We may have not always liked what they had to say, but one of the more refreshing aspects of the recent election was the emergence of the 527s who threw money, passion and greater popular involvement into the electoral process. In consequence (and regardless of what you thought about the result) as a civic exercise the election was something of a success.

Unsurprisingly, this has infuriated the same Washington barons who brought us McCain-Feingold-Bush. There are now attempts to crack down on the 527s. As I said, no surprise there. What is disappointing is that other previously more principled politicians have now joined in the attempt to suppress free speech. Ryan Sager has more on this topic in an excellent piece that can be found here. As I read it, these words from the end of Animal Farm came to mind:

“There was the same hearty cheering as before, and the mugs were emptied to the dregs. But as the animals outside gazed at the scene, it seemed to them that some strange thing was happening. What was it that had altered in the faces of the pigs? Clover's old dim eyes flitted from one face to another. Some of them had five chins, some had four, some had three. But what was it that seemed to be melting and changing? Then, the applause having come to an end, the company took up their cards and continued the game that had been interrupted, and the animals crept silently away. But they had not gone twenty yards when they stopped short. An uproar of voices was coming from the farmhouse. They rushed back and looked through the window again. Yes, a violent quarrel was in progress. There were shoutings, bangings on the table, sharp suspicious glances, furious denials. The source of the trouble appeared to be that Napoleon and Mr. Pilkington had each played an ace of spades simultaneously. Twelve voices were shouting in anger, and they were all alike. No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”

Senator Lott, you can do better than this.

One of the more interesting developments over the next few months is the way in which two issues – ‘Brussels’ and multiculturalism/immigration - may well collide.

A few weeks ago, Britain’s opposition Conservatives were in effect told that in the extremely unlikely prospect of a Tory win in the forthcoming elections, the party's (modest) attempts at immigration reform would simply not be permitted under EU law.

In Denmark, one of the reasons cited by the victorious center-right (there has just been an election) for declining to enter into formal coalition with another party on the right (the anti-immigration Danish People’s Party, which is now the third largest in the country) was the DPP's opposition to the EU ‘constitution’. Now, the Danish People’s Party has many faults, and is not always very likeable, but it has clearly understood what a more federal EU will mean for Denmark’s ability to decide who it admits past its borders. Its more mainstream associates on the Danish right (who while in government have clamped down on immigration) have not.

Meanwhile in the London Spectator (February 5th, subscription required, even for, sigh, print subscribers), the often obnoxious and frequently brilliant Rod Liddle has this to say in the course of a fascinating article on Holland’s problems with integrating its Muslim minority.

“…All of this is aided and abetted by the European Union, its liberal immigration laws, its espousal of multiculturalism and, crucially, it’s implicit disavowal of the concept of a sovereign nation state with a coherent national identity.”

He’s right.

Expect to hear much, much more on this topic.

The Dutch Report blog is reporting that the head of the (doubtless feared, and possibly legendary) AIVD (the country’s intelligence service) has given his first interview since the ritual slaughter of Theo van Gogh. The Dutch Reporter highlights this comment (I have tidied up the English a little):

“I think that we should realize that the way that we sometimes agitate in an extreme way against Islam makes it more likely that people who are already unstable will go in the direction of radicalism than moderate their opinions”

Translation: if you are even thinking about criticising extremist Islam, keep your mouth shout. Over in Britain, Blair’s proposed religious hate crimes law is based on very much the same type of thinking and, somewhere up high, or maybe down below, the ghost of Neville Chamberlain is smiling…

Howard Kurtz's run-down is useful. It's going to be pretty wild to see how some major news outlets which never mentioned the story in the first place must now explain why Jordan resigned.

I also think this illustrates something very significant about the comparative successes of the Leftwing bloggers and the rightwing bloggers. The righty blogs have taken down Dan Rather and Eason Jordan. That is big game. The lefty blogs got this Talon news guy. I don't think this has anything to do with the skills on one side or the other. Give the lefty side credit, they're smart and they're tenacious. They're just as good at digging up old quotes, finding inconsistencies etc. as the guys on the right. In some cases they may even be better. So at that level there's really no difference. But when it comes to going after the mainstream media they really don't have the taste for it. Why is that? Well, the obvious reason is that they don't particularly disagree with the stuff the Dan Rathers and Eason Jordans say or do. Sure they may tear apart a bad poll or criticize a quote out of context if it suits their purposes. But at the end of the day, at the macro level, the fact is that the lefty bloggers and the Mainstream Media are on the same side of things. That is an important distinction which will drive the story of the blogs versus the MSM for years to come.

