Bluebird

GAMAY

God and man and William F. Buckley

Reflecting on his "God and Man at Yale," published 60 years ago, teaches us something important about the nature and trajectory of modern conservatism.

Illustration of William F. Buckley, who wrote "God and Man at Yale." (Nancy Ohanian / For The Times)

By Carl T. Bogus

November 27, 2011

The modern conservative movement began 60 years ago with the publication of a book by a 26-year-old first-time author. Reflecting on that work teaches us something important about the nature and trajectory of modern conservatism, about the energy that propelled the movement and about serious problems with the movement today.

The book was "God and Man at Yale." The author was William F. Buckley Jr.

GAMAY (as conservatives often call this iconic work) was an attack on the young author's alma mater. Buckley excoriated Yale for two things:

First, he complained that Yale's economics instructors were not indoctrinating their students in a pure version of laissez-faire economics. Buckley claimed that less than half of the economics department advocated that ideology, which Buckley called "individualism." The rest were Keynesians who advocated some governmental regulation of the economy, and therefore as Buckley saw it, economics training at Yale was "thoroughly collectivist."

The term collectivist still has bite today, but when GAMAY was published it had a menacing connotation. Collectivism was associated with totalitarian regimes and their rulers: Josef Stalin of the Soviet Union and Mao Tse-tung of China, whose forces were killing American soldiers in Korea. Moreover, some on the right were ominously warning that even if the American military successfully defended the ramparts of freedom abroad, Keynesian economic theories would lead America down a slippery slope into collectivism at home.

Second, Buckley argued that although Yale's religion department was academically "everything one could wish" for, it was failing to "proselytize the Christian faith." One course, though taught by a Christian, was a "completely non-dogmatic examination of the philosophies of religion." Another religion professor, who was also an ordained minister, kept "his convictions largely to himself." Buckley found this unacceptable.

What was leading Yale astray? The problem was the university's mistaken belief in academic freedom. Buckley argued that academic freedom was a myth. Yale would surely dismiss any faculty member who advocated racist or anti-Semitic views, and a recent president of Yale had declared that the university would not "knowingly hire a Communist." Yet Yale foolishly failed to demand that its faculty promote individualism and Christianity.

In GAMAY's preface, Buckley wrote his two most historically important sentences. "I myself believe," he declared, "that the duel between Christianity and atheism is the most important in the world. I further believe that the struggle between individualism and collectivism is the same struggle reproduced on another level."

Thus did Buckley conflate economics and religion. The world was engaged in an existential struggle between good and evil, and purity in Christianity and laissez-faire economics were essentially intertwined and part of the good. As Buckley saw it, John Maynard Keynes was not merely incorrect in arguing that some governmental regulation of the economy was desirable. He was leading the West down a path to perdition.

One cannot understand the modern conservative movement without appreciating this sentiment. That is what it is — a sentiment — rather than an articulated argument. But sentiments are more powerful than logic or analysis.

From its origins in 1951, the conservative movement has perceived itself not essentially as an advocate for a more effective political philosophy but as a bulwark against evil. Though many liberals may be naive rather than malevolent, they are nonetheless leading America into something foul and wicked.

It is this sentiment that has imbued the modern conservative movement with so much fervor. It is what motivates the bombast of Rush Limbaugh and many imitators. It is why Ann Coulter books are titled "Treason," "High Crimes and Misdemeanors," "Guilty: Liberal 'Victims' and Their Assault on America" and "Demonic."

The sentiment also explains why so many Republican presidential candidates do not believe in evolution. Many on the right equate Christianity with conservatism, and demand purity in both.

Beyond their Mormonism (and Mitt Romney's flip-flops), this is the sentiment (or lack thereof) that separates Jon Huntsman Jr. and Romney from the rest of the Republican field. Huntsman and Romney do not exude the fervor of crusaders, and when periodically they try to do so, they appear inauthentic.

The crusading sentiment made more sense during the Cold War, when America faced a truly collectivist, atheistic and nuclear-armed adversary. It is becoming increasingly discordant with the times, and that is why some Republican candidates with considerable support strike non-conservatives as weird.

It is paradoxical that William F. Buckley Jr. — who, more than any other individual, infused the conservative movement with the sentiment of battling evil — enjoyed warm relationships with liberals such as John Kenneth Galbraith, Murray Kempton, Allard Lowenstein and George McGovern. Buckley was a crusader, but he was also a person of great and essential goodwill.

That should be Buckley's greatest lesson to all of us, whether on the right or the left. If there is something that can save us — from our own excesses, our own foolishness, even our own brilliance — it is essential goodwill.

Carl T. Bogus, a professor of law at Roger Williams University, is the author of "William F. Buckley Jr. and the Rise of American Conservatism."

Dissecting lies

November 21, 2011, 3:04 pm How to Attack Your Opponent for Things He Didn’t Do

By ANDREW ROSENTHAL

Charlie Neibergall/Associated PressGov. Rick Perry waves as he enters the Thanksgiving Family Forum sponsored by The Family Leader, Saturday, Nov. 19, 2011, in Des Moines, Iowa.

As a journalist who’s covered American politics for the last 24 years, and who covered the Soviet Union as a foreign correspondent before that, I’ve learn to appreciate the dark art of political propaganda.

There’s the outright lie (Barack Obama is not an American citizen), which some people will believe if you say it often enough. There is the subtle lie, which contains enough of a germ of truth to make your opponent look evil (Democrats want to take away your guns). And then there is the damning-by-implication ploy (Sarah Palin is a real American, so that must mean you are not).

One of my all-time favorites is the straw man scam. There are two ways you can do this. One is simply to take a page from the big lie and accuse your opponent of doing something he never did, so you can attack him for it. For example, Newt Gingrich has said that Barack Obama doesn’t believe in the exceptional nature of American democracy because he goes around the world apologizing for it.

 

The second way is to put an extra spin on damning-by-implication—to announce that if you were in charge, you would do X or Y or Z, thereby suggesting that your opponent couldn’t, wouldn’t, or hasn’t done that.

