Black or White

In the Wall Street Journal today is an excellent piece describing the differences between the dissenting and majority views on the Supreme Court’s recent ruling on free speech and corporations.

Many have seen the news accounts of President Obama railing against this ruling in his State of the Union address last month — and Justice Alito mouthing quietly “not true” regarding the President’s statement (which indeed turned out to be not true when facts were checked).

What I thought was interesting below was the point that this ruling points out the stark differences between right and left on this issue. In particular that the left sees corporations as uniformly bad in their actions and their intent. In other words, for them regulating, controlling, and punishing private enterprise and its leaders is a black and white issue: any action taken against them is uniformly righteous and done solely for the “public good”.

Here’s what I wish: that the left would have a similar black and white attitude toward what is truly a uniformly  bad — and mortally threatening — menace against the “public good”. Of what am I thinking? Terrorists and their supporters world-wide — Islamic and otherwise. Why can’t the President, the Democrats, and the left generally treat them as they seem perfectly able to treat corporations and private enterprise, entrepreneurs and successful people — as nothing but a public enemy. An enemy which must be defeated at any cost.

I assume the left wages this war against private enterprise because they want to win. To win and “change” how America works — and have control over how the spoils are distributed. Hey, I can’t begrudge that they are indeed playing to win and if they believe in the “change” they espouse then playing to win is the only way to go. No half way. No shades of gray or hesitation. Play to win so you can dictate the rules and control the new order once you’ve won.

We need this exact same attitude about Terrorism and the threats we face from it. It is an existential threat to our nation and our freedom. We need to  be black and white about it.

Just as during World War II when we went all out, sacrificed hundreds of thousands of American lives (and were poised to possibly lose 500,000 to 1 million more in 1945-1947 if we had to invade and conquer Japan) in order to win the war and bring about the peace. We kept State Secrets to protect our interest and our plans. We took prisoners, interrogated them harshly and did things under normal circumstances we frown upon and refrain from. But there could be No half way. No shades fo gray. Victory was the sole aim.

Just as we did in the Civil War. Hundreds of thousands perished. Lincoln felt the Union was of supreme importance and had to be preserved at any cost. He suspended Habeas Corpus rights. We took prisoners, interrogated them harshly, treated them as the enemy (even though they were our brothers). He went for total victory. No half way. No shades of gray.

Just as the patriots and the Continental Army under General Washington did during the Revolution. They went all out and were willing to die for their cause. They were fighting their mother country and its king and against a way of life that they had known for generations. But their could be No half way. No shades of gray. They felt their cause was just and with victory would be a better day and a brigther future.

When our nation has been black or white about an issue and done what it takes to achieve victory we’ve been successful.

Today the left has the wrong enemy in their cross-hairs. Right tactics, just wrong enemy.

The Scalia v. Stevens Smackdown 

Nothing—not even George W. Bush—has sent liberaldom screaming into the streets more than the Supreme Court’s recent 5-4 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. The Court’s ruling that corporations have a free-speech right to express opinions about politicians running for office really let the furies out. President Obama’s in-their-face criticism of the Supreme Court over Citizens United at his State of the Union speech got pundits on every blogger barstool chattering about the propriety of this public smackdown.

 That’s nothing compared to how the Supremes smack each other inside their public decisions.

 Justice John Paul Stevens dismissed the majority’s opinion, written by Anthony Kennedy, as lacking “a scintilla of evidence” for its argument and making “only a perfunctory attempt” to root its reasons in the First Amendment views of the Constitution’s Framers.

 Justice Antonin Scalia then wrote a majority concurrence solely so that he could go mano a mano with Justice Stevens. A mere three sentences in, he unloads: “The dissent attempts this demonstration, however, in splendid isolation from the text of the First Amendment.”

 While the commentary on Citizens United rightly emphasized First Amendment law, the scrum inside the decision between Justices Stevens and Scalia, over the status of corporations in America, deserves more attention than it got.

 Their dispute, and especially Justice Stevens’s view of corporations, reveals a lot about why Mr. Obama and liberalism’s left wing went nuts. It isn’t just corporate political advertising that’s anathema. Corporations themselves are anathema.

