Right Wing Nut House

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 Larrey Anderson of American Thinker, Monica Showalter of IDB, and Yid with a Lid’s Jeff Dunetz as we look at the midterm elections, Koran burning, and try and place 9/11 into historical context.

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.”

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

Tea party folk become outraged at just about anything that President Obama and the Democrats try to accomplish these days. I do too.

Now it’s time to step up and defend America and our Constitution against a different foe; the preacher who is planning to burn Korans on September 11 of this year.

As bad as Obama has been, there is nothing more destructive of the Constitution’s spirit and letter than burning the Koran - or any book for that matter. What this Reverend Jones is planning on doing is so antithetical to Americanism that any red-blooded tea party patriot should be steaming at the very thought that this glory-seeking preacher wants to besmirch our most sacred values by imitating Nazi brownshirts at their worst who piled high books by Jewish authors at Nuremberg and set fire to them.

There is no difference - none - between the 50 or so members of the Dove World Outreach Center and mindless Nazi drones if they carry through with this plan. This is really a no brainer for the tea party groups who have shown brilliance in organizing demonstrations against the president and his party. Why not head down to Gainesville, FL where this bunch of drooling mountebanks are about ready to spit on the Constitution, and demonstrate to protect the Koran?

I am absolutely, 100% dead serious about advocating this, despite the fact that such a demonstration will never, ever take place. If tea party groups are so all-fired, hell-bent-for-leather eager to protest against Obama’s questionable and extra-constitutional excesses, why not turn that notion into a crusade to demonstrate the idea that book burning is a slap in the face to our Founders and radically against the very idea of the First Amendment?

Ah, but don’t the inbred Teutons down in Florida have the same First Amendment right to purchase a book with their own money and burn it on private property? Of course they do - just as those who profess a reverence for the Constitution have a duty to protest against their sacrilege. What’s so hard to figure there?

To my mind, using the fact that Jones and his infantile followers have a right to burn a book as an excuse not to show America that the tea party is consistent in their love of the Constitution is hypocritical. Are tea party groups only in love with some of the Constitution? Do they wish only to protect certain sections of it?

And if you’re not going to protest against Nazi book burnings because it violates the spirit of the First Amendment, why not do it for the boys and girls serving in Afghanistan?

“It could endanger troops and it could endanger the overall effort,” Gen. Petraeus said in an interview. “It is precisely the kind of action the Taliban uses and could cause significant problems. Not just here, but everywhere in the world we are engaged with the Islamic community.”

Hundreds of Afghans attended a demonstration in Kabul on Monday to protest the plans of Florida pastor Terry Jones, who has said he will burn copies of Islam’s holy book to mark the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Afghan protesters chanted “death to America,” and speakers called on the U.S. to withdraw its troops. Some protesters threw rocks at a passing military convoy.

Military officials fear the protests will likely spread to other Afghan cities, especially if the event is broadcast or ends up on Internet video.

This fellow Jones obviously doesn’t get it:

Mr. Jones, head of the 50-member Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Fla., said in a statement that “We understand the General’s concerns. We are sure that his concerns are legitimate.” Nonetheless, he added, “We must send a clear message to the radical element of Islam. We will no longer be controlled and dominated by their fears and threats.”

I would say you are being totally “dominated by their fears and threats” to the point that you would forget what country you live in and channel Adolf Hitler to make your point.

I don’t care what the rabid savages in Muslim countries will do if we burn Korans. If it wasn’t Koran burning, their holy men would find something else to stir up the primitive emotions of the uneducated rabble who can always be counted on to riot and shed blood in the name of Islam when they feel that their juvenile pride has been nicked.

My sole concern is with protecting the legacy of free expression in the United States - a legacy that would be damaged if we burn any book for any reason. Why stop at burning the Koran. Why not move on to 1001 Arabian Nights? Or the diaries of T.E. Laurence? There are dozens of books that deal with the Koran and the Muslim faith, both fiction and non-fiction. If you want to make a symbolic gesture about Islam, why not torch those volumes too?

Peter Wehner is a lot more under control than I am about this:

If he carries through on his plan, then, the actions by Jones may undermine our mission in Afghanistan and threaten the lives of those serving in that theater. People with standing in Jones’s life need to stop him, in part because his actions are deeply antithetical to our founding principles. The Third Reich burned books; those who are citizens of the United States should not.

