Right Wing Nut House

He said all the right things. He said them in the right way. He said them with conviction. He was humble where he should have been. He was firm where he should have been. He was vague where he should have been (Iran). He was specific where he should have been (Anbar).

I largely agreed with the President’s assessment - as far is it went. Why he kept mentioning “sectarian elements” rather than militias and not mention al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army by name is a minor point but telling. What it says to me is that despite al-Maliki’s assurances, we’re still not sure what the consequences will be when we start going after Mookie’s Army. If the Mahdi Militia comes out swinging, the Iraqi army will have its hands full with no guarantee that they will actually fight them. In fact, this entire plan is dependent on an Iraqi army that has yet to prove it can do anything much at all. Deploying 18 brigades to Baghdad when the largest combat action that the Iraqi army has been involved in has been company sized engagements will test the new army to the limit.

Still, there’s no time like the present for the Iraqis to get their feet wet. Now all we have to do is hope that they’ll show up in Baghdad as ordered. Last summer when Maliki tried to deploy troops to Baghdad, many of the units mutinied and refused to serve. Let’s hope they have that little problem ironed out as well.

I would have hoped that we somehow could have engineered al-Maliki’s downfall and replaced him and his government with a much broader coalition of Sunnis, Kurds, and secular Shias. But the Grand Ayatollah Sistani nixed that idea because he feared the Shias would lose power in any arrangement that didn’t include the flaming Shia nationalist al-Sadr. This was unfortunate since the fear of absolute Shia dominance is one of the things driving the insurgency. Sharing oil revenues, which the President mentioned in his speech, is only part what has to be a sustained and serious effort by the Iraqi government to assure all factions that the Shias will not ride roughshod over everyone else. The sharing of revenues is a start. We await other moves by Maliki that will prove his statesmanship with other factions in Iraq.

So we refine our strategy in Iraq. Now what? Fewer people will die, hopefully. But the President barely touched on the consequences of this sectarian violence; the depopulation of Sunnis from the capitol as well as the mass exodus of Sunnis from the country. There are 1 million in Syria, 700,000 in Jordan, nearly 100,000 in Egypt, about 40,000 in Lebanon, and about 20,000 in Turkey. Another 50,000 have fled the Middle East all together and ended up in Europe and the US.

And since Sunnis generally made up the most skilled and most educated part of the workforce, this is a brain drain of immense proportions. What is driving these people away is the fact that, despite what the President said about Shias wanting to live in peace with the Sunnis, the fact is there is a sizable minority of Shias who don’t believe that, who either want to kill Sunnis or have them gone from Iraq.

This is the biggest challenge facing the Iraqi government and it won’t be solved by sending troops to Baghdad or even taking the guns out of the hands of the militias. This is a sickness in the Iraqi soul and only some kind of national reconciliation a la South Africa could make a start toward healing these wounds. America can’t do anything to help here either except perhaps create an atmosphere where such a process would be possible.

What Bush is proposing could lead to a limited success in Iraq; saving the Sunnis from annihilation and giving the streets back to the Iraqi government. Beyond that, any democracy that emerges from our involvement there will also be up to the Iraqi people. We’ve done just about all we can do in that regard as well.

I believe the President should get a bump in support from this. And support for the war may increase a couple of points as well. But the days of moving the American people en masse towards a belief in victory are long gone, crashed on the shoals of unfulfilled promises and the disheartening realities of the violence in Iraq. But if what the President proposes is the very best we can hope for - and I believe that it is - then perhaps it will eventually be seen by both the Iraqi and American people as having been worth the effort.

After three years of carping, harping, caterwauling, criticizing, not to mention spinning ever more outrageous and fantastical conspiracy theories about the war, it is time for the Democrats to stand up and do what they say they’ve been sent to Washington to do; get us out of Iraq.

Now is the time we find out whether the Democrats are a bunch of gutless cowards whose political calculations about “supporting the troops but not the mission” has any meaning beyond the sound bite culture of Washington and political campaigns. Now is the time we discover whether Democrats have the courage of their convictions and truly believe that the war is a lost cause, necessitating the immediate withdrawal of our forces.

Not “redeployment” or other weasel words that the Democrats have used in the past in attempting to hide from the gales of history that are blowing ever more fiercely through the Middle East and beyond, but the physical withdrawal of our troops from the fighting. In other words, a halt to combat operations, an admission that the war was not only ill advised, ill considered, and carried out with spectacular incompetence but also that we have lost the conflict and that the terrorists, jihadis, and murderous thugs in the Sunni insurgency have won.

Along with this admission of total failure must come an acknowledgement of success by our enemies. This is the nature of war. One side comes out the winner. The other, a loser. And if the Democrats had any balls at all they would be just as loud and obnoxious when complaining about al-Qaeda’s “victory” against us as they are when complaining about everything else having to do with the war.

They won’t do it, of course, It might lose them a few votes. So despite the fact that they believe the war a failure, that Bush an incompetent fool, that our men are dying needlessly in Iraq, that civilians are being butchered in a lost cause, that there is nothing we can do to stem the tide of victory by al-Qaeda and the jihadis, they will sit back on their over fed, overly ample haunches and kibitz like a bunch of old maids at a bridge game, maintaining a high moral tone while abjectly failing to act in a moral fashion.

For if the Democrats really believed all they say about Iraq - and there should be no doubt that they do - then the only morally defensible position to take is to cut our losses and bring our troops home. Not in 6 months. Not in three months. There should not be one more American soldier who dies or is wounded because of what they see as the illusory notion that there is any kind of victory to be had in Iraq.

But no. The Democrats want to have it both ways. They want an “out” just in case the security situation really does improve as the result of our sending an extra few thousand men to Baghdad. They don’t want Republicans to take political advantage of their moral stance regarding the withdrawal of our troops. They want to be able to claim that they “succeeded” in making Bush change direction in policy - especially if their is a significant improvement in the security situation.

Frankly, I don’t know what they’re so worried about. The chances that an extra 20,000 troops will make a difference in the long run are slight indeed. Three times that many and there may have been a chance to alter the cycle of sectarian violence that now claims far more lives every day than al-Qaeda terrorists or Sunni insurgents. As it stands, the extra troops are little more than a symbolic gesture by the President, a sign to his supporters and the Iraqis that he is still committed to achieving some kind of “victory” - whatever that means.

And lest you think I am any more satisfied with the Administration’s plans than I am with the stance of cowardly Democrats, think again.

The President has been saying for three years that we cannot fail in Iraq, that it is absolutely vital to our national security and to the future of our country that Iraq be seen as a success in the War on Terror.

If this is so, why has he been so lethargic in defending his actions? Why hasn’t he answered his critics with anything except platitudes and rosy scenarios that bore little relation to the reality of what was actually happening on the ground? Why did he resist any review of his strategy for so long, even after it became clear that we were failing in Iraq? And why for the love of God has he dithered for more than 4 months as the violence, already severely disrupting Iraqi society by making more than half a million refugees and record numbers of civilian dead, reached new heights of savagery and brutality?

George Bush is a failure on many levels as President but he has reached the zenith of incompetence as a moral leader. His apocalyptic rhetoric about the consequences of failure in Iraq has not been backed up by the kind of leadership that would have given the American people a stake in this conflict beyond the families of our soldiers who have born the entire burden of sacrifice in this war. This has meant that support for his policies was bound to deteriorate if things went south in Iraq. And, like the moral cowardice of the Democrats who refuse to take their rhetoric about the war to its logical conclusion by advocating an immediate withdrawal, the President has demonstrated his own moral laxity by opening a huge chasm between what he says the stakes are in Iraq with his actions.

For if, as the President contends, these stakes are so high, why not call up every National Guard member and every reservist we have? If our equipment is being slowly ground down by overuse in the hot, desert-like conditions of Iraq, why not ask for a crash program to have American industry turn out new equipment? Why not constitute a new “War Production Board to prioritize and order American manufacturers to turn out what is needed to prosecute the war to a successful conclusion? Despite the loss of much of our manufacturing base, you can’t convince me that this couldn’t be done - if there was the will and the leadership to do it.

Why not rationing? Why not raise taxes? Why not put his cherished domestic agenda on hold while the American government bends every effort and concentrates almost exclusively on winning the war in Iraq?

