The Casualties Game

You can tell that the right is starting to feel confident, because some old arguments are coming to the fore. After the NYT, of all places, posted a graph comparing civilian casualties in Iraq with other recent troublespots, GatewayPundit created a graph of his own, comparing Iraq War casualties with those of previous American Wars. Students of History will note that a war is missing, the 1898 Spanish-American War. I said so in a comment, and suggested that as the Spanish-American War led to a long counter-guerrilla campaign for mastery of the Phillipines, such a comparison would be far more apt.

I then decided to look the numbers up myself.

According to Wikipedia, The Unites States suffered 2,446 killed and wounded in the five months of the 1898 war, and another 4,324 killed and 2,818 wounded putting down the Phillippine insurgency. However, there seems to be a dispute on the time frame. Theodore Roosevelt declared victory over the insurgents in 1902, Wikipedia ignores this event and rather baldly declares that the insurgency went on until Woodrow Wilson's 1913 offer of eventual independence (indeed, the article seems to focus entirely on the negative aspects of the campaign, not only ignoring the American successes but placing all blame on the Americans for the outbreak of the conflict, and even going so far as to attribute miserliness with veteran's benefits to the American government as a reason for naming the conflict an insurgency rather than a war). While it is true that guerrilla activity continued on outlying islands, especially in the south, by 1902 Aguinaldo's army on the main island of Luzon had been defeated. This entry from the 20th Century Atlas suggests that the 4,000 number is taken exclusively from the years 1899-1902, but I could be wrong on that.

At any rate, the Phillippine Insurrection appears to be in all ways worse than the Iraq War. Especially different is the scale of civilian casuatlies: approximately 30,000 in Iraq, approximately 250,000 to 1 million in the Phillippines. The political fallout was worse as well: although they enjoyed a degree of self-government, the Phillippines did not become independent until 1946 and have had limited success as a nation-state.

Yet, despite all this, despite the bloodshed and the fury and a level of anti-civilian action well in excess of what we would consider just or desirable, the Americans won in the Phillipines. Aguinaldo was defeated, so eventually were the Moros. Nor did this happen in the absence of domestic political opposition. William Jennings Bryan, after convincing the Democratic Senate to vote for the Treaty that set American rule over the Phillipines, ran against President McKinley on an "anti-imperialist" platform. Somehow, the will was found, despite errors and cruelties which are typical to war, to carry on. It would be a poor commentary indeed if we were no longer capable of such today.

What Madness is This?

Republicans running the federal government believe, "You are on your own to buy your own health care, to buy your own retirement security ... to buy your own roads and levees," Obama said, referring to flood barriers that gave way in New Orleans during Katrina last August."

What, entrust the people to buy something they need? Suggest that the government not provide for everything? Why would anyone want the people to take care of themselves? Why, God, Why?

Sensible Mom may have struck upon the answer:

Then how does Obama explain the medicare prescription bill, the education bill, the money the federal government has historically earmarked for levees in New Orleans (that local officials used for other pet projects)...?

I believe it was P.J. O'Rourke who said that governments and money were like whiskey, car keys, and teenage boys; perhaps an inevitable combination, but nevertheless not one that should ever be encouraged.

Is it True, That When Vanity Fair Takes Your Picture...

...you lose your relevance?

Lileks = Funny

A few exerpts from his 2005 Year-in-Review:

Pope John Paul II dies. To the horror of many, his successor turns out to be Catholic.

Israel voluntarily withdraws from Gaza, earning approximately 17 seconds of good will from the international community. Personal best!

Hurricane Katrina strikes precisely at the moment when the dynamite charges, personally installed by Karl Rove, blow up New Orleans’s levees. Teams of the same ninjas the Bushies used to rig the Diebold voting machines have already disabled the buses that could be used in evacuation. Initial media reports indicate that refugees in the Superdome have resorted to murder, cannibalism, voodoo, keno, and possibly jai alai. FOX anchor Shep Smith is consumed on camera by zombies. His last words indicate that he shares their outrage, if not their desire for sweet, sweet brains.

Read the whole thing.

Should I Take it as a Sign of Our Success...

...that the Iraqis are voting, again, and that neither the WaPo nor the NYT appears to care? Can I take a moment to point out that millions of Arabs and Kurds voting to elect representatives as per their agreed-upon Constitution has become, for us, a minor story? Been there, done that, so 2004?

And before anyone says that elections don't equal democracy, let me look up the Arabic word for "bollocks." One election doesn't equal democracy. Regular, free, competitive elections are precisely democracy. One can argue against the Iraq war for many reasons, but you cannot argue that it has failed to strengthen moderating influences in the Middle East. Granted, it's not all a bed of roses, and much more needs to be done. But there is merit in standing our ground, and more in continuing to denounce our enemies.

Guess Who Wrote This:

If portions of the Constitution stand in the way of desired policies, rather than trying to change the Constitution, instead find someone with academic credentials to say that the Constitution doesn't say what it says, to make a halfway plausible, somewhat believable but basically pretend argument that it actually says something entirely different from what it appears to say and what we always thought it said. If the argument is weak, just sing it loud and stick to it! It is, in form at least, an argument! It was written by a law professor!

If you said Cary Tennis of Salon Magazine, you'd be right. Of course, he's writing not about judicial activism but the administration's arguments for its "program of torture," as apparently buttressed by Berkley professor John Yoo. And it comes as a rather meandering coda to advising an activist professor at a college in the "mountainous northeast" to stay where he is and not rush to the barricades, which he suggests after declaring that "if the current oligarchy cannot be removed via the ballot, direct political action may become an urgent and compelling mission." This is a profoundly ludicrous statement, as the current "oligarchy" (by which I assume he means the Bush administration) will be removed neither by ballot nor bullet, but by the 22nd Amendment. Perhaps he means Republicans in general, which leads to all manner of fascinating questions, such as why continued electoral victories for Republicans would qualify as oligarchic, and how such power could be wrested from them without resorting to means which are, shall we say, less than free and open.

But I don't expect answers to such questions, and am not concerned by them, as I do not think Tennis himself has even considered them. Rather, I hold this to be nothing more than the classic leftist phantasmagoria of civil disobedience as ersatz revolution. It is part of the Orwellian nostalgia of the 60's that believes that protesters ended the war in Vietnam (when it was really Nixon's policy of "Vietnamization," expanding operations into Cambodia, bombing the North without restraint, and opening relations with China) and forced the Nixon Administration from office (when it was really the Democratic-controlled Congress). Tennis plays a double game here: he wants to be able to stand in the streets and participate in a demi-mystical "speaking truth to power," but he has no intention of actually camping in the streets, nor of organizing anything that really would force the government from power. So he tells the young man that the time is not yet ripe, that he must preserve his status until the eschaton, when his gesture will have greater significance (as though anyone would be shocked by a professor at a protest. You see the time-warp these people are caught in? If anyone's stuck in the 50's, it's this lot).

I think we all know what Lenin would have made of this man.

Get Away From Here, Kid, You Bother Me...

Cathy Seipp has an interesting rumination on the idea that "Children should be seen and not heard."

I for one am not holding my breath, because the factors that lead us to the current epidemic of rude, noisy children are not going away anytime soon. People will read the quotation above and find it distasteful, if not horrific, it provokes imagery of nuns with rulers and the Mom in Carrie, and the response, "What, do you hate children or something?"

Let me put it in the words of Brutus in Julius Caeser: it is not that I love children less, but that I love adults more. Moreover, I recognize the truth of the old dictum that in every generation civilization suffers an invasion by barbarians: we call them children. To be a barbarian is not a moral fault, but a path down which we must all tread. But succoring the barbaric is no way to preserve a civilized society.

Our modern child-rearing techniques seem focused on the emotional lives of children. I think this is wrong, because in the grand scheme of things, the emotions of children are transitory and relatively unimportant. Child-rearing should be about not the blooming of the child's life but the coaxing into existence of the adult the child must become. None of the research-approved, peaceable parenting skills that the elite would foist on us are half so valuable as inducing a child to think beyond his immediate wants and desires. And I am unconvinced that this can be done without the use of fear.

Yes, I said fear. It is written that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom. To this, I add that the fear of parents is the beginning of familial peace. the State of childhood is a state of constant physical and emotional flux. They are long on impulse and short on experience. Catering to that mind-set gives that mind-set power that it neither deserves nor can use justly. To make up for that experience, it is necessary for parents to set boundaries and defend them to the utmost. As the best defense is a good offense, a properly built fear of parental anger keeps boundaries defended, sometimes without the parent even knowing it.

Of course it would be foolish for anyone to rely on nothing else but fear to raise children. Those who do so rapidly cross the line from discipline to abuse. But child-raising without fear makes the child the ruler of the house, the child's wishes the ones that gain the most attention, and the adults the ones who dread doing and saying the wrong thing. This is precisely the opposite of what it should be, and we see the evidence daily.

Observe the Following:

The Government tries to get Corporations to pay into their pension plans what they say they're going to pay into their pension plan. Result? Not only the corporation but the union resists. Apparently actually funding their pension plans will be bad for business, to such a degree that even the union foresees pain. Or, heaven forfend, the corporation might decide to ditch the thing and go with a "defined contribution" or 401(k) plan. Gee, why wouldn't the union want that?

If this goes on, you can look forward to a number of future news stories:

The collapse of the auto industry's pension plan, with accompanying scandal, and rousing of rabble against the "corporate America." Micheal Moore might make a triumphant return to form.

Blame transmitted somehow to our (slightly) more corporate-friendly party, the GOP, despite the fact that it's Republicans currently pushing to make GM pay what it should.

More and more pundits drawing the parallels between old-style pension plans and Social Security. I mean really, how can anyone argue that the current system is suited to survive?

For more information, consult The Essayist #6 and How Social Security Reform Got Borked.

If We're Going to Do This...

....we would do well to consider the likely consequences. As far as I can determine, they fall along these lines:

1. Possible Iranian/Pan-Arab Military Attack on Israel. I don't know that this is very likely, but it is a possibility. If Saddam's WMD's actually existed in large quantities and actually made it to Syria, this is the kind of move the Baathists and others will be wanting. Scuds flying at Tel Aviv in revenge for Israeli surgical strikes into Iran are not beyond the bounds of possibility. A weakened Hassad may be unable to restrain the outbreak of war. And even if Syria doesn't launch, Iran might. Missiles flying back and forth across the MidEast could lead in a variety of places.

