Be that as it may, the truly interesting part is the expressed definition of what qualifies as a "moderate Muslim." Alchemist expressed what I suspect a lot of people on that side of things believe, without fully articulating it even in their own minds: For them a "moderate Muslim" is simply anyone who isn't trying, either directly or indirectly, to kill them.

This truly does reflect having two standards, however. In normal discourse, this isn't generally the standard for moderation: David Duke isn't considered moderate just because he himself never engaged in a lynching and had learned how to express himself in such a way that it's virtually impossible to find a statement where he openly and clearly encourages violence or terror. Yet people can get in trouble with the widely-respected SPLC for example,simply sharing a stage with him in a debate. We understand he's not "moderate" in spite of the suit and tie, and the carefully couched statements.

The fringe of the Mormon faith that still embraces polygamy is not considered "moderate," despite the fact that they keep to themselves and aren't trying to kill anyone. The Westboro "Baptist Church" mobs are not considered moderate, again despite the fact that all they do is use their right to freedom of speech and do not try to kill anyone, directly or indirectly.

I have the same standards when it comes to what I consider moderate, and no, it isn't "appear to agree with [me] almost completely," shocking though that might seem. But it is a bit higher than the sort of people who believe that people on "their side" who are unrepentant terrorists should be considered "mainstream -- educator[s] with distinguished professor status," without altering their views in the slightest, and that any attempt to notice that is invidious. Or that someone can attend a Church for twenty years, quote extremist passages uttered by its pastor in his own book, and we're still supposed to not only believe that he was completely unaware of said Pastor's extreme views, but that the pastor himself was unfairly attacked and mischaracterized. I don't have to agree with someone almost completely to consider them a moderate - I disagree with Nat Hentoff, for example, on quite a lot of things, but respect him greatly (though apparently he is also a bigot now).

I don't know about you all, but it takes me a week or two at most of attending a Church before I have a clear idea what the Pastor or Priest's perspective is (when I was on mid-tour leave from Iraq, my mother was living in the DC area - the Maryland Suburbs - so I spent it with her there. She was going to a small local Episcopal Church at the time, and I went with her to service and "Sunday School." After the first Sunday, I had a fairly good idea where the Priest was coming from, after the 2nd, I knew for sure). If I found myself in, for example, a Westboroesque Church (extremist "conservative"), my skin would crawl and I doubt I'd make it through a single service. I certainly wouldn't sit their docilely for twenty years.

Imam Rauf is of the same sort, but quite a high standard of "evidence" is expected before the Enlightened will allow us to know this. Until then, enforced ignorance is the word of the day. The Atlantic can run a hyperventilating piece on how the Koch Brothers are funding groups, implying it's a Bad Thing - because the Koch Brothers have views that The Atlantic wants its readers to oppose. But inquire into the sorts of things Imam Rauf has supported, and it's off-limits, despicable even. I don't know about you, but I haven't ever accidentally stumbled uncontrollably into financing a flotilla that included unrepentant members of terrorist groups. The Imam has. Alchemist pooh-poohed this (yes, Alchemist - those members weren't in Turkey anymore when they were aboard the ships. You got me there. Good on you). (Btw, Turkey used to have close relations with Israel. Now it. . .does not. Should we draw any conclusions from that regarding why their attitude towards unrepentant domestic terror groups might have changed? Apparently not).

You know, if there's one thing I've learnt from being in the Army, it's never ignore a pooh-pooh. I knew a Major, who got pooh-poohed, made the mistake of ignoring the pooh-pooh. He pooh-poohed it! Fatal error! 'Cos it turned out all along that the soldier who pooh-poohed him had been pooh-poohing a lot of other officers who pooh-poohed their pooh-poohs. In the end, we had to disband the regiment. Morale totally destroyed... by pooh-pooh! (End Blackadder quote)

Enforced ignorance is the order of the day from our governing class/Progressives, even while they decry the ignorance of a majority of the American people. They will not allow proper conclusions to be drawn from, for example, the Fort Hood Shooting. Instead the official report, released this week, speaks of generic "workplace violence," and without a hint of irony the need to hire "additional health care providers, particularly in the mental health field." The "solutions" being imposed should be ones to make Armed Liberal(s) cringe: Fort Riley has prohibited soldiers who have firearm-carrying permits from carrying firearms for protection off-base and authorized unit commanders to set arbitrary limits on the caliber of firearms and ammunition their troops may privately own. The DoD is working on a regulation that would extend much of this Army-wide: all in response to Maj. Hasan bringing firearms onto the base in violation of base regulations, in a situation where if any of the other soldiers there had been armed, many lives might have been saved.

No, the above has nothing to do with the Cordoba Initiative or Imam Rauf. Or American Muslims. But it has everything to do with the enforced ignorance that is part-and-parcel of Progressive Consistency, of much wider significance than the building of any one Mosque. Alchemist says that when this or that happens, he'll oppose it. But do the Progressives really? In the same Christopher Hitchens article, Hitchens mentions Cab Drivers in America refusing to pick up passengers, and people being accosted on the streets and told not to come any closer to a Mosque. In other circumstances, such as, for example, cab drivers refusing Muslim passengers or airlines treating Muslim Imams differently, it's not only widely discussed national news but a Civil Rights Case. Again: Consistency.