How unrealistic am I being by hearkening back to the domestic tactics we used in World War II that successfully gave every American a stake in our victory or defeat? Obviously, very little of what I proposed above would be possible or even practicable. But I listed those actions because they illustrate a point; that the President has not tapped the enormous reserves of patriotism nor the deep, traditional well spring of self sacrifice that the American people have demonstrated they are capable of if they believe the stakes are high enough. And this President has failed miserably in doing that.

Because the President lacks the political courage to take these kinds of actions that would unite us in a common cause and call forth our best effort, we are losing the war. And now, at this late date, the best we can do is send a paltry 20,000 more men to a failing state that is in danger of falling off a cliff and turning into another Somalia - a haven for roving gangs of thugs with guns and terrorists to plan and train for their next mission against the United States.

The time for evasion by all sides is over. What we need is an up or down vote in the House and Senate on continuing this war. Either we decide to do everything in our power to prosecute the war to the fullest extent possible in order to achieve even a limited victory (defined as a stable Iraqi government in charge of its own streets) or we begin the immediate withdrawal of our forces and let the Iraqis stew in the mess we have made. Move some troops to Afghanistan where at least there is a fighting chance for success. But get them out of Iraq and allow the regional players who have done their best to undermine our efforts there to pick up the pieces themselves. We will just have to deal with their success as another aspect of the general War on Terror.

The aftermath will not be easy to overcome. But if we decide enough is enough, we will have to face the consequences of our failure and move on from there. And if we decide to do whatever it takes to win through to a limited victory, then it’s time to make the President responsible for his rhetoric.

Whatever the decision, no more straddling, no more evasions, no more hiding behind political doubletalk. For both the President and the Democrats, half measures won’t cut it. It’s time to stand up and be counted - no matter what side you’re on.

This article originally appears in The American Thinker

What do you get when you throw a stick of dynamite into a room full of nitroglycerin?

Let me rephrase that: What do you get when religion, politics, and powerful symbols of American tradition all intersect to form a combination of controversy and conundrum?

The decision by newly minted Congressman Keith Ellison (D-MN) to take his oath of office on the Koran rather than the bible has many conservatives up in arms and many of the rest of us scratching our heads. There has been an enormous amount of ink spilled by those who believe that Ellison’s choice of the Koran as a symbol to seal his oath somehow threatens American civilization. Columnist and syndicated radio host Dennis Prager pulled no punches:

First, it is an act of hubris that perfectly exemplifies multiculturalist activism — my culture trumps America’s culture. What Ellison and his Muslim and leftist supporters are saying is that it is of no consequence what America holds as its holiest book; all that matters is what any individual holds to be his holiest book.

Forgive me, but America should not give a hoot what Keith Ellison’s favorite book is. Insofar as a member of Congress taking an oath to serve America and uphold its values is concerned, America is interested in only one book, the Bible. If you are incapable of taking an oath on that book, don’t serve in Congress. In your personal life, we will fight for your right to prefer any other book. We will even fight for your right to publish cartoons mocking our Bible. But, Mr. Ellison, America, not you, decides on what book its public servants take their oath.

I sincerely hope that Prager was able to take something to cure whatever was ailing him the day he wrote that article. Referring to Ellison’s “culture” (he was born and raised in this country) and the Koran as Ellison’s “favorite book” was evidence of someone either suffering from a severe case of hyperbole or Prager was demonstrating a towering ignorance about the tradition and meaning of oaths.

Prager wasn’t the only one to be caught up in this hysteria over where Ellison’s hand was going to be when he swore to uphold the Constitution. Virginia Congressman Virgil Goode felt it necessary to send an email to hundreds of his constituents warning them that Ellison was just the tip of the iceberg; that unless we followed the Mr. Goode’s advice and drastically curtailed the immigration of Muslims to America, we would end up with more Congressmen who would take the oath using the Koran:

In his letter, which was dated Dec. 5, Mr. Goode said that Americans needed to “wake up” or else there would “likely be many more Muslims elected to office and demanding the use of the Koran.”

“I fear that in the next century we will have many more Muslims in the United States if we do not adopt the strict immigration policies that I believe are necessary to preserve the values and beliefs traditional to the United States of America and to prevent our resources from being swamped,” said Mr. Goode, who vowed to use the Bible when taking his own oath of office.

I am glad that Mr. Goode vowed to use the bible when being sworn in. This despite the fact that no one in this country or on planet earth for that matter ever suggested that he would use anything else. Goode reassured us even more when he published a short column in USA Today where he dutifully informed us that he has a copy of the 10 commandments on the wall of his office (presumably not the original) and that he does not subscribe to any of the tenets of the Koran nor will he display the book in his office. I’m sure this comes as an immense relief to his constituents although what relevance it has to his duties as a Congressman remains something of a mystery. Perhaps Goode believes that populating the country with strawmen is in his job description.

But Goode does his level best to ignore history and generate hysteria when he tries raise the spectre of some kind of Muslim invasion that would not only overwhelm our “resources” but even worse, mean the election of more Muslim Congressmen, probably Democrats. In fact, Goode has very little to worry about. The history of every immigrant group who has come to America has shown that the same fears expressed by Goode about the newcomers undermining our values and culture were used by nativist and anti-immigration forces in the past.

For the Irish, it was questioning how they could be loyal to both Rome and the US government. For the Italians, it was the fear that their birthrate would overwhelm the “real” Americans and we’d wake up one day and everyone would have a last name that ended in a vowel. And don’t forget the mafia while your at it. Mexican immigrants in the past raised many of the same fears plus the added bugaboo of everyone having to learn Spanish in order to get by. I would argue that this has become more of a threat as the push to assimilate more recent Mexican immigrants has been blunted by many of those multiculturalists that Goode and Prager rail against. But Mexicans who have been here for generations turned out (not surprisingly) to be regular Americans who speak English, complain about high taxes, and even vote Republican sometimes.

The question is why we should expect anything less from Muslims than we did from Irish, Italians, or Mexicans? In fact, Muslims who have been here for several generations have adapted very nicely, thank you. Like all other immigrants in our history, they learn English, adapt American values, work hard, and are loyal, patriotic citizens. And like other immigrant groups, they have those who find it hard to fit in and adapt. There are enclaves of Muslims that wish to remain separate. And the lure of radical Islamism is certainly a reality that we must deal with. But are we to deny entry into this country for an entire religious sect because of the violent proclivities of the few? This has never been the American way and despite the fact that we are at war with Islamic extremists, we shouldn’t change now.

I’m sure Ellison is enjoying all the attention. It is distracting people from examining his hyper-liberal record as well as some curious connections the new Congressman has with the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR). For a stunning review of these connections as well as a close look at some of his jaw dropping positions on the issues, the boys at Powerline covered Ellison’s campaign so well that the local paper, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune didn’t even bother. Or perhaps what the Powerline crew uncovered would have been absolutely devastating to his candidacy which is why the liberal “Strib” never wrote a word about Ellison’s radicalism.

Be that as it may, as a political junkie I can always appreciate a good political maneuver. And Ellison has come up with a beaut. He will take the oath on a Koran owned by none other than the author of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson:

“He wanted to use a Koran that was special,” said Mark Dimunation, chief of the rare book and special collections division at the Library of Congress, who was contacted by the Minnesota Dem early in December. Dimunation, who grew up in Ellison’s 5th District, was happy to help.

Jefferson’s copy is an English translation by George Sale published in the 1750s; it survived the 1851 fire that destroyed most of Jefferson’s collection and has his customary initialing on the pages. This isn’t the first historic book used for swearing-in ceremonies — the Library has allowed VIPs to use rare Bibles for inaugurations and other special occasions.

Pretty shrewd. And I’ll bet Mr. Goode and perhaps even Dennis Prager are having apoplexy over Ellison’s political master stroke.

All of this ignores two salient facts. The first being that the oath taken using the bible (or the Koran or the Hindu Bhagvad Gita if you’re so inclined) is actually the second oath taken by the incoming Congressmen. It is a photo-op, nothing more. The first oath is administered in private with no holy book at all. This not only raises the question of what the fuss is all about but also just what an oath or affirmation means?

An oath is a personal guarantee. Despite Dennis Prager’s contention that the Congressional oath is somehow a rite that belongs to America, anytime someone swears - with or without a sacred text - that individual is giving a personal assurance that the terms of the oath will be upheld. Until recently, the bible was a powerful talisman to use when taking an oath because it was believed (and still is thought by some) that if you break an oath after swearing it on the bible, you go straight to hell when you die and burn for eternity with no possibility of being given a reprieve. This had the salutatory effect of assuring one and all that the individual swearing on the bible really meant it.

