Our first BlackBerry president

He's quit smoking, but can he quit texting?

Barack Obama wants his BlackBerry back - or at least some good way to communicate better with people outside the immediate circle of the president-elect. . . .
How is the president-elect getting along without that BlackBerry which the Secret Service wasn't happy about the boss carrying?
"This is a problem,'' Obama says in the interview airing Wednesday night, according to excerpts released by ABC. "You know, one of the things that I'm going to have to work through is how to break through the isolation and the bubble that exists around the president. And I'm in the process of negotiating with the Secret Service, with lawyers, with White House staff and....''
Does that mean he'll get his Berry back?
"Well, I'm, I'm negotiating to figure out how can I get information from outside of the ten or 12 people who surround my office in the White House,'' Obama said. "Because, one of the worst things I think that could happen to a president is losing touch with what people are going through day to day.''

With its mobile Web connection, the "Crackberry" -- that's how supposedly addictive the devices are -- has become ubiquitous among Washington operatives in the past few years. (Apple's pricier iPhone is not quite so popular.) Attend any event in Washington and you'll see people scrolling their e-mail or surfing the Web throughout the event. And if, perchance, the event occurs in the bowels of a hotel where there's no signal, then as soon they emerge from the event, the first thing they must do is check the device to make sure they haven't missed anything.

Because a Blackberry or cellphone signal could be tracked or intercepted, the Secret Service can't allow the Commander in Chief to carry one, and so add this to the sacrifices the office requires.

(Cross-posted at AmSpecBlog.)

A Tide of tradition

My latest American Spectator column:

Saturday afternoon, my phone will ring and I'll answer by hollering, "Roll, Tide!" My brother Kirby will return the greeting and we'll talk football for a few minutes before kickoff. Then, every time our team scores, the ritual phone calls will be repeated. It's a family tradition.
Logically, there is no reason why the University of Alabama should have the top-rated team in college football. They don't have a player in the running for the Heisman Trophy, and eight of the Top 10 teams in the Associated Press poll -- including Utah and Boise State -- outrank Alabama in total offense (where the Tide rates 30th).
Tide quarterback John Parker Wilson has thrown for 1,775 yards, but that doesn't even put him among the Top 30 passers in NCAA Division I, and certainly Wilson can't compare to Texas Tech's Graham Harrell (4,438 yards) or Oklahoma's Sam Bradford (3,710 yards). Nor does Alabama (23rd in team rushing) have a big-name running back. Glenn Coffee's 1,091 yards this season put him only at No. 25 on the list of leading rushers.
As a statistical proposition, then, Alabama's status as No. 1 would be indefensible, were it not for the one statistic that matters most -- that zero in the "L" column.
Logic and statistics be damned! The Crimson Tide is 11-0 going into Saturday's game against arch-rival Auburn, and every 'Bama fan is dreaming of the team's 13th national championship.

Please read the whole thing. And beat Auburn!

Palin to the Peach State

Can Sarah Palin save Saxby Chambliss?

Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin will make multiple campaign appearances on behalf of Sen. Saxby Chambliss next week in Georgia, serving as the political closer for the GOP senator who is battling to win a second term.
This is Palin's first campaign appearance on behalf of another Republican candidate since losing her bid to become the nation's first woman to serve as vice president.
Palin will attend a fundraiser on Sunday night, then appear at multiple campaign stops on Monday in an effort to rally the GOP base to turn out to vote for Chambliss. The incumbent Republican is facing a strong challenge from Democrat Jim Martin. A runoff is scheduled for next Tuesday, after neither candidate received the 50 percent plus one vote needed to win on Election Day. . . .
Nick Ayers, executive director of the Republican Governors Association, said that it made sense for Palin to help Chambliss. . . .
"She is going to bring a lot of energy and enthusiasm to this run-off," said Ayers, a close Palin confidante. "She is widely popular in Georgia, and I could not envision a stronger closer for Saxby in this election."

Chambliss made the mistake of voting for the $700 billion bailout, and faces a runoff because Libertarian Allen Buckley got 127,723 votes (3%) in the general election.

