The Media's Ancien Régime

Columbia Journalism School tries to save the old order.

Hugh Hewitt writes about his visit to The Columbia University's School of Journalism to see how the clerics of the old order plan to revive the failing system of elite media. Apparently the school's big idea to save old media is to teach the students there to use regression analysis so they can understand statistics. While it is no doubt useful to understand the use of statistics, this article shows the underlying problems at the foundation of old media which have not been addressed and which probably won't be. Hewitt describes the pre-existing assumptions which are prevalent in the student body.

The "blue" nature of the student body is further confirmed by my polling of the class I attended, done with the permission of Shapiro. Six of the 16 were English majors, two studied history, and the balance spread across the humanities. No one had a background in the physical sciences. No one owned a gun. All supported same-sex marriage. Three had been in a house of worship the previous week. Six read blogs. None of them recognized the phrase "Christmas Eve in Cambodia"--though Shapiro not only got the allusion but knew the date of the John Kerry Senate speech in which he made the false claim about his Vietnam war experience. Three quarters of them hope to make more than $100,000 as a journalist, 11 had voted for John Kerry, and one for George Bush (three are from abroad and not eligible, and one didn't vote for either candidate). I concluded by asking them if they "think George Bush is something of a dolt." There was unanimous agreement with this proposition, one of the widely shared views within elite media and elsewhere on the left. The president's Harvard MBA and four consecutive victories over Democrats judged "smarter" than him haven't made even a dent in that prejudice.

This is the real reason that old media is dying. Ayn Rand was known for saying, "check your premises." The Elite Media Monoculture operates on a set of unstated assumptions which, when put to the test of reality, often come up short. Each of us has such a set of fundamental premises or axioms on which we base our actions whether we know it or not. The question is do they accurately reflect reality or are they false? If our premises are true, then they serve as a reliable guide to the world in which we live and our actions will be in accordance with reality. To succeed in life we need accurate information and an accurate road map. But if our assumptions are false, then so is the map and the result is that we quickly lose our way. For decades the left has been using a false map, and now they find themselves in the wilderness with no hope of return. But instead of getting a new map, they continue to blame those who are not lost for the difficulty in which they find themselves. They need a new map, but have yet to acknowledge it.

The Hybrid Hoax

They're not as fuel-efficient as you think.

Richard Burr points out in this article from the Weekly Standard that hybrid vehicle technology has a way to go before it lives up to the claims made by its proponents.

Hybrids, which typically claim to get 32 to 60 miles per gallon, ended up delivering an average of 19 miles per gallon less than their EPA ratings under real-world driving conditions (which reflect more stop-and-go traffic and Americans' penchant for heavy accelerating) according to a Consumer Reports investigation in October 2005.

For example, a 2004 Toyota Prius got 35 miles per gallon in city driving, off 42 percent from its EPA rating of 60 mpg. The 2003 Honda Civic averaged 26 mpg, off 46 percent from its advertised 48 mpg. And the Ford Escape small sport utility vehicle managed 22 mpg, falling 33 percent short of its 33 mpg rating.

"City traffic is supposed to be the hybrids' strong suit, but their shortfall amounted to a 40 percent deficit on average," Consumer Reports said.

Progressivism's Alamo

Why stare decisis has become so important to the liberal project.

John Hinderaker of Powerline looks at the recent Sam Alito confirmation hearings in the context of the doctrine of Stare Decisis and how liberal Senators of a certain age argue for precedent when it suits their purpose, but ignore it when it does not.

Still Morning in America

Reaganomics, 25 years later.

The editors at The Wall Street Journal remind us that President Reagan was right when he argued for reduced government spending and tax cuts as a means to unleash the productivity of the free market. Looking back over the last 25 years the evidence is overwhelming that, then as now, Reaganomics works and welfare state socialism does not.

Twenty-five years ago today, Ronald Reagan was inaugurated as the 40th President of the United States promising less intrusive government, lower tax rates and victory over communism. On that same day, the American hostages in Iran were freed after 444 days of captivity. If the story of history is one long and arduous march toward freedom, this was a momentous day well worth commemorating.

All the more so because over this 25-year period prosperity has been the rule, not the exception, for America--in stark contrast to the stagflationary 1970s. Perhaps the greatest tribute to the success of Reaganomics is that, over the course of the past 276 months, the U.S. economy has been in recession for only 15. That is to say, 94% of the time the U.S. economy has been creating jobs (43 million in all) and wealth ($30 trillion). More wealth has been created in the U.S. in the last quarter-century than in the previous 200 years. The policy lessons of this supply-side prosperity need to be constantly relearned, lest we return to the errors that produced the 1970s.

Eat Paint, Get Rich

Welcome to Wisconsin!

Maureen Martin writes that if you are an ambulance chasing trial lawyer and you want to get rich, Wisconsin is now the place to be, thanks to your local Democrats.

Three key legal issues are at stake in this election as a result of the governor's vetoes. The first relates to the admissibility of expert testimony in court. Under Wisconsin law, such testimony is admissible even when the judge believes it is unreliable. Juries determine on their own whether to consider such testimony. In other words, junk science is fully admissible in Wisconsin. That policy--created by the courts, corrected by a bill, but retained by Gov. Doyle's veto--enables a researcher in an obesity case against a fast-food restaurant to say that, based on a single study of rat behavior, cheeseburgers are as addictive as heroin to humans.

Not a Bad Time to Take Stock

Thoughts on the decline of the liberal media monopoly and the future of the GOP.

Peggy Noonan looks at the effects of New Media on the Sam Alito hearings and how The Angry Left and the Democrats are no longer able to control the story as they once did in the days of three networks and Walter Cronkite. The old media have lost their monopoly. The rise of talk radio, Fox and most importantly the Internet have changed the information landscape beyond recognition. Today one can get opinion and information from thousands of radio stations and millions of blogs across the Internet. There is no monopoly. There is, instead, a plethora of options from which one can choose which run across the spectrum from left to right and all points in between. In such an environment we see true debate and discussion.