Times change and few would make a similar argument today. Instead, the consequences for breaking an oath are entirely secular in nature. In the case of a Congressman violating their oath to be loyal to America, one would think a very long jail term would be in the offing.

But it is the symbolic power of the oath as a reminder both to a Congressman and to his constituents that the stakes of service are high and that being true to the United States is extremely important. And if one is concerned about the Congressman holding that promise sacred by using a symbol to denote the seriousness and gravity of the moment, shouldn’t that symbol reflect the deepest beliefs of the oath taker rather than some arbitrary construct that would be meaningless in a religious sense?

This is an issue that will not go away. Someday, a fundamentalist Muslim may be elected to Congress and questions will again be raised about “serving two masters” and whether or not someone who believes in the efficacy of Sharia law can serve after swearing allegiance to the Constitution. I don’t think that day will come anytime soon. But when it does, I hope the hysteria can be kept to a minimum and we can examine the issue with reason and tolerance. For a nation founded on religious diversity, I see no reason why we shouldn’t be able to manage without descending into the darkness of ignorance and bigotry.

“Any man who judges by the group is a pea-wit.”
(Sergeant ‘Buster’ Kilrain from the film Gettysburg)

I’ve got to hand it to Representative Virgil Goode. Not content with exposing himself as an ignorant bigot by sending a letter to his constituents warning of a Muslim invasion of America and the prospect of many more Congressmen swearing allegiance to the United States on the Koran, he has now reiterated these points on the pages of USA Today:

My letter did not call for a religious test for prospective members of Congress, as some have charged. Americans have the right to elect any person of their choosing to represent them. I indicated to my constituents that I did not subscribe to the Quran in any way, and I intended to use the Bible in connection with my swearing-in. I also stated that the Ten Commandments and “In God We Trust” are on the wall of my office, and I have no intention of displaying the Quran in my office. That is my choice, and I stand by my position and do not apologize for it.

My letter also stated, “If American citizens don’t wake up and adopt the Virgil Goode position on immigration there will likely be many more Muslims elected to office and demanding the use of the Quran.”

Immigration is arguably the most important issue facing the country today. At least 12 million immigrants are here illegally. And diversity visas, a program initiated in 1990 to grant visas to people from countries that had low U.S. immigration at that time, are bringing in 50,000 a year from various parts of the world, including the Middle East.

Let us remember that we were not attacked by a nation on 9/11; we were attacked by extremists who acted in the name of the Islamic religion. I believe that if we do not stop illegal immigration totally, reduce legal immigration and end diversity visas, we are leaving ourselves vulnerable to infiltration by those who want to mold the United States into the image of their religion, rather than working within the Judeo-Christian principles that have made us a beacon for freedom-loving persons around the world.

Goode may not have called for a “religious test” specifically, but what the hell are we supposed to make of his warning about there “will likely be many more Muslims elected to office and demanding the use of the Quran…?” Ooooh…those “demanding” Muslims, how dare they! I didn’t hear Ellison “demanding” anything. I heard him state the fact that he would use the Koran when being sworn in. Why does Goode mischaracterize Ellison’s action in this way?

I will point out that making Ellison into a martyr was something I thought impossible. The radical liberal can be taken to task for his position on any number of issues. But his religion shouldn’t enter into the debate.

And what’s with Mr. Goode solemnly stating that he will not display a Koran in his office? And that he doesn’t “subscribe” to it in any way? That’s just bizarre. And that he assures everyone he has the Ten Commandments on the wall of his office and refuses to apologize for it? Holy Mother! If this guy set up any more strawmen to knock down, he’d be populating the universe with scarecrows.

The tone of this article is, if anything, more blatantly bigoted than Goode’s letter to his constituents. I can’t understand why his colleagues don’t take the lost soul aside and advise him to keep his mouth shut, that he’s sounding like a paranoid fool when he uses phrases like “vulnerable to infiltration…” - as if legal immigrants are sneaking around behind the government’s back.

My last post on the good Mr. Goode’s prejudice was met with outraged cries of “You don’t understand!” and “He’s absolutely right!” I suspect I’ll get the same for the following.

Anyone who believes that Muslim immigration is bad in and of itself doesn’t know American history and also doesn’t know much of American Muslims. The overwhelming majority of second and third generation Muslims are loyal, patriotic Americans who speak excellent English, believe firmly in American values, are very well assimilated into American life, and generally are indistinguishable from Americans of any other ethnic group who have recently arrived. They are teachers, doctors, lawyers, businessmen, factory workers - in short, good, hardworking Americans who want the exact same things you and I want.

While it is true that a small subset of American Muslims are very insular and remain wedded to the old ways, their numbers and influence on the Muslim population is negligible. It is also true that there are enclaves of Arabs in some big cities where immigrants are not assimilating and where radical Islam is a lure that entices some younger men. But if we are to deny immigration to people based on the violent proclivities of the few, best we keep out all sorts of “undesirables” such as the Irish, the Basques, and black South Africans.

Goode is dead wrong - and an embarrassment to the Republican party to boot. It is one thing to advocate enforcement of the law when it comes to illegal immigrants and to support stopping illegal immigration - something I wholeheartedly agree with. There is absolutely nothing wrong with insisting that legal immigrants be law abiding citizens in their own country and not have joined a terrorist group or terrorist sympathizing entity. And even though I strongly disagree, there is nothing bigoted or racist about supporting reduced immigration quotas.

But to work toward denying the blessings of America to Muslims simply because there are extremists who would do us harm is nutty. Yes we should tighten up our screening procedures for all immigrants. But to judge an entire group by the actions of a few makes Goode a pea wit.

And I just couldn’t in good conscience vote for a person who doesn’t believe in God. Someone who honestly thinks the other ninety five percent of us suffer from some form of mass delusion.
(Palmer Joss from the movie Contact)

Carl Sagan, who authored the novel on which the movie is loosely based, died before the production of the film Contact was complete. And while the film is fairly true to Sagan’s humanistic and atheistic outlook, the scientist was nevertheless fascinated by the the human mind’s need to seek out the mystical properties of the universe. It’s not that Sagan hated religion as some atheists demonstrate on a regular basis. He hated its dogmatic approach to seeking and explaining universal truths - something that offended his scientific soul to no end. More than anything however, Sagan railed against the impact of religion on politics in America, seeing the self-evident danger of connecting the zeal of the true believer in religion with any political movement or politician.

Now it’s not often that I rise in defense of a belief in the supernatural, the mystical, or simple faith in a power greater than ourselves. Being something of a befuddled atheist, I tend to look at the impact of religion on politics and how the threads of religious belief have been woven into the very fabric of our society rather than examining the efficacy of a belief in God itself. But Sagan was much too broad in his condemnation of the confluence of religion and politics in America. He consistently ignored the fact that most of the mass reform movements in America have been animated by religious fervor; abolition, temperance (which affected the nascent womens’ rights movement), “prairie” populism, civil rights, and the moral basis for the anti-war movement of the 1960’s.

The positive impact of those reform movements on American life can sometimes be described as uneven at best. The temperance movement was allied with anti-immigrant forces. The “prairie populism” of the late 19th century was hijacked by large eastern money interests and manipulated for their own ends. The civil rights movement has degenerated into a lobby of special pleaders, no different than those who advocate price supports for wheat. And the moral underpinnings of opposition to Viet Nam morphed into the moral absolutism of the new left. Nevertheless, religion’s impact on our politics has been a plus over the years, supplying a moral basis for change as well as animating and inspiring some of our most important historical figures.

Religion and politics in this country are joined at the hip. But that doesn’t mean that our citizens are drunk with it - the “drug” that Communists believed religion to be. Americans look with an equally jaundiced eye at politicians who profess their faith too vigorously as well as those who give short shrift to any kind of religiosity. Part of this is certainly due to our Puritan roots, a movement against the outward manifestation of religion, reacting against the rites and rituals of the Church of England. But it also reflects the eminently practical side of the American citizen; the majority of us don’t think about religion that much and when we do, we tend to be surprisingly tolerant of how someone else worships their god.

That there is intolerance in America of other religions among a significant percentage of the population is born out in FBI statistics of hate crimes directed against people based on their religious beliefs. But what is truly remarkable is that there so few incidents to record. Out of a little more than 8,800 hate crimes committed in America in 2005, there were 1407 victims of crimes based on religious bias. And out of those victims, by far and away the largest group offended against were Jews (364). The next largest religious sect targeted were Muslims - 89. This is down from more than 500 Muslim victims of religious based hate crimes in 2001.

