I'm back . .

. . . life in the U.K. can be hard. Offline since June -- but it's sorted now.

Of bombs and balconies . . .

Many of my previous posts have, I admit, reflected a certain contempt for our news media, much of which I consider to be on the whole thoroughly compromised, unable or unwilling to perform the role for which it is so desperately needed.

However, there have been some heroes in this age of darkness, even in the news media -- some even in the White House press corps. Lord knows they have a hard slog. You couldn't pay me enough to listen, week after week, to the fables spun by Bush White House press spokesmen. I just think, my God, it must be depressing being subjected to Ari's or Scotty's or now Tony's ever more fantastically Orwellian flights of fancy, week after week after week. It must be soul crushing sometimes.

But it is in Iraq that examples of incomprehensible heroism among the newsmedia arise. Yes, these people must be possessed of an extraordinary ambition, but in many cases an ambition born of an earnestness about the elemental ingredient for an operational democracy: an informed electorate.

There are those who feel otherwise, of course. Such people seem to believe it is in the public's interest not to know, that truth is less important than maintaining order in the ranks, that patriotism trumps all other considerations, even if our leadership leads us all over a cliff. The lengths to which these people are willing to go to denigrate, demonize and disparage those who would seek to enlighten we, the people, have proven quite telling.

Zzzzzz. . . .

. . . . what was that? Oh, same old shit. Go back to spleep. . .

What ever happened to that Iranian offer to negotiate . . . ?

Oh, yeah, now I remember . . .

Based on the situation at the time

Well, strike me with a feather! The Economist edges towards mea culpa ville?
On reading the valedictory message of departing editor Bill Emmott and Lexington’s dangerous dance with balance and fairness (as opposed to fair and balanced?), I had to prick myself. Good thing I did: it really was just a dream.
Let’s first consider Mr. Emmott’s urge for self-examination. As I mentioned earlier, in a teaser previously published in the Financial Times, Mr. Emmott admitted his self-doubt about The Economist’s unflagging support of Dubya’s war to disarm Saddam, eliminate a terrorist safe haven and liberate the Iraqi people. Now, in his valeditory column this week, he appears to go further.
First Mr. Emmott admits The Economist essentially got it wrong in opposing NATO’s intervention in the Balkans:

. . . our cover headline was ‘Stumbling into war’. Things turned out much better than we expected.

My, isn't that refreshing! Lessons learned and all that, right? Not quite: Mr. Emmott isn't willing -- yet -- to concede making a similar misjudgment on Iraq. The Economist’s decision to support the invastion of Iraq, he writes, “was correct – based on the situation at that time, which is all it could have been based on.” Mr. Emmott goes on to explain:

The risk of leaving Saddam in power was too high, practically, legally and morally. It should be done only in exceptional circumstances, and backed by exceptional efforts. Iraq qualified on the former. George Bush let us - and America - down on the latter.

This rather lame bit of sophistry reminds me of something Josh Marshall recently wrote about an inescapable consideration as we ponder the latest chasm (Iran) yawning before us:

When I look back on my own thinking about Iraq (in 2002) and the thinking of a lot of other sensible people, the biggest mistake was considering the issue in the abstract without taking into account who was really driving the car, i.e., who was president and who would make the key decisions.
Not that I didn't think about it on some level, of course. Most of what I wrote at the time suggested that the Bush White House would screw things up. But I considered that a secondary issue whereas in fact it was the primary issue. The fact that President Bush and his advisors wanted war and shaped their actions to achieve that goal was the issue. Everything else was secondary.
Folks like me, who thought that threatening war (and being willing to follow through on the threat) made sense, assuming a good-faith commander-in-chief at the helm, were just wasting their time and making a major miscalculation.
And that is one thing I fear in the current debate [over what to do about Iran].

Read the rest of Josh’s article – it’s a strong tonic and tastes awful. But, oh so necessary.
One shouldn't dwell over-long on the bitter irony of The Economist's conversion in favour of moral wars in the post-Clinton era, this sudden over-compensation in favour of wars which happen to coincide with Republican administrations. Guess they skipped that bit about the Council of Nicea in their moral philosophy classes at Oxford.
As for Lexington, well, although I suppose I should be grateful for this week’s column (“The rebirth of outrage”) in which Lexington finally, amazingly, acknowledges the existence of the Falafel King, Hannity, Scarface and Lou (“celebrate our sameness”) Dobbs. Unfortunately, the wheels come off yet again as Lexington assaults us with patently ridiculous comparisons suggesting the attainment of some sort of delicate equilibrium in the cosmic outrage balance between “leftists” and “rightists”:

Ironically, both sides of the divide feel marginalized. Leftists feel excluded because the Republicans control every branch of government. Rightists feel left out because the left dominates so much of the cultural world – especially the movie business and the universities . . .