Lets look at another underlying attitude here, which is also almost always applied with the same consistency: Associationism. Many improperly apply it in these contexts, but only these contexts. But note it is routine on the Progressive side of things to draw conclusions based not only on the sort of groups and affiliations someone chooses, but even if they happen to appear together in the same venue briefly it can be insinuated they support everything someone else has ever said and done.

Guilt-by-association would be to assert that, for example, because Miss USA Rima Fakih has relatives in the Middle East who are members of extremist organizations, she is tied to extremism. Asserting this about her would be invidious and improper, and of course I did no such thing. She might not count as an example, however, because it turns out she is one of those Muslims who "agree with me almost completely." Perhaps the fine people who stand up for civil discourse will call her Islamophobic.

But it is not improper to point out groups one voluntarily joins in and affiliates with and draw conclusions that it is because of a commonality of views. People do not affiliate randomly, like seeks like. I'm reminded here of a remark made by one of my favorite extremists, made in a completely different context but with wider validity:

(I love this argument that the candidate's past and present colleagues, mentors and employers are a deeply private matter, like whether the One wipes his ass with his left hand or his right, which must not contaminate our consideration of the soaring rhetorical exhalations his producers write for him.)

He has made another observation, also useful here:

Last week I was at a party, at a warehouse space in one of the crackhead districts of SF, at which the subject of crackheads came up. The woman across the table, a member of my social class, expressed great sympathy for this class. I asked her if she had ever been victimized by such. She said: "two days ago, someone smashed a window in my car and stole my iPhone."

And she perceived this crime through a pure Jean Valjean lens, with no sense at all that she had been *personally* victimized - much less, victimized by the government. Or a judge. Or an ideology. Or whatever. Rather, she considered it entirely normal and even laudable for a sophisticated, modern person to live in a city in which an iPhone cannot be left visible on a car seat, and she considered herself an idiot who had, for her $500 or whatever, purchased a valuable lesson about modern urban living. (She literally expressed the idea that an impoverished person had sold her iPhone to buy food. To be fair, she was in her early '20s.)

Who would think this way? Well, perhaps if you were a Frenchman in 1944, and your property was looted and vandalized, by American soldiers on their way to kick hell out of the Nazis, you might think this way. The State Department thought this way about the killing of Cleo Noel. This is the way you think about your own clients and the excesses and abuses they commit. Certainly, if this woman's car had been vandalized by cops, tea partiers, etc, she would have been enraged for life. We hate our enemies and not our allies - it is only natural.

Note that by "clients" he meant, in essence, "clientela," an analogy that is a bit strained perhaps but is akin to my assertions regarding Consistency, as reflected in the last sentence of that quote: consistently having two standards, one for themselves and their mascots, and another for their opponents and targets.

I think the reference to Tea Partiers is apt here. The same people who are sanguine about the Cordoba Initiative and caution against intemperance, rushing to conclusions without a forensic-level of CSI-type evidence, and cautioning against painting with a broad brush and guilt-by-association routinely and casually do all these things in their characterizations and portrayals of Tea Party members. Indeed, they don't have to "try to kill us or fund people trying to kill us" in order to be portrayed as extremist kooks, and of course they aren't seen by the governing class/Progressives as "moderate."

So we end where we started: the first, banal part of the Alchemist quote from which I built this post, using it as an example of the type, illustrates how the same people who are so full of concern that Imam Rauf's views or the like might be mischaracterized feel free, themselves, to completely mischaracterize the views of those they disagree with. As I said: also revealing, also an example of Consistency at work, but a commonplace one.

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On this one I actually agree with the majority of the country, but "to fence, or not to fence" is not actually the point here. I'm sure there are issues where I'll disagree with the majority of the electorate, and agree with the governing class (though prolly not many issues), and several where I'll think both are wrong. But still I think that, even where I think the majority is wrong, putting in everyone's face the fact that the disconnect between the governed and the governing class has become so vast is an absolute precondition to addressing a lot of the problems we have. I don't think the majority is always right, but I do think it will be...informative...for the majority to learn so decisively how often their leaders think they're wrong. Then we can all decide through democratic vote which group is really the most fsk'd up. Lustration to follow! épuration légale!

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Until the recent "troubles" it wasn't just Islamic jurisprudence that properly understood what the term Jihad meant; it was universally understood throughout not just Islam but all cultures that had contact with Islam to mean warfare, specifically directed at non-Muslims or those declared heretics and thus deemed to be un-Islamic.

In recent times Muslim spokesmen working in conjunction with the usual suspects of PoMo intellectuals/pseudo-scholars and progressives have attempted to re-define the term. But one needs only to pick up any book from the previous era that even tangentially touches on the subject to see the term used in its proper historic meaning. As a student of ByzantinoRoman history I know this full well. Thus Ibrahim is actually wrong when he says, almost reflecting the thinking of Edward Said, that his "dual Middle-East/Western background gives me the advantage to understand both the Islamicate and American mindsets equally." Previous generations of Westerners also understood the term Jihad properly. The ethnocentric projection Ibrahim rightly condemns is actually a post-modern and multiculturalist phenomenon, and thus a rather recent innovation. This might seem like a minor quibble, but it's critical to our understanding of the problems we face.

