The 2008 election season was just getting under way – a lifetime ago, it seems – when Don Devine, a longtime conservative and Reagan Administration official, decided to stir the pot. He emailed some of his conservative friends from the old days – the really old days. They passed it around and soon there were dozens of grizzled Goldwater groupies from the pre-Woodstock years pounding the keys.

What bait had Don used to lure all us Neanderthals out of our caves? “Hey, guys, in the 60s, we were all young and absolutely energized by Barry Goldwater. These days, Ron Paul seems to have really caught fire among young people. If you were young today, would you support Dr. Paul the way you did Barry Goldwater?”

Well, Don might have thought he was stirring the pot, but in fact he was lighting the fuse on a powder keg. It didn’t take long for it to blow up.

The battle lines were drawn pretty quickly. On one side, old-timers who insisted that Ron Paul was a crackpot, a GOP home-wrecker, or simply “nuts”; on the other, those who cheered him as the voice of reason in a party that had become increasingly mired in war abroad and the Beltway Hot Tub at home.

These folks were first-generation conservatives, not clueless party-hearty newcomers. There were so many veterans of Young Americans For Freedom that we quickly adopted “OAF’s” as our label: “Old Americans for Freedom.” Every one of us was a hard-core Reaganaut, but that was the only uniting feature that remained. The fur flew as every GOP presidential aspirant, ignoring the sitting incumbent, claimed to be another Ronald Reagan – except Ron Paul. Unlike all the others, he mentioned George W. Bush – and he did it again and again, attacking the war, attacking the Fed, and attacking big government in general – including Bush’s.

Jeb Bush recently observed with a hint of relief that Brother George has been silent ever since the debacle of 2008. Meanwhile, with each passing year, Ron Paul took his message on the road, attracting ever more adherents. Today his analysis of the GOP Establishment that tried to stuff him down the Memory Hole has proven so sound that it has become an inspiration. A resurgent conservative movement might be coming home, back from its big-government detour and fully determined to defend the conscience that Barry Goldwater made famous.

The Reconstruction of Political Theory

Today’s conservatives are adrift because they have lost their vocabulary – and thus their voice. They speak in terms that liberals have defined. “Illegal” is now a forbidden racist slur. “Sodomy” is homophobic. “Marriage” is a symbol to be hijacked (hence the concession to append “traditional”). “Cuts” are greed incarnate. Even Natural Law is a lightning rod, as Judge Clarence Thomas found out during his confirmation hearings.

When Barry Goldwater died in 1998, the New York Times obit called him “recklessly candid.” Today, refreshing candor has given way to the “gaffe” – truths, spoken by mistake.

DoubleSpeak rules.

As Vladimir Ilyich Lenin asked, What Is To Be Done? Well, Confucius insisted that, to recover from social collapse, one must first restore the proper meaning of words. This is not the task of the politician – it is pre-political. But liberty cannot survive without it.

Lenin knew the enemy – in this case, Confucius. A hundred years ago, he proclaimed that the Communist Party was the “Vanguard of the Proletariat” that represented the true interests of the working class. Thus the Party, with the seal of approval of Marx’s Laws of History, was by definition superior to the proletariat – and to everyone else. That definition conferred upon the Party power without limits. If the workers didn’t agree, they had to be convinced – or eliminated.

Lenin’s magical formula resonated Rousseau’s famous dictum that those who resist the General Will must be “forced to be free.” This intellectual patrimony of the Left must be firmly understood if today’s conservatives desire to overthrow it (yes, “overthrow”: persuasion is out of the question). And no one has done more to articulate that task than my old friend and colleague, Dr. Angelo Codevilla.

Three years ago Codevilla authored a masterful essay entitled “America’s Ruling Class.” In the spirit of Aquinas’ via negativa, he made clear what his task was not: namely, a defense of the Republican Party.

A master theoretician, Codevilla’s approach reflects Eric Voegelin’s dictum that theory cannot be the slave of a party. Theory seeks truth, which, as Aquinas points out, is adaequatio intellectus et rei – conformity between the intellect and reality (ST I, I, q. 21, a. 2c).

Codevilla’s Ruling Class is hardly “in conformity with reality.” In fact, the method of its self-appointed elites in both parties is softly but firmly Leninesque:

The ruling class is keener to reform the American people’s family and spiritual lives than their economic and civic ones·. It believes that the Christian family (and the Orthodox Jewish one too) is rooted in and perpetuates the ignorance commonly called religion, divisive social prejudices, and repressive gender roles, that it is the greatest barrier to human progress because it looks to its very particular interest – often defined as mere coherence against outsiders who most often know better. Thus the family prevents its members from playing their proper roles in social reform. Worst of all, it reproduces itself.

Lenin’s Party “represented” the interests not of the proletariat – a term derived from Marx’s imagination – but of the Party, which sought to gain power and to keep it, period.

Just like the Ruling Class.

The Elitist Temptation

In his 2010 essay, Codevilla’s notion of representation reflects truth, which has not fared well in the bipartisan halls of American power. Republicans regained the House later in 2010.

Did it help?

No. In a new sequel targeting “Country Club Republicans,” Codevilla points to the simple truth that the GOP leadership no longer represents the majority of the party, or even the majority of the party’s congressional majority. To dissent is to invite scorn: “The civilization of the ruling class does not concede that those who resist it have any moral or intellectual right, and only reluctantly any civil right, to do so. Resistance is illegitimate because it can come only from low motives.” (Rousseau called such “low motives” Le Volonté de Tous – what the people want, not what the all-powerful Sovereign wants for them.)

Codevilla touches a raw Republican nerve when he observes that “modern big government is an interest group in and of itself, inherently at odds with the rest of society.” In other words – specifically, those of Federalist 10 – government is a faction. Thus Lincoln’s brilliant but flawed construct – “government of the people, by the people, and for the people” – comes crashing down on the rocks of reality: to consecrate omnipotent government, Lincoln was reaching beyond the eschaton, to the perfect and loving rule of Christ (who also happens to be omnipotent). In that sense, so was George W. Bush when after 9-11 he promised to “rid the world of evil.”

Alas, that claim defied constitutional limits, justified the explosion of government power, and wrought the destruction of the GOP.

While he flogs the smug elitism of the “Ruling Class,” Codevilla quietly bypasses the neoconservatives, a profoundly scornful and self-promoting faction, so powerful that it scares the Ruling Class a lot more than the people do. But that’s because neoconservatives and the ruling class both vie for power. To the Ruling Class, the neocons are competition; to both, the people are the enemy.

Codevilla’s analysis should be read in full by frustrated conservatives seeking solid intellectual ground as well as bewildered Republicans still longing for the Reagan years. His analysis invites a discussion – OAF’s and YAF’s should have this conversation, heretofore forbidden, with their Republican friends. Ideas thus refreshed will have consequences. Codevilla calls them “revolutionary.”

Let us pray that they are peaceful.

Recently by Christopher Manion: A Catholic Looks at AustrianEconomics

The 2008 election season was just getting under way — a lifetime ago, it seems — when Don Devine, a longtime conservative and Reagan Administration official, decided to stir the pot. He emailed some of his conservative friends from the old days — the really old days. They passed it around and soon there were dozens of grizzled Goldwater groupies from the pre-Woodstock years pounding the keys.

What bait had Don used to lure all us Neanderthals out of our caves? “Hey, guys, in the 60s, we were all young and absolutely energized by Barry Goldwater. These days, Ron Paul seems to have really caught fire among young people. If you were young today, would you support Dr. Paul the way you did Barry Goldwater?”

Well, Don might have thought he was stirring the pot, but in fact he was lighting the fuse on a powder keg. It didn’t take long for it to blow up.

The battle lines were drawn pretty quickly. On one side, old-timers who insisted that Ron Paul was a crackpot, a GOP home-wrecker, or simply “nuts”; on the other, those who cheered him as the voice of reason in a party that had become increasingly mired in war abroad and the Beltway Hot Tub at home.

These folks were first-generation conservatives, not clueless party-hearty newcomers. There were so many veterans of Young Americans For Freedom that we quickly adopted “OAF’s” as our label: “Old Americans for Freedom.” Every one of us was a hard-core Reaganaut, but that was the only uniting feature that remained. The fur flew as every GOP presidential aspirant, ignoring the sitting incumbent, claimed to be another Ronald Reagan — except Ron Paul. Unlike all the others, he mentioned George W. Bush — and he did it again and again, attacking the war, attacking the Fed, and attacking big government in general — including Bush’s.

Jeb Bush recently observed with a hint of relief that Brother George has been silent ever since the debacle of 2008. Meanwhile, with each passing year, Ron Paul took his message on the road, attracting ever more adherents. Today his analysis of the GOP Establishment that tried to stuff him down the Memory Hole has proven so sound that it has become an inspiration. A resurgent conservative movement might be coming home, back from its big-government detour and fully determined to defend the conscience that Barry Goldwater made famous.

The Reconstruction of Political Theory

Today’s conservatives are adrift because they have lost their vocabulary — and thus their voice. They speak in terms that liberals have defined. “Illegal” is now a forbidden racist slur. “Sodomy” is homophobic. “Marriage” is a symbol to be hijacked (hence the concession to append “traditional”). “Cuts” are greed incarnate. Even Natural Law is a lightning rod, as Judge Clarence Thomas found out during his confirmation hearings.

When Barry Goldwater died in 1998, the New York Times obit called him “recklessly candid.” Today, refreshing candor has given way to the “gaffe” — truths, spoken by mistake.

DoubleSpeak rules.

As Vladimir Ilyich Lenin asked, What Is To Be Done? Well, Confucius insisted that, to recover from social collapse, one must first restore the proper meaning of words. This is not the task of the politician — it is pre-political. But liberty cannot survive without it.

Lenin knew the enemy — in this case, Confucius. A hundred years ago, he proclaimed that the Communist Party was the “Vanguard of the Proletariat” that represented the true interests of the working class. Thus the Party, with the seal of approval of Marx’s Laws of History, was by definition superior to the proletariat — and to everyone else. That definition conferred upon the Party power without limits. If the workers didn’t agree, they had to be convinced — or eliminated.

Lenin’s magical formula resonated Rousseau’s famous dictum that those who resist the General Will must be “forced to be free.” This intellectual patrimony of the Left must be firmly understood if today’s conservatives desire to overthrow it (yes, “overthrow”: persuasion is out of the question). And no one has done more to articulate that task than my old friend and colleague, Dr. Angelo Codevilla.

Three years ago Codevilla authored a masterful essay entitled “America’s Ruling Class.” In the spirit of Aquinas’ via negativa, he made clear what his task was not: namely, a defense of the Republican Party.

A master theoretician, Codevilla’s approach reflects Eric Voegelin’s dictum that theory cannot be the slave of a party. Theory seeks truth, which, as Aquinas points out, is adaequatio intellectus et rei — conformity between the intellect and reality (ST I, I, q. 21, a. 2c).

Codevilla’s Ruling Class is hardly “in conformity with reality.” In fact, the method of its self-appointed elites in both parties is softly but firmly Leninesque:

The ruling class is keener to reform the American people’s family and spiritual lives than their economic and civic ones. It believes that the Christian family (and the Orthodox Jewish one too) is rooted in and perpetuates the ignorance commonly called religion, divisive social prejudices, and repressive gender roles, that it is the greatest barrier to human progress because it looks to its very particular interest — often defined as mere coherence against outsiders who most often know better. Thus the family prevents its members from playing their proper roles in social reform. Worst of all, it reproduces itself.

Lenin’s Party “represented” the interests not of the proletariat — a term derived from Marx’s imagination — but of the Party, which sought to gain power and to keep it, period.

Just like the Ruling Class.

The Elitist Temptation

In his 2010 essay, Codevilla’s notion of representation reflects truth, which has not fared well in the bipartisan halls of American power. Republicans regained the House later in 2010.

Did it help?

No. In a new sequel targeting “Country Club Republicans,” Codevilla points to the simple truth that the GOP leadership no longer represents the majority of the party, or even the majority of the party’s congressional majority. To dissent is to invite scorn: “The civilization of the ruling class does not concede that those who resist it have any moral or intellectual right, and only reluctantly any civil right, to do so. Resistance is illegitimate because it can come only from low motives.” (Rousseau called such “low motives” Le Volonté de Tous — what the people want, not what the all-powerful Sovereign wants for them.)

Codevilla touches a raw Republican nerve when he observes that “modern big government is an interest group in and of itself, inherently at odds with the rest of society.” In other words — specifically, those of Federalist 10 — government is a faction. Thus Lincoln’s brilliant but flawed construct — “government of the people, by the people, and for the people” — comes crashing down on the rocks of reality: to consecrate omnipotent government, Lincoln was reaching beyond the eschaton, to the perfect and loving rule of Christ (who also happens to be omnipotent). In that sense, so was George W. Bush when after 9-11 he promised to “rid the world of evil.”

Alas, that claim defied constitutional limits, justified the explosion of government power, and wrought the destruction of the GOP.

While he flogs the smug elitism of the “Ruling Class,” Codevilla quietly bypasses the neoconservatives, a profoundly scornful and self-promoting faction, so powerful that it scares the Ruling Class a lot more than the people do. But that’s because neoconservatives and the ruling class both vie for power. To the Ruling Class, the neocons are competition; to both, the people are the enemy.

Codevilla’s analysis should be read in full by frustrated conservatives seeking solid intellectual ground as well as bewildered Republicans still longing for the Reagan years. His analysis invites a discussion — OAF’s and YAF’s should have this conversation, heretofore forbidden, with their Republican friends. Ideas thus refreshed will have consequences. Codevilla calls them “revolutionary.”

Let us pray that they are peaceful.

Reprinted from the Fitzgerald Griffin Foundation.

This column is sponsored by the Bellarmine Forum, and distributed by Griffin Internet Syndicate and FGF Books.

Christopher Manion Archives

Recently by Christopher Manion: Disaster, Defiance, and Definitions

It Didn't Have to Be This Way Harry C. Veryser: ISI Books, $28.95

Traveling through the intersection of religion and economics is often a very rough ride, and it features a high collision rate. Countless influential religious folks, both lay and clerical, insist on writing about economics, only to demonstrate their well-intentioned ignorance (or perhaps their ill-intentioned ideologies). Many economists, on the other hand, consider religion something they have to put up with, or to deny altogether, in order to make their "systems" work.

It's a rare breed that takes pains to study both realms. The overriding virtue demanded by such an effort is not intelligence, but humility. Today, economists are more likely to defer to a juicy algorithm than to human freedom. The economist confronts a powerful temptation to believe that people's lives would be better if they lived them his way. A similar temptation plagues those in the realm of religion. At one time or another, we have all been trapped in the middle of the pew as the preacher launches into a political tirade. His duty might be to defend the faithful's freedom to do God's Will, but instead he somehow finds that the salvation requires our acquiescence to his political agenda.

Dr. Harry Veryser, of the Department of Economics at the University of Detroit Mercy, has his feet on solid ground in both realms. A successful businessman and an educated Catholic, he has both practical and intellectual experience that informs this work that is helpful in so many ways.

“This book is an effort to tell the story of the modern economic condition, which began about 150 years ago,” writes Veryser. His goal — which he achieves masterfully — lies in both investigating and understanding the disasters that bad economics has wrought over the years, and learning from them. The unique gift he brings to this effort is his understanding of man — an understanding flowing from his study of Aristotle and Aquinas and, therefore, an understanding that respects human freedom as well as the limits of power.

On that solid ground, Veryser invites the reader to consider economic questions not an arsenal of abstract mathematical formulations, but with a firm grip on reality. "If there is a bright spot in the recent economic crisis," he writes almost cheerfully, "it is this: people everywhere are giving much more serious thought to foundational questions about the economy. What caused our woes, and more important, how can we prevent future calamities?"

As Sherlock Holmes said to Watson, "Watson, when I say you are instructive, I mean I learn from your mistakes."

The Hundred Years War On Freedom

Robert Nisbet once observed that in 1913, the year he was born, the only contact that the average US citizen had with the federal government was the Post Office. For Veryser as well, 1913 was a pivotal year. "Before World War I," he writes," government based public policy on so-called classical economic theories about money and trade." But that quickly changed, as reality-based economic policy quickly gave way to revered abstractions and their constant companion, government power.

One seldom hears an economist cite Aristotle's dictum that a science can be only as exact as its subject matter permits. Human beings are not equilateral triangles. Veryser recounts how, for the last hundred years, several generations of self-appointed whiz kids routinely manipulated the political economy, causing the "boom and bust cycle" and making the 1913 dollar worth one penny today.

Oh — and they never apologized.

Veryser presents a lucid look at the age of classical liberalism and the rise of the Austrian School of Economics, in a fashion that is both appealing and understandable to the generalist. He continually emphasizes principles that are not derived from imaginative rumination, but from real life — the rule of law, limited taxation and economic freedom, free trade, and a metallic-based currency.

There are some insightful raisons in the cake, such as A.J.P. Taylor's classic quotation from Bismarck: "Whoever has a pension for his old age is far more content and far easier to handle than one who has no such prospect. Look at the difference between a private servant and a servant in the Chancellery Court; the latter would put up with much more, because he has a pension to look forward to."

Words for budding tyrants to live by.

Budding tyrants also prefer war to peace, and Veryser contrasts Pope Benedict XV, who championed an early peace after World War I broke out, to Woodrow Wilson, one of several US presidents who were elected on a platform of peace but took the country to war, and to ruin. "And so the age of classical liberalism, which began in 1815 with the Congress of Vienna, ended in 1919 with the Treaty of Versailles," Veryser observes.

The Tenth Amendment And The Tenth Commandment

The tenth chapter, "Cornerstones of Prosperity," is worth the price of the book. The "cornerstones" are familiar: private property, a sound currency, the rule of law, the sacredness of contracts, among others. But Veryser also elucidates unfamiliar but equally indispensable elements of a free society — a sound family structure, the common good, and leisure– essential ingredients which are seldom seen in the work of economists. He also points to an insidious vice, the engine of socialism and a poisonous enemy of freedom: envy.

The principle of subsidiarity deserves special mention: "It holds that the smallest, least centralized units of society are best equipped to handle most of the work that society gets done." Veryser's treatment of this vital principle cannot be easily condensed, but it raises an important point.

The principle of subsidiarity has been articulated well by the Catholic Church in recent years, but many American progressives insist that it poses no impediment to their agenda because the problems they desire to address have not been adequately resolved by the states and smaller communities.

Two points arise. First, meddling progressives are given to call everything a "problem" — which assertion, if conceded, gives them the authority to "solve" it. They fail to distinguish between a problem, which has a solution, and a condition, which does not. This defies Aristotle's admonition to humility (which is resonated in Sirach 3:18 — "Humble yourself, the greater you are, and you will find favor with God"). Their reckless tampering not only offends basic human freedoms, but it also invariably brings on failure, which they then insist requires more progressive wrecking crews.

Second, Veryser points to the Tenth Amendment as an affirmation of this principle, which it is; but there is a profound distinction: in the Church, a genuine problem that cannot be solved locally can theoretically rise beyond the local bishop to the pope. Under the Constitution, however, even if a state does not address a problem in a manner that satisfies the progressive, the Federal Government is not authorized to act unless that action is allowed by the powers expressly enumerated in the Constitution.

All in all, Veryser stands out among his peers as a man who is comfortable with philosophy, theology, economics, history, and politics, and the result is a welcome and informative read.

This column is sponsored by the Bellarmine Forum, and distributed by Griffin Internet Syndicate and FGF Books.

Christopher Manion Archives

Pop Quiz: When is a Neocon Not A Neocon?

Answer. When he’s wrong.

Which is most of the time. And that irks Charles Krauthammer.

Dr. Krauthammer is an interesting character. For some thirty years he’s been a Washington fixture. Trained as a psychiatrist, he became a speechwriter for Vice President Walter Mondale (Sounds reasonable. Eagleton Redux). He then began to write for the Washington Post – once more, feeling right at home, since, at the Post, all abnormal behaviors are deemed normal.

Mondale. The Post. Those two credits are similar to those of many other “former” liberals who have become neoconservatives over the years. But these days the Doctor Is In, and he’s pouting. Why? Well, just a year ago he was bragging: “Today, everyone and his cousin supports the ‘freedom agenda.’ Of course, yesterday it was just George W. Bush, Tony Blair and a band of neocons with unusual hypnotic powers….”

Well, I know the neoncons lust after power – but hypnotic? Well, remember, the Doc is a shrink, and a proud one at that. But he also believes in mandatory amnesia, because today his celebrated “freedom agenda” has once more blown up in his face, so he now gripes that people are calling him names. Neoconservative? He’s not a “neoconservative” at all, not any more, he confesses to National Review’s Rich Lowry. Better not argue (and Rich, shame on him, didn’t), because Dr. K. is on a roll: “Neoconservative is an ‘epithet.’ [sic] Today [K. continues] it’s usually meant as a silent synonym for ‘Jewish conservative.’ And when it is meant otherwise, I would ask you whenever you hear the word [to] challenge the person to describe and explain to you what a neocon is.”

Yes, the good Doctor is in, but he’s totally out of it. Frankly, I don’t blame him for ducking the neocon label – it’s as closely identified with failure as “Bush” is. Mr. Lowry’s magazine quietly admitted as much in the run-up to the 2012 elections. Moreover, Dr. Krauthammer’s “challenge” comes off as somewhat insincere, considering how, ten years ago, he had no time for rational discussion, brushing off Bush’s conservative critics as “navel gazers” because they insisted on a debate that would apply constitutional principles to Bush’s wars – which, like Bush, were failures (John McCain, another failure, to the contrary).

On brief inspection, the doctor’s tendentious tantrum borders on hilarity. Many neocons wear the label proudly. After Obama’s illegal war on Libya (another disastrous failure, but I digress), Bill Kristol cheered, and proudly baptized Obama as a “born again neocon.” Did Mr. Kristol’s use of that sly “epithet” intend to brand Obama as a “Jewish conservative,” I wonder? Mr. Kristol is often off the wall, and even more often wrong, but even he has his standards.

Mr. Kristol’s father, Irving, proudly referred to himself as the “godfather of all those neocons” just ten years ago, in his son’s magazine. Neoconservatism, wrote Kristol, is “forward-looking” conservatism. Moreover, “neoconservative policies … have helped make the very idea of political conservatism more acceptable to a majority of American voters,” he insisted.

