RISK-Y BUSINESS

Over at Winds of Change, I’ve got a post on ‘Risk’ up.
I was, as usual, led there by my children…

Then it turns out that Tenacious G and the boys haven’t seen the Branagh ‘Henry V‘, so we jump it to the head of the Netflix queue, and it shows up in the mail. We watched it the other night, and it was still wonderful (Yes, Bacchus, I’m still supporting Branagh’s erotic reward). My boys loved it as well; Littlest Guy, who is six, wanted to watch it again the next day, and spent the time after bath and before bed wandering the house in his blue PJ’s-with-rocket-ships-and-feet and a stern look, declaiming “No King of England if not King of France.” I love my sons and they are wonderful, but they are a bit…odd, sometimes. Somehow that line over all the others had caught him, and he and I had a long discussion in which I explained that Henry wanted to be King of France, and that he was willing to risk losing England to get it.

More to come.

France^3

Trent has extended his argument; I’m interspersing some comments below, and will reply with a longer post in the next day or so; I have an appointment with a William Hill Cabernet…

Please compare this from Collin May:

Now to France.

My point is that Jacques Chirac cast himself as the defender of Republican values, but Republican values have never found an exact fit with the French nation. Indeed, these values are now often diverging from the French nation itself and seeking something of a new home, a home that could be the new Europe. In other words, the French nation is splitting from the universal values it was supposed to incarnate, a split that began more or less with the end of its empire and the colonial wars following World War II. This is the great difference between events of September 11 and those of April 21. The attack on Republican values came from inside France, from people claiming to defend the French nation, whereas the US was attacked by a foreign intruder.

The implication is that the United States retains its national integrity in the face of foreign attack, while France is losing, even actively terminating, its national existence in favor of the European Union. French patriotism is committing suicide, while American patriotism is flowering.

AL: Yes, France is trying hard to leverage it’s national power by tying Europe together into a bureaucratic suprastate – which France believes it will effectively control. Part of where our views diverge on this is that you seem to be saying that Republican (in the classical, rather than GOP sense) nationalism is key to the ‘moral foundation’ of French national politics. I don’t see that as the case, because unlike us in the U.S., the French see themselves as a true ‘people’. Their national standing is relatively independent of the political structure they live under…they would be a nation regardless, bound by language, tradition, and culture.

[Check out Vinod Valopillil’s take on this (via Instapundit)]
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N.B for the complete, updated history of this discussion arranged by date, see “Fight Night: The Dance In France“)
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Yet the Chirac government still behaves as though the only thing that matters is preventing Saddam from being overthrown by the Americans.

If it isn’t money that is motivating the French government and it isn’t power in the EU, then what is it driving them to oppose the USA on Iraq?

The answer isn’t physical, it is existential.

French elites abandoned religion for nationalism after the French revolution. Then they abandoned nationalism for multi-cultural, EU style, transnational progressivism. Now that has failed as well and they are as lost as the Wahhabbis in the modern world. The elites that govern France are using their power to hurt and cause pain.

AL: Sorry, but while the EU certainly has it’s problems (and I’ll argue is doomed for a variety of reasons and a Bad Thing for others) it is a bit of a reach to claim that it has failed. It is clearly a crisis point, in which either the new constitution will be adopted … or not, and the risk of dissolution is (fortunately) high. But the french elites (along with the German, Belgian, Dutch, and British elites) remain firmly committed to a supranational entity.

As I said before and restate now:

“People who have chosen the path of damnation are easily known. They seek power above all things. They choose what will immediately benefit them over choices that take longer but reward more. And they use what power they have to hurt others, because inflicting pain is the only pleasure they have that will reach past the aching wound where their soul used to be.

AL: Trent, here’s where I just scratch my head in confusion. How do you get from A to B? From the attempts by the French cadres d’administration to solidify their power to their taking on pain and evil as their and political objectives? I’m just baffled; help me out here.

The France has had a “value neutral” foreign policy since before it was a real nation. This has even extended to modern times and includes issues of nuclear proliferation. Here is a link from the National Review and a snip from the Moscow Times (with a hat tip to The Diffident Spectator) :

In April 1975, Hussein visited Moscow to ask for Soviet help to build a full reactor to make nuclear weapons. Although Russia agreed to supply Iraq with staggering amounts of conventional weapons, it balked at helping Baghdad go nuclear. In September 1975, Hussein went to Paris to meet politicians with far fewer scruples than Soviet Communists. The French prime minister at the time, Jacques Chirac, signed an agreement to sell Hussein a reactor and arms-grade uranium.

