The president’s determination to transform the US into a social democracy, complete with a centrally run healthcare programme and a redistributive tax system, has collided rather magnificently with America’s history as a nation of displaced people who were prepared to risk their futures on a bid to be free from the power of the state.

Americans who have risen from poverty to become qualified tradesmen or entrepreneurs generally believe that they have a right to put what wealth they produce back into their own businesses, rather than trusting governments to spread it around among those judged to be deserving.

What is more startling is the growth in America of precisely the sort of political alignment which we have known for many years in Britain: an electoral alliance of the educated, self-consciously (or self-deceivingly, depending on your point of view) “enlightened” class with the poor and deprived.

A little later I ran across the second piece, which seemed almost purposely written to confirm Daley’s take on contemporary America.  Written, appropriately enough, for CNN (you remember, the news organization Germany’s Spiegel Magazine recently described as “non-partisan“) by Julian Zelizer, a professor of history at Princeton and a quintessential member of the elite Daley was writing about, it was entitled, “Why Obama’s poll numbers have sunk.”  Zelizer’s take:

How should we understand the fate of a president and a party who have been relatively successful at passing their agenda, yet don’t seem to be enjoying an electoral bounce?

With the unemployment rate over 9 percent, many Americans are unhappy and scared. But there is more to it than that.

The first factor has to do with President Obama’s decision to focus on controversial issues that he felt were important to the nation, even if they were not the most beneficial issues for his party. In other words, Obama selected issues such as health care and financial regulation that were sure to stimulate conservative opposition and cause concern among moderates.

At the same time, the president is a pragmatic politician who has been willing to cut deals to survive a notoriously difficult legislative process. In making those compromises, he has often angered many of his supporters on the left.

…citizens are deeply cynical. Given the large donations that private interest groups make to candidates, including the health care industry and Wall Street executives, it is naturally hard to believe that Washington would ever really pass government reform.

And so on.  In other words, the factors that Englishwoman Daley has apparently had no difficulty understanding have gone completely over the Princeton professor’s head.  He can come up with all kinds of good sounding reasons for Obama’s drop in the polls, but the one reason that is energizing the Tea Party movement and is ubiquitous above all others on every conservative and libertarian blog, not to mention talk radio and Foxnews, namely, unease at the cancerous growth of the nanny state and the intrusion of state power in the lives of average citizens, has gone completely over his head.  It’s as if the citizens of the United States could not possibly fear the growth of big government itself.  In the good professor’s alternate universe, the possibility that any of them might object to the prospect of serving as dutiful milk cows,  exploited by the state to support programs that benefit other people, whether that prospect is real or not, could not possibly even occur to them.  Based on his article, the thought has never even entered his mind.  Mind you, we’re not discussing whether the real motivations of Obama’s opposition are real or imaginary, rational or the product of some strange hysteria whipped up by Rush Limbaugh.  We’re talking about the very existence of that concern.

If members of the elites Ms. Daley refers to have not merely discounted popular unease at the growth of big government as a problem in itself, but have so insulated themselves from reality that they honestly believe that unease doesn’t even bear mention as a reason for Obama’s drop in the polls, to say they are out of touch is an understatement.  A large and growing number of the citizens in this country fear their future role will be as tax slaves to an alien state power that will milk them to support programs whose chances of ever providing them with benefits in any way commensurate with the resources they will be forced to hand over are vanishingly small.   The question about whether they are right or wrong in that surmise is not the point.  The point is that elites who pride themselves on their infallibility actually seem unaware that such concerns even exist.  The “best and the brightest” among us are, once again, suffering a remarkable disconnect with reality.  It wouldn’t be the first time.

Those of you with long memories will recall that George McGovern nominated Missouri Senator Thomas Eagleton as his running mate after clinching the Democratic nomination for President in 1972.  When it was discovered that Eagleton had received medical treatment  and was under medication for a mental health problem, McGovern threw him under the bus, replacing him with Kennedy in-law Sargent Schriver.  Of course, the “similarities” with Palin immediately occurred to mainstream media journalists.  For them, the historical parallel was ”obvious,” and they immediately got in the tiresome habit if asking anyone they could find to interview if they thought Palin had been properly “vetted,” as if the whole world must believe the same fairy tale.   They were cocksure McCain would have to abandon her, and that with alacrity.  For example, from Joshua Green of the Atlantic:

Here in St. Paul, talk of Palin has dominated the Republican convention—even more so than cable news—and by Monday night discussion among Republican operatives and reporters had turned to whether Palin would survive or become the first running mate since Thomas Eagleton in 1972 to leave a major-party ticket.

