Right Wing Nut House

You won’t want to miss tonight’s Rick Moran Show, one of the most popular conservative talk shows on Blog Talk Radio.

Tonight, I will welcome special guests Rich Baehr of the American Thinker and Tony Badran of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy to talk about Obama’s Cairo speech, and the elections in Lebanon and Iran.

The show will air from 7:00 - 8:00 PM Central time. You can access the live stream here. A podcast will be available for streaming or download shortly after the end of the broadcast.

Click on the stream below and join in on what one wag called a “Wayne’s World for adults.”

The Chat Room will open around 15 minutes before the show opens,

Also, if you’d like to call in and put your two cents in, you can dial (718) 664-9764.

I am not on the best of terms with Dan Riehl but that has not prevented me from congratulating him from time to time when he nails it:

It’s a wonderful thing to be able to get yourself worked up on a topic, or in a spat, and just blurt out what you think or have recently discovered. You may even have convinced yourself it’s the coup de gras if things have turned into a fight. Then all of seconds later, if you’re smart, you get to appreciate what you just did as a reader if you look at your blog. It’s usually about then that you realize you’ve just done something significant for the whole world to see before having taken enough time pre-post to figure out just what it might be. Heh!

Whelan can relax in knowing that his liberal critics have now etched the moment into their collective soul in blog code and will inject it as the ad hominem of choice in any and every heated debate for some time: this from a guy who blah, blah, blah. If it’s any consolation to Whelan, you usually stop wincing after the first few times. And for now you know the worst your critics can and will do - forewarned is forearmed and all that. My advice is to ignore it. It’s done.

It’s ironic that given blogging’s technocentric existence, it’s still its ability to remind us that we’re human that’s often the most fascinating element. Except for Reynolds, of course. He was designed by a consortium of scientists from the tech industry to give them the next new rationale to sell more PCs back in the day. The group has moved on to Twitter and applications beyond these days.

In any event, discovering our humanity, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse, is always a good thing to my way of thinking. As human beings, it’s one of the best ways we learn. And it won’t be long before some blogger somewhere makes the next greatest reminder that we’re all human of a blog post and we all too often inhuman bastards that are bloggers will be certain to circle round to pick the bones.

There couldn’t be a better blood sport for intellects in this information age.

I am closing in on 3,000 posts for this blog (2986), most of them essays of more than 1000 words. Not only is that a lot of hot air but also a lot of myself that has been poured on to this site. Readers familiar with my work know that few topics are off limits including some personal stuff that others might have a hard time putting out there for all the world to see. And I get into trouble a lot of the time because I don’t view this space as “publication” as much as I see it as an online diary of sorts - or a virtual scratch pad. Hence, sometimes my thinking is muddled, confused, disconnected, and even illogical as I seek answers to questions that some other bloggers might wait until they have fully formed their reasoning about a subject before hitting that “publish” button.

Far from seeing this as a disadvantage or a minus, for me it is a godsend. “Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man,” quoth Sir Francis Bacon. And if writing forces me to organize my thoughts and place them into some kind of rational context while helping me gain insight into why I think the way I do about people and issues, then I have accomplished what I set out to do by writing in the first place.

I would estimate that out of those nearly 3000 screeds, there are probably at least 100 that should never have seen the light of day. Maybe less, I don’t know. Ironically, a couple of them directed to Mr. Riehl would fall into that category. On the other hand, my sometimes emotional outbursts are quite theraputic and while I wouldn’t recommend it as an answer to thoughtful discourse, sometimes screaming about something serves the dual purpose of getting your point across while making you feel immensely better after letting off some steam.

Riehl is correct; blogs help one discover their humanity; in all its glory, its sordidness, its generosity, its stupidity, and its brilliance. It also helps you know yourself better; your strengths, weaknesses, limitations - everything that Erasmus’s “examined life” should reveal.

We all want to know ourselves. Sometimes the revelations are quite disturbing - as when I discovered shortly after starting to blog that I have a very thin skin. Sometimes, they are sublime. I have developed an enormous measure of confidence in my cognitive abilities and insight that, while not claiming Pope-like infallibility, nevertheless proves me right more often than wrong. I am certain I would not have developed this confidence without blogging for going on 5 years.

When I am shown to be in error, I almost always acknowledge it. To some, this proves that I blow with the wind on some issues rather than, when exposed to new information or a new point of view, believing that altering your thinking is the correct path to follow. To some, this makes me a squish. But I value being honest with myself and my readers. I am not 100% successful but then there’s that “humanity” that prevents me from overcoming my own pride and emotional investment in order to achieve the unachievable.

Just writing this post has helped clarify my thinking. From now on, I will be a model citizen of the internet. I will never again take off after the left in a personal, insulting manner. I will never again criticize a conservative for being an idiot. I will never again take a fellow blogger to task for writing something that makes no sense or uses illogical arguments to get their point across.

Yeah - okay. But I can dream, can’t I?

I don’t know the man so I can’t say definitively if this apology is a self serving effort at damage control or whether it is sincere. But it strikes me as genuine - a realization by Whelan that his actions caused real damage to a real person:

On reflection, I now realize that, completely apart from any debate over our respective rights and completely apart from our competing views on the merits of pseudonymous blogging, I have been uncharitable in my conduct towards the blogger who has used the pseudonym Publius. Earlier this evening, I sent him an e-mail setting forth my apology for my uncharitable conduct. As I stated in that e-mail, I realize that, unfortunately, it is impossible for me to undo my ill-considered disclosure of his identity. For that reason, I recognize that Publius may understandably regard my apology as inadequate.

Short, sweet, and to the point. It appears that Mr. Whelan, despite publishing a lot of stuff online, really had no clue of the consequences of revealing someone’s identity on the internet. It is no excuse for his actions but, as Publius himself points out, at the very least, Whelan has started a much overdue debate about a blogger hiding his identity by using a pseudonym:

Ed Whelan has written both publicly and privately and apologized. I know it was not an easy thing to do, and it is of course accepted. I therefore consider the matter done, and don’t intend on writing about it anymore.

The real story here wasn’t really about me anyway — it’s about whether the norm of pseudonymity is a good thing. And there’s a legitimate debate about that. Personally, I think that pseudonymity is a net benefit, whatever other costs it brings. More voices are better than less — and pseudonymity (to me) enriches the public sphere by adding voices that could not otherwise be heard. But people can disagree in good faith about these things, as Whelan correctly notes.