2. Protests/Riots/Blowback in Iraq. The extent of Iraqi sentiments regarding Israel have not, to my knowledge, been closely quantified. Nor, for that matter, have their sentiments regarding a nuclear Iran. Will they be outraged as Israeli cruise missiles flying over their airspace? Will they officially protest and cover their glee? Will they not care? It's something we should know.

3. Collapse of the Mullarchy. Military embarrassment is often the father of Revolution for unpopular regimes. So it was for Russia, Germany, Austria-Hungary, etc. A coup by the military against the "too-soft" regime might spin out of control. But we've been hoping that the people will throw off the Islamic state for some time, and so far the state has demonstrated the will to survive.

4. Failure. Iran's weapons facilities won't be as easy to take out as Iraq's was in 1981. Several of them are spread throughout the country, and I'm sure that several of them are near enough to civilian areas as to be uncomfortable. The Israelis might launch a strike and accomplish nothing but stirring the hornet's nest.

It would be nice to see some commentary along this line. Perhaps Belmont Club would be interested.

Pursuant to Essayist #12:

A classic example of reductionism, courtesy of Slate. It begs many questions: is a police threatening harsh treatment at the hands of other prisoners in jail "torture"? Is using bright lights to disorient and disturb thought processes "torture"? Is playing good cop/bad cop "torture"? If not, why not? They're all coercive, and they're all aimed at getting information, or a confession, out of what may be an innocent person. Where is the line drawn? And if the line can be drawn, and clearly, why is it risible to argue that the line should be drawn elsewhere?

I'm not holding my breath for answers.

The Essayist #12: Torture and Reductionism

As our Secretary of State tours Europe and lets the cat out of the bag regarding where our "black sites" are (and, by association, who gave us permission to establish them), the torture debate still hasn't reached anything like a mutual exchange of ideas. The MSM has gone into full eye-rolling mode, blithely skimming by Administration attempts to define "torture". The assumption is made without ever being stated that a) all coercive interrogation is torture, b) all attempts to define it otherwise are non-starters.

Charles Krauthammer, naturally, has a different point of view. First, he makes an important distinction: between a military prisoner of war...

First, there is the ordinary soldier caught on the field of battle. There is no question that he is entitled to humane treatment. Indeed, we have no right to disturb a hair on his head. His detention has but a single purpose: to keep him hors de combat.

...and a terrorist...

A terrorist is by profession, indeed by definition, an unlawful combatant: He lives outside the laws of war because he does not wear a uniform, he hides among civilians, and he deliberately targets innocents. He is entitled to no protections whatsoever. People seem to think that the postwar Geneva Conventions were written only to protect detainees. In fact, their deeper purpose was to provide a deterrent to the kind of barbaric treatment of civilians that had become so horribly apparent during the first half of the 20th century, and in particular, during the Second World War. The idea was to deter the abuse of civilians by promising combatants who treated noncombatants well that they themselves would be treated according to a code of dignity if captured--and, crucially, that they would be denied the protections of that code if they broke the laws of war and abused civilians themselves.

He goes on to describe two circumstances under which terrorists may be subject to coercive interrogation: 1) the oft-repeated Ethics 101 dilemna of a bomb in an urban area and one person who knows where it is and how to disarm it, and 2) a high-level terror commander (Krauthammer uses Khalid Sheikh Mohammed), who can name names and places. He calls for interrogation to be banned by U.S. military personnel and to belong only to, as he puts it, "highly specialized agents who are experts and experienced in interrogation, and who are known not to abuse it." Leaving aside the question who these people are, and how they're going to come by their expertise, this seems to at least be a framework for interrogating an enemy without descending into barbarism.

A DailyKos poster, on the other hand, attacks this with the words of NRO's own John Derbyshire, who is becoming a rather unpredictable chap. The same fellow who once intoned that we would not be able to defeat terror without breaking some heads open has categorically denounced torture of any kind, thusly:

The first thing to be said about torture, as a means of discovering facts, was said by Aristotle in Book 1, Chapter 15 of Rhetorica: torture doesn't work very well. Under physical torture, some people will lie; some will say anything to make the pain stop, even just for a while; and a surprising number will refuse to yield.

A valid point, but one which Krauthammer addresses:

Is one to believe that in the entire history of human warfare, no combatant has ever received useful information by the use of pressure, torture, or any other kind of inhuman treatment? It may indeed be true that torture is not a reliable tool. But that is very different from saying that it is never useful.

The monstrous thing about torture is that sometimes it does work. In 1994, 19-year-old Israeli corporal Nachshon Waxman was kidnapped by Palestinian terrorists. The Israelis captured the driver of the car used in the kidnapping and tortured him in order to find where Waxman was being held. Yitzhak Rabin, prime minister and peacemaker, admitted that they tortured him in a way that went even beyond the '87 guidelines for "coercive interrogation" later struck down by the Israeli Supreme Court as too harsh. The driver talked. His information was accurate. The Israelis found Waxman.

It remains to be seen just how effective our interrogations methods will be, how much information they will yield. Indeed, given the secrecy such operations tend to entail, we may never know. Perhaps, concurrent to a framework of interrogation, we construct a framework of declassification, of public knowledge of success rates, if such can be done without compromising intelligence.

There's a slippery-slope argument to be dealt with as well. More Derbyshire:

Don't let's kid ourselves that we can pick and choose from the menu. "Yes, we'll beat, but we won't pull out fingernails." ... "Yes, OK, we'll pull out fingernails, but we won't rape your children in front of you." Forget it — when you start on the road of torture, there is no end. We beat him: he doesn't talk. We remove his fingernails, and then, for good measure, his toenails: Still he won't talk. That nuke is ticking away in a high building, in some American city. The suspect has a 16-year-old daughter: Do we send for her?

However valid this slope is, the rapidity with which we descend it may well depend on our ability to accept failure. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed may be indeed a treasure trove of information useful and essential to prosecuting the war on Al-Qaeda, but how far are we willing to go to get it? At what point does the image of America-the-torturer become a net minus, inducing ordinary Iraqis and Afghanis to keep us at arm's length rather than inducing terrorist to spill their guts quickly? This is largely a debate we aren't having, because many of us can't accept that there's even a difference between a terrorist and a regular POW.

Thus, the dangers of reductionism, of the refusal to recognize practical and moral distinctions. To many, anyone who is held by the government, be it a U.S. citizen for theft or a foreign national for plotting the mass-murder of Americans, is a defendant, and thus guaranteed the rights of a defendant. That this is legally questionable does not stop them from speaking and behaving as though it were set in stone, and castigating with empty labels ("pro-torture", "medieval," "Grand Inquisitor") those who say otherwise. By the same token, many believe that violence is violence is violence, whether indiscriminate and for its own sake or focused and targeted. They believe this because it has the ring of cosmic truth to it: to a degree, all prisoners share a universal experience, and all violence bears the same marks. But only to a degree.

It's not moral cowardice to point these things out. In many circumstances, it's impossible to make judgements without making distinctions between type and purpose. The Jesuits themselves, not known for being nihilists, have a dictum: "Never deny. Seldom affirm. Always make distinctions."

No one should be called unpatriotic because they blanche at the thought of agents of the U.S. Government depriving captured men of sleep and comfort to make them talk. Such things run against the grain of popular government. And the wartime powers that the Executive branch claims, the wartime plans it creates, indeed the very wars they propose must be subject to scrutiny. Such is what a loyal opposition is for. But scrutiny that does not make room in its rhetoric for the actions and goals of our government as seperate from the actions and goals of our enemies is counterproductive. A significant amount of the Left's criticism of the manner in which the War on Terror is being fought would have, I think, greater resonance if these criticisms were not dismissable as being made in bad faith. We cannot rationally discuss how far we should permit ourselves to go if one side refuses to concede that we should go anywhere.

Sad, Hollow Men

Read Mark Steyn on the Democrat Defeatists:

Kerry drones that we need to "set benchmarks" for the "transfer of authority." Actually, the administration's been doing that for two years -- setting dates for the return of sovereignty, for electing a national assembly, for approving a constitution, etc, and meeting all of them. And all during those same two years Kerry and his fellow Democrats have huffed that these dates are far too premature, the Iraqis aren't in a position to take over, hold an election, whatever. The Defeaticrats were against the benchmarks before they were for them.

All of which might be, as Glenn Reynolds thinks, code for consensus, that in offering agreement that sounds like criticism the Democrats may be able to keep the war going while placating their base, to transform themselves into hawks while still hating Bush. It remains to be seen whether they've actually got the stomach for it. We may find out in 2009.

But in all other respects, the Democrats have seemed bent on proving the joke about the definition of a liberal as someone who won't even take his own side in a fight. Somehow the left believes that violence is a spiritual malady that doesn't really effect their lives; that everybody really loses no matter how the war turns out. This is true of a few wars (Trojan, Peloponessian, World War I), but by no means all, a fact readily apparent to anyone with more than a superficial understanding of history. But the left is determined not to study war no more, and so have only one option when faced with it: fritter and carp, preach and howl.

The old saw about how war doesn't prove who's right, only who's left, is absolutely true. If virtue and civilization were the guarantors of military success, we wouldn't need to fight this war (I'm not praising the virtue and civilization of us, by the way, merely underlining the outstanding lack of it in our enemies). But victory in war is dependent on a great many factors; and such things as cunning, killing power, and fortitude rank high among them. As the left is opposed to these things, it does not care for any victory which requires them, and will declare any such victory false, even if it should produce wonders undreamt of, such as the third set of elections happening in Mesopotamia. This is to be ignored, or at any rate declared "not worth the cost," because it doesn't fit the narrative of imperial conquest leading to People's War by the Great Oppressed. Keepers of an ancient tragic narrative of master and slave, bourgeois and proletarian, colonialist and noble savage, they cannot look at Zarqawi and see a brute, a thug, a barbarian who kills for it's own sake and believes himself rewarded by God for this. They see Harriet Tubman, Nat Turner, and Ghandi all rolled into one.

They are trapped in the past, determined to reduce everything to the old crusade no matter how much new data keeps slipping in. Having irrevocably decided that their society is not right, it naturally follows that in a war they do not wish it to be left.

Saddam's Trial: Greatest Show on Earth?

Ken Frost of "The Trial of Saddam Hussein" thinks that his trial is being handled less than well by the Iraqis. While I think it's too early to tell, it could be so. I certainly think that their should be a greater effort to control Saddam's theatrics; he should be restrained if he refuses to behave in a civilized manner. On the other hand, it's not as though anyone in Iraq has any real experience with fair trials.


