A reader from Texas writes to tell me that ‘Doctor Pepper’ should be written ‘Dr. Pepper’. He’s right. My mistake. The only time I tried that essence of evil I threw the can away so quickly that I cannot have had time to fix the correct spelling in my mind. Another reader (also from the Lone Star state) e-mails that there is a ‘Dr. Pepper’ museum in Waco, Texas.

Now, I’m not saying that Dr. Pepper devotees can be compared with an esoteric religious sect, but…

We have a reader in the Netherlands! Hans from Holland writes to say that he checks out the Corner ‘every day’ because he likes ‘to read about the free world. Good guy that he is, Hans will be voting for Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

One question from the suits:

Hans, do you have a subscription to NRODT?

That revolting despotism currently known as ‘Saudi’ Arabia is apparently interested in joining the WTO. The New York Sun is reporting (no link available) that, needless to say, the ‘Kingdom’ is hedging discussion about any application with numerous caveats. Unsurprisingly, this totalitarian state is, for example, not prepared to liberalize its ‘audio-visual’ sector. In addition, The Sun quotes Arab News as saying that Saudi Arabia will “not compromise its ‘unique status’ as the home of Islam’s holiest sites for the sake of joining the WTO”.

At this stage in the proceedings, it would be much more interesting to know whether the country’s government is prepared to take meaningful steps to change the country’s ‘status’ as a source of financial and ideological support for Islamic extremism. Until it does, this greedy, grasping and venomous regime should be told to shove off.

We’ve mentioned Somali refugee Ayaan Hirsi Ali on the Corner before. She’s the woman living in Holland who had to go into hiding after the death threats that followed her ‘admission’ that she was no longer a practicing Muslim. Now she is standing for election to the Dutch parliament. She’s interviewed in today’s Daily Telegraph.

Multiculturalism is, she believes, a calamitous mistake born of "a misplaced sense of guilt or pity". She notes that it has allowed militant imams "preaching hate" to indoctrinate youths in segregated schools, all heavily subsidized by the Dutch taxpayer. According to the report, she is “demanding an immediate end to state funding for 700 Islamic clubs, often run by hard-line clerics.”

Quite right.

I don’t know if this will be read anyone in the Netherlands, but if it is, here’s a message:

Vote for Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

Here’s an excellent article by the Cato Institute's Doug Bandow on why it is not in America’s interest for the UK to sign up for the Euro. He’s right, of course, but, much more important (to me anyway), it’s not in Britain’s interest either.

Via blogger Iain Murray.

There’s trouble in Greenland. Who knew? Apparently, the government has fallen because of a row over the decision by a senior civil servant to summon a “healer” to drive evil spirits and “negative energy” out of government offices in Greenland’s capital, the marvelously monosyllabic Nuuk.

Evil spirits? Negative Energy? It’s just so much merde, but don’t tell Cherie Blair, wife of poor old Tony. She’s famous for her ‘bio-electric’ pendant filled with ‘magic crystals’ designed to ward off harmful rays from computers and mobile phones. More recently, she has, reportedly, taken to chatting to the dead, a weakness of another 'first lady' that I could mention. What is wrong with these people?

My own personal favorite tale of such madness comes from this account (recounted with relish in the Blair-hostile Daily Mail) of Tony and Cherie on holiday in Mexico:

“They stripped to their swimming costumes for a rebirthing ceremony in which they screamed in a special hut as they smeared each other with mud from the jungle, together with water melon and papaya, while ancient Mayan songs were chanted.”

So much for the Enlightenment.

France has never been known as the home of free speech, but even by the standards of that benighted country this is a new low point:

A French court has just ordered a magazine to pay Beaujolais producers libel damages of $300,000 for denouncing their product as ‘fermented fruit juice’ and quoting a wine guru who referred to Beaujolais as a “vin de merde”.

That’s tough criticism? Those French judges should hear what I have say about Doctor Pepper.

Meanwhile all lovers of liberty – and good wine - should boycott Beaujolais.

Today's Newsday gives a somewhat positive review to Mr. Sterling. As it is revealed in the article (and presumably in the episode tonight), Sterling hesitates to accept the governor's appointment to serve as senator because his own father was in politics and was not around during his childhood years. Family breakdown leads to liberalism -- Q.E.D.

I've been re-reading Tom Wolfe for an upcoming NRO piece I've just finished. In my old copy of his out-of-print anthology The Purple Decades, I found this golden passage describing a fictional "Modern Churchman." It was written in the 1970s, but it sure adds context to current events, which didn't emerge from nowhere. Wolfe writes:

He was a socially acceptable but obscure minister to the Tassel Loafer & Tennis Lesson Set until the day in 1975 when he announced that he was a pederast. He not only announced it, he enunciated his theory that the sexual life of the child was an essential part of, not an obstacle to, the spiritual life of the child, and that anyone who doubted that God had created a link of sexual attraction between generations was an upland Tennessee aborigine.

When he held a Holy Roller Disco Night in the sanctuary and urged the recitation of the prayer book 'in tongues,' he was featured in the Religious sections of both Time and Newsweek, and his elevation to bishop was said to be imminent.

Kentucky State Representative Susan Westrom has introduced legislation to abolish the legal confidentiality of statements made in confession to a priest (or by people of other faiths speaking to a minister, rabbi, etc.) According to Westrom's bill, "The privilege shall not extend to any communication relating to the neglect or abuse of a minor child." Should the bill become law, it will deter parents or other caregivers from seeking the help of priests and other religious counselors -- especially since aggressive social workers tend to define "neglect" very broadly.

The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights explains: "This bill does not touch tangentially on church-state relations—it cuts to the core. The sanctity of the confessional is one of the most important elements of the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Indeed, it is impossible to fathom how the sacrament could operate if the government is permitted to penetrate the privacy of the priest-penitent relationship. At stake is both the religious liberty clause of the First Amendment and the establishment clause....the cases of child sexual abuse that have come to light have had nothing to do with information learned in the confessional."