 In his State of the Union swipe, Mr. Obama said the Citizens United decision would “open the floodgates for special interests.” The “special interests,” of course, is Democode for corporate interests. This week we learned Mr. Obama will try to convey his pro-business sentiments Feb. 24 to the Business Roundtable. Don’t buy it.

 Justice Stevens offered the historic and psychological basis for this foundational antipathy.

 “Thomas Jefferson,” he notes, “famously fretted that corporations would subvert the Republic.” A citation quoted by the justice notes that “the word ‘soulless’ constantly recurs in debates over corporations”; and “corporations, it was feared, could concentrate the worst urges of whole groups of men.”

 But here’s the public-philosophy belief that flows from this view: “The Framers thus took it as a given,” in Justice Stevens’s opinion, “that corporations could be comprehensively regulated (my emphasis) in the service of the public welfare.”

 In short, private corporations have not much, if anything, to do with the public good.

 In his crack-back concurrence, Justice Scalia ridicules “the corporation-hating quotations the dissent has dredged up.” He notes that most corporations back then had “state-granted monopoly privileges” (sort of like Fannie and Freddie today—columnist’s footnote) and that modern corporations without these state privileges “would probably have been favored by most of our enterprising Founders—excluding, perhaps, Thomas Jefferson and others favoring perpetuation of an agrarian society.”

 He ends with a conservative belief: “To exclude or impede corporate speech is to muzzle the principal agents of the modern free economy.”

 America’s Democrats and Republicans, crudely defined, are with this presidency and this Congress living today on opposite sides of a moon that they both call the United States.

 In the universe inhabited by Justice Stevens and President Obama, corporations—the private sector—are a suspect abstraction, ever tending toward “the worst urges” which have to be “comprehensively regulated.” The saints regulate the sinners.

 If you think this way, what one does to the private sector, such as the proposed $90 billion bank tax, can never be wrong in any serious way, so long as the rationale offered is the “public good.” Private-sector players are seen as barely more than paid galley slaves on the ship of state. So it is with the health-care bill’s mammoth, comprehensive regulation of American medicine and insurance.

 Mr. Obama seems genuinely perplexed that the opposition can’t just, you know, sign onto it. What’s their problem?

 Evidently, the voters of Massachusetts have a problem with that and more.

 In the past year, Mr. Obama and the Democratic Congress passed a $787 billion stimulus, seized banks and the auto industry, embarked on a $1 trillion reorganization of the private health-care system, and passed a fiscal 2010 budget that put spending as a percentage of GDP at 24.1%. These are very large claims for the public good.

 This public-private tension is an ancient and never-ending debate in the U.S. But what we are seeing this year, in Massachusetts and elsewhere, is American voters arriving at a tipping point over the scale and role of government. Most Americans still go to work each day inside a private economy organized around tens of thousands of corporations. Their basic view of the world and that found inside Justice Stevens’s dissent and this White House are out of sync.

 

Folly

Barbara Tuchman, a noted historian and wonderful writer, defines “folly” in the context of governments and societies as: “a policy pursued despite contemporary arguments to the contrary.”

Charles Krauthammer, writer for the Washington Post aligned this definition exactly with the Obama Administration’s approach to terrorism.

In his piece he states this telling insight: “The logic [of the Obama administration] is perverse. If we find Abdulmutallab in an al-Qaida training camp in Yemen, where he is merely preparing for a terror attack, we snuff him out with a Predator — no judge, no jury, no qualms. But if we catch him in the United States in the very act of mass murder, he instantly acquires protection not just from execution by drone but even from interrogation.”

Read the entire piece here. Folly is the only word I can think of to describe what’s going on.

 

Keep your underwear on!

Alan Dershowitz is not someone I often agree with but these are good and reasonable ideas.

And even better — I read it on the Huffington Post! Wow, they have some crazy ideas on there but regardless of the company he’s keeping, a rave for the professor is deserved!

Will The Next “Underwear Bomber” Succeed?

