REDUX

Well that explains...

His boyish good looks.

LONDON - British Prime Minister Tony Blair has spent more than 1,800 pounds (US$3,130) of taxpayers' money on makeup and cosmetic artists over the past six years, according to the government.

Tradition in an Age of Rationalization

I love the Wall Street Journal, and not just because I'm a capitalist swine.  No, I love them because, more than other news outlest, they eschew he-said-she-said journalism or I'm-right-dumbass-becase-I've-got-a-bigger-soapbox-than-you editorializing and rise to a level of intellectually honest and insightful discourse, as illustrated by this excellent piece by Lee Harris, The Future of Tradition:

Each of these wars has its own particular antagonists, each its own weapons of combat, each its own battlefield. But the essential nature of a culture war is invariant: A set of traditional values comes under attack by those who, like the Greek Sophist, the French philosophe and the American intellectual, make their living by their superior proficiency in handling abstract ideas, and promote a radically new and revolutionary set of values. This is precisely what one would expect from those who excel in dispute and argumentation.

In every culture war the existing customs and traditions of a society are called to the bar of reason and ruthlessly interrogated and cross-examined by an intellectual elite asking whether they can be rationally justified or are simply the products of superstition and thus unworthy of being taken seriously by enlightened men and women.

Indeed, there could be no better example of this disdainful attitude toward inherited tradition than that displayed by the chief justice of the Supreme Court of Canada in discussing her court's legalization of gay marriage, clearly expressed by her summary dismissal of any opposition to the high court's decision as arising from nothing more than "residual personal prejudice." Against such opposition, it is no wonder that many conservatives--including many of those who call themselves neoconservatives--have attempted to combat the opponents of tradition with their opponents' own weapon of enlightened rationality.

But is it possible to defend tradition with the help of reason? Can a particular tradition be justified by reason? And what if our traditional belief conflicts with reason--can we rationally justify keeping it? Suppose we have been raised in the belief that we must wash our hands before every meal in order to appease a local deity in our pantheon, say, the god of the harvest; and suppose again that we have come to learn of the hygienic benefits of washing our hands before every meal. Must we keep the absurd tradition once we have grasped its scientific rationale? In either case, whether tradition and reason conflict, or tradition is revealed to be reason disguised, reason wins and tradition loses.

Where reason shines forth, then, tradition is no longer necessary. Hence the question before us: In a world that is being more and more rationalized, does tradition have a future? Or will we one day look upon it as we now look upon the myths of the ancient world--quaint and amusing, but of no real relevance to our lives?

Provocative questions.  As they say, read it all -- his conclusions may surprise you.

GOP & NAACP: Happy Together?

RealClearPolitics posts some of RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman's July 14 speech before the NAACP.  We repost bits n' pieces approvingly.

The party of Lincoln and the African American community have a proud history together.

Our party was founded to eliminate slavery, and our first Republican President was Abraham Lincoln, the Great Emancipator.

It was the Republican Party that led the effort to pass the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments.

We spearheaded the Homestead Act of 1862 and the Morrill Land Grant College Act, which recognized that education and opportunity and property ownership were all essential to the American Dream.

(snip)

The history of the other party is a different one. Democrats were the party of Jim Crow and Democratic filibusters blocked progress for decades.

Despite this history, the Democratic Party by the 1960s had something real and tangible to overcome this legacy. Lyndon Johnson, a Democratic President, signed what in my opinion were the most important laws of the 20th century: the civil rights act, voting rights act, open housing law.

By the 70s and into the 80s and 90s, the Democratic Party solidified its gains in the African American community, and we Republicans did not effectively reach out.

Some Republicans gave up on winning the African American vote, looking the other way or trying to benefit politically from racial polarization. I am here today as the Republican Chairman to tell you we were wrong.

But if my party benefited from racial polarization in the past, it is the Democratic Party that benefits from it today.

