Black Friday

It has come to this. But who's really to blame? I know many people who don't fall for the "Black Friday" hype. Some people abhor crowds and have their holiday shopping done already. Personally, I don't mind the bustle of the normal holiday season and won't start shopping for some weeks yet. But some people can't resist the compulsion to be present at an obscene hour for an arbitrarily declared beginning of the season. The stores exacerbate the condition with promises of the best prices for the earliest customers. The term "Black Friday" comes from their expectation that sales after Thanksgiving will put them in the black for the year. For sales staffs it's probably had a different meaning for some time, as the day must be one of the year's worst for them. Now the term probably approaches the meaning the Universal studio intended when they made it the title of a 1940 horror film. The day after Thanksgiving has been a kind of spectacle for some time, now, a manufactured false event, a means of exploiting people's tendency to take a four-day weekend when there's a Thursday holiday. There's no easy fix for the situation. You can only hope that people decide that the event isn't worth the danger, but that might not sink in until a shopper dies.

Culture War by Any Other Name ...

The Obama victory edition of The American Prospect, a liberal monthly, arrived with my mail today. It's not that celebratory, since the Prospect is a fairly dry, wonkish journal, but Ann Friedman's column still stood out for contrarian grumpiness. She's disappointed at several setbacks for gay rights: bans on same-sex marriage in three states and a ban on adoption by same-sex couples in a fourth. These results belie hopeful talk about the end of the "culture wars," Friedman claims. Rather, they reveal the need for a new offensive, only with a twist. Friedman wants progressives to keep fighting the "culture war," but not to call it that anymore.

We'll continue to lose (Friedman writes) until we can successfully relabel LGBT rights a civil-rights issue situated firmly within the context of other civil-rights struggles, not an issue mired in the culture-war swamp of moral controversy...."Culture" implies we are comfortable with different parts of our country and different groups of people seeing the issue differently. It implies that there is no absolute right or wrong -- just two sparring factions -- and that we'll simply have to wait for the rest of the country to come around.

"I'm sorry," she adds, "but that's just not good enough." Unfortunately, her proposed approach won't be good enough if it means denying that there is, in fact, a cultural war going on. If she means that advocating equal rights for homosexuals should not be seen as a "cultural" thing, I can accept that. The problem is that denying equal rights for homosexuals is a cultural thing. The most vocal homophobes believe that homophobia is part of their cultural birthright. What does someone like Maggie Gallagher say nearly every week? That being compelled by the state to tolerate same-sex marriage would be a violation of her cultural rights, her right as a believer and her right of conscience to say that homosexuality is wrong.

Friedman thinks it would be effective to equate same-sex marriage with interracial marriage. It almost seems as if she thinks no one has ever suggested this before. Yet homophobes themselves frequently invoke that argument in order to express their outrage at the equation. Giving at least some homophobes the benefit of the doubt and assuming that they're not racists, their view seems to be that there is no moral basis for objecting to interracial marriage, while their religion requires them to make moral objections to same-sex marriage. Culture enables and empowers their homophobia. Friedman is kidding herself and her readers if she thinks she can run around that obstacle instead of confronting the culture of homophobia. No matter what she says or what flag she wants to fly under, the other side knows it's waging a culture war, and it fights with the desperate fanaticism of those who feel that everything they know is at stake. They think that, if they lose, their culture goes. Their opponents should not necessarily disagree.

While criticizing Friedman's strategy, I can't deny her conclusion: "The harsh reality is that, just as the country wasn't rabidly conservative when it elected and re-elected George W. Bush, today's America is no progressive wonderland." Nor does it need to be one for Friedman's cause to prevail. The culture war itself is fought on a different plane from partisan politics. Libertarians are among her most likely allies, but they think "progressive" is a dirty word. The key to securing same-sex rights may be to decouple the cause from the bipolar partisanship typical of this country, find more allies outside one's preferred party, and surround the cultural enemy in a constantly shrinking space. They've been forced to retreat before and can be made to do so again. But that's not likely to happen if you don't acknowledge your enemy for what it is and act accordingly. If this be culture war, as a postmodern Patrick Henry might say, make the most of it.

Wars and Rumors of Wars

The news from Mumbai probably lends unearned credibility to the alert from New York City warning of terrorist aspirations to attack the city's subway system. Almost as soon as word got out, officials rushed in to minimize the gravity of the threat. We are to understand that some terrorists suggested such an attack while brainstorming one summer day -- as if they don't think about such stunts all the time. Even though the magic name of al Qaeda is invoked, the impression is that the present conspiracy is no more developed, and maybe even less so, than that of the two morons who proposed to don white tuxedos and assassinate Senator Obama.

