Lady in Waiting

Dick Cheney had better be getting somebody warmed up in the bullpen, because it is about time for Harriet Miers to be taken out of the game. This was just another embarrassment the President didn't need. It was humorous that he called all of the criticisms of his administration in recent months "background noise." Perhaps. That is, if you would be willing to stand at Cape Canaveral and call the takeoff of Discovery "background noise." This is what happens when the President's Brain is under investigation and his Administrator sick. You know, there's a rumor going around DC that Dick Cheney is going to resign and Condi is going to be appointed Vice President. I have a better idea: President Bush can resign and Dick Cheney can appoint Coindi to be Vice President. Dick Morris could become the new White House Chief of Staff, and we could turn the second term of this administration around, albeit without a principal player or two. Even better, Lynn Cheney, a true intellect in her own right, might give the President some decent advice on who to pick for the Supreme Court...what an improvement that would be over the "Hillary Lite" we have been subjected to as of late. Maybe Laura is gearing up for her own US Senate run in 2008--unfortunately there's not a seat up for grabs in New York until 2010. She could move to Massachussetts and run against John Kerry, though. Now that's an idea. Somebody pinch me; none of this is going to happen, and we will have to endure 3 more years of George W. Bush, and not much will be left of the progress the GOP has made in the last 15 years. Bill Clinton was much better for our party--maybe Newt will come back and rescue us.

Kangaroo Courts and Kangaroo Justices

With Tom DeLay's mugshot in competition against the media's favorite "Guilty Karl" shot of Rove in the race to be the DNC's Goldstein in the upcoming infomercial on CBS called "The Two Weeks Hate," we should all be concerned, Right and Left, about the state of the justice system in this country. [As an aside, that previous sentence will not be at all funny if you haven't read George Orwell's 1984] You know, it used to be that politicians in America were decent, genuine, honest, upstanding folks who abided by the law, did what was right, and made their mothers' proud. We should all remember such righteous politicians as New York county Democrat Party Chairman William March "Boss" Tweed, who embezzled from the City what would be, in today's Greenspan era no-inflation inflated money, around 2.9 billion dollars. Or what about the days when President Harding appointed the angelic Albert Fall to be Secretary of the Interior, and Fall proceeded to lease protected oil reserves to major oil magnates in exchange for incentive bonuses (I'm trying to be politically correct...I wanted to say "bribes" but it just came out kinda harsh). For those of you whose American history training is limited to public high school or university courses, what I just mentioned is known as the Teapot Dome Scandal. Anyway, history is replete with harrowing tales of political chivalry that cause the crimes of Tom DeLay and Karl Rove to whimper in their presence, but all of that is beside the point. DeLay is being prosecuted by a corrupt partisan. At the same time, DeLay no longer deserves to be Majority Leader of the House. The GOP is starting to act too much like the Democrats of old. It's time for some new blood. As for the Rove issue, according to the Washington Post, he has gotten a tongue lashing from President Bush--surely that's punishment enough.

Since the title of this post is "Kangaroo Courts and Kangaroo Justices" I guess I am obligated to say something about the abysmal nominee Harriet Miers and her latest travails in the most concocted effort of cronyism since, as Steve Chapman noted earlier this week, Harry Truman appointed his poker buddies to the court. The Bush administration has even resorted to releasing a document from 1989 when Miers publicly supported a constitutional amendment to ban abortion. Somebody isn't thinking. Granted, President Bush has to get Conservatives back on his side, but he will not succeed in convincing all of them. At the same time, these sorts of stunts will only make Chuck Schumer and Ted Kennedy fired up to oppose Miers--I only hope they do.

Harriet Miers 2.0, The Re-Release

According to Mike Allen's column this week in TIME, President Bush and his aides are planning to "re-launch" the Harriet Miers nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court after two completely disastrous weeks. The President's cronies have been sqawking this weekend that "few Republicans have attacked this President so frontally and lived to tell about it." Interesting threat coming from a virtual lame duck administration whose poll numbers are flirting with the 30s depending on the day. The White House should learn its lesson from the Democrats' stunning defeats in the 2004 elections: substance matters more than style. The Democrats thought if they just phrased their arguments better that they would win, because their message was right-on, they thought. Wrong. Poll after poll, and Democrat strategist after Democrat strategist confirmed that the Left-wing message of the Democrat Party was what led to their failure in the '04 races.

