November 27, 2003
November 26, 2003
It's pronunced "Nevambleda" you idiot!
(Review) No, the title above isn't a typo. Xrlq hilariously takes the Las Vegas Sun sun to task for their article complaining that President Bush--that moron--mispronounces the state name as neh-VAH-dah instead of neh-VAD-uh. Actualy, the Sun wites that pre president "mispronunces" the state name.
The article's lede then says, "Nevada memo to George Bush: When making a first presidential visit to a state, use the right pronounciation of its name."
Yes, we must be sure to get that "pronounciation" correct.
As Xrlq writes:
OK, time to move on. No more carping over how to pronounce a pronunciation, pronunce a pronounciation, or any of that stuff. We got your point: don't say "ne vah-dah." So what should we say instead?To properly pronounce Nevada, the middle syllable should rhyme with gamble.Really? Maybe it's just me, but for all the times I've been to Reno, Lake Tahoe and Las Vegas, I have yet to meet a single Nevadan who pronounce the name of his state "Nevambleda."
Ah, the arrogance of the press.
(Hat Tip: BoiFromTroi)
Newt Gingrich: The new tax collector for the Welfare State
(Review) Terence Jeffries comments on Newt gingrich's support of the Medicare Reform Bill.
Gingrich is right about one thing: This is historic. In days of yore, before Newt went hoary, he rode the backbenches of the House spitting acid-laced invective at party elders who sold out his principles. He once famously accused then-Senate Finance Chairman Bob Dole of being "the tax collector for the welfare state."But now Newt spits invective at what he calls "obstructionist conservatives." These are today’s backbenchers who labor to prevent their entire party from becoming the tax collector -- or debt monger -- for the welfare state. They are led by principled legislators -- such as Reps. Mike Pence of Indiana, John Shadegg of Arizona, Marilyn Musgrave of Colorado, Walter Jones of North Carolina, Tom Feeney of Florida and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania.
"Obstructionist conservatives can always find reasons to vote no," Gingrich wrote in the Wall Street Journal on the eve of the drug vote, "but that path leads right back into the minority and it would be a minority status they would deserve."
"Deserve," he said!
But since when did subsidized drug handouts become a litmus test of good government? When did they become a defining issue for the party of limited government?
And what is the difference between two parties, both of who have as their chief characteristic a willingness to shower public largess?
Aside from the War on Terror, there are, as far as I can see, no major differences between Republicans and Democrats.
And the truth is that, no matter which party is running the show, we will win the War on terror eventually. Sure, if somebody like Howard Dean becomes president, we'll pull back from Bush's policies. As a result there'll be another 911 or two.
But at some point, the American people will go ballistic, forcing whoever is running the show to fight this thing full bore. Democrats might make it more costly, due to the price that appeasement and weakness always extracts, but even they can't contain the righteous wrath of an American people who are attacked repeatedly. All they can do--worst case--is cause more American casualties through their ineffective policies. Which will probably finish them as a national party forever.
Still, it's clearly true that, as far as domestic policy is concerned, there is a Culture of Spending in Washington. Success is measured in a peculiarly Robert Byrd-ish kind of way, i.e. by how much federal slop you can pour into the local hog trough.
I guess it's too easy and too seductive to resist, this whole idea of spending other people's money on other people. Republicans, who've been telling us for years that they are the party of smaller government, evidently succumb to it just as easily as Democrats did.
Even Gingrich, the once-radical, conservative bomb-thrower.
"Deserve," indeed.
Those darn Palestinians
(Review) Since I mentioned Palestinian polls earlier, I thought I would run this by you, which is from the Palestinian Center for Public Opinion.
There are barely any women active in Palestinian politics because:38.8% Woman's place is in the home
14.1% Not talented enough
8.1% Prohibited by religious law
7.6% If women were in politics it would hurt the status of men
31.4% OtherResponse to adultery in a marriage:
30.7% Kill the adulterer
9.1% Kill the adulterer only if female
29.3% Separate or divorce
7.6% Divorce only if female was the adulterer
6.1% Forgive the adulterer
17.2% No opinion
Just a little slice of life for Women in Palestine. How wonderful it must be to be a woman there.
You have to be willing to uphold your principles, even when they're unpopular. It's called "leadership"
Photo: Reuters/Mike Theiler
It's a fantasy-land he's living in
(Review) There's no reason to read any farther than the first paragraph of Ambassador Dennis Ross' Washington Post op/ed today. When you start out this spectacularly wrong, everything else that follows is really just pointless drivel.
While peace is not about to break out between Israelis and Palestinians, there is once again an opening to end the past three years of warfare. Both sides want to end the war, create a period of calm and restore normal life for their publics. Those desires are not sufficient to reestablish faith in the other side's intentions or to bridge the gaps on how to deal with Jerusalem, borders and refugees. But they may be sufficient to produce a more enduring cease-fire and the resumption of a peace process.
Really, Ambassador? Both sides? Because from where I sit, it looks like one of the sides is committed to blowing up Israeli civilians at every available opportunity. And it doesn't look like the Palestinian Authority is very keen on stopping them.
Now, you can quote all you want from recent opinion polls that say 66% or whatever of the Palestinian people want a ceasefire with Israel. And I can show you another recent poll that says the exact opposite.
That is entirely irrelevant. Opinion polls matter only in states with representative governments. Yasser Arafat, the PA Prime Minister and his Cabinet are all elected in the same sense that Egyptian "President" Hosni Mubarak was.
When, as I asked earlier, do their terms end?
In a state where Yasser Arafat's thugs publicly murder those who "collaborate" with Israel, Opinion polls work pretty much like this: "Hello. While keeping in mind that having certain political opinions can have you shot, would you like to parrot the PA's current PR pap, or should we just send someone over to drag you away now?"
Telling me that 60% of the Palestinians prefer this or that 80% of them prefer that is just as pointless as opinion polls in the 1980s that purported to tell us what Soviet citizens felt.
Since they don't run the show, their opinions don't matter.
Yasser Arafat, the man who can't say yes to peace, is still the guy who gives orders to the men with guns. And his orders have been to leave the Hamas and Al-Aqsa killers alone to do their work. Which, I should also point out, they have been doing with a vengeance.
In point of fact, both sides don't want peace. One of the sides consists solely of Yasser Arafat (the father of modern terrorism), his sycophants, and his ideological children. No one else on that side matters, because they don't call any of the shots.
What Yasser and his punks want is the destruction of Israel. And that's hardly a basis for negotiation.
