The Jerry Springer Debate

That was some tussle tonight. I'm surprised nobody walked away with a fat shiner, or a bloody nose. If the eventual nominee -- be it HRC or Obama -- scraps half as hard come general time, the Republicans haven't a chance. It'll be an absolute bloodbath. The Democratic primary has been a bit too dirty, but overall the combativeness is useful and positive. Remember what Hemingway said: "Strong at the broken places."

Of course, the internecine feuding could become too ferocious and fatally tarnish the victor, leaving him vulnerable to Republican tricks. That's always a risk, but perhaps one worth taking.

Both Clinton and Obama deserve praise. They proved their mettle, alright. Neither wilted in the limelight, though I think Obama's performance lagged towards the end. If I had to choose a "winner", it'd be HRC by a hair. Edwards continues to be a joke. When will he drop out already?

Mainly, I was struck by the essential weakness and incompleteness of the Democratic agenda, and how far they've fallen since the '06 triumphs. Coming out of the midterms, it seemed a robust, all-American, "purple state" liberalism was finally ready to emerge.

This brave new liberalism was colored by civil libertarianism and steeled by a healthy appeal to economic nationalism among Rust Belt and Heartland voters. Even the anti-war message was cloaked in that America First rhetoric (i.e. "American dollars for Americans, not Iraqis!").

This new liberal hearkened back to the "Reagan Democrat", but resisted playing into blue collar anxieties over sensitive cultural issues. At the same time, it situated deficit reduction as crucial, suggesting that tax raises were better suited to shrinking the national debt than expanding the welfare state. This 21st century liberalism was refreshingly free of technocratic sympathies (there was no talk of a "brain trust"), and it arose from the American interior by popular demand.

Unfortunately, the new liberalism doesn't appear to have had much staying power. The Democrats are back to their old games, bribing voters with the promise of curing all their problems using other people's money. The enormous and nefarious scheme that is socialized medicine is the base's favorite horse this cycle, and they candidates are clearly prepared to ride that sucker into the dust.

Babel

I was lucky enough to have escaped the frigid winter weather this past vacation, at least for a time. A friend of mine has a house outside Miami, in Coral Gables, and I spent a week or so bumming around that handsome area, baking in the sun and swallowing iced drinks on South Beach.

Miami is a place rich with imported flavor, that's for sure. Particularly for someone accustomed to the vanilla provincialism of New England, the city is an engaging creature, almost exhausting in its novelty. Mostly, the melange of foreign sights and sounds is a positive element of life among the palms.

The locals' apparent disinterest in adopting the English language is, however, troubling. The prevalence of Spanish speaking among immigrants and natives alike confounds me. Now, the desire to maintain the old country's tongue is understandable, even commendable, but it shouldn't be the preferred means of communication. This is America, where the king's (corrupted) English is the lingua franca. New-comers should accept this reality, and deal with it.

I was shocked, then, when my host reacted violently to these precise sentiments. I told her the way I felt following a frustrating ordeal wherein the entire staff of a convenience store was unable to give me directions to a location nearby. You see, not one of them seemed even remotely familiar with English. In response to my questioning, they just shrugged and winced. (And I'm supposed to consider them my countrymen?)

When I expressed my anger at the communication barrier, she call me a bigot. "If they want to speak Spanish, let them," she said.

I responded, "That's fine, they can speak Spanish so long as they deal with English in public, so long as they have a working relationship with the language."

But even that compromise upset my, eh, broad-minded companion. "Language is an artificiality," she explained in a strained tone of voice, "an illusion." Ever the cosmopolitan, she concluded, "One isn't better than the other. People should be free to use whichever they want without a negative reaction to their personal choice."

I lit a cigarette and shut-up. The spat blew over soon enough, but returned unexpectedly not too long after. We scooped a mutual friend, who that night was feeling particularly sore about her boss.

"And the worst part is," she said, "he really hates it when people speak Spanish. He says everyone should speak English, or be shipped back to who-the-hell-knows-where. It's so . . . simian."

I sighed aloud.

"What?" she asked, turning to me.

"We were having a similar debate before getting you. Let's just say I'm not altogether unfriendly to your boss' suggestion. Assimilate or emigrate -- catchy, if a bit extreme. Okay, a lot extreme, but I'm of the same general frame of mind on the issue."