“Forward-looking.” Well, as Charles Burton Marshall once observed, “there’s no such thing as the foreseeable future.” But, “backward looking,” as we conservatives are wont to do – you know, Western Civ, history, and all that stuff – in the ten years since Kristol père made that presumptuous assertion, “neoconservative policies” have destroyed the GOP, brought the country to its knees, and delivered the White House to Obama on a silver platter, twice.

Well. Mr. Krauthammer pretends to issue a challenge. Let’s take him at his word.

Beautiful Losers

Just who are the “neocons”? To begin with, Krauthammer and a small group of other well-compensated neocons are the “conservatives” appointed by the leftist media – because, as we will see, they both speak the same language, the dialectic. The Left loves them because the neocon wrecking crew has been so wrong on virtually every foreign policy issue for the past ten years. The media thus make them their convenient poster boys for the assertion that all conservatives are as dumb as the neocons are.

But wait, are we ducking the good doctor’s “challenge”? No way. He smugly asserts that his critics are as dumb as his victims – those poor, misled conservatives who were duped by neocons like Cheney, Bush, Lowry, McGurn, (Michael) Novak, and other fine Christians to cheer on the criminals who plundered the country, established a domestic police state, destroyed the economy, and cashed in big-time on two unwinnable , illegal, and immoral wars.

But the Doctor demands definitions – so here goes. Let’s start with Aristotle’s concept of “limits.”

Like their leftist forbears, neocons defy constitutional limits on presidential power (viz. their embrace of the “unitary executive”), and thus defy metaphysical limits on government. They denyreligious limits on government, an Augustinian principle which is unique in history to Christendom – that is, Western Civilization. As history repeatedly demonstrates, these denials open the door to totalitarianism. Neocons also employ the Trotskyite dialectic (traditionally known as “lying”) to stay in power, regardless of principle or party. Next, Bill Kristol’s baptism of Obama reflects another neocon intellectual indulgence, the denial of Aristotle’s principle of non-contradiction. They only criticize power when somebody else has it and uses it against them. For them, power has the force of gravity: they can’t resist it.

Neocons accept the dictum of Marx’s Eleventh Thesis on Feuerbach: they evade rational discussion, and demand immediate action instead, in the service of the ideological demand to change the world without understanding it – thus George W. Bush’s fanatical promise to “rid the world of evil.”

So much for the Prince of Peace.

Neocons are not religious fanatics – often, they are not religious at all. But like Rousseau, they find religion useful. Ten years ago, they were able to dupe several million anti-Catholic Dispensational Evangelicals (who haven’t a clue about metaphysics but who want Armageddon now) into supporting the Iraq war because it was “God’s will.” Neocons also borrow from Rousseau, the godfather of totalitarianism, the notion that men must be “forced to be free” –by the neocons and the armies they send marching off to endless war. They justify this by asserting the notion of “American Exceptionalism,” an empty phrase that oozes narcissism because, after all, they are the most exceptional Americans of all.

Tommyrot.

Possessed by this manic hubris, neocons embrace the Manichaean art of self-deification: their cause is perfect good, while every enemy (and critic) is “another Hitler” – if not sheer evil, at least an anti-Semite. But the wheels on the neocon bus go round and round, and the dialectic can’t help constantly seriving up new Hitlers – Saddam, Osama, Ahmadinijad, and now Mokhtar Belmokhtar. As Tom Lehrer used to sing, “Who’s Next?”

And speaking of Hitler, neocons also falsify history: for them, it’s always 1938; disagree with them and you’re Neville Chamberlain. “If you’re not with us, you’re against us.”

Ideas have consequences, and bad ideas have very bad consequences. The neocon’s self-divinization permits torture, lies (falsely attributing that “right” to Socrates and the “noble lie”), premeditated Murder By Predator of Americans, worldwide death squads that kill for democracy, imperial swagger, defiance of accountability, hubris as virtue, power lust (libido dominandi: Augustine, City of God, Book I, Preface), lust for fame and glory (superbia vitae: 1 John 2:16), and endless, profound, but always unintended, collateral damage.

Dr. Krauthammer’s taunt is both tawdry and typical. Which raises one last, but essential, point: the neocons are always wrong; and they never, ever apologize.

Recently by Christopher Manion: The Two Faces of the Power Party

Pop Quiz: When is a Neocon Not A Neocon?

Answer. When he's wrong.

Which is most of the time. And that irks Charles Krauthammer.

Dr. Krauthammer is an interesting character. For some thirty years he's been a Washington fixture. Trained as a psychiatrist, he became a speechwriter for Vice President Walter Mondale (Sounds reasonable. Eagleton Redux). He then began to write for the Washington Post — once more, feeling right at home, since, at the Post, all abnormal behaviors are deemed normal.

Mondale. The Post. Those two credits are similar to those of many other "former" liberals who have become neoconservatives over the years. But these days the Doctor Is In, and he's pouting. Why? Well, just a year ago he was bragging: "Today, everyone and his cousin supports the u2018freedom agenda.' Of course, yesterday it was just George W. Bush, Tony Blair and a band of neocons with unusual hypnotic powers…."

Well, I know the neoncons lust after power — but hypnotic? Well, remember, the Doc is a shrink, and a proud one at that. But he also believes in mandatory amnesia, because today his celebrated "freedom agenda" has once more blown up in his face, so he now gripes that people are calling him names. Neoconservative? He’s not a “neoconservative” at all, not any more, he confesses to National Review's Rich Lowry. Better not argue (and Rich, shame on him, didn't), because Dr. K. is on a roll: “Neoconservative is an ‘epithet.’ [sic] Today [K. continues] it's usually meant as a silent synonym for u2018Jewish conservative.' And when it is meant otherwise, I would ask you whenever you hear the word [to] challenge the person to describe and explain to you what a neocon is.”

Yes, the good Doctor is in, but he's totally out of it. Frankly, I don’t blame him for ducking the neocon label — it’s as closely identified with failure as “Bush” is. Mr. Lowry's magazine quietly admitted as much in the run-up to the 2012 elections. Moreover, Dr. Krauthammer's "challenge" comes off as somewhat insincere, considering how, ten years ago, he had no time for rational discussion, brushing off Bush’s conservative critics as “navel gazers” because they insisted on a debate that would apply constitutional principles to Bush's wars — which, like Bush, were failures (John McCain, another failure, to the contrary).

On brief inspection, the doctor's tendentious tantrum borders on hilarity. Many neocons wear the label proudly. After Obama's illegal war on Libya (another disastrous failure, but I digress), Bill Kristol cheered, and proudly baptized Obama as a "born again neocon." Did Mr. Kristol's use of that sly "epithet" intend to brand Obama as a "Jewish conservative," I wonder? Mr. Kristol is often off the wall, and even more often wrong, but even he has his standards.

Mr. Kristol's father, Irving, proudly referred to himself as the "godfather of all those neocons" just ten years ago, in his son's magazine. Neoconservatism, wrote Kristol, is "forward-looking" conservatism. Moreover, "neoconservative policies … have helped make the very idea of political conservatism more acceptable to a majority of American voters," he insisted.

"Forward-looking." Well, as Charles Burton Marshall once observed, "there's no such thing as the foreseeable future." But, "backward looking," as we conservatives are wont to do — you know, Western Civ, history, and all that stuff — in the ten years since Kristol père made that presumptuous assertion, "neoconservative policies" have destroyed the GOP, brought the country to its knees, and delivered the White House to Obama on a silver platter, twice.

Well. Mr. Krauthammer pretends to issue a challenge. Let's take him at his word.

Beautiful Losers

Just who are the “neocons”? To begin with, Krauthammer and a small group of other well-compensated neocons are the “conservatives” appointed by the leftist media — because, as we will see, they both speak the same language, the dialectic. The Left loves them because the neocon wrecking crew has been so wrong on virtually every foreign policy issue for the past ten years. The media thus make them their convenient poster boys for the assertion that all conservatives are as dumb as the neocons are.

But wait, are we ducking the good doctor’s “challenge”? No way. He smugly asserts that his critics are as dumb as his victims — those poor, misled conservatives who were duped by neocons like Cheney, Bush, Lowry, McGurn, (Michael) Novak, and other fine Christians to cheer on the criminals who plundered the country, established a domestic police state, destroyed the economy, and cashed in big-time on two unwinnable , illegal, and immoral wars.

But the Doctor demands definitions — so here goes. Let’s start with Aristotle’s concept of “limits.”

Like their leftist forbears, neocons defy constitutional limits on presidential power (viz. their embrace of the “unitary executive”), and thus defy metaphysical limits on government. They denyreligious limits on government, an Augustinian principle which is unique in history to Christendom — that is, Western Civilization. As history repeatedly demonstrates, these denials open the door to totalitarianism. Neocons also employ the Trotskyite dialectic (traditionally known as “lying”) to stay in power, regardless of principle or party. Next, Bill Kristol’s baptism of Obama reflects another neocon intellectual indulgence, the denial of Aristotle’s principle of non-contradiction. They only criticize power when somebody else has it and uses it against them. For them, power has the force of gravity: they can't resist it.

Neocons accept the dictum of Marx’s Eleventh Thesis on Feuerbach: they evade rational discussion, and demand immediate action instead, in the service of the ideological demand to change the world without understanding it — thus George W. Bush’s fanatical promise to “rid the world of evil."

So much for the Prince of Peace.

Neocons are not religious fanatics — often, they are not religious at all. But like Rousseau, they find religion useful. Ten years ago, they were able to dupe several million anti-Catholic Dispensational Evangelicals (who haven’t a clue about metaphysics but who want Armageddon now) into supporting the Iraq war because it was “God’s will.” Neocons also borrow from Rousseau, the godfather of totalitarianism, the notion that men must be "forced to be free" –by the neocons and the armies they send marching off to endless war. They justify this by asserting the notion of "American Exceptionalism," an empty phrase that oozes narcissism because, after all, they are the most exceptional Americans of all.

Tommyrot.

Possessed by this manic hubris, neocons embrace the Manichaean art of self-deification: their cause is perfect good, while every enemy (and critic) is “another Hitler” — if not sheer evil, at least an anti-Semite. But the wheels on the neocon bus go round and round, and the dialectic can't help constantly seriving up new Hitlers — Saddam, Osama, Ahmadinijad, and now Mokhtar Belmokhtar. As Tom Lehrer used to sing, "Who's Next?"

And speaking of Hitler, neocons also falsify history: for them, it’s always 1938; disagree with them and you’re Neville Chamberlain. “If you’re not with us, you’re against us.”

Ideas have consequences, and bad ideas have very bad consequences. The neocon’s self-divinization permits torture, lies (falsely attributing that "right" to Socrates and the “noble lie”), premeditated Murder By Predator of Americans, worldwide death squads that kill for democracy, imperial swagger, defiance of accountability, hubris as virtue, power lust (libido dominandi: Augustine, City of God, Book I, Preface), lust for fame and glory (superbia vitae: 1 John 2:16), and endless, profound, but always unintended, collateral damage.

Dr. Krauthammer's taunt is both tawdry and typical. Which raises one last, but essential, point: the neocons are always wrong; and they never, ever apologize.

This column is sponsored by the Bellarmine Forum, and distributed by Griffin Internet Syndicate and FGF Books.

Christopher Manion Archives

Gary North's insightful piece last week invites serious reflection. He refers briefly to Barack Obama's twenty year discipleship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright, whose theological roots lie in the shallows of the faux religion called "Liberation Theology." That term signifies the variant of Marxism that presents Jesus not as Savior, but as a materialist warlord and political liberator. In other words, Liberation Theology hides Marx's impersonal and inexorable process of the Class Struggle behind a Christian, human face to make it more palatable to the masses and more intimidating to its clueless opponents — all without changing its methods or its goals.

This is what ideology is all about — the deceptive assertion of falsehood as the ground of truth and reality. It represents a perversion of metaphysics and philosophical anthropology — that is, it denies what's true about reality and about us. But the Devil knows Latin, as the saying goes, and the ideologues feel free to pick and choose from among treasured, traditional language and symbols that once meant something real, but have long been emptied of their content and stuffed with tyrannical hemlock. Thus "patriotism" now means love of government. "Freedom" means bombing ornery foreigners into submission. And the "Two-Party System" means the one-power charade.

And "Change" means the same old same-old.

Consider the neocons. We've long known that they are the proud intellectual disciples of Trotsky. Well, they dread pitchforks as well as pickaxes. They rise and fall on the dialectic — they never "lie," you see it's just that the "correlation of forces" keeps on shifting. For a neocon, there's nothing that's true for long except the timeless fact that they're always superior (after all, Marx called the party "The Vanguard of the Proletariat"), that they are always right (especially when they're wrong), and that we must all love Big Brother.

But here is the theoretical breakthrough: as Dr. North suggests, a glance at Obama's own campaign reveals that he too is relying on the dialectic, and in a most original and innovative way:

Obama is still running against George W. Bush, as we knew he would. But Obama is also running as George Bush.

"The Obama Administration is the operational successor of the Bush Administration. In Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Guantanamo, [and] on Wall Street," North writes. All this, and so much more. But should we be surprised? Consider: long ago the neocon altar boy at the pagan power-shrine welcomed Obama into the ranks of the Inner Party as a "born-again neocon."

We might not ever find Obama's birth certificate, but here's Bill Kristol issuing his baptismal certificate.

"But Obama is such a liar," we are plaintively told. True enough. Now, please examine George W. Bush's 2000 campaign promises. Were any of them true? Smaller government? A humble foreign policy? Less federal spending? Blah Blah blah? Which is to say: Of course Obama lies. Was Bush any different?

The elephant in the room has morphed into a donkey. No one will acknowledge it, although everybody sees it. That, too, is a required ingredient of the dialectic.

Admittedly, the GOP has an internal dialectic of its own. It claims it wants to win, yet it has repeatedly acted as though it is possessed by a death wish. Just last week several of my neighbors here in the Shenandoah Valley witnessed firsthand the slow-motion suicide of the GOP when they were held in involuntary servitude in Tampa. Victims of an endearing prank engineered by the party Hot-Tubbers, they were trapped for hours aboard a "lost" bus supposedly sent to bring them to the convention hall. This cute little ploy occasioned their convenient absence from the convention floor, allowing the party elites to vote holy war on the grass roots, whom they nonetheless expect to vote for them by the millions in November because of course everybody knows that "Obama must be defeated." occasioned

In ancient Rome, near today's Forum of Nerva, there stood the Temple of Janus, the two-faced god of beginnings, of war and peace, and (perhaps a stretch) of outright duplicity. Our own imperial age should trot out this good fellow, who symbolizes so much of the spirit of our own time. The two parties are actually two faces of one power-cult. Our politicians are not actually lying, they are only ignoring Confucius ("restore the proper meaning of words"), preferring instead the scornful reprise of Humpty Dumpty: “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.”

We live in an age of DoubleThink — where "minds [are] trained to hold contradictory positions simultaneously and unquestioningly." On examination, the campaign promises of both parties thrill to the dialectic: Freedom is Slavery. War Is Peace. And, especially in even-numbered years, Ignorance is Strength. We've heard before of politicians who say that "I was for it before I was against it." Now Obama has magically raised the dialectic to a new high (Hegel called it die Aufhebung): he is governing as George Bush while he is running against George Bush. It is indeed a stunning specter to behold.

Christopher Manion Archives

The Mitt Romney nomination reminds me of the 1976 convention that nominated Gerald Ford. Back then, Ford’s fixers (Dick Cheney and James Baker III) did everything they could to eviscerate Governor Reagan’s supporters at the 1976 RNC – and then tried to “reunite” the GOP and try to recoup the Reagan supporters they had alienated, all to no avail.

It failed because it was sheer pretense, disingenuous on its face. Baker and his sidekick, David Gergen, hated conservatives as much as Ford hated Reagan. They hated especially the millions of “blue collar” Democrats who came to provide the backbone of the “social conservatives” that supplied Reagan’s winning margins in 1980 and 1984.

Ford was adamant and unrepentant about his loyalty to the Rockefeller-Bush establishment. He bragged in the 1990s that his proudest accomplishment was the appointment of Supreme Court Justice Stevens, who quickly became a left-wing stalwart on the court, to be joined there by George H.W. Bush appointee David Souter in 1990. Time after time, the GOP Hot-Tubbers have lied to traditional conservatives, gotten their votes, and then betrayed them.

I don’t blame Ron Paul for demurring when asked to endorse Romney. Old-time Goldwater conservatives like me who support the good doctor have been betrayed all too many times by the GOP establishment’s lip service. The "Cloud” doesn’t have enough storage space to hold all the lies, and I admire the Ron Paul delegates for not believing them.

Romney has hired virtually all of George W. Bush’s disaster-ridden foreign policy cadre. They hate Ron Paul, and they hate us, for exposing their failures, for drawing back the curtain on their murderous plunder, and for puncturing their pious patriotic palaver to reveal its mordant mendacity. With them in charge, are we to believe that a President Romney would be a man of peace and freedom? Remember, they always lie, and they never, ever apologize.

Christopher Manion Archives

I’ve been asked to pay bribes in countries all over the world. Occasionally, I’ve actually had to shell out some dough. A couple of the demands were covered by American diplomats I was traveling with — and that is also not uncommon. When Air Force One travels on a worldwide tour, there’s always a guy on the second plane (for press and staff) who has a gym bag full of ready money, in $100 bills. The president’s plane always gets off without a hitch, at which time the TV cameras and tripods all break down and get packed up. At that point, a gaggle of low-level airport employees from country X suddenly appear out of nowhere and explain that there’s a problem in the tower that might take a few hours to resolve before Air Force Two can take off. “Where’s that guy with the gym bag?” Everything gets worked out pretty fast, and off they go.

Yes, your money pays bribes, all over the world, all the time. Heard of Iraq? Afghanistan?

Billions.

Perhaps the Pentagon should get charged under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. But I digress.

I used to live in Mexico. Like many other foreign countries, it is a land of bribes. Many government officials and policemen there scarcely get paid. They are expected to make a living from “La Mordida." It’s no offense, and certainly no insult — it’s a way of life. When I translate for local law enforcement here, the sheriff tells me, excitedly, “get their hands out of their pockets!” I have to explain calmly that they are not reaching for a gun, they are reaching for their wallet, to pay him a bribe. Every man in uniform they have ever seen in their life has insisted on being paid off. When I explained to them that are local police are professional, that they are especially vigilant about this area because there have been two murders here, the Hispanics virtually disappear. Smiling.

Back to Mexico. When I was staff director for Latin America on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, American businessmen would complain all the time about the bribes that they were forced to pay in order to do business in Mexico. This was long after the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act had been passed in 1977. That legislation, a sniffing pirouette of American moral superiority strutting across the stage, was laughed at worldwide. Companies that had once paid bribes now pay lawyers to pay bribes. It actually raised the price of doing business in Mexico for many American firms. Why? Mexican lawyers caught on quickly, and demanded a higher percentage because the entire transaction was supposedly illegal. "Thank you, my Congress Amigos!"

So all these American businessmen would come to Capitol Hill complaining that the high rates of bribery they had to pay to do business in Mexico. Local officials would demand a percentage of the gross! Their families would handle the construction. Electricity, gas, security — you name it, everybody demanded bribes. What if you don't pay? Well, your building might burn down – if you're lucky.

And if you're not lucky? Well, I used to tell these businessmen, “Wow, this is dynamite! Why don’t you come and testify before the Foreign Relations Committee? This would break the whole corrupt system wide open!”

But those were my younger days. A steely look from the bribing businessman would set me straight: “What? Do you think I’m crazy? They’ll kill me.”

Ah yes, and they kill folks all the time in Mexico. They leave heads on the doorsteps of widows, all of them widows who don’t yet know that they're widows. They leave rows of heads on the steps of municipalities to "influence" the mayor. If that doesn't work, they kill the mayor. It usually works. Stateside, we hear that it’s all about drugs — but it can be all about anything. Everybody whom you refuse to bribe has a pal in a gang that collects notches on their machetes. You pay the bribe.

Bribery is possible only when a government (or government-controlled) service or product exists. Imagine going to a gas station where the attendant demands a bribe. Adiós, Amigo! But if you're a New York crane operator confronted by a city building inspector? You can't go down the street to another building inspector. You pay the bribe.

Bienvenidos a México!

The other day I heard Mexican President Felipe Calderon complaining on Spanish news that Walmart has been — he's shocked! Shocked! — Paying bribes! Bribes to Mexican officials! And American “justice” brigades have found out that bribes are being paid by American firms and businessmen in Mexico! Why, something must be done! It all brought on carcajadas (thigh-slapping peals of laughter).

I learned about bribery in Mexico early. I was a kid waiting for some banjo strings sent from Harold’s music supply in South Bend, Indiana to little old me in my apartment at the corner of Avenida Benjamin Franklin and Taumalipas in Mexico City. Instead of the banjo strings, I got a card in the mail. “Come and pick up your package.” It looked very official. How efficient, I thought! So, as I prepared to go off to the aduana, my pal who had lived there a while said, “they’re going to want a bribe.” Said I: “I’m not gonna pay a bribe! I’ve never paid a bribe in my life!” So we hatched a plan.

I arrived at the customs office about an hour later. It resembled a huge auto-parts warehouse store. Rows and rows of shelves, going from floor to ceiling, and going back a full 50 meters to the far wall. When it was my turn, I confidently handed the clerk my card, which still looked very official, and was none the worse for wear. He glanced at it — for a millisecond — and looked up at me, shrugging his shoulders: “Pues, No está!" Now that means, either “it isn’t here,” or “he isn’t here.” Assuming he meant the package, I said, “Well, the card says that it’s here.” He looked at me gloomily and shook his head saying, “Pues, No está."

I said, “okay, I’ll be glad to wait.” He gave me a weird look.

Here is where my pal's expert advice came into play. I had brought my lunch. I had also brought my guitar. There was a bench opposite the counter, next to a window, with room enough to put down my guitar case and open it, while on the other side I could open up my lunch, which included something smelly, some bread, and something to drink. As people came and went from the counter, I proceeded to eat, and then, wiping my hands, I took my guitar out of the case and started playing (honest, I am not kidding), "if I Had a Hammer." Loudly.

Before I had even finished the second verse, my friend at the counter — remember, he had only glanced at that card for a millisecond — was calling to me from the counter, waving my package in his hand. "Aquí está, Señor, Aquí está!" — "Here it is, Señor, here it is! " This guy was really good.

And there it was. I packed up my gear, handed him the card, took my package, and left.

