Category Archives: The Nation

Civility III: The New Blog Order

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I admit it: I’m instituting
a double standard

By Brad Warthen
Editorial Page Editor
SO WHEN AM I going to get off this “civility” kick? Soon. Very soon. After all, electioneering season is almost back upon us in full force; we start endorsement interviews right after Labor Day.
    But that only gives greater urgency to an effort to encourage discussions on public policy issues that go beyond trite, partisan name-calling and sloganeering.
    As you know if you haven’t just tuned me out altogether, I’ve been worrying about the tone of the discussions taking place on my Weblog. Don’t misunderstand: I get hundreds of comments from thoughtful people from across the political spectrum. Unfortunately, some really hostile partisans from both left and right have been running off the folks who want to have a dialogue.
    It’s not that these folks can’t take the heat. They just don’t want to waste their time.
    My greater worry is that such partisan, ideological nonsense is the very problem with politics in America today, aggravating reasonable people to the point that they just want to turn away. My column last week celebrating Joe Lieberman’s independent candidacy was about this same subject. I don’t have the authority to play umpire with regard to the national political discourse. But I can call balls and strikes on the blog.
    So after an online discussion that drew close to 500 reader comments, I’ve come up with a new system that I hope will work. It’s far from perfect, and will be subject to change if it doesn’t appear to be working, but since I want the site to continue to be a place where people are free to disagree strongly, forget about perfect. I’ll settle for better.
    Here’s the plan: I’m implementing a Double Standard (I thought I’d go ahead and call it that before the critics do, seeing as how that’s what it is). Or maybe you’d call it “behavior profiling.”
    Some people will be free to post pretty much whatever they want. With them, I will maintain the same hands-off policy that I’ve applied to everyone up to now. But I’ll have a different rule for everyone not in that select group: I will delete at will any comments that I deem harmful to good-faith dialogue.
    The good news is that you get to choose whether you’ll be a privileged character or not.
    To be among the elect, you just have to give up your anonymity (just as letter-writers on this page do). You won’t have to fill out special forms or show your birth certificate or anything. Just fill out the existing fields that precede comments with your real, full name; your regular, main e-mail address (the one you use for friends or family or co-workers, not something you set up on Yahoo for the purpose of hiding your identity); and if you have a Web site, your URL.
    If it seems necessary (either to you or me) to provide more info to establish who you really are, you can do so either in the text of the comment, or by e-mailing me.
    When would it be helpful to provide more info? Use your judgment — if your name is John Smith and your e-mail is jsmith@aol.com, you might want to tell a little more, such as that you’re a Columbia attorney or a student at USC or whatever. And I’ll use my judgment — if you call yourself Mike Cakora (one of my regulars), but write something totally uncharacteristic of him, I’ll start asking questions.
    To be in the other group, just keep hiding behind anonymity. I’ll still let you through most of the time, but I’m going to start deleting comments that fit into one of two categories:

  • Insulting, demeaning personal remarks aimed at delegitimizing, discouraging or intimidating those with whom you disagree. If you don’t know what I mean by that, you’ll soon find out.
  • Dogmatic, repetitive, sloganeering ideological claptrap that fails to move the conversation forward and just generally wastes the time of anyone who reads through it in search of actual, original thought. If you use partisan buzzwords and labels as a substitute for genuine argument, you’re in this category. Once again, some of you may have trouble understanding exactly what I mean by that (such rhetoric is so reflexive today), but I will do my best to demonstrate.

    Between those two categories, I can tell you already that I will act upon the first with greater alacrity than upon the second. It is the greater offense.
    But, some of you are by now sputtering, this is so subjective! Yep, and to some of you, that’s just plain shocking. Not to me. I’ve had to make millions of such judgments in my 30-plus-year career. It’s what editors do. Every word I have ever allowed into the paper has required, at the most basic level, an unforgiving yes/no type of decision. Space and time constraints require us to leave out a whole lot more than we’re able to put in. Those considerations don’t apply on the Web, but something at least as important does: The need to have at least one place where people can hear each other think without being drowned out by shouted stupidity.
    I expect the number of comments will drop off for awhile. Some will depart in disgust, others in confusion. Still others will be more selective about what they post, which is actually the point of this. I hope we make up in quality what we give up in quantity.
    If you don’t understand how to meet the new standards, here’s a hint:
    Always try to express your ideas in a way that will actually change the minds of people with whom you disagree. Don’t write in a way calculated to win cheers and attaboys from those who already agree with you, or to give yourself a jolt of vindictive satisfaction.
    Oh, and remember: You don’t have to worry about the standards if you have the guts to stand up and identify yourself. Just don’t be a wuss, and you can still be a jerk.
    Unfortunately, given the present polarization of political attitudes, some of you will refuse to believe that “those other people” can ever be persuaded. You think there are people like you, and people like those others, and any attempt to reason across the divide is futile.
    If that describes you, you’ve come to the wrong place. I believe that good-faith dialogue has the power to bring us together over what we have in common. If all you want to do is shake your fist and shout slogans, there are plenty of other blogs out there that welcome that. Just not mine.
    And here’s where you find it: http://blogs.thestate.com/bradwarthensblog/.

Soros, Will: Georges of a feather

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Folks who think in simplistic terms such as "liberal" and "conservative" would probably be surprised to see George Soros and George Will essentially the same ideas on the same day.

I would not. Nor would Norman Podhoretz, to whose comments I referred over the weekend. It’s quite natural that a true conservative would take the John Kerry approach to dealing with terrorism. As I’ve said
since we went in in March 2003 (and as The New Republic said at about the same time), what we are engaged in in Iraq is a classically liberal enterprise.

Nor is it surprising that Mr. Soros would embrace the conservative position of treating acts of terrorism as separate, distinct crimes rather than as parts of a larger struggle called the "war on terror." Putative liberals have approached the world this way ever since Vietnam.

Anyway, read the pieces and enjoy the irony.

Tim has pointed out that he was unable to read the WSJ pieces. Sorry; I thought that since I was getting them through OpinionJournal they would be accessible, but I see now that they were not among the free material.

