Is the Political Center Up For Grabs?

I switched on the news this morning and saw a report about Joe Lieberman's defeat to Ned Lamont in the Connecticut Democratic party primary. The news anchor blabed on over a repeating loop of Joe coming out of a polling booth and Ned standing on a stage at his victory party, almost lost in the press of people trying to crowd up against some success, hoping that some of that success will rub off on them.

There, behind Ned's right shoulder was Al Sharpton; behind his left shoulder was Jessie Jackson. Two race-baiters who have between them have never won any elective office.

Though this is a blow for President Bush's Mideast policy, this may also be the high-water mark for the resurgent anti-war left. John McLaughlin points out this victory's surprising fragility:

These Connecticut Democrats were opposed to the war and unfavorable to President Bush by about a 4 to 1 ratio. Joe Lieberman stood up to the antiwar radicals Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson and found out he can’t count on Hillary Clinton. However, as the intellectual activists and radicals of the Democratic party left him, working class, small-town, and moderate Democrats rallied and voted with Senator Lieberman. It’s a very important lesson for Republicans who must win in blue states. The Democrat center is available. The political descendents of George McGovern are excommunicating the heirs to Scoop Jackson. As Ronald Reagan embraced anti-Communist Democrats, anti-terror Republicans should embrace Lieberman Democrats.

Hispanic Dynamism

A topic much discussed in conservative circles a few years back was the dynamism of the Evangelical church in Latin America. Back then National Review had cover artwork showing Billy Graham in a sombrero. (Discerning Evangelicals knew that the Latin American Billy Graham was Luis Palau.)

Here is a link to an example of that dynamism coming to the United States:

Spreading the Word--Fast
A new system makes church membership grow exponentially.

BY ANDREA TUNAROSA
Friday, July 28, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT

At one of his recent Sunday services at the Heavenly Vision Center in the Bronx, N.Y., the Rev. Salvador Sabino asked all the "leaders" in the room to rise. He was shocked to see an elderly woman named Sonia among those who stood up. She was one of the quietest people he had ever known--he had once even wondered whether she was mute. Mr. Sabino then asked: "Will all the heads of a cell rise?" The woman remained standing. He later found out that, despite her withdrawn personality, Sonia had at least 48 people under her guidance. Beneath that shy exterior was a true passion for leadership.

For the other 1,400 (mostly Hispanic) attendees at the Heavenly Vision Christian Center, a nondenominational evangelical church, leadership has become a key concept in their lives. Not only are the congregants expected to mentor 12 disciples--newcomers to the church--but they must also encourage the disciples themselves to become leaders. This cascading structure, called G-12--or Government of Twelve--has proved to be a good way of gaining members while keeping the old ones engaged. The idea is to imitate the delegated leadership of Jesus' 12 disciples. In North America, more than 380 churches have registered to use the G-12 system.

The Wharton business school couldn't have designed a better growth strategy. According to the imperatives of G-12, leaders have to follow four steps--win new adherents, strengthen the adherents' Christian beliefs, take them on as disciples and send them off to replicate the process--to complete the nine-month program called "The Ladder of Success." Each leader meets with his "cell" (often in his home) apart from larger Sunday services. Disciples learn fundamental Christian doctrines as well as techniques for problem-solving, teamwork and leadership.

I find two things interesting about this strategy: First, it didn't originate in the United States:

The system was first imported from Colombia five years ago. It was created by the Rev. Cesar Castellanos in the early 1990s, after a trip he took to South Korea (where Christians account for more that a fourth of the population). In Seoul, Mr. Castellanos met David Yonggi Cho, founder of the Yoido Full Gospel Church, the largest congregation in the world, now with more than 800,000 members, meeting in a number of satellite locations.

Second, it is affecting Latin America far beyond the church's doors:

In Colombia, Mr. Castellanos's wife, Claudia, who is also a pastor, has expanded her influence beyond the church. She thinks that the G-12 model should change not only lives but nations as well. In 1991, Ms. Castellanos became the first Christian senator in her country, and she has been a staunch opponent of abortion and euthanasia in Colombia ever since. Pastors from G-12 churches in Peru, Argentina, Mexico and Canada are already following her footsteps by taking on active careers in politics. Ms. Castellanos is also promoting an entrepreneurial network, under G-12 principles, to foster small-business creation.

While I will forgive Ms Tunarosa her faux pas (I believe that Ms Castellanos was the first Evangelical senator elected, and that the Catholic Church are still Christians), this is very big. As was pointed out a few years back, this is the biggest shift in Latin American culture since the Conquistadores arrived back in the 15th century.

And this may also point out whay so many Republicans are anxious (even to their short-term detriment) to cultivate the Hispanic vote. Latin American immigrants may be the most socially significant cultural group in the US in the next couple of decades.

Given the vitality of this this group, the question may not be, "How can we assimilate Hispanic immigrants into our culture?" But rather, "How can we adopt and assimilate the cultural vigor of Hispanic immigrants?"

Okay, Now I Really Don't Believe in "Global Warming"

The Constant Reader knows that I have many reservations of the validity of "Global Warming."

However, noted theologian, presidential candidate, gym monkey, and ur-idiotarian Pat Robertson seems to be making the connection between this week's weather and global climate change:

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. -- The Rev. Pat Robertson said he hasn't been a believer in global warming in the past, but this summer's record-breaking heat is "making a convert out of me."