If Chirac and other French politicians had had their way, Hussein could have made tens of nuclear bombs by 1990. The war to liberate Kuwait would never have taken place or would have turned into an all-out nuclear confrontation between Iraq, Israel and the United States. The tragedy was avoided when in 1979 Israeli agents near Toulon destroyed two French-built reactors en route to Iraq. In 1981, the Israelis bombed to debris the French replacement reactor in Iraq before it could be made operational.

Maybe France and Germany are so loyally trying to save Hussein because they want to cover up their long-time cooperation in helping to build weapons of mass destruction? Is the treachery of the past feeding more treachery today?

AL: Go read the history of the French ‘Force de Frappe’, and the effort they (and the U.K.) put into having an independent nuclear deterrent. They believe that this is a good thing because it restrains the superpowers, whose allies they did not feel themselves to be. Again, not ‘evil treachery’ because they never gave us fealty to breach.

America during the majority of the Cold War was no different than France in its foreign policy. There were many dictators who were supported by the USA while they muttered the magic words “I’m an anti-Communist.” The Nixon-Ford years, where Henry Kissinger reigned supreme in foreign policy, was the high point of a “valueless national interest” foreign policy over a “morality informed” foreign policy.

The American public and many American elites rejected this approach. First Jimmy Carter, with his concern for human rights, and Ronald Reagan, with his “Evil Empire” speech defining the Soviet Union, returned a moral dimension to American foreign policy for 12 years.

Now both these leaders made grave moral errors that helped to set up the Islamofascist WMD threat we face today, for all their “moral posturing.” Jimmy Carter did not respond forcefully to the hostage taking of the American embassy in Iran. While Reagan did both the “bug-out boogie” from Beirut after the bombing there and looked the other way while Pakistan got the nuclear bomb.

AL: I’m starting to get your point, but think you’re mistaken on the facts. Reagan defined his moral compass by their alignment for or against the USSR; hence our support of the mujads in Afghanistan. Carter, with his politically-correct emphasis on ‘human rights as long as they don’t really damage our interests’ was arguably one of the worst Presidents as far as foreign policy that we’ve seen. Iran would stand as an excellent example of his masterful handing of the difficult dismount that one must do when trying to move from a repressive dictatorship to a less-repressive dictatorship. BTW, I’ll point out that it is truism (I need to do some homework and try and validate this) that most revolutions happen when repression is eased.

Yet the return of “valueless national interest” after Reagan arguably made things worse. Just look at G.H.W. Bush with his post-Gulf War deference to Saudi and Gulf State interests in keeping Iraq intact and the work his people did to keep a Serb dominated Yugoslavia intact to preserve “stability.” You also have Clinton’s serial mistakes with the Mogadishu “”Bug-out,” the post-African Embassy attack cruise missile bombing of Ossama plus an aspirin factory as well as the non-reaction to the USS Cole attack coming from that same narrow view of national interest that treated terrorism as a law enforcement issue apart from middle eastern foreign policy.

The bottom line is the valueless indulgence of national interest with Arab oil states lead directly to 9/11/2001 attack. In so many words, a valueless pursuit of national interest enables evil. This is why all the people around Dubya, as William Kristol put it, are Reaganites now. As he said in a column:

As President Bush said in his State of the Union address, “America’s purpose is more than to follow a process–it is to achieve a result.” The result the president had in mind was “the end of terrible threats to the civilized world.” Reagan ended one such threat, with the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Now, as the president explained, we face a different kind of threat–“a world of chaos and constant alarm,” where “outlaw regimes” sponsor terrorism and acquire and trade in horrific weapons, the better to threaten their neighbors and intimidate their people. The nature of the regime is crucial, rather than some alleged underlying, geographically or economically or culturally determined “national interest.” The priority of the political order implies a morally informed American foreign policy. Thus, a brutal tyranny like Saddam’s is evil, Bush said, or else “evil has no meaning”–and Bush intends to liberate the people of Iraq from their regime. As President Bush said to the people of Iraq, “Your enemy is not surrounding your country–your enemy is ruling your country.”

Now, it is true that regimes don’t exist apart from the various material interests and geographical and historical characteristics of nations. So “morality in foreign policy” is always limited. Necessity has its claims. And the freedom and security of one’s own nation come first. But our freedom and security turn out to be inextricably linked to the character of regimes elsewhere in the world.

It mattered that the Soviet Union was an “evil empire.” It matters that North Korea has, as the president said, an “oppressive regime ruling] a people living in fear and starvation.”

AL: ‘Political order’ means many things. On one hand, we can emphasize the ‘political’ and talk about liberty and due process; on the other we can talk about ‘order’ and emphasize the rule of power. I think we face a difficult but not impossible task; it will require that we recognize that our interests are not everyone’s, and allow for legitimate conflicts. Our history has been informed by an idealistic attachment to our values, except when our interests are challenged. I’m not an “All Americal Foreign Policy is Evil” fella, but neither do I look at our history in Latin America, Asia (not just Vietnam) or Africa as ‘enlightened by high moral purpose’.

