Have We Forsaken Them?

I commend to you this remembrance by Robert Morrison of the Churchill-Roosevelt summit of 1941.

What I wish to leave with you are these closing lines:

This 70th anniversary of the first summit comes just as the U.S. Air Force has backed down ignominiously when challenged by a small, militant group of atheizers. For 20 years, Air Force chaplains have been offering training to those who might be called upon to launch nuclear missiles in the event of a Doomsday scenario. In the course, the Air Force chaplains dared to invoke biblical imagery and offer quotes from Scripture.

Britain’s normally conservative Daily Telegraph hooted at the now-banned course, dubbing it “Jesus Loves Nukes.” Banned as well is anything taught by Augustine of Hippo. His philosophy served for 1,600 years as the basis for just-war doctrine. It is to Augustine we looked to know why the Holocaust was wrong, why the builders of the Gulag were an evil empire. In place of Augustine, we will be directed to the U.N.’s Human Rights Council, where slaughterers of innocents outvote the craven representatives of once-civilized states.

They were the kind of nations whose chosen leaders met at the first summit. Would Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill recognize the world their successors are making? Have we forsaken them and all they did for our freedom? Are we yet men of strength and courage?

How can that world seem so much farther than seventy years away? Oh, the false gods we have built for ourselves...

And they seem to be demanding their reckoning.

Two Californias

Now, the other interesting thing I wanted to share: Victor Davis Hanson's depressing "Two Californias" piece.

The last three weeks I have traveled about, taking the pulse of the more forgotten areas of central California. I wanted to witness, even if superficially, what is happening to a state that has the highest sales and income taxes, the most lavish entitlements, the near-worst public schools (based on federal test scores), and the largest number of illegal aliens in the nation, along with an overregulated private sector, a stagnant and shrinking manufacturing base, and an elite environmental ethos that restricts commerce and productivity without curbing consumption.

VDH knows whereof he speaks; the California he is surveying is his own backyard, the California he has spent his life in. Not the pampered coast, but the rural valley that once boomed with agriculture. But not any more.

The entire piece is an essential read, but one thread that runs through it stands out to me more than anything - a lack of equality before the law.

We hear about the tough small-business regulations that have driven residents out of the state, at the rate of 2,000 to 3,000 a week. But from my unscientific observations these past weeks, it seems rather easy to open a small business in California without any oversight at all, or at least what I might call a “counter business.” I counted eleven mobile hot-kitchen trucks that simply park by the side of the road, spread about some plastic chairs, pull down a tarp canopy, and, presto, become mini-restaurants. There are no “facilities” such as toilets or washrooms. But I do frequently see lard trails on the isolated roads I bike on, where trucks apparently have simply opened their draining tanks and sped on, leaving a slick of cooking fats and oils. Crows and ground squirrels love them; they can be seen from a distance mysteriously occupied in the middle of the road.

At crossroads, peddlers in a counter-California economy sell almost anything. Here is what I noticed at an intersection on the west side last week: shovels, rakes, hoes, gas pumps, lawnmowers, edgers, blowers, jackets, gloves, and caps. The merchandise was all new. I doubt whether in high-tax California sales taxes or income taxes were paid on any of these stop-and-go transactions.

This is far different than the usual legal iniquities spoon-fed us by popular culture, where poor minorities are preyed upon by the rich & powerful.

Rather, today's California is the opposite, where the shadow world is ignored - if not abetted - by the government of California. This is a tyranny of apathy, of ignorance, of sloth. Where political correctness and obeisance to trendy pieties matters more than truth.

Many of the rural trailer-house compounds I saw appear to the naked eye no different from what I have seen in the Third World. There is a Caribbean look to the junked cars, electric wires crisscrossing between various outbuildings, plastic tarps substituting for replacement shingles, lean-tos cobbled together as auxiliary housing, pit bulls unleashed, and geese, goats, and chickens roaming around the yards. The public hears about all sorts of tough California regulations that stymie business — rigid zoning laws, strict building codes, constant inspections — but apparently none of that applies out here.

It is almost as if the more California regulates, the more it does not regulate. Its public employees prefer to go after misdemeanors in the upscale areas to justify our expensive oversight industry, while ignoring the felonies in the downtrodden areas, which are becoming feral and beyond the ability of any inspector to do anything but feel irrelevant. But in the regulators’ defense, where would one get the money to redo an ad hoc trailer park with a spider web of illegal bare wires?