Note how the business world, the military and especially all our thoroughly compromised friends in the news media are left out of this particular equation.
Ah, yes: after briefly acknowledging Bob Dole’s plea for the inexplicably missing “outrage” during those halcyon days when principle triumphed over politics in the feverish pursuit of Bill Clinton in 1996, Lexington pronounces, “[t]oday the mood is sourer”. Only since 2000, evidently, has outrage been truly “reborn”.
Outrageous.

Our greatest jurist . . .

. . . truly a genius.

Teensy tip of the iceberg

In the great "jaded" vs. "complicit" debate, I vote for the latter.

Unhinged

He's really on a bender these days.

Scalia again

He's a genius, they tells me . . .

As Atrios points out, I love how Scalia orders the press around.

Yeah, yeah

Not bad . . .

. . . but it's the second comment that strikes the right chord. Here it is reprinted in its entirety:

Too little, too late (so far) (#84727)
by Peter K. Clarke on March 27, 2006 at 3:33 AM

This analysis is solid, as far as it goes, but is deficient in several crucial respects which, even in a short piece such as this cry out for mention.

First of all, the extremism of the Bush administration has been blatantly obvious ever since 9-11-01, when it trumpeted the conscious, crudely self-serving and supremely asinine decision to focus not on the clearly revealed challenges for airline safety, building codes, information, education, and dysfunctional foreign policies, but to instead pretend that the whole problem was basically a military one. So, the first matter not properly addressed by the authors is why has the Bushies "power grab" not been a central issue in America politics for the last 5 1/2 years?

Secondly, the motives behind the supposed determination "to restore the authority of the presidency" are untouched in this essay.

Thirdly, other than a vague call for the "public" to "wake up", there is no proposed solution for concerned readers to grasp as a vision or to rally around, and no action plan for how to proceed as practical matter.

Taken together, these three deficiencies all but eviscerate this article, turning what could have been a warning bell into a wind chime. Look no further than the comment of J. Callahan above for an indication of how easily flabbiness can be turned into mincemeat.

Take the second deficiency: motive. There is no consistent evidence that G.W. Bush seeks or has sought any fundamental change in the American system of government except inadvertently. He gives no indication of wanting to establish a 1000 Year Texas Reich, abolish motherhood, or ban apple pie. Despite what seems at times like obtuse stubbornness and instinctive vindictiveness, he does not appear to be operating with anything like an "Enemies List" nor is he the standard bearer of any consistent principled ideology. He is not, in other words, Hitler, Mussolini, or even Nixon, Reagan, or Goldwater. He was for a "humble" foreign policy in 2000, a pre-emptive Pax American in 2003, and now claims to be pursuing “transformative diplomacy” in 2006. These radical shifts have little to do with any strategic vision, or pratical foreign policy considerations, but correlate very closely with wanting to get elected in 2000 and 2004 and now wanting to salvage some vestige of a "historical legacy" from a disaster-laden presidency.

What Bush has been saying, instigating and promulgating does indeed amount to dangerous behavior injurious to America’s future: trashing the principle of multilateral agreements on weapons proliferation, international justice, and global climate change, wasting enormous amounts of money on an Iraqi boondoggle that has had no purpose other than to give him a "re"-election platform in 2004, sending America's finances recklessly on an accelerating one-way course towards national bankruptcy, laying waste to the principle of an independent, non-partisan civil service, in addition to the abuses of power stemming from the moronicly-mislabelled "war on terror" stressed in the piece here.

But, the real danger to the Republic is that of some future, truly power-hungry and much more clever successor, steamrolling a new tyranny down the paths blazed by the current bumbling tenderfoot scout.

Such risks are amplified by the kind of mistakes made by the authors here, in the aforementioned first and third deficiencies of the article (failure to examine the time delay in any serious challenge to the Bush administration's power grabs and the failure to indicate any practical approach for resisting and reversing those mistakes and abuses). The two deficiencies are linked: a key reason why there has been far to little effective opposition to the most egregious and reckless misdeeds of the Cheney-Bush administration lies with the lack of articulated, tangible, and effective alternatives. There is more to America than the Federalists, the Constitution, the three branches of government, and the "public." We also have political parties, a press, a university system, private companies, non profit organizations, etc. etc.. THERE is where the most serious slumbering, sleepwalking and negligence has resided and still lies.

Bottom line: The "war on terror" was a foolish croc from the start. It was never, and could never truly be, more than a metaphorical war, like the "war on cancer", the "war on poverty" or the "war on drugs". The authors rightly note this, but don't draw the critical inferences. Other countries have worse problems with terrorism than America but they haven't usually waged "war" on it, let alone used a terrorist attack from one set of scoundrels, to launch a half-assed attempt at regime change in a different wholly unrelated country run a by a separate group of scoundrels. Except, arguably in 1914, but a C average History major might have forgotten Ferdinand in Sarajevo.