On his "700 Club" broadcast, Robertson said, "It is getting hotter, and the icecaps are melting and there is a buildup of carbon dioxide in the air."

Switching sides on an issue that divides evangelical Christians, Robertson said, "We really need to address the burning of fossil fuels."

The religious broadcaster told viewers, "If we are contributing to the destruction of this planet, we need to do something about it."

That just about tears it.

"She's Not Ann Coulter. She's Not Insane"

Another in a series of efforts by liberal media people trying to understand, portray, and make money from conservatives:

'Ally McBeal' Star to Play Conservative Pundit in New TV Series

NEW YORK ABC reportedly has huge hopes for a new series to air this fall called "Brothers & Sisters," which will follow the hit "Desperate Housewives" on the schedule. Calista Flockhart, best known as Ally McBeal, plays a conservative radio host turned TV pundit. Others in the high-powered cast include Patricia Wettig, Rachel Griffiths, Ron Rifkin and Sally Field.

Flockhart recently explained, "I really want to go back to work. It just seemed like the perfect time and the perfect project."

Asked to describe the pundit, producer Ken Olin (formerly a star of “Thirty Something’) said, "She's not Ann Coulter. She's not insane."Writer Jon Robin Baitz added, "No, I think she's a thoughtful conservative. She's ideologically, in some respects, very much in mind with the older parts of the party, the sort of Eisenhower Republican, the William Buckley conservative. She's also a humanist."

She's not someone who is apologetic about being a conservative. But it's very, very interesting and compelling to us to try and understand this, to leave behind some of the smug presuppositions of the two coasts, . . . to look at evolving patriotism and evolving traditionalism," he said, according to an article by Dave Walker of New Orleans’ Times-Picayune.

"For years and years, the left has looked at the right in complete incomprehension and felt, 'We just can't connect.' And maybe there's an effort in the show to try and bridge that in some way.”

Sally Field plays Flockhart’s mother.

I dunno. Could be good. Could be a stinker. I was not an Alley McBeal fan, but I'll be TIVOing the first few episodes.

It's interesting that they are attempting to skirt the social conservative issue (smart move in my opinion) by writing the lead as an "Eisenhower Republican." It does cause a big hit in the series's premises's believability. How many "Eisenhower Republicans" are hits on the talk radio venue?

I wonder if they will be able to capture the motivation of a conservative without descending into farce or lame parody. I wonder how they will portray the tension between the "Country Club" and populist conservatives?

There are a lot of funny conservative people out there, such as Jonah Goldberg, Rob Long, P.J. O'Rourke, et cetera. I wonder if they are going to tap into these rich veins, or go for the predictable yocks. What makes me think that this is going to be a sitcom rather than a series drama?

It would be a gutsy move to write a conservative character that the either loves and identifies with or hates to love (in the mold of Dabney Coleman's Buffalo Bill) , but the former would threaten their concept of their audience and the latter would threaten their bottom line.

As an aside, how many overtly politically conservative roles have there been in American television?

Alex P. Keaton (Michael J. Fox) on Family Ties.
Ainsley Hayes (Emily Procter) on West Wing.
Arnold Vinick (Alan Alda ) on West Wing.

Three names and all start with "A." I can't think of many more.

UPDATE: Someone over at The Corner makes some points about the series's cognative dissonance that I am too young to remember:

Re: the new ABC series that has Calista "Ally McBeal" Flockhart playing a "conservative radio host turned television pundit." I think it's uproariously funny to see how the entertainment industry portrays conservatives. The show's writer Jon Robin Baitz says that she's a "thoughtful conservative" and that "[s]he's ideologically, in some respects, very much in mind with the older parts of the party, the sort of Eisenhower Republican, the William Buckley conservative. She's also a humanist." Uh, last time I checked Bill Buckley didn't think much of Eisenhower, Jon-Jon. And no respectable conservative who came of age during the Reagan Revolution would ever describe himself as a "humanist." Other than that, it sounds like a riveting series. Will anyone give me odds on whether this show actually lasts an entire season? See all of you "humanists" later!

Are we looking at another Commander in Chief? I fear so.

Three Men in a Boat

I have just returned from a brief trip through the highways that comprise the "Cascade Loop," a delightful drive through alp-like peaks in northern Washington state. This is the first real vacation that I've had in many years and its occasion caused me to return to this review of my all-time favorite travel book, which I consider the funniest book in the English Language:

Three Men in a Boat (to say nothing of the Dog), by Jerome Kappa Jerome, is a pure delight. Through repeated re-readings it never, never palls. Written as a travelogue serial for a magazine at the turn of the century (1898 must be specified as we have past the turning of another century), the book takes the framework of a road story and hangs upon it a series of misadventures, remembered anecdotes, and observations about life. I have been told that since it's first publication, it has never been out of print.

The three men are George, Harris, and J. (Jerome himself). All three work in The City (London) and feel that that it is time to leave the rat race behind and spend a fortnight on holiday. They decide to take a small boat up the Thames, bringing with them only essential supplies and the fourth member of the group, Montmorency the Fox Terrier.

