The Weekly Standard doesn't want "our" Muslims talking to "their" Muslims

America'ssmiling face to the Muslim world?

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the man behind the so-called Ground Zero mosque, is apparently set to take a State Department trip to "to help people overseas understand our society and the role of religion within our society.” John McCormack of the Weekly Standard responds with confusing pugnaciousness:

If the purpose of the junket is to "help people overseas understand our society"--and not to help Rauf raise the $100 million for his mosque--wouldn't it make sense to send someone representative of the vast majority of Americans who oppose the Ground Zero mosque? Perhaps the State Department could send someone--maybe Juan Williams or Rich Lowry or Abe Foxman or Bill McGurn or Neda Bolourchi or Sarah Palin or Rod Dreher or Christopher Caldwell or Bill Kristol--to explain to the people of the world that Americans aren't bigots but simply find it offensive and insensitive to build a mosque two blocks from the site of a horrific Islamist terrorist attack?

This is simply brain-dead.

The purpose of the trip is clearly to do the "soft power" work of making the United States seem, to Muslims abroad, like a nice place with nice people trying to make a nicer world. It only makes sense that the U.S. might send emissaries who can relate, culturally and linguistically, to the target audience -- it makes more sense, after all, than putting Karen Hughes in front of a crowd for the purpose of looking completely out of touch.

There's only on Muslim, Neda Boloruchi, on McCormack's list. Just about everybody else on the list tends to buy into the whole "clash of the civilizations" stuff that sees not radical fundamentalist jihadist Islam as the problem -- but Islam itself. Why in the hell would you send Bill Kristol to present America's smiling face to the Muslim world? I admire Rod Dreher in a lot of ways, but he's also the last person for the job.

My guess is that McCormack isn't serious. He can't possibly be. He's just engaged in some political point scoring, some "why don't they send a real American blah blah" stuff that goes down well with the sort of demagogery the Standard is indulging in these days, but which should never be mistaken for the thoughts of anybody who would ever have to be responsible for the fallout of their suggestions.

Obama, Gibbs, Ungrateful Liberals and the Art of Politicking

President Obama on Monday:

"We have spent the last 20 months governing. They spent the last 20 months politicking," Obama said of Republicans. With three months to go before the election, Obama all but said "bring it on": "They've forgotten I know how to politick pretty good."

Back in Washington, his spokesman Robert Gibbs:

The White House is simmering with anger at criticism from liberals who say President Obama is more concerned with deal-making than ideological purity.

The press secretary dismissed the “professional left” in terms very similar to those used by their opponents on the ideological right, saying, “They will be satisfied when we have Canadian healthcare and we’ve eliminated the Pentagon. That’s not reality.”

Of those who complain that Obama caved to centrists on issues such as healthcare reform, Gibbs said: “They wouldn’t be satisfied if Dennis Kucinich was president.”

All I can say is: Way to motivate the base, guys. Part of politicking is making sure your side is motivated to get out and support your candidates. Attacking the people most likely to support your candidates -- particularly in terms that sound like this -- isn't actually a very effective way to do that.

Conservatives Against Philanthropy: Are Bill Gates and Warren Buffett Socialists?

They're wearing red. That can't be a coincidence.

I confess I don't get this reaction to the June story in Fortune about how Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are trying to persuade other billionaires to leave half their estates to charity:

As it turns out, however, the writer, senior editor-at-large Carol Loomis, struck a raw nerve with Fortune readers. Most were outraged – regarding the philanthropy plan as grandstanding that would do nothing to create jobs or to address horrific problems, including runaway government spending, the spiraling deficit, and the near-comatose state of the economy. As Fortune notes in its July 26 issue, “When Carol Loomis reported on Warren Buffett and Bill and Melinda Gates’ plan to pledge half of their wealth away, the comments – nearly 500 of them – came in fast and, literally, furious.”

According to Fortune’s own tally, the comments ran 2-to-1 against Buffett and Gates. The included 36 percent of who readers described the philanthropy plan as “a publicity stunt/dangerous/the work of socialists” and another 26 percent who said the money that Buffett, Gates, and the other billiionaires were proposing to spend on charity should be spent in other ways – to pay off the U.S. debt, to help individuals, or reinvested in the creation of new businesses and job opportunities.

Any number of readers wrote in to urge Buffett and Gates to remember that they were supposed to be capitalists. As one put it, “For all their vast wealth, these people don’t have a clue about how economies flourish and fail. Don’t GIVE your money away. That’s called putting it in a bottomless pit. INVEST IT. Create some badly needed jobs by creating something called BUSINESSES with that capital.”

This is why I'm confused: Conservatives have typically sought to defuse allegations that they're heartless moneygrubbers by saying that they're not against helping poor or needy people, exactly -- they just think it's the job of communities and churches and private charity, not the state. But if they're now so critical of private individuals actually giving their money to charity, what's left?

Is the Ayn Randization of the business community becoming complete? Is the only virtue to build yourself and your profit? Is altruism morally suspect in this universe?

A conservative friend suggests that some of the response is less "anti-charity" than a reaction against the kinds of charity Gates and Buffett are supporting. (Buffet has, quietly, used his philathropical reach to try to expand access to abortion.) And their efforts do seem aimed at more than feeding the hungry and healing the sick -- they want to use their billions to transform societies. From the Fortune article, a description of a dinner where several billionaires told their stories of philathropy:

The charitable causes discussed in those stories covered the spectrum: education, again and again; culture; hospitals and health; the environment; public policy; the poor generally. Bill Gates, who found the whole event "amazing," regarded the range of causes as admirable: "The diversity of American giving," he says, "is part of its beauty."

But it's not as though Gates or Buffett have the power to compel other rich people to give to charity -- much less determine which philanthropies those rich people choose to fund. So statism -- usually the bugaboo of capitalist-conservatives -- seems to be absent from the equation. How the effort equates to "socialism," I'm at a loss to understand.

As it happens, today's New York Times has a front-page story about India -- that economic up-and-comer whose growth sometimes seems to come at the expense of America's -- and the debate there over whether the poor have a right to eat. Even with the availability of more good-paying jobs than ever before, there are still many, many Indians in poverty: 421 million. Which happens to be more people than exist in the United States, rich or poor.

