That’s the characterization of the Republican Party by those who consider themselves progressive on issues of “economic justice.” But Mickey Kaus draws attention to a point made by the editors of National Review:

On the issue of immigration, majorities of Republicans in both the Senate and House have sided with their conservative base against not just left-wing civil-rights groups and elite opinion, but also a business lobby accustomed to plenty of cheap labor, Republican-party poobahs, and President Bush. They have withstood withering press criticism and pressure from their deep-pocketed donors.

A party that was nothing but an extension of the corporate boardroom never would have approved anti-immigrant legislation that redounds to the benefit of (among others) unions. That said, it doesn’t reflect well on Republicans that the best defense against the charge of corporatism is, “No, they’re not—they’re nativists! They’d rather keep Latinos out of the U.S. than please their biggest campaign donors!” High praise, indeed.

On the offchance you were feeling at all cheerful, this report from the Blair government about climate change ought to cure you. Here’s the abridged version: The consequences of doing nothing are “literally disastrous,” but can be averted if the world acts in concert to take drastic steps.

If after reading that article you still harbor any sense of optimism, go read Robert Samuelson’s analysis of the prospects for serious concerted effort.

Get thee hence, vain deluding cheer. ‘Tis Monday.

p.s.—Economist Sir Nicholas Stern says “there is much more we need to understand—both in sicence and economics.” In other words, the science isn’t settled. Too often rank-and-file environmentalists start boiling oil to pour on anyone who dares suggest as much.

For a gloss on George Will’s displeasure with the White House, check out this piece, which argues that the world Will lives in doesn’t exist any longer. Will once wrote about conservatism as a movement to regain a superior but recoverable past. The author of the linked piece says, essentially: Get real.

Although this corner of cyberspace has been dissecting the question of what constitutes conservatism, there’s an equally important question: What is liberalism? Is it different from progressivism, or is the latter just the word people who are scared of the word liberal now use to describe themselves? On The New Republic’s Open University blog, David Greenberg has some thoughts. Here’s an excerpt:

I think there’s another reason for this budding re-embrace of liberal: the fight against Islamist jihadism. Whatever our views of Bush’s policies, liberals and conservatives agree that what divides the West from the terrorists is our commitment to liberal values--liberal in the broad sense of the term that denotes the Enlightenment traditions of freedom, equality, and human rights. Search for the term liberal on sites like that of the Progressive Policy Institute and you’ll rarely find it used in distinction to Bush-style conservatism--but often invoked in distinction to al-Qaeda-style fundamentalism. Even the Bushies use “liberal values,” if only rhetorically, to describe their project of democratizing the Middle East.

The trouble, of course, is that any definition of liberalism so broad that it includes anyone more tolerant than the Taliban doesn’t help much to draw distinctions in the U.S. By that measure Tom DeLay and Rush Limbaugh are liberals. And in the international context, they in fact are. So how do we delineate between the various shades of liberalism domestically without becoming so denominational that we end up denouncing Paul Lovestone for being a Lovestonite?

James Taranto of The Wall Street Journal, in his Best of the Web column:

“Despite a generally buoyant Democratic Party nationally,” the New York Times reports, “there are worries among Democratic strategists in some states that blacks may not turn up at the polls in big enough numbers because of disillusionment over past shenanigans.” What shenanigans would those be? The paper explains:

“This notion that elections are stolen and that elections are rigged is so common in the public sphere that we’re having to go out of our way to counter them this year,” said Donna Brazile, a Democratic strategist. . . .

“Democrats’ worries are backed up by a Pew Research Center report that found that blacks were twice as likely now than they were in 2004 to say they had little or no confidence in the voting system, rising to 29 percent from 15 percent.

“And more than three times as many blacks as whites--29 percent versus 8 percent--say they do not believe that their vote will be accurately tallied. . . .”

Who exactly made the notion that elections are stolen or rigged “so common in the public sphere”? Wouldn’t that be the Democrats, who never got over their grudge over Al Gore’s photo-finish loss in 2000, who preposterously claimed Ohio was stolen in 2004, and who are already warning that if they don’t do as well as they expect this year, it will be because of Republican dirty tricks?

Given that many of the Dems’ complaints are made in expressly racial terms--e.g., blacks were disfranchised in Florida, or a requirement to show ID to vote is racist--why should it be surprising that blacks are more “disillusioned” than whites?

For some reason, this video retains its fascinating quality even after several viewings. Perhaps the reason has to do with the difficulty in deciding whether the performance is a hip, ironic sendup of a cheesy Eighties pop tune—or just a cheesier version of it. Or, maybe, a less cheesy version of it. It might even qualify for the category of things-so-cheesy-they’re-actually-kinda-cool. You decide.

(Warning: Brief semi-nudity of a skinny guy’s badonkadonk. . . . Is “skinny badonkadonk” oxymoronic? You decide that, too. Is this a proper usage of the term? Who cares—badonkadonk’s a fun word no matter what. Say it out loud, you’ll see.)

Perhaps you think the new voting machines are a plot by evil corporate overlords to destroy democracy. Perhaps you think the complaints about them are a plot by anarchosyndicalist elements of the Weather Underground remnant to destroy the capitalist system. Either way, some of these are quite clever. (Hat tip: the irrepressible Roy Scherer.)

It’s right there in “Oedipus Rex.” Go read it for yourself.

