Ten Ways Progressive Policies Harm Society's Moral Character

Agree with him or not, this piece by Dennis Prager is a good example of writing with clarity (I sometimes think his writing would be better with more examples, but I thought this piece was well-written for a short summary). Read the whole thing. As usual with Prager, I didn't find a single "weasel word" in the piece.  Kicker at the end.

If you'd rather watch a video, he did short one with the same theme earlier. I hope that most people would fall somewhere between the extremes in how much government they think is good:   no government (true anarchy with its risks of destruction) and really big government (national or international egalitarian government with its risks of totalitarianism).  But about the only people agitating for anarchy today are faux anarchists who want to see Western Civilization fall so they can build a new, utopian system.  Progressive policies which lead toward really big government, on the other hand, remain popular.  The ten moral downsides which Prager identifies are:

1. The bigger the government, the less the citizens do for one another.

The greatest description of American civilization was written in the 19th century by the Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville. One of the differences distinguishing Americans from Europeans that he most marveled at was how much Americans — through myriad associations — took care of one another.

2. The welfare state, though often well intended, is nevertheless a Ponzi scheme.

As a result, virtually every welfare state in Europe, along with many American states, like California, is going broke.

3. Citizens of liberal welfare states become increasingly narcissistic.

4. The liberal welfare state makes people disdain work.

5. Nothing more guarantees the erosion of character than getting something for nothing.

And the rhetoric of liberalism — labeling each new entitlement a “right” — reinforces this sense of entitlement.

6. The bigger the government, the more the corruption.

Of course, big businesses are also often corrupt. But they are eventually caught or go out of business. The government cannot go out of business. And, unlike corrupt governments, corrupt businesses cannot print money and thereby devalue a nation’s currency, and they cannot arrest you.

7. The welfare state corrupts family life.

8. The welfare state inhibits the maturation of its young citizens into responsible adults.

9. As a result of the Left’s sympathetic views of pacifism, and because almost no welfare state can afford a strong military, European countries rely on America to fight the world’s evils and even to defend them.

10. The leftist weltanschauung sees society’s and the world’s great battle as between rich and poor rather than between good and evil.

This is what produces the morally confused liberal elites that can venerate a Cuban tyranny with its egalitarian society over a free and decent America that has greater inequality.

Bastille Day and La Marseillaise

I was thinking yesterday that it's a wonder that La Marseillaise is still the French National Anthem: "To Arms, Citizens", etc. Doesn't quite fit with the current culture of Social Democracy and multiculturalism in Europe. Does any Western country have a fiestier National Anthem? Or a more rousing one? The version from Casa Blanca reminds us that tyranny is a recurring danger.  On the other hand, Bastille Day also reminds us that revolutions don't always turn out as hoped.  

Walter Russell Meade is on a roll. He has a wonderful piece about the Fall of the Bastille.  

Anyway, for your holiday reflections, five takes on the French Revolution : Charles Dickens, Maximilien Robespierre, Albert Camus, the Marquis de Lafayette and your Via Meadia host.

I hope that a significant percentage of high school and college students still knows who Dickens, Robespierre, Camus and Lafayette were.

Maximilien Robespierre:
If virtue be the spring of a popular government in times of peace, the spring of that government during a revolution is virtue combined with terror.

And of course, terror got a little out of hand during the French Revolution and eventually took even Robespierre's life.* I don't know if Meade intended a connection, but he also put up a short post on the Spirit of Marie Antoinette Alive and Well in the Hamptons. Heh.

* A great deal of the terror came as the result of the attempt to "purify" the country with regard to egalitarianism, (which takes "equality" far beyond the American Founders' emphasis on Equality Before the Law) and other principles which animated the revolutionaries.

It's remarkable to me how many 20th Century tyrants from around the world spent time in Paris before embarking on their careers of tyranny. Many of those tyrants also espoused the idea of "purifying" their own countries. Not something you would expect when visiting modern-day France.

Happy Independence Day

Well, Calvin Coolidge seems to be popular today, on account of his thoughts at the 150th birthday of the Declaration of Independence. Jeff Jacoby discusses President Coolidge's speech:

Since ancient times there had been many revolutions . . . What makes America's founding extraordinary, observed the 30th president, is that it was the first to be based not on blood or soil but on a set of philosophical ideas about the nature of mankind and therefore of government. Other nations have their deepest roots in ethnicity, tribal loyalty, or military conquest. America, uniquely, was dedicated to a proposition - to the fundamental, self-evident truth that all men are created equal and the political ideas that flow from that truth. . . .