The point here is not to disparage capitalism. It may have some warts, but it has also created more wealth -- and lifted more people out of poverty -- than any other force in history. So Gates and Buffett's critics are right to an extent: Start some businesses and put some people to work! You know what? That can easily be done with the billions of dollars each man will still have, even after their sizable philanthropic donations. It's not an either-or question.

The critics seem more than a little  foolish when they suggest that two self-made billionaires don't understand economics. They're also guilty of narrow thinking. As India shows -- and American history demonstrates -- there are places the market cannot reach and people the market cannot help, even in the most vibrant of economies. (There are places it probably shouldn't reach, but that's another discussion.) Conservatives usually seem to know this, which is why they've advocated private charity as a solution to such ills. To see them now sneer at altruism is weird and a little unsettling.

Federalist 30-36: This Government Was Made For Taxin'. And That's Just What It'll Do.

The farther I read into the Federalist Papers, the more I'm convinced the Tea Partiers only know about half their history.

Back up: I didn't start reading the Federalists with the aim of debunking the Tea Partiers. But it's impossible to read historical documents about the nature of governance in America when there's a coalition of folks out there who so strongly identify with those historical personages.

Their narrative, I believe, goes something like this: America was born, essentially, in a tax rebellion. And the Founding Fathers then created a limited government in order to avoid oppressing the people either with burdensome taxes or directly tyrannical rule. And maybe, just maybe, if the tax burden gets too large -- well, maybe, Americans have the right to resort to rebellion again.

Like I said: I think that's only partly right. Because the Federalist Papers -- the documents we most use, aside from the Constitution itself, for insight into the Founders' thinking -- seem to favor a rather more expansive vision of government than the Tea Party narrative would suggest.

I already mentioned this theory back in Federalist 15. But it's' greatly reinforced by reading Alexander Hamilton in Federalist 30 through 36.

Why? Because those chapters are about the topic nearest and dearest to the hearts of Tea Partiers: Taxation.

And get this: Hamilton was arguing that the power to tax was a central reason -- maybe the central reason -- the Constitution needed to be passed. And not just any power to tax: Unlimited power to tax.

This kind of goes against the narrative we hear lately, but there it is in Hamilton's own words: Without unlimited power to tax, the government will be a weak and ineffective thing.

How is it possible that a government half supplied and always necessitous, can fulfill the purposes of its institution, can provide for the security, advance the prosperity, or support the reputation of the commonwealth? How can it ever possess either energy or stability, dignity or credit, confidence at home or respectability abroad? How can its administration be any thing else than a succession of expedients temporizing, impotent, disgraceful? How will it be able to avoid a frequent sacrifice of its engagements to immediate necessity? How can it undertake or execute any liberal or enlarged plans of public good?

Now, Hamilton was speaking from some experience here: A reason the Articles of Confederation were considered to have failed was that the Congress under the articles couldn't raise its own money -- it had to ask the states, essentially. And the states weren't always forthcoming. That left the United States unable to expeditiously pay its debts from the Revolutionary War.

Here's where honesty compels me to note, though, that Hamilton's call for unlimited power of taxation -- and I'm serious here: he wanted it to be unlimited -- didn't seem to be in the service of creating a welfare state, but rather to pay for the common defense. (Federalist 34: "The expenses arising from those institutions which are relative to the mere domestic police of a state, to the support of its legislative, executive, and judicial departments, with their different appendages, and to the encouragement of agriculture and manufactures (which will comprehend almost all the objects of state expenditure), are insignificant in comparison with those which relate to the national defense.")

But unlimited power is, of course, unlimited power. And that's what Hamilton was arguing for. Here he is in Federalist 31:

As the duties of superintending the national defense and of securing the public peace against foreign or domestic violence involve a provision for casualties and dangers to which no possible limits can be assigned, the power of making that provision ought to know no other bounds than the exigencies of the nation and the resources of the community.

As revenue is the essential engine by which the means of answering the national exigencies must be procured, the power of procuring that article in its full extent must necessarily be comprehended in that of providing for those exigencies.

As theory and practice conspire to prove that the power of procuring revenue is unavailing when exercised over the States in their collective capacities, the federal government must of necessity be invested with an unqualified power of taxation in the ordinary modes.

This, of course, was horrifying to the antifederalists. And -- not to drive the point home with too much earnestness -- it was horrifying to them in a way that today's Tea Partiers would find very familiar. Here's "Brutus" writing in Antifederalist 32:

We may say then that this clause commits to the hands of the general legislature every conceivable source of revenue within the United States, Not only are these terms very comprehensive, and extend to a vast number of objects, but the power to lay and collect has great latitude; it will lead to the passing a vast number of laws, which may affect the personal rights of the citizens of the states, expose their property to fines and confiscation, and put their lives in jeopardy. It opens a door to the appointment of a swarm of revenue and excise collectors to prey upon the honest and industrious part of the community, [and] eat up their substance. . . .

If you're a Tea Partier, that sounds like a fairly accurate description of what happened, I suppose.

But the antifederalists were wrong, to some extent. They were concerned, it seems, with preserving a fair measure of state sovereignty -- "state's rights" you might say -- and their biggest worry about the Constitution's grant of unlimited power to tax was that it would, over time, deprive the states of their power to tax. It hasn't really worked out that way.

In the end, Hamilton rejected every suggested limitation to restrict Congress' power to tax. The only real check, he suggested, was the voters themselves -- and their ability to send to Congress wise people who would understand how to balance the needs of government against the income of its citizens.

There is no part of the administration of government that requires extensive information and a thorough knowledge of the principles of political economy, so much as the business of taxation. The man who understands those principles best will be least likely to resort to oppressive expedients, or sacrifice any particular class of citizens to the procurement of revenue. It might be demonstrated that the most productive system of finance will always be the least burdensome. There can be no doubt that in order to a judicious exercise of the power of taxation, it is necessary that the person in whose hands it should be acquainted with the general genius, habits, and modes of thinking of the people at large, and with the resources of the country. And this is all that can be reasonably meant by a knowledge of the interests and feelings of the people. In any other sense the proposition has either no meaning, or an absurd one. And in that sense let every considerate citizen judge for himself where the requisite qualification is most likely to be found.

Two-hundred years later, the only question I can ask is: How's that working out for ya?

Now that Proposition 8 has been struck down, will gay marriage become the law of the land?