I might note that there was exactly 1 atheist who was victim of a hate crime that year. And the number of hate crimes against Protestants and Catholics totalled 54. So much for persecution of us atheists.

What these statistics don’t tell us is how many American citizens stared in disapproval when a Muslim woman walked by in a Chador. Or how many people razzed a Hasidic Jew for their distinctive facial hair (payoth). Or how many articles skewering Scientology as a scam and a farce were written. Or how many websites are on the internet that write the most laughably ignorant screeds against a “Papal Conspiracy” or even how anti-Catholics have latched on to theThe DaVinci Code to prove one nefarious thing or another about Catholicism.

Committing an overt act of aggressive violence against a practitioner of a particular religion is one thing. It is the intolerance visited upon religions in the form of a lack of respect for custom and beliefs that I believe to be a more significant problem in that this aspect of bigotry is not only becoming more common, but also more acceptable to both sides of the political spectrum.

In fact, both right and left are increasingly using religion as a political club, attempting to “prove” one horrible thing or another about their opponents. What makes this a matter of curiosity to me is that not all religions are targeted. For the left, it is Christians (or more generally, historical Judeo-Christian beliefs) who have borne the brunt of some of the most vile, hate filled speech imaginable. On the right, it is the simple minded attack of equating the entire Islamic faith with terrorism and/or world conquest while raising the specter of collusion in this fantasy by the left.

This is not to say that there should be no criticism directed against the followers of these religions for their stupidities or villainies. I have taken both Christians and Muslims to task for their excesses and their fake piety on many occasions. It is not criticism that is intolerant but rather the gratuitous, unthinking, unreasonable, shallow critiques that are passed off as “analysis” or “the way things really are” that reveal a profound bigotry disguising itself as political commentary.

Both sides are equally guilty of this calumnious behavior although, perhaps being a conservative, I see the left’s gratuitous Christian bashing as more obscenely casual than the sometimes laughably earnest efforts on the right to connect the left to Muslim extremism (while denigrating the entire Islamic faith in the process).

Trying to prove that the left is sympathetic to Islamic extremists is fairly simple - as long as you ignore the facts and concentrate on the left’s lack of enthusiasm for fighting the War on Terror the way that many of my fellow conservatives believe it should be fought - by bombing any number of countries who are clear enemies of the United States or who don’t speak out vigorously enough against the Islamists in their midst. In this case, it is simply a matter of using illogic to make the charge that since liberals don’t condemn the Islamists loud enough or often enough, they somehow support them - a bit of sophistry that understandably infuriates the left.

And always present in these charges is the belief that the left is somehow complicit in what many conservatives refer to as the “dhimmification” of America - the belief that by being too tolerant of the Muslim faith, we are actually playing into the Islamist’s hands and readying ourselves for domination by Muslims. What my conservative friends mistake for submission is no more than a strain of Political Correctness toward religion that manifests itself in many ways - including bending over backwards not to offend evangelicals:

Grand Canyon National Park is not permitted to give an official estimate of the geologic age of its principal feature, due to pressure from Bush administration appointees. Despite promising a prompt review of its approval for a book claiming the Grand Canyon was created by Noah’s flood rather than by geologic forces, more than three years later no review has ever been done and the book remains on sale at the park, according to documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).

“In order to avoid offending religious fundamentalists, our National Park Service is under orders to suspend its belief in geology,” stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch. “It is disconcerting that the official position of a national park as to the geologic age of the Grand Canyon is ‘no comment.’”

(HT: C & L)

Having said all of this, there is ample reason for criticizing the left’s myopia regarding the real threat of Islamic extremism and their apparent sanguinity in the face of Islamists using their favorite talking points when criticizing the United States. This doesn’t make them supporters of the extremists nor does it make them any less patriotic. It only reveals them to be the useful idiots of the Islamists, a charge they refute by trying to point to all the ways in which the Islamists resemble religious conservatives. This is a laughable argument that fails to address the fact that a tape from al-Qaeda can sound very much like many a diary that appears on Daily Kos or many columns that appear in Raw Story or on Juan Cole’s ever more conspiratorial-minded blog, Informed Comment.

On the other side of the coin, it has been shocking to watch over the last few years as the left has thrown off all restraints and attacked the Bush Administration and their supporters using some of the most nauseating anti-Christian invective imaginable. It isn’t enough that the left denigrates the use of devout Christian beliefs by the Bush Administration to advance a political agenda (such as the above example regarding the Grand Canyon). Such criticism (if carefully done) is valid and necessary. The problem has been the stomach turning way in which not only the beliefs of evangelicals and Christians in general have been denigrated, but also the lifestyle, the manners, the customs, and concerns of these folks which have been turned into fodder for ruthless parody or outright hate filled rants that reek of cultural and intellectual superiority:

But there is one number that stands out among the rest as absolutely unbelievable. Twenty-five percent of Americans believe that Jesus Christ will return to earth in 2007. TWENTY-FIVE PERCENT! IN 2007!

These people are nuts. There’s no polite way of saying it. If I sound superior, too bad. Sanity has its advantages.

If some of the famed cultural warriors of the right want to take me on and defend their cherished Christian cohorts, step on up. I’ll take every one of them on and win very, very easily.

Here’s my plan for victory - wait till 2008. When Jesus doesn’t come - again, for the 2,007th time - I will be proven right. Will the people who believed he was coming in 2007 change their minds? Of course not. They’ll just say he’s coming in 2008. And on and on it goes.

I will gladly step up and defend the 25% of Americans who believe in the second coming of Christ - a belief that many protestant denominations teach is imminent and that their congregations should expect Christ’s return at any time.

How “sane” the author, Cenk Uygur, of this vicious, anti-Christian piece actually is can be gleaned from this jaw dropping passage:

You people are seriously disturbed. You think a magic man is going to appear out of the sky and grant you eternal bliss. If the man’s name was anything other than Jesus, that belief would get you locked up as a psychotic. And the fact that you have given him this magic name and decided to call him your Lord doesn’t make it any more sane.

Imagine for a second if instead of Jesus, some psycho was waiting for a magical creature named Fred to come save him this year and suck him up into the sky. Now, who doesn’t think that man needs serious counseling and perhaps medical supervision? Now, you change Fred into Jesus, and you have 25% of the country.

Sometimes the world scares me. It is full of psychotics who go around pretending to be rational human beings. You think that’s offensive, then prove me wrong. I dare you. Show me Jesus in 2007 and I’ll do whatever you demand of me.

It should go without saying that it is not “psychotic” to believe in the tenets of any religion - the operative word being “belief” which denotes that which cannot be empirically proven but rather “a state or habit of mind in which trust or confidence is placed in some person or thing,” according to Dr. Johnson. And as far as rationality is concerned, I suggest Mr. Uygur read Thomas Aquinas for proof that reason and faith can, in fact, compliment one another. Indeed, as Pope Benedict recently elucidated brilliantly, reason is the basis for belief in God.

Why then, should the author stop at poking fun at The Last Days? For a “sane” and “rational” person, the idea of the son of a dead carpenter rising from the dead is ludicrous, the height of idiocy. Everyone knows once you’re dead, you’re dead. And what about all those “miracles?” Helping the blind to see and the lame to walk? You’ve got to be kidding. Except that this belief has animated and inspired scientific giants, none more prominent than Isaac Newton whose faith in God and that dead son of a carpenter led to discoveries that are universally recognized as the greatest in the history of science. “I have a fundamental belief in the Bible as the Word of God, written by those who were inspired. I study the Bible daily,” he wrote. And there is absolutely no difference between his beliefs and the beliefs that Mr. Uygur so sickeningly describes as “psychotic.”

This is but one example of the left’s despicable attack on people of faith. To find others, I suggest you Google up “American Taliban” - an outrageous, exaggerated phrase that seeks to tie the religious political right in America to the murderous tyrants who bullied the Afghanistan people until they were overthrown by American arms in 2001.

Intolerance is not confined to those with religious beliefs. As Mr. Uygur proves beyond a shadow of a doubt, the disease can manifest itself even among “sane” and “rational” bigots on the left. And the air of insufferable superiority and condescension by the Uygur’s of this country is so ripe that the stink of their ignorance permeates our politics to the point that rational discourse regarding the very real threat of religious influence affecting reason and science in society is impossible.

