This article originally appears on The Moderate Voice

Something remarkable has been happening in America since even before President Obama took office. There has been a dedicated effort on both sides of the political divide to reconnect with our founding document and its principles in an effort to understand, and counteract what they see as dangerous unconstitutional actions by our government.

It is more widespread today than it was in the Bush years, but even then there were many on the left who worried about the increase in executive power the Bush administration was accumulating and we witnessed many ordinary citizens earnestly studying the Constitution in their efforts to place the actions of Bush in a constitutional framework. The resulting criticism was, at least in some part, reasonable and rational while being based on sound constitutional arguments.

But this effort was but a prologue to the tsunami of interest in the Constitution evinced by the tea party movement and conservatives generally once the massive spending and power grabs of the Obama administration began. Probably millions of ordinary citizens are reading and trying to understand the Ur document of America’s founding given that the pocket sized edition of the Constitution is passed out at every tea party meeting across the country. I commented on this phenomenon following my visit to the Southern Republican Leadership Conference:

It may seem to some a quaint exercise in good citizenship for these millions to wrestle with such convoluted and complex questions as the meaning and reach of the commerce clause or the constitutionality of the individual mandate to buy health insurance. The condescension is misplaced — and totally unwarranted.

The Constitution was not written in legalese despite the presence of so many lawyers at the Constitutional Convention. It was written in plain, accessible English so that the document could be read and understood by ordinary Americans. It was printed in newspapers, slapped on the walls near the village commons, and mailed far and wide. It was discussed in churches, in public houses, at family dinners, and between neighbors from New England to Georgia.

Never before in history had a country thought and debated itself into existence. When that generation of Americans looked at our founding document, could they have imagined that one day a congressman would say that the Constitution doesn’t matter? Or that congressmen could not answer the question of where in the Constitution did it authorize the federal government to force citizens to buy health insurance?

What does it matter today that ordinary people are reading and interpreting the Constitution in their own way, without reference to precedent or knowledge of specific court cases that have laid out the grid work upon which the powers and responsibilities of government have been constructed? After all, they can interpret the Constitution from here to doomsday and it won’t matter a fig to the Supreme Court. Those nine robed magistrates will work their will regardless of popular sentiment and, sometimes, common sense.

But in one of the more remarkable aspects of this revival of interest among the citizenry of the meaning and purpose of the Constitution, it doesn’t matter what the Supremes think, or the elites, or the sickeningly condescending left who sneer at talk of the Tenth Amendment or strict constructionism. What matters is the effort itself — that people are becoming more engaged in what their government is up to than they have been in a very long time.

What does this mean? The Hill reports a run on the Constitution booklet at the Government Printing Office:

Since September 2009, the GPO has sold more than 8,700 copies of the pocket Constitution to the public, according to GPO spokesman Gary Somerset. That is a higher sell rate than in recent years.

Those sales are in addition to the thousands of copies given to members of Congress each year. Congress authorized a resolution in 2009 to print 441,000 copies for the use of the House (1,000 for each member) and 100,000 copies for the Senate (1,000 for each senator).

The Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute, which keep statistics on the Constitution, also say that requests for the historical document are on the rise.

GPO sells copies for $2.75, but constituents can request a free one from their lawmaker.

Congressional offices are burning through theirs stacks of pocket Constitutions.

In a recent “Dear Colleague” letter titled “Order More Pocket Constitutions!” House Administration Committee Chairman Robert Brady (D-Pa.) advised members to take advantage of a special rate.

The letter stated, “Many Members have lately experienced a large increase in constituent requests for the Pocket Constitution. Members who may need more are invited to take advantage of a special, pre-publication ‘rider-rate’ of $390 per 1,000 copies. This rider rate of 39¢ each represents a substantial savings over the post-publication price of $2.75 each ($2,750 per 1,000) available later through the GPO Sales Program.”

There’s been nothing like it in my lifetime and no similar wave of interest in the Constitution that I can fathom from my own reading of history. Perhaps not since the debate on ratification itself have so many ordinary Americans struggled with trying to interpret and understand what Madison, Mason and their compatriots wrought 222 years ago this summer.

Ed Meese from Heritage’s Constitution Center:

“I think there is more interest now than I’ve seen in the last many years, and I think it’s because people are really worried about whether the federal government is getting so large, so expansive, so intrusive and so powerful that the Constitution is in jeopardy.”

Can the naysayers who pooh-pooh American exceptionalism explain this phenomenon in the context of other nations’ citizens carrying on this way? I doubt it. We Americans have always had a reverence for our founding document that transcends the words on the page and becomes sublime veneration - almost a civic bible.

In this, there is danger. There are many in the tea party movement as well as in some boisterous conservative circles who posit the notion that if something is not in the Constitution, then it is, quite simply unconstitutional. Nothing in there about health insurance so of course, it’s not legal. We don’t see the words “Cap and Trade” so we have to oppose it as a measure not authorized in our founding document.

These are people who actually think of the Constitution the same way they think of the Bible; immutable, unchanging, and holy writ. There is no “interpreting” the document because the words are themselves good enough to cover any eventuality that may arise.

This is wrongheaded, of course, but there are many of us who wish government erred more toward that interpretation than toward the present “anything goes” free for all where the Constitution is stretched beyond recognition to cover one scheme or another that seeks to separate Americans from their liberty.

It is here where the debate cleaves the sharpest; is the Constitution a guidebook that government is to follow or is it a suggestion box whose codicils are used to justify power grabs? It seems at times that we use the Constitution to absolve and exonerate rather than trying to grapple with connecting what is being adjudicated to the intent of the Founders.

I know that intentionalism is in pretty bad odor on the left and indeed, carried to extremes it is a pernicious doctrine. But if you are going to respect what’s in the Constitution, it seems like simple common sense to respect the intent of those who wrote it. Obviously, the framers didn’t have a clue about our modern world. They designed a government to cover the exigencies of a 18th century coastal republic of 7 million freemen. But neither could they envision a day when their basic intent of creating a nation of limited government, expansive individual rights, and the protection of property was tossed aside in the name of modernity.

Will all of this interest in the Constitution make a practical difference in our politics and culture? I am anxious to see the answer to that question play out over the next few years.

Tim Pawlenty is a mainstream conservative governor in a traditionally liberal state. When I use the term “mainstream,” I mean simply that he is in the mainstream of Minnesota conservatism - decidedly less conservative than the heart of Republicanism in the south, but conservative enough for most of the rest of the GOP. This alone gives him a decent shot as an alternative to either Palin or Romney in the 2012 primaries.

Reading this long interview in Esquire, I was struck by the governor’s pragmatism and unflappability. Esquire’s Mark Warren threw enough bait into the water that Pawlenty could have easily blundered in his responses. Instead, the Minnesota governor coolly maneuvered through the minefields and came off looking reasonable, and thoughtful.

One thing is for sure; Pawlenty has a very good idea of where the GOP went wrong during their time in the majority:

“The Republicans had their shot not long ago to address the real needs and concerns of everyday Americans, and they blew it…. Over the time that they were there and had the leadership opportunity, they blew it. We got fired for a reason.”

“The party got into a whole bunch of corruption and personal scandals that weren’t compatible with the principles it claimed to stand for.”

“We just lost our way. You can’t say that your hallmark issues are that we’re going to control spending, keep taxes low, and make government accountable, and then go to Washington and do the opposite…. Let’s face it, when Republicans had total control over it, they didn’t do what they said they were gonna do.”

“The marketplace measurement in politics is something called an election…. And in 2006 and 2008, the marketplace was telling the Republicans, We prefer the products and services of your competitors.”

That may still be the case in 2010 if the GOP tries to recycle an agenda better left in the 1980’s. Conservative principles may be deathless, but issues are not. Compared to Palin, Pawlenty has a lot going for him in this regard. Where Palin has a laundry list of resentments that resonate with the base, Pawlenty has a record of achieving concrete results by applying conservative principles to governance. That puts him lightyears ahead of Palin in my book.

Like most GOP governors, Pawlenty is a font of new and innovative ideas when it comes to applying conservative principles to a governing philosophy. Education, health care, mass transit, and other issues important at the state level were addressed to varying degrees by Pawlenty by growing government as little as possible. He also addressed budget shortfalls by generally cutting spending and not raising taxes, although he did raise the cigarette tax and tuition at Minnesota state schools among other “fee” increases to close the budget deficit.

Along with Indiana’s Mitch Daniels, and now Ambassador to China, former Utah governor John Huntsman, Pawlenty represents a new kind of Republican governor - pragmatic leadership buttressed by maintaining good relationships with the legislature, and plugging in conservative policy ideas to address the problems of ordinary people.

If this be the future of Republicanism, bring it on.

This pragmatic conservatism comes through in the Esquire interview as Pawlenty addressed what he would have done about the financial meltdown, a stim bill, and the bailouts:

Whether the threats or doomsday scenarios that were painted were real or partially real or not real at all. We won’t know the answer to that, but we do know that some very bright people said that we faced doomsday, and there were other very bright people who said that, at the very least, the danger was overstated, and this notion that they were too big to fail was untested or untrue.