UPDATE: Here's Powerline:

A court can only function if it is accepted that it has power over those who come before it. In this case, that basic premise is unclear. Many Iraqis still fear that Saddam could return to power; most of the witnesses against him do not dare to reveal their identities for fear that they will be killed by Saddam's allies.

Like I said, all could still be well. The seeming meekness of the court could create an impression when it convicts Saddam and sentences him to die despite all the blowhardiness. But I'd like it better if the Court asserted its own authority in its own room.

Blowback Works Both Ways

Every time I've pointed out to someone anti-war that the terrorists aren't making themselves popular in Iraq, that no one in Iraq really wants Zarqawi to win, and therefore we can't lose unless we accede to defeat as we did in Vietnam, that person has been left without much of a response. The possibility that we could be the ones who win by default has generally never occurred to them. That isn't the way the script is supposed to work: It's the U.S. that's the ogre everyone hates, that makes things worse just by being there, that gets blamed for everything they do and everything that the enemy does, that gets a little closer to defeat with every explosion.

Austin Bay has a little story that demonstrates an opposite trend. Gee, even Arabs are capable of acting in their own self-interest, and of perceiving which belligerent is less monstrous. Who'd a thunk it? I am of course being facetious; it's only leftists that really believe that Osama bin Laden is the most popular man in the Third World. Most people worldwide probably regard him as a thug and troublemaker but are simply not empowered to do anything about him. For the last several decades, the money and the guns have been flowing into the hands of mujahideen, not moderates. It's time that trend was reversed.

And let me make the argument that we are achieving good in Iraq merely by being there, and standing in a line-up next to Zarqawi. We build schools; they blow them up. We respect mosques; they blow them up. We guard voters on election day; they...

For two years, al-Qaeda and the die-hard Baathists have been doing their merry best to drive us out of the country with our tail between our legs. They've butchered thousands, committed ghastly public acts of brutality, and occasionally even gone toe-to-toe with our soldiers. They've accomplished jack-squat. The Constitution has been ratified, the elections have gone forward, a new Iraqi army is being trained. From Zarqawi's perspective, all the trends are negative.

And we who are at home, supporting this effort. Need to be making this argument loudly, and publicly, and persistently. This only becomes another Vietnam if we let it.

Camille Paglia on Madonna:

In cannibalizing her disco diva days, Madonna runs the risk of turning into a pasty powdered crumpet like the aging Bette Davis in "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?" Will she become a whooping Charo shaking her geriatric hoochie-coochie hips on TV talk shows? Or should we expect a sudden, grisly collapse from glowing beauty to dust, like Ursula Andress as the 2000-year-old femme fatale in "She"? Too hungry to connect to the youth market, Madonna goes on childishly using naughty words and flipping the finger (as onstage at Live 8 last summer).

All the more reason to grab the long hook and yank her showboating tail offstage. It's time to find new material, Camille. Your idols are aging, and there's thousands of artists worth the commentary. If "dance albums are sorely in need of a more sophisticated critical vocabulary," then why not start looking into some other work? Forgo your pop sensibilities for once and look for something that has merit merely to the ear.

Umm...who am I talking to?

Sorry about that.

I Like This Post...

...over at Tenebris, because it nicely jibes with C.S. Lewis' dictum that it is far more important that heaven should ever exist than that we should ever get there.

I wonder how many people go through the motions of worship without a thought such as that ever entering their heads.

The Thread that Will not Die.

Protein Wisdom's posters refuse to let a joke go. I got in on the action, too. See if you can guess which one is mine.

Global Warming is Going to Make Us Freeze!

Or, Britain Freeze, or something along those lines. You see, the Gulf Stream is weakening, and that means less warm water and air from the tropics makes it to northern Europe. Consequently, things up there get colder. All of this the Guardian calls "a consequence of global warming."

Please feel free to blither now.

I'm no physicist, but I'm pretty sure that increased temperature means that stuff has more energy, and stuff that has more energy moves around more. So if Global Warming is so runaway and unstoppable, shouldn't the Gulf Stream be strenghtening?

We're rapidly reaching the point where we could have comets hurtling at the earth in synchronized-swimmer formation and people would find a way to link it to "global warming." It's the bogeyman caused by Society's Evil, a secular Anti-Christ if ever there was one.

Took you long enough...

Adam L. Penenberg of Slate comes in more or less on the same side as me on the Internet hullaballoo, albeit with some requisite muttered suspicions about the U.S. Government. Although he suggests an equitable settlement that will keep the 'Net free, he doesn't hold out a lot of hope for it. Yet even this, he says, is not a big deal, as the spread of internet technology beyond computers is supposed to eventually reduce the need for DNS servers. Thus:

What diplomacy fails to solve, obsolescence will.

Great line. And think of the myriad of things in this world it applies too. Hell, try to think of things it doesn't apply to...

Caption This!

Politburo Diktat has a Cindy Sheehan/Saddam Hussein double feature. Ah, the magic of Photoshop (don't worry, it's work safe). So far, nothing truly rib-tickling. Give it your best shot.

Greatest Songs #7

Blur - "Death of a Party" (1997, from Blur)


Not much to yap about here. This is just a very well-crafted song, expressing an idea that will always have a niche in our culture. We love parties, we love throwing parties, we love going to them, and we love the idea that those who do nothing but become miserable thereby. And so it probably is; repitition is the mother of tedium.

Like the last song, the music to Blur's "Death of a Party" fits the subject. There's an overflowing mix of instruments, distorted and loud yet oddly distant, as though being heard in another room. Two and three-note vamps drop in and out while the guitars crunch along the same several chords. Only the bass line really displays anything like motion, and it too is locked in the same riff. The resulting sound is pretty and sad, and decadent and empty, while Damon sings about going to another party and hanging himself, gently.

Sure, the tune owes scads to Velvet Underground's "All Tommorrow's Parties," but it's not merely a rip-off, as it manages to be both heavier and darker, no mean feat. And as I said, it's not exactly a new mine of ideas. But it works well, demands attention, and speaks to a great truth about our culture. That's good enough for the Hebrew children, and it's good enough for me.


#8

Don't Expect Much Today.

My sinuses are acting up again. I am sick as a dog. Hopefully tommorrow will be better, but I'm not holding my breath.

And the Military Recruiting Goals are...

...being met.

And will the earlier hysteria about recruitment and the Clear and Troubling message this sends about Mr. Bush's War be now redacted to reflect this new data? Of course not. You could grow old waiting for the WaPo to mention these numbers unless it finds a datum that it can make sound Controversial (perhaps there will be too many Hispanics or not enough left-handed people or something).

You know this. I know this. Intellectually honest people on the Left will admit this as well. So whence the determination that the WaPo or the NYT or the LAT or CNN or ABC, NBC, CBS, etc., are filled with objective professional journalists while the right-wing blogs and FoxNews are biased little cells of distortion?

I've said it before and will continue to say it: the pretense of objectivity must be dropped.

Greatest Songs #8

Richard Hell and the Voidoids -- "Betrayal Takes Two" (1977, from Blank Generation)


On the surface of it, Richard Hell is exactly the kind of cat I should dislike: pretentious, self-absorbed, and nihilistic to the point of boredom. What's more, he's aware of it, and consciously chooses to live that way. Based on his interviews, he seems to genuinely admire the addled, post-Revolutionary aristocrats he's read about in such authors and Huysmans and really wants to be like them. In other words, he's the kind of person who's always proclaiming doom without offering solutions, because the doom feels right, sounds complete. In politics, I hate that, and I'm not too fond of it in art, either.

So why do I love this guy's music?

I suspect it has a lot to do with his backing band. Marc Bell, soon to be Marky Ramone, was his drummer, and his two guitarists, Bob Quine, and Ivan Julian, created some truly beautiful noise, despite the fact that you couldn't have found men who appeared to be more different (Quine looked like an adjunct poetry professor and Julian looked like Sly Stone's cousin). What was more, they crafted an album in 1977 that dared to have songs that sounded different from one another, to make their rebellion in the wierd tangents of their riffs rather than a typical expression of impotent rage. The classic example of which is "Betrayal Takes Two"

First off, the song is not a quick-off, three-chord bottle rocket; it moves at a mellow blues shuffle, unafraid of space. Hell attempts a croon, doesn't quite pull it off, gives up and howls his way to the chorus. The guitars mope prettily, until the aformentioned, at which point they turn on each other and claw and scratch like two alleycats, only to settle down again, then start it up again, etc. The structure of the song thus nicely reflects the subject of the lyrics. Observe:

The sensation of life was aroused in ourselves,
from the plot we digressed, knocked the books off the shelves,
then burned down the house, then met in a bar
with a motel attached and kissed all the scars

You'd call it emo, if you were an idiot, because the lyrics speak of pain and doomed romance, and the tune fits it. But if you were capable of drawing distinctions, you'd note that the lyrics are devoid of maudlin sentiment, that they hold these exchanges at comic distance. The song doesn't say "Hold me," but "This is how it is, ain't it a hoot?" as only someone who's been knocked up the side of the head by life enough times can say.

And yes, that kind of thinking is dangerous if it becomes an excuse for avoiding life, as many have suspected it has for M. Hell. But at some point in life we have to get over sappy romanticism and look with a jaundiced eye at the games we play. Only then can we ever hit the next lock in the Love Canal.


#9

Shove it, Miss Bliss

Much as I'd like to give a "Boy, Howdy" to Lileks and Steyn for their deft takedowns of the endless PC arrythmns regardind "Looney Tunes" there's at least one other culprit that needs to be blamed for the fall of Saturday Morning TV.

Yes, I speak of Saved by the Bell, the show that ran for eons without having, as near as anyone can recall, a single noteworthy, or memorable, or even particularly funny moment, the show that encouraged kids to throw aside whimsy for mindless hip preening, the show that furthered the lame ecapsulation of high school as a universe unto itself, and an important one, the show that seemed to be wallowing in its own nostalgia while still on the air. I mean, for the love of sugar cereals, who in their right mind wanted to watch a show about school on a Saturday Morning?

But they sold it, and we bought it, and by the truckload. And it isn't really our fault. Much as some folk would like to hold the 80's-90's as some kind of Golden Age of Television, I remember too well the gar-bazhe to which I willingly subjected myself. For every *M*A*S*H* and The Simpsons there were ten Perfect Strangers, Websters, Full Houses, etc. And I sat through all of them, and believed myself entertained. These were the things the adults were supposed to enjoy, that appealed to their sophisticated humor. And it sucked fish guts.

