The Gonzales Nomination, Part I

Despite a contentious confirmation hearing, all indications point towards, Alberto Gonzales, President Bush’s nominee for attorney general (and by the way, in case you missed the 31,527 mentions of this fact in the press, the first Hispanic to be nominated to the post and a veritable minority “conservative” supreme if you listen to Sean Hannity) being confirmed by the United States Senate sometime this week.

Gonzales’ nomination has stirred controversy on both the right and left.

Conservatives and pro-lifers have focused on a ruling made by Gonzales while he was on the Texas Supreme Court that allowed a 17-year-old girl to get an abortion without notifying her parents in spite of a Texas parental notification law. This decision seems consistent with Joseph Farah’s claim that Gonzales believes the Constitution is a “living document” – words often used by lawyers and judges who have sought to use the judiciary to impose a social agenda on the American people.

A point of history seemingly lost on conservatives who support Gonzales’ confirmation is the instrumental role he played in shaping the Administration’s position on two of the most important cases involving affirmative action/racial preferences in recent years – cases involving the University of Michigan undergraduate (Gratz v. Bollinger) and law school (Grutter v. Bollinger) admissions system. Gratz held that race preferences were illegal because “the procedures employed by the University of Michigan’s Office of Undergraduate Admissions do not provide for a meaningful individualized review of applicants.” Whereas, in Grutter the Court found that the law school’s method of review does provide an individualized review process and therefore validated giving minorities preferential treatment on the basis of the “compelling state interest of diversity”. Stripped of its rhetorical veneer the Court essentially struck down a rigid quota system while providing a nod and a wink to the policy of university administrators who are allowed to discriminate against better-qualified white applicants in the service of a loosely defined social engineering objective.

The President’s response?

I applaud the Supreme Court for recognizing the value of diversity on our Nation's campuses. Diversity is one of America's greatest strengths.

So where does Gonzales fit into all of this? According to CNN’s Robert Novak, the Bush Administration, led by Solicitor General Ted Olson, originally planned to file a brief opposing any consideration of race by public universities, that is, before Gonzales intervened:

Gonzales, who has publicly supported racial preferences, revised the petition. Accepted by the president, it advocates the desirability of government-sponsored diversity if achieved short of quotas.

In other words, the legal reasoning put forth by the Court in Grutter is totally congruent with Gonzales’ legal philosophy on this matter. The entire tale of how Bush and his advisors were able to skillfully appease the Republican Party’s conservative wing by denouncing “quotas” while simultaneously assenting to Gonzales’ tortured (no pun intended) Constitutional argument, which essentially allows for what amounts to a stealth quota is intriguing and I will not attempt to rehash it here. Suffice it to say, the President’s handling of the affirmative action cases and his choice for attorney general provide two more examples amongst a litany of betrayals of his conservative base.

Part II: Gonzales, Torture, and the Constitution

Who Are We and Who Are You?

For those who keep track of this sort of thing, we’ve made it to the run-off in Dan Flynn’s “best blog contest.” While compliments never get old, the criticisms interest me far more, and this entry is designed to respond to them in one broad sweep and show exactly what it is we’re hoping to accomplish.

There are those who will say our posts are too long. In addition, there are those who question why exactly we’re “angry,” and are put off by that characterization.

My response is simple: anything worth doing is worth doing right. Anyone can offer you an opinion; few can defend them. When you espouse contrariwise, reactionary points of view, you have to elaborate them in detail to even allow them a voice in the forest of screaming trees that is mainstream political opinion. Why so angry? Because things are not okay in the world today; the problems sit in the Middle East, in Europe, in Washington, DC, in our state capitals and at the core of American life. Most people, however, take an unfounded optimistic view of human nature, assuming people are at their essence good, and able to be understood. However, this demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of history and the human spirit: people can be good and virtuous, but they are not born that way, they have to work at it. And this work is not being done.

The whole situation resembles the game of “telephone” that I and many others played as children. The first person communicates an idea, and it gets passed down the line on this first listen, no questions asked. By the end, it’s all gibberish, but everyone thinks they’re on the same page.

The simplest way to demonstrate this is to look at the labels people give themselves. Politics is so far off-base in this country these days, that if you look closely at the labels, they make no sense in actual context. Words have meaning, and it’s important that those meanings aren’t ignored.

The two biggest dividing lines are the terms “conservative” and “liberal.”

Conservative, adjective:

“1. reluctant to accept change: in favor of preserving the status quo and traditional values and customs, and against abrupt change.”

Conservatism, historically, involves people like Klemens von Metternich supporting dynastic rule in the wake of the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars. That suits the definition: anti-revolutionary defense of the old order. The term has snaked its way to application in the modern political spectrum, usually applied to the “right-wing” Republican Party. Of course, the Republican Party’s journey leftward carried the word “conservative” with it and rendered it meaningless. True conservatives wouldn’t support an executive-branch led war of democratic revolution overseas or the continued and unceasing growth of the national government into more and more channels farther and farther away from the original intent of the Constitution. This led to an ideological split in “conservatism:” so-called “neo-conservatives” and “paleo-conservatives.”

Neo-conservatives, for obvious reasons, should not be allowed the moniker “conservative.” There’s nothing conservative about them; or, if there happens to be vestiges of conservatism left in them, it is merely used as bargaining positions in the act of compromise. Neo-conservatives are, in all actuality, democrats or centrists, the term we’ll use for what I would call “compromising conservatives.”

