False equivalencies

A good two weeks ago now, a friend with whom we were dining drew an analogy. I, unfortunately, was not in good shape to respond to it at the time (we were coming off an intense week of Disney and I'd been consuming wine at roughly the rate and volume I'd been hitting the water bottles for the past seven days), but since then I've been haunted, haunted I tell you, by a need to deconstruct it.

We were talking about the foreign policy platforms of the presidential hopefuls. (Read that as "Iraq," of course.) I maintained, as I always do, that "We shouldn't have gone into Iraq in the first place," is not a meaningful foreign policy position; we are in Iraq, and the question for these candidates and near-candidates is what we do there from this point forward. I should note that the original act is a settled question in both my mind and my friend's: I've never wavered from my belief that deposing Saddam Hussein made absolute good sense, and he's never accepted that it made any sense at all. But here's where the analogy came in: he countered that what I was saying - that the important statement from these hopefuls should focus on what next rather than on whether in the first place, and furthermore that a continual focus on the past paralyzed us from acting as wisely and decisively as possible now - was like telling an abused wife that she should discount all her husband's abuses because they happened in the past, after all - it'd all be different in the future, honey, or at any rate the future would render the past irrelevant.

This is a grotesque equivalency, and a fundamentally flawed one. Oh, I understand its root: as I said, the "whether" question is settled for my friend as "absolutely not," so I suppose it's natural, if that's the right word, for him to equate the U.S./coalition invasion of Iraq with domestic violence. And for what it's worth, I do believe that revisiting that question helps voters evaluate the presidential hopefuls' judgment and reasoning. (He and I reach different conclusions from that evaluation, of course.) But when the question being asked is "What would you do next?" a response of, "We shouldn't be there in the first place, so we should get out," is not a response at all. Or, at best, it's shallow and blind.

Moving on to the deconstruction part. First: the marital relationship in the analogy appears to marry the U.S. government to the people of the United States, with government as abuser and people as abused wife. All metaphors break down, but this one never even stands up. The U.S. government is in fact the people of the United States; the fact that not all the people agree with all the actions of the government doesn't reflect either an unequal marital partnership or (more close to reality, though sulkily put) "disenfranchisement" of some portion of the electorate; it reflects the compromise we call our republic, that's all. I've "suffered" through many years of government action against my preferences and will; it's not "abuse," but simply my side's inability to popularize its policies. The lack of government support for my point of view on this or that issue might be a result of its being wrong, or it might be a result of its being hard to sell or difficult to maintain; it certainly does not constitute an "abuse."

In practical terms, the "abuse" to which my friend referred might be the cost of the war rather than the "mental abuse" of having to slog through two terms' worth of presidential policies with which one disagrees. I hear a lot about this cost lately, all of which seems to begin from the assumption that whatever we're spending on the war (a) would have been spent elsewhere (that is, that we've lost an opportunity cost of some kind) and (b) would have been better spent elsewhere (that is, that government spending is an unreserved good, unless it's on a military venture). I can't accept either premise. Is this war worth its cost in money? Time will tell, and we're not yet to the point where time can tell. But taking down Saddam Hussein was, in my opinion, absolutely worth everything it cost at the time. What we've been doing since then is that uniquely American post-war activity called "reconstruction." It's our obligation to some extent, but beyond that extent it's just what we do: we try to rebuild and reform the damaged and destroyed so that it can join us in fruitful commerce (not just the financial kind) in time. This principle, which we've been doing for many years under many presidents, has become codified as the "Bush Doctrine," thanks to the now-explicit hypothesis that liberal transformation in the Middle East will be superior to realpolitik in stabilizing that volatile region. And the potential benefits of the action, if it works, are not being valued opposite the costs both real and hypothetical. There is an incremental cost associated with achieving those benefits - what is it? And can the benefits be monetized, and if so, what's their value? That's how you make a foreign policy decision about a war, if money is the main criterion. But was money the main criterion in our entering WWII?

Next: history is indeed a guide to future behavior when you're dealing with individuals, but the more appropriate analog would have been the "abused wife" who remarried every few years. Here my friend might say that the party affiliation of the "husband" was an important datum in gauging his likelihood to "abuse" her; I'd point to history as a refutation of that view, since it's been Democrats who tended to get the U.S. into foreign entanglements over the last century or so, since no party remains the same for more than a (political) generation, and since a party's leader can have a strong, if often temporary, effect on that party's philosophy.

Finally, the analogy was intended to illustrate something about the presidential candidates. But all it did was to restate the flawed premise - that the right question to ask and answer is, "Since we shouldn't be in Iraq at all, how do you propose we leave?" Drawing the question in terms of domestic abuse is a trick, like the one my side used against the other during the 2004 and 2006 election cycles, when Osama bin Laden's various taped statements seemed to be drawing on Democrat talking points. Remember it? We (not specifically I, that I recall, but my side) called our political opponents "objectively pro-terrorist." (My point of view was that if your country's enemy seemed to be echoing your own position, you might want to consider that position carefully.)

It's too obvious a trick, too, since it's just about identical to "Have you stopped beating your wife?" Point is, rhetorical tricks can sometimes "win" debates, but they do not answer questions. (I've used plenty of tricks, won plenty of debates, and skirted plenty of questions in my time.) If the object of this year's election is to choose a leader for what is still THE world hyperpower, our focus needs to be on hearing and evaluating the substance, rather than the rhetoric, of our candidates. (In other words, after lo these many paragraphs, I wearily acknowledge that I won't un-settle the question of "whether" for my friend, just as he won't un-settle it for me; I'm looking for the candidate who will commit to staying in Iraq until circumstances clearly show one outcome or another - recalling that inadequate reconstruction after WWI spawned WWII, and reconstruction after WWII took decades. This is the long war, and the "hard work," Bush is vilified and ridiculed for talking about.)

My capacity for shock is taking a hit

So Instapundit steered me to this:

Well, a Smith College professor found a way around that ["the gender gap in math and science" - I urge the reader to follow the link above for futher background links, because I'm a glass and a half of wine into this post] for getting women into engineering: Ignore the math. From the Chronicle:

[The curriculum] emphasizes context, ethics, and communication as much as formulas and equations.

Smith, the first women’s college to offer an engineering degree, graduated its first class of engineers in 2004, and since the program’s creation, in 1999, has attained a 90-percent retention rate[.]

Does this mean I have to ask for resumes and transcripts - with DNA testing to confirm gender - every time I step onto an airliner? Good gravy.

This is the problem, people, with setting different standards in order to bolster the self-esteem of the terminally sensitive. If the firefighter responsible for hefting my husband, overcome by smoke, out of my house is a 5'5" woman who can bench seventy pounds, well heck, leave my husband to me - I'm bigger and stronger. If the engineer designing my car studied "context, ethics, and communication" at the expense of loading and metal fatigue and tensile strength and so forth (not being an engineer, I'm just naming off some things I know matter), thankyouverymuch, I'll put my kids in the Amish wagon in the garage; my own lack of speed makes up for its lack of seat belts.

I was a geologist. I was pretty good at parts of it; I really stank at other parts. Upper-body strength wasn't an issue in my jobs, nor was geophysics (one of the things I stank at, along with optical mineralogy, like everyone in my class - thank goodness for the grading curve, but I never deceived myself that I understood the material despite the passing grade - and structural geology - so it's best that I stay far from faults), so I could perform as well as any man in the same job. Often better. But I would not have been hired to perform an assessment of the geologic conditions underlying a hospital site, because I didn't have the math - and that's absolutely correct. The stakes are generally higher than self-esteem, darn it.

Rrrrripped from the headlines

Or somewhere in the body of the piece, anyway. From the front page of yesterday's WSJ:

...Barack Obama brainstormed with his top advisers on the fine points of his positions. Michelle Obama had dialed in to listen, but finally couldn't stay silent any longer.

"Barack," she interjected, "Feel - don't think!"

Holy cow. Really?

All right, the final point of her exhortation is that he use his heart and his head rather than "overthinking." And I'm sympathetic to the plight of a wife who must continually build up her husband, show tremendous confidence in him, lest he start to doubt himself in the midst of a grueling campaign (or project of any kind - I can think of times when my literal words in support of my husband might not have been exactly what I was thinking, but chosen in order to bolster his confidence instead). But. How utterly pathetic that the newspaper quote ended up as, "Feel - don't think!" rather than simply, "Barack, decide!" which is, I certainly hope, what she meant.

Of course, I give both of them the benefit of the doubt: that Michelle Obama purposely misspoke because my formulation could be confidence-shaking at a critical time, and that Barack Obama actually has the ability to decide. Sigh.

And then, same page:

[Clinton's campaign manager] was replaced by Maggie Williams... who served as her chief of staff when she was First Lady. ... Ms. Williams... is viewed by staffers as a long-time, loyal defender of Mrs. Clinton.

This sounds sadly like Bush's attempt to put Miers on the Supreme Court, the differences being (1) Bush (and Miers, I imagine), wisely, listened to the outcry that she was too lightweight for the job and the unfortunate plan went away, and (2) Bush's reasoning was to put a loyalist in a position of influence over something else, something that affected more than just his own administration, such that loyalty to his administration might have an effect - versus Clinton's putting a "loyal defender" of her own self in charge of - what? her own campaign. How many non-loyalists does she have working on her campaign, for heaven's sake?

