As Jonah's article and Peter's post demonstrate, many conservatives seem to feel that the presence in America of millions of illegal immigrants, and the extreme unlikelihood (or perhaps undesirability) of their all being deported, is a powerful argument for the Bush amnesty.

Let me start by conceding that under almost any policy regime there will be some illegal immigration. I do not believe in an immigration policy that matches "every willing worker" with "every willing employer"--a policy that would, theoretically, be compatible with an inflow of 20 million people a year. (As would Jonathan Adler's policy of letting in every person who wants to work here, but nobody who wants to kill us--even assuming such a policy could be implemented.) But any policy that seeks to block a voluntary transaction is going to create a black market.

But the numbers matter. As it stands, every year 400,000 illegal immigrants are deported, leave the country voluntarily, or get green cards and become legal. Every year another 800,000 illegals enter the country. So we have a net increase of 400,000 to the illegal population. Are we really convinced that it is impossible to increase the 400,000 departures or reduce the 800,000 entries?

We are told that we have tried control of the borders, and it has failed. What we have not seriously tried is enforcement of the immigration laws in the interior. What if we stepped up deportation? The alternative here is not "deport 8 million people." It's deport a bunch more. Make other illegal immigrants who are here less eager to stay, and Mexicans considering it less eager to come. Let's try some sort of worksite enforcement, which we never really have--even something as simple as allowing the IRS and the Social Security Administration share information about known illegals more widely. If you reduce the inflow and increase the outflow, you will stabilize the situation. You will still, to be sure, have plenty of illegals still here. Maybe then will be the time to talk about an amnesty.

Finally, Jonah: The existence of an "unholy mess" does not preclude the possibility that the mess can be made worse. Conservatives of all people should know that.

Lots of VERY interesting posts on the differences between California and
Texas in attitudes to illegal immigration. I am now convinced, at any rate,
that the difference is real. (The last word in my previous post should have
been "Texas," not "Mexico," by the way. Freudian slip.)

Several readers believe that the actual Mexicans coming in are different in
the two places, with the Texas-Mexicans much more conservative and
assimilationist, the California ones much more inclined to buy into the
Aztlan/La Raza race-grievance racket, much less inclined to assimilate, or
even to bother learning English.

If this is right it raises the uncomfortable question: Which type of
illegal immigrant is more representative, country-wide? Is California the
anomaly, or Texas? If Texas is the anomaly, and if the background to Bush's
proposal is the Texas experience, then he is attempting to set national
policy based on the experience of an unrepresentative state.

A reader from Virginia said this more forcefully at the end of a long and
thoughtful e-mail:

"I left California for Virginia because of illegal immigration, and there
are millions like me. It turned California from a moderate state with
forward thinking policies into a third world hellhole run by crazy leftists
(and I mean CRAZY -- Barney Frank is quite literally a centrist Dem by
California standards). Bush's policies are informed by his experience with
Texan Hispanics. He needs to take a good hard look at California, because
that's what his proposals will turn the country into."

The entire region will succumb and fall into the basket like a ripe fruit once the dust settles and the benefits begin to materialize and they will, have no doubt. The main thing is that this neo-imperialism is quite different from the old. Rather than aiming at subjugating and enslaving people it aims at freeing and raising their standard so that they may be eligible to join the family of civilized people. The tables are indeed turned (eloquent Lisa); almost every meaning is reversed. We should not be afraid of names. Occupation is liberation; Imperialism is benevolent; Resistance is sabotage and directed against the people and their livelihood and has no clear objective and no future; The Right is revolutionary and the Left is reactionary; The Conservatives of yesterday are the optimists who believe in the ability of eastern people for freedom and democracy and the Liberals and Leftists of yesterday are pessimistic and skeptical and even racist about it; and we could go on and on citing this remarkable reversal of things.

The USA and Allies have two choices with not third to them: ignominious retreat and ensuing isolationism leaving the world at the mercy of the forces of darkness and reaction; or glorious triumph that would indeed inaugurate the American century of enlightenment and hope, and free the long suffering peoples of the “twilight zone” and bring enormous benefits both cultural and economic to everybody. The choice is yours, Oh, democratic people of America and the West.

There’s no doubt that the most persuasive argument in favor of the Bush amnesty (and, for all the feverish – and rather insulting - denials coming out of the administration, that’s what it is) is the one being made on NRO (and elsewhere) that the US will not solve a problem – the presence in this country of some ten million ‘undocumented’ aliens - by hoping that it, and they, will go away. Given that there appears to be no political will to deport these folks the only sensible approach, it is claimed, is to somehow integrate them within the American system – and that is exactly what the President’s proposal is designed to achieve. It has to be admitted that there is something to be said for this, but only in the context of a wider policy that showed that the White House was capable of constructing an immigration policy that could allow the US to regain control of its borders.

So far there’s no sign of this. On the contrary, what we have instead is cockamamie mixture of politically correct pieties, embarrassingly incoherent leaks, vague promises of tougher enforcement and, with the nonsensical suggestion that all jobs that “Americans won’t take” (by the way, there’s no such thing) should effectively be open to the world, an initiative of such stunning economic illiteracy that, by comparison, Treasury Secretary Snow’s blundering forays into the currency markets look like the efforts of a financial genius.

Jonathan points out that “in the past 24 months, there has been an unprecedented crackdown on various immigration violations, such as visa overstays, as, as well as a general slowdown in the processing of visas and citizenship applications.” True enough, there has, but these measures are the result of administrative fiat, and could easily be reversed. Remember Al Gore and all those citizenship applications that were rushed through on, basically, bureaucratic whim? In the absence of more lasting legislative change, that’s something that could easily happen again under a subsequent administration with different priorities. In sizing up where they stand in this debate, Americans would thus be unwise to take much comfort in the current more aggressive policing.

What they have to contemplate instead is an amnesty that is the centerpiece of immigration ‘reform’ designed by a president who believes, apparently, that America’s “current limits on legal immigration are too low.” As such, if there’s anyone who believes that this amnesty will really be the last such free pass, I have a bridge to sell them.

Like all of us right-thinkers, I applaud the President’s tax cuts, his uncompromising prosecution of the War on Terror and the return of character and the rule-of-law to the executive branch. However, I wish Bush were inclined, or at least constrained [by having control of Congress in the hands of the other party], as Clinton was, to proclaim that “the era of big government is over.” Big government is certainly on a roll right now. The Medicare bill is a near-total disaster (medical savings accounts being the only positive). Overall federal spending is out of control….

As for a manned mission to Mars, well, I think another president might say, “There you go again.” As with [Bush’s] immigration [proposal], the effect is to implicitly reward undesirable behavior. Let’s see, the current NASA bureaucracy is manifestly unsuccessful in managing travel to low earth orbit. But the poor guys running the place are all depressed because they have nothing exciting to do. So let’s increase the agency’s budget and give it an exponentially bigger job to manage. That’ll do it! I suppose Karl Rove will tick the box next to the Star Trek voting demographic or some such.