I first heard of this book as a boy, reading Robert A. Heinlein's Have Spacesuit, Will Travel. In that book the protagonist (Kip) goes to his father to ask something of him. The father is reading Three Men in a Boat, which Kip remarks that his father has read so many times that he must have it memorized. The father, in answer to Kip's question, begins reading the story of the Pineapple Tin. Kip sneaks away. I wondered, what kind of book could stand such repeated re-readings? And what was the story of the Pineapple Tin?

I searched libraries and book stores for years without luck until I moved to Portland Oregon, home of Powell's, which has to be the biggest new-and-used book store in the world. There I found a copy of the book, printed in England in the 1960's.

I was surprised that the book seemed to hold up so well. Even though the story was written over 100 years ago, the jokes are funny, the travelogue engaging, and the life observations as true as ever. I enjoy other British writers but it seems to me that Jerome's book is a mother-lode from which has been mined much "British Humor." P.G. Wodehouse, The Goonies, and Monty Python owe much to this truly funny writer.

Everyone who read this book has a favorite part. A scene where thay must lay the book down and laugh out loud. I must admit to being helpless because of the cheese episode and Harris's adventures in the Maze. Read the book and you'll understand.

Footnotes:

I have recently read Connie Willis's To Say Nothing of the Dog. She dedicates the book to Robert Heinlein from whom she, too, first heard of this wonderful book.

A couple of years ago I read another book by Jerome, Three Men on the Bummel. It returns to our three heroes ten years later as they decide to escape the joys of wedded life (for all three are now married) to take a bicycle tour of Germany's Black Forest. Bummel wasn't nearly as funny as Boat (nothing could be), but it is another engaging travelogue with a large dose of humor. (The story about buying phrasebooks tops my list.)

The Five Pillars of Aristocracy

I grew up in Southern California and saw (and still see) the idolization of motion picture actors as the kind of déclassé thing that is done by tourists who buy maps to the star's homes, and dream about encountering their big-screen heroes walking down the street in Hollywood.

Hollywood is an industry town; and the industry is movies. When I was a teenager, my goal wasn't to to be a movie star, it was to play horn in a studio orchestra.

So why are people whose main talent is pretending to be other people so celebrated?

John Adams in a letter to Thomas Jefferson defines the basis for aristocracy:

The five Pillars of Aristocracy, are Beauty, Wealth, Birth, Genius and Virtues. Any one of the three first, can at any time over bear any one or both of the two
last.

Rick Brookhiser comments that this applies to Hollywood stars:

The stars of Hollywood have beauty, and genius of a kind. Hence they are aristocrats in a media age.

Which reminds me of the scene in Back to the Future where Doc Brown realizes that when television becomes ubiquitous, the President of the United States will be a movie actor.

Many people love to joke about Ronald Reagan' status as a B-level actor being a poor preparation for the presidency. Many of these same people wet themselves when an actor who agrees with their political stance makes some inflammatory public statement.

Fake but Accurate--1955

Yesterday was the 81st anniversary of the Scopes trial. American Heritage is running a 20 question quiz on the "trial of the century." What is amazing is not what you don't know--it's what you know that ain't true.

Q. So what you're saying is that Inherit the Wind, Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee's 1955 play based on the Scopes trial (which was made into a film in 1960), in which a defeated character based on Bryan breaks down and cries on the witness stand, is alternative history?

A. Exactly. The only difference is that if someone writes a play in which the South wins the Civil War, everyone knows it's fiction. With Inherit the Wind, all too many people seem to think it's fact.

Inherit the Wind has become an iconic movie in American culture. It tells the story of the 1925 Scopes "Monkey Trial" that repudiated creationism and freed educators across the land to freely teach Darwinian evolution.

Except that it didn't.

Scopes set out to break the law as a test case--and he lost. National figures tried to use the courts to circumvent the democratic process.

Inherit the Wind tells the story the way many people felt that it should be told. In this way it resembles the correlation between the Clinton White House and The West Wing.

The climactic scene in Inherit comes when Spencer Tracy puts Frederic March on the witness stand and poses a long string of meaningless conundrums. He finishes with a challenge about Joshua's Day--the day when the Bible says that God stopped the sun to let Joshua continue fighting a battle in daylight. He gets March to agree that the sun did not stop moving, but that the earth paused in it's rotation.

He then says that this would have caused oceans to splash out of their basins and mountains to crumble from their inertia.

Even as a child I thought that that was the lamest argument that I had ever heard. Surely a supreme being who created all things, and who can stop the Earth's 5.97 * 10²⁴ kilograms and then restart it isn't going to be unaware of the conservation of momentum.

And yet Frederic March gobbles and gasps for a few minutes and the viewer feels sorry for him.

But that's not what happened. But in the eyes of those with the money, talent, and time to make this movie that is what should have happened.

You know, "Fake but accurate."

The "Southern Strategy" and the "netroots"

So what do we hear from Democratic "netroots" regarding a Southern culture? (a key to implementing the "Southern Strategey" as described by Dave "Mudcat" Saunders) Why, let's listen in:

The Peckerwood era in the south were good ole days for southerners, or at least as good as it got after Lee's crying uncle and throwing in the towel to the hated Yankees. They still had the Negroes to kick around and could freely exercise their domestic version of Apartheid, (`least till dose meddlin' hippie college boys began stickin' dere noses where day didn't belong and stirrin' up a ruckus) until that long avowed day when the south would rise again, and rising is just what it is doing in 2005 with the help of Jesus and the GOP (Good Ole Peckerwoods)...

