BFFs - Democrats And The One Percent

Jay Cost explores the cozy relationship between the left and Big Business.

"Fantastic Foolishness"

Of the two Wall Street Journal editorial writing superstars, Dan Henninger and Bret Stephens, Henninger is the more laid back, and as such, he's less prone to expressing anger at outrages that one commonly encounters in the news these days. Alas, Barack Obama has the ability to infuriate even the most placid of observers and such was the case as Henninger watched Obama's State of the Union address Tuesday night.

Barack Obama was 15 minutes into his State of the Union speech when I arrived home to watch it, having just walked back from seeing “American Sniper.”
Watching a movie about a Navy SEAL who served four tours fighting in Iraq was not the best way to enhance the experience of a Barack Obama speech. As a matter of fact, it was pretty unbearable.

(snip)

Announcing the decision at the White House on Oct. 21, Mr. Obama said, “After taking office, I announced a new strategy that would end our combat mission in Iraq and remove all of our troops by the end of 2011.” (Emphasis added.)
Military analysts at the time, in government and on the outside, warned Mr. Obama that a zero U.S. presence could put the war’s gains and achievements at risk. He did it anyway and ever since Mr. Obama has repeatedly bragged about this decision in public speeches, notably to the graduating cadets of West Point last May.
In January, months before that West Point speech, the terrorist army of Islamic State, or ISIS, seized back control of both Fallujah and Ramadi in Anbar province. The month after the West Point speech, the city of Mosul and its population of one million fell to Islamic State, and here we are with the barbarians on the loose there, in Yemen, in Nigeria and in France.
Watching “American Sniper,” it is impossible to separate these catastrophes from seeing what the Marines did and endured to secure northern Iraq. Again, anyone is entitled to hate the Iraq war. But no serious person would want a president to make a decision that would allow so much personal sacrifice to simply evaporate. Which, in his serene self-confidence, is what Barack Obama did. That absolute drawdown was a decision of fantastic foolishness.

(snip)

In the one spontaneous moment of Tuesday evening’s speech, Mr. Obama cracked back at some chiding Republicans that he’d won two elections. And he’s right. The first election was a remarkable, historic event for the United States. His second election was a historic electoral mistake, leaving the country and the world to be led by a president who is living on his own fantasy island.
He said in the State of the Union that we are leading “a broad coalition” against ISIS. We are? What coalition? Mainly it’s the Iraqi army and Kurds battling for survival alongside U.S air support.
The president said we are “supporting a moderate opposition in Syria.” But twice in 2014 Mr. Obama derided the Syrian moderates as dentists, pharmacists and teachers. U.S. support for the moderates is de minimis.
On Ukraine, Mr. Obama said, “We’re upholding the principle that bigger nations can’t bully the small.” But bullying is exactly what Russia’s Vladimir Putin is doing to Ukraine because Mr. Obama refuses to give its army even basic defensive weapons.
Then there’s the grandest foreign-policy self-delusion of the Obama presidency—the never-ending nuclear arms deal with Iran. Mr. Obama said we’ve “halted the progress of its nuclear program.” Slowed perhaps but no one thinks we’ve “halted” Iran’s multifacility nuclear-weapon and ballistic-missile project. Only in the Obama fantasy is it halted.
Sen. Robert Menendez, the New Jersey foreign-policy Democrat, who sat bolted to his seat during the speech, said the next day that the administration’s talking points on Iran now sound “straight out of Tehran.”

http://www.wsj.com/articles/dan-henninger-obamas-american-sniper-1421887128?cb=logged0.39874502342386575

A summary of Obama's brilliant foreign policy initiatives and their consequences is provided by Peter Wehner in Commentary magazine.

Trashing the domestic portion of Obama's SOTU was W. Bradford Wilcox, also in the WSJ.

Guess which kind of family was left out in the cold by President Obama as he unveiled his plan to help middle-class families in his State of the Union address? The traditional two-parent family with a single breadwinner.
The president pitched his plan as part of an agenda in which “everyone gets their fair shot, everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of rules” in part by “lowering the taxes of working families and putting thousands of dollars back into their pockets each year.” But by design or omission, his plan does virtually nothing for married families with a parent at home, usually the mother.
The president’s plan would triple the existing child-care tax credit to $3,000 for two-earner families with children under 5 and a combined income of less than $120,000, and it would establish a new $500 credit for families in which both spouses work. The plan would provide tax relief—which would no doubt help with the cost of child care, commuting, etc.—to middle-class families with both parents in the workforce. But families who choose to have a parent at home would see none of this tax relief.

