It’s not how they should be done in any religion, but sadly that just isn’t the world we live in.

Much has been written in recent days on the pickle “South Park” creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone put themselves in by depicting (or rather not depicting by dressing him in a bear costume) the prophet Mohammed in an episode of their popular cartoon series. By now, the absurdly over-the-top reaction of a New York-based jihadist group has been too ubiquitously documented to require reprise here.

Much of what I’ve seen in commentaries adopts the same point of view as an editorial in today’s New York Post titled “Cowardly Central.” The bottom line of the editorial is summed up in a single, closing sentence: “And until the West decides—culturally and collectively—not to take it any longer, it’s only going to get worse.”

The general point is hard to dispute. Behind it is the attitude—in a very real sense it was a warning—that we Americans conveyed in the days and weeks after 9/11 by flying the American flag and displaying posters showing Old Glory and carrying the legend “These colors don’t run.”

But there is an important distinction between that situation and this one. It is one thing to stand tall and hang tough as a nation. It is quite another to do the same when you as an individual have been singled out and have a bounty on your head.

Before you exception me your exceptions, understand: I agree with the general tenet that if you give the islamist cretins an inch, they’ll take a mile, and that we should not tolerate their threats, which are little more in the end than thinly veiled excuses to kill more of us “non-believers.” They certainly needed no provocation to wantonly murder 3,000 innocent Americans on 9/11, and we now know from another headline this morning that they will keep on trying with every last breath in their being.

That eventuality—a day when the last of these monstrous miscreants takes his last breath—is something to be devoutly wished for. But until it arrives, we need to do what it takes to survive—both en masse and as individuals. If that means we resist depicting their prophet, so be it. It’s a small sacrifice to make it if means living to fight another day.

It is a truism of survival that under threatening circumstances it is important first and foremost to keep you head. At this critical juncture in the lives of Trey Parker and Matt Stone, let us all pray that they are able to keep theirs.

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But let’s take a step back, to that part about majorities objecting to their money being given to those with less of it. In order to believe that this procedure is justified, you need to believe one of the following: one, that it is a bad business, but it is less bad than the alternatives, which will be unbearable, like rioting, large numbers of people lingering on the margins of society and presenting a danger, beggars carpeting the streets, etc.—so, let’s resign ourselves to it, and make it as harmless as possible; two, that, in fact, the majority has not earned its wealth, which therefore results from some previous bias built into the system. Here is where liberalism tilts over into leftism, because your agenda then becomes twofold: not only to correct injustices, but to expose and attack that bias—something which can easily become more important than actually helping anyone. (It’s easy enough to see how sincere attempts to help individuals, which would involve studying their conditions and understanding how those conditions have been shaped, would lead to a deterministic view of those conditions.) The thing is, it is very difficult to be a committed, long term foot soldier in the War on Poverty if you believe the former—in fact, you must be either a very cynical or demoralized bureaucrat or a bit of a saint. All the energy will be on the side of those believing the latter, who can see themselves as crusaders, as opposed to merely mitigating a problem that will never be solved. There are many reasons why race has become so important to the left and an increasingly leftist Democrat Party, but one very important reason is that the indelible stain of racism on American society is enduring proof of the inherent bias of that society.

A genuinely courageous conservative politics would continually, insistently, obsessively, lay bare this liberal formula, but would also consistently juxtapose it with the worst possible alternatives, and hence explicitly entertain the possibility that yes, part of our political dialogue must concern when and how to take money from some and give it to others. We can then ask for clarity and transparency regarding how much, from whom is to be taken and to whom given. I think this approach is ultimately preferable to the conservative attempts to co-opt liberal sentiments, such as “Compassionate Conservatism,” the “Ownership Society,” various public-private joint initiatives, etc. I admit that part of me relishes the possible bluntness of discussions over how much this or that community must be bribed so as to appreciably lower the risk of rioting (the need to lower which itself being weighed against the distaste for using force to squash said riots), but I also believe that such bluntness and explicit condescension might do away with a lot of euphemisms and encourage a certain alertness on the part of the takers/givers, the taken from, and the recipients alike. But can we bear too much reality; could it be that we really need the euphemisms?

