Anti-establishment stirrings in the House…

The New Neo Posted on by

[see UPDATE in ADDENDUM II]

…on whether to proceed with the vote on the Iran deal.

As has often been the case in the past, Ted Cruz is leading the way in the Senate, along with several conservatives in the House (Roskam of Illinois; Pompeo of Kansas and the rest of the House Freedom Caucus). The House doesn’t have a cloture or filibuster rule, so it is much easier to bring something to a vote there over minority opposition than it is in the Senate.

I haven’t seen any definitive statement coming down one way or the other from Boehner (just a general one about “healthy conversation”), although I doubt he’s on the side of the rebels—after all, he’s what they’re rebelling against.

In the Senate, quite a few people take the establishment tack. They are no surprise whatsoever—McConnell, Corker, and Pete Sessions (note: not Jeff Sessions, as I had originally and mistakenly thought, although his supposed inclusion had puzzled me):

“As I understand law, once Sept. 17 passes is it not the case that the president will take the view that he is free to go forward,” to lift sanctions [sic], Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said, rejecting the proposal.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) also dismissed the proposal…

“You know what, I think it’s pretty clear that a month and a half ago we understood that Sept. 17 would be the drop-dead date. And the week we’re doing it is a little bit late to bring up the argument,” said House Rules Committee Chairman Pete Sessions (R-Texas).

Here’s more of Corker’s reasoning about it. I can’t find more background to the Sessions quote, in which I assume that he explains why it’s “too late.” But when last I checked, September 9th was more than a week before September 17th.

Or perhaps the “too late” he’s talking about is a generic “too late”—meaning there just isn’t enough will among enough Republicans to stop Obama. For that, it was always too late.

[ADDENDUM: Andrew McCarthy writes that John Kerry’s letter to Congress on the Iran deal effectively admits that the deal supports terrorism:

Obviously, there is no disputing the Obama administration’s patent knowledge that much of the material support its deal will provide to the terror-sponsoring regime in Tehran will be funneled to these and other designated foreign terrorist organizations. This means yet another criminal statute prohibiting material support to terrorism is implicated (Section 2339B of the federal penal code).

That law states:

Whoever knowingly provides material support or resources to a foreign terrorist organization, or attempts or conspires to do so, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both, and, if the death of any person results, shall be imprisoned for any term of years or for life.

The statute goes on to require proof that an accused person knows:

”¦ that the organization is a designated terrorist organization[,] ”¦ that the organization has engaged or engages in terrorist activity[,] ”¦ or that the organization has engaged or engages in terrorism[.]

It is incontestable that President Obama, Secretary Kerry, and their subordinates know all three things about Hezbollah and Hamas, even though the statute requires knowledge of only one of them to establish guilt.

It bears emphasizing that for all their absurd claims about how the president’s Iran deal reins in Iran’s nuclear program, even Obama administration officials feel compelled to admit that Iran will step up its material support to terrorism while it is receiving the windfall from the deal.

That is not just unconscionable; it is criminal.

How can Obama’s Iran deal conceivably be supported by anyone who claims to oppose international terrorism or support Israel?

I assume that last question of McCarthy’s is rhetorical. But just in case McCarthy wants an answer, here’s mine: the left specializes in saying that 2 + 2 = 5 if need be.]

[ADDENDUM II: There’s a report that Boehner is giving in to conservatives on this issue, postponing the vote and substituting a series of votes on three other resolutions in the House:

The first would declare that President Obama violated Corker-Cardin by failing to provide the side deals to Congress. The second will bar President Obama from lifting sanctions against Iran. The third will be a resolution outside of Corker-Cardin to “approve” the Iran deal that all Republicans will vote no on. Most Democrats will vote yes.

We don’t know whether this report is true; at the moment it’s just a report from anonymous sources. Even if it comes to pass, in the Senate all three could be filibustered, or vetoed if they do manage to get to a vote. But they have the advantage of putting Democratic members of Congress on the record as having supported Obama’s Iran deal.]

The Iran deal: when does 41 out of 100 votes become a big victory?

The New Neo Posted on by

When it’s Obama’s, and signifies a sellout of Israel, the world, and 35 years of unified and unquestioned US policy.

That’s when.

This development is one of the many problems with Corker-Menendez. If there never was a chance of getting a veto-proof majority to block Obama, then passing that bill only affords him and the MSM an opportunity to crow about victory when he fails to get a single Republican vote, loses many influential members of his own party, and yet manages to stymie his opposition anyway by twisting arms (and who knows what else) in order to squeak by with enough of a minority to thwart the opposition’s efforts. All that Obama’s forces needed to block even a vote on the subject were 41 votes, and they now seem to have them.

Of course, Republicans could probably figure out some way to jettison the filibuster rule and vote on the Iran deal even without those 41 votes. The disapproval vote would then pass with a simple majority, but not enough to even come close to overriding a veto. So why bother? And I ask that question even though I am well aware that the GOP leadership lacks the intestinal fortitude to even consider it. But although I’m not sure it would be worth it even if we had a party and leadership willing to do it, I still think that something must be done.

Harry Reid offers his usual sterling thoughts:

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, said Tuesday he will insist that 60 Senate votes are required to pass a resolution of disapproval.

“There is no precedent in recent history for an issue of this magnitude getting consideration in the Senate without having to secure 60 votes,” Reid said during a speech before the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.

That would be humorous if the issue weren’t so very very serious. Let me correct you, Sen. Reid. You are right that “There is no precedent in recent history for an issue of this magnitude getting consideration in the Senate without having to secure 60 votes.” Actually, there is also no precedent in recent history (or perhaps American history) for a minority party to force “an issue of this magnitude” (Obama’s deal with Iran) onto a strongly opposed American public as well as the majority party in Congress. And that’s not just because the present-day Republicans in Congress are feckless. In fact—although we on the right are reluctant to face it—the Republican majority would be powerless to stop Obama without the cooperation of very significant numbers on the minority side in order to reach the requisite 60 and then 67 votes, and that cooperation has not been forthcoming even on an issue where the danger to America and the world is crystal clear, and the break with previous bilateral policy profound.