Again I say, I'm just sick about the fact that the Democrats have punted the Presidency altogether by facing these two off against one another (there's no strong Democrat governor, or even a Democrat Senator or Rep with years of federal experience, available?), yet they may actually win. Social conservatives and other ideological purists, beware: if you decide to punish McCain for not being perfect for you, you (and your children, and mine) could be cleaning up the unholy mess for a generation. More. Be a purist in your own heart, mind, and life - certainly! But don't rejoice in your own purity to the point where you're willing to punt the Presidency just as utterly, and leave the nation in the hands of the "close your eyes and throw money at it" socialists.

Problems with the premises

I was reading in Reason why Steve Chapman believes we should not worry about a potential nuclear strike from a terrorist organizations. In brief, it's really hard either to acquire or to build a nuclear device, and then delivery of said device is even harder. Okay, I grant all that. But there are several premises in this little op-ed that I can't get behind.

Ever since Sept. 11, 2001, Americans have had to live with the knowledge that the next time the terrorists strike, it could be not with airplanes capable of killing thousands but atomic bombs capable of killing hundreds of thousands.

What I glean from this paragraph is that we shouldn't worry about those airplanes any more. Hmm. Secondary is the implication (followed on in the next para) that American policy since 9/11 has been shaped predominantly by fear. It seems that the strawman of choice for a common variety of person-who-disagrees-with-me-and-my-ilk is the terrified right-winger, crouched in his walk-in closet with a roll of duct tape at the ready. But you don't (for instance) get your brakes checked because you live in terror that they'll fail and kill you; you don't even install an alarm system out of fear (television ads for alarm systems notwithstanding), except in a kind of abstract sense that it would be bad if your house were broken into with you and your sleeping children in it.

My husband's childhood home was, in fact, broken into with his single mom asleep therein; he, returning from a high school date, happened to drive around the block, passing his house (in which he saw a light on and a man inside and wondered why his mother was entertaining so late), because a favorite song was on the radio. When he finally pulled into the driveway and went inside, all lights were off, to his surprise, and his mom was fast asleep. The back door was ajar, though, and they later found Mom's purse out on the lawn. So if anyone would have had cause to fear such an event, it should've been this family. Yet Mom still lives in that house, and she sleeps soundly. She has an alarm system - no sense in ignoring reality - but she doesn't bite her nails wondering when the next intruder will defeat it and gain entry.

Prevention of the preventable has been the focus of American policy. Has it been effective? Well:

But remember: After Sept. 11, 2001, we all thought more attacks were a certainty. Yet Al Qaeda and its ideological kin have proved unable to mount a second strike.

So it would appear that for all its myriad faults, Homeland Security's efforts haven't been in vain. In fact, it's the victim of its own success, since we're now supposed to assume that since no attack has been successful, we should disable the alarm.

Moving on:

If terrorists were able to steal a Pakistani bomb...

I think I'll just let that stand, Pakistan being a nominal ally and all. And then:

Stealing some 100 pounds of bomb fuel would require help from rogue individuals inside some government who are prepared to jeopardize their own lives.

Which hundreds of terrorists have demonstrated their willingness to do. Could such a person reach high levels in some nuclear-enabled government? Are we prepared to claim that no such person ever could?

He does end with, "None of this means we should stop trying to minimize the risk by securing nuclear stockpiles, monitoring terrorist communications and improving port screening." Unfortunately, he follows that sentence with this one:

But it offers good reason to think that in this war, it appears, the worst eventuality is one that will never happen[,]

...which is the final premise with which I take issue. A nuclear strike by a terrorist organizations is not, in my opinion, the "worst eventuality." It might be the worst single casualty event, in the (I agree here) very unlikely case that it could be brought about, but it's hardly the worst thing. WWII: was the "worst eventuality" for Britons the possibility that Hitler could level London? He gave it a darn effective try - but no, the worst eventuality was that Britain could be defeated overall and that Germany could take over Britain. For Japan, was the worst eventuality that the Allies could drop A-bombs on two of their cities? It was horrible, it was unthinkably horrible for Japan - but what about the million Japanese casualties and the widespread destruction of infrastructure projected if the Allies had invaded Japan instead? And, for the Japanese at the time, what about the prospect of an Allied occupation following that invasion?

The "preventable" that American policy to date continues to try to prevent is not a terrorist strike per se. It's something much worse, but something that "multicultural awareness" dictates we can't talk about very clearly: it's Islamist aggression, whether by violence or by relentless use of our liberality against us, resulting in a loss of what makes liberal pluralist democracies the amazing force for good that they are. So (as always) I call for today's immigrants to follow the lead of yesterday's, including my own people, and embrace this place, not differentiate themselves from it. And furthermore, I call for those of us who have been here a while to continue to ask this level of assimilation from our newcomers, not facilitate their differentiation with patronizing observations about their Otherness.

Lileks, speaking for himself

And as well as always. I love James Lileks. Today his "Bleat" was more of a rant - he seems to have removed the curmudgeonly section of his absolutely addictive website, so the Bleat must now do double duty. He's talking about the great idea they had at the Freakonomics blog on the NYT to have a "six-word motto for the U.S." contest, which (being the NYT) had many predictable results. (Also, to my surprise, some good 'uns, including "That hot girl who ignores you," my personal favorite of the selection I read.) Let me give you a little of my man James:

It doesn’t matter that these fascists-in-fetal-form [he refers here to these people: "Someone somewhere is a practicing Baptist and someone somewhere else is eating a hamburger larger than you’d prefer, and other people are watching cars go around a track at high speed."] never quite seem to accomplish anything; it’s not like they drove the gay Teletubbies off the air or had Tony Kushner drawn and quartered in the public square. But they’re preventing something. Something wonderful. And they’re driving large cars to Wal-Mart and putting 18-roll packs of Charmin in the back and they have three kids. Earth has withstood a lot in its four billion years, but it cannot withstand them. And even if it does, who wants to live in a world where these people don’t care that they’re being mocked by small, underfunded theaters in honest, gritty neighborhoods? (Which are being gentrified by upwardly-mobile poseurs who have decided it’s a great place to live because the theater is good and the restaurants are cheap. F*#*$ing interlopers. But we’ll deal with them later.)

A slightly younger relative of mine, whom I adore for his great heart, his love of fun, his manner with the children in his life, and lots more, is a right git where it comes to economics; right now he lives in one of those honest, gritty neighborhoods, and he likes to visit honest, gritty countries where a hundred bucks a month is big money for the locals (and, in spite of his theoretical social-justice stance, he thinks that's terrific because it means cheap vacations for him and his buds), and the fashion lines he represents are both honest and gritty, and in addition far out of the reach of both those Wal-mart shoppers and the poor down-trodden pipples (sorry, that's a Zorro, the Gay Blade reference) for whom he feels so deeply. Now, he's not the snob that the elbow-patch crowd seems to be; he's sincerely egalitarian, but he just doesn't quite get what egalitarianism actually entails.

I have no time for the snobs.

Of Superbowls, underdogs, and politics

Man, did you see that game? That incredible escape from the sack? That catch?!

I haven't enjoyed a Superbowl that much in years, and given that my Superbowl munchies consisted of clear broth and dry toast (thank you very much, ugly G-I bug that knocked down my family one by one), that's saying something. But though I, like the whole football-fan world, give the heavy credit to that last 2:39-or-so drive (I was hyperventilating, and I've got no allegiance to either team), I was most impressed with (a) the Giants' absolutely unstoppable defensive line and (b) the Giants rookie Bradshaw. How tall is he? Five-nine or so? Yet the Patriots repeatedly had to pile three or four ginormous men onto him to bring him down. He was a little bitty freight train.

I do love an upset. And funnily enough, whenever I hear about the current Pats' formidableness (is that even a word?), I think only of the Superbowl back in the '80s, when I was first interested in Superbowls, when they were smushed into the turf by the then-awesome Bears. I was pulling so hard for the tiny Patriots - they looked like children opposite the Bears' line. So I came into this Superbowl, in spite of the Pats' season record, with a visceral indecision about who represented the underdogs. My subconscious was saying "little Patriots versus Giant... um, bears?" But of course my conscious mind knew the truth, and that first quarter, when Manning converted four times, was when I realized this was going to be a Game after all - even though the Giants couldn't actually capitalize very much on their relentless drive. I admit to losing interest in the middle a bit, but that fourth quarter was something to stay awake for, wasn't it?

And onward. Deep into primary season, I've lost my candidate, it looks as if I'll lose the one governor I'd support, and McCain will end up with the Republican nomination. Obama and Clinton continue to snipe at one another and to play with their various physical characteristics as differentiators (and/or their campaigns do the playing, which has the same effect); bleah, still. As a woman and a staunch meritocrat, I have no issue whatsoever with the principle of an otherly-than-male-gendered or otherly-than-Caucasian-toned President; but my goodness, could we have a candidate, please? The Republican slate, lily-white and male-appendaged as it is, at least represents experience in high-level governance, and the lily-white maleness of it has, weirdly, an effect similar to the candidates' all wearing the same suits and ties during debates (I'll be so interested to see how they handle this newish tradition if Clinton is the Dem nominee): it removes a distraction and allows easier focus on the actually relevant.

