Vote November Eighth

Listen therefore, O kings, and understand;
learn, O judges of the ends of the earth.
Give ear, you that rule over multitudes,
and boast of many nations.

For your dominion was given you from the Lord,
and your sovereignty from the Most High,
who will search out your works
and inquire into your plans.
Because as servants of his kingdom you did not rule rightly,
nor keep the law, nor walk according to the purpose of God,
He will come upon you terribly and swiftly,
because severe judgment falls on those in high places.

For the lowliest man may be pardoned in mercy,
but mighty men will be mightily tested.
For the Lord of all will not stand in awe of any one,
nor show deference to greatness;
because he himself made both small and great,
and he takes thought for all alike.
But a strict inquiry is in store for the mighty.

To you then, O monarchs, my words are directed,
that you may learn wisdom and not transgress.
Wisdom 6: 1-9.

　

It is nice to think of our leaders as the “Kings and Judges”
especially when they are from a different political party
and consider the wrath of God with unjust joy.

But This is a democracy; and at least on Election Day
we all are the “Kings and Judges,”
as servants of His Kingdom will we
rule rightly when we vote?

Barrack H. Obama - An Old Story - Oft' Told.

For three things the earth is disquieted, and for four which it cannot bear
For a servant when he reigneth; and a fool when he is filled with meat;
For an odious woman when she is married; and an handmaid that is heir to her mistress.
Proverbs 30:21-23


Three things make earth unquiet
And four she cannot brook
The godly Agur counted them
And put them in a book –
Those Four Tremendous Curses
With which mankind is cursed;
But a Servant when He Reigneth
Old Agur entered first.

An Handmaid that is Mistress
We need not call upon.
A Fool when he is full of Meat
Will fall asleep anon.
An Odious Woman Married
May bear a babe and mend;
But a Servant when He Reigneth
Is Confusion to the end.

His feet are swift to tumult,
His hands are slow to toil,
His ears are deaf to reason,
His lips are loud in broil.
He knows no use for power
Except to show his might.
He gives no heed to judgment
Unless it prove him right.

Because he served a master
Before his Kingship came,
And hid in all disaster
Behind his master’s name,
So, when his Folly opens
The unnecessary hells,
A Servant when He Reigneth
Throws the blame on some one else.

His vows are lightly spoken,
His faith is hard to bind,
His trust is easy broken,
He fears his fellow-kind.
The nearest mob will move him
To break the pledge he gave –
Oh, a Servant when he Reigneth
Is more than ever slave!


Rudyard Kipling



The Obama Topic
Highlights’

Mr. President Make a Decision
An Audacious Hope
East Meets West - President Obama in the Middle East.

“The Water Tastes the Same!”

My friend Addie was vocal on some subjects. “Mister Lincoln freed the slaves . . “ was the beginning of a rant on the history of race relations, good and bad, in the US that was something to behold. When Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas accused the Judicial Committee of conducing an electronic lynching, she stood up and yelled “That’s right, you tell ’em” loud enough that I’m sure he heard the encouragement a thousand miles away without electronics.

I can here her cry “You tell ‘em Herman!”



From Little Miss Attaila and Allah pundit who comments ““[S]egregation laws were so vicious and demeaning that they insisted on stigmatizing blacks even when doing so produced no material advantage for whites.”.



NB I am not endorsing Mr. Cain about whom I know very little - his message here needs to be told often enough that we do not forget.

American Arrogance

Michael Yon recently made a humors/serious post on American Arrogance.

There have been many comments about American arrogance. During my travels to 48 United States and over 50 countries -- most of those states and countries multiple times -- some themes have emerged. continue reading

My contribution to the comments:
The best country in the world?
The one you call home!

Flamenco

Ihath tells a story.



Stage Freight


And dances Flamenco

Who Goes Nazi

Elizabeth Scilia, of First Things brings us an article by Dorothy Thompson from the August 1941 edition of Harpers Magazine. asking

“Who Goes Nazi?”

Certainly the names are different these days but there are still people who will “go Nazi” if the chance happens though it I possible they will be the loudest denouncing Nazism. .


It is an interesting and somewhat macabre parlor game to play at a large gathering of one’s acquaintances: to speculate who in a showdown would go Nazi. By now, I think I know. I have gone through the experience many times–in Germany, in Austria, and in France. I have come to know the types: the born Nazis, the Nazis whom democracy itself has created, the certain-to-be fellow-travelers. And I also know those who never, under any conceivable circumstances, would become Nazis.

snip

Sometimes I think there are direct biological factors at work–a type of education, feeding, and physical training which has produced a new kind of human being with an imbalance in his nature. He has been fed vitamins and filled with energies that are beyond the capacity of his intellect to discipline. He has been treated to forms of education which have released him from inhibitions. His body is vigorous. His mind is childish. His soul has been almost completely neglected.

