Reading Tea Leaves in Iraq

The big problem for us war-mongers is to know what is really going down in Iraq.  Is Iraq in a civil war?  Is the conflict there a religious war of Sunni vs. Shia?  Is all the violence being orchestrated by Iran? Is everything lost?  Or is everyone posturing for the cameras, cynically manipulated images of violence as the cheapest way to influence US policy?

First of all, writes Iranian Amir Taheri, we should understand that the war is not simply a “sectarian” war.  A sectarian war was what they had in Yugoslavia. And he was there.

You could be sure that almost all Serbs, from the taxi driver that took you from the airport to the hotel to the nation’s leading poet, would be a sectarian - hating the Croats and the Muslims with passion.
...
Nothing of the sort exists in Iraq today. The deadly disease of sectarianism has not contaminated the majority of Iraqis. Shiites and Sunnis both organize on the basis of political affiliations and interests, rather than sectarian loyalties.

So what is going down in Iraq?

What is happening in Iraq, however, is neither a civil nor a sectarian war (although elements of both exist within the broader context). This war is a political one - between those who wish Iraq to succeed as a new democracy and those who want it to fail.

The folks who want Iraq to fail include Saddamites, “death squads financed by Tehran,” not to mention the al-Qaeda foreigners.

The question for the United States is this: What exactly does victory in Iraq mean?

Maybe it is simply this.  Defeat the Saddamites.  Defeat the Iranian death squads.  And defeat the foreign terrorists of al-Qaeda.

New Hope for School Choice

After the reupdiation of the Republican Party in November, you might be forgiven for thinking that all is lost.  But at least where school choice is concerned there are grounds for hope, according to George Will.

The public school lobby, which apparently has little confidence in its product, lives in fear of competition -- the fear that if parents’ choices are expanded, there will be a flight from public schools. But the tide is turning[.]

Of course, the public school lobby is fighting all of this.  And usually, it is fighting again and again as in Arizona where the usual suspects are gearing up for a third challenge to school choice in that state.

In Arizona, some amazingly persistent and mostly liberal people are demonstrating the tenacity with which some interests fight to prevent parents of modest means from having education choices like those available to most Americans.

But maybe, just maybe, the train has left the station. Politicians, eastern politicians are starting to push for school choice.

• Newark’s mayor, Cory Booker, a member of the board of the national Alliance for School Choice, proposes a scholarship program similar to Arizona’s...
• New York’s new Democratic governor, Eliot L. Spitzer, proposes lifting the cap that restricts the state to a mere 100 charter schools...
• Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg... [of] New York City... is dividing large schools into smaller ones, emancipating many principals to be educational entrepreneurs under a system that holds them accountable for cognitive results.

Well, it can’t come too soon. Too many millions of children have already been sacrificed on the altar of teacher tenure and teacher pensions.

Because they just don’t care about kids.

A Revolution in Black Politics

OK, let’s get serious, suggests Kay S. Hymowitz in a major article in City Journal.

What if someone gave a convention called “Black America Today” and Barack Obama, Harold Ford, Cory Booker, Bill Cosby, and Juan Williams starred as the marquee names?

 Er... What about Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and the stalwarts of the Congressional Black Caucus?

That’s just the point.  There’s a new generation coming up in black politics, one that doesn’t live by the narrative of the civil rights movement.

And it’s not just in black politics, but in the economy generally.  Rising black professionals and businesspeople just don’t see everything through the lens of racial oppression.

It’s a huge article, so make some time and read the whole thing. The money graf?

For a younger generation of blacks, the symbolic, I-marched-with-Martin politics, not to mention the Jackson-style cronyism that it often degenerated into, doesn’t cut it... Instead of rights activists and ministers, many of these newcomers are lawyers or businessmen. Even though a few grew up poor, they’ve all spent their formative years swimming in the mainstream, including major universities, corporations, and law firms, and they are now solidly middle class.

Here’s how Vanderbilt political science professor Carol Swain (Black Faces, Black Interests: The Representation of African Americans in Congress) puts it. 

[The new generation] had white friends; they’ve had white girlfriends. They may still be frustrated by racism at times, but they’re functioning fine in the world they’re living in.

Using the developmental psychology of Clare Graves, we would say here at Road to the Middle Class that many blacks have left the world of red victimhood and power obsession.  Now they are blue purposives and orange achievers.  That makes a difference.

It's a Conservative not a Republican Problem

A lot of conservatives have been blaming the feckless Republican Congress for the loss last November, writes Charles R. Kesler.  For them the election defeat was “a rejection of a party that had strayed too far from the conservative path.” 

Not so fast, says Kesler.  If only it were true that all Republicans needed to do was to swing in line with conservative ideas and reap a gratifying majority!  On the contrary, conservative ideas since the end of the Cold War have been a mish-mash.

Upward floated the balloons of civil society conservatism... "third wave" conservatism (technology to the rescue), and national greatness conservatism (McCain was an early enthusiast)... Libertarianism, emboldened by socialism’s pell-mell retreat, enjoyed its moment, too, though less than one might have expected.

Meanwhile the twenty-year Reagan boom has allowed the government to offer tax cuts and spending increases at the same time.  There is no automatic conservative majority today.  And President Bush’s ad-hoc adventure in Iraq does not exactly inspire confidence in the heartland.