Which means, I believe, that the Democrats had best watch themselves; to make the Presidency a figurehead, where it doesn't matter who's in the big chair as long as that person "looks like America" or some such nonsense (it would've been fascinating to see an America that looked like Lincoln, I think - gives whole new meaning to the term "ugly American"), implies the exact opposite of the Democrat policy platform: that strong central government is not an effective means of actually governing, that the King Log approach is in fact the preferable one. Because if anybody can do it (which is the lesson of the two Dem front-runners' resumes), then nobody actually has to do it.

All right, I think I'm overstating the case. Possibly the Dems have decided to kibosh the strong-Executive thing and return to a stronger Legislative branch. I wish them luck with that too, considering what seems to catch the attention of our legislators in Washington.

But in any event, yup, if McCain gets the nomination I'll vote for him over either Dem front-runner, because as the Captain (a Romney man) says,

I want to emphasize the point that I have no problem supporting John McCain in a general election against either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama if he wins the nomination. Elections are about choices and reality, not fantasy.

That's where we are now. The art of the possible, the necessity of opposing the party and/or candidate who disagrees with one's principles eighty percent of the time and supporting the party and/or candidate who agrees with one's principles seventy percent of the time. McCain-Feingold is bad; McCain selecting Supreme Court justices and acting as CinC is better than Clinton or Obama doing the same, by my lights. He is not perfect - oh so far from it - but he's also not socialist, nor a fool.

Not even February yet, and I'm already tired of it all

Yeah. The primaries and caucuses. Blech.

Turning first to the Democrats... for heaven's sake, are these the best they can field? Three Senators, one of whom hasn't even served a whole term yet and the other two of whom haven't served one and a half? What have they been doing for the past eight years? Not even a governor in the bunch - not a soul with executive experience. Sure, that's what I want: a President who's never presided over anything. (I have a very hard time voting for a Senator, regardless of party; the legislative skillset is entirely different from that required of an executive.)

And then the Republican side: I could get behind Thompson, from what I know of him, except that he doesn't seem to want the job very much. Now, personally I believe that's probably to his credit, a la Groucho Marx's not wanting to belong to any country club that'd have him as a member. But as for actually getting the job, it's not a help. Romney - here's a Republican (of sorts) governor of a militantly liberal State: that shows promise. But. Will he actually employ Republican principles unapologetically, like Reagan, or will he go all Schwartzeneggar and start by couching the right answers in the wrong terms ("We should make the Bush tax cuts permanent because, really, those primarily affected are no longer the richest Americans but the new middle class - and we don't want the embattled middle class to suffer disproportionately for their hard-won success" versus the right terms, "We should make the Bush tax cuts permanent because it's in the best interests of society and the American economy to allow Americans to keep as much of their earnings as possible"), then move toward embracing less and less Republican policy because his best friends are snubbing him at parties? I do believe Presidents are human, and subject to human folly; this is why they need hard-hearted handlers. (Think how much more dignified the Clinton Presidency would have been if Bill's handlers had been more effective.)

Moving on. McCain - again, there's the Senator near-disqualification, for me. There's McCain-Feingold - another blech. Mostly what he has going for him is that he understands the stakes in Iraq and, so far at any rate, seems unwilling to throw over our, and Iraq's, mounting successes for the sake of a demagogical point scored. Huckabee - honestly I know almost nothing about him; I don't like his name, so my visceral response is yet another blech. But besides that, I keep hearing that he's a government-interventionist, and that ain't Republican in my book. Giuliani - again, he's good on national security (which is sort of a proxy for foreign policy generally for me, at present, as fighting the ongoing battle against Islamism is my single-issue issue), but is being a mayor good enough? Maybe, if it's mayor of New York City... but as my husband points out, he's a New Yorker through and through; is he too regional? And of course there's this odd "going dark" strategy of his. We'll see what happens in Florida. Though that's problematic for me too, since I equate Florida with "New York al Sur": If he can appeal to Floridians, does that only mean there are a whole lot of New Yorkers in the sun?

Kathryn Lopez at National Review Online says The White House Is No House For a Woman - more pithily blurbed on NRO's front page as "I don't want a woman President." I predict that if this piece is noticed by anyone in the Leftosphere, it'll be taken as a sign - heck, it'll be trumpeted as proof - that Republican women are self-hating and that Republicans generally are sexist. (I don't doubt that Thomas Sowell's denouncement of the Clinton/Obama Populism Wars will similarly be cast as race treachery. Sigh.) But I completely agree with Ms. Lopez: I don't want a woman President either. Or a Mormon President. Or a differently abled President. Or any other kind of President.

I just want a President: a person who understands that the office is the important thing, not the person in it, and that any descriptor of "President" other than "dignified" detracts from the office. Bush, I believe, has done a great job of keeping himself out of the office: while there are those who might call him the "cowboy" President or worse, I've never heard "Bush, the Texan President," or "Bush, the Yalie President," or "Bush, the semi-evangelical Christian President." It's easy to see that he doesn't have a lot of identity-politics labels that could be applied to him, which makes it easier for him and his supporters to avoid imposing those labels on the office, and indeed this may be why we "get" yet another white male in November: because it shouldn't be about identity politics, it should be about convincing the voters that you have the experience, character, and determination to do the hardest job in the world. Which brings me again to Clinton and Obama: what are they offering? Is either the best candidate for this incredibly hard job, or is she just the woman with the most recognizable face and name, and he the African American with the greatest across-the-board appeal? (I actually commented on his DNC speech in 2004, saying with a story like his, I didn't understand why he wasn't a Republican - but besides one great speech, why him?)

I'm reminded (again) of an old Bloom County strip in which Binkley's dad has to have an intervention. He calls Oliver Wendell Jones's dad in tears to confess that, all his liberal bona fides notwithstanding, he "just doesn't like Jesse" (Jackson, of course). Mr. Jones pats him on the shoulder, tells him it's OK not to like Jesse, it doesn't actually affect his liberal status, and that the "first black president will be a conservative." Now, I don't necessarily agree with that cartoon assessment; the first "whatever" president doesn't have to be conservative. But he or she would have to be well qualified, I'd hope - at least as well qualified as every other candidate in the field.

Which, depressingly, does not serve to disqualify either Clinton or Obama, since they're pretty much right up there with Edwards. And that, friends, is called "damning with faint praise."

Not optional, Chapter TWo

That's me, the once-a-month blogger... I'm burning the candle at both ends and at various places along its length, so this is the best I can do right now. But it's certainly got to be time to return to Mark Steyn.

When last we spoke of Mr. Steyn, the subject was the out-populating of western pluralist liberals such as myself by adamantly non-pluralist illiberal groups. Chapter Two, entitled "Going...Going....Gone," Steyn's argument is that to believe with all your might that the unassimilated and fertile young will one day take up their (ahem) cross and support you in your age is to ignore the obvious. The Spanish election results in March 2003 clearly marked the Spanish populace's position: as Steyn puts it, "We apologize for catching your eye." That Theo van Gogh could be brutally murdered in the street and the outcry concerning the culturally insensitive subjects of his movie-making could actually be used, if not to justify, then at least to rationalize the manner of his death - farce. Let me quote a paragraph in its entirety:

In June 2006, a fifty-four-year-old Flemish train conductor called Guido Demoor got on the number 23 bus in Antwerp to go to work. Six - what's that word again? - "youths" boarded the bus and commenced intimidating the other riders. There were some forty passengers aboard. But the "youths" were youthful and the other passengers less so. Nonetheless, Mr. Demoor asked the lads to cut it out and so they turned on him, thumping and kicking him. Of those forty other passengers, none intervened to help the man under attack. Instead, at the next stop, thirty of the forty scrammed, leaving Mr. Demoor to be beaten to death. Three "youths" were arrested, and proved to be - quelle surprise! - of Moroccan origin. The ringleader escaped and, despite police assurances of complete confidentiality, of those forty passengers only four came forward to speak to investigators. "You see what happens if you intervene," a fellow rail worker told the Belgian newspaper De Morgen. "If Guido had not opened his mouth he would still be alive."

Wait - I've got to include two more sentences:

No, he wouldn't. He would be as dead as those forty passengers are, as the Belgian state is, keeping his head down, trying not to make eye contact, cowering behind his newspaper in the corner seat and hoping just to be left alone.

The so-inclined reader will no doubt glom onto that first paragraph as "further" "evidence" of racism by a non-voting Rethug. But that's not it at all. The point Steyn makes is that "youths" are young; their victims, or their neighbors if they're just ordinary "youths" rather than violent criminals, are older. As he notes, the ten percent of France that is Muslim is significantly skewed younger (more like 45% of the under-twenty crowd in the major cities), which makes cultural assimilation absolutely vital to the future of French society as it is generally understood. Let me say it another way, to be utterly clear: I don't give a hoot whether 45%, or 65%, of all of France visits a mosque rather than a church or synagogue (or, more likely, a café), and their country of origin is even less important, provided that that 45% (or 65%) buys into the kernel of Western civilization that makes us liberal and pluralist: individual, natural rights that are only affirmed, not granted, by government.

