From a buddy in California:

Jonah, Couldn't agree with you more regarding your amazement at how people cannot distinguish between editorials and straight journalistic copy. I can't tell you how many times I have heard, "The Times reported" or "According to the Times" and have the reference be straight out of one of the editorials, but quoted as if unbiased fact. It's like saying I read an essay on Plato and the author "thinks" Plato "meant" X or Y without ever quoting Plato. I feel the same way when people say, as they are wont to do, that T.S. Eliot said, "This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper." It is true that he wrote those words IN HIS POEM The Hollow Men. He may well have believed the statement, but it is not something he said in casual conversation nor arguably as part of a debate. (Actually, I don't know if he ever did any of those things, but I do know it is in the poem). Rant aside though, many of the people pointing out media bias make the same mistake. Does Ann Coulter makes sure to leave editorials out of her searches? Otherwise she is showing a bias on editorial pages (which is not insignificant, but a different phenomenon). This is not to say that were it possible on Lexis Nexis to exclude editorial there would be no bias, just that a lot of the bias is expressed on editorial pages. None of which would be a big deal if people would read the editorials as what they are EDITORIALS. Ever your servant,

The AOL news page has linked to yesterday's G-File and for some reason AOL-generated email tends to be a bit more, um, heated. Here's a shockingly typical one from this morning:

Sir, you are an arrogant and obnoxious ass. Could you be any more partisan. You are a disgrace to objective journalists everywhere. Take the republican propoganda machine and shove it where the sun doesn't shine. You are truly either the most ignorant jackass around, or you are a hateful. manipulative piece of crap. Either way, your writing is pure unadulterated GARBAGE. Drop dead.

I'm not going to address many of this guy's finer points, but I am amazed by how many people seem to think that editorial and opinion writers are supposed to be objective. I get this "You're no journalist!" stuff all the time.

Bonnie Rait speaks:

.... "The highpoint would be our European tour, to get out of the US and give Europeans a shot at what the rest of Americans are thinking so they don't think we're just all latched up behind the new world imperialist order."

Raitt laughs but she's serious. We've begun by talking about her saying that politically this was the worst time in America in her lifetime. Given she was there in the civil rights era, the Vietnam protests and the anti-Reagan battles that's some statement. It's not just this administration, she says, but how Americans are perceived abroad which worries her.

"I don't think we've ever been regarded with as little esteem as we are now, and the debacle in Iraq and Afghanistan has hurt our standing, economically as well as politically. Domestically what's happened with medical care, environmental protection, civil rights, privacy, and free speech? I don't think I've ever seen it as threatened as it is now.

"Basically Congress has undone 20 years of environmental protection legislation, just slashed it. It's beyond infuriating for those of us who have been working for human rights and justice, for them to undo all we thought was written into law.

"The thing that makes it especially problematic is that there is no democracy without an informed electorate. But if the right of the political spectrum is controlling the ways people are getting political information - and the computerised election machines are being bought by a company controlled by an out-and-out Republican contributor, so there is no way to get into the software to track whether there is fraud or fooling with election results - you've got serious problems for a democracy. Especially if you are only getting one political viewpoint and everyone else is considered unpatriotic."

An activist and ordinary citizen could feel defeated by this but Raitt is optimistic about the Democrats' chances.

"Don't forget Bush didn't win the election," she laughs. "There are many more people upset about the way things are going than is being reported in the polls. I'm not being simplistic, there are polls and there are polls."

From the BBC:

Al-Jazeera editor leaves for BBC
The Arabic satellite TV channel al-Jazeera says its editor-in-chief has submitted his resignation.

According to an al-Jazeera spokesman, Ibrahim Helal said he had had "a tempting offer" from the BBC.

The charity BBC World Service Trust confirmed that Mr Helal was joining to work on a variety of media training projects over the next two years.

Al-Jazeera has been criticised by the US for airing recorded messages from Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden.

Since all of those angry liberals were angry with my name-calling yesterday, I wrote a far more sober article about the Kennedy School for my syndicated column. I think I want to do a longer piece on all of this for NR/O.

Q: Were you both active in Planned Parenthood in Burlington?

Judy: We both worked there, while we were residents, but I wouldn't call it active.

Howard: And no, neither of us ever did an abortion.

Q: Why do you say it that way?

Howard: Because I always get asked that.

Q: Why didn't you perform abortions?

Howard: Because we don't do them. They don't train residents to do that.

Judy: When we were residents, we were working there basically to get GYN experience because you don't generally do it on hospitalized patients. And then you start to have a practice without having a lot of GYN experience.

Q: Do you have a moral opposition to performing the procedure? I mean, you're both physicians, you at some point -

Howard: I think that's a private matter between the physician and the patient. I don't have a moral problem, but neither of us is trained to do abortions. We're both internists. Internists don't do abortions. ... It would be malpractice if we did.

Q: Would you do them if you'd had the training?

Howard: I've learned long ago not to answer hypothetical questions like that. Both of us chose internal medicine, so we never had to make that choice. I firmly believe in the right to choose. This is a private matter between a doctor and a patient. It's none of the government's business.

No doctor is going to do an abortion on a live fetus. That doesn't happen. Doctors don't do that. If they do, they'll get their license pulled, as well they should.

Now here's a sobering email from a reader:

Jonah,

I love your writing, but the complaints from social conservatives about NRO are really complaints about you. I love your free style, but you regularly make references to your lifestyle that are not very morally pure (women's prison movies, drinking liquor, etc). Also your language, while not usually often actually cursing, cuts as close to the line as you can.

My impression is that your lifestyle and my lifestyle differ. If social conservatives are defined as evangelicals and those who are comfortable with evangelicals, then you aren't social conservative. I love your writing, but I would never let you spend unsupervised time alone with my children. There's no telling what you would teach them.

I should say that the same thing applies to my other favorite writer, Derbyshire.

My response: That's all fair, if a bit depressing. I would object only to three points. First, that I'm uncomfortable with evangelicals. I simply don't think this is true. If by uncomfortable you mean a personal dislike, a sense of unease or bigotry against them or any other personal or political bias of consequence, I think that's unfair. If you mean that the average evangelical might have different tastes or attitudes than my own, fair enough. But that's true of the average Jew too.

Second, jokes about women's prison movies do not reflect my actual lifestyle too much. No hellcats have been shived in a shower around here for quite some time.

Third, I am an outstanding, hilarious and age-appropriately so, babysitter. And I would think most people understand that even I don't make jokes about hooker and cocaine parties around the kids.

The reason I am a regular reader of NRO *and* now a subscriber to NRO Digital is precisely because at NRO more diversity of thought and argument is presented on your website than any other political website I know, far more than any liberal website I've found.

If I had to pin myself on a line, I'd probably put myself down as something of a moderate, just to left of center. But the Clinton Years ruined my faith in my tendency to give the benefit of the doubt to the left, the bad behavior of Gore & Co. during the 2000 elections sealed it. The fact that conservative web sites such as yours allow actual arguments to take place, instead of just preaching to the choir, has me seriously considering voting Republican in 2004.

If you think you guys should apologize to your more conservative readers for all this, well, that's up to you, but be careful what you wish for.

As Andrew Sullivan has been noting, Josh Marshall has been rushing to make everything Wesley Clark does seem reasonable. I think that's too bad, because Marshall's made a name for himself as a relatively intellectually honest broker. It seems to me that Marshall's confusion stems from the fact that just because you can make something crazy sound sane, doesn't mean it is in fact sane. Rationalizations do not make everything rational. Marshall's current spin challenge is that Clark's been saying things which were clearly intended to mean something very different than the reasonable gloss Marshall keeps putting on it. The other day Marshall explained what Clark really means when he says Bush "never intended" to catch Osama. Clark's referring to the White House's strategic decision to shift resources to Iraq, Marshall insists. Okay. But on the stump, that's simply not how Clark wants to be heard. Why say, for example, that if Newsweek can find Osama Bin Laden the administration could too if it wanted? Marshall surely knows that Clark is trying to out-Dean Howard Dean by holding a massive fire-sale on his own credibility.

As for this newly revealed Clark testimony which Marshall dismisses as "Drudgitprop," Marshall again tries quite hard to make it seem like there's no inconsistency with Clark's past statements. Everything's all so reasonable, Marshall insists. But that's simply bogus. This week Clark suggested that Congress should start an investigation to see if Bush should be impeached for the "crime" of going to war. Howard Dean or Dennis Kucinich get to say something like that. Wesley Clark doesn't.

Even if Clark's 2002 testimony means exactly what Marshall says it means (it doesn't), there's no way you could conclude that it was given by a man who thinks Bush should be impeached if he follows Richard Perle's advice. Clark may, as Marshall points out, have some differences with the administration, but they were obviously minor in the scheme of things. If conservatives had said in response to Clark's 2002 testimony, "See! Clark thinks Bush should be impeached if we go to war with Iraq!" Marshall would surely have said conservatives are fools. But now Marshall would have us believe that there's nothing inconsistent between the old (pro-Bush) Clark and the new say-anything Clark. Indeed, if Marshall believes that Clark would have dismissed the first Gulf War as nothing more than a "war for oil" before Clark started running for office, I think he's hitting the Cool Aid a bit too hard.

The same certainly holds for Howard Dean too. But we've heard all that before.

Those who bet their own real money in the Iowa Electronic Markets (IEM) show Clark making gains that are at least as significant as Kerry. Dean's stock is nosediving, as is Gephardt (who is advertising like crazy in my state [Mich]). IEM has upgraded its graphs to Flash versions, as well.

I think Ramesh should be commended for penning such a thoughtful response to so many complaints, especially so late in the day.

As close readers of this space have no doubt noticed recently, I tend to get agitated by some of the prevailing criticisms of NRO from folks on the Right -- because I often know they are not based in fact: NR's fictional "support" for gay marriage, its "surrender" on immigration, etc.

One comment I hear often from serious-minded people on the Right is that one source of this (mis)perception is the broad disconnect between NR and NRO. So what, they ask, if print NR has run so many anti-gay marriage pieces? NRO seems to take a different position and so many people read only NRO.

I've thought about this a lot for a long time and we should probably have a longer conversation about it later, internally and externally. But let me just make two points on this here.

First of all, from its outset -- and I should know because I was there -- NRO has never, ever, taken an editorial line different from the magazine. In fact, we really don't run editorials at all. That was the deal when I was first asked to build the thing. Any comment on this site which isn't clearly identified as an editorial from the editors is simply the view of the author.

Now of course there are larger editorial reasons why a contrary esssay might appear on our site. And, yes, it's reasonable to assume there's some kind of "endorsement" of that view. But that endorsement is not necessarily agreement on the substance. Rather, as Ramesh suggested, its presence on NRO reflects the editors' belief that the argument made therein is worth hearing, particularly by conservatives. From the begining, we always thought that NRO could afford to be more diverse in its content if for not other reason than there's an unlimited supply of space and a daily quota to fill. Also, the nature of the web and the nature of our readers are such, that we always felt it was an important message to send that not all conservatives think alike. Since Kathryn has taken over the reigns of the site, I think she has done a superb job at maintaining that mission while improving the quality of the material we run. I know that she personally doesn't always agree with everything she publishes, including my own columns just as I often disagree with things said here and in the magazine.

