In Defense of Rush Limbaugh

To the gentle reader,

The news media recently have recounted a rather distasteful incident.  I have not followed it in detail, but apparently a young woman who is a student at a Catholic college testified before Congress that she wanted her health insurance to pay for her contraceptives so that she could be sexually active with whomever she wanted without having to concern herself with the longer-term consequences of such activity.  (Let us pass over for the moment the emotional entanglements that come with sexual activity and the devastation that results when such relationships end; let us also pass over the fact that contraceptives are not completely effective and that the woman in question is risking her future whenever she engages in such activity.)  It appears further that a conservative commentator named Rush Limbaugh, who is quite well known, used a pair of single-syllable Anglo-Saxon words to describe this young woman.  Finally, it seems that this has ignited a firestorm of controversy; the President of the United States has seen fit to call the young woman in question to offer her his comfort and support and Mr. Limbaugh has been rather universally pilloried in the press.

Gentle reader, let us consider first the question:  is what Mr. Limbaugh said correct?  One of the terms that he used denotes a woman who has multiple sexual partners; if the young woman in question does indeed have multiple sexual partners, then that term is accurate.  A second term denotes a woman who dispenses sexual favors in exchange for money; from what little I have heard of the controversy, this is not the case with the young woman in question.  As such, I would say that the second term is inaccurate.

Let us consider a second question:  is this evidence that Mr. Limbaugh and his defenders hate women?  I would suggest that the answer is no.  I cannot speak for Mr. Limbaugh’s motives and thinking, but I will state categorically that women are fitted to a much higher purpose than climbing into bed with a variety of different men.  They are entitled to a certain level of respect, and in fact a higher level of respect than men, simply by virtue of the fact that they are women.  When a woman cheapens herself sexually, she reflects poorly on women as a whole and is deserving of direct and uncomplimentary terms being used to describe her.

Let me hasten to put the shoe on the other foot, though, and apply the same thought process to men.  Men are fitted to a much higher purpose than climbing into bed with a variety of different women.  Certainly they are entitled to a certain level of respect simply by virtue of the fact that they are men, although I would say (even though I am putting the shoe on the other foot) that women are entitled to greater respect.  And when a man cheapens himself sexually, he reflects poorly on men as a whole and is deserving of direct and uncomplimentary terms being used to describe him.

One problem, then, is the lack of terms that have the same punch and directness to describe a man who “sleeps around.”  The term “cad” comes to mind, but it lacks a certain something.  I would suggest that until there is a term the evokes the same visceral response concerning a man as Mr. Limbaugh’s term does concerning a woman, that we refrain from using such strong terms concerning women.

A second problem comes with applying a label to a person and stopping there.  Indeed, many very uncomplimentary terms can be used to describe most, if not all, of us.  Everybody has sinned; everybody is in need of forgiveness.  The primary differences between me and anybody else in modern America are that first, I am more expert at keeping my sins private; and second, I should know better.

A third and larger problem, though, is that sin has become so commonplace and so widely accepted in this country that people are condemned and vilified for using direct language when describing it.  Let us be perfectly clear on this point:  sexual activity outside of marriage is wrong, immoral, and should not take place.  As a society we have lost this knowledge; until we get it back, people and families will continue to suffer.  And “shooting the messenger” will not fix the problem.

- John F. Fay

 

On the Defense of Bradley Manning

To the gentle reader,

If I may begin by making something perfectly clear, this essay is not in the defense of Bradley Manning; it gives some thoughts concerning the defense of Bradley Manning.  If Pfc. Manning is guilty as accused, what he did was indefensible.

With that preamble, let us set the stage.  About a year and a half ago, the web site “Wikileaks” began publishing several tens of thousands–hundreds of thousands, actually–of secret reports from the United States military concerning its conduct of the war in Afghanistan.  These reports described how the United States military conducts its operations; knowing this gives the enemies of the United States an advantage in countering American efforts in this direction.  The publication of the reports also exposed the efforts of many people in the field who were gathering intelligence data for the United States military–the short word is “spying.”  Yes, it is a dirty business, but the world is a dangerous place and good guys spy as well as bad guys.  More to the point, while the public was assured that the military reports had been scrubbed of any material that would endanger somebody who had been spying in Afghanistan for the Americans, I seriously doubt that a bunch of amateurs at Wikileaks would be able to outwit professionals in foreign intelligence agencies.  It was never made public, but most likely at least one person died as a result of the Wikileaks publication.

After the publication of the military reports, the Wikileaks site proceeded to publish a quarter of a million secret telegrams from United States embassies around the world back to the Department of State.  Again, many things were made public that should not have been made public; American interests were put in danger or explicitly harmed, and it is most likely that at least some of our intelligence sources in foreign countries have been imprisoned or killed because of this leak.

Enter Private First Class Bradley Manning, arrested shortly after the leaks happened, and who apparently provided the material to the people of Wikileaks.  He is presently undergoing a hearing at which the military will determine whether the evidence against him is strong enough to warrant a court martial.

Pfc. Manning’s defense borders on the bizarre.  First, it would appear that Pfc. Manning thinks that he is actually a woman named “Breanna.”  Second, Pfc. Manning exhibited violent and erratic behavior while at his post that the defense claims should have led to his being removed from his position of trust.  In summary, his defense is that he did indeed commit the crime but that it wasn’t his fault so he shouldn’t be punished for it.

Gentle reader, let us consider this carefully.  There is so much wrong here that I do not know where to begin; the nature of the crime may be as good a starting point as any.  Pfc. Manning took an oath when he received his security clearance not to reveal information that the military has labeled “secret.”  He has violated that oath.  Whatever his state of mind may have been, whatever somebody else may or may not have done to him, he made a promise and broke it.  On a personal level this is called betrayal; on his level it is called treason.

