On Wisconsin

My home state appears to be immune from pressure on the subject of global warming. We're set for our coldest July day since 1900!

Memory in the Unborn

Here's a remarkable new study presented today on Good Morning America about pre-natal memory development. (I am unable to post the video here, for some reason.) Will this jolt more people into thinking seriously about the bigger question implied here? It's fascinating to listen to the language used in this story. When the discussion isn't specifically about abortion, nobody seems to doubt the humanity/personhood of the unborn child.

On Manners and Elegance

Confronted by the left's apotheosis in domestic politics, here are some timely thoughts for consideration from Professor Daniel J. Mahoney, reflecting on the political theory of Bertrand de Jouvenel:

European chivalry had tied manliness to gentleness and had “subdued the fierceness of pride and power.” In Christian Europe, authority had been tamed by elegance and “subdued by manners.” But modern rationalist philosophy, vulgarized by the revolutionaries, had no place for taste, elegance, or even moral self-restraint. Its cold, calculating rationality undermined the “love, veneration, admiration, or attachment” that connect people to their commonwealth. In Burke’s view, public affections, combined with manners, are required as “supplements,” correctives” and “aids” to the law. The French Revolution left “another inheritance: it…hallowed violence.”

Taken from Bertrand de Jouvenel: The Conservative Liberal and the Illusions of Modernity

The Weight of the "Personal Story"

Estrada's "story" didn't matter all that much

Sonia Sotomayor's confirmation hearings solidify the prominence of the "personal story" era in contemporary politics. Candidate Barack Obama, perhaps the most narcissistic politician ever to descend on the political scene, was the forerunner in this movement. Throughout the campaign, we witnessed how personality and background consistently eclipsed experience, qualifications, issues and philosophy. To this day, he rarely gets through a speech without making some conspicuous reference to his personal story or background. But, as several Republican senators pointed out during today's confirmation hearings, it's a one-way street, this personal story bit. Miguel Estrada, a brilliant conservative Hispanic, had a similarly impressive personal story, like Sotomayor, but he saw his prospects for judicial advancement derailed by Senate Democrats, who gave scant notice to his story and labeled him an ideologue. Ditto for Janice Rogers Brown, who barely survived the senate's gauntlet and was eventually (barely) confirmed as a federal judge. Personal stories, you see, matter only if you're a doctrinaire liberal. If you happen to be a qualified conservative with a great personal story, you're out of the mainstream and you're story is totally irrelevant. Just ask Clarence Thomas.

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As a rough, unpolished afterthought, could the explosion in popularity of things like blogs, Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, etc., have something to do with the heightened importance placed on one's "personal story" in politics and pop-culture? Not that these things are bad in themselves (if used properly) but for many, they appear simply to be shallow outlets for endless self-promotion.

"Change" in Store for the Military?

Anyone searching for an intelligent, concise rebuttal to those arguing in favor of allowing open homosexuality in the military will find a superb resource in MacKubin Thomas Owens' essay, Ask, tell, whatever? Gays-in-the-military comes up again.

I think I've linked to this piece before, but the controversial subject has been resurrected of late in the wake of Obama's election. The president repeatedly promised while on the campaign trail that, were he to be elected, he would overturn the current "Don't ask, don't tell" policy enacted by President Clinton (who utterly botched his attempt to change the policy more radically) and supported overwhelmingly by military personnel. Lately, the left has been turning up the heat on the president to finally make good on his word.

But let's address the broadest question: Why prohibit open homosexual service at all? Congress provided the answer in 1993, when it passed the current law: "Homosexuality is incompatible with military service and presents a risk to the morale, good order and discipline, and unit cohesion that underpin military effectiveness."

An important element of war is "friction," which Clausewitz described as "the only concept that more or less corresponds to the factors that distinguish real war from war on paper." Clausewitz's friction describes the cumulative effect of the small, often unnoticeable events that are amplified in war, producing unanticipated macro-effects. Military effectiveness aims at reducing the impact of friction and other obstacles to success on the battlefield.

Most research has shown unit cohesion is critical to military effectiveness and battlefield success. The key to cohesion is what the Greeks called philia--friendship, comradeship, or brotherly love. Philia is the bond among disparate individuals who have nothing in common but facing death and misery together. Its importance has been described by J. Glenn Gray in The Warriors: Reflections on Men in Battle:

Numberless soldiers have died, more or
less willingly, not for country or honor or
religious faith or for any other abstract
good, but because they realized that by
fleeing their posts and rescuing themselves,
they would expose their companions
to greater danger. Such loyalty to the
group is the essence of fighting morale.
The commander who can preserve and
strengthen it knows that all other physical
and psychological factors are little in comparison.
The feeling of loyalty, it is clear, is
the result, not the cause, of comradeship.
Comrades are loyal to each other spontaneously
and without any need for reasons.