Paleo-conservatives got their unflattering name in order to imply that their ideas are somehow anachronistic. However, this fails to take into account that paleo-cons have the most defensible political position in the world: they simply believe in the rule of law. The supreme law in this country is the US Constitution, which has a threefold advantage: it allows for strong and efficient national government, it allows for individual liberty, and it allows for self-government in the form of the states. You can’t argue with the law. Or, rather, you shouldn’t, but most do, especially in the other wing of the “conservative” movement. Paleo-conservatives are in actuality Constitutionalists, believers in law and order, individual liberty, states’ rights, and, believe or not, a strong Federal government within the bounds it has been given. It is tempting to refer to them as true conservatives, but I’d like to dissociate them from the Congress of Vienna and the dynastic regimes that gave birth to the term conservative and look at them as a uniquely American brand of politico.

And, now, the other side. Liberal, adjective:

“2. politics progressive politically or socially: favoring gradual reform, especially political reforms that extend democracy, distribute wealth more evenly, and protect the personal freedom of the individual.”

That’s all well and good, except for the fact that term liberal self-contradicts in its own definition. You can’t have government involvement (reform, distribution of wealth) and protect the freedom of the individual (another definition includes the line “[using] government power to promote social progress”). If you set out with a contradiction, your ideas are meaningless and nonsense. Liberals are actually socialists, and this is what they believe:

“1. political system of communal ownership: a political theory or system in which the means of production and distribution are controlled by the people and operated according to equity and fairness rather than market principles.”

The only way such a system could be brought about would be for the government to extend its hand into the affairs of business and society to tone down capitalism and widen the political base by extended suffrage and unchecked immigration. Income taxes and business regulations resulting in fines allow the government to take that money and redistribute it to the lower rungs of society, allowing the people greater control over the means of production through elections which promote anti-business elected officials.

Note that the ones not defending your God-given rights are the ones given nice-sounding names. So-called conservatives are protecting your values, liberals are making the world a better place, and neither are actually doing either, because words have no meaning in today’s political climate. The ones actually promoting freedom and traditional values are given a name implying that they’re a bunch of cavemen. Words have meaning, and no group of words has more meaning than the ones assembled in the US Constitution. Politics in this country has moved so far off-base that even those words begin to lose their meaning. That makes me angry. It should make you angry, too.

As We Go Marching: Inauguration Reflections

So 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 our world. - George W. Bush, January 20, 2005

The world must be made safe for democracy.
- Woodrow Wilson, April 2, 1917

Once upon a time, there was an American Right that espoused a political philosophy rooted in a realistic view of the world predicated on an Augustinian view of human nature.

These old-style conservatives were not utopians. They were intensely skeptical of government’s ability to regenerate mankind, particularly on an international scale. They were extremely cautious in the realm of foreign policy if not downright non-interventionist. They opposed the centralized state and sought to roll back the federal leviathan while staunchly supporting the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

One of the most prominent members of the Old Right was a man whose name you will not see in the pages of the National Review or hear on six hours worth of Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity daily radio shows.

John T. Flynn was a political commentator, columnist, and critic of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal. Perhaps best known for his role in the America First Committee, which sought to keep the United States out of World War II, Flynn was an articulate champion of the Constitution and economic freedom.

Flynn was a man who consistently put principle over politics, despite the professional and personal costs. Flynn felt the full brunt of these costs – in no small part due to his relentless criticisms of the Roosevelt Administration – when, in 1939, an outraged FDR wrote a private letter to the editor of the Yale Review describing Flynn as a “destructive rather than constructive force” whose writings “should be barred […] from any presentable daily paper, monthly magazine or national quarterly.” According to historian John Moser, Roosevelt’s request had a silencing effect as it became "clear that by late 1940 fewer and fewer of Flynn’s manuscripts were finding their way into print.” This process culminated in November 1940 when the editor of the New Republic announced that the publication would no longer carry “Other People’s Money” (Flynn’s column).

Over Christmas break I read two of Flynn’s most prominent works – As We Go Marching and The Roosevelt Myth. The latter meticulously documents FDR’s prolifigate spending, Congress’ unconstitutional $3 billion mass appropriation to be spent at the President’s leisure, Roosevelt’s war on the Supreme Court, and the use of New Deal agencies and federal money to coerce American citizens into supporting the President’s favorite political candidates.

A particularly hard-hitting facet of this book is its analysis of US foreign policy during World War II. Flynn takes us back to the writing of the much-ballyhooed (at least at the time) Atlantic Charter, a document that declared American and British support for the principle of self-determination for the small nations of the world. Within a matter of pages Flynn paints the dreary picture of the Yalta Conference, where the United States and Great Britain surrendered Poland and Eastern Europe into the hands of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin. At this point, Flynn refers back to the Atlantic Chater and provides a devastating critique with the great fireside chatter’s own words.

