REDUX

Spring Daze

The Gift...

That doesn't keep on givin':

"[An] absolute and irrevocable transfer of title to property from a donor to a donee," [a Wednesday ruling by the Illinois Appellate Court said.] "There was no agreement that the original deposit would be returned upon request."

et tu, Canada?

As much as I have found the many Canadians that I have known throughout my life to be personable, agreeable, and fun, -- that is, after the obligatory, "You're different than most Americans -- I can't for the life of me explain the strange disease that overwhelms them in the aggregate.  New blog AMERICAN FUTURE observes:

From Canada's National Post:

According to an Associated Press-Ipsos poll. only 22% of Canadians think the United States should try to promote the creation of democratic governments in other countries.

I'm at a loss for words.

I'm not.  Neighboring countries are always the most likely to have bitter feelings against each other, over border disputes, encroaching cultural influences, anecdotal bad behavior, influencing domestic politics, what have you.  Hans Morgenthau posited a theory of International Relations which is illustrated by the Conquest of Mexico.  When Cortez landed in the New World, and he marched on his way to Tenochtitlan, the capital of the Aztec Empire, he found allies in the city-states which neighbored the capital (e.g. Tlaxcala), and which were the first colonized -- and longest suffering -- of the tributary nations. 

This is not to say that the Canadians are would-be traitors seething under the stifling pressure of the American jack-boot on their throats.  What does grip the Canadian psyche is a thorough and abiding resentment at having to be the neighbors of the American experiment.  I'm not sure if some of the gripes that Canadians have against Americans are legitimate; i.e. valid.  What is irrational, and at issue here, is the majority of Candian's antipathy towards America.  I use the term "resentment" to describe it, because it seems that the anti-Americanism is motivated by a great dislike of the mutual, albeit asymetrical, interdependency that exists between our two nations.

Once again, don't get me wrong.  I love Labatt's Blue,"You Can't Do That on Television", Toronto Drum n' Bass, and Candaian sketch comedy (e.g. SCTV, Kids in the Hall, and yes, SNL)  But I simply cannot understand why a nation could be so infected by resentment that 78% of Candians oppose Americans "[promoting] the creation of democratic governments in other countries".  Intelligent people might differ over the efficacy or motivations of American foreign policy, but sober (and intellectually honest) observers cannot help but look around the world and see that the United States is acting as a much-needed catalyst for democratic reform in the Middle East.  Which is why I keep coming back to this word, "resentment."

Diploblogger NewSisyphus insightfully argues that this is the result of dependence, and lays the fault squarely on the shoulder of hippies -- you gotta love that!

All the countries of the Anglosphere, like the rest of the Western world, experienced the social and political upheavals of the 1960's, which culminated around the world (or at least in the world's imagination) in 1968. During this time a politically and socially liberal tidal wave crashed over the institutions of the Western governments. As one would expect, each nation took in the radical changes in the public's viewpoints in unique ways.

However, one generalization can be readily made: in the countries where the Parliamentary System was in place and the 1968 Generation constituted a politically significant vote bloc, the 1968 Generation was able to institutionalize itself. For all intents and purposes, the counter-culture became the new establishment, especially in Canada since the geographic focal point of the new wave held the political balance of power. And since the Parliamentary System enabled full-scale platform enactment, the practical scope of the opposition was minor at best. While old-school values and their political standard-bearers would not disappear, and some even eventually returned to power, the fact is that the Government of Canada is the 1960's incarnate, and the Parliamentary System enabled (and enables) the complete shut-out of the opposition, as any sad Western Canadian with his head screwed on straight can tell you.

In those other Western countries lucky enough to have populations where 1968 ideology never fully took hold (Australia) or where the Presidential System diffused the passions of the moment and forced the new wave to compromise with other constituencies (the United States), the 68'ers became just another political bloc, like any other. In the U.S. you can find 68'ers in the Presidency (Bill Clinton), in the Senate (Hillary Clinton), in the judiciary (Ruth Bader Ginsburg), in the press, in business and, well, everywhere; but, unlike in Canada, they have to compete with other ideological blocs for votes and influence.

