No Surrender--At Least Not Yet

A review of U2: No Line On The Horizon.

by Victorino Matus
http://www.weeklystandard.com/
03/12/2009 12:00:00 AM


There's nothing worse than a music review written by a devotee of the band being reviewed. The result is invariably an excess of name-dropping and obscure references, all for the sake of proving one's street cred. By the end of the review, the critic has become a brainless fan declaring to the world, "This album rocks!"

This may happen here.

There was a moment, twenty years ago, when U2 could have ended things. Rattle and Hum (both movie and record) had been released, and the Lovetown Tour was wrapping up in Dublin. On the last night of the tour, Bono said to the crowd, "We've had a lot of fun over the last few months, just getting to know some of the music which we didn't know so much about--and still don't know very much about, but it was fun.... This is just the end of something for U2 . It's no big deal, it's just--we have to go away and ... and dream it all up again."

This naturally sparked rumors that Ireland's most famous rockers were about to break up. And though that was not their intention, the band did reach a critical juncture while recording their next album in Berlin. Things were not coming together and there was the thought that maybe they should just scrap everything--that is, until "One," which led to the dark masterpiece Achtung Baby. By this time, U2 had been in existence for 14 years, 4 years longer than the Beatles.

In the 18 years after Achtung Baby, which proved to critics that the band could reinvent itself, create new sounds, and remain prolific, the question has repeatedly come up: Can they do it again? Zooropa and Pop might have left some fans disconcerted, but All That You Can't Leave Behind and How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb restored their faith (earning Grammys along the way). Still, the Edge had mentioned dissolving the band the moment they lost their originality--a notion that left the rest of us to wonder if that next album, whatever it is, would be the one to end it all.

Upon listening to No Line On The Horizon for the first time, the temptation is to say yes, this is it. They cannot possibly have more to sing about. They have run out of both ideas and melodies. It is Pop 2.0. Bono's voice is ragged (as in the opening verse of "Moment of Surrender," in which a screech ruins a fluid sound of bass, keyboards, and drums). There are more falsetto and conversational tones than soaring vocals. Another song, "FEZ-Being Born," might as well be "Miami" or that confused B-side of "The Fly," "Alex Descends Into Hell for a Bottle of Milk." "Breathe" is either "Acrobat" or "Please" (though the latter does have its merits, especially the live version that transitions to "Where the Streets Have No Name"). What did I say about obscure references?

But then I listened to it again. And again. Each time the songs seemed more nuanced, sophisticated, melodious, coherent. (This happens: Axl Rose and Slash supposedly cut class to hear Led Zeppelin's "D'yer Maker" for the first time, laughed hysterically at how stupid it sounded, and then fell in love with it. Besides, how many of you thought something was wrong with your speakers the first time you heard "Zoo Station"?) One of the reasons Joshua Tree worked so brilliantly was that one track seemed to effortlessly transition to the next. Bono had said as much about the album and how it wasn't meant to be split into two sides (back when it was on vinyl and cassette). "Running to Stand Still" should softly pick-up with "Red Hill Mining Town" like a sunrise over the desert. (No, I am not crying.) In any event, the same could be said, within limits, about No Line, which rises steadily and reaches its peak with "Get On Your Boots," before making a slow descent.

Musically, No Line is closely related to Achtung Baby, How to Dismantle, and, yes, Pop (not that there's anything wrong with that). A number of tracks feature a futuristic bass (critic J. Freedom du Lac compares it to a videogame sound) and the Edge's guitar is replete with reverb, as on the last album (fine: as on most albums). And while the guitarist may not be breaking new ground here, his restraint, such as in "Magnificent," is noteworthy. It builds and you expect the Edge to do more (aside from the standard solo), but he doesn't. In fact, you may be supplying missing notes of the phrase in your head. It leaves you wanting a bit more, resulting in a sort of delayed gratification. (Think back to the finale of "With or Without You," in which, only at the very end, do you hear the guitar break out into connected melodies, which could have gone on longer, but instead fades out. In the film Rattle and Hum, and in concert for a few years after, that end solo was fully realized, culminating in Bono's exclamation, "Yeah, we'll shine like stars in the summer night .")

As with any U2 album, Bono's lyrics will keep you guessing. Take, for instance, these lines from "Breathe": "Coming from a long line of traveling salespeople on my mother's side / I wasn't gonna buy just anyone's cockatoo." Suit yourself. In "One Tree Hill" on Joshua Tree, "Jara sang his song / a weapon / in the hands of love / you know his blood still cries from the ground." Who's Jara? Or from "Twilight": "My body grows and grows / It frightens me you know / An old man tried to walk me home / I thought he should know." Don't even think it.

And there are certain types of phrases Bono loves, such as "It's not if I believe in love / But if love believes in me" in "Moment of Surrender" from the current album, which is like "What you thought was freedom was just free." But it works as Bono soulfully pleads his case for, if I'm not mistaken, love. On the other hand, the curious incantations in "Unknown Caller" make me wonder if all four band members will have to provide that chorus in concert. And can one really keep a straight face while singing, "Force quit / And move to trash"?

Quibbles. By and large Bono knows not to take himself too seriously. In the upbeat "Stand Up Comedy," he sings, "Stand up to rock stars, Napoleon in high heels / Josephine, be careful of small men with big ideas." There is no greater taboo subject in the world of U2 than Bono's height--just check out his shoes in any photo. And while there are serious tracks like "White as Snow" (to the tune of "Oh Come, Oh Come, Emanuel") about the death of a soldier in Afghanistan, No Line is a mostly optimistic offering, with standouts like "I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight" and, of course, "Get On Your Boots" (one lyric: "I don't want to talk about the wars between nations / not right now"). The effort is there--clearly, while Bono has gone about saving the world, the Edge, Larry Mullen, and Adam Clayton have been busying themselves fine-tuning their instruments.

Fans can ultimately breathe a sigh of relief that No Line On The Horizon is not the end of that "musical journey" (yes, a movie line from Rattle and Hum). It is both hopeful and harmonious, which is more than you can ask from a band that is 33 years old. At some point, however, there will be an end--an Abbey Road, a Synchronicity. After all, by the time the band opens the tour in Spain this summer, Bono will be 49. (This is inevitably followed by the realization that I am no longer 14, listening to Joshua Tree on my Sony Walkman, looking for some deep revelation in "Exit.")

Oh, and in case I forgot to mention it, this album rocks.

Victorino Matus is assistant managing editor at THE WEEKLY STANDARD. Somewhere in his basement is a baseball cap bearing the words "Pop Mart."

Paved With Magnificent Intentions

By George Will
The Washington Post
March 12, 2009, Page A19
http://www.washingtonpost.com/

WASHINGTON -- Charles Dickens, who visited in 1842, described Washington as a "city of magnificent intentions" because of the incongruity between the city's grand aspirations and muddy, swampy actuality. Today Washington's discrepancy is not architectural but political. It is between the extraordinary powers and competences the administration claims it has, and the administration's inability to be clear or plausible about what it is doing.


President Obama at the White House's forum on health care this month. (By Chip Somodevilla -- Getty Images)

Improvisation is understandable when confronting the unprecedented, but protracted improvisation precludes a prerequisite for recovery -- investors' certainty about the relationship between the government and the economy. One year ago this weekend, that relationship began changing when the Bush administration decided that Bear Stearns, the nation's fifth largest investment bank, was too big, or too connected -- too something -- to be allowed to fail. Seven months later, with the financial system frozen, Congress passed the Troubled Asset Relief Program, fresh proof that the titles of legislation, like the titles of Marx Brothers movies ("Duck Soup"; "Horse Feathers"), are uninformative about the contents.

Quicker than you can say "toxic assets," which TARP was supposedly designed to quarantine, TARP was subsidizing the manufacture of automobiles partially designed by Washington. Which recent government adventure in enterprise justifies such government confidence? Fannie Mae? Freddie Mac? Amtrak? Ethanol? The government has subsidized ethanol, protected it with tariffs, mandated levels of production and authorized 10 percent ethanol in gasoline blends, and now the shrinking ethanol industry wants government to authorize 15 percent.

Five months after enactment of TARP, a plan for unfreezing the credit system remains, like Atlantis, rumored but unseen. Twelve months after the government brokered the marriage of Bear Stearns and JPMorgan Chase, the government is recapitalizing financial institutions that the market has said should be shuttered. Lawrence H. White, economics professor at the University of Missouri, St. Louis, denies that financial institutions ever were "unregulated." Hitherto, such institutions were "regulated by profit and loss":

"The failure of Lehman Brothers and the near-failure of Merrill Lynch raised the interest rate at which profit-seeking lenders were willing to lend to highly leveraged investment banks. The market thereby forced Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to change their business models drastically and to convert to commercial banks. If that isn't effective regulation, what is? Protecting firms from failure (Bear Stearns, AIG, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Goldman Sachs, Citibank) and mitigating their losses with bailouts renders this most appropriate form of regulation much less effective."

