Oh, this is good!

David Frum is Moe Green and Mark Levin is Michael Corleone, and it's time to settle old scores:

David Frum was never much of a thinker. Try as he might, he just can't seem to attract interest, let alone a following, even when stabbing his old boss, President George W. Bush, in the back with a rambling screed. Profiting from a confidential relationship with a president is about as low as it gets. But Frum, the ex-speech-writer turned self-hating blogger, isn't done descending. Now he spends his lonely days and nights at his keyboard trying to settle personal scores and demonizing those who dare to dismiss his ramblings as the work of an emotional wreck.
Go read every blood-drenched word. See why I like Levin? He is perfectly happy to spend his days going after Democrats and ignore the occasional insult. But if you ever really piss him off . . .

(Via Protein Wisdom.) Go read the whole thing, but check back here in an hour or so, because I'll have an update I think you'll want to read.

UPDATE: Believe it or not, I consider David Frum a friend. He did me a favor once when I needed it, and I try not to forget a favor.

Nothing hurts me worse than to see two friends at daggers drawn, as with Frum and Levin, but Levin is clearly the injured party here. As I sometimes say when somebody gets cross-ways with me, "Buddy, you done pissed off the wrong redneck."

Frum wrote a truly excellent book about the 1970s, How We Got Here, and his wife, Danielle Crittenden, wrote a truly excellent book about feminism, What Our Mothers Never Told Us. I do not hesitate to recommend either book, even if you don't like David Frum.

So, what happened to Frum? He made the mistake of joining the Bush speechwriting team without thinking of what he was getting himself into. As Matthew Scully has explained, Bush made the mistake of assigning his speechwriting shop to Michael Gerson, a worthless, self-serving, two-faced, second-rate scoundrel.

There is something about working for a mediocrity like Gerson that injures a man's pride, which is why it is always dangerous to entrust managerial or supervisory duties to mediocrities. Gerson was a disloyal glory hog who was always leaking to the press. The rest of the speechwriting staff knew who was doing the leaking, they resented the hell out of it, and it destroyed morale.

That kind of stuff happens all the time in D.C.. When I showed up for my first day of work at The Washington Times in November 1997, I got talking to a guy named Michael Rust, a brilliant writer who died a few years ago of diabetes. Michael said, "Welcome to Washington, a town where people advance" -- and here he made a motion with his hands, as if climbing a ladder -- "on the knives stuck in the backs of their former friends."

Ah, would that I had heeded Michael's warning more closely! It was not until about 2006 that I began to understand what he meant. The specifics are irrelevant here, but the lesson that you must understand is that most feuds like this in Washington are not really about ideology, they're about ambition.

There is another excellent book you should read by -- surprise! -- David Brooks. Bobos in Paradise (2000) includes a chapter describing the means by which political intellectuals ascend the ranks of the punditocracy. It's a shrewd and devastatingly accurate analysis of how things work inside the Beltway, and the insightful reader realizes that Brooks followed his own cunning advice. ("Brooks, you brilliant bastard! I read your book!")

When I write about The Republicans Who Really Matter, I'm trying to explain how ambition accounts for the bizarre peregrinations of so many "conservative" operatives in Washington. It isn't that they don't have principles or that they don't have any core beliefs. Rather, it is that they stay in the game long enough to see how the game is played by the "winners" -- e.g. , David Gergen -- and decide to start playing that same game.

This is why I so admire Robert Novak. An excellent reporter who was originally a liberal Republican, Novak followed the facts wherever they led him -- which is why he became a conservative. But if a Republican was doing the wrong thing, he always had to worry about Novak, because Novak was fearless and independent, and he would blow the whistle in a heartbeat if he found out someone was running a scam.

In his ill-advised article "Unpatriotic Conservatives," Frum unjustly attacked Novak, and Rich Lowry should have been fired immediately for having had the bad taste to publish such a thing on the cover of National Review. (What did Ann Coulter call Lowry, a "girly man"?)

I've got friends on both sides of the paleoconservative/neoconservative divide. My paleo friends are laughing their asses off to see Levin and Frum going at one another. And half my family is Democrats, so you can imagine how they're enjoying this internecine Republican bloodletting.

It's just like when Charles Johnson goes after Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? Who assigned Charles as the Torquemada to lead the Blogospheric Inquisition? In any large collaborative enterprise, these kinds of feuds and schisms are to be expected, but sooner or later somebody has got to say, "Hey, knock it off with this Urge to Purge power trip." I've got no personal beef with Charles, but at the point he accused Geller of being a pawn of Euro-fascism, he jumped the shark.

Same thing with Frum or Dreher or anyone else who wants to arrogate to themselves the right to say who is or is not a legitimate conservative spokesman. Like Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin and Laura Ingraham, Mark Levin has earned what he's got by honest toil.

Levin's independence is a function of his hard-earned success, and he speaks to an audience that is always free to turn the station. Even if I don't always agree with him -- even if I sometimes think, "Hey, Mark, could you maybe turn it down to 11?" -- Levin is honest, and does not fawn or flatter or backstab.

If Levin's got a problem with you, he's going to come right at you. That's just the way the bad boys roll. Either roll with them, or get out of the way, Moe Green.

My advice to David Frum would be to admit his error and try to make amends, because like I said, "Buddy, you done pissed off the wrong redneck."

UPDATE II: Now linked at Memeorandum, and speaking of pissing off the wrong redneckCanadian, Kathy Shaidle jumps in and predicts the trench warfare will continue all week.
BTW, Kathy perfectly illustrates what I'm trying to say about trying to bridge the paleo/neo divide. Kathy is pro-Israel, which would normally make her neo, but she's so bold in her political incorrectness, it's as if Sam Francis had been reincarnated as a sawed-off Canadian girl. (NTTAWWT.)

And, by God, she fights. That's what really counts with me. I admire conservatives who hate and despise liberalism with a primal ferocity, so that the minute the Left comes after one of our guys . . .

When you're Jet,
You're a Jet all the way,
From your first cigarette
To your last dying day.

Heaven help any fool who thinks he's going to cross Kathy Shaidle and walk away unscathed.

UPDATE III: Just updated the right-sidebar headlines to link this post by Tigerhawk:

Sadly, it is fashionable among certain righty intellectuals to make a point of distancing themselves from Ann Coulter. . . .
The offensive reason, of course, is to establish their bona fides as "reasonable" conservatives so that they do not destroy their social lives. . . .
The more legitimate reason is that Ann, along with Rush, has been so successful promoting a sort of "low brow" conservatism (see John Derbyshire on this taxonomic classification and Rush Limbaugh's impact on it) that the middle-brow version has been terribly diminished by comparison.

Like I said in the headline, "Watch it with that 'lowbrow' stuff, cracker." Coulter and Limbaugh are obviously quite intelligent, and I credit them with knowing exactly what they're doing. (See also: Dreher, Levin, and the Craft of Talk Radio.)

Some people like to imagine that they're more sophisticated than Rush, more sensitive than Coulter, more civil than Levin. And anyone who thinks like that is an arrogant son of bitch, in my book.

When someone is very successful at what they do, they must be given credit for knowing what they're doing. Don't try to tell Jimmy Page how to play guitar and don't tell Tiger Woods how to swing a three iron.

This is not to say that Page never misses a note, or that Tiger never shanks a drive, nor is it to say that Rush or Ann or Mark is immune to criticism. Rather, they have earned, by their demonstrable success, a certain level of respect for their judgment, and ought not be lectured self-righteously by some wannabe "expert" who never played the game. And I will repeat what I said before:

"One of the basic principles of military strategy is to reinforce success. If you see a man who fights and wins, give him reinforcements, and bid others to emulate his success."

Conservatives who want to derogate successful leadership really need to ask themselves whether David Brooks, Kathleen Parker, Rod Dreher et al., have what it takes to inspire and lead conservatives to success. Evidence for such a proposition is lacking.

If Republicans had listened to Rush, John McCain never would have been the GOP nominee and Barack Obama would not have been the Democratic nominee. So if the Republican Party is in disarray, whose fault is that? It ain't the fault of us "lowbrow" conservatives, is it?

Tigerhawk, you're still a Jet in good standing, as far as I'm concerned. I've always liked John Derbyshire, but that was an article he never should have published. And if Rush or Ann see you quoting that kind of stuff, don't say I didn't try to warn you.

