Tag Archives: National Review Online

I found this a lovely, very American letter -- see if you agree: 

Mr. Nordlinger,

 

Just wanted you to know that I care about Cuba . . . I don’t have any particular reason to care, I suppose -- I’m as WASP as they come -- I just love freedom and hate tyrants.

 Awesome.

Conan:   Now, what about … you talk in the book about geothermal energy …
Al:   Yeah, yeah.
Conan:     and that is, as I understand it, using the heat that's generated from the core of the earth …
Al:   Yeah.
Conan:   … to create energy, and it sounds to me like an evil plan by Lex Luthor to defeat Superman. Can you, can you tell me, is this a viable solution, geothermal energy?
Al:   It definitely is, and it's a relatively new one. People think about geothermal energy — when they think about it at all — in terms of the hot water bubbling up in some places, but two kilometers or so down in most places there are these incredibly hot rocks, 'cause the interior of the earth is extremely hot, several million degrees, and the crust of the earth is hot …

[Me]  The geothermal gradient is usually quoted as 25-50 degrees Celsius per mile of depth in normal terrain (not, e.g., in the crater of Kilauea). Two kilometers down, therefore, (that's a mile and a quarter if you're not as science-y as Al) you'll have an average gain of 30-60 degrees -- exploitable for things like home heating, though not hot enough to make a nice pot of tea. The temperature at the earth's core, 4,000 miles down, is usually quoted as 5,000 degrees Celsius, though these guys claim it's much less, while some contrarian geophysicists have posted claims up to 9,000 degrees. The temperature at the surface of the Sun is around 6,000 degrees Celsius, while at the center, where nuclear fusion is going on bigtime, things get up over 10 million degrees.

If the temperature anywhere inside the earth was "several million degrees," we'd be a star.

I hope my small contribution helps. I have greatly enjoyed NR and NRO for several years, and look forward to many more!

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I wish I could give more, but my eldest has been out of work since January, and we are pretty much tapped out from helping with expenses. Thank you for all you do -- I learn so much from NRO.

May we all Live Long and Prosper!

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Love your magazine and your online articles as well. I am the old lady (88 years!) in the wheelchair that was pushed around by my son on the NR Cruise November 2008. What a wonderful time we had! Thanks for all.

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I've always thought this was a deeply pernicious thing to do. Whatever your objections to conservatives and corporations, they don't routinely murder people. To suggest that our ideological-yet-democratic disputes are plausibly analogized to stories of wanton homicide is a serious disservice. Indeed, because the show is astoundingly smug in its didacticism, the hypocrisy of it all is galling. The show often preens as if it is lecturing us about political morality even as it slanders American society in the process. I stopped watching years ago. But every now and then I do watch to see if it's still as bad. It usually is. But it sounds like it's getting even worse.

Michael Rulle at Big Hollywood writes:

NBC’s “Law and Order” is in its 20th season. The economy is weak, so they have devolved to converting White House talking points into weekly shows. Last week, “Doped” was a farcical equivalent of “Damien Thorn meets Karen Silkwood.” Pharmaceutical companies and Doctors are worse than drug cartels. The killers in the previous week’s episode on such cartels were more sympathetic than the health professionals.

In the opening scene, a woman with 4 children is driving the wrong way down the West Side Highway (like the Diane Schuler Taconic Parkway horror this summer). Speaking on her cell phone erratically (no “hands free!”), the kids get concerned. She decides it is time to use nasal spray for her allergies, which had been spiked without her knowledge. Flash forward and viewers see two mangled vehicles resulting in seven deaths.

Go to B.H. for the rest, but the upshot is we need health-care reform.

Thank you so much for your endeavors in keeping us informed. You are a lighthouse in a murky, foggy sea.

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I have tried to tackle this question in my Reason column this month. My overall conclusion is that economists need a new paradigm to understand inflation today. Think about it this way: In the 1970s, economists couldn't understand what inflation was about and how to get the country out of the vicious spiral of stagflation. That's until Milton Friedman turned the field of monetary theory upside down. Since then, economists agree that inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.

The same revolution needs to take place today.

While the current monetarists learned from Friedman the idea that we should fear inflation, in practice central banks' biggest fear is deflation. As a result, economists who are theoretically inflation-hating Friedmanites now want to meet every downturn by fighting deflation. Translation: The Fed has spent a lot of time in the last 20 years creating bubbles.

Virtually all economists now agree, for example, that the Fed’s low interest rates inflated housing prices earlier in the decade. Yet as the prices of houses went up, few economists worried about inflation because the CPI looked relatively stable, due in part to a decrease in energy prices. When housing started to crash in 2007, many economists thought the Fed should inject still more funds into the system to stave off further declines. They failed to see that the Fed had distorted relative prices in the first place.

Plus, how can economists be missing the fact that inflation is already here? For all of you out there with big lines of credit, with variable rates based on prime, it's time to pay it down before the rates start increasing big time.

My article is here. Also, here is a great piece by Allan Melzter.

"It's simply a fact of life that a jihadist, particularly somebody like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, is looking for a big stage," Mukasey said in an interview on the WTimes's "America's Morning News" radio show. "New York City is the biggest stage in the world, and the attempt will be made to make this as big, spectacular and ugly as possible."

He reminded listeners that Zacarias Moussaoui had turned his civilian trial into a circus (Remember this ditty: "America, you lost . . . I won," and "God save Osama bin Laden. You will never get him.")  Joe Weber's report continues:

Mr. Mukasey also supported the criticism that the Obama administration's plan for the trials -- as announced Friday by Attorney General Eric Holder -- reflects a "pre-9-11" mentality, or worse. He cited Mr. Obama's decision to bring suspected terrorists from the Guantanamo Bay detention center to trial on U.S. soil and his refusal to use the term "war of terror."

 

"Using soft, cushy euphemisms instead reflect they're back in a pre-9-11 mentality," he said. "In some ways it's worse, because at least before [the attacks] we were not aware of what we were facing."

 

Mr. Mukasey also said the mass shooting at the Fort Hood Army base in which 13 people were killed was a terrorist act. Witnesses said suspected shooter Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan yelled "Allahu Akbar" before shooting. "It's impossible to categorize it as any other act," Mr. Mukasey said.

 

He said Maj. Hasan represents the new breed of "leaderless jihadists," encouraged by Osama bin Laden and other terrorist leaders. "This man is a fulfillment of their dreams," he said.

(make sure you read the news crawl, too).

I am especially addicted to The Corner, which I can't help but check regularly throughout the day, and continually during an election cycle.

Keep up the fantastic work.

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I just finished reading the reader response to your Prejean column and I think the commenter is missing the point in comparing Prejean/gay marriage to Joe the Plumber/economy. There is little question that Joe the Plumber is not an economic expert, but the reality is that for many of us gay marriage is not a political issue as much as it is a moral issue that happens to have been politicized. I'm quite sure that Miss Prejean is capable of espousing her own moral point of view, and if the proponents of that side of the discussion choose to use her as a spokeswoman, I see nothing wrong with that. To say that any individual is not an "important voice" on a moral issue is missing the point entirely.