This is the reality of the situation: deep south bible belt whites, mainly poor, increasingly hostile and always Republican now own a disproportionate amount of political power in America and they are determined to wield it. They will use it in order to drag the country backwards through time to a dark place in our history that had apparently been buried in the past. They seek to return to the days where the American south was mired in the smothering blackness of a festering, hateful and corrupt parallel universe to the more progressive states above the Mason Dixon Line, trapped like a dinosaur in a tar pit. It was only through the courage of the civil rights movement and federal anti discrimination laws that the roaring beast was able to be semi-tamed to a point where it would be able to interact with decent folk. With the ascendancy of a red state evangelical movement the south is back for blood revenge, thundering a bastardized version of Christianity from pulpits, preaching hatred and bigotry and the end times and drawing the masses of the disenfranchised into ever growing mega churches and mobilizing armies of activists. The southern regressive fervor has infiltrated the United States government itself, controlling both houses of congress, the executive branch and now is on the precipice of seizing control of the supreme court as well, engulfing all of our democratic institutions like a malignant strain of alien kudzu.

Hateful? Check!

Historically ignorant? Check!

Sure to drive moderates into your opponent's arms? Check!

Mission accomplished! Bring on the next election!

Authentic Voices

The Constant Reader will know that I have a bone to pick with Democrats who put on Christianity like a magic hat to try and convince us dumb old fundamentalists that they, too, get this "God thing."

Well, the Democrats have one national figure who "gets it." Barack Obama gave a very thoughtful speech the other day:

For some time now, there has been plenty of talk among pundits and pollsters that the political divide in this country has fallen sharply along religious lines. Indeed, the single biggest "gap" in party affiliation among white Americans today is not between men and women, or those who reside in so-called Red States and those who reside in Blue, but between those who attend church regularly and those who don't.

Conservative leaders have been all too happy to exploit this gap, consistently reminding evangelical Christians that Democrats disrespect their values and dislike their Church, while suggesting to the rest of the country that religious Americans care only about issues like abortion and gay marriage; school prayer and intelligent design.

Democrats, for the most part, have taken the bait. At best, we may try to avoid the conversation about religious values altogether, fearful of offending anyone and claiming that - regardless of our personal beliefs - constitutional principles tie our hands. At worst, there are some liberals who dismiss religion in the public square as inherently irrational or intolerant, insisting on a caricature of religious Americans that paints them as fanatical, or thinking that the very word "Christian" describes one's political opponents, not people of faith.

...over the long haul, I think we make a mistake when we fail to acknowledge the power of faith in people's lives -- in the lives of the American people -- and I think it's time that we join a serious debate about how to reconcile faith with our modern, pluralistic democracy.

And if we're going to do that then we first need to understand that Americans are a religious people. 90 percent of us believe in God, 70 percent affiliate themselves with an organized religion, 38 percent call themselves committed Christians, and substantially more people in America believe in angels than they do in evolution.

...That's a path that has been shared by millions upon millions of Americans - evangelicals, Catholics, Protestants, Jews and Muslims alike; some since birth, others at certain turning points in their lives. It is not something they set apart from the rest of their beliefs and values. In fact, it is often what drives their beliefs and their values.

...And that is why that, if we truly hope to speak to people where they're at - to communicate our hopes and values in a way that's relevant to their own - then as progressives, we cannot abandon the field of religious discourse.

Because when we ignore the debate about what it means to be a good Christian or Muslim or Jew; when we discuss religion only in the negative sense of where or how it should not be practiced, rather than in the positive sense of what it tells us about our obligations towards one another; when we shy away from religious venues and religious broadcasts because we assume that we will be unwelcome - others will fill the vacuum, those with the most insular views of faith, or those who cynically use religion to justify partisan ends.

And how was Senator Obama's speech received by his most outspoken fellow Democrats?

It's Bill Clinton's Fault!

But this bullshit from Barack Obama is Bill Clinton’s fault. The greatest victory of the radical right wing has been to train Democratic politicians to disrespect, mischaracterize and run against their base in the progressive movement. And that is Bill Clinton’s fault.

Man, that netroots thing is what's gonna keep Republicans in power for the next 20 years.

Unsolicited Advice I

If Democrats were asking me (which they are most certainly not) they'd be listening to Dave "Mudcat" Saunders.

One of Mudcat's myriad cris de coeur (besides the lament that Democrats "have no testosterone" and are unable to "get through the culture" of the South) is that his party can't count. "Politics is about addition, that's all it is. It's not difficult," he says, giving me a primer on Mudcat math. "If I go get a white male," he asks, "how many votes do I get?" One, I reply. "No," he says impatiently, "I get two. Because I just took one away from Republicans."

It is the most elegantly simple precept, he says, one that could end the Democratic drought, and yet they don't see it because they think targeting Bubba males alienates their base and smacks of racism. "No it doesn't," he says. "My African-American friends want to win as much as I do. . . . Democrats are insane. They say Republicans are insane, but they win. I don't see anything insane about winning."