(Cross-posted at AmSpecBlog.)

UPDATE: Politico:

All of Obama's 25 Georgia field organizers remained in the state to work on the runoff, and the 25 Obama regional offices were immediately converted into Martin for Senate campaign offices. All told, more than 100 Obama field organizers are now in Georgia working Martin's get-out-the-vote efforts, along with leading operatives who served under Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Chairman Charles Schumer of New York during the past election cycle. . . .
But the early signs are not encouraging for Martin. During the presidential election, African-Americans composed a record 30 percent of the electorate in Georgia -- about 5 points higher than in the 2004 presidential campaign. And in early voting, they totaled 35 percent of the vote.
In the runoff, even as Democrats are vigorously encouraging supporters to vote early, only 22.7 percent of the 150,500 ballots so far have been cast by African-Americans.

It isn't hard to see why black voters (or any other voters, really) would have a hard time getting excited about Jim Martin. He's not exactly an inspirational leader.

Holiday Books: Thomas Sowell

Only 30 shopping days until Christmas!

The 2008 Holiday Book Sale continues with Thomas Sowell's The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congralation as a Basis for Social Policy. Folks, this is a book that I can't recommend strongly enough. It is simply the best one-volume analysis of liberalism ever written. Sowell provides a cogent explanation of the moral narcissism that is the essential basis of the liberal worldview.

If you haven't read The Vision of the Anointed yet, you should do so immediately, and buy copies for all your family and friends. And while you're at it, go ahead and send 'em a copy of Basic Economics: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy, and The Quest for Cosmic Justice, two other great books by the same great mind. And remember, with Amazon.com, you get discount pricing with delivery anywhere in the country. Why wait? ORDER NOW!

PREVIOUSLY:

• 11/24: The Great Depression
• 11/23: Blacklisted by History
• 11/22: Mises & Hayek
• 11/21: White Guilt by Shelby Steele

Olbermann on Turkeygate

Here's a perfect recipe for holiday nausea: Take one large turkey, add a popular Republican governor and Keith Olbermann. Stir well.

(Via Hot Air.)

UPDATE: The great thing about MSNBC is their utterly unobjective chyrons: "Footage of Turkey Extermination . . ." Where do these idiots think cold cuts come from? Bacon? Burgers? And don't even get me started on foie gras.

The Left's favorite bank

Citigroup is "a Big Government lovers' bank that funds just about every trendy left-wing cause in America," says Matthew Vadum:

Long before it started drowning in red ink, the poster child for so-called corporate social responsibility was a longtime donor to left-wing pressure groups such as Jesse Jackson's Rainbow/PUSH Coalition and Henry Paulson's Nature Conservancy. In tax year 2003, Citigroup's foundation gave 20 times more money to groups on the left than to groups on the right, according to Capital Research Center's 2006 study of Fortune 100 foundation giving. . . .
Citigroup's foundation has given a staggering $1.4 million to the alarmist World Resources Institute, as well as $509,000 to ACORN in recent years. The ACORN funding included a $500,000 grant to ACORN's American Institute for Social Justice, which offers Saul Alinsky-style training in community organizing. Other donations to liberal groups include the Aspen Institute ($762,500), Rainbow/PUSH ($750,000), Nature Conservancy ($380,000), Rainforest Alliance ($200,000), and the Council on Foreign Relations ($50,000).

"Too big to fail"? More like "too Left to fail."

UPDATE: Linked by Michelle Malkin, who adds this:

Four major banks, including one that collapsed, two that received federal bailout money and one that filed for bankruptcy this past September, paid former President Clinton $2.1 million for 13 speeches he delivered on their behalf between 2004-2007, according to Senate financial disclosure statements filed by Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.).
Citigroup paid Bill Clinton $700,000; Goldman Sachs paid $950,000; Lehman Brothers paid $300,000 and Merrill Lynch paid $175,000 to the former president for speeches during that time period. Sen. Clinton’s 2008 financial disclosure reports are not yet available.