At any rate, let us look round the room.

The gentleman standing beside the fireplace with an almost untouched glass of whiskey beside him on the mantelpiece is Mr. A, a descendant of one of the great American families. There has never been an American Blue Book without several persons of his surname in it. He is poor and earns his living as an editor. He has had a classical education, has a sound and cultivated taste in literature, painting, and music; has not a touch of snobbery in him; is full of humor, courtesy, and wit. He was a lieutenant in the World War, is a Republican in politics, but voted twice for Roosevelt, last time for Willkie. He is modest, not particularly brilliant, a staunch friend, and a man who greatly enjoys the company of pretty and witty women. His wife, whom he adored, is dead, and he will never remarry.

He has never attracted any attention because of outstanding bravery. But I will put my hand in the fire that nothing on earth could ever make him a Nazi. He would greatly dislike fighting them, but they could never convert him…. Why not?

Beside him stands Mr. B, a man of his own class, graduate of the same preparatory school and university, rich, a sportsman, owner of a famous racing stable, vice-president of a bank, married to a well-known society belle. He is a good fellow and extremely popular. But if America were going Nazi he would certainly join up, and early. Why?… Why the one and not the other?


Indeed why? Read the whole article. The names are different but is today the same old story?




From Wikipedia.
Dorothy Thompson (9 July 1893, Lancaster, New York – January 30, 1961, Portugal) was an American journalist and radio broadcaster, who was noted by Time magazine in 1939 as one of the two most influential women in America, the other being Eleanor Roosevelt.

She is notable as the first American journalist to be expelled from Nazi Germany (in 1934), one of the few women news commentators on radio during the 1930s, and as the inspiration for Katharine Hepburn's character "Tess Harding" in the film Woman of the Year (1942).



Related: Who is a Fascist?

Frank Capra: It's a Wonderful Life??

Frank Capra, contrary to popular opinion, is one of the most challenging—maybe even disturbing—of all filmmakers. He asks us to accept things about which we have grave doubts—not because they’re nice or inspirational or comforting or helpful—but because they’re true.




Rod Bennett in the January 2007 edition of the online magazine GodSpy gives us The Gospel according to Frank Capra. He starts by asking the question - how can the story of George Bailey be called It’s a Wonderful Live?

At Christmastime in the year 1974, when I was 14 years old, I saw an old black & white movie on television called It's A Wonderful Life. It was a very cold sunny afternoon as I remember; I was home from school on two weeks of Christmas vacation. I had been randomly turning the TV dial and just happened to get interested in a scene—about ten minutes into the picture, as it turns out—in which a young boy had just saved a drunken druggist from accidentally poisoning a sick child. At the first commercial break, the "Armchair Theatre" announcer told me the title.

Wracked as I was at the time with all the usual terrors and traumas of being fourteen years old, I wasn't at all sure that it was, in fact, a wonderful life here on Planet Earth. But I watched the movie anyway. And the longer that old picture went on the more the sound of that title (which had seemed at first so pat and sugary) began to change in my doubtful ears. It's A Wonderful Life. Standing there so unashamed in the face of everything going on all around it, that simplistic, illogical phrase began to sound... I don't know... defiant; like a challenge being flung at me or even an attack.

I had no way of knowing at the time that this was supposed to be a corny old Christmas "feel-good" movie. It began to make me feel pretty bad, in fact. Certainly I saw that It's A Wonderful Life is full of wonderful things: charm and humor and unforgettable characters that have since become like a second family to me. But the longer the movie went on, the bleaker and blacker things got. George Bailey, the hero (played by James Stewart), the dreamer who was going to see the world and lasso the moon, struggles to get out of the dead end job that keeps him chained to the hick town where he was born. It soon becomes obvious, to us and to him, that he never will get out of it. And yet, somehow, with every commercial break, that announcer kept repeating It's A Wonderful Life. I myself had dreams very like George Bailey's: dreams of accomplishment, dreams of romance.

But the plain reality was that I was failing in school, my first real romance was ten years away, and I was lonely, alienated, and ugly with that unique ugliness only possible to fourteen year olds. And yet with every commercial break, over and over at eight-minute intervals, the "Armchair Theatre" man insisted It's A Wonderful Life. Before long, George Bailey (because of a meaningless accident—his lovable, doddering old uncle has destroyed his business by absentmindedly losing a packet of money) stands on a frigid overpass ready to drown his whole thwarted, aborted dream in an icy black river and we're not so sure we blame him. I stood there with him—my own dreams seemed (and sometimes still seem) just as hopeless. And still the man says It's A Wonderful Life.

