Editor's Note
07/27 09:14 AM
Mona's blog is on a summer hiatus. Will be back in the fall. Watch for Mona in The Corner in the meantime. — KJL
Who Brought Us This Nightmare?
07/17 05:05 PM
David Brooks had an interesting piece (registration required) in Sunday’s New York Times arguing that just as Israel has started to move to the center politically, its enemies have gone berserk. Brooks is a brilliant columnist, but I don’t think his analysis on this is correct. It’s true enough that Israel’s enemies are berserk with bloodlust and maniacal hatred. The genocidal threats from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are evidence enough. Or just look at yesterday’s editorial from the Iranian newspaper Kayhan, courtesy of Memri.org. Hossein Shariatmadari, editor of the conservative Iranian daily Kayhan, affiliated with Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, called today (July 17, 2006) in his editorial to "wipe Israel off the map." He said: "There are many signs and portents indicating that 'the fateful day' is coming near. It is possible that this day... has already begun...
"The Muslim peoples and many other peoples think that, in global geopolitics, there is no such thing as the state of Israel, and that the [entity] which presently bears this name is a usurping and rootless state that has imposed its parasitic presence over the region and over Palestine with the support of the arrogant powers. [This entity] invents a new crime every day. It causes men, women, and innocent children to bleed to death, or else deports them from their homeland and turns them into refugees. In light of this 'problem,' which is perfectly obvious, the annihilation of the Zionist regime is not only a religious and national duty, but also a universal human duty, from which no Muslim or free human being can be exempt. . .
The Muslim peoples must not allow this conflict to remain within the boundaries of the region. The Zionists are dispersed in many places around the world, and it is not so difficult to locate and get [our] hands on them. The entire world can and must be made unsafe for the Zionists, [including] their political and commercial centers. This does not require the governments' approval... The fateful day may have begun, and fierce revenge on the barbaric Zionists is underway, Allah willing."(2)
Brooks argues that the old days of Israeli/Palestinian tit for tat and negotiations over land for peace are over and that the religious extremists have hijacked the conflict for their broader war against the West. But the entire Oslo illusion, in which all the world including (God help her) Israel indulged helped pave the way for this nightmare. In the years since Oslo, the entire world has been pretending that the conflict was about whether Israel would allow the Palestinians to have a homeland of their own on the West Bank and Gaza. Throughout that time, while Arafat sipped tea with Madeleine Albright and bussed Jacques Chirac, his regime was poisoning the minds of the Palestinian people with the most inflammatory anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic propaganda imaginable. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Mein Kampf were big sellers in Ramallah and Hebron. Not content with that, Arafat launched a suicide bomber war against Israeli civilians and stoked hopes of taking all of “Palestine” one day. He was a monster with the blood of thousands of innocents (including Christian Lebanese) on his hands, and when he died he did so in the warm cocoon of a French hospital and his people wept for him. While Israelis were watching their children , their siblings, their parents, blown to pieces at outdoor cafes, on buses, and in supermarkets, the whole world chanted “We must stop the cycle of violence. Israel must move faster to give the Palestinians what they demand.” The only difference between Hamas/Hizbollah and Fatah is that the former two are less devious about their intentions. The genocidal fantasy of “wiping Israel off the map” has been alive since 1948 and has been nurtured by every government that failed to call Arafat what he was, every government that deligitimized Israeli self-defense, and every government that has held Israel up to impossible standards ever since. A word about George Bush: He is the most stalwart supporter of Israel who has ever sat in the Oval Office and he deserves honor.