Jones’s actions would also be an offense against the Christian faith. From what we know, Jesus not only wasn’t an advocate of book-burning; he was a lover of them, most especially the Hebrew Bible, which he often quoted. Beyond that, Christianity is premised on evangelism, on spreading what the faithful believe to be truth about God, history, and the human person. There is nothing that would lead one to embrace coercion or to stoke (literally) the flames of hatred.

Whatever differences the Christian faith has with Islam, they are ones that followers of Jesus need to articulate with reason, with measured words, and with a spirit of grace and understanding. And whatever purpose Jones thinks he’s serving, it is not the purpose of the Prince of Peace. It is, in fact, very nearly its antithesis. We can only hope that this deeply misguided pastor is stopped before he does significant damage to his country, its gallant warriors, and the faith Jones claims as his own.

Jones might not be stopped. But a clear signal of society’s disapproval can be made if tea party folks show up en masse in Gainesville to tell this charlatan that he doesn’t speak for those who love the Constitution and defend it from all besmirchers.

Stephen Hawking was known as something of a mischievous youth, which makes me think his latest proncunciamento on the universe was deliberately calculated to raise the ire of believers of all stripes:

God did not create the universe, world-famous physicist Stephen Hawking argues in a new book that aims to banish a divine creator from physics.

Hawking says in his book “The Grand Design” that, given the existence of gravity, “the universe can and will create itself from nothing,” according to an excerpt published Thursday in The Times of London.

“Spontaneous creation is the reason why there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist,” he writes in the excerpt.

“It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper [fuse] and set the universe going,” he writes.

His book — as the title suggests — is an attempt to answer “the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything,” he writes, quoting Douglas Adams’ cult science fiction romp, “The Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.”

Believers come back with the argument that there could be a God somewhere in all that mess and you can’t prove otherwise. Indeed, such reductio ad absurdum arguments made by believers have been basic to the thesis that God exists at least since Thomas Aquinas; You must accept the existence of a Supreme Being because not to do so makes the existence of the universe impossible.

And now, here comes Stephen Hawking with his puckish notion that it was not necessary for the Big Bang to occur at God’s direction, that the state of the universe at it’s beginning could account for the laws of physics - and life - all by itself. We’ll see. The Hadron Collider might have a thing or two to say about that if it ever gets up and running at full speed.

It is expected that some of the fundamental particles that will be discovered by the high energy collisions of atoms at Cern will answer some questions we have been tantalizingly close to discovering already; how did the universe get started? Currently, we’ve proved experimentally what happened a couple of millionths of a second after the expansion of the universe began. But prior to that, there is a gap in our knowledge. Hawking is convinced that the distance to discovering the origin of the universe can be bridged without resorting to supernatural explanations.

And, as this Anglican priest and scientist points out, even if Hawking is correct, that isn’t the end of God:

Fraser Watts, an Anglican priest and Cambridge expert in the history of science, said that it’s not the existence of the universe that proves the existence of God.

But, he said, “a creator God provides a reasonable and credible explanation of why there is a universe, and … it is somewhat more likely that there is a God than that there is not. That view is not undermined by what Hawking has said.”

What is undermined is the kind of Supreme Being worshiped by most of the world; an all powerful, all seeing entity that butts into everyone’s life and will send you to hell if you fantasize about Rene Pignataro being almost naked, as my 8th grade nun used to warn us boys about.

The kind of God still possible under Hawking’s theories is a static God whose benign presence can be construed by a belief in predestination or, what some philosophers say is a “universal intelligence.” I don’t buy either theory simply because using a reductive argument, you still end up needing faith to make that last leap of illogic in order to “prove” God’s existence.

Some would say that’s the idea; that humanity’s belief in a Supreme Being is the essence of that part of our mind that bridges reality with dreams, or the perception of what’s real with the knowledge of what isn’t. Somewhere in that muddle, there must be room for faith or life simply has no meaning beyond being born, experiencing consciousness for a while, and then facing eternal oblivion by dying.

Most of us cannot make that leap into what is thought to be absurdist logic. Life is too special, too rare to simply end with a “lights out” finality. Hawking’s point is “Who says so?” If life could come into being as a result of forces at the beginning of the universe that randomly came together without assistance from God, why should there be purpose to anything - including life?