That's the central question of my Scripps Howard column with Ben Boychuk this week. My take:

Whether the Supreme Court strikes down gay-marriage bans may depend entirely on the attitudes and disposition of Justice Anthony Kennedy, who tends to be the swing vote on controversial issues. Reading his 2003 opinion in Lawrence v. Texas -- the ruling that struck down laws making homosexual sex a crime -- it's difficult to see how state bans on gay marriage will survive.

It is true that Kennedy, in his 2003 ruling, was careful to state that decriminalizing such sexual practices did not require formal government recognition of gay relationships. But the logic of that ruling is compelling in the context of gay marriage.

The logic was this: To use the law to set apart homosexual conduct "demeans the lives of homosexual persons," and thus is at odds with the guarantees of liberty provided by the U.S. Constitution.

Kennedy was right then, and he would be right now to say the same thing about gay-marriage bans.

Such a ruling would invariably bring cries of "judicial activism" from the right, but it's entirely appropriate for the courts to get involved. Since at least the late 1960s, the right to marry has been considered a "fundamental right" under the U.S. Constitution --and nobody seriously contests that. Fundamental rights, it should be noted, cannot and should not be contravened by legislative action or statewide referendums. They simply exist.

Walker correctly realized this in his ruling. Gay couples, he wrote, "do not seek recognition of a new right. To characterize (their) objective as 'the right to same-sex marriage' would suggest that plaintiffs seek something different from what opposite-sex couples across the state enjoy -- namely, marriage. Rather, plaintiffs ask California to recognize their relationships for what they are: marriages."

If the Supreme Court follows its own precedent, it will agree. And that will be a good thing.

Ben obviously has a different take on things, about which I can say little more than what I have. I do have to take issue, though, with one of his remarks:

Marshalling one-sided testimony from social scientists led Walker to conclude: "Gender no longer forms an essential part of marriage," "parents' genders are irrelevant to children's developmental outcomes" and, incredibly, "the evidence shows same-sex marriage has and will have no adverse effects on society or the institution of marriage."

Here's where it must be noted that if the testimony in the case seems "one-sided," it's because the Proposition 8 proponents who argued the case at trial barely bothered to put on a case. They called just two witnesses, one of whom -- David Blankenhorn -- wasn't a researcher, exactly, but a pundit. (From Prop 8 on Trial: "He has never written a peer-reviewed article on the effects of same-sex marriage nor, by his own admission, studied any of the legal cases in which the United States Supreme Court has declared marriage a fundamental right.") I think it's fair to say that Ben is just about as qualified as Blankenhorn to make the pro-Prop 8 case -- and Ben, despite being widely read and a great writer, isn't qualified at all to testify as an expert witness.

Qualifiactions aside, though, he wasn't exactly a stellar witness for his side:

Under cross-examination by David Boies, an attorney for challengers of the ballot measure, Blankenhorn admitted he knew of no study that showed children reared by gay couples fared worse than those raised by heterosexual parents.

Blankenhorn also conceded that same-sex marriage would probably "improve the well-being of gay and lesbian households and their children."

Further down our column, Ben complains that Judge Walker "simply asserts" that voters based their decisions based on moral disapproval. But the pro-Prop 8 attorneys basically tried to assert their way to legal victory in this case. That's not the fault of Walker, nor is it the fault of gay marriage advocates. And it's hard to avoid the conclusion that the pro-Prop 8 lawyers barely put on a case defending the Constitutionality of a gay marriage ban because, well, they didn't have much of a case to make.

Proposition 8 and judicial activism

This excerpt from Judge Vaughn Walker's ruling strikes a proper balance, I think:

An initiative measure adopted by the voters deserves great respect. The considered views and opinions of even the most highly qualified scholars and experts seldom outweigh the determinations of the voters. When challenged, however, the voters' determinations must find at least some support in evidence. This is especially so when those determinations enact into law classifications of persons. Conjecture, speculation and fears are not enough. Still less will the moral disapprobation of a group or class of citizens suffice, no matter how large the majority that shares that view. The evidence demonstrated beyond serious recknong that Proposition 8 finds support only in such disapproval. As such, Proposition 8 is beyond the constitutional reach of the voters or their representatives.

Emphasis added.

Obama Disappointment Watch: Cordoba House Edition

I'm starting to wonder if President Obama can give nuanced speeches on controversial topics only when his own bacon is in the fire. Because in the history of cowardly question-ducking, this one goes pretty high on the list:

As the proposal to build a 13-story Islamic center two blocks from Ground Zero moves forward and controversy surrounding the plan grows, top New York Democrats are maintaining radio silence on the matter.

President Obama is also declining to take a position on the issue. Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said today the decision to build the mosque next to Ground Zero is "rightly a matter for New York City and the local community to decide."

When a reporter asked why Obama would use his powers of moral suasion on other issues where religious freedom is concerned, but not this issue, Gibbs ducked the question and said it was a local matter.

This is Grade A political cowardice. And it's furthermore nonsensical: The First Amendment is a "local matter?" Umm ... where to begin?

At Mother Jones, Kevin Drum wonders whether Republicans who are summoning the country to a culture war over the Cordoba House issue -- Rudy Giuliani, Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich, most prominently -- are "venal or stupid." It doesn't actually matter, but the question moves him to state: "For once, I really do miss George Bush. The damage he did to the American cause in the Muslim world is incalculable, but at least he never countenanced this kind of lunatic bigotry."

That's exactly right. And the problem with Obama right now isn't that he's "countenancing lunatic bigotry." The problem is that he's doing nothing to counter it.

Now, the country's fairly well split these days, and it's possible -- I suppose -- that an Obama statement would be greeted along more or less those lines. But as many commentators have noticed, the Cordoba House initiative really isn't a local matter: It's being watched by "peace-seeking" Muslims around the world to gauge if the United States makes good on its promises, or if this country is willing to bend or even break its own rules to deny Muslims the right to full participate in American life. That makes the debate something of a national security issue -- and thus demands the president's participation and leadership.

Instead, we're left to seek statesmanship and moral leadership in the unlikeliest of places: Ladies and gentlemen, I give you New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Dear Steve Levitan: Don't take 'Modern Family' offline!

James Hibberd reports:

If it was up to Steve Levitan, his ABC hit "Modern Family" wouldn't be available online.

During an ABC-sponsored coffee break at TCA, Levitan said he's unsuccessfully lobbied Disney-ABC TV Group president Anne Sweeney to remove online versions of his hit show.

