Was walking up Broadway and saw a sign touting a group called Earth Justice. Their slogan: “Because the earth needs a good lawyer.” I thought that this combined two important elements of modern life nicely, and chillingly: environmentalism, probably of an extreme variety; and litigation. Could there be anything more American, in 2009? Environmental litigation? By the way, people – real live people – need good lawyers, too. For example, to protect them from environmentalist takings. Will those lawyers be supplied? ‐Yesterday, I printed something out from a website. And as I was doing so, this ad, or something, popped up. It said, “After you print out, please help nature by planting a tree.” You were supposed to plunk down $1.50 through PayPal. The printing out of something is a shameful act, you see, or at least a conscience-pricking one. And this $1.50 thing is penance. Sort of like “carbon offsets,” those modern indulgences. ‐I was thinking further about Wanda Sykes, the comedian whom I wrote about in yesterday’s Impromptus. (Actually, I mainly wrote about President Obama’s response to her: laughing at her jibes about Rush Limbaugh, whose death she wished for.) You don’t hear any jokes about the president, really. Dissent used to be the highest form of patriotism. And it used to be de rigueur to poke fun at the president – even to revile him. Bush was the butt of every joke, the object of every calumny. But everyone is aboard the Obama train. They’ve been abusing Rush Limbaugh for a long time, haven’t they? By “they,” I mean Democratic chieftains, the mainstream media – you know: “the culture.” In 1984, there are two-minute hates. They have gone way beyond their two minutes with Rush. Comedians, and “the culture,” need a villain, a bad guy: It can’t be Obama. So it must be Rush, who I suppose is the most prominent conservative. And this reminds me of something I strongly dislike about modern life, and maybe life in general: bandwagoning; herding together; piling on. People just go with the flow. They don’t want to be out of step. And the flow is with Obama, and against Rush. Well, to hell with that: If Rush is against the flow, I am happy to row the “wrong” way until my arms fall off. ‐Also in yesterday’s Impromptus, I wrote about the National Abortion Federation, hailing them for eschewing the “safe, legal, and rare” BS – you know, that Clintonian formulation that makes you ask, “If abortion isn’t wrong – isn’t the taking of an innocent life, deserving of protection, as the anti-abortion people say it is – why should it be rare? If a fetus is just a ‘meaningless blob of protoplasm,’ why in the world should the removal of it be rare?” NAF does not say “safe, legal, and rare.” They say “safe, legal, and accessible.” Good for them (in a way). I now wish to make another point – and congratulate NAF again, for having the word “abortion” in their name. Ours is a society soaked in euphemisms. “Reproductive rights” and so on. This group has gone ahead and said “abortion.” Again, good for them (in a way). You remember NARAL, right? They used to be the National Abortion Rights Action League. Now they call themselves NARAL Pro-Choice America, with no mention of abortion. (And don’t they sound patriotic!) Actually, the group has had several names, in the 40-plus years of its existence. One of its founders was Bernard Nathanson – who became one of the most important anti-abortion people in the country. He was the doctor, the former abortionist, who made the documentary The Silent Scream. Maybe ex-abortionists make the best anti-abortionists – sort of like Whittaker Chambers, James Burnham, Max Eastman, John Dos Passos, Frank Meyers, Willi Schlamm, and the boys made the best anti-Communists. ‐I was moved by a post that Abe Greenwald had on Commentary’s blog. He spoke of our president’s bowing to dictators (sometimes literally). And he said,

Since World War II, the U.S. has served (somewhat inconsistently) as the world’s police. Obama has not yet given up that job. We are staying the course in Iraq and beefing up operations in Afghanistan. But America’s role as beacon of hope to the world’s oppressed is an older and more fundamental aspect of our exceptionalism; it was the basis upon which the country was conceived. And on that front it’s hard not to conclude that we’ve simply closed shop.

Yes, “closed shop” is exactly right. Or as a headline over a Fouad Ajami column had it: “America’s diplomacy of freedom is officially over.” I have written a whole lot, usually in agonizing tones, about this. And Greenwald’s post reminded me of the letter from Geng He I quoted the other week. She is the wife of Gao Zhisheng, a political prisoner in China. (Well, who knows what his fate has been: He was “disappeared.”) Geng He escaped with their children to the United States. In a letter to Congress, she wrote,

My friends tell me that this great nation of the United States, which regards human rights as a cornerstone of its foreign policy, would never just sit and watch my husband suffer and do nothing. . . . I remember that, when my husband was still free, whenever major human rights cases arose in China, he would always look towards the United States. He always said: The United States is the cornerstone of world freedom, human rights and social order; the United States would not tolerate despotic rule and the wanton abuse of the weak and the masses. . . .
In the past, whenever I was worried about my husband because of his challenges against tyranny, he would often console me by saying, evil cannot win over good, the ones upholding justice will always have help. He said that if one day he would be persecuted because of his ideals and sense of justice, the people in the world who believe in justice would stand by him and support him.

