Sarah Palin, the Ground Zero mosque and the American presidency

More than most American leaders who might run for president someday, Sarah Palin has made a career of dividing "us" and "them." Most famously, she spent parts of the 2008 dismissing her opponents and their allies as residing somewhere outside the "real America" -- and while she apologized for it, her constant grievance-mongering suggests she sees the world, and this country, mostly in terms of its divisions.

Don't get me wrong: Other leaders can be "divisive." Palin is different: The divisions animate her.

I mention all of this because of a recent posting to her Facebook page, which features this title: "An Intolerable Mistake on Hallowed Ground." She is, of course, talking about the proposed mosque to be located 600 feet or so from Ground Zero in New York.

I agree with the sister of one of the 9/11 victims (and a New York resident) who said: “This is a place which is 600 feet from where almost 3,000 people were torn to pieces by Islamic extremists. I think that it is incredibly insensitive and audacious really for them to build a mosque, not only on that site, but to do it specifically so that they could be in proximity to where that atrocity happened.”

Palin cites a specific person associated with the proposed mosque whose statements about 9/11, she judges, are insufficiently sympathetic to the victims. But her concerns aren't quite so nuanced or specific -- witness this Tweet which asked all "peace-seeking Muslims" to avoid the provocation.

But it wasn't "peace-seeking Muslims" who flew the planes into the World Trade Center. It was 19 extremists -- people whose ideology unfortunately has broader support than we'd like, but whose views do not represent the vast majority of American Muslims. The truth is that more Muslims died on 9/11 as victims of the attack than as the aggressors. By implicitly lumping them in with criminals and vile murderers, Sarah Palin is suggesting that American Muslims cannot be full citizens of this country -- that they should have the "decency" to accept a "lesser-than" status that denies them the right to practice their religion as fully as their Christian neighbors.

American Muslims, in this view, aren't part of the community of Americans who mourned 9/11 -- they are more closely related to and allied with the transgressors. Not to put too fine a point on it: This isn't dissimilar from the "blood libel" that anti-Semites use to smear all Jews as killers of Jesus Christ. All bear a measure of guilt, regardless of their actions.

This is why Sarah Palin should never be our president. She simply cannot be the president of all Americans. Maybe few presidents ever are -- but they at least have the good sense to attempt it. Even George W. Bush recognized his duty in this regard.

Palin's statements on the mosque issue also point to another reason she should never be president: She cannot distinguish America's friends from its enemies. Her divisiveness would make her a poor president; her inability to make the right kinds of distinctions would make her a dangerous one.

UPDATE: Via Conor Friedersdorf's Twitter feed, this is simply ugly and evil.

Tucker Carlson's Daily Caller, and the JournoList "scandal"

So Spencer Ackerman, Michael Tomasky, Joe Conason, Chris Hayes, Katha Pollitt, Mark Schmitt and Kevin Drum are liberals who, in 2008, wanted to see Barack Obama elected president? Shocked! I am very very shocked!

Actually, I'll go ahead and say that Tucker Carlson -- the guy behind the Daily Caller -- is a liar. His headline -- "Documents show media plotting to kill stories about Rev. Jeremiah Wright" -- is wrong on two counts, and Carlson must know it: It wasn't the "media" having a discussion about the Rev. Wright story, but a group of liberal journalists who write from openly liberal perspectives. This wasn't the "straight" reporters from mainstream media outlets, it was the people who get paid to do opinionated journalism. Furthermore, from the Daily Caller's own reporting a good chunk of the people involved in the conversation argued against a response proposed by one or two members of the group. So it wasn't the "media" and they weren't "plotting."

But it's the headline, not the details, that will burn their way into the public consciousness on this story.

Maybe the least-defensible person in the story is Ackerman, who proposed going after Republicans as a bunch of racists for trying to make the Jeremiah Wright story into a brouhaha. But even he's defensible: The Daily Caller's own reporting shows that Ackerman said some Republicans -- the "non-racist" ones -- shouldn't be tarred with that brush. Whether you agree with him or not, he was being intellectually honest: He was proposing going after "racist" Republicans because he really believed they were racist.

Honestly, to these liberal eyes, there did seem to be a whiff of racism about the Jeremiah Wright scandal. Obama's opponents had failed to find a way to depict him as an angry black man, so they generated controversy out of the next best thing: He knew an angry black man. I'm not defending Wright, who has long proved himself untrustworthy, but it seemed to me at the time the point of the controversy was to render unelectable any person -- like Obama -- who had been immersed in "black culture." In retrospect, it still seems that way.

Federalist 23-29: Freedom, and the national security state

Find all my Federalist Papers blog posts here.

There's a conservative narrative of the last 100 years or so that goes something like this: America started to become a little less free -- a little less tethered to its Constitution -- about the time that Franklin D. Roosevelt took power during the Great Depression and started creating the welfare state. Every new entitlement -- "ObamaCare," say -- and every slight tax increase represents a near-tyrannical intrusion of the state into realms that should be private. Every time a Medicare check goes out, then, freedom dies a little more and somewhere in the great beyond, Friedrich Hayek sheds a tear. Or maybe Ayn Rand.

There's an alternative narrative -- one that doesn't get as much attention -- and in the last year it's been most famously advanced by onetime conservative author Garry Wills. In this reading of history, it was indeed Franklin D. Roosevelt who expanded the state at the expense of the individual -- but it wasn't Social Security that represented tyranny: It was the explosive growth of the national security state, which since World War II has granted the president ever greater -- and, seemingly, ever-more-uncheckable -- power, all in the name of protecting America from her enemies.