Anyway, I’m moving on. I appreciate Whelan’s update. And that’s all I have to say.

Well done by Publius on all accounts - accepting the apology and wanting to move on to other, more vital matters.

I note a couple of things from the comments and emails I’ve received on this matter. First, I found it more just a little ironic that many of those defending Whelan were anonymous commenters themselves. I think it also revealing - at least, based on an unscientific survey of comments on my site and elsewhere - that many bloggers, even on the right, sympathized with Publius and even supported his right to anonymity while many commenters did not.

The real issue of anonymity as far as I’m concerned has nothing to do with bloggers but rather with those who comment on their sites. Yes, there is a difference - a big one. I don’t think I can recall a single instance where a blog commenter lost their job, or was harassed or stalked, or suffered in any way for commenting on a blog post using their own name. If there are such cases, they must be very rare and not well publicized. What are the chances of an employer of a blog commenter who uses their real name, running across a comment made on a website - even if they’re looking for it - and firing that commenter for something he said?

The problem of stalking and threats may be a different matter but it is no accident that blog commenters who use their real name are much less likely to engage in “fighting words” hyperbole when commenting than the blog commenter who hides ignobly behind a fictitious character.

For these reasons, the use of a pseudonym when commenting on blogs is a device employed not for protection but rather to hide behind. Many find anonymity more comfortable when personally attacking a blogger using the most vile and disgusting language, because they would never say anything similar to the bloggers face if they were using their real name. “Fighting words” take on a whole new dimension when reality sets in and the “conversation” between a blogger and a commenter is based on two human beings exchanging thoughts rather than one human being and one fictional character throwing verbal bombs at one another. In this way, the pseudonymous commenter can ignore the minimal societal strictures that prohibit the kind of personal insults which, if said face to face to another human being, would result in the commenter coming to regret their vile attacks.

Is that the definition of cowardly? You betchya.

I suspect that most of these commenters who troll the blogs trying to start a fight are really quite mild mannered, milquetoast sorts of people when they push themselves away from the monitor, scared of their own shadow, and easily dominated by others be it their spouses or their bosses at work. They hit back at life by developing an alter ego where they can pour out all their frustration, all of their hate, all of their bile where it is assured that no one will ever connect them to their real life personaes.

I realize that not all pseudonymous commenters are trolls and many anonymous commenters are quite circumspect in their commentary. But the motivation is the same; they feel more comfortable in criticizing someone by wrapping themselves in a comfortable cloak of anonymity rather than taking the risk that if someone were to then criticize them, that criticism would be personal. Instead of being directed at a fictitious character, the criticism of their thoughts, their ideas, their logic strikes at their self-identity. In my opinion, this too, is cowardly.

Save investigating every commenter to determine if the handle they are using is of a real person, I see no way that this practice will change anytime soon. But most bloggers with whom I have discussed this behavior believe the anonymity of nasty, unprincipled commenters on their site to be the most frustrating part of blogging. And I suppose it’s something that bloggers are going to have to live with until the technology is developed to deal with the problem, or blogging culture itself changes.

We knew this sort of thing was possible the moment we laid eyes on him. The strong chin, thrust upward with a serene confidence that melted our hearts. The eyes - so open and honest that we could see into his soul (as he could see into ours). The smile with impossibly white teeth that lifts one up whenever his steady gaze meets our unworthy eyes - and suddenly, you feel almost worthy, as if granted a gift from on high.

And what about those pecs, eh? It’s not enough our God-thing be the smartest, the most gentle, the most courageous being in the universe. He’s also sexy as hell and causes men to contemplate same sex marriage and women to dream of bearing his children after torrid, sweaty, multi-orgasmic lovemaking under a waterfall or on a deserted beach.

All this pales in comparison to what The Lightworker can do when he opens his mouth, expelling a fresh air that smells like peppermint (except after he’s eaten garlic and then it smells like daffodils), and his beautiful mouth forms words that can cause the sun to rise and set, move mountains, cause the tide to recede heal the sick, raise the dead (even the gooey ones who have been deceased a while), and melt the hearts of the wicked.

His recent speech to our brothers and sisters who worship Allah and sadly, have no Lightworker to guide them, is a beautiful example of how the planet has changed since Barack Obama (PBUH) alighted from his chariot in Washington to save us. Our Barack generously offered to share himself with the Mohammedans and heal their hearts of hatred by uttering soothing words of brotherhood and love.

The result? An amazing transformation in Lebanon! A miracle! Oh ye of little faith who doubt the Lightworker’s power, look upon his work in the Levant and be amazed!

With idiot conservatives questioning the point of making a stirring, beautiful speech to win over the hearts and minds in the Muslim world, it looks like those efforts to nudge public opinion are already bearing fruit:

An American-backed alliance appeared to retain control of the Lebanese Parliament on Sunday in a hotly contested election that had been billed as a showdown between Tehran and Washington for influence in the Middle East.

Preliminary results reported on Lebanese television showed the alliance, known as the March 14 coalition, had managed to preserve its majority in Parliament. If those results are confirmed, they would represent a significant and unexpected defeat for Hezbollah and its allies, Iran and Syria. Most polls had showed a tight race, but one in which the Hezbollah-led group would win.

So wooing minds in the Muslim world has helped tip an election towards a pro-western coalition in a notoriously divided Lebanon.

When I try to sometimes wrap my head around what about conservative thinking bothers me so much, it comes down to this:

conservatives care more about means than ends.

This case is the perfect example. The end in this particular foreign policy issue is weaken the strength of violent extremest forces in islamic countries. Obama thinks that by opening up dialogue with the region and improving America’s image in those countries is the best way to achieve that end.

But conservatives aren’t really interested if that end is achieved. They are more interested in having means that look cool on TV and that satisfy a gut emotional craving to just do something, goddamit, like making the Bagdad sky light up with the force of American airpower. Anything short of that just isn’t getting the job done, because something in their minds lacks the capacity to make the cognitive leap that soft power can sometimes be much better at achieving the end they profess to care about.

Obama just achieved a significant end, and conservative heads are exploding because they just cannot compute how. I can’t wait to see their reaction when the Iranians toss out Ahmadinejad in a week.