There's a hint of conflicting imperatives in all these reports. It's as if some people felt that it was necessary to mention the new possibility of terrorism even while they realized that the most likely consequence will be to further depress business in New York during the holiday season. So we see spokesmen scrambling to minimize the threat that they publicized. It's as if they needed to say something about the possibility of attack, such as it is, so that, should something actually happen, they can say: we did so anticipate this; we were not ignoring the warnings! In other words, there's a whiff of covering one's ass about the story as it's developing that seems irresponsible. I was inclined to say it should have been kept secret until I learned how the information was disseminated. In general, though, I tend to wonder when schemes like this are publicized whether the only practical result is to alert terrorists to which of their communication channels are insecure. That apparently isn't the case in this instance, but it might be some other time. I can imagine al Qaeda floating false rumors just to discover which ones are picked up by the Americans and who shouldn't be trusted in their networks.

A country like India appears terribly vulnerable to terrorism, but India also seems to be a country where corruption can sometimes trump security, not to mention a place where Muslims get it in the face far more often and far more viciously than they do in the U.S. Today's terrorism in Mumbai reminds us of what terrorists can do, but it doesn't prove that they can do it anywhere or everywhere. But the coincidence of the real attack and the rumors about New York will probably leave Americans feeling more anxious than they probably should -- at least until they get back to worrying about the economy.

"The Most Despicable Philosopher in the West"

When I found the latest New Republic in my mailbox, I noticed a blurb in the bottom left corner of the cover advertising an article about "The Most Despicable Philosopher in the West." I didn't even need to open the magazine to the table of contents to know that Adam Kirsch was writing about Slavoj Zizek, the Slovenian critic best known for his practice of illustrating nuances of Lacanian psychology or political science with examples from popular movies or TV shows. That practice alone might mark him as a twit for some people, but Zizek asks for stronger condemnation because he dares to call for revolutionary violence -- revolutionary terror, in fact -- toward the overthrow of liberal democracy.

You can read the review here, but I needn't discuss it in detail. Kirsch appears to be a classic liberal, and from his perspective Zizek can only be an abomination. But as long as Kirsch is content to portray Zizek as someone with mass murder on his mind, why can't we characterize liberals like Kirsch as creatures of infinite complacency, the sort who can tolerate unlimited suffering by countless people so long as they don't have to kill someone. Perhaps he's the kind that can stand it when a system or a society kills people, but can't when another man does, for whatever motive. Maybe he's a pacifist, someone who believes that all the world's problems can be solved through the tactics of Gandhi and King, or that all the world's problems have been solved by those tactics. And maybe he thinks that, if or when those tactics fail, there's nothing left to do but suffer gracefully -- better that than to coerce someone!

I've been playing the devil's advocate here, but that's part of what I've learned from reading some of Zizek's books. He's the sort of thinker who, when someone declares certain acts or notions intolerable, will wonder what that person does or will tolerate. I'm not ready to march under his banner -- his idea of radical human emancipation remains nebulous to me -- but I find him useful and invigorating because he challenges readers to look at seemingly straightforward positions from different angles. It's his view that conventional liberal morality overlooks or acquiesces in quite a bit of immorality or injustice, and it's no answer to his argument to call him a totalitarian -- which is pretty much all that Kirsch does. I take that back. This being The New Republic, it's probably no surprise that he also calls Zizek an anti-Semite.

Zizek outrages many liberals because he dares speak out in the name of Humanity or "the People." He really seems to believe in an imperative for people to become "the People," however totalitarian that prospect might sound to some folks. He suggests that "the People" (and these are my quotation marks, not his) will find itself through revolutionary commitment, which can take the form of "divine violence" and terror in the revolutionary sense of the world -- an effort to force people to become "the People." Zizek has read and seen too much history to assume that all this is inevitable, or to think that success is assured. He infuriates right-minded writers like Kirsch, however, by daring to assert that, despite past failures, revolution the way the French did it, the way Lenin did it, is worth trying again, and should be tried again in order to succeed where the French and the Bolsheviks failed. He does not assume that we'll succeed next time, or ever; he concedes sometimes that there will always be conflict in human society. But he insists that people can attain their highest state of moral commitment by trying just the same for the goal of radical emancipation. If you're going to argue against that, you have to come up with something better than "thousands of people could die" because, as I said, thousands of people die preventable deaths due to poverty every day. You also have to do better than vowing not to kill people as means to an end, because the logical end of that train of thought is one selfish person sitting on the track and blocking everybody else's path, forever. When is it wrong to force him out of the way? When is it right? And when is it right to run him over? If you declare such questions off limits, you're in some way limiting human progress. I'm sure Adam Kirsch doesn't see himself that way, but that's why he should read Zizek more carefully instead of just picking out passages to condemn.

But again, you can't rule out the possibility that Zizek himself is just nuts. Try this sample on for size. There's plenty more like it out there.

