Reining In Government Employment Before It Reins Us In
“Unless you have a terrific talent for something like hitting a ball or trading commodity futures, the private sector is a mug’s game; and this was, sad but not surprising to record, more true at the end of GWB’s eight years than at the beginning.” - - John Derbyshire
It ought to be a conservative priority to bring public-employee pay and levels of employment into some rational relation with what the Federal, state and local governments should be doing.
Otherwise tax-predator public-employee-unions will live off tax-producing businesses and individuals until the free-market system and thus our own freedom is destroyed in the process.
Last Thursday National Review on Line’s (NRO) John Derbyshire in his “GET A GOVERNMENT JOB!” here cites a Reuter’s article “Washington, D.C. favorite area for wealthy young” here - -
“Loudoun county, which is part of the Washington metropolitan area, has 10 percent, or 10,327 young adults, making more than six figures — more than San Francisco and New York in terms of percentage of the population.”
Columnist Derbyshire declares - -
“If you’re not working for the feddle gummint either directly (Assistant to Administrative Assistant Grade 3(a) in the U.S. Department of Administrative Assistance) or indirectly (lobbying, lawyering, feeding the beast, or living on bailout subsidies) you are a loser chump. Write out 100 times: THE PRIVATE SECTOR IS FOR LOSER CHUMPS. Then, go beg a bureaucrat for a job.” (Emphasis in original.)
In a later post here also last Thursday, he reports in “Government Thrives!” - -
“(1) From yesterday’s Wall Street Journal:
The George W. Bush years were very lucrative for federal workers. In 2000, the average compensation (wages and benefits) of federal workers was 66 percent higher than the average compensation in the U.S. private sector. The new data show that average federal compensation is now more than double the average in the private sector …
(Thanks to a pal in Charlotte, N.C., for that.) Then
(2) Tom Piatak over at Takimag picked up the same story I had. Tom notes that:
Of the 50 counties in the United States with the highest percentage of people aged 25-34 making over $100,000 per year, sixteen of them were in the Washington area, and only two counties not near Washington or a state capital made the top ten.
As Tom further remarked to me in an offline exchange, many of our state capitals have become mini-D.C.s. In Ohio, for example, Columbus is the only part of the state doing well.(Underscoring Forum’s)
Cato’s Chris Edwards recommendation here has, in our view, great merit - -
“It’s time to put a stop to this. Federal wages should be frozen for a period of years, at least until the private-sector economy has recovered and average workers start seeing some wage gains of their own.”
For those activities the Federal government arguably should be doing - - ranging from the “common defense,” to encouraging the development, side-by-side with the states, of the nation’s infrastructure, to overseeing a prudent national “safety net,” the US agencies need to be able to hire (and let go or retain) capable men and women based on sound business practices and genuinely competitive salaries, not rigid civil-service rules and inflated compensation packages.
But to hire, for example, more and more young men and women to serve an expanding (but below the radar) regulatory state at ever-increasing wage schedules makes no sense.
Readers will find the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Wayne Crews “Ten Thousand Commandments: An Annual Snapshot of the Federal Regulatory State” here a revealing document.
One can see here the growth in enforcement budgets and in “economically significant [with at least $100 million in economic impact] rules.”
Of course, the expansion of the Federal Establishment lies in program as well as regulatory areas.
But consider what is happening now: universities and colleges, infused with political correctness, accustom students to restricted political speech, as Michael Barone points out here this morning.
Many of these students then move on to some of the best-paying jobs now available — in the Federal government, or as Steven Malanga explains in the larger state or local governments as the case may be.
Malanga here points out that —
“[T]he real power of the public sector is showing through in this economic crisis. Some five million private-sector workers have lost their jobs in the last year alone, and their unemployment rate is above 9% according to the BLS. By contrast, public-sector employment has grown in virtually every month of the recession,and the jobless rate for government workers is a mere 2.8%.” (Underscoring Forum’s)
None of these developments augurs well for the strengthening of our liberties or our enterprises. Conservatives can’t realistically expect Maryland or Virginia incumbents or candidates to confront public-employee unions head-on. We shall have to do whatever heavy listing must be done ourselves.
A Defense-Addled White House: from Venezuela to Poland
UPDATE SEPTEMBER 18! Washington Examiner’s Tim Carney’s explains that “Obama helps strengthen General Electric-Putin ties” here. Author Carney points to a Reuter’s post here “ANALYSIS-US firms, others may gain from shield pullback.”
A Defense-Addled White House: from Venezuela to Poland
“. . . [Y]ou can’t be in favor of assertive American foreign policy overseas and increasing Europeanization domestically; likewise, you can’t take a reductively libertarian view while the rest of the planet goes to pieces.”
- - Mark Steyn
Of course, we are all concerned with the imminent threat of intrusive Obamacare. And the current accelerated expansion of government has been enabled by a series of wrong-headed enactments — from last year’s Barney Frank Housing Bill right on through to last March’s mega-appropriations bill.
But the Obama Administration’s serious national-security missteps or failures to act jeopardize our own safety, and our world-wide interests as well.
Our Adversaries Hustle in Latin America
Last week Michael Ledeen sketched here a wider picture of what we face in his “The End of the World” - -
“There is a mounting body of evidence of a global alliance directed against the United States, running from Moscow to Tehran, Damascus and Caracas. United by hatred of America, funded by oil and narcotics revenues (including our own), and unanimous in their contempt for free societies, the leaders of Russia, Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba and Bolivia publicly declare their intentions and demonstrate their resolve.”
. . . . .
“As usual, nobody really cares to add up all this information, because their sum comes quite close to a potential ‘end of the world’ scenario. Russia and Venezuela and several other countries are now in cahoots to strengthen Iran (and its regional colony, Syria) in the Middle East and radical Marxist regimes in Latin America. The target of this conspiracy is the United States.
