Flipping Around Iraq, Heading for a Flop

So, it seems that the news from Iraq is relatively good, or at least not so bad as it once was, and now the media expect that Barack Obama must be getting ready to flip-flop about the war. There is this much truth to such speculation: if the war in Iraq had been a painless, stunning success, with little cost in taxpayer dollars and soldier’s lives, if it gave us an upbeat parade at little cost, a good sized majority of American voters would have cared less about any moral arguments. Likewise, if the war drags on and on with no clear purpose or visible benchmarks of victory, a good sized majority will get tired of it, regardless of any moral purpose to staying the course. After all, nobody wanted to fight Hitler on account of persecuted Jews, until the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.

But if Barack Obama has the sense that he seemed to show in his best-selling books, he can handle this subject without flip-flopping.

First, whoever we elect as president is going to be leading us through situations we haven’t even imagined yet. So the first question is, who has the good judgment to deal with the NEXT few crises to come along.

Going into Iraq was a bad idea. Obama called that correctly in 2003, when he said he wasn’t against all wars, he was against dumb wars. Our so-called allies in Iraq (remember Ahmed Chalabi?) were cynically manipulating a presidential cabinet who were just begging to be manipulated. The pretexts for going in have turned out to be stone cold lies, for the most part. Most important, our president sold us on the idea it would be a cheap war with a fast rosy ending. If he wasn’t lying, if he believed that, he was a fool.

Now, while things may be calming down a bit, it remains true that we have no real friends in Iraq, with the possible exception of the Kurds, who need us more than anyone else does. If we have any other friends, it is the Sunni Arabs we went in to knock out of power, who need us to protect them from the Shia political parties we thought were our allies, who are in fact just waiting for us to leave.

Neither George W. Bush nor John McCain can give us a clear definition of “victory.” Neither one of us can tell us what we get out of “staying the course.” That is because the raw material for an outcome worth the expenditure of American blood and tax dollars simply doesn’t exist in Iraq. That’s why it was a dumb war in the first place.

In World War II, we knew who we were fighting, and why we needed to secure unconditional surrender from the Axis powers. In the Korean War, we knew that either reaching the Yalu River or stabilizing an armistice at the 38^th parallel would make some sense of all we had put into the war. In Vietnam, at least we knew there was a clique of cynical, manipulative, corrupt military officers whose continued presence in office meant that we had not lost. We don’t have any of that in Iraq. The “government” we are fighting to stabilize is just waiting for us to go so they can run their own agenda without interference. The only way we might have gotten a really positive outcome is if we totally occupied the place, as we did with Germany after WW II. That would have required millions of soldiers, and a military draft, plus a much larger budget.

We should be looking for a president who will continually examine all the facts, and do what is best, not stick to an outdated program to make himself look good. If McCain keeps our troops bleeding for 100 years so nobody can say he was wrong about staying the course, he’d be a bad president. If Obama pulls the plug on a complicated situation, where we pay prices for either staying in or pulling out, he’d be a bad president too. Obama should remain firm that this whole war was a dumb idea, ineptly planned and ineptly led. He should also forthrightly let us know that he is prepared to work with all new information which comes in, adjusting policy to whatever will get the best results now. What should not be lost sight of us:

1) Our real security interests lie more in Afghanistan and Pakistan than in Iraq.

2) Our military are stretched thin, and our all-volunteer military force is paying an unacceptable price for it.

3) IF it is necessary to really pour more time and effort into Iraq for some reason, that will require a massively enlarged military. We either must all be prepared to make the sacrifices required, or stop pretending we are going to “stay the course” when a tiny fraction of American families are asked to pay most of the prices.

4) Getting out of Iraq will be handled in a responsible way, which may mean adjusting time-tables, deployment, in consultation with the military commanders, so we get the best possible result from a bad situation.

5) No candidate who is honest can really say what the situation on the ground will be on January 20, 2009, so nobody should make their promises in absolute numbers. We do need to know what kind of judgment a candidate will bring to the job, and what their priorities will be, as they review a constant stream of incoming, ever-changing, facts from the field.

Say Nothing About Marriage

I would hope that either or both or all candidates for president of the United States will have the integrity and the courage to openly announce that they will take no position whatsoever on the contentious issue of "gay marriage."

It has become a fad in American politics, the last few decades, to expect every president, and every candidate for president, to express an Official Opinion on every debatable issue on anybody's radar screen. Some voters rely on these opinions to decide who they want for president.

Many of these issues are really none of the president's business, none of the federal government's business. This is still a federal republic. Our commerce may be almost entirely interstate, the federal government may have grown to huge and intrusive proportions, some of that may be good and right and necessary. But, the federal government is still one of enumerated powers, and there are matters still reserved to the states, or to the people.

Marriage is definitely NOT under federal jurisdiction. It is for the states to define.

The question of whether to expand the traditional definition of marriage, issuing marriage licenses to couples of the same sex, is a passionately debated one at this time. There should be no hurry to close the debate, with a definite and binding final answer.

At this time, different states have taken a variety of different positions. Some have chosen to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, identical to those issued to opposite-sex couples. Some have chosen to write into their state constitutions that marriage means ONLY the union of one man and one woman. Some have chosen to experiment with "civil unions," a status available to same-sex couples (and in some states to unmarried opposite-sex couples), which is distinct from marriage.

This is healthy. This diversity of law reflects a great diversity of opinion among the people of the United States of America. It is only natural that some states will lean one way, other states will lean the opposite way. It is vital and healthy to leave the matter open for different states to adopt different answers, which are acceptable to people in those states.

True, for a Bible-believing born-again Christian living in California (and there are millions), it is painful to observe that one's own state legislature has approved of civil unions, and the state supreme court has ruled that equal protection of the laws requires that same-sex couples who choose to apply receive marriage licenses. Likewise, for an affectionate, monogamously-committed same-sex couple living in Ohio (there are at least tens of thousands), it is painful to know that the law denies one the marriage license that any opposite-sex couple can obtain, no matter how frivolous, violent or short-lived the marriage might be.

But to set a single national standard will doom one or the other to suffer such pain permanently, with no rays of hope from other states where the majority takes a different view.

Why not make room for different majorities in different states to try different resolutions, and then observe each other's results? If anything, a wise president should encourage the debate, prolong the debate, and refuse to put the weight of federal power behind any particular position that may arise.

Of course any candidate who rises above conventional politics to do this will face some tired and trite questions:

Isn't this just an expedient way to duck the question?

If it is expedient, it is expedient for good and proper reason. If taking one side or the other is going to cost a calculating politician votes, obviously there is profound division among the people. The federal government should refrain from favoring one position over the other, or demanding national uniformity. There is more pressing business that the federal government can and must resolve now, and that should be the focus of election campaigns. We can afford to take our time on the issue of "gay marriage."

Would you have said the same thing about the civil rights movement or abolition of slavery?

