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WaPo has something today that’s really rich. Pickerhead has often asked his liberal friends if they hate W so much because he’s stolen Wilson’s thunder. A former Clinton dude asks WWWWD. What would Woodrow Wilson do?
Woodrow Wilson, FDR, Harry S. Truman and John F. Kennedy must be turning in their graves. Using U.S. power to promote freedom and democracy was central to their foreign policies and legacies. Even Jimmy Carter, a far less successful Democratic president, can be proud of making human rights a major U.S. foreign policy objective. And Bill Clinton’s interventions in the Balkans and drive to expand NATO were all about consolidating democracy in Europe‘s eastern half. There was a time, not too long ago, when Democrats were proud of their track record on democracy promotion — and rightly so.
Is the party of Wilson abandoning Wilsonianism? Why have we gone mum on an issue that is so central to our own foreign policy heritage and past triumphs?
Mark’s making fun of the Anglicans today. Then he goes after the nanny state.
The other day, six Anglican archbishops called for the church to bless the unions of same-sex couples. The Anglican Church of Canada is about to have a big vote on the issue, and depending which way they swing it will either deepen the schism within the worldwide Anglican Communion or further isolate the Episcopal Church of the United States.
But never mind all that. What struck me was the rationale the archbishops came up with. This gay thing, they sighed. We’ve been yakking about it for years. Let’s just get on with it, and then we can get back to the important stuff. “We are deeply concerned that ongoing study,” they fretted, “will only continue to draw us away from issues which are gradually destroying God’s creation – child poverty, racism, global warming, economic injustice, concern for our aboriginal brothers and sisters and the growing disparity between the rich and the poor.”
That’s it? Anglicans need to fast-track a liturgy for gay couples so they can free up time to deal with the real issues like global warming? …
… But in the broader picture it might be truer still to say that the individual, unlike the state, therefore has an interest in stopping and reversing the government annexation of health care – because that argument can be used to justify almost any restraint on freedom – and, in the end, you may not get the health care, anyway. Under Britain’s National Health Service, smokers in Manchester have been denied treatment for heart disease, and the obese in Suffolk are refused hip and knee replacements. Patricia Hewitt, the health secretary, says that it’s appropriate to decline treatment on the basis of “lifestyle choices.” Today, it’s smokers and the obese. But, if a gay guy has condom-less sex with multiple partners, why should his “lifestyle choices” get a pass? Health care costs can be used to justify anything. …
Vaclav Klaus, president of the Czech republic says the agenda of greens will destroy freedom.
We are living in strange times. One exceptionally warm winter is enough – irrespective of the fact that in the course of the 20th century the global temperature increased only by 0.6 per cent – for the environmentalists and their followers to suggest radical measures to do something about the weather, and to do it right now.
In the past year, Al Gore’s so-called “documentary” film was shown in cinemas worldwide, Britain’s – more or less Tony Blair’s – Stern report was published, the fourth report of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was put together and the Group of Eight summit announced ambitions to do something about the weather. Rational and freedom-loving people have to respond. The dictates of political correctness are strict and only one permitted truth, not for the first time in human history, is imposed on us. Everything else is denounced.
… I agree with Professor Richard Lindzen from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who said: “future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early 21st century’s developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally averaged temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree, and, on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer projections combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to contemplate a roll-back of the industrial age”. …
Adam Smith’s quote of the week is from Ronald Reagan.
Jerusalem Post reports a bit of Gaza irony.
Enraged Fatah leaders on Saturday accused Hamas militiamen of looting the home of former Palestinian Authority chairman Yasser Arafat in Gaza City.
“They stole almost everything inside the house, including Arafat’s Nobel Peace Prize medal,”
Corner post on the pilfered prize.
Roger Simon says it’s poetic justice.
Neal Boortz with a Trent Lott post.
… Now we have yet another lesson in how the power of the Imperial Federal Government can be brought to bear against talk radio. Not only are the threats coming from the left, but now also from the right. Talk radio is abuzz today — and I suspect will be for quite a few days — over a comment made by Senator Lott late this week. According to The New York Times Senator Lott had threw a bit of a snit-fit on Thursday over the failure (thus far) of the amnesty bill. He is quoted as saying “Talk radio is running America. We have to deal with that problem.”
Now if I were Senator Lott and I wanted to diffuse the uproar over that comment, I would say that what I really meant to say was that we, in the Senate, need to work harder to deal with the problems with the amnesty bill that has talk radio listeners in such an uproar. I would then amuse the press by spinning around on my eyebrows and spitting twenty-dollar gold pieces.
We know what Senator Lott meant. Talk radio is getting in the way of a political goal, and therefore talk radio needs to be dealt with. How? Why with government regulations and restrictions, of course! How else does the government deal with pesky little problems?
Kill the messenger. …
The Captain posts on a Lieberman WSJ op-ed. Then the Nifong disbarment gets a comment.
The Bar had some damning things to say about Nifong before disbarring him. They found that Nifong deliberately acted with malice in order to boost his political career, a conclusion most reached after the results of DNA testing became fully known. They also found that he lied to the court and to Bar investigators.
Speaking of Duke, Power Line wants to know, “what about the (professors in the) gang of 88?”
… It is a remarkable fact of the Duke case that the legal profession has acquitted itself with greater honor than the professoriate.
Helen Thomas reviews the Reagan Diaries and says nice things.
Read the newly published “The Reagan Diaries” if you want a true insight into the mind of the nation’s 40th president.
The diaries — written daily from 1981 until President Reagan left office in 1989 — reveal him to be much more involved in the nitty gritty of national and world affairs than many White House reporters thought. He had often been portrayed as a detached “chairman of the board” kind of president. …
… As a reporter having covered him for eight years in the White House, I am sure the media could have done a better job if we had known the real Ronald Reagan.
American Thinker on NY Times ad revenue.
Knowledge Problem posts on “creative destruction” as a film shows producing assets leaving Germany for China.