The Kentucky bill -- and similar bills sure to be introduced in other states -- should be understood not simply as expressions of hostility towards religious freedom, but as important steps toward the total information state, in which all legal claims to privacy from state surveillance, such as the accountant-client privilege, are under attack.

Iraq must train convoys of martyrs in belief, and this will be possible only by [studying] the Koran. The Koran is the most energizing [book] for heroism and honor, and there is no room in it for weakness and laxness. 'Fight them; Allah will punish them at your hands, and will humiliate them, and will heal the hearts of the believers' [Koran 9:14]. Those knowledgeable in the Koran can, by Allah's will, as is happening in Palestine, shock the foundations of the enemy, whatever its strength. They can, with Allah's help, defeat it, however cruel it is. How great is the difference between those who seek martyrdom and those who seek [the life of] this world!

"Should doctors be required to provide non-English-speaking patients with translators?"

Yes 234 (11%)

Dreher gets sent to Holland. Miller gets to go play with cool stuff at NORAD. Now Derbyshire gets a column in the magazine. And all I get from Rich is some oblique fatwah about extending my banishment to soyland? What the Hell is that? What's next? Ponnuru gets assigned an in depth-expose on the mis-use of rum at Club Meds? Maybe when my soy-fiesta is over, Rich will let me write a first "hand" story on the sorry state of proctological medicine in Third World countries. I say it again: Rich Lowry is a terrible, terrible person.

Proof that there is no pleasing some people may be found in this complaint from a Bosnian woman regarding the accents of her interpreters:

Hataija Pehlic, a Bosnian woman of 50, suffers from depression. At St. Luke's Hospital in 2000, she was served by a succession of phone interpreters on a squawk box for two hours a day during a month of psychotherapy. They spoke a common language, "but I felt really bad," Ms. Pehlic says through one of Ms. Brown's interpreters. "They had different accents" -- accents, that is, of Serbians and Croatians, the enemies who had killed her son and driven her husband to suicide during the Balkan bloodshed of the 1990s.

"Should doctors be required to provide non-English-speaking patients with translators?"

http://www.nice-tits.org/

A couple dozen readers -- please no more -- have sent me emails about what a tear tattoo by your eye means. Answers include: It shows you've been in jail, a gang, a rape gang etc. Some say it also means you've been raped or done some raping. Again, I don't know if this O'Keefe shmo actually had a tear-drop tat or whether he simply had a really unfortunate birthmark. If someone actually watched the segment, they might be able to clarify for me. As for the actual meaning of the tattoo, my sense is that it varies.

Corner reader Jeff Stockwell of Stockwell Design writes: "Working in advertising I find most of the copy that adorns web sites is either written by designers or clients. These people for the most part are not writers. I would guess that a professional writer came nowhere near the copy for that web site. And students can't write because unless they are being taught by a writer, they're not learning the correct skills. Being able to diagram a sentence qualifies one to be an English teacher, but not a writer.

"A woman I know is a professor of English (and writing, I think) somewhere in Texas. When I used to ask her to write newsletter articles for me, I just wanted to kill myself they were so incomprehensible. She used to crow about winning writing awards."

Jonathan - I knew there was a reason why Tapped had lapsed into self-parody. You nailed it.

A reader who followed the links to the school I mentioned earlier is befuddled by the school's mission statement, which pledges the school "to provide an environment conducive to the development and growth of the academic, social, and physical skills of each student by improving instruction and performance
outcomes, providing a safe and orderly school climate, and promoting
community involvement. "

Says the reader: "Environment conducive? Improving instruction and performance outcomes... ? Why is it educators can't write?"

Which prompts the question: why can't students write? Perhaps it starts here. This kind of asinine jargon is depressingly common, even among people who write for a living. I used to work for a newspaper whose bosses were thrilled when they came up with a "mission statement" that vowed to make the paper the community's "most valued information provider." Can you imagine H.L. Mencken or any of the great ink-stained wretches working for an "information provider"? If news executives want to figure out why fewer people are reading newspapers, maybe they should stop thinking of their enterprises as "information providers," which signals sterility, and start thinking of them as newspapers.

Ken Nichols O’Keefe is the guy I "debated" today on CNN International. Of course, I could be wrong, but he struck me as a barnacle of clichéd propaganda masquerading as a man of integrity. He’s leading a bunch of "human shields" to Iraq. He seemed to believe that risking his life automatically made his arguments right and honest. As if were I to agree to be a human shield for the Mafia, my action would be incontrovertibly morally correct. In the few short minutes we were on, the former U.S. Marine and soon to be Baath Party meat-prop suggested America was in on the 9/11 attacks, was going to war for oil, called me a coward (yawn), and mentioned a half-dozen times that Bush didn’t win a majority of the votes in the last election. It really is difficult to exaggerate how much this guy represents the pugnacious ignorance of the anti-war left. If Lenin were alive he would brief his staff on the meaning of "useful idiot" with this guy’s picture. It was hard to tell from the monitor, so I might be mistaken but I believe he has a fake tear tattooed next to his eye. For whom he metaphorically weeps, I could not tell you. But I can guess.

Several readers have been quick to alert me to the fact that Orwell later recanted these views. I knew that. But A) he was more right the first time and B) his recantation had more to do with forgiving the inner motives of the pacifists than the objective consequences of their actions. In other words, he wanted to withdraw the assertion that pacifists were inwardly pro-Nazi. I do not believe he changed his mind about the fact that pacifist actions were pro-Nazi in their results. Some excerpts from his 1944 column on the subject:

"....We are told that it is only people’s objective actions that matter, and their subjective feelings are of no importance. Thus pacifists, by obstructing the war effort, are ‘objectively’ aiding the Nazis; and therefore the fact that they may be personally hostile to Fascism is irrelevant. I have been guilty of saying this myself more than once.