When he and Jarding approached the Democratic National Committee about sponsoring a NASCAR truck decked out with fire-snorting donkey nostrils--as they'd done successfully with Warner, and as everyone from the NRA to the U.S. Navy has also done, as a way to start cracking the culture--he says they were rebuffed. "It wasn't the demographic they were going for." I ask what they were going for. "Fat women from New England," he snaps.

It's going to take more that running a NASCAR entry, though. The Democrats are going to have to have their Sister Souljah moment with Michael Moore and his ilk:

...You know in my town the small businesses that everyone wanted to protect? They were the people that supported all the right-wing groups. They were the Republicans in the town, they were in the Kiwanas, the Chamber of Commerce - people that kept the town all white. The small hardware salesman, the small clothing store salespersons, Jesse the Barber who signed his name three different times on three different petitions to recall me from the school board. Fuck all these small businesses - fuck 'em all! Bring in the chains. The small businesspeople are the rednecks that run the town and suppress the people. Fuck 'em all. That's how I feel.

If that's how you feel, Michael, Okay. You were the one that got invited to sit in former President Jimmy Carter's box at the Democratic Convention.

The Paranoid Style of Netroots Politics

It's become a common observation among conservatives to note that Richard Hofstadter's essay, "The Paranoid Style in American Politics," more and more closely describes what is happening among the warring factions of the Democratic party. Hofstadter's comments about conservative criticisms of the Korean war now apply to Liberal criticisms of the Global War on Terror:

...Any historian of warfare knows it is in good part a comedy of errors and a museum of incompetence; but if for every error and every act of incompetence one can substitute an act of treason, many points of fascinating interpretation are open to the paranoid imagination. In the end, the real mystery, for one who reads the primary works of paranoid scholarship, is not how the United States has been brought to its present dangerous position but how it has managed to survive at all.

The group that was the banner carrier for the paranoid politics about which Hofstadter wrote was the unhinged John Birch Society of the late 1950s and early 1960s. The Society was more than a collection of "old ladies in tennis shoes," as they were often characterized. Members included high-technology aerospace workers in Orange County, California who sent Richard Nixon to congress.

Josh Trevino writes a nice comparison between the "netroots" campaigns of sites like DailyKos and MyDD and the John Birch Society:

...Its leader was one Robert Welch, Jr., an erstwhile Massachusetts manufacturer who looked at the past quarter-century of statism’s march, and saw relentless conspiracy. He was not alone in his analysis: surely this sea change, counterintuitive and counter-American as it was, could never have succeeded simply by the will of the people. Surely it was not a function of the mere zeitgeist. Surely it was not coincidental. No: forces were at work. The Birchers meant to identify them.

And identify them they did. In the classic manner of the conspiracy-minded and the cultist, having arrived at the effect — which is to say, their own relentless marginalization by hidden forces — they set out to identify causes and agents. One obvious agent was international Communism. Fair enough: it had an objectively-verifiable existence, acknowledged by its own participants. Less obvious were the American agents of that agent: the secret Communists advancing the cause within our very nation. And here the Birchers went astray....

Hofstadter characterized their alienation this way:

...But the modern right wing, as Daniel Bell has put it, feels dispossessed: America has been largely taken away from them and their kind, though they are determined to try to repossess it and to prevent the final destructive act of subversion. The old American virtues have already been eaten away by cosmopolitans and intellectuals; the old competitive capitalism has been gradually undermined by socialistic and communistic schemers; the old national security and independence have been destroyed by treasonous plots, having as their most powerful agents not merely outsiders and foreigners as of old but major statesmen who are at the very centers of American power. Their predecessors had discovered conspiracies; the modern radical right finds conspiracy to be betrayal from on high.

How do they compare with the "netroots" crowd? Josh Trevino writes:

Consider the average member of this group. He (or she) remembers the era of leftist dominance of American politics — and he remembers the beginning of its end, on election day 1980. He is around 50 years old. He is professional living in a coastal enclave, mostly on the Pacific coast or the northeast. His political consciousness was formed by the McGovern and Carter campaigns — and of course the American retreat from Vietnam. He may have grown up in Iowa, or Texas, or Missouri, or Utah — but he went to college elsewhere, and fell in love with the people in California, or New York, or Boston, who were so much more progressive and intellectual than the hayseeds back home. His initial concept of conservatives, which he’s never really abandoned, was formed by Nixonian malfeasance: they’re all crooks and corrupt, in his mind. The ascent of Reagan in 1980, and later the 1994 revolution, came as a profound shock — how could America forget so soon? He is well-off: and the bulk of his working career — and hence the font of his personal prosperity — was spent in the boom markets of the 1980s and 1990s, under Republican national governance in one form or another. He doesn’t think about the implications of that much.

But for all his generally good circumstances, he’s been on the political and cultural losing side all his adult life. He’s tired of it. And he’s found a website which, at last, makes him feel empowered. He is, in short, the typical member of the so-called netroots: the left-wing movement, organized around blogs, that seeks to “take back” this country from its usurpers. The netroots is a movement born of desperation and a sense of embattlement at being on the losing side of historical forces. It sees itself as the inheritor and the guarantor of true American tradition and identity, and it seeks to restore those things to their rightful primacy in national life. Critically, it choose to not merely fight its foes, but emulate them. It sees the prime virtue of its enemies as their ability to win, and if they can just crack the code — if it can grasp the very methodology of victory — then they will turn the tables, and victory will be theirs.