I don’t know what Walmart should do. Everybody doing business in Mexico pays bribes. Every elected official (who takes bribes) in Mexico complains about the corruptos who demand bribes, but they continue to thrive — even among the top brass. Not long ago, it was worth $100 million to occupy a senior position in a Mexican Ministry. And thirty years ago, President José López Portillo was one of the richest men in the world. But there is also "trickle-down Mordida." I went to a party once at the home of a woman who was the manager of a Social Security hospital in Mexico City. Medical care is “free” in Mexico — once you’re in the hospital door. In exchange for favors handed to her at her hospital door, this woman had amassed the most marvelous world–class collection of Chinese ivory that I have ever seen. Ivory tusks, several feet long, intricately carved, lined the walls. It filled several rooms.

Maybe Wal-Mart should hire her.

Christopher Manion Archives

Four years ago and more, I met a neighbor at our farm gate. He was an LRC regular and wanted to say hello — and to post a big 3'x6' "Ron Paul Revolution" sign on our farm fence.

As he drove up, I smiled at his license plate — "Wrench 1." He got out the sign, unrolled it, and we talked while we put it up.

"How long have you been interested in politics," I asked.

"About two months."

"What got you hooked?"

"I was driving to work one morning and saw a sign at the side of the highway, u2018Google Ron Paul.' I went home that night and looked him up."

"I haven't sat down since."

That's how I met Richard Conrow, a living tribute to the passion for liberty that God has planted in every man, woman, and child ever born. While Rockefeller Romney has placed paid campaign staff in virtually every county in the country — and there are some 3,300 of them — for the past five years, Ron Paul's simple appeal to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" has inspired countless lovers of liberty to devote millions of unpaid hours to spread the word that freedom isn't dead, and it need not die.

Richard came back last spring and we went to work again at the farm gate. I asked him if he'd be so kind as to write down his story — why a guy who had seldom been interested in politics had suddenly become an engine of inspiration out here in the Shenandoah Valley. With his permission, I am quoting here his reply.

"One of the things that struck me the other night was a question you posed, asking me if I was in touch with the Ron Paul campaign. I’ve been asked that before and I have even been asked how much the campaign was paying me to spread the word about Ron Paul. Every time that I hear it, I’m kind of blindsided even though I shouldn’t be, since it occurs so often. Why would I work so hard, with no pay, for a cause that will only benefit me minimally, if at all? What would make me, or anyone, stand in the cold rain to hang a banner supporting a “politician”? On the drive back home I gave it some thought. This is what I came up with, I hope you don’t mind me sharing it with you:

"When I was a child, I’m not sure how old, perhaps my early preteen years or just into my early teens, I had a vision of America. It was right around the first term of Reagan. I had not grown so old as to become jaded or so educated as to know the true history of injustice and inequality in America. I was innocent, I guess you could call it. I saw America as a bastion of freedom in a world of injustice. I had read the federal Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. I “believed.” Deep within me I knew that people had an inherent “right” to be free; to live their lives as they saw fit and to make the mistakes or missteps that they would, without an overbearing master dictating their actions. People are substantially “good” and “giving." There are a few bad apples out there but they are the minority, or so I supposed. When we apply ourselves to work, we have the right to the fruits of that labor. Any money or benefit that we derive from our efforts belongs to us, not to any “collective.” I was told repeatedly how evil the Soviet Union was and the reason usually given was that they believed that any human effort was rightly taken away from the individual and used to “benefit all.” We Americans were going to band together and fight this evil nature that wanted to destroy our economic freedom and civil liberties!

"Then I grew up, educated myself and became jaded. I grew to realize that neither party really stands for much of anything that the other party doesn’t also support to some degree. Both want me to give up my economic and civil rights to benefit (or to bend to the will of) the larger collective. So much for us having defeated the “evil” Soviet empire — it looked to me like they might have won.

"I was completely disillusioned. I pretty much gave up on ever being a part of the America that I was so proud to imagine myself a part of when I was younger. Then came the day I told you about, when I Googled Ron Paul. I came upon a video where Ron Paul was speaking. I cocked my head to one side, amazed that someone was talking from my viewpoint. A politician who believes that we are a free people? This can’t be true. Only the power-hungry people decide to become politicians. You certainly can’t find a decent American that would subject himself to the intense scrutiny and personal attacks that comes with a public office unless they had ulterior motives. I figured that politicians only came in two flavors, those who were crooked from “go” and were trying to enable their corporate friends or those who wanted to be Robin Hood (take from those “evil” rich people and give it to the “needy” poor people – when you rob Peter to pay Paul, you can count on Paul’s support).

"Within hours I had searched Ron Paul’s voting record and his positions. In the first hour or so I was just waiting for the other shoe to drop. This had to be another politician that would say what was needed just long enough to get into office and enact his “real” plan. As the hours went along and I dug deeper and deeper, I began to hope. I hadn’t seen hope for my youthful America since I lost sight of her decades ago. “Can it be? Is this person real?” I felt sure that the next web page rendered would unmask this charlatan and show his true nature. With every story and YouTube video, my hope grew stronger and stronger. The flickering spark started to burn brighter. I needed to help get people to see that there is one politician that has actually read the Constitution and believes in it. Within hours I got involved in a local Meetup.com group and did all I could from there.

"You will find people who only “like” Ron Paul. They believe as he does about Americans being free but they haven’t got behind him one hundred percent. I think that they fear placing too much hope in any politician because they fear the thought of having their hopeful spark extinguished, and having hope stepped upon once again. Hope is a powerful thing in the mind, but how many times can it be crushed and yet remain? You will find many who are Ron Paul activists. The only difference between the supporters who like him and the activists is the degree to which we believe he will effect a change. The supporters have a small spark of hope that has not quite blossomed into the u2018brushfire in the mind' that the activists feel. The thought that we may one day change America into the bright beacon of hope and liberty that we know is possible keeps us going."

"In my mind the choice is clear. Ron Paul or someone else. But, to get back to the point, why do I do what I do? I guess, put simply, I still have hope for the America that we can be."

That is Richard Conrow's Ron Paul story, in his own words. On Tuesday night, he was rewarded. Our own Warren County had the highest margin for Ron Paul in the Commonwealth of Virginia — 59% for Dr. Paul, and 41% for Romney. Thanks in large part to the tireless work of "Wrench 1," who bought his own bumper stickers to distribute, who made his own signs in his garage ("You gotta be careful, the paint fumes get pretty strong," he told me), who paid for his own gas, who knocked on countless doors, and who worked the Shenandoah Valley for the cause of liberty for four years without being paid a dime.

Congratulations, Richard, and thanks for your devotion to the cause of liberty.

Christopher Manion Archives

There are millions of traditional Christian conservatives who have not bought into the Washington Culture of the Beltway Trough. Many of them embrace Ron Paul's intrepid demands for serious cuts in the size, budget, and power of government. Many more cheer Dr. Paul's drive to end Fed-driven theft-by-inflation. In fact, that effort appeals to members of many denominations who honor the Commandment, "Thou shalt not steal."

Of course, many (but not all) Christians who embrace radical Dispensationalism have a different set of priorities: they desire Armageddon. Their millennial passion disposes them to support candidates who advocate expanding the wars in the Middle East, in order to bring on the Second Coming of Christ — which will apparently inaugurate his one-thousand year reign, which they will then share with him. These voters are not inconsequential in number and influence: in 2008, for instance, both Huckabee and McCain slavishly sought the blessing of Pastor John Hagee of San Antonio's Cornerstone Church, the founder and leader of "Christians United for Israel." Hagee finally endorsed McCain, only to find McCain denouncing the endorsement because of Hagee's long history of Anti-Catholicism.

Which brings us to the Catholics. The Catholic faith does not applaud Armageddon or urge its early arrival. Of course, we pray "Thy Kingdom come," but we do not pretend to know the day or the hour. As far as Israel is concerned, Catholics believe that the Catholic Church, and not any specific ethnic group or geographical territory, is the "New Israel." So why aren't Catholic "leaders" inclined to applaud, and even zealously support, Ron Paul, not only for his fiscal honesty, but for his opposition to abortion and Roe v. Wade? Sure, Dispensationalists might oppose him because of his condemnation of BushObama's illegal wars, but Catholics have no similar theological calling to do so. In fact, they have good reason to resonate that condemnation.

So what's Ron Paul's Catholic problem? When offered this pro-life constitutionalist who reflects the moral views of millions of Catholics, why do prominent Catholics follow the lead of the secular liberal media and treat Dr. Paul like the "thirteenth floor of a hotel"? I think a great deal of the problem lies not with the people in the pews, but with professional Catholics who have put their faith in the Republican Party — specifically, with the GOP establishment "left behind" by George W. Bush. Specifically, many people among the establishment's Catholic faction are closely identified with the Iraq War, and to this day long to vindicate their support of it.

These self-appointed "professional Catholics" do not represent all the faithful, of course. Congressman Walter Jones of North Carolina, of "Freedom Fries" fame, was honest enough to say publicly what many Republicans thought privately: the Iraq War was a mistake, and he said so, admitting that he was wrong to support it. Nor does it include all pro-lifers: yes, after watching Obama's strident support of abortion and gay marriage, many Catholics believe that the Republican Party istheir only hope. But "put not your hope in princes" certainly rings true here — the GOP has used, abused, and betrayed pro-lifers for decades.

The problem rests with a small group of Catholics, chosen and cultivated by Karl Rove, who were given entrée to the White House early on in Bush's presidency. With their help, Rove traveled the country speaking to leaders of various interest groups that he identified and assiduously cultivated. In one city after another, he would meet with pro-life, pro-family groups on one floor of a hotel, and then went upstairs to meet with another group that supported the government of Israel. For Rove, getting Catholics to support the war was a high priority, while there were no parallel efforts on the other side.

Well, that is, except for Pope John Paul II and Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger – later to become Pope Benedict – both of whom profoundly opposed the US invasion and occupation of Iraq. At Pope John Paul's beatification this past May 1, his closest friend and confidant, Cardinal Dziwisz, described how the pope expressed real anger only twice in his reign — condemning the Mafia in southern Italy, and condemning the US invasion of Iraq. Pity poor Jim Nicholson, the Catholic whom Bush appointed as his envoy to the Holy See, whose job it was to sell Bush's war to a Pope who opposed it so strongly. Other Catholic neocons like George Weigel, Michael Novak, Fr. Richard Neuhaus, and William McGurn also fervently supported the war in any way they could.

In a way, their support was somewhat ironic. The Iraq War kicked to the back burner all efforts to advance the pro-life, pro-family cause. Attorney General John Ashcroft, one of the most ardent defenders of the family ever to hold that position, once told me (when I lived next door to him) that the war on terror was his first priority, and he never got to address other pro-family priorities like abortion and Internet obscenity. While Bush would have lost both the elections of 2000 and 2004 without the support of pro-life Catholics, he brought into his inner circle only pro-war Catholics. They did their best to give the war a Catholic imprimatur, concocting an upside-down version of Just War theory twisted to justify the unjustifiable: “preemptive war.” They threw 1500 years of Just War tradition down the Memory Hole, but that is the neocon dialectic at work — northing is true forever, and, after all, "9-11 changed everything."

One of the most disingenuous of these depredations came from William McGurn, who left his post as chief editor at the Wall Street Journal to work as Bush's chief speechwriter, and later returned to News Corp. as Rupert Murdoch's speechwriter. In 2007, when Pope Benedict visited the White House, McGurn used his Journal column to announce that Pope Benedict had somehow changed his mind, and now actually supported the war in Iraq. I recently asked him about that at a Washington function. The usually loquacious wordsmith roared, "I don't wanna talk about it," and turned on his heel — an uncommon reaction for a celebrated conservative who is a frequent speaker on the Catholic circuit.

In sum, a small group of professional Catholic apologists for President Bush pushed the war to the front burner, leaving serious issues like abortion, Internet obscenity, and other issues important to the indispensable pro-family coalitions to gather dust. During the 2004 campaign, Rove admitted as much, and promised pro-family leaders that, "after the election," their issues would finally get attention — but that never came to pass: the endless, disastrous conduct of the war virtually blacked them out. And no, Karl Rove never apologized.

A specific and troubling vector has emerged in the crusade for secular democracy on the part of professional Christians, including Catholics: they virtually ignore the persecution, killing, and forced emigration of Christians from Iraq caused by the Iraq War. Curiously, President Bush, whom many hailed as a "good Christian," did not manifest any interest in the plight of Iraqi Christians, their pastors, their families, or their churches. Clearly they were not ignorant of it: Mr. McGurn had foreseen that very prospect in the Journal as early as 2003, but he was strangely silent thereafter — when the persecution was widespread, murderous, and rampant (Mr. McGurn did not respond to a request for comment for this article).

So today's strange professional Catholic silence regarding Ron Paul is not surprising, even though he is a champion of everything Catholic conservatives believe in. It's humorous, really: Pro-life Catholics are often ridiculed for being "single-issue" voters. However, pro-war Catholic neo-conservatives, to whom the war was the paramount issue, don't have to deal with that criticism. Take Rick Santorum, who seizes every opportunity to condemn Ron Paul's foreign policy of defending America, rather than exporting secular democracy. Santorum is at the bottom of the polls because he toured Pennsylvania with George W. Bush in 2004 supporting the reelection of Senator Arlen Specter. The ardently "pro-choice" Specter was the number one target of prolife groups nationwide, but, for Santorum, backing Bush's war was apparently more important than the life issues. As a result, he lost his own reelection bid by twenty points in 2006.

Santorum is a sore loser. He can't stand Ron Paul because Dr. Paul's very presence mocks Santorum's hypocrisy (not to mention his oversize ego). On polls, Santorum is regularly in the one percent range, while Ron Paul heads for the first tier as one GOP pygmy presidential after another takes a tumble. Santorum proudly sings his own praises as a family man, but can't find a kind word for the doctor who has delivered four thousand babies without ever seeing a medical case that required abortion. The petulant Santorum doesn't aim his spiteful cheap shots at his fellow pygmies, several of whom know nothing about foreign policy besides chanting the "stop Iran" mantra. He blasts Ron Paul, who has spent years on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and who towers above him in consistency and principle.

But Santorum is a player: he became a hero to pro-life Catholics when he opposed Partial Birth Abortion in the 1990s. He knows that more than one percent of Republican primary voters are pro-life, and is vexed that they are voting for other candidates. He considers himself the natural beneficiary of their votes, ignoring his own flip-flopping past — but when you support Arlen Specter, that's all prolifers need to know. You're finished. It's the same syndrome that Mitt Romney runs into: RomneyCare and his support for "choice" on abortion in Massachusetts alone are enough to alienate a majority of Republican primary voters.

Nonetheless, Santorum represents the views of the "professional Catholic" political establishment. After his defeat, he joined the same think tank that Elliott Abrams had run in the 1990s. Abrams, who pleaded guilty to federal charges of withholding information from Congress in 1991, was pardoned by Bush 41 the next year. Wonder of wonders, he was nonetheless hired by Bush 43 to run his Middle East policy at the NSC. Abrams undoubtedly shares some blame for the ensuing Iraq disaster, but, like his fellow failures, he has never apologized either – neocons never do. Losers seem to flock together, alas, and to persist: now Santorum pouts that the U.S. has "lost the war," and blames Obama.

Only Ron Paul dares to remind the Republican pygmies that all the country's problems did not begin on January 20, 2009. He adds that Republican congresses were also complicit in Bush's domestic failures and his unconstitutional foreign wars. Such honesty is so refreshing that Washington's establishment, where Down is Up, finds it asphyxiating. The Hot Tub crowd returns the favor by doing everything it can to suck the air out of Ron Paul's campaign.

Because every one of the other current GOP candidates suffers from flaws that would be fatal in the real world, Ron Paul might wind up as the last man standing. Hot Tubbers would be aghast, of course, but if Ron Paul wins the nomination, we can expect some professional Catholics to foment an undercurrent of resentment and retaliation. It does not matter that America’s Catholic bishops have finally discovered that the Obama Administration is the most anti-Catholic, anti-Christian administration in history. For these diehards, Obama is just the competition: Ron Paul is the enemy.

After all, self-vindication is a high priority inside the Beltway, right up there with the endless wars. Why else did God invent memoirs?

Christopher Manion Archives

Amabo was from another planet. He arrived on earth in the year 2020 to see if was worth staying. His name meant "I will love" in Latin, but he didn’t know that, because he didn’t know Latin. Spelled backwards, his name meant something else, but he didn’t know that, either. But he was here to learn.

Amabo happened to land in the United States. Everywhere he saw signs. They read, "They Keep Us Safe!" The sign had a picture of a grim androgynous face above a uniform. That made Amabo curious. He started poking around. Since he came from a smart planet — a brilliant one, in fact — Amabo caught on fast. It didn’t take him long to discover that there were two kinds of people in America. The Uniformed People (UP) — and everybody else.

Amabo recognized that this was artificial and unnatural. It turned the laws of nature upside down. Amabo did not find this reassuring. He regarded the laws of nature with reverence: without them, his ship would have disintegrated long before reaching Earth.

Amabo noticed that the Uniformed People lorded it over everyone else. They acted as though putting on their uniform had doubled their IQ. Amabo called them the "Ups." The Ups looked down their noses at normal people, and considered them backward, ignorant, even subhuman. So Amabo came to call normal people the "Downs."

What a queer sort of gravity, he thought. Why do so many people acquiesce to it?

Like normal people throughout the universe, Amabo believed in law. For him, it was as natural as the music of the spheres. But he was perplexed to find that, in America, anyone in a Uniform could break the law. This aggravated his senses. But the fact was inescapable: the Uniformed People were different from everybody else. While the vast majority of people he met had a basic sense of right and wrong, the Uniformed People were above all that. Of course, Amabo knew that was silly, because the least among the people on his planet was far above any of the Ups. He shrugged. The Ups were just dangerous and delusional, he decided.

Amabo marveled. If a man without a Uniform walked onto a playground and physically assaulted a young girl playing there, he spent 20 years in prison. But in any airport, an Up wearing a TSA Uniform could assault the same young girl without fear of reprisal. And he could do it all day. "I love my job!" Amabo heard an Up shout, as he assaulted another one.

Amabo had heard about that kind of love. It made him angry, which was rare on his planet. He found an old book by a saint (a category that Amabo found mystifying, but also exhilarating). The saint’s name was Augustine. He wrote that the "earthly city" was "ruled by the lust of rule." Members of the "earthly city" loved power above all else, especially power over their equals.

To Amabo, that described the Uniformed People. He marveled at their contemptuous ignorance, but he also acknowledged their earthly success. He noticed that, in airports, the crowds were not outraged when confronted by constant abuse by the Ups. In fact, the Downs cowered — surprisingly, even the parents of children assaulted by the smug Ups looked on helplessly. Why, an Up could even make an entire crowd undress and nothing would happen to him!

It wasn’t just the airports. As he roamed the country, Amabo learned that murder was severely punished in America — often by execution. He winced, but recognized that murder is an awful, barbaric act. When Downs committed murder in America, they paid a heavy price.

But not the Ups. Amabo marveled: if a policeman kills you, he gets a promotion. For the same crime a Down would pay with his life — or at least with life without parole. An IRS Up can rob you under threat of deadly force; without the Uniform, a Down would receive twenty years in jail for that — or, if his victim had Concealed Carry, he could get a bullet between the eyes. An Up called a "Mayor" can bulldoze your house and give your land to his pals. A Down trying this would briefly experience a loud shotgun blast; later, a used bulldozer would be for sale.

And there’s more. Amabo trembled. He realized that an Up with a sophisticated airplane ("Sophisticated! What a laugh," chuckled Amabo, whose children had toys that could fly rings around it) can secretly blow innocent civilians to smithereens and get a medal, while a Down who makes the incident public is regarded as a terrorist.

Amabo was pensive. He had read Lenin. "The purpose of terror is to terrorize," Lenin said. But who was terrorized among the people he saw? The Ups? Or the Downs?

Amabo learned that "ethics" comes from the Greek ethike, "habits." The ancient Greeks had discovered a timeless truth that was true on Amabo’s planet too: to preserve liberty, good habits were not only important, they were indispensable — not only in the young, but in the society at large. And virtues — like fortitude, courage, and justice.

Amabo knew that, in a surprisingly similar way, from his home planet. It cheered him up.

But the Ups that Amabo observed had twisted it all around. They tried to inculcate bad habits. They acted like the tyrants Amabo read about. Some Ups began the process by pretending to advocate "diversity," instead of virtue, but they soon came to know better. Take "diversity" to its logical conclusion, and pretty soon everybody would be acting like an Up. That’s no good.

Other Ups knew better: in order to preserve their Uppityness, they realized that good people must be corrupted. That meant destroying good habits that had developed over the centuries — simple civic virtues as hard work, modesty, and respect for others’ persons and property. For the Ups to stay Up, these virtues must first be coarsened, then redefined, and finally transformed until, in their perverted form, they become the domain of the Ups alone. The Downs must be made to believe that all virtue flows from the benevolent Ups. Only then can they be made to feel glad to be Down — to accept their abject condition, even be grateful for it. Amabo had read about that in a book by Aldous Huxley: "I’m so glad I’m not an Alpha," said a girl named Lenina. Thank Ford she was only a Beta!

Yes, after a while the Downs had come to believe that, without the Ups, they would soon be living fearful lives that were Solitary, Poor, Nasty, Brutish, and Short. Oh, how the Grateful Downs actually loved the Ups! "They keep us safe," the downtrodden Downs told Amabo again and again.

Amabo was especially pleased when he found a little chapter in an old book by a foreigner (like Amabo). His name was Hayek. "Why the worst always rise to the top," it read. Amabo realized that Hayek was right. The Ups had convinced people that bad is good — that Down is Up. It had worked.

Amabo traveled throughout America. In one airport after another, he observed the salacious jabs, the brazen grips, and the ubiquitous "Get Undressed Now" Code (GUNC). He realized that Hayek was right: the Ups are the Worst, and they had risen to the top. When they got there, they had to reach down — way down — and hire the scum of the earth to do their dirty work.

Amabo realized that it was just a matter of time before they emptied the prisons in their next hiring binge.

"We’ve got an Opt-Out," yelled the TSA Up.

"Step over there to the Waterboard, lady!" ordered an Up officer. He wore a bright and shiny badge.

Amabo sighed. He watched the grandmother limp slowly over to the side of the room where the hoses were. She groaned as they strapped her tightly to the board. The other passengers looked away and tried to ignore her gurgled screams. After all, the Ups protected us from the Terrorists! Obviously, anyone who resists must be a Terrorist! After all, they keep us safe!