I already support NR as a suscriber, but I am donating $100 in hopes that voices like yours will keep Derbyshire's prophesies of impending doom from coming true.

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VDH wrote about “the strange Obama-administration practice of counting hypothetical jobs saved by more government borrowing rather than focusing on real statistics of real jobs lost,” and the “fantasy congressional districts with fantasy new employment in them.” I could not help thinking of a line from the president’s inaugural address: “We’ll restore science to its rightful place.” Well, maybe, but what in the world is the administration doing with statistics? More generally, has an administration’s practices ever been more out of line with a president’s boasts and promises?

UPDATE: A reader chimes in, “You think those districts don’t exist? They will after the ACORN-ized 2010 Census, and they’ll be gerrymandered for the Democrats, too!”

P.S. Remember when Reagan, saying “gerrymander,” would signal that he knew that Gerry pronounced his name with a hard “G,” though we pronounce “gerrymander” with a soft one? Amazing guy, the Gipper.

Every day, first thing, I read The Corner from when I last left off. It is my daily aspirin for the splitting headache caused by toxic exposure to our nation's current political fiasco. Sometimes, I need several aspirin a day.

You make good medicine!

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TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Iran has sentenced five people to death over the unrest that followed the country's disputed June presidential election, state television reported Tuesday.

At least three others caught up in the turmoil have received death sentences previously.

One midshipman who loves reading a publication that fights for the troops instead of just supporting them . . .

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So it is possible that this decision is actually a victory for science over the precautionary principle, with a decision having been based on a proper consideration of the risk trade-offs involved. Even if cost was involved in the decision, as Captain Ed suggests, it's still the right decision.

What's going to be interesting is the reaction from the baptist and bootlegger alliance of feminists and providers of screening services. Last time this was discussed in the early 90s, that alliance forced the Clinton administration to cave and recommend annual mammograms. The administration's reaction to that likely backlash will tell us much about the value the president really places on science.

Several times a year, Teodoro Nguema Obiang arrives at the doorstep of the United States from his home in Equatorial Guinea, on his way to his $35 million estate in Malibu, Calif., his fleet of luxury cars, his speedboats and private jet. And he is always let into the country.

The nation’s doors are open to Mr. Obiang, the forest and agriculture minister of Equatorial Guinea and the son of its president, even though federal law enforcement officials believe that “most if not all” of his wealth comes from corruption related to the extensive oil and gas reserves discovered more than a decade and a half ago off the coast of his tiny West African country, according to internal Justice Department and Immigration and Customs Enforcement documents.

And they are open despite a federal law and a presidential proclamation that prohibit corrupt foreign officials and their families from receiving American visas. The measures require only credible evidence of corruption, not a conviction of it.

Now I'm all for enforcing very high standards for admission, but this is just moralist baloney. (Why am I not surprised to see that this prohibition was the brainchild of Bush and Leahy?) Virtually every government official in the Third World is corrupt, and we're obviously not going to bar all of them. So we end up announcing that we will apply our standards to foreigners, but then make exceptions when foreign policy demands it (as it inevitably must -- because of oil in the case of Equatorial Guinea), and end up looking like hypocrites. Better to hold up our standards as aspirations for foreigners (because our standards are, in fact, objectively superior) but acknowledge that we have to operate in the real world.

As a sidenote, I was delighted to see the story cite an official government document, from ICE, referring to the government of Equatorial Guinea as a "kleptocracy." That's the kind of straight talk that you seldom get from a bureaucracy.

Several times a year, Teodoro Nguema Obiang arrives at the doorstep of the United States from his home in Equatorial Guinea, on his way to his $35 million estate in Malibu, Calif., his fleet of luxury cars, his speedboats and private jet. And he is always let into the country.

The nation’s doors are open to Mr. Obiang, the forest and agriculture minister of Equatorial Guinea and the son of its president, even though federal law enforcement officials believe that “most if not all” of his wealth comes from corruption related to the extensive oil and gas reserves discovered more than a decade and a half ago off the coast of his tiny West African country, according to internal Justice Department and Immigration and Customs Enforcement documents.

And they are open despite a federal law and a presidential proclamation that prohibit corrupt foreign officials and their families from receiving American visas. The measures require only credible evidence of corruption, not a conviction of it.

Now I'm all for enforcing very high standards for admission, but this is just moralist baloney. (Why am I not surprised to see that this prohibition was the brainchild of Bush and Leahy?) Virtually every government official in the Third World is corrupt, and we're obviously not going to bar all of them. So we end up announcing that we will apply our standards to foreigners, but then make exceptions when foreign policy demands it (as it inevitably must -- because of oil in the case of Equatorial Guinea), and end up looking like hypocrites. Better to hold up our standards as aspirations for foreigners (because our standards are, in fact, objectively superior) but acknowledge that we have to operate in the real world.

As a sidenote, I was delighted to see the story cite an official government document, from ICE, referring to the government of Equatorial Guinea as a "kleptocracy." That's the kind of straight talk that you seldom get from a bureaucracy.

That's why I cannot bear to take vacation. I miss the Corner blog too much.

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You guys on the right are making the same mistake about Prejean that you did with Joe the Plumber.  Elevating someone who happens to have been involved in a political/cultural moment into a spokesperson for the political/cultural point even though they have no special talents or qualifications for the job.  I am pro-gay marriage, but I had no use for the Perez Hilton question, no problem with her respectfully stated position (even though it differs than mine), and don't think that answer should have had any effect on the outcome of the pageant.  And I have no problem with those involved in the gay marriage debate criticquing what occurred.  But that doesn't make Prejean an important voice on this issue, any more than Joe the Plumber was regarding economic policy.  But the anti gay marriage movement had to cash in on her notoriety by turning her into a celebrity spokesperson for the cause, and now she is exploiting that celebrity to sell a book (I cry for all the good books in the world that will not be read because people waste their time on this one).   All of this dumbs down the discussion of this issue.  She can say whatever she wants, but I think you are foolish to hitch your cause to her wagon.

The pollsters are in overdrive measuring Sarah Palin’s popularity. Most of the new polls show that large majorities say she is unqualified to be president. To take just one, 70 percent in the CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll gave that response. That’s what makes another finding in the same poll so interesting. Half say Vice President Joe Biden is qualified to assume the top job, but almost as many, 48 percent, say he’s not.

NR: The REAL heartbeat of America

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Rogers resumes: "Now, with health care reform on the line, the same male-dominated church hierarchy is dictating to the first woman speaker of the House, Democrat Nancy Pelosi. . ." At this point, I assumed I was reading an op-ed by a pro-choice activist--but the piece certainly isn't labeled as such.

Later we hear that "[t]he political reality is the anti-abortion movement has largely succeeded in Washington by applying Hyde restrictions to what are captive populations reliant on the government."

I'm surprised Rogers didn't use "anti-choice" in his copy, or bring up the clerical sex scandals.