Second, I sometimes suspect that one of the reasons so many people "to our right" attack NR/NRO for its alleged weakness stems from the fact they are misled by the atmosphere on NRO. From the get-go, we thought it was important to have fun around here. We make jokes. We discuss pop culture. We write about what interests us. We reveal that we are humans, not the mean-spirited monks conservatives are so often caricatured as. This, too, stems from a number of editorial choices we made from the outset. But I think some decent and sincere people on the Right misunderstand the jocularity around here for a lack of sincerity. That's simply unfair and inaccurate.

But when you add these -- and a few other -- factors together, one can see how the perception that we are a bunch of glib, worldly, libertarian go-along/get-along Republicans starts to spread. On the substance, I think this perception is debunked very easily. But I'm not sure what we can do about the perception.

"The more I see of this man, the more I see of this leader, my respect and my support just continues to grow," Miller said to cheers, whistles and applause. "I can guarantee you I will not be the only Democrat working for his election."

A few hours ago, I glanced at a few websites that criticized NR from a traditionalist perspective. David Mills thought it wrong of us to run an article by Deroy Murdock that made what one might call the Britney Spears argument for gay marriage (heteros have trashed the institution, you social conservatives don’t object to it, why object to same-sex commitment?) Joe Carter criticized us for running that article, another by Catherine Seipp that argued that Playboy wasn’t so bad and noted that the author freelances for Penthouse, and a third by Jennifer Nicholson Graham that (in Carter’s view) “denigrated charitable giving.”

I disagreed with these guys, but it was nice to hear attacks on the magazine from that direction rather than the usual fare (attacks on us from liberals and libertarians for our socially conservative views). Anyway, a few hours later, as I was about to log off and go to bed, I figured I would check in on Mark Shea’s blog—he’s usually right, and always (I thought) worth reading.

At the top of his blog, I found more criticism of NR. To summarize the complaints: 1) NR has defined some people out of respectable, mainstream conservatism for their foreign-policy views and for (sometimes weak allegations of) anti-Semitism and racism, but never for lack of moral conservatism. Shea brings up David Frum’s anti-paleocon article here. 2) We run articles supporting abortion, pornography, etc., but never anything against the Iraq war or for higher taxes. 3) We don’t think moral/family issues really matter much. 4) We are willing “to overlook--with a few half-hearted bleats to the contrary--the ever more egregious things that Andrew Sullivan writes to undermine the traditional family. After all, he's all for bombing Baghdad and cutting taxes.” The best Shea can say for our moral conservatism is that it's better than nothing.

NR has from its earliest days reflected both traditionalist and libertarian impulses, seeking sometimes to reconcile and sometimes to balance them. People who are more purely libertarian or traditionalist will always find things about the magazine that bother them, or find its philosophy inadequate. That’s fine (or at least an argument for another day).

But I would remind these guys that National Review editorializes consistently and runs articles regularly against gay marriage, abortion, cloning, euthanasia, illegitimacy, divorce, day care, and gender integration in the military. Do social conservatives control so many editorial offices that it is wise of them to attack those allies they have? Is there, for that matter, any national publication of comparable circulation and prominence that has taken these positions? That has argued for the Federal Marriage Amendment as often? On cloning, the Standard might tie with us, but I doubt it.

I think these critiques get a few things wrong factually. There have been articles on NRO and in NR against the war or skeptical about it, although these have admittedly been few. See, for example, anything by Andy Bacevich or Adam Garfinkle. To my knowledge, NR has never read Ann Coulter out of respectable conservatism; we merely stopped running her column after a public dispute about our editorial practices. The idea that Andrew Sullivan is “all for” cutting taxes is news to me—last I read, he was for hiking estate taxes massively. I criticized him for it. NR’s editorials have criticized him a fair bit—and I don’t think he regards that criticism as half-hearted. He also regularly criticizes our editorial line as far right, theocratic, etc. (I will admit that when Sullivan goes seriously wrong, as he did when discussing the Catholic church and slavery, my view is that the appropriate response is to offer a substantive critique rather than to discuss his anatomy as Shea does.) David Frum’s famous/infamous article did not, in fact, read Buchanan and the like out of mainstream conservatism merely for opposing the Iraq war.

But leaving those things aside, there is no denying that the critics have a real difference of opinion with the magazine. That difference concerns the magazine’s editorial line less than its editorial policy. Should we refuse to publish articles that dissent from aspects of social conservatism? I don’t think that is a question that conservative principles can by themselves answer.

Nor can I say I have any great answer to the question. In general, I would say that we should not devote scarce space to articles that make arguments against our own positions positions when those arguments are made well and often elsewhere. For that reason, I probably wouldn’t have run that particular column of Murdock’s (unless we have some agreement to run all his columns). Arguments against tax cuts are not in short supply, either. I’d say the same about arguments for “abortion rights,” and can recall only one recent instance where we’ve run something on the other side—as an aside to an article. An argument that the partial-birth abortion ban violates conservatives’ federalist principles, on the other hand, would be worth running (and worth refuting, as I have attempted to do).

I think there has been, on the part of the critics, a failure of perspective. As for Shea’s claim that NR adheres to a “Mammon First/Family Second” conservatism, or his rather breast-beating declaration that he will stick with “the Faith” rather than with “conservative ideology,” I think that sort of thing should be beneath him.

Since I'm almost alone in here:

I am amazed at such rambling. There is no logic whatever employed in your tirade. Do you actually get paid for producing this drivel. Your defense of this President and his motives is a joke. Why don’t you engage someone with a clear view of what’s going on, perhaps someone who can read, in order to become enlightened. Obviously if you won’t even acknowledge that

George Bush is arrogant, you are exceptionally dimwitted to start. Casting aspersions on Ted Kennedy doesn’t make you seem any brighter.

From a reader:

Jonah,

I want you to know you are ruining a perfectly good googlewhack. (For those
in the dark, a googlewhack is a Google search that returns one, and only one, result).

Right now "feckless crapweasel" is a googlewhack, appearing only in an archived Corner where you refer to Stephen Glass as one.

But now that Paul O'Neill is also one, I fear that this googlewhack is not long for this world.

I am curious how you feel about having cornered the worldwide marked on feckless crapweasels.

For reasons having entirely to do with sloth, I am remaining agnostic on the issue of Sweden's economic well-being until I look it up myself. But I've gotten quite a few emails like this:

Dear Jonah:

Please don't accept TAPped's defense of Sweden at face value. The comparisons
of Sweden's standard of living which show it to be lower than Mississippi are
NOT based on net income after taxes, as TAPPed claims, but rather, on BEFORE-TAX GROSS INCOME.

This means that the comparison to Mississippi does indeed take into consideration government spending on social programs, which naturally come from taxes. If you don't believe me, look back at paragraph 6 in the Instapundit
post you linked to yesterday: http://www.instapundit.com/archives/003594.php

If you don't trust income figures, then look at GDP per capita, which is how
most economists do apples-to-oranges comparisons of relative purchasing power. This includes government productivity. According to the CIA World Factbook Sweden's stands at $26,000, while the U.S.'s is $36,300.

What has many Swedes worried is the long-term drag on their economy of their
high tax rates, a phenomenom that ought to be familiar to a supply-sider. This
is illustrated by the lower trajectory of their income growth over the past decade vs. the U.S., which over time has meant a relative decline in the Swedish standard of living.

Keep on keepin' on,

I'm getting inundated with questions about those letters. Yes, they are all real. Yes, they are all very representative of many more like them. Yes, I do get more thoughtful letters from people disagreeing with me too. Yes, I get some which are much, much, much worse than the ones I posted. The reason I don't post those should be obvious: disgusting language, anti-Semitic bile and a desire not to reward the tinfoil heads are chief among them.

Some people ask why post any at all. The answer is that I think most readers find them entertaining or illuminating.

From a "reader":

Mr. Goldberg,

I was initially shocked and surprised at the language and the tone of your article on the NRO titled 'The Mayflower Gasbag Disaster of 2004'.

But as I read the article i realised that it was not you who was speaking, but the an irresponsible and outrageously arrogant person from the 'bush'. I must admit that people like you really need to think outside of the bush. Otherwise the nation will be filled with fanatics who cannot even spell the word politics and believe that Iraq is the 55th state of the US. Of course if you claim the present president was democratically elected, I guess you need to go back to school to learn the word 'democracy'. From his actions and his words, there is not difference between Bush and Saddam. They are made from the same oil and speak the same lanaguage of arrogance and weapons.

I wonder who made you 'NRO editor-at-large', it would have better if you were just 'at large'. Would suit your personality and of course your brains in general. I wonder when people like you would grow up and understand that the 'gun slinging' wild west is for the movies and looks good only there, not in the White House for sure. I wonder how would some one react if his daughters were in Iraq.........

People like you also need a lesson in humiility (though you have no reason to be arrogant, the word having brains is like an insult to the likes of you).

And finally, to be a 'stooge' of the government is fine, but then you need not be having a 'bush' baby honey.

Hope you realise your responsibility as a journalist before you author such balantly prejudiced and politically motivated articles before. I wonder how much in political gains was given to you as a bribe for this article. Maybe in your next article you can share that with everyone else......

a concerned american.

One of the things I find amazing is how so many different people can write nearly identical emails. Anyway:

Mr. Goldberg,

First of all you are the biggest gasbag around not Teddy. Secondly, your attempt at being the propaganda minister for the Bush administration is so sad it makes want to puke. If you have the blindness or the gall to not see the truth about the War and why it was done then you need help. Pull your head out of you ass you dupe before it is too late, which it may very well be.

Sincerely.

From a "reader":

Zionist Goldberg (Anything for Likud) and CIA Buckley ...ARE THE GAS BAGS!!

Your National (Socialist) Review Fascist SLANDER of A U. S. SENATOR IS
TREASONOUS!

YOU CANNOT STAND THE TRUTH!

No WMD's PROVES "Selected Resident" Committed "WAR OF AGRESSION" a "Crime
Against Peace"

Princilpe IV Nurenberg Internationl LAW..

Of Which U.S.A. IS A SIGNATORY!

Homeland Security Shoul Arrest You And Seize Nat Review For Treason Against
Congress Officials.

From a reader:

Jonah, if you google "schmundo" instead of "shmundo" you get some non-NRO references (as well as more Goldberg-penned postings), but they are few and mostly blog-type sites. So it is still possible that you coined this word, and furthermore I can't believe you would even mis-spell a word that you yourself invented! (Although you will have to tell us which spelling is correct.)

There is one apparently unrelated reference here:

http://www.sailingsource.com/scuttlebutt/764.html
SCHMUNDO
Here in Annapolis, just about everything we apply to the surfaces of a boat is fondly referred to as "schmundo". While West System epoxy concoctions are the ultimate schmundo, any high-quality filler, sealer, cleaner, coating or polish fits the definition. This spring you can order all the maintenance supplies you need from your desk at work, and be ready to go first thing Saturday morning. Think of all the time you'll save, and remember that if it's not from www.pyacht.com it's not schmundo.

