REDUX

Quote of the Day

And I distrust anyone who doesn't believe in passion. Which is all Jedi.

Michele Catalano.

Schadenfreude, 2.0

From the IHT:

French voters dealt a crushing defeat to the European constitution on Sunday, demonstrating their determination to punish the leaders of France and of Europe after a bitter campaign that split the country in two.

With nearly 83 percent of the votes counted, the French Interior Ministry said the no camp had 57.26 percent, compared with 42.74 for the yes.

The result created a major challenge for the European Union, which has staked its future on the constitution.

But the most immediate impact was felt at home. The rejection undermined President Jacques Chirac and threw into disarray the opposition Socialist Party, which was split on the issue.

Chirac addressed the nation 30 minutes after the result was announced. "My dear compatriots," he said, "France has spoken democratically. A majority of you have rejected the constitution. This is your sovereign decision."

However, he added, "France's decision inevitably creates a difficult context for defending our interests in Europe."

It also makes you look like a horse's ass, don't it Jackie?  Hey buddy, ever heard of a "focus group"? Maybe  they don't teach that at the ecole nationale d'administration.   "Counterweight" indeed! 

Couldn't have happened to nicer guy.

UPDATE:  David Ignatius of the WaPo writes:

France's stunning rejection Sunday of a new European constitution was, most of all, a noisy protest against the disruptive, leveling force of economic globalization. You could see that in television images of the "no" voters as the result was announced -- burly arms raised in the air, fists cocked -- as if by rejecting a set of technical amendments to European rules they could hold back a threatening future.

And you could see the result on the faces of the losers -- glum establishment politicians being interviewed after the vote, trying to put a brave spin on a devastating defeat. For this no vote had been opposed by nearly all the luminaries of the French political class in both the socialist and conservative parties.

It was a no that resonated on many levels: a rejection of the document and the wider Europe it came to symbolize, a rejection of a market-driven way of life that's taken for granted in America, and above all a rejection of President Jacques Chirac, who tried to trick and cajole France into embracing the realities of the global economy, rather than forthrightly explaining them.

Fear of the future is always a powerful political force, and one that often has unfortunate consequences. And it's hard in this case to see much positive coming out of the French no. Europe will go on as before, but European politicians will be tempted to waste even more time soft-pedaling the fact of global competition rather than helping their people adapt and change.

Chirac will be a chief victim of Sunday's vote, and he richly deserves the scorn that will be shoveled his way. His mistake was far larger than what commentators were citing Sunday night: his decision to put the constitution to a vote even though that wasn't technically necessary. Chirac's real failure was his inability over two terms as president to level with the French people about the changes that are needed to protect the way of life they cherish. He played games with economic reform -- tiptoeing up to the edge and then pulling back at any sign of public displeasure.

There really are two targets of scorn here.  The fool Chirac, for thinking that he was cleverer than he really is,  but also the French people.  The latter for "fearing the future", and the former for fearing the consquences of telling ugly truths to his people.

UPDATE, PART DEUX:  Best. Headline. Ever.

France and Europe limp on after French 'No'

tsk-tsk. The French can be so disagreeable.

Courting Moderates

Every once in a while, John Leo writes something which sparkles with brilliance.  The first couple o' paragraphs of his column, Time to fix the court, is one of them.

As soon as the filibuster deal was announced, we began to hear the argument that President Bush should sustain the spirit of compromise by naming a moderate as his first selection to the Supreme Court. This suggestion, floated mostly by Democrats and faithfully carried in headlines and news reports as a neutral idea, boils down to this: It would be needlessly provocative for Bush to name a Supreme Court justice who reflects his party's basic conviction that something is very wrong with the courts.

Here is the dominant Republican concern in two short sentences, as framed by blogger Mickey Kaus (a conservative Democrat, as it happens): "In the post-Warren era, judges . . . have almost uncheckable antidemocratic power. The Constitution has been durably politicized in a way that the Framers didn't anticipate." Burt Neuborne of New York University law school said recently that his fellow Democrats may be making a mistake by depending so heavily on judges to establish law without seeking true public support.

Well, that's one way of putting it. Another is simply to say that the Democrats consistently rely on judges to impose legislation that they can't get through the normal democratic process because majorities don't want it. As a result, our politics and our courts have been deformed. A contempt for majorities keeps growing on the left, and contempt for the courts keeps rising on the right. Megan McArdle, the sensible blogger at Asymmetrical Information, says Republicans are determined to pack the court because "it is the only way Democrats have left them to undo the quasi-legislation that liberal judges wrote."

