Excellent Bret Stephens column yesterday, if you have not read it, do so.

He must have mad a wrong turn

Spitzer should argue that he just got lost, accidentally turned onto Sleaze Drive, and then down Slimeball Lane. From there, he veered left onto Creepy Terrace, eventually landing up on Topoftrash Mt.
(And let this be a lesson for all who travel down Corny Ad Rd.)

Then and Now

Rolling Stone endorses McCain!

No generation of Young Voters has ever cared less about politics and politicians than yours. There's hard demographic and voter-pattern data backing this up … assuming you give a s*** about data. In fact, even if you're reading other stuff in RS, it's doubtful you're going to read much of this article — such is the enormous shuddering yawn that the Political Process evokes in us now, in this post-Watergate-post-Iran-Contra-post-Whitewater-post-Lewinsky era, an era when politicians' statements of principle or vision are understood as self-serving ad copy and judged not for their sincerity or ability to inspire but for their tactical shrewdness, their marketability.

and when Senator John McCain... says that his goal as president will be "to inspire young Americans to devote themselves to causes greater than their own self-interest," it's hard not to hear it as just one more piece of the carefully scripted bull**** that presidential candidates hand us as they go about the self-interested business of trying to become the most powerful, important and talked-about human being on earth, which is of course their real "cause," to which they appear to be so deeply devoted that they can swallow and spew whole mountains of noble-sounding bull**** and convince even themselves that they mean it. Cynical as that may sound, polls show it's how most of us feel. And it's beyond not believing the bull****; mostly we don't even hear it, dismiss it at the same deep level where we also block out billboards and Muzak.

But there's something underneath politics in the way you have to hear McCain, something riveting and unSpinnable and true. It has to do with McCain's military background and Vietnam combat and the five-plus years he spent in a North Vietnamese prison, mostly in solitary, in a box, getting tortured and starved. And the unbelievable honor and balls he showed there. It's very easy to gloss over the POW thing, partly because we've all heard so much about it and partly because it's so off-the-charts dramatic, like something in a movie instead of a man's life. But it's worth considering for a minute, because it's what makes McCain's "causes greater than self-interest" line easier to hear.

You probably already know what happened. In October of '67 McCain was himself still a Young Voter and flying his 23rd Vietnam combat mission and his A-4 Skyhawk plane got shot down over Hanoi and he had to eject, which basically means setting off an explosive charge that blows your seat out of the plane, which ejection broke both McCain's arms and one leg and gave him a concussion and he started falling out of the skies right over Hanoi. Try to imagine for a second how much this would hurt and how scared you'd be, three limbs broken and falling toward the enemy capital you just tried to bomb. His chute opened late and he landed hard in a little lake in a park right in the middle of downtown Hanoi. Imagine treading water with broken arms and trying to pull the lifevest's toggle with your teeth as a crowd of Vietnamese men swim out toward you (there's film of this, somebody had a home-movie camera, and the N.V. government released it, though it's grainy and McCain's face is hard to see). The crowd pulled him out and then just about killed him. U.S. bomber pilots were especially hated, for obvious reasons. McCain got bayoneted in the groin; a soldier broke his shoulder apart with a rifle butt. Plus by this time his right knee was bent 90° to the side with the bone sticking out. Try to imagine this. He finally got tossed on a jeep and taken five blocks to the infamous Hoa Lo prison — a.k.a. the "Hanoi Hilton," of much movie fame — where they made him beg a week for a doctor and finally set a couple of the fractures without anesthetic and let two other fractures and the groin wound (imagine: groin wound) stay like they were. Then they threw him in a cell. Try for a moment to feel this. All the media profiles talk about how McCain still can't lift his arms over his head to comb his hair, which is true. But try to imagine it at the time, yourself in his place, because it's important. Think about how diametrically opposed to your own self-interest getting knifed in the balls and having fractures set without painkiller would be, and then about getting thrown in a cell to just lie there and hurt, which is what happened. He was delirious with pain for weeks, and his weight dropped to 100 pounds, and the other POWs were sure he would die; and then after a few months like that after his bones mostly knitted and he could sort of stand up they brought him in to the prison commandant's office and offered to let him go. This is true. They said he could just leave. They had found out that McCain's father was one of the top-ranking naval officers in the U.S. Armed Forces (which is true — both his father and grandfather were admirals), and the North Vietnamese wanted the PR coup of mercifully releasing his son, the baby-killer. McCain, 100 pounds and barely able to stand, refused. The U.S. military's Code of Conduct for Prisoners of War apparently said that POWs had to be released in the order they were captured, and there were others who'd been in Hoa Lo a long time, and McCain refused to violate the Code. The commandant, not pleased, right there in the office had guards break his ribs, rebreak his arm, knock his teeth out. McCain still refused to leave without the other POWs. And so then he spent four more years in Hoa Lo like this, much of the time in solitary, in the dark, in a closet-sized box called a "punishment cell." Maybe you've heard all this before; it's been in umpteen different media profiles of McCain. But try to imagine that moment between getting offered early release and turning it down. Try to imagine it was you. Imagine how loudly your most basic, primal self-interest would have cried out to you in that moment, and all the ways you could rationalize accepting the offer. Can you hear it? If so, would you have refused to go? You simply can't know for sure. None of us can. It's hard even to imagine the pain and fear in that moment, much less know how you'd react.

But, see, we do know how this man reacted. That he chose to spend four more years there, in a dark box, alone, tapping code on the walls to the others, rather than violate a Code. Maybe he was nuts. But the point is that with McCain it feels like we know, for a proven fact, that he's capable of devotion to something other, more, than his own self-interest. So that when he says the line in speeches in early February you can feel like maybe it isn't just more candidate bull****, that with this guy it's maybe the truth. Or maybe both the truth and bull****: the guy does — did — want your vote, after all.

Well, that's pretty jaded. Now fast forward eight years:

The tides of history are rising higher and faster these days. Read them right and ride them, or be crushed. And then along comes Barack Obama, with the kinds of gifts that appear in politics but once every few generations. There is a sense of dignity, even majesty, about him, and underneath that ease lies a resolute discipline. It's not just that he is eloquent — with that ability to speak both to you and to speak for you — it's that he has a quality of thinking and intellectual and emotional honesty that is extraordinary.