".... This is not only dishonest; it also carries a severe penalty with it. If you disregard people’s motives, it becomes much harder to foresee their actions. For there are occasions when even the most misguided person can see the results of what he is doing. Here is a crude but quite possible illustration. A pacifist is working in some job which gives him access to important military information, and is approached by a German secret agent. In those circumstances his subjective feelings do make a difference. If he is subjectively pro-Nazi he will sell his country, and if he isn’t, he won’t. And situations essentially similar though less dramatic are constantly arising.
In my opinion a few pacifists are inwardly pro-Nazi, and extremist left-wing parties will inevitably contain Fascist spies. The important thing is to discover which individuals are honest and which are not, and the usual blanket accusation merely makes this more difficult."

"In so far as it hampers the British war effort, British pacifism is on the side of the Nazis and German pacifism, if it exists, is on the side of Britain and the USSR. Since pacifists have more freedom of action in countries where traces of democracy survive, pacifism can act more effectively against democracy than for it. Objectively the pacifist is pro-Nazi."

"Pacifism is objectively pro-Fascist. This is elementary common sense. If you hamper the war effort of one side you automatically help out that of the other. Nor is there any real way of remaining outside such a war as the present one. In practice, 'he that is not with me is against me.'''

West Wing promises to be the height of somber and serious drama compared to the offal heading our way in the form of "Mr. Sterling." "Mister" -- get it? As in Mister Smith, who went to Washington. "Sterling" as in "Sterling" silver, which is what his heart must be made of beneath that broad hunky expanse of man-chest (Prediction: we see the Senator with his shirt off within the first three episodes). Put the two together and it equals a weekly sprinkler system of crap. From the promos alone, the schtick seems to be that Mr. Sterling looks like Warren Beatty (before Beatty needed diamond-cutter lighting to prevent his forhead from looking like Oklahoma with a hairline), talks like John McCain channelling Oprah Winfrey and votes like Paul Wellstone. We already know he'll be an independent and that he likes to march with farm-workers. But, unlike most senators, he's actually willing to talk to them! Bless his heart. Maybe it's the soy milk in my veins or the nitrogen bubbles in my brain, but I think this may be the show most in need of the regular intrusion of Monty Python-esque bloodthirsty pirates to slaughter everyone in the room.

Again, the show reached a new plateau on the way to the bottom. I feel the need to watch it as a matter of professional obligation now more than anything else. The show does inform how millions of people think politics and liberalism work. But, as Hans and Franz used to say, listen to me now or believe me later: I would rather stop a weed whacker with my tongue than watch the heart-wrenching romantic barf-o-rama that next week's show promises to be. Watching C.J. deal with her ailing father would be awful enough. But watching her get smoochy-faced with Matthew Modine defies several clauses of the Geneva Convention.

Sorry, maybe it's the soy-dementia, but I had awful writer's block today. Regardless, I'm done. It's in K-Lo's hands. Now I've got to go to the park and then the vet -- both for Cosmo's benefit (don't worry, the vet trip is for a check-up only).

Man, complaining about my deadlines and mentioning my dog again, Tapped must be aghast.

Some people -- especially readers who've received snarky emails back from me -- might be wondering why I'm a bit cranky these days. I'll tell you why, and I am not making this up. It's because I've spent the last week on an all-vegan diet (not vegetarian, mind you. That would be cake -- which I can't eat because it's got eggs and butter in it). Stop laughing, it's true. Rich Lowry, the most awful human being on the planet, insisted it would make a great article for me to go all-soy and write about it for the mag. It has been awful. I can't talk about it any more here because I have to save the material for the mag. But, I thought I owed people an explanation. Still, if you have any insights, recipes, or vegan bistro suggestions, please let me know.

Good piece by Nick Schulz on an enviro-smear.

Taking a full two days to "respond" to my critique of their silly self-congratulatory discussion of the draft, the gang at Tapped ignores all of the substance of my remarks to accuse me -- and the Corner -- of being unserious, in a "I know you are but what am I?" tone. I guess, it's a fair point as far as pot-calling-the-kettle-blackism goes. But that doesn't go very far. First of all, I challenge them to call my dog unserious to his face. They shall meet the wrath that is Cosmo. Or they may just get a yawn and a tennis ball. Fickle is his warrior's heart.

More important, I think Tapped is playing the role of the earnest liberal to pitch perfect perfection (is that redundant?). There's a huge difference between not taking yourself too seriously and not being serious. Tapped seems to take itself extremely seriously. While I make jokes about my dog, my belly and the pecuniary perfidy of the suits. Vive la difference! But I'll stack the substance of my arguments -- and the Corner's -- against theirs any day. Their assertion that conservatives don't want a draft because it might make America a healthier society is a perfect example. The fact that there's no humor or irony (never mind evidence) in their argument makes it almost impossible to take it seriously. Do you guys even know any conservatives? Anyway, maybe I was too harsh. But such liberal earnestness irks me mightily. At times I expect them to exclaim "And if you elect me student body president, we'll have the best senior year ever!"

To distract attention from the Jonah/Rich 'blank space' controversy, I thought I would post the following rather disturbing piece of information from the New Scientist:

"Light-speed gravity means that if the Sun suddenly disappeared from the centre of the Solar System, the Earth would remain in orbit for about 8.3 minutes - the time it takes light to travel from the Sun to the Earth. Then, suddenly feeling no gravity, Earth would shoot off into space in a straight line."

Thanks, I think, to blogger Sasha Castel for highlighting this new worry.

..me, but

I don't

like big

white spaces in The Corner

like some poem by e.e. cummings

From a reader:

I agree with your style of posting the text of e-mails. However, I don't think openly challenging Rich is a good way to get that raise you are looking for.

