Right Wing Nut House

The hour is late. Jack Bauer will be on in less than an hour. I haven’t eaten dinner. The cats need feeding too, and their litterbox needs cleaning.

But in this, a break from my usual practice of not using profanity, I am wondering what the fuck is wrong with so many on the right who have exploded in anger and cries of “dhimmitude” because a Muslim woman was named Miss USA.

Are you people nuts? What is Michelle Malkin’s excuse?

She nearly tripped over her gown.

She called birth control a “controlled substance.”

She argued that contraceptives should be covered by health insurers because they are “expensive” — and then said you could get them for “free” from your OB/GYN’s office.

Omigod. A beauty pageant contestant is nervous and makes a couple of misstatements. It’s a plot! It’s a conspiracy to deny a good old fashioned white American girl the honor of being Miss USA.

How do we know? The runner up got a question on the Arizona immigration law in which she echoed the de facto conservative position:

Miss Oklahoma USA Morgan Elizabeth Woolard was named first runner-up after handling a question about Arizona’s new immigration law. Woolard said she supports the law, which requires police enforcing another law to verify a person’s immigration status if there’s “reasonable suspicion” that the person is in the country illegally.

She said she’s against illegal immigration but is also against racial profiling.

“I’m a huge believer in states’ rights. I think that’s what’s so wonderful about America. So I think it’s perfectly fine for Arizona to create that law.

Malkin’s response:

Looks like the Miss USA pageant didn’t want to risk the wrath of the open-borders mob.

Or of that ranting, conservative woman-bashing nutball and former Miss USA judge, Perez Hilton.

Yes, Perez Hilton is a dickless philistine. But why bring him into the picture? As Malkin admits, he’s a former judge of the pageant. But positing a conspiracy against Miss Oklahoma because she supports cracking down on illegal immigration? What proof is there? Malkin, not surprisingly doesn’t present any because, let’s face it, there is none. All Malkin has is conspiracy by result - an extraordinarily weak minded construct that I’d expect from some mouth breathing birther, not Malkin. At least Michelle usually has coherent arguments based on some facts. But this is so far over the line, it fell off the cliff before it started.

I suppose I shouldn’t but quoting the hysterical Debbie Schlussel is good at least for low brow entertainment. She doesn’t try to hide her bigotry. She proudly wears it on her sleeve, totally oblivious to how her hate filled, out of control screeds look to the rest of sane world. Like the pretty little storm trooper she is, Schlussel judges people by their race and religion first, and then fills in the blanks:

Don’t let her lack of a headscarf and her donning a bikini in public fool you. Miss Michigan USA, Rimah Fakih is a Muslim activist and propagandist extraordinaire. She recently participated, using the Miss Michigan USA name to promote Islamic subjugation of women, in a Henry Ford Community College’s tax-funded forum promoting Islam, featuring many Shi’ite extremists. One of the prominent participants on-stage with Fakih was Najah Bazzy, the Islamic Nurse Ratched who was apparently involved in Medicaid fraud at Oakwood Hospital, helping thousands of pregnant Muslim alien women use fake social security numbers to pay for the delivery of their babies, and enabling instant anchorbabyhood.

Topics at the forum in which Miss Michigan USA participated included these:

• Why do some Arab women cover themselves while others don’t;
• Are Muslim women allowed to marry non-Muslim men?
• Under Muslim law, are women allowed to divorce their husbands?

Yes - we shouldn’t be fooled because the girl doesn’t wear a headscarf. All Muslim women wear headscarves - unless they are trying to fool us into thinking they are trying to adapt to western customs. That’s the whole point of Miss Fakih’s participation; to fool us into thinking that somehow, Moooslims are just like us.

Reading Schlussel, one would think other topics discussed at that forum would be “Bomb making in the home” and “How to clean up after your jihadist husband after he lops off the heads of infidels.”

And if she supports the subjugation of women, she has a very odd way of showing it by appearing in a very skimpy bikini in front of millions of people.

A little sanity from Melissa Couthier:

Did the new Miss USA from “Dearbornistan” win because of politics? I don’t really care. Have you seen the pictures?

If you haven’t. Check her out. She’s gorgeous. And she’s not wearing a burqa.

She’s in a bikini. And she’s not wearing a burqa.

Did I mention that she has a gorgeous body? And she’s not wearing a burqa.

She’s in America. She’s doing what beautiful American girls do. She’s acting Western.

I would have voted for her in a heartbeat. And yes, it is wonderful that she is an American citizen, acclimating herself to the fashions and mores of this country.

Ah, but our Ms. Schlussel says that this is a Mooooslim Roooose! In their constant efforts to bring death to the infidels, the clever Moooslims allow for this kind of trickery in the greater cause of taking over the world. The Mooslims allowed Miss Fakih to appear nearly naked on stage in order to advance their nefarious schemes. She actually runs around in a burqa at home where no one can see her.

Clever indeed, these Moooslims.

My anger at this display of ignorance and stupidity is based on three things:

1. It’s a fucking beauty pageant you morons!

2. The idea that Donald Trump is some kind of weak willed “dhimmi” who caved to PC notions of diversity by engineering the victory for Miss Fakih comes to us with no evidence, not a glimmer of proof. But hey! It sounds good so lets throw it out there.

3. Did I mention all of this energy is being expended over a fucking beauty pageant?

The absolute disgust I feel at this moment at these so-called conservatives who have gone off the deep end of conspiracy and anger over such a minuscule event cannot easily be put into words. The reaction is so over the top, so far beyond reason, rationality, and sanity that my own response has been reduced to sputtering incoherence. Terrorism is too serious an issue to be left to these nitwits and bigots who never met a Muslim they didn’t hate nor miss an opportunity to reveal their ignorance of Islam and Arab cultures in general.

This article originally appears on The Moderate Voice

How can you claim that a senator who has a lifetime score of 85 from the American Conservative Union to be “not conservative enough” for any state?