The White House has trumpeted the plan’s “fairness.” But according to data from the Census Bureau, today about one-quarter of married families have a parent at home, more than one-third of married families with young children have a parent at home, and an even larger share of married families will have a parent step out of the workforce for several months to care for the children. It seems patently unfair to offer a plan targeting middle-class families that excludes such a large share of American families.

This approach is all the more mystifying because the White House had other, more-inclusive policy options to help families. For instance, in a bid to shore up the economic fortunes of all working families, Sens. Mike Lee (R., Utah) and Marco Rubio(R., Fla.) have proposed expanding the child tax credit to $3,500 from its current $1,000 and extending it to payroll taxes, i.e., Social Security and Medicare.
The Lee-Rubio plan would do a lot for millions of working- and middle-class families, whether or not they have two parents in the workforce. As Messrs. Lee and Rubio wrote in an op-ed for this newspaper in September, their proposal is rooted in a recognition that all families, not just two-earner families, “shoulder the financial burden of raising the next generation of taxpayers, who will grow up to fund the Social Security and Medicare benefits of all future seniors.”
If Mr. Obama were interested in helping all families and finding bipartisan ground in the new Congress, he could have adopted some version of the Lee-Rubio plan.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/w-bradford-wilcox-obamas-middle-class-blind-spot-1421885691

Wilcox doesn't say so but Obama's proposal - rewarding parents who transfer a significant portion of the care of their children to federally subsidized day care - is entirely consistent with the "progressive" strategy, (as depicted in the Life of Julia cartoons), of diminishing the role of the family while expanding the role of government. That strategy's ultimate goal is a citizenry universally dependent on the state, which is perilously close to realization as George Will explains.

With Friends Like These...

Kevin Williamson doesn't think much of the strategy of sending James Taylor to console the French.

"We’re responding to barbarism from the 7th century with soft rock from the 1970s."

(snip)

"We Americans sometimes laugh at the French — cheese-eating surrender monkeys and all that — but in World War I they lost nearly 1.8 million people, or nearly 5 percent of their population, losses that were proportionally more than 30 times those we suffered in that horrific conflict. (In World War II, the French death rate was only four times ours.) They may have lost some of their fighting spirit since then — or they may not have, if you ask your average trans-Saharan jihadist — but we did not elect Barack Obama president of these United States out of a surplus of courage, either. It’s not that we should send the 101st Airborne to les banlieues, rather that we should be the sort of country that makes it matter when we say “you’ve got a friend.” When it comes to jihad, there are no obvious solutions, but there are some obvious non-solutions, and an impromptu James Taylor concert surely is one of them."

 

The Wrong Victims

In his weekly G-File column, Jonah Goldberg observes how quickly the focus of concern for the actual victims of the Paris terror attack has shifted toward the potential victims of a backlash. He lays the blame for this misdirection on the left's destructive obsession with victimology and its convenient rejection of collective responsibility only when it applies to Muslims.

"Simply put, victimology is the language and currency of our politics. Fighting for victims is a calling and minting new victims and grievances is a trillion-dollar industry. Heroism, fidelity, courage, duty, temperance: Their stock value may be volatile but the long-term trends have been bad for a while. But guilt and resentment are the gold and silver of our realm, a perfect hedge against the civilizational recession."

(snip)

"By the way, how much have you heard about the anti-Muslim backlash over the last decade and a half? Well, here’s a fun fact. In every year since 9/11 the number of anti-Jewish hate crimes in the U.S. has dwarfed anti-Muslim hate crimes." (Me - Another fun fact - Jews constituting 1% of France's population are victims of 50% of its hate crimes).

(Goldberg continues) - "In 2001 — you know, the year when the World Trade Center was knocked down by Islamist terrorists — there were still twice as many anti-Jewish incidents as there were anti-Muslim ones reported to the FBI. By 2002, things got back to “normal” and anti-Jewish outstripped anti-Muslim hate crimes by roughly a factor of five – and it’s stayed that way ever since. In 2013, nearly 60 percent of anti-religious hate crimes were against Jews. Just over 14 percent were against Muslims. Now, I’m not saying America is anti-Semitic, far from it. It’s easily the most philo-Semitic country in the world, save for Israel (and if you spent time listening to Israelis criticize themselves, you’d consider that a debatable proposition). But when was the last time you heard a reporter from the New York Times fret over the need to be careful lest we encourage an anti-Semitic backlash?"