Atheists feel this intuitively and accept the notion that death is the end of existence. A universe that creates the conditions of what some might say is this kind of a “meaningless” life, is perfectly capable of creating itself out of the random fluctuations of forces and particles. The transience of existence is just one more hiccup in the history of time since the instant the universe came into being.

I am not one of those atheists who looks down on believers. After all, there is easily enough uncertainty for me to be spectacularly wrong. This does not mean I will have a deathbed conversion “just to be on the safe side.” Chris Hitchens, suffering with cancer, explains this:

Pursuing the prayer thread through the labyrinth of the Web, I eventually found a bizarre “Place Bets” video. This invites potential punters to put money on whether I will repudiate my atheism and embrace religion by a certain date or continue to affirm unbelief and take the hellish consequences. This isn’t, perhaps, as cheap or as nasty as it may sound. One of Christianity’s most cerebral defenders, Blaise Pascal, reduced the essentials to a wager as far back as the 17th century. Put your faith in the almighty, he proposed, and you stand to gain everything. Decline the heavenly offer and you lose everything if the coin falls the other way. (Some philosophers also call this Pascal’s Gambit.)

Ingenious though the full reasoning of his essay may be—he was one of the founders of probability theory—Pascal assumes both a cynical god and an abjectly opportunist human being. Suppose I ditch the principles I have held for a lifetime, in the hope of gaining favor at the last minute? I hope and trust that no serious person would be at all impressed by such a hucksterish choice. Meanwhile, the god who would reward cowardice and dishonesty and punish irreconcilable doubt is among the many gods in which (whom?) I do not believe. I don’t mean to be churlish about any kind intentions, but when September 20 comes, please do not trouble deaf heaven with your bootless cries. Unless, of course, it makes you feel better.

And that, in the end, is what all this God bothering is about; the very human requirement that we be comforted in the face of a universe so vast it is beyond our understanding. Rather than accept the idea that there are some things we will never know about life, the cosmos, even that pebble in our shoe, it makes us feel better to imagine there is someone, somewhere who has it all figured out and will let us in on the secret if we’re good little boys and girls and make it to the finish line in heaven when we die.

The alternative may sound cynical, but for a rationalist, there really is no other way to face the world when you get out of bed in the morning.

You don’t have to be able to read tea leaves, examine entrails, or count the warts on a horny toad to know that conservatism is headed for a smashing victory in November.

Or is it? Will the coming electoral tidal wave hide deficiencies that have yet to be addressed following a long decade of decline and exhaustion?

What has changed in the intervening months? Certainly, the rising fortunes of the GOP has energized the conservative base and instilled confidence in conservative cadres. But have any of the systemic challenges that faced conservatism following the 2008 electoral debacle been addressed?

Alas, I don’t see it. Indeed, if one were to examine what is shaping up to be the Republican agenda that will be set before the American people in November, you would be excused if you felt like you had to pinch yourself in order to make sure you were not somehow magically transported back to 1980.

Tax cuts. Check. Get government “out of the way.” Check. Less regulation. Check. Cut spending. Check. Reduce the deficit. Check. Maintain a strong defense. Check.

It’s as if the smiling visage of the Gipper himself was standing along side Republican candidates as for the 15th election in a row, some variation of the above agenda is presented as conservatism’s answer to the welfare state coddling of the Democrats and liberals.

To those who might say that conservative principles are timeless and immutable, I would wholeheartedly agree. Except that tax cuts are not a “conservative principle.” Neither is reduced spending, less regulation, or any other issue that currently substitutes for substantive thought on the right.

In an article in the Wall Street Journal, Peter Berkowitz crows about the right being back on top:

In late 2008 and early 2009, in the wake of Mr. Obama’s meteoric ascent, the idea that conservatism would enjoy any sort of revival in the summer of 2009 would have seemed to demoralized conservatives too much to hope for. To leading lights on the left, it would have appeared absolutely outlandish.

In late October 2008, New Yorker staff writer George Packer reported “the complete collapse of the four-decade project that brought conservatism to power in America.” Two weeks later, the day after Mr. Obama’s election, Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne proclaimed “the end of a conservative era” that had begun with the rise of Ronald Reagan.

And in February 2009, New York Times Book Review and Week in Review editor Sam Tanenhaus, writing in The New Republic, declared that “movement conservatism is exhausted and quite possibly dead.” Mr. Tanenhaus even purported to discern in the new president “the emergence of a president who seems more thoroughly steeped in the principles of Burkean conservatism than any significant thinker or political figure on the right.”