I have released two statements on Carrie to the press, none of which has received much coverage. I will be filing a column later today.

Statement One, made at the request of Team Carrie on the day of her book release:

When I was 22 years old, Carrie’s age, I had a child out of wedlock.

 

When I rushed to defend Carrie I didn’t know anything at all about her, except she was a 21 year old California beauty queen who answered a question truthfully: "No offense to anybody out there. But that's how I was raised, and that's how I believe that [marriage] should be - between a man and a woman."

 

You shouldn't have to be a perfect person to stand up in public and say, to make a marriage you need a husband and wife. Nobody should be made to feel afraid because they say or believe that.

 

The ongoing campaign of hatred directed at Carrie is inexplicable, and ugly. Leave her alone. Let her be. Stop this madness. Let her be a model, or a write a book, or be on TV, or help the Special Olympics, or teach disabled kids, or anything else she wants to do.

 

If the people going after Carrie want to shame, smear and personally destroy someone who openly says marriage is a man and a woman, I say: pick on someone your own size. How about the President of the United States? He’s the leader of the Free World. He can take it.

 

This is not just about Carrie. Thousands of ordinary decent, honorable, law-abiding Americans have been harassed, intimidated, and threatened because they peacefully participated in the democratic process on behalf of marriage. They don’t have PR teams, or book deals, they are not famous or glamorous. Carrie is standing up for every single one of them in standing tall.

 

I wish Carrie well in whatever she chooses to do moving forward.

My statement to Lifesite News on Nov. 17, 2009, in response to their questions:

Carrie has never worked for the National Organization for Marriage. Out of the goodness of her heart, when we cut an ad "No Offense" featuring the vicious attacks on Carrie -- and by extension every California voter who supported Prop 8 -- she agreed to appear at our press conference to call attention to our message. I remain grateful to her for that.

 

I have no personal knowledge of the allegations. Carrie has told the media she participated in some instances of 'sexting" to her then-boyfriend. I cannot believe that reputable media are featuring said boyfriends as they anonymously dump intimate details about Carrie.

 

Admittedly, I am getting kind of old. But in my old-fashioned view boyfriends who release such information on ex-girlfriends are scummy. I don't understand the newsworthiness of these allegations.

 

Seven million Californians voted for Prop 8. I have no doubt that quite a few of them are people who committed sexual sins of various kinds. Why is this one 22 year old girl carrying the whole weight of that on her young shoulders? 

 

The whole episode is weird, sad and ugly. No-one should face this kind of invasion of their privacy simply because they believe marriage is the union of husband and wife. Period. I hope the people gleeful about this attack are enjoying their phyrric victory.  What they have done says far more about them than about Carrie, who is a not-unusual California 22 year old.

If you enjoy what you read here, if it inspires, outrages, moves, or informs you — or even if it’s merely one of your routine clicks in the morning — please consider contributing to our fundraising drive.

Believe me, we are as frugal as possible publishing NR and NRO. Just ask our authors, or our editors. None of them are doing this for the money. But to our publisher Jack Fowler’s regret, we do have to pay them something. And servers don’t come for free.

Every time one of these fundraising drives comes around, I recall Bill Buckley’s axiom that National Review exists to make a point, not a profit. Sadly, those words have continued to hold across the decades. Opinion magazines just don’t make money, and we’ve never been owned by a media mogul (or a mogul of any sort for that matter).

We’ve always been an independent conservative voice that depends on the kindness of strangers. Although, that’s not quite right. We really depend on the kindness of friends. From its very beginning, NR forged a community of like-minded people, brought together by a love of liberty and this country. It’s been a joy to watch that community spread to NRO, updated for the digital age.

It’s always been a mutually beneficial relationship. We provide the journalistic sustenance, our friends provide — to the extent they can, and every mite is appreciated — the support we need to survive.

I don’t need to tell you that what we do — defend the principles that make this country unique and great — is more important than ever. Those ideas are under threat as never before. The more embattled they are, the more desperately we will fight for them.

What did Clemenceau say? “I had a wife, she abandoned me; I had children, they turned against me; I had friends, they betrayed me; I have only my claws, and I used them.”

We have literally thrown everything we have at Obamacare, deconstructing it in editorials, dissecting it hour-by-hour on Critical Condition, reporting on its progress (and, on the good days, lack thereof) on Capitol Hill. Again, we’d do this for nothing if we could, because it’s what we believe. But we need your support to keep at it.

So, if you enjoy what you read here, please do what you can to help — if it’s $10 or $1,000. Do it for Steyn, VDH, and Jonah. For Ramesh, Derb, Miller, and Geraghty. For Andy McCarthy and Kathryn Lopez. For the indefatigable Bob Costa. For our Critical Condition guys, James Capretta, Tevi Troy, et al. Do it for Pollowitz and Williamson. Do it for the folks here you usually don’t hear about, but who make NRO possible everyday:Chris McEvoy, Ed Craig, and Russell Jenkins.

Do it because this fight is too important to lose, and we’re not stopping until we win.

NRO allows me to read the digital version before my 15-year-old son steals my NRODT.

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On the House floor last night, Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R., Fla.) gave a speech. His subject was the persecution of Cuban democrats, and the general ignoring of this persecution by the American press. This has been a longstanding grievance of Cubans and Cuban Americans, and their supporters: Horrible things take place on that island, 90 miles from our shore; and yet we tend to look away (and wear our Che Guevara T-shirts). If a Palestinian kid skins his knee in Ramallah, we hear about it. But what about torture in the Cuban gulag? What about the suppression of a free press? Shouldn’t that arouse our own journalists, make them indignant?

In the course of his remarks, Diaz-Balart said, “Cubans have been stateless non-persons for almost 51 years. Their suffering is systematically ignored. Their unity of purpose is continuously questioned or ridiculed. Even the torture of their heroes, of the heroic political prisoners, is ignored.”

Then he started to name some names -- of the ignored:

Martha Beatriz Roque, a respected economist and leading Cuban dissident and former political prisoner (who was only released from prison so she would not die in prison and embarrass Castro), is close to death in Havana due to complications arising from a hunger strike she is engaged in. . . .

 

I ask the press, the media, to please cease treating Cuba’s pro-democracy activists as though they did not exist. Stop treating Martha Beatriz Roque as a non-person.

 

Why do you continue to absolutely ignore Cuba’s brave prisoners of conscience? Why don’t you, at least, write about the elderly prisoners of conscience in Cuba, such as Hector Maseda Gutierrez, or Arnaldo Ramos Lauzurique? Or about severely handicapped prisoners of conscience such as Miguel Galván Gutierrez? Or, most especially, about the gravely ill Cuban prisoners of conscience in the gulag such as Ariel Sigler or Normando Hernández? Or Dr. José Luis García Paneque? Or Dr. Alfredo Pulido Lopez, or Pedro Arguelles Morán?

 

Members of the press, have you no conscience? Do not continue to treat the suffering, oppressed people of Cuba and their heroes as non-persons. Please, do your duty.