You can if you are a member of the modern Republican party. You can if the senator in question - Bob Bennett of Utah - made the horrible mistake of taking his responsibilities as a senator seriously. Senator Bennett was unaware that the modern Republican party demands that he seek to constantly score political points against his opponents by exaggerated and outrageous name calling rather than thoughtfully approach issues that concern his constituents and look to address their problems.

For this, he has been tossed aside by Utah Republicans and will not appear on the ballot this November.

Bennett, along with his Democratic colleague from Oregon Ron Wyden, made a serious attempt to address the health insurance problem in America with a flawed, but earnest effort at comprehensive reform. Called “The Healthy Americans Act,” the bill incorporated some standard liberal thinking like an individual mandate, but was also innovative in the way costs would be shared and how the program would be administered at the state level. It would also have done away with Medicaid - a plus in any conservative’s book. In short, it was a good old fashioned senate compromise on a thorny issue that, in another less mindlessly partisan time, would have served as a starting point for the two parties to work out their differences.

It wasn’t just his dalliance with the “enemy” that angered right wingers in Utah. Bennett courageously voted against the Constitutional amendment to prohibit flag burning back in 2006 - one of only three GOP senators to do so. He also supported comprehensive immigration reform. While there was a lot wrong with that bill, the guest worker provision had broad bi-partisan support and Bennett worked tirelessly to improve it. As for the rest of it, the best that could be said of the measure was that it was attempting to address a problem for which there are probably no good answers. That Bennett felt responsible enough as a legislator to lend his name and support to the bill reveals much about how seriously he views his office.

Alas, Bennett’s base of conservatives in Utah didn’t see it that way. Egged on by a massive infusion of cash by the Washington, D.C. based Club For Growth, Utah conservatives plotted to ambush Bennett at the state convention where he needed at least 40% of the delegates to vote for his candidacy in order for him to take part in a closed primary with the other leading candidate. (If he had received 60%, he would have won the nomination outright.)

In the end, Bennett received 26% at the convention and his 18 year senate career of exemplary public service will come to an end. Chris Chocola, President of Club for Growth, who poured $200,000 into the effort to defeat Bennett, said, “Utah Republicans made the right decision today for their state and sent a clear message that change is finally coming to Washington.” The CFG is angry at Bennett for supporting TARP in the fall of 2008 – a bill desired by a Republican president and pushed by a Republican Treasury Secretary.

How “conservative” is making a change simply for the sake of change? Not very conservative at all. And despite the fact that polls showed a plurality of Utah Republicans supported Bennett’s candidacy, he was defeated largely because he is identified with a GOP leadership that is perceived as insufficiently rabid in their opposition to President Obama and the Democrats. The Tea Party forces don’t want cooperation with the opposition to address the pressing needs of the people; they want war. And any Republican incumbent viewed as less than ideologically committed to total victory will be in trouble this year.

Senator Bob Bennett may not be as far to the right as many Republicans in Utah would wish. But their loss is more than they can imagine. A senator with Bennett’s seniority shouldn’t be sidelined so precipitously, and it very well may be that right wingers in Utah will rue the day they so gleefully shelved a fine public servant.

This article originally appears on The Moderate Voice

What do you get when tea party activists team up with Ron Paulbots?

A nightmare:

The official platform for the Republican Party of Maine is now a mix of right-wing fringe policies, libertarian buzzwords and outright conspiracy theories.

The document calls for the elimination of the Department of Education and the Federal Reserve, demands an investigation of “collusion between government and industry in the global warming myth,” suggests the adoption of “Austrian Economics,” declares that “‘Freedom of Religion’ does not mean ‘freedom from religion’” (which I guess makes atheism illegal), insists that “healthcare is not a right,” calls for the abrogation of the “UN Treaty on Rights of the Child” and the “Law Of The Sea Treaty” and declares that we must resist “efforts to create a one world government.”

It also contains favorable mentions of both the Tea Party and Ron Paul. You can read the whole thing here.

Dan Billings, who has served as an attorney for the Maine GOP, called the new platform “wack job pablum” and “nutcase stuff.”

I would say that Mr. Billings sums it up nicely, although most of the really objectionable stuff is straight out of the Ron Paul playbook. Ridding ourselves of the Fed is the first step on the road back to a gold standard, a dubious idea that Milton Friedman pointed out would increase government regulation of the economy:

With no Fed, inexpert Congress will bear the onus of alleviating economic suffering. With deeper, longer recessions, Congressmen will inevitably succumb to pressure for more spending and regulation of the economy–as they did during the Great Depression.

How about eliminating the Department of Education? When first proposed by Ronald Reagan, the Department was in its infancy, only sucking up $6 billion dollars of taxpayer monies and serving as a repository for federal education programs that previously had existed in the various departments.

No more today. The Department is now a $60 billion behemoth with almost every school district in the country dependent on its largess. Cutting it down to size while gradually getting the feds out of the education business might be more to the point. But for our tea party patriots, no half measures and nothing “gradual” allowed.

But it is the conspiracy mongering that should give us the most pause. Putting paranoid loons in charge of the GOP in Maine who believe in a global warming “conspiracy” involving industry and government and that there is any possibility on planet earth that we would be yoked under some kind of “one world government” is madness.

Are all tea party patriots inclined to believe this “whack job pablum?” Certainly not all, although if you spend much time listening to them, similar sentiments are expressed by many. As a free standing group of activists dedicated to fiscal sanity and constitutional principles, the tea party movement has a vital role to play in any American revival. But as purely political animals, they are a washout. There are a sizable number of birthers among them, and a significant number who believe Obama is a Muslim, or favors Muslims, or is working for their interests. I hate to bring up the “R” word but yes, there is a small but significant number who are racists as well.