Brothers in Arms: The Latest JFK Conspiracy

John F. Kennedy died 45 years ago yesterday, and many people still aren't certain how that happened. Despite the gigantic effort of Vincent Bugliosi two years ago to refute every possible conspiracy theory, many remain unsatisfied with Lee Harvey Oswald's ability to pull off the crime unassisted and on his own initiative. While it may be facetious to cite Sgt. Hartman from the movie Full Metal Jacket, who describes the assassination as an example of what a motivated Marine can do with his rifle, that does pretty much sum up my view. I remain intrigued by conspiracy theory and theorists, however, because the shifting tides of belief might tell us something about our own changing times as JFK's generation grows old and generations with no memory of the living man come to the fore.

Brothers in Arms is a collaboration of crime journalist Gus Russo and novelist/screenwriter Stephen Molton. Russo earns an occasional favorable mention in Bugliosi's massive tome, but probably won't win any kudos for this effort. While he concedes readily that Oswald acted alone and pretty much on his own initiative, he believes that the Cuban government had the opportunity and the motive to abet the assassin. Russo speculates that the Castro regime, or its spymasters in Mexico City, gave Oswald financial assistance on different occasions, and may have promised, once aware of his intentions, to help him escape from Dallas. Russo's own view is that Oswald would have been a sucker to believe this, as his suspicion is that the Cubans would have killed him to keep their ties to him secret.

Russo and Molton's most impressive achievement is portraying a milieu in Mexico City that makes their story look plausible. They emphasize the high-stakes spy game that the U.S. and Cuba were playing, with the USSR and the Mexicans kibitzing, the Russians often helping the Cubans and the Mexicans sometimes helping both. They strive to demonstrate that the Cubans were capable of assassination as a tactic, pointing out various alleged terror plots against the U.S. and assassinations of others around the world. Both sides were looking for every advantage, constantly attempting to turn people, so it does seem plausible that Oswald would be noticed in nearby New Orleans and during at least one trip to Mexico.

Oswald's own motive was fame as a revolutionary hero, the authors assert. While the title announces that the book is mostly about the blood feud between the Kennedy and Castro brothers, Russo and Molton follow Oswald's career in the footsteps of Norman Mailer and other researchers. They do a good job suggesting that Oswald's aspiring ruthlessness fits right in with his time, though it's more dubious of them to claim that he was a kind of vanguard figure of the drop-out rebels from later in the 1960s. I give Molton credit for making the cross-cut narrative of Kennedy plots, Castro counter-plots and Oswald's adventures freshly dramatic for a reader very familiar with the material.

While plausible, however, their thesis isn't really convincing. To get beyond conjecture, they must depend on unnamed Cuban sources and on "Nikolai," whom they credit with copying out super-secret documents from the KGB archives that prove greater Cuban knowledge of Oswald than the Castro regime cares to admit. The nature of the JFK conspiracy racket brings many fabricators into it, and Russo's vouching for Nikolai, who had assisted a German researcher for a film about the Cuban theory, simply isn't good enough.

Other sources for Cuban conspiracy theories have been dismissed by Bugliosi, but on reviewing his chapter on Cuba, he seems to accept too readily the premise that Fidel Castro was too rational to risk war with the U.S. by having any association with Oswald. Russo and Molton take Castro's struggle with the U.S. from the beginning, with special attention to the Missile Crisis to show that Castro had grown extremely reckless and seemed to insist on a world war. They state that Castro went so far during the crisis as to seize one of the missile sites from the Russians by force rather than have Moscow limit his options. This helps them make their case that Castro was capable of anything, but it doesn't prove that he actually endorsed Oswald in any way.

Russo and Molton also throw Bugliosi's rationalization into question by emphasizing the reasons Lyndon Johnson had for suspecting Cuba from the moment of the assassination, as well as LBJ's reluctance to do anything about it. The way Bugliosi tells it, Castro wouldn't attempt a decapitation strike because, were his role detected, an invasion would have followed automatically. But in Russo's account, Johnson is immediately conscious that, despite growing tension between Cuba and the USSR from the Missile Crisis forward, war with Cuba would mean war with Russia -- a nuclear holocaust. In this version, Johnson orders a cover-up in order to eliminate any risk of a war, while Bobby Kennedy is pursuing the same means to avoid exposing his brother's efforts to have Castro killed. This part of the story depends on what looks more plausible to you: Johnson's reticence as described by Russo, or a knee-jerk drive for war as assumed by Bugliosi.