Let us consider next the question of “Breanna.”  Each of us as a citizen of the United States has a need for a military that will protect us; for the military to do this effectively, it needs its people to keep certain things secret.  If confusion over whether a person is male or female (and a DNA test will eliminate all confusion 99.9 percent of the time) is grounds for betraying one’s country, then we will need to bring back the exclusion of people with gender issues from positions of trust within the government.  (I recognize that homosexuality and gender identity questions are not identical, but the homosexual community has been lumping them together as “LGBT” for many years now and I will agree with them here.)  In short, Bradley Manning may deal the homosexual rights movement its worst blow since Guy Burgess half a century ago.

The defense claim that Pfc. Manning should have been removed from his position because of his erratic and violent behavior also flies in the face of modern political correctness.  For a generation now we have been mercilessly taught that we should tolerate–no, accept and respect–people whose behavior we find offensive because they are just “being themselves” and aren’t wrong, merely different.  Now we are told that no, this behavior should not have been tolerated, and that the person who behaved this way should be allowed to get away with treason because his superior officers did not quash his behavior right away.  I invite our brethren on the social left to make up their minds:  either violent and erratic behavior is acceptable and Pfc. Manning has no excuse, or violent and erratic behavior is not acceptable and should be opposed.

Interestingly, Pfc. Manning has many supporters among the public.  (Actually, let us be clear:  they may not be many, but they can be loud.)  Pfc. Manning’s supporters appear to believe that betrayal, oath-breaking, and other misconduct is acceptable if only the guilty party honestly believes that he’s doing the right thing.  Their tune changes, of course, when police break up Occupy encampments, but for the moment that is what they are saying.  But they are wrong:  evil actions remain evil, even if the people doing the evil have the best of intentions.  I am sure that Judas Iscariot had the best of intentions when he sold Jesus for thirty pieces of silver.

The attempted defense of Pfc. Bradley Manning embodies all that is the worst in American society.  A man has done great evil but tries to avoid taking responsibility and blame those around him.  He has broken his promises, violated his oath, betrayed his comrades in arms, and considers it acceptable because he is confused over whether he is a man or a woman.  That his lawyers would even consider this sort of argument for a defense is an indictment of our society.

- John F. Fay

On Modern Moral Thinking

To the gentle reader,

Two recent items drew my attention towards the subject of morality in modern times.  If you will bear with me, I will describe them to you briefly.

The first item came from a coworker who was describing to a group of us the story line behind a current television show.  Apparently the hero of the show is a high school teacher who finds himself out of a job and in desperation takes to “cooking meth,” meaning that he makes an illegal drug to sell on the street.  “It’s not like he’s a criminal, or anything like that,” my coworker said, explaining that the show had mainly to do with the dealings of this hapless former school teacher with professional members of the underworld.

Gentle reader, let us please be perfectly clear on this:  if a person engages in criminal activity, he is a criminal.  This is the definition of the term.  Let us also be perfectly clear:  making illegal drugs is against the law; this is why the drugs are illegal.  Therefore, plainly and simply, no matter what the former school teacher’s motives were and are, the man is a criminal.

Let us also note the decline in the idea of a hero.  A hero is supposed to be somebody worthy of imitation, somebody who practices virtues and who is to be admired.  An unemployed person who turns to a life of crime is not worthy of imitation; he is not displaying virtue; and he is not to be admired.

The second item was an article in the Sunday, December 4 edition of the Northwest Florida Daily News concerning Debbie Craig, who was the first woman hired to serve as a patrol officer in Okaloosa County.  Ms. Craig was sworn in on her twenty-second birthday in 1976, served for two years, and abruptly handed in her badge and dropped out of sight.  She died earlier this year.  The article describes her having been haunted by something, drinking a fifth of whiskey every day.  One of her friends is quoted as saying that he “tried to get her to stop of slow down.  She tried a few times but it just didn’t work.  It didn’t make her a bad person.”  The article then goes on to describe the incident that haunted her so badly:  back when she had been on the police force, her married lover had killed himself using her police weapon.

Let us sort through this with great care and gentleness; these are real people we are describing here.  I can understand in some small way the grief and sorrow that did indeed haunt Ms. Craig.  Certainly one person cannot read another person’s mind or motives, but it would be very understandable for her to have taken to drink in an effort to relieve the emotional pain from her lover’s suicide.  As her friend said in the article, the drinking “didn’t make her a bad person.”

Let us also make another point perfectly clear from this tragic life:  adultery is plainly and simply immoral.  It is always wrong; there is no set of circumstances that can ever make it right.  It ruins lives; it leads to the destruction of people such as we read about in the article.  No matter how strong the temptation may be towards it; no matter how pleasant it may feel at the moment; no matter what sort of excuses one may trump up for it; adultery is sinful and will lead to disaster.  The man involved killed himself; the woman involved wasted the rest of her life; and only God knows what happened to the man’s wife and any children he left behind.

The newspaper article did not mention that adultery is wrong; it did not quote anybody as saying this; it did not even hint in this general direction.  Once upon a time, people knew about it and perhaps a reminder was not necessary.  In the modern day, though, many people have lost sight of this fact.  Morality is often reduced to wishful thinking and the consequences are catastrophic.  The example of Debbie Craig should remind us that there are actions that are good, there are actions that are evil, and that we do evil to our own detriment.  Let us hope that when she finally went to stand in front of God, she accepted the forgiveness that He continuously offers.

- John F. Fay

 

On Scientific Creationism

To the gentle reader,

A friend of mine recently loaned me a book titled “In the Beginning:  Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood.”  He hailed it as an example of scientific creationism, the placing on a scientific foundation of the idea that the universe is only several thousands of years old.