The Amazing Miss Helen Rittelmayer

Last month, a young friend of mine turned down a summer internship at The American Spectator, which instead went to another friend of mine, the only Ivy League graduate I actually like, Helen Rittelmayer. This morning, my favorite Yalie lays the knife into -- wait for it -- Ross Douthat:

Douthat. . . assumes that everyone can agree that "the steady advancement of single motherhood threatens the interests and happiness of women" . . . This, of course, is a little concern-trollish, too -- who is Douthat to tell Catharine MacKinnon, et al., what a real feminist would do?
The real feminists, of course, have turned up right on schedule to tell Douthat that, if he were really on their side, he'd join feminists in supporting their two favorite methods of reducing single motherhood: abortion and the Pill.
And that's the real problem with Douthat's column. . . .
After all, what Douthat doesn't know is that the feminists have been stigmatizing single motherhood, just not in a way that would please him. . . .
You're pregnant on your own -- what, were you drunk or something?
That kind of stigma works, but presumably the conservative half of Douthat's alliance couldn't really unite behind it. This leaves Douthat in a corner from which there are a limited number of ways to escape. . . . If Douthat accepts late marriage as a social given, then he'll have to create an America in which "thirty-year-old virgin" isn't a punchline.

There's much more of that delicious flaying. Very good, Helen. Very, very good. Just one word of advice: Next time, find an excuse to link me. (Rule 2.)

UPDATE: Dan Collins of Protein Wisdom advises via Twitter that he went to Dartmouth, and so I take that back about Helen being the only Ivy Leaguer I actually like. And I could probably think of some other Ivy League alumni who are decent human beings. But most of them are as obnoxiously snotty as Douthat.

Chris Matthews -- and Allah? -- bash Rush

"The reason the White House goes after Rush, Newt, and Cheney isn’t because they’re out of power, it’s because they’re unpopular, something Matthews knows (or should know) better than anyone given his network’s obsession with trumpeting Limbaugh’s pronouncements as a foil to Obama."
-- Allahpundit

Tucker Freaking Carlson?

Odd item of the day:

Pundit Tucker Carlson publicly announced Tuesday that a right-leaning news site resembling the Huffington Post he's been planning will go live within weeks.
Carlson will launch TheDailyCaller.com, which he said would focus on reporting on the Obama administration and "adding facts to the conversation."
"We are a general-interest newspaper-format style site," Carlson told conservative bloggers at the Heritage Foundation on Tuesday. "There just aren't enough people covering this administration and telling the people what's going on."

(Hat tip: Hot Air Headlines.) How long until the Culture 11-style Hindenburg-at-Lakehurst explosion of The Daily TuckerTuckPo? Anybody want to take a stab at an over/under? Please hand me a clue here, because I certainly know nothing about the news business or online publishing.

UPDATE: Despite my ignorance of news and online publishing, I just found what's called a "Web page" named "Google," which you can use to look up stuff. And I was surprised to find that, just two weeks ago, it was announced that Tucker Carlson had been hired by something called "Fox News" (it connects to your television set with what's called a "cable").

So maybe this online thing is just a hobby for him, at least until he gets fired from Fox like he did from CNN and MSNBC.

UPDATE II: Advice to Tucker Carlson: It had better not suck. See, the thing is, even though I'm not one of The Republicans Who Really Matter -- not the kind of "influential" guy who can get you hooked up with a TV gig -- you would never want to make me your enemy. Just ask Ross Douthat.

Or John McCain. Let you in on a little secret: Part of the rationale of this blog, originally, was the hope that somebody in the Republican Party might notice and be smart enough to think, "Hey, that loose cannon could be dangerous," and then inquire about the price to get it off deck. I'm notoriously lazy, and getting paid not to blog would be a sweet gig.

But I overestimated their intelligence. (You'll never go broke underestimating the intelligence of GOP political operatives.) Nobody ever got in touch with me, and by the time the campaign really got rolling, I'd completely forgotten about my original get-rich-quick scheme, and pretty soon I was racking up some impressive traffic and . . .

Well, now Technorati tells me the site's worth more than $200,000. Man, to think what I'd have done for even $50,000 as late as mid-2008. Chumps.

Max Boot, R.I.P.

The late commentator was defending himself against charges that he had been too harsh in criticizing Liz Cheney when, for no apparent reason, he decided to write this sentence:

I wouldn’t waste my time criticizing a clown like, say, Ann Coulter, because, unlike Liz, she is not a serious person.

The first witnesses to arrive at the scene reported finding a smoldering crater . . .

(Hat tip: C.K. MacLeod.)

'6.5% of nothing'

Glenn Reynolds asks, "Who Is John Galt?" in response to this Wall Street Journal editorial about Maryland (where I live):

Maryland couldn't balance its budget last year, so the state tried to close the shortfall by fleecing the wealthy. Politicians in Annapolis created a millionaire tax bracket, raising the top marginal income-tax rate to 6.25%. . . .
One year later, nobody's grinning. One-third of the millionaires have disappeared from Maryland tax rolls. In 2008 roughly 3,000 million-dollar income tax returns were filed by the end of April. This year there were 2,000, which the state comptroller's office concedes is a "substantial decline." On those missing returns, the government collects 6.25% of nothing. Instead of the state coffers gaining the extra $106 million the politicians predicted, millionaires paid $100 million less in taxes than they did last year -- even at higher rates.

Even if we concede that the recession may account for some or most of this revenue decline, what's fascinating is the reaction of liberals like the Atlantic's Conor Clarke:

Progressive taxes are useful in recessions precisely because of all that vanishing revenue. That's because a progressive income tax is an automatic stabilizer: It helps offset shocks to GDP that come from large declines in income and wealth. . . .
It is also true, as the Journal says, that there will be a decline in revenue. That's the inevitable price of offsetting the shock.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? It is at this point that the sane man must ask Conor Clarke, "What is the purpose of taxation?" Excuse me for believing (a belief shared by the Founders) that the entire point of taxation is to collect revenue. The government must have money to fund its operations, therefore it must have tax revenue.

Stabilizing the economy? Offsetting shocks to GDP? I am a primitive caveman blogger. Your Keynesian concepts confuse and frighten me.

What Clarke confesses here is that progressive taxation is not about revenue. It has policy aims beyond merely funding the government, and constitutes an effort toward the planned economy, in which economic activity is not a function of voluntary action by individuals. Rather, the progressive tax is a mechanism for centralized direction of the economy by government.

Ergo, never mind the Laffer Curve. A soak-the-rich rationale means that progressive taxation is preferred even if it results less revenue.

There is a word for this. It begins with "s" and ends with "m." And I don't mean "sarcasm."

UPDATE: Cato's Brink Lindsey dismantles Paul Krugman's economic nostalgia in Reason magazine. I used to work with a guy, a Pat Buchanan-type protectionist, whose basic political impulse was that life should be like it was when he was growing up in the 1950s in Parkersburg, W.Va. Dad worked at the mill, mom stayed home and made cookies, the kids played in the streets without fear, etc.

No doubt it was wonderful, but nearly everyone remembers their childhood fondly. Then you point out that they lived in a 2-bedroom bungalow, all three kids sleeping in the same room, and the whole family sharing one bath. No air-conditioning, no cable TV, no computers, etc.

Even if we could "turn back the clock," even if my friend and I were willing to live so simply, foreswearing every modern convenience, we cannot legislate matters so as to force others to do so, in order to create around us this 1950s Parkersburg society. But the enactment of protectionist legislation is just exactly the kind of legislation by which the nostalgists propose to do that.

