Right Wing Nut House

No less than 5 recent articles (and a spirited debate between two very smart conservatives in David Frum and David Horowitz) have taken on the question regarding the demise of intellectual conservatism and the rise of movement or “populist” conservatives.

The intellectuals go under several names, depending on which side of the divide you sit. They are “reformers,” or RINO’s, or “Elders,” or “squishes.” And to varying degrees, they have either died off, disappeared, or been marginalized by the populists.

Or not.

With such a huge divide between the two camps in even trying to define conservatism, much less agree on what the public face of conservatism should look like, it is apparent that there will not be a meeting of the minds anytime soon. Nor will the two sides be pooling their intellectual capital to fight the liberals on the battlefield of ideas where it would do the most good, rather than in the arena of soundbites and bitter, exaggerated denunciations that only makes the right look like angry kooks or worse.

I will examine each of these articles and critique them, beginning from the premise that the intellectual right is not dead, but made quiescent by the surge of the populists and their ability to dominate the discussion through the sheer brutality of their critiques which drown out the far more reasonable, and reality based analyses of - what should they be called? I guess “reformists” is as good as any moniker although it doesn’t exactly speak to the critique of movement conservatives whose whole idea of reform seems to be kicking the reformists in the teeth.

Let’s start today with an excellent defense of Glenn Beck and the populists tactics by David Horowitz, who took part in an informal “Symposium” at FrontPage.com:

There are two issues here. One is a remarkable conservative outburst against the broadcaster Glenn Beck which includes you, Mark Levin and Pete Wehner among others, and which collectively wishes for his early self-destruction. The message from the three of you is that for the good of the conservative cause he should be silent — and the sooner the better. Wehner expresses the judgment I detect in all three of your blasts in this sentence: “The role Glenn Beck is playing is harmful in its totality.”

More than anything else, it is this is that I am reacting to. I think this attitude is wrongheaded, absurd, destructive to the conservative cause and a blatant contradiction of the “big tent” philosophy which you otherwise support.

[...]

Glenn Beck is daily providing a school for millions of Americans in the nature and agendas and networks of the left – something that your fine books do not do, and Mark Levin’s fine books do not do, and Pete Wehner’s volumes of blogs and speeches and position papers – all admirable in my estimation, also do not do. How are conservatives going to meet the challenge of the left if they don’t understand what it is, how it operates and what it intends? And who else is giving courses in this subject at the moment?

Now I have to confess my own vested interest in this. Because the fact is that I have been attempting to do this from a much smaller platform than Beck’s for many years. Five years ago I put an encyclopedia of the left on the web called Discover the Networks. It details the chief groups, individuals and funders of the left and maps their agendas and networks. Since I put it up five years ago, 20 million people have visited the site, many of whom have written articles and even books from its information. So far as I can tell, this site has never been mentioned by you or Wehner or Mark Levin or National Review or the Weekly Standard or the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal. But it has been read by and profoundly influenced the producers and anchors at Fox News. Among these no one has used it so systematically and relentlessly and to such great effect as Glenn Beck.

Horowitz gives David Frum what has become the standard attack on moderates and intellectual conservatives:

It seems to me you are suffering from a kind of political Stockholm syndrome. You inhabit a mental universe shaped by media like Newsweek and the New York Review of Books, in which you are a hostage of the Left. As a result you’ve absorbed some of their attitudes, and look at Palin and other non-U conservatives through their eyes, instead of your own.

Spoken like a true believer. Of this argument, I will say this; Hogwash!

Horowitz presupposes that all news media is biased and that only he and his band of intellectual dilettantes can see it. That notion, by itself, is ignorant. It rejects the idea of professionalism of any kind in the media, while insulting the intelligence of the American people who, sheeplike, are led to feed at the liberal trough without a clue that they are being “indoctrinated.”

I prefer to take my biases one reporter/writer at a time, thank you. There are good, solid, objective (as possible) correspondents and then there are biased ones - both liberal and conservative. To lump them all into a liberal universe is ridiculous - as is the notion the only good source of news is Fox or some other conservative outlet. It seems to me that people who accuse me of being held “hostage” by a liberal media are themselves in thrall to a one note, equally biased media where they get most of their information from Fox News and ranting talk show hosts.

Come back and see me when you are able to discuss an issue from all angles, thus proving to me that you have taken the time to truly understand the subtleties and nuances - the clash of interests and ideology. It is my belief that unless you can argue both sides of an issue effectively, you don’t know it and should keep reading. Those who see only black and white, good or evil, suffer from one dimensional thinking - a disease far too prevalent among Horowitz and those he is defending.

I am not an intellectual - obviously. But I think it important to rigorously examine both your own biases and predilections as well as your opponents before coming to any conclusions. Any other approach is shallow sophistry, knee jerk emotionalism which has become the hallmark of the Glenn Becks, Rush Limbaughs, and Sean Hannity’s of the right.

David Frum says something important about this that Horowitz doesn’t address:

It is true that I have criticized some famous conservative talkers like Rush Limbaugh and now Glenn Beck, just as I have previously criticized right-wing opponents of the war on terror like Pat Buchanan and Lew Rockwell. But my “crusade” as David Horowitz calls is not a crusade to criticize. It is a crusade to repair and modernize a very troubled conservative movement.

I agree with David’s implied point that a thriving conservative movement needs a variety of talents: politicians and academics, thinkers and activists, intellectuals and popularizers.

Both have their appropriate roles. But it seems to me that latterly the conservative intellectuals have not properly fulfilled theirs.

And the result is that the conservative intellectual movement has become subservient to the political entertainment complex – with seriously negative consequences for conservative political success. It’s very sobering to compare how much conservatives got done in the 12 years before the creation of Fox News in 1996 with how little they have achieved in the 13 years since. And the problem has only intensified since the election of 2008, with the conservative entertainment complex helping to trap conservatives in a cycle of shrillness, rage, and paranoia that radically off-putting to the centrist voters who will choose the next president and Congress.

We are still a center-right country - but with the emphasis on “center.” People may be of a mind to reject Obamacare but are in no mood to embrace the extremely ideological conservatism that posits the left as minions of Satan and that anything Obama does is not only wrong, but inimical to freedom. It justifies opposing him and the left using the most outrageously exaggerated rhetoric that, if you really believe it, marks you as a paranoid, or more often, uninformed and illogical.

It’s not just a question of “manners,” although keeping debate within the boundaries of respect for others is necessary in a democracy. It is a question of detaching rank emotionalism from reason; it’s rejecting argument by demonization and substituting logic; it’s not employing paranoid exaggeration when realistic descriptions of what the president and the left are trying to do is easily done.

In each case, the former marks one as an unthinking, shrill, unbalanced ideologue who think Americans must be frightened into agreeing with them; the latter, someone who believes that Americans are persuadable without the histrionics employed by cotton candy conservatives on talk radio and elsewhere.

