Right Wing Nut House

Franklin Foer, Editor of The New Republic is still trying desperately to confirm many of the details of bad behavior by US troops in Iraq related in the Scott Thomas stories. He really needn’t worry that much; blogs appear to be doing his work for him:

This information is from an anonymous soldier who served in the area described by Thomas. It partially confirms one of the more gruesome stories in the Thomas diaries - that of a soldier wearing the skull of a dead child that was unearthed by a mass grave:

There was a children’s cemetery unearthed while constructing a Combat Outpost (COP) in the farm land south of Baghdad International Airport. It was not a mass grave. It was not the result of some inhumane genocide. It was an unmarked cometary where the locals had buried children some years back. There are many such unmarked cemeteries in and around Baghdad. The remains unearthed that day were transported to another location and reburied. While I was not there personally, and can not confirm or deny and actions taken by Soldiers that day, I can tell you that no Soldier put a human skull under his helmet and wore it around. The Army Combat Helmet (ACH) is form fitted to the head. Unlike the old Kevlar helmets, the ACH does not have a gap between the helmet and the liner, only pads. It would have been impossible for him to have placed and human skull, of any size, between his helmet and his head. Further more, no leader would have tolerated this type of behavior. This type of behavior is strictly forbidden in the U.S. Army and would have made the individual involved subject to UCMJ actions.

Not a “mass grave” as described by Thomas (the article said that Thomas and his mates “speculated” that it could have been a mass grave) but rather an unmarked children’s cemetery that the army then moved to another location. A difference worth quibbling about? Not to my mind. That much we can confirm about the story.

What about the soldier walking around wearing a part of a child’s skull? This may be a little more problematic for TNR as the soldier makes clear above. Is it possible some goof put the piece of bone on his head and paraded around for a few minutes or longer? This is possible. But spending an entire day with the skullbone underneath his helmet would seem to be an impossibility.

Score one for the blogs. And chalk up an embellishment to the author.

In the end, that’s what I think this story is going to be about; a real combat soldier who is serving in Iraq with a gift for writing and who didn’t mind spicing up his memoirs with some exaggerations and embellishments to the truth. The Bradley driver who targeted dogs with his vehicle will probably end up being someone who decided it was suicide to slow down in a combat zone to avoid hitting a dog or two. Did he joke about keeping track of how many dogs he ran over while trying to ease the tension you might find on a combat patrol? Other incidents related by Thomas may be composites of several different events that actually happened but for the sake of his “narrative,” he chose to combine various elements in order to make a seamless whole.

An excellent technique - if you’re writing fact-based fiction. Unfortunately for The New Republic, this isn’t the case.

The problem for Foer and TNR is that they presented this fellow Thomas as writing the unvarnished truth about his experiences in Iraq. In this case, embellishment of the facts surrounding any of the incidents mentioned is the same as lying. Publishing what they purport to be “journalism” as opposed to a story based on fact, TNR was obligated to vet carefully anything that appeared in those articles before the fact. The idea that Foer is just now getting around to that little detail is astonishing - especially after the Stephen Glass fiasco.

I’m not sure why but Matthew Yglesias doesn’t seem to have much of a problem with this:

. . but amidst The Weekly Standard’s huffing and puffing about how “Scott Thomas” couldn’t possibly have come across a mass grave in a particular area of operations where he allegedly said he came across one (crucially, he didn’t actually say that), they inadvertently corroborated the story. Thomas said he and other soldiers found a bunch of skeletons during the construction of a combat outpost. One of the article’s detractors concedes that “There was a children’s cemetery unearthed while constructing a Combat Outpost (COP) in the farm land south of Baghdad International Airport” and then gets very insistent that it was no mass grave. The article, however, just said they found a bunch of bones and then speculated idly that it might have been a mass grave. Well, turns out it was a children’s cemetary.

Meanwhile, the case that nobody could possibly have driven around in his Bradley Fighting Vehicle killing dogs seems to essentially come down to the fact that “This would violate standard operating procedure (SOP) and make the convoy more susceptible to attack.” I don’t, however, think anyone ever argued that killing dogs was SOP, the claim was that it happened. Surely the Standard is prepared to concede that SOP, though standard, is sometimes violated.

First, why must Yglesias do his own bit of exaggerating here? The Standard didn’t “inadvertently” corroborate the information about the children’s cemetery. That’s absurd. Is Yglesias saying that Goldfarb is such a dolt he forgot to exclude exculpatory evidence that would prove Thomas correct? Evidently yes. No mention of debunking the child’s skullbone on the head of the soldier story by Yglesias. Looks like he “inadvertently” left that out.

As for the Bradley deliberately targeting dogs, it is evident that Yglesias is a little behind the information curve. Several vets who have driven or a currently driving Bradleys point out the impossibility of targeting anything given the location of the hatch as well as the range of vision afforded the driver. This would seem to supersede Yglesias’ contention that judging the veracity of the incident came down to a question of SOP.

Another “inadvertent” omission by Yglesias? I guess so. I think Matthew would probably fit in wonderfully at The New Republic.

Debunking or confirming specific incidents related by Scott Thomas is important but at the same time, we mustn’t lose sight of the overall picture of the military being painted by the left recently; and that is, the US army is chock full of kooks, crazies, gun nuts, latent serial killers, rapists, psychologically disturbed, violence prone killers who are careening around Iraq firing indiscriminately at civilians, killing kids for sport, and hating their hosts with a genocidal passion.

I have no doubt that war turns men into beasts, that no amount of training can prepare young men for the horror of combat, and that the stress of numerous deployments has taken its toll on the psychological health of many in the military.

But articles like those written by Scott Thomas and the 7500 word screed appearing this month in The Nation make no effort to avoid generalizing the behavior of the few into what amounts to an indictment of the entire US military.

That’s their intent, of course. Being anti-war has its perks, not the least of which is the right to talk out one side of your mouth claiming support for the troops while dishing dirt on the military out of the other side. And inadvertently or not, the effect is to tar the entire military serving in Iraq with the crimes of the few.

The article in The Nation is astonishing for its detailed recitation of some brutal atrocities as well as the casual - perhaps inhuman is a better word - manner in which the death of civilians was treated by the military. The graphic descriptions of war crimes come from 50 ex-military people who served in Iraq between 2003-2005.

Many of these young men are undergoing psychological treatment for the things they did as well as incidents they witnessed first hand. For them, as well as no doubt thousands of others who the experts say will need counseling when their tours are over, let us wish them well and hope that they can recover and adjust to living among civilians.