Johnson's role raises an abstract question that we've addressed in the past. If Russo and Molton are right, then Fidel Castro, however indirectly, practiced the policy of assassination as an alternative to war. History seems more certain that, after the Bay of Pigs fiasco, John Kennedy was doing the same. My colleague Crhymethinc has suggested that making this a common practice would make full-scale wars less likely. My skepticism toward the idea follows from an assumption that the public, at least in a democratic republic, would demand war if they learned that an enemy power had done the deed. In Russo's account, Johnson is determined to keep the public from learning about the Cuban connection, fearing that they, goaded by the Republican party, would indeed drive him toward war. But if Russo is right, then Cuba at least gave LBJ room to cover things up and keep their ties from Oswald from public awareness. True or not, that suggests how assassination as an alternative to war would have to work. It could never be a blatant attack by an explicit agent. It would have to be orchestrated in secret through disgruntled citizens of the targeted leader's own country, arranged so that the public would have the least chance of seeing foreign fingerprints on the crime. The leader's successor may figure out what actually happened, but the point of the exercise would have been to deter him from pursuing the policies that got his predecessor killed.

Speculating that way raises a further question. Assuming for argument's sake that Russo and Molton are right and that Johnson had good reason and some evidence to suspect Cuban involvement in the assassination, was his cover-up the act of a coward? Is the assassination of a leader, especially one who was elected democratically, an act which, if attributable to a foreign power, requires war in response as a matter of national honor or duty? Or was Johnson right to weigh costs against benefits? In this book, LBJ is somewhat aware of the Kennedy plots against Castro and doesn't really approve -- just as, ironically in retrospect, he advised JFK against deeper involvement in Vietnam. If Johnson decided that Kennedy had reaped what he had sown, how should that have altered the balance of calculations? If he learned the lesson Crhymethinc would say he should have learned -- and Russo suggests that he did -- might his refusal to go to war for Kennedy's sake have actually been the act of a statesman?

Because Russo and Molton can't really seal the deal until their sources are more forthcoming, any speculation about Johnson's response to the assassination is really for amusement purposes only. But the fact that they get you thinking about such things is one of the virtues of their book. With some details necessarily blurred, they paint a compelling picture of a dangerous period in American history. They lay on the schmaltz at the end with their portrayal of Bobby Kennedy attempting to atone for his role in the feud, and a hint at the very end that Raul Castro may do the same, but otherwise it's an often powerful and evocative book. It's probably unusual among conspiracy books that you can probably read it and not agree and still not feel like your intelligence has been insulted.

"Live within our means"

These days, I hear a lot of people saying that "we need to live within our means," as if doing that now or in the future will get us out of the current crisis. Not that it isn't sound advice on general principles, but people need to understand that it was once people started living more strictly within their means that the bottom dropped out of the economy. Capitalism depends on consumption. Capitalism on the scale we know needs perpetual consumption. If capitalists need us to buy their products, they'll have us all go into debt if necessary. They don't want to bankrupt us. More likely, they imagine that credit-fueled demand will result in more production, more prosperity all around, and everyone paying their bills. For that to work, they need to create a perpetual-motion machine of borrowing and buying, but once people retrench, stop borrowing, and live within their means, the machine stops. Living within your means may be a virtue in a more traditional or a simpler society, but you can't get there from here just by deciding to live within your means or exhorting others to do so. It's going to have to be part of a more thorough transformation of society and culture, and I don't know if people are willing to go all that way.

Piracy in the 21st Century

In today's piracy news -- what kind of world are we living in that we need that intro? -- India seems to be stepping up to deal with the Somali pirates. The Indians sank what is described as a "mother ship" for the Somali speedboats, and news accounts report other actions against the raiders in what is, after all, the far reaches of the Indian Ocean. But raids continue and reports of them are reaching epidemic proportions.

It leaves me wondering why the United Nations can't assemble a fleet to wipe out the pirates. What superpower would veto such a plan? The Russians are already aggrieved at the pirates, and I can't imagine the Chinese imagining that they'd benefit from rampant piracy. Britain and France? Not likely. But guess what I read in this article? The good old U.S.A. is urging shippers to hire private security, and none other than our old friends at Blackwater are declaring themselves available -- on the premise, presumably, that it takes pirates to beat pirates. But shouldn't the lesson of the present news be that we want less privatized naval power on the world's oceans? The article says that no country wants to be the policeman of the Gulf of Aden, but that's all the more reason to develop a U.N. navy. Suppressing piracy and protecting international commerce is one of the reasons why there ought to be something like the U.N. in the first place.

Of course, it'd also help if Somalia could put its own house in order, but there, too, one gets the sense that there are powers restraining the process. Considering that the group that came closest to pacifying the place most recently were labeled "Islamists," one can guess that the U.S. isn't exactly helping things along. Some people believe that the U.S. would rather see chaos than strong government in some places, for strategic or ideological reasons. While we oughtn't overrate American ability to straighten things out even if we wanted to, the current chaos leaves me wondering about what might be and what might not be allowed.

