how to dismantle an atomic bear
27 August 2004
Iowa.
Since arriving in here late Tuesday night, I have had a number of new experiences. Among them:
1)Eating crab
It didn't taste especially wonderful, but it certainly not as bad as fish. It's that rare form of seafood that I found myself able to tolerate. And it really is quite unique, having to break open a hard shell before eating any of it. When eating chicken or fish, it is usually skinned, cooked, and prepared so that by the time it arrives on your plate, the final product bears little resemblance to the living thing. Not so with crab. I found myself wanting to take home the choppers.
2)Watching Secondhand Lions
It's an almost half-serious, but touching movie about Walter, a boy who is largely neglected by his morally depraved mother who spends most of her energy trying to make a quick, dishonest fortune. His mother is constantly leaving him in the care of others they know vaguely or not at all. Her consistently broken promises leave Walter
unable to trust anyone.
At the outset, his mother leaves him with two reclusive, eccentric, billionaire uncles in rural Texas, both with shady pasts as war heroes during the World Wars and mercenaries in between. They consent to keeping Walter around primarily because their nosey relations, interested in their prospects for inheritance, despise Walter and see him as a threat.
But in the mean time, Walter manages to forge a relationship with them, while learning from them a great deal about growing up. In return, Walter has a moderating effect on their reckless, eccentric behavior. They become more cautious about their own health and safety as they grow increasingly attached to him.
The central conflict of the movie involves Walter himself and the choices he makes as he begins to apply the lessons he has learned from his new mentors.
Haley Joel Osbourne does a wonderful job as Walter, and Robert Duvall is really delightful playing the part of an eccentric old man. I really wish Hollywood would put out more movies in which Duvall engages in bizarre, unexplained behavior with all the mannerisms of a crazy, old man.
3) Books
This may not sound like a terribly new experience. It's not. It's just that whenever I wander into the bookstore, I can never quite exercise enough self-restraint, and always find myself buying more books than I really have time to read. There's always a substantial selection of books on my bookshelf that have collected dust, as I have never gotten around to reading them.
My uncle's house is quite refreshing. All those books I run across in the bookstore which I do manage to restrain myself from buying -- I can find all of those here. I'm not quite sure if my uncle reads that much or if he has even less self-restraint than I do. Either way, it's great fun to come here. It's almost as good as just being in the bookstore all the time.
He's got Yossef Bodansky's book on the Iraq War. Bodansky made the assertion on the first page that, to me, is somewhat jaw-dropping -- that Saddam Hussein actually did supply Al Qaeda with functional weapons of mass destruction, and that this was the primary assertion the administration was so determined to go to war. It's somewhat amazing to me that this assertion has missed the radar of the mainstream media. For something like this, I would expect a blowout headline splashed on the Drudge Report.
"Head of Terrorism Task Force: Saddam Gave Al Qaeda WMD"
or something along those lines. As it is, this book will take a great amount of time and energy to dissect at the same level that I dissected Kenneth Pollack's book in late 2002. I've been waiting for something like this for quite sometime, but the revelations are so startling and yet so unknown that I will not be able to credibly proceed from his assertions in any argument or discussion because few people have heard of Bodansky and no one will accept such arguments at face value.
Perhaps I'll get around to it. My classes, scheduled to start Monday, don't look especially challenging, and I plan to have plenty of time to read and write as I please. The previous post was actually the text (with slight modifications) of an article I already handed in to the editor in chief of the student newspaper at UNT.
I'm still waiting to hear back from them on whether or not they want to publish it.
I've found rather amusing the latest political controversy over the SBVT group and their anti-Kerry ads. For my part, I don't particularly care if they're right or if Kerry's right. I don't give one rip what Kerry did in Vietnam. I care about the war on terror and how he plans to win it.
After World War II, the world look substantially different. All of Western Europe fell under Anglo-American occupation and were set on the road to democracy and economic recovery. Japan and much of East Asia followed the same course.
After the Cold War, communism in Eastern Europe collapsed, and the nations of that region were set on their own paths to democracy (ill-fated though those paths might be for some such nations).
President Bush has outlined a similar vision for the Middle East. Under the Bush doctrine, the essential element in the war on terror is the spread of democratic ideas and values in the Middle East.