Ironically, the topic of rubber rooms was addressed on Glenn Beck’s program yesterday, where he recounted some of the many outrages of a system that refuses to suspend teachers who are awaiting disciplinary hearings for misconduct. In some cases, the waits are measured in years and one or two have dragged on for decades. All the while, teachers earn full pay, which translates to $70,000 or more, for “playing Scrabble, reading or surfing the Internet.”

The Post reports that Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the city’s teachers’ union, which has long backed the arrangement, have reached an agreement that will have the centers close this coming fall.

Currently, rubber rooms are the daily haunt of more than 600 teachers accused of misconduct ranging from educational incompetence to sexual abuse. At a time when New York State is grappling with a $9 billion budget shortfall, news of this spectacular bureaucratic waste is particularly galling.

Under the new arrangement, teachers accused of lesser charges will now report to Department of Education administrative offices or schools to perform clerical duties. In addition, the city will hire more arbitrators and set a strict time limit on the length of investigations in order clear up the logjam in disciplinary hearings.

Please update your bookmarks.  Authors please e-mail the Web Tsar for new passwords.

We are at the beginning of an election campaign like you’ve never seen before!

We are challenged to answer again the momentous questions our Founders raised when they launched mankind’s noblest experiment in human freedom. They made a fundamental choice and changed history for the better. Now it’s our high calling to make that choice: between managed scarcity, or solid growth … between living in dependency on government handouts, or taking responsibility for our lives … between confiscating the earnings of some and spreading them around, or securing everyone’s right to the rewards of their work … between bureaucratic central government, or self-government … between the European social welfare state or the American idea of free market democracy.

What kind of nation do we wish to be? What kind of society will we hand down to our children and future generations? In the coming watershed election, the nature of this unique and exceptional land is at stake. We will choose one of two different paths. And once we make that choice, there’s no going back.

Paul Ryan:  “Should America Bid Farewell to Exceptional Freedom?”

Bonus (still think I’m crazy?):

The Democratic leaders of Congress and in the White House hold a view they call “Progressivism.” Progressivism began in Wisconsin, where I come from. It came into our schools from European universities under the spell of intellectuals such as Hegel and Weber, and the German leader Bismarck. The best known Wisconsin Progressive was actually a Republican, Robert LaFollette.

Progressivism was a powerful strain in both political parties for many years. Theodore Roosevelt, a Republican, and Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat, both brought the Progressive movement to Washington.

Early Progressives wanted to empower and engage the people. They fought for populist reforms like initiative and referendum, recalls, judicial elections, the breakup of monopoly corporations, and the elimination of vote buying and urban patronage. But Progressivism turned away from popular control toward central government planning. It lost most Americans and consumed itself in paternalism, arrogance, and snobbish condescension. “Fighting Bob” LaFollette, Teddy Roosevelt, and Woodrow Wilson would have scorned the self-proclaimed “Progressives” of our day for handing out bailout checks to giant corporations, corrupting the Congress to purchase votes for government controlled health care, and funneling billions in Jobs Stimulus money to local politicians to pay for make-work patronage. That’s not “Progressivism,” that’s what real Progressives fought against!

Easeover is the Easter/Passover/Spring holiday that syncreticist mischlings like myself celebrate around this time of year.  Seems like a good time to attempt a Zombie Contentions resurrection, too.

The plan is to move this site to a new location, and a new web host, this Sunday.  I hope that after the move we’ll experience fewer slow-downs and service interruptions, and there are other potential advantages to new digs, but that’s mostly tech stuff – and you don’t have to bother your pretty little heads with such things.

