Fairness Doctrine & Fox News

We may not agree with Senator McCain about campaign finance or immigration or a number of other things, but we admire his stalwart support of the current surge in Iraq. McCain gets it. He understands that retreat and loss in Iraq would result in hundreds of thousands maybe millions of deaths there and a huge setback in the War on Terror. McCain is willing to lose a Presidential election because of his unpopular yet principled stand. That's what leaders do. It's unfortunate some of his fellow Republican Senators aren't willing to take the same risk with their elected position. Senator Gordon Smith, we're talking about you. Just because the Democrats are willing to play politics with the war, doesn't mean you or Senator Domenici or anyone has to. Senator Lieberman's win last fall is proof that elected officials can want to win in Iraq and persuade their constituents to re-elect them. We're embarrassed to share our alma mater with Senator Smith.

Meanwhile over at the Seattle PI, their liberal readership is debating a "fairness doctrine for media." It seems control of CBS, NBC, ABC, PBS, MSNBC, CNN, NPR, the New York Times, Washington Post and the overwhelming majority of newspaper editorial boards is not enough for them. They want to legislate fairness in the one bastion of conservative thought--talk radio. It's telling that this legislation targets only one segment of the media. And such legislation begs way too many questions for us to even raise in this paragraph. Suffice it to say that we agree with Bruce Chapman, author of the op-ed that started the debate. If they want a "fairness doctrine," let them apply it to broadcast and print media as well as talk radio. Or they could just let free speech rule and permit the market to do its job.

One follow up item: if you read the first couple dozen comments, you'll read a lot of blather about how horrible Fox News and Rupert Murdoch are--you know, how they "distort" the news. They're afraid Murdoch and other "conservative billionaires" will control all media and give it their personal spin. Can anyone name another politically influential conservative billionaire? We can name a bunch of liberal ones--George Soros, Ted Turner, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett--the list goes on. It's all part of another favorite liberal trope, that the rich are all conservative, white, and male. Right, and John Edwards--$400 haircuts and all--is a man of the people. We guess that's 2 out of 3.

But back to Murdoch and Fox News. The loony-left--especially those of the nutroots variety--love to bash Fox News. Not all liberals feel this way, many of them watch it, as evidenced by the fact that it regularly trounces its competition. What are we to conclude from this? That conservatism is popular despite the famously low ratings of Republicans and their leader, President Bush? Come on libs, think harder and try again. Fox News is popular because they peddle a particular brand of politics that appeals to elements in both parties--it's called populism. This explains why a true conservative outlet, the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal, is so insistent on editorial autonomy if Murdoch's Newscorp is successfull in its bid to purchase Dow Jones, the parent company of the WSJ. If Murdoch and Fox News were the conservative spin machine the loony left claims, you would think that the partisans over at the WSJ would positively love to be owned by Murdoch's Newscorp. But they're not. In fact, since the Newscorp offer was announced, Dow Jones ownership has been actively searching for other offers while simultaneously negotiating editorial independence in the event of a sale to Newscorp.

Another point about the wildly out of touch theory that all conservatives are rich or maybe that the rich are all conservative. The founding conservative publication, National Review, with William F. Buckley Jr. conservatism's founding father, have almost never turned a profit (homer nods: thanks Morgan) in their more than 50 years of publication. They regularly have to engage in drives to raise the funds necessary to support the magazine. Which of John Edwards' "two Americas" subscribes to National Review?

A footnote to the point about the WSJ. You'll note that we said the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal. It's important and worth pointing out that their editorial bias, unlike the New York Times, does not bleed into their news reporting. That is to say, that like the rest of the mainstream media, the average beat reporter at the Wall Street Journal has about a 70% chance of voting for John Kerry in the last Presidential election. It's a fact of life that the profession is dominated by people with left leaning political beliefs.


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Inconvenient Questions

A question posed in the comments section of a recent blog by our beloved critic and friend of this blog, Raisin, prompted us to write a series of questions that ended up far larger than we intended. These, then, are a series of inconvenient questions we, in turn, would like to pose to the liberal-left (or angry left or loony left, whatever), netroots, Democrats in Congress and certain Republican Senators. You'll excuse us if they are (mostly) rhetorical.

We start, therefore, with Raisin's question.

Must we or anyone watch every film Moore produces? Who is Michael Moore that every American should watch and value his opinion? Does anyone believe that the lies of earlier films give this one or any future film any degree of credibility whatsoever? Do you really believe that 9/11 was a Bush/CIA/Mossad/Oil conspiracy to get us into a shooting war? Do you really believe that Bush lied about intelligence to get us to go to war? And this, despite the overwhelming amount of intelligence supporting his decision? And the overwhelming support of everyone in Congress (including the dems)? And the overwhelming popular support?

Should we listen to Moore or anyone else just because he hates President Bush and opposes the current war? Is that enough? Is our credibility standard so low? Is it possible that we are so disenchanted with the current administration that we will listen to anyone who opposes Bush? Is this why the loony left likes Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez or believes Kim Jong Il and Ahmadinejad, simply because they too hate George W. Bush?

Has the Patriot Act denied you any freedoms or infringed on your privacy? Have you or anyone you know lost any of their civil rights? Has the economic boom of the last 4 years put you in a tighter financial spot than you were in under Clinton? Have Bush's "tax cuts for the rich" made you poorer? Has free trade cost you your job?

So, you didn't think we should have gone to war, do you think leaving now will erase that "mistake?" Do you really think things will get better? That Al-Qaeda wont thrive in the vacuum or launch new terror attacks from its new hom in Iraq? Or Iran? Or that Shiites wont kill Sunnis and Sunnis kill Shiites? Or that the Kurds wont declare independence and cause war with another American ally, Turkey? In sum, do you honestly believe that American withdrawal wont result in complete regional chaos?

Do you really believe that the loss of life in Iraq since the war began will be anywhere near the loss of life if American troops withdraw prematurely? Have you learned nothing from America's history of retreat in Vietnam, Beirut, or Somalia? Do you think that the EU or the UN will help guarantee world peace and safety--like they did in Rwanda (oh wait, bad example) or finally did in the former Yugoslavia (oh wait, that was largely the US that solved that "european" problem) after more than 250,000 people had been killed or they are now doing in Darfur? For those of you who think we should be doing more in Darfur: how can you ignore the logic of your argument in favor of intervening in Darfur while also arguing for withdrawal in Iraq? Aren't we even more responsible to the people of Iraq?

Do you really believe that European hate of America is anything new, that it started with George W. Bush? Are you familiar with the "peace" movement of the '70's and '80's? Or perhaps the opposition to Reagan's attempts to win the Cold War? Or, to take another tack and put you in their shoes, if you owed your WWI and WWII liberation (and subsequent loss of power and prestige) and winning of the Cold War and the brunt of fighting Islamofascism to another country and people, wouldn't your initial gratitude also turn into resentment?


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Captain Republican

Got Mitt?

We celebrate our 200th post with this picture of our brother, Captain Republican. Matt is one of the student liaisons at BYU for the Mitt Romney Presidential campaign.

We found this graffiti while walking along the grand canal in Venice, Italy. Seems Mitt has Italian supporters. We don't condone graffiti nor do we approve of poor spelling, but we have to appreciate their verve. For those of you curious few wondering what book Matt is carrying, it's The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman.

Yes, we know this is the true meaning.