Amabo could no longer stand the pain — especially the pain deep inside his conscience. Amabo went home.

Christopher Manion Archives

The lay of the land now indicates that the Congress will probably spend the next two years arguing about Obamacare, endlessly disputing the 2,000-page legislation line by line. The effort will grind to a halt, and helpless Republicans will cringe as an increasingly presidential Obama rises above the fray. In 2012, frantic Republicans will appeal to the public, "You see? You need more of us!" But exasperated voters might disagree.

Republicans might be elephants, but they have short memories. They forget that the Republican majority was blamed for the disasters of the Bush years. Result? The GOP was blown away in 2006 and 2008. The Tea Party’s popularity rests on public hatred of Washington — of both Democrats and Republicans. If both parties keep on perpetuating endless growth of government, voters will blame both parties. So if Republicans want to win in 2012, they will have to propose a genuine alternative to the bipartisan trough-dwelling mentality that has brought us to the brink.

I have one here.

The GOP must make a clean break with the past. That requires a blanket refusal to wallow in the mud over thousands of pages of Obamacare’s line-items, a task that will sink them back into the mire. A clean break means coming clean: if socialist Britain can "step back from the brink," there’s no reason why the GOP needs to keep heading towards it, merely slowing down judiciously so as not to exceed the speed limit.

The New Republicans should simply announce that they will pass a budget, and authorize corresponding appropriations, only if that budget’s total spending is ten percent less than that of the previous year.

That’s right, cut the budget by ten percent a year. In fact, if Congress cuts the budget by ten percent every year for twenty years, by the year 2030 we will be back to Jimmy Carter’s 1980 budget that Ronald Reagan ran against as "Big Government" that was "the problem, not the solution."

But "where would you cut?" Simple: everywhere, across the board — including sacred cows like defense. After all, isn’t the defense budget from the height of the Cold War big enough for today, now that the Soviet Union has collapsed?

Some sacred cows could be eliminated altogether, of course. The Department of Education (DoE) could disappear without a murmur. After all, it has done its best to destroy academic standards nationwide, as it has aimed to politicize government, private, and even religious schools with thousands of pages of regulations that every school district has to hire someone to read and interpret.

So clearly, we should close down DoE. But "what about the children"? Easy. The discretionary budget of the Department of Education is approximately fifty billion dollars. Good. Simply allow the hundred million plus households that pay taxes to send $500 apiece to their favorite educational institution, and enter it with a receipt as a credit (not a deduction) on their tax return. That simple mechanism will produce fifty billion dollars that go directly to schools. No generously-compensated elite "peer review panels" for grants, no million-dollar lobbyists securing earmarks for rich institutions, and no bureaucratic overhead.

In fact, no bureaucrats! Parents, who know their children and their schools best, will replace them all — at no cost. And parents will decide where the money goes — at least their $500 share of it. This consideration alone will allow local schools and states to dissolve the huge bureaucracies they have built up to interface with the federal bureaucrats that regulate, fund, and generally harass them. "The children" will have more money than ever for their schools as administrative costs tumble, and real teaching, without federal interference, begins to thrive once more. Not only that, but all the money saved on DoE’s buildings, salaries, pensions, and equipment — a not insignificant sum — can be used to pay down that national debt.

Who can object to more money for education? And of course the people know better than the bureaucrats what schools to support, so this will be a truly democratic reform. All we have to do is to eliminate the federal government middleman between our schools and us. Schools will be encouraged to become customer friendly, since each taxpayer will be free to choose which school will receive his $500 to every year. No more teachers unions blaming the parents for poor teacher performance. Finally, teachers will work for the parents, not for the government or the teachers union.

The reader might object that the GOP establishment will not be excited by the prospect of weakening their own power by downsizing government. To counter that evident inertia, a radical change of priorities is required. Republicans must forget seniority and face reality: without the Tea Party, the GOP would be wallowing miserably in the Slough of Despond, popularly known as the permanent minority. There are two reasons why Republicans must cast aside their Good Old Boy mentality, boot the entrenched GOP leadership that brought the party low, and follow the Tea Party that is responsible for their resurgence:

1. Because the Tea Party is right: we are Taxed Enough Already.
2. Because the GOP will wither away under business as usual.

The Department of Education is just one of hundreds, even thousands, of possible targets for extinction. Of course, readers might nominate their own favorites. Surprisingly, the federal government has already helped us in that task by generously identifying tens of thousands of possible targets for us.

Have you ever heard on the news that, because of a snowstorm in Washington, all "non-essential federal personnel" have been told to stay home?

Did you hear that? "Non-essential personnel"? Mull that over for a moment. Millions of bureaucrats know that they are "non-essential," so they don’t have to go to work in a snowstorm.

Well? If they are not essential, why don’t we just fire them?

You get the picture. "Where would you cut?" The answer is simple: everywhere!

Back to the Ten Percent Solution. Of course, we can expect government employee unions and other interest groups that prosper on the back of the taxpayer to oppose this sensible course of recovery, the first step in restoration of the republic. Good! Their opposition will actually be very helpful in persuading the rest of the country of the merits of the plan. In fact, the louder opponents to serious budget cuts scream (viz. the recent riots in France and Greece), the more the taxpayer will be educated on how the sleazy system really works and whom it really benefits — and he will act accordingly.

The Ten Percent Solution’s positive benefits far outweigh the negative ones. For one, the country’s economy would experience an unprecedented boom, certainly large enough to afford employment in the private sector to the hundreds of thousands of furloughed federal employees who might have useful and productive skills. Who better to identify and abolish useless federal regulations than the former bureaucrats who wrote them? Hence, a corollary: eliminate ten percent of federal regulations per year, too.

Readers might complain that my numbers are back-of-the-envelope estimates. That is correct. Perhaps we should go for twenty-five years of cuts. After all, as government shrinks, the country will grow, astronomically.

And haven’t I ignored inflation? And what about taxes?

No, I haven’t ignored inflation. Here’s the solution: End the Fed.

As far as taxes go, no one said it better than the late Senator Jesse Helms: "The Good Book says the Lord gets ten percent, and the government shouldn’t get a penny more."

Country’ll grow.

Christopher Manion Archives

That’s right, quit.

You think I’m crazy — or, better said, do I think you’re crazy?

You’ve got a job for life. When your job ends (at your sole discretion since you can’t be fired), your bountiful taxpayer-guaranteed pension takes over. When you die, your spouse inherits half of your pension and all of your blue-ribbon health care. Cost-of-living raises are generous and automatic and paid by the taxpayer.

Yes, I admit, all this is true. That’s why you should quit.

Yes, quit.

Face it. You are trapped by a system you hate. You are surrounded by slugs to whom work is a dirty word. Your job is meaningless.

Admit it, you never make decisions. Why? Because if you make the right decision, someone above you takes the credit. If you make the wrong decision, you get the blame. So you don’t make any decisions. For thirty years you will face thousands of opportunities to make a decisions, and evade every one of them.

For thirty years you will write thousands of memos, copy everybody under the sun, and then turn back to writing the great American novel and perusing the real estate ads for retirement properties in the Shenandoah Valley.

Your Great American Novel’s plot centers on the plague of bureaucratic government. Evil characters are everywhere. You wipe your beaded brow and wonder if it’s too realistic to be regarded as fiction.

You know it is.

So quit.

Admit it. When you got your government job, you felt smugly superior to the hoi polloi — your college classmates — who had to go knock on doors and constantly prove their worth to an employer who could fire them at will for nonperformance. You felt so smart that you were sure your I.Q. had risen by at least twenty points (make that forty, if you work for the State Department). You acquired a certain swagger. You had power.

But that set of illuminations led to another one: you discovered that your bureaucratic superiors were a bunch of craven CYA experts who had only contempt for the masses.

Oh yes, I forgot about the masses: these are the people, the citizens — your neighbors when you were growing up — the tired, wretched, the poor and weary of the world for whom you had such compassion that you wanted to go to work for the government so you could "help" them. You weren’t sure until your junior year, when you took a sociology course that proved scientifically the superiority of the government to all other forms of human association. That cinched it.

Of course, that very dispiriting visit to the college placement office was also, shall we say, an incentive. As those snarky fraternity guys would have put it, your rsum sucked. They got jobs on Wall Street, while you were left sitting out on the side of the road.

You showed’em! You rose above the reveling, revolting, ignorant accounting and business majors. You scorned the tailgate parties and the easy love. You knew your mission — work for the government and save the world.

So quit.

And tell everyone else down there to quit too.

If two million federal government bureaucrats read this and quit, consider the consequences.

First, a nationwide sigh of relief. Simply thrilling.

Instead of having two million surly and arrogant government bureaucrats impeding growth, progress, charity, and freedom every day, privately-owned businesses built with risk capital will have two million brilliant and capable new hires to choose from without government interference. In some few of the two million ex-bureaucrats, a glimmer of entrepreneurial zeal might have survived — you know, like the gnostic spark. They will start businesses too.

If you quit, HHS will disappear. Instead of HHS bureaucrats raking in billions in taxes and counterfeit Fed paper and keeping over half of it, free Americans will be able to donate their own money directly to the local organizations that actually serve the health and other human needs of their communities.

You can even help. But volunteer — don’t take a salary, not even a cent. That is the secret to providing effective health and human services. When it comes to business, make a profit. When it comes to charity, work for free.

If you quit, the Department of Education will evaporate. More billions will be left in the pockets of parents in communities all over the country. They know their local schools better than you ever could. They know the slackers. They know the lifers. And they know the stars.

Let them run their own schools. How?

Quit.

"Now wait a minute," I hear you say … "I admit I hate my job and my coworkers. By and large, they’re a lot of slugs. I do more work than any ten of them, frankly. And I admit it’s not fair — to me and, on reflection (boy that’s hard!) to you. It’s not fair to you. Boy is that a novel idea! But what about those pensions, the health care, the security — how can I quit and leave all that behind?"

Good question. Answer: if you don’t quit, all that will evaporate anyway, as soon as the Leviathan collapses. All of your pension money will be worthless scrip. If that doesn’t motivate you, consider the possibility that the coming wrath of the common man could envelop your bureaucracy’s headquarters with pitchfork brigades that might well visit great and justified retribution on you and yours.

So quit.

You see, if you do quit, you’ve got a shot at making it on your own. Think of it! You can acquire self-respect. For the first time in your life, you can be productive. You will be paid because you are productive. And you will continue to be productive because you know that, if you aren’t productive, you won’t get paid, either.

Whew! There’s an idea for your next novel!

If you quit, and convince the millions in your government "workers" union to do the same, the country will flourish. Growth will abound, and, with it, happiness and goodwill.

Come on, when is the last time that you walked down the street and smiled at a stranger? If you quit, that stranger is a potential customer of your private employer. So you’ll smile — and you’ll mean it.

Admit it. When you walk into your government office building and are blocked by a gaggle of tourists from Alabama or South Dakota, do you smile and say silently, "thank you, taxpayers, for the privilege of working for you"?

Or do you silently say, "what a bunch of addled scum — get outta my way"?

Does that make you stop and think? You need to quit.

Oh, an added bonus: if you quit, you’ll never have to lie again. Not even to yourself! Think of it!

Now where was I? Ah yes. If you all quit, a sound currency will emerge, on its own, and jobs will abound, unimpeded by government because there will be no one left in the government to call a press conference and sic the bureaucratic Hydra on you and your company. In fact, the government buildings will be empty — except, I admit, for the slugs. However, for them I have a solution: continue to pay them and send them home. That’s all they want. They will be easy to please, and they will be out of the way.

Quit. All of you, quit. Then send the slugs home, with pay and benefits. Promise them pensions, too. Then we can sell the government buildings and use the proceeds to pay down the government debt — and pensions for the slugs.

This is not a thought piece, this is a demand for action. Time is short. If you do not quit, the country will sink into the mire. Do not pretend that you will be spared. Remember, the District of Columbia began as a swamp, and it will end as one.

You can still get out. Walk out the nearest door into the sunshine, breathe deeply, and be yourself again. Don’t be afraid, your true self is in there somewhere. Burn off the barnacles, shed the smarmy arrogance and pride, forgive all of your colleagues their trespasses, and leave, never to darken that bureaucracy’s door again. Two million strong, you will abandon the capital to the swamp, the cockroaches, and the slugs.

But time is short. Time is not only of the essence, it is the essence. Your college profs lied to you. You can’t save the world. But if you quit, you can save your country.

The choice lies before you. You have only two options.

Quit.

Or write another memo.

Christopher Manion Archives

But the Catholic Church isn’t a theocracy, either. So when our bishops beat the drum for socialized medicine — and they have, for years — they unnecessarily alienate many people, and not only Catholics. After all, the church has always taught that the laity, not the clergy, should take lead in practical political matters. So why do our bishops ignore Catholic experts, as well as common sense? Why do they give aid and comfort to Speaker Pelosi and her disastrous bill, demanding only that it be "abortion neutral"?

When bishops play politics, they enter a hog wallow for which they are ill-equipped. But there they are, and the damage that their "reform" would cause demands a candid appraisal. After all, if the bishops insist on playing politics, they invite political analysis. As a Catholic layman, in the Christian spirit of charity and truth, I offer this brief survey of some key aspects of the bishops’ political involvement that are often overlooked.

First, comes clericalism. The bishop’s duty is to teach the faith — even the unpopular moral precepts — boldly, in and out of season. But every bishop is a citizen, and, like the layman, he has the right to his private political opinions as well. There are many issues where good Catholics (and bishops) can disagree. The problem arises when a bishop attempts to elevate his personal opinion on such an issue to the level of authoritative church teaching. That oft-condemned attitude constitutes an abuse of the prelate’s authority and confuses not only the faithful, but the public as well. Case in point: our bishops now call their radical version of "reform" a "moral imperative." They take care to dress up their ideology with religious language, as though no good Catholic — or good person! — could possibly disagree. This manipulation of Catholic teaching to advance a particular ideology ill serves — and even perverts — the Church’s mission to "go and teach all nations"; it scandalizes good Catholics; and, bluntly put, it advances socialism, which the Catholic Church has always condemned

Then there’s history: Over the past century, America’s Catholic bishops have increasingly identified the church with a particular political party — the Democrats. For instance, when Pope Benedict the Fifteenth attempted to bring an end to World War One, America’s leading prelate, Cardinal James Gibbons, supported President Wilson, admonishing Americans to embrace "obedience and devotion to our country," meaning Wilson’s government and Wilson’s War. Cardinal Gibbons forged an alliance of the American Catholic hierarchy with the Democrat Party that has only become stronger with time.

During the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt, The Rev. John R. Ryan, a key advocate of "social justice" in the bishops conference, was so zealous a supporter of FDR that people called him "Monsignor New Deal." Since then, and especially since the 1960s, the bishops have continued to move left with the Democrats, and become cheerleaders for a number of left-wing causes. While they constantly advocate higher spending and taxes in program after program, they never bring up such unpleasant topics as "Thou Shalt Not Steal."

And of course there’s tradition. Like most Catholics their age — like me — most of today’s American bishops grew up in Democrat families.

Then there’s selective morality: while our bishops beat the drum for their favorite political agendas, they ignore moral absolutes which the Pope repeatedly admonishes bishops to address. Bishops are consecrated to teach even unpopular Church teachings that many in the culture oppose or ignore. One of those authoritative moral teachings identifies contraception an intrinsic evil, like abortion. Yet, while bishops insist that the final health care bill be abortion-neutral, I have never seen them lobby Congress to oppose the billions of taxpayer dollars the federal government spends on contraceptive programs designed to reduce poor Third World populations — including many predominantly Catholic countries — in the name of “development.” Why the silence?

Then there’s money: During the presidency of Lyndon Johnson, Catholic universities quickly declared independence from the Vatican so they could get the newly-available federal funding. Catholic Charities, USA, quickly followed, and now receives over $2 billion a year from the taxpayer. In the 1990s, Cardinal Bernardin of Chicago, Barack Obama’s favorite Catholic bishop, complained that donations from the pews were declining, but never acknowledged the possibility that left-wing politics in the pulpit might be to blame. In contrast, Catholic charities, universities, schools, and hospitals today receive more from the government than ever before — billions of dollars a year. Politicians in Washington, where everything is "tit for tat," undoubtedly expect the beneficiaries of their largesse to respond accordingly.

Then there’s bureaucracy. The Catholic bishops conference boasts a burgeoning staff of committed leftists who pass out millions of the faithful’s donations to radical groups and causes. In a classic case of Realpolitik, the bishops’ bureaucracies have modeled their organization chart to reflect those of the government agencies that fund them, as well as the left-wing politicians whose programs they support (and who in turn support them). Meanwhile, other Catholics on Capitol Hill observe that the bishops’ staff concentrates it lobbying efforts on the congressional left — period.

Then, alas, there’s the scandals. When the clerical abuse scandals broke into the open in 2002, the only bishops that quit were those directly involved in abuse or blackmail. The rest insisted that they stay on, even though the majority of bishops had enabled abusers in their dioceses. Their prolonged state of denial produced the greatest scandal in the history of the American Catholic Church, yet many prelates still in office today refuse to retire, no matter how deeply involved they were.

Then there’s Church Law. A bishop weakened by the scandals would feel mighty uncomfortable doing his job by following Canon Law and condemning the public scandal of Catholic politicians who support abortion. Could it be that these Catholic politicians — including Biden, Pelosi, Durbin, Leahy, the Kennedys, Kerry, and countless others — might shut the water off and stop funding the bishops if they did their job?

And last, just in case, there’s Congress. Specifically, Catholic Senator Patrick Leahy, sent a shot across the bow of any bishop who might be thinking of barring Leahy from receiving the Eucharist (as Canon Law requires). The mere prospect of a subpoena from the Chairman of the Judiciary Committee is enough to chill the spine of any bishop who still has one.

ObamaCare would be dead as a doornail if the bishops stopped supporting it. But they persist, heatedly rejecting (but not addressing) complaints detailing their leftist bias. All believers should pray for our spiritual leaders, to be sure. And, in this season of Lent, we are often reminded that this world is indeed the Vale of Tears. Nonetheless, the sad truth remains: if our Catholic bishops are successful in their campaign for national health care, there will be a lot more tears.

Christopher Manion Archives

My old friend John Bolton toasts Dick Cheney as the “HUMAN EVENTS’ Conservative of the Year.”

I must demur.

In explanation, one need go no further than the reasons Bolton cites as Cheney’s qualifications: “In particular, [Cheney's] vigorous defense of u2018enhanced-interrogation techniques,’" as well as “the critical need to understand that we are in a long, continuing war against international terrorism.”

On the backs of torture and endless war, the conservative movement will roar back in 2010. Q.E.D.

Human Events has been going downhill for a long time. When I lamented its decline in 2007, its editor roared back two weeks later, with an editorial featuring a do-se-do of faux outrage: “Fire the Neocons!” he roared at Bush.

Of course, he wasn’t serious. Would Bush really fire Dick Cheney — could Bush have fired Dick Cheney? And consider: today, while Bush quietly reposes in suburban Texas solitude, Cheney is anything but his old "quiet" self ("quiet" — a sobriquet which Bolton regards as "a plus for Cheney"). Why?

Cheney has come out from under cover for a reason so obvious, no one seems able to admit it: since he was running the show for most of the Bush years, it’s up to him to defend them. After all, he’s only defending himself. And, as in days of yore, he only goes to the few audiences that welcome him — most of the rest of the country is off limits.

While Cheney’s outbursts ooze with self-absorbed treacle, Bush’s silence is also instructive: after all, most of the disastrous decisions weren’t his in the first place. One can chart the foul course, beginning with that fateful third weekend in July 2000, when Cheney cornered Bush into choosing — Cheney! — as VP. Supposedly acting as the seasoned pro “advising” the amateur Bush on his consideration of candidates, Cheney calmly "vetted," then eliminated all the other contenders. They were enraged when Cheney put himself forward without a shred of documentation, when he had demanded of them onerous tons of background information (one recalls that Missouri Senator Jack Danforth, one of the contenders, hurriedly wrapped up just prior to that weekend his "independent" whitewash of Janet Reno at Waco in order to rush back to Saint Louis and put his dossier together — for Cheney, of course).

The past was prologue. For eight years, Cheney was the powerful progenitor of virtually every important foreign policy decision made by the Bush Administration. And it was his to defend.

Remember how Cheney refused to allow Bush to be interviewed alone by the 9-11 Commission? How he insisted that he accompany Bush when they questioned the president? And that he and Bush refused to testify under oath? To put the icing on the cold shoulder, he had the Secret Service frisk the members of the Commission at the door of the Oval Office. Nice. "Colleagues, welcome to the Ministry of Love!"

For sheer chutzpah, Cheney has few peers. While the economy was collapsing in the fall of 2008, Cheney worked overtime — to get Bush to pardon Cheney’s felonious chief of staff, in the manner that Bush’s father had pardoned perjurer Elliott Abrams during the Christmas week of 1992. Cheney, who supposedly had vast business and financial experience (compared to Bush’s woeful lack of same), devoted scant attention or energy to our country’s financial collapse. He single-mindedly sought a pardon for his boy (still referred to with the juvenile name of "Scooter"). By steadfastly refusing, Bush made the only decision of his administration which we can be sure did not originate with Cheney. Perhaps Bush had finally begun to see the light about the man who had run the country from the darkness of his constantly "undisclosed location." Clearly, the light wasn’t a halo.

But as Paul Begala and James Carville used to say of Clinton’s crimes, "Hey, but so what?? That’s old news!!" So today, conservatives are supposed to raise their glasses to Cheney the hero. Or, is he, perhaps, the zero? After all, Cheney celebrated the disastrous wars and lies that tanked the GOP in 2006 and 2008, bringing Obama to power with his filibuster-proof majorities. It is those wars which Cheney now defends, exulting at AEI, for which consistency Bolton and Human Events now praise him. However damaging those policies were to the country, to the world, and to (ahem) the conservative movement, Cheney apparently feels compelled to defend hem because they are, in effect, his patrimony. The Bush years represent Cheney’s record more than Bush’s.

