Right Wing Nut House

What conservatives have yet to do is confront the large but inescapable truth that movement conservatism is exhausted and quite possibly dead. And yet they should, because the death of movement politics can only be a boon to the right, since it has been clear for some time the movement is profoundly and defiantly un-conservative–in its ideas, arguments, strategies, and above all its vision.
(Stan Tanenhaus writing in The New Republic)

First in a series.

I hope I am forgiven by my regular readers for leaving behind arguments over stimulants, diuretics, laxatives, and other government remedies for what ails us while I return once again to the theme of making this site a “Blog of Self-Discovery” or, the “Writings of the Self-Absorbed Man” if you prefer. In truth, after more than 4 years of struggle, I am in many ways, more of a stranger in my minds eye than I was when I began this journey of self criticism; challenging everything I believe, forcing me to justify the underlying assumptions of my philosophy to my own satisfaction.

Although it should be the goal of any examined life to make such a quest a lifelong pursuit, it is a journey that is best begun when one is young, I think. At age 55, one has lived too much, experienced too much, seen too much, lived and loved and lost too much to retain the suppleness of mind that can process and absorb the terabytes of information we mainline every day. Can we recognize what all of this data is doing to us, how it is changing us, why it challenges our long and comfortably held assumptions as new insights are gleaned and new directions in thought are explored?

For those handful of you who have taken seriously my earnest but woefully inadequate attempts to put into words the “velocity of my thoughts” on the nature of man, of conservatism, and the threads of history and the evolution of man’s relationship to the state that seeks to find a complementary connection between them, please bear with me over the next few days as I attempt to explain the insights that have been granted to me recently. I hope by sharing them, some small part of the joy and satisfaction I received from the opening of new vistas, new horizons on this journey will help assuage your craving for acquiring knowledge for knowledge’s sake - learning for the simple happiness that comes from knowing.

I was pleased to discover that even at this point in my life, I could read something and have it reach out and slap me in the face with the power of the ideas contained therein. This essay by Sam Tanenhaus in The New Republic has, in one fell swoop, crystalized much of my thinking that has been taking shape over the life of this blog while connecting many of the unordered, incoherent threads of criticism through which I have vainly sought to explore my personal philosophy.

Also assisting in this process was Andrew Sullivan who has cataloged what appears to me to be a similar journey to my own on his site and in the pages of leading journals of opinion and news. I am well aware of the distaste most of the right has for Sullivan (Tanenhaus, who edits the New York Times Book Reivew, is no catch either for righties) and yet, when the filter of politics and ideology are removed, what you are left with are ideas and concepts - take them or leave them. There is much with which to disagree from both men, but rejecting their thoughts out of hand and in their totality smacks of a deliberate effort to remain ignorant - a tale too often told on the right in recent years. Not being open to new ideas and new ways of looking at the world has been our downfall both philosophically and electorally.

Tanenhaus has written what he calls “an intellectual autopsy of the movement” which dovetails with the title of his essay, “Conservatism is Dead.” What has died, Tanenhaus believes, is the post World War II strain of conservatism that grew into a “movement” in the 1950’s and ’60’s, reaching its apex, he believes, in the late 1970’s. He carefully separates this “Movement Conservatism” from the classical conservatism of Burke, Disraeli, and Matthew Arnold, seeing the movement as something of an antithesis to Burkean logic which eschewed ideology altogether in favor of a society that favored both “conservation and correction.”

The author takes us on a guided tour of the history (his version) of “movement conservatism” and where it’s failures to adhere to classical conservative thinking led to a gigantic contradiction - one I have explored in depth elsewhere - between the natural center of gravity of classical conservatism’s mandate to eschew the “totalizing nostrums” and ideological purity of revolutionary politics, and the rebellious revanchism of the Goldwater-Reagan “counterrevolutions” which sought, at bottom, to undo the New Deal and Great Society.

The story of postwar American conservatism is best understood as a continual replay of a single long-standing debate. On one side are those who have upheld the Burkean ideal of replenishing civil society by adjusting to changing conditions. On the other are those committed to a revanchist counterrevolution, the restoration of America’s pre-welfare state ancien regime. And, time and again, the counterrevolutionaries have won. The result is that modern American conservatism has dedicated itself not to fortifying and replenishing civil society but rather to weakening it through a politics of civil warfare.

One might legitimately ask what conditions led to this contradiction. It takes two sides to make a war and Tanenhaus doesn’t excuse the radical left of the 1960’s from contributing to the growth of this backlash:

As liberals unwittingly squeezed themselves into the stereotypes conservatives had invented, conservative intellectuals began to look like prophets for identifying a self-appointed “managerial elite” (Burnham’s term from 1941) that was leading a “liberal revolution” (Kendall’s, from 1963). The poor–believers in the American dream, content to struggle upward on their own–had become “a project” for technocrats intoxicated with nostalgie de la boue. In his book Maximum Feasible Misunderstanding, Moynihan–disillusioned with the programs he helped instate–ridiculed the pretensions of social scientists, “who love poor people [and] … get along fine with rich people” but “do not have much time for the people in between.” “In particular,” he wrote, “they would appear to have but little sympathy with the desire for order, and anxiety about change, that are commonly encountered among working-class and lower middle-class persons. The privileged children of the upper middle classes more and more devoted themselves, in the name of helping the oppressed, to outraging the people in between.” The absurdities of “social engineering” became sport for observers like Tom Wolfe, who satirized their excesses in Mau-mauing the Flak Catchers: “So the poverty professionals were always on the lookout for the bad-acting dudes who were the ‘real leaders,’ the ‘natural leaders,’ the ‘charismatic figures,’ in the ghetto jungle.”

This liberal overreach combined with the right’s new sophistication promised a new period in U.S. politics, one in which conservatives, fortified by Burkean principles, might emerge as the most articulate voices of “civil society,” separating out the strands of true reform, which drew on inherited values, from “liberal-left” attempts to make those values extinct. Perhaps the Great Society could be retooled, tamed into a legitimate extension of the New Deal. But, to accomplish this, the right would have to deal honestly with capitalism and its many ambiguities.

Dealing honestly with capitalism wasn’t in the cards for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was a fervent belief by the movement that entrepreneurs are gods and the “American system” was a self correcting mechanism where a level playing field for all economic actors was a a virtual given. “Bigger is better” was not necessarily a battle cry of the Movement but the dangers inherent to gigantic, international corporations to the very free markets that were enthusiastically espoused were largely ignored.

There have been harsh critiques of capitalism that have, of course, turned the tables in an equally exaggerated way and painted the businessman as a combination Beelzebub and Babbitt. How much of the Movement’s unquestioning support of capitalism was in response to the latter view espoused by many on the left to this day? Tanenhaus seems to acknowledge that the Movement’s failings were not born in a vacuum; that the whole idea of a “counterrevolution” is that there is something to counter in the first place.

So what happened? What sidetracked the movement from adopting Tanenhaus’s “Burkean principles” and becoming a partner with government in building not only a “just moral order” but a “civil society” as well?

One reason is that the most intellectually sophisticated founders of postwar conservatism were in many instances ex-Marxists, who moved from left to right but remained persuaded that they were living in revolutionary times and so retained their absolutist fervor. In place of the Marxist dialectic they formulated a Manichaean politics of good and evil, still with us today, and their strategy was to build a movement based on organizing cultural antagonisms. Many have observed that movement politics most clearly defines itself not by what it yearns to conserve but by what it longs to destroy–”statist” social programs; “socialized medicine”; “big labor”; “activist” Supreme Court justices, the “media elite”; “tenured radicals” on university faculties; “experts” in and out of government.

“A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation,” was a warning by Burke that accepting the reality of government was paramount to stability. Tanenhaus avers that the Movement ” placed an idea of the perfect society over and above the need to improve society as it really existed” which describes perfectly the Utopian moral universe of many on the right who believe only through God can America prosper and achieve the pinnacle of a perfect moral order - a world where gays would still be in the closet, abortions performed in back alleys or not at all, everyone would pull their own weight, and school children would be taught the Bible in public schools. Removing God from the equation was unthinkable because only through the Creator was true harmony possible.