I first learned of Barack Obama from a man who was at the highest level of George W. Bush's political organization through two presidential campaigns. He described the first-term senator from Illinois as "a walking hope machine" and told me that he would not work for any Republican candidate in 2008 if Obama was nominated. He challenged me to read Obama's autobiography, Dreams From My Father.

The book was a revelation. Here was a man whose honesty about himself and understanding of the human condition are both deep and compassionate. Born to a white mother and an African father, he was raised in multiracial Hawaii and for several years in Indonesia. He drifted through some druggy teenage years — no apologies! — before emerging as a star at Harvard Law School. He chose to work as a community organizer in the projects of Chicago rather than join the wealthy insider world of corporate law. And as a young adult, he searched, in the distant villages of Kenya, for the father and family he never knew.

As I read all this, so elegantly written, my mind kept rolling over: Might it be possible? Is there some fate by which we could have this man as president of the United States?

Throughout the primaries, and during a visit he paid to our offices, we have come to know Barack Obama, his toughness and his grace. He would not be intimidated, and he declined to back down, when Senator Clinton called him "frankly, naive" for his willingness to meet leaders of hostile nations. When one of her top campaign officials tried to smear him for his earlier drug use, he did not equivocate or backtrack. On the matter of experience and capability, he has run an impressive, nearly flawless campaign — one that whupped America's most hard-boiled political infighters. Indeed, Obama was far more prepared to run a presidential campaign — from Day One — than Senator Clinton. And at no point did he go negative with personal attacks or character assassination; as much as they might have been justified, they didn't even seem tempting to him.

Obama has emerged by displaying precisely the kind of character and judgment we need in a president: renouncing the politics of fear, speaking frankly on the most pressing issues facing the country and sticking to his principles. He recognizes that running for president is an opportunity to inspire an entire nation.

I guess there's no possibility that he wants anyone to vote for him, though.

"I, by the way, served in Vietnam"

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McCain: No You Can't Kill Us

Best news on McCain comes from the Nation, here some excerpts:

But what you may not have heard is an extended critique of the kind of Commander in Chief that Captain McCain might be. To combat what he likes to call "the transcendent challenge [of] radical Islamic extremism," McCain is drawing up plans for a new set of global institutions, from a potent covert operations unit to a "League of Democracies" that can bypass the balky United Nations, from an expanded NATO that will bump up against Russian interests in Central Asia and the Caucasus to a revived US unilateralism that will engage in "rogue state rollback" against his version of the "axis of evil." In all, it's a new apparatus designed to carry the "war on terror" deep into the twenty-first century.

"We created a number of institutions in the wake of World War II to deal with the situation," says Randy Scheunemann, McCain's top adviser on foreign policy. "And what Senator McCain wants to begin a dialogue about is, Do we need new structures and new institutions, both internally, in the US government, and externally, to recognize that the situation we face now is very, very different than the one we faced during the cold war?" Joining Scheunemann, a veteran neoconservative strategist and one of the chief architects of the Iraq War, are a panoply of like-minded neocons who've gathered to advise McCain, including Bill Kristol, James Woolsey, Robert Kagan, Max Boot, Gary Schmitt and Maj. Ralph Peters. "There are some who've moved into his camp who scare me," Wilkerson says. "Scare me."

If McCain intends to be a shoot first, ask questions later President, consider a couple of the new institutions he's outlined, which seem designed to facilitate an unencumbered, interventionist foreign policy.

First is an unnamed "new agency patterned after the...Office of Strategic Services," the rambunctious, often out-of-control World War II-era covert-ops team. "A modern day OSS could draw together specialists in unconventional warfare; covert action operators; and experts in anthropology, advertising, and other relevant disciplines," wrote McCain in Foreign Affairs. "Like the original OSS, this would be a small, nimble, can-do organization" that would "fight terrorist subversion [and] take risks." It's clear that McCain wants to set up an agency to conduct paramilitary operations, covert action and psy-ops.

This idea is McCain's response to a longstanding critique of the CIA by neoconservatives such as Richard Perle, who have accused the agency of being "risk averse."


The UN, too, would be shunted aside to make room for McCain's new League of Democracies. Though the concept is couched in soothing rhetoric, the "league" would provide an alternate way of legitimizing foreign interventions by the United States when the UN Security Council won't authorize force. Five years ago, on the eve of the Iraq War, McCain said bluntly before the European Parliament that if Security Council members resisted the use of force, or if China opposed US action against North Korea, "the United States will do whatever it must to guarantee the security of the American people." Among the targets McCain cites for his plan to short-circuit the UN are Darfur, Burma, Zimbabwe, Serbia, Ukraine and, of course, Iran--and he has already referred to "wackos" in Venezuela. According to Scheunemann, it's an idea that bubbled up from some of McCain's advisers, including Peters and Kagan, but it alarms analysts from the realist-Republican school of foreign policy. "They're talking about a body that essentially would circumvent the UN and would take authority to act in the name of the international community, sometimes using force," says a veteran GOP strategist who knows McCain well and who insisted on anonymity. "Well, it's very easy to predict that the Russians and Chinese would view this as a threat."

McCain seems almost gleeful about provoking Russia. At first blush, you'd think he'd be more nuanced, since many of the foreign policy gurus he says he talks to emanate from the old-school Nixon-Kissinger circle of détente-niks, including Henry Kissinger himself, Lawrence Eagleburger and Brent Scowcroft. Their collective attitude is that as long as Moscow doesn't threaten US interests, we can do business with it. But there is little evidence of their views in McCain's policy toward Putin's Russia. "I think it's fair to assume that he's most influenced by his neoconservative advisers," says the GOP strategist.

Not surprisingly, the center of McCain's foreign policy is the Middle East. "He's bought into the completely fallacious notion that we're in a global struggle of us-versus-them. He calls it the 'transcendental threat...of extreme Islam," says Daalder. "But it's a silly argument to think that this is either an ideological or a material struggle on a par with [the ones against] Nazi Germany or Soviet Communism." For McCain, the Iraq War, the conflict with Iran, the Arab-Israeli dispute, the war in Afghanistan, the Pakistani crisis and the lack of democracy in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan are all rolled up into one "transcendent" ball of wax.