From CBS news:

Mr. Clinton says he's been following "The South Beach Diet," and "working out with a German man."

From a reader:

[I'm]Sure you're going to hear some crap about this...but as someone with ADD, I'm thinking you might have chosen slightly clearer language when you said "moron with ADD." I'm thinking that you were using it to try and create the image of a great pile of ignorance ("On top of the fact that you're dumb is the fact that you have difficulty paying attention for lengthy periods of time"), but some may have thought you were trying to link the two as being the same. Furthermore, I'd like to point out the fact that even someone with ADD should have been able to notice the constant stream of "Saddam = bad" coming out of the past three administrations over the past fourteen years or so. It's also worth noting that people with ADD would probably have a natural inclincation towards becoming avid Corner readers, and thus should be pursued by the NRO crew at large.

For the record, I meant no offense to smart people with ADD. And I'm not sure morons with ADD will make it that far into the column. But seriously, no offense.

From a reader:

Dear Mr. Goldberg,

Having spent the summer helping to rebuilding, among other things, police forces in Tikrit and Kirkuk and other places accross the Suni Triangle, I can tell you that police are a big priority in rebuilding Police forces. The thing you have to remember is that literally every police station in Iraq was looted and the police officers themselves ran for their lives. In May, when this process started, we had nothing, no police, no weapons, no stations, nothing. A lot of cars came in over the summer. The problem is slowly being resovled. As for your guy in Bahgdad, I am sure he is getting paid, has a weapon, a radio, a uniform, and works in a nice police station. They will get to the car.

From a reader:

I googled "shmundo" and found references basically only to the G-file. Did you invent this word? It is so clear that it means lots of money. Not like in a bank, but sort of a big pile of cash.

For the record I don't believe I coined it, but I've been using it for so long I have no idea where I heard it. One small insight into my upbringing: such neologisms were not in short supply in the Goldberg household.

Jonah - The notion of a lottery for Mars has been made before, and is one of several creative funding options that deserve (but won't receive) serious consideration. One variation that I find especially appealing is described in the book The Case for Mars by Robert Zubrin, president of the Mars Society. He proposes a series of competitions, based on a several incremental goals, each of which is a step toward ultimately getting humans to Mars. For example, Zubrin proposes a reward of $1 billion for the first company to bring a sample of Martian soil back to Earth; $2 billion for the first company to gently put a payload of 10 metric tons on the Martian surface; $3 billion for the first company to demonstrate a system that can put 50 metric tons onto a trajectory toward Mars, and so on. If I recall correctly, Zubrin actually developed that plan at the behest of Newt Gingrich, back in the 1990s.

An email about my post on George Will yesterday:

"I'm not sure Dean will be the nominee but it is to Republican advantage to posit a close race and few things motivate like fear so I understand all this 'close race' business. Still, Dukakis ran at a time of Democratic dominance in almost all states and in the Congress; institutional power now Gone with the Wind. Moreover, Dukakis got the votes of a lot of white ethnics (especially Greeks!) who loved the fact that a second or third generation guy was running for President. Jewish voters backed him overwhelmingly. That won't happen for Dean. Most importantly, Dukakis had a conservative, old line Texas Democrat named Bentsen on the ticket. This staunched a lot of bleeding. Zell Miller won't be on this ticket. No Southern Democrat has the cachet or Washington experience or conservatism Bentsen could bring to the ticket ('I knew John Kennedy, John Kennedy was a fried of mine....') and that alone was probably worth a couple of million votes. Neither Edwards, nor Bayh, nor even Graham carry that kind of clout anymore.

"Dean is relatively weak with industrial unionists, blacks, Hispanics and Jews. All those who grew up in the Reaganite 80's can vote now. Many New-Fair Dealers who voted in 88 are dead. I'm not sure Dean will be the nominee but if he is I don't think he'll crack 44.7% and will win only 10 states;; NY, Vermont, Illinois, California, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maryland, Hawaii, Maine and Washington. (maybe not even last two)(plus dc). His cultural disconnect will lose him Michigan and Pennsylvania which should be his. The Dems will lose every open Southern Senate seat except Louisiana and Dean may sink a good run in Alaska for them, even Daschle must fear Dean (he has a bad Indian record in Vermont!).

"I'm a big pessimist but I'm finding it hard to be morose as I watch the Democrats."

From a reader:

I am a (civilian) pediatrician at Fort Carson, Colorado. A lot of our patients' parents, therefore, are - have been - will be in Iraq.

A soldier and his wife brought a baby in today for a checkup. The soldier (who was not in uniform - and perhaps was home for his two-week leave, I didn't ask) had on a t-shirt which read across the back "Baghdaddy".

I thought that was cool.

From a reader:

Dear Jonah,

As a rule, I detest hair-splitting, but on occasion certain subjects demand a high degree of scrutiny. I'm referring of course to the all-important expletive "DAGNABBIT," which you have consistently misspelled. Alas, I had hoped to prove my point by a simple Google search. However, both spellings appear in roughly equal numbers. Therefore, to authenticate my claim, I'll refer you to all the old western movies in which authorities on the word like Walter Brennan, John Wayne, Slim Pickens, et.al. repeatedly pronounce this word as "DAGnabbit." Until I saw the word on your Corner blogs, I had NEVER heard it pronounced this way. Like the Derb, I am a C-O-N-S-E-R-V-A-T-I-V-E and therefore like my traditions preserved in their original garb. Andy Devine must be turning in his grave, dagnabbit. Perhaps a poll of your readers could resolve this point.

An article.

From a reader:

Jonah,

good afternoon. Did you really mean 'grizzly' when you said the Japanese tolerate grizzly comic books or 'grisly'? It struck me as an odd choice for someone I would normally consider quite erudite. Am I missing something?

My answer: No, I wasn't being clever. Rather, as longtime readers know, I have a big problem with Homonymic typos. It's always been a problem of mine which I try to fix, but I write very quickly. Mispellings the spell checker catches but, homonyms sale right threw. Here's how I put it in a 2000 G-File :

Let’s take a moment to deal with typos and other dreck while I watch the last remnants of my once impressive portfolio evaporate into so much mist on Alan Greenspan’s Coke-bottle glasses.

I rarely misspell things outright, but when I do it’s usually something interesting (what’s that sorta from?). Instead, I use homonyms. These are small, gay creatures with furry feet, loosely related to Hobbits. They make wonderful cookies, are very friendly, and write brilliantly on deregulation and other libertarian issues. Know, know. What aye meant to c’est is that two off-10 aye spell words that sound write butt look wrong. It seems that some people actually kick their cats every time I mess up cite versus site. Obviously, a bunch of you need to pile into a van, pull up to the curb in front of my third-grade teacher’s retirement home and deliver some rough tutoring.

One of Jonah's correspondents asks how I would feel about Mexican immigration if Mexico were a totalitarian country. China was a totalitarian country, and in some respects still is; it's certainly a brutal and tyrannical regime. I'm sympathetic to anyone trying to get out of there. That doesn't mean I would think it a good idea to take 20 million of them next year.

I think the comparison of living in a poor country to living in a totalitarian one, however, trivializes the evil of totalitarianism.

I was annoyed by the implicit charge that I treat illegal immigrants from Mexico with "disdain." I'm sure the charge is true of some, even many, opponents of high immigration policies and of laxity in enforcement of laws against illegal immigration. But I am happy to concede--indeed, to declare--that illegal immigrants are human beings with understandable motivations who should be treated decently. I just don't see that open borders follows from that view. Part of my point has been that if you let in one million immigrants, letting in another million is unlikely to be good for that first group for all sorts of reasons.

Instapundit has it.

From the "fair point" reader below:
Jonah,

I want to elaborate further on my previous e-mail regarding borders. Pick any two countries in the world that share a border and you will not find a greater prosperity gap between those nations as the one that exists between the US and Mexico. North and South Korea would be the only example I can think of, and the mountainous border makes it nearly impossible to cross, though North Koreans try all the time. There was another example back in the 80s when Germany was broken into East and West. East Germans regularly risked death to climb the wall and make it to the West. Should these "law-breakers" have been sent back? Which brings me to my next point: If Mexico was a totalitarian dictatorship, would the Derb, Stuttaford, Ponnuru, et al, be calling for the US to send back these immigrants from Mexico? Mexico may not be a dictatorship, but the living conditions are every bit as bad and the local authorities are so corrupt the country might as well be a dictatorship. Why are immigrants from Cuba and Haiti who brave the Ocean to come here for freedom hailed, while the illegal immigrants from Mexico are treated with such disdain?

From a reader:

Just a thought.

Having read many of the posts in the Corner over the past few days on Sweden
and immigration, I have failed to see anyone bring up the obvious. Sweden's
median income is lower than it is in Mississippi. Some utopia.

No one who's glad that George Bush is president can insist with a straight face that articulateness is a requirement for a successful president. But I'll take Bush's verbal fumbles over the disco-ball of incoherence that is Howard Dean's brain.

From a reader:

Jonah,

It should be mentioned that Japan shares a border with nobody and Sweden shares a border with Norway and Finland, both countries of similar prosperity. The US is unique because it shares a gigantic border with a nation that has one of the worst standards of living in the west, while the US has the best standard of living in the west. If Mexico shared a border with Japan or Sweden, they (Japan and Sweden) would have an illegal immigration problem, plain and simple.

This actually reminds me of a friend of mine's response when the comparison of Japan to Iraq came up in an argument about nation-building. He said, "You know, it helped a lot that Japan was an island."

From a reader:

... My 3 years in Japan (which I dearly love, for some unfathomable reason) taught me that comparisons of this sort are useless. The whole history of a culture plays into what kind of society is comfortable for natives. Notice I said comfortable, not efficient, better or more personally fulfilling. I know lots of Japanese who complain about lack of mobility, hidebound traditions, etc. But when most of those Japanese have lived in the US or Europe for a while, they can't wait to get back home. In theory, it is possible to figure out the 'best' society, but not in practice. Arabs would be miserable in Japan, Mexicans ready to pull their hair out in Sweden, etc. I'm one of those odd birds who was more comfortable in Japan despite the things that drive me nuts about the place.

NOAH---Any of your readers offer an explanation as to why they [i.e. the Japanese] don't just use debit cards, if they hate credit cards?

DERB---No, but here's my explanation: They're JAPANESE.

I've stayed out of the whole Japan conversation largely because I thought Derb's narrow point about Japan was perfectly fair as far it went. Japan does maintain a high-living standard without permitting high levels of immigration. He was responding to Tamar Jacoby and, it seems to me, he was right.

But I’ve gotten so much email now about Japan and Sweden and how they get by without immigration I thought I might add something: I don’t care.

I don't think comparisons to Japan are all that useful for anything. I didn't think it was useful in the 1980s and 1990s when Lester Thurow, James Fallows, Edward Luttwak and others did it and I don't think such comparisons are any more useful now.