As California seeks to provide more and more with less and less, one has to wonder - how much longer can it continue?

At some point, the money has to run out.

Repost: The Beginning of a Reckoning for the Khmer Rouge

Tyler's Note: I originally posted this two weeks ago, but I wanted to call your attention to its contents again. So here it is.

Claire Berlinski over at Ricochet.com pointed out this article by Guy Sorman at City Journal. Mr. Sorman explains that Cambodia is finally bringing to justice - in a civil, lawful manner - some of those who perpetrated the horrors of the killing fields.

But Cambodians and foreigners alike still struggle to understand why so many were put to death. Mr. Sorman explains that the answer why is chillingly simple - such carnage is an essential part of Communism, a natural reflex:

But who or what was behind what the tribunal has called the genocide of Khmers by other Khmers? Might this be the fault of the United States? Was it not the Americans who, by setting up a regime in Cambodia to their liking, brought about a nationalist reaction? Or, might this genocide not be a cultural legacy, distinctive of Khmer civilization? Archeologists are digging through the past in vain to find a historical precedent. The true explanation, the meaning of the crime, can be found in the declarations of the Khmer Rouge themselves: just as Hitler described his crimes in advance, Pol Pot (who died in 1998) had explained early on that he would destroy his people, so as to create a new one. Pol Pot called himself a Communist; he became one in the 1960s as a student in Paris, then a cradle of Marxism. Since Pol Pot and leaders of the regime that he forced on his people referred to themselves as Communists—and in no way claimed to be heirs of some Cambodian dynasty—we must acknowledge that they were, in fact, Communists.

What the Khmer Rouge brought to Cambodia was in fact real Communism. There was no radical distinction, either conceptually or concretely, between the rule of the Khmer Rouge and that of Stalinism, Maoism, Castroism, or the North Korean regime. All Communist regimes follow strangely similar trajectories, barely colored by local traditions. In every case, these regimes seek to make a blank slate of the past and to forge a new humanity. In every case, the “rich,” intellectuals, and skeptics wind up exterminated. The Khmer Rouge rounded up urban and rural populations in agricultural communities based on precedents both Russian (the Kolkhozy) and Chinese (the popular communes), and they acted for the same ideological reasons and with the same result: famine. There is no such thing as real Communism without massacre, torture, concentration camps, gulags, or laogai. And if there has never been any such thing, then we must conclude that there could be no other outcome: Communist ideology leads necessarily to mass violence, because the masses do not want real Communism. This is as true in the rice fields of Cambodia as in the plains of Ukraine or under Cuban palms.

And still, far too many refuse to see. It simply hasn't been done properly yet; it just wasn't done right. Give us a chance. We'll make it work.

But killing is Communism's nature. It is essential to how it works, how it survives.

Communism survives - no, thrives - on blood and horror and human misery.


***

By the way, if all this seems like cold numbers to you, read this. It is an account by Pin Yathay, a man who welcomed the arrival of the Khmer Rouge into the capital - and spent the next two years trying to survive them. He escaped with only his life, watching his entire family die at their hands or by their neglect.

When everything - and everyone - is property of The State on behalf of The People, it is truly horrible what crimes will be committed in their name.


***

P.S. Ricochet and City Journal should be weekly visits, at minimum. There are some fascinating conversations at Ricochet, and absolutely fantastic writing at City Journal.

The Beginning of a Reckoning for the Khmer Rouge

Claire Berlinski over at Ricochet.com pointed out this article by Guy Sorman at City Journal. Mr. Sorman explains that Cambodia is finally bringing to justice - in a civil, lawful manner - some of those who perpetrated the horrors of the killing fields.

But Cambodians and foreigners alike still struggle to understand why so many were put to death. Mr. Sorman explains that the answer why is chillingly simple - such carnage is an essential part of Communism, a natural reflex:

But who or what was behind what the tribunal has called the genocide of Khmers by other Khmers? Might this be the fault of the United States? Was it not the Americans who, by setting up a regime in Cambodia to their liking, brought about a nationalist reaction? Or, might this genocide not be a cultural legacy, distinctive of Khmer civilization? Archeologists are digging through the past in vain to find a historical precedent. The true explanation, the meaning of the crime, can be found in the declarations of the Khmer Rouge themselves: just as Hitler described his crimes in advance, Pol Pot (who died in 1998) had explained early on that he would destroy his people, so as to create a new one. Pol Pot called himself a Communist; he became one in the 1960s as a student in Paris, then a cradle of Marxism. Since Pol Pot and leaders of the regime that he forced on his people referred to themselves as Communists—and in no way claimed to be heirs of some Cambodian dynasty—we must acknowledge that they were, in fact, Communists.