Does the fact that many of those interviewed for the article - if not the overwhelming majority - come from anti-war groups or were recommended by them cast doubt on their stories? We don’t know. Wherever possible, The Nation included press reports that confirmed the soldiers’ stories. But that fact raises other questions of media contamination as well as the simple, human penchant for remembering things differently from the way they actually occurred. And then there is the experience we in the United States have had with these types of forums, specifically the Viet Nam era “Winter Soldier” confabs. To avoid the worst errors made by the organizers of that anti-military get together - it turns out many of the testimonials of atrocities were given by people either never in the military or who couldn’t possibly have witnessed what they were describing - The Nation was careful in only interviewing genuine ex-servicemen. Whether they served in areas that would have put them in a position to actually witness the events they describe is up to the reader to decide.

The problem for The Nation is the same one facing The New Republic; how do you vet stories in a combat zone, months or years after the fact? Given the anti-war agenda of both publications as well as their reputation for advocacy journalism, questions should always be raised about their sources and methods. And despite arguments by the left to the contrary - that even if partly true, the stories confirm a “larger truth” about Iraq and the military - the standards for publication should be at least as strict as those used when publishing any other news story in those magazines.

Where is the truth in all of this? In the eye of the beholder, naturally. Subjective vs. objective truth will always fight it out when issues that enjoin the passions of the people are discussed and debated. It might be helpful if we remember however, that smearing the reputations of honorable people for political profit reserves a special level in hell for the practitioners - something both publications might want to keep in mind when printing stories about the United States military.

The case of Scott Thomas and TNR v. The Truth is not going to be resolved by anything bloggers can unearth. Nor are questions about the credibility of The New Republic and the stories of Scott Thomas going to be laid to rest by anything the magazine can do by itself.

The only way to discover the truth of the matter is for the magazine to form a committee of people independent of both conservative blogs and The New Republic in order to investigate the stories.

I urge this course of action on The New Republic as someone who has been a reader of the magazine for going on 40 years. My father had a lifetime subscription to The New Republic and as long as I lived at home as well as during my many visits to our house during my mother’s extended illness, I made a point of reading it. I was never a subscriber but have sought out the publication at news stands and other places all my professional life. I consider The New Republic one of the indispensable publications in America today. Over the years, it has consistently challenged my assumptions, rounded out my knowledge of current events, and informed me as have few other publications.

But the questions swirling around the veracity of Scott Thomas, the pseudonymous soldier who wrote an article for the magazine detailing bad behavior by the American military, will not go away because of any internal investigation carried out by the magazine. And the reason is very simple; no one would believe them. The magazine’s problems with former writer Stephen Glass perhaps unfairly places a larger burden of proof upon them than would normally be the case. Beyond that, their well known anti-war editorial stance presupposes a bias to believe the Scott Thomas stories - a fact made abundantly clear by Editor Franklin Foer’s “Note to our Readers:”

Several conservative blogs have raised questions about the Diarist “Shock Troops,” written by a soldier in Iraq using the pseudonym Scott Thomas. Whenever anybody levels serious accusations against a piece published in our magazine, we take those charges seriously. Indeed, we’re in the process of investigating them. I’ve spoken extensively with the author of the piece and have communicated with other soldiers who witnessed the events described in the diarist. Thus far, these conversations have done nothing to undermine–and much to corroborate–the author’s descriptions. I will let you know more after we complete our investigation.

The fact that Foer waited until questions started to arise over the veracity of the article before he spoke with the author of the piece and “communicated with other soldiers who witnessed the events” described by Thomas can only mean one thing; this kind of rigorous vetting of the story and its sources was not done prior to publication.

Simply put, The New Republic cannot be trusted to carry out an internal investigation of their own to either confirm the accuracy of the incidents in question or the integrity of the writer.

(For an excellent look at all the questions raised by bloggers about these stories, see this post by Michael Goldfarb and then go back to “Main” and start scrolling. He has 8-10 entries on the matter.)

An inquiry made up of respected journalists would be able to resolve the matter fairly quickly and to everyone’s satisfaction. For that reason, I call upon Franklin Foer to set up such a committee and have them begin work immediately. The reputation of the United States military as well as the integrity of The New Republic are at stake.

UPDATE

Bryan at Hot Air:

Given Foer’s smear as quoted by Kurtz, he should not be be trusted when he comes out in a few days or weeks and says “It’s all true. I can’t show you any evidence or introduce you to a single corroborating witness, so you’ll just have to take my word for it.” No sale. Foer has done nothing to earn anyone’s trust, and his magazine has a peculiar history that mandates a very careful and thorough investigation and a very honest and complete rendering of a verdict. It doesn’t look like we’ll get that from Foer.

What Foer and TNR will get if they hunker down and keep lashing out at legitimate criticism is some nutroots cred for publishing smears of US troops in combat. Sad to say, that may be the end goal here.

I was inclined to believe Foer was serious about checking the facts until I read his comments to Kurtz about the controversy. Now the need for an independent inquiry is made manifest by Foer’s arrogance.

And Michelle Malkin has a piece highlighting the military service of the “9/11 Generation.” All the more reason to urge The New Republic to get it right and not smear the reputations of these fine young men and women.

There are lessons to be learned from the Great Capitol Hill Sex Scandal of the Summer of 2007 except I’m not exactly sure what those lessons should be.

But first, we’ve got to come up with a better name. Something catchy. Something that will fit easily into newspaper headlines. Something that rolls off the tongue and spits out of the mouth with the proper amount of indignation and contempt. Something that will fit in that space under the TV picture where the “crawl” of headlines rolls by all day long.

“Pantygate?” Not bad but needs work.
“Progate?” Too obscure.
“Ho’gate?” Don’t go there.
“Zippergate?” Getting warm. As in “Why can’t these “family values” Republicans keep their zippers zipped?

I will say to my Republican friends that it does no good to whine about double standards. You’re going to have to concede the hypocrisy point to our Democratic friends on this one. If your going to lecture people about the sanctity of marriage as it relates to banning gay unions or campaign on a platform stressing “family values,” it would be best if you didn’t go whoring around on your wife, wetting your wick at $300 a pop.

Mindboggling stupidity.

And it appears that more good news for the GOP is on the way. The Hill reports that Larry Flynt, pornographer, guardian and promoter of public immorality, and paragon of Democratic party virtue, has smoked out a few other lawmakers whose inability to resist the temptations found in Washington, D.C. fleshpots will no doubt be making headlines soon:

Larry Flynt, the porn-industry magnate who first linked Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) to the escort service of the “D.C. Madam,” said Wednesday that his investigators are tracking more than 20 leads on alleged congressional sex scandals.

As Vitter remained missing in action for two Senate votes on defense policy, Flynt insisted that he exposed the conservative lawmaker’s sexual indiscretions only because they contradicted Vitter’s longtime defense of the “sanctity of marriage.”