Messrs. Packer, Dionne and Tanenhaus underestimated what the conservative tradition rightly emphasizes, which is the high degree of unpredictability in human affairs. They also conflated the flagging fortunes of George W. Bush’s Republican Party with conservatism’s popular appeal. Most importantly, they failed to grasp the imperatives that flow from conservative principles in America, and the full range of tasks connected to preserving freedom.

What Berkowitz doesn’t mention about those critiques - and many more like it on both the right and the left - is that it appeared at the time that conservatism was a hollowed out shell; that it had lost its vibrancy, it’s vim and vigor. The idea factories were still churning out papers, the intellectuals were still trying to connect history and philosophy to politics and policy, but there was a disconnect between conservative thinkers and doers.

The politicians were less interested in implementing new ideas than in trying to preserve their majorities. The activists - then as now - were more interested in giving litmus tests to candidates and politicians in order to purge those they found less than pure than in working to elect candidates who might have advanced legitimate policy alternatives to the left to deal with real world problems that had festered for decades because conservatism had failed to find a vocabulary to connect ordinary people’s concern’s with government action.

In short, conservatism had exhausted itself. The old verities were still true, and still resonated up to a point with voters. But the world had changed in the intervening 30 years between Reagan and Obama and the right was incapable of articulating how to deal with those changes both philosophically and politically.

“Small government” (and its sister battle cry “smaller government”) was no longer an adhesive that bound the movement conservatives to the libertarians because the hypocrisy of crying for cuts in the size of government when advocating massive government intervention in marriage and family matters drove many libertarians into the waiting arms of the Democrats. That, and the inability of any two conservatives to agree on how to shrink government to make it “smaller” - much less “small” - imparted an incoherence to political conservatism that people gave up trying to understand.

Libertarians are coming back to the GOP in waves because of liberal overreach in implementing Obama’s agenda, while a welcome de-emphasizing of the social issues that drove them away has taken place. Meanwhile, in the hinterlands, GOP governors have experimented with ways to apply a more pragmatic conservatism to make a difference in the lives of their citizens on issues like health care, social policy, and education - issues that heretofore were not considered “conservative” by many on the right, or at least in the way that governors like Mitch Daniels and Chris Christie were choosing to address them. And Representative Paul Ryan has stepped forward with his “Roadmap” to deal with entitlements - the first stirrings of what may be a rallying point for the “young turks” emerging as a force in the Republican party.

All of this is welcome news for the right. But the question I have for Berkowitz and other self congratulatory conservatives is what has changed in the intervening months to make anyone think there has been any kind of a “revival?” Conservative elites are not interested in governors and have been extremely cautious about Rep. Ryan’s admittedly radical ideas. The political class has resisted any kind of change, as evidenced by clinging to the Reagan agenda as if it were a talisman to be stroked and caressed so that whatever magic might be left in the mantra might rub off on them and bring them victory.

The Beck Rally as evidence of conservative revival? Spare me. It may have indicated some kind of effort at religious revival, but please don’t confuse coming back to God with politics.

Daniel Larison:

In other words, when Mormons and evangelicals are at their worst and are indulging their least admirable tendencies to idolize the country at the expense of their religious teachings, there is a chance for them to find common ground. If you think that a serious religious revival in America might have something to do with a spirit of repentance and humility rather than with an extravaganza of validation and national self-congratulation, that is really a very damning indictment of what Beck is doing. As Joe Carter correctly says, “As Moore notes, the problem isn’t really Beck. The problem is believers trading the true faith for the syncretism of Christian-flavored civic religion.”

Religion and politics is a mighty incendiary mixture, and Beck’s sermonizing at the rally evoked unflattering comparisons to Father Coughlin. If Christians want another “Great Awakening,” that’s fine, more power to them. Just don’t try and drag political conservatism along for the ride. While many conservative philosophers believe it necessary for a just moral order to include a belief in God, that does not mean that you set the old fellow alongside conservative candidates during campaigns and use him as bait to capture voters. I’m sure God has better things to do than help elect a GOP majority.

As long as conservative activists and the elites reject the idea that conservatism has an activist role to play in running government; that prudent, practical, reasonable efforts by government to regulate business, protect consumers, care for the poor, ensure access to health care, protect the environment, and carry out the other responsibilities that must be shouldered by a 21st century industrialized democratic government, there will be no “revival” of conservatism except in the overheated imaginations of its ideological adherents.