Listen to what Democratic support for Obama’s position sounds like, and weep. Here’s Michigan Democratic Senator Gary Peters voicing his “support”:

Peters said in a statement, “Despite my serious reservations, I will reluctantly vote against a motion of disapproval because I believe that doing so will protect the credibility of the United States to hold Iran accountable to adhere to every single obligation”…

‘Tis not so deep as a well nor so wide as a church-door, but ’tis enough, ’twill serve.

And lest you think it would have been just hunky dory had Congress not passed Corker-Menendez, think again. These same 41 Democratic senators (and perhaps even more) would have blocked a vote on the Iran deal as a treaty, too.

Why has this sort of thing never happened before? One reason is that, in the past, very basic issues of national defense did not engender a similar magnitude of disagreement; the sides tended to be on the same page on them for the most part. In addition, if a president wanted to do an about-face on a huge matter of foreign policy, he would not have done so in the past without major support. Nor would he have done so against public opinion (see NOTE below for a discussion of Nixon and China), because he feared the consequences.

Obama is sui generis in being audacious enough to even think of doing such a thing, and confident enough that he could get away with it. And I believe he is correct; he will get away with it.

Andrew McCarthy and Paul Mirengoff have some suggestions for how next to proceed in order to even have a chance of stopping this. Again, it seems that the GOP Congressional leadership is loathe to take them to heart. At this point, who can profess surprise at this? But the GOP leadership’s reaction (or rather, lack of reaction) is still unconscionable.

Here’s Powerline’s Scott Johnson on the subject:

I wrote a spokesman for Senator McConnell yesterday on this point. I posed the question whether Senator McConnell was aware that the administration had not complied with the requirement for submission of side deals set forth in Corker-Cardin. If so, I asked, what is he going to do about it? Senator McConnell’s spokesman responded: “He’s called the administration out on not handing over these deals. He’s going to oppose the deal and get a vote on the resolution of disapproval. I’m not sure there’s much that can be done beyond that, unfortunately.”

Not only is the letter’s tone of mild regret offensive and deplorable, but the reply doesn’t make much sense in view of the 41 Democratic votes to block any vote in the Senate. McConnell is “going to oppose the deal and get a vote on the resolution of disapproval”? How’s he going to do that? Is he going to do away with the need for cloture in order to vote? That would at least be interesting, although ultimately ineffective in terms of overriding a veto. But I very much doubt that’s what McConnell contemplates. No, his office probably just hasn’t updated its form letters yet to reflect the new “unfortunate” reality. And when the vote is blocked, he will just declare that to be “unfortunate,” too, and claim his hands are tied.

[NOTE: On Nixon and China, I will reproduce something I wrote last month.

Nixon’s trip to China is not a good analogy with Obama and Iran, although the left is very fond of making it. Among other things, Nixon’s well-known history of anti-Communism defused criticism to a large extent, but Obama has no such hardline history on Iran. Au contraire.

Nixon faced very little criticism from either party in a Democratic-dominated Senate (it was 54/44 D/R and the House was 255 to 180).

This rather obscure piece is the only article I’ve found online so far that deals in any detail with the amount of Congressional or popular opposition Nixon faced. Basically, any serious opposition was limited to William Loeb, who had been the editor of the very conservative Manchester Union Leader, and just a few others. Similarly, the MSM was almost universally approving and optimistic about his overtures, as was most of the public. Taiwan was understandably negative about the US rapprochement with China, but that seemed a minor problem on the US domestic scene.

But the huge differences between Nixon/China and Obama/Iran are hardly limited to the differences in US public opinion, although that’s important. There are large substantive and strategic differences as well. Also important was the fact that Nixon was not negotiating a nuclear arms deal, but rather beginning diplomatic relations and opening trade, a far less controversial process (although at this point we see that it has had major repercussions, some of them negative for the US). But China already was a nuclear power at the time of Nixon’s trip, and had been for several years.]

John Hinderaker has a question about the tsunami of “refugees” arriving in Europe

The New Neo Posted on by

Hinderaker asks some questions I’ve been wondering and wondering and wondering about, too—why this surge of refugees in Europe now? And who are they?

These are obvious questions, but a great many articles on the subject fail to ask them or answer them. For the most part they’re either ignored, or more often glossed over with a boilerplate version of “these people are leaving in large numbers due to the war-torn strife of the civil war in Syria or Libya or any of several other places.” No doubt that’s true for a certain percentage of the newcomers. But these wars have been going on for quite some time and nothing like these enormous and overwhelming numbers were coming to Europe before. And no one has alleged (at least as far as I’ve seen) that things have suddenly gotten catastrophically worse.

Hinderaker correctly points out that the welfare states and benefits available in many nations in Europe have something to do with the “why?” question in the general sense. But still, it doesn’t explain the sudden explosion of numbers. Nor does it explain another phenomenon he and many others on the right (including me) have wondered about:

…[W]hy is it that the migrants are overwhelmingly young men? There are a few women, children and families; but numerically, young men predominate. This is not what one would normally expect from a group of refugees fleeing a war zone.

My question exactly, and so far I’ve seen no answer, because no one seems to know, or if they do know they are reluctant to say. I can come up with plenty of possibilities—as you no doubt can, too. But all of that is mere educated guessing.

Hinderaker quotes a letter from a reader of his:

The current wave is just the beginning and the response just encourages more. Oh, sure, it will stop just as soon as the 14 century old Sunni-Shia conflict and the various middle eastern tribal hatreds and rivalries abate and the entire African continent, soon to have 2 billion people, ceases to be fundamentally dysfunctional.

That means that the situation is utterly intractable. An intractable situation is not a “problem” that can be “solved”: it is a fact which must be reckoned with.

This is why so many actual citizens of these countries (as opposed to their elites) are growing more and more alarmed at the failure of their own government to either see what seems very plain, or to acknowledge it if they do see it.

Pam Geller has an idea of what’s going on:

If these were real refugees, where are the women? Where are the elderly people? Where are the weak and the sick? It is increasingly clear that what I have said is true: this is not a refugee crisis. This is a hijrah, a migration to Islamize a new land.