The two girls rolled their eyes, visibly disgusted at what one of them described colorfully as "stupid fucking white nationalism." (Note: Race has nothing to do with it. If Miami was super-saturated by unapologetic French speakers, I'd be equally disturbed.)

"Your idea of America is pathetic. It's so, like, depressing. Let's just listen to music."

The radio came alive, filling the car with Latino music. One of the girls changed the station: more foreign clamor. The next flip brought the same -- spitfire Spanish, spoken and song -- as did the one after that and the one after that. It actually seemed that the airwaves were captive to some south-of-the-border disc jockey spinning out of a salsa bar. There we were, cruising American soil, struggling to catch a familiar word.

"What the hell . . . " muttered one of the girls, sporting a restrained frown.

"Where're the real stations, the good ones?" wondered the other, chagrined.

I said, "Frustrating, right? It's so, like, depressing."

Faux-Feminism Watch

Great, more faux-feminism care of Eve Ensler, the arch-enemy of women's progress herself. First, she forced upon us The Vagina Monologues, a vulgar text that sought to combat sexism by conjuring every female caricature imaginable (and without the slightest hint of irony!). Now, she's set to one-up that juvenile effort. Witness . . .

April 11 and 12 will find the Louisiana Superdome interior turned into a pink and red vagina -- "with a big vagina entrance," Ensler said -- as a setting for performance events, parties, parades, workshops, wellness and education programs, speakers, even spa treatments, which will be free to residents of New Orleans and the Gulf South. (Men are excluded only from the spa.) For those two days, New Orleans will be "the Vagina Capital of America," Ensler said. "We're coming here to say that we should celebrate New Orleans, cherish it, protect it, just as we do our vaginas, and make sure it goes on and on."

Great, once again Ensler is undermining women's equitable integration into society by symbolically reducing femininity to the vagina. Because, you know, that's not what patriarchy has done all along, right? Lady = Vagina; what a revolutionary formula!

Really, could these clitoris-transfixed bra-burners be any less self-aware?

McCain for America

Since Fred Thompson obviously isn't going to survive primary season, I've aligned behind John McCain 110% (McCain/Thompson '08?/!). Being young and from the New England, my conservative sensibilities are somewhat moderate. Even so, I disagree with Sen. McCain on certain pressing economic issues, and also on immigration. I worry a little about his scalding temper, and his tireless support for the occupation of Iraq makes me, well, skittish.

Why, then, am I banging the senator's war drum? It's quite simple, really, and I think it's the same reason many "lay conservatives" have flocked to the Mac, despite serious policy disagreements.

The thing is, I desire a red-blooded patriot in the White House. A true patriot, you know, someone who has actually bled for this country, someone who has endured "it all." John McCain began serving America in 1955 (that's 53 years now -- heck, nearly as long as, oh, Mitt Romney has been alive!).

He hasn't quit since then, not once, never. The senator isn't some MBA biznizman worth half a billion dollars. He isn't a hot-shot lawyer or famous entertainer or golden-tongued orator or corporate shill or professional talking-head or backwater preacher. His has been a life of national duty and dogged public service. That level of commitment and self-sacrifice resonates with main street conservatives, who value active patriotism. The presidency would be a fine, appropriate, and well deserved coda to such a legacy.

Why the conservative establishment, as represented by National Review and Rush Limbaugh and the rest, has failed to embrace McCain is more than confusing. It's ridiculous. It proves that the institutional right remains incapable of ending its Reagan fetishization, even if it means supporting a man who's carefully tailored each and every aspect of himself to fit that antique ideal.

Yes, I'm talking, of course, about Mitt Romney, an ex-RINO (so said Human Events) whose born-again conservatism was conveniently timed with his presidential campaign; a man who abandoned his state party to the wolves for the sake of personal ambition; a man with one term of governing experience; a man whose pandering is painfully obvious (life-long hunter, Soviet-style Michigan package, etc.)l a man with zero military know-how (!). It's beyond baffling, isn't it?

Thankfully, there's evidence of rank-breaking over at Nat'l Review following last night's results. Romney has won two uncontested primaries (Wyoming, Nevada), and one semi-contested one (Michigan), whereas McCain has triumphed in two key states (New Hampshire, South Carolina), both of which were difficult wins.