Is that any reason why the rest of us have to fall asleep at our desks as well?

This Orwellian bull about a "war on terrorism" stank from day 1. Where were the Democrats? Cowering in spineless acquiescence. Where were the Republicans? Gazing at their navels, happy to see every conservative principle slaughtered in a rah-rah, our-team-winning crusade for childishly myopic self-centeredness. Where were the self-proclaimed Christians? Busy worshipping the false idol of Ignorance. Where was the New York Times? Regurgitating the propaganda fed to it. Where were the intellectuals? Trying to give new spins to arcane and obsolete social theories. Where were the university students? Blissfully ignorant and apathetic.
Where was the "progressive" and "antiwar" "Left"? Rejoicing in deliberately ineffective irrelevance. Which of these ever raised a whimper about the lazy lemming-like 40% of voters who couldn't bother to take a few minutes in November 2004 to vote?

How can one expect the "public" to "wake up" when those who ought to be waking them are as comatose, cowardly, and stupidly negligent as far too many have been for far too long?

P.S. to the kneejerk Rovians of HNN: Before trying to stuff words in others' mouths, please be aware I am not saying (nor have I ever maintained) that there is no legitimate purpose to the use of American military power. It was used multilaterally, and legitimately, and was effective in achieveing its STATED purposes in Kosovo and Afghanistan, for example.

Shaken not stirred

Want to know where our Supreme Court's heading? Justice Scalia has hardly been shy about his intent.

Here's his speech at the U of C Divinity School (2002) (you have to scroll down a bit):

If you're too lazy to click the link, here's the money quote (among many, actually):

It seems to me that the reaction of people of faith to this tendency of democracy to obscure the divine authority behind government should be not resignation to it but resolution to combat it as effectively as possible, and a principal way of combating it, in my view, is constant public reminder that - in the words of one of the Supreme Court's religion cases in the days when we understood the religion clauses better than I think we now do - "we are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a supreme being."

This, from a sitting USSC Justice. There are many other equally fantastic statements in the speech -- it's really worth reading in toto.

How should the saner among us respond to such tripe? Here's a quick take from the head of the American Studies Program at Princeton.

On the other hand, since eveyone in the fawning media falls all over themselves proclaiming what a genius Scalia is, he must be right. Maybe democracy indeed is the problem! Damn, that whole Enlightenment thing really wrecked everything! Thankfully, since Scalia's U of C speech, we've now got Alito and Roberts to help nudge us all back to those good old days when religion and politics mixed so well.

I think the logic is perfectly sound

It's simple, really: emergency war powers become permanent when the president deems us to be in a permanent state of war. I wonder if we'll be allowed to have elections? I would assume all those recently gerrymandered districts would reduce the risk of the opposition party taking control of anything, but it's best to be sure, isn't it. Karl Rove didn't get to where he is by being satisfied with half measures, did he?

Part Four -- Lexington and the Iraq War

Picking up from where I left off, let's move on to The Economist's unpardonable coverage of and support for the Iraq war.

In direct contradiction to Lexington's column about the war, no one who can be taken seriously is saying the president knew there were no WMDs. Many who should be taken seriously are saying the president presented a case as unvarnished truth when he and his subordinates knew full well the evidence supporting it was variously cherry-picked, suspect or outright fraudulent.

This, in the context of a supposed “imminent threat” of attack on the nation, from a paper which demanded another president's resignation because he lied about oral sex.

The Economist has pointedly ignored or dismissed very serious concerns relating to how dubbya and his subordinates used and presented information to the congress and the people in making the case for war on Iraq. Like an angry alcoholic, the Economist simply refuses to admit it has a problem.

Why has The Economist so stubbornly, so persistently, framed the debate about the war in this way? Why has it steadfastly refused even to acknowledge what lies in plain sight: a veritable smorgasbord of dishonesty exhibited toward the American people by the Bush administration, not to mention toward the Iraqi people, who never seem to have suffered enough. Why can't this newspaper -- of all newspapers -- bring itself to say even the minimally decent thing, i.e., “taking the country to war on a false prospectus is, perhaps, a problem.”

Instead, true to its long-standing assertion that the president’s wackiest hard-core right-wing supporters are no more obnoxious than and anyone left of John McCain, Lexington wrote (in a previous week's column) "American conservatives" are no worse than "Michael Moore and the 'I hate Republicans crowd'". It is on this basis, and only on this basis, that the Economist evades any serious discussion of such minor indelicacies as separation of powers and the administration's misuse of the nation's intelligence apparatus. As the debacle in Iraq goes from bad to unendingly worse, The Economist doggedly perseveres, FawltyTowers-style: "Don't mention the war!"

So . . . the clear message from The Economist -- either by saying so directly or by refusing to discuss the casus belli of the Iraq war seriously -- is there is no need to discuss how we got into the Iraq mess because those people who have raised questions are hate-filled lunatic Bush-haters.