It’s hard to reject that as a working theory. A commenter at Powerline has another somewhat related theory [spelling is the original]:

This is merely the vanguard, the ones who establish a foothold and a foreward line. There’s a reason they are mainly young males: they are most likely to find work and can ‘make do’ with their living accomodations. But back home, there are parents, wives, children, unmarried siblings, and any number of family members waiting for their papers to arrive in the mail.

Steyn is right: the West is commiting suicide.

Again, I would like to disagree. I want to disagree. But I cannot.

Spengler attempts an answer, too:

The horror [resulting from the West’s reluctance to offer help in fighting ISIS or intervening in Syria] has now piled up on Europe’s doorstep, thanks evidently to the skill of Turkish gangs who have turned the Turkey-to-Balkans smuggling route into a superhighway. Europe said and did nothing while the global refugee count exploded from 40 million in 2010 to 60 million in 2014, according to the UN High Commission on Refugees, but was shocked, shocked to find such people on its doorstep.

Here’s another opinion, from a Welsh MP:

We are already providing sanctuary and shelter to people in over 20 refugee camps in Turkey and also further in Jordan so nobody is actually fleeing because of war, everyone is taking an economic decision.

“That is why these are mostly young men, mostly with mobile phones, who are chancing their luck. I fully understand why. I would probably do the same if I was them. I don’t blame them for having a go.”…

And by the way, most Arab countries won’t take them without a visa:

This comes as part of wider obstacles facing Syrians, who are required to obtain rarely granted visas to enter almost all Arab countries.

Without a visa, Syrians are not currently allowed to enter Arab countries except for Algeria, Mauritania, Sudan and Yemen.

Spengler explains:

The Arab Gulf States accept very few Syrian refugees out of security concerns which are entirely legitimate. Thousands of Syrian migrants fought either with the Assad regime (allied to Iran, the nemesis of the Sunni Gulf States) or ISIS and al-Qaeda (which want to overthrow the Saudi monarchy).

The social pathologies that this brutal and brutalized population bring Europe will change Germany in a predictably nasty way. Even worse, the open door policy will attract an order of magnitude more such refugees, as the Interior Minister of the State of Bavaria, Joachim Herrmann, warned yesterday. To no avail: Germans have spent the past seventy years feeling bady about themselves and are determined to take this opportunity to feel good about themselves.

Precisely.

This young “refugee” isn’t exactly economically typical in that his family has enough money to buy him safe passage to Sweden as well as false papers. But he may be extremely typical in his motivation for leaving, which is economic:

Central Damascus has escaped the worst of the Syrian civil war but young men still face being called up. Even if they don’t have to fight, jobs are scarce in the shattered economy.

“I found myself having to choose between living on handouts from my family or taking a risk, hoping that once you cross the sea, you will have a chance for a better life,” the tall, bearded young man told Reuters by Skype from the northern Swedish town of Boliden.

For 18 months the marketing graduate, who did not want his family name to be given, scanned head-hunters’ websites and attended countless interviews without success. Then he went to the UAE on a business visa in 2012, early in the Syrian conflict, to join a venture run by relatives.

He was one of thousands of Syrians, and Palestinians with Syrian documents, who have joined family members and friends already resident in the UAE during the war. But the enterprise faltered and Tareq’s efforts to find work in Lebanon and Algeria also failed. And so his thoughts turned to Europe…

Tareq could reach Sweden unhindered, traveling through Europe’s Schengen area, where border controls are no longer routinely made.

Sweden has a long tradition of welcoming refugees. Paperwork can be minimal and arrivals are given a medical test before being moved on to temporary homes. Tareq was one of 81,000 people who sought asylum there last year, second in Europe only to Germany, with Syrians making up the biggest group.

After a tranquil night at his new home in Boliden, Tareq applied for permanent residency.

“In a few years, I will be able to return to the Middle East with my Swedish passport,” he said.

As the Welsh MP said, I can’t fault the guy in terms of looking out for himself. He sounds savvy, and doesn’t appear to be a terrorist (although as we know, appearances can deceive). It seems to me that the formation of the EU and its open borders (which seemed like a crazy step to me even before this) represented an attempt by those in charge to convince the people of Europe that they have no nationhoods or borders to protect. What began as an interchangeability of residence within Europe for Europeans now effectively includes a welcome mat to the entire world. Coupled with a welfare state, that’s a recipe for disaster.

[ADDENDUM 9/9: I see that today Steven Hayward of Powerline asks much the same question. He thinks this is being orchestrated, but doesn’t know exactly who is doing it.

See also this comment from “Ann.”]

Black voters and Donald Trump

The New Neo Posted on by

A recent poll has shown that Donald Trump has an astounding amount of support among African-Americans: 25%.

Astounding, that is, for a Republican in this era. Of course, the poll could be an outlier. But for the sake of discussion let’s assume it’s accurate.

If true, it would be both extraordinary and significant for the 2016 election, because in the last few elections the electorate has included about 11-13% black voters, and that bloc has gone Democratic somewhere in the 90-plus percentage realm. Therefore, we’re talking about the potential switch of a lot of votes.

So, why might this be happening? Name recognition for Trump has got to be a part of it—that, and the fact that Hillary Clinton is not a natural fit for these voters despite her Democrat status and her service in the Obama administration. Trump isn’t black, but he’s also an urban New Yorker who comes across as outspoken, street-smart, and tough, which probably adds to his appeal for the urban-dwelling segment of the black population.

But most of all, Trump probably appeals because he is addressing an issue that resonates with many African-Americans: illegal immigration. The black population is a group that is particularly threatened by the arrival of so many illegal immigrants in terms of job competition. Democrats have been catering to the Hispanic vote in championing “undocumented workers,” but that could backfire on them with black voters if the right Republican candidate were to come along.

I’m made no secret of the fact that I’m not a Trump fan. But I do think his emphasis on the problems with illegal immigration is mega-important and very appealing to a huge number of Americans who feel they’ve not only not been heard, but who feel that politicians of both parties are ignoring and purposely sabotaging their concerns.