And perhaps most important is the fact that Americans in the silent majority can now talk and discuss with each other the events of the day and their importance, thus bypassing the filters and walls which were previously erected by The Elite Media Monoculture. All across the Internet, regular Americans of all walks of life are discussing the ideas of freedom. From the meaning of individualism to free market economics to social change to national defense, Americans are proving that they are interested in these ideas and are willing and able to promote their differing points of view. The old media put up those walls to prevent such dangerous ideas from germinating and gaining traction. But now those walls are down. When regular Americans can talk with each other using e-mail, blogs and Internet chat rooms, they can form a consensus and move in an organized fashion to effect change; something that was previously impossible. And that change has not been in the direction of more leftism.

Democrats Fiddle While Rome Burns

Michelle Malkin reports on the rash of insane pronouncements coming from luminaries in the Democratic party in the last few days. In this essay, "Day of Demagoguery" we get to see Hillary Clinton, The Smartest Woman in the World, tell us all about those racist bigots in the Congress, who are all Republicans of course. No need to examine the question of which party was the author of Jim Crow, or which side they backed in the Civil War or how their modern day decendents have created a cradle to grave entitlement system that keeps minorities addicted to Democratic handouts. No need to talk about that at all. Just keep blaming Republicans for all things evil and perhaps some of it will eventually stick. And don't stop to reflect on those poor election results year after year after year either. Eventually the smears and attacks will have their desired effect.

Meanwhile, back in the world of real problems and real danger Charles Krauthammer writes about the impending development of atomic weapons by one of the world's most odious regimes. The Mullahs in Iran want to wipe the West off the face of the map and they won't be interested in negotiation as long as they get their 72 virgins. But of course this is just not important enough for the Democrats to take it seriously. Much more fun to bash the party that has actually been trying to do something about it.

The Punch and Judy Show Democrats

Like Vaudeville, their time has passed.

Well, the big news this week was the Alito hearings in which impotent and intellectually bankrupt bullies, otherwise known as Democrats, did their best to shoot down Sam Alito in the vain hope that they could somehow prevent him from sitting on the Supreme Court. Their performance was yet more proof that the once-great party of FDR and JFK is today no more than the court jester of modern politics. Democratic Senators pranced and preened, putting on their best Punch and Judy show, but to no avail. Their greatest achievement was to make Mrs. Alito flee sobbing from the hearing room. Their best argument could be summed up in the question, "Have you stopped being a bigot yet?" Not exactly the kind of hearings one might have hoped for if one were serious about constitutional issues.

And this is really the heart of the matter. For the Democrats long ago lost any interest in the pursuit of great ideas. And ultimately the highest court in the land is, in large part, a philosophical enterprise. The constitution is a philosophical document which deals with the proper role of government in society and the individual's relation to both. It is impossible to discuss the role of the court without also addressing the fundamental ideas of the founders and the constitution they wrote, and how it shapes the nation in which we live.

What are individual rights? What is the proper scope of government? How do we delegate authority to the state and for what purpose? What is the proper balance between the individual and the group and how is it pertinent to national security? What are rights during wartime and are they different that those in peacetime and to what extent, if any?

These are the kinds of questions that intelligent Senators might have asked if they had some wits at their command. Sadly the Democrats had none. They focused instead on a little known political group at Princeton, Vanguard Mutual Funds and the claim that Mr. Alito is a racist and a bigot. In the end, all their arguments collapsed like a wet cardboard stage set.

So here we bring you a round up of the stories from the most recent week of what could have been, and should have been matter for great oratory and deep philisophical discussion, but instead became the tired and well worn Democratic stand up comedy with which we are so familiar. And like an old joke used too many times, it no longer works as it once did. The unresponsive audience flags down a waitress before the next act.

Check please...

Senate Civility

Why Mrs. Alito left the room.

The editors at The Wall Street Journal take a moment to look at the bullying behavior of the Democrats who drove Mrs. Alito from the hearing room in tears and why they seem so tone-deaf to common human decency.

It's a sign of how little Democrats have on Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito that on Day Three of his confirmation hearings they were still pounding away on his membership in an obscure Princeton alumni group that flowered briefly at the judge's alma mater. They can't touch him on credentials or his mastery of jurisprudence, so they're trying to get him on guilt by ancient association.

Senators Ted Kennedy and Chuck Schumer did their best yesterday to imply that Judge Alito was racist and sexist by linking the nominee with the views of some members of Concerned Alumni of Princeton, which back in the 1970s and 1980s took issue with university policies on coeducation and affirmative action. The questioning was mean enough that Judge Alito's wife left the hearing room after GOP Senator Lindsey Graham apologized for the comments of his fellow Senators. "Are you really a closet bigot?" Mr. Graham asked the nominee. "No, sir, you're not."

Alito: A Last-Gasp Democratic Gambit Fails

What’s in the Concerned Alumni of Princeton papers? Nothing.

Byron York writes about the Democrats desperate attempt to find some sort of incriminating evidence concerning Sam Alito's relationship with the conservative group Concerned Alumni of Princeton in the hope that they could somehow prove that he was, and is, an evil racist bigot and homophobe. As is usually the case, the facts of reality were on the side of conservatives. But the posturing of the Democrats was enjoyable to watch as the facts became known and the truth became clear. And of course it was priceless to watch Arlen Spector smack down the drunken swimmer, Ted Kennedy.

You can say what you want about the liberal groups opposing Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito, but they stay on message. So much so that by late afternoon Wednesday, when Alito's confirmation hearing was nearing the end of its third day, and Alito himself had testified for nearly 15 hours, and just a few members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, not to mention the press and the public, remained in the Hart Senate Office Building hearing room, and Democratic senators were struggling and failing to find new ways to interrogate Alito on his membership in Concerned Alumni of Princeton, and Alito was looking like an absolute lock to win confirmation, barring a suicidal Democratic filibuster…well, even then, the anti-Alito coalition was bravely claiming that everything was going just fine.

"It's been a very, very bad day for him," said Nan Aron, head of the Alliance for Justice. By "him," she meant Alito, who had suffered, Aron said, severe blows to his credibility. "The credibility gap that existed before the hearing has become a credibility chasm," said People for the American Way head Ralph Neas, talking to reporters outside the hearing room. "Judge Alito has a profound problem both on substance and credibility grounds," said Wade Henderson of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights.