Why does President Bush think he is any different? For the last five years (yes, since Bush started running for President in 1999) we have been promised and assured that it was always his hope and intention to appoint justices in the model of Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia. At best, Miers has only the potential to be like Thomas and Scalia. Thomas and Scalia were both appellate court judges with conservative records on their jurisprudential resume. It has obviously not gone without notice that Ms. Miers has no such resume. Instead, the President has demanded (he has certainly not asked nicely) that conservatives trust him. Indeed, trust him like we trusted his Father (Remember David Souter), Ronald Reagan (Anthony Kennedy), Gerald Ford (John Paul Stevens), Richard Nixon (Harry Blackmun), and Dwight Eisenhower (Earl Warren). The Republicans' history of "trust me" nominees is nothing short of catastrophic. George Will , Ann Coulter, Charles Krauthammer, and Robert Bork, have all publicly opposed the Miers nomination, along with countless other conservative leaders. The criticism is the same: Miers isn't qualified and she isn't proven. And as Judge Bork points out, the only people (other than the President's cronies) who are saying anything nice about Miers are Democrats; that should tell the President something.

In light of all of this, the President has determined to re-launch the Miers nomination. He plans to parade a list of Texas Supreme Court justices who will attest to Harriet Miers' qualifications. Since when do we determine the fitness of a Supreme Court nominee based on character references? This isn't the Good Neighbor of the Year Award, this is the United States Supreme Court, and if Ms. Miers' resume does not substantiate her readiness to serve on the high court, the President should think again.

This is beginning to look like the 4th re-invention of Al Gore during the 2000 Presidential Campaign. Here are my predictions for the Harriet Miers 2.0 Re-Release:

1) Miers will swing through the Southern states wearing ankle-length dresses and a bonnet to appeal to Chauvinistic White Males.

2) James Dobson and the President will do their secret handshake in public, proving to conservatives that Miers really is pro-life.

3) President Bush will apologize again for betraying his base and then beg its forgiveness by singing a trio with Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong Il entitled "Give Me One More Chance."

4) Pat Robertson will publicly demand the assassination of any Republican who opposes Miers.

5) Karl Rove will accidentally leak to Robert Novak the name of Harriet Miers' undercover stunt double who will be filling in for her at the Senate Judiciary committee.

6) To appease Conservatives, Miers will give a contribution to Tom DeLay's legal defense fund.

7) Miers will grow a beard and randomly insert the word "originalism" into every sentence.

8) John Kerry and Harriet Miers will do a joint press conference Monday morning talking about how they miraculously lost all of their wrinkles over the weekend.

9) Miers will travel to Houston to train for her new job on NASA's new zero gravity BLACK ROBE simulator.

10) CBS will launch a new reality series "Who Wants to Be a Supreme Court Justice?" where Miers and 6 other average attorneys from across the country will run around New York playing "big city lawyer" and then be interviewed by Donald Trump for the job of a lifetime.

Quartering of Soldiers

The only amendment to the United States Constitution in the Bill of Rights never to be litigated in court is the 3rd Amendment. Most people probably have no idea what the 3rd Amendment even says, much less that it has never had a hearing before the U.S. Supreme Court. I imagine that is about to change. President Bush is embarking on an initiative that has dire implications for the liberty of ordinary citizens in this country. If his unbridled deficit spending, multiplication of social programs, meager efforts at social security, medicare, and tax reform weren't enough reasons to criticize this administration, the President just gave us another. I am far from being a wild-eyed liberal critic of the war, and I am a staunch supporter of the military. However, one of the hallmarks of the American system of government is the prohibition against using the military on our own citizens. Cindy Sheehan (the clinically insane protester whose son died last year in Iraq) referred to "Occupied New Orleans" with the sights of American military personal mobilizing to assist in the recovery effort in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Sheehan took the criticism too far. Without doubt, the lawlessness that was occurring in New Orleans was shameful, and dispatching armed military personnel was excessive, but it was not "Occupied."

However, it is imperative that we recognize the long-term implications of this new precedent. The President announced this week his desire to utilize the military more often in disaster situations and states of emergency. This has all of the makings of a would-be dictatorship under an administration more Machiavellian than the present one. President Bush, despite being an incapable President on budget matters, and an incompetent president in the year 2005 all around, is not evil. In today's age of media presidential campaigns, soundbites, and cameras, the people of America should be weary of any current attempts to expand the scope and influence of domestic military activity in case we someday get duped by a Hitler or a Mussolini.

Rather than establishing an explicitly governmental program of response to natural disasters, Congress and this administration should take a more creative approach to such situations. FEMA should be reorganized to merely coordinate the tens of thousands of potential volunteers so that the average person who wants to help his neighbor in need can be effective in times of crisis. By bringing together the efforts of the Red Cross, the Salvation Army, the Southern Baptist Convention (the top three providers of disaster relief assistance in the United States), and the countless other organizations who reach out to people in time of need, FEMA and the Federal Government could save the taxpayers millions of dollars on additional federal personnel who would only be used irregularly, while rebuilding a spirit of community among the citizens of the United States. It is when we get past this failed experiment with rugged individualism that we will truly be able to value the individual and the community, and in the process we might well salvage our liberty too.