Trump speaks for those people who feel that way, and he speaks in a very loud voice. So why should anyone be surprised if a significant number of black people support him?

Happy Labor Day!

The New Neo Posted on by

[BUMPED UP]

Labor Day is the bookend on the opposite end of summer from its holiday beginning, Memorial Day.

July Fourth is its early peak, with the promise of many long light-filled days ahead. But Labor Day is summer’s last gasp, the moment I dreaded as a child because it marked the finish of vacation and the start of the school year. Spiffy new clothes, a shiny bookbag, freshly sharpened pencils, and the promise of beautiful autumn leaves’ arrival were nice. But they couldn’t make up for the fact that a new school year was beginning. Where oh where had the summer gone?

Now let’s celebrate the fact that we don’t have to worry about that anymore—except, perhaps, for the teachers among you.

As for politics—Obama will celebrate the holiday by extending paid leave for federal contractors:

The White House wouldn’t specify the cost to federal contractors to implement the executive order, which Obama was to address at a major union rally and breakfast in Boston. The Labor Department said any costs would be offset by savings that contractors would see as a result of lower attrition rates and increased worker loyalty, but produced nothing to back that up.

But let’s forget about Obama for the moment. I’m with friends and family, it’s a beautiful day, last night we had grilled steak steak and salmon (and corn and blueberry pie). Today we’re about to eat lunch, and then maybe swim.

Here’s wishing you all a Happy Labor Day! Barbecues, picnics, parades, beach, just hanging out in your yard, whatever you desire. And for the historically-minded among you, here’s some information the origins of the holiday.

[ADDENDUM: I just noticed that, seemingly by coincidence, all three posts today have something to do with the topic of labor.]

These evil British colonizers of Africa and the institution of slavery

The New Neo Posted on by

So, why don’t our history books teach us much about this aspect of the history of slavery in Africa? Mine certainly didn’t touch on it at all, and in all the years since then, when I’ve about the evils of the institution of slavery I never heard a word about the role of Christian missionaries in ending slavery within Africa itself.

In fact, ending slavery seems to have been one of the main reasons that missionaries were there, and a rather significant force in the European colonization of Africa in general, although of course it was hardly the only factor. And the campaign was relatively effective, although there is still some slavery there:

Patrick Manning explains that “if there is any time when one can speak of African societies being organized around a slave mode production, [1850-1900] was it.”

The continuing anti-slavery movement in Europe became an excuse and a casus belli for the European conquest and colonisation of much of the African continent. It was the central theme of the Brussels Anti-Slavery Conference 1889-90. In the late 19th century, the Scramble for Africa saw the continent rapidly divided between Imperialistic European powers, and an early but secondary focus of all colonial regimes was the suppression of slavery and the slave trade. In response to this pressure, Ethiopia officially abolished slavery in 1932, Sokoto Caliphate abolished slavery in 1900, and the rest of the Sahel in 1911. By the end of the colonial period they were mostly successful in this aim, though slavery is still very active in Africa even though it has gradually moved to a wage economy. Slavery has never been eradicated in Africa, and it commonly appears in African states, such as Chad, Ethiopia, Mali, Niger, and Sudan, in places where law and order have collapsed.

Then today, after I’d already prepared the above draft, I saw this offering in the comments section from “Dennis”:

In the mid 19th century Islamic jihad against black Africans was in full force. The Muslims had invaded central Africa and were killing and enslaving Africans on a massive scale. They would march the newly minted African slaves out to the coast in chain gangs. These poor sick undernourished Africans were forced to march with elephant tusks on their heads. Many of the men were castrated out in the field…

The Britisher who was most influential missionary in fighting Muslim depredations in Africa was a Scottish missionary named David Livingstone (19 March 1813 ”“ 1 May 187). The primary mission of the early British missionaries to Africa was to protect the Africans from Islamic jihad. David Livingstone and the other missionaries fought Islamic jihad against Africans primarily through education both in England where the English were alerted to the tragedy which was unfolding in Africa and in Africa where the Africans received the education necessary to enable them to repel the Muslim invaders. It is ironic that leftists accuse missionaries of destroying traditional African society and to some extent they did however since Christian missionaries relied on education and persuasion to win converts rather than by force they ended up saving much of what is uniquely African from the impending destruction by Islamic jihad.

The name of the modern day Islamic jihadis in central Africa, Boko Harem (roughly translated ”“ Western education is a fraud which is forbidden in Islam) is not a fluke. The Islamists know exactly what the missionaries hoped to accomplish by establishing schools and hospitals throughout Africa and they hate them because they stand as bulwark against their violent jihad.

It’s a never-ending struggle, isn’t it?

Ultimately, after European influence, some anti-slavery feeling developed within the Muslim world, although it was met with resistance:

Bernard Lewis writes: “In one of the sad paradoxes of human history, it was the humanitarian reforms brought by Islam that resulted in a vast development of the slave trade inside, and still more outside, the Islamic empire.” He notes that the Islamic injunctions against the enslavement of Muslims led to massive importation of slaves from the outside. According to Patrick Manning, Islam by recognizing and codifying the slavery seems to have done more to protect and expand slavery than the reverse…

Arab or Islamic slave trade lasted much longer than Atlantic or European slave trade: “It began in the middle of the seventh century and survives today in Mauritania and Sudan. With the Islamic slave trade, we’re talking of 14 centuries rather than four.”…

Earlier in the 20th century, prior to the “reopening” of slavery by Salafi scholars like Shaykh al-Fawzan, Islamist authors declared slavery outdated without actually clearly supporting its abolition. This has caused at least one scholar (William Clarence-Smith) to bemoan the “dogged refusal of Mawlana Mawdudi to give up on slavery” and the notable “evasions and silences of Muhammad Qutb”.

Muhammad Qutb, brother and promoter, of the famous Sayyid Qutb, vigorously defended Islamic slavery from Western criticism, telling his audience that “Islam gave spiritual enfranchisement to slaves” and “in the early period of Islam the slave was exalted to such a noble state of humanity as was never before witnessed in any other part of the world.” He contrasted the adultery, prostitution, and (what he called) “that most odious form of animalism” casual sex, found in Europe, with (what he called) “that clean and spiritual bond that ties a maid [i.e. slave girl] to her master in Islam.”

