SOBRAN'S --
The Real News of the Month
February 2006
Volume 13, Number 2
Editor: Joe Sobran
Publisher: Fran Griffin (Griffin Communications)
Managing Editor: Ronald N. Neff
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CONTENTS
Features
-> President Katrina
-> Year of the Geezer
Nuggets
"Reactionary Utopian" Columns Reprinted in This Issue
FEATURES
President Katrina
(page 1)
During the fuss about the Bush administration's
warrantless wiretaps, liberal critics were on the verge
of making a few good points, but they missed the biggest
point of all: George W. Bush is the fruit of their own
liberalism.
David Ignatius of the WASHINGTON POST quite properly
noted that Bush and Dick Cheney make the dubious claim
that the president's constitutional wartime authority
"trumps everything," even acts of Congress specifically
forbidding, say, warrantless wiretaps. Sound familiar?
Where have we heard this before?
Yes, of course! Abraham Lincoln felt entitled to
claim any powers he deemed necessary to perform his
transcendent duty to "save the Union." True, the
Constitution didn't spell these out, but as Harry V.
Jaffa has written, Lincoln "discovered" a whole
"reservoir" of wartime powers implicit in Article II. Why
shouldn't Bush imitate the great example of Lincoln, one
of liberalism's gods?
And after all, liberalism adores "great" presidents,
those who, like Lincoln and the Roosevelts, take a
"creative" and "expansive" view of executive power, not
necessarily going by the book. This dovetails nicely with
the liberal view of the Constitution as a "living
document" whose meanings evolve over time, adapting to
new circumstances.
This is a game any number can play. Today liberals
are, by their lights, understandably upset with what Bush
is doing, and I'm not happy about it myself. But Bush and
his men are merely doing what liberals have always done,
finding new implications -- penumbras and emanations and
so forth -- in the Living Document. And they have so many
precedents on their side. This is just the Republican
version of what the Democrats have been doing since
Woodrow Wilson. (And Republicans had been doing it long
before that.)
I can't get hysterical about the remote possibility
that my own phone may be wiretapped. The real danger is
more general than that; and even to call it a "danger" is
wrong, because it's a certainty, and it's already
happening. All limits on Federal power are going the way
of the New Orleans levees.
I must admit that the colossal and explosive growth
of the Federal Government under Bush has surprised me.
But I can't deny its logic, given the legacy of
liberalism. What surprises me more painfully is that Bush
has done all this with so little protest or resistance
from conservatives who should know better.
However it happened, it has happened. The Federal
budget first reached a trillion dollars under Ronald
Reagan; Bush has now proposed one of $2.77 trillion. And
it's safe to assume even that figure understates the
amount that will actually be spent.
"The era of big government is over," Bill Clinton
assured us, lying as usual. What we didn't suspect was
that Clinton was just the calm before the real storm, to
wit, the political Hurricane Katrina that is the Bush
administration. Who ever dreamed that a president calling
himself a conservative would end any illusion that
government could be limited?
Year of the Geezer
(page 2)
Like many others of my generation, I turned 60 in
2006. This is the year the Baby Boom becomes a Geezer
Boom. We ourselves, however, having lived by the credo
"Make love, not babies," find the next generation in
short supply. And since the Federal Government has
promised to take care of us -- with the compassionate
President Bush adding generous new Medicare benefits --
hoo boy.
* * *
Even if Denmark were to ban all cartoons, Europe
would still face cultural tensions with its new
immigrants. In Italy, for example, Muslims are demanding
the removal of statues of Dante Alighieri, who wasn't
thinking of Islamic sensitivities when he placed the
Prophet in hell, suffering an especially revolting
punishment (Canto 28). The new arrivals are certainly
making themselves at home, aren't they? Well, nature
abhors a vacuum, which is just what Europe has become.
* * *
Francis Fukuyama, best known for his somewhat
premature announcement of "the end of history," has
detached himself from the neoconservatives who once
embraced his thesis. Acknowledging that the Iraq war was
a boo-boo, he observes that "the neoconservative moment
appears to have passed," chiefly as a result of that war.
He barely touches on the Zionism and ethnocentrism of the
neocons, but he notes that their ideas have been
thoroughly tested and found wanting.
* * *
Victor Davis Hanson is among the few writers still
defending this war in columns and articles. He's become a
rather comical figure. Billed as "a classicist and
historian," he has written a book about the Peloponnesian
War, but everything I've read of his has harped
monotonously on a single Lesson of History: that
"appeasement" led to World War II. Just like the
Democrats today, don't you see. Islamofascism, and all
that. What a threadbare imagination.
