Ronald Regan: Why They Still Hate Him

Well... here's one reason anyway. Regan, at the very least, accelerated the downfall of the Soviet Union. Who says so...? Why, Genrikh Grofimenko, one time aid to Leonid Brezhnev.

From a review of: Reagan’s War: The Epic Story of His Forty Year Struggle and Final Triumph Over Communism, by Peter Schweizer in Reason Online.
by Glenn Gavin.

As Stephen Green says, "This is Required Reading".

Looks like he may have not been so dumb after all. By the way, apparently neither is Bush 43. Via Instapundit.

Here it is. Click Now... GO!!!

Shame on the Pulitzer Committee

They're not going to revoke the prize that Walter Duranty received in 1932 for being Stalin's sock puppet. Hey... what's a few million dead Ukranians?

Well, I guess the those who dole out the Pulitzers can't be wrong. Even if those who awarded that particular one are long dead. Truth be damned. The Pulitzer's cachet is much more important than the truth.. The prestige of the award cannot be dimished.

Ooops. It just was.

Hat tip: who else... but Instapundit?

Brooks - Gay Marriage Strengthens the Institution

David Brooks has a pretty persuasive conservative argument in favor of granting gays and lesbians entry into the institution of marriage.

Marriage is in crisis because marriage, which relies on a culture of fidelity, is now asked to survive in a culture of contingency. Today, individual choice is held up as the highest value: choice of lifestyles, choice of identities, choice of cellphone rate plans. Freedom is a wonderful thing, but the culture of contingency means that the marriage bond, which is supposed to be a sacred vow till death do us part, is now more likely to be seen as an easily canceled contract.

Still, even in this time of crisis, every human being in the United States has the chance to move from the path of contingency to the path of marital fidelity ? except homosexuals. Gays and lesbians are banned from marriage and forbidden to enter into this powerful and ennobling institution. A gay or lesbian couple may love each other as deeply as any two people, but when you meet a member of such a couple at a party, he or she then introduces you to a "partner," a word that reeks of contingency.

Like it or not, the institution of marriage is in flux. And, although you'd never know it from the current iteration of the hubbub, this is not a new phenomenon. To the continued chagrin of social conservatives, the development and social acceptance of effective contraception changed the nature of marriage over 40 years ago. That horse has WAY left the barn.

And what goes mainly unspoken in the discussion is that their sacred nuclear family is a recent and arguably "unnatural" arrangement. Years before the sexual revolution, the extended family was going through its final death throes. I sometimes wonder how many social conservatives would trumpet "the traditional family" if they were forced to live with their mother-in-law? Gays are not responsible for the decline of the traditional family. Blame modern agriculture and the industrial revolution.

It's bloody hard to stay married without social (and I don't mean STATE) support. Without brothers, sisters, cousins, and the rest of the tribe to support, guide and enforce your vow of commitment, it's hard to know how to make the damned thing work and all too easy to call it quits. It is impossible to insulate marriage from the increasing spectrum of choice brought about by technology. Without the additional bond that offspring bring to the mix, I don't know how anyone makes it through.

Brief digression... one thing that fascinates me. Why is there SO much opposition to forms of marriage that diverge from monogamy? It may very well be that our rapid technological development (and the choices/limitations it brings) will drive us to other forms of socially sanctioned union. Maybe I read too much Heinlein in my youth, but polygamy and polyandry make as much sense as the current model. It wouldn't work for everyone. Hell, given our socially reinforced biological tendency toward monogamy, it wouldn't work for most. But for those who can thrive, raise well-balanced and healthy children and thereby create "home' in the larger world with such an arrangement... who are we to judge?

Another.. . pretending that children have nothing to do with the institution of marriage is more than a bit disingenious. As a human being on the straight and narrow path of marital fidelity for 22 years (as my wife says: "...4 of the happiest years of my life..."), I'm not sure why one would want to marry today without the prospect of children. I'm not talking about civil commitment here. Everyone has heard the horror stories of a gay man who is not allowed to visit his dying long-time partner because the patient's parents forbid it. Social and financial contracts with others should be (and to a great extent ARE) available to adults regardless of whether or not they rub selective body parts together. I'm talking about marriage... cleaving only to... 'till death do us part... for better or for worse... the whole 9 yards.