But John Kerry never speaks of bringing democracy to the Middle East, and all indicators are that he has little interest in doing so. Senator Kerry is always eager to detail his plan to bring more allies into a global war on terror. But what will that war look like? What will be done about terrorist-sponsoring nations seeking weapons of mass destruction if Kerry eschews the doctrine of pre-emption? How will the world look when John Kerry's war on terror is won?
Senator Kerry has little interest in answering these questions. It seems he is offering America a return to safer, more innocent days, hoping that the electorate has grown nostalgic for the days when terrorism was treated as a law enforcement issue, largely ignored by a Clinton administration that was much too busy appeasing its "allies" to take any substantive action to fight the terrorists that had bombed our African embassies and blown a hole in the U.S.S. Cole, among other blatant attacks on U.S. interests. Terrorists had declared war on America, but had not begun to fight back. These are the days to which Senator Kerry would have us return.
But he does not want you to realize this, and so his campaign spent their convention trying relentlessly to convince Americans that Senator Kerry is strong, brave, and resolute, and well qualified to be an effective commander in chief.
And now after having spent the last few crucial months talking almost exclusively about his service in Vietnam and his substantial credentials to be a strong president, Kerry is finding this claim under heavy fire.
And after publicly proclaiming that he was ready to have a debate with President Bush about who was better qualified to be America's leader in the war on terror and explicitly challenging Bush to "Bring it on!", Senator Kerry is begging Bush to call of his attack dogs.
They aren't Bush's dogs. And when spokesmen for the Kerry campaign are asked why they think the Bush campaign is behind it, they usually repeat their claim that Bush is behind it. Oh yes, of course, what were we thinking?
It seems Senator Kerry can endure heavy fire from Vietcong guerrilas, but anything close to the rhetorical volleys that President Bush has endured for the last year is sufficient to send him scurrying to denounce his opponents, initiate legal action, and demand that a book be banned.
On all other significant issues, Kerry could avoid, backpeddle, add endless caveats, and generally nuance all of his positions into the oblivion of incoherent ambiguity.
But he can't nuance this one. He can't backpeddle. He can't flip-flop. And he can't take it.
He could avoid the intense fire of Vietcong bullets. He managed to avoid the energetic onslaught of the Howard Dean charge during the primaries. But this is something he couldn't avoid. He just stepped on a Republican landmine. He won't win any purple hearts for it, he may not recover from it, and he sure won't be able to use it to pad his political resume this time.
23 August 2004
"'In the immediate postwar years, France was in ruins. I saw only a world marked by war, by destruction, by shadow of war, and by fear. I believed it was not finished, that there would be a next war. I did not think it would be possible to build a life, to have a family. Then came a group of young Americans, attractive, idealistic, optimistic, protected, believing and acting as though anything was possible. It was a transforming experience for me.'
[...]
That spirit -- we can do it, we can rebuild Europe and hold back the Red Army and avoid World War III -- was the great gift of the New World to the Old World."
--From To America, Stephen Ambrose
"You think I'm licked. You all think I'm licked. Well I'm not licked! And I'm going to stay right here and fight for this lost cause even if this room gets filled with lies like these!"
--Jefferson Smith (Jimmy Stewart), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
"There are no cats in America."
--Immigrant mice bound for America, An American Tail
Naivete; innocent simplicity; audacious dreams from foolishly optimistic dreamers -- all are classic symptoms of what is a uniquely American condition -- an overwhelming tendency to dream big dreams and to fight relentlessly for their fulfillment with an unceasing optimism and an ever-resilient immunity to despair.
To our more sophisticated European cousins, such a brazenly idealistic outlook smacks of naivete at best and outright foolishness at worst. In 1917, French onlookers are said to have smiled, almost pitying the simplistic optimism of the cheerful American doughboys as they took their places in the trenches amidst a seemingly-unending war of attrition that had exhausted Europe's faith and idealism.
Awakened from their isolationist fantasy in late 1941, American war planners proceeded to formulate war plans against not only Japan, but also against Germany, Italy, Croatia, Finland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and Slovakia. No doubt, this must have looked remarkably reckless to the nations that today comprise a U.N. Security Council that shrinks from making and enforcing its own resolutions, lest it arouse to anger the Kim Jong-Ils, the Saddam Husseins, or perhaps some other mass-murdering tyrant with a third-rate military at his disposal.
Perhaps they are right about us. America, after all, is not the land of dreams, as our immigrant mice discovered when they unexpectedly stumbled upon cats in America.