I’ve argued, at least as it related to the stimulus bill as opposed to TARP, that there were things that we could have and should have done, but it should have been much more targeted. For example, instead of spending $800 billion in a stimulus package, I think we would have gotten much more bang for the buck if we would have done two simple things: focused on tax cuts that would have put cash immediately into the average citizen’s pocket, and two, put money into bread-and-butter infrastructure projects like roads and bridges that could be done quickly. Of the $800 billion stimulus package, only about $50 billion, give or take, actually went into roads and bridges. It was a paltry amount compared to the overall size of the bill.

As for the other bailouts, I did not support the car-company bailout, either. They should have been allowed to go bankrupt — in fact, they [entered] bankruptcy, most of ‘em. That’s the way that they’re going to get most effectively restructured. And I think the same could be said for many of the financial institutions. The idea that we’re gonna bail out every major bank in the country with the exception of Lehman Brothers is ridiculous. Why let Lehman fail and not all the others? These markets have to correct. And the answer can’t be for every problem that emerges as a result of reckless behavior, the government’s gonna come in and bail everybody out. I was talkin’ to people this morning who run small businesses. Where’s their bailout?

The narrative as it is presented today - the trillions we spent on TARP, bailing out the banks, the auto takeover, and the stimulus package - is that without these measures, we would have had a catastrophic, worldwide depression.

As Pawlenty says later, “We’ll never know” if that scenario would have played out if we had allowed the banks to go into bankruptcy, along with the GM and Chrysler (who, as the governor points out, went into bankruptcy anyway), or if the stim, bill had been smaller and more targeted in its spending and tax cuts. Yes, there are many economists who agree with Paul Krugman that Obama saved the world, but there are also many others who disagree to one degree or another. Why their criticisms should be any more or less valid than the dominant narrative that has emerged about these government actions mitigating a crisis is a mystery.

Nor do I believe that the choice was between doing nothing and having the government massively intervene the way it did. That’s a political take on what might have been accomplished short of the trillions in bailout monies advanced by the Fed and the government. The fact is, there was talk at the time of managed bankruptcies, forced mergers, and other measures short of simply handing over money to companies that it was claimed were “too big to fail.” It was never tried, so it is impossible to say if it would have accomplished much of the same thing; i.e., an economy in the toilet but a ruinous depression avoided.

I think Pawlenty is the man to make that case. He supports regulation of the banks, a modified stimulus bill, health care reform, but a firm belief in the idea that market forces are what underlies the American economy:

I think both sides have people who have genuine feelings and beliefs about what they think the proper direction of the country should be. I just think the other side’s wrong. I don’t question motives or assign some sort of label. But I think what President Obama and the Democratic Congress are offering is a dangerous direction for the country. Not just because it’s gonna cost us more, not just because taxes are gonna go up, not just because it expands government, but because of what it does to the American spirit. As I view it, there is an American spirit that is associated with the kinds of attitudes about taking risk, about taking responsibility, about a sense of respect for the private market and the power that it has in creating and rewarding wealth. The government doesn’t do that — the government redistributes, but it doesn’t actually create wealth or prosperity. And the health-care debate is a pretty good proxy for this struggle between these two views. And in the case of the Republicans, what they see and what they’re rightly concerned about is that it’s another increment down the road toward government taking over more and more things. And it worries people.

Is Obama a socialist?

You know, I don’t think name-calling is helpful. I’ve done my share of that, so I’m not Pollyannaish about how the political process works. But as a general proposition, I think these are serious times, the country’s in significant danger, and I think we need people who are thoughtful. We’re gonna have sharp differences, but we need to debate those in a way that’s constructive and civil. I think President Obama is governing as a movement liberal. I don’t think that rises to the level of being a socialist.

This puts Pawlenty in the mainstream of conservatism in about 75% of the country - and proves that he can handle a hostile interviewer. (Warren spent a lot of time making statements that defended Obama, much less time asking Pawlenty any questions that might reveal something about the man.)

Beyond that, note that he makes a classic defense of conservative principles against the onslaught of liberal orthodoxy on growing the size of government to meet challenges. And he frames this argument in terms of American exceptionalism - the “American Spirit” he calls it - while clearly delineating between the role of government and the role of private citizens.

Clearly, Pawlenty has given these issues and concepts a great deal of thought. This comes out in his statement on why he might run in 2012:

I think the country’s in trouble. And I think I have a pretty clear sense of the values and principles that have made this country great. I’ve had a chance to govern and lead with those in mind, with some significant success in Minnesota. And I think the country needs that kind of leadership and insight and perspective. So through my PAC, I’m going to share my beliefs across the country. And I’m gonna take the next year to see how that goes and make my decision late in 2010 or in early 2011.

His bid is still a very long shot. He will not generate the kind of excitement that Sarah Palin would if she chooses to run, nor will he possess the bottomless resources of a Romney should Mitt choose to throw his hat into the ring again. He will not capture much of the Republican base, nor attract much interest in the south generally speaking. He is not an inspiring speaker by any means.

But Pawlenty is a candidate brimming with ideas, and an idea of what kind of leadership the country needs right now. How far that will take him is anyone’s guess.

Last night on Hannity, Dick Cheney charged the president with heresy.

Sean Hannity: You said about Barack Obama that he is projecting weakness to America’s enemies. Expand on that.

Dick Cheney: Well, I think most of us believe and most presidents believe and talk about the truly exceptional nature of America. Our history, where we come from, our belief in our Constitutional values and principles. Our advocacy for freedom and democracy and the fact that we’ve provided it for millions of people all over the globe and so unselfishly. There’s never been a nation like the United States of America in world history. And, yet when you have a president that goes around and bows to his host and proceeds to apologize profusely for the United States, I find that deeply disturbing. That says to me there’s a guy who doesn’t fully understand or share that view of American exceptionalism that I think most of us believe in.

American Exceptionalism is our civic religion. I take a little less expansive view than Cheney of what Exceptionalism represents; that it is, at bottom the simple recognition that our founding, our evolution, certain unique character traits, and the unimaginable expanse of the land itself sets us apart from other nations.

But does it set us above others? Does it make us a “superior” nation?

I believe that it does. There has never been a nation like America in the whole history of human civilization. This doesn’t make us perfect - not by a long shot. But if one were to balance the good against the bad in all that America has done both here and abroad, the scales would tip decidedly in favor of the good.

In fact, I have argued on this site that it is this dichotomy - the mix of good and evil, slavery and freedom, selfless sacrifice for others abroad combined with grubby commercialism and exploitation - all of this together is what makes America, “America” and is unique, special, and without peer anywhere else. People the world over still line up to get in, and failing that, will do just about anything to get here legal or not. I believe that all of this places America above any other nation in history. It makes us better. It makes us superior. It makes us special.

This singular fact is so self-evident that those who deny it have to twist themselves into knots of illogic trying to debunk it, or more often, leave out inconvenient facts in order to achieve their goal of trying to prove that relative to the rest of the world, we are just another ordinary place. There has never been anything “ordinary” about America whether it be our sins or virtues. Our mistakes have been huge as have our triumphs. Destroying fascism, militarism, and Communism all in breathtaking short order, while also destroying much of Southeast Asia, Iraq, and what was left of Afghanistan must be seen in the context of our capacity to do enormous good while causing enormous suffering.

“Ordinary?” Not hardly.

In agreeing with Cheney, Ed Driscoll calls the president a “transnationalist.”

Flashback to the the preface Obama gave in April when asked by a journalist his view on the topic:

“I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.”

Which is a perfectly Clintonian “I didn’t inhale” sort of response: I’m willing to pretend, for the purposes of the more ceremonial aspects of my current position, to believe in the charade of American exceptionalism. But as a dedicated transnationalist, I’m far, far beyond such a petty antediluvian concept, myself. After all, those modern day “Greeks” and “Brits” are living on history that’s increasingly in the rearview mirror. They and plenty of other exhausted former empires believed in their own exceptionalism, and didn’t they seem awfully foolish in retrospect when their period in the sun expired, leaving behind nations a shell of their former selves — a moment I’m doing my best to engineer, myself.

Is this a fair criticism of the president? Is it even a criticism at all?

It is by no means a monolithic view on the left that the president espouses, but I think it fair to say that Obama’s transnationalism informs the views of many liberals who are suspicious of Exceptionalism as being just another word for “nationalism.” In this, it may surprise you to find out that I share those same worries. Substituting a raw chauvinism and an almost fervid religiosity with regard to our uniqueness instead of a balanced and realistic view of the pluses and minuses in our past is a danger to our politics and policy. It is this attitude that brooks no criticism of America, or her history - a form of “America: love it or leave it.”

This is Exceptionalism transmogrified by ideology. Something similar can be seen among the Noam Chomskys of the left who constantly confuse “America” with the “American government” and blame much of the world’s ills on our very existence. That too, is an ideological construct, informed by a pathological loathing of much of what the rest of us see as our virtues. Chomskyites don’t hate America as much as their Weltanschauung prevents them admitting that our arrival on the world stage should be seen as a blessing, not a curse. They can more accurately be portrayed as “anti-Exceptionalists” - the reverse image of the civic religionists.

President Obama is no ideologue on the matter of Exceptionalism. But his radically skewed idea of our history - a fault I believe he shares with many liberals - where he cherry picks and takes out of context what he considers to be our faults, is an extension of his own Nicene creed about the world order.