To at least give you the gist of the Soros piece and explain why it reminded me of Will, here is an excerpt:

(T)he war on terror emphasizes military action while most territorial
conflicts require political solutions. And, as the British have shown,
al Qaeda is best dealt with by good intelligence. The war on terror
increases the terrorist threat and makes the task of the intelligence
agencies more difficult. Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri are
still at large; we need to focus on finding them, and preventing
attacks like the one foiled in England.

Joementum column

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Liebermancol

One state’s voters get chance
to break partisan death grip

By Brad Warthen
Editorial Page Editor

A WONDERFUL thing happened in Connecticut last week — something that could bode very well for the political direction of this country:
    A man who six years ago came within a hair’s breadth of the vice presidency broke with the partisan insanity represented by the Democratic and Republican parties and launched a general election campaign for the U.S. Senate that he has a good chance of winning.
    If he succeeds, it could change everything. It would show sensible people that it is possible to take our country back from those with an interest in keeping us bitterly divided — the parties, advocacy groups, 24-hour TV news and a bunch of self-justifying idiots in the blogosphere.
    The exciting thing about Sen. Joe Lieberman’s independent candidacy is that voters are actually going to be given the option of voting for a viable, highly qualified candidate who was not chosen by a vote of extremists on either the “right” or the “left.”
    In fact, that system actually chewed him up and spit him out. As qualifications go, I’d put that right up there along with his 35 years of thoughtful, principled, sterling public service to his state and to his nation.
    Do you still doubt that the two parties have lost their narrow little minds? How can you, when the proof was on such stark display last week? (And not only on the Democratic side. A Republican Schwarz2congressman in Michigan was expelled for being too centrist.)
    The ultimate proof was not Sen. Lieberman’s primary defeat by a rich political neophyte whose only qualification was a capacity to tell the more extreme elements of the Democratic Party what they want to hear. (Supposedly about the war, but the senator’s real “sin” was daring to agree with the hated George W. Bush.) That was just the warmup.
    The real craziness started when all the “mainstream” Democrats who had supported Joe Lieberman in the primary, and had in fact seen challenger Ned Lamont as a harmful force, endorsed the winner.
    Among those individuals who surrendered their consciences to “party unity” were Bill and Hillary Clinton. You know, fellow Democratic Leadership Council stalwart Bill Clinton — who had stumped for Mr. Lieberman in person in recent weeks — and his wife the senator, who has been almost as identified with support of our effort in Iraq as Sen. We-No-Longer-Speak-His-Name.
    Not long ago, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid begged Eli Pariser not to oppose Mr. Lieberman, for the sake of the party and its chances of retaking the Senate. After last Tuesday, he announced that “The results bode well for Democratic victories in November.” Ow. Whiplash.
    You don’t know who Eli Pariser is? He’s the 25-year-old who heads up MoveOn.org, a major force in the left wing’s push to dominate the Democratic Party. His take on the situation was typically, dogmatically priggish: “This puts the political class on notice that they have to pay attention to people outside the Beltway.”
    Young Eli hasn’t noticed that most politicians pay minute attention to “people outside the Beltway,” letting polls override the judgment they are elected to exercise. Nor does he understand that most people outside the Beltway have very different values from those held by him and his friends in the blogosphere.
    Joe Lieberman is one of the rare pols who actually sticks with what his conscience dictates. This is frowned upon within the Beltway, where you’re supposed to surrender judgment to whichever howling mob claims you.
    Some Democratic leaders — and some in the media — act as though Joe Lieberman is the deluded one. In a story called “Lieberman defiance,” The Associated Press quoted various “analysts” in an effort to diagnose the senator’s inability to “accept the reality of defeat.”
    “He was in denial,” said one political scientist. Former Clinton Chief of Staff Leon Panetta said of poor ol’ Joe: “You have to, in some ways, kid yourself. It’s more a psychological mechanism than it is reality.” The general consensus was that the shock of defeat had pushed him over the edge.
    Think for a moment, people. “Poor ol’ Joe” has more money, more support in the general electorate and far greater qualifications for office than either Ned Lamont or his Republican opponent. That was true Monday, and it was just as true Wednesday. One would only say otherwise if one believes the momentary whim of a party is more important than the good of the nation.
    How did it become conventional wisdom that people doing all they can to defeat a fringe candidate one day — for the very good reason that he would be bad for the state, the nation and their party — should embrace him the next?
    The dynamics that boosted Mr. Lamont to victory, and that induced “mainstream” politicos to go where only the likes of Eli Pariser and Al Sharpton would go before, are precisely the same ones that keep giving us choices between, say, George W. Bush and John Kerry. Seldom do those of us who are revolted by the options forced upon us by the extremists who dominate primaries get the opportunity to choose a candidate we can respect.
    Well, the voters of Connec
ticut now have such an opportunity. I hope they appreciate it.

Podhoretz on foreign policy

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There was a very interesting piece based on an interview with Norman Podhoretz on the WSJ’s editorial page today.

It was particularly interesting — and disturbing — for me because he is considered a sort of seminal neoconservative. "Disturbing" because I agreed with almost everything he said. When you hate agreeing across the board with any ideological label the way I do, this sort of thing can make you very uncomfortable.

I take comfort from the fact that the piece was confined to neocon thinking on foreign policy. That there is an overlap in that area should probably not be disturbing or surprising. I’ve said many times that my view of America’s role in the world is pretty much that of pre-Vietnam liberals, and it should be expected that my views would jibe with the neocons in this area because they were pre-Vietnam liberals — at least, the old ones like Podhoretz were.

Of course, nowadays "neocon" is most often defined more or less entirely in terms of a certain stance on foreign policy, and indeed it largely grew out of its fathers’ dispute with liberalism in that area during the ’60s. I still don’t like the label, though, because I first heard of it in connection with Reaganomics, and I disagreed with that stuff most vehemently. That’s the trouble with all modern political labels. I agree strongly with the "conservatives" on abortion and I agree strongly with "liberals" on public education. So I guess it’s OK to agree strongly with the "neocons" on muscular interventionism. Or so I tell myself.

Anyway, back to this piece. I said I agree with almost all of it. My blood sort of runs cold when he seems to be advocating torture. But then I wonder: Am I being hypocritical about this? While I embrace the McCain-Graham approach of pulling us away from the use of coercion on prisoners, I wonder if I take that position just to make myself feel righteous.

