I’ve found myself lately thinking about George McGovern. Let me explain what I mean:

All my life, I heard George McGovern say one–maddening–thing in interviews. (He’d also say it in debate.) He’d say it over and over. His spiel went something like this:

Thank goodness we have two parties in this country. The two-party system is great. We need the Democrats, to promote change: to innovate, to imagine, to make progress. And we need the Republicans to act as a brake on change–to temper the pace and scope of change. Yes, this is a great system we have.

Well, well, well: how the tables have turned. The Republican party is definitely the reform party. All the reformist ideas come from the right–on the military, on the tax code, on the schools, on immigration, on Medicare, on tort law, on (of course) Social Security. And the Democrats are in the position of blocking, or, when they can’t do that, modifying. They are, in a sense, the “conservative” party, while the Republicans are progressive.

Democrats will say that we just want to undo what they’ve done. Well–in a lot of these areas–that’s a start.

‐For a little piece I’ve just written–which I’ll share with you later–I reviewed some old inaugural addresses. Please have a listen to the final paragraphs of FDR’s fourth (and last–this was January 1945):

“The Almighty God has blessed our land in many ways. He has given our people stout hearts and strong arms with which to strike mighty blows for freedom and truth. He has given our country a faith which has become the hope of all peoples in an anguished world.

“So we pray to Him now for the vision to see our way clearly–to see the way that leads to a better life for ourselves and for all our fellow men–to the achievement of His will, to peace on earth.”

Who can doubt that, if FDR talked that way today, he would be branded a “theocrat”? A dangerous kook who knows nothing about the “separation of church and state.” Who, indeed, hates the Constitution, and this country, really.

‐Richard Brookhiser had a shorthand for his most recent biographical subject, Gouverneur Morris: “the peg-legged rake who wrote the Constitution” (speaking of the Constitution). I thought of a similar shorthand for Mahmoud Abbas, aka Abu Mazen, new boss of the Palestinian Authority: “the Holocaust denier who financed Munich” (1972).

Not to rain on any parade or anything . . .

‐Abbas, remember, wrote his Ph.D. dissertation in Moscow, and this scholarly opus was later published as The Other Side: The Secret Relations Between Nazism and the Leadership of the Zionist Movement. Among the charming features of this book is Holocaust denial. And, of course, the beauty part–one of them–is that Arab leaders had, not secret relations with the Nazis, but open, very warm, mutually supportive ones.

What a world we live in: A Holocaust denier can rise to power in a land, and we say . . . nothing. Even worse, Abbas may be the best we can do in the PA.

‐memri.org, the website of the Middle East Media Research Institute. (My 2002 piece on the institute is here.)

I keep saying it: MEMRI is the most pro-Arab organization there is, because they pay Arabs the (very, very rare) compliment of taking what Arabs say seriously. Most Westerners just sweep it under the rug: “Oh, that’s just the way they talk, you know, they’re excitable.” This is condescension at best, and you-know-what–racism–at worst.

‐Several months ago, I heard a fun story from a journalist in the Middle East. The story concerns the New York Times.

Somewhere in the PA, Arafat gave a typically fiery speech: We will annihilate them, we will crush them, Palestine is ours, etc., etc. And then, at the end of the speech, he tacked on a line about diplomacy. The headline in the Times the next day was (something very close to) “Arafat Gives Conciliatory Speech.”

I thought of this when reading the papers last Saturday. Journalism is very subjective, emphasis meaning almost everything: The headline in the Times: “Abbas, Winding Up Campaign, Urges Revival of Peace Talks”; the headline in the New York Post: “Abbas rally cry–’Jerusalem!’” (This last refers to Abbas’s vow to swamp the Israeli capital.)

There was almost certainly nothing inaccurate about either headline–just a matter of emphasis. And bias.

‐I wish to direct your attention to this piece by David Frum. Being by David, it is marvelous. Its title in the New York Sun was “The Myth of the U.N.’s Moral Authority.” Frum punctures what very badly needs to be punctured: namely, that absurd myth.

Sooner or later, we’re going to have to figure out what to do about the U.N. I mean, we conservatives. I intend to put my mind to it. We like to grouse about the U.N., of course: That’s our main position–grousing. And maybe we should do no more. Occasionally you hear, “Withdraw from the U.N.!” and “Boot the U.N. from New York,” and “Form a union of democracies.” Then, too, you hear calls for internal reform, such as reconstituting the Security Council (India in, the French out).

I myself do not have a course to recommend. So, in the meantime–grousing.

‐I will make a point that a lot of us have made, over the last four years, but one that keeps coming to mind: Amazing, that Dick Cheney should have become a figure of villainy–a Left bogeyman. Cheney’s been in and around government for decades, as White House chief of staff, as a congressman, as a House leader, as defense secretary, etc., etc. And he was always known as exceptionally moderate (certainly in temperament), and wise, and decent, and trustworthy, and unobjectionable. I mean just a prince of a good-government guy (right of center).

And now–he is seen as a monster. I give you a joke, from Craig Ferguson of The Late, Late Show: “Here’s the update concerning Miss Beazley–the new puppy at the White House. Today there was a biting incident involving Dick Cheney. But don’t worry: The dog’s okay.”

How did this happen? How did Dick Cheney get morphed into this insane fiction?

I know. I’m just being rhetorical here.

‐As a sometime student of the malpractice crisis–and the crying need for tort reform–I nod in recognition at one thing: If the Left fails when playing the “There’s no problem” card, they immediately play the insurance card. That’s their fallback: “The doctors aren’t guilty, the suers aren’t guilty–it’s the damn insurance companies.” Everyone hates insurance companies, right?

Well, the insurance card is one of the dirtiest in the deck. And the maligning of the insurance industry speaks to a mysterious defect in the American character. Without the insurance industry . . . many, many people would be up a creek.