As Mark Steyn -- who's no McCain loyalist -- writes:

In that sense, McCain's is a genuine national candidacy. Rudy's campaign
announced itself as one, but, as I said a while back, it quickly turned into a
1-800 candidacy, rooted in no real area code, with no real physical presence, as
if he'd outsourced the thing to a call center in Bombay. That's why his
team have spent most of the last month artfully explaining why it doesn't
matter that ten per cent of American states have consigned "America's
Mayor" to a statistical asterisk. I'd love to hear from Lisa, David Frum or our
old pal JPod if this is truly where they expected the "frontrunner" to
be at this stage in the game: Two per cent in South Carolina, and a grand total
of one delegate.

On the Way Back

So as my father was driving me back to Emerson this morning, we passed a car with a bumper sticker that read "Gay marriage doesn't scare me, no healthcare does." And while I'm sure that's not a new phrase or anything, it was the first time I've seen it. I thought "Wow, someone who realizes that gay marriage isn't that pressing of an issue, given all the other problems in the world" and I was happy for a few minutes (only interrupted by an old John Kerry bumper sticker).

And if you're wondering, it was an older woman driving.

Before Paul Was Paul, He Was Saul

Hitchens apologizes for 1968. Peter Hitchens, that is. A competent, if incomplete, indictment of youth gone mad in paradise.

Bush = Liberal

He'd make a fine Truman Democrat. Check out the spectacular tripe Michael Gerson, his former speechwriter and ideological co-conspirator, is pushing this week. It's mind blowing. I can't believe anyone believes Gerson and his neocon comrades are conservative in any way, shape, or form. Watch as he sneers at Thompson's understandable hesitation to send boatloads of hard-earned American money to dysfunctional African regimes.

Thompson's argument reflects an anti-government extremism, which I am sure his defenders would call a belief in limited government. In this case, Thompson is limiting government to a half-full thimble. Its duties apparently do not extend to the treatment of sick people in extreme poverty, which should be "the role of us as individuals and as Christians." One wonders, in his view, if responding to the 2004 tsunami should also have been a private responsibility. Religious groups are essential to fighting AIDS, but they cannot act on a sufficient scale.

Thompson also dives headfirst into the shallow pool of his own theological knowledge. In his interpretation, Jesus seems to be a libertarian activist who taught that compassion is an exclusively private virtue. This ignores centuries of reflection on the words of the Bible that have led to a nearly universal Christian conviction that government has obligations to help the weak and pursue social justice. Religious social reformers fought to end child labor and improve public health. It is hard to imagine they would have used the teachings of Christ to justify cutting off lifesaving drugs for tens of thousands of African children -- an argument both novel and obscene.

In the lifeboat dilemma Thompson proposes, we are asked to throw overboard either an American child with leukemia or an African child with AIDS -- and, by gum, it had better not be the American. The real issue is different: Should we increase the amount of money devoted to our generous cancer research efforts at the expense of African lives that can be saved for about $90 a year?

Daniel Larison, a wonderful paleocon, has some wonderfully pointed commentary on Gerson's inability to organize our national priorities in a matter even vaguely conservative.

P.S. This makes a good case for just how much the Democrats sacrificed by making a sharp left turn in the cultural arena. The Boomer Dems ran the party flat into the ground by scaring off Social Gospel liberals, who just couldn't abide by sharing an organization with abortionists and same-sex marriage cheerleaders, but who have zero problem with spending public money on "good works." They were a critical element of the long perished New Deal coalition, and their departure helped end liberalism's dominance of American politics.

Dixie Do or Dixie Don't?

Huckabee spit polishes his image down South by loudly defending the flying of Confederate colors. The New York Times tells us . . .

“You don’t like people from outside the state coming in and telling you what to do with your flag,” Mr. Huckabee, a former governor of Arkansas, told supporters in Myrtle Beach, according to The Associated Press.

“In fact,” he said, “if somebody came to Arkansas and told us what to do with our flag, we’d tell them what to do with the pole; that’s what we’d do.”

At a news conference on Thursday night, he said, “It is not an issue the president of the United States needs to weigh in on.”

I'm split on the issue myself. One one hand, it's stupid to claim that "outsiders" (presumably, anyone north of the Mason-Dixon) have no stake in the flying of the Stars and Bars. That flag represents a rebellious movement that was ended only after hundreds of thousands of "outsiders" lost their lives, with many others coming away maimed or mentally disturbed. For all non-Southerners, the Stars and Bars continues to be a reminder of that brutal conflict, and a symbol with significant emotional resonance.