One face of conservatism is off putting to the majority; the other, indicative of a movement that takes itself seriously and doesn’t listen to clowns, and deliberate provocateurs who care more about ratings and ad money than whether conservative ideas triumph. If Rush Limbaugh actually believes that his hysterical view of liberals and Obama (as well as his shallow understanding of conservatism) contributes to conservatism’s popularity and the perception that our ideas should win out over those of the left, he is only kidding himself.

His audience, while huge by radio standards, is still relatively small compared to the number of voters at large. And considering his unpopularity outside of the right, he can’t possibly believe that his rants do anything except resonate with an audience that already agrees with him. The same holds true for the other pop conservatives who, while fulfilling a vital role of “popularizing” conservatism, nevertheless end up being a net minus for the right because of their antics and extraordinarily skewed version of reality.

I am not interested in purging the popularizers. I am interested in reducing their influence - as I am interested in reducing the influence on policy in the GOP by the religious right - and the perception that their methods and views reflect a majority of those of us on the right.

If so, it will be a long road to hoe for reformists who will continue to wander in the wilderness created by the scorched earth conservatives whose excessive ideology poisons the well of ideas from which so little has been drawn in recent years.

My latest at PJ Media is up and it deals with our slowly evolving policy toward Iran, begun during the Bush administration and carried on by Obama’s team, that the US has rejected the military option entirely (or nearly so) and is working toward containment and deterrence.

A sample:

The number one unpleasant truth the UN refuses to face is that the Iranians are not going to stop their drive for developing the capability to build a nuclear weapon unless someone physically restrains them from doing so. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has made this perfectly plain and there should be no reason to doubt him. He has tied the Iranian nuclear program to the issue of Iranian sovereignty and demands the same rights any other nation has to a nuclear program granted under international law.

The “P-5 + 1? talks (the five permanent members of the Security Council plus Germany) in Geneva will simply confirm what everyone already knows: no sanctions regime will prevent Iran from continuing their nuclear work. There are no enticements, no blandishments that the Iranians will accept in exchange for abandoning what they clearly see is a matter of national pride and international prestige. To think otherwise is not logical.

There have been all manner of grandiose proposals for a “grand bargain” that would establish a multinational enrichment facility on Iranian soil, or a vastly increased inspection regime by the IAEA, in exchange for inducements to Iran that consist of sponsoring Iranian membership in the WTO to increased trade with the West.

But when Iran refuses, what then? And here is where I think it fairly obvious that the United States, the West, and the rest of the world have already accepted the idea that Iran is going to eventually develop the capability to construct a nuclear bomb.

It’s easy to declare that bombing Iran will get them to see reason (how this is so is never quite revealed). But taking a hard headed look at the military option necessarily means trying to ascertain what you would gain by a strike versus what you would lose. And I think in the fall of October, 2006, the Bush administration finally reached a consensus that the military option would cause far more problems than it would solve.

The recent revelation about a previously unknown Iranian enrichment facility drives that point home. For any military action to be successful, we would have to identify the the targets that would have to be destroyed in order to set back the Iranian program several years (the relentless logic of zero sum benefits/consequences demands that we don’t have to go back and do the same thing in a matter of months). But it is likely now that Iran has been surreptitiously adding to their capability by building facilities of which we are totally unaware.

You can’t bomb what you don’t know about. And given the ruinous consequences of military action to American interests, you damn well better be sure that any such strike took out enough of the Iranian program that they could not threaten anyone for at least a couple of years. (I am not even going to address invasion and regime change. Such notions are silly.)

And what of the consequences to the innocent? No one has ever - repeat ever - deliberately bombed a nuclear enrichment facility (the Israeli strike on the Osirak reactor never hit the reactor itself, targeting the vast infrastructure that supported it). But by definition, a strike on Nantanz or the vast complex we would be hitting centrifuges and reactors full of enriched uranium:

The Persian Gulf nations of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, and Iran have more than half the world’s known oil reserves. The 1981 study by Fetter and Tsipis in Scientific American on “Catastrophic Releases of Radioactivity” estimated that bombing a nuclear reactor would cause 8600 square miles around the reactor to be uninhabitable, depending on which way the wind blows. Bombing the Bushehr reactor will mean half of the world’s oil is instantly inaccessible. Bombing Iran means that Americans will not be driving cars any where, any more, for a long, long time. The American Way of Life will be finished. An economic collapse unimagined by Americans will follow. Mechanized farming and food transport will be finished. Famine is a possibility. Food riots are a certainty, in the land of plenty, with the fuel gauge on empty.

By the way - we’d probably end up killing some Russians if we bombed Bushehr as they are assisting the Iranians in construction.

And Israel? Richard Clark sums up the Israeli dilemma on bombing Iran:

Well, put yourself in Israel’s shoes. The President of Iran has said repeatedly that he wants to wipe Israel off the face of the earth. He’s repeatedly denied that the Holocaust ever took place. He talks in mystical terms about the invisible Imam and the return of the expected one, the Madi, all of which sounds like an Islamic version of the fundamentalist Christians talking about rapture and final days and if this person had the authority to throw nuclear weapons around, would he perhaps throw them at Israel without further provocation because he wants to wipe Israel off the face of the earth? From the Israeli perspective, two or three nuclear weapons going off in their country is the end of their country. This is an existential issue for Israel. So, we, as Israel’s ally, have to take that into account. This is not just a question of another country getting a nuclear weapon like, say, Pakistan or India. It’s a question of a country that has actively supported terrorism, has had complete disregard for international law and talks openly about destroying Israel. So, this is a serious question for the United States and for Israel. But it doesn’t mean that because it’s a serious question that the answer is necessarily a military option.

As I point out in the PJM piece, Israel is apparently taking a wait and see attitude - at least until the end of the year. At that point, unless the world applies “crippling” (word used by the Israeli ambassador to the US) sanctions on Iran, all bets are off and the clock may strike midnight.

Israel is in a horrible position - but so are we if they strike. Iran will simply blame us anyway and the same consequences that would accrue if we ourselves bombed the Iranians would probably be visited on us anyway. Logically, this would mean that we may threaten Israel with a cutoff or a substantial reduction in aid if they choose the military option towards Iran. My guess is, they’ve already been told that which has probably delayed a strike on Tehran to this point.

If the rest of the world has already accepted the fact of Iranian nukes, this means that Israel is probably alone in their desire to start a war over the issue. Would that stay their hand in attacking? Obama would not stand still for an Israeli strike on Iran where America was blamed so in addition to all the other consequences that the Jewish state must calculate, there is the very real possibility of an actively hostile America to consider. If that becomes part of the calculation, it is very possible that Israel would not bomb Iran and would work with us to develop missile defense and other countermeasures short of war.

I fully realize that many supporters of Israel would like to see either the US or the Jewish state bomb Iran. Sometimes, a military response is necessary regardless of the consequences. But in this case, where the gain in bombing is so uncertain while the consequences of military action are stark and predictable, responsible policy makers here, and in Israel, I believe, will eventually come to the conclusion (if they haven’t already) that the second option - unsatisfying as it is - of not taking military action while working to protect our friends and deter the Iranians otherwise, is probably the wisest course.

I finally did it.

Mediacom proved their incompetence once too often and I have made the switch to satellite TV - Direct TV to be specific.