I guess the repeated words of that corny title—proved surely to be a lie by the very story to which they had somehow been tacked—made me feel a little like Nero must have felt, listening in disbelief to the joyful hymns the martyrs sang as he fed them to the lions.

And then the final act of the movie began.

Snip

If one had only Capra's reputation to go by, without knowing the man or seeing the films, I suppose that one might come to create a mental portrait of him as some smiling white-haired sentimentalist, perhaps a retired Congregationalist minister, with his eyes full of easy stars and possessing a fondness for quoting Norman Vincent Peale. In reality, Frank Capra was not only a hard-nosed, up-from-poverty immigrant with a rather acidic sense of humor (the biggest laughs in his films are cynical cracks from jaded sophisticates mocking the callow Capra hero), he was actually an intellectual—almost a rationalist. He was certainly every inch the Cal Tech Chemical Engineer of his school years. In fact, in Capra's unique background I've found what has been, for me, the whole key to the mystery of his films and their strange fate at the hands of the critics.

snip

This is why Frank Capra, contrary to popular opinion, is one of the most challenging of all filmmakers and in some ways the most disturbing. Most "serious films"—the "hard-hitting" "uncompromising" films—ask us only to accept, for example, that poverty is bad, relationships are hard, that politics is corrupt. In short, their "challenge" consists precisely in asking us to accept ideas that we already accept anyway, even if we struggle to know just what to do about them. In these comedies, Capra asks us to accept that the old-fashioned American ideals are still good, that David really can whip Goliath, that our prayers do not go unheard, that the meek shall inherit the earth. In other words, he asks us to accept things about which we have grave, grave doubts. And he is uncompromising in his asking: he doesn't ask us to accept these propositions as nice or inspirational or comforting or helpful—he asks us to accept them as true. That, my friend, is a challenging filmmaker. That is serious, avant-garde cinema, if you will.

Read the whole article

The Least of These

Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House, who’s biblical scholarship this blog has previously noted, was a guest on Tom Brokow’s Meet the Press last weekend and presented her understanding of Catholic teaching on abortion. It seems to be lacking in factual veracity.

MR. BROKAW: Senator Obama saying the question of when life begins is above his pay grade, whether you’re looking at it scientifically or theologically. If he were to come to you and say, “Help me out here, Madame Speaker. When does life begin?” what would you tell him?

REP. PELOSI: I would say that as an ardent, practicing Catholic, this is an issue that I have studied for a long time. And what I know is, over the centuries, the doctors of the church have not been able to make that definition. And Senator–St. Augustine said at three months. We don’t know. The point is, is that it shouldn’t have an impact on the woman’s right to choose. Roe v. Wade talks about very clear definitions of when the child–first trimester, certain considerations; second trimester; not so third trimester. There’s very clear distinctions. This isn’t about abortion on demand, it’s about a careful, careful consideration of all factors and–to–that a woman has to make with her doctor and her god. And so I don’t think anybody can tell you when life begins, human life begins. As I say, the Catholic Church for centuries has been discussing this, and there are those who’ve decided…

MR. BROKAW: The Catholic Church at the moment feels very strongly that it…

REP. PELOSI: I understand that.

MR. BROKAW: …begins at the point of conception.

REP. PELOSI: I understand. And this is like maybe 50 years or something like that. So again, over the history of the church, this is an issue of controversy. But it is, it is also true that God has given us, each of us, a free will and a responsibility to answer for our actions. And we want abortions to be safe, rare, and reduce the number of abortions.

While I would not comment on her claim to be an ardent practicing Catholic which is between her and God, I really wonder what she, or her research assistant, has been studying for a long time. The Church has always called abortion an evil which is never permissible. This is true no matter what the viewpoints were of individuals over time on secondary issues.


Non-Catholic Irenaeus at Catholidoxy looks at the historical record and fisks the accuracy of Speaker Pelosi’s statement several times over:

That the doctors of the church have not been able to decide when life begins. But if she’d really studied the issue (as she expressly claims), she would know that no doctor of the church in particular and no orthodox father of the church has ever said abortion is OK, as we’ll see at great length. It’s true that some doctors and fathers and theologians of the Church raised the question of “ensoulment,” asking when an unborn baby receives a soul, and given different answers. But in Christian (as opposed to Gnostic) tradition, humans are not only souls but also bodies. And thus no Father ever, ever used the idea of later ensoulment (often borrowed from Aristotle) to excuse or permit abortion. Contrary to what Pelosi expressly says, Augustine never ever said life begins at three months In Christian tradition, until the 1960s, life was thought to begin at conception, regardless of the details certain thinkers put forth about speculative embryonic anthropology..

