Best of the Web Today - January 21, 2005
By JAMES TARANTO
Best of the Tube This Weekend
We'll be joining Paul Gigot, Dorothy Rabinowitz, Jason Riley and John Fund for this week's edition of "The Journal Editorial Report" on PBS. Topics include President Bush's inaugural address and the prospects for his second term.
Air times are determined by local stations, so check the schedule here. Among the stations airing the program tonight are New York's WNET (13) and Washington's WETA (26) at 9 p.m., and Boston's WGBH (2) at 10 p.m.
Chicken of the Cloth
Iraq isn't the only place where Iraqis will be voting a week from Sunday; polling sites will also be operating in many countries with large Iraqi expatriate populations, including America. Iraqi immigrants will be able to cast ballots in Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, Nashville and Washington.
But while tens of thousands of U.S. troops are risking their lives every day for Iraqi democracy, some cowardly Americans are frustrating it right here at home. "A prominent local Catholic priest is supporting a movement of businesses and churches who are demanding that city leaders move one of the Nashville polling sites in the upcoming Iraq elections," reports the Tennessean:
The Rev. Joseph Breen of St. Edward Catholic Church said he represents a group whose members either live, work, send their kids to school or worship near Coleman Community Center, one of two Nashville-area polling and voter registration sites for the Iraqi Transitional National Assembly election. . . .
Breen worries that a suicide bomber could target either the community center or the other polling station, the Fraternal Order of Police building at 440 Welshwood Drive. . . .
''Five years ago no one would be thinking about this. But there's not a day that goes by when you don't hear of a roadside bomb going off in Iraq. People may think it couldn't happen here, but it could,'' the priest said.
The Associated Press reports a similar story in Niles, Ill.:
An organization assisting in voter registration for the upcoming Iraqi elections left their headquarters Thursday in this suburb north of Chicago after village officials expressed security concerns, officials said.
The International Organization for Migration said Niles officials told the group they had concerns that the building could be a target for violence. The organization plans to move its administrative operations to the northwest side of Chicago. . . .
Mary Kay Morrissey, Niles village manager, said officials were worried they could not provide adequate protection for the organization's Niles site. She also said the organization did not get necessary zoning permits.
What kind of people are so pathetic and cowardly? Morrissey seems to be living in the past; her Web page declares: "As we approach the millennium and celebrate our 100 years of pride and progress, the General Government Department will continue to work together with residents, businesses, and community organizations and provide high quality services, efficiently and effectively!" Iraqis need not apply.
As for Father Breen, he should stick to giving fashion advice.
Bush to World: Get Real
The consensus on President Bush's second inaugural address seems to be that it was a very idealistic speech, which it was. As to its meaning, however, the president's critics and supporters alike are divided. The New York Times editorial board yawns that Bush simply fulfilled his "role, which was to summon the generalities that unite us":
Once in a long while, a newly sworn-in president moves beyond the deeply felt but slightly bland oratory and says something that people will repeat long after he has moved into history. Mr. Bush's speech did not seem in danger of becoming immortal, but its universal intent suited the day.
The Times' news story, however, says that Bush delivered a memorable speech--but says it in a hilariously backhanded way:
His speech was infused with a deliberate sense of timelessness, and it often seemed as though his words were directed as much to history as to the crowd of invited Republicans, who huddled on the snow-covered lawn beneath the West Front of the Capitol.
And of course it's true that many of the themes the president sounded have been heard in inaugural addresses before, including JFK's in 1961 and Bill Clinton's in 1993. (Homer nods: Yesterday's item, since corrected, erroneously said 1997.)
Yet in part because Bush's rhetoric went further and in part because he has already undertaken so many deeds to match his words, others are accusing him of overreaching. Agence France-Presse reports on British media reaction:
The liberal Guardian summed up the concern in a commentary under the headline "Fireworks in Washington, despair around the world."
It compared the massive fireworks display used in the inauguration celebration to the ordnance US "occupation forces" would expend in Iraq in 24 hours.
"The contrasts between this uninhibited triumphalism and the real world are as wide as the American continent," it said. . . .
In its lead editorial, the conservative Daily Telegraph also wondered whether Bush's brave words could survive the test of reality.
Bush's "ringing encomium of freedom in his inaugural address yesterday faces a cruel and immediate test in Iraq," the Telegraph said.
Also among the skeptics is our own Peggy Noonan:
[Bush declared:] "It is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in the world."
Ending tyranny in the world? Well that's an ambition, and if you're going to have an ambition it might as well be a big one. But this declaration, which is not wrong by any means, seemed to me to land somewhere between dreamy and disturbing. Tyranny is a very bad thing and quite wicked, but one doesn't expect we're going to eradicate it any time soon. Again, this is not heaven, it's earth. . . .
One wonders if [those in the White House] shouldn't ease up, calm down, breathe deep, get more securely grounded. The most moving speeches summon us to the cause of what is actually possible. Perfection in the life of man on earth is not.
