Fear and Loathing in Manhattan

Let us not get mad at Howard Dean for tagging the Republican Party as monolithically
“white Christian.” He is just reflecting the mainstream belief in his Democratic
Party, writes
Don Feder.
The same sentiments are routinely advanced in the elite media and with rather less moderation
by wacko lefties in the academy.

It is easy to be outraged by Dean’s hate speech, or alternatively chuckle at the gift that keeps on giving. But there is a bigger problem.
What is to become of America when one of its political parties is so radically anti-religion?

Smart Guys on Janice Rogers Brown

Judging from the mournful comments of left-wing law school professor
Erwin Chemerinsky, the successful nomination of Janice Rogers Brown to
the DC Court of Appeals is the end of life as we know it. You can get
a flavor of the left-wing take on Brown in Chemerinsky’s comments
on the Hugh Hewitt Show captured by
Radio Blogger.

I think Janice Rogers Brown is pretty much as far to the right on the political spectrum as you’re going to get for a federal Court of Appeals. She said that she believes the social security program is unconstitutional. She said that she believes that the Bill of Rights shouldn’t be applied to the states. She was ranked unqualified by the commission that evaluated her for the California Supreme Court. The ABA committee gave her the lowest possible evaluation that would pass her for the position. I think it’s really a sad day for America that she has a lifetime position on one of the most important federal Courts of Appeal.

You get a certain frisson of excitement reading that someone actually
has the courage to declare Social Security unconstitutional. Law school professor
John Eastman reminds us what the judge battle is about, what liberals are defending and
what conservative want to change:

Let me go back. I mean, liberal scholars have been trying for seventy years to find a rationalization to defend what happened in the Court signing off, ultimately under pressure in the New Deal. Bruce Ackerman has come up with a theory that we somehow have collective Constitutional moments, as the way we amend our Constitution now. That’s not what the Constitution requires. And the notion that it is off limits even to challenge the illegitimacy of what went on seventy years ago, is to simply throw in the towel on any notion of Constitutionalism, and law becomes whatever the most recent pronouncement of the Court says it is. That’s a dictatorship of nine. That’s not the democratic republic we have. And we are at risk of losing our Constitution system itself, if we’re not even able to challenge the principles on which that Constitution is based.

That’s it. Liberals want to put the jurisprudence of the last 70 years off limits, and that’s
why they head for the fainting couches when conservatives like Janice Rogers Brown are nominated
to the federal bench.

Bush Stays on Message

According to American strategy expert John Boyd, we have two options in life:
“To Be or To Do.” In an interview with
Neil Cavuto
on Fox News President Bush told us the choice he has made as president.
He has decided To Do: to advance his Social Security reform, to advance his
energy plan, to advance his “ownership” agenda.

Naturally, the president’s critics
(here
and here) are not amused.

Democrats Not Sure About Judge Compromise

Two weeks ago conservatives were mad as hell about the compromise on judicial filibusters and liberals
were smug. Now liberals are not so sure. In the Washington Post liberals are expressing their shock
about Janice Rogers Brown, “one of the most extreme nominees” ever to come before the Senate. In
the debate on Brown’s nomination on the floor of the Senate, according to reporter
Charles Babington:

Democrats recited a litany of Brown’s controversial statements,
including several from a 2000 speech titled "Fifty Ways to Lose Your Freedom."
She said senior citizens "blithely cannibalize their grandchildren because they have a
right to get as much`free’ stuff as the political system will permit them to extract."
Elsewhere, Brown has said: "Where government moves in, community retreats, civil society
disintegrates. . . . When government advances . . . freedom is imperiled, civilization itself [is]
jeopardized."

Gee fellas, what’s the problem? You been in a liberal echo-chamber all these years? Actually, we
can understand the liberal outrage. The quotes from Brown are “gaffes,” true
statements that liberals, like aging drama queens, have forbidden anyone to articulate in their presence.
“Omigod, I can’t believe I just heard that?”

Americans Like Their Religion Straight

It’s an old story. Conservative, strict churches are growing, and liberal, secular churches are
shrinking. According to sociologist
Rodney Stark, it’s always been like this.
But it doesn’t hurt to get a second opinion. So
David Shiflett
has written a book about it:
Exodus: Why Americans are Fleeing Liberal Churches for Conservative Christianity.

People want meaning, purpose, and connection to something bigger than themselves. They get it from
a life and from a faith that makes demands upon them.

What Would President Hillary Be For?

Global content provider
Mark Steyn
takes a look at the prospect of President Hillary in our future, and rates the chances at 50-50.
Senator Clinton is the only Democrat running for president that can afford to ignore the sacraments of
peace and abortion. So she is the only Democratic candidate that can appeal to middle America.

But the question is: what would President Hillary be for? Surely, the Democrats have tested to
destruction the old formula of the rule of the experts and pensions for the people. Tony Blair and
New Labour are busily testing the concept to destruction in Britain: one-size-fits-all education, welfare,
and health care leads to not much of anything except bureaucracy, rationing, targets, schemes, regulators,
and jobs for Labour Party voters.

Could the Hillary Clinton of Hillary Care, of the Children’s Defense Fund, of “reforming”
the government school system of Arkansas ever turn from the cult of the rule of the experts and
help restore an America of self-government? There is a Nixon-Goes-to-China opportunity here, if Senator
Clinton is smart enough to grab it.

The Experts Can't Read

The problem with our glorious empire of experts, where experts pronounce, and we the people genuflect, is this. What if the experts are wrong, and fails to teach about 20 percent of kids to read? What if they have pronounced a one-size-fits-all regime of “whole language” reading for every schoolkid, and it turns out their program is wrong?

Don’t think about it. Just praise the lord that the experts and their political masters have
finally seen the light, as Minette Marrin does. Britain’s Labour Party has finally agreed that “whole language” reading is a disaster and now they are going to change the entire British education system to teach phonics.

But enquiring minds are bound to ask the deeper question here. Aren’t we progressive types supposed to believe in diversity, and hate monoculture? Yes, of course we do, when it comes to fields of monoculture wheat and forests of monoculture Douglas-firs. But we seem to have a blind spot when it comes to humans.

Surely, if it means anything, diversity means no one-size-fits-all programs for our nation’s children. For what if the expert designers of the one-size-fits-all program are wrong?

The trouble is, you are not allowed to tell liberals they are wrong. When liberals hear criticism, they label it hate speech.