Republicans laughed when they heard that one. "It's over," one GOP aide said flatly, referring both to the Democratic opposition and the hearing itself.

The Anti-Alito Coalition

The Left courts its agenda.

Spencer Abraham looks at the array of Angry Leftist special interest groups which are opposed to the nomination of Sam Alito and how their views are well to the left of the American mainstream of political thought.

Meanwhile Back at the Moonbat Ranch...

The Angry Left is so clueless and out of touch that they think it is a good thing when Ted "The Swimmer" Kennedy and the other Democrats bully Judge Alito and call him a bigot whilst sending his wife crying from the room. Check out their superior form of tolerance and love here and here if you want to understand what kind of people they are.

"I'm GLAD she was reduced to tears. These hyper-pampered Stepford wives have never endured anything more stressful than making it to Saks Fifth Avenue before it closes. If seeing her poor widdle hubby getting caught in an avalanche of lies about his not-exactly-concealed racism triggers the weeping-willow response, I'd venture to say Martha needs to get out a little more. Maybe visit a black neighborhood or two and get acquainted with a few strong women who DON'T burst into tears while DAILY dealing with hardships that Martha's fragile, feeble mind could not even conceive of. What a phony, fraudulent, sheltered twit."

The Radical Left Goes the Way of the Dinosaur

Tony Phyrillas at WebCommentary.com brings us his list of reasons demonstrating just what a bad year it has been for the Angry Left. Looking at them all together, one has to agree that things have not gone well for them, which is of course a good thing for all the rest of us.

The signs of the apocalypse for liberalism are everywhere:

• Fox News Channel dominates cable news, drawing millions more viewers than its liberal competitors. Left-wing icon CNN was so desperate to escape the ratings cellar in 2005 that it hired the host of the reality show "The Mole" to anchor its prime time newscast. Who's next at the CNN anchor desk? Regis Philbin? Bob Barker?

• The launch of Air America was trumpeted as front-page news in all the liberal newspapers, including the mother of biased reporting, the New York Times. The network turned into Dead Air America in 2005 and was rocked by a financial scandal involving deceptive loans to keep the network on the air despite dismal ratings. Conservative talk radio dominates.

• Hollywood box office receipts have declined for the third year in a row. The Left Coast continues to churn out movies that most Americans don't want to see, including tales of gay cowboys ("Brokeback Mountain"), transsexuals ("Transamerica") and sympathetic terrorists ("Syrianna").

It’s the Demography, Stupid

Mark Steyn is, I think, a bit less optimistic than Victor Davis Hanson in this long, but very recommended essay from The New Criterion in which he looks at long term demographic trends in the west and how they will play out in the rest of this century. The bad news is that much of what we used to call the west will vanish as the population of Old Europe ages, dies and is replaced by Muslims with a higher birth rate. And as Old Europe dies, so will the culture that took 2500 years to build. By the end of this century Europe will have become Eurabia and what is left of western culture will be the province of America and those countries of the modern world which survive the wave of violent Arabism which is now sweeping the globe.

I now have begun to think that in the end we Americans will once again be called on to fight in Europe as we did twice in the past. Not right away, mind you. My liberal democratic parents, who have done so much to bring it about, will not live to see the fruits of their multicultural leftism come to flower. But my generation will see it and so will my young nieces and nephews who will have to fight if we all wish to survive and keep our freedom. It is not hard to imagine a Muslim Eurabia launching all-out war on the rest of the world. They have already as much as declared war on the west. If they become the majority in the countries of Old Europe, then it is logical to conclude that they will use the wealth and resources at their disposal to bring about their Islamic Utopia. Inevitably it will be at the point of a gun. Whether the rest of us resist is, of course, the question. The answer will depend on whether leftism and multiculturalism is first defeated here at home and whether there are enough of us remaining to do so.

To avoid collapse, European nations will need to take in immigrants at a rate no stable society has ever attempted. The CIA is predicting the EU will collapse by 2020. Given that the CIA’s got pretty much everything wrong for half a century, that would suggest the EU is a shoo-in to be the colossus of the new millennium. But even a flop spook is right twice a generation. If anything, the date of EU collapse is rather a cautious estimate. It seems more likely that within the next couple of European election cycles, the internal contradictions of the EU will manifest themselves in the usual way, and that by 2010 we’ll be watching burning buildings, street riots, and assassinations on American network news every night. Even if they avoid that, the idea of a childless Europe ever rivaling America militarily or economically is laughable. Sometime this century there will be 500 million Americans, and what’s left in Europe will either be very old or very Muslim. Japan faces the same problem: its population is already in absolute decline, the first gentle slope of a death spiral it will be unlikely ever to climb out of. Will Japan be an economic powerhouse if it’s populated by Koreans and Filipinos? Very possibly. Will Germany if it’s populated by Algerians? That’s a trickier proposition.

Best-case scenario? The Continent winds up as Vienna with Swedish tax rates.

Worst-case scenario: Sharia, circa 2040; semi-Sharia, a lot sooner—and we’re already seeing a drift in that direction.

A Letter to the Europeans

Cry the beloved continent

Victor Davis Hanson writes this open letter to our former European friends in the hopes that they will come to their senses. Whether they do or not is the question. Even now, in this late hour, they could change their ways. But it would be very painful and difficult to change course. And so far they show no indication that they are willing to endure that pain, however temporary it may be.

The Clay Feet of Liberal Saints

What George Clooney and Upton Sinclair have in common.

Jonah Goldberg looks at the interesting fact that golden liberal icons often turn out to be made of tin. But don't expect any recognition of this uncomfortable reality from the elite establishment. For them the hazy legend is all they are willing to see.

Murtha Fears a Withdrawal that “Makes It Look Like There’s a Victory”

The antiwar congressman speaks out — again.

Byron York reports that congressman John Murtha is at it again. This time around he is advocating American surrender in front of a crowd of moonbats from MoveOn.org who have as their fondest wish, after the destruction of America, the impeachment of George Bush on charges of war crimes. Mr. Murtha apparently considers this a great opportunity for Democrats in the leadership, who are running for President, to impress the American people with their sincerity and conviction that American defeat is the best policy if you want to be elected to the highest office in the land.