From Steve Sailer's homepage:

"Showing how carefully the Bushies have thought through this whole immigration thing, the two 'senior administration officials' who briefed the press on Tuesday announced that when the no longer illegal aliens emerge from the underground economy, 'They'll pay sales taxes when they buy things.' Hmmmhmmhm... What do they do now? Do they show their Illegal Alien Card to the cashier and get a rebate? Obviously, legalized illegals will continue to pay exactly the same amount of sales tax as they do now.

"The other administration poobah said, 'As they rent property, they'll pay property taxes.' No, they won't. How do I know? Because nobody pays property taxes when they rent. They pay rent to the landlord who pays the property tax.

"Do these guys know what they're talking about?"

There's a lot more there on the amnesty worth checking out.

First off, my qualifications as a lifelong aerospace fanatic: I'm an instrument-rated pilot, fly a Cirrus SR22 regularly, and I was, briefly, an astronaut candidate (I wouldn't have made it but it sounds impressive! In any event, my interview was cancelled after Challenger blew up, so I decided to go to business school.) In short, I love this stuff.

NASA, at least as currently configured, is a colossal waste of money. We have a classic example of the organizational structure outliving the mission. A massive, command-and-control program to beat the Soviets to the moon made sense, especially given the direct application to ICBMs and control of earth orbit for military purposes. However, the same organization is now dedicated to what? supporting - poorly - a couple of lonely souls trapped in low earth orbit in seeming perpetuity [in the space station].

A better approach is to privatize much of the program. [The Department of Defense] can purchase launch services from private vendors, just as booster rockets are currently procured for NASA to launch. If DOD needs manned launch capability, I'm sure that private vendors can supply a product here as well (see next paragraph). This will allow a streamlined NASA to focus on the almost hidden part of its current mission - awarding small grants to jump-start promising new aerospace technologies to be commercialized by private industry (e.g., new aviation powerplants, more efficient wings, improved rocket engine technology). I agree with my fellow Cirrus pilot James Fallows that the government has a role in awarding such grants. Fallows' book Free Flight provides a good example of this under-appreciated - and inexpensive - side of NASA. I think that, in this way, we can spend much much less money on NASA and get a whole lot more R&D output.

By way of example, the most exciting space flight developments of late are coming from Burt Rutan's scaled composites. Rutan is flight testing the first privately developed manned spacecraft. Rutan's suborbital craft returns to the 1950's and 60's Air Force vision of a relatively simple, flyable space plane - think X-15 - rather than NASA's ground-controlled capsule - think "spam in a can."

From a reader:

"However, if Dean gets the nomination. And then he's crushed like a bug by Bush and if Bush has coattails, don't you think many Democrats will see that the hardcore lefty-populist stuff is a loser?"

Remember the Goldwater debacle? Many, many people in the GOP did not see serious conservatism as a loser. When the arch-liberal Nixon was nominated in 1968, many conservative Republicans supported him reluctantly. In fact a Dean blow-out would likely cause the left to do what conservatives did in the GOP after 1964. Which would down the road present the country with a Democratic Party significantly to the Left of
where it is today.

Worst of all, all the bad legislation heaped on the nation by the victorious LBJ and his coattailed followers is still with us today and no one in the GOP is suggesting that it be repealed. This is not a good thing if you want to do long range planning for 2020.

From a reader:

"However, if Dean gets the nomination. And then he's crushed like a bug by Bush and if Bush has coattails, don't you think many Democrats will see that the hardcore lefty-populist stuff is a loser?"

Remember the Goldwater debacle? Many, many people in the GOP did not see serious conservatism as a loser. When the arch-liberal Nixon was nominated in 1968, many conservative Republicans supported him reluctantly. In fact a Dean blow-out would likely cause the left to do what conservatives did in the GOP after 1964. Which would down the road present the country with a Democratic Party significantly to the Left of
where it is today.

Worst of all, all the bad legislation heaped on the nation by the victorious LBJ and his coattailed followers is still with us today and no one in the GOP is suggesting that it be repealed. This is not a good thing if you want to do long range planning for 2020.

I had posted that Dean losing the nomination would marginalize the left and make it easier to enact conservative legislation in 2005. Jonah responds that if Dean loses the nomination now it will be taken as a rejection of the man rather than of his ideas. A good point. But there is some reason for thinking otherwise. The flame-out of the Republican revolution was taken as a rejection both of Gingrich personally and of small-government conservatism; neither explanation crowded out the other. I know the media doesn't play these things symmetrically, but the rejection of Dean might be taken as an embrace of centrism. Also, Dean's "personal" traits--especially the alleged "anger"--are tied up with leftism and obstruction of the Bush agenda.

But here's another point. If Dean loses the nomination, we may get to do this whole thing over in 2008. Republicans are unlikely to be as well positioned for victory in 2008 as they are this year. Let's face a leftist that year, instead of a party that has decided that Dean failed in 2004 and it needs to move to the center. Even better: Let's have four years of intra-Democratic feuds and leftist seething brought on by Dean's rejection. Then the general-election defeat of Gephardt or whoever the nominee is will be attributed by Democrats to insufficient leftism, just as 2002 was, setting them up to make future mistakes when they will come in more handy.

I'm catching up with the Weekly Standard, and ran across a "Scrapbook" item in the December 29/Jan 5 issue. According to the item, someone at NRO criticized the drug war on Dec. 19, assuming that the war was being lost. The same day, the drug czar's office announced "an astonishingly good piece of news": Drug usage among 8th, 10th, and 12th graders has dropped 11 percent over the past two years. (The 9th graders were conspicuously absent from the list--maybe they're hoarding all the other students' drugs?) A big factor in changing the kids' drug use was that office's controversial ad campaign. One reason that campaign was controversial was that it linked drug use (and, indeed, advocacy of legalization) to terrorism. The same day as the drug czar's announcement, and NRO's anti-drug-war commentary, "[t]he Navy announced . . . that it had intercepted a boatload of hashish in the Persian Gulf. Three of the men on board were believed to have al Qaeda ties." Both announcements show the good reasons, the Standard concludes, for continuing the drug war.

The Standard does not provide enough information for a full evaluation of its argument. Has the decline in drug use been a decline in casual use, or a decline in hard-core addiction? What is the evidence for concluding that the ads were the reason for the decline?

But its argument is also a little beside the point. Does anybody really think that the major argument against the drug war is that it never succeeds in bringing drug use down? Actually, we have to qualify that further: Does anybody think that the major argument against the drug war is that it never succeeds in bringing drug use down for some period of time among some segments of the population? That would be an absurd argument. We have had a federal drug prohibition for ninety years, and a metaphorical war for at least two decades. That prohibition is enforced more and less harshly at different times, and drug use goes up and down--partly, no doubt, in response to changes in enforcement. It is not crazy, however, to suggest that the policy has overall been a failure.