For I actually agree with some of the left’s critique of the religious right and their drive to impose their beliefs on the rest of us, although I think the threat is vastly overstated for purely political purposes. And the religious right’s intolerance of gays, of the teaching of science that contradicts dogma, and of the “godlessness” of the political opposition all contribute to a coarsening of political dialogue.

And it isn’t just the hard, evangelical right that exhibits this kind of intolerance. Many of my fellow conservatives, in their zeal to prosecute the War on Terror, much too often use too broad a brush in condemning Islam and, by extension, the left itself for what they see as failures to stand up to the extremists or worse, sympathize with their goals. The fact that moderate Muslims are too eager to play politics with Islamism by piggybacking their grievances on the attention garnered by the terrorists doesn’t mean that they support violence. They should be roundly criticized for their moral blindness not for the fact that they share a general belief system with the murderers.

I regret to say that even though many conservatives may deny it, their criticisms of Islam as a religion that seeks to enslave the rest of us smacks of the same kind of prejudice and ignorance exhibited by the left toward Christianity. It has the same out of control feel to it - as if by its very shallowness, it can cover a multitude of sins, both real and imagined. Both critiques should be rejected for what they are; muddled thinking born out of a desire to score political points rather than objectify the nature of the threat - be it radical Islamism or radical Christian fundamentalism.

I don’t expect any of this to change anytime soon. The echo chamber here in Blogland is a powerful instrument that enslaves adherents to a particular worldview and will brook no opposition. Apostasy on both sides is punished severely. One wonders if we’ll ever be able to get back to a place where we can all view the intersection of religion and politics with a wary but welcome attitude, seeing the moral underpinnings supplied by religion as a plus for our politics while recognizing the dangers of using politics to trash the belief systems of others.

UPDATE

Frank Martin (of the excellent blog Varifrank) in the comments points out that the National Park Service does indeed gladly give the age of the Grand Canyon on its website.

What’s more, it appears that the group of park employees who sent the letter, vastly exaggerated their charge that the age of the Canyon could not be disseminated to the public.

What they’re bitching about is that a book that posits the notion that Noah’s flood caused the Canyon to be formed is still on the shelves after a year of dithering by Park bureacrats. I can’t tell if this is bureaucratic stupidity or the imposing of religious beliefs by Bush appointees on scientific questions. Whatever it is, the book should be taken off the shelves, especially after a directive stating that Park bookstores should be akin to schoolrooms rather than libraries was handed down.

And I can’t find anywhere in the linked letter where they actually say no one is allowed to give the true age of the Canyon (about 550 million years). It appears that Frank’s belief that this is simply more BDS on display is correct.

The case against 1st Lt. Ehren Watada, who refused to deploy with his unit to Iraq and made statements against the war and President Bush, took an unusual turn yesterday when the army subpoenaed the journalists who originally reported on Watada’s statement:

Army prosecutors have sent subpoenas to journalists in Oakland and Honolulu demanding testimony about quotes they attributed to an officer who faces a court-martial after denouncing the war in Iraq and refusing to deploy with his unit.

The Army’s subpoenas, which the journalists said they received last week, put them in the uncomfortable position of being ordered to help the Army build its case against 1st Lt. Ehren Watada, who faces up to six years in prison if convicted.

“It’s not a reporter’s job to participate in the prosecution of her own sources,” said Sarah Olson, an Oakland freelance journalist and radio producer. “When you force a journalist to participate, you run the risk of turning the journalist into an investigative tool of the state.”

But Olson, who received her subpoena Thursday, acknowledged she has no legal grounds to refuse to testify, since she is being asked only to confirm the accuracy of what she wrote about Watada and not to disclose confidential sources or unpublished material.

Normally, she said, “no one, myself included, has any problem verifying the veracity of their reporting.” The ethical problem in this case, she said, is that she would be aiding the prosecution of one of the dissidents and war critics who regularly trust her to tell their stories to the public.

(HT: Instapundit)

I can understand the reporter’s reluctance to testify. But the defense attorney says he doesn’t mind the reporters giving testimony - ostensibly because he is basing his defense of the soldier on Watada’s First Amendment rights:

Watada’s lawyer, Eric Seitz, said he understands journalists’ unhappiness at having to appear in court but would not object if they complied.

“It doesn’t bother us or disturb us that reporters testify Lt. Watada made those comments,” he said. The main issue, Seitz said, is “whether he had First Amendment rights to say what he did.”

Both Olson and her lawyer, David Greene, declined to say whether she would comply with the subpoena, which requires her to take part in a hearing in January as well as the court-martial. She could be held in contempt of the military tribunal and jailed if she refuses.

I think Olson is overreacting. She’s not being asked to reveal anything. She will be asked to confirm the accuracy of her reporting, something any reporter worth their salt should gladly do whether it be to the public or a military tribunal. In fact, she appears to be setting up something of a strawman in order to justify non compliance:

Before sending subpoenas to the journalists who reported Watada’s comments, the Army asked them to verify their quotes voluntarily, but they refused. Olson said last week that free expression is endangered by both the Army’s case against Watada and its attempt to enlist journalists.

“If conscientious objectors know that they can be prosecuted for speaking to the press and that the press will participate in their prosecution, it stands to reason that they would think twice before being public about their positions,” she said. “What we need in this country now is more dialogue and not less.”

This is nonsense. First of all, conscientious objectors will never be prosecuted for “speaking to the press.” That’s ridiculous. What they might be prosecuted for is what Lt. Watada is being charged with; failure to deploy with his unit and “conduct unbecoming an officer” for his statements against the Commander in Chief. Would Watada be prosecuted if he simply stated his opposition to the war and left out his criticism of the Commander in Chief? I doubt it.

There have been plenty of examples both here in America and in Iraq where soldiers have not been shy about declaring their opposition to the war. As far as I know, none of them have been disciplined. And if they have, that too would be ridiculous. Joining the army doesn’t mean that you lose your right to protected speech under the First Amendment. But criticism of the CIC is a different story. It goes against both military tradition and common sense. You can’t have an army in the field second guessing the decisions of the CIC. This would affect morale not to mention lead to chaos in the ranks.

There is one more aspect to this case that troubles me; it appears that the Army decided to make an example of Watada. Here’s Watada’s statement - puerile though it may be - as well as an offer the young man made that I can’t understand why the military didn’t agree to:

Watada, raised in Honolulu, joined the Army in 2003 after graduating from college and was first stationed in South Korea. In public appearances and interviews, he has said he was motivated to enlist by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks but had misgivings about the Iraq war from the start and eventually concluded that it was both immoral and illegal.

“As I read about the level of deception the Bush administration used to initiate and process this war, I was shocked,” Olson quoted him as saying in one of the statements cited by the Army as conduct unbecoming an officer. “I became ashamed of wearing the uniform. How can we wear something with such a time-honored tradition, knowing we waged war based on a misrepresentation and lies?”

The interview, conducted in May, was published on truthout.org on June 7, the same day Watada declined to go to Iraq with his armored vehicle unit in the 2nd Infantry Division. He said he offered to redeploy to Afghanistan or resign his commission but was turned down.

As I understand it, such requests for reassignment based on conscientious objections are unusual but have been honored in the past. As have requests to resign a commission for similar reasons been accepted. It seems to me - as completely unschooled in military procedures as any civilian - that the army wants to single Watada out and make an example of his objections to the Iraq War. If so, we can reasonably ask if Lt. Watada is being treated fairly.

Despite sounding like a Michael Moore clone, Watada is entitled to his opinions. However, his refusal to deploy based on his political opinions cannot be allowed under any circumstances. But what about his refusal to join his unit in Iraq based on his personal, moral precepts?

These are tricky waters indeed for both Watada and the army to navigate. Watada refusal of duty is not based specifically on the moral tenets of any organized religion but rather on his own personal, moral code. In this respect, Watada’s refusal of a lawful order to deploy may be seen in the same moral context as a soldier who refuses to carry out an order to shoot civilians or kill babies. It doesn’t matter if we believe Watada to be a misguided, simple minded fool. Each soldier is responsible to their own concept of morality. In this sense, Watada’s dissent may be seen as an honorable means to live up to his own personal code of moral conduct - as long as he is willing to accept the consequences of his dissent.

That last being the key to any act of civil disobedience. Because in essence, that is what Watada is doing in a very public way; he is trying to influence others by sacrificing his career and possibly his freedom. We can violently disagree with his methods and his rationale; but we can also recognize that in a democratic, civil society, this is an honorable means to disagree with the government.