“If someone’s living a life contrary to the way they’re advocating … then they become fair game,” Flynt told reporters. “I don’t want a man like that legislating for me, especially in the area of morality.”

Should this condemnation of hypocritical behavior include Mr. Flynt? After all, his magazine is full of good looking, shapely models, women who were are told in a rather disappointing disclaimer that the stories and descriptions accompanying the girlie pictures do not necessarily reflect the lifestyle or moral character of the woman being photographed.

Full disclosure, Mr. Flynt. How many of those models really would like to urinate all over their lover? How many would like to perform other scatological sex rituals that you seem so nauseatingly obsessed with in your magazine?

America wants to know, Mr. Flynt! They deserve to know! Have any of these models ever done the do-do on you?

Considering that most of the Republican party would like to oblige Mr. Flynt’s curious proclivities toward bathroom sex and take a dump right in his lap, maybe he could get a couple of good photospreads out of it.

Flynt setting himself up as arbiter of American morals is funny enough. But the kicker is that he apparently has no intention of publishing the names of Democratic lawmakers caught with their pants down:

The 20-plus new leads, Flynt said, come from the newspaper ad and not Palfrey. The Hustler publisher, arrested and jailed multiple times during his decades-long career, vowed to provide clear proof and only out lawmakers whom he perceives to be hypocrites.

“You guys always know, [from] the past, I deliver,” Flynt said. “And if I fail to, the mainstream media will crush me like a bug.”

The Vitter scandal has touched off new anxiety among Republicans over whether their party will pay the price for members who fail to live up to their moral principles. Flynt, an unabashed Democrat, acknowledged that the GOP provides him with easier targets.

First, it’s hard to crush a bug who lives in a sewer. But does anyone else find it riotously amusing that Flynt gets to decide who’s a “hypocrite” and who isn’t?

The publisher of a magazine that promotes gratuitous and consequence-free sex is now sitting in judgment of people who have simply followed his formulaic lifestyle and engaged in a little slap and tickle with a willing partner. Despite his magazine’s clear message that there’s absolutely no downside to having easy morals, that in fact, it is a preferred way to live one’s life, Flynt is about to lower the boom on people for living up to his own misogynistic credo.

Why should whether they are “hypocrites” matter to him at all? In Flynt’s moral universe, you’re only a hypocrite if you don’t screw anything that moves three times a day. The idea that anyone who visits a prostitute - married or not; spouting allegiance to family values or not - should be held up as an object lesson in sanctimony by the purveyor of a publication that features the most nauseating racist, homophobic, and chauvinistic cartoons while showcasing women in the most degrading way imaginable is beyond funny, beyond satire - it is beyond belief.

And lest anyone take me for a bluenose, readers of this site know my affection for classic porn from the 70’s and 80’s as well as the early 90’s and the advent of videotape. It is not the fact that Flynt is a pornographer that makes him such lowlife pond scum. It is his own sanctimony, his own shtick as Champion of the First Amendment. He deliberately abuses that freedom not in order to express himself but to bully and browbeat his ideological foes while lowering the bar of acceptable political combat to unheard of and unimagined levels. For this reason alone, we should condemn this execrable man to slither in the shadows and back alleys of society where his kind belong.

Anything Flynt comes up with will be used by the Democrats to try and make a larger point about Republican hypocrisy. As I said above, this is fair game. But perhaps - just perhaps - Democrats will want to look a little harder at who their allies are in this sexfest. The excrement smeared on the bodies of Flynt’s models may just migrate to the faces of Democratic politicians who attempt to tar an entire political party using the actions of a few hypocrites who don’t have the good sense or common decency to remain true to their wives.

“The rhetoric has changed but not the behavior, and the behavior has gotten worse in the sense that while they are pretending to reform things, they are still groveling in the trough.”
(Winslow T. Wheeler, CDI)

I swear that most Congresscritters missed their calling. Serving in Congress is swell I’m sure. But if this were a different world, we might see many of those ladies and gents in nightclubs plying their craft as magicians.

It’s the old sleight of hand trick. Replace one bunch of greedy, grasping, politicians from one party with a sneaky, conniving, yet equally greedy and grasping set from another party. Hard to tell the difference in the end. The result is the same; unaccountability and a lack of discipline in spending our tax dollars.

This is because despite running on a platform that included solemn promises to halve the number of earmarks included in appropriations bills, as well as reforming the way they were ordered to insure transparency and accountability, the Democrats were apparently struck a severe blow to the head, having suffered a massive memory loss as a result and are carrying on pretty much as before.

That “as before” refers to the way that Republicans purloined tens of billions of dollars from the Federal government via the earmark gravy train - something the Democrats had a gay old time bashing them over the head with in the lead up to the election last November. And rightly so. The practice of slipping a Congressman’s pet project anonymously as an addition to appropriations bills at the last moment - behind closed doors in conference or even after the bill was passed - with little or no chance for debate (not to mention little scrutiny about who exactly was going to benefit) was an out of control outrage, an affront to the principles of good government, and a significant contributing factor to the deficit.

So, of course, the Democrats just had to give it a try:

When the new Democratic majority in the House of Representatives passed one of its first spending bills, funding the Energy Department for the rest of 2007, it proudly boasted that the legislation contained no money earmarked for lawmakers’ pet projects and stressed that any prior congressional requests for such spending “shall have no legal effect.”

Within days, however, lawmakers including Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) began directly contacting the Energy Department. They sought to secure money for their favorite causes outside of the congressional appropriations process — a practice that lobbyists and appropriations insiders call “phonemarking.”…

Upon taking control of Congress after November’s midterm elections, Democrats vowed to try to halve the number of earmarks, and to require lawmakers to disclose their requests and to certify that the money they are requesting will not benefit them.

But the new majority is already skirting its own reforms.

It isn’t just the spectacle of rank hypocrisy that the Democrats are making of themselves. It is the supreme arrogance of power that sneeringly tells the rest of us to mind our own business and leave the lawmakers alone when they are planning to rob us blind:

Perhaps the biggest retreat from that pledge came this week, when House Appropriations Committee Chairman David R. Obey (D-Wis.) told fellow lawmakers that he intends to keep requests for earmarks out of pending spending bills, at least for now. Obey said the committee will deal with them at the end of the appropriations process in the closed-door meetings between House and Senate negotiators known as conference committees.

Democrats had complained bitterly in recent years that Republicans routinely slipped multimillion-dollar pet projects into spending bills at the end of the legislative process, preventing any chance for serious public scrutiny. Now Democrats are poised to do the same.

“I don’t give a damn if people criticize me or not,” Obey said.