The president's confidence in his capacities is undermining confidence in his judgment. His way of correcting what he called the Bush administration's "misplaced priorities" has been to have no priorities. Mature political leaders know that to govern is to choose -- to choose what to do and thereby to choose what cannot be done. The administration insists that it really does have a single priority: Everything depends on fixing the economy. But it also says that everything depends on everything: Economic revival requires enactment of the entire liberal wish list of recent decades.

The implausibility of this opportunistic hypothesis is deepened by Obama's rhetoric, which says "catastrophe" impends unless everything is done simultaneously. But his budget, in effect, says the danger will soon be gone and the new risk will be whiplash from the economy's sudden acceleration. Although only a small fraction of the supposedly countercyclical stimulus will be spent by the end of the year, the budget assumes that by then the economy will have perked up, and that it will grow robustly -- 3.2 percent, 4 percent and 4.6 percent -- in the next three years. Growth supposedly will cut the deficit in half -- growth and the $1.6 trillion "saved" by first assuming, and then "canceling," a 10-year continuation of the surge in Iraq. Why, one wonders, not "save" $5 trillion by proposing to spend that amount to cover the moon with yogurt, and then canceling the proposal?

The first president whose campaign was his qualification for office continues to campaign. And he is overexposed. His schedulers should remember what a contemporary said of Thomas Babington Macaulay, a prodigiously articulate but oppressively constant talker: "He has occasional flashes of silence that make his conversation perfectly delightful."

One afternoon last week, cable news viewers saw, at the top of their screens, the president launching yet another magnificent intention -- the disassembly and rearrangement of the 17 percent of the economy that is health care. The bottom of their screens showed the Dow plunging 281 points. Surely the top of the screen partially explained the bottom.

georgewill@washpost.com

ARE 'HOPE' AND 'CHANGE' STILL TAX-DEDUCTIBLE?

By Ann Coulter
http://www.anncoulter.com/
March 11, 2009


Are you sitting down? Obama plans to pay for his $3.6 trillion-dollar spending bill by raising taxes on "the rich." I know, I know ... I was pretty shocked, too.

The bad news is, by hiking taxes in a recession, Obama will turn a disaster into a catastrophe. But there's good news, too. The "rich" include most of Obama's biggest supporters!

While liberals love being praised for their looks, their style, their brilliance and their courage, the one quality they don't want talked about is their money. To the contrary, Democrats are constantly boasting about how poor they are -- as if that's a virtue in a capitalist society with no class barriers.

No matter how much money they have, liberals will be damned if they're giving up the poor's mantle of angry self-righteousness. This is especially true if their wealth came by inheritance, marriage or the taxpayer, the preferred sources of income for Liberalus Americanus.

Democrats' claims of poverty merely serve to show how out of touch elected Democrats are with actual incomes in America.

At the Democratic National Convention, for example, there were heartfelt tributes to the daunting self-sacrifice of both Barack and Michelle Obama for passing up lucrative jobs to work in "public service" -- which apparently is now defined, such as in Michelle Obama's case, as "working as a 'diversity coordinator' at a big city hospital for $300,000 a year."

Seriously, even with a company car, full medical benefits and six weeks' paid vacation thrown in, how do people live on that?

Meanwhile, the average salary for a lawyer with 20 years or more experience in the U.S. is a little more than $100,000. If Michelle Obama doesn't lay off all this "giving back" stuff pretty soon, she's going to find herself in Warren Buffett's tax bracket.

During the campaign, Joe Biden was also praised by the Democrats for being the poorest U.S. senator -- as if that were a major accomplishment.

Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, touted Biden as "a good example of a working-class kid," adding that, to this day, Biden was "one of the least wealthy members of the U.S. Senate." Only a Democrat would list "never really made anything of myself" on his resume.

On the Huffington Post, operated by a woman who acquired her wealth by marrying a rich gay guy connected to Big Oil, liberal blogger Steven Clemons gloated that, unlike John McCain, Biden wouldn't "forget the number of houses he owns," adding that, in 2006, Biden was ranked the poorest U.S. senator.

And at his high school reunion Biden was voted "most likely to try to bum a ride off of somebody." Vote Biden!

According to tax returns for Biden and his public schoolteacher wife, in 2006, their total income was $248,459; in 2007, it was $319,853 -- putting the couple in the top 1 percent of all earners in the U..S.

This, my friends, is the face of poverty in America. At least in the Democratic Party. It's located just below that row of hair plugs. The Bidens are yet another heart-rending example of America's "hidden poor" -- desperately needy families hidden behind annual incomes of a quarter million dollars or more paid by the taxpayer. My fellow Americans, we can do better.

The national median household income was $48,201 in 2006 and $50,233 in 2007. Working for the government pays well.

If liberals are going to show how in touch they are with normal Americans by demanding a Marxist revolution against the rich every time they control the government, how about taking a peek at the charitable giving of these champions of the little guy?

According to their tax returns, in 2006 and 2007, the Obamas gave 5.8 percent and 6.1 percent of their income to charity. I guess Michelle Obama has to draw the line someplace with all this "giving back" stuff. The Bidens gave 0.15 percent and 0.31 percent of the income to charity.

No wonder Obama doesn't see what the big fuss is over his decision to limit tax deductions for charitable giving. At least that part of Obama's tax plan won't affect his supporters.

Meanwhile, in 1991, 1992 and 1993, George W. Bush had incomes of $179,591, $212,313 and $610,772. His charitable contributions those years were $28,236, $31,914 and $31,292. During his presidency, Bush gave away more than 10 percent of his income each year.

For purposes of comparison, in 2005, Barack Obama made $1.7 million -- more than twice President Bush's 2005 income of $735,180 -- but they both gave about the same amount to charity.

That same year, the heartless Halliburton employee Vice President Dick Cheney gave 77 percent of his income to charity. The following year, in 2006, Bush gave more to charity than Obama on an income one-third smaller than Obama's. Maybe when Obama talks about "change" he's referring to his charitable contributions.

Liberals have no intention of actually parting with any of their own wealth or lifting a finger to help the poor. That's for other people to do with what's left of their incomes after the government has taken its increasingly large cut.

As the great liberal intellectual Bertrand Russell explained while scoffing at the idea that he would give his money to charity: "I'm afraid you've got it wrong. (We) are socialists. We don't pretend to be Christians."

Today's Tune: Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers - King's Highway

(Click on title to play video)

THE GIRLYMAN GOVERNOR

Steyn on People
http://www.marksteyn.com/
Tuesday, 10 March 2009

HAPPY WARRIOR
from National Review (March 9, 2009 issue)
http://www.nationalreview.com/

The Times of London put it this way: “Arnie Schwarzenegger Joins the Ranks of Girlie Men.”

Quite. As is well known, the Terminator has been unable to terminate anything — not even the impact study group studying the impact of expanding the Department of Impact Studies. The man who walloped his predecessor for fiscal profligacy has managed to preside over a California budget that’s expanded 40 percent (so far) since the good old Gray days. Sacramento is piling on an extra million-and-three-quarter dollars of debt every hour, 24/7. The Golden State is a foldin’ state, going out of business — a far cry from when Ahnuld arrived as a penniless immigrant in a land of plenty. Now he’s an immigrant of plenty in a penniless land. Another Californian actor-governor famously observed that “we are a nation that has a government, not the other way around.” In Collyvornya, it’s the other way round. Doing your ’08 tax return? If you’re expecting a refund, Sacramento’s stopped the check: Instead you receive an IOU saying they’ll get around to it when they can. On the other hand, if you owe them money, don’t expect reciprocal treatment. As the governor’s celebrated catchphrase has it: “Ah’ll be back — for more of your money.”

Ah, well. I supported him at the time. Don’t know why. In a field of Arnie, Cruz Bustamante, Arianna Huffington, Larry Flynt, etc., etc., I should probably have plumped for Angelyne, the non-singing non-dancing non-acting “celebrity” famous for doing nothing except displaying her embonpoint on Los Angeles billboards. True, her cleavage isn’t as impressive as Ahnuld’s, but whose is? If I sound bitter, I shouldn’t be. Governor Schwarzenegger is merely the latest “fiscally conservative, socially liberal” mirage to dissolve from shimmering oasis to bottomless toxic swamp. Usually this beast roams the East Coast — see Christie Whitman, George Pataki, William Weld, and others you forgot to remember. I see the nice Maine ladies, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, were hailed for reaching across the aisle on the “stimulus” bill by William Cohen, who helpfully explained to The Washington Post that Pine Tree Staters are “liberal on social issues and conservative on fiscal matters.” And nothing says “fiscally conservative” like voting for a trillion dollars of pork after you’ve stayed up three nights in a row carefully weeding out the $473.84 that shouldn’t have been in there.