Update Tim Karr has more. Though in fairness, I was late on this story and really shouldn't be counted as one of the folks who brought Jordan down -- as much as I would like to be.

From a candidate at an Ivy League school:

Jonah, I am in a similar boat as your previous emailer. I entered academia knowing it was left-leaning, but dreamed of engaging in great debates. I never imagined what it would really be like. Academia is everything the Left claims to despise. Foucault wrote about how society demonizes deviant behavior (sexuality) by treating it in a sinful way. Well, the academy has done the same thing for conservatives. No matter where you go, introductory conversations always begin with a recitation of your liberalism and hatred for conservatives; in effect, making those with alternate views feel uncomfortable with their own ideas from the get-go. It is so pervasive and entrenched that you wither get on board or get left behind. For a conservative, it has been amazing to witness a hegemonic force at work, but I doubt the Left would ever admit that they have become their worst fears. As an American, I think it is a disaster for our country on multiple levels - it to some extent limits the number of conservative intellectuals, affects the minds of our youth, and leads to the coarsening of society because an entire institution has become a singular political entity, instead of an arena for dialogue.

From a reader:

Jonah--

Like your former correspondent, I want to finish my Ph.D. but I won't seek a
job in academia unless it's at a small college tucked away in a red state
somewhere. This is a lonely life.

If it were just me, I might try to make it through. But I have a family to
support and I don't feel like playing Russian Roulette with a tenure
committee.

I do take some comfort in the words of Harvey Mansfield, upon learning that
a couple of his grad students were passed over for academic jobs: "Oh
well, I guess they'll just have to go to Washington and run the country!"

Please, obviously, don't use my name.

From a professor at a major university:

To hammer a point home.

There is academia and then there are sciences. If you're a PhD in physics,
mathematics, biology, engineering etc. your political orientation does not
matter one bit. I chair a faculty search, hire a postdoc, and evaluate
prospective graduate students and I don't even know (nor do I care) what
political orientation they have. It does not matter!

The problem is not with the liberals in universities, the problem is with
the liberal arts: they are not objective disciplines, nor are they supposed
to be. Sooner or later they will be dominated by this or that kind of
subjective nons... errr, opinion.

And yes, we liberals do dominate the hard-science departments, but it
has nothing to do with a left-wing bias. I'll change my mind if you
point me to any right-wing think tank specializing in physics. :)

Cordially,

From a reader:

Mr. Goldberg, Sir, you are not being Machiavellian enough. There's no point in applying Machiavellian principles to academia in isolation. You don't want more conservative scholars per se, you want more because they're good for conservatism. But here, Churchill is great. Think about it: imagine that someone wanted to defend the arguments of a hypothetical Middle Eastern scholar, and said something to the effect that he must be right because he's a tenured professor at a respectable university, Churchill allows you to point out that you can be a liberal nutjob and get tenure. Take him away, and whatever the benefits to conservative scholars, non-academics will have his removal thrown in their faces -- "See? Republicans really don't care about free speech!" Conservative intellectuals are winning battles (hell, they're the only ones who've tried to take new territory since the Beatles broke up), and liberal intellectuals have a Churchill shaped albatross around their necks. Don't mess that up.

From a reader:

Hi Jonah,

Last year I abandoned, effectively, my dissertation when I realized I didn’t have a prayer to even compete for a job in academia—simply because I have conservative credentials.

And let me tell you, I was totally gung-ho to go a-pillaging in the academy! But, alas, with what I thought were fairly competitive academic credentials, as far as my research goes, I was never even invited to an interview where I could be told I was a worthless conservative snake.

Sour grapes!

I can't quite see what Senator Reid and the Democrats get out of complaining about Republican criticisms of him as an obstructionist. The criticisms almost all strike me as fair: Most of what the RNC did was to quote the man. He did say that the president's Social Security plan was DOA before Bush even gave his State of the Union address. Calling that obstructionist is accurate. But Reid and the Democrats are complaining that it's terribly unfair for Republicans to beat up on Reid. All the Senate Democrats signed a letter to the president asking that the criticism stop.

Various Democrats--Schumer, Durbin--have been quoted saying that Democrats made a mistake in not defending Tom Daschle when Republicans attacked him. I seem to recall that same fits being thrown about Republican criticism of Daschle, actually. But whoever's recollection is correct, what's the theory here? Does Dick Durbin really believe that he could have saved Daschle's seat if he had just said more nice things about him?

