Conservatives and Law Enforcement

Conservatives and Law Enforcement
By Daniel G. Jennings
If we are to create a New Conservatism that addresses the issues facing modern America, conservatives must be prepared to reevaluate their positions on all aspects of our society. In particular conservatives must take a long hard look at law enforcement and determine if modern American law enforcement is a threat to traditional conservative values.
Like defense, law enforcement has long been a conservative sacred cow largely because it is a popular issue at election time. Conservatives believe law enforcement can do no wrong and vote to give the law enforcement establishment all the money it wants, whether the expenditures are justified or not.
Just as mindless defense spending may actually undermine military preparedness and national security so mindless law enforcement spending may actually undermine effective police work. Often times the large sums allocated to law enforcement go not to the cop on the beat but to law enforcement bureaucracies. Instead of hiring more police officers, improving police training or increasing resources for community policing law enforcement agencies often spend their funds on fancy equipment and weaponry that’s of little value in day to day police work. Fancy crime labs, automatic rifles for the SWAT team and tanks for the riot squad look good in demonstrations for the press but don’t help stop street crime.
Nor is the situation on the federal level much better, as Col. Bill Lind of the Free Congress Foundation has pointed out money from the federal government’s effective COPS community policing program has been redirected to bureaucracy namely Homeland Security. COPS has been effective in helping local police clean up communities, the Department of Homeland Security has accomplished little beyond building up a massive bureaucracy.
Beyond the expenditures on law enforcement there is the relationship between law enforcement and constitutional rights. Conservatives like to talk about constitutional rights and the rule of law but too often the message that gets out is that conservatives only want constitutional rights and the rule of law for white middle class people. Conservatives harp on big government threats to rights that affect the middle and upper classes such as business licensing but ignore what amounts to an organized war on the rights of poor people in the name of law enforcement.
Take the war on drugs, one drug war tactic is to seize the property of people convicted of drug crimes. This generates money for law enforcement agencies that seize the property but there’s no evidence it actually prevents or deters drug dealing. After all drug dealing criminals will simply sell more dope to buy more property or put the property in somebody else’s name. Average people who get caught up in drug crime may loose property they’ve worked hard for. Seizures are morally questionable and may violate the spirit of the constitution yet conservatives have ignored the issue.
Nor have conservatives, many of whom supposedly believe in the right to bear arms, complained loudly about gun crime laws. Under some of these laws people can be given hard prison time for committing minor crimes if police find they possess a gun while committing the crime. For example a person could theoretically get a long prison sentence if police found both an ounce of marijuana and a hunting rifle in their vehicle. Does the Second Amendment apply only to white people who abide the law or does it apply to all citizens?
What about a poor man who has a criminal record but has gone straight and now has a family to protect. He may live in a bad neighborhood and feel the need to keep a gun to protect his family. Yet he might not be able to keep that gun because of a stupid mistake he made twenty years ago.
What about three strikes your out laws? Under these laws people often get long prison sentences for committing minor and harmless crimes like swiping a piece of pizza because they have three felony convictions on their record. These people often get longer sentences than violent criminals like rapists and child molesters who are a real threat to the community. Shouldn’t conservatives stand up for common sense?
This leads us to the prison system, America now maintains one of the world’s largest and most expensive penal systems. Several million people are locked up, some of them are violent and dangerous criminals but many are just poor people in prison for the crime of not having a decent lawyer. Unfortunately, the purpose of this prison system increasingly seems to be to guarantee jobs to people who work at prisons and profits to corporations that build and operate prisons rather than the incarceration or reformation of criminals.
Vast amounts of tax money are now spent on prisons even though crime rates are falling. Officials are constantly demanding more tax money for more prisons. In many cases, the politicians promoting prison construction blatantly say that the real goal is the creation of good paying government jobs with good benefits for people who are too lazy to find work in the private sector.
This new prison system is the antithesis of traditional conservative values, the prisons are big government a massive bureaucracy run for the selfish interest of those who profit from them not the public good. They are supported by tax money and hurt the economy in two ways, first by taking money in the form of taxes and secondly by locking large numbers of people who might become productive citizens if given the chance.
Many prisoners could probably be reformed or at least scared into law abiding citizens if we tried. Parole and probation systems might do this, especially if there are enough parole officers to make sure young punks are working and going to school rather than getting into trouble. Many younger prisoners might benefit from the discipline and education provided by military service, the military has a hard time getting recruits. Maybe it’s time to give young offenders the opportunity to avoid prison by serving their country in uniform.
Perhaps it’s time for conservatives to come out against mandatory sentencing and private prisons. A moratorium on prison building might be in order, as would sensible plans to reduce the number of prisons.
In addition to prisons there is the so called War on Drugs, it’s been going on for over thirty years yet the drug problem doesn’t seem to be any better. Virtually any American can get any illegal drug he or she wants, provided he or she has a few bucks and is willing to ask around. Yet we spend billions of dollars on drug interdiction and trample the rights of average citizens to stop drugs. Perhaps it’s time to end the war on drugs or change tactics. Education efforts like Nancy Reagan’s just say for example.
The Drug War even effects our foreign policy and national security. Military and intelligence resources that could be used to fight terrorism are diverted to fight drug trafficking. American drug interdiction and eradication efforts antagonize average people in foreign countries encouraging popular support for drug dealing gangsters. The drug trade itself gives terrorists, such as Marxist thugs in Latin America, a ready source of cash for weapons and mercenaries to support their cause. Some Islamic terror groups also profit from the drug war. The secret networks set up by drug smugglers may one day provide terrorists with the means to bring operatives and weapons into the United States.
It’s time Conservatives had a serious discussion about the War on Drugs and decided whether it’s worth the effort or not. Perhaps other tactics might be in order, for example we might be able to reduce drug dependence by cutting welfare payments. A great many drug addicts are on welfare, that is they use money taken from taxpayers to pay for their drugs. Drug dealers often target communities with lots of poor people on welfare such as Indian Reservations. In other words the same government that is fighting drug gangs is financing them by handing out welfare money to the poor.
Even the question of legalization must be raised. After all is it ethical for our government to try and ban some categories of addictive drugs such as cocaine and heroin while profiting from taxes on addictive substances such as alcohol and tobacco? Alcohol and tobacco hurt and kill many more people than illegal drugs do. Or for that matter ethical to throw some people into prison for selling methamphetamine, while allowing doctors to prescribe a similar drug, Riddilin to school children?
There are I am sure many other questions that conservatives should be asking about law enforcement? The federalization of law enforcement inherent in the War on Terror and the War on Drugs could it lead to the rise of a national police force, an American KGB? Or the militarization of law enforcement, increasingly our police are looking and in some instances acting like storm troopers. In some cases, the police in our cities operate like an occupying army rather than cops. None of these developments are healthy and they represent betrayals of traditional American values.
Conservatives have to ask themselves: how do we protect our communities and citizens without betraying our values and trampling our rights? It’s a big question and a difficult one. After all vast expenditures for law enforcement bureaucracies and prisons are politically popular. So are the War on Drugs, mandatory sentencing and gun laws. Can conservatives overcome political expediency to ask these questions?
That is the challenge facing the New Conservatism how do we protect our communities and our values at the same time?