A recent example of the straw man scam came courtesy of Gov. Rick Perry of Texas. At a Family Leader conference in Iowa on Saturday, Mr. Perry said that “there is a time and a place for us to intervene and intervene militarily.”

Phew. Glad we got that cleared up.

Mr. Perry went on: “But when we intervene militarily, we best make the decision on how we are going to win and how we are going to win convincingly and quickly, send those young men and women with the equipment to win.”

As opposed to what? I think President George W. Bush and his bungling Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld actually thought they were planning an effective invasion of Iraq. It wasn’t that they didn’t think about winning. They were just were really bad at it. (I doubt Mr. Perry had them in mind anyway.)

But Mr. Perry was not satisfied with two straw men, so we he went for a third. He said he did not want to “let some Congressman sitting in an air-conditioned office in Washington, D.C. deciding what the rules of engagement are. … And for us to micromanage them, in a civilian way, without their commanders truly in charge, is absolute irresponsible and as commander-in-chief of this country I will not let it happen.”

That’s a lot of stuff to digest, even leaving out that the president is not commander-in-chief of the country, but of the military. Surely he was not suggesting we do away with civilian control of the military. So what problem does he want to fix? When exactly does Mr. Perry think a politician micromanaged troops in the field? Is he trying to say that’s what President Obama does, or what one of his opponents would do?

Only one recent example comes to mind of a president personally supervising a military operation: the assassination of Osama bin Laden. I’m not in favor of a junta, but that actually turned out rather well.

Hilariously wack repugnant logic

Op-Ed Columnist

Republican Financial Plans

By GAIL COLLINS

Published: November 18, 2011

Our topic for today is: Where do the Republican candidates for president get their money?

Earl Wilson/The New York Times

Gail Collins

The personal finances of the G.O.P. presidential hopefuls are important for two reasons. One is that we’re talking about people who aspire to the most prestigious and important job the nation has to offer. The other is that these folks seem to have done really, really well. Perhaps, they can offer career tips.

Remember when Newt Gingrich claimed that the mortgage giant Freddie Mac paid him $300,000 for his advice “as a historian?” Thousands of young history majors who were resigned to a future in which they would pad out their $2,000-a-semester salaries as part-time adjunct lecturers with fulfilling careers in bartending suddenly were engulfed with new hope.

Unfortunately, it turned out that Newt’s income actually comes from running think tanks that help promote the corporate clients’ goals in the public sector. That may be a little harder for the youth of America to put their heads around. But, kids, if anybody asks you what you want to be when you grow up, say: policy guru.

Gingrich wants everyone to understand that he does not lobby. Really, whatever the exact legal definition of lobbying is, that is something he did not do. The Gingrich Group got what turns out to be about $1.6 million to not-lobby for Freddie Mac, one of a long, long list of clients. Let’s all pause to recall the high dudgeon with which Gingrich announced, during one of the debates, that Representative Barney Frank ought to be put in jail for being “close to” Freddie Mac lobbyists. What kind of politician demands that an elected official be incarcerated for hanging out with the same people who are paying said politician $1.6 million or so to not-lobby?

This is an unusually delusional presidential field. Mitt Romney’s greatest political asset is that he doesn’t seem to actually believe it when he says he’s been consistent on matters like health care reform or abortion. Thank God there’s at least one guy on the stage who knows he’s fibbing.

Romney is the richest person running for president, worth somewhere between $190 million and $250 million. Most of that came from his work at Bain Capital, a firm that bought up troubled companies and gave them makeovers. Although many people lost their jobs when Bain Capital reeled in their employers, Romney’s work did create a lot of new value. Which, on occasion, Bain Capital walked away with, leaving the remnants of the company flopping helplessly on the beach.

In 2010, Mitt earned somewhere between $9.6 million and $43.2 million, according to The National Journal’s calculation of his financial reports. I believe I speak for us all when I say that there seems to be a lot of room in the middle of that estimate, but you get the idea. Much of that came from investments, but Romney also gets quite a bit of cash for making speeches. He once made $68,000 for one appearance before the International Franchise Association in Las Vegas.

People, if you were raking in more than $9.6 million a year, would you waste your time talking to the International Franchise Association? Perhaps you would if international franchises were especially close to your heart. But, in that case, why charge them $68,000? There are a lot of mysteries in the Mitt saga. For instance, if you were a very wealthy father of five energetic young boys, would you choose to spend your vacation driving the whole family to Canada with the dog strapped to the roof of the car? Wouldn’t it be more fun to take a plane to Disneyland?

Some of the Republican candidates seem to have no visible means of support whatsoever — like Rick Santorum, who has seven kids. You would hate to think they were going without shoes just so Dad could continue his never-ending quest to break into the 5 percent range in the polls.

But, good news! Santorum made at least $970,000 in 2010, in all those mysterious ways unsuccessful Republican candidates for president seem to have of making money. Part of it came from being a commentator for Fox News, and part of it came from Santorum’s work at — yes! — a think tank.

Rick Perry does not have a vast fortune, although he is blessed with friends who fly him around on private jets, take him on cool vacations and, occasionally, sell him real estate at bargain-basement prices. This week, Perry laced into Barack Obama as a man who could not possibly understand what ordinary Americans were going through because he “grew up in a privileged way.” This is a strange way to describe the president’s upbringing — particularly when Romney, the guy Perry is actually supposed to be running against, was the son of the head of American Motors. Maybe he got the two mixed up.

All I can tell you is this. Rick Perry will never be paid by a tank to think.

Wisco rallies

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker fights back as recall effort begins

 

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker speaks to voters in a new television ad released just before the start of an effort to recall him from office. (YouTube)

By Michael A. Memoli Washington Bureau

November 15, 2011, 10:58 a.m.

Democrats and liberal activists officially launched a campaign Tuesday to recall Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, an effort rooted in the Republican's successful effort to pass legislation stripping public employees of collective bargaining rights.