--------------

Amy Welborn of Charollote is Both hits the issue at it’s heart.

Over and over we are told - by bishops themselves - that their primary role in contentious situations like this is to teach.

So..TEACH.

Here you have a very prominent American Catholic, going on the record with her purported studiousness on this issue, authoritatively declaring something false about the teaching of the Catholic Church.

This is what we call a teachable moment. Monday morning, the USCCB should have a press release, accompanied by a real human being - preferably a bishop - maybe even a Colorado bishop, given the location and the proximity of the press - giving a short, succinct correction of Pelosi’s statement. It wouldn’t take long. Do it right in front of where the convention is meeting.

No 501(c)(3) worries. No threats of endorsement or condemnation. Just…

Teach.

Do it over and over and over - do not let this moments pass by and the deceptions continue to rule.

Her advice is especially important because as Father John Richard Neuhaus pointed out a few years ago:

. . .when the Democrats had unequivocally become the abortion party and the Republicans unmistakably the pro-life party, it was obvious that liberal Catholics, including most bishops, had chosen, whether they knew it or not, party over principle. Under the tutelage of Cardinal Bernardin and others, consciences had been sedated, and the bishops turned their energies to writing pastoral letters on "peace and justice" issues such as disarmament and economic equality. For which they received the enthusiastic plaudits of the media. Largely because they were not talking about abortion.


But several Bishops have started have started to speak out this time.

Cardinal Egan of New York

We are blessed in the 21st century with crystal-clear photographs and action films of the living realities within their pregnant mothers. No one with the slightest measure of integrity or honor could fail to know what these marvelous beings manifestly, clearly, and obviously are, as they smile and wave into the world outside the womb. In simplest terms, they are human beings with an inalienable right to live, a right that the Speaker of the House of Representatives is bound to defend at all costs for the most basic of ethical reasons. They are not parts of their mothers, and what they are depends not at all upon the opinions of theologians of any faith. Anyone who dares to defend that they may be legitimately killed because another human being “chooses” to do so or for any other equally ridiculous reason should not be providing leadership in a civilized democracy worthy of the name.

Cardinal Rigali and Bishop Lori for National Catholic Conference

The Church has always taught that human life deserves respect from its very beginning and that procured abortion is a grave moral evil. In the Middle Ages, uninformed and inadequate theories about embryology led some theologians to speculate that specifically human life capable of receiving an immortal soul may not exist until a few weeks into pregnancy. While in canon law these theories led to a distinction in penalties between very early and later abortions, the Church’s moral teaching never justified or permitted abortion at any stage of development.
These mistaken biological theories became obsolete over 150 years ago when scientists discovered that a new human individual comes into being from the union of sperm and egg at fertilization. In keeping with this modern understanding, the Church has long taught that from the time of conception (fertilization), each member of the human species must be given the full respect due to a human person, beginning with respect for the fundamental right to life.


Archbishop Wuerl of Washington D.C.

. . .We respect the right of elected officials such as Speaker Pelosi to address matters of public policy that are before them, but the interpretation of Catholic faith has rightfully been entrusted to the Catholic bishops. Given this responsibility to teach, it is important to make this correction for the record.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church is clear: the current teaching of the Catholic Church on human life and abortion is the same teaching as it was 2,000 years ago. The Catechism reads:
“Human life must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of conception…Since the first century the Church has affirmed the moral evil of every procured abortion. This teaching has not changed and remains unchangeable. Direct abortion, that is to say, abortion willed either as an end or a means, is gravely contrary to the moral law.” (Catechism, 2270-2271)
The Catechism goes on to quote the Didache, a treatise that dates to the first century: “’You shall not kill the embryo by abortion and shall not cause the newborn to perish.’”
From the beginning, the Catholic Church has respected the dignity of all human life from the moment of conception to natural death.

Archbishop Chaput of Denver in a letter wih the delightful title of On the Separation of Sense and State

Catholic public leaders inconvenienced by the abortion debate tend to take a hard line in talking about the “separation of Church and state.” But their idea of separation often seems to work one way. In fact, some officials also seem comfortable in the role of theologian. And that warrants some interest, not as a “political” issue, but as a matter of accuracy and justice.

. . .