Indeed, since day one, the president has sought to re-engage the world on America’s behalf by walking softly, carrying no stick at all, and when he feels it appropriate, pointing to our past sins, and acknowledging that we caused problems. Little noticed when he does this is his strong, unapologetic follow up, taking his listeners to task for their knee jerk anti-Americanism. It’s almost Socratic in its dialog although I wonder how effective it is.

Not exactly “apologizing,” but at the very least, inviting his foreign audiences to draw untoward conclusions about our past - or his interpretation of that past if you prefer - while mildly remonstrating against the unreasoning hatred of America felt by many overseas makes it appear Obama wants his transnationalist cake while eating an Exceptionalist one. As we are coming to expect from the president, his Solomonic decision making process where he tries to split the difference on most issues serves the purpose of giving something for everyone while satisfying no one.

President Obama is not just an internationalist in the traditional American sense. He is seeking to re-order the world by deliberately subsuming American interests to make us “first among equals.” He is cooling the relationships with traditional allies like Great Britain and NATO, while making an ostentatious display of submitting to the will of the international community represented by the United Nations. For the moment, this has garnered him praise and support from around the world. I sincerely doubt that will last.

There will come a time in crisis where all heads will turn toward America for succor and Obama will stare blankly back, not quite believing that all of this talk about the new international order was mostly for show; that the governments of the world really do look to America to solve their problems for them come crunch time. It is here that a pragmatic belief in American Exceptionalism gives a president the confidence to proceed despite the usual clatter that will be raised against us.

Without that belief, would Obama risk his international standing to intervene to prevent catastrophe? Faith in international institutions is fine as far as it goes. But what happens in a few months when Israel is faced with the question of war or peace regarding Iran? What happens if the worst case scenario occurs in Pakistan and fundamentalists seize control of the government and dozens of nuclear weapons fall into the hands of those allied with terrorists? Does anyone expect the UN to be able to do anything to address these kinds of crises?

I am not advocating war. But the world will expect the US to get out front on these crises and I wonder if the president’s worldview would allow him to deal with these problems effectively? He may very well prove able to do so. I pray that is true.

But I think it logical to think that a strong belief in your own country’s superiority might make his job a little easier.

OK, so the president of the United States made a bow to the Emperor of Japan. Yes, he also bowed to the Saudi King, even though press secretary Gibb’s nose grew about 6 inches when he offered that the president was really trying to pick something up off the floor.

I can understand the motivation for lying - hysterical kooks saying that the bow proves the president is really a Moooooslim - but really, couldn’t he have come up with something a little more imaginative? Maybe the president was trying to stretch his back - he hurt it playing basketball, you see. Or perhaps the president had a cramp and was doubled over in pain. Either one of those explanations would have been better than the invisible whatever that was on the floor that the president felt compelled to reach down and pick up just as he was greeting the Saudi King Abdullah.

Whether to the Sheikh of Araby or Hirohito’s son, I am told it doesn’t matter by my liberal friends, that this is a distraction, that it’s typical right wing hand wringing, that nobody cares, that you’re supposed to bow to the emperor, that everybody does it so what’s the big deal besides Obama never does anything wrong and is perfect….

OK - Well, I just sort of extrapolated from their argument that last bit.

One wonders if there will ever be any monumental goof this president makes that would rise above the level of “distraction” and actually be a cause for complaint. And by “monumental” I mean a serious breach of protocol. Tom Lifson at American Thinker spent many years in Japan and offers this:

I agree with Scott Johnson, Steve Gilbert, Andrew Malcom, and many others that the President of the United States should not be bowing before any head of state. But unlike these astute observers, I actually know a little something about the art of the bow in Japan, having lived in Japan four different times on a resident visa, taught East Asian Studies at Harvard, and counseled many hundreds of American, European, Middle Eastern, and Australian executives on how to work and negotiate with the Japanese — including teaching them the right way to bow.

Obama’s bow (below) violates a fundamental precept: NO TOUCHING while bowing.

Here is one of many websites that illustrates how to bow in Japan. The one thing that virtually everyone who teaches bowing etiquette stresses is under no circumstance try to combine a bow with a handshake.

The Emperor appears to smile, which is something polite Japanese are taught to do when embarrassed. Unlike just about everyone who comes into the Emperor’s presence, Obama obviously received no instruction on Imperial etiquette. (Note: The Japanese take their monarch and etiquette in general about 100 times more seriously than do the British.)

That’s fine with me. I wouldn’t like our president to receive such instructions from a foreign entity. But he obviously did not indicate to any of the American embassy staff, nor to any aides familiar with Japan that he intended to bow, and bow deeply. Anyone with about two days’ familiarity with Japan knows about bowing. The average person in Japan bows dozens of times a day. You see it everywhere.

Lifson goes on to say that the emperor’s reaction was in keeping with someone who has been embarrassed and chooses to smile broadly instead. Looking at pics of other world leaders greeting the emperor, seems to bear that out.

So is it a big deal that Obama bows to the son of Hirohito, a man who could have easily stopped the attack on Pearl Harbor but didn’t? The son of a man who acquiesced in atrocities as his army literally raped its way across Asia? The son of a man whose real war crimes would have had him hanging from a gibbet without the intercession of McArthur who needed him as a figurehead to control the post-war Japanese population?

Is it a big deal that we fought a revolution so that no American forevermore would ever have to bow to another sovereign? This isn’t just some quaint little tradition that conservatives shouldn’t get their panties in a twist over. This means something - to history, to the nature and character of Americans, to how we define ourselves as a people. No bowing - ever. That has been the standard American presidents have followed for 240 years. Why is it all of a sudden a “distraction” to point this out? Can we at least criticize the president for his doltish understanding of protocol? His towering ignorance? His arrogance in making us look like a bunch of international rubes who don’t know the first thing about greeting an ally?

Apparently, the definition of America to Obama and his snickering, simpering, ultra-cynical supporters includes not only fashioning a foreign policy that gives the appearance of groveling, but performing the actual act as well.

I wonder if he’ll kow tow to the Chinese when he visits later this week? That would be another “distraction,” I suppose. He might as well considering that the thugs in Beijing hold about $3 trillion of our debt. Maybe if he kneels and touches his head to the floor they won’t ask him how he intends to pay it back.

CORRECTION

Steve Pendlebury at AOL’s The Sphere points out that I am in error for making the sweeping statement that no president ever bowed to a monarch in our history.

“His bow is neither (1) unprecedented nor (2) a sign of cultural understanding,” an academic who knows Japanese culture well explained in a message to ABC’s Jake Tapper. In 1971, President Nixon bowed to
Emperor Hirohito and his wife and repeatedly referred to them as “Your Imperial Majesties.”

Nixon got the bow right, though — a slight bend from the waist with hands at his side. “Obama’s handshake/forward lurch was … jarring and inappropriate,” according to Tapper’s friend.

Referring to a monarch by their title is fine - I have no problems with that. That, indeed, is protocol and part of the diplomatic rituals to which all presidents must adhere.

And it would satisfy my curiosity if there was anything said about that bow of Nixon’s at the time. A brief search of the New York Times archives failed to turn up anything, although the good professor didn’t mention the year of Nixon’s visit. Given the contempt the national press felt for Nixon, I wonder if any of them took the opportunity to take him to task for it.

I apologize for my error in making Obama the only president who dissed our revolution. But while we’re discussing it, why did the White House lie again about the bow, calling it “protocol?”

If that were the case, several dozen other world leaders who met the emperor and didn’t bow were breaking protocol. Obviously, the White House is once again full of it. The question is; what are they ashamed of?

When Obama bowed to the Saudi King Abdullah, why not come out and say that the president was showing respect to the Guardian of Mecca? Or when he bowed to the emperor, why not just say he was humoring an old man or something? The president has made a point to deny American exceptionalism. That is his choice. If he wants to bow to every prince and potentate on the planet, he can do so. Maybe it is a kind of “distraction.”

Except they’re lying about it. That is not a distraction, that is a question of presidential credibility. We supposedly just went through a period of 8 years where a president had no credibility because he lied all the time. Obama’s lies are becoming painful and obvious. This may be one small lie but it fits into a larger pattern that should concern even liberals. If you want honest government, you don’t excuse lies, you don’t defend lies, you call them out and shame the liars.

I still think it was wrong for the president - any president - to bow before royalty.

We all like things to be simple. This is probably due to an evolutionary quirk that rewarded simpleminded hominids who didn’t expend the enormous energy in calories that would have required us to think hard about something. The brain eats up about 40% of our caloric intake so it makes sense that those early pre-homo sapiens would have been natural Clintonites and “kept things simple, stupid.”

The way everyone is furiously writing about the Fort Hood shootings - specifically why this painfully obvious jihadist was allowed to stay in the army - verifies that hypothesis.

It’s really quite simple, you see. The American government and the military are lousy with PC and we paid for our timidity in the face of evil with the lives of 14 brave soldiers.

Or, an equally simple explanation is that war and cruelty to Muslims drove Hasan over the edge so of course he snapped. That and the prospect that he was going to be sent to Iraq.

For the fringes, it’s even easier; the only good Muslim is a dead Muslim and, on the other side, it really is America’s fault that Hasan “went Muslim.”

You can box, wrap, and tie up in a bow explanations given by both right and left for why the Fort Hood attack occurred. They are that pat, that logical, that simple - so easy to understand in the context of ideology and partisanship that going beyond and digging a little deeper is discouraged because it might complicate things.