The Media isn't covering the war

America’s War Correspondents: Missing in Action
By Daniel G. Jennings
I recently noticed something disturbing about news coverage of the Iraq War, there is no real news coverage of the Iraq War.
I’ve been watching some of the media outlets particularly, the big three TV network news operation s and I can’t remember when I last saw an actual news report from the war zone. Not coverage of some press conference in Bagdad but a TV reporter actually out with the troops on the front line trying to learn about the war first hand. We haven’t seen anything like that since the early days of the war when a lot of reporters got embedded and gave us a historic look at the war.
Instead of actual coverage of the war what see on the big three TV networks and the major cable news channels is a few seconds of stock footage of soldiers walking around in an Iraqi town. Followed by commentary from experts and pundits namely a bunch of middle aged white guys in three piece suits. Occasionally they throw a token black or Arab or woman into the mix but that’s about it. If they need the military point of view they talk to some retired general or colonel who’s never been to Iraq and probably hasn’t seen combat since Vietnam.
We get more coverage of the so-called peace movement and its antics than we do of our soldiers’ activities in the field. Instead of war reporting we get a commentator saying and by the way three soldiers died today in Iraq between news snippets. That’s not coverage of the war, it’s not reporting and it’s not journalism.
At least during the Vietnam War, the TV networks sent reporters and cameramen out into the field to see what was going on. They got the story wrong but at least they tried to cover it. In this war they do nothing of the kind, they don’t even go to Iraq. The self proclaimed journalists stay in New York and Washington and sit in their comfortable studios sipping their lattes and listening to the rantings of politicians.
The print media’s coverage of the war isn’t much better it consists of wire service reports that seem to be based upon statements from military spokesmen. The same can be said of much of the TV coverage of the war, instead of trying to get the story the journalists are simply regurgitating whatever the military says.
Or worse they rely on reporting from foreign news outlets and politically motivated organizations like self proclaimed human rights groups. Many of these groups are hostile to America and the war effort and are only interested in making us look bad. Much of their reporting is little more than propaganda yet it is being reported as fact. The deaths of American soldiers are ignored while non events like the Abu Ghraib scandal, in which nobody died, become “news.”
The saddest part of this is that the military isn’t censoring the news or keeping reporters away from the battlefields. No they’re giving reporters unprecedented access to the troops and the war zone. The so called journalists just don’t seem to be interested in covering the story.
Why aren’t the journalists in Iraq? Perhaps it’s too much like work, it isn’t glamorous there are no Starbucks and hair salons in the desert, no National Public Radio. Perhaps journalists don’t want to hang out with working class types like soldiers and Marines. Perhaps they don’t want to see what’s happening in Iraq because it might disprove their politically correct prejudices. Perhaps it’s too dangerous. Maybe they just don’t want to deal with the military and the Iraqi people as human beings rather than abstracts.
This lack of war reporting is representative of the decline of American journalism. Major news organizations and reporters no longer do basic things like verify sources or check out the information the stories are based upon it. Just ask Dan Rather? Remember how easy it was for political partisans to get fake documents publicized on a major national news show. Or to see if reporters are actually doing their jobs, remember the Jayson Blair scandal at The New York Times he was simply rewriting wire service copy and filing it as stories he was covering in the field while laying around his apartment in Brooklyn snorting cocaine. Yet he got away with it for months and nobody noticed.
The tragedy here is that we’re not getting the real story about the Iraq War, instead all we’re getting a lot of opinions and prejudices about the war from people who refuse to cover it. Worst of all, we have now have journalists for whom a war with an enemy that wants to destroy us, a war in which American soldiers are dying isn’t a story. If that isn’t a symptom of a dysfunctional media I don’t know what is.