Guilty be told, on a certain level I hope that the Brits are doing what they can to extract information from the bomb plotters they’ve arrested so that they might quickly capture the ones they haven’t arrested, before they manage to carry out some plan B. I ask myself, which is worse — a would-be mass murderer getting slapped around a little, or a 747 with 400-plus people on it blowing up? And I think I know the answer.

But ultimately, I think McCain and company are right — if we’re going to win this war that Mr. Podhoretz calls World War IV, we have to tie our own hands to a great extent. Otherwise, it’s sort of hard to be champions of the liberal democracy we hope to foster in hostile soil. So on that point, I think the Podhoretz approach is not only chilling, but strategically wrong.

Is Joe ready for the Unparty?

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Lamont72
Well, if anyone out there doubted that political parties in the United States have gone stark, raving mad,Tuesday’s election results
should have settled the matter.

The most dramatic example was the Deaniac rejection of the Democratic Party’s 2000 vice presidential nominee. (Note the victor, above, in full Dean-style rant mode.)

My colleagues point out that something similar
happened over on the Republican side, but that isn’t nearly as dramatic or meaningful. Still, while I’m often suspicious when some of my colleagues in the media refer to "pro-choice" Republicans as "moderates," this guy was supported by John McCain, which gives him some cred in my eyes.

You want a Republican who is a real moderate, in the sense that Joe Lieberman is a moderate Democrat? Lindsey Graham. In the traditional, rational-human-being sense in which the terms used to be used, Sen. Graham is a true conservative, and Sen. Lieberman is a true liberal. But the extremists in their respective parties (and that’s who generally calls the shots in primaries in both parties) have twisted the terms, and their own standards of acceptance, into grotesque, unrecognizable shapes.

At this point, the only thing to do is wish Mr. Lieberman Godspeed as he seeks to hold his seat as an independent. If he succeeds, it will be a wonderful thing for the entire country.

I’m thinking about offering him the support of the Unparty in my Sunday column. Any thoughts on that from you Unpartisan loyalists out there?

Liebermanblog

The coming war with Iran, etc.

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Hezbollah2
Since Sunday, I’ve been meaning to call your attention to this piece that was in the NYT‘s Week in Review section. OK, all the folks on the right wing of the blog community can now spend 10 seconds doing the customary hyperventilating about what an unreliable, biased source the Times is … 3, 2, 1. Time’s up. Let’s get on with the topic now.

If you can’t get access, here’s the essence:

    United States officials worry that they’re not prepared, either, for Hezbollah’s style of warfare — a kind that pits finders against hiders and favors the hiders.
    Certain that other terrorists are learning from Hezbollah’s successes, the United States is studying the conflict closely for lessons to apply to its own wars. Military planners suggest that the Pentagon take a page out of Hezbollah’s book about small-unit, agile operations as it battles insurgents and cells in Iraq and Afghanistan and plans for countering more cells and their state sponsors across the Middle East and in Africa, Southeast Asia and Latin America.
    The United States and Israel have each fought conventional armies of nation-states and shadowy terror organizations. But Hezbollah, with the sophistication of a national army (it almost sank an Israeli warship with a cruise missile) and the lethal invisibility of a guerrilla army, is a hybrid. Old labels, and old planning, do not apply. Certainly its style of 21st-century combat is known — on paper. The style even has its own labels, including network warfare, or net war, and fourth-generation warfare, although many in the military don’t care for such titles. But the battlefields of south Lebanon prove that it is here, and sooner than expected. And the American national security establishment is struggling to adapt.

Two things come to mind as I read this piece and others:

  1. We’re going to be at war with Iran sooner or later — sooner, if we act in the best interests of our own country and civilization as a whole. We can wait until the dark cloud out of Mordor assumes mushroom shape and consumes a few of our cities, courtesy of Hezbollah Delivery Service, or sooner. Our standard modus operandi has been to act later. You may say that Iraq represents a departure from that wait-until-they-hit-us-first mode, but rhetoric aside, it really doesn’t. Basically, we acted after 12 years of dithering. The cause may not have been proximate, but there was a cause.
  2. Most hand-wringing pieces (and this one is no exception) about how helpless the United States, or a regional superpower such as Israel, is against skilled practitioners of asymmetric warfare ignore a salient fact: That we tie our own hands, and the bad guys rely upon us to do that.

An elaboration on that last: There are many, many examples of the way people who would destroy us use the very decency that they assume us to have against us. One is particularly vivid. It’s from Mark Bowden’s Black Hawk Down — on page 46 of the Penguin paperback version, not in the original newspaper series:

    … They both ran for better cover.
    They found it behind a burned-out car. Peering out from underneath toward the north now, Nelson saw a Somali with a gun lying prone on the street beneath two kneeling women. The shooter had the barrel of his weapon between the women’s legs, and there were four children actually sitting on him. He was completely shielded in noncombatants, taking full cynical advantage of the Americans’ decency.
    "Check this out, John," he told Waddell, who scooted over for a look.
    "What do you want to do?" Waddell asked.
    "I can’t get to that guy through those people."
    So Nelson threw a flashbang, and the group fled so fast the man left his gun in the dirt.

What do you do about someone who is evil enough, craven enough, hateful enough to do something like that? I’ve come to the conclusion — and it’s a difficult one for me — that the only solution is to kill him — and every one of his fellows. I don’t even like the way that sounds. I gain no satisfaction from saying it. But think about it. Few people consider World War II to have been an unjust war from the Allied perspective. But the average Wehrmacht soldier was much less deserving of death than the individual who will so directly and literally use noncombatants as a shield. And yet WE killed thousands — actually, hundreds of thousands — of civilians to get at them.

We’re too enlightened, and too technologically advanced, to resort to carpet bombing today. We flatter ourselves that we can put a smart bomb into a certain window of a certain building, and this constrains us — if we can be so discriminating and particular in our targeting, then we must be. Well, no bomb is that smart.

I accept the morality of that logic, and the logic of such an ethic. But really, what do we do in such a situation as those we face today?

I’ll tell you what we do: We lose. People hold up Vietnam as an example of the futility of using American force to shape the world. Such people don’t understand military realities. The truth is that our ability to achieve military aims is limited mainly by the limits we place upon ourselves.