Well, nice thoughts. That phrase “the wanton abuse of the weak and the masses” is particularly striking, I think. No country can do everything, of course. And that includes the United States. But countries can do more than they might think. And that includes the United States. ‐Shall we pause for a little fun with names? I was thinking about that name Greenwald: Usually, you find Grunwald, or Gruenwald, or Grünwald. And then the anglicization: Greenwood. But Greenwald? Neither fish nor fowl – or, put another way, a hybrid. I like it. ‐I’ll tell you what I’ve never liked: the extremely slanted names that congressmen can put on legislation. Say the Left wants to distribute free false teeth (a Buckley formulation I picked up years ago). The Dems will title their bill “In Defense of the American Mouth” or something. I thought of this the other day when reading about the Keep Terrorists Out of America Act. (Has to do with Guantanamo detainees, and how the Obama people will spring them.) I’m sure I support this bill. Still . . . Think of the campaign possibilities! “That Dem bastard Jones voted against the Keep Terrorists Out of America Act.” Etc. ‐Couple of Che notes? Okay. Many readers have sent me a picture of the AIG Financial Products guy. This is the unit blamed for so much. And the guy wears a Che shirt: here. Under a blazer of some type. Whatevsky. And I got a note from dear old Ann Arbor Town: “Jay, I was dropping my six- and eight-year-old boys at Burns Park Elementary this morning, and I saw a fourth- or fifth-grader wearing a Che shirt. I wish he had walked near me so I could have told him something about the person on his shirt.” I think we should be grateful that Ann Arbor schoolkids aren’t required to wear Che shirts . . . ‐You know which writers are very, very political? Sportswriters. I think it’s because they’re saying, “Even though I write about sports, I’m really very serious, you know.” So they flaunt left-wing attitudes. I haven’t read Sports Illustrated in maybe 15 years, but, when I was reading it, the magazine was infected by that. And sports columns in the New York Times? Forget it . . . They made Frank Rich or Paul Krugman columns seem apolitical. (This is in the past – haven’t seen the Times’s sports section for years.) Now and then, readers send me articles from ESPN.com. They contain many political jibes, all from the left. Here is one from the other week: “Unlike many conservatives, Kemp was keenly concerned with the plight of the poor.” (The column in question is here.) I could get all indignant about this. But the thing is: The late Kemp would have liked it, I’m afraid. You remember the Al Gore debate? Yet we shouldn’t remember a fellow’s weaker or less attentive moments. And Kemp had many fabulous ones. ‐I thought this letter from a reader was interesting – impolite, maybe, but interesting:

Jay:
Specter’s cancer is a touchy subject, to be sure. But in all the talk about Specter and the GOP – a party that has done so much for him in the past – has everyone forgotten that Senator Sununu went so far as to shave his head in solidarity with Specter during the latter’s chemotherapy treatments?

Oh, everyone knows that Republicans are a bunch of hardhearted stiffs. Don’t try to change the subject . . . ‐Almost every day, we could have an item that says, “If George W. Bush had said that,” or, “If Sarah Palin had said that,” or, “If Dan Quayle had said that,” etc. Barack Obama says 57 states, he says “I don’t know what the term is in Austrian,” etc. And now we have “Happy Cuatro de Cinco!” When I was coming of age, politically, there was a hot book called Reagan’s Reign of Error. Everyone laughed over it and rejoiced in it, because it was supposed to show what a dunce Reagan was. I believe there were similar books about GWB. Will there be a collection of Obama’s goofs and gaffes? I wouldn’t wait up nights – and this will not be for lack of material. And the vice president could fill a library. Speaking of vice presidents: Remember when Al Gore said, “A leopard never changes his stripes”? Remember when he translated our national motto – E pluribus unum – “Out of one, many,” which is bassackwards? Remember when, at Monticello, he looked at busts of George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, et al., and said, “Who are these people?” Dan Quayle’s “potatoe” episode was far more famous than any of this. Everybody makes mistakes – it’s only human. It’s just that mistakes by conservatives are . . . what? Amplified? Publicized and mocked to death, making them part of our collective memory, entering them into the national lore? An old, frustrating story . . . ‐In yesterday’s column, I had occasion to mention Ho, Mao, and Ann Arbor – Ho and Mao being big, big figures when I was growing up. Practically heartthrobs and pinups. A reader sent me a note supplying a name in another university town: the Ho Che Mao Record Co-op. Isn’t that perfect? Chew over that name. Such a shop actually existed. And here’s the beauty part: The owners were “Property Is Theft” types, of course. And they were having a big problem with shoplifting. Thanks, and see you!

#JAYBOOK#