Obey may have the safest seat in Christendom. He also may be one of the more arrogant SOB’s on the Hill. The combination of the two give the Congressman the confidence to give the rest of us the finger just for trying to hold he and his Democratic friends accountable for how they spend our money.

The Examiner shows how Obey’s “reforms” will work in practice:

The same day, House Appropriations Chairman David Obey, D-Wis., disclosed that earmarks will be inserted into bills only after they’ve been approved by the House and sent to conference committees with the Senate. Under this newly rigged process, there won’t be any of those pesky amendments against things like the Bridge to Nowhere. In fact, House members will only be voting on conference committee reports, not on the thousands of earmarks that will be inserted into the bills covered by those reports. In other words, after some tentative moves in the right direction earlier this year, Democrats are now putting the corrupt system disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff called the congressional “favor factory” back behind closed doors.

Obey sounds like he’s a little overworked and under appreciated here:

“I have to sign off on that stuff,” Obey said. “And I’m going to make damn sure that we’ve done everything we can do to make sure that they’re legitimate projects, so that you don’t get embarrassed by some idiot who is putting in money for a project that happens to benefit himself and his wife.”

Those words would carry a helluva lot more weight if you held you own party leader accountable:

Another key Democratic reform requires House members seeking earmarks to certify that neither they nor their spouses have any financial interest in the project.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) did just that when she requested $25 million for a project to improve the waterfront in her home district of San Francisco. Her request did not note that her family owns interests in four buildings near the proposed Pier 35 project.

Brendan Daly, a spokesman for Pelosi, said that any suggestion of a conflict of interest is “ridiculous.” He said that Pelosi was passing along a spending request from the Port of San Francisco and that she would not benefit from it.

Nice try, Brendan. Did you forget the fact that the four buildings will almost certainly increase in value as a result of the improvements? Maybe we should ask how difficult it would be for the Speaker of the House to buttonhole some Port of San Francsico flunkie and get him to make the request in the first place? Of course, that kind of thing never happens, now does it?

The point is not to get rid of earmarks entirely. There are legitimate projects that for one reason or another, the Executive Branch refuses to fund. By having the power to override the objections of federal departments on spending matters, the Congress exercises a form of oversight that is both legal and, in rare cases, necessary.

But you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that 13,000 earmarks are a scandal. And the way they are approved is an invitation to corruption. Just ask Duke Cunningham. The California Congressman is spending 8 years in prison for using earmarks to personally enrich himself and his cronies. I wonder how long it will be before we start seeing the same kind of abuses by the Democrats that we got sick to death of under Republicans?

Funny how these things always seem to happen at the last minute in politics.

Republicans, including the President, have been saying for more than two years that his immigration “reform” bill was not - repeat - not an amnesty measure. Anyone who said any differently was a “racist” or paranoid. There was no way that this bill would be used to grant permanent legal status to the 12 million illegal immigrant scofflaws residing in the United States.

“Trust me:”

Senators negotiating a bipartisan immigration reform bill have settled on the details of a plan that would immediately grant legal status to all illegal immigrants currently in the United States.

The deal on “Z visas” for illegal immigrants is one of several issues where Democrats and Republicans have reached broad agreement.

But as senators emerged from what they had hoped would be a final round of negotiations Tuesday, they indicated that painstakingly slow progress would keep them from meeting the deadline set by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to begin debate on a bill today.

Late Tuesday, Reid agreed to push that deadline to Monday.

“They tell me they’re 80% of the way,” Reid said in announcing the delay. “That’s fine, the other 20% is hard.”

The plan to award legal status to all illegal immigrants who meet certain qualifications would occur only after other “triggers” are met. These triggers would require that certain border security and work-site enforcement measures be in place before other aspects of the overhaul go forward.

The Z visa plan would start with the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the United States going on a probationary legal status. If the triggers are met — a process that Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) estimated would take 18 months — then illegal immigrants who qualify could get Z visas. Those who have committed felonies would not be eligible, Graham said, and all participants would have to pass security checks, pay a fine and a processing fee and pass an English proficiency test.

I am a cynical old curmudgeon, having long ago lost my wide eyed innocence when it comes to worshiping the men and women who occupy seats in the House or the Senate. In fact, I lost my schoolboy notions of government and the people who serve the United States within about 6 months of coming to Washington. They are not paradigms of wisdom and virtue nor are they evil manipulators. They are human. There are nice ones and mean ones. Smart ones and dumb ones. Clever ones and clueless ones. Serious and unserious, trustworthy and untrustworthy - the whole, rich panoply of the human tapestry encompassing all the good, the bad, the bald, and the ugly resides in those chambers of lawmaking. So it is entirely possible to revere lawmaking but be cynical about the lawmakers. Such is the way of Washington.

But one thing that all politicians can’t help being - good, evil, and everything in between - are liars. The very same thing that you might spank your child for, politicians do on a regular basis. The very same thing that you would divorce your spouse for, politicians do without thinking.

Hence, the illegal immigrant amnesty bill and what seems like an abrupt about face by many of the politicians involved. Long time Hill watchers took a look at that immigration bill when it first saw the light of day and could smell the amnesty provisions in it a mile away. Despite the denials that this simply wasn’t so. Despite the name calling by proponents, tarring the opposition with horribly hurtful epithets questioning their fairness and empathy. Despite all of it, the opponents of the bill turn out to be right and the advocates are revealed as liars.

Our politics have become so cynical that politicians know there is a very good chance the public will not penalize them for their lies, that the people will simply shrug their shoulders and chalk it up to “politics as usual.” And they would be right. The infection of fatalism regarding our politics and politicians has so sickened the public that expecting honesty and integrity in our public officials is no longer a given. When someone like Representative William Jefferson (D-LA) can be caught with $90,000 in cash stuffed in his freezer and be re-elected by a comfortable margin, you know that something might just be amiss with the body politic.

It’s their fault, of course. And ours. And our parents and grandparents and the long, illustrious line of Americans going all the way back to the Founding Fathers. The Founders may not have imagined a republic the likes of which we have today. But they knew what men were capable of doing when in power and tried to set up a system that mitigated against the worst of what we were capable of. The fact that they largely succeeded is astonishing. It’s just too bad they couldn’t imagine an age where lying became second nature to the politicians that people have grown weary of making excuses for.

UPDATE

Ed Morrissey doesn’t seem alarmed, pointing to increased border security measures. better workplace enforcement, and a slight roadblock placed in the way of amnesty seekers.

Obviously, I’m a tad more hysterical. Allah less so. Hewitt - steaming.

The Wrong Stuff: The Extraordinary Saga of Randy “Duke” Cunningham, The Most Corrupt Congressman Ever Caught: A Review

Disclaimer: One of the authors of this book, Jerry Kammer, is an old friend of the family. It was he who sent me a free copy of the book to review.

