The Long View 2007-01-21: I've Had a Really Bad Weekend
I did not have a bad weekend, but John J. Reilly was rather disappointed in the Republican convention in 2007.
JJR had some substantial disagreements with the domestic policy of President George W. Bush, leading to this cri de coeur:
What a fraud the Republican Revolution was. It was not Burkean, it was not populist, it was not libertarian; it certainly wasn't Evangelical or Catholic. More and more it looks like a pro-business, anti-market scam that co-opted popular disgust with the decrepit and incoherent Democratic Party. The Republican Party in power, starting with the Reagan Administration (don't get me started on the S&L scandal again) has been marked by indifference to the ordinary principles of public administration.
….
If it were not for the necessity to prosecute the Terror War, I would just give up on the Bush Administration.
Would that he had. It is fascinating to return to how we got into the Iraq war after 9/11, and then to see how once it was all laid bare, criticism was really only possible in partisan terms.
Also, Peak Oil was false. Maybe the best you could say is that it is true in some ultimate, heat death of the universe sense.
Strictly speaking, I think we have to chalk up John’s endorsement of this prediction by Mark Steyn as false:
To put it briefly: Mark Steyn said that every major political party in the West will be pro-natalist by 2015. He is almost certainly right: look here.
That being said, it hasn’t been for lack of trying. The rise of populist parties in the West has gone along with pro-natalist sentiment, and even policies. What prevents this from being true is that the establishment parties have shown considerable power to fight back.
I've Had a Really Bad Weekend
What a fraud the Republican Revolution was. It was not Burkean, it was not populist, it was not libertarian; it certainly wasn't Evangelical or Catholic. More and more it looks like a pro-business, anti-market scam that co-opted popular disgust with the decrepit and incoherent Democratic Party. The Republican Party in power, starting with the Reagan Administration (don't get me started on the S&L scandal again) has been marked by indifference to the ordinary principles of public administration. The saddest thing is that these people think the country still owes them a living. As Mark Steyn put it to his confessor, Hugh Hewitt:
You know, I think there’s a big load of wishful thinking going on amongst the Republican leadership that in a sense, the pendulum will swing back in 2008, and things will go their way. I don’t think so. I think in my own state, for example, which was one of those red states with bluish inclinations, and transformed wholly blue, I think Senator Sununu would certainly be swept away if 2008 was like 2006. And they’re not going to hold those kind of seats with this kind of complacent establishment think that is represented by [the recent] RNC gathering...
That's just his assessment of the party in general. When he gets to the Bush Administration in particular, he becomes harsh:
I was very struck by a comment Michelle Malkin made. She’s just back from Iraq, and she said...the Bush administration is Lucy, and those of us who support it are looking like Charlie Brown, that basically, you go out, you spend your whole time…I’ve been in discussions on radio shows and what not, where you’re defending this thing, defending it, you’re whacking down in column after column these guys who are claiming that it’s treason and a police state, and the Bush-Hitler, and you defend, defend, defend, defend, and then it turns out, you know, that they quietly cave, or as you say, give that impression, and you’re left feeling what the hell did I write those last fifteen columns for?
With this thought in mind, we turn to media reports anticipating a key element of this week's State of the Union Address:
President Bush intends to use his State of the Union address Tuesday to tackle the rising cost of health care with a one-two punch: tax breaks to help low-income people buy health insurance and tax increases for some workers whose health plans cost significantly more than the national average...The basic concept is that employer-provided health insurance, now treated as a fringe benefit exempt from taxation, would no longer be entirely tax-free. Workers could be taxed if their coverage exceeded limits set by the government. But the government would also offer a new tax deduction for people buying health insurance on their own.
Here we see the fiscal brilliance of President Bush's Social Security privatization program, combined with the political sensitivity of his nomination of Harriet Meyers to the Supreme Court: an income-tax deduction-incentive for people who don't pay much income tax that will be paid for by degrading the coverage of the minority of the population with really adequate coverage.
If it were not for the necessity to prosecute the Terror War, I would just give up on the Bush Administration. And in that connection, let me take issue with Hugh Hewitt's parting remark to Mark Steyn:
HH: And so…well, Mark Steyn, always a pleasure in these despairing days. Luckily, there’s nothing that a victory won’t turn around in a hurry, and maybe David Petraeus will go get it.
Not really. The Democrats got serious about bringing down Richard Nixon only after he had negotiated a settlement in Vietnam that offered some hope of keeping the South independent. Victory is precisely what would be unforgivable; or at any rate, victory would be intolerable.