Well, I challenge anyone to cite examples of legitimate, professed liberal commentators, pundits or columnists openly sliming the opposition as "traitors" or worse. Such is the vitriol commonly put forward by commentators on Fox News, various right-wing pundits and even by Republican elected officials (witness Representative’s Schmidt’s recent viciousness directed at Representative Murtha). Hell, this approach was a key tactic used by Karl Rove to defeat Kerry.

What does The Economist hope to accomplish with all this ducking-and-weaving?

My guess is The Economist, like much of the American mainstream media, including The New York Times and The Washington Post, has come to realize that it has not yet even begun to atone for its own manifold sins in the lead-up-to-Iraq fiasco. Perhaps its editors have begun to notice the increasing number of journalists in the U.S. who have started to become a part of the story about how the Bush administration so ably misled Americans in so many ways. Funny, isn't it, how so many of these journalists have been revealed to be highly reliable transmitters for Bush administration-disseminated information that has turned out to be false, misleading or intended to intimidate critics.

In other words, if The Economist were to acknowledge the validity of the war critics' concerns, it would then need to consider the media's -- and its own -- complicity in perpetrating the larger con.

Now, don't get me wrong: I don't put The Economist on par with Judy Judy Judy Miller or Timmeh Russert, but there's no doubting they do bear some responsibility as enablers of Bush administration deception. I just hold them to a much higher standard, I guess.

Right on

I couldn't agree with Kevin more. The so-called social security crisis is a charade.

Part 'tree -- Mens Rea Exposed!

The Economist is perhaps the standard-bearer of classical liberalism in the global media: it is a 160-year old magazine (scroll down) that still refers to itself as a "newspaper" and, true to the tenets of its Scottish hat-making founder, continuously evangelises about how only free markets and free trade can be counted on to build a better world. While I don't entirely buy into The Economist's vision, which I view as unnervingly utopian in its own right, I accept their sincerity of purpose and admire it.

A key to The Economist's enduring credibility is what may be perceived as the "dismal science's" inherent objectivity. If (and I mean "if") it is perceived as being stripped of emotion, irrationality, bias, prejudice or what have you, econimics can be a powerful weapon in debates over public or social policy and, ultimately, in politics.

Facts and unadorned statistical analysis don't lie: these are supposed to be, at least in theory, an economist's stock in trade. In a broader sense The Economist trace their philosophical lineage to the age of reason (see above link) and they remain firmly in that trajectory of progressive thinking that has been moving mankind forward ever since.

What I can't understand, therefore, is how such a newspaper so readily turns its back on its own principles when it comes to political analysis, particularly in relation to the U.S.

As is obvious in my previous post on this topic, Lexington really gets to me. I don't know why he/she/it - whomever or whatever hides behind that famously pseudonymous byline -- bugs me so much. Maybe it's that palpable smugness capable of being worn only by those who believe the god of statistics is on their side, and who have the added luxury of pronouncing as much anonomously.

In light of Lexington's endless harping about the supposed intolerance of the left, not a single Lexington column comes to mind in which the regular occurrence of right-wing intolerance and worse was identified or called into question. Nor can I recall a single column in which Lexington concedes any exception to the rule that liberals must tolerate anyone and anything if they hope to avoid being branded as hypocrites. Lexington mischaracterises "tolerance" by suggesting that it means caving in to right-wing demands, including those that would seek to impose on the nation out-and-out insanity enforced by blatant thuggery.

The tactic employed is hardly novel: it relies on the time-honoured tradition of mischaracterising all progressives as bereft of principles or moral constancy (both of which are supposedly in the exclusive domain of the religious right: read, religion equals morality and all else is rot).

The permissiveness of those Godless liberals, so the logic goes, is doubly perfidious because in their limitless hypocricy liberals deign to "permit" only leftist social and political norms to take root in modern cultural institutions (i.e., schools and universities, newspapers and Hollywood, the federal government) to the exclusion of traditional or religious (i.e., conservative Christian) values and morality. Of course, if one reads or listens to many conservatives, this is the charitable view: many on the right ascribe the weakening of the moral fibre of America not just to hypocricy (as Lexington appears to say) but to a conspiracy of effetes who in reality hate America. This is a regular theme on Fox and Rush Limbaugh.

To "prove" their point, conservatives engage in what appears to be some kind of crude tautology. Don't accept the recitation of the Lord's prayer in a state-financed classroom? Intolerant! Gotcha! Don't accept the teaching of "intelligent design" as "science" in state-financed science classrooms? Intolerant! Gotcha!

Like a lot of conservative pundits and opinionologists, Lexington conflates liberal "intolerance" with the liberal or moderate (or some may say sane) desire to find common ground, to maintain the separation of church and state (which evangelicals historically zealously endorsed) or to establish minimum standards for what constitutes "science" (insistence on observing the scientific method, peer review, etc.).