UPDATE

Some may disagree with my characterization of Watada’s actions as “civil” disobedience. And they would be technically correct. But the practical consequences of Watada’s protest go beyond military justice and enter the realm of politics. For this reason, Watada’s protest impacts civil society much more than it impacts military jurisprudence.

This is fascinating. Two interviews with former President Ford before he died and two almost polar opposite positions taken by the ex-President (according to the reporters) regarding his support for the Iraq War.

First, Bob Woodward’s taped interview with the former President that was embargoed until after he died:

Former president Gerald R. Ford said in an embargoed interview in July 2004 that the Iraq war was not justified. “I don’t think I would have gone to war,” he said a little more than a year after President Bush launched the invasion advocated and carried out by prominent veterans of Ford’s own administration.

In a four-hour conversation at his house in Beaver Creek, Colo., Ford “very strongly” disagreed with the current president’s justifications for invading Iraq and said he would have pushed alternatives, such as sanctions, much more vigorously. In the tape-recorded interview, Ford was critical not only of Bush but also of Vice President Cheney — Ford’s White House chief of staff — and then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who served as Ford’s chief of staff and then his Pentagon chief.

“Rumsfeld and Cheney and the president made a big mistake in justifying going into the war in Iraq. They put the emphasis on weapons of mass destruction,” Ford said. “And now, I’ve never publicly said I thought they made a mistake, but I felt very strongly it was an error in how they should justify what they were going to do.”

Did Ford say that the Iraq War was “not justified?” Or did he say that he would not have used the justification of WMD as a causus belli?

According to Thomas DeFrank, the other interviewer, it’s the latter:

“Saddam Hussein was an evil person and there was justification to get rid of him,” he observed, “but we shouldn’t have put the basis on weapons of mass destruction. That was a bad mistake. Where does [Bush] get his advice?”

Ford was predictably defensive about Vice President Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, his two White House chiefs of staff. Asked why Cheney had tanked in public opinion polls, he smiled. “Dick’s a classy guy, but he’s not an electrified orator.”

If Ford believed “there was justification” to get rid of Saddam, then we are left with something of a conundrum; which Ford should we believe? After all, he told DeFrank that he actually supported the war:

Ford was a few weeks shy of his 93rd birthday as we chatted for about 45 minutes. He’d been visited by President Bush three weeks earlier and said he’d told Bush he supported the war in Iraq but that the 43rd President had erred by staking the invasion on weapons of mass destruction.

So why the massive feeding frenzy by the left (and the handwringing on the right) over Woodward’s embargoed interview (that Ed Morrissey believes reflects badly on the ex-President) while few if any bloggers are looking at the DeFrank piece?

First, I have little doubt that our invasion of Iraq made Ford very uncomfortable. One need only listen to his acolyte Brent Scowcroft to discern the realpolitik thinking about Iraq and the Middle East of which Ford was enamored. In the realists world, Iraq was a secular bulwark against radical Iran. It is interesting to note that Ford supported George Bush 41 in not going “on to Baghdad” in 1991. Scowcroft believed (and we might extrapolate that Ford agreed with him) that even a de-fanged Saddam confronting Iran was preferable to a weak and divided Iraq at Iran’s mercy.

But after 9/11 and Dick Cheney’s “One Percent” doctrine (that if there was a 1% chance that a nation was a threat to attack America with WMD, the threat must be eliminated) that kind of “realism” lost out to the seductive idea that not only could the Saddam threat be neutralized but that bringing democracy to Iraq would have a salutatory effect on efforts to promote democracy in the entire region.

Leave aside for the moment the realist’s belief that our real interests in the Middle East lay with the corrupt Kingdoms who sit on most of the world’s oil and that Israel was, if not expendable, certainly a secondary concern and depending on who was advising the President, an obstacle to stability in the region. The fact is, we can both promote democracy and work for stability at the same time.

A tricky balancing act to be sure but not impossible. And judging by recent events, it appears that this may be what we are going to try. Going on under the media radar have been historic elections in Qatar, Yemen, and Saudi Arabia (and earlier, Lebanon). The momentum toward increased participation by the people of the Middle East is growing. And for all the blunders, the mistakes, the tragic stupidities that have marked our efforts in Iraq, the idea that these events have taken place because of the invasion and subsequent elections in Iraq cannot be dismissed out of hand.

I think that Ford told Bush exactly what he wanted to hear; that he supported him. This despite the reservations he expressed to Woodward. And indeed, the fact that he embargoed the interview with Woodward would seem to support that contention. But Ford was if nothing else, a man who treasured loyalty. It is not surprising that he would suppress his misgivings about Iraq while he was alive.

Make sure you read DeFrank’s article about his last visit with the ex-President. It is an uncommonly frank portrayal of a man who knows he doesn’t have long to live and, with misty eyed reflection, watches as the highlights of his life roll past him.

It says a lot about the character of the new Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid that he would blow off the state funeral of Gerald Ford, the least partisan of our most recent presidents, in order to get in a little holiday sight seeing and engage in some hobnobbing with South American leftists. In fact, I think it a precursor of what we can expect from the Democrats in general for the foreseeable future. Out of power for a decade, I think it safe to say that these ain’t your daddy’s Democrats. In fact, I’m certain that these aren’t the Democrats of the 1970’s either.

The Majority Leader of the Senate during Ford’s tenure as President was Mike Mansfield. The craggy faced Montana lawmaker served in that leadership position longer than anyone in history. Perhaps his greatest moment occurred during the service in the Capitol Rotunda for the assassinated John F. Kennedy when he delivered what is considered one of the most moving eulogies in American political history:

There was a sound of laughter; in a moment, it was no more. And so she took a ring from her finger and placed it in his hands.

There was a wit in a man neither young nor old, but a wit full of an old man’s wisdom and of a child’s wisdom, and then, in a moment it was no more. And so she took a ring from her finger and placed it in his hands.

There was a man marked with the scars of his love of country, a body active with the surge of a life far, far from spent and, in a moment, it was no more. And so she took a ring from her finger and placed it in his hands.

Somehow, I don’t think our Harry quite measures up, do you?

Mansfield was a brilliant man, an accomplished diplomat. Harry Reid is a political hack. But the differences go beyond talent, beyond intelligence. The fact is, Mike Mansfield was a gentleman. Harry Reid is not.

Mansfield could be as hyper-partisan as any politician today but he always behaved in a way that reflected his belief that the feelings and sensibilities of others was something to be considered. In other words, Mansfield demonstrated the number one trait of a gentleman; empathy.

Harry Reid seems to have a dead spot in his soul where empathy usually resides in the rest of us. Blowing off the government of the United States, his colleagues, the Ford family, and history itself is just the latest in series of actions and statements that show Reid to be unfit to follow in the footsteps of giants like Mansfield, LBJ, and the venerable wise man George Mitchell - all of whom would have blanched in horror at the prospect of the Majority Leader of the Senate missing a high affair of state such as a presidential funeral.

Reid has demonstrated on numerous occasions that his rank partisanship gets in the way of him acting like a normal human being; to wit:

Reid made headlines in May 2005 when he said of George W. Bush, “The man’s father is a wonderful human being. I think this guy is a loser.” Reid later apologized for these comments. Reid also called Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas an “embarrassment” and referred to Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan as a “partisan hack.”

He also called the President a “liar” and refused to apologize. Whether true or not, the idea that one politician calls out another for lying is loony. It is beyond the pot/kettle analogy, moving into the sublime territory of stratospheric irony usually reserved for Communists when they name their country a “Peoples Republic.”

Reid’s snub may be unprecedented, although I doubt whether statistics about such insults to the United States government are kept. And I doubt whether we’ll hear a peep of criticism from any sitting Democratic politician either. At bottom and with few exceptions, the values of tradition and etiquette mean very little to the left. After all, they’ve spent the last 40 years trying to overturn tradition and violate etiquette in order to “speak truth to power” or “challenge convention” or some other such nonsense that more often denotes agitating for change simply for the sake of change itself rather than any specific goal for improving society.

The fact that Reid’s deputy, my home state senator Dick Durbin is also on the junket (along with Kent Conrad, Judd Gregg, Robert Bennett, and Ken Salazar) means that the task of delivering the eulogy may fall to Senator Robert Byrd, President pro tempore emeritus of the Senate. Byrd, for all his faults, is a creature of the Senate and one who reveres and worships its traditions and precedents. I have no doubt that the West Virginia Senator will do a fine job in eulogizing Ford. But frankly, it’s not his job. It’s Reid’s. And the absence of the new Majority Leader at the state funeral of a former president sets a very bad precedent that I hope Republicans will never take advantage.