In short, while the majority of tea partiers are average, normal Americans with pretty standard views, there is a sizable segment of the movement that makes them a political liability. Another case in point was the tea party revolt in Utah that ousted Senator Bob Bennett. For someone who has a lifetime rating of 85 from the ACU, it is amazing to think that Bennett wouldn’t be “conservative enough” for any state in the union. But Utah Republicans had a few beefs with the senator and not even a last minute plea from Mitt Romney - popular in the state for his stewardship of the Salt Lake City Olympics - could save his political hide.

Other factors besides Bennett’s obvious conservatism were in play. Bennett, along with his Democratic colleague from Oregon Ron Wyden, made a serious attempt to address the health insurance problem in America with a flawed, but earnest effort at comprehensive reform. Called “The Healthy Americans Act,” the bill incorporated some standard liberal thinking like an individual mandate, but was also innovative in the way costs would be shared and how the program would be administered at the state level. It would also have done away with Medicaid - a plus in any conservative’s book. In short, it was a good old fashioned senate compromise on a thorny issue that, in another less mindlessly partisan time, would have served as a starting point for the two parties to work out their differences.

It wasn’t just his dalliance with the “enemy” that angered right wingers in Utah. Bennett courageously voted against the Constitutional amendment to prohibit flag burning back in 2006 - one of only three GOP senators to do so. He also supported comprehensive immigration reform. While there was a lot wrong with that bill, the guest worker provision had broad bi-partisan support and Bennett worked tirelessly to improve it. As for the rest of it, the best that could be said of the measure was that it was attempting to address a problem for which there are probably no good answers. That Bennett felt responsible enough as a legislator to lend his name and support to the bill reveals much about how he views his responsibilities.

To get rid of a senator of Bennett’s seniority and experience is the most unconservative thing the tea party movement has done to date. To effect change simply to realize change is the antithesis of conservative thinking and the excessive partisanship demonstrated by activists in Utah who hated Bennett for working with “the enemy” does not serve the interests of their state.

Maine and Utah are the first stirrings of tea party activists flexing their muscles in the political arena. They may see success where failure is the real outcome.

This blurb by Dave Neiwert at Crooks and Liars is fascinating. It is so blithely ignorant of its own irony that it could easily be construed as a child sticking its tongue out at a playmate and sneering, “So there, nyeah.”

The next time you hear some right-winger (most notably Dick Cheney) sneer at the Obama administration’s “law enforcement approach to terrorism,” remember this.

Remember what? How incredibly lucky we are because twice now since Christmas we failed to interdict a terrorist attack because the essence of the “law enforcement approach” is to wait until the terrorists have killed a lot of Americans before acting? The “law enforcement approach” did not stop Shahzad from trying to incinerate New Yorkers in Times Square, nor did it stop Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab from trying to bring down an airplane filled with people on Christmas day.

If Mr. Shahdaz was sitting in jail right after a successful attack, how sneeringly juvenile would Neiwert be about that? If Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab had been able to bring down the plane on Christmas day, how much crowing would Neiwert be doing about the “law enforcement approach” to terrorism?

The police have an important role to play in the War on Terror. No one disputes this except people like Neiwert trying to set up strawman arguments to shadow box with his political opponents. International cooperation to break up terror cells already in place is a vital component to keep us safe. Cheney should know. He headed a Bush administration effort that, for all its faults, worked closely with our allies, and even those nations who don’t like us very much (Pakistan) in a proactive attempt to foil terrorist plots before they occurred.

Those of us who believe that we are at war with Islamic extremists (they certainly believe they are at war with us) want to go beyond this common sense approach and, using special forces, drones, and even assassins, attack terrorists where they are hiding to prevent them from planning attacks on us in the first place. Also, if necessary, attack nations that harbor and succor terrorists who have successfully attacked America.

Don’t look now, but President Obama is doing all of that (I have no doubt he would respond with military force if it could be shown a major attack on America originated in a country that allowed terrorists safe haven). He’s just not calling it a “War on Terror” and has liberals like Neiwert bamboozled into thinking he has altered President Bush’s policies much at all. He hasn’t. He has stepped up the use of drones on our enemies while special forces are assisting Yemenis, Pakistanis, and probably other nations in going after and killing terrorists. His emphasis on law enforcement is cosmetic. In order not to offend the sensibilities of moderate Muslims (and to fool his own domestic political base), the president is downplaying the military aspect of the War on Terror in his public pronouncements. What goes on behind the scenes is a different story.

Cheney is upset that Obama isn’t acting like a cowboy and broadcasting our efforts to fight a war against the terrorists where they live and plot their attacks. And liberals like Neiwert are deluding themselves if they think that because the atmospherics have changed, the policy has been altered. Nothing could be further from the truth.

CIA paramilitaries, SEALS, Green Berets, and special forces units from every branch of the service are engaged in a “hot” war with those who would do us harm. They are working with the military and intelligence services of other nations to track, expose, and kill terrorists. By any definition you want to use, this is war. And Neiwert’s arrogant posturing notwithstanding, it is a vitally important adjunct to efforts by police around the world to carry out their own anti-terrorism functions that not only look to capture terrorists before they can harm us, but also take away their sources of finance, cut off their communications with their overseas masters, and relentlessly pursue them, never giving them a moment’s rest.

Our military constantly feeds intelligence gleaned from their efforts to our allies in the War on Terror who pass the information along to local and national police authorities. It is a symbiotic relationship that has proven very successful - for the most part. But as former DHS Secretary Tom Ridge pointed out years ago, we have to be successful in interdicting the terrorist’s plans 100% of the time where they only have to be successful once in order to kill a lot of Americans.

The recent attacks in Detroit on Christmas day and in Times Square over the weekend highlight that truism. It is worrisome in both instances that our own government dropped the ball; a failure in airport security measures that failed to stop Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab from attempting his murder, and several red flags that should have made Faisal Shahzad a person of interest to domestic law enforcement. This calls into question the basic competence of this administration and whether President Obama is protecting the homeland adequately.

