Moral equivalence

The New Neo Posted on by

A mob, whipped up to a homicidal frenzy by local Afghan clerics enraged at the recent Koran burning by a fanatical minister in Florida, kills twelve UN workers in retaliation.

And the Guardian’s poll asks whether the Florida pastor is responsible for the deaths, with the results neck and neck between yes and no. Simultaneously, many in the comments section to this article on the killings make a similar pernicious moral equivalence.

The continuing decline of the West—as well as logic and judgment—in full view.

Is it time to take the “neo” out of neo-neocon, and go south?

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve been blogging now for six years.

Six long years under the moniker “neo-neocon.” And I was thinking the other day about whether I can really lay claim to the prefix “neo” any more.

After all, am I really still a newly-minted neocon? Haven’t I become just sort of a middle-vintage neocon? Or maybe even turned paleocon?

But “neo” is my name, and my nickname too. What would I do without it? What would I call this blog? What would I call myself?

However, in the interests of honesty, truth, justice, and the American way, I’ve decided I can no longer be known as neo-neocon. Casting about for a substitute, I realize that it’s time for a geographic change, too; this weird April First snow/rain/yuck storm has come just in time to get me thinking that I really should set out for warmer climes.

And what could be warmer than—Brazil? Yes friends, there’s been an exciting development in the life of neo(ooops! old habits die hard)-neocon. I will soon be taking up permanent residence on the beach at Copacabana. Or maybe the beach at Ipanema—after all, I’ve written about it already.

I plan to move down there once I learn enough Portuguese to get by. And of course I’ll have to get bikini-ready by availing myself of some of the famous body-sculpting surgeons of Brazil.

And then, and only then—well, just call me Rio-neocon, my new name.

The face behind those anti-GOP death threats

The New Neo Posted on by

Remember those death threats against the Republican legislators in Wisconsin, the news the MSM played down? Now 26-year-old Wisconsin preschool teacher Katherine Windels has been charged with sending those emails to 16 Republicans in the Wisconsin legislature:

Windels was charged with two felony counts “bomb scare” and two misdemeanor counts of “computer message-threatening injury/bodily harm.” If convicted, each felony count carries a maximum penalty of three years and six months in prison and a $10,000 fine, and each misdemeanor count carries a maximum penalty of 90 days in prison and a $1,000 fine.

I would like to see her get the maximum. You think that’s too harsh? I don’t. Ms. Windels may be a gentle molder of tender young minds by day, but by night (and by computer light) she’s a union thug—at least, in her fantasies. She seems to have watched too many “Godfather” movies; take a look at the sentiments in her teacherly missive:

Please put your things in order because you will be killed and your families will be killed…So, this is how it’s going to happen: I as well as many others know where you and your family live, it’s a matter of public records.

We have all planned to assault you by arriving at your house and putting a nice little bullet in your head. However, we decided that we wouldn’t leave it there. We also have decided that this may not be enough to send the message to you. So we have also built several bombs that we have placed in various locations around the areas in which we know that you frequent.

This includes your house, your car, the state capitol, and well I won’t tell you all of them because that’s just no fun. Since we know that you are not smart enough to figure out why this is happening to you we have decided to make it perfectly clear to you…

In another one of those ironies we’ve grown so accustomed to (and which is no surprise at all), it seems the real climate of hate was stirred up, not by the Tea Partiers, but by unions and union sympathizers.

Assad the reformer, Obama, and Hillary

The New Neo Posted on by

Charles Krauthammer thinks Hillary’s statement about Assad of Syria may represent some sort of new low for the Obama administration:

Many of the members of Congress of both parties who have gone to Syria in recent months have said they believe he’s a reformer.
”” Hillary Clinton on Bashar al-Assad, March 27

Few things said by this administration in its two years can match this one for moral bankruptcy and strategic incomprehensibility.

However, later in his piece, he suggest a strategy that might be behind it:

This delicacy toward Assad is dismayingly reminiscent of President Obama’s response to the 2009 Iranian uprising during which he was scandalously reluctant to support the demonstrators, while repeatedly reaffirming the legitimacy of the brutal theocracy suppressing them.

Why? Because Obama wanted to remain “engaged” with the mullahs ”” so that he could talk them out of their nuclear weapons. We know how that went.

The same conceit animates his Syria policy ”” keep good relations with the regime so that Obama can sweet-talk it out of its alliance with Iran and sponsorship of Hezbollah.

Pretty funny.

It occurs to me that, if Hillary really has any notion of running in 2012, the opposition might consider running an ad featuring a clip of this particular quote.

I disagree with Krauthammer in one respect, though. I think there are many things the Obama administration has done has that have matched Hillary’s Assad remarks. This sort of moral and strategic bankruptcy—or perhaps a better word for it would be perversity—in foreign relations was demonstrated long ago, almost from the start of Obama’s presidency.

