Democrats Out Of Ideas

We’ve already looked at the agenda-less Democrats here at Road to the Middle Class, and tut-tutted here and here about the venality of just wanting to control Congress for the power.

We wondered if this could really be so.  Could Democrats really be that cynical?  Yes they could, reports Tony Blankley.   In an interview with the Washington Post’s David Ignatius, Clintonoid and now Congressman Rahm Emanuel said that Democrats would not be pushing any controversial or unpopular measures, like universal health care or Social Security reform in the new Congress.

"The secret for the Democrats, says Emanuel, is to remain the party of reform and change. The country is angry, and it will only get more so as the problems in Iraq deepen... It’s Bush’s war, and as it splinters the structure of GOP power, the Democrats are waiting to pick up the pieces."

Don’t get mad, conservatives; get even.  This is not bad news.  This is good news.  If the Democrats don’t feel that energized about passing important reform legislation, but prefer just to sit there talking about “reform and change” that means they are past their prime.

For sure they will get the presidency when it is  Buggins’ Turn, as the Brits say.  But when they get there Democrats will find that they don’t have a mandate to do anything.  And they will find, as they did after 1992, that if they take a sharp left turn the voters will deal with them just as decisively as they did in 1994.

Honesty is the best policy.  That’s what Mom said. 

Tell you what, Democrats.  Tell us what you stand for. 

Told that the American people didn’t agree with his proposals about tax cuts, Candidate George W. Bush responded that he’d just have to persuade them, and “move” the country.

You could do the same.  Try to persuade us.  It might work.

Michelle Malkin in Baghdad

A few weeks ago conservative columnist and blogger Michelle Malkin took out after the AP for relying on unreliable sources in Iraq.  The upshot was a visit to Baghdad.  Just back from the front, Malkin writes:

I came to Iraq a darkening pessimist about the war, due in large part to my doubts about the compatability of Islam and Western-style democracy, but also as a result of the steady, sensational diet of “grim milestone” and “daily IED count” media coverage that aids the insurgency.

I left Iraq with unexpected hope and resolve.

The question is whether US resolve to “bring security to Iraq, one neighborhood at a time” can bring peace to Iraq short of a real civil war in which the future of the nation is proved by a trial of strength.  Read the peripatetic Spengler as he recommends civil war to the Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas.

[C]ivil war is the sine qua non of nationhood. Permit me to try to sell you on the merits of having a civil war of your very own. Think of a civil war not as a luxury, but as an investment.

Real nations, as opposed to romantic visions of nations, have no room for irredentists and other rejectionists... Having a civil war is de rigeur. All the right people do it. It shows that the prospective nation has the grit to sort out its own problems.

The problem is that a civil war is much better when you can do it yourself with a minimum of interference from outside.  Outside interference (think Thirty Years War, Spanish Civil War) just makes the civil war longer and bloodier.

That’s what is really scary about the Iraq situation.  Everybody is muscling in—the US, the Saudis, the Iranians, the Syrians—when really the Iraqis should be getting on with it themselves.

But thanks to the courageous Michelle Malkin for going to Iraq and learning about that nation with boots on the ground.

Too Hot or Too Cold?

How should Congressional Republicans behave?  As pit-bulls or as lap-dogs?  That’s the hot political story today taken up by Rush Limbaugh. 

According to Christina Bellantoni:

Several Republicans confirmed privately that more than two-thirds of House Republicans are favoring a slow approach, while a minority of members think the attacks on Democrats should come rapid-fire.

Rush Limbaugh isn’t happy.  He was grumbling this morning about 40 more years in the wilderness if the Republicans don’t show a bit of backbone.

But Rush, let’s not put the cart before the horse.  Republicans should, of course they should, oppose the usual Democratic menu of privilege, subsidy, and government control—a welfare state that doesn’t care about welfare.

But until Republicans come up with a new agenda, good ideas that resonate with the American people, they’d be better keeping quiet. 

Anyway, the ugly truth about politics is that the voters get tired of the same old same old.  They are tired of Republicans just like they were in 1992.

