More on Iraq

I've been doing some more thinking on Iraq, and I think a distinction needs to be made that it seems like pro- and anti- war folks have overlooked. The end of authoritarian regimes should certainly be part of our national policy. There's nothing unconservative about that. However, the US should be a facilitator of regime change rather than the implementer.

I look back at the Reagan years and the work the US did in supporting Afghani mujahedeen and the various freedom fighters in Central America. We never committed troops to bring about overthrow in any of these cases, but instead facilitated native forces by providing them with training and weapons. I think it was precisely because we didn't get involved in a hamfisted way that we succeeded there.

In contrast with Iraq we never used a native movement. I realize that none existed because of Saddam, but that doesn't equal a justification for the use of our own troops. I think one of the reasons that we saw so much more stability in Afghanistan a year and a half after the invasion, as opposed to the instability we see in Iraq after one year and a half, is that the Northern Alliance played such a large role.

I realize that this doesn't fix anything regarding the current situation in Iraq. However, it is worth remembering (assuming you concur) in the future. Perhaps we'll decide to not invade when there's no native movement for freedom and instead try to cultivate that movement as we did in Russia.

A Victory of Sorts

Good news for the faithful, it appears that one of the most stalwart atheists has changed his mind. According to this story on Drudge Antony Flew, age 81, now believes in God. His reasoning is on the huge complexity of the universe, human DNA, etc. Good stuff, perhaps he can now complete the journey to Christ.

Triumph of the Caped Crusader?

The Guardian reports that a law being considered for discussion in the next session of Britain's Parliament will impose stricter penalties on parents (read: mostly women) who refuse child visitation rights to their former and estranged spouses. While elements of the law strike me as a bit draconian (curfews and electronic tags seem somewhat incompatible with democracy), the spirit of the motion suggests growing support for dads who are separated from their children, in spite of the legal rights that have been granted to them by the courts.

Could this be the influence of Fathers 4 Justice, the occasionally wacky but earnest coalition of husbands that recently sent an envoy to Her Majesty in the form of a Batman impersonator who chained himself to the walls of Buckingham Palace? The security breach was not as amusing to the authorities as it was to my sister, a fan of Adam West and anything remotely campy. She pasted the news photo prominently on her binder, much to the bewilderment of classmates who would prefer to gaze at the overrated Ben Mckenzie, but that's a story for another day.

There seems to be increased acknowledgement of the importance fathers play in their children's lives, and this law is one of many indicators. I won't go so far as to hail it as the beginning of a renaissance of family values, particularly in a socially liberal country such as Britain. However, it may be a tiny step in the right direction, provided that the offending mothers are not outfitted with electronic dog collars.

On a completely random note, check out the Yuletide appearance of Fathers 4 Justice.

re: Split Personality

"What can I say, I'm a nice gal who happens to think dictators deserve a balistic missile up the @** on occassion"

OK, we had that done months ago. So why don't we move onto Iran, Syria, North Korea, China, half of Africa...

Split Personality

What's a bleeding heart, compassionate conservative to do in the odd moments when she isn't cleaning her guns?

By way of introduction: If you see the picture, I'm sure you can discern that I get very little "intellectual" (Ha!) respect without proving myself. I've noticed that a guy only needs to grow a beard and his maturity-index jumps exponentially.

My attempts to grow a beard have failed, so I must settle for being spectacularly well-informed.
And I want to help you--yes you, the girls who aren't imposing Alaskans like Melinda or the guys who aren't political powerhouses like Mr. Sitman.

You see, the number one way to win respect is to know everything about everything and thanks to the wide world of blogs, you can do that in about 20 minutes a day.

On the issue of Iraq: yes, there are the questions of logistics, intelligence, the Washington power structure etc. But, arguing these dry and endlessly boring details with a liberal will win you no brownies, no nuts, and definitely no frosting.

Let me introduce you to Omar, Mohammed, and Ali: 3 intrepid Baghdad dentists and brothers who blog on daily life in the newly liberated Iraq -- http://iraqthemodel.blogspot.com/

The next time you find yourself trapped on the bus next to a liberal who confides in that smug, self-assured tone that, "Isn't it a shame how terrible things have turned out in Iraq?" you can answer by quoting one of these gentleman directly, showing off your compassion and unwavering devotion to the people, the individual lives, behind the bloody news coverage. And you sound as if you know everthing without having to drone on about the OMB, DCI, NSA, AWOL, or PCP.

Then you can go back to cleaning your .22 or eating the livers of small children or whatever it is that your particular brand of Evil Conservatism compels you to do (I find myself stealing half-pints of milk from childrens' school lunches).

What can I say, I'm a nice gal who happens to think dictators deserve a balistic missile up the @** on occassion....

Incurable case of split personality.

Child of Reagan Welcomes the Delightful...

MARIANNE PERACCHIO

"MP"

The zany and always zesty Marianne Peracchio of Oakland, Maryland is a PhD student in literature at Notre Dame. She holds a BA in English and French from Grove City College, where she co-founded Make Your Case debating society with Melinda Haring and Matthew Sitman. Erstwhile a political animal, she spent a term interning at the American Embassy in Paris, but is more interested in writing and directing plays. While a mere undergraduate, she wrote a comedy which was produced in the college One Act Festival. This summer she directed “The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds,” a Pulitzer Prize winning play, for the Our Town Theatre in her hometown. This fall she will be presenting a paper at the Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture conference, “Epiphanies of Beauty: the Arts in a Post-Christian Culture.” This is her first experience presenting a paper to the academic community.

MP already serves as Melinda's part-time speech-writer, is a master wordsmith and BS artist, and is a connoisseur of all things gastronomical.

More on Iraq

I've been meaning to sit down and write a bleg about a classmate from Edison HS who was recently killed in Iraq. I'll confess I didn't know Binh Le well, I mostly stuck to the newspaper and International Baccalaureate classes. But after reading the Washington Post story on him I wish I did.

I knew Binh as a pretty chill, nice guy. He was one of the people, to me at least, that if I didn't know him personally he melted into the crowd of people that didn't fit neatly into any of the niches of jock, thug, hipster, etc. But clearly he had a life story much more impressive.

I didn't know it, but he came over at 4 from Vietnam. He came with his aunt and uncle while his parents stayed behind. He also had a strong faith, something pretty incredible in a nation where less than half go to work on a weekly basis. Despite entering the military during a period of interminable war he wanted to make a career out of the Marines.

Like I said, I didn't know Le that well, but his passing does bring back the war.

I recently posted a bleg I had earlier written for the BraunlichBlog. I still stand by what I wrote and want to reflect on the closing ideas about a lack of direction.

It's clear that after Falluja we have the tactics to end an insurgency in a single town. But that's not enough to save a partial success from the teeth of failure. For Iraq to be a democracy we must set up conditions conducive for it. Above all else this means bringing stability, and that means more troops than we have or are willing to have. So we must look abroad. This isn't giving other countries veto power over us, this is giving us a chance for success through the cooperation of other states.

I'll try to write more on this later, but it's late.

Buchanan

So Pat Buchanan just spoke here this semester. That makes two major conservative speakers for undergrad consumption in the last year. I must be dreaming. It also make me wonder if our faculty and staff are schitzo for letting this when they donate like this. (The other speaker was Justice Antonin Scalia)

Buchanan's speech has given me plenty of fodder for writing, but I want to address his economic policy tonight.

For most of my thinking life, I've been a free trader. Originally I didn't know exactly why, just that Republicans seemed to like it. Sophomore year I took a microeconomics course that was fantastic and really locked me in.

Lately, though I've bene doing some thinking, and its a vein that Buchanan managed to tap into to a certain extent.

While I don't advocate protectionism for the sake of jobs, Buchanan is right in that a belief in unfettered free trade doesn't account for American interests.

Free trade is a rising tide that lifts all boats. On the whole we are better off monatarily for it. But we are not necessarily better off by all measures. The case I'm thinking of is China. Our trading with Red China dumps billions of dollars into their treasury. This money is then used to develop their military which targets our allies and us.

At the same time we are losing our manufacturing sector. Being of the realist stance that all states have offensive capabilities and we can never know all their actions we must holdthe possibility that a state which currently manufactures some of our armaments may turn on us. Thus I hold it beneficial to hold a "manufacturing floor" - a point below which we justifiably use government action in order to maintain a capability to rearm reasonably quickly.

Nor is this view without precedent. Adam Smith was one of the first free traders. Yet even he supported the Navigation Acts which restricted English trade. Why? Because failure to pass them would have led to a loss relative to England's rival Holland.

So to sum it all up, free trade is good but should be tempered with conservative judgements about security concerns relating to relative gains with those whom we trade.

Iraq Second Thoughts

Recently a high school classmate serving in Iraq died. This is a previously written bleg that I want to put here, and I hope to expand on some more later.

I've been doing some soul searchin on the issue of Iraq. It clearly looms large for many voters, they made it the third most important issue of the election by the CNN and Washington Post exit polls.