We "lost" the Vietnam conflict because we chose to. No, this is not a tirade against those politicians in Washington tying the hands of the military. We were simply not prepared as a nation to go on the offensive against the North Vietnamese — I mean, "on the offensive" in a strategic sense. Why didn’t we just take Hanoi the way we did Baghdad, or the way we did Berlin or Tokyo before? Because we never tried to. We went in to defend, not attack. You can’t win a defensive war.

By March 2003, there had been a change in the American attitude, caused by Sept. 11. We were ready to go on the offensive. So we did — in a concerted, yet restrained, way. Yes, there were many civilian deaths. But the firebombing of Dresden it was not. We still try to kill the enemy without killing noncombatants to the extent that is practical. And it often is not practical. For instance, how many more people would al-Zarqawi have killed if we had not killed him with a bomb that also killed innocents?

So what do we do, if we are to remain the kind of "good guys" we want to be? Seldom are we able to resolve such situations by tossing a flashbang. I firmly believe it is profoundly wrong to harm noncombatants, particularly women and children. So what do we do about enemies who hide among them, whether in southern Lebanon, Baghdad, Tikrit or Mogadishu? We’d better figure it out soon, because our problem isn’t the likes of Hezbollah. It’s the states that support and egg it on.

Iran will be a much tougher problem for us than Iraq — diplomatically, politically, morally and militarily. And we still haven’t figured out how to deal with Iraq.

I don’t know the answer. I’m just trying to clarify the question. Do we wait while Iran a) develops nukes and b) gets ever-more-effective at what it’s been doing for several decades — sponsoring terrorism across the greater Mideast?

Or do we go ahead and act? And if so, how, and where? And, given the way we have overextended the military that Rumsfeld has insisted doesn’t need to expand, with what?

Thoughts?

May be. May not be.

32 Replies

Trying to get through 330 e-mails from the last few days (I’ve been having some trouble with Outlook) before starting my Sunday column, I ran across this one that came in on Saturday. Since I spontaneously responded, and I’m trying not to say anything to readers as individuals that I don’t share on the blog, I will now do so. Share, I mean. Here is the e-mail:

From: C Hugh Campbell
To: stateeditor@thestate.com
Cc: bwarthen@thestate.com
Sent: Sunday, July 16, 2006 10:59 AM
Subject: Letter to the Editor

After innumerable columns proclaiming, and straining to justify, the vital importance to the U.S. of democratizing the Middle East, Thomas Friedman has finally run out of rationalizations and is forthright enough to suggest what should have been obvious from day one: "It may be the skeptics are right: Maybe democracy can’t be implemented everywhere."  Because of Brad Warthen’s deep regard for Friedman I hope that he, too, will face up to this reality.

C. Hugh Campbell, Jr.

Here’s my response:

He’s right. It "may be." It also may be — and this is more likely —
that if the world’s most powerful nation says to itself "We’re gonna
fail! We’re gonna fail! We’re gonna fail!" about a million times, it
just might fail to accomplish that which it was perfectly capable of
accomplishing at the start.

Oh, and here’s what Mr. Friedman actually wrote:

     It may be the skeptics are right: maybe democracy, while it is the most powerful form of legitimate government, simply can’t be implemented everywhere. It certainly is never going to work in the Arab-Muslim world if the U.S. and Britain are alone in pushing it in Iraq, if Europe dithers on the fence, if the moderate Arabs cannot come together and make a fist, and if Islamist parties are allowed to sit in governments and be treated with respect — while maintaining private armies.

Is that all it takes?

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Michael Kinsley is apparently doing well after brain surgery last week. As he wrote in his most recent column for TIME,

That’s right, brain surgery — it’s a real conversation stopper, isn’t it? There aren’t many things you can say these days that retain their shock value, but that is one of them. "So, Mike — got any summer plans?" "Why, yes, next Tuesday I’m having brain surgery. How about you?" … People don’t expect to run into someone who’s having brain surgery next week squeezing the melons at Whole Foods. (Unless, of course, he’s squeezing them and shrieking, "Why don’t you answer? Hello? Hello?") Self-indulgently, I’ve been dropping the conversational bomb of brain surgery more often than absolutely necessary just to enjoy the reaction. And why not? I deserve that treat. After all, I’m going to be having brain surgery.

Anyway, this was attached to the end of the column:

Editor’s note: Kinsley’s surgery took place on July 12 and went fine.
His first words were, "Well, of course, when you cut taxes, government
revenues go up. Why couldn’t I see that before?"

Big Brother, we hardly knew ye

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As time goes by, I get less and less comfortable with the culture in which I live.

This morning, got an unsolicited alert from the Realplayer folks inviting me to check out a link called "Big Brother live video feeds!"

I thought it was an Orwell reference (which, I suppose, in a tacky-distant-relative kind of way, it is — just not the way I was thinking). I figured maybe it was live feeds from one of those observation cameras so many communities have been putting up in public places. I thought it would lead me to a lively discussion between privacy advocates and those of us who are just fine with such augmentations of law enforcement capabilities.

Imagine my disappointment.

Hey, it’s not that I’m some sort of culture snob or anything. I hate opera, and I like action movies. Last night, I kept groaning because the womenfolk in my house wanted to watch some sort of "reality" show involving a dance competition, just when I was getting into a Firefly episode that I hadn’t seen before. I own the series on DVD, and have been making my way through it slowly. The ladies made the perfectly valid point that I could find out what happened to Capt. Reynolds later, so after griping for a few minutes, I just went to bed early.

We all have our tastes in junk. It’s just that the stuff I like gets canceled before it completes its first season (I will admit I only became a fan after the fact, when my son persuaded us to go see "Serenity"), and the gorram "reality" shows go on and on and on.

As Jayne would say, "Where does that get fun?"