But as I remember, it took just two years to upchuck the Democrats after the 1992 election.  The Year of the Woman was followed by the Year of the Angry White Male.  And no wonder.  The New Democrats of Bill Clinton turned out to the the same old San Francisco Democrats that Americans had repeatedly rejected.

Let’s not waste all our political bandwidth on opposition for the sake of opposition.  Let’s develop an agenda of reform so that, when Republicans are returned to power they can boast of a mandate from the voters.

And then implement it.

A Bollywood Marriage -- Made in Heaven?

Let’s analyze the announcement that has all India dancing in the streets, the engagement between Bollywood stars Aishwarya Rai (Bride and Prejudice) and Abhishek Bachchan. I mean, let’s do some cultural analysis. 

First of all, the engagement was announced by the father of the groom, himself a famous Bollywood star.  According to Jeremy Page in Delhi the engagement was announced this way. 

“The children have decided. We are very happy and thought we should go ahead with the engagement ceremony,” Amitabh Bachchan told The Times of India.

Exactly.  You certainly would never have the parent of a Hollywood star making an announcement about the “children.”

Of course, no Bollywood event would be complete without a big production number. The fans knew just what to do.  They set up a big song and dance production number right outside Bachchan’s house.

As news of the engagement spread, hundreds of fans sang and danced through the night outside the house.

But there’s a problem.

Ms Rai is widely reported to be manglik, meaning she was born under a poorly placed Mars that can bring bad luck and even premature death to her husband.

It is interesting that, with all the interest in horoscopes in the West and the song “Age of Aquarius,” you know what with the Moon in the Seventh House and Jupiter aligned with Mars, it would be unthinkable for the US supermarket tabloids to worry about an in auspicious horoscope.

Before getting married, manglik women are traditionally required to go through a symbolic wedding to an idol of the Hindu god Vishnu or to a peepal or banana tree. It is still unclear if Ms Rai has been through such a ritual.

Ah yes, very important that, and very prudent.  In fact, it would probably do Britney Spears a power of good.

The important thing to realize is that Hindu gods are, like Americans, deeply into personal transportation.  Each god has a “vehicle.” 

Vishnu’s vehicle is Garuda, described as “king of birds, half-man and half-bird.”  So that’s all right.  Hollywood stars, of course, go in for private jets, so there’s a clear connection.

[T]hey were then seen visiting a Hindu temple with their parents in November and emerging with marigold garlands around their necks -- usually a sign of engagement.

Indian media also reported that their families had offered prayers on the banks of the River Ganges at the holy city of Varanasi to help to clear up potential conflicts in their horoscopes.

Quite a family affair, very much like the Bollywood movies themselves, which always seem to have a mother in complete charge of the universe and a father who struts around very importantly but ineffectively.

Now back to Prince William and Kate Middleton.  What about their engagement announcement?

When Underclass Pathology Reaches into the Middle Class

The thing about underclass pathologies is: Who Cares?  It’s all so far away.  The closest that ordinary middle-class people get to it is watching the local news on TV or reading about “bad choices” in a magazine article about troubled teens.  But what about when it comes a little too close to home?

In Britain this fall the nation was transfixed by a series of five murders of young drug-addled prostitutes in the middle-class town of Ipswich.  Worse was the news that some of the girls had come from what we like to call “good homes.”

How could it happen, we wonder?

It’s difficult to find out because the poor don’t write books or magazine articles.  It takes an activist, a Jacob Riis and his How the Other Half Lives or a Michael Harrington and The Other America, to bring the lives of the poor to the respectable classes.  And you always wonder about the activists: what’s their game?

But here’s a woman who actually became one of those Ipswich hookers and lived to tell the tale. Her name is Rhea Coombs and her book is My Name is Angel.  The book is being excerpted in The Daily Telegraph.

All I know about my father is that he had a drink problem and that he and my mother split up when I was about one.

Her mother was a bohemian who had fled her dreadful middle-class Fifties parents for the European music scene.  

From the moment I became conscious of my own thoughts, I was aware of a mismatch between my body and my soul. Later as I edged towards adolescence these feelings of “unbelonging” intensified and manifested themselves in prolonged outbreaks of sobbing whenever I was alone.