* * *
Some hoaxes never have the opportunity to flower, but wither in the bud. It looks as if Peak Oil is about to join their number:
Fresh data from the International Energy Agency show oil consumption in the 30 member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development fell 0.6% in 2006. Though the decline appears small, it marks the first annual drop in more than 20 years among the OECD countries...To be sure, global oil demand grew 0.9% in 2006, owing to steady growth in China and the Middle East. But that was down from growth of 3.9% in 2004 and 1.5% in 2005.
Americans should remember that low oil prices are not an unalloyed good for the United States, which remains a major oil producer. Be that as it may, neither the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela nor the Islam Republic in Iran will survive this trend.
* * *
But while the Republican Party is merely doomed and unworthy, the Democratic Party shows every sign of turning into a Vampire's Ball held on the beach because the organizers have convinced themselves the sun will never rise again. We see this especially in their idea of outreach:
Eager to avoid a resumption of the culture wars, the new Democratic leaders are trying to tiptoe around the abortion issue by promoting legislation to encourage birth control and assist women who decide to proceed with unwanted pregnancies...
"You're going to see a change in the tone of the debate, and a move toward more solutions, rather than the divisiveness," said Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, a leading abortion rights group that signed on early to the prevention agenda. "What we're going to see in this Congress is some problem-solving."
Third Way, a moderate Democratic policy group, coined the term "abortion grays" to define the nearly two-thirds of voters who hold mixed views on the subject. Rachel Laser, Third Way's abortion expert, has counseled numerous Democratic candidates and lawmakers on prevention rhetoric. In a poll the group commissioned last summer, 69 percent of voters said they supported the goal of reducing the number of abortions "while still preserving the basic right to have one."
Aside from the underlying insincerity of this Third Way (my Lord, that term is jinxed!), there are three reasons this effort will miscarry:
(1) It conflates, yet again, the notion of "unplanned child" with "unwanted child." You may argue about what God thinks about this equation, but Darwin says "no."
(2) It tries to avoid the fact that Roe and the related cases are fatal to legitimate jurisprudence. By legitimate jurisprudence, I mean jurisprudence that is acceptable to the political system in the long run. Roe would have to be overturned, even if it were about double-parking.
(3) This Third Way is kairotically inapposite. It opposes the flow of the hour, which is the reversal of the anti-natalist population policy that was enacted through the courts in the 1960s and '70s. Official promotion of contraception is not the alternative to abortion; they are complements.
A change in kairos is always somewhat mysterious. When it occurs, the cultural defaults change, and those people who think they are controlling the change (and there always are some) are in fact the most helplessly under its influence.
To put it briefly: Mark Steyn said that every major political party in the West will be pro-natalist by 2015. He is almost certainly right: look here.
* * *
Presidential hopeful John Edwards recently chose to announce his candidacy in New Orleans, a city of social dysfunction and lethal political incompetence. Frankly, after the reelection of Mayor Nagin, the city became an argument against democracy.
According to The New York Times, the New Orleans of [the] Future May Stay Half Its Old Size. It would be better if it were 0% of its old size.
* * *
The cruelty of Spengler exceeds anything I say here, as we see in his latest column at Asia Times, Jimmy Carter's heart of dorkiness:
Where the Palestinians are concerned, Carter keens the same trope. It is repulsive to think that a people of several millions, honeycombed with representatives of international organizations, the virtual stepchild of the United Nations, appears doomed to reduce its national fever by letting blood. The 700,000 refugees of 1948, hothoused by the UN relief agencies, prevented from emigrating by other Arab regimes, have turned into a people, but a test-tube nation incapable of independent national life: four destitute millions of third-generation refugees in the small and barren territories of Gaza, Judea and Samaria, which cannot support a fraction of that number...Jimmy Carter knows better than that: the Palestinians are not in the position of southern American blacks, but rather of southern American whites, the exemplar of a self-exterminating people in the modern period. That is why Carter identifies with them. Apart from modern Palestine, there are very few cases in modern history in which a militant population showed its willingness to fight to the death. The US south sacrificed two-fifths of its military-age men during the Civil War of 1861-65...Think of Frodo Baggins in Lord of the Rings explaining to Samwise why he cannot give up hope for Gollum's redemption from the curse of Sauron's ring, because that would weaken Frodo's hope for his own redemption. This form of obsessive self-pity produces the unctuous forms of expression that make it so painful to listen to a Jimmy Carter or a Bill Clinton talk about political morality...
Let us never forget that Woodrow Wilson was a southerner.
That explains it all.
Copyright © 2007 by John J. Reilly
Support the Long View re-posting project by downloading Brave browser. With Both Hands is a verified Brave publisher, you can leave me a tip too!
Comments ()