I am not satisfied by these explanations and you shouldn’t be either. There is a germ of truth in the explanations offered by both sides, but I think large gaps need to be filled in to prevent us from making Hasan a cartoonish representation of the Evil Muslim, or blameless victim.

There is history to consider, for instance. The 9/11 attacks placed the American government - indeed all Americans - in a bind; how do we fight an ideology animated by religious fanaticism without condemning hundreds of millions of believers who are peaceful adherents to that same religion to guilt by association?

We failed to make this distinction in World War II with the Japanese to our eternal shame. You simply cannot tar an entire group - ethnic, racial, religious, or even those of a certain sexual orientation - with the sins, no matter how grievous, of a few. To do so is to toss the very idea of American exceptionalism out the window.

This does not mean that you must totally sacrifice security in order to avoid the conundrum. The Hasan case clearly proves that. This is a fellow that dozens of people knew did not belong in the United States Army due to his radical, treasonous statements. At this point, we don’t know why no one turned him in, or if they did, why nothing was done. It is a distinct possibility that more latitude has been given Muslims in the military with regard to their views than is granted others, but there is no direct evidence that this is so. It makes sense that this is the case, but lacking facts, it is still rank speculation.

It is also speculation that no one turned him in because they feared PC retribution. What Hasan did is so far beyond the pale of rationality that most who heard him spout no doubt believed him chillingly odd but not a real threat. I think that would be the reaction of most of us if we had encountered Hasan in our everyday lives. We get the same kind of reaction from friends and neighbors of serial killers, despite warning signs that we never pick up on. It may very well be that Hasan’s acquaintances in the army did indeed fear the consequences of turning him in. But we don’t have a clue so why the certainty in such speculation?

Not wanting a repeat of the Japanese experience in World War II is not political correctness. But perhaps the way our government implemented policies to avoid that historical deja vu will be seen as having gone too far. Clearly, the Hasan case cries out for a thorough review by the military of its policies. But I suspect it wasn’t a policy failure that led to Hasan’s continued association with the Army but rather a failure of imagination on the part of his co-workers and friends who either fooled themselves into believing he wasn’t a killer, or dismissed his treasonous utterances as someone “just letting off steam.” The prospect that he would pick up guns and kill fellow soldiers was so far beyond the pale of  imagination that those who knew of his views and heard his bloodcurdling threats never put two and two together, never made the psychic connection, between thought and act.

Does this mean that it was, in fact, political correctness that was involved in the “failure of imagination?” I can hear many of you who subscribe to this theory telling yourself that you never would have made that mistake, that because you are PC free, you would have reported Hasan immediately.

I congratulate you on your perspicaciousness. But if you worked with someone everyday for years and the change was gradual, I question whether in fact, such would be the case. And for those, like the seminar participants at Walter Reed who heard Hasan in all his jihad glory, the failure of imagination would have been even more applicable given their unfamiliarity with the terrorist.

Hindsight allows us to read into Hasan’s jihad anything that fits our preconceived notions of political correctness or victimhood. But for all of us, the conundrum remains. Bending too far toward PC is a recipe for disaster. Leaning toward treating every Muslim as a potential threat is equally distasteful and un-American. Finding the middle ground would seem to be impossible given the way this incident has now become a war between the ideologies.

But find it we must. Is there a way to satisfy our security needs while refraining from engaging in emotionally satisfying Muslim bashing or ignoring the eventualities posed by radical, fundamental Islamism that led to Hasan’s rampage?

Not quite as easy to explain now, is it?

Is Pat Buchanan a racist? Is Rush Limbaugh?

Am I? Are you?

I discovered after writing my Rush Limbaugh post that there is no set definition for identifying a racist - at least one not fraught with politics, and informed by partisan rancor. “It’s obvious” is not an argument either way. Nor is there much agreement on whether one can be a racist subconsciously. This “all white people are racists and don’t even know it” idea was very popular a couple of decades back. But I don’t think anyone save committed racialists think that way anymore.

But does that mean that there is not a nurtured outlook of white superiority in our society that makes some of us oblivious to our own bigotry?

In the end, it all comes down to perception, and whether one has a decidedly deterministic worldview. How one experiences race in America has an awful lot to do with how low or how high we set the bar that defines for us whether one is a race hater or not.

Attorney General Eric Holder remarked early in Obama’s term that America was “a nation of cowards” because we wouldn’t talk candidly about race. I think he is right we don’t talk candidly about race but he is wrong when he says the reason is cowardice. How can there be a discussion on race when there is no agreement on what actually constitutes racism? Oh, there are “speech codes” and “hate crime legislation” that deal with the most obvious, outward manifestations of racism that help define, in the broadest possible terms, racists.

In fact, I would argue that speech codes and hate crime definitions further muddy the waters with regard to defining racism. In my estimation, such remedies lower the bar on what defines a racist, mixing legitimate free speech issues with racial issues. If one defines racism according to racial sensitivity, simply stepping on someone’s toes verbally can be construed as “hate.” That defeats the purpose of the First Amendment, and I believe is the reason many conservatives reject the idea of speech codes altogether.

(Hate crime legislation is an entirely different matter and goes to “intent” - a tricky legal definition that I wish would be used judiciously but the potential for abuse, and inconsistent application is too great to justify its passage.)

So are all racially insensitive people racists? Does the use of stereotypes automatically make one a racist? If you reject the NAACP position on affirmative action, are you a racist?

Most mindless partisans eschew the questions and simply go for the jugular. But for those interested in exploring these questions, we have an excellent exhibit in the form of an Op-Ed by paleoconservative Pat Buchanan that, on the surface, appears to be something of a “white man’s lament” at the loss of “traditional” America:

In their lifetimes, they have seen their Christian faith purged from schools their taxes paid for, and mocked in movies and on TV. They have seen their factories shuttered in the thousands and their jobs outsourced in the millions to Mexico and China. They have seen trillions of tax dollars go for Great Society programs, but have seen no Great Society, only rising crime, illegitimacy, drug use and dropout rates.

They watch on cable TV as illegal aliens walk into their country, are rewarded with free educations and health care and take jobs at lower pay than American families can live on – then carry Mexican flags in American cities and demand U.S. citizenship.

They see Wall Street banks bailed out as they sweat their next paycheck, then read that bank profits are soaring, and the big bonuses for the brilliant bankers are back. Neither they nor their kids ever benefited from affirmative action, unlike Barack and Michelle Obama.

They see a government in Washington that cannot balance its books, win our wars or protect our borders. The government shovels out trillions to Fortune 500 corporations and banks to rescue the country from a crisis created by the government and Fortune 500 corporations and banks.

America was once their country. They sense they are losing it. And they are right.

Buchanan is not the first conservative to incorporate these concepts in their critique of the Obama administration. But Buchanan scores the trifecta of hyperbole by collating race, class, and fear of “The Other” in his lament.

And he proves himself once again to have the historical sense of a marmoset about America. What is America ever been about but change? I’ve said it many times, and it is born out by even a cursory understanding of the thrust of American history; this is a nation on the move, has been on the move, and will always be on the move as long as we are free.

We stand still for nothing, for nobody - no institution, no philosophy, no group, industry, or movement. To be static in America means that you are already on your way out. We reinvent ourselves at the drop of a hat, with impossible speed. What takes European democracies decades, we do in one or two election cycles. It is frightening. It is marvelous. It is the defining characteristic of this country and it is one of those things that makes us exceptional.

I know what Buchanan is trying to say - he’s not saying it well and he is mixing a witches brew of politics and racial identity in with his critique. What he refers to as “traditional America” is defined by his enemies as white America. But if we are to postulate that Buchanan’s “traditional Americans” are upset because we have an African American president and preferences for minorities, doesn’t that make “traditional Americans” themselves racist by definition?

Beware, a trap Mr. Serwer:

I’d love to just leave this post with snark, but I have to say one last thing. Black Americans have shed blood in every American war since the Revolution. This country, even the very Capitol building in which today’s legislators now demand to see the birth certificate of the first black president, was built on the sweat and sinew of slaves. Before we were people in the eyes of the law, before we had the right to vote, before we had a black president, we were here, helping make this country as it is today. We are as American as it gets. And frankly, the time of people who think otherwise is passing. If that’s the country Buchanan wants to hold onto, well, he’s right, he is losing it.

Did Mr. Serwer not just define “traditional” Americans?” I believe he did. Race, or gender, or sexual orientation has nothing to do with whether one is a “traditional American.” Some may believe that Buchanan is limiting himself to the white race, but his critique echoes in those communities where “traditional American” is broadly defined as anyone who respects and reveres the first principles upon this nation was founded; among them - self reliance, a respect for individual rights, and the investment of the nation’s sovereignty in the Constitution. One doesn’t need to be a conservative to believe in the traditional American values Buchanan believes are disappearing. And it is insulting, as Mr. Serwer points out, to limit the idea of traditional American to one race.

The question then becomes not whether Buchanan is a racist but whether he’s right. As usual, Buchanan overstates the case but hits upon something that critics ignore at their peril.

It is the pace of change that has people of many races, many backgrounds worried. If it were only tea partiers and loudmouths at town hall meetings, the sense of unease that runs the length and breadth of the land would not be so obvious - obvious enough to be reflected in poll numbers and soon, at the ballot box. It is difficult to argue that the pace of change doesn’t matter or that traditional Americans are not worried that the many changes being proposed by the president cannot be shoehorned into their vision of what America is supposed to be all about.