A video of the congressman’s speech can be found here. I hesitate to post it, because Diaz-Balart mentions me in it. He says I have done a lot, about human rights. But, as I have said many times, the reality is that I have done fairly little: I have done some, and that is more than our mainstream press wants to do. I have related dribs and drabs about Cuba; but dribs and drabs are hard to find, in our media at large. Very strange.

I once asked Jeane Kirkpatrick about this. I said, “Why are the heroics of Cuban dissidents ignored in this free country, so close?” She answered, “It is both a puzzling and profoundly painful phenomenon of our times.” Yes.

She also said that religiously-affiliated groups like the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which had pushed for the Stupak provision, should be shut out of the process.

"Last I heard, we had separation of church and state in this country," she said. "I've got to say that I think the Catholic bishops and all of the other groups shouldn't have input."

That's from the famous no-input clause of the First Amendment.

The Washington Post just polled on the question. "Say someone buys private health insurance using government assistance to help pay for it. Do you think insurance sold that way should or should not be allowed to include coverage for abortions?" Results: 35 percent were with DeGette, 61 percent against.

A first rate job on a day in, day out basis. . . .

(If Obamacare passes, I'll be sending you guys my resume.)

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Yes, the sentence -- that's the interesting part. The court has sent Stewart's case back to the trial judge for reconsideration of her absurdly short 28-month jail term (after the government asked for 30 years). The sentence has divided the appellate panel. All three judges agree that the sentence needs to be reconsidered. But two judges, Sack and Calabresi, seem to be narrowing the complaint down to whether Stewart committed perjury at her trial, which -- if she is found by the sentencing judge to have done so -- would call for a modest increase. In dissent, Judge Walker's point is that a 28-month sentence for the terrorism-related offenses Stewart committed is a travesty whether or not she committed perjury.

In any event, she will be resentenced. For those interested in such things, I wrote about my mixed feelings about Lynne, here; and here's the pre and post-mortems regarding the sentence. 

By the way, since my topic in today's column is Attorney General Holder's sudden concern over delays in the military commission system, it's worth pointing out that, for conduct that started around 1999, Stewart was indicted in 2002; her trial did not begin until mid-2004 and took about eight months; after that, they dawdled for over a year before finally imposing sentence in October 2006; now, a decade after the conduct, seven years after arrest, four years after trial, and three years after sentence -- and mind you, she's been free on bail since 2002 -- the appeal has at long last been decided, and it has resulted in . . . a remand for further sentencing proceedings. And, after they someday occur, there will surely be another trip to the Second Circuit, and then an appeal to the Supreme Court. After that, the habeas corpus petitions start . . .

I will be at Ithaca College tomorrow night giving a talk on the state of the media. It's at 7:30 p.m. in Park Hall Auditorium. The event is open to the public, so I hope to see you there.

I voted for Obama, and I'm dead against "the cause." But we need smart opinion journalism, on both sides of the divide.

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No doubt it's a critical job -- Head of Stimulus Disbursement Promotion or some such. But it's unsustainable. By comparison, the jobs Obama's created in fictional congressional districts are a bargain. Clearly, he's better at community-organizing in non-existent communities. 

I’d like to add just one point about Reagan -- a familiar one, but one worth remaking now and then. It is frequently cited that Reagan liked to talk about an “Eleventh Commandment”: “Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican.” It should be cited at least half as frequently that the guy did what is rarely done: challenge an incumbent president of his own party, for the presidential nomination. So . . .

I am a National Review subscriber and would like to give gift subscriptions. As part of the webathon, you should have an associated online section that provides for giving NR gift subscriptions. It would be a double gift -- donate to NRO and provide a wonderful Christmas gift.

You can donate to NRO here. You can order a gift subscription or two or more here.

The rise in the gold price above $1,100 per ounce last week is a pretty good indicator that something has changed. For 18 months, the gold price had been in a trading range topping out around $1,000. It has now broken out decisively from that range. The opportunity for the world's central banks to change policy and affect the economic outcome has been lost. The world economy is now locked on to an undeviating track towards another train wreck...

As was demonstrated by the housing bubble of 2004-06, modest rises in interest rates are not sufficient to stop a bubble once it is well under way. Given the Fed's recent track record, it is most unlikely that we will get any more than modest and very reluctant interest-rate rises. Even if inflation is moving at a brisk pace by the latter part of next year, the price rises will be explained away, or possibly massaged out of the figures as happened in the early part of 2008. Hence the bubble will inexorably move to its denouement, at which point gold will probably be north of $3,000 an ounce and oil well north of $150 per barrel. Even though there will be no supply/demand reason why oil should get to those levels, and gold has almost no genuine demand at all, the weight of money behind those commodities in a speculative situation will push their prices inexorably upwards, beyond all reason until something intervenes to stop it.

At some point, probably before the end of 2010, the bubble will burst. The deflationary effect on the U.S. economy of $150 plus oil will overwhelm the modest forces of genuine economic expansion. The Treasury bond market will collapse, overwhelmed by the weight of deficit financing. Once again, the banking system will be in deep trouble. The industrial sector, beyond the largest and most liquid companies and the extractive industries, will in any case have remained in recession - it is notable that, in spite of the Fed's frenzy of activity, bank lending has fallen $600 billion in the last year. Unemployment, which will probably enter the second downturn at around current levels, will spike further upwards. The dollar will probably not collapse, but only because it will have been declining inexorably in the intervening year, to give a euro value of $2 and a yen value of 60 to 65 yen to the dollar...

The danger in those years will be that Ben Bernanke will attempt yet again to refloat the U.S. economy through inflation, buying government debt to fund the deficit and forcing short term rates well below the inflation rate. This danger is exacerbated by the Obama administration's insouciance about deficits. Ben Bernanke on his own (and his predecessor Alan Greenspan) bears a large share of responsibility for the 2008 crash, but the Bernanke/Obama combination is potentially even more dangerous. If expansionary monetary and fiscal policies are pursued regardless of market signals, the U.S. will head towards Weimar-style trillion-percent inflation. That would make the government's position easier as its mountain of Treasury debt became worthless, but devastate everybody else's savings and impoverish the American people as Weimar impoverished 1920s Germany. 

As I said, a train wreck. Probability of arrival: close to 100%. Time of arrival: around the end of 2010, or possibly a bit earlier. And at this stage, there's very little anyone can do about it; the definitive rise of gold above $1,000 marked the point of no return.

Those are just the edited highlights but, if Martin is right, we are, indeed, all doomed.

We call upon the World’s leaders to resist calls for green protectionism. Trade enables specialisation, which results in the development of new technologies and leads to the creation of wealth. In the past two decades, trade has enabled over a billion people to escape poverty. Trade is the most powerful weapon in humanity’s armoury to fight poverty and environmental ills, including climate change. Trade restrictions are not desirable, nor are they an effective means of addressing climate change.