One of the conclusions that I've come around to is that, with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, the war was unjustified. There were basically three main points made in favor of the war. 1) Iraq had or was close to having WMDs. 2) A democracy in Iraq would have a transformative effect on the region. 3) Saddam Hussein was a mass murderer.

I am willing to accept that the intelligence telling us that Iraq was close to having or had weapons of mass destruction. Our intelligence operations have been terrible ever since the cuts made in intelligence spending in the 1990s. These cuts were bipartisan, although Republicans were more willing to fight them, and they hurt us. We had inadequate intel on WTC 1, the embassy bombings, the Cole, and 9/11. There is no reason to think that it didn't apply to Iraq.

The second point, however, should have stopped this student of history. It didn't. Over the last fifty odd years the US has attempted to install democracies in many nations. Lebanon, Haiti, Vietnam, Korea, Germany, and Japan. The last three may be considered successes of a sort. While Germany and Japan did become democracies it took us upwards of 10 years, and it took 3 times that for Korea. Lebanon, Haiti, and Vietnam were all failures.

That Saddam was a mass murderer should have had no impact on US foreign policy unless it made him a threat to us. I know that sounds like a terrible thing to say, but I do believe the first obligation of the state is to its citizens. This means that it shouldn't risk the citizens' lives for noncitizens. This is also the only intellectually honest solution. If we say that the state should be involved in solving crises abroad, then why notup our immigration policy? The best way for a third worlder to improve their lot in life is to come America. We don't, though, for good reason.

But all of this matters not. The fact is that we are in Iraq, and now we need a solution. There seems to be basically two paths before us. The first brings us to station tens - perhaps hundreds - of thousands of troops in Iraq for at least a decade. If we take this path we must not leave until we have established a democracy, if we wanted to prop up an autocracy we could have done so with Saddam. While in Iraq our troops must use overwhelming force to put down any and all insurrections as stability is a necessary precursor to democracy. All the while casualties will mount and we will be unable to act elsewhere in the world.

The second course would be to crush the insurrection in Fallujah, pull up stakes and go home, leaving the message behind that if you attempt to install an anti-American government we will return again to smash it up then leave. No promise of nation building, simply that we will not tolerate an anti-American government.

Which course should we take? I don't know. All I know is the status quo is untenable and we seem to be working in no direction.

From the Desk of Whittaker Chambers

"Thus every social revolution begins with a spiritual and intellectual revolution. Men revolt first in thought, in order to be free to revolt in act."

Just thought I'd pass this along, because I think we need to turn to Chambers to help our understanding of the War on Terrorism. What am I getting at? In a sentence, we won the Cold War because a few important people - most importantly Ronald Reagan - never lost sight of the fact that the Cold War was not just about geopolitics but was a struggle between two faiths. Chambers' spiritual view of our conflict with the Soviets had a profound impact on Reagan - in fact, his "Evil Empire speech" borrows from a line Chambers wrote in the 1950s: "the Soviet Union was the focus of evil" in the modern world. Unless we view the War on Terror as a battle of ideas - indeed, a battle of faiths - I'm not sure we can win. Very politically incorrect, I know. But I've been reflecting on Chambers alot recently and am convinced the central truth of his writings on communism and the Cold War still apply today. Your assignment: go read the preface to Witness, "Foreward in the Form of a Letter to My Children" - now. I'm not sure if any single chapter of any book ever touched me like this one. A sample (the last paragraph):

My children, when you were little, we used sometimes to go for walks in our pine woods In thefields, you would run along by yourselves. But you used instinctively to give me your hands as we entered those woods, where it was darker, lonelier, and in the stillness our voices sounded loud and frightening. In this book I am again giving you my hands. I am leading you, not through cool pine woods, but up and up a narrow defile between bare and steep rocks from which in shadow things uncoil and slither away. It will be dark. But, in the end, if I have led you aright, you will make out three crosses, from two of which hang thieves. I will have brought you to Golgotha--the place of skulls. This is the meaning of the journey. Before you understand, I may not be there, my hands may have slipped from yours. It will not matter. For when you understand what you see, you will no longer be children. You will know that life is pain, that each of us hangs always upon the cross of himself. And when you know that this is true of every man, woman and child on earth, you will be wise.

Good stuff, no?

UPDATE: Due to the wonders of the internet, you can read the entire Foreward here.

Pave the Rainforest!

Not really. I'm a big fan of the environment. I'm less of a fan of Jane Goodall. And most importantly, I enjoy making fun of leftists - especially when they imitate the laughter of chimps.

If the environment has to be saved, I suppose we should do it through free market solutions. But overall I'm skeptical about some of the science behind some of the claims the more apocalyptic environmentalists make (NOTE: I said some of the science and some of the claims). Put differently, I believe some of the "scientists" peforming this research are politically motivated -- and I think you can manipulate statistics to justify almost anything.

That said, the bulk of my previous post made fun of Jane Goodall and chimps and was not really meant to be a commentary on the state of the environment. I see how it could have been taken the wrong way, but the spectacle of a lefty like Jane Goodall laughing like a chimp was what really captured my imagination in the aforementioned AP story.

So, to summarize: a healthy environment achieved through free market solutions = good; Jane Goodall laughing like a chimp = funny.

RE: Another Great Story...

Matt,
I wish you had included a link to the story as I would have liked to see the whole article.

In reading your post it seemed like you had a knee-jerk reaction against claims of environmental degradation. I may be wrong as I'm not good at reading emotion in the written word, but it does seem to be a common response among many on the right and one that I think is politically damaging and factually wrong.

By most measures the environment is changing. Whether it is worse or not is for the individual to decide, but we are seeing accelerated changes in nature. Rather than fight that fact as it seems we do all to often I think its important to accept it and then propose solutions grounded in conservative principles. One group that I think excels at this is PERC.

There are externalities that the market can't account for. But rather than rejecting the market (the liberal method) lets use market principles to fix the market (e.g. cap and trade.)

Another Great Story from the AP Newswire

SINGAPORE - Biologist Jane Goodall brought her trademark message to Singapore on Tuesday: human beings and chimpanzees are more alike than one would think.

To prove it, Goodall imitated the laugh of a chimpanzee before a surprised audience of 300 students and university lecturers at an international conference. It sounded a lot like a human laugh, though more high-pitched.

Goodall, known for decades of research on chimpanzees' behavior, told the crowd at the Biology in Asia International Conference that individuals must act to conserve the environment.
"We are at the crossroads, we can't have hope forever," she said.

---

I'm sorry, but I just can't take her message about the environment seriously after reading about her imitation of a chimp's laugh. The whole tone of this story is enraging. The AP is passing off Goodall's nonsense like its holy writ -- why, of course humans and chimps are more alike than one would think. You don't believe it? Just listen to our laughs! Of course, our laughs are alot alike because back when we were emerging from primordial ooze together, chimps and humans grunted jokes to each other, and our laughter grew over thousands of years to resemble one another's. Then, the evil humans - no, just the capitalist humans - took over the world and tried to destroy it, nearly wiping out the chimps! And if we'd only all become more like Jane Goodall we wouldn't be in this mess.

REMEMBER: it is people like Jane Goodall that are the heart and soul of the left. Don't be fooled by the occasional moderate you stumble across. Fear the left. Fear them. Fear Jane Goodall. Fear the chimps. When the chimps rule the world, don't come crying to Jane Goodall...she'll only say she told us so.

Echoes of the Past

Before and after the poisoning

Doctors have confirmed that Ukrainian opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko was poisoned in an attempt to kill him. Yushchenko was locked in a tight election against President Viktor Yanukovych at the time of the attack and is currently pushing for a new election after massive fraud by Yanukovych was revealed. Yanukovych is backed by Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

It is uncertain who organized the attempt, but the Times Online reported that "It would raise questions about whether the poisoning was ordered by Mr Yanukovych, his allies, or even the Kremlin, which fears that Mr Yushchenko will take Ukraine out of its sphere of influence by joining Nato and the EU."

The possibility that it was ordered by Putin, a former KGB agent, hearkens back to the Cold War assassination of Georgi Markov, a Bulgarian highly critical of Communist rulers. Here again we may be Russian trying to illegally influence neighboring states to create an empire. Nor is this a single event, as this excellent essay by John Dunlop shows.

Other suggested articles on Russia:
Unfinished Business by Michael McFaul

Manliness, continued

To contribute to what seems to be a recurring theme on Child of Reagan, I submit the thoughts of Harvey Mansfield on manliness, which incidentally is the topic of his next book. This is an excerpt from an article he wrote for The American Enterprise magazine:

"Manliness offers gallantry to women. But is gallantry fundamentally insincere because it always contains an element of disdain? The man who a door for a woman makes a show of being stronger than she, one could say. At the same time, the woman does go first. Manly men are romantic about women; unmanly men are sympathetic. Which is better for women?

The “sensitive male” who mimics many female emotions and interests, while discarding the small favors men have traditionally done for women, is mostly just a creation of contemporary feminists who are irritated with the ways of men, no longer tolerant of their foibles, and demanding new behavior that would pave the way for ambitious women. Feminists insist that men must work harder to appreciate women. Yet they never ask women to be more understanding of men.