As We Go Marching, written in 1944, is a different type of book. What makes it so effective is its historical analysis of the rise and reign of fascism in Italy and Germany in the context of the New Deal. According to Flynn, fascism in both Italy and Germany consisted of a regimen of economic planning, political centralization (particularly in the realm of the executive branch), and militarism. Flynn then points out the striking similarities between Roosevelt’s National Recovery Administration and Mussolini’s cartels, Roosevelt’s wholesale disregard for the Tenth Amendment and the way in which Mussolini and Hitler ran roughshod over the jurisdictions of local communities, and the massive build-up of the warfare state in all three nations.

In the realm of foreign policy, of particular note is the chapter on American Imperialism. Flynn takes us back to the time of America’s acquisition of the Philippines, quoting large portions of the Congressional Record with Senators talking of America’s “divine mission” to spread democracy and freedom around the world (sounds familiar doesn’t it?). Flynn notes how the wisdom of our forefathers was seemingly forgotten during this entire debate – the fact that we had a Constitution, which granted the federal government a set of limited and enumerated powers (the power to “spread democracy” by force of arms is not one of them) was disregarded in the brave new world.

Flynn’s essential point is implicit within the book’s title – that as we, quite literally, went marching around the world in the name of stomping out fascism we witnessed the rise of a fascist state at home. That as we joined the noble crusade for “freedom” and “democracy” abroad those values were simultaneously damaged beyond repair on the domestic front.

This brings us to the President Bush’s Inauguration speech. The neocons, ever the admirers of Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, have been beside themselves with adulation. According to National Review’s Jonah Goldberg, Bush is a “revolutionary”. Bill Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard beams:

INFORMED BY STRAUSS and inspired by Paine, appealing to Lincoln and alluding to Truman, beginning with the Constitution and ending with the Declaration, with Biblical phrases echoing throughout -- George W. Bush's Second Inaugural was a powerful and subtle speech.

The President may have started this chilling speech with a reference to the “durable wisdom of our Constitution”, but the rest of it contradicts the wisdom of the Framers of that document. In his farewell address George Washington talked about avoiding “entangling alliances” with an emphasis on American independence. Jefferson spoke of “peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none” and John Quincy Adams said of America that “she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy.”

According to Bush, “Advancing these ideals is the mission that created our nation. It is the honorable achievement of our Fathers.” Perhaps if the President considers “our Fathers” Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, and Franklin Roosevelt, he may be on to something, yet this was not the original vision of the Founders, nor is it a conservative one.

As Pat Buchanan pointed out on last Thursday night’s Scarborough Country:

It's the defiance of the farewell address totally of George Washington about foreign entanglements, all the rest of it. John Quincy Adams said we go not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. We are the champions of freedom everywhere, but we are the vindicators only of our own. This is thrown in the trash can.

Indeed, as an exchange between a commentator on the liberal Air America radio network and Larry Kudlow, a National Review and CNBC stalwart demonstrates:

SEDER: Honestly, you know, it was President Adams who I think said America should not be going out into these foreign wars to export freedoms. We should be a beacon and a light and an example, but we shouldn't be getting involved in these type of wars. It just doesn`t work that way.

KUDLOW: Well, with respect to Washington, who I adore intellectually and morally, Washington, Adams, Jefferson and so forth weren't faced with jet fighters use as homicide bombers in a world of weapons of mass destruction. I mean, citing John Adams to me is an extreme example of pre-9/11 thinking.

To those familiar with the conservative battle against “judicial activisim”, Kudlow’s response sounds eerily familiar to the grandiose claims of liberal jurists and legal elites about a “living” or “breathing” Constitution, with provisions completely malleable to the whims of five justices on the Supreme Court.

I thought conservatives sought to preserve the principles of the past and apply them to the problems of the present. What we are engaged in presently is not a battle between whether or not historical positions will be applied to the problems of our post-9/11 world, it is a question of whose positions – those of the Framers and the Western Christian tradition, or those like the Jacobins who exalt the state and believe that all that matters is “security” and that the ends justify the means.

While the President talks incessantly of “expanding freedom” and As We Go Marching abroad, tyranny at home continues to grow while our Constitutional liberties are assailed by the Patriot Act, campaign finance reform, assault weapon bans, and nationalized education. And with both major national parties in lockstep and four more years of Mr. Bush's leadership to boot, there appears to be no end in sight.

If a shred of our Constitutional liberty, as understood by the Founders of this country, is to survive on into this century it is past time for conservatives to investigate the writings of John T. Flynn and others like him.

Book Review: 'When I Was a Kid, This Was a Free Country', by G. Gordon Liddy

One of the principal advantages of the National Conservative Student Conferences that the Young America’s Foundation puts on in the summer is the discounted books available from the speakers at the conference. The novelty of a half-price book combined with the immediate possibility of having it signed by the author is enough to encourage buying stacks of them, though they can often be of specious quality.

You see, political books fall into distinct categories. There are the landmarks, and then there are the functional equivalents of roadside stands. There’s usually a lot of open space from landmark to landmark, so the enterprising will put up cheap wooden stands to hawk items of immediate convenience to passers by. The quality isn’t stellar, the staying power is minimal, and no one pretends its any more than a simple way to cash in on the immediate circumstances. Of the latter type, these are the books you see glutting bookstores, written weeks after an event, usually with loud dust jackets and a stern-looking picture of the author on the cover.

Most of the books one buys at YAF fall into that category. A precious few are the aforementioned landmarks. Some, however, are a useful middle ground. They bridge the gap, portraying sound ideas in an accessible, easy-to-read format. This includes G. Gordon Liddy’s When I Was a Kid, This Was a Free Country.