It is a determinedly myopic view of modern industrialized society that has caused many, less ideological conservatives to revolt. This has led to the spectacle of the Movement imposing “litmus tests” and enforcing a stifling ideological purity, something Tanenhaus argues convincingly is very unconservative.

And it highlights perhaps the greatest problem with modern Movement conservatism: It’s lack of a coherent, positive agenda setting out what it supports that would improve a modern society. “Tax cuts, less regulation, and a strong national defense” are catch phrases and bear little on the realities of living in a 21st century industrialized democracy of 300 million people. Tanenhaus recognizes this dilemma for conservatives - that being against everything means that you can’t be for anything - and how this principle has led to the slow strangulation of the Movement over time. He tells the story of one of the lions of the old guard, Whittaker Chambers whose own intellectual journey from Communist to conservative was so consequential to 20th century thought:

But, if it’s clear what the right is against, what exactly has it been for? This question has haunted the movement from its inception in the 1950s, when its principal objective was to undo the New Deal and reinstate the laissez-faire Republicanism of the 1920s. This backward-looking program mystified one leading conservative. Whittaker Chambers, a repentant ex-communist, had passed through a brief counterrevolutionary phase but then, in his last years, had gravitated toward a genuinely classic conservatism. He distilled his thinking in a remarkable sequence of letters written from the self-imposed exile of his Maryland farm, and sent to a young admirer, William F. Buckley Jr. When their relationship began, Buckley–a self-described “radical conservative”–was assembling the group of thinkers and writers who would form the core of National Review, a journal conceived to contest the “liberal monopolists of ‘public opinion.’” Buckley was especially keen to recruit Chambers. But Chambers turned him down. He sympathized with the magazine’s opposition to increasingly centralized government, but, in practical terms, he believed challenging it was futile. It was evident that New Deal economics had become the basis for governing in postwar America, and the right had no plausible choice but to accept this fact–not because liberals were all-powerful (as some on the right believed) but rather because what the right called “statism” looked very much like a Burkean “correction.”

Chambers witnessed the popular demand for the New Deal firsthand. He raised milch cattle, and his neighbors were farmers. Most were archconservative, even reactionary. They had sent the segregationist Democrat Millard Tydings to the Senate, and then, when Tydings had opposed McCarthy’s Red-hunting investigations, they had voted him out of office. They were also sworn enemies of programs like FDR’s Agricultural Adjustment Act, which tried to offset the volatility of markets by controlling crop yields and fixing prices. Some had even been indicted for refusing to allow farm officials to inspect their crops. Nonetheless, Chambers observed, his typical neighbor happily accepted federal subsidies. In other words, the farmers wanted it both ways. They wanted the freedom to grow as much as they could, even though it was against their best interests. But they also expected the government to bail them out in difficult times. In sum, “the farmers are signing for a socialist agriculture with their feet.”

It is this schizophrenia that has marked the skein of conservatism from Taft to Bush; people actually want government to do for them, just not everyone else. And to make matters worse, they don’t want to pay for it - a singularly unhappy outgrowth of conservatives telling them on the one hand that government is the problem and on the other, showering them with tax cuts while the beneficiaries of this largess want social welfare programs to make their lives easier. No matter what legerdemain is performed, the numbers will never, ever add up to anything even approaching a zero balance. You can spout supply side nostrums from here to Christmas and not make what we spend match what we take in.

Deep down, I really think even Movement conservatives know this but are reluctant to abandon the contradiction because if they do, a chasm opens beneath their feet and the stark reality of being wrong about a fundamental tenet of Movement conservatism stares them in the face. Infallibility is another by-product of the Movement, as Tanenhaus points out, and the dreadful consequences of opening a crack in the dam might mean catastrophe if further self-examination revealed other weak points in their thinking.

Tomorrow: Small government, big government, or the right government?

Is there any purpose served by investigating allegations of ordering torture, illegal surveillance, and other sins alleged to have been committed during the years of the Bush Administration?

For those of us on both sides who are slightly less partisan in our view of government and politics, it is a serious question. For those who have already made up their mind on both sides, not so much. While they scream at each other across the great divide in American politics, serious people will have to grapple with the serious questions - legal and constitutional - raised by the actions of the Bush Administration over the years.

As I see it, there are two major roadblocks to investigating previous actions of the administration. The first is that much of what has been alleged involves top secret programs, only parts of which we have been given a glimpse. It is a dead sure bet that no one has seen the legal opinions written by the Justice Department for any of these alleged abuses which makes any charges of illegal or unconstitutional actions by the Bushies even more problematic.

To base an opinion only on what has come out in the press about the Terrorist Surveillance Program, for instance, has always puzzled me. Forming an opinion without all the facts is the definition of “half-assed.” And what information we have as far as the TSP is concerned has come to us largely from anonymous sources who may, or may not, have had sufficient access to information about how the program worked in its entirety, not to mention a question of their knowledge of the legal implications involved. Compartmentalization of information in these top secret programs is a given and the number of people who would have a good overall picture of how they worked would be few indeed.

The only way to find out for sure is to investigate how the program was set up, how it was run, the technical means employed, and the legal justification for them. (Torture is a different matter that I address below.) But is it possible to investigate the workings of a top secret, on-going intelligence program without compromising its effectiveness?

And this brings me to my second major roadblock to investigating alleged abuses in the Bush Administration; the probability that any such investigating will degenerate into a partisan circus.

The Judiciary Committee under John Conyers has written two reports since 2006 that goes into excruciating detail about illegalities and unconstitutional actions by the Bush Administration. The problem is - and Conyers admits it - is that nothing in either report constitutes a finding of fact. This is not surprising given that the overwhelming number of allegations are based on newspaper accounts, studies done by liberal think tanks, or reports from partisan left organizations like Human Rights Watch and the ACLU.

Here’s Conyers from the Forward to today’s release of a 457 page list of allegations against Bush and his Administration. He is quoting from an op-ed he wrote in 2006 after the release of his initial report, “The Constitution in Crisis.” After all that ”investigating,” we are left with little better than a political indictment of actions Conyers and much of the left disagrees with:

The administration’s stonewalling, and the lack of oversight by Congress, have left us to guess whether we are dealing with isolated wrongdoing, or mistakes, or something worse. In my view, the American people deserve answers, not guesses. I have proposed that we obtain these answers in a responsible and bipartisan manner.

It was House Republicans who took power in 1995 with immediate plans to undermine President Bill Clinton by any means necessary, and they did so in the most autocratic, partisan and destructive ways imaginable. If there is any lesson from those “revolutionaries,” it is that partisan vendettas ultimately provoke a public backlash and are never viewed as legitimate. So, rather than seeking impeachment, I have chosen to propose comprehensive oversight of these alleged abuses. The oversight I have suggested would be performed by a select committee made up equally of Democrats and Republicans and chosen by the House speaker and the minority leader.

The committee’s job would be to obtain answers - finally. At the end of the process, if - and only if - the select committee, acting on a bipartisan basis, finds evidence of potentially impeachable offenses, it would forward that information to the Judiciary Committee.

Conyers admits he has no “answers” - only questions. Hence, the idea of some kind of “bi-partisan” committee to look into these allegations (there are hundreds) and discover “the truth.”

The Judiciary reports take issue with the Administration over just about every action they’ve undertaken in 8 years. Signing statements, intelligence, detention policies, rendition (begun under Clinton and expanded under Bush), warrantless searches and surveillance, the Plame Affair, the politicization of the Justice Department, the states attorney imbroglio, and “enhanced interrogation” or torture.

How many are actual allegations of crimes committed and how many are reasonable (or unreasonable) differences of opinion over politics? We won’t know unless someone, somewhere investigates what went on. The question of whether we need answers or not is moot. We do. The problem is who is going to find the answers?