Some Bloggers, most notably Patrick Ruffini, are keen on making the 2004 the first "blogged" convention (Yes, I learned this through Instapundit). I think it's a perfectly fine idea, and the Corner will surely be all over both conventions. But, let me be the first to predict it will be a massive headache and not nearly the unmitigated success it will be billed as in the days and weeks leading to the conventions.

First of all, most people don't remember -- or care -- but the 2000 Democratic and Republican conventions was supposed to be the breakthrough events for web media. Voter.com (more properly named Voter.crap) spent millions on both conventions. Pseudo.com, the internet "televsion network," spent many more millions (Full disclosure: I had minimal relationships with both outfits -- though I was always outspoken in my skepticism). You could "speak out" on the web in real time. You could see the convention from a zillion different angles via webcam. The so-called media monopoly was going to be shattered. The problem is that nobody watched or cared, and not just because webcams are worse than television "cams."

Second, I predict thousands of Bloggers will try to get convention press passes and maybe a dozen will get them. This will in turn result in the Blogosphere claiming bias against them in much the same way Ralph Nader claims bias against the presidential debate commission. Depending on how shrill these complaints get, most of the Bloggers could be seen as whiners and oddballs, not serious journalists.

Or, the bloggers will be wildly over-hyped in advance of the conventions because the media invariably hypes media stories at the conventions, mostly out of lack of interesting material to report on. This in turn will build up the inevitable debunking stories.

But most important, while the conventions will be billed as the moment when Bloggers "come of age" -- just as they said about web news in 2000 -- the conventions wll highlight the handicaps of the Bloggers -- again, just as the 2000 conventions did for Voter.crap etc. You see, as is already the case, there will be vastly more commentary than there will be news. As it is, most reporters and pundits strain to find something, anything, worth talking about at the conventions. And these people have contacts, experience, etc. Adding a bunch of people who can't get interviews, don't know what they're doing etc. won't be a coup for the bloggers. Of course, a couple people will do great things, but thousands won't -- and it will show. Save this prediction.

When I post emails I block them off. For example:

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah blah, blah, blah blah, blah, blah blah, blah, blah blah, blah, blah blah, blah, blah blah, blah, blah blah, blah, blah blah, blah, blah blah, blah, blah blah, blah, blah blah, blah, blah.

When Rich posts emails he just dumps them into the Corner between quotation marks. I think my version is better, cleaner, more efficient etc. Does anybody disagree?

From the listserv of New York City homeschoolers, this list of Reasons Why Homeschooling Is Like Owning A Pet Rat:

<<1. Most people would never consider doing it.
2. To many people, it just doesn't seem right somehow.
3. Well, that's OK for your family, but we could never do it....
4. Is that legal?
5. You must be weird.
6. People hope you don't bring it up in conversation.
7. There are stereotypical images of both:
Rats smell, bite, are creepy; homeschoolers are
fundamentalists who stay home all day and shelter
their children from the world.
8. Everyone has a horror story to share:
Rats as big as cats attacking people; children held against
their will and abused by fanatic parents.
9. There is a suspicion you are irresponsible:
Aren't you afraid they will escape/bite/attract wild rodents?
Aren't you afraid they won't learn to socialize/read/function?
10. Family members will forward articles about:
how animals make people sick; how homeschooling is
anti-American and undemocratic.
11. You will be given gifts of workbooks/Lysol.
12. No matter how much you love spending time with your
homeschooled child/pet rat, you will never convince anyone
to try it themselves.
13. Friends and family will talk about you behind your back.>>

Dem Reps. Ralph Hall (TX), Charles Stenholm (TX), Ken Lucas (KY) and Gene
Taylor (MS) "declined to vote for their new leader," Rep. Nancy Pelosi, when
the House re-elected Speaker Dennis Hastert (AP)

A reader writes:

Jonah,

I'm with you on the bacon. In fact, I was tricked into buying the CD, "Sounds of Bacon" only to discover it was a CD of Francis Bacon poems.

I've got to finish my syndicated column. But first, the radio show went fine. Lots of agreement, smart people, not enough time to really duke it out on the disagreements. The highlight was when, in the midst of a conversation aabout natural rights and the like, a caller prefaced his question by inquiring as to whether or not Cosmo was doing ok. I said Cosmo's fine, but the truth is he was furious with me for leaving.

Second, Rod: I agree that labels have meaning, I never said that they don't. And I know you are deeply convinced by and invested in the crunchy con label being deeply significant. You may be right. But if you are -- and my skepticism is on record -- it's still an exception to the general rule that hyphenating every conservative camp into a intellectually intact and distinct group does more harm than good and distorts more than it reveals. But that's an argument for another day.

I gotta take out Der WunderHund and then I'm off to talk libertoid stuff for NPR. I think you can listen over the web at WBEZ.org. If it helps, I'll be doing the interview in the nude. They let me do that on the radio.

John Fonte has an outstanding piece on NRO today clarifying the conservative record on civil rights. I might have some quibbles about his ideological taxonomy of some Senators, but in general he’s absolutely right.

Mario Cuomo: "You have Rush Limbaugh. Rush Limbaugh tells one side of the story. He exaggerates. He hyperbolizes. He is a master entertainer. There's no question about that. He's very bright. He's probably a very good fellow, too. He does not discuss the issues. He does not debate the issues. He doesn't want to give you a full view of the issues. He won't even entertain a debate. He doesn't want any kind of a debate. And he pleases a lot of people because he says what they want to hear. So does Bob Grant here in New York. So does the Murdoch papers, the New York Post. We don't have counterparts on the liberal side of the agenda.
Donahue: "Why is that, Governor?"
Cuomo: "Because we believe in subtlety. We believe in telling the whole truth. We don't want to exaggerate. Look, they write their message with crayons. We use fine-point quills."