Which brings us back to 200 years ago, and the adoption of the Constitution. Its passage, it seems, was no sure thing, and the central issue in the debate between Federalists and Antifederalists, it seems, was freedom: What form of government would be effective, yet still allow men -- and it was men who had the freedom -- the latitude to live their lives as they pleased?

There's not much in either the Federalist or the Antifederalist papers to suggest that the welfare state was a concern in the debate over freedom. To be fair, partisans on both sides probably hadn't conceived of it. Instead, they clashed over a controversial power of the new goverment: The power to raise a standing army.

"Brutus" writing in Antifederalist 24, made the case plain:

. . . . Standing armies are dangerous to the liberties of a people. . . . [If] necessary, the truth of the position might be confirmed by the history of almost every nation in the world. A cloud of the most illustrious patriots of every age and country, where freedom has been enjoyed, might be adduced as witnesses in support of the sentiment. But I presume it would be useless, to enter into a labored argument, to prove to the people of America, a position which has so long and so generally been received by them as a kind of axiom.

This, it seems, was an argument the Federalists took seriously. Alexander Hamilton spent all of Federalist 23 through 29 defending the government's prerogative to raise a standing army. And he made some decent arguments -- pointing out, not unreasonably, that most state governments at the time were empowered to raise armies, and that furthermore the "Western frontier" of the United States, still confined to those early 13 coast-hugging colonies, was in need of defense. If an invasion came,it would already be too late to form an army to repel the attack. And in Federalist 25, he even makes the odd argument that it's safe to let the federal government raise a standing army precisely because Americans would be suspicious of infringement on their liberties:

As far as an army may be considered as a dangerous weapon of power, it had better be in those hands of which the people are most likely to be jealous than in those of which they are least likely to be jealous. For it is a truth, which the experience of ages has attested, that the people are always most in danger when the means of injuring their rights are in the possession of those of whom they entertain the least suspicion.

Hamilton's strongest argument against a standing army being used to usurp American liberties, though, comes from the structure of the government itself. The chief executive might be willing to use the army for nefarious purposes, he says, but then he'd have to contend with Congress!

Federalist 24:

the whole power of raising armies was lodged in the legislature, not in the executive; that this legislature was to be a popular body, consisting of the representatives of the people periodically elected; and that instead of the provision he had supposed in favor of standing armies, there was to be found, in respect to this object, an important qualification even of the legislative discretion, in that clause which forbids the appropriation of money for the support of an army for any longer period than two years a precaution which, upon a nearer view of it, will appear to be a great and real security against the keeping up of troops without evident necessity.

From this, we can gather a few things:

* That Hamilton didn't really forsee that the executive branch -- despite the division of powers enumerated in the Constitution -- would claim for itself practically unlimited and unilateral power over national security.

* Nor did he forsee that Congress would generally defer to the executive's assertion of authority.

* Then again, none of the folks involved really foresaw the explosive growth of a national security state that involves hundreds of thousands of people collecting snooping and spying on, well, pretty much all electronic communication on Planet Earth. Concerns about a "standing army" seem almost quaint, don't they.

One wonders what Brutus or Alexander Hamilton would've made of today's lead story in the Washington Post, and these findings:

* Some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States.

* An estimated 854,000 people, nearly 1.5 times as many people as live in Washington, D.C., hold top-secret security clearances.

* In Washington and the surrounding area, 33 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work are under construction or have been built since September 2001. Together they occupy the equivalent of almost three Pentagons or 22 U.S. Capitol buildings - about 17 million square feet of space.

There are reasons for all of this, of course. We want to be kept safe from the threats the world aims at us. The result is that we have a huge -- and, because it is so huge, virtually unchecked -- national security establishment that operates in the shadows, out of the public's sight. Alexander Hamilton promised us that Congress would keep the leviathan in check. It hasn't. Do you feel any more free?

Eric Cantor's piddly YouCut site proves Republicans aren't serious about cutting the deficit

Via Twitter, Peter Suderman points out that Republicans plan on campaigning this fall against the federal deficit, but have no plans to actually do anything about it if they take Congress. See Sunday's "Meet The Press" for confirmation. In response to such complaints, National Review's Robert Costa points to Eric Cantor's YouCut website, which he describes:

Cantor debuted YouCut [in May]. Its premise is simple: Each week, Americans can vote for their favorite of five potential spending cuts on the web (or via text message to 68398). Cantor works to bring the winner to the House floor. With one click, you can help to shape the House GOP agenda.

“It allows us to focus on out-of-control federal spending, the number-one issue for millions of Americans,” Cantor says. “For us, it is an unprecedented online project.”

Unprecedented? Whatever. It's also incredibly piddly and lame. Look at the current options YouCut offers for a vote.

* Eliminating unnecessary Congressional spending: Potential savings of $35 million over 10 years.

* Eliminate the "Dodd Earmark" from "ObamaCare:" Savings of $100 million over 10 years.

* Prohibiting first class subsidies on Amtrak: Potential savings of $1.2 billion over 10 years.

* Reform the Energy Star program: $655 million over 10 years.

* Prevent energy assistance payments to dead people: "Hundreds of millions of dollars" over 10 years.

Notice a common attribute? All these options are piddly rounding errors in the gargantuan federal budget, eliminating -- at most -- $120 million a year out of a $3.55 trillion budget! It's simply not a serious attempt to address budget fears; it looks a lot more like feeble, ineffective pandering. Real austerity is going to force people to give up stuff they want or like getting from government. And not just the poor, "unproductive" people. Hard, politically unpopular choices will have to be made. Republicans have never shown the ability to make those choices. Eric Cantor's "unprecedented" web site proves the point.