Manliness is a quality that causes individuals to stand up for something. It is a quality that calls private persons into public life. In the past such people have been predominantly male, and it is no accident that those who possess this quality have often ended up as political rulers and leaders.

Manly men defend their turf, just as other male mammals do. The analogy to animals obviously suggests something animalistic about manliness. But manliness is specifically human as well. Manly men defend not just their turf but their country. Manliness is best shown in war, the defense of one’s country at its most difficult and dangerous. In Greek, the word for manliness, andreia, is also the word for courage."

Of course, there is much more to be said about manliness - and I'm sure a great deal will indeed be written in this space. But I appreciated these thoughts on manliness from one of our country's most distinguished political theorists.

WTF WFB?

I love Bill Buckley's stuff, but I do think he's slipping. Take this excerpt from his latest column:

"The actual development of a nuclear bomb is by no means masturbatory arms talk."

It may be an acceptable use of the word, but dammit its weird.

Wimps and Barbarians

The Sons of Murphy Brown

By Terrence O. Moore

More than a decade ago the nation was in a stir over the birth of a fictional boy. The boy was Avery, son of Murphy Brown. Television's Murphy Brown, played by Candice Bergen, was a successful news commentator who, after an unsuccessful relationship with a man that left her alone and pregnant, bore a son out of wedlock. The event, popular enough in its own right, became the center of political controversy when then Vice President Dan Quayle in a speech to the Commonwealth Club of California lamented that the show was "mocking the importance of a father." Suddenly the nation polarized over this question of "family values." But the controversy over Murphy Brown's childbearing soon died down. The characters on the show became more interested in Murphy's hairstyle than her baby, as did perhaps Murphy, who eventually found a suitable nanny in her painter so she could pursue her career without abatement. The show was off the air before Murphy's son would have been seven. Vice President Quayle was not reelected. Eleven years later, it is worth pondering what might have happened to Avery had this story not been just a television show. More to the point, what is happening today to our boys and young men who come from "families" not unlike Murphy's and who find the nation as divided now as it was then over the "values" by which we ought to raise them?

For more than a decade I have been in a position to see young men in the making. As a Marine, college professor, and now principal of a K-12 charter school, I have deliberately tried to figure out whether the nation through its most important institutions of moral instruction—its families and schools—is turning boys into responsible young men. Young women, always the natural judges of the male character, say emphatically "No." In my experience, many young women are upset, but not about an elusive Prince Charming or even the shortage of "cute guys" around. Rather, they have very specific complaints against how they have been treated in shopping malls or on college campuses by immature and uncouth males, and even more pointed complaints against their boyfriends or other male acquaintances who fail to protect them. At times, they appear desperately hopeless. They say matter-of-factly that the males around them do not know how to act like either men or gentlemen. It appears to them that, except for a few lucky members of their sex, most women today must choose between males who are whiny, incapable of making decisions, and in general of "acting like men," or those who treat women roughly and are unreliable, unmannerly, and usually stupid.

The young men, for their part, are not a little embarrassed when they hear these charges but can't wholly deny them. Indeed, when asked the simple question, "When have you ever been taught what it means to be a man?" they are typically speechless and somewhat ashamed.

The question for teachers, professors, and others in positions of moral influence is what to do about young women's growing dissatisfaction and young men's increasing confusion and embarrassment. Teachers cannot become their students' parents, but they can give direction to those who have ears to hear. Two lessons are essential. First, a clear challenge must be issued to young males urging them to become the men their grandfathers and great-grandfathers were. This challenge must be clear, uncompromising, engaging, somewhat humorous, and inspiring. It cannot seem like a tired, fusty, chicken-little lament on the part of the old and boring, but must be seen as the truly revolutionary and cutting-edge effort to recover authentic manliness. Second, a new generation of scholars must tell the tale of how men used to become men and act manfully, and how we as a nation have lost our sense of true manliness. The spirit of this inquiry cannot be that of an autopsy but rather that of the Renaissance humanists, who sought to recover and to borrow the wisdom of the past in order to ennoble their own lives.

Historians and political theorists and professors of literature must realize that the topic of gender is not the monopoly of those who would try to eradicate gender but the natural possession of the great thinkers and actors and even the common folk of the Western tradition. Aristotle had a great deal to say about gender and manhood, as did Washington and Burke and Jane Austen. These two enterprises, the one rhetorical and the other philosophical, are and must be related. One comes from and appeals to the heart. The other comes from and appeals to the mind. Young men today have both hearts and minds that are in chronic need of cultivation. Specifically, they need to realize what true manhood is, what it is not, and why it has become so difficult in the modern world to achieve the status and stature of the true man.

Character Counts

Manhood is not simply a matter of being male and reaching a certain age. These are acts of nature; manhood is a sustained act of character. It is no easier to become a man than it is to become virtuous. In fact, the two are the same. The root of our old-fashioned word "virtue" is the Latin word virtus, a derivative of vir, or man. To be virtuous is to be "manly." As Aristotle understood it, virtue is a "golden mean" between the extremes of excess and deficiency. Too often among today's young males, the extremes seem to predominate. One extreme suffers from an excess of manliness, or from misdirected and unrefined manly energies. The other suffers from a lack of manliness, a total want of manly spirit. Call them barbarians and wimps. So prevalent are these two errant types that the prescription for what ails our young males might be reduced to two simple injunctions: Don't be a barbarian. Don't be a wimp. What is left, ceteris paribus, will be a man.

Today's barbarians are not hard to find. Like the barbarians of old, the new ones wander about in great packs. You can recognize them by their dress, their speech, their amusements, their manners, and their treatment of women. You will know them right away by their distinctive headgear. They wear baseball caps everywhere they go and in every situation: in class, at the table, indoors, outdoors, while taking a test, while watching a movie, while on a date. They wear these caps frontward, backward, and sideways. They will wear them in church and with suits, if ever a barbarian puts on a suit. Part security blanket, part good-luck charm, these distinctive head coverings unite each barbarian with the rest of the vast barbaric horde.

Recognizing other barbarians by their ball caps, one barbarian can enter into a verbal exchange with another anywhere: in a men's room, at an airport, in a movie theater. This exchange, which never quite reaches the level of conversation, might begin with, "Hey, what up?" A traditional response: "Dude!" The enlightening colloquy can go on for hours at increasingly high volumes. "You know, you know!" "What I'm sayin'!" "No way, man!" "What the f---!" "You da man!" "Cool!" "Phat!" "Awesome!" And so on. Barbarians do not use words to express thoughts, convey information, paint pictures in the imagination, or come to a rational understanding. Such speech as they employ serves mainly to elicit in others audible reactions to a few sensual events: football, sex, hard rock, the latest barbarian movie, sex, football. In the barbarian universe, Buckleyesque vocabularies are not required.

Among the most popular barbarian activities are playing sports and lifting weights. There is, of course, nothing wrong with sports or physical training. Playing sports can encourage young males to cultivate several important manly virtues: courage, competitiveness, camaraderie, stamina, a sense of fairness. For this reason, superior cultures have invariably used sports as a proving ground for manly endeavor. As the Duke of Wellington said, "The battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton." The problem is that many young males of today receive no manly education apart from sports. When the British boys who later defeated Napoleon were not competing in the sporting contests conducted in elite public schools, they were learning how to become gentlemen. They spoke the King's English, carried themselves with an air of dignity, treated women with respect, and studied assiduously.

Today's barbarians act as though they never leave the playing field or the gym. They wear the same clothes, speak the same language (just as loudly), spit and scratch themselves just as much, whether on the field or off. More properly, nothing off the field matters to them, except perhaps sex, which they also treat as a game, and alcohol. As a result, they live almost a divided life. On the field, they can be serious, competitive, eager, and disciplined. Off the field, they are lazy, careless, disorganized, and disaffected. Such a divided life is the hallmark of barbarism. In his classic account of the ancient Germanic tribes, the Roman historian Tacitus contrasted the energy and purpose of the German men on the field of battle with their listlessness in the camp.

Whenever they are not fighting, they pass much of their time in the chase, and still more in idleness, giving themselves up to sleep and to feasting, the bravest and the most warlike doing nothing, and surrendering the management of the household, of the home, and of the land, to the women, the old men, and all the weakest members of the family. They themselves lie buried in sloth, a strange combination in their nature that the same men should be so fond of idleness, so averse to peace.

The ancient barbarians did little except fight and hunt. The modern barbarians do little besides play sports and pursue women. To be sure, they have other amusements. But these activities do not as a rule require sensibility or thought. Indeed, typical barbarian pastimes, like drinking mightily and watching WWF wrestling, seem expressly contrived to stupefy the senses and nullify the intellect.