The straw that finally broke the Three Toed Sloth’s back was the total breakdown in Mediacom’s automatic bill pay. After taking about 4 months to get set up - signing up time and time again to have them deduct the bill automatically from my checking account - auto pay finally kicked in last April. For exactly 4 months, it worked fine.

Then in July, Mediacom never deducted anything from my bank account. I probably should have noticed but didn’t. Neither did the company make a deduction in August. This time, I received a notice last week that we would be disconnected unless the July bill was paid.

I called and talked to three separate people - two customer service and one in the collection department - who swore that their records showed the bank had denied their efforts to elicit payment. When I offered to pay online, I was told not to bother, that the situation had been corrected and that auto pay would deduct for both bills last Wednesday. The collection employee was cross, argumentative, and treated me like dirt.

After calling the bank only to find out they were all either lying or incompetent boobs because the bank had absolutely no record of any requests for withdrawal from Mediacom, I decided to wait to see what would happen on Wednesday before doing anything.

Meanwhile, a collection call came every day - each time we had to explain all over again the problem. Each time the Mediacom employee said there was no record of anyone calling previously - including no record of my having called the week before to volunteer to pay the amount immediately.

Wednesday came and went without the amount being deducted from our bank account. When I called on Thursday, it was to inform them that I had paid the past due amount and that I was switching to the dish. The customer service rep was laughing under his breath at me. I could hear the amusement in his voice as I related the entire story of incompetence and lousy service.

With that kind of attitude, Mediacom better hope they can maintain their monopoly on cable TV in the areas they are licensed. Otherwise, they will disappear faster than you can say “Mediacom sucks.”

Today, Direct TV installed 250 crystal clear channels that have already left Mediacom in the dust. The introductory offer includes the whole NFL package - free for 5 months. Every movie channel - premium or otherwise - every sports channel, every artsty fartsy, science, history, news, channel known to the English speaking world.

The picture quality is jaw dropping. Just a few days ago I was saying to Zsu-Zsu that we must be getting too used to HD TV because watching the paltry 30 channels Mediacom offered in HD was getting boring. Well, it wasn’t that it was necessarily getting boring - it was that the signal from Mediacom was coming from 100 miles away. We also got extremely tired of pixelated screens on a regular basis, extremely poor standard def reception, and the constant frozen frames that would sometimes last for minutes.

I was not prepared for the difference in picture quality. It’s like we didn’t have an HD set for the previous year. With 130 HD channels, digital sound on every channel (Our Bose sounds incredible), I can see the follicles on Wolf Blitzer’s face. The nose hairs of Chris Matthews are brought out in stark relief. In short, I am going to watch football in a few minutes and I am sure that I am going to see the bloodshot eyes of Ray Lewis as he eats the opposing quarterback alive.

I was an idiot for not doing this within two weeks of moving out to Streator.

One other big change in our lives; a new arrival:

Meet Lucky. And yes, he is. Not just for finding a home with us but also for being alive at all.

It seems that lucky was born in the wild, child of one of the many strays who hang around, scrounging for food and looking for sex with kitties lucky enough to have their own slaves. Lucky and her littermates were fortunate enough to have been found by some special needs people who live in a group home down the street. Last weekend, one of the teens was going house to house looking to give the kittens away and we decided to take a chance and bring one into our home.

We have two grown cats, of course, who are very comfortable with each other.

So the new arrival was a chance to show their magnanimity and interpersonal skills in adopting the newcomer and welcoming him with open arms.

Wel,, Aramis and Snowball were perfectly willing to be friends but our wild little Lucky had other ideas. Every time either one would approach, he would let out the most ear piercing growls and hisses you can imagine. Yes, they will eventually work out living arrangements but it is so pathetic to see the two of them walking away in bewilderment after Lucky warns them not to approach. I really think they want to be friends but will just have to be patient with the little one until he gets his paws under him.

Meantime, get plenty of rest and we’ll go looking for more trouble tomorrow.

No, it doesn’t seem like “just yesterday,” or feel like anything but what it is; 5 years of blogging at The House.

I feel every one of those years. With more than 3,200 posts - most of them essay length or longer - my fingers hurt just thinking about it. My head hurts when I reflect on all that thinking. And my soul is tired to its core.

Not looking for sympathy here. Just telling you how it is. Writing a daily journal for 5 years where you expose your deepest thoughts and emotions, leaving yourself open to the slings and arrows of experts at invective and the put down would tax the constitution of anyone. The last 3 years have been especially hard as I have been at odds with many of you (and many more who no longer read me) over fundamental matters of philosophy as well as specific issues.

There have been many times - too many to count - that I just wanted to throw in the towel and close up shop. I have lost many friends, many larger bloggers who used to support this site and give me much encouragement have fallen away. I get little respect from anyone I care about and less notice from those I do.

Heh - now it IS starting to sound like a pity party. OK - enough of that. The real question is why? Why, if blogging makes me miserable sometimes, if I’ve lost the respect of people whose opinion matters to me, if my readership is a pittance of what it once was, and if just about everytime I write something, the most vile, hurtful things are said about me, do I keep plugging away, day after day?

In an odd way, I am driven to do it. Not because I feel I matter and am making a difference. My ego is large but not that big. But because I simply feel I have something to say about contemporary America and conservatism that needs to be said. And, as I have pointed out many times, this site acts as a combination confessional and canvas where I spread my thoughts out in all their incoherence, their imperfection, their confusion, their conceit, and attempt to glean the essence of what I really believe.

It is the “examined life” I seek. A hubristic effort, no doubt, but one worth striving for. I am driven to write about it not so much to share it but to fulfill a very deep need that I think resides in all of us; the drive to know ourselves. The intense curiosity we all have about who we are, what we believe, can be addressed only be a healthy dose of self-criticism and self-examination. Sometimes, it is painful. Sometimes I reject what is so obvious to others but hidden from me. Sometimes I learn the wrong lessons or even lie to myself as we all do at times. But it is the process that is rewarding - addicting I guess. And that’s why I am still blogging after 5 years.

Some might be curious about how I think blogging has changed in 5 years. There are many more of us. There are fewer individual bloggers such as myself. There are a lot fewer links from everyone to be had - not quite sure why that is so although it is quite noticeable. I think bloggers just starting out will have a harder time gathering an audience than I did. Beyond this, social networking sites have augmented blogs - they will not replace them. And the business of blogging - making money at it - has gotten a lot tougher.

I have, in the past, thanked a lot of people when acknowledging this anniversary. They seemed to get fewer every year so I won’t do that now (thanks Ed). The cynic in me wants to tell you all to go to hell because I don’t care if you read me or not. But that wouldn’t be true and you guys know it. I may be a pill. I may be a curmudgeon. I may lash out at commenters, returning insult for insult, tit for tat. But for those who have been with me from the beginning and to those who joined me along the way, I do sincerely, and humbly thank you.

Rick Moran
Proprietor

There is little doubt that the nation’s newspapers are in deep trouble. And not just a few rags here and there. The entire industry is in the process of going extinct with the exception of a few papers funded by individuals with very, very deep pockets and can absorb the millions in losses incurred by running a modern, metropolitan daily newspaper.