I know it is not in my interest as chairman of the Republican Party for close to 90% of African-Americans to vote for the Democrat every election. But more important, it’s not in the interest of African-Americans for 90% to vote for the Democrat every election.

And it’s not healthy for the country for our political parties to be so racially polarized.

African-American voters should have the benefit of a two-party system. In recent years, the Democratic Party, in my judgment, has come to take many African American voters for granted.

Just as the Democrats came to this community in 1964 with something real to offer, today we Republicans have something that should cause you to take another look at the party of Lincoln.

Just last month, Bruce Gordon talked about a wider vision of civil rights. "We've got to get the right emphasis placed on economic equality," he said. "I happen to think that when you have economic stability and equality that often becomes an enabler for social equality."

I couldn’t agree more.

The next step in civil rights is to build on equal treatment under the law to ensure equal opportunity to pursue the American Dream -- equal opportunity in education, equal opportunity in where you live, equal opportunity in making a living, equal opportunity for a secure retirement.

To all Americans who want equal opportunity in America, give us a chance, and we’ll give you a choice.

This message -- give us a chance and we’ll give you a choice—should sound familiar. It’s the same theme that 50 years ago inspired decent Americans like Joe Mehlman to support the work of the NAACP. We’re not asking for folks to embrace all of our policies or to vote for all of our candidates. We’re not asking for agreement on everything or endorsement of our platform. All we’re asking for is a fair hearing, the chance to make our case, the benefit of the doubt that we’re sincere in wanting to renew our historic bonds.

(snip)

Renewing our common bonds is important for the African American community. As my law school classmate and friend and now Senator Barak Obama says, there’s a reason that the farmers usually get what they want in politics. All Americans – white, black, Asian, Hispanic – are better served by having two parties competing for their attention and their support.

The NAACP is too important, your mission too urgent, to be identified with one political party. As we go forward, let’s talk more, and look for more opportunities where we can work together. And when we do disagree—and we will—let’s remember our proud past and what we can accomplish when we work together.

Steyn speaks truth, vii

The only distraction here is the pitiful parochialism of our political culture. .

Those Reckless Bush Tax Cuts

OpinionJournal:

Let's see if we can get this straight: When tax revenues fall and budget deficits go up, it's bad news. But when tax revenues rise and deficits decline, it's still bad news.

At least that seems to be the way a sizable chunk of Washington is reacting to this week's report from the White House budget office that the federal deficit is down by nearly $100 billion this fiscal year, that the deficit as a share of GDP is down to 2.7% (very near its historical average), and that this is all happening because tax receipts are surging by more than 14%. Uncle Sam is having a better year so far than even Paris Hilton, but half of the Beltway is depressed.

John Spratt, the ranking Democrat on the House Budget Committee, seems especially upset that this revenue surge isn't coming from wage income, but rather from investment income--that is, the so-called non-withholding income tax collections, which have skyrocketed by some 30% this year. "These are typically taxes paid on one-time capital gains, bonuses, stock-options income that may not recur," he laments.

Well, sure, Congressman, the 2003 reductions in the tax rates on dividends and capital gains seem to be resulting in much higher tax revenues on . . . dividends and capital gains. This is called the Laffer Curve effect, and we thank Mr. Spratt for validating it. If he wants those revenues to "recur," maybe he'll even vote to make those tax cuts permanent.

This revenue surge from investment income also rebuts the mantra that the 2003 tax cuts were a giveaway to the rich. Nearly half of all Americans have some kind of stock ownership, and thus have shared in these gains in investment income. And if most of the extra tax income is coming from capital gains and dividend payments, that would have to mean that the rich in America are paying more taxes, not less, as a result of the 2003 tax cut.

By the way, we don't recall Mr. Spratt and other Democrats lamenting when a similar spike in taxes from investment income was boosting tax revenues to historic heights as a share of GDP during the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s, as per the nearby chart. Then it was all said to be an economic miracle; now it's a windfall for the wealthy. This selective budget criticism couldn't be related to who's sitting in the White House, could it?