NRO’s 2006 Crystal Ball

Predicting 2006

The editors and writers at The National Review have some fun making predictions, not always serious, about what we can look forward to in the coming year.

Hollywood studios will continue to reach out to religious America in their efforts to market movies about gay cowboys, the suffering of terrorists, and greedy corporations. Then when these movies fail at the box office, the studios will respond by blaming competition from videogames and DVDs.

Google and Apple laugh all the way to the bank.

Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame will enter talks to launch their own talk/reality show. Even after a sweeps week episode in which Wilson eats 6 pounds of yellow cake from in-between Plame's cleavage with his hands tied behind his back, he will take great offense at anyone who suggests he's a publicity hound.

Abu Zarqawi will be caught alive. But he will hang himself in his cell when Reuters reports that Iraqi authorities found the director's cut of Brokeback Mountain in his portable DVD player.

The Chicago Cubs will win the pennant.

Howard Dean denounces "the smelly, stupid, fire-breathing, snake-handling fundamentalists that dominate the Bush administration." He also denounces name-calling and intolerance.

With strong bipartisan support Congress calls for a three-month embargo on Angelina Jolie adopting any more kids from the third world.

Federal government scraps Witness Protection Program, starts giving witnesses in need of anonymity their own shows on Air America Radio.

Answering Back to the News Media, Using the Internet

Katharine Q. Seelye of The Al-Qaeda Times looks at the effects that the Internet and the blogsphere are having on The Elite Media Monoculture. Mostly she pines away for the good old days when reporters with a liberal slant could spin the news as they see fit and there was no way for critics to reply or answer back with a different view. Note for the record here that in this story Seelye admits that journalists have regularly taken quotes out of context, printed a single quote from a more extensive interview or just plain ignored things they didn't like.

But with the rise of the Internet and citizen commentary in the form of blogs, the old media can't control how a story will be presented outside of their own newspaper pages. Interview subjects now routinely post their own complete transcripts on their own web sites, thus allowing readers to judge for themselves how the reporter may have filtered the information which they actually print in their papers or air on their television programs. And when the Times or any other outlet puts out a story, there are millions of fact-checkers in the blogsphere waiting to find any factual mistakes or to scrutinize the spin of the reporter who wrote it.

Just ask "Nightline," the ABC News program, which broadcast a segment in August about intelligent design that the Discovery Institute, a conservative clearinghouse for proponents of intelligent design, did not like very much. The next day, the institute published on its Web site the entire transcript of the nearly hourlong interview that "Nightline" had conducted a few days earlier with one of the institute's leaders, not just the brief quotes that had appeared on television.

The institute did not accuse "Nightline" of any errors. Rather, it urged readers to examine the unedited interview because, it said, the transcript would reveal "the predictable tone of some of the questions" by the staff of "Nightline."

"Here's your chance to go behind the scenes with the gatekeepers of the national media to see how they screen out viewpoints and information that don't fit their stereotypes," Rob Crowther, the institute's spokesman, wrote on the Web site.

The Elite Media Monoculture has having a hard time adapting to this new reality. They seem not to want to acknowledge that the rules of the game have changed and that from now on the audience has more than one choice of viewpoint. Some of the reporters quoted in the story sound downright cranky about the fact that they are now being closely examined for errors and bias.

Danny Schechter, executive editor of MediaChannel.org and a former producer at ABC News and CNN, said that while the active participation by so many readers was healthy for democracy and journalism, it had allowed partisanship to mask itself as media criticism and had given rise to a new level of vitriol.

"It's now O.K. to demonize the messenger," he said. "This has led to a very uncivil discourse in which it seems to be O.K. to shout down, discredit, delegitimize and denigrate the people who are reporting stories and to pick at their methodology and ascribe motives to them that are often unfair."

Thomas Kunkel, dean of the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland, said reporting on reporters had created a kind of "Wild West atmosphere" in cyberspace.

With reporters conducting interviews more frequently by e-mail, he said, "You have to start thinking a couple of moves ahead because you're leaving a paper trail. And the truth squad mentality of some bloggers means you are apt to have your own questions thrown back at you."

Fortunately there is little that The Elite Media Monoculture can do to get back their monopoly of information control and distribution. Commentary and opinion on the Internet are now a part of our culture, protected by the first amendment. Millions of people who take an active interest in politics, culture and other subjects, are now free to become their own publishers for the cost of a computer and an Internet connection. The leftist press can't get around that fact and will have to adapt to the new world of open-source information or perish from inflexibility.

The Liberal Bubble

American Thinker Thomas Lifson takes a look at liberals inside their bubble. And what a comfortable place it must be when compared with the real world with all of its dangers and uncertainties. For the Angry Left it is an increasingly isolated sanctuary which protects them from having to debate with, or even hear, ideas and arguments which don't fit the liberal paradigm. But of course this kind of isolation also breeds in intellectual weakness in the same way that nature weeds out creatures unable to adapt to changing conditions.

Mr. Sevan, I Presume

Claudia Rosett asks where you would be if you were the UN staffer who ran the Old-for-Palaces scheme from 1997 to 2003? Why, back in Cyprus of course where you can't be extradited to the US.

Clinton Claimed Authority to Order No-Warrant Searches

Does anyone remember that?

Byron York reminds us that President Clinton also claimed the authority to use warrantless searches in cases where national security was involved. In this article we look back to 1994 during which the Clinton administration was working on intelligence reform. The Clinton administration argued then, as Bush is arguing today, that gathering intelligence for national defense is quite a different thing than gathering evidence for the prosecution of a crime.

"The Department of Justice believes, and the case law supports, that the president has inherent authority to conduct warrantless physical searches for foreign intelligence purposes," Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee on July 14, 1994, "and that the President may, as has been done, delegate this authority to the Attorney General."

"It is important to understand," Gorelick continued, "that the rules and methodology for criminal searches are inconsistent with the collection of foreign intelligence and would unduly frustrate the president in carrying out his foreign intelligence responsibilities."

Executive Order 12333, signed by Ronald Reagan in 1981, provides for such warrantless searches directed against "a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power."