Conyers’ idea of a bi-partisan committee or commission made up equally of members from both sides won’t fly. The Republicans tried it with investigating intelligence leading up to the Iraq War and the Democrats rejected the findings and substituted their own narrative. There was also the 9/11 Commission that degenerated into a partisan tug of war and that failed to assess enough blame to either Clinton or Bush while going easy on Giuliani and the intel agencies. There was also the findings of the WMD Commission most Democrats rejected out of hand.

The fact of the matter is politicians are, well, politicians and asking them to forget that primary fact of their existence is absurd. Hence, Conyers idea of entrusting such a daunting task to Congress is, to my mind, a non-starter. Even beyond the 9/11 Commission or the other investigative committee reports on the war, any body that investigates the president must be beyond partisan suspicion.

The leaves us with two choices; naming a special prosecutor (or several) to impartially investigate potential abuses or, intriguingly, set up a Commission of private citizens a la the South African Truth Commission. The latter idea has some interesting possibilities but at bottom, is a little ridiculous. In South Africa, they were dealing with decades of apartheid as well as political murders and violence. Unless you think Bush is responsible for 9/11 or actually caused Hurricane Katrina, I think some kind of Truth Commission is a just too much drama for what is at stake in any investigation of the Bushies.

A special prosecutor would probably be the fairest and most efficacious way to investigate wrongdoing during the Bush years. I think one should definitely be appointed to address the issue of torture which is not a political issue and represents some of the most serious charges of illegality against the president and his people.

As for the rest of Conyers allegations, I just don’t know. The problem with special prosecutors is that once you appoint one, they are almost duty bound to find illegality come hell or high water (i.e. Scooter Libby, Ken Starr). If it would be possible to narrow the scope of what a special prosecutor might be tasked to investigate, it might be possible that such an examination of Administration actions could rise above partisanship and would be accepted by a large majority.

But perhaps, that is only wishful thinking. Obama himself recognizes the difficulties which is why he would rather “look forward” than behind:

Obama also views waterboarding as torture. To find out who authorized its use in interrogations, House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers has introduced a bill creating a bipartisan commission with subpoena power. But when Obama was asked on ABC’s This Week whether he’d back such a commission, he was cautiously noncommittal.

“We’re still evaluating how we’re going to approach the whole issue of interrogations, detentions and so forth,” Obama said. “Obviously, we’re going to be looking at past practices and I don’t believe that anybody is above the law. On the other hand, I also have a belief that we need to look forward as opposed to looking backward.”

Some Democrats who have strongly opposed the Bush administration’s detention and interrogation practices say they agree with Obama’s cautious approach. Among them is the Senate’s No. 2 Democrat, Dick Durbin.

“There’s a big debate going on about holding the previous administration accountable for [its] actions, and I would say for the time being that the Obama team is focused properly on the future,” Durbin said. “Our economy is so weak; we’re in desperate need of jobs. Before we start looking at the pages of history in the Bush administration, we should be looking at the obvious need to create jobs and create a new economic climate in this country.”

There’s a good reason both Obama and Durbin are cautious and it has little to do with the state of the economy. Congress or any Commission named can easily carry out its duties. Congress, especially, can do more than one thing at a time.

The danger that both Democratic leaders see is in the extraordinary difficulty in investigating Bush in a non-partisan manner and whose findings would be accepted by a majority of Americans. If the investigation would be seen as a partisan witch hunt, it would not redound to the Democrat’s advantage and might even hurt them at the polls. This would seem to make some kind of a special prosecutor even more likely but even there, Obama and the Democrats will tread cautiously.

Perhaps there will be more of a push for the facts by the American people of what happened during the Bush years than one can currently imagine. But like Obama, Americans tend to be a forward thinking people who tend not to dwell on the past. Except in this case, there may be good reason to find out what went on at the White House during the last 8 years. Whether it can be done believably and fairly is another question entirely.

The other shoe dropped today in Israel’s war against Hamas when two rockets were launched from southern Lebanon, striking an old folks home and slightly injuring a resident.

Israel responded with an artillery barrage at the site. Lebanese PM Fouad Siniora played the moral equivalencey card to perfection, decrying the attack launched from Lebanon - almost certainly by a Palestinian faction - while condemning Israel for their response.

In this, Siniora proves how much of a figurehead he really is. The man calling the shots in Lebanon at the moment is Hezb’allah “spiritual” leader Hassan Nassrallah. And the Palestinians responsible for launching the rockets were, at the very least, acting with his knowledge and approval. There is not much that happens in the south of Lebanon that escapes the attention of Nasrallah so despite Hezb’allah claims that they were not responsible for the attacks, the action has Hezb’allah’s fingerprints all over it.

Does it also have Iran’s?

It is sometimes too easy to draw a straight line from Iran to Hezb’allah in Lebanon and proclaim that the mullahs in Tehran ordered the attack. Nassrallah has his own agenda and to call him a simple puppet of Iran simply isn’t true. However, there is little doubt that when Hezb’allah’s interests coincide with Tehran’s, they are more than eager to help facilitate Iran’s strategic vision. And in this case, because of the meshing of interests between the two, it is too obvious to dismiss this action as anything except an attempt by Iran to open a second front against Israel, hoping perhaps to get the Jewish state bogged down in another Lebanese debacle.

Writing in Haaretz, Yoav Stern:

Several days before Israel launched Operation Cast Lead …, Iranian foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki called several of his European counterparts and warned that Israel would face additional fronts if it attacked [Hamas in Gaza].

The rocket fire on Thursday morning … can be seen as the realization of the Iranian threat.

It is safe to assume that Palestinian operatives, working in coordination with Hizbullah and sponsored by Iran, are responsible. …

For now, Hizbullah is too sophisticated to claim responsibility. …

However, Nasrallah’s rhetoric from recent days says it all: “We are prepared for all Israeli aggression,” he said. In other words, Hizbullah won’t take responsibility for the rockets into Israel, but will claim credit for standing up against any Israeli retaliatory attacks, should there be any. …

Israel must now decide what the price tag will be for Thursday’s attacks on the north, knowing that a harsh response is likely to bring with it an escalation on the northern front and increasing international criticism.

Iran has played this card well. Israel, winding down operations in Gaza and under intense international pressure to stop fighting, can hardly be expected to launch any major military operations against the south of Lebanon - especially with the UN “peacekeepers” there.

David Hornik, writing at Pajamas Media:

If the border tensions escalate, it will also be a test case for the arrangements in place since August 2006 when, at the end of the Second Lebanon War, UN Security Resolution 1701 mandated the deployment to southern Lebanon of the Lebanese army and a beefed-up UNIFIL force ostensibly to keep Hezbollah in check and prevent further hostilities.

Critics have charged that 1701 is a flop because, since that time, Hizbullah has tripled its arsenal of missiles under the Lebanese army and UNIFIL’s vacant gaze. Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert has continued to claim that 1701-and the Second Lebanon War itself-is a success because Hizbullah hasn’t been firing any of these projectiles and is supposedly deterred. Reports that UNIFIL and the Lebanese army had been stepping up their border patrols since Cast Lead began seemed to bolster the more positive view

An escalation in the north, though, would put an end to much of this speculation. It would show that 1701 has prevented neither Hezbollah’s armament nor its use of the arms, which would seem logical since terror organizations and other entities don’t generally amass arsenals just to look at them. It would also show that Iran is indeed interested in expanding the war even at a time when it is in economic distress from falling oil prices.

In fact, one of those UNIFIL patrols stumbled on some rocket launchers in southern Lebanon last week not far from where today’s attack was initiated.

Too bad they missed the other 39,999 rockets shipped to Lebanon by Iran through Syria that Hezb’allah now has in their possession.

We know what’s in it for Iran by opening a second front; embarrass Israel, tempt them to overreact, deflect attention from their nuclear program, perhaps even take some pressure off of Hamas militarily.

But what’s in it for Nasrallah?

The most important elections in Lebanon’s history will take place on June 7 of this year when Lebanese go to the polls to elect Members of Parliament. A new electoral agreement signed at the conference at Doha last year will give fewer seats to members of Christian sects while increasing the number of Shia representatives in the fast growing south of the country. It is possible to imagine - although a long shot at this point - that a coalition of Shia parties and the Christian Free Patriotic Movement led by Michel Aoun as well as a few minor pro-Syrian groups could win control of the parliament.