I, too, freely admit I am intolerant of any detractors of the heliocentric theory or of the theory of gravitation: they are, after all, only theories. I guess this makes me a liberal elistist, too.

By so circumscribing the context of the liberal conspiracy of "intolerance" (i.e., continually referring to supposed depredations inflicted by "American liberals" upon a God-fearing nation), Lexington presents an entirely unbalanced picture of the cultural and socio-political dynamic at work in America. Worse, Lexington unconscionably -- or perhaps consciously -- covers for extreme elements of the Christian and extreme right, who in obviously don't really believe the left should tolerate just anyone's faith-based application of the scientific method.

Next -- Lexington and the Iraq war.

"We don't call them elitists for nothing"

. . . quoth Joe Scarface.

Yes, who oh who will be held accountable?

Wow

Can it get any more corrupt? Has anyone attempted to compare our current era of sleaze with those in the past? I wonder how we'd compare. Bob Dole once famously quipped in the 80s or 90s (I forget which) that politics in Washington had become much cleaner than the good 'ol days. . . can that be true even today?

Anyhoo, I still am blown away by this:

Here's a bit more from Paul Kiel on Norquist's money-laundering tax, at least the one he charged Abramoff for the service of making the gambling money spick and span so it could be passed on to Ralph Reed. Take a look. There're some great email quotes.

"Grover kept another $ 25K!," says an exasperated Abramoff at one
point.

Unbelievable -- is it possible to be cynical enough to just take this in stride?

The inmates are taking over the asylum

Oh, those crazy guys and gals in congress. Will they never stop with all these kooky, out-there antics?

"What the president did by consciously and intentionally violating the Constitution and laws of this country with this illegal wiretapping has to be answered." [Senator Feingold] added, "Proper accountability is a censuring of the president, saying, 'Mr. President, acknowledge that you broke the law, return to the law, return to our system of government.' "

Senator Bill Frist, Republican of Tennessee and the majority leader, called Mr. Feingold's proposal "a crazy political move."

That Feingold, he's so zany!

I Love/Hate The Economist, Part II

And now for the long-awaited follow-up to my previous post in which I declared my intention to embark, quixotic, on a mission to unmask certain fiendish intentions of The Economist and the modus operandi by which it would seek to accomplish them!

In a subsequent post, when I thunder j'accuse!, I will reveal why this humble exercise in muckraking -- or, to coin a phrase, sterilisation by sunlight -- might be considered worthwhile by anyone paying attention to the extent of the media's aiding and abetting of the Bush administration's spectacular failures which we as a nation, long after the rest of the world, are just beginning to appreciate.

But for the moment let us focus not on the mens rea but rather on the actus reus.

Lexington's columns abound with examples of an unfortunate tendency to pander to a certain readership, a bias that can be displayed sometimes subtly, sometimes egregiously. This last week's column is of the more subtle variety: it's the usual tripe in which Lexington lifts the curtain on the supposedly rampant hypocricy of "intolerance" as committed by professed practitioners of "tolerance" on the American left (que the usual stuff about the P.C. police and universities conspiring to exclude different viewpoints, etc.).

A more egregious example of this tendency can be found in "The paranoid style of American politics" (5th January) in which Lexington accuses the American left of transgressions that he/she/it always fails to observe in the right. Here Lexington explains that since the rise of John Birch the "paranoid style", which is defined as "heated exaggeration", "suspiciousness" and "conspiratorial fantasy", has been over the decades appropriated solely and exclusively by the American left.

Lexington seems to have slept through the entire 1990s. Who can explain? Perhaps Lexington failed to notice the relentless attacks on President Clinton -- when the American people were subjected to daily barrages of increasingly outrageous accusations, including petty corruption, murder, drug smuggling and rape -- all of which were false -- and which in many cases were ascribed to imagined plots of Godless liberals. Perhaps Lexington didn't read or hear about William Bennett's "The Death of Outrage" or the myriad other calls to arms that helped ignite the conservative right. Perhaps Lexington was on sick leave when her/his/its own newspaper called for the resignation of President Clinton for, of all things, lying about irrelevant testimony in a civil depostion.

Lexington seems to think it is "paranoid" to expect a congressional a Senate Intelligence panel to investigate a president who can't be bothered to explain why a law such as the FISA statute -- a clearly articulated law intended to protect fundamental rights enshrined in the constitution -- does not apply to him.

It gets worse.

In "Pants on Fire", 19 November 2005, Lexington sniffs, "Mr. Bush starts with one big advantage: the charge that he knew all along that Iraq possessed no [WMD] seems to be a farrago of nonsense." Lexington naturally fails to point out who, exactly, is saying such a thing. Need it really be said this is not even close to the gravamen of the criticism being leveled at the president for his adventure in Iraq or of the way in which he chose to prosecute America's Global War on Unspecified Threats?