I can't help thinking that in some ways that many gays and lesbians want it... because they can't have it. I'll be curious to see what the divorce (or dissolution of civil commitment) rate will be for gay men.

With all due respect to Andrew Sullivan... be careful what you ask for... you just may get it.

Now I'm too Tired

I don't have the energy for a proper Fisking. Maybe you'll find one over at Tusk and Talon or Cornfield Commentary.

But, I do have a few comments.

So it's come to this. The liberation of Iraq is bad because a serving soldier has a grandmother who's dying. Rekha, Rekha, Rekha... You've GOT to be kidding. What depresses me is that there are people out there who are going to read her piece and say: "Yeah, that nice boy should get to see his granny one last time. She's got a point."

It begins in the first sentence with the war on terror in scare quotes and ends with this:

But those are particularly painful burdens when they come with the uneasy sense that there is no noble cause. That you send your young off to make these sacrifices and miss final goodbyes and other life passages they can never repeat, yet Americans will be no better off and no freer for it in the end.

Rekha... we've disrupted two-thirds of al Qaeda's cash flow (per NPR's All Things Considered of all sources). We've not suffered another terrorist attack in this country. The people of Afghanistan and Iraq are freer RIGHT NOW than they've been since the British left. They're on the whole happy and optimistic about it. The polls in those two countries overwhelmingly reflect that.

The people who are dejected about this are you and the others who still mourn the passing of the Soviet Union. It's hard seeing your ideology crumbling before your eyes. You get desperate. You write desperate crap like this maudlin attempt to appeal to emotion combined with half-truths and outright lies about the war on Islamic Fascism.

I read this crap. I get riled up before breakfast about it. I then remember that it’s only the Register. Next I think about where I live and what passport I hold. All is good.

Sleep easy Rekha. Those men in Afghanistan and Iraq are serving for you. They fight and die to maintain your constitutional right to write blindly ideological agitprop drivel and get paid for it. Even that (in a bizarre way) makes me proud of who we are and what we are doing right now.

In Iraq and Afghanistan at this very moment your journalistic brothers and sisters have that same right to political expression without the fear of being tossed in a plastic shredder. Why…? Because we have shed our blood and spent our fortune to help them secure it.

Explore that in your next column Rekha


Update - David Hogberg comes through! Taste cold logic Rekha!!!

Register: Play Nice Now Senators

The Register shows it's even-handed, impartial stance in one of their editorials today:
Declare truce in judicial war

In an ideal world, federal court nominees would be scrutinized purely on strength of intellect, experience and "judicial temperament" rather than left-right ideology. Alas, those days are probably past. But there is a cure for this problem short of having the Senate pull all-nighters: The president could send mainstream conservative nominees over to the Senate, and they will be confirmed. The Democrats have demonstrated how that works by allowing 168 of Bush's nominees to be confirmed while blocking only four.

"Alas, those days are probably past."

What a laugh. That ship sailed when judges started making law from the bench. From the 1970's on, a Judicial nominee's political stance, not "intellect, experience and judicial temperament", became THE critical litmus test for approval. Both parties realize this.

I'm going to guess that the Register Editorial Board would LOVE to see more "progressive
, liberal, post modern, internationalist, etc. legislate from the Federal bench. As long as it's liberal-leaning law that spreads wealth around, handcuffs private enterprise and creates more entitlements framed as rights... hey, that's great.

Bah!

Come January 2005... the Democrats may not have the numbers for a filibuster. I hope he re-nominates Janice Rogers Brown!

NAFTA Bad

Ugherr... NAFTA bad. Union good. Multinational corporation bad. Mexican peasant farmer good. People bad off. No new job. Must stop progress. Go live village. No shop Wallmart. Iowa small town shrink. NAFTA bad! Bolivia privatize water. Price go up. Ugherr... Public good. Private bad. Mexican truck make dirty air. Democrat win 2004. Ross Perot smart. Fire BAD! Rekha write good.