Gas-Guzzling Gore

Who can fail to be heartened by the news that Al Gore’s house is a real energy hog. The chaps at the Tennessee Center for Policy Research went through Gore’s electric utility bills and they found that Gore is burning up more than 20 times the average household in his posh Tennessee house.

The average household in America consumes 10,656 kilowatt-hours (kWh) per year, according to the Department of Energy. In 2006, Gore devoured nearly 221,000 kWh&mdashmore than 20 times the national average.

What with natural gas for the house and the pool and the guest house,

In total, Gore paid nearly $30,000 in combined electricity and natural gas bills for his Nashville estate in 2006.

But what about President Bush?  He’s a Texan, after all, and a friend of the oil companies.  What about his energy usage?

Here’s what free-lance reporter Rob Sullivan found at Bush’s Crawford, Texas, ranch. It makes him seem like a tree hugger.

• Bush has a heat pump with the heat exchanger deep in the ground—the most efficient way to economize on energy for home heating and cooling.
• “A 25,000-gallon underground cistern collects rainwater gathered from roof runs; wastewater from sinks, toilets and showers goes into underground purifying tanks and is also funneled into the cistern.”
• “There’s a great grove of oak trees to the west that protects [the house] from the late afternoon sun.”

How could this be, Sullivan fumes, when Bush thinks it’s ok to put arsenic in drinking water?  And anyway, how dare he have a 4,000 sq ft house when there are single mothers and Latino immigrants who have to make do with far less.

But isn’t that better than Al Gore, with an energy bill bigger than the salary of a single mother working full time at $15 per hour?  And that’s just on his house.  Forget the energy bill for his private jet travel.

Europe's 200 Year Civil War

It’s no particular secret that the last 200 years has seen a struggle between religious believers and secularists.  On the one side was Voltaire and his cry to erase the infamies of the Church.  And on the other side were the religious who saw the secular world view as “an insurrection against God,” according to  Larry Siedentop.

Over the past hundred years the religious camp has come, by and large, to accept civil liberty and religious pluralism. The anticlericals have -- with the exception of hardline Marxists and writers such as Richard Dawkins -- given up on the attempt to extirpate religious belief.

In fact, Siedentop argues, Christianity and secularism need each other, because there is a “moral logic that joins Christianity and civil liberty.”  Muslims understand that when they talk of “Christian secularism.”  Another way of expressing the idea is the separation of church and state.

And that’s just as well, Siedentop writes, because the European idea is facing a challenge from Islam and cannot afford to be divided.

The question is: Who will make the first move of reconciliation between secular and godly?  The fact is that writers like Richard Dawkins are not an exception.  They represent a large community of secularist believers who think they are doing “humanity’s” work by stamping out religion in the public square.  Because otherwise the fundamentalists might end abortion and persecute homosexuals.

In their dreams.

There is a fundamental lie at the center of the fuss about “theocracy.”  There is no chance, right now, of any political party in the United States or elsewhere in Europe turning into a theocracy and burning abortionists at the stake.  For one thing, it’s in the constitution.  No establishment of religion.  For another, today’s religious believers are private people who don’t understand how to use political power, at least not in the way that secularists do.

We conservatives would be delighted to negotiate a truce with our secular friends.  But we recognize the enormity of the challenge.

What can you do about people who have been raised by their secular parents and educated in a thousand government schools and universities to hate religion?

Call Me a "Civil Societist"

Now that the conservative light is dimming at the end of the Reagan-Bush era, it is time to get back to basics. 

Unlike the coach who bellowed: Let’s get back to basics—this is a football, our basic need is: What do we believe in.  And what we call ourselves.

Are we conservatives?  Libertarians?  Conservative libertarians? Libertarian conservatives?  Names matter.

Arnold Kling has decided what to do. 

Call me a Civil Societarian. I strongly support the institutions of civil society. These include families, corporations, religious groups, private schools, charities, trade associations, and the other peaceful, voluntary collective organizations that promote our individual and collective well-being.

Me too.  But wait.  We are not done yet.

As the structuralists say, don’t forget difference and opposition.  We are opposed to compulsion, political hegemony, government education, government welfare, government healthcare, government subsidies, government privileges, government tenure, and just about everything except a government of laws that defends us against enemies foreign and domestic.

And we also think this.  It is a miracle, a stunning discovery of cosmic proportions, that we should have discovered that in civil society—voluntary cooperation beyond the boundaries of blood kinship—we can build a Great Society, a voluntary collective of all together with all.  And it works.

Not only does it work, but it works better than anything else.

We propose our vision of the Civil Society and its voluntary collective in proud opposition to the idea of the compulsory collective, the mean and cramped vision of our liberal and progressive friends.

But I’m sorry, “Civil Societarian” doesn’t cut it.  We need something shorter: the shorter the better.  What endings are available?  There is conservat-ive, liber-al, social-ist, patri-ot, fight-er, for a start.

I think that the -ist ending is best.  It is modern, as in scient-ist, and is shorter than the three syllables of -ar-i-an.

So let us call ourselves  “Civil Societists.” 

Then liberals can call us neo-socs. (They will, you know.)

Advice to Euros Visiting the US

What should eager young visitors or sojourners in the US do to avoid deal-destroying faux pas? The Global Perspective offers some tips and tricks.  Most are unexceptional, such as: Don’t assume that your understated Euro demeanor will go over in the US.  Good point.  In the US you are expected to be outgoing and open.

But really.  when it comes to politics what kind of advice is this?