Nevertheless, there would certainly be no American condition to speak of if Americans were not so uniquely accustomed to having their dreams come true. Americans reside, not in the land of dreams, but in a land where they are free to pursue their dreams, to make them come true, no matter how small, large, or outlandish.
America is full of such foolish optimists: single mothers who work and pray unceasingly that their children might attend the best schools; dyslexic children who study tirelessly to win their school spelling bee contests; the 35-year-old high school science teacher and baseball coach who dares to believe it's not too late for him to play major league baseball; the technologically challenged senior who resolves to become a web page designer; the handicapped veteran who aspires to become a tri-athlete -- all of this happens here. In America, all of these dreams can come true.
Even the most casual survey of American history will show that this reflexive inclination to defy the most hopeless odds with the most uncompromising optimism is deeply ingrained into the American psyche.
Just go read about a certain spring afternoon in April 1775 when a ragtag band of minutemen in Concord dared confront a company of professional British soldiers and subsequently sent them scurrying back to their Boston barracks like frightened puppies. Go read about that foolhardy group of American policymakers who audaciously supposed they could rebuild war-torn Western Europe, face down the Red Army, and avoid World War III. You just go read about the lasting legacies of America's most idealistic leaders -- the ones who dared to dream big dreams -- from Washington to Lincoln to FDR to Reagan. And if that's not enough, try watching the rest of An American Tail.
America is just no place for the worldly-wise, the pessimistic, or the faint-hearted. It is for those who believe in themselves and in their dreams with endless reserves of optimism. It is for those who never say "never."
It may be that the Europeans are right about us -- that we are to prone to see the world in simple, idealistic, black-and-white terms. They may be right that our war on terrorist ideologies is not winnable and that it will only destabilize the Middle East while bringing no substantive change.
But the same was said of Reagan's Cold War; and as I look back on the history of the twentieth century -- the American century -- I can't help but think that perhaps nothing is more naive, simplistic, and foolish than lecturing Americans about what cannot be done.
21 August 2004
"Do what you will, there is going to be some benevolence, as well as some malice, in your patient's soul. The great thing is to direct the malice to his immediate neighbours whom he meets every day and to thrust his benevolence out to the remote circumference, to people he does not know. The malice thus becomes wholly real and the benevolence largely imaginary. There is no good at all in inflaming his hatred of Germans if, at the same time, a pernicious habit of charity is growing up between him and his mother, his employer, and the man he meets on the train."
--From The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis
Those who profess a love for humanity in general often manifestly hate human beings in particular.
This is a primary characteristic of the adherents of far leftist ideologies. They have an alleged love and compassion for the world's poor. These are the disenfranchised elements of society that are allegedly held back by the rich and the powerful, who are ever utilizing the most clever, even conspiratorial methods to perpetuate their wealth and power, thereby keeping down the poor, common folk in a zero-sum economic society.
It is this indignation at such injustice that allegedly drives leftist intellectuals who are ever reading, thinking, and storing up knowledge to uncover the hidden schemes of the wealthy and powerful, in order to expose them and bring some measure of justice to the world. They scorn the conventional wisdom of their surroundings as the veil of lies pulled over the eyes of their foolish, uncaring countrymen. Indeed, redemption for their countrymen could only be brought about by a full scale rejection of the conventional wisdom, in favor of the radical ideas that leftists espouse.
And this is the heart of leftist ideology. They may endlessly assert that it all stems from an honest, altruistic concern for the poor and disenfranchised.
But this claim rings hollow. It does so because of what America is and what it has been: a land of opportunity to which the outcasts and rejects of the world can come and build profitable, happy, and fulfilling lives for themselves.
But this is the real catch: they do so independently, relying on only their own hard work, on their own creative energies, and foolishly enough, on God. The American people are so disgustingly independent and religious that they have rendered the would-be rulers and saviors of the far left superfluous.
America is an enduring symbol that forever relegates such self-exalted messiahs to the status of complete irrelevancy. American society, the most advanced in the world, has so little use for such self-exalted intellectuals except to employ them in obscure corners of academia at negligible salaries, writing worthless books that no one aside from similarly elitist, out of touch intellectuals will actually read.
Make no mistake about it. Leftists will often profess a genuine concern for peoples they will never see in countries to which they will never go. But this concern is wholly imaginary. To leftists, for all their talk, it is not about the poor and the disenfranchised, but rather about themselves.