Today in Judeo-Christian justification: Immigration

Late in the New York Times' story about how evangelical leaders are teaming up with President Obama to reform immigration law -- including a sort of amnesty for illegal immigrants already on American soil -- we hear from Bryan Fischer of the conservative American Family Association.

Bryan Fischer, director of issue analysis for the American Family Association, a national conservative Christian organization in Tupelo, Miss., said, “What my evangelical friends are arguing is that illegal aliens should essentially be rewarded for breaking the law.

“I think it’s extremely problematic from a Judeo-Christian standpoint to grant citizenship to people whose first act on American soil was to break an American law,” said Mr. Fischer, who hosts a daily radio show on which immigration is a frequent topic.

Well, sure. It's not as though the core doctrine of Christianity involves redemption and forgiveness for a lifetime of sins. It's certainly not like Jesus told his human followers to offer forgiveness for sins "not seven times, but seventy-seven times."

Now, I'm not saying that illegal immigrants should be offered amnesty. (Although I think it makes sense, but that's not the point here.) But even though I'm agnostic these days, I have a long background in the church. And I hate to see people blithely invoke "Judeo-Christian" tradition to justify their policy preferences -- particularly when their invocation actually contradicts the religion they use as justification.

George Will's silly plan for Republican outreach to Latinos

George Will thinks the GOP can capture some of the Latino vote by ... making Puerto Rico a state. He uses his Sunday column to profile Luis Fortuno, the Republican governor of Puerto Rico:

Conservatives need a strategy for addressing the immigration issue without alienating America's largest and most rapidly growing minority. Conservatives believe the southern border must be secured before there can be "comprehensive" immigration reform that resolves the status of the 11 million illegal immigrants. But this policy risks making Republicans seem hostile to Hispanics.

Fortuno wants Republicans to couple insistence on border enforcement with support for Puerto Rican statehood. This, he says, would resonate deeply among Hispanics nationwide.

But why would that be the case? Latinos aren't abandoning the Republican Party over concerns about the citizenship of other Latinos 1,000 miles away from U.S. shores. They're abandoning the GOP because they don't like how Republicans are treating them right here in the lower 48 states. The Arizona immigration-enforcement law, as has been much noted, makes it likely that U.S. citizens and legal immigrants of Latino descent will have to go the extra mile to literally prove themselves to police -- all by virtue of their race.

Making Puerto Rico a state doesn't address those concerns. Using the rationale offered by Will and Fortuno, it frankly smacks of a "some of my best friends are Latinos" tokenism -- we're happy to bring a majority Latino state into the union, it seems, as long as that state can only be reached by plane or boat. Such factors would probably exacerbate the GOP's image problem among Hispanics, and probably deservedly so.

Bag O' Books: "American Gods" by Neil Gaiman

Despite being very, very, very nerdy, I've never been much of a reader of fantasy books. I've got friends who are all up in Robert Jordan's house, and I feel like I should be there with them. But I'm not.

I occasionally -- thanks to the influence of my wife -- make an exception for the books of Terry Pratchett. He's an English fantasy writer, creator of the "Discworld" series of books that tell fantasy stories filtered through the lens of British humor. It works for me. And a few years ago, I greatly enjoyed "Good Omens," a novelistic collaboration about the Apocalypse from Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, who's probably better-known for his graphic novel work.

Which is why I picked up Gaiman's "American Gods" a few weeks ago. And I wish I'd enjoyed it more than I did. Which, ok, I did enjoy it a little bit. But it wasn't really absorbing. Without Pratchett's collaboration, Gaiman comes across as a very, very smart guy who's more interested in ideas than in storytelling. The end result is something cool, a bit didactic, somewhat entertaining, but never fully gripping.

Short synopsis: Our protagonist, Shadow, finishes a stint in prison only to go to work for a mysterious figure named "Wednesday." Wednesday, it turns out, is the American version of the Norse god Odin, who is rounding up all the other ancient gods brought to these shores by ancient cultures from around the world to mount a final all-consuming battle against the new gods who are displacing them in American culture -- the gods of debt, technology, credit cards and cable TV, among others.

Which gives you a taste of where "American Gods" is coming from -- a wry critique on the culture, which creates its gods in living, breathing form through the act of worship. The end battle, when it comes, doesn't really offer us insight about the critique -- it's there to round the story out. The result is a "novel of ideas" -- a term that usually describes books that are overly preachy -- that doesn't really commit to being a novel or to its own ideas.

But maybe I'm expecting too much. "American Gods" is reasonably diverting, so long as Neil Gaiman's reputation hasn't been oversold to you. And better an novel of incomplete ideas than no ideas at all.

Arizona will stop enforcing a controversial law

No, not that law:

At the first tick of the clock Friday, an array of automated cameras on Arizona freeways aimed at catching speeders were to stop clicking.

There is no glitch. The state, the first to adopt such cameras on its highways in October 2008, has become the first to pull the plug, bowing to the wishes of a vocal band of conservative activists who complained that photo enforcement intruded on privacy and was mainly designed to raise money.

It was a tumultuous, impassioned run here. A man wearing a monkey mask racked up dozens of tickets, fighting them in court, to protest the system.

Some of the loudest critics were conservatives, who organized protest groups and prodded legislators to impose restrictions on their use, arguing the cameras amounted to, as one put it, the “government spying on its citizens.”

The data suggested that the system led to a 19-percent drop in fatal collisions. But it's good that Arizona officials see the wisdom of backing away from an intrusive law that seems likely to catch and penalize a fair number of innocent people in its sweep. If only that logic were applied more widely.