Since Speaker Pelosi has, in her words, studied the issue “for a long time,” she must know very well one of the premier works on the subject, Jesuit John Connery’s “Abortion: The Development of the Roman Catholic Perspective” (Loyola, 1977). Here’s how Connery concludes his study:

“The Christian tradition from the earliest days reveals a firm antiabortion attitude. … The condemnation of abortion did not depend on and was not limited in any way by theories regarding the time of fetal animation. Even during the many centuries when Church penal and penitential practice was based on the theory of delayed animation, the condemnation of abortion was never affected by it. Whatever one would want to hold about the time of animation, or when the fetus became a human being in the strict sense of the term, abortion from the time of conception was considered wrong, and the time of animation was never looked on as a moral dividing line between permissible and impermissible abortion.”

Or to put it in the blunter words of the great Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer: “Destruction of the embryo in the mother’s womb is a violation of the right to live which God has bestowed on this nascent life. To raise the question whether we are here concerned already with a human being or not is merely to confuse the issue. The simple fact is that God certainly intended to create a human being and that this nascent human being has been deliberately deprived of his life. And that is nothing but murder.”

. . .

The duty of the Church and other religious communities is moral witness. The duty of the state and its officials is to serve the common good, which is always rooted in moral truth. A proper understanding of the “separation of Church and state” does not imply a separation of faith from political life.

But of course, it’s always important to know what our faith actually teaches.

And many more bishops and laity are joining the chorus.


---------------------

Perhaps in closing we should listen to the words of Jesus:

. . .I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.' Then they also will answer, 'Lord, when did we see thee hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to thee?' Then he will answer them, 'Truly, I say to you, as you did it not to one of the least of these, you did it not to me. 'Matt 25:42-45

I ask:

If the unborn child

even a child at the one cell stage of development,

is not the “least of these”

JUST WHO IS?




See Also:
Cause Not Harm
Criss Cross Democrats and Republicans and Abortion
And my:
Social Justice topic

Criss-Cross: Democrats, Republicans, and Abortion

Suppose this: suppose a politically savvy Rip Van Winkle in say, 1965, perceiving that a movement to legalize abortion was gaining strength in the country, were asked, "Which of the two major political parties will eventually identify with that movement?" What would he answer? I think he would mull it over in his head for awhile and then say: "the Republicans, probably." Why? "Well, in the first place, it fits pretty well into the Republicans' private-property philosophy. 'Let's keep government out of a woman's most personal property.' secondly, consider the demographics. The Republicans draw heavily from the upper-middle class WASPs, where the drive for population control has always come from. Abortion fits very well into the old eugenics mythology-the belief that you can improve the health of the 'race' by limiting the breeding of 'undesirables.' You can still hear echoes of that in the conversations of bicoastal Republicans. It wouldn't surprise me at all if the Republican Party came out with a plank saying 'We support abortion, in certain cases, for the nation's overall health and well-being.' Finally, consider the Republicans' emphasis on the need for law and order and their conservative approach to welfare. The Republicans may not say this out loud but it slots right into their conservative ideology: abortion is good because, by holding down illegitimate births, it will cut down on crime and welfare costs."

What about the Democrats? "Well," Rip would say, "let's start again with demographics. Consider the heavy concentration of Roman Catholics in the Democratic party. The Church hierarchy would go bananas if any prominent Catholic Democrat-or any Democrat at all-came out in favor of abortion. The Church has consistently held that abortion is one of the gravest moral offenses because it involves the direct killing of an innocent human being. No way is a Catholic Democrat, or any Democrat who wants Catholic support (and what Democrat doesn't?), going to support abortion. It might even be smart politics for the Democrats to pick a fight with the Republicans on the abortion issue. Democrats like to boast that they protect the weak and the vulnerable. You remember Vice President Hubert Humphrey's characterization of his party as the advocate of those "who are in the dawn of life; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped." All they have to do is insert "unborn children" into that list and they can beat up Republicans every time on the abortion issue. I can hear them now: 'Let the Republicans pick on the weak and vulnerable, killing children in the womb to cut welfare costs. We Democrats are the party of compassion, the party that sticks up for the little guy, including the littlest guy of all, the child in the womb. (Applause)"'

Having delivered himself of this well-considered prophecy in 1965, Rip Van Winkle goes down for his nap. When he wakes up and we tell him how the abortion issue finally sorted itself out between our two major parties, Rip says, "Huh? How could that have happened?"


Yes, what happened?


It this July 2006 article Human Life Review Criss-Cross: Democrats, Republicans, and Abortion George McKenna, Emeritus Professor of Political Science at City College (New York), offers an broad brush picture of what happened in the abortion debate from the 1960’s to the 1980’s. The two ton elephant in the room that no one mentions this debate had serious effects on both political parties and the Catholic Church.