This articile originally appears in The American Thinker

It is “the biggest case of Congressional corruption ever documented.” Shocking in its scope and in the brazenness of its conspirators, the Duke Cunningham bribery caper is a tale not only of individual malfeasance that would make a grifter cry but also of a culture in Washington, D.C. that threatens the integrity of government itself.

The saga of Duke Cunningham from a popular, athletically inclined small town boy to war hero, to Congressman, to convicted felon is told in a new book by the Pulitzer Prize winning reporters who broke the story. Marcus Stern, Jerry Kammer, and George E. Condon, Jr. of Copely News Service and Deal Calbreath of the San Diego Union Tribune shared the award for National Reporting in 2006 with James Risen and Eric Lichtblau of The New York Times who won for exposing the top secret NSA program to spy on terrorists.

What Stern et. al. uncovered in their investigation of Cunningham’s criminality went far beyond the rather seedy yet spectacular corruption of one Congressman. The authors have written a brief against the budget device that led Cunningham (and no doubt others) down a primrose path toward temptation and ultimately, a moral surrender to turpitude; a device that threatens the foundations of trust in our elected officials; a belief that they are acting in the interests of their constituents and not to line their pockets with gifts and cash from the legions of lobbyists whose only job is to wring as much of our tax dollars as is humanly possible from the government and deposit it in the bank accounts of their clients (keeping a healthy portion of pork for themselves).

It’s earmarks, of course. And if you can come away after reading this book and not be shaking in anger at the unadulterated and transparent corruption that earmarks have fostered, then you don’t pay taxes or simply don’t care.

In truth, there is nothing illegal about earmarks and, as the authors point out in a brilliant chapter on the practice, they can be used for good at times. As an example of earmarks being used for a beneficial purpose, a lone Texas Congressman steered billions of dollars to the Afghan resistance fighting Soviet occupation in the 1980’s. Said Representative Charlie Wilson (whose story was told in the hugely entertaining Charlie Wilson’s War) “There are three branches of the government and you have to explain that to the executive branch every once and a while and earmarks are the best way to do that.” Wilson believed that the Afghan resistance would never have triumphed without earmarks because the CIA would not have spent the money effectively.

But the authors make the case it is not necessarily what earmarks are for that is the problem. After all, one man’s earmark is another man’s necessary expenditure. What may look like a pork road project to one person living far away from where construction would take place could in fact be a “quality of life” issue to someone directly affected by the increased traffic flow and safer driving that a particular earmarked project would bring.

Rather it is the way that earmarks are included in the budget process that cries out for radical reform. Earmarks are usually dropped into spending bills anonymously and are rarely debated on the floor of the House. Or they are added during mark-up sessions or even during House-Senate conferences. Sometimes, they are included in the Committee’s report on the final spending bill and not even passed on to the President when he signs it.

Earmarks were a problem going back in the 1980’s. For example, the authors point to the 1987 Transportation bill vetoed by an astonished Ronald Reagan who counted no less than 121 earmarks in the bill. Both the House and Senate - Democrats and Republicans - shrugged off the Gipper’s disapproval and passed the bill over the President’s veto overwhelmingly. In 1991, the number of earmarks in the pork laden Transportation bill had grown to 538; 1850 by 1998; and by 2005 the total number of earmarks reached a mind numbing 6,373 costing an additional $24.2 billion. (Source: Taxpayers for Common Sense).

Newt Gingrich and the Republicans saw the earmark as a ticket to a permanent majority. The Republicans would place newer or more vulnerable members on one of the Appropriations Committees which would give them access to the lobbyists who, in exchange for an earmark, would fill their campaign coffers with cash as well as shower the member with gifts, junkets, and other goodies.

It is a sordid, depressing, but perfectly legal practice. But to a man like Duke Cunningham, it was a goldmine, a path to the riches and lifestyle he had craved since a boy in a small Missouri town where he grew up. Graduating from the University of Missouri, Cunningham got married to his college sweetheart and took a job in Hinsdale, Illinois as an assistant coach of the swim team. At that time, the Hinsdale swim team was coached by the legendary Doc Watson who won 12 straight state swimming titles and sent several of his athletes to the Olympics. Cunningham was later to brag that he was responsible for much of the team’s success - a statement belied by both former athletes he coached as well as Doc Watson himself.

But that was Duke. And after losing a close friend in Viet Nam, Cunningham decided to enlist in the Navy and fly jets. Proving himself a dedicated aviator, Cunningham’s diligence was rewarded on one spectacular day in May of 1972. On May 10th, in a dogfight immortalized by the History Channel’s “Aces of Vietnam” documentary, Cunningham engaged and shot down 3 enemy MIG’s. Coupled with the two he shot down earlier in the year, that made Lt. Randy Cunningham an air ace - the only naval ace of the war.

But there were troubling indications that Duke Cunningham had a moral weakness when it came to money even back then. Prior to receiving the Navy Cross for the action that made him an ace, Cunningham and his backseat man Willie Driscoll informed their commanding officer that they were going to refuse the most prestigious decoration the Navy awards and “hold out for the Medal of Honor.”

Apparently, Duke had been promised by a Washington bureaucrat that he would receive the Medal of Honor and felt he deserved it - and the $100 a month that came with it. And even though his commanding officer disabused Duke and Driscoll of the notion that they were going to be awarded the MOH, to many who became aware of the story, this early indication of Cunningham’s moral blindness was telling indeed.

Being feted after the war as a hero and role model, Cunningham also saw how the rich lived and craved that lifestyle until it became an obsession. Barely elected to Congress in 1990, Cunningham set out to get the most out of his position of trust.

The story of his bribery is told in a spare, no nonsense manner by the authors. It traces Cunningham’s relationships with his co-conspirators Mitchell Wade, Brent Wilkes, and Thomas Kontogiannis and how they milked the government for federal contracts using earmarks - often in the “black budget” of classified projects - while Cunningham was paid for his services in cash.

The most unbelievable piece of evidence against Cunningham was the so called “bribery menu” where the Congressman actually wrote down on a piece of Congressional stationary how much he expected in kickbacks for each kind of earmark he successfully pushed through Congress. The menu showed that Cunningham wanted a $140,000 yacht for the first $16 million in government contracts. Thereafter, he expected $50,000 in bribes for each additional million in contracts.

Missing this piece of evidence the first time around, prosecutors got a tip about the document and deciphered it. The Congressman, who had been proclaiming his innocence, buckled at that point and agreed to plead guilty. He is currently serving an 8 year sentence - the longest prison sentence ever given to a Congressman for bribery.