It’s a serious threat, and any sensible person would have to take it seriously, but we do not have sensible people in charge of our policies. When the president is not tied up lecturing school children on the importance of taking the high road, he’s ‘making history’ by embracing the United Nations, or actively catering to our enemies, from sending back-channel messages to Tehran, to slapping sanctions on the legitimate government of Honduras in favor of a Chavez and Castro buddy.”
Last Sunday, investigator and author Ken Timmerman revealed in his “U.S. May Face 9/11-Scale Threat from Venezuela” here - -
“In a separate case, [Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau] indicted a company called Limmt and its manager, Li Fang Wei, who used aliases and shell companies to purchased banned missile, nuclear, and dual use materials for Iranian military entities.
Morgenthau predicted this week that Iran and Venezuela, ‘two of the world’s most dangerous regimes… will be acting together in our backyard on the development of nuclear and missile technology.’”
We Abandon Our Friends in Central and Eastern Europe
Scott Johnson “The gathering storm, part 168″ concludes here in Power Line today - -
“The Obama administration must be setting some kind of record for comprehensive error in foreign policy. Today comes word that it will abandon plans to build the missile-defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic. An announcement from the White House is expected about 10:30 a.m. (Eastern). Nile Gardiner comments:
‘This is bad news for all who care about the US commitment to the transatlantic alliance and the defence of Europe as well as the United States. It represents the appalling appeasement of Russian aggression and a willingness to sacrifice American allies on the altar of political expediency. A deal with the Russians to cancel missile defence installations sends a clear message that even Washington can be intimidated by the Russian bear.
What signal does this send to Ukraine, Georgia and a host of other former Soviet satellites who look to America and NATO for protection from their powerful neighbour? The impending cancellation of Third Site is a shameful abandonment of America’s friends in eastern and central Europe, and a slap in the face for those who actually believed a key agreement with Washington was worth the paper it was written on.’
Gardiner could go further. What signal does this send to the mullahs in Iran? The impending cancellation tells them nothing they didn’t already know, but it confirms their perception of Obama as a clueless doofus who has done much to merit their utmost contempt? What signal does this send to our ally Israel? You are on your own, buddy, and you’d better get cracking.”
National Review on Line’s (NRO) Rich Lowry quotes John Bolton on the president’s grave error with Poland and the Czech Republic here - -
‘Pre-emptive capitulation’
Just talked to John Bolton. Here’s his take. ‘This is just pre-emptive capitulation, although like everything else, the rhetoric is that we’re doing the opposite.’ It doesn’t make sense that we should only be concerned with the short-and-medium-range threat and not also with ‘the long-range threat 2 or 3 years from now.’ And our intelligence on Iran is manifestly ‘inadequate.’ I wouldn’t ‘bet a lot of money on it being right,’ and in any case, ‘there’s this concept called ‘break-out,’ where they achieve a quantum leap in their capability. It’s a ‘bet against the future’ that leaves ‘us and the Europeans in a more risky situation.’ All the talk of the intelligence changing and an enhanced short-and-medium-range capability is ‘blue smoke and mirrors’ because they never believed in missile defense. ‘It’s a convenient smoke-screen to do what they wanted to do anyway, which is to give up on missile defense in the hope the Russians will be nice to us.’ Secretary Gates’s comments were the ‘most disingenuous.’ Yes, we want a defense against the short-and-medium-range threat, but the whole idea of missile defense is based on a ‘layered defense.’ ‘Gates was a problem in the Bush administration on missile defense. He was always weak on this.’”
Heritage’s Mackenzie Eaglen asks here - -
“So President Obama has axed the agreement with America’s allies in eastern Europe and abandoned the so-called ‘third site’ missile-defense plan.
It’s hard to determine which is worse:
- the lame excuse that Iran’s nuclear program isn’t progressing as rapidly as before (Just this week the U.S. ambassador to the IAEA said Iran now has ‘possible breakout capacity’ to enrich and convert its uranium stockpile to bomb-grade material) or,
- that U.S. leaders would sell out our friends for Russia whose own leaders just said they won’t push for tougher sanctions against Iran.
This betrayal of allies comes as America continues to press NATO allies to do more in Afghanistan. Earlier this year Poland sent even more troops to Afghanistan to help with the recent election. So too, the Czech Republic is running a large Provincial Reconstruction Team and advising the Afghanistan Air Corps today.” (Underscoring Forum’s.)
(NRO’s Andrew Stuttaford points out that today is the 70th anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Poland.)
So what can Maryland and Virginia grass-roots conservatives do?
- Raise questions about “provid[ing] for the common defense” in future TEA Parties and Recess Rallies.
- Ask Blue Dog members who declare “a deep commitment to the . . . national security of the United States” what they are doing to bring the Obama Administration to a better mind on protecting all Americans from our adversaries.
And start to learn about the very dangerous EMP threat through this video.
Will Maryland Conservatives Have Any Voice in Their GOP?
The jaw-dropping part of the campaign to force party chairman Jim Pelura out of office here was how wholly self-referential it was in the midst of a national crisis: a kind of high-school campaign almost entirely about the narrow concerns of the anti-Pelura leaders.
The key actors — the so-called Republican Floor Leaders in the state Senate here, and the Minority Leader and Minority Whip here among the rump collection of Republicans in the General Assembly — have apparently little to contribute to the ongoing national conversation on the proper role of government.
Perhaps they fear a “Recess Rally” targeted at the Annapolis Establishment. More likely, their imaginations do not extend that far. Back in 2007, they seemed wholly deaf to the challenges of that time. Today, one wonders whether they even take in the larger concerns about the size and reach of government, evident in the great events (see Demos Chrissos’ 9/12 video here) now taking place around us.