Nowhere To Turn

As the already impoverished people of New Orleans attempt to free themselves from the putrid liquid that engulfed them in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the spinmeisters and hucksters of the political realm are attempting to make partisan hay out of this tragedy. While Jesse Jackson and the Congressional Black Caucus try to paint the federal government's pitiful response to the hurricane as being indicative of George W. Bush's racism, the poor people of New Orleans are still alone. The reality is that this tragedy, like all others, will be remedied by the efforts, not of the Government, but private organizations and individuals acting out of pure compassion. From the Red Cross and Salvation Army to the Southern Baptist Convention, hundreds of private charitable organizations are making a positive impact on the lives of the downtrodden in Louisiana and Mississippi.

My question, however, is: where was all this compassion six months ago, or five years ago when the people of New Orleans were living in their poverty? And across this country, even today, there are hundreds of thousands of Americans living in utterly destitute conditions with no hope of ever coming out of them. The government tried for the last forty years to put an end to such poverty, and has failed miserably. It is time for the Church in this country to stand up with creative solutions to help people in need and glorify God by fulfilling Christ's second great command "Love thy neighbor."

Adventures in the Backcountry

I am sitting on a computer in the little Mercantile of Denali National Park in Alaska as I write this entry. I'm rather out of the loop with respect to news and current events, something that is rather odd for me. But that is because I have spent five days in the backcountry wilderness of one of America's largest national parks.

We departed from the Denali Headquarters on July 20 on a "Camper Bus," which drives across the rough, dirt/gravel road through Denali National Park. Along the road, we saw a number of grizzly bears, golden eagles, caribou, and ptarmigan. Of course, we had to stop for every animal at 1,000 yards so people could take pictures that would most certainly not develop well. I couldn't tell for sure, but I don't think anybody on the bus was in possession of Mini-Hubble to view the animals. Nevertheless, after several hours on the bus, we made our final stop past the Eilson Visitor Center, right above the Thorofare River. We made our way along a game trail (that's a trail carved out by wildlife, for those of you who are unfamiliar with outdoors jargon) for a short ways down the hill from the park road, until we came to some rather thick brush. We had to find a place to descend into the riverbed, but there were really no gentle slopes, so we selected the slope with the most brush. Normally, one would never want to travel in thick brush, but whenever traveling up and down very steep inclines, brush is essential, because it is the only thing that keeps one from losing his footing and plummeting to his certain doom--ok, maybe not that dramatic, but broken bones are pretty bad in the backcountry.

We get down into the riverbed, and spot a moose at about 300 yards, just trapsing across the Thorofare. As we began to cross the classic Alaska stream, with its 25-30 braids, we discovered the water, while cold, was pretty shallow in most places, and not terribly swift. With ease, we finished crossing the Thorofare, and thought we were well on our way, when I looked up and spotted a male grizzly bear (quite large...500 lbs or so) at 150 yards. We stopped, hoping he had not yet seen us, and then noticed that he most certainly had, and was moving directly towards us. We waved our hands and shouted "BEAR! BEAR!" as if that is the thing one ought to say to a bear instead of "GO AWAY GO AWAY" or something else (I figure that talking to bears is like giving political speeches, it's not so much the message, but the delivery that matters). He raised up, gave us a second sturdy look, and then nonchalantly moved in the opposite direction. Danger had been averted.

I will continue this post later, but my time on the computer has run out...

The Dangers of Closure

With the recent, rather brutal, battle in the United States Senate over the ratification of the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), the people of the United States should be increasingly concerned about the policy direction the United States is taking with respect to trade and international commerce. One of the hallmark events of the pre-World War I era was the movement from free trade and free international economic activity to that of relative economic closure, and high tariffs. We would do well to avoid a repeat of this disastrous epoch in world history, but the rising pressures from China's rapid economic expansion, coupled with the resistance of American Organized Labor community to revisions in America's antiquated labor laws confront us with a severe set of problems. First, we are inefficient at production compared to the rest of the world, and second, we are unwilling to accept large trade deficits (despite the fact that most economists will tell you the trade deficit is not the problem; the budget deficit is, and the trade deficit would be relatively resolved if we did not have the budget deficit issue, but I digress).

Given this, there is increasing pressure in the American political community to oppose further liberalization of American trade, and even to impose tariffs on goods coming from countries like China. This is the worst possible course of action we can take in the face of these problems, and the lessons of history teach us that economic closure leads to economic stagnation and even recessions, and then to war. There is no greater form of war mongering than passing tariffs.