Much Ado About Nothing

If Karl Rove were any other man, he'd be a hero to these people.

Democrats and most of the Beltway press corps are baying for Karl Rove's head over his role in exposing a case of CIA nepotism involving Joe Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame. On the contrary, we'd say the White House political guru deserves a prize--perhaps the next iteration of the "Truth-Telling" award that The Nation magazine bestowed upon Mr. Wilson before the Senate Intelligence Committee exposed him as a fraud.

For Mr. Rove is turning out to be the real "whistleblower" in this whole sorry pseudo-scandal. He's the one who warned Time's Matthew Cooper and other reporters to be wary of Mr. Wilson's credibility. He's the one who told the press the truth that Mr. Wilson had been recommended for the CIA consulting gig by his wife, not by Vice President Dick Cheney as Mr. Wilson was asserting on the airwaves. In short, Mr. Rove provided important background so Americans could understand that Mr. Wilson wasn't a whistleblower but was a partisan trying to discredit the Iraq War in an election campaign. Thank you, Mr. Rove.

Media chants aside, there's no evidence that Mr. Rove broke any laws in telling reporters that Ms. Plame may have played a role in her husband's selection for a 2002 mission to investigate reports that Iraq was seeking uranium ore in Niger. To be prosecuted under the 1982 Intelligence Identities Protection Act, Mr. Rove would had to have deliberately and maliciously exposed Ms. Plame knowing that she was an undercover agent and using information he'd obtained in an official capacity. But it appears Mr. Rove didn't even know Ms. Plame's name and had only heard about her work at Langley from other journalists.

On the "no underlying crime" point, moreover, no less than the New York Times and Washington Post now agree. So do the 36 major news organizations that filed a legal brief in March aimed at keeping Mr. Cooper and the New York Times's Judith Miller out of jail.

"While an investigation of the leak was justified, it is far from clear--at least on the public record--that a crime took place," the Post noted the other day. Granted the media have come a bit late to this understanding, and then only to protect their own, but the logic of their argument is that Mr. Rove did nothing wrong either.

(ASIDE:  We should note, at this point, that the underlying logic of the media's argument -- while persuasive to this observer -- ultimately means nothing, because, as we all know, journalists are above the law.)

If there's any scandal at all here, it is that this entire episode has been allowed to waste so much government time and media attention, not to mention inspire a "special counsel" probe. The Bush Administration is also guilty on this count, since it went along with the appointment of prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald in an election year in order to punt the issue down the road. But now Mr. Fitzgerald has become an unguided missile, holding reporters in contempt for not disclosing their sources even as it becomes clearer all the time that no underlying crime was at issue.

As for the press corps, rather than calling for Mr. Rove to be fired, they ought to be grateful to him for telling the truth.

Yes. That's what they should do.  But they won't.  Because journalism is not an intellectually honest discipline.  Especially not how it is practiced within the Beltway.  The Washington media establishment (and their fellow travelers in the Democratic Party) are calling for Rove's head out of spite and anger (and political opportunism) for looking like fools for buying Wilson's fraud and falling prey to yellowcake fever, but also over the hung-on-their-own-petard "martyrdom" of Judith Miller and Matt Cooper, prompted, you might remember, by the White House Press Corps' calls for a special prosecutor to investigate themselves.

Still, we await the results of the special prosecutor's investigation.  Especially since we are eager to evaluate the degree of disengenousness that characterizes that reporting.

Taranto Gem

From today's Best of the Web Today.

Terror vs. Medicaid Billing

Not long ago, Karl Rove upset many liberals by suggesting that they aren't serious about fighting terrorism. Among those taking offense were the editorialists at the New York Times, who declared on June 25:

The president and his supporters continue to duck behind 9/11 whenever they feel pressure about what is happening in Iraq. The most cynical recent example was Karl Rove's absurd and offensive declaration this week that conservatives and liberals had different reactions to 9/11.