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Matt Berry: "He's a really patriotic guy"

Raisin had a field day with our last post about football patriot and erstwhile OL&L contributor, Matt Berry. But we can take it. In that article, we wrote about John Kerry's infamous botched joke and the usual idiocy from Chuck Rangel and referred the reader to Berry who we argued was an example of the type of person who often volunteers to serve--educated, accomplished, yet desiring to defend his/her country.

Well, Berry has been home from basic for a few months and while preparing for officer candidate school, he has continued working on ConSource--another project we've written about before.

In our daily review of cougarfan.com, we came across a recent ABC News 4 piece about Berry and his military service. His candor is refreshing. None of the false, 'shoot 'em up' bravado the loony left uses to caricature soldiers and conservatives. Nope, Berry is as honest about his patriotic desires to serve his country as he is his fears of what might happen to him in Iraq or Afghanistan. Click here to watch the video.

Thanks for your service, Matt.


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Dennis Miller on Harry Reid 6/10/07

Like hip hop, we were introduced to Dennis Miller and his "rants" by our friend Michael J Mouncer. We listened to Miller with our beloved debate coach, AP government teacher and committed liberal, Chuck Hammaker-Teals. As the lone conservative in that triumvirate, we took a lot of flak for a lot of things. This was back when Bill Clinton's "peccadillos" were all the rage, you know, back when al-Qaeda was plotting 9/11 and America's demise.

Counting Miller, we guess that triumvirate was really a fearsome foursome. And like many other former libs, Miller woke up to reality in the post-9/11 world and joined the forces of liberty, justice, and the American way. All three (Hammaker-Teals, Mouncer, Miller (in spirit)) remain friends. We're glad the political numbers have evened out a bit since 1999.

Hey MJ, still a big Miller fan?

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Mitt Romney Watch III

We're late to the game with these links, but the questions they address remain relevant to the ongoing issues surrounding Mitt Romney's campaign for President.

First, Romney's Mormon Question over at time.com. From Time you get about what you'd expect. Left of center writing for the slightly above average American reader. Time is for the intellectually curious who are interested in politics, but not that interested and not that intellectual. They want more than they get from a newspaper, but not what they might get from The Nation on the left or National Review on the right. So, option one is the superficial, mainstream look at Mitt Romney.

For the more ambitious, those who fancy themselves to be a bit more intellectual, check out the transcript of a lengthy interview/discussion with Professor Richard Bushman. Hat tip to our old man for finding and emailing us the link to this insightful dialogue.

All the heavy hitters from most of the major periodicals attended and many of them asked questions: John Fund from The Wall Street Journal, E.J. Dionne from The Washington Post, et al. The piece starts out with a prepared presentation by Bushman, followed by Q&A with members of the press.

Of particular interest to us was the evolution of Mormon politics since the church's inception. From the radicalism of Joseph Smith to the conservatism of the last century, Bushman explores the historical factors surrounding these ideologies. If you want to know about the compatibility of Mormonism and Democracy, this is your primer. Mormonism and Democratic Politics: Are They Compatible?


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Pardon Libby

We've been reading the op-ed "soundoffs" section over at the Seattle P-I. It's part of our effort to avoid becoming as insular our liberal friends who continue to drink the kool-aid over at Daily Kos, The Nation, NYT op-ed, Washington Post op-ed.... uh, yeah, it might be a quicker exercise to list only the conservative outlets.

Predictably, they are all foaming at the mouth about the 30 month sentence given to Scooter Libby yesterday. Never mind that there was no original crime committed. Never mind that the prosecutor knew it wasn't Libby who leaked the information to the press, but rather Bush administration critic Richard Armitage. Never mind also that Libby's only crime was not being able to remember from whom he first heard about the leak. None of that matters. For the loony left, it's far more important that facts are bent to fit the conspiracy theories that soften their reality.

Kind of like the loony left's favorite accepted notion about Castro's Cuba--specifically, that health care down there is awesome(!!). Michael Moore produced his latest docu-drama based on that "fact." Forget for a moment that all the information we have about Cuba's health care comes from Castro's propaganda machine. He wouldn't lie about this stuff, would he?

But, like Miller, we don't want to get off on a rant here. The point is that the loony left substitutes "liberal talking points" for "facts." Kind of like the dustup between whacky Rosie and Elizabeth Hasselbeck on The View we watched on Youtube yesterday. Kind of like the ideological differences between the Democratic candidates in the debate the other day (sarcasm in print just doesn't work; there were no differences). All of this from the party that insists it is open minded and intellectually diverse. Has "pro-life Democrat" become an oxymoron yet?

So, for now, they get to rant about how Libby is the first of the administration "criminals" to face prison time. Hopefully, President Bush will soon pardon Libby, so then the loony left can add another layer of complexity to their favorite campfire conspiracy stories.


***Remember: D-Day Anniversary, 6 June 1944.***


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Lest We Forget

Arlington National Cemetery

Views from above.

Scenes from within.

*Update: Where Eagles Dare, By James S. Robinson.

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Memorial Day

As a student of history, we have long been fascinated with America's history of involvement in armed conflict. We've read dozens of books about every major war since 1776. Most of these stories follow the Stephen Ambrose telling of military history--a tale of men fighting in defense of their country and their buddies next to them in the foxhole. As a result of this lifelong study, we have tremendous respect and admiration for men who have served and given so much. This respect and admiration extends to several friends who currently serve in America's Armed Forces. Thank you.

We submit, therefore, this article from the Wall Street Journal (subscription required). It's a fantastic telling of just a few of the stories of men who won the Congressional Medal of Honor.

_____

American Honor
By Peter Collier

Once we knew who and what to honor on Memorial Day: Those who had given all their tomorrows, as was said of the men who stormed the beaches of Normandy, for our todays. But in a world saturated with selfhood, where every death is by definition a death in vain, the notion of sacrifice today provokes puzzlement more often than admiration. We support the troops, of course, but we also believe that war, being hell, can easily touch them with an evil no cause for engagement can wash away. And in any case we are more comfortable supporting them as victims than as warriors.

Former football star Pat Tillman and Marine Cpl. Jason Dunham were killed on the same day: April 22, 2004. But as details of his death fitfully emerged from Afghanistan, Tillman has become a metaphor for the current conflict -- a victim of fratricide, disillusionment, coverup and possibly conspiracy. By comparison, Dunham, who saved several of his comrades in Iraq by falling on an insurgent's grenade, is the unknown soldier. The New York Times, which featured Abu Ghraib on its front page for 32 consecutive days, put the story of Dunham's Medal of Honor on the third page of section B.

Not long ago I was asked to write the biographical sketches for a book featuring formal photographs of all our living Medal of Honor recipients. As I talked with them, I was, of course, chilled by the primal power of their stories. But I also felt pathos: They had become strangers -- honored strangers, but strangers nonetheless -- in our midst.

In my own boyhood, figures such as Jimmy Doolittle, Audie Murphy and John Basilone were household names. And it was assumed that what they had done defined us as well as them, telling us what kind of nation we were. But the 110 Medal recipients alive today are virtually unknown except for a niche audience of warfare buffs. Their heroism has become the military equivalent of genre painting. There's something wrong with that.

