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Hillary Health Care Threat

Posted by Bert Chapman on Thursday, February 07, 2008 7:09:36
On ABC's This Week this past Sunday, we were given a chilling demonstration of what a Hillary Clinton presidency would look like.  Hillary remains wedded to her delusionary belief in universal health care, a commitment she's more faithful to than her own marital vows, despite overwhelming empirical evidence of this policy's flaws demonstrated in Britain and Canada.  When she was asked a question about her health care policies, she responded that those reprobate individuals who did not sign up for socialized Hillary Care would have their wages garnished.  Even sycophantic Clintonite toady Georgie Porgy Stephanieopolous who was interviewing the termagent was taken aback by this arrogant display of raw leftist ideological ambition.  I hope Senator McCain's people have gotten this video captured in their files because it's a gold mine of opposition research material and a window into the dessicated power hungry soul of Hillary Clinton.

There are many historical figures Hillary can be compared to.  Biblical students will immediately recognize the parallels with Jezebel.  Students of Elizabethan England and Shakespearean scholars will recognize, as the American Spectator did in the 1990s, eerie similarities to Queen Bloody Mary and Lady Macbeth.  20th century  Sinologists and students of totalitarian political behavior will find numerous commonalities between Hillary and Jiang Qing one of Mao Zedong's wifes who was even more sadistic than he was and directly involved in the Cultural Revolution and other crimes against humanity with her husband.  One scathing biography of hers is called White-Boned Demon.  Both Hillary and Jiang Qing possessed the souls of leftist totalitarians hell-bent on imposing their collectivist vision of political power on ignorant and reactionary yokels such as us.  Both used their husbands to blaze a trail to political power.  Jiang Qing was disgraced once Mao died and went to meet the maker who's existence he denied.  Hopefully, Hillary's schemes for untrammeled power will also be thwarted.

Infantile critics of the Bush Administration claim that he has jeopardized or eroded civil liberties.  Such claims are patent nonsense.  However, if Hillary Clinton is allowed to come to power, such erosions of personal freedoms are much more likely to occur.  The Clinton machine's political behavior of the past 16 years demonstrates that they will do anything and stop at nothing those daring to question their objectives.

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Super Tuesday Summation

Posted by Bert Chapman on Wednesday, February 06, 2008 10:21:19 AM
John McCain, thanks to favorable establishmentarian media coverage, is clearly the front-runner for the GOP nomination.  His victory in California solidifies that along with other victories he won last night.  Romney did well in Massachusetts, Alaska, the northern plains and the rockies, but could not come up with a victory in California or the south.  A resurgent Huckabee did well in the south siphoning off votes for Romney but it's clear Huckabee doesn't play well beyond the south.  Romney was also victimized by the cynical Huckabee-McCain power play in West Virginia and more seriously by residual anti-Mormon and anti-New England prejudice that still lingers in the psyches of many insecure hypersensitive southerners.  McCain will probably get the nomination, but he has to contend with a significant phalanx of distrust held toward him by many conservatives for his apostasy on issues such as campaign finance reform, immigration, and coddling terrorist detainees.  If he is the nominee, I'll follow his mother's advice by holding my nose and voting for him, but that's only because the alternative of a Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama is to ghastly to contemplate.  I cannot support McCain with any enthusiasm at this point and remain loyal to Romney.

The upcoming Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) conference will give McCain an opportunity to substantively address conservative concerns with what will hopefully be specific policy proposals.  Romney will need to persuade attendees that he's the only candidate with the intellectual acumen to defeat Clinton and Obama, and Huckabee will have to demonstrate that he can appeal to non-southerners and non-evangelical Christians.

On the Dems side, Tuesday's results showed their is still a race on which I hope will become increasingly bitter and create deep and painful cleavages within the Democratic psyche.  Wouldn't the loser of the Democrats presidential campaign struggle running as an independent be delightful? Clinton won the big enchilada of California but Obama won more states overall, including Missouri, and New Mexico's results are still uncertain.
It was especially enjoyable to see Massachusetts Dems reject Kennedy and Kerry's endorsement of Obama.