Another fad of the last few decades is that almost every conceivable cause has tried to wrap itself in the legacy of the civil rights movement. This is very unhealthy. Any cause, right or wrong, just or unjust, should rise or fall on its own merits, not by drawing analogies to other causes which have achieved national consensus. Every form of discrimination is different. Every kind of oppression has different causes and different solutions. Equal protection of the laws does not entitle 5-year-olds to vote. When we abolished separate restrooms labeled "white" and "colored," we did not abolish separate restrooms for men and women, although we DID abolish both "whites only" and "men only" membership in business clubs. To say that we will never again treat people like animals, does not necessarily mean that we must treat animals like people.

It is worth noting that the movement to abolish slavery began, by and large, in the mountains of eastern Tennessee, western North Carolina, and in the Piedmont and mountains of Virginia. Mississippi adopted a constitution in 1832 which prohibited the importation of slaves for sale into the state. When powerful and wealthy slave-owners secured control of the legislatures of many states, and imposed criminal penalties for even questioning the morality of slavery, that is what made it impossible to resolve the issue by any means but a bloody civil war.

By the time the Civil War was fought, and the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments adopted, the nation had had for score and seven years AS a nation, and slavery had been debated for at least 100 years back into colonial times. By the time Martin Luther King wrote Why We Can't Wait, civil rights laws had been on the books for 100 years, and the nation had been through at least four or five eras of race relations. The debate over the definition of marriage does not need to go on for 100 years, but the president of the United States doesn't have to draw it to a close this year, or even in the next four years. A legally sustainable answer requires a broad consensus; that can only be achieved by open discussion and debate, or by forceful conquest.

Won't a president's appointments to the federal courts, especially the Supreme Court, determine the outcome of this debate?

It shouldn't. People who have firm convictions on a given legal issue can play a valuable role in the advocacy bar. They are unfit to judge future cases. No president with integrity will appoint impassioned advocates of present controversies to the Supreme Court.

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka Kansas was not decided by justices who were asked at their confirmation hearings whether Plessy v. Ferguson should be overturned. The idea wasn't even on anyone's radar screen when they were nominated. The decision was unanimous, although at least one justice was a former member of the Ku Klux Klan (and he was one of the liberals on the court by 1954). By the time Thurgood Marshall was nominated for the Supreme Court, the legal rulings for which he advocated had already been securely adopted, by judges who had not been advocates at all.

So, nobody who says they will NEVER even consider that equal protection of the laws entitles same-sex couples to a marriage license should be nominated to the Supreme Court. Nobody who says they will take the first opportunity to INSIST that equal protection of the laws entitles same-sex couples to a marriage license should be nominated either. We need justices who will listen carefully to the facts and the legal arguments actually presented to the court, and make a sober judgment according to the law.

If this is a moral issue, or a matter of rights guaranteed to every individual by the constitution, how can any president dare to take no position at all?

There are profound moral claims on both sides, and several moral positions held by citizens who are not vigorous advocates either for or against issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Nobody with any sense could claim that "This nation cannot endure half allowing gay marriage and half insisting that marriage is only between a man and a woman." Nobody is going to go to war over this issue. Nor is anyone's life, liberty or property seriously infringed. If a gay couple with a marriage license lives next door to a family which sincerely believes homosexual conduct is a grievous sin, the parents can still teach their cherished beliefs to their own children. If a gay couple is denied a marriage license, their right to share a private household is firmly protected by law already. The president of the United States is not the ultimate judge of morality, and not always the best guide either. Only a free and open debate offers any possibility that we will all, or mostly, arrive at some acceptable consensus in due time. The president should take an open and honest hands-off position.

Wright is really Wrong now.

A member of the original Saturday Night Live cast used to begin phony news broadcasts by announcing "I'm Chevy Chase, and you're not." I am not Barack Obama. But if I were, this is what I would have to say about Rev. Jeremiah Wright:

When a few video clips of Rev. Jeremiah Wright's sermons began appearing on U-Tube, I did not consider it necessary to make any change in my church membership, or my relation with my pastor of over 20 years. Rev. Wright is not running for office. Pastors have the option, sometimes even the obligation, to say things that nobody running for office would dare say, and nobody holding government office could responsibly say. The roles are different. Everyone has some disagreements with their pastor. There are many ties which bind an individual or a family to their church. The pastor is one, but fellowship, praise and worship, the ministries the church runs outside the walls, are equally important or more so.

I did consider it necessary to say, clearly and publicly, where Rev. Wright and I differ.

Something different has been happening in late April. Rev. Jeremiah Wright is no longer just giving sermons from his own pulpit, and speaking frankly for his own views. He has not only accepted, but eagerly sought, the opportunity to reassert some of his most controversial positions, and in my opinion, his most ridiculous statements, on a national stage. The microphones have not opened up for him because the national media are deeply interested in the ministries and accomplishments of Trinity United Church of Christ. The media has only taken an interest because Rev. Wright is "Barack Obama's pastor."

It seems from his most recent statements that Rev. Wright is doing more than saying what he believes. Rev. Wright's latest statements suggest that he feels genuinely threatened by the prospect that a member of his church, a person of known African ancestry, could actually be elected president of the United States. The possibility that a majority of people traditionally classified as "white" might actually vote for a man traditionally classified as "black" would upset some stereotypes that Rev. Wright desires to cling to. And so, while pundits insinuate that Rev. Wright is somehow speaking for Barack Obama, or providing essential insight into what Barack Obama believes, Rev. Wright is using this opportunity to make sure that Barack Obama is derailed as a serious candidate.

If Rev. Wright simply reminded us that racism remains a significant obstacle for many African Americans, I would agree. Anyone who doubts that need only read the first chapters of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas's biography My Grandfather's Son. His experience at Holy Cross college adjusting to a different and sometimes hostile world is an experience that many young African Americans still have to grapple with. But Rev. Wright seems determined to prove that such difficulties are the result of a deliberate and continuing conspiracy, and they are not. If you are looking for conspiracies, perhaps its time to ask why a devoted supporter of the Clinton campaign arranged Rev. Wright's appearance at the National Press Club.

Most of the imperfect human beings who inhabit this world have our good points and our bad points. We all make mistakes. Rev. Jeremiah Wright's ministry has accomplished many good things for the community in which he has worked. I regret that he has chosen to hammer at the worst themes of his ministry, over and over, when thrust into the limelight. There is so much he could have said that would have been of great value.

Don't vote for Barack Obama just to prove that Rev. Wright is wrong. But if what Barack Obama has been saying, for himself, throughout this campaign and for the past four years, make sense to you, then a vote for Barack Obama would go a long way to show that Rev. Wright is clinging to fears that we must now cast aside. Rev. Wright can cling to the past if he wishes, but there is no reason that the rest of us need to do so. Now is the time to move forward.

Defense of Marriage

Would some candidate for public office PLEASE summon up the spinal fortitude to firmly tell the pundits, the advocates and the voters:

It is time to stop politicizing marriage!

True enough, that will offend almost everyone who has strong political opinions about what we need to do to expand marriage, defend marriage, etc. etc. etc. But it will go down in history as a profile in courage. What marriage most needs to be defended from is politics.