Well, it won't work, because it is based on a false understanding of why the '50s were the way they were. Lindsey debunks some of Krugman's revisionism, but he doesn't debunk all of it. Let me finish the job:

• During World War II, the U.S. came as close as it ever could to "full employment," but wartime rationing limited the ability of workers to spend all their earnings, and much of the excess was invested in war bonds or otherwise saved.
• World War II devastated the industrial infrastructure of Germany, Japan, Russia and other nations. Until those nations could rebuild, they were effectively off the map as economic competitors to the United States, which had expanded and improved its own infrastructure during the war. Furthermore, U.S.-made equipment -- trucks, cranes, bulldozers, machine tools -- would be needed for the work of rebuilding those war-shattered rivals.
• Meanwhile, once wartime rationing and other economic controls were lifted, U.S. consumers were flush with cash and eager to buy. I once worked for a man who began a small department store right after the war. He explained to me that the difficulty in the first couple years was getting stuff to sell. There was no shortage of willing customers, but it took a while for manufacturers to switch from making bombs and boots to making skillets and skirts.
• The great era of general prosperity that followed World War II, then, was not really caused by liberal economic policy so much as it was a consequence of the war.
• The social stability of the 1950s was, in large measure, a result of the fact that Americans had experienced so much turmoil and woe -- first the Depression, then the war -- in the past two decades, and were intent on enjoying peace and prosperity.
• However, a recession began in 1957, caused by various factors, including labor union strikes and a tax policy under Eisenhower that imposed high rates on top incomes.
• In reaction to this sense of economic stagnation, Kennedy in 1960 ran on a promise to "get this country moving again," and subsequently did so by slashing income taxes, particularly in the top brackets.
• Kennedy's tax cuts sparked one of the greatest economic booms the country had ever seen, creating new affluence and rising hopes of upward mobility that were the real fuel of the social upheavals we think of (in retrospect) as "The Sixties." College kids did dope and protested the war because they could afford to. Jobs were plentiful, wages were high, and many middle-class kids saw no point in working the night jobs, weekend jobs, and summer jobs which previously been necessary to pay tuition, room and board.

This is one of the ironies of modern liberalism, this desire to substitute ideological certainty and revisionist history for the actual reality of what happened. Many Baby Boomers who fondly remember the peace-and-love stuff of the 1960s don't ever think hard enough to understand how JFK's big tax cut (and the hard work of their parents) made it all possible.

You want a revolution? Cut taxes!

Rule 2 Update Seminar

Something that bears repeating when talking about The Rules: If you can do nothing else as a blogger, you can always aggregate.

This morning I woke up with Sotomayer on TV representin' the South Bronx and thought, "OK, there will be a zillion guys blogging this story today, but what's up with that dissin' on the North Bronx?" Wham-bam, and the joke was online in a few minutes.

Well, "hit 'em where they ain't," you see? Most political bloggers take this big stuff seriously and blog it like judicial Armageddon, so why not roll the other way and treat it like a joke? And then my buddy Chris Moody at Cato sent me some reaction from his guys, and I threw that in as an update.

The story kept rolling, I got 'Lanched, and figured: Linkfest! Let's just round up links to every consevative blog we know, make this a "one stop" post, so the thousands of readers who come in from Instapundit will have more than a dozen choices of where to click next.

Round-up blogging -- aggregation, linkfests, whatever you want to call it -- is a very reader-friendly way to work. Everybody loves to play the pundit with the original insightful commentary, but that's really much harder to do than simply to link, link, link.

So: If you ever get some good traffic coming in on a post about a hot topic, try to update with links to other sites on the same topic. In that way, you become a one-stop source for the reader, and you're also throwing off traffic to other bloggers, who will appreciate it.

What's Wrong With the North Bronx?

So I woke up and heard Judge Sotomayor giving her speech accepting the Supreme Court nomination. And she was like "South Bronx" this and "South Bronx" that, and after a while, I start saying to myself, dang, y'all, girl representin' here.

I'm pretty sure she threw some gang signs and name-checked Biggie and Tupac . . .

Anyway, my grasp of New York City geography being a little hazy -- I've only actually been there once, not counting the the time I passed through on a train to Boston and back -- I began to wonder, why are we always hearing about people being from the South Bronx? Never in my life have I heard anybody even mention the North Bronx.

What's up with that? My guess is that while the South Bronx is all gritty and mean streets with graffiti and gang bangers and pimps and all that, the North Bronx probably must be like a vanilla bland suburban scene, with Ikea stores and stuff.

So nobody wants to admit they're from boring, bourgeois North Bronx, which is uncool, like being from Connecticut or Long Island. Kids in North Bronx, with their safe neighborhoods and shopping malls, probably lie and say they're South Bronx, because otherwise people would think they were wimps and beat them up.

That's my theory, anyway.

UPDATE: Yo, Cato in the House! Ilya Shapiro:

In picking Sonia Sotomayor, President Obama has confirmed that identity politics matter to him more than merit.

Word, bro. Roger Pilon:

In nominating Second Circuit Judge Sonia Sotomayor to fill the seat of retiring Supreme Court Justice David Souter, President Obama chose the most radical of all the frequently mentioned candidates before him.

And she didn't even mention Jam Master Jay.

UPDATE II: Via Instapundit, the sister from South Bronx gets dissed by Roger Kimball:

The air hadn't stopped vibrating with the news that Justice Souter was taking his quill pen and heading back to New Hampshire before Sonia Sotomayor, the first Hispanic nominee to the Supreme Court, emerged as a front-runner on the SCOTUS racing form. Comments there noted her qualifications -- correct complement of chromosomes and suitable ethnic identity, above all, but also the requisite armory of left-liberal opinions without which no candidate for the Court under Obama need apply.

Isn't it odd that (a) on the one hand, her being a Latina inspires MSM celebration, yet (b) on the other hand, nobody is supposed to think she was chosen mainly because she is a Latina?

Donald Douglas calls her a "token," but the weird thing is I can't even work up any outrage at this kind of tokenism. It's expected, like her being a Princeton/Yale Law alumna. Just once in my life I'd like to see a president nominate to the court a graduate of, say, University of Tennessee Law School.

That would be diversity. Instead, she's just another Ivy Leaguer. Yawn.

UPDATE III: In the comments, E.D. Kain of The Ordinary Gentlemen arches an eyebrow:

Biggie and Tupac, Stacy?

Like I said, I was asleep and woke up with this on my TV, so maybe I misunderstood. But if I don't know North Bronx from South Bronx, how can you expect me to tell East Coast from West Coast? I'm hip, but not that hip.

You notice she didn't say a word for my homey Dolla Burton, though.

UPDATE IV: Second 'Lanche of the day? Like Tigerhawk says in the comments:

Rule 6: Weave approving references to law professors, Knoxville, or the University of Tennessee Law School into as many posts as possible, preferably those with a hat tip-link back to Instapundit.

Don't try this at home, kids. I am a highly-trained professional blogger. Also, Clyde offers a good comment:

I think he picked her because Rosa Luxemburg was already dead.

And to all you uptight whiteys throwing down "bigotry" accusations in the comments:

• That's so 2007, dude.
• Don't hate the playa, hate the game.

Peace out.

UPDATE V: Since we're all about representin' today -- Dirty South! -- I'll go through the Memeorandum threads, and throw some Rule 2 on the usual suspects and newbie peeps:

KURU Lounge, Opinionated Catholic, Just One Minute, Weekly Standard, Don Surber, Volokh Conspiracy, Outside the Beltway, Townhall, Red State, Wizbang, Roger L. Simon, Debbie Schlussel, Pundit & Pundette, Hot Air, Michelle Malkin, Power Line, Jawa Report, NRO Corner, Stop the ACLU and Dr. Flap.

Lot of FMJRA aggregation there.

UPDATE VI: Sarcasm alert! Sarcasm alert!

'In the Famous Wordsof Rahm Emanuel . . .'

And you know what those two words are, don't you, Rod Dreher?

Lately, Dreher has endlessly whined about talk-radio personalities he considers uncouth lowbrows. In March, Dreher said that Limbaugh's speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference "made clear that the GOP and the conservative movement are stuck on stupid." In April, Dreher said Glenn Beck was "giving crackpots a bad name." Then Friday, Dreher called Mark Levin a "cretin," a "creep" and a "trashmouth." . . .
"Cretin"? A magna cum laude graduate of Temple University, Levin served in the Reagan administration, ultimately as chief of staff to Attorney General Ed Meese, before becoming president of the Landmark Legal Foundation. All of this Levin accomplished before beginning his successful radio career and, most recently, authoring the No. 1 bestseller Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto.
That Levin employs hyperbole and sarcasm on his show is only shocking to people who don't listen to talk radio. More importantly, Levin believes conservatives are in a fight they cannot afford to lose, against implacable adversaries determined to win at all costs. When a guy begins a fight by slamming a barstool into the back of your head, the Marquis of Queensberry rules do not apply. If you respond by ripping open his carotid artery with the jagged edge of a broken beer bottle, whose fault is that? ("He needed killing," as Texans like to say.) . . .