Only by the grace of God and the incompetence of the attackers has a major domestic terrorist incident been avoided over the last few months. I hardly think that calls for the kind of childishness offered up by Dave Neiwert or any other lefty who is stupidly celebrating their “victory” over their political foes.

A few more victories like that and we’re going to have a lot of dead Americans to mourn.

This article originally appears on The Moderate Voice.

John McCain is saying we shouldn’t mirandize an American citizen who has been arrested for his participation in the Times Square bomb plot:

It would have been a serious mistake to have read the suspect in the attempted Times Square car bombing his Miranda rights, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said Tuesday.

McCain, the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and a longtime leading Republican on national security issues, said he expected the suspect in the case could face charges that might warrant a death sentence if convicted.

“Obviously that would be a serious mistake…at least until we find out as much information we have,” McCain said during an appearance on “Imus in the Morning” when asked whether the suspect, 30-year-old Faisal Shahzad, a naturalized American citizen from Pakistan.

“Don’t give this guy his Miranda rights until we find out what it’s all about,” McCain added.

First of all, it is never a “mistake” to follow the law. Mr Shahzad is an American citizen, and even if he had murdered thousands, he would still be entitled to the protections guaranteed under our Constitution.

And yet, this is one instance where the “ticking bomb” scenario might very well be a reality. Newsweek reports there may be a connection between Shahzad and the Pakistani Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud:

A prominent expert on Jihadist media says there is an apparent link between the new video message in which Pakistani Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud, once thought to have been killed, proclaims he is still alive, and a message posted overnight Saturday in which the Pakistani Taliban appears to claim credit for the failed Times Square car bomb attack.

Rita Katz, founder of the Site Intelligence Group, a private organization that monitors and translates extremist Web postings, late on Monday outlined a timeline her organization put together that suggests that the Hakimullah video and the U.S. attack claim were both posted, at least on some sites, by the same person or persons.

Terrorists are notoriously full of bombast but just for the record, Meshud made some bloodthirsty threats toward America in his latest video:

In the videos, Hakimullah Mehsud vows attacks on U.S. cities, which he says his suicide bombers have penetrated. The videos provide the first solid evidence that he survived the missile strike, and they come after the Pakistani Taliban’s widely dismissed claim of responsibility for the failed attack in New York’s Times Square. In that case, authorities were zeroing in on a naturalized U.S. citizen from Pakistan. A suspect was arrested late Monday, though reports of his ties to extremist groups in Pakistan could not be substantiated.

Might there be other terrorists in other major American cities waiting to strike as I write this? And would that be a good enough excuse for the government to arbitrarily waive Mr. Shahzad’s Constitutional rights, designate him an “enemy combatant,” and interrogate him using all legal means at our disposal (I take it as a given that President Obama has rejected “enhanced interrogation” as an option)?

For some on both sides of the argument, this is an easy question to answer in the affirmative or negative. However, knee jerk ideological reactions from civil liberties absolutists or bloodthirsty right wingers are just not good enough in this situation.

The threat is real and immediate. Hundreds - perhaps thousands - of American lives may be at stake. Wouldn’t it be easier just to forget the Constitution in this one instance and treat this terrorist as the enemy he himself claims to be?

It would be easier. But would it be the right thing to do? I daresay if there is another terrorist attack - this one successful - and we followed the law to the letter by allowing the suspect to remain silent despite the fact that it is later revealed he could have given us information that would have stopped the attack, the political ramifications would be severe. And the fact that our police obeyed the Constitution would give cold comfort to the families of those who lost a loved on in a preventable attack.

It’s an easy choice - unless you lose someone because of that choice. Then it becomes a little more complicated, yes? Or, on the other side of the coin, if Mr. Shahzad knows nothing of any other attacks and precious little about his overseas connections, violating his constitutional rights would be seen as dramatic overkill. The law would have been violated for, what in retrospect, would be seen as no good reason.

You might argue that postulating outcomes is a fool’s game and that holding fast to Constitutional principles or making the exception in Shahzad’s case is a decision for the moment and no thought should be given to relative consequences. I disagree. This decision would be all about “relevant consequences.” If we violate the suspect’s Constitutional rights and the information we are able to wean out of him prevents an attack, is that justification for tossing the Constitution aside? Or if he has no information relevant to accomplices or other plots, must we automatically assume that what was done was a travesty?

Herein lies the conundrum over Mirandizing Shahzad. Whether we do or don’t, our actions will have profound consequences.  Even if no other terrorist attacks are being planned, finding that out is almost as important as discovering another plot to kill Americans. And as with any other decisions made by policymakers, the potential harm must be weighed against any positive outcome to their actions.

In a perfect world, we wouldn’t be confronted with choices like this. But in the real world where lives may be at stake and the responsibility weighs heavily on our national leaders, the simplified view of the ideologues is a luxury not vouchsafed those who are charged with protecting American citizens.

UPDATE

As is his wont - and the wont of other excessively ideological dimwits on both sides - John Cole exaggerates, takes out of context, and generally makes a hash of my writing.

As far as torture, Cole knows full well I oppose it as strenuously as he does. As for the “ticking bomb scenario,” I have written extensively about how the professionals do not believe it could ever happen.

The point of this post was to theorize that there may arise a situation in the future where - ticking bomb or not - American lives would be placed at risk by mirandizing a terrorist. It doesn’t take much imagination to visualize such a scenario. My purpose was to outline the arguments for and against such action. I tried to present both sides fairly. Cole, being the partisan, ideological hack that he is, only saw one side.

James Joyner is also dubious about my reasoning here and corrects me about any American citizen able to be designated an “enemy combatant.” I don’t believe I came down on either side in Shahzad’s case in the article but just for the record, I support mirandizing him.

I have an article up at David Horowitz’s FrontPage.com this morning in which I lay out the case against “comprehensive reform” of just about anything.