You can argue that African Americans as a group are less critical, or that the Hispanic community may not be as worried about the pace of change as white Americans. But to dismiss this phenomenon as a white only construct is naive. To do so identifies the critic as someone too enamored in viewing the nation’s problems through the prism of race and racism.

This plays to the idea that many whites are subconsciously racist - that when they lament the passing of an America with which they are familiar, what they are really saying is, “I don’t like that black man as president:”

I agree with the substance of Adam’s case against Pat Buchanan; the vision that Buchanan is putting forth of America is both racist and ahistorical, and is genuinely dismissive of the contributions of every non-white American (not to mention women, immigrants, and so forth). At the same time, I think that there’s more going on; Buchanan has always been more willing than most conservative pundits to make forthright, and in some sense honest, defenses of unpalatable elements of the right wing worldview. I recall at some point in the 1990s that Buchanan was asked why the United States was willing to sacrifice treasure for Bosnia and not Rwanda, and he gave the straightforward answer that Rwandans weren’t white enough.

In this case, I think that Buchanan is invoking a genuine sense of loss of entitlement on the part of a substantial portion of white America. This isn’t to defend or justify the white privilege that created this entitlement entailed, or to justify Pat Buchanan’s nostalgia for it. Nevertheless, I think that Buchanan is pointing to something that’s very real, or at least as real as any sociological fact. White America, as the construct exists in the mind of many Americans, is disappearing, even by some objective criteria; it’s retreating deeper into exurban communities, and it’s very, very slowly ceding political and financial power. Moreover, the idea of America is changing; Buchanan has a very definite vision of what America is, and is smart enough to understand that his vision is losing traction. In this context, it’s hardly surprising that the response is a combination of rage and raw panic. That the ideological structure that supports White America is racist and has a disturbing narrative of American history is academically relevant, but it’s also not the central point. Those who hold Buchanan’s vision (and many do, although often not in terms as explicit as Pat is willing to put forth) really do find themselves under siege, and pointing out that these beliefs are both crazy and immoral has very limited effect.

Spoken like a true determinist. Positing the notion that white Americans obsess about race, or their “entitlement” makes sense if you believe the rush to create a different kind of America doesn’t involve a radical movement away from what all races, all creeds who believe in “traditional America” see as fundamentally important to their identity. How do those black and Hispanic veterans who shed blood in our wars view the president’s foreign policy? Or do the black and Hispanic communities march in lockstep with the idea of national health insurance? Bail outs for big banks and corporations? A larger federal role in educating their children? A radical restructuring of our energy policy?

A determinist can ascribe all of this to white racism because looking at the country through the warped vision of racial conflict, everything becomes explainable as “loss” defined as privilege or status. People don’t think that way, have never thought that way, will not act in that fashion as evidenced by the fact that Communism is, for all intents and purposes, dead. This phenomenon resists a deterministic explanation. We must look to history for answers.

It has never been that white America, or traditionalists of any kind have been resistant to all change, everywhere, all the time. There have been pockets of resistance throughout our history to change (some larger than others, as was the case in southern resistance to integration). The social history of America is replete with examples of a “brake” being placed on change that turned out to be both necessary and good.

But unless you are willing to argue that “traditionalists” wish to see Jim Crow reestablished or women denied the right to vote, you must accept the fact that rapid change, while causing some dislocation, is nevertheless accepted by tradtionalists eventually. This does not mean that southern whites were correct in resisting integration, or men were spot on in their opposition to a woman’s right to vote. But in a nation that can alter its political landscape every four years, some anchors must be recognized if change that is proposed is to be folded into our national consciousness and become part of our national character.

Looking at the long view of history, I find it absolutely astonishing that in my youth, a black man couldn’t get a sandwich at a southern coffee shop and yet, I live in a time where an African American received more white votes for president than his party’s predecessor.

Is it the position of critics that this miracle was accomplished without the traditionalists? I beg to differ. I believe it was the traditionalist’s eventual acceptance of racial integration - begrudging though it might have been - that made the election of Barack Obama possible. And the fact that we have gone from Jim Crow to an African American president in less than one human lifetime only points more strongly to the idea of American exceptionalism and the idea that rapid change, when governed by applying first principles - in this case, equality for all - will eventually be accepted even by those who oppose the change in the first place.

Mr. Serwer rejects the findings of the Democracy Corps focus groups that race plays a small part in opposition to the president because it doesn’t feed his thesis that Buchanan (and Limbaugh) are explicitly lamenting a “loss” to white America as the result of the election of a black man.

I don’t doubt that there is an element of racism - clear, nauseating, and shocking - that is a significant part of Obama hate. But limiting one’s critique to a purely racial explanation belies the fact that traditionalists (sometimes incoherently) are more concerned about the president severing connections to the past than any non-acceptance that a black man can be president, or that the very fact that a black man sits in the White House gives them cause to lament their being marginalized in this “new” America.

I am not accusing Mr. Serwer of deliberately misinterpreting Buchanan’s critique. But rejecting out of hand empirical evidence that your own critique is off base smacks of partisanship, not rigorous analysis.

President Obama ran on a platform of change. He is giving his supporters exactly what they voted for. But from recent poll numbers, it is clear that even many of those who voted for Mr. Obama are feeling uneasy about what he is doing, that he is moving too quickly in some areas, without giving proper respect to the principles that America was founded upon or the “traditions” if you will that binds this nation as one. Whether they are white, black, brown, or purple matters not. And those who seek to muddy the waters by making opposition to the president’s idea of change a question of race hate are missing the boat.

I have written previously that I believed the biggest contribution Ronald Reagan made to American conservatism was that he almost singlehandedly altered the civic conversation about government spending on social programs.

Prior to Reagan’s reasoned, and impassioned dialectic against big government, the debate over government programs began and ended with the question “How much more” should we be spending,” or “How big should this government program be” to accomplish its intended objective.

Democrats monetized this debate by increasing the number of zeroes in these program’s appropriations. Granted, this is something of an oversimplification but essentially, the center of gravity in Washington tilted toward more, more, and still more in the belief that “solving” the problem being addressed, and showing “compassion” for the poor was a matter of growing the size of government to meet the challenge.

Enter Ronald Reagan who championed the idea that “throwing money” at a problem wasn’t solving anything, and was making things worse. (There were other conservatives who gave Reagan his arguments - Buckley, Hayek, Mises, etc. But none had as big a bullhorn.) Over time, the civic conversation was altered to question not only the huge appropriations, but the necessity and the viability of these programs.

At bottom, of course, was Reagan’s contention that government was mis-spending tax dollars and threatening individual liberty by growing the size and scope of the federal government. It was an argument that plowed already fertile fields because from it’s founding, Americans have fiercely resisted centrally exercised power from Washington. From Andrew Jackson’s destruction of the Bank of America to the cheers of the common man, through Abe Lincoln’s draft, which set off riots in the north, through FDR’s overreach, and Bill Clinton’s attempt at nationalized health care, Americans have been more than suspicious of big government. There seems to be a genetic predisposition for Americans to resist government that they perceive as overstepping its limits.

Granted, those limits have expanded since Andy Jackson’s time. Most Americans have accepted a government that can feed them when they’re hungry, house them when they’re homeless, and generally be there with a “safety net” if misfortune befalls them. Social Security, Medicare, and other entitlements are sacred cows because they enjoy almost universal support by voters. This may be the death of us yet unless we can find a way to get their gargantuan costs under control.

But, as President Obama is finding, there are still lines in the sand that Americans are refusing to allow their government in Washington to cross. And Matt Welch of Reason Magazine, writing in the NY Post, nails why:

While the commentariat’s condescension is almost comical, the whole evil-or-stupid explanation misses the elephant in Obama’s room: Americans of all stripes, it turns out, aren’t very keen about the government barging into their lives.

An ABC/Washington Post poll from June showed people preferred “smaller government with fewer services” over “larger government with more services” by 54% to 41%, up from 50%-45% a year earlier (independents were even more pronounced, at 61%-35%). A Rasmussen poll from April showed that 77% of Americans preferred a “free market” economy over a “government managed” economy, up seven percentage points from just last December. A July CBS poll found that 52% of Americans think that Obama is trying to do “too much.”

After 11 months of federal bailouts and freakouts, Americans have become bone tired of panicky power grabs from Washington. It’s the big government, stupid.

The message of the various Tea Party protests, which predated this summer’s ahistorical media panic over town hall “lynch mobs,” has been pretty simple, says Matt Kibbe, president of FreedomWorks, the nonprofit that has helped organize the protests, told Reason magazine this spring. “It was: stop spending so much money, stop borrowing so much money, and stop bailing out people who were irresponsible.”

I applaud the attempt by Mr. Welch to alter the narrative that begins and ends with protestors being “racist,” fascist mobs,” “un-American,” or “retarded.” It won’t matter anyway. Polls also show that a majority of Americans support the protestors which means that the Krugman’s, Rich’s, Pelosi’s, Garafolo’s, and the rest of the left aren’t getting any traction with their “evil-or-stupid” incantations.