He goes on to criticize the lamentable efforts that the GOP has taken to reform the Court, nominating left-leaning moderates, and the cozy relations between Democrats, law professors, the Court, and the media.

It is clear that the Judiciary has been politicized.  Whether it always was, or whether this is a recent development, I'm not certain.  I'm inclined to believe that it always was political, and the appearance of judicial independence was maintained by fitting within the parameters of the dominant political party or philosophy of the time.  For example, Lincoln had a good deal of trouble with the Supreme Court during his tenure, and in partiuclar, with Chief Justice Taney, author of Dredd Scott.  Likewise, FDR had a devil of a time getting the Court to play nice with his New Deal reforms.  What is significant here is that both Lincoln and FDR were watershed leaders, who changed the political landscape after them, and who had to contend with reactionary judges from an earlier paradigm.

The politicized nature of the Judiciary didn't register with many on the Left until Bush v. Gore.  That must have been a rude awakening.  Not only did their traditional allies on the bench fail to support Gore's attempt to litigate his way into the White House, but the 14 Amendment's Due Process and Equal Protection clauses were used to safeguard born-again George W. Bush's electoral victory.  Boy, that must have stung.  Continues Leo:

Don't blow it. Democrats try to frame their case by saying that Republicans are attacking the independence of the judiciary. Not true. They are attacking the process by which the policy preferences of the left are removed from the democratic process and written into the Constitution. The current moment may be the one historic opportunity that the Republicans will have to halt and reverse this severe damage to the courts. If they blow this chance out of timidity or bipartisan niceness, many of us will conclude that the GOP is not really a serious party entitled to our support.

Roe is a particularly noteworthy example.  Now I think that Roe is a through, pragmatic, and ultimately enlightened law.  Which is to say, it would make for great legislation, but makes for horrible jurisprudence.  That abortion was not on the Founding Fathers' radar screen when they wrote the Constitution is moot.  This issue should have been considered, decided, and possibly re-visited by the representatives of the people, in a democratic forum.

Looking back on the case law that has been written by the Court since the Warren Era, it's clear that some kind of reform is needed.  Creative decisions, like Roe, have come down and settled contentious political issues, outside of the political process.  This must stop.  Yet this is not the reason why Democrats want moderates on the bench.  They are afraid that a Republican Court will utilized the precedents and methods which their Courts have honed over the years to produce conservative legal solutions to political problems.  Call it Karma, call it comeuppance, call it turnaround-is-fairplay, call it what you will, but they fear it. 
Which is why I hope that the future Republican Courts do not succumb to heavy-handed interference ala Warren Court.  I don't want "moderates" however. "Moderates," not extremists,  are the political actors most likely to destroy our rights.  Just look at McCain-Feingold.  It circumscribes free political speech for just about everyone except the candidates and the media, in the interest of cleaning up politics.

No, I want Justices who respect the powers and the checks and balances of the Constitution.  But asking an institution to limit itself and its scope is like trying to hold up a falling sky -- pointless. And, what's more, judging by the success of the majority Republicans attempts to limit the size and scope of the Federal government, a conservative Court would redefine the Constitution to suit their own ends.

Ultimately, that's what a mandate means in American Democracy:  the opportunity to fashion and re-fashion the Republic, not the opportunity to compromise and find the middle ground.  As far as the future of the Court is concerned, moderates are red herrrings.

The great, unanswered question that surrounds future conservative Courts, is "In whose interest will they act?"  Pre-9/11 minority conservatism argued for the doctrines of State's Rights and Legislative Supremacy.  Post-9/11 majoritarian Republicans have been more, um, selective, when it comes to pursuing these goals, but the commitment to a more circumscribed Judiciary seems real.  Will a future, conservatve Supreme Court act in accordance with small government or big government Republcans?  Or, will it act in its own institutional interest,  maximize the scope of the Federal government and the role of Federal caselaw in shaping the Republic?  As I see it, these will be foundations of this young century's future consitutional crises.

And Now, a Public Service Annoucement

Comes to us courtesy of Modern Drunkard Magazine Online's 86 Rules of Boozing:.

14. If you offer to buy a woman a drink and she refuses, she does not like you.

15. If you offer to buy a woman a drink and she accepts, she still might not like you.

16. If she buys you a drink, she likes you.

These really should be posted in every men's room.

It's a Conspiracy... C-O-N-er, spiracy

The evil theocrats strike again!  In an effort to silence insane-communist-tinfoil hatter and visionary film artiste Oliver Stone was Arrested on Drug, DUI Charges.  Or maybe it was the Smoking Man?  Or maybe the Second Shooter?  Or maybe the ghost of Richard Nixon and the alive-and-still-kicking Dr. Henry Kissinger?  Or maybe, just maybe, it was orchestrated by the producers of his last movie, Alexander.