Let us pause briefly and consider the questions of “creationism.”  As with many other terms, it covers multiple definitions.  Strictly speaking, “creationism” is the belief that individual species of plants, animals, and other living things were created individually; this stands in contrast with the theory of evolution, which claims that different species formed from other species.  Let us note that the strict definition of “creationism” says nothing of the age of the universe; neither does it say anything about a God, although creation implies a Creator.

The “creationism” embraced by the author of this book, however, is a specific flavor of creationism:  it is young-universe creationism.  The young-universe creation theory claims that the universe is only about 6,000 years old; it is a stricter variation of the young-earth creation theory, which claims that the earth is only about 6,000 years old but which may allow for the rest of the universe to be older.  But this book takes the strictest form:  it attempts to show that the universe is only about 6,000 years old and that individual species of living things did not evolve one from another.

Let us also consider briefly the term “scientific.”  The Scientific Method is to observe things, form a hypothesis as to how they work, make some predictions based on this hypothesis, and then go test these predictions.  The predictions may be qualitative, meaning that they only describe the sorts of things that would be observed if the hypothesis is correct, but it is much better if they are quantitative, meaning that the hypothesis will allow one to predict how much of something will be measured.  To do this, one requires mathematics.

Any serious science nowadays requires the use of mathematics.  In an experiment or a field observation, a scientist measures a variety of things:  the time between two events, the distance between two points on the earth, the deflection of a needle in a voltmeter, the number of clicks a Geiger counter registers.  To make sense of all the measurements, the scientist must use some fairly serious mathematics.  I have led high school students through some simpler equations in special relativity using only elementary algebra, but the moment things get interesting one is into calculus and differential equations.  As I say to the students, if one has not done the math, one has not done the science completely.

So now let us open the book.  (The front material notes that the book may be found in its entirety at “CSC’s website.”)  The first section is titled “The Scientific Case for Creation.”  Unfortunately it is not scientific, it does not make a case, and it is not for creation.  It consists of a series of paragraphs with catchy titles like “Fast Binaries” and “Stellar Evolution?” and which purport to attack the old-universe theory.  The pattern is extremely common and dull:  bring up a result which may be inconsistent with the scientifically-accepted age of the universe and then insist that the only alternative to this inconsistency is a young universe.  There is no mathematics; there is no support for a young-universe theory; there is nothing positive at all.  To give just the one example of “Fast Binaries” (paragraph 59 in the first section) the book points out that there are two start in space which orbit each other very quickly, making a complete circuit in eleven minutes.  The book cites a reference that concludes (correctly, as far as I know, although the masses of the stars also figure critically in the calculation) that the centers of the two stars are only about 80,000 miles apart.  By way of comparison, our sun is about 876,000 miles in diameter.  According to astronomical theories of stellar evolution, typical stars like the sun have diameters similar to that of the sun; then they swell up and then they shrink to a diameter in the neighborhood of 80,000 miles.  Since the two stars that orbit each other could not have followed this course of evolution, the book claims, they apparently did not follow any course of evolution at all and so therefore stars do not evolve.  No suggestion is made that there might be another course of stellar evolution that the stars did follow.

In another place the book mentions Noah’s Ark.  While this is a digression from science, it is somewhat relevant to the question at hand.  It gives a latitude and longitude, 39.703 degrees north and 44.275 degrees east, of what the author calls “the Ararat anomaly” which he claims is the final resting place of the Ark.  Google Maps is our friend here; one can type the latitude and longitude directly into Google Maps and go directly to the location.  Well, almost directly; Google Maps takes you to the nearest road, which is about seven miles west of the point requested.  One needs to find the green arrow.  The satellite photographs have a resolution of a few inches at most, which is plenty when one is looking for a 500-foot-long box-shaped boat.  (I note that the photograph in the book is pointing to a slightly different point, latitude 39.709 degrees north and longitude 44.282 degrees east.)  A photograph from the area which claims to show Noah’s Ark is also available on the related Panoramio site.  It may be needless to say, but I will say it anyway:  I see no evidence from Google Maps or from Google Earth of a 500-foot-long box-shaped boat.

Another point on which I have some expertise is the speed of light.  The Wikipedia entry on the “Speed of Light” has a good summary.  The measured values for the speed of light have indeed been decreasing slowly since the first successful measurement in 1676; the uncertainties in the measurements have also been decreasing steadily.  These early measurements were uncertain enough that the “measured” value could have been anywhere within a rather wide interval; the true value of the speed of light was almost always within that interval, towards the lower end (in other words, the slowest possible speed from the measurement).  After the Second World War, when physicists became extremely adept at measuring the speed of light very precisely and very accurately, the measured values for the speed of light suddenly quit changing.  They have now been rock-solid constant for about 60 years.  That the measured quantity would quit changing its value just as the measurement techniques improved to the point to detect the change unambiguously beggars belief.

In the book’s favor, I will note that it does make a prediction based on a young-universe theory.  On page 235, the author predicts that if the speed of light has decreased dramatically over the years and centuries, then events in distant galaxies will appear to happen more slowly than they do in our own galaxy by some powers of ten.  This epitomizes the Scientific Method:  the author has a hypothesis and he makes a prediction.  And in fact astronomers have been able to test his prediction:  supernovas (stars exploding at the end of their lifetimes) happen in distant galaxies frequently, certainly many times a year.  The rate of brightening, the changes in the spectrum of the supernova, the final decay of the embers of the star, all of these things can be observed.  No evidence of the predicted slowing down of events has been seen, not by powers of ten, not by a factor of two or three, not by a few percent.  We can conclude that the hypothesis is false.  Unfortunately the book does not mention any of this.

The book exemplifies what is wrong with “Creation Science.”  For the most part, there is no science there.  The “evidence” that is cited in support of creation science does not support it; usually it is a poorly-done attack on the mainstream theory.  Only rarely are predictions made in accordance with the scientific method, and when such predictions are made they are found to be laughably false.