Noting there's roughly 2 million people watching "Modern Family" episodes online whose viewership is not fully monetized Levitan said that, in theory, those viewers could be watching the comedy on regular ad-supported TV.

I'm one of those 2 million viewers. And I need to let Mr. Levitan know something: I'm not going to watch "Modern Family" on TV if you take it offline. I don't have a TV. (I don't say that snobbishly; I'm obviously watching TV shows anyway.)

If you take "Modern Family" off Hulu, then, one of three things will happen.

* I will stop watching "Modern Family" entirely. There's no money in that for you!

* I might hypothetically watch, ahem, less than fully legal feeds of "Modern Family" that will be easy to find online anyway. There's no money in that for you!

* I will wait a year or two for "Modern Family" to show up on Netflix Streaming, or some after-the-fact placement on Hulu, and watch it then. In which case, you probably get some money -- but only about as much as you're getting now!

As Levitan surely knows -- or, at least he should -- 2 million viewers online isn't really 2 million viewers he's not getting on television. Some people might go back to the TV, surely, but a lot won't. Instead of seeing the 2 million viewers of "Modern Family" online as "not fully monetized," he should instead think of them as "additional monetization we might not be getting otherwise." Hulu is ad-supported, after all.

The web video genie is out of the bottle. It's not going back in.

A reader challenges me on the Cordoba House and religious freedom

"Capt. Jack Gilles," a reader of the Scripps Howard column, writes to challenge my position in favor of the Cordoba House mosque at Ground Zero.

If there is no debate then:Shouldn’t ground zero not contain a Synagogue and a Church as well as a mosque ?

And my response to this is: Of course! If any Jewish or Christian congregations want to build near the site and there's a space for them, let them build! I don't advocate for the Cordoba House because I'm an evangelist for the Muslim faith; I advocate for the Cordoba House because I believe in American values and laws, particularly as represented in the First Amendment.

Gilles also repeats the canard that the the Cordoba House mosque amounts, essentially, to trophy-claiming by Muslims for their "victory" on 9/11. It's a common view -- one, again, that assumes that American Muslims are indistinguishable from Osama bin Laden in their beliefs and sympathies. I do not believe that and I do not grant that.

After the jump, Gilles' full letter:

Tom Corbett and me in the Philly Daily News

If you saw my blog last week, you already know what I think about GOP gubernatorial candidate Tom Corbett's ongoing "unemployed people are lazy" meme. I expand those thoughts in today's Philadelphia Daily News -- and even add a little research to show just how bad the jobs situation is in Pennsylvania right now:

Between June 2009 and June 2010, this is what happened:

* The state lost roughly 9,000 professional and technical jobs that had a prevailing annual wage of $73,808.

* Another 10,000 manufacturing jobs were lost in a sector that typically pays $51,529 a year.

* And the construction industry - which pays on average $51,928 a year - cut another 5,000 jobs.

So where did the state's job growth come from?

* The biggest growth was in "administrative and waste services" - 23,000 new jobs. But they paid just $30,887 a year.

* Pennsylvania added another 15,000 "leisure and hospitality" jobs, with prevailing wages ranging from $14,848 for food-service workers all the way up to $26,583 for "arts and recreation" employees.

* Only one high-wage sector added jobs: The mining industry, with prevailing annual wages of $59,907, added 3,000 new jobs.

The trend is clear: Most of the state's new jobs pay just half the wages - or worse - of all the lost jobs. If you were recently unemployed and trying to restart your career, would this be an attractive picture to you? Would you feel confident in your ability to feed and house your family?

The persecution of Christians in Indonesia

Terrible story in Sunday's New York Times:

For Luspida Simanjuntak, the Christian congregation’s leader, the problem is simple: Her flock of 1,500 has no church, and no one here will let her build one. In Indonesia, houses of worship can be built only with permission from the surrounding community. This is a measure that critics say contributes to a tyranny of the majority and forces minorities to hold services in private homes, hotels, shopping malls and streets.

“We’ve been worshipping for 15 years, more or less, moving from house to house because every time we try to build a church, we’re faced with mobs who won’t let us build,” Mrs. Simanjuntak said.

On the Muslim side of the police cordon, a speaker warned that the Christians were trying to provoke Muslims into violence and were seeking to turn local children into kafir, or infidels.

It's a good thing nothing like that could ever happen in the United States!

Andrew Breitbart comes to Philadelphia

Andrew Breitbart came to Philadelphia on Saturday; I missed the event, unfortunately, but this Philadelphia Inquirer article crystallized what about Breitbart, exactly, troubles me so.

It's not his willingness to peddle misleadingly edited videos, or his well-documented arrogance (some would call it flair) or the fact that he gives shelter, on his Big Government site, to conspiracy peddlers like Frank Gaffney. (No, I'm not going to link to that.) These things bug me, but they're not the thing that bugs me about Andrew Breitbart.

This is the thing that bugs me: Andrew Breitbart has made himself famous and influential by raging against (he says) a liberal establishment colossus. But he's used his power, essentially, to try to crush ants. He's done that loudly, sure, but that doesn't change the essential dynamic.

Let me elaborate, by referring to the Inky article. Here's Breitbart describing his mission, echoing statements he's made elsewhere:

Andrew Breitbart, the Hollywood Internet celebrity with a flair for controversial video, fired up about 300 Tea Party devotees rallying on Independence Mall Saturday afternoon, denouncing a "media cabal," the Congressional Black Caucus, NAACP, liberals, and everyone else who has "ripped apart" America.

The media, he told reporters, in cahoots with black politicians and the Democratic Party, are dividing the country with false charges of racism aimed at the Tea Party groups.

"It's cynical politics," he said. "I'm more than happy to talk about this very noxious form of trying to stifle political speech in the United States. It's un-American."

This is typical Breitbart stuff -- if anything, a bit understated in his example. He's not simply arguing back against liberals and Democrats with whom he disagrees -- he's mounting a full-scale cultural rebellion against the leftward bias of some of the country's leading institutions. The media, after all, provides most of what you read and watch. The Democratic Party is in control of the government. Let's not even get started on the universities.

So how does Andrew Breitbart rebel against the establishment? By embarrassing office workers and mid-level bureaucrats.

Think about it. What are Breitbart's two big contributions to mainstream debate in the last year?