Good thing I’m not blogging today

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Here are some of the items I would have posted yesterday had I been blogging. Which I’m not. ‘Cause I’m on vacation. Anyway:

  • We wanted to get an early start since we were heading all the way back to S.C., but while my wife was downstairs getting the free breakfast I decided to check my investments. My portfolio consists — that is, consisted — of about $1,300 worth of Knight Ridder stock. I’ve written of this brilliant move on my part before. Anyway, we ended up being delayed about half an hour, because I discovered that, instead of having been converted to cash in the sale of the company earlier this week, my investment had simply … disappeared. I had about $67 left in my e-trade account. First I got an Indian guy on the phone (he didn’t tell me his name, but if I had asked, he probably would have said it was "Steve"), who passed me to somebody else, who said I needed to talk to a "professional," who said I needed to talk to another "professional." I think the last guy I talked to said something — money, negotiable securities, something — should show up in my account in the next couple of days. I shrugged, and we got on the road. By the way, if you need investment advice, my services are available for a fee.
  • Before putting away the laptop, though, I checked to see if there was anyplace good to stop on the way for coffee. There was a Starbucks in Fredericksburg, a couple of hours out. (I have confessed in the past about my hateful Starbucks jones, which makes at least one of my coffee-drinking children ashamed of me.) It was at a place called "Central Park." I decided I could wait that long. You couldn’t miss Central Park, but it was very, very easy to miss something located within Central Park. I remember Alan Kahn talking about places where they had something like what he had in mind for the Village at Sandhill. This had to be one of them (I’m not in a position to check archives at the moment). This place was like the Village at Sandhill multiplied by Harbison to the power of the Mall of America — street after street of shops, strips and big boxes. The general layout was like Broadway at the Beach — winding lanes and such — but it went on and on and on. You know how terrorists dream of 72 virgins? This is what Burroughs and Chapin dream about. Only blind luck enabled me to find Starbucks in all that. I did stop and ask directions. Guess where? Where would be the last place in the world where you would be likely to find people who knew the way to a trendy-yuppie place like Starbucks? That’s right. Wal-Mart. I first asked the greeter, and when she looked up and had only one tooth in her head, my heart sank. I asked another employee, and she gave me very confident directions, but they were entirely wrong. Fortunately, I ran into it while on the way to the place she had pointed out. If was only a couple of hundred yards from Wal-Mart.
  • I stopped by the battlefield in Petersburg, because one of my great-great grandfathers had died there. I called my uncle from the visitors center to get him to remind me what unit he was with. He couldn’t remember, and my cousin who’s the genealogist was off someplace. But he did tell me that we had determined that great-great grandad had not died at Petersburg,Crater_1 but at a place called "Kingsburg." The ranger in the visitor’s center had never heard of it. So we went off to have a look at the Crater before getting back on the road.
  • The Crater was disappointing. I expected something about half a mile across. This wasn’t big enough to be a cellar for a small house. Ol’ Henry Pleasants didn’t use as much dynamite as Butch Cassidy, I suppose. Anyway, it was a glorious victory for South Carolinians, as the plaque I photographed (and will post when I get back to the house) attests. But it was a godawful mess. Forgive my levity. I kept saying to my wife as we drove through, looking for stop number 8, "Here we go, just breezing by, and all those men poured out their lifeblood atScplaque_1 every one of these stops." I am capable of being sober at times.
  • OK, this one’s weird. Anybody ever read The Guns of the South by Harry Turtledove? If you haven’t, I’m not going to describe it to you, because it will lower your opinion of my reading tastes. But it’s really a lot better than it sounds. Anyway, it’s an alternative history novel, in which the South wins the war. Instead of being the famous man who created the Crater at Petersburg, Henry Pleasants appears in it as a POW released by the Confederacy after the war, who decides to settle in Nash County, NC. His Crater idea does occur to him in the novel, but within a completely different context. Anyway, Lt. Col. Pleasants was captured at the battle of Bealeton. Not familiar with that one? That’s because it only happened in the novel, after the course of history changed from what we know. But this novel, which I’ve read more than once, kept screwing up my sense of real history as I drove through Virginia and N.C. As we drove by the exit to Bealeton, I started to tell my wife, in a professorial tone, how this was the place where … and caught myself just in time, realizing that it never actually happened. Then I saw the Crater made by the real Col. Pleasants. Then we’re driving through N.C., and we enter Nash County. Then we pass by the exit for Nashville, where Nate Caudell lived. If I had seen a sign to Rivington, I really would have freaked out. You have to have read the book to understand that last one.
  • How come, when you’re looking for the junction between one Interstate and another, they don’t give you a little warning so you can be on the lookout for it? Paranoid about missing my turn, I kept looking obsessively at all the signs for about 50 miles. I wanted to get off 95 and onto 40 to Wilmington. You know when the gummint finally deigned to put up a sign telling me it was coming? Two miles away. If I had been in one of those semiconscious zones you get into while driving for just two minutes, I could have missed it. I didn’t, but still. Don’t you think they should tell a guy a little earlier.
  • I am never going to Wilmington again for the rest of my life. All we wanted to do was turn onto 17 and head down to the Strand. Easy, right? Not around there. I turned off looking for the waterfront areas where there might be a nice seafood place. We found nothing, and then could not get back onto 17. Really. I have a great sense of direction, if nothing else, but it was useless in that place. We were lost for an hour. Once I found the bloody bridge, though, it was easy. I was so glad to get out of North Carolina, and back home. So was my wife, and she’s actually from Tennessee.
  • They don’t even know how to have a beach town up there in N.C. The place was totally dead, and just looked like any other Southern town. As soon as we crossed the line, we were greeted by a fireworks place, then restaurants, tacky tourist traps, all sorts of crazy, bustling traffic and an Eagles or Wings on every block. People deride the Redneck Riviera, but it’s the Beach to me, and felt as homey and welcoming as my blue recliner at home. If only I had packed those ratty old slippers of mine.

Well, that’s enough. Like I said, good thing I’m not blogging today.

Post-diluvean

3 Replies

Flood_road
Capital A mentions that he was headed for New York for "vacation."

We had thought about heading up to NYC for a day, or maybe Washington, or maybe catch a ball game in Baltimore — the Orioles were scheduled to be at home Tues, Wed and Thurs, and I’d never been to Camden Yards.

But we were sick of all that Yankee rain, and there were warnings of floods — in fact, we drove through some pretty heavily flooded country roads night before last in Pa. — and thought we’d get out of that part of the country, seeing as how we didn’t have a head start on an Ark. Some of the Amish folk might have let us on board theirs, but we didn’t want to take the chance.