He is the candidate of those Americans whose chief goal is an endless war against radical Islam and who'd like nothing more than for the Arizona senator to clamber figuratively into the cockpit once more. Like his former aide Marshall Wittman, currently a top aide to Senator Lieberman, McCain sees Theodore Roosevelt, the Bull Moose interventionist President of the early twentieth century, as his role model. And that attracts neoconservatives.

"I'm an old-fashioned, Scoop Jackson--I guess you'd now say Joe Lieberman--Democrat, and he's a Teddy Roosevelt Republican, and they're pretty close in their views, so substantively there's a lot of overlap between us," says James Woolsey, a former CIA director who's endorsed McCain and has campaigned with him this year. "I think John's style is very TR-like. It's very much about speaking softly but carrying a big stick."

We too can hope.

Coincidence? I think not.

hat tip:
Slate Obama Messiah Watch

Real Life Liberals Imitate 30 Rock

which is supposed to be a caricature, of conservatives.
WaPo:

Most important, led by the two main contenders for the party's 2008 nomination, religious Democrats are publicly reclaiming their faith. I've gotten used to people coming out to me when I speak to Democratic audiences these days. "I'm religious, too," they'll whisper in my ear as they shake my hand quickly. Not long after the 2004 election, a congressional aide identified himself as an evangelical during a public Q&A. He told me afterward that it was the first time he'd "outed" himself in front of fellow Democrats. "How did it feel?" I asked. He paused. "A little scary," he said. "But good."

Unbeatable GOP Campaign Slogan

I think this is actually an attack ad, but that's no reason that we can't use it.

Metaphor Alert

Ross Douthat:

All along, I've made the argument that nominating Hillary is the play-it-safe strategy for the Democrats, because while she has a lower ceiling than Obama she also may have a higher floor. Now that McCain is the presumptive GOP nominee, there seems to be an assumption that the Democrats just have to nominate Obama, because you need the guy with the higher ceiling if you're up against a media-darling and moderate-friendly candidate like the Arizona Senator. And maybe that's so. But if Obama does have a glass jaw, if his candidacy is a bubble waiting to be pricked, a strong Republican nominee like McCain is precisely the guy to do it.

And I think McCain is a glass-blimp-cathedral.

Links for the Day

Gabriel Schoenfeld on Democrats' Iraq problem
David Brooks on Democrats' illusory unity
Leon Wieseltier: a liberal's conservative problems with Obama
Last, John Podhoretz's really long piece on why Iraq is the Republican's only hope

From the Immanent Archives

I just found this article about McCain from one year ago. And this one which shows who some were rooting for, just one year ago.

New round of endorsements

On the Republican side, Indecision '08. (Best Romney endorsement here:

Mitt Romney's mind is a marvel — a calculating, evaluating, inquisitive,
all-consuming consulting machine, formed on his CEO-father's lap, trained in
Harvard's business and law schools, and perfected while making hundreds of
millions in the cutthroat world of private equity investing. There is not a
spreadsheet that does not pique his interest, not a bureaucracy he does not itch
to streamline, not a widget factory he does not wish to understand.
"I'm so
excited to see this product!" he exclaimed Saturday in Lutz, Florida, outside of
Tampa, while visiting a company called Opinicus, which makes "Level D" flight
simulators.
"I don't think I have seen a more impressive layout at a
facility, and I have seen some extraordinary facilities," he gushed a few hours
earlier, after touring a coupon-making ValPak plant in Largo.
"Unfortunately, the utensils are not as hard as they need to be," he said
over lunch at KFC, where the cholesterol-soaked skin of his fried chicken was
overwhelming his plastic knife and fork.

On Democratic side, the endorsements speak for themselves: Europe's Candidate (Definitively, Barack Obama is the Candidate of Europe) and The Anti-Torture President.
Update: Best of course would be a stolen nomination, with perhaps Florida as the decisive state.

Immanent Eschaton 2008 Presidential Election Guide

Does the current crop of conservative Christian candidates confuse you? Well my friend, if its any consolation, you're not alone.

You've heard the pros and cons, the cons and pros of both sides... You've
listened to people you believe in and people you've never heard of, so it's not
surprising that you're confused. But beyond all the words, beyond all the claims
and promises There's actually just One Big Thing on which most people base their
vote for president: the Man: Ike for president, Ike for president, you like Ike, I like Ike, everybody likes Ike. So bring out the banners, beat the drums, we'll take Ike to Washington... Those were the voices of the people speaking about the man they are going to vote for. What is your decision? Who are you going to vote for?

It is in this spirit that we offer the Comprehensive Election Guide for the Unthinking Conservative: follow the masses, as manipulated by the senior staff of immanent eschaton. We will give you the pros and cons and the cons and pros of both sides, as well as the pros of the cons of the pros, and vice versa. (candidates are presented in order of desirability.)

Giuliani: The Pros: 1) he hates weasels. 2) he really hates weasels, and dictators. 3) he will kick out weaseling dictators, and the disturbed weasel lovers who support them. 4) The New York Times Editors hate him more than anyone, even Bush. The Cons: he constantly quotes George Will as having said he ran the most conservative administration in the last fifty years. (This is additionally annoying because what George Will actually said is that he ran the most effective conservative administration.)

McCain: the pros: perceived moderation, electability-the media love him. the cons: perceived moderation, electability-the media love him.

Thompson: the pros: He can beat up the most Democrats. He smokes cigars. He may have suggested that Michael Moore consider a mental institution. He seems to actually have a sense of humor. The cons: that's really it for the pros.

Romney: the pros: His hair allegedly rivals Democratic Hair front runner Edwards; his sense of humor rivals former Vice President Gore's. The resulting mix of humor and hair is too formidable to contemplate. Another pro for Romney is that he cannot be parodied. Some have attempted:

Mr. Romney also extended an olive branch to evangelical Christians
suspicious of his belief in Mormon doctrine, promising to “continue speaking in
vague, inoffensive language about Jesus and the Bible if you’ll agree to do the
same.