A “social liberal/fiscal conservative” is not necessarily a girly-man, more of a pre-op transsexual. It would be nice to be able to have it both ways, like that so-called “pregnant man” out on the West Coast — and, incidentally, didn’t Ahnuld play a pregnant man in some movie a decade or so back? Why, so he did: Junior. I remember the poster, the leading man with a swollen belly — like a girly-man governor about to give birth to a big bloated budget. The problem with being “socially liberal, fiscally conservative” is that most of the social liberalism comes with quite a price tag — just have a ten-minute riffle through the non-stimulus bill. We all want to move beyond “the standard left/right paradigm,” as Arianna liked to say in that gubernatorial race. If I had a pair o’ dime for every time a politician has said we need to move beyond the old paradigm, I could afford to live in Arnold’s California. But the reality is that almost every “socially liberal, fiscally conservative” politician turns out to be fiscally liberal — in the same way that, if you mix half a pint of vanilla ice cream with half a pint of horse manure, it’s not hard to figure which taste will predominate.

To be fair to Ahnuld, a lot of voters want it both ways, too. Which is why “fiscal” is not a useful word in this context. Big Government is not primarily a “fiscal” issue: These programs are not wrong because they’re unaffordable; they’re unaffordable because they’re wrong — they’re not the proper role of government, and if you pretend they are, then, as in California, you unbalance the relationship between the citizen and the state. But it’s not a green-eyeshade thing: They would be just as wrong, as I said a month or two back, if Bill Gates wrote a check to cover them every month. So when a politician tells you he’s “fiscally” conservative, it’s like Conan the Barbarian announcing he’ll bring his abacus to a sword fight.

That’s the missing element in the bailoutapalooza. For six months now, Paulson, Geithner, and the gang have talked about it as a kind of technical correction, a recalibration that will re-inflate the credit bubble and get us back to “normal.” But it’s not about the arithmetic, it’s about restoring the concept of “moral hazard” that is vital to any functioning market but which the “socially liberal/fiscally conservative” circle-squarers have all but rendered extinct. No government can guarantee universal homeownership, or absurd returns on mediocre assets as a permanent feature of life. And to attempt to do so is to strip language of meaning. You’re debauching the currency — not in the “fiscal” exchange-rate nickel-’n’-dime sense, but something more profound: the very currency of liberty — property, contract, citizenship, responsibility.

There was another muscle man who ran into trouble long ago: Antaeus. Big tough guy. No girly-man. Slew all comers — as long as his feet were planted firmly on the ground. But, as Hercules figured out, get him up in the air, unmoored, unrooted, and he turned into a big sack of nothing. There’s a lesson there, and not just for Conan in La-La Land.

The New Humanism

The Pursuit of Knowledge

By Roger Scruton on 3.10.09 @ 6:07AM
The American Spectator
http://spectator.org/

The family in which I was raised was, in the matter of religion, typical of postwar England. There was no objection to the children receiving Christian instruction at school, and performing there a daily act of worship. There was no objection to chapel and Sunday school—indeed, provided these institutions were gloomy enough, my parents thought, their children could only be improved by them. But the home was a religion-free zone: no grace before meals, no prayers at bedtime, and the Bible wedged firmly on the shelf between the Oxford Dictionary and Winston Churchill's History of the Second World War. Our parents called themselves humanists. They had been raised as Christians, but had lived through the Second World War and lost faith in the God who permitted it. They regarded humanism as a residual option, once faith had dissolved. It was not something to make a song and dance about, still less something to impose on others, but simply the best they could manage in the absence of God.

All around me I encountered humanists of my parents' kind. I befriended them at school, and was taught by them at Cambridge. And whenever I lost the Christian faith which had first dawned on me in school assemblies I would be a humanist for a spell, and feel comforted that there existed this other and more tangled path to the goal of moral discipline. Looking back on it, I see the humanism of my parents as a kind of rearguard action on behalf of religious values. They, and their contemporaries, believed that man is the source of his own ideals and also the object of them. There is no need for God, they thought, in order to live with a vision of the higher life. All the values that had been appropriated by the Christian churches are available to the humanist too. Faith, hope, and charity can exist as human causes, and without the need for a heavenly focus; humanists can build their lives on the love of neighbor, can exercise the virtues and discipline their appetites so as to be just, prudent, temperate, and courageous, just as the Greeks had taught, long before the edict of the Church had fallen like a shadow across the human spirit. A humanist can be a patriot; he can believe with Jesus that "greater love hath no man than this, that he should lay down his life for his friend." He is the enemy of false sentiment and lax morals, and all the more vigilant on behalf of morality in that he believes it to be the thing by which humanity is exalted, and the proof that we can be the source of our own ideals.

That noble form of humanism has its roots in the Enlightenment, in Kant's defense of the moral law, and in the progressivism of well-meaning Victorian sages. And the memory of it leads me to take an interest in something that calls itself "humanism," and is now beginning to announce itself in Britain. This humanism is self-consciously "new," like New Labour; it has its own journal, the New Humanist, and its own sages, the most prominent of whom is Richard Dawkins, author of The Selfish Gene and vice-president of the British Humanist Association. It runs advertising campaigns and letter-writing campaigns and is militant in asserting the truth of its vision and its right to make converts. But the vision is not that of my parents. The new humanism spends little time exalting man as an ideal. It says nothing, or next to nothing, about faith, hope, and charity; is scathing about patriotism; and is dismissive of those rearguard actions in defense of the family, public spirit, and sexual restraint that animated my parents. Instead of idealizing man, the new humanism denigrates God and attacks the belief in God as a human weakness. My parents too thought belief in God to be a weakness. But they were reluctant to deprive other human beings of a moral prop that they seemed to need.

The British Humanist Association is currently running a campaign against religious faith. It has bought advertising space on our city buses, which now patrol the streets declaring that "There probably is no God; so stop worrying and enjoy life." My parents would have been appalled at such a declaration. From a true premise, they would have said, it derives a false and pernicious conclusion. Had they wished to announce their beliefs—and it was part of their humanism to think that you don't announce your beliefs but live them—they would have expressed them thus: "There probably is no God; so start worrying, and remember that self-discipline is up to you." The British Humanist Association sees nothing wrong with the reference to enjoyment; it seems to have no consciousness of what is clearly announced between the lines of the text, namely that there are no ideals higher than pleasure. Its publications imply that there is only one thing that stands between man and his happiness, and that is the belief in God. Take that belief away, and we can run out into the garden of permissions, picking the fruit that we wrongly thought to have been forbidden. The humanists I knew as a young man would have reacted with disgust at this hedonistic message, and at a philosophy that aims to dispense with God without also aiming to replace Him.

BUT THE BUS adverts fit the spirit of modern Britain, and not even the Muslims complain about them. One Christian bus driver has refused to drive his bus, and a few hundred people have written to the Advertising Standards Council, which has rejected their complaint, but that is as far as the protests have gone. When, in the light of this advertising campaign, I look back at the humanist movement that I encountered as an adolescent, one thing above all strikes me: that the old humanism was not about deconstructing God; it was about constructing man. It was a positive movement, devoted to seeking things worthy of emulation and sacrifice, even if there is no God to promote them. Its principal fear was that, deprived of religious belief, people would let go of their ideals. Hence it urgently sought a new basis for moral restraint in the idea of human dignity.

The old humanism was not a pleasure-seeking, still less a pleasure-loving philosophy. It took its inspiration from Enlightenment philosophers, from Milton, Blake, and D. H. Lawrence, and from the legacy of Western art. The humanist who most influenced me at Cambridge believed that in no works had humanity been more blessed by true ideals than in the St. Matthew Passion of Bach and the Tristan und Isolde of Wagner, the one a work of Christian devotion, the other a work that makes no mention of God or gods, but simply dwells on the exalted nature of erotic love when tied to mutual sacrifice. Although I was skeptical toward that kind of humanism, I never doubted its nobility of purpose. It was devoted to exalting the human person above the human animal, and moral discipline above random appetite. It saw art, music, and literature not simply as pleasures, but as sources of spiritual strength. And it took the same view of religion. Humanists of the old school were not believers. The ability to question, to doubt, to live in perpetual uncertainty, they thought, is one of the noble endowments of the human intellect. But they respected religion and studied it for the moral and spiritual truths that could outlive the God who once promoted them.