The March 14th coalition of democrats, led by Sunni Rafiq Hariri and containing a coalition of Christian and moderate Sunni parties, is still expected to poll a majority of seats - if the election is free and fair and Nasrallah doesn’t try any bully boy tactics. That last is hardly a given, however, and it remains to be seen if any election in Lebanon can be free from the taint of Hezb’allah’s menacing influence. After all, they are the ones with the guns. And they have shown in the past that when they don’t get their way politically, Nasrallah will unleash his militia to attack other Lebanese factions.

But Nasrallah would prefer a little international legitimacy and to do so, he will probably play as fair as he is able where the election is concerned. To that end, he needs to constantly remind the voters of who their real enemy is (Israel) and who actually safeguards Lebanon (not the army). US attempts to strengthen the Lebanese military have been well meaning but much too little to make a difference in that moribund, barracks bound army. This suits Nasrallah fine as he desires no competition for the role of “Protector of Lebanon” and showing off Hezb’allah as the official “resistance” to Israel.

The rocket attack on Israel - almost certainly personally approved by Nasrallah - plays into both Iran’s strategic requirements to weaken Israel (and by extension, the West) while giving Nasrallah an opportunity to remind the Lebanese voter of Hezb’allah’s independence from the marginally pro-western government of Siniora and the terrorist’s claim as the guarantor of Lebanese sovereignty.

Might we expect more rocket attacks from southern Lebanon? I think it is almost a certainty that as long as the IDF is active in Gaza, more provocations will come from that quarter.

This post originally appears at The American Thinker

UPDATE

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air has a different take:

When Hezbollah goaded Israel into a war in the sub-Litani region in 2006, they launched a large number of missiles, and more effective missiles, in their attack. Firing three old missiles sounds more like the actions of a Hamas auxiliary crossing the border in order to stir up another war to distract Israel from Gaza. However, it also seems unlikely that any group could haul around missiles without getting Hezbollah’s permission to do so, and Hezbollah might not mind the idea of Israel engaging them at this point.

The Lebanese government issued a statement saying that they would investigate the rocket fire and try to determine who attacked Israel. Their army defused eight Katyushas in December in the same town where this missile attack originated, but their ability to hold the line on attacks is obviously limited. Hezbollah dominates the sub-Litani, even after Beirut promised in 2006 to have its own army take control in that region and the UN bolstered its UNIFIL mission. Their writ does not consistently run in that area, thanks to Hezbollah, which means thanks to Iran and Syria.

Ed reports that suspicion for the rocket attacks has fallen on the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command and their notorious leader Ahmad Jibril. The PFLP-GC is closely allied with Syria (they have training bases there) and also are closely associated with Hezbullah and Iran. In fact, Jibril is the first old gaurd Palestinian to seek aid from Iran.

I would think this information buttresses my contention that Iran-Hezb’allah rather than Hamas (who has taken responsibility for the a missile attacks from Lebanon) are also interested in opening a second front against Israel - for their own reasons.

UPDATE II: Welcome Michelle Malkin Readers!

I appreciate it when Michelle posts a link to my stuff in her sidebar. Not only do I get a nice bump in traffic but the quality of the comments rises as well!

Perhaps you may have heard that Right Wing Nuthouse was nominated in the “Best Conservative Blog” category for the weblog awards. Michelle, of course was nominated in the same category.

Please head on over and vote for one of us. If you are feeling charitable and would like to take pity on an old fat man, please vote for me.

What’s a little knife thrust between the shoulder blades among friends, huh? After all, it’s not like Israel’s enemies on the left want to plunge the blade up to the hilt, penetrating the heart and killing off the Jewish state. They would prefer someone else deliver the coup de grace. Instead, this is more like a “love thrust” - a little wound just to get Israel’s attention and maybe allow them to bleed a bit before calling 911.

After all, it’s not like the left wants Israel to disappear - “wiped off the map” as that little elf in Tehran so colorfully puts it. They just want Israel to behave as if the left’s silly, stupid pretensions regarding the rules of diplomacy and conflict resolution (such as they are) actually mean something. It would prove that might doesn’t make right, that it is better to receive attacks without response than defend oneself, and that a few dead Jews are a small price to pay for giving it the old college try at the negotiating table with an enemy that wants to barter their very existence.

Israel an ally? For some on the left, they have taken the word as an open invitation to try and undercut the Jewish state’s ability to defend itself as it sees fit. They disagree with Israel’s defense policy so they feel perfectly comfortable in seeking to change it by getting the US government to do their dirty work for them.

(Note that there have been few, if any, calls by Israel’s liberal enemies for the United Nations to stop the fighting. They know full well the utter futility of calling on that body to do anything except fatten their expense accounts with US taxpayer dollars. At that, they are the world’s experts.)

Instead, they harangue their government to cease our support for the Jewish state - or at least “pressure” Israel to lie down and take the barrages of rockets and mortars like a man. The arms we’ve sold to Israel are being misused - in their opinion. In fact, they shouldn’t be used at all but rather dusted off and spit shined so that they can be displayed during parades and such. Deterrence, don’t you know.

The fact that Israel is fighting a war against an implacable enemy who hides behind women and children, hoping and praying for their deaths so that the world can build up enough fake outrage to pressure Israel to pull back is inconsequential to these jamokes. But when the Palestinians have friends like Matthew Yglesias, what do they need the world for?

All throughout the “peace process” years — through the good ones and through the bad ones — Israel continued expanding both the geographical footprint of its settlements and the population living upon them. For most of this time, Israel has often appeared unwilling to enforce domestic Israeli law on the settler population, to say nothing of abiding by international law or agreements made. And while Israel has stated a desire to leave the Gaza Palestinians alone in their tiny, overcrowded, economically unviable enclave, the “disengagement” from Gaza has never entailed letting Palestinians control their borders or exercise meaningful sovereignty over the area. The proposal has basically been that if Palestinians cease violence against Israel, then the Gaza Strip will be treated like an Indian reservation. Israel’s policy objectives in the West Bank appear to be first seizing the choice bits of it, and then withdrawing behind a wall with the residual West Bank treating like post-”disengagement” Gaza.

Is there an award for “Sophistry above and beyond the call of Reason?” Yglesias would certainly be in the running although Ezra Klein would give him a run for his money. Rarely do you find such extraordinary self delusion, exaggeration, and basic misunderstanding of Israel’s  domestic political situation.

Israel’s policy on the settlements is extraordinarily complex and a political minefield that could blow up and not only oust the current government but make any kind of stable government in Israel impossible. Witness what happened in Hebron last month when Israel tried to enforce provisions in an agreement that divided the city into a Palestinian and Jewish sections.

The facts are a little more complicated than Yglesias infers which either proves his ignorance or a perfidious desire to misinform his readers. And judging by his belief that Gazans live in an economically “unviable” area, one can only conclude that Yglesias wishes to expand the two state solution’s recognized borders - a novel approach to peacemaking if you’re interested in the destruction of the Jewish state.

I guess that’s one way to make peace.

As for Gaza being an “indian reservation” that is up to Hamas. Perhaps the idea of living in peace with their neighbor who then would have no need for roadblocks, walls, nor interfere in Hamas’s desire for “meaningful sovereignty” which might eventually lead to a viable economic state.

But Hamas has said - and proved it time and again with their actions - that they don’t want a viable economic state or meaningful sovereignty, or even the prospect of living on an Indian reservation. They want the Jews gone and Israel occupied by them. Such an attitude makes any Israeli violations of agreements regarding the settlements a non sequitor. Using the settlements as a club, Hamas and their friends in the United States wish to negotiate the question of whether Israel has a right to exist. Why any state should be forced to do that is beyond me - an incredible condition to force upon a sovereign country.

