Ironies in Jackson puff piece

"I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man." So said Dr. King on the day before he was murdered in 1968. The quote appears in a photo caption with today's long, largely uncritical piece on Jesse Jackson in the Rocky. Jackson is seen next to King in that picture. M. E. Sprengelmeyer does a pretty good job of recapping Jackson's epic gaffe from this June when his raging jealousy and resentment of Barack Obama burst out in a comment (unknowingly recorded) about wanting to "cut his nuts off." But the article would be better journalism had it given us those four exact words, instead of the delicate euphemism the writer substituted.

Sprengelmeyer also fails to acknowledge the dark side of Jackson's 40-year career as a race-guilt hustler, with all the vast personal enrichment, prestige, and sexual license which are now uncomfortably contrasted with Obama's moral uplift speeches -- and which face extinction if America elects a black President.

That's the real source of Jesse Jackson's hot-mic indiscretion. Unlike MLK, he's worried about plenty, and he fears one man very much. Hence the castration fantasy. CNN's question to viewers a few weeks ago, quoted by Sprengelmeyer, "Has Jesse Jackson become irrelevant?", is in process of coming true with Obama's nomination, and will take hold with cold finality on Nov. 5 if Obama wins.

Another irony in this fawning three-page spread on Jesse the Great cropped up in the sidebar on lessons he allegedly learned from patching up a welfare-reform dispute with Bill Clinton at DNC 1996: "Set aside differences while the television cameras are on, deal with internal squabbles later." Bet he was wishing he'd taken his own advice on the Fox set, after the firestorm broke earlier this summer.

Ford vs. Carter again?

Our electoral situation feels like the 1970’s again. McCain is Gerald Ford, Obama is Jimmy Carter with a college kid cool factor. His speech at Invesco will have a JFK-like media aura about it, and even many Republicans, especially in the party hierarchy, will join in the swooning. Conservatives are in the wilderness for the time being, as Churchill, Thatcher, Reagan and every other political great often was.

Don’t give money to the Republican Party. Give it to your church and do what you can to help revitalize Christian faith in the U.S., beginning at home if necessary.

Conservative resurgence will not come without spiritual resurgence; conservatism and the national strength and identity it brings are fundamentally spiritual.

When we find faith again, we will find another Reagan. Not much else to talk about between now and November.

Friendship and the candidates

My sympathies to Gloria Neal of Politics West. She's already tired of John McCain's corny phrase "my friends," and there are still 80 days until the election. True enough, as she wrote, those words aren't the deepest, but they convey a lot more genuineness than Obama's glib and empty slogans -- "hope and change" -- "we are the people we've been waiting for" -- and so on through the whole pop-psych repertoire. What I saw in the two candidates' parallel interviews as conducted Saturday night by Rick Warren was a glaring contrast in leadership styles. McCain came over as crisp, direct, commanding, and real. Obama was all syrup and blather and sophistication. He could lead a philosophy seminar, but heaven help us with that fuzzy-minded approach in the White House. To lead our nation in this dangerous world, I'll take Mac any day.

As for friendship, based on what we witnessed in the Saddleback Civil Forum with Warren, which man could you best rely on and trust as a friend, the young opportunist or the old warrior?

With no pretense to objectivity, I'll again say McCain. Duty, honor, loyalty, courage, and unselfishness define the man. He's the one I would want to have my back when things get tough. Ask his friend Everett Alvarez, for whose benefit the weary POW, broken in body but not in spirit, refused early release from the Hanoi Hilton, as we heard at Saturday's forum.

Obama, in contrast -- as columnist David Brooks has observed on the evidence of the Chicagoan's own books -- has always been a sojourner, in but not of whatever setting he happens to be passing through. My hunch is that in the privacy of their hearts, this whole thing is about him and Michelle, not about America the Good and certainly not about you and me, mere audience members that we are.

Loyal and unselfish? Ask Barack's former friend Jeremiah Wright; or for that matter, his own "typical white person" grandmother.

So groan if you want, Gloria. My guy may be unhip. Your guy may have a more magnetic stage presence and a far bigger Facebook friends list. But the people have a pretty good nose for phonies, and I predict that when the "Can I be your friend?" verdict is settled in November, Mac will prove to have the most friends out there in voterland.