Progressive plutocracy -- what a concept!

Financial incest

Just in case you thought Obama was going to rid Washington of insider cronyism:

Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr.; Citigroup board member Robert E. Rubin; and Timothy F. Geithner, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, have for years followed one another in and out of jobs in government and industry. Their close relationships helped pave the way for one of the largest and most dramatic government interventions to date in the financial crisis. . . .
The bailout came only days after Paulson made comments that many in the financial markets took to mean that he would leave any future bailouts to the Obama administration. But once Citigroup's stock price plunged 60 percent last week, Rubin, an old colleague from Goldman Sachs, told Paulson in phone calls that the government had to act, according to industry sources familiar with their discussions.
Geithner, too, shared a close relationship with the pair.
He worked for Rubin at the Treasury Department in the 1990s and now is President-elect Barack Obama's nominee to follow Paulson as Treasury secretary.
As Citigroup's lead regulator, Geithner was deeply involved in the rescue of the firm, participating in meetings and conference calls with Paulson through the weekend. He did, however, withdraw from direct interactions with Rubin and other Citigroup leaders in these negotiations after his name was leaked as Obama's nominee, according to people familiar with the discussions.

You voted for Hope. You got Goldman Sachs.

(Cross-posted at AmSpecBlog.)

UPDATE: A friend writes:

It doesn't matter who you vote for. You always get Goldman Sachs. As someone famous is reputed to have said to Nelson Rockerfeller, "Why do want to run the country? You already own it."

Indeed, but you'd think that voters would eventually see through the liberal class-warfare charade. But if it weren't for gullible voters, where would the Democratic Party be?

Don't blame greed

There are two kinds of intellectual experts: (a) overeducated fools, and (b) experts who agree with me. From category (b), Professor Lawrence H. White explains the financial meltdown:

Those who fault "deregulation," "unfettered capitalism," or "greed" would do well to look instead at flawed institutions and misguided policies.
The expansion in risky mortgages to underqualified borrowers was encouraged by the federal government. The growth of "creative" nonprime lending followed Congress's strengthening of the Community Reinvestment Act, the Federal Housing Administration's loosening of down-payment standards, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development's pressuring lenders to extend mortgages to borrowers who previously would not have qualified.
Meanwhile, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae grew to own or guarantee about half of the United States' $12 trillion mortgage market. Congressional leaders pointedly refused to moderate the moral hazard problem of implicit guarantees or otherwise rein in their hyperexpansion, instead pushing them to promote "affordable housing" through expanded purchases of nonprime loans to low income applicants.
The credit that fueled these risky mortgages was provided by the cheap money policy of the Federal Reserve. Following the 2001 recession, Fed chairman Alan Greenspan slashed the federal funds rate from 6.25 to 1.75 percent. It was reduced further in 2002 and 2003, reaching a record low of 1 percent in mid-2003 - where it stayed for a year. This set off what economist Steve Hanke called "the mother of all liquidity cycles and yet another massive demand bubble."

His full Cato Institute briefing paper is online in PDF format.

(Cross-posted at AmSpecBlog.)

The only issue that matters

Mona Charen covering last week's National Review Institute conference:

The most important battle, Yuval Levin of the Ethics and Public Policy Center argued, will be health care. If health care is successfully nationalized in America, the case for a smaller and less bureaucratic state becomes immeasurably more difficult. Throughout the developed world, in countries that have adopted socialized medicine, every call to limit the size and scope of government is instantly caricatured as an attempt to take medicine away from the weak and sick. People become awfully attached to "free" medical care even though it is emphatically not free (it is supported through higher taxes), even though it requires waiting periods for care (even in cases of cancer and other serious illnesses), and even though it deprives people of the latest technology (the city of Pittsburgh has more MRI scanners than the entire nation of Canada).

Philip Klein said the same thing in July:

[T]he worst possible thing that could happen for conservatives during an Obama administration, would be for him to create a government-run health-care system. . . .
Both in terms of the sheer cost, as well as the psychological impact of putting the state in control of our life and death decisions, this would represent the final defeat for advocates of limited government, because if history is a guide, such reforms will never be undone.