(snip)

"The entire edifice of supposedly sophisticated left-wing thinking is about collective responsibility. For instance, The Atlantic’s Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote an impassioned case for reparations last year. Whatever you think of his argument, two things are indisputably true: (1) The piece was universally praised on the left (and parts of the right) and (2) slavery reparations amount to collective punishment. You might say that slavery was collective punishment — and you’d be right! But there are no living former slaves in the U.S. (not counting refugees) and there are no living former slave owners of the Confederacy either. Moreover, there are quite literally hundreds of millions of people who have little to no tangible connection to slavery — even by lineage. There are over 40 million foreign-born Americans today. Why should a Vietnamese immigrant be asked to pay for 19th-century slavery? My mother is half of southern heritage and half of northern, but my dad’s side of the family were all refugees from the pogroms. Do I pay a quarter reparation?

Forget reparations. What about correcting “white privilege,” taxing the “1 percent,” and denouncing all cops for the actions of a few? These, along with critical legal studies, critical race studies, and vast swaths of feminism, Marxism, post-colonialism, and other bits of wreckage from the overturned manure truck of left-wing thinking all depend, in one way or another, on notions of collective responsibility. Moreover, they depend on them not just in a communal or political sense, but as a matter of metaphysics. White people owe. Men owe. The wealthy owe. The West owes. They owe because the goddess “social justice” demands it. And this particular goddess is Crom-like in the sense that she cares not whether you were born in poverty or what good works you have done in your life. You don’t matter. All that matters is the eternal them and they owe by virtue of their identity."

(snip)

"We’re breeding generations of citizens who think attacking left-wing college administrators from the left is bold and courageous and denouncing Islamic extremism is racist. We apologize for the “root causes” that lead to actual violence, while we theorize endlessly about how ultimately we’re really to blame. Our military heroes are terroristic and the terrorists are misunderstood. That’s not merely dazzlingly idiotic; it is effulgently suicidal."

Shut Up She Explained

A remarkably obtuse letter appearing in today's Wall Street Journal --

The terrorist attack on the French satirical magazine has horrified the world with its brutality. We in America treasure our freedom of expression, but we also believe that you don’t scream fire in a crowded theater. The deliberate provocation by Charlie Hebdo at this time of world-wide terrorism wasn’t the wisest move, as this tragedy shows. The magazine’s infantile humor in insulting everybody and everything may appeal to the French, but fortunately our press knows that inflaming Islamic murderers for fun can threaten the safety of the community.
Carla Wallach
Greenwich, Conn.

"Deliberate provocation"? Charlie Hebdo treats all religions with the same degree of disdain. Only Islamists were "provoked". By all means, let's reward violent retribution for mockery. Let's ridicule all peaceful religions and ideologies but not Islam. When Christians begin shooting up editorial offices we'll stop mocking them.
The writer laments the "infantile" nature of Charlie Hebdo's satire. As if it's the (perceived) lack of seriousness that stokes Islamists' murderous impulses. Ayaan Hirsi Ali's denunciations of Islam are not "infantile" but they still attract death threats. She believes it necessary to speak up against female genital mutilation (and other assorted horrific, uncivilized practices). Does the writer believe Hirsi Ali's "wisest move" should be to censor herself to protect the "safety of the community"? Even if she isn't doing it "for fun"? (Wallach assumes that Charlie Hebdo's motivation is "fun" rather than exposing what it considers an absurd and dangerous ideology).
The overused "scream fire in a crowded theater" analogy is particularly laughable. Absent an actual fire, it is dangerous to do this because the target audience may reasonably react to an imminent life-threatening situation by initiating a tragic stampede for the exits. Satire or other critical commentary threatens no physical harm to its intended audience whatsoever, imminent or otherwise. The offended party can choose to ignore the insult or respond in kind, with the use of language. Those that respond with violence deserve neither sympathy nor justification.
The problem is not us, it's them. 

Unfair To Animals

Kevin Williamson comments on the fallacious custom of calling those who commit barbaric acts animals.