Ho-Ho! Soon, another target for our Lightworker’s incredible, miraculous powers will be revealed as the Persian hordes will transmogrify into lambs before our eyes and turn their faces away from the temptations of building map wiping weapons to use against the Hebrews. We can be sure that the 7th century peasants who know no better, will vote to to displace the angry elf Ahmadinejad not because he has destroyed the economy but because the calm visage of our Lightworker will magically appear before their eyes while they are casting their vote and they will experience the light of truth, justice, and the way of the Great Soul who guides us and tells us what to do.

Our Lightworker’s magic voice - so mellifluous, so achingly seductive, it can cause the Sirens to throw themselves into the sea, frantic and desperate to reach HIM - placed a spell on the well meaning but ignorant cave dwellers and goat herders in the Lebanese electorate and, without them even being aware of any internal political considerations whatsoever, wondrously caused them to vote for the American backed forces while forgetting all about the Hezzies.

For all of my misgivings about President Obama’s Thursday speech in Cairo, I have to admit that the first mass response from an Arab body politic was more than I had hoped for…and more than I expected.

[...]

Had Hezbollah won the balloting, the results it would have heaped scorn on the president’s address. It the court of measurable Arab public opinion the tally is 1-0, our side wins.

It’s the same trick he used on us and it worked fantastically.

Is there nothing he can’t do? Might it be possible that he is - dare I say it - more than a man?

Reagan was all about America, and you talked about it. Obama is ‘we are above that now.’ We’re not just parochial, we’re not just chauvinistic, we’re not just provincial. We stand for something – I mean in a way Obama’s standing above the country, above – above the world, he’s sort of God.

And lest there be any doubt that this is an opinion formed by a partisan, the words of this Frenchmen ring equally true:

When dining out Saturday night at a no-star bistro, La Fontaine de Mars, the presidential party was served water, Coke and table wine to accompany foie gras, lamb and steak with shallots, and paid for meals “like any client,” said owner Jacques Boudon. “It’s just what they wanted.”

“And I think they were very happy since they stayed three-quarters of an hour after dining,” he said by telephone.

Boudon was over the moon.

The table had been reserved 10 days earlier but he only knew his guests were the Obamas that morning.

“I saw God before me,” he said, “because I saw this smile that a million people have seen around the world. I saw her (Michelle) radiant.

Another God sighting, this time in the Land of the Frogs. And his saintly companion and partner, whose rap can bring down the thunder or tame the savage beast, watches over us with a benign presence and bare armed beauty. She is mother to us all. Wife, lover, mistress, same sex partner, and harlot - Ambassador to the Masses. She is Gaia’s secret agent. She is All. And she completes our Lightworker so completely that while it might seem impossible he needs completing she nevertheless is completely complete in her ability to, well, complete him.

First Lebanon, then Iran. What other historic, extraordinary feats of love and statecraft can our Lighworker achieve? Will he magically remove the scales from the eyes of the One Whose Name We Always Get Mixed Up With His, causing a transformation so profound that he Whose Name We Always Get Mixed Up With His will order his construction companies to rebuild the towers - for free? With Barack, anything is possible, any dream can come true. We live in an age where miracles are mundane and feats of legerdemain commonplace. They will look back on this time 10 million years from now in awestruck wonder that such a one as HE, of flesh and bone, actually walked the earth.

Now if he can only figure out how to fix the economy…

UPDATE

Hey! Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe Obama’s speech did indeed affect the election in Lebanon.

Of course, not quite the way the Lightworker’s drooling sycophants would have us believe:

Michael Ledeen:

Second, I cannot help thinking that the Lebanese learned something from Obama’s Cairo speech (and Bush’s second term), namely that they cannot rely on the United States to confront terrorists like Hezbollah. They, and others all over the area, are going to have to do a lot of their own fighting, and take their own chances, even though they know they cannot count on American support.

We already abandoned Lebanon once. When Saddam invaded Kuwait, RealPolitik demanded that we entice President Assad to join us by giving Syria a free hand in Lebanon. The rape, theft, murder, and domination of Lebanon that followed wasn’t entirely our fault but we had a big hand in letting it happen.

No doubt, Obama’s “pragmatism” in Cairo brought back painful memories for some Lebanese.

This article originally appears in The American Thinker

It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. While no formal polling is allowed close to the election, many analysts still gave a slight edge to the Hezb’allah backed Development and Resistance bloc to emerge with a plurality of seats in the nation’s 128 member parliament, beating out the Sunni-Christian March 14th forces. In any event, neither side was expected to dominate the election.

But if elections were decided by analysts, there would be no such thing as democracy. This, the Lebanese people proved when they shocked themselves and the world by giving a stunning, convincing victory to the forces of democracy represented by the March 14th coalition.

From the Lebanese news portal Now Lebanon:

The March 14 alliance appears headed for a decisive victory in Sunday’s parliamentary elections, with poll results, as of early Monday morning, indicating the alliance took around 70 seats, roughly the same number they held in the last parliament.

Speaking at a victory rally around 1 a.m., Future Movement leader Saad Hariri thanked all Future and March 14 supporters, in addition to the security forces, the army, and Arab and international observers, “all[ of whom] contributed to this glorious national day and establishing democracy.”

“These elections have no winner or loser, because the only winner is democracy and the biggest winner is Lebanon,” Hariri said.

“No victor, no vanquished.” That’s the motto of Lebanese political society. So even though the March 14th forces outpolled Hezb’allah substantially (they may have won up to 58 seats), they will still be invited to participate in the government.

And that includes the participation of the Christian Free Patriotic Movement party who cast their lot with pro-Syrian Hezb’allah and divided the Christian community. Their leader, Michel Aoun, stands humiliated if the results hold up.

Once an anti-Syrian hero in Lebanon, a reputation earned by fighting for Lebanese independence against the Syrian occupiers, Aoun’s triumphant return following the expulsion of Syrian troops raised hopes that the Christian community could rally behind his banner.

Hariri and the Sunnis didn’t trust Aoun and refused to give him what he coveted most; their endorsement of his candidacy for the presidency. He then shocked the nation when he signed a memorandum of understanding with pro-Syrian Hezb’allah and joined their coalition. This has resulted in some awkward moments over the years as Aoun has been forced to take positions inconveniently opposed to ones had taken previously.

Naharnet has the opposition’s response:

Hizbullah MP Hassan Fadlallah reiterated late Sunday the party’s calls for “national partnership” and said the March 8 alliance was reacting to the outcome of the elections with a “positive attitude.”