Bush's Supreme Decision

Few issues in the last several years have received public attention as much as the American judiciary. The Right has excoriated it for being too Leftist, and the Left has excoriated it for being too Rightist. The Religious Conservatives have claimed that the Court is anti-religious, and the Radical Left-wingers have claimed that it isn't Anti-Religious enough. Leftists claim they want a judge who sees the constitution as a living document, except when that means giving into a majority view that most liberals reject. Conservatives claim they want a judge who "interprets the law rather than makes law." We shall soon see if the Conservative bloc and the President hold true to this conviction, or if the Conservative bloc cheers when the President appoints an ideologue to the court instead of a strict constructionist. The Constitution is not a living, breathing document. It is a set of rules by which we have determined we will govern ourselves. If we think the rules need to change, we have a method for changing those rules. At the same time, existing rules can be applied incorrectly and the Court can determine when there has been a long-standing misapplication of the rules. Brown v. Board of Education is the quintessential example of the Court correcting such a misapplication. Ultimately the underpinning notions of the Constitution are that individuals have rights that must be upheld, must be applied equitably, and in a judicious manner. This means individual rights for all Americans, and the President needs to choose a Justice who recognizes this, even if it conflicts with his ideological beliefs. Fidelity to the Constitutional text should be the foremost concern of any Justice on the Supreme Court, and sometimes fidelity to the text requires the abandonment of tradition. I sincerely hope that equal rights, including private property rights, free speech rights, the right to freedom of religion, the right to keep and bear arms, privacy rights, equal protection, etc. are the fundamental concern of the new Justic on the Supreme Court. I am sketpical that this will happen in our era of partisanship, for which both sides are to blame, but I hope the confirmation process will bring about this desire end in spite of the partisanship. Conservatives and Liberals ought to be united on this front, but politics seems to always get in the way.

A Series of Rants

There is just too much going on in the news as of late, so I will try to comment on several of the major recent news items.

The Supreme Court and Private Property- In one of the most repugnant decisions in American history, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled yesterday that municpalities can seize private property with almost no limitations, as long as it "serves the public interest." This is a perversion of the already perverse doctrine of eminent domain. The Supreme Court, rather than serving as the restraining mechanism of the U.S. government, it has become the great enabler of statists who do not believe the Constitution actually limits government power (except when it comes to regulating war protests and burning the American flag...then it's hands off!). No greater blow has been dealt to individual rights in this country since the wave of gun control policies passed during Clinton administration.

George Voinovich and John Bolton- despite his tears on the Senate floor, the George Voinovich failed to make a compelling case that John Bolton is unfit to be Ambassador to the United Nations. That the Democrats are holding up an appointee to a diplomatic post purely on ideological grounds (don't let Barbara Boxer's smokescreen fool you) is anathema to tradition. Whether Bolton is the "best" man for the job is not the question--that is never the question on appointments. "Best man for the job" is a nebulous description, and if that were our criteria, we would likely never find a person to fill the post. The Democrats are constantly complaining that they never get to talk about what really matters to the American people (what that is, I'm not really sure), so rather than talking about those things, they are holding up appointments to the Bench, to Diplomatic posts, and whining about turning off the Air Conditioning at Gitmo.

Hillary- the new "gotcha" book about Hillary Clinton is yet another example of the media's blatant bias. They have created backlash against the book by the way they have reported it. I have not read the book, and so make no claims either way about it, but the media's behavior has been wholly reprehensible. Meanwhile, Hillary is gearing up for what is likely to be the most vicious, brutal presidential campaign in American history. I do not know if our Republic can survive 2008.

China- The greatest threat to American national security, and moreover, to the very existence of American hegemony is China. China is taking a mixed approach to achieving hegemony in the world: improve the economy and build big guns. China's bids for Unocal and Maytag should cause significant worry in the White House, the halls of Congress, and in the offices on Wall Street. The question, unfortunately, is no longer whether or not China should be contained, but rather are we ready to deal with the uncontainable China that has emerged in the last ten years. Do we have the economic vitality, scientific advantage, and popular will to stand up to the world's most populous country? I fear we do not. American optimism is about to be shattered when the Eagle and the Dragon face off, and the Eagle loses.

Europe's Misfit and America's Ally

The Washington Times today reports on Turkey's clouded future with regard to its EU membership, particularly given the abject failure of the new EU constitution in Holland and France (the only two countries, it is worth noting, to hold a popular referendum to determine whether or not to ratify the constitution) and the troubled Western European leaders who had previously been ardent supporters of Turkey's EU membership. As the Washington Times reports, Angela Merkel, the leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the opposition party in Germany, is likely to be the next Chancellor when Germans reject the failed economic and social-experimental policies of the Socialist Schroeder government. Merkel would become the first woman ever to lead a unified Germany, and while she is not a conservative from the American perspective on social issues, she is a staunch economic conservative favoring lower taxes, reduced governmental regulation, and fiscal discipline.

The CDU also is far more hawkish on immigration than Schroeder's Socialists. Due to the immigration policies of the EU for its member countries, Germany is extraordinarily concerned about a massive influx of Turkish immigrants if Turkey gains EU membership. They already consider the Turkish immigration issue one of the most serious of all national issues. All of this, together with Turkey's growing alienation from the Europe it thought was its friend (we can empathize), especially on cultural/linguistic/historical matters exhibits a unique opportunity for the United States to improve its relations with the Islamic world.