ISIS and Boko Harum are firmly in that tradition, although much of the Islamic world now opposes them:

ISIL appealed to apocalyptic beliefs and “claimed justification by a Hadith that they interpret as portraying the revival of slavery as a precursor to the end of the world.” In late September 2014, 126 Islamic scholars from around the Muslim world signed an open letter to the Islamic State’s leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, rejecting his group’s interpretations of the Qur’an and hadith to justify its actions. The letter accuses the group of instigating fitna””sedition””by instituting slavery under its rule in contravention of the anti-slavery consensus of the Islamic scholarly community.

Who will win that battle?

What does Kim Davis want?

The New Neo Posted on by

In all the verbiage about Kim Davis’ refusal to issue marriage licenses to same sex couples and her subsequent jail sentence, there’s been a great deal of muddled thinking as well as a great many accusations.

The best article I’ve seen so far on what is actually happening with Davis is this by Eugene Volokh, who places the case squarely in the context of legal precedent involving employment law and religious objections to elements of a job. He discusses what type of excuses are allowed and under what circumstances.

One of the points Volokh makes caused me to go “Aha!,” because it clarified Kim Davis’ position in a way that indicates quite strongly that she isn’t out to deny gay people marriages. So those who call her a bigot should take a look at this (not that most of them will, because it would spoil the agenda):

…[I]t seems to me that Davis has a much stronger claim under state law for a much more limited exemption. Davis’s objection, it appears (see pp. 40, 133, and 139 of her stay application and attachments), is not to issuing same-sex marriage licenses as such. Rather, she objects to issuing such licenses with her name on them, because she believes (rightly or wrongly) that having her name on them is an endorsement of same-sex marriage. Indeed, she says that she would be content with

“Modifying the prescribed Kentucky marriage license form to remove the multiple references to Davis’ name, and thus to remove the personal nature of the authorization that Davis must provide on the current form.”

Now this would be a cheap accommodation that, it seems to me, a state could quite easily provide. It’s true that state law requires the County Clerk’s name on the marriage license and the marriage certificate. But the point of RFRAs, such as the Kentucky RFRA, is precisely to provide religious objectors with exemptions even from such generally applicable laws, so long as the exemptions don’t necessarily and materially undermine a compelling government interest.

And allowing all marriage licenses and certificates ”” for opposite-sex marriages or same-sex ones ”” to include a deputy clerk’s name, or just the notation “Rowan County Clerk,” wouldn’t jeopardize any compelling government interest. To be sure, it would have to be clear that this modification is legally authorized, and doesn’t make the license and certificate invalid. But a court that grants Davis’s RFRA exemption request could easily issue an order that makes this clear.

Indeed, Kim Davis has filed a federal complaint against state officials under, among other things, the Kentucky RFRA. And, as I noted, one of the proposed accommodations that she herself has suggested, albeit in the federal stay application, is the simple removal of her name.

Seems reasonable to me, and it also seems to support the argument that she is motivated by freedom of religion issues.

Violette Verdy: feet that speak

The New Neo Posted on by

Violette Verdy is now in her early 80s, but in her heyday as a soloist with the New York City Ballet I saw her dance many times and loved her performances, particularly in the role she created as the girl in green in Jerome Robbins’ “Dances at a Gathering,” set to the music of Chopin. I’ve written before about Verdy in that role, describing her “fluid charm, subtle humor, and exquisite musicality.” “Dances” is an ensemble piece, and her role is one of the smaller ones, but what she did with it was simply astounding. I’ve seen other people perform it since, and watched a few more of them recently on YouTube, and no one compares to Verdy.

In fact, no one even comes close. Although I love the ballet, it’s almost painful to watch other people dance it.

How did she do what she did? Not a great technician by current standards (although she was known for fast footwork that was also incredibly precise), she had none of the rubbery extensions of today’s dancers. Her leg never got raised much more than a little over 90 degrees, for example. Her brilliance—her genius, actually—was in timing, nuance, style, and sparkling wit. She was like champagne, and when you watched her dance, you felt buoyed up.

The are very few videos on YouTube of her dancing, and the few that exist are mostly of poor quality. But watch these two rather short ones and the stills and film in them will give you some idea—a poor idea, but better than nothing—of the amazing musicality and clarity and exquisite Gallic charm of her dancing (alas, no “Dances at a Gathering,” though, and in the second video the music that is used does not match the excerpts, unfortunately):

Here is one of the only visual records I can find online of her “Dances” performance, a multiple exposure still that appeared in Life magazine. There is something very special, particularly in the two middle pictures, about the weightedness of her stance and yet the lightness of her entire being. Her dancing always, always, always said something (that’s why Balanchine said to her that she spoke with her feet; she did):
verdy2

Why am I writing about Verdy now? My memory was jogged when a reader sent me an excellent article about her that appeared in The Nation July 30. The author describes the musicality of her dancing in this way:

In his 1969 Dances at a Gathering, set to Chopin piano pieces, Robbins cast her as a woman in green who appears halfway through the ballet, an isolated figure who dances for her own pleasure, giving herself airs, reveling in her own charms, perhaps remembering past conquests. With small pauses, sudden changes of emphasis, flashing glances, and alternating staccato and legato movements, Verdy was able to evoke a wide range of emotions, both real and affected: insouciance, self-importance, vulnerability, an underlying loneliness. The woman in green became a multidimensional character, despite appearing onstage for only a few minutes…

…[N]ot all dancers are particularly musical. They are trained to listen and count and follow certain cues, to start with the first note of a phrase and end with the last, but this is a superficial definition of musicality. A musical dancer helps you to see and feel the music in your own body; a dancer with a superior musicality goes even further, playing against the music, entering into a conversation with it, bending it to her own wishes. This is the kind of dancer Verdy was. Such musicality is innate. Verdy already had it as a child; when she heard music on the piano, “I just had to participate, I had to do something about it,” she told an interviewer. Having studied piano and violin, she had a grasp of the structures that underpin music: rhythm, the mood evoked by certain tonalities, the workings of counterpoint, the excitement of syncopation. And she understood phrasing, the changes in topography that give music its character. “It’s like speaking,” Verdy told me. “If you’re going to emphasize a certain thing, then you can slide over something else. Phrasing is a recognition of the values of talking, of thinking; it’s an evaluation, an itinerary.” Like her explanations, Verdy’s dancing was articulate.