- John F. Fay

 

A Few Thoughts on the Occupy Movement

To the gentle reader,

About a month ago, I was in Columbia, South Carolina; my visit there coincided with the beginning of the “Occupy Columbia” protest on the grounds of the state capitol building.  I went and visited the protest site for about an hour on Sunday morning and spoke to some of the protesters there.  More importantly, I listened to them.  My impression was of a group of young people, very angry about the direction society has turned, and not at all sure what to do about it.  There was much goodwill and cooperation.  There was also a tendency to rush to judgment against people with whom they disagreed or whom they did not understand; for example, I heard several people condemn our soldiers for thinking of enemy fighters as “targets” rather than as people.  I would hasten to add, though, that rushing to judgment is not something that is limited to young liberals.

The “Occupy Columbia” people were also quite well-behaved and law-abiding, if reluctantly.  When the police ordered them to move their blankets and sleeping bags onto the pavement so as not to kill the grass, they complied with some grumbling.  I realize that this is a single incident, very early on in the protest, but it is my starting point.

Let us consider the question of obeying the law a little more deeply.  The basic premise of the Occupy movement is that they are occupying, lodging in a place or in places where they are not supposed to be.  The original Occupy Wall Street group, through a legalistic sleight of hand, have found that they are not clearly breaking the law through their residence at Zuccotti Park in New York City.  Other groups, however, are simply trespassing and have been able to stay where they are through sheer intimidation of the authorities.  Since the existence of the Occupy movement itself is rooted in law-breaking, one should not be surprised to hear reports of other cases of illegal activity on the part of the Occupiers.

There is another factor to take into account.  The beginning of any effort is always accompanied by a sense of novelty and delight; these are the halcyon days.  In a marriage, it is the honeymoon period.  After a while, the novelty wears off and the participants realize that they need to buckle down and do some strenuously hard work.  I visited the Occupy Columbia site on the second morning of the protest; these were definitely the halcyon days for this protest.  Similarly, much of what we heard in the news media from the early days of the Occupy movement was colored by this sense of novelty.  The movement was new to the participants, it was new to the media, and it was new to us.  Anything was possible, and it was much more pleasant to consider the positive possibilities than it was to consider the negative possibilities.

While I was visiting the Occupy Columbia site, I attended an organizational meeting and spoke briefly to the group as a whole.  I told them that there was another group, about two years old, that was also thoroughly angry about the direction society was going and wanted reform.  I listed our core principles of demanding accountability and transparency at all levels of government, of upholding the Constitution as the supreme law of the land, of keeping taxes low and ensuring responsible spending, of expanding individual freedom and recognizing that individual responsibility is the basis of all of our freedoms.  This group, of course, is the Tea Party.  I invited them, if they could accept the core principles, to come and join us.  They listened politely and took down my contact information, but I have not heard back from them.

There have been many news reports of police brutality against members of the Occupy movement; conversely, there have been many news reports of criminal activity by members of the Occupy movement.  Again, news reports will rarely give the full story, but usually there are a few facts that one can hang one’s hat on.  For example, when the mayor of Oakland had the police clear the Occupy Oakland site, the incident that triggered the mayor’s action was that some self-appointed security people in the Occupy movement were beating somebody with a two-by-four and when the police responded, the other Occupy members prevented them from reaching the victim of the beating.  This is clearly beyond the realm of tolerable:  assault and battery are criminal behavior, no matter what the person’s motivation may be.

The Occupy movement and the Tea Party have a good bit in common.  We are both, as I said, very angry about the direction society has gone.  We both represent “the little guy” against big business and big government.  We both oppose multi-billion-dollar bailouts of large corporations with our tax money.  If we were to join forces, we could accomplish quite a bit.

On the other hand, though, there are many serious differences between the Occupy movement and the Tea Party.  The first has to do with obeying the law.  Tea Parties hold political rallies, just as the Occupy movement does; the Tea Parties, though, pay the fees and get permits for their rallies.  We welcome the police as our brothers and sisters, our friends and neighbors, our fathers and mothers and sons and daughters.  We do not misbehave and the police do not give us any trouble.  It is that simple.

A second difference has to do with what the Tea Party and the Occupy movement are trying to accomplish.  The Tea Party has rather a simple platform:  we want responsible government, responsible spending by government, with the resulting low taxes.  The Occupy movement has not articulated any common set of goals; in fact they appear to pride themselves on keeping their demands fluid and ambiguous.  I have heard of individual demands that are simply outrageous, such as a guaranteed minimum wage of $20 per hour whether a person works or not, but again these are from news reports that probably do not tell anything like the whole story.  Having ambiguous and changing demands, though, is not an acceptable state if one wishes to have a dialogue with others.  If you want me to help you accomplish your goals, I need to know clearly what those goals are.

- John F. Fay

 

Concerning When a Human Life Begins

To the gentle reader,

During the 1970′s and 1980′s, the crux of the abortion debate had to do with the question of when a human being became a human being.  The defenders of the practice of abortion used such terms as “embryo” and “fetus” to describe whatever or whoever it was inside a woman’s uterus; terms such as “unborn child” were never used.  Similarly, the woman concerned was always called a “pregnant woman”; never, ever did a defender of abortion refer to an “expectant mother.”

The purpose of this linguistic sleight of hand was to cloud the issue.  Once the issue was raised, everybody knew instinctively that an unborn child was a human being and that abortion was immoral and wrong.  The only hope of the defenders of abortion was to choose their terms carefully and hope that nobody ever used the wrong word to describe the situation.

I propose here to step through the argument clearly and explicitly.  While the subject should have been settled some decades ago, it apparently has not; our current president, when asked whether an unborn child was a human being, declared that the question was above his pay grade.  Evidently he did not mind taking the chance that he was supporting the killing of human beings, but that is a different subject.  My purpose here is to remove the doubt, to answer the question that he dodged.