Because of America's cultural, linguistic, ethnic, and religious diversity (particularly in contrast with Europe's lack thereof), we are well-positioned to create a primarily diplomatic "empire" that would put the Europeans to shame. The question of course is whether or not we are willing to swallow our pride and embrace countries and the leaders of countries who do not look like us, talk like us, or think necessarily like us. Through the positive diplomatic interaction, however, we can spread the ideas of liberty and republicanism to the rest of the world without the loss of American or foreign civilian lives. For a country whose leaders are at least nominally Christian, we should attempt, as best we can, to apply the teachings of Christ and the whole of Scripture to all areas of life, and that includes foreign policy. And as Solomon tells us in the Proverbs "A harsh word stirs up anger, but a gentle word breaks a bone."

There is one additional factor that is important to this discussion of diplomatic relations, and courting Turkey (among other non-Arab, Islamic states, like Pakistan and those in Central and Southeast Asia), and that is the remarkable diplomatic abilities of the Chinese. The Chinese were, in their golden age, the greatest of the world's diplomats. This has been culturally preserved, and we see that the Chinese are opening embassies in obscure countries around the world where China has little or no economic interests. This is not the behavior of a minor, regional power, but of a would-be superpower. If we allow China to win in the world of diplomacy, I fear the battle is all but lost when they determine to assert their status as one of the world's new superpowers.

Dean, Guerrillas, and Christians

Howard Dean is a tragi-comic character in American politics these days. His inflammatory rhetoric is often so ridiculous that it pokes at even the most serious politico's funny bone. Calling the Republicans the "White Christian Party" was not so off-base in matter of fact, but patently false in the context. The Republican Party is the Party of White Christians. It is the Party of White Christians because the Democrats want little or nothing to do with White Christians.

Dean's pejorative use of the phrase "White Christian" is in fact quite revealing of this reality. The Republican Party, though, is more than just the Party of White Christians. It is also the Party of Black Christians and Hispanic Christians who have more than just a slight problem with the Secularist mindset that has overcome the entirety of the Democrat Party.

The GOP is also the Party of young Hispanic and Black Americans who want the chance to be entrepreneurs, to make something of their lives without the government riding in their backs the entire way. The GOP, at its core (though unfortunately not in its current manifestation of the Bush White House and the Frist/Hastert Congress) is the Party of Fiscal Responsibility, Governmental Restraint, and true, Constitutional rule. The fact that this is no longer the perception in America indicates the dire need for Republicans to examine themselves institutionally and get back on message.

The Republican Party, in contrast to the Democrat Party, believes that individuals, not the government, should control their own future. Republicans believe that individuals, not groups, have rights, and the sooner we start treating and loving people, rather than giving special priveleges and faux rights to groups, the sooner we will ameliorate the malaise of racism, classism, and sexism. The policies currently being propagated by the Democrat Party only further entrench these heinous evils by creating reasons for resentment and anger.

This is what Howard Dean just does not understand. As Howard Fineman wrote today, Howard Dean's problem isn't his mouth, it's mindset. He cannot understand how the word "Christian" could be a good thing, and just assumes that the standard, 60-year old line of the Democrats that Republicans are a bunch of "evil, rich, white men" is true.

Dean has another problem. He thinks that raising money and running a party is sort of like commanding a Guerrilla war. Snipe somebody here, (character) assassinate a leader there, do outrageous things to distract people from other targets while sending a few henchmen to take care of those targets. The trouble of course is that Guerrilla warriors can cause the ruling army a lot of headache and trouble, but Guerrillas are no good at occupying and governing. Their success depends wholly on hiding in the shadows and causing the other side so much pain that it retreats and leaves. This is what is going on with the "insurgency" in Iraq. It is a test of wills and endurance. Although the Republicans under George W. Bush have given in to many Democrat demands in the face of similar Guerrilla tactics, by and large, even this administration has shown a pretty genuine resolve on the things that mattered: tax cuts, judicial nominees, and tort reform. Perhaps the Democrats and Dean will wake up and realize they need to have a plan to govern. That is, unless they like being Guerrillas forever resigned to be in the minority. I'd be fine with that, too.