For the love of Pete...

So Instapundit steered me to this piece in The New Republic. I can't figure out how to comment on it directly, which it deserves - and which its commenters deserve even more so - so I'm a-blogging instead. (And America Alone languishes on the bedside table, because blogging on it takes more thought and time.)

Saith author Michael Crowley,

What do the Democrats do if--yes: if, if, if--the surge appears to have succeeded? (Or at least seems, to voters, to have succeeded: I realize the tribal shift in Anbar, for instance, wasn't imposed by US troops--although my correspondent friend said surge forces did enable us to exploit Sunni tribal cooperation and root out al Qaeda.) Indeed, if Iraq somehow stabilizes and even incrementally improves, doesn't that affect the presidential campaign in important and unpredictable ways? Obviously it's almost impossible to concieve of an outcome in Iraq that any reasonable person could call "victory." Democrats will resonably argue that the adventure wasn't worth the cost in lives and dollars. But the notion that Bush's patience really did save Iraq from unmitigated humanitarian and strategic catastrophe might be a powerful one. Expectations have been lowered to such an extent over the past several months that any glimmer of hope is a godsend for Republicans.

First point: who cares whether "the surge" was the proximate cause of success, if we and the Iraqis do achieve lasting success? Overlapping a troop rotation or two ("the surge") was and is the necessary factor for improving security at a critical time; most of the heavy lifting is up to the Iraqis now, with spotting and assists from us and our allies. As a guy named Reagan once tried to remind us, credit is a whole lot less important than results.

That being said, the "important and unpredictable ways" in which the 2008 elections would be affected by lasting stability in Iraq are indeed important, but does the author really believe they're unpredictable? The Democrats have done an absolutely fantastic job of ensuring that any success in Iraq, or shall we say "any glimmer of hope," will not be laid at their feet.

All the rest that needs to be said about this post is basically this: About time you people started to consider the consequences of your policy stance, not to mention your tactics.

On to the comments. Here's my favorite:

[Even if lots of good things happen, with expletive,] what have you got to show for our efforts? An Iranian Shiite outpost in Mesopotamia, a disempowered and p[...]ed-off Sunni minority with allies in Saudi Arabia and across the Islamic world, and the legacy of 6 years of criminality, sectarian cleansing and armed conflict - and a disreputable government that does not command the loyalty of its security forces and cannot rule without the US military to support it.

Hmm. Let's review what Iraq had before: a no-fly zone expending American resources to absolutely no good effect, international sanctions which, we were told, killed some hundred thousand innocent Iraqi children a year, an oil-for-food program that undermined our alliances with some of our formerly staunchest allies, an empowered and p'ed off Sunni minority (with the same allies the commenter named, but less need of them because they already had all the guns), the legacy of 20+ years of criminality, sectarian cleansing and armed conflict, and an utterly disreputable and dangerous dictatorial government that had already invaded two of its neighbors, that commanded the loyalty of its security forces by holding their families hostage, and that held power by dint of rape and torture rooms and an established willingness to use at least chemical and possibly biological weapons against its own people.

Gosh. Now Iraq has trouble, right here in River City - but also the most liberal constitution in the Middle East, a significant and growing cadre of people of good will of all ethnic stripes who see their own and their country's interest in defending that constitution, and the help of the undeniably mighty American military to get to their feet and keep on cranking out those clean elections. None of which they had under Saddam Hussein.

That same dour commenter goes on, "The only thing worth celebrating is the day when no more Americans will be fighting and dying in that hell-hole -- the difference is I would like to bring that celebration home tomorrow, whereas you are willing to wait till 2009." And again I say, Gosh. That's the only thing worth celebrating? And is s/he laboring under the delusion that the American military would in fact "celebrate" it if they left tomorrow? Perhaps s/he doesn't visit milblogs very often... This commenter believes that we're in Iraq because Bush wants to "save face"; I beg his or her pardon, but does s/he really believe that Bush, a lame duck president whose approval ratings hit rock bottom long ago and have only rebounded into the 30s, has "face" to save? If Bush were interested in saving face, he could've done so by doing exactly what the Democrats want to do: by declaring victory at any arbitrary point and pulling out all American troops, then blaming Iraq (and/or Iran) for not being able to hold the gains we'd given them.

Instead, this man's legacy is going to have to wait. I'm an optimist; I believe that Iraq has a good chance. I also believe that Bush's legacy will be a heck of a lot more history-book-apt than Clinton's (at least, I cringe at the thought of my children's learning about the more noteworthy aspects of Clinton's presidency), and certainly more positive than that bumbling goofball Carter's. (Bravo to you, Carter, for swinging a hammer for the downtrodden - but ferme la bouche about Israel, sir; you only come across as an antisemite.)

Two things. Well, three.

One: I really, really don't like Bob Dylan. Whiny little so-and-so...

Two: I was listening to NPR this afternoon and heard a review of the 40th anniversary edition of The Graduate by the network's - what did they call him again... reviewer-at-large? Roving reviewer? Anyway, some guy named John; it cracked me up. See, when the film first came out, he was a sophomore in high school, and he saw it repeatedly (the way some of my generation saw Star Wars, albeit when they were five years or so younger). He felt swept up in the zeitgeist of it all; he felt as if Nichols had made the movie just for him. In the review, he wryly noted (side note: at least some programs on NPR remember to poke fun at themselves for putting such a premium on wryness, though this was not one of those programs) that millions of other teens felt exactly the same way. He identified strongly with the Ben character (Dustin Hoffman, for anyone who - like me - has never actually seen the movie but only the "You're trying to seduce me, Mrs. Robinson," clip). He says that Mrs. Robinson was much more interesting to him than her daughter even at the time, but still goes with the Young as his point of connection with the movie back then.

Fast forward: he refuses to re-watch the movie until now, when he was asked to review it, honoring his memory of it (yup, actually said that). (Another side note: I'm not above "honoring the memory" of something by avoiding it; I'm sure I've done so myself. But I recognize that the impulse comes from fear that it'll either (a) age poorly, or (b) reveal me as a philistine. Probably a lot more (b) than (a). I recently passed up the chance to watch Ladyhawke, which I loved in my early twenties, for just that reason. Maybe next week I'll be brave...) He was pleased and delighted that the film held up well through the years... but lo and behold, as a grown man he suddenly "realized" that the true "rebel without a cause" (yup, actually said that too) was not Ben but Mrs. Robinson. Ben was, he said, a cipher, a suburban placeholder for the real (one might say "authentic") rebels who, by the time the film hit theaters in 1967 rather than the few years earlier when the film appeared to have been set, were actually on the scene in American life; Mrs. Robinson, now, she was the iconoclast, the brave soul who broke out of her milieu.

Oh, please. He's now 55, by my count, and suddenly Mrs. Robinson is the "real" rebel? Is this guy completely without self-awareness? If he would just have wrapped up his review with a (wry) "Of course, I would think that now, wouldn't I?" I would've forgiven him. But instead, we're supposed to stroke our chins and muse, with him, over the Truth that back in the '60s, Ben was universally perceived as the rebel, yet now, with our eyes sharpened by time, we can easily perceive that it was Mrs. Robinson, all along, who should have engaged our sympathies. Or perhaps "empathies" is a better word, since that's the obvious problem here: he identifies with the middle-aged character now. Duh.

I am not, I repeat, immune to these feelings. I certainly identify more strongly now, speaking of the zeitgeist and all, with the Han Solo of Return of the Jedi than with the Mark Hamill of A New Hope (which, for you non-Star Wars geeks, is Episode IV, most commonly known as Star Wars), and I don't identify in any smallest way with any character from any of the Episode I-III movies (especially not that bleeping Natalie Portman, just hours from delivering twins, in heels, leaping gazelle-like from rock to rock with boiling lava all around, her belly pretty much invisible unless she turns sideways, dang her). All right, maybe with C3PO, which makes sense, given my love of Miss Manners. But it's not one of those things I'd care to admit publicly.

Oops.

Third thing: I shall, as God is my witness, get back to America Alone - soon. When my husband relinquishes custody of it and the beginning of the school year steadies down a bit.

Not optional - Chapter One

Chapter One of Mark Steyn's America Alone is entitled "The Coming of Age." I ended rather abruptly yesterday - maybe I can be a little more coherent today.

And so. Populations in the developed world are aging. And, in the developed world, old people expect that systems they've been "paying into" for much of if not their entire adult lives will continue to "pay out" at expected rates. And how, pray tell, do we manage this on less and less actual money coming in, given that among these social programs there's not a "lockbox" to be seen? Take the U.S. Social Security system: it's apparently predicated on "30 percent population growth between now and 2075 or so and, even then, expects to be running a deficit after 2017." Yet the U.S. population is at replacement rate, 2.1-ish births per couple. How do we grow by 30 percent in the next seventy years when we're only just replacing ourselves?

Immigration, of course. Right? The trouble is that everyone in the developed world is in the same boat, many nations in far worse shape than we are. Take Spain, now, at 1.1 births per couple. Their population is halving itself in every generation. Can it possibly invite - attract - support enough immigration to replace all the babies not being born there, to pension off its rapidly aging populace? And add to this conundrum the fact that fertility rates are declining all over the world, not just in developed countries; it's just that in the developed world, we've already been close to the edge for some time.