It is up to what passes for "liberals" these days to firmly inform couples of the same gender, who have made life-long monogamous commitments to each other, that their right to privacy and personal choice does not also entitle them to the applause, approbation, and enthusiastic cheers of their fellow citizens. Feel free to advocate, but if you don't get an immediate round of applause, or a license, well, life isn't always fair.

It is up to those who pass themselves off as "conservatives" to break the news to scripturally committed Christians (Protestant and Roman, Greek and Coptic Orthodox), Jews, Muslims, probably Hindus, possibly Buddhists, who feel in their hearts that a sacred bond is under sacriligious attack, that this is not a particularly high priority for any level of government, that an overwhelming majority of Americans are and remain heterosexual, and the best way to defend marriage is to practice it. Sorry, no more amendments and drum-beating in election platforms.

Everything our little hearts desire is not a constitutional right, and everything sacred does not make good civil law. Every question on the minds of lawyers and columnists does not automatically become a good test of the character of candidates for public office. Common sense will probably lead us to something like James Watkins's Orange Solution, in due time.

There is no constitutional reason why any state, if the voters should elect a legislature willing to do so, should not issue marriage licenses to couples of the same sex, or for that matter to men who are enamoured of their cars. There is also no constitutional reason why a state must do so. If a majority of voters don't care to give official recognition to every private activity their fellow citizens are engaged in, they don't have to. In any case, what the state legislature may choose to do is not, and constitutionally cannot be, binding on any church.

The Supreme Court of Massachusetts, incidentally, was utterly wrong in finding that equal protection of the laws requires the state to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Four justices out of seven reasoned that there is a class of people called heterosexual, and a class of people called homosexual, and these two classes are treated unequally. These classes are legal fictions. Every so-called heterosexual, and every so-called homosexual, is either a man, or a woman. The term "homosexual" would have no meaning if this were not so. Some men have different desires than other men, and some women have different desires than other women. That doesn't mean the state has to license every desire any given individual has. What the state licenses (in this case, the union of a man and a woman) must be available to every man and woman. Equal protection requires no more. I do not want or need a hunting license, but I have the same right to apply for one as any other citizen. I like to cultivate a garden, but I have not demanded a hunting license to establish my civil equality with deer hunters.

If so-called liberals have the courage to say, no expanding the definition of marriage is not a vital political issue of our time, if they are willing to disappoint a constituency that has, after all, come to think they have an entitlement to hear their hopes favorably commented upon at election time, that will be one step forward.

If so-called conservatives have the courage to say, no, passing constitutional amendments and throwing roadblocks in the path of "the homosexual agenda" is not a priority for any branch of government, if they too are willing to disappoint a constitutency that also claims an entitlement to hear their hit list prominently recited at political conventions, that will be another step forward.

Let marriage be marriage. Let moral lessons issue from the pulpit. Some of those pulpits are in churches where every born-again Christian responding to the altar call has a homosexual partner. Other pulpits are in churches which deny that such people could possibly be Christians, let alone born-again. Perhaps there IS some reason God doesn't particularly approve, and again, James Watkins appears to have some valuable insights. This is all none of the government's business. Let those churches that choose to bless same-sex marriages do so, and let those churches that choose to denounce it as blasphemy also do so. God will judge.

Also, let the states sort out state law on the subject. The definition of marriage is no business of the president of the United States, except for his or her own of course, nor of the congress. This is still a federal republic. Those matters reserved to the states should not even be an issue in federal elections. Marriage is a matter reserved to the states. If Massachusetts and Louisiana don't agree, there is no reason they have to.

Solid Reasons Not to Vote for Hillary

After moving into the White House with her husband the president, Hillary Rodham Clinton published a book, called It Takes A Village, and Other Lessons Children Teach Us. The book was used as a foil by Senator Bob Dole at the 1996 Republican national convention. He said, with about as much passion as Dole ever mustered, "It doesn't take a village to raise a child, it takes a family to raise a child." Dole was wrong.

A strong nuclear family is central to raising a child, but not sufficient. It takes a whole network of adults, some relatives, some not. It takes, not only mom and dad, but also the neighbor down the block who gives a young man inspiration, the teacher who encourages a young girl, mentors at church or in sports, as well as aunts and uncles and cousins.

Clinton was also wrong. Her book very explicitly says that in the modern world, the role of village in raising a child is filled by government. Nobody who believes that, much less published it, is qualified to hold the position of President of the United States. In fact, this is precisely the folly of George W. Bush's so-called "No Child Left Behind" bureaucracy.

The village necessary to raise a child is anything but government. It is a network of spontaneous human interactions too complex and too unpredictable to ever be defined by law, administered by a cabinet agency, or reduced to the cold hard numbers of a budget. "Here kid, we're issuing you your mentor for the year." Is it worth offering a subsidy to elderly widowers who fix bicycles for free? Should we require that they get certification from the Department of Social Services? How about a B.A. in child development?

Our government, whether led by Republicans or Democrats, has gotten itself far too deeply into the work of private, voluntary organizations. Unlike commercial corporations, which exist by government license, and often control the economic base of millions of helpless individuals and families, voluntary organizations are an expression of First Amendment rights to speak freely, associate freely, and advocate freely. The village that it takes to raise a child is not even a voluntary organization, it is the freely chosen acts of private individuals.

Remember Hillary Clinton's health care plan? We're living with it now. No, it didn't pass into legislation. Those "Harry and Louise" ads prevented any such thing. But, private HMOs and PPOs proceeded to take over the health care industry, forcing individual private medical practices to knuckle under for fear of losing patients, and gave us exactly the cold, heartless bureaucracy that Harry and Louise warned us against. So government isn't the problem. Private enterprise funding Harry and Louise ads can be just as much the problem as government. But Hillary Clinton probably is not the solution.

Judicial Elections

The best way to win an election against a judge running for re-election is to call them soft on crime.

Crime, of course, is not the real motive for anyone who pumps money into a judicial election. People who are subject to significant hazard of mugging, rape, drive-by shootings, extortion, daily intimidation on the street, do not have the money to buy multiple TV ads in major markets. Besides, the criminal defendants may be their second cousins.

The big money in judicial races comes from wealthy business leagues, who don't want to be accountable to the law. Of course, they can't tell the voters that. If any of us saw a TV commercial announcing "Judge Simon F. McGillicutty requires manufacturers who sell children's toys lined with lead paint to reimburse families for medical costs," naturally the good judge would be re-elected by a landslide.

Instead, the commercials say things like "Simon McGillicutty sentenced a convicted killer to less than half the maximum term allowed by law." Never mind that this was a case of vehicular homicide while intoxicated, with a sentence of twenty years rather than forty. Never mind the two dozen first degree intentional homicides where the sentence was life plus forty years.

It is not the job of any judge to be soft on crime, nor is it their job to be tough on crime, it is their job to examine each individual case according to the law and the facts, delivering justice every time. One day it might be the vicious psychopath who raped and murdered your daughter. The next case might be your saintly grandmother, up for trial as a drug king-pin because a real drug dealer cut a deal for a low sentence and named grandma as his supplier. All it takes is a little perjury, and grandma is sentenced to life in prison.