The end result is an Anglosphere-wide rift between those countries where the 68'ers, for various reasons, have failed to win control of the political machinery (though they may take power from time to time) and those in which the ideologies of the late 1960's/early 1970's have been more or less institutionalized (see, for example, the entire jurisprudence of the Canadian Supreme Court).

And from this comes the Great White North that we know today:

Where this all comes to a head is the behavior of the Government of Canada since the Trudeau permiership which marked the sizing of the state by the 1960's generation in Canada. As Canada fell more and more from the "reliable Cold War partner and WWII ally" to the "hip, hanging with Castro and bragging about peacekeeping operations" Canada we know today, Canada simply dropped off Washington D.C.'s radar. And, as its responsibilities were lifted from its shoulders, Canada became increasingly free to engage in a kind of politics more akin to that of a major university's English department than that of a serious power. (As the great Mark Steyn and David Frum would be happy to explain to you). Interestingly, from a State Department perspective, Canada's move from the EUR bureau to the WHA bureau more-or-less mirrored this demotion in importance in American eyes.

Over the past 25 years, Canada has been increasingly relieved of duties (we even stopped inviting them to NORAD conferences after Sept. 11) and, correspondingly, has grown increasingly shrill in its anti-Americanism. Totally and completely dependent on the United States for its economy and national security, reduced in fact to status of junior partner in a joint North American enterprise, the once-great Dominion has nearly gone mad politically railing against its powerlessness.

So what is NewSisyphus' perscription to Canada's sad, sad malaise:

If we ever are to reclaim our northern cousins, and re-gain a valuable ally, we would have to re-integrate Canada in important world duties (in this instance, naval almost exclusively). Were Canada's navy responsible in and around Korea or in the Asian sea-lanes, its government would inevitably have to forfeit the empty anti-American soundbite in favor of reasoned, balanced policy.

It is unrealistic to expect this to change.  There is nothing that Americans can do to change this -- in fact, any course of action that we choose will only exacerbate the situation.  Efforts to re-integrate the Canadians in more pro-active defense and global security initiatives will be dismissed and will ultimately fail, not because of the merits of the plan, but simply because we offer them.  (c.f. AMERICAN FUTURE, again)

I imagine that, like many siblings, the North Americans have simply come to take each other for granted.  And, as in many a sibling rivalry, each side of the relationship is loathe to blink first.  This is unfortunate; even more so, because in this spat, the United States is actually right.  Free nations should promote freedom.  Democracies should promote democracy.  We can only hope that the fever of the 1968ers breaks soon,

3-D Vulcan Chess

The other day I was reading Glenn, when I came across this little tidbit:

YES, IT'S A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT GAME THEY'RE PLAYING: SKBubba notes something that I had noticed -- that the Bush Administration let news of Rumsfeld's offer to resign after Abu Ghraib leak out now, when it was too late to help them before the election, and observes:

I thought that the Gonzales nomination was being offered up as a sacrificial lamb for Abu Ghraib to take the heat off of Bush and Rumsfeld and that his confirmation defeat would put an end to the whole sordid affair.

Now that he's confirmed, and apparently nobody gives a damn, Rumsfeld comes out and takes responsibility. Go figure. Maybe he was Plan B? These guys are playing a level of 3-D Vulcan chess that I can't even comprehend.

I think they're playing the long game, not the short game. And here's another example: the retroactive increase in death benefits paid to the families of servicepeople killed in action. They waited until after the election, when doing it sooner might have gotten them some votes. At a guess, I'd say that they want the troops to know it's genuine, and not just political -- and that's why they waited.

I remembered that particular phrase as I read the following freebie Stratfor intelligence report (reprinted entirely below the fold).