Iraq: the Beginning of a Democratic Defeat

Iraq: the Beginning of a Democratic Defeat
By Daniel G. Jennings
Once again, the Democratic Party, and its sponsors in the media elite, have figured out a means of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
By making opposition to the Iraq War the center of their strategy the Democrats are killing what looks like an excellent opportunity to make a big electoral comeback in 2006. With their noisy, sensational and obnoxious attacks on the war the Democrats are playing right into Karl Rove’s hands.
Basically the Democrats are showing themselves as the party of the left, the peace movement and the intellectual and media elite, in other words all the groups that the public despises and fears. Instead of appearing as moderates standing up to the extremist neconservative policies of George W. Bush or the religious right, the Democrats appear to be loud and obnoxious extremists out to push their agenda on America just like the Republicans.
Despite the media elite’s attempt to make it that way the war in Iraq is not a big deal for most Americans. It’s a colonial war, with a low number of casualties compared to past conflicts like Vietnam, waged by a professional military. The war doesn’t impact the lives of average Americans in the way Vietnam did.
By focusing on it the Democrats will get a lot of attention from the media elite and hurt their electoral chances. Attention that they don’t need at this time for all the attention will do is expose the elements of the Democratic Party average Americans loathe; the peace movement, the far left, the intellectual elite, to the media spotlight. This will turn many likely Democratic voters off and keep them away from the polls.
So what should Democrats do? Follow the lead of their most pragmatic star, Hillary Clinton. Keep a low profile don’t publicly support the Iraq War, but don’t criticize it either. That way if the war goes badly they can come back to it next year during the elections or in 2008 and say see we were right. That way Bush will be the only politician associated with the unpopular war. If we win they can simply claim victory by saying we backed Mr. Bush and his successful war. Or if Iraq peters out and attracts little attention the Democrats can move onto other issues.
Instead of ranting and raving about Iraq, the Democrats should concentrate on other issues, the economy, trade, immigration, healthcare, Social Security, tax reform, transportation, energy, the deficit, the environment, etc. etc. Talk about something that really makes Americans mad this confusing new Medicare drug benefit program. Or all the wasteful spending coming out of the Republican Congress.
Instead of looking like an effective opposition party the Democrats look like a bunch of publicity hounds saying and doing whatever it takes to attract the attention of the TV cameras and the praise of the talking heads. The Democrats are letting the media elite set their agenda and that is a recipe for disaster.
This is happening because the Democratic leadership in Congress is now completely divorced from the American reality. They spend all their time in Washington, D.C., in the fishbowl of media attention. Their constituency is no longer the voters but the reporters, editors, commentators and producers at big media outlets. Making those people happy is their primary goal. Since the media elite has decided Iraq is the major issue, Iraq is the major issue even though it isn’t appear on most Americans’ radar.
This policy of talking about nothing about Iraq will cost the Democrats victory in next year’s congressional election. It will also make Hillary, America’s most popular Democrat because she is not associated with the noisy crowd ranting and raving about Iraq and Scooter Libby

Transportation and Republicans

Transportation and Republicans
By Daniel G. Jennings
A while back I predicted that the Republican policy on transportation which is basically,“Mass Transit is Bad highways are good” would cost some GOP candidate an election. Well that has now happened in Virginia.
Republican Jerry W. Kilgore lost the governor’s race in my dad’s home state to Timothy M. Kaine, a Democrat on Nov. 1. Kaine won the election by running on issues important to voters in suburban and exburban (far out suburban counties). According to The Washington Post* and other observers one of the biggest issues Kaine used to appeal to suburban voters was transportation.
Most of the voters who elected Mr. Kaine live in the Washington D.C. suburbs and exburbs an area heavily dependant upon mass transit (people there ride the Washington Subway, buses or commuter trains to work at Federal offices). I have to wonder did many of those voters vote for Mr. Kaine because they thought he’d work for money for mass transit to make their commute easier?
The media in it’s usual blindness said the issue was roads but was it? Was the real issue mass transit and the perception that Republicans vote against mass transit?
Mass transit is a huge issue in the exburbs, I should know I grew up in one of the original exburbs, Evergreen, Colorado. I also lived in one of the country’s biggest exburbs, Riverside, California, and took the train to work in Orange, County. From personal experience I know that exburbs are “park and ride country.” That is a large percentage of exburb residents drive to a parking lot, park their cars and get on a bus or train that takes them to work. Exburbanites who don’t take the train to work may take it downtown to the museum or the ball game on the weekends.
Many of the fastest growing exburbs are on commuter and light rail lines. Many more are on bus lines. Much of the support for mass transit expansion is coming from real estate developers and chamber of commerce types who believe mass transit can benefit their communities. That is it will raise property values, these are hard nosed businessmen they want rail transit not because it will help the environment but because it will make them money by increasing the value of their investments. Many of these guys will write checks to people who vote for rail.
Average people seem to agree, in the Denver metro area last year voters in a presidential election year approved FasTracks a plan to raise sales to build new rail lines to suburban areas. Getting Colorado voters to approve a tax increase is close impossible yet Denver area voters have twice voted for tax measures designed to finance new rail lines to suburbs. Suburban Republican voters who voted for George W. Bush also voted for FasTracks.
Even U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo, (R-Colorado) formerly a staunch light rail critic, is now seeking more federal funds for light rail expansion in his exburban district (Douglas County, Colorado). A change for a man who once wrote editorials promoting bus rapid transit, now that light rail reaches into Tancredo’s district and voters like it. Guess what, Tom Tancredo now believes in light rail and wants federal funds for it.
The message the voters are sending is clear, they want mass transit (i.e. rail transit) and they’ll support candidates who back it. They’ll even raise their taxes to pay for it. The question is, will Republicans listen or go down fighting for a lost cause called highways?

