Right Wing Nut House

It was 62 years ago that US Rangers stormed the cliffs of Pointe Du Hoc near Omaha Beach. And as the veterans of that day grow oh so gray and bent, mere shadows of the lithe and limber youths who pulled themselves up the jagged bluffs, one hand over another, their comrades falling all about them, we are reminded that the word “courage” came alive that day.

Too often, we use that word in a base and cavalier way. A Hollywood movie star has “courage” because she revealed to the world that she’s a drug addict. A comic has “courage” because he made fun of the President of the United States to his face. A filmaker has “courage” because he made millions of dollars shooting a “documentary” which shows the US government complicit in the mass murder on 9/11.

And so instead of “courage” being a word with inexpressible significance and meaning beyond its simple definition, it has become a self congratulatory epithet, a hollowed out expression of empty promise and insincerity. Today, the purveyors of myth and shapers of opinion use the word to tell the rest of us who to admire and what to respect. No longer does courage imply sacrifice or a willingness to give all that one has for a cause greater than oneself. Instead, courage defines the selfish desires and overwrought egos of an ideology that sees more irony in the word than reverence.

All of this was in the future 62 years ago when the Rangers lived the word courage by taking the bluffs above the beach. And a short distance away at Omaha, Americans were dying, never knowing that their sacrifice was redefining the word courage for all time. For in their last bloody moments on earth, a titanic struggle was taking place between good and evil that 10,000 years from now, poets will still be singing songs and human beings will still be shaking their heads at in wonder and awestruck disbelief.

It takes genuine courage to confront evil. By its very nature, evil must defend itself by lashing out and destroying anything that attempts to get in its path, lest it perish ignominiously. Those representing good realize this which makes the confrontation between good and evil always a life threatening proposition and thus, an exercise in self-denial and sacrifice. The Rangers on the bluffs and the men in transports speeding toward bloody Omaha that terrible day 62 years ago knew full well what they were in for. They were willing to pay the price to defeat evil.

There were more than 700 war ships on the waters of Normandy that day, firepower never before seen on the open ocean. The men would be landing with tanks and guns and grenades and enough explosives to blow up a small town. But their most potent weapon by far was the courage to face their foes in open combat with the full knowledge that doing so was likely to get them killed. We ask ourselves quite properly, would I have been capable of such a feat? The answer will likely tell us much about ourselves.

Because in those last frantic minutes before hitting the beach, as grown men wept and prayed and steeled themselves for the supreme test of their young lives, they must have found something deep within themselves, something they could mentally and emotionally grasp and hold onto so real and palpable it must have been. What was it? An image of their family? A remembrance of love and closeness that wrapped itself around them and made them feel safe? Or perhaps it was the simple recognition of the here and now with a sublime faith that He that arbitrates our fate has placed me in His keeping and if these be my last moments, let them be meaningful ones.

Whatever rushed thoughts were coursing through their minds as they splashed ashore, participating in some of the most intense combat ever experienced by American fighting men, their courage allowed them to disobey the most primal of instincts to flee for safety and walk into the teeth of the enemy’s fire. And then, the supreme test. Historian Stephen Ambrose:

They were getting butchered where they were all the sea wall because the Germans had it all zeroed in with their mortars that were coming down on top of them. And, “Over here, Captain,” “Over here, Lieutenant, over here.” A sergeant looked at this situation and said, “The hell with this. If I’m going to get killed, I’m going to take some Germans with me.” And he would call out, “Follow me,” and up he would start. Hitler didn’t believe this was ever possible. Hitler was certain that the soft, effeminate children of democracy could never become soldiers. Hitler was certain that the Nazi youth would always outfight the Boy Scouts, and Hitler was wrong.

The Boy Scouts took them on D-Day. Joe Dawson led Company G. He started off with 200 men. He got to the top of the bluff with 20 men, but he got to the top. He was the first one to get there. He’s going to be introducing President Clinton tomorrow at Omaha Beach. John Spaulding was another. He was a lieutenant. Many of them are nameless. I don’t know their names. I’ve talked to men who’ve said, “I saw this lieutenant and he tossed a grenade into the embrasure of that fortification, and out came four Germans with their hands up. I thought to myself, hell, if he can do that, I can do that.” “What was his name?” I will ask. “Geez, I don’t know. I never found out his name. I never saw him before, and I never saw him again, but he was a great man. He got me up that bluff.”

“Unknown but to God” and history, I suspect. In the end, whatever gave them the inner strength to keep going in the face of such murderous opposition, it was as inspirational then as it is today.

