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Theodore Dalrymple’s Solzhenitsyn obit is first.
Contrary to popular belief, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who died last week at 89, told the world nothing that it did not already know, or could not already have known, about the Soviet Union and the Communist system. Information about their true nature was available from the very first, including photographic evidence of massacre and famine. Bertrand Russell, no apologist of conservatism, spotted Lenin’s appalling inhumanity and its consequences for Russia and humanity as early as 1920. The problem was that this information was not believed; or if believed, it was explained away and rendered innocuous by various mental subterfuges, such as false comparison with others’ misdeeds, historical rationalizations, reference to the supposed grandeur of the social ideals behind the apparent horrors, and so forth. Anything other than admission of the obvious.
Solzhenitsyn’s achievement was to render such illusion about the Soviet Union impossible, even for its most die-hard defenders: he made illusion not merely stupid but wicked. With a mixture of literary talent, iron integrity, bravery, and determination of a kind very rarely encountered, he made it impossible to deny the world-historical scale of the Soviet evil. After Solzhenitsyn, not to recognize Soviet Communism for what it was and what it had always been was to join those who denied that the earth was round or who believed in abduction by aliens. Because of his clear-sightedness about Lenin’s true nature, it was no longer permissible for intellectuals who had been pro-Soviet to hide behind the myth that Stalin perverted the noble ideal that Lenin had started to put into practice. Lenin was, if such a thing be possible, more of a monster than Stalin, not so much inhumane as anti-human. …
Couple of shorts from John Fund. One introduces the current William Ayers flap.
… Also unexplained is the sudden sensitivity on Team Obama’s part. It’s already known that Mr. Ayers, now a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, hosted a key fund-raising party during Mr. Obama’s first bid for public office and also served with Mr. Obama on the board of a Chicago-based charity until 2002. Today, the University of Illinois will finally release documents it tried to keep from the public on the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, the liberal school reform effort founded by Mr. Ayers and chaired by Mr. Obama. Obama campaign aides insist the two men had only a casual relationship. During a Democratic primary debate last April, Mr. Obama said that “the notion that . . . me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8 years old, somehow reflects on me and my values doesn’t make much sense.”
We may know more about the relationship between the two men later this week, after reporters have plowed through the once-suppressed Annenberg Challenge records.
Jonah Goldberg follows the Ayers thoughts.
I am amazed, simply amazed, at the amazement of many liberals that Ayers and Dohrn should matter to anyone. I was one of the first to write about Ayers (for which Alan Colmes denounced me as some kind of McCarthyite, though not in so many words) and I’ve been getting email ever since for my mule-headedness. Apparently the groupthink is so thick that at the Obama campaign they actually think this rightwing or Republican obsession is a weakness. How else to explain the stupidity of their Ayers’ ad? …
Hugh Hewitt posts on the unease the Democrats are exhibiting in Denver.
The Washington Post reports on the great unease at the Democratic Convention:
As the Democrats kicked off a convention designed to unite support behind Obama, interviews with several dozen delegates pointed to an undercurrent of anxiety among many from key swing states who will be charged with leading the push in their communities. They expressed doubts bordering on bewilderment: Why, in a year that had been shaping up as a watershed for Democrats, amid an economic downturn and an unpopular Republican presidency, is the race so tight?
Why, indeed. The answers: Jeremiah Wright. Tony Rezko. Michael Pfleger. Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn.
“Above my pay grade.” “Bitter and clinging to God and their guns.” “Citizen of the world.” Tire gauges. “First time I have been proud of my country.” “Vastly superior infrastructure.” The Born Alive Infant Protection Act.
And now Slow Joe Biden.
That’s just part of the list. The Dems are nominating the most radical major party candidate in history, whose thin record is relentlessly hard left, and whose rhetoric of change and hope cannot cover the fact that he has never worked across the aisle, has never sought to reform the deeply corrupt Chicago or Illinois political machines, and that he is hopelessly out of his depth on foreign policy and national security issues. …
David Harsanyi reacts to the Biden pick.
… And there is a noteworthy difference between Biden and Clinton: The loquacious Biden entertained the press corps for a handful of primary debates before dropping out. Hillary convinced 18 million primary voters to support her.
