The Dish

The lead editorial today, completely overlooking the extremist nature of the organizers of the “anti-war” marches this weekend, amounts to propaganda. No mention that the main organizing group supported Milosevic, and has kind words to say about North Korea. No mention of the burning of American flags, vandalism against government offices, Bush = Hitler slogans. No mention of the relatively small turnout, compared to previous marches, nor to polls showing continued concern about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction (something the march’s organizers have called a hoax.) What we get is this absurd Orwellianism:

It was impressive for the obvious mainstream roots of the marchers – from young college students to grayheads with vivid protest memories of the 60’s.

In their editorials, the Times routinely nods toward the need to enforce U.N. resolutions against Iraq. But you know where Howell Raines really stands.

An MLK-Day tribute to one of the civil right’s movement’s unsung heroes, Bayard Rustin. For me, he forms a bridge between yesterday’s vital moral crusade – for black dignity – and today’s – for gay equality. If you get a chance to watch tonight’s PBS documentary on the man, I hope you’ll see what I mean.

BRITAIN’S NEW CLOUT: By defying anti-Americanism, the British prime minister has vaulted his country to a position of extraordinary global influence. Gerhard Schroder, eat your heart out.

THE SANE LEFT: Take a look at the London Observer’s editorial yesterday on the Iraq situation. The Observer is the Guardian’s sister-paper. It can be relied upon in most instances to represent left-liberal consensus. And yet it has reluctantly come to acknowledge the strengths of the pro-war argument – on liberal grounds. Here’s the money paragraph:

War with Iraq may yet not come, but, conscious of the potentially terrifying responsibility resting with the British Government, we find ourselves supporting the current commitment to a possible use of force. That is not because we have not agonised, as have so many of our readers and those who demonstrated across the country yesterday, about what is right. It is because we believe that, if Saddam does not yield, military action may eventually be the least awful necessity for Iraq, for the Middle East and for the world.

THE EXTREME LEFT: Check out these photos of the depraved from San Francisco. Routine posters equating Bush and Cheney with Hitler. KKK-style slogans: “I want YOU to die for Israel. Israel Sings Onward Christian Soldiers.” My favorite: “The Difference Between Bush and Saddam is that Saddam was Elected.” I’d say the term “fifth column” is a little esoteric for these goons. And given that this march was organized by the extremist group, ANSWER, it’s no big surprise. Now let’s see when one of the more respectable anti-war types actually condemns this kind of depravity. The Republicans rightly disowned Trent Lott. Yet much of the left expects us to ignore this hatred of the United States. Check out blogger Tacitus’ roll-call of honor for the alleged liberals all too happy to turn a blind eye to the fascists and fascist-supporters who organized their anti-war march.

NOKO NO-NO: A belated link to Charles Krauthammer’s essentially unanswerable critique of the Bush administration’s policy toward Pyongyang.

MORE EVIDENCE: Of Saddam’s continued reach for weapons of mass destruction.

AFTER THE LOTT DEBACLE: Why on earth is the Bush administration doing this?

CHINA’S GAYS: It’s still a truly horrifying place to be a gay man or woman. Not as bad as in the Islamic states, of course, but that’s hardly a good standard.

DERBYSHIRE AWARD NOMINEE: “A friend in DC emails to tell me that there are 100,000 antiwar protestors on the Mall. I am reminded of watching the New York St. Patrick’s Day parade once with a friend of Ulster Unionist sympathies. As the massed ranks of Irish marched past, my friend sighed and said: ‘The things you see when you don’t have a gun!'” – John Derbyshire, adding yet another minority, Irish Catholics, to the groups (blacks, gays) for whom he affects disdain to the point of revulsion.

ISLAM VERSUS FREEDOM: Yet another example of what happens to free expression when theocratic fascists get into power.

The liberal news organization now simply reprints pro-Saddam propaganda.

More reader opinion on the Letters Page.

“Who, you may be asking incredulously, would want their country to be bombed? What would make people want to risk their children being blown to pieces? I thought this too until, last October, I spent a month as a journalist seeing the reality of life under Saddam Hussein.

Strangely, it’s the small details which remain in the memory, even now, three months later. It’s the pale, sickly look that would come over people’s faces when I mentioned Saddam. It’s the fact that the Marsh Arabs – a proud, independent people who have seen their marshes drained and been “relocated” to tiny desert shacks – are forced to hang a small, menacing picture of Saddam in their new “homes”. It’s the child wearing a T-shirt saying “Yes, yes, yes to Daddy Saddam”.

