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P.J. Vs. The NYT

While I have not had time for P.J. O’Rourke of late — thanks partly to his nasty rant at pro-life conservatives in the wake of the 2008 election – his attack on the New York Times in The Weekly Standard is really good.  Take this part, for example:

But liberalism, as personified by  the New York Times, became a dotty old aunt sometime during the Johnson administration. She’s provincial, eccentric, and holds dull, peculiar views about the world. Still, she has our fond regard, and we visit her regularly in her nursing home otherwise known as Arts and Leisure and the Book Review. Or we did until Sunday, January 9, when she began spouting obscenities and exposing herself.

A Small Observation

Barack Obama taught con law at the University of Chicago for years, and yet as President he doesn’t talk about the Constitution much.  Maybe he thinks it would be pointless, given that 99.9% of us would not have a prayer of earning a spot in one of his classes and therefore couldn’t possibly understand his deep, nuanced thoughts on the Commerce Clause, federalism and executive powers.  Or maybe, now that he’s President, the Constitution has ceased to be a fascinating subject of inquiry and evolved into a real inconvenience that he would prefer to ignore in order to achieve his aims.  The vast majority of his predecessors seem to have viewed it as such.

Wanted: Columnist Who Thinks Before He Writes

In The Boston Globe, token neocon Jeff Jacoby complains that the United States has not intervened enough in the affairs of other countries.  Seriously.  ”Too often,” writes Jacoby, “we have been willing to disregard unspeakable evil in the mistaken belief that preventing atrocities is not ‘an American concern.’”  He mentions the Holocaust, the Armenian genocide and Rwanda as catastrophes that could have been averted or mitigated through armed US intervention. 

Jacoby goes after the low-hanging fruit with his examples, but let’s try some harder ones: what about Stalin’s starvation of millions of kulaks in the 1930s?  For that matter what about Soviet savagery after WWII, should we have intervened there?  During the establishment of the state of Israel Jews committed atrocities against Arabs – should Truman have sent in the Marines?    

And what — other than Mr. Jacoby’s pious assertion — makes “preventing atrocities . . . an American concern”?  There’s no charter for that in the Constitution, no law that Congress has passed mandating that American armed forces police the world.  It’s time to cut the overwrought rhetoric and think a little.  Maybe start by answering some of these questions.

AIDS In Africa: America’s Response

A fairly heated debate has broken out between John Derbyshire, the only person currently at National Review who would have been comfortable there 20 years ago, and the tag team of Kathryn Jean Lopez and Dubya lackey Peter Wehner of Commentary.  Derb criticized Dubya’s African AIDS Op-Ed in no uncertain terms, and loyal Bushies Lopez and Wehner took exception, and added that Derb was a jerk because he doesn’t care about Africans.

The introduction of ad hominem attacks has clouded the issue, but I think that Derbyshire wins it on the essential point: did the billions of taxpayer dollars the Bush Administration sent to Africa serve America’s best interests?  Clearly not, I should think.  Did they help Dubya and the other crooks under his command (such as Wehner) sleep better at night?  Judging by Wehner’s smug responses, they clearly did.

Shocking

There is nothing to disagree with in this Eugene Robinson column. 

Anyone who claims to be a deficit hawk but refuses to consider cuts in defense spending should be treated exactly the same as someone who claims to be a health nut but refuses to quit smoking.

That’s Pretty Spot On

The last paragraph in Joel Klein’s Time article on Dubya’s memoir almost perfectly captures my feelings toward the former President.  In fact, it’s probably what the majority of Americans think now. 

Here’s how Klein concludes: “far too much testosterone was spent kicking irrelevant butts and landing, breathless with self-regard, on carrier decks to celebrate victories that were Pyrrhic at best. We struggle to recover from the thoughtless carnage of his tenure.”

Amen to that.

By The End Of January 2011

Randal Paul will be the junior Republican Senator from Kentucky.  David Frum will still be a neocon hack. 

Obviously Rand Paul’s election is the most vital of this week’s election results, but closer to home, Keith Fimian’s narrow loss to Gerry Connolly hurts.  To some extent I think that the excessive (and largely accurate) pre-election chatter about the looming GOP blowout hurt Fimian and other candidates in more liberal parts of the country.  No doubt there were a number of Democratic voters in Fairfax County who grew concerned about the prospects of a Republican landslide and decided to do what they could to mitigate the blow.  Now I just hope that Paul sticks to his convictions.

We Finally Have An Answer

Question: “How dumb do you have to be to still think that the United States can win in Afghanistan?”

Answer: As dumb as Max Boot.

Barry Knows Best

Katrina vanden Heuvel would be a lot less fun if she weren’t such a humorless, earnest leftie.  A lot less fun to laugh at, that is.  Vanden Heuvel, a woman with about as much of a common touch as Queen Elizabeth II, takes to the Post website to defend her crush, President Obama, from Michael Gerson’s accusation of snobbery:

“Obama is understandably chagrined by the millions of Americans who cling — for any reason — to extreme policies that promise to strip them of medical care, safe food, and unemployment protection.”

Stupid yokels — why don’t they just sit back and let the all-benevolent Obama run their lives?  I feel so bad for Obama that he has such rotten subjects — oops, sorry, citizens, citizens!