The presence of open homosexuals (and women) in the close confines of ships or military units opens the possibility that eros will be unleashed into an environment based on philia, creating friction and corroding the very source of military excellence itself. It does so by undermining the non-sexual bonding essential to unit cohesion as described by Gray. Unlike philia, eros is sexual, and therefore individual and exclusive. Eros manifests itself as sexual competition, protectiveness, and favoritism, all of which undermine order, discipline, and morale. These are issues of life and death, and help to explain why open homosexuality and homosexual behavior traditionally have been considered incompatible with military service.

Emphasis added

Learn more about Carl von Clausewitz here.

Iran, Vindicated

In stark contrast to the steely resolve of the administration of Andrew Jackson, here is a sobering piece by Andrew McCarthy on an under-reported decision by the Obama Administration to release Iranian operatives responsible for the deaths of American soldiers in Iraq. It represents a sorry capitulation more in the tradition of Clinton and Carter than with Jackson, T. Roosevelt and Reagan.

There are a few things you need to know about President Obama’s shameful release on Thursday of the “Irbil Five” — Quds Force commanders from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) who were coordinating terrorist attacks in Iraq that have killed hundreds — yes, hundreds — of American soldiers and Marines.

First, of the 4,322 Americans killed in combat in Iraq since 2003, 10 percent of them (i.e., more than 400) have been murdered by a single type of weapon alone, a weapon that is supplied by Iran for the singular purpose of murdering Americans. As Steve Schippert explains at NRO’s military blog, the Tank, the weapon is “the EFP (Explosively Formed Penetrator), designed by Iran’s IRGC specifically to penetrate the armor of the M1 Abrams main battle tank and, consequently, everything else deployed in the field.” Understand: This does not mean Iran has killed only 400 Americans in Iraq. The number killed and wounded at the mullahs’ direction is far higher than that — likely multiples of that — when factoring in the IRGC’s other tactics, such as the mustering of Hezbollah-style Shiite terror cells.

Second, President Bush and our armed forces steadfastly refused demands by Iran and Iraq’s Maliki government for the release of the Irbil Five because Iran was continuing to coordinate terrorist operations against American forces in Iraq (and to aid Taliban operations against American forces in Afghanistan). Freeing the Quds operatives obviously would return the most effective, dedicated terrorist trainers to their grisly business.

Old Hickory

What to make of President Andrew Jackson? On the one hand, he loathed the secessionist and nullification movements that were flaring up in South Carolina, led primarily by his arch-nemesis John C. Calhoun. Thus, Jackson opposed one interpretation of Jeffersonian political theory, i.e., the underlying thesis behind the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions. On the other hand, one of Jackson's primary objectives as president was to stamp out, once and for all, any vestige of the national bank, setting himself squarely against the Hamiltonian camp. A fierce nationalist who saved New Orleans and perhaps even the Union in the War of 1812, maybe the best way to read Jackson is to see him as his own man who paved his unique path, embracing some of Hamilton and a little of Jefferson. Anyone curious to learn more about the fiery Andrew Jackson should pick up Jon Meacham's Pulitzer Prize winning biography: Andrew Jackson: American Lion. While I do not agree with all of Meacham's conclusions, overall, he does a fine job in presenting Jackson's virtues and faults to the reader. One of my favorite lines from the book is a quote from Jackson to his doctor.

"Now doctor, I can do anything you think proper to order and endure as much as most men. There are only two things that I can't give up: one is coffee and the other is tobacco."

Judging Thomas

A thoughtful piece by Michael Barone on the reticent Supreme Court justice.

Justice Clarence Thomas has now served on the Supreme Court for 18 years, longer than most of the other 109 men and women who have sat on that high bench. Yet he remains an enigma to many. In the court’s open hearings he sits mute while most of his colleagues pepper counsel with questions. Yet he can be seen trading quips with his seatmate, Justice Stephen Breyer — a hint of the gregarious Clarence Thomas whose close friends describe him as a man with a wide-ranging intellect and gutsy sense of humor that takes flight in what they call “The Laugh.”

The Rain in Spain

When a political party controls all the levers of power in government, it often becomes the victim of its own success and, by extension, its ambition and arrogance, regardless of the strength or position of the opposing party. (This political truism could apply, in a qualified sense, to the GOP in the United States.) Spain is already suffering from the highest unemployment rate in Europe, which augurs poorly for the ruling socialists. And now, Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero and his leftist cohorts are trying to railroad a bill through parliament that would make it legal for a 16-year-old obtain an abortion without parental consent.