In a later post, I'll explain why The Economist's failure to do its job is, like The New York Times's, CNN's and The Washington Post's, so much more imporant than the vacuous and obvious duplicity of Fox and Friends.


Late Update: This weekend's Financial Times Magazine contains a revealing interview (one of their "Lunches with" series) with the departing editor of The Economist, Bill Emmott. Worth reading . . . I detect a hint of contrition, but not near enough, of course.

Remedial Epistomological Despondency

If all the right-wing hacks in the the forest collapsed under the collective weight of their bloated egos could you still hear yourself scream? Discuss.

Yer doin' a heckuva job, Kevvy

Gol-DAMN - here's another one! Well, at least this guy can't do too much damage. The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System are just a bunch of figureheads, right?

The best streamin' radio everest?

Unsolicited plug -- RadioParadise.

You can learn a lot from the General

Living in Oregon ain't easy for Republicans, I guess.

Dead-Eye Dick

Dick Cheney -- I've nothing to add. It just doesn't get any better.

My war against The Economist

And a more just war there never was: let's take a trip in the way-back machine. Remember this?

My favorite bit:

. . . the issue is now strikingly simple. It rests entirely on whether Mr Clinton is telling the truth—and not just a partial truth, but the whole truth. If he is, and Miss Lewinsky’s apparent accusations turn to dust, then he can and should survive. But if he is not, he must go. And the test of this does not rest on the issue of whether, in lying, he has committed the “high crimes and misdemeanours” required for impeachment. It rests simply on whether he has lied, even one jot, about whether he has had a sexual relationship with Miss Lewinsky. For if he has, his already fragile credibility will be utterly destroyed.

Or is it this?

. . . nub of America’s great experiment with government is that the president must be able to be disconnected from his office, dealt with like an ordinary man. His office should not put him above the reach of the law.

Or is it this?

A government headed by a man who is reckless—and, worse, whose recklessness and moral weakness are indulged—is running on empty, because it has no claim to the public trust.

Or is the money quote the pitch at the end?

. . . if there is a shred of truth to the story he is so vigorously trashing, he should not be allowed to get away with it again. He should go.

Your assignment, if you can bear it, is to read the main article, here, and reflect on the lengths to which The Economist went to posit possible acts of wrong-doing and illegality by Clinton and his lawyers. Ah, the self-satisfied "he-has-it-coming-to-him" flights of supposition will take you back to another era when -- with a Democrat in the White House -- the "liberal" media didn't quite turn over rocks as much as imagine for us what might be under them.

In tomorrow's class, we'll compare and contrast with how The Economist has treated Dubya.

Stay tuned.

Good thing the grown-ups are in charge

You know, when I see stuff like this in the morning papers, I thank the Lord America has a president who sold himself as a uniter not a divider.

Am I blaming Bush for the Muslim world going apeshit over some cartoons in an inconsquential Danish newspaper?

Let me answer a question with a question.

Would the world be such a tinderbox had Al Gore moved into the White House in 2000?

It's all just speculation.

Mission Statement: Hold the Center

What can be said that hasn't already been said a million times elsewhere in the vastness of the blogosphere? Like the song says: what the world needs now is another contributor mouthing off on the internets like it needs a hole in the head.

All I can offer is this: others have not said what needs to be said, and some worse than others, which means piping up a little may be not only warranted, but indeed a civic duty.

***

First, for reasons which will be explained shortly, we interrupt this gratuitous exercise with a brief mash note about Josh Marshall (www.talkingpointsmemo.com): for my money Josh is the most astute political observer going on the internet. More important, Josh is not just a blogger; he is in the best sense a chronicler. He identifies the larger themes often at play that most other bloggers and so-called pundits simply do not see - or at least aren't willing to talk about. No doubt this is the reason a link to Josh is considered by left-to-moderate bloggers as the final word in political analysis.

We now return to our regularly scheduled programming.

***

The reason I mention Josh Marshall is because he posted a note a few years ago that got me thinking about Bigger Things. In this particular thought-provoker Josh proposed an interesting narrative about the then-unbelievable reaction in the Muslim world to the publication of some unfortunate cartoons depicting Mohammed in a Danish newspaper: after setting the stage by describing the obvious conflict between theocratic impulses and classical liberalism in the world at large, Josh honed in on a similar conflict that had also been developing for some time in God's country, my country of origin, the good ol’ freedom-lovin’ U.S. of A. The broader narrative of course was that nationality, religion, supposed levels of education, style-sense – whatever -- none of those are reliable barometers for measuring cultural predispositions toward despotism versus individual liberty: a theocrat is a theocrat is a theocrat, and theocrats over there aren't much different from theocrats over here.