If you agree with this in whole or in part, go ahead and sign it here. As any number of green NGOs have shown, this sort of thing weighs heavily with the international bureaucrats who increasingly control treaty-making.

I am a cardiologist (26 years) -- love Critical Condition.

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From last night's Fox News All-Stars.

On President Obama’s trip to Asia:

Well, that was definitely a world-class bow in Tokyo. [Obama's] apologists will say it was protocol or politeness, but I have looked at pictures of other presidents, vice presidents, and others, and they haven't gone halfway to the emperor's toes on a bow.

I have seen pictures of MacArthur with Hirohito and he never bowed -- and MacArthur wasn't even a president, although at times he thought he was.

But there was a second incident that I found interesting, when the president declared himself the First Pacific President. That's because, presumably, he grew up and spent some of his childhood in Hawaii, and in Indonesia, and his mom took him on a visit to Japan, although all he remembers of that, as he says, was the ice cream.

The First Pacific President?

Well, Teddy Roosevelt -- he built the Panama Canal in order to make the United States a Pacific power and he did. William Howard Taft, his successor, was the governor of the Philippines. And John Kennedy and George Bush Sr. were in the Pacific [theater] in the Second World War and spent some time in the Pacific Ocean itself -- Bush, after having been shot down from his airplane; and Kennedy, after having his ship cut in half by a Japanese patrol boat.

So these people actually spend time in the Pacific, but in Obama's mind, it doesn't in any way match the experience of the baby Jesus -- excuse me, the baby Obama -- growing up on some Pacific island.

… The narcissism of the man is rather unbounded.

On the decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a New York civilian court:

What is so hard to understand is Holder's argument, the logic of his argument.

Now, I want to look only at a single aspect of it. … If [Holder] opposed the military commissions on principle, you could say his decision on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was wrong, but at least it was logical.

But he doesn't. On the day he sent KSM to a civilian trial in New York, he announced he would send five of the miscreants who attacked the Cole, a warship, to a military trial in Guantanamo or perhaps elsewhere.

Now, what is the logic here? Holder was asked about this, and to the extent that he was coherent, which is only to a small extent, he said: Well, if you attack a civilian target, as in 9/11, then you go to a civilian court; a military target like the Cole, to a military [court].

First of all, the Pentagon was hit on 9/11, so it wasn't exclusively a civilian attack. But perhaps Holder forgot about that.

But secondly, even if [9/11] were exclusively an attack on civilians -- which is a worse act of war criminality, attacking defenseless civilians or attacking a military target, like a warship? We have attacked warships in our history, Japan and Germany in the Second World War and elsewhere. That is an accepted act of war.

Why does a person [like] Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who attacked civilians -- the more obvious and egregious war crime -- get the extra protections, the extra constitutional niceties that you get in a civilian courtroom, as opposed to someone who attacks a military target? The logic here is perverse.

And the incentive is [perverse]: If you are a terrorist overseas thinking -- am I going to attack a well-protected military installation? [No,] I will hit a civilian [target]. I will be in a cozy cell with a lawyer, Miranda rights and perhaps even a blog. Why wouldn't I attack innocent civilians?

On whether, if by technicality or hung jury, one of these cases went the other way, they would be let free:

They will be rearrested in the courtroom. A second charge will be filed, and it will be endless. And in the end, if they are acquitted on all charges endlessly, they will end up in indefinite detention.

We will not let them out. Everyone knows that. That's what makes it such a farce.

On that, note that Holder plays the same game -- he (and Obama) claimed that they were simply complying with court orders. As I've explained a few times, Obama and Holder have the power under the Freedom of Information Act to order disclosure, but (a) they want disclosure and (b) such an order would make their base go nuts. So, Obama passes the buck to Holder, and Holder passes the buck to the courts -- but it shouldn't obscure that the decision is Obama's. He's now playing out the string on the photos: he reversed Holder and had DOJ appeal the disclosure order to the Supreme Court; he's figuring the Supremes will uphold the disclosure order and then he can have DOJ publicize the photos under the fig-leaf that the Court has spoken. But it's a game -- the justices are in this position only because Obama is trying to be unaccountable.

Secondly, as I recount in Willful Blindness (about to be released in paperback), the decision to indict Omar Abdel Rahman (the Blind Sheikh) was a controversial one, involving not only DOJ but State, the National Security Council, the Intelligence Community, etc. Attorney General Reno was forcefully in favor of indictment, others were either neutral or opposed but not strongly so. (Not indicting the Sheikh would have created a separate set of serious issues.) But it was not the AG's decision alone. Whenever a decision like this implicates the interests of multiple executive branch agencies, they are all consulted. But if there is strong disagreement, the president resolves the disagreement; and if it's a national security matter, the AG does not pull the trigger and indict if the president does not want that to happen -- AG Reno would never have given us the green-light to go ahead unless President Clinton was on board.

In my mind, it is really foolish cowardice on President Obama's part to pretend AG Holder made this call alone. Obama owns the decision whether he owns up to it or not, so he might as well get out there and own it.

They’re the perfect Christmas gifts: NR’s acclaimed “Classic Bedtime Stories” Treasuries. Only $39.95 for the hardcover set, which includes shipping. We’ll even send them as a gift for with a nice personalized note included. Read all about them and order here.

During this fundraising drive I am sitting in Pakistan. Last year at this time I was in Madagascar. I travel a lot and am so happy to have NRO along with me to counter the endless Obamathon of CNN International.

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During this fundraising drive I am sitting in Pakistan. Last year at this time I was in Madagascar. I travel a lot and am so happy to have NRO along with me to counter the endless Obamathon of CNN International.

Contribute to NRO here.

You may recall that when Kate O'Beirne's Women Who Make the World Worse was released, something similar happened:

Yes, they tried a little harder with Kate. At least someone tried to make it look like a book cover.

As usual, Andy McCarthy hits it out of the park with his column today on NRO, "Justice Delayed."

I would add only one point: Part of the delay in trying KSM was in fact by choice, and it was a wise choice. Unlike the Obama administration, our first priority in the Bush administration was not putting KSM on trial -- it was getting intelligence from KSM so we could stop follow-on attacks and save lives.

Remember what KSM said after his capture: He would tell us everything when he got to New York for his trial. We told him: You’re not going to New York. First, you’re going to spend a little time talking to the CIA. And under CIA questioning, KSM -- together with other CIA detainees -- gave us vital intelligence that helped stop a number of attacks, including a plot to fly an airplane into the Library Tower in Los Angeles; a plot to fly airplanes in the Heathrow Airport and buildings in downtown London; a plot to blow up our consulate in Karachi; a plot to blow up our Marine camp in Djibouti; and many others. His interrogation produced thousands of intelligence reports, and helped us wrap up the two main terrorist networks still at large at the time of his capture: the remaining members of the KSM network that had planned the 9/11 attacks, and the key members of the Hambali network that was working with al-Qaeda on follow-on attacks.

Once we had exhausted KSM as an intelligence source, President Bush transferred him and 13 other detainees from CIA custody to Guantanamo Bay so that they could face justice. If it had not been for the legal obstacles Andy cites, their trials would have begun soon thereafter.