It would be more proper to say that the word "Crusade" has transformed from its original meaning than it is to say "Jihad" has. After all, we have such things as "crusades for peace" and "The Billy Graham Crusade," neither of which involve mobilizing armies to recover¹ lands from Islam by military means. Jihad has never ceased to mean what it means, however, up through the mobilization of Arabs to fight in Afghanistan against the Soviets and down through the present, though we are asked to believe otherwise. But we are told we cannot use the word "Crusade" because it is inflamatory, while also being instructed to re-conceive our understanding of calls for Jihad. This is a form of mental manipulation inflicted upon us not by our enemies, but by ourselves - or at any rate one wing of our own civilization.

And of course many young people, knowing little, having come of age in this era of degenerate pseudo-scholarship, educated by the instructors they have been educated, sincerely believe Jihad does not mean what it means. This is one means of intellectually disarming us, and leading people into accepting the received wisdom of progressivism on the sources and causes of this conflict, rather than connecting it to history. It helps open them to the conclusions of a Said or a Fisk or even their slightly-less-radical imitators: That we are to blame.

Redfining terms by those with an ideological axe to grind is almost invariably aimed at controling the thinking of others.

¹Yes, recover: Crusades, aweful as many Crusaders behaved, were launched as counter-attacks. To call any but the 4th agqressive is akin to calling D-Day agressive. But, in this degenerate age, that history, however bad it was even told "straight," has been corrupted for ideological ends.

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So, of course "Amnesty" International suspended her from her job in the gender-affairs unit. Sahgal writes:

"A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when a great organisation must ask: if it lies to itself, can it demand the truth of others?

....I have always opposed the illegal detention and torture of Muslim men at Guantanamo Bay and during the so-called War on Terror. I have been horrified and appalled by the treatment of people like Moazzam Begg and I have personally told him so. I have vocally opposed attempts by governments to justify 'torture lite'.

The issue is not about Moazzam Begg's freedom of opinion, nor about his right to propound his views: he already exercises these rights fully as he should. The issue is a fundamental one about the importance of the human rights movement maintaining an objective distance from groups and ideas that are committed to systematic discrimination and fundamentally undermine the universality of human rights. I have raised this issue because of my firm belief in human rights for all.

I sent two memos to my management asking a series of questions about what considerations were given to the nature of the relationship with Moazzam Begg and his organisation, Cageprisoners. I have received no answer to my questions. There has been a history of warnings within Amnesty that it is inadvisable to partner with Begg. Amnesty has created the impression that Begg is not only a victim of human rights violations but a defender of human rights.... I have been a human rights campaigner for over three decades, defending the rights of women and ethnic minorities, defending religious freedom and the rights of victims of torture, and campaigning against illegal detention and state repression. I have raised the issue of the association of Amnesty International with groups such as Begg's consistently within the organisation. I have now been suspended for trying to do my job and staying faithful to Amnesty's mission to protect and defend human rights universally and impartially."

Well, of course she has. Amnesty ceased to be a great organization, or to give a damn about human rights, several years ago. Shame you were late to get the memo, Ms. Sahgal. Salman Rushdie gets it, and takes his analysis to the sensible conclusion:

"Amnesty International has done its reputation incalculable damage by allying itself with Moazzam Begg and his group Cageprisoners, and holding them up as human rights advocates. It looks very much as if Amnesty's leadership is suffering from a kind of moral bankruptcy, and has lost the ability to distinguish right from wrong. It has greatly compounded its error by suspending the redoubtable Gita Sahgal for the crime of going public with her concerns. Gita Sahgal is a woman of immense integrity and distinction and I am personally grateful to her for the courageous stands she made at the time of the Khomeini fatwa against The Satanic Verses, as a leading member of the groups Southall Black Sisters and Women Against Fundamentalism. It is people like Gita Sahgal who are the true voices of the human rights movement; Amnesty and Begg have revealed, by their statements and actions, that they deserve our contempt."

Just remember, next time you hear the words "Amnesty International" - this is the organization that fired its gender affairs staffer for criticizing a member of the Taliban over their human rights record.

You just can't make this stuff up about the modern Left's fascist wing. You really can't. London Times article | Gita Saghal's statement | Salman Rushdie statement | Wall St. Journal.

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I. Avoid war by every possible means, in all possible circumstances, but always act as if war might start at any time. Train intensively and be ready for battle at all times -- but do not be eager to fight. The highest purpose of combat readiness is to reduce the probability of having to fight.

America has, critics to the contrary notwithstanding, typically followed this, including in the latest war, where, as many have noted, they "were at war with us, but we were not yet at war with them", and even in the "rush to war" against Iraq that took a decade.

II. Gather intelligence on the enemy and his mentality, and monitor his actions continuously. Efforts to do so by all possible means might not be very productive, but they are seldom wasted.

I shall elide over this a bit for the time being, because it is clearly one area where one might say we fall short of the highest standards. However, I will note that we do better than are given credit for, including in the current conflict where we must be right all the time in our counterterrorism efforts to foil attacks against us, while one intelligence failure on this front can lead to catastrophic results and the pointy finger of blame being directed at poor intelligence, flawed analysis of intelligence we did have, failure to recognize the value of intelligence or what it meant, and the like. But the Byzantines also had such failures: Just ask Nicephoros I or Manuel Komnenos. Nothing human is perfect.

III. Campaign vigorously, both offensively and defensively, but avoid battles, especially large-scale battles, except in very favorable circumstances. Don't think like the Romans, who viewed persuasion as just an adjunct to force. Instead, employ force in the smallest possible doses to help persuade the persuadable and harm those not yet amenable to persuasion.