Syria, Syria, Syria

Things are moving along very quickly on the Lebanon-Syria issue.

The SF Chronicle notes:

Tens of thousands of opposition supporters shouted insults at Syria and demanded the resignation of their pro-Syrian government in a Beirut demonstration Monday, marking a week since the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

Beating drums and waving Lebanese flags, those of their own parties and portraits of past leaders killed during the 1975-90 civil war, the protesters gathered at the site where Hariri was killed Feb. 14 in a bombing that the opposition blames on Damascus.

Some in the crowd yelled "Syria out!" and "We don't want a parliament that acts as a doorkeeper for the Syrians," competing with loud insults shouted against Syrian President Bashar Assad.

(snip)

Protesters wore scarves of red and white _ the colors of Lebanon's flag _ which have become the symbol of the opposition's "independence uprising," described as a peaceful campaign to dislodge the pro-Syrian government and force the Syrian army out of Lebanon.

Some protesters carried banners reading, "Independence," and chanted, "The government of puppets must fall" and "Enough blood, leave us alone."

The crowd was estimated in the tens of thousands, with many converging on downtown Beirut from all parts of the Lebanese capital.

"It is my civic duty as a Lebanese to take part in this uprising," said Youssef Mukhtar, a 47-year-old engineer. "Enough bloodshed and disasters. It is the 21st century, and people should be able to govern themselves. The situation has become unbearable and we have to regain our country."

Many held pictures of Hariri and sang patriotic songs. Some protesters held a copy of the Quran in one hand and the cross in another hand to signify Muslim-Christian national unity.

Police and army troops in full battle gear stood guard without intervening, blocking roads with metal barriers. To prevent more potential protesters from reaching Beirut, security forces set up checkpoints on the northern and eastern entrances to the Lebanese capital.

The protest reached its peak shortly before 12:55 p.m., the time that Hariri's motorcade was blown up, killing him and 16 other people and wounding more than 100. The protesters, chanting "All for the Nation," the national anthem, observed a moment of silence at the exact time of the bombing and then began converging on the U.N. offices in the downtown Riad Solh Square to hand a letter to representatives of U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

On the way, the protesters marched by the nearby Grand Serail, the prime minister's office, shouting "Syria out!" and "We don't want an army in Lebanon except that of Lebanon!"

The protesters then marched to Hariri's grave outside the Mohammed Al-Amin Mosque at the central Martyrs' Square and sang the national anthem. "We want the truth," said one speaker.

President Bush announced his backing of the people power movement:

"The Lebanese people have the right to be free, and the United States and Europe share an interest in an independent, democratic Lebanon," Bush said.

To which the Syrian government quickly responded:

SYRIA has defied American demands to withdraw its forces from Lebanon and to disarm Hezbollah militants, insisting that Israel must first pull out of the Golan Heights.

The government in Damascus has been under growing pressure from Washington since last week’s assassination of Rafik Hariri, the former Lebanese prime minister and forthright critic of Syria’s military presence in his country. President George W Bush recalled the US ambassador to Syria and demanded an international investigation of the killing.

Ayman Abdel Nour, a leading Syrian analyst, said yesterday that Damascus had now told senior American officials that a unilateral withdrawal of its 15,000 troops was out of the question until Israel ended its occupation of the Golan Heights, which it seized from Syria in 1967 and annexed 14 years later.

“Syria has national interests which must be fulfilled before it can withdraw from Lebanon and this has been relayed to American members of Congress, the Senate and the State Department,” Nour said. “If the United States uses its leverage and pressures Israel fully to return the Golan Heights, only then can Syria fully withdraw from Lebanon.”

(h/t Joshua Landis at Syrian Comment.  It should also be noted that Dr. Landis has felt a fair degree of political pressure for his blog, and because of his family and personal connections to Syria, has chosen to self-censure some of his posts.)