What the Khmer Rouge brought to Cambodia was in fact real Communism. There was no radical distinction, either conceptually or concretely, between the rule of the Khmer Rouge and that of Stalinism, Maoism, Castroism, or the North Korean regime. All Communist regimes follow strangely similar trajectories, barely colored by local traditions. In every case, these regimes seek to make a blank slate of the past and to forge a new humanity. In every case, the “rich,” intellectuals, and skeptics wind up exterminated. The Khmer Rouge rounded up urban and rural populations in agricultural communities based on precedents both Russian (the Kolkhozy) and Chinese (the popular communes), and they acted for the same ideological reasons and with the same result: famine. There is no such thing as real Communism without massacre, torture, concentration camps, gulags, or laogai. And if there has never been any such thing, then we must conclude that there could be no other outcome: Communist ideology leads necessarily to mass violence, because the masses do not want real Communism. This is as true in the rice fields of Cambodia as in the plains of Ukraine or under Cuban palms.

And still, far too many refuse to see. It simply hasn't been done properly yet; it just wasn't done right. Give us a chance. We'll make it work.

But killing is Communism's nature. It is essential to how it works, how it survives.

Communism survives - no, thrives - on blood and horror and human misery.

***

By the way, if all this seems like cold numbers to you, read this. It is an account by Pin Yathay, a man who welcomed the arrival of the Khmer Rouge into the capital - and spent the next two years trying to survive them. He escaped with only his life, watching his entire family die at their hands or by their neglect.

When everything - and everyone - is property of The State on behalf of The People, it is truly horrible what crimes will be committed in their name.

***

P.S. Ricochet and City Journal should be weekly visits, at minimum. There are some fascinating conversations at Ricochet, and absolutely fantastic writing at City Journal.

These Groups Don't Represent Me

The difference between reality and fiction? Fiction has to make sense.


- Tom Clancy

Some things you just can't make up. A month ago, Glenn Beck organized a rally that attracted some 500,000 people, where they proceeded to talk about God and honor, which are apparently radical concepts considering the hostile response it attracted.

Now, the latest outraged response is a counter-rally, occurring this coming weekend, and organized by Democratic campaign organizations. So who is answering the alarm? National Review's Dan Foster:

Confederacy to Descend on Washington
September 27, 2010 1:52 A.M.
By Daniel Foster

A confederacy of liberal groups, that is. They plan to host on Saturday a sort of ‘counter-demonstration’ to Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally and, according to the New York Times “make the case that they, and not the ascendant right, speak for America’s embattled middle class.”

Who’s going to be at the march, representing the embattled middle class?

Why, the NAACP, the AFL-CIO, the SEIU, the American Federation of Teachers, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, and the National Council of La Raza.

And that’s just the organizations that the Times sees fit to mention in the article. More telling still is the ranks of those left out. Among them:

–Chicago Democratic Socialists of America

–Code Pink

–Committee of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism

–Communist Party USA

–Democratic Socialists of America

–International Socialist Organization

–Planned Parenthood

A veritable tapestry of America’s embattled middle class.

The sarcasm is Foster's, but I don't think it misplaced.

If you planned such a set-up in a novel, you would be laughed out of the editors' office. My high school English teacher would demand better plotting in a short story.

But here we are.

Surrender & Self-Loathing

Bill Whittle is a must-see.

UPDATE 8/20/2010
Here's the video:

"Those Voices Don't Speak For The Rest Of Us"

This needs to be shown everywhere it can be, not just in the next two-and-a-half months but over the next two-and-a-half years.

They Already Know Who They Want To Win

"If this surprises you, you are not paying attention."
Amy Miller, Red State

In California 36th Congressional District, the local press decides to sit the election out. Apparently they only need to cover one candidate.

From The Other McCain:

A reporter for the Torrance (Calif.) Daily Breeze sent an e-mail to a political consultant saying the newspaper is “not interested” in covering Republican candidate Mattie Fein, who is challenging Democratic Rep. Jane Harman in California’s 36th District.

In the e-mail sent Wednesday (see text below), Daily Breeze reporter Nick Green told consultant John S. Thomas of Thomas Partners Strategies, “Don’t call or e-mail us – we’ll call you if we’re interested. And if you haven’t got it yet, we’re not interested.”