The first point has to do with determining when the unborn child becomes a living being.  This may be answered scientifically:  biologists determined centuries ago that living things do not sprout from things that are not alive.  In the Middle Ages, people thought that rotting meat spontaneously grew maggots and that grain storehouses created mice by themselves.  Biologists then established that this does not happen:  adult flies lay eggs on the rotting meat that hatch into maggots and mice break into the grain storehouses and multiply.  For a thing to be living, there must be a continuous string of life reaching back into the past; it must have been living when it was younger, it must have been alive when it was in the egg or, for mammals, in utero; and before it was conceived its parent gametes must have been alive.  At every point on this continuous thread leading from the parents to the children, the active agents must have been alive.

In the case of the unborn child, this leads to an ironclad conclusion:  an unborn child is alive from the moment that the mother’s egg is fertilized.  In addition, before fertilization the mother’s egg and the father’s sperm must both be alive.  At no point are the egg, sperm, fertilized egg, embryo, or fetus not alive.  This is demonstrated by science beyond a reasonable doubt.

The second question is, when does the unborn child become a human being.  Webster’s Dictionary, which reflects the use of the language by society and its members, defines “human” as “belonging to the human race.”  The criterion for this is that for a person to be a human being, he or she must have a human mother and a human father.  By this definition, the fertilized egg is most definitely a human being.  One can point to a female human being and clearly identify her as the mother; one can also, in theory at least, point to a male human being and clearly identify him as the father.  Again, starting immediately at the point of conception, the fertilized egg, embryo, fetus, or baby has a human mother and a human father and is therefore a human being.  It is very clear and very simple.  Before conception, there are a separate egg and a separate sperm; they are not human, because the egg has no father and the sperm has no mother.

Another canard that was bruited about in the 1970′s and the 1980′s was the statement by the feminist mother-to-be that “it’s my body and I have the right to do what I want with it.”  This is another statement that does not stand up at all to scientific inquiry.  The unborn child is manifestly not just another part of the mother’s body; it is separated from the mother’s body by an umbilical cord, an amniotic sac, and a placenta.  Its genetic material is also different from that of the mother’s body.

In conclusion, then, while there are some things about which reasonable people may differ, the question of when a human life begins is not one of them.  It is proven from science and from the language that an unborn child is a living human being, starting from the point at which he or she is first conceived.  This is not a question above anybody’s pay grade, either.

- John F. Fay

 

On Kathleen Parker, Hank Williams Jr., Barack Obama, and Adolf Hitler

To the gentle reader,

There appeared in the Northwest Florida Daily News a few days ago an excellent column by Kathleen Parker, a syndicated columnist with whom I agree more often than I disagree, who writes much better than I do, and who is always thought-provoking, even when (I say) she is wrong.  The column was titled “Obama, Hitler, and Hank Williams Jr.”  It began with the excellent (and hilarious) observation that she never would have imagined writing a column with such a title.  Gentle reader, at the risk of boring you with my personal foibles, I confess that I am still laughing at Ms. Parker’s statement.  Truly the situation to which she refers defies satire.

The news story behind the column is that Hank Williams Jr., the country singer, has been fired by ESPN for mentioning (in another forum) President Obama and Adolf Hitler in the same sentence.  Let us be clear here:  he did not explicitly compare President Obama to Adolf Hitler; he merely mentioned them in the same breath.  He also mentioned Benjamin Netanyahu and John Boehner in that breath, but this appears not to have caused as much controversy.  Let us observe also that the conclusion that was jumped to was not that Mr. Williams thought that John Boehner resembled Adolf Hitler; the outraged public presumed that Mr. Williams was comparing our president to the former chancellor of Germany.

The good Ms. Parker notes that when one searches on Google for “George W. Bush and Hitler” one finds their names linked some 13,900,000 times.  While this may be too much of a quibble, that particular set of words brought me 7,420,000 results from Google; removing the word “and” reduced the number by ten thousand; removing the middle initial of our former president’s name raised the number to 11,800,000; and using just the two last names returned 33,600,000 results for me.  By any measurement, though, our brethren on the political left have succeeded in making comparisons to Hitler trite and meaningless.  Ms. Parker points this out, although she delicately refrains from pointing fingers in any one direction.

Ms. Parker continues her column to call for a moratorium on comparisons with Hitler.  In this, I think, she is right.  As she says, “His name is too convenient … .  (I)nvoking Hitler trivializes that which defines horrific.”

What Ms. Parker did not say, although it is a small step from what she did say, was that we should stop comparing situations to Nazi Germany.  In general, it would be good to do this.  (For the record, Google returned for me 6,680,000 results for the words “republicans nazis” and 7,370,000 results for the words “democrats nazis”, although in the latter case the first result was a headline saying “House Democrat compares Republican ‘lies’ to Nazi propagandist.”  Obviously this is not a scientific poll.)

There is one situation in this country, though, where such a comparison is apt.  That situation is abortion.  Between 1973 and 2008, the number of unborn children who died in abortions in the United States was 49,338,920.  Worldwide, the “most recent annual abortion figure” is calculated to be 14,845,647.  In contrast, the Holocaust in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945 killed between 6,000,000 and 22,000,000 people, depending on how the term is defined.  Gentle reader, let us consider for a minute:  more than twice as many people have been murdered by abortion in the United States alone than were murdered in Nazi Germany, and as many people are murdered by abortion worldwide in a year and a half as were murdered by the Nazis over twelve years.  Truly the scale of the modern Holocaust is breathtaking.