This reader makes a great point which I've thought about a bit and should have included:

Jonah, Excellent post. But it's application would logically have broader application that you haven't touched on... "Punky cons" and "conservatives who like punk music..." "Punky cons" is the language of the left. "Conservatives who like punk music..." should be the grammar of the right. Because the logic of this leads you to distinctions such as: "African-Americans" and "Americans who are of African descent..." (or any other ethnicity or group identity.) By allowing those "useful shorthands" to enter into the common language we then allow the left to help not only define the issues but also define the way the issue is thought about by the ideological middle. Sorta along the way the "pro-choice" slogan manipulates the opinion of the moderately informed... ("Choice? Who isn't in favor of choice?"). Granted, this is a subtle form of propaganda, but I think it is quite powerful over the long-term. And it's an art that the left has mastered.

In response to the punk stuff, a few readers have asked me what kind of music I like. I'm tempted to say, "the sound of sizzling bacon" and leave it at that. But basically, I'm your basic alternative/rock guy. I don't much like heavy metal -- with the exception of AC/DC -- and I don't like rap at all anymore. I did have a flirtation with Ska, and a local band called the Pietasters is still one of my favorites. I generally like music that wasn't intended for dancing. I used to love the Kinks and I still listen to Dire Straits, U2 and REM a lot. I even enjoy crunchy stuff from time to time like the Indigo Girls (who I actually appeared on stage with a couple years ago). In other words, my tastes are dull and conventional. I use music as background noise for when I'm writing and that's about it.

I am whole-heartedly with Mark Steyn on this one, though not necessarily because I have anything particularly interesting to say against or in favor of punk rock or because I'm an idolator of Steyn -- though both things are true. Rather, my agreement stems from my continuing objection with prefix conservatism. I define this as the tendency to mint new "schools" of conservatism based upon superficial distinctions or tastes. This objection explains some, though not all, of my problems with Rod's "Crunchy Con" stuff. I like the following things: women's prison movies, science fiction, comic books (Marvel comics particularly), dogs, TV (ah, TV, you'll never let me down), Jameson's Irish Whiskey, meat dishes covered with cheese dishes and so on. I do not think any of this necessarily distinguishes me as, say, a "Couch Conservative." But I am sure that if I were to ask "Are there any couch conservatives out there?" I would discover that there are legions of us. We could even claim to be the inactivist core of the conservative movement, and that our ideas and sentiments form a distinct school of conservative thought. But this would be stupid.

Why can't discussions of punk music be about, hmmm I dunno, punk music? If there are conservative points to be made, make them. If you need to talk about the overlap between conservatives and punk music more generally, you could talk about "conservatives who like punk music..." I know, I am making a big deal out of a very little thing. I admit, "Punky cons" is useful shorthand, less clunky than my way of doing things.

But my only point is that there's no end to this sort of prefix conservatism and it bespeaks a desire to be ideologically pure, something conservatism doesn't require. As with the crunchy con stuff, the rationale seems to be: I like A. "Typical" conservatives do not like "A." Therefore I am an "A" conservative; a different species. In other words, prefix conservatism assumes the existence of prixe fixe conservatism; a rigid, set menu of ideas that is immune from debate and reason. Yeah, of course, there are some bedrock values at the core of conservatism. But these values do not translate themselves automatically into a fixed set of policy proposals or personal tastes. Virtually all conservatives believe in a smaller government and fewer taxes. But there's hardly universal agreement about how to translate those values into programmatic reality. Some conservatives like punk music because they see it as a rebellion to hippydom. Interesting argument. Other conservatives hate punk because it represents villainy and sloth. Good argument there. But neither camp disagress with the other camp's values. The anti-punk people like rebellion against hippydom and the pro-punk people are not in favor of villainy and sloth. Their disagreement is over how these sentiments are translated or mistranslated into music. Anyway, that's how I see it.

Last weekend's post on 'binge drinking' has produced the following shocking confession from a reader in Virginia:

"I didn't realize...until now that, according to the CDC, my wife and I just binged our way through the entire holiday season--from Thanksgiving to the Feast of the Epiphany. There were many days that she and I barged our way through a pre-dinner cocktail, a bottle of wine, and an after-dinner drink and there was one stupendously enjoyable day when we nestled down by the fire, reading, playing games with the children, and drinking wine."

Worse, as the following passage reveals, this unrepentant binger has chosen to mock the helpful advice contained in his local newspaper:

"In an article I read yesterday in my local paper, [it was reported that one organization is now recommending] that people over 60 years of age have no more than one drink a day. This was accompanied by the usual, tiresome questionnaire meant to determine if you "have a problem." A quick glance at the questions made me realize that I had no hope of being classed as anything but a hopeless drunkard."

The shame, the shame...

Mark Steyn is worried that the British right is going to seed:

“I hardly dare open The Daily Telegraph these days. One morning it's an appreciation of Joe Strummer that reveals the former Clash punk to have been an "avid reader" of this paper. The next, it's the old Red Wedgie himself, Billy Bragg, holding forth as a Telegraph columnist. I turn to the leaders opposite only to find yet another call by Charles "Ganja" Moore for the legalisation of drugs...”

Yes, he's funny, that Steyn. I laughed smugly and then read a little further on:

“It's no better across the Atlantic. My friends at William F Buckley's National Review claim to have identified a phenomenon they call "punky-cons", punk conservatives who understand that the punk movement was a rebellion against the grey torpor of Callaghan's Britain and thus the advance guard of Thatcherism... “

Oh no, is the Corner in trouble with the sage of New Hampshire?