The Greatest of These Is Love

Christian Evangelist and Apologist Ravi Zacharias has said, I think quite correctly, "A conviction, ungirded by love, will make the possessor of it obnoxious and the dogma he possesses repulsive." The Scriptures tell us "Now abideth faith, hope, and love. The greatest of these is love," and that "He who loves another has fulfilled the law." With all that is going on in the so-called "culture war," it is time for those of us who are conservative and more important, Christian, to do a gut check and re-examine our approach. Is our political philosophy and is our political advocacy undergirded by love or ungirded by it? Are we reaching out to the people who have fallen victim to the destructive Existentialist philosophy that plagues our nation, or are we standing up like Pharisees and prounouncing judgment and casting the first stone? Jesus did not tell the adulteress "Thou art damned," he said "Go and sin no more." He showed loving compassion to those in spiritual need. It was the Pharisees pronouncing judgment. Christ was the only one who had a right to judge, and yet He did not. Does this mean we should approve of sin? No. But "love the sinner, hate the sin" is not manifested with hateful speech and vitriolic rhetoric. It was Ghandi who said when asked what he thought of Christianity: "I like their Christ, but I don't like their Christian. When I think of a Christian, I see him with a mug of beer in his right hand and a slab of beef in his left." Nietzche, the famed Athetist philosopher, said "I will start beliving in the Redeemer when the Christian looks a little more redeemed." You see, Postmodern Christianity in the Conservative churches teach abstention from alcohol and sex, and if you can do those two things, then you're in good shape. Sad to say, this is far from the truth. The message of the Gospel is far-reaching and radical, and it should infiltrate our every motive, thought, belief, and action. If we are to win this generation to Christ, it will be through showing His love to them through ourselves. We should live each day in the shadow of the Cross, and by doing so will be forced to live humbly, loving one another, and showing mercy to one another. Soli Deo Gloria, that is, To God Alone Be The Glory.

TAFTA

After my last post, I began thinking seriously about the possibility of a NAFTA-like agreement with the free market countries of Europe. I think we should call it the Trans-Atlantic Free Trade Agreement, or TAFTA, and invite Great Britain, Estonia, and all of the other countries who believe that free markets are superior to socialism when it comes to growing an economy. Perhaps the faltering economies of Western Europe, like Italy, will recognize the extreme value of openness and will decide to accede to the agreement themselves. This idea makes sense not only from an economic perspective with economic benefits in mind, but it is imperative that the United States attempt such a project for reasons of political stability. The impending collapse and failure of the EU experiment will leave a vacuum that must be filled, lest the economies of the world slip into autarky again. A period of closure such as that would lead to the same economic decline and thus political nightmare scenarios like those of the Interwar period: Hitler, Mussolini, Hirohito.

A Grand Opportunity

The United States should recognize the unique opportunity it has right now to step in and fill the gap that is being gradually created by the incompetent leaders of the European Union. With European government officials publicly speculating about the collapse of the Euro, it seems that the 50 year old dream of the European Utopianists is about to come to an abrupt and bitter end. The United States should sieze this opportunity to reclaim its leadership as the world's maintainer of the liberal international economic order and promote increased trade to head off any moves toward economic closure that might ensue. We should announce our intentions to create a NAFTA-like agreement with Great Britain and the marketizing nations of Eastern Europe like Estonia, whose political economy is much closer to ours (or at least is on a trajectory to be closer to ours) than it is to their Western European counterparts. This sort of economic integration will have tremendous benefits for both sides, as well as further improving political relations between the countries. Western Europe will continue to decline until it realizes that Socicalism is a completely unworkable pipe dream that ignores the realities of economics and human nature. Ironically, Karl Marx was right about one thing. He said history repeats itself, the first time as tragedy and the second time as farce. The Soviet Union was the tragedy, the European Union is the farce.

Why the French Rejection of the EU Treaty is both Good and Bad

The French people soundly rejected a proposed new constitution for the European Union, which would have further integrated the western part of the Eurasian subcontinent (it is rightly noted by geographers that Europe is not a continent in and of itself, and if history had not developed as it had, Europe would never have been classified as a continent, but I digress).

Europe's bloody thousand-year history was to come to an end after the denoument of the Second World War. So far, it has succeeded. But it is hardly time to make any sort of bold statements about peace in Europe with only sixty intervening years. The French rejection of the new EU constitution, and the impending defeat of the same by the Dutch exposes the deep-rooted, centuries old nationalism and cultural differences that have divided Europe throughout the ages. Without doubt, economic concerns are the overriding reason for the rejection, at least outwardly. But the reality is that the economic sovereignty issues are merely the manifestation of uneasiness the French have in signing over their national autonomy to German bureaucrats in Brussels.

When examining the economic problems of the Eurozone, it is important to recognize that the European economies, particularly in Western Europe, are stagnating rather miserably. They are experiencing little, if any economic growth, and massive unemployment. The situation is so wretched in Italy, that it would not be out of the realm of possibility if the Italians withdrew from the Euro altogether in the next few years. The integration of different economies with different fundamental infrastructures has proved to be a more difficult task in reality than it was in theory. With the widespread inequities in GDP, economic institutions, etc. that separate the countries of East and West Europe, there should be no wonder about why countries are weary of further economic and political integration.