Barbarians, not surprisingly, listen to barbaric music. Allan Bloom famously identified rock-and-roll as the music of sexual intercourse. It was no accident that the progenitor of the rock-and-roll revolution was nicknamed "the Pelvis." Equally basic, but fundamentally different, are the passions enlisted by modern rock without the roll, that is, heavy metal. It is certainly not the music of intercourse, at least not of the consensual variety, since girls and women generally hate it. And with good reason: It is impossible to dance to. You can, of course, thrust your fist over and over into the air. Heavy metal lacks all rhythmic quality, sounding more like jet engines taking off while a growling male voice shouts repeated threats, epithets, and obscenities. Heavy metal lacks all subtlety, reflection, harmony, refinement—in a word, civilization. For good reason did Plato combine music with gymnastic instruction in the education of the guardian class of his Republic. A certain kind of music would soften the souls of young men. Heavy metal softens nothing. It is the music of pure rage.

Barbarians, strictly speaking, have no manners. They shout out to each other in public as though the world were a playing field or a rock concert. To complement the shouting, there is a recognizable barbarian posture, carriage, and comportment. They slouch in their seats. They belch and proudly pass loud gas in public places. They spit practically everywhere they go. A particularly annoying barbarian habit is not looking you in the eye. He will look this way and that, shrug his shoulders, move his body in different directions, but rarely just stand in one place, look you in the eye, and say something intelligible. Speaking to adults used to be one of the first lessons a child learned. Proper speech and posture and other signs of respect helped to bring him into the community of civilized human beings. No longer.

Young males, of course, have always been rough around the edges. But in the past, their edges were smoothed, in part, by being introduced into female company. Boys learned to behave properly first from their mothers and later around other women and girls. They helddoors, pulled out chairs, stood up when a woman entered a room, stood up in public places to offer their seats, took off their hats in the presence of women, and carefully guarded their language so as not to offend the fair sex. All that is gone. In no other aspect of their conduct is barbarism more apparent among a large number of young men these days than in their treatment of women.

Not only do they not show women any special regard. They go out of their way to bother them. A woman does not like to be yelled at by men in passing cars or from dormitory rooms. She does not like to walk by a group of imposing, leering young men only to hear them cutting up after she passes. She does not like to be the subject of jests and sexual innuendo. But this sort of thing goes on all the time. Young women who appear in public, whether in a dance club, at a pub, or in a shopping mall, are constantly accosted by packs of young males on the prowl who consider it their inalienable right to make crude, suggestive advances. These days young males curse with abandon in front of women, often in reference to sex. Nighttime finds barbarians reveling in the pick-up, hook-up culture of the bar scene. In short, the company of women no longer brings out the best in young men. Around the opposite sex, the adolescent and post-adolescent males of today are at their worst.

The problem of the modern barbarian is no academic or fastidious concern. Plato was right to regard the education and civilization of spirited males as the sine qua non of a decent political order. They are the natural watchdogs of society. When they are not properly trained, they become at best nuisances and at worst something much more dangerous.

Men Without Chests

At the other extreme from true manliness is the wimp. Wimps are in many ways the opposite of barbarians. We would be mistaken, however, to classify wimps as simply young men without muscle. Often enough they are the stereotypical 98-pound weaklings who get sand kicked in their faces at the beach. But slightness of build and want of talent in sports do not make one a wimp. The diminutive and sickly James Madison was a man, just as was the towering and vigorous George Washington.

If barbarians suffer from a misdirected manliness, wimps suffer from a want of manly spirit altogether. They lack what the ancient Greeks called thumos, the part of the soul that contains the assertive passions: pugnacity, enterprise, ambition, anger. Thumos compels a man to defend proximate goods: himself, his honor, his lady, his country; as well as universal goods: truth, beauty, goodness, justice. Without thumotic men to combat the cruel, the malevolent, and the unjust, goodness and honor hardly have a chance in our precarious world. But two conditions must be present for thumos to fulfill its mission. First, the soul must be properly ordered. Besides thumos, symbolized by the chest, the soul is composed of reason and appetites, symbolized by the head on the one hand and the stomach and loins on the other. Reason has the capacity to discern right from wrong, but it lacks the strength to act. Appetites, while necessary to keep the body healthy, pull the individual toward pleasures of a lower order. In the well-ordered soul, as C.S. Lewis put it, "the head rules the belly through the chest." In the souls of today's barbarians, clearly thumos has allied itself with the unbridled appetites, and reason has been thrown out the window.

The second condition that must be present is a sufficient level of thumos to enable the man to rise to the defense of honor or goodness when required. Modern education and culture, however, have conspired to turn modern males into what C. S. Lewis called "men without chests," that is, wimps. The chest of the wimp has atrophied from want of early training. The wimp is therefore unable to live up to his duties as a man:

We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.

Wimps make worthless watchdogs. But their failure as watchdogs or guardians has nothing to do with size or physique. My father used to tell me when I was growing up, "It is not the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog" that matters. Many of today's young men seem to have no fight in them at all. Not for them to rescue damsels in distress from the barbarians. Furthermore, wimps vote. As Aristotle pointed out, to the cowardly, bravery will seem more like rashness and foolhardiness than what it really is. Hence political and social issues that require bravery for their solution elicit only hand-wringing and half-measures from the wimps. Wimps are always looking for the easy way out.

Like the barbarian, the wimp is easily recognized by his personality and preoccupations. His main passion is music. Music does not serve him as it does the Platonic guardian, to balance his soul. Nor is he usually a performer or student of music. He has no affinity for classical symphony or opera. Rather, he finds that certain types of music evoke a mood of listless self-infatuation. He may at times listen to music with friends. And he will probably try to express his interest in a girl by quoting a song lyric. Nonetheless, his absorption with music is essentially a private refuge from the challenges of the world.

In addition to music, the wimp may take an interest in the opposite sex. But his approach to dating and relationships is different from the barbarian. The barbarian has simple appetites. His ideal is the Playboy playmate or the winner of a hot legs contest at Daytona Beach, and his ultimate aim in any relationship or encounter, whatever he may say, is sex. As an athlete, the barbarian is a hero of sorts. He walks with an unmistakable air of confidence. The wimp, on the other hand, has more complex reasons for wanting women. Although sex is certainly one of his desires, more than sex he needs affirmation. He desperately needs a girlfriend to boost his self-confidence. Having someone else notice him will somehow show the world that he is not a total loser. The wimp also needs someone to hear his laments, to commiserate with him when he is feeling down, to discover his secret self. Since he has few qualities or achievements to recommend him, he seeks to appear "interesting" or mysterious. Initially, the wimp might seem amusing to an unsuspecting young lady and very different from the insensitive jocks and rowdies she has known. Ultimately, however, the wimp seeks to draw her into his web of melancholy and self-pity. The story always ends unhappily since romance cannot be based upon pity or the thin facade of personality. He might mope and whine his way into a woman's bed but will find excuses to avoid "commitment." The wimp will begin the relationship by saying, "You're the only one who understands me" and end it by saying, "You don't understand me at all." The truth is that there is not much to understand.

The wimp is unmanly in other ways, especially when compared to young men in the past. Throughout history men have come of age by preparing for war, going to sea, felling forests, or even mastering Latin and Greek. Besides listening to music, however, how does the average wimp spend the most formative years of his life? Shopping. Andy Warhol was, in this respect, a paragon of wimpiness. Whenever he felt down and was tired of painting soup cans, he would go shopping to cheer himself up. After his death, bags upon bags of unused products were found in his New York apartment. The wimp is a perfect consumer. In the largest sense, he consumes the liberties and public treasures his forefathers have passed on to him through their "blood, toil, tears, and sweat," without himself adding anything back to the common stock.

Needless to say, these sketches are not exhaustive. Barbarians and wimps come in many forms in a society that celebrates Diversity as we do. But all of them remind us that Plato's quandary was a timeless one and is our quandary no less than his. Our civilization cannot be sustained by barbarians or wimps; it needs true men.

Brave New World

The world has always had its share of wimps and barbarians. Throughout history and literature they have appeared under the names of rogues, scoundrels, boors, ne'er-do-wells, namby-pambies, fops, and macaroni men, to name a few. What needs explaining is why these two obviously defective character types have become so common, at times seeming like the norm.

A close look at the culture in which boys are raised reveals not only that they are no longer encouraged to become vigorous and responsible men, but also that practically every factor affecting their development is profoundly hostile to the ideals and practices of traditional manhood and the painstaking steps necessary to attain it. The demanding regime of physical and moral instruction that used to turn boys into men and the larger cultural forces that supported that instruction have been systematically dismantled by a culture that ostensibly enables all individuals but in reality disables men. "It's too easy!" complained John the Savage of the overly efficient, overly sexual, overly youthful, overly fun Brave New World. That dehumanizing tyranny of pleasure, described by Aldous Huxley, resembles the world of easy effort and easy virtue that entices adolescent males today to indulge in their appetites at the expense of their nobler longings and passions.

Above all, there is easy sex. The sexual revolution released the sexual urge from its domestic harness. A male need no longer be a man, in character or physique, to have sex. He may be a boy of 14. Unchaperoned girls are not hard to find. They can be lured over to one's house under the pretense of listening to some new CDs. Avoiding dual-career parents' supervision is as easy as walking home from school. Indeed, the school will provide the illusion of safe sex in its required sex education classes, and chances are the school nurse will supply the condoms. What more could a boy want? Not only is sex no longer subordinated to marriage, which was predicated on male responsibility, but the most sly and unsavory characters are now the most rewarded with sex. "Boys will be boys," but they have little incentive to be responsible men.