Having rejected God, leftist intellectuals too often seek to attain meaning in life, not by loving their neighbors, but rather by becoming superior to them and directing them as to how to go about their lives.
But America has made them into messiahs with no one to save. America has demonstrated that the common poor have no need of them. The number of people lifted out of poverty by American freedom is modestly approached only by the number of people starved, shot, or otherwise killed at the hands of communist governments in the twentieth century.
I have often found myself dumbfounded, as I review the history of the Cold War, as to how Americans on the far left could root so blatantly for communist victories in Southeast Asia and in Latin America. But it's no big mystery. Such people have always had a personal stake in America's defeat.
20 August 2004
I've been instructed that I can speak with the editor in-chief of my local campus newspaper in her office anytime after 23 August. I've considered writing a full-length article expanding on my thoughts about leftist ideology or my own Christian nationalistic one. I could write a thorough critique Kerry's foreign policy, or lack thereof. I've thought about writing a comprehensive defense of, of all things, the Vietnam War.
But I've put aside my reading material on that subject, unable to stay awake while studying it, and instead went out to buy a copy of Pilgrim's Progress and also Speaker for the Dead, the sequel to Ender's Game. I also went out and bought a cheap copy of Crime and Punishment, and I plan to read these extensively in these last final days of freedom (school starts on 08/30), and write about whatever topic happens to suit my latest whim (that rules out Vietnam).
This is assuming I can get my mind of fantasy baseball. My team has met with dramatic success lately. There is one such player in my league who complains incessantly, quite like a village idiot. Over the past week, I've offered him many trades that, outwardly, appear quite attractive, but only upon deeper inspection prove to be colossal blunders. Naturally, he has walked right into every single one of the traps I've laid for him. His team has been gutted of all the hot players, and so recently, I've felt a resurgence of interest in fantasy baseball primarily as a result of the delightful discovery that I have the ability to wreck other peoples' teams as well as improve my own.
I haven't had much to write here about lately, but as I resume my reading, I anticipate more updates.
15 August 2004
The pile of books on my "to read" list is steadily growing and remaining free time is steadily dwindling down. I've spent the last few days editing portions of an engineering proposal for Dad's company. They paid me $20/hour for it. So that means I have spending money for the first time in quite a while. I'm not quit sure what I'm going to do with it (besides buy a PC strategy game I promised someone I would buy months ago). Dad says engineers can't write, and after spending around 17 hours editing their written work, I think he's mostly right.
Fantasy baseball is still in high gear. I managed to build up a solid lead in June, but was never quite able to bury my rival, and there has been little substantive change in the standings since. My lead remains solid, but not insurmountable. All remedial measures to break free of my stagnation, substantial though they were, have thus far failed, and I often find myself junking strategies previously worked out in painstaking detail and returning to the drawing board.
My recent obsession with fiction has been put on indefinite hold. I've had time to read very little over the last three weeks, and now that I anticipate having time again, I plan to delve into aforementioned alternative histories on the Vietnam War and the Japanese internment during World War II. I imagine myself returning to fiction with the start of the school year though. I like to read for both fun and for education, but when my free time is as limited as it often is during the school year, I tend to have little tolerance for reading anything other than something I absolutely enjoy.
I was going to expand on my previous entry tonight, but I'm too tired. Perhaps later.
13 August 2004
"Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?"
--1 Corinthians 1:20
"And when He has done with all of them, then He will summon us. 'You too come forth,' He will say, 'Come forth ye drunkards, come forth, ye weak ones, come forth, ye children of shame!' And we shall all come forth, without shame and shall stand before him. And He will say unto us, 'Ye are swine, made in the Image of the Beast and with his mark; but come ye also!' And the wise ones and those of understanding will say, 'Oh Lord, why dost Thou receive these men?' And He will say, 'This is why I receive them, oh ye wise, this is why I receive them, oh ye of understanding, that not one of them believed himself to be worthy of this.'"
--From Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky
"The kingdom of heaven is not for the well-meaning; it is for the desperate."
--James Denney
I have been hesitant to raise the alarm bells on the Rangers all year long, but after watching them tonight, I am ready to declare a "collapse watch" in effect. They managed one run, made possible by a wild pitch from Orlando Hernandez. It was a dreadful game to watch, not least because I had to put up with so many obnoxious Yankees' fans.