Why did the Dems go Euro?

The elitists who dominate the Democratic Party have embraced the New Europe and its world view. The fawning reception of Barack Obama in Europe illustrated this. They see him as the anti-Bush, their best bet ever to lash “rambunctious” America to the collectivist chariot of Europe’s “Brave New World”. [So writes Bill Moloney in his overview of liberalism's trans-Atlantic convergence and its significance for Election 2008. Here's the piece in full. - Editor]

The Europeanization of the Democratic Party

In the 19th century Americans took very seriously Washington’s warning against “entangling alliances” which might interfere with the country’s unfolding “Manifest Destiny” of dynamic growth and expansion. A corollary to this belief was that the “Great American Democracy” was a unique-perhaps even divinely inspired-form of political organization vastly superior to the Old World’s tired regimes of aristocratic privilege and downtrodden masses.

In the 20th century America entered upon the world stage powerfully and decisively coming to the aid of embattled European democracies and leading them to victory in two World Wars and the Cold War. Launching these extraordinary interventions were three memorable Democratic presidents- Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman.

Though American actions in the two centuries were starkly different- isolationism in the 19th, and intervention in the 20th-one compelling theme was constant: American Exceptionalism- a general notion that foreigners were a source of problems and Americans were a source of solutions. This attitude was often naïve, and jingoistic, but it provided a sturdy foundation for American patriotism through most of our history.

This enduring national consensus, however, collapsed during the “perfect storm” of the 1960s when a toxic brew of social, military and political convulsions tore gaping holes in the fabric of our national life-self-inflicted wounds that remain unhealed to this day.

Out of this turmoil there emerged a powerful body of left wing opinion and activism that turned the old national consensus upside down. Rejecting Henry Clay’s “my country-right or wrong”, the left substituted “my country-always wrong”. More extreme elements declared their country to be the most oppressive society in history- racist at home and imperialist abroad-while discovering sublime virtues in genocidal tyrants from Mao Tse-Tung to Pol Pot.

While this raging ideological virus infected in varying degree a wide range of American institutions-e.g. media, academia- its principal victim was the national Democratic party.

In less than a decade the party that boldly sponsored the Berlin airlift, the Marshall Plan, and the NATO alliance went from the confident activism of the hawkish John Kennedy-“pay any price, bear any burden to assure the success of liberty”- to the “Blame America First” defeatism of George McGovern-who aptly themed his 1972 acceptance speech as “Come Home, America”.

Betraying allies in Viet Nam, ignoring genocide in Cambodia, accepting communist aggression from Angola to Afghanistan, and bowing to humiliation in Iran, America’s defense of liberty abroad was reduced to Carter’s pathetic gesture of boycotting the Moscow Olympics.

The sorry Democratic mismanagement of both economic and foreign policy led to a series of landslide Republican Presidential victories and finally a decade of GOP Congressional dominance. Yet, amazingly none of these severe reality checks halted the Democrats steady leftward drift.

To understand this hostile take-over of the Democratic Party it must be seen in the context of what happened to all “parties of the left” in Europe in the second half of the 20th century. Traumatized by the shocks and dislocations of World Wars and Cold War the entire European political spectrum moved decisively leftward. While the Socialist parties led this progression, the parties of the Center and Right- shaken by their own crises of confidence- succumbed as well. European Capitalism and Nationalism was decisively weakened and the door opened to a continent-wide shift to collectivism and the trans-nationalism represented by the United Nations, and the European Union.

Today the elitists who dominate the Democratic Party have embraced the “New Europe” and its world view. On virtually every issue- Iraq, taxes, abortion, global warming, energy, hostility to religion, suspicion of Israel, regulation, U.N. worship etc. etc.-difference are only of degree not kind.

The fawning reception of Barack Obama in Europe illustrated this perverse harmony. Clearly Obama’s view of the future fits with Europe’s. They see him as the anti-Bush, their best bet ever to lash “rambunctious” America to the collectivist chariot of Europe’s “Brave New World”.

While heir to Western Civilization, America has always stood apart in the degree of its faith, patriotism, individualism, opportunity, and vitality. Most basically the Presidential election will decide whether this American Exceptionalism will endure or not. The Democratic Party has already given its answer. In November, ordinary Americans will give theirs.