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But the lefties on the right are still up to their old tricks. Predictably, Bolton pretends that only the Left dislikes Cheney. It is the classic neocon ploy, perfected by Richer Perle, the pretense that all the enemies of the neocons are on the Left, when in fact Cheney, Obama, and the statist Trotskyite neocons are all peas in the same leftist pod. For proof, one need only observe the election returns, where a total zero with no responsible record dragged a criminal gaggle of Capitol Hill compatriots to power as millions of Republicans headed for the hills. The Bush-Cheney years were probably the most brilliant illustration ever of Pat Buchanan’s famous observation that "it was enough to make conservatives throw up their hands — or just throw up."

So now Dick Cheney brays, proudly dragging before the public the crimes that destroyed the Republican (I did not say "conservative") majorities on Capitol Hill, as well as the livelihood of a few hundred million Americans (not to mention the rest of the world). Why is Cheney so fixated on continuing to visit ruination on the party that elected him, by parading proudly before the world torture and endless war which he defends as our nation’s new Prime Mandate? Is he that dumb?

No, Cheney is not dumb. I think the answer is clearer every day: former Vice-President Cheney is determined to prevent serious, genuine conservatives from ever attaining power in Washington, because they aim to destroy the Leviathan and the bipartisan gang of criminals who run it. For Cheney, having Obama to kick around is just the right recipe, since Obama is mimicking all of Cheney’s moves, including the coy "statesmanship" that requires him to renege on all of his campaign promises. The delightful dialectic, like the endless wars, goes on forever.

Cheney is apparently determined to destroy the GOP in order to save it — from Ron Paul or any other sane, balanced, and modest constitutionalist. For Cheney, two corrupt national parties are necessary to keep America on its course of war, torture, collapse, ruin — and, of course, plunder. That the GOP might serve as a channel for true conservative renewal is repugnant to Cheney, because a repudiation of Cheney would of course be a successful party’s first order of business.

Since only a rump — some twenty percent — of voters are still willing to identify with the GOP, and since Cheney and Bush are still heroes to a majority of that tiny minority, it’s a cinch that true conservatives aiming to win GOP primaries in coming years will have a steep mountain to climb. It’s much more likely that the usual suspects will chant their "back to basics" mantra while cadging to recover their old contracts, donors, jobs, grants, and reservations at the DC Hot Tub, known to the rest of the country as "the Washington sewer."

When conservatism had a conscience, it had principles — precisely those which Cheney, hero of today’s "conservatives," has renounced. I wonder if the folks at Human Events would even recognize them, as Barry Goldwater enunciated them fifty years ago:

"The turn will come when we entrust the conduct of our affairs to the men who understand that their first duty as public officials is to divest themselves of the power that they have been given. It will come when Americans, in hundreds of communities throughout the nation, decide to put the man in office who is pledged to enforce the Constitution and restore the Republic. Who will proclaim in a campaign speech: "I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel the old ones that do violence to the Constitution, or that have failed in their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden. I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is "needed" before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible. And if I should later be attacked for neglecting my constituents’ "interests," I shall reply that I was informed their main interest is liberty and that in that cause I am doing the very best I can." [Barry Goldwater, The Conscience of a Conservative, Shepherdsville, Ky., The Victor Publishing Company (1960), p. 17.]

Christopher Manion Archives

Thomas has promoted himself as the poster boy of "Christian" op-ed values for years, but I wonder if his frequent indulgence in hypocrisy isn’t more reminiscent of the Pharisees. In beating the drum for war, Cal the Christian has led his fawning flock down a treacherous path, running the risk of trading true Christianity (and millions of souls) for a this-worldly, politicized, and murderous sect run by Armageddonites and bellicose nonbelievers. If the recent reports that Christianity is losing adherents in America are true, a goodly portion of that attrition might well be attributed to the poisonous propaganda that Mr. Thomas, Pastor Hagee, and their neocon allies have served up in service of war, war, war — always in the name of the Prince of Peace.

Look at Thomas Monday, assailing astronomical government deficits under those nasty Democrats! Now look at the same Cal in January, cuddling lap-dog of the outgoing big-war-spender George Bush on his last visit to the Oval Office. Is this mere cognitive dissonance? Look further: during the presidential primaries in February 2008, Christian Cal was channeling David Frum and criticizing principled conservatives for not backing pro-war big spender John McCain. "Too many modern conservatives seem embedded in a concrete slab of pessimism, preferring to go over a bridge and drown rather than u2018compromise’ their u2018principles,’" he wrote, employing the mocking scare-quotes in the original. Gee, Cal must think those Christian martyrs of old were pretty pessimistic too, preferring to hang on to their faithful principles unto death, and getting only a concrete slab (although possibly salvation as well) for their efforts.

After all this, are we suddenly to believe that Christian Cal has suddenly gotten religion?

The more likely explanation for Cal’s outburst during the primaries is that he was obviously vexed with Dr. Ron Paul, who was telling the truth about the war, the Fed, and the profane profligacy of both political parties. And guess what? Cal actually admitted it: "If you can’t get elected, your principles can be talked about on the lecture circuit, but are unlikely to be adopted in Washington," he wrote. (Gee, doesn’t that sound like the temptation that Satan used on Jesus in the desert? "All these kingdoms have been given to me…." [Luke 4])

In the light of all these deviations, we might ask, is this really a man who cares about principle at all? Or are these just the predictable perorations of a self-promoting personality cult addict? Christian Cal glides with ease from contradiction to contradiction — but committed Christians should read the label: this is the way of the neocon gospel, not the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Yes, it was the sellouts and idolaters who betrayed conservatism and delivered the country to Obama’s revolutionaries on a silver platter — but it’s the people in the pews who have paid the price. Dr. James Dobson, a Christian leader who has kept politics at arms-length as a rule, recently observed the wreckage on the battlefields of the culture wars: "Humanly speaking," he said, "we can say that we have lost all those battles." I believe that Dr. Dobson is correct. And today it’s pretty obvious that the forces of banksters and neocons who brought us to ruin with profligacy at home and endless wars abroad could care less about the tens of millions of Christians without whose critical support George Bush would still be just another failed trust-fund-baby businessman.

It has been a very long and distressing eight years for traditional conservatives, however defined. Countless pro-family Christians were betrayed by their "leadership" who climbed aboard the Big-Government-Republican Hummer, even as the neocons were steering it off a cliff and giving the pro-family folks the back of their contemptuous hand. While the neocons (predictably) jumped ship before the crash and are now sitting pretty, the millions of Christians whom they masterfully manipulated continued to rely on bellicose palaver from the likes of Christian Cal. Thus, they remained faithful to Bush long after the neocons were betraying him left and right. Karl Rove never told them the signals had been changed; he didn’t dare — he needed their votes.

This is the essence of betrayal. As a result, today the conservative coalition is in ruins, sold out by the self-dealers, the war profiteers, the personality cultists, and the blatant opportunists who manipulated American patriotism and the faithful for their own private, and often very profitable, agendas. That Cal Thomas cheered them on is not only a blight on his judgment, but an enduring insult to millions of Christians in whose name he pretended to speak to power.

Lucky for Cal that Christ called on us to forgive. Forgive, yes. Follow? Never again, callous Cal.

Christopher Manion Archives

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By now even Newt Gingrich realizes that conservatives will never recover until they admit that Bush did his best to destroy the movement, the party, and the country. So Newt’s latest salvo on the future of the "conservative movement" masquerades as a broadside on "the Bush-Obama big government, big bureaucracy, politician-empowering, high-tax, high-inflation and high-interest-rate system."

Sounds like he’s taking a big risk, right? I mean, channeling Ron Paul and attacking Bush and all that?

Well, as the kids on campus say, "Not!" Sure, as usual, Newt spews the buzz-words: he invokes "principles" nine times — but never names one, except "telling the truth" (three times), opposing "big government" (five times), and (the clincher), invoking Ronald Reagan (four times).

As Lenin would say, “really revolutionary.”

Apparently, Newt’s rhythmic mantras didn’t leave any space for the Constitution, which he never mentions once. Nor does he mention Iraq or Israel. Perhaps Newt can’t name any first principles because he doesn’t stick to any for long. A one-time history professor, he would have us believe today that the U.S. is over-committed in the Middle East: "The next building boom ought to be in America instead of the Middle East," he chirps. He conveniently forgets that he has long advocated not only the Iraq War, but a broadened US war in the Middle East against Iran and Syria on behalf of Israel. After all, he insists, this is "World War III"!

Nor does Newt mention any family issues — abortion, euthanasia, education, the courts, embryonic stem-cell research, and dozens more — that are so important to millions of his one-time supporters on the "religious right." (Maybe that because every time Newt tries to make a comeback, he seems to have a new wife.)

Will Newt’s overture to “change” really work? I’m not so sure. Last November, Michael Steele, then the head of Gingrich’s GOPAC organization, complained that Republicans in the fall elections "didn’t have anything to say to the American people other than, ‘We’re not Democrats. We’re not Obama. We’re not Hillary.’ Well, we know that. So what else is new?"

Well, now Newt has added something new, another strophe to Steele’s chorus: "We’re not Bush either." But I wonder, will Mr. Steele, who is now Chairman of the Republican National Committee, sing along? Or will he be bound in the Bush straitjacket? He must know that, while Bush’s final approval rating nationally was a historically low 22%, 57% of those still willing to call themselves Republicans approved of him — and now they are supposedly Steele’s constituency.

So has-beens of a feather fly, but not together: "We’re not Bush," says Newt, because apparently he can now safely say that Bush had no principles, that he didn’t tell the truth, and that he is no different from Obama.

My goodness. Next week we might see Newt shouting, "Bush lied! People Died!" But don’t hold your breath.

"We’re not Bush." Well, Newt, we knew that already. But for all the hot air, I don’t think Newt’s trial balloon will fly until he tells conservatives that "we’re not that World War III-mongering, Middle East leveling, Iraq War cheerleader Newt Gingrich either."

Christopher Manion Archives

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I recently unearthed this historic defense of Clinton by James Carville and Paul Begala. Since it was never published, I include it below, in full:

At Least Clinton Kept Us Safe!
By Paul Begala And James Carville

The Washington Post
January 20, 2001

As George W. Bush takes the oath of office today, Republicans will be rejoicing at the inauguration of the man who sold himself to the electorate as the complete opposite of Bill Clinton. But these confirmed Clinton-haters, who reviled the president with crass catcalls about ethics and a vain and tawdry impeachment attempt, would do well to look beyond their baser instincts and contemplate the better world that Mr. Clinton has nurtured, and today delivers safely into the hands of Mr. Bush, who is now charged to preserve and to protect it

That world embodies two undeniable realities that represent accomplishments for Mr. Clinton, but serious challenges to Mr. Bush.

First, Mr. Clinton has overseen an era of historic revival and surging growth, saving the economy from the depths of the recession that he inherited from the first Bush administration.

And second, since the 1993 attack on Tower One of the World Trade Center in New York, Bill Clinton has preserved and protected our country from attacks by foreign terrorists on our own soil for over seven years.

Will George W. Bush, whose campaign reviled Mr. Clinton ceaselessly and promised "to change the way Washington works," be able to embrace and enhance President Clinton’s achievements during his term in office?

Or will he fail, and put our country’s economy and security at grave risk?

As advisors to President Clinton who are proud of our achievements, we put this challenge bluntly to the Republicans: Yes, Mr. Bush’s right-wing Clinton-haters might cheer at his faux victory, but they should be on notice that the new president will be judged by history on these two fundamental criteria: Will President Bush continue to protect Americans from another terrorist attack on our native soil, as President Clinton has so ably done? And will he continue the industrial growth and flourishing twenty-first century economy that the Clinton Administration has delivered to him on a silver platter?

If, by the end of his four, or (fates forbid!!) eight years in office, President George W. Bush can deliver to his successor a country that has been free from terrorist attacks since today (January 20, 2001), and an economy that is even stronger and more robust than the one he inherits today, then he will have met the challenge.

But if — and we pray (seriously!) that this will not come to pass! — if President Bush fails to prevent a terrorist attack on American soil during his time in office, or if he squanders the burgeoning and virtually unprecedented economic miracle that today’s America enjoys — if President Bush has failed at either of these two fundamental responsibilities, then he will rightly be judged a failure and will probably never recover from the ignominy that will justly be directed at his malfeasance. In short, he will be condemned by history — and he should be.

Let us assume the worst: that Mr. Bush serves eight years in office. Should that come to pass, will he be able to say, on January 20, 2009, "My fellow Americans, For these past eight years, I have successfully protected the nation. I have kept America safe from an attack by foreign terrorists, as it has been since 1993"?

Under President Clinton, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has tripled. Today, it stands at over 10,500. When President Bush leaves office in 2009, will he be able to boast a Dow that soars over 30,000?

If Mr. Bush cannot honestly point to those achievements in 2009, then his administration will and should be considered a dismal failure.

Let history judge.

[The authors served as Senior Advisors to President Clinton]

Oh, you don’t remember reading it? A busy day, perhaps?

OK, I made it up.

But doesn’t it sound familiar?

It should. Because last month, as Obama was inaugurated, the ink fairly flowed for Bush apologists who sang to the skies the outgoing president’s praises. In particular, three former speechwriters for Republican presidents went even further, challenging the new president with dark premonitions, schoolyard taunts from the losers who seethed at the success of the new guy, especially at his supporters (all of them "left-wingers," of course) who opposed Bush’s great "success," the Iraq War.

Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan conjured up a grim future epithet that she wants Obama to think about every day: "At least Bush kept us safe — unlike Obama." Peter Wehner, who wrote speeches for Bush, insisted in USA Today that "Bush Kept U.S. Safe." And on inauguration day, Wehner’s White House colleague Bill McGurn, who now writes speeches for Rupert Murdoch, wrote in the WSJ that Obama "will soon find himself under pressure to measure up to two Bush achievements: a strategic victory in Iraq, and the prevention of another attack on America’s home soil."

Of course, their assertions are as spurious as my channeling of "Carville and Begala," above. Bill Clinton didn’t "keep us safe" from terrorism — just ask anyone in Oklahoma City. And neither did George W. Bush — unless history began on September 12, 2001, and the Constitution doesn’t matter, and you don’t count thousands of new Al Queda recruits that killed thousands of Americans in Iraq, and Osama’s ongoing monologues, ad nauseam.

This entire charade is all of a piece with Bush’s insistence that history will vindicate him someday, since today a generous majority of his own generation has repudiated him.

Camouflage aside, it is time we look seriously at Osama Bin Laden’s own explanation for the 9-11 attacks: he spent half a million dollars funding the operation, in hopes that Bush’s response would ruin the country. Alas, by Osama’s standard, Bush has succeeded splendidly. So far, America has paid with trillions of dollars, a broken economy, a nearly collapsed military, and a socialist president who appears to be intent on finishing the job.

But consider the tenor of the Bush years. Had the real Begala and Carville written such a noxious diatribe eight years ago, Republicans (and especially those famous "Clinton-haters"!) would have been up in arms and demanding their scalps, condemning "Bush-haters" with grim moralisms. But apparently not even the real Carville and Begala, for whom Republican esteem could hardly have been lower in 2001, stooped to that level.

Ah, but today the shoe is on the other foot. And lo! Three Republican stalwarts have no problem taking the lowest available road in welcoming President Obama to the Oval Office. Apparently, defenders of Bush have little else to offer but spite — and fear. Apart from that, their quiver is empty.

It’s fair to ask, will Bush’s defenders — who always couple assertions of "success" in Iraq with the "safe at home" mantra — will they ever come around and admit Bush’s mistakes, and theirs? Privately, a number of my Republican friends — especially on Capitol Hill, but even some who worked for President Bush — have done so; some regretting the war, others (more numerous) on the point that, whatever his accomplishments, Bush ruined the economy and virtually guaranteed the onset of a long and powerful Democratic era.

Although the war has strained some friendships, a lot of us still talk. But when I wrote Mr. McGurn regarding his piece, he replied questioning the very possibility of our having a rational discussion, since I had criticized him here for asserting last April that Pope Benedict had finally come to his senses and now supported the war (a textbook example of what Mr. Justice Goldberg once called "a gross canard, cut out of whole cloth!").

So: will they admit their mistakes? Boston University Professor Andrew Bacevich doesn’t have high hopes.

"Don’t expect triumphalists to recant or apologize," he writes. "Yet their time has passed. The Age of Triumphalism has ended."

Ironic, isn’t it, that the democracy-exporting "triumphalists" should proclaim their smashing victory in defiant unison, in the face of such a domestic democratic defeat so overwhelming that all they can do is taunt the victor with vacant platitudes? Bearing in mind that it was the failure of their cherished policies that guaranteed his victory?

Indeed, their time has passed. Whether that goes for conservatism as well is yet to be seen. One thing is certain: if it is these unrepentant losers are going to be in charge of resuscitating the Republican cadaver, the result is sure to be a Frankenstein.

• Noonan
• Wehner
• McGurn

Christopher Manion Archives

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Hello, this is John McCain. I have some straight talk to tell you, my friends.

1. In the past two weeks, millions of Republicans have told one another that they are so disgusted with George Bush that they’re going to vote for Obama and they’ll never vote for a Republican again. Well, my friends, I’m disgusted with George Bush too. I renounce him, Cheney, and all their works. I promise you a clear alternative — a truly revolutionary one. So don’t tune me out, hear me out.

2. Obama is a socialist and wants to take our country down. But Bush and Cheney are socialists too, and they’ve taken our beloved America down, major league, big time. There’s some straight talk for you.

3. Ron Paul is right. He has been the true maverick in this race, not me — and he is a principled one, to boot. In my old age, I have realized my many failings, and I cheerfully admit them to you today. I have called Dr. Paul to apologize, profoundly and personally, for smirking at him, making fun of him, and otherwise ignoring him during the primaries. I should have been his strongest ally. I apologize to all of you for not supporting him. I have assured him that I will welcome his counsel in my administration. And I promise that I will follow it.

4. If I had not so stubbornly rejected Ron Paul’s counsel in the past, I would never have supported the bailout, giving cover the Bush-Cheney-Paulson-Pelosi-Frank-Dodd-Obama Gang. I now renounce all bailout deals past and future and demand that the government stop the takeover of our economy and let the private sector sort itself out without government interference. It will be a rough ride but believe me, I have been through worse, and I have survived.

5. With regard to Israel, our government is doing everything wrong, in a bipartisan fashion. As a result, the U.S. is close to guaranteeing an unnecessary worldwide depression, as well as an illegal war. We do not have a security treaty with Israel, so it is unconstitutional for any American official to promise to defend Israel against attack until the end of time.

You know, there are so many supporters of Israel in Congress that I’m sure they wouldn’t object to my demanding a security treaty with Israel. I will insist that the country at large discuss and debate such a treaty and its consequences for a good long time. When that discussion has taken place, I will then ask for a vote of two-thirds of the Senate for its advice and consent. Under the Constitution, the Senate can either accept the treaty or reject it. If the Senate rejects it, I will treat Israel in the same manner that I approach every other country in the world — which I explain simply thus: I come in peace, as a friend.

6. Social Security is a fraud. For the past sixty years, it has divided families — the old against the young; it has defrauded families, allowing Congress to squander trillions of your hard-earned dollars on itself; and it has perpetrated a lie — that your family’s Social Security "mandatory contributions" are somehow being saved for you. They are not. They are all gone. Your government has spent every dollar. As president, I will insist that the government pay back everyone who has paid into they system at least what you’ve paid in, and possibly some interest. And then I will abolish the system — and I will encourage retired folks to learn to take care of themselves, to get to know their children again, and I will encourage children to accept some responsibility for their extended family. If we perpetuate this fraud, the young will be strongly tempted to euthanize their aging parents "voluntarily" — in order to avoid bearing a huge tax burden to support welfare for the elderly through an impersonal and fraudulent federal program.

7. I will pay for liberating your Social Security from government control by ending all illegal wars. Beginning with Iraq and Afghanistan, and moving smartly to Iran, Pakistan, South Ossetia, Taiwan, North Korea, and other potential conflicts, I will immediately demand that the Congress declare all the wars it wants to have, under the First Article of the Constitution — after a lengthy, public, and nationwide debate. The wars they want, I will lead as Commander in Chief. The wars they don’t want, I will end immediately. We spend more on defense than all other countries in the world combined. Millions of trough-dwellers in and out of government have made billions of dollars on this charade, and I will end it.

8. In 2007, Obama promised Planned Parenthood that the first bill he will sign is the so-called "Freedom of Choice Act" (FOCA). That proposed legislation would prohibit the states from adopting any legislation that empowers families (parental choice), informs women (allowing sonograms and consultation before abortions), allows free speech (sidewalk counseling), and gives women true choice by allowing alternatives to abortion to be offered in the same neighborhoods where abortion clinics thrive (usually poor and minority neighborhoods).

FOCA opposes all of these reasonable and commendable goals, so I oppose FOCA. I promise that FOCA is the first bill I will veto.

9. You all seem to like Sarah Palin, and so do I. But my neocon advisors insisted on taking advantage of her. They leaked to the press that she was "inexperienced." Well, Mrs. Palin is immensely more experienced and qualified than Obama, and more intelligent and able than any of the neocons on my campaign staff, so I have fired them all. I encourage Sarah Palin to bring to the White House the same independence and tough-mindedness she brought to the Governor’s Mansion in Alaska — and I congratulate her for insisting on the firing of that rogue cop who was so brutal, he even Tased his own son.

10. My friends, an Obama presidency will be Bush-Cheney’s third term. Haven’t you had enough already?

    Let me say a word about President Bush. I bear him no malice. However, I will deny his demands for a battalion of 110 Secret Service agents and their hundreds of support staff and millions of dollars worth of equipment after he leaves office. In our constitutional system, the ex-president is a private citizen. I admire Jimmy Carter, and I will authorize for Mr. Bush the same size of security detail that President Carter now enjoys. Of course, if Mr. Bush wants more armed goons around, he has plenty of money to pay for them himself.

There you have it, folks. Finally, this election offers you a clear choice: you can vote for Bush-Cheny-Obama socialism or McCain-Palin-Paul freedom. Thank God I have finally come to my senses and embraced the unadulterated and beautiful principles of liberty.

Now, at last, there’s some Straight Talk!

Christopher Manion Archives

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And the Lord said, "what did you lose, my son?"

"My house, O Lord," replied the hapless former homeowner.

"And whose fault was that," said the Lord.

"Well, the saleslady, she said I’d be able to live like a king, and she gave me all this money, and it was a great until — poof! — the rates went up and I couldn’t pay my mortgage."

"Now, is this the saleslady," said the Lord, nodding toward a bewildered woman who was being ushered in by an archangel.

"Why, yes, sir. That’s her. Hi, Mary Ann. Where you been?"

