Columnist.
One of William F. Buckley's later books was titled simply "Gratitude," which is, when you think about it, one of the cardinal conservative virtues. The spirit of gratitude was amply on display this past week at a symposium jointly sponsored by the Bradley Foundation and the Hudson Institute titled "True Americanism: What It Is and Why It Matters." Spoiler alert: It matters. Panelists took as their starting point an indispensable new book by Leon and Amy Kass and Diana Schaub called "What So Proudly We Hail," a selection of stories, songs, and speeches about "the American soul" which should become "The Book of Virtues" for patriots. From the Mayflower Compact to Flannery O'Connor, and from Ralph Ellison to George S. Patton Jr., this collection ranges across American history lighting upon the words that have shaped and reflected us.
The race to succeed chest-baring, Craigslist-dabbling Rep. Chris Lee in upstate New York has not received much national notice. Events in Abbottabad have crowded out other stories. But Democrats are excited by a Siena College poll suggesting the possibility of an upset in the May 24 election. New York's 26th congressional district stretches from the suburbs east of Buffalo to the suburbs west of Rochester, a mostly rural, white, and Republican part of New York. As Michael Barone notes in The Almanac of American Politics, "People speak not in the pungent accents of New York City but in flat Midwestern tones." The 26th gave 55 percent of its vote to George W. Bush in 2004, and 52 percent to McCain in 2008.
Images of Osama bin Laden's mangled face will not be beamed around the world. But it's worth considering, as we think about the death of bin Laden, how his face looked in life. It was not the face of a rabid or fulminating zealot. It was not even an angry face. On the contrary, in nearly every photograph, bin Laden bears a benign expression. There is softness to his demeanor. He was reportedly soft-spoken (if intense) with colleagues and reasonably kind, if distant, with his wives and children.
In those harrowing first days and weeks after the 9/11 atrocity, Americans were traumatized -- but also bewildered. What vicious hatred was this? Who was this new and terrifying enemy? What could possibly motivate people to sacrifice their lives for the honor of killing innocent American civilians -- and cause thousands of others to cheer mass murder? Naturally, some Americans couldn't resist the temptation to ride their own hobbyhorses. We had it coming, said the late Rev. Jerry Falwell, for tolerating abortion and gay unions. (Falwell later apologized.) On the left, a veritable chorus of "blame the victim" analysis explained that America's crimes had driven our enemies to terrorism. The Nation magazine declared that America was "the world's leading rogue state."
By the time you read this, Prince William and his bride, Catherine Middleton (who, depending upon the distribution of titles, may henceforth be known officially by the odd formulation "Her Royal Highness Princess William of Wales"), will have exchanged vows. The organ will have boomed the recessional. The royal carriage with its elegantly adorned and perfectly groomed horses will have paraded the happy couple through cheering crowds in a London bedecked with Union Jacks and flowers. And the guests in their finery will have feasted on a sumptuous wedding breakfast. You needn't be a royal watcher to join whole-heartedly in the rejoicing at a wedding. And we should celebrate -- not because the principals are royalty, but because marriage itself badly needs reinforcing. For the past several decades, we've been conducting an experiment to determine whether marriage really matters all that much to society. The results are in. But the news hasn't yet been taken on board.
The Obama foreign policy is a mess. In the first 12 months of his term -- let's call it the contra-Bush era -- the president's chief aim seemed to be to undo, to the degree possible, what his predecessor had done. The U.S. would close Guantanamo; eschew the term "war on terror"; withdraw from Iraq on a fixed timetable; befriend Iran, Syria, China, Russia, and even Sudan; stiff-arm Israel; and make a concerted effort (via the Cairo speech among other things) to ingratiate America with the Muslim world. It didn't work. Guantanamo remains open. Changing the name didn't change the fact of the war on terror. American troops will remain in Iraq and Afghanistan for a long time. Iran has become even more belligerent, and so forth. Has experience affected the administration's approach?