Please read the whole thing. Of course, Levin is fully capable of defending himself, and does so at length at Dan Riehl's blog, including back and forth in the comments with Conor Friedersdorf. This is all part of the same problem I've been talking about for months, so also see:

• The Republicans Who Really Matter
• Rod Dreher: Truman Capote Con
• The Geek at the Prom vs. Mark Levin
• Essay on the Arrogance of the Elite
• 'Diversity Through Homegenization' and the Cowardice of the Elite
• Conor Friedersdorf vs. Rush Limbaugh
• The Ordinary American
• 'Fever Swamp' Memo to A.J. Strata and Other 'Centrist, Sane' GOP Losers
• On the Futility of Discourse With the Left
• Whither Marriage?
• Tea Parties, Defeatism and Wolverines
• You Did Not Lose
• Don't Overthink It
• Stickin' With the Hockey Mom

You will find unfavorable reference to me in a series on "Conservative Renewal" at The Ordinary Gentlemen. What manner of conservative is Freddie DeBoer? Beats me, other than to say he's the kind of conservative who doesn't like me -- a potentially formidable coalition there, I'm sure.

Unfortunately, there is so much competition for anti-Stacy market share that the numerous Gentlemen could manage only 45K visits in April, less than a third of what we racked up here with just me and Smitty.

I'm the pinata at this fiesta, so Clark Stooksbury gets in a whack, as does Friedersdorf. (What, Larison took a holiday?) The experience of being bear-baited like this, when I have so much to do that I can't even keep up with my e-mail, is one reason I'm sympathetic to Levin:

Levin, who served as Ed Meese's chief of staff, must defend in detail everything he says during 15 hours of weekly radio time against whatever specific criticism any blogger might make, or else be presumed indefensible.

It's absurd, you see. Friedersdorf lashes out and then, if Levin considers it unworthy of his labor to respond point-by-point, Friedersdorf shouts that Levin didn't address his "substantive criticisms." Like Zell Miller said to Chris Matthews, it makes a fellow nostalgic for the days of the code duello.

Tim Blair of the Telegraph is at least amused my enumeration of behaviors that distinguish one from the wusses of Beltway elite journalism. OK, Tim, you want more?

• If you've ever paid your rent with proceeds from ticket-scalping;
• If you've ever had a search warrant served at your home;
• If your high school yearbook was signed by at least one person later sentenced to life without parole;
• If you have at least one scar as the result of a motorcycle accident;
• If you've ever been in a fight that ended when your sister-in-law pulled a pistol;
• If you know all the words to at least one David Allen Coe song;
• If you've ever eluded a pursuing police car;
• If you've ever been on the front row at a ZZ Top concert;
• If you've ever worked in a strip club;
• If you got fired for "fraternization" . . .

Well, the list could be extended ad infinitum, I suppose, but my wife reads the blog. And I must point out that I used to be a Democrat, so that the charge of "conservative hypocrisy" doesn't apply. Of course, the main thing that separates me from the Beltway elite wusses is that none of them ever sported a Speedo in such fine style.

UPDATE: Thanks to Freddie DeBoer, Sully has now named me "the Malkinyest of Malkin Award winners." Hey, I'm just "a kid from the South Bronx," yo.

What did I tell you about bonds?

Lot of jargon here, but important:

The interest yield on 10-year US Treasuries – the benchmark price of long-term credit for the global system – jumped 33 basis points last week to 3.45pc week on contagion effects after Standard & Poor's issued a warning on Britain's "AAA" credit rating.
The yield has risen over 90 basis points since March when the US Federal Reserve first announced its controversial plan to buy Treasury bonds directly, a move designed to force down the borrowing costs and help stabilise the housing market.
The yield-spike may be nearing the point where it threatens to short-circuit economic recovery. . . . The Obama administration needs to raise $2 trillion this year to cover the fiscal stimulus plan and the bank bail-outs. It has to fund $900bn by September.
"The dynamic is just getting overwhelming," said RBC Capital Markets.
The US Treasury is selling $40bn of two-year notes on Tuesday, $35bn of five-year bonds on Wednesday, and $25bn of seven-year debt on Thursday. While the US has not yet suffered the indignity of a failed auction – unlike Britain and Germany – traders are watching closely to see what share is being purchased by US government itself in pure "monetisation" of the deficit.

(Via Instapundit.) OK, who's been warning you about this? March 23:

My own point of view is that last week's Fed buy-up of Treasury notes represents the fateful step into the fiscal/monetary abyss of Weimar America. We are so f****d now that the only question is what kind of financial rubble we will find most useful in rebuilding the shattered wreck of an economy that will be left desolated by the remorselessly descending spiral of inflation/stagnation that now begins in earnest. . .
When that disaster finally hits -- when capital freaks the hell out and the bond market goes sideways -- the lone sanctuary of sanity and calm will be Galt's Gulch.

I've tried to explain this in more detail at the American Spectator. I'm not an economist, of course, but you don't have to be an economist to understand (a) bonds are sold in a market, (b) the pace of deficit spending means a huge increase in the supply of debt, and (c) the loss of capital in the meltdown means weak demand for securities.

OK, so even if there were enough demand to buy up all these bonds (i.e., the Treasury notes issued to pay for the deficit spending), if the Treasury sucks up that much capital, what will be the impact on the stock market? And what will this mean for the amount of capital available to private borrowers including businesses?

Bill Clinton was elected in 1992 after promising all kinds of new stuff during his campaign. But then he sat down to talk to his economic brain trust (Larry Summers, Lloyd Bentsen and a lot of Goldman Sachs people) and they said, "Uh-uh. You pile on all kinds of fresh deficit spending, and the bond market will tank."

Like Obama, Clinton was an Ivy League law grad who didn't know jack about macroeconomics, but his background in Arkansas gave him that kind of Chamber of Commerce pro-business attitude that most Southern governors had. So when his financial advisors explained the basic reality of capital markets and why new deficits would hinder recovery, Clinton took it seriously and canceled a lot of his promises.

This infuriated a lot of people, including Labor Secretary Robert Reich, and James Carville famously said, "Man, I wish I was the bond market. Then people would respect me."

That basic story has been told by Robert Reich, William Greider and others, and I had it in the back of my mind in December when I first wrote "It Won't Work" in December and followed up with "It Still Won't Work" in February. Clinton wisely heeded the warnings about the bond market, whereas Obama pushed recklessly ahead, and so we march down The Road to Weimar America.

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers! In the comments, Jimbo begins a dissertation by telling me that I "don't understand how reserve accounting works in a floating exchange rate fiat money system." And I don't for a minute claim to do so.

However, I do understand that supply and demand function in every market, including bond markets, stock markets and currency markets. Furthermore, I understand that "currency" and "capital" are not the same thing. When the government prints currency, the mere act of printing does not create capital.

What we are dealing with, in this recession, is a capital shortage. The collapse of the housing bubble wiped out a massive amount of value. People had borrowed money against that value, and the creditors whose capital was invested in those loans are now trying to figure out exactly how many cents on the dollar they might be able to collect, and how soon.

Ergo, there is a severe liquidity crunch, which the federal government is attempting to remedy through deficit spending. But deficit spending is borrowing, and so money that might otherwise be invested in the (job-creating, growth-inducing) private sector is instead being siphoned off into government bonds.

Something is wrong here. Whatever the result of such a policy, it will not be economic growth. Exactly what "reserve accounting" has to do with this, I don't know. What I'm seeing is the monetary cat is chasing its fiscal tail, and taking an educated guess that the result will be stagflation.

UPDATE II: Linked at RCP Best of the Blogs.

Hayekian, Reaganite or Texan?Essay on the Arrogance of the Elite

"It is just mind-boggling how some people think that an M.A. or a Ph.D. is somehow a bestowal of omniscience. . . . So why is it that so many academics believe that their word is final when it comes to anything and everything under the sun? As an academic myself, I can answer that question with one word: arrogance."
-- Mike LaRoche, May 23, 2009

"The typical intellectual . . . need not possess special knowledge of anything in particular, nor need he even be particularly intelligent, to perform his role as intermediary in the spreading of ideas. What qualifies him for his job is the wide range of subjects on which he can readily talk and write, and a position or habits through which he becomes acquainted with new ideas sooner than those to whom he addresses himself."
-- Friedrich Hayek, 1949

When I use "intellectual" and "elite" as putdowns, it is a Hayek's conception of modern intellectuals as "secondhand dealers in ideas" that informs my disdain. The arrogance of their presumed omniscience, as Mike LaRoche says, is what renders them obnoxious.