I have said before that the French are acting as if the fall of Iraq would be a regime changing event. Steve Den Beste has speculated that it was for reasons of WMD proliferation. I don’t think so anymore.

There is a mortal threat to the French regime, but it isn’t from American hard power or anything in the Iraqi archives America will capture. It is from the soft power of American example, not from a “moral foreign policy,” but the example success from the rotation of political elites within a Nation-State. That is a mortal threat to France and the EU transnational progressives alike.

The whole point of the EU is to isolate the political elites from the will of the democratic, nationalist, masses. The success of America points out that the EU experiment’s isolation and inbreeding of Euro-elites is what is destroying Europe as a viable alternative to the American model.

AL: Again, I think you’re right re:the superiority of the American model, but flat wrong when you suggest that the EU elites think they are doomed by it. They think they are powerful enough to stand up to it, hence the situation we’re in right now.

As it is with the Islamofascist, so it is with French elites, the existence of America is a grave threat to their identity that must be destroyed for them to live.

AL: Wild hyperbole. The EU simply insists on parity with the US; a party engendered by our willingness to bear the burden of defense costs for the Western world.

This brings us back to the French pursuit of “valueless national interest.” Lexington Green ran the following thought experiment (which his fellow contributors disagreed with here and here) on the assumption that Steven Den Beste was right about the French WMD connection to Iraq:

Let us take it a step farther. Let’s assume that the French and Germans have been actively assisting Iraq to acquire WMD, especially nuclear weapons. Why would they do this? First, of course, money. That has to be part of it. In the German case, I think it is probably the main part. But they are running huge risks just for money. There must be more. What?

At least in the case of the French, a plausible explanation would be a positive desire to see Iraq armed with WMD, and to assist it to acquire them. Why? Pure power politics. France sees itself in a zero-sum power struggle with America. But America is the Hyperpower. France is forced to dance to Washington’s tune. So, France is a non-status quo power, which wants to terminate American Unipolarity. But it cannot do so on its own. It simply lacks the size, economic power, military power, vitality, efficiency – everything which it would need for a direct challenge to the United States. There is no way for France to get into the same league as the United States. France has tried to build a European Union which would offset U.S. power, with itself as primus inter pares, but it is clear to everyone with half a brain that this project will never be a true challenger to the United States.

That leaves to France only the option of doing of things which positively harm the position of the United States. France cannot do this overtly, because the United States can crush French militarily if it came to it. Therefore, arming Saddam is a way to covertly harm the United States to the advantage of France. The French benefit from nuclear weapons proliferating, because this has the effect of neutralizing American conventional military power. The French benefit from Saddam becoming an unassailable regional power in the Persian Gulf, as a client and covert ally of France, because this makes them a major player in the region through their ties to Saddam, and damages American interests in the region. The French might even believe that they would benefit from the provision of nuclear weapons to terrorists, so long as they were used against the United States. A nuclear detonation in New York or Washington or Chicago or all three would severely damage the United States. Destruction on this scale would cause worldwide economic disruption. But it would also render the United States a much less formidable actor, far less able to make its influence felt abroad, since it would be absorbed with police activity and reconstruction at home. This would enhance the relative power of other states at the expense of the United States, including France. Complicity in the destruction of millions of American lives is a price the senior political leadership in France would probably be willing to pay to enhance France’s political position in the world, if it could get away with it, and if its own consequent economic losses were not unendurably severe.

So there you have it, whether you argue from valueless interest or existential evil, the result is the same. The French are hiding something they did with Iraq. The most likely explanation is they provided working nukes to Iraq.

AL: More wild hyperbole. Yes, the French want to harm US interests in order to advance their own. Yes, the French are less anxious about a multilateral nuclear standoff than we are; that’s a world in which they believe they can navigate very successfully, because their approach to foreign policy is so instrumental. But there’s a large gap from ‘turning a blind eye’ to delivering working nukes.

We will find out is this theory is true if Saddam uses one on advancing American troops before he goes down.

Or if Saddam has already smuggled one to Syria for Hezbolla to use in nuking Israel.

AL: If he had one, it’d have been used already. I doubt that a week will go by from the time he successfully builds one to either a public demonstration or an actual attack. What in his history suggests that he waits to exploit any advantage he may have? He acts in the moment, and has every time.

Trent, to me there’s a mixture of sensible and difficult to understand here; yes, France (along with Germany and Russia and several other states) is acting actively against our interests, but what’s new about that? Yes, they have a different model, one that aims for a supranational bureaucracy welding together what were once states into something they believe they can dominate, or at minimum be an equal within. They don’t have a problem with a constellation of nuclear-armed states holding each other hostage – to them that’ preferable to being dependent on one nuclear-armed state.