Jeff Goldstein has some thoughts on the Constitution today, apparently prompted by a very interesting note from Dr. Larry Arn:

The 4th of July cover article of Time magazine claims that the Constitution is irrelevant.

Frightening. . . .

The Constitution does not allow us to do whatever we want to do. In the words of James Madison, the Constitution was framed out of the belief that “it is the reason, alone, of the public, that ought to control and regulate the government. The passions ought to be controlled and regulated by the government.”

The genius of the Constitution lies in its having a definite meaning on the fundamentals – that every individual has rights, that the people are sovereign, and that the governmental powers must remain separated – while leaving wide latitude to local government, or the people themselves, on issues not specifically addressed in the Constitution. . . .

Liberty. Equality. Self-government.

If the Fourth of July is a celebration of these things, it is a celebration of the Constitution as much as the Declaration of Independence. No constitution in history has proven itself more deeply committed to these principles, and no nation has been more richly blessed in return.

The basic truth within the Constitution is that the government cannot have limitless power, for the simple reason that government is made up of people. A Constitution with no definite meaning gives free reign to the passions of those people within and without the government. A Constitution with a meaning honored and obeyed becomes a guardian of all people, for it sustains a government that is strong within its defined powers but limited in order to protect the liberty and equality of citizens.Instead of scoffing at those Americans concerned that their federal government has overrun its limits in the name of energy and modernity, perhaps Time should consider what an American President said about the principles of the Declaration and the Constitution on the 150th anniversary of July 4th, 1776:

"It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern. But that reasoning can not be applied to this great charter. If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers."

- Calvin Coolidge
July 5, 1926

Read the whole thing. Follow the link to President Coolidge's full speech.  And Goldstein discusses in another post some philosophies which threaten our independence from government tyranny. For example:

The loss of a controlling idea about how interpretation works — how it comes to count as interpretation in the first place — has led us down the path where meaning is determined not by a true appeal to the foundational documents intended to constrain the power of a centralized authority, but rather by a judicial oligarchy, where one vote, determined by nothing more than partisan ideology, a felicity with signifiers, and a supposed unshakable fidelity to prior rulings, takes the place of our Constitution and Declaration as the law of the land for 300 million + people. . . .

We shan’t go down without a fight. Once this country is unrecognizable as this country, the time will come once again to declare our independence. . . .

Or, maybe we could start now to educate children once again about how our country began. There are even some resources available for TV. Remarkably, the token conservative in this round-table, George Will, is allowed to finish his thoughts. He did a good job of defending the Constitution.

Police extorting political support in Wisconsin

Iowahawk:

Wisconsin state employee union woos Wisconsin small business support with threats of severed horse heads

Well, he is a satirist. But union supporters HAVE been "doubling down" on intimidation of local businesses as a crucial election approaches. Among other nasty practices. The videos are interesting. But this is more worrisome - Ann Althouse:

I can’t get my head around the concept of police involvement in boycotting businesses. That reads like pure corruption. I can’t believe it’s being done openly. Can someone explain to me how you can even argue that it is acceptable for police to extort political support from citizens?

Interesting to consider the circumstances under which extortion is effective.

Is California next? The legendary Democrat WILLIE BROWN, who managed California politics for years, is worried about pension costs?

Bill Whittle: Michael Moore's Right

Ace: Bill Whittle: "Michael Moore's Right: We Can Balance the Budget By Taking Money From The Rich.   Ah, but there's a catch. Great video; stay with it." Allahpundit: Long, but it has to be.

First came the video by Mary Katherine Ham's analysis of Michael Moore's simple, elegant solution to America's financial crisis.

 The reviews above concern Bill Whittle's visual illustration of a more detailed Iowahawk blog post on Moore's Madison speech ON VIDEO. Iowahawk is a genius. Bill Whittle, a screenwriter, provides the images to make his words memorable.

One thing you have to say about Michael Moore is that he is effective in persuading and energizing his intended audience. Since Moore declared war on the government of Wisconsin, Governor Walker's poll numbers have been going down, and now the Left is engaging in a deceitful and intimidating campaign to unseat a supreme court judge in Wisconsin. (They are also going door-to-door for signatures on recall petitions, while misrepresenting the language of the petitions.)