And wasting no time ahead of what may be a lengthy and expensive campaign, Walker is already responding with a new television ad (see video below) defending his record after less than a year in office.

The main effort to recall Walker is sponsored by a group called United Wisconsin, which filed paperwork with the state's Government Accountability Board so it can begin gathering the necessary petition signatures.

"Walker has lied to the people of Wisconsin and is destroying our state," wrote Julie Wells, an employee at a manufacturing plant in Fort Atkinson who submitted the document. "Walker has taken away the rights of workers, is destroying our education system, and is selling our state to the big corporations that put him in office."

The committee has until Jan. 17 to submit the 540,208 signatures required to spur the recall election. Elections officials would then have at least a month to review those signatures, and Walker would also have the opportunity to challenge them.

Once a petition is considered valid, an election would be called for six weeks. Democrats would have to put forward a candidate to challenge Walker in that election; if a primary is required, the general election would be held four weeks later.

Reid Magney, a spokesman for the Government Accountability Board, estimated that the elections could be held as early as May or June.

Walker, elected in 2010, introduced his anti-union law in February of this year, sparking heated protests from Democrats and labor unions. Democratic lawmakers even fled the state in hopes of preventing its passage, but the law took effect in June.

Opponents of the law first initiated recall efforts against Republican state senators who'd backed the legislation. Two of six were successfully recalled, leaving Democrats just shy of regaining a majority in the chamber.

The effort to recall Walker comes one week after Ohio voters rejected a similar law pushed by Republican Gov. John Kasich, a result seen as a victory for the labor movement.

Anticipating today's action, Walker launched a television ad that aired during Monday night's Packers-Vikings football game. It included a school board member who said the new law helped her district put money in the classroom.

"Wisconsin's best days are yet to come. It won't happen overnight. But we are on our way," Walker says in the 30-second spot.

Walker told the Associated Press on Monday that he'd launch more ads soon showing "real people" talking about his initiatives.

Wisconsin Democrats planned a series of events Tuesday to promote the "Recall Walker Kickout Kickoff."

Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, who chairs the Democratic Governors Assn., would not say Monday how active his group might be in the effort.

"If we have an opportunity to replace a narrow-minded, ideological and ineffective governor with a Democratic governor that gets things done, we'll be in there with both feet," he said.

Any costs for a recall election would incurred by local cities and towns. The 17 separate recall elections held in targeted state Senate districts this year cost an estimated $2.1 million.

 

Copyright © 2011, Los Angeles Times

Stormin' Mormon

Op-Ed Columnist

Anne Frank, a Mormon?

By MAUREEN DOWD

Published: October 18, 2011

WASHINGTON

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

 

At an appearance at George Washington University here Saturday night, Bill Maher bounded into territory that the news media have been gingerly tiptoeing around.

Magic underwear. Baptizing dead people. Celestial marriages. Private planets. Racism. Polygamy.

“By any standard, Mormonism is more ridiculous than any other religion,” asserted the famously nonbelieving comic who skewered the “fairy tales” of several faiths in his documentary “Religulous.” “It’s a religion founded on the idea of polygamy. They call it The Principle. That sounds like The Prime Directive in ‘Star Trek.’ ”

He said he expects the Romney crowd — fighting back after Robert Jeffress, a Texas Baptist pastor supporting Rick Perry, labeled Mormonism a non-Christian “cult” — to once more “gloss over the differences between Christians and Mormons.”

Maher was not easy on the religion he was raised in either. He referred to the Roman Catholic Church as “an international child sex ring.”

But atheists, like Catholics and evangelical Christians, seem especially wary of Mormons, dubbed the “ultimate shape-shifters” by Maher.

In a Washington Post-Pew Research Center poll released on Tuesday, people were asked what single word came to mind for Republican candidates. For Herman Cain it was 9-9-9; for Rick Perry, Texas; and for Mitt Romney, Mormon. In the debate Tuesday night, Romney said it was repugnant that “we should choose people based on their religion.”

In The Times on Sunday, Sheryl Gay Stolberg chronicled Romney’s role as a bishop in Boston often giving imperious pastoral guidance on everything from divorce to abortion.

Stolberg reported that Romney, who would later run for Senate as a supporter of abortion rights against Teddy Kennedy and then flip to oppose those rights in Republican presidential primaries, showed up unannounced at a hospital in his role as bishop. He “sternly” warned a married mother of four, who was considering terminating a pregnancy because of a potentially dangerous blood clot, not to go forward.

Another famous nonbeliever, Christopher Hitchens, wrote in Slate on Monday about “the weird and sinister belief system of the LDS,” the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Aside from Joseph Smith, whom Hitchens calls “a fraud and conjurer well known to the authorities in upstate New York,” the writer also wonders about the Mormon practice of amassing archives of the dead and “praying them in” as a way to “retrospectively ‘baptize’ everybody as a convert.”

Hitchens noted that they “got hold of a list of those put to death by the Nazis’ Final Solution” and “began making these massacred Jews into honorary LDS members as well.” He called it “a crass attempt at mass identity theft from the deceased.”

The Mormons even baptized Anne Frank.

It took Ernest Michel, then chairman of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors, three years to get Mormons to agree to stop proxy-baptizing Holocaust victims.

Mormons desisted in 1995 after Michel, as the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported, “discovered that his own mother, father, grandmother and best childhood friend, all from Mannheim, Germany, had been posthumously baptized.”

Michel told the news agency that “I was hurt that my parents, who were killed as Jews in Auschwitz, were being listed as members of the Mormon faith.”

Richard Bushman, a Mormon who is a professor emeritus of history at Columbia University, said that after “the Jewish dust-up,” Mormons “backed away” from “going to extravagant lengths to collect the names of every last person who ever lived and baptize them — even George Washington.” Now they will do it for Mormons who bring a relative or ancestor’s name into the temple, he said.

Bushman said that “Mormons believe that Christ is the divine son of God who atoned for our sins, but we don’t believe in the Trinity in the sense that there are three in one. We believe the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost are three distinct persons.”