Thomas Sowell (who far outranks me as a "top Hayekian public intellectual") describes the liberal worldview as The Vision of the Anointed, a book that every conservative ought to read, re-read, and continue re-reading until it is thoroughly understood, if not indeed memorized.

When speaking about liberal bias in the media, I sometimes explain to conservative audiences what should need no explaining: The media elite hate you.

They hate you with a thoroughgoing contempt you cannot begin to comprehend. They hate everything you believe in and everything you stand for, and until you understand why they hate you, no defense against their hatred is possible.

The reason the elite hate you is because of your failure to acknowledge their superiority. What the elite cherish, above all else, is prestige. By questioning the truth of the elite's belief, you deny their superiority and deprive them of prestige.

Have you ever wondered why evolutionists are so vehement in denouncing creationists? Among the elite, one cannot gain prestige by advocating biblical truth, creation ex nihilo as an expression of the transcendent soveignty of the Almighty.

If the Bible is true, then the elite are fools. To admit the possibility that "in the beginning was the Word," is to suggest that Richard Dawkins is the intellectual inferior of the holy roller shouting hallelujahs at the Pentacostal revival in the hollows of eastern Kentucky.

Your Christian faith therefore is an insult to the elite, an attack upon their precious prestige, an invitation to whatever evil word or deed the elite employ against you. Creationism is a threat to the elite in the same way that the Ukrainian kulak was a threat to the Soviet revolution, or as Albert Einstein's genius was a threat to Hitler's vision of Aryan supremacy.

As the Marxist would say, those analogies are no accident, comrade.

"[E]very scholar can probably name several instances from his field of men who have undeservedly achieved a popular reputation as great scientists solely because they hold what the intellectuals regard as 'progressive' political views; but I have yet to come across a single instance where such a scientific pseudo-reputation has been bestowed for political reason on a scholar of more conservative leanings."
-- Friedrich Hayek, 1949

For all that we are told about the need for conservatives to come up with "new ideas," it is amazing how little the situation has changed in the six decades since Hayek wrote "Socialism and the Intellectuals." Even the Nobel Prize (which Hayek won in 1974) has been tainted by being recently awarded to Al Gore and Paul Krugman.

The prestige enjoyed by Dawkins, Gore and Krugman is denied to Michael Behe, to Steven Hayward, to Thomas Sowell. To protect their status, the elite must deny prestige to their critics and it is this monopolization of prestige -- not the pursuit or dissemination of sturdy truth -- that eventually becomes the chief occupation as they seek to defend their supremacy against rivals.

You need not be an intellectual to understand this. Anyone who has ever worked in a dysfunctional office under an incompetent manager knows how this game is played. The manager has attained his position by deceiving his superiors into believing he is competent, and the object of the manager's manipulations is to prevent the discovery that he doesn't know how to do his job.

In this situation, the incompetent manager will:

• Routinely take credit for the achievements of others;
• Identify as enemies the most intelligent and competent of his underlings, since they are most aware of his ineptitude and most likely to benefit from his downfall;
• Attempt by favoritism toward sycophants to create a Praetorian Guard to defend himself against criticism; and
• Attribute all failures to scapegoats or circumstances beyond his control.

If you've ever been in the kind of toxic work environment where office politics is a bloodsport, then you understand how ambitious frauds can ascend to dominance, especially in environments where quantitative and qualitative measures of individual output are difficult to obtain.

This is one reason every bright, industrious student abhors the "group project" method that became vogue among progressive educators in the 1970s. Five students are assigned to the project, one or two do all the real work, sharing their grade with the slugs and dullards.

Students of Nicco Machiavelli, Antonio Gramsci or James Burnham equally understand how the organizational structure of institutions favor or disfavor various types of personalities and various means of advancement within those institutions.

Again, to borrow the Marxist's maxim, it is no accident that incompetent backstabbers flock toward careers in academia. Who is to say whether one professor of women's studies is superior to another? What are the criteria by which a dean chooses a new chairman for the sociology department? Now that Ph.D.'s in history, psychology and similar disciplines so vastly exceed the number of available tenure-track positions, the business of hiring and promoting in those fields has become notoriously arbitrary and politicized.

Academia is remote from the direct input of markets, and such is the prestige of elite institutions (e.g., the Ivy League schools) that the hiring process at Columbia or Yale can never affect the success and prosperity of those institutions unless -- as in the notable case of Lawrence Summers at Harvard -- they accidentally hire someone with the effrontery to criticize the elite's belief system.

Yet it is a mistake to suppose that this sort of elitism exists only in academia or that elitism is only a problem among liberals.

"This is the issue of this election: whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capitol can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves."
-- Ronald Reagan, 1964

As with Hayek, so with Reagan, one of Hayek's most successful admirers. Isn't it amazing how little things have changed? Truth is a sturdy thing and human nature is a constant factor in the equation, so that the elite always strive to impose their will, and the free man always struggles to resist.

If Reagan sneered at the elite, was he a "populist"? If he used "intellectual" as an epithet, did this make him "anti-intellectual"? No, he was merely expressing the Hayekian insight: Knowledge is so scattered among the population that, in the universe of facts, no one -- no professor, no pundit, no politician -- can ever have all the facts or claim such a superiority of knowledge that he qualifies to be an "expert" dictating the ordinary affairs of others.

That such arrogant presumptions of expertise are common among intellectuals is as obvious to me and Mike LaRoche as it was to Reagan and Hayek. And that those we might broadly descibe as the ruling class in Washington constitute an elite is self-evident. Reagan was therefore speaking of a real problem in American political life.

Having dealt with this intellectual elite in Washington for more than a decade, I know their habits and attitudes quite well. They habitually presume to know things they do not know, and react with hostility to anyone who questions their presumptions.

Ross Douthat, whose father is a successful attorney, grew up in New Haven, Conn., attended Hamden Hall Country Day School (tuition: $26K/yr.), graduated from Harvard University (tuition $32K/yr.), and married one of his Harvard classmates.

And the title of Douthat's most recent book? Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream.

Douthat might be competent to suggest how Republicans can win the alumni of Hamden Hall and save the Harvard dream, but his only qualification to speak for the working class is the ubiquitous arrogance of the intellectual elite.

"You look back in the earlier times, there were no opportunities, so there were no opportunists. . . . Later on, you have all these people who figure it's probably a pretty good political thing to do. And so they start talking about being conservative when they're running [for office], but they really aren't. So when they get to Congress or wherever they go, they're pretty easily dissuaded."
-- Al Regnery, The American Spectator

Douthat is the answer to a question that has long puzzled conservatives. When I abandoned the Democratic Party in the mid-1990s (hint: "From My Cold Dead Hands!"), one of the first things I discovered was that grassroots conservatives were perpetually peeved by the ineffectiveness of Republicans in Washington.

Living in northwest Georgia (Bob Barr's district 1995-2003) this grassroots discontent was palpable. After I moved to Washington, I'd sometimes see people roll their eyes at any mention of Barr, whom even most conservatives in D.C. considered a reckless firebrand. I'd always tell them, "Man, if you think Bob's an extremist, you ought to meet his constituents!"

The guy in charge of IT at the newspaper I worked for in Georgia was a federal licensed firearms dealer who used to tell me, "Hey, if you ever want to shoot a machine gun, just let me know." Another grassroots leader among Republicans, the wife of a county judge, was also the head of the local Eagle Forum and an activist for the John Birch Society.

Bob Barr never could have been elected without the support of people like that, and if you believe in representative government, then it was Bob's job to represent those people.

And that was my job, too. In 1997, I left Georgia to join the staff of the Washington Times, but not before all my conservative friends down home had thoroughly warned me not to forget where I came from. So it was that I came to Washington with a two-fold mission.

First, I would attempt to represent accurately the essential decency of the good folks I'd left behind -- hard-working, God-fearing, patriotic and self-sufficient. If there is one belief that the elite never doubt for a minute, it is that the average citizen of Floyd County, Georgia, is demonstrably inferior to the average citizen of Chicago, Boston or San Francisco.