Green also told Thomas not to send Fein campaign communications to his Daily Breeze colleague, Art Marroquin.

TEXT OF NICK GREEN E-MAIL
TO JOHN S. THOMAS
Sent: Aug 11, 2010 12:58 PM
John:
Don’t call or e-mail us – we’ll call you if we’re interested. And if you haven’t got it yet, we’re not interested. And stop sending the same messages to my co-worker Art as well
Thank you.
Nick

According to sources with the Fein campaign, Thomas had contacted the Daily Breeze staffers seeking coverage of the Republican challenger’s response to a recently passed bill that the newspaper reported would “save 215 jobs in Rep. Jane Harman’s district.” A subsequent Daily Breeze story Thursday featured Harman’s statement that a jobs program was the ”best thing out there to keep and create jobs in Los Angeles County,” included no reponse from Fein or any other Republican.

That would be the same Representative Harman whose husband just bought Newsweak Newsweek, although he was only able to do so because he had sufficiently liberal credentials.

Isn't it interesting how the press is only interested in holding certain people to account? It's almost as though they've chosen sides...

Solutions Looking For Problems, and Finding Them

Finding them after making them up.

As referred to by the DC Trawler (at The Daily Caller), the Department of Justice is going after the state of South Carolina because of its HIV/AIDS prevention policies in the state's prison system. From J. Christian Adams in the Washington Examiner:

Two unpleasant topics of conversation most of us avoid are the epidemic of HIV/AIDS among prison inmates and a variety of sometimes violent events resulting in transmission of the disease. Some states long ago implemented policies to protect the uninfected part of the prison population while providing exceptional medical treatment and counseling to the infected population.

In South Carolina, it has worked so well since 1998 that there has only been a single transmission of HIV/AIDS to a noninfected prisoner. All that may change, however, thanks to a threat from Eric Holder's Justice Department.

South Carolina received a letter from the now-infamous Civil Rights Division that the policy of keeping infected inmates at a designated facility, instead of scattered across the state in the general prison population, may unfairly stigmatize infected prisoners. To the Obama political appointees in the Civil Rights Division, this constitutes discrimination under the Americans With Disabilities Act.

The Justice Department objects to separate living facilities and specialized medical treatment for the HIV/AIDS prison population. Naturally, DOJ has threatened a lawsuit.

Read the whole piece.

The New Anti-Semitism Can Give You a Headache

I'll let Mr. Nordlinger do all the talking this time:

Jews, Decoy and Real [Jay Nordlinger]

The news about “decoy Jews” in Holland is making the rounds. And I was especially interested in this column by Paul Belien, available from Hudson New York. (Yes, you read that right: no commas no nothin’.) I’ll excerpt a little of the column, or a lot:

Last week, a television broadcast showed how three Jews with skullcaps, two adolescents and an adult, were harassed within thirty minutes of being out in the streets of Amsterdam. Young Muslims spat at them, mocked them, shouted insults and made Nazi salutes. “Dirty Jew, go back to your own country,” a group of Moroccan youths shouted at a young indigenous Dutch Jew. “It is rather ironic,” the young man commented, adding that if one goes out in a burka one encounters less hostility than if one wears a skullcap.

I wonder what those young Moroccans meant by “your own country.” Helen Thomas means Germany and Poland, chiefly. (She did not specify Auschwitz: That was the “peace activists” and “humanitarians” aboard that Turkish ship.) Do they mean Israel? It must be so confusing for a Jew, this “go home” stuff. Where’s home? Poland? Israel? Mars?

But the Moroccans clearly have a sure sense of home: Holland, and Europe generally...

...Now, check out this bit:

The deployment of “decoy Jews”, however, is being criticized by leftist parties such as the Dutch Greens. Evelien van Roemburg, an Amsterdam counselor of the Green Left Party, says that using a decoy by the police amounts to provoking a crime, which is itself a criminal offence under Dutch law.

Got that? If you go out looking like a Jew, and a Muslim physically assaults you, it’s your fault — kind of like it’s your fault if you’re a girl and your skirt is too short. To be on the safe side: Don’t look Jewish. And if you do look Jewish, you had better be Jewish, or the Dutch Greens won’t like it. Or something.

The new anti-Semitism is sometimes hard to keep up with.

Or, if you’re a Muslim, and you assault a Jew who is actually a Jew, that’s kind of bad, but if you assault a Jew who turns out to be a decoy — even though you thought he was a Jew — that’s not so bad, because you were tricked . . . or something.