This does not mean that any one individual can be compared to Adolf Hitler.  The abortion Holocaust does not have, and never really did have, any single one driver or organizer.  It was done a little bit at a time, by millions of willing participants, by tens of millions of mothers who felt that they had no choice, while hundreds of millions of others stood by and let it happen.  While some groups or organizations have greater culpability than others (National Organization for Women and Planned Parenthood come to mind), they could not have done the job by themselves.  There is plenty of blame to go around and no single person that we can conveniently pin it on.

- John F. Fay

An Open Letter to the “Occupy Wall Street” Protesters

To the gentle reader,

As the “Occupy Wall Street” protests spread to other cities around the United States, and as they grow in size from dozens of people to hundreds of people, the news media is beginning to give them some attention.  At present, the protests show a great anger at the present economic and political system in the United States and a desire to change things.  These things they have in common with the Tea Party movement.

The media coverage of “Occupy Wall Street” is a case study in bias.  The “Occupy Wall Street” protesters are perceived as liberals, so they receive generally positive coverage from the mainstream media.  This is in glaring contrast to the Tea Party, which is perceived as conservative and whose lunatic fringe elements are portrayed as representing their whole.  The demands of the “Occupy Wall Street” protesters are given a sympathetic hearing, no matter how illegal and unconstitutional the individual demands may be.  National Public Radio had a five-minute report on “Occupy Wall Street” which traced its roots back to the protest movements of the Sixties, spoke of the modern conditions which the present-day movement is protesting, and never once mentioned the Tea Party.

The platform of the “Occupy Wall Street” movement is presently not so well-defined.  Media reports have spoken of much that they are against; I have heard quotes of wishing to put bank presidents into jail.  The movement is young, though, in its infancy in fact.  They will need some time to think through their positions and come out with some coherent statements of policy.  Obviously throwing people into jail without their having actually broken a law is a non-player; on the other hand, declaring that any company that is “too big to fail” is also too big to succeed and then dismantling it under anti-trust legislation is an excellent idea.  This is not a question of liberal versus conservative; good ideas on how to run society can come from any direction.

I invite the participants in the “Occupy Wall Street” movement to come join the Tea Party.  We have many things in common:  we oppose the overly-close relationship between the financial industries and the government agencies that are supposed to be regulating them; we oppose government bailouts of big businesses; we want government to be more responsive to the average citizen; we want managers of large companies who ruin our economy and our lives to be punished.  We also share your anger and frustration with the present system and wish to change it.  We have our core principles:  support the Constitution, keep taxes low, ensure that government spending is responsible, demand accountability from all levels of government, protect individual freedoms, and recognize that individual responsibility is the basis of our society.  If you can accept these principles, then come on over; we’d love to have you.

- John F. Fay

 

Some Pointed Comments About Twitter, Facebook, the Tea Party, and Blogs

To the gentle reader,

I am sure you know by now that I get a good bit of material from the Stratfor open-source intelligence service.  Nor am I shy about reposting their material.  I recently visited their web site and saw a self-advertising link, a sort of “I like me,” listing various other media outlets quoting Stratfor or interviewing its employees.  In particular, two interviews with an outfit called “TechCrunch” with Stratfor’s founder George Friedman caught my eye and I thought them to be worth passing on.  You may find them at a page titled “Keen On George Friedman.“

The first video, titled “Did the secret police invent Twitter?”, concerns the role of social media such as Twitter in revolutions in general and particularly in the recent “Arab Spring.”  I find it rather amusing to see the interviewer’s befuddlement at some of Dr. Friedman’s remarks about the Arab Spring; it’s pretty obvious that the interviewer had not done his homework before the interview.  (If I may give you a hint, Dr. Friedman opines that there has been precious little in the way of true revolution or regime change in Arab countries this year.)  The primary point of the interview, though, is the complete inability of Twitter users to hide their posts from the authorities.  If you tell your friends that there will be a demonstration in two days in some particular place, the police will show up there and break it up.

In the second video Dr. Friedman explains how the internet has given a megaphone to people from whom society would be better off not hearing.  These people have always been around, but now the internet has given them a way to communicate with each other and make noise.  (Interestingly, he cites the Tea Party specifically as one group of these “loonies.”)  They are a radical fringe, he says, but the internet has allowed them to convince the public discourse that they are much more common and much more powerful than they really are.  This is bad for the public discourse and it is bad for society.

In Shakespeare’s play “Much Ado About Nothing,” the character Benedick exclaims in a soliloquy that “Happy are they that hear their detractions and can put them to mending.”  We of the Tea Party have legitimate concerns:  our government is far overreaching its Constitutionally-allowed authority; our nation’s debt comes to tens of thousands of dollars for every man, woman, and child in this nation; we are beginning to be presented with the choices of violating our morals and losing our livelihoods; our culture is, over the next few generations, aborting and contracepting itself out of existence.  Half the battle, though, is convincing reasonable onlookers that we are in fact reasonable people with legitimate concerns.  This in turn requires that we behave reasonably.

- John F. Fay

 

From Stratfor: US Foreign Policy and Electoral Realities

To the gentle reader,

If you will permit another “lazy man’s post” of largely reposting somebody else’s material, I would like to forward an essay from the Stratfor open-source intelligence service.  It concerns President Obama’s situation and the general forecast for United States foreign policy between now and the presidential election.  The gist of the article, if I may give it away, is that there won’t be much foreign policy; the president will be too busy with domestic politics.  The flip side of this is that other countries will be able to take advantage of this preoccupation to do things which may not be in the best interests of the United States.

The problem, as Stratfor makes clear, is not with President Obama personally.  Any American president is hemmed in by a thousand calls for his attention; a hundred competing interests; a dozen contradictory demands, all of which he must satisfy.  The problems that our country presently faces are not primarily political problems; they are social problems.  We as a people have become lazy, dishonest, and self-centered; out politics and politicians merely reflect those tendencies.