"Why it’s Mary Ann," said the Lord. "Mary Ann, let’s not waste time. Did you really sell this man a worthless mortgage?"

"Yes, Lord, I cannot tell a lie. You see…."

The Lord’s eyes flared. "Mary Ann, you are certainly correct, you can never tell a lie again now, can you?"

"No, Lord," she sniveled.

"Now, why did you lie to this man?"

"Because, Lord, I was out of a job and I answered an ad and this company in New York gave me five thousand dollars for every mortgage I could sell — no questions asked."

"Now that’s a good, honest answer, Mary Ann. But I’m asking the questions now. Well, they weren’t telling you the truth either, were they?"

"No, Lord," she said, wiping her nose.

"And who was your supervisor in New York, Mary Ann?"

"A guy named Jeremy, sir. I never really met him, but …"

"Now … oh thank you, Gabriel," said the Lord, as the archangel ushered in a youngish fellow in dapper attire. "Jeremy. Jeremy. How many times I have tried to help you. (Sighs). Well, Jeremy, did you really try to hoodwink all these people like that?"

"Oh noooo, Sir," wailed Jeremy — and suddenly screamed, as the archangel’s wing gave him a sound wallop in the behind — accompanied by a bright flash. Jeremy’s eyes glowed for an instant, then darkened again. "Yessir yessir yessir I did. I lied. I stole. Lotsa times."

"That’s much better, Jeremy," said the Lord. "And why would you do a thing like that?"

"Gee, sir, I really didn’t …(looks at menacing archangel wing) … Well, sir, it was money. It was the money and (furtively glancing at the archangel) cocaine, sir."

"Now that’s very good, Jeremy. Very good." He paused.

"Jeremy, have you ever told the truth in your life before? Ever?"

"Probably not, Sir."

"That’s too bad. You’ll soon discover just how bad. But you’re doing a good job now. So tell me, how did you get away with all this thievery, Jeremy? Why didn’t the police just arrest you?"

Jeremy’s face reddened and he stammered for a moment. Eyeing the archangel warily, he said, "our CEO hired lobbyists, sir. They made sure it wasn’t against the law."

"Your CEO? And who might that …."

"THAT WOULD BE ME," boomed the voice of a swaggering figure as he made his entrance unannounced, having been shoved by a couple of beefy angels.

"Ah, Paul. Paul. I haven’t seen you for so long … what did they give you, Paul, that I hadn’t already given you," said the Lord.

"Forty-eight million a year plus a ten-year parachute, worth maybe five-ten million more, that’s what they gave me," roared the CEO.

"Ah, sir — that parachute figure should be twenty-eight million and change," Raphael told the Lord in a stage whisper. "Taking into account what you’ve told us about the future, it works out to $28,887,291.01 — close of business, ten years from today."

"Thank you, Raphael," said the Lord. "Now, Paul, this poor man here has lost his house. How could you get away with letting Mary Ann and Jeremy here do what they did? Jeremy says it was u2018lobbyists.’ What do lobbyists do, Paul?"

"Look, it’s business, just business. Tit for tat, that kind of thing. Once they were poor staffers, we make them rich. We give them a lot of money because they know the congressmen — they’re all friends, you know, and we give them money and they let us make money. It’s a pretty neat deal, really. Everybody gets a piece of the action."

"Really?" said the Lord. "They let you steal? Legally? … Gabriel, please bring me one of these congressmen." (enter congressman). "Good morning, Mr. Congressman."

Congressman (puzzled look): "Good morning, sir … ah, may I sit down?"

"Most people prefer to stand," said the Lord, "but of course you may. Gabriel, please bring the congressman a chair."

The congressman sat down. He shifted in his chair, which was too small for him.

The Lord eyed him intently. "Now, Mr. Congressman, did you really make all this possible? Printing money, spending like a drunken sailor, taking all those bribes, and letting people like Paul and Jeremy and Mary Ann here trick this poor man out of his house?"

The congressman sat up erect: "Er, u2018Lord,’ or whatever they call you, look: if we’re gonna put all our cards face-up on the table here, may I mention that this never would have happened if 147,821 people hadn’t voted for me in the last election?"

"That’s a very astute observation," said the Lord. "Who are they? Do you know their names?"

"Oh Lord," said the dazed elected official, "I could never know that. See, we have secret ballots in our … our system, our country, our district …."

"Were you going to say your u2018empire," asked the Lord.

"Yessir, yessir, that’s right. My little piece of terra firma. And so I just don’t know who voted for me and who didn’t. I mean, let’s face it, everybody who comes to me asking for favors says he voted for me, but you know how believable that is."

"As a matter of fact, you’re right," said the Lord. "I do know how many of them were lying." He sighed. "Raphael?"

Raphael addressed the uncomfortable congressman. "Sir, of the 48,024 people who have told you that they voted for you since you were first elected, 18,912 were not telling you the truth."

The congressman was momentarily flustered. Then he looked dazed. Finally, he said, "Well, anyway, Sir — Lord, whatever — look, don’t blame me for all this. If you could blame the people who voted for me — and get the ones who said they did, too — then you’ll have the real culprits here. But of course, we have secret ballots, you see, so we’ll never know …"

The Lord’s magnificent face showed the faintest trace of a smile.

"Oh yes we will know. Gabriel, will you give me that list and let’s start at the top — the first election, the first voter. Let’s get to the bottom of this…. Ah, thank you, Gabriel … My oh my, what a long list! And you say there are 435 of them? And 100 more senators, too? Hmmmm…. Senators ….. Raphael, go get Cato and Cicero, will you, please? I think they’ll want to watch this.

"Now, let’s look at Gabriel’s list. Here it is, my congressman son, this is the list of all the people who voted for you. We’ll talk to each one of them and, I assure you, we’ll straighten all this out. Let’s see: first election, first precinct, first voter, 6:02 a.m. — oh, here’s Harriet. Now what is a nice lady like Harriet doing here? Just like her to be first, she’s always so punctual. Gabriel, fetch our dear daughter Harriet for me, will you? Tell her it’ll only take a minute." (exit Gabriel)

"Sir? Uh … Sir?" It was the congressman.

"Yes, my son?"

"Er, uh… Sir," said the congressman, still squirming in his too-small chair. "We’ve got to pass emergency legislation, we really have to pass it right away or our country as we know it will collapse. Can’t we put this off until, you know, we have more time?"

The trace of a smile waxed into an eloquent, shining face full of joy. "Oh, don’t worry, my son," said the Lord. "We have all the time in the world…. Oh, hello, Harriet, I’m so sorry to trouble you, my dear. Now, tell me, did you really vote for this man?"

Harriet smiled, bowing low. "O Lord," she said, "I am your faithful servant. I always love seeing you. Anything you ask, I will happily do. Anything. Now, tell me, O Lord, just which man do you mean?"

"Ah, Harriet, my dear, dear Harriet. You perpetually warm my heart. Now, my dear child, the man I asked you about is sitting over there on that chair, between Raphael and Gabriel."

Harriet bowed again, and then turned her gaze around the room slowly, peacefully. She first glanced at the hapless former homeowner, but eventually her eyes came to rest on the Congressman, who was still squirming in his chair.

"Why, it’s BARNEY!!"

(Fade to Black Friday)

Christopher Manion Archives

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From time to time, my old boss, Jesse Helms, God rest him, used to give real stemwinders full of stuff that no speechwriter ever could have dreamed of. "Sometimes you gotta feed the goats, son," he explained. "Gotta give ‘em goat food."

The neocons apparently have a "goat food" menu to which they repair in times of need.

A recent instance caught my attention because it resurrects that old neocon favorite, the "Bush-haters." Note the immediate attempt to reduce the opponent’s position to a passion, and a sinful one at that — an evil movement of the will. It was cute once, however tawdry, however shopworn, however self-congratulatory — and those sentiments pervade the piece. Why, we neocon lovers might even have a "decent outcome" in Iraq, trumpets Mark Goldblatt, if we can just ignore morality and the Constitution. (Let us not address the decency of the past seven years, just the outcome: here Goldblatt embraces the fatal moral flaw of consequentialism, but he isn’t finished). He disses the Constitution — routine with the left-righties — and embraces the UN (Hey, I thought John Bolton said the UN was bad. Oh, only when we don’t like it?). Notably, he says that Abe Lincoln and FDR were worse than Bush — but he says it only to embellish Bush’s crimes, not to sully those extra-Constitutional characters. (Tom DiLorenzo, call your office! The American Spectator agrees with you!)

The tipoff comes with this beauty: "Like every war before it, the war on terror (or, to call it what it is, the war against totalitarian Islam) is a nasty, brutish endeavor. It is fraught with obscene excesses and squalid idiocies because, like every war before it, it looses the primordial evils of tribalism and bloodlust to which the human race, even at its current stage of evolution, remains heir."

Here, Goldblatt lets the cat out of the bag. He embraces, in one paragraph, Hobbes, Darwin, and Marx. Quite a feat? Undoubtedly — but absolutely essential for the left-right war apologists. With Hobbes, he rejects morality in war, because Hobbes’s "war of all against all" absolved every crime, and eradicated every moral standard, in the name of self-preservation. So for Hobbes, the Leviathan — "a mortal god" — was just the ticket. Goldblatt is evidently ignorant of the provenance of his own principles — because Hobbes’s Leviathan doesn’t have to be moral either. His word is law, and he can change his mind on a whim (hey, so can Allah! We might be on to something here!).

The "war against totalitarian Islam" absolves "us" (the government, of course), as Hobbes does, from any constitutional or moral limits on our actions. Since war makes us all barbarians, Goldblatt has, for all practical purposes, placed the conduct of the war outside the realm of prudential morality (and barred moral and Constitutional criticism). And the prohibition is permanent, because the war will last until our grandchildren’s generation, as Dick Cheney often reminds us, and, if it’s actually a war against evil, or madmen, as President Bush has put it, well, it’s going to last until the Second Coming. Goldblatt even borrows Hobbes’s language to make his point more emphatically: the war against Islam is "a nasty, brutish endeavor," but, unlike Hobbes, it is not short: so we’re not in Hobbes’s State of Nature any more, but under our own private Leviathan. The Leviathan then authorizes himself, and us (under orders, of course) to act like barbarians, even though Goldblatt admits that what he advocates is dehumanizing. (How Clintonesque: Hey, so what??!! )

After channeling Hobbes, Goldblatt next embraces Darwin, because, "war looses the primordial evils of tribalism and bloodlust to which the human race, even at its current stage of evolution." Well, that must make it OK. Note that "tribalism" — which entails pre-modern, non-Democratic, family-based arrangements, prevails in Arab societies (as it has as in most societies throughout the world since ancient times), so it must be bad. Clearly democracy is superior, and exporting democracy is today the very tip of the spear of evolution — especially when you export it by force. Well, we’re talking about "survival of the fittest," after all. Founders, roll over.

Once we embrace Goldblatt’s principles, we are launched into a new stage of history beyond good and evil, beyond Christendom and Western Civilization, where everything is permitted (see Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov) because, after all, war calls up from the depths what is worst in us. (The Founders certainly recognized that temptation — but not that certainty. Maybe that’s why they insisted that Congress, and not just any single elected leader, should declare war. Why? Because Congress is closest to the virtuous people of Federalist 57.)

And what about Marx? He’s actually very helpful here. Of course we’re absolved for lowering ourselves to barbarian behavior in war because the war — the "class struggle" that explains away any given conflict of the day — is permanent. Anyway, for Marx, we act like barbarians because 1) we can’t help it — we are trapped in the bourgeois consciousness, and we have no free will; 2) because human nature is materialist, since we cannot control ourselves morally, and must suspend even the pretense of morality in war, because victory is everything; and 3) because of contradiction, the beautiful tool of the dialectic that allows the rhetorical "ideals" of democracy to float around as thought they were principles rooted in metaphysical reality, when in fact there isn’t any metaphysical reality, only power, and winning or losing the war that — oops — will never be won, or lost, by definition (viz. Trotsky’s Permanent Revolution). Isn’t contradiction wonderful?

Goldblatt also follows Marx’s endearing style of invective, honed in the 1840s when the Left-Hegelians launched a lot more vituperation at each other than they ever did at the evil bourgeoisie. That makes sense, though, because their common leftism was nothing but an apology for totalitarian power, without the limits of natural law or the moral law, and so is Goldblatt’s. In addition, of course, Goldblatt throws in the "Spott" — that exquisite German term for high contempt. It spares him (he hopes) the duty of speaking rationally. Being irrational himself, Goldblatt projects, in self-defense: it’s really the "Bush-haters [who] are blind" — deprived of rationality, by assertion.

Like Bush, who insists that he will be vindicated by history, even though he is repudiated by a majority of today’s Americans, Goldblatt is a prophet: “Bush will eventually be ranked with Lincoln and Roosevelt among our greatest presidents — for the very reason that he championed American values. Bush-haters, in turn, will join the long ranks of history’s laughingstocks.” Now, eight paragraphs ago, Goldblatt just said that Bush wasn’t as bad as Lincoln and FDR — now he tells us that someday he will be considered as good as Lincoln and FDR! Leon Trotsky, call your office! Isn’t the dialectic wonderful? The goats must feel a lot better now.

And that’s a wrap, folks, way over there in Neoconville. That’s the dialectic for you. Goldblatt’s "eventually" is required, of course, so Darwin can do his work and smarter people — who will apparently agree with Bush and Goldblatt — start showing up in future centuries.

In the meantime, speaking of "laughingstock," let’s look at the real world. I wonder what Mr. Goldblatt would make of the views of today’s Republicans: "House Republican leader rips Bush," reports The Hill:

"Republican House Policy Committee Chairman Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI) told fellow GOP lawmakers and staff that u2018Beijing George’ was tossing his party’s lawmakers "under the bone dry bus." [Which one is the barbarian, Mr. Goldblatt?] Today, in his final term, the wildly unpopular President George W. Bush boarded Air Force One bound for the Beijing Olympics and a meeting with his chum Hu Jintao, the dapper ruler of a nuclear armed, communist dictatorship,’ railed the Republican leader."

Well, evolution will no doubt take care of Mr. McCotter — unless Goldblatt and his barbarians get him first.

Christopher Manion Archives

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There is a curiously triumphant story line emerging in the neocon blogosphere regarding the Haditha killings. It is curious because their story line begins by implying that the unarmed Iraqi men, women and children who died in the Haditha incident were not killed in cold blood, and that their killers were innocent because military Court Martial charges were being dropped in case after case. But each article daintily dances around the fact that the Iraqi victims were in fact innocent and unarmed, and each article winds up by implying, "so what? — after all, Iraq is a dangerous place, and sometimes you have to kill innocent, unarmed civilians to bring democracy to the Middle East."

In the first article, a WorldNetDaily headline charges that Rep. John Murtha (D-PA), a Marine and a Viet Nam veteran, "fueled the case by declaring the men cold-blooded killers." WND begins by calling Murtha’s charges a "smear," but ends with a defense lawyer admitting that terrible things happen, and that, yes, Americans do them, but they should not be blamed for them because the Iraqis are such bad people: "In a horrible and very complex environment, when you have an enemy that’s using women and children as shields, you should always give the benefit of the doubt to the Marine or soldier," said Rooney. “You should never bring him back and put him in front of a court martial."

I find that a rather underwhelming stretch. It hardly constitutes an exoneration — in fact, it’s a tacit admission of guilt combined with a call for absolute immunity for every man and woman in Iraq who wears a uniform.

In the second case, my old housemate Mac Owens complains that Iraqis won’t play by our rules, and that makes it tough on our soldiers and Marines: "Insurgents blend in with the people, making it hard to distinguish between combatant and noncombatant. A counterinsurgency always has to negotiate a fine line between too much and too little force. Indeed, it suits the insurgents’ goal when too much force is applied." Again, hardly an exoneration — more like a confirmation.

In the final analysis, though, both "defenses" are actually admissions: that killings in cold blood did occur, but argue that they do not rise to the level of murder because the men were just following orders and hey, it was a bad day all around. Thus, in describing the actions of one Lance Corporal, Owens writes approvingly that his "actions were in accord with the rules of engagement and use of force," and assumes that that is enough to exonerate him.

And it was. In fact, the killers don’t even deny what they did. "u2018I fired because I had been told the house was hostile and I was following my training that all individuals in a hostile house are to be shot,’ Mendoza told investigators. The Marines then entered the house and tossed grenades before firing into a back bedroom, which they later found was filled with women and children."

"Just following orders." Doesn’t that sound familiar? But WND and Mac Owens never inquire into the wisdom of the orders, or the training, or the government behind them.

War is hell, said General Sherman, who was no stranger to visiting hell on defeated civilian populations. But for 60 years the "I was just following orders" routine has been called the "Nuremberg Defense" for good reason. Whatever one might think of the Nuremberg Trials, it is indeed curious that, when it suits their agenda, the neocons — who used to call Saddam "another Hitler" (apparently a sign of opprobrium) — would applaud the "just following orders" defense employed by Hitler’s surviving henchmen who were condemned at Nuremberg.

Let’s face it — the neocons are not doing their war any favors by inviting the notion that American troops in Iraq are on the same moral level as the Nazis. In fact, a primary purpose of the Nuremberg Trials was to trumpet the moral superiority of the Allies and to justify their right to sit in judgment of the defeated Nazis — even though FDR’s allies, the Soviets, sat there in judgment too, with Iona Nikitchenko, who had presided over some of Stalin’s most notorious show trials, as chief judge during the first Nuremberg session. This coronation-as-capitulation announced to the world a colossal symbolic moral victory for Stalin — his regime had now been proclaimed legitimate — he had received the moral "seal of approval" of the victorious West. As Hitler said at Obersalzberg, "the world believes only in success." FDR, Churchill, and Stalin proved Hitler right.

And the Soviets had indeed succeeded — with the indispensable assistance and seal of approval of Roosevelt and Churchill, the undisputed postwar leaders of what was left of Christendom.

Clearly, while the Nuremberg Trials are still a subject of heated debate, the Nuremberg "just following orders" defense is not. It is a loser. One wonders: given its unlovely provenance in Nuremberg, how is it that the Haditha Defense can be successfully employed in today’s postmodern world, where the very word "Hitler" conjures up virtually the only universally-accepted standard of evil itself? Is this a dialectical master-stroke by the neocons? Or is it the only one left?

Is the Haditha Defense an axiomatic self-exoneration, the neocons’ last gasp in their chaotic fall from grace and power, as they all blame one another, blame the Iraqis, blame the stars, blame anyone but themselves for their Iraq disaster? Is the Nuremberg defense really the core fallacy of the neocon dialectic? Could this really be what they mean when they insist that we "support the troops"?

Wrapping themselves in the flag and the uniform of a dutiful Lance Corporal, they proclaim both their triumph and their innocence of the blood and disaster that they have wrought for the past six years. By definition, they proclaim themselves innocent, and victorious.

It’s breathtaking, really. Lenin would indeed be proud.

All this is especially curious because the fundamental ingredient of the neocon effort to remake the world is the assumption that they — and any country they can manipulate or dominate — are morally superior to the rest of the word that is, by definition, in need of reform — by them, of course. This is certainly in harmony with their Trotskyite foundations — as is the masterful, profound contradiction that serves as the foundation for their argument about Haditha and every other murder committed in the name of the morally superior state — to wit:

"Saddam was another Hitler. We proved in World War II that we are morally superior to Hitler. We condemned Hitler’s henchmen who claimed to be u2018just following orders’ because those orders were given by a morally inferior power, whom we defeated. But war is hell, and, because we are morally superior to Hitler (and to Saddam), our orders are morally superior to those of Hitler. Hence our invocation of the Nuremberg Defense at Haditha is qualitatively different from how the Nazis employed it at Nuremberg. The Nazis were losers. We are winners. Thus it is not a crime for our soldiers and Marines to be "just following orders" when they kill innocent, unarmed civilians in Iraq. Why not? Because we gave the orders, and they are therefore, by definition, good."

The world believes only in success. Q.E.D.

May I suggest a different approach? For instance, one view (one of many, I dare say), explaining "why the United States has botched this war," is reflected in a 2006 article by Dr. Andrew Bacevich. Unlike the neocons, Bacevich actually inquires rationally into the wisdom and morality behind those "orders" that were (and are) "just being followed." Bacevich is a West Point grad, Viet Nam veteran, and Professor of International Relations at Boston University (whose son was killed in Iraq in May 2007).

For my own part, I might be old-fashioned, but allow me to refer to a different incident in the fog of a different war, in which a classmate of mine died in Viet Nam. Set aside your views of that war (I have long since changed my own), and compare Gordon Yntema’s actions with those of the Haditha killers.

And then draw your own conclusions.

Christopher Manion Archives

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"The view that 9/11 ‘changed everything’ did not hold up under the weight of our politics."

This is the quintessential neocon dialectic, the Hegelian revolt against reality, succinctly stated by the Wall Street Journal’s Daniel Henninger, Deputy to editor Paul Gigot.

They are both nice guys, but this is dead wrong.

Advocates of the dialectic insist that reality can change, and that, after an apocalyptic event like 9-11, reality should change.

That explains why the Constitution, the separation of powers, the primacy of Congress, the limits on governmental power, and the danger of the lust for power are all dismissed by the neocons as passé.

Like Marx, they consign everything that went before 9-11 to an earlier historical stage, which has now given way to a new reality with new truths (which they know, but which we do not yet know — that is, to them has been revealed the gnostic secret that we cannot understand, and, therefore, that must be forced upon us in our ignorance. As Rousseau, their hero, lovingly put it, “they must be forced to be free.” Or, as they put it in Big Brother’s Ministry of Love, “Room 101!!”).

Eric Voegelin underscored the critical insight of novelist Robert Musil (Der Mann Ohne Eigenschaften/The Man Without Qualities): the ideologue rebels against reality and creates a “second reality” in which he is allowed to turn the world upside down. The creator and inhabitant of this “Second Reality” can literally defy the laws of nature, because there are no longer any immutable laws — except, of course, power. And, in Mao’s pithy phrase, “power flows from the barrel of a gun.”

Once the neocons throw those "old truths" of a bygone era into the dustbin of history, what are the "new" truths that must now govern the new, neocon reality? It’s quite simple: they include the Manichaean goodness and messianic mission of America; the nobility and primacy of neocon goals and methods to represent best that goodness; the self-evident superiority of the neocons as the most desirable group to accomplish the mission; and the abiding ignorance of those who cling to historical forms (e.g., the Founders, Christian Revelation, tradition, actual history) that went before.