Also, not many people argued that the problem with the drugs-and-terror ads was that they would not be effective at reducing drug use. The point legalizers made, which I've never seen a good or even half-good refutation of, is that the drug trade would not be providing terrorists with cash if not for the drug war.

According to Drudge, Maureen Dowd has returned. To be honest I hadn't noticed she'd left. But man, I'd like to know where she went if this is the sort of thing she writes when she gets back.

One of Jonah's correspondents suggests that if I'm for legalizing pot because the law against it is unenforceable, I should also be for legalizing illegal immigrants because the immigration laws are unenforceable, too. Yet there I was on the Corner yesterday, criticizing the argument that legalization was a solution to illegal immigration.

It seems to me there are two different kinds of arguments here. I was criticizing an argument for amnesty for illegal immigrants that, if applied to drugs, would take this form: "Legalizing drugs would send the crime rate way down, because buying, selling, and using drugs would no longer be illegal." It seems to me that this argument would be fairly stupid, and is not an important argument of drug legalizers.

Here are two other possible arguments: 1) "Legalizing drugs, or amnesty for illegal immigrants, would free up law-enforcement resources and prison space to fight more serious offenses." 2) "Laws regulating drugs or immigration are difficult to enforce, and a serious effort to enforce them would entail unacceptable costs, so we should get rid of them." These arguments are, I think, much more reasonable and require a refutation. Also, obviously, our judgments as to the validity of either type of argument might vary depending on whether we are talking about drugs or immigration. I am very sympathetic to argument two with respect to marijuana.

One more from a reader:

Dear Mr. Goldberg:

If you can tolerate yet another response to the "bolder" correspondent: I find his wish that Dean beats Bush so a "real conservative" can take over in 2008 to be shortsighted and shrill. He's got far too much in common with the Democratic Underground types who want the U.S. to be defeated in Iraq -- even at the cost of U.S. soldiers' lives -- because they oppose the war. Bush won't be all things to everyone, but he's done pretty well by the conservatives. I can assure your bolder reader that conservatives won't get as much consideration in a Dean administration. As my grandfather used to tell me, accompanied by a smack on the back of the head: "Don't be stupid!"

This dog has endorsed Joe Lieberman. Cosmo, meanwhile, is withholding endorsing any candidate. But Lieberman's a longshot given the fact that he doesn't eat pork. As best I can tell, Coz supports Bush -- mostly because he would love that ranch. But he's made no commitment as of yet. Indeed, the last political statement I heard from him was along the lines of "we need to bring back the Czar."

From another reader:

Jonah,

Perhaps you could inform your reader who hopes Dean will be our next president that there is a difference between "lawbreakers" who are illegal aliens and "lawbreakers" who commit crimes like murder and assault. A large portion of the population believes that there are doctors who murder unborn children and should be punished for their crimes. Within our legal framework, people who flee the poverty of their countries with the hopes of a better life here in the US are criminals; but doctors who perform abortions, are not criminals. Ask some of the NROnicks if they think it's wrong to legalize pot because it legalizes an act that had previously been illegal, therefore allowing potheads to smoke pot in the US legally. Those same potheads have been BREAKING THE LAW, much in the same way illegal aliens have been BREAKING THE LAW. Ask Ramesh or Stuttaford if it's wrong to legalize pot on those grounds. Ask them if it's wrong to legalize something on the grounds that the crime they want to legalize is silly and unenforceable, which I believe is their rationalization for legalizing marijuana.

This reader takes a bolder stance:

As a conservative, I too hope Dean wins the nomination. But I also hope he beats Bush. With the immigration fiasco, Bush has shown he has no principle. Allowing lawbreakers to stay in this country is stupid and sick and evil. The de-Americanization of America should not be Republican policy. I want Bush to lose, and I want a real conservative to come forward in 2008.

Ramesh - I'm not so sure. Yes, in an ideal world a race-to-the-top between the GOP and Democrats on who could be the better -- i.e. more conservative party -- would be great. But, since you are spoling the fun of my column by getting into the nitty-gritty of reality, let me offer an objection. At this point, if Dean loses the nomination, do you really think it will be because of his views or because he's such a weird guy? In other words, if he loses now, I don't think it will be because his ideas have been rejected by the Democrats so much as the man will have been rejected. The argument that Dean's populism, like Gore's, is the smart play for the Democrats will live on. Indeed, Gore won more votes than any Democrat in a very long time, right? Won't many more seasoned Democrats conclude that the message is the right one but a better man than the vein-bulging Dean or the android Gore is what's required?

However, if Dean gets the nomination. And then he's crushed like a bug by Bush and if Bush has coattails, don't you think many Democrats will see that the hardcore lefty-populist stuff is a loser?

I posted a bit yesterday about Jonah Goldberg's column endorsing Howard Dean for the Democratic nomination. Jonah is, of course, hardly alone in wishing for a Dean victory. The wishes of conservatives in this matter are mostly irrelevant, but it still strikes me that this is not what to wish for. What we should want for the Democrats is what we should want for the Republicans and, indeed, for ourselves: to be brought further into the fullness of truth.

But here is a practical consideration to keep in mind. I think it is quite reasonable to assume that there will be at least 45 Democratic senators next year, and that Republicans will need a few of them to enact measures to cut taxes, reform the legal system, fight terrorism, and move Social Security in a free-market direction. Under which scenario are we more likely to see cooperation from the necessary number of Democrats? One in which Dean comes close to beating Bush? One in which Dean is crushed by Bush? Or one in which Dean cannot even win the Democratic nomination? I would argue that cooperation is more likely in the second than in the first scenario, but even more likely in the third. In this last scenario, Dean, and rejectionism toward the Bush agenda, fails to prevail even in the Democratic party. Democratic senators who want to be president do not reach the conclusion that the only way to get the nomination is to pander to the left. They may even reach the conclusion that such pandering is dangerous.

Now, if Dean as nominee causes the Democrats to lose, say, 5 Senate seats more than they otherwise would, his nomination would produce a gain in conservatives' ability to enact legislation. But I very much doubt that his nomination will prove that catastrophic. In which case it is likely to retard, not advance, the achievement of a conservative legislative agenda.

I used to do a lot of work on immigration when I was at the American Enterprise Institute. But my files are long since scattered to the winds. I'm looking for the data which backs up the argument that during previous immigration waves, most notably at the turn of the century, many immigrants went home because they couldn't hack it here. Since we didn't have a social welfare state, only the immigrants who had the boot-strap gumption to tough it out stayed here. I've heard this argument many times and have made it, but for the life of me I can't find the numbers. Anyone out there want to help me out?

the point that Derb and Jonah made, here's a comment from Thomas Fleming over at the paleo magazine Chronicles (it's like The American Conservative, but duller): "The current litmus test for leftists is support for homosexual marriage, and the conservatives at National Review and the Weekly Standard have passed with flying colors. . . . [David] Brooks's arguments are echoing across the empty canyons of the neoconservative brains at National Review, where David Frum has embraced homosexual unions with predictable alacrity. . . . Principled Christian conservatives. . . are bewildered by this tergiversation at National Review, a publication founded by a putative Catholic."