What they did in battle was extraordinary. Jose Lopez, a diminutive Mexican American from the barrio of San Antonio, was in the Ardennes forest when the Germans began the counteroffensive that became the Battle of the Bulge. As 10 enemy soldiers approached his position, he grabbed a machine gun and opened fire, killing them all. He killed two dozen more who rushed him. Knocked down by the concussion of German shells, he picked himself up, packed his weapon on his back and ran toward a group of Americans about to be surrounded. He began firing and didn't stop until all his ammunition and all that he could scrounge from other guns was gone. By then he had killed over 100 of the enemy and bought his comrades time to establish a defensive line.

Yet their stories were not only about killing. Several Medal of Honor recipients told me that the first thing they did after the battle was to find a church or some other secluded spot where they could pray, not only for those comrades they'd lost but also the enemy they'd killed.

Desmond Doss, for instance, was a conscientious objector who entered the army in 1942 and became a medic. Because of his religious convictions and refusal to carry a weapon, the men in his unit intimidated and threatened him, trying to get him to transfer out. He refused and they grudgingly accepted him. Late in 1945 he was with them in Okinawa when they got cut to pieces assaulting a Japanese stronghold.

Everyone but Mr. Doss retreated from the rocky plateau where dozens of wounded remained. Under fire, he treated them and then began moving them one by one to a steep escarpment where he roped them down to safety. Each time he succeeded, he prayed, "Dear God, please let me get just one more man." By the end of the day, he had single-handedly saved 75 GIs.

Why did they do it? Some talked of entering a zone of slow motion invulnerability, where they were spectators at their own heroism. But for most, the answer was simpler and more straightforward: They couldn't let their buddies down.

Big for his age at 14, Jack Lucas begged his mother to help him enlist after Pearl Harbor. She collaborated in lying about his age in return for his promise to someday finish school. After training at Parris Island, he was sent to Honolulu. When his unit boarded a troop ship for Iwo Jima, Mr. Lucas was ordered to remain behind for guard duty. He stowed away to be with his friends and, discovered two days out at sea, convinced his commanding officer to put him in a combat unit rather than the brig. He had just turned 17 when he hit the beach and a day later he was fighting in a Japanese trench when he saw two grenades land near his comrades.

He threw himself onto the grenades and absorbed the explosion. Later a medic, assuming he was dead, was about to take his dog tag when he saw Mr. Lucas's finger twitch. After months of treatment and recovery, he returned to school as he'd promised his mother, a ninth grader wearing a Medal of Honor around his neck.

The men in World War II always knew, although news coverage was sometimes scant, that they were in some sense performing for the people at home. The audience dwindled during Korea. By the Vietnam War, the journalists were omnipresent, but the men were performing primarily for each other. One story that expresses this isolation and comradeship involves a SEAL team ambushed on a beach after an aborted mission near North Vietnam's Cua Viet river base.

After a five-hour gunfight, Cmdr. Tom Norris, already a legend thanks to his part in a harrowing rescue mission for a downed pilot (later dramatized in the film BAT-21), stayed behind to provide covering fire while the three others headed to rendezvous with the boat sent to extract them. At the water's edge, one of the men, Mike Thornton, looked back and saw Tom Norris get hit. As the enemy moved in, he ran back through heavy fire and killed two North Vietnamese standing over Norris's body. He lifted the officer, barely alive with a shattered skull, and carried him to the water and then swam out to sea where they were picked up two hours later.

The two men have been inseparable in the 30 years since.

The POWs of Vietnam configured a mini-America in prison that upheld the values beginning to wilt at home as a result of protest and dissension. John McCain tells of Lance Sijan, an airman who ejected over North Vietnam and survived for six weeks crawling (because of his wounds) through the jungle before being captured.

Close to death when he reached Hanoi, Sijan told his captors that he would give them no information because it was against the code of conduct. When not delirious, he quizzed his cellmates about camp security and made plans to escape. The North Vietnamese were obsessed with breaking him, but never did. When he died after long sessions of torture Sijan was, in Sen. McCain's words, "a free man from a free country."

Leo Thorsness was also at the Hanoi Hilton. The Air Force pilot had taken on four MiGs trying to strafe his wingman who had parachuted out of his damaged aircraft; Mr. Thorsness destroyed two and drove off the other two. He was shot down himself soon after this engagement and found out by tap code that his name had been submitted for the Medal.

One of Mr. Thorsness's most vivid memories from seven years of imprisonment involved a fellow prisoner named Mike Christian, who one day found a grimy piece of cloth, perhaps a former handkerchief, during a visit to the nasty concrete tank where the POWs were occasionally allowed a quick sponge bath. Christian picked up the scrap of fabric and hid it.

Back in his cell he convinced prisoners to give him precious crumbs of soap so he could clean the cloth. He stole a small piece of roof tile which he laboriously ground into a powder, mixed with a bit of water and used to make horizontal stripes. He used one of the blue pills of unknown provenance the prisoners were given for all ailments to color a square in the upper left of the cloth. With a needle made from bamboo wood and thread unraveled from the cell's one blanket, Christian stitched little stars on the blue field.

"It took Mike a couple weeks to finish, working at night under his mosquito net so the guards couldn't see him," Mr. Thorsness told me. "Early one morning, he got up before the guards were active and held up the little flag, waving it as if in a breeze. We turned to him and saw it coming to attention and automatically saluted, some of us with tears running down our cheeks. Of course, the Vietnamese found it during a strip search, took Mike to the torture cell and beat him unmercifully. Sometime after midnight they pushed him into our cell, so bad off that even his voice was gone. But when he recovered in a couple weeks he immediately started looking for another piece of cloth."

We impoverish ourselves by shunting these heroes and their experiences to the back pages of our national consciousness. Their stories are not just boys' adventure tales writ large. They are a kind of moral instruction. They remind of something we've heard many times before but is worth repeating on a wartime Memorial Day when we're uncertain about what we celebrate. We're the land of the free for one reason only: We're also the home of the brave.

Mr. Collier wrote the text for "Medal of Honor: Portraits of Valor Beyond the Call of Duty" (Workman, 2006).

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Our Friend's Blogs

If you're like us, and enjoy travel blogs, we suggest you click on the link to our friend Fernando's blog, entitled "Fernando's Hideaway." For the last couple of weeks, Fernando has been island hopping in SE Asia and detailing the events of each day on his blog. His interesting experiences plus good writing make for a very interesting read.

Recently added to the list of "Friends of Lybberty" was a link to a music/media blog--Gooses Ganders--co-written by our good, old, friend Michael J. Mouncer. MJ first introduced us to hip hop way back in the day. For those curious about his bona fides, consider also his tenure as lead singer in a Seattle-area band and annual attendance at the Coachella music festival. We noticed in a recent post--from MJ's co-bloggist, Gooseninja--that they are live-blogging from the Sasquatch Festival. We're glad to see MJ putting his Blackberry to good use.


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Nordlinger, Goldberg, and the Loony Left

Since our London bedtime is quite a bit earlier than the start time for last night's debate, we've spent the morning reading up on last night's debate.

First we surfed on over to the Daily Kos. The angry wing of the democratic party never ceases to prove just how angry they are by their constant use of expletives. They're like the Red Sox fanbase before winning the World Series--you know, smug, sarcastic, bitter/jaded, frequent use of four-letter words. The whole bit. We'd provide a link, but this is a family friendly blog, after all.

Looking for less emotion and more reason, we turned our sights to National Review. Lot's of interesting stuff, but two things stood out.