They have a very different vision of what the world ought to be. We ought to offer alternative visions, and use every tool we have (up to and including military force) to see that our vision wins out.

There’s a problem, though.

We’re a small minority of the people on the planet. We need to win converts faster than we make enemies, or we’ll eventually be faced with the decision to lose or to commit genocide.

A clear moral vision and a willingness to work within it is a part of what it will take to win converts to our side. But it’s going to have to be a flexible and inclusive vision, and I wonder, I really do, if the conservative Christian leadership who is in large part in control of the centers of power under GWB really have the ability to be flexible and inclusive.

It’s gonna be interesting…

The Noo-clear Risk

A while ago, I played out a scenario in which:

One nice afternoon, I’m sitting here in my home office near the Palos Verdes peninsula when I notice a brilliant flash of light and some of my windows break.

The power goes out, the telephones, cell phones, and computers don’t work. My backup AM/SW/SSB radio in the garage doesn’t work, and I step onto my driveway and look toward San Pedro and see a dark mushroom cloud.

We’ll skip over the fact that all the electronics in the area are kaput because of EMP, and hypothesize a working TV or radio, which informs me that it appears that a small – 5KT – nuke has just exploded on a container ship in San Pedro harbor, along with another one in Red Hook, just across from Manhattan, and another one at the container yard in Seattle.

We’ll skip over the hundred thousand or so who have just died or will die at each site in the coming week, from burns and radiation poisoning, or from one of the diseases or a lack of medical attention caused by the collapse of the public health system.

My family and I are not in immediate danger, because I’m maybe 10 miles from the blast center, and shielded by the mass of Palos Verdes hill, and the prevailing winds are onshore, meaning they blow the radioactive dust inland and away from me, but the next few days are pretty chaotic.

Well, the local paper just picked this up.

WHAT IF?

SCENARIO: Experts say the Port of Los Angeles is vulnerable to nuclear terrorism that would bring mass casualties to the area and send shock waves through the national economy. Here’s how it could unfold.

By Josh Grossberg
DAILY BREEZE

It’s a bright, clear morning in San Pedro.

A slight sea breeze blows inland and the sun glints off the Pacific. Cargo ships idle in the water, while cranes swing back and forth unloading packages. Workers driving across the Vincent Thomas Bridge pay no attention to the ship just passing beneath them.

Without warning, something hidden deep in the hull of the ship explodes. In less than a second, everything nearby is vaporized by temperatures hotter than the sun. The expanding fireball causes a shock wave of compressed air and winds strong enough to knock down or kill anything in its path. Miles away, the flash is bright enough to burn retinas. Windows shatter. Houses rock off their foundations.

The Breeze goes on to talk about some things you ought to do.

Best plan in a disaster is to have one
GUIDELINES: Considerations include food and water supplies, contacts, meeting places and sources of information.

By Josh Grossberg
DAILY BREEZE

Don’t panic.

During any catastrophe – man-made or natural – keep a clear head and plan ahead.

“People should not make any rash decisions,” said Brian Humphrey of the Los Angeles City Fire Department.

Humphrey urges everyone to keep a supply of food and water available, maintain an out-of-state contact for all family members to call in case local lines are not working, devise a second route home and develop alternate meeting places for loved ones.

And keep a working battery-powered radio nearby and know where the city’s two news radio stations are located on the AM dial – KFWB at 980 and KNX at 1070. That’s where officials will instruct people what to do.

Yeah, I forgot about radios…gotta pick some up. Probably inexpensive AM/ FM/ SW/SSB’s.

Take this in two ways. First, it’s mainstream acknowledgement of some of the things that I’ve been worrying about, which boosts both my ego and my anxiety level a bit. Second, it plus into the second part of my original post:

Got the picture??

So here are some questions for all parties.

For the hawks: How strong is the temptation to nuke somebody – anybody – who might have had anything to do with this, regardless of whether it gets the people who really planned it?

For the doves: How long after this happens does the first column come out in the New York Times that suggests that nuking Iraq won’t bring back our dead or rebuild our economy, and that we should pull in, buckle down, and take care of our own?

See, I see two likely outcomes from an event like this, (which I ly don’t believe would be all that hard to pull off).

One is that we go berserk, and turn the Middle East into a plain of glass.

The other is that we surrender our role as leader of the world, the economic and security benefits that come with that, and attempt to retreat into a Fortress America.

As you can imagine, I see problems with both.

What do you see as the outcome of a scenario like that? And how does it influence your thoughts on what to do today?

Well, how does it?