A sample:

It doesn’t matter what putative tasks that government wants to assign for itself, anytime that Congress comprehensively tries to address a supposed injustice, or take on a big problem, it is a given that government will carve out a role greater than it had previous to the reform. It is a sure means of growing the size of the federal behemoth. Unintended consequences notwithstanding, you can take that to your federally run bank and cash it.

[...]

Prudence as a civic virtue has disappeared from public life. It’s just not the style in these days of massive, nation-changing legislation and a president with one eye on the polls and the other on the history books. One of Cicero’s Four Cardinal Virtues, prudence, he wrote, “is the knowledge of what is good, what is bad, and what is neutral.” Russell Kirk believed that prudence was one of the ten most important conservative principles, saying, “[a]ny public measure ought to be judged by its probable long-run consequences, not merely by temporary advantage or popularity.” It would seem that both classical and contemporary philosophers had a better handle on what the liberals are doing than Republicans in Congress.

In an age where anything is justified in the cause of “social justice,” or advancing “positive rights,” the Left’s massive attempts at “comprehensive” reform are unsettling society, discarding America’s first principles, and uncoupling citizens from the traditions that have been lovingly and courageously handed down by our ancestors at great cost in blood and treasure. It is being done without so much as a sniff in the direction of continuity in government, as Democrats seek to shatter convention and substitute an alien philosophy that alters society in ways that most of those who voted for “change” in 2008 could never have dreamed. What is really needed in America today is not comprehensive reform but a comprehensive cleaning of our House – and the Senate.

When was our last truly “prudent” president? A case could be made that George Bush #41 was mostly a prudent leader, although some conservatives would argue that his policies provoked exactly the kind of “unintended consequences” that would brand his presidency as imprudent.

Ronald Reagan’s massive tax cuts were a boon to the economy but also unhinged the budget for a generation - a consequence we are still dealing with today. An argument could be made that it is the fault of Congress for not cutting the budget sufficiently, but there were plenty of conservatives who warned Reagan - Howard Baker among them - that Congress would never be able to cut the budget enough to balance outlays.

The flurry of government activity initiated by the Nixon-Ford-Carter triumvirate, with an alphabet soup of government agencies created or expanded would leave all three of those presidents off the list of “prudent” leaders.

I think we have to go all the way back to Eisenhower to find the last truly prudent American president. Both in foreign and domestic affairs, Eisenhower’s stewardship reflected his basic outlook as both a military commander - where prudence is a necessity - and his governing philosophy, where he believed doing the least was doing the best.

Barack Obama is giving LBJ a run for his money as far as being the most imprudent, reckless president of the 20th century. But he still has a way to go in that regard. Both men’s imprudence flowed from a serene, almost frightening confidence in their own abilities to manage the federal behemoth. They both have been blinded by their own arrogance to the point that they thought they could ignore any consequences flowing from their transformative policies, believing in the basic moral rightness of their cause.

Such hubris is always rewarded with the most damaging of unintended consequences. In Johnson’s case, the destruction of the inner cities, the black family structure, and the creation of a dependent underclass all flowed from his Great Society.

In Obama’s case, we can only dimly see how his massive intrusions in the private sector and threats to individual liberty will play out. Until then, we will have to award the title of “Least Prudent President of the 20th Century” to LBJ.

This article originally appears on The Moderate Voice

You can make a marginal case in favor of the Arizona law that cracks down on illegal immigrants by giving police wide latitude to arrest and detain those in the country without proper documentation. The state is under siege, and the federal government refuses to do anything meaningful to stop the flow of drug traffickers, criminals, and economic refugees from Mexico and other Central American countries. The border is in chaos and Arizona residents feel threatened by the human tidal wave of more than half a million unwanted visitors every year crossing into Arizona alone.

Some aspects of the law are objectionable if the statute were to be abused by the police. But until we see how the law is enforced, it makes no sense to gin up hysteria and outrage over what might occur.

But no such defense can be mounted in favor of another Arizona law - HB 2281 - recently passed by the legislature and awaiting the governor’s signature. It is a bill at odds with American values, the purpose of education, and tolerance for other races and cultures.

The bill “would make it illegal for a school district to have any courses or classes that promote the overthrow of the U.S. government, are designed primarily for students of a particular ethnic group or advocate ethnic solidarity “instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals.”

No doubt performances of Riverdance where Irish step dancing is featured, would be banned, nor would any school program teaching ethnic dances, drama, literature, or cooking be allowed.

Or does the law apply only to Hispanic cultural studies?

The insidiousness of this law is compounded by an edict by the state Department of Education who “recently began telling school districts that teachers whose spoken English it deems to be heavily accented or ungrammatical must be removed from classes for students still learning English.”

Heavily accented? What kind of nonsense is this? Under those standards, Albert Einstein would have been prevented from teaching at Princeton.

The ignorance of both the ban on cultural studies and the search for teachers whose English isn’t quite up to snuff is institutional bigotry writ large. These attacks on immigrants - both legal and illegal - is a slap in the face to American tradition and values which has generally welcomed strangers to our shores.

Arizona follows what is known as “Structural English Immersion” in its schools, having abandoned the folly of bilingual education several years ago. It has proved to be more effective and a quicker way for new arrivals to learn English. Using “discrete” cues, the student is acclimated to English in a natural, albeit intensive manner.

The problem, apparently, is that some teachers, while fluent enough in English, have residual accents that make it difficult for some non-Hispanic students to understand them. The emphasis there is on “some” students because studies show that most students will, after a short time, “tune their ears” to the teacher’s accent and have no trouble understanding them. My personal experience in this regard was with a sixth grade nun whose Irish brogue was so thick, it was impossible to process more than a couple of words in every spoken sentence. However, within a couple of weeks my ears became attuned to her accent and linguistic idiosyncrasies and I was able to understand everything she said clearly.