It all depends on whose ox is being gored, I guess.

Once again, Andy McCarthy wants Iraqis to be grateful for being invaded

There's not a lot I'm going to say about Andy McCarthy's latest column in National Review, except that I want to note -- again -- the amazing and repugnant way he characterizes Iraqis:

When the WMD did not materialize, the result of “look forward, not back” was to portray nation-building — a goal the public never agreed to — as the dominant purpose of our prohibitively costly presence in Iraq, an ungrateful Muslim country that generally despises Americans. 

This isn't the first time that McCarthy has called Iraqis "ingrates" -- and really, there's a (can't get around this word) imperialist presumption to his attitude that's quite simply breathtaking. "You'll take our invasion -- and the years of bloody violence it unleashes -- and you'll like it!"

As McCarthy notes, we didn't actually invade Iraq in order to bestow the blessings of freedom -- even in the anger that permeated America after 9/11, there probably wouldn't have been much stomach to go nation-building for the pure and simple pleasure of nation-building. We invaded Iraq to protect ourselves. And it turns out that we were mistaken in doing so. Most folks aren't grateful to you, though, when you act in your own interests.

Don't get me wrong (it must always be said): Saddam Hussein was a bad guy. But let's try a little empathy exercise: If you were an Iraqi and had your life under a vile dictator usurped by outsiders -- who gave you years of bloody and explosive violence and public infrastructure problems, only to end up with an apparent strongman leader with ties to Iran -- how grateful would you be feeling? McCarthy, like too many of his ilk, is so proud of the efforts and sacrifices of U.S. servicemen and women that he can't even imagine why Iraqis wouldn't see it the same way. The problem isn't really one of Iraqi non-gratitude. The real problem is Andy McCarthy's chauvinism.

Why Philly?

As my wife and I have contemplated what our futures hold -- now that we're seeking ravenously after full-time employment -- we've had to figure out our priorities. And it's emerged that one of the top priorities is trying to stay in Philly. But why?

Part of it might be inertia: It's expensive and energy-consuming to move. But part of it is that we've become fond of the city. And I don't always understand that: In some ways, the two years we've spent here have been the roughest, hairiest, least-fun years of my adult life. We want to stick it out.

Again, why?

Maybe because -- despite the challenges -- there's a lot to love. I like Philly. I like Cafe Lutecia and Almaz Ethiopian restaurant and the art museum and the orchestra and Rittenhouse Square and Jafar Barron and the Monday jazz jam with Orrin Evans and Cafe L'Aube and Grace Tavern and Shakespeare in Clark Park and Skorpion and Makael and Ekta and Gusto and Paolo's and the Phillies and Andrew's Video Vault and the silly debates over the New Black Panthers and the amateur boxing gyms with "Rocky" posters and Malcolm X Park and Joseph Fox Bookshop and the library and Bill Conlin and vending cart food and not needing a car and the BoltBus and being near New York without having to pay New York prices and having my son grow up some place that isn't 90 or 95 percent white and PhillyGrrl and Brendan Skwire and the Roots and all the farmer's markets and Stu Bykofsky (but not John Yoo) and Mayor Nutter's cute way of acting angry when he knows that's what the public wants and West Philly and South Philly and Fairmount Park and the Schuykill River trail and the skyline -- oh that gorgeous skyline.

And even the Piazza. A little bit. But not the Eagles. I hate the Eagles.

Those are just my reasons. My wife could and would add a few more, I know. But those are the things I know after two quick-but-traumatic years. And I know I've only scratched the surface of what this town holds, and what it can show me. It's not "home" the way that Lawrence, Kansas used to be for me -- but I had eight years to make Lawrence my home.

I don't know if I'll have that much time here. But I kind of hope so. We'll see.

Gabriel Schoenfield, the Pentagon Papers and democratic self-governance

Gabriel Schoenfield, writing in the summer issue of National Affairs, revisits the Pentagon Papers incident and makes an extraordinary claim: Daniel Ellsberg, the Pentagon Papers leaker, undermined democracy by showing the American public how their government worked.

No really:

Whatever one thinks of Ellsberg's motives — and however one might appraise the harm his actions inflicted on American foreign policy — the fact is that, at its root, Ellsberg's leak was not just an assault on orderly government. In a polity with an elected president and elected representatives, it was an assault on democratic self-governance itself.

For better or worse, the American people in the Vietnam years had elected Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon; they had acted at the ballot box to make their leadership and policy preferences clear. Yet here was a mid-level bureaucrat, elected by no one and representing no one, entrusted with secrets he had pledged to the American people to protect, abusing that trust to force his own policy preferences upon a government chosen by the people.

Here's the problem. Earlier in the piece, Schoenfield admits that the "government chosen by the people" was elected by lying to the people.

Given its size and complexity, the (Pentagon Papers) collection defies easy summary. But it did show, among other things, that officials throughout the 1960s presented the public a much rosier picture of events in Vietnam than was justified by the intelligence policymakers were receiving. The papers demonstrated, for instance, that President Johnson had every intention of beginning a bombing campaign against North Vietnam before the 1964 election, even though he strenuously denied it during the election season. They showed that American intelligence officials told the Johnson administration in advance of its 1965 escalation of the war effort that the move was not likely to succeed. And they documented how the internal justification for the war shifted over time from the containment of communism to the protection of America's own prestige abroad.