It is fitting and proper that we remember their courage today, the young men who lived and died the word courage. But we must also question ourselves about our commitment to that memory. Does it have meaning beyond the misty eyed reminisces of old men? Can we still summon forth the will to perform great deeds in a cause that reaches far beyond our narrow little corner of planet earth in which we live and love and die?

At the moment, the answer to that last question is unknown. But I daresay the fate of the nation rests upon a positive response. For unless we are willing to propel ourselves beyond our own selfish, comfortable existence and find the strength to confront the evil that seeks to destroy us, we are more likely to end up a victim of our own hubris rather than triumphant with the knowledge that we, like the men of D-Day, brought to life the word courage and made it once again something to be lived and felt in our hearts, ever mindful of the sacrifice of those who came before us.

This post originally appeared on June 6, 2006

I am writing an in-depth piece for Pajamas Media on the speech but I wanted to get some thoughts down while some of them were fresh in my mind.

I saw the speech this morning and just finished reading the transcript. My initial impression from watching it was, I believe, correct; it was a very good speech with some eye popping assumptions that were just plain false, a glossing over of some points that needed to be hit harder, and a troubling lack of candor about the Muslim world regarding extremism that he either believes or deliberately failed to address.

Positive parts of the speech were that he did indeed tell the Muslim world some things they needed to hear: Denial that al-Qaeda carried out the attacks of 9/11 and the reality of the Holocaust are two subjects that are absolutely essential for the Muslim world to accept before any progress can be made. I think he also said some things that we in the west needed to hear about Islam although that part of his speech will fall on deaf ears in this country. Those predisposed to believe the worst about Islam and Muslims will not change (and that goes double for the other side).

I also thought Obama gave a good defense of our invasion of Afghanistan - something we should be reminding Pakistan of every day. And while I wish he would have hit the Iranian nuclear problem much harder, he laid out the consequences of an Iranian bomb realistically and without bombast. What he can do about it is another story.

He said some nice things about religious freedom and the democratic aspirations of all people on the planet. But Bush had been saying basically the same thing for years. And as far as religious freedom, his dubious claim of tolerance for other religions by Islam either proves his naivete or he has been misinformed about Christian persecution in Islamic lands.

His suggestive rhetoric that we are “imposing” democracy on Iraq or Afghanistan was pretty strange. While the Iraqi constitution borrowed some western concepts, it is much more beholden to Arab and Islamic practices than western-style government. I don’t recall anywhere in the US Constitution where it says the Koran inspires the law as it does in the Iraqi document.

Besides, should we have “imposed” another dictatorship on the Iraqis instead? I see no evidence that we were seeking to impose our values or culture on the Iraqis either. Just where this “imposing democracy” line came from would be a mystery except that is standard leftist tripe going back to Viet Nam.

He said almost nothing about government corruption (”stealing from the people”) when most citizens in the Middle East view the issue as one of the major problems in their countries. And he was virtually silent about separation of church from state. This was understandable but a truly brave speech would have addressed the issue head on. Islam is not incompatible with modernity but when governments use its traditions and teachings to control the people, impede economic development, stifle free speech, and maintain power, it becomes a dead weight on realizing progress toward a free, open, and prosperous society.

Stylistically, I thought the speech was near brilliant. It was extremely well organized, and the segues from topic to topic were rhetorically smooth and logical. It was both easy to follow if you were watching and easy to read.

The rhetoric was flowery without being obnoxious. Obama’s speeches have a tendency to take rhetorical flight and have trouble coming in for a landing sometimes. He avoided that pitfall by carefully crafting imagery that was substantive and somewhat subdued. The tone was at times hectoring - almost like a teacher scolding a class. But there was much beauty in the language and he mostly succeeded in walking the line between preaching and conversation.

There were many specific passages that will be taken out of context to attack the speech - many of them justified in my opinion. His belief that no one country should dominate in this brave new world is nonsense - unless he intends to deliberately subsume American interests to please other countries and the United Nations. You can bet the Russians and the Chinese were laughing at that passage. They have no intention of not acting in their vital interests - even if the world condemns them for it - as they seek to match or supplant America as the dominant power on the planet.

Was it a great speech? I subscribe to Theodore H. White’s view of what makes a great speech where three elements have to be present for a political speech to achieve immortality. First, the moment in time must amplify the words spoken. Since Obama’s Cairo address had no dramatic event or backdrop, that alone would disqualify it from being considered with even the top 100 American speeches much less being analogous to several of Churchill’s ringing addresses.