The more circumspect CNN played the familiar journalistic game of using an incendiary headline, but hedging its bets in the body of the article itself.  The headline of an item that appeared on September 3, 2008:

Betting on a Palin withdrawal

The more subliminal Eagleton reference in the body of the article:

Placing a Palin withdrawal at even 12% seems bullish; no presidential candidate has withdrawn his VP selection since Thomas Eagleton left Democratic candidate George McGovern’s ticket in 1972.

The Grey Lady was less subtle.  It’s headline, by op-ed guy Gary Wills:

McCain’s McGovern Moment

and his sage advice, after being “shocked, shocked,” to learn that Palin was ”an initial supporter of the so-called bridge to nowhere; an appointer of a man who had been officially reprimanded for sexual harassment as the public safety commissioner in Alaska; a mother of an unwed and pregnant 17-year-old; and other things being ferreted out by the minute.”

Perhaps Senator McGovern should not have deserted Tom Eagleton. Perhaps Senator McCain should stick by Governor Palin. But if he does soldier on with her by his side for a while, will he end up having to call another midget convention like the one that had to be cobbled together to nominate Sargent Shriver? That is hardly in his best interests.

Perhaps Governor Palin, realizing that and trying to minimize her own humiliation in coming days, should withdraw before she is nominated and let Senator McCain turn again to one of his more experienced options. We should remember that Senator Eagleton went on to serve honorably after his withdrawal, both during his time in the Senate and in charitable work after he retired from public office. He died last year, respected and beloved.

Gives you the warm fuzzies, doesn’t it?  Well, the Eagleton meme is no more, the MSM’s curiosity about whether Palin was properly “vetted” seems to have evaporated, and the former governor’s political stock seems to be doing just fine at the moment.  Still, it’s interesting to recall the fantasy worlds journalists occasionally create for themselves when they take themselves too seriously.

Question: Has anyone actually read the Rolling Stone article?
Answer: Apparently not

The article has very few direct quotes from McChrystal, and almost none that could be termed criticisms. There are a lot of “flavor” quotes, such as this:

“I’d rather have my ass kicked by a roomful of people than go out to this dinner,” McChrystal says.

He pauses a beat.

“Unfortunately,” he adds, “no one in this room could do it.”

But when it comes to actual criticisms of Obama or the administration, there is almost nothing attributed to McChrystal.

…and so on. Apparently Obama didn’t read the article in Rolling Stone either.  Why should he?   Things like this distract people’s attention from all that oil in the Gulf.

He wanted to do everything completely differently from George W. Bush: Barack Obama promised transparency in dealing with government information. In fact, he persecutes insiders who blab about embarrassing incidents far more severely than his predecessor. The arrest in the Wikileaks Scandal is only the most well known example.

and includes such bits as:

• The dramatic case shows how quickly a moral pitfall can become a judicial pitfall.  Beyond that, it illustrates a phenomenon that rights activists in the U.S. have been viewing with unease for some time – the increasingly aggressive action Washington has been taking against “whistle blowers,” or government insiders who reveal malfeasance and state scandals.
• Liberals and leftists in the US are particularly enraged at the fact that, during the 2008 election campaign, it was just in this area that President Barack Obama promised a clean break with the politics of his predecessor, George W. Bush.  M.’s arrest confirms an “increasingly poisonous trend,” writes Jesselyn Radack of the activist group, Government Accountability Project (GAP):  “Bush bullied whistle blowers mercilessly, but Obama sets the law on them and puts them in prison,”  Obama is “much harder than Bush.”
• One of the most prominent Obama critics in this case is Daniel Ellsberg, perhaps the ultimate whistle blower.  Ellsberg passed the “Pentagon Papers” to the press in 1971 – internal memos that revealed that the government had already concluded the Vietnam War was a lost cause.  Ellsberg suffered persecution for years as a result.
• “Obama is continuing the worst of the Bush Administration,” said Ellsberg in an interview with Spiegel Online about the persecution of whistle blowers.  “This continuing assault on citizen’s rights is inexcusable.”  Obama has “made a 180 degree turn.”