This was why Republican support for Medicare Part D was such a gutless and self-defeating move. Twisting arms to secure passage, Tom DeLay sought to buy off senior citizens in an election year by pushing through the largest entitlement expansion since LBJ. But Republicans can never outbid Democrats on entitlements, and the attempt to do so undermines the GOP's credibility on the size-of-government argument.

Now, when Obama starts pushing for nationalized health care, Republicans will have both diminished numbers and diminished credibility in their opposition.

Holiday Books: The Great Depression

Only 31 shopping days until Christmas!

With Barack Obama trying to push grandiose economic "stimulus" boondoggles as the solution to the financial crisis, what better time to study the disastrous results of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal?

The 2008 Holiday Book Sale continues with these three great titles: Amity Shlae's highly praised The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression, Burt Folsom's New Deal or Raw Deal? How FDR's Economic Legacy Has Damaged America, and (thanks to Greg Ransom at PrestoPundit for the recommendation) Jim Powell's FDR's Folly: How Roosevelt and His New Deal Prolonged the Great Depression.

These books will make great gifts for your Democratic friends -- so they can have a depressing Christmas -- and with Amazon.com, you get discount pricing with delivery anywhere in the country. Why wait? ORDER NOW!

PREVIOUSLY:
11/23: Blacklisted by History
11/22: Mises & Hayek
11/21: White Guilty by Shelby Steele

Sid is back!

Wherever the Wicked Witch goes, can her flying monkeys be far behind?

Late last week, as stories swirled around Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's possible jump to the job of Secretary of State, another longtime Clinton aide's name began to crop up: former journalist and Clinton back-room consigliere, Sidney Blumenthal.
Should Clinton accept the Secretary of State job, Blumenthal, it is believed, will move to Foggy Bottom as a counsel to the secretary, a post that will not require Senate confirmation, but will require an extensive security and background check.
According to Obama transition team sources, Clinton aides presented them with a list of potential senior staff for the Secretary of State office, and Blumenthal's name -- without a title or role described -- was on it.

Hope! Change! Sidney Blumenthal! Don't you know there's got to be some Obama volunteers who walked precincts for him in New Hampshire who are now about to blow a gasket over Hillary getting a Cabinet post -- and bringing her evil minions with her?

Future Ex-Democrats

From my latest American Spectator column:

Bill Clinton, in my mind, had two great accomplishments as president: He signed the Welfare Reform Act of 1996 and he made me an ex-Democrat. While my conversion is probably an extreme example of the phenomenon, I'm one of millions whom Clinton drove out of the party.
There was a reason, after all, that the Obama campaign pushed so hard to register first-time voters this year -- the Clinton years produced so many "once burned, twice shy" voters who now wouldn't vote for any Democrat under any circumstance.
Obama gained his margin of victory in large measure by enlisting the support of the disengaged, the disaffected and those too young to know better. Voters under 30 -- who weren't yet in high school when Bill Clinton was elected -- went for Obama by a 2-to-1 margin. Many of these young Obama supporters will be among the first to feel the shock of discovering how wide is the chasm that separates their Hope from any Change that Obama can actually accomplish.
Already, their disillusionment is beginning, the Internet rumbling with discontent as Obama staffs his administration with Washington insiders, Clinton cronies and even, perhaps, Hillary Clinton herself. Many more will be disheartened to discover that there is no magic in Obama's economic plan, a patchwork of warmed-over Keynesian "pump-priming" claptrap as stale as the memory of Hubert Humphrey.

Please read the whole thing. And don't stop thinkin' about tomorrow.

John Ziegler vs. his critics

Got a note from John Ziegler in response to my post about Nate Silver's interview with him, thanking me "for being one of the VERY few even on our side you 'got it' and defended me." There has been a tendency among conservatives to ignore this kind of distortion by the Netroots, but Silver's objections were so ridiculous as to demand a response.