But the other factors that White believed made a great speech - the place the address is given and the words themselves, which should be great both spoken and read - came close to being fulfilled with Obama’s address. Martin Luther King speaking when he did and where he did acted as a gigantic megaphone for his words. Certainly Obama’s address will receive wide play around the world and the fact that he delivered it in a Muslim country will amplify the message . And the words in the speech itself will be seen in a context that guarantees the address will live beyond the daily news cycle.

In short, a good speech that could have been braver.

UPDATE

There’s a lot of good commentary both right and left. Ignore the politically motivated on both sides and concentrate on independent analysis.

On the right, Ed Morrissey and Christopher Preble of Cato have reasoned analysis. On the left, Peter Daou has an interesting critique. But the reality is, most on the right are trashing it and most on the left either believe it the second coming of the Sermon on the Mount or take great delight in linking to righties trashing the speech.

Conor Friedersdorf receiving some words of wisdom from one of his many strawmen.

A few days ago when the Levin/Dreher/Friedersdorf war was waging at various points around the internet, I wanted to weigh in on it to defend Conor Friedersdorf from charges by some that he was just some youthful lightweight whose attacks on Levin for suggesting a woman’s husband put a gun to his head for being married to such a dolt were misguided and ignorant of the “context” found on conservative talk radio.

After reading this piece at The American Scene by Mr. Friedersdorf, I’m glad I didn’t.

I have given up trying to understand why conservatives place such importance on what comes out of the mouths of pop righties like Levin whose shtick, while entertaining, is taken far too seriously by way too many. Fine. Color me a old fuddy duddy but it used to be conservatives were perfectly able to find inspiration and guidance from genuine thinkers or even thoughtful politicians. I suppose every mass movement needs its popularizers and celebrities these days (I recall the guff astronomer Carl Sagan endured from his colleagues for trying to make extraordinarily complex concepts accessible to minds less scientifically inclined - like mine). But really now, must we elevate to hero status people whose claim to fame is that they can savage the opposition in more colorful and amusing ways than some other shock jock?

Yes, yes, I know that Rush, Levin, and the rest do more than simply make liberals look like idiots, and even dangerous idiots at times. They also dispense conservative wisdom - or, at least what their adoring fans believe is wisdom. Mark me down as unimpressed with most of these shock jocks forays into the realm of conservative ideas. Listening to Limbaugh sometimes reminds me of my best friend John when I was in high school who didn’t read Moby Dick, or The Red Badge of Courage, or any of the classics assigned in literature class but instead bought the comic book version, usually on the morning of the test. Needless to say, he passed the exam but lost out on the richness of Melville’s prose and Crane’s towering anger at the waste of war.

I like a good verbal slap at liberals as much as the next conservative but why must it degenerate into the kind of crude vulgarities used by Levin et al? In the race for ratings, the more inventive the invective, the more friendly that Arbitron meter becomes, I guess.

At any rate, I agreed with Friedersdorf that Levin stepped over the line and should have been smacked down for it. But when a young man like Friedersdorf comes up with a shockingly ill conceived post like this one on “terror hawks” and how Obama could use the same excuses used by Bush to start going after anti-abortion activists, I am glad my support for his arguments against Levin was never put in a post.

This piece has a double dose of straw men, a generous dollop of reductio ad absurdom argumentation, with a heaping pile of manure for desert.

First, what’s with this?

The attack on Dr. Tiller is widely referred to as “terrorism” in the blogosphere. Agree or not, it is easy to image an ongoing terrorist campaign run by fringe pro-lifers to shut down abortion clinics. Heaven forbid that this recent murder is followed by bombings at a few Planned Parenthood locations, but that scenario isn’t unthinkable — copycat atrocities are a sad fact of modern life.

“Easy to image” an “ongoing terrorist campaign” carried out by fanatical pro lifers in a scenario that “isn’t unthinkable? No, it’s not easy to imagine and barely thinkable (Dismissing the possibility entirely cannot be done but “easy to imagine” it is not.) In fact, one would have to deliberately ignore history to imagine anything of the sort. Such acts of murder by unbalanced fanatics have been blessedly rare and have never come in the kind of terrorist wave attack Friedersdorf posits above. The self evident reason is that abortion providers are on high alert after such a terrorist act as are clinics, making further atrocities nearly impossible.