The debate caused serious cases of cognitive dissonance in the Church. For the progressive wing (and leadership) of the Church the Democratic Party most represented their view of political and social issues but abortion support became an important issue for the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, however the Church has a nearly 2000 year old history of vigorously opposing abortion. We see the fallout of attempting to resolve this dissonance in today’s politics. I think we can see the shadow of this in the different demographics that make up the supporters of the two presidential candidates.

In the January 2007 issue of Fr. John Richard Neuhaus First Things How We Got to Where We Are Fr. John Richard Neuhaus extrapolates on this article at length.

But George McKenna is right: When it came to the crunch in 1980, when the Democrats had unequivocally become the abortion party and the Republicans unmistakably the pro-life party, it was obvious that liberal Catholics, including most bishops, had chosen, whether they knew it or not, party over principle. Under the tutelage of Cardinal Bernardin and others, consciences had been sedated, and the bishops turned their energies to writing pastoral letters on "peace and justice" issues such as disarmament and economic equality. For which they received the enthusiastic plaudits of the media. Largely because they were not talking about abortion.


No matter what you think of abortion, if you want to know what happened and how we got here these are indispensible articles.


See Also Cause not Harm

HT : Christopher Blosser at Catholic in the Public Square

Election 2008 Overview

It looks like Clinton will win the Democratic nomination and McCain will win the Republican nomination.


I took the rolling poll tracking data for the for the candidates at Rassmusen Reports and copied them into a spread sheet starting from December First. I averaged the results for each day with an average of the previous ten days. (The entry for the tenth is an average of the first to the tenth, the entry for the eleventh is an average of the second to the eleventh) This smoothes the results eliminating minor day to day variances in public opinion or errors in a particular days samplings. The disadvantage of this method is it is not very sensitive to the last several day’s results. (I am not reproducing the data because Rasmussen will be happy to sell you similar data, more professionally done.) Of course individual primaries and caucuses will not accurately reflect the national average and may be more important in the actual nomination.


On the Democratic side Clinton has been holding at the high thirties nationally. Obama is in the low very high twenties low thirties and Edwards in the Low twenties. These numbers are stable for a month and a half. I suspect she will win the Democratic nomination. The question is how much anti-Clinton sentiment there is in the undecided and Edwards supporters. Normally you would expect them split between Clinton and Obama proportionally, but there is too much Clinton angst to make that a safe bet.

I don’t see much in any of them to vote for. As is often pointed out that the so-called Neo-conservatives are not actual conservatives. They rebelled from the main stream of the left because they saw those policies as morally and intellectually bankrupt. Though their ideas are much better than the main stream left they are not really conservative. Left Wing Lite so to speak. Most of what got President Bush in trouble in Iraq and domestically came from the baggage they brought with them to Bush's coalition. The thought of going from Left Wing Lite to the high calorie version does not seem exciting.

In the 2000 Presidential debates Al Gore said he thought Nation Building was a good policy for the US military. This was reflecting the traditional Wilsonian ideas. Bush disagreed. The US should only use it's armed forces to protect our vital interests. Iraq is basically a Nation Building project, justified by the Bush Administration as response to Nine Eleven. This was the result of the Neocon’s increased influence after Nine Eleven. It may not have been Iraq, but Gore would have had much less inhibition to getting us into similar activities even without Nine Eleven. I see no reason to assume a new Democratic administration would not continue the traditional Democratic military policy.If you thought Iraq was fun - Vote Democratic.





The Republican side is more interesting.

Giuliani, the long time expected Republican nominee is doing a nosedive. Every three or four days since December First he has been losing a percentage point If this continues he will be in negative numbers in late February. None the less the perceptive Anchoress gives him her Endorsement:

It is easy to forget, particularly if you did not live in New York in the months following 9/11, that Rudy Giuliani went to the wakes or funerals of nearly every lost cop and firefighter in the city, sometimes going from one funeral to the next in a single day. He even walked a bride down the aisle, after she’d lost her firefighter father and brother. He was tremendous and authentic, and he showed courage, commitment and leadership.

She is right, he is the best leader in a crisis of all the candidates, but I am not at all sure what direction he will lead in the more normal affairs of government. He is not at all solid on social conservative or fiscal issues, issues that need solid leadership in directions he does not support.



Romney has been climbing slowly to the low twenties and holding. Thompson is steady at ten to twelve percent. I think they have found their level and will not go anywhere, assuming none of the other candidates does something stupid. These would both be reasonable Presidents but I am not sure they are enough of a candidate to win. Romney may be able to position himself with enough recognition that he will be a much better candidate in 2012 or 2016. The more I see of Thompson the more I like him, but at a steady ten to twelve percent he not going anywhere.