Verdy was married briefly but had no children, and at the end of the article she describes herself as “more or less by myself. I’m a bit of an odd number now.” Funny thing, that’s exactly the trajectory of her second variation in Robbins’ “Dances at a Gathering”—after a series of relationships, she ends up alone, still dancing.

Verdy’s Wiki entry says of that role of hers:

Her solo…[was] a showpiece of her extraordinary musicality set to a quick Chopin étude (op. 25, no.4), [and] remains a challenge for ballerinas to this day.

You said it! A challenge that you will see illustrated next.

First we have an excerpt from a tape of the entire ballet performed by the Paris Opera Ballet. You’d think they would display some of the same elements in their dancing that Verdy had, since they are French, too. But I don’t see any of it in the soloist who performs her part. It’s all very ho-hum; straightforward, on-the-music, and the charm factor—the smile, the lightness, the wit, the flirtaciousness—is completely missing.

However, as you watch the dance (which is only about two minutes long) it is as though you can see the ghost of Verdy’s movement peering through the choreography, which highlights all of her strengths—quick changes of direction, unexpected movements that are not bravura but involve port de bras (arms, that is) and the face and the eyes, gestures that say something (or should say something. I don’t want to continue to trash the dancer performing it; let’s just say that she’s not Verdy):

Now we have another dancer attempting it, this time a dancer from New York City Ballet, the company the ballet was originally choreographed on, so you might expect them to continue the tradition best. Well, she’s better than the dancer from the Paris Opera, I think, because she gets the quickness and sharpness of the movement somewhat better (I believe she’s a bit more petite, which helps). But she is too concerned with making graceful and classic lines with her poses, too careful. She doesn’t have that freedom and abandon-within-control quality that Verdy had, or that ability to be with the music without being right on top of it; to be the music:

Lastly we have the Pacific Northwest Ballet of Seattle. It’s an excellent ballet company, but not usually thought of as a world-class one like the first two. Nor does it have advantage of being French or of being the place where Robbins first choreographed the ballet. However, in the very short excerpt from Verdy’s dance you see in this video, I came to the conclusion that the dancer here might just be the best of the three at this particular variation. It’s from Verdy’s second dance in the ballet rather than the first one that’s shown in the other videos, and again there’s the unfortunate matching of the wrong music. But no matter. You can still see a tiny glimpse of something like Verdy’s delicacy and effervescence. This is the dance where various gentlemen come by, she tries to charm each one, but ends up alone:

I know that video or film of Verdy doing the role must exist. And I know where it must be—in the Lincoln Center Dance Library, which has records of vast numbers of ballets that are not allowed to be shown commercially because of the musicians union. Yes, the musicians union. People can go to the library and watch them there; I’ve never done it, but I know it can be done. Maybe I should. I would dearly love to see it again, even if only in two dimensions. Because that’s the only way it can be seen now, except in the mind’s eye and memory.

Andrew McCarthy: what Congress can do about the Iran deal

The New Neo Posted on by

Andrew McCarthy has not been a fan of Corker-Menendez, to say the least. Today he has an article in National Review that lucidly explains how the bill can be taken to its logical conclusion by living up to its provisions, under which Congress can state that Obama has not lived up to his side of the bargain.

McCarthy’s argument goes like this (but please read the whole thing):

While maddening, the Corker bill is not an abject congressional surrender to Obama and Tehran. It is a conditional surrender. It would grant Obama grudging congressional endorsement of the deal in the absence of a now unattainable veto-proof resolution of disapproval, but only if Obama fulfills certain basic terms. Obama has not complied with the most basic one: the mandate that he provide the complete Iran deal for Congress’s consideration. Therefore, notwithstanding Washington’s frenzied assumption that the 60-day period for a congressional vote is winding down, the clock has never actually started to run. Congress’s obligations under Corker have never been triggered; the Corker process is moot.

As I have previously outlined, Obama has withheld from Congress the Iran deal’s key inspection and verification provisions…

It is not enough to say that Congress has no obligation to proceed with the Corker review process. It would, under the act, be impermissible for Congress to do so…

As I have been arguing for weeks, Congress must scrap the Corker process and treat Obama’s Iran deal as either a treaty or proposed legislation. Consequently, I could not agree more with my friend Jim Geraghty that the Senate should regard the deal as a treaty and vote it down decisively ”” as I’ve pointed out, senators don’t need the president’s cooperation to do this; their authority to review international agreements as treaties comes from the Constitution, not from Obama.

As I said, the article is well worth reading in its entirety. However, the basic point is that Congress has not abdicated its right to vote on the Iran deal as a treaty (something I’ve also been saying for quite some time), and it can and should do that. However, that does not mean that Obama or the Supreme Court would consider it a treaty and that the down vote would have any force in that regard; it would not. What it would do is something else:

The courts are unlikely to referee a dispute regarding the relative power of the political branches to bind the nation to international agreements ”” even though the judges may have to get involved to the extent the sanctions affect the rights of private parties. No, the reason to reject the Iran deal as a treaty is to lay the groundwork for the next president to abandon the deal. That involves putting other countries on notice, immediately, that the U.S. statutory sanctions are still in effect; that Obama is powerless to lift them permanently; that the next president is likely to enforce them; and that countries, businesses, and individuals that rely on Obama’s mere executive agreement as a rationale for resuming commerce with Tehran do so at their peril.

That’s it.

Will Congress listen to McCarthy’s counsel? As I read his article, I was saying to myself, “Yes, yes, do it!” But at the same time I was wondering whether McConnell would be saying “yes, yes!” as well, and the sad thing is that I don’t think there’s much chance of that, which is why I detest the current GOP leadership in Congress. I would like to be pleasantly surprised by them, although I very much doubt it will happen.