In an interview with AFP, Fadlallah said Hizbullah’s 11 candidates won seats in the new 128-member parliament.

“Lebanon’s specificity is in its diversity and there is no majority or minority,” Fadlallah said. “No party can claim to have won the majority among all communities.”

“Hizbullah has accepted the public will. The opposition handles the outcome of the polls and the people’s choice with a positive attitude,” he said.

Will that “positive attitude” extend to accepting the result and a reduced role in the cabinet?

For 18 months, Hezb’allah held the nation hostage by besieging the Grand Serail, Lebanon’s government house. During that time, several March 14th politicians were assassinated - probably by Syrian security - including Pierre Gemayel whose family is extremely prominent in Lebanese politics. The question on everyone’s mind is will they accept anything less than what they achieved last year at Doha, Qatar following what Prime Minister Siniora referred to as “an attempted coup?”

As always, Hezb’allah has one advantage not enjoyed by their opposition. They’ve got the guns and the will to use them if they feel threatened. They proved that in May of 2008 when, following a challenge to their communications network, they easily brushed aside disorganized Sunni militias and entered the Sunni enclave in West Beirut. That action triggered a crisis conference in Doha where the March 14th government gave in to most of Hezb’allah’s demands and reorganized the cabinet, giving the Shias and their Christian allies a virtual veto over Prime Minister Fouad Siniora’s government.

Lebanon can ill afford a repeat of that military-political exercise by Hezb’allah. Nor can it afford another Hezb’allah war with Israel which is always a possibility now that they have been fully rearmed and resupplied by Syria and Iran after the 2006 conflict. But March 14th is stuck with integrating the opposition into the government and trying to keep them happy.

It is in Hezb’allah’s long term interest to cause trouble for the March 14th majority. But there is a possibility they will go along for a while and accept a reduced role as a result of the election. Their spiritual and military leader Hassan Nasrallah is a shrewd operator and has demonstrated a gambler’s instinct when he thinks the odds are in his favor. But given the fact that the Lebanese people seem to have spoken clearly about their future, we might see Hezb’allah laying low for the time being.

The key to March 14th’s success was found in the Christian members of the coalition and their victories in hotly contested districts against FPM candidates. Now Lebanon has the details:

According to unofficial results, March 14 swept Zahle, which was widely seen as one of the more tightly contested districts in the nation. Nicholas Fattouch and Antoine Abu Khater took the two Greek Catholic seats, Elie Marouni took the Maronite seat, Joseph Maalouf took the Orthodox seat, Assem Aaraji took the Sunni seat, Okab Sakr took the Shia seat, and Chant Gengenian took the Armenian Orthodox seat.

In Beirut I, another hard-fought district, March 14 candidates won all five seats, with Nayla Tueni taking the Greek Orthodox seat, Michel Pharaon the Greek Catholic seat, Nadim Gemayel the Maronite seat, Serge Torsarkissian the Armenian Catholic seat and Jean Ogassapian the Armenian Orthodox seat.

March 14 also prevailed in Batroun, winning both the district’s seats. Current Telecommunications Minister Gebran Bassil, who was a candidate in the race, lost, as MPs Antoine Zahra and Boutros Harb took the district’s two Maronite seats.

In race after race where there was a competitive contest (about 100 seats were safely apportioned to the various religions), March 14th surged to victory. A change in the electoral law pushed on the government by Hezb’allah at the Doha conference was thought to favor them over March 14th, but in the end appeared to make little difference.

Now comes the hard part; forming a working government that won’t provoke Hezb’allah into a ruinous confrontation. Although current Prime Minister Fouad Siniora won his race going away, he is not expected back. It would be helpful if whoever emerges from the coming scrum for Prime Minister would be acceptable to Hezb’allah but it is not vital. For the moment, March 14th has the votes. That should cinch the proposition in Parliament.

Sa’ad Hariri, son of the slain ex-Prime Minister, has now engineered two election victories for his coalition. Considering the fact that March 14th appeared dead in the water following their surrender at Doha, he has pulled off a political coup by outmaneuvering Michel Aoun in almost all the competitive districts while infusing his supporters with hope for an independent Lebanon with a strong central government. Not a bad trick if you can pull it off. And Hariri did.

Someday, someone is going to make a million by writing a book on what so far is largely unwritten; the rules and etiquette of blogging.

When that happens, we won’t have internet ignorant philistines like Ed Whelan running around destroying the anonymity of bloggers who choose to remain unknown. Or maybe we will, if they prove as unable to control their anger as Mr. Whelan has demonstrated.

Whelan, a legal writer of some repute whose stuff has appeared just about everywhere one would expect from a brilliant legal mind, but is perhaps best known for writing Bench Memos at NRO, became annoyed with Publius of Obsidian Wings for some of the cracks the blogger made about Whelan’s analysis of Sotomayer’s remarks about judicial policy making.

Responding point by point to Publius’s piquing of Whelan’s demonstrably thin skin, the President of the Ethics and Public Policy Center couldn’t leave it at that. Instead, he decided to act rather unethically and dig unto Publius’s personal life in order to discover who this mosquito nibbling on his backside might be.

Sounding for all the world as if he had solved the mystery of Area 51, Whelan wrote triumphantly:

I’ve been reliably informed that publius is in fact the pseudonym of law professor John F. Blevins of the South Texas College of Law. I e-mailed Blevins to ask him to confirm or deny that he is publius, and I copied the e-mail to the separate e-mail address, under the pseudonym “Edward Winkleman,” that publius used to respond to my initial private complaints about his reckless blogging. In response, I received from “Edward Winkleman” an e-mail stating that he is “not commenting on [his] identity” and that he writes under a pseudonym “[f]or a variety of private, family, and professional reasons.” I’m guessing that those reasons include that friends, family members, and his professional colleagues would be surprised by the poor quality and substance of his blogging.

I am very happy Ed has enjoyed his Captain Queeg moment and solved the mystery of the missing strawberries. Such sleuthing no doubt builds up an appetite to which Whelan might consider eating the plate of slightly overdone crow that is sitting in front of him.

And since Publius’s opinion differs from Whelan’s on Sotomayor’s beliefs regarding judicial activism, the only obvious explanation for his anonymity is that he is trying to keep his family and colleagues in the dark about the “poor quality and substance of his blogging.”