So we drove back home to the Grand Strand. This morning, my wife walks down to the pier and gets three papers. A different flooded place in Pennsylvania was on the front of each of them.

I think we made the right call. Even LexWolf should be able to agree on that.

Flood_vans

Confederate BDA

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Courthouse72
Apparently, I spoke too soon. Pennsylvanians do have their Civil War (that’s what they call The Recent Unpleasantness up here) battle scars, and they do have a capacity for clinging to the fact. Like us, they don’t just fix up thePlaque72 damage and move on. This makes me feel closer to them.

Indeed, there was no artillery damage to their statehouse in Harrisburg, but I conducted a closer BDA examination in Carlisle, and found evidence that Confederate artillery was somewhat effective inWall72 leaving them something to remember us by when our boys were making that swing through the Gettysburg area.

The damage to the pillars and wall of the old Cumberland County courthouse is not only preserved, but marked with the date. Sure, they did it in a haphazard, tacky way — without bronze stars. But it shows that they do have a certain SouthernPillar72 incapacity for letting bygones be bygones. I just knew these were my kind of people.

Now, if they could only figure out how to do grits, so I wouldn’t have to make them myself in the hotel room. (Which I am eating as I type — true, real-time blogging.)

A monster is dead

147 Replies

We awake to astounding news out of Iraq — astounding not so much because it’s surprising we would be able to get al-Zarqawi, but because we are so accustomed to something other than good news.

Of course, there is something in us (or there should be something in us) that says, hold on — a man’sZarqawi death is good news? What kind of world do we live in?

Well, we live in a world in which a man who kills innocents as a main aim, as a matter of policy, as a way of sowing despair, can get a following of creatures like him. This guy got his jollies cutting off people’s heads for the videos, which he distributed as widely as he could.

He won’t be doing that any more. That’s great news.

Unity08

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Tim asked, in a comment to a recent post, what I thought of Unity08. Frankly, I hadn’t really focused on it, because I’ve been so busy with state primaries.

But I should have. I think it’s an important movement.

Is it everything I would be looking for in an alternative to the pointless division and intellectual dishonesty that the two main parties represent? No. No mass movement (if this turns out to be a mass movement, which appears to be the intent) could be.

I question two things about it:

  1. Why would it concentrate its effort on the disaffected young, as David Broder noted? What about us disaffected old? We’ve been frustrated by all the partisan nonsense longer than they have. And of course, we’re wiser and all that.
  2. While I admire the determination not to get bogged down in the absurdities of the culture wars, and concentrate on the "crucial issues" of war and peace, education, health care, etc., I get a little whiff of avoidance here. What we need is for people’s positions on abortion, prayer in schools, etc. not to be dealkillers.

Think what you like about those things. I have my positions on some of those things (while, admittedly, ignoring others as being entirely false choices). What should be important in a candidate should be whether voters across the political spectra (as they are variously defined) can trust him or her to deal wisely, pragmatically and morally with the issues that matter most at a given time — issues that usually can’t be defined in advance. No one would have guessed in 2000, for instance, that George W. Bush might be judged on the basis of how well, or how poorly, he engages in war and nation-building.

Anyway, this may be a bogus caveat on my part, and not inconsistent with what the Unity08 folks want at all. I just know I’m going to be watching this with interest.

Howdy, Big Brother!

53 Replies

It occurred to me while reading and answering comments on this recent post that I should clarify something. Yes, I was lampooning Gen. Hayden and the NSA domestic intelligence-gathering. But I tend to make ironic comments about everyone, whether I agree with them or not. I think it’s healthyHaydencia to mock my own positions the way opponents would. It helps me to keep a sense of perspective that people with calcified points of view lack.

You see, it doesn’t bother me a bit that the government is engaging in a variation on the classic intelligence-gathering technique of "traffic analysis." I hope the sweeps are comprehensive enough to work, and help prevent the next 9/11. Ultimately, I think playing defense all the time will fail at some point — all the bad guys have to do is get lucky once. That’s why we need to be on the offensive on their turf, with the ultimate goal of changing the conditions that produce these nut jobs. But in the meantime, analyze phone records all you want.

Anyway, here is the response I wrote to various comments. I thought it would be better to make a separate post of them, since the points were important enough for that:

  • I first heard about the Murtha thing when I was trapped watching TV news while working out several nights ago. It was FoxNEWS. Come to think of it, I haven’t seen or read anything about it since, until you mentioned it (Of course, I’ve been buried in state and local with all these candidate interviews). It’s not about political "bias." It’s about the fact that TV always blows this type of stuff out of proportion.
  • I couldn’t care less about records being kept of phone calls. I wouldn’t care if it was actual surveillance. The G-men can listen to my calls all day if they like. I’ll say howdy to them. Does that mean I’m A-OK with the program? Not quite — I’m pretty upset with the president that he won’t work with Congress to change the stupid law so that there’s no question that what we’re doing — what we need to do, what we’d be crazy NOT to do — is legal.
  • What "rights?" Have you had anything taken away from you? Do you know anybody who’s had anything taken away from him? What are we talking about — some hyperactive, superlibertarian view of the 4th Amendment? That was about Redcoats kicking down your door in the dead of night and tearing up your house. It wasn’t about records of how many times you called Aunt Martha last month. Like anybody cares.
  • It occurs to me that I have become inured to privacy concerns by the fact of what I do for a living. Especially with this blog, I write just about anything that pops into my head. And I have this general rule — don’t write anything in an e-mail, or say anything on the phone, that you wouldn’t want published. Yeah, sometimes I slip on that. But I doubt that any such slips would interest the NSA.

Hayden as top spook? Are we mad?

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Hayden? We’re actually considering Haydon to head our secret intelligence service? No way!

Sure, there was none better at humint, and we need that sort of thing these days. But what is that beside the fact that we’ve known ever since the ’70s that Haydon was the mole Gerald, the mostHayden famous double-crossing traitor in spy literature?

Are we to supposed to think it’s someone else because of a slight change in the spelling of his name?

George Smiley, sure. Toby Esterhase, maybe. Even that pipe-smoking Alleline would be more trustworthy, though he’s an idiot. Peter Guillam probably has the seniority by now.

But Hayden? What kind of Circus are we running around here?