The insensitivity of the Computer industry
(Review) This is typical city government in California:
Los Angeles officials have asked that manufacturers, suppliers and contractors stop using the terms "master" and "slave" on computer equipment, saying such terms are unacceptable and offensive.The request -- which has some suppliers furious and others busy re-labeling components -- came after an unidentified worker spotted a videotape machine carrying devices labeled "master" and "slave" and filed a discrimination complaint with the county's Office of Affirmative Action Compliance.
In the computer industry, "master" and "slave" are used to refer to primary and secondary hard disk drives. The terms are also used in other industries.
"Based on the cultural diversity and sensitivity of Los Angeles County, this is not an acceptable identification label," Joe Sandoval, division manager of purchasing and contract services, said in a memo sent to County vendors.
"We would request that each manufacturer, supplier and contractor review, identify and remove/change any identification or labeling of equipment components that could be interpreted as discriminatory or offensive in nature," Sandoval said in the memo, which was distributed last week and made available to Reuters.
*sigh*
You know, sometimes you don't know whether to laugh or cry.
UPDATE:
Evidently, as a result of the Equal Opportunity Compliance Office's investigation, 1,000 items of county equipment in LA have been relabeled from Master/Slave to Primary/Secondary. Of course, Primary/Secondary means something entirely different in the electronics industry.
Next thing you know, male/female connectors will be named patriarchal/oppressed connectors.
This is just frickin' insane.
Old fantasies, new realities
(Review) Victor Davis Hanson writes that the multilateral illusions of the pre-911 world have been shattered, and we must understand that a new world is being forged in its place.
No, the once-cheery multilateral world has become a very different place after 9/11, Afghanistan, and Iraq — the latter being the greatest and riskiest endeavor in the last 50 years of American foreign policy. Understandably, almost everyone is invested in its failure — and will slur us as either isolationist or hegemonist, depending upon the particular ox gored.Russia will not want to see us succeed humanely when it has failed brutally in Chechnya and profited off Saddam. Europe's faith in multilateralism surely cannot be dashed by Anglo-American exceptionalism. Faux-moderates in the region were "moderate" only when they had a Saddam Hussein to point to and say, "At least I'm not him!" Here at home, Democrats can't count on a bad economy, and so it must instead be a bad situation in Iraq. Professors and media pundits cannot believe the world really has descended to such a level that reason only works in tandem with force.
So if Americans in exasperation are asking "What is going on here?", the answer is, "Almost everything." And that is precisely why so many are so upset about so much. Remember, "multilateralism" and "unilateralism" are just concepts — only as good or bad as the people who embrace them. In 1939 a "multilateral" world — Germany, Italy, Russia, along with support from Spain, Japan, and many Eastern Europe states, and the indifference of the United States and most of the Americas — decided to carve up Poland; a "unilateral" Britain choose to become bothersome and thus resisted. Go figure the moral arithmetic between the one and the many.
As always, read the whole thing.
"The era of Big Government is Over." Uh-huh
(Review) Cal Thomas writes that, as libertarians have been saying for years, there isn't a dime's worth of difference between the major political parties.
The time when the Republican Party stood for something worth standing for is over. The "G" in GOP might as well stand for government. Smaller, less intrusive government with less spending and lower taxes is the stuff of history books and fond memories for a party that once had a purpose. But Republicans, having tasted power, are now drunk with it. Like the Democrats before them who became inebriated with the wine of success, Republicans now seem interested only in preserving their elective offices.Truly there is less than a dime's worth of difference between the two parties. If only term limits would catch on! But the very people who are the problem would have to vote for the idea and there isn't any money in it.
Defense and anti-terrorism spending aside, there is no excuse for much of the rest of it. It is a pathetic betrayal of the faith many had put in the Republican Party to reduce the size and role of government in our lives.
But, now we'll all get "free" drugs when we get old. But, none of the fun ones, of course.
Actually, since the benefit will come out of taxes, we'll really be getting pre-paid drugs. And, at $400 billion, we'll be pre-paying up the ying-yang.
It's called "creative destruction"
(Review) Economist Walter Williams explains why it's made the United States the richest country in thw world
In 1970, the telecommunications industry employed 421,000 switchboard operators. In the same year, Americans made 9.8 billion long distance calls. Today, the telecommunications industry employs only 78,000 operators. That's a tremendous 80 percent job loss.What should Congress have done to save those jobs?
The correct answer, of course, is "nothing."
Finding cheaper ways to produce goods and services frees up labor to produce other things. If productivity gains aren't made, where in the world would we find workers to produce all those goods that weren't even around in the 1970s?It's my guess that the average anti-free-trade person wouldn't protest, much less argue that Congress should have done something about the job loss in the telecommunications industry. He'd reveal himself an idiot. But there's no significant economic difference between an industry using technology to reduce production costs and using cheaper labor to do the same. In either case, there's no question that the worker who finds himself out of a job because of the use of technology or cheaper labor might encounter hardships. The political difference is that it's easier to organize resentment against India and China than against technology.
Both Republican and Democratic interventionist like to focus on job losses as they call for trade restrictions, but let us look at what was happening in the 1990s. Cox and Alm report that recent Bureau of Labor Statistics show an annual job loss from a low of 27 million in 1993 to a high of 35.4 million in 2001. In 2000, when unemployment reached its lowest level, 33 million jobs were lost. That's the loss side. However, annual jobs created ranged from 29.6 million in 1993 to a high of 35.6 million in 1999.
These are signs of a healthy economy, where businesses start up, fail, downsize and upsize, and workers are fired and workers are hired all in the process of adapting to changing technological, economic and global conditions. Societies become richer when this process is allowed to occur. Indeed, because our nation has a history of allowing this process to occur goes a long way toward explaining why we are richer than the rest of the world.
Those Americans calling for government restrictions that would deny companies and ultimately consumers to benefit from cheaper methods of production are asking us to accept lower wealth in order to protect special interests. Of course, they don't cloak their agenda that way. It's always "national security," "level playing fields" and "protecting jobs". Don't fall for it -- we'll all become losers.
That's essentially all you have to know about free trade, in one simple lesson.
Well, actually, you should know about Ricardo's Theory of Comparative Advantage, too. But this is a really good start.
The media's Double Standards
(Review) Byron York writes that the press' willingness to let the Democratic memos story quietly die exposes the media's explicit double standards. Ethical misdeeds by Republicans get them hammered like cheap nails, but when the Dems do it, the story just quietly dies on the vine.
A fundamental misread
(Review) John Cullinan writes that US officials are suffering from a fundamental misread of the political situation iu Iraq.
No freedom, please. We're Arabs.
(Review) MEMRI reports on the Arab World's reaction to President Bush's speech about democratizing the Middle East. Based on the Arab press --a press that is mainly controlled by the government--two things are clear: they aren't quite sure what democracy is, but they certainly don't want any of it.