Coupled with easy sex, easy divorce has also had devastating moral and psychological effects on boys. Half of American boys growing up do not live with their natural fathers. The sons of single mothers lack strong men to usher them into the world of responsible, adult manhood. Divorce, whether in reality or in the acrimonious rhetoric of the mother, impresses upon the boy an image of the father, and therefore of all men, as being irresponsible, deceitful, immature, and often hateful or abusive towards women. For sons, the divided loyalties occasioned by divorce actually create profound doubts about their own masculinity. As the boy approaches manhood, he is plagued by subconscious questions which have no immediate resolution: "Will I be like Dad?" "Do I want to be like Dad?" "What is a man supposed to do?"

Even when boys live with fathers, or when divorced mothers remarry, the erstwhile "man of the house" has diminished considerably in stature. The traditional father was the sole breadwinner, the chief disciplinarian, and the figure who sat at the head of the table and spoke with authority on matters of politics, economics, and religion. Loving his children, he did not spare the rod. A new breed of parent (fathers are hardly to be distinguished from mothers) has arrived on the scene. The new parent has invented a new way of disciplining sons, adhering firmly to the principles of "self-esteem." The boy is never wrong, is never spanked, and is never made to feel ashamed. Postmodern parents believe, at least until it is too late, that raising children must be easy since the nature of children is basically good. I had no idea how entrenched these post-Spockian ideas were until I became a school principal and began hearing how parents talk about correcting their children. The word "punishment" no longer exists in the parental lexicon; it has been replaced by "consequences." Boys are not made to feel ashamed for bad behavior; they must reconsider their "poor choices." Least of all will parents spank their sons; if you suggest that they should, they look at you in horror, for after all, "violence only breeds violence." Of course, this softer form of discipline does not really work. When "time-outs" and restricted use of the internet prove unavailing, then it is time for counseling and Ritalin.

The old form of discipline was quick, direct, clear-cut, and effective. The new non-punitive discipline is time-consuming, indirect, muddled, and ineffective. Every breaking of the rules requires a long discussion in which the boy gets to express his "feelings" and therefore make his case. This new form of easy discipline actually compromises the boy's moral growth in several ways. First, he receives no real punishment for wrongdoing and is not made to feel shame. The absence of these traditional external and internal sanctions inhibits his development of self-control. Second, rather than truly learning to be responsible and to accept the real consequences of his actions, he learns to be litigious and whiny. Worst of all, to the extent his father is involved in all this nonsense, he sees the man who should be his master and mentor not as an authoritative figure who imposes order and dispenses justice but as a craven coddler who shudders to injure an errant boy's self-esteem. On the surface, the boy is glad to skim by without getting into too much trouble. Deep down, he knows that his father is no man and so looks abroad for more energetic examples of thumotic manhood.

Schools for Sissies

No less than at home, at school the boy encounters a world that thwarts any natural drive to become a true man. As Christina Hoff Sommers has shown, some schools are actively trying to remove any vestiges of traditional culture that work to the benefit and inspiration of boys: older forms of academic competition such as math and spelling bees, the preponderance of male heroes who can no longer outnumber female heroines, even school playgrounds and games like dodge ball. Even when schools are not deliberately trying to emasculate young boys, the world of education can appear feminized and overly pampering to young males. In elementary school, over 90 percent of the teachers are women. Having no decent curriculum to guide them, as is the case in most schools, these female teachers will quite innocently and unimaginatively choose books and assignments that do not appeal to boys in the least. The boy student will have to suffer through Charlotte's Web three or four times but never hear of Captains Courageous or Treasure Island or Sherlock Holmes.

When he gets into middle and high school he may begin to have male teachers. But these are the tired, ineffective, jaded clock-watchers and pension-seekers of Theodore Sizer's Horace's Compromise. Horace lets the half of the class he cannot control talk for the whole period while he passes out worksheets to the half of the class who still care about grades. Horace is a wimp. If the boy sees any energy on the part of men at the school it is among the coaching staff. Coaches know how to appeal to the thumotic element in boys in order to train them to win, and they actually work hard on the field. They appear far less energetic and in command, however, when they must teach a history class, for there are only so many health and P.E. courses a school can offer.

Beyond these decayed institutions, the broader cultural landscape inhibits the transformation of boys into good men. Radical feminism, to name one feature of this landscape, has in some ways undermined the relations between the sexes. Radical feminists have not directly changed the character of traditional men. There are still a number of gentlemen who willdoors for ladies at the risk of being told off by the occasional woman out to prove her equality and independence. What feminism has done, in conjunction with political correctness, is deprive overly non-offensive, modern parents of the language traditionally used to bring up young boys: "Be a man." "Stick up for your sister." "Quit throwing the ball like a sissy." "Quit crying like a girl." Instead, we have a lot of lukewarm, androgynous talk about "being a good person" and "showing respect to people." A naturally rambunctious and irascible boy, though, is not too interested in being a good person. For if he achieves that status, what will distinguish him from his prim and proper sister? The parents have no language to answer their son's deepest and most natural needs.

Rites of Passage

Finally, today's boys mill about their adolescent and post-adolescent years lacking any formal, approved rite of passage that would turn them into men. The American frontier disappeared in 1890. The call of the sea did not survive much longer. All-male colleges, where young men used to compete against each other in the lecture halls and on the playing field, can now be counted on the fingers of one hand. President Eliot of Harvard told his student body on taking office in 1869, "The best way to put boyishness to shame is to foster scholarship and manliness." Could a college president say that today to a student body in which males are the distinct minority? While theng up of commerce and industry to women has increased their economic freedom and equality, men have lost one more arena in which to prove themselves, as George Gilder has elegantly shown. Moreover, most of the jobs offered in the new economy hardly appeal to the spiritedness in man. Certainly, the military still beckons many spirited boys coming out of high school, but the entire armed services constitute less than one percent of the American population and must make room for a fair number of women in their ranks. In short, modern America lacks what virtually every society in the past has established and governed with great effort and concern: a proving ground for male youth seeking some legitimate expression of their erratic and as yet undisciplined spiritedness.

The sum effect is an environment that demands virtually nothing special of boys as they grow into men. Many aspects of modern culture are debilitating for girls as well as boys, but the lack of dramatic challenge is not one of them. The recent statistics comparing girls' to boys' academic achievements worldwide demonstrate what any teacher in the country knows: that girls are achieving as never before and are outdistancing boys. Perhaps the kinder, gentler, nurturing, egalitarian, consultative, non-competitive approach to education and family has been a boon for girls. Yet what is good for the goose is not necessarily good for the gander. As Father Walter Ong expressed it, the male nature, in order to prove itself, in order to distinguish itself from the potentially emasculating feminine world into which the boy is born, longs for some "againstness" in the natural or moral world which the boy can overcome. But in our culture everything is too easy. Boys are not compelled, indeed not allowed, to fight anymore. They cannot fight on the playground. Nor can they fight for grades, for a girl, for God, or for country (though September 11 has altered this last). Even the saints of old would find the 21st century an inhospitable place, for how could they "fight the good fight" against their own fallen nature in a world supposedly without sin?

Little Avery

So how is Murphy Brown's little Avery doing? He is 11 now. He has grown up under an overbearing mother who has occasionally brought men home, though none has stayed. While Murphy has pursued her successful career, Avery has been showered with material possessions to give him something to do during the long stretches of the day when he finds himself at home alone or left to an indifferent nanny, finished with his half hour of easy homework, which his mother will check over and often redo for him after they have eaten the pizza or take-out Chinese she picked up on the way home from work. Every time Avery has a problem at school or in the neighborhood, Murphy solves it for him with the same decisiveness she demonstrates at the network, thus proving to her son and to herself that she is a good mother.

Avery has posters on his wall of Eminem, Kobe Bryant, and Fred Durst of Limp Bizkit. He is becoming interested in girls but is still too shy to say much to them. Still, he has learned a lot about women on the internet, and his favorite rap songs tell him precisely how to relate to women and what women want. His mother, for her part, has told him a lot about the value of "respecting people." Avery has never been hunting or fishing. True, Avery and his mother used to have fun times at the park and on trips when she could get away from work, but now he is beginning to pull away from her when she rubs his head in an affectionate way. They are not as close as they used to be.

The next few, crucial years of Avery's life will determine what kind of man he will be. Will he rest in wretched contentment with the ease and luxury provided by his oft-absent, deep-voiced mother, or will he rebel with other boys his own age, raised much like him, by finding his own rites of passage in drugs and sex and acts of petty delinquency, or worse? Will he become a wimp or a barbarian?

Bush Country?

Isn't the saying that pride comes before the fall? While the GOP did win a clear majority of the national vote and in many states, the margins were still very slight. Does this mean that Bush shouldn't govern as a conservative? No. But it does mean we need to be aware that pushing too hard too fast could result in a backlash akin to that of Clinton's when he pushed liberalism too hard too fast.