Kent Jackson, the associate dean of religion at Brigham Young University, says that while Mormons are Christians, “Mormonism is not part of the Christian family tree.”

It probably won’t comfort skeptical evangelicals and Catholics to know that Mormons think that while other Christians merely “have a portion of the truth, what God revealed to Joseph Smith is the fullness of the truth,” as Jackson says. “We have no qualms about saying evangelicals, Catholics and Protestants can go to heaven, including Pastor Jeffress. We just believe that the highest blessings of heaven come” to Mormons.

As for those planets that devout Mormon couples might get after death, Jackson says that’s a canard. But Bushman says it’s part of “Mormon lore,” and that it’s based on the belief that if humans can become like God, and God has the whole universe, then maybe Mormons will get to run a bit of that universe.

As for the special garment that Mitt wears, “we wouldn’t say ‘magic underwear,’ ” Bushman explains.

It is meant to denote “moral protection,” a sign that they are “a consecrated people like the priests of ancient Israel.”

And it’s not only a one-piece any more. “There’s a two-piece now,” he said.

Republicans are the ones who have made faith part of the presidential test. Now we’ll see if Mitt can pass it.

Banning prevention in Texas

The Texas Tribune

Planned Parenthood Struggles After State Budget Cuts

By THANH TAN

Published: October 15, 2011

Hidalgo County, situated along the border that separates Texas and Mexico, is home to one of the country’s fastest-growing but poorest populations. Largely Hispanic and Catholic, the county also has one of the highest birth rates in a state where Medicaid finances more than half of all deliveries.

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Justin Dehn for The Texas Tribune

A patient's child at Planned Parenthood's clinic in McAllen.

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Justin Dehn for The Texas Tribune

A sign at the organization's Mission clinic.

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Justin Dehn for The Texas Tribune

Patients at the McAllen clinic to voice their concerns over the Legislature's family-planning budget cuts.

Not all of those new mothers and fathers are ready to be parents, and Patricio Gonzales, a former social worker in McAllen, the county’s largest city, has witnessed the consequences — case after case of child neglect and abuse. Convinced that family planning could be a solution, he became the chief executive of the Planned Parenthood Association of Hidalgo County, which was founded in a Methodist church in nearby Mission.

In 2010, the Hidalgo County network’s eight clinics provided family-planning services to 23,000 patients, many of whom are uninsured and cannot afford to pay. The services include contraception, breast and cervical cancer screenings, testing for sexually transmitted diseases, and wellness exams for both men and women — but not abortions.

“Basically, we are their doctors,” Mr. Gonzales said. “And for many of them, this is a way to help them get out of poverty.”

Operating in a region with a limited donor base and high need for health services, Mr. Gonzales said, the clinics have relied heavily on government financing. So when state cuts to family planning took effect in September, the Hidalgo County network lost a $3.1 million contract and was forced to lay off half its staff and shut down four of its facilities. (Another five clinics have closed around the state since the beginning of September.) Mr. Gonzales estimated that the closings would affect approximately 16,000 low-income men, women and teenagers in the Rio Grande Valley.

What is happening in Texas is emblematic of a national trend. Unable to overturn Roe v. Wade, anti-abortion campaigners have worked in recent years within Congress and state legislatures, many of which have become increasingly conservative, to make gaining access to the procedure as difficult as possible. Around the country, state legislatures from Arizona to Kansas have passed sweeping measures this year intended to make it more onerous for Planned Parenthood clinics to stay open.

In Texas, lawmakers approved a measure requiring doctors to perform sonograms on women seeking abortions and to describe to them what they see and hear. They also worked to strip financing from any organization that performs abortions or refers women to abortion providers, even if the majority of the organization’s services — or all of them — are primary and preventive care.

“Taxpayers should not be subsidizing the abortion industry,” said Elizabeth Graham, the director of Texas Right to Life.

Supporters of Planned Parenthood maintain that about 95 percent of the organization’s services consist of routine health care. Planned Parenthood clinics receive state aid in Texas by legally separating their family-planning services from their abortion services, which are off limits to tax dollars, but the distinction has never been enough to appease politicians who oppose abortion.

“Their interest is not in giving women options,” Representative Wayne Christian, Republican of Center, said during this year’s legislative session. “Their ultimate answer is, ‘The best we can do is an abortion.’ ”

Earlier this year, Mr. Christian and his colleagues cut the state’s family-planning budget by two-thirds, to $37.9 million over the next two years from $111.5 million. The money was diverted to other causes, including autism and early childhood programs. Budget analysts warned lawmakers that reducing family-planning access would affect at least 180,000 men and women each year and could lead to more than 20,000 additional babies being born at a cost of more than $200 million.

Planned Parenthood reports that 66 of its Texas clinics remain open, but hours and educational outreach efforts have been reduced. This year, 11 clinics received state support, down from 40 clinics last year.

Anti-abortion activists say the women who have relied on Planned Parenthood can go to crisis pregnancy centers — for which lawmakers increased financing — and other community health clinics that do not refer for the procedure. But community health clinics have faced budget cuts as well.

In late August, the Department of State Health Services enforced a new priority financing system that determined that 56 family- planning providers would receive smaller grants through November. But 15 organizations would immediately lose their contracts because of “lack of need” or because there was another agency “within the same service area.” Centers that lost financing included nine unaffiliated with Planned Parenthood, like the People’s Community Clinic in Austin and Haven Health Clinics in Amarillo.

Lone Star Circle of Care, a federally qualified health center with locations throughout Central Texas, received some financing but not enough to cover the demand for birth control and testing.

“We’re talking about basic primary things that everyone should be entitled to, and it really shouldn’t be attached to any political or religious agenda,” said Dr. Tamarah Duperval-Brownlee, Lone Star’s chief medical officer.

In Hidalgo County, the Planned Parenthood network received a one-time award of $113,000 from the state in September after two other agencies rejected the money — enough to treat about 650 patients, but not enough to keep its clinics open in Mission, Progreso, Rio Grande City and San Carlos.