And had it not been for the Obama administration, KSM and his partners would now be sitting on death row. KSM and his co-conspirators offered to plead guilty once their military commissions got underway and proceed straight to execution -- until the Obama administration suspended the proceedings. This means that, with his decision to give KSM a civilian trial, Eric Holder effectively rejected KSM’s guilty plea, and told him, “No, Mr. Mohammed, first let us give you that stage you wanted in New York to rally jihadists to kill Americans and incite new attacks.”

That decision is what will lead to years of delay -- and could lead to new terrorist attacks.

It is telling that Eric Holder considers the three years KSM spent being questioned by the CIA as a “years of delay.” To the contrary, the delay in KSM’s prosecution saved lives.

If we had followed the Obama/Holder model, and sent KSM to New York to see his lawyer, there would likely be craters in the ground in Los Angeles, London, and where our consulate in Karachi and our Marine camp in Dijbouti once stood.

-- Marc Thiessen’s new book, Courting Disaster: How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack, will be published by Regnery in January 2010.

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*** Would Reagan Have Passed Today’s Conservative Litmus Test? Evan Thomas’ piece on Palin in the latest issue of Newsweek raises this provocative question, especially for conservatives who are targeting Charlie Crist in Florida, Bob Bennett in Utah, and even Lindsey Graham in South Carolina: Would Ronald Reagan -- just looking at his record as president -- be a target for conservatives today? After all, he raised taxes; his policies increased the size of the deficit; he reached out, through diplomatic channels, to Russia to end the Cold War; he had a pragmatist like James Baker serve as his chief of staff; and he picked the moderate George H.W. Bush as his running mate.

This has been chewed on a lot over the years (including by yours truly), so the notion that it's a "provocative question" only makes sense to those who are coming very late to the party. Still, it's a subject worth discussing.

But can I deflate the question's significance just a bit? At least when liberals raise this argument, the intent seems to be to demonstrate how the Right has been hijacked by crazy wingnuts. There's a special glee that comes with pointing out that Reagan wasn't the stalwart some on the Right claim he was.

But isn't this just a bit of a parlor game? JFK is worshipped by liberals arguably more than Reagan is by conservatives. But he was a hawkish, tax-cutting, anti-Communist, American exceptionalist who didn't care all that much about civil rights. Someone holding Kennedy's views in a Democratic primary would be running to Joe Lieberman's right. The Democrats look awfully wingnutty against the JFK standard.

The Jimmy Carter in 1976, what with all his God-talk and odes to "ethnic purity" wouldn't do so hot either. Someone holding Truman's views would do even worse. Someone holding FDR's views, at least on domestic issues, would do pretty well. Heck, that candidate won in 2008. But someone holding Woodrow Wilson's views would probably become a target of the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Presidents are important landmarks on history's road and they tell us a great deal. Pundits use them to show how far we've traveled, and that's fine. But the landmarks also illuminate how much the terrain has changed. Ronald Reagan was a product of his times, and he dealt with the challenges that presented themselves then. If Reagan were running for office today, he wouldn't be talking about the Soviet menace, now would he? He'd be focusing on our problems today and learning from the lessons of yesterday, just like any good politician.

More than 15 million taxpayers may owe the government $250 or more because of how the IRS last spring set up President Barack Obama's tax break that was designed to help consumers spend the U.S. economy out of recession. Individuals with more than one job and married couples in which both spouses work may have to repay the government $400, either through a smaller tax refund or a larger tax bill.

On top of that, roughly "65,000 taxpayers could technically face penalties for underpaying their taxes in 2009."

I am sure that these taxpayers will be grateful to Mr. Obama for his super-sloppy implementation of his tax credit (which was a bad idea to begin with).

Sorting through the mail on “upstate New York,” I thought I’d offer you this, plopped in the middle of a very learned little essay on New York geography: Buffalo is “the home of chicken wings. Note, not Buffalo wings, chicken wings. Buffalo wings do not exist. If you’re from Buffalo, you don’t call them that. If you’re not, you don’t know how to make them.”

Okay!

Also, a reader has written to object to my describing New York as “a very big state.” He wrote from Dyess AFB, Texas.

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What I'm wondering, having laid out the case against Holder at great length prior to his Judiciary Committee hearing and eventual lop-sided confirmation (75-21, 3 not voting), is when we're going to hear something from the Republicans who voted in favor of making him Attorney General. Besides the since-switched Arlen Specter, here's that list:

Alexander (Tennessee)

Bennett (Utah)

Bond (Missouri)

Chambliss (Georgia)

Collins (Maine)

Corker (Tennessee)

Graham (South Carolina)

Grassley (Iowa)

Gregg (New Hampshire)

Hatch (Utah)

Isakson (Georgia)

Kyl (Arizona)

Lugar (Indiana)

McCain (Arizona)

Mukowski (Arkansas)

Sessions (Alabama)

Snowe (Maine)

Voinovich (Ohio)

In recent weeks, I’ve been writing about this term “teabagger” and what to do about it. In fact, it is the subject of my piece in the next National Review (which will be available in digital form on Friday). Today, a reader wrote to highlight this article, which tells us that “unfriend” is the Word of the Year. Says who? Says the New Oxford Dictionary. But my reader wanted us to know: “Teabagger” was a finalist. Kind of glad it didn’t win.

There is no proper language item in today’s Impromptus, but I do reflect a bit on this word “upstate,” as in New York. To many people -- City dwellers -- “upstate” means even a foot or two beyond urban limits. Wherever you see non-City: There is upstate. This has occasioned a fair amount of mail, including, “Jay, when I was a child growing up in Plattsburgh, N.Y., our family would drive 250 miles due south to visit relatives in Newburgh, in a mysteriously named region called ‘upstate New York.’ This of course confused me.” I would imagine.

P.S. Thanks to all who are giving to NRO in this webathon -- how gratifying, and encouraging. Thanks again.

Perhaps I've missed it, but doesn't David McCollough deserve a mention as an important - and prolific - writer of American history? I've thoroughly enjoyed several of his books without sensing a political bias of any kind.

Yep. Again, I don't think McCullough is conservative in any NR sense. But he's also responsible for the popular revival of two semi-forgotten presidents, Harry Truman and John Adams. Truman was a true anti-Communist cold warrior, also a Democrat who would not have meshed well with today's liberals; Adams was arguably our most conservative founding father. Whatever his own politics, McCullough has had a kind of conservative influence on our country's understanding of itself.

It may not constitute history from a conservative point of view but I have tried for many years to inspire children to read Churchill's "History of the English Speaking Peoples" as a good overview of an aspect of western civilization.

Good choice. A number of years ago, when we published a ranking of the best non-fiction books of the 20th century, Churchill topped the list (for his WW2 volumes). In fact, the list is a good guide for readers of quality nonfiction.