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. - Oscar-winning director Oliver Stone was arrested for investigation of drug possession and driving while intoxicated, police said Saturday.

Stone, 58, was arrested Friday night at a police checkpoint on Sunset Boulevard after showing signs of alcohol intoxication, police Sgt. John Edmundson said.

A search of his Mercedes turned up drugs, Edmundson said. He did not specify what kind.

Stone was released Saturday morning after posting $15,000 bail.

We await the mugshot with bated breath.  Anybody want to take bets on the unknown drugs?  I'll give 2-5 on pot, 2-1 on coke, 5-1 on ecstacy.

The EU is eewww... for its would-be citizens, too.

From Stratfor's free e-mail Geopolitical Intelligence Report:

The idea of a united Europe is not a moral project -- it is a mutually beneficial contract that has no moral hold once those benefits are no longer safeguarded.

This gives the idea of Europe a fundamental fragility. A political system that has no basis on which to justify hardship cannot endure hardship, and hardship is the one certainty that comes to all regimes. In this immediate case, Europe -- or at least France, Germany and Italy, the center of gravity of Europe -- is in serious economic trouble. Growth has slowed to only 1.5 percent per year while unemployment has climbed into the double digits. For these three countries, the EU model is simply not delivering on prosperity.

(snip)

Europe either must undergo a massive reinvention or sink into the abyss. In either case, a generation of European workers will pay the price. Like all humans, they will blame someone, and the most logical target -- whether valid or not -- is the immigrant population, whose presence they see as the catalyst for the problem.

There is a deeper level to this. France is France. France was very happy to go to Algeria and declare it "France." Its people have been much less happy to have Algerians come to France and declare it "Algeria." Whatever the irony of it, France is changing demographically, with the inevitable result that many French -- particularly those outside the corporate elite -- don't want their country to change. Even more to the point, some feel that they are losing control of their country to immigrants, and that they no longer have the sovereign right to determine the kind of society they will have.

The EU constitution institutionalizes that powerlessness. The doctrines embedded in the EU recognize the right of immigration from one country to another: Once you have citizenship somewhere, you have the right to go anywhere within the union. This might make sense from an economist's view of labor markets, but it means that France no longer controls its fate. When Turkey enters the EU, the perception is, an avalanche of Muslim immigrants will sweep France, and the European government's bureaucrats will celebrate the shift instead of stopping it. The guarantees of security are being kept in preventing nation-states from fighting, but not -- it is perceived -- in protecting the traditional way of life in France and other countries.

The issue only partly concerns migration. The deeper issue is sovereignty. The government of France is asking its people essentially to transfer major elements of sovereignty to a state that France cannot control. The French do not see a common identity with the rest of Europe, and the rest of Europe does not see a common identity with France. The EU is rooted in an alliance of convenience that is rapidly becoming inconvenient. (emphasis added)

I'm not a big fan of the EU.  I liked the idea of a Common (Free) Market, but it has since then grown into a bloated, metastatizing socialist uber-state.  I suppose this highlights, more than anything else, the difference between American (Anglo?) and Continental governance.  Here, we find a huge outcry when the goverment tries to implement much-needed national ID cards.  There, a fifty year experiment of ever-increasing economic mutual interdependence, legal reform and reconciliation, and surrender of national sovriegnty was foisted upon the citizenry by unaccountable political elites without anything so much as a "by-your-leave", resulting in economic stagnation and a 300 page (!) constitution that nobody wants.  It's a situation that I would not like to find myself in.  It also illustrates why accountability is one of the more important virtues for good, democratic governence.

The e-mail is posted in its entirety after the jump.

Where are they now?

Today's edition brings us the sad rise and fall of Hair Bear. After years of success as a freedom-loving, zookeeper-escaping ne'er-do-well and rocketing to worldwide fame as the Leader of the Hair Bear Bunch, he sadly turned his back on Bubi Bear and Square Bear, in order to pursue his love of music and starlets.

A lifetime of critical accliam and industry accolades later, the inventor of the so-called "Wall of Hair" musical technique, Mr. Bear finds himself embroiled in a murder mystery plot. The former cartoon and recording industry star murdered actress Lana Clarkson at his palatial Alhambra estate in 2003. Authorities allege that this murder is part of a pattern of violent, anti-social behavior:

LOS ANGELES - Prosecutors can introduce evidence in Phil Spector's murder trial to try to show the famed music producer had a history of threatening women before he was charged with killing a B-movie actress in his home two years ago.