Ziegler has compiled his own response to his critics.

Neil Cavuto vs. Ben Stein

The lovely Dagan McDowell also gets in on it:

Fear itself

Tom Friedman hits the panic button:

This is the real "Code Red." As one banker remarked to me: "We finally found the W.M.D." They were buried in our own backyard -- subprime mortgages and all the derivatives attached to them.
Yet, it is obvious that President Bush can't mobilize the tools to defuse them -- a massive stimulus program to improve infrastructure and create jobs, a broad-based homeowner initiative to limit foreclosures and stabilize housing prices, and therefore mortgage assets, more capital for bank balance sheets and, most importantly, a huge injection of optimism and confidence that we can and will pull out of this with a new economic team at the helm.
The last point is something only a new President Obama can inject. What ails us right now is as much a loss of confidence -- in our financial system and our leadership -- as anything else.

Again, the endorsement of more Keynesian "stimulus," like Theodorick of York prescribing another bloodletting.

Our unbiased media

Mark Halperin's ruminations on this year's blatant pro-Obama bias, and the attempt by some in the media to defend their grossly unfair coverage of the campaign, prompts Ace to say:

They have no defense. To ladle additional lies upon a breathtaking record of dishonesty adds insult to injury.

To Ace, and everyone else enraged by media bias, let me offer what I conceive as the underlying rationale of this bias, which comes in two parts:

• THE FOX EFFECT -- The rise of Fox News as the No. 1 cable news outlet has resulted in ideological counterprograming. The success of a conservative news network has had an effect that might be best understood by reference to Newton's third law of motion. At first, there was the "equal effect" -- chastened by Fox's success, most networks sought to rein in their traditional liberal bias. But then, after the 2004 election, the "opposite effect" kicked in. Network executives figured, "Hey, Fox already has a monopoly on conservative viewers. Let's let our freak flags fly and give liberals what they really want." I really noticed this phenomenon during the 2006 campaign, when the media (a) pretended that the contributions Jack Abramoff's clients made to Democrats were meaningless, and (b) presented Mark Foley as the GOP poster boy. The existence of Fox News provides a ready-made excuse for liberals in the media to think of their bias as "balancing" Fox.
• "IT'S THEIR TURN" -- What is the most elementary definition of "fairness"? Taking turns. So, Clinton had his 8 years in the White House, then Bush had his 8 years, and now -- by the taking-turns definition of "fairness" -- it's time for another Democratic president. The careful observer will note that liberal bias was somewhat ameliorated in 2000, when Al Gore sought the "third Clinton term." Eric Alterman seized on negative coverage of Gore (two words: "earth tones") to suggest that in fact the media has a conservative bias, but it was really more of a case of Clinton fatigue in the Washington press corps. Plus the fact that Gore is such a notorious phony.

This is how the media rationalizes blatant unfairness as being true fairness. Remember: They went into this business to "make a difference" (see note at end) and keeping Republicans from holding the White House for an unfairly long time is the kind of difference they most wish to make.

The fact that the next Democratic president is black made the media double down on the taking-turns rationale: Hey, let's let the minorities have a shot! To reply "no" to that proposition was, to the liberal mind, irrefutable proof of racism.

Well, then, what does this mean for media coverage of politics going forward? First of all, the Media Research Center and others need to recognize how the Fox Effect is helping drive hyperliberalism in the non-Fox media, and call this to public attention, because the appeal of ideological counterprogramming is so strong. Look:

• ABC World News -- 7.9 million viewers
• NBC Nightly News -- 7.9 million viewers
• CBS Evening News -- 5.9 million viewers
• Fox: O'Reilly Factor -- 4.0 million views

Which is to say, the major network evening news programs have an audience have a combined viewership of 21.7 million -- more than FIVE TIMES LARGER than the audience of the highest-rated Fox News show. Conservatives cannot afford to ignore this kind of basic math and allow their viewpoints to be walled off in the Fox News "ghetto." The existence of Fox -- which reaches less than one-sixth of the TV news audience -- ought not give the other media a license to conform their reporting to DNC talking points.