When you take into account the margins of victory the map looks more like this:


I'm also concerned about the durability of the winning coalition.

In addition to Melinda's generous offer, you can order your survival kit or a parting gift for your favorite distraught Democrat here.
If you're looking to sweeten your exodus with a fellow leftie to kiss under the mistletoe, hammer and sickle, or your brand new Canadian flag, go here. It's for you, not your citizenship. Really.

Claim Your One-Way Tickets Here...

If you live in a blue region of the country, we'd be happy to pay your way to Canada. Not only will the Canadians welcome you dirty liberals, they'll also pay for your health care! And, you can relax -- they are no privately practicing physicians, so you only get the best -- socialized medicine!

Chris Lilik is My Hero!

Meet the man who nearly blogged Specter out of office

If Pennsylvania turns into a bastion of conservatism, political anthropologists might someday partially credit a 25-year-old Duquesne University law student from Newton Township.

BY RODERICK RANDOM

Scranton Times Tribune

Christopher K. Lilik -- who goes by Chris and likes punk rock -- and his band of young bloggers helped an obscure conservative Republican congressman from Allentown scare the heck out of the state's senior U.S. senator in the spring and boosted President Bush's Pennsylvania vote in the fall.

They call themselves the Young Conservatives of Pennsylvania (YCOP) now and aim to keep conservative ideology at the political dinner table. But Mr. Lilik isn't looking for his own political career -- at least not yet.

"To be honest with you, I've kind of had a lot of fun just organizing and helping good people like Pat Toomey out in recent years," he said.

His fun attracted the attention of, among others, Business Week magazine, which called him "a one-man political action committee." The conservative National Review magazine had him as its Pennsylvania blogger during the presidential race.

What's fun now is rooted in growing up as the older of two sons of Dr. Kenneth W. Lilik and his wife, Karen. Politics was part of life in the home of his socially and fiscally conservative Catholic parents, the 1998 Bishop O'Hara High School graduate said.

The Liliks' idea of fun sometimes was eating popcorn and watching presidential debates. Between stocking shelves and assembling hoagies at the Village Grocery in South Abington Township, Chris Lilik loved talking politics with customers.

As a Villanova University political science major, Mr. Lilik co-founded a conservative daily newspaper.When U.S. Rep. Pat Toomey announced a Senate run in 2003 while preaching a limited government, tax-cutting, pro-life, family values agenda, Mr. Lilik had a "hero" and "straight shooter" he could rally behind.

"I absolutely love that guy," Mr. Lilik said.

Politically, the safe thing would have been backing Sen. Arlen Specter, Pennsylvania's four-term moderate incumbent from Philadelphia, he said.

"The scariest thought in my mind was the thought of Arlen Specter chairing the Senate Judiciary Committee," Mr. Lilik said.

Pro-life conservatives fear Mr. Specter will favor pro-choice nominees for federal judgeships as committee chairman.

So Mr. Lilik set up Toomeyblog and a Toomey meet-up on meetup.com. Blogs, short for Web logs, are Internet sites where like-minded people dispense thoughts on whatever topic is at hand. Meet-ups are sites where information is disseminated and discussed.

Operating out of his Pittsburgh-area apartment with a computer he built himself, Mr. Lilik led a grass-roots army that almost e-mailed and blogged Mr. Specter's political career to death.

"We did extraordinarily well in the western part of the state," said Joe Sterns, the Toomey campaign's press secretary. "We knew the importance of the Internet ... But Chris Lilik really took it to a different level. He introduced blogging into the campaign and really used that to mobilize the grass roots.

"Mr. Toomey almost ended Mr. Specter's political career, losing the April primary election by only 17,146 votes out of more than 1 million cast."We shocked the world," Mr. Lilik said.

Mr. Lilik and his fellow bloggers next targeted Catholic voters for President Bush's re-election campaign. By the fall, YCOP, with Mr. Lilik as chairman, had a bigger picture in mind.

Its goal is ensuring the future of Pennsylvania's conservative movement and rallying voters behind smaller government, family values and a strong national defense. Its members' Web site is www.grassrootspa.com.

"I think there's a real opportunity for them to have a major impact within the conservative movement and within the Republican Party," Mr. Toomey said Friday.

"They want the Republican Party to represent the set of values that most conservatives believe in."(Mr. Lilik is also helping to start a state chapter of the Club for Growth, the Washington-based political action committee that spent about $2 million trying to get Mr. Toomey elected.)

Notice YCOP's name isn't Young Conservative Republicans of Pennsylvania. They welcome socially and fiscally conservative Democrats, too.On the group's Web site Friday, Mr. Lilik posted a Wilkes-Barre newspaper story about Luzerne County's Democratic commissioners cutting property taxes.

Mr. Lilik said many Republicans in Washington allow huge federal budget deficits to pile up while cutting taxes.

"Republicans are totally destroying their credibility because they constantly spend out the wazoo. We have legislators up on Capitol Hill that spend like drunken sailors and then they try to sell the argument that we need tax cuts," he said.

"I think we have to get rid of this old kingmaker system where people in the back room decide who runs. Let's have primaries, let's have the war of ideas. Let's have excitement again where we debate issues. And I think in the war of ideas, conservative ideas win out.

"Matthew Best, the chairman of the Pennsylvania Federation of Young Republicans, said many of his members are also YCOP members, but realize backing Republican candidates they disagree with is better than backing Democrats.

"I have ideas of my own that I'd like to see happen and that's why I'm a Republican. More times than not, it's going to be accomplished through policies a Republican is promoting," Mr. Best, 28, of Carlisle, said.

For Mr. Lilik, the day for that kind of thinking has passed.

"We need people who are willing to put principle before party," he said.

The War

Given this news - admittedly from the NYT - I thought I'd pull from my vast archive of unfinished rants and raves an almost completed article on Russell Kirk's foreign policy ideas, particularly those I deemed relevant to the war in Iraq. Kirk was a critic of the Neocons - a friendly critic to be sure, but a critic nonetheless. With that in mind, I submit part of a longer piece I was at one time writing. I don't stand by all of this - that's why I never pursued getting it published - but I'm interested in everyone's thoughts on this...where I was wrong and, just maybe, where I (read: Kirk) was right. A part of my article:

---

In particular, their wisdom deficit caused Kirk to harbor doubts in the realm of the Neoconservative’s foreign policy. Indeed, he specifically questioned the “possible long-run consequences of their understanding of America’s international undertakings.” Borrowing a passage from Eliot’s The Rock, Kirk asked the Neoconservatives:

Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

Raw information, intelligence, and cleverness did not translate into that supreme political virtue: prudence. Knowledge is no guarantee of wisdom; that Kirk knew well. And so he acknowledged that “In their publications, the Neoconservatives thrust upon us a great deal of useful information, and obviously are possessed of considerable knowledge of the world about us.” But that alone does not make for prudent statecraft and foreign policy formulations. For that, one must go beneath the surface, deeper than the realm of mere data. What they lacked, Kirk believed, was “understanding of the human condition” and an “apprehension of the accumulated wisdom of our civilization.”

This deficiency in understanding and wisdom most egregiously showed itself in what Kirk called their “infatuation with ideology.” Kirk believed the Neoconservatives to hold to ideology rather than prudence, and there could be few greater sins to Kirk. By ideology he meant “a political formula that promises mankind an earthly paradise.” And he did not exempt the ideology of Democratic Capitalism from that malignant category. Kirk found such formulas, even the less malevolent one of Democratic Capitalism to be nothing more than “the substitution of political slogans for real political thought.” With George Orwell, he found ideologues to be “the streamlined men who think in slogans and talk in bullets.”

Could we have a more accurate description of those driving American foreign policy? Is a phrase like “axis of evil” a political slogan or real political thought? Trite and meaningless phrases abound, with platitudes replacing substantive discussion. Proponents of invading Iraq were clever, but were they wise?

Walter Williams

makes more sense with each column. He may not be PC, but dammit its good reading. I continue with my recommendations of authors to read.

In this weeks column he hits the nail on the head regarding our social decline. This is especially true in light of mankind's (and I mean that to the male sex) failure as potential boyfriends as discussed in a recent IM conversation. Our decline in "datability" is directly linked to feminisms attempts to de-sex society.

Putin's Face

Is anyone else bothered by this picture? Aside from the soldiers doing push-ups, the giant picture of Putin's face in the background is a bit unsettling. It kind of reminds me of...oh, I don't know...the Soviet era. But wait, you tell me, its not like the guy used to work for the KGB...

The Fodder for Maureen Dowd's Next Column...

"Seventy-nine percent of Americans believe that, as the Bible says, Jesus Christ was born of the Virgin Mary, without a human father, according to a new NEWSWEEK poll on beliefs about Jesus. " Read the rest here.

Though I'm sure a number like this bewilders blue state secularists, the contents of this Newsweek article probably aren't a surprise to all those inhabiting "Jesusland," that vast expanse between the coasts where all our country's narrow-minded, medieval trogladytes live. Such a story could only be "news" to the MSM - who I'm sure in response to this "startling" data are preparing another round of op-eds such as appeared after Bush's reelection, which claimed the Enlightenment was dead at the hands of crass Superstition.