I’ve been experimenting with new formats and other changes, but, for now, the new site will look darn near identical to this site, though you may have to re-adjust your browsers if you’ve previously customized ZC viewing options  for bleary, undead eyes.  (I’d bet that a few of you aren’t even aware that you can do that… click on View/Zoom or try Ctrl+ in Firefox or Internet Explorer.)  In future months, when you click on http://ckmac.com/thewholething/, in addition to finding a prominent link to http://zombiecontentions.com, you’ll also likely find the evidence of ongoing experimentation.  Feedback will be welcome, as always, and may be expressly solicited from time to time.

Now, about the Wall:  It’s nearing 5,000 comments, and moving them all over would present a particular challenge.  I’m thinking instead of creating a “Best of the Wall” page, collecting some of the best items from its ca. 6 months in existence, and starting off fresh at the New ZC.  If someone else wants to go through the 100 pages of Wall comments and pick out the best exchanges, images, videos, and links – lemme know and I’ll tell you how to do it relatively easily.

Authors:  I’ll be e-mailing you on the need to create new passwords for your accounts and on minor issues, but don’t worry your purty little rotting undead heads about that one either.  All of your work, including drafts, revisions, and images, will remain available at the current location indefinitely.  By the way, if anyone wants a file containing his or her posts, it’s easy to generate one, and it can quite possibly be imported into your own blog, comments and all.

Thanks to those who donated during that brief Winter fund drive, who made this move possible/justifiable.  For the rest of you, or for those of you who’d like to re-express your support for this (incredibly time-consuming and distracting, though quite rewarding, I hasten to add, in ways more meaningful than moolah) enterprise, you can click on down in the depths of the sidebar, and follow the instructions (or contact me directly if you don’t like these newfangled web-based money-sucking identity-stealing contraptions…).

What makes 1938 unique on such a list is our own absence from the critical scenes.  The effect in Giles MacDonogh’s month by month, sometimes day by day and hour by hour, chronicle of the year, is a portrait of American leadership traced out as though in a photographic negative.

The cloudy, black and gray surface reveals the following:  A world without American leadership is a world that can fall prey to the “gambles” of upstart second-raters and maniacs. A world without American leadership is a world in which secretive, shifting alliances, immoral deals, territorial larceny, and brute force lead, step by step, to chaos and conflagration. It’s a world in which everyone can choose to look the other way when a monster and his brood are appeased, and appeased again, at the expense of races, religions, and nations. It’s also a world in which anyone can get in on the action while the getting seems good, not daring to think that he might be next.

In other words, 1938 marks the last historical moment up to the present day during which other nations could pretend to solve matters of great importance without significant American involvement.  For nearly three more years, the U.S. avoided formal entry into the developing conflict, but the last pretense that the world could take care of itself on its own ended a few months into 1939.  Soon, the argument for acting “while dangers gather,” instead of waiting for whatever day of infamy, would have 60 – 100 million direct casualties and a rubble of nations weighing on its side.

That cataclysm is the other “negative subject” of this chronicle, which, like many histories focusing on Nazi Germany, makes for fascinating yet agonizing reading.  At the beginning of the year, Adolf Hitler was Chancellor in a rightwing coalition government.  The country and the National Socialist order spent the year on the verge of bankruptcy and economic chaos. German borders were still defined by the Versailles Treaty, and Germany’s range of action was constrained by, supposedly, firm commitments of the “Great Powers.” The military establishment, still dominated by aristocrats and a special target of the Nazi power structure, spent much of the year planning and preparing a coup.  According to much evidence, and for good reason, the German masses were uncertain and fearful, and still capable of resistance.

By the end of the year, following a series of successful, highly improvisational acts of acrobatic brinksmanship on the world stage, Hitler was the unchallenged leader of an empire at dawn set for further expansion, the nation having already absorbed and to some extent exhausted its newly acquired financial, material, and human resources.  The internal opposition had been silenced and humiliated. The officers around General Ludwig Beck put plans for rebellion, which at times had been mere days from irrevocable execution, on indefinite hold (many of the same conspirators would be involved in the Valkyrie plot six years later).