Incidentally, the only show I watch religiously now is The Apprentice. Watching these corporate lobotomy patients explain themselves to Mr. Bottom Line is a manifest joy, as is watching their babbling egos collapse like a Phillistine temple at the utterance of two little words.

She's Ba-ack....

The Moron of the Week, I mean. I went with Jessica Simpson, but something tells me her hair isn't that stringy...yet.

Quite Frankly, I'm often at a loss for these things, because I don't follow our glorious pop culture enough to really know who's having the BEST WEEK EVER all the time. I really just wanted to remind everyone of how big a moron Jessica Simpson is.

Hope Everyone's Turkey Was Well-Stuffed.

I know I, er, ours was.

Expect a new Greatest Song today, and a few other posts as the madness continues.

Meanwhile, the Linkfest Continues...

Added Politburo Diktat to the blogroll.

Frrrttt...wgwrbl...Sony is the Devil...Frrrttt...wgwrbl...Sony is the Devil

The Politburo Diktat covers the State of Texas bringing suit against Sony/BMG for violation of anti-spyware laws. I used to care about this issue a lot more, when I was writing The Notion, but I've lost track of the debate.

"People buy these CDs to listen to music," Abbott said. "What they don’t bargain for is the consumer invasion that is unleashed by Sony BMG."

That's the stupidest part of booby-trapping the CD's: the damage is being done to paying customers who have already forked over the $17 for the music. What's the object lesson? Don't buy the CD, download it off of Limewire or some such. You can't tell me that this anti-piracy software is so sophisticated that dedicated crackers can't find a way to nullify it. At least some free copies will be available to those that want them, which means that within a relatively small space of time there will be thousands of copies or more. Now, does Sony want to convince people to take advantage of them, or not? Welcome to the land of perverse incentives.

50 Cent said in a recent Spin that his first album was downloaded 300,000 times prior to its release, and still managed to sell 800,000 copies within a month. When is the music industry going to use downloaded music as low-cost advertising instead of marking it as a debit? Their business model needs rapid readjustment. Glad to see the law finally wacking them in the head with this fact.

Pursuant to Essayist #11

Mark Steyn:

In war, there are usually only two exit strategies: victory or defeat. The latter's easier. Just say, whoa, we're the world's pre-eminent power but we can't handle an unprecedently low level of casualties, so if you don't mind we'd just as soon get off at the next stop.

Even Democrats, judging by the result of Murtha's resolution, know this is dumb. But we haven't really defined what victory looks like. If the President felt more comfortable divulging his strategies and selling them to the American people, we might be able to have a real conversation on the subject. But his presidency has been (or at any rate, acted like it's been) under siege since it started, so everything is played on a James Bond, need-to-know basis. Consequently, the President's arguments are broad and not specific.

So yes, in time of war that many people still consider debatable, the President needs to consistently articulate his arguments with something more than "stay the course." But there's more than a little suspicion that the Left is unwilling to be convinced that victory is even desirable. Consequent arguing in bad faith gets us nowhere.

Link Wray Has Died

Link Wray was Awesome.

Link Wray will always be cool.

Amen

By the way...

Today is my birthday. I'm 29 (for the first time!). Wish me happy one, or ta hell wit'cha!

Kurt Vonnegut Has Become Unstuck In Time

Lileks takes down a target that's been deserving it for years. Smart people whose opinions I respect tell me I should read more Vonnegut, but after sloughing through Slaughter-House Five in high school I never had any interest in it. Maybe I just didn't get the joke. Douglas Adams, whose books describe much the same universe, works because he employs the Guide device for his explications of true insanity: a traveler's resource from Hell, pointing out with chirpy optomism how there's nothing to be optomistic about. That, plus secondary characters who are memorable because their creator actually gives a damn about them instead of using them as archetypes. I freely quote Zaphod Beeblebrox and have referenced him in music reviews; I couldn't remember the name of the Italian wanker who promised to whack Billy Pilgrim if you paid me.

But the real meat is this:

Which is more likely: a book review that says Vonnegut’s criticisms of the Bush Regime must be considered in light of the author’s support of suicide bombers, or a review that says Vonnegut has made statements lauding bombers, BUT he brings up troubling issues / confronts the hypocrisy inherent in Washington / speaks truth to power / speaks Hindu to houseplants / etc.

What's depressing is how beyond parody this all is. It's like I keep expecting a cutaway to a series of explosions with "We'llllll meet agaaaaaaaaain/Don't know wheeerrrreee/Don't know wheeeennnnnnn" on the soundtrack, or "What a Wonderful World" by Louis Armstrong or something, but it never does. Instead, all I'm left with is this feeling of impeding doom and the desire to slap the snot out of people while yelling "What the is wrong with you? At what point do you stop making excuses for people who kill civilians for its own sake? At what point do you start making fun of their supporters with half the fervor that you make fun of the President? What's it gonna take, a car-bomb in a Buddhist Temple in San Francisco during Gay Pride Week with accompanying billboards that state: WE WANT TO KILL ALL OF YOU BECAUSE YOU ARE UNHOLY KAFFIRS, AND SO THAT WE CAN RULE THE WORLD?"

And it ends like this: "POO-TEE-WEET?"

The Essayist #11: Our Grand Conundrum

Wretchard on the pre-war intel debate:

Although the pre-war intelligence estimates of Iraq now turn out to be inadequate in many ways, its principal defect was that it attempted to measure the wrong thing. It ought to have focused on the extent to which Iraqi Ba'athists and regional terror groups would have mounted a Lebanon or West Bank type defense; identified the key hurdles in creating a replacement Iraqi state; and specified the requirements necessary to win this campaign in an impressive and overwhelming manner in order to demonstrate to the rogue state audience what the consequences of aggression against the United States were. But this subject was verboten, and so instead intelligence spoke to the strategically irrelevant minutiae of Yellowcake and centrifuges, casting a wavering light, like the drunk searching for a lost coin in the story, not in the area where it would be found but in the only place he could shine a beam.

It is said that foreign policy debates in the U.S. are always about the next election. In a democratic society, such must inevitably be true, but perhaps the biggest problem is not the incompetence of our intelligence service but the lack of consensus about our proper foreign policy goals. This problem is not just inter-party but intra-party; the Republicans are currently dominated by a liberationist (neo-con) approach, but only because President Bush is a subscriber. With another republican, the "realist" control-them approach would be just as dominant. Among Democrats, the few who genuinely want to protect American interests tread softly amid the vicious Utopian fantasies of the New Left.

This is unlikely to change. As P.J. O'Rourke recently wrote, Americans hate foreign policy, because Americans have little interest in the rest of the world. America was founded to be different from the rest of the world, a culture in itself, and it would be perfectly happy to not have a foreign policy of any kind. What Europeans and others don't seem to understand is how uncomfortable being the world's No. 1 is for us. We don't like it, and have accepted the role largely because it fell to us. If we believed that we could stand down our defense pacts, send our subs home, and cut the size of the military in half or more, without it leading to mass insanity abroad, we would.

But that's not going to happen. The world has intruded upon us, so we intrude upon the world. But we've managed everything on an ad hoc basis so far, organizing resistance to threats as they materialize, and according to whatever we think will work. Determining that a Soviet-American war would be too costly and not certain of victory, we came up with "containment". The necessities of containment, and our natural predelictions permitted us to ignore jihadism until we were presented with it one fine September morning. Concluding that containment had reached it's limits, the President embarked on a new strategy, without perhaps thinking everything through.

This last is a serious criticism, but the Right has been hesitant to entertain it, because the next election keeps figuring into thinking. The failure of the Democrats to even attempt an alternate strategy on counter-terrorism leads us to say of Bush what Lincoln said of Grant: "I can't spare this man. He fights." So the proper debate on our goals in the world is cast aside for a debate on the merits of George W. Bush. Unfortunately, Bush will be out of office on the 30th of January, 2009. What will we talk about then?

I have a few suggestions:

Are we prepared to give the proper name to so-called "rogue states": that of enemy?

If not, how will we prepare for their continued existence and continued troublemaking?

If so, what strategies are appropriate to destroying our enemies? How shall we determine which enemies require direct confrontation and which require quieter means?

What standards will we use in the selection of allies? When does an ally become more trouble than he is worth?

What appropriate deferrment is due the United Nations, given the level of corruption in the bureaucracy and its tendency to protect "rogue" states?

These are the questions of our age. We have one possible answer for them. Let's hear more.

SANCTUARY!!!!

One of the handy things guerillas like to have in the battle against government troops is an over-the-border sanctuary to escape to and rebuild. It would appear that Zarqawi, having failed to create anything in Iraq but a pile of corpses, is preparing to attempt one in Jordan. I can't imagine how he's going to be successful. He's resorted to blowing up mosques.

Tell me again how this war is a dismal failure that will only aid the terror masters?

The Downside of a Spending Revolt

Pondering Vodkapundit's "still pissed off" post, and this week's Moron of the Week revelation at Samantha Burns, it occurs to me that if the conservative faithful do a mass sit-out, or even a mass run, due to budget or other right-wing reasons, it's almost guarunteed to not be reported as such by the MSM. They're beating their War-Is-Bad-MMKay drums so loud, and have made polls respond, that no other issues will be heard. Thus, the wrong message might be sent.

Good solutions? I don't have any. To put up with the administration's porkfest is to render our votes meaningless, as they don't translate into legislative results. But to punish them is to reward all the people who despise us. It's either foreign policy we like, or fiscal policy we like.

The consequences of the choice we made in 2004 may be coming due. Somewhere in P-Town, Andrew Sullivan is laughing.

Friday Short Takes

Away we go:

Calls for pullout of Iraq are dumb. Obviously we don't want to be there forever, and troops coming home should accelerate over the next year. But a closing date on our obligation to the state we've fostered is immature and short-sighted. There's arguably a whole host of lessons to be drawn from Iraq, but running away with our tail between our legs is no way to learn them.

Adult Swim is starting to suck. Between the preachy and unfunny Boondocks and the pretentious 12-Oz. Mouse, I can hardly muster a guffaw on an evenings watching. I spend my whole summer glued to Cartoon Network at 10:00 like a Pavlovian laugh-track. Now it's all awash in its coolness, and it's really getting tedious to sit through. I'm going to post an extended rant on the subject when I get an adultswim.com account, and I'll let you know.