Sex Selection and Europe
07/12 03:33 PM
And in other medical news from Britain, it seems the Blair government is considering a measure that would outlaw sex selection for non-medical reasons in fertility clinics. Today couples can choose to have a boy or girl for any reason at all. There is no regulation of this practice in the United States – though it is well known that sex selection is widespread. Those who can afford (or whose insurance covers) fertility treatments can often choose the sex of their children. And among some subsets of the population, ultrasound technology is being widely misused to determine the sex of unborn children. Female children are nearly always the ones aborted when sex selection is the issue. The British rules would apply only to in vitro and similar technologies. But here’s the main thing that caught my eye: In Britain, it remains against the law to abort a fetus past 24 weeks gestation – and that is the most liberal law in Europe. In France, abortion is permitted only until the 12th week. After that, two doctors must certify that continuing the pregnancy would pose a risk to the woman’s health or that the fetus is seriously abnormal. In Sweden, abortions after 18 weeks require permission of a medical board. The U.S. has the world’s most liberal abortion regime by far – yet any deviation from our current standard of anywhere, anytime, for any reason is treated as a step toward abolition. Since abortion advocates tend to think of Europe as more enlightened than the U.S., we should remind them that the Old World makes do with many more restrictions and the sky has not fallen.
Free Health Care
07/12 03:01 PM
This item in the London Evening Standard calls attention to that oh so enviable public health service of theirs. It’s free, don’t you know? And open to all. No health insurance “crisis” there. But here is a routine news story explaining that in half of all cases, the maximum wait time specified by the government of 18 weeks between being seen by a general practitioner and being treated is not being met. So half of Britons wait longer than 18 weeks for treatment. It reminds me of P.J. O’Rourke’s quip “If you think health care is expensive now, just wait till it’s free."
Jefferson's Going Down: What About Hastert?
07/11 04:57 PM
Does anyone remember the heady days of 1994 when Republicans took control of the House? Does anyone remember one of the grand themes that enabled Newt Gingrich to grasp the Speaker’s gavel? Why, it was corruption. The Republicans were going to clean house. No more smarmy House bank scandals. No more cozy perks. No more exemptions for Congressmen from the laws they enacted for everyone else. Clearly Speaker Denny Hastert has long forgotten that bit of lore. His response to the FBI search of Democratic Congressman William Jefferson’s office could not have been more maladroit. Hastert rushed before the cameras to defend the privileges of the House, thereby lending his prestige to the vacuous Democratic argument that large principles are at stake here. They aren’t. Jefferson froze cash in his freezer and kept ill-gotten gains in his House office. Those are very quotidian crimes. His reach for the “Speech and Debate” clause was laughable. As federal district judge Judge Thomas Hogan ruled today Congressman Jefferson's interpretation of the Speech or Debate privilege would have the effect of converting every congressional office into a taxpayer-subsidized sanctuary for crime. Perhaps now the House leadership will back off. Defending Jefferson made them look elitist, arrogant, and way too comfortable with the perks of office.
Kinsley's Moral Compass
07/07 05:45 PM
Michael Kinsley’s patience with pro-lifers is exhausted. He had been willing to give us the benefit of the doubt, he acknowledges, because we were “that rarity in modern American politics: a strong interest group defending the interest of someone other than themselves.” But it seems we lost his respect because we do not see the stem cell debate in the same way that he does. Pointing to fertility clinics, Kinsley demands to know why there is no outcry at what they do. In any particular case, fertility clinics try to produce more embryos than they intend to implant. Then — like the Yale admissions office (only more accurately) — they pick and choose among the candidates, looking for qualities that make for a better human being. If you don't get into Yale, you have the choice of attending a different college. If the fertility clinic rejects you, you get flushed away — or maybe frozen until the day you can be discarded without controversy.
And fate isn't much kinder to the embryos that make this first cut. Usually several of them are implanted in the hope that one will survive. Or, to put it another way, in the hope that all but one will not survive. And fertility doctors do their ruthless best to make these hopes come true.
In short, if embryos are human beings with full human rights, fertility clinics are death camps — with a side order of cold-blooded eugenics. No one who truly believes in the humanity of embryos could possibly think otherwise.