Today the Times weighs in against expanding the USA Patriot Act to allow terror investigators to use a procedure called an administrative subpoena to gather information. We gather that conservatives by and large support this proposal while liberals oppose it, which itself would be evidence that Rove was right. But our jaw dropped when we read this paragraph:

The bill's defenders note that administrative subpoenas are already allowed in other kinds of investigations. But these are generally in highly regulated areas, like Medicaid billing. The administrative subpoena power in the new bill would apply to anything the F.B.I. deemed related to alleged foreign intelligence or terrorism, and could, in practice, give the F.B.I. access to almost any private records it wanted.

So in the Times' view, it's worth making some compromises on civil liberties when something really weighty is at stake, like Medicaid funding. But terrorism just doesn't rise to that level of importance.

Those HMOs are pretty dastardly, though, don't you think?

London.

Our condolences go out to Londoners and Britons everywhere today.

As well as our admiration for their big brass ones (emphasis added).

At dusk, hundreds of thousands of Londoners began a long walk home, with the underground network that carries 3 million passengers a day closed at least until Friday.

Thomas Carr, a 63-year-old electrician who faced a two-hour walk home, said he would keep using the underground.

"It won't put me off using the Tube," he said. "You can't let them beat you."

Unintended Political Consequences

James Taranto goes into greater depth on his theory, the "Roe Effect".

Roe v. Wade is a study in unanticipated consequences. By establishing a constitutional right to abortion, the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court no doubt thought they were settling the issue for good, accelerating a process of liberalization that was already under way in 1973. But instead of consensus, the result was polarization. The issue of abortion soon after, and for the first time, took a prominent place in national political campaigns. By 1980, both major political parties had adopted extreme positions--Republicans favoring a "pro-life" constitutional amendment to ban abortion, and Democrats opposing virtually all regulation on "pro-choice" grounds. Every presidential and vice-presidential nominee since then has toed the party line on abortion.

Polarization over abortion coincided with a period of Republican ascendancy. Since the parties split on abortion, the GOP has won five of seven presidential elections, and no Democrat has had a majority of the popular vote. Republicans took over the Senate in 1980, and both houses of Congress in 1994. Obviously, many other factors have contributed to Republican success, but it is hard to look at these results and conclude that abortion has been a winning issue for the Democrats. Thus, the politics of abortion has favored the party that opposes the court-imposed "consensus."

This is not to say that America has embraced the near-absolutist pro-life position that the Republican Party formally endorses. Most Americans are moderate or ambivalent on abortion, rejecting the extreme positions on either side. One reason Republicans have an advantage is that as long as Roe remains in effect--taking off the table any restriction that imposes an "undue burden" on a woman seeking to abort her pregnancy--Republicans are an extreme antiabortion party only in theory. When it comes to actual legislation, the GOP favors only modest--and popular--regulations. The Democrats, on the other hand, must defend such unpopular practices as partial-birth abortion, taxpayer-subsidized abortion, and abortions for 13-year-olds without their parents' knowledge.

Okay, so the political analysis is pretty straightforward and historically faithful, right?  Wait... there's the demography.

Compounding the GOP advantage is what I call the Roe effect. It is a statement of fact, not a moral judgment, to observe that every pregnancy aborted today results in one fewer eligible voter 18 years from now. More than 40 million legal abortions have occurred in the United States since 1973, and these are not randomly distributed across the population. Black women, for example, have a higher abortion ratio (percentage of pregnancies aborted) than Hispanic women, whose abortion ratio in turn is higher than that of non-Hispanic whites. Since blacks vote Democratic in far greater proportions than Hispanics, and whites are more Republican than Hispanics or blacks, ethnic disparities in abortion ratios would be sufficient to give the GOP a significant boost--surely enough to account for George W. Bush's razor-thin Florida victory in 2000.