The illegal outposts set down by radical Israelis who believe the Bible gives them the right to the land (and which George Bush has demanded the Israeli government remove) are not fueling the violence in Gaza. They are an excuse and not the proximate cause of the rocket barrages. It is pure sophistry to infer that anything except a virulent, nauseating strain of anti-Semitism is what keeps the Palestnians at war with Israel. They hate the Jews because they are Jews and any other greivance they have is pure gravy - sauce for the goose. And their single, animating, national ambition is to kill as many as they can while hoping that someone can come along and kick the Jews out of Israel for them.

This appears not to be complicated enough for Israel’s enemies on the left as there just isn’t enough nuance for their tastes. No good international conflict is possible unless there are “root causes” and “underlying dichotomies” to sink one’s teeth into. The idea that they have nothing to do with the matter at hand is of no consequence. When things are too simple, it is best to try to complicate them by raising straw man arguements or, better yet, just make sh*t up as Yglesias does with his “Indian reservation” analogy.

Yes, it really is quite simple. And so is the idea of an ally standing behind another when they are attacked. I realize that this too, is beyond their ken and they would rather subvert that ally by having us betray them in their hour of need by undermining what the Israelis believe is necessary to protect themselves. Hell, the left has done it before so why not polish up that knife and ready it for when Israel’s back is turned.

At this distance, they can’t miss.

With Israel poised to begin ground operations in Gaza - an action that will no doubt set off new howls of outrage from the usual suspects on the left - we might do well to examine the intellectual underpinnings of the moral equivalency that afflicts many liberals as they struggle to frame the conflict between Hama sand Israel in terms that assigns equal blame to both sides for the violence (or sometimes disproportionate blame directed toward Israel).

Further, the Israeli response - even if grudgingly granted that a response was necessary - has to be folded into the larger question of how bombing the Palestinians will hurt the “peace process” and besides, it won’t win the Israelis any friends on the other side and will only radicalize the Palestinian people.

I appreciate the difficulty of their task. In order to achieve such a dishonest result, basic truths regarding the Hamas desire to destroy Israel and its people must be ignored while the terrorist’s provocations must be minimized or dismissed as inconsequential pinpricks. Not only that, a “peace process” must be invented and presented as a viable entity for achieving impossible goals like getting Hamas to recognize Israel’s right to exist.

Finally, to pull off this nauseating conceit, America must be blamed for supporting an ally during its struggle for survival and not being “even handed” toward both the victim and the aggressor. This support is marginalized by playing up the ubiquitous “Jewish Lobby” and the evil neocons who do the bidding of Likud rather than seeing the US acting in its own interests by supporting the Jewish state in its war against those who would destroy them.

The intellectual gymnastics that are necessary to arrive at these conclusions by the left are simply astonishing. Here’s Matthew Yglesias doing a forward double flip with a twist in an attempt to elevate moral equivalency to heights heretofore only imagined in this conflict:

One way to reply to this is à la Ezra Klein who observes that at some point you need to judge based on what’s actually happening. And what’s been happening is that whatever Hamas’ ambitions may or may not have been, they were scattering short-range inaccurate rocket fire on Israel that was causing little damage. Israel struck back with actions that have killed hundreds of Palestinians and pushed over a million more closer to the brink of starvation. And in general this is an important aspect of the conflict — irrespective of intentions, over the years you have many more dead Palestinian civilians than Israeli civilians.

There is no doubt to anyone with the ability to read that Hamas “ambitions” (a queer word to describe genocide) are clear, unambiguous, unchanging (despite Yglesisas’s sly inference otherwise), and central to the matter at hand regardless of the accuracy of their rockets or bean counting civilian deaths.

Yglesias wants to ignore “intentions” because it is the only possible way to place the moral onus for the conflict on Israel. How very convenient. Simply forget that this is the continuation of a conflict with Hamas who, without constant vigilance on the part of the Israeli security services, would make any action taken by the IDF look like a walk in the park casualty wise.

Yglesias’s contention is that because Hamas has been unsuccessful in deliberately murdering Israelis in suicide attacks or rocket barrages, we should ignore their fanatical desire to do so and concentrate on their thankfully puny efforts to inflict pain and terror on the Israeli populace.

Perhaps we should ask the Israeli police to allow a few Hamas martyrs into the country just so that their attacks could even things out a bit and make Matthew feel a little better about “what is actually happening” on the ground in Israel.

That Israel’s response has nothing to do with changing hearts and minds or furthering the “peace process” but rather the simple, straightforward, morally unambiguous goal of making their citizens safe in their homes must be lost in the translation somewhere.

Charles Krauthammer:

Some geopolitical conflicts are morally complicated. The Israel-Gaza war is not. It possesses a moral clarity not only rare but excruciating.

Israel is so scrupulous about civilian life that, risking the element of surprise, it contacts enemy noncombatants in advance to warn them of approaching danger. Hamas, which started this conflict with unrelenting rocket and mortar attacks on unarmed Israelis — 6,464 launched from Gaza in the past three years — deliberately places its weapons in and near the homes of its own people.

This has two purposes. First, counting on the moral scrupulousness of Israel, Hamas figures civilian proximity might help protect at least part of its arsenal. Second, knowing that Israelis have new precision weapons that may allow them to attack nonetheless, Hamas hopes that inevitable collateral damage — or, if it is really fortunate, an errant Israeli bomb — will kill large numbers of its own people for which, of course, the world will blame Israel.

If Krauthammer believes such remedial lessons in moral clarity would educate those on the left who need it most, it is obvious he has never read Firedoglake:

So I guess this is good news to the IRA, Basque Separatists, and various others who have blown shit up over the years (killing many) — they now get a pass because they telegraphed their punches via warnings ahead of time. And I guess, by ol’ Charlies’ logic it is morally right to bomb Iran, because he wrote a cloying article about “Peace through Confligration” a couple years ago. So they’ve been adequately warned. So as long as you give a courtesy call it is okay to nuke somebody, because proportionate response just is not a moral question Krauthammer can believe in.

Huh? A bomb being set off by terrorists at a department store in London with warning given has any equivalence whatsoever with the Israelis warning civilians that they are going to destroy Hamas military installations? How novel!

First of all, our IRA heroes were nowhere near the blast site and were targeting a civilian establishments. Only the deliberately self-deluded actually believe that Israel is trying to kill civilians. And it is useless to try and argue the right and wrong of unintentional civilian casualties in war where the enemy, as Krauthammer points out, places its military installations where even pinpoint bombing can cause civilian deaths.

The faux choice between killing civilians or not killing any at all is an artificial standard created for Israel and the US who are supposed to fight wars as they did in the 18th century - gentlemanly conflicts where aristocratic officers weren’t targeted because the conflict might get out of control otherwise, it being fought by commoners and other rabble.

The sterile argument that Israel (or America) killing non combatants violates the Geneva Convention, when one side ignores the GC’s strictures against hiding behind civilian populations, fails to address the unpalatable option of not going to war at all in order to avoid civilian casualties and consequently enduring attacks on your country without response. It is the real world versus the ideal world imagined by those on the left who care less about the Geneva Convention and more about using the treaty as a way to defang both Israel and the US - emasculating them in order to achieve some wildly unrealistic status quo belli  but where the enemies of both nations can violate the GC with impunity and be safely ignored while an absolutist notion regarding civilian casualties is advanced.

Nice trick if you can get away with it.

Secondly, I daresay when the ground assault by Israel begins - as it apparently will, shortly - and if the IDF warns civilians thus losing the element of surprise for their soldiers, the resulting casualties sustained by the IDF will prove the efficacy of Krauthammer’s argument; that Israel goes to extraordinary lengths to protect the enemy population even at a cost to the the lives of their own military.

The weird, idiotic hearkening back to a column written by Krauthammer on the possibility of an attack on Iran being presented as further “argument” that Israel should receive no points for good behavior as a result of their warnings is daffy. A two year old column by a journalist is similar in construct to Israel warning Palestinian civilians?

The preceding by FDL was not an exercise in mental gymnastics but rather a baking class where students are taught how to make a pretzel. Only in this case, the confections were twisted so painfully and into such ludicrous shapes, that it cried out in protest at being abused so ignorantly.