TODAY IT’S MY BIRTHDAY…

Today’s my birthday. It’s a milestone one, so I managed not to tell anyone outside my immediate family or let them set up a party (we’ll be having a big one in a few weeks) so I can just hang out and relax today, thinking good thoughts about everyone and everything in my life.
Then I realize that my house smells like a catbox and I have to close my eyes and work really hard to extend those charitable thoughts to our two semi-incontinent cats…I’m working on it…ommmm…

BABY, BABY

It’s Valentine’s Day, and I just wanted to interrupt my normally scheduled blogging for a moment to publicly tell Tenacious G that I’m grateful every day that she’s mine and that she’s taken me and all my boys as hers.
Thank you, baby.
It’s been a wonderful time with you, and I hope you’ll be a part of my life forever.

I NEED A NEW HAT

Well, golly…
…it’s funny how the things that I do that are just thrown out there seem to get the biggest responses; as opposed to the things I sweat over and worry about.
The note on dating, below, got more traffic than anything else I’ve ever posted; funny how that works. My kinda serious comments on American political history or on ‘bug out kits’ over at Winds of Change didn’t get nearly the reaction. So I know what’s important to you people…or what you think I might know anything about.
It got fairly widely linked, and then Instalanched, and as a result hopefully I will get to have some interesting dialogs with some new folks.
In other ego-preening news, I (or at least my pseudonym) got into The Atlantic!! In print!! Thanks to Media Minded for ferreting this out…I stood by the mailbox waiting for my copy for five days!!
If my mother knew I was doing this, she’d be so proud…
Speaking of dialogs, I’ll be at the Blogging Event in Chinatown Saturday night; I’m looking forward to meeting some other blogfolks (Tenacious G is tolerant of it…).

B.O.K. (Bug Out Kit)

Many of the folks I know have an abiding belief in survival; some of them become survivalists and center their lives around it, which has always struck me as kinda weird. But I find that I can often learn useful things from them, even if we may disagree about how central those useful things ought to be in one’s life. Put those useful things into a bag and have it at hand in case you need to ‘head for the hills’, and you have a “Bug Out Kit”.

There’s an interesting discussion to have about apocalyptic fantasies, and our bizarre attachment to them. I mentioned some of the issues over in a post on Armed Liberal [note: site is down]. It’s almost time for a longer discussion on it.

But today, let’s be practical and discuss what such a kit might consist of.

First, you’ve got to discuss purpose.

The hardier among us assume that they will be taking to the field as a guerilla army defending against the invading Red forces, or the newly oppressive U.S. government under President H. Clinton. They envision living on venison jerky and fresh-caught fish and carrying enough weapons to put together a light infantry platoon.

On the other extreme, some folks would just like to be able to get home in the event their car breaks down on the other side of town.

I’m somewhere in between. I live in Southern California, where we live on borrowed time – the earthquakes, riots, floods, or fires compete for the ‘Disaster of the Decade’ pageant, which we hold in Pasadena every Leap Year Day.

For me, it’s not a “Bug Out Kit”, it’s a “Get Home Kit”. It’s not unreasonable to assume that my SO or I may have to cover fifty miles to get home, and that having gotten home, we may be without water, power, or gas for several days to a week until the grown-ups can get their act together and take care of us.

And to this I’ll add the new layer of risk posed by a meaningful terrorist attack.

So the kits break into two parts: What we try and have with us, and what we have at home.

What we have with us is primarily designed to get us home. Because I have children, unless I can be convinced that my entire neighborhood is a giant smoking crater, or communicate with someone who has my children and is getting them somewhere safe, I’m heading home. End of subject.

This is a small, cheap day pack that we can leave in the car or at the office.

It contains:

Light hiking boots (hell, we own them, and why leave them in the closet where they just take up space?)
Socks (I’m likely to be wearing dress socks, and TG is likely to be wearing hose)
Pants and a sweatshirt
A poncho
Five or six Power Bars
Five or six GU Gel packs (food you squeeze)
Two bottles of water, and some water purification tablets
Two bandanas
A Leatherman multi-tool
A decent knife (Spyderco Delicia)
50′ of 4mm perlon cord
A locking carabiner
More first-aid stuff (pretty much what I carry in my motorcycle suit):
– 2 battle dressings
– 2 – 4 x 4 gauze pads
– 1 CPR shield
– 2 pairs nitrile gloves
– vial with core prescriptions
– bottle of aspirin
– Imodium
A spare pair of prescription glasses for each of us (what else do you do with old glasses?)
Two black heavy-duty trash bags
Tarp with eyelets in the corners
4 – 6″ zip ties
Scorpion Streamlight
2 spare lithium batteries

– and a partridge in a pear tree.

Basically, with this kit, I could – comfortably – cover 20 – 30 miles in a day on foot in pretty much any weather condition I’m likely to face here in SoCal, bivvy for the night, and have enough stuff to do it again another day.