In issuing his ruling Monday, Superior Court Judge Larry P. Fidler acknowledged that allowing the evidence was "a dangerous path to go down," but concluded the incidents seemed to illustrate the state's theory.

Deputy District Attorney Doug Sortino had argued before the ruling that Spector used guns to threaten or intimidate people in "an ongoing course of conduct that happens again and again and again."

Outside the courthouse, Spector insisted he "never pulled a gun on these women."

Yet it's becoming increasingly clear that Mr. Bear has been been gripped with by an all-consuming and over-powering misogynist rage that has plagued the celebrity for years. "Ever since his salad days at Cave Block 9 of the Wonderland Zoo," an ursa major close to the case commented," Hair has taken out his frustrations at not being taken seriously by humans on his objects of lust -- their women. It's really sad, humans and bears just don't mix."

The Left Will Eat Itself

Just when I thought that there was no reason to read the SF Chronicle anymore, I happen across this lovely little column by Keith Thompson, who confesses that he "Can no longer abide the simpering voices of self-styled progressives."

In the sixties, America correctly focused on bringing down walls that prevented equal access and due process. It was time to walk the Founders' talk -- and we did. With barriers to opportunity no longer written into law, today the body politic is crying for different remedies.

America must now focus on creating healthy, self-actualizing individuals committed to taking responsibility for their lives, developing their talents, honing their skills and intellects, fostering emotional and moral intelligence, all in all contributing to the advancement of the human condition.

At the heart of authentic liberalism lies the recognition, in the words of John Gardner, "that the ever renewing society will be a free society (whose] capacity for renewal depends on the individuals who make it up." A continuously renewing society, Gardner believed, is one that seeks to "foster innovative, versatile, and self-renewing men and women and give them room to breathe."

One aspect of my politics hasn't changed a bit. I became a liberal in the first place to break from the repressive group orthodoxies of my reactionary hometown.

This past January, my liberalism was in full throttle when I bid the cultural left goodbye to escape a new version of that oppressiveness. I departed with new clarity about the brilliance of liberal democracy and the value system it entails; the quest for freedom as an intrinsically human affair; and the dangers of demands for conformity and adherence to any point of view through silence, fear, or coercion.

True, it took a while to see what was right before my eyes. A certain misplaced loyalty kept me from grasping that a view of individuals as morally capable of and responsible for making the principle decisions that shape their lives is decisively at odds with the contemporary left's entrance-level view of people as passive and helpless victims of powerful external forces, hence political wards who require the continuous shepherding of caretaker elites.

Leftists who no longer speak of the duties of citizens, but only of the rights of clients, cannot be expected to grasp the importance (not least to our survival) of fostering in the Middle East the crucial developmental advances that gave rise to our own capacity for pluralism, self-reflection, and equality. A left averse to making common cause with competent, self- determining individuals -- people who guide their lives on the basis of received values, everyday moral understandings, traditional wisdom, and plain common sense -- is a faction that deserves the marginalization it has pursued with such tenacity for so many years.

All of which is why I have come to believe, and gladly join with others who have discovered for themselves, that the single most important thing a genuinely liberal person can do now is walk away from the house the left has built. The renewal of any tradition that deserves the name "progressive" becomes more likely with each step in a better direction.

Amen, brother.  Do read the entire column.  While I excerpted the point, I left a lot of good stuff.

On another point, it seems to me that Dr. King's legacy was betrayed by 60s era liberals and progressives that turned their movement into a career.  Have you ever heard a civil rights lawyer say, "Yup. That does it.  We're all done here."  I haven't. 

And what Mr. Thompson says is true:  the Left reduces people.  It reduces them to victims, among other things, who are not only not responsible for their actions, but are also not responsible for their own chracter, seeing as how they have been determined by outside forces and powers-that-be.  This is the haunting legacy of Marxism.   People are not people, they are masses; and to affect change they must remain en masse, in solidarity with each other.  They become indeterminate things to be shaped, subordinate to the group.  And, even worse, they are only part of a greater group, in whose essence they share.  That is to say, all that they are, and all that they will be, is their race.

This is the toxic legacy of the American Left: to end racism, they became racists. Or, in words that still-unable-to-let-go 60s Liberals can understand, the Left had to destroy the village to save it.