But it was Obama’s reaction to Honduras (beginning in late June of 2009) that indisputably revealed which way the wind was blowing, on both Obama’s and Hillary’s part. In fact, I wrote the following back in early July of 2009:

During her presidential campaign [Hillary] seemed to have a grip on the fact that the United States stood for something””for example, speaking out against tyrannies such as we’ve seen the last week or so in Iran, and speaking up for the rule of law in places such as Honduras against those such as Zelaya who would go against its constitution.

And she sold whatever was left of her self-respect so cheaply, too. Secretary of State, presiding over Obama’s muddled “I never met a dictator I didn’t like, or a human rights violation I couldn’t wink at” mentality? Who would want that job? Is it merely a stepping stone to something else, or an end in itself?

I still don’t have an answer to that last question.

Last call for donations for a while–and thanks!

The New Neo Posted on by

One more call, and then I’ll shut up about this for a while. But I am deeply grateful to every single one of you who contributes. Every bit—large or small—adds up, and helps me immensely in continuing the blog.

To all who have already contributed by clicking that “Donate” button on the right—and you know who you are—I thank you from the bottom of my heart. In many cases, by the way, I don’t even know who you are, since the names on the donations are often quite different from the names by which I know you.

Libya CIA revelations: Obama supporter shocked—shocked!

The New Neo Posted on by

A few Obama supporters and generalized liberal/leftist others are discovering that Obama lied about the extent of our involvement in Libya, having already (allegedly) authorized covert CIA operatives to offer support—and, I would sincerely hope, to figure out who the rebels are and see what might actually be going on there. Boots on the ground and all that.

Andrew Sullivan is so stunned by the news that he’s practically gone silent, which takes a lot of doing. Others don’t seem stunned; merely angry (see also this).

JammieWearingFool has a nice way of describing the stunned ones:

“Useful Idiot Shocked Over Obama’s Covert Actions in Libya”

They’re usually the last ones to figure out they’ve been duped.

How sad.

That “how sad” is sarcasm, but it’s also true. People do have a highly unfortunate tendency to overlook evidence that their idols have feet of clay, right up to the point when the idol’s feet crumble and the statue falls over and crashes right onto them (and onto the rest of us as well).

Sullivan is in a state of cognitive dissonance so great he may have trouble recovering:

It’s so surreal, so discordant with what the president has told the American people, so fantastically contrary to everything he campaigned on, that I will simply wait for more confirmation than this before commenting further. I simply cannot believe it. I know the president is not against all wars – just dumb ones. But could any war be dumber than this – in a place with no potential for civil society, wrecked by totalitarianism, riven by tribalism, in defense of rebels we do not know and who are clearly insufficient to the task?

Apparently Sullivan has either ignored all previous “discordances” between what Obama has promised and what he has done, or rationalized them away.

You may wonder why I focus on Sullivan, who has lost so much credibility himself over the years. The answer is that I see him as somewhat typical of a certain type of liberal thinking that’s fairly common—and not even limited to the left, although I find it a lot more prevalent there. Sullivan, after all, used to be a centrist of sorts—at least temporarily, until the cause of gay marriage and the Abu Ghraib scandal drove him leftward.

You can see—in Sullivan’s emphasis on the word “dumb”—another shock: what’s a smart president like Obama doing in such a dumb place? Therein lies the wounded yet still-beating heart of a great deal of Obama’s support among supposed intellectuals: he was felt to be so much smarter than anyone else who’d occupied the office recently, even Clinton the Rhodes scholar, and smart people don’t do dumb things.

Leaving aside the question of whether there was much evidence for this belief about his intellectual firepower, the conviction was and still is quite firmly entrenched in many of Obama’s supporters. But they are ignoring the fact that “smart” people quite often do dumb things in the real world, especially the world of war, especially if they are almost totally inexperienced in said world. Has Obama—or Sullivan—never heard of “the best and the brightest?” If not, it’s time for a history lesson.

As for me, I have no illusions about Obama. But as far as sending the CIA goes, I’m for it. If we’re going to support the rebels to the tune of billions of dollars we don’t have, it would be great to find out who they are and whether they’re worthy of support.

[NOTE: Michael Totten offers an interview with a woman who says she knows who the rebels are and is part of a group called Shabakat that has extensive contacts with them, and that they’re nice urban educated guys who want democracy and freedom.

Although I’d like this to be true, I’m exceedingly skeptical. Not of Totten, whom I trust implicitly, but of the rest. And even if it’s true, I can’t imagine that such forces would be a match for Qaddafi’s supporters, even with our clandestine help on the ground and air support.]

[ADDENDUM: Victor Davis Hanson on Obama and Libya. As usual, Hanson is well worth reading, and the essay brings to mind the fact that he is, after all, a military historian. Many of the comments are good, too (hat tip: “T”).

Walmart and the women and the law

The New Neo Posted on by

The Supreme Court has been hearing arguments on whether a class action suit on behalf of women employed by Walmart can go forward. Here’s a fairly good summary of the issues involved at this stage, which boil down to whether a class action suit is the proper remedy or whether the women involved should sue the company on an individual basis.