Reporting the day after Gorelick's testimony, the Washington Post's headline — on page A-19 — read, "Administration Backing No-Warrant Spy Searches." The story began, "The Clinton administration, in a little-noticed facet of the debate on intelligence reforms, is seeking congressional authorization for U.S. spies to continue conducting clandestine searches at foreign embassies in Washington and other cities without a federal court order. The administration's quiet lobbying effort is aimed at modifying draft legislation that would require U.S. counterintelligence officials to get a court order before secretly snooping inside the homes or workplaces of suspected foreign agents or foreign powers."

Warrantless Searches of Americans? That’s Shocking!

Except when it happens every day.

While the Angry Left is shrieking that the President should be impeached for the barbaric crime of trying to find out what Islamofascists are planning to do in America, Andrew McCarthy brings us a few examples of the kinds of warrantless searches which have been allowed by the courts and are considered within the framework of the Constitution.

F.B.I. Watched Activist Groups, New Files Show

In this article from The Al-Qaeda Times, Eric Lichtblau tries to gin up fear and loathing for the administration's use of wiretaps against terrorist groups and individuals. Because we wouldn't want the government to actually keep an eye on violent groups that destroy property and threaten American lives now, would we? No, according to the Leftmedia, that would be a bad thing. And so we have yet another leak of sensitive information designed to make the defense of America more difficult than it already is.

The fact that an administration in a time of war apparently cannot hope to conduct such activities without The Elite Media Monoculture shouting every little detail of them to our enemies is, of course, only a problem for those of us who actually want to win this fight. For the Democrats, The Angry Left and Dinosaur media the goal is to undermine the Evil BushHalliburton Crime Family no matter the cost. And if that means an American defeat in the war against the Islamofascists because our intelligence methods have been compromised, then so be it. After all, the Angry Left doesn't really like the country anyway.

Lancing the Boil

We quietly keep on killing terrorists, promoting elections in Iraq, pressuring Arab autocracies to democratize, and growing the economy.

Victor Davis Hanson takes a look at the effects the Iraqi elections are having at home and abroad on the chattering classes in this National Review article. The developments in Iraq have, as usual, taken the critics by surprise. Because as we all are supposed to know, the BushHitlerHalliburton regime is the most evil in history. In the parallel reality of the Eurotrash elites, the Angry Left and the Defeatocrats, the critics have been united in their condemnation of American defence, capitalism and conservatives as if they were a dread disease spreading across the landscape.

Back in the real world however, events are proving the administration's strategy to be the right one as democracy is taking hold in Iraq and the economy back home is in full swing. According to the received wisdom of the elites, this was all supposed to be impossible. And the Democratic Left has lurched around like an angry drunk trying to explain away its own failure to understand the success of the administration and why the world behaves in ways which refute the leftist fantasy.

Dazed and Confused on Iraq

The damaging power of Democratic convictions.

Rich Lowry brings us a roundup of recent Defeatocrat gymnastics in this essay from The National Review. With the large turnout in the latest round of Iraqi elections, the President's strategy for the Middle East continues to unfold in the direction of democratic reform, just as it was originally envisioned. The road up to this point has not been easy, and certainly not without sacrifice. But President Bush, and the administration, have maintained a confidence in the possibility of a more democratic Middle East and have put that idea to the test in the real world. Now we are seeing the product of that vision in form of Iraqi elections, and slow but steady movement towards reform in much of the rest of the region.

Meanwhile the Defeatocrats have thrashed around from one bizarre position on the war to the next in a desperate attempt to undermine the President, get the public on the side of defeat and thus to get their own power back. Their attempts have not exactly been an outstanding success. When top members of the party like Sen. Kerry falsely claim our troop are "terrorizing" the Iraqi people, when John Murtha calls for immediate surrender and Howard Dean declares the war lost, one does not get the impression of a party with strength or confidence in the arena of foreign affairs. And indeed, one wonders whether the Defeatocrats and the Angry Left will ever be able to recover from this self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.

A Moral War

The project in Iraq can succeed, and leave its critics scrambling.

As usual, Victor Davis Hanson hits the nail on the head with this essay in which he argues that the coming victory in Iraq will leave the ankle biting critics in the dust, once again trying to figure out where they went wrong. As Iraq becomes more and more an independent and successful democracy the self-anointed moral elites will come to be seen for the cynical, triangulating frauds that they are.

This is now what comprises statesmanship: Some renounce their earlier support for the war. Others, less imaginative, in Clintonian (his and hers) fashion, take credit for backing the miraculous victory of spring 2003, but in hindsight, of course, blame the bloody peace on Bush. Or, better yet, they praise Congressman Murtha to the skies, but under no circumstances go on record urging the military to follow his advice.

How strange that journalists pontificate post facto about all the mistakes that they think have been made, nevertheless conceding that here we are on the verge of a third and final successful election. No mention, of course, is ever made about the current sorry state of journalistic ethics and incompetence (cf. Jayson Blair, Judy Miller, Michael Isikoff, Bob Woodward, Eason Jordan). A group of professionals, after all, who cannot even be professional in their own sphere, surely have no credibility in lecturing the U.S. military about what they think went wrong in Iraq.

The Angry Left is Still Very Angry.

This blog post by Michelle Malkin reports on some of the latest in angry whining from the left. In this instance our favorite alternative ingenue, the perpetually aggrieved Janeane Garofalo, appeared on MSNBC to spout her frustration on failing to attract the assistance of therapists who could help her. In this interview we get to see more of the kind of moonbat conspiracy theorizing that has brought her show and AirMoonbat the stellar ratings that have pushed them to the number 23 station in liberal New York. (Enthusiastic financial assistance from widows and orphans of The Gloria Wise Boys and Girls Club notwithstanding.)

Of course it should be clear from reading the transcript, provided by Newsbusters, that Janeane is far from being a serious thinker. Like so many on the left, she provides a wealth of angry emotion and bumper-sticker slogans, but is unable to offer any kind of factual arguments. She opines that Bob Novak and Ann Coulter are "unpleasant" but offers no specifics about what that might entail. Terms like "partisan right-wing hack" and "dark forces" are thrown out as if they were self-evident with no need of further explanation. And weirdly she claims that Republicans and conservatives are neither Republicans or conservative. Is an A a non-A in Janeane's universe? Does the law of non-contraction fail to apply in leftyland? It would seem so. And Olberman as host fails to ask for any expansion on these bizarre claims. If Republicans and conservatives are neither Republican or conservative, then what are they? What does Garofalo mean when she uses these terms? No answer is given. We are expected to simply accept them at face value without further analysis.

