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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: calgal who wrote (544274)	2/23/2004 3:50:55 PM
From: calgal	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769670

FEB. 23, 2004: RALPH'S NADIR Boy, I’d sure like to believe that Ralph Nader’s announcement yesterday on Meet the Press delivers the election to President Bush. But I have a feeling that Nader’s vote-catching success in 2000 won’t be repeated in 2004. Four years ago, the Clinton administration was a fresh memory – and many Democrats, especially left-wing Democrats, were very embarrassed by it. The Clintons’ high living and big money – their endless scandals – and then finally their poor record of delivery on left-wing agenda items – all together persuaded many Democrats that 2000 would be a good year to vote their consciences rather than their party loyalty. (Many Republicans felt the same way in 1992.) This year, though, few liberals and leftists seem inclined to vote their consciences – as witness the implosion of the Howard Dean candidacy. Democrats are voting tactically this year. They want to win much more fiercely than they did four years ago. They are making compromises and facing facts. Fact number one is that there is no mass movement of angry, disaffected nonvoters out there waiting to be galvanized by a charismatic populist. Howard Dean spent $41 million – and pulled fewer than400,000 people to the polls to vote for him before he quit for good. There's a lesson there, and the angry anti-Bush constituency has learned it. My guess is that the dropoff in Nader’s vote between 2000 and 2004 will be even sharper than the plunge in Ross Perot’s. If President Bush is to win this race, he will have to do it on his own power. Those San Francisco ‘Marriage Licenses’ Perhaps you have heard the argument that the Sixteenth Amendment was never properly ratified – and that therefore Americans are not legally obliged to file income-tax returns? Tens of thousands of Americans have been deluded (or deluded themselves) into believing this absurd argument. At one point in the mid-1990s, tax-deniers owed as much as $540 million the IRS. Vigorous enforcement and public education seem since then to have discredited the tax scam. San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom is following in the footsteps of the antitax buncombe artists. He has not even the shadow of authority to issue same-sex marriage licenses. California law declares as plainly as plain can be that marriages can only be contracted by opposite-sex couples. Perhaps someday some bold plaintiff will convince the California Supreme Court to strike down this law. Perhaps that day will never come. But until it does come, the law is the law. Mayor Newsom’s decision to dispense marriage licenses to same-sex couples is not merely lawless, but actively ridiculous. He has no more power to marry these people than he does to declare them members of the British House of Lords. Wonders Never Cease On the good news side, consider this: On Sunday, the Washington Post published an oped coauthored by 1970s ultra-feminist Phyllis Chesler, for whom Barbra Streisand funded a professorship at Brandeis University, and Donna Hughes, a women's studies professor and activist against the sexual exploitation of women. Chesler and Hughes argue that feminists should drop their instinctive mistrust of their own country and society and recognize the threat to the freedom and equality of women posed by Islamic extremism. They warn that the romanticization of Third-World anticolonial movements is tempting feminists and the left into an acceptance of anti-Semitism. And most astonishingly of all, they conclude: “In the past, when faced with choosing allies, feminists made compromises. To gain the support of the liberal left, feminists acquiesced in the exploitation of women in the pornography trade - in the name of free speech. The issue of abortion has prevented most feminists from considering working with conservative or faith-based groups. Feminists are right to support reproductive rights and sexual autonomy for women, but they should stop demonizing the conservative and faith-based groups that could be better allies on some issues than the liberal left has been. …. "Twenty-first-century feminists need to become a force for literate, civil democracies. They must oppose dictatorships and totalitarian movements that crush the liberty and rights of people, especially women and girls. They would be wise to abandon multicultural relativism and instead uphold a universal standard of human rights.” If this is sisterhood, then it is indeed beautiful. And then there's that moneylending thing ... The New York Review of Books devotes its lead review this issue to An End to Evil. The reviewer is Thomas Powers, author of many fine books on intelligence and in most respects a very level-headed person. Richard and I will have more to say about the Powers review in the forthcoming issue of NR. But one theme in the review does raise eyebrows. In the course of the review, Powers scolds Richard Perle at some length for his "hardline" views. And what is the defining element of these views? "'Hard-liners' share an Old Testament view of the world, promise an eye for an eye, know what they want, and never forget an injury." I suppose it's pointless to note that the Old Testament is the book in which Amos, Isaiah, and Micah are gathered, or that the New Testament contains passages every bit as implacable as anything in Leviticus: "In flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: Who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power." (2 Thessalonians 1:9) But it is perhaps not pointless to wonder why of all possible descriptions of the way "hardliners" think, this was the one that sprang to Powers' mind? 12:40 AM