Regardless, it’s the resistance to government overstepping what Americans sense is a proper exercise of its power that has so many, so angry. While there is much more tolerance for big government today - even government that helps the middle class with programs like S-Chip, and home mortgage bailouts - there are still boundaries (sensed more than specifically spelled out) that a majority of Americans refuse to stand for.

This is the essence of American exceptionalism. We are a different people than Europeans, and any other society in the world. We were deliberately made so at our founding and continue to be to this day. What should be self evident, is lost on many liberals who equate American exceptionalism with a rude form of nationalism. Not so - demonstrably not so. There is no other society in the world that looks upon government with such a jaundiced eye when they perceive that government to be crossing a comfort barrier relating to how much power the central authority should wield.

At heart, America is a profoundly conservative country in that First Principles, a respect for our past, and supporting change only when that change can be folded into tradition, is believed and supported by a large majority. This doesn’t mean that the out of bounds hasn’t been moving left the last 100 years. We are also, at bottom, a practical people, and see real benefit to growing government when the occasion calls for it. This too, makes us an exceptional people in that despite all, the people still have a big say in how big a government they will accept.

Perhaps one day, Americans will accept a growth in government that will result in Washington running health care. But it is not today, nor do I see such a day arriving in my lifetime. Each generation of Americans defines the parameters of their liberty differently. It is our particular genius as we constantly re-invent ourselves to meet the challenges of a changing world.

Obama and the Democrats ignore this reality at their political peril.

I just finished visiting the blog Crooked Timbers and, as is the case when I read stuff by very smart people, I need an aspirin because my head hurts. I take that as a sign that too much brainy stuff is crammed into my head and I must access the release valve so that some of the older crap can dribble out of my ears to make room for the next clump of logical, coherent, analysis from writers who know a helluva lot more about philosophy and politics than I do.

I lose a lot of long term memory that way, but hopefully, nothing major like the batting averages for the 2005 World Champion White Sox or the names of my children. (Do I have any children? Too late.)

Some very smart writers give me both a headache and make me want to throw up. Juan Cole comes to mind because even though I find his history writing the bomb, he is a nauseating self-referentialist and a terrorist apologist. Come to think of it, just about anyone who writes a blog is guilty of the former so perhaps I am being too hard on Professor Cole as far as his constant self promotion is concerned. His views on Hezbullah and Hamas are another matter and not only have me gagging but also make me want to take a shower after reading him. Same thing happens to me after trying to read Jane Hamsher’s foul mouthed spewings which only goes to show that you can have the mind of slug and still engender massive disgust. Nice trick, that.

There is great virtue in reading stuff by people more intelligent than you are. First of all, generally speaking, you learn something new - even if it’s that the writer is a dork and despite his brilliance, would benefit from the intellectual equivalent of a bracing thwack across the noggin with a two by four. Beyond that, learned writers offer perspectives you will never find by reading most columnists (the sainted Buckley one of the few exceptions), bloggers, or pundits, or by listening to your bartender expound on the mysteries of the universe (despite the fact that most PHD’s in philosophy work as mixologists or cab drivers).

That said, this well toned argument by Henry Farrell at Crooked Timbers on whether or not Barack Obama is turning America into a European style social democracy should be must reading for those who have been complaining about the president’s “socialist” policies.

Farrell quotes Roger Cohen on turning America into France-lite:

To paraphrase Mauriac, I love France, but I don’t want there to be two of them, least of all if one is in the United States. … I think President Obama’s counter-revolution goes in the right direction. … Still, the $3.6 trillion Obama budget made me a little queasy. There is a touch of France in its “étatisme” — the state as all-embracing solution rather than problem — and there’s more than a touch of France in the bash-the-rich righteousness with which the new president cast his plans as “a threat to the status quo in Washington.” … You know possibility when you breathe it. For an immigrant, it lies in the ease of American identity and the boundlessness of American horizons after the narrower confines of European nationhood and the stifling attentions of the European nanny state, which has often made it more attractive not to work than to work. High French unemployment was never much of a mystery. Americans, at least in their imaginations, have always lived at the new frontier; French frontiers have not shifted much in centuries. Churn is the American way. … If America loses sight of these truths, it will cease to be itself.

Cohen sums up the argument nicely, referencing American exceptionalsm without naming it explicitly. Any such mention of exceptionalism would put him in very bad odor with some of his friends on the left who have a jaundiced view of such old fashioned, outmoded, jingoistic nonsense.

Farrell also quotes from this Clive Crook piece at National Journal where the author speaks the forbidden words and points out that if we were to adopt some French social policies (health insurance, labor protections, etc.) that we would not become some kind of French-American hybrid while maintaining our “exceptional” character but rather something totally different:

I was hoping that Brooks would press Shields to say what exactly it is about France he objects to, what makes him recoil at the parallel. Where has France gone too far, in the view of an American liberal? … Presumably, liberals approve of the universal health care, the generous and extensive welfare state, the comprehensive worker protections, the stricter regulation, the vastly more-generous subsidies for higher education, the stronger unions, the higher taxes, and especially the higher taxes on the rich. … Perhaps some liberals privately long to make the United States over in the image of France, but the great majority, I imagine, are more interested in taking the things they regard as best in the European economic model—all the things I just listed—and combining those “socially enlightened” policies with the traditional economic virtues of the United States. Take French social policies and welfare-state institutions and add them to the American work ethic, spirit of self-reliance, and appetite for change. Et voila, the best of both worlds. Color me skeptical. Culture shapes institutions and vice versa. Culture—that bundle of traits of self-reliance, self-determination, innovation, and striving for success—underpins the American exception. … In ordinary times, this culture makes it hard for a government to push the United States in a European direction … But now, maybe, the time is ripe. This unusually severe economic crisis has called American capitalism into question, highlighting its weaknesses and making it easier to forget its strengths. Liberalism has a rare opportunity. … But the interaction between culture and institutions works both ways. Change the system and, with time, you will change the culture.

Farrell’s take deals with the shocks to the political economies of Europe in the 90’s when the “Anglo-Saxon” model of capitalism seemed to be the road to take in a globalized economy:

France and other countries faced a profound crisis – a crisis which in some ways was even more profound than that facing the US today. They have faced continuing pressures to ‘reform’ institutions in a more market-liberal direction over the succeeding two decades. And they have indeed changed in some very important ways. But France did not converge onto the US model despite these pressures. If it had, presumably Crook’s and Cohen’s criticisms would be rather different than the ones that they are making Instead, it has reformed along a divergent trajectory to the US, with continued heavy state involvement in the economy but of a different variety than previously.

This reinforces a near-universal finding of the relevant literature in political economy as I read it. While there is some diffusion of policy lessons across states, it tends to have limited consequences. Different countries respond to common shocks in very different ways, because of their existing institutional structures. National economic trajectories are quite robust. Even in major crises, advanced capitalist countries tend to tinker around the edges of their institutional systems rather than opt for wholesale reform, let alone converging on a perceived ‘better national model’ elsewhere.

And this is what is happening in the US. The Obama proposals are not particularly radical departures from existing practice in the US. They are certainly nothing like traditional European social democracy. Even David Brooks effectively acknowledges this, when he says that they are potentially problematic in combination rather than individually. They aren’t going to set the US on a different national trajectory, let alone make it ‘French’ or ‘European.’ Some of us might like to see this happen, but it isn’t going to, even given the ideological trauma that the US is undergoing. And arguing that American individualism is likely to wilt if exposed to nasty foreign influences smacks more of a kind of capitalist-road José Bové-ism than any serious kind of intellectual analysis.

Reformer, not radical? Farrell seems to be saying that because our “Americanism” is so ingrained, that Obama can slap all the social democratic nonsense he wishes over the exceptionalism template and we will remain virtually unchanged in a cultural sense. I agree. A little more “progressive” in our tax and spending policies perhaps. But it will take a lot more than universal health insurance or card check legislation to destroy what has taken 400 years to build. The problem is, it is not Obama’s policies per se that are necessarily “radical” but rather the ways and means he will achieve them.

But I think Farrell is missing one part of the argument - the practical political effect of Obama’s transformative agenda. This is where the real “change” will occur - a change that will fundamentally alter the relationship between the governed and the governors. For this, we must look to the last American president who attempted transformation - Ronald Reagan.

At bottom, Reagan’s revolution was also firmly grounded in a non-radical departure from existing practice. Reagan did not repeal the Great Society or the New Deal. Social spending skyrocketed under his leadership, anywhere from 3-5% above inflation. Part of this was the fact that he was dealing with a Democratic majority in the House (and, for the last two years, the Senate). The traditional guarantors of aid to the poor made sure there was plenty of funding available to take care of their dependent constituency. Reagan managed to cut the rate of growth as a percentage of GDP in social spending, nothing more - a not inconsequential achievement given the spending trajectory we had been on in the 1970’s.

But even beyond that, Reagan’s “revolution” altered the national conversation on entitlements, bringing some much needed realism and perspective to the debate. Whether this caused a backlash or was itself a product of middle class resentment I will let the historians duke it out to discover the truth of the matter. I don’t see President Obama trying to bring us back to the days when the only question about entitlements was “How much more do we spend?” That part of the Reagan legacy seems secure and may be a starting point to finally come to grips with the frightening prospect of stupdendous social security and medicare outlays 20 years down the road that could literally bankrupt us (if Obama doesn’t beat the clock and do it sooner).