The Republic is at a kind of historic crossroads and hundreds of thousands of Americans spent their own money to come to Washington, D. C. to protest ever-growing government, government-run health care proposals, and unprecedented levels of spending.
Yet these Maryland Republican legislative leaders can only suggest that the state party must do more to meet their campaign needs to protect their incumbencies. Of course, after chairman Pelura’s departure, we expect that former governor Ehrlich will steer money to the state party which will help his own campaign for reelection.
If current Maryland Republican trends continue (and it is always somewhat risky to make such projections), Bob Ehrlich will likely be the Republican candidate for governor in 2010. The current nominal leaders of the Republicans in the General Assembly would then become part of Mr. Ehrlich’s team.
Bob Ehrlich, as we have written here, is a centrist — whose organizing cause in his first term was slots. Three members of the Republican anti-Pelura gang are are no-new-tax pledge signers who broke their promises here to the people of Maryland - - delegate Tony O’Donnell three times, delegate Christopher Shank two times, and state senator Nancy Jacobs once. (State senator Allan Kittleman, arriving later in then-governor Ehrlich’s tenure, did not sign the no-new-taxes pledge.)
Apparently the pledge-breakers believed that voting for Democratic tax hikes was wicked, but voting for Republican tax hikes was virtuous. That is part of their definition of being a “team player.”
Former governor Ehrlich, wisely, in view of what must have been his planned program, did not sign the gubernatorial no-new-taxes pledge. Having deeply worried fiscal conservatives, he then vexed the leadership of a major group of Maryland Second Amendment defenders, and demoralized Maryland values voters.
The prudent Maryland conservative can only expect more of the same from Mr. Ehrlich and his friends.
We would be delighted, of course, if the former governor would say “I get it now . . . I’ve been listening to Rush for these years of exile and now I see where I went wrong.”
We are great believers in redemption.
But from pork spending to green statism to dangerous diversity programs, Maryland conservatives should be reviewing the records of incumbent Republican state legislators.
The choice is not the false one between the very heavy statism of the Maryland Democratic Party and the lighter statism of what, if elected, would likely be an Ehrlich Machine. There is another way.
Conservatives need to organize statewide, to decide on a few essential publicly defensible positions, and to make it clear to the likely Republican gubernatorial nominee and his “team” that they expect his public commitment to these essential positions. As we have seen this summer, there is nothing like continuing public protests to command the attention of a candidate or an incumbent.
Here is a test: first listen to the thoughtfulness of this Glenn Beck message “Turn This Thing Around,” then decide whether former governor Bob Ehrlich has vision and perspective enough to speak for you today. If the answer is no, then Mr. Ehrlich will need a great deal of guidance from Maryland conservatives.
It will be up to Maryland conservatives statewide, however, to come together to be sure that their guidance is heard and accepted.
Glenn Beck, Mark Steyn “Get It” But Does the Beltway GOP?
Glenn Beck, Mark Steyn “Get It” But Does the Beltway GOP?
At today’s Washington, D. C. “9-12″ rally, Glenn Beck (see his video “Turn This Thing Around” here) interviews Representative Mike Pence and Senator Jim DeMint. The two conservative legislators related their attempts to slow Bush spending which certainly eased the way for Obama mega-spending and government overreach.It is clear that the hundreds of thousands of Americans at today’s rally are behind the Pence-DeMint (and we would add House Republican Study Committee chair) Tom Price approach to right-sizing government while expanding, not shrinking liberty.
But the Beltway GOP doesn’t like all that very much. And even many of those Republican faithful who have finally come to understand the importance of reining in government on the Federal level turn off their new-found warning devices when they applaud indiscriminately at local Republican Party meetings in Virginia, or cheer the feckless leaders of Maryland Republican state legislators.
Maybe, for example, the Loudoun County GOP could have a civil but healing talk with Mr. Ed Gillespie next week and bring him to a better mind on smaller government, lower taxes, and a wiser immigration policy.
Today Dan Eggen and Perry Bacon report that the “GOP Sees Protest As an Opportunity: ‘Taxpayer March’ in D.C. Attracts Party Leaders, but Some Are Wary” in their Washington Post article here.
They illustrate, however unwittingly, the barriers conservatives face with a Beltway GOP well represented in the Senate Republican leadership.
“Several key Republican lawmakers, including House GOP Chairman Mike Pence of Indiana, have helped to drum up support for the march and are slated to deliver speeches to the crowd.
But top Republican strategists and many party observers also worry about the impact that the most extreme protesters might have on the party’s image, including those who carry swastika signs or obsess over the veracity of Obama’s Hawaiian birth.
Mark McKinnon, a former adviser to Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) and other Republicans, said there is an ‘opportunity for Republicans’ to tap into legitimate fears about an overreaching federal government. But he said that ‘right-wing nutballs are aligning themselves with these movements’ and are dominating media coverage.
“It’s bad for Republicans because in the absence of any real leadership, the freaks fill the void and define the party,” McKinnon said.”
Reporters Eggen and Bacon continued - -
“Saturday’s march is sponsored by the same loose-knit coalition of groups that helped to organize health-care protests over the summer and anti-tax rallies in the spring. They include the Tea Party Patriots, ResistNet and Freedomworks, a Washington-based organization headed by former House majority leader Richard Armey (R-Tex.). The march has also been heavily publicized by Fox News host Glenn Beck as part of his ‘9-12 Project.’”