But we don't personally know the candidates, so we run like sheep, herded by colorful TV commercials.

The cold hard question is not, why are these rich people (with money to burn on judicial campaigns) so mean and nasty? Bullies are bullies. If they had a conscience, and acted on it, we wouldn't need so many laws to protect consumers, employees, children, the folks downstream from the pollution... The real question is, why do judges running for re-election cringe so defensively in the face of these bullies?

Professional campaign managers seem to believe that the only antidote to "soft on crime" bullying is more of the same. For example, somebody working for Justice Louis Butler's re-election campaign for the Wisconsin Supreme Court thought it would be cool to put on TV that Justice Butler voted against criminal defendants 97% of the time. That probably just played into the hands of his challenger. It sends a message that the challenger's campaign is asking the right questions, so obviously the man who asked the question is the one to vote for. It also suggests, ah-hah, Justice Butler has something to hide here. He doth protest too much!

The same thing happened in 2006 in the race for Wisconsin attorney general, between J.B. Van Hollen and Kathleen Falk. One has to sympathize with Van Hollen. He got into the Republican primary expecting to challenge an incumbent attorney general who had taken an arrest for DUI, in a state car, while serving as attorney general. Darn, the Democratic voters dumped her for a fresh clean face, and he had to find some other excuse for himself.

He ran one commercial after another, showing a distorted, black and white photo of Falk, walking in slow motion, while the most obnoxious narration that a male voice is capable of called her unqualified because she had never been a district attorney. Its the phony "tough on crime" issue again. (From the sound of these commercials, there is one guy in a studio somewhere who has made his living for the past thirty years doing nothing but making this kind of commercial. It's always the same nasty voice-over.)

What did Falk's campaign do? They dug up some obscure case of Van Hollen's where a convicted killer had briefly won an appeal over some misconduct by Van Hollen. It was a desperate, weak, knee-jerk move, and it backfired for reasons that should have been obvious. First, it confirmed Van Hollen's phony issue, which became the central point of the campaign. Second, since the felon did eventually get sentenced to life in prison, it was easily kicked back in Falk's face by a follow-up commercial.

All Kathleen Falk needed to do was come on her own commercials, in person, in living color, smiling like she did at the Labor Day parade the previous September, just be her own lively, vivacious self on camera, and talk a little about the experience she DID have as an assistant attorney general, talk about what the attorney general's job IS (they don't go into court to argue in front of juries), and talk about what she did hope to accomplish in the office. She could have won by a landslide.

As Franklin Delano Roosevelt said, even before he really figured out what he was going to do about the Depression, before he was even committed to a minimum wage law or a National Labor Relations Act, when he was still relying on a viciously anti-union retired general to get economic recovery rolling, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."

The only thing we have to fear from fear-mongering candidates for judge, or attorney general, is the paralysis of assuming that their way is the winning way, and the only way to beat them is to one-up them with sleaze. When everything on the airways is garbage, the sloppiest garbage eater is going to win the election. How about a bold burst of light in the darkness to get attention?

OBAMA EXPOSED???

An unsolicited advertising link showed up on my gmail account. It was from Human Events, the self-described "National Conservative Weekly." My mother might take issue with that description. She considers herself the paradigm for a conservative Republican. She is deeply embarrassed that the last three Republican administrations have engaged in record deficit spending, while an intervening liberal Democratic president managed to balance the budget and almost eliminate the national debt. You could call Human Events the "Borrow and Spend Government Weekly." But professional pundits consider it to be a quintessentially "conservative" publication. So be it.

The unsolicited ad link offered me a FREE paper, with the catchy title, BARACK OBAMA EXPOSED! Naturally I wanted a copy. They were happy to download the free exposé. But its true "There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch" (TANSTAAFL). First came three web pages full of clickable ads for all kinds of merchandise and services I definitely do not need. I had to be careful too, because if I clicked on the wrong button, I would be authorizing purchase, dissemination of my personal information, etc. etc. etc. No doubt Human Events gets a cut on every sale. Talk about arrogant people, who think they know what is best for me, better than I do. Thank God I know how to look for the SKIP button.

Then I got to the final pitch. A striking but not particularly attractive blonde woman, name of Ann Coulter, offered me a FREE copy of her latest book, something about how liberals can't be liberals without God, in appreciation for my new subscription to Human Events. No thank you. I just wanted to see all the worst that could be said about Barack Obama collected in one convenient pdf file. Ann Coulter? If this woman loved her enemies, she would be a Christian.

But at last I broke my connection with this pushy web site, and could curl up to read all the dirt about the man I voted for in my state's primary.

Disclosure: Yes, the anonymous individual behind this DemocritusNA persona voted for Obama, and I have an Obama bumper sticker on my car. I meant to make the contents of this site available in a nonpartisan spirit to whoever cared to use it: John McCain, Ralph Nader, Hillary Clinton, Mitt Romney, anyone. But I just had to take up this offer, read the material, and then dissect it in an articulate manner. So a brief disclosure is in order. We all know that Publius, who wrote The Federalist Papers, was really Alexander Hamilton, John Jay and James Madison. We all know that Vindex was Samuel Adams. For now, my name is unimportant, but for the record, I consider myself a Madisonian Federalist. And I did vote for Barack Hussein Obama.

Barack Obama Exposed! turns out to be a hastily collected anthology of articles, most previously published in Human Events, or by its sister publishing companies, most by regular contributors or staff. Nine of these articles could be considered favorable to Obama. If I were his campaign manager, I might well run off copies.

"Barack Obama and the Pertinent Precedents" by Steve Chapman is glowing praise with a few sensible caveats. Chapman compares Obama to Colin Powell, finds many admirable qualities in common, then notes that Powell had more experience commanding before anyone talked about him as a possible president. (Certainly Powell would have made a better president than the man with NO experience in command, whom he served under as Secretary of State.) The way in which Obama resembles George W. Bush, "his thin resumé," will not help him observes Chapman, but it may be cancelled out by the ways in which he contrasts with the outgoing president: "notably, being thoughtful, articulate and seemingly open to opposing views. Bush is the commander in chief. But it’s Obama who gives the effortless impression of command." Wow. No wonder some life-long Republicans I have known since childhood are thinking of voting for Obama. Now when does Obama start to be EXPOSED?

D.R. Tucker asks "Will GOP Be Ready for Obama Onslaught?" and makes a good case that it will not. Tucker finds this obnoxious. Obama, he worries "offers the Democrats an opportunity to once and for all destroy any chance the GOP has of appealing to black voters." The Republican Party, says Tucker, must be prepared to defend its record on race. Well, yes, the Republican Party gave the nation a president with a very admirable record on race; his name was Abraham Lincoln. A more recent Republican president appointed a very intelligent African American to the cabinet, and side-lined him for pointing out inconvenient truths. Certainly to a partisan Republican (and any American has a constitutional right to be one) Tucker poses an important question. But to undecided voters, this is hardly an exposé showing that Obama is unqualified to be president.