The Roe effect, however, refers specifically to the nexus between the practice of abortion and the politics of abortion. It seems self-evident that pro-choice women are more likely to have abortions than pro-life ones, and common sense suggests that children tend to gravitate toward their parents' values. This would seem to ensure that Americans born after Roe v. Wade have a greater propensity to vote for the pro-life party--that is, Republican--than they otherwise would have.

(snip)

Has the Roe effect borne itself out in practice? The results are mixed. In terms of reapportionment, the trend is decidedly in favor of Republican states. The 30 states George W. Bush carried in 2000 had 271 electoral votes, a bare majority. Reapportionment after the 2000 census increased that number to 278. In the 1980s, they were worth only 267 electoral votes, not enough for a majority; in the 1970s, 260. The trend continues: Of the 10 fastest-growing states in 2003-04, Bush carried nine in 2004. (One of them, New Mexico, went for Al Gore four years earlier.)

Some might find that shocking and other unpersuasive.  Statistics are funny things, and I find myself reflexively skeptical of them.  But what I find most provocative, however, is his conclusion:

And if Republicans keep winning the presidency and appointing Supreme Court justices, Roe v. Wade may eventually be overturned. (This almost certainly would have happened in 1992 if the Senate had approved Robert Bork's confirmation five years earlier.) If Roe goes by the boards, one would expect fertility to increase in states that outlawed abortion, which would presumably be largely conservative and Republican ones. If the Roe effect continues to operate, though, it would make those states more Democratic and liberal, since women who otherwise might get abortions would no longer have the option in their home states. But in the end, that may not matter. If Roe were overturned, the politics of abortion would change dramatically, and in the Democrats' favor. With the legality of abortion itself on the line, the debate would shift away from the pro-choice extremes, forcing pro-choice politicians to take a more centrist (and popular) position. Republicans would be torn between their antiabortion base and more moderate voters, for whom an outright ban on abortion is a bridge too far.

The best solution for both parties would likely be a return to the status quo ante Roe--that is, for Congress and the president largely to ignore abortion, and leave its regulation to the state legislatures. This would allow politicians, Democrat and Republican alike, to tailor their views to match those of their constituents and their own consciences, and it would remove abortion as a polarizing issue from national elections. Thus, one might say that both Roe and the Roe effect contain the seeds of their own demise.

This unintended consequences effect -- bearing the seeds of demise within -- seems to a regular feature of political and economic ideologies.  Take the French Revolution. Out of their zeal to remake their world, the Jacobins put everyone they could grab to the guillotine, reasoning that Louis XVI was corrupt, and that vritue was rational, so reason could arrive at virtue, and, what's more, by using terror once could rationally mold the behavior of the citizenry. Hence, one decadent, arbitrary, and absolutist politcal order was replaced by a paranoid, arbitrary, and purist political regime which equated public terror = private virtue.  That didn't work out so well.

Or take communist political economies.  They purport to be the magic bullet for political and economic inequality, by promising a democracy that is more democratic than democracy.  But, banning private property, and making the revolution paramount above the lives of citizens, means that those who would benefit from the communist takeover would actually sink into greater slavery.

Or take the Democrat's New Deal.  The rationale for a larger government assuming constitutinally questionable powers was that in a time of depression, the government would be better at deliving goods and services to the people than the private sector.  Over time, the citizenry was told to think of themselves as consumers, and the government, immune from the private sector's boom-bust cycles and profit motives, as the best provider for their every need.  After the successive crises of the Great Depression and WWII abated, this reasoning began to lose steam.  The newly-minted consumer-citizen found out that they, in fact, were not recieving better or cheaper goods and services from the government than they would the private sector.  Instead, citizens see high taxes and unresponsive bureaucracy which prevents and frustrates their opportunities -- "for their own good."  As a result,  they began to clamor for a reduction of the government's role in their lives. So, by creating the expectation of a consumer-provider relationship, the New Deal government model eventually undercuts its reason for increased size in order to be involved in all facets of its citizens lives.