Also, I suggest reading The Puritan Origins of the American Self by Sacvan Bercovitch to further understand why, among other things, the Democrats won't win the presidency again until they attempt to respect America's religious heritage.

It seems to me...

One of the great things of late has been the MSM's willingness to take Kofi Annan to press with allegations of broken promises and treaties. Yes they haven't come out remarkably strong against him, but something is better than nothing.

America's one party state (The Economist)

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Hi All...I had to share this lovely little article from the Economist- in case anyone missed it!

Enjoy....I hope that you feel vindicated...I sure did.

Lexington

America's one-party state

Dec 2nd 2004

The Economist

If you loathe political debate, join the faculty of an American university

TOM WOLFE'S new novel about a young student, “I am Charlotte Simmons”, is a depressing read for any parent. Four years at an Ivy League university costs as much as a house in parts of the heartland—about $120,000 for tuition alone. But what do you get for your money? A ticket to “Animal House”.

In Mr Wolfe's fictional university the pleasures of the body take absolute precedence over the life of the mind. Students “hook up” (ie, sleep around) with indiscriminate zeal. Brainless jocks rule the roost, while impoverished nerds are reduced to ghost-writing their essays for them. The university administration is utterly indifferent to anything except the dogmas of political correctness (men and women are forced to share the same bathrooms in the name of gender equality). The Bacchanalia takes place to the soundtrack of hate-fuelled gangsta rap.

Mr Wolfe clearly exaggerates for effect (that's kinda, like, what satirists do, as one of his students might have explained). But on one subject he is guilty of understatement: diversity. He fires off a few predictable arrows at “diversoids”—students who are chosen on the basis of their race or gender. But he fails to expose the full absurdity of the diversity industry.

Academia is simultaneously both the part of America that is most obsessed with diversity, and the least diverse part of the country. On the one hand, colleges bend over backwards to hire minority professors and recruit minority students, aided by an ever-burgeoning bureaucracy of “diversity officers”. Yet, when it comes to politics, they are not just indifferent to diversity, but downright allergic to it.

Evidence of the atypical uniformity of American universities grows by the week. The Centre for Responsive Politics notes that this year two universities—the University of California and Harvard—occupied first and second place in the list of donations to the Kerry campaign by employee groups, ahead of Time Warner, Goldman Sachs, Microsoft et al. Employees at both universities gave 19 times as much to John Kerry as to George Bush. Meanwhile, a new national survey of more than 1,000 academics by Daniel Klein, of Santa Clara University, shows that Democrats outnumber Republicans by at least seven to one in the humanities and social sciences. And things are likely to get less balanced, because younger professors are more liberal. For instance, at Berkeley and Stanford, where Democrats overall outnumber Republicans by a mere nine to one, the ratio rises above 30 to one among assistant and associate professors.

“So what”, you might say, particularly if you happen to be an American liberal academic. Yet the current situation makes a mockery of the very legal opinion that underpins the diversity fad. In 1978, Justice Lewis Powell argued that diversity is vital to a university's educational mission, to promote the atmosphere of “speculation, experiment and creation” that is essential to their identities. The more diverse the body, the more robust the exchange of ideas. Why apply that argument so rigorously to, say, sexual orientation, where you have campus groups that proudly call themselves GLBTQ (gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered and questioning), but ignore it when it comes to political beliefs?

This is profoundly unhealthy per se. Debating chambers are becoming echo chambers. Students hear only one side of the story on everything from abortion (good) to the rise of the West (bad). It is notable that the surveys show far more conservatives in the more rigorous disciplines such as economics than in the vaguer 1960s “ologies”. Yet, as George Will pointed out in the Washington Post this week, this monotheism is also limiting universities' ability to influence the wider intellectual culture. In John Kennedy's day, there were so many profs in Washington that it was said the waters of the Charles flowed into the Potomac. These days, academia is marginalised in the capital—unless, of course, you count all the Straussian conservative intellectuals in think-tanks who left academia because they thought it was rigged against them.

Bias in universities is hard to correct because it is usually not overt: it has to do with prejudice about which topics are worth studying and what values are worth holding. Stephen Balch, the president of the conservative National Association of Scholars, argues that university faculties suffer from the same political problems as the “small republics” described in Federalist 10: a motivated majority within the faculty finds it easy to monopolise decision-making and squeeze out minorities.

Ivy-clad propaganda

The question is what to do about it. The most radical solution comes from David Horowitz, a conservative provocateur: force universities to endorse an Academic Bill of Rights, guaranteeing conservatives a fairer deal. Bills modelled on this idea are working their way through Republican state legislatures, most notably Colorado's. But even some conservatives are nervous about politicians interfering in self-governing institutions.

Mr Balch prefers an appropriately Madisonian solution to his Madisonian problem: a voluntary system of checks and balances to preserve the influence of minorities and promote intellectual competition. This might include a system of proportional voting that would give dissenters on a faculty more power, or the establishment of special programmes to promote views that are under-represented by the faculties.

The likelihood of much changing in universities in the near future is slim. The Republican business elite doesn't give a fig about silly academic fads in the humanities so long as American universities remain on the cutting edge of science and technology. As for the university establishment, leftists are hardly likely to relinquish their grip on one of the few bits of America where they remain in the ascendant. And that is a tragedy not just for America's universities but also for liberal thought.

Child of Reagan Welcomes Amanda Harder

AMANDA HARDER

Amanda Harder of Ojai, California studies War and Peace and International Studies at Norwich University in Vermont. She recently attended the Student Conference on the United States Affairs (SCUSA) at West Point. She's attended the Young America's Foundation National Student Conservative Conference in Washington, DC and helped out at their Santa Barbara office.

Amanda is an avid traveller, a beautiful soul and the most formidable of debaters. She loves art, political theory and people.

Novak's New Column

For those that know me, an admittedly few people, I consider Bob Novak's column required reading. Of late on the election he seemed to be mistaken (for example on pulling troops out of Iraq) but on the whole I like that he reports while pontificating.

His column out today is on Lindsey Graham's call to boost upper income payroll taxes to finance Social Security reform. I find it interesting for two main reasons.

• Its a great case for where philosophy meets pragmatism. I want to get rid of Social Security reform, but with Republicans like Arlen Specter its gonna need to be liberalized some to get crossover support. Financing it by sopping the rich would do this.
• It's a small step towards fiscal responsibility. The biggest charge against social security, besides that it'll leave the old out in the cold, is that its too expensive. Since Republicans have already run up the debt they can't plan anymore big things without suggesting how to finance it. Now they need to tax to finance reforms. Perhaps they'll think twice about wasting the voters fiscal patience on bad bills and save it for the good stuff from now on.

Well, that's all for now. I have a feeling my thoughts didn't come through too clearly, and it'll take questioning to sound em out better.

Whispers

Santorum Still Sore on Toomey Betrayal

Senator Rick Santorum - a man renown and reviled for his stance on family issues - not only supported but also campaigned for pro-abort Arlen Specter in both the general and primaries this year.

Why did Santorum give more than tacit support to Specter when he diametrically opposes many of Arlen's policies?

Some said that Specter endorsed Santorum when he was up for re-election and thus Rick was obligated to do the same thing. That answer seems unsatisfactory and shallow given that Santorum has demonstrated his unwillingness to bend on these most important issues in the past, even for his own gain.

Other theories say that Santorum wants power and has his eye on the presidency. The theory goes that Rick endorsed Specter to prevent another articulate, dynamic conservative like Patrick Toomey from saturating the market. Before the elections, Santorum had been seen as the favored son of the social Right -- the man who would confront the darkness of DC with all the moral indignation he could muster (and for Rick, that’s a lot). Toomey’s entrance into the Senate would strip Santorum of being “the up and coming bright conservative” from Pennsylvania, for Toomey is far brighter, thoughtful and well versed on the issues. (Toomey has a backbone, I might add too, unlike Santorum.)

But Santorum’s endorsement in the primary and general wasn’t enough. He worked behind the scenes to ensure that Arlen Specter was given the highly coveted chairmanship of the Senate Judiciary Committee, despite the thousands of phone calls his office received indicating that they prefer “anyone to Arlen.”

That’s three betrayals.

But the story doesn’t end there.

Rick sold out his old pro-life constituency not one or two, but three times all within the course of nine months.

And then he came to Alaska and did it again.

At this point, the best of the pundits could not call the Senate race in Alaska. The RNC was worried and sent Rick to persuade the Alaska Right to Life to endorse Lisa Murkowski, the nominal Republican.
Rick Santorum flew to Anchorage and eloquently defended his pro-life record, which was unblemished before the Specter endorsements. By inference, the Alaska Right to Life was supposed to endorse Lisa “Women Have a Right to an Abortion” Murkowski because Ricky loves loves loves babies.

My hero and the man who turned me onto politics as a precocious eight-year-old girl told Santorum over a conference call, “Senator, we don’t care about your record. This is about Lisa, not you.”

The Senator began to defend his record again.

My friend said, “Sir, what about Toomey? If you had not interfered in that race, Pat Toomey would have been elected.”

