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Peter Wehner tries to set the Iraq record straight.
Peter Baker, the excellent New York Times reporter, wrote an interesting Week in Review piece yesterday contrasting President Bush’s effort at promoting democracy with that of President Obama, who has said nary a word in defense of it and whose administration seems to be downplaying human rights as a centerpiece of American foreign policy (see Hillary Clinton’s remarks in China). …
… It seems that for many people, the mistakes made in Iraq in the aftermath of 2003 permanently tainted their views of that nation; it is as if they decided the war was wrong and the effort to transform it into a functioning democracy was a mistake, come what may. Fortunately the Iraqi people have, with the support and skill of the American military, carried on; they have continued with the difficult task of self-government. Given all they have suffered through, what Iraqis have achieved is fairly extraordinary, and even heroic. And with the passage of time, Iraq may well demonstrate to the world all over again that freedom is still the best path to human flourishing and the cause of peace. Championing freedom and human rights isn’t easy, but it remains a noble cause. Those who want to make the opposite case — who want to argue on behalf of the benefits of authoritarianism, dictatorships, and tyranny, or why we should be indifferent to them — are free to do so. My hope and expectation is that America will, in the main, remain on the side of liberty. That is, after all, right where she belongs.
John Tierney gives us pause to be careful of scientists with a political agenda; like John Holdren, nominated to be Obama’s science advisor. You will be interested in Holdren’s reaction to one of our favorites; Bjørn Lomborg.
… “Some scientists want to influence policy in a certain direction and still be able to claim to be above politics,” Dr. Pielke says. “So they engage in what I call ‘stealth issue advocacy’ by smuggling political arguments into putative scientific ones.”
In Dr. Pielke’s book, one example of this stealthy advocate is the nominee for White House science adviser, Dr. Holdren, a longtime proponent of policies to slow population growth and control energy use. (See TierneyLab, for more on his background.) He appears in a chapter analyzing the reaction of scientists to “The Skeptical Environmentalist,” a 2001 book arguing that many ecological dangers had been exaggerated.
Dr. Holdren called it his “scientific duty” to expose the “complete incompetence” of the book’s author, Bjorn Lomborg, a Danish political scientist. Dr. Holdren was one of the authors of an extraordinary 11-page attack on the book that ran in Scientific American under the headline, “Science defends itself against ‘The Skeptical Environmentalist’ ” — as if “science” spoke with one voice.
After reviewing the criticisms, Dr. Pielke concludes that a more accurate headline would have been, “Our political perspective defends itself against the political agenda of ‘The Skeptical Environmentalist.’ ” …
Seems like California might be a preview of what Obama has in store for us. Mark Steyn kicks off the coverage.
The Times of London put it this way: “Arnie Schwarzenegger Joins the Ranks of Girlie Men.”
Quite. As is well known, the Terminator has been unable to terminate anything — not even the impact study group studying the impact of expanding the Department of Impact Studies. The man who walloped his predecessor for fiscal profligacy has managed to preside over a California budget that’s expanded 40 percent (so far) since the good old Gray days. Sacramento is piling on an extra million-and-three-quarter dollars of debt every hour, 24/7. The Golden State is a foldin’ state, going out of business — a far cry from when Ahnuld arrived as a penniless immigrant in a land of plenty. Now he’s an immigrant of plenty in a penniless land. Another Californian actor-governor famously observed that “we are a nation that has a government, not the other way around.” In Collyvornya, it’s the other way round. Doing your ’08 tax return? If you’re expecting a refund, Sacramento’s stopped the check: Instead you receive an IOU saying they’ll get around to it when they can. On the other hand, if you owe them money, don’t expect reciprocal treatment. As the governor’s celebrated catchphrase has it: “Ah’ll be back — for more of your money.” …
And Matthew Kaminski tells us how California became France.
… The parallels are also disquieting. The French have long experienced the unintended consequences of a large public sector. Ask them about it. As the number of people who get money from government grows, so does the power of constituencies dedicated to keep this honey dripping. Even when voters recognize the model carries drawbacks, such as subpar growth, high taxes, an uncompetitive business climate and above-average unemployment, their elected leaders find it near impossible to tweak the system. This has been the story of France for decades, and lately of California.
Six years ago, Mr. Schwarzenegger arrived in Sacramento to “cut up the credit card” and give the girlie men at the State Capitol a testosterone shot. California languished then in a fiscal crisis whose causes were pretty much the same as today. The hapless Gray Davis had been recalled, and the Austrian-born actor made a promising start to break the pattern.
In 2005, banking on his popularity, the governor pushed an ambitious ballot initiative to impose a hard state spending cap, limit the unions’ political buying power, tighten requirements for teacher tenure, and overhaul a gerrymandered state political map. Arnold lost.
After that setback, Mr. Schwarzenegger shifted his attention to green jobs and energy, winning fans in Europe and among Democrats. “He’s recognized that California’s a pretty moderate place,” says Darrell Steinberg, the Democratic president pro tem of the Senate. “You’ve got to govern from the middle.”
People closer to the governor offer a different take. “Once he got beat, he reverted back to, ‘I want to be liked,’” says a former Schwarzenegger aide. “It’s classic narcissism.” …
WSJ Editors on last night’s speech.
Anyone who thought the recession and financial market turmoil would moderate President Obama’s policy ambitions discovered the opposite last night. Far from suggesting limits on Congress or federal spending, the new President made clear in his first State of the Union address that he believes in government power as the answer to our current difficulties, and he intends to use it. …
Jennifer Rubin has some speech thoughts.
… There is not the slightest recognition that the growth of government retards economic vitality or impairs innovation. There is no sense that all that money we are going to spend comes from somewhere — businesses and individuals who will have fewer and fewer resources of their own. This is a fantasyland. There is no responsibility in sight, no mature discipline. It is all just a flood of government goodies.
Abe Greenwald too.
In listening to President Obama’s address tonight, I thought I heard something a little extreme about education, but then tossed it up to being distracted and a little sleepy. I just went back and looked at the transcript and, sure enough, this startling little passage was actually uttered:
And so tonight, I ask every American to commit to at least one year or more of higher education or career training. This can be community college or a four-year school; vocational training or an apprenticeship. But whatever the training may be, every American will need to get more than a high school diploma. And dropping out of high school is no longer an option.
Every American should go back to school for at least a year on the president’s orders? Really? …
Michael Goldfarb from the Blog at the Weekly Standard.
… It’s only been a few weeks, but so far all the American people have to show for Obama’s election is $1 trillion in new debt and a thousand point drop in the Dow. Everything else is still just talk, some of which has the potential to damage the economy even further if implemented poorly or, in the case of cap and trade, implemented at all. The only thing Obama’s certain to deliver is the one thing he claimed tonight he didn’t believe in — bigger government.
Jack Shafer at Slate continues with the Moyers story.
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