But prolifers have expressed dismay at what fertility clinics do and many oppose in vitro fertilization for some of the reasons Kinsley notes. By the same logic, they also oppose the “morning after” pill because it prevents an already fertilized ovum from implanting in the uterus. If Kinsley hasn’t heard an outcry, perhaps it’s because he isn’t listening to the right people. Besides, even if one does not believe that embryos enjoy “full human rights,” it’s a long way from that to extracting their DNA and flushing them down the drain like so much spare saline solution. Surely the more humane and morally sensitive approach is to err on the side of respecting life, or certainly to pause before wantonly destroying life. Kinsley is also out of date. There was a time, 15 or so years ago, when fertility clinics did try to maximize the number of embryos created by and for each couple in order to increase the chances of having at least one “take home baby.” But techniques have improved and this is no longer considered desirable or necessary. Nor is it the case that clinics casually discard embryos. Most make elaborate and meticulous prearrangements (looking over their shoulders at the lawyers to be sure) for “leftover” embryos and it is now a common practice for clinics to offer up embryos to unsuccessful couples for embryo adoption. Even a strictly pro-life couple can undertake assisted reproduction with a clear conscience provided they decide in advance to treat each embryo as a potential child and to give each a chance at life. This may result in larger families than some would have considered ideal, but it solves the problem of embryos stored in freezers for years and decades. Many pro-lifers have thought deeply in this arena – unlike Kinsley who tosses out accusations of “willful ignorance and indifference to logic” when he has clearly not studied the matter carefully himself.
And in Federal District Court
07/06 01:54 PM
A coalition of the usual suspects has challenged a Georgia law that would require voters to present a government-issued photo ID in order to vote. Here, from the ACLU's website, is a list: In addition to the NAACP, other organizations represented in the lawsuit include: Common Cause/Georgia, the League of Women Voters of Georgia, the Central Presbyterian Outreach and Advocacy Center, the Georgia Association of Black Elected Officials, the Georgia Legislative Black Caucus and Concerned Black Clergy of Metropolitan Atlanta. Groups providing legal counsel to the effort include the ACLU, AARP, Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.
Any such law, opponents argue, would disproportionately handicap minorities, the elderly, and the poor. Wouldn't you think they'd be embarrassed to argue this? For heaven's sake, you need a photo ID to fly on an airplane, purchase wine or beer, rent a car, cash a check, and do a thousand other daily activities of modern life that are not limited to the middle and upper classes. Georgia passed a nearly identical statute last year but it was invalidated by a federal judge because it would have required the poor to pay the fee to get a driver's license. Georgia then changed the law to provide the IDs free of charge. But the ACLU et. al. are still at it. Is it really because they worry about the effect on minorities? Or is it closer to what Democratic congressional candidate Francine Busby blurted out at a campaign stop last month in San Diego before a Hispanic crowd: "You don't need papers to vote."
How's This for a Rational Basis?
07/06 01:40 PM
Writing for the majority (doesn't that have a satisfying ring to it?), Judge Robert Smith of the NY Court of Appeals — that state's highest court — offers a new argument against a right to gay marriage. Appellees had argued that the State of New York had no rational basis upon which to exclude homosexual couples from the benefits of marriage (proponents of gay marriage always argue that any such restriction is nothing more than prejudice). Judge Smith disagreed. First, the Legislature could rationally decide that, for the welfare of children, it is more important to promote stability, and to avoid instability, in opposite-sex than in same-sex relationships, Heterosexual intercourse has a natural tendency to lead to the birth of children; homosexual intercourse does not. Despite the advances of science, it remains true that the vast majority of children are born as a result of a sexual relationship between a man and a woman, and the Legislature could find that this will continue to be true. The Legislature could also find that such relationships are all too often casual or temporary. It could find that an important function of marriage is to create more stability and permanence in the relationships that cause children to be born. It thus could choose to offer an inducement — in the form of marriage and its attendant benefits — to opposite-sex couples who make a solemn, long-term commitment to each other,
Nicely put. The rest of the decision is here.
Even a Stopped Clock . . .