First, Jonah Goldberg on why the Rosie O'Donnell wing of the Democratic party isn't just angry, but also loony:

I offer you data. Rasmussen Reports, the public opinion outfit, recently asked voters whether President Bush knew about the 9/11 attacks beforehand. The findings? Well, here’s how the research firm put it: “Democrats in America are evenly divided on the question of whether George W. Bush knew about the 9/11 terrorist attacks in advance. Thirty-five percent of Democrats believe he did know, 39 percent say he did not know and 26 percent are not sure.”

So, one in three Democrats believe that Bush was in on it somehow, and a majority of Democrats either believe that Bush knew about the attacks in advance or can’t quite make up their minds.

The problem with rebutting this sort of allegation is that there are too many reasons why it’s so stupid. It’s like trying to explain to a four-year-old why Superman isn’t real. You can spend all day talking about how kryptonite just wouldn’t work that way. Or you can just say, “It’s make-believe.”

Similarly, why try to explain that it’s implausible that Bush was evil enough to let this happen — and clever enough to get away with it — yet incapable either morally or intellectually of doing it again? After all, if he’s such a villainous super-genius to have paved the way for 9/11 without getting caught, why stop there? Democrats constantly insinuate that Bush plays politics with terror warnings on the assumption that the higher the terror level, the more support Bush has. Well, a couple of more 9/11s and Dick Cheney will finally be able to get that shiny Bill of Rights shredder he always wanted.

And, if Bush — whom Democrats insist is a moron — is clever enough to green-light one 9/11, why is Iraq such a blunder? Surely a James Bond villain like Bush would just plant some WMDs?

Not that any of this really comes as a surprise. Though it has diminished, we still field emails from our friends who insist that two planes full of jet fuel couldn't have caused the WTC to come crashing down. And before you ask, yes, we've seen the conspiracy docudrama. And Fahrenheit 9/11, and An Inconvenient Truth. What does all of this prove? You know, besides the fact that the loony left has the corner on the "documentary" market?

What's really entertaining is the constant state of ticked-offedness of the loony left brought on by Fox News. The loony left just cannot stand Fox's "Fair and balanced," Bill O'Reilly, and Sean Hannity (they probably don't like Neil Cavuto either). Consider this for a minute. Now that the shoe, apparently, is on the other foot. For years the Big Three of mainstream media, plus most newspapers, plus the supposedly "non-partisan" NPR have been echoing the liberal establishment line. Now, Fox News appears on the scene, with its appealing populist politics and absolutely obliterates all other news channels. "Jealousy and envy..." how does that 2Pac line go, Morgan?

But Fox News isn't conservative, that's just the way the world is.

Gosh, you have no idea how long we've wanted to repeat that oft-repeated liberal line about the liberal media.

Then there's this, from Jay Nordlinger:

The Democratic presidential candidates refused to participate in a debate sponsored by Fox News. (It was scheduled for Nevada, as you recall.) But the Republican presidential candidates had their first debate on MSNBC — moderated by Chris Matthews. (If a word that contains “moderate” can be used about Chris!) That tells us a lot about our political and media culture. We conservatives and Republicans can’t afford to have a pariah; but the Democrats certainly can — they write off one TV network, they got scads of others.

Of course, Democrats would say, “But Fox News is a partisan network, and MSNBC is nonpartisan, neutral, and objective.” Uh-huh.

The above matter reminded me of something: I was talking to a Muslim friend once. I said, “Saudi Arabia outlaws all churches. Yet there’s a mosque on every street corner in America. Saudi Arabia outlaws the Bible. The penalty for possessing it is expulsion from the country — if you’re a foreigner. If you’re a Saudi, the penalty is death by beheading. Yet, in America, Korans are as plentiful as comic books.

“Aren’t Saudis, particularly those in the United States — such as students — ever embarrassed by this imbalance, this disparity? Don’t they ever think, ‘Hmm, how odd: They let us do our thing, but we don’t let them do theirs’?”

And my friend answered, “No: They regard this situation as perfectly normal and proper.” I will never forget the definiteness of his answer.

As I said, I couldn’t help thinking about this, when pondering Fox News, MSNBC, and presidential debates: The Republicans are happy to go on liberal networks, knowing that this is life; the Democrats, as I have stated, can afford to have a pariah. Networks are simply supposed to be liberal, or at least liberal-leaning; everything else is a freakish, hateful blight.

Hey libs, how's Air America doing?

*Update: The distinguished Democratic Senator from Connecticut, Senator Joe Lieberman, speaks on Iraq: Time for Choosing.

**Update: Fred Thompson calls out Michael Moore.

***Update: More from the Church of the Holy Environment: an ark. You can't make this stuff up.

****Update: Global warming "consensus" fractures like the Greenland ice shelf.


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I'll take sour grapes, with a skosh of schadenfreude

In our last post we referred to an impending Cambridge trip. It ended up being positive and productive for a number of reasons. With the help of a professor friend there, we pounded out an idea for a PhD proposal, attended the Intelligence Seminar and listened to a CIA historian, and sat at the high table at Corpus Christi formal hall.

These intelligence seminars are interesting affairs. All in attendance agree to abide by Chatham House rules. Essentially this means that participants can use the information they learn at these seminars (or any other setting where Chatham House rules are invoked), but cannot reveal the source. As a result, we get some fairly interesting bits of information. Since I've already revealed who the source was, I can't really post what he said, other than to say, that the CIA had more things going on in China and Tibet going on in the last 50 years than I would have ever guessed.

During the seminar he also discussed the gross innacuracies of The Good Shepherd and its treatment of what is supposed to be "the untold story of the beginning of the CIA." Sorry to burst the bubble of all you cloak-and-dagger enthusiasts, but that movie is pure fiction. He (the CIA historian) also referred us to a fantastic story about two CIA operatives who were captured by the Chinese in 1973, imprisoned for 20 years undergoing all sorts of deprivations, and finally released, quietly when relations with China "thawed" under Nixon.

There's another interesting dynamic at these meetings. Most of those in attendance have or are working on PhDs, with a few MA students and undergrads kind of in the periphery. Though the invited speaker is a guest, it is a time honored tradition to put hard questions to these speakers. Having been trained in the self-esteem society that is the American education system, it is always a little shocking to hear just about anyone sitting around the large conference table in the hollowed halls of Corpus Christi College take a CIA historian or whoever to task.

While in this seminar, we met and briefly talked to Stefan Halper. Mr. Halper was an erstwhile assistant to Vice President Dick Cheney when Mr. Cheney was White House Chief of Staff for President Gerald Ford and later an assistant to Mr. Cheney when he was Secretary of Defense under President George H.W. Bush. Prior to the 2004 Presidential election, Mr. Halper co-authored a book critical of the "neoconservative cabal" inhabiting the halls of power in Washington DC. In his own words, his name was "stricken from dinner party lists in DC." That line sounded like it had been repeated not a few times, with great delight.

Now, we don't want to jump to any hasty conclusions, but the schadenfreude that infects Mr. Halper's voice as he talks about the difficulties of his one time Republican colleagues and friends smacks of sour grapes at not having been invited in to government when the Republicans retook the presidency with George W. Bush in 2000. Mr. Halper now hosts a show over at the BBC.

Mr. Halper pointed out, and we found it funny, that Mark Steyn, probably the most consistently funny political writer we read, "stole" his book name, America Alone. He probably wouldn't be pleased to know that Mr. Steyn's book appears #1 on an Amazon search for "americal alone," while his comes in at #6.