*http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/08/AR2005110800371_3.html

Threats

The Threats to the State: Cultural Marxism vs Radical Islam
By Daniel G. Jennings
In his excellent series on the Next Conservatism Paul Weyrich writes that one of conservatives’ biggest tasks in the years ahead will be to defend the state, or government from forces that want to destroy it.
Two of those forces, Radical Islam and Cultural Marxism, are now in conflict on the streets of France. Although they seem radical opposites, Cultural Marxism and Radical Islam are revolutionary dogmas whose adherents refuse to acknowledge the legitimacy and authority of the state.
Cultural Marxism is a nihilist doctrine that teaches that all authority and tradition is illegitimate and must be resisted and overturned. The Cultural Marxist believes that all institutions, governments in particular are corrupt and not worth defending. Cultural Marxism is now the official ideology of France which explains why French men are not defending their cities from rampaging mobs of Islamic youth.
The Cultural Marxists have spent the last half century or so in the deconstruction of Western Civilization that is teaching that Western countries are corrupt, racist, brutal, oppressive, imperialistic etc. The accomplishments and basic values of civilization are ignored and its shortcomings highlighted.
The young Muslims running amuck in France’s streets were taught the Cultural Marxist dogma that Western Civilization is evil and inferior in school and the media. They learned from their teachers that France and Europe are corrupt, evil and not worth defending.
Is it any wonder many of them have turned to Radical Islam a revolutionary doctrine that teaches modern secular civilization is illegitimate because it is not based on Islamic law and the Koran? Like Cultural Marxism, Radical Islam seeks to overturn modern secular civilization, but unlike Cultural Marxism Radical Islam has something to replace modern civilization with. That something is a romanticized fantasy of an historic Islamic Empire that only exists in Hollywood movies.
The Cultural Marxists on the other hand have nothing to replace the civilization they would destroy with. Unlike the old time Marxists who had least had something to replace the existing order with, a socialist utopia that doesn’t work. The Cultural Marxists have nothing to replace our present day society with except some vague notions of moral relativism and multiculturalism. Is it any wonder that the French immigrant youth educated by Cultural Marxists finds the romantic past nonsense spewed out by the Muslim radicals so intoxicating?
What has happened in France is the ultimate result of the forces working against the state. Cultural Marxism has undermined the moral, cultural and ideological foundations of the state. Leaving the state vulnerable for the physical attack of the Radical Muslims.
France’s conservatives paved the way for this debacle by allowing the Cultural Marxists to takeover their educational, cultural, political and media institutions. This enabled the Cultural Marxists to undermine French Culture which meant the poor immigrants of France’s ghettos turned not to France’s traditions but to their Islamic culture. These immigrants already the victims of discrimination and poverty view the French as enemies to be conquered not as fellow countrymen.
France has important lessons to teach Americans and particularly American conservatives about the damage Cultural Marxism can do to a society. Fortunately America’s immigrants have plenty of economic opportunity and political freedom to make them feel at home but if that were to change (say because of an economic collapse) we could see similar disenfranchisement and violence in our cities.

Threats

The Threats to the State: Cultural Marxism vs Radical Islam
By Daniel G. Jennings
In his excellent series on the Next Conservatism Paul Weyrich writes that one of conservatives’ biggest tasks in the years ahead will be to defend the state, or government from forces that want to destroy it.
Two of those forces, Radical Islam and Cultural Marxism, are now in conflict on the streets of France. Although they seem radical opposites, Cultural Marxism and Radical Islam are revolutionary dogmas whose adherents refuse to acknowledge the legitimacy and authority of the state.
Cultural Marxism is a nihilist doctrine that teaches that all authority and tradition is illegitimate and must be resisted and overturned. The Cultural Marxist believes that all institutions, governments in particular are corrupt and not worth defending. Cultural Marxism is now the official ideology of France which explains why French men are not defending their cities from rampaging mobs of Islamic youth.
The Cultural Marxists have spent the last half century or so in the deconstruction of Western Civilization that is teaching that Western countries are corrupt, racist, brutal, oppressive, imperialistic etc. The accomplishments and basic values of civilization are ignored and its shortcomings highlighted.
The young Muslims running amuck in France’s streets were taught the Cultural Marxist dogma that Western Civilization is evil and inferior in school and the media. They learned from their teachers that France and Europe are corrupt, evil and not worth defending.
Is it any wonder many of them have turned to Radical Islam a revolutionary doctrine that teaches modern secular civilization is illegitimate because it is not based on Islamic law and the Koran? Like Cultural Marxism, Radical Islam seeks to overturn modern secular civilization, but unlike Cultural Marxism Radical Islam has something to replace modern civilization with. That something is a romanticized fantasy of an historic Islamic Empire that only exists in Hollywood movies.
The Cultural Marxists on the other hand have nothing to replace the civilization they would destroy with. Unlike the old time Marxists who had least had something to replace the existing order with, a socialist utopia that doesn’t work. The Cultural Marxists have nothing to replace our present day society with except some vague notions of moral relativism and multiculturalism. Is it any wonder that the French immigrant youth educated by Cultural Marxists finds the romantic past nonsense spewed out by the Muslim radicals so intoxicating?
What has happened in France is the ultimate result of the forces working against the state. Cultural Marxism has undermined the moral, cultural and ideological foundations of the state. Leaving the state vulnerable for the physical attack of the Radical Muslims.
France’s conservatives paved the way for this debacle by allowing the Cultural Marxists to takeover their educational, cultural, political and media institutions. This enabled the Cultural Marxists to undermine French Culture which meant the poor immigrants of France’s ghettos turned not to France’s traditions but to their Islamic culture. These immigrants already the victims of discrimination and poverty view the French as enemies to be conquered not as fellow countrymen.
France has important lessons to teach Americans and particularly American conservatives about the damage Cultural Marxism can do to a society. Fortunately America’s immigrants have plenty of economic opportunity and political freedom to make them feel at home but if that were to change (say because of an economic collapse) we could see similar disenfranchisement and violence in our cities.