How far does the Christian duty to help others go?

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: I have a busy day today and not too much time for blogging at the moment; maybe more later. This is a huge topic and one requiring a fair amount of research to treat properly in a post.

This is not that post. This is a quick introduction to the question.]

A great many Christians seem to be arguing that we Westerners have a duty to accept all the refugees coming from war-torn countries such as Syria, or those in economic distress such as illegal immigrants from Mexico, whether the “we” be individuals here or in Europe. I’ve read many such arguments on blogs in posts and comments, and have seen them offered by talking heads on TV.

To me as a non-Christian, it is a puzzling argument. To me it seems that the prescription to give to charity, to help the needy, never requires that one help all the needy to the point of beggaring yourself. Nor does it require putting yourself in personal jeopardy. In other words, although Christianity has long admired the saintliness of martyrdom, it does not require it of individuals and certainly not of societies.

There is a saying, “charity begins at home” that has these origins:

The notion that a man’s family should be his foremost concern is expressed in 1 Timothy 5:8, King James Bible, 1611:

But if any prouide not for his owne, & specially for those of his owne house, hee hath denied the faith, and is worse then an infidel.

John Wyclif had expressed the same idea as early as 1382, in Of Prelates, reprinted in English Works, 1880:

Charite schuld bigyne at hem-self.

So it seems clear that helping everyone in need is not possible in the real world. Nor does helping people require that you take them into your own home, either in small numbers or large.

Another principle to remember is that generally any behavior that is rewarded will increase in frequency. So, issue an open invitation to your house saying that all who come will be fed and clothed there and given money, and see what happens if you broadcast it throughout the entire world.

In the case of immigrants from a country such as Syria, the current refugee crisis is a golden opportunity for a significant number of terrorists to come in among them. The more immigrants arrive the more difficult it will be to properly vet them (if indeed there’s any effort at all to do so). In addition, a great number of bona fide refugees fleeing a harsh situation in Syria are nevertheless sworn to the cultural and religious overthrow of the West through the demographic change of which they will be part.

So, how far does your obligation to help go, and to accept the stranger into your home? Does it extend to those who want to take over your dwelling?

I am not completely familiar with the tenets of Christianity, to be sure. But I can’t imagine that it requires such self-destruction in the name of good. To me, it seems that limits are necessary, and the proper topic for debate is the question of where to draw those limits.

The European elites ♥ the refugees

The New Neo Posted on by

As in this country, the Western European and EU leaders are unresponsive to the people on the topics of immigration and of refugees. I can assure you that the speakers here will not have their lives affected by the problem in the same way the local hoi-polloi will, so they can afford to give them stern lectures about their bigotry [Hat tip: Gates of Vienna, where there is also an English transcript]:

Meanwhile, the WaPo reports that not all the leaders in Hungary are getting with the program:

The European Union’s sharpening divisions over a spiraling refugee crisis broke into the open Thursday with two leaders strongly disagreeing in public over whether the asylum-seekers were threatening “Europe’s Christian roots.”

That was the language used by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban as he warned Europe against allowing in mostly Muslim families.

Presently there’s a complicated standoff in a Hungarian train station where a train of refugees has been halted, and this sort of back-and-forth is going on:

Orban, Hungary’s nationalist leader who has spearheaded attempts to turn back the migrants, said Thursday that he had little choice but to seal his nation’s border with razor wire, soldiers and a high fence.

“We Hungarians are full of fear, people in Europe are full of fear, because we see that the European leaders, among them the prime ministers, are not able to control the situation,” he said in Brussels in a raw joint appearance with European Parliament President Martin Schulz. Orban and Schulz, a veteran politician from Germany, made no attempt to paper over their differences or their distaste for each other.

The Hungarian leader blamed Germany for the crisis, saying that its open-door policy toward Syrian asylum-seekers was propelling a wave of migrants to undertake dangerous journeys toward Europe’s heart.

It is similar to our own strife, especially last summer when the child refugee crisis seemed to reach a head. One difference is that we don’t have to deal with the interaction among all the countries of Europe, too; our own political factions within this country are enough, thank you very much. However, what happens in Europe doesn’t stay in Europe; it affects the entire West.

Here’s more from Europe:

Schulz called Orban’s approach “wrong.”

He warned that the splits emerging during the refugee crisis could do lasting damage to the 28-nation alliance, which was founded on a spirit of consensus and burden-sharing.

“This is a crucial moment for the European Union,” Schulz said. “A deeper split of the union is a risk we cannot exclude.”

They’re facing problems even bigger than a split in the EU. However, the split is indeed very real, and it seems to mostly involve Eastern vs. Western Europe:

Orban’s fears are shared by many Eastern European nations, which have pushed hard against any attempt to require them to take in asylum-seekers. Slovakia has said it will accept only Christians.

I don’t know, but it may just be that Eastern Europe has more experience with Muslim takeovers (at least since Ottoman times; here’s a map of the Ottoman Empire at its height). It may also be that Christianity is stronger in Eastern Europe than in Western. Britain is an anomaly in that it seems more resistant than the rest of Western Europe to this influx of Middle Eastern refugees.

Here’s another EU official:

“For a Christian, it shouldn’t matter what race, religion and nationality the person in need represents,” European Council President Donald Tusk said Thursday, launching into Orban before the two met in Brussels. Tusk, a former prime minister of Poland, proposed resettling at least 100,000 refugees across Europe.

Tusk is a Pole, but he represents the Western European point of view. However, I’d like to ask Tusk the following question: what if a major teaching of large groups within that religion is that it is at war with Christianity and Western values and seeks to replace them, if necessary by demographics such as emigration, or by the sword? What then? Is all of that still irrelevant?

Kim Davis: Christian believer or homophobe?

The New Neo Posted on by

By now you’ve probably all read the story of Kim Davis:

A federal judge ordered Kim Davis ”” the defiant Kentucky county clerk who has cited her Christian faith in refusing to issue marriage licenses to gay couples ”” to jail Thursday afternoon for refusing to carry out the duties of her position.