We suggest, therefore, that you read Mr. Steyn's column from yesterdays New York Sun about Nicolas Sarkozy's win in the French presidential election (Congrats, Mr. Sarkozy). Good stuff.

Read also John Fund, from the Opinion Journal, about the same thing.

***Update: Also worth reading, a primer on George Tenet's new "slam dunk" of a best seller by the Weekly Standard's William Kristol. Turns out (thanks Marc) the intel about al-Qaeda in Iraq was even better than we thought. Thanks Mr. Tenet for that "inadvertent truth."

Until next time, enjoy.


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This is not Cambridge

Last fall we wrote about (among other things) our experience with the UCL Union debate. We happened to stumble upon their meeting and simply observed the proceedings. Then today, while browsing the interweb, we came across an article by Jonah Goldberg in which he details his own debate experience at the Oxford Union. Though long, it's a great read and an excellent insight into the Oxbridge experience.

Tomorrow we will attend the Intelligence seminar at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, followed by high table/formal hall.

_____

Oxford's Preposterous Proposition
Justifying America to a doubtful audience

By Jonah Goldberg

Last week, I appeared at the Oxford Union to debate the proposition: “This House regrets the founding of The United States of America.” Such is the extent of anti-Americanism out there that this was considered to be a reasonable debate topic by Britain’s best and brightest.

It was an exhilarating and daunting experience. I do a lot of campus speaking and yet, going in, this felt like the functional equivalent of Rose Bowl. Ultimately, it turned out otherwise. But I only really realized that in retrospect.

In fact, I haven’t been that nervous before a speech or debate in years. One of the things that makes the whole thing so intimidating is how unrelentingly British the entire affair is. You debate in black tie. The President of the Union, a very sharp young man who looked like a cross between Harry Potter and Elvis Costello, wore a kilt. The pre-debate cocktail party is held in the Oxford Union library — or one of them — the shelves groaning with leatherbound collections of The Economist and other journals going back more than a century. The pre-debate dinner is quite formal with toasts to the queen and ceremonial beatings of the Irish.

(I made that last part up.)

Regardless, the pomp and ceremony is authentic, not kitschy, and it comes easily to these kids who seem to be oblivious to how British they really are. The net effect of all of this is to make this American visitor feel all the more the outsider, like my cultural fly was permanently unzipped.

My colleagues in the debate were Peter Rodman, a former foreign-policy muckety-muck in the Reagan administration (and NR senior editor) and all around good guy, and Matt Frei, a convivial and charming Brit who covers the U.S. for the BBC. Plus there was one student debater on our side, an earnest and sharp young man who looked like he raced to put on his tux after arduous rehearsals for the Oxford theater troupe’s edition of Godspell. Lanky and long-haired, when he first told me he was one of the debaters, I immediately assumed the hippyish fellow was the anti-American. Instead, he was on our side.

The defenders of the proposition were originally scheduled to be one student plus three invited speakers: two Islamist radicals and a bona fide Communist.

But the Communist chickened out at the last minute, reportedly explaining that he didn’t want to debate because he feared his side would lose. Now, a few short points need to be made here. First, this was remarkably shabby on his part. Second, why on earth a devout Communist would shirk at the prospect of fighting for a lost cause is beyond me. I mean hasn’t that ship sailed? And, lastly, the Communist’s cowardice was an enormous disappointment because Peter Rodman and I had prepared to debate a Communist. We yearned to debate a Communist. I mean how often do you even get to meet an actual supporter of Stalin and Kim Jong Il? And, yet, they dangled this bloody ideological chum in front of our eyes and then cruelly yanked the bait away at the very last minute, informing us less than an hour before the debate. They replaced the Communist with a Canadian which, even I had to concede, was a very poor substitute for a Communist.

Moving on, the first speaker for the proposition, a very bright Oxford student named Charlie Holt only reinforced my fear that we were going to be outclassed. Something akin to Hugh Grant’s mini-me, Holt had a very light sarcastic touch which allowed him to be biting while seeming lovable at the same time, like a barking toy robot puppy. As I commented from the floor — in an effort to defang him — he was just an adorable “little fellow…I wonder where you put the batteries in.”

The Islamists were more interesting. The first to speak, was the head of the now moribund British Islamic Party, David Pidcock. He turned out to be something of a quintessential leftwing loon. He began by talking about how George W. Bush’s grandfather was a primary financial backer of Hitler’s rise to power. He also explained how great the U.S. Constitution is and how much he has advocated it as a model for the Muslim world. But then he explained that he was saddened by the fact that the U.S. Constitution had been suspended. I expected this to be a lead-in for his denunciations of Guantanamo and the Patriot Act. Instead, it was the prologue to a long explanation of how the plutocrats in America had conspired to create the Federal Reserve which has ruled America from behind the scenes ever since. Or at least I think that’s what he was saying. As I commented, I fully expected him to start ranting about how the Fed is sapping our precious bodily fluids.

Jamal Harwood, the other Islamist and head of Hizb ut-Tahrir (read about this “peaceful” group here and here) was a much more serious and philosophically consistent fellow but, also, not a particularly impressive speaker either. Going in, I had assumed that the Islamists would be at minimum good talkers because demagogues always are. Instead, both men were oratorical mediocrities. They were outclassed in every way by the students on their side. I’m going to try to write up a more substantial analysis of what the Islamists represented for the magazine. But, the gist of Harwood’s indictment of America was that America represents modernity and individualism, and these things are bad. If you believe that modernity and individualism are bad, that’s a perfectly legitimate argument. But, to say America is too modern is not really the sort of argument cosmopolitan lefties at Oxford want to hear.

For example, Harwood went on and on about how America is selfish and crime-ridden. When I rose on a point of information to ask if he was aware that Americans are in fact vastly more charitable than Europeans and that crime rates in America compare very favorably with those in much of Europe, he said he didn’t care because he was hardly there to defend Europe. It was an honest and consistent answer, but not very helpful to his cause.

Anyway, we won the day by a margin of 2-1. The Islamists brought some Muslim supporters with them, the source of pretty much the only applause they received. In one sense this was a big victory. In another it was pretty depressing. The proposition, after all, was essentially that America should never have been born. If the question hadn’t been so extreme, it is entirely likely we would have lost, big (see for example Rich Lowry’s narrow defeat last year). Imagine if Britain had an election and a leftwing-Islamist party gained a third of the national vote. People would be flipping out.

What follows are my prepared remarks for the evening. They only imperfectly jibe with remarks as given, as I tried to stay away from the text and speak off the cuff as much as possible (which is why these comments are written the way I wanted to say them). Our own Iain Murray, an Oxford Union veteran, advised me to highlight the common British and American heritage, which was typically wise advice. Moreover, Rodman and I figured that since he went last he could deal more effectively with the various points raised by the bad guys. I salvaged as much of the Communist bashing as possible, but I ultimately ad-libbed a bunch of Canadian stuff as well. As I was the second speaker against the proposition, my strategy was to go on the attack, both against the proposition itself and against my opponents. This was the advice from everyone I talked to. The Union audience respects aggression, humor, and more aggression. In fact, the design and energy of the room is such that when I concluded my remarks, I felt like I should throw my sword at the upper decks like Maximus in Gladiator, shouting “Are you not entertained?!”