…and so on and so on.  I think we can safely say the honeymoon is over.

In keeping with these truisms, White House counter-terrorism advisor John Brennan has done Moslem terrorists the honor of redefining the word “jihad.”  In the process of explaining the “real” nature of their religion to them, he recently enlightened them with the knowledge that all those hours they spent in the Madrassa memorizing the Koran were in vain. Thanks to careful reading of the New York Times, he is now able to inform them that their understanding of “jihad” is flawed. When they blew all those people up, they were the victims of a terrible imposture. Bringing his profound theological expertise to bear, he sets them straight:

Nor do we describe our enemy as ‘jihadists’ or ‘Islamists’ because jihad is a holy struggle, a legitimate tenet of Islam, meaning to purify oneself or one’s community, and there is nothing holy or legitimate or Islamic about murdering innocent men, women and children.

Thus spake Imam Brennan.  In order to fact check the presidential advisor and newly minted Islamic scholar, I consulted Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, circa 1968.  It is one of those wonderful old massive dictionaries that used to be mounted on lecterns in the better libraries, and was published by the great ancient ones long before the dawn of the era of political correctness.  It defines ”jihad” as follows:

1) A holy war waged on behalf of Islam as a religious duty. 2) A bitter strife or crusade undertaken in the spirit of a holy war.

Note the guileless use of the now forbidden term, “crusade.”  I thought that was particularly charming.  It is not recorded that anyone at the time, Moslem or otherwise, objected to the above definitions.

As his hyperbolic title implies, Navarrette shares the pervasive heartburn on the left over the Arizona immigration law.  In his words,

(Arizona Governor Jan) Brewer just signed SB 1070, a disgraceful anti-immigration and pro-racial-profiling law, to give local and state cops throughout the state the chance to suit up and play border patrol agent. Why shouldn’t she get the chance to suit up and play general?”

In accordance with established precedent, he never bothers to actually quote the sections of the law he finds “anti-immigration” and “pro-racial-profiling.”  There’s good reason for that.  There aren’t any.  In fact, the law specifically prohibits racial profiling.  For example, according to Section 2B,

A law enforcement official or agency of this state or a county, city, town or other political subdivision of this state may not consider race, color, or national origin in implementing the requirements of this subsection except to the extent permitted by the United States or Arizona Constitution.

and similar wording appears in Sections 3C and 5D.  One could, of course, claim that the “real” intent of the law is to condone racial profiling in spite of its repeated and explicit rejection thereof if it were impossible for law enforcement officers to reasonably form the suspicion that someone was in the country illegally for any other reason.  However, that claim is nonsense, based as it is on the supposition that nothing in the dress, manner, or behavior of an individual could possibly lead an experienced law enforcement officer to suspect such a thing.

In fact, the idea that SB1070 condones racial profiling is so absurd that no one who has actually read the short, ten page law could rationally make such a claim.  I suspect that’s the reason for the now familiar claim we’ve heard from the likes of Eric Holder and Janet Napolitano that they haven’t actually read the bill.  It gives them an out.

In fact, the Arizona law is pretty lame stuff, and it’s hard to imagine what all the fuss is about unless one realizes that ones opinion concerning it happens to be a litmus test that distinguishes those who live in the ideological box on the left from those who live in the ideological box on the right in this country.  In other words, its something like the Three Chapters controversy, which raised furious passions in the days of the Emperor Justinian, even though no one outside of a seminary could distinguish what it was the two sides were actually fighting about today, or the controversy over whether Communion in both kinds was permissible or not, a question over which a long series of wars were fought, even though not one person in a thousand could explain the difference between the two sides today.  It serves as a similar red flag in our own day, inflaming the passions of the partisans of the two sides, although it is otherwise unlikely to have a significant effect on the inhabitants of Arizona, whether there legally or not.  Hence Mr. Navarrette’s furious pronunciamiento against the “rogue state.”