Al-Qaeda vs "House Negro"

Ayman al-Zawahiri's cultural literacy doesn't go so far, apparently, as to suggest the term "Uncle Tom" to describe the President-Elect. Instead, in his latest video offering the reputed second-in-command of al-Qaeda borrows from Malcolm X to characterize Barack Obama as a "house negro" or "house slave" and indict him as a traitor to his race. Well, Arabs know from slaves. They were enslaving African kaffirs long before Europeans got in on the racket, so it amuses me to see the Egyptian doctor posing as if his kind were the historic friends of the Negro. It just goes to show that haters and maniacs see things through the prism of their subjective obsessions. Zawahiri sees Obama as the pet of a "white" establishment, and he won't be the only one to think so, but others see the complete opposite, and are probably equally far from the truth. I'm reminded of the fable of the blind men and the elephant, except that Obama is a Democrat, so the symbolism's wrong.

Is Fairness Unfair?

"You can't legislate fairness," Mr. Right said to me once upon a time. He was waxing philosophical then, at least by his standards, but it came as no surprise that he opposed the notion of reviving the Federal Communication Commission's "Fairness Doctrine," a rule that prevailed for broadcast media from 1949-87 that required broadcasters to provide time for contrasting viewpoints on political controversies. Mr. Right's position is the standard one for his kind: reviving the Doctrine is a plot by liberals to destroy conservative talk radio. How that would be accomplished is unclear, since the Doctrine wouldn't require any conservative host to be taken off the air. The objectionable aspect of its revival would more likely be the extinction of conservative talk stations as exclusive bastions of one-sided opinion. Stations would be required to diversify their programming to a minimal extent. That would be in keeping with the older idea of media that prevailed when the Doctrine was enacted. Then, radio and TV stations were considered public trusts and owners of frequencies were expected to make the airwaves available to a wide range of views. By the time the Doctrine was repealed, the proliferation of new media was already underway, and has accelerated since then. It could be argued that a growing multitude of media made access to one particular source less imperative. But the more important motive, I suspect, was the desire to privatize the perception of the media so that it was seen not as a public trust, but just as someone's personal property to dispose of as you pleased, like a newspaper or magazine. That'd be ironic if, as I guess, the Fairness Doctrine was instituted in order to prevent radio and TV from becoming equivalent to the news chains that served as little more than propaganda instruments for press magnates like Hearst and his rivals.

Mr. Right thinks that liberals want to revive the Doctrine because they're envious of the popularity of conservative radio and bitter over the poor fortunes of the Air America network. His view seems to be that liberal opinion has failed in the radio marketplace, and doesn't deserve any space on the dial if it can't earn any in the ratings. That's the wrong way to look at the matter. Conservatives, recall, started their talk radio movement because they felt excluded from the TV news media by institutional biases. It would border on hypocrisy to contend that any force, even the dread and holy marketplace, should have the power to exclude other points of view. So unless it can be proven that large numbers of conservative talkers would lose their jobs -- and I rather suspect that some of them would turn up as liberal talkers under new names -- I see no reason not to revive the Fairness Doctrine for radio and television. A similar doctrine already prevails here.

Lieberman Lives!

Democratic U.S. Senators have apparently decided to satisfy their anger at Sen. Lieberman with a slap on the wrist, stripping him of the chairmanship of a relatively minor subcommittee while allowing him to retain the post he really covets, the chair of the Homeland Security Committee. Leaving aside my opinion of Lieberman as a politician, this strikes me as fair treatment. As a dissident within the American Bipolarchy I abhor partisanship. Lieberman is an independent by virtue of his re-election following defeat in a Democratic primary, but continues to caucus with the Democratic senators. If he wants to continue doing so, as he's given every indication of doing to my knowledge, it would be stupid of Sen. Reid or his colleagues to punish a non-Democrat for supporting another non-Democrat, Sen. McCain, in the presidential election. Would they treat the other alleged independent, Sen. Sanders, the same way if he had shown true independence and endorsed Nader or another left-leaning candidate? Perhaps they would, since partisanship dulls the brain, but it would be unwise in both cases. Why throw away votes when you'll need every one you can get, including some from the other side of the aisle, to win cloture votes?

If Democrats want to convince us that their party is just some convenient tool for advancing liberal or progressive policies, and not some self-conscious, self-interested and self-perpetuating institution that exists for its own ends alone, they should avoid the habits of partisanship in other lands and resist the temptation to purge impure elements like Lieberman. I abhor his foreign policy, but if his state wants him in spite of the party, the Senate might as well accommodate him if he wants to be accommodating. As far as I know, he remains a liberal on most domestic issues, and so long as the Homeland Security chair can be checked by President Obama and grants Lieberman no authority over foreign policy, there's little harm in giving him his way. Further, protecting Lieberman may help Reid and Obama secure the good will of McCain, Sen. Graham and any other Republicans who might want to play ball with the new regime. If there's to be a "team of rivals" from January forward, Lieberman may as well be part of it.

Obama's "Team of Rivals?"