"Bush has forgotten that the Arab and Islamic peoples prefer to be ruled by a dictator such as Saddam Hussein than by a democratic president of the likes of Bush...
Yeah, well, I'm sure the employees of the State run newspaper in a dictatorship like Egypt certainly hope that's true.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmad Maher stated that Bush's address was misunderstood, and that Bush was in fact not criticizing Egyptian democracy but praising Egypt's leading role in democratization and Egypt's democracy as a model that should be applied in other countries in the region.
Hmm. That's certainly an...optimistic view of the president's remarks.
By the way, I wonder If he's any relationship to Bill Maher? Anyway, Maher continues:
Our people, whose civilization is 7,000 years old, does not expect, and does not need to expect, others to give it lessons in democracy or in anything else.
Maybe you don't need any lessons in democracy, Ahmad, but if so, a lot of us are just wondering why, in the course of your 7,000 year history, you've never had any of it. I mean, let's face it, Hosni Mubarak doesn't look like he's gonna be running up against any term limits anytime soon.
Just how long is his presidential term anyway?
"The fact that Egypt is marching on the path of democracy demands no proof. It is impossible to cast doubts on [the fact that] this land enjoys freedom of the press that is nonexistent in many countries of the world."
I gotta say, this would be a lot more convincing if it wasn't taken from a newspaper owned and run by the unelected Egyptian government, printing an article by the Foreign Minister of that government.
President Bush and his speechwriters… are motivated by a Yankee and missionary mentality that propagates the values of democracy in the way of colonialism. [This mentality] blinds them to the facts of reality and history, because there is no one model for democracy. Democracy is the result of the economic, political, and social development of cultures, and it is not forced upon peoples by means of cruise missiles, tanks, and planes...
It worked in Germany and Japan in '45. I'm just saying...
Nasser Shamali wrote in the government daily Teshreen: "[Bush's] speechwriters are [members] of the Zionist gang that wrote the speeches of the war on Iraq and on the Arabs and Muslims. This is the same gang of usurers and bloodsuckers whose discourse on U.S.-style democracy refers to expanding its dictatorship all over the world, killing anyone it wants to, and robbing anyone it wants to."
Of course, it's a little known fact, but in Arabic, "Nasser Shamali" means "Noam Chomsky". No, really.
And, by the way, is it just me, or do Arab governments own a lot of newspapers?
My heart Bleeds for you III
(Review) The editors of the Manchester Union-Leader weigh in on the Democrats' outrage about the president's campaign ad.
Where were the Democrats when former Rep. Cynthia McKinney, D-GA, accused President Bush of knowing that the 9/11 attacks were coming but letting them happen anyway? She lost her seat in Congress over her accusations, and now she claims she was ousted from office in a Republican conspiracy. Just last week she told an audience that the White House is developing some race-based bio-weapons they can use against minorities and political enemies.Where were the Democrats when Gore Vidal, Noam Chomsky and other kooks accused the President of conspiracies similar to those alleged by McKinney?
Where were the Democrats when Sen. Ted Kennedy called the Iraq war a “fraud” and accused Bush of concocting the Iraq war plans in Texas purely for political gain?
We could go on, but you get the point.
Yes, I do. The point is that most of the leading Democrats are collection of pathetic little whiners and/or liars.
November 25, 2003
Free drugs for everyone!
(Review) Well, everyone over 65, that is. The Medicare overhaul passed, and the President will sign it.
So, where's my free health care?
Oh, wait a second. I'm ideologically opposed to single-payer health care. Sorry. Slipped my mind there for a moment.
The Left's apologetics for Soviet Communism
(Review) Jamie Glazov interviews Professors John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr about their new book, In Denial: Historians, Communism, and Espionage. Glazov, a Soviet Émigré asks why the Academic Left is so keen to apologize for the USSR, and downplay the true evil of that regime, even in retrospect. Professor Haynes replies:
What is overwhelmingly clear to them is an imagined future collectivist utopia where antagonisms of class and race have been eliminated, the economic and social inequalities that have driven people to crime have been removed, poverty does not exist and social justice reigns, world brotherhood has replaced war and international strife, and an economy planned by people like them has produced economic abundance without pollution or waste. Coupled with this vision of the future is loathing of the real present which falls woefully short of these goals and hatred for anyone or anything that stands in the way of their illusion of the radiant future.At Solovki, one of earliest Gulag camps, Soviet administrators put up a sign that expressed the Communist program: "With an Iron Fist, We Will Lead Humanity to Happiness." That slogan captures the murderous nature of the Utopian vision of the hard left.
What perfect, unintended irony. "With an Iron Fist, We Will Lead Humanity to Happiness."
Well, there wasn't much happiness by the time it was over. But 100 million dead proves that there was certainly an iron fist in there, somewhere.
Dear US Soldier...
(Review) Dennis Prager writes a moving, and important, open letter to US soldiers serving in Iraq.
Avoiding Democracy
(Review) John Leo writes on the Massachusetts Supreme Court's gay marriage decision:
Some admire the gay-marriage ruling in Massachusetts. Some don't. But surely the heart of the story is the stupefying arrogance of the state's Supreme Judicial Court. If you are going to stretch a state's constitution beyond all previous understanding and impose what many people believe is a fundamental redefinition of marriage, you don't do it in a 4-to-3 vote.[...]
How could the four have missed the obvious lesson of Roe v. Wade? The U.S. Supreme Court's abortion decision, imposed out of the blue with flimsy constitutional cover, short-circuited debate that was still in its early stages. It took the issue out of democratic politics and sparked 30 years of social turmoil. It gave everything to one side of the debate, nothing to the other, and made a European-style compromise impossible by its arrogant and constitutionally dubious "fundamental right" ruling. It assured rage by making its decision democracy-proof--as antiabortion forces quickly learned, the ruling could not really be modified by democratic decision making. Well, here we go again. Although a serious debate on gay marriage has not yet taken place, the short-circuiting process is already far advanced, complete with attempts to bar the civil-union compromise and to make a constitutional amendment almost impossible. Once again, no consensus and no broad debate. And just as with the abortion decision, a court is summoning up enormous opposition by foreclosing normal democratic procedures.
[...]
Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 was a good and necessary decision, but it created the monster of "landmarkism." It also deeply affected left-right politics. As the left gradually despaired of attracting a majority of voters to its programs, it opted for a strategy of going around the voters by relying on judges to impose liberal outcomes. This liberal end-run around politics is what the current battle over judges is all about.
Judicial review is a necessary component of our political system. It is not, however, a substitute for legislative action, nor should it serve to short-circuit debate on important social and cultural issues.
But that is exactly what the Court has done, in this case, and what courts all over the country have done time and time again since the 1930s.