But someone must have put a burr up Mr. Friedersdorf’s behind for him to go off like this:

Should something like that come to pass, I wonder how “War on Terror hawks” would react. My admittedly flawed term is meant to reference folks who believe the executive branch possesses broad unchecked powers to combat terrorism, including the designation of American citizens as enemy combatants, the indefinite detention of terror suspects, wiretapping phones without warrants, “enhanced interrogation techniques,” and other powers initially claimed by the Bush Administration and its defenders. Would these predominantly conservative officials, commentators and writers be comfortable if President Obama declared two or three extremist pro-lifers as “enemy combatants”? Should Pres. Obama have the prerogative to order the waterboarding of these uncharged, untried detainees? Should he be able to listen in on phone conversations originating from evangelical churches where suspected abortion extremists hang out? The answer is probably that different “War on Terror hawks” — anyone have a better term for this? — would react differently, but as a matter of law, it seems to me that if they’d gotten their way during the Bush Administration, President Obama would have the power to take all those steps and more, a prospect that is terrifying to me, not because I think our Commander in Chief is looking for a pretext to round up innocent pro-lifers, but because it doesn’t take many violent attacks before Americans start clamoring for a strong executive response, a dynamic that tends to erode liberties in previously unthinkable ways and spawn mistakes whereby innocents are made to suffer.

First of all, take a breath, my friend. My eyes are turning red just from reading that last sentence.

I must congratulate Mr. Friedersdorf on setting up such a fine strawman. Obama holding pro-life activists as “enemy combatants” sure is dramatic but really now, the odds of that happening fall somewhere between my becoming starting right fielder for the Chicago Cubs and the moon careening out of orbit and hitting the earth before I finish writing this sentence. Still here? Good.

So the idea that “terror hawk” commentators would be faced with such a question has as much chance of occurring as me being elected Governor of Illinois - especially since I am a nominal Republican and, while I wouldn’t mind a little harmless graft now and again, the crooks and rogues who inhabit the sewer of Illinois politics are major leaguers compared to anyone else.

It is a ridiculous argument to make, this idea that any president would come down on anti-abortion fanatics like that. Ditto waterboarding pro life activists (Why??). And Mr. Friedersdorf is naive indeed if he doesn’t believe the FBI isn’t already listening in on what these activists are up to - even if the connection leads to a church. The Bureau no doubt has a handle on most, if not all of the fanatics and probably have a good idea which ones are a threat and which are mostly talk.

Friedersdorf is also probably off base with his contention that a wave of terrorist attacks on clinics would cause an outcry by Americans for a “strong executive response.” No doubt pro-choice activists would quite understandably be yelping for the civil liberties of activists but would the average American, who would be in little danger from such attacks, make the kind of stink about internal security that our politicians made in the aftermath of 9/11?

Mr. Friedersdorf’s arguments are based on the notion that there is equivalence between a terrorist attack carried out by trained cadres hell bent on killing as many of us as possible and, historically speaking, lone wackos or small groups of untrained fanatics attacking small targets that — again, historically - have resulted in a small loss of life. I don’t see the equivalence or much need to worry that Obama or any president - even if Mr. Friedersorf’s terror wave scenario came true - would carry out the draconian measures that President Bush felt necessary to impose in the aftermath of 9/11.

I would be in agreement with Conor if he had stuck to the notion that another terrorist attack that was equally or more devastating than 9/11 would almost certainly lead to additional curtailments of our liberties. I hate to contemplate the notion of what the aftermath of a WMD attack would entail and what impact it would have on our freedoms. But Friedersdorf is trying to make a point about the danger of right wing religious nuts being equal to that of the jihadists - not only as a threat but that tactics used to fight the jihadists would be used to violate the civil liberties of anti-abortion fanatics That dog don’t hunt.

One point Conor makes I agree with; supporting torture techniques like waterboarding is wrong. As for the rest, I have been troubled by some of the Bush-era policies like FISA violations and and some of the more eyebrow raising strictures in the Patriot Act like removing safeguards on FBI warrants. But I am also not a civil liberties absolutist and recognize that the exigencies of war sometimes calls for a curtailment of some liberty. That has historically been the case and to have denied the president the same powers granted every president since Washington would have been wrong.

If I were Conor Friedersdorf, I would pick another analogy to make his point about “terror hawks” than the fringe fanatics of the anti-abortion movement.

You won’t want to miss tonight’s Rick Moran Show, one of the most popular conservative talk shows on Blog Talk Radio.

Tonight, I will welcome special guests Ed Morrissey of Hot Air, Jazz Shaw of The Moderate Voice, and Andrew Ian Dodge of PJTV for a discussion of the Tiller murder as well as other hot topics.

The show will air from 7:00 - 8:00 PM Central time. You can access the live stream here. A podcast will be available for streaming or download shortly after the end of the broadcast.

Click on the stream below and join in on what one wag called a “Wayne’s World for adults.”