Thomas Friedman declares this an aftershock of the Iraq War and Election, and announces a "Baghdad Spring":

It's good news, bad news time again for the Middle East. The good news is that what you are witnessing in the Arab world is the fall of its Berlin Wall. The old autocratic order is starting to crumble. The bad news is that unlike the Berlin Wall in central Europe, the one in the Arab world is going to fall one bloody brick at a time, and, unfortunately, Vaclav Havel, Lech Walesa and the Solidarity trade union are not waiting to jump into our arms on the other side.

No one is more pleased than I am to see the demonstration of "people power" in Iraq, with millions of Iraqis defying the "you vote, you die" threat of the Baathists and jihadists. No one should take lightly the willingness of the opposition forces in Lebanon to stand up and point a finger at the Syrian regime and say "J'accuse!" for the murder of the opposition leader Rafik Hariri. No one should dismiss the Palestinian election, which featured a real choice of candidates, and a solid majority voting in favor of a decent, modernizing figure - Mahmoud Abbas. No one should ignore the willingness of some Egyptians to demand to run against President Hosni Mubarak when he seeks a fifth - unopposed - term. These are things you have not seen in the Arab world before. They are really, really unusual - like watching camels fly.

Something really is going on with the proverbial "Arab street." The automatic assumption that the "Arab street" will always rally to the local king or dictator - if that king or dictator just waves around some bogus threat or insult from "America," "Israel" or "the West" - is no longer valid. Yes, the Iraq invasion probably brought more anti-American terrorists to the surface. But it also certainly brought more pro-democracy advocates to the surface.

Call it the "Baghdad Spring."

But we shouldn't get carried away with ourselves, he cautions:

There will be no velvet revolutions in this part of the world. The walls of autocracy will not collapse with just one good push. As the head-chopping insurgents in Iraq, the suicide bombers in Saudi Arabia and the murderers of Mr. Hariri have all signaled: The old order in this part of the world will not go quietly into this good night. You put a flower in the barrel of their gun and they'll blow your hand and your head right off.

Unlike Iraq, we enjoy greater international agreement on this issue.

The assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in a massive car bomb on Monday reminds us that the Global War on Terror is a global war, and indicates its central front is shifting from Iraq.

Syria has had troops in Lebanon since 1976, when it intervened to quell a Lebanese civil war it had helped foment.

Syrian puppets currently control the Lebanese government, but the natives were getting restless. Factions which not so long ago had been shooting at each other (the Lebanese are divided among Maronite Christians, Sunni and Shiite Muslims, Druze and other religious groups) were, under the leadership of Hariri, banding together to oppose the occupiers. Elections slated for later this spring were expected to go badly for the puppets and their puppeteers.

Syria views Lebanon as a part of Syria, much as Saddam Hussein coveted Kuwait as a part of Iraq, and is loath to let go. "For decades now Syria has been losing card after card in a steadily weakening strategic hand. Its domination of Lebanon is one of the last and most vital of them," wrote David Hirst, Middle East correspondent for The Guardian.

If the purpose of the Hariri assassination was to intimidate the Lebanese, it isn't working out so well. The turnout for his funeral was huge, and the crowd was angry.

(snip)

France loves to stick its fingers in American eyes. But the Hariri assassination is a complication. Hariri and French President Jacques Chirac were good friends.

"Whoever orchestrated Hariri's assassination imagined the explosive event would produce results in accordance with a master plan," wrote foreign affairs commentator Frida Ghitis in The Miami Herald. "It is unlikely, however, that the master plan included strengthening the bonds between the United States and France. But closer ties between Paris and Washington will undoubtedly result from the Hariri murder."

"France is working closely with the United States to craft a new U.N. Security Council resolution calling for the Lebanese government to fully investigate the blast that killed Hariri," reported Stratfor, a private intelligence service.