And, just like ROE v. WADE, this decision will provoke a national uproar. It will further politicize the selection of judges. It will close off any possibility of reasoned debate. In short, it will have precisely the same pernicious effect on our politics that ROE has had.
And don't think that the reduced respect for the judiciary that these kinds of rulings promote will have no effect on judicial review. Eventually, the citizenry will tire of judges telling them essentially that they are too stupid, greedy, or morally deficient to be trusted to decide these issues for themselves. The people do, after all, have the power to amend the constitution to severely restrict the right of judicial review.
Which one is the evil party and which one is the stupid party again?
(Review) Tim Cavanaugh is confused. He writes that politics in Washington is beginning to resemble a creepy version of Disney's Freaky Friday.
And you say you have a Harvard MBA?
(Review) Hudson Institute economist irwin Steltzer writes that the president just can't seem to leave well enough alone when it comes to the economy.
Eager to respond to charges that George W. Bush has presided over the first decline in jobs since Herbert Hoover was in the White House, the president's team seems determined to adopt policies that have in the past stunted economic growth.[...]
And how better for Bush to demonstrate his concern about the manufacturing jobs that seem to be moving to China, and the high-tech jobs that are being lured to India, than by a dramatic reversion to the sort of protectionism that has historically thrown the world into recession?
[...]As if the federal deficit were not already large enough, Bush is preparing to sign an energy bill that doles out some $30 billion in subsidies to farmers and assorted special interests over the next 10 years. He is also pressing Congress to pass a bill that would subsidize seniors' purchases of prescription drugs, at an estimated cost to the government of $400 billion over 10 years--and that estimate, say most experts, is wildly on the low side.
There you have it. An economy growing steadily stronger, in part due to some intelligent tax cutting by the president. But it isn't growing fast enough to satisfy his reelection team, so they are pushing protectionist and fiscal policies that just might counteract all of the good work done in their calmer moments.
At this point, the only guy who can beat George Bush is George Bush. But, like his dad, he seems willing to give it try.
My heart bleeds for you II
(Review) John Podhoretz writes that Democratic outrage over the President's campaign ad is just a tiny bit overblown.
Democrats greeted the ad with screams of outrage. Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle demanded that it be retracted. Sen. Ted Kennedy said its intention was to "stifle dissent" in this country.Please. For six months, the Democratic candidates for president have been going after Bush for his handling of the War on Terror and the war in Iraq. One, the flaky Rep. Dennis Kucinich, opposes the war in Afghanistan that routed al Qaeda and ousted the Taliban. All of them have attacked the USA Patriot Act, the key domestic element of the War on Terror, for its supposedly draconian qualities.
This weekend, Wesley Clark said we could find Osama bin Laden "if we wanted to" - suggesting, in other words, that Bush really didn't want to. John Kerry has said that "a dangerous gap in credibility has developed between President Bush's tough rhetoric and timid policies, which don't do nearly enough to protect Americans."
Evidently, senior Democrats believe they are permitted to say anything they like about the president - but it's illegitimate for Republicans to fire back on the president's behalf. It's such a pathetic line of argument that it's hard to believe they mean it.
This is of a piece with the immediately previous post. What is the deal with these guys? They get to say and do anything they want, and we have to give them a pass, but they get to jump on their opponents with impunity?
Yeah, I guess it would be cool for you if life worked that way, huh, guys? Then you wouldn't have to defend any of your positions to the electorate. "Republicans are evil. They want to starve children and kill the elderly." Game over, you win. But, life doesn't work that way, and the whining is just getting pathetic.
"Mommy, the Republicans are passing laws, and they promised we'd get to pass some too! And, that doodyhead George is calling me bad names!"
Judas H. Priest, what a bunch a whiners! If Harry Truman were alive today, he'd march up to the Saddened and Concerned® Tom Daschle, and say, "Now, I don't know how they do things up in the Dakotas. But in Missouri, we don't have much patience for some silly SOB who can't do anything but whine about how tough he has it. If all you can do is sit there and cry, then you just need to go home, and give your place to somebody who knows how to fight."
Can you imagine Truman in 1948, saying the things that come out of Daschle's mouth? If he had, the famous election picture would be Dewey holding up the newspaper that said "Dewey Defeats Truman".
No wonder the Democrats don't have the guts to stay the course in Iraq. They don't even have the guts to run an election campaign without bitching and moaning.
Compare that to FDR, who not only had to campaign, but did it from a wheelchair, and who, even though he was paralyzed from the waste down, used his upper body strength and crutches to pretend he was walking to the podium when he gave speeches. Not much whining there.
Geez, what bunch of losers.
My heart bleeds for you
(Review) Paul Gigot writes that the Republicans are just being terribly, terribly unfair. Why, they are using their majority to pass legislation, even when the Democrats disagree! Majorities passing laws? It's practically the end of consensual government!
"I don't mean to be alarmist, but this is the end of parliamentary democracy as we have known it," said Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts. The new system amounted to "plebiscitary democracy" in which leaders of the House have imposed such a strong sense of party discipline that they will ultimately pass whatever legislation they bring to the floor. "The Republican Party in the House is the most ideologically cohesive and disciplined party in the democratic world," Frank said. In response, House Democrats were more united in opposition to the bill than Democratic senators, who are operating as if the older system of give-and-take were still in force.
And the Republicans are now enforcing party discipline, in a way that used to be completely unremarkable for both parties 30 or 40 years ago? The ultimate crime, I'm sure.
Of course, when the minority party prevents even a floor vote on judicial nominees, that's a valid exercise of parliamentary democracy. So, I guess, democracy is only threatened when the elected majority passes laws, but not when a vocal minority uses parliamentary tricks to subvert the nominations process.
Cry me a river, Barney. You're part of the minority party. You don't like it? Win some elections. Until then, suck it up, legislation-boy.
Lee is nobody's fool
(Review) Lee Kwan Yew is a very wise man. Fareed Zakaria conveys to us Lee's take on the War Against Terror:
“The Europeans underestimate the problem of Al Qaeda-style terrorism,” he said. “They think that the United States is exaggerating the threat. They compare it to their own many experiences with terror—the IRA, the Red Brigade, the Baader-Meinhof, ETA. But they are wrong.”He went on: “Al Qaeda-style terrorism is new and unique because it is global. An event in Morocco can excite the passions of extremist groups in Indonesia. There is a shared fanatical zealousness among these different extremists around the world. Many Europeans think they can finesse the problem, that if they don’t upset Muslim countries and treat Muslims well, the terrorists won’t target them. But look at Southeast Asia. Muslims have prospered here. But still, Muslim terrorism and militancy have infected them.” Lee pointed out that Singapore and Thailand have both been targeted in recent years, though neither has mistreated its Muslim populations.