Meanwhile, world-class conservative thinker Mark Steyn warned yesterday - -
“Three stories bubbled up in the past week, although if you read The New York Times and the administration’s other airbrushers you’ll be blissfully unaware of them: The resignation of Van Jones, former (?) communist and current 9/11 ‘truther,’ from his post as Obama’s “Green Jobs Czar.” The reassignment” of Yosi Sergant at the National Endowment for the Arts after he was found to be urging government-funded arts groups to produce ‘art’ in support of Obama policy positions. And, finally, the extraordinary undercover tape from Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government Web site in which officials from ACORN (the Obama chums who’ll be ‘helping’ with the next census) offer advice on how pimps can get government housing loans for brothels employing underage girls from El Salvador.
What do all these Obama associates have in common? I mean,aside from the fact that Glenn Beck played a key role in exposing them. We are assured by the airbrushing media and ‘moderate’ conservatives that Beck is crazy, a frothing spokesnut for the lunatic fringe. By contrast, Van Jones, Yosi Sergant and ACORN are all members of the lunatic mainstream, embedded philosophically and actually in the heart of Obamaland.
What all these individuals share is a supersized view of the state, from a make-work gig coordinating the invention of phony-baloney ‘green jobs’ to Soviet-style government-licensed art in support of heroic government programs to government-funded ‘community organizers’ organizing government funding for jailbait bordellos.”
On August 5 of last year, we wrote “Legacies - Bush Signed Bill Bankrolling ACORN, La Raza.” We don’t know of a better current example, apart from the bailout last fall here and here, when the Beltway GOP showed how far it has lost its way.
But Steyn’s immediate view is pessimistic - -
“My sense from Wednesday’s speech is that the president’s gonna shove this through in some form or other. It may cause a little temporary pain in Blue Dog districts in 2010, but the long-term gains will be transformative and irreversible.” (Underscoring Forum’s.)
Our fear is that commentator Steyn may well be right.
But our hope is that enough of the conservative media will join with home-state activists to get the Senate Republican leadership to play hardball not only against the Other Team — but also against straying Republican senators when whatever version of Obamacare, heavy or “lite,” finally comes before that chamber.
The Senate Republican leadership here and here must be persuaded that it is not enough to “talk right” in elevated tones that sound “statesmanlike” to the national media, but that the leadership must jump into the arena and effectively “act right.”
Who Learns Today about Our Constitution and History?
“’I would point out to you that in the Constitution it also does not say the government can build roads or should build roads,’ Shea-Porter replied. ‘It also doesn’t say the government should make sure the drugs are safe. It doesn’t say the government should look at airplanes to make sure they are safe to get on. It doesn’t say we should have a police force in Manchester.’‘So, the Constitution did not cover everything,’ Shea-Porter concluded.(Underscoring Forum’s.)
– U. S. Representative Carol Shea-Porter (D, N.H.); extract and video thanks to HotAir
The American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) last month released a study “What Will They Learn? - - A Guide to What College Rankings Don’t Tell You.”
The accompanying “Dean’s Letter” makes a vital point about our history and institutions - -
“Many studies have shown that our college graduates are ignorant of the basic principles on which our government runs. For starters, most cannot identify the purpose of the First Amendment, what Reconstruction was, or the historical context of the Voting Rights Act. If you peruse this website, you will see why: The vast majority of our colleges have made a course on the broad themes of U.S. history or government optional. This is especially dangerous in America, where nothing holds us together except our democratic principles. If universities don’t pass them down, our children will not inherit our nationhood genetically. They can receive that heritage only through learning. That’s one key reason that during the college search you must ask: What will they learn?” (Underscoring Forum’s.)
The ACTA study looks at two universities in Maryland, and five in Virginia:
- “Johns Hopkins University
- University of Maryland
- College of William and Mary
- University of Mary Washington
- University of Virginia
- Virginia Tech
- Washington and Lee University“
All except, apparently, Washington and Lee receive state support.
None of these Maryland and Virginia colleges and universities requires what the ACTA would say is a core subject — in U. S. government or history.
As ACTA pointed out, “only 11 out of 100 [schools surveyed] require American government or history.” And they revealed “only 2 out of 100 require economics (University of Alaska-Fairbanks & West Point).”
We suggest it is a kind of cultural suicide for the taxpayers of Maryland and Virginia to continue to give money to universities here and here and here that do not require all their undergraduates to work toward a grounding in American history and government. Certainly Maryland and Virginia state legislators who sail under the conservative flag should get their arms around this problem and promptly fix it.
Afghanistan, Iran: Getting Our Own Survival Priorities Right
SCROLL DOWN TO UPDATES! We believe this exchange among conservatives is vital to help us get past the mixed legacy of the last administration.
Afghanistan, Iran: Getting Our Own Survival Priorities Right
“There has been a fascinating point of alignment since 9/11 between the anti-war Left and the democracy hawks. Both sides have failed to identify the enemy: Islamists. The hard Left resists because it doesn’t see Islamism as an enemy at all. The Islamists, like the Left, regard the United States as the problem in the world.
Democracy hawks are another matter. Their boundless faith in democracy blinds them to the severity of the Islamist challenge. For them, dwelling on Islam is counterproductive: If Islam is understood as a huge liability, Americans will rebel against the prohibitive costs, in lives and money, of democracy-building. So the democracy-hawk approach is either not to mention Islam at all or to absurdly portray it as a ‘moderating’ influence that will help build stable democracies.” - - - - Andrew McCarthy
Like many conservatives who agree with Mark Steyn here that “you can’t take a reductively libertarian view while the rest of the planet goes to pieces,” we have paid close attention to the Obama Administration’s serial failures in national security ranging from attacks on the Central Intelligence Agency’s interrogators to the scandalous pressure the Administration has brought on Honduras for getting rid of a dangerous (now former) president.
Recently George Will has helped reopen the discussion among conservatives about continuing our mission in Afghanistan.