Huckabee has been doing a slow gain picking up a net of about fifteen points from a starting point of twelve percent. He has been doing a good job of bringing some very disappointed social conservatives into the process. I think the real question is can he deliver them to whomever is the candidate the Republicans nominate. The Republicans can’t win with out this support. The biggest problem was nicely summed up by Peggy Noonan.

From the mail I have received the past month after criticizing him in this space, I would say his great power, the thing really pushing his supporters, is that they believe that what ails America and threatens its continued existence is not economic collapse or jihad, it is our culture.

They have been bruised and offended by the rigid, almost militant secularism and multiculturalism of the public schools; they reject those schools' squalor, in all senses of the word. They believe in God and family and America. They are populist: They don't admire billionaire CEOs, they admire husbands with two jobs who hold the family together for the sake of the kids; they don't need to see the triumph of supply-side thinking, they want to see that suffering woman down the street get the help she needs.

They believe that Mr. Huckabee, the minister who speaks their language, shares, down to the bone, their anxieties, concerns and beliefs. They fear that the other Republican candidates are caught up in a million smaller issues--taxing, spending, the global economy, Sunnis and Shia--and missing the central issue: again, our culture. They are populists who vote Republican, and as I have read their letters, I have felt nothing but respect.

But there are two problems. One is that while the presidency, as an office, can actually make real changes in the areas of economic and foreign policy, the federal government has a limited ability to change the culture of America. That is something conservatives used to know. Second, I'm sorry to say it is my sense that Mr. Huckabee is not so much leading a movement as riding a wave. One senses he brilliantly discerned and pursued an underserved part of the voting demographic, and went for it.


John McCain was down to the low teens in mid December and has been sky rocketing up ever since. I think this reflects that in addition to his strong base at about his minimum in December, but he also is an acceptable candidate to the undecided and acceptable as a second or third choice of the Republicans who support other candidates and acceptable to independents in the general election. But with that much soft support it is easy to stumble.

El Jefe of the The Kingdom of Chaos calls John McCain the the Most Viable Conservative.

So convince me, people. I'll go with the most viable conservative. McCain's voting record in Congress is in general conservative, and he can win. Show me somebody else who can win. Show me somebody else as persistent. Think on something else: McCain could have been anointed -- walked into this nomination if he wanted -- all he had to do was back-off a bunch of stands that have irritated the Hell out of a lot of us. Okay, most of us on the conversative side of things disagree with his stands. But he made them anyway. He didn't maneuver for advantage, when it was clearly in his interest to do so. He did his duty as he saw it. Show me somebody else, who -- at such great political cost to himself: stands up for what he thinks . . .


Gerald of the The Cafeteria is Closed quotes Gerard V. Bradley of Notre Dame University on McCain’s prolife record. He may actually be stronger on social conservativism in practice than Huckabee.

Of the remaining pro-life Republicans, none can match McCain’s record of opposing abortion. He has served in Congress for 24 years, and cast a lot of votes on abortion legislation during that time. His record is not merely exemplary — it is perfect. McCain’s votes on abortion really could not be better. A campaign advertisement in South Carolina says of John McCain: “Pro-life. Not just recently. Always. Never wavering.” The ad is true....Twenty-four years of service at the national level — almost all of them in the Senate — make a big difference when we are talking about the next President, compared to candidates who have been small-state governors. There is no need to speculate or to rely upon promises or take matters on faith when it comes to McCain and abortion. He has demonstrated himself to be the best pro-life choice.


Identifying the best presidential pro-life candidate is very largely about judges, as well as particular issues. The next president is likely to (no one can say for sure, of course) have a couple of vacancies on the Supreme Court to fill. Given the Court’s present makeup and who is likely to be replaced, these two nominations will either tip the balance against Roe, or confirm it once again for a whole generation. For if the Court revisits the question of Roe’s basic validity in, say, 2010, it will not do so again for a very long time.(The last time was Planned Parenthood v. Casey, in 1992.) McCain’s “model” of a Supreme Court Justice are — he has said — Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia.I mentioned a recent South Carolina advertisement about McCain’s pro-life voting record. As good as that record is, the ad contained still more powerful evidence of his pro-life convictions. This part of the ad shows Cindy McCain walking beside a diminutive Catholic nun. Mrs. McCain is holding an infant in her arms. It is (the ad text says) “little Bridget, a baby she and John adopted in 1993 from Mother Teresa’s orphanage in Bangladesh. Bridget has been a great blessing to the McCain family.”