From the Associated Press:

MADRID – Spain's Socialist prime minister has irked his natural enemies on the right and in the Catholic church by legalizing gay marriage and instituting fast-track divorce. Now he has hit a raw nerve even among his supporters with a proposal to let 16-year-olds get abortions without parental consent.

The debate is harsh and emotional, showing that for all the changes Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero has introduced with his trailblazing social agenda since taking power in 2004, abortion remains sensitive in a country where most people call themselves Catholic, even if few churches are full on Sundays.

Polling numbers are against him: A survey published last month by the newspaper La Vanguardia said 71 percent oppose the teenage abortion reform, and the proportion among Socialist voters was 60 percent. A poll in El Pais put the figures at 64 and 56 percent, respectively. Both surveys gave a margin of error of 3.2 percentage points.

Obama, Joe Catholic and the Pope

An article in Newsweek is provocatively titled, More Catholic than the Pope. To no ones surprise, it was penned by Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, a name that should immediately betray the article's slant. The point of her screed is to limn why Barack Obama is a better representation of Joe Catholic than the pope himself. While arrogantly put forward and, considering the source, totally predictable, there is more to the story. There are elements that Kennedy Townsend conveniently glosses over in her attempt to place her own conscience at peace, to make Obama look mainstream and the pope out of touch. What the article fails to grapple with is that, if there is any truth to its claim, it is the result of one of two factors: ignorance regarding the faith or rank infidelity...or a little bit of a both. For generations now, the Kennedy clan has unapologetically demonstrated its proficiency in both schools: ignorance and infidelity.

Truth be told however, there is indeed a festering wound in the Catholic Church in America; a problem derivative of the horrendous catechesis that stretches back several decades and of which people like Kathleen Kennedy Townsend are the prime beneficiaries. The pope is clearly aware of this disparity, even if some in our own leadership stateside prefer to turn a blind eye to the fact.

The Protestant Obama embraces, along with many American Catholics, the alluring lie of relativism and utilitarianism. Many American Catholics have incorrectly transfered the checks and balances/separation of powers political formula to their approach to theology and ethics. In other words, it is okay, even commendable, to disagree on the fundamental teachings of the Church, just as it is commendable to disagree on matters of state in the agora of civil society. This infidelity (or declaration of independence, as otherwise falsely construed) signifies to the believer a certain protection of his individuality and autonomy from meddling outside forces. But, as Bertrand de Jouvenel stressed in his firm rejection of Hobbes, it is false to conceive of man apart from his connection to the community, to others, and by extension, the moral obligations to which he is bound as a result. Enlightenment notions of radical sovereignty are misplaced, erroneous, even dangerous. But many American Catholics have imbibed this modern doctrine and applied it to the practice of the faith. Hence, the article from Newsweek and hence, the Kennedy problem.

For the First Time

From TIME:

Body language says a lot about a world leader's audience with the Pope. During his 2007 visit to Pope Benedict XVI's private library, President George W. Bush sat down across the desk from the Pontiff as if he had just landed on his own porch in Crawford, Texas: leaning back in the velvet chair, legs crossed, apparently eager to show his command of the situation.

When President Barack Obama sat down in that same spot on Friday, July 10, for his first papal meeting, his posture was altogether different. Leaning forward from the front edge of the chair, his shoulders slightly hunched, his crossed hands resting softly on the edge of the Pope's desk, the leader of the free world looked more like a schoolboy who'd arrived to humbly plead his case to the principal.

WFB: Catholic

Here's a rich first-hand account of the Catholic William F. Buckley Jr., told from the perspective of (gasp!) an Episcopalian and close friend Neal Freeman.

I was introduced to the woman who would become my Catholic wife, of course, by Bill Buckley. It was part of his indefatigable campaign to enlist me in the legions of Rome. Every few years for a half-century he would inquire, “Mon vieux, are you still a stalwart Episcopalian?” I would reply that I was. He would then say in a pained tone, “Ohhhh, I see,” as if he had been reminded yet again that my ignorance was invincible.

Bracing for the "Common Ground" Spin

We can expect Obama's fast-acting spin doctors, people John Adams would derisively call "puffers," to kick it into high gear in order to dress-up the president's highly anticipated meeting with Pope Benedict XVI. I can only hope that the Vatican's communication department is sufficiently savvy and prepared to beat the Obama team to the punch. I'm not optimistic though, on that question. A master of co-opting language and situations to his advantage, the president (not to mention his bumptious mouthpiece Robert Gibbs who kissed the pope's ring at the audience today) is sure to emphasize the ample "common ground" that he shares with the pope on a wide range of issues, all the while giving scant notice to no doubt the pope's primary concern: the president's militant support for abortion.