* The ACORN tapes. Enough's been said about this that I don't need to pile on, except to note that the tapes don't show ACORN leaders plotting to do anything nefarious or illegal, and certainly not working to steal elections -- the fantasy scenario of so many conservatives. What the tapes did show was office workers in big American cities being, essentially, being polite to Breitbart's minions. It's the right-wing version of "Borat," which made Americans look racist and dumb by virtue of their willingness to accomodate a stranger. I'll go out on a limb, though, and suggest that few -- if any -- of the ACORN workers depicted in the tapes were making even $30,000 a year.

* Shirley Sherrod. Who really ever heard of this woman before Breitbart made her famous? I hadn't. I bet you hadn't either.

So Breitbart, essentially, has been making his bones off of people who were only very loosely "public figures," individuals who didn't know they were front-line participants in our nation's great debates -- until he thrust them into the spotlight without so much as a how-do-you-do.

This, frankly, is the stuff of bullying and cowardice.

Now the genius of Breitbart is that, somehow, he's managed to convince his audience that each embarrassment of a minor, unknown figure somehow counts as a mighty blow against the hated liberal establishment. It doesn't; it's bread and circuses stuff, really.

It's probably too much to hope that Andrew Breitbart takes his energies and argument against the establishment to the establishment itself. It's much easier picking on small fries, and just as lucrative -- maybe more so. Breitbart might be a crusader, but he's also a bit of a wimp. It works for him.

The ADL, Ilario Pentano, the Ground Zero mosque, and what it means to be an American

A few years ago, a friend of mine -- an editor, only about 10 years older than I, a man of some Italian lineage -- looked ahead to the 2008 elections and declared, flatly, that Barack Obama would never be president.

"Nobody becomes president whose last name ends in a vowel," he said.

The remark struck me, because I wasn't really used to thinking of my friend in ethnic terms.(He'd was a little over-rhapsodic about "The Sopranos," but then again, what man wasn't?) But my friend was heir to a not-so-distant history, the son of a family that -- thanks to its Mediterranean origins -- had just a few decades previous been considered not-quite-fully American. By 2005 or 2006, whenever I had that discussion with my friend, those days seemed past -- but he still felt it in his bones.

I thought about my friend last night, when I read the New York Times' story about how the Anti-Defamation League has decided to oppose the Cordoba House, better known as the Ground Zero mosque. I was already saddened by the turn of events when I stopped, gobstruck, by the Times' pullback to a national overview of the story.

In North Carolina, Ilario Pantano, a former Marine and a Republican candidate for Congress, has also campaigned on the issue, and says it is stirring voters in his rural district, some 600 miles away from ground zero.

A few days ago, at a roadside pizza shop in the small town of Salemburg, he attacked the proposal before an enthusiastic crowd of hog farmers and military veterans.

“Uniformly, there was disgust and disdain in the room for the idea,” Mr. Pantano said.

Ilario Pantano? That's a name with lots and lots of vowels! He's the son of an Italian immigrant, and he grew up in Hell's Kitchen, New York! Now yes, he's a Marine -- one with a controversial history -- but does anybody think that Ilario Pentano would've stood a chance in hell of being elected to Congress in, say, 1960? From North Carolina?


I don't mean to pick on my Tarheel friends. The North Carolina of 2010 is different from the North Carolina of 1960. That's at least partly because the America of 2010 is different from the America of 1960. (Or the America, say, of 1941.) Italian Americans -- except, maybe, for the ones on "Jersey Shore" -- aren't really seen as "others" anymore. The emphasis, for people who aren't Italian-American, is a little less "Italian" and a little more "American." Both sides have benefited from the exchange, I think. But it's not been that long since Ilario Pantano would've been seen as not-quite-American. He, at least, has reaped the rewards of an America that has broadened its mind about who gets to be in the club of "real Americans."

And he's using those rewards ... to try to keep other people out of the club.

The Anti-Defamation League fares much, much worse in this comparison, of course, because its whole reason for existing was to fight for the right of Jewish-Americans to live fully as Americans. And now it, too, has seen fit to try to keep other people out of the club.

Here, astonishingly, is the "about" section at the ADL's website:

The Anti-Defamation League was founded in 1913 "to stop the defamation of the Jewish people and to secure justice and fair treatment to all." Now the nation's premier civil rights/human relations agency, ADL fights anti-Semitism and all forms of bigotry, defends democratic ideals and protects civil rights for all.

A leader in the development of materials, programs and services, ADL builds bridges of communication, understanding and respect among diverse groups, carrying out its mission through a network of 30 Regional and Satellite Offices in the United States and abroad.

The parts in bold? Those words can no longer be considered true in any meaningful sense. They are, in fact, a lie. It hurts me to say so.

The people who oppose Cordoba House -- the people who, somewhat gleefully, would have America march off in a "clash of the civilizations" against the Muslim religion -- would have us believe that Islam, and Muslims, are a monolith. That the most extreme interpretations of that faith are, in fact, the only legitimate interpretations. That Osama bin Laden is no different from Feisal Abdul Rauf is no different from my halal butcher down the street.

But that's untrue. It's pernicious nonsense. And given five minutes of honest, empathetic thinking, most Americans would have to concede the actual truth: That it's complicated. That there are a few real violent nutjobs, like Osama and Al Qaeda, and a few more not-violent-but-still-kinda-asshole-types who want their religion to rule the rest of us -- and a whole lot more people who have faith, who wrestle with its demands, and just try to live each day as best their conscience allows.

Which is no different, really from the rest of America. Or the rest of humanity.

Listen: a terrible wound was inflicted upon America on 9/11. I know: I saw the wreckage of the towers myself and smelled the smoke. I visited the field in rural Pennsylvania where Flight 93 crashed. These experiences marked me and changed my life.

But we betray our values, deeply and perhaps irreparably, if we hold all Muslims culpable for the acts of a few. This moment is a crucible. I really believe that, 20 years from now, a few people will be pround of having been on the right side of this issue -- and the few people who still stand up then for today's discrimination will be viewed much like Ann Coulter defending McCarthyism today: as embarrassments.

The history of America encompasses many stories, many narratives, but one of them is this: the ever-expanding notion of what it means to be American. Ilario Pentano is, I believe, aware of this story. The folks at the ADL certainly are. We are always proud when those definitions expand -- and always ashamed, even if it takes a few years, when they contract. This can be a moment when we choose to be proud before posterity. I sincerely hope it is.