We already owned everything in the kits, except the backpacks, leatherman, knife, carabiner, flashlight, and perlon cord. Total investment, maybe $150 each if you buy a good multi-tool.

At home, we have:

Water (5 extra 5 ga Sparkletts distilled water bottles; we use and rotate them when we change the water in the fish tank)
Food (a 20 ga ‘tupperware’ container full of canned and dried food, plus camping cooking gear, the car camping propane stove and a couple of propane cylinders)
First Aid (the big kit described here)
Tools (a Sears roller cabinet full)
A wonderbar (pry bar) in the bedroom closet, in case we have to pry open jammed doors
A shutoff wrench that fits the city water valve
A crescent wrench swedged onto a wire loop at the gas meter

If I were to add antiterrorism to the kit, I’d consider adding:

Potassium iodide (antiradiation)
Some high-end respirators (not gas masks, but the ones with fine carbon filters)
Four or five sheets of Visqueen (disposable painter’s tarp)
Five or ten rolls of duct tape
Some starter packs of a broad-spectrum antibiotic
A couple of Tyvek (disposable) overalls

I’m thinking about it…

JK Note: Don’t miss his Super First Aid Kit, either.

After-Dinner Thoughts

I just had the Valentines Dinner From Hell (not really, actually a wonderful dinner with my SO), and was confronted by bad dating habits (check out Armed Liberal for my comments and recommendations on middle-aged dating) as well as some points in opposition to the ‘Impending War on Iraq’ (we ought to just make that name official) that actually got me to think a bit, and I wanted to throw a few things out for consideration. The points are:

1) We can’t invade Iraq because we haven’t dealt with Al Qaeda; and
2) We can’t invade Iraq because we haven’t dealt with the Palestinian-Israeli conflicts.

Those are two of the more typical antiwar arguments that I hear from people who think more deeply about the subject than “war is bad”.

And last night I just realized that they are both flat wrong.

We can’t deal with Al Qaeda as long as there are states that control territory, the issuance of identification, and the import and export of weapons which actively support Al Qaeda or tacitly support them through inaction.

We can’t deal with the Palestinian’s unwillingness to make a final, binding, real, two-state deal with Israel as long as there are states that actively encourage Palestinian rage and violence with funds and weapons.

I’m thinking that both of these problems are essentially unsolvable as long as they are really ‘proxy’ conflicts with state actors.

What do you folks think?

(fixed spelling of ‘Al-Qaeda’ per Inkgrrl’s comment)

DATING ADVICE FROM THE ARMED LIBERAL

So Tenacious G (my sweetie) and I went out for our pre-Valentine’s Day dinner last night. We have the boys Friday, and it’ll be a zoo everywhere, so we went to our favorite neighborhood bistro and had a nice dinner together.
Which was slightly spoiled by the conversation at the next table. I’m usually pretty good at filtering, and too polite to acknowledge that I’m eavesdropping (or reading your mail upside down on your desk), but this was just too much, in every sense of the word.
It was a first date. He was (from the conversation) about my age, but overweight, balding, and with a sunlamp tan and a ponytail…a combination that I can’t imagine the ladies could resist. I’m commenting on his physical attributes (actually more his ‘presentation’ of them) because they meshed so well with the personality that he displayed at dinner.
I kept one eye on my watch for a bit and at one point he talked over three minutes without stopping. I think she said about ten words in the entire hour and a half that we were there, and the conversation from their table never stopped.
They (he, actually) discussed Iraq. He’s against it, but he would have gone to Canada if his lottery number had come up during Vietnam and would personally drive his son to Canada today (in his Ferrari) if he was in any danger of serving in the military. We can’t invade Iraq, he explained, because we haven’t defeated Al Quieda, and we haven’t made a settlement between the Israelis and Palestinians. Once we do those things, he’d be open to considering it if it was OK with the U.N.
I have a discussion on his points over at Winds of Change.
He discussed work. He’s apparently a prosecutor, and he discussed how unfair the laws that he is sworn to enforce are, and how he practices his own form of ‘jury nullification’ on cases that he thinks are just unfair.
He discussed (at painful length) his divorce, his lack of a relationship with his children, and his dysfunctional dating history.
He discussed his cars (a 70’s Ferrari, a 60’s Porsche, and a new BMW).
He discussed dancing, and the kind of music he likes. He went on a long riff about ‘the sensuality of just moving your body to music’…i.e. he dances like a white guy.
So in 90 minutes, he did a kind of miniature ‘Biography Channel’ special on himself.
There are so many problems here…
Look, I’ve never been a ‘playa’, but I’ve certainly dated a bunch (TG would say ‘more than a bunch’) and met a bunch of neat women (even married a couple). I’ve given some dating advice to my sons and to my more relationship-challenged friends (male and female, showing that they’ll take advice from anybody). But it was all I could do not to turn around in my chair last night and go “Stop. Stop now. Ask her something about herself, and let her complete her answer. Explore her interests. Hand her the keys to the conversation, because believe me at the rate this is going you aren’t going to be getting any tonight.”
So let me offer some dating advice to my fellow middle-aged divorced guys:
Shut the fuck up.
Don’t try and ‘sell’ yourself, it’s boring and ineffective. Help her sell herself, and in doing so you’ll sell yourself far more effectively than you could otherwise.
Don’t inventory your possessions, inventory your passions.
Don’t recount, in real-time, the story of your failed prior relationships.
Don’t talk down your exes.
Basically, don’t assume that you’re the only interesting person in the room.
And lose the damn ponytail.