But ballgames are always fun, even in defeat and even at the hands of the despised Yankees. I took Riley to the game with me. Riley is thirteen, and I have gathered that his Dad isn't always around. Riley has never been to many ballgames. Baseball terms such as "bullpen" and "can of corn" are foreign to him. What he knows, he has largely taught himself.
On the long car ride back from Arlington, the topic of conversation turned to metaphysical matters, though I can't quite remember how it came up. Riley told me of how, when he was younger, he had to seek counseling because of a crippling fear of going to hell.
"What made you fear that?" I asked.
"I know I've done a lot of bad things," said Riley.
This was the answer I was looking for. I told him that that was a very healthy thought and that it was true.
When I told him about Jesus, Riley was very glad to hear it. I couldn't quite tell if the message was new to him. He had, evidently, had some degree of Christian upbringing. But I think many forms of Christianity have wandered far away from the foundations of Scripture, and don't have the Gospel message quite right. It's hard to tell with most people who claim to be Christians though unless you discuss it directly with them.
In any case, one thing I've come to realize over the past year is that the primary difference between atheists and believers does not involve scientific or Scriptural presuppositions about the universe.
The primary difference is that the atheist is too proud and confident in his own righeousness. He has never felt the crippling weight of his own sin, the conviction of it, or the desperation that results from it.
It's really very interesting. I've spent most of the previous four years in an academic world that is full of the most learned scholars, almost none of whom possess the wisdom to realize, as Riley has, that they have done a lot of bad things.
10 August 2004
I couldn't figure out how to get Malkin's book for free, so I just ordered it off Amazon. With it, I ordered a book arguing that the war in Vietnam was necessary. That's all I know of it as of yet, but I intend to read all of it, and detail everything I find here. I haven't posted or done much reading lately. Lynniebeth has had back problems lately, and it's left me with a good excuse to hang out at her house. When I'm at home, I've been working on this blog -- the external work (new banner, updated some of the right panel sections, but no written updates until now). I intend to return to my reading soon, but right now I've got to proof Dad's executive summary.
I usually like to get back here and summarize what I read (it's a good way not to forget what you've learned).
06 August 2004
I found some cool stuff yesterday that I decided I must have. So I spent much of the afternoon trying to figure out how I could get it for free.
Michelle Malkin's new book, In Defense of Internment, looks very interesting, and I'll probably read it soon. I've gotten tired of reading everywhere that the Japanese internment camps set up in the U.S. during WWII were death camps, concentration camps, that torture was carried out, etc. etc.
Leftists seem to have a peculiar fondness for rewriting history. And this is one of their colossal Orwellian lies that Malkin, it seems, has set about to put right.
Yossef Bodansky's latest book about the Iraq War also looks very good. Bodansky is the type that really knows his stuff. He will dive into the nitty, gritty policy details, making his arguments at great depth -- very much along the lines of Kenneth Pollack.
I've decided that I must get these books for free or almost for free. I am currently awaiting new membership status in Conservative Book Club which should make that possible if my new membership request goes through (three books for $1 each for new members).
Additionally, there are some new songs I've tried to rip off Kazaa lately. It seems the record companies have flooded the file-sharing services with fake songs. Most everything I've tried to download turns out to be a fake.
Dang music companies. This is truly an outrage. Music theft is a God-given right.
My preferred reading material lately has consisted exclusively of interesting op-eds, most of them election analyses, that I have found at various places online. I have had little time for fantasy reading (though I hope to get back to it soon).
John Zogby asserts Kerry didn't get much of a bounce primarily because of the polarized electorate, and doesn't expect the President will get much of a bounce either.
Charles Krauthammer says Kerry didn't get much of a bounce because the convention was so lacking in substance. One cannot, he argues, expect to be elected president exclusively on the basis of four months of war service.
The convention gave no bounce because it consisted of but two elements: Vietnam, plus attacks on the president. The press swallowed the claim that the convention, following a directive from on high, was not negative. In fact, that meant simply that Al Gore was not to repeat his charges that the Bush administration is allied with "digital brownshirts" and running a "gulag." And that Bush was not to be attacked by name.
But the themes were transparently negative: We are not the party that misleads you into war. We are not the party that trashes the Constitution. We are not the party that acts unilaterally. And my favorite, because of its Escher-like yogiism: We are not the party that divides the country -- as opposed to those lying, Constitution-trashing, unilateralist Republican cowboys.