The ultimate result is the contests will go on for awhile longer due to ideological fractures within both parties.
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Suggestions for Super Tuesday Conservative Voters

Posted by Bert Chapman on Monday, February 04, 2008 4:07:02
Conservatives voting in tomorrow's Republican primaries have a chance to make sure an adherent to conservative principles has the chance to become the GOP presidential nominee.  John McCain may say he's a true-blue conservative, and he is on selected issues, but he has also veered from conservative orthodoxy on issues such as immigration, keeping terrorist detainees at Guantanamo Bay, campaign finance, climate change, and making the 2001 Bush tax cuts permanent.  Conservatives voting tomorrow need to examine who has endorsed McCain including the New York Times, Los Angeles Times who can hardly be described as conservative movement friends.   Voters also need to remember that McCain may have flirted with leaving the GOP in 2001, that he said he was open to being John Kerry's running mate in 2004, and Barack Obama's recent declaration that he and McCain were "eye-to-eye" on many issues.  We need a President who holds disciplined and consistent conservative principles, who has core philosophical beliefs about the role of government, and a steady personal temperament.  We don't need a president who takes pride in being a maverick or seeks to obsequiously curry favor with the liberal cognoscenti.

Take a look at who has endorsed Mitt Romney.  Former Pennsylvania Senator and stalwart conservative Rick Santorum, South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint, Indiana Secretary of State Todd Rokita, conservative columnist Laura Ingraham, and National Review.  If the New York Times and Los Angeles Times are more credible political advisors than mainstream conservatives such as these than vote for McCain.  If you prefer actual conservative principles and demonstrated leadership in your presidential candidate, then select Mitt Romney.
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Romney's Tax Plan & Time for Huckabee to Withdraw

Posted by Bert Chapman on Saturday, February 02, 2008 11:40:26 AM
Conservatives should support Mitt Romney's plan to reduce the tax rate on savings and capital gains taxes to zero for those with annual incomes of under $200,000.  This would due much to spur prudent financial planning by Americans and invigorate the stock market.  I recommend you read an excellent analysis of the merits of Romney's plan by the Manhattan Institute's Nicole Gelinas in the newest issue of that research institute's City Journal accessible at http://www.city-journal.org/2008/eon0131ng.html


Romney's prescient thinking on economic matters should be contrasted with John McCain's desire to increase the burden on Americans with his de facto support for imposing higher energy costs on Americans through his monomaniacal obsession with global warming and especially with Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama's desire to augment the power of the welfare state with nationalized health care and their own confiscatory economic appoach to climate change.  Additional demonstration of Romney's superior economic acumen is provided by Mike Huckabee's support for protectionism which is the last thing our economy needs if its to compete with emerging economic powers like India and China and be able to provide Americans with high-quality jobs.
Romney's plan will provide more structural reform to the American economy and improve the living standards of individual Americans and Americans with families than the quick fix and short-sighted economic stimulus package being rushed through Congress by the Bush Administration which does not address the spending and debt problems at the core of our budgetary deficits and economic malaise.

I also urge Huckabee to withdraw from the race because he is siphoning conservative support from Romney who needs to be able to stand up one-on-one against McCain because he, unlike McCain, represents true conservative based qualitiative change against the status quo.    Whether the Democrats nominate Hillary Clinton or  Barack Obama, there candidate will represent the liberal status quo that is determined to expand the growth of the bureaucratic welfare state.  John McCain will not shake up Washington culture despite his incessant rhetoric for purportedly straight talk and his claims to be a conservative reformer.  This coming Tuesday is probably the last chance for conservatives desirous or real and substantive change to support Mitt Romney as the only credible exemplar of such change.  Get out and shock the establishmentarian media and even the status quo forces within the GOP by supporting  Romney's campaign for transformational conservative change.


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McCain's Straight Lies and Greatest Generation Mythology

Posted by Bert Chapman on Friday, February 01, 2008 2:34:48
There is an excellent column by the distinguished conservative columnist Thomas Sowell on how McCain has flat out lied about Mitt Romney's position on Iraq and Romney's alleged support for a withdrawal timetable which can be found at http://www.gopusa.com/commentary/tsowell/2008/ts_02011.shtml

McCain, in an effort to bolster his alleged superior credentials on national security and Iraqi strategy prescience, has resorted to flat out falsehoods on Romney's position on Iraq that needed to be exposed.  Mark Levin also effectively demonstates in a National Review online posting that McCain's claims to be sound on national security have flaws.  Levin mentions that McCain was not an advocate for defense spending while military budgets were being slashed during the Clinton Administration and he also slams McCain for wanting to close Guantanamo and providing unprecedented legal rights and protections to terrorist detainees.  Clearly, McCain's experience at a POW in the Hanoi Hilton, has caused him to have excessive respect for legal norms toward terrorist sadists who do not recognize and have utter contempt for western legal standards.