Could it be something else? Publius explains:

As I told Ed (to no avail), I have blogged under a pseudonym largely for private and professional reasons. Professionally, I’ve heard that pre-tenure blogging (particularly on politics) can cause problems. And before that, I was a lawyer with real clients. I also believe that the classroom should be as nonpolitical as possible – and I don’t want conservative students to feel uncomfortable before they take a single class based on my posts. So I don’t tell them about this blog. Also, I write and research on telecom policy – and I consider blogging and academic research separate endeavors. This, frankly, is a hobby.

Privately, I don’t write under my own name for family reasons. I’m from a conservative Southern family – and there are certain family members who I’d prefer not to know about this blog (thanks Ed). Also, I have family members who are well known in my home state who have had political jobs with Republicans, and I don’t want my posts to jeopardize anything for them (thanks again).

All of these things I would have told Ed, if he had asked. Instead, I told him that I have family and professional reasons for not publishing under my own name, and he wrote back and called me an “idiot” and a “coward.”

Whelan obviously doesn’t get out much. Or read the news. He is certainly an ignoramus about blogging if he hasn’t read about the dozens of cases of people who have lost jobs, been stalked and threatened, or forced to give up writing by employers all due to their passion for blogging.

My own case is instructive, although not for the reasons cited above. For the first 7 months this blog was in existence, I used the nom de blog” Superhawk” as a handle. The reasons was simple; being the brother of a national journalist known to most in the blogging community, I wanted to establish myself as a writer/blogger before coming out. I had always intended to write under my own name eventually. But I wanted to assure myself - quite understandably, I believe - that any success I enjoyed was due to my own efforts.

The irony, as it turned out, was that my own brother outed me on the Hugh Hewitt Show. He did it at almost the exact moment I was thinking of coming out of the anonymity closet anyway so it actually worked out pretty well.

The point is, there are a lot of good reasons for bloggers to remain anonymous and Ed Whalen has no right to decide differently just because he got steamed about someone’s response to his analysis. Did Publius commit a crime? Was he slandering Whalen? If not, Whalen’s fit of personal pique looks low, tawdry, childish, and vengeful. The closest Publius got to getting personal with Whelan was in calling him a “know-nothing demagogue.” And this was after making the point that Whelan knew better and was simply pandering to conservative sensibilities.

Holy Jesus, Ed. I’ve got pretty thin skin myself but it would take a helluva lot more than that to set me off. Questioning my integrity will do the trick as will trying to tell me what to write on my own site. And if you plan on commenting on this or any other post without reading what I’ve written and instead, substitute what you think I wrote or make the same points I made in the post and try and convince me I didn’t make them, you might as well be prepared for some skin flaying because that is my number one pet peeve.

But a “know-nothing demagogue?” In the rarefied atmosphere you inhabit at NRO and other elite bastions of opinion, them’s might be fightin’ words, but in the blogosphere, that’s almost a compliment. To point out that almost any blogger has experienced much, much worse (and dished it out accordingly) would be to mention the obvious to anyone who has spent more than an hour reading blogs.

So, through Whelan’s towering ignorance, he has outed someone for no good reason save his own sense of payback with still unknown consequences to a man he doesn’t know, who never did him any personal harm, and couldn’t affect his reputation one way or another even if that was his intent.

Yeah - way to go Ed.

The question of anonymity of bloggers is, I think, something to be settled by each individual blogger for the reasons I gave above. But what about anonymous commenters? Should they be granted the same comforting cloak that a blogging pseudonym brings?

There are so many sneering, snarky, ignorant, racist-bigots-haters out there in Blog Commentville - many more proportionately than actual bloggers - that I find it disgusting that these reprobates don’t have the guts to use their real names when chastising me or anyone else. If they want anonymity, they should start their own blogs. Their poison is spread to a far wider audience than they deserve as they glom onto sites with large traffic and where like minded anonymous trolls gather to cheer on each other’s putrid rants.

Even in the free wheeling atmosphere that blogs inhabit, if one were to attack fellow bloggers using the language and insults hurled by these anonymous commenters, they would never get the kind of attention they get on larger blogs. Hence, many bloggers are contemplating outlawing anonymous commenters altogether. Most publishing platforms today give the blogger the option of forcing their readers to register if they wish to comment, the registration being activated only when a link to a valid email address is sent.

While this stops the most rabid of trolls, it can’t stop anonymous commenters from fouling a site. The only option for the blogger is to ban the IP and name of the transgressor - a sometimes fruitless exercise as it is relatively easy to establish a new IP, get a new email address, and change one’s handle. In the end, one has the choice of banning comments altogether or simply deleting the objectionable ones.

If Publius had been a commenter at some blog attacking Whelan personally, or spreading lies about him, or simply calling him names, I would not be very sympathetic. But the blogger - one of the few left of center bloggers I find reasonable and thoughtful - gave what most bloggers would consider a mild rebuke to Whelan’s analysis and was outed for his trouble.

I would recommend that Mr. Whelan familiarize himself with blogs and the nature of the beast before going off half cocked and making himself appear a vengeful, spiteful, small minded man. I lost far more respect for Whelan through his outing of Hilzoy than anything the blogger has written about him.

What does that tell you, Mr. Whelan?

EMBARRASSING UPDATE

I stupidly wrote “Hilzoy” was the blogger outed when the actual victim was “Publius.” No excuse, just carelessness.

It was 62 years ago that US Rangers stormed the cliffs of Pointe Du Hoc near Omaha Beach. And as the veterans of that day grow oh so gray and bent, mere shadows of the lithe and limber youths who pulled themselves up the jagged bluffs, one hand over another, their comrades falling all about them, we are reminded that the word “courage” came alive that day.

Too often, we use that word in a base and cavalier way. A Hollywood movie star has “courage” because she revealed to the world that she’s a drug addict. A comic has “courage” because he made fun of the President of the United States to his face. A filmaker has “courage” because he made millions of dollars shooting a “documentary” which shows the US government complicit in the mass murder on 9/11.

And so instead of “courage” being a word with inexpressible significance and meaning beyond its simple definition, it has become a self congratulatory epithet, a hollowed out expression of empty promise and insincerity. Today, the purveyors of myth and shapers of opinion use the word to tell the rest of us who to admire and what to respect. No longer does courage imply sacrifice or a willingness to give all that one has for a cause greater than oneself. Instead, courage defines the selfish desires and overwrought egos of an ideology that sees more irony in the word than reverence.