The new anti-Semitism can give you a headache.

Taking Israel's Side

John Derbyshire:

It remains the case that any fair-minded person must be an Israel sympathizer. A hundred years ago there were Jews and Arabs living in that part of the Ottoman Empire. After the Ottoman collapse both peoples had a right to set up their own ethnostates. It has been the furiously intransigent Arab denial of this fact, not anything Israelis have done, that has been the root cause of all subsequent troubles. It is also indisputably the case, as has often been said, that if Hamas, Hezbollah, and the rest were to lay down their arms, there would be peace in Palestine, while if Israel were to lay down her arms, the Israelis would be slaughtered.

At some level, I’ll agree, this is not our business. North of five million people have been slaughtered in the Congo this past twelve years, and nobody much (no, not me—how about you?) has lost a wink of sleep over it...

...Israel is something to me. It’s an outpost of my civilization, organized on principles I agree with, inhabited by people I could live at ease with. They defend themselves, their borders, their interests, with the kind of vigor and thick-skinned determination I’d like to see my nation display. (If only!) I admire them and wish them well.

There’s an affinity. In some tenuous sense, they are me, and I am them.

Hang This One Up On The Wall

"There is no "good" communist," writes Jeff Jacoby.


A simple truth that just doesn't seem to penetrate into the popular culture. It's nice to hear it so plainly spoken:

IF JOSÉ Saramago, the Portuguese writer who died on Friday at 87, had been an unrepentant Nazi for the last four decades, he would never have won international acclaim or received the 1998 Nobel Prize for Literature. Leading publishers would never have brought out his books, his works would not have been translated into more than 20 languages, and the head of Portugal’s government would never have said on his death — as Prime Minister José Sócrates did say last week — that he was “one of our great cultural figures and his disappearance has left our culture poorer.’’


But Saramago wasn’t a Nazi, he was a communist.

Continuing,

But the idea that good people can be devoted communists is grotesque. The two categories are mutually exclusive. There was a time, perhaps, when dedication to communism could be absolved as misplaced idealism or naiveté, but that day is long past. After Auschwitz and Babi Yar, only a moral cripple could be a committed Nazi. By the same token, there are no good and decent communists — not after the Gulag Archipelago and the Cambodian killing fields and Mao’s “Great Leap Forward.’’ Not after the testimonies of Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Armando Valladares and Dith Pran...


...Anyone who imagines that the horrors of communist rule is a thing of the past ought to spend a few minutes with, say, the State Department’s latest human rights report on North Korea. (Sample passage: “Methods of torture . . . included severe beatings, electric shock, prolonged periods of exposure to the elements, humiliations such as public nakedness, confinement for up to several weeks in small ‘punishment cells’ in which prisoners were unable to stand upright or lie down... and forcing mothers recently repatriated from China to watch the infanticide of their newborn infants.") Communism is not, as its champions like to claim, an appealing doctrine that has been perverted by monstrous regimes. It is a monstrous doctrine that hides behind appealing rhetoric. It is mass crime embodied in government. Nothing devised by human beings has caused more misery or proven more brutal.


Saramago may have been a fine writer, but he was no exemplar of goodness. Good people do not embrace communism, and communists are not good.

Bolding is mine.

How rare that is to hear, and how sad how few realize its truth. Well said, Mr. Jacoby.

Distant Thunder

Daniel Jackson reports:

I've been travelling up and down Israel the last several weeks talking with the young men and women who are either in service or recently out of service. They are an incredible group. They are bright, fit, clear, and incredibly pleasant company. They are also very sober with how things are shaping up. They will be the ones in Harm's Way.

There's a place where I go to look at stars where the Israel Trail cuts through.

On any given night, I will run into four to six young people eager to play with telescopes, share some tea and food around a campfire, and talk about things to come.

The coming war is on everyone's mind.

I cannot comment on the veracity of Mr. Jackson's comments, but there is a building tension in the Middle East as the United States and Europe wallow in their self-inflicted misery and turn their focus ever-more myopically inward.

Rumors of moves and counters, of Israeli plans and Iranian initiatives, of Hezbollah rockets and Syrian chemical weapons. Israel views Iran as an existential threat; Iran views Israel as the paramount obstacle to its Arabian ambitions. Israel is said to be considering a preemptive strike to slow Iran's nuclar program; Iran is now rumored to be planning a strike of is own to forestall that, figuring it better to take the initiative while its nuclear capabilities are an open question.