Also, another e-mailer says that Stephen Ambrose belongs in our discussion. Agreed. I wouldn't call him a conservative in the movement sense of the term; he's more of an Ike Republican. I recall his support of Colin Powell for president. More important than these distinctions, he's a high-quality historian of America.

Sarah Palin? Yes, I have my doubts. Doubts, I mean, that she'd be able to resist the temptation to "go native" once installed in D.C. Her main appeal for me in the '08 campaign was as evidence that the GOP still had a few functioning brain cells. They gave us G. H. W. Bush and Dan Quayle; they gave us Bob Dole and Jack Kemp; they gave us G. W. Bush and Cheney; then, for anyone who had not yet put his GOP registration card into the waste disposal unit, they gave us John McCain.

Then, after that dismal parade of world-savers, cock-eyed optimists, WASP ethnomasochists, and Senate seat-warmers, here came Calamity Jane from out West, six-shooters a-poppin'. Who wouldn't be bowled over? I still am. Good luck to her; and if she goes native in D.C., well, at least she'll have to go native. From being something else.

Thank you!

Just how big is the stimulus package? Well for one, it has doubled the size of the House of Representatives, according to recovery.gov, which says that funds were distributed to 440 congressional districts that do not exist.

According to data retrieved from recovery.gov, nearly $6.4 billion was used to “create or save” just under 30,000 jobs in these phantom congressional districts-almost $225,000 per job. The web site operates on an $84 million budget and is tasked with monitoring the distribution of the $787 billion stimulus package passed by Congress-which, for the record, counts 435 members-in early 2009.

The site’s monitors, however, are not too savvy about America’s political or geographic landscape. More than $2 million was given to the 99th District of North Dakota, a state which has only one congressional district. In order to qualify for 99 districts, North Dakota would have to have a population of about 60 million people, almost 24 million more people than California.

But even if it were true, it's still Obama's decision. When the commander-in-chief gives law enforcement the final authority over what to do with enemy combatants, he can't then claim that he's not responsible for the decision. This isn't just a "buck stops here" point, though that's part of it. The moment he made this the Justice Department's call rather than the Defense Department's he made it clear where he comes down on the question. It's good politics to claim that he's just letting the rule of law and the justice system work through the issues, but that's all it is, politics. And, as president, it's if he thought Holder was wrong, he would have both the power and the responsibility to overrule him. He doesn't want to overrule Holder because the two of them see eye-to-eye on these questions.

I almost didn't donate this year. Two kids applying to med school, a third a freshman in college, retirement not that far away. Then I thought: It's worth it; give anyway.

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I almost didn't donate this year. Two kids applying to med school, a third a freshman in college, retirement not that far away. Then I thought: It's worth it; give anyway.

Contribute to NRO here.

Last January, several Republican legal stars wrote a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee supporting Eric Holder's nomination to be attorney general. Now, in light of Holder's decision to grant 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed full American constitutional rights and try him in federal court in New York, some of those veteran lawyers are having second thoughts.

The January letter called Holder an "extraordinary lawyer" of "unfailing integrity" who is "superbly qualified" to lead the Justice Department and whose appointment as the first African-American attorney general "should be hailed as a milestone."  "From his experience Eric fully understands and appreciates the constant threat posed by al Qaeda and Islamic extremists," the GOP lawyers wrote. "[He] is the right man at the right time to protect our citizens in the critical years ahead."

The Khalid Sheikh Mohammed decision, in which Holder abandoned the carefully-constructed military tribunal system in favor of a risky prosecution in civilian court, troubles some of the Republicans who once supported Holder. "If the decision was his, and he made the decision and told the president, then I have some real qualms about my support for him," says Makan Delrahim, a former Justice Department official and former staff director of the Judiciary Committee. "I personally have a tough time knowing the rationale for this. We spent so much time making the military tribunals conform to constitutional standards to deal with exactly this type of situation."

Holder says the decision was indeed his.

Andy won't say it, but I will: Andy McCarthy was right. Andy McCarthy warned us. Andy McCarthy isn't blind.

Thank you for what you do for all of us.

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Since then, I've formed a friendship with George. A few years ago, I encouraged him to collect his various essays and reviews and publish them in a single volume. Now he has. It's called Reappraising the Right: The Past and Future of American Conservatism.

Today's podcast is with Nash. We discuss whether liberals were premature in their eager declarations of conservatism's death a year ago, why conservatism may be in a better position today than it was a generation ago, and why conservatives need to know their intellectual forefathers. Nash also offers a spirited interpretation of Herbert Hoover's conservatism.

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Love the work you do. One of the best sources for information you won't get from the MSM.

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Major Nidal Malik Hasan's military superiors repeatedly ignored or rebuffed his efforts to open criminal prosecutions of soldiers he claimed had confessed to "war crimes" during psychiatric counseling, according to investigative reports circulated among federal law enforcement officials.

On Nov. 4, the day after his last attempt to raise the issue, he took extra target practice at Stan's shooting range in nearby Florence, Texas and then closed a safe deposit box he had at a Bank of America branch in Killeen, according to the reports... Diane Wagner, Bank of America's senior vice president of media relations, said that her company does not "comment or discuss customer relationships".

Which evidently is more than you can say for Dr. Hasan.

Captain Surman told investigators that Hasan had formally contacted military prosecutors to report patients he was evaluating, according to people briefed on the exchange. She said Hasan signed his e-mails with "Praise Be to Allah." Legal analysts say psychiatrists are strictly bound by the rules of patient confidentiality except in cases where they might become aware of crimes about to be committed.

Imagine you're back from a tour in Iraq or Afghanistan. The Army assigns you a shrink who tries to convert you to Islam, and looks on his "counseling" sessions as war-crimes interrogations.

The U.S. military appears awfully close to having colluded in Major Hasan's abuse of his patients. But that's okay, it's not like they're Gitmo detainees or anything . . .

This year I saw my health insurance premium double from $500 to $1,000. My work has already announced that there will be no raises (for the second year), and our summer work has been seriously curtailed (severely cutting into my annual income). It isn't just those who have lost their jobs that have seen the impact of this disastrous economy. I'm donating to NR because NR is an essential voice for the intellectual argument for liberty and the market -- the surest guarantor of a reversal of these troubling economic trends. My donation is hence an investment in the victory of free market ideas . . . and I hope to see a return on my investment that far exceeds the small sum I'm contributing today!

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It's good American history, with good reviews on the Right and Left, and it's even in classrooms.

I'm apparently one of the few Americans who didn't think Borat was an especially funny film. Anyway, I bet the KNYS will enjoy greater-than-normal success because the movie was such a hit.

I realized how much I rely on you when the server was down during one of the presidential debates. You never know how much something means until it's not there. You keep me sane.

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Most of those who attended the event at the Museum of Science and Technology turned out to be members of the Communist Youth League, an official organization that grooms obedient students for future leadership posts.

Some Chinese bloggers whom the White House had tried to invite were barred from attending. Even then, the Chinese government took no chances, declining to broadcast the event live to a national audience -- or even mention it on the main evening newscast of state-run China Central Television.