There are powerful psychological reasons for the allure of liberal social policies even in the face of economic disaster.   Mark Steyn characterizes two very different types of protesters in the London protests and riots against modest cuts in government benefits, in The Human Right to Suspend Reality, then makes the following observation:

In a democracy, there are not many easy ways back from insane levels of “social” spending, and certainly not when the leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition panders to the mob by comparing them to anti-apartheid activists.

Michael Moore is apparently proud of his recent appearance on the Colbert Report.   Note, starting at about 6 minutes and 30 seconds how viciously and falsely he characterizes America's 400 billionaires, from Bill Gates and Warren Buffett to the "littler Mubaraks" like Oprah Winfrey.  Who could really believe that Bill Gates and Oprah Winfrey are conspiring to concentrate ALL of the money in the United States into the hands of exactly 400 people?  But it's the emotion that counts -- no evidence needed.

I am in no position to judge the deepest intentions of America's billionaires, but I would imagine that not all of their motives are altruistic.  However, the leadership of the Left proclaims that it knows EXACTLY what  "the rich" are thinking.   Might this be a form of projection?  The Left tends to think of money as power more than classical liberals, libertarians or conservatives do.

The leadership of the Left knows that its primary weapon is to demonize some person or group on the other side. "Personalize and Polarize", as Saul Alinsky liked to say. It is impossible for them to portray those on the other side as having ANY honorable motives. Their worldview REQUIRES them to attribute evil motives to others, because the record of the left's economic policies has been consistently disastrous (given enough time).

Questions for Michael Moore:   If these 400 billionaires are conspiring to control ALL of the wealth in the United States, WHY DO MANY OF THEM GIVE AWAY SO MUCH OF THEIR MONEY TO CHARITY?  And why do they have so many employees?  And to whom do they sell products or services?  What is the true nature of their wealth?

Compare Moore's economic philosophy with that of Abraham Lincoln.

I don’t believe in a law to prevent a man from getting rich; it would do more harm than good. So while we do not propose any war upon capital, we do wish to allow the humblest man an equal chance to get rich with everybody else. …. I want every man to have the chance — and I believe a black man is entitled to it — in which he can better his condition — when he may look forward and hope to be a hired laborer this year and the next, work for himself afterward, and finally to hire men to work for him! That is the true system.

p.s.:   While taxes for corporations are not fairly distributed in the U.S., tomorrow the United States will have the worlds highest corporate tax rate. Not only that, but no country leans on upper-income households more than the U.S. for tax revenues. And then there's this little bit of fact to counter Mr. Moore's scary scenario of total control of America's assets by 400 very rich people:

I like to point out that the low rate at the top of the income scale is an artifact of the lower capital gain rate, that it doesn't count the double taxation of corporate income, and the fact that people usually get to the very top of the income scale once, when they sell their business or some other big asset in capital gain transactions.

In other words, most rich people reach high, temporary income levels by giving up control of the businesses or stocks which made them rich. There is, over a period of decades, a fair amount of turnover in the richest families in America. But Michael Moore will present only the worst possible characterization of "the rich" because it is part of his strategy.

Meg McArdle via Instapundit: THE RICH REALLY ARE DIFFERENT: Their Incomes Fluctuate More. “This is one of the reasons that we can’t fix all our budget problems with higher taxes on the rich – if we do that, revenues are going to collapse dangerously every time there’s a recession.” McArdle quotes Robert Frank:

Nearly half of California's income taxes before the recession came from the top 1% of earners: households that took in more than $490,000 a year. High earners, it turns out, have especially volatile incomes--their earnings fell by more than twice as much as the rest of the population's during the recession. When they crashed, they took California's finances down with them.

Mr. Williams, a former economic forecaster for the state, spent more than a decade warning state leaders about California's over-dependence on the rich. "We created a revenue cliff," he said. "We built a large part of our government on the state's most unstable income group."

As far as I can tell, if Michael Moore had his way, there would be no risky investments because there would be no rich people. Only people toiling happily under the direction of the Federal Government (or the Revolutionary Council or whatever), which would magically provide good jobs, good wages and benefits to all of the 300 million people in America. It would be a Worker's Paradise. Sort of like Cuba. THE POSSIBILITY OF BILLIONAIRES TAKING ALL YOUR MONEY WOULD VANISH.