In 1994, in a close race for governor of Florida between Democrat Lawton Chiles and Republican Jeb Bush, a late blitz of robo calls may have put Chiles over the top. The calls, which Chiles at first disavowed, but later -- in the face of a subpoena -- acknowledged, were aimed at older voters. They "informed" voters that Bush's running mate favored eliminating Social Security and that Bush himself was a tax cheat. Neither was true. But Chiles won. It's a hoary Democratic formula for winning elections -- frighten seniors that Republicans are gunning for their Social Security or Medicare -- and has been deftly deployed by Bill Clinton, Dick Gephardt, Nancy Pelosi, and countless others over the years. In 2010, some Republicans couldn't resist stealing the tactic themselves -- warning voters that Obamacare would result in cuts to Medicare. It wasn't a false charge -- Obamacare does slice $500 billion from Medicare to pay for its new entitlement -- but it was unseemly coming from the party that claims to be for fiscal responsibility.
Conservatives, particularly those of libertarian bent, have always bristled at government efforts to do good, believing that the state has no business performing any but essential functions. They're the ones who, when a government shutdown loomed and it was announced that only "essential" workers should report to work following a budget impasse, asked, "Why the heck do we have non-essential workers?" Neo-conservatives, at least in their early incarnation in the late '60s and '70s, tended to stress that the unintended consequences of government efforts to do good were often more important (and usually more harmful) than the intended consequences.
I've never felt so simpatico with Joe Biden as I did after President Obama's Great Deficit Speech. Ol' lunch bucket Joe seemed to doze off during the president's oration. Perhaps he only appeared to be snoozing. But I can report that your faithful correspondent, despite the best intentions, did actually nod off a few times in the course of the address myself. The first time I found my lids drooping was around paragraph four, when the president rhapsodized about the greatness of government: "We've laid down railroads and highways to facilitate travel and commerce. We've supported the work of scientists and researchers whose discoveries have saved lives, unleashed repeated technological revolutions and led to countless new jobs and entire industries. Each of us has benefited from these investments, and we are a more prosperous country as a result."
Dear Arab protesters, From Tripoli to Sanaa, and from Cairo to Damascus, you are taking to the streets to topple your governments. The fabled "Arab street" has, after many predicted eruptions that failed to materialize, at last been heard from. There is still a great deal we don't know about you -- though we do know that you've displayed tremendous courage, particularly in Libya and Syria, where the regimes are firing on and murdering peaceful demonstrators by the score. Some of you are Islamists, who would usher in even worse regimes than the ones you hope to replace. Some of you are clearly hoping for economic change.
His face adorns the $10 bill, but as Richard Brookhiser, host of "Rediscovering Alexander Hamilton" (airing on PBS April 11), finds when conducting a quick street canvas -- many Americans cannot identify him. "Washington has a monument," Brookhiser intones. "Jefferson has a memorial. It's often said that New York City is Hamilton's monument."
Richard Goldstone, the formerly respected South African jurist who disgraced himself by lending his name to a sinister and libelous U.N. report condemning Israel for war crimes, has now issued a very public retraction. "If I had known then what I know now," he wrote in The Washington Post, "the Goldstone Report would have been a different document." New information has persuaded him, he said, "that civilians were not intentionally targeted as a matter of policy" by Israel. While this recantation is better than none, it invites the question: How could Goldstone not have known the relevant facts? A 10-year-old could have known the relevant facts.
Perhaps you've seen the commercials touting the life-saving benefits of Planned Parenthood. They're very professional, very persuasive, and clearly very expensive. Viewers might wonder why, if Planned Parenthood can afford this multimillion-dollar image advertising, it would be devastated by the loss of about $300 million in taxpayer support? That Planned Parenthood is spooked by Republican efforts to withdraw funding is obvious -- though they have additional reasons to fret about their image just now. Over the course of the past few months, they've been stung by a group calling itself Live Action. In one case, a man and a woman posing as a pimp and a prostitute (yes, shades of the ACORN prank) visited a Planned Parenthood clinic in Perth Amboy, N.J. There, a Planned Parenthood manager coached the couple in how to obtain birth control, HIV tests, and abortions for prostitutes she was told were 14 and 15 years old. The manager was fired, but not before real damage was done to Planned Parenthood's reputation.