Further, Obama is not going to “undo” the Reagan tax revolution, not when 48 million Americans are paying no taxes at all and the marginal rates he proposes will still fall far short of the rates in place when Reagan took office. Again, Reagan’s tax policies were not really radical in retrospect (Bush’s tax cuts fit that bill nicely) but the changed perspective on taxation - influenced by the California tax revolt that was occurring at the same time - may have been radical in the sense that it reversed 50 years of thinking about taxation. Seeing taxes as personal property and that the government that confiscates the least, governs the best may have to undergo some slight adjustments given our current deficits but the overarching belief that low taxes are a beneficial model for our government will outlast Obama.

So the question of how radical Obama’s policies might be must be seen in the context of politics and history. While grounded, as Farrell rightly points out, in practices and theories of the past, the “remaking” of America that I and others see in Obama’s policies have more to do with a psychological barrier being broken with regards to government intervention in the economy and the resulting alteration of the national conversation about the efficacy of statist solutions to a myriad of social problems. Not France and yet, not America as we have known it either. I realize that “change” is what people voted for but did they vote for the kind of Middle Class dependency that some of Obama’s policies would seem to promote? I struggled with this question in a post I wrote last month, “If Government Makes Life Easier, Does That Make it Better?”

The transformation of American society from one that values liberty to one that embraces dependency has taken longer than any other western nation. This has largely been due to American conservatisms steadfast refusal to abandon what Kirk calls the “voluntary community” in favor of the stifling hand of collectivism. Where once only the poor felt the deadening hand of statism which created a permanent underclass, destroyed the family, and smothered ambition, now the middle class is in line to be granted similar attention…

Liberals do not like to discuss the loss of freedom their collectivist ideas entail. But we are clearly in an era where choices are to be limited for the middle class in order to make life less of a burden . And any society that limits choice, limits freedom.

But isn’t this what the people want, what they are demanding? How can you live in a democracy and tell people that government acting to make your life easier is wrong and that the alternative - struggling to make the right choices for yourself and your family and where not choosing wisely might cost you - is the preferred, indeed the “American” way of self sufficiency and taking responsibility for your own life?

There is nothing noble in suffering but I would posit the notion that independence is, in and of itself, enobling and in any society that values freedom, the slide into dependency cannot be allowed without a recognition of what we lose as well as what is gained. There are 400 years of struggle behind us to create a society where the individual took responsibility for his own well being and that of his family, his fortunes rising or falling based on his native abilities and talents. The reward was “an earned life” of personal satisfaction and a feeling of self worth and accomplishment that you simply cannot experience if you depend on government for as much as we do today. Or as much as we will in the near future if more of our freedoms are given up in the name of personal security and comfort.

Farrell does not believe that kind of “rugged individualism” is at stake in an Obama presidency. I believe it is. I believe the real transformation that Obama’s ideas and policies represent might not make us into a France (which isn’t really the point) but will result in a different kind of America - one that is inconsistent with our founding and an anathema to conservative (traditional) principles upon which we have built a society unique among men. And what I find despicable is the president and his cohorts using the “opportunity” of an economic crisis to bring about these transformative policies by subterfuge. They wouldn’t fly otherwise and they know it.

Give us a stand up fight without resorting to political tricks of fear mongering and partisan bitchery and I would guarantee the bulk of Americans would be standing with us and not the president.

CNBC’s Rick Santelli hit a raw nerve with his rant against President Obama’s mortgage bailout plan on the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade - a 10,000 volt charge of energy and anger that hit the internet with a force that transcended politics and spilled over into popular culture.

His words fell like a jackhammer on the hearts and souls of conservatives who had been struggling in recent weeks to define what was making them so uneasy about President Obama’s “savior based economy.” At stake; the soul of America - the very essence of what makes us different from other countries. Self reliance, personal responsibility, a belief that individuals count for more than the group, and a well developed sense of justice and fair play are being thrown under the bus. They are being tossed in favor of a bail out culture that spits on self reliance, sneers at personal responsibility, lumps Americans into manageable (and malleable) groups of victims, and penalizes those who play by the rules.

These are not the attributes that have animated the American heart since our founding. Rather, it is those cornerstone ideals mentioned above that make up the crux of what it means to be an American. And these values are under attack by a president who is using the economic crisis as an excuse to fundamentally alter the relationship between the governed and the governors - a change that the president never mentioned during his run for the presidency and is accomplishing by means of executive diktat and legislative fiat.

By destroying “American exceptionalism” - a concept that has come under increasing attack by the left over the years - the president, vigorously backed by his base of democratic socialists, is seeking to elevate the importance of government over the primacy of the individual - as clear a violation of the intent of the Constitution as anything President Bush ever did in the name of protecting us. The President may not be shredding the Constitution but he his tearing asunder the spirit of our founding document. What will be left after he is done will be a lifeless husk, a shadow of the way the Founders saw themselves and how we, the inheritors of their dreams, have betrayed their fundamental beliefs about man’s relationship to government.

President Obama apparently believes it is necessary to destroy who we are to save us. Most conservatives disagree. I don’t doubt the president has the best of intentions. Perhaps he even thinks that what he is proposing is not that radical, not so fundamentally abhorrent to I believe a majority of Americans. It is certain he thinks he is doing it for our own good.

But in his determination to solve our severe economic problems, he appears willing to seek solutions that undermine the fabric that sustained our ancestors through even tougher times than these. He is using a nuclear bomb where a scalpel is called for. And the question of whether there will be much of a patient left after he is done goes unanswered.

Mr. Santelli’s rant - a bracing, emotional explosion that elevated flagging spirits and galvanized the hearts of netwise conservatives - is a fine catalyst but to what end? A “tea party” is being planned for several cities on July 4 but realistically, can you say that this is the beginning of a mass movement to oppose the Obama Dependency? Frankly, I see no evidence that millions of people are moving in that direction. And by the time the 4th rolls around, how many who are so excited today will show up?

I don’t doubt the passion Mr. Santelli has generated among conservatives. I just doubt its staying power. To have any effect at all, millions must stand up and make their voices heard. So far, I don’t hear them. In fact, by large majorities, the American people are extremely uneasy about what Mr. Obama is doing but are either so in thrall to his personae or so frightened of losing their jobs that they are willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Of course, the president stokes this fear at every opportunity - something about which even Bill Clinton is becoming concerned.

But we are seeing only the beginning of massive government intervention and takeover of the economy. What will the majority of people say when Treasury Secretary Geithner finally comes up with details of his plan for TARP II that may cost taxpayers more than a trillion dollars? or Stimulus, The Sequel? Or this mortgage bail out plan that currently stands at $75 billion but that some administration-friendly economists say could run closer to $200 billion? And don’t forget the health insurance plan that will almost certainly have a price tag in the hundreds of billions.

For each, there will be Obama out front, telling us we must have this spending plan or that bail out measure or all is lost. He will slam these bills through Congress in the first 6 months of his presidency because after that, even his own party will balk. By then, it will be way too late - the transformation of America will be complete and it will just be a matter of administering what America will have become; a series of dependent duchies with the federal government dictating the winners and losers in our economy while overseeing a massive transfer of wealth.

It can’t be stopped. Conservatives don’t have the votes. All we can do is rant like Mr. Santelli. But after the feel good rhetoric and the shot in the arm, we are left with a Red Bull rush - a splash of energy and excitement that will eventually fade and leave us feeling groggy and sluggish. Not for all of us, of course. But if conservatives are expecting to build mass opposition to the president using Mr. Santelli’s outburst, that would be wishful thinking indeed. Such a cause needs organization, volunteers, and most of all, money.

Michelle Malkin is trying and if anyone can keep the right at an emotional high, it’s her. But so much more is needed to make an impact that I fear even such noble efforts are a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing.

When ordinary Americans in their millions become involved, I will be glad to hop aboard the bandwagon and wave the bloody shirt from the battlements. Until then, I think I’m already crashing from my Santelli Energy Drink and feel like taking a nap.

UPDATE

Eeeesh - re-reading this piece, I see that it came out much more negatively than I was actually thinking. Sorry - don’t feel like a massive rewrite but allow me a few points that I should have made above.

1. It is early yet. Much of my negativity is based on the idea that I don’t see the kind of mass groundswell of support beyond the environs of the conservative internet (including social networking sites). I may yet be proved wrong if this is actually the beginnings of a mass movement against dependency.

2. One side benefit is that this will probably serve as a catalyst to organize the right side of the internet in ways that we can only guess at now. I would watch a couple of websites like The Next Right and Rebuild the Party to see how those very smart folks latch on and try and lead this movement.

3. It was not my intent to dampen spirits just as it was not my intent during the campaign when I wrote gloomy analyses of McCain’s chances to discourage anyone from voting. Those who will make the argument that I am trying to spoil the party should really grow up a little. I am a rationalist and am offering my opinion, seeing the situation with gimlet eyed reason and skepticism. I will be overjoyed if I am wrong. But dreaming of a mass movement and creating one out of nothing are two different propositions. We want our dreams to come true but there is a gargantuan amount of work to be done in order to realize that dream. It can’t be done in months. But it very well may bear fruit in 2010.

Every once and a while, even smart people say or write stuff that makes them look stupid.