The result could be a Franco-American push for trade sanctions against Syria by the United Nations and the European Union. And given the bad press the United Nations has been receiving from the Iraq oil-for-food scandal, these sanctions likely would be enforced. The diplomatic isolation of Syria would be nearly complete.

Amazing.

Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics

The WSJ Op-ed page shares this little nugget about how a talk given Nobel-Prize winning economist, and darling of the intellectual Left, Amartya Sen resulted in a comeuppance of sorts.

At first, the writer notes,

[I]ndeed, after Mr. Sen's observations--NATO is partly responsible for Third World debt and for turning back Africa's democratic evolution; more people died of AIDS on Sept. 11, 2001, than in the terrorist attack; Social Security, the U.S. pension system, is not at a crisis point--it seemed that it was going to be a one-sided afternoon.

Dr. Sen then began praising the Chinese Communist Cultural Revolution for its health-care system,

Mr. Sen asserted that Maoist China had actually made great strides in medicine, bringing down child mortality rates and prolonging life expectancy. Moving to a privatized system was making the system less fair and efficient, said the Nobel laureate, who's behind many U.N. economic works, such as the much-heralded "Human Development Index."

To back up his remarkable claim, Mr. Sen said that the rate of growth in life expectancy in China was slowing down. Or at least it was doing so compared to India, which is catching up with China in life expectancy. "The gap between India and China has gone from 14 years to seven [since 1979] because of moving from a Canada-like system to a U.S. like system," said Mr. Sen, adding that he thought this change by China was a mistake.

It seems to me that Dr. Sen's arguement is politically motivated, and as such, he manipulates or presents evidence to suit his own ideological stance.  This is not surprising, as we all do it to some degree or another.  But to claim that the Maoist Chinese system was better than a privatized health-care system on the basis of statistics is intellectually dishonest.

That's because the statistic that Dr. Sen uses is the slowing rate of growth of Chinese life expectancy rates in relation to Indian life expectancy rates.  Get it?  It's not that Chinese life expectancy is going down, rather, the rate at which it is increasing has slowed.  This could be due to several factors.  First, there could very well be a diminshing returns effect in place with regard to availablity of medicine and increased per-capita wealth.  I don't have the hard data in front of me, but it seems logical that the greater results in life expectancy would be found at the beginning of any effort to provide wide-spread modern medical technology and treatment.  Think of the impact of simple vaccines alone on life expectancy.  How much longer do we live, on average, by not dying from the diseases that are easily preventable by vaccines?  This is a red herring.

It gets even worse when you consider that Dr. Sen puts this decreasing rate of growth in contra-distinction to the increasing rate of growth of life expectancy in India.  Why is India growing faster?  Is it because they have adopted a health-care system similar to that which Dr. Sen advocates, or is it because the free-market reforms that India has undertaken are starting to pay off in terms of this economic metric?

Dr. Sen's position was revealed to be nothing but a concoction of half-baked statistics, chosen to push his political agenda, when he was shot down by somebody who actually put up with Maoist Medicine:

But, alas, there was someone in the audience who actually had lived through the Cultural Revolution in China, and had been one of Mao's "barefoot doctors." He didn't see things quite the same way as Mr. Sen. In fact, he said the comments had quite surprised him.

"I observed with my own eyes the total absence of medicine in some parts of China. The system was totally unsustainable. We used to admire India," said Weijian Shan, now a banker in Hong Kong. Mr. Shan then added an anecdote that tickled the audience, telling how when he first visited Taiwan in the 1980s and saw young medical school graduates serving in the countryside, he thought to himself, "China ought to copy Taiwan."

Mr. Shan added, about Mao's medicine, "If they had made the system optional, nobody would have opted for it."

Since he evidently belives in that a lack of choice in healthcare is good for you, I wonder if Dr. Sen would also agree that limiting choices through taxation would be also be good for you?