Thanks for the mentions, which I'm sure will boost our circulation mightily, but there are a few things wrong here. Frum is an opponent both of homosexual marriage and of civil unions, NR has editorialized and run articles against both on numerous occasions, the Standard has run several cover stories against gay marriage as well. When the Federal Marriage Amendment was first proposed, it was in the pages of National Review. Fleming himself opposes that amendment. Does all this make Fleming a defeatist, un-Christian, or unconservative? I figure it makes him a crank, and not even an interesting one.

Now, I'm getting about fifteen emails a minute saying "it is too a parody!" A cautionary blogger's tale.

Jimmy Carter on the Lord of the Rings:

"For three hours in this latest installment of 'Lord of the Rings,' young people the world over watch my work in the United States and your work here in Europe -- to get nations to disarm, not to make moral judgments about any nation other than America or Israel -- undone.

"We who love peace," the Nobel Peace Prize laureate continued, "have to initiate a campaign to jolt people back to our view of the world. Let's be clear about the dangers. What if young people start identifying George W. Bush with Aragorn or Gandalf, and Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden with Saruman? Even worse, impressionable moviegoers might identify the American war against Iraq and so-called 'Islamic terror' with the war against the Orcs and Mordor.

"Who knows what might happen if enough young people start thinking that war is an option, or that some people or countries can be labeled 'evil,' or that there is something noble about a soldier who kills for a 'just' cause?"

The former president continued, "I hope that the European community, enlightened Democrats and progressives in America begin to realize the potential consequences of this film. There may even be a demand among American college students to allow the return of ROTC (Reserve Officers Training Corps) recruiters to campuses. People might start regarding war as an option.

"When I saw the audience in the movie theater cheer when Orcs were killed, I shuddered," Mr. Carter said, visibly pained. "The message of 'Lord of the Rings' is just plain bad...."

There's more...

UPDATE! I'm an idjit! Like five emailers sent me this with excerpts. I read a ways into and then posted. I didn't read the last line. It is a parody! D'oh! My bad, my apologies.

Ramesh - Apparently he even duped the New York Times into buying his claims to writing about the Middle East. They said his (wonderful) book The Closed Circle: An Interpretation of the Arabs was "A brilliant insight into the way Arab societies work. A healthy corrective, a thought-provoking study."

Good point from a reader:

Hey Jonah, while this amnesty thing is a real bad idea, it should at least put paid to the "Bush is Hitler" line emanating from the loony left. Hitler would have never proposed such a thing, unless he was going to exterminate them.

Of course, it was "Please NOMINATE This Man"... not "elect". And yes, it was a hilarious segment, although they did go to pains to make the point that there's no real evidence behind the charge that Dean is "angry." If only they had read Rich's cover story, they'd have all the evidence they need.

In a follow up interview of Tom Brokaw, Stewart asked if there was anything to this charge against Dean. Brokaw responded (or not) by saying that Dean had definitely "given voice" to the anger felt by his supporters.

Pat Buchanan never worked for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. A conservative like him wouldn't dare. He wrote editorials for the late and still lamented St. Louis Globe-Democrat.

Endorses Wesley Clark:

I've never done this before. But life is about taking risks is it not?

I know that people seem to pay attention to everything I do. Big or Small. Ridiculous or Sublime. So I am hoping they pay attention to this:

I am supporting General Wesley Clark for President.

Not only as a "celebrity" but as an American citizen and as a mother. I want my children to grow up with the same opportunities that I had – to know and understand what's going on in the world and to travel that world safely and with pride.

Now I'm asking you to join me.

I am writing to you because the future I wish for my children is at risk.

Our greatest risk is not terrorism and it's not Iraq or the "Axis of Evil." Our greatest risk is a lack of leadership, a lack of honesty and a complete lack of consciousness. Unfortunately our current government cannot see the big picture. They think too small. They suffer from the "what's in it for me?" syndrome. The simple truth is that the current administration has squandered incredible opportunities to bring the world together, to promote peace in regions that have only known war, to encourage health in places that are ravaged with disease, to make us more secure by living up to our principles at home and abroad. The simple truth is that the policies of our current administration do not reflect what is great about America.....

"Kids just accept whatever their family situation is. It doesn't matter," Matthew told me. After all, he was raised by a single mom and doing just fine.

Sure, he was doing fine, in a lot of ways.

But then I pulled out my big gun: "What about you?" I asked him. "Do you think you'll matter to your kids?"

Matthew seemed taken aback by the question. Obviously he had never looked at it from that perspective. He thought for a moment and then followed his train of thought to the only logical conclusion -- a train wreck:

"No," he said. "Not really."

Abandon your kids early enough, he implied, and fatherlessness is all they know. They won't need you. Kids adjust.

From a reader:

Neocon definition = boring!!!! It's like trying to define pornography - everyone has their own idea and they know it when they see it. Nothing causes my eyes to glass over and spittle to run down my chin faster than trying to define Neocon. Get over it and move on to a discussion of paint drying.

From a reader:

i occasionally read nro articles, and have noticed a disturbing, if not annoying, trend of some authors to overuse the (symbol: ------ ). i might be willing to concede the use of these ( ----- ) is considered chic, but several nro pundits (as well as others) tend to grossly overuse this symbol. it's annoying because it interupts sentence flow, slows and makes for choppy reading. you, o'sullivan & lowry, i have noticed, are the worst violators. wfb & o'bierne, for example, seem far less likely to insert these sentence disruptors. i long for the day that basic punctuation symbols like the period & comma, for example, make a triumphant return.

Okay. Here's just one of the basic problems with all of this. If Neocons love big-government, why does Pat Buchanan -- perhaps the only self-described "paleocon" average Americans have ever heard of -- want to expand the welfare state? As Ramesh Ponnuru pointed out in a brilliant take-down of Buchanan, the man's biggest complaint with Bush's "compassionate conservatism" is that it's a rip-off of Buchanan's "conservatism of the heart." Meanwhile I know literally dozens of allegedly well-known "neocons" who very much want to shrink the welfare state.

Meanwhile, the Buchanan crowd says National Review is a "neocon" magazine because it supported the war, while the mainstream press routinely says NR is "paleo" and the Weekly Standard is "neo" even though our respective positions on foreign policy are nearly identical -- albeit from the vantage point of, say, a New York Times or Slate reporter. If being a neocon means being hawkish, then NR was always more neocon than the neocons because we were the ones championing rollback, not containment. And, oh yeah, why did Buchanan want to send the Sixth Fleet to defend Dubrovnik in 1991, if the Paleos are against foreign adventures. And why did über-neo Charles Krauthammer oppose getting mired in the Balkans?