Second, the "make a difference" media types ought to be reminded of another cliche, namely, "speaking truth to power." With the Democrats now running the whole show in Washington, the media need to maintain their adversarial watchdog stance if they want to maintain any shred of credibility. They cannot be complicit in any cover-up of wrongdoing by the Obama administration or the Democrats in Congress.

Third, conservative spokesmen and Republican leaders in Washington need to find a safe line of attack against the new regime. If I were John Boehner, I'd call a huddle and give 'em a simple three-word message: "It won't work." Whatever the Democrats propose, the Republican response is, "It won't work." Whether it's the next round of bailouts, a proposed health-care program, or some neo-Keynesian make-work boondoggle, Republicans should reply to every Democratic idea by predicting that it won't solve the problem it's aimed at, and will likely make matters worse.

The beauty of this is that it's true. Nothing proposed by Obama, Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi can possibly make a dime's worth of difference in solving the current economic crisis. These aren't "new ideas" at all, they're just gussied-up versions of obsolete liberal tax-and-spend policies from the era of Hubert Humphrey, ideas that weren't even really new when J.K. Galbraith and Michael Harrington proposed them half a century ago. These ideas have always failed before, and they'll fail again.

If conservatives will elaborate and reiterate that message -- the Heritage Foundation, Cato Institute and Americans For Prosperity can supply the statistics and specifics -- then they will look like prophets when, as predicted, Obama's economic policies fail. And the credibility gained from this accurate prediction ought to give them leverage to attract better media coverage.

Oh, one final point: Some Republican staffers on Capitol Hill ought to make an effort to locate the favorite watering holes of the Washington press corps and never miss an opportunity to buy the next round. You might be surprised how much goodwill can be purchased with a $200 bar tab. I'm convinced that a GOP "whiskey offensive" could have a significant positive impact on the quality and quantity of the Republican Party's news coverage.

NOTE: Despite 22 years in the news business, I never bought into the "make a difference" mentality. I became a journalist because, as Hunter S. Thompson said of his own career, "sportswriting was the only thing I could do that anybody was willing to pay for." (And, yes, I was a sportswriter for five years.) Super-serious save-the-world crusaders bore me to tears, and there is no trend that's hurt journalism more than the cliched five-part Pulitzer-bait series examining some Important Social Issue Of Our Time: The pathetic plight of left-handed Latino lesbians, etc. A major reason the newspaper industry is circling the drain is because of its preference for pretentious "in-depth" features to the detriment of basic meat-and-potatoes reporting -- which usually does more to "make a difference" than that other stuff.

UPDATE: Linked by Ed Driscoll -- thanks!

Bailout fever goes viral

Michelle Malkin notes that the state of Pennsylvania has secured $35 million in federal money to bail out the Boscov's regional department store chain:

Gov. Ed Rendell announced today that the state will direct $35 million of federal Housing and Urban Development money to Al Boscov and his family to help them purchase the bankrupt department store chain.
Rendell said the money will help Boscov secure the funds to complete the purchase in bankruptcy court.
Without the money, the department store chain may not be able to survive, he said. It has 39 stores and 9,000 employees in the mid-Atlantic region. Rendell said there are 25 stores and 5,000 employees in the state. Boscov's is based in Reading.
"It would be devastating in the state of Pennsylvania to lose Boscov's," he said.

This is economic idiocy of the first magnitude. If Boscov's can't compete with Macy's (or Costco or Wal-Mart), how is that any concern to federal taxpayers? Retail entities rise and fall routinely without governments lifting a finger, simply because retailing is so competitive and innovative, and consumer preferences are so fickle. The people who used to shop at Boscov's, but who now shop somewhere else, are not going to be lured back by anything that an injection of taxpayer millions can accomplish, and this is a perfect example of government pouring money down a rathole to no purpose.

At some point, people need to realize that businesses fail for a reason and that attempting to prop up failed enterprises is a waste of taxpayer resources. I'm reminded of Ronald Reagan's description of liberal economic policy: "If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. If it stops moving, subsidize it."