Indeed, I think comparisons to other countries generally have only marginal or very specific utility. Anti-gun people point to countries with strict gun control laws and say “See, we can be like them.” Or they point at foreign healthcare systems, marriage laws etc and say, we can be like them.

Bocce balls.

The fact is we aren’t those countries. If, for example, you think it makes sense to force people to work 35 hours a week so they can eat clever cheese for a solid chunk of the work day, move to France. As Derb and others have commented many times, America has a culture all its own. And that means we arrange social policies based upon our own values. Some say our culture needs a break from continued high-levels of immigration, others draw the opposite conclusion. That's a fair fight. But we ain't Japan and we never will be.

The Japanese tolerate all sorts of things Americans wouldn't: Teeny-tiny homes, tyrannical bosses, grossly stunted social mobility, crazy game shows, repugnant pedo-porn and grizzly comic books. The Swedes have no problem confiscating family wealth, giving outrageous sums to the welfare state, waiting on line for heart surgery or paying $40 for a six-pack of beer. Obviously, not all of these cultural facets are directly involved in a trade-off for a near total ban on immigration. But a great many of them are indirectly related. The Japanese and Swedish cultures and economies are not dynamic in the way ours are. These are homogeneous, prosperous, anti-individualist and, by my lights, unappealing societies to emulate (though not necessarily to visit). Sure, we may have more income inequality, but we also have more income mobility. Sure we have more immigration, but we also pay tiny fraction of our incomes on fresh fruit and create new business at the drop of a hat. Yes, we have fewer shared items in our common culture but our broader culture is much richer because it is derived from so many sources.

In their belief that laws always do what they're intended to do, American liberals like to say Japan doesn’t have as much gun crime as us because they have strict gun control laws. No, they have less gun crime because they are Japanese. Some restrictionists are now doing the same. They look at the Japans and Swedens and say "look they preserve their cultural identity by shutting out immigrants." Maybe so, but their cultural identity has no room for immigrants. Ours does.

IT all started when I went to the mall to buy a new toaster. It should have been a day off, which in my case means not writing about America, not taking notes on America, not thinking about America. But such days don’t exist. I got a column out of my day off, and here it is.

Shopping at the big discount chains is a painful experience for me because I’m scared of the Official Greeters, especially the one in the wheelchair. As soon as she sees you come in, she revs up and zooms in on you, shrieking, “How can I help you have a fun-filled shopping experience?” They had her in a TV ad once, racing through the aisles and burbling, “I love people! I love people! I just love people!” Having been stalked by irony all my life, I know an omen when I see one. If there’s the slightest chance of someone being run over by a people-loving disabled American, it’s a dead cert to be me.

My first task was getting into the store without being seen by the cadre of Official Greeters. There’s a way to do this. Lighting a cigarette, I stood outside the door smoking until I saw a covey of Fam Vals approach: distracted parents, three or four kids, everybody dropping things and talking at once. If there’s one thing OGs love even more than human beings it’s kids, so I got behind the Fam Vals and surged in with them. It worked. As soon as the OG on duty saw the munchkins she shrieked, “Hiya, fellas!” and immediately engulfed them, allowing me to sneak past on my little cat feet.

I hadn’t bought a toaster for twenty years so I was unprepared for the new four-slot models (one even had six) that had come on the market since then. Fam Vals again: the bigger the toasters, the better we feel about ourselves. Finally I found a two-slotter and bought it.

Back home, I plugged it in and was about to throw the packing away when I noticed the “Use and Care Guide.” I started reading it, and in minutes I was underlining my favorite passages and making marginal notes in typical workaday fashion.

It opens with “WARNING: A risk of fire and electrical shock exists in all electrical appliances and may cause personal injury or death.” Next comes “IMPORTANT SAFEGUARDS: When using electrical appliances, basic safety precautions should always be followed to reduce the risk of fire, electric shock, and injury to persons, including the following.”

What follows is a list of 17 Dos, Don’ts, precautions, safeguards, warnings, and dire caveats that leave nothing to the imagination, common sense, or sanity itself. Not even those unrivaled connoisseurs of peril, Jewish mothers and grandmothers of all stripes, could come up with a list like this. Things happen here that could happen only in a “Pink Panther” movie.

“Do not use appliance except as intended.”

“Do not use outdoors or while standing in a damp area.”

“Do not place on or near hot gas or electric burner, or in a heated oven.”

“Do not place any part of this toaster under water or other liquid.”

“Do not insert over-sized foods, metal foil packages, or metal utensils into the toaster.”

“Do not clean with metal scouring pads. Pieces can break off the pad and touch electrical parts creating a risk of electrical shock.” “Use toaster in an open area with 4-6 inches air space above and on all sides for air circulation. A fire may occur if toaster is covered or touching flammable materials including curtains, draperies, towels, walls, and toaster covers.” “Failure to clean crumb tray may result in a risk of fire.”

Is Paris burning? You bet; Inspector Clouseau has done with one toaster what von Choltitz failed to do with a whole German army.

Meanwhile, non-klutzy toast lovers are stymied by two SAFEGUARDS that never before crossed their minds: “Do not use appliance unattended” and “Unplug from outlet when not in use.” You don’t really have to go to the bathroom, it’s all in your mind; just stand there and watch the toaster toast and everything will be all right as long as you remember to unplug it before going downstairs to get the mail.

At this point the guide dissolves in repetitive babble. SAFEGUARDS is followed by a CAUTION about extension cords, which “may be used if care is exercised in their use. If an extension cord is required, special care and caution is [sic] necessary.” CAUTION is followed by another WARNING (“Unplug before cleaning. . . . Do not immerse in water”), followed by a four-point CAUTION, only two of which are new. One says: “Avoid using items with ‘runny’ frosting, fillings, icings, or cheese. This includes pre-buttered foods. When these substances melt, they cause a sticky build-up and may result in a risk of fire.” The other new CAUTION says, “Do not physically hold down the toast lever,” which, when combined with “Do not operate unattended,” raises the distinct possibility that there are people in this world who get their kicks from hanging around toasters.

The purpose of this frenzied flyer is to protect the manufacturer against lawsuits, but there’s more to it. The surface of American craziness is only the beginning; the really good stuff is found underneath. Looking at my day off as a whole, I would venture to say that there would be no litigiousness or Official Greeters if we had real Family Values, instead of the fake kind that hangs over everything from shopping malls to focus groups like a damp shroud.

I mean, for example, grandmothers who did not dye their hair and date, but lived with their married daughters and enlivened breakfast with: “If you stick a fork in that toaster you’ll be burned to a crisp. There’ll be nothing left of you except a little pile of ashes and everybody will say, ‘Do you remember that poor little girl who electrocuted herself?’”

That’s called a “loving warning,” and if you grow up hearing them you won’t have to sue people or hug strangers to get attention or prove that somebody cares.

From a reader:

Jonah - Just caught up with your Sec. 215 discussion in the corner, and wanted to point out one more reason why conservatives empahsize that it's never been used: Because the liberals who refer to it mainly use it to bash the Bush Administration (and John Ashcroft in particular), not to attack the Congress that passed it. You'll note that the DOJ is part of the executive branch, which enforces laws. So, by attacking Bush and Ashcroft, the liberals are attacking the exectutive branch for their (supposed) draconian, Nazi-like enforcement of a law. Therefore it's perfectly reasonable to defend the administration by pointing out that they're not even going as far as the law allows them to.

If liberals were susceptible to reason, they'd see that the lack of enforcement suggests that far from overreaching, John Ashcroft is in fact not even using all the power those great defenders of civil liberties in Congress like John Edwards granted him.

Your (anon) clerk guy,

Let me add my own two cents' worth to the discussion Jonathan has started on the similarities and differences between these two topics. As I suggested the other day, my principal concern with amnesty, a guest-worker program, and increased legal immigration is not that it will tend to reduce wages for unskilled work to the minimum wage. I think these policies will tend to have that effect, but I don't object to other policies that move low-end wages downward (such as the abolition of the minimum wage).

One point of agreement in this discussion seems to be that citizenship and voting rights should be withheld from guest workers, even if their terms of employment are renewed again and again. I just think that the idea of a permanent bloc of people in this country who have no political rights is a) disturbing if possible and b) more likely to turn out to be a conservative fantasy.

Finally, I would say that if the immigration proposals were merely economic in their impact I would probably support them. But a nation is (or should be) a culture as well as an economy, its generation of a shared sense of belonging is something that its people legitimately want, assimilation is necessary for that to occur, and high levels of immigration (legal and illegal) make that harder.

George Will notes that Michael Dukakis's much-ridiculed 1988 campaign got 45.6 percent of the vote, and did so in an unfavorable year: during the conservative 1980s, running against a background of peace and prosperity. The Dukakis performance casts doubt on the likelihood of a blowout win for Bush. It's not inconceivable, he says, that Dean could add 4.4 percent to the total.

He's right. It's not inconceivable that Dean will win. It's also wise not to expect Bush to get 59 percent of the vote if he does win. (John Podhoretz writes today that a "razor-thin" win by Bush of "a point or two" would not mean much, whereas a win of eight or more points would end the Democratic party. Let's not be too quick to scoff at a razor-thin win. Nobody has gotten an absolute majority of the popular vote in 16 years.)

But a Dean win remains unlikely. Dukakis may have had an unfavorable environment in some respects, but it was favorable in others. Sitting vice presidents don't usually succeed in succeeding their presidents. (Also, we know that the 1980s were conservative in part because Dukakis lost. We'd remember the period differently if he had not.)

I suspect that there will be at least one point, if not several, during which Bush will fall behind Dean in the polls, just as his father fell behind Dukakis (by 17 points!). But Bush is the guy to bet on.

From a reader:

Hi Jonah - We did have a test for voting. It was called the butterfly ballot. The democrats didn't like it too much. Mary.

Several readers have offered similar complaints along these lines about my Mother Jones post:

Jonah - Since you posted about the Patriot Act in the corner, I thought I would take the opportunity to ask you something that has been bugging me. Why does the "it has never been used" defense get so much play by conservatives on the library part of the Patriot Act? I would think that a bad law is a bad law, regardless if it has been used or not.

Put another way, say that Clinton got a law passed stating that the president had executive power to take money from CEOs and buy drugs for homeless people with it. If he never used the law, would you defend it on those grounds?

There is obviously a valid debate about whether that aspect of the Patriot Act is good or bad, but I very rarely see conservatives defending the essence of it, only the implementation (or lack thereof).

My quick response: This is a perfectly legitimate point. However, I am perfectly willing to defend the Patriot Act and section 215 -- and I have many times. My motive in mentioning that section 215 has never been utilized is not to defend the law, it is to attack its critics. Many, many, critics of the Patriot Act insisted that 215 was authorizing actual and ongoing civil liberties outrages. The Democratic presidential candidates caterwauled about the ongoing trampling of our civil liberties and the invasions of our libraries. Russ Feingold said Americans are "afraid to read books, terrified into silence."

This was all bogus.