The logic behind the President-elect's supposed interest in recruiting Senator Clinton into his Cabinet is allegedly to be found in Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals, the best-selling account of Abraham Lincoln's Civil War Cabinet. Lincoln recruited numerous GOP power-brokers into his orbit, including defeated rivals for the 1860 nomination, and Goodwin will tell you (I haven't read the book) that it all went well.

If anything, it would be less risky for Obama to assemble such a cabinet than it was for Lincoln. In Abe's time, there was nothing to stop Cabinet members from scheming to succeed or even to overthrow the President in the next election. Lincoln was in fact giving people like William Seward and Salmon P. Chase stronger positions to challenge him from, had they chosen that course. During our "early national period," a Cabinet post was the strongest credential for a potential President. Once Thomas Jefferson's party took over in 1801, in fact, the Secretary of State, rather than the Vice President, was the heir apparent to supreme power. James Madison was Jefferson's Sec. of State and succeeded him, and Madison's Sec., James Monroe, succeeded him. The pattern repeated itself once more with John Quincy Adams, but Monroe's Cabinet was probably the most formidable "Team of Rivals" ever. Along with Adams at State, it included two other men who would vie with Adams for the presidency in 1824: Treasury Secretary William Crawford and War Secretary John C. Calhoun. None would defer to another, and Crawford actually won the party nomination via a congressional caucus. Adams ran regardless, while Calhoun hedged his bets by serving as running mate to both Adams and Andrew Jackson. The consequence of Monroe packing his Cabinet with such ambitious talent was that the country went from the "Era of Good Feeling" and a de facto one-party system to the disintegration of Jefferson's party in just eight years.

Some observers understandably worry that Senator Clinton might act as if she were in the Monroe Cabinet rather than Lincoln's, but I think that the parties, not to mention the public, expect more deference to the President from his department heads. Clinton could not hope to hold the job, if she gets it, if she appeared to use it to build a campaign organization, even if it wasn't meant to go operational until 2016. Furthermore, it's been one hundred years since a candidate went directly from the Cabinet to the Presidency; the last man was Secretary of War William Howard Taft in 1909, and standards were so different back then that no one really cared that the Presidency was Taft's first elected office. Following this logic, bringing Clinton into the White House would be a way of "keeping your friends close and your enemies closer. But calculations of that kind shouldn't outweigh Clinton's unsuitability for the office.

As for Senator McCain, his meeting with Obama today provoked speculation that the Republican might be made part of the team. But even if Obama can work something out with McCain, the Arizonan would probably be of more use to him right where he is, as a potential filibuster-buster in the Senate. And with that, speculation about a "team of rivals" should end, since no other Democrat can be taken seriously as a rival who needs to be incorporated into the Cabinet. The only other gambit I can imagine would be for Obama to recruit Mike Huckabee or Mitt Romney, his most likely Republican rivals four years from now, and neither man would have any reason to accept such invitations were they offered. By process of elimination, the only motive for appointing Clinton, absent the emergence of a real team of rivals, would be to neutralize her as an intra-party threat, and that would be an irresponsible motive for a potentially disastrous decision.

Fiscal Conservatives, Social Liberals?

In the aftermath of defeat, Republicans and conservatives are debating the future direction of the party and the movement. While some argue that the GOP, at least, must reach out to new voting blocs, and therefore must moderate some of its recent positions, columnist Jonah Goldberg warns against alienating the core constituencies. Goldberg also denies an evolving thesis of conventional wisdom: that there's a growing schism separating people who are fiscally conservative but socially "liberal" from social conservatives.

In Republican circles, some people must be arguing that the first group must be their target for future success, but Goldberg questions whether the category even exists. "The idea that social liberalism and economic conservatism can coexist easily is not well supported by the evidence," he writes, "It turns out that people who buy into the logic of social liberalism, not just on abortion but racial and other issues as well, usually find themselves ill-equipped ideologically to say no to additional spending on causes they care about."

Goldberg may be missing the main point. He defines economic conservatism (allowing for a hair-splitting distinction between "economic" and "fiscal" conservatives) entirely within the context of government spending. To be a conservative, as he sees it, is primarily to be against "big government." This isn't untrue, but the terms of the debate are changing as we speak. The financial crisis and the Bailout are forcing the free market upon us as a fresh debate subject. The question is becoming less about how big government should be, and more about how free the market should be. Government's role becomes less a question of spending and more one of regulation. In this changing context, it doesn't necessarily follow that social conservatives will remain economic conservatives. They may opt for an older form of economic conservatism dating back to 19th century Britain, when Tories upheld state regulation of the economy while Liberals advocated laissez-faire. At the same time, libertarians will continue their commitment to limited government with free markets and (at least) cultural liberalism.

It's Goldberg's right to desire a Republican party dedicated before all else to limited government. But his argument that social, cultural or religious conservatives are the most dependable friends of limited government looks like wishful thinking. He acknowledges that "it's also difficult to be fiscally conservative and socially conservative if you've jettisoned the conservative dogma of limited government," making his faith in the Religious Right's commitment to limited government even more dubious. Again, Goldberg himself writes that "The religious right is much more likely to stop being 'right' than stop being religious." That coming near the close of his column makes reading it seem even more like a waste of time.