In any case, I did a piece in August 2001 on West Virginia; it’s called “Welcome to ‘Tort Hell,’” and I think you will find its relevance continuing.

‐Melanie Phillips gave a big speech recently on media bias, and you should check it out in its entirety–but check out, in particular, the anecdote with which the speech opens:

“A friend went into Blackwells university bookshop in Oxford and asked the counter clerk: ‘Do you have a copy of Alan Dershowitz’s The Case for Israel?’ ‘There is no case for Israel’, the counter clerk replied.”

Yep–those are the book clerks I know! It reminded me of our piece “Little Suppressors: Dealing with the bookstore clerk who hates you“–and I say “our” because many, many Impromptus readers helped me out with it.

‐All of us righties are saying that Michael Chertoff was a marvelous pick for the Department of Homeland Security (whether there should be such a department or not), and so he was. The consensus is correct. And I direct you to the piece that Chertoff wrote for The Weekly Standard, about a year ago, on “our legal response to the post-9/11 world.”

‐Anthony Daniels–who also writes as Theodore Dalrymple–is always telling us how bad Britain has gotten, far worse than most Americans can imagine. He is the author, as you know, of Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass. Anyway, I thought of Tony when reading a wire-service dispatch: “A 13-year-old Manchester boy was sentenced to four months in a detention center for young offenders this week after he was found guilty of taking a drunken joy ride in a stolen car. He is believed to be the youngest person ever convicted of drunken driving in Britain.”

If I’m not mistaken, that’s more “Cool Britannia” than “Rule, Britannia”–right? Or is it “Fool Britannia”? I shouldn’t joke, or even semi-joke. It is mainly a pity.

‐A very curious piece appeared in last Sunday’s New York Times. Called “The Snob’s Comeuppance,” it concerned pretentiousness in New York. Its subheading: “In New York, magnet for the über-pretentious, it helps to know your Buxtehude from your ‘Berceuse.’”

One passage went, “I recognized upon my arrival in New York that I was but a very small fish in a very big pond. This was driven home to me one night in the early 1970’s when I made the acquaintance of a young music aficionado who actually turned down tickets to see Vladimir Horowitz at Carnegie Hall because he had attended a recital given by the magnificent soprano Janet Baker the night before. ‘My ears are tuned for voice,’ he explained. ‘I simply wouldn’t be able to enjoy a piano recital.’”

Um, I just want to say that Baker was a mezzo-soprano.

‐Massimo Freccia was, among other things, a friend of our senior editor David Pryce-Jones. He was also a conductor, and very long-lived. He died the other day, two years short of 100.

The Telegraph’s obituary on him is marvelous, and I wanted you to see in particular this paragraph:

He was one of the last men to fight a duel. [What a sentence!] Staying on a Mediterranean island in 1934, he was attacked by a rival for the attentions of a woman. Freccia (illegally) challenged his assailant to a duel. The weapon chosen was swords–his opponent was a cavalry officer, but Freccia had merely had fencing lessons as a boy and went for a “crash course” at a fencing school in Naples in the week before the encounter. They met at 5 a.m. and Freccia’s sword pierced his rival’s right arm. After 15 minutes of medical treatment, defeat was admitted.

I must offer another paragraph as well:

A few months before [the duel] Freccia had conducted the Budapest Symphony Orchestra on an Italian tour. Mussolini attended the concert, in Rome, and summoned Freccia to meet him next day in the Palazzo Venezia. The Duce received him in his vast study and talked about the orchestra’s string section (he was a violinist) and the precision of the violins in Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony. At this point he broke off, the balcony windows were opened and he harangued the crowd below for 20 minutes. He then returned to his desk and resumed the conversation exactly where he had left it.

What a life, Freccia’s.

‐Care for a little music criticism (of a decidedly un-Mussolini-like strain)? For a review of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, under James Levine, with violinist Gil Shaham as guest soloist–and for a review of the New York Philharmonic, under Daniele Gatti, with pianist Yefim Bronfman as guest soloist–please go here.

‐Care for a little language? I was reading an Associated Press story about a recent snowstorm, and this Coloradoan–Amy Williams–said, “We got dumped on. The snow is just outrageously amazing.”

How I love our American language–”The snow is just outrageously amazing.” What a marvelous sentence.

‐Incidentally, “Coloradan” sounds better than “Coloradoan,” to my ear, but the latter seems to be more common.

‐I especially loved the final line in a recent WFB column. It was–in the best word–Buckleyan. He was talking of a serial killer and rapist scheduled to be put to death in Connecticut. The convict has requested that his date not be (further) delayed.

Ended Buckley: “. . . the only reason to fail to execute him is that he wishes to be executed.”

That is Bill. That is so Bill. For some reason it reminded me of his comment on Gore Vidal, who had accused someone–probably Bill–of lying about him: “Anyone who lies about Gore Vidal is doing him a favor.”

‐I wish to end on a Buckley, too–Priscilla Buckley, one of my predecessors as managing editor of National Review. (Have you read her memoirs, by the way? You should treat yourself to String of Pearls.) Among her skills is golf–Priscilla is a whiz. And she came to learn the game in a most interesting way.

The governor of her club had a daughter, who was pretty good. Now, the club’s pro didn’t like the governor, and he was loath to see the daughter be top girl dog. So he undertook to groom Priscilla–so that she could beat the governor’s daughter. Which, of course, she did.

I update the story: That club, Priscilla’s home club, has a new trophy: the Priscilla L. Buckley Trophy. And guess who won it, last summer? Priscilla L. Buckley.

I mean, Nicklaus won his own PGA tournament–the Memorial–but this is ridiculous.

See you next time, y’all.