Unfortunately, questions of law such as this sound very boring and picayune. In fact, they are pretty boring and picayune. But they are nonetheless important. If this is allowed to go forward as a class action, it sets a ludicrously broad standard for huge lawsuits of this type, which threaten to financially destroy companies that don’t have a strict quota system for promotion on representative racial and/or gender lines.

There is really no evidence of a discriminatory policy on the part of Walmart, either. In fact, Walmart’s official policy is explicitly non-discriminatory, but promotion decisions are de-centralized and made through individual discretion. The plaintiffs contend that, through some sort of oozing osmosis, these individual decisions become saturated with gender discrimination that flows down from above and is therefore Walmart management’s responsibility.

How did it come to this? How did we get to the point of ignoring actual policy and looking only at equality of outcome as the indicator of what a policy might be? This is the way the “argument” goes [emphasis mine]:

A plaintiff can prove a “pattern and practice” of employment discrimination by showing an unexplained statistical disparity between the composition of the employer’s workforce and the composition of the qualified labor pool from which the employer draws its workforce. A nondiscriminating employer would wind up with a workforce that reflects the demographics of the relevant labor market, absent some unusual circumstances. Of course, that’s just where the analysis starts: If fewer women are qualified for or interested in the jobs in question, the imbalance wouldn’t suggest discrimination. Sophisticated statistical methods can take account of the other factors that might contribute to disparities, like differences in qualifications, interest, or availability.

Once such legitimate factors have been taken into account, it’s reasonable to conclude that any remaining disparity is the result of discrimination.

I’m not so sure how reasonable it is. There are intangibles that are part of promotion decisions that are not gender-based. What’s more, even if is “reasonable” to conclude that the remaining disparity is the result of discrimination, is that conclusion reasonable enough and certain enough to support a legal decision that affects millions of people and could bankrupt a company, as well as leading other companies to promote a number of women beyond their competence level (and in the process discriminate against men) in a frantic effort to avoid a similar fate for themselves?

What happened to the Tea Party?

The New Neo Posted on by

Michael Barone reports that Wisconsin is turning on Governor Walker, and the electorate there might be poised to recall a number of the Republican legislators who stood with him in his fight against the public unions and for a more balanced budget. Governors Kasich in Ohio and Corbett in Pennsylvania are in trouble, and polls indicate that Tea Party support is down in general, or at least among low-income voters.

What’s the problem? How has the worm turned so very suddenly? After all, the election was only last November.

An answer I happen to agree with is provided by commenter “paul1149” at Hot Air:

Walker has been magnificent, but he and our side have failed to get the message out. It was and is a message that will resound with most people ”“ it’s a winner ”“ but if people do not have basic economics explained to them they just don’t know what’s going on. Such is the level of citizenship at this point in time…

Too much was assumed. This is a nation, after all, that place[d] Barack Obama in office…

Barone agrees, although he offers a bit more cause for optimism, as do certain polls in which rephrased questions draw different responses:

There’s an assumption by many Republicans, seemingly shared by Walker, that voters settled these issues definitively in the November elections. But the IWV poll suggests that voters are not necessarily well-informed and have been swayed by those who frame the issue as collective bargaining “rights.”

Respondents become more favorable to Walker’s position when informed that public employees are paid 45 percent more than private-sector union members and that union dues have been automatically deducted and go to support candidates workers may not favor.

In New Jersey, a more Democratic state than Wisconsin, Gov. Chris Christie has won majority support in his struggles with public employee unions by making his case repeatedly, with facts and figures, and with a forcefulness that has made his town hall appearances a YouTube hit.

But Christie is sui generis, a YouTube sensation who has a unique ability to get to the heart of the matter in an entertaining way. He’s like the rare star teacher who commands a spellbound classroom with the sheer force of his intelligence, eloquence, and personality. We can’t expect all Republican governors and legislators to have these skills; it’s unrealistic.

But short of a Christie cloning, how to get the message out? Not only is the MSM failing to cooperate, it’s bound and determined to foist a competing message on the public. The school system, for the most part, likewise. In addition, there’s a natural backlash to the message of austerity the Tea Party wing of the GOP is trying to put out right now. Everyone wants a free lunch, and no one wants his or her own lunch money cut.

It’s all very well and good to talk about budget cuts in general. It’s the particulars that smart. And if the public is factually ignorant and/or economically illiterate, the game is over before it has begun, and the forces of misinformation find it easy to win.

Dancing With the Stars: still a kid

The New Neo Posted on by

Those of you who are not into frivolity, skip this one. But as for me, I welcome the chance to watch Ralph Macchio, the long-ago “Karate Kid,” do a credible jive on “Dancing With the Stars.”

He’s fun to watch. And the most amazing, astounding thing is that he still looks like a kid despite his age (which I which reveal after the clip—no peeking!):

Macchio will turn fifty this November 4th.