War & Politics

War & Politics
By Daniel G. Jennings
In the last couple of weeks America’s political class has demonstrated how incapable of leading and protecting this country it really is. Disturbing news indicating a major new terrorist offensive against all civilized nations is coming in yet all the politicians seem to be able to do is fight among themselves.
What’s happening overseas is utterly frightening France is burning, mobs of Islamic youth some of them apparently in league with Islamic extremists are burning French cities and attacking police and civilians. The French government seems incapable or worse unwilling to stop the violence and protect it’s own citizens. In Australia, police broke up a ring of Al Qaeda terrorists planning a major bomb attack. In India, terrorists set off bombs in markets and cities killing dozens of innocent citizens. In Jordan, suicide bombers attacked three hotels killing 52 innocent people.
This indicates that Al Qaeda is expanding its operations on new fronts. It’s operatives are able to launch major terrorist attacks in new countries. The attacks in Jordan are particularly disturbing the Iraqi insurgency is expanding it’s operations into neighboring countries. A strategy that seems designed to destabilize the entire Middle East and make it into a battleground for Al Qaeda. Israel will probably be the next target, Al Qaeda will expand its’ suicide attacks to that nation which could provoke a greater Middle Eastern war.
The Australian arrests prove that Al Qaeda has the capability to infiltrate even the most advanced nations and set up cells there using both homegrown and imported fanatics. These cells, as the London and Madrid train attacks prove, are capable of launching devastating bomb attacks that can kill dozens or hundreds of innocent people.
The violence in France proves that the housing projects and slums of Europe are a breeding ground for Islamic violence. The disenfranchised youths burning France’s cities could easily become Al Qaeda’s foot soldiers in Europe and beyond. These riots could give Bin Laden an army in the heart of Europe in a country that possesses nuclear weapons, chemical weapons, biological weapons, intercontinental missiles and lots of other high tech weaponry.
If all this wasn’t bad enough the President of Iran seems to have gone crazy holding a disgusting rally of anti-Semitism and hatred of Israel that seems like something out of the Third Reich. The result of this won’t be a resurgence of Islamic power in Iran but a series of destructive Israeli attacks on Iran, quite possibly with Chinese help, that will blast Iran back into the stone age further destabilizing the region and leading to more war.
Yet what are our leaders doing? The Democrats are running around screaming for President Bush’s blood and ranting and raving about lies about WMD two years ago and a minor scandal involving some third rate vice presidential staffer. President Bush is giving meaningless defenses of his policies in useless press conferences. The talking heads are talking about Judge Alito and Scootergate anything but the international crisis which is as dangerous as anything we’ve seen since 1941. Worse of all both Democrats and Republicans seem to be more concerned about the rights of captured terrorists than the safety of the United States.
The media instead of sounding the alarm are enabling the self deception of our leaders by giving them a stage upon which to enact their sick little show. The reporters are following Scooter Libby around instead of covering the havoc overseas. Or worse putting out reports that make American security forces who are fighting terror look like the bad guys. The media’s pet Republican John McCain and his ranting and raving about torture of terrorists (even though there’s no evidence of that) while nobody is asking what are we going to do about France?
The sickening situation reveals the moral bankruptcy of both of our so called political parties. The Democrats who have an excellent opportunity to come back seem to be more interested in committing ritual suicide to appease the left rather than winning elections. How will the pompous intellectuals who screamed about torture of terrorists look when the bombs go off in New York or Orlando? All the Democrats had to do was sit back and let the Republicans destroy themselves. Instead they’re destroying themselves by selling their souls to the peace movement.
Notice the most astute of all Democratic leaders, Hillary Clinton, is nowhere to be seen during this debacle. She’s laying low so she can jump on her white horse and ride to the rescue after the big Democratic losses in November 2006.
The Republicans instead of standing up to the media elite’s insane campaign to brand America’s security forces and intelligence community torturers are bowing to it. Rather than taking on the morally bankrupt human rights activists who denounce the good guys for defending themselves but ignore the bad guys’ atrocities the Congressional Republicans are going along with the witch hunt. Nor has any major Democrat come out against the stupidity and hypocrisy of the human rights movement.
Only President Bush is standing up to this stupidity which will make him look like a popular national hero when the next terror attack comes. When the Al Qaeda bombs go off next the President will look like a wise leader who put the nation’s defense first. The Democrats will look like fools who refused to defend their own nation.
One prediction here, the only Democrat who will stand up and defend the President and back him will be Hillary. The Left will attack Hillary for taking this stand which will make her look like a brave and thoughtful patriot standing up to the arrogant intellectuals. This debacle will destroy the Democrats in Congress but lay the groundwork for a successful Hillary campaign in 2008.
In the end these political games are disgusting and frightening. Our so called leaders are behaving like the Byzantine intellectuals who argued about theology and refused to defend their homeland because of theological differences with their Emperor while the Turks were setting up their canons outside the walls of Constantinople in 1453. In the end those Byzantine scholars were butchered by the Sultan’s storm troopers the Janissaries or sold into slavery. I just hope that history is kinder to the United States than it was to the Byzantines.