Sound familiar? It is — to us. To the left, it’s all very exciting, and all very new. And so we see the self-proclaimed netroots go through a trajectory very much like what the Birchers went through, albeit in highly compressed time. The elements are all there: the resentment, the conspiracy-mindedness, and especially the leaders with stupefyingly poor judgment married to Napoleon complexes.

This knd of thinking ends up in with self-appointed leaders condemning other, older leaders for lax ideological purity.

So how did the political right deal with its own wingnuttery?

...but the beginning of the end for its place in American conservatism came the preceding year. Nearly concurrent with its founding was the founding of the National Review, and in the beginning, there was much overlap between the personnel of each entity. Under William F. Buckley’s aegis, the National Review did what the Birchers did not: specifically, it eschewed the foe rather than mimicking it; and it inculcated within itself and its fellow-travelers a basic optimism about the American people that the Birchers, with their dark Weltanschauung of dupes and proxies, found utterly alien. Buckley in particular wrestled with the problem of Welch’s unhinged theories, until publicly concluding in the seminal February 1962 NR essay, “The Question of Robert Welch,” that the Birchers’ leader was simply a paranoiac who had to be ejected from the still-nascent conservative movement.

The gravity of Buckley’s action cannot be overstated. Conservatism was still on the ropes. Its declared adherents were few, and it would shortly suffer a crushing rejection from the American electorate in the 1964 election. In this circumstance, many argued that to turn away any ally was a fool’s act, bringing division in dire straits where unity was paramount. Mercifully, the National Review rejected this in favor of doing what was right rather than what was seemingly pragmatic. Considering the probable resulting alternatives in the modern day — a conservative movement twisted by a dark vision of paranoia and loathing, or no conservative movement at all — we owe a debt of gratitude for this simple essay in winter 1962.

Will the leaders of the Democratic Party find the courage to dump the "nutroots"?

Their inability to keep from slobbering all over race demagogues like Al Sharpton do not give me much hope.

Moving to the Right

Mona Charon muses on the reasons she is a conservative and quotes one of the finest bon mots I have ever read.

...He has reminisced about moving to Washington in the 1960s. Paraphrase: “I was a young, brash Barry Goldwater conservative. But in the intervening years, I’ve matured and grown and moved steadily to the right.”

Jim Baen, R.I.P.

After suffering a stoke, publisher Jim Baen has died. While I will write more later, David Drake has written a wonderful obituary.

UPDATE: Just Barking Mad reminds us that Jim remembered when he was a young soldier:

The final, and perhaps the most important thing to me, is that Jim never forgot the serviceman. Once a lowly private on the Bavarian border Jim would later send tens of thousands of first run books to soldiers, seaman, airmen and Marines around the globe at no expense to them. Naturally there were some who decried this a publicity stunt. I know that it was not…Jim cared. He was honored when they thanked him. Letters from service members took place of pride on his website.

Democratic Disconnect

It's like falling through the looking glass. Howard Dean likens 2006 to 1968:

"We're about to enter the '60s again," Dean said, but he was not referring to the Vietnam War or racial tensions.

Dean said he is looking for "the age of enlightenment led by religious figures who want to greet Americans with a moral, uplifting vision." . . .

Baby, the last thing the Democratic Party wants is a to be led by a religious figure with a moral vision.

Alternating between references to the "McCarthy era" of the 1950s, which he accused the Bush administration of reviving, the decade of the 1960s and the current era, Dean explained that he was "looking to go back to the same moral principles of the '50s and '60s."

Man, are we back to that 50s "Happy Days" nostalgia again?

That was a time that stressed "everybody's in it together," he said. "We know that no one person can succeed unless everybody else succeeds." . . .

Leave No Child Behind!

Before leaving Tuesday's conference, the DNC chairman thanked those in attendance for giving him "a big lift."

"I came in the wrong door when I first got here," Dean said. "I came in the back, and everybody was talking about praising the Lord, and I thought, 'I am home. Finally, a group of people who want to praise the Lord and help their fellow man just like Jesus did and just like Jesus taught.' Thank you so much for doing that for me."

Howard, if saying "Praise the Lord" makes you feel at home, I know a lot of gun-toten' rednecks that you'd feel real cozy with.

James Taranto seems to characterize this best when he says:

But there's something bizarre about the head of the Democratic Party yearning for a return to the 1960s. After all, 1968 marked the beginning of the Republican ascendancy in American politics. Richard Nixon's narrow victory in that year's presidential election began an impressive 7-for-10 GOP streak, and of course the Republicans eventually broke the Democrats' congressional majority too. For a Democrat to long for a return to the '60s is the equivalent of a Republican looking back wistfully on the glory days of the Hoover administration.

The Silence of the Dems

Christopher Hitchens has written about the silence of the Peace Movement when it comes to actually..., you know..., doing something more that pounding drums.

...may I propose some ways in which those who don't want to be associated with Michael Moore, George Galloway, Ramsey Clark, and the rest of the Zarqawi and Saddam apologists can make themselves plain? Here are four headings under which the anti-war types could disprove the charge of bad faith.

He lists the four things:

1. Promote the ban on land mines.
2. Human shields to protest the tageting of Iraqi civilians by terrorists.
3. Reaffirm the condemnation of sanctions against Iraq.
4. Re-start the drive to allow homosexuals to serve in the US armed forces.