Two more.  The Democratic Party of the late 20th century was seen as a party that was more attractive to racial minorities than the Republicans.  This was because they made a point of reaching out to minorities, and purported to represent them with leaders from their communities. As the party of government, they believed in using public sector solutions to rectify problems attributed to racism in the polity. The electoral incentive motivating Democratic Party leaders was to spin the spectre of racism into a near-insurmountable bogeyman for their constituents, with the only solution being the public-sector activities that they were promoting. The problem was that while the rationale for the Demoicrats' assistance was to help minorites get ahead, the solution, more government entitlement programs, actually made minorites dependent upon the Democratic Party's largesse. This led to a vicious cycle -- minorites felt marginialized because they were dependent on the government; Democratic leaders would propose a new program to ameliorate the fact of their marginalization, which created more and more electoral constituencies, but would not solve the problem; which would further deepen their dependence, etc., ad nauseum.

The last example of unintended consequences comes from the Republican party.  The dawning realization of this effect is, I believe, leading the party to a down-the-road split.  Republicans have long argued for less government incursion into and regulation of the private sector, rightly believing that economic freedom is vital to maintaining and upholding the rest of our rights and liberties.  What is interesting is that the more economic freedom or financial independence that people experience, the more they feel empowered, and the more they feel empowered, the more they will come to their own conclusions on issues of the day, and in particular, social issues.  And this is the fault-line in the G.O.P.  One branch would like to promote traditional social values and solutions to social issues, while the other views such promotion as undue or inappropriate government incursion into our lives, much like excessive regulation or public sector enterprises.  Sure, the more that people are empowered, many will choose to construct their lives on a more traditional footing.  But this doesn't change the fact that they are choosing that footing, instead of uncritically assuming it.  Greater empowerment of the citizens, especially at the expense or in the teeth of the public sector would lead to greater skepticism and self-reliance, precisely the kind of character traits which would bridle at attempts coming out of that same public sector to influence individual morality in a social context.

That long tangent aside, even as I remain skeptical about the demographic argument, the idea that overturning of Roe would ulitmately hurt the G.O.P. is a persuasive one.  But Taranto's conclusion -- "a return to the status quo ante Roe" -- is unlikely.  So much political and financial resources and intellectual and emotional commitment have been tied up in this fight, that it is unlikey that the parties will drop the issue and let the state legislatures fight it out.  Both sides have found the tempation of Federal power too great to ignore, even if its exercise ultimately harms their political fortunes.

UPDATE: Megan McArdle offers the following analysis on what would happen if the G.O.P base was successful in getting Roe overturned:

Oh, I'm sure that striking down Roe would cause a temporary electoral backlash. But I think it'd be pretty temporary. By two years after the decision, pretty much all the states where the people live who want abortion to be legal, would have legal abortion. A handful would make abortion illegal. And eventually, all but the hard-core pro-choice activists would contentedly settle into the new status quo.

(snip)

Moreover, I think that they're vastly overestimating the importance that people in the mushy middle place on abortion. Look at me: pro-choice woman, early thirties, socially liberal. But I just don't care that much about abortion. The only people who do care that much are political activists, some health care workers, and the fairly small percentage of the population which is regularly having sex with people they don't want to bear children with. I'm not even sure that I'd vote on the issue if it were coming up for legalisation in my state; there are a lot more pressing economic issues on my mind. Two thirds of Americans may say they support Roe, but for a large number of them the question is academic, and, frankly, not that interesting.

Thus, the argument that Republicans don't dare touch Roe strikes me as so much wishful thinking. If pro-lifers can get an anti-Roe court, at the expense of a couple of years of electoral setbacks, I bet they take that deal in a New York minute.

Which is significant, because such a result would be most like Taranto's status quo ante Roe. Would striking down Roe have the unintended consequence of nuetralizing a Republican political advantage?