Secretary of State Clinton: No Way!

The Washington Post has got to be kidding me. The idea that Senator Clinton might be considered for Secretary of State in the Obama administration must be a joke, right? Why? Well, let's search our memories a bit. What was a significant point of difference between Clinton and Obama during the primaries? That was a long time ago, but if I recall right, one big difference was Obama's willingness to meet with "anti-American" leaders and Clinton's criticism of such willingness as naive and irresponsible. And now Clinton would implement Obama's foreign policy? Or make it?

Worse, if this happens (and right now we're only speculating wildly on small evidence) it would stink of political calculation at the expense of diplomatic competence. I recall myself sneering at Clinton's boasts of her foreign-policy credentials, which seemed to consist of acting as hostess for visiting leaders and giving an ineffectual yet insulting speech in China. Putting her in charge at State might be a Clintonian plan to burnish her resume for 2016, or an Obamite plan to reduce the likelihood of a 2012 primary challenge -- or even a scheme by New York Democrats to kick her upstairs so that Gov. Paterson can fill her seat with some ambitious character like Andrew Cuomo, and thus eliminate a challenge to himself come 2010. Whatever the ulterior motives, such a move to place Clinton so close to power would be the opposite of change, perhaps even the opposite of hope.

Ukraine Legislators vs. Jerusalem Monks: Who Would Win?

A friend asked me if I'd seen the brawl in the Ukrainian parliament on the news today. I hadn't.

"How does it compare with the monks in Jerusalem?" I asked.

"There's some pretty good action. Why don't you see if you can find it online?"

So I did.



Frankly, I was not impressed. One guy looks like he has some wrestling skills, but for the most part it's just slapping and shoving. These Ukrainians look old and out of shape compared to the Fists of Orthodoxy. Their technique is no good. I think that if you tell either group of monks that the other group is inside, and they'd clean the chamber out in short order. If we're talking about the red monks, that whole building would be Chicken Kiev before long. Then the only hope for Ukraine would be to beam a distress call to Chernobyl and summon the Toxic Avenger.

American Catholics under Interdict?

A Catholic priest in South Carolina has warned parishioners that they'll take communion at their own risk if they voted for President-elect Obama last week because of his support for abortion rights. There's nothing really novel to this, since priests elsewhere, and higher authorities, deemed the sacrament inappropriate for people who voted for Senator Kerry four years ago.

Back in the day, of course, priests could deny the sacraments to entire communities and entire nations if their rulers went against the Pope's will or denied his temporal power. The priest in the present instance denies any partisan intent, and I can accept that insofar as he's made his statement now rather than, say, two weeks ago. But the real issue isn't partisanship; it's political intimidation. This is the sort of stunt that gave Catholics a bad name 150 years ago. The presumption that priests could use such tactics to force Catholics to vote according to dictation, for whichever party or for whatever reason, is why many Protestants wanted to deny the vote to Catholics or force them into a longer naturalization period than other immigrants. History calls the old nativists "Know Nothings," but when someone like this fellow in South Carolina pulls a stunt like this, it makes you wonder whether the Know Nothings were on to something after all. Fortunately, Catholics throughout American history have proven worthy of the franchise, but you wonder sometimes about certain individuals.

Markets, Freedom and Failure

The President remains adamant in telling all who still listen to him that the present financial panic is not "a failure of the free market system." I would say he's kidding himself, or is trapped in a self-delusion, but his concept of a "free market" is probably so vague that he may be right at some level. Free enterprise, as such, didn't bring us to the present point. However, the "free market" as it exists in the United States and allied countries is so susceptible to abuse and so incapable of restraint that some form of systemic failure is obvious and was inevitable. To hint that government interference is to blame is only to repeat the scapegoating of poor debtors that went over so well during the late elections. No government compelled the "masters of the universe" to gamble as recklessly as they did, and it was not government but the market itself that urged people to borrow so that they could consume and contribute to global economic growth. Bush may be right to note that countries with stronger government regulation of markets are also suffering, but that only shows the risks of globalization once every country's economy is tied to one big one -- ours -- regardless of each country's laws. Our lame-duck-in-chief is in no position to lecture his people or anyone else on what not to do to clean the mess he helped make but won't help fix. His ideological fixation on "freedom" at the expense of all other virtues already has a hint of obsolescence to it, and the poor man still has two months of public irrelevance to go.