Santorum went ballistic.

Child of Reagan Welcomes Matt Sitman

MATTHEW SITMAN

Matthew Sitman of Bellwood, Pennsylvania is a PhD student at Georgetown University and a magna cum laude graduate of Grove City College. At Georgetown, Matthew studies political theory by day and Henry Kissenger by night. He has worked at the Heritage Foundation, been a research assistant for a New York Times best-selling book, and is an Intercollegiate Studies Institute campus representative.

He considers the source of all wisdom about American politics to be Tocqueville's Democracy in America and believes Russell Kirk to be the greatest conservative thinker of the 20th century. A political pessimist, he, like Whittaker Chambers, believes he is fighting for the losing side - George W. Bush's victory notwithstanding. He prefers Plato over Aristotle, Jesus over Mohammed, and Hamilton over Jefferson.

The continuing collapse of the Iron Curtain

The past few weeks have echoed with the fading tremors of the Cold War. Continuing the legacy of activists who bucked the power of the Soviet arsenal, Ukrainians have unequivocally sent a message to Vladimir Putin that authoritarian suppression of representative government will not be exported to the former satellites, as it was in the days of Yalta.

Despite Russian efforts to the contrary, democracy and markets are beginning to flourish behind the old borders of the Soviet Socialist Republics. Lithuania is a superb case study: three-fourths of the economy is now privately owned, with aggressive plans underway for further privatization of the remaining government-owned assets within the next few years. The GDP is up from an already-healthy 6.9 percent to 9 percent, and significantly more confidence is placed in churches, schools, and the media than in the government. Fear of encroachment has been replaced with elite forces such as Iron Wolf, and the American model of free markets, liberty, and peace through strength is growing in popularity throughout the region.

For those of you who may not have seen Krauthammer’s choice column on current developments in the region, and their global significance, it is well worth a read.

He raises the greater problem of the belief in “democracy on one continent.”

Can it be fostered elsewhere? More pointedly, what are Europe’s responsibilities?

Is there, as Michael Novak argues, a “universal hunger for liberty”?

More to follow later…

Love Hurts...

William and Mary how can you do this to me? First you make a glorious comeback from 21 down at the half to win the football quarterfinals in double overtime. Then I read that you've spent $100,000 in the space of 3 hrs.

On the one hand I love how enthused the student body is at the game, making so much noise as to force 1 time out and 2 false starts. On the other hand this is the same student body that elected the putzes that spend money like a drunken sailor.

Can you beat the NY Times?

Drudge had up an article by Frank Rich today. It basically attacked attempts by NBC to make new head anchor Brian Williams seem culturally to the right. Don't read the article for that, but because its absolutely silly.

Some choice lines...

"There's a [culture] war on. TV remains by far the most prevalent source of news for Americans. We need honest information to help us navigate, not bunkum skewed to flatter one segment of the country, whatever that segment might be." ...now remember this was printed in the NY Times.

"The newsmakers who made freshly shot guest appearances in the program to augment Mr. Brokaw's own accounts included not just George H. W. Bush and Norman Schwarzkopf but also Betty Friedan (who talked of how women of the 1950's "were supposed to have orgasms waxing the kitchen floor"), the AIDS activist Larry Kramer..., [sweatship activist] Tom Hayden and... Hillary Clinton. If Mr. Brokaw were arriving as anchor instead of leaving, this genuinely fair-and-balanced account of his career would have been vilified by the right-wing press and blogosphere 24/7 - assuming the red-state-besotted suits at NBC would have allowed him anywhere near the anchor chair in the first place."... by my count that's 2 center right for 4 liberals. fair-and-balanced?

"The idea, largely but not exclusively fomented by the right, that TV news might somehow soon be supplanted by blogging as a mass medium may remain a populist fantasy until Americans are able to receive blogs by iPod. (At which point they become talk radio.) "

there's more, but that's all for now folks.

...[Nature] can so inform

The mind that is within us, so impress

With quietness and beauty, so feed

With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,

Rash judgements, nor the sneers of selfish men,

Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all

The dreary intercourse of daily life,

Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb

Our cheerful faith that all which we behold

Is full of blessings.

--Wordsworth

Child of Reagan Welcomes New Bloggers

STEPHEN "Judas" BRAUNLICH

Stephen Braunlich attends the College of William & Mary, where he is majoring in government and minoring in history. He founded a conservative student paper, The W&M Standard, and and Virginia Collegians for Life. He has no immediate plans following graduation, but is considering missionary work through a Catholic organization, military service, work, and/or post-graduate degrees. He has been active in politics since high school and is an officer of William & Mary Students for Life and Virginia Collegians for Life.

ANASTAZIA SKOLNITSKY

Anastazia Skolnitsky, of Fairfax, Va., is a Dean's List senior at George Mason University majoring in government and international politics with a history minor. She is a Founding Member of GMU Students for Life and active in the College Republicans. Her most recent campaign stint was in La Crosse, WI. She has worked for the Mercatus Center, an economic think thank, and collaborated with the Institute for Humane Studies. A Cold War geek, freelance writer, and book reviewer for townhall.com, she enjoys collecting old volumes and plans to get a graduate degree before taking a post as a journalist or Foreign Service Officer. She has participated in Heritage Foundation, Luce Institute, and YAF programs, and interned for Reuters Television in Washington, D.C. As a Research Fellow at the Kuwait Information Office, she studied democracy and women's rights while feasting on the best chicken shwarma west of the Gulf. Anastazia is a passionate proponent of liberty and free markets. She credits Reagan with making both a possibility for millions of the oppressed around the world.

FOUNDING BLOGGER

MELINDA HARING

melindaharing

Melinda Haring of Kenai, Alaska graduated magna cum laude with a degree in politics from Grove City College in dreary western Pennsylvania. She spent her collegiate summers in Washington, DC, for the noble cause of advancing the conservative cause and the less noble cause of finding free food. Melinda has worked on the Hill, with the Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute, the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, the Club for Growth, and most recently, for the Young Britons' Foundation in London.

She is an avid campaigner and possesses an unhealthy love of campaigns. While a student, she volunteered on the Toomey for U.S. Senate campaign (PA), the hottest primary race of the 2004 season and later worked and blogged on Mike Miller’s U.S. Senatorial campaign (AK). She considers the highlight of her college days chasing 24 year incumbent Senator Arlen Specter in a pig suit.

Melinda is most passionate about the cause of liberty, an indefatigable defender of the free market, a rabid Euro-skeptic, and a great admirer of Ronald Reagan and Julian Simon.

On the sublime...

"...sublime places suggest that it is not surprising that things should be thus. We are the playthings of the forces that laid out the oceans and chiselled the mountains. Sublime places gently move us to acknowledge limitations that we might otherwise encounter with anxiety or anger in the ordinary flow of events. It is not just nature that defies us. Human life is as overwhelming. But it is the vast spaces of nature that perhaps provide us with the finest, the most respectful reminder of all that exceeds us. If we spend time in them, they may help us to accept more graciously the great, unfathomable events that molest our lives and will inevitably return us to dust."

Alain de Botton, The Art of Travel

Honoring the Conquer of Communism

Help Honor Ronald Reagan With a Monument in Warsaw, Poland

From the Proclamation of The Committee for Raising the Monument of Ronald Reagan:

"We, the Undersigned, do hereby constitute the The Committee for Raising the Monument of Ronald Reagan. It shall be our purpose to give honor to the 40th President of the United States, the conqueror of communism, by erecting a monument in the center of Warsaw."

-----

On Saturday, June 5th 2004, Ronald Reagan died. He was the fortieth president of the USA, a supporter of conservative values, and a great friend of Poland and the Polish people.

He was one of the most important figures in the world of politics in the 20th century. He destroyed the "Evil Empire" and freed the nations of Eastern Europe from communism. He advocated freedom and initiative in the then stagnant and socialized American economy.

On June 7th 2004, a social committee was set up to pay homage to Ronald Reagan by erecting a monument in his memory in Warsaw. The activities of the Committee are co-ordinated by Mr. Iwo Bender, a member of the City Council of Warsaw, and Councilman Stanisław Wojtera, who is also Chairman of the conservative party Unia Polityki Realnej. It is a shared belief among the members of the Committee that the memory of President Reagan, a great friend of Poland and the Polish people, should be especially cultivated by the citizens of Warsaw. The main task of the Committee is to collect financial resources, and thus all the people and institutions sharing our convictions and willing to support the erection of the monument are cordially invited to participate in its activities.

Dignity, faith, family, justice, individual freedom and independence were the leading values in Ronald Reagan's life. If you endorse those values as well, and are willing to commemorate the life of the politician who defeated communism and liberated Eastern Europe, do contact us and support the erection of Reagan's monument in Warsaw.

We would like to invite all the institutions and people willing to support this idea to contact us and we will provide you with all the required information regarding the activities of our Committee.

Contact details:

The Ronald Reagan Monument Committeeul. Nowy Świat 4100-042 Warsaw POLAND

phone no.: (+48 22) 826 46 42

e-mail: info