Again I would say that by and large and for the most part, the invidious Powell Doctrine to the contrary notwithstanding, we do this. Sometimes to excess: Witness the initial attempt at a small footprint in Afghanistan. Arguably that was a good strategy, however, depending upon what ones goals in Afghanistan are. If they are simply to defeat our foes and keep them on the run, than this, in conjunction with the use of native forces as allies and proxies, is enough. If our goal is to build a strong democratic state there, then it is insufficient.

IV. Replace the battle of attrition and occupation of countries with maneuver warfare -- lightning strikes and offensive raids to disrupt enemies, followed by rapid withdrawals. The object is not to destroy your enemies, because they can become tomorrow's allies. A multiplicity of enemies can be less of a threat than just one, so long as they can be persuaded to attack one another.

Iraq is the one recent counter-example to this that people may point to. Afghanistan is becoming a counter-example in part because of the limitations of lightning-strike warfare. This is not to say that such strikes are always a failure, but they are not a panacea either. Note that in Iraq itself, pre-surge, this was the operational method that was preferred: Minimize American presence in the cities and neighborhoods, and conduct strikes from basecamps instead. The Surge meant occupying more areas to produce security.

V. Strive to end wars successfully by recruiting allies to change the balance of power. Diplomacy is even more important during war than peace. Reject, as the Byzantines did, the foolish aphorism that when the guns speak, diplomats fall silent. The most useful allies are those nearest to the enemy, for they know how best to fight his forces.

This is done more quite often. The same people who will on the one hand criticize American "militarism" will often on the other hand condemn our "proxy-wars". I'll note that in Afghanistan we recruited local forces from the outset, and neighboring countries. I'll also note that in my tour in Iraq, I got the chance to work for a couple weeks with a SF Team that was responsible for training the ISOFOR. During that time, Iraqi recruits were subjected to a psychological screening conducted by military psychologists from friendly Arab country bordering Iraq (I'll leave it to the reader to guess which one): So even there, more allies were recruited to help than is generally known.

VI. Subversion is the cheapest path to victory. So cheap, in fact, as compared with the costs and risks of battle, that it must always be attempted, even with the most seemingly irreconcilable enemies. Remember: Even religious fanatics can be bribed, as the Byzantines were some of the first to discover, because zealots can be quite creative in inventing religious justifications for betraying their own cause ("since the ultimate victory of Islam is inevitable anyway ...").

This is done more often than we're given credit for, and indeed when critics of American foreign policy note it, it is to condemn any efforts to subvert or suborn enemies from within. I will note that we largely won the Cold War in Eastern Europe, however, in no small part through the use of such tactics, and that to the extent to which there was a period when Saddam was "friendly" with America, it was during a spell when we were employing this strategem against both Iran and Iraq and the Soviets.

VII. When diplomacy and subversion are not enough and fighting is unavoidable, use methods and tactics that exploit enemy weaknesses, avoid consuming combat forces, and patiently whittle down the enemy's strength. This might require much time. But there is no urgency because as soon as one enemy is no more, another will surely take his place. All is constantly changing as rulers and nations rise and fall. Only the empire is eternal -- if, that is, it does not exhaust itself.

Here also we have invested quite a bit of effort and creativity into just that over the last three or four decades.

But I want to turn the rest of my post on this to what could be called the Dark Side of Byzantine Strategy, an internal conflict that burst into the open in the 11th Century to the ultimate detriment of the Eastern Roman Empire, and again at the dawn of the 13th. Proxy forces can be waged against external enemies, but those engaged in internal political squabbles may consciously or unconsciously tempted tengage in warfare by proxy against their opponents, to humiliate, weaken, and discredit them in the struggle for political dominance.

After the death of Basil II Makedonion, the already existing tensions between Byzantium's "Civil" and its "military" elites flared up, worstening throughout the next five decades. The American counterparts of this are the Blue State "Georgetownist" Transnational Progressives and the Red State "Arlingtonist" nationalists. In Byzantium this conflict included the elimination of opponents from positions of influence even if (ultimately, especially if) they were competent, diverting funding (for example, Constantine IX Monomachus' demobilization of the forces of the Dukate of Armenia, at the time when Turkish raids were starting), sabotaging military campaigns (the most obvious being the withdrawal of half the army at Manzikurt, leaving Romanus III Diogenes to be defeated), and ultimately paying Turkish proxy forces to fight against each other in civil wars during the 1070s, even as the Turks conquered Anatolia.

One hundred years later, the son of a deposed Emperor recruited Crusaders to help place his father (or him) back on the throne, resulting instead in the conquest of the capital by said Crusaders and untold destruction.

Are we at that stage yet? Clearly not. Our current situation resembles the 1040s more than the 1070s, much less 1200s. But all the elements are in place, including a ruling class that is tougher with domestic opponents than with foreign enemies, always ready to advocate extending understanding and diplomatic, tactful treatment of foreign enemies while having nothing but the harshest, hatefully vituperative and merciless treatment of their domestic opponents. They have already rhetorically at minimum on numerous occasions used foreign enemies as proxies, and their mentors marched under the banner of more than one foreign foe, openly rooting for their victory, believing it would help discredit their domestic political opponents and advance their own cause.