A couple of thoughts:

* Seems to me our Constitution recognizes, through creation of the judicial branch, that democratic self-governance cannot rely entirely upon elected officials to safeguard democratic self-governance. Elected officials are to be given substantial deference, of course, but that deference isn't unlimited.

* If democratic self-governance is to mean anything at all, though, it must be informed governance. The people must have a reasonable idea of what it is that elected officials are doing on their behalf. I won't argue that there's no need at all for state secrets -- but there's probably substantially less a need than what's usually invoked. Democratic self-governance does not mean, however, that people elect officials to go do the job and then close their eyes and hope for the best. As the Pentagon Papers case proves, sometimes the White House will classify information precisely in order to avoid being held accountable by voters.

It's silly to argue that Ellsburg was "forcing" a policy outcome through his leaks: As Schoenfield notes, Ellsburg wasn't an elected official -- he had no power at all to change American policy. But Ellsberg did give Americans insight into how the policy had been made, and how what they'd been told by their leaders differed from the reality of the war in Vietnam. Daniel Ellsberg, then, enabled real democratic self-governance -- he didn't short-circuit it.

The logic of our Constitution is that we can't always depend on elected officials to make correct decisions. It's up to citizens to hold them accountable. Schoenfield claims to be upholding democratic self-government, but it's hard to see how his critique does anything but enable Nixonian lawbreakers to govern in ways the people who elected them never intended.

On the value of low-skill, low-wage labor

Believe it or not, there's a lot to recommend about John Derbyshire's column today at National Review. It's ostensibly about how Obama Administration policies are drying up the number of unpaid summer internships for teenagers, but it drifts into a meditation on how -- even in these recession days -- American elites don't seem to value manual labor the way they once did. The whole thing should be read, even if you don't agree with everything. But some of Derbyshire's anecdotes rang true for me.

I have noticed that if, among 30-something colleagues, I mention one of my own school or college summer jobs — factory or construction work, dishwashing, retail sales, bartending — my colleagues will look amused, and a bit baffled. How come a guy as well-educated as Derb was shoveling concrete? Boy, he’s a real eccentric! No, I’m not. Those experiences were perfectly normal for a person of my generation. They’re just not normal any more, not for children of the American middle and upper classes.

Well, I don’t suppose anybody ever did drudge work if better options were available. Until recently, though, a great many people reconciled themselves to it: as a means to support a family, as a pathway to as much independence as their abilities would permit, and even as something in which satisfactions might be found. Remember Luke in The Thorn Birds boasting of his prowess as a sheep-shearer and sugarcane-cutter?

Nor was physical labor always thought shameful. In the older American ideal, which is now as dead as the one-room schoolhouse, physical labor was held to have a dignity to it. Even elites believed their youngsters would benefit from a taste of it. Calvin Coolidge put his 15-year-old son to work in the tobacco fields of Hatfield, Mass., as a vacation job. (When the lad happened to mention who he was, one of his co-workers said: “Gee, if the president was my father, I wouldn’t be working here.” Cal Jr.: “You would, if your father were my father.” For a comparison with the “conservative” sensibility of our own time, recall Karl Rove’s remark: “I don’t want my 17-year-old son to have to pick tomatoes.” Good heavens, Karl, of course you don’t: The poor lad might break a fingernail.)

Now Derbyshire, because he's Derbyshire, uses all this to build a case against letting immigrants into the United States to do low-wage low-skill work. I'm not entirely on board with that, but I don't think that lessens the power of these observations.

A few years ago, I became convinced that one of the problems with journalism -- and I know, there are many -- is that there are few practitioners left who have ever done anything besides journalism. The went to J-school, got an internship, got a job at a newspaper and never ever worked or had much life experience that didn't involve the business. And that opinion was confirmed in the person of Mike Shields -- probably the best of a string of great editors I've worked for. He was -- is -- a hell of a journalist, but before he got into the business he'd worked in the Navy, construction and truck-driving. (Probably more, but I'm working from memory.) He had some college under his belt, but I think he got his actual degree somewhat later in life. I don't think it's a coincidence that he had a gift for shmoozing lots of "regular folks" on his beats: farmer-legislators from western Kansas, cops hanging out at the bar, that kind of thing. He could relate to working stiffs better than the average reporter because, unlike most of them, he had been a working stiff.

That said: There's a danger in romanticizing the "dignity" of low-skill, low-wage labor too much. As noted before: I'm between full-time gigs right now. I've taken on a part-time job at a nearby coffee shop here in Philadelphia. Before I started it, I think it's fair to say I'd romanticized the idea in my head: I'll work as a barista, and have plenty of headspace left over to pursue other income and creative endeavours. But it's not like that. It's harder work than I'd realized, for one thing. And I come home from most shifts with with sore feet and an aching back. There are benefits: We're not as poor as we might be. And I've gotten to know my neighborhood much better in the last two months than I did in the nearly two years previous. What's more: It doesn't seem very "low skill" to me -- there's a million small things to know and do to keep the shop running smoothly. But: It's hard work. For pay that won't, on its own, sustain my family. I do it now because it's the right thing to do, but there's not much that's ennobling about it. That's ok. The value of work isn't and can't always about self-fulfillment. It's about survival, first.

Matt Labash, Justin Krebs and "living liberally"

Because he's Matt Labash, the new Weekly Standard cover story in which he attempts "living liberally" -- as defined by Justin Krebs' new book, "538 Ways to Live Work and Play Like a Liberal" -- is at least moderately entertaining until it stretches into tedium. In a bit of stunt journalism, Labash attempts to "live liberally" for 10 days, exploring the ways that Krebs' book contains contradictions and/or reaches into the furthest corners of your life.