The Cordoba House mosque, Ground Zero, and all you religious people trying to run my life

That's the topic of my Scripps Howard column with Ben Boychuk this week. Since you already got most of my take in blog form last week, let me do something different and focus on Ben's take.

An excerpt:

Now let's contrast Washington with Feisal Abdul Rauf, the imam behind the Cordoba House project who wrote a fascinating book in 2004 called "What's Right with Islam Is What's Right with America." In it, Rauf casually argues that the U.S. Constitution and the core principles of Islamic law (sharia) are not in conflict at all and, indeed, the "American political structure is sharia-compliant."

"Islamic law and American democratic principles have many things in common," Rauf wrote, stressing that sharia's support for "political justice" and "economic justice ... for the weak and impoverished" "sounds suspiciously like the Declaration of Independence."

To the casual reader, maybe. Fact is, sharia doesn't recognize the separation of church and state, has a medieval understanding of equal rights and sanctions treating Christians and Jews as second-class citizens who must pay a tax to receive Muslim protection. In other words, to "demean themselves as good citizens" in a "sharia-compliant" America is something very different from what George Washington would have understood.

I'll sum up, at the risk of oversimplifying: Muslims -- at least the Muslims involved in Cordoba House -- think that society should be run according to Islamic precepts. And my response is: Of course they do!

To my liberal, agnostic eyes, though, that doesn't appear all that different from, well, any other religious group -- or, admittedly, that different from secularists who'd like to get through the political day without having to argue against somebody else's faith. There are very few people who think that society shouldn't be run according to their particular view of the universe.

Let's take the Southern Baptists. Here are some excerpts from a resolution "on political engagement" members of the convention approved in 2008:

WHEREAS, Christians acting as the salt of the earth and the light of the world (Matthew 5:13-16) have a responsibility to engage their culture, including participating in the political process; and

WHEREAS, Candidates for political office seek the endorsement of Christians for their candidacies; and

WHEREAS, Christians exercising their rights as responsible citizens may choose to endorse candidates for political office as part of the exercise of their engagement of culture; and

WHEREAS, Christians should seek to apply their spiritual and moral values to the political process rather than politicize the church;

(snip)


now, therefore, be it

RESOLVED, That we urge Christians to engage the culture through discipleship within the churches and through participation in the democratic public policy and political process in order to help fulfill the kingdom mandate taught in the Bible and expressed in the Baptist Faith and Message “to bring industry, government, and society as a whole under the sway of the principles of righteousness, truth, and brotherly love,” while always protecting freedom of conscience; and be it further

RESOLVED, That we encourage our churches regularly to teach and preach biblical truth on moral issues and to urge their members to vote according to their beliefs, convictions, and values; and be it further

RESOLVED, That we call on candidates for political office to endorse the Judeo-Christian beliefs, convictions, and values upon which society should rest.

Now, see, I find that last part alarming -- the Constitution pretty clearly states there should be "no religious test" for public office, but the Southern Baptist Convention believes candidates should have to pass the test anyway. They may not be at odds with the letter of the law, but it's certainly against the spirit. And the Southern Baptist Convention does this all the time, letting officials know they don't want gay people to serve in the military or have marriage rights or even have the right to hold a job! Baptists aren't just stating personal preferences: They're stating that American society should be run along Southern Baptist lines.

But let's not pick on merely the examples I find objectionable. Let's take a look at a rather more liberal church, one whose beliefs are somewhat closer to my own: The Episcopal Church of America. Here's a list of legislation passed by church leaders at their 2009 convention -- there's a condemnation of "first strike" military action, a condemnation of the invasion of Iraq and America's "sin committed in Iraq," and even a call to end the U.S. embargo in Cuba. Episcopalians, in other words, want the United States to run its foreign policy along lines acceptable to a branch of the Church of England!

How crazy is that?

Well, it's both kinda crazy and not-so-crazy. It is -- again from my agnostic eyes -- a little weird that we let our speculations about the possibility of a divine entity who may or may not exist guide how we organize our society. But in my warmer, wiser moments, I realize that politics are an expression of values -- and that an invidual's values are shaped by their religion, or shape the religion itself.

On the other hand: America's about as secular as it ever has been in its history. And it's still pretty religious. Somehow, we've survived pretty well without becoming a theocracy and without banning Bibles from public streets. So maybe it's ok if I recognize that the tensions exist, but that they haven't overwhelmed our system. Southern Baptists surely have an influence on our governance, but they don't out-and-out run things. What's more, Southern Baptists have attempted to influence and shape American governance in a decidedly conservative way -- and yet there's never been any serious effort, that I know of, to deny them their First Amendment rights of worship. Why would we treat Muslims differently?

Most of us in this country are Christians and Americans and find ways to meld those two identities without threatening the good order of society -- and in lots of cases, society even benefits. And so it is, I believe, with the vast majority of American Muslims.

What's interesting to me, finally, is that my friend Ben and many other conservatives are so opposed to the possible rise of sharia law to dominate and shape America -- nevermind that Islam's numbers are too few to ever really permit that to happen, nevermind there's already a few mosques in New York -- that they seemingly don't have any real confidence in Amerca's ability to shape Islam right back. You know who actually has that confidence? The people behind the Cordoba House proposal in New York.

With the flexibility permitted by America’s religious freedom and openness, American Muslims can catalyze innovations in the global process of ijtihad (Islamic legal interpretation)just as American Jews and Christians birthed new developments in their faiths. They represent the diversity championed by both their own religious history and the heritage of the country in which they reside, positioning them uniquely to reach out to other Muslims and Americans and thus help close the gap in understanding.

Well, yeah. But if we throw up our hands in fear when somebody wants to build a mosque -- or if, worse, we act contrary to our own laws and values and decide not to let the mosque be built -- well, then, we may well blow that opportunity.

Ben closed his portion of the column with these words: "Let us give bigotry no sanction -- and be ever watchful of those who would exploit American openness and freedom to do just that." I couldn't agree more. And I'd add a second statement: "Let us give bigotry no sanction -- and be ever watchful of those who would end American openness and freedom to do just that." And that's the problem posed by those who would refuse the construction of a mosque near Ground Zero. Right now, it's a greater threat than any posed by a hypothetical imposition of sharia law on American citizens.