The Decline of Television and the New Politics

The Decline of Television and the New Politics
By Daniel G. Jennings
The nature of mass communications in the United States is changing profoundly and changing the nature of American politics with it. These changes result from the decline of what we might call traditional television.
To understand this change a bit of historical background will be needed here. American politics, like all politics, has always been dominated by small groups of influential people. In colonial times and the early days of the Republic politics was dominated by aristocrats, landowners in the South, Merchant princes in the North. During the 19th Century politics was dominated by various political machines which controlled the voting process and determined who was elected. Generally, these political machines existed to dispense patronage, i.e., government money, jobs and favors. These political machines worked closely with the rising business community and controlled the mass communications of the day the newspapers.
In the early 20th Century politics changed again, reformers succeeded in defeating or at least containing the power of the political machines. More importantly, a new class of college educated intellectuals and powerbrokers succeeded in seizing control of the mass media the newspapers and the new mediums of radio, television and movies.
Control of the mass media and through it public opinion (or more precisely an illusion of public opinion) enabled this New Class to set the national agenda. This was why America was able to enter World War I even though most Americans were against the war because the New Class wanted to enter the war. It was also why America’s war effort in World War II focused on Germany because the New Class viewed Germany as America’s principal enemy.
The new class was able to manipulate public opinion and the political system because the nation’s communications system was centralized. The electronic media: radio and television were controlled by a few networks based in New York. Time for news was limited so a few network employees sitting in Manhattan could decide what was and wasn’t news. The situation in newspapers was similar most of the news content of the large newspapers was generated by a centralized organization based in New York the Associated Press. AP staffers could and decide what was news and how the news was portrayed.
Under this media monopoly politicians had to do as the New Class said or be destroyed by it. Politicians who rocked the boat could easily be portrayed in a negative light and destroyed, not even powerful figures like Sen. Joseph McCarthy, President Lyndon Johnson and President Richard Nixon could survive the attacks of the media elite. The only way politicians could get their message out without going through the media elite was to buy television advertising which was costly and of limited influence.
This of course was why political campaigns became so costly in the last few decades of the 20th Century. Politicians had to spend a fortune to produce TV ads then another fortune to put them on the air.
Now thanks to technological progress the rules of politics are changing. New media, the Internet in particular allows virtually anybody to distribute news on a national basis. No massive printing plants or staffs or transmitters are needed just a computer and an Internet connection. Conservative activists were able to shoot down CBS News’ shoddy attempt to smear President Bush as a draft dodger by exposing the fraudulent evidence upon which the claims were made. Vast numbers of people now rely upon the Internet for their news, news that isn’t filtered by the new class.
Even threatening to television is downloading that is the ability to literally download video footage say a movie or TV show from the Internet, satellite or a cable system. This means people will be able to choose what they want to watch and when to watch. Many people will take advantage of pay per view services in which they buy programs without commercials for a small fee. Others will purchase, borrow or rent DVDs.
What this means is that vast numbers of people can and will watch TV without commercials. Figure in the large number of people watching commercial free cable channels, DVD and videos and playing video games that means a majority of voters might not see those expensive TV commercials.
The question facing politicians then is how does one reach those voters with a message and influence them. Only a literate minority will listen to talk radio or visit political web sites. So new political tactics and organizations will be needed to reach voters or rather old political tactics rediscovered.
The answer is grass roots organization the formation of nationwide networks of activists and volunteers who get out the vote on a face to face basis. In other words politicians must recreate something like the old time political machines which mobilized voters on a local basis for national, state and local elections.
Recent elections seem to bear this thesis out. President Bush won the White House last year by mobilizing conservative Christian voters using churches as focal points. Bush got out the vote through Christian media and Christian activists who took the message to their friends and neighbors. These people were mostly average folk with strong feelings about issues like abortion and the ploy worked.
The Democrats backed heavily by the New Class ran an old fashioned media driven election. They relied heavily on television advertisements, media attacks and media exposure and failed miserably in efforts to get Kerry over. Tactics that worked in the past didn’t work, efforts to smear Bush with fake stories in big media failed. Hysterical advertisements that tried to scare young voters with fears of a draft didn’t make achieve any noticeable effect.
State elections this year are even more telling examples of television’s decline. In my home state of Colorado, the big government crowd put an initiatives, C, which would enable the state government to keep tax refund money on the ballot. The Anti-tax crowd responded with traditional TV advertisements showing greedy politicians stealing money from average people. Yet issue C passed largely because grassroots liberal activists, mostly government employees’ unions, and business and community groups like Chambers of Commerce, got out the vote on behalf of the issue.
In California, four issues put on the ballot by Arnold Schwarzenegger, a popular and charismatic media savvy politician failed. These issues failed largely because opposition from grass roots liberal activists mostly public employees’ unions. Interestingly enough, the grassroots activists have succeeded in damaging and possibly destroying Arnold’s reputation and derailing his reform efforts.
What this means is that the political game has changed completely, the media has lost much of its power and influence and so has the media elite. It’s no longer possible for a few wealthy elitists sitting at desks in New York to set the nation’s political agenda. The Harvard educated corporate plutocrats can longer rest soundly in their beds knowing that Walter Cronkite will tell the average citizen how to think and vote.
The power is now with the grass roots groups and their leaders, the public employees unions, the Conservative Christians and I’m sure other groups that’ll emerge in the future. Other groups which could potentially be powerful include veterans, senior citizens the American Association of Retired People, civic groups, civil rights groups, Catholics, unions, the peace movement, hobby enthusiasts and fans of sports and entertainment.
Already the peace movement is setting the Democratic agenda, Democratic politicians are rabidly opposing the war even though that is probably political suicide. On the Republican side President Bush withdrew Supreme Court nominee Harriet Myers because of opposition from cultural conservatives. In her place he nominated a good Catholic with a strong anti-abortion record. During the nomination debate, the views of a grass roots leader, Dr. James Dobson, head of Focus on the Family, were considered more important than those of many Senators. Dobson after all is viewed as a kingmaker whose endorsement like that of an old fashioned political boss can make or break a politicians’ career.
How this all will play out I don’t know but I do know one thing. The center of gravity in American politics seems to have moved. The power is now with the grass roots activists and their leaders not with the media. So we have to ask ourselves how will this new class use its new found power, will it become corrupt and abusive like the greedy bosses who destroyed the political machines of the 19th century? Or arrogant and self righteous and estranged from the common man like today’s media elite? Only time will tell.