Captains of Capitalism set out to CHANGE capitalism

Via the New York TImes, GE's profits are now highly dependent on its tax strategy:

The company reported worldwide profits of $14.2 billion, and said $5.1 billion of the total came from its operations in the United States.
Its American tax bill? None. In fact, G.E. claimed a tax benefit of $3.2 billion.

In other words, you've been paying taxes to GE! Unfettered Free Enterprise rules in the United States!  Everybody follows the same rules!  Heh.

Ace says:

Via Nathan Wurtzel . . . who reminds us that until earlier this year GE owned the pro-tax MSNBC. Well, pro tax for the little people, not them. Big difference.

Which gives me an excuse to link the fantasy video in which Chris Matthews Tells the Truth. Rich Democrats DO seem awfully good at evading or avoiding taxes: John Kerry docking his yacht out of state to avoid taxes amd Clair McCaskill's maneuvers to avoid taxes on her plane are just two recent examples. Of course, the very rich don't necessarily have to be Democrats to find ways to avoid paying taxes. But high tax rates motivate the very rich to seek help from government in finding loopholes or other ways to avoid paying "their fair share".  Watch what they do, not what they say.

Special deals for certain corporations can be more damaging to the economy than loopholes for individuals because they provide the favored companies with an unfair advantage over competitors. "As The Washington Examiner’s Tim Carney has reported, days after President Barack Obama’s inauguration, Immelt wrote to GE shareholders:

[W]e are going through more than a cycle. The global economy, and capitalism, will be ‘reset’ in several important ways. The interaction between government and business will change forever. In a reset economy, the government will be a regulator; and also an industry policy champion, a financier, and a key partner."

Hmmm. "regulator, industry policy champion, financier and key partner."   WHERE HAVE WE SEEN THIS KIND OF RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN GOVERNMENT AND INDUSTRY BEFORE? ITALY?   What could possibly go wrong? 

Tigerhawk on Obama and the Fortune 500:

. . . I wish that the president would stop catering to the Fortune 500 tools. These are not the companies that innovate. They don't create a lot of American jobs in the long run, they are big enough to lobby for legislation to protect their entrenched businesses, their CEOs consort with politicians partly for the fun of it, and they are in general willing and inevitable participants in the government-corporate complex. If President Obama really wants to motivate business, he will start paying attention to the next several thousand companies, which are the real engine of growth and innovation in the great American prosperity machine.

Meanwhile, Left-wing billionaire George Soros is reportely quietly planning to push for 'a grand bargain that rearranges the entire financial order.' Because, you know, American leadership at present is "unacceptable" to Mr. Soros, who wants to use us as guinea pigs in his grand design to establish a global sheriff. I wonder if he is boosting greater power for China at the expense of India? We know he thinks America is awful, but does he think India is worse than China because the people are somewhat more free?

I think these people bear watching. But we're too busy watching the Marxist incitements of Michael Moore, who's only a millionaire, and a former SEIU official.

Kind of reminds me of the rumor that Jamie Gorelick is on President Obama's short list to head up the FBI, even though she's the "Typhoid Mary of policy fiascos." If the villains from Enron should be in prison for cooking the books, so should she. Being a reliable Washington Democratic insider has its privileges. But even though she's not in prison, her name makes all the other candidates seem wonderful by comparison.

Progressives in American History

Jonah Goldberg reminds us that things could be worse with regard to the political actions of the Commander in Chief.

I'm thinking of an American president who demonized ethnic groups as enemies of the state, censored the press, imprisoned dissidents, bullied political opponents, spewed propaganda, often expressed contempt for the Constitution, approved warrantless searches and eavesdropping, and pursued his policies with a blind, religious certainty.

Oh, and I'm not thinking of George W. Bush, but another "W" – actually "WW": Woodrow Wilson, the Democrat who served from 1913 to 1921.

President Wilson is mostly remembered today as the first modern liberal president, the first (and only) POTUS with a PhD, and the only political scientist to occupy the Oval Office. He was the champion of "self determination" and the author of the idealistic but doomed "Fourteen Points" – his vision of peace for Europe and his hope for a League of Nations. But the nature of his presidency has largely been forgotten.

That's a shame, because Wilson's two terms in office provide the clearest historical window into the soul of progressivism. Wilson's racism, his ideological rigidity, and his antipathy toward the Constitution were all products of the progressive worldview. . .

An extremely interesting piece which briefly outlines the beginnings of the progressive movement in the United States and discusses the changes in progressivism over the years.