As for this notion, popularized by Irving Kristol -- who I greatly admire -- that neoconservatism is "optimistic" conservatism, I'm afraid I have to say poppycock. Some of the cheeriest people I know are un-prefixed conservatives and some of the dourest folks I've ever met are neocons. And, besides, "optimistic" is not a definition it's an adjective.

Hi Jonah,

My short definition is that a neoconservative is a big government conservative. This includes numerous politicians and commentators who would probably not consider themselves anything but conservatives.

As the Republican party has grown, it has attracted more and more people who are more devoted to being on the winning team than they are to conservative Republican priniciples. Add to this the pragmatic Republicans, who will sell out every conservative principle in order to win an election, and you have the foundation for what increasingly appears to be a transformation into a full-blown neoconservative party.

Neoconservativism rejects conservative isolationism in favor of Wilsonian adventurism. It rejects republicanism in favor of fostering democracy, both here and abroad. It consistently favors favors the acceptance of federalism over battling for states rights. It rejects tradition and what you call the democracy of the dead in favor of building a new world order. It does not respect national sovereignty, and uses left-liberal language of human rights to justify this lack of respect. It rejects the Christian principle of being in but not of a fallen world and imitates the architects of the secular Left in attempting to construct Man's paradise here on Earth. There are different strains to this neoconservativism, but the common theme is a willingness to embrace the expansion of government power for a particular end.

I think there is a strong case for describing President Bush as a neoconservative. He ran away from conservativism with his "compassionate conservative" rhetoric, has twice refused to follow the Constitution in properly declaring war and has instituted a new government entitlement as well as increasing government spending at rate that puts past Democrats to shame.

I am a libertarian, not a conservative, but I don't find it hard to understand why many conservatives are dismayed with both President Bush and his neoconservative administration. I'm somewhat acquainted with the non-official Bush coterie - I once dated the daughter of one of his major longtime supporters - and these were not conservatives offended by the notion of big government, so long as the sum total of its interventions were in their favor.

[Name withheld]

Dear Mr. Goldberg,

Irving Kristol wrote “Neoconservatism is the first variant of American conservatism in the past century that is in the "American grain." It is hopeful, not lugubrious; forward-looking, not nostalgic; and its general tone is cheerful, not grim or dyspeptic.” While this is self-flattering phraseology, I think “optimistic conservatism” isn’t a bad way to put it. Or, neoconservatives are John Adams in 1776; conservatives are John Adams in 1796.

Yours,

[Name withheld]

You have asked, more than once, what the definition of a neocon is. I have always understood that a neocon is one who accepts the immense economic change wrought by FDR, to wit, Social Security, immensely increased governmental regulation of business, etc. Paleocons are those who have not accepted the New Deal, and essentially want to turn the clock back to a pre-Wickard v. Filburn, small Federal government that we believe is much more akin to the government envisioned by the founding fathers. We paleos definitely tend to be strict constructionists, non-Keynesians, and are more likely to be Federalists, in the laboratories of democracy sense of that term. We also tend to be much more modest in our foreign policy agendas, wistfully wishing we could live in a world where we could avoid entanglements with other countries, to the extent possible. Ours is not to remake the world in any Wilsonian sense. Neocons obviously have accepted not only Roosevelt, but also Wilson, gentlemen we paleos consider probably the worst two presidents of the last century, in terms of damage to the country. There are many other differences of opinion, but this is the base distinctions, as I understand them.

Just one more, honestly. This one so thoughtful I had to read it twice. A
reader:

"You are all wrong. What makes me an authority you ask? Am I an acclaimed
movie critic? No, I'm an actuary.

"'About Schmidt' is a great movie because it is about man's search for
meaning and purpose in life, and the risk (actuarial concept) of hitching
your wagon to the wrong pony. Warren Schmidt tethered his fortunes to a life
philosophy known as 'risk aversion.' Play it safe and follow the formula
that has worked for billions of people for thousands of years: work hard,
get married, provide for your family, and follow the rules (i.e. don't leave
work before the second hand hits 12) and everything will work out fine. Keep
your head down and don't ask a lot of questions, and you will have a
meaningful life and a happy retirement.

"In this sense, 'About Schmidt' is a tragedy like 'Death of a Sales Man':
through no fault of his own, the standard formula didn't work for Warren
Schmidt. (Fulfillment didn't materialize, he experiences loneliness in
retirement because his wife died, he discovers a friend had betrayed him,
and he doesn't have a loving relationship with his child). He finds that by
following this formula he didn't live life, he merely went through the
motions in an attempt to 'get through' life. He got married, but he didn't
work to create a fulfilling marriage. He had a child, but delegated the
active parenting role to his wife. This is why his daughter had the
personality of her mother (controlling complainer with low coping skills)
with the career ambitions of her father (deciding between bubble-wrap and
Styrofoam peanuts). The tragedy is that he realizes this lesson too late to
be a positive influence in a major step in his daughter's life.

"The redeeming message is that it is never too late to find some meaning.
Sure, it's too late to become an entrepreneur and have a meaningful career
by building a business, and it's too late to raise his daughter, but it's
not too late to save the life of Ndugu from an infection. Yes, he's wasted a
lot of his potential, but by saving Ndugu's life, his life was not
meaningless.

"Finally, the wedding toast was a call for tolerance and respect in other
people's search for meaning. The father-in-law wants social status, the
mother-in-law personal connection (and sexual fulfillment), the son-in-law
wants basically the same thing as Warren Schmidt, but without all the hard
work. It's said that nobody looks back upon their life from their deathbed
and says, 'gee, I wish I would have put in more hours at the office.' Will
the in-laws have regrets about wasted potential similar in magnitude to
Warren Schmidt when they retire? Who knows? But it seems hard to believe
that their regrets could be any worse."

Like it or hate it, this is some movie. I can't tell you how many essays it
has generated in my inbox, several of them of publishable quality. Any
pastor with half a brain should be able to get at least five sermons out of
ABOUT SCHMIDT. Some movie.

Masses of e-mail on this from servicemen and ex-servicemen (and a couple of
servicewomen) (and may I please be forgiven for having referred in a
previous post to my buddy as "ex-USMC"... there is, of course, no such thing
as an "ex-Marine"), but I think the following, from a retired military
gentleman, deserves some kind of prize:

"I offer an amusing & relevant anecdote of days gone by.

"My grandfather was an officer of the Imperial & Royal Cavalry of the
Austro-Hungarian Empire ['13th Kaiser- und Koenigliche Husaren-Regiment']
and related to me his experience in 1912 when the varied headgear of the
ethnically-diverse army [Franz Kafka worked for one of its FIVE SEPARATE
Ministries of War!] was standardized to a very latest fashion: a flat cap.