More Reflections on the Meaning of Independence Day

No, I'm not talking about Independence Day with President Bill Pullman. (Although, I don't think it was accidental that the redneck-type had to be sacrificed to for the greater good and survival of humanity...)

A little over a month ago, I found myself in a heated discussion with a good friend, who shall remain nameless, from school.  Originally Bulgarian, he had emigrated to the United States as a young teenager.  I mention this only because it has some bearing on our argument.

He insisted that the United States was not something new; that it was -- at best -- a molten-pot copy of Europe.  I instantly took offense at such a preposterous suggestion.

Me:  The United States is an original! 

Nameless:  How could you say anything like that?  What language do you speak?  What kind of clothes do you wear?  What kind of foo-- er, uh... OK... wait... uh... what kind of culture do you have?

Me:  You misunderstand me.  It's like a work of art:  sure there might be influences, borrowed techniques, even, but it forms its own, whole and complete work.

Nameless:  Always with the politics! You'd think that Americans invented democracy or something!

Me:  Well, no, but we did invent something just as important:  inalienable rights.

Oh yes we did.  And it was good:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed...

That particular conversation then dovetailed into a discussion of separation of powers and whether or not the Judiciary was really independent here or in backward Europe, and whether or not "sophistication" was nothing more than a mask people affected to hide their weakness.  Still, something was missing that hadn't occurred to me, until now.

Absinthe & Cookies points out this marvelous Op-Ed in the Scotsman in their post, For The Fourth.  The tasty morsels:

As Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, has put it, we are engaged in a great struggle in which "both our security and our moral conscience tell us that this [the Middle East] is a part of the world that can no longer be isolated from the prosperity and human dignity that freedom brings".

In Paris this year, she said: "This is not an issue of military power. This is an issue of the power of ideas."

Those ideas are what made the American revolution. The idea that all men - and now women too - are conceived in liberty and granted certain inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Revolutionary stuff in 1776 - and still, alas, far from self-evident in the dark corners of the world today.

Two centuries later these ideas have not lost their power, or their appeal, which helps to explain why young men from Tulsa or Omaha are giving what Abraham Lincoln called "the full measure of devotion" in far-off Mesopotamia.

But wait, there's more:

Unlike every other western country, the US retains a purpose greater than maintaining the comfort of its present circumstances. Highfalutin words such as liberty and progress have not been stripped of their meaning and - at its best - modern America still looks to the future with confidence, not trepidation, confident in its ability to stare destiny in the eye and not shirk from the challenges ahead.

And, finally, there's this:

But it is also important to say, this 4 July, that one need not have ever visited the US to feel in tune with what it means to be an American. It is an empire of the mind (and the imagination) as much as it is a military and economic superpower. The principles of the American Revolution remain sound. The World Trade Centre no longer stands, but the language of the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights does.

No other country has embedded the "pursuit of happiness" - the great goal of mankind - in the foundations of the state; nowhere else is the idea of liberty so revered. There is such a thing as an American sensibility and it can be felt from the Baltic to the Pacific.

Could the United States be doing better? Wrong question. If not America, then who? No-one, that's who. At its best, America and American ideals remain, in Lincoln's famous words, "the last, best hope of mankind".  The United States still believes in a place called hope. As it celebrates its 229th birthday today, we should too.

Imagine.  How ironic to think that the nation considered by most to be an intellectual wasteland is secretly the font of subversive ideas like "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness".  How strange to think that these ideas are worth fighting for, and remain worth it, even when we fight on behalf of others.  How remarkable to think that "unsophisticated" America is "the last, best hope of mankind".  No wonder Europeans are so resentful.

Did the American Revolution transform the world with the infusion of "an American sensibility", i.e. "a purpose greater than maintaining the comfort of its present circumstances"?  That might be a little bit of a stretch.  But the infectious idea -- the very American idea -- the hope that things can be better,  not by believing in a Big Idea, but beginning with love of liberty and the pursuit of happiness... well, this is another thing, completely new and original to this country, which we celebrate this day.