Going after teachers whose accents are deemed unacceptable makes no sense unless one comes to the conclusion that Arizona does not wish to employ Hispanic teachers to teach Hispanic children. It should go without saying that newly arrived students who are having trouble with English in the first place, will not be served by ridding the school system of instructors who can bridge that crucial gap between the period a pupil feels lost and out of place trying to adjust to new surroundings and a new language, and the time when they can participate comfortably in classes where English-only instruction predominates.

It might be interesting to see how the Arizona Education Department goes about defining a teacher who speaks with too “heavy” an accent. How heavy is too heavy? Who decides? And as far as being proficient in English, perhaps the Arizona education big shots should read a little about how teachers all across the country are flunking basic reading and English tests. Are we going to single out Hispanic teachers for punishment even though White teachers elsewhere are as bad or worse in knowledge of English grammar?

The problems associated with illegal immigrants are knotty and will not be solved easily. Perhaps one of the most pressing and heartbreaking issues is what to do with innocent children whose parents have broken the law by coming here illegally. We can pretend they don’t exist and make their lives miserable by keeping them out of school. Or, we can approach the problem in a practical manner and recognize the need to educate them, while working to resolve the question of what to do with the 10 million uninvited and illegal trespassers who call America home.

Every illegal immigrant - man, woman, child - is a potential citizen and while we must stand for enforcing the laws on our books, circumstances also require that we deal with the situation pragmatically, prudently, and humanely as possible. These new laws and regulations promulgated by the state of Arizona’s Education Department accomplish none of that.

For legal immigrants or even native born Americans whose accented English isn’t up to snuff or English proficiency questioned to be treated in this manner should be an embarrassment to the people of Arizona. It won’t be, of course. The good citizens of that state, and plenty of their supporters around the country, are showing an amazing lack of empathy and understanding toward newcomers, both legal and illegal. We can recognize Arizona’s unique problems being on the border. But we cannot and should not condone their methods to deal with the crisis if the way they go about it flies in the face of common sense and the American way.

This article originally appears on The Moderate Voice

Did you hear? President Obama called out a SWAT team to threaten tea party protestors in Quincy, Illinois yesterday.

Don’t believe me? Ask premiere conservative blogger Jim Hoft of Gateway Pundit writing on Andrew Brietbart’s Big Government website who headlines his piece “Team Obama Calls Out Swat Team on Tea Party Patrioits:

The SWAT Team was called in today at the Quincy Tea Party Rally. Obama was speaking at the convention center this afternoon.

Unreal.

Yes Jim - unreal. But not because President Obama ordered the local police to do anything. What is truly unreal is your laughably over the top description of the situation.

Perhaps a calmer, more rational description is in order. From the local Quincy paper:

There were a few tense moments when the crowd moved west down York toward Third Street after the president’s motorcade arrived. A Secret Service agent asked the crowd to move back across the street to the north side.

When the crowd didn’t move and began singing “God Bless, America” and the national anthem, Quincy Deputy Police Chief Ron Dreyer called for members of the Mobile Field Force to walk up the street.

The officers, mainly from Metro East departments near St. Louis and dressed in full body armor, marched from the east and stood on the south side of York facing the protesters.

There was no physical contact, and the officers did not come close to the crowd, but there were catcalls and more than a few upset tea party members, including a woman who shouted, “This is communism!”

No ma’am. This is America. And refusing an order from the Secret Service is a serious matter. Imagine lefty protestors doing the same thing and I’ll bet you would be coming down on them like a ton of bricks.

Hoft makes the point that the protestors were not only peaceful, but looked the part as well with many grandmothers and oldsters in attendance. They may have been peaceful but not following the clear, lawful orders of the authorities to move to the other side of the street unnecessarily raised the temperature of those who swore an oath to give their life in defense of the person of the President of the United States. They can be forgiven much when carrying out their duties in that regard, including paying visits to bloggers who joked about killing President Bush.

Perhaps you’ve never heard of Sara Jane Moore, the innocent looking 45 year old woman who took a potshot at President Ford. Moore was upset at what she thought was the war being waged on the left and looked no more a threat than my pet cat Snowball. Or how about Reagan’s attacker John Hinckley? The guy looked like some poor dweeb standing around waiting for the rain to fall on his head.

How does the way someone “looks” make a damn bit of difference as to whether or not they are a threat to the president’s life?

As for the president or anyone associated with his administration having a hand in siccing the “SWAT Team” (they were police dressed in riot gear) on the tea party crowd, that’s just plain nonsense. The police, mobilized as a routine part of the president’s security arrangements, moved between the protestors and the venue and stood there looking pretty bored after the tea partiers refused to obey the instructions of the Secret Service. If you want to second guess the Secret Service, I suggest you should have access to the same information that they do, as well as understand the nuances of their security arrangements.

Dana Loesch, an hysteric on normal days, goes far off the deep end as she breathlessly informs us:

Word is that Secret Service from inside the venue and the presidential team pressured local law enforcement, who were against the idea. Local cops were overruled, I’m told by various sources, including a few members of local press. [Blogger Michelle]Moore reported that she overheard Secret Service telling the riot squad to “push them back, out of sight.“

Loesch isn’t much of a journalist. Here is Moore’s description:

In addition, the Secret Service told the Riot Police to “push the crowd back as far as you can, out of sight.”…..So, this is what your dear leader thinks of YOU America. He doesn’t want to even see your face or know of your existence if you don’t agree with his policy.

Did Moore “overhear” the Secret Service telling the “riot squad” to push the protestors back out of sight? I don’t get that at all from Moore’s report. It sounds like hearsay to me which, if you’ve ever been to a protest, rumors like that sweep through a crowd like wildfire only to be proved bogus a short time later.

And I might add that during a presidential visit, if the Secret Service orders the police to move, they move. If what both Loesch and Moore are saying is true about the Secret Service telling local police to move the protestors - and then failing to do so - it would be a serious breach of protocol. All the more reason to think that both women were repeating rumors, or more likely, exaggerating their paranoid fears for effect.