Ultimately we are left to conclude that when an Angry Leftists complains about conservatives being "unpleasant" that what the left really objects to is having to offer any kind of intellectual debate on the substance of an issue. For instance, the entire question of Bob Novak's involvement in the Plame affair has been entirely undercut by the admission of Bob Woodward that he had the same information about her months before it was published in the Chicago Sun-Times, and thus it logically follows that Karl Rove could not have been the source of the leak as leftists have been claiming. But none of this was mentioned in the interview because as we all can recognize, facts, logic and evidence have no effect on the Angry Left any longer. Their shields are up and nothing which contradicts the evil rightwing conspiracy viewpoint is allowed to get through.

And as for Janeane's claim that conservatives have an anger management problems, check out Michelle Malkin's response in her column over at Jewish World Review. And while you're at it, you might also want to check out Brian Maloney's post on the subject as well.

Another Weird Claim

And while we're on the subject of AirMoonbat, I was listening to Randi Rhodes the other day and as she usually does, she made another of her bizarre remarks. Actually there were two that I heard that demonstrate just how out of touch they are over there, why they have no listeners even in liberal New York, and why they will eventually be off the air for lack of advertisers who know a sinking ship when they see one.

The first weird statement she made was that our troops are "brainwashed" because most of them support the President and applauded at his recent speech. As one would expect from a member of The Angry Left, no evidence was offered for this insulting claim. It seems that it is beyond the understanding of the Angry Left to grasp that most people, including members of the military who volunteered to serve, might actually support the country and its elected President. But remember, don't question the left's "Patriotism."

The other odd thing she said was in reference to Iraq's progress in rebuilding. She made the claim, and I am paraphrasing here, that America had bombed Iraq plenty, but that there was no rebuilding or reconstruction. Now of course there is no question that during combat operations we used air power to take out Saddam's military installations and palaces. No one disputes this. But most of the operations in which we are engaged now are of the close combat, urban fighting variety. When was the last time you heard on the news about American aircraft engaged in large-scale bombing in Iraq? Neither have I. And as for reconstruction, one must conclude that Randi Rhodes is both incredibly stupid as well as incredibly ignorant. Because all that you have to do to find out what we, and the Iraqi people themselves have been doing to rebuild, is to go here and here and here.

I guess the "reality based community" is in need of remedial reading lessons.

What, Me Worry?

Bush abandons the Alfred E. Neuman school of public relations.

Daniel Henninger writes about the frustration that many in the conservative movement have felt at the lack of a spirited intellectual defense from the administration with regard to its policies both foreign and domestic. It has indeed been a mystery to many observers that the White House could have such a clear view of how to fight a war against Islamofascism as well as moving the economy forward with pro-growth policies like tax cuts, and yet not know how to promote this same agenda with the public. For some time it has seemed that the administration did not even understand the need to let the American public see that they were confident of their own actions by vigorously defending them. Unfortunately in the new media environment silently allowing one's actions to speak for themselves is just not enough. There are several reasons for this that require any Republican administration, now or in the future, to take a more pro-active approach to the management of public relations and information in the age of a hostile dinosaur media, a collapsing hard left Democratic party and the rise of new media.

One must recognize that The Elite Media Monoculture is not on the side of America and certainly not of this Presidency. It is clear that they do not want him to succeed. But in order for this President to fail, the President's defense policy must also fail since so much of the administration's political capital is founded on the war against terrorism. The press cannot, of course, make the case that the overall strategy is failing since that would require an extended philosophical debate and an argument over facts which they are unwilling to discuss or put forward. A detailed analysis of how the war is being fought and its overall goals and strategy is the last thing they want. Nor do they want to notice the continuing progress being made in Iraq and the rest of the Middle East as a result of White House policy. Indeed, Old Media has gone out of its way to avoid discussing a great deal of what is actually happening in Iraq as well as the broader Middle East precisely because it does not fit their world view or their agenda of ridding the country of a Republican administration. That the President's policy in Iraq is actually succeeding is a fact that they simply do not wish to discuss.

Thus the members of Old Media have been attempting very hard to do the next best thing. They have been working tirelessly to erode the confidence of the American people at home because they know that a foreign policy cannot last if it does not have the support of the people. And because the facts show that the President's Iraq policy is slowly but surely achieving its goals in Iraq, the elites have instead chosen to attack the administration's credibility and ethical standing in the hope that they will be able to sour the American public on the President. In the last few years we have seen plenty of examples of them trying to bring down this President, even going so far as to cook up fake National Guard documents, fake testimony about troops targeting journalists, fake claims about a war for oil, fake stories of flushing Korans down toilets at Guantanamo and fake sanctimony about intelligence which everyone had and no one doubted at the time.

The Elite Media Monoculture has become Pravda; providing a daily dose of propaganda in favor of America's enemies and against America being able to defend itself against those who wish to destroy it. They are doing their best to present only that information which puts the President and his administration in the worst possible light, while at the same time fabricating bad news and ignoring everything else which shows the administration's policies to be effective. In such an environment it is vital to offer an intellectual defense of our actions. One cannot be shy about it. The support of the American people is critical to the war effort and the press knows it. Failing to defend one's ideas in this day and age is to give up the field to the enemy.

At the same time we also have to contend with the implosion of the Democratic party. Having been taken over by the radical hard left, the Democrats, like the press, have chosen to side with America's enemies because they think that it will be the road by which they return to power. And the return of their power is what they want the most. In concert with the Elite Media Monoculture, the Democrats have chosen to launch an all-out political war against the Republicans and the President hoping that it will win them back the White House and the congress. And like the press, they have chosen the politics of personal destruction rather than a debate over the issues. The basic idea is not so different. They believe that if they can discredit Republicans and the President that the American people will turn to them as the logical alternative. Never mind that they have no plan and do not appear to take the defense of the country seriously. Never mind that they have lost in election after election because the public knows they are not a serious party. Never mind that we live in dangerous times and that Democrats seem not to notice it and to blame all problems on the United States. Somehow, against all evidence, they think that this path will bring them back to power.