All of this was in the future 62 years ago when the Rangers lived the word courage by taking the bluffs above the beach. And a short distance away at Omaha, Americans were dying, never knowing that their sacrifice was redefining the word courage for all time. For in their last bloody moments on earth, a titanic struggle was taking place between good and evil that 10,000 years from now, poets will still be singing songs and human beings will still be shaking their heads at in wonder and awestruck disbelief.

It takes genuine courage to confront evil. By its very nature, evil must defend itself by lashing out and destroying anything that attempts to get in its path, lest it perish ignominiously. Those representing good realize this which makes the confrontation between good and evil always a life threatening proposition and thus, an exercise in self-denial and sacrifice. The Rangers on the bluffs and the men in transports speeding toward bloody Omaha that terrible day 62 years ago knew full well what they were in for. They were willing to pay the price to defeat evil.

There were more than 700 war ships on the waters of Normandy that day, firepower never before seen on the open ocean. The men would be landing with tanks and guns and grenades and enough explosives to blow up a small town. But their most potent weapon by far was the courage to face their foes in open combat with the full knowledge that doing so was likely to get them killed. We ask ourselves quite properly, would I have been capable of such a feat? The answer will likely tell us much about ourselves.

Because in those last frantic minutes before hitting the beach, as grown men wept and prayed and steeled themselves for the supreme test of their young lives, they must have found something deep within themselves, something they could mentally and emotionally grasp and hold onto so real and palpable it must have been. What was it? An image of their family? A remembrance of love and closeness that wrapped itself around them and made them feel safe? Or perhaps it was the simple recognition of the here and now with a sublime faith that He that arbitrates our fate has placed me in His keeping and if these be my last moments, let them be meaningful ones.

Whatever rushed thoughts were coursing through their minds as they splashed ashore, participating in some of the most intense combat ever experienced by American fighting men, their courage allowed them to disobey the most primal of instincts to flee for safety and walk into the teeth of the enemy’s fire. And then, the supreme test. Historian Stephen Ambrose:

They were getting butchered where they were all the sea wall because the Germans had it all zeroed in with their mortars that were coming down on top of them. And, “Over here, Captain,” “Over here, Lieutenant, over here.” A sergeant looked at this situation and said, “The hell with this. If I’m going to get killed, I’m going to take some Germans with me.” And he would call out, “Follow me,” and up he would start. Hitler didn’t believe this was ever possible. Hitler was certain that the soft, effeminate children of democracy could never become soldiers. Hitler was certain that the Nazi youth would always outfight the Boy Scouts, and Hitler was wrong.

The Boy Scouts took them on D-Day. Joe Dawson led Company G. He started off with 200 men. He got to the top of the bluff with 20 men, but he got to the top. He was the first one to get there. He’s going to be introducing President Clinton tomorrow at Omaha Beach. John Spaulding was another. He was a lieutenant. Many of them are nameless. I don’t know their names. I’ve talked to men who’ve said, “I saw this lieutenant and he tossed a grenade into the embrasure of that fortification, and out came four Germans with their hands up. I thought to myself, hell, if he can do that, I can do that.” “What was his name?” I will ask. “Geez, I don’t know. I never found out his name. I never saw him before, and I never saw him again, but he was a great man. He got me up that bluff.”

“Unknown but to God” and history, I suspect. In the end, whatever gave them the inner strength to keep going in the face of such murderous opposition, it was as inspirational then as it is today.

It is fitting and proper that we remember their courage today, the young men who lived and died the word courage. But we must also question ourselves about our commitment to that memory. Does it have meaning beyond the misty eyed reminisces of old men? Can we still summon forth the will to perform great deeds in a cause that reaches far beyond our narrow little corner of planet earth in which we live and love and die?

At the moment, the answer to that last question is unknown. But I daresay the fate of the nation rests upon a positive response. For unless we are willing to propel ourselves beyond our own selfish, comfortable existence and find the strength to confront the evil that seeks to destroy us, we are more likely to end up a victim of our own hubris rather than triumphant with the knowledge that we, like the men of D-Day, brought to life the word courage and made it once again something to be lived and felt in our hearts, ever mindful of the sacrifice of those who came before us.

This post originally appeared on June 6, 2006

My latest column is up at PJ Media and it is receiving the usual love and respect of commenters there.

Evidently, I was insufficiently harsh and brutal on the president, on Muslims, and on the media. But in reading a lot of react to the speech from yesterday and today, I don’t think my analysis is that far off from many on the thoughtful right. We all had problems with much of what Obama said but also acknowledge that the effort was necessary and that there were places where the president was very good.

I think in particular, Obama’s themes were, while rather ordinary, very successful in making the speech accessible to his audience. And I can’t see anyone on the right quibbling with the president’s strong, unequivocal statement that he would defend this country and citizens from terrorism - implying he would do so even if the Muslim world disagreed with him. Alas, that kind of strength was missing from much of the speech.

Here’s a sample but please do me a favor and read the whole thing before commenting:

The fact that this perception has been fed by the controlled press of the holy terrors who rule much of the Islamic world as well as the holy men who seek to control their flocks through fear of the “crusader” and hate for the infidel only made Obama’s job of breaking through the ignorance and isolation that is the sad lot of most of the world’s Muslims that much harder.

Even if you have a very low opinion of President Obama, I don’t see how you can honestly criticize him for trying to alter the dynamic that currently exists between Islam and the West. And keeping in mind that we are at war with a large segment of Islam (much larger than the president would have ever dared say in public), the rhetorical tightrope that Obama was forced to walk between unequivocally condemning the extremists while attempting to placate the sensibilities and feelings of hypersensitive Muslims who believe they have been stereotyped as mad bombers was worthy of anything Barnum and Bailey could have produced.

There are many on both the left and right who are criticizing the president for making a speech that didn’t accomplish anything or actually played into the hands of our enemies. While I found plenty that was objectionable in the speech, I think that kind of criticism misses the point.

As the president said, no one speech was going to change things. Rather, it was the fact that speech was made in the first place, and where it was given that impacted the consciousness of the Muslim world. Right now, they’re not listening to us — even with our Lightworker president in office. Announcing to the world that the president of the United States was going to address the Muslim world and do it in a Muslim country you have to admit at least got the planet’s attention.