None of this is out of bounds, mind you. It is simply politically stupid. It does not work. Why? Because the political market has, as they say on Wall Street, already discounted these negatives. The people have already registered all the bad news of the past six months that has sent Bush's approval ratings plummeting.
Peter Beinart compares John Kerry's foreign policy vision to Joseph Biden's and finds Kerry's vision to be woefully lacking in, well, vision. Kerry has left no room in his foreign policy for promoting democracy and American ideals abroad. Additionally, unlike the famous president he tries so hard to imitate, Kerry wants Americans to ask not what they can do for their country. He wants them to ask what their allies can do for their country so that they can do less.
Victor Davis Hanson has written, as every Friday, an insightful article about the childishness that has characterized the Western world's attitude toward war. I particularly enjoyed his paragraph describing the real source of European antagonism toward America.
European elites, it is true, are angry at the United States. But that pique is more a result of projection and scapegoating rising from its own problems, not ours -- as it struggles with demographic crises, unassimilated immigrants, impotence abroad, an embarrassing desire for free American protection despite concomitant resentment and envy, and a growing realization that while the world talks up the EU, when it has real problems, it goes to Washington.
I must stop writing now. I have meant all afternoon to clear out all the eels from my hovercraft. I must get this done before Lynniebeth gets here.
04 August 2004
A jet fighter flew directly above my house. As it approached, I was sitting at my computer, and as I heard it, I thought it must be a sudden blast of wind.
But as it quickly drew nearer, it became much too loud to be wind. It was one of those sounds that was so out of the ordinary that you feel inclined to drop everything and find out what it is. And that was exactly what happened. I ran out on the balcony and gazed up at the sky. A jet fighter was circling low above my house. It looked like it was patrolling. It flew back around more than once.
Other people in the neighborhood rushed out of their houses, wondering what the strange, loud noise was.
I wondered for several hours what it might mean. Had there been an incident at DFW Airport? Had a plane in the area been hijacked? What was going on?
I found out later that the President was in town at that time. Evidently, a small aircraft had been flying in one of the "no-fly zones" that had been designated for the President's safety.
Several of my cousins who joined my fantasy baseball league made great boasts at the start of the season that they held a distinct advantage over me. Despite conceding that I held a far greater hand in my knowledge of Major League Baseball, they bragged that their higher level of "fantasy baseball experience" virtually assured their dominance over me in my first full season as a fantasy baseball manager.
This was before I trashed them so badly they threw in the towel after roughly three weeks. They have not made a single managerial move in months.
My offense has become stagnant lately and I felt the need to make some changes in order to rejuvenate my lineup. Hence, I sought out my vanquished opponents. I assumed that because they no longer gave the league any thought and didn't care one whit for their teams, it would be relatively easy to get a deal done.
I made very attractive offers. Our needs and strengths complemented one another nicely.
But I had failed to appreciate how badly I had humiliated them; and they all flatly declined to negotiate with me purely out of spite.
I spent most of the yesterday afternoon calculating statistics and moving around all kinds of pieces on paper like a chess board, trying to construct feasible offers to other managers who had never had previous "fantasy baseball experience" but had nevertheless performed dramatically better than those with it, and as a result, were less inclined to be unreasonable and spiteful.
I have since brought in Michael Young and Albert Pujols to boost the offense. Deals for Javy Lopez, Ichiro Suzuki, Kenny Rogers, and Curt Schilling are all in the works.
02 August 2004
Dear [Kreliav]:
The student editor interviews and hires his/her staff each semester. Fall's editor is [C---- B----] --she will be back in the office August 23.
As far as I know she has hired her staff; but you might come by and visit with C----. And, yes, generally we like to see some writing samples. Columns are usually written as part of other writing assignments or as part of the commentary editor's duty--i.e. we don't have a staff job where you just write columns. We do run guest columns from time to time.
Thanks for your interest.
Best,
C----- M-------, Ph. D.
Student Publications Director
The North Texas Daily
I haven't felt much like pretending to be a pundit in the last couple of days. I suppose the above letter would be the reason for it. Hence, the promised commentary on the DNC never came.
But I'll give it a shot.
I was disappointed Al Gore didn't yell and scream during his speech that the President had betrayed the nation and was a threat to democracy.
I thought Bill Clinton's and Barak Obama's speeches were home runs. In four more years, I wouldn't be surprised if I find myself voting to elect Obama president.