These are facts: Pointing them out is only an act of intellectual honesty. It is simply chronicling current history accurately. None the less, it is extremely controversial to take note of this reality, except in the most indirect or praising way (that is, you can note it without controversy if you share their perspective). It is also not unfair to say that the outcome of what passes for their sage wisdom on the waging of war, and their fundamental transformation of traditional International Law and the Laws of War hinder their own nation's efforts and make it easier for their country's enemies (see previous posts in this series). This is what makes "asymmetric warfare" possible at all. It is this kind of "warfare by proxy" that results in dictators getting their job through the New York Times, and even now regularly speak power to truth in their efforts to advantage undemocratic enemies of their country abroad at the expense of integrity. Once you've read about international law untainted by their manipulations, or what the drafters of the real Geneva Conventions had to say:

"(2) Members of other militias and members of other volunteer corps, including those of organized resistance movements, belonging to a Party to the conflict and operating in or outside their own territory, even if this territory is occupied, provided that such militias or volunteer corps, including such organized resistance movements, fulfil [sic] the following conditions:[ (a) that of being commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates; (b) that of having a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance; (c) that of carrying arms openly; (d) that of conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war.

you then realize that these people have turned reality on its head. It is no exaggeration to say that they now offer far more protection to what are, under true international law, unlawful combatants who in a sane era were not extended the protections given uniformed combatants, than anyone ever extended to lawful, uniformed combatants. It should surprise no one that deciples of 'Franz Fanon' (sic) would behave in such a fashion, and that they would be drawn to concepts aimed at persuading people that fighting insurgencies is futile (which flies in the face of actual historical experience in defeating insurgencies). One is to be portrayed as a wild-eyed extremist for noting in a non-laudatory way what they say in their own words, which itself represents 1) the enforced detachment from reality that we are nudged into and 2) one aspect of the very internal conflict under discussion here, where war methods are waged with ruthlessness against internal dissent. (Language is an important expression of mentality: a "War Room" is what one has to combat domestic enemies; a "Situation Room" is what is now used to address overseas crises).

They are not to be seen as extremist for behaving this way: You to be treated as an extremist nut engaging in un-American activities, even as a terrorist for opposing them at home and for highlighting such behavior in an unflattering way. The degeneration of our governing class is all the more evident in the fact that they are sincerely delusional, thinking of themselves as outsider underdogs "speaking truth to power" when they are the ones in power, and are everywhere speaking power to truth in their efforts to destroy all opposition root and branch, and the fact that even ostensibly sensible people like Steven M. Teles thinks that this is not only a legitimate attitude towards those who disagree with them at home, but "necessary": The idea of a "loyal opposition", legitimate institutions other than ones they control, has become so foreign to not only the core of this group, but its sympathizers, that they believe they have "no choice but to use the... tools at its disposal to destroy its opponents root and branch". Since they "agree with Mao that power comes largely from the barrel of a gun", it should not be a surprise that they are not above using proxy forces in an attempt to discredit and destroy their domestic political opponents in this way.

I could invoke far more examples to drive this point home, but those in the "reality-based community" that dismiss empirical reality would pooh-pooh it regardless. Suffice to say that the attitude of domestic warfare that our governing class displays, when combined with the incontrovertible fact that they are as grounded in reality as O'Brien, forms a dire combination that bodes ill for the future.

Bonus for Extra Credit: Compare and contrast a typical example of the sage military advice offered up by these people with Luttwak's and other real experts, as well as those with actual experience, and remembering that the British defeated an insurgency in Malaysia even while the "typical example's" conception was taking root. Which passes for conventional wisdom, and who does it serve that this is maintained as conventional wisdom, all empirical evidence to the contrary notwithstanding?

Pointed fact to keep in mind when addressing the Extra-Credit Question: FDR's America would have had no problem employing the means necessary to crush opponents we now are expected to take for granted cannot be beaten militarily.

Note also that another real expert on matters military connects this outlook to a real ideology, whose aims you can judge for yourself.

Response to Potential Objection: Yes, in spring they sent more troops to Afghanistan, and they haven't followed through on their previous rhetoric about Iraq, behaving, now that they are in office, in a more responsible way. But note that they do not embrace this outlook as a means of discrediting themselves, it's only for the utility of destroying their domestic political opponents. So, when a process like this is underway, we should naturally expect their own behavior to differ from what their rhetoric was when they were assailing their opponents. At minimum temporizing and an obvious tension about what decision to make, as they struggle with the internal conflict of their ideology pulling them one way while their instinct for political survival tugs them the other way.

Nothing illustrates this better than Obama's recent speech. I believe he is sincere when he said ""I will never rush the solemn decision of sending you into harm's way. I won't risk your lives unless it is absolutely necessary, and if it is necessary, we will back you up to the hilt."

I'm positive he sincerely perceives himself that way, just as he sincerely holds a contrary idea in his head (cognitive dissonance is not alien to these people). However, it is simply not part of his mental process that he already made such a decision (last spring, in sending additional troops), and he is now Hamlet over whether to back to the hilt or not, because of the tension between the siren song of their base, which is where their heart lays, where their own beliefs rest.

So we are served a public rationalization over why there is a delay in decision and why the forces necessary for victory ought to be denied which no rational people could possibly believe is sincere. We're to believe that a circle of Chicago Pols with close ties to the likes of ACORN and George Soros and benefit from shenannegans of all kinds are shocked, shocked! to have suddenly discovered that there is political corruption in Afghanistan. Roman, please! If you sincerely believe that, as opposed to pretending to believe it because you're a sycophantic courtier speaking power to truth like the rest of the coterie surrounding this faction, I have only one question for you: Do you have your own cup to drool into, or do you have to share one?