This has prompted a thoughtful commentary — “A Dangerous Delusion: We go to war to defend our interests, not to encourage democracy” — by former Federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy who proposes by his challenge that we rethink the basics.
Here are some of what we see as the key points in analyst McCarthy’s essay:
- “Quite apart from the inherent futility of trying to democratize fundamentalist Muslim countries, our efforts in those two places [Iraq and Afghanistan] were doomed if we failed to address Iran’s promotion of terrorism and its intolerable nuclear threat. What has happened to Iraq has happened because we lacked the will to deal with Iran. We left unaccomplished the mission that was vital to our national interests while laboring exhaustively to create Islamic democracies that are either hostile or useless to us. And now, while we are still idling on Iran,the plan is to double-down against the Taliban?”
- “Islamism is not terrorism. To be sure, Islamism includes terrorism in its arsenal. Still, there is major disagreement among Islamists about when violence should be used and how effective it is. In any event, we must fight the tendency to meld these concepts. Terrorism is a tactic that divides Muslims. Islamism is a belief system that unites tens of millions of Muslims. Abdurrahman Wahid, the former president of Indonesia, estimates what he calls the “radicalized” portion of the umma at about 15 percent. I think he’s low-balling it, but even if he’s right, that would be about 200 million people.”
- “So what is Islamism? It is the belief that Islam is not merely a religious creed but a comprehensive guide to human existence, conformity to which is obligatory, that governs all matters political, social, cultural, and religious, from cradle to grave (and, of course, beyond). The neologism ‘Islamist’ was minted over three-quarters of a century ago by Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood. To this day, the credo of the Brotherhood is “Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. The Koran is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.” The Brotherhood claims, preposterously, to have renounced terrorism. It maintains, more credibly, that it is the Muslim Nation, as in a mass movement representing what Muslims, broadly, believe.”
- “The Brotherhood’s Islam is called Salafism. Developed in the 19th century, Salafism calls for a return to the unalloyed Islam of the 7th-century founders. It is to be ‘unalloyed’ in the sense that it should be stripped of modernizing influences — particularly Western influences. This is to be achieved by implementing sharia, the divine law designed to govern all aspects of life.”
- “Jihad is correctly understood as a military duty, but it need not be violent. That does not mean, as Islam’s Western apologists claim, that jihad is some wishy-washy internal struggle to become a better person. To the contrary, just as war is politics by other means, violent force is one of several jihadist tactics by which the Muslim Nation seeks to install sharia. If non-Muslims are willing to accommodate sharia in their political, legal, and financial systems, combat is not required. Surrenders are happily accepted.”
- “The fact that Islamists disagree with their terrorist factions on tactics obscures the reality that they heartily agree with the terrorists’ contempt for the West. Most of the places that are sources of Islamist terror do not want Western democracy. They want sharia.”
- “We can’t change that about them, and it cheapens us when we try. The State Department’s new ‘democratic’ constitutions for Afghanistan and Iraq are a disgrace: establishing Islam as the state religion and elevating sharia as fundamental law. That is not exporting our values; it is appeasing Islamism. It is putting on display our lack of will to fight for our principles, which only emboldens our enemies. Recall, for example, the spectacle of the Christian prosecuted for apostasy a couple of years back by the post-Taliban, U.S.-backed Afghan government. He had to be whisked out of the country because it’s not safe for an ex-Muslim religious convert in the new Afghanistan. It’s not safe for non-Muslims, period. We’re not building a democratic culture.”(Underscoring Forum’s throughout.)
What about Iran and the Iranians?
Long-time anti-terrorist expert Michael Ledeen replies here in “Andy: Some Democracy Hawks Pay Lots of Attention to Islamism” - -
“But we have said from day one that we are in a regional war, and cannot win that war until and unless we have defeated the Islamist regime in Tehran. I said that it was impossible to ‘win’ durably in Iraq so long as the regime in Tehran was still in place, because a free Iraq was a mortal threat to the mullahs. Ditto for Afghanistan.
I have long said that we could bring down the Iranian regime without sending in troops, because the Iranian people hated the regime and if we helped them — politically, much as we helped the pro-democracy dissidents in the Soviet Empire — they would rise up and overthrow the regime.
. . . . .
Finally, the mater of counterinsurgency doctrine: Winning the support of the people in order to defeat the insurgents is not the same as promoting democracy. The best book I know on counterinsurgency was written by David Galula, a French officer in Algeria. He was adamant that wars of this sort are won by the side that gains the support of the people. It is not a question of democracy, and it is not won as a result of ideology. He insisted that ideology has very little to do with the final outcome. It is all about winning and losing; the people support the side they believe is going to win, and that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. They might prefer democracy, but they will always go with the winner.” (Underscoring Forum’s throughout.)
Mark Levin Weighs In
In his “Not So Fast: A response to Andy McCarthy on the democracy project” (also today), Mark Levin here declares - -
“Regarding Afghanistan, the argument (as best I understand it) for leaving now is very weak. The bottom line seems to be that the Taliban would defeat the corrupt,inept Afghan government but for our support. Therefore, since the government cannot stand on its own, we should leave. Say what you will about Iraq, the war in Afghanistan was certainly never launched as part of a democracy project. It was launched, as Andy argues, to rid the country of al-Qaeda. But the purpose of ridding the country of al-Qaeda was to punish and destroy, as best we could, the perpetrators of 9/11. Those perpetrators included the Taliban. (By the way, if we are going to cite President Bush, he was quite clear about dealing with regimes that give safe harbor to al-Qaeda.) Both al-Qaeda and the Taliban remain a dire threat to our country. They have now taken over large rural parts of Pakistan, an imperfect American ally with nukes and a weak democratic government. They are active and growing in another dangerous region of the world. The fact that the Obama administration doesn’t seem to have a coherent policy for addressing the threat argues in favor of developing such a policy, not our departure from Afghanistan. Again, the consequences of leaving now or soon, given the situation there, must be addressed by those who urge it. In his column, George Will makes a couple of rather silly suggestions for positioning special forces on the border, thus acknowledging that we should do something about Afghanistan (just not enough to be meaningful).” (Underscoring Forum’s.)