November 2010 will therefore be a “false dawn” for conservatism. For once a GOP majority takes its seats in Congress (if it does), they are going to have to address the monumental problems facing America today. Looking at what they say they will do to address many of those problems, one wonders if they fully realize how fully out of touch they seem when advocating an agenda that was new when Leonid Brezhnev was in power in the old Soviet Union.

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 Rich Baehr, Monica Showalter, and Jazz Shaw to discuss the “dry run” terrorist attack and the question about conservative revival.

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.”

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

I have another article up at FrontPage.com this morning. It’s about what I call the “Premature Evisceration” problem of many on the left who seem unable to hold their fire against the right long enough for all the facts to emerge and save them the embarrassment of a humiliating walk back.

A sample:

Consistency is considered a virtue in most cases. But when it comes to jumping to conclusions and accusing the right of being responsible for the actions of mentally unbalanced people who become violent and commit hate crimes, or seem inspired by the far right fringe, the Left has demonstrated an ideological uniformity that turns virtue into embarrassing idiocy.

Call it “premature evisceration,” as the Left on several occasions has risen up in its self-righteous might to smite the right for its perceived “hate speech,” only to tiptoe away later with egg on its face when it was discovered that things were not quite as they seemed at first blush.

[...]

The one problem in all of this is that Mr. Enright himself fails to serve as a poster boy for right-wing rage against Muslims — something leftist critics would have known if they took a deep breath and waited a couple of days before storming the battlefield, attacking Park 51 opponents and accusing them of responsibility for the crime.

Enright is one very disturbed young man. He had apparently gone on a bender prior to the stabbing incident and was so drunk at the time of his arrest that police couldn’t process him and shipped him off to Bellvue psychiatric hospital. He has since been moved into a psychiatric ward for evaluation. Journals that came to light written by the suspect detailed his 35 days in Afghanistan and authorities say “the notes do not include anti-Muslim rhetoric.”

I have a new piece up at FrontPage.com and in it, I take to task Mayor Bloomberg for some outrageous comments he made late last week about the Park 51 project at an Iftar.

A sample:

Bloomberg, as with politicians on both sides of the Park 51 issue, is seeking to make political hay out of the imbroglio. There are very few things politicians enjoy doing more than posturing, and this goes double for lefties who can’t resist demonstrating their street cred when it comes to what they perceive as moral issues. They believe that being down with racial and other oppressed minorities, as well as fashionable religions like Islam, imparts an authenticity to their politics that raises their moral masquerade to a level beyond the grubby, conniving jostling for power to the sublime and elevated plane of revealed truth.

This notion of undeniable truth has taken a fantastical turn lately as the latest argument in favor of Park 51 makes the rounds of the leftist punditocracy; we better support the project or Muslims around the world won’t like us.

Bloomberg again:

Bloomberg brought home the point that the propaganda war now being waged on Islam in America threatens to undercut our counterinsurgency battle for “hearts and minds” in Iraq and Afghanistan. “If we do not practice here at home what we preach abroad–if we do not lead by example–we undermine our soldiers,” he said. “We undermine our foreign policy objectives. And we undermine our national security.

Apparently, Park 51 opponents are not only mouth breathing rubes who hate Islam, but now we’re gumming up President Obama’s extra good foreign policy while stupidly inviting the jihadis to attack us. If I were Bloomberg, I’d lock these people up before the world goes up in flames as a result of their machinations against innocent Muslims.

Read the whole thing.

To those predisposed because of ideological animus to dismiss the notion of the tea party movement being the true inheritors of Martin Luther King’s dream, you might as well click away now. But if you want to engage on this issue in a reasonable manner, discussing the pros and cons rationally, you are invited to read on and ponder both the irony and the efficacy of these claims as they relate to history as well as current events.

It’s an interesting effort at spin for tea party types to claim kinship with Dr. King. They in no way began the movement with that archetype in mind, nor had they expressed much interest in what engaged Dr. King and his civil rights movement. We were told it was all about “spending” and “taking the country back,” and “adherence to the Constitution.” These are, for the most part, worthy and vitally necessary issues for citizens to agitate for and against, but hardly touches the meat of what King and his followers were seeking.