If the administration does not defend itself, loudly and with moral authority, they could be right. Fortunately the White House seems to be getting the message and they are now starting to do what they should have been doing all along.

Bloggers, talk radio and the rest of the new media have for some time been doing much of the grunt work of defending the administration as well as conservative and libertarian political ideas in general, and that will continue to be the case in the future. The new media environment makes it a certainty that the Internet will be critical to the debate over politics, culture and economics both now and in the future. But at the same time any conservative or Republican administration must understand that in the information age silence is not golden. Especially when so much is at stake and so many on the hard left want you to fail. If conservatives are to survive and thrive in this new world of instant information combined with a hostile hard left, they need to understand the battle of ideas and come to it prepared to fight for what is right. Remaining silent and hoping for the best is just not an option.

The Adventures of Chester and Globalization

Blogger Adventures of Chester has a fascinating essay on how the effects of globalization have been felt in unexpected ways from Japanese pop culture to the rise of networked warriors. His views on the decline of hierarchies in both government and business are well worth considering and have broad implications if true. One might point out, for instance, that of our two major political parties, one is fatally tied to the 19th century idea of top down socialistic command and control both politically and economically. If globalization is really moving us in the direction of flattened hierarchies, as Chester argues, then the political parties which survive will be those which recognize the advantages of networked systems of information and economic exchange that dispense with much of the current framework of bureaucracy that is a remnant of a time when instant information was simply unavailable.

Thanks for the New Links

There are not a lot of other blogs which link to The Red Moon Journal, this being a rather small blog, but we are thankful for those that do. We are thus glad to be able to bring you some new links to blogs which have recently linked to us. So go and visit Different River, Committees of Correspondence and The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns.

Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory

The Senate reverses itself and opens the courts to al Qaeda.

Andrew McCarthy writes about our imperial house of lords and their continuing disconnect from reality and the American people. For the Senate has decreed that courts now get to decide who is an enemy combatant, even though American law has always held that this is the rightful purview of the military. Imagine an ACLU lawyer going along on combat missions to tell you who you can, and who you cannot shoot and you get the idea. And it won't stop there either. If this is not reversed then terrorists who are not US citizens and who are at war with us and civilization will have all the legal protections in the civilian courts that Americans enjoy. Apparently the US Senate is not smart enough to realize that these are the same courts that Al Qaeda considers illegitimate in any case and wishes to destroy along with the rest of western civilization.

It's ideas like this that get people killed.

The Crying Game

So near in Iraq, so far at home.

Victor Davis Hanson argues that recent events have given the Democrats in the congress the cover for a more anti-war stance than has previously been the case. There are, he says, three reasons that the Democrats feel they can now indulge themselves more in this regard and he outlines them in his article. They are the craziness of The Angry Left, the Democrats being wrong about the cold war and their responsibility for the disastrous pull out from Vietnam and the results which followed.

I have to say, though, that I think he is being just a bit too generous with the Dems. The harping and whining has been going on for some time now. As early as 2003, former vice president AlGore was cozying up to Moveon.org and just a few months later was giving a wild-eyed speech.

"How dare the incompetent and willful members of this Bush-Cheney administration humiliate our nation and our people in the eyes of the world and in the conscience of our own people."

It wasn't long before he was calling conservative bloggers on the net "digital brownshirts."

The Democrats party has been moving in a more leftward direction for several years now and they have been pulled in that direction by the moonbat fringe. They have become the effective base of the party. With election funds provided by a small, but very wealthy group of people including George Soros, Peter Lewis, Stephen Bing and Herbert and Marion Sandler, the Angry Left has taken over the Democratic party. Add to that a wide range of 527s and all of the assorted and perpetually aggrieved special interest groups, and you have a party in the hands of the "hate America" crowd. See Byron York's, "The Vast Left Wing Conspiracy for a more detailed accounting of the tale. These individuals and groups now provide the bulk of Democratic money. And as long as that is where the money is, the party will continue moving left.

Of course controlling the party and winning elections are two different things as we have seen. The Angry Left tried very hard in the last outing to win for their candidate, but were unable to do so, even with a massive voter turn out and plenty of money. In the end, the American people just don't trust them to be a serious party.

War & Reconstruction

For Bush’s critics, even hindsight is cloudy.

Victor Davis Hanson points out that the critics of the President's Iraq strategy are in CYA mode. Despite all evidence to the contrary many Democrats, and sadly some spineless Republicans as well, seem to think we have been unsuccessful in Iraq. Thus we have had the sad spectacle this past week of Republican perfidy in the form of a vote in the Senate that echoed the demands for a "timetable" such as the left has been arguing for as a pretext for pullout and surrender. That Republicans went along with this at all is as shameful a betrayal as one can imagine. It sends all the wrong messages to all the wrong people. It was not a sign of confidence or strength and everyone but the Senate Republicans knew it.

Fortunately the Republicans in the house know how to fight back and do have a spine. On Friday they scheduled a debate and a vote on a resolution pertaining to a troop pullout from Iraq. This, of course, gave the cut and run crowd the very opportunity they needed to put their money where their mouths have been for so long. What was the result? The final vote, after all of the whining and moaning of the leftist Democrats was 403 to 3 to reject a pullout. That's right. Democrats are plenty brave when it comes to embedding themselves in The Elite Media Monoculture. But when they actually have to take a stand and go on record they chicken out.

Typical.

You All Right, Jacques?

Chirac’s strategy? Just you wait!

Denis Boyles predicts that Jacques Chirac and the French government will handle the current situation there just as they did the heat wave of 2003 that killed 15,000 elderly citizens; they will ignore it and hope it goes away.

Trouble in Gaulistan

Les Muslimerables? No. Les Invisibles

Jonah Goldberg also thinks we are unlikely to see much change from the French government, but for different reasons. For Goldberg the motivating issue here is the smug, self-satisfied snobbery of the French and their inertia. Even now, the French are unwilling to look to at how their own social welfare system is helping to create a permanent underclass of radicalized Muslims with nothing better to do.