McCain has also sought to seek support based on his being part of what Tom Brokaw has described as the "greatest generation."  Calling a generation the "greatest generation" reflects utter arrogance and absolute historical amnesia.  All generations of humanity have great and mediocre individuals and to claim that the Depression and World War II era generation is the greatest in U.S. or world history reeks of hubris.  This alleged greatest generation includes many fine individuals, such as my parents, but it also includes incompetent parents who helped spawn the laziness and moral permissiveness which resulted in the upheavals of the 1960s such as drug abuse, family breakdown, and permissive sexual mores which afflict our society in so many ways.  Americans should recognize that the Depression and World War II generation has had its opportunity for governmental leadership and that it is time for them to retire from the stage, with all their accomplishments and failures, and let younger generations, with all of our strengths and faults, have their opportunity, for better or worse, to shape America's future.
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Florida Review

Posted by Bert Chapman on Wednesday, January 30, 2008 9:34:09 AM
With last night's victory, McCain established himself as the front-runner.  He has a chance to essentially seal up the nomination with a decisive win in Tsunami Tuesday in 6 days.  Where did all that rhetoric and purported public aspirations about change go?  McCain's win last night and Hillary's "win" in Florida's pseudo-Democratic primary yesterday appears to give the most establishmentarian candidates the edge.

McCain's win was helped by the scurrilous push-pulling he and some of his supporters have launched toward Romney.  The most egregious falsehood McCain and his cohorts have told is claiming Romney did not support the troop surge.  That is totally false and neglects to remember that Romney has strongly supported our policies in Iraq and has a better geopolitical understanding of the war against Islamist terror than even McCain does.  Romney would also bring a fresh energized approach to fighting the war that McCain does not.  Another lie perpetrated by McCain supporters in Florida was that Romney favored restoring normal ties with Fidel Castro.  Romney is a strong supporter of Cuban freedom and you would think Cuban-Americans would be intelligent enough to recognize that.  McCain was also helped by the timely endorsement of Florida's Governor Charlie Crist and Senator Mel Martinez who, despite his many desirable qualities, is also a big-time supporter of amnesty for illegal immigrants and undoubtedly influenced McCain's thinking on this subject.

Romney needs to continue stressing his superior economic knowledge and management skills in tonight's Reagan Library debate and subsequent campaigning.  He also needs to stress that only he can be counted on to appoint conservative judicial scholars to the federal courts including the Supreme Court.  Conservatives need to remember that McCain thought Justice Alito wore his conservatism on his sleeve to much.  That attitude is unacceptable for a President who is likely to get the opportunity to appoint Supreme Court Justices to replace aging liberal justice John Paul Stevens and potentially other justices.  Mitt Romney, unlike McCain, understands the importance of quality judicial appointments.  John McCain has not had an original economic idea during his senatorial career.  He has opposed making the Bush tax cuts permanent and is to prone to make substantive legislative compromises with the ilks of Ted Kennedy in his desire to appeal to the liberal establishment and blogosphere.

Despite this, McCain is still preferable as President to Hideous Hillary and Obama who is being hailed as the latest incarnation of John Kennedy.  Conservatives who may be susceptible to Obama idolatory, should think carefully about a man who's endorsed by Ted Kennedy, Caroline Kennedy,  John Kerry, Patrick Leahy, and other prominent liberals and who, according to one report, has promised John Edwards that he will get to be his Attorney General if he becomes President.  That last promise, alone, should be enough to scare the daylights out of any sane individual.  Do we really want an ambulance chasing buffoon serving as the nation's top law enforcement officer?  Frivilous lawsuits will be coming out of the Justice Dept. building faster than a blinding snowstorm or hurricane storm surge causing untold damage to the nation's economy.

McCain, however, needs to do more to reassure conservatives that he's committed to reducing the size of the federal government, promoting traditional moral values, will appoint conservative scholar justices, and aggressively fighting Islamist terror.  His chances of winning depend on enthusiastic conservative support and he must address future national requirements instead of engaging in nostalgic recollections of President Reagan or posturing about how only he has the national security experience to be Commander-in-Chief.  He needs to recognize Romney's strong appeal to conservatives such as me and making Romney his running mate, if he wins, would be a step in the right direction.

Currently Romney and McCain do not get along.  There is, however, precedent for such a linking of disparate personalities on the national ticket.  John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson did not care for each other at all but they were able to work together as the Democratic ticket during 1960.  The desire to avoid the calamity of another Clinton presidency or an Obama presidency with John Edwards as Attorney General, should be enough to cause the GOP to support the strongest possible ticket that can intellectually annihilate the Democrats resurgent presidential dreams.