In short, I had a grand time, and now that I know how it works, I would love to do it again. So without further ado, here’s my plan of attack as I entered the arena:

_____

As both a committed Anglophile and patriotic American, I am honored to be here.

Though, I must say that the proposition tonight saddens me.

Until recently, it never would have dawned on me that good, decent, and wise Britons, proud of their heritage, proud of their culture, honored to call themselves sons and daughters of this great nation and co-authors of its future achievements, would lament the birth of a sister democracy and comrade-in-arms — particularly when that democracy stands upon the shoulders of British giants.

There is no denying the question before this house is shameful.

No decent mother questions whether her daughter should ever have been born lest she already has an answer in mind.

And whatever regrettable commentary it may be on the child, the mere posing of the question is even more pitiable comment upon the mother.

Unless. Unless, of course this is all a grand joke in the great satirical tradition of Monty Python, Simon Pegg and the farcical oxymoron that is David Cameron’s “conservatism.”

There is hopeful evidence on this front.

When I learned that tonight’s proposition would have as its champions two passionate defenders of sharia law and the hijab plus one spokesman for the Communist party, it dawned on me: “Aha, this is all a joke.”

This house regrets the birth of America as much as Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail had naught but a “flesh wound.”

[pause]

I don’t know how it is in Britain, but in America, Communists are nearly extinct. A few aging relics do linger on — like Japanese soldiers refusing to surrender long after the war. They live in an archipelago of academic backwaters, their bunkers brimming with yellowing copies of The Daily Worker and the Guardian, saturated with the strong stink of despair mixed with the suggestion of old urine.

Communists are more commonly seen as comic-book villains or mythical creatures rumored to have once existed in fairy tales or, perhaps, James Bond movies.

A Communist!? My goodness, were Dr. Doom, Lex Luthor, and Ernst Blowfeld unavailable?

Did the most sagacious pundits of the Klingon Empire not return the Oxford Union’s phone calls?

Do the Oompah Loompahs refuse to fly coach?

I’m sorry, but my honorable opponent’s party stands — as a matter of principle! — in lockstep solidarity with the murderocracy of Kim Jong Il’s North Korea. He stands as the living exponent of the criminal tradition of Pol Pot, Joseph Stalin, and Mao Tse Tung, and he dares damn the United States of America from the safety of history’s dustbin. Please.

Surely, this evening was intended as a gag.

Where is the hidden camera? When will my opponents tear off their masks and laugh at the put on, joining us at the pub for beer and cigars giggling at the whole thing? As they say on MTV, Am I being punked?

And then there are my other “honorable” opponents: The gentlemen representing the “moderate” face of political Islam.

The Islamic Party of Britain holds that open homosexuals may receive the death sentence. Hizb ut-Tahrir openly desires a world — not merely a United Kingdom — where rejection of Islam by its adherents would bring a death sentence, and where Jews and Christians must live in official ghettos.

Both represent theocratic visions that make President Bush’s supposed “theo-conservatism” seem like a lapsed Unitarian’s weekend hobby.

Indeed, despite some vein-popping hysteria here and in Europe, the fact is that America is no theocracy, and it mixes religion and government less you folks in Britain and Europe do.

However, on the off chance that there are some in the room who do not get the joke, or — worse — that someone here isn’t kidding, let me make a few brief points.

First, there is no objection my honorable opponents could make to the existence of America that could not be made about the existence of Great Britain herself.

At least two of these men reject the Enlightenment. And I’m not talking about the French one. But the good one from Scotland. (When it comes to Enlightenments, as Michael Meyers says in So I Married an Ax Murderer — “if it’s not Scottish, it’s crap.”)

And all three of my opponents stand against the kind of Liberalism the United States, the United Kingdom, and this very Union represent.

The United States is not flawless, to be sure, but we are the fruit of freedom, the flawed champions of liberty and defenders of decency.

And, if you are honest with yourselves, you know — KNOW! — that should any of my opponents succeed in having their perfect world realized, those of you who did not stay in Britain to fight such oppression would count yourselves lucky to find asylum in the United States of America.

And, you know full well, that the United States of America would gladly offer it.

Second, whatever causes some of you to roll your eyes or titter at these statements must either be of very recent vintage indeed or, again, you must stand athwart Britain’s own history yelling, “Stop.”

And, if the case is the former, then your vote against America will be a badge of honor, for I want the support of no man who counts the United Kingdom as a villain.

But, if your position is the latter, if you were a fan, friend, or ally of the United States, until George W. Bush was elected — or until he allegedly seduced your own prime minister with some sort of Jedi Mind Trick into going into Iraq or some other recently minted grievance, let me say this: How childish of you.

To reject a former colony or ally for most of the last 400 years only to say that it was all for nothing because of a war you honorably enlisted in yourselves? For shame.

If in 2001 you would have voted against this proposition but today you want to vote for it, if you honestly think the last six-plus years erase all that was good about and of America for the previous four centuries, then you are either suffering from what we in the United States call Bush Derangement Syndrome or your friendship was never worth anything to begin with.

The proposition is not that the Bush presidency, the war, slavery, or even disco should be regretted. It is that the United States of America should be.

And that proposition would reap the scorn of Edmund Burke, William Gladstone, Winston Churchill, and countless others.

Please, my friends, let us be grownups. This is not Cambridge.

Lastly, let me just note that if the ugly fantasy at the heart of the proposition were somehow made real and America had never been born, then a lot more than democracy and freedom would suffer. America is the engine of global prosperity — a job we inherited from Britain.

From penicillin to the iPod, the artificial heart to rising crust pizza, jazz and the Simpsons to the Marshall Plan, America — through its ingenuity, openness, generosity, and adherence to the liberal principles it inherited from this great land — has championed the relief of man’s estate (in the words of Francis Bacon) and the liberty to let your freak flag fly (in the words of David Crosby).

Yes, anti-Americanism fashions itself a form of anti-globalization. But this is most often a ruse. Do keep in mind that my opponents represent a truly tyrannical form of globalization. Whether it’s “Workers of the World Unite” or the World Caliphate, the choice they are presenting is globalization for losers, while America, to the extent it represents globalization at all, offers the globalization of liberty.

The mere fact that you had to select three men from outside this heritage to defend the proposition, is proof enough that it is indefensible from within it. For, again, if you want to lament the birth of America, you must lament all that has been born of America.

And if you are prepared to do that, you are prepared to regret all that was born of Britain as well.

To which I say again: Surely you must be joking.

Mr. Goldberg is editor-at-large of National Review Online.

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The first "Diversity Day"

Follow up from yesterday:

The one positive coming out of the demonstration against Vice President Cheney? Now BYU's tortured, liberal few wont be as embarrassed when they admit in front of the liberal cool kids that they attend Brigham Young University. You know, because after this rally, they got liberal-protest street cred. Viva la revolucion! Che Guevara, yeah! Let's hear it for the hammer and sickle!



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Commencement Redux

First, a few quick notes.

We support Vice President Cheney speaking at BYU graduation ceremonies. Of course.

And, though we disagree with their reasoning, we support students' right to protest his visit.

Last year we referred to and included an excerpt of a speech given at our commencement by former BYU history professor, Dr. Frank Fox. We have read and re-read that speech a number of times and felt that now would be a good time to reproduce it, in full, for the benefit of the new graduates.

No Regrets
By Frank Fox

If there was a Guiness Book award for the most college students taught live, I’d win it, hands down.

