Chicago Boyz

This WSJ editorial patronizes Republican pols, treating them as too foolish to understand that their interest lies in avoiding reregulation of electronic media.

What’s amazing is how oblivious Republicans are to this stop-Rush game. So eager are Senators Trent Lott and Kay Bailey Hutchison to paste a defeat on their local media enemies that they’re willing to punish all media companies. For their part, House Republicans have fallen for the lobbying of local TV and newspapers that want Congressional protection from takeover bids; Members are too frightened by what kind of coverage they’ll get next election to just say no.

It could be that editorial writers at the WSJ understand politics better than experienced national politicians do. An alternative possibility is that Limbaugh doesn’t serve the interests of Republican pols any more than he serves those of Democrats. Rush doesn’t hesitate to criticize Republicans when they screw up, or to gin up popular enthusiasm for courses of action that most pols would prefer to avoid. He probably helps Republicans as a group but it’s not necessarily in the interest of individual Republican officeholders to come under his scrutiny. A lot of them, particularly pork-addicted jerks like Trent Lott, might find life easier if Limbaugh weren’t around.

Sylvain, in this post quotes British Foreign Minister Jack Straw as saying that “… a significant part of the way in which the French political diplomatic class defines itself is against America, and this has been a continuing neurosis amongst the French political class for many decades.” This is pretty much right. Straw is just off in his timing by an order of magnitude. In fact, French and Continental intellectuals have been defining themselves against America for over two centuries. There is an excellent and enlightening article at the Public Interest website, entitled “A Genealogy of Anti-Americanism” by James W. Ceasar. (This article is a short version of Ceasar’s book Reconstructing America: The Symbol of America in Modern Thought, which I bought but haven’t read yet.)

Ceasar tells us that European Anti-Americanism is not about the America which concretely exists, but is directed against an idea, even a mirage:

It is tempting to call anti-Americanism a stereotype or a prejudice, but it is much more than that. A prejudice, at least an ordinary one, is a shortcut usually having some basis in experience that people use to try to grasp reality’s complexities. Although often highly erroneous, prejudices have the merit that those holding them will generally revisit and revise their views when confronted with contrary facts. Anti-Americanism, while having some elements of prejudice, has been mostly a creation of “high” thought and philosophy. Some of the greatest European minds of the past two centuries have contributed to its making. The concept of America was built in such a way as to make it almost impervious to refutation by mere facts. The interest of these thinkers was not always with a real country or people, but more often with general ideas of modernity, for which “America” became the name or symbol. Indeed, many who played a chief part in discovering this symbolic America never visited the United States or showed much interest in its actual social and political conditions.

Ceasar traces the history of Anti-Americanism in European thought, and argues at the end that the Europeans, freed from the fear of the Soviet Union, now are free to indulge in this prejudice in safety. He also suggests that there is a real “Clash of Civilizations” going on between the United States and Europe, in large part because many in Europe see America as a symbol of all they despise. He concludes that Americans cannot use this reality as a way to ignore or avoid legitimate criticism, but that “[a] genuine dialogue between America and Europe will become possible only when Europeans start the long and arduous process of freeing themselves from the grip of anti-Americanism – a process, fortunately, that several courageous European intellectuals have already launched. ” Bring on the courageous European intellectuals. We need more of them.

David Warren very plausibly argues that the Israelis are serious this time, and are going to “remove” Arafat. Regime change is becoming a regular practice, it seems. Which probably means they will kill him. One can hope. After all, how in Hell could they hope to get him out of there alive, surrounded as he is by his supporters, without a bloody fight? This is a move which is long, long overdue. “The Arab Street” will be upset. Fine. Let it break its own windows. Or its angry young fellows who want to kill Jews and Americans can all join Al Qaeda, if they can find the recruiting office. We should open one at Guantanamo, cut out the middle man. Whatever. The hurdy gurdy has been cranked for the last time. Arafat is responsible for the program of suicide bombings, so Arafat has to go. As to the Palestinians, they can never get past square one with this leadership. Once Arafat is dead someone rational can come to the fore, eventually, though probably not soon. The suicide bombing policy has to be shown to be a failure, with consequences. As to world opinion, the basic attitude is utterly hostile to Israel anyway. This will only make the shouting louder, but not change the substance.

So, go get the sumbitch. Do it in a harsh, brutal way, in broad daylight with live TV coverage. Send a loud message that violence will be met unwaveringly with massively greater violence, over and over again, as often and for as long as necessary. That message may penetrate the thick craniums on the Arab street. It is a language they understand.

Then put Arafat’s dead face on TV, like the Hussein boys.

One more link is now broken with an older, freer, wilder, harder America, a place of strong emotions, with little or no irony, deep loves, abiding hatreds, strong friendships, hard punches, hard knocks, hard work, too much liquor, loyalty and sacrifice, sadness and betrayal, forgiveness and a new start — dirt roads and train whistles in the night and sunrise on the open road. And it’s all still there, that lost world, in the music. And we saw that lost America too in the work ethic of a man who never retired and never became an oldies act, but kept on reinventing himself and kept pushing himself and his fans, old and new, until his body simply disintegrated. Lucky for us. But we’ll miss the Man in Black, and what he might have given us next. God rest his soul.

Don Luskin links to what he calls a fascinating op-ed by Admiral Poindexter.

It is indeed a fascinating piece, partly because of what Poindexter doesn’t say. He discusses DARPA’s data-mining proposal mainly in terms of intentions rather than nuts and bolts. And he attempts to deflect criticism of the scheme’s intrusiveness by asserting that it was designed to use non-U.S. databases.

My main objections to the scheme are not that it’s ill-intended but that it will generate huge numbers of false positives and be an invitation to abuse in the future. (See this post and this post for related comments.) Admiral Poindexter says that the overseas databases that are to be used for the project do not contain information about U.S. citizens. However, there is reason to be cautious in accepting such assurances, as initial rumors had the scheme searching through precisely the kinds of U.S. financial records that Poindexter now insists are not involved, and DARPA’s description of the program has changed in response to public and Congressional opposition. Even if you take Poindexter at his word, it’s reasonable to be nervous about such a program, because it’s impossible to know who will be running it in the future and whether the system’s anti-snooping safeguards, which require us to trust the good will of whoever is administering it, will be followed.

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