Get it? It's comically tiresome to live every single aspect of your life through the prism of politics.

Which, no kidding. If you haven't given up somewhere by page 12 or so, though, it seems to me the real story comes when Labash puts down the book and goes to a "Drinking Liberally" meetup to hang out with some real liberals.

The group arrives one by one—about a dozen in all. I haven’t told them in advance I was coming, so when I break the news that I’m a reporter for a conservative magazine and pull my tape recorder out, I expect them to tell me to get bent. But they generously welcome me. One of the group leaders, Michelle Elliot, a software engineer, even tells me that her life-partner works for Firedoglake. But if she thinks I’m a douche-nozzle, she keeps it to herself, as we tuck in for a completely agreeable evening of interrogation and polite sparring.

I chide them a bit for convening at a corporatist chain restaurant, even if Ruby Tuesdays does have an impressive salad bar, with all manner of fresh ingredients and a stunning array of croutons. They give me the business for drinking too liberally after I order a third Maker’s (child’s play, I assure them, I’m a professional journalist after all), suggesting I might be the first member of their group that they have to drive home.

Because of my machine-gun questioning, we cover the waterfront, everything from their thoughts on BP to whether to avoid Wal-Mart to whether it’s okay to meet at chain restaurants to the evils of Ann Coulter and Meghan McCain’s political viability (one gay-activist type mentions her as being one of the only Republicans he likes, though hearing the words “Meghan’s platform” nearly makes me do a spit-take).

It’s a pleasant conversation. I lapse back into my conservative nature as a result of a liberal intake of my liberal whiskey, but there are no hostilities. Nobody changes anybody’s mind. It’s not life or death. It bears little resemblance to television screech-matches, which as one of my drinking mates, Aaron Oesterle, says, “is not about discussion, it’s about finding everybody who agrees with me, and shouting the loudest.” We encounter each other as individuals, leaving room for complexities and ambiguities, instead of assuming a mere set of prefab conclusions. Oesterle, who works at a space-related consultancy, says, “It’s easy to assume large-scale. But when you engage one-on-one, it’s more difficult to make assumptions on a smaller scale.”

Another of my drinking companions, Claiborn Booker, recasts F. Scott Fitzgerald’s notion that the rich are different than you and me. “So are the very political,” he says. “They have a different sort of calculus that goes on in their minds, and as a result, we see some of that manifesting itself in the polarization of political debate.”

The group tells me that they often don’t discuss politics very much at their political gatherings. “Most of us live in the middle muddle,” Booker says. “We have certain tendencies in some directions. But we’re by and large caring people, have a kindly disposition toward our fellow sufferers, so we want socially to have kindness or gentleness be a part of our character. But at the same time, we want to make sure that we get to keep what we earn and we want to have a strong defense. So finding that right balance is a perennial problem.”

After making a night of it, I like these people.

Once Labash puts away the books, in other words, he finds that the liberals he sets out to mock aren't too different from, well, everybody else: Trying to live a life informed by values and running up against the contradictions, ambiguities, nuance and even obstacles that real life imposes upon us all. That means, of course, that there are as many ways to "live liberally" as there are, well, actual liberals. Putting that at the front of an interminably long story -- instead of at the end -- wouldn't be quite as sexy or as stereotype-confirming to the Weekly Standard's readership.

More on marriage: Josh Rosenau

Science blogger -- and fellow former Lawrencian -- Josh Rosenau takes note of my marriage post, and adds his own two cents:

Let's talk about my grandmother. Her husband died in his fifties, before I was born. Quite some time later, well after menopause, she remarried, and the man she married was the only grandfather on that side of the family that I ever knew. Both had adult children from previous marriages, and some of their grandchildren attended the wedding. They knew they wouldn't have children of their own, but that didn't change their desire to marry. Again, if conservatives cannot understand why senior citizens choose to marry and stay married past menopause… well, I'm still glad I'm not marrying a conservative.

When people make this argument that marriage is about procreation, it insults the memory of my grandmother and grandfather, people who could not have legally married if this standard were applied consistently. It insults people who are infertile for any reason, including voluntary sterilization, congenital conditions, or side effects of other medical treatments. And it insults anyone who takes marriage seriously – as an institution focused on bringing together loving couples and recognizing the special ties that they've formed.

Victor Davis Hanson: Conservatives are destroying capitalism

National Review's Victor Davis Hanson reports his frustration with a business-owning friend who won't buy equipment or expand his business. It deserves quoting at length:

I asked a businessman two weeks ago why he said that he was neither hiring nor buying new equipment. He started in on “rising taxes.”

“But wait,” I interrupted. I pointed out that income-tax hikes haven’t taken effect. The old FICA income caps are also still applicable. Health-care surcharges haven’t hit us yet.

He countered with “regulations” and “bailouts.” I said, “Come on, get specific.” He offered up “cap and trade” and “the Chrysler creditors.” I parried with more demands that he tell me exactly how the federal government has suddenly curbed his profit margins, or how his electric bill had gone up since January 2009, or whether he had lost money on any investment because the government had violated a contract.

Exasperated, he talked now instead of more cosmic issues — the astronomical borrowing, the staggering national debt, and the new protectionism. I pressed again, “But aren’t interest rates historically low? Inflation is almost non-existent, isn’t it? New products are still comparatively cheap? Rents and new business property are at bargain-basement prices?”

This give-and-take went on for ten minutes; but you get the picture. Private enterprise is wary, hesitant, even frightened, but nevertheless hard pressed to demonstrate in concrete fashion how Obama has quite ruined them in just 18 months.