Why this is so, is a trickier question and not conducive to simple, one sentence answers. You can say the internet is killing the daily newspaper and that would be true, but not the whole story.

You can say blogs are killing newspapers and you would be indulging in wishful thinking. They have certainly affected newspapers but most bloggers need newspapers more than newspapers need blogs.

You can say political bias is killing newspapers and you would be picking nits. Bias in reporting only makes the political class angry. No one else really notices or cares.

You can say that the standard business model for the daily paper does not reflect the reality of the marketplace and you would be correct - except most papers have already tried to adapt to the internet age and are finding it very tough going.

The number one reason newspapers are dying is because they cannot compete in a rapidly changing information marketplace. The print editions are not as immediate as television. The web editions are hard to navigate and difficult to find the information for which you are looking. Advertising revenue for both is dropping as marketing whizzes use social networking sites and techniques to drive conversation about products and services that were once full page ads. The huge falloff in revenue from classified ads moving to websites like Craig’s List has also contributed to the decline.

People’s reading habits are changing. Audio books and Kindle are revolutionizing the way we read and web sites like Memeorandum make it a simple matter to pick out information that the reader feels is necessary to know or in which he is interested. Newspapers are becoming superfluous - an unwanted appendage that doesn’t fill any need except that of tradition and continuity.

Blogs and message boards do a better job of informing about sports, style, even business. Ditto for what used to be called “opinion journalism” and is now simply ranting, for the most part. Such opinion columnists don’t marshal arguments, illuminate options, and recommend a course of action. They have - with very few exceptions - become creative writers, trying to outdo blogs in their use of colorful invective and snarky sarcasm.

If Rupert Murdoch gets his way and readers are forced to pay for the privilege of accessing on-line newspaper content, it will only hasten their demise. The New York Times “firewall” experiment proves that. Not enough people are willing to pay to read opinion - even if they are usually in agreement with the columnist. They can get pretty much the same thing for free on blogs. And sometimes, the writing and thinking is superior to that which is found at newspapers, online or otherwise.

That leaves paying for “news” stories. This presupposes that no one will step in and offer for free what these newspapers want to charge money for. The Army of Davids who would eagerly dive into the void and “report” on various news stories using what they discover on local blogs, YouTube, or even Twitter would doom to failure any attempt for newspapers to alter their revenue plans to include charging for online access - even if it’s only a “nominal” fee.

I love newspapers - both online and dead tree. But they belong to another age, much like the elegance of a horse drawn carriage or the friendliness of a Mom and Pop grocery store. What exactly is it that newspapers do that would justify their continued existence?

“Investigative” reporting? Most newspapers don’t do that anymore - too expensive. And even if a paper has an investigative reporting department, is that reason enough to pay for the privilege of access when these stories make up such a small percentage of news reported during the course of a year?

“In-depth” analysis of issues? Anyone who is interested in an issue or a story can find a dozen websites ranging from think tanks to university professors who would do an equally good job of giving context, history, and analysis to any issue.

There are niche areas where newspapers could thrive. I can see an ESPN or IDB, or Wall Street Journal remaining viable as long as their price for access was reasonable and commensurate with the value of the content. Ditto for websites that report on fashion, or movies, or any other department found in daily newspapers. I wouldn’t doubt it if there weren’t already websites that contain obituaries. Many would pay for access there too.

But why pay to read about New York sports teams in the New York Times? If you’re from New York, you could get equally good coverage and analysis on any of a dozen blogs. Sports talk radio would give the sports fan access to the same news with the bonus of it being free.

As long as newspapers were the gatekeepers for information and commanded the attention of the masses, they could charge advertisers enough money to make a profit. But with such diluted information streams coming from all points, and advertisers finding alternatives that are cheaper and actually promise to promote their products better, newspapers have become entities in search of a mission. They are casting about desperately, trying to manufacture reasons to remain relevant. And no one - not readers or advertisers - is buying it.

Nothing I’ve written so far is news to anyone who follows the newspaper industry. Nor is the idea that somehow, the government must step in and “help” newspapers survive. Direct subsidies would be ridiculous. The government should not be in the business of subsidizing opinion. The slippery slope there is so obvious a 3 year old could see it.

But what about indirect subsidies in the form of tax breaks for newspapers that reorganize themselves into non profit organizations? The Hill reports:

The president said he is “happy to look at” bills before Congress that would give struggling news organizations tax breaks if they were to restructure as nonprofit businesses.

“I haven’t seen detailed proposals yet, but I’ll be happy to look at them,” Obama told the editors of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and Toledo Blade in an interview.

Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) has introduced S. 673, the so-called “Newspaper Revitalization Act,” that would give outlets tax deals if they were to restructure as 501(c)(3) corporations. That bill has so far attracted one cosponsor, Cardin’s Maryland colleague Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D).

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs had played down the possibility of government assistance for news organizations, which have been hit by an economic downturn and dwindling ad revenue.

In early May, Gibbs said that while he hadn’t asked the president specifically about bailout options for newspapers, “I don’t know what, in all honesty, government can do about it.”

Obama said that good journalism is “critical to the health of our democracy,” but expressed concern toward growing tends in reporting — especially on political blogs, from which a groundswell of support for his campaign emerged during the presidential election.

“I am concerned that if the direction of the news is all blogosphere, all opinions, with no serious fact-checking, no serious attempts to put stories in context, that what you will end up getting is people shouting at each other across the void but not a lot of mutual understanding,” he said.

The president obviously doesn’t spend 10 hours a day on the internet like the rest of us. If he did, he would have known that there are many websites and blogs that already offer mostly unbiased analysis and fact based opinion. The idea that these qualities are solely the province of old school journalists found in the newsrooms of America is absurd.

Sadly, many on both the right and the left read only those blogs and websites that reflect their partisan tilt (this is less true on the left but there is still a very significant percentage of liberals who will read only liberal blogs.) It is not that the kind of information the president is talking about isn’t already available, it is that the number of people interested in non-partisan or less partisan reading is relatively small.

And perhaps the president would like to tell us how newspapers have promoted “mutual understanding?” Newspapers have historically promoted their own biased viewpoints, from Hearst to Ochs. Until relatively recently, newspapers were basically organs for one party or the other. Some still are.

If newspapers believe they can investigate corruption, fairly analyze politics and culture, and offer fact based opinion pieces that seek to inform rather than inflame, then by all means give them the tax breaks.

But you and I know that won’t happen. In fact, it is the profit motive that restrains newspapers from being too overtly biased in their reporting. Currently, newspapers must attract as many people as possible regardless of their political biases or party affiliation. If they were to go non-profit, what would be the incentive to be fair? There would be some, of course, who would respect the idea that they were in the business of informing their readers in as neutral a way possible of the issues and politics that are newsworthy. But such nobility would be even rarer than it is today. Without the incentive to make money, newspapers would de-evolve and revert to their past practice of being openly partisan or ideological. Remove the profit motive and you remove the one thing that governs content.