If Britain were governed by such a man, I would welcome friendly bombs – a concept I once thought absurd. I might be prepared to risk my own life to bring my country’s living death to an end. Most of the Iraqi people I encountered clearly felt the same. The moment they established that I was British, people would hug me and offer coded support (they would be even more effusive towards the Americans I travelled with). They would explain how much they ‘admire Britain – British democracy, yes? You understand?'” Well, some people understand. And we’ll be coming to rescue you soon. There are some egregious bits of left-wing credentializing in this piece first published in the In dependent. But then that makes its moral clarity all the more impressive.

THE LEFT FOR WAR II: “The United States finds itself at war with the forces of reaction. Do I have to demonstrate this? The Taliban’s annihilation of music and culture? The enslavement of women? The massacre of Shiite Muslims in Afghanistan? Or what about the latest boast of al Qaeda – that the bomb in Bali, massacring so many Australian holidaymakers, was a deliberate revenge for Australia’s belated help in securing independence for East Timor? (Never forget that the Muslim fundamentalists are not against “empire.” They fight proudly for the restoration of their own lost caliphate.) To these people, the concept of a civilian casualty is meaningless if the civilian is an unbeliever or a heretic.” – Hitch in fine form tackling the potluck peaceniks of Seattle.

“Bush’s effort [on affirmative action] is so special that this may very well be the first Martin Luther King. Jr. birthday during which the loudest celebrations come not from black churches and integrated downtown breakfasts but from the hallways of segregated suburbia to the romantic enclaves of the Confederacy. Finally for them, this is the day to shout ”We Have Overcome.” This is the day that a lot of God’s white people – Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics – are holding hands and singing in the words of their new spiritual, ‘Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty, we are free at last!'” – Derrick Z. Jackson, Boston Globe today. (Via Winderkinder.)

This is the only question worth asking about the chemical warheads discovered by U.N. inspectors in Iraq. The U.N. resolution is quite clear. If Saddam did not specifically declare the existence of these missile warheads capable of delivering chemical weapons, then this entire charade is now over. I presume the administration is downplaying this find so that it can continue to build up forces for an attack, and so that it can also guide inspectors to more substantive finds. But if there was no accounting of these missiles, as the U.N. inspectors have argued, the line has surely been crossed. There can be no further excuses. Saddam had one absolutely last chance and he lied. If we do not go to war now, then Bush, in turn, will have been shown to have lied in his countless statements declaring zero tolerance for future violations. The timing can be calibrated. But the removal of Saddam – by force if necessary – seems to me now to be necessary, urgent, inevitable.

THE VATICAN STRIKES BACK: In advance of what I predict will be a purging of all gay priests and seminarians from the Catholic church, the men who now control the Vatican (it’s not clear if John Paul II is one of them) are now moving toward a tighter control of the Catholic press. No Catholic publication will henceforth be allowed to publish a variety of viewpoints on such critical matters as church governance, women priests, clerical celibacy or gay priests. Equally, no Catholic politician will be allowed to deviate from Vatican orthodoxy. At least that’s the clear inference of this latest 17-page document from Cardinal Ratzinger’s department. I wonder if this is in part a response to the Jesuit magazine America’s recent special issue defending the dignity and worth of homosexual priests. I’m beginning to think we’ll soon find that the late twentieth century was an historical aberration in Roman Catholicism. It’s back to the nineteenth, pronto.

POSEUR ALERT: “No one has inspired more blacks for hope in America than I have.” – Jesse Jackson, MSNBC.

SONTAG AWARD NOMINEE: “There is on the one hand the America of the New Deal, of Jimmy Carter, and even, more or less, of George Herbert Bush [sic] … But there exists today as well … a second America… a troubled and disturbing America, where pluralism is above all a mask for special interests, a Christian America (Ashcroft), bursting with revolvers (Cheney), arrogant (Rumsfeld), imperial (William Kristol), racist (Trent Lott), opportunist (Condi Rice), partisan (Karl Rove), the America of spying and denunciation (Poindexter), of conspiracy (Elliot Abrams) … of a rotten Enron-style capitalism, of the unlimited death penalty – the America, in a word, of George W. Bush. This symbolically Texan and overweeningly aggressive America wants war, cheap oil, and, incidentally, the crushing and total humiliation of the Palestinians: in a word imperial domination in its purest form. A short-sighted nationalism and capitalism, which scorn the have-nots, are its raison d’xeatre … Europe, sooner or later, will have to separate itself from the new America … The fact that America, the eldest daughter of the Enlightenment, has become ‘a threat to itself and the entire world,’ as Anatol Lieven explained a few weeks ago in an article for The London Review of Books, is a very worrisome reversal of affairs.” – Patrice Higgonet, professor of French history at Harvard University, quoted in the French paper, Liberation, January 3.