Morality, Religion, and America (for Randall)

What I said:

I’ll suggest that morality and spirituality in politics is central and absolutely necessary, on one hand, and incredibly dangerous on the other. I’ll follow with the assertion that the genius of the American Foundation was that it both provided a sphere for a politics centered on moral and spiritual values, and that it explicitly denied morality and spiritual values a seat at the political table.

This was a brilliant bank shot which has led to the American genius of assimilation and to the cultural openness which has made us the dominant force in the world for over a hundred years.

Let’s go to some sources. Washington’s “Farewell Address” is best known for the ‘no foreign entanglements’ meme; there were other significant ones strung through it, including a vital point on religion:

Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked: Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice ? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.

Washington was not the only deeply religious Founder:

The Continental-Confederation Congress, a legislative body that governed the United States from 1774 to 1789, contained an extraordinary number of deeply religious men. The amount of energy that Congress invested in encouraging the practice of religion in the new nation exceeded that expended by any subsequent American national government. Although the Articles of Confederation did not officially authorize Congress to concern itself with religion, the citizenry did not object to such activities. This lack of objection suggests that both the legislators and the public considered it appropriate for the national government to promote a nondenominational, nonpolemical Christianity.

The Continental Congress asked for a “day of Humiliation, Fasting and Prayer” throughout the colonies. The Congress urged its fellow citizens to “confess and bewail our manifold sins and transgressions, and by a sincere repentance and amendment of life, appease his [God’s] righteous displeasure, and through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ, obtain his pardon and forgiveness.”

Congress proclaimed days of fasting and of thanksgiving annually throughout the Revolutionary War. This proclamation by Congress set May 17, 1776, as a “day of Humiliation, Fasting and Prayer” throughout the colonies. Congress urges its fellow citizens to “confess and bewail our manifold sins and transgressions, and by a sincere repentance and amendment of life, appease his [God’s] righteous displeasure, and through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ, obtain his pardon and forgiveness.” Massachusetts ordered a “suitable Number” of these proclamations to be printed so “that each of the religious Assemblies in this Colony, may be furnished with a Copy of the same” and added the motto “God Save This People” as a substitute for “God Save the King.”

But somehow, this piety did not translate into a political role for any Church.From Franklin:

OCTOBER 9, 1780

I am fully of your opinion respecting religious tests; but, though the people of Massachusetts have not in their new constitution kept quite clear of them, yet, if we consider what that people were one hundred years ago, we must allow they have gone great lengths in liberality of sentiment on religious subjects; and we may hope for greater degrees of perfection, when their constitution, some years hence, shall be revised. If Christian preachers had continued to teach as Christ and his Apostles did, without salaries, and as the Quakers now do, I imagine tests would never have existed; for I think they were invented, not so much to secure religion itself, as the emoluments of it. When a religion is good, I conceive that it will support itself; and, when it cannot support itself, and God does not take care to support it, so that its professors are obliged to call for the help of the civil power, it is a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one. . . .

Source of Information:

Excerpt of letter written by Benjamin Franklin to Dr. Richard Price, October 9, 1780. Works of Benjamin Franklin (Sparks ed.)

From Adams:

Writing in 1786, just before the federal Constitution was written, he took it as given that political constitutions were wholly secular enterprises free of godly involvement or inspiration. “The United States of America,” he wrote, marks “the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature.” The architects of American governments never “had interviews with the gods or were in any degree under the inspiration of Heaven.” Government, Adams insisted, is “contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses.” Adams’s view of constitution making is also caught up in the secular ideals of the Age of Reason. “Neither the people nor their conventions, committees, or subcommittees,” he wrote, “considered legislation in any other light than as ordinary arts and sciences, only more important… . The people were universally too enlightened to be imposed on by artifice. . . . [G]overnments thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretense of miracle or mystery, and which are destined to spread over the northern part of that whole quarter of the globe, are a great point gained in favour of the rights of mankind.”