Obama, Hobbes & that 3am call

Events of the past week -- Russia invading Georgia, the repeated failure of the diplomatic efforts to stop Iran's nuclear program, and the impending departure of Pakistan's Musharraf -- should reinforce for any sensible voter just how dangerous the world remains. While the United States has been focused on Iraq, Afghanistan and the wider war on terrorism, other nations have consolidated power and made substantial moves against our interests. And, while the world has focused on the idealism of diplomacy to curb the expansionist goals of rogue regimes, Thomas Hobbes has been working overtime: proving that the international system still does resemble the "state of nature", and that life is consequently "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short". For all those enamored with Barack Obama, this should also constitute a reality check, for this is no time for a neophyte as president. The geopolitical challenges that will face the next president are complex, highly volatile and full of potential peril. Take Russia, for example. For the past decade, Vladimir Putin has acted to consolidate authoritarian power in the Kremlin by crushing dissent and vacating the system of free elections. He has effectively made himself "leader for life" and has turned Russia from an emerging democracy into a dictatorship on a model that the Soviets would be justly proud of. At the same time, Russia sits on the second largest oil reserves in the world, is awash with wealth and has much of the West reliant on its energy exports. Its an envious position to be in if you are interested in empire-building.

And make no mistake, Putin is interested in rebuilding Russia into a global power. Though its export may no longer be socialism, Russia has designs on bringing the former Soviet republics back into the fold, while actively working to defeat American power. It is, on a lesser scale, the return of a Cold War-style conflict: Russia working to support many of the enemies of America, Western Europe and Israel, while consolidating power at home -- which in Putin's mind includes the former Soviet republics. The invasion of Georgia fits perfectly into this picture.

Similarly, the Iranian nuclear program represents a critical threat to world security and will be a central test to the next administration. Our record on Iran during the Bush presidency has been poor: because of the difficulties in Iraq, we have been unable to credibly deter Iran with the threat of force. Because of this, we have been forced to rely on a purely diplomatic approach, led by the Europeans. While this has cheered the left in the U.S. and fits perfectly with the prevailing pacifist approach in Europe, it has met with absolutely no success. While we talk, Iran has played for time, continuing to enrich weapons-grade uranium while supposedly "seriously considering" the myriad offers of economic and political incentives. It has thus far been a disaster: only the most idealistic among us could possibly believe that Iran is truly interested in an agreement that will result in suspending their nuclear weapons program.

Unfortunately for the security of the United States, one of those idealists is Barack Obama. Obama has consistently supported the European-led negotiations, and has famously offered to meet personally with the Iranian regime "unconditionally" should he become president. Obama, like many on the left, believes fundamentally that Iran wants to join the community of nations, and thus is interested in a deal that would bring them deeper into the international system. Such a view is a serious misreading of history, and shows a mius-understanding of the goals of the Iranian regime. Iran is a revolutionary state that seeks not accommodation with the west but rather its destruction. Whatever the interests of the moderates who live in Iran, the leadership wants to export Islam to the rest of the world. It is their raison d'etre. The creation of a nuclear weapon and the means to deliver it will make that goal that much easier -- holding the Mideast hostage and presenting a direct threat to the existence of Israel. This is the absolute objective of the Iranian state -- and it isn't negotiable.

How, then, do you effectively deal with regimes like Russia and Iran? You take a page out of the Hobbesian view of the world and counter aggression with the credible threat of force. That means the willingness to use force if and when necessary -- as a means of making more effective the process of diplomacy. Alexander George coined the phrase "coercive diplomacy" almost a generation ago -- it is hardly a new concept. But it takes leadership with the courage to see the world realistically, and to admit that evil does exist in this world. Force in the defense of our security and our values is sometimes necessary when faced with an enemy that actively seeks our destruction. It does no good to unilaterally take force off the table as Obama has offered to do. It makes the cherished process of diplomacy completely ineffective.

It is time for the U.S. to collectively dust off its copy of Hobbes' Leviathan and get serious about both the nature of the threats facing us, and the qualities we need in the next leader of the free world. The challenges that we face are multi-faceted and complex; its no time for an untested idealist with zero foreign policy experience and a very poor understanding of the world to be president of the United States