But these parodists have always come short of the True Romney:

I believe that every faith I have encountered draws its adherents closer
to God. And in every faith I have come to know, there are features I wish were
in my own: I love the profound ceremony of the Catholic Mass, the
approachability of God in the prayers of the Evangelicals, the tenderness of
spirit among the Pentecostals, the confident independence of the Lutherans, the
ancient traditions of the Jews, unchanged through the ages, and the commitment
to frequent prayer of the Muslims....

There is one fundamental question about which I often am asked. What do I believe about Jesus Christ?
I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the Savior of mankind. My church's beliefs about Christ may not all be the same as those of other faiths. Each religion has its own unique doctrines and history. These are not bases for criticism but rather a test of our tolerance."

Which brings us to the last pro: He loves Jesus. The cons: You pick. Also, how much do you really want to have to hear about Mormonism?

Huckabee the pros: He hates Darwinism. He hates rape. The cons: He loves Darwin. He loves rapists. He probably also loves Bush, but hates his foreign policy. He really loves Jesus. UPDATE: Also, what is it about Huckabee that inspires everyone to think up clever puns like "huckaboom", "huckabust" and "huckabasher". If this represents the state of modern conservatism, we are in a very sorry state indeed.

And Hewitt's objectively dumb because I think so

Hugh Hewitt: Now last week, Romney gave a speech... I thought it was objectively a great speech, given who liked it.

Update: It seems Hewitt meant it as a joke, see here.
However, anyone who thinks Romney's speech was that great is still objectively an idiot.

Ferrets Fight Back

A dark episode of former NYC mayor Rudy Giuliani's past has come back to haunt himon the campaign trail for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination. Giuliani is now paying the price for derogatory comments made about ferrets on his WABC radio show as mayor, on July 23 1999. UPDATE: audio available here

Mayor Giuliani: We're gonna go to David in Oceanside.
David Guthartz: Hello, Mr. Giuliani, we speak again.
Giuliani: Hi, David.
Guthartz: Let me introduce myself again, David Guthartz, executive president of New York Ferrets' Rights Advocacy. Last week when we spoke, you said a very disparaging remark to me, that I should get a life. That was very unprofessional of you. Here we're trying to get something seriously done–
Giuliani: I, I–
Guthartz: Without you talking over me, we're trying to get something very seriously done–
Giuliani: David, you're on my show. I have the right to talk over you.
Guthartz: But here's the thing: We're trying to get an important issue taken care of where the city is violating state law and I asked you last week if you care about the law.
Giuliani: Yes, I do care about the law. I think you have totally and absolutely misinterpreted the law, because there's something deranged about you.
Guthartz: No, there isn't, sir.
Giuliani: The excessive concern that you have for ferrets is something you should examine with a therapist. Not with me.
Guthartz: Don't go insulting me again!
Giuliani: I'm not insulting you. I'm being honest with you. Maybe no one in your life has ever been honest with you.
Guthartz: I happen to be more sane than you.
Giuliani: This conversation is over, David. Thank you. [Mr. Giuliani cuts him off.] There is something really, really, very sad about you. You need help. You need somebody to help you. I know you feel insulted by that, but I'm being honest with you. This excessive concern with little weasels is a sickness. I'm sorry. That's my opinion. You don't have to accept it. There are probably very few people who would be as honest with you about that. But you should go consult a psychologist or a psychiatrist, and have him help you with this excessive concern, how you are devoting your life to weasels. There are people in this city and in this world that need a lot of help. Something has gone wrong with you. Your compulsion about it, your excessive concern with it, is a sign of something wrong in your personality. I do not mean to be insulting. I'm trying to be honest with you and I'm trying to give you advice for your own good. I know you, I know how you operate, I know how many times you called here this week. Three or 4 o'clock in the morning, David, you called here. You have a sickness. I know it's hard for you to accept that, because you hang on to this sickness, and it's your shield, it's your whatever. You know, you gotta go
to someone who understands this a lot better than I do. And I know you're real
angry at me, you're gonna attack me, but actually you're angry at yourself and
you're afraid of what I'm raising with you. And if you don't deal with it, I
don't know what you're gonna do. But you called here excessively all week, and
you called here at 3 o'clock in the morning. And 4 o'clock in the morning. Over
weasels. Over a ferret. So I know this is difficult and tomorrow one of the
newspapers will write how mean I am and how cruel I am and all this other stuff,
but I believe, because my father and mother taught me this, that you should be
honest with people. And I am giving you the benefit of 55 years of experience
having represented hundreds and in some cases thousands of people on either side in the courtroom, having handled insanity defenses and cases. You need help! And please get it! And you don't have the right to call here at three o'clock in the morning, harass the people on my staff, because of your compulsion. So, David, see what you can do to get help. But we can't help you. We don't have the professional expertise to help you. Now we're gonna move on to Richard in the Bronx.

Now United Ferrets International has issued an ad blasting the mayor for his perceived indifference to ferret rights.

[Thou art] like the toad, ugly and venomous

And that's the happy one.

These Kids Are Swift

Quote of the Day

In no area of human behavior does Albert Einstein's definition of insanity – "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results" – come so frequently to mind as Middle East peacemaking.--Jonathan Rosenblum

Hezb No Allah II

Arthur C. Brooks:

In a unguarded moment in a recent interview with Britain’s Guardian, Richard Dawkins, Oxford professor and bestselling author of the atheist polemic The God Delusion, regretted that atheists have, he believes, so little political influence in the U.S. — especially compared with the influence of one other religious group: Jews. According to Dawkins, American Jews “more or less monopolise American foreign policy as far as many people can see. So if atheists could achieve a small fraction of that influence, the world would be a better place."

Dawkins scores a trifecta for European intellectuals: His claim is anti-semitic, slanders religion, and asserts victimhood. Still, it raises what is actually an important empirical question: Do nonbelievers truly have so little political influence? It turns out that the data tell a different story. In American liberal politics, nonbelievers are a very powerful political force indeed.

It will surprise nobody to learn that the American left is much less religious than the rest of the U.S. population. The General Social Survey tells us that in 2004, liberals were less than half as likely as conservatives to attend a house of worship weekly, and nearly three times as likely as conservatives never to attend. Furthermore, the American left is becoming more secular still: While 27 percent of American liberals attended church weekly in 1974, only 16 percent did by 2004. In contrast, the percentage of church-attending conservatives rose over the same period from 38 percent to 46 percent. There are still some religious liberals left in America, but today they are outnumbered by religious conservatives by about four to one...