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Byrd Turds on Earmarks

Posted by Bert Chapman on Tuesday, January 29, 2008 7:18:20
 The U.S. Senate has a number of liberal offenders in conservatives hall of shame.  These include the Chappaquiddick Mariner Ted Kennedy, his Bay State buddy Jean Francois Kerry, Michigan's unleavened Senator Carl Levin, New York's grandstanding Chuck Schumer, and Horrible Hillary.  A new enfant terrible is Ohio's Sherrod Brown who is a protectionist yahoo of the worst sort.  The longest serving example of senatorial decripitude is West Virginia's Robert Byrd.  Byrd has been in the Senate since 1959 and while he prides himself on his knowledge of Senate traditions and history and his desire to be seen as an examplar of Roman derived Senate excellence, the reality is just the opposite.

Robert Byrd, a former Ku Klux Klan, member should be remembered as an individual who has tried to relocate large portions of the federal government to West Virginia.  If any one single legislator, is responsible for the deficit spending and national debt afflicting our economy, it is he.  Byrd is the absolute monarch of congressional pork and earmarks.  He would have fit in well as the recklessly incompetent finance minister in any ancient or modern profligate nation state.No one else, not even Ted Stevens comes close.  A consummate exemplar of all that is wrong with Washington, Byrd exudes intellectual decripitude and doddering senility with every pronouncement he makes defending the existing governmental fiscal order.  When President Bush criticized congressional earmarks in last night's State of the Union address, Byrd replied with imbecilic fury which you can view on the Senate Appropriations Committee homepage http://appropriations.senate.gov/  Byrd places sole responsibility for the earmarks problem on the President for whom he goes into apoplectic rages due to the President's failure to observe Byrd's purported Ciceronian rectitude on matters such as the Iraq War and governmental fiscal policy.  Byrd's infantile diatribe conveniently forgets that the President cannot veto individual earmarks in congressional appropriations bills because he doesn't have line item veto authority.

It's pretty scary that a cretin such as Robert Byrd chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee and is just behind the Speaker of the House in the presidential line of succession.  West Virginians should be embarrassed and ashamed that they have repeatedly let such a pathological demagogue represent them in the U.S. Senate for nearly five decades.  If West Virginians want the country and world to have a better image of them, then getting rid of Robert Byrd and his porcine fiscal policies and unctuous rhetoric would be a big step in the right direction.  If Byrd survives his current term of office, which last thru 2012, he will be 95 and his arrogance and senility will undoubtedly worsen.

Our country has little hope of restoring fiscal rectitude to its governmental finances, as long as Robert Byrd is in a position of power in the United States Senate or anywhere else.  How much longer do we have to endure his fiscal turds and sanctimonious posturing?
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Tonight's GOP Florida Debate

Posted by Bert Chapman on Thursday, January 24, 2008 11:01:59
It was actually a somewhat subdued affair at Florida Atlantic University tonight.  If it hadn't been for the Ron Paul yahoos who erupted whenever he spouted his pre-federalist pseudo-constitutionalist idealism, it could have been an academic seminar. Romney did an excellent job defending political candidates right to self-finance their campaigns and framing the differences between him and Hillary which could be a preview of the fall campaign.  Romney also did a good job of explaining the value of his plan to eliminate taxes on savings for those with incomes of under $200,000.  It's high time conservatives reembraced the value of personal frugality in our economic policies!  While McCain was affable, Tim Russert's revelation that the New York Times endorsed him for the upcoming New York primary should again be another warning shot to conservatives of McCain's appeal to the liberal cognoscenti who consider him "their kind of Republican" or "their kind of conservative."  Huckabee's comments about Chuck Norris were funny, though his misnamed fair tax would not benefit the economy and destroy a significant feature of federalism with states having the right to determine sales taxes and replacing it with a top-down Washington imposed solution.  Guliani is kidding himself if he thinks he will be able to replicate the New York Giants run to the Super Bowl with his delusional campaign strategy of thinking he can place all his eggs in the Florida and tsunami Tuesday baskets.