What is wrong with these guys? Every time I check their site it seems to get more arrogant and less serious. Have they given it to over to the interns? This is an excerpt from their meandering on-the-one-hand-on-the-other-hand discussion of the draft:

So we think military drafts are legitimate, and luckily constitutional jurisprudence agree with us. But is a draft a good idea at the present time? There are plenty of pros and cons. But ask yourself why conservatives so hate the idea of mandatory national service. (That is, a mandatory service obligation that can be discharged via military or civilian service.) One reason, we'd argue, is that it acts to break down class divisions and foster a sense of genuine community and shared sacrifice that threatens conservative projects and benefits liberal ones. The World War II draft helped integrate vast numbers of recent immigrants into the polity and give them a sense of Americanness. By making millions of returning soldiers eligible for the G.I. Bill and college loans, it helped create the postwar middle class. It was also a vehicle for social cohesion, personal dignity, upward mobility and the best kind of patriotism. As Kevin Drum puts it:

"Mandatory national service would oblige everyone who lives here to give something back to their country. It would allow teenagers to see firsthand what other parts of America are like, and what their fellow Americans are like. It would allow blacks to work alongside whites, rich alongside poor, and natives alongside immigrants. It would provide a large workforce that could be deployed both domestically and internationally. It would provide manpower for our inner cities and ambassadors to the third world. Military service would count, of course, but no one would be forced to serve in the military, and the vast majority of teenagers would serve in non-military areas."

Imagine a country where every American had this kind of experience under his or her belt. We could become a better, more generous, less class-snobby, more self-aware America. Conservatives are not eager to see it happen.

Now, there are good military reasons to oppose a full-scale military draft...

Come on. Tapped -- which refuses to take a stand itself on the draft -- is willing to see good arguments on both sides of the issue. But it finds it difficult to imagine that conservatives could have good reasons to be against it. Rather, the only conservative arguments against the draft are that it might disrupt our cushy fat cat lives and might require us to socialize with poor people and immigrants.
This is sophomoric liberal gassbaggery. Since when are conservatives the chief opponents to the draft? And since when are the conservatives opposing the draft caricatures from a Thomas Nast cartoon? Do liberals really believe that "class snobbiness" occurs only on the conservative side of the aisle. Pundits heal thyself.

Guess what? The conservative arguments against the draft are pretty much exactly the liberal arguments against the draft, although conservatives emphasize personal liberty a bit more. Regardless, Tappers, if you want to pat yourselves on the back for your Clintonian ability to be simultaneously for and against something, that’s fine. But do you really have to assume moral superiority to conservative straw men at the same time?

Okay the show is produced out of Chicago (WBEZ). It's called Odyssey and will be on in Chicago at 12 Noon their time. 1 PM is my time. Where else and when you can catch Odyssey is a mystery to me.

I'll be on NPR tomorrow from 1 to 2 P.M. in the Chicago market. I don't know if the show will rebroadcast elsewhere at different times. It doesn't play here in DC. Anyway, the interesting part is that I will be on with Richard Epstein of the University of Chicago and Tom Palmer of the Cato Institute. The subject? "What the Hell is Jonah doing on this show?" No, actually, it will be on libertarianism in America. Should be fun.

Okay the English is very bad -- almost to the point of seeming deliberately so. Also, the guy says he from Munich but his email address has a "yahoo.Fr" at the end, which I've always taken to be a French thing. Anyway, I think it's genuine in it's sentiment. Great reading, if by "great" you mean morally, intellectually and factually absurd and offensive.

Hi mister Jonah, good job you bash the french, but keep in mind that more and more people, here in Europe and everywhere else on this planet consider George Bush as a global A.Hitlerlike tyran with one goal, invade and kill all those johnny foreigners who are not like us, the us. Gas them, bomb them, bring big bukes in return, and finally kill this sad planet (which Adolf Bush and Richard Perle Himmler) will eventually do for the sake of their sad ass'o shitty pants.

The more I see the appaling apathy of the us citizens before the horrendous behaviour of the us government against arab minorities (for the sake of terrorism, oh oh, you bet, for the sake of extermination, and by the way, where are the Konzentration Lage, no, not those ones in Gaza and Cisjordany, Adolf Sharon filled them already, I mean those ones in AmeriKKKa?), the more I see before my terrified eye the behaviour of the german population between 1930 and 1939. Are the AmeriKKKans so blind and short sighted?

Bush poor people and poor country are on the brink, like those grim nasdaq, dow jones and standard and poors. Killed they are. No pension funds for poor old Sam. Sad that is. And sad sod o'nazi Bush does not even have a clue of the future he will trigger.

Cheers (from a Munich leftist and his british wife). God Bless AmeriKKKA and its Arabs killers.

(and don't tell I am an antisemite, my country hosts the biggest jew community in Europe, and none of them (bare a few hundred of orthomoronics) would EVER go to ISRAEL with SHARON in charge and the deadly Perle in Washington).
Cheers (again).

A news analyst at the Media Research Center sends me this, from today's White House press briefing:

12:37 p.m. EST

Helen Thomas, Hearst Newspapers columnist: "[In your] earlier briefing, Ari, you said that the President deplored the taking of innocent lives. Does that apply to all innocent lives in the world? And I have a follow-up."

[Ari Fleischer: "Well, Helen, I referred specifically to a horrible terrorist attack in Tel Aviv that killed scores and wounded hundreds. And the President, as he said in a statement yesterday deplores in the strongest terms the taking of those lives and the wounding of those people: innocents in Israel."]

Thomas: "The follow-up is, why does he want to drop bombs on innocent Iraqis?"

[Fleischer: "Helen, the question is how to protect Americans and our allies and friends."]

Thomas, interrupting: "They're not attacking. Have they laid a glove on you or on the United States, the Iraqs [sic] in eleven years?"

[Fleischer: "I guess you've forgotten about the Americans who were killed in the first Gulf War as a result of Saddam Hussein's aggression then."]

Thomas: "Is this your revenge? Eleven years of revenge?"

[Fleischer: "Now, Helen, I think you know very well that the President's position is that he wants to avert war and that the President has asked the United Nations to go into Iraq to help for the purpose of averting war."]