The main idea of the book follows the title. America was once free, now it is not. This is furnished with a broad range of examples consisting of both Liddy’s personal experiences and his social commentary. Chapters cover topics ranging from guns, to marriage, to the military, to principles of education and self-reliance. Bizarrely, the book also includes an ending appendix chapter about Watergate, which one can only assume was too scant to stand alone, and the end of this book is as good a place as any.

The question is, why would anyone want to read around 190 pages of Liddy’s opinions? This is where the matter of the book’s true value comes in. If you agree with Liddy on most points, the book’s value is negligible, unless you’re of the mould that really, truly enjoys “amen corners” and constant affirmation of your own viewpoints. You won’t learn much new here. Conversely, those opposed to Liddy’s viewpoints will not be converted, as there is a considerable lack of depth, and no footnotes or sources. No, the true value of the book belongs to the undecided and the uninformed: those who believe what they believe simply because they haven’t heard anything else.

To wit, I’ve met, in my day, a few fairly conservative people who are education majors. Their conservatism goes out the window when it approaches matters of education. They assume the Federal government should have its hands in it, because they’ve never been presented a real alternative. Well, Liddy’s chapter on education is a very solid introduction on how to have good education in this country without federal control. He doesn’t go into deep, detailed or technical arguments, but his opinion is well-founded and interesting, and if someone’s opinion happens to be the only one they’ve heard voiced, it could be of service to them.

The chapter on education is Liddy’s best, followed by his chapter on marriage and relationships, which is brutally honest, managing to be both realistic about human nature and within the parameters of conservative values. His chapter on the right to bear arms would also be useful to someone uninformed about the topic. The chapter on the military is interesting, though his views are slightly hackneyed and predictable. The same can be said for the chapter on self-reliance. Concerning the Watergate chapter, I’m not entirely positive that was written for anyone but Liddy himself. The entire book, however, is written very well, and Liddy’s writing style is very engaging and intelligent, with his distinct personality always in full view.

In short, I’d put this in the “easy listening” section of political writing. The initiated of the conservative cause will find little new here, though it can be nice to read something you agree with for a couple nights. This book is really best for those who aren’t quite sure what they believe yet. Liddy’s arguments conducted well-enough to be a fitting introduction to good, social conservative ideas. If you have someone you’d like to help bring around to your side, this is the book for them. It’s an entertaining, quick read, and they might learn a thing or two.

Recommendation: Recommended, but only for specific audiences.

NB, for our readers

Over at http://www.flynnfiles.com/ , scroll down to the entry for January 18th. James entered us in their "Best Blog" contest and the voting isn't really inviting a huge turnout. We want to get our name out there early, so go, and leave a comment, telling them the The Last Angry Men gets your vote. Just a few of us could be able to overturn the thing.

Thanks in advance.

The Dubai Experience and Iraq

The beauty of treating one’s life like a liberal arts education is that by taking a juxtaposition of rugby, James Madison, and the city of Dubai, one can find answers to plaguing questions.

Among my predominant interests is the sport of rugby, specifically rugby union. I play it, I watch it, and any unclaimed hour of my time I’ll willingly devote to it. One such hour was watching the IRB Sevens on tape from Dubai on Fox Sports World.

Sevens is the term given to rugby played with shorter halves and fewer players. The game, as a result, is quicker and more wide-open. Dubai is a city in the United Arab Emirates, the financial and business capital of that country.

The tournament was interesting enough, including, among other things, a satisfying upset of the French by Portugal. Dubai boasts a very fine pitch, and the whole series of matches was sponsored by Emirates Air Lines. As I watched, a question crept into my mind.

You see, Dubai, besides rugby, hosts international golf and tennis tournaments, as well. It’s a city of commerce and finance, and Europeans pass safely in their time there. The standard of living seems pretty acceptable, the government is stable, and tourists seem to have no problem spending their time and money there. Yet, to the north, in Iraq, Palestine, and Syria, war and terror are constant realities. The UAE seems to have little in common with those states, and, depending on the depth of comparison, that view would seem to be correct. However, one overarching bond exists amongst them: they are all Arab nations.

How, exactly, does the United Arab Emirates succeed?

I posit this: the UAE succeeds because it is governed by a form of government natural and best-suited to the Arab world.

The UAE is somewhat like the United States in that it has a federal government. It is different from the USA in that the federal government is elected among the emirs of the constituent emirates, who are hereditary rulers. The CIA World Factbook bears this out: the country offers no suffrage to its people. Yet, it manages to survive, and, in my opinion, prosper.

This creates an interesting context for the Iraqi situation. Our current administration seems to feel that no nation can be peaceful unless it is a western-style democracy. Our full military effort at this time is committed to holding the country together so it can hold “free elections.” The specter of violence haunts these elections daily, with the added strain of the possibility of having to seal the borders of the entire nation the day they are to take place.

Now, what western-style democracy actually is, is a difficult thing to pin down. Is it European social democracy, English parliamentary democracy, or American federal republicanism? If it’s the third, and since our soldiers are doing the lion’s share of the dying in Iraq, it would follow that it would be, it might be helpful, at this time, to take a look at one of the framers of our federal government, the Father of the Constitution, James Madison, and what he might have to say that would be helpful in this situation:

Democracy is the most vile form of government... democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention: have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property: and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.