I've been reading too much about World War One of late, so these rumors cannot help but invite comparisons to the various crises that lead to that horrible war. Much like the summer of 1914, I feel that we are in for a long, tense summer of diplomatic initiatives that ultimately fail to prevent a horrible war. And regardless of your feelings about it, Americans will be caught in the crossfire, in Israel, in the Persian Gulf and in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It's going to be a long, hot summer.

There Oughta Be A Law

Shannen Coffin has a great little piece up on NRO:

There Oughta Be a Law

This article is in full compliance with all applicable state, federal, and municipal regulations.


Bleary-eyed, I crawl out of bed, shuffle into the bathroom, and flip on the lights, but the bulb is out. I remind myself to get to Home Depot and stockpile a few cases of good, old-fashioned incandescent bulbs while I still can. After my morning business, I flush an extra time, since 1.6 gallons just doesn’t seem to do the trick. But at least we’re saving water, huh? Hop in the shower, where the water trickles out at an EPA-limited 2.5 gallons per minute. I think I’ll stay in here for an extra ten minutes or so.

I walk out to get the morning paper and take out the trash. “Honey, make sure to put out the recycling, too.” Right. I hope we sorted this stuff correctly. As I’m contemplating whether you can recycle pizza boxes, my dog fertilizes the lawn, so I go looking for a plastic bag (without holes).

I load my daughter into my fuel-inefficient SUV, asking myself how many hybrids the manufacturer had to make to offset the hit against Department of Transportation CAFE standards. She’s comfortably seated in her state-mandated booster seat. With no time for a decent breakfast, we hop in the drive-through lane at McDonald’s. I wonder how they’re going to get all that nutrition information required by Obamacare on the drive-through menu. Or how I’m going to be able to read it. Not to worry, though — at least no insurance company can refuse to cover me for my high cholesterol now. Who says there is no such thing as a free breakfast?

On the way to the office, my cell phone rings, but I can’t answer it because I can’t find my hands-free device. I drop by the bank for some cash and ponder whether I’ve exceeded the six withdrawals per month permitted by the Fed’s Regulation D. I spend my day at work trying to save a client facing possible extinction from a federal regulation that would effectively shut his business down. Thank goodness I don’t have to deal with such oppressive regulations in my daily life.

On the way home, I stop at the drugstore to pick up some cold medicine. They ask for my ID and check the log to see the last time I bought any. The feds want to make sure I’m not manufacturing crystal meth. Me, manufacture meth? I have a hard time making pancakes.

When I get home that night, I lunge for the remote as the all-too-familiar Cialis ad is coming on. The kids don’t need to hear about side effects in excess of four hours. (Four hours? Really?) After sending them off to bed in their Consumer Product Safety Commission–compliant pajamas, I look at a stack of bills. Can I call the doctor to dispute the charges on my wife’s bill if she hasn’t signed a HIPAA waiver? Maybe she should just call herself.

As much as I hate to do it, I sit down with TaxCut to go over my return. Tax day is just around the corner, after all. Since my law firm does business overseas, I am entitled to a tax credit for foreign taxes paid. But to take advantage of it, I’ll also have to rerun the alternative-minimum-tax calculations, which means filling out Form 1116 twice. I also need to rerun last year’s alt-min calculation to figure out if my state tax refund is taxable on my federal return this year. Maybe I should have just followed Tim Geithner’s example.

Individual liberty is a diminishing commodity these days. It began with laws protecting one individual from harming another; these days, it has morphed into bans on trans-fats in your doughnuts and salt on your fries. And you don’t have to be Ted Kaczynski to feel just a little overwhelmed.

Exhausted once again, I collapse into bed, finally in the one place where even liberals say I should be left alone. Now what’s this mattress tag say?

— Shannen W. Coffin is a lawyer at Steptoe & Johnson LLP in Washington, D.C. No animals were harmed in the writing of this piece.

If America Becomes as Europe, Who Fills America's Shoes?

Jonah Goldberg today:

In the egghead-o-sphere, there’s been an ongoing debate about whether America should become more like Europe. The battle lines are split almost perfectly along left-right lines ideologically. Liberals like Europe’s welfare states, unionized workforces (in and out of government), generous benefits, long vacations, etc. Conservatives like America’s economic growth, its dynamism and innovation.