EVEN BETTER PUT: “Florida’s programs, and the principles that they advance, are more than just “another” way of accomplishing true diversity. They provide a better way. Florida’s plan is better in that it no longer accepts the lack of quality in the public schools that serve our underprivileged children; better because it recognizes the need to provide mentoring, tutoring, and other extra attention to those underprivileged children and their teachers; better because it encourages all students regardless of race or economic status to aspire to post-secondary education; better because it no longer accepts a separate standard on the basis of race; better because it focuses on providing all races with the opportunity to meet common standards; and finally, better because it looks forward to a day when racial classifications and separate standards are no longer deemed necessary by anyone.” – from the amicus brief to the Michigan affirmative action case, submitted by governor Jeb Bush of Florida.

EMAIL OF THE DAY: “I praised Susan Sontag in two of my books, and her decline pains me. Now she says Europe was her “California” and she grew up dreaming of being European? Impossible. She knows that in Europe she can only be a Jew. A Jew can become a Californian, but not French: when push comes to shove, you are only “the Jew Sontag.” Only in America can she be a full cultural citizen; or even just “Susan,” an individual who likes photos and French philosophy, and who was, in her youth, more beautiful than you young people can imagine – Wynona Ryder with a brain. The Dark Lady of New York’s sonnets. If America loses that power she so hates, her life won’t be worth a franc anywhere in the world. Wherever America’s power ebbs today, her life is already in danger. Even she, if she thinks of it, would have to grudgingly agree. I respected her once. She does have a mind. In the late sixties, a New York intellectual of my generation read the provocative, high-strung essays in Against Interpretation; paused to look at her face on the cover; and thought: Perfect. If you don’t understand that, Mr. Sullivan, you can’t understand the grief over her now.”

Warheads capable of delivering chemical weapons. If verified, and if not accounted for in Iraq’s declaration, case for war closed.

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

– Wallace Stevens.

Ramesh Ponnuru is concerned that Orrin Hatch is going to produce a new and tough-as-nails hate crimes statute to appease the Congressional Black Caucus. Ramesh is right to be dismayed. The idiot-right actually believes that the way to win over minorities is not to rid itself of prejudice and promote good conservative principles for all Americans. It believes that you have to adopt left-liberal panaceas to brandish as innoculation against the charge of bigotry. This was Lott’s farewell gambit. Now it’s Hatch’s. But this particular ploy won’t even achieve the results Hatch wants. Why? Because Hatch’s proposal will go out of its way to exclude gays from federal hate crimes protection. Here’s a simple question to those conservatives who support hate-crime laws for blacks but not for gays. (That includes the president.) What’s your rationale? Let’s say you’re an orthodox fundamentalist who believes that gay sex is immoral. I don’t agree with you (gay sex can be moral and immoral, like all sex), but let’s concede that this can be a sincere moral position. How do you get from that to saying that gays – uniquely – should be excluded from protection from hate crimes? Isn’t your official position that you hate the sin, not the sinner? Isn’t it wrong – on Christian grounds – to say that somehow violence against one group is less worrisome than against another? Isn’t it a violation of Biblical principles to condone any bigotry accompanied by violence – bigotry not based on a position on a sexual act but on a person’s simple identity? Gays, after all, are one of the social groups most vulnerable to hate-filled physical attacks in our society. By saying that every other group deserves protection, except this one, is, to my mind, prima facie evidence of anti-gay animus. Again, this has nothing to do with the morality of gay sex. The average thug doesn’t walk down the street, see a lonely homo and think, “I need to reassert the importance of procreation as essential to an ordered society.” He thinks: “Fucking faggot. Let’s kick some pansy-ass.” Hatch wants to say that someone motivated in this fashion is somehow less reprehensible than someone who wants to attack someone because he’s Jewish or black or white. I want to say: is Hatch kidding? How low does he think gay people are in the social order that it’s okay to send a signal that demonizing and loathing them is somehow less problematic than demonizing and loathing other groups?

PRINCIPLES, INDEED: It seems to me there are two defensible positions on hate crimes laws. One is that they are all pernicious, illiberal, incoherent and should be abolished (that would be mine). The other is that they have merit and should protect any minority from being physically attacked. (A third is to oppose them all in principle, but if they’re are practically unavoidable, to make sure they are fairly applied. That’s my default position.) The one stance that makes no sense – a stance that can only be explained by pure prejudice – is that some beleaguered groups deserve protection but that others – gays – somehow don’t. Hatch’s proposal – and president Bush’s current position – is therefore text-book prejudice. You can’t be a compassionate conservative and send a public message that you think gay-bashing is not as big a deal as black-bashing or Jew-bashing. Or you can – and show yourself to be barely indistinguishable from a man, Trent Lott, you just spent a great deal of effort condemning.