Seems pretty straightforward. How about another big name from our founding, Thomas Jefferson?

A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.

Where could two of our most venerable framers have gotten such ideas? You might have heard of him. His name is Aristotle.

There are three systems of government diverging from the three “straight” systems: tyranny diverging from kingship, oligarchy diverging from aristocracy, and democracy diverging from polity. Each diverging system (parekbasis) is structured to operate to the advantage of the ruler(s); for example, democracy is rule to the advantage of the poor. None of the diverging systems aims at the profit of every type of citizen in common.

The “polity” according to Aristotle was a mixture of democracy and aristocracy. Aristotle characterizes the “worst” form of government as tyranny, which is “furthest” from polity, allowing for the reasonable conclusion that polity is the best. Polity is this view is the primitive form of what now call federal government, or government on different levels which have checks and balances on each other. That may sound familiar, as it was the government that Madison, Jefferson, and their contemporaries created for this country.

The similarity between Aristotle’s views on government and our Founders’ is not a coincidence. Aristotle is one of the cornerstones of western thought, and our framers drew heavily on him and other political thinkers. Why? So the United States would succeed where other experiments in popular government failed. In this sense, American government is the product of Western thought, a span of thousands of years of history and struggle unique to the Western experience.

To say that it can be translated into a foreign culture is not only painfully misguided, but a disservice to the battles fought to create it. What Iraq needs is American style government not in the sense of republicanism, but in the sense of a government created from the unique experiences of its people. True self-determination, as it were. If this requires the separation of Iraq, so be it. There will never be stability so long as the people there are under the control of an alien form of government. To them, American democracy is as foreign as socialist dictatorship under Saddam Hussein was.

The emirs of the UAE are uniquely Arab. They are also singularly successful. There will never be peace in Iraq until the people are governed how they see fit. The same goes for the rest of the Arab world, and, indeed, the rest of the world in general. What neo-conservatives need to realize is that outside of Western eyes, ballot boxes aren’t always the best solution.

Hannity versus Aquinas: How the West Will Be Won...or Lost.

I’m glad James took the time to post a couple works, including an old one of mine from my distinctly colloquial former online journal. Personal problems have precluded me from completing my half of our planned introductory post, so I guess we’ll just have to introduce ourselves as we go along.

The best way to do that, I think, would be to write about what I feel is one of the most glaring problems with our culture today. I came up with the title “The Last Angry Men” because anger is what one feels when things aren’t how they should be and no one is doing anything about it. When confronted with a problem, one can either get angry, or resign oneself to compromise. The latter option is not really an option at all for anyone with any real concern for who they are and from where they came. Some would say that it’s better to act than to sit around and complain. I wholeheartedly agree. It happens to be that one person’s efforts are noble but inefficient; however, one person’s voice can influence the actions of many. James and I would have numerous conversations where I’d tell myself, “People should be able to see what we’re saying.” Now, they can, and hopefully in doing so they can recognize that many problems go unnoticed.

One of the most profound problems is the fact that we’re fighting two wars: one abroad, and one at home. We’re fighting one like we should be fighting the other, and vice-versa. Abroad, we’re fighting to bring democracy, freedom, and rule of law to the people of Iraq. At home, we’re doing our very best to erase a culture.

The war at home is the war to save Western Civilization. Perhaps you’d be surprised to learn that Western Civilization is losing. This battle can be summed up in one particular clash for the hearts and minds of conservatives: Sean Hannity versus Thomas Aquinas.

Sean Hannity is a popular radio commentator and news analyst on Fox News Channel. Being among conservatives on a regular basis, I can tell you he is well liked and respected. I can also tell you that that is emblematic of the problems facing the conservative movement today.

Let’s take Hannity’s view on the war we’re waging abroad: “You've got to learn something. He had weapons of mass destruction. He promised to disclose them. And he didn't do it. You would have let him go free; we decided to hold him accountable."

Accountable, indeed. Now that the search for weapons of mass destruction has ended, are we going to let Saddam Hussein go? Of course not, because we’ve changed the plot in the middle of the play. We are now fighting for freedom and democracy, and Hannity will waste no time shilling that angle without missing a step. To me, this begs the question, are we going to stop looking for Osama Bin Laden, as well? We invaded Afghanistan to find him, and he never turned up. Perhaps like in Iraq we can change our story and turn the sack of Afghanistan into a crusade for the American Way. Sounds farfetched? Well, the Civil War has become a crusade to end slavery and World War II a crusade to end the Holocaust, thanks to quick revisionism. Neither of those two ends were justifications posed at the beginning of either conflict, but have since been happily accepted.

Now, this isn’t so much to single out Sean Hannity, but merely to use him as symbolic of his kind. Others are guilty of the same chasing of the party line:

• Rush Limbaugh: "There's a newspaper out there called the World Tribune. I saw it on their website, and they make no bones about the fact that there's a story over the weekend that the weapons of mass destruction are routinely being found, evidence of them."

• Jonah Goldberg: “But, as a political proposition, without the discovery of WMD, postwar Iraq will be a political tar baby anyway — perhaps even if we're greeted as liberators by most Iraqis. We might as well hand it over to the United Nations. I am still confident we will find plenty of such weapons — Saddam didn't buy those chemical suits and atropine injectors because Glamour magazine says they're all the rage — and these stories about drums of chemicals are not encouraging.”