It’s time for conservatives to admit the need to rethink and clarify their own precepts. To be sure, there are verities to which the wise and good may always repair, and conservatism is distinguished by its reverence for them. But these must be relearned in every generation, restated in the idiom of life, and applied to new circumstances. The challenge is as exhilarating as it is serious. Far from being a cause for despair, conservatism’s perplexities may contribute to making this the most illuminating political season in 30 years.

Let us call the era just past the Reagan Era.  It was a glorious summer and glorious things were done for America and for the world.  Now it’s time to retreat to winter quarters, to think and to plan.

Don’t worry.  The problems are still going to be there 5 years, 10 years from now.  That’s because our liberal friends only know how to spend and elect, privilege and subsidize.  Every now and again they run out of money.  That’s when the American people call for conservatives to come in and sort things out.

Here Comes The Eco-industrial Complex

You have to feel for the climate change enthusiasts. If George W. Bush can spend $100 billion a year on his war, why shouldn’t they have some cash to subsidize vital carbon reduction programs, like building wind farms and carbon-neutral switchgrass processing plants?

And if Bush can do it with taxpayers’ money, why not the venture socialists?

Yes, Virginia. There are venture capitalists and there are venture socialists. And you know the difference.

Right now the venture socialists—ok, environmentalists—are busily co-opting Big Business into an eco-industrial complex, according to Stephen Milloy. Here’s how it works.

Since the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, it has been increasingly difficult for the Left to advance its social agenda through the public political process. This has certainly been true on environmental issues, in general, and global warming, in particular.

So the lefties have learned to use other methods to advance their agenda. One method is by pressure campaigns against big corporations. And it works. Now that General Electric Co. has teamed up with environmental activists to “champion global-warming regulation” it has found it much easier to do its PCB cleanup in the Hudson River.

Just this week the so-called U.S. Climate Action Partnership (USCAP) announced its presence and called for "the federal government to quickly enact strong national legislation to require significant reductions of greenhouse gas emissions." USCAP members include: Alcoa, BP America , Caterpillar Inc., Duke Energy, DuPont, Environmental Defense, FPL Group, General Electric, Lehman Brothers, Natural Resources Defense Council, Pew Center on Global Climate Change, PG&E Corp., PNM Resources, World Resources Institute.

As usual, the capitalists are selling us out. They don’t care. Business is business. After all, they won’t be spending their money.

French Candidate Holds Rally in London

Imagine, if you can, the next Republican candidate for the presidency campaigning in Toronto.

That is about what French presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy just did. He held a campaign rally in Billingsgate fish market in London, England.

Why on earth would he do that? Well, how about 300,000 French people living and working in London?

Anyway, the French expats loved it. According to Anthony Browne

Police struggled to control the crowd of hundreds of French citizens living in Britain as they attempted to see the dynamic Interior Minister, who is favourite to succeed President Chirac.

That was not all.  Read this:

Addressing 2,000 cheering expatriates at the old Billingsgate fish market, Mr Sarkozy spelt out his vision of a modern France no longer trapped in the past. The audience of students and business people shouted “Sarko!”, waved the Tricolour, and sang La Marseillaise as video screens declared: “Together, everything is possible.” They then broke out into Happy Birthday — in English — in tribute to the centre-right candidate’s 52nd birthday on Sunday.

Yes, the French in London are not the French we love to hate.  We took a look at them a while back on Road to the Middle Class. Nice chaps.

The Party of Resentment

As you may know by now, Hillary Clinton “really resents” that Bush’s War may not be over by January 2009, the month of her inaugural.

Columnist and neo-con son John Podhoretz duly took note.

It’s rare to hear questions about difficult policies discussed in terms of personal resentments, but perhaps this is one of the areas where Hillary Clinton will blaze a new presidential trail.

He should be careful.  Hillary Clinton may not be the smartest woman in the world, but she has certainly used her womanhood to good effect in her political career, most notably when Senate candidate Rick Lazio made the fatal mistake of invading her “personal space” during a campaign debate.

Everyone understands that Hillary Clinton is probably going to win the presidential election in 2008 because she will bring millions of non-voting single women to the polls.

And what do you suppose is something that single women really connect with?  You got it.  Resentment.  That Hillary.  She is some smart woman.

And it is not just the non-voting single woman that is into resentment.  In a review of the monstrous Duke Rape case, Thomas Sowell chides his fellow African Americans.

The larger tragedy is what this case revealed about the degeneration of our times and the hollowness of so many people in "responsible" positions in the media, in academia, and among those blacks so consumed by racial resentments and thirst for revenge that they are prepared to lash out at individuals who have done nothing to them and are guilty of no crime against anybody.

Yes. Resentment.  “Anger felt as a result of a real or imagined wrong done.”  Our liberal friends have a more sophisticated word.  “Passive-aggressive.” That’s what they call it.

Now we are getting somewhere.  Isn’t it really the case that the entire Democratic Party is the party of resentment?  Isn’t the primary emotion of your average bump-on-a-log American nothing more than resentment? 

Here’s how it works. Don’t ever ask your average bump-on-a-log Democrat to take responsibility for anything.  They got their rights, after all.  But don’t, whatever you do, ever forget to send that check every month.  Otherwise they might resent it.  But they certainly won’t forget to vote for a Democrat.

Here’s another word definition.  Democratic politician.  One who knows how to stir up resentment among the voters.