For the United States, this development could be extremely positive, particularly in the short term. Leaders across Europe will now have to turn their attention and focus inward to deal with this major setback, and they will have to engage in serious gut-checking in order to determine the best future course of action in Europe. This strengthens the United States' hand in world affairs, and also puts to rest, at least temporarily, further talk of Europe as a "counter-weight" to U.S. global influence. T.R. Reid and the handful of other American Europhiles who released a flurry of books a few months ago declaring the dawn of a new age with Europe at the helm should now be hanging their heads in shame. The superficial success of Europe has now been proven to be just that, and the picture will begin to dim even further in the coming months.

However, there is a distinct danger in the French rejection of the EU treaty this week. As the Turks continue to overwhelm Germany through immigration, and the Algerians France, and various Arab sects the Netherlands, the possibility of a new bloody Europe emerges. With ethnic conflict continuing to rise in the Netherlands and parts of France, and the inevitable rise of radical elements among the indigenous population in response, the Turk will become to the 21st Century German what the Jew was to the early 20th Century German. The dangerous reality for Europe is that the Jew was not a threat in the 20th Century, but the Muslim is. As immigration control policies increase in Europe, so will Islamic violence and terrorism. A fractured European continent enhances the ability of Islamic factions to take control of smaller political units on the continent through strategic immigration.

Europe is in turmoil. Let us see what comes of it.

The Bankruptcy of Secularism

This is really more the title of a book than a blog post, but I hope the reader will indulge my overly-ambitious title for the thoughts in my post today.

I have not posted in almost a month, as life sometimes catches up with us and we get sidetracked. But today's post will make up for it, as this has been one of the chief topics on my mind in the last few weeks.

Life is filled with little observations, little occurrences, mishaps, coincidences, and contradictions. Much of our experiential knowledge of the world is garnered from these blips in our existence, as they seem to be of no consequence at the moment they happen, but later are often instructive if we take the time to reflect. All around me in the last several weeks I have witnessed these small blips in my existence, and in those near me, and I have come to a firm conclusion that not only is Secularism less than ideal, that is, that it is one system among many which is merely inferior, but that it is utterly bankrupt in every regard.

The world cries out in agony today. It occupies itself with distractions, while convincing itself that these distractions are the goals. Distractions have captured the fortress, and we seem not to know how expel them from our midst, since in their capture of the fortress, they have made us worse than servants to their designs, they have made us their prisoners. And though we may violently shake our prison gates, we call out to the night "Oh darkness where is thy deliverance?" Yet the reply is an eerie, deathly silence.

Our jailors do not feed us, and we shriek with hunger pangs. But the night does not feed us either. Our jailors do not give us water, and we groan in the misery of thirst. But the night does not supply us with drink either. When the morning dawns, we think we have a reprieve, and we play merrily with our jailors, who sport smiles during the daylight hours. They give us chocolates and sodas, and we for a time our lot improves.

We think we have no need to call to the Sun for help when he is breaking on the horizon. But as he flees from the clutches of the twilight, our captors' smiles fade and our shackles are put on us again. The temporality of the chocolates and sodas disappears in an instant, and we are suddenly strapped by our lack of sustenance and nutrition. But the night does not respond to our calls.

This is the likeness of America today. We consort with our captors and we call out to the night. Drunkenness, sex, money, drugs, entertainment, popularity have all become our captors. We think they will provide us happiness, and then they do not. But like the burnt fool's bandaged finger from Kipling's great poem, we go wobbling back to the fire. We are the dog returning to his vomit. We know they do not fulfill, yet we return to check again. "It will be different this time," we tell ourselves. But it is never different this time, and while the moment seems pleasurable, the aftermath is disastrous. Our souls mourn over the pain. Then we go back for another round.

Secular Humanism is the manifestation of true Existentialist philosophy. We are here for but a moment, our lives are meaningless, so we must maximize the pleasures and minimize the pains. Instead, we maximize the pains and minimize the pleasures, and lie to ourselves about the state of affairrs. Each moment in the Existentialist life is infused with anxious anticipation for the next moment. For if the next moment is not more pleasurable than this moment, then what will we have gained? And this moment-to-moment living produces despair. We have no hope for future joy, apart from that we obtain on our own (which we never seem to obtain). The reason Existentialism manifests itself as Secular Humanism is that only in the Secular Humanistic conception are we free from all moral constraints, all impediments to our temporal pleasure.

But Secular Humanism is an unstable philosophy. To the question "Where did we come from?" they say "an accident." To the question "Why are we here?" they say "to enjoy ourselves." To the question "What are the rules?" They say "There are none--but there are--but there aren't." And to the question "Where are we going?" they say "to the grave, and nothing more."

The entire system is Secular Humanism was conceived to annihilate moral restraint. But to the question of objective morality, they insist first of all that there is no objective morality, but the nihilism of this response is unpalatable even to the existentialist, for it would instantly justify rape, murder, and genocide. There can be no response to this problem from the humanist. He may attempt a response, but it will not stand up to scrutiny. If there is some objective moral standard, even as simple as "Murder is wrong," then it had to come from some objective moral law-giver. There can be no other way out.