Further, secularists are by far the most politically active liberals at the grassroots level. In the 2005, the Maxwell Poll on Civic Engagement and Inequality revealed that those who never attend religious services are just 11 percent of the adult population in America. But they are 21 percent of self-described liberals, 27 percent of liberals who contribute money to political causes, and 33 percent of liberals who attend political rallies and events. The bottom line is that the Democratic party — at least at the national level — depends critically on nonbelievers. They have influence over American liberal politics that extends far beyond their actual numbers in the population...

The truth is that secularists have nothing to complain about when it comes to political power. Their representation in American liberal political activity is disproportionately high, it is increasing, and it utterly dominates the political scene in many places. What secularists might legitimately complain about is the fact that liberal political leaders rarely acknowledge their contribution. To my knowledge, for example, Senator Clinton has never thanked the atheist community for what will no doubt prove to be energetic support for her presidential candidacy. Why is this? Nonbelievers might justifiably ask Mrs. Clinton and other Democratic leaders for the credit they truly deserve.

Bush and Gore Meet; Gore Still Unable to Smile

In their first private meeting since the beginning of Bush's presidency, former Vice President Al Gore retained his trademark look of condescension that he has been unable to change for at least the last twelve years. The expression, which conveys a mixture of "I know I'm so much smarter than you" and "I can't believe I'm standing next to this idiot", according to many commetators, may have cost Gore the hotly contested 2000 presidential election. Gore spokespeople were quick to point out that the former vice president's condescension had nothing to do with George W. Bush. "Al was snooty before the election. The election may have made him more bitter, but he was always snooty," one spokesperson who wished to remain anonymous said.

UPDATE: immanent eschaton staff have confirmed that Gore has never smiled. If anything, this picture is probably Gore happy. We for one would therefore like to commend his graciousness in putting on such a good act of exuberance.

best of the hecklers

The Plight of the Haredim

By far, the best article on this subject I have seen. Sympathetic, but not apologetic, and extremely well researched and understanding. From Azure:

In Israel, however, a different model has emerged, according to which a far greater portion of working-age haredi men are engaged in full-time study--as many as two-thirds, according to one survey.¹² Following the rise of Nazism and the destruction of European Jewry in the 1930s and 1940s, a large number of Orthodox Jews came to Israel, including many rabbinical students and rabbis eager to rebuild the world of the yeshivot that had been lost. The most notable of these was R. Avraham Yeshaya Karelitz, better known as the Hazon Ish, who arrived in Palestine in 1933 and was the foremost leader of the haredi community in Israel until his death in 1953; Karelitz led an effort to recast Orthodox life in a way that focused on stringency in observance of Jewish law, isolationism, and, above all, Tora study.¹³ While many similarly minded rabbis immigrated to the United States as well during this period (most notably R. Aharon Kotler, founder of the Lakewood yeshiva in New Jersey), their influence was far more decisive in Israel. One reason was the difference in size: By the end of World War II, the haredi community in the United States was already well-established and institutionally organized; the community in Palestine, on the other hand, was tiny, numbering only a few thousand, and disorganized, giving the immigrant rabbis far greater say in shaping its ideological tenor.

Another difference stemmed from the powerful Zionist ideals that defined the identity of secular Israel. From before the founding of the state, the haredi community has been locked in an ideological battle with Zionism, which its early leaders saw as a direct threat to the haredi way of life. Ya’akov Weinrot, one of Israel’s leading attorneys, who served as one of the Orthodox representatives on the Tal Commission, minces no words in articulating this view of Zionism. “Zionism was never content with gaining national independence,” he writes in his addendum to the commission’s report. “The mainstream expressed a desire to create a new culture, a new identity, of which a central tenet was the need to wipe out Orthodoxy as a precondition to opening new vistas.”¹⁴

This Zionist “threat” was greatest in the early years of the state, when Israel’s small haredi community, ravaged by the Holocaust and competing for the future of its children against the compelling image of the “new Jew” offered by Zionism, saw itself as struggling for survival. R. Binyamin Secharansky, director of the Beit Ya’akov girls’ seminaries in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, recalls the spiritual climate in Israel in the early 1950s: “The haredi public in those days suffered doubly: The great centers of Tora and Hasidism of Europe… had gone up in flames, and those who survived had to rebuild from scratch; moreover, the young state had new ideals and launched new symbols and flags to obscure their uniqueness as Jews.… The image of the tanned sabra, smiling confidently and speaking and acting brashly, whose whole being said youth and strength-this was the image that symbolized the new identity.”¹⁵ Jonathan Rosenblum, a well-known haredi columnist for The Jerusalem Post, describes the sentiment shared by secular and Orthodox Jews alike in the early days of the state: “In the early 1950s, there existed a virtual consensus concerning the future of the haredi community in Israel: Except for a few pockets of the old yishuv in Jerusalem, haredi Judaism would be a historical memory within one generation…. Even within the citadel of the old yishuv in Me’a She’arim, there was not a house in which someone had not been swept up by the Zionist movement, which was viewed as the vanguard of the future.”¹⁶

Nowhere was the threat felt more acutely than with respect to compulsory military service. According to the dominant Zionist vision, the army was meant not only to defend the state against foreign aggression, but also to serve as a central tool in forging a new national identity, through which immigrants from disparate lands would shed their cultural and linguistic baggage and adopt the language and customs of the new Jewish state. This was precisely what the haredi public did not want-and, for the most part, still does not want. Then as now, many haredi parents saw conscription as an attempt by the state to strip their children of the standards of behavior they had worked for years to inculcate. Retired Supreme Court Justice Tzvi Tal, who headed the commission that bears his name, says the haredim “do not want any contact between the yeshiva world and the dangerous-from the religious point of view-army, where people have different values relating to modesty and profane language.”¹⁷ The Post’s Rosenblum concurs: “After guarding their children’s souls like a Ming vase for eighteen years, haredi parents cannot be expected to expose them, at the most vulnerable stage in their lives, to an environment of casual sexual mixing and standards of modesty so at odds with their own.”¹⁸ A Gerrer Hasid who did four months of army service before joining the workforce relates that while he had no difficulty with the physical demands of basic training, he was shocked by the late-night discussions, which focused on women, movies, and sex. “Under no circumstances would I expose my son to a world” like the one he found in the IDF, he says. “I can’t send my son to be under the supervision of [then Defense Minister] Ehud Barak or [IDF Chief of Staff] Shaul Mofaz. Barak doesn’t live my experience and doesn’t know what’s important to me.”¹⁹

In the early days of the state, a settlement was reached between David Ben-Gurion and the leadership of the haredi community, according to which yeshiva students would be exempt from army duty so long as they were engaged in full-time study. Students who declared that “their Tora is their trade” (toratam umnutam) could continue to defer their enlistment indefinitely, but would be prohibited from engaging in activities other than Tora study-including teaching or even volunteer work--without first serving in the army.