“The Americans, however, make the mistake of seeking largely a military solution. You must use force. But force will only deal with the tip of the problem. In killing the terrorists, you will only kill the worker bees. The queen bees are the preachers, who teach a deviant form of Islam in schools and Islamic centers, who capture and twist the minds of the young.”
Hear that Saudi Arabia? That means you.
Because, at the end of the day, Lee is right. There is a whole infrastructure in the Islamic world dedicated to spreading the fundamental, wahabbist type of Islam. The most noticeable of which are Madrassas all over the Muslim world whose only education is daily memorization of the Koran along with wahabbist religious instruction, and absolutely nothing else. Then there are the preachers in Mosques who give sermons filled with hate and bile for the West in general, and America--and, of course, the Jews; always the Jews--in particular.
These are the guys we should be going after. Their followers are just the cannon fodder.
And the main source of support for these radical clerics and terrorist wannabes, is our old "ally," the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Harsh lessons must be taught there, sooner or later.
A time for optimism
(Review) David Brooks writes in the New York Times that despite the carping you hear from some--on the Right in the 1990s and on the Left now--we are essentially a prosperous, well-governed nation.
Obviously, huge problems remain. But the overwhelming weight of the evidence suggests that despite all the ugliness of our politics, this is a well-governed nation. The trends of the past two decades stand as howling refutation of those antipolitical cynics who have become more scathing about government even as the results of our policies have been impressive. The evidence also rebukes those gloomy liberals who for two decades have been predicting that the center-right governance of Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Bush would lead to disaster.Most of all, the evidence rebuts the cultural critics of the right and left, who have bemoaned the rise of narcissism, cultural relativism, greed, and on and on. And while many of these critics have made valid points, if you relied on their work you would have a horribly distorted view of the state of this nation.
Catious optimism. I like it.
Reality TV I want to watch
(Review) Now, I've never been a big reality TV fan. I've never seen a single episode of Survivor, The Bachelor, Or hardly any of the others. I have wathed Joe Millionaire because I was engaged by the train wreck feeling of it all, but that's it.
But I am going to watch The Simple Life. Watching Paris Hilton and Nicole Ritchie getting a sink-or-swim introduction tor eal people, with real physical labor to do every day (and there's hardly any more work that's more physically exacting than farm work) should just be a fascinating bit of television.
Watch Nicole and Paris jet to Altus, Ark., after a last-ditch shopping spree that includes a $1,500 designer dog carrier. Watch their faces fall as they realize they're staying in a modest country home that doesn't have room service or private bath. And that's no chocolate mint on the bed -- it's a tick! (Cue horrified looks from Paris and Nicole.)See the young ladies traipse around the countryside in wildly inappropriate outfits. Watch Paris ponder the meaning of the following: Wal-Mart ("Is that where they sell wall stuff?"); a shopping list calling for "generic water" and the phrase "soup kitchen."
Oh, yeah. This should be fun.
November 24, 2003
Let's not declare victory just yet
(Review) Jonah Goldberg provides some counterpoints to Brian Anderson's City Journal article, "We’re Not Losing the Culture Wars Anymore." Conservatives shouldn't, writes Goldberg, declare victory quite yet.
If conservatives have such a lock on the culture these days, as Al Gore, Al Franken, and others keep insisting, why don't we just switch sides? The Left can have Fox News, the Wall Street Journal op-ed page, the lavish offices of National Review and The Weekly Standard, as well as Sean Hannity's and Rush Limbaugh's airtime. The gangs at the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation will clear out their desks, give John Podesta the code to the Xerox machine, and tell Eric Alterman where in the neighborhood to buy the best gyros.In return, we'd like the keys to the executive bathrooms at ABC, CBS and NBC, please. We'd like the cast of Fox and Friends to take over The Today Show's studios ("and tell Couric to take her Cabbage Patch dolls with her!"). We want Ramesh Ponnuru as the editor of the New York Times and Rich Lowry can have his choice between Time and Newsweek. Matt Labash will get Esquire and let's set up Rick Brookhiser at Rolling Stone (that way they won't have to change their drug coverage). Andrew Sullivan can have The New York Times Magazine. Robert Bork will be the dean of the Yale Law School and the faculty of Hillsdale and Harvard will simply switch places. Cornell West will be airbrushed out of The Matrix and Harvey Mansfield will take his place (though convincing him say anything other than "you call that a haircut?" will be hard). NRO will get the bazillions of dollars spent by the editors of Salon and Slate, and those guys can start paying their authors with chickens and irregular tube socks made in Albania.
In other words, talk to me about how we've won the culture war when Dinesh D'Souza wins a MacArthur Foundation "genius grant" and Maya Angelou has to blog about it because no one at the New York Times will run her pieces.
It'll never happen, of course. Heck, I'd pay good money to see it. The Left would be permanently assigned to the ash heap of history, and the big political fights would be between conservatives and libertarians.
And conservatives would lose.
Naiveté of the Anti-Bush Protesters
(Review) Andrew Rawnsley writes--in the Guardian/Observer, no less--that the bombings in Turkey make the anti-bush protesters look naive. In the end, the Islamists would be quite happy to kill the protesters, too.
For this form of terrorism, the front line is wherever the bombers can strike. Islamist extremists have killed the citizens of countries that supported the removal of the Taliban and the toppling of Saddam. They have slaughtered Italian policemen in Iraq and young Australian holidaymakers in Bali.The terrorists have been equally delighted to kill the citizens of countries that volubly opposed the military action in Iraq. They have massacred French technicians in Karachi and German tourists in Tunisia.
The hallmark of this terrorism is that it kills anywhere anytime in any numbers that it can. The victims are American, European, African, Asian and Hispanic, Jews, Christians, Hindus, atheists - and Muslims. In Istanbul, as so often before, these people have no compunction about murdering their own faith.
[...]
As for those protesters who toppled that papier-maché Bush in Trafalgar Square, they were made to look naive. The bombers, if they could, would happily slaughter them too. It is a delusion to think that all that is needed to make the world safe is a change to the occupants of the White House and Number 10. Charles Kennedy could be Prime Minister and Michael Moore might be President of the United States. Al-Qaeda would carry on killing. Because, to them, freedom is an ugly thing.
And most likely, they'd find it easier to do the killing as well.