McCain seems to be the best (or least worse) of the candidates. However I am not entirely happy with him. The McCain Finegold Act denies freedom of speech, but nothing like the so called hate speech laws advocated by the Democrats; those parts of the act should be repealed or ruled unconstitutional. His grandstanding on torture with proposed legislation that was so poorly written that it could increase the use of torture was disappointing. (The link is my post.)

He is the best the candidate that’s running, but I think I will keep my old endorsement until I accommodate myself to reality.


Update 8 PM,Jan 19, 2008: I corrected some grammer errors and rewrote some text that was not clear. I shouldn't post after midnight.

Military Culture Wars

Review: Occupations, Cultures, and Leadership in the Army and Air Force
George R. Mastroianni
Parameters, Winter 2005-06, pp. 76-90


The Fall Winter issue of Parameters, the journal of the US Army War Collage has a very interesting article by Dr. George R. Mastroianni on the cultural differences between the military services. He is well qualified for this as he is a Professor in the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership at the Air Force War Collage and a Lieutenant Colonel in the US Army Reserve.

I spent several years as a civilian employee of a jointly manned headquarters, the differences between the services cultures are real, usually the cause of much humor, but also a potential problem in our ability to conduct war and preserve the peace.

The article's focus is on the differences between the Army and the Air Force officer corps, which is where he has his personal experience. He also limits his study to combat arms officers for the Army and pilots for the Air Force as these groups set the standard for their respective services.

He starts out with the observation that large organizations can be characterized by their members intuitional and/or occupational commitment. Are the members of the organization committed to the organization and its ideals or to a occupation that they can take to another organization depending on their self interest. He makes the assertion that, while officers in both services have share these commitments, Army officers have a stronger intuitional commitment that the Air Force officers. Partly this is because pilots have a portable skill, they can leave the service and be airline pilots, infantry officers can leave the service and be anything but infantry officers.

The differences that different occupations have on the cultures is also a factor, the way you process information as pilot flying at supersonic speeds is different than the way you would process information in a fox hole. By the time these officers reach mid and high level positions these patterns of thinking come with them and effect their actions and decisions.

A major difference between the two services is the their approach to leadership and the relationship between commissioned officers and non-commissioned officers. The humor is that the air force would say their enlisted men strap a weapons system on the back of their officers and send them into combat, whereas in the Army the officers send their enlisted men into combat. The Army would say that an Air Force pilot is really the commander of a flying tank and is a grossly overpaid staff sergeant. Both these observations are extreme overstatements. But the differences are real. An army officers first job is as a platoon leader; his platoon has a platoon sergeant, who has the job of teaching the lieutenant how to be a combat officer. While the Air Force prizes its enlisted mechanics who keep the planes flying a mechanic is not going to teach the new Air Force officer how to be a pilot. I gather that in many Air Force organizations the pilots and mechanics are in different sub-organizations. The Air Force officer respects the NCO's specialists with whom they have few interactions, the Army officer dealt with the senior NCO as a collaborator in the day to day work of his unit. The result is that an Air force Officer will spend his first formative years with a group of people who have similar backgrounds, education, training and aspirations. The Army officer spends his first formative years with other combat officers but also with people who have different backgrounds, education, training, and aspirations. At later points in their service this effects their professional relations with persons outside their service, outside the military and government. He suggests that Air Force officers can are more effective in dealing with scientific/technical people. Army officers generally have experience and training that allows them to work better with a broader set of situations and people.

When I was working in joint headquarters I saw this in play, the officers of both services were usually Captains or higher. This was typically the first assignment where an Air Force officer was in a leadership position. The Army Officer had been the platoon leader and maybe the company commander of units ranging from 20 to 150 soldiers. The Air Force officer had been held positions where his technological knowledge was essential to the organization, the army officer was a generalist who called on technical experts. This would cause problems as higher ranked Army officers had assumed that a Air Force Captain should already be an experienced leader and higher ranked Air Force officers assumed a Army Captain should have much deeper technical skills.

An observation.

The President’s military experience was as an interceptor pilot. The Secretary of Defense was a Navy reserve anti-submarine pilot. They appointed a strategic Air Force pilot as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Other appointments tended to follow a similar pattern. The Secretary of Defense is supporting technology based transformations. The inability of the Army professional leadership and the Secretary of Defense to understand each other are legendary. We are in ground war. The Air Force flies a sortie, destroys the target and returns to base. The Army captures a place and holds it against all comers. The Rumsfeld/Shineski controversy can be described as one seeing a sortie to replace Saddam and go home - the other seeing a mission capture a place (Iraq,) control it, and hold it. While not explaining everything or even most things, the story of events leading up to the war and it’s conduct becomes much clearer when these differences are understood.


There is much more in this article than I reviewed, I strongly recommend this article.