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Essential Presidential Candidates Military Experience

Posted by Bert Chapman on Tuesday, January 22, 2008 12:42:58
Several weeks ago, I posted a listing of what I think is essential foreign policy experience for presidential aspirants.  Today, I'll list what I think is essential military experience for a presidential candidate.  Many of these essential attributes are drawn from the characteristics I presented in the foreign policy blog posting.  These include the candidate believing in the superiority of the United States, having an intense interest in the histories and policies of foreign countries and cultures, and recognizing the intrinsic sinfulness of human nature.

We need to begin by dismissing the canard that personal military service and experience is essential for presidents.  Unless, a member of the armed services rises to the high level officer command rank, they are going to have very little concrete understanding of major military strategic operational issues and the political, diplomatic, and other currents affecting policymaking on those issues.  Any individual with a reasonably substantive understanding of military history and current military trends and developments can be an effective commander-in-chief.  The actual commander-in-chief must be able to listen carefully to the advice presented by U.S. military commanders, but does not have to accept all of that advice uncritically.  Elliott Cohen's 2002 book Supreme Command:  Soldiers, Statesmen, and Leadership in Wartime demonstrates that truly effective political leaders such as Churchill, Lincoln, Ben-Gurion, and Clemenceau achieved desirable military and political objectives by challenging their military establishments and pushing them beyond their comfort zones.  Military institutions often tend to be inherently conservative and bureaucratic and favor maintaining the status quo even while upheavals may be occurring in military technology and strategy.

The next president must not adhere to the belief that future military conflict will be all conventional forces or involve exclusively counterinsurgency forces.  History demonstrates that military conflicts can involve all kinds of force structures.  We cannot rely exclusively on a World War II/Cold War view of military conflict nor can we rely on warfare being exclusively counterinsurgency based.  Consequently, the next commander-in-chief must resist the temptation to put all their military eggs in one basket.

The next president must resist the temptation to believe that future U.S. enemies share the same normative or moral views about warfare the U.S. does.  John McCain is an egregious adherent of this utopian  viewpoint and McCain's military leadership skills are effectively denigrated in Mark Levin's January 20, 2008 column in National Review online which I commend to your reading.  Our next president must also be able and willing to tell the American public and international community in blunt language that the war against Islamist terror will involve brutal tactics and take decades and that it cannot be won by pandering to the tender sensitivities of the chattering classes of leftist intelligentsias in the U.S. or elsewhere internationally.
 
The next President must recognize that national security involves securing the homeland against illegal immigration (which McCain again has fallen woefully short on) and must recognize that societal cohesion is a vital prerequisite for conducting and sustaining difficult military operations.  At the same time, the President must be willing to go against domestic and international public opinion when it is in the U.S.' vital strategic interest to do so.  Presidents must be prepared to take decisive action to defend U.S. national interests at short notice without consultation with Congress or allies.  The President must recognize that U.S. national security decisions are made only in the U.S. and tell the American public and international community in unequivocal terms that the United Nations or other international organizations do NOT have a veto on U.S. national security policy.  Additionally, the President must ensure that the U.S. has the appropriate size and mix of military forces to deal with current and potentially future national security needs and not allow excessive reliance to be placed on military branches like the Army has experienced in Iraq and Afghanistan.

What ultimately matters in terms of presidential military experience and leadership are knowledge, character, vision, curiosity, adaptability, ruthless determination, and forceful and decisive communication skills. 
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Michigan GOP Gets it Right & Dems King Stagnation

Posted by Bert Chapman on Wednesday, January 16, 2008 10:03:51 AM
Michigan's GOP primary voters got it right last night in the decisive victory they gave Mitt Romney in the presidential primary.  After disappointing showings in Iowa and New Hampshire, last night's win for Romney temporarily gives him frontrunner status.  Romney was able to articulate the economic concerns of MIchigan voters and stress how important the auto industry is to American economic health and competitiveness.  His victory reflected a wide level of support which will serve him well if he becomes the GOP nominee because, I believe, he's the only Republican candidate who can bring together economic, social, and national security conservatives.  It's also nice that the independents who supported McCain in New Hampshire did not come out in force.  I hold the "heretical" view that the Republican presidential candidate should actually be supported by Republicans instead of independents and mischief minded Democrats.  Long live closed primaries!