Pax Americana, revisited

Paul Johnson, eminent British historian, writes in Forbes.com:

Despite all these false friends and hidden enemies, however, democracy is taking its first faltering steps in the Arab-Muslim world. It may well be that in history's long perspective, America's success in turning Afghanistan and Iraq away from tyranny, fear and murder toward the peaceful rule of the ballot will seem a historic turning point. Other successes may well follow, and the chariot of democracy will gather momentum.

Just as the appalling 20th century was the age of the totalitarian state, the Gulag and Auschwitz, so the 21st may come to be seen as the age of government "of the people, by the people, for the people." If so, the U.S., by its courage and persistence, will be able to take primary credit. It has certainly led from the front, and it has shown that it knows how to use its position as the world's sole superpower with judgment, honor and unselfishness.

I think Abraham Lincoln would be proud of what George W. Bush and the U.S. forces have done. After the freeing of the slaves, what more logical and benevolent step could there be than to free millions of Arabs from the slavery of terror? So I say, God Bless America. And I'm confident that countless millions throughout the world say so, too, even if they do not dare--yet--to say so aloud.

It seems to me that this is what was missed in past years' discussions about Imperial America -- the idea that America, while belligerent, and quite possibly, too-quick to wage war, fights for something greater than its own, narrow "hegemonic" interests.

I don't expect many foreign observers, or many Americans that affect foreign observations to take this point seriously (Dr. Johnson excepted, natch).  In their understanding of America and American actions, they transpose themselves into our shoes and keep their own worldview operative, instead of adopting our contexts and our horizons.

It's like the would-be-historian that looks at the westward expansion of the United States and says, "See, American society is built on genocide!"  Such thinking is essentially anachronistic.  In those days, genocide was not seen for the great evil that it was.  Which is why it is also anachronistic and possibly willfully intellectually dishonest to claim that America is intent on genocide today -- based on the fact that we carried out genocide then.

"Genocide" is a historical concept.  That is to say, it is both a concept that describes events in history, but also, as a concept, genocide is its own historical event.  And as much as leftists and center-left intellectuals, with their affected cynicism might wish to draw historical parallels with what we are seeing, it is increasingly clear that they are not only wrong, but monumentally, colossally wrong. 

Indeed, the American people have grown out of the painful adolescence of its expansionist, frontier days, much as Europe has grown out of its sadistic colonialism, and -- let us hope -- nihilistic nationalism.  What we are witnessing today in the Middle East is the wholehearted acceptance of the United States as its on-again, off-again role as the fulcrum in the progression of the historico-philosphical idea of a free humanity.

Many will scoff at the idea and many will disabuse themselves of it.  After all, who wants to really stand behind some kind of teleology?  Weren't many enthralled by the would-be-prophetic dialectical materialism which its termination not as some kind of happy place where we can all do as we wish -- "fisherman by day, philosopher by night" -- only to be betrayed by the exclusionary, obliterative violence which resided at in the vile, black heart of that ideology?    Yes.  Because the ideology of communism posited the dissolution of difference -- socio-economic difference -- as the key to a hippie. dippie future Shangri-La, which logically entails the ultimate destruction of the offending "other" that denies us our destiny.  That is to say, at the bottom of the historico-philosophical idea of European communism was the irresistable urge to commit genocide.

We argue a different historico-philosophical idea.  Instead of a utopian future, free from want and chock-full-o'-license, we argue a hard future, a difficult one.  We argue a future of freedom, a future of empowerment. One which, we can say, is typified by the words of Jean-Paul Sartre:

Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.

(Aside:  I quote Sartre in spite of himself and myself.  He was a devoted communist who gained his renown by simultaneously arguing for individualism and collectivism, and rationalizing the excesses of communism by intellectually reconciling reality to the theory.  Moreover, he did it by cribbing the writings of better philosophers that came before him, and hit it big by being able to turn as good a phrase as any.)