Mr. Gonzales said he was most concerned that clients would have to travel longer distances for care — or would stop seeking treatment altogether.

One of those clients, Nidia Torres, 62, of San Juan, started going to Planned Parenthood when she was 15. Ms. Torres said the organization helped her plan five pregnancies and treated early signs of cervical cancer in 1985.

Though she is staunchly opposed to abortion, Ms. Torres said she supports prevention. She is concerned that a desire to punish Planned Parenthood could have unintended consequences for the health of those in the community.

“If someone comes in and she’s pregnant? She’s pregnant. There’s nothing we can do,” Ms. Torres said. “We’ll be worse if they take away that money for Planned Parenthood. The hospitals will be filled. We will have more children. We will need more food stamps. This is not what the Valley needs. This is not what our community needs. This is not what Texas needs.”

ttan@texastribune.org

As God is our witness...

America: With God on our side

Presidential candidates feel no shame in asserting divine purpose in U.S. policies and actions. In this ubiquitous view of American exceptionalism, the nation is not bound by rules to which others must submit.

By Andrew J. Bacevich

October 16, 2011

In the United States, despite a Constitution that mandates the separation of church and state, religion and politics have become inseparable. To lend authority to their views, presidential aspirants of both parties regularly press God into service. They know what he intends.

So the claims made by Republican front-runner Mitt Romney in a recent speech at the Citadel managed to be both striking and unexceptionable. "God did not create this country to be a nation of followers," Romney announced. "America must lead the world." Absent the "clarity of American purpose and resolve, the world becomes a far more dangerous place," with freedom itself in jeopardy. To avert this catastrophe, Romney declared, "this century must be an American century," with the United States economically preeminent and wielding "the strongest military in the world."

Whence do these insights derive? "Why should America be any different than scores of other countries around the globe?" Romney asked rhetorically. His answer captures the essence of our present-day civic religion: "I believe we are an exceptional country with a unique destiny and role in the world."

The Hebrew Bible provides no evidence to support this proposition. Nor do the teachings of Jesus Christ and his disciples. Yet the American Bible incorporates a de facto Third Testament, which validates this assertion of American uniqueness. That testament, fashioned from a carefully tailored rendering of the 20th century, recounts the story of a new chosen people serving as God's instrument of salvation, leading humankind onward to the promised land.

For anyone aspiring to high office, professing fealty to this Third Testament has become all but obligatory. And Romney took care to do so in his Citadel speech. Genuflecting before the "generations that fought in world wars, that came through the Great Depression and that gained victory in the Cold War," he summoned his listeners to "seize the torch" their forebears had held aloft, continuing the inexorable advance toward "freedom, peace and prosperity." This, he made clear, defines America's calling, one to which citizens of all religious persuasions (or none at all) can subscribe.

"This is America's moment," Romney insisted. He likened those who disagree to Third Testament villains, proposing that the nation should "crawl into an isolationist shell" and "wave the white flag of surrender," acquiescing in the claim that "America's time has passed." All of this Romney dismissed as "utter nonsense."

Now duty confers prerogatives. And God's elect are not bound by rules to which others must submit. Among other things, they need not admit error. "I will never, ever apologize for America," Romney promised. Apologies imply misjudgments, mistakes or wrongdoing, none of which figure in the Third Testament's depiction of a nation unsullied by malign intent or sordid action.

Above all, the United States need not apologize for its pursuit of permanent military supremacy or for its propensity for violence. "When America is strong," Romney declared, "the world is safer." The post-Cold War era, with unquestioned U.S. military preeminence going hand in hand with widespread disorder, offers little to substantiate this proposition. Even so, an insistence that American military power and its application are conducive to peace remains one of the Third Testament's central tenets. So, whereas a single Chinese aircraft carrier poses a looming danger, a dozen American aircraft carriers make the U.S. Navy a global force for good. A brief Russian incursion into Georgia threatens peace; protracted wars resulting from the U.S. invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan advance it.

In his Citadel speech, Romney said nothing that a thousand politicians and pundits have not already said a thousand times and will say again. The significance of his presentation lies not in its originality but in its familiarity. Are Mormons really Christians? Romney has rendered the question moot. In all the ways that count politically, he has shown himself to be a true believer, committed to a faith-based approach to statecraft.

No leading contender for the Republican nomination will challenge the positions that Romney laid out. After all, they share his certain knowledge that God has designated America as his earthly agent. They endorse Romney's emphasis on enhancing U.S. military power as the key to perpetuating an American century. And they mirror his lack of interest in the world as it is, indulging instead the pretense that it's still 1945.

The eventual Republican nominee, whoever that may be, will argue that President Obama believes none of these things — hence his unworthiness for a second term. For his part, the president will exert himself to prove otherwise. As he has done before, Obama will signal his own allegiance to militant exceptionalism, offered as positive proof that he is authentically American. Rival messianic visions will compete.

Most experts expect bread-and-butter issues to decide the upcoming election. Yet regardless of the final outcome, the real winner is going to be the concept of American exceptionalism. Whoever takes the oath of office on Jan. 20, 2013, will be someone who believes in the American Bible's Third Testament. In that regard — whether for better or worse — the outcome appears foreordained. One might even say that God wills it.

Andrew J. Bacevich is professor of history and international relations at Boston University. He is the editor of "The Short American Century: A Postmortem," to be published next year.

Demonizing common sense

Op-Ed Columnist

Panic of the Plutocrats

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: October 9, 2011

It remains to be seen whether the Occupy Wall Street protests will change America’s direction. Yet the protests have already elicited a remarkably hysterical reaction from Wall Street, the super-rich in general, and politicians and pundits who reliably serve the interests of the wealthiest hundredth of a percent.

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

And this reaction tells you something important — namely, that the extremists threatening American values are what F.D.R. called “economic royalists,” not the people camping in Zuccotti Park.

Consider first how Republican politicians have portrayed the modest-sized if growing demonstrations, which have involved some confrontations with the police — confrontations that seem to have involved a lot of police overreaction — but nothing one could call a riot. And there has in fact been nothing so far to match the behavior of Tea Party crowds in the summer of 2009.