Not bad for a guy that can't pronounce "nuclear"

Fouad Ajami:

To venture into the Arab world, as I did recently over four weeks in Qatar, Kuwait, Jordan and Iraq, is to travel into Bush Country. I was to encounter people from practically all Arab lands, to listen in on a great debate about the possibility of freedom and liberty. I met Lebanese giddy with the Cedar Revolution that liberated their country from the Syrian prison that had seemed an unalterable curse. They were under no illusions about the change that had come their way. They knew that this new history was the gift of an American president who had put the Syrian rulers on notice. The speed with which Syria quit Lebanon was astonishing, a race to the border to forestall an American strike that the regime could not discount. I met Syrians in the know who admitted that the fear of American power, and the example of American forces flushing Saddam Hussein out of his spider hole, now drive Syrian policy. They hang on George Bush's words in Damascus, I was told: the rulers wondering if Iraq was a crystal ball in which they could glimpse their future.

The weight of American power, historically on the side of the dominant order, now drives this new quest among the Arabs. For decades, the intellectual classes in the Arab world bemoaned the indifference of American power to the cause of their liberty. Now a conservative American president had come bearing the gift of Wilsonian redemption. For a quarter century the Pax Americana had sustained the autocracy of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak: He had posed as America's man on the Nile, a bulwark against the Islamists. He was sly and cunning, running afoul of our purposes in Iraq and over Israeli-Palestinian matters. He had nurtured a culture of antimodernism and anti-Americanism, and had gotten away with it. Now the wind from Washington brought tidings: America had wearied of Mr. Mubarak, and was willing to bet on an open political process, with all its attendant risks and possibilities. The brave oppositional movement in Cairo that stepped forth under the banner of Kifaya ("Enough!") wanted the end of his reign: It had had enough of his mediocrity, enough of the despotism of an aging officer who had risen out of the military bureaucracy to entertain dynastic dreams of succession for his son. Egyptians challenging the quiescence of an old land may have had no kind words to say about America in the past. But they were sure that the play between them and the regime was unfolding under Mr. Bush's eyes.

Unmistakably, there is in the air of the Arab world a new contest about the possibility and the meaning of freedom. This world had been given over to a dark nationalism, and to the atavisms of a terrible history. For decades, it was divided between rulers who monopolized political power and intellectual classes shut out of genuine power, forever prey to the temptations of radicalism. Americans may not have cared for those rulers, but we judged them as better than the alternative. We feared the "Shia bogeyman" in Iraq and the Islamists in Algeria, Egypt and Tunisia; we bought the legend that Syria's dominion in Lebanon kept the lid on anarchy. We feared tinkering with the Saudi realm; it was terra incognita to us, and the House of Saud seemed a surer bet than the "wrath and virtue" of the zealots. Even Yasser Arafat, a retailer of terror, made it into our good graces as a man who would tame the furies of the masked men of Hamas. That bargain with authoritarianism did not work, and begot us the terrors of 9/11.

The children of Islam, and of the Arabs in particular, had taken to the road, and to terror. There were many liberal, secular Arabs now clamoring for American intervention. The claims of sovereignty were no longer adequate; a malignant political culture had to be "rehabilitated and placed in receivership," a wise Jordanian observer conceded. Mr. Bush may not be given to excessive philosophical sophistication, but his break with "the soft bigotry of low expectations" in the Arab-Islamic world has found eager converts among Muslims and Arabs keen to repair their world, to wean it from a culture of scapegoating and self-pity. Pick up the Arabic papers today: They are curiously, and suddenly, readable. They describe the objective world; they give voice to recognition that the world has bypassed the Arabs. The doors have been thrown wide open, and the truth of that world laid bare. Grant Mr. Bush his due: The revolutionary message he brought forth was the simple belief that there was no Arab and Muslim "exceptionalism" to the appeal of liberty. For a people mired in historical pessimism, the message of this outsider was a powerful antidote to the culture of tyranny.

I'm not one that gives himself over to the idea that unsophisticated people are naturally more intelligent or more virtuous than most, but it's increasingly clear that Bush's Middle East strategy was the right one.  The curious thing is that his strategy seemed to be the right course, precisely because it entrusts Arabs with their own future, and diminishes the role, status, and knowledge of elites, here and abroad.

More Star Wars Silliness

In tribute to Sith's PG-13 rating, I offer the following silliness:

Your Star Wars Pickup Line

"In time, you will call me.....Master."

What's Your Star Wars Pickup Line?

Your Amazing Yoda Sex Line

"When 900 years old you get, Viagra you need too, hmmmm?"

The Amazing Yoda Sex Line Generator

Of course, there's nothing sillier than the lengths to which George Lucas will go to make a buck.