Steyn's point is why I'm calling this portion of this blogpost series "Not optional." You ignore the bare facts of demography at your peril. You, as a society, defer or avoid having children for today's reasons, but tomorrow you'll pay.

His secondary point is that if you're going to rely on immigrants to have the children who will eventually pay your social security, you ought probably to think about how those immigrants and their children will fit in to your social systems, such that they'll be willing to abide by the social contract that compels them to give up (at present) a quarter of what they might otherwise expect to pocket in order to support today's elders. (Yes, I know the percentage that comes out of my paycheck is half that, but if my employer weren't having to pony up the other half, perhaps he might consider increasing my rate of pay. Or not; I'd settle for the extra 13 percent and my own IRA that nobody but me has to fund.)

I was on a demographics blog (yup, there are some) today in which someone was claiming that "family friendly" policies including cash payments until age 18, free day care for all, etc., etc., were the solution to the demographic cliffhanger in which participating. You know, in some ways I almost wish I could believe it. But I have three children; free day care would not have enticed me to work, work, work to support somebody else's grandparents while my kids were babies, and I'm already making "cash payments" for my children until age 18 and beyond; I can't imagine why anyone else would be willing to pay for them too. Any "cash payment" that could make a meaningful difference in the expense of having children for me would be prohibitive. Three kids, each costing a quarter mil or so to raise to adulthood - isn't that the number we hear so often? So society - which, face it, is US, all of us, whether or not we have children, whether or not we have one, two, three, or eight children - would "owe" me $750,000 over eighteen years? And by the same token, I as a worker in society would owe a portion of that amount to some other three-kid family? How on earth do we make those books balance? Talk about robbing Peter to pay Paul.

Social payouts can't be a longterm solution. But the problem must be solved, somehow, or we pass from the earth - we liberal pluralist democrats.

Not optional

There's only one man in the world who could, at my advanced age, convince me to have another baby, and he's neither my husband nor that lopsided-lip knowitall naif George Clooney, however popular he is with my set: it's Mark Steyn, humorist commentator and demographic doomsayer. I finally found his America Alone and started it last night. I'm only up to page 59 (Deathly Hallows was like the world's longest sprint while hopped up on goofballs, while this book takes a little more digestion on the way), but I decided on the strength of what I've read so far that I'm going to blog it chapter by chapter.

Beginning with the prologue, and beginning here: "To Be or Not To Be."

Steyn acknowledges the resemblance of his thesis to the many end-of-the-world theses that have been promulgated since, well, the beginning of the world (as he says) - but perhaps I should start with that thesis: that Islamists pose the greatest-ever threat to (in his apt formulation) the community of liberal pluralist democracies, and that demographics alone gives them a significant advantage over the nations that belong to that fraternity. Muslim-majority nations have, across the board, way way higher birth rates than we LPDs (because I wouldn't be a military brat without occasionally introducing a new acronym) have, and most of us, save - wait for it - America alone, are not even close to replacement level. Therefore we'll simply be outpopulated, and the Islamists and their indifferent Muslim counterparts will achieve the Islamist aim of widespread, even global, caliphate without firing a shot. Or many, at any rate.

It's terribly hard to resist launching into a whole lot more on this piece of the topic right now, but I'll try to stick to the prologue, the point of which is the ever-popular "We stand at a crossroads." We do, and I (and many others) have been talking about it since 9/11, when multicultural sensitivity first clashed with the determination of the world's most committed enemies of liberalism on the front pages and the TV news ledes. Yet we continue to muddle through the bogs of fantasy:

All dominant powers are hated - Britain was, and Rome - but they're usually hated for the right reasons. America is hated for every reason. The fanatical Muslims despise America because it's all lap-dancing and gay porn; the secular Europeans despise America because it's all born-again Christians hung up on abortion; the anti-Semites despise America because it's controlled by Jews. Too Jewish, too Christian, too godless, America is George Orwell's Room 101: whatever your bugbear you will find it therein; whatever you're against, America is the prime example of it.

That's one reason why its disparagers have embraced environmentalism. If Washington were a conventional great power [I might say, instead, if it acted like one - ed.], the intellectual class would be arguing that the United States is a threat to France or India or Gabon or some such. But because it's so obviously not that kind of power the world has had to concoct a thesis that the hyperpower is a threat not merely to this or that rinky-dink nation state but to the entire planet, if not the entire galaxy. "We are," warns Al Gore portentously, "altering the balance of energy between our planet and the rest of the universe."

Spoken like a true child of the Crazy Years. Al Gore, I mean. And my Lord, my Lord, I'm reminded of my dear friend who told me, post-9/11, that her most potent fear was that Bush would be reelected in 2004. Here we are, three years on from that dread day, and so far she and her kids continue to live normal liberal lives, probably sporting that puckish little "Oh well, I wasn't using my civil liberties anyway" button I ran across in Dallas.

I also heard a dude on the radio the other day, a caller to the Glenn Beck program, which I seldom hear but usually get a chuckle from when I do, who came across with the usual "You righties are living in fear" line. Uh-huh. No. The analogy that sprang to mind was actually a real event: a wasps' nest outside the door of my work, which happens to be a door children use a lot. I'm not afraid of stinging insects. In fact, there's a ground nest of bees in the lavender in my herb garden, and we live in perfect harmony, the swarms of bees and I. I do, however, realize that wasps can hurt people, that some people actually are in grave danger from stinging insects, and that a door opening and closing in front of the nest all the time might incite the critters to action.

So my choices were (a) to detour everybody to another door, and therefore avoid irritating the wasps, or (b) to remove the nest, at some risk to my skin. I removed the nest - of course. What are we, as a society, as a liberal and, we hope, global community, to do about the Islamist wasps who have built their nest outside our door? Do we avoid them so they don't get stirred up, or do we remove them, taking back possession of our door? Me, I'm for removing them; we built the damn door. (The analogy fails where it comes to Europe, because the nest - of unassimilated, disaffected Muslims - is in the middle of the living room.)

Standard disclaimer: I'm speaking of Islamists, not Muslims: of that minority in the Muslim world that looks forward to and works toward a renewed caliphate in which non-Muslims are dhimmis who exist on suffrance. Those who practice Islam but are committed, by birth or by conversion, so to speak, to the principals of liberal pluralist democracy, are my brothers and sisters as much as anyone else who embraces the principles of the Enlightenment.

Steyn concludes his prologue: "One day the British foreign secretary will wake up and discover that, in practice, there's very little difference between living under Exquisitely Refined Multicultural Sensitivity and sharia." This statement comes after a bunch of examples of Exquisitely Refined Multicultural Sensitivity's capitulation to the unreasonable demands of Islamists: the Danish cartoon "kerfuffle" that resulted in dozens of deaths, Burger King's elimination of squiggly-topped ice cream cones from British menus because they looked too much like the word "Allah," the fact that Muslim inmates at Gitmo are handed complimentary copies of the Koran by gloved soldiers (gloves not being normally part of the Uniform of the Day), such that the U.S. military has tacitly acknowledged and attempted to mitigate its ritual uncleanness to its prisoners and enemies.

Book Club

June 21, huh? Amazing how time flies, especially when a new Harry Potter book and movie come out...

So let's start there, shall we? Putting aside for the moment my Mrs. Robinson thing for Harry (and I do mean Harry, not Dan Radcliffe, who I think is cute and all but my goodness, he could be my son if I'd just gotten an earlier start), what makes the Potter franchise so very not a franchise and so very much a world to which I wish I had access? Well... consider Wicked, which I read this summer too, for the first and last time.

Before I go on, I should point out that I'm an avid rereader. I love to read more than just about any other recreational activity. But the only books that survive my periodic purges of my home library are the ones I want to read, and read, and read. Dune is in there, but not any Dune franchise book after the third. The Mitford series are all there. Most of the Evanovich number books (One For the Money, etc.) made it, but none of her other romantic pabulum. Wicked was great when I read it - in talking it over with them afterwards, it appeared that I enjoyed it much more than did most of the friends who had recommended it to me - but then Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows came out and Wicked became just another book I'd borrowed and given back, without wanting to rush out and buy it for the home shelves. I loved the style of Wicked: the fairy tale made real, with mundanities salted through the magic to make it a little bit droll and with big emotions played out on an enchanted stage. It echoed the gorgeous Technicolor of The Wizard of Oz.

But it failed to catch my heart, because no matter how you slice her, the Wicked Witch of the West really does try to kill Dorothy and her friends, and ideological necessities can't erase that fact. Let me be clear: in the real world, there is such a thing as a "lesser evil." Hard decisions can and do cost innocent lives. It's possible to be a hero and not have clean hands. And yes, I do understand that Wizard is the children's version, Wicked the adult one: that we, the nuanced, are supposed to see Elphata in shades of gray, so to speak. Sure, I can do that. But it doesn't make me want to revisit her. She stood up for something good but her means to that end were meants to encompass the willful killing of a child; why should I have to read that twice?