I could go on, but I’d like to stop here to prevent a misunderstanding about what I’m trying to accomplish. I’m not trying to weave a pacifist tapestry or claim that I never supported the use of arms in Iraq. What I am trying to do is tell you that you should be careful who you listen to when a major issue like Iraq comes up. Hannity, Limbaugh, and Goldberg will say what they want one day and change their story the next. Bill O’Reilly has also followed a similar path, going so far as to apologize for his insistence that weapons of mass destruction would be found. People still read them, listen to them, quote them, and trust them. The thrill of having a public political commentator who votes Republican is too much to pass up, the truth be damned.

And this is how our culture is losing, as well. If one should want to consult an authority on whether a war is justified or not, the answer is not to turn to a talking head. Somewhere in the annals of history, someone with real authority—centuries’ proof of it, not a few years’ worth of high ratings—has wrestled with the very topic that our society is wrestling with. Has anyone written about how a state can ensure that any war it wages will be just?

The answer is yes: Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas is both a Catholic saint and one of the greatest scholars the Western world has produced. He is best known for his major work, the Summa theologica, a complete summary of Christian theology, philosophy, and doctrine. Among the most well-known excerpts of the work is Aquinas’s proof that God exists. But, in the Summa theologica, he also spells out what has come to be known as his Just War Theory.

Aquinas formulated his Just War Theory to answer the question whether it is ever lawful, in moral terms, for a state to go to war. This was meant as an aid to enable Christian states to fight without compromising the essential goodness that a Christian state is supposed to have.

Aquinas answered that a Christian state could go to war, provided three factors were in place:

• “The authority of the sovereign by whose command the war is to be waged.”
• A just cause; the state attacked should conclusively deserve to be attacked.
• A “rightful intention,” meaning the intent of the war promotes good, and not evil.
  

It is hard to make an argument for the Iraq war under these guidelines.

• The war was not waged with the authority of the proper sovereign: Congress is “sovereign” in terms of declaring or not declaring war in this country. Yes, Congress “authorized the use of force” on the President’s behalf, but Congress can no more give the right to the President to wage war than a doctor can let a pharmacist write his own prescriptions. No Congressional declaration of war, no just use of force.
• The second point does follow. I supported the Iraq war initially because in this day and age, allowing a state like Saddam Hussein’s Iraq to exist was leaving the door wide open for further problems down the road, given a contemptible record that includes many causes for war that were never acted upon.
• The third, however, does not. Our intent in Iraq is to transform it, somehow, into a Western style democracy. This sounds like a good intention, but in fact is one that is both misguided and impossible. Now that the regime has been overthrown that we sought to overthrow, our soldiers remain there to hold together a country that was four arbitrary lines drawn on a map after World War I, so it can hold “free elections” in a land that knows nothing of democracy. A just intention would be to allow the Iraqis true self-determination, including but not limited to a free Kurdistan. There is no justice in ignorance, and trying to install a government that took thousands of years of Western thought and struggle to succeed in a place that does not share our traditions is just that. Why, someone please answer me, is a federal republic whose founders knew the danger of unchecked democracy fighting for “democracy” in the first place?
  

The United States is a Christian state founded on Christian principles and therefore was intended by Aquinas to be receptive to this kind of argument. Yet, I would not venture to guess what percentage of Hannity’s viewers and listeners would be able to adequately explain Aquinas’ arguments, let alone intelligently refute them so they at least know why their heads are bobbing in unison to his tired rhetoric. I do not venture to guess because my mind does not work with well with miniscule numbers.

Aquinas’ Just War Theory is a frightening thing. It makes us question how many just wars we’ve really fought, either by questions of motive or authority. For a nation founded on ideas and believing in moral principle, that question is crucial. I do not care to live in a society that ignores the great scholars of its civilization in favor of television showmen and radio Republican policy pimps.

Nor should you. The United States is the last and greatest bastion of Western Civilization; when it moves, is it championing those who have come before or betraying them? Who will we let win, Sean Hannity or St. Thomas Aquinas? In the answers to those questions lies our collective fate. Maybe its time we mute the television for a minute and give them some more thought.
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Anthony Galasso is a resident of Perth Amboy, New Jersey and co-administrator of The Last Angry Men with his friend James Lawrence. He welcomes any comments or questions pertaining to his work and ideas and can be reached by AOL Instant Messenger at TSVgalasso1860 and by e-mail at tsvgalasso1860@netscape.net.

Celebrate King's Day the Right Way

In case you didn't know (and how could you not?) today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

Not unlike the Presidencies of Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, and Franklin D. Roosevelt, an understanding of the actual body of principles King stood for along with a knowledge of the Reverend’s very questionable personal life seems to be inversely proportional to time with any sort of honest investigation, particularly with regards to the latter, being generally derided as the product of a hopelessly racist and bigoted psychology.

Indeed, as Marcus Epstein notes:

There is probably no greater sacred cow in America than Martin Luther King Jr. The slightest criticism of him or even suggesting that he isn’t deserving of a national holiday leads to the usual accusations of racist, fascism, and the rest of the usual left-wing epithets not only from liberals, but also from many ostensible conservatives and libertarians.