Every journey begins with a first step. And if the minimum President Obama could accomplish would be to get the Muslim world to pause in their headlong dash toward history’s gasoline dump with a stick of dynamite in their mouth and a fistful of lit matches, while forcing them to listen to a few (too few, as it turned out) truths about Islam and the threat of extremists, then the president would have accomplished as much as could be expected.

I am writing an in-depth piece for Pajamas Media on the speech but I wanted to get some thoughts down while some of them were fresh in my mind.

I saw the speech this morning and just finished reading the transcript. My initial impression from watching it was, I believe, correct; it was a very good speech with some eye popping assumptions that were just plain false, a glossing over of some points that needed to be hit harder, and a troubling lack of candor about the Muslim world regarding extremism that he either believes or deliberately failed to address.

Positive parts of the speech were that he did indeed tell the Muslim world some things they needed to hear: Denial that al-Qaeda carried out the attacks of 9/11 and the reality of the Holocaust are two subjects that are absolutely essential for the Muslim world to accept before any progress can be made. I think he also said some things that we in the west needed to hear about Islam although that part of his speech will fall on deaf ears in this country. Those predisposed to believe the worst about Islam and Muslims will not change (and that goes double for the other side).

I also thought Obama gave a good defense of our invasion of Afghanistan - something we should be reminding Pakistan of every day. And while I wish he would have hit the Iranian nuclear problem much harder, he laid out the consequences of an Iranian bomb realistically and without bombast. What he can do about it is another story.

He said some nice things about religious freedom and the democratic aspirations of all people on the planet. But Bush had been saying basically the same thing for years. And as far as religious freedom, his dubious claim of tolerance for other religions by Islam either proves his naivete or he has been misinformed about Christian persecution in Islamic lands.

His suggestive rhetoric that we are “imposing” democracy on Iraq or Afghanistan was pretty strange. While the Iraqi constitution borrowed some western concepts, it is much more beholden to Arab and Islamic practices than western-style government. I don’t recall anywhere in the US Constitution where it says the Koran inspires the law as it does in the Iraqi document.

Besides, should we have “imposed” another dictatorship on the Iraqis instead? I see no evidence that we were seeking to impose our values or culture on the Iraqis either. Just where this “imposing democracy” line came from would be a mystery except that is standard leftist tripe going back to Viet Nam.

He said almost nothing about government corruption (”stealing from the people”) when most citizens in the Middle East view the issue as one of the major problems in their countries. And he was virtually silent about separation of church from state. This was understandable but a truly brave speech would have addressed the issue head on. Islam is not incompatible with modernity but when governments use its traditions and teachings to control the people, impede economic development, stifle free speech, and maintain power, it becomes a dead weight on realizing progress toward a free, open, and prosperous society.

Stylistically, I thought the speech was near brilliant. It was extremely well organized, and the segues from topic to topic were rhetorically smooth and logical. It was both easy to follow if you were watching and easy to read.

The rhetoric was flowery without being obnoxious. Obama’s speeches have a tendency to take rhetorical flight and have trouble coming in for a landing sometimes. He avoided that pitfall by carefully crafting imagery that was substantive and somewhat subdued. The tone was at times hectoring - almost like a teacher scolding a class. But there was much beauty in the language and he mostly succeeded in walking the line between preaching and conversation.

There were many specific passages that will be taken out of context to attack the speech - many of them justified in my opinion. His belief that no one country should dominate in this brave new world is nonsense - unless he intends to deliberately subsume American interests to please other countries and the United Nations. You can bet the Russians and the Chinese were laughing at that passage. They have no intention of not acting in their vital interests - even if the world condemns them for it - as they seek to match or supplant America as the dominant power on the planet.

Was it a great speech? I subscribe to Theodore H. White’s view of what makes a great speech where three elements have to be present for a political speech to achieve immortality. First, the moment in time must amplify the words spoken. Since Obama’s Cairo address had no dramatic event or backdrop, that alone would disqualify it from being considered with even the top 100 American speeches much less being analogous to several of Churchill’s ringing addresses.

But the other factors that White believed made a great speech - the place the address is given and the words themselves, which should be great both spoken and read - came close to being fulfilled with Obama’s address. Martin Luther King speaking when he did and where he did acted as a gigantic megaphone for his words. Certainly Obama’s address will receive wide play around the world and the fact that he delivered it in a Muslim country will amplify the message . And the words in the speech itself will be seen in a context that guarantees the address will live beyond the daily news cycle.

In short, a good speech that could have been braver.

UPDATE

There’s a lot of good commentary both right and left. Ignore the politically motivated on both sides and concentrate on independent analysis.

On the right, Ed Morrissey and Christopher Preble of Cato have reasoned analysis. On the left, Peter Daou has an interesting critique. But the reality is, most on the right are trashing it and most on the left either believe it the second coming of the Sermon on the Mount or take great delight in linking to righties trashing the speech.

Conor Friedersdorf receiving some words of wisdom from one of his many strawmen.

A few days ago when the Levin/Dreher/Friedersdorf war was waging at various points around the internet, I wanted to weigh in on it to defend Conor Friedersdorf from charges by some that he was just some youthful lightweight whose attacks on Levin for suggesting a woman’s husband put a gun to his head for being married to such a dolt were misguided and ignorant of the “context” found on conservative talk radio.

After reading this piece at The American Scene by Mr. Friedersdorf, I’m glad I didn’t.

I have given up trying to understand why conservatives place such importance on what comes out of the mouths of pop righties like Levin whose shtick, while entertaining, is taken far too seriously by way too many. Fine. Color me a old fuddy duddy but it used to be conservatives were perfectly able to find inspiration and guidance from genuine thinkers or even thoughtful politicians. I suppose every mass movement needs its popularizers and celebrities these days (I recall the guff astronomer Carl Sagan endured from his colleagues for trying to make extraordinarily complex concepts accessible to minds less scientifically inclined - like mine). But really now, must we elevate to hero status people whose claim to fame is that they can savage the opposition in more colorful and amusing ways than some other shock jock?