A War Like No Other

Frontpage Magazine interviews historian Victor Davis Hanson on the current siltation in Europe and the war against the Islamofascists. Hanson has some interesting views about the similarity of the current conflict and the ancient Peloponnesian war. In particular I found his description of the anti-war kooks of the day quite interesting and eerily similar to the Angry Left of today. It is very instructive to be reminded that the Greeks lost in large part because they listened to their own appeasement fringe.

Everything we have seen in the present global; war-slaughtering schoolchildren in Beslan; murdering diplomats; taking hostages; lopping limbs; targeted assassinations; roadside killing; spreading democracy through arms-had identical counterparts in the Peloponnesian War. That is not surprising when Thucydides reminds us that the nature of man does not change, and thus war is eternal, its face merely evolving with new technology that masks, but does not alter its essence.

More importantly, Athens' tragedy reminds of us of our dilemma that often wealth, leisure, sophistication, and, yes, cynicism, are the wages of successful democracy and vibrant economies, breeding both a sort of smugness and an arrogance. And for all Thucydides' chronicle of Athenian lapses, in the last analysis, rightly or wrongly, he attributes much of Athens' defeat to infighting back at home, and a hypercritical populace, egged on by demagogues that time and again turned on their own.

So the war is also a timely reminder about the strengths-and lethal propensities-of democracies at war. And we should remember that when we hear some of the internecine hysteria voiced here at home-whether over a flushed Koran or George Bush's flight suit- when 160,000 Americans are risking their lives to ensure that 50 million can continue to vote.

Reflections on the Revolution in France

Middle East expert and writer Daniel Pipes considers the possible reactions of the French government to the attempted takeover by radical Islamists. His prognosis for the present is somewhat pessimistic as he thinks that even the current crisis is not enough to wake the French from their slumber. He thinks a more shocking event will be needed and no doubt the Islamists will be eager to provide one.

Jihad in Europe?

Robert Spencer, author of "Islam Unveiled," brings us this essay in which he looks at the jihadist motivations behind the riots in France and elsewhere in Europe.

And So it Begins...

Paris is burning

For almost two weeks now we have seen the riots in France and it reminds us all too well of another time when a violent movement was rising in Europe to threaten the world. Leaders of the time played down the problem and tried to find ways to appease the threat and for a decade they thought they had done so. They proclaimed "Peace in our Time." But it was a temporary illusion and it did not last. And now we see another barbaric cult of death pushing against the frontiers of civilization across the globe from Europe to America to India to Asia to Africa. It seems there is no place on Earth which is not now under siege from violent Muslims bent on murder and destruction. The leaders of this movement mean to take your freedom away from you by force and to make you a slave, if they let you live at all that is.

The war of Islamism against the world has arrived and we will be fighting it for a very long time to come. It will last for some time because, unlike Germany in the 30's, Islamism is not located in just one geographical area or country. There is no single army or navy to fight. And the enemy may be located in any nation which has allowed uncontrolled immigration of Muslims into its territory. The French did so for forty years. The chickens have now come home to roost. And they have guns and bombs and aren't afraid to use them. The rest of Europe is not far behind.

Note that France is not the only place where the savages are now rioting against civilization. It is telling that they no longer feel the need to hide their agenda. When a mob feels no fear it will be capable of any violence, even setting an invalid woman on fire. The war has arrived in Europe. There will be no bystanders and everyone will have to pick a side. We already know where the left stands.

The Islamists have a utopian ideology, and like the Nazis before them they are uninterested in political dialog or discussion. They consider everyone else to be inferior to them. To the Islamist mind the infidel is less than fully human and thus unworthy of respect And when you see the rest of the world in this way you have no reason to refrain from killing those who stand in your way. Thus the Islamist is at war with the world. American, Hindu, Japanese or French; it makes no difference at all to the enemies of civilization. To them we are all dhimmis to be made subservient to the "master race."

We have, of course, heard this before.

Busy, Busy, Busy

Sorry about the light blogging, but when you work for the biggest printing company in the country you sometimes get overwhelmed with work. Six days a week and 10 hours a day, not counting the commute is not at all uncommon. Thus it has been the case recently and will probably continue for a while yet as we are deep in the Christmas season. In the world of graphics things are done well in advance in order to get jobs to press on time and thus to you so you will be more inclined to visit your local retailer. And of course one has to note that this is not all a bad thing as it puts extra money in my pocket, and also shows the continuing strength of the American economy which is humming along at a brisk pace. Growth for the recent quarter has been revised upward. Jobs are more plentiful and the hurricanes apparently did not slow the economy as much as some feared. All good news.

In the meantime, I will see if I can't get a few posts up at the least, as there is much going on outside the world of graphics and printing which is important to us all.

Internet Rules

The Miers denouement shows the power of the new media.

John Fund of The Wall Street Journal sums up the fight over Harriet Miers in the context of the development of new media. And indeed, the new media is where such intellectual skirmishes will be fought for the foreseeable future. For the Internet allows people on all sides of the debate to talk to each other and to process the various arguments in favor, or against, any given idea or position one can name. In this case we saw an internal debate on the conservative side over the qualifications and future implication of the Miers nomination. And in the end the skeptics formed the majority with defenders being few and far between. In this particular battle of ideas it was the skeptics who were on solid ground with the defenders putting up various weak arguments that were quickly refuted. And it should not have surprised the defenders that the critics held to the positions that they did. For this particular nomination, and the next one to come, will be critical in turning the country away from the left's version of court ordered socialism and back to the democratic-capitalist republic that it was originally intended to be.

In the next battle we will see conservatives defending the new nominee, Sam Alito, against the attacks from the Angry Left. It should be very interesting to say the least. And conservatives have been waiting for this fight for some time. Americans are coming to understand that the courts have taken much of the job of legislatures to themselves in a manner which would have disturbed the founding fathers greatly. The motivation of conservatives in this fights is to bring the court back to where it was originally designed to be in the context of American government; as an impartial arbiter rather than as a super-legislature that cannot be un-elected. The Angry Left will fight this with all their might because they have nothing left and more importantly because they know that they cannot advance the Great Socialist Utopia at the ballot box. Only through the courts have they been able to put their programs into action. And courts, unlike legislatures, are very difficult to reverse. Thus the left has a vested interest in keeping the courts beyond the reach of the influence of the vast majority of Americans