All of this twisting and running in circles stands in stark contrast to the way the left justified fighting fascism on the side of the “republicans” during the Spanish Civil War. On the surface, going to war against Franco and the nationalists could be seen as noble, even heroic. The clerical-fascists backing the Spanish dictator were certainly an unattractive lot, wanting to keep the Spanish people in virtual bondage and peonage while being kept in line using the heavy hand of the Catholic Church.

Franco was supported by Italian and German fascists. And hearing the siren song of war being sung by Stalin and his communist party minions throughout the west, thousands of Americans joined what history has come to know as the Abraham Lincoln Brigade - a kind of super glorified Boy Scout troop that was short on military knowledge and discipline but long on enthusiasm and true belief in the cause.

What was that cause? The Spanish “republicans” were an equally inglorious bunch having made it their first order of business upon assuming power the slaughter of Catholic clergy and laity (more than 7,000 murdered) as well as tens of thousands of others who didn’t demonstrate correct political thinking. This “Red Terror” was followed by the much more brutal and efficient “White Terror” of Franco.

The Abraham Lincoln Brigade was made up of the cream of the American left - many of whom, as was the fashion of the time, were communists. (Being a Communist in the 1930’s was cool - sort of like being a Republican in the ’80’s or a Democrat today.) There were also socialists, Wobblies (IWW members), liberal democrats, the mainstream middle class, and the usual smattering of soldiers of fortune, adventurers, and devil-may-care journalists.

All the ALB cared about was that they were fighting fascism. No doubt the nationalists were deserving of disapprobation given their bombing of cities and wanton slaughter of civilians. But the atrocities committed by the “republicans” were equally vile as they too killed their fair share of non combatants, executing as many nationalist sympathizers as they could find.

Committing evil to fight evil? Who’da thunk it. Very few voices on the left were raised in opposition to these tactics on the republican side and indeed, those that were pointed to “disproportionality” between atrocities committed by Franco’s government and the Republicans.

Fighting Franco was almost certainly the right thing to do. Standing on the sidelines and positing a “pox on both their houses” would have ignored the moral framework of the conflict in favor of a safe intellectual harbor where kibbitzing from the sidelines as the nationalists murdered their way to victory would have been cowardly. No one knows what kind of government would have emerged if the republicans had been victorious but given the history of communist movements worldwide, its a safe bet to say that Spain may very well have eventully been gobbled up by Moscow.

But we have the advantage of 20/20 hindisight and at the time, fighting on the side of those who supported liberal democracy was the correct moral choice.

The point is, the left had no trouble taking sides when the moral choices were much less clear given the ravages committed by both sides. But correctly identifying the side in the right in the current Hamas-Israeli War seems to be beyond their capacity despite the fact that the issues here, as Krauthammer points out, possess “a moral clarity not only rare but excruciating.”

I used to make great sport of Salon’s Glenn Greenwald and his idiotic rantings against Bush, conservatives, Republicans, and individual bloggers he would attack irrationally. There is no one on the internet who exaggerates more, takes what someone writes or says completely and dishonestly out of context more often, or sets up larger strawmen - knocking them down with the kind of feverish frenzy one might see in a 14 year old drama queen.

His over the top, hysterical warnings about the imminent demise of American democracy, his one dimensional take on everything from the war to same sex marriage, and his insufferable, loutish, smugly self righteous attitude figured to be just too tempting a target for many of us who see in him the epitome of netroots hypocrisy and stupidity.

But it got boring after a while to pillory Greenwald because he was so predictable. This is why he largely goes unchallenged these days; people are just too busy with other, more important matters, than going through one of his 3,000 word rants and calling him out for the lies, the exaggerations, the deliberate twisting of intent, and other grevious sins that is this sock puppet’s stock in trade.

Occasionally, however, the urge comes upon me to try to set the record straight. It may seem vainglorious for me to think that anything I write on my little blog matters a whit in the larger scheme of things - even in so insignificant a matter as Glenn Greenwald and his latest smears against those with which he disagrees. But winding up and throwing a haymaker toward Greenwald’s jaw - in a literary sense - is nevertheless a quite satisfying exercise emotionally and I will therefore indulge myself as I desperately need some spiritual uplift following the decline and fall of My Beloved Bears last week.

Greenwald has written perhaps the most dishonest, ignorant, deliberately deceptive piece on the War against Hamas that has yet been penned. And given the tripe that’s been vomiting forth from sites like The Nation and Firedoglake, that is a truly remarkable achievement.

Greenwald is a liar. Either that or he is so oblivious to facts, reason, and logic that he must experience life on the level of a two year old. How else would you describe his opening to this anti-Israeli screed that drips with venomous hatred against his political enemies:

This Rasmussen Reports poll — the first to survey American public opinion specifically regarding the Israeli attack on Gaza — strongly bolsters the severe disconnect I documented the other day between (a) American public opinion on U.S. policy towards Israel and (b) the consensus views expressed by America’s political leadership.  Not only does Rasmussen find that Americans generally “are closely divided over whether the Jewish state should be taking military action against militants in the Gaza Strip” (44-41%, with 15% undecided), but Democratic voters overwhelmingly oppose the Israeli offensive — by a 24-point margin (31-55%).  By stark constrast, Republicans, as one would expect (in light of their history of supporting virtually any proposed attack on Arabs and Muslims), overwhelmingly support the Israeli bombing campaign (62-27%).

The smear written here - so casually made - that “as one would expect” (as if everyone were as intellectually dishonest as Greenwald), Republicans have a “history” of supporting “any proposed attacks on Arabs or Muslims.” What history might that be? A favorite Greenwaldian subterfuge is to throw as many charges against his enemies just to see if any stick. This one’s a biggie, of course.He is saying that all Republicans are bigots and hate Muslims and Arabs - without one single example or any evidence to support his wild, unsupported lie.

No, very few people “expect” Republicans to act in such a bigoted manner - especially 62% of them - except Greenwald and his ilk whose exaggerated sense of disproportion allows them to posit all kinds of evil without offering a scintilla of proof. Supporting wars against Saddam Hussein and the Taliban for reasons of national security is not the same as hating Muslims so much that Republicans relish the thought of killing them. The fact that I have to point this out would seem silly to most rational people except Greenwald apparently believes it - or is a liar.

It would also be relevant point out that while Democrats and liberals were willing to allow Muslims to be slaughtered in Bosnia and Kosovo, it was Republican support that allowed a Democratic president to go to war against orthodox Christian Serbia and save them. Does that mean that liberals hate Muslims because they didn’t mind seeing them murdered and raped? In Greenwald’s world, yes.

If possible, this statement is even more dishonest:

It’s not at all surprising, then, that Republican leaders — from Dick Cheney and John Bolton to virtually all appendages of the right-wing noise machine, from talk radio and Fox News to right-wing blogs and neoconservative journals — are unquestioning supporters of the Israeli attack. After all, they’re expressing the core ideology of the overwhelming majority of their voters and audience.

What “core ideology” is that Mr. Greenwald? The subtext is, we assume, the same as above; that the GOP hates Arabs and Muslims. And where in God’s name did this worthless dreck of a human being come up with the idea that the “overwhelming majority” of Republican voters and audience hates Muslims?

It might be interesting to have Mr. Greenwald link to the poll that shows that the “overwhelming majority” of Republicans buy the “core ideology” of bigotry and hate against Muslims and Arabs. It is this kind of deliberate smear that Greenwald gets away with for the simple reason no one takes the time (or wastes it) in responding.

This calumny is not your run of the mill political mud wrestling where eye gouging and leg twisting is done with relish and opponents end up covering themselves in manure when all is said and done. This is the world according to Glenn Greenwald - a very special place where simply having him say that up is down, black is white, and the “overwhelming majority” of Republicans are bigots makes it so.