Over the years, as the haredi community increased in size and the ideal of full-time Tora study for as long as possible became increasingly accepted, the number of people taking advantage of the deferments rose dramatically. What began as a group of approximately 400 students exempt from army duty at the founding of the state had grown by 1980 to around 10,000, and by 1999 had blossomed into a corps of over 30,000 men who were exempt from service, a number that continues to grow by about one thousand each year.²⁰ These men, dedicated to full-time Tora study, are also bound to it by the threat of immediate conscription should they attempt to enter the workforce. This fact alone constitutes one of the most significant differences between the American and Israeli communities: While an American haredi youth is free to pursue college or vocational training without the worry of being drafted, his Israeli counterpart must remain in yeshiva or face months or years in an army environment that is, in his view, hostile to his way of life. The threat of army service, in the words of Justice Tal, “imprisons” haredim in their yeshivot.²¹

Driven both by ideology and by the fear of army service, the haredi community that has emerged in Israel is characterized by a far more decisive commitment to full-time study of Tora than its American counterpart. According to a study by Boston University economist Eli Berman, 77 percent of haredi men between the ages of 25 and 29 in Israel are studying full-time in yeshiva; even for men aged 41 to 44, this figure remains as high as 46 percent.²² Overall, about two-thirds of working-age haredi men in Israel are full-time yeshiva students.²³

The exclusive nature of the ideal of Tora study is felt especially strongly among those haredim who end up pursuing careers outside the yeshiva. “Every father wants his son to grow up and become a great Tora scholar,” notes Moti Green, who left the yeshiva at 34 to become the first haredi attorney to clerk in the Israeli Supreme Court. “Even though I’ve succeeded as a lawyer, I’ve failed in terms of my ultimate goals in Tora.” Reflecting the extent to which the haredi world has succeeded in driving home the message of “Tora learning for all,” Green concludes: “This is my tragedy… to go from a spiritual life to a life of work is a giant waste.”²⁴

This attitude is reflected in the haredi educational system in Israel, which prepares young men for a life of Tora study, with a far smaller emphasis on vocational training. From the age of three, when boys are sent to heder to taste cakes baked in the shape of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet and coated with honey to symbolize the sweetness of Tora, until 13, when they graduate from talmud tora (which parallels elementary and middle school), study of subjects such as English, math, and science is a barely tolerated necessity. “I was 12 the last time I had secular studies, and that was for 45 minutes a day,” recalls Yisrael. “We used to say, ‘What do we need this for? Are we going to be grocery store owners? We’re going to be Tora scholars!’”²⁵ Yeshiva ketana, the haredi equivalent of high school, offers no secular studies whatsoever; boys as young as 14 are expected to study Talmud ten hours or more a day.²⁶ Students move on at age 17 or 18 to yeshiva gevoha, the equivalent of talmudic college, and then, after marriage at 20 or 21, to kollel, where they continue as long as possible; for some it is a lifetime, for many others it is until their early forties and beyond.

Most girls attend Beit Ya’akov schools, where they are taught that nothing is more important than the study of Tora, and that marrying and supporting a scholar-in-the-making is the most noble mission of all-even if it means a life of poverty.²⁷ The success of the Beit Ya’akov system in inculcating this message is largely responsible for the phenomenal growth of the yeshivot. Some sixty years ago in Europe, R. Haim Ozer Grodzinski, one of the leading figures of Orthodox Jewry through the start of World War II, remarked that whenever he saw an unattractive or disabled girl, he would stand in her honor, “for she is likely to become the wife of a Tora scholar.”²⁸ In those days, most of the women who would consider marrying yeshiva students were those with no other option. Today, in the words of a psychologist in Jerusalem who works with haredi women, “Grade A marries Grade A”--the top girls want the top boys, which means someone who will sit and learn for many years.²⁹ Some 30,000 young women attend Beit Ya’akov high school and seminary, a six-year program that offers job training, mostly as teachers, and imparts a reverence for Tora and those who study it.

The rabbis who crafted this model were not under the illusion that every man is cut out for a lifetime of learning, or that every woman can bear and raise an average of seven or eight children while being the sole breadwinner in her family. But they nonetheless encouraged young men who had little chance of becoming serious Tora scholars to pursue an education that left them few opportunities to succeed in anything else, because this approach was seen as the only way to rebuild the Tora world after the devastation of the Holocaust. Only by creating a single track, it was believed, would the exceptional scholars remain in yeshiva long enough to realize their potential. And only by demanding compliance with a rigid model of what a Jew should be could the less-than-stellar scholar be protected from the lures of secular society.