That there exists strong evidence pointing to the possibility that the good doctor plagiarized his doctoral thesis and other papers is certainly not an article of American common knowledge. His womanizing is perhaps better known.

Of course, just as in the case of Presidents Lincoln, Wilson, and Roosevelt, the response from those who cede the historicity of the aforementioned can be summarized in two words: so what.

So what if Lincoln illegally suspended habeaus corpus in the North during the War Between the States while censoring media outlets hostile to his administration. It matters little because Father Abraham freed the slaves.

So what if Woodrow Wilson campaigned in 1916 on the slogan “he kept us out of war” before plunging us into the conflagration in the spring of 1917. So what if his administration ran roughshod over the Bill of Rights while jailing American citizens opposed to the war under the Espionage Act. He helped “make the world safe for democracy” and rolled back that despicable institution known as German militarism.

So what if Franklin Delano Roosevelt told mothers and fathers in 1940 that their boys would not be fighting in any foreign wars while he and his administration continued to provoke the Japanese. So what if the great fireside chatter jailed thousands of Americans of Japanese, German, and Italian ancestry. So what if Roosevelt played Stalin’s fool while sentencing millions of Eastern Europeans to live behind the iron curtain. Roosevelt “saved capitalism from itself” and beat back fascism.

In all three cases the glorious ends justify the means – no matter how deceptive, illegal, and unconstitutional those means may be.

This principle certainly applies, albeit on a lesser scale, to Dr. King. Yes, he might have plagiarized his doctoral thesis, he might have talked about judging men “by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin” while advocating racial quotas and preferences, and yes his personal life might not have been beyond reproach. But he ended segregation and that’s all that matters and for one to bring up these items so many years after the fact, the conventional wisdom runs, belies a deeper, innate racism.

I, as you might expect, reject this line of reasoning completely. Attempting to gain an accurate understanding of a historical figure’s principles, positions, and conduct is not racist. Rather, it is the by-product of a pursuit of truth, congruent with the great tradition of Western Civilization and St. Paul’s admonition to “test all things and holdfast to what is true”.

In the end a disservice is done to all by continuing to latch on to caricatures in the interest of not offending anyone – by choosing this route we are assured that truth is the only casualty.

Vintange Galasso: Celebrating King Day the Right Way

I know what you're expecting.

It's MLK day...

I should write something here that absolutely destroys the man. I should post the comments from Boston University admitting King plagarized his doctoral thesis. I should post the excerpts from Rev. Abernathy's book that explain King's frequent and violent interactions with prostitutes. I should dig up the FBI's evidence of his elbow-rubbing with known Communist organizations. I should wonder why another file on King was sealed by a judge until 2037. I should bemoan the fact that this liar and hyprocrite was a given a national holiday, an honor bestowed on no one by name (remember that it's President's Day, not Lincoln and Washington's Birthday anymore).

But if I do, anyone who reads this is just going to think it's mere racist bluster from me. That I'm just jealous that he gets the honor over someone my people can identify with. They'll probably accuse me of making it all up.

Because the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King was a martyr. Just like JFK. Because generalized, mass media, popularized history fogs over the truth. Just like with FDR and Woodrow Wilson. Because he was black. Just like how avowed racists Malcom X and Elijah Muhammed get honored by the civil rights movement, as well. Because America is the home of false heroes, of the people terrified to offend. Just the kind of place that honors a man like King.

The sad part is...I back up what I say with facts. Sure, he lead some civil disobedience movements. But, to me, the real issue is that the reverend was morally bankrupt and the doctor plagarized his thesis. But the real issue isn't important, and the truth can't be known.

So I'm not going to write it. Why bother. Let kids enjoy their day off, after seeing the MLK cardboard cutouts hung up in their school and hearing all the repetitions of his "I Have a Dream" speech. Let them continue to be filled with the media's steady stream of "He was a Great Man, No Questions Asked." Let them have their minds made up for them. Let them embrace "diversity", while their own culture is destroyed, supplanted by a monochrome America that can worship all the rotten-at-the-core, plastic false idols it wants.

"But damn it, Galasso! He opposed racism! His faults are nothing compared to what he accomplished."

It's all a matter of perspective, I guess. For a man so unilaterally revered to have had such a terrible private life seems a bit hypocritical to me. I mean, David Duke is no more a racist than King was, just in reverse. And, Duke served in the military and hasn't been caught doing anything nearly as reprehensible. Duke even served honorably in the US House of Representatives. Yet, he'll never get anything near a holiday. To me, venerating King is alot like worshipping Reverend Moon. It's hard to believe in a Messiah who beats his wife and gets caught with illegal pornograhy. It should be just as hard to follow a man who takes credit for the work of others or a man of the cloth who can't keep his hands off whores.

"How dare you call the Honorable Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr. a racist! He wanted a colorblind society!"

A colorblind society is racist, as it wishes to see other races, and their identities, dissolved. What's the best solution to the problem of White America? Get rid of it. With our immigrant situation as it is, monochrome America'll get itself tinted sepia real fast. Now what's so wrong with that, you may ask? My people are on the outside of that equation, that's what.