Personal note: My grandmother briefly lost her citizenship during Wilson's administration because she was married to a German immigrant.

Ed Driscoll recounts how Progressives decided, starting in the mid-nineteenth century, that they should start from zero in a variety of ways. And later, that they should go forward, into the past. Glenn Reynolds comments: Reminds me of this Neal Stephenson quote: “The twentieth century was one in which limits on state power were removed in order to let the intellectuals run with the ball, and they screwed everything up and turned the century into an abattoir. . . . We Americans are the only ones who didn’t get creamed at some point during all of this. We are free and prosperous because we have inherited political and value systems fabricated by a particular set of eighteenth-century intellectuals who happened to get it right. But we have lost touch with those intellectuals.”

Michael Knox Beran: When compassion turns to coercion

The past three years have witnessed a renewal of faith in progressive social policy, a faith embodied in President Obama's pledge to lead an administration dedicated to "change we can believe in." It is a faith that, in an earlier incarnation, made one liberal, the Columbia teacher and literary critic Lionel Trilling, uncomfortable.

In his book "The Liberal Imagination," published in 1950, Trilling pointed to the "dangers which lie in our most generous wishes." Progressives, Trilling observed, believe that through the "rational direction of human life" they can alleviate misery. But the reformers, Trilling showed, are too often oblivious of the truth of their own motives.

In his 1947 novel "The Middle of the Journey," Trilling probes this hidden impulse in his portrayal of Gifford Maxim, a character modeled on his Columbia schoolmate and legendary Soviet spy-turned-anti-Communist Whittaker Chambers. "And in the most secret heart of every intellectual ... there lies hidden ... the hope of power, the desire to bring his ideas to reality by imposing them on his fellow man," Maxim says. This hope tempts the progressive to embrace coercive policies in the name of social equity. "The more we talk of welfare, the crueler we become," Maxim says. "How can we possibly be guilty when we have in mind the welfare of others, and of so many others?"

Former SEIU official plans to destabilize the economy again

This guy is more serious about redistribution than Michael Moore.

But don't worry, he's going to give Wall Street's money to YOU. No word on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's money. He plans to start the revolution by focusing the hatred of the people on JP Morgan Chase in early May. (May Day communist celebration, perhaps)?

Big firms such as this make an easy target for hatred after the government bail-outs. But the consolidation of firms into entities which are considered "too big to fail" is, more often than not, favored by complex government regulation.

I think a separation of political power from the ability to amass wealth is critical for long-term prosperity. Corporations which are "too big to fail" become dependent on government to prop them up. This is a sign of decline in both equality before the law and in the firms which are dependent on government for special favors.  Other corporations, especially those without special government connections, don't know how to proceed with their businesses when regulations are fickle.  Fickle regulation was one of the ways FDR's administration inadvertently lengthened the Great Depression.

It would be better if we had more financial firms which were big enough to be stable, but not so big that they were "too big to fail". I believe that it is better for such firms to go bankrupt if they are mismanaged  than for the government to rashly set aside the rule of law and property rights in the process of "saving" them.  And it didn't help that these firms were forced by the government and "community activists" to make loans to people who would be unlikely to pay the loans back.

I believe that a separation of political power from the ability to amass wealth is critical for long-term survival of our culture.

Lerner said that unions and community organizations are, for all intents and purposes, dead. The only way to achieve their goals, therefore--the redistribution of wealth and the return of "$17 trillion" stolen from the middle class by Wall Street--is to "destabilize the country."

Lerner's plan is to organize a mass, coordinated "strike" on mortgage, student loan, and local government debt payments--thus bringing the banks to the edge of insolvency and forcing them to renegotiate the terms of the loans. This destabilization and turmoil, Lerner hopes, will also crash the stock market, isolating the banking class and allowing for a transfer of power.

What I can never figure out is why people like this are so obsessed with the concentration of money, but seem totally fine with a concentration of political power. Maybe because they believe that THEY wiill have the power. And this variant on the old "Cloward-Pivens Strategy" still seems predictably short on details concerning what happens between the "destabilization" and the utopian new egalitarianism which the "destabilization" will bring about. BUT WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG?

Well, right off the bat, it would likely devastate the 401k retirements of most older Americans. When George Soros set out to destabilize the Bank of England, he made many British widows and widowers very poor.