Nevertheless, there are echoes of King’s social movement in the advocacy of the tea party. The goal of the civil rights movement was to open the eyes of the American people to the plight of their fellow citizens of color while agitating for a change in government policy that would help realize the goal of ending state-sponsored oppression. As for the tea party movement, it seeks to raise awareness among the American public of what they perceive to be the threat of big government while changing policy to reflect their ideals of a smaller, less intrusive government.

An interesting irony is the belief of tea party opponents that a “smaller” government would necessarily make enforcement of modern civil rights legislation more difficult. Given the animus of many tea party folk toward what is perceived as the overbearing hand of government in enforcing what they believe is discriminatory policies aimed against whites, that may be a valid criticism. In shrinking government, no doubt a prime target would be enforcement agencies like the EEOC whose quotas and mandates in attacking perceived discrimination have raised legitimate questions about how best to achieve what the left calls “social justice.”

There have been interesting debates recently about the meaning and intent of “social justice” as it relates to the law and politics. Clearly, the concept of “social justice” means different things to different people, and a dispositive resolution to that debate is not sought here. But there can be little argument that the means to achieve social justice employs the “positive rights” doctrine so much in opposition to the “negative rights” the Founders supported in creating a government that would ensure liberty.

Briefly, Wikpedia explains the difference between positive and negative rights:

[P]ositive rights permit or oblige action, whereas negative rights permit or oblige inaction. These permissions or obligations may be of either a legal or moral character. Likewise, the notion of positive and negative rights may be applied to either liberty rights or claim rights, either permitting one to act or refrain from acting, or obliging others to act or refrain from acting.

In short, an “activist” government vs. a “Leave me the hell alone” government.

Almost by definition, employing “positive rights” to rectify perceived wrongs in society means growing the size and scope of government to meet the requirement of forcing others to act, or permitting the government to intervene. Redistribution of wealth, ending historic advantages enjoyed by straight white males in employment and education, and grouping Americans into racial classifications to delineate “protected classes” of citizens all require a gigantic government to compel the rest of America to comply.

Is this what Dr. King had in mind? You will get an argument from racialists like Reverend Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and other special pleaders in the civil rights movement. But clearly, King saw a different America than the one those gentlemen and their white, liberal, guilt-ridden elitist allies are trying to create.

I found this comment in an excellent New York Times piece about the Glenn Beck rally today revealing:

On his radio show, Mr. Beck said he had not intended to choose the anniversary for his “Restoring Honor” rally on Saturday but had since decided it was “divine providence.”

Dr. King’s dream, he told listeners, “has been so corrupted.”

“Judge a man by the content of his character?” he said. “Character doesn’t even matter in this country. It’s time we picked back up the job.”

He later added: “We are the people of the civil rights movement. We are the ones that must stand for civil and equal rights, justice, equal justice. Not special justice, not social justice. We are the inheritors and protectors of the civil rights movement. They are perverting it.”

The words are compelling but the reality is quite different. The question that has never been debated or addressed by politicians is simply this; what is the best way to achieve the kind of society for which Martin Luther King spent his life trying to build and died in that dream’s service?

Glenn Beck and the tea partiers believe that America has matured to the point where much of the civil rights legislation and regulation of the last 45 years can either be scrapped or reformed (weakened). As proof, they offer the presidency of Barack Obama as exhibit one. Now that we have elected a black man president - largely as a result of whites voting in favor of his candidacy - the need for quotas and other measures to “level the playing field” for minorities who have been historically discriminated against has virtually disappeared, according to many in the tea party movement.

I am sure Dr. King would have scoffed at such a notion. Just as he would have scoffed at the modern interpretation of “social justice.” King was an eminently practical man who knew that America would have racial discrimination long after he left the stage. His belief that change would come only when the hearts and minds of Americans were turned from hate and that only through Christian love and charity would that change be effected animated much of his leadership. That, and a cunning politician’s grasp of what was achievable through “direct action” led to historic civil rights legislation that began the process of reversing 300 years of oppression.

King saw anti-discrimination measures such as affirmative action as temporary, inoffensive means to an end; the start of achieving equality with the white majority in the economic sphere. As it was originally designed by the Kennedy administration, affirmative action was voluntary, somewhat limited, and simply required that when examining candidates for employment, all other criteria being equal (experience, education, etc.) that the job should be given to the minority candidate in recognition of past wrongs.