Now, there are plenty of intellectually honest objections to 215. I disagree with them, but I can respect them. But there's a huge difference between saying a law is a potential threat to our civil liberties and saying the law is resulting in real outrages occurring in our existing space and time. That's why I think it's relevant. As for the Mother Jones article, I thought it was journalistically relevant that the magazine thinks the fact that 215 has remained on the shelf is so irrelevent to this librarian's heroic resistance, it doesn't even mention it. I think that's either outrageous or funny.

From a reader:

Mr.. G:

You post "On The Spot" in the corner included the reference to "hair-brained issues". The term is incorrect; it should be "hare-brained", as in rabbit.
Now, I know that a hair has less brain than a hare. If fact a hair is brainless. Never the less you can't be hair-brained because the hair has no brain to begin with. So it is not truly a no-brainer. Since this is a blog post, I suppose the issue will be, forgive me, "Hare today, gone tomorrow"

In a true free market, there would be no such thing as job-stealing, but in reality we have two labor pools, legitimate and underground, and ne'er the twain shall meet. Illegal immigrant labor is, by definition, off the books and under the radar. Illegal aliens are already breaking the law to be here, so it's no stretch for them to break the law by working at below minimum wage, or under hazardous conditions. If they complain, they have no recourse with their employers; they're just fired, and potentially deported. They can't run to the government looking for protection.
It's much harder for Americans or documented workers to work off the books. Everyone has to file an income tax return, and anyone who works off the books is committing a felony every time he files. It's no big deal for an illegal alien, but for an otherwise-upstanding American citizen, it's much more of a problem. In a sense, illegal aliens are stealing jobs from those who play by the rules. No economic theory I know of supports that.

I think you missed commenting on the most disturbing part of that quote. "I just think she should do what she needs to do for her own happiness and satisfaction." So, in light of these thoughts, how does Howard define marriage?

Dr. Steinberg said she planned to keep practicing medicine if her husband is elected, but she had seen enough episodes of "The West Wing" to know that were she to become the real-life version of Stockard Channing's Dr. Bartlett--wife of the fictional President Bartlett--she would "certainly have to do some public events."

He calls home nightly unless he is on the West Coast and fears waking her, but rarely shares tales from the trail. "I don't talk politics," he said, "with people who aren't interested in politics."

"I do not intend to drag her around because I think I need her as a prop on the campaign trail," Dr. Dean said last week in Iowa. "If she wanted to do it, it'd be great, but she doesn't want to do it, and therefore if she does do it, it won't be great. I just think she should do what she needs to do for her own happiness and satisfaction."

BC NBC's KATIE COURIC: Now to former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill. In a new book out today, Secretary O'Neill calls his former boss, President Bush, disengaged but eager for war in Iraq well before September 11th. Well, now the Treasury Department is investigating whether O'Neill improperly revealed classified documents to Ron Suskind, the author of that book called "The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, The White House and The Education of Paul O'Neill." Secretary O'Neill and Ron Suskind, good morning, nice to have you both.

PAUL O'NEILL, FORMER TREASURY SECRETARY: Good morning.

RON SUSKIND, AUTHOR: Hi, Katie.

COURIC: All right, let me ask you about the news of the morning. What do you think about this investigation being launched by the Department of Treasury that somehow you took classified documents and they were used, in fact, in the writing of this book?

O'NEILL: The truth is I didn't take any documents at all. Ron approached me after he heard me give a speech last January wanting to write a book about my ideas. And after I had read the things that he'd written before, I decided to cooperate with him and I called the chief legal officer at the Treasury Department, the general counsel and said to him, "I'd like to have the documents that are OK for me to have." And about three weeks later, the general counsel, the chief legal officer of the Treasury Department, sent me a couple of CDs which I, frankly, never opened. I gave them to Ron believing, as I do, if you're going to trust someone, you need to trust them completely. So I gave Ron the CDs. And if you look at the document that seems to be in question...

COURIC: It was shown on "60 Minutes," correct?

O'NEILL: If the cover page and the attachments were secret, the cover page was not secret. And so I'm not surprised that the Treasury Department has said they are going to take a look at how all this happened. What they will discover is the general counsel, the chief legal officer of the Treasury Department, went through all these documents and sent me things. Under the law, he's not supposed to send me anything that isn't unclassified. And so if there's anything in that file that's unclassified, the general counsel failed to be sure that everything was clear.

COURIC: So perhaps he's the one who should be investigated?

O'NEILL: No, I don't think so. I don't honestly think there's anything that's classified in those 19,000 documents. There was a cover sheet that had classified attachments, but the attachments were not included in the file.

COURIC: The White House has said it would be irresponsible not to investigate this properly.

O'NEILL: Of course. If I were secretary of the Treasury, I would have done the same.

COURIC: Is this payback? They insist it's not. But do you think in a way it is?

O'NEILL: I don't think so. As I said, if I were secretary of the Treasury and these circumstances occurred, I would have asked the inspector general to take a look at this. I'm surprised they didn't first call the general counsel and say, "What are the circumstances of this?" And hopefully today they will do that.

COURIC: And it will be a done deal; I mean, it will be over.

O'NEILL: Yeah, and the other thing that's good, today the book is going to be available, and this red meat frenzy that's occurred when people didn't have anything except snippets -- as an example, you know, people are trying to make a case that I said the president was planning war in Iraq early in the administration. Actually, there was a continuation of work that had been going on in the Clinton administration with the notion that there needed to be regime change in Iraq.

COURIC: So you see nothing wrong with that being at the top of the president's agenda 10 days after the inauguration?

O'NEILL: Absolutely not. One of the candidates had said this confirms his worst suspicions. I'm amazed that anyone would think that our government, on a continuing basis across political administrations, doesn't do contingency planning and look at circumstances. Saddam Hussein has been this forever. And so, I was surprised, as I've said in the book, that Iraq was given such a high priority. But I was not surprised that we were doing a continuation of planning that had been going on and looking at contingency options during the Clinton administration.

COURIC: Because of the Iraq Liberation Act that was passed in 1998 almost unanimously by the Senate and near unanimously by the House.

O'NEILL: Absolutely.

COURIC: Ron?

SUSKIND: I mean, to be sure, you know, Paul and other people in the room in that first NSC meeting were surprised, as Paul says in the book, that Iraq was at the top of the agenda and that it was more about the hows than the whys: how to affect regime change, rather than whether we should engage possibly the U.S. military in doing that. That's what the book says. When people read the book, they'll see it. You know, is that important? It's crucial for public dialogue. But it's the kind of thing that unless people read the book, they can draw assessments that may not be in the book.

COURIC: At the same time though, Mr. O'Neill, you do talk about the fact that you were in National Security Council meetings for 23 months, you saw a variety of documents and nowhere did you ever see evidence...

O'NEILL: I think I saw everything unless something was withheld from me that I didn't know about.

COURIC: Well, we'll get to that in a moment. But you say nowhere did you ever see evidence that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. Well, an intelligent person would draw the conclusion that those charges were being trumped up by the administration as a rationale for the invasion.

O'NEILL: No, that's not what I've said. I have a very high standard for what represents evidence. If you told me that you put your hands on weapons of mass destruction, I'd probably believe you because you are a public person. If someone that I believed in told me they'd actually seen it, that's evidence for me. But it's possible -- and certainly there were lots of inferences and circumstantial things that the national security assessments pulled together in looking at this question of mass destruction. I'm not denying or gainsaying the fact that one could make a case. What I have said is I never saw anything that I considered to be concrete evidence of weapons of mass destruction. I think the fact that we haven't found them makes the point. That also doesn't make a point that we shouldn't have gotten rid of Saddam Hussein. I'm not making that case. I'm making the really clear case that I know the difference between evidence and what is allusion and assertion and the rest. That's my point.

COURIC: Well, do you think an invasion of a country should be based on allusion and assertion?

O'NEILL: Well, I think one has to look very hard at the apparatus we have with the national intelligence assessments. And it's why we have presidents. At the end of the day there's one person who gets to decide is what he considers to be convincing proof of basis for going to war, and we elected George Bush and he decided it was good enough.

COURIC: Well, let's talk about your assessment of the president and, I guess, his leadership style, for lack of a better term. You do describe him as disengaged. You do describe, I think if I can, sort of, try to assess your description, as policy having no process, kind of, being put together willy-nilly. You do describe him as a blind man in a room full of deaf people. So what are you saying about the way policy is established in this White House?

O'NEILL: Well, I'd say several things in response to your question. One, in hundreds of hours of conversation with the author -- let me not put this off on general case. I used some vivid language that if I could take it back, I'd take that back, because it's become the controversial centerpiece. And I am afraid that it will cause people to have an impression without actually reading the book. I hope people will read the book. But having said that, I want to also say this: This is Ron Suskind's book. This is not my book. I have no economic interest in it, contrary to the inference in the Wall Street Journal this morning. I hope people will read it because I think it makes a contribution to illuminating, especially for young people, what I consider to be a bipartisan, broken political process.

COURIC: What's broken about it?

O'NEILL: Well, this is a very long story. I'll tell you what's broken about it, Katie. The conversation we have, for example, about the need for fundamental reform of Social Security and our health and medical care system and our tax reform system -- which is what I would have written about if this were my book; we probably would have sold 25 copies to my extended family because people don't seem to have the interest. Television doesn't seem to have the interest in drilling into really consequential issues with any depth. And both political parties are caught up in the same kind of stuff. You know, one of the presidential candidates has said we should have a lot more troops in Iraq and when he's asked the question, "How many do we have now?" he doesn't know. And people are not startled and think what's the matter with us if we don't insist on people having credible evidence and ideas about what they're doing instead of the line of the day and looking for the red meat stuff that's about controversy -- it's not about what's right for the country.

COURIC: You do talk about some of the real philosophical differences you did have with this White House, or at least some members of the White House, vis-à-vis tax cuts.

O'NEILL: I didn't think the third tax cut was a good idea, because I was pretty confident, from 40 years worth of experience and looking at the data, that in the fourth quarter of 2003, the real growth rate would be 6 percent. It turned out to be 8.2 percent. I think the 2.2 percent came because of the third tax cut, but the price we are going to pay for it is enormous because it reduces our fiscal flexibility to fix Social Security, which we desperately need to do.

COURIC: You talk about after the Republicans won big in the mid- term elections, winning back the U.S. Senate, that you sensed a change at the White House, a certain smugness, a sureness. And you once again pointed out the danger of rising deficits to Vice President Dick Cheney, but he said, "Reagan proved deficits don't matter. We won the mid-terms. This is our due." You profess shock at that statement. And I'm not an economic expert, but isn't there a pretty significant school of economic thought, Keynesian, that deficits are not that damaging to the overall economy? I mean, why did you consider this so blasphemous?

O'NEILL: Because it has such a long-term implication. If we were going to have a deficit with a year or two worth of additional stimulus, I would have said, "OK, suck it up, we're going to have to do this." But with the profound changes we've now made, and the president urging we make them permanent, we're going to have a very difficult time finding the money to do a fundamental fix of Social Security, and I thought that was a more compelling need. You know, and I thought 6 percent real growth was not an unreasonable level of real growth that we were likely to have without an additional tax cut. Now, are people going to keep bashing each other for the unemployment rate is too high? Yes. The truth of the matter is, government on a long-term basis can fix the conditions that affect the level of employment, but the truth of the matter is no politician, I don't care who they are, they cannot make a difference in short-term employment rates because it's a complicated consequence of what's going on in the whole world economy, not some politician standing up saying, you know, "We're going to have more jobs." That's all garbage.