April 18 looms like a specter at this time of year, casting a pall over the forsythia and daffodils that coax us to be cheerful. Like a sick child who longs to play outside on a sunny day but must remain confined, we itemizers are chained to desks or dining-room tables littered with receipts, calendars, checkbook registers, and credit card statements for the annual spring ordeal. Not that we file our own taxes. No, like 71 percent of Americans (according to Rasmussen), and like the overwhelming majority of members of Congress, including those on tax-writing committees, we pay someone else to prepare our taxes. The pencil-chewing dining-room table tribulation is merely the necessary antecedent to the actual preparation of a tax return by a professional.
The village of Berkeley, Ill., 15 miles west of Chicago, is small enough to proclaim its population (5,245) on its welcome sign. It is also small enough to escape mention in the national news -- most of the time. But the village, which, according to The Washington Post, is majority African-American and Hispanic, has attracted the attention of the U.S. Department of Justice. The department is suing the Berkeley School District on behalf of a former teacher.
In the Democratic primary campaign of 2008, candidate Barack Obama scored points because he, unlike many Democrats, had opposed the Iraq War from the start. Though a state senator at the time of the 2002 congressional vote authorizing military action, Obama had delivered a speech to an anti-war rally in Chicago. He said, "I don't oppose all wars ... What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other armchair weekend warriors in this administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne."
President Obama is known for his cool. He's been called "No drama Obama" by some of his associates. And certainly in the realm of foreign policy, his response to events has been phlegmatic. The Iranian government sent its thugs into the streets to beat and murder democracy demonstrators, and Obama stayed aloof. The Iranians arrested three American hikers, held them for months in prison, and now accuse two of spying -- and Obama remained calm. A Muslim American opened fire on U.S. soldiers at Fort Hood, and the president initially warned the nation not to jump to conclusions. But there was one outrage that provoked the president's ire -- when Israel announced a permit for the construction of 1,600 new apartments on Jewish-owned land in a Jerusalem neighborhood. Though Prime Minister Netanyahu immediately apologized to the visiting Vice President Biden about the timing of the announcement (by which Netanyahu was apparently blindsided), the reportedly "livid" Obama was unsatisfied.
Who won the battle of Wisconsin? Republican Gov. Scott Walker got a legislative victory. On the other hand, Democrats, with a wary eye on 2012 and noting the worrying drop in support for President Obama in union-heavy states like Pennsylvania and Michigan, claim to be delighted that Walker has picked this fight. "Republicans have done organized labor a great favor by putting the movement back in (the) labor movement, creating a level of passion and activism for workers' rights that hasn't been seen in generations," crowed Democratic strategist Mike Lux.
James O'Keefe, who is now felling executives of National Public Radio as he previously trap-doored ACORN, must be a deeply cynical young man. How else could he have imagined that ACORN workers in several cities would cheerfully offer to help him set up brothels using underage Central American girls? How else could he have imagined that executives of National Public Radio (and apparently PBS, though that video has not surfaced as of this writing) would eagerly truckle to a front group of the Muslim Brotherhood?
My friend E.J. Dionne Jr., a liberal columnist for the Washington Post, is a fine man with, I feel safe in asserting, a warm heart. But he betrays in a recent column a persistent failing of the left -- imperviousness to evidence. Describing Speaker Boehner's tactics in the budget fights with Democrats, Dionne wrote: "Begin with the outrageous $1.1 billion, 15 percent cut from Head Start, a program that offers preschool education to roughly 965,000 poor children. According to the Center for Law and Public Policy, this would knock 218,000 kids out of Head Start and force 16,000 classrooms to close. That is an excellent way to lose the future, as Obama ought to be saying. What could be a better use of public money than helping our poorest children early in life so they might achieve more in school, and later?"