Once he has put the oppressive tyrants of Arizona in their place with sufficient contempt, Navarrette regales us with accounts of all the wonderful things the Administration is doing to prevent illegal immigration.  For example,

So I can tell you what the border patrol agents on the ground would tell you: The U.S.-Mexico border has never been more fortified. There are now more than 20,000 border patrol agents on the federal payroll. That’s more agents than any other federal enforcement agency, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Those agents apprehend people and deport them at a feverish clip. In fact, it was recently announced that the Obama administration deported more people last year than the Bush administration during its final year in office.

Of course, what all these wonderful and praiseworthy efforts have in common is that they are completely ineffective.  Those who are deported “at a feverish clip” merely suffer the inconvenience of having to re-cross the border, taking better care not to get caught the second time around.  Navarrette continues,

If the federal government does take border enforcement seriously, critics might ask: Why are there still people trying to enter the United States illegally? Simple. We can dig a moat, deploy an army, build walls or call in an airstrike, but desperate people will always find a way to go around, under or over any impediment in their path to a better life.

In fact, history provides ample proof of the fact that moats, walls, and airstrikes are not necessary to stop the illegal crossing of borders.  What is required is the political will to stop it, and that will is lacking.  It is cold comfort that the Republicans also lacked that will.  Why compare failures?  Navarrette aims another slap at the Republicans in his closing paragraph:

There’s only one of those (magic bullets for stopping illegal immigration). It involves fining, arresting and prosecuting the employers of illegal immigrants, including people who are, this election year, streaming into fundraisers for McCain, Brewer and other tough-talking Republicans vowing to solve a problem that many of their backers helped create.

I’m on board with that, but it’s all one, really.  We’re only arguing about how to shut the barn door now that the horses have already escaped.  The chances are slim that we’ll even bother.  After all, Navarrette is right about the Republicans.  They’re all talk.  They had eight years to do something about illegal immigration during the Bush administration and accomplished nothing.  As long as the people who keep their campaign coffers full continue to require cheap labor, we can safely assume they will continue to accomplish nothing if they regain power, all their rhetoric to the contrary notwithstanding.  There’s nothing for it, really, but to grin and bear it.

I’m a Christian. We go to the Presbyterian Church. My wife’s a Deacon there and we’ve gone there ever since we came to town. I see that Christianity and values is the basis of our society. . . . 98% of us won’t murder people, won’t steal, won’t break the law and it helps a society to have that religious underpinning. You still need to have the laws but I think it helps to have a people who believe in law and order and who have a moral compass or a moral basis for their day to day life.

As an atheist, who must therefore, by implication, be an immoral murderer, thief, and subverter of law and order, I can only suggest that Mr. Paul consider how well the “Christian nation” thing has worked out for us in the past. The Albigensians were mercilessly annihilated by the leaders of Christian nations at the behest of the leader of the world’s Christians at the time, Pope Innocent III. They carried out this act of law and order because they were Christians. The Hussites were attacked and slaughtered by the leaders of Christian nations at the behest of the leader of the world’s Christians at the time, Pope Martin V, who called on

all the kings, princes, dukes, barons, knights, states, and commonwealths of Christendom, adjured them, by “the wounds of Christ,” to unite their arms and exterminate that “sacrilegious and accursed nation.

Exterminate they did, and countless thousands were killed in the many years of warfare between Christian nations that followed.  Those who carried out these acts of law and order did so because they were Christians.  In France, tens of thousands of Huguenots were murdered on St. Bartholomew’s Day in a Christian nation at the behest of Christian rulers by people who acted on behalf of Christianity. They carried out this act of law and order because they were Christians.  Eight civil wars were fought between the Christian Huguenots and the Christian Catholics in Christian France.  Tens of thousands died in these acts of law and order, fought by Christians to vindicate Christian principles.  Eventually, hundreds of thousands of Huguenots were forced to flee the country after being subjected to countless acts of rape, pillage, and murder, carried out by Christians to vindicate Christian principles at the behest of a Christian king.  Very few of them remained in France after law and order had been restored in this way. 