The result of all this is a pattern of haredi life in Israel that differs markedly from the way religious Jews have ever lived, both in Europe before the war and in America today. As Justice Tal points out, even the great yeshivot of Lithuania never had more than a few hundred students--as compared to the nearly 4,000 students who are now learning at the Mir yeshiva in Jerusalem or the 1,500 at the Ponavez yeshiva in Bnei Brak. “This is how it always was,” Tal says. “There was never a situation when a boy learned his whole life. Even Volozhin, the flagship of the yeshiva world, only had four hundred students at its peak…. The situation in Israel is an anomaly.”³⁰

In recent years, however, it has become increasingly clear that the Israeli model cannot sustain itself indefinitely. The foremost problem is economic, resulting from the rapid growth in the size of the learning community. In the past two decades, as the ideology of lifelong, full-time Tora study has taken a firmer hold, the percentage of haredi men over the age of 25 choosing to study in kollel rather than earn a living has increased dramatically-from 41 percent in 1980 to 60 percent in 1996, according to one study.³¹ At the same time, haredi families are growing larger, and therefore the financial burdens are increasing: In 1980, the average haredi woman would bear 6.5 children in her lifetime; by 1995 that number had risen to 7.6, a 17-percent increase. This means that the number of children growing up in conditions of poverty-and the corresponding economic burden on Israeli society-is far higher than in the past. According to Berman, the portion of Israeli children overall whose fathers are studying in yeshiva full-time has more than doubled, from 2.7 percent in 1980 to 5.9 percent in 1996; according to one estimate, that number could exceed 10 percent by the year 2006.³²

These families tend to live in conditions of significant poverty and significant dependence. According to Berman, the average haredi family in which the father does not work has a total annual income of about $14,000, less than half that of the average two-parent family in Israel, while supporting 4.5 children, as opposed to the nationwide average of 2.1.³³ Of this income, only 18 percent is earned, almost entirely from the wife’s efforts, while the rest comes from a variety of government stipends and transfer payments. As a result, Jerusalem and Bnei Brak, cities with large haredi populations, consistently top the poverty figures released each year by the National Insurance Institute.³⁴ According to a recent study by the economist Momi Dahan of the Bank of Israel, over 50 percent of haredi families in Jerusalem lived below the poverty line in 1995.³⁵

there is much much more...

Why Bush loves- Orthodox Jews.

just found this article from 2004 New Republic (reprinted on the Jewish World Review--see if you can recognize the guy sitting behind Rick Santorum)