The Padilla Matter
(Review) The editors of the Washington Post opine on the detention of Jose Padilla:
The problem here is not that Mr. Padilla is being held as an enemy combatant; it is that the government is denying him any meaningful process for examining the accuracy of its allegation. This is particularly troubling in the context of a potentially perpetual conflict against a non-state, transnational enemy, one in which distinguishing combatants from innocents can be difficult. Mr. Padilla is being imprisoned indefinitely on the basis of the president's say-so alone. But what if an enemy combatant designation were the product of some tragic mistake? What if it were made maliciously? No court could provide relief, because no court would even know whether Mr. Padilla admitted or contested the allegations against him.In the lower court, Chief Judge Michael B. Mukasey struck a delicate balance to which the appeals court should pay heed. If Mr. Padilla is really an al Qaeda operative, Judge Mukasey wrote, his detention as an "enemy combatant" is lawful. But the courts cannot simply accept the government's word. An American citizen must be able to respond to the government's allegations and must have some access to counsel in order to do so.
Maybe Padilla is an enemy combattant. Maybe he isn't. But we'll never know if all we can do is take the President's word for it.
Ted Kennedy: Liar
(Review) Civil Libertarian Nat Hentoff is essentially calling Teddy kennedy a blatant liar, when it comes to his opposition to Judge Janice Rogers Brown.
I hardly agree, to say the least, with all of Justice Brown's judicial opinions; but the fiercely partisan Democrats on the Judiciary Committee slide by her dissents and majority opinions that are at vivid variance with the Democrats' campaign to stereotype her entire record. This selective prosecution is dishonest.In In re Visciotti (1996), Justice Brown, dissenting, insisted that the death sentence of John Visciotti — convicted of murder, attempted murder and armed robbery — should be set aside because of the incompetence of the defense lawyer. And, in In re Brown (1998), she actually reversed a death sentence in the capital murder conviction of John George Brown because the prosecutor severely violated due process by failing to reveal evidence that could have been exculpatory.
Sen. Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts charged Justice Brown with "a deep-seated and disturbing hostility to civil rights, workers' rights, consumer protection and government action."
But Mr. Kennedy didn't cite her votes in these California Supreme Court cases:
In People ex rel. Lungren vs. Superior Court (1996), Justice Brown said that the California attorney general had the authority to sue faucet manufacturers who used lead in their faucets. And, in Hartwell Corp. v. Superior Court (2002), she agreed that water utilities could be sued for injuries resulting from harmful chemicals in the water consumed by residents of the state.
Excuse me, Mr. Kennedy, is Justice Brown totally hostile to government action and consumer protection?
Good old Teddy. I guess he's just bitter because he knows he'd be president today, if he'd ever learned how to drive.
Spam-Killing
I have a problem with spam. Every single day, I get over 300 Spam messages in my inbox. Deleting them is such a huge pain, because if I don't exercise a fair amount of caution, I get rid of non-spam messages as well.
But I've found a whitelisting service that provides FREE spam-blocking. It's called 0spam.com. Whenever someone sends you an email, 0spam sends back a confirmation email. If they don't get a reply, they delete the message after a number of days that I select. If it's a legitimate message, you can just click on a link and you're added to my whitelist. If it's a spambot, the message will go unanswered.
Yes, if you send me a message, then you'll have to be slightly inconvenienced the first time you send me a message. But, after you're on my whitelist, you don't have to do that anymore.
The service is free, too, which astounds me. Similar services I've found run about 25 bucks per year. They do ask for donations, much the same way the Movable Type does, so if you use the service and like it, it's only fair to pony up a few bucks. After all, it certainly is a service that has value, especially if, like me, you're getting hundreds of spam messages per day.
It has really cleaned out my mailbox, and so, I figured that some of you out there might want to look into it.
I don't know who decided to put this together for free--well, for a voluntary donation, actually--but I do appreciate it.
The risk of Howard Dean
(Review) Michael Barone writes that if Dean gets the Democratic Party nomination, the election will be a tough one for Democrats.
The Democrats' problem will be different if Dean is nominated. Their problem will be with American exceptionalism. That is the idea, shared by most Americans, that this country is unique and special, with unique virtues and special responsibilities--a city on a hill, as John Winthrop and Ronald Reagan put it, with the responsibility to spread freedom and democracy around the world. Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman, John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan were all American exceptionalists. So, as we have seen with ever increasing clarity, is Bush. Dean doesn't seem to be, and neither do most of his followers. When they say they want to take their country back, they mean they want the United States to take its place as just one of many nations, with no claim to moral superiority, heeding the cautions of France, Germany, and Russia; deferring to the United Nations or NATO; seeking the respect of the protesters in the streets of London or the opinion writers in Le Monde.
The party of FDR and Harry Truman is dead. A Dean nomination will just put the final nail in that old party's coffin.
And a governing Dean would have an even bigger problem. Americans will not, on the whole, be impressed with a president who clears our national security objectives through the Elysée Palace first.
Indeed, a Dean win in 2004 might be a disaster of the first magnitude for the Democrats. Two-thirds of the electorate believes the Democratic Party is unserious about national security. Any event which appears to highlight that weakness--like another 911 style terrorist attack--will cement in the public mind the complete unsuitability of Democratic politicians for the Presidency in times of national emergency.
Emerods on both their houses
(Review) Joe Klein illustrates the problems with both Democrats and Republicans when it comes to domestic policy.
The week's events illuminate a fundamental difference between Democrats and Republicans on domestic policy. The Democrats are boxed into complicated and unpopular positions because they tend to stand on principle—although the principles involved are often antiquated, peripheral and, arguably, foolish. The Republicans, by contrast, have abandoned traditional conservativism to gain political advantage (with the elderly, for instance) or to pay off their stable of corporate-welfare recipients.
And let's not forget steel, textile, and lumber tariffs. Or the $350 billion farm subsidies bill.
Still, it's funny to note that the president, a Republican, will beat on the Democrats like egg-sucking dogs for their opposition to a Medicare prescription drugs benefit.
So, Dems, how do you like »Mediscare« tactics now?
Saddened and Disappointed
(Review) The perennially saddened and disappointed Senator Tom Daschle (D-SD) is once again saddened and disappointed over the President's new television commercial.
The 30-second ad, which aired in Iowa over the weekend, features clips of Bush during his State of the Union address last January. It portrays Bush as a fighter of terrorism and says his opponents "are now attacking the president for attacking the terrorists.""It's wrong. It's erroneous, and I think that they ought to pull the ad," Daschle told NBC's "Meet the Press" program on Sunday.
"We all want to defeat terrorism," the South Dakota senator said. But "to chastise and to question the patriotism of those who are in opposition to some of the president's plans I think is wrong."
It is neither wrong, nor erroneous. The Democrats are attacking Bush for fighting the War Against Terror. They disagreed with the Action in Iraq, the Disagree with the president's handling of the postwar administration of that country, they disagree with his policy of preemption, they disagreed with the attack on the Taliban in Afghanistan.
It is not wrong of the president to point this out. Indeed, it is vitally important that he does. If that causes the electorate to doubt even further the Democratic Party's seriousness about national security affairs, then the fault is not the president's, but rather the Democratic politicians who display such a lack of seriousness as to cripple their party's credibility when it comes to national security.