Now, here lies the neocon dialectical contradiction: the neocon can defy Aristotle’s fundamental metaphysical principle that underlies all reality and language. Remember that? A is A. A is not non-A.

For the neocon, Aristotle can take a hike. Two opposing realities can co-exist in their Second Reality. First, 9-11 has changed everything. Second, if 9-11 hasn’t changed everything yet, then we [neocons] must be given the power to make everything change according to our vision of the new reality. This is precisely the same dilemma faced by Karl Marx, dilemmas which Lenin and Stalin resolved by pickaxes in the head in Colonia Polanco and bullets in the back of the neck in the basement of the Lubayanka. Their successors faced it when their totalitarian "Second Reality" finally collapsed in the face of the incorrigible facts of the real world and fallen human nature.

Mr. Henninger sputters that it’s our imperfect politics that will not allow this magical transformation to take place. No, Mr. Henninger, it is the reality of our fallen nature and the fact that "all men are created equal" that prevents it. No neocon claims to the possession of a raised consciousness can change that.

So here’s the rewrite: "The view that 9/11 ‘changed everything’ did not hold up under the weight of reality."

Christopher Manion Archives

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During a disastrous week, with the country poised on the brink of financial collapse, the president stumbled through a series of appearances, the impact of which can only be described as ghastly. Clearly few believe him any more. And yet, in all the wreckage tumbling around him, he just couldn’t muster the moral courage to admit that his war in Iraq had played a major role in the epochal disasters befalling us.

In an event conveniently hidden under the rubble of the mushroom cloud of Bush’s blunders, the president’s last-ditch defense of his war in Iraq was finally exposed as a self-serving lie. "I rely on my commanders on the ground," he has obsessively and tirelessly recited. In a way, that made sense: After all, we can’t expect this Commander in Chief coherently to justify his own policy, can we?

Now that latest ignoble lie has been put to rest, with the firing of Admiral William Fallon as the head of Central Command in the Middle East.

Bush’s diehard fans, groping for some virtue in which to dress their naked emperor, often pretend to celebrate his fortitude. Apparently, that vaunted virtue failed him this time around. He assigned to Defense Secretary Gates, a lifelong bureaucrat, the smarmy task of firing Fallon. Typically, Bush did not have the C. O. Jones to do it himself. At least Harry Truman, one of Bush’s many left-wing militarist heroes, fired Douglas MacArthur personally. But not our own, brave Dear Leader.

Even the most ardent among Bush’s diminishing faction of supporters — including many who have made tens of millions as War Profiteers — grit their teeth when their Benefactor-in-Chief speaks. They are all undoubtedly grateful that it was Secretary Gates who smoothly lied through his teeth, insisting that there were no policy differences between Admiral Fallon and the rest of the Defense Department establishment. The reason is simple: as long as the war goes on, regardless of the kaleidoscope of justifications, the profiteers will continue to reap munificent rewards. When the war ends, they will have to lop off a zero or two off their incomes, and live normal, peaceful, honest lives — perhaps for the very first time.

God forbid! Where would they go to lunch? Wendy’s?

Bush’s supporters have known it for years, of course, but Admiral Fallon’s firing makes it clear to the rest of us: Bush has not been telling us the truth. Dick Cheney is the only “commander on the ground" that he relies on. Clearly, Bush and Cheney are both spiteful about the resentment and outright contempt that a growing number of Americans now harbor against them. With that in mind, as he leaves office, Cheney’s moral compass would have no trouble sticking the country with a war in Iran — to serve his personal agenda, yes, but also to make the next administration look even worse than this one. "History will vindicate us," they crow.

Perverse? Of course. But Americans now understand that these are today’s zeroes, where there once walked heroes.

Admiral Fallon, the last US senior military commander with Viet Nam experience, does not want a wider war. Bush claims publicly that he embraces the same desire for peace. But his actions (as usual) speak more loudly than his lies.

During the years of Clinton’s “I hate the military” 1990′s routine, many promising midlevel officers left military service. David Petraeus, an intelligent man, stayed on, laid low, and used his smarts to become a political general. Alas. He epitomizes the bureaucratic military, who will cover for his boss and do what he is told. To call him a political general is not a calumny: in fact, some of his strongest supporters insist that he should run for high political office.

Political Petraeus would not demand of Congress that, in order to consummate Bush’s (admittedly monstrous) strategy, he would need a quarter of a million more men in Iraq for three to five years. In contrast, Admiral Fallon is a truth teller. Bush reminds me of Paul Simon in the Boxer: “A man hears what he wants to hear, and disregards the rest.” Given political power, such a man will act as an irrational ideologue, hardly fit for leadership — a moral wreckage, the rank carcass of a character. Yet, for ten more months, the president is free to betray once more his oath of office and start another unconstitutional war.

Bush has failed conservatives in so many ways, but especially in his shell game about the Middle East. He has sullied our symbols and our principles — liberty, small government, the Constitution, genuine patriotism, love of the fatherland, America’s position in the world, respect for our family members who have fallen in battle… the list is endless. What is there that Bush has not destroyed?

When my father started teaching at Notre dame in 1919, it was still a Catholic institution. Lying was still a mortal sin. Dad used to tell his law students, "if you tell the first lie, you may as well tell the rest."

It’s not hard to imagine a young George W. Bush sitting in that class, nudging the guy next to him with a whispered expletive, saying, "Hey, that sure sounds good to me!"

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When most Americans read about the Bush Administration’s defense of torture, they undoubtedly think of faraway fascists whom supporters of the war describe as animals and turn the page. But torture, like endless war, can rend the fabric of civilized life, which is why our founders strongly opposed both.

While we weren’t looking, the brutality of torture and preemptive war propounded by our national government has steadily seeped ever deeper into the consciousness of state and local bureaucrats, especially those armed with deadly weapons. I notice especially the emergence of an increasingly non-random pattern of preemptive government torture, this time by Taser.

Spend a couple of minutes on the web, and you can find numerous such incidents — in, Ohio, Florida, Florida, and South Carolina (in the South Carolina case, a 75-year-old infirm woman was actually Tased in a nursing home).

Apparently, this "harmless" little device is a favorite among domestic police forces.

But Tasers are not harmless: they can kill innocent victims who pose no mortal threat merely because police officers consider the victims to be insufficiently obsequious.

For instance, last October, police in Vancouver tasered Robert Dziekanski to death. Last Tuesday, Minnesota police killed Mark Backlund with Tasers when they found him "uncooperative."

The incident which has probably gotten the most coverage, and which first attracted my attention when I saw it on Lew’s blog, occurred in Utah last fall. A Utah State Highway Patrol (UHP) officer Tased an unarmed, nonviolent man whom he had stopped for speeding. Weeks later, the victim acquired the video from the trooper’s dashboard-mounted videocam in a public records request and posted it on the internet. To date, a million and a half people have watched it.

Naturally, the UHP was swamped with outraged calls and e-mails, so it announced an investigation. It investigated itself, of course, but without the public outcry it would undoubtedly not have done even that. Without such a public uproar, Utah’s "bureaucrats with guns" would probably consider Tasing the innocent as unremarkable as stopping for a free cup of coffee and a donut at Mom’s Diner. In fact, maybe they still do.

The investigation was obviously a coverup. Since the UHP knew that the victim was considering a lawsuit, its top brass were undoubtedly advised by counsel that an honest investigation would amount to "self-incrimination." Hence, the "investigation" probably took all of five minutes. The "results" were not reported to the public for weeks, and, to no one’s surprise, the Tasing officer, one Trooper John Gardener, was exonerated.

Nonetheless, in trying to say nothing, the UHP let the cat out of the bag, and painted a picture of where "law enforcement" is heading, not only in Utah but in the entire nation.

The telling admission came when Col. Lance Davenport, Commander of the Utah Highway Patrol, explained his decision to exonerate Gardener. According to Col. Davenport, Trooper Gardener "felt threatened and acted reasonably."

Here, Dear Reader, is the "guilty" plea of the highest-ranking police officer in Utah to the charge that he and his troopers are irrational. In fact, he is so proud of it that he calls a news conference to announce it. Unfortunately, this condition is common among armed agents of the state everywhere.

Any grade-school teacher fifty years ago would instantly correct a pupil who confused her feelings with rational thinking. Alas, this is not the case in today’s government schools. There, pathetic educrats try to make the little toddlers "feel good about themselves" and call it education, even as their test scores sink below those of Lower Slobbovia.

Let me hazard a guess: Trooper Gardener and Col. Davenport went to government schools.

I am in the music business and I’ve been teaching college courses off and on for years. Early on, I have learned, both from artists and from students, that it is virtually impossible to argue with a feeling. Feelings must be respected, to be sure, and powerful feelings must be respected powerfully. But I often find myself having to tiptoe gingerly (and respectfully) around them, awaiting the opportunity to commence a rational conversation. I repeat: You simply cannot argue with a feeling. You have to wait for a rational opening.

Sometimes that opening never comes. Too many of today’s government school students are raised on the pure drivel of self-esteem. "I am special, I am special, look at me, look at me, " they chant. And, when they show up in my class, they write things like, "I feel that Plato was a fascist."

Well, I don’t care if they write, "I feel that Aquinas was a great saint." That is, whether their feelings tend to agree or to disagree with what I think, I realize that we have to get the discussion onto a rational level in order to proceed.

Col. Davenport no doubt considers his whitewashing of Trooper Gardener to be a smashing success. But he has unwittingly laid bare the fatal flaw in his entire operation, admitting outright that Gardner, by his own admission, acted passionately, not reasonably, and that his superiors want him to continue to do so. How comforting to the people of Utah!

But not to the rest of us. Think about Col. Davenport’s admission for a moment. The next time you are confronted by a government employee who is armed with a deadly weapon, you have to keep constantly in mind that his superiors have drilled into his psyche that he should act according to his feelings. You cannot expect him to be rational, or try to engage in rational discourse, or even expect him to understand, much less to answer, a simple factual question. That approach, you see, might make the armed agent of the state feel threatened! And frankly, I run into people all the time who feel threatened by rational inquiry into even their most firmly-held convictions (example: try having a rational conversation with your friends who still believe that Bush’s invasion of Iraq was a "success.")

Long ago I had an old jalopy and put a bumper sticker on it that said, "Support Your Local Police." Try asking your local police about their standards regarding the use of force. They will probably respond that they are trained to use reasonable force. That is, the individuals applying that principle must be rational people. Apparently, Utah is an exception. Or is it the rule?

By the way, to pacify any unreasonable readers who might feel threatened by these observations: I am not judging the legal particulars of the incidents linked above. I believe in letting the jury decide. From them I draw two inescapable conclusions: police use Tasers a lot, and Tasers can kill people (the manufacturer objects, however, and insists that there is always another reason the victim is dead. You can look it up). I am focusing here simply on the outrageous but inescapable conclusion that it is law enforcement’s policy to act irrationally, at least in Utah. On the video, Trooper Gardener even brags to a backup officer on the scene that he has made his victim "take a ride on the Taser." You don’t have to be a psychology major to analyze the personality disorder represented by that line, but Col. Davenport exonerated him because of the way he felt.

Two years ago, Pope Benedict XVI delivered a historic address that encourages the world to engage in civilized and rational discussion. Benedict is speaking not only the world of Islam, but also the West: be rational! Act rationally!

It is good advice. Let us pray that someone in the Utah Highway Patrol is listening.

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As usual, the left-right neocon sites are full of self-righteous puffing again. This time around, they’re blaming Nancy Pelosi for losing our "good ally" Turkey in the middle of their little war to export democracy. Pelosi, it appears, is prepared to allow a House vote condemning Turkey for the “Armenian genocide” that wiped out countless Armenians about a century ago. And Turkey is decidedly unhappy about it.

As usual, the neocons are outraged that foreign countries might actually act based on their assessment of how the U.S. government has acted towards them. This simple fact of human reality was famously denied by debater Rudy Giuliani when he feigned amazement when Ron Paul made reference to it. Giuliani bristled at Paul’s observation that the behavior of Islamic countries might indeed be influenced by the way the U.S. government has acted towards them.

Giuliani, like Bush, is ignorant of foreign affairs (unless one considers the Upper East Side to be foreign territory). That should constitute a mortal wound to any serious candidacy. In today’s world of spin, alas, it threatens instead a mortal wound to our country’s well-being, if Giuliani’s ignorance is catapulted into the White House after the 2008 elections. Sadly, Giuliani’s ignorance of the world is shared by most of the candidates of both parties (naturally, with the exception of Congressman Ron Paul).

Twenty years ago I was in Turkey, observing an election as a senate foreign policy staffer. Instead of staying in major cities, I asked my hosts to head out to the middle of nowhere, asking them to turn here, then there, as we drove for hours visiting random towns and villages in the middle of the Anatolian plain. After driving for a while on the afternoon of election day, on a whim, I directed the driver (who spoke excellent German: he had worked as a foreign worker in Germany for several years) to turn up a dirt road to a village I could see in the distance.

Clearly, the villagers did not know we were coming. Their village was a clutch of huts and one-story brick buildings that might have comprised a population of perhaps five hundred people. The villagers gathered around our car, all smiles, and someone ran to get the mayor. He arrived quickly, and escorted us into a room with a long, rough-cut table. Twenty or thirty men crowded into the room, and perhaps half of them sat on hand-hewn benches, while the others stood along the wall. They gave me and my government escort-interpreter the only chairs.

Tea was served — strong stuff. Courtesy and elegance abounded in these country farmers, who were a lot like the ones I grew up with in the Midwest. We were given a genuine welcome.

The mayor gave a little speech of welcome. "We welcome our American friend," he said. "We love America. America is a good friend and ally of Turkey."

I smiled diplomatically, trying to conjure up a proper response — but I didn’t have a chance to deliver it. One of the elders sitting near the mayor broke into his speech. He brought his fist down sharply on the wooden table, shaking the small teacups all around. "But what’s this about the Armenian Resolution in your Congress," he roared.

So much for my travels. But it was clear to me that this sentiment was genuine, and evidently quite strongly held not only by these men, but by other Turks as well, in thousands of other villages I might have visited at random.

The Turks then are like the Turks now. They are not ignorant, and they are not idiots. Nancy Pelosi should be well aware of how deeply those sentiments run, twenty years after I saw them first-hand. And undoubtedly they will run deep twenty years from now.

Pelosi’s maneuver is deft and calculated, all too true. But when the neocons blame Pelosi for threatening to "alienate Turkey," they are wrong. President Bush and Proconsul Dick Cheney have already alienated the Turks — major league, big time.

The Turks have long memories. Turkey is a democracy. And in 2003, Bush fatuously assumed he could bribe these proud, independent people with dollars — admittedly, a lot of them — $35 BILLION to be exact. After all, the neocons at DoD convinced Cheney that they could "handle" Turkey. But Bush failed. Rumsfeld failed. Turkey’s democratic government would not allow US forces to invade Iraq from the north. They were not bribed by the U.S. government’s $35 billion; they were offended, even outraged. (By the way, $35 billion was a lot of money back then.)

The neocons were incensed. After all, hadn’t Richard Perle’s firm once “represented” Turkey? Hadn’t Perle gotten Israel to help Turkey get their number-one most-wanted terrorist, Ocalan? Hadn’t Israel tracked Ocalan down in Kenya so he could be captured? And wasn’t Ocalan the founder of the Turkish Workers Party (PKK)? And isn’t the PKK the very "terrorist organization" that today harasses the Turkish army from its hideout in Iraqi "Kurdistan"?

In short, wasn’t Turkey safely "bought" back when Ocalan was captured in 1999? And yet these ignorant, ungrateful Turks actually turned down a $35-billion-dollar bribe in 2003! Ingrates! And now they’re mad as blazes that Pelosi might pass the Armenian resolution (which, by the way, never passed back in 1987). There is no justice! Those barbarians!

Naturally, when Turkey refused to be bought in 2003, the Cheney crowd heaped abuse on it — while championing “democracy” for Iraq (war war war). Bush wouldn’t know Anatolia from Anacostia, of course, but the Turks were well aware of the daggers drawn to “tame” it in return for its entry into the EU (truly a dead letter today — but not so in 2003). Their outrage at a "simple harmless congressional resolution" is real and far from harmless. Symbols speak volumes to civilized peoples.

In 2003 the Cheney-neocon “pro-democracy” crowd tried to overturn the decision of Turkey’s democratic government and failed; now they are faced with the reality on the ground, and, naturally, they tremble at the disaster they have wrought: an increasingly anti-American Turkey that won’t buy the neocon palaver of Bush, Perle, or of the neocons who are desperate to find another scapegoat whom they can blame for their own bungling.

Ron Paul is right, of course: foreign countries and foreign people are not barbarians, nor are they simpletons who "hate us because we are free." There are millions of intelligent and cultured people in the world who watch what our government does. And they act accordingly. In seven years of occupying the Oval Office, Mr. Bush has not yet learned this simple lesson that any high-school kid who didn’t go to Andover could teach you in ten minutes on the playground.

The U.S. government, speaking in our name, has slapped Turkey around so much that the Turks are fed up. What the Turks will do is up to them: but watch the neocons play their dialectical games, as they transform our "solid NATO ally" into just another bunch of barbarian boobs who "hate us because we are free," and thus actually react when we insult, demean, and try to bribe them.

Yes, the ignoramuses running this war have unwrapped one Pandora’s box after another. Turkey is just the latest. They have been consistently startled when the natural consequences have followed. How to cover up their mistakes? Blame Pelosi. Blame the Turks. And, of course, there’s always that neocon face-card: start another war.

On to Iran! For Bush, that’s the real “Way Forward.”

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Never let it be said that the neocons are a single-issue pro-war clique. In addition to hijacking the country into perpetual war, and ever the aboriginal left-wing Democrats, they have also successfully destroyed the GOP, its conservative base, and the pro-life and pro-family movements that propelled the Bush-Cheney ticket to victory in 2000 and 2004. If there remained any doubts before this week, President Bush’s appointment of retired federal judge Michael B. Mukasey to succeed Attorney General Alberto Gonzales seals the lid on the coffin in which the neocons buried "compassionate conservatism" long ago.

You don’t have to be pro-life to marvel at the breadth and depth of the betrayal that Bush has delivered to his base on the "religious right." Even from a distance, it is as revolting as it is revealing. The palpable cynicism and contempt of Bush now brilliantly shines through, while the neocons chortle all the way to the arms bazaar.

The Washington Post celebrates, and calls retired federal judge Michael B. Mukasey a "law-and-order conservative" — but the Post is lying, as usual. In fact, People for the American Way’s Ralph Neas let the cat out of the bag when he said of Mukasey that "he seems like a bona fide conservative Republican, not a right-wing ideologue." Neas, my one-time pal and classmate from Notre Dame, has effectively led the pro-abortion forces in Washington for over twenty years. His seal of approval says it all.

Needless to say, neocon standard-bearer William Kristol was salivating as he breathlessly broke the news, fulfilling my long-standing prediction that Bush and the neocons would betray the evangelicals again and again and again — in fact, as long as the evangelicals would let them. Apparently, all too many evangelicals are gluttons for punishment. Even now a goodly number of them still support Bush because they hope that he will expand the war in the Middle East, bomb Iran now, and bring on Armageddon in their lifetimes so that they can rule with Christ over all the earth (and the rest of us) for a thousand years.

Mr. Mukasey is also a strong supporter of the presidential campaign of Rudy Giuliani, a longtime pro-abortion Republican who is running for the GOP nomination as the "anti-terrorism" candidate. As for frosting on the cake (as if we needed any), Mukasey is also championed by none other than liberal New York Senator Chuck Schumer, a bane (and banality) to pro-lifers for years. The Mukasey nomination culminates a long and painful chain of betrayals of the religious right by the man who would not be president without them.

But why would he take the job? Why bother? Well, it should be clear by now that Mukasey is well-positioned to serve as Attorney General for the next ten years, if he wants to. After all, he would undoubtedly be acceptable either to President Hillary Rodham Clinton or President Rudy Giuliani. Either way, with Mukasey’s appointment, any lingering hopes of a prolife Supreme Court in our lifetime are dead — as are any chances that the Department of Justice will lift a finger to enforce existing federal laws against internet obscenity, broadcast indecency, and sex trafficking. Such activities are already illegal, but Janet Reno’s Justice Department steadfastly refused to prosecute them in the 1990s. In 2000 and 2004, Bush promised a coalition of pro-family groups (with aggregate members numbering in the tens of millions) that he would enforce those laws. Unfortunately, with few exceptions, his administration just hasn’t quite been able to get around to it yet.

Well, now the bloom is off the rose. Mukasey’s appointment seals the deal that Bush and Cheney made long ago with the neocons to put their pro-war agenda first, last, and always. We have seen the last prolife judge, Supreme Court justice, or initiative coming from the Executive Branch for years to come.

One wonders, does Bush even care? While the embattled president expects to be vindicated by historians of future generations, this latest move clearly vindicates those conservative critics who have long argued that his portrayal as a "good Christian" is a smokescreen to keep the religious right on board while he gaily grows the gargantuan government and launches the country into ever more wars, betraying his campaign promises at every turn.

While Bush worries about his legacy, Cheney and the neocons have firmly taken the helm and, in their dictatorial bent, now feel comfortable enough to jettison the useful idiots who propelled them to power with Bush’s first victory in 2000 and kept the party going in 2004. Jim Baker, Bush 41′s hatchet man, directed the same kind of operation in 1989, removing every possible Reagan supporter from the Executive Branch (with as little grace as he could muster), even though Reagan had virtually bestowed the presidency on the unworthy Bush, gratis. Jim Baker was a major-league scofflaw when it came to Knute Rockne’s cardinal rule: "You don’t spit on a man’s head if you’re standing on his shoulders."

But what now for the Christian right? Well, years ago the Washington Post wrote that the religious right was "poor, undereducated, and easily led." Immediate outrage poured forth. But why? After all, we could also say that the atheist left is rich, overeducated, and firmly in charge, and not an eye would blink. The neocons, the scions of the well-to-do left and the grandchildren of Trotsky, have never thought in terms of limited government. The Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God that form and inform true conservatism have no claim on them. They are interested in only one thing, as their heroes Leo Strauss and Machiavelli taught them all too well: power.

Well, now they have it. They got it by lying all the time — and, let us recall, they deflected criticism early on with a good deal of name-calling (do you remember how they squealed "Anti-Semite" at anyone who called them neocons? Now they wear the label proudly), but I’m sure they would assert that they won it fair and square.