The Reid Democrats risk looking like whiny losers--which, whatever else you think of him, Howard Dean rarely does. They have already drawn more attention to the RNC's criticism than it would otherwise have received. They have in no way reduced the Republicans' willingness to criticize Reid in the future.

Andrew Busch offers a more detailed version of the Kondracke defense of Churchill; Let's not fire him, let's study him:

Instead of being fired, perhaps he should be studied and examined, much as one might probe the victim of a once-rare psychiatric disorder that has become rampant. Ward Churchill might be more valuable to the opponents of the academic left employed than unemployed.

Above all, he can serve as a living window into the intellectual, moral, and political bankruptcy of the left.

To borrow a point made by Brit Hume last night, Churchill isn't there to teach "how to be a parody of a leftwing jackass" or "I hate America 101." He is supposed to be a scholar and a teacher and a role model. It seems to me he's none of these things. Busch writes:

After all, though Churchill is now on the hot-seat, his opinions, or some slightly moderated version of them, are a dime a dozen in the academic world. He is, though he will hardly confess it, a rather tedious commonplace.

Yes that's right. There are lots and lots of characters like Churchill. And they, like Churchill, will eventually fall out of the limelight and continue to do what they do. There is, right now, no social or professional pressure to keep these guys in line. And by "in line" I don't mean they shouldn't "speak out" or "dissent" or any of that kind of thing. I mean there's no pressure on them to be professionals. Or at least there isn't enough pressure. There is bone-snapping pressure of conservative not even to pursue PhDs! I simply don't believe that the "chilling effect" on conservatives can get much worse. Meanwhile, the warm, nurturing, environment for champions of Jackassery couldn't be much more encouraging. Hang Churchill (metaphorically of course). Send a signal. If Free Leonard Peltier or Free Mumia types want to get jobs living off the public teet, poisoning the minds of students, fine. But at the very least let's make it just that much harder for them. It will still be far easier for one of them to get a good job than it will be for a decent, scholarly, professional conservative.

Studying Churchill like he was a lab rat isn't a good idea precisely because he is exactly that -- a lab rat. Typical in every way; the baseline. No one studies lab rats qua lab rats anymore. You only study them after you've done something to them. The only thing that would make Ward Churchill interesting for study is if you cut him loose. See how the other lab rats react. I'm sorry if I sound to Machiavellian about all this, but I've known too many decent, brilliant friends pursue PhDs and then get the shaft simply because they weren't interested in boutiquey leftwing causes.

The taping went fine, I guess. But I probably come out sounding too hard against Bush because we were talking about spending and A) his behavior has been outrageous and B) I could never get around to getting any pro-Bush points before we moved on. It was a very fast segment.

The woman who claimed to have seen a baby being tossed from a moving car fabricated the story to cover up a pregnancy and birth she had been trying to conceal, Broward County Sheriff Ken Jenne said Friday. The baby was never thrown.

From a reader:

I live in Denver. I'm following this Churchill embarrassment closely. Loved your article today. About the Affirmative Action issue, a local radio station did a Freedom of Information Request to CU for documents relating to his hiring, promotions, tenure and so on. It clearly shows that, at all steps along the way, his status as an American Indian was a critical component (in face, a requirement) (see KHOW.com). Looks like "resume fraud" together with "academic fraud" will be sufficient grounds to let him go. Hope so.

I understand your point, but I see these Baby Moses laws as the last resort of a society up against a wall to save babies. You may recall that Judge Edith Jones cited these laws as one of the reasons Roe v. Wade's factual assumptions about the burdens of pregnancy and an unwanted child are no longer valid.

I agree that adoption-education should be the preferred course, but I cannot fault a state for having both.

I hear where you're coming from but I disagree. I think Safe Haven laws send the message that the citizens of State X have decided that even if you don't want your baby, we do. We won't charge you with abandonment, we won't fine you, so come on in and give up the baby.

If you hadn't figured out from my column I disagree with what seems to be the consensus view among conservatives about Ward Churchill. I think he should be canned. It would be preferable if they could do it for cause -- i.e. find fraud, or malfeasance or some such -- but if not I still think he should go. I appreciate the arguments on the other side from a lot of smart folks, but at the end of the day he should never have been hired in the first place (has anyone found out if he was hired as part of a "diversity" program on account of his almost certainly fictional Indian status?). And while I understand the worries of a "chilling-effect" backlash, I think academic freedom would actually be better served if he were fired in the long run. Right now the left chills speech it doesn't like with impunity and there is no sign that they see any reason to stop. Perhaps if they realized that this is a two way street we might get some more appreciation for real ideological diversity.