Dateline: NEW YORK, NEW YORK
John Kerry may or may not know what agita is. (It's an Italian word for indigestion appropriated by American Jews of my grandparents' generation.) But Neal Turk could give it to him. Turk is the head of Beth Israel, an Orthodox Jewish congregation of some 250 families in Miami Beach. He's visiting New York this week for two reasons. First, to drop in on his son at Yeshiva University in New York City; and second, to attend a Bush-Cheney campaign briefing for Orthodox Jews. When I approach Turk after the event, he explains that much of his congregation supported Al Gore and Joe Lieberman in 2000. Lieberman even attended services at his synagogue during the campaign. But Turk says most members are voting Republican this time around. "It's not a hard decision at all," he says. "I think that President Bush has so convinced us all of his support for Israel."
One shouldn't overstate the significance of people like Turk. "Jews remain one of most loyal constituencies," says one Kerry adviser. "It makes many uncomfortable--if not downright scared--to know that this administration is so ideologically driven on so many issues." He's right. A recent poll of Jewish Americans found that 75 percent prefer Kerry, pretty much the same number that favored Gore. Bush campaign officials protest that the poll was partisan--it was sponsored by a Democratic organization--and skewed because it was conducted during the Democratic convention. But even strategists close to the administration concede it's unlikely Bush will perform more than five or ten points better than the poll indicates. "Seventy to seventy-five percent of the Jewish vote is off the table to Bush," admits one.
The issue, these strategists claim, is not whether Bush wins 30 percent of the national Jewish vote. It's whether he picks off five or ten percentage points in key swing states like Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania--states where Jews tilted strongly toward Gore and Lieberman in 2000 and where a few thousand votes could mean the difference between a second term and a one-way ticket to Crawford. The Bush campaign--run by Ken Mehlman. who grew up in a kosher household--is acutely aware of this. And the Jewish outreach shows it: It is vastly more sophisticated than anything the Republicans attempted in 2000 or 1996--and in some ways more sophisticated than anything the Democrats are doing this year. "My conversations with [the Kerry people] are much more in broad terms, about broad policy issues, broad message," says an official from a large Jewish organization. "The Bush folks have their playbook. They're running plays. They want to know... in this city, who do you recommend?" If people like Neal Turk are any indication, those plays may be working.
The obvious place for Republicans to troll for Jewish votes is the Orthodox community. Orthodox Jews are more comfortable with Republican positions on abortion and gay marriage than their Conservative, Reform, and unaffiliated Jewish counterparts. They are sympathetic to Republican programs like faith-based initiatives and school choice. (Vouchers could significantly benefit Orthodox Jews, who often send their children to private religious schools.) And they are more hawkish than other Jews on Israel. Their numbers, moreover, aren't trivial. Estimates for South Florida's Orthodox Jewish population exceed 50,000 (out of a state population typically estimated at 750,000 Jews). The Cleveland area boasts several thousand Orthodox Jews; Philadelphia and Detroit have large Orthodox populations of their own. Bush could easily win more than 50 percent of the vote in these communities, says Larry Grossman, co-editor of the American Jewish Yearbook at the American Jewish Committee. That would likely be a significant improvement from 2000, when, according to one estimate, 60 percent of Orthodox Jews voted for Gore. This is apparently the motivation behind a trip by Republican Senators Rick Santorum and Norm Coleman (himself a Jew) to the largely Orthodox Borough Park neighborhood of Brooklyn on the second day of the convention. Santorum and Coleman are inside consulting with three prominent rabbis when I arrive at the Joseph Tanenbaum Torah Center. It's a private meeting that's closed to the press, so it's unlikely I'll be admitted even if I can find the right room. But it doesn't matter anyway. A scrum of teenage seminary students block the entrance, each dressed in traditional black pants, white shirts, and velvet skullcaps. Their de facto leader, a short, broad-shouldered blonde whom the others refer to as the "student mayor," demands to know what I'm doing here. Saying I'm a journalist is apparently the wrong answer because, before long, I'm in a raging political debate. Actually, "debate" is a stretch. The kids I'm talking to have no idea who Santorum is. But they know what they think of Bush and Kerry. "Bush is a man," the student mayor sums it up for me, whereas Kerry is a liberal. "And religious Jews don't go with liberals."
The political benefit of an event targeted at haredi, or ultra-Orthodox, Jews in New York is not immediately obvious. After all, New York is a blue state, and winning every Brooklyn Orthodox vote isn't going to dent the Democratic tally here. But Jeff Ballabon, a 41-year-old Orthodox Jew and Bush Pioneer who helped organize the Brooklyn trip and the earlier briefing, argues that the events will resonate outside New York because haredim in different parts of the country are tightly connected. "They all read the same national papers," says Ballabon. "And ninety-five percent of them are published in New York. ... The Orthodox press for many is the primary source of news." The logic applies to non-haredi, modern Orthodox Jews as well. At the Bush campaign press briefing earlier in the day, Tevi Troy, an Orthodox Jewish campaign official, emphasizes that the assembled leaders, a mixture of haredi and modern Orthodox Jews, are "plugged into other cities"--"you know, people in Detroit, St. Louis, Philadelphia, Cleveland." He encourages them to "talk to your friends in other cities and tell them what the president is about."
With a hawkish evangelical in the White House and no Lieberman on the Democratic ticket, Bush's task when it comes to Orthodox Jews is probably less a matter of changing minds than energizing the vote. Hence the much-hyped appearance at Madison Square Garden Tuesday evening of Rebbetzin Esther Jungreis, a renowned figure in the Orthodox community and perhaps the first person ever to wear a sheitel (the wig worn by Orthodox women) on a convention stage.
The true swing voters, by contrast, are those secular and moderately religious Jews for whom Israel and the war on terrorism trump other issues, such as abortion. The Bush campaign believes it can make gains here as well. "The natural inroads are Jews in areas with Republican congressmen," says a Republican strategist. "The work that's going to be done is among the Reform, Conservative, and unaffiliated Jews who identify Israel as one of their top three issues."
The public face of this effort is Virginia Representative Eric Cantor, the chief deputy majority whip in the House of Representatives and the only Jewish Republican in the House. Cantor is a mild-mannered, third-generation Richmonder with a boyish grin and an easy Southern lilt. But, when he takes the microphone at a Sunday brunch at the Plaza Hotel, where American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) members dominate the crowd, his rhetoric verges on the apocalyptic. "The Jewish people have a sometimes painful and tragic history," he says. "It gives us an understanding of the devastation that can be wrought by a savage ideology." At an event the following afternoon, he tells the crowd, "We aren't negotiating with the terrorists, and neither should Israel." Cantor tells me this is a message he's been taking to swing states like Ohio, Florida, and Arizona "several weekends a month."
It's a message the people who showed up at the Plaza are receptive to. Many are secular Jews who were Democrats before September 11. A stocky middle-aged man from Florida who looks like a slightly older version of Al Franken glances conspiratorially over his shoulder as he confides to me, "I think there are a lot of Jewish Democrats, including me, that support the president. ... He understands the difference between good and evil." Some of these people have probably been voting Republican for years and were just too embarrassed to admit it. September 11 and the Bush administration's support of Israel gave them a powerful public rationale. Still, there does appear to be a real shift underway, if only a small one. Jay Stein, chairman of the clothing outlet Stein Mart and previously one of the largest donors to Al Gore, told me, ''After the experience of 9/11, in my view, a different criterion had to be placed on who's going to be president. ... If America is not safe, very little else matters. ... All these wonderful democratic values matter less if we're not secure in our own country."
The underbelly of the Bush campaign's pitch to these voters is the idea that, even if John Kerry, who gets a stellar rating from AIPAC, is a reliable supporter of Israel, and even if he says he'd prosecute the war on terrorism aggressively, there are structural forces within the Democratic Party that make a Kerry administration dangerous. At just about every Jewish-themed event I attended this week--and there were multiple events each day--someone has drawn attention to the rise of the antiwar, anti-Israel left within the Democratic Party. Usually, the conversation begins with Michael Moore, who has left a long trail of anti-Israel comments, continues on to MoveOn.org and former supporters of Howard Dean, and ends with the observation that, in recent years, it has been the far left of the Democratic Party, not the far right of the Republican Party, that has been AWOL on votes in Congress regarding Israel. "That's going to be a major theme going into the stretch run," says one Republican strategist. "The point is, who do you surround yourself with? ... [With the Kerry] campaign, the focus is on Michael Moore, Jimmy Carter." One Jewish Republican close to the White House, who occasionally serves as a Bush campaign surrogate, told me he makes this pitch explicitly. "Even if Kerry means everything he says about Israel," he tells Jewish audiences, "the question is whether his constituency--today's Democratic Party--would really let him go there."
There are signs this strategy is working. A leader of a major Jewish organization told me, "After the Democratic convention, they may well have driven Jews into the Republican camp. ... I was there. I saw the reaction ... to seeing the whole thing revolve around Michael Moore." Others attribute the increasing willingness of young Jews to vote Republican--Republican pollster Frank Luntz has data suggesting that only 60 percent of Jews under 35 vote Democratic--to a reaction against campus anti-Israel and antiwar activism.
Ironically, though, the Bushies may be making their greatest inroads among a group of Jews who aren't within 5,000 miles of Madison Square Garden. Estimates suggest there are about 200,000 American citizens living in Israel, making it the fifth-largest source of American expatriates in the world. Over 100,000 are eligible to vote. Americans in Israel--and Israelis in general--tend to be favorably disposed to Bush thanks to his close relationship with Ariel Sharon. A Tel Aviv University poll conducted in early August found that Israelis prefer Bush to Kerry by a 49-18 margin. So a 527 organization called Republicans Abroad Israel has identified several thousand expats eligible to vote in each of the major swing states (about 25,000 in all) and is frantically trying to register them before a self-imposed deadline arrives in two weeks. Bush may not be playing well in Peoria. But, this year, he might gladly exchange Peoria for Tel Aviv.
~~~~~~~~
By Noam Scheiber

(as a side note, the New Republic has stopped being interesting ever since they got rid of Peter Beinart-another orthodox Jew-as their editor.)

Jonathan Rosenblum Attacks the Charedim!

jonathan rosenblum comments about a split in the orthodox world:

On one side, there exists a small minority that does not factor in the
reactions of its fellow Jews before acting. That group has for so long viewed
itself as a besieged minority that it has lost the sense of connection to the
larger Jewish people. The consequences of its members’ actions on the general
perception of the Torah and Torah-observant Jews are of little concern.
Their focus is instead on the protection of their turf from alien
intrusions.

sound familiar? although Rosenblum is writing about the Neturei Karta, perhaps he is sending a hidden message as well. (this may be a common theme in his writing, דוק ותשכח.) alternatively, he is thoroughly unfamiliar with irony.