Over the past twenty-five years I have taught some 65,000 students, most of them in BYU’s American Heritage Program.

One result of such a career is that you always have to be on your best behavior—your students are everywhere! Another result is that you have lots of follow-up conversations. Former students approach you at games, at restaurants, in the mall, and they often want to chat about their lives after BYU.

In a surprising number of cases, I find that they express regrets:
“I should have studied harder.”
“I should have had a different major.”
“I should have gotten married sooner.” “I shouldn’t have gotten married at all.”

And then, almost inevitably, “I wish I could go back and do it over again—knowing what I know now.”

Life regrets are a familiar refrain, especially in America. We grow up expecting perfection in all things—and life rarely affords that. The world out there is harsh. It is eminently productive of regret. If someone hasn’t told you that yet, you need to hear it now, loud and clear.

If there was a time to which adults could scroll back and do it over again, that time is probably right now—the day of graduation:

Any sooner and you wouldn’t have the background necessary for life’s important choices.

Any later and many of those choices would already be made.

So let’s call today—this hour, this minute—time zero. Just for fun, let’s date everything from the moment you receive your college diploma. In other words, regrets, if there be any, begin now.

To help you on your way, I’m going to offer you three tips. Graduation day advice is nothing new—and my three tips are nothing new. All the same, I wish someone would have given them to me on that balmy evening in the spring of 1966, precisely forty years ago, when I graduated from the University of Utah.

First, live the examined life.

“The unexamined life,” said Socrates, “is not worth living.”

Much of what you have acquired at BYU are the tools of examination. We have taught you how to examine the spatial world, the temporal world, the world of human relations, the world of thought and feeling, the world of ideas. And we have imparted gospel insights for keeping perspectives clear and priorities straight.

Yet it would surprise you to know how rare the examined life still is. Many of your predecessors have gone forth as pilgrims, never really examining anything, simply putting one foot ahead of the other, receiving whatever is offered by friends, by neighbors, by authorities, by the media, by those who are but pilgrims themselves—the blind leading the blind.

A few months ago, you put thousands of hard-earned dollars into a ponzi scheme that confidently promised to earn you 12% per day on your investment. Such are the wages of the unexamined life.

Others fall prey to different scams. Much of the academic world has embraced a view of life that asks only about gender, class or ethnicity—the things that divide us—ignoring the things that unite us, such as our common moral sense. A distinguished professor of bioethics recently stated that he saw nothing wrong with the killing of full term infants and the harvesting of their organs—yet saw plenty wrong with the eating of animals. The unexamined life strikes again!

The examined life literally examines everything. It questions everything—not in the corrosive manner that weakens faith but in the constructive manner that strengthens faith and gives it surer footing.

The examined life favors reality over appearance. Substance over style. Fact over opinion. It prefers universals to the partial, the fleeting, the fashionable—and the relative. It seeks to learn those truths which will in fact make us free.

It asks hard questions—and demands good answers. With the examined life it is never enough to say: “because someone told me so.”

Second, live beyond yourself.

You reside in a world where living beyond the self is becoming rare. We call it rugged individualism, or healthy egoism, or looking out for number one, or simply me-first. “Greed is good,” intoned a character in the movie Wall Street.

Much of your life experience has already reinforced that point of view. After all, didn’t my team beat yours? Didn’t the prom queen prefer me to you? Didn’t I have the most baptisms in the mission field? Wasn’t my GPA higher?

It has been observed that a person all wrapped up in himself makes a mighty small bundle—and so he does. In his book Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam noted that the bundles have been getting ever smaller for the past hundred years. Gone in many places is the neighborhood get-together, the Thursday night bridge club, the barbershop bull session, the local bowling league. People are simply less interested in one another.

People are warier too. We have created a world of interpersonal barriers and extreme suspiciousness—separating each from the other. To reach out and touch someone now may land you in a lawsuit.

Living beyond oneself means being interested in, and engaged with, your world. It means volunteering for civic duty. It means caring about the unfortunate. It means attention to those institutions that, among other things, safeguard our common liberty.

Living beyond oneself transformed a gifted dilettante into an Albert Schweitzer. It made an otherwise undistinguished nun into Mother Teresa. It is the magic ingredient that rendered C. S. Lewis more than simply an interesting writer—and Elder Neal A. Maxwell more than simply an engaging speaker. Living beyond oneself transformed an ordinary housewife in my acquaintance into a veritable saint. While others were content to play tennis or do scrapbooks, she chose to sacrifice 15 years of her life to the care of her elderly parents—both of whom suffered from Alzheimer’s.

So don’t confuse living beyond oneself with career advancement. The two don’t mix. Gen. George C. Marshall put the case this way: “There is no limit to the good you can accomplish,” he said, “as long as you don’t insist on taking credit for it.”

Much of your education at BYU has been about living beyond the self. In addition to school and church work, you have been called upon to take part in blood drives, big brother and sister programs, reading to the blind, comforting the sick, sheltering the homeless. One of my American Heritage classes scraped together some $18,000 to provide Christmas for more than 60 local families. (Of course they got the added benefit of watching me kiss a pig.)

Living beyond the self is the ultimate mark of humility. It concedes that the world doesn’t start and end with me. Its supreme manifestation is the insistence of the Savior that he wash the feet of his disciples in order to be their servant.

Third, stand for something.

I unashamedly borrow the phrase from President Hinckley’s book—a highly recommended read, by the way.

Just as we live in a world whose ultimate reality is appearance and whose ultimate value is the self, so too we live in a world where it is imprudent—one might say politically incorrect—to stand for anything.

Standing for something involves making waves—rocking boats. One such boat rocker—to cite but a single example—was a member of the British House of Commons back in the 1930s. The right honorable Winston S. Churchill made a career of standing for things. He stood for the British Empire when imperialism was fading away. He stood for the monarchy when the king himself had lost interest in it and abdicated his throne. Above all, he stood for opposing Hitler and his program of piecemeal conquest—when the tide of appeasement was cresting. He was bitterly scorned by his colleagues, in and out of Parliament. But when push finally came to shove (as Churchill knew it must), he was the person they all turned to. Standing for something gave him stupendous moral power.

There are plenty of things to stand for at this dawn of the 21st century. Stand up for honor and decency. Stand up for Judeo-Christian values. Stand up for a worthy political cause. Stand up for simple integrity—as one of my own students recently did.

It was necessary for me to ask this student to take a sheaf of examinations over to the Testing Center. Owing to circumstances, the student had possession of the exams over the entire weekend, delivering them to the Testing Center on Monday morning. Subsequently the student herself took the exam. She did poorly on parts of it—mostly because she was unwilling to cheat, even when to do so would have entailed no risk. I could never, of course, have taught her anything of comparable value in the class.

If we have learned anything in the years following 9/11, it is how fragile civilization truly is. Skyscrapers are vulnerable to aircraft. Aircraft are vulnerable to terrorists. Our most cherished institutions often depend on simple human trust. There cannot be a policeman on every corner—the policeman must be in every heart. Of course you can use the internet to scam people. Of course the aged and infirm can be victimized. Of course children make easy targets. Every apple orchard is filled with free fruit. Every public fountain is awaiting its box of soap. Every graduation ceremony—including this one—can be disrupted by those few who want their graduate to get the most attention. In a world where people fail to stand up—people will surely fall down.