So why are a lot of cash-solvent financial firms, banks, and manufacturing companies not hiring, not expanding, and not buying new operating equipment as they did in past bottoming-out recessions?

In a word, fear. Remember that capitalism is in large part psychologically driven. Confidence, optimism, and a sense of calm about the future foster risk and investment, while worry, pessimism, and a sense of foreboding ensure timidity and stasis.

Barack Obama — who is mostly a creature of the university and the dependable government payroll — does not seem to grasp that fact.

Hanson goes on to say that Obama has created a climate of fear through the hiring of appointees -- like Van Jones -- with radical pasts, or through insufficient worship of free markets. But if there really is a climate of fear in the business community, who really has created it?

Conservatives, that's who.

They've devoted considerable time and resources to proclaiming the Obama Administration an era of "socialism" and "tyranny" -- even though, as Hanson admits, the actual rules and taxes on business right now should be encouraging growth and expansion. The country has been force-fed a diet of Glenn Beck and Tea Parties over the last 18 months, all of them making the case against Democratic policies in the most dire terms possible. Is it any wonder that some people actually take it seriously?

I don't think Victor Davis Hanson or other conservatives should refrain from criticizing Obama in order to revive the economy. But I do think a constant stream of hyperbole can have consequences. Hanson's column, though, shows how Republicans all-too-easily win: They get to create a climate of fear -- and blame it on the victim. It's cynical stuff, and in this case -- if Hanson is to be believed -- it has demonstrable harm.

Marriage is about kids. And nothing else.

National Review blasts last week's federal court ruling knocking down part of the federal Defense of Marriage Act. The editors offer up -- once again -- a familiar argument for traditional marriage that, while much-debated the last few years, always is very bracing to me.

The actual motive for having governments recognize the union of a man and a woman (and only such a union) as a marriage is to encourage, in a gentle and non-coercive way, the formation and maintenance of a stable environment in which children can naturally come to be. If heterosexual coupling did not regularly produce children there would be no reason for the institution of marriage to exist, let alone for governments to recognize it.

What a depressingly -- implausibly -- narrow view of marriage.

No doubt, children are a common byproduct of heterosexual marriage. That's certainly been the case in my marriage, and I'm glad of it. But the pairing instinct -- one that predated any government recognition of the "institution" of marriage -- far exceeds simple propigation of the species. People, as a general rule, want company. They want sex, they want economic partnerships, they want somebody to hang out with.

To reduce marriage to merely a mechanism of natural child-creation -- as National Review and other conservatives regularly do, because it's pretty much the one thing that heterosexual marriage offers that same-sex partnerships can't -- is, when you think about it, a surprisingly Darwinian argument coming from a movement that is largely theology-minded. It aggressively ignores that humans are social, spiritual creatures and that they express those characteristics, often but not exclusively, through marriage. The conservative case against same-sex marriage reduces the "institution" to simple biology. It's a point of view that reduces humanity to the level of beasts, with a bureaucracy.

The Yankees are about to acquire CLIFF LEE!?!?!

Cliff Lee Who Cares Catch - Watch today’s top amazing videos here

One of the best things about the Phillies' run to the World Series last year was the performance of pitcher Cliff Lee. And he cemented his place in my heart with a pair of catches -- one amazing, one amusing (see above)-- in a sterling Game One performance against the Yankees.

And I was very disappointed when the Phillies traded Lee away. I understood, but I was disappointed.

Now there's news that the Yankees themselves are about to acquire Cliff Lee from the Seattle Mariners. I already hate the Yankees. And the Phillies don't look like they're making another postseason run this year. But still: BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!

UPDATE: He went to the Rangers. I can live with that.

Why is Andrew Klavan proud of his sexism?

This Andrew Klavan blog post, I think, expresses a certain kind of conservative mindset about as succinctly as possible. To sum it up: the dangerous sexism of the Muslim world makes the sexism of American-Christian conservatives charming, benign and even desirable.

Let's break it down.

I am a sexist. I believe men and women are inherently different and that it’s therefore appropriate to treat them differently. I continue to open doors for women, curb my occasionally profane tongue around them and stand when they leave the table. Feminists have occasionally berated me for this, believing such manners display a patriarchal and protective attitude toward them.

I'm not going to begrudge Klavan's door-opening for women. But.

Even if one accepted, broadly, that "men" and "women" were different, that in no way accounts for all the millions of individuals who might not fit those norms and who deserve to be treated on the basis of their own individual qualities instead of consigned to a broader group. Sexism is just lazy. In Klavan's hands, we can see pretty quickly, it's lazy and smug.

And in any case, it's a pretty short trip from "men and women are inherently different" to "men and women are unequal, and thus men deserve to have the power." Which leads us to...

They’re right: a protective patriarch is exactly the kind of patriarch I am.

Um, that's swell? Let's move on -- this sentence will be important in later context.

Compare our Muslim friends. In his book What Went Wrong, Bernard Lewis reports that a Turkish visitor to Vienna in 1665 was flabbergasted by the “extraordinary spectacle” of the emperor tipping his hat to a lady. He speculated this bizarre behavior might derive from Christian respect for the Virgin Mary. Maybe so. It's certainly true that the local rules of politeness bear within them the deepest attitudes of the culture. Which is something to consider in light of the imminent stoning of Sakineh Mohammadie Ashtiani in Iran, an Islamic horror story which inspires in me the very impolite desire to slug somebody, preferably with a clawhammer.

I'm glad that Klavan -- along with many of his fellow conservatives -- is so angry about the the imminent stoning in Iran. Let's get to the final statement, though.