The Democratic race has gotten into one of its silly leftist ideological tantrums with Clinton and Obama getting tied up in knots over how important Martin Luther King and the Democratic party establishment were in achieving the leftist conception of civil rights.  It's been 40 years since King's death, and you would think it would be possible to develop some balanced historical perspective on King's life, personal character, career, and overall historical significance.  That is the case with most historically significant figures, but not with the "martyred saint" of the liberal cognoscenti in the Democratic Party or "civil rights establishment."  Any attempt to provide less than a hagiographic assessment of King's influence and character by people in public life, is likely to be met with denunciations of "racism" or "insensitivity" if individuals offering such assessments take any position of King other than absolute deification. This was most visibly reflected by the comments of South Carolina Congressman and House Majority Whip James Clymer who recently  opined  ex cathedra "We have to be very, very careful about how we speak of that era in American politics."  You would think the First Amendment would apply to discussions of King and the civil rights movement, but not if Soviet style civil rights apparatchik enforcers like Clymer have their way.  Thank heavens we don't have to put up with that infantile nonsense in the Republican Party or as Conservatives!
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New Hampshire Post-Mortem

Posted by Bert Chapman on Wednesday, January 09, 2008 9:12:46 AM
For all the rhetoric emanating from the campaign trail about the need for the vapid mantra of "change," last nights New Hampshire primary results were a thunderous reaffirmation of the status quo and establishmentarian views.  On the Democratic side, the words of Elton John's classic The *itch is Back" are in order as Hillary Clinton reasserted her ruthless aspirations for political power.  Perhaps New Hampshire Dems wanted her purported experience over Obama's purported inexperience.  A better explanation is this secular bunch following the insight of Proverbs 26:11 "As a dog returns to its vomit, so a fool repeats his folly."

Some analysts credit Clinton's sudden resurgence to her teary-eyed episode in a New Hampshire cafe over the weekend.  Don't believe that for a minute.  Hillary Clinton is a calculating cold-blooded termagent who does nothing spontaneously and whose modus operandi is enhancing her personal political objectives at all costs.  This is a shrew who has exploded in fury at Arkansas state troopers, secret service agents, her "husband" and his mistresses, a mythical right-wing conspiracy, and anyone who refuses to grovel before her self-righteous vision and unbridled lust for political power.  Hillary Clinton is no more capable of genuine human sentiment or emotion than a jackal.

On the Republican side, New Hampshire primary voters also reaffirmed the status quo by supporting illegal immigration loving, political speech restricting, and terrorist prisoner coddling John McCain.  Some analysts attribute McCain's victory to the success of the troop surge in Iraq which McCain, to his credit, has supported steadfastly.  More likely factors include NH Republicans following Proverbs 26:11 and allowing McCain to reprise his 2000 New Hampshire primary victory (which did not result in his receiving the GOP nomination), endorsements of him by New Hampshire papers which also managed to defame Romney, and the desire to distinguish themselves from Iowa voters.

I think it can be safely said that both Iowa and New Hampshire results demonstrate that the electorate wants the primary process to continue for a while which is positive as it will allow campaings to clarify their thinking and messages and for candidates to be further refined.

If McCain is the nominee and goes up against Horrible Hillary it will be the ultimate case of the revenge of the establishment which will not produce qualitiative change in American political governance.  If it's McCain against Obama, you will have a quarter century age difference in candidates with McCain likely to come off the worse in the eyes of younger voters.  I'll support the GOP candidate against the Goldwater Girl Gone Bad or the great liberal multicultural myth but I still think Mitt Romney is the only Republican who has the communication and intellectual skills necessary to defeat either of them.  Despite his weekend win in Wyoming, though, Romney urgently needs to win Michigan or his chances are kaput. 
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New Year Reading Recommendations

Posted by Bert Chapman on Tuesday, January 08, 2008 7:23:43
As a professional librarian, it's incumbent on me to recommend books I've enjoyed reading this past year.  I've done that in a couple of previous postings in this blog, so before the New Year gets to far along I'll make some additional recommendations.  Since I became a homeowner a few years ago, I've developed an interest in architecture and urban planning.  A work I read this past year which was enjoyable was Capital Drawings:  Architectural Designs for Washington, DC From the Library of Congress.  Edited by C. Ford Peatross and published by Johns Hopkins University Press, this work features drawings in the Library  of Congress' collections documenting the growth of Washington, DC and its Maryland and Virginia surroundings.  Material included here encompasses drawings of commercial and residential structures and monuments such as the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and coverage of the architectural evolution of the White House, Capitol, and numerous other structures.

I try reading histories of many countries and one I particularly enjoyed this past year was Simon Schama's The Embarrassment of Riches:  An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age (University of California Press).
This is a cultural and social history of the Netherlands during the 17th century with appearances by artists such as Rembrandt along with coverage of literary, religious, intellectual, and economic events prompting this country's rise to global prominence despite its limited size and population.