Carping from the antidemocrats and anti-Republicans who make up the left is to be expected, but criticism from the likes of the Telegraph and Noonan can't be easily dismissed. A couple of points, though, seem worth making.
First, those who fault Bush for an excess of idealism, or an insufficiency of realism, are not grappling with the conceptual breakthrough of his speech, which is to declare the idealism-realism dichotomy a false choice. A key passage:
We are led, by events and common sense, to one conclusion: The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world.
The lesson Bush drew from Sept. 11 is that "realism" is unrealistic--that the "stability" that results from an accommodation with tyranny is illusory. To Bush, there is no fundamental conflict between American ideals and American interests; by promoting the former, we secure the latter. Maybe he'll turn out to be wrong, but for now the burden ought to be on those who, in the wake of Sept. 11, hold to a pre-9/11 view of what is "realistic."
Noonan is right that "ending tyranny in the world" is a fantastically ambitious aspiration, one that isn't going to be realized anytime soon. But Bush didn't promise to do it in the next four years or even in our lifetimes. He said it was "the ultimate goal" and "the concentrated work of generations."
"We do not accept the existence of permanent tyranny because we do not accept the possibility of permanent slavery," Bush said--not the only point in his speech in which he invoked the struggle against slavery. And it isn't the first speech in which he made that connection. As he put it in a July 2003 speech at Senegal's Goree Island:
My nation's journey toward justice has not been easy and it is not over. The racial bigotry fed by slavery did not end with slavery or with segregation. And many of the issues that still trouble America have roots in the bitter experience of other times. But however long the journey, our destination is set: liberty and justice for all. . . .
With the power and resources given to us, the United States seeks to bring peace where there is conflict, hope where there is suffering, and liberty where there is tyranny.
Slavery was once an accepted fact of life, and ending it even in America was an epic struggle. Today, however, slavery has been legally abolished everywhere in the world, and it is still practiced only in a few backward lands. One could argue that slavery still exists, in different forms: child labor, prostitution, communism. Perfection is indeed impossible, but progress is still worth pursuing.
What Would We Do Without Analysts?
"Bush Speech Marks Interventionist Policy: Analysts"--headline, CTV.ca, Jan. 21
ABC's Funeral
DocWeasel.com has re-created the ABC News page seeking "military funerals for Iraq war casualties" to cover "for a possible Inauguration Day story." Sure enough, they found one. We checked the transcript of yesterday's "World News Tonight" (available on Factiva, but not on the public Net) and found this:
Peter Jennings: Fair to say, we think, that at some point today here in Washington, the war in Iraq was on everyone's mind, when the president spoke; when the antiwar demonstrators shouted as the president went by; when one or another military unit did something here today as part of the celebration. And we thought, too, of the many wounded at the army hospital here, watching it all on television.
And in Rockport, Texas, today, just about the time the president was speaking, there was a funeral for a young marine reservist, 21 year-old Matthew Holloway was killed in Iraq last week by a roadside bomb. His brother told a local paper that as much as Matthew wanted to be home, he was very proud of what he was doing in Iraq, and it is something you hear from so many people in the services, including the 10,000 who have already been wounded.
We didn't actually see the show, but reading the transcript Jennings seems rather condescending when he observes that servicemen are "very proud." It's as if he was expecting them not to be.
Metaphor Alert
"A Shiver Runs Round the World as Bush Bangs the Drum for 'Fire of Freedom' "--headline, Scotsman, Jan. 21
While Hundreds of Millions Don't
"Hundreds Mark Inauguration With Protests"--headline, Associated Press, Jan. 20
Did He at Least Break a Rib?
"Just outside the White House grounds, 17 protesters staged a 'die-in.' After shouting a chant of 'Stop the killing, stop the war,' they dropped to the pavement one by one as one of them began reading a list of those killed in Iraq. One spectator apparently found the act so credible that he began administering CPR."--Reuters, Jan. 20
Gingrich Without the Charm
Some prankster long ago put us on the e-mail list for the Angry Left group MoveOn.org, and yesterday the following missive arrived, bearing the name of Eli Pariser:
Today, as Bush's corporate donors celebrate their victory, it may feel like the progressive America we're all fighting for is very far away. But it doesn't have to be that way.
In 1994, just two years after a big presidential defeat, Republicans with a pro-corporate, right-wing agenda swept to power in the House. From there, they gained control of all three branches of government. It's our turn. If we can convert the passion and energy of the progressive movement we've built together into power on the ground, we can take back Congress and make 2006 our 1994.
Today, we're launching our plan to do that. Together, MoveOn members will build an organized network of neighbors and friends in every Congressional district to stop the Bush agenda. We'll organize press events, we'll hold living room meetings with our neighbors, and we'll meet with local leaders on the issues we care about most--Social Security, right-wing judges, media reform, and more. We'll develop a national message together.