This well meaning but impractical idea eventually gave way to compulsory “goals and timetables” in the Nixon, Ford, and Carter administration, and ended up as the mandatory quotas and mandates we have today. In discrimination cases, the burden of proof is now on the defendant to show that no discrimination was intended. Sometimes, even that isn’t good enough to avoid penalties.

Clearly, neither the tea party movement or contemporary special interest groups like the NAACP grasp the essence of Dr. King’s message of redemption and change. Nor does the application of positive rights lead to a more just society. Indeed, “social justice” may more accurately be defined as “government justice” in that it is the federal government that chooses to actively intercede on behalf of those minorities who have been historically oppressed.

There is no design to change the hearts and minds of Americans - quite reasonably because such a task is beyond the ken of any government. All government can do is mitigate against the effects of racism, the effects of discrimination. They cannot advance the notion of a color blind society, or a society where women are on equal footing with men, or where gays have the same opportunities as the rest of us. To believe otherwise, as apparently some who are passionate advocates for social justice do - is on par with believing in Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy. Any government big enough and strong enough to demand that a citizen think and act a certain way defines tyranny.

No, the tea party movement are not the inheritors of Dr. King’s legacy. His dream may have been similar, but he certainly would have objected to the tea party folk invoking his name to advance an agenda that, in some ways, would turn back the clock on progress.

On the other hand, King would have been equally concerned about how social justice advocates have twisted his message to include strictures and caveats that have little to do with “justice,” and everything to do with reserving goodies for favored interest groups.

It is a sad testimony about the legacy of one of the greatest Americans who ever lived that 42 years after his death, no one can quite decide just what that legacy should mean.

My latest is up at PJ Media and in it, I return to familiar territory; trying to debunk the notion that President Obama is less of an American, or doesn’t love America, or is anti-American.

First, a couple of excerpts:

But the question isn’t whether the president’s vision of what American can be is different from that of most of the country; the question revolves around that vision’s legitimacy as emanating from deep within the American soul, and whether it fulfills a longing in the American heart for “true” justice and equality.

The Founders were eminently practical men, well read in the classics, believing they had learned the lessons of history about the dangers of concentrated power and the evil of which all men are capable. It’s what historian Page Smith refers to as a “Classical Christian Consciousness,” where recognition of man’s fallen state as well as a dose of public virtue were more likely to keep us free than the alternative. This he described as a “Secular Democratic Consciousness,” heavily influenced by the European enlightenment, saw man as basically good and his faults correctable.

Having faith in the ultimate goodness of mankind and the perfectibility of its institutions was the vision of the Jeffersonians, while the majority of the Founders believed in creating safeguards against the depredations of evil men and guaranteeing the natural rights of citizens. The resulting clash over the centuries of these two visions as the best way to achieve justice and liberty has defined an America that lurches between spurts of progressive reform and conservative restraint and retrenchment.

Barack Obama’s ideas are firmly rooted in the former of these visions. It is a belief that government institutions are perfectable; that the unintended consequences of his massive efforts to tear down the old and build up the new in health care, finance, the free market, and other areas are controllable and indeed, necessary in order to achieve the ultimate goal of creating a “more perfect union.” Whatever huge dislocations arise because of his policies must be accepted so that his notions of “justice” and “equality” can evolve.

It has become de rigueur on the right to complain that Obama wants to turn America into a Euro-socialist paradise. That’s half true. The president wants to use some of the tools that European social democracies use in order to fulfill his vision for America.

That vision, as I point out in the piece, is 100% American. The 19th century Utopian societies that sprang up around the country were ultimately efforts to change America into a society that was perfectly just, equal, and tolerant. From the Shakers to the Transcendentalists, the connecting thread was to alter the definition of what it meant to be American, and in the process, a new society would be created where all could share in the nation’s bounty, free from prejudice and racism as well as capitalisms more unattractive features.

Beyond the Utopians, there is the progressive movement of the early 20th century who believed in the perfectibility of human institutions like government through the application of scientific principles, and the “New Left” ideological forebears of the president who truly sought something closer to a Euro-democracy than we have now. Obama’s vision for America was influenced by all of these and more.

The real beef people have with this piece is simple; I don’t hate Obama enough. I don’t think he’s a Communist, or that he’s Muslim, or that he wasn’t born here, or that he wears women’s underpants. I can’t see his horns or his tail, I don’t believe in my heart of hearts that he is deliberately trying to destroy America, and I don’t believe that he is the worst president in history.