07/03 05:34 PM
I recently purchased a brand new American flag and taught my 10-year-old son how to fold it properly. We discussed flag etiquette: — never permit the flag to touch the ground — do not fly the flag at night unless it is illuminated — do not fly any other flag above the Stars and Stripes Naturally, all of this was new to him. When I was in school, we learned this sort of chest-swelling patriotism along with the hymns of the military services and traditional American folk songs. I was proud to pass it along to him. It pains me to be in agreement with the leading liberals in the Senate on anything, and particularly on a subject touching upon patriotism, but the minority who voted against the flag desecration amendment were right. Odious, disgusting, and unimaginative it may be, but burning the flag is, it seems to me, a pretty clear case of political expression — just the sort of thing the First Amendment was intended to protect. And yet, can we give liberal Democrats like Ted Kennedy, Chris Dodd, Pat Leahy, and Barbara Boxer credit for First Amendment integrity when all of them supported the McCain Feingold campaign finance reform? In the name of public integrity, they were all delighted to limit the speech of potential challengers and interested citizens. Tomorrow, flying our flag proudly, I will think of the Americans who gave — and stand ready to give — their lives for the country the flag symbolizes. Happy Independence Day.
HPV Vaccine for All?
06/30 03:45 PM
Has everyone surrendered? The Washington Post reports that the government experts who advise the federal government on immunization policy have recommended that the new vaccine — which prevents cervical cancer — be given to all 11 and 12-year-old girls. And even the Family Research Council has signed on. "The Family Research Council continues to endorse both the distribution and the widespread availability of the vaccine," said Moira Gaul, the coordinator of the organization's Abstinence Project.
Cervical cancer is caused by the HPV virus, which is transmitted sexually. The logic of immunizing every girl child is obvious. But the thought of just lining up those kids with a cheery "Here gals, come and get your shots before you dive in to the sexual carnival that awaits you in (2 or 3 or 4) years" is depressing, not to say decadent. Perhaps the battle is completly lost, but someone should be reminding young girls that HPV is just another reason (though far from the best) to avoid the bacchanal that beckons.
What Democrats Think
06/29 09:17 AM
The indispensible Karlyn Bowman of the American Enterprise Institute alerts us to the results of a number of recent surveys on the subject of patriotism. Americans, it seems, are among the most patriotic people on the planet, and large majorities describe themselves as very patriotic. (Only the Phillipines scored higher — go figure.) But there are differences between the parties. While 71 percent of Republicans "completely agree" with the statement "I am very patriotic," only 48 percent of Democrats did. Asked "If you had the opportunity to leave the United States and live permanently in another country, would you take it?" 8 percent of Republicans, but 24 percent of Democrats answered in the affirmative. To be fair, in response to another similarly worded question, only 10 percent of Democrats said they'd prefer to live elsewhere. Still, that contrasts with only 1 percent of Republicans. It is considered extremely bad form to question anyone's patriotism, and Hillary Clinton, for one, has thundered and blustered that her patriotism was being challenged (when it wasn't). Certainly it is not a charge that should be carelessly or lightly levelled. But these poll results do get at a reality — Democrats do tend to be less patriotic than Republicans. There, I've said it out loud.
What Muslims Think
06/28 11:41 AM
Daniel Pipes has a depressing round up of the findings of that Pew Research Poll about attitudes of Muslims worldwide. Some of the headlines: In no Arab country polled does a majority believe that Arabs were responsible for 9/11. They tend to believe it was a conspiracy hatched by the United States or Israel or both. Between 13 percent (Germany) and 69 percent (Nigeria) believe suicide bombing is justified. Large numbers of Muslims are inclined to blame outsiders for their problems.
Conspiracy theories also pertain to larger topics. Asked, “What is most responsible for Muslim nations’ lack of prosperity?” between 14 percent (in Pakistan) and 43 percent (in Jordan) blame the policies of the U.S. and other Western states, as opposed to indigenous problems, such as a lack of democracy or education, or the presence of corruption or radical Islam.