I don't have much to say about number four. This seems to be kind of tacked onto the whole Iraq thing, like a senator placing an earmark for his home state in a highway appropriations bill.

But look at number one. Remember Princess Di? Patron saint of the tabloid? She was making some waves, lending her image to a very large movement to ban the use of landmines. As Hitchens points out, news about the ban has been displaced by news of casualties caused by terrorists using IEDs which are homebrew land mines.

And look at number two. What about those crazy human shields? Weren't they loveably kooky? Yep, they hung around Bagdad until it looked like the shooting was really about to start, then, "Oops! Sorry guys, but I've gotta get back for a....a.... drum circle! Yeah, that's the ticket! I've gotta get back to my drum circle and help drive that evil Chimpy McHallibushitler outta office. Email me!"

And number three. The lament of some, back in the 1990s was that the sanctions against Iraq were causing the death of half a million children, between 1991 and 1998. The alternative to war wasn't some utopia where, "They had flowery meadows and rainbow skies, and rivers made of chocolate, where the children danced and laughed and played with gumdrop smiles. " It was a totalitarian regime where death was brutal and common.

What do these three things have in common? I think that they show that the "Peace" movement isn't primarily concerned with peace. It's concerned with a desperate attempt to delegitimize the actions of people with whom they have style issues at the cost of suffering and misery of people that they don't want to acknowlege.

Theocratic Crack-up?

Russell Cobb over in Slate writes about the appearance of cracks in what is usually seen as a monolithic American Christian Nationalism. In this article he counters the alarm-crying of cultural observers such as Kevin Phillips and Michelle Goldberg.

I have written about my own differences with the National Association of Evangelicals over their stance on Environmental issues.

What astonishes me is that anyone who has 1) any knowledge of church history and 2) access to a newspaper would conclude that Christians--especially American Christians--would be able to form some sort of long-lasting, all-encompassing political coalition.

The branch of the church that seems to have observers such as Michelle Goldberg exercised is the Fundamentalist/Evangelical branch of Protestant Christianity. Let's take a look at this unity:

Christianity hasn't been monolithic since, oh...at least seven years after its founding when the Apostle Peter baptized a Roman commander, scandalizing what had been a Jewish church.

In the 11th century the Church split between Rome and Constantinople. In the 16th century we have the Reformation with the Protestant church splitting away from the Roman church--a fragment of a fragment. Then in the 1500s, the non-conformists (Presbyterians, Congregationalists, etc.) broke with the Church of England, becoming a fragments of a fragment of a fragment. Some of these fragments separated themselves from their mother churches by fleeing to the American Colonies.

American Christians have a propensity, nay a delight, in schism. There are a dizzying array of church denominations in the United States. Along with the churches that were transplanted into the colonies, many more have sprung up. Methodists, Anabaptists, Amish, Mennonite, Restorationists, as well as others seen as completely heterodox: Christian Science, Mormons, Jehovah's Witness. A drive through almost any American urban or suburban neighborhood would show a kaleidoscope of denominations.

And this doesn't mention the tensions between American Catholics and Rome.

Politics has been the "art of the compromise." People who are the recipients of Divine Truth cannot compromise that Truth for mere political gain. No compromise--no political gain.

The question has never been, "Will the Christian Right split?" The question has always been, "How and when will the Church set aside earthly power and turn their hearts to God?"

Follow the Money

Many on the Democratic side of the aisle seem to be hell-bent on bringing down the Bush administration--even if it takes wrecking the United State's national security to accomplish it.

Taleena at Sun Comprehending Glass has intemperate words for the editors and publishers of the New York Times regarding their publishing of the details of a anti-terrorist program that tracks international funds transfers.

On Fox News Sunday, the often-likable NPR commentator Juan Williams felt that it was a good thing that the news was published because, as he said, the terrorists would stop moving money around--there was no alternative to the international banking system.

I weep.

The First Rule of Fight Club is: You Don't Talk About Fight Club.

The Second Rule of Fight Club is: You Don't Talk About Fight Club.

You never, never, never expose to your opponents your intentions, capabilities or actions. Perhaps your opponent doesn't know; perhaps he suspects, but isn't sure; or perhaps he's got the information, but he's looking for confirmation.

Mr. Williams certainly knows that on June 13th Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister Mahmoud al-Zahar was breifly delayed at the Cairo airport with seven suitcases stuffed with cash.

The foreign minister is the third Hamas official to enter at the Rafah crossing into Gaza carrying large amounts of cash. Last month, a Hamas lawmaker passed through with $4.5 million in banknotes. Before that, a Hamas spokesman brought in $800,000. Not a single dollar of these cash deliveries ever reached official Palestinian national coffers. Rather, Palestinian sources report that the cash covered the wages of Hamas’s militiamen and “security forces” — that is, the hired killers of “one of the deadliest terrorist organizations in the world today.”

The reason the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times did what they did is that they could count on Bush Derangement Syndrome to cover their ass. And now we are facing international terrorism with one less weapon.

In the words of Jake Gittes:

You can follow the action, which gets you good pictures. You can follow your instincts, which'll probably get you in trouble. Or, you can follow the money, which nine times out of ten will get you closer to the truth.