Of course, that was the point in writing the piece - an article in which I am very, very tough on the president but realize that most of his agenda has, in one form or another, been pushed since the New Deal. Just because socialist countries have national health care doesn’t make those who advocate it socialists. There are plenty of conservatives who support Medicare and Social Security - two programs in one form another that are very popular in socialist countries. Does that make those conservatives socialists?

It pains me to think that Obama’s “not American enough” critics actually believe you can quantify patriotism, or are truly ignorant of our history and are unaware that Obama’s vision for a different America is not new at all. What’s changed is that he was able to soft pedal his radicalism, hiding it brilliantly with euphemistic rhetoric and fuzzy headed talk of “change.”. That, and the extraordinary weakness of McCain’s campaign as well as the previous 8 years of cronyism, mismanagement, and incompetence.

It is disheartening to read the comments to my article. What possible good is done by ignorantly pushing the idea that one can judge another American’s love of country, or dedication to its core principles? If Obama were as bad as many of these numbskulls say he is, why aren’t they out starting a revolution? Why don’t they grab their guns and “take their country back?” If we are in as much danger as they say, we can’t wait for the next presidential election, we must act NOW!

I know that if I believed what they say they believe, I wouldn’t be sitting in front of this monitor and keyboard. I’d be out fomenting rebellion. And if fat old me would do it, why not them?

The reason is that they are not serious about their language. It sounds good, makes them feel important, but in the end, their talk of Obama being a Communist and ruining the country is drama. Their dull, drab, hopeless existence needs excitement so they pretend their president is something he is not - sort of like 13 year old drama queens who need attention. Otherwise, they’d be in the streets rioting and doing everything possible to get the man responsible for “ruining the country” out of the White House.

I am not a drama queen. I prefer reality and reasoned debate (usually). Those who have disappeared down this impossibly deep rabbit hole need to start clawing their way out or the vast majority of the country who doesn’t think Obama a socialist or a communist, and who don’t think he is deliberately trying to destroy the country, will make their views known in no uncertain terms when they vote.

And nobody rational votes for anyone supported by crazy people.

My latest at FrontPage.com is a piece on the political fallout from the flooding in Pakistan.

A sample:

The first fortnight of the unfolding calamity saw a Pakistani government frozen by incompetence, lack of leadership, and bureaucratic inertia. In the first 10 days of the disaster, the government managed to deliver 10,000 food packs that fed 80,000 people out of the more than 2 million who were already destitute.

Zardari only stoked the rage Pakistanis were feeling against the government when he left the country at the beginning of August — just when the floods had gone from bad, to worse, to catastrophic — to pay a visit to David Cameron and Nicholas Sarkozy. A trip to Great Britain and France might ordinarily give a boost to the flagging popularity of a Pakistani president, but in this case, it had the opposite effect. Zardari arrived at Heathrow dressed in casual clothing, looking for all the world like a bored tourist. And then between conferences with officials, he helicoptered off to spend a little time at his fabulous chateau in Normandy owned by him and his late wife Benazir Bhutto.

It’s no secret that both the late Mrs. Bhutto and Zardari were spectacularly corrupt politicians. Mrs. Bhutto was sacked in a military coup by General Musharraf largely because of corruption while Zardari — known in Pakistan as “Mr. Ten Percent” — who has already served 8 years in jail on corruption charges, is still under a cloud even as president.

What all this added up to was a monumental political miscalculation on the part of Zardari that if it doesn’t directly threaten the stability of the government (most observers dismiss the idea of a military coup) it nevertheless opens the door to massively increased influence by two other concerned parties in Pakistani politics; the military, and the fundamentalist Islamist parties.

As I explain, the rising popularity of the military as a result of their response to the crisis will make it more difficult for the civilian government to rein in their influence on national security and foreign policy, while complicating our own relationship with the Pakistani armed forces. We need their cooperation to not only facilitate our efforts in Afghanistan, but their behind the scenes sharing of intelligence about the Taliban and al-Qaeda has led to many successful drone strikes on enemy targets inside Pakistan.

As for the Islamists, they have their own agenda - and it doesn’t include helping the government to change people’s minds about their pitiful response to the calamity. There is some question as to whether the extremist’s success in rehabbing their image will translate into votes for the fundamentalist parties - many observers believe incompetence and corruption by the government are more of an inducement for people to look at the religious parties than any good works done by terrorist outfits. But the political messages of both are similar, and the government ignores this at their peril.