This discussion about Islamism and preserving our own values should be a preeminent concern for all conservatives.
Readers are encouraged to read McCarthy’s essay and his addendum “‘Democracy Hawks’ — a Poor Choice of Words” in their entirety, as well as Ledeen’s response and Levin’s comments, both also of today.
But whatever the overseas military strategy and mix of tactics on which conservatives may reach a new consensus, we certainly agree with McCarthy that at home - -
“. . .We must accept that Islamism is our enemy and has targeted our constitutional system for destruction by slow strangulation via sharia. Instead of worrying about democracy in Afghanistan, we need to worry about democracy in America. The surge we need is at home: to roll back Islamism’s infiltration of our schools, our financial system, our law, and our government. In addition to not being universal, the ‘values of the human spirit’ are not immortal. If we don’t defend them in the West, they will die.”(Underscoring Forum’s.)
* * * * *
SEPTEMBER 5 RESPONSE FROM ANDREW MCCARTHY HERE TO MICHAEL LEDEEN – “The challenge of Islamism in Iran is more difficult in my mind than you suggest. It’s not as if all the Islamists are in the regime and the population is a bunch of Western democrats. Iran is a fundamentalist Shiite country. If the mullahs are overthrown, the world would be a much better place because an aggressor regime bent on exporting its Islamic revolution would be gone. But I think the best we should hope for is its replacement by a moderate Islamist government which is more interested in governing Iran and content to export Islamism the same way the Saudis do—not good but a significant improvement. Obviously, that would dramatically improve our prospects in Iraq, Afghanistan, and everywhere else.” AND HERE TO MARK LEVIN — “Democracy promotion is counterproductive because it feeds the illusion that the two civilizations can assimilate and be harmonized. They can’t. We’re hell-bent to prove the impossible, so we set out to spread democracy and end up capitulating to sharia-lite.” Worth clicking on the links to read both McCarthy responses in their entirety.
Obama’s Green Statists Sneak in the Regulatory Back Door
Not that we don’t have enough on our plate with Obamacare, “diversity” czars at the Federal Communications Commission, and an ever more shaky national-security posture.
But our friends at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) tell us here in their “EPA Proposes ‘Illegal’ Clean Air Rule” that last Tuesday - -
“The Environmental Protection Agency has sent a proposed rule to the White House that would allow regulation of greenhouse gas emissions, but restrict the scope to only very large industrial sources. This proposal, issued under the Clean Air Act, violates the language of the statute and effectively amounts to the EPA usurping the role of Congress . . . .
‘EPA is proposing an illegal rule,’ said Marlo Lewis, CEI Senior Fellow. ‘They are presuming – on their own authority – to amend the Clean Air Act. It turns out that CEI was correct all along – that EPA cannot regulate carbon dioxide without grave risks to the U.S. economy unless it plays lawmaker and amends the Clean Air Act, which is a clear violation of the separation of powers.’ (Underscoring Forum’s.)
As CEI’s Lewis had declared last June 15 - -
“An endangerment finding will trigger a regulatory cascade with potentially devastating economic impacts that Congress never intended or approved when it enacted §202. Regulatory litigation rather than legislative deliberation will determine the direction of public policy and the extent of the burdens imposed on the private sector, vitiating our democratic system. We could end up with a Mega-Kyoto system without the people’s elected representatives ever casting a vote. Moreover, the only way EPA can regulate greenhouse gases under the CAA [Clean Air Act] without risk of administrative chaos and economic disaster is to flout statutory language, play lawmaker, and effectively ‘amend’ the statute, violating the separation of powers.” (Underscoring Forum’s.)
The indefatigable Climate Depot points us to today’s WSJ “Terms of ‘Endangerment’: The EPA’s anti-carbon rule is an admission that CO2 limits hurt the economy.”
Here is the crucial warning from the Journal’s editors - -
“But even businesses that do get a pass shouldn’t rest too easily. The green lobby will quickly sue to force the EPA to enforce fully its own rules and go after all carbon sources. And why not? The Obama Administration is deliberately flouting its own legal claims for political reasons. Its cynical political hope is that if Congress won’t impose cap and tax, the courts will do it anyway.”
Here is yet another message to pass on to US Senators and Representatives of the president’s party in the remaining few days of the Congressional recess: “We’ll hold you accountable if you can’t keep the Obama White House from signing off on this intrusive, economy-hobbling greenhouse-gas rule.”
Stand for Freedom at Hoyer Obamacare Pep Rally Tuesday!
UPDATE SEPTEMBER 2 - - Mark Hemingway reports here (with pictures) on “Fear and Loathing in Waldorf, Md.”
“To his credit, Hoyer finally took questions via random lottery for almost the next two hours. What is not to his credit is how he answered those questions. I could pick apart the political objections to his claims some more, but Hoyer seemed bound and determined to sink himself by simply being tone-deaf.”
Stand for Freedom at Hoyer Obamacare Pep Rally Tuesday!
Americans, from Virginia and Washington, D.C., as well as Maryland – who care about preserving their personal freedom from government direction in the most intimate parts of their lives — will want to come to this “Town Hall” Tuesday September 1st in Waldorf, Maryland to show their strong opposition to Obamacare.