Another objection of course is: Porphy, aren't you just on the other side? In the largest sense, no. I am chronicling this and hoping people will be aware of it. I certainly have sympathy for one side in this conflict, and as is obvious by what I concentrated on describing, hold the other in at best a minimum of high regard. But I am certainly not asking or hoping for you to become active in fighting against them and for Team B, aka "The Outer Party". That simply fuels the conflict. Additionally, voting, and other conventional political activism is a laughable way of thwarting this, as the locus of their power, is insulated from democratic politics as we normally understand it. Being in office helps the velocity by which they "affect change", marginally, but being out of office does not cripple them, as they are never truly out of power. The tides still flow.

I have no program, and won't offer up the usual "ten point plan for restoring the Republic" of items that range from the futile to the banal that others do and which are always so anticlimactically inconsequential or fantastically outside the realm of the possible (even as they illustrate the point I am making here, in that 70% of the voting public would support them, or something like them, but there aint no way they'll ever get close to be placed on the agenda) as to be depressing.

The last thing I should advocate is "taking sides" in this conflict and fighting it, as tempting as that is. Hopefully someone out there does have some idea of how to resolve this non-catastrophically, and I chronicle and describe it in no small part in the hope that someone shall put their mind to it.

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Consumer choices not only reflect price and quality preferences but also social and moral values as witnessed in the remarkable growth of the global market for organic and environmentally friendly products. Building on recent research on behavioral priming and moral regulation, we find that mere exposure to green products and the purchase of them lead to markedly different behavioral consequences. In line with the halo associated with green consumerism, people act more altruistically after mere exposure to green than conventional products. However, people act less altruistically and are more likely to cheat and steal after purchasing green products as opposed to conventional products.

Their study suggests that thinking about environmentally conscious products leads to more altruism and honesty; buying environmentally sound products, however leads to selfishness and dishonest behavior.

That's consistent with some of my personal experience, as well as studies which have shown (for example) that conservatives are more charitable than liberals.

And this bothers the hell out of me.

I was discussing Michael Moore's latest with a friend and I explained that I was troubled by his technique, and by his personal hypocrisy. I explained that I have two friends who do low-income housing with nonprofits in New York and here in Los Angeles. Each of them created, early in their careers, a limited-equity coop that they chose to live in. Each of their personal residences could be sold (even in today's climate) for nearly a million dollars on the open market - but they will never see that because they made the moral choice to live the values they espouse. That's the kind of liberalism I support.

It appears, sadly, to be almost too rare to mention.
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And it was like getting slapped. WHAT THE F***?? How can someone make the claim that there was no peace dividend - we'll talk later about whether there was peace - in the aftermath of the collapse of Communism as a strategic enemy? Did he ever look at the Clinton budgets?

Here's a handy graph, based on data from Truth and Politics.org (I have superficially checked their numbers and they seem right).



Note that it shows that the percentage of US Gross Domestic Product spent on defense declined from 6.1% in 1983 to 3.0% in 1999-2001. That's 3.1% of GDP that was freed up from the Reagan peak; from the fall of the wall in 1989, the decline is only 2.6%. To put that in perspective, the entire health sector today comprises about 17% of GDP - so we're talking about a savings in defense spending of almost 20% of the entire healthcare budget.

Now I know it's strong to accuse someone of lying. But I don't know how else to interpret such a willful misstating of elementary fact in support of one's argument. And while I'll go on and finish the book, I have to say that I don't understand how every critic in America didn't confront Bacevich with the same question.
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"As for me, I'm not shocked, I'm thrilled. This evil murderous bastard finally at last got what he deserved.

If that makes me an accomplice, as pro-abortionists are labeling anyone who protested against Tiller's medical murder practice, so be it."

I'm sorry, but that's either nuts, or it's treason. We'll start with nuts.

I would not side with the person who killed the slave owner, though I be a strong abolitionist.

The Long murder illustrates why not. In both cases, loyalty to the laws of the United States is cast aside to murder, on grounds of moral conviction, for conduct that is legal. Because those in question cannot win a democratic political argument. The same is true for Jack's thought-experiment.

Newsflash: There are a lot of people out there with ideas that fit these categories. They're not always going to pick the targets you approve of. Once you decide it's OK for group A to do it, anyone and everyone could be a target.

Which is one reason why the rule of law around murder is such a critical component of civilized life. Just as the potential and historic recurrence of its breakdown on these grounds is one of the underpinnings beneath the human right to bear arms.

Back to our Earth First! types for a minute, and animal rights activists who believe that animals and people are morally equivalent, with the same rights. Can they shoot people for torturing and killing thousands of animals in the name of science? If you believed in the Earth First! theology and were a staunch pro-lifer, then based on your premises, an abortionist and an experimental scientist who conducts lethal experiments on live animals wold be exactly the same moral thing. Exactly.

In a Imamist fatwa society of whatever flavour, you can go out and shoot people on those grounds. In a civilized society, you cannot. Marxism is fundamentally anti-civilization, of course. Always has been. Its 100-million skulls record within a similar justifying framework is just an expression of that fundamental nature. And that exact fundamental flaw.