The president is not questioning the patriotism of his opponents, he is questioning their competence at devising a national security strategy that will protect the lives and property of American citizens. The Democrats, in general, seem to believe that national security policy seems to consist of handing out fuzzy bunnies to anyone who disagrees with us, and if that fails to pacify them, proffering elaborate and abject apologies to them for ever defending our national interests at any time in the past two centuries.
As The RNC replied to Sen. Daschle's remarks:
"We have no doubt that Sen. Daschle and others in his party who oppose the president's policy of preemptive self-defense believe that their national security approach is in the best interests of the country," RNC spokeswoman Christine Iverson said. "But we also have no doubt that they are wrong about that, and we will continue to highlight this critical policy difference as well as others."
Other Democrats are less temperate than Sen. Daschle:
Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy called it an "attempt to stifle dissent." On ABC's "This Week," Kennedy said "dissent is a basic part of what our whole society is about."
Perhaps I missed the part of the commercial where the president promised to track down dissenters, round them up, and put them in re-education camps. That's stifling dissent.
What the president is doing is telling the American voters that, as far as national security goes, the Democrats couldn't find their own asses without a flashlight, GPS, a geodetic survey map, and a ground approach controller to talk them in.
Teddy wants to be able to say or do anything he likes in opposition to the president without the president being able to say "boo" to any of his criticisms in return. Well, bad luck, Teddy, that's not the way the system works. If you want to act like a weasel then the president gets to call you one, and if it makes the voters view you with a more cynical eye, then tough cookies.
November 21, 2003
You mean they're not chafing under the yoke of Western Hegemony?
(Review) A new survey is out detailing some of the attitudes of Afghanis.
Some 83 percent of the Afghans surveyed said they feel safer than they did three years ago, when the hard-line Taliban regime was in power. More than three-quarters of those questioned said Afghanistan will be safer still in another year.
Of course, if the Left had their way, these people would still be trooping into the soccer stadium to watch the latest round of Taliban executions.
Fun with Systran™
Okay, this is a complete waste of time, but it's pretty amusing. I call it fun with Systran. Here's how it works. Systran, the makers of the language translation software--the most publicly known example of which is Alta Vista's Babelfish--have a multi-language translator on their web site. Now, this translation software is pretty good. It can take plain, non-slang language examples and do a pretty good job of translating it into another language.
Unfortunately, things lose a little bit of their original meaning when you use multiple translations. it's like the old game of "telephone", where multiple repetitions get completely corrupted.
So, here's what you do. Take a simple English phrase, and go through the following translation cycle:
English to Dutch
Dutch to French
French to German
German to French
French to English
You get some interesting returns.
Original:
I'm a little tea pot, short and stout.
Result:
I am what the box of tea suddenly and maliciously.
That's some pretty strong tea.
Original:
The quick, brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.
Result:
Bruiné fast fox jumped with regard to the putrefied dog.
Well, at least now we know why that darned dog is so lazy. It's dead.
Original:
When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that's amore.
Result:
If the moon relates to your eye like a large pie of paste of sheet Pizza dish amore those.
When you start talking like that, maybe you need Cher to slap you across the face and say, "Snap out of it!"
Original:
You can get more of what you want with a kind word and a gun than you can with just a kind word.
Result:
They can more receive what you want with a worthy word to be loved, and not to then be able a gun with a worthy word to be loved you.
Somehow, I just knew if that phrase got passed through French, the meaning would change.
Original:
When you have to kill a man it costs nothing to be polite.
Result:
If you cannot kill it, a man cost anything to have lived.
Well, that's true enough, I suppose.
Anyway, this is just a load of time-wasting fun. And, even though this is a family blog, so I can't provide examples, here's a little hint: Swear words are fun!
November 20, 2003
Euros protest the president. Yawn.
(Review) Austin Bay writes that we've seen this spasm of Europeans bashing the president before. In fact, it was almost 20 years ago to the day.
Back then it was the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament v. Reagan, but a lot of us have seen it all before.
This month is the 20th anniversary of the Great Euro-missile Crisis. Oh, the accusations! Reagan was stupid. Reagan was dangerous, a warmonger seeking the nuclear destruction of the Soviet Union. Reagan was — good heavens — a unilateralist. Today, the mayor of London calls Bush "the greatest threat to life on the planet."Twaddle. The current crop of Axis of Neville (Chamberlain) leftist pundits and leaders are thus exposed, recycling 20-year-old insults.
It does bring back memories, I must say. I remember having to patrol the fenceline at HQ Allied Forces Central Europe (it's now AFNORTH instead of AFCENT) in Brunssum, the Netherlands on a regular basis to chase these lefty yahoos when they broke into the camp. It was a pain.
And the criticisms of the Euros haven't changed a bit. Of course, that isn't to say that nothing's changed.
There is no more USSR, for example.
JFK: Illegitimate President
(Review) John Fund points out an interesting historical sidelight to the Kennedy election in 1960. In actuality, it appears Kennedy lost the popular vote, due to oddities of the ballot in Alabama that year.
The Democratic slate defeated Nixon, 324,050 votes to 237,981. In the end, the six unpledged electors voted for Sen. Harry Byrd of Virginia, a leading Dixiecrat, and the other five stuck with their pledge to Kennedy. When the Associated Press at the time counted up the popular vote from all 50 states it listed all the Democratic votes, pledged and unpledged, in the Kennedy column. Over the years other counts have routinely assigned all of Alabama's votes to Kennedy.But scholars say that isn't accurate. "Not all the voters who chose those electors were for Kennedy--anything but," says historian Albert Southwick. Humphrey Taylor, the current chairman of the polling firm Louis Harris & Associates (which worked for Kennedy in 1960), acknowledges that in Alabama "much of the popular vote . . . that is credited to Kennedy's line to give him a small plurality nationally" is dubious. "Richard Nixon seems to have carried the popular vote narrowly, while Kennedy won in the Electoral College," he concludes.
Congressional Quarterly, the respected nonpartisan chronicler of Washington politics, spent some effort in the 1960s to come up with a fair way of counting Alabama's votes. Reporter Neil Pierce took the highest vote cast for any of the 11 Democratic electors in Alabama--324,050--and divided it proportionately between Kennedy and the unpledged electors who ended up voting for Harry Byrd.
Using that method, Kennedy was given credit for 5/11ths of the Democratic total, or 147,295 votes. Nixon's total in Alabama of 237,981 remained the same. The remaining 176,755 votes were counted as being for the unpledged electors.
With these new totals for Alabama factored in with the vote counts for the other 49 states, Nixon has a 58,181-vote plurality, edging out Kennedy 34,108,157 votes to 34,049,976. Using that calculation the 1960 election was even closer than we thought.