But even if we make an unnecessary concession to the Secular Humanist and say that "there is no morality or immorality, there is only the pleasure of the self wherein it does not infringe upon others' pleasure" (again this is inconsistent with their philosophy, but I must use it to illustrate a point), we are left with an extraordinarily difficult problem. That is, if this life and its enjoyment is all that there is, how absurd is our meager existence? And since life has more pains than pleasures, how can even the physical fulfillments (which do not fulfill at all) make life less absurd, except by way of distraction?

In God, however, the personal creator of all of the universe, we find meaning. As William Lane Craig has said "God infuses every moment of our existence with his eternal meaning." Only through God does life lose its absurdity. More on this in the coming days...

A Lackluster Beginning

This has been a very disappointing 3 months since the President's Inauguration. Standing behind the Capitol in the frigid conditions of that overcast day, I listened to President Bush rattle off a litany of goals he had for his second term. Among them were Social Security Reform and further Education Reform. He also talked about the importance of spreading democracy across the globe. He should have stuck to foreign policy. The Social Security effort hasn't moved off the starting blocks, and the President's approval rating has sunk to an all-time low. There's just something about 2nd Terms that aren't worth a whole lot. It might just be the only legitimate reason to repeal the 22nd Amendment: no more lame ducks. It hasn't helped that the Republicans in Congress have become the same kind of cowards that the Democrats were when they were in the majority. I'm not talking about all of them, just a whole lot of them. What will it take to get their attention? My fear is that it will take a major defeat at the polls. If things don't change soon, we'll be looking at Speaker Pelosi.

The Perpetual Campaign: The Final Nail in the Republic's Coffin

It's finally here: the perpetual campaign. As our Presidential campaign cycles get longer and longer, and as midterm posturing begins on Election night, we have enough to worry about when it comes to long campaign seasons. But there is another addition to the campaign family: issue campaigning. This is not totally new, but my guess is that it is about to become more prevalent. Social Security, Judicial Nominees, Gay Marriage---all of these issues are becoming campaign issues, that is, they issues that the Administration, members of Congress, and Governors are flying about the country "campaigning for," pushing popular support upward for whatever their position is on the matter.

This is a disaster for our system of government. The Republic has been dying for about a half-century, with more democracy (the bad kind) taking root in the United States. The initial attacks on the Republic came in the form of the 16th & 17th Amendments, as well as the 18th but it was fortunately repealed. The advent of information technology and instant news has allowed the transformation from Republic to Democracy to be complete. Now the majority will rule without protecting the rights of the minority, and they will vote themselves whatever portion of the public treasury that they want. Indeed, Social Security and Medicare are the perfect examples of this, and our nation will crumble as a result.

Some Good News for a Change

Corporate Profits are up, way up in fact. This is good news for the economy, though not necessarily for consumers in the short run. It's not bad news for consumers, it just doesn't do a whole lot for them right now. Many on the Left argue that employment and more money for the "little guy" are the best things for the economy, and that nothing else really matters. Well, we had that during the 1990s, the Clinton Bubble (whose burst was very painful), and it didn't do us much good. It also was a decade of very low capital formation, we were spending our way into prosperity, only to discover that prosperity was soon followed by recession. Corporations, at least most corporations who have long term focus (and corporations that don't aren't around for long) are taking their profits and reinvesting them in capital. That is good news for productivity. Capital investment right now could also mean new alternatives to the oil-driven economy. This could be the shot in the arm that will prevent major economic catastrophe in the near future. Let's just hope the Democrats don't win any elections soon, because Big Corporations are the favorite target of Democrat tax increases (well, Big Corporations and everybody else in the country).

Stagflation Redux

Oil is up, prices are up, employment is shaky--the Fed is responding to all of this with higher interest rates. For those people who were around for the 1970s, the term Stagflation may be unfamiliar, but the realities of it are not. Prior to the '70s, economists believed that Inflation and Unemployment were mutually exclusive phenomena. In other words, there as thought to be a tradeoff: accept a little inflation to have not so much unemployment, and vice versa. This was known as the Phillips Curve in the academic literature. But the '70s broke the Phillips Curve, and economists were standing around scratching their heads. Suddenly there was unemployment and inflation, or stagnant inflation---now known as "stagflation." With oil prices soaring in recent days, and with the job creation numbers out today, it is looking like we could be having a repeat of '70s-style stagflation. The question everybody is asking is "Who do we blame?" Most people want to blame the government. And that works pretty well, but we can't lay it on a single person or group. Everybody is responsible. They are responsible for failing to reduce spending, and further cut taxes. They are responsible for failing to further reduce regulatory burdens on industry and small business. They are responsible for failing to reform the entitlement programs that are sucking the economy dry.

So on this April Fool's day, the only fool is the American public, for buying politicians' lies that more government makes things better. It just isn't so.