From what I can tell, everyone agrees that you can’t have Europeanization without European-size governments. Hence, America’s government outlays (pre-Obama) have tended to hover around 20 percent of GDP (the average of the last 50 years), while Europe’s are often more than twice that. In France, government outlays are nearly 55 percent of GDP. In 2009, the bailout and the Obama budget sent America’s government outlays to 28 percent of GDP, but that should decline a bit over the next decade, unless Democrats have something else in mind.

To be fair, liberals insist conservatives are wrong to think that Europeanizing America will necessarily come at any significant cost. New York Times columnist and Princeton economist Paul Krugman says that, in exchange for only a tiny bit less growth, Europeans buy a whole lot of security and comfort. Economists such as Stanford’s Michael Boskin say Europeans have a standard of living about 30 percent lower than ours and are stagnating. Others note that the structural unemployment rate in Europe, particularly for young people (it’s over 20 percent in many countries), is socially devastating.

Obviously, I’m in the conservative camp. But I think the debate misses something. We can’t become Europe unless someone else is willing to become America.

Look at it this way. My seven-year-old daughter has a great lifestyle. She has all of her clothes and food bought for her. She goes on great vacations. She has plenty of leisure time. A day doesn’t go by where I don’t look at her and feel envious of how good she’s got it compared to me. But here’s the problem: If I decide to live like her, who’s going to take my place?

Europe is a free-rider. It can only afford to be Europe because we can afford to be America.

The most obvious and most cited illustration of this fact is national defense. Europe’s defense budgets have been miniscule because Europeans can count on Uncle Sam to protect them. Britain, which has the most credible military in NATO after ours, has funded its butter account with its gun account. As Mark Steyn recently noted in National Review, from 1951 to 1997 the share of British government expenditure devoted to defense fell from 24 percent to 7 percent, while the share spent on health and welfare increased from 22 percent to 53 percent. And that was before New Labour started rolling back Thatcherism. If America Europeanizes, who’s going to protect Europe? Who’s going to keep the sea lanes open? Who’s going to contain Iran — China? Okay, maybe. But then who’s going to contain China?

But that’s not the only way in which Europeans are free-riders. America invents a lot of stuff. When was the last time you used a Portuguese electronic device? How often does Europe come out with a breakthrough drug? Not often, and when they do, it’s usually because companies like Novartis and GlaxoSmithKline increasingly conduct their research here. Indeed, the top five U.S. hospitals conduct more clinical trials than all the hospitals in any other single country combined. We nearly monopolize the Nobel Prize in medicine, and we create stuff at a rate Europe hasn’t seen since da Vinci was in his workshop.

If America truly Europeanized, where would the innovations come from?

Europhiles hate this sort of talk. They say there’s no reason to expect America to lose its edge just because we have a more “compassionate” government. Americans are an innovative, economically driven people. That’s true. But so were the Europeans — once. Then they adopted the policies they have today and that liberals want us to have tomorrow.

On Marxism

To quote Moe Lane (quote is from this entry):

Marxism is intellectualism for stupid people.*

*How hard is it to farm? I mean, illiterate Copper-age Sumerians who plowed with sticks managed it! And yet those people couldn’t manage to keep an agricultural system running to save their lives. Often literally.

Living in an Islamic Country

Seen at the Corner:

If you cannot say that Islam is a backward religion and that Mohammed is a criminal, then you are living in an Islamic country, my friend, because there also you cannot say such things.

There's more.

Two Russian Submarines Patrolling Off East Coast

Back to the Bad Old Days. Paging Jack Ryan...

From the New York Times(!):

Russian Subs Patrolling Off East Coast of U.S.

WASHINGTON — A pair of nuclear-powered Russian attack submarines has been patrolling off the eastern seaboard of the United States in recent days, a rare mission that has raised concerns inside the Pentagon and intelligence agencies about a more assertive stance by the Russian military.

The episode has echoes of the cold war era, when the United States and the Soviet Union regularly parked submarines off each other’s coasts to steal military secrets, track the movements of their underwater fleets — and be poised for war.

But the collapse of the Soviet Union all but eliminated the ability of the Russian Navy to operate far from home ports, making the current submarine patrols thousands of miles from Russia more surprising for military officials and defense policy experts.

“I don’t think they’ve put two first-line nuclear subs off the U.S. coast in about 15 years,” said Norman Polmar, a naval historian and submarine warfare expert.

The submarines are of the Akula class, a counterpart to the Los Angeles class attack subs of the United States Navy, and not one of the larger submarines that can launch intercontinental nuclear missiles.