Honor to Veterans

Americans who've served in the military, especially in wartime, are worthy of honor. They should be praised for noble acts, for sacrifice and risk. These things are worthy of honor. I insist on that word instead of the preferred term of our time, which is gratitude. Honor is what's due to brave people in a democratic republic. If we owe them anything, which is the implication of gratitude, it's for serving in our places -- for being braver than the rest of us.Too often, however, propagandists and self-styled superpatriots claim that we owe the soldiers everything, but especially our freedom. This is the pretext of militarism as an ideology. Militarists would convince us that civilians are in a permanent state of indebtedness or obligation to the military. The object is to promote deference toward the military, although in practice this means deference toward the commander-in-chief. Militarists don't want us to question political decisions in favor of military force or the ethics of any given military action. To do either, they insinuate, is to show ingratitude to the one power that sustains our freedom. But each person's courage is the real power that sustains individual freedom. Military power guarantees only territorial security, and that alone, history shows, is no guarantee of freedom. So let's not overstate our debts to veterans. Instead, let's acknowledge the most obvious ones. If these people were willing to risk their lives or sacrifice their health in our places, then the least we can do is guarantee the survivors as secure an existence as the nation's resources can provide.That is how we honor heroes in democracies; not by making them our masters, but by giving them their due.

"A Civilian National Security Force"

A Democrat has won the presidential election, so now it's Republicans' turn to sound alarms of dictatorship. One who got attention doing so this week is Rep. Paul Brown of Georgia, fresh from his own re-election. He bases his suspicions in part on a speech Senator Obama gave in Colorado Springs last July 2. This talk has gotten a lot of attention in the libertarian-conservative blogosphere, who find it telling that a crucial passage has been edited from some transcripts of the speech, even though video clips clearly show Obama saying the same words. This is what he said, according to the Chicago Tribune:

We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we've set. We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well funded.

It is a curious phrase, and very much open to interpretation. In context, Obama seemed to mean that civilians undertaking civilian activities both at home and abroad could make an equal contribution to national security --broadly defined as restoring good will toward the U.S. in foreign countries and protecting Americans from natural disasters and the like as well as guarding against terrorism. But it's also an incautious phrase, as tone deaf to the sensibilities of many Americans as the first President Bush's invocation of a "New World Order" at the time of the Gulf War. While the full phrase "civilian national security force" should dispel the fears expressed by people like Rep. Brown about Obama's alleged intent to create a Gestapo-like organization, the "national security force" bit was bound to raise alarms. Critics have speculated that Obama had in mind something like the organizations fostered by Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, which are accused of spying on and otherwise harassing dissidents, and the senator's seeming insistence that this entity be "just as powerful, just as strong, just as well funded" as the military was bound to have some people wondering why.

Since this blog doesn't play by American Bipolarchy rules, I can note that the exact same words out of Senator McCain's mouth would have sparked similar alarms in the liberal-left blogosphere. McCain and Obama both, in fact, are strong advocates of "national service." That aspect of McCain partly explains why more libertarian Republicans preferred George W. Bush during the 2000 primaries. McCain made proposals similar in detail to what Obama advocated in Colorado, but to my knowledge never used the exact phrase that has spooked some people. The similarity of their ideas, nevertheless, may explain why Obama's remarks weren't much exploited by Republicans during the late campaign.

It may just have been a misconceived bit of rhetoric that was repudiated once its liability sunk in, but some people have a habit of interpreting all political rhetoric indiscriminately or unconditionally. As opposed to cynics who assume that rhetoric = lies, these others assume that each speech is a naked confession of a candidate's genuine intentions, especially if those inferred intentions confirm their own pre-existing fears. For someone to expunge the offending passage, from this perspective, could only be an admission of guilt, not a realization that the words didn't sound right. But someone may simply have realized that the phrase created a wrong impression that impressionable people would assume was the right one.

The easiest way around this would be for a reporter to ask the President-elect what he meant in Colorado Springs. He may have been asked already, since I'm only catching up with this story, and any new answer might not satisfy anyone, but for the sake of argument the question is worth asking.

The Fist of the Holy Cross

The Shaolin temple has nothing on the fighting monks of the Greek and Armenian Orthodox congregations of Jerusalem. In fact, the Chinese kung fu is very weak compared to the wrath of Orthodoxy. As a witness explains, the Greeks (or does the guy say "Freaks") were trying to "put their monk into the tomb" during an Armenian celebration of what sounds like "the Fist of the Holy Cross." It's hard to keep track of the sides in the melee, but keep an eye on the monks in red. I think their style is stronger. I wonder whether the guy who throws the sucker punch is a ringer, though. He appears to be a lefty, and in pugilism that's the "un-Orthodox" style.



Religion of peace, indeed!

Let's Go to the Movies

I've finally started my long-threatened move blog. I call it MONDO 70 and it's enigmatic that way on purpose. My tastes in film run from arthouse elite to grindhouse sleaze, and I like anything that expands my range of aesthetic awareness. Good and bad movies alike have done that for me, and you'll see plenty of both kinds there. I hope you find it entertaining.