Why NPR is sheltered, stupid, and contra common sense.

When did we become a nation of pussies?

When did "freedom of speech" give way to "obligation not to say mean things that might hurt someone's feelings?"

When did we decide that a "wrong" opinion is every bit as bad as a "wrong" action, and in some instances worse?

Juan Williams was fired from his job at NPR, ostensibly because of a decidedly nuanced comment about concern at sharing a plane with self-identified Muslims wearing burkhas and robes. He followed that by noting that those we need to fear are specific groups of Muslims who advocate terror, and he further noted that we have to be careful about putting all Muslims in the same categories. This, apparently, was a firing offense.

Williams is a fair-minded, respected liberal journalist who tries to understand the world from all sides before he writes or comments about it. I have found myself in diametrical opposition to his viewpoints on numerous occasions, but I respect his opinions because he knows why he came to the conclusions he reached; he reasoned through his opinions. He does not merely accept prevailing received wisdom. In short, he is an honest journalist. But that, apparently, was not enough to save his job. One nuanced comment about Muslims while appearing on Fox News with Bill O'Reilly later, and he is shown the door...

Um. Yeah. Just a sec. About Fox News...

NPR hates them. NPR believes that Fox News is opinion disguised as news, and, as such, is a Bad Thing. They insist that Fox is Republican territory, whereas NPR is an unbiased presentation of news and opinion.

But here is the thing: even if we entirely accept that point of view, which I decidedly do not, if NPR was really concerned about having unbiased news reach people that are not their natural constituency, why would they NOT want to have their commentators appear on Fox to provide some balance? Why would they NOT want to "infect" Fox with the truth, daily, if possible?

Because that ain't what this is about. NPR is "elite" opinion received. If you want to know what people who graduated from the Ivy League think, go to NPR. If you want to hear the same received wisdom that runs through the editorial pages of the New York Times, Washington Post, et al, listen to NPR.

And elite opinion doesn't want a thing to do with anyone who watches Fox News, except to look down on them.

But here is the thing: even on the "opinion" shows, Fox brings on commentators who contrast the opinions of the hosts. There is some effort expended to provide some balance of opinion.

Unlike NPR.

There, you get liberal doctrine untainted by conservatism. Elite opinion unmixed with...that icky other stuff. It is sheltered opinion disguised as comprehensive. ANd while there is much good work on NPR, too often it fails to come to grips with what is actually happening in America...as opposed to what is happening in Eastern Seaboard, Blue State America.

There is a difference.

What NPR finally admitted, in a back door sense, was that Williams was consorting with the enemy. The true firing offense was that he appeared on Fox at all.

NPR's loss. Fox News' gain. And it will probably work out better for Williams, too, in the long run.

The only losers are the 26.5 million listeners of NPR who won't hear a thing that makes them uncomfortable. It's all good. Go back to sleep, untroubled by thoughts of THOSE people. You know: the OTHER 280,000,000 living here in the US.

Which Constitution is Judge Phillips reading?

Lots of people find ourselves diametrically opposed to the military policy referred to as "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," and many of us would like very much to see that policy changed. I have stated on a number of occasions, in blogs, in essays, and in innumerable conversations with uncounted numbers of other participants that DADT needs to be replaced with a policy that is entirely neutral as to sexual orientation except where the mission of the military can be affected. What that exception means is simple: in the military, everyone is required to act, dress, and comport themselves in particular, mandated ways. They must accept discipline, and they must think "mission first."

All of that said, the federal judge in San Diego who struck down DADT as unconstitutional has clearly never read the Constitution. I quote Article 1, Section 8: Powers of Congress: It shall have the power:

To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;

That simple. It is a completely exclusive grant of power with no "except as it pertains to" equivocations. Congress, bluntly, has the power to make rules for the military. Not the Executive. Not the Judiciary. Congress.