The Chat Room will open around 15 minutes before the show opens,

Also, if you’d like to call in and put your two cents in, you can dial (718) 664-9764.

You won’t want to miss tonight’s Rick Moran Show, one of the most popular conservative talk shows on Blog Talk Radio.

Tonight, it’s wall to wall SCOTUS as I welcome three lovely ladies; Kim Priestap, Lori Byrd, and my good buddy Fausta Wertz for a look at just how really, really bad a choice is Sonia Sotomayor.

The show will air from 7:00 - 8:00 PM Central time. You can access the live stream here. A podcast will be available for streaming or download shortly after the end of the broadcast.

Click on the stream below and join in on what one wag called a “Wayne’s World for adults.”

The Chat Room will open around 15 minutes before the show opens,

Also, if you’d like to call in and put your two cents in, you can dial (718) 664-9764.

You won’t want to miss tonight’s Rick Moran Show, one of the most popular conservative talk shows on Blog Talk Radio.

Tonight, Jazz Shaw and Jennifer Rubin join me to talk about politics, taxes, health care, and whatever else we can think of to entertain you.

The show will air from 7:00 - 8:00 PM Central time. You can access the live stream here. A podcast will be available for streaming or download shortly after the end of the broadcast.

Click on the stream below and join in on what one wag called a “Wayne’s World for adults.”

The Chat Room will open around 15 minutes before the show opens,

Also, if you’d like to call in and put your two cents in, you can dial (718) 664-9764.

You won’t want to miss tonight’s Rick Moran Show, one of the most popular conservative talk shows on Blog Talk Radio.

Tonight, it’s another all American Thinker night as my friends Rich Baehr and Ed Lasky join me to talk about the recent AIPAC gathering and some political pastiche.

The show will air from 7:00 - 8:00 PM Central time. You can access the live stream here. A podcast will be available for streaming or download shortly after the end of the broadcast.

Click on the stream below and join in on what one wag called a “Wayne’s World for adults.”

The Chat Room will open around 15 minutes before the show opens,

Also, if you’d like to call in and put your two cents in, you can dial (718) 664-9764.

You won’t want to miss tonight’s Rick Moran Show, one of the most popular conservative talk shows on Blog Talk Radio.

Tonight, we’ll try to get the show on the road with Fausta Wertz and Jazz Shaw as we discuss Flu, Specter, and Obama’s first 100 days.

The show will air from 7:00 - 8:00 PM Central time. You can access the live stream here. A podcast will be available for streaming or download shortly after the end of the broadcast.

Click on the stream below and join in on what one wag called a “Wayne’s World for adults.”

The Chat Room will open around 15 minutes before the show opens,

Also, if you’d like to call in and put your two cents in, you can dial (718) 664-9764.

You won’t want to miss tonight’s Rick Moran Show, one of the most popular conservative talk shows on Blog Talk Radio.

Tonight, I welcome Fausta Wertz of Fausta’s Blog, and Val Prieto and Henry Gomez of Babalu Blog. We’ll discuss Obama’s recent trip to the Latin American summit as well as future US policy in the region.

The show will air from 7:00 - 8:00 PM Central time. You can access the live stream here. A podcast will be available for streaming or download shortly after the end of the broadcast.

Click on the stream below and join in on what one wag called a “Wayne’s World for adults.”

The Chat Room will open around 15 minutes before the show opens,

Also, if you’d like to call in and put your two cents in, you can dial (718) 664-9764.

UPDATE: SHOW CANCELED

A thousand pardons, my friends. Due to technical problems, I was forced to cancel the show last night.

Massive, massive computer problems - took me a while to figure out because even the diagnostic tools weren’t working — but the camera I hooked up to my laptop (which I am now using as a platform for my monitor mouse and keyboard) disabled every single process and program! Have to call HP to get it straightened out.

To make matters worse, I only scheduled the show for 15 min!

Unbelievable.

You won’t want to miss tonight’s Rick Moran Show, one of the most popular conservative talk shows on Blog Talk Radio.

Tonight, its an all American Thinker show with my friends and colleagues Rich Baehr and Ed Lasky. We’ll look at the pirate situation and talk a little tea party.

The show will air from 7:00 - 8:00 PM Central time. You can access the live stream here. A podcast will be available for streaming or download shortly after the end of the broadcast.

Click on the stream below and join in on what one wag called a “Wayne’s World for adults.”

The Chat Room will open around 15 minutes before the show opens,

Also, if you’d like to call in and put your two cents in, you can dial (718) 664-9764.