Interesting.
The 2004 Election
(Review) Robert Samuelson writes that it looks like the economy is casting its presidential vote for Geoorge W. Bush.
November 19, 2003
I am a mouthpiece only for my own views
(Review) Nicholas Confessore alleges in the Washington Monthly that TechCentralStation is nothing more than a shill for corporate interests.
As a veteran TCS contributor, I can state firmly that Nick Schulz, TCS' editor, has never directed my writing in any way. Aside from questioning me in such a way as to force me to strengthen my own arguments, or to correct passages where my meaning was insufficiently clear--in short, exactly the kind of thing editors are supposed to do--Nick has left me completely free to choose my own topics, and to write essentially whatever I please.
In fact, Nick published my very first TCS piece is spite of the fact that it a) had appeared somewhere else previously, and b) contradicted the TCS editorial position.
So, if I am a shill for some corporate interests, I come by it honestly, not because anyone at TCS has suggested it to me.
(Hat Tip: Megan McArdle)
No, I'm not trolling for Google™ hits. Why do you ask?
Here are some things I'm just not talking about:
- Nude pictures of Britney Spears
- The Paris Hilton amateur sex tape
- The child molestation arrest warrant for Michael Jackson
- Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
- The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
If you've somehow gotten here looking for any of that stuff, well, you just won't find it here.
Not a bit of it.
And you won't find it at Indepundit, either.
And pay no attention to Xrlq's comment. "Googlebait", indeed. Well, I never.
Ducking a fight
(Review) James miller argues in TechCentralStation that libertarians are ducking the fight on homosexual marriage. That, he writes, is simply not an option.
Libertarians believe that the state should express no opinion on the morality of acts engaged in by consulting adults. Consequently, you would think that the default libertarian position on gay marriage is simply to have states never address the question of whether homosexuality is moral. Alas, on the issue of gay marriage there can be no neutral position.If a state allowed gay couples to marry, it would clearly be endorsing gay marriage and proclaiming to America that homosexual love is equivalent or at least morally equal to its heterosexual counterpart. Through marriage the state officially endorses a relationship, so by allowing two men to wed, the state would be taking a strong moral position supporting homosexuality, a position which goes against the religious views of many Americans.
Of course, if the state doesn't allow gays to marry it proclaims that homosexual relationships are inferior to heterosexual ones. Married couples have legal rights that unwed couples don't possess, so by opposing gay marriage states deny homosexual couples the ability to acquire these rights. Given that much of the opposition to homosexuality is religiously based, if a state denies gays the right to marry it is essentially endorsing certain religious views of marriage.
Even if the state compromised on the issue of gay marriage and allowed just civil homosexual unions it would be taking a moral stand. The state would be claiming that gay relationships are not completely abominable, but not quite as preferable as heterosexual ones. Imagine that some state passed a law saying interracial couples couldn't marry but could still be joined in a civil union. Surely through this law the state would be criticizing interracial love.
Well, he's right. It's a toughie, and as a Libertarian, I really don't know what the principled answer should be. I do know, however, that it's a lot more complicated than the »We love each other, so that's all that matters« standard.
First, I reject the notion that marriage is simply about two people declaring their commitment to each other. It may be about that in part, but the most important part of marriage is the family aspect. As I wrote yesterday:
"The purpose of marriage is not to enshrine the beautiful love of two people. It's to legally force the man to stay around so that children can be properly raised and civilized. All that romantic crap is how we dress it up to disguise the fact that society requires marriage in order to act as a civilizing influence on men so that they don't blow off their dumpy, 40 year-old wives and children in order to buy a 'Vette and chase the local Paris Hilton when the urge strikes."
To a very large degree, the intent of marriage is to legally force men into accepting their responsibilities to provide for their families. It imposes an obligation upon them that remains even if the spousal relationship is broken and ends in divorce. Marriage is how we enfold men in a web of obligation to their mates, their children, and--to the extent that marriage prevents the wife and children from becoming public charges--to society as a whole.
Narrowing the definition of marriage to little more than a spousal relationship ignores the very real cultural and civilizational effects that marriage has in raising each new generation.
A lot of people will argue that marriage isn't about procreation, but this argument simply defies common sense. When two people get married, don't we expect them to procreate as a matter of course? Certainly procreation, and the long-term welfare of the resulting children, has something to do with marriage. If it didn't then what purpose would marriage serve? What could possibly justify the time and trouble both of getting married, as well as the expense and difficulty of getting divorced, if the only point is to show the world your love for your spouse? Marriage doesn't contain a multitude of legal restrictions and responsibilities because they all foster feelings of deep love, so let's leave the romantic notions at the door.
At the same time, what do we do with gay men and women who want to remain committed to a life partner, and who, furthermore, wish to have children, either through surrogacy or adoption? Obviously, their children are just as deserving of the legal protections of marriage as any other couple's. And, even for gays who don't want a family, what about the ability of partners to make medical decisions, inherit property, and all the other legal rights that automatically pass between married couples?
In the end, I believe this a matter for the people to decide democratically, because the Constitution offers us no guidance whatsoever on such deeply held social values. The Constitution is a wonderful document for protecting our political liberties. It does not, however, offer us any guidance on social issues, nor is it intended to. Jurists who pretend otherwise do nothing more than act as an unelected superlegislature, imposing their views on society by fiat.
And we should note that when Jurists do this, it isn't particularly helpful. It's been thirty years since the Supreme Court granted abortion rights in Roe v. Wade. I haven't noticed the issue become any less incendiary in the interim. All that's happened is that the will of the public is now totally irrelevant to the issue. That isn't, as we've clearly seen, helped calm everybody down.
I suspect that had the issue remained in the hands of the legislatures, some states would have abortion, some wouldn't, and the number of public protests, judicial confirmation wars, and national electoral politics would be vastly different. And far less strident.
We have to accept that the Constitution cannot address every issue in society, nor can it offer us reliable guidance in moral judgment. That simply isn't its purpose.
So, then, we're left with only our conscience as a guide.
That is, I think, why libertarians are ducking out of the gay marriage fight. Because we really can't divine principles from the text of the Constitution that are helpful. The issue is, in essence, primarily a moral rather than a political issue, irrespective of it's political consequences. And libertarians tend to be uncomfortable taking stands on matters of individual morality, believing them to be...well..individual. I don't think there is a libertarian principle about gay marriage that can be universally agreed upon.
In the end, I think I would accept the notion of homosexual marriage without quibbling too much. But I certainly respect the views of those who argue that marriage is a specific arrangement between a man and a woman. I recognize that this is just too complicated for any simple answer to satisfy.