No SWAT team. No threats to protestors. No phalanx of menacing riot police bearing down on tea partiers with billy clubs - the kind of police threat I experienced several times in my youth. Simple, routine security that you will see the world over when a national leader pays a visit.

But damn, that’s just not good enough. We need drama! We need to be seen as being oppressed! We need to wave the bloody shirt from the battlements! We’re Patriots ready to spill our blood in defense of …something!

Moe Lane calling the riot police “SWAT” also, and writing about the innocent grandmothers in the crowd as well:

You know, I remember a day when we had a President who wasn’t fundamentally afraid of the American people, and so do you.

If he’s talking about President Bush, WTF? Is he brain dead? With Moe, it’s hard to tell sometimes. His mouth moves but nothing intelligible comes out.

I don’t like President Obama. He is a liar, a bully, a radical who sneers at our traditions and history while seeking to fundamentally alter the relationship between the citizen and the government in Washington, D.C. He is the antithesis of everything I believe about the United States, and whose policies are an anathema to prudent government, presidential decorum, and wise policy making. He is a nightmare from which I sincerely hope we awake in 2012.

But lying, exaggerating, getting hysterical - real or feigned - about stuff like this tea party protest makes me ashamed to be a conservative. We can strenuously oppose this president without descending into the muck of idiocy and quicksand of hyperbole. Nothing happened at that tea party protest that threatened anyone’s liberty or constitutional rights.

Making it seem otherwise only makes these bloggers look ridiculous.

This article originally appears on The Moderate Voice

First in a series.

This post by Julian Sanchez started an internet conversation/debate on what he calls “epistemic closure” on the right.

Reality is defined by a multimedia array of interconnected and cross promoting conservative blogs, radio programs, magazines, and of course, Fox News. Whatever conflicts with that reality can be dismissed out of hand because it comes from the liberal media, and is therefore ipso facto not to be trusted. (How do you know they’re liberal? Well, they disagree with the conservative media!) This epistemic closure can be a source of solidarity and energy, but it also renders the conservative media ecosystem fragile. Think of the complete panic China’s rulers feel about any breaks in their Internet firewall: The more successfully external sources of information have been excluded to date, the more unpredictable the effects of a breach become. Internal criticism is then especially problematic, because it threatens the hermetic seal. It’s not just that any particular criticism might have to be taken seriously coming from a fellow conservative. Rather, it’s that anything that breaks down the tacit equivalence between “critic of conservatives and “wicked liberal smear artist” undermines the effectiveness of the entire information filter. If disagreement is not in itself evidence of malign intent or moral degeneracy, people start feeling an obligation to engage it sincerely—maybe even when it comes from the New York Times. And there is nothing more potentially fatal to the momentum of an insurgency fueled by anger than a conversation. A more intellectually secure conservatism would welcome this, because it wouldn’t need to define itself primarily in terms of its rejection of an alien enemy.

Predictably, conservatives don’t like being compared to Communist Chinese. But in that one brief passage. Mr. Sanchez has crystallized one of the major problems with modern conservatism; what I term its “negative feedback loop” of information exchange. Epistemic closure, by any other name, is an echo chamber effect; a disease that afflicts both sides but that, for some reason, is especially virulent on the right.

But Sanchez goes beyond the obvious to posit the notion that the very reality inhabited by the right is a Matrix-like construct, created out of the resentments and false assumptions made by conservatives about the world around them. There is the objective reality of Zion and then there is the Machine World that sort of looks like Zion but is the result of bearing a false consciousness about the way the world truly works.

The result? A herd mentality that brooks no criticism lest the sleepers awaken to their dilemma and realize all is not as they have imagined. Where for years they have believed Zion was the dream and they were living in the real world, they simply cannot make the psychic leap of faith and logic to embrace the same reality the rest of us accept. Hence, their ill treatment of apostates and total dismissiveness of liberal critics.

It is hard to argue with a lot of that. Even Jonah Goldberg accepts some of Sanchez’s critique:

Now, I think there’s some merit to what Sanchez says here. As the recipient of lots of email from people who insist I’m an apostate to conservative orthodoxy and from lots of people who insist I’m a leading enforcer of conservative orthodoxy, I have some appreciation for both the reality and the mirage of what Sanchez calls conservatism’s movement toward epistemic closure.

But what I find rather astounding and perplexing in these sorts of autopsies or vivisections of conservatism are how so many people claim there are problems for conservatism that are in fact simply facts of life for all human associations and movements. It’s like a physician describing the anatomy of Belgians as if they were somehow different from Ukrainians.

Jonah is right - up to a point. His problem is one of degree. The level of epistemic closure in, for example, the Catholic priesthood is far less a denial of objective reality than that found on the American right today. The Matrix like world inhabited by talk radio hosts and listeners, where Barack Obama is not just wrong but deliberately trying to destroy the country, has no counterpart in any other milieu of which I am aware.

The level of hysteria regarding Obama and the Democrats on what passes for the mainstream right is truly astonishing. Are we really “that close” to becoming a Marxist dictatorship? Is health care reform the end of American liberty? Is Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals really a liberal playbook being followed religiously by Obama on how to take over the country? Is the Obama administration a “regime?” Is it a “gangster government?”

This is but a sampling of the reality propounded on a daily basis by the cotton candy conservatives on talk radio, and eagerly lapped up by conservative listeners in the tens of millions. This, and worse, is written daily on conservative blogs and websites, reinforcing the reality as it is recognized and delivered by Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and other big names on the right.

The light of knowledge and objective reality cannot penetrate the screen set up by the gatekeepers of information trafficking because to do so would obviate their own cockeyed view of the world. The closed circle grows ever tighter around adherents as they deliberately shut off opposing perspectives, even when offered by those who are putatively on their side. To protect themselves from straying too far from the reality they have invented, they skewer critics - even on the right - with charges that they are liberal, or RINO’s, or their motivation is born out of jealousy and hate for the successful puindits who promulgate their warped worldview.