COURIC: Let me read the Wall Street Journal editorial today. It says, "The Non-Treasury Secretary. Mr. O'Neill cooperated fully with author Ron Suskind, a former Wall Street Journal reporter and well- known Bush antagonist."

SUSKIND: I disagree with that.

COURIC: "Sharing recollections and 19,000 documents, as well as fact-checking the final manuscript. "After reading it, we're amazed he wasn't fired sooner. Mr. Bush apparently thought he was getting a smart veteran of the Nixon and Ford administration, a former CEO recommended by Dick Cheney and Alan Greenspan. The expectation was that Mr. O'Neill would be credible with business and politically astute. Instead he got a policy and political blunderbuss who must not have been paying attention during the 2000 presidential campaign. "Mr. O'Neill in the book reveals that he disagreed with much of the Bush agenda, especially with tax cuts. Three years later, the record shows that Mr. Bush was right to ignore Mr. O'Neill's counsel. The Bush tax cut helped to make the recession one of the mildest on record, despite the burst stock market bubble, corporate scandal, September 11th and war. And now the recovery is well under way with the third quarter's 8.2 percent growth rate; the fastest since 1984."

O'NEILL: I was on board for the first tax cut, I had no problem at all. I went and represented it to the Congress, worked with the moderates to put some actual front-end stimulus into the tax bill, because there wasn't any in the initial proposal. I had no problem at all with the first one. I had no problem at all with the second one, which people forget about. The third one I thought was not a good idea for four reasons. One, there's still a continuing danger of another terrorist attack. At that time, we didn't know whether we were going into Iraq or not, and I thought we needed some contingency money for that; turned out I was right about that. Thirdly, I didn't think the economy needed additional stimulus, and I thought Social Security fundamental reform was more important.

COURIC: We're almost out of time. This is television after all. But I was surprised, and many other people were, when you told Lesley Stahl on "60 Minutes" you didn't think this was an unflattering portrayal of President Bush.

O'NEILL: I hope people will read the book. They can draw their own conclusions.

COURIC: But you insisted you didn't think -- you seemed befuddled, and most people watching that thought, "Are you out of your mind?"

O'NEILL: Well, go read the book. You've read the book?

COURIC: Yes.

O'NEILL: Do you think it is personally critical of the president? It's not my intention to be personally critical of the president or of anyone else, but to cooperate with Ron in trying to depict, kind of, what turned out to be a chronicle of 23 months at the top of the government.

COURIC: Very quickly, will you vote for President Bush in November?

O'NEILL: Probably. I don't see anybody that strikes me as better prepared and more capable. But I really do think we have a bipartisan problem of a broken political process, and I think the American people need to demand more of people who would be their leaders.

COURIC: All right. Well, Paul O'Neill and Ron Suskind, you didn't get much in.

SUSKIND: Well, I figure Paul gets the chance to talk today, I was on yesterday.

COURIC: Thanks so much for coming by this morning. We appreciate your time.

O'NEILL: It's a pleasure. Thank you.

As far as I can tell, Andrew's response to me deals with none of the points that I made. He correctly observes that National Review's editors objects to gay equality, if such equality is understood to require same-sex marriage. This is not, I take it, news to anyone. But Sullivan is wrong to insist that the magazine's "bedrock position" on a constitutional amendment is that there should be no governmental recognition of same-sex relationships. The editorial in question says that an amendment need not require this principle of non-recognition, and that what is more important is that the amendment reserve the right to make decisions about gay marriage, civil unions, and the like to legislatures rather than courts. When an editorial specifically says that point B should be sacrificed for point A, I don't see how Point B can be held to be its "bedrock position." That is so even if, once the legislature was in charge, NR would have different views than Andrew Sullivan on what it should do. Nor do I see how an amendment to reserve decisions to legislatures can fairly be said to be "motivated entirely by animus toward gay couples."

It is true that nobody proposed an amendment to block other policy changes that have, in the view of their opponents, weakened marriage. Is this because the proponents of the amendment have a special animus toward gays, or a particular objection to gay marriage? Well, maybe. But it's also true that there would have been no point to an amendment to block the judicial imposition of no-fault divorce, since that policy was set by legislatures.

If my previous post on this subject had a "bedrock" point, it was that Sullivan had failed to deal with the purely anti-judicial amendment that the editorial recommends as a fallback position (a compromise that is, I would add, not all that far from one that Sullivan has himself proposed). That failure continues.

Peter - I think the reader is pretty much right on the merits and thought so at the time -- at leat about O'Neill. I think he was a disastrous choice. He disagreed with the administration on substance and he wasn't a team player on politics. He couldn't explain the White House's policies well at all and he clearly enjoyed engaging on peripheral or just plain hair-brained issues. But frankly, I think Dick Cheney deserves more of the criticism. Don't get me wrong, I think Cheney's a hoss and doing a great job. But O'Neill was almost surely Cheney's pick and Cheney should get some flak.

On the other hand, I don't think it's fair to say that Bush's entire domestic team is bad news. John Ashcroft, Tommy Thompson, Spence Abraham have done a good job, particularly Ashcroft, if you ask me. As for, um, er... the other members of the domestic side of the cabinet, I think they um....well, I think it's fair to say that what they lack in memorability they make up for in teamwork.

Considering it was obvious to all shortly after [Paul O'Neill] was appointed that he was a disastrous choice, and that this was more fully obvious to those who actually met the man, can you think of any reason why this episode does not cast serious doubts upon the President's ability to choose a leadership team in the domestic sphere? Granted, his foreign policy team is excellent, but the domestic sphere is a different beast altogether. I think we conservatives are letting the President off a little too lightly on this one; would our reaction to this have been the same had Clinton picked such an obvious dolt to run one of the big executive departments? I don't care for Rubin much, but, damn, at least he was a serious Treas. leader.

From a reader:

Jonah,

Here's an excerpt from my new book I'm writing:

"I found Jonah Goldberg particulary disengaged. He never answered any of my e-mail."

Tim - I saw it. Two-thirds into it I turned to my wife and said, "Man, who put a horse head in Paul O'Neill's bed last night?"

Astounding back-tracking.

10. "Every speech begins: 'It's great to be wherever the hell I am today'"

9. "You've hired Pete Rose to manage your campaign funds"

8. "You've been working tirelessly to secure endorsement of your imaginary friend Lester"

7. "You black out while campaigning in Nevada and wake up married to Britney Spears"

6. "You ask yourself, 'What would Schwarzenegger do?'"

5. "Last time you were home, America had 36 states"

4. "More and more debates are ending with you and Joe Lieberman on the floor wrestling"

3. "You actually attempt to show a pie chart on the radio" [OUCH!]

2. "Agree to appear on lame late night talk show"

1. "Get caught polling yourself"

"Certainly there's a connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda," he said in 2002. "It doesn't surprise me at all that they would be talking to Al Qaeda, that there would be some Al Qaeda there or that Saddam Hussein might even be, you know, discussing gee, I wonder since I don't have any scuds and since the Americans are coming at me, I wonder if I could take advantage of Al Qaeda? How would I do it? Is it worth the risk? What could they do for me?"

Let me see if I understand the BBC Rules of Engagement correctly: if you're Robert Kilroy-Silk and you make some robust statements about the Arab penchant for suicide bombing, amputations, repression of women and a generally celebratory attitude to September 11 – none of which is factually in dispute – the BBC will yank you off the air and the Commission for Racial Equality will file a complaint to the police which could result in your serving seven years in gaol. Message: this behaviour is unacceptable in multicultural Britain. . .

Jonathan, no one around here is arguing that people are ‘entitled’ to a job. Americans, however, are entitled to an American government that puts their interests first. It’s quite possible to believe, as I do, that a limited skill-based immigration policy benefits this country, and thus its citizens. The importation of a large gastarbeiter class is something else altogether. It benefits no Americans other than the senior employees of a number of large corporations and, I suppose, cheapskates unprepared to pay up for ‘menial’ labor. Remember, in proposing a legislative change on this scale, the President has show not only that his scheme is not a bad idea, but that it is actually a good one. He hasn’t because he can’t.

Writing for UPI today, Martin Hutchinson, the agency’s resident gloomster, had this to say:

“ There are a number of studies…that demonstrate that high immigration has had no effect on the living standards of low skill U.S. citizens. As any truck driver will tell you, such studies are unmitigated rubbish. To prove it, you only have to look at differential earnings since the early 1970s, when immigration began again to play a significant role in the U.S. economy, after the hiatus caused by the restrictive 1924 immigration legislation. If competition from immigrants had played no role in the economy, then whatever trend had been apparent before 1973 should have continued, with low skill workers maintaining their relative purchasing power.

”This did not happen. In the low-immigration period between 1958 and 1973, low skill male workers (high school or less) increased their real earnings by 50.5 percent, compared with 42.5 percent for those with 4 or more years of college. A modest narrowing of differentials, in other words, in a booming overall economy. From 1973, the income of those with postgraduate degrees (male and female -- female figures were not available for 1958) increased more slowly, by only 17 percent. However, the average income of those with high school or less dropped substantially, by 9.5 percent, or by 16.2 percent if only male earnings are considered. For those without high school diplomas, the effect was even more severe -- a drop of 19.1 percent, or 23.5 percent for males alone. Inequality between different educational cohorts has hugely increased. The labor force participation rate, 78.4 percent for college graduates in December 2003, is 63.8 percent for high school graduates without college, and a mere 44.6 percent for those without a high school diploma.

”This is what one would have expected in a period of heavy low-skill immigration, in which immigrant labor drives down the earnings of low-skill domestic labor. The increase in the great American "middle class" -- by the U.S. definition, established blue collar labor, went sharply into reverse as immigrants forced down blue collar earnings.”

Now, I’m far from convinced that immigration is the primary explanation for this shift, although it may have been a contributing factor. I am convinced, however, that massive additions to the supply of cheap labor at this time, and after that performance, make no sense at all. The argument that “no Americans will do these jobs” is simply nonsense. They would if they were paid enough. And as for claims that crops would be unpicked without cheap immigrant labor, the right (if rather simplistic) response to that is that the agricultural industry needs to invest in a few more machines, machines incidentally, that would be built by exactly the sort of higher-paid blue collar workers now being betrayed by George W. Bush.

My old boss Ben Wattenberg -- a self-styled "pro-immigration super-hawk" -- had one idea I really liked. At the end of the Cold War, he argued that America should issue roughly a half-million "liberty visas." His primary motivation was to compensate for the fact that the citizens of "captive nations" in the Soviet Empire were largely denied the opportunity to emigrate to the United States. By issuing the liberty visas outside the usual quotas for immigrants, the US would A) make amends B) help trade and capital flows between the fledgling ex-Soviet states C) increase the percentage of skilled or educated immigrants coming into the US and D) help maintain the demographic balance of the United States -- i.e. prop-up the share of white folks in this country.