Unlike most of Euro-America, I'm proud of where I came from. For some reason, all they're proud of is where other people come from. The minorities, to their credit, have their own interests in mind. My people are too busy having MLK day programmes and showing off Latino executives. While Mr. and Mrs. Dedham, Massachusetts are proud of themselves for having "Afro-American" friends, their culture is being wiped away. To me, it's disgraceful to have let it occur so blithely. Every other ethnic group in this country has their agendas in order, why not mine? And, go ahead, call me a racist. I'm just saying what they've said. Just because you endorse their point of view and not mine doesn't make theirs any less similarly motivated.

So, yeah. I'm not going to attack the Rev. today. Why bother. No one'll listen. They'll either not stop shouting the white washed lies long enough to hear, or not take their earplugs of denial out long enough to listen to what they know is the dark truth.

I have a dream, myself. It goes like this: one day, Americans are going to realize they've been lied to, and refuse to hold people hostile to their morality and way of life in such high esteem.
Every day, I seem to wake up, and things stay the same.

And so it was written.

AG Galasso, 01/19/04

A Paycheck for Armstrong

As the USA Today first reported , Armstrong Williams, a "conservative" radio commentator and syndicated columnist was paid nearly $241,000 by the US Department of Education to promote the No Child Left Behind Act on his talk show.

Per Williams: “I wanted to do it because its something I believe in.” Rest assured then, dear taxpayer, that Mr. Williams’ support of NCLB had nothing whatsoever to do with a fat paycheck. No sir, money had nothing to do with it because this was a matter of principle. Williams was putting your hard-earned tax dollars to good use.

In a column apologizing to his readers (what about US taxpayers?), Williams writes, “People have used this conflict of interest to portray my column as being paid for by the Bush Administration,” and that “people need to know that my column is uncorrupted by any outside influences.” Of course, that Williams’ column was most definitely “corrupted” and “influenced” by his quarter-million dollar payday is evident to any honest observer of his record.

As Dan Flynn astutely points out:

In a May 16, 2001 column, Williams laments that ‘Bush scooped out the soul of his own education proposal’ and that ‘the spirit that ought to animate such legislation has been bargained away.’ After he got paid, Williams lavished unadulterated praise upon the No Child Left Behind Act.

And lavish praise Williams did. In a column appearing just days before the Presidential election Williams wrote:

[The] synthesis of government, individual responsibility and free choice is perfectly summed up by Bush's educational reforms. Against the backdrop of chronically underfunded schools that lack the wherewithal to educate low-income students, Bush has backed school choice options, which hold the promise of a new civil rights movement.

Williams' contention that Bush’s major educational reform – the No Child Left Behind Act – was a victory for “free choice” is a blatant contradiction both of the record and his own understanding of the legislation.

On this point, Flynn nails it again:

The Bush Administration dumped the No Child Left Behind Act's provisions regarding school choice to win over Democrats. Williams acknowleged this in his June 26, 2002 column: ‘Unfortunately, something happened on the way to Congress. On May 2, the school choice provisions were stripped from the bill.’

The fact NCLB’s school choice provisions were stripped away in order to build a bi-partisan coalition has not been lost on conservatives who see the legislation as a move towards greater federal control over education while the Constitution reserves the responsibility of education to the several states.

Also absurd is the contention of Williams and outgoing Education Secretary Rod Paige that this whole arrangement was perfectly legal. According to Paige, “All of this has been reviewed and is legal.”

“I’m not concerned about this witch hunt,” says Williams. “I know that I’ve done nothing wrong, nothing illegal.”

Federal statute barring taxpayer dollars from being spent on government propaganda aside, perhaps both men should take a look at what the Constitution says.

Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution explicitly spells out the “limited and enumerated” powers granted to the federal government while the Tenth Amendment reserves all powers not granted to the federal government to the people and the several states. Since the federal government is granted no power by the Constitution to play a role in education, Paige has been the head of an unconstitutional department for four years. The Republican Party as recent as 2000 recognized this fact in its party platform:

We recognize that under the American constitutional system, education is a state, local, and family responsibility, not a federal obligation. (emphasis mine)

Moreover, according to Article I Section 8, Congress is not authorized to appropriate any funds to pundits – on the right or left – to agitate for any sort of political agenda. This makes Armstrong Williams’ payday utterly unconstitutional and illegal. Yes Virginia, there is no “Armstrong clause” or "elastic clause" in the Constitution that can make this scam legal.

This episode provides just one more reason to take the advice of men like Reagan, abolish the Department of Education, roll back big government, and return education to states and localities.

No word yet from Rich Lowry and the boys at the National Review as to Williams’ long-term future in the conservative movement. At the Young America’s Foundation National Conservative Student Conference, Lowry, in response to a question I posed regarding a David Frum cover story deriding opponents of the war in Iraq as “unpatriotic conservatives” thundered about how he and the National Review were “policemen of the Right” after purging the opponents as people who “thought the North should have lost the Civil War, are intolerant of racial minorities, and are fellow travelers of our nation’s enemies” all to a raucous ovation from around 200 or so self-described conservatives.

This, sadly, is the state of modern American conservatism – opponents of big government projects such as “nation-building”, “democratization”, and constant American interventionism are to be shunned and subjected to assaults on personal character in major national publications while pundits like Armstrong Williams and other advocates of nationalized education are shielded. Yes indeed, the American Right is now an emissary of the centralized state.