Furthermore, the Confederates were, in part, fighting to maintain the cornerstone of their caste-based agrarian society: that is, human bondage. Thus the flag -- a flag of, for, and by the CSA -- is an icon of an illegitimate white supremacist nation that not only defended but championed a system of racial subjugation and exploitation. That being so, its continued veneration is a massive insult to all African-Americans, whose descendents suffered the greatest cruelties.

But . . . it's equally true that the Stars and Bars is a multifaceted icon. There are some liberal Yankees who are still eager to gloat over Appomattox. They would unfairly reduce the flag to an exclusively racist symbol, which is just wrongheaded. Undeniably, it is representative of the Old South, and its rich social, economic, and political heritage, not all of which is immoral or embarassing. Localism, particular community, respect of tradition, self-determination, popular sovereignty, anti-Caesarism, limited government -- these fine principles constitute the DNA of the Old South. They are notions to admire, and if a man looks into the Stars and Bars and sees those ideas, then more power to him.

After all, many people (particularly where I grew up, in New England) fly Revolutionary banners, or flags from the early republic (the circle of thirteen stars, etc.), and these represented the nation when it still accepted human bondage as alright, if not ideal. Yet, to most, those old school colors are not perceived as symbols of American slavery, but of American liberty. Isn't this somewhat of a double standard?

I suppose this is the ideal arrangment: keep the Stars and Bars off public property, but don't heckle others for giving it respect. The thing is a powerful, complicated symbol, rich it connotation, with meanings that range from despicable to utterly admirable.

Huckabee Gets Mean

War of attrition on illegals, so says the ex-fat preacher. I'm kinda like the sound of that.

I'm defensive about this country, protective, and I don't think admitting wave after wave of poorly educated, poorly assimilated, and just plain poor Third World immigrants is a wise choice. Given that we're a post-industrial information society, that's simply a recipe for disaster. It'd mean the erosion of our Anglo-Saxon character, and our descent into a balkanized banana republic. No thanks to that.

That said, the logistics of what amounts to mass deportation are challenging, and the scope of the project is, to sell it short, daunting. There are tens of millions of illegals in the country, many of them deeply ingrained in the fabric of American labor and, to a lesser extent, American society.

As Ramesh Ponurru, one of National Review' brighter bulbs, writes:

I can just imagine some 60-year-olds in my home town, still at work in landscaping after 40 years, who have never been arrested, own homes, and haven't a clue what Oaxaca looks like after 40 years, suddenly put on a bus back there. So while it is easy to say, "I oppose amnesty in all its forms," note apparently how difficult it is for the candidates to make the next intellectually honest and logical corollary, "Thus I am for the mass deportation of all illegal aliens."

It is fine and good to talk of "attrition" by slowly and incrementally rounding up illegal aliens as they come in contact with government agencies and need various licenses, papers, statements, etc., but you are still talking about deporting millions, who are currently working and crime-free, rather promptly.

The odd thing is that should illegal immigration cease at the border, the pool of illegals here, properly screened, would become static, and not be replenished, and, if the past is any guide, within a generation melt into the American pot.So it seems that while "amnesty" is a political death sentence, so is mass deportation-the only element of the immigration debate that would play into the hands of the Democrats who otherwise lose big on the issue.

Lock down the border. Kick out any illegal picked up with a serious criminal record. Lower the quotas for Third World immigrants, even legal ones. That much is common sense, but more exteme measures require careful consideration. Not to mention delicate, humane handling.

We could have avoided this problem by locking down the border decades ago, but . . .

The Fredheads Are Coming

His regular campaign e-reports are bubbly enough:

Fred's South Carolina surge is working!Two new polls by Zogby and Rasmussen, conducted just this week, show support for Fred growing. Thousands of internal calls by the campaign show Fred's strength increasing.It's Day 10 of Fred's South Carolina bus tour, and Fred is on fire!

Still, he's only at 16%, neck and neck with Romney but well behind McCain and Huckabee, who are tied with 24% each. And Romney has apparently abandoned efforts in S.C., which might bode well for Huckabee. With only a few days left, I'm not sure if Fred can manage it, though an upset would be awesome. I supported Thompson from the get-go; his dismal showing thus far has been disappointing, though I can't deny my affection for his "Quiet Cal" style. Just so refreshing compared to the zeal and statist rah-rah flooding from both sides of the aisle. Now if only he could just crack a smile . . .