In a civilized society, a slaveowner whose practice is still legal is allowed the same basic protections against murder as any other citizen.

Stealing his slaves and putting them on the Underground Railroad is another thing. If you believe they are humans, you cannot be stealing since that only applies to property, not sentient creatures with free will. You still expect to pay the price if caught, of course. And you're morally enjoined to either make sure that those you've freed choose to freely accept the risks under full disclosure, or ensure that you've placed them in a better position. Else you haven't done good, you've done them a direct and personal harm.

But murder is a whole different ball game.

The basic compact of citizenry in a free government ultimately rests on the principle that we will protect fellow citizens, within our agreed laws and fundamental liberties. If you repudiate that, there isn't anything left of free citizenship.

As an aside, the failure to openly grasp that fundamental truth pretty much underlays the liberal-left's position on any form of international or domestic security over the past 40 years.

A congruent lack of judgment lies behind To The Point commenter mwilhite - who stupidly asks, as he defends the Tiller murder:

"Which is more important, the rule of law or saving millions of innocent lives?"

Answer: In societies where it's OK to summarily kill people you disagree with, for doing things that are legal, the record shows a pretty hefty death toll anyway. Defend, then, the Rule of Law around murder, lest you simply move the death toll around.

Which brings us to the next part, treason.

In the subsequent comments, a few TTP members said outright that they were OK with moving the death toll around. That many murders (abortions), they said, justified murder in return.

Which is another way of saying that Muslim jihadists shooting American troops in America is conceptually fine, but they would personally take issue with the gunman's choice of targets. Of course, the fact that people do disagree is why the rule of law is part of free societies in the first place.

To be fair, however, there's actually a coherent moral position one can hold within that framework. TTP reader Kenny frames it nicely, and it's the right follow-up question:

"Would it have been alright to have shot Hitler in 1939 or 1940, and if not, why not? How about an even bigger mudrered, Stalin? Should someone have taken him out while he was in the midsts of murdering millions?"

The answer to both question is yes. In acts of justified armed insurrection against the government as a whole. Totalitarian governments are not legitimate, and armed insurrection against them is justified. This includes killing their leaders, and functionaries. Jack Wheeler spent a lot of time tramping around such insurrectionists all over the globe. He's the person who, more than anyone else, brought the reality of anti-communist liberation movements to the Reagan White House's attention.

In the words of a document many of us are familiar with, however, that's no longer a mere act of murder. To organize and engage in it, in order to change the politics of an established country that has effective control of its own territory, is far more akin to "levying war." Which is one of the US Constitution's definitions of treason.

So be it - insurrections are always treason. You either win and change the government by force of arms, in which case the charge becomes moot. You're now the government, and you were always loyal to yourselves. Or you lose. At which point, trial for treason is nothing less than one should expect.

Along the way, of course, lies civil war. At least once before in America, that meant many thousands of people dead.

In case you're wondering, Jack, later in his own article, extends his historical slavery analogy and wonders if the death toll of abortion could reach a level that could morally justify secession. It's a valid moral question to ask, and it shows that he, at least, understands at some level how high the stakes could go. Shades of Orson Scott Card's novel "Empire".

Fortunately, prominent pro-life groups have been quick and clear in their condemnation of the Tiller murder - a sharp contrast to the positions of Gulf-supported Islamic front groups like CAIR and the AMC on terrorism and terrorist acts.

A government that does not understand or respect that difference risks crossing some pretty important red lines of its own, and is likely to seriously radicalize far more of its opponents. Which is what I fully expect Obama to do: conduct a public witch-hunt without qualification or distinction. All supported by a media who aren't that interested in Islamic terrorism like the inconveniently paired Long shooting, since they'd rather focus on their enemies.

Having said that, those people who do espouse support of the Tiller murder, and especially any organizations that are supportive or equivocal, ought to expect a strong government reaction. Including monitoring and further investigations. The lack of these public square and investigative reactions with respect to organized supporters of terrorism like CAIR and the AMC, is part of the reason that Islamic terrorism is a larger problem than it should be.

I do not support that mistake, and I do not support repeating it elsewhere.

Levying war is a double-edged sword. If you're one of those people who believes that taking up arms is justified - perhaps by the scope of what you believe to be a genocide, because you haven't won the political argument yet in a free society - then so be it.

Just don't kid yourself about what you're doing, or what you've stepped into. On any level. And don't expect my support. On any level.

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I've been vocal that Muslims in America need to (and to a large extent have) take a firm stand on terrorism.

For conservatives to take that stance on Islamic terrorism and turn a blind eye to homegrown anti-abortion terrorism is rank hypocrisy.
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Two things put my environmental-regulation-loving, hybrid-driving, solar-panel powered self off from supporting AGW and the policies that fall out from it:

1. The bullying tone of the supporters of AGW. Look, if you've got the facts and the science, you don't need to try and rhetorically drive people out of the debate. But if you don't...

2. The fact that many (not all) of the supporters of AGW are people who also - for a variety of reasons good and bad - have issues with "the dominant paradigm" of Western industrial society. It's kind of like the local Lothario discovering that nude hot oil massages are the key to preventing some kind of fatal disease.

As someone who knows something (certainly not everything) about physical sciences and complex systems, I can say with some certainty that there is no way in hell that the level of certainty in the data we have supports an absolute society-restructuring belief in AGW. We're talking about something vastly more complex than markets, and yet with a smidgen of data and a few complex computer models we have a group of bright people assuring us that absolutely they know what's going to happen next.