For Socrates, the most important learning was not about being taught but about being prompted to remember. There is a higher self in all of us, Socrates argued, and that self needed only to be jogged awake from time to time. For many of you, your BYU experience has been precisely that, an awakening, a remembering, a reacquainting of the self with the person you really are. On this day and in this hour let us suppose that you know that person for the very first time.

And so, at time zero, I wish you well. May my few humble tips spare at least some of you from a lifetime of regret.

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Romney: 2nd Amendment Champion (I like Mitt Romney)

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Tax Cuts for the Rich: In favor

Do you believe liberal propaganda about President Bush's "tax cuts for the rich?" (or any other conservative-proposed tax cuts) We understand. Tax math is complicated. We submit, therefore, this very simple tax parable to help you, dear reader, understand Democratic demagoguery and see it for what it is--rubbish.

Hat tip: Matt Lybbert

Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:

The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
The fifth would pay $1.
The sixth would pay $3.
The seventh would pay $7.
The eighth would pay $12.
The ninth would pay $18.
The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.
So, that's what they decided to do.

The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve. "Since you are all such good customers," he said, "I'm going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20." Drinks for the ten now cost just $80.

The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes so the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free. But what about the other six men - the paying customers? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his 'fair share?' They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody's share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer. So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man's bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay. And so:

The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings).
The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33%savings).
The seventh now pay $5 instead of $7 (28%savings).
The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings).
The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings).
The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).

Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings.

"I only got a dollar out of the $20," declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man," but he got $10!"

"Yeah, that's right," exclaimed the fifth man. "I only saved a dollar, too. It's unfair that he got ten times more than I!"

"That's true!" shouted the seventh man. "Why should he get $10 back when I got only two? The wealthy get all the breaks!"

"Wait a minute," yelled the first four men in unison. "We didn't get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!"

The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.

The next night the tenth man didn't show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn't have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!

And that, boys and girls, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore. In fact, they might start drinking overseas where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.

Next time you read the NYT, or hear your socialist friend spouting off about the oppression of the common man by the rich of America, well, you'll know better, and be able to set her straight.


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Look at Cartoon, Reader!

(With apologies to G.O.B., Michael, and the Arrested Development Banner.)


Hat tip: Dr. Sanity.


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Give These Guys Gore's Oscar!

Are you like our friends who insist the debate about global warming is over? Do you believe all scientists agree that human created CO2 is causing global warming? Have you convinced yourself the Kyoto Protocol (or something like it) may actually affect global temperatures?

Think again.

Our brother Matt turned us on to a column by Thomas Sowell which referred to a movie entitled "The Great Global Warming Swindle." Our old man quickly followed with a link to the movie. Thanks Dad.

From Mr. Sowell:

Britain's Channel 4 has produced a devastating documentary titled "The Great Global Warming Swindle." It has apparently not been broadcast by any of the networks in the United States. But, fortunately, it is available on the Internet.

Distinguished scientists specializing in climate and climate-related fields talk in plain English and present readily understood graphs showing what a crock the current global warming hysteria is.

Please, dear lemmings, you owe it to yourselves to watch this movie and listen to a voice of reason before you follow Al Gore and the rest of the Apocalyptic Church of the Holy Environment off the edge of a cliff.

The religious parallels don't end with doomsday predictions as we documented here and here. They even sell indulgences!!! This time, from Charles Krauthammer on carbon credits:

In other words, the rich reduce their carbon output by not one ounce. But drawing on the hundreds of millions of net worth in the Kodak Theatre, they pull out lunch money to buy ecological indulgences. The last time the selling of pardons was prevalent--in a predecessor religion to environmentalism called Christianity--Martin Luther lost his temper and launched the Reformation.

But don't worry, we're sure zealots like the hypocritical, private jet-flying, Tennessee mansion energy-burning, Mr. Gore will cook up another environmental crusade you can feel morally superior about and persecute others for not joining.

**Update: At the request of some of our more sensitive readers, we've toned down the pejorative language of this post. Thus, "deluded" has become "convinced" and "whack job" is now "zealot." We apologize that "lemmings" remains in this draft. Our search of the thesaurus could not produce a satisfactory substitute.


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We Love Freedom!

On Friday we met with the current Cabinet Secretary and head of all British Civil Servants (544,000 according to his count) Gus O'Donnell. After a brief, high school civics class-like presentation on 'what goes on at the Cabinet and Whitehall,' Mr. O'Donnell opened the floor to a few questions.

In case you've missed the theme, we appreciate and are intensely interested in how basic economic principles inform public policy. You can imagine our delight, therefore, when we learned that Mr. O'Donnell has a background in economics. With that in mind, we posed the following question: we asked, "how he employed his background in economics and understanding of incentives as the head of a notoriously inefficient bureaucracy?"

Reading the question in print, we understand how he might have taken that as a bit of an institutional dig. But it wasn't intended as such.

He proceeded to give a somewhat tedious and patronizing explanation--almost lecturing--on the differences between undergraduate and graduate economics (as though the laws of supply and demand stop after ones bachelors degree!).

Of course, he never really explained how they were different, simply insisting that they were so in order to establish his superiority. What he was really arguing came out when he applied his bureaucratic jargon to a practical example: the National Health Service.

Being the only American accent in the room, he probably understood that we were thinking specifically of Britain's socialized medicine when we asked our question about economic incentives. He explained that with no prices--after all, health care is free--there was no way to employ market forces to bring about any degree of efficiency whatsoever. The overriding principle, and my peers around the table nodded their heads, was equity.

Espousal of egalitarian principles is what all good socialists do. Never mind that everyone gets crummy health care, or that thousands die because cancer isn't diagnosed in time for treatment, or that thousands more wait in queues (brit-speak for lines) for basic procedures. None of this matters, so long as everyone's health care sucks equally.

And suck, it does. Think Walter Reed writ large.

Consider that since we've been in this country, we've had personal experience with two friends who needed medical treatment. Both reflected poorly on socialized medicine.

One friend knocked out all her front teeth and cut up her mouth very badly. Because of the inefficient bureaucracy that is the NHS, she had to wait three weeks before they could begin treatment and repair. Did you catch that? She was forced to wait, teeth presumably in a cup of milk, hidden away because she didn't want to go out in public, for 3 weeks before she could start on a series of procedures that would take longer than a month to complete. "That," as the Brits might say sarcastically, "is just brilliant." What makes this sucky sequence of events even suckier is that this friend doesn't even know any better. That's just how it is. Suckiness has permeated British expectations for their medical care.

Example number two is a friend who took a nasty spill off of his bicycle. His knock on the head was bad enough that a passing driver had time to stop the car, get out, and pick him up off the ground. In this friend's case, he wasn't able to see a doctor that day. The next day, when he turned up for his appointment, he discovered that they had scheduled him during a time when doctors were only seeing "emergency" patients. Finally, three days later, he saw a doctor who was able to properly clean up and bandage his various cuts and scrapes. As for any tests to determine damage to his brain as a result of his head injury and apparent concussion? Well, that would require waiting at least two weeks to see a specialist, and our friend just couldn't be bothered. How many Brits don't get the care they need because the line or wait is too long?

So far, the NHS is 0 for 2. And that's just our count. We hope we don't get injured or sick and have to rely on the NHS for medical care. We don't want to become another cautionary tale.

Sure, it's free--if you consider nearly 50% income taxes free (and with costs spiraling out of control, the tax burden is only going to grow)--but it sucks.


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