Bullshit. Want to argue, Harvard boy?

My second mission in Washington was to discover why the Republican Party failed so miserably to advance the kind of agenda that grassroots conservatives believed they were voting for. It took me many years to understand this, and the answer is complex, but it is also as simple as two words: Ross Douthat.

Well, the liberals had their intellectual elite, you see, and so conservatives decided they needed to get them one, too. Given the natural assumption that the finest minds in America had all been scooped up by the elite schools, there soon developed an intellectual superstructure in Washington of think-tank wonks, policy analysts, political advisers and journalists who came from the same elite background, and had attended the same elite institutions, as the liberal elite.

OK, fine. Let us match Ph.D. to Ph.D., expert to expert, in a sort of intellectual equivalent of the Harvard-Yale game. But while the liberal elite were directly and constantly associating with the liberals whose beliefs it was their job to translate into policy, the conservative elite were generally isolated from the kind of people whose beliefs they were representing.

The Democrat in Brooklyn may resent the arrogance of the Columbia University graduate who specializes in urban policy for the Brookings Institute, but the Brookings specialist is not immersed in an environment where that Brooklyn Democrat is sneered at contemptuously, the way a policy wonk at the American Enterprise Institute sneers as the constituents of the typical Republican congressman.

Whatever their differences in terms of policy, the Brookings wonk and the AEI wonk share the elite belief that the typical Brooklyn Democrat is somehow superior to the typical Georgia Republican. And from that shared belief -- which I assure you is well-nigh universal among the intellectual elite in Washington -- emanates the great divide between the Republican elite in Washington and the rank-and-file of the GOP.

The Republican elite is ashamed of its constituents in a way that the Democratic elite is not. Therefore, Democrats fight ferociously for their agenda in a way that Republicans seldom do.

The Republican elite in Washington crave prestige, you see, and they cannot gain prestige by sticking up for the typical GOP voter in Tucson, Tulsa, Tampa or Tulllahoma. You cannot become one of The Republicans Who Really Matter by defending Ann Coulter or Rush Limbaugh. No one can impress his friends at a Georgetown cocktail party by saying nice things about Sarah Palin or Joe the Plumber. No one in the D.C. elite -- whether Republican or Democrat -- can ever advance his career by quoting Michelle Malkin or Mark Levin.

You see why not only do Republican elites fail to defend their own party's constituents, but they viciously attack anyone who attempts to represent the core beliefs of the conservative grassroots. Because if Michelle Malkin is a conservative, then David Brooks is not, and it is only his status as token "conservative" that assures Brooks of membership in the elite. If Brooks were just another liberal Democrat, after all, the New York Times already has plenty of those from which to choose.

So when you see some "conservative" sneering at Rush Limbaugh or mocking the Tea Party movement -- what you are witnessing is the effort of elitists to signal to their fellow elitists that they are in on the joke, that they don't take seriously the core values of grassroots types like Joe the Plumber.

"Even where the direction of policy is in the hands of men of affairs of different views, the execution of policy will in general be in the hands of intellectuals, and it is frequently the decision on the detail which determines the net effect. We find this illustrated in almost all fields of contemporary society. Newspapers in 'capitalist' ownership, universities presided over by 'reactionary' governing bodies, broadcasting systems owned by conservative governments, have all been known to influence public opinion in the direction of socialism, because this was the conviction of the personnel."
-- Friedrich Hayek, 1949

What Hayek says here can be applied equally, you see, to the Republican Party and the various institutions of the conservative movement. If the think-tank wonks, the congressional staffers and the writers for conservative journals believe in same-sex marriage, global warming or universal health care, efforts to employ those institutions on behalf of contrary opinions will not be as effective as if those efforts were conducted by personnel who actually shared the beliefs they were paid to advance.

The elite cadre of the GOP and the official conservative movement constitute a bureaucracy, and the critique of bureaucracy are equally valid. The beliefs of the Heritage Foundation bureaucrat are in many ways more important in the operations of that institution than the beliefs of Ed Feulner or Ed Meese. The enemy within the camp is always the most to be feared.

Why, after all, does John Cornyn not hesitate to urinate all over the Republican rank-and-file in Florida by endorsing Charlie Crist more than a year before the primary? Because no one at NRSC headquarters, nor any member of Cornyn's Senate staff, has any interest in the concerns of the conservative grassroots nor any incentive to represent those concerns.

Is David Brooks going to speak up for Marco Rubio? Will Kathleen Parker defend the rights of Florida Republicans to choose their own candidates? Do you expect Rod Dreher to tear himself away from the important work of defaming Mark Levin in order to tell his readers in Dallas what Cornyn has done?

"This is the arrogance of the intellectual elite, to imagine that their particular specialty -- the expression of abstract ideals via the written word -- is the only ability that matters, qualifying them as experts on anything and everything they choose to write about."
-- Robert Stacy McCain, May 22, 2009

Michelle Malkin went to Oberlin, Mark Levin went to Temple and Ann Coulter went to Dartmouth. These are all elite institutions, and all three of these individuals engage in endeavors that qualify them as "intellectuals" in the sense that their work involves "shaping public opinion." Why, then, are they at odds with, and scorned by, the people you think of as the "intellectual elite"? Chiefly because they do not look down at The Ordinary American, nor do they ever entertain the notion that their readers are morons incapable of thinking for themselves.

The greatest example of this respect for the grassroots, of course, is Rush Limbaugh. If you listen to Rush regularly, you know that sometimes he'll get a caller who'll say, "Rush, how can you say such-and-so? Everybody in the MSM is saying the opposite. The people will believe the MSM, not you!" And Limbaugh will calmly reply, "Look, you figured it out on your own. I figured it out. Don't you think that other people see the same thing and can figure it out for themselves? Give people some credit."

What makes Rush angry is the evident belief of so many Republican "leaders" that the American people can't handle the truth. Among these truths is that the economic agenda of today's Democrats is the exact same agenda that Hayek warned was being advanced by the intellectuals of 1949.

Begins with an "s," ends with an "m," and I don't mean "sarcasm." But don't say it out loud, or Rod Dreher will call you a "crackpot."

Ayers, Asness: which side to support?

by Smitty (hat tips: Lucianne and Roger Kimball)

  The poor wee Ayers was unable to enter Canada on 18May. He'd asked during a similar January incident "Are we living in some kind of McCarthyist nightmare?"
  It seems we are, Bill, though not your usual Rod Serling-esque Q&A about your preferences when you Party. No, it's more a Kafka-esque running dream where the First Amendment has become notional, as Clifford Asness relates:

...a businessman who ran a manufacturing concern spent a good quarter of an hour railing against Obama's plans to nationalize health care. He had informed himself about the pending legislation in minute detail. He had devoted hours to studying the effects on hospitals and HMOs. He had become utterly convinced that Obama's plans would harm millions.
Well, then, one of his listeners asked, why had the businessman failed to say any of this in public?
The businessman paused, astonished.
"Isn't it obvious?" he replied. "I have an obligation to my shareholders. Keep your head down. Don't speak out. In this climate, that's just being responsible."

  Now, this is a context-free anecdote, and it may be that the writer is buffing up the column.
  What I do know is that the mood of the country is significantly altered. The general case of the blues is not the same as when the Internet bubble burst, post-Clinton. It's not the worry about whether the world was ending on 9/11. It's not just the certainty that the economy is going to stay parked in the toilet for the foreseeable future. No, it's the sobering realization that the worst pre-election fears about the current administration are true, and then some: BHO represents the culmination of a lengthy cultural and academic campaign fomented by the likes of Ayers to put an absolute tool in the Oval Office.
  I remain optimistic, however, that the coming Tea Parties on 04Jul and 12Sep will build momentum, and McDonnell will win the VA gubernatorial race, and the 112th Congress won't suck as much pondwater with Pelosi Galore out of the picture. This administration needs to become the Battle of the Bulge for the collectivists, the time where they threw in everything to the last union, acorn, and unicorn but couldn't quite crush the American spirit.
  If we don't support Asness in every legitimate way, then the Ayers crowd wins the day.

PajamasTV: silky fail?

by Smitty

So they finally offer emblematics, and what do you think is missing? Hint: this is P A J A M A S media, right? Haven't these Hollywood types heard of Chekhov's Gun?
I demand silk jim-jams of stunning, Hefnerian proportions.