In the last 5 years, I may have read half a dozen dead tree newspapers. My reading habits have changed and the time spent perusing a newspaper could be better spent googling what I want to know. That’s the bottom line and I see no way that newspapers - online or traditional paper editions - will ever to be able to overcome the problem that the meteor has already struck Chicxulub and there is nothing they can do to save themselves from catastrophe.

A dragon lives forever
But not so little boys
Painted wings and giant rings
Make way for other toys.

“Puff the Magic Dragon”
Lyrics and music by Leonard Lipton and Peter Yarrow
Released in 1963

Social progress in America has never come easy. We are a nation in love with the past, wedded to tradition, and curiously schizophrenic about our notions of freedom and justice.

We were born proudly proclaiming our liberty from tyranny while at the same time, holding 3 million human beings in bondage - a situation that moved English author and compiler of the first dictionary Samuel Johnson to wryly remark during the Stamp Act controversy of 1765, “How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?”

We spent more than 150 years glorifying American womanhood while denying them the vote and other rights. We patted ourselves on the back for a 100 years about how we had rid ourselves of slavery, only to hold their children through their great, great, grandchildren in the even more insidious embrace of Jim Crow. We put on our most iconic symbol - the Statue of Liberty - words of welcome to immigrants, asking the world to send “…Your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…” — only to put up “No Irish Need Apply” and other signs, visible and invisible, to make their treatment a blot on our collective conscience.

We don’t keep our history locked in a closet, guarded 24 hours a day by CIA agents. Neither do we take that history out and dust it off often enough to relearn the lessons it teaches us about ourselves, and how social progress in America never comes cheap, or easy, or bloodless.

The point is not that we aren’t a perfect society and never have been. The point is that the revolutionary nature of our heritage and history has always held out the promise that we can be better. Not the absolute certainty of designed outcomes that enamors many on the left today. Not the “perfect” equality sought by the Utopians. Rather, simply the promise that if enough of us demand change — demand it loudly enough and long enough - progress toward making the words of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution mean what they say will occur.

These reflections were rattling through my head this morning after the news reached me that Mary Travers died. The New York Times may be decidedly biased in their political coverage, but few match them when it comes to obits of the famous:

Mary Travers, whose ringing, earnest vocals with the folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary made songs like “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “If I Had a Hammer” and “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” enduring anthems of the 1960s protest movement, died on Wednesday at Danbury Hospital in Connecticut. She was 72 and lived in Redding, Conn.

[...]

Ms. Travers brought a powerful voice and an unfeigned urgency to music that resonated with mainstream listeners. With her straight blond hair and willowy figure and two bearded guitar players by her side, she looked exactly like what she was, a Greenwich Villager directly from the clubs and the coffeehouses that nourished the folk-music revival.

“She was obviously the sex appeal of that group, and that group was the sex appeal of the movement,” said Elijah Wald, a folk-blues musician and a historian of popular music.

Ms. Travers’s voice blended seamlessly with those of her colleagues, Peter Yarrow and Paul Stookey, to create a rich three-part harmony that propelled the group to the top of the pop charts. Their first album, “Peter, Paul and Mary,” which featured the hit singles “Lemon Tree” and “If I Had a Hammer,” reached No. 1 shortly after its release in March 1962 and stayed there for seven weeks, eventually selling more than two million copies.

I have written previously of our family’s immersion into the Folk revival of the 1950’s and 60’s, commenting on the passing of the Kingston Trio’s Nick Reynolds and the Clancy Brothers Tommy Makem. (My brother Jim’s emotional tribute to KT’s John Stewart can be found here.).

And now, another link in the chain stretching back to my early childhood and my exposure to the Great American Songbook of traditional folk tunes has been broken with the death of Travers. We don’t realize at the time how childhood experiences shape our lives, our thinking, or our interests. My fascination with American history surely is at least partly the result of learning and listening to the traditional Scotch-Irish folk tunes, the sea shanties, the songs to which men marched off to war, performed backbreaking manual labor, dreamed of freedom, lived, loved, and died over the centuries.

They are songs mostly about ordinary people - a social history of the United States set to music - and it fired my imagination, spurring me to discover more about an America you don’t usually find in grammar school textbooks or High School reading assignments. What really happened in Harlan County, Tennessee Kentucky? How did the Underground Railroad work? Why are the Irish so fatalistic?

Mary Travers, Peter Yarrow, and Paul Stookey sang songs that posed questions about American society - and the human condition - that demanded answers. And around campfires, and library sing alongs, our family belted out the music, harmonizing and sharing our sheer joy of being together, learning, laughing, loving. This is why the death of these folk icons are almost like a death in the family to me. The memories the songs they wrote and sang are so powerful, so sweet, so full of the things that make life worth living for all of us, that I cannot help but allow a tear or two to course down my cheek.

As a musical group, Peter, Paul, and Mary were polished, professional, and chose their music with the utmost care. Their manager/producer, the legendary Milt Okun saw to that. With his keen ear and unfailing sense of a commercially viable package, Okun made Peter, Paul, and Mary into a hugely popular act whose success lasted almost a decade. Okun would go on to manage other iconic folk groups like The Chad Mitchell Trio, the Brothers Four, and John Denver.

It was their rendition of Dylan’s Blowin’ in the Wind that launched their careers. At once beautifully harmonized and featuring a driving rhythm, the song - along with their other huge hits If I had a Hammer and Where have all the Flowers Gone - became anthems of the civil rights and anti-war movements. It is perhaps telling that Hammer and Flowers were both written and originally sung by Pete Seeger and his 50’s era group The Weavers, who were banned in many jurisdictions for their left wing sympathies.

When you’re a kid, you don’t think much about the politics of a song. You sing it because it’s good music and stirs emotions in your breast. Today, I probably don’t agree with 90% of the politics promoted by Seeger, Travers, Baez, and the rest of the folkies from that time. But you can’t argue with the fact that they were dead right about civil rights, and I still think they were mostly right about the Viet Nam War.

I learned long ago you can love left wing writers, artists, singers, and actors by admiring the talent while ignoring the politics. Barbara Streisand is a putz about politics, but an extraordinary talented singer. Joan Didion writes achingly beautiful prose (as does John Updike), but I wouldn’t give a fig for their political opinions. That’s how I feel about Mary Travers and Peter Paul and Mary.

Perhaps our favorite PPM song was not about politics, or protest, but rather the magical imagination of a little boy named Jackie Paper who conjured up a friendly dragon with whiom he had wonderful, exciting adventures. No, Puff the Magic Dragon is not about smoking dope or tripping on LSD. It is a classic American folk song rooted in celebrating a child’s imagination and how, sadly, we all grow up and move on to other adventures.

Together they would travel
On a boat with billowed sail.
Jackie kept a lookout perched
On Puff’s gigantic tail.
Noble kings and princes
Would bow whenever they came,
Pirate ships would lower their flags
When Puff roared out his name. Oh!

(Chorus)
Puff, the magic dragon
Lived by the sea
And frolicked in the autumn mist
In a land called Honah Lee. Oh!
Puff, the magic dragon
Lived by the sea
And frolicked in the autumn mist
In a land called Honah Lee.