- John F. Fay

Obama’s Dilemma: U.S. Foreign Policy and Electoral Realities

By George Friedman

STRATFOR does not normally involve itself in domestic American politics. Our focus is on international affairs, and American politics, like politics everywhere, is a passionate business. The vilification from all sides that follows any mention we make of American politics is both inevitable and unpleasant. Nevertheless, it’s our job to chronicle the unfolding of the international system, and the fact that the United States is moving deeply into an election cycle will affect American international behavior and therefore the international system.

The United States remains the center of gravity of the international system. The sheer size of its economy (regardless of its growth rate) and the power of its military (regardless of its current problems) make the United States unique. Even more important, no single leader of the world is as significant, for good or bad, as the American president. That makes the American presidency, in its broadest sense, a matter that cannot be ignored in studying the international system.

The American system was designed to be a phased process. By separating the selection of the legislature from the selection of the president, the founders created a system that did not allow for sudden shifts in personnel. Unlike parliamentary systems, in which the legislature and the leadership are intimately linked, the institutional and temporal uncoupling of the system in the United States was intended to control the passing passions by leaving about two-thirds of the U.S. Senate unchanged even in a presidential election year, which always coincides with the election of the House of Representatives. Coupled with senatorial rules, this makes it difficult for the president to govern on domestic affairs. Changes in the ideological tenor of the system are years in coming, and when they come they stay a long time. Mostly, however, the system is in gridlock. Thomas Jefferson said that a government that governs least is the best. The United States has a vast government that rests on a system in which significant change is not impossible but which demands a level of consensus over a period of time that rarely exists.

This is particularly true in domestic politics, where the complexity is compounded by the uncertainty of the legislative branch. Consider that the healthcare legislation passed through major compromise is still in doubt, pending court rulings that thus far have been contradictory. All of this would have delighted the founders if not the constantly trapped presidents, who frequently shrug off their limits in the domestic arena in favor of action in the international realm, where their freedom to maneuver is much greater, as the founders intended.

The Burden of the Past

The point of this is that all U.S. presidents live within the framework in which Barack Obama is now operating. First, no president begins with a clean slate. All begin with the unfinished work of the prior administration. Thus, George W. Bush began his presidency with an al Qaeda whose planning and implementation for 9/11 was already well under way. Some of the al Qaeda operatives who would die in the attack were already in the country. So, like all of his predecessors, Obama assumed the presidency with his agenda already laid out.

Obama had a unique set of problems. The first was his agenda, which focused on ending the Iraq war and reversing social policies in place since Ronald Reagan became president in 1981. By the time Obama entered office, the process of withdrawal from Iraq was under way, which gave him the option of shifting the terminal date. The historic reversal that he wanted to execute, starting with healthcare reform, confronted the realities of September 2008 and the American financial crisis. His Iraq policy was in place by Inauguration Day while his social programs were colliding with the financial crisis.

Obama’s campaign was about more than particular policies. He ran on a platform that famously promised change and hope. His tremendous political achievement was in framing those concepts in such a way that they were interpreted by voters to mean precisely what they wanted them to mean without committing Obama to specific policies. To the anti-war faction it meant that the wars would end. To those concerned about unilateralism it meant that unilateralism would be replaced by multilateralism. To those worried about growing inequality it meant that he would end inequality. To those concerned about industrial jobs going overseas it meant that those jobs would stay in the United States. To those who hated Guantanamo it meant that Guantanamo would be closed.

Obama created a coalition whose expectations of what Obama would do were shaped by them and projected on Obama. In fact, Obama never quite said what his supporters thought he said. His supporters thought they heard that he was anti-war. He never said that. He simply said that he opposed Iraq and thought Afghanistan should be waged. His strategy was to allow his followers to believe what they wanted so long as they voted for him, and they obliged. Now, this is not unique to Obama. It is how presidents get elected. What was unique was how well he did it and the problems it caused once he became president.

It must first be remembered that, contrary to the excitement of the time and faulty memories today, Obama did not win an overwhelming victory. About 47 percent of the public voted for someone other than Obama. It was certainly a solid victory, but it was neither a landslide nor a mandate for his programs. But the excitement generated by his victory created the sense of victory that his numbers didn’t support.

Another problem was that he had no programmatic preparation for the reality he faced. September 2008 changed everything in the sense that it created financial and economic realities that ran counter to the policies he envisioned. He shaped those policies during the primaries and after the convention, and they were based on assumptions that were no longer true after September 2008. Indeed, it could be argued that he was elected because of September 2008. Prior to the meltdown, John McCain had a small lead over Obama, who took over the lead only after the meltdown. Given that the crisis emerged on the Republicans’ watch, this made perfect sense. But shifting policy priorities was hard because of political commitments and inertia and perhaps because the extremities of the crisis were not fully appreciated.

Obama’s economic policies did not differ wildly from Bush’s — indeed, many of the key figures had served in the Federal Reserve and elsewhere during the Bush administration. The Bush administration’s solution was to print and insert money into financial institutions in order to stabilize the system. By the time Obama came into power, it was clear to his team that the amount of inserted money was insufficient and had to be increased. In addition, in order to sustain the economy, the policy that had been in place during the Bush years of maintaining low interest rates through monetary easing was extended and intensified. To a great extent, the Obama years have been the Bush years extended to their logical conclusion. Whether Bush would have gone for the stimulus package is not clear, but it is conceivable that he would have.

Obama essentially pursued the Bush strategy of stabilizing the banks in the belief that a stable banking system was indispensible and would in itself stimulate the economy by creating liquidity. Whether it did or it didn’t, the strategy created the beginnings of Obama’s political problem. He drew substantial support from populists on the left and suspicion from populists on the right. The latter, already hostile to Bush’s policies, coalesced into the Tea Party. But this was not Obama’s biggest problem. It was that his policies, which both seemed to favor the financial elite and were at odds with what Democratic populists believed the president stood for, weakened his support from the left. The division between what he actually said and what his supporters thought they heard him say began to widen. While the healthcare battle solidified his opposition among those who would oppose him anyway, his continuing response to the financial crisis both solidified opposition among Republicans and weakened support among Democrats.