House Democratic Majority Leader Steny Hoyer is very likely intending to produce not just a local, but a national pep rally — aiming at wide exposure — in behalf of Obamacare, just before the House returns from summer recess.
From Mr. Hoyer’s website announcement - -
“Hoyer to Hold Health Care Town Hall on Tuesday, September 1st in Waldorf, MD
Congressman Steny H. Hoyer (D-MD) announced that he will hold a town hall meeting on health care reform for residents of the Fifth Congressional District of Maryland on TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 1ST, 7:00 to 8:30 p.m. at North Point High School located at 2500 Davis Road, Waldorf, MD. IMPORTANT INFORMATION
- Doors will open at 6:00 p.m.
- Event capacity is 1000. Entry will be granted on a first come first serve basis.
- Parking is available in the high school parking lot after 5:00 p.m.”
Your presence Tuesday evening in Waldorf, Maryland will send a powerful message for personal freedom not only to the House of Representatives Democratic Leadership, but to the many Americans watching this event.
Losing the Culture Struggle Means Losing Our Freedom
UPDATE SEPTEMBER 2 — “For dedicated campus conservatives and libertarians everywhere.” Morton Blackwell of the widely respected Leadership Institute draws our attention to their new Campus Reform blog here and provides basic facts about Campus Reform here.
Losing the Culture Struggle Means Losing Our Freedom
How Did We Start to Lose Our Culture? By way of an answer, we can view the National Association of Scholars posting of a “Pajamas Media TV, a 13-minute video in which Bill Whittle chronicles the rise of political correctness since the Frankfurt School and the rise of ‘critical theory.’”
Conservatives and the center-right generally are doing their utmost these days to treat the simultaneous afflictions of Obamacare, Cap-and-Tax, a shaky national-security posture, and the shameless advancing of statism.
But their treatment may only amount to band-aids if they cannot somehow bring enough of alienated older, and emerging younger generations into a culture necessary for a constitutional republic to flourish.
The only harder job than doing that, moreover, is to convince Republican politicians that this is as important a focus for us all as their latest poll or campaign mantra. And many party apparatchiks are salivating over possible Republican gains this year and in 2010 from president Obama’s overreaching. They fantasize that all will come back to “normal” - - instead of realizing that any gains may be the Party’s last chance of regaining broad public confidence — through better ways of thinking and governing.
Perhaps the Tea Parties and Recess Rallies, which often criticize GOP big-government habits as well as the Democrats, can shake the Republican Establishment hard enough to re-tune their antennae — more toward the many concerned constituents, who have found their voices at these gatherings, and less toward the Washington, D. C., Annapolis, or Richmond Establishment which too often circumscribes their daily frame of reference.
Is President Obama Filling a Great Void of the Spirit?
Robin, “a recovering liberal and a psychotherapist in Berkeley,” wrote last Thursday in the American Thinker about what we are up against in her post “In Obama We Trust?”
Robin declares - -
“I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the factors in my life that lured me far Left for so long; what captivated me and held me there even with mounting evidence that the ideology was bankrupt. And why are millions still following the Pied Piper of Chicago, even though he’s looking increasingly more corrupt and vacuous?
And I’ve come to this: the Left is filled to the brim with people like me, who grew up in homes with God in permanent exile and various adults floating in and out in hot pursuit of self fulfillment. With no way to understand life, this realm starts looking like an unmanageable House of Horrors. The result: people turn to someone like Obama to engineer a whole new world.
So we have a situation today with the Left in charge,preaching their religion which is anti-religion.”
. . . . .
“I saw a blog where a young person posts, ‘I have pictures of Obama on my wall. He gives me a reason to get out of bed in the morning.’ There are no rational arguments about bailouts and taxes that will counteract this desperation for purpose.”
. . . . .
“And it’s not just the young. Baby boomers are being dragged kicking and screaming into old age, without any spiritual guideposts and within a culture that fears and despises anything old. In ancient times, elders were revered as the cultural wellspring of wisdom and tradition.
But in most of the First World, older people are as disposable as yesterday’s trash. How unacceptable to grow old in a culture that finds no grace, only disgrace, in wrinkles, and wants to hustle you out the door as soon as possible.
Baby boomers are also dancing to Obama’s beat, enveloped in feelings of hope and change, holding on for dear life to their long lost youth. But it’s not the real 60’s with its hard drugs, violence, and exploitation of women, but a fantasy, frozen in time, of peace and flower power.”
. . . . .
“If we as a culture don’t find our way back to those young and old who are lost in space, adrift and unanchored, they will embrace false idols. For as long as Obama is the only game in town, the only way people can feel alive and hopeful,they’ll ignore every red flag and defend Obama until their last dying breath. They must believe in him. The alternative is just too unbearable.” (Underscoring Forum’s throughout.)
Readers may want to revisit our post here from a year ago last July where we warned about “Ignoring Obama’s Appeal as ‘Regenerative Healer.’”
Our Students: Divested of their history, literacy, and ability to reason.
“While the economy tanks, the government job sector is growing. Young people are encouraged to educate themselves for jobs in nonprofits and government agencies. They build up their academic resumes with ‘community service’ that does nothing for their intellectual growth.” — Mary Grabar
Thursday George Leef writing in National Review on Line that “Educational Dumbing Down Greases the Rails for Statism” alerted us to Mary Grabar’s essay here .
Teacher and writer Grabar believes “Obama’s Civilian Troops Were Trained by Ayers: Obama’s election and the health care reform push would have been impossible without the dumbing down of academia.”