Hi KLO --

Yes, yesterday's Corner was a good one. But it would have been a GREAT day if someone (i.e. Jonah, Stuttaford, etc.) had slipped in at least one Star Trek post, preferably when you had gone to bed.

Just got up-to-date with the Corner, and thus read Derb's last post on the subject (from 6:47 am). Two points:

1) The U.S. would not go to war with any regime because it refused to sell oil to some countries or even because it refused to sell oil to us. The Iraq and Afghan wars do nothing to make this fantastic scenario more plausible.

2) It remains unclear why you're worried about American dependence on Mideast oil given the other premises you've put in place (if, for example, the ability of Mideastern regimes to hurt other countries' economies has been "much exaggerated").

My view remains that sound policy should aim at keeping radical anti-American regimes from being able to sell a large share of the world's oil at state-cartel prices.

Ms. Lopez,

I too have been charmed by Gov. Romney and, as someone who comes from the socially libertarian wing of the GOP, I think that he has the uncanny ability to bring cultural conservatives like yourself and social moderates like me together. The reason is that, as you pointed out, all of his positions seem well-reasoned. Never do you hear the nuance of some Republicans, who are obviously trying to hide their pro-choice position behind pro-life rhetoric or vice-versa. Instead, Mitt's social positions are all based on logic and reason (something all Republicans like) and usually end up as a compromise between both wings of the party that we can all live with.

Moreover, Mitt has proven himself to be a forward-thinking individual, not unlike Newt Gingrich when he was in his prime. When Mitt talks about education policy, for example, he understands that the biggest challenge our nation faces regarding our public schools is to prepare students to compete in what is becoming a global economy and thus maintain America's role as an economic superpower for another generation. This position seems eons ahead of anything Democrats are saying and even trumps GWB's compassionate conservative message on education.

And need we mention the electoral calculus of a Mitt/Hillary race? Romney would almost certainly win his father's Michigan (my native state) and would likely pull Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and hold Ohio. In order for Hillary to win, she'd have to pierce the red/blue divide and win the South, the thought of which is laughable.

And yet, all of this remains speculation, as I am one of those stubborn history buffs who has seen how the GOP selects nominees and remain convinced that either McCain or Rudy will be the nominee largely because it's "his turn." Republicans haven't nominated a dark horse since 1940. Romney certainly has a shot at defying history in New Hampshire, but I'm not putting any money on him just yet.

USA Today has an op-ed today that calls on J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. bank, which the piece says recently disclosed that two of its predecessor entities had ties to Louisiana antebellum plantations, “to seek the descendants of the 13,000 slaves who were accepted as collateral [I guess for the bank’s loans to the plantations] between 1831 and 1865 and make restitution.” (The bank has already apologized and set up a $5 million scholarship program for black Louisianans, but that “doesn’t go far enough.”)

I would be interested in Cornerites’ thoughts on how best to implement this obviously brilliant idea. Some questions: How do you track down the descendants of 13,000 people, most dead for over a hundred years? How do you calculate the check you present them? What if the descendant considers himself or herself to be a white Republican? What if one of the great-great grandsons had been disowned by his parents? What should the bank’s current shareholders think of this project? Since the bank “profited from slavery” but was not itself a slave-owner, shouldn’t we be asking any company (or its successors) that did business with any slave-owner to be making restitution, too? What if the bank also did business with the Union army or abolitionists? And, finally, what of the psychology of people who think it’s really a good idea to divide Americans in 2005 into villains and victims based on events 150 years ago or more?

Do not apologize.... Did it ever occur to you that we readers might need a break, too? And Friday is VDH-Day, therefore a little quiet from the peanut gallery is appropriate.

Subject: Greatest...Day...Ever?

K-Lo,

I've been reading the Corner from the beginning, and I think today might be the greatest day it has ever had. Substance and style, friendly back and forth, interesting detours, all mixed in with the usual good humor, and all at a very high level all day. Congratulations, thank you, and keep up the good work.

On Thursday, rebels attacked Iraqi soldiers with machine-gun fire and mortar rounds in Salman Pak, 12 miles southeast of Baghdad, police said, adding that 14 policemen were killed and 65 were injured in the two-hour gunbattle.

Ramesh - I think you date the crisis years about ten or fifteen years late, though the Coolidge years were a deceptive parentheses. Most of the roots of the New Deal and the National Security state go back to Woodrow Wilson (boo, hiss).