A Foreign Policy Problem

This was coupled with his foreign policy problem. Among Democrats, the anti-war faction was a significant bloc. Most Democrats did not support Obama with anti-war reasons as their primary motivator, but enough did make this the priority issue that he could not win if he lost this bloc. This bloc believed two things. The first was that the war in Iraq was unjustified and harmful and the second was that it emerged from an administration that was singularly insensitive to the world at large and to the European alliance in particular. They supported Obama because they assumed not only that he would end wars — as well as stop torture and imprisonment without trial — but that he would also re-found American foreign policy on new principles.

Obama’s decision to dramatically increase forces in Afghanistan while merely modifying the Bush administration’s timeline for withdrawing from Iraq caused unease within the Democratic Party. But two steps that Bush took held his position. First, one of the first things Obama did after he became president was to reach out to the Europeans. It was expected that this would increase European support for U.S. foreign policy. The Europeans, of course, were enthusiastic about Obama, as the Noble Peace Prize showed. But while Obama believed that his willingness to listen to the Europeans meant they would be forthcoming with help, the Europeans believed that Obama would understand them better and not ask for help.

The relationship was no better under Obama than under Bush. It wasn’t personality or ideology that mattered. It was simply that Germany, as the prime example, had different interests than the United States. This was compounded by the differing views and approaches to the global financial crisis. Whereas the Americans were still interested in Afghanistan, the Europeans considered Afghanistan a much lower priority than the financial crisis. Thus, U.S.-European relations remained frozen.

Then Obama made his speech to the Islamic world in Cairo, where his supporters heard him trying to make amends for Bush’s actions and where many Muslims heard an unwillingness to break with Israel or end the wars. His supporters heard conciliation, the Islamic world heard inflexibility.

The European response to Obama the president as opposed to Obama the candidate running against George Bush slowly reverberated among his supporters. Not only had he failed to end the wars, he doubled down and surged forces into Afghanistan. And the continued hostility toward the United States from the Islamic world reverberated among those on the Democratic left who were concerned with such matters. Add to that the failure to close Guantanamo and a range of other issues concerning the war on terror and support for Obama crumbled.

A Domestic Policy Focus

His primary victory, health-care reform, was the foundation of an edifice that was never built. Indeed, the reform bill is caught in the courts, and its future is as uncertain as it was when the bill was caught in Congress. The Republicans, as expected, agree on nothing other than Obama’s defeat. The Democrats will support him; the question is how enthusiastic that support will be.

Obama’s support now stands at 41 percent. The failure point for a president’s second term lurks around 35 percent. It is hard to come back from there. Obama is not there yet. The loss of another six points would come from his Democratic base (which is why 35 is the failure point; when you lose a chunk of your own base, you are in deep trouble). At this point, however, the president is far less interested in foreign policy than he is in holding his base together and retaking the middle. He did not win by a large enough margin to be able to lose any of his core constituencies. He may hope that his Republican challenger will alienate the center, but he can’t count on that. He has to capture his center and hold his left.

That means he must first focus on domestic policy. That is where the public is focused. Even the Afghan war and the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq are not touching nerves in the center. His problem is twofold. First, it is not clear that he can get anything past Congress. He can then argue that this is Congress’ fault, but the Republicans can run against Congress as well. Second, it is not clear what he would propose. The Republican right can’t be redeemed, but what can Obama propose that will please the Democratic core and hold the center? The Democratic core wants taxes. The center doesn’t oppose taxes (it is merely uneasy about them), but it is extremely sensitive about having the taxes eaten up by new spending — something the Democratic left supports. Obama is trapped between two groups he must have that view the world differently enough that bridging the gap is impossible.

The founders gave the United States a government that, no matter how large it gets, can’t act on domestic policy without a powerful consensus. Today there is none, and therefore there can’t be action. Foreign policy isn’t currently resonating with the American public, so any daring initiatives in that arena will likely fail to achieve the desired domestic political end. Obama has to hold together a coalition that is inherently fragmented by many different understandings of what his presidency is about. This coalition has weakened substantially. Obama’s attention must be on holding it together. He cannot resurrect the foreign policy part of it at this point. He must bet on the fact that the coalition has nowhere else to go. What he must focus on is domestic policy crafted to hold his base and center together long enough to win the election.

The world, therefore, is facing at least 14 months with the United States being at best reactive and at worst non-responsive to events. Obama has never been a foreign policy president; events and proclivity (I suspect) have always drawn him to domestic matters. But between now and the election, the political configuration of the United States and the dynamics of his presidency will force him away from foreign policy.

This at a time when the Persian Gulf is coming to terms with the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq and the power of Iran, when Palestinians and Israelis are facing another crisis over U.N. recognition, when the future of Europe is unknown, when North Africa is unstable and Syria is in crisis and when U.S. forces continue to fight in Afghanistan. All of this creates opportunities for countries to build realities that may not be in the best interests of the United States in the long run. There is a period of at least 14 months for regional powers to act with confidence without being too concerned about the United States.

The point of this analysis is to try to show the dynamics that have led the United States to this position, and to sketch the international landscape in broad strokes. The U.S. president will not be deeply engaged in the world for more than a year. Thus, he will have to cope with events pressed on him. He may undertake initiatives, such as trying to revive the Middle East peace process, but such moves would have large political components that would make it difficult to cope with realities on the ground. The rest of the world knows this, of course. The question is whether and how they take advantage of it.

Obama’s Dilemma: U.S. Foreign Policy and Electoral Realities is republished with permission of STRATFOR.