Robert Spencer's "Our First Muslim President?" debunks its title with admirable honesty. He suggests that Obama may be our first Muslim president in the sense that Bill Clinton was our first "black president." Spencer actually speculates whether Muslim clergy may put Obama under a death sentence for NOT being a Muslim, since he attended school in a predominantly Muslim nation, Indonesia. But Spencer is just kidding. He admits that is not going to happen. And he knows Obama is a bond fide active worshipping member of a United Church of Christ in Chicago.

Dennis Byrne, in a piece called "Is Obama Black Enough" ends up highlighting what a ludicrous question that really is. Byrne is not anxious to see Obama win, because Byrne differs on how the U.S.A. should be governed for the next four to eight years. But he freely admits, "The vetting has begun of Obama’s views on great and small issues, and of his mettle and character. This is all that counts." Byrne offers no scandals, just straightforward disagreement. And he's not disagreeable about it.

Bill O'Reilly is almost sympathetic in "The Perils of Obama," noting that unfortunate misunderstandings about the meaning of various words may have caused him to fall 14 points behind Hillary Clinton in a January poll. Well, I guess that's old news now.

Ericka Anderson's title "Debate Coverage: The Obama Question," belies its content, which is basically a quick round-up of everything that may be wrong with each Democratic candidate's contributions to the debates. And that's kind of old news now too.

Dan Proft's "Reality of Obama Taking Hold" observes hopefully that Hillary Clinton's lead over Obama has widened to 33 points, "just as she has emerged as the front-runner in Iowa." If that weren't one small step in a long race, it would rank right up there with the Chicago Tribune's famous headline "Dewey Defeats Truman." And, this must be the first time anyone writing in Human Events spoke with admiration of Hillary Clinton's commanding lead for anything.

The very next page, "Obama In Perspective" by Robert J. Caldwell, is a bit more up to date. One wonders why the editor who put all this together didn't notice the disconnection. Obama "won a smashing victory in Iowa, then gave a stirring speech framed as a transformational moment in American history." Caldwell is a little concerned that Obama has a relatively short resum

é. He's a "skilled campaigner with an inspirational message," but a bit on the liberal side for Caldwell's taste. Fair enough. Those of us who do not share Caldwell's vision find that inspiring.

"Huckabee and Obama: A Study in Contrasts" by Star Parker draws parallels, then makes distinctions, which amount to, for anyone who writes for

Human Events, Huckabee is more their kind of guy. Well, Huckabee is history, and I'm still waiting for Barack Obama to be exposed. Nine out of twenty articles really inspire me.

Ann Coulter (there she is again) contributes a tired mix of name-calling and considered sarcasm. That's a legitimate art form, and it will play well to the budding thespian's fan base, but hardly informative to undecided or wavering voters. Seven articles to go.

Amanda B. Carpenter offers up three articles which prove to her personal satisfaction that Obama has a liberal voting record in the Illinois legislature. I don't recall that Obama ever said he has a 100% rating from the American Conservative Union, or that he is a compromise candidate with a 50% liberal and 50% conservative record. His first classic sound byte on the national stage was "We worship an awesome God in the blue states." He offered that the polarization between liberal and conservative, red and blue states, not to mention the tired old black and white, are hollow nothings. Carpenter obviously clings to her hollow nothings, which have been a great comfort to her, but the rest of us are tired of them.

Tom Fitton reviews some questionable real estate deals with a questionable man now under indictment, under the title "Barack Obama's Whitewater?" The facts as stated are disturbing, and could best be addressed by the candidate publicly saying "I made a mistake here, I regret it. I'm not going to move my family out of our home now, but I will be more careful in the future." On the other hand, Fitton could have his facts all wrong. Who knows? Its not a make or break situation.

Michelle Malkin and Ben Shapiro manage to score a few points about Iraq. ("Obama: Wasting His Own Breath" and "Iran Praying for Obama"). It all turns on the phrase that "

over 3,000 lives of the bravest young Americans" have been "wasted" in Iraq. Naturally, Malkin can turn up veterans, and families of veterans, who passionately state that they, or their late loved one, believed wholeheartedly in the mission, and their sacrifices are NOT wasted. Anyone who wants to get us out of Iraq sooner vs. later will have to deal with that, directly and upfront.

It probably isn't enough that Obama told the Des Moines Register "I was actually upset with myself when I said that, because I never use that term," or that he clarified "What I would say-and meant to say-is that their service hasn’t been honored." Now, let's get real on this question. When thousands of soldiers are sent into a conflict overseas, and the mission gets bogged down in a long, protracted fight, there will be many thoughts among the troops, and among the civilians. There will be many motives among those in uniform. Some become sick and tired, demoralized, or develop moral doubts about why they are there. They don't speak for everybody; never have and never will. Many earnestly desire to provide security and peace to a civilian population which badly needs and desires it, especially if they have personal experience with individual Iraqis they were able to serve and protect.

But there is still a factual question: With all the best motives and most earnest convictions, with all the skills, training and determination in the world, are we delivering that objective? Considering the incompetent way the troops were sent in, in the first place, are we in a position where we CAN deliver that objective? If not, then in the end, it may prove true that over 3,000 lives of the bravest young Americans have been wasted. One thing General David Petraeus has firmly stated is that IF the Iraqi political leaders and government cannot pull their own nation together, then no sacrifice by American soldiers can do that for them.

The Bush administration offered us a glowing vision that "the Iraqi people" would "welcome us as liberators" and then peace and democracy would reign. Mission accomplished in May 2003, remember? It turns out there is no such thing as "the Iraqi people," there is no unified democratic leadership in Iraq, and while most people were glad to be rid of Saddam, everyone had their own agenda, which is not ours, and involves a good deal of killing each other. In that specific sense, the lives of many of brave American soldiers were wasted on a lie.

Whether we can pull anything worthwhile out of the mission now is open to doubt, but is still up for debate. Meantime, every American soldier who has saved the life of an Iraqi family can and should be proud of that. Nobody should expect a soldier who has to put on their uniform each morning, pick up their gun, and go out on patrol, to do so thinking "I may die today, and it will all be for nothing." Even pulling out has to be managed better than that.

Shapiro shoots himself in the foot, quoting Australian Prime Minister John Howard "lashing out" after Obama sponsored legislation calling for a full troop withdrawal from Iraq. Make that former Prime Minister Howard. The Australian people dumped him in the last election, because they also want a full withdrawal of their own troops from Iraq. As Obama responded at the time, Howard's words were empty rhetoric unless he called up another 20,000 Australian troops as his contribution to the war, and it appears Howard is no longer in any position to do that. Australian voters have told him "We won't go."

Most undecided voters who have bothered to read this column have long since fallen asleep. "Barack Obama Exposed" is a mind-numbing 37 pages long. If this is how so-called "conservatives" have "Exposed" Barack Obama, he seems to be headed for a landslide victory in November.