In Sartre's pithy quote there is a moral injuction which carries with it a terrible burden.  If freedom and responisbility are concomitant, in what is essentially an ethical relationship, then the possession of freeom implies not only the responsibility to remain free, but the responsibliity to use one's freedom, whether through action or inaction, for moral ends.  There is no higher principle to which the free man can defer to other than the responsibility which is inalienable from his freedom. 

It is this responsibility that America has siezed, with "judgment, honor and unselfishness", while other nations have shirked from the ethical obligations that their freedoms exert upon them.  Shirking such obligations might be the shrewd move for some, and prudence is a virtue.  Prudence demands a proportion, a careful weighing of value -- a cost/benefit analysis.  But what is the calculus of such prudence in light of the issue of freedom vs. oppression?  At what point does one value one's freedoms at the expense of others?  Isn't that what realpolitik is all about, anyway -- stability "over there" for freedom here.

This is also where the history of the United  States becomes salient.  But not the exapnsionism of the West, rather, it is the sad occasion of the American Civil War.  For the first 80 or 90 years of the Union, the people of the North were "realistic" and tolerated the practice of slavery in the South to preserve the poltical union of the United States, and by extension, safeguard their own freedoms.  Is it not the case that in the 1860's a call for "realism" would have been an acceptance, if not a tacit endorsement, of slavery?

The parallels are many, indeed.  The argument that the South was entitled to its "peculiar institution" -- slavery -- is the same as the one that defends the brutatlity and savagery of tyrants and dictators:  the primacy of culture over ideas. Culture, we are told by some, trumps universal principles, because cultural practices are valid within their own, particular contexts.  The argument that the freed slaves would never be full or responsible citizens of the United States is the same as the condescending view that holds that Arabs are incapable of governning themselves by democracy:  they have no history of such ideas or institutions.  This is rationalization is an appeal to the authority of elites -- only the elite (for whatever reason) have the knowledge/inclination/birthright/temperment/ethnicity to properly govern and dispense justice, "So if you know what's good for you -- and you don't -- you will listen and obey!"

The parallels of our contemparpy conflict to the Civil War extend far beyond that, including the fact that the war was nominally about a realist goal, which morphed into an idealist goal.  In the case of the Civil War the causus belli was to affirm the supremacy of the Union and deny the validity of the Doctrine of Nullifaction, which then turned into a war to free the slaves and to punish the wicked Southerners.  (Yeah, that last point is somewhat incindieary, but look at how the war was won and the imposition of Federal rule over the rebel states, and it becomes clear that the war become punitive as it became a contest of attrition>.  In our current conflagration, the causus belli was to maintain collective peace and security by minimizing the likelihood of a transfer of weapons of mass destruction to nihilist Sunni Jihadists, which has since turned into a war to bring democracy to the Middle East.

Which brings us back to the historico-philosophical Idea.  How are we to understand it within the American context and horizon?  Does it have at its root the genocide of European communism?  No.  While their origins are contemporary to the 1860's, the American Idea is not the destruction and marginalization of "classes" of people, rather, it's about the promotion of freedom, It's really quite simple, actually.  Why, it's even a song, written by Julia Ward Howe:

The Battle Hymn of the Republic

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored,
He has loosed the fateful lightening of His terrible swift sword
His truth is marching on.

Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
His truth is marching on.

I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps
They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps
I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps
His day is marching on.

Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
His truth is marching on.

I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnish`d rows of steel
"As ye deal with my contemners, So with you my grace shall deal;"
Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel
Since God is marching on.

Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
His truth is marching on.

He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-seat
Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet!
Our God is marching on.

Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
His truth is marching on.

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me:
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on.

Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
His truth is marching on.

A question that this hymn raises for me is to what degree this mission to make men free necessarily requires a religious component.  In the case of 1860's it clearly had a religious component.  In our time, is it still the case that it carries with it some undeniable aspect of religiousity?