Note I have not called Greenwald an “anti-Semite” for opposing Israel’s war of survival against an enemy whose public policy toward their neighbor is total destruction. You can be an idiot without being a hater. But his selective outrage against Israel (and tepid, pro-forma objections to Hamas’s cruel barrage of rockets targeting civilians in Israel) is indicative of someone without moral awareness. Is he deceiving us or himself? A good question that too many on the left - lacking the desire for introspection as they do - fail to ask themselves.

But what really has Greenwald’s panties in a twist is the fact that American political leaders of both parties have, for the most part, taken Israel’s side in the War:

Ultimately, what is most notable about the “debate” in the U.S. over Israel-Gaza is that virtually all of it occurs from the perspective of Israeli interests but almost none of it is conducted from the perspective of American interests. There is endless debate over whether Israel’s security is enhanced or undermined by the attack on Gaza and whether the 40-year-old Israeli occupation, expanding West Bank settlements and recent devastating blockade or Hamas militancy and attacks on Israeli civilians bear more of the blame. American opinion-making elites march forward to opine on the historical rights and wrongs of the endless Israeli-Palestinian territorial conflict with such fervor and fixation that it’s often easy to forget that the U.S. is not actually a direct party to this dispute.

As Israel’s biggest and best ally and virtual guarantor of their existence, of course we have an abiding interest in the conflict. The wonder is that Greenwald evidently feels sticking a knife in the back of your ally while she is fighting for her life by condemning this bomb going off in the wrong place or that bullet not hitting its intended target is just fine. Better yet, take the morally reprehensible position of a “pox on both your houses” and condemn everybody. That way, you can do away with the only democracy in the Middle East as an ally and simply treat them as we might look upon Sierra Leone or Gabon.

When one’s moral compass goes in a circle and taking the “out” that the survival of an ally is none of your business might be satisfying from an ideological standpoint but is hardly practical or even desirable. Taking sides in a war is a necessary evil when it comes right down to it. The US is not Sweden or Switzerland, although Greenwald might prefer that kind of “neutrality” to the sort of practical realization that the survival of Israel is important to the US national interest.

Whew! Remind me not to ask Greenwald to be an ally.

The rank deceitfulness of Greenwald is really getting tiresome. The idea that this ignorant hypocrite - as ignorant and hypocritical as any right winger he wants to name - has been given such a big megaphone at Salon would be incomprehensible except when you realize that his followers among the netroots are equally obtuse and perfidious when it comes to attacking their political and ideological enemies.

With that kind of devoted following, he’ll probably grab a Pulitzer someday.

I suppose the real question is will there ever be agreement among everybody on just what is satire and what is racism?

The answer is not as long as liberals see playing the race card as the political advantage it is.

The latest blow up involves a Rush Limbaugh parody that first surfaced on his show during the campaign. “Barack the Magic Negro,” an edgy satire of Obama’s celebrity and popularity with white voters that was written by Paul Shanklin and played numerous times on Rush’s show. (The term ‘Barack the Magic Negro” was first used in an Los Angeles Times column by cultural critic David Ehrenstein - a fact that the parody makes mention of. Ehrenstein is a white liberal.)

The song was sent out as a Christmas greeting by RNC chair candidate Chip Saltsman with the message:

“I look forward to working together in the New Year,” Saltsman wrote. “Please enjoy the enclosed CD by my friend Paul Shanklin of the Rush Limbaugh Show.”

Also on the CD were other examples of Shanklin’s satire including “John Edwards’ Poverty Tour,” “Wright place, wrong pastor,” “Love Client #9,” “Ivory and Ebony” and “The Star Spanglish banner.”

Shanklin’s stuff is mostly brilliant satire. But like all good political humor, it walks a line of good taste and decorum. In fact, by pushing the boundaries as Shanklin does, he defines for us the essence of political satire. In this respect (not in talent) Shanklin’s material is no more objectionable than Jonathon Swift or George Orwewll for that matter.

That is, unless you’re a liberal seeking to make political hay and stifle free expression. You can criticize “Barack the Magic Negro” as unfunny or not in good taste. But when you use the inflammatory word “racism” to describe it, you go beyond critiquing the work and enter the world of pure politics. This liberals do on a regular basis and they get away with the sliming of political speech and speakers they disagree with because the press refuses to call them out on it.

In fact, the left has lowered the bar on what constitutes “racism” by redefining the term to suit their own political needs. And by refusing to acknowledge any set definition of the word, the left deliberately undermines free speech by cutting off debate with liberals firmly ensconced in a superior moral position while the person being unfairly smeared as a racist is unable to defend themselves. If one tries to stand up and fight the charge, they give automatic legitimacy to the left’s argument. And if they remain silent in the face of such slimeball tactics, the smear works and sticks to the accused like glue.

Having said all this, is it an appropriate Christmas message from a potential RNC chairman? It wouldn’t be my first choice but then I don’t think Saltsman the guy for the job anyway.

What is clear is that this despicable tactic by the left predates Obama and has done more to poison relations between the races in this country than all the cross burnings and hate speech delivererd by the morons in the Klan or the Skinheads. The reason is simple; the left has appropriated the word “racist” in order to define the debate on race - any issue, any time, anywhere - on their terms and their terms alone. Do you oppose Affirmative Action? You’re a racist. Do you oppose set asides for business based on race? You are a racist. Do you oppose racial quotas in college entrance requirements? You are a racist.

No debate. No exchange of ideas. No give and take on any issue that touches race unless you first accept the left’s position on these and other issues. If you don’t, the debate is closed off by simply calling you a racist - end of discussion.

So it’s no surprise they see legitimate satire as “racist.” In fact, the surprise would be if they didn’t.

UPDATE

Thanks to so many commenters - both present and future - who are proving the thesis of my argument so spectacularly. Not only are those calling me a racist proving their aversion to free speech but the dumbing down of the term racism by my detractors and its use to cut off debate (with the obligatory nod to the idea that  defending 1st Amendment rights are what will keep Republicans out of power - which is used in lieu of any kind of intelligent answer to the points I raise) only goes to show that the mind of a liberal is extraordinarily predictable.

Simple minded sophists usually are.

The irony in the left’s total absolution granted the Obama transition team regarding any unethical contacts with Governor Rod Blagojevich or his staff actually makes for some pretty good comedy.

This is the crew that swallowed al-Qaeda propaganda whole with regards to every war “atrocity” ever reported instead of giving their own military or government the benefit of the doubt - including the “Haditha Massacre” where many liberals tried to outdo one another in heaping calumny on innocent soldiers. And now a single report, issued by a politician who presents no other evidence that could clarify or contradict its conclusions, is being trumpeted to the skies as “proof” that no one in the Obama camp did anything wrong.

In short, the left is apt to unquestioningly take what al-Qaeda and Obama say at face value while dismissing the reports of their own government.

Now I will be the first to point out that there were many reports from our military regarding readiness of the Iraqi Army and other political benchmarks set by Congress that were less than honest. And there have been other instances where our government lied outright about the war, specifically in their overly optimistic assessments about progress in bringing peace and security to the provinces.

I am not saying that we should automatically believe everything the government says and not believe al-Qaeda propagandists. I am saying that the left is being hypocritical by not showing the same skepticism they direct towards the Bush Administration on anything and everything they come out with compared to their superficial, eager embrace of the one sided, sole source Obama report on staff contacts with Blago.

It is a selective form of information processing that proves two things; most on the left are partisan hacks and that we are in for at least four years of insufferable hypocrisy from people who are so clueless that they fail to recognize it.

Apparently, we are to suspend disbelief for the duration of Obama’s presidency. No matter that not one single taped conversation with the principles has been released to either confirm the information in the report or make Obama out a liar. Reports in the press on what Fitzy actually has as far as taped conversations between Blagojevich and the Obama team have been wildly overstated (at least according to the report). And yet, when the press assures us that because of the findings in the president-elect’s own manufactured report we can now put this controversy to rest.

In a front page diary at Kos from JedL, we get this bit of certainty about our new president:

Let me emphasize this point: the reason why the release of the Obama report was delayed was to allow Fitzgerald to complete his interviews with the transition team. In other words, everything that Obama’s team has said has been true.