CAMPAIGN PROMISES

If a candidate for public office is honest, they will tell voters openly that they have no idea what they are actually going to accomplish in office, and can't make any firm promises. This is most true for executive offices, and most of all for the office of President of the United States. State legislators, even congressional representatives, can promise to introduce certain legislation, to oppose other measures. But they cannot promise voters what their legislation will look like when it comes out of committee, or that it will come out of committee at all. Presidents? They can't promise much of anything.

John F. Kennedy was elected president with then-traditional Democratic support from most southern states. Nobody would have expected him to sponor a comprehensive federal civil rights bill. He certainly didn't promise one in his campaign. If he had, no doubt he would have lost the election. True, he did make a phone call when Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. was in prison in Georgia, and many feared for his life. That was a calculated political move, debated in both the Nixon and Kennedy campaigns. Shall we, or shall we not? Will we win more votes or lose more votes if we get into this or stay out of it? Decisions like that do give voters a glimpse of the calculations that motivate a candidate. But they don't tell us what the candidate will actually do in office.

George W. Bush did not campaign in 2000 promising a "war on terrorism." He didn't know, or we hope he didn't know, that the World Trade Center was going to be targetted on September 11 of his first year in office. He did campaign on a promise to cut taxes for the wealthiest Americans. A man of integrity, who entered into a protracted and expensive set of military operations on three or more fronts, might have said "oops, I'm sorry folks, we can't cut taxes when we have all these wars to pay for." An honest fiscal conservative, seeing the dot com bubble burst and revenues sharply down, would have said, "I thought I saw a surplus, but its just not there any more." Not George W. He was determined to deliver on his campaign promise, AND fight his wars, even if he had to mortgage the U.S.A. to the Bank of China to do so. (And he did exactly that.)

Abraham Lincoln did not campaign on a promise to emancipate all slaves in the U.S.A. He promised to leave slavery alone in the states where it existed, but forbid introducing slavery into new territory. He didn't expect a civil war either. His greatest leadership skill was timing: introducing emancipation, enlisting soldiers of African descent, laying the groundwork for African Americans to vote as full citizens, in ways and at times when a hostile majority of "white" voters (and soldiers) would accept it.

Jimmy Carter came into the White House to heal the wounds of a corrupt government that betrayed the people's trust, expecting to do so in an atmosphere of general prosperity. Nobody knew that most of the industrial employers in America were about to close down or move overseas. Ronald Reagan said he could turn that around with some tax cuts. He presided over one of the worst recessions since 1929, and kept smiling through it all, because he believed in his campaign promises more than he believed what was really happening to American working families.

George H.W. Bush campaigned in 1988 on the promise "Read my lips. No new taxes." He didn't really believe that, but he had to pacify the right wing of his own party, which regarded him as something of a liberal. In 1991, it was obvious that responsible government required a modest increase in certain taxes. Congress passed it, and he signed off on it. Now it is quite doubtful that massive numbers of anti-tax conservative voters cast their ballots for William Jefferson Clinton because the Republican incumbent signed off on a tax increase, but that's how its been spun in most of the media, from radio talk shows to the New York Times.

The highest integrity a candidate for president could offer would be to admit that s/he has no crystal ball, that any new president faces surprises nobody could have expected, and then give us a clear sense of the principles that will guide them as they make difficult decisions, in crises we haven't even imagined yet. An honest candidate facing voters concerned about rising unemployment would admit that what government can do is limited in an international market, but give some hints about how s/he would cultivate new development, spread the short-term pain around, and introduce as much fairness into the market as possible.

Of course a candidate who did that would be called vague and superficial, attacked mercilessly for having no substance to their proposals. There is a difference between casual slogans and offering a clear vision for the future. There is also a difference between offering detailed position papers and delivering practical results. A president must inspire, must know how to work with a variety of people and interests, and still keep a clear vision of where we are trying to get to as a nation. Skills are important, principles are important, but promises, even well-intended promises, don't really mean much.

RAISING TAXES

Two things that sound really foolish coming out of the mouth of any candidate for public office:

I'm going to raise taxes.

I will cut taxes, or never raise them for any reason.

Everyone knows why the first statement is a stupid thing to say. There will be all kinds of negative campaign ads saying "John Smith wants to raise taxes!!!" That will be enough to ensure defeat at the polls. These ads never say "John Smith wants to add fifteen dollars to your annual tax bill, so that your aging widowed mother has the best quality health care and lives to see her great-grand-children grow up, even though she is eking out a living on your late father's social security."

The second statement is equally silly. The real question is "What exactly are we getting for our taxes?" But among professional campaign managers, voters are generally assumed to be too dumb, ignorant, dazed or intoxicated to think about that question. Professional campaign managers think the only way to deal with this question is bound up in 500 page volumes of highly technical budget proposals. The truth is, this question can be discussed in plain, simple direct language any voter can understand.

A president with any integrity who said "We are going to invade Iraq" would in the same breath say "It is going to cost American taxpayers $X billion, but we are willing to pay that price. We will raise taxes as much as necessary to provide our brave troops, who are risking much more than money, whatever they need to carry out a successful mission. We're not going to wage war on credit, we are going to be fiscally conservative, even in a time of national crisis, and pay as we go."

The truth nobody want to mention is, government is NOT a business, it is NOT a family, it does not EARN any income at all! As MAD Magazine said in its parody of The Godfather, everyone knows the government loses money every year. Who wants to take over a losing operation like that? The only money the government has, is what we all chip in, one way or another, whether it is income tax or sales tax or import tax or whatever tax. We pay it in the end. So we can't ask government to "live within its budget." I can live within a budget, because my paycheck is what it is, and that's all I have to spend. The company I work for does NOT belong to me. But the government does belong to us. It doesn't have ANY paycheck; until I pay some taxes, it has NO MONEY at all. First we, the people, have to DECIDE what the budget IS.

A cardinal principle in American government is "That government governs best which governs least." Somehow, everyone manages to think of some ways the government should govern more, and other ways the government should govern less. The sheer size of American government grew more under Ronald Reagan than under any previous president. Let's get real about taxes:

Anyone want to save tax money by disbanding all local police forces, the state highway patrol, closing down sheriff's departments, abolishing the FBI, the DEA, the ATF ??? Some people advocate abolishing the ATF, some the DEA, but nobody wants to live with no law enforcement at all, except those who expect "I could BE the law around here without any police to interfere." People who think like that are the reason the rest of us want some kind of police force on the street.

OK, we want police protection. How much are we willing to pay for it? Bill Clinton spent our tax money paying for thousands of additional officers doing community policing, on the street, in local cities all over America. George W. Bush saved taxpayers money by taking that funding away. Do you feel safer now?

Many cities have tried to save tax money by keeping the police department on a tight budget. That means police officers don't get paid much. That means police officers are easy targets for anyone who offers to supplement their income. "Oh, the mayor isn't paying you enough to buy your family a nice house? We'll pay you something extra on the side, and its tax free. All you have to do is..." Taxpayers, like everyone else in the world, get what we pay for.