Davis has become a symbol of religiously motivated disobedience after the landmark Supreme Court decision legalizing gay marriage in June ”” she’s said she is acting under “God’s authority” when she repeatedly turns gay couples away.

But you may not be aware of the reasonable accommodations that other jurisdictions have made for officials with a similar dilemma:

In Utah, North Carolina, Texas and other states, local governments are shifting responsibilities so that employees who object to gay marriage do not have to be involved with wedding licenses at all. In this scenario, the objectors’ co-workers or other government officials rotate to handle the task, allowing clerks who object to fade into the background and not participate.

Here’s what’s called “the Utah compromise”:

…which carves out personal exemptions for government officials while extending housing and hiring protections to LGBT people. In Utah, county clerk employees who don’t want to marry gay people can privately notify the government of that and then appoint someone else in the community to handle all marriage licenses.

“There are good reasons to try to allow people who have been in these jobs for a long time to be able to keep their jobs,” Wilson says. “That’s a really noble thing to do in our culture, especially at a time of deep division.”

Kim Davis says she will not resign, because then she “would have no voice for God’s word.” Apparently she has weighed the possibilities, and has decided to take a public stand rather than go quietly.

I’m not sure why her office doesn’t do some version of the Utah approach, but I read (can’t find the link now, unfortunately) that in that jurisdiction she is required to sign off on other clerks, or be some part of the process in some way, and she refuses to do that. She is an elected official and can’t be fired. She can only be impeached, but that would take time and the cooperation of the legislature. Thus, the stalemate.

Why on earth send her to jail? Apparently the judge was well aware that any fine would probably be paid by donations, and would not constitute enough of a deterrent. So Davis becomes a martyr for the cause of traditional Christian belief and freedom of religion, although I think there would have been better ways to handle it on all sides.

This is clearly a bona fide religious objection of Davis. She is merely espousing a point of view that was standard until a very short time ago, leading up to the SCOTUS decision in Obergefell which was rendered only in June 0f 2015 and was a close one at 5-4. Anyone who doesn’t acknowledge that Davis’ protest is motivated by sincere and traditional religious beliefs that have been unquestioned for millennia is either lying or fooling him/herself. But the same sex movement seems determined not only to get their marriage rights, but to compel participation and relabel any reluctance to comply as bigotry, and to do that they must stomp on religious freedom. This is part of the war that the left has been waging on religion for a long, long time.

You see a lot of it in posts and comments section on many blogs on the left; just go to any of them and it’s easy to find a combination of hatred and ridicule of Davis and celebration at her sentence. The fact that until just a couple of years ago, many leftists and liberals (among them Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton) stated their opposition to gay marriage—and in Obama’s case, in 2008 he cited his Christianity as a reason—is dropped down the rabbit hole of revisionist memory, in the general and accustomed leftist manner.

Back then, the same leftist/liberal anti-religious pro-same-sex-marriage advocates were not calling Obama a bigot and a hater. At least, if they were, I certainly haven’t read about it. But Kim Davis, who so far has not been reported to have breathed a word of actual bigotry towards gay people—is obviously a bigot to those same people. Her bigotry is so obvious that the author of a column such as this one merely has to assert it for it to be so, and to compare her to George Wallace:

…[T]his uncivil civil servant [Davis] isn’t a religious freedom fighter. She’s a homophobe, pure and simple.

And note how the author gets around the issue of the fact that Wallace never mentioned religion as a justification for his actions:

…[E]ven the shameless Wallace didn’t try to hide his bigotry behind the Bible.

So, Wallace was better than Davis, because he didn’t lie about religion in order to explain his bigotry.

To make my own opinion on all of this clear: I don’t agree with Kim Davis on gay marriage. I’m not a Christian of any sort, much less a fundamentalist one. As a public official, she needs to carry out her duties, which now (unexpectedly and as a result of a seismic change) include issuing gay marriage licenses, or she needs to resign or to face the consequences, which could include jail. I don’t think she should have been sent there; I would have much preferred that the state or the county or the municipality or the judge had figured out a creative solution to this one. But I applaud her willingness to be jailed in order to defend her principles and her religious beliefs. To me, this is clearly a principled stand and a form of civil disobedience in the classic Thoreauvian sense.

So the proper analogy is to Thoreau, not Wallace. But that’s not one you’ll be hearing from the left.

Sean Davis (no relation to Kim) makes an excellent point about the left’s hypocritical inconsistency in the Davis case:

Davis’s arrest was met with cheers by same-sex marriage advocates who for some reason did not demand imprisonment of officials who lawlessly issued gay marriage licenses in clear contravention of state and federal laws. Take, for example, Democrat Gavin Newsom, who is currently the California lieutenant governor. Back in 2004, when gay marriage was banned under California state law, Newsom openly defied the law and used his power as the mayor of San Francisco to force taxpayer-funded government clerks to issue gay marriage licenses…

Just like Kim Davis, who is an elected Democrat, Newsom justified his lawlessness by citing his own conscience and beliefs about right and wrong rather than deferring to the actual laws of his state.

If you look for evidence of gay rights advocates chastising Newsom for his blatant lawlessness, you won’t find it. Because it doesn’t exist. You similarly won’t find any evidence of these principled law enforcement purists chastising California state officials for refusing to enforce or defend the Prop 8 ballot initiative in California, which was passed overwhelmingly by California voters.

The piece goes on to list other examples. There are many, including this:

Perhaps natural marriage advocates should abandon their religious liberty arguments and instead declare whole cities to be marriage sanctuaries. That strategy has worked splendidly for open borders advocates.

Don’t sit on a hot stove until it happens. Consistency of argument and assumption of goodwill on the part of the Christians opposing gay marriage went out of the window a long time ago for a very vocal majority of same-sex marriage proponents online, and I assume they are relatively representative of the whole.

[NOTE: This essay sparked a memory for me. As a teenager, I was part of a class that was assigned Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience to read in my junior year of high school, along with Leviathan by Hobbes. Not bad for a public high school in New York, although it was in the honors classes rather than part of the regular curriculum. But still, I wonder whether this sort of thing happens much anymore. Anyone with teenagers have an answer to that question?]