The judge is completely out of line, and I do not doubt that if the case arrives at the Supreme Court, she will be reversed. There is this, also: because Article 1, Section 8 gives Congress the exclusive right to determine the rules and regulations of the armed forces, it also has the derived right to determine who may serve and who may not.

There is NO Constitutional right to serve in the military. Absent that right, everyone who serves in the military serves at the discretion of Congress or the particular branch as it applies. People who are significantly overweight cannot serve. People who are over a particular age cannot enlist. And many others are excluded for a variety of reasons, including health, criminal records, or country of origin issues. This, in law, is simply one more disqualification.

Now. Congress may change that law, and I believe that it can and will for many good and valuable reasons. Gays and lesbians already serve honorably and well, and it is an injustice not to allow them to serve openly, and an idiocy to exclude people of good character, high integrity, and manifest ability, whatever their sexual orientation.

In the meantime, I believe that Congress should vote out a resolution to the effect that it, and it alone, will decide on qualifications for service, and that it is not subject to judicial review. I also believe that when the military is finished with its review, Congress should act and definitively change the policy.

And I think that California U.S. District Judge Virginia Phillips ought to take the time to read the Constitution before she trots out another specious decision on what it does, or does not, allow.

The end of the Reagan Revolution?

For the past three election cycles, a lot of people with varying points of view have been talking about the end of the Reagan Revolution. The Gipper cast a 25 year shadow on American politics, and it wasn't until after the 2006 election when Democrats decided it might be safe, finally, to take a left turn.

What Reagan had accomplished through two terms was the equivalent of FDR's New Deal in terms of talismanic longevity. Where FDR had brought about a decades long realignment in favor of the Democratic party and a more expansive view of government, Reagan accomplished the opposite almost entirely, moving the electoral goalposts dramatically to the right of center and contracting the role of government. Post Reagan, Democrats seeking to compete at the national level were forced to move to the political center...in some instances, moving a great deal farther to the right than was entirely comfortable. This is not to say that hard left Democrats suddenly vanished at the national level; not at all. They burrowed into Congress and acquired seniority, accomplishing much in their own way. But in marginal or competitive districts, particularly those with certain amount of turnover, candidates from either party were definitively centrist or somewhat to the right of center. More importantly, the language of government and the perimeters of what it was intended to accomplish were delineated and circumscribed by Reagan and his fellow revolutionaries.

President Clinton, for instance, was elected as a "new" Democrat, i.e., a centrist. That was reinforced for him in 1994, when voters, perceiving that the Democratic party was trying to govern farther to the left than they were comfortable with, readjusted course in mid term, and the Republicans took the Congress. Clinton learned this lesson well, and was careful to appear centrist, triangulating his policies between a Democratic party that wanted, but feared, more liberal policies, an ascendant GOP, a watchful public, and the looming Reagan shadow.

With the election of George W. Bush, a man who explicitly claimed the Reagan mantle, the course was set for continued, uneventful center-right governance...until 9/11; from that point, everything changed.

His prosecution of the Cold War to one side, if one examines the Reagan record, one notes particular care to keep US commitments but not add to them. There were no hot wars; indeed, virtually no military actions at all that extended past 30 days except for exercises. Marine presence in Lebanon was one exception, but when their barracks at the Beirut airport were bombed, Reagan's response was to pull the troops and have the USS New Jersey bang away at Druze and Syrian positions. The Grenada police action in 1983 also qualifies here, and it was carefully planned and lasted just a bit over two months.

In contrast, President Bush almost immediately began planning a military response post 9/11, which, by March of 2003, developed into a two pronged war effort in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The president won re-election specifically on a "stay the course" campaign, but by the 2006 midterms, steady reports of reversals, bad news, poor operational control and worse planning in the war effort, along with GOP overreach and arrogance of power within the administration and Congress, worked to create a toxic combination for Republicans at the polls. Both the House and the Senate turned over. The hard left in the Democratic party, heavy in seniority and sure that the Republican brand was tainted, took control on Capitol Hill. By the time the 2008 elections rolled up and in the midst of an economic blitzkrieg of mammoth proportions, the left was looking at realignment. It had Congress; it had elected the most liberal president in the nation's history; and it had majorities capable of beating back GOP objections to anything.