"The issues we care about most" turn out to be all negative: preventing Social Security reform, stopping "right-wing judges" and "media reform," which means sitting around bitching about "conservative bias." These guys are so relentlessly negative that awhile back they subjected The Wall Street Journal to a spam attack because we accused them of being for something!
It's true that there was a significant strain of oppositionism in Newt Gingrich's 1994 "revolution." But there was also a positive message, the Contract With America. The liberal media explained away the 1994 election with the myth of the "angry white man," so you can see why the MoveOn types might have been misled into thinking that negativism and anger are sufficient to win elections. But if 2004 didn't teach them otherwise, they may be uneducable.
Champions of Free Expression?
The left-wing magazine Rolling Stone "declined to run an advertisement for a new translation of the Bible aimed at young people, the nation's largest Bible publisher said Wednesday," the Associated Press reports:
On Tuesday, USA Today quoted Kent Brownridge, general manager of Wenner Media [publisher of Rolling Stone], as saying his staff first saw the ad copy last week, and "we are not in the business of publishing advertising for religious messages."
Rolling Stone is perfectly entitled to set its own advertising policies, but how is it that those on the left get away with posing as champions of free speech? From Agence France-Presse, meanwhile, comes a chilling story out of Stockholm:
A Swedish Pentecostal minister who was sentenced to a month in jail last year for preaching against homosexuality appealed the verdict yesterday. . . .
In a sermon in August 2003, the minister, Ake Green, said homosexuals' "sexual abnormality was like a cancer of society."
Both Mr. Green and the prosecution appealed the verdict. The prosecution called for the minister to be sentenced to six months in prison. The court is expected to issue its verdict within a month.
Even Larry Summers hasn't been threatened with prison for challenging the left's orthodoxy. Yet.
Zero-Tolerance Watch
Twelve-year-old Raven Furbert of Schenectady, N.Y., is suing the Mont Pleasant Middle School, reports Albany's WNYT-TV:
For Raven, every day is a chance to be patriotic. Her uncle, J.D. Barnes, is serving in Iraq. So she made a red, white and blue beaded necklace to express her patriotism and her support for the troops.
She wore the necklace to Mont Pleasant Middle School on Tuesday until she was told to take it off. "All they said was [the beads are] gang-related," Raven said. "I don't get how beads can be gang-related," she added.
"It's red, white and blue," notes her lawyer, Bob Keach. "The colors of the school are red, white and blue. This is potentially gang-related? What does that mean? It's ridiculous."
We've certainly come a long way since Tinker v. Des Moines, the 1969 case in which the Supreme Court ruled that antiwar students had a constitutional right to wear black armbands to school. These days school officials even try to ban displays of patriotism. (Hat tip: ZeroIntelligence.net.)
We Get Results
We noted last week that the ACLU Web site had dowdified the First Amendment, falsely claiming that freedom of speech is "the first freedom mentioned" therein. The group has now corrected its statement, so that it now says: "It is no accident that freedom of speech is protected in the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights."
Of course, given that amending the Constitution requires the approval of two-thirds of each house of Congress and three-fourths of the state legislatures, it's hard to see how it could happen by accident.
Homer Nods
In yesterday's item on Harry Reid and Clarence Thomas, we should have (and since have) qualified our statement that stare decisis is "a fairly weak legal principle." We were referring specifically to constitutional law and did not mean to suggest that 49 states and the federal government have adopted the Napoleonic Code.
Sure It Wasn't Just His Pants?
"Clinton Man Sets Himself on Fire"--headline, Associated Press, Jan. 19
Oh, Never Mind--False Alarm
"Bill Just Smoke, Lawmakers Say"--headline, Columbia (Mo.) Daily Tribune, Jan. 20
Quiet Riot
Back in 2003, The Nation's David Corn faulted us for using the term "Angry Left": "The moniker is designed as a put-down, one meant to signal that those afflicted with anti-Bushism are motivated by emotion, not rationality," he complained.
As we later noted, we meant it as a description, not a put-down. But if you listen to the Angry Left, they very often describe themselves as having emotional problems. Here's a passage from an Associated Press dispatch about anti-inauguration protests:
"We don't feel that Bush's supposed mandate represents us. Maybe this is just therapy for us for feeling helpless and hapless," said veterinarian Paul Makidon of Ann Arbor, Mich.
And here's some statistical evidence: UC Berkeley recently completed what a press release describes as "the first attempt to compare measures of mental health and general well-being among California's general population on a county-level basis." The study (link in PDF) finds that the two counties with the lowest "mental health scores" are Alameda, which includes Berkeley, and San Francisco, which is coterminous with the city. (See page 30 of the PDF document, which is page 21 of the printed report.)
What else do these counties have in common? They are the California counties where John Kerry did best: 83% of the vote in San Francisco and 75% in Alameda. You don't have to be crazy to oppose President Bush, but it doesn't hurt. |