The list goes on and on.  I would be interested in hearing how the “libertarian” Paul would go about the task of creating a Christian utopia, with all the blessings of law and order set forth above.  Normally, to create such utopias, it is necessary to use state power.  I would also be interested in hearing how Paul would insure equality before the law and equal rights for all citizens, regardless of their religious beliefs, in a country ruled by people who, like him, believe that those who are not religious are likely to murder, steal, and break the law. 

Paul’s detractors are right.  He is a bigot.

His latest detractor is Congressman Anthony Weiner of New York, who has been shedding crocodile tears because one of Beck’s sponsors, Goldline, Inc., is supposedly overcharging for its gold coins. It’s interesting when you follow the links on this story that you have a very hard time finding exactly which gold coins Weiner is referring to, regardless of whether the source is on the left or the right. It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that neither side has a clue what they’re talking about. The dead tree media sites often claim that Goldline’s markup is 90% over bullion value, but, as noted here, that number is meaningless unless you identify which coin you’re talking about. For example, one of the more recently struck U.S. gold coins, the $2.50 Indian head quarter eagle, only contains 0.121 troy ounces of gold, or a little over a tenth of an ounce. Based on the current gold price of $1190 per ounce, its bullion value is, therefore, about $144. However, look at the completed listings for the coin on eBay and you’ll see that high grade coins easily fetch over $300 at the moment, and even coins with significant wear typically sell for over $225. 

If one is speaking of strictly bullion coins, it appears that Goldline’s markup over the most competitive dealers is around 25%, varying up to 35% for proof coins, which do have limited numismatic value.  However, that’s hardly out of the ordinary in the coin business.  Shop around on any of the coin cable channels on TV, and you’re unlikely to find markups less than that on similar bullion coins.  That seems rather odd when we learn that Weiner represents himself as perfectly balanced.  Why, to hear him tell it, he would go after liberals like a bulldog if they did the same thing.  For example, from Politico,

But Weiner, a liberal who represents New York City, brushed off allegations that his report was politically motivated. “My message is directed at consumers, telling them to beware that the things that Goldline and Glenn Beck are selling are essentially rip-offs,” he said, adding “if these were all liberal commentators who were promoting a company that has a 200-percent mark-up on its gold, I would like to think that I would be just as hard on them.”

If that’s really true, and we can take the good Congressman at his word, I have a prime candidate for his next investigation; the staunchly liberal Washington Post.  It happens that on page A-17 of today’s issue there’s a quarter page ad for silver dollars by GovMint.com, which refers to itself as “Your one best source for coins worldwide.”   It appears they’re selling Peace silver dollars for the bargain price of $39.95 each.  Now Peace silver dollars contain 0.773 troy ounces of silver, so the bullion value of each coin based on today’s silver price of $17.75 per ounce is only $13.75!  In case you’re bad at math, Congressman Weiner, that’s a markup of not just a paltry 90%, but a whopping 190% plus!  Unleash the hounds!

The WaPo has been running similar ads for years, so one can only wonder at the fact that the “fair and balanced” Congressman hasn’t yet sniffed them out.  Of course, the coins in question are claimed to be uncirculated, and even common Peace dollars have some numismatic value in that condition, so let us be more charitable than the good Congressman, and actually take that into account.  Let us take into account, as well, the fact that, if one buys twenty of the coins, one can get them for the bargain basement price of only $29.50 each.  Turning once again to eBay, we find that, as I write these lines, one can buy a dumptruck full of uncirculated Peace silver dollars for under $20 each.  Putting it all together, we arrive at a markup of a “mere” 50%.     Goldline, with its paltry 25% to 35% for similar material, is a mere piker by comparison.  So much for Congressman Weiner’s “evenhandedness.”

I doubt that Glenn Beck would agree with much of anything I’ve posted on this blog, but I’m glad he’s out there.  Don’t his liberal enemies always tell us that diversity is a good thing?  Well, he represents real diversity.  There’s no such thing as freedom of speech if it’s only the freedom to listen to people who think just like you.