"He observed Croat Pandurs, Czech Line Infantry, Slovak Uhlans, Austrian
Grenadiers, Slovene Grenzers, and his own Magyar Hussars being issued this
piece of gear and they all did EXACTLY the same thing: they held it
vertically and opened & closed it repeatedly and then loudly named it in
their native tongues, all the while convulsed in rough soldierly mirth.

"As a result, he knew how to name this item the improper way in six
languages! Actually seven, as I taught him the English version in '71."

[Incidentally, "Kaiser- und Koenigliche," or "KUK" (pronounced "kah-oo-kah")
was what the later Austro-Hungarian Empire called itself--literally
"Imperial and Royal." This followed a complicated compromise in 1867 when
the Hapsburg Emperor cut a deal that gave the Hungarians effective
self-rule, provided they continued to acknowledge his title as
"Emperor-King."----JD]

stuff in Alan Reynolds's latest column, about whether we should worry about "exporting high-paying service jobs to India."

Reynolds writes: "Worrying about U.S. companies importing services from India is a classic example of the journalistic inclination to ignore the forest and focus on a few twigs. The United States is by far the world's biggest exporter of services, just as the United States is by far the leading exporter of goods.

"The United States accounted for 18.1 percent of worldwide service exports in 2001, according to the WTO, up from 17 percent in 1990. India accounts for only 1.4 percent of world service exports. India is in 21st place among world exporters of services and in 30th place for goods. . . .

"The United States had a $64.8 billion trade surplus in services in 2002 . . . . Services accounted for 30 percent of all U.S. exports and 43 percent ($3.1 billion) of U.S. exports to India. . . .

"The Bureau of Labor Statistics categorizes these allegedly vanishing jobs among ‘computer and mathematical science occupations’ -- i.e., computer programmers, software engineers, systems analysts, support specialists, network administrators, etc. These jobs exploded with the tech boom, rising 11.9 percent in 2000 alone, but such panicky hoarding of computer geeks was no more sustainable than 5,000 on NASDAQ. Even in 2002, however, employment in these computer-related occupations was nonetheless higher than in 1999, and so were salaries" (emphasis in original).

Reynolds also notes that previous complaints about losing manufacturing jobs to Japan or China "invariably involved disparaging U.S. service jobs as 'McJobs' -- inferior to working with a sewing machine or wrench. In the case of India, however, even the most menial computer service chores -- such as tech support and handling health insurance claims -- are now being glorified as 'high-wage' jobs."

Jon - I agree that Brooks kind of mails it in today. He seems to be blending two or three different arguments he's made in the past. I don't think Neo means Jewish and I think Brooks was kind of making a joke when he wrote it. But Drum is practicing some pretty serious hackdom himself when he freelances that the Neoconservatives made up the term. If he was remotely familiar with the intellectual history of neoconservatism he certainly wouldn't need to read your no doubt excellent senior essay. This basic fact is mentioned in pretty much every published book and essay ever written on the subject. As Seymour Martin Lipset put it, the term neocon "was invented as an invidious label to undermine political opponents, most of whom have been unhappy with being so described."

Moreover, Drum writes:

I'm mystified. Neocons exist, they have a fair amount of influence in current political discourse, and it is not simply another word for "Jew." What's more, this is all out in the open, in the same way that you might say that "DLC Democrats" had some influence in the Clinton White House but are looking kind of ragged lately. Just the normal ups and downs of political factions.

This strikes me as more than bit misleading. Sure it's not "simply another word for 'Jew.'" But it is very often a word for Jew. That is certainly how Pat Buchanan often uses it. It is also how the Arab press uses it. And the French press. And often the BBC. And Chris Matthews. And the increasing Jew-obsessed Michael Lind. And piles of average American leftists who think these sources are authoritative.

Lastly, as I wrote at length in my, alas, epic trilogy on neocons, I would love for a critic of the neocons to give me a serviceable definition of what one is. A few self-described neocons -- Irving Kristol, Max Boot, Adam Wolfson -- are invested in imbuing neocons with a lot more meaning than I believe it has in part because they are leaders of what they see as the distinct political faction Drum's talking about. But on specific public policy issues, I am at a loss to understand what exactly neocons believe to the exclusion of plain old conservatives. And spare me the B.S. dichotomy of "neos" versus the mini-busload of "paleo" blood and soil socialists and isolationists Pat Buchanan claims to represent.

I now have a good database of information on this from readers. The way
it's shaping up is:

Army & USMC: Derb-style usage common until the early 1980s at least.

USAF: Same to mid or late 1980s at least.

NAVY: Never heard this usage.

An interesting pattern, especially in re the Navy. I guess that after a
long time at sea, one forgets what a lot of land-based features look like.
This draws down one's stock of available metaphors.

No link yet:

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) _ Three-judge federal panel upholds
Republican congressional redistricting plan in Texas.

From a reader:

Jonah,

I don't remember whose post was complaining about media networks touting Brittney over Tom Ridge, but they may need a mirror. I've noticed no fewer than 3 posts alluding to Split-ney and your one liner is the only mention of the Nork nuke drop. I'm disappointed because I've got a few wonderful "discussions" going with some liberal friends and I'm running out of talking points. Where's my Corner when I need it?!

The New York Times Book Review overwhelmingly favors books and book reviews written by men, according to a new study from Brown University. Over the course of a year, the study reveals, 72 percent of all books reviewed in the NYTBR were written by men, and 66 percent of all reviews also carried a male byline. In other words, the most influential venue in the publishing world showcases male authors and reviewers by an average of two to one.

2001 and Black Stallion nominations are rushing in.

And my friend Eric Spratling from G-Philes suggests the "Hush" episode of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" which was truly outstanding but, uh, not a movie. If we're gonna talk about silent-talky TV shows, the Twilight Zone episode "An Occurrence and Owl Creek Bridge" (adapted from the Bierce short story) wins hands-down.

Though the European aid workers are treated with respect, they also receive a great deal of aloofness. The arrival of a U.S. colonel and his aides in Hercules C130 military transport planes, however, proved to be a raging success. Iranians had gathered in the Kerman airport to greet them with arms full of flowers, shouting, "AMRIKAAYEE...KHOSH AMADEE" (American, you're welcome). Iranians hugged them and hung on to them as if their "saviors" had come. Departing Americans were met with pleas from the crowd, begging them to stay. One of the American aid workers involved said that she was shocked and deeply moved to receive such a reception.

Khatami and Khamenei's visits to Bam, however, lasted no more than a scant hour each. Though they were surrounded by "walls" of bodyguards, they could not be shielded from harangues and insults hurled at them. "It is your fault this happened to us," one woman cried. "You knew that this could happen and you liars never warned us." The hatred for the regime reached a fever pitch as it became clear that, in fact, all the information about the seismic activities and dangers of the region had been made available to the clerics for years, and they had simply ignored it.