I'm pleased by the momentum towards cutting spending in Congress, but there's nowhere near enough of it. Budget hawkery needs to become the issue in 2006, among Democrats and Republicans. If we can have a Gang of 14 to reach consensus on judicial nominations, then why can't there be reaching across the aisle to destroy government waste? The only fair way to do it is to slice up all the boondoggles: farm subsidies, entitlements, building projects, everything unnecessary or counterproductive needs to go. A serious take on this issue would rocket the Dems to victory next November. Even I might support them.

Greatest Song #9

U2 -- "Seconds" (1983, from WAR)


I've never been a massive fan of U2, but neither do I really have a problem with them. They fit nicely into a group of bands, such as Coldplay and Radiohead, that I feel comfortably neutral about: I respect them as musicians, perhaps like a few of their tunes, and could otherwise hardly be bothered with them. Nowadays, with U2 as the Irish Beatles, agelessly throwing out pop hooks that will result in fulsome praise from critics and gushing fans alike, I can happily delete them from my ruminations without wishing to see them destroyed. There's nothing offensive about them, and no need for me to by their records.

I liked them better when they were the Irish Clash. The cover of War is startling, with layers of complexity sitting just beyond. We see a young boy, his eyes furious, a scab on his lower lip. We see here the reduction of all conflict to an immature response to pain: battling for blocks in kindergarten. But look again. Note how androgynous the boy's appearance is, even angelic. He's got no shirt on, his hair is tousled and flowing. And what is that background behind him? Council Flats, like as not, but whose to say they aren't the layers of Hell? Really, what's the difference?

Maybe I'm reaching, but Bono's devout Catholocism should be pretty well known to anyone with more than a passing familiarity with the band. Maybe bono intended nothing Miltonic by the cover, but the connection is still striking.

It's said that until an hour before he fell, Satan was beautiful in Heaven, and according to U2, it only "takes a second to say good-bye". The second song on this album is a much better early-80's lament on the possibility of nuclear war than was usual, better by a mile than Sting's mewling blather about how the Russians loved their children, too. The lyrics aren't about telling anyone to get along, merely describing the Apocalyptic horror, the reign of Death. This is depicted not by what it says as what's left out: not burning cities, bodies turned to ash, radiation vomit, but merely "good-bye"; Finalilty.

Lighting flashes across the sky
From East to West you do or die
Like a theif in the night
You see the world by candlelight

The song structure is likewise a pleasing back-and-forth; the bass line lurches while the Edge's trademark guitar scratch punctuates the phrases. It's a bizarre sound for an Armageddon jam, but there is a payoff: in the middle of the song the documentary "Soldier Girls" is sampled, a call-and-response of an instructor leading female recruits in "I Wanna Be an Airborne Ranger" and ending with martial shrieks. Basic exists to transform citizens into killers, and this microcosm of that transformation is scary even to those of us who favor a big military with spiffy uniforms and lots of dangerous toys. As this freakiness fades out, that bass line pumps back in, and the song's rythmn fits the recruits howls, and the whole tune is a lot darker for it.

Look, I figured out when I was about eleven that the bombs weren't coming, because if everyone else could see that Nuclear Smackdown was M.A.D., then surely Reagan and Gorby could. But the central message of the song remains intact, if we flit back to Milton: it only takes a second to kill something or someone in your heart, and it is there that death can still reign o'er us. Walls built across cities can be brought down with some hammers and drills. The other walls can come down, too...as soon as we admit that they're there.


#10

Just the Three, er, Two, of Us.

I don't know that this WaPo editorial is quite as infuriating to me as it is to Katherine Jean Lopez, but I can see what has her goat. Among pro-lifers, the only thing as arguably monstrous than a partial-birth abortion is aborting a fetus because of Down Syndrome or other mental handicap. My sentiments swing the same way; it's a difference of degree from the destruction of "useless eaters" as advocated and practiced by you-know-who.

But I am far from thinking that such was what motivated Ms. Eftimiades. She'll even pay lip service to the notion that raising a mentally handicapped child:

While I have no doubt there can be joys and victories in raising a mentally handicapped child, for me and for Mike, it's a painful journey that we believe is better not taken.

Now who could be so unjust as to take issue with that? It's not that she's opposed to the raising of handicapped children, per se, it just wasn't her bag, baby. The "joys and victories" were, for her lifestyle, insufficient to set aside the pain of the "journey," or something.

Note that all the "joys and victories" of their child's life is talked of as belonging to herself and her man, not the child itself. On first glance, this is unsurprising; spend too much time thinking of the fetus, even a "profoundly retarded" fetus, as an entity all its own capable of its own joys and victories and it becomes harder to justify squelching it. But then she has the temerity to claim that she "made the right choice for the three of us."

How to square these statements? If the choice to abort a child is justifiable because the pain of raising it will be too much for yourselves to handle, then why the need to justify it in term of the needs of the fetus? Does this woman seriously believe that her Down Syndrome-afflicted child would not rather have lived, whatever the cost? If you made the call to spare yourself and your boyfriend difficulties better left untaken, then own it and live with it. Don't sit there and pretend that you made a choice for the three of you when there no longer is a three of you.

One thing further: you aren't denied "the right to grieve". How could you be? What you are denied is the right to use your grief as a shield against the troublesome march of "other people's morality". I'm going to get hate mail for this, but I don't give a hoot in hell about the grief of a woman who gets an abortion. All her agony, powerful though it may be, is entirely self-inflicted, and the suggestion that it trumps someone else's life is insulting to the memory of the dead and the intelligence of the living. The child you had ended no longer has feelings, no longer has pains, no longer has anything. It's dead. You killed it. If you think that's gonna wash away with a few bars of soap and a stale platitude, then maybe "someone else's morality" would do you more good than you think.

Well, I guess it was infuriating after all. I'll be nicer on the next one, I swear.

Steyn Nails it Again

On "Social Democracy":

Somewhere along the way these countries redefined the relationship between government and citizen into something closer to pusher and junkie. And once you’ve done that, it’s very hard to persuade the junkie to cut back his habit.

It's tempting to gloat, and Mark does. But we're rapidly becoming trapped in the same death cycle of transforming our government into nothing more than a massive entitlement bureau. This is bad for two reasons: the government gradually ceases to be capable of performing its essential functions; and the people cease to be capable of fending for themselves. We see it already in our inner cities: despite all the rhetoric about lifting minorities out of misery and into productive citizenship, things get no better, because the government does not have the power to make one person valuable to his fellow citizens. The only thing that can do this is the acceptance of that person of the values that society holds, insofar as it will allow him to function within it. This, of course, is precisely what the elite tell the geto boys they should not do, as it will rob them of their precious unique culture, their noble savagery. One has to wonder whose interests are really being served by this.

Read the whole thing.

The Internet is safe...for the moment...

When I read the words "Deal Reached on Managing the Internet", my heart quailed. Surely, handover was imminent, surrender inescapable. But no. The world gets an ombudsman with the impressive-sounding name of the Internet Governance Forum, which will have zero actual authority. ICANN retains the substance of power.

This might be a clever manuever or it might be the beginning of retreat. It largely depends on how matters proceed in other areas, how general distrust among the peoples of the world grows or abides. But let us not forget the basic principle: For the internet, as for other things, the government which governs least is best.

Greatest Songs #10

Sleater-Kinney - "Words and Guitar" (1997, from Dig Me Out


It's not easy keeping Rock n' Roll alive. The music is infinitely repeatable because it jolts right to the reptilian brain. But it's not infinitely replaceable; Chuck Berry Fan #9584675937 making a record that moves no different from "Maybelline" will not be considered as good as "Maybelline," it will be considered trash and made fun of. So there's a handful of tricks that the industry has been bombarding us with more or less since "Maybelline" was released.

The easiest is to re-package: squeeze the same sound out of a crew with different clothes and a different image and give the style a different name. This works best if your group slags whatever happens to be popular at the moment. Instant controversey equals instant attention, and if the record doesn't suck, it'll sell. For bonus points, wait for somebody else's repackaged movement to run into its third or fourth generation of bands, at which point mockery at the lowest common denominators of the movement will weigh it down like a lead weight. You can then sing the praises of your new repackaging of something you used to like, complete with boisterous homages to the Great Bands of Yore.

For those slightly more daring, There's making an actual effort to write songs that sound new, with structures that don't settle into predictable routines, with lyrics that aren't about sex, lack of sex, or how angry you are at stuff.

Sleater-Kinney's Dig Me Out was an album-length attempt to do just that. The gang were all veterans of the Riot Grrl movement of the late-80's-to-early-90's, and while the sturm-and-drang of that is still very much present, the true revolution is not something promised, but something delivered, in the songwriting, the lyrics, and the deliciously explosive, unstable wanderings of the two guitarists. "Words and Guitar" is the perfect example.

We start with a simple walking (or perhaps, running) treble riff, that starts bell-clear but sinks into distortion just as the fuzz of the other guitar (SK is bass-less, way before the White Stripes and Yeah Yeah Yeahs made it cool) reaches up out of the muck, and the drums roll in a staccato punch that seems to be trying to silence the shrieks, only to stop every measure, frustrated. Things settle down in choruses that seem smoother, but only because the playing is gentler, not less complicated; the beats and notes still tumble as though pouring out of the very hearts and minds of the bandmates.

The singing gives off this impression as well. As with the guitars there are two vocal themes: one yowlingly dominant and over the top, one low and sardonic, making up in speed and tone what it lacks in volume. When they crash together, they overwhelm, laying too related but divergent trains of thought into your head, an experience with which the honest among us will relate.

And what has them so excited? Loss? Death? Damning someone from an Olympian height?

Nope:

Words and guitar
I got it
Words and guitar
I like it
way way too loud
I got it
words and guitar

Meanwhile, the low voice punctures the later lines with:

(can't take this away from me
music is the air I breathe)

Yeah, they're singing about Rock, about how they love it, about how it feeds them, about how the fact that they can play it "till there's nothing left" is freedom. All this fury is neither a lament nor a phillipic but a celebration and a clamoring for more.

'Cause in the end, the simplest way to save Rock n' Roll is to rock you till your good and dead.


#11

Oh, That Foxy Desert...

You know, I remember making this argument way the hell back when the War was merely a potentiality. Sporting of ol' Hill to come up with a phrase as concise as "inherent authority".

Little Known Fact: The Korean War never officially ended; we've just maintained an armistice for 50 years. By the same token, the 1991 Gulf War never ended by any kind of treaty agreement, merely a cease-fire dependent on Saddam fulfilling certain obligations. It isn't like Bill Clinton asked Mother-May-I whenever he felt the need to bomb Baghdad Beardy.

Or did they vote authorizing Desert Fox? Clinton lied, people died!