Now get this:

The degree of control exercised over the most public event of Mr. Obama’s three-day stay in China suggests that Chinese leaders are less willing to make concessions to American demands for the arrangements of a presidential visit than they once were.

The White House spent weeks wrangling with Chinese authorities over who would be allowed to attend the Shanghai town hall meeting, including how much access the media would have and whether it would be broadcast live throughout the country. In the end Mr. Obama had little chance to promote a message to the broader Chinese public.

The event in some respects signaled a retreat from the reception given at least two earlier American presidents, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, both of whom asked for, and were granted, the opportunity to address the Chinese people and answer their questions in a live national broadcast.

A retreat, read: less influence than, Bill Clinton or George W. Bush -- both of whom got more from the Chinese in advance. So much for a new foreign policy where there is more respect for the United States.

He was asked one question by the Shanghai crowd, should Chinese citizens be allowed to Twitter freely.  He gave what the NYT describes as an "oblique" and "cautious answer," saying that critics in the United States make him better.

But, the NYT concludes: "Beijing vetoed the White House’s attempt to invite a group of popular bloggers, an audience component that administration officials hoped would make the session more authentic."

So, to sum up: Less influence than Bush and Clinton, "a retreat," "Beijing vetoed White House attempt." So far I'd say, China 1, U.S. 0.  How's that for resetting relations and better diplomacy?  

Might as well go down the line: Are we doing better with one single nation since President Obama came to office campaigning on and promising a better kind of respectful diplomacy with other nations? Nobody is happier in Latin America since President Obama came to power, except Hugo Chavez and the Castro brothers who have praised him. Iran has done nothing to show any leniency and, instead, has been given the green light to crush dissent and has not been dissuaded in its nuclear ambitions (the IAEA said yesterday Iran is as close as ever to developing a nuclear bomb, btw). Eastern Europe is "rethinking" its position relative to the U.S. according to Lech Walesa. Israel is no more the happier with the United States and feels no more the safer just now. And now we have China, kicking us around. I guess if you show softness, you will be treated as soft.

This kind of international public representation is what brought Jimmy Carter's presidency to a halt, Americans do not like to be kicked around -- and even if our leadership doesn't believe in a strong United States, our allies depend on it. Here's a question: In Iraq, we are about to redeploy troops, in Afghanistan, it's an even proposition that we may redeploy troops. Last week we took the worst terrorists out of our military system and granted them civil judicial respect: When we do leave Iraq, and if we do leave Afghanistan, do you think bin Laden or Ayman al-Zawahiri will view us as a weak or as a strong horse? Will they be curtailed in their future plans for us or emboldened? And what, right now, do you think the Iranians think about U.S. power and the willingness to deploy it in order to stop them?

 -- Seth Leibsohn is a fellow of the Claremont Institute.

I treasure this resource. It's a daily read. Keep up the good fight!

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Another way of looking at the problem is not to consider the author but rather the form. Popular works of narrative history are often conservative, at least in the small-c sense of the word. Many academics despise them: They hate their popularity among the hoi polloi, they hate their refusal to invoke critical race theory and other ivory-tower obsessions, they hate their jargon-free readability, etc. Jealousy is at work in this assessment, but so is ideology. These books aim for large audiences of Americans who want to learn more about their country's past and its traditions (often because their own classroom education left too many gaps in their knowledge). In other words, this is a market of readers who broadly admire the United States. They are not uncritical, but neither are they hostile. They express their patriotism through their book-buying choices. Smart and successful historians don't insult them.

One book that's selling well right now (according to a quick look at the NYT best-seller list) is D-Day: The Battle for Normandy, by Anthony Beevor. I haven't read it. I know almost nothing about Beevor. But I suspect that this book is a well-written and fundamentally reliable guide to one of the great events of the 20th century. Left-wing historians just don't write books on this topic, at least not books that sell enough copies to make the best-seller list. Liberals (as opposed to leftists) can break through, but their mission is not subversive: Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin is written by a liberal who admires Lincoln. This is the very essence of small-c conservatism.

There are exceptions that prove the rule: Howard Zinn, an America-bashing historian whose books have sold well, in large part because they're heavily assigned in college courses. Also, narrative histories on certain recent subjects, such as the 1960s or the New Deal, should be handled with care.

And now, just for fun, a few additional names of historians not menitoned by Jonah who are at least right of center (or at least seem to be): Jacques Barzun, Michael Knox Beran, Adrian Goldsworthy, Allen Guelzo, Arthur Herman, Paul Kengor, Walter McDougal, Amity Shlaes, and Jay Winik.

Oh, and since we're on the general topic, Burt Folsom's excellent book New Deal or Raw Deal? is out in paperback today.

Here's a conjunction worth savoring: Media Matters and [as it proclaims] "The power of media to elevate the political discourse." Feeling a bit sea-sick? Paul Krugman will increase the malaise. "Until now," he writes in his New York Times blog, "it really has seemed as if there was nothing, nothing at all, that someone on the right could say and do that would make them unacceptable in polite company. Now it at least seems that there is a line somewhere." For those of you who wonder what has happened to the public's sense of irony, I note further that Krugman calls his blog "The Conscience of a Liberal." … I'd like to pause to consider Krugman's invocation of "polite company." When it first reported on Dobbs' departure from CNN Nov. 11, The New York Times described Dobbs as "an outlier at CNN, which has sought to position itself as a middle ground of sorts in the fractious cable news arena."

Elevating political discourse. Drawing a line in the sand. Polite company. A middle ground. Get it? If you're Media Matters, CNN or The New York Times, you are in the happy position of proposing that what you espouse is elevating, middle-of-the-road, non-fractious opinion that is acceptable to "polite company," i.e., you and your friends.

But according to what dispensation are entities like The New York Times and Media Matters, individuals like Burns and Krugman, endowed with that coveted imprimatur? Who says that they get to determine what is acceptable and unacceptable to polite company? That they get to stake out what counts as "the middle ground"? To decide what "elevates" and what is merely ideological pandering? ... [Like Dobbs,] Krugman and his confreres also have strong opinions. But they arrogate to themselves alone the privilege of deciding whose opinions count as part of the "middle ground" that is acceptable to "polite company." The opinions of people like Dobbs, or the millions who watch Fox News instead of CNN, do not pass muster. Why?

The English critic William Hazlitt once spoke disparagingly of "common place critics" who pretend to put themselves "in the middle, between the extremes of right and wrong." Something similar could be said of the rancid, illiberal liberalism of commentators like Krugman and Burns. They look upon their own opinions less as opinions than as universally applicable observations that reflect the state of nature. Their opinions are just what any enlightened, virtuous member of "polite" society believes. Only those who disagree with them have "fractious," line-crossing opinions unacceptable to such polite company as represented by Krugman, The New York Times and Media Matters. Here's what's really at stake in the controversy of Dobbs and CNN. It's not only Dobbs who's been rusticated: It's also the robust liberalism that thrived on disagreement, argument and polemic.