Nonetheless, Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, has denounced “mobs” and “the pitting of Americans against Americans.” The G.O.P. presidential candidates have weighed in, with Mitt Romney accusing the protesters of waging “class warfare,” while Herman Cain calls them “anti-American.” My favorite, however, is Senator Rand Paul, who for some reason worries that the protesters will start seizing iPads, because they believe rich people don’t deserve to have them.

Michael Bloomberg, New York’s mayor and a financial-industry titan in his own right, was a bit more moderate, but still accused the protesters of trying to “take the jobs away from people working in this city,” a statement that bears no resemblance to the movement’s actual goals.

And if you were listening to talking heads on CNBC, you learned that the protesters “let their freak flags fly,” and are “aligned with Lenin.”

The way to understand all of this is to realize that it’s part of a broader syndrome, in which wealthy Americans who benefit hugely from a system rigged in their favor react with hysteria to anyone who points out just how rigged the system is.

Last year, you may recall, a number of financial-industry barons went wild over very mild criticism from President Obama. They denounced Mr. Obama as being almost a socialist for endorsing the so-called Volcker rule, which would simply prohibit banks backed by federal guarantees from engaging in risky speculation. And as for their reaction to proposals to close a loophole that lets some of them pay remarkably low taxes — well, Stephen Schwarzman, chairman of the Blackstone Group, compared it to Hitler’s invasion of Poland.

And then there’s the campaign of character assassination against Elizabeth Warren, the financial reformer now running for the Senate in Massachusetts. Not long ago a YouTube video of Ms. Warren making an eloquent, down-to-earth case for taxes on the rich went viral. Nothing about what she said was radical — it was no more than a modern riff on Oliver Wendell Holmes’s famous dictum that “Taxes are what we pay for civilized society.”

But listening to the reliable defenders of the wealthy, you’d think that Ms. Warren was the second coming of Leon Trotsky. George Will declared that she has a “collectivist agenda,” that she believes that “individualism is a chimera.” And Rush Limbaugh called her “a parasite who hates her host. Willing to destroy the host while she sucks the life out of it.”

What’s going on here? The answer, surely, is that Wall Street’s Masters of the Universe realize, deep down, how morally indefensible their position is. They’re not John Galt; they’re not even Steve Jobs. They’re people who got rich by peddling complex financial schemes that, far from delivering clear benefits to the American people, helped push us into a crisis whose aftereffects continue to blight the lives of tens of millions of their fellow citizens.

Yet they have paid no price. Their institutions were bailed out by taxpayers, with few strings attached. They continue to benefit from explicit and implicit federal guarantees — basically, they’re still in a game of heads they win, tails taxpayers lose. And they benefit from tax loopholes that in many cases have people with multimillion-dollar incomes paying lower rates than middle-class families.

This special treatment can’t bear close scrutiny — and therefore, as they see it, there must be no close scrutiny. Anyone who points out the obvious, no matter how calmly and moderately, must be demonized and driven from the stage. In fact, the more reasonable and moderate a critic sounds, the more urgently he or she must be demonized, hence the frantic sliming of Elizabeth Warren.

So who’s really being un-American here? Not the protesters, who are simply trying to get their voices heard. No, the real extremists here are America’s oligarchs, who want to suppress any criticism of the sources of their wealth.

Sad political discourse

Tv Sports

Are You Ready to Put Your Foot in Your Mouth?

John Raoux/Associated Press

Hank Williams Jr. has kicked off Monday Night Football for two decades.

By RICHARD SANDOMIR

Published: October 5, 2011

Sometimes people surprise you. For more than 20 years, Hank Williams Jr. sang his adapted version of “All My Rowdy Friends Are Coming Over Tonight” to open “Monday Night Football.” Over the years, the production values grew but the message stayed the same: “Are you ready for some football?” The musical bit traveled with “Monday Night” from ABC to ESPN. Although it has grown stale, it was harmless.

And there was no reason to think about Williams’s right-wing politics.

Then on Monday, Williams compared President Obama to Hitler during an appearance on Fox News Channel. He described the round of golf between Obama and House Speaker John A. Boehner last summer as “Hitler playing golf with Netanyahu” — referring to Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu — then punctuated his political tirade by calling Obama and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. “the enemy.”

ESPN quickly pulled Williams’s opener from Monday’s Indianapolis-Tampa Bay game (the national anthem replaced the song) and left open further action against him.

Williams has issued two statements, one an apology of sorts, the second a condemnation of news media characterizations of Tea Party members as racist and extremist. He admitted that his Obama-to-Hitler analogy was “extreme” but said he did it to make a point. He canceled a follow-up appearance Tuesday night on Fox News Channel.

ESPN is contemplating whether to cut its ties to Williams, who is not an employee and is tangential to the company’s success. Comparing Obama to the epitome of pure evil seems to be a dismissible offense. But ESPN executives could conclude that Williams’s contrition is sufficient (despite the semi-sincere “if I offended anyone” part of his de rigueur celebrity apology) and declare a one-week suspension adequate.

But James Miller, the co-author of the recent book about ESPN, “Those Guys Have All the Fun,” said that the importance of “Monday Night” to the Bristol, Conn.-based empire has accelerated an internal debate about what to do about Williams. “Even before this occurred, there were people who thought the opening was past its prime and were advocating a new one,” he said. “Others want to keep it for its tradition and legacy.”

Williams’s remarks demonstrated the potency of Hitler’s name — and how almost any comparison, except to another genocidal tyrant, is extreme.

Mel Brooks angered some people by his mockery of Hitler and the Nazis in the film and stage versions of “The Producers.” Several years ago, he explained his approach to satirizing Hitler to the German publication Der Spiegel: “Rhetoric does not get you anywhere, because Hitler and Mussolini are just as good at rhetoric. But if you can bring these people down with comedy, they stand no chance.” He added that “by using the medium of comedy, we can try to rob Hitler of his posthumous power and myths.”