Deathly Hallows, now - and while we're at it, Order of the Phoenix, which I took my oldest to see and then sneaked out two days later, leaving a babysitter with the kids, to see again alone: there's no doubt about Voldemort. Not even his own supporters actually think he's good - they just substitute power for virtue, knowingly and often cynically. The whole story arc of the Harry Potter books brilliantly combines a very clear view of global good and evil with far less clear personal struggles on the part of several characters (Harry first, of course) to choose, and to continue to choose, over and over, the good. What the books do is to instruct the reader, entertainingly and with generally terrific pacing, that it's never enough to be good once. Teenagers sometimes think they know this already, but it's my opinion that most adults (perhaps all adults) could use the reminder. I know I can.

That's why all the Harry Potter books (except, inexplicably, Order of the Phoenix, which I swear was in the house two weeks ago but has vanished) are on my shelves: because I need that reminder.

Which brings me to two more books, one a former and one a current selection of my friendly real book club: The Kite Runners and A Thousand Splendid Suns. For the four people who haven't read them, they're Afghani stories: one that begins in Afghanistan and moves to the United States, the other that never makes it farther than Pakistan. Both moved me profoundly. Both impressed me horribly with the sheer brutal punishment the human body can endure, and impressed me tragically with the odds-against possibility of staying normal when everything around you is crazy-bad. Both made me feel woefully inadequate as a human being. But that's not why they're leaving my shelves; they're one-timers for me for the same reason that Prince of Tides was: because, having suffered through vicarious depravity once, I don't see why I should pollute myself again.

Anybody spot the discrepancy there? It's not as if Deathly Hallows is short on depravity. Maybe this is why I enjoy a certain degree of fantasy, and certain subgenres of science fiction: because there, the depravity is invented - even if it's based on what people have indeed done to one another over history, it's still not to be taken as "really real." No characters were harmed in the making of those stories. Whereas, in a realistic novel such as A Thousand Splendid Suns, it's hard to escape the sense that Hosseini was writing biography with (as Heinlein said) the serial numbers filed off. A doctor, perhaps he's revisiting old cases; an Afghan, perhaps he's recounting first- or second-hand accounts. I don't close my eyes... but I read fiction for entertainment, not to be harrowed up. The real world is quite harrowing enough... and while we're on the subject, Suns is a frickin' fantastic advertisement for why we need to stay in Iraq until Iraq can hold itself together on its own.

A rather clumsy segue into this appalling non-comedy:

A Roman Catholic Bishop in the Netherlands has proposed people of all faiths refer to God as Allah to foster understanding, stoking an already heated debate on religious tolerance in a country with one million Muslims.

Bishop Tiny Muskens, from the southern diocese of Breda, told Dutch television on Monday that God did not mind what he was named and that in Indonesia, where Muskens spent eight years, priests used the word “Allah” while celebrating Mass.

“Allah is a very beautiful word for God. Shouldn’t we all say that from now on we will name God Allah? … What does God care what we call him? It is our problem.”

(Actually an MSNBC story, but I prefer to credit Jeff at Protein Wisdom with winnowing it out.) Honest to God. Goes right along with the story I read sometime in July about the Episcopal (of course, she says, rolling her eyes at her adopted sect) priest in Seattle who is also a practicing Muslim, seeing no cognitive dissonance there. Again let me be very clear: Islam is not my, nor our, enemy. Muslims are not my, nor our, enemy. But when fanatical practitioners of one religion cause clergy of another to abdicate tenets of their own faith out of a sense that the fanatics might quite literally go medieval, it's hard to avoid labelling the fanatics "evil." Isn't it?

Danger? What danger?

So I was reading this blogpost from the Instapundit Glenn Reynolds's "lovely and talented co-host," his wife Helen Smith, and I supposed I'd better weigh in, since I bought the book in question last week. It's The Dangerous Book for Boys, and Dr. Helen's post did two things for me: first, it noted the upcoming publication of The Daring Book for Girls, a companion book of sorts; and second, it made me roll my eyes at the willingness of some folks to see sexism behind every door and under every throw rug. (Not Dr. Helen - Cathy Young, on whose post Dr. Helen was commenting.)

I have children of both genders, so I'm thrilled that the wonderful Dangerous book has a possible Daring commadre. Because I loved Dangerous. I haven't finished reading it yet - but man alive, just its table of contents sold me. Seven poems every boy should know! Spies - codes and ciphers! Making a paper hat, boat, and water bomb! First aid! Extraordinary stories - part one: Scott and the Antarctic! Coin tricks! Tanning a skin! Grinding an Italian nib! (Hang on, I want to check that one out right now.)

Okay, grinding an Italian nib is a little... arcane. And it's not the only thing contained herein that a whole lot of boys (and girls, and men and women) might not find all that interesting. (I myself found that particular bit very interesting indeed; I'm just not willing to try it with any of my good pens! I thought it'd be about actually making a quill pen, which I've always wanted to try. Not as if there's a dearth of goosefeathers around my house...) But the overall flavor of the book, both at the table-of-contents level and at the level of the actual articles and essays, is delicious. And dangerous in only one sense:

This book is about concepts, skills, even values, that are on the verge of passing into history, a place I don't believe they belong, because too many people disagree with me. I think I've written on heroism once or twice; today's heroes must be antiheroes, or minimally have Size 13 EEE feet of clay, or their stories aren't told. Scott's Antarctic expedition failed, it's true, both in its goal to be first to the Pole and for its members to return alive - but the attempt was great, and kids should know the story undistracted by petty details. There is plenty of time to learn whether Scott and Oates squabbled on the way south, or whether Shackleton was a dilletante, or whatever (I made up both of those irrelevancies); but the value of the story is in the determination of the men to overcome hardship, to win one of the original great races, to return triumphant, and failing that, at least to die well.

I think every kid should make invisible ink. I think every kid should be familiar with the biggies of Shakespeare. I think every kid should know what a mackeral sky means (that a warm front is coming - rain in a couple of days, if the clouds have enough moisture in them). I don't think calling a book The Dangerous Book for Boys is either sexist or a significant barrier to any girl; I think (boys and girls being what they are, society today being what it is) a book called The Daring Book for Girls is less likely to be seen in a boy's hands than the other way around, because, for instance, girls can wear skirts or pants, but a man in a kilt still attracts attention in today's United States, however unfairly. I'm looking forward to Daring, and I plan to photocopy good parts for my boys if need be.

Basically it comes down to this: I want my kids, all of them, to be brave, virtuous, resourceful, polite, and determined, among other things. If Dangerous and Daring help, even a little, to counteract the effects of The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy, then they have a place in our library. (Like all the Harry Potter books, which celebrate the virtues I'm trying to teach.)

Remembrance of things past

Specifically, Bill Whittle of Eject! Eject! Eject!. I have yet to figure out exactly who or what he is; I know he's a pilot, I know he's a TV producer, I know he's an essayist. He takes forever (longer even than I do!) to come up with a post, but when he does, it's so persuasive and so full of insight (that paradoxically seems utterly self-evident) that somehow you come away from it thinking that he didn't tell you anything at all that you didn't already know, but you want to go out and tell other people to read what he wrote anyway.

I seldom write in the second person because I don't like to make assumptions about other people's reactions, and saying "You do this" and "You do that" sounds an awful lot like making those blanket assumptions. But there were 650 comments attached to the post I just finally got around to reading, and the reactions of as many of them as I could get through seem to bear up my own (the man's fans are as passionate as any Beatlemaniac).

The post: Tribes, from September 2005. Its hook is Katrina, but its theme is much larger: Whittle divides society into the Pinks and the Greys, and uses the old military analogy of sheep, wolves, and sheepdogs to good effect. Here we go:

On the subject of disasters man-made and natural, one more thing from INSIDE 9/11 [a TV documentary -ed.] rings a powerful bell with me. At the very end, as Osama makes his way out of Afghanistan and into hiding, he tells an Al Jazeera reporter his motivations for the 9/11 attack. In his own words, to the friendly folks back home, he explains that his goal was to hurt America so badly that we would have no choice but to go after him and start the world-wide jihad that would result in him becoming the new Caliph, ruling from his recently completed palace outside Kandahar. He had seen much of the Pink tribe in his formative years, seen weakness and retreat in places like Somalia. He thought he had our number, but he made the mistake of having perhaps the least Pink individual in modern history in the White House when he made his move. He made a worse mistake in flying his murdering deathbots into a town that looked Pink, that was painted Pink from head to toe, but whose foundation was rock-solid granite Grey.

If I had gotten my 2000 voting wish and Al Gore had been president that day, would he have been Grey enough to knock that entire regime over and carry the fight to the rest of the region? Or would he have issued Stern Warnings and Worked With Our Allies and gotten the UN to Issue a Major Ultimatum?

I don’t know.

But I do know, that there, in his own words, the wolf said why he did what he did: he wanted to provoke War with the US, and would do whatever was necessary to accomplish it. And if we had not given him this war, he would have kept striking until he got what he was looking for. Nothing about US foreign policy, no word about injustice for the Palestinians or Evil Corporations or any of that. No, he said he wanted to start a war with the US. And so he has it. And he would have done whatever he had to do to get it.