I still don't believe the Tea Party: Eavesdropping edition

I've long believed the Tea Party phenomenon is mostly about sore loserdom -- the people who've been taking to the streets and raising hell at Congressional town meetings these last 18 months say they're alarmed at deficits and runaway government spending. But they were nowhere to be found while those same things were getting started under George W. Bush.

The complaints of Tea Parties have, generally, fallen under the rubric of "tyranny." The Obama Administration is infringing on our freedoms, it is said, to a degree unimaginable outside of historically extreme circumstances. But really, I don't believe the Tea Partiers on this front, either. Why? Well, let's look at today's Washington Post:

The Obama administration is seeking to make it easier for the FBI to compel companies to turn over records of an individual's Internet activity without a court order if agents deem the information relevant to a terrorism or intelligence investigation.

Critics say its effect would be to greatly expand the amount and type of personal data the government can obtain without a court order. "You're bringing a big category of data -- records reflecting who someone is communicating with in the digital world, Web browsing history and potentially location information -- outside of judicial review," said Michael Sussmann, a Justice Department lawyer under President Bill Clinton who now represents Internet and other firms.

I get -- even if I don't agree -- why Hayek-loving Tea Party folks think, say, slightly higher tax rates are a harbinger of a coming Orwellian world. What I don't get is their silence on the ability of government to reach into your private communications with fewer and fewer restrictions. (Read this for even more scariness.)

It could be that we'll suddenly see a spate of Tea Party criticism on this front -- but again, it'll be coming from people who were silent on this same subject during the Bush years. If they speak up now, they're hypocrites. And if they don't speak up now, well, they're hypocrites. Or maybe just extremely misguided: tyranny is not limited to merely economic matters, but our Tea Party friends don't seem to know that.

The shame of it is, if Tea Partiers accused the Obama Administration of enabling tyranny in this matter, I'd agree with them. As Kevin Drum posted: You know, if I'd wanted Dick Cheney as president I would have just voted for him."

In any case, it all boils down to this: I still don't believe the Tea Party.

UPDATE: Glenn Greenwald points out an ACLU report showing the Obama Administration is preserving the Bush Administration's worst civil liberties abuses. (Sigh.) Is Ralph Nader running in 2012?

Tom Corbett still really thinks that unemployed people are lazy

Looks like Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Corbett has decided to double-down on the "unemployed people are lazy" theme in fairly cowardly fashion:

Speaking to reporters after a campaign stop in Delaware County, the Republican nominee for governor noted that newspapers across the state are carrying line after line of help-wanted ads.

"Are there jobs out there? . . . How would you interpret that?" he asked.

Corbett reported seeing one newspaper page that he said promised thousands of jobs listings in print and online.

"You guys asked me if there are jobs out there," he said to a pair of reporters. "If I am a common citizen, the average citizen, and I look at a newspaper . . . and I see jobs - what's the answer to that question."

Asked if he was implying that the unemployed were not taking advantage of these listings, he said no-adamantly no-he wasn't saying that.

But he clearly is saying that. And he's being a punk by not owning up to the clear implications of his statement.

Now: Corbett has spent his career bouncing in and out of employment by the state of Pennsylvania; he's an attorney by profession, so I'm going to hazard a guess that he's rarely, if ever, had to seek a job by going through the classifieds of his local paper. It's not like turning on a water faucet -- hey, there's water! It's a more difficult and tedious process than that: You look for jobs that seem to match your skills and experience -- and, if you're lucky, your interests -- and then you further weigh if the jobs in question can provide enough income to sustain you and your family.

By the time you've gone through that process, there are -- for many people -- rather fewer than "thousands" of jobs available.

Corbett, like many other people, ignore the math: Nationwide right now, there are five job seekers for every job opening. Even if there are thousands of classified ads, there are tens of thousands of people who need jobs. Corbett's a smart guy with lots of information resources at his disposal; he could know this if he wanted to. Maybe he does. But he's choosing to judge the state of the Pennsylvania economy based on anecdotal evidence.

There is a long tradition, of course, of Republicans stirring popular anger among the "haves" against the "have nots." Does the phrase "welfare queens" ring any bells? Right now, there are more have-nots than there've been for a long time -- and their ranks include a lot more of the "haves" than there used to be. The GOP is doubling down on its rhetoric, though. And it makes you wonder: Who will they turn to for votes when there are more have-nots than haves?

This is why I won't read the Philadelphia Inquirer in print

At right is today's front page of the Philadelphia Inquirer. It's a demonstration of why -- much as I'd like to support local journalism -- I can't bring myself to subscribe to this paper in print.

The big main story? The one that occupies the two-thirds of the space above the "fold" and is thus the main selling point to buy the paper off the rack?

It's a two-day-old story.

And it was written by the Los Angeles Times.

The first issue is one that print newspapers will always deal with. They simply can't hit the news with the same speed as the web. (The story broke late enough Sunday that the Inky, apparently, couldn't or didn't get it on Monday's front page.) And the Inky's editors, in all fairness, went with a story that analyzes the fallout from the WikiLeaks document dump instead of reporting it as "new" news.

The second issue, though, goes to the heart of the Inky's problems. It used to be one of the newspapers of national record, with bureaus and reporters around the world. It's not that paper anymore. But it still plays at being that paper, which is why readers -- and potential readers -- are treated to front-page stories from the Los Angeles Times. Which, given 21st century technology, they easily could've read ... in the Los Angeles Times.

How would I have designed today's front page differently? Tough to say. But the Inky needs a different organizing principle. It's a Philly-Philly suburbs-South Jersey paper, and that's what it ought to look like -- not like a warmed-over New York Times. Switch up the sections -- the front page and everything in the front section should be local stuff (except in extreme 9/11-style "great moments of history" situations) and all that wire copy describing stuff going on in places that aren't Philadelphia should be relegated to the second section.

There are good journalists working at the Inquirer. I don't mean to diss them. But the changes I'm describing probably should've happened five years ago. At least. New ownership is in place. It's time to make the Inky more relevant to the communities it covers, and the front page is the best place to start.

Dennis Prager: Liberals hate conservatives

National Review's Dennis Prager departs from dispensing invaluable marriage advice to offer similarly valuable insight into human nature. Liberals, he says, hate conservatives.

Granting the exceptions that all generalizations allow for, conservatives believe that those on the left are wrong, while those on the left believe that those on the right are bad.