In the meantime – and this story takes up a large portion of 1938 - the oppression of the Jews and the suppression of dissent escalated. For the first time, a policy that foisted second-class status on law-abiding citizens took on a literally mass murderous shape, and in a widening transnational orbit, thanks to the collaboration of allies and opportunists.  Someone should have been able to do the math: Millions of Jews to be forcibly dispossessed, under orders of expulsion from a continent increasingly under Nazi domination… minus  thousands of spots grudgingly made available for immigration around the world. The final solution of this simple equation was something that either no one was willing to imagine or, a much darker thought, very many people, not just German-speaking people, were happy to write off on their own personal balance sheets.

Another piece of inexorable math might have been less obvious, but was critical to all that followed. The fascist economic system, contrary to the PR, was a total failure. Without larceny and enslavement on an international scale, it couldn’t survive. Combine economic compulsion with a culture of self-superiority and an ideology that celebrated the remorseless use of force, and war was inevitable.

These equations also expose certain schools of historical revisionism for the dreary obscenities they are.  By 1938 there was already ample moral and legal justification to act against Hitler’s Germany.  There was also opportunity:  The regime was vulnerable to the point of desperation.  Nothing succeeds like success, however, and the world, by cooperation and by omission, gave the Nazis one triumph and rescue after another.   By the end of the year, the message sent and received was “barbarism works” and “no one can stop it.”

For 70 years, we’ve been committed to sending the opposite messages, and have mostly succeeded, but are we still doing the math?

h/t:  Hot Air » Blog Archive » Video: NRSC hails Obama the Promise Keeper!

So, yeah, MC’s right – Palin endorsing McCain does “stink” – but only if you were hoping that she would lend her charisma exclusively to the cause of rigorously pure conservatism.

NOT MUCH DIFFERENCE ON POLICY

MC and I are not far apart on the most politically relevant points, even though this agreement leads us to different conclusions.  Before anyone reads the wrong things into these differences, however, there are some policy questions that need to be cleared up.

MC concedes that there’s little daylight between McCain and Palin on foreign policy, and he’s happy to set aside possible post-Campaign ’08 hard feelings (“her business”).  It’s on domestic policy that differences seem to arise, but I think MC partly mischaracterizes them, and otherwise exaggerates their importance:

1. Immigration: MC links to a recent FoxNews interview in which Palin unambiguously states her support for McCain’s current “position on immigration.”  Though inveterate McCain skeptics may be unwilling to credit a shift in his approach that’s as old as the ’08 campaign, we should be clear that what Palin is supporting is a “border security first” approach.  MC calls determining what Palin really means a “tough call.”  I disagree:  She says she supports McCain’s position.  If he diverges, he’ll presumably have to “answer to Sarah,” and, if she fails to call him out, it will harm her credibility.  That’s implied in any endorsement.
2. Global warming/Energy:  I believe MC misstates the differences between Palin and McCain on GW issues.  When MC claims that “McCain and Obama get along swimmingly” on Cap and Trade, he ignores the fact that McCain has been a fierce critic of Obama’s program from the day it was introduced.  McCain may, for instance, have been the first to dub it “Cap and Tax.”  MC also forgets the softer/squishier pre-ClimateGate remarks that Palin made over the course of years on Global Warming-based policy, clearly intended to make it easier for AGW believers to support her. Post-ClimateGate, she’s become much more vocal in her skepticism.  As for ANWR, differences on the subject are very old news.  They didn’t prevent Palin from running with McCain, and haven’t prevented her from recycling lines like “all of the above approach” and “drill, baby, drill” from her and McCain’s joint campaign ’08 platform.
3. Gay marriage:  McCain and Palin are both opponents.  They may differ on the wisdom of passing a “Defense of Marriage” amendment now, but even McCain, who opposed a constitutional amendment in 2004, has for years been saying that he would support it if the Defense of Marriage Act were overturned.  Does anyone see this secondary/tactical difference as likely to determine many elections this year – even a primary election on the GOP side?
4. Evolution:  In what election anywhere in America other than for school board are the particulars of beliefs on this issue of importance? McCain apparently believes in evolution + God.  Palin seems to believe in God + evolution.  MC:  “Some may say it’s a minor issue, but it’s seemed important to Sarah Palin.” She’s responded when others have brought the topic up, and she discussed her beliefs in her book.  Has anyone heard her bring it up on her own in any political context?