Plan for the Day:

We move into the top ten songs today, and I'll post a few other random collections of insanity, just as soon as I can take care of a few other things. Stay tuned!

Ever Wonder What You Would Look Like as a South Park Character?

Wonder no more (via Samantha Burns)


For the record, here's me:

The Essayist #10: Booga Booga

Much hullabaloo over Dr. Sanity's recent take on Bush Derangement Syndrome. An exerpt:

The number of things that Bush has been blamed for in this world since 9/11 (even acts of God like Tsunamis, hurricanes and other natural disasters) is the stuff of major comedy. You name the horrible event, and he is identified as the etiologic agent.

He is blamed when he does something (anything) and he is blamed when he does nothing. He is blamed for things that ocurred even before he was President, as well as everything that has happened since. He is blamed for things he says; and for things he doesn't say.

What makes Bush Hatred completely insane however, is the almost delusional degree of unremitting certitude of Bush's evil; while simultaneously believing that the TRUE perpetrators of evil in the world are somehow good and decent human beings with the world's intersts at heart.

I am not personally of the opinion that the portion of the country currently dissatisfied with the President is suffering from a mass derangment. I think that the drivers of the debate on the left are intellectually dishonest and driven by prejudices which they refuse to acknowledge Yes, I'm stooping to say that people are "unaware of their prejudice" a favorite tactic of the left for years. Yet I feel it justified, and will so explain.

President Bush is not merely a man with policies with which those on the Left disagree. He is not merely a man whom they feel will, long run, make the country less safe. Leftists will, when pressed, claim that this is all that animates them, but the plain fact is that Bush was behind in their eyes not since the war, not since 9/11, not even since the beginning of his Presidency after the controversial 2000 election. Bush has been the whipping boy of a good portion of the press and especially the commentariat of the Left since he beat McCain in the 2000 primaries.

It wasn't just that McCain was and is a media darling, and that Bush a famously untelegenetic son of another President whom the press enjoyed blaming for everything in 1992. It was the manner of Bush's victory, his unambiguous appeal to the evangelical Right, the Bob Jones U. rally-the-base routine. A brash, dynamic Republican who "talked straight" and seemed to Care Deeply about Serious Issues (campaign finance "reform"), losing to a Jesus freak given to dopey malaprops oozing out of nasal Texan drawl? The disappointment in the news reports of McCain's defeats was visceral, and to date, they still haven't recovered.

This is, to my mind, the real root of what's become known as BDS. It isn't so much an affinity with the goals of jihadism as an emotional disaffinity with the man who is their most public enemy. There are many among our political and media elite, and among those on the coasts who are in their zone of influence, who simply cannot believe that a born-again Christian from Texas can ever be right about anything, ever. Decades (centuries?) of internalized bigotry of urbanites against provincials, of secular humanists against unsophisticated believers, does not vanish overnight, not even in the face of an act of war, not when the same group has drank deep of the waters of Wilsonian collective security and refuses to believe that their enemy is their enemy because he wants to be so.

In short, George W. Bush has been despised since long before the Iraq War, because he is the living embodiment of Those People, and the habit of the American media and political establishment has for some time been to mock Those People as cruel, stupid, and dangerous. His words are treated with contempt, the values he speaks for dismissed as fronts, the common enemy he wants to destroy improperly understood. They cannot take him seriously. Their self-conciet and worldview will not permit it.

We have seen this sort of thing several times before. The Right had a perhaps-milder case of it in the 90's, with the Clintons, especially Hillary, whose background and resume, from her priveleged upbringing to her work on the Watergate investigation and beyond, read like an author's creation of the stereotypical Democratic woman pol. The Left did it again with Reagan, and (oddly enough) LBJ. The Right was equally furious towards Roosevelt, though perhaps for slightly different reasons (and in any case, Roosevelt was always a much more skilled propagandist than anyone in the mid-20th century GOP could ever hope of being).

None of which is to say that there are not reasonable arguments to be made against the Administration's policies. I myself am very unimpressed with just about all of Bush's domestic work since the tax cuts. But reasonable skepticism about the wisdom of proposed solutions, without serious attempt to offer alternatives, leads one to wonder what your real interests are.

Ah, Good...Detente...

Adeimantus has returned in full, posting glory, and he has a wonderful example of common ground between the U.S. and Chinese governments:

They're both in favor of restricting free speech on the Internet.

You see, it's things like that this that make people want originalists on the Supreme Court. Somehow we've arrived at the point where a woman sticking yams up her keyster is "protected speech" but placing your political opinions on the public airways is not. This is INSANITY. This is reason for despair, for revolt, for praying for a hurricane to do a Katrina to Washington until the Potomac covers the Capitol Rotunda. This is not what was intended.

Someone explain it to me. How is speech any less free because you have to pay good money for the format? Newspapers aren't free, nor are any of the things that go into making them, yet newspapers routinely print whatever they want whenever they want. And not just anyone can afford to run a newspaper; it's often commented that a handful of media bigshots own all the major communications corporations and thus all the mainstream media. Does anyone pretend that newspapers are silent on political decisions? Why can't I get my fair share of the freedom of the press? It's an issue screaming for regulation, I tell ya.

This is STUPID. Because not everyone has equal access to a particular format for political speech, we're going to prevent EVERYONE from using it? Except we're not. In the run-up to the election in Virginia, I saw ads from the two candidates for Governor on the friggin' day of the election.

Ah, but that's "hard money," stamped, sealed and approved by the Man. And who gets to use "hard money"? Why, the candidates' campaigns, of course. Who else is there?

And that's the practical upshot of "campaign finance reform": the polticical class saying smugly to itself: "Who else is there?"

Busy Weekend.

Got the girlfriend in town, and not much time for blogging. I'll be back on Monday. Cheers.

Torture = ?

Stupid Random Thoughts comments on a StrategyPage article regarding torture and the effort to control it, and how that effort trips up on the definition of terror. He speaks as a former military interrogator, and he says this:

You can’t get information from someone who just sits there and smiles back, knowing that I won’t touch him.

Which may be true. Police can avoid beating the truth out of suspects because they have the stick of jailtime and the carrot of reduced jailtime to work with. But how are you going to convince someone who believes he gets his seventy-two virgins as soon as he dies?

On the other hand, there's the idea that beating itself may only convince a perp to tell you what you already think you know. Remember Reservoir Dogs?:

If you beat this *expletive* long enough, he'll tell you he started the *expletive* Chicago fire! Now that doesn't necessarily make it *expletive* so!

I think we need to start defining "torture" internally at least, and then our troops need to know a) what we will do and won't do, and b) that what we will do will be effective. Because if the latter isn't true, than the former doesn't matter. Orders will be given, and scapegoats found. Think Calley.

Iraqi Parliament Analysis

Iraq the Model has the goods. The cracks in the Shi'ite alliance are especially interesting. The possibility of a pan-Iraq party doing well is also discussed.

I just have to wonder about Sadr. Who is it out there that thinks this man will ever be anything other than a troublemaker, and why does he think it?

Your Child is Depriving a Village of its Idiot

Blogging will be light today, due to parent/teacher conferences, which may well be the single biggest waste of time, breath, and catered food known to man, at least from the teacher's perspective. It's a very basic proposition: if your child works, he'll pass. If she doesn't, she won't.

Greatest Songs #11

The Ramones - "Judy is a Punk" (1976, from Ramones)


"Oh, for God's sake," I hear you saying. "What, The Exploited, Minor Threat, Sonic Youth, etc., weren't enough to bottom out the punk stylings? You had to finish off the bottom ten with a Ramones song? You fanboy! Had to hop on the 'they're dead, they're great' bandwagon, didn't ya?"

Fair enough. Now shut up.

Anyone who likes the kind of music I do is going to eventually run into certain indispensable bands. These are the ones who kicked it off, who were playing against the grain when that wasn't something you got rewarded for. The Velvet Underground is number one on such a list. The Stooges are a close second. The Ramones were most definitely working off of a Stooges riff, and could therefore be considered the lesser band. The Stooges were certainly more creative.

Unfortunately, the last Stooges album came out in '73. I was born in '76. So, on with the Ramones.

I'm fully aware of the criticisms. This is a band that basically wrote the same song over and over and over again. You could take songs of the last album and put them on the first album, and vice versa, and only the geeks would know the difference. They made minimal effort to grow as songwriters, and barely any at all as musicians. Et cetera, et cetera, ad infinitum.

But what band today casts a longer shadow? The simple, monotonous, fasterlouder style will never go away. There'll always be someone along to sweep it up and take a couple of chords and roar their way through to people's eardrums. That reality is largely the creation of the Ramones, who got in ahead of any of their contemporaries, reached more kids worldwide over the course of their careers, and managed to last the longest even though they didn't really care much for each other. They earned their legacy, and the hard way.

What's more, they remain superior to the majority of their descendants in one key element: their songs are FUN. They could write a tune about sniffin' glue, going to the beach, President Reagan, or anything else under the sun, and make it sound like an absolute blast, simultaneously giving off the impression that they didn't much care about it. Name one "punk" band in the last two decades who've managed to pull that off. You can't, can you? The self-serious little twerps ruined it, turned themselves into a lot of ersatz barricade boys, completely ignoring the fact that the music is itself the getaway, the escape. Sure, it's a temporary escape, but what isn't? In the end, we all go to the same place.

"Okay, okay, windy, we get it. But why 'Judy is a Punk'? Shouldn't you go with something more epoch-defining? 'I Wanna Be Sedated'? That song from the cell phone ads?"

No, I shouldn't. Because "Judy is a Punk" is the first song they ever wrote.

I think we're done here.


#12

How Social Security Reform got Borked

Reading Austin Bay's Notes From the Marine, I caught a comment that explained perfectly how the Left managed to kill reform -- spreading fear:

"Ownership Society" is code language for "We just made it even more legal and convenient for your employer to raid your pension plan, and we’re not bailing you out. In stead we’re bailing *them* out because they overspent, and despite raiding your pension, they’re still going under."

The commenter, one Josh Jasper, doesn't seem to pay any attention at all to the central premise of SocSec Reform, that "pension plans" inevitably become extra revenue streams, overspent and underfunded. Under privatization, your employer can't raid your pension plan, because there is no pension plan. Does anyone worry about getting their 401k's raided? Of course not, because the money's in an account in your name, and your employer has no rights to it, even though your employer contributes to it.