My wife and I had the opportunity to travel to Ireland in late September and early October and I'm still trying to digest a number of books I purchased during our visit to the Emerald Isle.  The heartbreaking story of the Irish Potato Famine during the mid-19th century is ably told by Christine Kinealy in This Great Calamity:  The Irish Famine 1845-52 (Gill & Macmillan) and how numerous factors such as an Irish agrarian culture that was to dependent on a single crop and a slow British Government response to this tragedy left scars on Ireland's economic and psychic development which lingered for several decades.  I also recommend F.S.L. Lyon's biography of 19th century Irish political leader Charles Stewart Parnell (Gill & Macmillan).  Parnell was a key  leader of the Irish Land League during the later 19th century and lobbied the British Parliament to grant Ireland additional political freedoms.  He worked with a number of British political leaders including Prime Minister William Gladstone and became a skilled parliamentary tactician and strategist in the British House of Commons.
Unfortunately, for Parnell and his cause he allowed his Clintonesque relationship with a married woman to bring his career to an end and his failure to physically take care of himself resulted in his death at 45 in 1891.

It'll be time soon to check New Hampshire primary results so I wish everyone good reading experiences in 2008.

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Iowa Caucus Ruminations

Posted by Bert Chapman on Friday, January 04, 2008 10:35:26 AM
Interesting results from the Hawkeye state.  On the Dumbocrat side, it was nice to see Hillary get smacked in the face and to see the sour looks on the faces of her philandering perjuring "spouse," Madeline Albright, and other members of the Clinton cabal.  Hillary is a ruthless termagent, though, and will fight hard against Obama who is presenting himself as the latest liberal multicultural avatar and against Pitchfork John Edwards and his peasant sans-culotte mob army.

The Republican results gave a boost to Huckabee and, unfortunately, were a setback for Mitt Romney the most substantive conservative candidate.  I try to be a committed conservative Christian, but I am disturbed that Huckabee thinks he can get the GOP nomination by spouting superficial evangelical theological cliches instead of presenting substantive and credible public policies that are intellectually sound, good for the country, and Christian compatible.  Hopefully, Huckabee's aw-shucks veneer will wear off in New Hampshire and his ill-advised protectionist economic policies and incoherent foreign policy understanding will be exposed to more criticial scrutiny than it has received so far.

Another striking aspect of Iowa, is how both Obama and Huckabee have heralded themself as harbingers of change.  If there is a more vacuous word in the English political campaign language than change, I can't think of it.  Calling for and espousing change is not intellectually credible!  You must present coherent and credible policy alternatives to existing policies and programs and have full-throttled debate over these proposals.  Even if existing situations and policies are bad, it is a reality of human nature to accept that things can get worse as well as better.  It's not enough to criticize the conduct of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan by calling for premature and unilateral withdrawal.  You need to present credible options for winning in these wars.  It's not enough to complain about high gas prices or mortgage foreclosures, you need to present realistic ways of resolving these problems.  Unfortunately, we'll hear the word "change" or the phrase "time for a change" tossed about like crazy during this election year, with their being limited likelihood that candidates or their followers will have substantive qualitiative or quantitative proposals behind such vapid calls for altering the status quo.

Regardless of your partisan proclivities, voters should demand candidates spell out specific legislative, legal, and regulatory ways that they will change existing "unpopular" policies, individuals and organizations they're willing to offend to bring about such changes, and the economic and other costs of such changes to individuals, families, communities, businesses, states, and the country, instead of vapidly droning on about the need to make change or change Washington.

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Essential Presidential Foreign Policy Experience

Posted by Bert Chapman on Thursday, January 03, 2008 2:51:39
As Democratic and Republican voters troop to the Iowa caucuses on this bitterly cold January night, there has been much discussion of whether presidential aspirants from both parties have the proper foreign policy experience to assume the presidency.  What is meant by "proper foreign policy experience" is highly elusive.  Should presidential candidates actually serve in the State Department's foreign service?  Should they have served as a political appointee in a U.S. Government foreign policymaking agency?  Should they be a member of Congress with service on a foreign relations committee?  Does it mean they should work at a think tank in Washington, DC or elsewhere where they specialized in foreign policy research?  Should they serve with the United Nations or other international government organizations or non-government organizations such as World Vision, Amnesty International, etc. whose work includes significant global components?  On a humorous note, should they have attended a cocktail party at a foreign embassy in Washington, DC?