Dear K-Lo,

This is in response to those New Yorkers claiming Tug McGraw as their own. A little history: the Mets unloaded Tugger after the 1974 season (just one year after the "Ya Gotta Believe!" season) because they thought he was washed up. Turned out his trouble was a benign growth in his shoulder. Once that was fixed via surgery, he pitched a full 10 seasons for the Phils. To us in Philly, Tug was, is and always will be a red-pinstriped god, the one who delivered the final strikeout that sealed our only World Series victory in 120 seasons.

He was always beloved here in our city, and he returned the love in spades. Every Philadelphian knows the photo of him from the victory parade in 1980 shows him holding up a copy of the Philadelphia Daily News with "WE WIN!" in giant letters. It was here that he became a TV sports reporter (WPVI) for 8 years. When he was stricken last year, it was at the Phillies' spring training, where he was a special instructor. And the most goose-bump inducing moment at the closing ceremony of Veterans Stadium in September was

Tug's recreation of his strikeout of Willie Wilson. The crowd, knowing that Tug was battling one of the worst forms of cancer, let out a cheer that is still echoing in space today. If love was medicine, Tugger would have been fully cured that day.

But perhaps the best illustration of the difference between Philly's love for Tug and New York's is to contrast the two cities' tabloids for today. Tug is on the front cover of the Phila Daily News, while Britney Spears appears on the New York Post's.

And the back page? Stephon Marbury on the Post, with Tug's passing relegated to a teaser headline at the top of the page. I rest my case!

Stanley: There has indeed been a shift in the media's attitude toward Howard Dean. He was a refreshing left-wing alternative to the party establishment for much of last year, but now the media is sobering up and he is seen as a serious danger to it. (It's almost as though the media is concerned for the fortunes of the Democratic party.) Two points about this:

1) If the media were still acting as it did for most of 2003, depicting Dean as the next big thing and Dick Gephardt as a has-been, Gephardt could not look forward to much of a media bounce out of winning Iowa. The CW would be that of course he won in his own backyard. Now a win in Iowa might actually be seen as, well, a win.

2) A pro-Dean backlash is starting. See this Toles cartoon, for instance. A lot of people have ridiculed Dean for whining that the other candidates are beating him up. It is ridiculous on the merits. But it is also a smart move. Dean's campaign is one in which the candidate has deeply bonded with his supporters. They think that they are much smarter than the president, and Dean thinks that he is, too. It's the rest of the country that's gone nuts by supporting this callow, callous, right-wing ignoramus. When the other candidates and the media attack Dean, they increase his voters' sense of being beleaguered. Remember what Dan Quayle said about the disdain he attracted? "When they attack me, they're attacking you." ("You" being the God-fearing heartland.) Just so with Dean. When they attack him, he wants them to come across as attacking his supporters: their latte towns, their grad-school degrees, their worldview, their anger. For the other candidates, the gamble has to be either that Dean's support cannot get any more intense than it is already, or that any increased intensity is offset by increased support for them from different voters. Because they're probably not going to peel off many of his.

Since we're talking about movies we've seen recently, I watched a little bit of Cast Away (or is that one word?) with Tom Hanks last night. I think it's an okay movie, but not nearly as good as the hype. But it occurred to me that Cast Away has got to have one of the longest stretches of film without dialogue in cinema history -- not counting silent movies and super clever art house stuff (sorry Mike Potemra: French films about lovers who meet, grope and commit suicide in a used bookstore don't count). Papilion has a long stretch without dialogue, but I don't think it matches Cast Away. The only film I think might beat it is Sorcerer with Roy Scheider. If I remember correctly, there's a little talking in the begining and then this vast swath of time with no talking as he drives a truck full of nitro through the rainforest. It's also a candidate for sweatiest movie ever, but let's not start that again.

From a reader:

You wrote:

"But those comparing Bush to Hitler and the Republican Party to Nazis aren't saying that conservatives are akin to Nazis in some abstract sense, they are saying conservatives are Nazis. It seems to me this diminishes the Holocaust a hell of a lot more than some abstract syllogism."

Bingo. Whenever I see a silly comparison to Nazis (or fascists, as you've noted in an earlier column), my first reaction is to say that the comparison does more to diminish Naziism than it does to enhance the horror of the comparee. Saying Bush = Hitler does more to dimish the evils of Naziism than it does to amplify the horrors of Bush. Another good example of this phenomenon is the radical feminist argument that viewing pornography is comparable to rape. That argument does more to diminish the real horrors of rape than it does to expose (heh) the supposed horrors of porn, a result that feminists ought to be more concerned about.

Right on the cutting edge of the cultural zeitgeist, Richard Cohen writes about a comment made by Grover Norquist in October of 2003. This follows on the heels of his last column in which he confessed that he was "the last person in the world to discover" the word "metrosexual," months after the pseudo issue came up and died out.

As for his comments about Norquist, I pretty much agree (except where he says that it's "pretty hard to overstate Norquist's importance in contemporary Washington." I think it's pretty easy to overstate it and people do everyday).

Anyway, Cohen skewers Grover for comparing the estate tax to the Holocaust. Here are the relevant passages:

This remark, so bizarre and tasteless that I felt it deserved checking, sent me to the transcript of the show, where, sure enough, it was confirmed. In it Norquist referred to the supposedly specious argument that the estate tax was worth keeping because it really affected only "2 percent of Americans." He went on: "I mean, that's the morality of the Holocaust. 'Well, it's only a small percentage,' you know. I mean, it's not you. It's somebody else."

From the transcript, it seems that Gross couldn't believe her ears. "Excuse me," she interjected. "Excuse me one second. Did you just . . . compare the estate tax with the Holocaust?"

Norquist explained himself. "No, the morality that says it's okay to do something to a group because they're a small percentage of the population is the morality that says the Holocaust is okay because they didn't target everybody, just a small percentage." He went on to liken the estate tax to apartheid in the old South Africa and to the communist regime of the old East Germany. How he neglected Iraq under Saddam Hussein I will never know....

....To my mind, the Holocaust should be compared only to itself. I make some allowance for, say, Rwanda or the massacre of Muslims at Srebrenica or the gulag of Stalin's Soviet Union. But when it comes to legalized murder by a state, almost nothing can approach it -- not in its size, not in its breadth and not in its virtually incomprehensible bestiality. The morality of the Holocaust, I would argue, is somehow different from that of the estate tax.

Now, I understand what Norquist is saying here and there's considerable validity to his logic. But the analogy is ultimately absurd and offensive and Cohen is right to point it out. The Holocaust was not about over-taxing a small group of very wealthy people.

But isn't it kind of amazing that Cohen chooses this topic to get uppity about? The same week, nay the same year, that the leftist zanies energizing much of the Democratic nomination process -- and, of course, the leftist buzz on the web -- have been comparing Bush to Hitler, Cohen decides to zing Norquist on a three month old comment on a topic no longer in the news. At least Norquist was clear that he was using logic to make a generic and defensible point. After all, if it's okay to stick it to "small" minorities of people, why have civil rights laws?