Thomas: "Would the President attack innocent Iraqi lives?"

[Fleischer: "The President wants to make certain that he can defend our country, defend our interests, defend the region, and make certain that American lives are not lost."]

Thomas: "Does he think they are a threat to us?"

[Fleischer: "There is no question that the President thinks that Iraq is a threat to the United States."]

Thomas: "The Iraqi people?"

[Fleischer: "The Iraqi people are represented by their government, if there was regime change-"]

Thomas: "So they will be vulnerable-"

[Fleischer: "Actually, the President has made it very clear that he has no dispute with the people of Iraq. That's why the American policy remains a policy of regime change. There's no question the people of Iraq-"]

Thomas: "That's a decision for them to make, isn't it? It's their country?"

[Fleischer: "Uh, Helen, if you think that the people of Iraq are in a position to dictate who their dictator is, I don't think that's been what history has shown. Ron [Fournier of AP]?"]

Thomas: "I think many countries don't have, people don't have the decision. Including us."

I confess that this has been an idea of my Dad's for decades. Ever since I was a little kid he's talked about it. Imagine how concerned I was when there was a villain on the Saturday morning "Super Friends" cartoon who wanted to do precisely the same thing my Dad wanted to do (for much the same reasons). Lots of people see my mom as a supervillain, but not dear ol' Dad. Today, however, I am more troubled by some of the Malthusian undertones to my Dad's premise. Since, of course, most natural resources are not becoming more scarce in an economic sense there's no need to shrink people.

My dad wants to shrink people

Some people are sending me movies that were technically never good in the first place but enjoyable nonetheless. "They Live" is a movie I love, but I would never actually claim it was a good movie in any technical sense. Silverado, on the other hand, seemed like a really good Western at first, but now I think it's very bad. Indeed, now that I think of it, many of the films directed by Larence Kasdan actually seemed like good movies at the time but were in fact not very good on closer examination.

Anyway here are some more nominations.

These I agree with:

Silverado
Johnny Dangerously
Night Shift
Saturday Night Fever
Vision Quest
All the Right Moves
Used Cars

These I disagree with:

Kelly's Heroes
Bachelor Party
Red Dawn

This isn't really a liberal media bias point, though it's not unrelated.

With the rise in cable news, the "issue environment" is often shaped by the repeated asking of the same questions over and over and over again. For example, I've now heard news anchors ask "Is North Korea a bigger threat than Iraq?" about 6 trillion times (yes, yes, I exaggerate for effect). Some people say yes, some say no. But with the exception of the most asinine anti-war liberals, few people make the bald argument that a more dangerous North Korea justifies doing nothing about Iraq. Instead, the answers are more nuanced and complicated.

But the question keeps getting asked over and over again, even though the assumption behind the question is idiotic. The way the question is asked, it sounds as though if the answer were "yes, North Korea is a bigger threat" than the conclusion would necessarily be that we should let Iraq off the hook. But no serious person thinks this. Indeed, it would be disastrous for the US to set the precedent that one nation's chicanery could cause it to abandon our goals and break our word. And yet, the question, "Is North Korea a greater threat?" keeps getting asked and asked and asked....

Mr. Goldberg, "movies we loved, but must now concede aren't in fact very good" Got to be..."TopGun." Killin' commies at mach 2 in the super-cool F-14 while diddlin' the stacked astrophysicist babe all while talkin' dirty on the radio! Plot??!! We don't need no stinkin' plot!

As I sit here reading the papers etc, I flashed around the dial and stumbled on "The Beastmaster" -- a terrible movie I really loved the first seven or eight times I saw it. It's funny, whatever happened to Marc Singer, the guy who plays the lead. He was also the protagonist in "V" and in a few other things and then completely disappeared. Anyway, I bring all of this up for two reasons. First, introducing the concept of "movies we loved, but must now concede aren't in fact very good" might be worthwhile here in the Corner. Second, and more important, the dog which rescues the young Beastmaster at the beginning of the film -- eventually giving his own life to do so -- looks remarkably like Cosmo. The movie dog is a bit heftier than Coz -- probably because he's a white German shepherd while Coz is a rich cocktail of the finest doggie ingredients -- but he looks like his brother regardless. While I look nothing like the Beastmaster, -- except when I'm talking to my dog.

Nestle has long been a company that the Left, anti-globalizers, and assorted NGOs have liked to blame for, well, just about everything. Recently the company has been threatened with an international boycott for trying to claim around $6 million from the Ethiopian government for assets confiscated by the country’s Marxist regime back in the 1970s. The objection is that Nestle should not be doing this at a time when famine may be approaching. The London Spectator takes up the story in a recent editorial and runs with it.

“Nestle wants the money in order to invest it within Ethiopia, and the world’s most successful food company has a better chance of investing the money than would any government, let alone the grasping, corrupt ones that have brought sub-Saharan Africa to its knees in recent decades. If the principle were to be established that African governments need not bother compensating the owners of nationalized assets, then the Mugabe tendency would have won a famous victory. No company would wish to risk investing in Africa again.”

Well, that last sentence might be an exaggeration, but the idea is sound. It reminds me of a meeting in Estonia in 1992, not long after that country recovered its independence from Moscow. I was interviewing the then prime minister, Mart Laar, for NRODT. Laar was a splendid reformer then in his early 30s, who, it was said, had two heroes – Margaret Thatcher and Axl Rose. At the time the privatization program was being bogged by down his government’s insistence in restoring the property nationalized by the Soviets to their original owners. As these confiscations dated back to the 1940s, tracking down the surviving owners or their descendants was a tricky and time-consuming business, but, as Laar explained, it was the correct thing to do. Not only was it morally right, but it would establish the principle that the notion of private property was something that endured beyond the whims of whatever regime happened to be in power at any one time. If Estonians (and foreigners) could believe that, they might be persuaded to invest in the future of that country.