Can we deport Arianna Huffington?

Just saw that idiotic woman on ABC's "This Week," and as always, it was like fingernails on a blackboard. George Will had just referenced the year 1937, when industrial production plummeted -- eight years after the Crash and five years into the New Deal -- as evidence that the New Deal did not actually solve economic problems. At which point Arianna cut in with, "Oh, George, zat's vun of zee meeths of conservatives . . ."

No, Arianna, it's not myth, it's a fact. And I hope you invested all the ill-gotten gains of your divorce settlement in Citigroup, GM and Wachovia stock.

UPDATE: Here's video:

Two books of particular relevance are Amity Shlae's The Forgotten Man and Burt Folsom's New Deal Or Raw Deal.

A (short) list of liberal accomplishments

In my post about the National Review Institute, I complained:

Too many of the NRI panelists were willing to cede ground to global warming, the biggest liberal hoax since the "homeless crisis" of the 1980s. Besides the specific evidence of fraudulent statistical manipulation and the problematic assumptions of climate "modeling," the very fact that liberals passionately believe in global warming is an argument against the theory. When have liberals ever been right about anything?

That last taunt prompted a troll to respond:

Let's see, off the top of my head:
Civil rights (and abolition, for that matter)
Ending child labor
40 hour work week
Rivers tend not to catch afire anymore
There are still bald eagles
Read "The Jungle" next time you eat a steak

I suppose other examples might be added, but let's go with this list for starters. Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" was published in 1906 and the Pure Food and Drug Act was passed that same year. Child labor was outlawed and the 40-hour week was mandated by the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. The Cuyahoga River in Cleveland caught fire in 1969. The Environmental Protection Agency was created in 1970, and the Endangered Species Act (credited, rightly or not, with saving the bald eagle) was passed in 1973. Slavery was abolished by the 13th Amendment (1865) and the Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964.

Shall we credit all of these measures as "liberal"? U.S. Grant and W.T. Sherman might eschew that label, and both the EPA and the ESA were signed into law by Richard Nixon. Shall we credit all these measures as successes? After all, we have not abolished child labor, merely outsourced it to the Third World, and you can ask the average professional (say, a young lawyer) when the last time was he worked a 40-hour week.

Yet call all of these measures unalloyed successes and credit them all to liberalism, and it's still a pathetically short list of achievements, most of them accomplished 70 or 100 years ago. And I fail to see how today's liberals can really claim credit for a food-safety law passed before any of them were old enough to vote. Will liberals next claim their opposition to the crucifixion of Christ as evidence that we should trust them about global warming?

Liberals promote a sort of Whig history of continual progress, wherein everything good and beneficial is credited to crusading liberals and all failures and shortcomings are the fault of their opponents. And this mantle of historical liberal virtue is then draped around the shoulders of the next liberal crusade, so that to oppose liberalism is analogous to opposing progress -- not merely the "progress" proposed today, but centuries-old "progress," as well.

It's a scam, a dishonest hustle, and if all the myriad measures that liberals say are necessary to "progress" today were enacted tomorrow, the liberals would come back the day after tomorrow with a new list of demands. This fact -- the absolute endlessness of the liberal appetite, the sheer voraciousness with which they seek new legislation -- is why it's so much easier simply to oppose liberals in everything.

Holiday Books: Blacklisted by History

Only 32 shopping days until Christmas!

The 2008 Holiday Book Sale continues with Stan Evans' blockbuster, Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight Against America's Enemies. Evans spent decades compiling this definitive account of one of the most controversial men in American history and his courageous crusade to expose how Communists and Soviet agents had penetrated the U.S. government. Evans debunks the liberal lies with page after page of never-before-published documents.

Books make excellent Christmas gifts, and with Amazon.com, you get discount pricing with delivery anywhere in the country. Why wait? ORDER NOW!

PREVIOUSLY:

• 11/22: Mises & Hayek
• 11/21: White Guilty by Shelby Steele