Well, now we are going to have a harder time following the money.

How Shall We Find the Concord of this Discord?

A tedious brief scene of young Pyramus
And his love Thisbe; very tragical mirth.'
Merry and tragical! tedious and brief!
That is, hot ice and wondrous strange snow.
How shall we find the concord of this discord?

The Seattle Times has run an unsigned editorial about the resignation of Dean Logan.

For those who are not familiar with him, Mr. Logan was Elections Director for King County, Washington during the late Gubernatorial* race. Mr. Logan's department mislaid ballots, certified ballots that were in clear and open violation of state elections law, and kept finding "lost" ballots until Democrat Christine Gregoire edged ahead of Republican Dino Rossi. The ill will generated by that debacle will poison Washington state politics for a generation.

Now Mr. Logan is to decamp to sunnier climes of Los Angeles County. I wish him safety, for Los Angeles is rough political scene. That kind of electoral jiggery-pokery will have Orange County rioting like South Central.

But what I want to look briefly at that editorial. It contains two paragraphs of amazing prose:

Logan was by no means perfect. His office made many unacceptable mistakes during the 2004 election. He accepted responsibility for the missteps and then worked tirelessly and cooperatively with three committees or task forces to fix the problems.

But few people can withstand incessant ranting of talk radio and sometimes rabid musings of the blogosphere, not to mention heavy-handed political posturing from the County Council.

So in the first paragraph we have "unacceptable mistakes" for which Mr. Logan has "accepted responsibility." I think I know what they mean, but someone needed to see the conflict between those sentences before they went to print.

The next paragraph contains the coining of the phrase, "rabid musings" of the blogosphere. Rabid evokes images of uncontrolled ferocity straining to break the leash, while "musings" evokes those of quite, even ironic, reflections. How do those get along?

Finally we have "heavy-handed political posturing." The metaphores have not been merely mixed, they've been blended to a frappe like a mochaccino.

Of course I don't believe a word of this stuff; but, once again, it's like the Democrats are sending in the second-string team.

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* I just love that word, "Gubernatorial." It's like all state executive officers are at heart, Jimmy Carter. Gubernatorial!

Summer Re-reads

I wonder how many people start summer, or re-affirm summer, by re-reading a specific book each year. I had thought that I was the only one who did such a thing, but I have met, through the years many people who do it.

Years ago, my friend Alex told me that every year since seminary he has started each summer by re-reading Dune. I completely understood. Dune is a novel that, if you are lucky, takes you in and transports you to a distant, not altogether nice, place. But the lapse of a year allows the ideas and themes of the novel to grow roots in your mind; and re-reading the novel allows new growth to experience of reading.

A former boss, Bill, told me that he started every summer re-reading The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever. I read through that series twice, both times carried by its story and repelled by its anti-hero. I cannot imagine doing that to myself again. But for Bill, summer didn't start until he had cracked open Lord Foul's Bane.

What triggers this rememberance is R. Andrew Newman's article on NRO about his summer ritual of re-reading Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine.

It’s not, I think, a bearing in life I seek. It’s an annual desire to reacquaint myself with the vistas of summer. Vistas wide and golden as the prairie itself. Times when school hallways darkened and three months of light beckoned. Days when the air seemed saturated with possibilities.

And, that, I think is the key. The annual desire to reacquaint ourselves with books that changed how we viewed the world.

And my annual summer read?

*Sigh*

It used to be The Lord of the Rings, but I have set that aside for a while. I'm looking for the next big, complex narrative, loaded with the frieight of ideas and new viewpoints that will be worth re-reading.

Any suggestions?

Hard Falls

So no sooner did I post the haiku about getting flung, than it happens. Last Friday Mrs. Islander had customers to attend to, so I took off to attend aikido class alone.

I arrived late (something I loathe) and thought that I would just wait out open-hand techniques and participate only in weapons class. Pierce Sensei had other ideas. He called a senior student over to show me the current technique. The attack was a ryotetori (two-hand grab) and the defense was a type of koyu nage or throw. (My ignorance is due to my late arrival.)

I am still gokyu (rank beginner) , so my partner was releasing me into forward rolls. At least she was trying to. Because I had been late arriving, I had not warmed up, I had not seen the technique demonstrated, and I was being a poor uke. If you can imagine someone stepping onto the dance floor and attempting a new step for the first time, bumping into their partner, treading on their partner's feet, that was me.

After a moment, Pierce Sensei came over and asked my partner to sit seiza. We bowed and he signaled for me to attack.

Now, about the only real error you can make in this situation (attacking your sensei) is to make your attack half-hearted or to not follow through with the attack you have begun. I would make neither of these mistakes. I stepped towards Pierce Sensei, grabbed his wrists firmly...and entered the maelstrom. He stepped back with a quarter-turn, grabbed my wrists and swept my arms (and the rest of my body) up and around. I approached the portion of the technique where nage should release my hands to allow me to execute a graceful ukeme forward roll.

Except Pierce Sensei never released my wrists.

With my wrists pinned in his fists, my body sailed up over my hands and I landed streched out, flat on my back in a hard breakfall. No one was more surprised than I. I landed okay, keeping my breath, so stood back up and prepared to attack my sensei again.

Expecting a roll,
Kohai rushes at Sensei.
The mat rushes up.