Jimmy Carter is no spring chicken. There will come a day in the not too distant future when his remains will lie in the Capitol Rotunda and the Honor Guard will stand their solemn watch. And Members of Congress will gather to pay their respects and deliver eulogies to the dead Commander in Chief. Will the Republican leader recall this insult by Reid and find other pressing matters to attend to? I hope not. For if there is one occasion where partisanship should be left at the door, it is in honoring those special men who took up what the Smithsonian referred to as “A Glorious Burden” and guided the United States and the Ship of State through perilous waters.

I’m with Hugh Hewitt 100%: “Turn. The. Plane. Around.”

UPDATE

Ed Morrissey:

What a classless act, and Reid, Durbin, Kent Conrad, Judd Gregg, Robert Bennett, and Ken Salazar should be ashamed of themselves. If Harry Reid can’t figure out that his new position as Majority Leader carries some extra responsibilities, then perhaps the Democrats need to find someone who does understand it.

Amen. Although with the exception of Byrd, I doubt there are more than a handful of Democrats who see anything wrong with Reid’s excursion and would therefore be equally unfit to lead.

And Heather at my blog bud Raven’s site - And Rightly So - wonders “What ever happened to respect?” Indeed.

UPDATE 12/29

It appears that the President of the United States will also forgo the proceedings in the Rotunda on Saturday in favor of staying at his ranch for another day.

Less anyone think my displeasure is reserved exclusively for the Democratic LEADERSHIP (Note: The Republicans on the junket are not a part of the leadership in the Senate. Those in the comments who have demonstrated their towering ignorance by not being able to tell the difference between the Majority Leader of the Senate passing on this event and two relatively unknown GOP members skipping out might want to deepen their thinking faculties a bit.) anything I said about Reid above goes double for Bush.

Look, friends. Hearken to me.

A nation is an organism, a life form. And what animates this life form, what gives it the power to unite our people - so diverse, so different - are its myths and legends; in other words, the symbolic over the substantative. The Constitution does a fine job in defining the powers of government. But its real power is in its iconic symbolism in which we have bound up all the hopes and dreams of our citizenry for a better life.

The United States is a very young country by any standard. We are so young, we really have no “myths” or “legends” per se. That’s because even our greatest mythic heroes like Daniel Boone and Davey Crockett left a written record behind along with friends and acquiantances who were able to tell biographers and historians what those two larger than life characters were all about. A “legend” is hardly legendary if we know that the myths surrounding the legend are untrue.

And tied up in these efforts to create legends has been the dominant truth about American public life since George Washington; the presidency as a symbol of nationhood. We have no king, no royal family. Our continuity is the result of civil compact among all of us that the office of the presidency belongs to no man, no party; that it is the one aspect of public life in which we invest enormous power and place enormous trust in the occupant not to abuse that power. Hence, the presidency as a symbolic representation of us, the citizens of the United States imbues the occupant of that office with the status of civic god - especially after he is safely retired and unable to do any damage to our liberties.

I think Bush should be widely criticized for not attending every event related to the Ford funeral rites. The symbolic life of the nation demands that he attend and participate. I believe he and Reid’s failure to take part in the ceremonial, the tradition of laying to rest a former president and former Commander in Chief lessens the hold that office has on our emotional bonds with America - what Lincoln referred to as the “mystic chords of memory” - that allow us to rise above that which separates us and unite in common cause to remember a dead icon.

I fully expect the lefty commenters to belittle this rationalization. So be it. It is probably why in 50 years, long after I’m dust thank god, the way citizens feel about the United States will be unrecognizable to my generation.

(This update has become a separate post.)

It’s bad enough when some B-List blogger and wacko talking head like Debbie Schussel runs off at the mouth about the danger of electing Muslims. That kind of idiocy can be partly ascribed to Ms. Schussel’s desire to move up the blogging ladder, bashing Muslims being a quick way to fame and fortune when plumbing the extreme depths of the conservative sphere for audience and links.

But when a Congressman of the United States sends a letter to his constituents that raises the false specter of some kind of Muslim invasion of Congress while simultaneously warning that “traditional” values would be threatened by Muslim immigration, it forces me once again to take up the Cudgel of Righteousness (already bloodied from yesterday’s pummeling of Schussel) and give Representative Virgil Goode, Jr. a few well deserved whacks upside the head:

In a letter sent to hundreds of voters this month, Representative Virgil H. Goode Jr., Republican of Virginia, warned that the recent election of the first Muslim to Congress posed a serious threat to the nation’s traditional values.

Representative Virgil H. Goode Jr., left, said Keith Ellison’s decision to use a Koran in a private swearing in for the House of Representatives was a mistake.
Mr. Goode was referring to Keith Ellison, the Minnesota Democrat and criminal defense lawyer who converted to Islam as a college student and was elected to the House in November. Mr. Ellison’s plan to use the Koran during his private swearing-in ceremony in January had outraged some Virginia voters, prompting Mr. Goode to issue a written response to them, a spokesman for Mr. Goode said.

In his letter, which was dated Dec. 5, Mr. Goode said that Americans needed to “wake up” or else there would “likely be many more Muslims elected to office and demanding the use of the Koran.”

“I fear that in the next century we will have many more Muslims in the United States if we do not adopt the strict immigration policies that I believe are necessary to preserve the values and beliefs traditional to the United States of America and to prevent our resources from being swamped,” said Mr. Goode, who vowed to use the Bible when taking his own oath of office.

In taking the good Mr. Goode to task for this stupidity, allow me first to slap all of you lefties around a bit for once again overgeneralizing when it comes to Values Conservatives by attempting to make the bad Mr. Goode a poster boy of sorts for that constituency.

Goode isn’t even a good example of an extremist. That’s because his letter is so transparently a political calculation that it doesn’t even come off as sincere. No Congressman can be this stupid, can they?

Mr. Goode declined Wednesday to comment on his letter, which quickly stirred a furor among some Congressional Democrats and Muslim Americans, who accused him of bigotry and intolerance.

They noted that the Constitution specifically bars any religious screening of members of Congress and that the actual swearing in of those lawmakers occurs without any religious texts. The use of the Bible or Koran occurs only in private ceremonial events that take place after lawmakers have officially sworn to uphold the Constitution.

Mr. Ellison dismissed Mr. Goode’s comments, saying they seemed ill informed about his personal origins as well as about Constitutional protections of religious freedom. “I’m not an immigrant,” added Mr. Ellison, who traces his American ancestors back to 1742. “I’m an African-American.”

Goode’s spokesman has informed us that the Congressman actually is that stupid; he declines to apologize and “stands by” the letter.

Of course, such incidents help Ellison enormously. They allow him to appear the reasonable, bemused, aggrieved party while anyone who has a passing familiarity with the devastating series of articles published by the Powerline boys knows that “reasonable” is not the way to describe many of the new Congressman’s views.

But beyond the shameless, shallow pandering by Goode is a revealed truth; that too often Republican politicians are using this “traditional values” theme to capitalize on some unimagined fear as in the case of Goode and his phantom Muslims. We also see other individual groups like gays targeted as somehow being in conflict with traditional American values - as if these values are practiced by people solely as a result of their religion, sexual orientation, ethnic heritage, or any other qualifier that a politician seeks to use to drive a wedge between us.

There are plenty of gay people who practice what, by any definition would be “traditional” American values. They are as monogamous as heterosexual couples. They raise children. They are god fearing folk. The cry when the flag passes in front of them. They fight and die for their country. Aside from their sexual orientation, there is absolutely nothing to differentiate them from your average Joe American. (Don’t believe me? Visit Gay Patriot and any one of a number of Republican/center right gay blogs and read a little bit about what they believe.) And yet, because of the actions of some so-called “Gay Rights” groups - who are much more about advancing a leftist agenda then they are about advancing gay rights - most conservatives look with distrust upon gays who believe in traditional American values.

There are traditional values that are under attack - but not by gays, or Muslims, or any specific group. Rather it is leftist ideology that seeks to remove religion from public life not separate it as they claim. It is leftist cant that seeks to change the narrative of our nation’s founding, substituting the basest of motives for Independence instead of the truly heroic and improbable way our freedom was achieved. The left has spent the last 40 years degrading our culture, denigrating our heroes, altering our history, deriding the simplicity and patriotism of the most common of folk among us, and in the end, trying to tear down 200 years of tradition and decency that our ancestors fought to pass down to the rest of us.