However, I do think that Glastris' critique (quoted in Austin's post) of the President's pitch has a degree of valitidy. In essence, the administration failed to come up with a convincing catchphrase to overcome the public's natural reticence to changing their benefits. If the Pres had made the connection between private SocSec accounts and the 401k's people already invest in, a lot of the fear might have been abated. Touting SocSec as a "National 401k" would have made people realize that they were trading in something inefficient and collapsing with a plan similar to something they already know and trust.

We should take up the cudgel again, as soon as we can. It isn't like the Dems have a counter-proposal, other than "raise taxes and cut benefits".


For further information, see The Essayist #6.

Are You SURE You Don't Want Gay Marriage?

Virginia Postrel on why Texas' Prop. 2 is gratuitous.

Oh, well. In Texas, the issue is over.

Kaus is right.

If the people don't care that the Man is choking off their voice, then they can be expected to live with the consequences. And everyone who voted against Prop 77 in California (and the similar bill in Ohio) no longer has the right to complain about government not responding to the will of the people.

National Conversation on R....*snore*

I won't comment too much more on Mark Steyn's defense of Bill Bennett, except to concur whole-heartedly with the contention that the capability to have a serious, honest conversation on race does not exist in this country. There is no dialogue, there is only preaching, and the vast majority tune it all out. We've reached the point where some silly pile of clothes (Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee, by name) can carp about the fact that there's no Hurricanes with African-American names, and the stupidity of it doesn't even register. As if the thousands of poor urban blacks in New Orleans would have felt better if it had been Hurrican Kunta-Kinte that made them suddenly homeless and wet.

But, watcha gonna do? There's a fortress of self-righteousness around people that say things like that, a complete lack of awareness of how such a complaint is scarecely more than late-night comedy fodder. As a honkie, I could no more critique Sheila Jackson-Lee (funny, I don't see an African name in there anywhere) to her face than a Pit Bull could. I might make noises that sound like communication, but nothing in any context that she'd be prepared to absorb and respond to, and anyway she'd be to busy waiting for me to start turning rabid.

Oh, and please don't infer from any of this that I'm all that anxious for a real "dialogue" on race to start. I don't want any such thing. I don't want race to matter a damn in America, about anything: how you get a job, how you get an education, how you get a loan approved, how you get into college, anything. I'm hardly champing at the bit to discuss a subject that even Chuck D thinks is based on nonsense. In fact, the sooner everybody shuts up about it, the better off we'll all be.

New Music

I'm gonna put Song #11 up tommorrow, probably. For the moment, I can' possibly be bothered, because I've found something I can't stop listening to, and I'm going to so so far as to recommend it.

I never really bothered to become a fan of the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, but I approved of them in theory. Still, I hadn't heard a single song until I picked up Howl for $10 (I love Target).

It's an album that's thrown it's fans a left hook, trading in blastery and distorted indie punk for acoustic blues shuffles and lyrics that boast about standing by Jesus. And it's easy to accuse them of ripping off Dylan and the like. But there's nothing cheap on this record, nothing that smacks of caving in to what the punters want. It's a one-five change, as Lou Reed says, and it's glorious.

One warning, however. It's a Sony product, and it's got software that can mess up your 'puter. So keep it in the stereo and the Walkman.

'Oo Won the Bloody War, Anyway?

Victor Davis Hanson has a new book about the Peloponessian War, in which he appears to run counter to some of the prevailing scholarship concerning what many consider to be the great folly of ancient Hellas. NRO has an excerpt from the tenth chapter:

Other observers, like the historians Theopompus and Cratippus, felt that the Peloponnesian War did not really end until 394, a thirty-eight-year war in all. In this view, hostilities actually ceased when the Spartan fleet was defeated by Athens at the sea battle at Cnidus (394). Then its expeditionary army was forced home to Sparta from Ionia to meet a new rising threat from Thebes, while the Long Walls of Athens were rebuilt, thereby ending once and for all the saga of the old fifth-century bipolar world of Athenian and Spartan hegemony.

Now this is the kind of revisionism a man can get behind. I'm putting the book on my wish list.

La Raza in L.A.

Moonbat Monitor has the alarm bell ringing on our own immigration problems in light of Paris. This observation was bound to be made, and I for one don't necessarily think it shouldn't be made. After all, hordes of unassimilated immigrants was how Texas stopped being Mexican in the first place.


Yet I can't help recalling Boxing Alcibiades' Humble Proposal on the Mexican Border, in which he writes:

As a Texan "anglo" (I hate that stupid term), I may not celebrate the Day of the Dead, but I sure have a lot more in common with Mexican emigres I've met, especially from Gerrero, Tamalpais, and Coahuila, than I do the typical New Yorker or Bostonian, both of whom, to judge by the newspapers, are regularly embarrassed at my state's mere existence. And the average guy in Indiana probably has an easier time understanding one of the many Mennonites in Chihuahua than he does the Chomsky-worshipping residents of Berserkely...

And this:

In fact, language is pretty much the only barrier Mexicans face to assimilation, at least when politicians aren't busy using race as a divide-and-conquer issue in LA. It certainly isn't the ranchero music, which sounds alarmingly close to something you might hear a couple of old guys playing at a Polish wedding in upstate Wisconsin. Mexicans who desire to assimilate do so almost instantly, as soon as they can speak English, because their values are so nearly identical to our own. Much closer than other groups, even those who integrate well, but steadfastly refuse any notion of assimilation. Go on, tell some cute girl from India that she should marry a white guy or a Navajo. G'wan, try it.

All of which is well and good. But if it took numbers to make a Revolution, there'd never be one. So what DO we do about those racial mau-mauers and their dreams of a Republica del Norte? Shuddering in horror is not an answer.


UPDATE: Russ suggested I should take an actual stand on the issue, and Moonbat Moniter gave me a link promising "interesting bits of info". So I suppose I had better offer some. A few points:

Both the French and Russian Revolutions were launched by a small but determined clique of educated radicals. At no time did the balance of the populations support either revolution, indeed, both the National Convention and the Politburo had to engage in extensive counterguerilla warfare against the peasant populations who had risen up in armed resistance. The latter's campaign constitutes a largely unknown portion of Russian History; when the war against the Whites was over, the Reds still had to tangle with the "Greens", and that continued for several years.

Revolutions also tend to break down ruling classes that are weak or retreating. It is always after the tyrant releases his grip that the revolution happens, not before. Louie Seize and Nicky Deuce were no man's idea of tyrants; by any reasonable account, they were unsure, self-effacing family men who went along with the tied of reform. Louie Quatorze and Alex Trip would have devoured Danton and Lenin respectively (in point of fact, it was the execution of his elder brother for a plot against the life of Triple Al that, according to him anyway, turned Lenin into a revolutionary). Nor were the nobility any help. For decades before 1917 in Russia the nobility had feared and expected a Revolution, the causes of which they could not be bothered to mobilize against, and the French elite of 1789 was in many cases on the side of the bourgeoisie, or at any rate did not care to resist them.

In spite of all of this, a preponderance of firepower could have stifled either revolt in its infancy. A professor of mine at St. Joes was noted for saying that with a few thousand loyal riflemen the Tsar could have survived 1917, and the performance of the Swiss Guards in Paris in 1789 were not inspirational. But you must have men who are ready, willing, and able to fire on civilians, who perceive them as their enemies, and the enemies of their society.

The true questions, therefore, are these:

1) How popular are the Alte-Californians among the balance of the Hispanic community? Do our Mexican immigrants feel significant animus against the Treaty of Guadelupe-Hidalgo to desire revanche?

2) How serious are these radicals? Do they really want to create their Republica del Norte, and are they willing to shed the necessary blood to obtain it? Or is this merely a pose to bait the Man?

3) Is our elite prepared to deny them such, and stomp on them vociferously if the desire? Are they willing to shed blood?

4) If they are, will our police and soldiers respond to the call?


Question 4 seems to be a certain "yes", and I'm pretty sure that somewhere along the line 3 will turn out to be "yes" as well. For the rest, more data is required.

Hey, My Gum is Losin' It's Flavah Heah!

Samantha Burns on the history of chewing gum. I for one have never heard bubble blowers go "foo...foo...foo" but it's possible I'm not paying attention.

Speaking as a teacher, I can point out that enforcing the Gum Rule is not especially difficult. They're so dumb about it most of the time, sitting there masticating like cattle, but none of them are so bold as to actually blow a bubble. At my school, chewing gum is accompanied by a $1 fine, proceeds to go to the Brothers' Mission Fund.

More Alito Slapfighting

War in the comments section over at Scotusblog.

An Actual French Response to French Riots:

A reporter interviews a man standing in front of a mosque in full Islamist regalia and politely relays his complaints. Do readers know that these offended Islamists are calling for the de-Zionization of France? And the defeat of the United States of America? No offense meant there! Do readers understand that the banlieues are being shaped into a foreign and hostile nation?

I think the deeper question is, does anyone on the Left care?

Lithwick on Alito: A Fisking

It's been a while since I revved one of these up, and I do enjoy it.

The Dangling Conversation The one-sided "debate" about judges. By Dahlia Lithwick Posted Friday, Nov. 4, 2005, at 2:12 PM ET

Of all the criticisms of Harriet Miers, the one I found most perplexing was that some Senators felt she spoke too quietly. Her murder boards were going badly, in part because she was a whisperer. Forgive me, but what the hell? She wasn't auditioning for the lead in Annie. She was applying for a job largely composed of reading and writing. I have heard a total of 30 words emanate from the mouth of Clarence Thomas in six years covering the court.

I followed the link Lithwick offers, and the word "quiet" appears precisely once, and is not attributed to any Senator by name, but does explain that the Senator in question couldn't hear Miers' statements and had to ask the people in the hall to shut up. The rest of the article quotes objections to the Miers nomination that includes words such as "gravitas," "underwhelming," "incomplete" and even "insulting." I know reporters aren't used to taking people at their word, but this seems a silly beginning to hang your screed on.

It occurred to me only in hindsight that there was a reason Miers' tiny voice was such an issue: Conservatives wanted to use these confirmation hearings as infomercials for their views on the proper role of judges in America. The soft-spoken Miers wouldn't have moved any product. The John Roberts hearing was, and the Sam Alito hearing will be, Justice Sunday III—the church service/call-to-arms staged by demagogues on the far right. Except these hearings are carried live on C-SPAN, broadcast nationwide, and blessed by the Senate.

You think I am overstating matters? You're not reading the right op-eds. Here is Ned Rice at the National Review Online, scorning Miers as a nominee: "Let's name someone to the Supreme Court whose nomination is guaranteed to trigger a national conversation on the proper role of the judiciary—it can only help the conservative cause. Let's demand that Judge Bork be allowed to take his case against judicial activism directly to the American people."