As for point D, Ben's aim wasn't racist in the slightest. As far as he was concerned he was delighted if Latinos, Asians and Africans came to America. But he recognized that a pro-immigration political consensus was that much harder to sustain in this country if the white-majority ethnic balance was thrown too much out of whack. It may sound cynical the way I'm describing it, but Ben's enthusiasm for immigrantion from everywhere was such that it was clear his idealism far outweighed any other motive. Regardless, I've always liked this idea for these and other reasons.

However, since we're told that favoring "limits" to immigration constitutes a racial animus of some kind, I can only assume that favoring an increase of Caucasians would arouse even more anger.

I agree with Jonathan on most of the substance, but I would object to one phrasing he offers. He says that most on the right who oppose Bush's plan favor "limits" on immigration. He goes on to qualify what he's talking about, so my quibble really isn't with him. But I keep running into this formulation about how some conservatives "support limits on legal immigration." I would argue that all conservatives support some limits on immigration. If, for the sake of argument, George Bush declared tomorrow that the US would issue 1 billion visas and green cards within 24 hours, pretty much everyone -- save perhaps a few hardcore libertarian and La Raza ideologues -- would oppose the policy. In other words, unless you favor open borders you favor limits. So, like the woman who agreed she'd sleep with Churchill for a million pounds, we've already decided what most of us believe in (limits to immigration) the question now is determining the number of immigrants we're willing to limit ourselves to over a given period of time.

I believe in having an immigration policy. I'm not horrified by a policy that allows a lot of immigrants in, but whatever number constitutes "a lot" I would very much like for us to stick to that number. In one sense that makes me a "restrictionist." But, again, we're all restrictionists. What annoys me about a lot of the commentary from defenders of the Bush plan is their glib use of the word "restrictionist" -- and like phrases -- when in reality they are restrictionists too.

I'm perfectly happy to concede, Jonathan, that Bush believes in his amnesty proposal. I believe that is true. But there are certainly political arguments being made for it that make it understandable for conservatives opposed to it to ascribe base motives to it. As for not all conservatives feeling betrayed, I am sure this is true--and more true among conservative journalists, think-tankers, law professors, and the like. Your average conservative voter is much more likely to be on the restrictionist side of this debate.

I haven't noticed the stealing-American-jobs argument being made here, but whether or not it has I disagree with it. It would be nice to find a proponent of the amnesty plan, other than Alan Reynolds, who is willing to concede that the argument about "jobs Americans aren't willing to do" is bad economics.

One interesting implication of Jonathan's remarks: It seems to suggest that views of illegal immigration per se, and the importance of enforcing the law, play no role here. Either proponents of high levels of legal immigration don't care about these things, or opponents care about them only as a cover for their opposition to mass legal immigration, or both. I think this may, again, be more true among conservative elites than among conservatives at large. I think a fair number of people are offended by the rewarding-lawbreaking aspect of this plan.

On the immigration issue, I know for a fact that there are more than a few "restrictionist" conservatives who are racists. But I also know that there are far more than a few who are most emphatically not racists. I really wish we could avoid saying that to be a conservative and in favor of reducing immigration automatically makes you an heir to the KKK. But, even Tamar Jacoby seems to be saying pretty much that. Here's the relevant graph:

"Easing immigration restriction is not, to put it mildly, a traditional Republican or conservative cause. Though early Americans made little effort to count or control who entered the country, anti-immigrant sentiment often ran strong, and it generally coincided with other orientations perceived to be conservative: anti-radicalism, anti-Catholicism, protectionism and out-and-out bigotry. The Know Nothing Party of the 1840s begat the Anglo-Saxonist movement of the 1890s begat the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s, and on into our era. Pete Wilson, Pat Buchanan, Congressman Tom Tancredo of Colorado . . . today's restrictionist pantheon, too, is made up almost entirely of Republicans or conservatives. Of course, American business has almost always been on the other side: Employers understood that economic growth required a robust supply of labor. But no American political thinker who called himself a conservative made a principled case for immigration in the first 200 years of the nation's history."

Moreover, Jacoby says that these groups were merely "perceived" as conservatives. Does that mean that maybe they weren't really conservatives? And if that's the case, maybe we shouldn't glibly suggest they are our conservative forefathers. Lastly, I'm not sure I buy that conservatives had such a monopoly on anti-immigrant bias in the first place. Do we associate, say, Margaret Sanger -- the founder of Planned Parenthood and a virulent racist -- with conservatism?

is not wholly without insight, but boy he comes close sometimes. Take his recent offering in the Nation on the gender politics of Howard Dean. Comparing the World Trade Centers to two erections has, I'm sure, been done countless times in the academy, but outside its precincts it's just bad taste.

I always enjoy appearances of the phallic theory of gun ownership. ("Take gun control. Despite the precipitate drop in crime, white men cling ever more tightly to their guns, and the right to lock and load is a major link between pistol-packing papas and the Republican Party. Assume that most of these guys cherish their weapons for other than practical reasons, and you can see the pull of the phallic on American politics.") Do the people who deploy this theory not realize its implications? If they're right, then gun control is a kind of symbolic castration. How likely is that to be successful as a policy? Or as a political platform?

If O'Neill had been less of a media darling and more of a movement conservative don't you think this interesting factoid from a reader would have gotten a lot more coverage (assuming it's true):

I worked for a division of Alcoa during O’Neill’s run as CEO. It was his policy to charge people to attend the company Christmas party. If memory serves, it was $40 for an individual or $60 per couple.

Keep up the good work.

[name withheld]

Ramesh asks if a guest-worker has a kid in America (and therefor a legal citizen) will we really deport them?

I've been wondering the same thing. Is there any reason we shouldn't expect a massive baby (and marriage) boom if this thing is enacted?

Not so fast Ramesh. I asked: "Other than the unfairness of validating the efforts of the lawbreakers, is there a conservative public policy objection I am missing to creating a guest worker program?"

Your answer, it seems to me, is based entirely on political and pragmatic grounds. Fair enough. But that's not really what I asked, or intended to ask.

Moreover, in almost all of your posts you use the word "amnesty" as a stand-in for "Bush's plan." The premise of my question was that we take Bush & Co. at their word that this is not an amnesty but a guest-worker program.

Indeed, you yourself have intimated -- as have others -- that amnesty is unpopular with almost everybody, including Hispanics. So maybe the Bushies don't actually think this is an amnesty? Maybe they're sincere, believing that allowing people to work here legally for a while and then requiring them to leave is a fair compromise. Maybe, they think that's a way to win some of those anti-amnesty Hispanic votes I keep hearing are out there while at the same time seeming "compassionate" and level-headed on the issue? You steal a base, it seems to me, when you say "If amnesty is the way [to win votes] why should we expect deportation to be doable?" while so many of Bush's immigration opponents have been saying that amnesty is in fact not the way to win votes. So if it's not the way to win votes, maybe Karl Rove actually knows that -- which is why he came up with a guest-worker program instead?

Second, I probably made a mistake raising the possibility of Bush's proposal making guest workers (formerly illegal immigrants) easier to find. It really isn't relevant to my question. But let's concede that it certainly wouldn't make the guest workers harder to find.

So again, as a matter of public policy, what's wrong with a guest worker program that actually does what it's supposed to do: Allow immigrants in to work and then sends them packing when they're done.

I feel enough time has transpired that I can now float my almost entirely unsubstantiated theory that a drug ring -- or some other smuggling operation -- runs out of the Cabo San Lucas, Mexico airport.

Here are the facts: Last month, as many of you might recall, my wife, daughter and I flew down to Cabo for my sister-in-law's wedding. Great time, good memories, yada yada. On the return trip we had three pieces of luggage. The biggest had my wife's stuff and most of lil' Lucy's. We checked in at Continental. They "searched" our luggage (translation: they opened it and closed it again) and sent us to the ticket counter. We got our tickets and checked our luggage. In Houston, we had to go through customs. Our three bags were there and we rechecked them for the connecting flight to DC. But when we got to DC, the biggest bag never showed.

Now, here's the interesting part. We discovered that we had gotten only two baggage claim checks, and the one that was missing corresponded with the bag that was missing. I would have said, "Ah the Mexicans lost our luggage," except for the fact that the bag showed up in Houston and disappeared after it was in the states. Moreover, the fact that the claim check that was missing was the one for the bag that was missing seemed highly coincidental. Unless it was deliberate. This way, the bag gets into the United States legally and then, once through customs, it disappears. This would mean that the lady at the ticket counter was in on it since she's the one who "mistakenly" failed to issue the baggage claim.

I wouldn't go public with my theory except for the fact that this remains a huge hassle in that Continental wants us to provide them with receipts for everything in the bag including the baby's clothes. So why I should bite my tongue any longer about what is obviously the biggest drug smuggling operation in the history of the universe?

was: Would I support continuing mass immigration if "a policy of strong assimilation [were] enforced"? Assimilation is not exactly a policy, but it is a thing that can be expected to happen more often when particular policies are in place. The abolition of bilingual education, which Jonah mentions, is one of those policies. So, I would argue, is a reduction in immigration levels. The more assimilative policies and attitudes are in place and the stronger they are, the greater the number of immigrants it would be healthy for the country to take in; the relation Jonah is getting at is real. But under any mix of other policies, you would have more assimilation with less immigration.

Jonah wants answers that do not depend on the improbability of the adoption of strongly assimilative policies. Fair enough. But it is reasonable to assume that continued mass immigration will make such policies even less likely. Leave aside the question of whether the new immigrants want assimilation, and policies that promote it. The fact is that millions of native-born Americans, and not only ideological liberals, will find multiculturalism a plausible answer to increasing levels of racial, linguistic, and cultural diversity.

The Left isn't anti-American or anti-military at all.

By the way, in case you didn't know (or haven't read enough VDH) here's the definition of Myrmidon, according to Dictionary.com:

1. Greek Mythology. A member of a warlike Thessalian people who were ruled by Achilles and followed him on the expedition against Troy.
2. myrmidon A faithful follower who carries out orders without question.

But you really only need to look at the armband.

It seems there's been a lot of serious immigration discussion here -- and in my email box -- while I've been gone. I don't want to try to reopen every issue already debated, but I would like to ask Ramesh, Derb et al. two questions, both of which are based in genuine curiosity as much as anything else.

First, while I am on record saying this is obviously an amnesty, or amnesty lite, what if the Bush administration's assertions (and the Bush administration's critics) are credible? Or what if Congress makes them credible? In other words, what if, after 3 years as a guest-worker with (no right to vote), millions of these immigrants do in fact leave (or are forced to)? After all, they will be far easier to locate once they've generated all that paperwork, declared their residences etc. So, conveivably they will be easier to deport. Other than the unfairness of validating the efforts of the lawbreakers, is there a conservative public policy objection I am missing to creating a guest worker program? Presumably one with teeth.

Second, what is the conservative objection -- other than the sort which comes from the likes of Sam Francis -- to large amounts of immigration if a policy of strong assimilation is enforced? In other words, on what grounds would Ramesh or Derb oppose sustained legal immigration if we first abolished bilingual education and the like?