Some of the most alienated and radical Muslims anywhere on earth are to be found in London.
Many more of them regard Westerners as violent, greedy, immoral, and arrogant than do their counterparts in France, Germany, and Spain. In addition, whether asked about their attitudes toward Jews, responsibility for 9/11, or the place of women in Western societies, their views are notably more extreme.
More Cash for Liberalism
06/27 03:53 PM
So Warren Buffet is contributing roughly $44 billion to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. I'm sure the Gates Foundation has done some good in the world, but one notes this contribution with a sigh. The liberals are forever hyperventilating about "corporate money" and "corporate America" — the font of all evil to judge by some of the rhetoric. Yet when corporate America donates billions of dollars to charity, who benefits? Liberal and left wing causes. The Gates Foundation is a generous supporter, reports the Washington Times, of the Planned Parenthood Federation, the National Council of La Raza, and the Clinton Presidential Foundation. We've seen this movie before with the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and so forth.
Aid and Comfort
06/27 12:21 PM
When I wrote Useful Idiots, I speculated about the motives of American liberals and leftists who more or less openly rooted for America's enemies. Some of this behavior was attributable to romantic attachment to the idea of Marxism, which many had absorbed to varying degrees at our "best" universities. But the advent of the current war against Islamofascism has been clarifying. For here is an enemy, unlike, say, the Sandinistas or the Soviets, that makes no pretense (however empty) of representing the poor; that condemns and deplores that beacon of liberalism, the Enlightenment; that cheerfully oppresses women and minorities; and that celebrates the stoning of homosexuals. And yet even against this enemy, the American Left cannot help but hope for American failure. The decision by the New York Times to publish details of the SWIFT program is not just disgraceful, as President Bush put it, it is treasonous. What else can you call it? Does the information about our methods of tracking terror financing not provide aid to the enemy? Does it not make another attack on the very city in which the Times originates more likely? The Times is also contradicting itself. In 2001, it ran an editorial recommending exactly the sort of program it has now sabotaged. Powerlineblog has it. And what is the logic of publishing? In defense of the Times' decision, reporter Eric Lichtblau notes that the Bush administration has publicly proclaimed its interest in tracking terror financing, so what's the big deal? He cannot be serious. The administration has also publicly proclaimed its interest in capturing or killing bin Laden. Would the New York Times publish details about how we're trying to find him? Would it publish the name of an informer within al Qaeda? I don't know. They are so corrupted by their own self-importance and by their hatred of the president that they have become a menace. Here is how I put in Useful Idiots: That some precincts on the Left — even now — can find reasons to blame the United States for the hatred directed against it, is evidence that the rotten kernel of their appeasement and weakness throughout the Cold War was America-hatred.
With Spokesmen Like These . . .
06/26 03:05 PM
Reviving a debate that had grown quiescent, C-SPAN offered airtime to John Mearshimer and Steven Walt, authors of the infamous “Israel Lobby” paper that received any number of well-deserved slams upon publication back in March ( here is the New York Sun’s concise riposte). The two have ducked debate with Alan Dershowitz and other critics. Yesterday, C-SPAN offered a platform to Anti-Defamation League president Abraham Foxman. It would be difficult to overstate how terrible a job he did. Ostensibly invited to rebut the Walt/Mearshimer thesis, Foxman actually offered it more free advertising by simply repeating the claims in the paper and then denouncing these assertions as obviously anti-Semitic. Well, they may be, but viewers would first, it seems to me, want to know: Are they true? Foxman never contradicted a single point, not cited any examples of the scores of misrepresentations, omissions, and slanders in the paper. The persistence of American support for Israel — despite such feeble advocates as Mr. Foxman — is yet further evidence that the fantasy of an all-powerful Jewish lobby cleverly dominating the debate in America is risible.