Observing the new humanism from my old perspective I am struck not only by its lack of positive belief, but also by its need to compensate for this lack by antagonism toward an imagined enemy. I say "imagined," since it is obvious that religion is a declining force in Britain. There is no need to consult the pronouncements of the Archbishop of Canterbury: the response to the bus campaign abundantly proves the point. But a weak enemy is precisely what these negative philosophies require. Like so many modern ideologies, the new humanism seeks to define itself through what it is against rather than what it is for. It is for nothing, or at any rate for nothing in particular. Ever since the Enlightenment there has been a tendency to adopt this negative approach to the human condition, rather than to live out the exacting demands of the Enlightenment morality, which tells us to take responsibility for ourselves and to cease our snivelling. Having shaken off their shackles and discovered that they have not obtained contentment, human beings have a lamentable tendency to believe that they are victims of some alien force, be it aristocracy, the bourgeoisie, capitalism, the priesthood, or simply the belief in God. And the feeling arises that they need only destroy this alien force, and happiness will be served up on a plate, in a garden of pleasures. That, in my view, is why the Enlightenment, which promised the reign of freedom and justice, issued in an unending series of wars.

I never thought, when I finally put the old humanism behind me, that I would ever feel nostalgia over its loss. But now I recognize that it was not only noble in itself, but was also a serious attempt to retain the belief in nobility without the theological vision on which that belief had once depended. It was, in effect, a proof of the ideal that it proposed: an example of how human beings can provide themselves with values, and then live up to them.

- Roger Scruton, the writer and philosopher, is most recently the author of Gentle Regrets: Thoughts From a Life (Continuum).

Paterno deserves the record

The Paterno-Bowden race looks to be over

Tuesday, March 10, 2009
By Ron Cook, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
http://www.post-gazette.com/sports/

The justice isn't that the Florida State football program, long considered by many to be dirty, is taking a big fall because of a widespread academic-cheating scandal. The real justice is that the NCAA punishment should cost Bobby Bowden any chance of finishing ahead of Penn State's Joe Paterno in the race to be major college football's all-time winningest coach. It would be a crying shame if Bowden ended up with that record. It would be one of the most fraudulent records in sports, right up there with Barry Bonds' home run record.

Paterno's 383 career wins are legitimate, Bowden's 382 are not.

It's not so much because of the slippery program Bowden has run over the many years, although that's a big part of it. Florida State hasn't been called Free Shoes University and the Criminoles for no reason. But what really would make a Bowden record tainted is that his 31 wins at Howard College -- now Samford University -- at the start of his long career count toward his total.
Included among those are victories against noted powerhouses Maryville, Southwestern, Gordon Military and the University of Mexico. According to the NCAA's bizarre guidelines, a coach gets to count all of his wins against four-year schools -- regardless of the level -- once he has coached 10 years on the Division I-A level.

That's beyond bizarre, actually.

That's why it seems only right that the NCAA could strip Bowden of as many as 14 victories because of the Florida State scandal involving 61 athletes in 10 sports in 2006 and '07.

There really is justice in this world.

The NCAA Committee on Infractions put Florida State on four-year probation Friday because of "major violations," reduced scholarships and ruled that the university must vacate all victories in football and the nine other sports in which ineligible athletes participated. Three former Florida State employees provided "improper assistance" to athletes taking online classes in Music Cultures of the World and Sports Psychology.

"Academic fraud is considered by the committee the most egregious of NCAA rules violations," the NCAA said in announcing its sanctions.

Florida State officials, who were praised by the NCAA for self-reporting the violations and cooperating during the investigation, are expected to appeal the vacated wins portion of their punishment.

"We already began implementing our self-imposed penalties [athlete suspensions]," Florida State president T.K. Wetherell said in a statement. "We just don't understand the sanction to vacate all wins in athletic contests in which ineligible student-athletes competed because we did not allow anyone who we knew was ineligible to compete."

You would think Wetherell and his lieutenants should spend their time doing a better job of helping the poor "student-athletes" who need to cheat to pass a music cultures course.

Not to be cynical.

If the NCAA sanctions hold and Bowden has to give up even a portion of the Seminoles' 14 wins from 2006 and '07, it will end any hope he has of catching Paterno. For one thing, Paterno, 82, agreed to a three-year contract extension in December and has shown no indication that he plans on stepping down soon. For another, Florida State already has named Bowden's successor, offensive coordinator Jimbo Fisher. Bowden, 79, must be out by January 2011, or the university must pay Fisher $5 million.

That's not going to happen.

The Paterno-Bowden race looks to be over.

College football will be better for it in the long run.

The only sad aspect to this unexpected ending is that some -- OK, Florida State fans and Bowden fans -- will turn things around and say Paterno's record is tainted because he didn't set it fair and square, that Bowden wasn't given the chance to beat him. That's nonsense, pure nonsense.

If anyone deserves a significant sports record, it's Paterno.

No, Paterno isn't perfect. He, too, has had his share of troubled players. Unfortunately, it happens at all schools these days. Paterno, like Bowden, also has stayed on long past his expiration date. It's pretty ridiculous that he coaches from the press box during games and often from home during the week.

But Paterno proved long ago that he's the greatest coach in college football history. He has done more for Penn State than any coach at any university. It says here he's twice the coach Bowden is and -- don't underestimate this -- 10 times the man.

The record has to be Paterno's.

That's only right.

That's justice.

Ron Cook can be reached at rcook@post-gazette.com.
More articles by this author
First published on March 10, 2009 at 12:00 am

The Left plays the phony umbrage card

DEBRA J. SAUNDERS
The San Fransisco Chronicle
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
http://www.sfgate.com/

I have known Rush Limbaugh since his old radio days in Sacramento, before he became a GOP god. I've disagreed with him over the years. Last year I took on his bashing of Republican moderates and criticized Limbaugh and other talk radio hosts when they were too harsh on not-yet GOP nominee John McCain. I've never apologized and we're still friends.

If you've watched cable news in the last week, you've seen how the Limbaugh story is playing. Limbaugh said he hopes President Obama "fails." As he explained, "I've been listening to Barack Obama for a year and a half. I know what his politics are. I know what his plans are, as he has stated them. I don't want them to succeed. If I wanted Obama to succeed, I'd be happy the Republicans have lain down."

Because Limbaugh used the f-word, Good Republicans are supposed to distance themselves from him.

Thus Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele called Limbaugh "ugly" and "incendiary." Not a smart move. Later Steele called Limbaugh to apologize - adding a new twist to a story concocted by Democrats.

As Politico.com reported last week, Demo gurus James Carville and Stan Greenberg first concocted the idea of making Limbaugh the GOP albatross last year after a poll showed that among younger voters Limbaugh's ratings were in the toilet. White House adviser David Axelrod and Press Secretary Robert Gibbs joined in the get-Limbaugh gambit, while White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel called Limbaugh "the voice and the intellectual force and energy behind the Republican party" on CBS' "Face the Nation."

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee jumped into the act and sent out an e-mail instructing recipients to send an "urgent call" for GOP senators "to denounce this shameful rhetoric." Key to the strategy are gullible partisans who fall for the phony umbrage of cynical operatives. Tens of thousands of outraged sheep - I mean, concerned individuals -have signed on, according to the DSCC.

"Shameful rhetoric?" Sorry, but the only thing that would make these operatives more gleeful would be if GOP leaders were caught in hotel rooms with hookers. This whole brouhaha is designed to get Republicans to snipe at each other and, perhaps more important, to distract voters from what is happening to their 401(k)s - after Democrats have thrown an extra trillion dollars at the economy.

"It's incredibly cynical," former McCain adviser Nicolle Wallace wrote in the Daily Beast. "It assumes that voters are too stupid to know the difference between a talk-radio host and a party's elected leaders."

This week, former Bush speechwriter David Frum foolishly bit at the worm. "Limbaugh is kryptonite, weakening the GOP nationally," Frum wrote in a Newsweek cover piece, "Why Rush is Wrong." Frum concluded that while he probably agrees with Limbaugh on most ideological matters, "The issues on which we do disagree are maybe the most important to the future of the conservative movement and the Republican Party: Should conservatives be trying to provoke or persuade? To narrow our coalition or enlarge it? To enflame or govern?"

Of course, the answer is: Both.

Yes, political parties need to reach beyond their ranks, but you don't win with an alienated base. Witness the Clinton-distancing Al Gore and the pro-Iraq-war voting John Kerry. Witness my guy, John McCain.

And you don't win without people who charge up the base. That's what Limbaugh does better than anyone. (And I say that as a "mushy" moderate conservative.)

While many think Limbaugh is enjoying the Obama-supplied spotlight, he was pretty steamed in e-mails to me. Divided government, he wrote, "is designed to ensure that the president fails when he is wrong. The framers wanted the country to succeed; if they wanted the president to succeed, they would not have saddled him with Congress, courts, a free press, and elections every four years."

"I can think of no pursuit more childish than an Oval-Office-initiated food fight with a talk-radio host," Wallace wrote. Apparently Team Obama sees the Limbaugh feud as an effective use of its time.

You can e-mail Debra J. Saunders at dsaunders@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page A - 11 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Lyndon Baines Obama

By Patrick J. Buchanan
http://www.vdare.com/
March 09, 2009

It was the winter of conservative discontent.