Such discussion illustrates the triviality of much political discussion of foreign policy in this country and probably other countries as well.  Experiences of the kind listed above are useful for presidents but hardly essential.  A President should probably avoid paying to much attention to the advice offered by many State Department foreign service personnel, because many of these individuals tend to forget that they are representing the United States and become excessively acculturated to the prejudices and beliefs of elites in the countries they serve in a process known as "going native."

Here are some principles of foreign policy experience I think would be U.S. Presidents should have.  The first is a firm and unflincing moral conviction that the U.S. is the greatest nation in history and a force for good in world affairs.  A second principle is that the U.S. must be willing to assertively promote its international interests by all means necessary including economic and technical assistance, diplomatic, and military force and that it should do so without hesitation or regret.  Thirdly, this individual must recognize the intrinsic sinfulness of humanity and reject utopian schemes for dealing with human issues such as the nonsensical ideas that using military force to resolve foreign policy differences is improper without United Nations authorization and the imbecilic belief  that the sovereign nation state is obsolete.  All U.S. Presidents must be willing to use military force in defense of vital national interests even if international opinion howls like a bunch of outraged hyenas. 
The President must continually educate American and international public opinion in this reality because it is natural for people to live in their own immediate physical environments and not be attentive to trends in the broader world and be aware of historical forces and trends affecting our world. Consequently, it is incumbent upon presidential aspirants to recognize that a strong and combat ready military is absolutely essential for the U.S. to have an effective foreign policy.  Believing in the good will of international public opinion or adhering to utopian beliefs that international human values or some other vapid secularist euphemism will carry the day is a recipe for perpetual disappointment.

Having a good understanding of other countries political, cultural, religious, and military histories is essential.  Presidential aspirants should be reasonably well read and informed in these topics with works and briefings representing divergent  perspectives.  An intense desire to increase one's knowledge of other countries and transnational organizations is also a desirable presidential foreign policy prerequisite.  A President should be aware of the subtleties involved in the diplomatic and cultural evolution of other countries while admitting the shortcomings of our own country in limited circumstances.

What ultimately matters is that the President have a sound understanding of the historical, contemporary, and emerging factors facing the international community and be willing to assertively defend U.S. national interests if those trends become inimical to U.S. national interests.  That is the kind of foreign policy experience U.S. Presidents need far more than going to a particular school or prior political or governmental experience.
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Bhutto's Assassination

Posted by Bert Chapman on Monday, December 31, 2007 6:55:41
The recent assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto is an unfortunate but unsurprising development for that troubled country.  Bhutto is the scion of a dynastic political family.  Her accomplishments as Prime Minister were fairly modest, although she was able to appeal to the western liberal cognoscenti who viewed her as a feminist messiah for her country's troubled political institutions.  Bhutto did little to stop the rise of the Taliban during her years in power when that organization was nursed by the Pakistani intelligence service following its conception during the 1980s under the dictatorship of then Pakistani leader Zia ul Haq.  She did nothing to stop the growth of Al Qaida thought and doctrine in Pakistani-based madrasas during her years in power and did nothing to enable her country's security forces to gain enhanced control over the Waziristan wildlands bordering Afghanistan.

The fact that her 19 year old Oxford student son has been appointed her successor by her political party indicates that her "movement for change" is just a vehicle for familial dynastic aspirations instead of representing a genuine broad-based political reform movement.  Pakistan is a highly tribalized state where powerful individual personalities and devotion to Islamist ideals are the means to get and retain political power.  There is a veneer or Western style democracy in some areas of Pakistan's government, military, and legal communities.  Unfortunately, a tribal style mentality, augmented by poisonous doses of Islamist doctrinal drivel, are the cornerstones of Pakistani political and constitutional discourse.  This is not a helpful recipe for the world's only Islamic nuclear state to deal with its domestic political angst and international political, diplomatic, and security challenges.  If Pakistan really wants to reform itself, it should consider looking at the model of Turkey which disbanded political Islam after World War I and made its government secular in its orientation.

Islam and effective political governance devoted to improving the lives of its people are mutually incompatible objectives as numerous states in the Islamic world prove.  Pakistan needs to reject Islamist fantasies once and for all and promote a genuinely democratic state that practices freedom of religion, judicial independence, effective legislative oversight over the executive branch, a civilian controlled professional military, and other attributes of republican governance.  Failing to take these steps means there will be more crises within this country which will cause headaches for U.S. foreign and national security policymakers, and policymakers in these fields from countries such as China, India, Afghanistan, and elsewhere.

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