Yes, yes, I know that Rush, Levin, and the rest do more than simply make liberals look like idiots, and even dangerous idiots at times. They also dispense conservative wisdom - or, at least what their adoring fans believe is wisdom. Mark me down as unimpressed with most of these shock jocks forays into the realm of conservative ideas. Listening to Limbaugh sometimes reminds me of my best friend John when I was in high school who didn’t read Moby Dick, or The Red Badge of Courage, or any of the classics assigned in literature class but instead bought the comic book version, usually on the morning of the test. Needless to say, he passed the exam but lost out on the richness of Melville’s prose and Crane’s towering anger at the waste of war.

I like a good verbal slap at liberals as much as the next conservative but why must it degenerate into the kind of crude vulgarities used by Levin et al? In the race for ratings, the more inventive the invective, the more friendly that Arbitron meter becomes, I guess.

At any rate, I agreed with Friedersdorf that Levin stepped over the line and should have been smacked down for it. But when a young man like Friedersdorf comes up with a shockingly ill conceived post like this one on “terror hawks” and how Obama could use the same excuses used by Bush to start going after anti-abortion activists, I am glad my support for his arguments against Levin was never put in a post.

This piece has a double dose of straw men, a generous dollop of reductio ad absurdom argumentation, with a heaping pile of manure for desert.

First, what’s with this?

The attack on Dr. Tiller is widely referred to as “terrorism” in the blogosphere. Agree or not, it is easy to image an ongoing terrorist campaign run by fringe pro-lifers to shut down abortion clinics. Heaven forbid that this recent murder is followed by bombings at a few Planned Parenthood locations, but that scenario isn’t unthinkable — copycat atrocities are a sad fact of modern life.

“Easy to image” an “ongoing terrorist campaign” carried out by fanatical pro lifers in a scenario that “isn’t unthinkable? No, it’s not easy to imagine and barely thinkable (Dismissing the possibility entirely cannot be done but “easy to imagine” it is not.) In fact, one would have to deliberately ignore history to imagine anything of the sort. Such acts of murder by unbalanced fanatics have been blessedly rare and have never come in the kind of terrorist wave attack Friedersdorf posits above. The self evident reason is that abortion providers are on high alert after such a terrorist act as are clinics, making further atrocities nearly impossible.

But someone must have put a burr up Mr. Friedersdorf’s behind for him to go off like this:

Should something like that come to pass, I wonder how “War on Terror hawks” would react. My admittedly flawed term is meant to reference folks who believe the executive branch possesses broad unchecked powers to combat terrorism, including the designation of American citizens as enemy combatants, the indefinite detention of terror suspects, wiretapping phones without warrants, “enhanced interrogation techniques,” and other powers initially claimed by the Bush Administration and its defenders. Would these predominantly conservative officials, commentators and writers be comfortable if President Obama declared two or three extremist pro-lifers as “enemy combatants”? Should Pres. Obama have the prerogative to order the waterboarding of these uncharged, untried detainees? Should he be able to listen in on phone conversations originating from evangelical churches where suspected abortion extremists hang out? The answer is probably that different “War on Terror hawks” — anyone have a better term for this? — would react differently, but as a matter of law, it seems to me that if they’d gotten their way during the Bush Administration, President Obama would have the power to take all those steps and more, a prospect that is terrifying to me, not because I think our Commander in Chief is looking for a pretext to round up innocent pro-lifers, but because it doesn’t take many violent attacks before Americans start clamoring for a strong executive response, a dynamic that tends to erode liberties in previously unthinkable ways and spawn mistakes whereby innocents are made to suffer.

First of all, take a breath, my friend. My eyes are turning red just from reading that last sentence.

I must congratulate Mr. Friedersdorf on setting up such a fine strawman. Obama holding pro-life activists as “enemy combatants” sure is dramatic but really now, the odds of that happening fall somewhere between my becoming starting right fielder for the Chicago Cubs and the moon careening out of orbit and hitting the earth before I finish writing this sentence. Still here? Good.

So the idea that “terror hawk” commentators would be faced with such a question has as much chance of occurring as me being elected Governor of Illinois - especially since I am a nominal Republican and, while I wouldn’t mind a little harmless graft now and again, the crooks and rogues who inhabit the sewer of Illinois politics are major leaguers compared to anyone else.

It is a ridiculous argument to make, this idea that any president would come down on anti-abortion fanatics like that. Ditto waterboarding pro life activists (Why??). And Mr. Friedersdorf is naive indeed if he doesn’t believe the FBI isn’t already listening in on what these activists are up to - even if the connection leads to a church. The Bureau no doubt has a handle on most, if not all of the fanatics and probably have a good idea which ones are a threat and which are mostly talk.

Friedersdorf is also probably off base with his contention that a wave of terrorist attacks on clinics would cause an outcry by Americans for a “strong executive response.” No doubt pro-choice activists would quite understandably be yelping for the civil liberties of activists but would the average American, who would be in little danger from such attacks, make the kind of stink about internal security that our politicians made in the aftermath of 9/11?

Mr. Friedersdorf’s arguments are based on the notion that there is equivalence between a terrorist attack carried out by trained cadres hell bent on killing as many of us as possible and, historically speaking, lone wackos or small groups of untrained fanatics attacking small targets that — again, historically - have resulted in a small loss of life. I don’t see the equivalence or much need to worry that Obama or any president - even if Mr. Friedersorf’s terror wave scenario came true - would carry out the draconian measures that President Bush felt necessary to impose in the aftermath of 9/11.

I would be in agreement with Conor if he had stuck to the notion that another terrorist attack that was equally or more devastating than 9/11 would almost certainly lead to additional curtailments of our liberties. I hate to contemplate the notion of what the aftermath of a WMD attack would entail and what impact it would have on our freedoms. But Friedersdorf is trying to make a point about the danger of right wing religious nuts being equal to that of the jihadists - not only as a threat but that tactics used to fight the jihadists would be used to violate the civil liberties of anti-abortion fanatics That dog don’t hunt.

One point Conor makes I agree with; supporting torture techniques like waterboarding is wrong. As for the rest, I have been troubled by some of the Bush-era policies like FISA violations and and some of the more eyebrow raising strictures in the Patriot Act like removing safeguards on FBI warrants. But I am also not a civil liberties absolutist and recognize that the exigencies of war sometimes calls for a curtailment of some liberty. That has historically been the case and to have denied the president the same powers granted every president since Washington would have been wrong.

If I were Conor Friedersdorf, I would pick another analogy to make his point about “terror hawks” than the fringe fanatics of the anti-abortion movement.