Whether this is their intent or not is a moot point. Their actions are having this affect. Whether it is the “no holds barred, anything goes” cesspool of a culture they have created via Hollywood or, in the name of “civil rights,” erecting a structure of separateness and discrimination via “affirmative action,” the left has done its best to destroy what many Americans cherish and believe in.

But none of this excuses idiots like Goode - and many others who use the battle cry of “Traditional Values” to advance their own agendas - from responsibility for engendering fear and loathing among those who are susceptible to the siren call of nativism. This strain has a long, dishonorable history in America, going back to the first days of the Republic when the first wave of immigrants began to unload onto the docks in New York and Boston. Then it was mostly Swiss and Germans with a smattering of Scots and Irish. Later waves of Irish immigrants would raise the spectre of not only aliens who didn’t possess “American values” but arrivals who were papists to boot. And each successive wave, the nativist impulse would rear its ugly head and find something scary and alien about the newcomers.

Goode is no different. From his letter:

“We need to stop illegal immigration totally and reduce legal immigration and end the diversity visas policy . . . allowing many persons from the Middle East to come to this country,” Goode said in the letter. “I fear that in the next century we will have many more Muslims in the United States if we do not adopt the strict immigration policies that I believe are necessary to preserve the values and beliefs traditional to the United States of America.”

Right out of the nativist playbook.

I’m all for controlling our borders. I’m all for enforcing the law. But I am also in favor of increasing legal immigration. If someone wishes to go through the bureaucratic rigmarole that it takes to get here legally and then work toward citizenship, that alone should denote a person’s interest in the “traditional values” of America. There are plenty of Muslims here today - second and third generation Muslims - who embrace the same values you and I do and are no more a threat to those values than my pet cat Snowball.

For Goode to posit the notion that Muslims are incapable of adopting and embracing traditional values not only flies in the face of history and everything we know about immigrants but also bespeaks a shallow and corrupt mind, incapable of grasping the shining truth about America as a melting pot that embraces all cultures and ethnic groups.

And that may be the most traditional of all American values.

In a long, sometimes contradictory, typically incoherent post, Christy Hardin Smith is crying crocodile tears over the “loss of American influence” in the world.

One would think, judging from the rhetoric and actions of the left over the last 50 years, that she and her fellow liberals would be jumping for joy. The goal of liberal foreign policy has always been a reduction in American influence in the world. Cut the military, unilaterally disarm, rein in the multinationals, do what the United Nations says, and generally grovel at the feet of every thug, dictator, and unelected royal who happens to mention either “colonialism” or the CIA has been, for all intents and purposes, liberal foreign policy goals for more than a generation.

So why the long faces now?

The myth of American superiority has been punctured, most likely irreparably, by the idiocy of George Bush’s policies and failures. Nations which once worked with us — not just because we were working on issues of import to them, but also because it was in their long-term interest to do so with a nation which controlled so much of the economic and military and other resources throughout the world, as well as had its finger on the pulse of so many spheres of influence at once…all of these nations have learned to get by without having to rely on any favor from the United States whatsoever.

Diplomacy is not just negotiating for what you want. It is also maintaining a balance of relationships, a level of trust, and a constant stream of ties that bind one nation to another. This ensures a long-term level of relationships on which we ought to be able to rely when problems — both big and small — crop up, be they in individual nations, regionally, or globally.

The Bush Administration’s disdain for such diplomacy has wrought a whole series of changes to the global system of interdependence and ties — and the web has re-woven itself. But instead of including the strands that the United States had for some many, many years assiduously guarded and jealously built and re-built time and time again, the Bush Administration has allowed many of them to fray, some of them to break — and all of them to become redundant to other lines that have now been built as detours around us.

First of all, allow me to comment on the logic and perspicuity of this extraordinarily convoluted and bizarre reasoning:

Huh?

What “myth” of American superiority is she talking about? Is that the “myth” of a $12 trillion economy? Or maybe it’s the “myth” of the only military on the planet that can project its power to all corners of the globe in a matter of days - even hours?

Couldn’t be the “myth” of our dominant culture, language, arts, sciences, and blue jeans, could it? It seems so recently that the left was skewering America for being too powerful, too dominant. The were imploring American companies to stop being so competitive. They were criticizing Hollywood for making too many movies and TV shows that everyone in the world wanted to watch. They were lambasting American workers for being the most productive on the planet .(Well… maybe they didn’t go that far).

Now that we’re cut down to size - at least according to Smith - one would think that the left would be turning handsprings and jumping for joy.

And as far as this “irreparable”(?) puncture of the “myth” of American superiority, I would dearly hope that Iran, Syria, and half a dozen other nations actually believe that hogwash. I can guarantee that they don’t which makes one wonder why Christy Hardin Smith does. Perhaps she is blessed with that special insight vouchsafed liberals whenever they wish to teach us all a lesson about the evils (or weaknesses) of America.

As for the rest of Ms. Smith’s lovely paean to the “strands” of diplomacy so frayed by the Bush Administration that other threads have been “built around us” - lovely poetry but hardly serious analysis. I daresay the next crisis to roil the world will not see the French or Germans or even Great Britain taking the lead to resolve it; it will, as it has been since the end of World War II, up to the United States to wade in, take the inevitable criticism from friend and foe alike, and bring relief to the suffering masses while the rest of the world stands by and kibitzes from the sidelines.

But here’s where Smith gets particularly incoherent:

Nations which once worked with us — not just because we were working on issues of import to them, but also because it was in their long-term interest to do so with a nation which controlled so much of the economic and military and other resources throughout the world, as well as had its finger on the pulse of so many spheres of influence at once…all of these nations have learned to get by without having to rely on any favor from the United States whatsoever.

First, talking about the power of the United States in the past tense is loony - as in we are “a nation which controlled so much…” and “had its finger on the pulse…” To talk about waning American influence is incredibly short sighted at this point. The doomsayers have buried America several times - most recently just prior to the fall of the Soviet Union when it was widely believed Ronald Reagan was destroying NATO, angering our friends, and driving third world nations into the Soviet orbit all because of our policies in Central America.

They were saying the American “era” was over back then as well. Such sophistry is silly, stupid, and ignores the real world calculations of the Assads and Ahmadinejad’s of the planet who could care less about favors but care very deeply about how fast and how far our military can rampage through their nations before driving them into their very own spider holes.

Belgium or France might not care very much about those calculations but given the stellar level of cooperation between all NATO countries and our allies in the War on Terror, one begins to wonder where Ms. Smith sees this fall off in “favor exchanges.” Is it in negotiating trade and tariff arrangements? Perhaps it is in import-export controls? Immigration? Cultural exchanges?

Even at the UN, all of our allies are on board for sanctions against Iran - most of them wishing stronger ones but recognizing the obstructionist policy of Russia and China in this regard, are fully prepared to go along with the watered down sanctions proposed that our two potential adversaries will eventually agree to. To believe that anything meaningful can be accomplished through diplomacy at the UN with regards to Iran or Syria is a pipe dream in the first place.

One might legitimately ask Ms. Smith then which “nations” she is referring to who have “learned to get by without having to rely on any favor” from America. The Iraq War, unpopular as it is with our allies (decidedly less unpopular than Viet Nam, I might add), as our Central American policies in the past, does not stand in the way of carrying on the business of diplomacy with friend or foe. It is typical liberal exaggeration and overblown rhetorical gibberish to advance the notion that the world is altering right before our eyes as a result of Bush incompetence, or Bush evil, or Bush stupidity. The only thing that is altered is the consciousness of liberals who are giddy at the prospect of American decline.

One final note; I realize the idea that “the world was with us” after 9/11 has now become firmly ensconced as one of the enduring myths about that horrible day. But as numerous people (including myself) have pointed out, the facts do not support that conclusion. Those interested in the truth might read this article which has links to other analyses that debunk that bit of hooey promoted by the left as a means to criticize the Bush Administration for losing something the government of the United States never had - the unqualified support of most of the world’s governments.

What we have lost in respect as a result of our Iraq adventure (including Abu Ghraib and Gitmo) is significant but not a body blow to either our position in the world nor especially our influence. To say otherwise is to ignore the fact that in the capitols of the world where governments plan and plot, they worry most about what impact their policies will have on America. And the day that changes, Ms. Smith and the rest of the left will let out a whoop and a holler for joy; not cry crocodile tears as Ms. Smith did today.