Barry Goldwater had gotten only 38 percent of the vote, and his party had suffered its worst thrashing since Alf Landon fell to FDR in 1936.

Democrats held 295 House seats, Republicans 140. They held 68 Senate seats to Republicans' 32, and 33 governors to the GOP's 17.

Democratic registration was twice that of the GOP. The liberal press was gleefully writing the obituary of "The Party That Lost Its Head."

Decades might pass, it was said, before the GOP recovered from its fatal embrace of right-wing radicalism and foolish rejection of the leadership of Govs. Nelson Rockefeller and William Scranton.

Wrote Robert Donovan in the opening lines of his book, The Future of the Republican Party:

"The devastating defeat of Barry Goldwater at the hands of voters in all sections of the country but the Deep South has damaged, weakened and tarnished the party. For years to come ... the two-party system will be crippled."

Donovan and all the rest were wrong. The GOP came roaring back in 1966 to capture 47 House seats and eight new governorships. In 1968, Nixon led the party out of the wilderness and into a White House it would hold for 20 of the next 24 years.

Full of hubris in 1965, Lyndon Johnson had seized his moment. He had launched a Great Society that would outdo his beloved patron FDR. He would dispatch 500,000 troops to Vietnam to "bring the coonskin home on the wall" and create a "Great Society on the Mekong." Those were heady days of "guns-and-butter."

By 1968, LBJ's coalition was shredded. Gov. George Wallace had torn away the populist right. Sens. Gene McCarthy, George McGovern and Robert Kennedy had rallied the antiwar left against him. LBJ and Hubert Humphrey were left to preside over a shrinking center.

Why did LBJ fail? He overloaded the circuits. He tried to do it all. He misread a national desire for continuity after Kennedy's death as a mandate for a lunge to the left and a great leap forward with the largest expansion of government since the New Deal.

By 1968, racial riots had torn apart almost every great city. The most prestigious campuses had been rocked by student violence. Thousands of antiwar demonstrators had taken to the streets. And 100 to 200 body bags were coming home from Vietnam every week.

By the winter of 1968, Lyndon Johnson was a broken president.

History never repeats itself exactly. But Barack Obama is making the same mistakes today that LBJ made in 1965.

He has ordered 17,000 more U.S. troops into Afghanistan, as the situation deteriorates and the NATO allies pull out. He has no exit strategy. He has read a repudiation of George Bush as a mandate for a government seizure of wealth and power that exceeds anything attempted in the Great Society.

Fully half of the $3.55 trillion in spending Obama will preside over this year will not be covered by tax revenue but by red ink. The money will have to be borrowed from abroad or printed by the Fed.

Not only is Barack running a deficit four times as large as Bush's largest, he has called for $1 trillion in new taxes on America's most successful, who have already seen their savings and pensions ravaged.

He wants a cap-and-trade system to deal with a global-warming or climate-change crisis many scientists believe is a hoax. He is going to provide health care for all, including immigrants, millions of whom arrive uninsured every year. He is going to plunge scores of billions more into education, though education has eaten up the wealth of an empire, as SAT scores sink further and further below the apogee of 1964, before LBJ and the feds barged in. He is going to ask Congress for authority to spend another $750 billion rescuing the banks.

He is going to find the cure for cancer. He is going to ensure every kid gets a college education. He is going to drop half of all wage-earners off the tax rolls, while the top 2 percent, who already pay 40 percent of all income taxes, are forced to cough up more.

Obama is misreading the election returns. When America voted to cancel the White House lease of Mr. Bush, it did not vote Barack Obama a blank check.

By misinterpreting his mandate, Obama has accomplished something John McCain could not—unite the Republican Party and instill in it a new esprit de corps. For the Obama budget is an insult to the core belief of the party—that free people, not coercive government, should shape the character of society.

By daring Republicans to fight on the issue of a $1.75 trillion deficit, Obama has liberated the GOP from any obligation to him. He has come out of the closet as a radical liberal spoiling for a fight over an agenda of radical change.

Sooner than any might have thought, we have clarity.

COPYRIGHT CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

Patrick J. Buchanan needs no introduction to VDARE.COM readers; his book State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America, can be ordered from Amazon.com. His latest book is Churchill, Hitler, and "The Unnecessary War": How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World, reviewed here by Paul Craig Roberts.

Stern Words for Global Warming Alarmists

by Christopher C. Horner
http://www.humanevents.com
03/10/2009

Ironies and double standards can be subtle. And, in giddy “historic” times, the ironies can be absolutely blistering. For example, consider the media’s different contortions when covering the positions of presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama on the matter of a “global warming” treaty.

For example, last week the Obama administration proclaimed that expectations shall be lowered on that front and, for some reason, broadcast anchors eschewed rending of cloth and gnashing of teeth, and the print media couldn’t be bothered with the usual editorials and hit pieces masquerading as news items to condemn the seemingly rational assessment. The words in question came in a speech by President Obama’s “climate envoy,” former Clinton-Gore “Kyoto” aide Todd Stern, that the global warming agenda demanded of Bush was too ambitious and “not going to happen.” (To whom do you present your credentials as “climate envoy”? Mother Nature?)

Well, Stern certainly ruined my day, even if he did unintentionally raise a few questions about some things said back in the campaign. But wait: have faith, oh ye alarmists. The media silence is explained by things not being quite what they seem. More on which in a moment.

Stern’s remarks were covered only by the Wall Street Journal, and even then only described as having been delivered in Washington. In them, Stern even chastised those who might question this judgment with, “We need to be very mindful of what the dictates of science are.”

Oh. Isn’t this the guy whose boss said, within days of being elected, that “[t]he science is beyond dispute and the facts are clear. Sea levels are rising. Coastlines are shrinking. We’ve seen record drought, spreading famine, and storms that are growing stronger with each passing hurricane season.”

Why, yes, it is, though of course Obama was either making that up or repeating a threadbare talking point of the crowd terrified of ever subjecting their pet hysteria (and now major revenue source for social engineering) to the acid test of debate.

So, instead of Obama’s climate envoy (I just can’t give up mentioning the title) reliably resorting to Moonbat science, Stern must instead have meant that actual research reveals there’s nothing within reach to replace “fossil fuels.” Hey, we’re a carbon–based economy, guys. Get over it. No matter how hard Al Gore blows, there’s not enough wind power and solar power available (nor will there be for decades, if ever) to provide a significant amount of the electricity America consumes. That is to say that hopping off the hydrocarbon train now would kill, oh I don’t know, billions. Which actually was the point of a paper in Science magazine in 2002 by, of all people, some leading alarmists (Hoffert, et al.). See, not all of the hysterics hate you for being beautiful.

Of course, regular HUMAN EVENTS readers know that Stern’s resetting of the rhetorical playing field is of a part with establishing new ground rules more accommodating to the new global warming sheriff in our town. The principal change is that of course Obama wouldn't be held to the standard to which Team Global Governance held the Bush administration for eight years: you must sign on to a global warming treaty now or the world will end and you killed it ... and, well, you know the rest if you weren't living on an island somewhere, enjoying a nice warm climate during the Bush-era global cooling.

This does not signal the global governance crowd giving up, of course -- just that they’re happy to let Obama find his own path to the mutually agreed end. U.N. officials have admitted as much, and that the guy therefore needs a break and some room to operate.

According to the U.N.’s chief eco-diplomat Yvo de Boer, Obama is new in office and, besides, his heart's in the right place, we know he'll do the right thing, but of course that Senate's always a problem. Odd, I was fairly attentive to this issue in 2001 after Bush indicated his intention to continue the Clinton-Gore policy of not seeking Senate ratification for Kyoto and, um, that’s not the approach you took at the time. I suppose this is “change” de Boer can believe in.

Testing our credulity a bit much, while also in town last week meeting with administration officials, de Boer greeted Stern’s assessment with the Orwellian glee of “we're really happy to see the United States back into the international climate change process.” By telling the world that what they urgently demanded of Bush to save the planet was, well, not in the cards. Got it.

Outside of de Boer, responses by the usual suspects among the green groups and Europeans were muted, consistent with the notion that Obama and they are on the same page. Now, you may recall similarly nuanced distinctions in how the intellectually dishonest global warming chorus treated, say, both the Clinton-Gore and Bush administrations sneering at the notion of asking the Senate to ratify Kyoto. Now, of course there’s nothing in the Constitution or statute requiring such a request of a signed treaty like Kyoto, but that wasn’t the point. By offering the alms of some lip-biting (his own, this time) and squishy rhetoric, one president was deeply caring and responsible, and the other burned in effigy for somehow setting the planet ablaze. Stern’s announcement surely will mean the lefties will scramble to find an unoccupied corner on which to protest this move. After all, their comrades have already filled the streets in outrage over his boss, Hillary Clinton, flying to China mere days before to assure them that little things like human rights won’t get in the way of addressing real crises.