The Godless Constitution, The Case Against Religious Correctness. By Isaac Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore.

de Toqueville says:

Religion in America takes no direct part in the government of society, but it must nevertheless be regarded as the foremost of the political institutions of that country; for if it does not impart a taste for freedom, it facilitates the use of free institutions. Indeed, it is in this same point of view that the inhabitants of the United States themselves look upon religious belief. I do not know whether all the Americans have a sincere faith in their religion; for who can search the human heart? but I am certain that they hold it to be indispensable to the maintenance of republican institutions. This opinion is not peculiar to a class of citizens or to a party, but it belongs to the whole nation and to every rank of society.

Democracy in America, Volume I

And at the Constitutional Convention:

MONDAY AUGUST 20 1787, IN CONVENTION (Philadelphia)

Mr. PINKNEY submitted to the house, in order to be referred to the committee of detail, the following propositions—-

. . . No religious test or qualification shall ever be annexed to any oath of office under the authority of the U.S. These propositions were referred to the Committee of detain without debate or consideration of them, by the House.

Bicentennial Edition, Notes of the Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787, Reported by James Madison, With an introduction by Adrienne Koch.

There’s a great exhibit online at the Library of Congress:

When the Constitution was submitted to the American public, “many pious people” complained that the document had slighted God, for it contained “no recognition of his mercies to us . . . or even of his existence.” The Constitution was reticent about religion for two reasons: first, many delegates were committed federalists, who believed that the power to legislate on religion, if it existed at all, lay within the domain of the state, not the national, governments; second, the delegates believed that it would be a tactical mistake to introduce such a politically controversial issue as religion into the Constitution. The only “religious clause” in the document–the proscription of religious tests as qualifications for federal office in Article Six–was intended to defuse controversy by disarming potential critics who might claim religious discrimination in eligibility for public office.

That religion was not otherwise addressed in the Constitution did not make it an “irreligious” document any more than the Articles of Confederation was an “irreligious” document. The Constitution dealt with the church precisely as the Articles had, thereby maintaining, at the national level, the religious status quo. In neither document did the people yield any explicit power to act in the field of religion. But the absence of expressed powers did not prevent either the Continental-Confederation Congress or the Congress under the Constitution from sponsoring a program to support general, nonsectarian religion.

And in a paper by Derek H. Davis of Baylor:

As written at the Constitutional Convention in 1787, the Constitution gave little attention to religion. Its only reference to religion was the prohibition against religious tests for federal officeholders. This provision had a dual purpose – one principled, one practical. The principled aim was to preclude the possibility of any church-state union or the establishment of a state church, neither of which was possible if religion could not bar one’s service to his country. The provision ensured that the establishment models of the New England and other states would not frame the federal regime. The practical consideration was that even had the framers wanted to impose a religious test, given the diversity of belief in America, disagreements among Americans on what the test should be would stall ratification of the Constitution.

In 1787, within the whole of Western political culture, the secularity of the American Constitution was an isolated anomaly. Religious establishments reigned all over Europe, not just Great Britain. The U.S. Constitution, then, can rightly be viewed as the document that marked the real beginning of political modernity. Government was now to be mostly a human affair; God might lend a helping providential hand, but the formation, maintenance, and dissolution of governments rested with men, not with angels. Without a provision placing the nation under divine rule, it is little wonder that as the Constitution was presented to the states for ratification, disconcerted religious traditionalists, including many of Puritan persuasion, voiced their disapproval.

The specific criticism against the Constitution, voiced repeatedly, was that the document essentially ignored religion. Much of the criticism came from Puritanism’s strongholds, the states of New England. Many objected to the “no religious test,” but similar objections were made to the Constitution’s failure to acknowledge God in some specific way. For one Connecticut critic, it was “a sinful omission in the . . . Constitution, in not looking to God for direction, and of omitting the mention of the name of God.” The framers weathered these objections, but did agree to add an amendment that would make it clear that the free exercise rights of all Americans were in no way jeopardized by the Constitution. Thus, the First Amemdment provides: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. . . .” This language ensured religious freedom, principally by disabling government from “establishing” religion in ways that could interfere with Americans’ own religious beliefs.

(emphasis added)

So I hope you can begin to see how I can assert that, on one hand, religion and morality were deeply entwined in the daily lives of the Founders, and at the same time, how the explicit exclusion of an established religion or religious test for office in the Constitution was extraordinary and powerful.

Every time I go back to the source documents, I am in awe of the brilliance and wisdom of those who founded this Republic, and at the complex issues they resolved with several simle rules.

In contemporary life, we face issues – both institutional, forseen by many of the Founders, and social which I doubt they could forsee as the role and ordering power of a shared religion and shared values is diminished.

How we confront those issues will be central to our well-being over the next century.