Today, somewhere near Honah Lee, Jackie Paper read of Mary Travers death and is weeping.

UPDATE: 9/18

A shout out to all the good people at Kingston Crossroads who come here because I paid my brother Jim an exorbitant fee to promote my blog with all you left wing folkies. After all, he’s just a poor teacher, poisoning the minds of our young people with his Marxist claptrap and needs every cent he can get just so that his subscription to The Daily Worker doesn’t expire.

Don’t worry. There’s not much chance of contamination as long as you don’t breathe the air or touch anything. And please watch where you step. I recently slaughtered a few liberals and I haven’t had time to clean up yet…

The sanctimonious Jimmy Carter is lecturing America again about how scummy we are. This time, he is accusing you, dear readers, of being closet Kluxers - racist pigs - for opposing anything our Dear Leader does.

“I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man,” Carter said. “I live in the South, and I’ve seen the South come a long way, and I’ve seen the rest of the country that share the South’s attitude toward minority groups at that time, particularly African Americans.”

Carter continued, “And that racism inclination still exists. And I think it’s bubbled up to the surface because of the belief among many white people, not just in the South but around the country, that African-Americans are not qualified to lead this great country. It’s an abominable circumstance, and it grieves me and concerns me very deeply.”

It is a fact: Barack Obama was not qualified to be president of the United States. It is laughable to make the case that someone with such a sparse resume of achievement, failing to demonstrate any qualities of leadership, could possibly have the skill set to be president. To say otherwise brands you as a rabid partisan whose opinion can safely be ignored.

I honestly don’t know that if Barack Obama was white, he would have been dismissed outright as a candidate. Those who make that argument assume too much. For Obama is not without ability. He is not without intellect. And some would argue he has the right temperament to be president.

Is that enough to be president? Obviously, I think not. Without the leavening of experience, none of that matters. I have said the same of GOP candidates in the past so it is not a partisan matter. I think the idea that Gary Bauer was qualified to be president is equally laughable. Or Alan Keyes. Or any one of a half dozen Republicans who, for vanity’s sake or because they are true believers, threw their hat in the presidential ring with fewer qualifications than Obama.

Carter is a putz for saying that opposition to Obama is based on the idea that no black candidates are qualified. Perhaps because it became painfully obvious to all when he was in office that Groucho Marx was better qualified to be chief executive than some peanut farmer with one term as governor of a small state, that he can’t recognize what qualifies anyone to be president.

Carter has always had that magical ability to peer into the souls of men and glean their intent - as all liberals possess to some degree. It’s why they can play the race card with impunity. They just KNOW that opposition to Obama is based solely and exclusively on the color of his skin. There simply is no other explanation because, how can you oppose a liberal? How can anyone oppose a BLACK MAN?

It’s a shame that dueling has been outlawed. If it were not, I would gladly call Mr. Carter out and challenge him to prove his charges. Spitballs at 20 paces. At dawn.

If Obama was truly concerned about being “post racial,” he would condemn Carter in the strongest possible terms. But he won’t. And the reason he won’t is because Carter, Maureen Dowd, and other liberals who are accusing the right of being racist are helping him. Playing the race card - at the moment - is politically profitable for the president. It unites his base by giving those who support him the feeling that they are morally superior to the opposition.

It is also the most damaging epithet one can hurl at the opposition and serves the purpose of putting doubts into the mind of more independent and moderate voters that if opposing the president is tantamount to being a racist, best keep their complaints to themselves. The left loves to intimdate people in this manner; like a bully who gets off on playing with their victim before beating them up. Those who might have questions about the direction the president is taking the country feel constrained about expressing themselves lest the hammer fall on them as well.

The stink of being called a racist is impossible to remove - which is the whole point. Delegitimzing any - and I mean any - opposition to President Obama by dismissing the people who are against him by accusing them of being on the same plane as the Klu Klux Klan is monstrously unfair. There is no comeback to the charges. If you open your mouth in your own defense, you supposedly prove their point. And if you remain quiet, silence equals assent. You are well and truly trapped in the briar patch set up by unscrupulous, dishonest, and immoral dogs who know full well the charges are not true, but make them anyway.

And it’s damned effective - as its practioners know. The cold calculation that goes into deliberately smearing your opponent with the one charge in American politics for which there is no answer, no possible response, should scare even some honest liberals.

What gives anyone the right - liberal or conservative - to make such an outrageous statement as Maureen Dowd makes here, and try and pass it off  legitimate analysis:

Surrounded by middle-aged white guys - a sepia snapshot of the days when such pols ran Washington like their own men’s club - Joe Wilson yelled “You lie!” at a president who didn’t.

But, fair or not, what I heard was an unspoken word in the air: You lie, boy!

“Fair or not?” Okay, MoDo, it’s not fair. Now what? Do you apologize for your rank smear perpetrated against someone you don’t know, have never met, and only assume the worst based on the region of the country he comes from? Of course not. To do so would reveal your towering ignorance and beastial judgment, not to mention a sneering elitism directed against those who you see as being beneath you.

And how about this whopper from Rep. Hank Johnson:

Making an obvious reference to the Ku Klux Klan, Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., said Tuesday that people will be putting on “white hoods and white uniforms again and riding through the countryside” if emerging racist attitudes, which he says were subtly supported by Wilson, are not rebuked. He said Wilson must be disciplined as an example.

“Subtly supported?” Holy Jesus Christ on a pogo stick what the f*ck does that mean? It means anything that Johnson and his ilk want it to mean. Using his faux “moral authority” as a black man, Johnson is allowed this smear - this non-specific, egregiously unfair, and ultimately unprovable smear - because his kind of dishonesty is accepted by his liberal colleagues as “authentic” outrage against the white man.

After getting on my high horse to condemn this broad brush attack on Obama’s opponents, there will be those who will ask whether or not I believe there are any racists who oppose Obama? My answer is, of course there are. And I would gladly join any legitimate, specific, verifiable instance in which that kind of ugliness is demonstrated. There’s no room for it in American politics, the conservative movement, or the Republican party. I have already noted a significant, but still relatively small number of protestors at the 9/12 rallies who were truly fringe actors - racists among them.

But I would echo the late great Carl Sagan in paraphrasing “Extraordinary charges require extraordinary proof.” And baby, you don’t got any. There is no evidence that any but a small subset of protestors were opposing Obama because of his race. It’s just not there and for anyone to posit the notion that they can read people’s minds and peer into their heart to determine what they were thinking or feeling when protesting, I would call them a liar to their face.

But for Carter, or Dowd, or Johnson, or any other liberal to accuse the broad swath of Americans who oppose this president as being motivated by the color of the president’s skin in opposing him is impossibly dangerous to the idea of free speech, not to mention patently and grossly unfair. It’s not hitting below the belt. It is taking a pair of garden shears and cutting them off.

We must demand that President Obama make it absolutely clear that the patriots who marched on 9/12 as well as others who oppose him, do so not because of his race but because we strenuously disagree with the direction he is taking the country. And he must condemn all of his supporters who so casually, and so viciously attack their opponents so unfairly and with so little cause.