Such unquestioning devotion based on nothing more than a politician’s word - an oxymoron to be sure - would be laughable if this same attitude wasn’t so prevelant on the left.

Steve Bennen:

And as expected, there was nothing to hide. The entire Craig memo is online (.pdf), and after reading it, everything we’d heard from Obama and his team was completely true. Obama never spoke to Blagojevich or his office about the Senate vacancy; no one on Obama’s staff ever had any inappropriate discussions with the governor or his office; and no one Obama’s staff ever had any indication that Blagojevich was engaged in alleged corruption.

The report is quite thorough - in a self serving kind of way. But what in God’s name does anyone expect? If anyone actually thought Obama would put one iota of information in that report that would have contradicted anything he or his aides have said on the matter they belong in an insane asylum.

So what’s the rush, guys? The exoneration of Obama and his team as a result of findings released in their own report after conducting their own investigation would make most people with a molecule of curiosity say “OK, fine. I’m glad they say they’re innocent of any ethical breach or lawbreaking as a newborn babe. Perhaps we might wait upon Fitzgerald for a release of, like, you know, some actual evidence that what they say is true rather than swallowing their report whole like a good little Obamabot?”

But why let a little reality slip into the “Reality Based Community” when anti-intellectualism is so much easier to embrace?

UPDATE

I note that Steven Benen makes the arguement that because Fitzy has the tapes, this means that the Obama camp was “forced” to tell the truth lest any information that came out a a later date would contradict what’s in the report.

One imagines that Obama detractors might not believe these conclusions — “the transition team can’t clear itself of wrongdoing!” — but the review was done with the knowledge that Blagojevich and his office was the subject of FBI wiretaps. The transition team, in other words, knew in advance that any false claims would be easily exposed, so they had a very strong incentive to be completely honest.

First, there is no certainty that the tapes in question will ever see the light of day and the Obama camp could certainly have been told this. No doubt Fitzy would play some of the tapes at any trial of Blagojevich and Harris but since there almost certainly was nothing illegal offered by Blago to the Obama camp, the chances of any Blago-Emanuel converstations aired at trial would be slim. What kind of horse trading that might have gone on would be irrelevant in a criminal trial but might be damaging politically.

Secondly, as we saw with Bill Clinton, parsing words is an art form and statements made in the report could very well contradict what the actual conversations might say because a good lawyer can twist words and facts until they reveal exactly what he wishes them to reveal. The report could have said the sun rises in the west and Obama could come out with a statement that if you are standing upsidedown and facing sideways, of course the sun rises in the west, dummy.

No doubt Bennen et al would swallow that one without any skepticism too.

This whole Rick Warren blow-up that has occupied both the left and right recently reminds me of all that I hate about both conservatives and liberals. They aren’t discussing the very smart political move (and wonderful, healing gesture) by Obama to invite a man who equates gay love with incest to give the invocation at this historic inaugural. The issue has been folded into the Prop 8 brouhaha and has been deliberately used to reignite a debate that was settled the only way such thorny issues can be settled; at the ballot box by ordinary Americans making their feelings known in a clear, unambiguous way.

To my conservative freinds, I would ask what possible relevance this minor, irritating issue has when the country’s economy is going to hell in a handbasket? I don’t ask the same question of the left because to them, “the personal is political” and forcing the concept of gay marriage down the American people’s throat seems perfectly reasonable - especially since they believe the rest of us are a bunch of bible thumping, goober chewing yahoos who need to be instructed (by them) as to what is correct thinking and what isn’t - regardless of one’s personal beliefs.

Calling on government to either ban or bless how one chooses to express their love for another human being is the height of idiocy. If individual religious sects (or, through the ballot box, a state) wishes to recognize unions of same sex couples as “marriage” or something similar who are we to say otherwise? It’s not anyone’s business and the idea that it should matter is rapidly becoming ridiculous.

The challenges we face in the next few years are as serious as any faced by a generation of Americans since World War II. We are at war with a fanatical ideology, supported by nation states - one of whom may very well be close to having the ultimate weapon - using terror tactics to achieve their ends while their actions are supported or tolerated by tens of millions of their co-religionists.

Our economic situation is dire - and being made moreso by mortgaging our future so that politicians can be seen to be “doing something about the problem.” Eight trillion dollars later, the economy is arguably no better off and we have postponed the date of recovery. In the meantime, a budget deficit approaching a trillion dollars is staring the liberals and the face and they are not giving an inch. They are going to initate all their pet spending schemes come hell or high water. The trouble is that both those things have come already. We are in hell. High water would be an improvement.

The most inexperienced chief executive in American history will be learning on the job while the rest of the world - especially our enemies - will seek to test the limits of his patience and skill. There are so many landmines strewn in his path that the chances of him stepping on one of them is pretty darn good. Either Russia or Iran is almost certain to challenge Obama somewhere, somehow. That seems to be a growing consensus among our foreign policy wise heads who give the new president less than a year before he faces a genuine, teeth rattling crisis.

And despite all this, the gay community is throwing a tantrum about Rick Warren while seeking to nullify the will of the people in California. Inconvenient? No doubt. Democracy is a messy, ugly process. But working actively to tell the millions of Californians who voted for Prop 8 that their vote, their feelings, and their beliefs matter as much as a pile of crap is not the way things are done in democracies. They are acting as if there will never be another election and that people’s minds cannot be changed. If they keep up with these bully boy, screaming, foot stomping, two year old-like tactics, people will continue voting to deny what they see as their “right” to marry until they grow up and work like responsible adults to bring people around to their point of view.

To the Mormons and rabid gay-haters out there on the right who think they hold a patent on truth, I’ve got news for you; very few people care what you think. In fact, the more you work against gay marriage, the faster you hasten the day when it will become a reality. The only thing keeping a backlash from forming against you now is the backlash that has already formed against the kooks on the left who beat you to it through their childish idiocy of attacking people for their religious beliefs while screaming that everyone should boycott everybody if they even sneezed in favor of Prop 8. I never thought I’d see the day when people would feel sorry for Mormons and others who are in the line of fire of these ignorant boobs in the gay community.

In the end, this is a non-issue being pushed on both sides by ignorant statists who wish to use government to get what they want. Meanwhile, the world melts down around them and the rest of us wonder just what the hell has got this minority of loudmouths so upset. The only thing I know is that the louder they get, the more I wish they’d just shut up and the whole issue just go away.

UPDATE:

Judging by the emails I’ve gotten, my usual detractors are accusing me of dismissing the issue with a “pox on both your houses,” typical Moran BS. In this case, I see no difference between the Mormons, the gay haters, and those in the gay community who are blowing a gasket over the Rick Warren imbroglio and Prop 8 boycotts.. They are all statist boobs as far as I’m concerned, seeking to hijack government in order to impose their views on the rest of us.

Gay marriage is not a “conservative” issue. Conservatives don’t care whether someone loves another who is the same sex or not. Love is love and trying to redefine it is like trying to get the sun to rise in the west and set in the east. If you believe the love you hold for your own spouse is legitimate, you cannot deny the same kind of love that exists between two men or two women is equally correct - bible or not.

And there is no “human right” to get married. That may be the biggest bunch of hooey ever advanced by the left. If gay marriage is going to happen in the US, it will happen with acceptance by the majority and not as part of legal trickery that seeks to redefine what a “human right” is suppose to be.

For all those who haven’t taken a good hard shot at me lately, I give you my newest up at PJ Media:

As the sands run out on the Bush administration and the nation looks to the incoming Obama White House with a combination of apprehension for the future and a desire to put the past behind us, there remains some unfinished business that is so fraught with political danger and so heavy with symbolism regarding how we Americans see ourselves that the political elites in Washington are reluctant to address it.

Added to the opinion war now is a report issued (PDF required) by the Senate Armed Services Committee regarding the treatment of detainees in U.S. custody. Even for those familiar with most of the details regarding Bush administration decisions about “enhanced interrogation” techniques, there is some new information as well as confirmation of the involvement of certain administration officials that directly implicates them in violations of U.S. law.

Read the whole thing.