To prove that the U.S. is not immune from this disturbing global trend Josh cited the strident militaristic tendencies that had at the same time arisen in the U.S. under a Bush administration that demanded unquestioning obedience from a frightened populace and a cowed media. He ended with the following:

"It's not the U.S. or the West versus Islam. At least it's not that simple. In any case, the government in this country is too close to illiberalism, militarism and theocracy for that to work as a model. But it is there -- liberalism and authoritarianism, modernity and theocracy."

I couldn't have agreed more. It is something I've been thinking about for some time. My only quibble was not about Josh's diagnosis but rather the symptom he chose to use as his example (militarism) in making the diagnosis.

I think a more obvious symptom is abortion.

Personally, I really can't get too excited about abortion as a moral issue. What is more interesting to me is the very fact that it is a moral issue, perhaps one of the moral issues of our time. Prayer in schools, stone tablets in court houses, sacrificing plastic action figures on stone alters in basements -- all of these might ignite similar heated public policy debates about how the American government should contend with what are fundamentally matters of personal morality, taste and religion. Abortion just happens to be the Big One that gets the most people -- at least in America -- all riled up. [n.b., I don't include issues such as legalisation of certain drugs, or Prohibition, for that matter, in this category, because such issues are also bound up with legitimate concerns about public order, e.g., should a stoner be permitted to drive a school bus?].

How do essentially secular systems of government deal with issues that are difficult to reduce to secular terms? It would seem this is a source of some if not most of the conflicts and tensions of our time. This is what interests me.

So, what is it about abortion? Evidently, according to Supreme Court's reasoning in Roe vs. Wade, there is some magic date at which abortion passes from being legally permissible to becoming impermissible. Whether that date is the commencement of the second or third trimester or somewhere in between hardly matters (at least for purposes of this post). What is interesting is the mere fact the Supreme Court made this determination in the first place. This is (or should be) at the crux of Josh's point about liberalism vs. illiberalism.

The thing about Roe vs. Wade that really chaffs the religious right is the fact the Supreme Court resolved the issue with reference to science, and not to moral values. The constitutional issue -- whether there is a right of privacy -- only has masked the real issue, which was whether the Supreme Court should have respected the moral (really theocratic) impulses of a certain segment of society over the putative interests of others.

That the Supreme Court waded into this morass -- instead of leaving the dirty work to state legislatures -- is mainly useful to the disparaging religious right as a rhetorical trump card to throw in the faces of secularists who give a shit about constitutional law (we who give a shit about such things are always fighting a rear-guard action, aren't we?). In reality, if one follows the logic of the religious right (i.e., all abortion is murder), it doesn't matter whether elected state legislatures or unelected liberals in black robes protect a woman's right to choose. If Roe vs. Wade were overturned but state legislatures effectively enshrined the same outcome in legislation, does anyone really think the religious right would concede the issue on constitutional principles? [The correct answer is: of course not].

Who can say with scientific certainty when life begins? Anyone who does, whether on the left or right, is asserting an opinion or a belief. He or she is professing his or her faith and nothing more. With Roe vs. Wade, the Court effectively threw up its hands by saying the only constitutionally appropriate way they could resolve the question was with reference to viability.

It is this approach American theocrats cannot accept because Roe vs. Wade was in essence an attempt to resolve a morally charged issue while still respecting the establishment clause.

For this reason, Roe vs. Wade is much bigger than "abortion". It is a marker: over-turning Roe would be huge for the religious right because it would signal a triumph over the forces of liberalism that in their opinion weakened the moral fibre of America. The religious right would see overturning Roe much as German generals saw blitzkrieging Panzers punching through enemy lines. From a secular perspective, in a nation professing the primacy of the rule of law, this is nothing more than simple thuggery. However, from a theocratic perspective, it aligns the nation with divine will; and theocrats would only wonder, what's wrong with that?

The bottom line is this: it makes no difference to me whether it's a Mullah dictating morality or a Bishop disqualifying Catholics from communion if they voted for Kerry: while it is true one might more obviously encourage and exhort to violence than the other, both are equally opposed to the classical liberalism and democratic principles I hold dear. From the perspective of a secular humanist, they only differ in terms of the means to which they might resort to achieve their aims.

To the religious right in America, the rule of law, the constitution, etc., are not important. A certain Attorney-General said early on during the Bush administration that such niceties had been rendered "quaint" and "obsolete"; relics of a bygone era. This is the reality of the public policy battle under way in America. Much is at stake.

Which is why I created this blog . . .

My Very First Post

Yet another blog? What can be said that hasn't already been said a million times elsewhere in the vastness of the blogosphere? Like the song says: what the world needs now is another blogger like you need a hole in the head, right?