I'm not sure who wrote Theresa Heinz Kerry's speech, but they must have neglected to run it by Kerry's speech editors. It was awful.
Y a todos los Hispanos, y los Latinos; a tous les Franco Americains, a tutti Italiani; a toda a familia Portugesa e Brazileria; and to all the continental Africans living in this country, and to all the new Americans in our country: I invite you to join in our conversation, and together with us work towards the noblest purpose of all: a free, good, and democratic society.
What better way to remind the folks living in Ohio that the Kerrys are disgustingly rich, stuck-up, French-loving elitists? What other purpose could this paragraph have than to say to voters, "I speak five languages"? My favorite line in particular was this one:
And my only hope is that, one day soon, women--who have all earned their right to their opinions--instead of being called opinionated, will be called smart and well-informed, just like men. Thank you. Merci.
Merci?!
Overall, I thought the convention was pulled off nicely. DNC strategists evidently opted to spend most of their available resources trying to convince swing voters that Democrats are patriotic and religious -- something they are manifestly not.
Says John Leo, of US News:
Perhaps the most jarring of the "values" themes in Boston was the convention's attempt to identify with religious voters. Come to the Democratic convention and sing "Amazing Grace." Many religious people, of course, are Democrats. But the secular elites who control the party have worked long and hard to marginalize religion in America and to banish it from the public square. Two political scientists, in a 2001 study published in the Public Interest, concluded that the origins of the culture war can be traced to "the increased prominence of secularists within the Democratic Party and the party's resulting antagonism toward traditional values." The authors, Louis Bolce and Gerald De Maio, describe a "secularist putsch" among the Democrats, explaining that it made the Republicans the traditionalist party "by default more than by overt action." According to Bolce and De Maio, the secularist constituency is as important to Democrats today as organized labor. Under these circumstances, invoking God (seven mentions in the Democratic platform) drags marketing to the point of hypocrisy. Get used to it. The Democrats will be strongly religious--right up till November 2.
The overall strategy was described this way by Paul A. Gigot of the Wall Street Journal:
[Kerry] and his strategists believe they've all but won. They think the voters have already decided to fire President Bush, so Democrats didn't need to make the case themselves. Their task was merely to present Mr. Kerry as a safe alternative.
There were few substantive suggestions from Senator Kerry about how he might lead, for example, the fight against terror. He has still neglected to take a coherent stand on the war he voted to authorize but not to fund. And so consequently, Republican strategists are seeing a wide opening for President Bush to make his case for reelection.
Gigot continues:
In his speech and the party platform, Mr. Kerry's disagreements with Mr. Bush on Iraq were distilled to two: He'll never "mislead" the country into war, and he'll persuade (somehow, but don't ask for details) more of the world to "share the burden." The Democrat said "I know what I have to do in Iraq" without saying what else he'd do differently than Mr. Bush. A Rip Van Winkle who returned last week after a year away would have concluded that the great Iraq debate was over, and the neocons had won.
Yet the very vagueness of Mr. Kerry's promises is what gives the Bush campaign a chance to counterattack... the last thing Mr. Kerry wants is a debate about his own antiterror policies. He wants to compare medals, not philosophies.
The challenge for the Bush campaign is therefore to force a genuine and more specific debate about national security.
William Kristol of The Weekly Standard agrees:
UNWILLING TO ARTICULATE a serious policy agenda, unable to explain why his record qualifies him to be president, John Kerry fled Thursday night to the refuge of patriotism. [...]
So Kerry made a reasonable political judgment when he chose to wrap himself in Old Glory on Thursday night. He wants to be an acceptable alternative should the American people choose to replace President Bush. But that puts the ball back in Bush's court.
What Bush needs to do is simple: make the positive case for his reelection--for his stewardship of the country since September 11, for the war in Iraq, for his overall success in the global war on terror. He should spend August making this positive argument, and mostly ignoring Kerry.
The Democratic nominee has shunned substance for patriotic atmospherics. He has failed to provide a real argument for himself, or against the incumbent president. He has therefore given President Bush an open field and a fair chance to make the case for his reelection.
The Bush campaign website has provided a rebuttal to Kerry's speech. I found it especially illuminating. Most often, Kerry's detractors repeat endlessly the long checklist of Kerry's many votes for cuts in military and intelligence spending.