Galivants Ferry III: Biden column

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06stump_043Biden hopes even ‘red states’ want ‘competent government’

By Brad Warthen
Editorial Page Editor
THE AMERICAN people “have written off” the Bush administration, U.S. Sen. Joe Biden told a parking lot full of Democrats Monday at Galivants Ferry.
    “Part of me says ‘good; they figured it out,’” he said. But “In a sense it’s a shame, because we’ve got George W. Bush as our president for the next two and a half years.”
    One woman called out, “No, we don’t!”
    There we have the two-party system, and all it’s done to America, in three words. I don’t know who it was, but I know the voice of a poster child when I hear it.
    It’s obvious, probably even to partisans, that if the guy who’s going to be commander in chief for the next two and a half years is falling apart, it’s probably not a cause for celebration, seeing as how that could be somewhat detrimental to our troops who are laying it on the line overseas. So diehard partisans figure it’s best to deny the situation: No he’s NOT!
    That way there’s no problem.
    But there is a problem, and as Sen. Biden said, “It goes beyond right and wrong…. This administration is not competent.” You can’t just say he’s-wrong-and-we’re-right-so-let’s-applaud-his-failure. The cost of a failed presidency at this moment in our history is too great for us all.
    Some of his speech I had heard — and agreed with — before, such as “History will judge George Bush harshly not for the mistakes he has made… but because of the opportunities that he has squandered.”
    Those include the opportunity to pull the world together on Sept. 12, 2001, to “plan the demise of Islamic fundamentalism,” as FDR or JFK or “even Ronald Reagan” would have done. Or to ask us all to sacrifice and shake off “the grip of foreign oil oligarchs,” instead of giving us tax cuts. “Do you believe anyone in America would have refused?”
    “Rich folks are every bit as patriotic as poor folks,” he said. “They got a tax cut they didn’t ask for.”
    But a lot of what he said was new — he showed me his scribbled notes. And some of what was new, and most welcome, to me was decidedly not the usual fare for a partisan event.
    “Did you think you’d ever live to see the day when we would be defined in terms of red and blue” states? We’re “not that way,” he insisted. He blamed Karl Rove for that false construct, but he also — in a gentler way — bemoaned the fact that “the Democratic Party is different from what I remember.”
    There are Democrats who want to “make our base more angry so that more will turn out.”
    “They may be right; that may be the way to win,” he admitted. But he’s not going that way.
    “The country can be reunited.”
    Later in the week, he confirmed by phone from Florida that he’s decided to pursue “a general-election strategy from the start.”
    “I’m gonna be coming down a lot” to South Carolina, he said. He’s not predicting he could win here, but he’s convinced that to win the White House, a Democrat must “become credible in a dozen or more red states.” By “credible,” he means “45 percent of the vote or more.” He sees opportunities in Mississippi, Arkansas, Colorado, Ohio, Kentucky, Montana and others he rattled off too quickly.
    There’s room for a candidate who believes in America in the 21st century and values doing the job right more than scoring partisan points, he suggested. Across the ideological spectrum, “Americans realize they want and are entitled to competent government.”
    That the Biden message appeals to frustrated independents there can be no doubt. “He talked about sacrifice,” said Paul DeMarco, a Marion physician and thoughtful regular contributor to my blog, at the Monday night event. “I like it when politicians talk that way.” I wondered how many politicians he had heard talk that way since January 1961, but I kept quiet because he was on a roll. “I’m one of the people who got the tax cut,” he said. “And I didn’t really want it.”
    It was a good October 2008 speech. Will Sen. Biden’s fellow Democrats let him get that far? I don’t know. But he got a warm welcome by the banks of the Pee Dee last week. It took him an hour after his speech to tear away from all the well-wishers.
    Of course, these were South Carolina Democrats, and he was the guest of honor, and it was the sweetest weather I’ve yet seen at a Stump, and some of the Styrofoam cups in the hands of Inner Party members contained something that smelled a lot stronger than RC Cola, and I couldn’t head back to Columbia until I’d stood for a moment with hostess Russell Holliday doing nothing more active than frankly admiring the way the razor-cut sliver of moon rose over the piney bottomland in a sky so deep-ocean blue…
    I’ve also been in Iowa in January. It’s different. We’ll see.06stump_040

‘New’ Democrats asking what YOU think

77 Replies

The S.C. Democratic Leadership Council is conducting what it calls the “First Ever e-Poll on ’08 Presidential Race and SC Issues.” Well, I certainly hope it’s the first one. I’d hate to think anybody around here was thinking about that stuff any earlier.

If you want to be heard, hurry. Results are to be announced at the state Democratic Party convention Saturday. Here’s the survey.

I probably won’t check to see the results myself. A “poll” such as this is meaningless. It’s not actually a poll in any statistically valid sense, since it will measure the views of only those people to whom notice was sent, and who decided to take part. If an advocacy group of any stripe conducts a “poll” publicly, don’t pay attention to it. They keep the polls that really tell them what’s going on to themselves.

I still go ahead and answer surveys like this, because of what it tells me about those who drafted it, and (sometimes) how it helps clarify my own thoughts.

Let’s run through this one:

It starts with the friendly message that “This e-survey is for everyone — not just Democrats.” I would have taken it anyway, but it’s nice to be invited. That’s one of the nice things about the DLC — unlike the party stalwarts who tried (but thanks to the last-minute heroics of party chairman Joe Ervin) failed to shut us independents out of their presidential primary in 2004, the “Third Way” Democrats are inclusive.

You remember the DLC, America’s answer to Tony Blair’s New Labour. They were all the rage in the 1990s, producing such relative centrists as Bill Clinton and Al Gore. By 2004, however, both parties had become so radicalized that DLC stalwart Joe Lieberman got crushed.

Anyway, here are my answers to the "poll":

1. “When thinking about the United States today, do you think we are generally on the” right track or wrong track? 2. Ditto for South Carolina.

I said "wrong track" on both.

The nation is trying to fail in Iraq and Afghanistan, with the war’s advocates underfunding it and committing huge blunders, and opponents doing all they can to undermine the country’s will to keep going. The record federal spending combined with massive tax cuts is sheer insanity. The lack of a sensible energy policy to free us from unreliable sources of petroleum is unconscionable. Then, of course, there’s “reality TV.”