All I can say at the moment is that our official "Mission Statement" will be posted shortly. In the mean time, I have an itch to scratch, which pretty much gets at what I mean to get at generally, for I well and truly think many others in fact are not saying what needs to be said, and some worse than others, which is why the existence of this blog may just be warranted.

Case in Point:

I really liked Josh Marshall's post earlier today, which picks up on the unbelievable reaction in the Muslim world to the publication of some unfortunate cartoons in a Danish newspaper, but . . .

First, we interrupt our regularly scheduled possibly gratuitous sophistry with an explanatory note about Josh: in my view he is probably the most astute political observer around. More important, Josh is not just a blogger; he is in the best sense a chronicler. He identifies the larger themes often at play that most other bloggers and so-called pundits simply do not see. No doubt this is the reason a link to Josh is considered by left-to-moderate bloggers as the final word in political analysis. He is, in short, my favorite blogger and this is my mash note to him.

But Josh isn't perfect.

We now return to our regularly scheduled programming . . .

In the post to which I refer Josh teases out an interesting, broader narrative from the Danish cartoon flap. After setting the stage by describing the obvious conflict between theocratic impulses and classical liberalism in the world at large, Josh hones in on a similar conflict that has also been developing for some time in God's country, my country of origin, the U.S. of A. This of course really fits in with a broader narrative: a theocrat is a theocrat is a theocrat, and theocrats over there aren't much different from those over here.

To prove that the U.S. is not immune from this disturbing global trend Josh cites the strident militaristic tendencies recently arisen in the U.S. under a Bush administration that demands unquestioning obedience from a frightened populace and a cowed media. He ends with the following:

"It's not the US or the West versus Islam. At least it's not that simple. In any case, the government in this country is too close to illiberalism, militarism and theocracy for that to work as a model. But it is there -- liberalism and authoritarianism, modernity and theocracy."

I couldn't agree more. It is something I've been thinking about for some time. My only quibble is not about Josh's diagnosis but rather the symptom he identifies (militarism) in making the diagnosis.

I think a more obvious symptom is abortion.

Personally, I really can't get too excited about abortion as a moral issue. What is more interesting to me is the very fact that it is a moral issue, perhaps one of the moral issues of our time. Prayer in schools, stone tablets in court houses, sacrificing plastic action figures on stone alters in basements -- they might raise similar issues in terms of how the American government deals with them as a matter of law and as a matter of public policy. Abortion just happens to be the big one that seems to get the most people -- at least in America -- all riled up.

How do essentially secular systems of government deal with issues that are difficult to reduce to secular terms? This is a source of some if not much of the conflicts and tensions of our time. This is what interests me.

So, what is it about abortion? Evidently, according to Supreme Court's reasoning in Roe vs. Wade, there is some magic date at which abortion passes from being legally permissible to becoming impermissible. Whether that date is the commencement of the second or third trimester or somewhere in between hardly matters (at least for purposes of this post). What is interesting is the mere fact the Supreme Court made this determination in the first place. This is (or should be) at the crux of Josh's point about liberalism vs. illiberalism.

The thing about Roe vs. Wade that really chaffs the religious right is the fact the Supreme Court resolved the issue with reference to science, and not to moral values. The constitutional issue -- whether there is a right of privacy -- only has masked the real issue, which was whether the Supreme Court should have respected the moral (really theocratic) impulses of a certain segment of society over the putative interests of others. That the Supreme Court waded into this morass -- instead of leaving the dirty work to state legislatures -- is mainly useful as a rhetorical trump card. In reality, if one follows the logic of the religious right (i.e., all abortion is murder), it doesn't matter whether elected state legislatures or unelected liberals in black robes protect a woman's right to choose.

Who can say with scientific certainty when life begins? Anyone who does, whether on the left or right, is asserting an opinion or a belief. He or she is professing his or her faith and nothing more. With Roe vs. Wade, the Court effectively threw up its hands by saying the only constitutionally appropriate way they could resolve the question was with reference to viability. It is this approach American theocrats cannot accept because Roe vs. Wade was in essence an attempt to resolve a morally charged issue while still respecting the establishment clause.

For this reason, Roe vs. Wade is much bigger than "abortion". It is a marker: over-turning Roe would be huge for the religious right because it would signal a triumph over the forces of liberalism that in their opinion of weakened the moral fiber of America. The religious right would see overturning Roe much as German generals saw breaching enemy lines in a blitzkrieg.

From a secular perspective, in a nation professing the primacy of the rule of law, this is nothing more than thuggery. However, from a theocratic perspective, it is little more than aligning the nation with divine will; and theocrats only wonder what could be wrong with that. The bottom line is this -- and this dovetails with Josh's point about militarism: to the religious right in America, the rule of law, the constitution, etc., are not important. A certain Attorney-General said recently such niceties have been rendered "quaint" and "obsolete"; relics of a bygone era.

This is the reality of the public policy battle under way in America. Much is at stake.