Hard Right
The Properties of Property
If you read libertarians, classical liberals, and their intellectual godfather John Locke, you might believe that they are the great defenders of property rights. After all Locke and his followers have always championed the rights of life, liberty, and property. How strange it is, then, that so many (not all certainly) modern libertarians have also argued for a mother’s right to kill her baby and the right of the Federal Government to take away liberty from local communities that have passed ordinances that one or another moral anarchist dislikes. But, since the liberals/ libertarians adore money, surely they are a bastion of support for property rights against Marxists and other would-be confiscators.
Three Weddings and a Funeral
For several decades “conservatives” have debated ways of strengthening marriage in the United States. The standard line has been to call for the repeal of no-fault divorce laws or to put sharper legal teeth into the marriage contract arranged by the state. As with every other major issue confronting us today, a lack of understanding about reality—in this case, the institution of marriage—makes it impossible to consider the most useful political options. In the interest of clarity and simplicity, I am going to be extremely brief, boiling down three chapters in a book I cannot seem to finish.
No More Good Time Charlies
The myth of Charlie Wilson is recounted in George Crile’s book Charlie Wilson’s War and popularized in “a major motion picture” starring (improbably and unconvincingly) Tom Hanks. Crile’s subtitle sums up the myth: “The Extraordinary Story of How the Wildest Man in Congress and a Rogue CIA Agent Changed the History of Our Times.” In a language more sober than publishers permit, it is the morality play of how a corrupt playboy politician was so touched by the sufferings of the oppressed Afghan people that he used every device of a dirty political process to support the struggle of Afghan “freedom fighters” against the USSR. Ironically, the end result was an increasingly militant Islamic regime that gave shelter to Osama bin Laden.
Humanitarian Bribery
Secretary of State Hilary Clinton has finally asserted herself as a foreign policy leader of Metternichian or rather Machiavellian proportions. On January 6, the day before Rajiv Shah is sworn in as director of USAID, Madame Clinton delivered her first major policy address, “Development in the 21st Century,” at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. The secretary conceded that it is hard to sell development aid to “farmers and factory workers and teachers and nurses and students, hard-working mothers and fathers [be grateful for the concession, fathers] who wonder, why is their government spending taxpayer dollars to improve the lives of people in the developing world when there is so much hardship and unmet needs right here at home.”
Churchless States and Stateless Churches I
Every “Holiday Season” Americans are given a glimpse of the most serious social and political enemy we face. I do not mean the atheism that prompts the ACLU, leftwing Jewish groups, and the rest of the anti-Christian lobby to challenge public displays of manger scenes. Atheism and anti-Christianity are serious problems, but the equally serious problem of public moronism. It is not just that most Americans in public life are stupid or drunk or even stupid drunkards like Senator Max Baucus, whose slurred speech and dim-wittted ramblings have made him an Internet star for several days.
Fish or Cut Bait
President Obama’s speech on Afghanistan was everything we have a right to expect from one of his speeches. It was vapid, dishonest, puerile, and–most of all–confused. Speaking grandly of an exit strategy he never defined, he did not once address the more serious question of an entrance strategy. What possible reason did we ever have for going in to that awful place, except to kill people we don’t like? I’ll give Obama this: The man never disappoints; he always lives down to my lowest expectations.
Islamophobia—or When Will They Ever Learn?
There is little to say about the shootings at Ft. Hood that has not already been said a thousand times in half-sentence bursts—expletives undeleted—on every newspaper site in the United States, but there are one or two questions to ask or ask again.
Barry and the Tarbaby
The Obama administration’s decision to pull the plug on the missile defense plan for Eastern Europe and the Republican response should provide hours of fun for political satirists. Both sides have agreed that the real issue is Iran. Can Iran rain nuclear death on the Poles and Czechs? Perhaps a better question is why Iran would choose the Poles. Perhaps as the newest incarnation of the Third Reich they just have to invade Poland and set up concentration camps.
Flashback to 9/11: What’s Next?
[Originally posted September 11, 2001, at 1:00 PM CDT.]
In the aftermath of the greatest loss of American life in a single attack since Pearl Harbor—and probably ever—our first thoughts must be for the victims of an attack that was neither cowardly nor senseless (as it is already being called), but a well-coordinated demonstration of American vulnerability. This is a time for prayer, not analysis. Unfortunately, even the chief executive of the United States—a professing Christian—could not find the courage to pray in front of the cameras. Faced with the evidence of a probable Islamic suicide attack carried out by men—perhaps Muslims—willing to die for their beliefs, the President could only ask for a moment of silence, a prayer to nothing. Score one for the terrorists.
Ted Kennedy: Lion of Liberalism or Lyin’ Liberal?
De mortuis nihil nisi bonum.
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