Some forgotten early Homo sapiens, the first great moral philosopher of our species, forever lost in the shadows of prehistory, took note of the fact that while wolves kill because they are hungry and bears kill because they are threatened, the human animal kills toward unknowable ends, from motives far more complex than biological necessity. Eventually, that first moral philosopher or one of his intellectual descendants came up with a word for that, for this inexplicable inclination that is not known to any wild animals, no matter how ravenous — but which is present only in men.

If only we could remember that word, and remember what it means.

Dennis Prager knows the word and what it means.

"Clash Of Civilizations"

Recent events continue to confirm Bernard Lewis' prescient quarter-century old thesis that there is an ongoing existential struggle between Western Civilization and Islamism.

Fox News' Megyn Kelly interviews Mark Steyn about the terror attack in Paris.

Not all news media are as cowardly as those mentioned by Steyn. The Wall Street Journal today reproduced a non-pixelated cartoon from Charlie Hebdo mocking Islamism.

There are cowards, and there are morons... To get a taste of asinine moral equivalence currently infesting news commentary, watch this short MSNBC segment. Jonah Goldberg calls this the dumbest 57 seconds he's ever seen on TV.*

Mocking Christianity is not only not a capital offense, nor a subject to be avoided for fear of offending delicate sensibilities, it is a taxpayer supported enterprise deserving of accolades. From Wikipedia --

Piss Christ is a 1987 photograph by the American artist and photographer Andres Serrano. It depicts a small plastic crucifix submerged in a glass of the artist's urine. The piece was a winner of the Southeastern Center For Contemporary Art's "Awards in the Visual Arts" competition, which was sponsored in part by the National Endowment For The Arts, a United States Government agency that offers support and funding for artistic projects, without controlling content.

And then there's the Broadway musical, winner of numerous awards, "The Book Of Mormon", a derisive satire targeting the Church Of Latter Day Saints. The Church's response to the play?

The production may attempt to entertain audiences for an evening, but the Book of Mormon as a volume of scripture will change people's lives forever by bringing them closer to Christ.

...Of course, parody isn't reality, and it's the very distortion that makes it appealing and often funny. The danger is not when people laugh but when they take it seriously—if they leave a theater believing that Mormons really do live in some kind of a surreal world of self-deception and illusion.

The LDS actually bought space in the play's program to advise theatergoers, "You've seen the play, now read the book."

A more heated reaction would no doubt be elicited from Islamists by a musical parody of their religion. Not that any Broadway producer would ever touch the subject. As Steyn wrote back in September, 2012 --

Last year Hillary Clinton went to see the Broadway musical Book of Mormon. “We reject all efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others”? The Book of Mormon’s big showstopper is “Hasa Diga Eebowai” which apparently translates as “F*** you, God.” The U.S. secretary of state stood and cheered.
Why does Secretary Clinton regard “F*** you, God” as a fun toe-tapper for all the family but “F*** you, Allah” as “disgusting and reprehensible”? The obvious answer is that, if you sing the latter, you’ll find a far more motivated crowd waiting for you at the stage door.

Worse, far worse, than the Paris terror attack was the recent Taliban perpetrated massacre of 145 people including 132 children aged 8 to 18 in a school in Peshawar, Pakistan. Though that outrage occurred less than a month ago (December 16) it has already faded from the collective global memory. In his latest WSJ column, Dan Henninger addresses this transience of focus and the danger it poses to peace and security.
Henninger notes the hollow attempt of some Parisiens to claim solidarity with the victims of Wednesday's attack as they hold signs proclaiming, "Je Suis Charlie". That sentiment is incongruous with Europe's overall support for Edward Snowden's publication of NSA secrets - an invaluable gift to jihadists.
Henninger brings up other forgotten atrocities including the April kidnapping of 276 girls from a school in Nigeria by the Islamist terrorist group Boko Haram. Recall that incident and the social media memes it inspired. No less a personage than Michelle Obama got in on the feel-good exercise of posting inane and completely ineffectual hashtag slogans. And the FLOTUS is someone who, theoretically at least, should have a bit more influence on current affairs than your average tweeter.

 

The kidnapped girls are still missing nearly a year later, Boko Haram has expanded its reach and influence in the country and the mindless campaign has long been abandoned.

[Kevin Williamson has some harsh words for those he calls "hashtag activists" (as well as for other scorn-worthy types) in this column.]

* Added 1/10 - Goldberg expands on his criticism here, making some very good points about how the left repeatedly contorts arguments to blame America or conservatism for all the wrongs of the world. Highly recommended.