My God! People of a particular political philosophy desiring that their ideas be given an opportunity to persuade the people! Such perfidy cannot stand!

And here is George Will: "This is the debate the country has needed for several generations: Should the Constitution be treated as so plastic, so changeable that it enables justices to reach whatever social outcomes—'results'—they, like the result-oriented senators who confirm them, consider desirable?" Here is Joe Mariani: "Taking a Mulligan—a golf term for 'undoing' a poor shot—on Harriet Miers gives President Bush an opportunity to launch a public relations offensive with his base solidly behind him. … [I]f the President nominates a strong originalist like Sam Alito, Janice Rogers Brown, Michael Luttig or Edith Hollan Jones, we can finally have that national conversation about judicial activism and tyranny the Left has been dreading for decades."
The italics are mine. But there is, it would seem, a national conversation going on, though it is a conversation in which most of us are not participating. The same devoted right-wingers who torpedoed the Miers nomination are frothing at the mouth

I beg your pardon. No one is frothing at anything. People are eager to make an argument. We are still permitted such by the 1st Amendment, yes? It's not 60 days before a national election.

to explain painstakingly to the nation—yet again—their theory of judging. Liberals believe that the object of these hearings is to find out what a nominee stands for.

And then, when these ideas fail to pass the litmus test that everyone pretends is not there, "torpedo"-ing the nomination. No word yet on whether they froth at the mouth.

But conservatives have long understood that the real point is a mass public-relations effort to drive home their lasting, unitary view of all liberal or even moderate judges as reckless and overreaching.

I'm fairly certain that no such words were uttered during the Roberts confirmation. But then, it's hard to follow ever quote when the loyal opposition's blather renders one doubled-over with laughter or unconcious.

The net effect of the John Roberts hearings was a national four-day "civics lesson" in which the populace heard, again and again, that any approach to judging other than "modesty" and "minimalism" would result in judges making things up as they go along.

Um, no. The net effect of the Roberts hearing was that Roberts became Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. I'm still confused as to why Lithwick objects to politicians and judicial appointees discussing the proper approach to exercising judicial power. Aren't senatorial hearings supposed to function as "civics lessons"?

That's a page from the far right's talking points.

Only the far right? No one on the moderate right? Does a "moderate right" exist in Lithwick's imagination? Or is that term only applied, as Mark Steyn noted to the less psychotic mullahs of Iran?

No competing vision emerged from the left, as far as I could tell.

Say, there's a surprise.

I won't credit the efforts of the Democrats on the judiciary committee to see into John Roberts' heart, or probe whether his kids play soccer with poor immigrant children, as efforts to put forth a competing jurisprudence. Those questions were clumsy proxies for the clumsy theory that judges should just fix life for sad people.

Um, isn't that what liberals want?

I am calling for something else. It's time for Senate Democrats to recognize that a) there is a national conversation about the role of judges now taking place; and that b) thanks to their weak efforts, it's not a conversation—it's a monologue.

That's funny, I could swear all the monologuing was being done by Senate Democrats in the aforementioned efforts to see into Roberts' heart. The guy hardly got a word in edgeways. Who was it that was doing all this yapping about judicial restraint? I mean, besides the frothing far-right conservative ideologues slamming their torpedoes into Miers (anyone else waiting for an accusation of "ideological rape" or some such by the sob-sister crowd)?

Partisans on both sides are eagerly setting one another's hair on fire,

Perhaps this explains the frothing. Or maybe they just need to froth a little higher?

deconstructing every word of every opinion Sam Alito ever penned. Trust me—my hate mail is staggering. But the substance of Alito's writings is a distraction from the main event.

Observe as our intrepid guide shows us the real plan at work.

In truth, conservatives cannot wait for Round 2 of this next civics lesson, a lesson that will star Sam Alito—a charming, articulate, card-carrying conservative jurist with an evolved and plausible-sounding legal theory.

If you're not frothing at the eeeeeeevil being perpetrated here, you obviously aren't reading the right op-eds. Do you see what the bastards are up to! Why, they'll stop at nothing! They'll even nominate charming, articulate men with evolved and plausible theories! Can the Republic ever survive?

It will, unless Democrats get it together, become yet another Jerry Lewis telethon,

Sister, you need to make up your mind. Either the Democrats are selling maudlin and sentimental gush as deep thought, or the Republicans are. Last I looked, Barbara Boxer was not a Republican.

raising national awareness about the dangers of "judicial activism" and the plague of "the reckless overreaching of out-of-touch liberal elitist judges." Democrats in the Senate either will not or cannot put the lie to these trite formulations. They need to shout it from the rooftops: that blithely striking down acts of Congress is activism; that the right's hero Clarence Thomas may be the most activist judge on the current court; that reversing or eroding long-settled precedent is also activism; and that "legislating from the bench" happens as frequently from the right as the left.

There are many words I would use to describe Clarence Thomas, but "blithe" is not one of them. And who ever said that acts of Congress couldn't be made void by the Supreme Court? That is what the Supreme Court is for. What is coming under attack by conservatives is the Court setting a particular public policy goal and man-handling the Constitution by whatever means to get there. The chief criticism of Roe vs. Wade as a decision is that it involved the federal government in an area where the federal government does not belong, and invented a Constitutional right that, if anything, was covered by the Tenth Amendment. That is what is meant by "legislating from the bench." The Supreme Court isn't there to re-write the Constitution to say what it thinks would be best for us all of us to say. It's there to guard it.

Part of this woeful unpreparedness is the result of something we've discussed before—the sinking fear on the part of some progressives that the right's criticisms are somehow legitimate.

Thoughtcrime! Thoughtcrime! Thoughtcrime!

Maybe Roe was judicial overreaching; maybe there is no principled theory for what liberal jurists do.

Is this sarcasm or not? I really can't tell.

Part of the left's program is that any principled theory for what liberal jurists do is complicated.

That's the best way to convince people that you aren't an elitist: say that your ideas are "complicated".

There's no cheap sound bite for Justice Stephen Breyer's notion of "active liberty" or for Cass Sunstein's program of judicial "minimalism" or Jack Balkin's principled "centrism." Or perhaps there is a cheap sound bite embedded in those ideas—it simply hasn't been excavated yet.

Um, wouldn't "active liberty", "judicial minimalism", or "principled centrism" be the sound bites?

Incidentally, I followed the links, and discovered the following:

• Justice Breyers does not explain in the interview linked just what "active liberty" means. But he does admit that the charge that unelected judges making decisions that should be left to the people is "a good criticism, not a bad criticism, even if I disagree with it in particular cases."
• Cass Sunstein says that the courts should let "public debates stay in the political realm, rather than the court providing broad, sweeping judgments on contentious issues," and that "even if they rely on their own deepest convictions, they may make mistakes like Dred Scott." (Doesn't this sound like an argument for repealing Roe?)
• Jack Balkin makes a fair argument that even those who claim to be originalists are inconsistent about applying that theory. But his basic premise: that following originalism would destroy everything we have achieved, is frankly, malarkey. He himself writes that "In the long run, the Supreme Court has helped secure greater protection for civil rights and civil liberties not because judges are smarter or nobler, but because the American people have demanded it." As conservatives have countlessly stated, the end result of striking down decisions like Roe depends entirely on what the people would do in its aftermath. To state on the one hand that civil-liberty guaruntees are dependent on the "living constitution" and to state on the other that the are the result of what the people have decided they want is an attempt to have your cake and eat it, too.

The main attraction of the right wing's relentless attack on the judiciary is that its oversimplified theory of judicial restraint solves its oversimplified problem of unconstrained judges. You have to drill down a lot deeper to see that unconstrained judges are making mischief at either end of the political spectrum, and more urgently, that hogtying judges is not an end in itself. It's a means to an end—with the end, I suppose, being the packing of the courts with judges who say they believe in restraint even as they gleefully dismantle decades' worth of legislative and judicial progress.

But if this "progress" was based on an abuse of judicial power, would not someone who believes in "restraint" want to correct that trend? Again, what we oppose is the re-writing of the Constitution. It's hardly inconsistent to want to edit out what has been improperly added.

The point here is not that Democrats must—between today and the start of the Alito hearings—pull together a well-worked-out global vision of constitutional interpretation.

Wait, weren't you just saying that they already had these global visions? And that they were complicated?

They do, however, need to enter into this "national conversation" about the role of judges with a more evolved doctrine than: "Judge Alito, would you cry if your puppy died?"

Only if the puppy was rabid, one presumes, and thus, frothing at the mouth (I'll stop now).

In his wonderful book, Radicals in Robes: Why Extreme Right-Wing Courts Are Wrong for America, Cass Sunstein lays out four alternative theories of constitutional interpretation and concludes that judicial minimalism is the surest and most principled path. Senate Democrats should commit to memory the parade of horribles Sunstein lists as following from the fundamentalist project (he means fundamentalism not in the religious sense but in terms of rigid adherence to original intent). If the Scalias, Thomases, Alitos, and Borks of the world had their way, he says, there would be no meaningful gun control. States could have official churches. Hard-fought federal worker, environmental, and civil rights protections would disintegrate. What you currently think of as the right to privacy would disappear.

Again, only if the people wanted them too, and got the legislatures to so instruct. If these things are so popular, then there's nothing stopping the Constitution from being amended to include them. But then the Constitution will say it, clearly, and there's no need for us to argue further on the subject.

Incidentally, I wasn't aware that there was any "meaningful gun control."

These are the questions Senate Democrats need to ask of Sam Alito: Should property rights trump individual rights? Should the right to privacy be interpreted as narrowly as the framers might have intended? Do you believe that a return to the morals and mores of two centuries ago is in the best interest of this nation?

It doesn't matter what he answers, indeed the answers are irrelevant.

Oh, of course they are. Because once you ask the questions, the raw, primal truth of them will cause any who hold incorrect answers to spontaneously implode and collapse in a puff of logic, like Sauron at the end of Return of the King. Think Lithwick's been watching The American President again?

By posing these questions to the American people, the senators will give them some understanding of the America that stands to be dismantled. What matters now is injecting an alternative voice into this conversation. To start talking, before the conversation passes us by altogether.

And that would be lovely. Because it might involve something other than the tendentious use of terms like "far-right," "out-of-the-mainstream," and "radical" and offer something like an argument for why the liberal understanding of constitutional jurisprudence should stand. Which is exactly what all the frothing conservatives want.