And they will strike again, and those silent, dogged sheepdogs who have succeeded so many times in the dark silent hours will miss a scent somewhere, and more people will die and that's what we can expect. Not dying of Influenza or Black Death, not being steamrollered under Nazi jackboots or watching Mongol hordes swarming towards us over the horizon as we run for the city walls. None of that. Only this.

And when they come, storms man-made and natural, what will the sheepdog/sheep ratio be? Enough?

Let me briefly review the sheep/wolves/sheepdogs thing, because while parts are obvious, others could stand a little illumination. One particularly noteworthy part is that sheep generally don't like sheepdogs. (See Babe for instance.) Yet sheepdogs, historically, were the only thing preventing the wolves from picking off the sheep at the edges of the herd. I think a lot about shepherding analogies, because I attend a church with actual sheep, and am of a sect that puts great stock in the whole Good Shepherd thing; it's easy for us moderns to read "shepherd" and think "Bo-Peep" rather than "unwashed, lanolin-stinking roughneck sleeping on the ground for months and killing predators with a stick." Those shepherds in the Christmas story? The ones abiding in the fields by night? First off, it means that Jesus's birth didn't happen in the winter because -

Well, have you seen Brokeback Mountain? Those shepherds were a lot like the shepherds of Jesus's place and time: hard-bitten guys who didn't shrink at either dark nights or sharp claws or snow in June. But they brought the herd back down at the end of summer, because even the worst sheep owner knows that winter in the uplands will kill his sheep. So the Jesus shepherds were living in the fields because it was summer.

Anyway. Shepherds aren't necessarily nice to sheep; they just protect them with their lives. (At my church, the amateur shepherds complain bitterly about the bleeping rams, whack them with the food bucket to keep them at a distance, and generally go about their shepherding duties because they do indeed want the sheep to live, even if sheep as individuals are not their favorite people, so to speak.) Sheepdogs - as Whittle's essay points out - look a lot like wolves, share a lot of heritage and instinct with wolves, and are even less beloved of sheep than shepherds. But they too live to protect the sheep.

Here's the important part: the sheep are able to live in denial of their haplessness in the presence of the danger that surrounds them (or used to, at any rate). They carry on, bleating and eating, heedless of the wolf, because there's a mean shepherd who makes them go where they don't want to and there are vicious dogs that nip at them and keep them in a bunch.

Whittle's point is that, as humans, we may be born with or without the capacity for violence, but it's possible for both the naturally non-violent and the naturally violent to be "good." Sheep, he says, are not weak, and they also greatly outnumber both their protectors and their enemies; they're just not able, on some level, to hurt or kill. The wolf is. The sheepdog is. But the sheepdog husbands his capacity for violence, saving it to use against the wolf.

How does all this get to the Pinks and the Greys, the Tribes of Whittle's theme? Pinks are sheep. All of them are sheep. But not all sheep are Pink. Because we're humans and not in fact sheep, we can choose whether and when we'll support the sheepdogs, even if we ourselves don't share their capacity for violence. (A sidenote that's maybe not so "side": a preponderance of Whittle's commenters either termed themselves sheepdogs, hoped that they were, or wished that they were. I'm in that camp too. I find that a little weird - predictable, but weird nonetheless.)

So the other day I heard the reprehensible Daniel Schorr holding forth on Putin's recent invitation to the Bush (Sr.) family getaway at Kennebunkport. Schorr actually said that Putin and his ilk would not view this unprecedented invitation as conciliatory and diplomatic but as weak, and cautioned (all right, scolded) Bush about it. Where, oh where, was this point of view where Iran was concerned? How about Kim Jong Il? Go back a little - Saddam Hussein himself? I don't listen to Schorr unless I happen to turn the radio station at an inopportune moment and haven't eaten recently (among sort of mainstream radio folk, only Garrison Keillor is as hard on my digestion), but I think I can say definitively that he was not advocating a tough-guy stance when Ahmadinejad was publicly praying for the coming of the twelfth imam by the expedient of wiping out Israel. Daniel Schorr: Pink sheep. George Bush: sheepdog, possibly forced into the role against his preference (I think that's the case, based on his general softness on just about every issue except Islamist terror) but nonetheless willing to accept great personal rancor and significant physical risk in order to protect Schorr from his own damn self.

Believe it or not, my posts aren't as long as Whittle's.

You can make the worst of anything

Here's a headline for you:

New detainees strain Iraq’s jails
Sharp rise follows start of security plan; suspects housed with convicts

And the lede:

BAGHDAD - The capture of thousands of new suspects under the three-month-old Baghdad security plan has overwhelmed the Iraqi government's detention system, forcing hundreds of people into overcrowded facilities, according to Iraqi and Western officials.

I wonder what the headline would have been if the "surge" had been unsuccessful in rounding up "thousands of new suspects"?

This article carefully skirts the issue of the evidence against these "suspects." Nowhere is the claim that neighbors with grudges are gleefully informing on one another and that this alone is enough to get you crammed into Baghdad's overcrowded jails - so, since there's no doubt in my mind (particularly given the tenor of the many, many other articles to which the WP's special correspondents on this story have contributed) that that detail wouldn't have been left out if true, it strikes me that perhaps the standard of evidence to throw someone into the slammer where they'll await arraignment is perhaps along the lines of "seen planting a roadside bomb."

This isn't to say jail overcrowding is not a problem, nor that it's good that uncharged suspects are held with convicts. My point is that the narrative doesn't change no matter what the news is: Baghdad is burning. Pre-"surge," it was an insurgency out of control; inter-"surge," it's an imperfect and inadequate criminal justice system, of all things. (Still no resurgence of the rape rooms, though.)

I commend to your attention the "parliament of clocks" fable from Chicagoboyz. It's highly instructive, with regard to the media narrative.

And running away, and buggering off...

Via Captain's Quarters, which I haven't visited in too long, we hear that Bill Richardson goes that extra mile beyond his Democrat brethren in advocating pullout from Iraq:

He would pull American troops out of Baghdad, but also from Anbar and Diyala, where they face al-Qaeda terrorists and where we have made a lot of progress in engaging the local tribes.

And from Richardson himself:

So I would deauthorize the war, I would set a timetable of all troops out by the end of the year. And here is where I'm different from other candidates -- I would have no residual forces. No American troops, except for an embassy detail [in Baghdad] of Marines, which is traditional in our diplomatic representation ...

Furthermore, he thinks Congress, acting alone, can correctly accomplish this lofty goal:

I believe that deauthorization, on the basis of Article I of the Constitution, also would have a Congressional reaffirmation of its power to declare war, which it has, but which it has not exercised. The President can't veto this. The issue probably would go to the courts.... But it's decisive, it's strong, it's direct, it's specific, it's easy to understand by the public, and that's the course I believe it should take.

So he plans decisively, strongly, directly, specifically, and most importantly ever-so-simply to leave Iraq altogether.

Paging the post-GWI Kurds...

The grace of God

I haven't posted on the Virginia Tech shootings; not only have I been busy with more personal matters, but I've been sorting out my feelings about the terrible crime and tragedy of that day a week ago. Here's what I've concluded.

My son has a little (all right, not so little) problem with negativity. I keep hoping it's just a phase - but he may in fact be one of those poor souls who goes through life under a cloud, all my husband's and my best efforts to change this pattern notwithstanding. When he starts in with the "I can't do it," "It's too hard," "I'll never be able to's," what do we tell him most often? We tell him that thoughts like these, negative thoughts, are first of all not the only way to look at whatever situation he's in, and second not helpful in changing the situation he's in. Try this, we say. Instead of saying, "I'll never be a good pitcher! I've been practicing all afternoon and I still throw more balls than strikes," try saying, instead, "Wow, this pitching thing is a real challenge. I've been spending a lot of time practicing, and look how much I've improved since I started!"

Sappy, right? But positive self-talk is a way to shape your attitude, to predispose you to positive outcomes.

I'm a sometime Weight Watchers member (the only program I've ever found that, if you choose to learn it this way, teaches you how to eat normal foods wisely). One of their tools is positive self-talk. Like this: "I can't believe I ate all those chips. What was I thinking? I have no willpower. I might as well give up now." Versus, "Those chips were really good; I really enjoyed them. I'll just make some really good choices at the next meal and be right back on track to meet my goal this week." Acknowledge your action, put it in the most positive light you can, and get back on the horse: it's the next thing you do that counts.

Columbine. Not the first school shooting, but the most notorious. A terrible waste that day was that police policy was to secure the perimeter but not to engage while shooting was going on. And after Columbine, police policy changed, and lives have been saved elsewhere on that account.

I remember after 9/11, I used to think a lot about Flight 93. My dad and I talked about it on one occasion I remember well. I told him, "I just hope that if I were ever in a situation like that (God forbid), I could be brave enough to try something. But I don't know... after all, my kids would probably be with me..."

He glanced up at me from whatever computer he was tinkering with. "You know," he said thoughtfully, "I think when something like that happens, people just... do what they have to do."