Alan Dershowitz, Lawyer and author

Posted: January 5, 2010 01:26 PM

My dire New Year prediction is that Islamic terrorists may well succeed this year in blowing up a civilian airliner. They have already twice proved that suicide bombers can get through security. And those are only the successful security bypasses that we know about. Who knows how many other potential terrorists, who have been tasked to test our system, have made it through. For all we know, the Christmas Day “failure” was also a test, at least in part — a test that included the potential for catastrophic success, but a test designed to probe weaknesses in our airline security system. And only 10 days later, another person got past security at Newark Airport and was never found. Who knows how many other people have simply managed to walk around the metal detectors or through the security exit.

I myself saw a man run pass security at Newark Airport several years ago, and when I notified security, their response was to search my briefcase and nearly make me miss my flight. There was no search for the security evader and no shutdown of the concourse.

Security at airports in many parts of the world is a cruel joke. Worse, it is an invitation to terrorism. In many international airports, security is no better than in the least secure country from which any flier begins his flight. Once in the secure area of some airports, there are no further checks when boarding a second flight. There must be security checks at every gate, not merely at the entrance to the general boarding area. Otherwise, passengers whose flights begin at low security airports can board planes without going through reasonable security.

Nor have we learned enough from the near successes of the shoe and underwear bombers. In both cases, we should have acted as if they had succeeded. The only reason they did not had absolutely nothing to do with our security, but rather with factors over which they have complete control, namely improving the effectiveness of their explosive triggers.

Imagine what the reaction would have been if hundreds of Detroit-bound passengers had been murdered! That is what the reaction should now be to this near-catastrophe.

We must adopt a multi-tiered approach to airline security. Frequent fliers who pose no security threat should be eligible for a non-transferable telemetric security card that is keyed into their retina for near foolproof identification. They could quickly pass through metal and explosive detection. Other fliers can opt for increased security or increased privacy. Those who opt for increased security would be subjected to intrusive scanning, without a metal box protecting their private parts. After all, it was the private parts that were the location of the most recent explosives.

If you are too prudish to have your private parts scanned, then opt for privacy. In that case, you have to come to airport three hours early and be subjected to a thorough external pat down and a lengthy sit-down interview.

The time has come to take airline security seriously. (We must also upgrade security in railroad and bus terminals, but Al Qaeda’s obsession with airlines should influence our priorities.) Those civil libertarians who claim that increasing security will not work are simply lying. It will work (though not perfectly) and it will also diminish privacy and civil liberties (though not significantly). Life is composed of tradeoffs. Those civil libertarians who deny that there are tradeoffs are serving neither the interests of civil liberties nor of truth. Among the most important civil liberty is our ability to travel without excessive fear of terrorism, and without excessive intrusion into our privacy.

We must increase the quality and training of the security personnel at the airports. It should become a job for retired and experienced law enforcement officials. It should pay well and it should be subject to rigorous testing. Security “testers” should be using every available tactic to try to evade security. Those in charge of protecting us should be graded by their ability to spot terrorist threats.

There must be more searching interviews of travelers who do not opt for the security card or the scanning. There is nothing wrong with profiling, so long as it does not lump together all members of a particular race, religion or ethnicity. Profiling, based on a wide variety of characteristics that are directly associated with the risk of terrorism, is a good thing. So is “negative profiling” — that is, excluding certain categories of travelers from super-scrutiny based on their obvious non-involvement in terrorism.

Finally, we must have air marshals on every flight. This will be expensive, but nobody ever said that safe travel coupled with reasonable privacy would be cheap.

We will implement all of these proposals — and more intrusive ones — as soon as the first plane is blown out of the sky and hundreds of innocent travelers murdered. Why not do it now before this preventable tragedy occurs?

 

Be Like Franklin

Last week President Obama made an important speech at West Point to announce his decision to send 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan. Much of his speech can be applauded for making the case that the fight against terrorism is not over and will require additional investment of our resources and the skill and blood of our armed forces to root out and defeat terrorists and the organizations that support this evil ideology. He emphasized that this war is not over and additional sacrifices are needed from our nation.