In South Carolina, there is no political leadership even trying to chart a sensible course to train our population to attract more investment so we can all be healthier, wealthier and wiser. No effective leadership at all, and none on the horizon.

3. “What is the most important issue facing the United States today?” It’s the war. But, as I explained in the comments box, I’m for it. My concern is to win. I wanted to make sure no one counted my checking “the Iraq war” as meaning “that awful mess.” One must be specific.

4. The “most important issue” in South Carolina? “Improving K-12 education system” was one of the six choices, but I wrote in, “The whole education system, K-grad school.”

5. The second most important S.C. issue? I wrote in “Economic development (broader than just jobs)” rather than check “Reducing poverty,” “Getting more and better jobs,” or “Improving the general quality of life.”

Of course, education and ecodevo are the same thing.

6. “If you were ‘king for a day’ in South Carolina and could do any one thing to improve our state, what would it be?” I answered, “Reform the tax code so that it adequately and fairly funds essential service.” It’s beginning to look like it might require the intervention of a monarch to do that, since the deliberative process is failing so miserably in that task.

7. “If the Democratic Presidential Primary were held today, who would you vote for?” I didn’t answer, since no one on the list would be a “first choice” for me.

8. “Who would be your second choice?” Joe Biden. The rest I either wouldn’t ever vote for, or don’t yet know enough about.

9. “When your children – or other young people today – grow up, do you think they will be better off than you are today?” Yes. Despite my answers on 1 and 2, I have to believe we can do better.

10. “In South Carolina today, what do you think is the biggest barrier to our future success — what is holding us back from achieving great things?” Unenlightened self-interest — the kind of libertarian selfishness that fails to see that not even one’s self interest is served when others in the community fail to thrive. (Ask me another day, I might answer differently.)

11. Somehow, I failed to write down my answer on that one.

12. "Based on the person, not the party." Duh. I have a lot of trouble respecting anyone who does anything else.

13. “Other than George W. Bush, who is your least favorite Republican?” Who said George W. Bush is my least favorite? (I’m not crazy about the guy, but sheesh. Talk about presumption. You’re not even going to let me decide that?)

14. Since “Memphis-style” wasn’t offered as an option, I couldn’t answer. If there had been a second choice, I would have said, “Vinegar based.”

15. I couldn’t answer. It depends on the issue. Just saying "moderate" is an oversimplification, although perhaps to some my "liberal" and "conservative" positions (using the terms as popularly defined today) average out to that. But these aren’t numbers; positions on issues can’t be averaged. Each position can be considered only for what it is, however "moderate" or "radical" it may be.

I’ll let you guess at my answers to the rest.

Instead, we get THIS insanity

55 Replies

I had my previous post fresh in my mind when I read about this pandering insanity. For those of you too lazy to follow links, here’s the gist:

WASHINGTON, April 25 — President Bush announced a series of short-term steps on Tuesday intended to ease the rise in energy prices, including a suspension of Bushoilgovernment purchases to refill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, a relaxation of environmental rules for the formulation of gasoline and investigations into possible price gouging and price fixing.

This is as bad as when Al Gore got Bill Clinton to loosen up reserves to help him get elected in 2000.

I say "as bad as" because I can’t quite decide which is worse: For a president at war in the Mideast to do this, or for a guy who pretends to care about the environment and sensible energy policy to do it in peacetime. Each action has its own loathsome qualities.

Rationing? Even better

18 Replies

Gas1"Look!" wrote my colleague Mike Fitts in an e-mail yesterday. "– an idea even less popular than your huge gas tax hike!"

"And even better, in my book," I wrote back.

He was referring to this letter on today’s page:

After reading Mike Fitts’ excellent column, (“U.S. helping to keep
oil prices marching upward,” Friday) on the woeful consequences, both
economic and diplomatic, of rising oil prices and of the inevitable oil
shortages to come, I’d like to put another option on the table: oil
rationing, which could bring a variety of benefits.

Many lament the fact that the only ones called upon to sacrifice in
this time of war are those on the front lines (and their families).
Rationing gas would call on everyone to sacrifice, just as during World
War II, when we all had ration cards, not only for oil but for many
other of life’s necessities such as meat, clothing and tires.

Fitts tells us that demand for fuel keeps going up, despite the
steadily rising price, which means leaving it to the market to control
supply and demand isn’t working. So perhaps only the government can
bring this control.

Fitts also points out that since our country consumes 25 percent of
the world’s oil, we can’t lecture other countries on the need to
conserve. But we can lead by example.

Rationing could give us some short-term breathing space as we labor
to find alternatives for the long haul. Yes, it is a political hot
potato, but isn’t it time to at least bring it to the table for
discussion?

HARRIET KEYSERLING
Beaufort

Mike was also referring to my enthusiasm for the idea floated by such disparate voices as Charles Krauthammer, Tom Friedman and Jim Hoagland, advocating a huge increase in the federal gas tax to take the already uncomfortably high gasoline pump prices high enough to depress demand. This would in turn create an oversupply, driving down prices. But (at least in the variant I like), you’d keep the tax rate up and use it additional for such sensible things as reducing the deficit, paying for a Manhattan/Apollo-style project to find and develop viable alternatives to petroleum, and pay for other aspects of our underfunded war — you know, like, put enough troops into Iraq and Afghanistan to get the job done. And note that I call military operations "other aspects" of the war. Reducing our energy dependence and taming deficits are as important to our strategic position as our ability to project force.

Oh, yes: Krauthammer would use the revenue to cut some other tax. But he has to say that; he’s a neocon.

Former Rep. Keyserling’s idea is even better in one respect — everyone would share the pain. With a high tax, the rich would keep on driving Hummers, and the poor would have a lot of trouble getting to work. The main benefit would occur among the middle class, who would make the choice of driving less and, when they bought a car, buying a much more fuel-efficient one. With rationing, everyone would be limited in their consumption. And it would be a more overt, deliberate way of saying, "We’re all in this together, and we’re doing something about it together," rather than letting the market pressure of high prices sort things out.

But then, it wouldn’t produce the revenue. So I qualify my flippant remark to Mike: The higher tax still might be better.