Not that he will do anything about it. But at least we’ll be able to reveal Obama as the cynical, political manipulator he truly is.

Some of this post originally appears in The American Thinker

As far back as 1999, it was apparent to anyone who listened closely to what he was saying that George Bush was not much of a conservative. This despite the lip service he gave to some conservative ideas (I wouldn’t say he was a study in advocating conservative principles), and his ability to excite the party’s evangelical base.

True, he was “more conservative” than Al Gore in 2000 and John Kerry in 2004. But so was about 70% of the country. It took about 5 years for the scales to fall from the eyes of many conservatives (some have never lost their true belief) for them to see that George Bush was a crony loving, big government elitist whose tangential connection to conservatism was more for convenience and political calculation than any belief in the efficacy of its principles.

Were we taken in? Partly, yes. But an honest appraisal of my former support for the man must include the fact that I was fooling myself more than anything. The writing was on the wall all along regarding the man’s faux conservatism - not to mention his many screw ups including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the prosecutors fiasco, justification for torture, and his curious habit of promoting and appointing incompetents for important jobs in government who also happened to be big campaign contributors or other cronies.

Now a book has been written by a former Bush speechwriter which has pretty much confirmed what most on the right now think of the ex-president. Matt Latimer reveals Bush to be an arrogant, self centered, elitist who looked down his nose at the conservative movement:

Latimer is a veteran of conservative politics. An admirer of Republican Sen. Jon Kyl, for whom he worked for several years, Latimer also worked in the Rumsfeld Pentagon before joining the Bush White House in 2007.

The revealing moment, described in “Speechless: Tales of a White House Survivor,” occurred in the Oval Office in early 2008.

Bush was preparing to give a speech to the annual meeting of the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC. The conference is the event of the year for conservative activists; Republican politicians are required to appear and offer their praise of the conservative movement.

Latimer got the assignment to write Bush’s speech. Draft in hand, he and a few other writers met with the president in the Oval Office. Bush was decidedly unenthusiastic.

“What is this movement you keep talking about in the speech?” the president asked Latimer.

Latimer explained that he meant the conservative movement — the movement that gave rise to groups like CPAC.

Bush seemed perplexed. Latimer elaborated a bit more. Then Bush leaned forward, with a point to make.

“Let me tell you something,” the president said. “I whupped Gary Bauer’s ass in 2000. So take out all this movement stuff. There is no movement.”

Bush seemed to equate the conservative movement — the astonishing growth of conservative political strength that took place in the decades after Barry Goldwater’s disastrous defeat in 1964 — with the fortunes of Bauer, the evangelical Christian activist and former head of the Family Research Council whose 2000 presidential campaign went nowhere.

Now it was Latimer who looked perplexed. Bush tried to explain.

“Look, I know this probably sounds arrogant to say,” the president said, “but I redefined the Republican Party.”

Yes, Mr. Bush. You certainly “redefined” the Republican party by showing the GOP could be even more careless with the public purse than Democrats, as well as being a political cynic of the first order by pandering to the base of the party - the “movement” - while sneering at what it represented.

The charge of “patrician” made against his father back in the day should also be applied to the son. Here, the blue blood shows why you can’t trust elites. At bottom, their arrogance directed toward ordinary people is so profound as to cloud their judgment.

Given everything we now know about Bush, would I have pulled an Andrew Sullivan and voted for Kerry in 2004? Definitely not. But, as I did in 1992 when his father ran for re-election, the chances are pretty good that I would not have voted for president at all.

True, Bush’s fiscal profligacy was known back then, but weighed against the war on terror and what most of us believed was a slowly improving situation in Iraq, it would have been enough to dissuade me from voting against him.

Now we have a different story - that of Bush the hypocrite who had few, if any, guiding principles save “Whatever’s best for George Bush, is best for the party and the country.” That kind of selfish conceit may be endemic among presidents - it certainly was for Nixon, and probably Johnson - but it explains a lot as far as Bush’s cronyism as well as his cozying up to Wall Street, his sticking with Rumsfeld long after he had outlived his usefulness, and other stubborn acts that many conservatives still mistake for resolve. Quite simply, it didn’t matter if all the wise heads in government were telling him to change course in Iraq. He, George Bush, knew better. And the United States paid a bitter price in blood and treasure because of this hubris.

And, it explains Karl Rove to some extent. No doubt that Clintonites like James Carville had vast knowledge about the intricacies of American politics. But Rove is a human computer - a veritable font of information about the most arcane, and fractional tidbits of political trivia. There may never have been his like in the White House.

But Rove was decidedly not a creature of ideology. He possessed a burning desire to win as all good political consultants have. Beyond that, Rove eschewed the idea of using the movement for anything except what he termed a “permanent Republican majority” that combined massive numbers of evangelical Christians energized by relying on “wedge” issues like gay marriage and abortion to turn them out, as well as the foreign policy hawks. Fiscal conservatives could come along for the ride if they wished but it was clear that neither Rove nor Bush gave a tinker’s damn about them. Add supply siders and libertarians and Rove believed he had his “permanent” majority - a majority not based on conservative issues as much as on political expediency.

The results were predictable; a fracturing of the “permanent” coalition within two years of his 2004 victory. The corruption, the spending, and the war between libertarans and evangelicals over the Terri Schiavo matter exploded any hope that Rove’s makeshift, rickety political construction would outlast his boss.

So here we are in the wilderness with many conservatives still clinging to the notion that Bush made some mistakes but was still a good president. I have said in the past that fingering Bush as the “worst president in American history” is ridiculous. In the bottom ten, yes. But I abhor those who would use history for political purposes and the facts simply do not bear that judgment out.

Until conservatives can let go of Bush and his checkered legacy, we will not learn the lessons from supporting him and probably end up voting for someone similar. That is the mistake Democrats made when they were in the political badlands and we would do well not to repeat it.

(Note: Please do not crow in the comments “I told you so.” What - you expect me to listen to partisan lefties at the time? That’s unreasonable and you know it. Your verdict on Bush was reached looking through the prism of partisanship just as mine was. Just because the left was right about some of Bush’s shortcomings does not mean they had - or have today - a corner on truth when it comes to criticizing him. I would also add that their hate of the man - as virulent a hate directed against another politician I had not seen before, even against Clinton - disqualifies most on the left from making any rational judgment on Bush that a reasonable person could agree with.)

I penned a special column for PJ Media on the 9/12 protests yesterday, pointing out the historical significance of the event; that it represents the first truly mass movement of conservatives in American history.

A sample that will no doubt bring the wrath of the right down on my head:

It is definitely an opposition movement, however. Certainly there is mass unhappiness with President Obama and his policies. And there is opposition to the Democrats in Congress. But does this really translate into electoral strength for Republicans? I am going to go out on a limb and say no. The anger here is a reaction (reactionary?) against a growing government, higher taxes, and the sense that the country that they grew up in is slipping away right before their eyes.