Before you answer let me anticipate one response I'm not looking for. One could fairly respond to both of these questions that they operate on implausible and naive premises. Do we really believe the government and the media will have the resolve to send these folks back after three -- or six -- years? And, do we really believe that in our politically correct environment we could rollback the apparatus of identity politics? These are fair objections. However, both Derb and Ramesh have fairly objected to my assertion that it's implausible that we could summon the will to deport all of these illegals, by saying that's it's really not so implausible as I think. All we need is the political courage and willpower to do what's right. Well, we can have that argument. But since you guys are willing to stipulate that such reserves of resolve are in fact tappable, I must assume we can get at them for my scenarios as well. So let's just assume for argument's sake that we can abolish bilingualism in all of its forms and let's just assume that we could enforce the rules of the guest-worker program. What say you to questions 1 & 2?

Rich -What I want to know is, Why isn't the administration -- including the source you spoke to -- mentioning that regime change in Iraq was US government policy since 1998? Presumably, that might help explain the "secret" plan to topple Saddam O'Neill's talking about. The scandal would have been that there was no plan to topple Saddam floating around three years after the decision was made. Moreover, isn't the chief criticism of the Bush White House that it didn't have a plan for Iraq? So now the charge is that it did?

Not for the first time, I read the same text that Andrew Sullivan does but understand it entirely differently. Here's National Review's editorial on a Federal Marriage Amendment; here's Sullivan's attack on it.

Before explaining why I think he's wrong about the editorial, let me also say that I disagree with his insinuation--he has made the argument several times before--that the judicial imposition of a policy becomes less anti-democratic if people eventually come to support the policy. To describe the public acceptance of judicial faits accomplis as "democratic" is not to take seriously in the first place the critique of judicial activism as anti-democratic. (It is also to skip entirely the critique of judicial activism as lawless.) It means that an act of judicial activism is to be condemned only when the public is moved to overturn it, which is to say: when the act was ineffective.

Sullivan says that he used to believe the anti-gay marriage forces were sincere in claiming to be concerned about marriage, but he now thinks they (with parenthetical exceptions) care more about stigmatizing gays. (I had not noticed this former charity toward social conservatives, myself, but I assume it existed.) His evidence for his new view? "NR editors want to trash traditional marriage by creating a civil unions structure open to absolutely anyone - gay couples, straight couples, aunts and nephews, college room-mates, bridge partners, whoever. So if you're a young straight couple considering marriage but unwilling to embrace all the responsibilities, National Review will provide you with an easy alternative. That measure would do more to undermine marriage than anything the pro-gay marriage advocates are supporting, or have ever supported. (My original case for gay marriage was designed specifically to avoid the anti-marriage civil unions option that NR is now endorsing.)"

A couple of points here: 1) The editorial does not advocate the creation of the civil unions structure he outlines or indeed any other civil unions. It suggests that it would be worth supporting a constitutional amendment that would leave it open to states the possibility of creating certain kinds of civil unions. States would be free to reject these civil unions. (They have both these options now.) Leaving this option open to states is explicitly defended in terms of federalism and compromise--two things Sullivan has said he is interested in on this question. 2) When John O'Sullivan suggested a flexible contractual system which any two people could join, whether or not they were engaged in a sexual relationship, Andrew Sullivan commended him for his fresh, creative thinking about marriage. He did not claim to find ulterior anti-gay motives for his suggestion. He was right back then.

Sullivan continues: "[NR's editors] argue that these other relationships would not undermine marriage because they could not include sex. But how on earth could this be enforced? Videocams in bedrooms? The whole idea is preposterous." Yes it is, but I don't see how the editorial came close to proposing any such idea.

Let's back up a minute here. Several issues of NR ago, I reported on the development of social-conservative thinking about a Federal Marriage Amendment. Some conservatives, I wrote, had reached the conclusion that an amendment should not ban all civil unions, but rather ban only those civil unions that granted governmental benefits on the basis of the fact, expectation, or supposition of a sexual relationship outside traditional marriage. So, for example, the government could provide a benefit to any two roommates whether or not they were involved in a sexual relationship with each other. Sullivan took from this the idea that the benefits would be conditioned on celibacy, and nothing seems capable of changing his mind on this point.

But the editorial could not be clearer about it: "But availability [of some government benefit] must not be limited only to homosexual couples or to cohabiting heterosexuals. Siblings, friends, and roommates who are not in sexual relationships would also have to be eligible. A person's homosexuality would, in other words, not be of interest to the government when distributing any benefit" (emphasis added). There would be no requirement of celibacy. You could be having all the sex you want and still get these benefits, so long as they were also available for people who are not having sex. Domestic-partnership laws often exclude siblings precisely because they are for people involved in presumptively sexual relationships. Under the idea outlined in the editorial, such domestic-partnership laws would have to be expanded or abolished. Note also that the amendment would not preclude sexually active gay couples from receiving any benefit or set of benefits--other than governmental recognition of their relationships as equivalent to traditional marital ones. Sullivan would of course object to that denial of equivalence, but he would be more persuasive if he attacked it instead of this videocam fantasy.

Sullivan says that the only point of the distinction made is to discriminate. But "discrimination" occurs whichever view we adopt. If Sullivan has his way, we are to provide the option of marriage for any two committed, loving people, gay or straight. (I have not, by the way, read his past writings to mean that only people involved in a sexual relationship would be eligible for marriage. He has lately been saying that sex is incidental to marriage.) He would exclude siblings, bridge partners, etc., from these benefits. If the social conservatives mentioned above have their way, marriage continues to be defined as the union of a man and a woman and the government does not discriminate within the class of people outside that institution. In other words, the question is how marriage should be defined. In either case, the government would "discriminate" between people who do and do not fit the definition.

But all of the above misses an important point. The editorial expresses its support for the idea of a constitutional amendment that bans gay marriage, allows civil unions only if they do not grant benefits that depend on non-marital sexual relationships, and keeps judges from second-guessing legislative choices about benefits that should be reserved to marriage. But it also suggests a further compromise. It says, at the end of the editorial, that the most important goal is the restriction of the courts. That is: The editorial says it's more important to take decisions about marriage away from judges than it is to ensure that there are no civil unions for gays only. It even says that it is more important to make these decisions democratically than to ban gay marriage.

The bottom line of the editorial is that the amendment should restrict judicial authority and that an amendment that did that would be okay even if it preserved the ability of state legislatures to enact full-fledged gay marriage. I would think that Sullivan would, while criticizing this editorial to some degree, welcome its spirit of compromise--instead of assuming that its stated concerns about marriage and judicial power were merely covers for hostility to gays.

Robert Kilroy-Silk is a former Labour MP who has hosted a Donahue-style program on the BBC for many years now. He has, evidently, pretty trenchant views on the Middle East, some of which he vented in a recent polemic in a British newspaper. How intemperate was it? Well, it was strong – and not always well informed - stuff, and over the top in my view, but judge for yourself. You can find it here (just scroll down). For writing this article, he has been reported to the police by Britain’s ‘Commission for Racial Equality,’ and may now face criminal investigation. That’s no surprise, of course. When the demands of multiculturalism run up against the right of free speech, free speech tends to lose.

Needless to say, the BBC has chosen to suspend Kilroy-Silk. Well, that’s its right. Yes, yes it is. It’s not ‘censorship’ (fans of the Dixie Chicks please note) although the Beeb’s status as a public body, funded by an annual license fee extorted from anyone in the UK who owns a television (discounts for the blind!), complicates the argument. And so does this: Kilroy-Silk’s article was insulting about ‘Arabs’ (he should have focused on the regimes, not the people), but, two years ago another BBC regular, the poet Tom Paulin, was quoted in an Egyptian newspaper as saying that Jews living in the Israeli-occupied territories were "Nazis" who should be "shot dead". The BBC took no action.

Now, free speech is free speech, however ugly, and I’m not necessarily saying that Paulin should have been thrown off the air, but the decision to take action against a man who is rude about Arabs, while doing nothing about a man who appeared to advocate killing Israelis, looks a little odd, doesn’t it?

The campaign against US restrictions on trade with Cuba is a familiar irritation, but it looks like some of those campaigners need to have a word with their favorite dictator: he’s busy isolating his island still further. The BBC is reporting that “a new law has been passed in Cuba which will make access to the internet more difficult for Cubans. Only those authorised to use the internet from home like civil servants, party officials and doctors will be able to do so on a regular phone line. “ Disgusting.

Samizdata’s David Carr has the last word: “So there we have it. A country that has (allegedly) 100% rates of literacy but you are not allowed to actually read anything.”

Come to Central Texas in August and watch the Mexican workers line up at dawn on street corners for day work -- usually a long day of manual labor in the heat. Even Texans predisposed to bias against "illegals" see this every day and it makes an impression. Plus it's not just unskilled workers seeking the American dream; wherever you look, you will see contributions from "recently arrived" tradesmen, craftsmen, artisans, etc. Most Texans get it.

General Sanchez began life at the bottom of the American pyramid, going to work as a dry cleaner's delivery boy at the age of 6 to augment welfare payments that supported his Mexican-American family in Rio Grande City, Tex., a few miles from the border that his paternal grandfather first crossed in the early 1900's. Now, addressing "the problem we have to solve," he is into his eighth month as commander of 125,000 American troops in Iraq, the most coveted and challenging field command for any American officer since the Vietnam War.

So, should the arguments for globalization be applied to the US labor market? If we have free trade in steel, why not in labor? The answer is, or should be, purely pragmatic. There has to be some understanding that, in the real world, some abstract theories have to recognize the realities of the nation state. Free market dogmatism makes little more sense than any other blind faith.

One of the most compelling intellectual arguments for globalization is the theory of comparative advantage. Put very simply, if all countries are, through free trade, able to exploit their competitive advantages (whether it is cheap labor, technological savvy or a benign climate) then everyone should benefit. Trade is not a zero-sum game. Importantly, there are also strong practical arguments in favor of globalization, at least one of which has important implications for the US immigration debate. By extending prosperity, or the hope of prosperity, to poorer countries, it lessens the pressure on their citizens to emigrate. In this context, it’s worth remembering that those who are most likely to emigrate tend to be the most enterprising, exactly the sort of people who those countries – if they are to flourish – need to retain.

We need to recognize that benign as the globalization process should be, it can be the cause of considerable dislocation, some positive, some not. In the case of a rich country such as the US, one of the principal benefits of globalization is that it allows its workers to ‘trade up’. Put crudely, instead of tilling the fields, they become computer programmers. The problem is that not everyone can become an IT specialist – there are going to be some folks who just can’t compete so well. These are, at least temporarily, the most obvious losers from globalization, but as, theoretically at least, there are, thanks to better education and training, fewer and fewer of them, the services they have to offer become more expensive and they too can share (to some extent) in the more general prosperity.

The Bush plan, with more relaxed immigration rules and the creation of a gastarbeiter class, kicks away that ladder. That is why it is, in particular, a punch in the face of blue collar America.