Paris is Burning and Nobody's Noticing.

The big meltdown in France that I've been predicting for some time is finally coming to pass. Mobs of young Muslims are rampaging through the streets of French cities attacking people and burning everything in sight including cars. Targets have included public buses and vehicles in the streets. Yesterday the Rocky Mountain News reported that a crippled old woman walking on crutches was pulled from a public bus outside Paris, doused with gasoline and set on fire.
Reuters is reporting that Islamic radicals (quite probably Al Qaeda) and drug dealing street gangs are organizing the violence. The French government is doing little or nothing to control the violence, the Foreign Legion isn't in the streets and the Gendarmes are standing by and letting the mobs burn property.
My guess is the next stage will be that native French mostly right wing extremists will strike back by attacking the rioters and staging raids on Muslim neighborhoods. Could be the beginning of a civil war remember Yugoslavia. A civil war in a country that has nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missiles. Do we want Bin Laden in control of the French nuclear arsenal?
The frightening thing is nobody in the United States seems to be noticing this catastrophe unfolding. There wasn't a single mention of the riots on any of the network Sunday morning chat fests today. Our political class seems oblvious to the coming catastrophe in Europe. What will it take the lynching of an American tourist or a tour bus full of Americans to get us to notice. Or the killing of some famous American Francophile such as Johnny Depp. What do you bet Mouessier Depp just happens to be at his home in Los Angeles right now and is thankful he's a US citizen. My guess is that Depp has quietly flown his children out of France and here to America where they'll be safe in the country he arrogantly attacked as a broken toy.
Still it's frightening to see our leaders not taking stock of an impending catastrophe in Europe. The Barbarians aren't at the gates folks. They're coming up the walk to the front door. We'd better get ready for some really ugly scenes out of France and the collapse of Europe. When will Americans wake up, perhaps when Jaques Chirac calls Washington and screams for the Marines to come to Paris to protect his Presidential Palace from the lynch mob.

Am I a Bigot?