* * *
Which reminds me: I recently took another look at
REDS, Warren Beatty's 1980 epic of John Reed's romance
with the early Soviet Union. Despite some hints that
Communism might turn out to be a flawed system, the film
tries to enchant us with the glow of Reed's generation's
youthful idealism. It's one of those smug historical
movies in which the "progressives" get all the good
lines, the "reactionaries" are obtuse, and the past
becomes the butt of the present.
* * *
Isn't it time to admit that "idealism" usually means
political fantasy, the use of evil means to attempt
impossible ends? Alleged lofty intentions can't excuse
what was done to countless millions of victims of those
false ideals.
* * *
Dick Cheney has become the first sitting vice
president in two centuries to shoot someone. The only
other one to do so was Aaron Burr, who saved the country
from Alexander Hamilton. But of course in those days a
politician could still whack somebody without fear of
what the late-night comedians might say.
NUGGETS
{{ EMPHASIS IS INDICATED BY THE PRESENCE OF "EQUALS"
SIGNS AROUND THE EMPHASIZED WORDS. }}
GOING WOBBLY: My old boss Bill Buckley has finally jumped
ship, calling the Iraq war an American "defeat." This
will make things a bit sticky for the young hawks he has
left in charge of NATIONAL REVIEW. It's as if Churchill,
in 1942, had declared, "Well, we must try to see how
things appear from Hitler's point of view." (page 4)
WHY THEY FOUGHT: Maybe we should think of the attack on
Pearl Harbor as a preemptive strike. How deeply indebted
to the Japanese the world might be if they'd succeeded in
preventing Franklin Roosevelt, that lump of foul
deformity, from developing weapons of mass destruction!
(page 5)
SINISTER ANALOGY: What do the USSR under Stalin and the
United States under Jimmy Carter have in common? Both
countries were headed by men with Georgian accents.
(page 6)
LESSONS OF (WRITING) HISTORY: In Austria, Convicted
Holocaust Denier (and, it appears, =Former= Historian)
David Irving began his three-year prison term in solitary
confinement. Arguing that the convict is "unrepentant,"
the prosecutor -- yes, that's right, the =prosecutor= --
has appealed the sentence, demanding that it be extended
to the maximum ten years. Watch it, Irving. The next
thought you think may be your last. (page 7)
COME TO THINK OF IT: Roosevelt started the Manhattan
Project at the urging of a famous physicist. The guy's
name is associated with the theory of relativity, but we
can also thank him for the nuclear age. Very brainy. A
regular Einstein. (page 8)
NOBODY HERE BUT US MAMMALS: George Will has made a snide
comment on the "reptile brain" of David Irving. Watch it
there, George. Not only is that a low blow, it invites
speculation on just which phylum you belong to. (page 9)
CONSPIRACY THEORY: Don Knotts, best known as Barney Fife,
has died at 81. He was among the last of a vanishing
breed: the hilarious white Protestant. Comedy today is so
heavily dominated by hilarious Jews that I suspect a
Mossad operation. (page 10)
PUT IT BACK ON: "Wispy" is the way one gossip column has
described movie sensation Keira Knightley; and as if to
underline the point, she has displayed her scrawny frame,
stark naked, on the cover of VANITY FAIR. I don't wish to
be ungallant, admiring her beauty and talent as I do, but
most of us look more silly than sexy with our clothes
off, and that includes Keira. (page 11)
LOOK BEFORE YOU LEAP: Lewis Lapham, editor of HARPER'S,
has called for the impeachment of George W. Bush. The
idea has undeniable merit and a strong superficial
appeal, but do we really want to risk making a martyr of
the guy? (page 12)
REPRINTED COLUMNS ("The Reactionary Utopian")
(pages 3-12)
* The Case against Football (January 10, 2006)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2006/060110.shtml
* The Heyday of Kennedyism (January 12, 2006)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2006/060112.shtml
* How to Handle a Woman (January 17, 2006)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2006/060117.shtml
* Lincoln's Party (January 19, 2006)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2006/060119.shtml
* Only Mozart (January 26, 2006)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2006/060126.shtml
* Penumbras, Emanations, and Stuff (February 02, 2006)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2006/060202.shtml
* Liberal in Chief (February 7, 2006)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2006/060207.shtml
* Fake Pollocks? (February 9, 2006)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2006/060209.shtml
* Cheney and Chappaquiddick (February 14, 2006)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2006/060214.shtml
* Playing for Laughs (February 16, 2006)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2006/060216.shtml
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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