But those comparing Bush to Hitler and the Republican Party to Nazis aren't saying that conservatives are akin to Nazis in some abstract sense, they are saying conservatives are Nazis. It seems to me this diminishes the Holocaust a hell of a lot more than some abstract syllogism.

Of course, in Cohen's defense, he may not have heard about any of this yet. Give him a couple months.

From a reader:

About a third thru that video, there's a girl dancing around in orange and it looks like she has a button that says "Elect Leonard Nimoy to the U.N." Did you see that? Is that really what it says? (A quick Google search shows me that some others thought so too.) What could that mean? Kinda makes you wonder what OTHER kind of subliminal messages are in that video. Stop watching it now for your own safety!

The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins.

The issue is not whether or not Pete Rose gambled on baseball. The issue is that with him now finally admitting it after 14 years of vehemently denying it the door is now wide open for his reinstatement into baseball. Rose has been the main concern for Bud Selig during his tenure as Baseball Commissioner and the belief has long been that Rose was an admission (and perhaps an apology) away from a return to baseball. The most constant and complicated of debates in sports about athletic accomplishments versus ethics and class is seemingly a step away from being decided. Rose's admission is almost guaranteed to get him back into baseball, into a managerial role and into the Hall of Fame... and it is sure to crush the idea of athletes maintaining an air of respectability and rules... even the ones that they draw up for themselves.

[And there’s much more…] the more than a dozen players who are on this year's Hall of Fame ballot who were the top stars of the '80s and the epitome of class in sports but who will not get into the Hall of Fame because the sports writers who vote for the Hall have a basic hypocrisy where they like to write and complain about how athletes stand for nothing and are greedy selfish bastards and yet they are entirely unwilling to reward the best athletes - both in statistics and behavior - of an era for doing that which they plead athletes to now do. Pete Rose can commit one of the worst "crimes" of the sport, lie vehemently about it for 15 years and then be handed the keys to the Hall but players such as Ryan Sandberg, Jim Rice and Don Mattingly - men who were the top of baseball in the '80s and always professionals when doing it - are refused from admission.

GOP Demands Censorship of Moveon Ad Comparing Bush with Hitler Once again, the comparison of Bush with Hitler strikes terror in the hearts of Republicans - because they know how close it cuts to the truth. A proposed TV ad submitted by a Moveon member had RNC chair Ed Gillespie spitting bullets. According to Drudge, Moveon removed the ad from its contest - one more victory for GOP censorship, bringing us ever closer to a Nazi dictatorship.

From a reader:

Dear Mr. Goldberg,

In your Dec. 30 column you mentioned the BBC's directive not to call Saddam Hussein a "dictator." An amusing contrast is their readiness to use that term with others such as Augusto Pinochet. Here are a few examples that Google turned up:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3237740.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3186871.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/country_profiles/1222905.stm
The last link is a brief history of Chile which has a "Pinochet dictatorship" section. I was curious whether they used "dictator" in other country profiles. Not for Iraq. In Cuba's they do, but not for Castro, only for one of his predecessors.

I think it's perfectly accurate to call both Hussein and Pinochet dictators. However, if one was requiring strict criteria for using this subjective characterization, Pinochet would much less qualify as a dictator than Hussein, e.g., level of dissent allowed, domestic body count, and the degree which others in his junta limited his one-man rule.

Dean said his own education about unconscious racism began at Yale, where he graduated in 1971. He was trying to get a child from the inner city of New Haven that he was tutoring to talk "proper" English. One of his African-American roommates told him, "Why don't you leave him alone?"

Jonah: Funny I was in Bosnia during the Kosovo war, and the Serb's (including government guys) I met were all of the opinion it was the US bombing them.

The normally astute Jim VandeHei blunders in this story about Wesley Clark: "Clark, a decorated Vietnam veteran who commanded the U.N. war in Kosovo, said: 'I'm saying that I'm not going to be the vice president, I'm not going to accept that nomination. I can't make it any more clear than that.'"

The Kosovo war wasn't a "U.N. war" (and Milosevic wasn't an imminent threat either), but Dean (and Clark and Kerry and almost everyone else in the Democratic Party) had no problem with it.

That's a misuse of salient (``I don't know how salient that is for electoral politics'') unless you're personifying electoral politics; "salient for'' needs a perceiver for whom it stands out.

They’re coming home soon. The ground troops who won the war and are building the new paradigm for peace are coming home.

Just wait. Over 75,000 are rotating back home. Young Americans who left as kids. They return as adults, hardened by their duty to face and beat evil. They join those who recently returned from Afghanistan ’s burnt mountains, the Gulf’s green waves and the Sky’s blue horizons.

And they have a story that’s worth telling. I just hope we listen.

the Lieberman kerfuffle over Roe illustrates the curious position that ruling now occupies in the American body politic. It was radical enough when handed down in 1973. But today it has become less a matter of law than a sacred talisman, the one absolute in a Democratic Party that has never explained why if it's OK to reverse a previous Supreme Court ruling on, say, sodomy, this one decision must remain untouchable.

Within the pundit class it is common to depict America's ongoing battle over abortion (and now, gay marriage) as a irreconcilable clash of moral absolutes: between those who believe that each abortion involves the taking of an innocent human life and those who, with equal passion, believe that the right to an abortion is fundamental to a woman's dignity. That's true enough as far as it goes. But the way these debates play out on the political battlefield points to an even more troubling clash: between those who would work within our democratic system to realize their ends and those who simply rely on courts and judges to impose them.

In the fallout from the scandal, the academy has tried to make the place more humane for freshmen. They are no longer screamed at by their superiors, and the grueling physical training was eased in hopes of giving new cadets a chance to better absorb information on military law, sexual assault, gender sensitivity and other issues.

[Bush] insisted Iraq comply with years of United Nations’ resolutions. When the Iraqi ruler allegedly refused, Bush led an effort that destroyed Saddam Hussein’s regime. Since then, he has pushed Congress for billions of dollars to build stable democracies in Afghanistan and Iraq....

A detailed knowledge of the Bible is hardly a requirement for presidential candidates (and nor should it be), and, under pressure, it’s always easy to make a silly mistake, but can you imagine what the media would have said if Dan Quayle had made this gaffe:

”Asked his favorite New Testament book, Dr. Dean named Job...An hour after his comments, Dr. Dean returned to the clutch of reporters, saying he realized he had misspoken because Job is not in the New Testament…”

There’s a good story in today’s Sunday Telegraph about Churchill’s extensive battles with the British tax authorities. Will this damage the great man’s reputation? Historian Andrew Roberts doesn’t think so:

"I do not think these disclosures will make people think any less of Churchill. I think if people had to choose between the Inland Revenue and the man who saved Western civilisation they would opt for the latter."