That's a fairly unambitious and undemanding statement. But consider the source: while sitting on a flak jacket, he flew helicopters into combat zones in Vietnam, as a newly married 23-year-old with a pregnant wife. Perhaps because he found himself in terrifying straits so soon after both intensive training and (let's face it) the onset of adulthood, my father's own personal pattern was set: "what he had to do" would forever include the possibility of barricading a door with his body while his charges escaped, as Prof. Librescu did last week (I find myself wondering whether one reason God brought this man through the Holocaust was to save the lives he saved last Monday, may he live forever in the loving presence of his Creator). It would include facing a crazy man with a shotgun in a playground, as my mother had to do one afternoon at the Catholic school in East St. Louis where she taught when I was fourteen. It would include - it did include - dropping into a clearing in a jungle where the gunfire could come from any direction. I feel sure that it would have included rushing the cockpit with a drinks tray.

And after that conversation with my dad, I started scoping out airplane cabins. I'd been counting seat backs between my seat and the exit for quite a while; I'd been mentally lining up the friendly-looking people between my row and the exit row to whom I'd physically pass my kids if the need should arise. But now I started also assessing what I had that could either distract or disable, and how I'd go about using it if I had to. A positive response, an internal dry run to help shape my reaction if the real world ever presented a scenario where such planning was necessary.

I'm just now getting to this point about the VA Tech shootings. I don't know what the classrooms looked like (I've avoided all television coverage, and apparently I should be very happy that I have), so I don't know, for instance, whether the desks were fixed to the floor. But I'm thinking about books, laptops, calculators - what could be thrown? If the desks were free-standing, wow, what a great tool they could be for someone in the front row. Could I have been the one - even if from under my desk - to chuck something from my purse at the door and try to get the shooter to turn? Would that have been enough to get someone on his blind side moving, to clock him with a textbook? Enough to start a rush for his knees?

My first reaction to these thoughts is guilt: I feel as if I'm judging the students facing a stone killer in a Keanu-Reeves stance with two very scary guns and obviously no compunctions about using them. Shouldn't I be saying to myself, "I don't know what I would have done. I can't possibly tell what I would have done"?

Just now, after a week, I'm giving myself permission to have these thoughts - because, after all, if I don't "know" what I would have done (and indeed, how could I know?), why must I assume that I would have done nothing? Why not let those thirty-two deaths teach me something, as the deaths of those on Flight 93 taught me something? Just as we all realized that 9/11 was separated from 9/10 by a chasm of unbelievable proportions, just as we all realized sometime in the latter half of September 2001 that we were living in a post-9/11 world, we now live in a post-VA-Tech-shooting world: it's a world where no one, armed with gun, bomb, gas can, or anything else will ever again be so damnably successful in his designs on the lives of other students. I hope we can generalize still further and no one will ever again be so damnably successful in holding anyone in any public space hostage.

But, you see, it's the attitude, not the weaponry, that makes the difference: while I wish we could turn back the clock and arm an ROTC student in one of those classrooms, I wonder whether a conventionally unarmed but determined few students could have turned the tide against that poor, deranged, and now dead man.

I'm utterly ignorant of any personal stories from the scene; there may have been an attempt, or more than one, to stop him. I'm not actually second-guessing what any person did on that day; I'm only preparing myself for an exigency I hope will never arise. The only reason I'm blogging on the subject at all is because the "vibe" I'm getting from listening to the radio and reading some other blogs is that we have no right to consider alternative responses - to judge, in a sense. There but for the grace of God sat I. I'm blogging to say that it's not only my right to consider alternatives, but my duty and a smart course of action, and indeed an homage to those who died - that their cruelly curtailed lives can make a difference even now.

Dream... or epitaph?

Victor David Hanson dreamt about the West:

I recently had a dream that British marines fought back, like their forefathers of old, against criminals and pirates. When taken captive, they proved defiant in their silence. When released, they talked to the tabloids with restraint and dignity, and accepted no recompense.

What a poignant beginning. My Anglophiliac soul weeps. I remember a scene from Louisa May Alcott's Jo's Boys, in which she's advising her nephew Emil about how to behave as an officer at sea. She tells him that every bit of rope used by the British Navy contains, at its core, a single red thread - that anywhere in the world, anyone can tell that that piece of rope is British because it contains that strand of red. She urges him to take that rope as his model: to let his character be known to and seen by all, no matter the circumstances, no matter his companions. He's later shipwrecked, and when he's rescued, he recounts that in some of his darkest moments on the lifeboat, he remembered the story and her admonition - and that it was out of fear that his loved ones would have to discover that he had behaved dishonorably that he did his best to behave honorably.

Somehow I doubt that a red thread is at the core of British rope today. Moving on...

Fellow Democrats like John Kerry, Barbara Boxer, and Harry Reid would add [to Pelosi's stern opposition to the actions of leaders of Syria and Iran] that, as defenders of the liberal tradition of the West, they were not about to call a retreat before extremist killers who behead and kidnap, who blow up children and threaten female reformers and religious minorities, and who have begun using poison gas, all in an effort to annihilate voices of tolerance in Iraq.

These Democrats would reiterate that they had not authorized a war to remove the psychopathic Saddam Hussein only to allow the hopeful country to be hijacked by equally vicious killers. And they would warn the world that their differences with the Bush administration, whatever they might be, pale in comparison to the shared American opposition to the efforts of al Qaeda, the Taliban, Syria, and Iran to kill any who would advocate freedom of the individual.

Et cetera, et cetera. In brief, his dream is that the West has definable character, a recognition of its roots, its fundamental aims, and the price paid over hundreds of years to achieve a good measure of those aims. What do we have instead? An essentially two-party system in the United States such that the undisputed enemies of this country actively root for just one of those two parties to take power. What message should the Democrats be getting, loud and clear, from that fact? And why aren't they? Or, if they are, why don't they care?

He ends this way:

And then I woke up, remembering that the West of old lives only in dreams. Yes, the new religion of the post-Westerner is neither the Enlightenment nor Christianity, but the gospel of the Path of Least Resistance — one that must lead inevitably to gratification rather than sacrifice.

Once one understands this new creed, then all the surreal present at last makes sense: life in the contemporary West is so good, so free, so undemanding, that we will pay, say, and suffer almost anything to enjoy its uninterrupted continuance — and accordingly avoid almost any principled act that might endanger it.

I heard a tarot reader on the radio this morning. She did a passable cold reading for a caller; if you were inclined to believe she had "powers," she didn't shake your belief. (If you were disinclined to believe in those "powers," well, her probing questions were kinda obvious.) She told this woman that the hardships in her life were just "tests," that there's no negative outcome in life - just exercises from God to help her move to the "next level." The funny thing is, I tend to see my faith in this light: the stumbles I've had, the obstacles in my way, have each contained some lesson or some hidden good that was eventually revealed, so I've had a pretty easy time believing that God sends these trials at the same time that God sends the means to cope with them, with a purpose known only to God.

But what about the family whose child is abducted and killed? Where's the "hidden good" in that for them? There may indeed be a hidden good for someone there; John Walsh's personal tragedy has brought about good for others, but I doubt that he misses his murdered son any less as a result. God's plan may not include my happiness, is what I'm saying. The thought that they might move to the "next level," for victims of Nazi inhumanity during WWII, would probably have been small recompense for the horrors they endured and from which so many millions escaped only through death. (I could have circumvented Godwin's Law there, but with a Holocaust denier at the top of the list of enemies of the United States, I felt the need to underscore the reality of the Holocaust.) How many enslaved people died as chattel, in the US and elsewhere, so that their disregarded remains could scream out the injustice of considering a human life "ownable" by anyone but its holder?

There is, like it or not, evil that can't be overcome by good thoughts. Likewise, there are threats to our most passionately held and vitally important societal beliefs that fail to respond to linking arms and singing about buying the world a Coke. That project to get as many people to have (shall we say) very, very happy thoughts simultaneously, and thereby bring about an end to the war in Iraq? Somehow I doubt that my refusal to participate was the deal-breaker there.

We went to Williamsburg for spring break this year. We didn't spend enough time in colonial Williamsburg - much more at Busch Gardens, to be honest - but while we were among the colonials we did at least have a chance to hear the Declaration of Independence declaimed. I hope, oh, I hope that kids are still stirred by these words as much as I am now and was as an idealistic teen:

And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

I hope that there are as many Americans (and others! This document should be known to everyone who values freedom) today as ever who realize that those words were not empty. Those men, and the women in their lives who supported their dangerous act, undoubtedly knew that they faced hanging and permanent familial disgrace if they failed - and that some of them might (probably would) die in the attempt even if they succeeded. Their lives. Their fortunes. Their sacred Honor. That's the price they were willing to pay for the inalienable rights in which they believed. Hanson believes that the West is no longer willing to pay that price for those goods - that the highest price we are now willing to pay, we pay for craven comfort instead.

What do I believe? I believe, or perhaps I only hope, that he's wrong.

Unconfirmed report...

...of bombing in Iraq, via Bank of America. Crude oil spiking - up about $1.50 - unconfirmed, once again. ??? Awaiting information!

UPDATE: OK, just a rumor. In particular, apparently the rumor was that Iran had fired on an American carrier (?). The Navy denies. Another rumor, so far as I know NOT being denied, is that the US has moved two carriers into the Gulf. I haven't been keeping up at all with troop movements and such, so for all I know, this is old news!