What were those real crises far more important than such trifles? Why, the global financial crisis and -- wait for it -- global warming.

Ah. Protest cancelled. Man, these guys and their, for lack of a better word, “reasoning” are the equivalent of that Escher print hanging over the commode in every house party I attended in my 20s. Round and round and round we go. The estimable Mr. de Boer called this high-profile assertion of that hierarchy "a really important and encouraging step." Less than you demanded of the other guy is actually more. Other than that, nothing is too expensive if incurred in the name of addressing “global warming.” Uh, except debate.

Don’t ask. Being on the vanguard of revolution can be confusing.

Mr. Horner is author of "Red Hot Lies: How Global Warming Alarmists Use Threats, Fraud, and Deception to Keep You Misinformed."

Obama's fear-mongering

The president and his aides say they don't want to waste a crisis. That's a cynical way to exploit a national emergency.

By Jonah Goldberg
Los Angeles Times
March 10, 2009
http://www.latimes.com


Imagine a child falls down a well. Now imagine I offer to lend the parents my ladder to save her, but only if they promise to paint my house. Would you applaud me for not letting a crisis go to waste? Or would you think I'm a jerk?

I ask because I'm trying to come to terms with Rule No. 1 of the Obama administration.

"Rule 1: Never allow a crisis to go to waste," White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel told the New York Times right after the election. "They are opportunities to do big things." Over the weekend, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told members of the European Parliament, "Never waste a good crisis." Then President Obama explained in his Saturday radio and Internet address that there is "great opportunity in the midst of" the "great crisis" befalling America.

Numerous commentators, including me, have pointed to this never-waste-a-crisis mantra as ideological evidence that Obama's budget priorities are a great bait-and-switch. He says he wants to fix the financial crisis, but he's focusing on selling his long-standing liberal agenda on healthcare, energy and education as the way to do it, even though his proposals have absolutely nothing to do with addressing the housing and toxic-debt problems that are the direct causes of our predicament. Indeed, some -- particularly on Wall Street -- would argue that his policies are making the crisis worse.

But the real scandal isn't those policies, even though they're bad enough. The real scandal is that this administration thinks crises are opportunities for governmental power-grabs (It seems writer Randolph Bourne was wrong. It is not war, but crisis, that is the health of the state).

Michael Kinsley famously said that a gaffe in Washington is when a politician accidentally tells the truth. As they say, it's funny because it's true.

But the White House tactic isn't funny at all. It's scary. Its amorality is outweighed only by the grotesque and astoundingly naked cynicism of it all.

Recall that not long ago, the first item on the bill of indictment against the Bush administration was that it was "exploiting" 9/11 to enact its agenda. Al Gore shrieked that President Bush "played on our fears" to get his way. In response to nearly every Bush policy proposal, from the Patriot Act to the toppling of Saddam Hussein, critics would caterwaul that Bush was taking advantage of the country's fear of terrorism.

The Bush administration always denied this, and rightly so. If the president admitted that he was using a national calamity for narrow partisan or ideological advantage, it would be outrageous. Indeed, every time Karl Rove or some other administration official said anything that could be even remotely interpreted as using the war or 9/11 for partisan or ideological gain, the editorial pages and Democratic news-release factories churned into overdrive with righteous indignation.

Well, now we have the president, along with his chief aides, admitting -- boasting! -- that they want to exploit a national emergency for their preexisting agenda, and there's no scandal. No one even calls it a gaffe. No, they call it leadership.

It's not leadership. It's fear-mongering.

Franklin Roosevelt said that all we have to fear is fear itself. Now Barack Obama all but admits that all he has to fear is the loss of fear itself.

In other realms of life, exploiting a crisis for your own purposes is an outrage. If a business uses a hurricane warning, for example, to price-gouge on vital supplies, it is a crime. When a liberal administration does it, it's taking advantage of a historic opportunity.

Obama's defenders respond to this argument that Obama's motives are decent, noble and pure. He wants to help the uninsured and the poorly educated. He wants to make good on his vow to halt those rising oceans.

But this is just a rationalization. Every president thinks his agenda is what's best for the country; every politician believes his motives are noble. The point is that scaring people about X in order to achieve Y is fundamentally undemocratic.

This was transparently obvious to Bush's harshest critics, who alleged that 9/11 was merely a convenient crisis for devious neocons who wanted to topple Hussein all along. But it's now clear that many of these critics simply objected to the agenda, not the alleged tactics. Now that it's their turn, they see nothing wrong with doing what they so recently condemned.

They even admit it, over and over again.

jgoldberg@latimescolumnists.com

Between the Covers with John J. Miller

James Mann on The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan
http://www.nationalreview.com/
March 9, 2009




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Today's Tune: Neko Case - Hold On, Hold On

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Islam Should Prove It's a Religion of Peace

Muslims can start with better Quranic scholarship.

By TAWFIK HAMID
http://online.wsj.com/home-page
March 9, 2009


The film "Fitna" by Dutch parliament member Geert Wilders has created an uproar around the world because it links violence committed by Islamists to Islam.

Many commentators and politicians -- including the British government, which denied him entry to the country last month -- reflexively accused Mr. Wilders of inciting hatred. The question, however, is whether the blame is with Mr. Wilders, who simply exposed Islamic radicalism, or with those who promote and engage in this religious extremism. In other words, shall we fault Mr. Wilders for raising issues like the stoning of women, or shall we fault those who actually promote and practice this crime?

Many Muslims seem to believe that it is acceptable to teach hatred and violence in the name of their religion -- while at the same time expecting the world to respect Islam as a religion of peace, love and harmony.

Scholars in the most prestigious Islamic institutes and universities continue to teach things like Jews are "pigs and monkeys," that women and men must be stoned to death for adultery, or that Muslims must fight the world to spread their religion. Isn't, then, Mr. Wilders's criticism appropriate? Instead of blaming him, we must blame the leading Islamic scholars for having failed to produce an authoritative book on Islamic jurisprudence that is accepted in the Islamic world and unambiguously rejects these violent teachings.

While many religious texts preach violence, the interpretation, modern usage and implementation of these teachings make all the difference. For example, the stoning of women exists in both the Old Testament and in the Islamic tradition, or "Sunna" -- the recorded deeds and manners of the prophet Muhammad. The difference, though, is that leading Jewish scholars agreed to discontinue these practices centuries ago, while Muslim scholars have yet to do so. Hence we do not see the stoning of women practiced or promoted in Israel, the "Jewish" state, but we see it practiced and promoted in Iran and Saudi Arabia, the "Islamic" states.

When the British government banned Geert Wilders from entering the country to present his film in the House of Lords, it made two egregious errors. The first was to suppress free speech, a canon of the civilized Western world. The second mistake was to blame the messenger -- punishing, so to speak, the witness who exposed the crime instead of punishing the criminal. Mr. Wilders did not produce the content of the violent Islamic message he showed in his film -- the Islamic world did that. Until the Islamic clerical establishment takes concrete steps to reject violence in the name of their religion, Mr. Wilders's criticism is not only permissible as "controversial" free speech but justified.

So, Islamic scholars and clerics, it is up to you to produce a Shariah book that will be accepted in the Islamic world and that teaches that Jews are not pigs and monkeys, that declaring war to spread Islam is unacceptable, and that killing apostates is a crime. Such a book would prove that Islam is a religion of peace.

Mr. Hamid, a former member of an Egyptian Islamist terrorist group, is an Islamic reformer and senior fellow at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies.

Presidential Double-Talk

Uncertainty (too much) and confidence (too little) define this crisis. Investors have surely noted the gap between Obama's rhetoric and his actions.

By Robert Samuelson
http://www.newsweek.com/
Published Mar 7, 2009

From the magazine issue dated Mar 16, 2009


WASHINGTON -- To those who believe that Barack Obama is a different kind of politician -- more honest, more courageous -- please don't examine his administration's budget. If you do, you may sadly conclude that he resembles presidents stretching back to John Kennedy in one crucial respect. He won't tax voters for all the government services they want. That's the main reason we've run budget deficits in 43 of the past 48 years.

Obama is a great pretender. He repeatedly says he's doing things that he isn't, trusting his powerful rhetoric to obscure the difference. He has made "responsibility" a personal theme; the budget's cover line is "A New Era of Responsibility." He says the budget begins "making the tough choices necessary to restore fiscal discipline." It doesn't.

With today's depressed economy, big deficits are unavoidable for some years. But let's assume that Obama wins re-election. By his last year, 2016, the economy presumably will have long recovered. What does his final budget look like? Well, it runs a $637 billion deficit, equal to 3.2 percent of the economy (gross domestic product), projects Obama's Office of Management and Budget. That would match Ronald Reagan's last deficit, 3.1 percent of GDP in 1988, so fiercely criticized by Democrats.