ESPN has past experience — none of it comedic — with personnel who could not resist including Hitler in their analyses. In an online column, Jemele Hill said that cheering for the Celtics “is like saying Hitler was a victim,” for which she was suspended. She apologized.

On the air, Lou Holtz discussed Michigan’s tough start in 2008 and Coach Rich Rodriguez’s leadership. Holtz’s point was simple: “Ya know, Hitler was a good leader, too.” (You wonder when Holtz the historian thought Hitler’s skills eroded.)

Unlike Hill, Holtz was not suspended, which suggested a double standard. In “Those Guys Have All the Fun,” Holtz defended himself by saying, “I think the point I made was very valid, very solid, and it was a different angle than the way people look at it.”

Ron Rosenbaum, the author of “Explaining Hitler: The Search for the Origins of His Evil,” said that the Tea Party “has legitimized the kind of casual comparison of Obama to Hitler.“

“We’ve seen it at rallies with posters of Obama with Hitler mustaches and in the comments sections of right-wing news sites,” he said. “I think that’s what he’s picking up on.”

Last year, the North Iowa Tea Party put up a billboard with pictures of Hitler and Lenin flanking Obama that said: Radical Leaders Prey on the Fearful & Naïve.

Rosenbaum lamented that “it’s sort of sad that our political discourse has come to a point where we’re discussing Hank Williams on Hitler.”

He added, “Somehow, one hopes for more.”

E-mail: sandor@nytimes.com

Daily dose of repugnant idiocy

Don’t Ask

By PETER CATAPANO

September 23, 2011, 7:41 pm

We really wanted to move things to a higher plane. But they keep having these debates.

After all, it did appear at moments this week that life might still be fantastic, mind-expanding and shot through with wonder. First, 50 new planets outside our solar system were found, one of them orbiting not one but two suns.  Then, a report of subatomic particles shattering the speed of light. The world in a grain of sand. Infinity in the palms of our hands! Wow. What wasn’t possible?

Plus, isn’t the new iPhone coming out?

NASA/NASA, via Getty ImagesAn illustration of the planet Kepler 16b orbiting two stars.

Back on terra firma, though, things were less awesome and more confounding. Here, humans still roamed the earth, with predictable results, and could be observed saying things like “we would move forward in conformity with what was happening in the past” to large audiences, who would then applaud.

That statement was not uttered by a mischievous astrophysicist but by Rick Santorum, a candidate for president, speaking at the most recent Republican debate last night in Orlando. Santorum’s time-twisting formulation was his way of saying that, if he were president, he would reinstate the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy on gay men and women in the military. The law, of course, was repealed Tuesday, after years of efforts by advocates; discrimination in the armed forces based on sexual orientation would never again be allowed. The march of time could not be reversed. Or could it?

That the past and future could dovetail in some Mobius strip of time was suggested by Santorum in a response to a question from a gay soldier, Stephen Hill, who is serving in Iraq. Hill appeared at the debate to ask his question via the magic of video. Please watch:

Or read.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HILL: In 2010, when I was deployed to Iraq, I had to lie about who I was, because I’m a gay soldier, and I didn’t want to lose my job.

My question is, under one of your presidencies, do you intend to circumvent the progress that’s been made for gay and lesbian soldiers in the military?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(Booing from audience.)

SANTORUM: Yeah, I — I would say, any type of sexual activity has absolutely no place in the military. And the fact that they’re making a point to include it as a provision within the military that we are going to recognize a group of people and give them a special privilege to — to — and removing “don’t ask/don’t tell” I think tries to inject social policy into the military. And the military’s job is to do one thing, and that is to defend our country.

We need to give the military, which is all-volunteer, the ability to do so in a way that is most efficient at protecting our men and women in uniform.

(APPLAUSE)

And I believe this undermines that ability.

(APPLAUSE)

KELLY: So what — what — what would you do with soldiers like Stephen Hill? I mean, he’s — now he’s out. He’s — you know, you saw his face on camera. When he first submitted this video to us, it was without his face on camera. Now he’s out. So what would you do as president?

SANTORUM: I think it’s  it’s — it’s — look, what we’re doing is playing social experimentation with — with our military right now. And that’s tragic.

I would — I would just say that, going forward, we would — we would reinstitute that policy, if Rick Santorum was president, period.

That policy would be reinstituted. And as far as people who are in — in — I would not throw them out, because that would be unfair to them because of the policy of this administration, but we would move forward in — in conformity with what was happening in the past, which was, sex is not an issue. It is — it should not be an issue. Leave it alone, keep it — keep it to yourself, whether you’re a heterosexual or a homosexual.

(APPLAUSE)

The gay conservative group GOProud quickly demanded an apology from Santorum. “Tonight, Rick Santorum disrespected our brave men and women in uniform,” the statement said, “and he owes Stephen Hill …an immediate apology. That brave gay soldier is doing something Rick Santorum has never done — put his life on the line to defend our freedoms and our way of life. It is telling that Rick Santorum is so blinded by his anti-gay bigotry that he couldn’t even bring himself to thank that gay soldier for his service.”

But that sure wasn’t the end of it.

(Santorum, in a follow up interview today, did thank the soldier, and claimed he did not hear the booing, but alas he could not turn back time. The truth was out there.)

Yes, the boos were for the soldier. And the applause for Santorum’s explanation of why he would repeal the repeal as president. This more or less followed the pattern of the notable audience outbursts at the two previous debates — the “Texas death penalty cheer” and the “Let him die” uninsured whoop.

Jonathan Weisman at The Wall Street Journal’s Washington Wire was quick to note the pattern, which is certainly being used by opponents of the G.O.P.

Three Republican debates in as many weeks have produced plenty of fodder for voters deciding not just who the Republican presidential nominee should be but ultimately who should sit in the White House.