To a certain extent, everyone missed what had actually happened. President Bush's unpopularity made Republicans unpopular by proxy, but many of the new Democrats gained office as centrist candidates, winning heretofore solid GOP seats. So with a president who was elected in large part because he was not President Bush, a Democratic Congress elected by voters tired of GOP rule because of misadventure, corruption, or arrogance (but still perceiving Democratic replacements as no more liberal than the GOP legislators they defeated), and large majorities, Democrats saw the end of the revolution and a chance to remake the government in a more progressive image.

The Progressive ascendancy lasted eight months, ending with the death of Edward Kennedy. By the end of that first year, Scott Brown was elected in Massachusetts to Kennedy's old Senate seat on an explicit promise to stop Democrats from shoving health care "reform" through the Senate. Obamacare limped over the finish line, but was so desperately unpopular that few Democrats dare to run for reelection while openly supporting the bill as it passed.

And a huge course correction, an electoral tsunami, awaits Democrats in this 2010 midterm election. Current estimates reflect Republican turnover of the House, with a chance to retake the Senate. This is an astonishing repudiation taking place within two years, and one caused by a simple misunderstanding: the Reagan Revolution, the realignment he brought to Washington and national politics, remains intact. And both parties missed it.

The US remains a center-right nation, predominantly. This was the meaning of the Tea Parties and is the source of their continuing power. They are a reflection of center-right principles. They have, essentially, reversed the leftward drift of the Republican party; in three weeks, the country itself will resume a more conservative course.

Ronald Reagan is gone, but the changes he wrought in our politics remain. Both parties forget that at their electoral peril.

Why the Democrats deserve to lose

Hubris.

Ok, so that makes a very short post. But that is what it is. When you run for office and the leader of your party has said things like this:

“I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.”

Or this:

"Change will not come if we wait for some other person or if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek."

...you have to expect that there is going to be a certain amount of disappointment and disillusionment when these things manifestly DO NOT HAPPEN.

We already know that functional unemployment is actually somewhere between 16 and 20%, if you count the people whose benefits have run out and who have stopped looking. This is not an inconsequential number, and it did not happen by accident. Marketplace uncertainty is adding to the problem; businesses are waiting to see how the financial regulations will affect them, what Obamacare is going to cost them, and if Congress or the EPA enacts some variety of carbon tax that they will have to pass along to consumers.

Most people have insurance, and the indigent can use Medicaid. Many other people are on Medicare. True, Obamacare passed, but, at best, it will provide a means for 15% of citizens to get insurance who do not presently have it. The potential costs are enormous, so large that several years of revenue will be raised before benefits begin. Even worse, the baldfaced statements, by the president and others, that people will be able to keep the insurance they have if they want is a horselaugh. Every incentive goes the other way for business, who will almost certainly withdraw from the market as primary suppliers of insurance. The net result will be a de facto public option as private insurers exit the market as well. And this is not a surprise. Advocates for Obamacare, at various times, pronounced it to be a precursor to single payer.

As far as the eco-malarkey, last time I looked the oceans are fine (if a little oily in places), and the earth isn't going anywhere. WE might be, but the earth is here for the long haul and will be thundering around its orbit in space long after we follow the Dodo, the Passenger Pigeon and the dinosaurs to dust.

And change, however we like the word, simply means that things are different than they were. Change is not necessarily something that goes from good to bad or bad to better. It can also go from something that is quite bad enough to something else that is far worse.

Kind of like now, for instance.

Hubris is, simply, overweening pride and ambition that the gods used to slam whenever they saw it.

This slam begins November 2. Stay tuned.