But there is much more to his record than that. Some interesting tidbits I had never previously run across:
As president, I will ask hard questions and demand hard evidence. I will immediately reform the intelligence system - so policy is guided by facts, and facts are never distorted by politics. And as president, I will bring back this nation's time-honored tradition: the United States of America never goes to war because we want to, we only go to war because we have to.
Kerry Was On Senate Select Intelligence Committee For Eight Years (1993-2000).
While On Committee, Kerry Missed 38 Of 49 Intelligence Committee Hearings. During John Kerry's eight years of service on the Senate's Select Committee on Intelligence, there were 49 open, public hearings. Of these 49, John Kerry attended just 11 (22.4%). Among the most notable of those he missed is the June 8, 2000, hearing on the report of the National Commission on Terrorism, which warned about the terrorist threat we now face and recommended numerous steps to address that threat (few of which were adopted prior to 9/11/01).
While On Committee, Kerry Proposed Over $7.5 Billion In Across The Board Cuts To Intelligence Budget, All Of Which Were Rejected By Democrats And Republicans Alike. (S. 1826, Introduced 2/3/1994; S. Amdt. 1452, Introduced 2/9/94; S. 1290, Introduced 9/29/95)
A Look At Kerry's Legislative Record During That Same Time Period Finds No Legislation That Kerry Proposed (Wrote And Sponsored) To Increase Funding For Human Intelligence Or Reform Intelligence Community To Focus Resources On Human Intelligence Gathering. [...]
1996: Sen. Kerry Questioned Defense Budget Size: "What Is It That We Are Really Preparing For In A Post-Cold-War World?" (Sen. John Kerry, Congressional Record, 5/15/96, p. S5061)
2001: Sen. Kerry Opposed Push To "Spend More Money On The Military, Which Bush Is Going To Do …" (CNN's "Late Edition With Wolf Blitzer," 2/25/01)
Robert Kagan, along with a number of other pundits, has seized upon Kerry's convention statement that "As president, I will bring back this nation's time-honored tradition: the United States of America never goes to war because we want to, we only go to war because we have to."
Says Kagan:
The United States has sent forces into combat dozens of times over the past century and a half, and only twice, in World War II and in Afghanistan, has it arguably done so because it "had to." It certainly did not "have to" go to war against Spain in 1898 (or Mexico in 1846.) It did not "have to" send the Marines to Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Mexico and Nicaragua in the first three decades of the 20th century, nor fight a lengthy war against insurgents in the Philippines. The necessity of Woodrow Wilson's intervention in World War I remains a hot topic for debate among historians.
And what about the war Kerry himself fought in? Kerry cannot believe the Vietnam War was part of his alleged "time-honored tradition," or he would not have thrown his ribbons away. But America's other Cold War interventions in Asia, Latin America and the Middle East are also problematic. Most opponents of the Vietnam War, like Kerry, believed it was symptomatic of a larger failure of U.S. foreign policy stemming from what Jimmy Carter memorably called Americans' "inordinate fear of communism." The other Cold War interventions were premised on the same "misguided" anti-communism and the concomitant democratic idealism, that pulled Kerry's hero, John F. Kennedy, into Vietnam. The United States, by this reckoning, did not "have to" go to war in Korea in 1950. Nor could a post-Vietnam Kerry have considered Lyndon Johnson's 1965 intervention in the Dominican Republic necessary. Or has Kerry now retroactively accepted the Cold War justification for these interventions that he once rejected?
Then there were the wars of the post-Cold War 1990s. The United States did not "have to" go to war to drive Saddam Hussein from Kuwait. No one knows that better than Kerry, who voted against the Persian Gulf War, despite its unanimous approval by the U.N. Security Council. Nor could anyone plausibly deny that the Clinton administration's interventions in Haiti, Bosnia and Kosovo were wars of choice. President Bill Clinton made the right choice in all three cases, but it was a choice.
Why is Kerry invoking an American "tradition" that does not exist?
Lastly, I find it astonishing that the convention provided virtually no bounce for Kerry. One poll gives him a meager four point bounce. Another shows a five point bounce -- for President Bush.
I find this stunning. I can recall that following the Democratic National Convention in 2000, Gore went from trailing by roughly ten percentage points to leading by 5%-10%.
This may only indicate that the American electorate is terribly polarized at the moment. Nevertheless, were I Kerry's strategists, I would not be optimistic at these results, and would be holding my breath that the Republican Convention at the end of August proves to be equally ineffective.