He was right. For years now Estonia has been the most successful former Soviet ‘republic’.

The same thing needs to happen in Africa, but it won’t so long as dictatorship and kleptocracy persist, particularly when their effects are so often made worse by the interventions of those sanctimonious NGOs. The Spectator’s editorial includes a long discussion of the ‘formula milk’ controversy. It concludes as follows:

“The only thing standing in the way of Africa making the same transition to low infant-mortality rates is Western ideologues who want to see African people as noble peasants, unsullied by modern commerce. Nestle should be praised not boycotted…”

Quite.

There’s a review of historian Niall Ferguson’s new book on the British Empire in the Financial Times this weekend. Ferguson is an interesting and sensible writer. I’m not convinced that the same is necessarily true of his reviewer, one David Gilmour. Check out his final paragraph. It’s in response to Ferguson’s comment that the US is an empire “in denial” that should now accept its historic international responsibility:

“The United States as benevolent or enlightened imperialist? The power that endowed the world with Pinochet and similar dictators in three continents, that nearly obliterated Indo-China, that bombs Iraq for disobeying UN resolutions while encouraging Israel to flaunt them for half a century? A power that repudiates Kyoto and dismisses the threat of global warming so that it can continue to pollute the planet on the cheap? No, surely not. Until the current American administration begins to care about the rest of the world we can only be relieved if American imperialism remains “in denial”".

Lets put the question about whether the US should exercise an imperial role to one side, and ignore for now a debate on the matters highlighted by Gilmour in his indictment of the US record abroad. Instead just focus on certain minor matters that, strangely, he chose not to cite. Oh, let me think, here’s a few: World War II, the Marshall Plan, holding off and then routing the Soviet dictatorship during the Cold War, and, most recently, rescuing Europe from its own incompetence in the Balkans.

I wonder why he didn’t mention those examples.

There’s a lengthy article in this weekend’s Financial Times about George W. Bush and religion. The whole thing is worth a look, but a couple of sentences really caught my attention:

“Bush’s moral clarity unnerves people in Europe, an essentially post-religious continent that views as suspect or distasteful people who treat the political podium as a pulpit.”

Hmmm, yes and no. Britain’s liberal intelligentsia is currently trembling with excitement over Rowan Williams, the clownish Archbishop of Canterbury. Williams, a moral cretin and intellectual lightweight, is currently using his pulpit as, well, a political podium to bien pensant cheers. In addition, there are, of course, a good number of European-based Islamic clerics who use their position to push a political agenda. The response from those supposedly secular Continentals? Silence.

If I believed in reincarnation, I’d be calling now for the return of Voltaire. Is it too late to clone him?

Another sentence from the same piece:

“To the increasingly secular societies of Europe, Bush’s firm belief in Christ unsettles humanist non-believers who suspect that unparalleled military might and a born-again Christian moral conviction make for a gung-ho superpower, over-confident both in the justice of its course [sic] and the promise of a righteous victory.”

What nonsense. Alleged skepticism over Bush’s “firm belief in Christ” is just an excuse to enable Europeans to continue their endless moral equivocation. To take one counter-example, Winston Churchill was able to know a “righteous” cause when he saw it, and he had, I suspect, not a scrap of religious conviction. He’d be disgusted by the Continent’s current stance.

And rightly so.

Reason magazine's Jacob Sullum is a rare voice of sanity on the drink, drug and tobacco wars. Here he is on ‘binge drinking’.

As he says:

“One man's dinner party is another man's binge—especially if the other man has a degree in public health.”

He then discusses the CDC’s definition of a ‘binge’. As would be expected from those relentless activists for the nanny state, their idea of a binge – five drinks – is, as we have discussed before on the Corner, simply laughable. It also seems to be another example of American unilateralism. As Jacob points out:

“Then, too, the CDC's notion of a binge is different from that of alcohol researchers in other countries. Hanson notes that "a recent Swedish study...defines a binge as the consumption of half a bottle of spirits or two bottles of wine on the same occasion." An Italian study viewed eight drinks a day as normal, while "in the United Kingdom, bingeing is commonly defined as consuming 11 or more drinks on an occasion."”

“11 or more drinks”. That’s more like it.

Cheers, Jacob.

From today’s New York Times:

“Expecting a warm tribal welcome when they marched into Iraq to toss out the Ottomans, the British instead were met with hostility from the [local] tribes, which united to massacre tens of thousands of British soldiers.”

I’m no expert on Britain’s World War One campaign in Mesopotamia (roughly today’s Iraq), but, hard fought though it was, to talk of the “massacre” of tens of thousands of British troops is, I suspect, a wild exaggeration. The worst massacre was in the aftermath of the fall of Kut, a disaster that saw the capture of 12,000 British and Indian troops. They were sent north to Anatolia by the Turks on a Bataan-style death march in which 1,750 British and 2,500 Indians perished.

When it came to fighting the Brits, it was the Turks who showed the most enthusiasm. The attitude of the local Arabs (today’s Iraqis) towards defending their Ottoman overlords was more ambivalent.

As to the response to the inhabitants of Baghdad when the British finally arrived, one British historian (AJ Barker) writing in the 1960s described the scene as follows:

“It was a bewildering reception. Persians dressed like Joseph in long silken coats of many colours; red-fezzed oriental Jews in misfit European clothing; handsome Armenian refugees who had spent the night huddled in Christian churches, fearful of their fate if any of the fleeing Turks learned of their existence; lordly turbaned Muslims in black flowing robes – all turned out to cheer them as [the British] tramped through the Southern Gate. It was a gala display, a fiesta…”

Of course, assuming that the welcome would be like that this time would be to invite overconfidence and thus disaster, but, let's just say that the historical precedents are not as bleak as that article might suggest.

Re-read too that description of that wonderful polyglot, multi-faith Baghdad and mourn its loss.