But a surprising factor has emerged in the impressions being left: the audience. Three times now, an incident with the audience has left some watchers scratching their heads and has touched off plenty of chatter in media and pundit circles. …

Ultimately, voters are making judgments on the candidates, not the crowds that pack the debates. But liberal activists are using the crowd responses to paint the GOP as extremist.

So true. Support for Santorum’s position or for the proclivities of the audiences at the Republican debates was exceedingly hard to find.

Jazz Shaw at Hot Air agrees that, policy aside, moments like this one have repercussions for Republicans beyond the lecterns. They turn into red meat for the Democratic wolves:

When something like that happens, the response of the candidate — and even the subject itself — ceases to be the story and the media picks up on “the bloodthirsty Republican audience” as the story du jour. It happened last time with the death penalty and health insurance questions, and sure enough, when I began flipping through the morning news shows today, those two items were right up near the top of the list of what they were talking about.

Hey, look! Republicans are booing an active duty soldier and cheering for the elimination of unemployment insurance!

You don’t need to be Karl Rove to figure out this might not be a winning visual image.

Andrew Sullivan, who aside from being a blogger and editor of renown is openly gay, did fire off a quick tirade during the debate, but stewed overnight and returned Friday with an extended, angry meditation:

As I went to bed last night, the scattered boos for an American soldier in the field at any debate began to sink in. And Santorum’s despicable lie in response — that repealing DADT somehow means license of gay sexual misconduct in the armed services — was intended to reduce that soldier, his life and work, to Santorum’s obsession: the intrinsic evil of gay sex. Again, this is usual. Gays are used to being reduced to sexual acts rather than being seen as full human beings, like straight people, with sexuality sure, but a whole lot of other things as well.

But somehow the fact that these indignities were heaped on a man risking his life to serve this country, a man ballsy enough to make that video, a man in the uniform of the United States … well, it tells me a couple of things. It tells me that these Republicans don’t actually deep down care for the troops, if that means gay troops. Their constant posturing military patriotism has its limits.

The shocking silence on the stage — the fact that no one challenged this outrage — also tells me that this kind of slur is not regarded as a big deal. …

And then I think of all those gay servicemembers who have died for this country, or been wounded in battle, or been on tours year after year … and the fury builds.

At Politico, Roger Simon imagined how the audience might be called to account for its response: “The crowd, knowing it was several thousand miles away from him, felt courageous enough to boo. It’s a shame that the curtains did not part, revealing the soldier standing on the stage. Did I mention this guy had biceps he could cracked walnuts with? The boo-birds would have whimpered once or twice and then stampeded for the exits.”

Walter Shapiro at The New Republic suggested that Santorum not only went awry, but could also use to brush up on his military history: “…Santorum was unyielding in his demand for heterosexuality in the military. The former Pennsylvania senator did not even thank the solider for his service in a war zone. But Santorum did insist, ‘Any type of sexual activity has absolutely no place in the military.’ Needless to say, that comment displayed a naiveté about the lives of soldiers since the days of Achilles and Hector at the gates of Troy.”

A few others found the “no sex in the military” line to be absurd. At The New Yorker, Amy Davidson wrote:

“Sexual activity has absolutely no place in the military”? That will be a surprise to the men and women, of every orientation, who love, marry, and become parents while serving. We have an all-volunteer military whose health relies on its strong ties to civilian life — not a praetorian guard of eunuchs. Does Santorum think that “the military” is a collection of battle scenes in an action movie? Surely not; his father worked for the Veterans Administration, and so he must know better. He also ought to know that there is no “special privilege” here, just the possibility of serving without the special obligation of lying, and the same knowledge other soldiers have that the person they love most might be able to be handed a folded flag if they die. Or is the word “gay” so strong for Santorum that it blotted out the word “soldier”?

James Joyner at Outside the Beltway followed suit: “Rick Santorum once again proved what a weird human being he is. Aside from the Mike Dukakis-like tone deafness of his response to the question being humanized rather than theoretical, the notion that ‘Any type of sexual activity has no place in the military’ is simply bizarre.”

At Opinion L.A. the Los Angeles Times opinion staff points out the damage this sort of rhetoric does for social conservatives:

That a Republican endorsed “don’t ask, don’t tell” isn’t surprising. But there was something especially crass about Santorum’s reply. His remark that “any type of sexual activity has absolutely no place in the military” completely misses the point and continues his bizarre refocusing of the gay-rights debate on sex.

And he doesn’t know how profoundly insulting it is to gays and lesbians to call requiring the military to afford them basic respect a “social experiment.” (Besides, which is the more dubious social experiment: sexually cleansing our armed forces, or having them reflect society’s inexorable march toward fully accepting gay men and women?)

Worst, watching Santorum and other Republicans stand stoically while a handful of debate-goers shout their disgust with a homosexual soldier leaves the impression that the GOP candidates have more outwardly embraced anti-gay prejudice to win over conservative voters. This kind of behavior makes it difficult to take social conservatives at their word when they insist that their opposition to, say, same-sex marriage is rooted respect for a longstanding institution instead of prejudice.

William Kristol summed up the general G.O.P. sentiment with the headline of The Weekly Standard’s special editorial following the debate: “Yikes.” Kristol does not single out Santorum, but rather channels the despair of the party faithful about the field of candidates:

Reading the reactions of thoughtful commentators after the stage emptied, talking with conservative policy types and GOP political operatives later last evening and this morning, we know we’re not alone. Most won’t express publicly just how horrified — or at least how demoralized — they are. After all, they still want to beat Obama — as do we. And they want to get along with the possible nominee and the other candidates and their supporters. They don’t want to rock the boat too much. But maybe the GOP presidential boat needs rocking.

The e-mails flooding into our inbox during the evening were less guarded. Early on, we received this missive from a bright young conservative: “I’m watching my first GOP debate…and WE SOUND LIKE CRAZY PEOPLE!!!!” As the evening went on, the craziness receded, and the demoralized comments we received stressed the mediocrity of the field rather than its wackiness.

Conservatives reflecting on their own weaknesses? What’s next? Democratic bouts of self-examination? Maybe the earth still is a wondrous place.