It's no surprise I side with Rich on this, but I would add that staying in Iraq ten years isn't a big deal. Staying in a dangerous Iraq for ten years is. We've had troops in some spots around the world for at least fifty years. Almost no one cares that we're in Germany or Japan because Americans aren't being killed there. If American troops are kept there as a geopolitical stabilizing presence, a la South Korea, but aren't being killed every day this won't bee a particularly controversial issue for us. How it's viewed in Arab countries is certainly a legitimate concern. Also, it's not clear that even if we stayed in Iraq for ten years -- or fifty -- that we'd be doing it with over 100,000 troops. Regardless, if Derb or any one else is keen on pulling troops out of places where they've outlived their utility I can think of lots of places which make more sense than Iraq.

Rachel, Lynne Stewart is, of course, entitled to her views, however repulsive they are, but I think ‘sinister’ is not a bad word to describe the person who said this:

"I don't have any problem with Mao or Stalin or the Vietnamese leaders or certainly Fidel locking up people they see as dangerous. Because so often, dissidence has been used by the greater powers to undermine a people's revolution."

The ‘certainly’ in front of ‘Fidel’s’ name is a particularly revolting touch.

I didn't see the Medved clip you mentioned, but it's true that crisis rhetoric (and moral-equivalent-of-war rhetoric) has often been used to justify expansions of state power, and is better suited to that agenda than to an anti-statist one. I think you can view 1929-1991 as a long "crisis era" in American politics. The country goes through a Great Depression, World War II, the Cold War, inflation, a crime wave, rapid and destabilizing social change, and many expansions of government. Then things settled down with the end of the Cold War and the diminishment of various social pathologies.

Interestingly, Republicans lost the House at the start of the period and regained it at the end. Also interestingly, as soon as the period ended, Bill Clinton failed to sell an expansion of federal power based on the idea of a health-care "crisis." Then Republicans failed in somewhat apocalyptic campaigns to abolish departments of the federal government and then to remove Clinton from office. I don't think that the war on terrorism has done much to make crisis politics work outside a narrow range of issues, because it isn't a war of mass mobilization. (And yes, these scattered thoughts do tend to reinforce your point about the utility of crisis talk as the president tries to win Social Security reform.)

This almost makes me want to take a Bush speech where he talks about the global thirst for liberty and replace "freedom" and "liberty" with "Ikea" and "cheap but stylish furniture."

From the BBC last September:

Three die in Saudi shop stampede Ikea

A stampede of hundreds of shoppers in western Saudi Arabia has left at least three people crushed to death.

A Saudi man and a Pakistani man were among those killed, officials in the port city of Jeddah said.

The incident occurred after shoppers rushed into a branch of Ikea to claim a limited number of credit vouchers being offered to the public.

More than 8,000 people had gathered near the store for the $150 vouchers, some of them having camped overnight.

The nationality of the third person killed was not given. Sixteen people were injured.

Ikea opened its doors at 0900 local time (0600 GMT), one hour ahead of the allotted tine, because of the large numbers of people who had gathered outside the store.

Mr. Robinson,

I graduated Summa Cum Laude from the Physics Dept of Moscow U in 1989 and then came here (I now live in Charlotte) after the Wall came down (BTW that was a great speech that you wrote!), so I have some knowledge of the matter.

The situation with science in the USSR was very uneven. Physics was generally considered ideologically safe because, well, it is materialistic, i.e. gives material explanation of the natural world and thus is hardly incosistent with Dialectical Materialism. In the early years of the USSR there were some ideological objections to relativity theory etc., but all that soon got abandoned. I think there were several reasons: 1) physics research was non-threatening ideologically (as long as physicists steered clear of philosophical interpretations), 2) utility of physics for making weapons was soon realized (especially after Hiroshima), 3) physics is a difficult subject about which Stalin and most of his ideologues had no clue, so it was really difficult for them to make any meaningful pronouncements, while those who had the ability and actually invested a considerable effort into learning it generally were not interested in making ideological hay out of it or perhaps just did not want to make fools of themselves by making claims that could soon be experimentally proven untrue.

So my education in physics was virtually free of ideology (although for five years I had to take courses in such wondeful subjects as Scientific Communism), lip service to which was largely relegated to forewords in textbooks which would typically just say that the textbook in question absolutely had to be written because the latest party congress resolved to improve the training of new professionals for the Soviet economy and science. Also, ever since Stalin conducted a campaign against "servility before the West" in the late 1940's, Russian priority in everything (including invention of steam locomotive, radio and airplane!) was discovered and some things were renamed - e.g. French rolls became Moscow rolls and some Russian names were inserted into some physics and math terms (e.g. the Clausius-Clapeyron equation became Mendeleev-Clapeyron equation). But that was about it.