…and that’s about it from MC on policy, though at other points both he and other commenters have brought up other issues, especially (5)  Campaign Finance Reform (CFR).  I don’t recall and couldn’t find a detailed statement of Palin’s on McCain-Feingold, though I believe that, like Fred Thompson (who co-sponsored it in the Senate), she expressed support for the good intention of cleaning up politics (since the 19th Century a typical progressive focus, incidentally).  Palin had her own personal experience of campaigning for and helping to implement progressive-style political reforms – the Alaska ethics laws – that, despite good intentions, seemed to backfire on her. She may sympathize with McCain.  Anyway, with the Supreme Court having gutted McCain-Feingold legally, and with the Obama ’08 campaign having blown apart many of its presumptions, it’s hard to imagine a deader letter, or any reason why it should influence Palin’s decision-making on McCain vs Hayworth.

In sum, Palin and McCain are very close in one major area – foreign policy – and easily close enough for government work on the other issues MC points to.  Most important, they’re together on the major unifying conservative issues of the 2010 campaigns – debt, deficits, ObamaCare, DC elitism/corruption – issues on which McCain has been and remains a leading spokesperson.

Moreover, like Mitt Romney and others who have endorsed McCain, Palin wouldn’t need a personal bond, debt of gratitude, or perfect agreement to conclude that putting the Arizona Senate seat at risk, losing a” lion of the Senate,” creating or widening rifts within the party, and opening the Republicans to a “they’ve gone crazy with ideology” narrative would interfere with job #1:  Defeating Obamacrats.

Some have focused on JD Hayworth’s flaws as a candidate, but, in trying to justify Palin’s endorsement, you don’t need to destroy Hayworth unless you despise McCain.  Palin focused almost entirely on McCain’s positives in her endorsement statement, with only a glancing, implicit reference to Hayworth in her conclusion:

In 2008, I firmly believed that John McCain was the right man for America. Today, I know he’s the right man for Arizona. Your state deserves more than rhetoric; you deserve a leader with a real record of accomplishment. That’s why, on behalf of Sen. McCain, I’m asking for your vote. For the good of our entire country and the future of your state, please send John McCain back to the United States Senate.

Not to take her at her word requires you to deny the evidence that she actually is closer to McCain than anti-McCain conservatives want to acknowledge.

PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATISM vs PURE CONSERVATISM

I therefore both disagree and agree with MC’s conclusions.  I don’t think he’s justified his description of McCain and Palin as “at odds all over the place,” but I think he’s right to question whether Sarah Palin is a “strong conservative,” if by that he means a committed ideologue.  She clearly possesses many strongly conservative impulses and core beliefs, but her approach to politics is at least as pragmatic as it is ideological.  In that way, she’s an authentic conservative in an American mode, putting concrete results above any idle search for absolute political right and wrong.  Since I consider the combination of the two political impulses, under whatever names, to be both desirable and inevitable, I applaud SP’s having offered support and encouragement across the conservative spectrum, from Scott Brown to Doug Hoffman and maybe even Rand Paul.  It’s good for her and good for us.

In disagreeing with me strongly on this conclusion, MadisonConservative is far from alone on the right.  He’s probably closer to the majority view at HotAir (at least among those highly interested in immigration policy).  I welcome the continuing debate with him and those who agree with him.  As for those who don’t welcome the discussion, I wonder what they think HotAir is for – endless recitation of “true conservative” principles, all dissenters shamed and silenced?

Far as I can tell, it ain’t that kind of place, never has been, from the top down and the bottom up, and I’m happy with that, too.

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