I can’t help thinking that when feminists attack gentlemanly manners (and the Christianity behind them) they are threatening the very wellspring of their most basic rights.

And there we have it: My sexism is ok, because I'm not going to kill you! Be grateful, women!

Maybe that's unfair. But let me rebut Klavan in a manner I think conservatives will understand: I'll use the Cold War as an analogy.

Everybody agrees that the Soviet Union was a horrible, awful place: No personal or economic freedom, millions of people died because of Joseph Stalin's cruelty and tyranny. But the Soviet Union was also powerful, if despised. After World War II, the United States helped create the system of "social democracy" in Western Europe -- a hybrid of capitalism with a very, very thick social safety net -- in order to keep Soviet-style socialism from being too tempting to the masses and preserving a rough balance of power between superpowers.

Now: Stalin-era Soviet Union was about exploiting the people. Social democracies were about, for lack of a better word, comforting them. These days, though, there's lots of folks who see the social democracy of Western Europe -- with its high taxes, heavy regulations and monthlong vacations for workers -- as a way station to tyranny. Sure the people of Western Europe are and were more free than citizens of the old Soviet Union. But that's not free enough for many of today's American conservatives.

So it is with sexism. The choice isn't really between an Iran-style tyranny that kills its women or a "protective patriarchy" that uses less overtly coercive methods to still keep women in their place. The alternative is to recognize women as full human beings, possessing the same rights as all of us -- not "granted" to them by dudes -- and worthy of respect as a result.

(Hat tip: Julie Ponzi)

On torture and stoning: National Review's Andrew McCarthy is as dumb as a rock

Here's how Andy McCarthy begins a National Review column that, ostensibly, about lambasting Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan:

I wonder if Elena Kagan knows about Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani.

Ms. Ashtiani is about to be stoned. That’s where they bury you up to your chest and hurl rocks at you until you die. The rocks can’t be too big. You see, this is real torture, religion-of-peace torture. It’s the kind that happens every day but that Democrats prefer not to talk about.

First: The last sentence. Huffington Post is promoting a petition to save Ashtiani's life. Feminist blogs like Shakesville are raising a ruckus. There's lots more examples of this. Ten seconds perusing Google could tell you that Andy McCarthy is wrong.

And probably lying. But maybe he's as dumb as a rock

But let's focus on the "real torture" part of McCarthy's statement -- with its implication that American treatment of Gitmo prisoners was relatively benign. Because here's what Andy McCarthy says about the Ashtiani case just one paragraph later.

The stoning of this 43-year-old mother of two has been ordered by a court in her native Iran, where the only legal code is Allah’s law, sharia. It is the Islamic sentence for adultery, the crime to which Ashtiani confessed after serial beatings by her interrogators.

Well: Andy McCarthy's right to be angry about this. A "confession" elicited under physical duress is -- at the very least -- unfair, and probably even suspect and tainted. Who knows what pain Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani decided to avoid by confessing? Maybe she lied to make the beatings stop. He doesn't come right out and say it, but McCarthy's construction of that sentence certainly seems to indicate that he disapproves of how the confession was elicited. And rightly so.

Only problem: Subjecting suspects to physical duress in order to elicit information is precisely what America did to terror suspects at Gitmo! It wasn't just waterboarding: It was sleep deprivation and beatings!

Andy McCarthy, seeking to snort at liberals' anger over torture, ends up vindicating their vision! He's probably just a moral relativist -- if Iran does it, it's wrong; if we do it, it's noble -- but it's possible that he's also just as dumb as a rock.*

I try, I really do, not to be in the business of name-calling. Andy McCarthy is one of my exceptions.

Do unemployment benefits "spoil" Americans for real work?

That's the topic of this week's column with Ben Boychuk for Scripps Howard News Service -- inspired by Sharron Angle's comments in Nevada. My take:

Let's forget political philosophy for a moment and focus only on math: At the moment, there is exactly one open job in America for every five people trying to find work. Even if every available spot were filled, 80 percent of the unemployed -- millions of Americans -- would still be unemployed. That's not because they're spoiled or lazy or intentionally unproductive. They're just unlucky.

Today's critics of unemployment insurance suggest the system takes money from productive citizens and gives it to the unproductive.

Perhaps. But those "productive" citizens should understand that they're not just throwing money down a rat hole -- they're buying civilization.

Look back at the origins of unemployment insurance. The Great Depression hit America in 1929, and unemployment rates soared far beyond the current crisis. In 1932, a "Bonus Army" of 17,000 unemployed World War I veterans marched on Washington D.C. -- and were dispersed with deadly force. Capitalism and the American system stood at the brink.

The Social Security Act of 1935 -- which created our modern unemployment insurance system -- helped change that. Workers and their families suddenly had breathing room when work disappeared. They were able to pay their mortgages, buy food and keep participating in the economy. That made them less inclined to act desperately -- and the "trickle up" effect helped keep other merchants in business.

Capitalism survived and thrived.

Our 21st-century economy isn't quite as dire, but the lessons from that era are still true. And it's reprehensible that Republicans like Sharron Angle treat hard-luck Americans like they're parasites.

Full disclosure: I've been collecting unemployment benefits while seeking a full-time job. I've also found part-time work and freelance writing gigs to supplement that income. So I certainly don't feel spoiled or lazy. I have, however, learned the value of a strong safety net.

I wasn't thrilled to disclose my job status in the column -- the thing gets printed around the nation and even, on occasion, internationally -- but I felt duty-bound to share that I have a personal stake in this debate. I assure you, though, that my opinions would've been the same either way.