As a society, we should pay in taxes what it costs government to provide desired services. If benefits don't seem equal to burdens, then the spending isn't worth having (exceptions: deficits in wartime and economic slumps).

If Obama were "responsible," he would conduct a candid conversation about the role of government. Who deserves support and why? How big can government grow before higher taxes and deficits harm economic growth? Although Obama claims to be doing this, he hasn't confronted entitlement psychology -- the belief that government benefits once conferred should never be revoked.

Is it in the public interest for the well-off elderly (say, a couple with $125,000 of income) to be subsidized, through Social Security and Medicare, by poorer young and middle-aged workers? Are any farm subsidies justified when they aren't essential for food production? We wouldn't starve without them.

Given an aging America, government faces huge conflicts between spending on the elderly and spending on everything else. But even before most of baby boomers retire (in 2016, only a quarter will have reached 65), Obama's government would have grown. In 2016, federal spending is projected to be 22.4 percent of GDP, up from 21 percent in 2008; federal taxes, 19.2 percent of GDP, up from 17.7 percent.

It would also be "responsible" for Obama to acknowledge the big gamble in his budget. National security has long been government's first job. In his budget, defense spending drops from 20 percent of the total in 2008 to 14 percent in 2016, the smallest share since the 1930s. The decline presumes a much safer world. If the world doesn't cooperate, deficits would grow.

The gap between Obama rhetoric and Obama reality transcends the budget, as do the consequences. In 2009, the stock market has declined 23.78 percent (through March 5), says Wilshire Associates. The Wall Street Journal's editorial page blames Obama's policies for all the fall. That's unfair; the economy's deterioration was a big cause. Still, Obama isn't blameless.

Confidence (too little) and uncertainty (too much) define this crisis. Obama's double talk reduces the first and raises the second. He says he's focused on reviving the economy, but he's also using the crisis to advance an ambitious long-term agenda. The two sometimes collide. The $787 billion "stimulus" is weaker than necessary, because almost $200 billion for extended projects (high-speed rail, computerized medical records) take effect after 2010. When Congress debates Obama's sweeping health care and energy proposals, industries, regions and governmental philosophies will clash. Will this improve confidence? Reduce uncertainty?

A prudent president would have made a "tough choice" -- concentrated on the economy; deferred his more contentious agenda. Similarly, Obama claims to seek bipartisanship but, in reality, doesn't. His bipartisanship consists of including a few Republicans in his Cabinet and inviting some Republican congressmen to the White House for the Super Bowl. It does not consist of fashioning proposals that would attract bipartisan support on their merits. Instead, he clings to dubious, partisan policies (mortgage cramdown, union check-off) that arouse fierce opposition.

Obama thinks he can ignore these blatant inconsistencies. Like many smart people, he believes he can talk his way around problems. Maybe. He's helped by much of the media, who seem so enthralled with him that they don't see glaring contradictions. During the campaign, Obama said he would change Washington's petty partisanship; he also advocated a highly partisan agenda. Both claims could not be true. The media barely noticed; the same obliviousness persists. But Obama still runs a risk: that his overworked rhetoric loses its power and boomerangs on him.

Hansbrough, North Carolina seniors depart Chapel Hill in a stylish way

By Andy Staples
INSIDE COLLEGE BASKETBALL
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/basketball/ncaa/
March 9, 2009

CHAPEL HILL, NC - MARCH 08: Tyler Hansbrough #50 of the North Carolina Tar Heels with his father, Gene, before the start of their game against the Duke Blue Devils on senior night at the Dean E. Smith Center on March 8, 2009 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. (Getty Images)


CHAPEL HILL, N.C. -- She sounded as only a member of the dance team at a Deep South flagship state university can. She had just enough brass in her voice -- a voice that will serve her well when she's managing accounts, analyzing financials or selling McMansions in five years -- to seem perfectly justified in her intrusion on the quiet time of a campus legend.

"Come ohn, Psy-cho Tee!" she yelled Sunday afternoon as the legend walked back to the locker room from his final pre-game shootaround at the Dean Dome. Tyler Hansbrough barely noticed. North Carolina's all-time leading scorer wore the same expression he always wears before he pours another gallon of sweat onto the hardwood.

"Yup," he said.

Behind that blank stare, Hansbrough's mind spun. Later, after the Tar Heels had escaped from a suddenly dangerous Duke team with a 79-71 win, after fellow senior Danny Green had danced one more time to "Jump Around" and after Hansbrough bade a sob-choked goodbye to the North Carolina faithful, Hansbrough catalogued the litany of issues weighing on his brain as tipoff approached.

"It's a hard game to play," said Hansbrough, who scored 17 points and grabbed eight rebounds. "First of all, you're thinking about everything. You're thinking about your after-game speech -- who you're going to thank. You're thinking, 'Oh man, this is my last game in the Dean Dome.' Then you start thinking about how your college career is coming to an end. All that, and you're still trying to focus on the game to get this win."

"This win" was a fitting home sendoff for a 6-foot-9, 250-pound fireball who makes every basket, every rebound look labor-intensive. As Michael Jordan, Larry Brown, Sean May and a host of Tar Heel luminaries watched from the second row, North Carolina made just enough plays to dispatch a group of Blue Devils who have reinvented themselves in the past three weeks. The win clinched an outright ACC regular-season title for the Tar Heels, and it further cemented Carolina as a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament.

Even though Jordan's presence somehow inspired Hansbrough to channel the spirit of Jordan's former Bulls teammate Craig Hodges -- Hansbrough made his 11th and 12th career 3-pointers in the first half -- the Tar Heels couldn't shake the pesky Blue Devils, who got all their points from their starters. Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski said the game came down to a handful of plays in the second half. Those plays, in order, were these:

CHAPEL HILL, NC - MARCH 08: The Duke Blue Devils huddle up against the North Carolina Tar Heels during their game at the Dean E. Smith Center on March 8, 2009 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. (Getty Images)

• After a Gerald Henderson dunk slashed Carolina's lead to 65-63 with 5:07 remaining, Carolina forward Deon Thompson scored while Henderson hacked him. Thompson also hit the ensuing free throw.

• After Duke guard John Scheyer (game-high 24 points) hit a 3-pointer to cut the Tar Heels' lead to 70-68 with 3:24 remaining, Green gave 21,750 reason to jump around by draining a 3-pointer of his own.

• Finally, after Duke forward Kyle Singler (23 points) made two free throws to cut Carolina's lead to 73-69 with 1:50 remaining, the Tar Heels needed to answer again. For the first time, they didn't. Point guard Ty Lawson, who played in spite of a painful big toe injury suffered Friday, missed a jumper. Singler grabbed the rebound with 1:18 remaining. Then, as Singler tried to throw an outlet pass, one of his sneakers grazed the baseline. Carolina ball. Lawson, a junior who may have played his final game in Chapel Hill, scored 14 seconds later.

Neither Krzyzewski nor his players could feel too badly Sunday about the way the Blue Devils played in a hostile environment against a Final Four-caliber team that would have done just about anything to send a group of beloved seniors out with a win in their final home game. On Feb. 11, the Tar Heels ran the Blue Devils out of Cameron Indoor Stadium, outscoring them 57-35 in the second half of a 101-87 win.

Other than the continued lack of an inside presence -- an issue that can't be fixed this season -- these Blue Devils seemed so much more capable this time of challenging an elite team. The paradigm shift came Feb. 19, when Krzyzewski inserted freshman guard Elliot Williams in the starting lineup. Essentially, he plunged a syringe of pure adrenalin into the hearts of the Blue Devils. Duke is 5-1 since, and it wouldn't seem the least bit shocking if Duke and Carolina meet next Sunday in the final of the ACC Tournament and Duke won. The Blue Devils lost Sunday because they shot 8 of 25 from the field in the second half. But they weren't taking bad shots; on another day, some of those shots fall.

"We want to be our best come the postseason. We're definitely the best team we've been now," Scheyer said. "That's as opposed to last year or the year before, when we may have been our best midseason."


Former UNC star Michael Jordan was in attendance for Sunday's game.
Bob Rosato/SI

North Carolina players noticed the improvement, but they couldn't allow the Blue Devils to ruin the going-away party for a group of players who cemented their place in the hearts of Tar Heels everywhere as freshmen on a defending national champ gutted by early departures to the NBA. Their defining moment that season? On senior day at Cameron, Hansbrough scored 27, fellow freshman Bobby Frasor made a pair of clutch free throws and Green stripped Sean Dockery in the waning seconds to help seal an 83-76 stunner against top-ranked Duke.

"Nothing," Hansbrough said Sunday, "has topped that yet."

So naturally, neither Hansbrough, Frasor, Green wanted to see their senior day ruined in a similar fashion. Tar Heels coach Roy Williams challenged his younger players to ensure the seniors got the proper sendoff.