She explains - -
“But were it not for the “Destructive Generation ” instantiating themselves in our schools, the election of Barack Obama would not have been possible. Had we had a generation who understood history, we would have had voters who understood the vacuity of his rhetoric and the implications of ’spreading the wealth.’ They would have understood how his writings on Saul Alinsky displayed his propensity for stirring up racial animus, demonizing the opposition, and threatening executives with ‘pitchfork’ mobs (that he would rouse up). We would have seen how his teaching a course on ‘critical race theory ‘ would naturally lead to a nomination of a Supreme Court justice who sees herself as a ‘wise Latina woman’ who can ‘empathize.’
They would have seen that Obama’s alliance with Bill Ayers, who has been working on behalf of ‘education’ in Venezuela, would lead to a cozy meeting with Hugo Chavez. While Venezuelans protest against a government takeover of the schools, we allow Bill Ayers to spread his poison to future teachers while paying him an annual salary of $126,000.
Like South American dictators who promise peasants a few hectares through redistribution, Obama promises such things as ‘free’ medical care, education, and new cars to his followers. Like Chavez, he appeals to the peasants — literally the illegal ones streaming into the country, promising rights of citizenship.
The historian Richard Pipes notes that the Russian revolution succeeded in large part because of the uneducated peasants. And in this country, the early communists targeted immigrants who spoke no English and were unacquainted with American values.
Today’s communists, like Bill Ayers, work in our schools aiming to keep American students in the same level of ignorance and tribalism as the peasants of Russia and South America.
They began their nefarious deeds in the 1960s. With help from the Soviet Union, they fomented hatred of the United States and then successfully groomed a generation to colonize the schools. The SDS (Students for a Democratic Society), of which Ayers was a member, spelled out their strategies in their position paper, the Port Huron Statement Employing the old Soviet strategy of ‘boring from within,’ they focused on ‘an overlooked seat of influence’: the university.” (Underscoring Forum’s.)
Read Grabar’s entire piece (with footnotes) here. She cautions - -
“Conservatives who have seen through these techniques but simply dismiss these kooky professors do so at their peril. They may be protecting their own children through homeschooling and private education, but they are reaping the products in the voting mobs that elected Barack Obama.”(Underscoring Forum’s.)
And that, of course, is the problem: “simply dismissing these kooky professors.”
We wrote in our “Radical University Empires vs. Clueless State Lawmakers” here last May about - -
“what is happening to colleges and universities in the United States and about the incapacity of Republican state legislators in Maryland and,apparently,also Virginia,to cope with the dangerous direction our own taxpayer-supported universities have taken.” (Underscoring Forum’s.)
We had earlier revealed that in 2008 the Maryland General Assembly (with some Republican help) approved so-called cultural-diversity legislation for “institutions of higher education.” On the other side of the Potomac, we have seen the “diversity” plague in Virginia Tech‘s hiring schemes.
As one analyst wrote –
“it is surely time to initiate a public campaign of watchdog legislation and purse-string vigilance to address the monumental aberration embodied in the modern academy.”
Readers can see a current ad from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) here. The ad shows - -
“. . . the colleges and universities that have earned FIRE’s Red Alert distinction for being the ‘worst of the worst’ when it comes to liberty on campus. Brandeis University, Colorado College, Johns Hopkins University, Michigan State University, and Tufts University are listed in the print ad, while Bucknell University, a late addition to the list, will be prominently featured in Facebook ads and in the school’s own newspaper.” (Underscoring Forum’s.)
And we continue to fear that - -
“[W]e simply cannot depend on the Republican Establishments of Maryland and Virginia to deal with serious threats like the transformation of our taxpayer-supported universities into mechanisms for the dissolution of our way of life.”
Minding the Campus here and the National Association of Scholars here are two of several useful web sources for Maryland and Virginia conservatives to track campus developments.
The conservative base in Maryland and Virginia needs to contrive their own ways to restore the culture in their taxpayer-supported schools. Likely the base will have to do the heavy lifting.
Caroline Glick’s YouTube Spells Out A Looming Iran Disaster
The Path We Are Taking with Iran
Readers will learn a great deal from defense analyst’s Caroline Glick’s comprehensive You Tube giving a careful exposition of our descent into an Iranian maelstrom with obvious nuclear-weapons consequences.
We have written about author Glick earlier when reviewing her “Shackled Warrior: Israel and the Global Jihad” here - -
“And as Glick praises both the American soldiers with whom she was an embedded journalist in the last Iraq campaign, she also reminds American conservative bloggers that they ‘have become a critical component of the free world’s defense in the current war.’”
Readers are cautioned, however, that this is no less-than-a-minute, entertaining YouTube about Dr. Evil and Barbara Boxer, but a longer yet vital and plain-words explanation of where the Obama Administration is leading us in the Middle East.
Why does the Obama Team Want Such a Limited Projection of U.S. Power?
Few have pinned down the motivation for the Obama Administration’s moves against our vital (read survival) interests: a dangerously reduced military budget, an attack on the Central Intelligence Agency’s intelligence-gathering operatives, and a policy of appeasement toward Iran, to list three of the most egregious presidential initiatives.
Visit today’s perspectives, for example, of former Federal prosecutor Andy McCarthy here and here on the CIA witch hunt, Michael Rubin here on the Obama policy toward Iran, and — on the defense budget — Newt Gingrich here and Heritage’s Mackenzie Eaglen here.
Perhaps the president and his circle of close advisers genuinely see a militarily curtailed U.S. — speaking with a soothing voice when dealing with dangerous governments, but a harsher one when dealing with long-time ally Israel — as the kind of global player and world-model they believe the U.S. should become.
Why they may believe this is a topic conservatives need to explore further.
The Obama Administration’s challenge to our way of life extends even beyond Obamacare and Cap-and-Tax to crucial matters of national survival. Maryland and Virginia conservatives will want to talk to their national-defense-inclined Representatives here and here and Senators here and here whenever an opportunity permits.