In fact, politics is a very good conversation starter in America, so don’t be afraid to ask someone who they are going to vote for at the next election right off the bat.

The best thing to do with politics is to stay out of it.  US politics is very divided at present, and you have to be an expert to avoid stepping on land-mines.  Europeans have a hugely distorted view of US politics, probably because it comes through the double filter of the US MSM and the European lefty media. As a result most Europeans sound terminally left-wing when they venture into political discussion in the US. Best stay out of it and NO LECTURES!

There are lots of comments from readers, many of which are better than the original post.  They advise that the US is a huge and diverse country, and that you should keep out of politics altogether.

After all, would Americans go to a European country and presume to tell them anything about their politics?

Assuming, of course that they weren’t spoiling for a fight...

Tax pledge dodge thrall - Commentary - The Washington Times, America's Newspaper

Here’s a no-brainer, brought to you by opinion columnist Donald Lambro.

The winner of the Republican presidential nomination will probably be the candidate who most embodies the core principles and beliefs of Ronald Reagan.

 No kidding!  You mean like lowering tax rates and facing up to the nation’s enemies foreign and domestic?

It turns out that the Republican presidential candidates are a bit slow at signing up for Ronald Reagan’s shining agenda.  They have, at least, agreed to make President Bush’s tax rate cuts permanent.

But the front-runners for their party’s nod — Arizona Sen. John McCain and former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani — have sent mixed signals on the centerpiece of Reagan’s domestic agenda: tax-rate cuts to achieve maximum economic growth. While both have said President Bush’s across-the-board income tax cuts should be made permanent before expiring in 2010, neither has signed the pledge signed by every Republican presidential nominee since 1988 promising not to raise the tax rates.

What planet are they on?  The record of John McCain is especially troubling. 

[He] was one of only two Republican senators who voted against the Bush tax cuts in 2001 and who voted against accelerating them in 2003. He abruptly flip-flopped last year, voting to extend some of the tax cuts, when he began actively running for president.

Here’s what he said about the tax rate cuts.

I cannot in good conscience support a tax cut in which so many of the benefits go to the most fortunate among us at the expense of middle-class Americans who need tax relief.

Oh really?  But the president’s tax cuts were designed to reduce the taxes of middle-class Americans by a bigger percentage than the taxes of wealthier Americans.  And the result of the president’s tax cuts is that the top 50 percent of income taxpayers pay 96 percent of all income taxes.

How much is enough, Senator McCain?

If Republicans won’t cut taxes, then who will?

Sexualizing Little Girls

Although any rational observer would note that there are a lot of overweight young girls out there, the sexualizing of little girls means that girls as young a 6 or 7 are experiencing eating disorders.

Mona Charen took a look at a Washington Post article on early sexualization and found that things were worse than she thought. 

"When do little girls start wanting to look good for others?" asks the Post, and quotes a sex educator as guessing that whereas it once began at 6 or 7, it now gets started as early as 4.

 Of course, when it is difficult to get anything but “little tart” clothes for girls of any age, then you know that there’s a problem.

You can see why there’s a problem.  On the one hand, big business can sell more clothes if little girls are worried about their appearance.  On the other hand, Hollywood can sell more commercials with their rude, crude output.

Conservatives draw the line at regulating the free enterprise of the fashion industry, and liberals draw the line at censoring the creativity of filmmakers and TV producers. 

But can’t liberals and conservatives get together on this one, Charen asks?

Perhaps we can now arrange a truce in the name of our daughters. Liberals and conservatives can unite to clean up TV, the music industry and popular culture generally. Liberals can do so believing they are thrashing big business, and conservatives can take satisfaction in confirming family values. Truce, anyone?

But maybe it is more important to posture about the other side than to get anything done.

Criticizing Hillary: Deja Vu All Over Again

Remember the good old days of the 1990s?  When anyone that criticized President Clinton was immediately shamed as a Clinton Hater?

Those days are back, according to Dick Morris and Eileen McGann.  And it is not just opponents of the future president who are forbidden to criticize her. 

Not even supporters of Hillary’s opponents are allowed to disparage her. If they do, the wrath of Hillary surfaces and it is not a pretty sight.
The latest sinner is Hollywood superstar David Geffen. Geffen used to be an avid supporter of the Clintons — he raised over $18 million for them in the past. But no more. Now the Dreamworld founder is backing Obama — and he’s not afraid to say so.

Said Geffen to Maureen Dowd:

I don’t think that another incredibly polarizing figure, no matter how smart she is and no matter how ambitious she is -- and God knows, is there anybody more ambitious than Hillary Clinton? -- can bring the country together.

Sounds fair, don’t you think?  I mean, this is a presidential campaign.  Powerful people get to brief media bigfeet and use them to communicate their rather superficial notions to the world.

But of course the Clinton War Room is outraged.  Hillary sent out Howard Wolfson, and through him

Hillary demanded that Obama dump Geffen and return the $1.3 million that he raised for Obama because of Geffen’s negative comments about the frontrunner and her husband.

Er, what’s that?  You are not allowed to contribute money to Barack Obama and then voice your deeply felt misgivings about the sainted Hillary Clinton?  This is unethical, or something?

Presumably Hillary Clinton’s spokesman is not saying that contibuting and opining is illegal.  And least, not yet.

Well, if this is how the Clinton campaign is operating in the innocent days a year before the primaries, imagine what it is going to be like in the month or two running up to the elections!

But then it it doesn’t take any imagining.  It all sounds so familiar.  We’ve been here before.