Why I'm not blogging much today

No, I'm not chillin' by the lake today. I'm on deadline for a column. Sample sentence:

When a guy begins a fight by slamming a barstool into the back of your head, the Marquis of Queensbury rules do not apply. If you respond by ripping open his carotid artery with the jagged edge of a broken beer bottle, whose fault is that? ("He needed killing," as Texans like to say.)*

So regular readers checking in for their daily prescription of insane commentary on contemporary events -- "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro," as the man said -- may not get the full dose today.

However, I will direct you to The Most Important Blog Post Ever Written. Other than that, check Memeorandum or sample the blogroll.

UPDATE 5:05 p.m.: Just finished the column, and the cited passage (*) has been altered to reflect changes to the draft. Writing is re-writing, as my teachers always reminded me.

Emergency: We Need Fireworks!

My friends know I'm a serious fireworks freak. Click here for video and photos of my 2007 fireworks show at Camp Fubar on Lake Weiss in Alabama -- 3,145 aerial shots in a five-minute show.

Smitty and I are concocting plans for a show this year. These plans are quite fluid and I'm also talking with Stephen Gordon of the Liberty Papers about doing this in conjunction with a 4th of July Tea Party event. However the plans finally work out, one thing is certain: WE MUST BUY FIREWORKS SOON.

A major wholesale fireworks vendor is having a 20% off sale that ends Friday, so we could buy caseloads of the stuff at discount prices if our readers will do their patriotic duty and give generously now.

Graphic: Carol at No Sheeples Here.

Ever want to laugh and puke at the same time?

by Smitty (h/t Lucianne)

  Andrew Breitbart in the Washington Times brought me to the state of dueling reflexes:

BREITBART: How Sean Penn won the war
...
Mr. Penn has spent a generation portraying his public self as a narcissistic, petulant, pugilistic and insufferable left-winger, but in fact he is a rational, even-keeled gentleman and a devoted teetotaling devotee of family values.
What makes his secret life all the more remarkable is that he didn't learn these skills at Langley, Va. - CIA Headquarters USA. He is an auto-didact - a self-taught master of disguise. He's not just a method actor, but a method spy as well.
...

  The tattooed hand recalls another intellectual heavy-weight:

On the need for clear communications

by Smitty (h/t HoEr)

  It starts off looking very bad, but do sit through it fully:

  A more extended example is found here. He may have meant "the red pen is your friend".

Rod Dreher: Truman Capote Con

The Bearded Church Lady speaketh:

If you have to descend to the level of trash-talking vulgarian to prove your bona fides with the Common Man, then fine, in the aristocracy of character, I'll keep working toward being an elitist. It is hard to imagine the conservatives I admire the most, and wish to emulate -- men like Wendell Berry and Russell Kirk -- being very impressed with Mark Levin's crude shtick. Or Robert Stacy McCain's, whose perpetual blunderbuss brings to mind the inner life of a failed oyster: a constant irritation, with no resulting pearl.
(I stole that oyster dig from Truman Capote, but boy, does it ever apply here!)

What is relevant here:

• Wendell Berry? WTF? Since when is Wendell Berry an icon in the conservative pantheon?
• Russell Kirk was not a wienerhead. Rod Dreher is.

Russell Kirk once said, in a lecture at the Heritage Foundation, no less: "Not seldom has it seemed as if some eminent Neoconservatives mistook Tel Aviv for the capital of the United States." Only a real troublemaker, a mixer, would have said such a thing. Kirk was a cultural eccentric, a man who cherished his status as an outsider, an anachronism, disdaining all things modern and "mass."

Among those thinkers whom Kirk examined in his landmark study, The Conservative Mind, was John C. Calhoun. Having long ago read the entirety of Calhoun's Disquisition on Government, I'm sure I would have noticed if Dreher had ever found occasion to reference Calhoun's most important insight:

The necessary result, then, of the unequal fiscal action of the government is, to divide the community into two great classes; one consisting of those who, in reality, pay the taxes, and, of course, bear exclusively the burthen of supporting the government; and the other, of those who are the recipients of their proceeds, through disbursements, and who are, in fact, supported by the government; or, in fewer words, to divide it into taxpayers and tax-consumers.

But this sturdy thought appears nowhere in Crunchy Cons, where instead we find the economic mysticism of E.F. Schumacher. And, as I've said before, I am aware of no evidence that Dreher has ever read Mises and Hayek. If he did, he evidently gained nothing from it.

Ultimately, it comes back to my critique of the Politics of Niceness:

So when Rod Dreher gets sniffy about Mark Levin or people act horrified by an implied slur in an RNC video, I just want to pound those weenies on the head and scream: "Wake the f--- up, you clueless dingbats! The Democrats are eating Republican babies for breakfast, bankrupting our grandchildren, and giving major industrial corporations as gift-wrapped presents to their labor goon buddies! If you want to award gold stars for 'plays well with others,' go be a kindergarten teacher and leave politics the hell alone!"
Maybe when the grown-ups are through beating the Democrats, then we'll have time to mind our manners like we were eating watercress-and-endive finger sandwiches at the Ladies Cotillion Society luncheon.

This is not debate club. The Democrats are not interested in "civil discourse," and your fearful hand-wringing is worse than useless in the present situation.

UPDATE: Rumblepak writes:

The problem reveals itself immediately when we look at the left, its heroes and media spokespeople. The average person under 40 indulges in heavy doses of Jon Stewart, Adult Swim, Bill Maher, et al, and none of these guys are particularly nice or civil. They are pretty darn "mean," in fact.

Exactly. It is one thing to condemn harsh rhetoric, per se. It is something else entirely to say that Republicans are losing elections because Rush said "I hope he fails" or because Levin told a caller to take a flying leap. There are two sides of this argument, and we don't see disgusted ex-GOP voters switching their radios from Michael Savage to "All Things Considered." Democrats are not attracting votes because Rahm Emanuel reduced his f-bombs to once every other sentence.

How many votes did the GOP lose because Ann Coulter called John Edwards a "faggot"? And how many votes did the GOP lose because John McCain endorsed the Bush bailout?

The Gay Elephant in the NRSC's Room

Over the past week, I have repeatedly heard from Republicans troubled by the rumors that Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, the National Republican Senatorial Committee's choice in the 2010 Senate primary, is gay.

At age 52, Crist had never wed until he married Florida businesswoman Christine Rome two weeks before Christmas last year. Those who profess concern about "civility" would say -- or at least, should say -- that the rumors are thereby disproven. But . . .

Let me share with you a message I received yesterday from someone I don't know, and who wishes to remain anonymous:

I have no interest in creating a fuss for you or us. Just asking some questions, if you know what I mean and I think you do.
How are you/we/they going to handle the persistent rumors that Charlie Crist is gay? The first conservative blog to raise this issue is going to be slammed by the MSM, the Democrats and Crist’s Republican supporters for rumor mongering and the politics of personal destruction. But these rumors ain’t going away. LGBT groups have already raised the specter of hypocrisy about Crist being safely in the closet while denying gays access to marriage.
If Crist is gay and had sex with a man, what are the odds we are going to hear about it? If so, I would wager that any revelations will come out after he has won the nomination.
If Crist is gay but has been celibate his entire life, until, you know, he married a woman, what impact will the rumors have on conservative voters in Florida?
If Crist is not gay but the rumors persist, again, impact on conservative voters?
Mark Foley Redux?
On the other hand, what negative impact will a public discussion of the topic by conservatives have on the Rubio campaign?

Well, there you go. If I am "going to be slammed by the MSM, the Democrats and Crist’s Republican supporters," let the slamming begin.

This message, as I said, came to me from someone I don't know, but people I do know have said much the same thing: No matter what the poll numbers show, no matter how much money Charlie Crist can raise, no matter what the probability that Crist could win the general election, these widespread rumors indicate potentially serious trouble.

And don't think that liberals haven't noticed. My tipster forwarded a link to this Huffington Post story:

Crist's increasing shift to the right on social policy may be canceled out by the documentary film, Outrage, which reports on persistent rumors that Crist is a closeted gay man -- even as he states positions against marriage rights for LGBT people and his support for Florida's ban on adoption by LGBT folks. (Florida's law is the only such adoption ban in the country; some 4,000 adoptable Florida children languish in foster care.) As shown in Outrage, which opened nationwide just days before Crist announced his Senate bid, the allegations of Crist's accusers are likely to rankle not only the right, but stand to alienate voters who may not care whether their governor is gay or straight, but who do care about his veracity and integrity -- or lack thereof.