It was all too predictable. Well, here is another prediction. The handwriting is on the wall, and it does not bode well for the neocons long term. The neocons are revolutionaries, and they have taken power in a classic dialectical combination of war and subterfuge. But when revolutionaries are secure in their power, they turn on their own. They always do. Who will go first when the time comes? Perhaps they will turn on the hot-tub profligates who financed the neocon rise to power, in the way that their heroes, the French Revolutionaries, turned on the French aristocracy at the end of the XVIII century. In classical Trotskyite fashion, the neocons allowed the profiteers to prosper, while the revolution was still consolidating its gains and getting the funding it needed to do so.

But once that consolidation comes, the die will be cast. And the neocons should go gently into that dark nightmare. They know their Lenin. They’d better re-read it. As Richard Weaver wrote, "Ideas have consequences." And for the neocons, the consequences of their ideas are grim indeed.

"If every bourgeois in town is not hanging from a streetlamp when I arrive, YOU will be hanging there when I leave," Lenin warned his revolutionary commissars whom he put in charge of cleansing the New Russia of its capitalist deadwood.

In revolutionary practice, once the dictatorship is advanced to the proper "correlation of forces" (with adequate deadwood removed), the surviving strongman will inevitably turn on "them that brung’im." First, he will turn on the super-rich, who thought that they were the "masters of the universe." For them there will be show trials and a bullet in the back of the neck in the basement of the Lubayanka. But eventually the time will come when, tired of the neocon prating, puffery, preening, and private agendas, our new Leviathan will deal with the neocons in the same way Stalin dealt with their hero Trotsky: they will get a pickaxe in the head. The Revolution devours its own children.

So long, Weekly Standard. Hello, Robespierre.

And what will become of Bush? Well, we have learned from this Mukasey affair more about the measure of the man. The boastful, brazen taunter who once bellowed at the Iraqis to "Bring’em on," has exited, stage left. It was apparently easy for him to bray about "evil madmen" when Saddam was far away and Bush was high on the swagger factor. But now, the shriveled peacock shrinks from a confrontation with — of all pygmies — none other that Chuck Schumer, known on the Hill as "Chuckie Cheesecake" for his affinity to television cameras. As they say in the halls on the Senate side, Bush has been "Shumed" — major league, big time.

Yes, Bush has shriveled, but he need not worry. The "good Christian" Bush who betrayed the Christian right will never again have a care — after all, he has helped make many people billionaires, and that will not hurt. Just in case, however, he will have a 100-man taxpayer-funded permanent Praetorian Guard to surround him in his cocoon for the rest of his natural life. He will never again have to come into contact with an average person not of his own choosing. As he retires in regal splendor, he will no doubt continue to espouse "democracy" and rule "by the people, of the people, and for the people." He will invite sundry fawning admirers who will assure him that his legacy is intact. Someday, "history" will vindicate him.

Sic semper neoconus.

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"Thompson Claims Reagan Mantle" — news item.

First, a little history.

In 1974, as we all know, Ronald Reagan was a very close friend and political ally of Vice President Gerald Ford. Reagan, who had tried and failed to become Dick Nixon’s running mate in 1968, was doing everything he could to stay close to the Republican money machine that Nixon had created, so he could launch his own future campaign from the same well-oiled plutocrat springboard. He artfully managed to keep on good terms with both the "Rockefeller Republicans" of the left and the Goldwater types, whom he disdained, with thinly-veiled contempt, but whose indispensable and indisputable grass-roots strength eclipsed that of the New York Limousine Liberals.

But the limousine Liberals had the money. And Reagan needed that, too.

Vice President Ford’s Chief of Staff, Dick Cheney, was a young whiz-kid know-it-all who had also, of course, long been a leader of the "Viet-Cons" — the insidious secret insider group of Washington foreign policy hacks who had helped lie America into the Viet Nam war under Lyndon Johnson. The Viet-Cons, you might recall, were a small but powerful group funded primarily by Thai exiles in the United States, who advocated the extermination of Ho Chi Minh by any means necessary because he was a world-class domino player and would eventually gobble up Thailand if he were allowed by Nixon-Ford to take over South Viet Nam and then run amok in Southeast Asia (this scary scenario came to be known as the "Domino Theory.") The marching orders from the Thai-onists were secretly transmitted in code through "Goren on Dominoes," a syndicated column that regularly appeared in newspapers across the country at the time, often next to the columns of one Robert Novak, a young newspaper reporter from Illinois.

Reagan and Ford were aided in their coalition-building efforts by a surprisingly vibrant youth movement, spearheaded by "Young Americans for Ford" (YAF). Led by a savvy up-and-coming New Yorker named Megan Marshack, YAF helped to cement broad support for the Ford-Reagan alliance that would prove to be so important when the Watergate scandals erupted.

That’s just to refresh your memory. Still with me?

What happened next is, alas, burned into the American memory. We all remember how incensed Ronald Reagan became when Vice-President Ford’s Chief of Staff, Dick Cheney, was indicted for leaking to reporter Novak the fact that CIA undercover operative G. Gordon Liddy was in fact married to Raquel Welch. Welch, you might recall, was an American ambassador, of sorts, to Southeast Asia, and a frequent official visitor there. In her travels, she had become disenchanted with the attempts of the Viet-cons to perpetuate the war, and was incensed that they would always trot out the "Domino Theory" when their war was challenged. "You don’t support the troops," the Viet-cons would shout at her.

The troops, however, begged to differ. They cheered Raquel at every appearance, and Raquel cheered them. In explaining her desire to end the war, she merely said, "I’d rather entertain live troops than go to funerals for dead ones."

From the court records we all know what happened next: Vice President Ford sent Cheney, his chief of staff, on a secret mission to save the Viet-cons and smear Raquel Welch any way he could. At First, Cheney suggested using grape jelly, but Ford nixed that approach, even though Liddy had often made secret CIA payments to certain Viet-con operatives with Krugerrands delivered in jars of Welch’s Famous Grape Preserves.

No, Cheney went instead to Bob Novak. Cheney told Novak about Liddy’s "operative" status, and Raquel Welch’s cover was blown for good. As we all undoubtedly remember (how could we forget?), Liddy was forced to leave the CIA. He later became a volunteer teacher in various federal prison facilities, as well as a part-time radio commentator.

Ah, how the memories surge. At that point, Reagan, now well-established as a great friend and fan of Vice-President Ford, went to him personally and offered to raise "big money" from Ford’s well-heeled friends for the "Dick Cheney Legal Defense Fund." Ford was so pleased when Reagan made this offer that he stood up and walked around his desk to embrace the Gipper — but unfortunately bumped his head on the "Nixon’s the One" poster that hung above his Heisman Trophy.

The rest is history, of course. Reagan raised five million dollars to defend Cheney from unscrupulous charges that he was a closet Viet-con, a leaker of state secrets, and a perjurer (he was charged with lying to federal prosecutors about his role in the Watergate coverup). With this bold step, Reagan solidly endeared himself to Ford’s wealthy supporters, and sealed his claim to Vice President Ford’s support for Reagan’s campaign to capture the GOP presidential nomination in 1976. As we can all recall now, in the light of Nixon’s subsequent pardon of Cheney, it was all a "slam dunk."

Well, that’s the whole story, folks — and it’s an important one. It constitutes the sole credible rationale for Fred Thompson’s claim that he is "Another Reagan."

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Ah, for the good old days when conservatives could appeal to honesty ("In Your Heart You Know He’s Right"), when we railed against runaway executive power (remember the Bricker Amendment?), and when all of us waited for Human Events to arrive in the mail.

From my earliest days in politics I remember Human Events. In 1960 we "Youth for Goldwater" kids were mocked as we carried our signs for Barry through the hall of the 1960 Republican convention next to Chicago’s Union Stockyards. We thought everyone else was bought — and apparently a lot of them were: There were four lines of "Nixon Girls" outside the floor entrance, waiting to give their "spontaneous" floor demonstration. I asked one of them how she could possibly be for Nixon when Barry was such a great guy. She proudly showed me her Kennedy button, hidden inside the strap of her dress. "I’m gettin’ paid for this, honey," she said.

The years have come and gone, and, as though like clockwork, the trough-dwellers are back in power. Now both "major parties" revel in the hot tub, and political millionaires abound. The Old Guard would not be surprised that this might be the case with the party of FDR and LBJ, or the party of Nelson Rockefeller, but I think they would expect Human Events to be manning the ramparts of the right and calling all true conservatives to be champions of the Constitution, not prideful hacks in an increasingly polluted party of profligates and profiteers.

Yet these strange times have brought strange signs at Human Events. Allan Ryskind used to hang out in our Capitol Hill offices in the 1980s, but apparently he and Tom Winter are long gone. Now one Jed Babbin edits Human Events, and, earlier this week, he commented on Sunday’s Republican debate. For a bewildered moment, I wondered if my computer had been hacked. Here was an editor of Human Events going ga-ga over that "great campaigner," the "comfortable" Rudy Giuliani, and attacking Ron Paul, the race’s only defender of the rule of law, as a "Constitutional gadfly" because Ron Paul has the temerity to point out that the war in Iraq is unconstitutional. Evidently Ron was not aware of just how dear Jed Babbin holds his war.

Once upon a time, Human Events stood for conservative principle. Now, it appears, the Iraq War is its principle. And since the war and its attendant "truths" change every day, so too must Human Events. Heraclitus of old could have warned Mr. Babbin, "do not cling to changing things, but seek the logos," the truth (and so much more). But alas, Mr. Babbin apparently does not have ears to hear.

If Mr. Babbin has never heard of Heraclitus (which is his loss), perhaps he has heard of Felix Morley. (On second thought perhaps he has not.) Mr. Morley was one of the founders of Human Events. As our colleague Tom Woods relates, Mr. Morley 48 years ago was as right as Mr. Babbin is so profoundly wrong today (I quote Dr. Woods at length because Mr. Babbin might not have Morley’s work at hand):

In Freedom and Federalism (1959), Old Right journalist Felix Morley suggested that the process of empire-building was "essentially mystical. It must somehow foster the impression that a man is great in the degree that his nation is great; that a German as such is superior to a Belgian as such; an Englishman, to an Irishman; an American, to a Mexican: merely because the first-named countries are in each case more powerful than their comparatives. And people who have no individual stature whatsoever are willing to accept this poisonous nonsense because it gives them a sense of importance without the trouble of any personal effort."

Morley, a co-founder of Human Events newspaper, added that empire-building amounted to "an application of mob psychology to the sphere of world politics, and how well it works is seen by considering the emotional satisfaction many English long derived from referring to “the Empire on which the sun never sets.” Some Americans now get the same sort of lift from the fact that the Stars and Stripes now floats over detachments of “our boys” in forty foreign countries."

(Ah, the old days, when it was only forty.)

I am struck by Mr. Morley’s observation that "people who have no individual stature whatsoever are willing to accept this poisonous nonsense because it gives them a sense of importance without the trouble of any personal effort." I haven’t seen that in Human Events lately. I do not know of Mr. Babbin’s personal stature, but I do know that of Human Events, and it has changed. In fact, it has sunk. It was once prestigious and commanding. Now it apparently just channels neocon talking points to GOP county chairmen and aspiring Young Republicans on the make.

The Babbin Human Events suffers from the same neocon disease that plagues the ranks of operatives clustering around the 2008 GOP race (which might explain its Babbinization — it’s the same old story: politics triumphs over principle). When the Washington Times asked Dick Allen, President Reagan’s first National Security Advisor, about the race, Mr. Allen was blunt: “There is an overwhelming presence of neoconservatives and absence of traditional conservatives that I don’t know what to make of,” he said.

Today, alas, we can say the same of Human Events.

"Ideas have consequences," said Richard Weaver, a contemporary of Mr. Morley. In contemplating what idea could possibly have wrought the consequence of someone of Mr. Babbin’s ilk becoming the editor of Human Events, I dimly recalled an article he had once written in another publication. I had saved it under "flagrant curiosities." Written in November 2004, it cheers on the U.S. attack on Fallujah, which had just gotten under way. What caught my eye was this apparently passing observation: "Our attack is made easier by the fact that about 75% of the civilian population has fled. There is little reason to restrain the use of air power, heavy artillery, and tanks."

Could it be true that Mr. Babbin considers the fact that only 25% of the civilian population remained in the city presented "little reason" to refrain from killing them en masse? We know now that the operation was one of the most disastrous episodes in Donald Rumsfeld’s failed plan to terrorize (oops, strike that, it’s the Lenin in me) — to intimidate other Sunni population centers into submission to the U.S. occupation. Instead, as Juan Cole sadly relates, "the U.S military really did destroy Fallujah to save it."

That Mr. Babbin has departed so far from the principles of Mr. Morley and the Human Events of old is bad enough, but he cannot resist the all-too-familiar temptation of smarmy self-adornment with the heroism of others confronting dangers far, far away: "Today, 10 November, [2004] is the 229th birthday of the U.S. Marines. Happy birthday to all leathernecks, and may God bless and protect every Marine, soldier, sailor, airman and coastie now in harm’s way."

It would be useful here to observe, as Mr. Babbin — firmly out of harm’s way — cheaply arrogates to himself the bravery of the men and women who are fighting and dying in Iraq, Mr. Morley’s observation once more: "people who have no individual stature whatsoever are willing to accept this poisonous nonsense because it gives them a sense of importance without the trouble of any personal effort."

That Fallujah was destroyed and 300,000 people were left without homes is now small potatoes, given the millions of refugees that Mr. Babbin’s cause has created to date. And, since the U.S Military will not divulge the number of civilian casualties in Fallujah, nor the number of civilian casualties it slyly denominated as "terrorists killed," we will know only at the Last Judgment how many thousands of innocent people died as Mr. Babbin cheered "this poisonous nonsense" from the comfort of the beltway.

So just who is the gadfly? Is it Ron Paul? Or is it Mr. Babbin? And how did Human Events come to hire this fellow after he had published such nonsensical puffery? And why are so many neocons, as Mr. Allen correctly observes, controlling so many 2008 campaigns when the abject failure of every single one of their nightmare forays is plain to see?

I mean, why didn’t they just go to the source and hire Richer Perle?

After all, the zillions of our taxpayer dollars flowing into the war effort and its domestic companion, "Homeland Security," are enriching well-placed Republicans as well as Democrats. So who’s to complain?

"I’m getting’ paid for this, honey."

The story addressing the Human Events conundrum would prove helpful to anyone trying to understand the collapse of the conservative movement under George Bush — but you know what? I don’t think Human Events will ever write it.

Well, what is to be done? (I know, Lenin again.) As Human Events sinks into the indistinguishable neocon mire of treacle at the RNC, one wonders whether Rupert Murdoch would even bother trying to buy it. But one issue is going to arise — if it hasn’t already: there is clearly going to come a clash between the neocon Babbin (if he has hiring authority) and John Gizzi, one of the best political reporters in the business — because John calls them as he sees them.

For example: Bob Novak has written that "Republican leaders report that the most enthusiasm among grass-roots activists is for Gingrich and libertarian Rep. Ron Paul." Will the voluntary Babbinesia at Human Events allow John Gizzi to follow up on that story?

The future is indeed hard to read, but frankly, I doubt it. I reckon John will be sticking to the "all politics is local" routine for a while, so he doesn’t accidentally confuse any Human Events readers about the innate goodness and virtue of the brazen Mr. Babbin or his lovely little war. But the longtime readers of Human Events love the Constitution; Mr. Babbin, who dismisses the race’s only advocate of the Constitution as a "gadfly," apparently sails by other lights. Sooner or later, as Mr. Weaver observed, ideas will have their consequences — and bad ideas have very bad consequences.

DIGG THIS

As we observed yesterday, it is most fortunate that George Bush is not the Sun King ("l’etat, c’est moi"), nor is he the Pharaoh, whose every word (Ma’at) was also law. Quite the contrary: Mr. Bush is an elected Constitutional officer and, as such, possesses certain powers, each of them limited, as are all federal Constitutional powers. Of late, many have criticized the president for claiming powers that are not accorded to him by the Constitution. There has been less attention paid, however, to another facet of his approach to power: namely, that, while Mr. Bush has abused some of the powers of the presidency, he has abdicated other central Constitutional powers and delegated them away.

Mr. Bush appears to have dimly recognized (but not publicly acknowledged), the realities that surround him, even as he continues to flail against them. Of late, the vast majority of the American people apparently consider him to be a failure. Unfortunately, instead of confronting this sad fact, he has taken several steps — actually, he has borrowed them from the Marxist dialectic — to make it irrelevant. The most prominent failures commonly attributed to Mr. Bush, you see, are actually somebody else’s fault — every one of them.

For instance, according to the Constitution, the President is the Commander in Chief. However, Mr. Bush has recognized that only a dwindling minority of Americans trust his judgment regarding the Iraq War. So the man who once proclaimed himself to be the "Decider’ has now fobbed off the crucial decisions about his war on General George Petraeus, the commander of U.S. troops there. General Petraeus has been accorded the mantle of legitimacy that Mr. Bush can no longer credibly wear.

As Congress and the American people assail Mr. Bush and insist that the disaster he has wrought in Iraq be ended, Mr. Bush smiles and says, "Let’s wait and see what General Petraeus says." Like Buddha, Mr. Bush peacefully awaits the general’s advice, which should be coming along in several months now.

On the face of it, Mr. Bush’s pretence that he wants to rely on the advice of the "commanders on the ground," is hardly credible: we know that he has blithely ignored them in the past. So what is Mr. Bush really up to? Alas, it is simply a new twist on an old neocon game: shift the blame.

Now it is Petraeus whose word will be the law of the land regarding the war in Iraq — and who will bear the blame for any "defeat." The president has essentially accomplished an illusory abdication of his role as "Commander in Chief" because he knows the people have adjudged him to be a failure in that role.

But that is not all. Sadly, Mr. Bush is also preparing the ground for laying off the blame for his own personal defeat onto the U.S. military. In effect, Mr. Bush’s desire to avoid responsibility results in the pretense that he isn’t calling the shots at all. The ultimate effect is a shabby neocon twist, to be sure, on "The Buck Stops Here" — blame Petraeus.

Mr. Petraeus, brace yourself.

But even that is not all. Mr. Bush has also abdicated to Dick Cheney many of the most essential powers of the Chief Executive — an arrangement that, while it is not strictly unconstitutional, certainly expropriates from the people their Constitutional authority to elect the person who will be president and expect him to fulfill that role.

And what has Mr. Bush been doing in the meantime? Well, while Dick Cheney has been running the country and General Petraeus has been running the war, the president has been meeting with intellectual courtiers with whom he can discuss in leisure his legacy, his place in history. The result? A neocon chorus which now proclaims that, regardless of how present-day Americans condemn this president, future historians, evidently more gifted than today’s peasants, will "vindicate" him.

In essence, Mr. Bush has abdicated the responsibility that he owes the "virtuous people" of the Founders. He has decided that he will answer instead to smarter generations in the far future that will not even exist until long after he is dead.

Note how both Marxist and Darwinian is this magical exoneration: it is Marxist, because "the future" — as yet non-existent and unknowable and unreal — becomes the superior moral standard for the present, conferring on its prophetic advocates today power without any limits. It is Darwinian because "future" generations will be smarter, more progressive, and intellectually superior to our own, and will thus crown Bush with a greatness which our own generation is too dumb, prejudiced, and ignorant to confer upon him.

Of course, Bush expects "history" to confer upon him the sobriquet of a second Churchill, or perhaps a second Lincoln. But just in case, he is rapidly divesting himself of all sorts of responsibilities, lest he be blamed for any disasters. Then, at the very least, he will be remembered as a harmless Bozo that was betrayed by incompetent generals, whose glorious dream was betrayed by people whom he entrusted with great powers and promise and who failed him and the American people.

The neocons recognize the true war: it is the war of power-lust and private agendas against sober reality and the freedoms enjoyed by Americans under the Constitution for hundreds of years. It is that war that the neocons cannot afford to lose. And so, they have arrayed the "Correlation of Forces" (Mao again) so that their failure can be laid off on anyone and everyone else. Fail to stabilize Iraq? Blame Petraeus. Fail to dominate the Middle East? Blame the Defeatocrats. Fail to recognize Bush’s greatness? Blame the benighted, backward people. Disaster today? "Don’t stop thinkin’ about tomorrow!"

Fail everywhere, blame everybody. That is the essence of the Bush charade, and at the heart of his abdication is his decision to allow the neocons, not the President and the Congress, to formulate American foreign policy. Now that their fate is on the line, the neocons preach "patience" — that is, inaction. But the American people need not wait patiently, cowed by attacks on their loyalty, their patriotism, and their honor, while the neocons labor night and day to ruin our Constitutional republic forever. Rather, the people need only reject outright the regnant ideology that rains down epithets and threats upon them, and take to heart the instructions of the moral philosophers: Think. Judge. Act.

Marxism-Leninism teaches determinism — that there is nothing we can do to avoid the tyrannical future, which will be more violent than anything that has gone before. But the Founders knew long before Marx that the virtuous people could act. And act we should.

First, in Christian charity, we must attempt to shake the president awake from his nightmares — his idle dreams and bewildered, self-exculpatory illusions of retroactive future approvals of his present-day disasters. In addition to participating vigorously in the articulation of public opinion, which the president professes to ignore studiously, we must also urge Congress to use its Constitutional powers peacefully to drag the president back to reality. He must face his responsibilities and assume them himself — take back from Cheney, Petraeus, and the neocons the duties that are his alone, and face the music: he must take the credit, or the blame, himself.

If that effort bears no fruit, then Congress must recognize that this president is, for all practical purposes, constitutionally dead. That is, he is performing primarily the functions normally accorded to Vice Presidents — meeting with thoughtful admirers, greeting foreign dignitaries, and giving speeches to carefully-screened audiences. And, of course, traveling abroad — to countries that are forced to grind to a halt for days while his entourage, which bears all the trappings of an occupying army, takes over and shuts down entire capitals to prevent any unpopular sentiment from being publicly demonstrated.

Of course, Mr. Cheney has also defied the Constitution’s definition of the office of Vice President, and is, in any case, existentially inseparable from Mr. Bush (just ask Scooter Libby). Hence, if the Congress cannot bring both of these officers of the Executive Branch to their senses, it should impeach them immediately and restore responsibility and constitutional legitimacy to the Executive Branch.