Russ Feingold and the Democrats’ Incoherence
06/26 02:39 PM
Russ Feingold is everything George W. Bush is not. He is facile, articulate, quick on his feet, and deeply foolish. Appearing on Meet the Press yesterday, he said. Our number one moral responsibility is to protect the American people, to focus on those who attacked us on 9/11, to not be distracted into a situation where even the administration did not have Iraq as one of the 45 countries that was connected with al-Qaeda. Our number one responsibility is to protect the American people from being killed by terrorists. Iraq has very little to do with that at this point. Iraq is obviously the place where they’re training people, but the idea of standing up and keeping a military involvement forever in Iraq will actually weaken the American people’s ability to go after terrorists who, frankly, look like they’re taking over Somalia right now.
So Feingold acknowledges that Iraq is a training ground for terrorists — yet he insists that the Iraq operation is a distraction from the main job of fighting terrorists. Clearly it isn’t great that Somalia has been seized by a band of Islamists. But is Feingold suggesting that Somalia is a more pressing security priority for the United States than the outcome in Iraq? This is breathtaking.
Russert reminded Feingold that he himself had declared before the Iraq War that Saddam had weapons capable of “unimaginable destructiveness.” Feingold stands by those assertions (well, he had just said that any presidential candidate would have to be perceived as straightforward and honest by the American people), but explains that though he believed that Saddam had chemical and biological weapons, he did not think he had the means to deliver them.
Really? How about handing them to terrorists in a suitcase?
Here is where Democrats like Feingold lose all respect points. Even if, for the sake of argument, you believed that going into Iraq was a mistake, is it not plain that a precipitous withdrawal would be a disaster? Even if it were true (and it isn’t) that Iraq had no ties to Al Qaeda before we invaded Iraq, they are obviously there now and we are struggling with them over the future of a key Arab country. Democrats are so weak they don’t even recognize when they are cringing. But our enemies do.
Why Are You a Conservative?
06/26 02:35 PM
Brian Lamb asked me in a recent interview how I came to be a conservative. As one sometimes does in these situations, I rambled on about my adolescent interest in the Holocaust, explaining that my immersion in the history of that period cured me of any romantic notions about people being basically good.
That was okay as far as it went (as a realistic appraisal of human nature — neither overly pessimistic nor unduly rosy is part of the wisdom of conservatism), but I should have added that reading and studying history impressed upon me how fragile civilization is. Civilizations do rise and fall. And I fear that our civilization — by far the most humane, just, and inspiring in the history of the world — can be undermined by those who fail to appreciate and guard it. That’s the essence of my conservatism: wanting to conserve our precious liberty, comfort, efficiency, and essential justice. I don’t believe, as I think most liberals do, that you can batter away at the roots of a society and expect the trunk and branches to continue bearing fruit.
I love Stan Evans’s bon mot about this: 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.” I too have “grown” since coming to Washington. I’ve gotten more right wing dammit.
Soggy Blog
06/26 02:33 PM
Mother Nature has been throwing her weight around in our neighborhood. National Airport got more than five inches of rain in a 24-hour period. We went out for dinner last night and never got home. When we emerged from the restaurant, the water was up over the curb and rising fast. Even the quick run to the car drenched us. The street we usually take home was closed. The alternate route was hilly — and every dip represented a fast-moving river. After a number of hair-raising crossings we made it to our street only to find that it too was blocked off. The policeman on duty shouted over the driving rain that in all his years of service, he’d never seen anything like it. “There are people trapped in cars down there that we can’t even get to.”
We were able to get to hotel and get a room for the night. The staff kindly provided us with toothbrushes and toothpaste and we reflected gratefully that having to sleep in our clothes in a warm, dry, comfortable hotel room was hardly a catastrophe. It didn’t even rise to the level of misfortune. Still, it does remind you of your total vulnerability to the fates. At any moment, things can get unpredictably dangerous, and prudence and care take you only so far.
Well, that’s all for now. Must dry out.
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