"I always try to put pressure on the underclassmen," Williams said, "to send the seniors out the right way."

During late timeouts, long after the Tar Heels realized the Blue Devils weren't going away, no one spoke of the terrible pall a loss would cast on the traditional postgame goodbyes, when each senior gets his chance to address the crowd. No one had to say anything.

"There wasn't any talk," Hansbrough said, "but it was on everybody's mind."

And so every time the Tar Heels needed a play, someone came through. With 13.8 seconds remaining, Hansbrough checked out of his final game at the Dean Dome. After the buzzer had sounded and the Tar Heels had cut down a net to celebrate their ACC title, Hansbrough stood on the court, a microphone in his hand and tears in his eyes.

"It's kind of hard to put into words what my experience at Carolina has been like," Hansbrough said. Then he found the perfect words. "It's been the best four years of my life."

Bad News on Rodriguez That Could Turn Good for Yankees

By HARVEY ARATON
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com
March 8, 2009

Alex Rodriguez didn’t want to surrender to a surgeon. For the glory of the pinstripes, he was ready to play with pain, an indication he was hoping that fate had a much smarter plan for the restoration of A-Rod’s image than his army of well-paid spin merchants.


Alex Rodriguez with Derek Jeter, who has brought a type of leadership to the Yankees that Rodriguez seems to lack.

But the labrum tear in his right hip will require arthroscopic surgery on Monday and a prolonged stay on the disabled list. For the Yankees, a vacation from A-Rod may be just what the proverbial doctor ordered. If only temporarily, the face of the team will again belong to Derek Jeter, not Rodriguez, whom we have come to recognize in a variety of poses as the deer caught in the limelight.

Maybe the Yankees will hold their own with improved pitching, for which there was no shortage of off-season expenditure, and the brand of baseball that won them four World Series during a five-year stretch almost a decade ago. This is not to say that A-Rod is fundamentally unsound; it’s more his all-thumbs approach to life, his exceedingly unsubtle presence as the reigning clubhouse hub.

One day, he is mobilizing his public-relations machine in response to steroid revelations. Another he is deploying his children as props in a training camp photo opportunity. Rodriguez’s chronic transparency and heavy-handedness has become a metaphor for the Yankees’ inelegance and inconsistency dating to the American League Championship Series in 2004, when they dominated the Red Sox for three games only to be ghost-busted into a state of championship-identity disrepair.

The story of the Yankees since has been 16 runs one night, one run on three hits the next. What they need now is a better appreciation of nuance and timing. They need Mark Teixeira and C. C. Sabathia to add to what Jeter has brought to the ballpark for 13 years, qualities so difficult to quantify. You just know them when you see them, or hear them, because they galvanize rather than self-glorify.

For the first glaring example of what Jeter has that Rodriguez sorely lacks, go back to spring training 2001, when A-Rod was with Texas and he made the startling claim in Esquire that Jeter — at that point considered his good friend — was a player who is “never your concern” and who “never had to lead.”

In one of life’s delicious ironies, Jeter was presented with the opportunity to demonstrate precisely why he has most often been the opposition’s concern, primarily because of his capacity to lead.

“I’ll ask him tonight,” he said when cornered by reporters. “I’ll talk to him and let you know.”

By embracing restraint, saying nothing, Jeter passed responsibility for the uproar back to Rodriguez, where it belonged. He gave Rodriguez a chance to edit himself — as A-Rod had to do again after recently implying to reporters that he’d rather have José Reyes playing for his team than Jeter — and defuse a potential public feud between two of baseball’s glamour players. It was the verbal equivalent of laying down the perfect sacrifice bunt to put the winning run in scoring position.


Alex Rodriguez during a spring training game against the Cincinnati Reds last week

Many people would argue the public genius of Jeter is really just a strict policy of avoiding incendiary issues. Some members of the news media have extrapolated on that to call him boring. But boring is in the eye or ear of the beholder. To me, Jeter is not boring. When it comes to quotations, he just isn’t obsequious, or self-destructively dense.

His aura says: if keeping the back-page headline writers on 24-hour alert is the shallow measure of one’s commercial appeal, we can elect someone else most popular in class.

If asked a thoughtful question, Jeter will invariably provide a printable answer. But that’s only part of an overall evaluation. We live in a video culture, and when you think of Jeter, provocative imagery comes to mind — the flip play to nail Jeremy Giambi in the playoffs, the headfirst leap into the stands to catch a foul fly against the Red Sox, a thousand slides into second followed by a hard clap of the hands.

What is talk if you can’t be believed? Last summer, Rodriguez charmingly entertained waves of reporters for the full 50-minute player availability session before the All-Star Game at the retiring Yankee Stadium. Just a few feet away, Jeter made his exit in half the time.

Both repeatedly extolled the Stadium as a baseball shrine — but on the night of the game, A-Rod left well before it dragged into extra innings, while Jeter ran on the field like a delirious 12-year-old when the American League finally won in the bottom of the 15th.

No one will ever accuse A-Rod of not playing hard, but he does so with a self-imposed burden that weighs on people around him. That Seattle and Texas improved immediately after he left is hardly empirical evidence. But after all that has happened since the turn of the year, something tells me the Yankees won’t crumble while A-Rod is recovering for six to nine weeks. Given a break from all things A-Rod and good pitching, they may even thrive.

E-mail: hjaraton@nytimes.com

Where's global warming?

By Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe Columnist
http://www.boston.com/
March 8, 2009

SUPPOSE the climate landscape in recent weeks looked something like this:

Half the country was experiencing its mildest winter in years, with no sign of snow in many Northern states. Most of the Great Lakes were ice-free. Not a single Canadian province had had a white Christmas. There was a new study discussing a mysterious surge in global temperatures - a warming trend more intense than computer models had predicted. Other scientists admitted that, because of a bug in satellite sensors, they had been vastly overestimating the extent of Arctic sea ice.

If all that were happening on the climate-change front, do you think you'd be hearing about it on the news? Seeing it on Page 1 of your daily paper? Would politicians be exclaiming that global warming was even more of a crisis than they'd thought? Would environmentalists be skewering global-warming "deniers" for clinging to their skepticism despite the growing case against it?

No doubt.

But it isn't such hints of a planetary warming trend that have been piling up in profusion lately. Just the opposite.

The United States has shivered through an unusually severe winter, with snow falling in such unlikely destinations as New Orleans, Las Vegas, Alabama, and Georgia. On Dec. 25, every Canadian province woke up to a white Christmas, something that hadn't happened in 37 years. Earlier this year, Europe was gripped by such a killing cold wave that trains were shut down in the French Riviera and chimpanzees in the Rome Zoo had to be plied with hot tea. Last week, satellite data showed three of the Great Lakes - Erie, Superior, and Huron - almost completely frozen over. In Washington, D.C., what was supposed to be a massive rally against global warming was upstaged by the heaviest snowfall of the season, which paralyzed the capital.

Meanwhile, the National Snow and Ice Data Center has acknowledged that due to a satellite sensor malfunction, it had been underestimating the extent of Arctic sea ice by 193,000 square miles - an area the size of Spain. In a new study, University of Wisconsin researchers Kyle Swanson and Anastasios Tsonis conclude that global warming could be going into a decades-long remission. The current global cooling "is nothing like anything we've seen since 1950," Swanson told Discovery News. Yes, global cooling: 2008 was the coolest year of the past decade - global temperatures have not exceeded the record high measured in 1998, notwithstanding the carbon-dioxide that human beings continue to pump into the atmosphere.

None of this proves conclusively that a period of planetary cooling is irrevocably underway, or that anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions are not the main driver of global temperatures, or that concerns about a hotter world are overblown. Individual weather episodes, it always bears repeating, are not the same as broad climate trends.

But considering how much attention would have been lavished on a comparable run of hot weather or on a warming trend that was plainly accelerating, shouldn't the recent cold phenomena and the absence of any global warming during the past 10 years be getting a little more notice? Isn't it possible that the most apocalyptic voices of global-warming alarmism might not be the only ones worth listening to?

There is no shame in conceding that science still has a long way to go before it fully understands the immense complexity of the Earth's ever-changing climate(s). It would be shameful not to concede it. The climate models on which so much global-warming alarmism rests "do not begin to describe the real world that we live in," says Freeman Dyson, the eminent physicist and futurist. "The real world is muddy and messy and full of things that we do not yet understand."

But for many people, the science of climate change is not nearly as important as the religion of climate change. When Al Gore insisted yet again at a conference last Thursday that there can be no debate about global warming, he was speaking not with the authority of a man of science, but with the closed-minded dogmatism of a religious zealot. Dogma and zealotry have their virtues, no doubt. But if we want to understand where global warming has gone, those aren't the tools we need.

Jeff Jacoby can be reached at jacoby@globe.com.