There may be good reasons to cut government spending. Just let me know what spending you intend to cut, and how I am going to live a safe, comfortable life without it. Let me know what the impact on my world is going to be. I may even want to know whether it would be morally acceptable, to me, to cut whatever you are cutting to save me money. By all means buy toilet seats and hammers from Home Depot, or Ace, or True-Value, at the same price I pay, not hundreds of dollars extra. That would be a way to save tax dollars.

Much of the "anti-tax" propaganda is funded by people who save millions of dollars on their taxes, and can afford to buy premium medical care for themselves, but the TV spots are aimed at people who will save $40 or $100, maybe $2000 at best. A smart president or congress rep or senator would cut off this kind of appeal with a simple restructuring of the income tax. Call it "The Fair Income Tax," to steal a page from the manipulators.

The first $20,000 should be tax free. For families with children, make it $50,000. Every taxpayer, whether it is Bill Gates or Warren Buffet or a single mother flipping hamburgers at McDonald's gets this part of their income tax free. That's fair for all.

Start taxing 10% of the income ABOVE that level. So a single person with no dependents making $60,000 a year would pay 10% of $40,000. $4,000 taxes on $60,000 income. A family would not pay $4000 until they had $90,000. When income goes over $500,000, tax it at 50%. Don't listen to the crocodile tears of those who say that will discourage investment. Nobody ever walked away from a million dollars because they would only get to spend $500,000 of it.

But every year, the tax rates should be adjusted, just a little, based on what we actually NEED to spend. No more seeing what the current tax rate will bring in, then deciding what we are going to spend that money on. First, let's decide what we want our government to do for us in the first place. Then, how much is that going to cost. Then, is it really worth the money, or, looking at the price tag, would we rather do without this program? Then adjust the tax rates, according to what we are really willing to pay for. But the first $20,000, or $50,000, is tax free. Only income above that level will be taxed.

When the income tax was first introduced, only about 10% of Americans made enough money to file a return or pay an income tax at all. The tax return was one page long, for everyone. That is the kind of simplicity we need to return to.

Iraq, A Rock

“a stone which causes them to stumble, and a rock which makes them to fall”

A large majority of Americans wish that George W. Bush hadn’t led us into this quagmire in Iraq, and want us to get out of there.

Muslim leaders in the Middle East say that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have to be kidding when they talk about a rapid withdrawal.

Clinton has the albatross around her neck that she DID vote to go in there, and publicly justified that vote in many speeches. It seemed the politically prudent thing to do at the time. She blithely turned around when she calculated she could get more votes in 2008 by opposing the whole debacle she voted for.

John McCain admits that the man he ran against for the Republican nomination in 2000 made serious strategic errors getting in, but firmly supports “staying the course” now that we are there.

The obvious specter is that either Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia will take over if we leave, or that Iran, Turkey and any other neighbor will move in to pick up the pieces.

Everyone still wonders, is there anything in all this for American soldiers to die for, and American taxpayers to run up huge deficits, with the national debt being purchased by the national bank of China, flush with the profits of outsourcing manufacturing for American brand names?

The bottom line is, we have no friends in Iraq. The cardinal rules for intervening in someone else’s civil war are:

1. Don’t.

2. If you do, pick a side.

3. Make sure your side wins.

“Our side,” according to George W. Bush and VP Cheney, was an overwhelming majority of “the Iraqi people” who would “welcome us as liberators,” elect a government committed to democratic pluralism and free enterprise, and live happily ever after, a beacon of hope to the Middle East. Remember that delusion?

Well, there is no such thing. Iraq is a fictional nation, created by British military officers and diplomats after World War I, who didn’t know beans about the people of the land. Now it is a mess of feuding tribes, ethnicities and religious sects. Our closest thing to friends in that nation are Sunni Arab tribes, who were the political base of Saddam Hussein, the man we moved in to overthrow.

The government we are shedding American blood to uphold is led by corrupt, venal, politicians, playing the Shia Muslim religious card, and cozying up to Iran. Oh, and then there are the Kurds, who under the protection of our air cover, while Saddam Hussein ruled in Bagdhad, built up a fairly prosperous mini-state, occasionally fighting civil wars between political factions. But if we leave them, Turkey will no doubt invade, because Turkey has its own Kurdish revolt on their side of the border.

The problem for John McCain is, how can he justify sacrificing American lives to defend such a corrupt, factionalized government? Especially when some of the parties IN the government have militias who periodically declare war on OUR soldiers who are there to preserve and protect that same government?

The problem for any anti-war candidate is, now that our country, albeit under the most incompetent leadership we have had since Millard Fillmore and James Polk, has broken Iraq open, how can we just leave it to its fate, with all the disasters that might present for its neighbors, some of whom are our friends, and the opportunities it would present for other neighbors, some of whom way nasty things about America?

The corrupt factions sitting in the Green Zone in Bagdhad, pretending to be a government, know that is our dilemma. Therefore, they assume they can do whatever they want, and our troops will pay the price of keeping them in office. The sad truth is, we cannot build someone else’s country for them. General Petraeus has done an amazing job, but he freely admits that the military can only buy time, not do the work of creating a peaceful, prosperous, united nation. Nor have our diplomats persuaded any significant political faction in Iraq to do so. The time to heed General Petraeus was in 2003, not 2008.

We probably owe it to our few remaining friends in the region, and those who have in some way helped us and relied upon us, to execute a staged withdrawal, not simply get out in February 2009. It will be hard to tell the families of servicemen and women, who die during that protracted withdrawal, that we couldn’t get their son, daughter, brother, sister, cousin, wife, husband, father, mother out of there sooner, because we had to stay long enough to clean up our own mess. But that was decided when we went in. We can’t get all the troops out in one day. Someone has to be the rear guard, or even more troops would die on the way out.

Our president, whoever that may be, must communicate by action, not words, to the political cliques in Bagdhad, that we are going, and they will have to step up to the plate, now. They have had a free ride on our backs, exercising the rhetoric of sovereignty without many of the responsiblities. We will not be blackmailed by the probability of chaos to continue paying their prices, letting them fiddle while their country burns. That means we have to start pulling out. We can’t do any more for them than we already have.

On the way out, perhaps we should keep some presence in support of the Kurds, who have shown they can run their own little mini-state with some success, and arm the Sunni tribes who have helped us against Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. They are going to be a minority in Iraq when we leave. We owe them some protection. They could continue to be helpful, if they don’t feel used and betrayed.

IF there were a sizeable ORGANIZED number of Iraqis who said “we are Shia and Sunni and we don’t want armed gangs turning us against each other, give us a protected enclave where we can live in peace together and we will help you hunt down and kill the armed factions” that might be a viable strategy. It is not enough that INDIVIDUALS say that. They need to be a political FORCE in the nation. Any president who could put together the diplomacy and military operation to accomplish that would go down in history as a hero. But it would mean trampling, at least temporarily, on the forms of Iraqi sovereignty.

Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia is going to be nothing once there are no more Americans in Iraq to blow up. They and the Shia majority hate each other. They have alienated the Sunnis as well. They are for the most part foreign interlopers, who get away with raising a so-called “insurgency” because they are foreigners who speak the same language, less foreign than the Americans. With the Americans gone, the Shia and Sunnis will do horrible things to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, slaughtering and torturing them in ways that our armed forces are not allowed to do.

Finally, all voters should remember that, whoever we elect, we don’t know what our new president is going to end up doing, and neither does he or she. Events change. George W. Bush didn’t know in 2000 what was going to happen September 11, 2001. At least, we hope he didn’t. Presidents try out new programs, some work, some don’t. We need to get the president who has shown the best judgment in the past, and trust him or her to lead us well through the hazards of the next few years, which we can’t even guess at. It is doubtful that anyone who voted to get us into this mess can succeed at getting us out of it.

Abortion

First of all, the President of the United States has no authority regarding abortion. Zip. Nada. Nothing. Article II of the Constitution defines the Executive Power. It says nothing about abortion. It is not a suitable subject for national policy. If any criminal statute is going to be passed, that is properly a matter for the states, not the federal government. This is still a federal republic, even if it is a fact of life that our commerce is almost all interstate these days, and federal jurisdiction is a lot bigger than it used to be.

So its really not a significant issue in a campaign for president. But as a matter of moral leadership, Bill Clinton had it right when he said that abortion should be safe, legal and rare.

Hardly anybody is “in favor of abortion.” Most of the rest of us don’t listen to those who think there is some liberating positive good to having an abortion. Any woman who has had an abortion knows there are physical, psychological and spiritual prices. ANY decision in life has prices, as well as, sometimes, benefits, or the benefit of avoiding even more painful prices.

To the extent that abortion is a spiritual question, we should look to spiritual means to prevent it, not look to government to do what is truthfully a very delicate job that requires reaching out one on one. History teaches that criminal laws concerning abortion do more harm than good.

The Supreme Court has never ruled that abortion is a good thing, nor that there is a constitutional right to abortion. The Supreme Court has ruled, on many subjects, that there are matters in our private and family lives that the government is constitutionally restrained from butting into. The Supreme Court has ruled that during the first trimester of pregnancy, abortion is one such matter, and to a lesser extent, during the second trimester as well.

Those who are opposed on principle to abortion may someday have cause to be thankful for the ruling in Roe v. Wade. Consider the possibility that a government may come to power in the United States committed to a vast program of social engineering. Suppose the newly elected congress passes a law requiring women to have abortion in certain circumstances: because the mother cannot provide for the baby, because it would be cruel to bring a severely deformed child into the world, to prevent a financial burden upon taxpayers and society... There are many legal advocacy groups who would rush into court for an injunction protecting women from enforcement of such a law, probably including the Pacific Legal Foundation and the Rutherford Foundation, not to mention Focus on the Family.

Lawyers for these organizations would find their best legal foundation in Roe v. Wade. If the government may not intervene, then the government may not intervene. Period. The government may no more decree that a woman must abort than the government may forbid abortion. Either the government has power over the decision, or it does not. The constitution is indifferent as to how a legislature exercises power it does have. The constitution only defines whether the government does or does not have authority to act. As to the third trimester, the state’s power to intervene derives ONLY from the development of a fetus much closer to independent viable existence as a distinct person. If the fetus is not a person, the state may not intervene at all. If the fetus is a person, the state may intervene only to protect, not to destroy, as with any other person.

Let’s also remember that it is an arrogant myth that electing a president can sway the Supreme Court. Presidents have always been shocked, surprised, disappointed by their Supreme Court appointees. Rightly so. On the court, as judges, men and women have assumed the very real responsibilities of an independent branch of government. This is not unlike the appointment of Thomas a Beckett, by England’s King Henry II, to be Archbishop of Canterbury. Thomas warned his good friend Henry, if you make me Archbishop, I will act like an Archbishop. And he did. A president who approaches Supreme Court appointments with suitable humility will look for distinguished, well qualified judges, knowing that the president can never predict how they will decide any particular case.

Roe v. Wade is a fine legal framework for the power of the state to intervene in a personal or family decision. That said, many things can and should be done to make the individual decision to seek an abortion as rare as possible. The most obvious is, every person who is morally opposed to abortion should make the offer to a pregnant woman, whatever you need, to carry that baby to term, I will provide it. That is a responsible way to act on pro-life principles. We should all be prepared to pay the prices of acting upon our beliefs; it is cheap to say to another, you pay this price, because I believe you should, and I will call the police if you don’t do it my way.

There are steps government can take also, steps which promote the general welfare and the public good, which will make abortion increasingly rare. Some of the lowest rates of abortion are found in European nations where the operation is legal, and the social safety net strong. Some of the highest rates of abortion are found in nations where abortion is strictly punished by law, and there is virtually no social safety net.

We need to move beyond the two failures of the 20th century: giving any woman who has a baby eighteen years of welfare, or putting mothers to work full time when their youngest child reaches the age of two. But we have to assure pregnant women that any baby they choose to carry to term, will have a healthy future available. Children take time, providing for children costs money. Unfortunately, government is not and cannot be the village that raises a child. Private initiatives, local community initiatives, and stable families, are indispensible. Government, especially the federal government, can only foster opportunities and provide essential resources.

Torture

Let’s apply a little common sense to the debate about use of torture by police, military and intelligence forces.

If we have a man or woman in custody, who we know for a fact has information on where a nuclear bomb was placed in a major city, and when it will detonate, we are justified in using ANY means to extract that information from them. Whatever they suffer, it is secondary to the thousands or millions of lives to be saved, and even larger numbers of lifelong painful burns and cancers to be averted.

Of course, we are hardly ever so lucky as that.

More likely, we have a few dozen people in custody, some frightened raw recruits, some innocent people who happened to be swept up, maybe a couple of hardened veterans, and even those may or may not know anything useful.

Torture will induce a man or woman who knows nothing to make up anything to stop the pain. We send our best forces off on a wild goose chase, put civilian populations through all kinds of annoying security measures, and accomplish nothing. We might even miss something that was really going on, because we were so confident of the lies we extracted by use of torture.

Torture will inspire an innocent man or woman to join whatever it is the torturers are fighting against, out of sheer personal hate for what they went through. It will also inspire their families, neighbors, even people who read about it in the newspaper, to fear and loathe whatever principles we thought we could offer to the world. Statements obtained through torture should never be admitted as evidence in any court: they are never reliable.

For those who have the luxury of considering pure spiritual concerns, freed from the gross material concerns of everyday life, it is true that to inflict torture dehumanizes the interrogator. They come back to civilian life someday, and they think its OK to treat their spouses, children, neighbors, coworkers, more or less the same way. There is no evidence that God calls us to torture, maim, or terrorize.

There are many good reasons not to torture prisoners, no matter what they have done or tried to do. There are exceptions to every rule. There are ways every rule, and every exception, can be abused. To forbid torture is a good policy. If we make an exception for a very good reason, we need to be sure we know exactly what we are doing and why. Then we need to have enough oversight to be sure it really was a good reason, and won’t ever be done again for any lesser reason.