But the question that the authors never quite answer and seem to dangle in front of the readers, tempting them perhaps to make their own judgement, goes to the heart of the debate over earmarks. Did the earmarks themselves corrupt Cunningham or did they simply act as a catalyst for his already warped sense of entitlement?

If it is the latter, then this is a story of one more venal politician caught with his hands in the cookie jar. But what if it’s the former? What if earmarks themselves (and the way they are currently being used and abused) is at bottom, an overwhelming temptation to members and literally irresistible to all but the most incorruptible.

There are now 35,000 lobbyists in Washington, D.C. whose ability to deliver tens of thousands of dollars to Congressional campaigns means that members must pay obeisance to them or lose out on the gravy train. It is a broken system that no one can figure out how to fix. Some see government financed elections as the answer - unsatisfying because most experts agree that it would make races even less competitive than they are now. Others see unlimited contributions with full and immediate disclosure on the internet. This would be another invitation to permanent incumbency.

The authors sensibly do not offer any grandiose solutions to this dilemma. They are, after all, reporters not policy wonks. All they’ve done is uncovered the facts and told a story - a maddening, frustrating, sad, and yet riveting story of one man’s fall from the heights of power and privilege to the absolute lowest depths of prison and disgrace. It is a compelling human drama told in an entertaining manner. And in a way, like all good journalism, it is a call to action - to address the problem of earmarks before the corruption they engender destroys what credibility our lawmakers and government have left.

Addendum: I interviewed Jerry Kammer, one of the authors of the book, on my radio show. The podcast is available here.

My first reaction to hearing the news that Jerry Falwell had died was surprisingly the same kind of reaction to the news a couple of weeks ago that astronaut Wally Schirra had passed on: Sadness for having lost something from my youth. A reminder that the candle is starting to flicker and the skein of my life is unravelling faster than I thought possible just a short time ago.

Yeah, it’s selfish. And self-absorbed. But frankly, I view Falwell - like Schirra - as more of a talisman from my past than any great political/historical figure. He was a spokesman for a certain point of view among religious conservatives who thrived in a time of enormous intellectual upheaval for the conservative movement. And unlike some other TV evangelical preachers, he mostly avoided sins of the flesh in carrying out what I’m sure he saw as his mission from God.

Ed Morrissey is right. There will come a better time to assess the political legacy of the Reverend Mr. Falwell. But Ed is a fine Christian gentleman and I, a grubby minded atheist. So allow me to offer a few thoughts regarding the Reverend Mr. Falwell.

Every great political movement in American history has been driven by passion. The 19th and 20th century reformers who ended slavery, fought for womens’ rights, sought to ban demon rum, and agitated for unions were, for the most part, ordinary Americans swept up in historical tidal forces that altered the political and social landscape of America forever. What made them successful was the overarching, overweening, absolute belief that what they were doing was right and that people who opposed them were not just wrong but evil. They didn’t demonize the opposition out of political calculation but rather because they truly believed the fate of the republic or mankind was at stake in the successful prosecution of their cause. Ergo, if one opposes that cause, they are on the side of the dark one.

The period of the mid-1970’s to the late 1990’s could very well one day be remembered as another “Great Awakening” for American evangelicals. The first three “Awakenings” (or four if you subscribe to 1960’s “consciousness raising” as a religious movement) occurred during periods of great social ferment and spun off social movements like abolitionism, prairie populism, and prohibition. This particular “Awakening” inspired a generation of evangelical Christians to treat politics itself as a question of faith - that some political questions were answered not by reason, logic, and adherence to a set of political principles but rather by reading the bible carefully and gleaning God’s plan for man as laid out in the old or new Testaments.

The fact that secular Republicans who did indeed use reason, logic, and adherence to a set of political principles many times came to the same conclusions about issues as the evangelicals meant for an uneasy and at times, uncomfortable alliance with the party. And it was preachers like Jerry Falwell who first introduced these evangelicals - the “moral majority” - to Republican politics. They were never a majority (even of Republicans) and the “moral” failings of many prominent TV preachers in the 80’s and 90’s tarnished the image of the movement considerably with ordinary, secular Americans. But to this day, they make up a sizable (about 15%) and vocal minority in the party. Many analysts believe they were the difference in the last two presidential elections.

Falwell was perhaps the most visible of these TV preachers during the last 3 decades although other, more polished (bland) and carefully spoken leaders have supplanted him as a spiritual guide lately. They too, are not without their failures in resisting temptations of the flesh. But at least they don’t mutter outrageous comments about America being punished for our sins by planes being flown into buildings and a lot of innocents getting killed. While Falwell apologized for his comments following 9/11, there has always been this underlying threat in his sermons that unless America “reforms,” there will literally be hell to pay. In that respect, he is an echo of an earlier evangelical period where hellfire and tent revivals mixed easily with a population that was mostly rural and hungry for answers to life’s tragedies.

I have no doubt the left will make jokes about Falwell’s death as they are wont to do when it comes to anything where faith is involved. He was an easy target thanks to his simplistic world view and uncanny ability to say the wrong thing at exactly the wrong time.

But Jerry Falwell was an authentic American, a linear descendant of Jonathan Edwards whose 1741 sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” echoed many of the themes in Falwell’s preaching and was a seminal moment in the first “Great Awakening.” These true believers have undeniably contributed much that is positive to our politics. Reformers will tend to do that. But their limited view of issues and their tendency to view opposition to their ideas as evil also makes them a danger to democracy. Thankfully, their numbers and influence has always been limited. This was true even of the biggest TV preacher in history who when all was said and done, lived life by the light of faith he truly and honestly believed was given to him by the Almighty.

UPDATE

Allah has the reaction from the left. I’ll just send you over there without comment and urge you to start clicking.

Michelle Malkin has a round up of mostly MSM sources. As is her wont, she will probably expand coverage as more react comes in.

This kind of cynicism deserves a special reward.

Mort Kondracke thinks he’s being sensible by coming up with a “Plan B” for the day that the surge proves itself to be a tactical success but a strategic failure. The plan is simple, elegant, immoral, and would condemn millions of people to slaughter and misery.

But hey! Who’s countin’ noses when we get our very own pet Shia running Iraq?

The 80 percent alternative involves accepting rule by Shiites and Kurds, allowing them to violently suppress Sunni resistance and making sure that Shiites friendly to the United States emerge victorious.

No one has publicly advocated this Plan B, and I know of only one Member of Congress who backs it - and he wants to stay anonymous. But he argues persuasively that it’s the best alternative available if Bush’s surge fails. Winning will be dirty because it will allow the Shiite-dominated Iraqi military and some Shiite militias to decimate the Sunni insurgency. There likely will be ethnic cleansing, atrocities against civilians and massive refugee flows.