Explanations, Christians, Etc.
By Daniel G. Jennings
I recently had an interesting and disturbing experience I was informed that the President of a conservative think tank in Washington I admire and have written for was circulating an e-mail that accused me of being an anti-Christian bigot. Now this caught me by surprise, no I’m not a Christian and I have been critical of Christianity as a belief system and of churches and said in so my writings but I wasn’t aware that I was a bigot.
I haven’t for example dismissed all evangelical and Bible believing Christians as ignorant barbarians as Bill Moyers, himself an ordained Baptist minister, keeps doing on a regular basis. Nor have I said that Bible Believing Christians are no better than Al Qaeda something that liberal columnists for the major news media do on an almost daily basis. I might also add that I have never professed the idiotic belief that Conservative Christians are maniacs who believe that Jesus will return waving the flag next week as Bill Moyers keeps telling paying audiences.
In fact I’ve defended Christians on a number of occasions and made a number of liberal secularists mad by pointing out the very obvious and transparent fact that George W. Bush is not an evangelical or born again Christian. Bush is a Methodist who attends a very liberal I think it’s Episcopal Church in Washington DC. Were Bush really a Bible thumping evangelical he’d be attending a Bible Thumping evangelical church. Oddly enough, the liberal media which is hostile to both Bush and evangelicals, has enhanced Bush’s reputation among evangelicals by branding him as one of them.
Now I suppose that I am a conservative secularist, that is I’m an agnostic who doesn’t go to church or espouse any set religious beliefs yet most of my political beliefs are quite conservative, as are most of my social values. I’m very critical of Christianity and the Church, but I’m also critical of other religions such as Islam, Marxism (which is a religion), secular humanism, Mormonism, racism, organized Atheism and the New Age.
Yes, I don’t have much love or respect for the collection of Evangelical, Pentecostal, fundamentalist and Charismatic churches lumped together as the Religious Right. Yet, I’m just as critical of the Religious Left, which is worse than the Religious Right in almost conceivable way. One of my pet peeves is the way in which the media broadcasts every misdeed of Conservative Christians real or imagined but completely ignores worse behavior on the Religious Left. Pat Robertson, whose charities actually do a lot of good and are funded by donations, is attacked for making one silly remark on TV. Bill Moyers, whose network is funded by our tax dollars, is allowed to spew out reprehensible bigotry and demonize vast numbers of good people in the process.
Those on the Religious Right at least seem to honestly believe in their faith. Much of the clergy of the Religious Left, (the establishment of the mainline Episcopal, Methodist, Pentecostal, Northern Baptist, and related churches) no longer believes in God, basic Christian theology or the Bible. I’ve heard plenty of horror stories about mainline clergy who don’t believe in God or the divinity of Jesus anymore, some of them even say so in their sermons. Where are the Sixty Minutes exposes and news articles exposing these pious frauds?
Many of these religious frauds try to express their lack of faith through such acts as ordaining gay clergymen. Yet, I have never once heard of a liberal clergyman who doesn’t believe in God not handing out the collection plate or refusing a donation to the church. Or turning down the large salaries and excellent benefits many clergymen get these days. How are clergymen who preach a faith they don’t believe in but still pass out the collection plate every Sunday any better than TV preachers who rip off little old ladies? After all much of the liberal clergyman’s income comes from the donations of elderly women in the pews, many of whom are believers living on fixed incomes. How is Mr. Spong, the former Episcopal Bishop of Newark, New Jersey, who doesn’t believe in Christianity any less of a charlatan than Benny Hinn or John Averzini (who promises to make the faithful rich if they send in a donation)? Like Hinn and Averzini, Spong travels the world peddling books and cashing in.
The hypocrisy of the Religious Left isn’t just confined to a lack of faith but to behavior that is well Unchristian in any sense of the word? How are Bill Moyers’ ignorant diatribes against Bible Believing Christians to be reconciled with the Religious Left’s hollow claims of tolerance or the Sermon on the Mount? Or the many liberal clergy who participate in the Peace movement which is awash in Anti-Semitism, Anti-Americanism and other gutter level bigotries? The religious liberals make common cause with political liberals whose attacks on our president and political leaders are filled with childish insults To the liberal Christian “love thy neighbor” only seems to apply if thy neighbor shares thy political beliefs.
The Religious Left seems as willing to force its beliefs on others as the Religious Right. Last year in Denver New Agers put a measure to force citizens to meditate for peace on the city ballot. That of course is atypical of the Religious Left, their real threat is to economic freedom.
Yes, some members of the Religious Right want to reach into my home and control my sex life. But the Religious Left would reach out into my wallet, seize what little income I have left in the form of taxes and waste it on all matter of nutty social programs and foreign aid. If I would try to increase my income by starting a business, the Religious Leftist will surely try to regulate it out of existence. Which is the greater threat to my individual freedom a Religious Conservative telling me sex outside of marriage is evil or a Religious Leftist stealing my money and my financial freedom and labeling it progress?
Why is the Religious Left so in love with the idea of taxation? Could it be that they think that higher taxes means more tax deductible donations for their churches?
Then there’s the way in which the Religious Left is constantly trashing my country, which I love, or if not empowering people who do. Religious Leftists are constantly calling the government, the military and the people who serve in them evil. They label America as imperialistic and fascist. Religious leftists also proclaim their love of peace by making common cause with Marxists who believe in violent revolution and terrorism.
Okay, I could go on ranting and raving about the Religious Left all day and God knows those people deserve far worse criticism than I could dish out, but I won’t. Instead I’ll knock my fellow secularists.
I can understand why the head of that Washington think tank would be angry at secularists. Virtually all of the secularist argument and literature these days is little more than cheap anti-religious bigotry. Much of it crude and quite ignorant. And much of it as nutty as anything people of faith produce.
For example we constantly hear conservative American Christians compared to the Taliban and Al Qaeda. The comparison is ludicrous and ignorant as a few questions quickly reveal. Are people being beheaded in Alabama? Are American Muslims and Jews being executed for refusing to convert to Christianity? Are American Christian suicide bombers attacking mosques or Hindu temples? The answer to these questions is no. The argument is one of bigotry.
It is also one of hypocrisy secularists constantly rant and rave about the moronic beliefs of some evangelicals, the silly and I might point out un-Biblical rapture story for example. Yet they ignore equally silly beliefs on the Religious Left, the New Agers some of them Christian clergy who try to talk to angels and spirits for example. Or Oprah Winfrey and her course of miracles. Or the idiotic belief that the Earth is a living being with a soul.
Secularists gripe constantly about “The Left Behind Novels,” which are moronic and comic bookish, but the Left Behind Novels are no worse than “The De Vinci Code,” clearly a work of the religious left, which combines gutter level anti Catholic bigotry with New Age ideas about Christ in a cheap pulp novel. Yet we never hear secularists griping about the Code.
Nor do people of faith have any monopoly on nutty ideas. The truth of course is that many of the secularist arguments and causes are nutty.
I can’t for the life of me see how posting the Ten Commandments on the Court House Wall, having children say the words “Under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance or for that matter school prayer threatens the Constitution. The Ten Commandments are posted on the walls of the US Supreme Court which conservatives blast as a notorious bastion of secularism so posting them on the wall is a meaningless act. “Under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance is just a hollow and meaningless phrase having kids say it won’t make them grow up to be Bible Thumpers (I said it every day for twelve years in school). As for School Prayer, would the watered down, inoffensive, politically correct prayer public school teachers would have to administer mean anything or have any influence on kids?
I might also add that secularists atheists in particular can be every bit as smug, holier than thou and arrogant as any person of faith. The presumption of moral superiority because they believe or don’t believe in something is arrogant and offensive. It’s this kind of nonsense that made me give up on religion or at least Christianity in the first place. So I have to wonder how I could be labeled a bigot? I suppose I’m a bigot because I’m not an Ivy League educated Baptist minister who used to run public television a job he got by kissing Lyndon Johnson’s ass for a few years. Not because I’m a secularist.