I'll grant that there are lots and lots of liberals who feel this way. But Prager's blithe dismissal of similar phenomena on the right suggests he's not dealing with the issue honestly. Because there's lots of conservatives who think that liberals are evil. For example: I was attending a conservative evangelical Mennonite college in 1992 when Bill Clinton was elected president. I was one of the few students to openly support Clinton for president that year; many of my fellow students and faculty warned of literally Biblical, literally Apocalyptic consequences if he attained office. (The night of the election, a student in my dormitory openly wished for Clinton's assassination; I chalk that up more to immaturity than any actual desire.) This was not -- and is not, I think -- a narrowly held view. The whole existence of the "religious right" -- which a not-insignificant part of the conservative coalition -- is predicated on a Manichean view of the world: There's not really a distinction to be made in these circles (Prager's opinions aside) between "wrong" and "evil."

Prager might respond by saying that he's speaking only of "elite liberal journalists," and that "elite conservative journalists" don't demonstrate this behavior. But, uh, Andy McCarthy is making a career right now out of his belief that liberals and terrorist Muslims "are working together to sabotage America." Dinesh D'Souza took a different route, writing a whole (widely panned) book about how the 9/11 attacks were a response to American decadence unleashed by the left. The whole Tea Party movement is predicated on the idea that Barack Obama is a budding tyrant -- a belief promoted by, um, the conservative media. These are not the words and ideas of people who think the left is merely wrong; they're born out of a clear belief that liberals, if not inherently evil, at least act in evil ways.

More Prager:

Second, when you don’t confront real evil, you hate those who do. You can see this on almost any school playground. The kid who confronts the school bully is often resented more than the bully. Whether out of guilt over their own cowardice or out of fear that the one who confronted the bully will provoke the bully to lash out more, those who refuse to confront the bully often resent the one who does.

This analogy makes. no. sense. People LOVE the guys who stand up to the bullies -- in almost every case, almost without exception. That's why liberals and conservatives alike are fans of "Star Wars" "Karate Kid" "My Bodyguard" and virtually every great movie that features a confrontation between powerful evil and underdog good guys. It's the ultimate bully versus the standup guy scenario.

Where liberals might differ from conservatives is discerning who is a bully and how to deal with them. Liberals haven't always been right on this score, but neither have conservatives. And I'll go ahead and say this: Almost all of populist politics -- whether practiced by the left or the right -- can be boiled down to a powerful cultural desire to stand up to bullies.

In any case, Prager's argument is silly. It suggests that he doesn't actually know that many people on the left -- and, weirdly, maybe not that many people on the right.

Andy McCarthy in a nutshell

Abigail Thernstrom of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, replying to Andy McCarthy in National Review today:

McCarthy’s screed falls far short of reasonable disagreement, offering superheated and sarcastic rhetoric where evidence and logical analysis are needed.

Sounds about right.

The Trig Truther Theory: Why I'm Giving Up on Andrew Sullivan

Here's what we've always known about Andrew Sullivan, blogger: He's smart, but he's also passionate, contrarian, paranoid and reckless. On his best days, that's made him an entertaining -- if sometimes annoying -- read. (And important: His work on the Bush Administration's torture policies was crucial.) On his worst days as a blogger (we'll put aside his career as an editor) it's led him down the path of outright calumny.

But I've kept reading. Why? In part because he's just about the biggest thing going in the political blogosphere. His traffic, it's well known, forms the cornerstone that keeps other very smart blogs alive at The Atlantic's website. He's a one-man industry. In recent years, he's added staff that allowed him to function as a kind of meta-blogger -- he didn't necessarily comment on every story or debate out there, but at the very least he would point you to the most important debates happening elsewhere on the web.

I think, though, that it is finally time for me to stop reading Andrew Sullivan. His pursuit of the "truth" about Trig Palin's parentage has gone from weird to boring to, now, simply embarrassing.

It was Sullivan's self-righteous reply to guest-blogger Dave Weigel, I think, that finally broke me of the Sullivan habit. Here's the critical bit.

We journalists are and should remain the lowest of the low life forms in a political democracy. We should not be hobnobbing with the powerful, let alone bragging about it, and begging for scooplets to get Politico-style pageview moolah. We should not be garnering our reputations and angling to get on cable or playing water-slides with the people we cover.

We should be asking the most uncomfortable questions of the many frauds and phonies and charlatans who are in public office - and enjoy being despised by the legions of true-believers who actually credit the endless bullshit shoveled out into the public by frauds like Palin.

Broadly speaking, there's nothing to quibble with here. More narrowly, though, Sullivan is adopting the pose of disingenuous conspiracy mongers everywhere -- from 9/11 truthers on back through the decades -- and it goes something like this: "I'm not saying (preposterous statement here). I'm just asking questions!"

There is, however, asking questions and asking questions. I get that Sullivan believes his questions about whether Trig Palin is really Sarah Palin's son could, supposedly, be easily answered if she'd just release her medical records. I get that she's not done that. And I get that Sullivan believes there are enough inconsistencies about Palin's birth story -- how her water broke in Texas, and how she flew back to Alaska to give birth -- that warrant questioning.

At this point, though, it is fairly obvious that final answers won't be forthcoming. That doesn't necessarily mean that Sullivan should stop asking -- but in the manner of conspiracy theorists everywhere, his constant repetition of questions without obtaining new or satisfactory has crossed the line from mere question-asking into outright advocacy of a theory. The questions become, themselves, the evidence. Sullivan obviously doesn't believe this -- he's doing journalism, after all! -- but that doesn't change the reality of it.

This wouldn't be so troublesome, I suppose, except that Sullivan's characteristic self-righteousness causes him to castigate other journalists who believe their energies are better spent elsewhere. Journalists don't want to look like fools for pursuing a line of questioning that they (rightly) suspect they'll never prove, and he treats them with contempt. It's all a little embarrassing and painful to read Sullivan assault them. It feels, in fact, like following a distant relative's descent into madness -- in real time.

And to what end? If Sullivan is right and Sarah Palin faked her pregnancy to raise her grandchild as her own -- well, so what? Though some of the story might've played out in public, it's essentially a private affair. The things that Sarah Palin believes and wants to do this country are bad enough. Focus on them, instead of unprovable theories that raise more doubt in the public mind about the questioner than the object of the questions.

Andrew Sullivan has every right to keep pursuing this story. But I can't imagine it's worth my time as a reader to follow his futile pursuit. I'm removing his feed from my RSS feeder. I can find crazy elsewhere.