This is all fed, of course, by the pop conservatives on talk radio who have ginned up outrage against Obama and the Democrats. I say “ginned up” because what the president and his party have already done doesn’t need the added fear mongering being promoted by Beck, Hannity, Rush, and Savage in order for conservatives to rally. Raised taxes, cap and trade, health care reform, bailouts and takeovers, and other liberal agenda items should be sufficient to outrage anyone on the right and motivate them to protest these horrific policies. It is unnecessary to brand Obama a “communist” or even a “socialist” to realize that his policies spell disaster for individual liberty and the free market economy.

Getting caught up trying to guess the number of attendees at Saturday’s protests (as I and many others are doing today and will continue to do) is irrelevant. This is history in the making, something the United States has never seen: a genuine grass-roots conservative mass movement, activated by the new technologies, communicating effectively using the new software and hardware — and it is growing.

I received an email from a long time reader yesterday who was concerned I couldn’t see that the protests were, at bottom, “anti-American, racist, and dangerous…” There’s nothing “anti-American” about protesting anything. We are, after all, a nation born out of protest, nurtured in the bosom of contrarianism, and defining progress by going against the grain in order to right significant wrongs in our society. This is not “dangerous” by any stretch of the imagination - except to the comfort of the elites who always believe it dangerous when the hoi polloi become restless and disagree that only they in their superior wisdom are fit to tell the rest of us what to do.

As for the charge of the protest being “racist,” well, that’s nonsense. If you’re going to tar an entire movement with that epitaph based on the beliefs of a tiny fraction, then you should have no trouble referring to the civil rights movement of the 1960’s as a “Communist” movement since the CPUSA played a prominent role in the SCLC and other civil rights organizations. The same holds true for the anti-war movement where you couldn’t attend a protest without tripping over a Communist or two.

This protest movement encompasses the right in all its contradictions, it’s factions, and its various conceits. From far right nullification supporters to Rand Objectivists, conservatism in all its glory was on display. The dominant theme as it appeared to me was “Don’t Tread on Me” - the words emblazoned on the iconic Gaddsen Flag. This is both a warning and a statement of fact. The truth is, whether due to agitation by talk radio hosts or the very real belief held by millions that President Obama is going too far, too fast, in his quest to “remake” America, there is a sizable segment of the population who has stood up and said “enough.”

In their struggle to define what it is they don’t like about the direction Obama and the Democrats are taking the country, I believe they mis-identify their concerns as fighting “socialism” or “Communism.” But at bottom, I believe above all else, that they wish to “conserve” their own vision of what America is and what it should aspire to be. This vision is no more invalid than that of the presidents’ despite attempts on the left to delegitimize it. It is Burkean in its roots, and has to do with classic conservative values that have been at the root of conservative thought for as long as the republic has endured.

Change is coming to America. Change always comes to America because we are a dynamic society that stands still for no one. But the value of conservatism has always been that, in Bill Buckley’s words, conservatives “stand athwart history yelling Stop!” It is always better to manage change, to channel the revolutionary nature of our society into acceptable, and accepted paths that lead to consensual change. Any other path leads to blood and revolution. Just ask the French.

President Obama and the Democrats are moving too far, too fast. They have exceeded the comfort level for change that many Americans - perhaps most - believe is right and proper. You can argue the merits of the president’s agenda. That’s politics. But the pace of change is structural in our society. We aren’t set up for the kind of rapid, dizzying alterations that Obama and the Democrats are proposing. This is especially true because some of what the president advocates would change the fundamental relationship citizens have with the government.

“Small moves, Ellie. Small moves…” was the advice that Elenore Arroway’s dad gave to the youngster as she fiddled with the dial of her ham radio in the film Contact. By moving the dial in small increments, she was much more likely to be rewarded by making contact with another ham radio enthusiast.

Hundreds of thousands of people at the Capitol yesterday gave President Obama the same message.

Both the Times and AP are equating the crowds turning out in DC to protest Obama’s policies with crowds turning out to see the president later today at a town hall meeting. Both are saying “thousands” have turned out.

Here’s AP’s and the Times notion of “thousands:”

According to CNN, the event got underway an hour and a half early because so many people showed up at the bottom of Pennsylvania avenue, there was simply no more room for new arrivals.

Pictures supplied by Fox and CNN appeared to me to show a crowd stretching all the way from the Capitol steps, back many, many blocks, stretching off into the distance.

By any stretch of the imagination, such a crowd should have been identified in “the hundreds of thousands.” And yet. here’s the Times report by Jeff Zeleny:

As President Obama flew to Minnesota on Saturday to rally support for his health care plan, thousands of protestors from around the country arrived here to demonstrate against the White House and Congress for what they say is an ever-expanding intrusion of government.

On a cloudy and cool September morning, scores of people waved flags and carried signs as they arrived in Freedom Plaza in downtown Washington for a march to the capital. The event was being billed as the culmination of summer protests at town meetings, where opposition to the president’s health care plan boiled over.

“Scores of people…?” Are you kidding me?

The DC Park Police stopped trying to estimate crowds years ago. But given the  estimate for Obama’s inauguration by some (”more than a million people”), I would say the number of people out today comes close to matching the number on January 20.

More pics will be available later.

Most of this post originally appears at The American Thinker.

UPDATE

Stacy McCain just called and told me that Barbara Espinosa , a volunteer with Freedomworks, reports that the organization’s “metered” count of protestors is “more than 450,000.”

I think they missed a few hundred thousand but it won’t matter. The official media line will be “thousands” unless someone in an official capacity - police or otherwise - says differently.

My estimate was probably a little overenthusiastic, definitely not matching Obama’s inauguration crowds. But by any measure, an impressive turnout.

UPDATE II

Michelle Malkin reports that Capitol Police are estimating crowd at 1.2 million. ABC saying 2 million.

Can’t say where Malkin got the “police” estimate. And the ABC website has only the AP story where they have now upped their estimate to “tens of thousands.”

UPDATE III

Daily Mail hed - “Up to Two Million march to Capitol to protest Obama’s spending…”

Sorry, but that is certainly an exaggeration. This time lapse aerial sequence taken from where the march kicked off shows, in my opinion, less than a million marchers. A long time ago, a park policeman told me that 7 blocks of people shoulder to shoulder equals a half million marchers. Someone might want to correct me but it looked to me that there might have been 9 or 10 blocks of a massed crowd. Maybe less than that.

Of course, there were people already at the Capitol who didn’t participate in the march. And there were many late arrivals. It would be more accurate to place the total at between 750,000 and a million.

Impressive by any yardstick.

UPDATE IV

Well, there are estimates…and then there are, you know, estimates:

Carrying signs depicting President Obama as Adolf Hitler and the Joker, and chanting slogans such as “‘No big government” and “Obamacare makes me sick,” approximately 60,000 to 70,000 people flooded Pennsylvania Ave, according to the Washington DC Fire Department.

M’kay. That’s fascinating. To each his own, I guess.

They appear to be satisfied underestimating the number by a factor of 10. If there were on 60,000 marchers, I will run naked down Pennsylvania Avenue singing the Internationale while kissing an Obama poster.