Of course, her mother

had never been a bad parent but she had dragged me across Europe with her love-and-peace addled friends. She was often absorbed with boyfriends and the combination of being in perpetual motion and getting accustomed to different men had unsettled me.

There’s a thought.

Rhea started out in a Rudolf Steiner school but felt out of place and moved to a “tough comprehensive in inner-city Bristol when I was 12.”  She and her friend Carole smoked cannabis “with an evangelical commitment.”

Then she got a 24-year-old boy-friend and then he wanted her to earn money.  Eventually he put her on the street.

She entered a downward cycle of drink and drugs and abusive relationships and then came the day when her ex-boy-friend took her kids away until she could deal with her crack habit.

Maybe the children of the hippie generation had it coming.  Or maybe our generation lacks the Charles Dickens or the Sinclair Lewis to wake us up from our selfish slumber.

Whatever it is, something out there ain’t right.

UPDATE: Here’s Part Two of Rhea Coombs’s compelling story.

Has Bush Blundered into Victory?

Did the Bush administration blunder into the best policy in the Middle East?  That is the suggestion of Edward N. Luttwak.

The Bush administration launched the Iraq invasion as the centerpiece of an ambitious effort to bring democracy to the Middle East.  Well, that dream is over.  But it seems that it has inadvertently brought about a strategic win, with “divide and rule, the classic formula for imperial power on the cheap.”

What?  The collapse of Saddam Hussein has meant that that the polarity in the Middle East is now between Sunni and Shia, and with the growing power of Shiite Iran the Sunnis are nervous.  And that is bringing them into the arms of the United States.  In Lebanon there is an open US-Sunni alliance, fueled by Saudi money.

But paradoxically the Shias of Iraq also need an alliance with the US—to help them beat off the Sunni insurgency.

On Dec. 4, 2006, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, head of Iraq’s largest political party, went to the White House to plead his case with President Bush... [A]s the chief leader of Iraq’s Arab Shiite population, he has no choice... [The Shiites] need all the help they can get, especially American military training for the Shiite-dominated army and police.

Huh?  Yes, it’s all a bit confusing if all you hear is the mainstream media drumbeat of disaster in Iraq.

Not only that, but al-Hakim is willing to help bring down rival Moqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi militia army.

The Iraq war has indeed brought into existence a New Middle East, in which Arab Sunnis can no longer gleefully disregard American interests because they need help against the looming threat of Shiite supremacy, while in Iraq at the core of the Arab world, the Shia are allied with the U.S. What past imperial statesmen strove to achieve with much cunning and cynicism, the Bush administration has brought about accidentally.

The strategic interest of the United States in the Middle East for the last generation has been to contain the power of militant Iran.  That hasn’t changed.  What has changed is the interest of the non-Iranian parties in the Middle East.  All of a sudden they feel the need to cosy up to the United States.  For now. 

People are Getting Better and Better.

Back in the 1500s there was nothing people liked more than a good old cat-burning.  Now, says psychologist Steven Pinker, “such sadism would be unthinkable today in most of the world.”

Here’s what Stephen M. Kosslyn another Harvard psychologist thinks, as reported by Arnold Kling.

Just as a body builder can do curls to build up biceps and dips on parallel bars to build up triceps, we can design computer-game-like tasks that exercise specific parts of the brain&mdashmental muscles, if you will.

Maybe so.  Things are going to get better and better as our knowledge, our physical wellbeing, and our moral reasoning improves.

But I’ve just been reading Judith Rich Harris’s Nurture Assumption, and what all these people are missing out is Harris’s Big Idea.  Groupness.  We all belong to groups and we think that our group is best.

That’s why university professors all think that the world can be saved with a bit more scholarly research.

Let us take warfare.  In the lasts 500 years here in the West we have made astonishing advances in the technology of war, both on the hardware side and also on the organizational side.  Yet what really has changed?  The chaps in the Middle East have found a new way to wage war that is designed to neutralize the Western advantages in technology and in human organization.  They’ve organized themselves into small, village-sized cells that conduct old-fashioned border wars on the lumbering modern western beast.

Here’s what progress does.  It raises the stakes.