Why, even I myself have fallen victim to these little intellectual hiccups. You don’t write on a blog everyday for 4 years and not, on occasion, come up with some really, really lights out, eye poppingly, drop dead clueless, monumentally ignorant stuff. Any blogger or writer who tells you differently is either a liar or so full of himself that the power of their egos would probably light up Chicago. It is an occupational hazard and is impossible to avoid. (I can’t think of anything offhand but I’m sure there are some intrepid commenters out there who would help me out.)

Of course, there are some bloggers and writers out there who make a career of writing brainless, fatuous, jaw droppingly doltish stuff. Village idiots like TBogg or the folks at Sadly No have taken bathroom humor, playground taunts, and pre-teen sex jokes to a level unseen by most adults. I would add the pathologically bigoted writings of Debbie Schlussel and just about everything written by Robert Kagan as examples on the right of writers who make a living penning witless missives, dopey treatises, and uninformed balderdash.

But even very smart, very witty people can fall victim to the Stupid Virus. Take the delightful CNBC host and commentator James Pethokoukis, who also writes a money blog for US News and World Report. He really caught a virulent form of the disease with his post entitled “How Tom Daschle might kill conservatism.”

The GOP strategist had been joking about the upcoming presidential election and giving his humorous assessments of the candidates. Then he suddenly cut out the schtick and got scary serious. “Let me tell you something, if Democrats take the White House and pass a big-government healthcare plan, that’s it. Game over. Government will dominate the economy like it does in Europe. Conservatives will spend the rest of their lives trying to turn things around and they will fail.”

And it turns out that the fearsome harbinger of free-market doom is the mild-mannered ex-U.S. senator with the little, red glasses, Tom Daschle. He’ll be the guy shepherding President Barack Obama’s healthcare plan through Congress via his probable role as secretary of health and human services. At the core of Daschle’s thinking on the subject is the creation of a “Federal Health Board that would resemble our current Federal Reserve Board” and ensure “harmonization across public programs of health-care protocols, benefits, and transparency.” (Forget secretary of state, Hillary Clinton should shoot for chairman of Fed Health and run one seventh of the U.S. economy.) And the subject of that “harmonization” would be a $100 billion to $150 billion a year plan that would let individuals (and small businesses) buy insurance from private companies or from a government plan.

Daschle and the Obamacrats certainly have the momentum: a near-landslide presidential election victory, at least 58 Democratic votes in the Senate, and a nasty recession that will make many Americans yearn for economic security. Already the health insurance companies seem set back on their heels. The industry’s trade organization now says it would accept new rules requiring them to cover pre-existing conditions as long as there was a universal mandate for all Americans to have health insurance. On top of all that, Obama clearly wants to make healthcare reform a priority in his first term, as evidenced by the selection of a heavy hitter like Daschle. And even if he wasn’t interested, Congress sure is, with Max Baucus and Ted Kennedy readying a plan in the Senate. A few observations:

1) Passage would be a political gamechanger. Recently, I stumbled across this analysis of how nationalized healthcare in Great Britain affected the political environment there. As Norman Markowitz in Political Affairs, a journal of “Marxist thought,” puts it: “After the Labor Party established the National Health Service after World War II, supposedly conservative workers and low-income people under religious and other influences who tended to support the Conservatives were much more likely to vote for the Labor Party when health care, social welfare, education and pro-working class policies were enacted by labor-supported governments.”

Passing Obamacare would be like performing exactly the opposite function of turning people into investors. Whereas the Investor Class is more conservative than the rest of America, creating the Obamacare Class would pull America to the left. Michael Cannon of the Cato Institute, who first found that wonderful Markowitz quote, puts it succinctly in a recent blog post: “Blocking Obama’s health plan is key to the GOP’s survival.”

I’ll go even further and say that passing Obamacare would turn the US from from being the world’s only superpower into a second class backwater with little more influence than France on the world stage. This may happen anyway thanks to the financial meltdown and the subsequent $2 trillion and rising in bailouts. Let’s face it; trillion dollar deficits and half a trillion dollar defense budgets are an impossibility. They cannot exist in the same universe. You can’t cut entitlements in a deep recession and since there is only around $35 billion in real discretionary spending to be cut, something has got to give somewhere. With Democrats in charge, it will be the defense budget.

But would Obamacare “kill” conservatism? That’s something of a nutty idea considering that it comes from an analysis given in a journal devoted to that wildly successful political philosophy known as Marxism. In a deterministic world where we are all happy little Commie robots, we would “vote our interests” and cast our ballot for the politician who promised us the most goodies. Democrats and liberals have been whining for years that Americans in flyover country have been hypnotized or fooled by Republicans into actually voting against politicians who will give them everything necessary to make their lives easier.

But determinism is dead, killed by the reality that people simply don’t act the way the Marxists say we should act. If they did, I guarantee you the old Soviet Union would still be with us while the United States would have gone the way of the Dodo bird. In the aggregate, people do not make decisions for themselves or their families based on what is best for their “class” or even care much about how their lives might be improved at the margins by voting for big government liberals. It has never been that way in America when voting for president and is only partly true when voting for Congressmen and Senators.

A study done earlier this year and published in the Journal of Leadership Studies revealed some of the real reasons people choose one presidential candidate over the other - and it ain’t because one of them will shower them with gifts from the government:

An article to be published in the new Journal of Leadership Studies (Wiley Periodicals, Inc.) on February 28th discusses results of researching and analyzing data from the seven most recent U.S. presidential elections comparing Democratic and Republican Party candidates who were successful in securing votes. The analysis reveals what tipped the scales with voters and how perceptions of leader intelligence, feelings of pride and hope, as well as feelings of fear and anger, were found to impact the decision process, rather than the issues that candidates present.

Researchers M. David Albritton, Sharon L. Oswald and Joseph S. Anderson used data from the National Election Studies (NES) division of the Center for Political Studies at the University of Michigan to expand upon previous work on voter attitudes, perceptions of leaders, and voter support. They found perceived intelligence, inspirational qualities, and charisma to be key factors in the formation of voter opinion. Instead of the varying positions on issues, voter’s perceptions of these key traits are found to be predictors of whether or not that voter will consider a leader to be of high quality.

How a candidate’s charisma as well as how fear plays into a voter’s evaluation was also examined. Intuitively perhaps, fear played a negative role toward a candidate. Individuals who generated stronger feelings of voter fear were considered “lower quality leaders.” However, fear also helped shape positive behaviors toward a rival candidate. Surprisingly, charisma, traditionally considered an asset, was often viewed negatively when framed in the context of manipulating others toward personal gain.

The vote for president is the most personal political decision most Americans make. Political pros have known for decades, thanks to several landmark social psychology studies, what goes into the decision making process of citizens when they choose a president. First, as with any politician, it is likability that is most translatable into votes. Next comes shared values or comfortability. The third is fear of the alternative. Ideology plays into the comfortability index while positions on the issues and campaign promises are almost always way down the list.

Voting for other federal offices is not quite as personal but for House members especially, it is not national issues as much as it is local concerns that determine competitive races - a dwindling number thanks to finely honed redistricting techniques. More than anything, what will keep Democrats in power will be how the new Congressional district lines will be drawn following the 2010 census.

The Senate is a different story but is still an electoral body dominated by incumbents thanks to their massive advantage in fundraising, name recognition, and their ability to build a sophisticated political ground game over their 6 year term. Here again, likability and shared values mean more than any specific issues.

In the kind of deterministic construct offered by those who believe that Obamacare and other proposed social programs will kill conservatism because people will be so overjoyed that government will offer them “security” that they will vote for big government liberals for the foreseeable future fail to understand that first, we are a different people than the Europeans despite what many on the left who have abandoned the idea of American exceptionalism are telling us; and second, such twaddle reveals a lack of understanding of basic political psychology.

America has been gradually adapting itself to the idea that health care is a right, not a privilege. I would say to my conservative friends that politically - and realistically - we have probably lost this argument. The issue plays to the people’s basic sense of fairness and despite their misgivings about government run boondoggles, would support some kind of national health insurance that guaranteed everyone’s access to at least minimal care.

But I would say to my friends on the left that this doesn’t mean Americans will support the kind of massive intrusion being planned by Kennedy-Baucus or the Obama Administration - especially after conservatives get through informing the public of just what it means to have mandates, “Federal Health Boards” and other cockamamie ideas that limit freedom and choices. There are alternatives - some free market options as well as a mix of government-industry proposals - that would accomplish the goal without having government get on the slippery slope of eventually controlling the entire health care industry.

But even if Kennedy-Baucus were to pass - highly unlikely at this point - would that mean the “death of conservatism?” If Marxism couldn’t be killed off by it’s massive, world wide failures it is extremely difficult to see how conservatism could be executed by the passage of a government program - especially one that would be amenable to alteration once its deficiencies were exposed by its application to the real world. Conservatives may not be able to get rid of national health insurance. But there is no doubt that they will be able to run against its failures by proposing sensible alternatives and reforms.

Conservatism is a philosophy. I have had many arguments with my conservative friends over how to make this philosophy into a real world, governing ideal in a 21st century industrialized democracy. I am unsure if on some level, that “governing ideal” hasn’t run its course and lost its way. Making conservative principles and a conservative approach to issues relevant again will take a careful study of where we went wrong and some fresh ideas of how to translate the principles and values of conservatism into concrete, programmatic proposals that can compete in the great American marketplace of ideas once again.