The tipster also sent me this Miami Herald story:

Outrage dares to name names, alleging that politicians of various degrees of power -- including Idaho Sen. Larry E. Craig, California Rep. David Dreier and Florida Gov. Charlie Crist -- have supported bans on gay marriage, gay adoption and AIDS-support bills from the relatively safety of their closets.

OK, this is not a story that really interests me, either politically or personally. But as my tipster says, you can bet good money that it's a story the MSM are going to be very interested in -- if and when Crist gets the Republican nomination.

The Huffington Post story references the reporting of Broward-Palm Beach New Times columnist Bob Norman. (Who seems to be turning "Is Charlie Crist gay?" into a career.) Critics will say that Norman repeats second-hand gossip, but (a) the gossip is very specific, and (b) Norman at least had the decency to call Crist and give him the opportunity to deny the gossip.

Norman names two people, one a Republican staffer who reportedly claimed to have had sex with Crist, the other rumored to have been Crist's male partner. Norman then linked to a Miami Herald story reporting that the alleged partner was a convicted thief who had worked on Katherine Harris's 2006 Senate campaign.

All of which may mean absolutely nothing and is irrelevant to the more fundamental problem of the NRSC trying to pre-empt an open-seat GOP primary by crushing the hopes of the notoriously studly Marco Rubio. But . . .

Did NRSC chairman John Cornyn and Florida GOP chairman Jim Greer take any of this into consideration before endorsing Crist? Surely, Greer must have been aware that these rumors had been dogging Crist for years.

If these rumors had not already been publicly aired by the Huffington Post and Florida media, I would have disregarded the anonymous tip. But the story is out there, and to have ignored it under these circumstances would have been a disservice to Republican readers concerned about the Florida Senate race.

Because you're wrong

Nothing is more important for conservative writers, in its current situation, than to correctly analyze the causes that led the Republican Party from the triumphant heights of 2002-04 to the abysmal defeats of 2006-08.

In a post Saturday evening, I explained that I am currently reading The Thumpin', Naftali Bendavid's account of the 2006 mid-term election in which Democrats reclaimed the majority they'd lost in 1994. I'm a fast reader.

The facts of that election are at odds with the explanations offered by those Republicans who say that the fundamental problem currently facing the GOP is that the party is "too far right," that it is too beholden to the Religious Right, or that the party has suffered for the "mean-spirited" rhetoric of Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, etc.

These analyses conflict with the facts of what happened in 2006. The public expression of these mistaken analyses by soi-dissant "conservatives" or self-identified Republicans are therefore not merely useless for the immediate task of the GOP -- regaining seats in the 2010 mid-term election -- but are in fact harmful to the efforts of those who are laboring toward that task.

Whatever the relevance of intramural ideological disputes (or concern about the tone and content of the GOP "message") to the current situation, henceforth propagation of false understanding by Republican commentators must be identified and denounced as nothing but what it is: Aid and comfort to the Democrats in the electoral showdown that is now less than 18 months away.

Many of the readers and commenters at The Other McCain are also bloggers, and therefore I ask that they join me in enforcing this policy. The 11th Commandment was never intended to be a shield behind which cowardly fools could hide in safety, merely because they had an "R" beside their names or declare that they are loyal Republicans.

Defeatist rhetoric and mistaken analyses offered by "Republicans," tending to impugn, demoralize and confuse the conservative grassroots, can only be considered as objectively pro-Democrat. Such incorrect understandings of the political situation cannot be ignored, but must be actively repudiated. Idiots have the right to free speech, and we have the right to call them idiots.

Freeberg nails it again

by Smitty

  You'd think that "it" would get tired of being nailed. If you followed the Rule 5 URL yesterday to Freeberg's Ten Terraces, number 5 in the taxonomy raised hackles for being as enthusiastic about marijuana (and other drug) legalization as Carrie Prejean and this blog are about the destruction of marriage.
  Freeberg doubles down on his point, and draws a comparison with lotteries. The comparison is a high-level one, and the point made is one about sapping the human spirit.
  Back in the day, there was a string of dope comedy flicks by Cheech and Chong. One of them, and it's really not important enough to research, had a character smoking something which had been urinated upon by an iguana or something. Over the course of the movie, the character transforms into a lizard. Hah, hah, ain't that a hoot? Even though I was yet a teenager when I saw flick, I recall finding the point profound: you will eventually become that which you smoke.
  Too many relatives in my extended family are basket cases and drains on society as a result of body chemistry experimentation. Caffeine, alcohol, and nicotine receive, to varying degrees, a pass. Their effects are not seen in the same debilitating light. Good news, bad news, who can say?
  To have the government consider legalizing any currently banned substances, particularly when ideas of health care legislation are in play, is an entry into paradise engineering, indeed.

Rule 5 Sunday

By Smitty
Rule 5 Sunday time again. Irony abounds, in this age where we've given a black man the honor of the Presidency, that the name Honor Blackman should come up in the context of his party's Speaker of the House.

Cruella de Ville might have been more accurate, albeit less flattering depiction of Pelosi. However, the potential inference that the House Democrats are a pack of dalmatians would be an insult to a noble breed of dog.

• Dustbury featured some Japanese Marriage-Hunting Bra, vaguely disturbing, as so many things Japanese. It may be that technology does not in fact enhance everything.
• Freeberg, easily among my personal Top 10 blogs, meanders from Dukes of Hazard to Buck Rogers in an entertaining way. He also threw in a Hooters girl and some unidentified cel-phone women in a post entitled: "Ten Terraces of Liberalism", which, if nothing else, is an interesting taxonomy.
• Monique Stewart was on some kind of Rule 5 Reign of Terror this week:
  
  • Kim Basinger Wednesday
  • Halle Berry Thursday
  • Reese Witherspoon Friday
  Will the Unidentified Gods of the Blogosphere force Monique to rename her blog "Cheesecake: the Only Foodgroup"? Probably not, but Ms. Stewart does know how to tempt fate.
• Now, the proprietor of Bob's Bar and Grill and I have evolved something of a rapport. You can troll his archives for the last couple of weeks for details. Suffice it to say that the therapy seems to have helped, and it is with pleasure I link his Stacey Scowley. That's Stacey like my sister, not Stacy like the Blogfather.
• Donald Douglas brings Britney, nautical nymph sporting shades.
• He doubles down with Marisa Miller linkage. If only the California economy looked so healthy.
• Jillian at Blueshelled becomes the newest blogger to take the million hit challenge. Her choice of subject is daring, unexcpected, maybe even shocking, and certainly pushes the limits of Rule 5.
• For those who crave more Carrie Prejean, Thrasymachus has some, along with some "Savage Love" commentary.
• The Clever S.Logan offers Adriana Lima, which is good, and then frets that her preacher father reads her blog. Don't worry about it, Suzanna: Billie Holiday, Billy Graham--we're no' so picky.
• Little Miss Attila links a Sport Illustrated clip that features great...landscapes.
• Paco continues his smashing (and educational) series of silver screen sirens (OK, one in color, but I'll let the alliteration stand).
• Elizabeth Mitchell may have been lost, but the diligent Jeffords found her.
• The Troglopundit appears to be in a duel with Monique for The Rule 5 M(istressaster) Award. He's given us:
  
  • Danika Patrick
  • About 2.3 manly POTUS shots
  • Some innuendo-free Bananarama. Because you know this blog is having none of that.
• Avid sportsmen probably already follow the WyBlog, but for the rest, there is import information about the beach volleyball tournament in Ocean City, MD. Remember, it's about sports.
• As it is Memorial Day, The Camp of the Saints provides some Gina Elise goodness. Thank you and thank her, sir.
• The Classical Liberal finishes us off (for now) with Hayden Panettiere and maybe some follow-on links that escaped my roundup.
• Politics and Critical Thinking contributes two hot 'Zonies and a war zone. It's all alliteratively linked, but I don't pretend to understand it. Gimme shelter.

Feel free to a) hit the tip jar, and b) hit my inbox with further Rule 5 submissions. The guidelines are notional, but the taste is simple.