Jim Manzi:

I started to read Mark Levin’s massive bestseller Liberty and Tyranny a number of months ago as debate swirled around it. I wasn’t expecting a PhD thesis (and in fact had hoped to write a post supporting the book as a well-reasoned case for certain principles that upset academics just because it didn’t employ a bunch of pseudo-intellectual tropes). But when I waded into the first couple of chapters, I found that — while I had a lot of sympathy for many of its basic points — it seemed to all but ignore the most obvious counter-arguments that could be raised to any of its assertions. This sounds to me like a pretty good plain English meaning of epistemic closure. The problem with this, of course, is that unwillingness to confront the strongest evidence or arguments contrary to our own beliefs normally means we fail to learn quickly, and therefore persist in correctable error.

Case in point; try telling an inhabitant of this alternate reality that Obama is not a socialist, that the government has taken over only a tiny slice of the economy, and that if you value the meanings of words, you would desist from trying shoehorn the president and the Democrats into a definitional construct that is false from the word “go.”

“Obama lover” would be the first response, followed quickly by “RINO.” There currently isn’t a vocabulary on most of the right that would encompass dealing with internal criticism of this kind. The very nature of criticism has been turned on its head as ideological bona fides must be established before the critic is accepted. Thus, the echo chamber remains secure and the negative feedback loop intact.

It will take a national leader of the stature of Reagan to break through this morass and restore some semblance of objective reality to movement conservatism. The Republican party may triumph at the polls in November, but it will be no thanks to the mainstream right who have embraced a worldview that is at odds with what most of the rest of us know to be true.

This article originally appears on The Moderate Voice

Center-left pundit Peter Beinart is perfectly OK with the idea that the Democrats may get clobbered in this year’s midterms. He writes that he’s happy enough that the Democrats have passed health care reform, the stim bill, and most likely, the financial reform package:

All of which makes me feel… pretty darn good. There’s a tendency, especially on television, to judge policy by how it affects politics. That’s because most pundits don’t like judging policy on its own merits. First, it’s hard, since policy questions are often complicated. Second, such judgments undermine the pretense of objectivity that many analysts cultivate. Thus, talking heads often respond to policy questions with political answers. The host asks “Are the Democrats making a mistake by pushing this health-care bill?” And instead of answering: “They sure are, this sucker will euthanize Grandma,” the talking head says, “Well, the polls look bad, this could really hurt them this fall.”

I don’t happen to believe that the Democrats’ policy successes are the reason they’ll get hurt this fall. They’ll get hurt because they run Washington, and Obama has been president for more than a year, and as a result they now own the terrible economy. And since many of their big policy initiatives—the stimulus package, the auto takeover, the bank bailouts, even health-care reform—are being judged on whether they’ve rapidly improved the economic fortunes of average Americans, they look like failures. But even if someone could prove that Obama’s big policy victories were, in and of themselves, politically disastrous, I would still say it’s an excellent tradeoff.

“Judging policy on its own merits?” What planet did Beinart drop to earth from? It is the real world consequences of policy where politics enters the picture. And whether Beinart acknowledges it or not, some of those consequences are scaring people half to death.

Massive debt that no one knows how to pay off, changes to the fundamental relationship between the citizen and the federal government, worries about the relevance of the constitution - all of this and more is a factor in people’s political calculations above and beyond whether it will be easier for them to get health insurance. And, I dare say, when many of them find it much more difficult to get a mortgage or a credit card as the financial reform bill will almost certainly make it so, they won’t be so enamored of much of the policy in the first place. Nor if the Democrats push cap and trade through the senate that promises to add an unknown amount to everyone’s electric bill - Heritage says as much as $1800 a year - will people be dancing in the streets over these “policy successes.”

If Mr. Beinart chooses to believe that the bad economy is the only thing standing between the Democrats and a smashing mid term victory, someone should wake him up pronto. He has apparently slept through the last year’s debates over not just the policy of health care reform, but the consequences of that policy to individual freedom and our future. Perhaps Mr. Beinart has heard of the tea party movement? Or maybe he’s so in love with the skewed narrative being advanced by his fellow leftists that he can dismiss their concerns so readily.

It’s not just the effect on people’s lives that citizens judge the efficacy of a policy. That may be what the liberals are counting on, but if that were the case, the health care bill would be riotously popular. The idea that people should be grateful for these gifts from government fails to recognize that Americans are particular about some things, and one of them is their rock ribbed belief in a government that doesn’t try to do too much. Call it a belief in “small” government if you wish. It is the recognition that the more government tries to do, fewer choices are presented to citizens. You don’t need a PHD to know that less choice means less freedom. Americans figured that out 221 years ago and have not changed since.

Beinart demonstrates an appalling attitude; the belief that policy is an end in and of itself, disconnected from its consequences on ordinary people, and that it doesn’t matter if citizens support a policy because it was advanced and passed for their own good - even if they can’t see how wonderful it is. If they want to punish Democrats for pushing policies they disagree with, that’s regrettable but there’s not a damn thing the rubes can do about it.

Finally, doesn’t Beinart contradict himself here?

This is how our system of government is meant to work. Members of Congress are supposed to get elected so they can pass legislation, or not pass legislation, so they can get elected. If, as looks likely, Congressional Democrats get creamed this fall, pundits will spend Election Night pondering what they and the president did wrong. I’ll be thinking about the stimulus, health care and financial reform, and pondering what they did right.

But isn’t the reason Mr. Beinart will still be happy is because the policy successes are divorced from politics? And if this is so, how does he square that with his theory of “how our system of government works?” The policies passed via legislation by Congress are supposed to be popular so that they can get re-elected. Beinart is saying it doesn’t matter except when it does.

I am glad Mr. Beinart is going to be happy if the Democrats get slaughtered this November. But his nauseating condescension toward the citizens of this country who have to live with the consequences of the policies he is supporting - both known and unknown - is revealing of a mind set more in tune with a monarchy than a republic.