Note how well that worked out in the financial markets...

At the same time, it's hard to argue that we are taking on some unknown risk - a risk that could be catastrophic - by dumping ever-increasing amounts of anything into the environment. So maybe it makes sense - a lot of sense - to do what we can as quickly as we can to minimize our byproducts.

The devil is in defining "what we can" and "as quickly as we can." Some people - Quiggin certainly among them - don't like industrial capitalism much for reasons of their own, and arguably see this - the deep regulation necessary to reverse our carbon impacts - as both good for its own sake and good because it will provide an opportunity to move society closer to the desired model.

I have a good friend who is a senior official in a national agency tasked with environmental management, and we've talked about this; how the same people who argued that resource constraints and population growth required that we remake society; then species protection; now climate change. The constant is the need to remake society and the issues are sellable justifications for why it should be done.

I'm not so interested in remaking society; but I do worry about the impacts of climate change.

My response on AGW is somewhat different than Quiggins, and more like the "on one hand, and on the other" that many AGW proponents criticize.

We have some data which is highly suggestive of an impact by human activity on climate. Even if we accept the existence of the impact, and its significance in changing a naturally-variable climate, its extent is hard to determine with the information we have. But in the worst reasonable cases, by the time we have enough data, it may be too late to act in any meaningful way.

So we should act.

Our inefficient dependence on oil and coal wastes finite, valuable resources, creates pollution, has significant geopolitical impacts, and possibly worsens out climate.

There are a variety of painless things we could do to be more efficient, and we should do them immediately.

There are a variety of things we can and should do to improve efficiency and security, like building a smarter electric grid and beginning to decentralize power production, which also have positive impacts on overall energy efficiency and our climate impacts. We should do them quickly.

And there are harder, more complex things we should do - from changing land use development patterns to adding nuclear power - and we should be looking hard at them with an eye to deciding on what we can do soon.

That seems like a set of positions it would be relatively easy to build a consensus on, and one that could lead to relatively quick and somewhat effective action. No one has to - or needs to - bully anyone else, we just start doing it.

And that, perhaps, is the most challenging step of all.

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In 1939, as we approached the end of the Great Depression and the beginning of a war against a seemingly irresistible totalitarian vision, songwriters Harold Arlen and E.Y. Harburg wrote a ballad that virtually personified the reanimation of Western liberal democratic culture after an interminable demoralization. The song appeared twice in the MGM musical The Wizard of Oz: first as Judy Garland mused in the barnyard of Dorothy’s dustbowl farm, and again after she’d been magically transported to a land ruled by a benevolently omniscient fake. The dustbowl version is far more moving than the Oz version (pardon the subtitles, but it had the best sound quality).

If you’d like to hear the second version, as a point of reference, it’s here. The second performance has a jaunty pretense of “good times” that’s irritatingly unconvincing, both from a theatrical and an historical perspective. Israel Kamakawiwo Ole' performed a version of the song recently that also seems a little 9/10 for my taste. It’s nice, though.

My favorite version of the ballad (so far) is Eva Cassidy’s. She performed it in a small dive in Washington, DC during the 1990s, probably not more than a few blocks from where I lived at the time. Her matchless voice is cast in breathtaking relief as she performs with scraggly hair against the backdrop of a brick wall. As much as I like Garland’s signature version I just find Cassidy’s guileless performance more comforting and inspiring.

What’s your favorite version of Over the Rainbow?

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The student council voted almost unanimously in favour of the decision. One exception: Nick Bergamini, the journalism rep. He said:

"They're not doctors. They're playing politics with this... I think they see this, in their own twisted way, as a win for diversity. I see it as a loss for people with cystic fibrosis."

When the journalist is the voice of sanity in the room, you know you're in wayyy deep trouble. I mean, how out of touch do you have to be to think this is anything even close to acceptable?

Well, you could move in the semi-closed "political weenie" circles that tend to furnish most student council reps.

The President's predictable non-apology "apology" [PDF] illustrates this well - she still doesn't see anything morally wrong with the motion itself. Other reps are scrambling for cover on the grounds that they were misinformed in the motion regarding the disease's reach - again, missing the moral point entirely.

Nick Bergamini was being charitable. When you see something for the 1,000th time, there comes a point where you have to start taking it at face value. The left's standard racism sees white people and males as the root of all evil; this council motion is just a minor extension of that hate-filled mentality toward its logical conclusion. This isn't the first time, or even the hundredth time, I've seen stuff with a similar tenor. It's just more starkly put this time, and hence more memorable.

Happily enough, another voice is coming from the students. They're moving to impeach their student council president, and the Science faculty (!) student rep who put the motion forward and composed it. Based on signature velocity, both will be looking forward to new hobbies soon.

I certainly hope so.

If political weenies wonder why normal people tend to distrust them, perhaps it's because people remember stuff like this from their own experiences. Those of us in the political blogosphere might do well to remember that earned distrust, now and again, as we contemplate our engagement with the world beyond the web.

As for my childhood friend, at least one good thing came out of this moral swamp. Reading the Carleton story caused me to wonder, and the magic of Google and email did the rest. My old friend has beaten the odds - he's still alive. Next time I'm back in Canada, I hope we can get together.

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