On the other hand, as Bush’s critics point out, bloody civil war is the reality in Iraq right now. U.S. troops are standing in the middle of it and so far cannot stop either Shiites from killing Sunnis or Sunnis from killing Shiites.

Winning dirty would involve taking sides in the civil war - backing the Shiite-dominated elected government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and ensuring that he and his allies prevail over both the Sunni insurgency and his Shiite adversary Muqtada al-Sadr, who’s now Iran’s candidate to rule Iraq.

What’s a little ethnic cleansing among friends, eh Mort? Standing by while Sunnis are slaughtered is going to sit quite well with our friends in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, and the majority Sunni Gulf States.

The plan, of course, is as immoral as the Democrat’s current political gamesmanship which would accomplish exactly the same thing - Sunni slaughter - but would have the advantage of giving the US plausible deniability. (”How were we supposed to know that was going to happen?”) Kondracke doesn’t even pretend the murder of several hundred thousand people would come as a surprise. In fact, it’s part of his master plan.

And in the muddle that is Iraqi politics, it is unclear whether Mookie al-Sadr is, in fact, an “adversary” of Maliki at all. In some respects and on some issues, he is almost certainly an “ally.” And while a rival for power, as long as Ayatollah al-Sistani draws breath, the SCIRI will never allow the young upstart cleric to run much of anything in Iraq - even if he’s backed by Iran.

As for the rest of this tripe, is Kondracke sure this “anonymous” Congress critter wasn’t pulling his leg? I can’t imagine the US standing by watching as Shias herd Sunnis like cattle, whipping them toward the Saudi, Syrian, or Jordanian border. It would be the largest forced migration of people since the India-Pakistan partition in 1947. But that’s what a lot of the Shias who surround Maliki are all about - making Iraq a Sunni-free nation. It’s why the political benchmarks demanded of the Iraqi government by Congress will never be met. There is not the desire much less the political will among major Shia parties and personalities to unite the country.

Kondracke’s explanation is unconvincing:

Prudence calls for preparation of a Plan B. The withdrawal policy advocated by most Democrats virtually guarantees catastrophic ethnic cleansing - but without any guarantee that a government friendly to the United States would emerge. Almost certainly, Shiites will dominate Iraq because they outnumber Sunnis three to one. But the United States would get no credit for helping the Shiites win. In fact, America’s credibility would suffer because it abandoned its mission. And, there is no guarantee that al-Sadr - currently residing in Iran and resting his militias - would not emerge as the victor in a power struggle with al-Maliki’s Dawa Party and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, led by Abdul Aziz al-Hakim.

Iran formerly backed the SCIRI and its Badr Brigades but recently switched allegiances - foolishly, my Congressional source contends - to al-Sadr, who’s regarded by other Shiites as young, volatile and unreliable. Under a win dirty strategy, the United States would have to back al-Maliki and the Badr Brigades in their eventual showdown with al-Sadr. It also would have to help Jordan and Saudi Arabia care for a surge in Sunni refugees, possibly 1 million to 2 million joining an equal number who already have fled.

Sunnis will suffer under a winning dirty strategy, no question, but so far they’ve refused to accept that they’re a minority. They will have to do so eventually, one way or another. And, eventually, Iraq will achieve political equilibrium. Civil wars do end. The losers lose and have to knuckle under. As my Congressional source says, “every civil war is a political struggle. The center of this struggle is for control of the Shiite community. Wherever the Shiites go, is where Iraq will go. So, the quicker we back the winning side, the quicker the war ends. … Winning dirty isn’t attractive, but it sure beats losing.”

Allah asks the tough questions that Kondracke shrivels from and lays out “we broke it, we’ve got to fix it” case for at least maintaining enough of a presence to forestall genocide:

We all understand the dilemma here: we’re the only thing preventing a pogrom, but it’s at a huge human cost to our own military. At what point does our responsibility to get our boys out of harm’s way morally justify leaving a power vacuum within which Iraqi Arabs can slam away at each other? We’re not going to solve a Sunni/Shiite rift that’s existed for 1400 years so why waste any more American lives trying to postpone it? The answer, or my answer, in two words: Pam Hess. It’d be unconscionable for the United States to acquiesce in ethnic cleansing in a country whose security we’ve taken responsibility for; if you believe some on the left (and right), it’s unconscionable for us to acquiesce in ethnic cleansing even in countries whose security we’re not responsible for, like Sudan. When we leave, we have to leave with a good faith belief that the two sides can co-exist, which is why political reconciliation within parliament is so important and why we’re stuck there until it happens. If you take Kondracke seriously, the best solution might actually be to have the Air Force carpet-bomb Anbar: it’d solve the problem instantly, we’d get “credit for helping the Shiites win,” and it’d send a none-too-subtle message to Sadr that he’d best not antagonize us in the future. It would also send the Sunni countries in the Middle East into a frenzy, of course, and would mean the destruction of a part of Iraq where the leadership is, increasingly, unabashedly on our side and has taken the lead in fighting Al Qaeda — but of course, Shiite ethnic cleansing would accomplish the same things.

Strangest of all, in what sense does Kondracke think “American credibility” would be served by letting Sadr put the Sunnis to the sword? We’d be hearing about it from the left and the Islamists for the next thousand years. Al Qaeda would make it a centerpiece of their recruiting strategy. Even Iran, the ostensible beneficiaries, would demagogue the hell out of it with crocodile tears about their “Sunni brothers” whom the Sadrists had no choice but to fight after the U.S. goaded them into it.

Kondracke is wrong on so many levels it is beyond belief that he isn’t just throwing this out in order to initiate discussion about what next in Iraq.

And if he’s seriously considering what he wrote as an actual course of action for the United States, he should, as I suggest above, be sentenced to be dressed in Sunni garb and dropped smack in the middle of Sadr city.

Methinks his perspective on Shia ethnic cleansing would benefit by a little first hand experience with the process.

Coming from a family of 10 children, I can just imagine my sainted Mother’s reaction to the news that it should be considered an environmental “misdemeanor” to bring more than two children into the world:

HAVING large families should be frowned upon as an environmental misdemeanour in the same way as frequent long-haul flights, driving a 4×4 car and failing to reuse plastic bags, according to a report to be published tomorrow by a green think tank.

The paper by the Optimum Population Trust (OPT) will say that if couples had two children instead of three they could cut their family’s carbon dioxide output by the equivalent of 620 return flights a year between London and New York.

John Guillebaud, co-chairman of OPT and emeritus professor of family planning at University College London, said: “The effect on the planet of having one child less is an order of magnitude greater than all these other things we might do, such as switching off lights. An extra child is the equivalent of a lot of flights across the planet.