So, then, why not Clinton? If you erode your theme of “change” by choosing a longtime Washington insider, why not pick the one who can unite your party?
Perhaps a clue can be found in the words of Nancy Pelosi, who said Democrats need to “begin anew.” At a convention that features Jimmy Carter, Al Gore, John Kerry, Joe Biden and Ted Kennedy (in order of most annoying), who can argue?
Most observers say Biden is the “safe” pick. Maybe. But there is one thing for certain: Picking Biden over Clinton helps a presidential candidate. And that candidate is not here in Denver.
Ed Morrissey has a bunch of good posts. First on Ayers.
Barack Obama did a double-twist on free speech yesterday in reaction to the ad produced by an outside political group regarding his association with William Ayers. After his own campaign produced an ad that Factcheck called a “smear” tying Jack Abramoff to John McCain through Ralph Reed, American Issues produced an ad that pointed out Obama’s political ties to the unrepentant former domestic terrorist, William Ayers. Instead of letting it drop, Obama’s campaign took two really stupid actions: they produced a response ad and then demanded that the Department of Justice investigate American Issues while pressuring television stations to reject the ad: …
And Ed catches Time going gaga over Obama.
One of the pitfalls of reporting from the conventions is that people tend to lose perspective amidst the fervor. Mainstream journalists supposedly have immunity from this phenomenon, and sometimes chide bloggers for cheerleading rather than retaining a more objective point of view. Maybe Amy Sullivan’s colleagues should perform an intervention for her and Time magazine, then, because she’s obviously been drinking the Kool-Aid in Denver with this passage:
Given all that buildup, it may come as a surprise that the Democrats who will gather around the gavel in Denver are actually more united than perhaps at any other point in the past 30 years. When Obama accepts the Democratic nomination on Thursday night, he will inherit a party focused on its determination to take back the White House, and that overarching goal should paper over any lingering resentments or policy differences, at least until after Election Day.
You. Have. Got. To. Be. Kidding. Me. More united than at “any other point in the past 30 years”? How old is Amy Sullivan — three? …
Slate’s Press Box on Biden’s plagiarism.
Joe Biden’s return as a vice-presidential candidate signals forgiveness—at least from Barack Obama—for having plagiarized a leading British politician during Biden’s campaign for the Democratic Party’s 1988 presidential nomination.
The Biden episode merits revisiting because as acts of plagiarism go, it was spectacular, and because it points to other dicey chapters in his life. To know Biden in full, you must appreciate his parts.
Biden’s puttering campaign for president effectively died on Sept. 13, 1987, when the New York Times’ Maureen Dowd reported that he had pinched major elements of a recent and celebrated speech by Labor Party leader Neil Kinnock. That speech, included in this May 1987 Labor Party broadcast, begins at the 7:23 mark.
But Biden didn’t merely borrow words and phrasings from Kinnock, which is a time-honored practice of candidates and their speechwriters and is almost never regarded as plagiarism. He became Kinnock, as David Greenberg writes today, claiming things about himself and his family that were untrue and that he knew to be untrue. …
Thomas Sowell’s random thoughts.
… One of the problems with successfully dealing with threats is that people start believing that there is no threat. That is where we are, seven years after 9/11, so that reminding people of terrorist dangers can be dismissed as “the politics of fear” by Barack Obama, who has a rhetorical answer for everything.
There are countries in Europe that would love to have their unemployment rate fall to the 5.7 percent unemployment rate to which ours has risen. Yet those who seem to want us to imitate European economic and social policies never seem to want to consider the actual consequences of those policies. …
Bernie Marcus, Home Depot’s founder, writes on the Dems new labor laws.
I recently said that America “would become France” if a certain bill now in Congress — which would virtually guarantee that every company becomes unionized — ever became law. Deceptively named the Employee Free Choice Act, this bill would in most cases take away an employee’s right to a secret ballot in a union election and give unions the option to have federal arbitrators set the wages, benefits, hours and all other terms and conditions of employment. …
Borowitz reports Clinton’s Denver speech will be on a 5 second delay.