Of course, if they were of the type that could launch ICBMs, the Russians would be violating several conventions, and escalating matters far more than they already have.

And the Russians aren't denying it. From the AP:

Russian general confirms submarine patrols near US

MOSCOW – A top Russian general says two nuclear-powered Russian attack submarines that have been spotted off the U.S. East Coast are part of regular patrols. Anatoly Nogovitsyn, the deputy chief of staff of Russia's armed forces, says the patrols are not newsworthy.

Right.

But this doesn't seem to cause much consternation among the Navy blogs I visit.
Cdr. Salamander isn't worried. Neither is EagleSpeak.

Galrahn at Information Dissemination isn't too concerned, but has his usual thoughtful insight, and is worth reading.

So maybe I'm overblowing this. Taken in isolation, I probably am, but taken in aggregate...

A New Tide of Authoritarianism

From Freedom House:

Democracy seen threatened by new authoritarianism

China, Iran, Russia and Venezuela form a clique of authoritarian states that use their wealth and influence to undermine global democracy and rule of law.

Their findings:

Democracy Redefined: Authoritarian regimes are tarnishing the public understanding of democracy.

Internet Under Threat: Leading authoritarians are using advanced and well-funded techniques to subvert legitimate online discourse, especially in China, Iran and Russia. In addition to controlling access through physical, economic, and technological means, these regimes have deployed armies of commentators and provocateurs like the “Fifty Cent Party” in China and the “Brigades” in Russia to disrupt legitimate internet discussions.

Authoritarian Foreign Aid: By doling out billions of dollars in no strings attached foreign aid, these regimes are hobbling international efforts to improve governance and reduce corruption.

Rules-Based Organizations Under Siege: As part of a broader effort to export authoritarian influence, these regimes are disrupting key international rules-based bodies that support democratic and human rights, including the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the Organization of American States (OAS) and the European Court of Human Rights. At the United Nations, they have formed ad hoc coalitions to blunt criticism, obstruct proposed sanctions, and advance antidemocratic measures. The governments of Venezuela, Russia, and China have been particularly active in creating new institutions to serve as counterweights to existing rules-based multilateral organizations.

Illiberal Education—Tainting the Next Generation: By either actively promoting or enabling the distortion of history through a nationalistic or extremist lens, authoritarian regimes are inculcating in the next generation attitudes of hostility toward democracy and suspicion of the outside world.

Their summary of the challenges facing us:

Today’s authoritarians recognize that absolute control over information and economic activity is neither possible nor necessary. Instead, they have adapted their traditional coercive mechanisms with more subtle methods. Political discourse is “managed,” rather than blatantly dictated, through the selective suppression or reshaping of news and information. And while the most important business entities are either co-opted or swallowed up by the state, the days of the command economy are over. Their citizens are allowed to enjoy personal freedoms—including foreign travel and access to consumer goods—that would have been unthinkable in the era of Mao and Brezhnev.

During the Cold War, the nature and goals of the dominant authoritarian states were clearer. In contrast, modern authoritarians, integrated into the global economy and participating in many of the world’s established financial and political institutions, present a murkier challenge.

In a 21st-century context, isolation of or disengagement from these states are not viable options. And generally speaking, in order to advance economic interests, these regimes would prefer engagement with the United States and its allies, but only on their terms.

And while the new authoritarians continue with this sophisticated approach, we become less so. ("If we just talk to them, they'll like us!")

The 1930s were often described as an authoritarian age, as it witnessed the rise of Hitler, the consolidation of Mussolini, and the ascendancy of Stalin. It was even worried about here, as FDR pushed the limits of government power to their limits.

And today doesn't seem too dissimilar, does it?

More worrying still - we know how the 1930s ended.

And They Don't Care

Hugh Hewitt, yesterday:

"Yesterday's Dowd column blaming Dick Cheney for all future terrorist attacks in the U.S. no matter when or where they occur marks the most obvious case of end stage BDS I have ever seen, and the low point in the opinion section of the New York Times, until of course Dowd writes again. "Drivel" is exactly right, but Dowd's anticipatory defense of President Obama's innocence of any responsibility for a future terrorist attack is a signal that even the left knows the new president is dismantling the defenses brick by brick."

More importantly, they know it and they don't care.

It's not their priority. Terrorism is not where they want to spend their time, not when there is an economy, a society, and a nation to knock down and rebuild in their image.

Defense issues are a distraction for the modern left.