Maybe the parents should promise that their extra kids will hold their breaths a lot. Or promise not to fly 620 times between New York and London.

Even in her day and age when families were huge compared to today, my mother had to put up with the occasional tut-tutting from some buttinski who thought it was their business how many children any family should have. In those instances, she would smile and return the gross insult with a pithy comment about the advantages of being able to field a complete baseball team or some other bon mot that made the lout feel about 2 feet tall.

Grace under fire was one of my mother’s strong points.

But that kind of ill mannered behavior really didn’t come to the fore until the 1970’s when the “population bomb” was all the rage and panic rippled through the left that we were going to run out of food by 1985, that there would be mass starvation in India and China, and that hordes of refugees from the teeming cities of Central and South America would stream into the United States desperate for food.

Well - they were partly right about that last, anyway. The teeming hordes may not be desperate for food but they sure are streaming in and not much effort is being made to stop them. But of course, the left has changed their attitude about these “refugees.” Now they are “undocumented workers” and therefore subject to the tender ministrations of the leftist nanny state.

But that’s another story, another issue. This latest effort by eco-terrorizers has little to do with food but everything to do with carbon. And what makes this such an idiotic, shallow, and self defeating criticism - to the point that we now have international eco-arbiters who have taken it upon themselves to police the manners and customs of everyone else in search of “green” violations - is that it fails to take into account the potential contributions and even eco-pluses of those extra human beings to the human race. This is what happens when you stop thinking of human beings as living, breathing, thinking, caring, loving organisms and instead look at them as metrics on a chart who either consume resources like food, or raw materials or belch carbon.

I shudder to think what this world would be like if my mother was “shamed” into not having any more than two children. First of all, I wouldn’t exist which in some quarters would be considered a tragedy. Others, not so much.

But I think of the contributions of my other brothers and sisters and think of all the lives they have touched outside the family and wonder what the world would be like if they had never existed. To my mind, it is easy to see that this planet would be a poorer place, a less interesting place. The 35 years child #3, my brother Jim has spent teaching by all accounts from his students and fellow teachers has positively impacted the lives of hundreds if not thousands of people. And the contributions from my other siblings - both their personal impact on this planet as well as the impact made by their own children - cannot be quantified and reduced to how much carbon they may be adding to the world’s warming problems. That’s a silly, stupid way to judge the value and worth of someone’s life.

What should be an environmental “felony” is giving any credence whatsoever to busybody eco-procurators who find it pleases their own warped sense of self-importance to tell others that the most personal and private decisions human beings make - the size of their families - are subject to their elevated sense of eco-morality.

It is despicable. And worthless.

UPDATE

Michelle Malkin has some interesting thoughts from the commentariat. And she correctly identifies “Public Enemy #1.

Tough looking desperado…

Following up on yesterday’s post where I criticized Chris Muir for his use of black face to depict Hillary Clinton’s craven pandering to blacks by affecting the cadence and idioms of black language when speaking before an African American audience, I just want to thank Mr. Muir for his comments directed toward me on CQ Radio yesterday. (The relevant portion starts at about 9:50 into the podcast.)

It really wasn’t necessary.

It wasn’t necessary to point out that I’m soused with political correctness for criticizing his use of a symbol that I took great pains to give some historical background on - the use of black face in minstrel shows and how those entertainments shaped white attitudes and ideas toward black culture. Specifically the idea that context sometimes doesn’t matter when using symbols that are particularly hateful and hurtful.

Mr. Muir dismisses this argument out of hand by saying that “thinking people” are smarter than that and that context always trumps being sensitive to how symbols impact others. His statement that “symbols only have the power you give them,” could also apply to specific words like “nigger” (and, one would assume “kike” and “spic.”) He quotes from my piece at Heading Right to illustrate his point:

This is not political correctness per se, although there will be some racialists who would use Mr. Muir’s depiction to advance their own political agenda. Being sensitive to the real feelings of others is always the right thing to do regardless of intent or context.

Note to Chris: “Racialists” is indeed a word. See here and here and here. In another context, it refers to those who use race as a platform to attain a supposed moral superiority, usually in order to shut off debate on issues of political correctness or public policy. I don’t think Jeff Goldstein was the first to use it in that context, but his blog was the first place I saw it used thusly.

Muir takes my quote and says that “it is the very definition of political correctness.” He accuses me of using a “fast, cheap, and easy way to feel superior by assuming that those who are offended are weak and can’t make up their own minds.”

First of all, Muir assumes that the only people offended by black face are blacks. I challenge anyone of any color to watch the film I mentioned in my piece, Holiday Inn, with Bing Crosby singing “Abraham” in black face with his black cook and her son joining in without becoming embarrassed. It is offensive in the extreme as are the 97 other films listed here that use black face in various contexts.

I guess I’m just weak and can’t make up my own mind about these things. Too much listening to Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, I guess.

Muir’s first amendment arguments are spot on and I would never advocate banning the use of words or symbols in any way whatsoever. But I will continue to make the argument that yes indeed, there are some symbols and words that are just too offensive, too drenched with a history of repression and violence that the use of them in any context and regardless of intent is just plain wrong.

I took a similar tack with my arguments against the use of the Confederate Battle Flag:

The history of the Battle of Gettysburg says that the Union won. But the heritage of the battle belongs to the south.

Distinctive and yes, hurtful. For many Americans, the Confederate Battle Flag represents a hateful system that held human beings as chattel slaves. For them, there is no heritage only history; a shameful chronicle of rape, of whippings, of oppression that colors our politics and culture down to this very day.

My admiration for the Southern soldier and the martial legacy of the Civil War that is so much a part of Southern history nevertheless must take a backseat to the very real pain caused by that “most distinctive of American symbols.” I sincerely hope that one day, we can reach a point in our national life where the Battle Flag can once again be flown, proudly bringing to mind the courage and valor of the Southern soldier. But not now. Not when that symbol has been used to show resistance to federal authority with regards to civil rights and integration.

Political correctness? Or an empathetic response to a hateful symbol? Those of you who read my site on a regular basis know that accusing me of being “politically correct” is pretty baseless. But I think that there are times we conservatives go too far in denigrating the very real and necessary reasons for, lack of a better term, political correctness; that to clutter our national conversation with words and symbols that come with historical baggage from a past where the words of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were relatively meaningless only serves to keep us separate as a people and gets in the way of uniting us.

It is a shame that the left uses political correctness as a club to score political points and choke off conversation. I would hope that by giving meaning and historical context to these very, very few words and symbols that signify hate and divisiveness in any context, we can elevate the national dialogue and talk about these issues without fear of wounding those who have suffered and continue to suffer from an American past that too often failed to live up to its golden promise of being that “shining city on a hill.”