I really would have liked, though, if he would have made a more personal plea to the citizens of the United States and more clearly identified this as a severe test for our nation. A test that will not be easily passed and that we should bring the gravity of this test and its importance to the future our of nation to the front of our minds. While he showed by his decision that he’s serious about the test — by committing additional soldiers to the effort, which is a decision I am confident the President did not take lightly or miss the potential impact it will have in terms of costing American service men and women their lives — a call to each of us to reflect upon this sacrifice was sorely lacking.

I really wish he’d be more like Franklin … Franklin D. Roosevelt.

On June 6, 1945 President Roosevelt made one of the most famous speeches in American history. This was the start of the D-Day invasion of continental Europe and the great push to defeat the Nazis. He used a prayer as the central device of his speech to bring the minds of all Americans listening to the speech or who would read about later into sharp focus upon the seriousness of the situation facing our troops, and our allies, on the beaches of Normandy that day. Calling upon the nation to pray made it clear that this was no ordinary battle, even in the midst of a war that had already wrought unimaginable destruction and cost millions of lives and casualties.

President Obama could have done something similar last week. He missed an opportunity to use the “pulpit” from which all Presidents can uniquely communicate with the nation to ask the country to rally behind the troops and rally behind our cause. If he truly believes — which he must based on his decision and his words — that the cause behind his decision to commit troops is just, he could reconnect all of us as citizens to this cause. This is a connection I fear we have lost since September 11, 2001.

Here is President Roosevelt’s speech. It is eloquent and inspiring. I hope to hear a similar one from President Obama some day.

Franklin Roosevelt’s D-Day Prayer

June 6, 1944

My fellow Americans: Last night, when I spoke with you about the fall of Rome, I knew at that moment that troops of the United States and our allies were crossing the Channel in another and greater operation. It has come to pass with success thus far.

And so, in this poignant hour, I ask you to join with me in prayer:

Almighty God: Our sons, pride of our Nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion, and our civilization, and to set free a suffering humanity.

Lead them straight and true; give strength to their arms, stoutness to their hearts, steadfastness in their faith.

They will need Thy blessings. Their road will be long and hard. For the enemy is strong. He may hurl back our forces. Success may not come with rushing speed, but we shall return again and again; and we know that by Thy grace, and by the righteousness of our cause, our sons will triumph.

They will be sore tried, by night and by day, without rest-until the victory is won. The darkness will be rent by noise and flame. Men’s souls will be shaken with the violences of war.

For these men are lately drawn from the ways of peace. They fight not for the lust of conquest. They fight to end conquest. They fight to liberate. They fight to let justice arise, and tolerance and good will among all Thy people. They yearn but for the end of battle, for their return to the haven of home.

Some will never return. Embrace these, Father, and receive them, Thy heroic servants, into Thy kingdom.

And for us at home — fathers, mothers, children, wives, sisters, and brothers of brave men overseas — whose thoughts and prayers are ever with them–help us, Almighty God, to rededicate ourselves in renewed faith in Thee in this hour of great sacrifice.

Many people have urged that I call the Nation into a single day of special prayer. But because the road is long and the desire is great, I ask that our people devote themselves in a continuance of prayer. As we rise to each new day, and again when each day is spent, let words of prayer be on our lips, invoking Thy help to our efforts.

Give us strength, too — strength in our daily tasks, to redouble the contributions we make in the physical and the material support of our armed forces.

And let our hearts be stout, to wait out the long travail, to bear sorrows that may come, to impart our courage unto our sons wheresoever they may be.

And, O Lord, give us Faith. Give us Faith in Thee; Faith in our sons; Faith in each other; Faith in our united crusade. Let not the keenness of our spirit ever be dulled. Let not the impacts of temporary events, of temporal matters of but fleeting moment let not these deter us in our unconquerable purpose.

With Thy blessing, we shall prevail over the unholy forces of our enemy. Help us to conquer the apostles of greed and racial arrogancies. Lead us to the saving of our country, and with our sister Nations into a world unity that will spell a sure peace a peace invulnerable to the schemings of unworthy men. And a peace that will let all of men live in freedom, reaping the just rewards of their honest toil.

Thy will be done, Almighty God.

Amen.