And has Lerner ever heard of "hyperinflation"? Would he care if hyperinflation stole money from everyone? What about a deflation which would make debts unpayable? Which way would the destabilization go? Either way, it would cause grave problems in the lives of ordinary people. Would his dream of a utopian egalitarian society be worth the suffering he would cause?

Business Insider notes Lerner was forced out of SEIU last year for spending millions pursuing some kind of plan that looked a lot like this.

But you know who's scary? The Tea Party, man.

Libya: Whatever you think, a lot of people probably disagree with you

What do you think the U.S. approach to the Libyan crisis should be?  Some varied responses here. Could be interesting to review later.  Liberals are divided in their opinions.  Conservatives are divided in their opinions.  Some foreign tyrants are still pulling for Qaddafi. The UN undermines Obama.

March 21: Anti-war movement not dead, but subdued.

Hugo Chavez, reported March 22: End Capitalism, which may have destroyed life on Mars

“I have always said, heard, that it would not be strange that there had been civilization on Mars, but maybe capitalism arrived there, imperialism arrived and finished off the planet,” Chavez said in speech to mark World Water Day. . . .

He added that the West’s attacks on Libya were about water and oil reserves.

Bolivian President, March 22: Isn't it time to revoke Obama's Nobel Peace Prize? Most Americans disagree.

President Barak Obama, March 22: installing a democratic system that respects the people’s will.?    Needs clarification. He sounds too much like a neocon here.

White House, March 22: We're not at war with Libya.  Interview of Hillary Clinton. Planning on handing off power to an undetermined group of people. President Obama cutting short his Latin American trip.

Congress, March 22: No "King's Army" in U.S.?

Joe Scarborough: Republicans have become the party of reckless interventionism.

David Brooks: The problem with multilateralism.

France proposes political steering committee to guide Libyan operations.

March 23: Center-left TNR weighs in with "What the Left got wrong".

The Hill: President Obama struggles to define mission  Glenn Reynolds offers some ancient guidance:

If you strike at a king, you must kill him.

Michael Kinsley: How did this happen?

Eric Posner: An imperial presidency?

Austin Bay:

Candidate Obama may have pursued smart politics (for the tactical purpose of gaining power) by mainstreaming ‘Bush lied, people died’ and other inflammatory nonsense. The intent was to impugn the motives of those of us who saw the GWOT enterprise as the best choice among many terrible choices. Libya, however, reveals Candidate Obama’s foreign policy prescriptions, billed as smart diplomacy by liberal media operatives, as more balderdash for the dustbin of history. It also calls into question just how smart the politics of 2005 to 2009 will ultimately prove to be for Obama and the Democratic Party.

President Obama: The exit strategy is to stick around, sort of? NOTE: Jazz Shaw writes today about the blatant hypocrisy at the heart of the UN “R2P” doctrine on which Obama relied.

Ace: Germany withdraws from the "Remarkable Coalition". Jeff G. weighs in: "If only we'd been warned."

Ace links VDH: with some "coherent principles" for conservative criticism of the Libyan operation. Then Ace goes on to discuss the current cognitive dissonance of the Left. Interesting.

. . . when they see a Qadaffy killing rebels, they don't understand. They're confused -- aren't heroes supposed to be on the side of justice and liberation?

But they've spent their whole lives ripping into America for doing just that.

Their only resolution of this contradiction is It's okay when we do it, because our hearts are pure.

On the other hand Gingrich is playing politics on this issue in an unsupportable way. More.

Fouad Ajami: The right thing at last.

Who said this?

President Obama Redefines the Term "Exit Strategy" . . . .

Doesn’t sound like an exit strategy at all.

What it does recall is Lewis Carroll.

'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.

Down the rabbit hole?

Joe Lieberman said WHAT?

Joe Biden: Was the President's decision to use force in Libya an impeachable offense?

March 23: What is the basis of our Libya policy? National interest? "Aligning our interests and our values"?  Who is in charge?

Andrea Mitchell discusses the emerging "vision" for Libya and defines the  Obama Doctrine:

1) "When you have a catastrophe you can avert"

2) "and the benefits outweigh the costs"

3) "and you have an international or multilateral support"

4) "Go for it."

As Ace points out, # 1 almost always exists. #2 is a judgment call. #3 - GWB did this too, except that France was not on board. I wonder if the President agrees with Ms. Mitchell. Maybe we'll find out someday.

March 24: Jonah Goldberg on sterile, impersonal terms for war. Peter Wehner: "Muddled thinking creates muddled language".