Perhaps.  That may very well be why an increasingly secular Americans and Europeans reject this mission.  After all, if there is no God, who is to say that one's ways are the "right" ones, i.e. the Truth? (Aside: Without the backing of the full faith and credit of the Big Guy Upstairs, every worldview is equally valid -- although some are more valid than others, natch. This propostion lies at the bottom of the "intolerant tolerance" of intellectual relativism:  Since there is no one way, we must listen to all equally valid ways, so shut-the-fu@k-up you close-minded Jesusfreak @ssholes, and think righteo-, er, "correctly", like we do!)

Is religiousity necessary to bring about the kind of historico-philosophical change that we are discussing?  Could it be that the power of religion not so much the permanence of dogma or healing of the sick, but, rather, the machinery to affect sweeping, millenial, historico-philosophical change?  This would seem to be the case, if we examine the end of the Roman Empire and the rise of Christianity, or the end of the Hellenic World and the rise of Islam.  And, it would seem to be the case that our contemporary, millenial Christianity is affecting today.  And no, it's not spreading worldwide Jesusland. It's exporting freedom.  God Bless America, indeed.

Only in America

Will you find two female zoologists file suit against a celebrity gorilla for demanding that the two scientists: "Show me your t**s!".

This, of course, begs the question, is Koko's breast fixation the product of nature of nurture?

a great loss.

Today, one of our nation's heroes took his own life.

His life and work -- truly inseperable -- represent a high water-mark for the late 60s craziness.  His death closes the book on that era.

malaise.

It's no secret that Jimmy Carter is the world's #1 tool, and one of the world's leading self-indulgent, preening gasbags.  That's why I'm ecstatic to find that the guys at Powerline have decided to revisit Jimmy Carter and resolved to take a wrecking ball to the "Cult of Carter" the "world's greatest living ex-president" bullshit ( ed -- isn't that something like Michael Jackson claiming to be the "King of Pop"?):

We have touched on Jimmy Carter's political failings, but we have barely begun to exhaust the subject. He was certainly the worst president of the twentieth century. He vies with James Buchanan for the title of worst president in American history. We are old enough to recall how Carter proudly announced that the United States had overcome its "inordinate fear of Communism," famously planted a kiss on the cheek of Leonid Brezhnev, and then reacted with shock when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan.

Can you imagine that day in the Oval Offce?  Jimmy, wearing his Mr. Rodgers cardigan, secretly lusting in his heart at every female staffer walking in and out of his office, gets the news that the USSR just invaded Afghanistan.  There is a measured, deliberative discussion with his advisers.  "We've got to hit them where it really counts, y'all -- that's it!  We'll boycott the Olympics!  Why, they'll just die of shame!"

Didn't work out that way.  It turns out that the Olympics don't really bring countries together to "wage peace" over sporting events.

But what seperates this post from others, is that Big Trunk did a little research and unearthed, quite possibly, the most obnoxious and odious poetry ever.  Do read it all.  Then take a bath. You'll notice how he takes a nominal act of charity, and builds it up into an absolution of his sins, because it's not about helping a little girl with leporasy, so much as triumphantly declaring that he planted a kiss on the little girl, and then,

I didn't feel unclean.

That's because helping other people isn't about helping them, it's about helping yourself.

I know that in the months following the US invasion of Iraq, many resurrected the Greek word hubris, in order to forecost the impending tragedy we had wrought through our arrogance.  This is incorrect.

Hubris is Jimmy Carter.  He thinks himself Olympian.  The Cult of Carter actively seeks to portray the man so elevated in the heavens by selfless care for humanity that he shits marble.  So what does he do with this exalted sense of self?  The man inserts himself into the political processes of failed states and dictatorships, granting the imprimatur of legitimacy from the international community to leftist murderers, thugs, and rapists.  It makes you think that all of his election work worldwide is focussed on promoting democracy or promoting himself.  Do you think that after giving totalitarian types a little peck on the cheek he feels unclean?