That seems to be the reasoning among supporters of George Allen who are buying into his campaign’s latest attack, aimed at passages in Jim Webb’s fiction.

For once, liberals might enjoy reading (at least part of) Michelle Malkin’s views. (Hat tip: Say Anything.)

Excerpt:

Are the passages in Webb’s “Lost Soldiers” bizarre and perverted? Yes. But they are no more proof of Webb’s immorality and unfitness for office than the passages in “Sisters” are proof that Lynne Cheney hates men or that the passages in “The Apprentice” are proof that Scooter Libby endorses sex between children and bears.

p.s.-- Also, Tennyson endorsed adultery. Dostoyevsky endorsed murder. Mary Shelley endorsed stitching cadavers together to make monsters. . .

p.p.s.-- Didn’t Allen take to the air earlier this month to implore everyone to pay attention to real issues, not personal attacks? (Hint—yes: “Virginians expect to hear us address the real issues you care about. . . .But the negative personal attacks and baseless allegations have also pulled us away from what you expect and deserve. . . .")

p.p.p.s. -- We might as well obey Godwin’s Law and get it over with by bringing up the inevitable comparison: “Schindler’s List” shows Nazis killing Jews, but that doesn’t mean Steven Spielberg endorses the practice. . . . 

Former Old Dominion University president James Koch is asking a question some find uncomfortable: Why should taxpayers hundreds or thousands of miles from Virginia Beach have to shell out big bucks for sand replenishment there?

A new report analyzes the economics of the issue. It finds that the beach is an economic asset to the community, that people are willing to pay higher prices for homes near beaches, and that beach replenishment pays for itself.

The obvious question, then, is: Why shouldn’t Virginia Beach pay for beach replenishment all by itself, through a combination of funding from (a) the real-estate taxes on locals whose property value derives from the beach’s vicinity and (b) hotel, meal, and other taxes on tourists who come to frolic in the sand? By what right should Virginia Beach take money for beach replenishment from a New Mexico waitress who never sets foot outside of Albuquerque?

p.s.—Oh, c’mon. Would you really take as much interest in the economics of beach replenishment without the picture of the blond in the bikini? Would you rather have a picture of Koch? Absolutely splendid gentleman, to be sure. But still!

That’s the description by one Muslim cleric of women who appear in public without a veil. Let’s make perfectly clear: one Muslim cleric. But also a quite senior one. He is, literally, arguing that women who are gang-raped are asking for it: 

If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside on the street, or in the garden or in the park, or in the backyard without a cover, and the cats come and eat it . . . whose fault is it - the cats’ or the uncovered meat? The uncovered meat is the problem.

The article says a “large number” of Muslims condemned the remark (though it doesn’t quote any). Let’s hope so.

For those who want more information about the subject of the earlier post on Google-bombing, here is a New York Times article on the topic.

Is the obesity epidemic just another excuse for elites to tell the proles how to live? Is it even an epidemic, in the public-health sense? These questions form the subject of today’s column.

The editors of The Weekly Standard seem to think they have caught columnist George Will in a contradiction, or at least a change of heart. Will recently criticized the newly passed ban on Internet gambling as “Prohibition II,” a “mother-hen” attempt “to purify Americans’ behavior.” But 13 years ago, the Standard points out, Will was lamenting the “social costs” from “the rapid spread of legalized gambing”: “We are gambling with our national character, forgetting that character is destiny,” he wrote back then.

But surely, from the notion that gambling has many social costs, it does not follow that government must prohibit gambling. Many things that are utterly deplorable also ought to be legal because they flow from the exercise of individual rights. (White-supremacist tracts and misogynistic rap lyrics come immediately to mind.)

That is a libertarian argument for allowing behavior that carries social costs; there is also a conservative argument for doing so. It might go something like this: A virtue that is imposed from above ceases to be virtuous; only when someone is free to choose is he to be commended for choosing well. It is courageous to run into a burning building to save a child—unless someone with a gun is threatening to shoot you if you don’t. Indeed, the purpose of moral education is to teach people to do the right thing even when no one is watching. A society seeking to encourage virtue must therefore rely on persuasion rather than coercion.

People ought to be free to gamble, to proclaim white supremacy, and to call women degrading names—and noble enough to refrain from all three. 

A few days ago the post, “What Is Conservatism?” asked whether it was (a) merely agreeing with anything President Bush says, or (b) upholding a set of principles and time-tested practices.

Turns out the answer is (c).

Today’s editorial taking Rush Limbaugh to task for his boorish behavior draws a rebuke from a reader who writes:

Your attack on Rush Limbaugh in the editorial comment today made me mad and I now feel you are truly and thoroughly an extreme liberal and unbalanced news medium.

Evidently conservatism consists of swallowing anything Limbaugh says, whole.

Duly noted—with a sigh.

There are many reasons to object to the new prohibition against online gambling. The implication for poker playoffs is just one of them. Radley Balko explores another, more fascinating, potential outcome.

Kevin Drum:

Conservatives have been lecturing liberals for the past few years about the fact that George Bush will be our president for the next few years whether we like it or not, so for the good of the country we ought to be supporting him instead of gleefully hoping for a failure that just hurts all of us. The stakes are high, war of civilizations, madmen with nuclear bombs, etc. etc.

So if Democrats win control of Congress this year, I expect we’ll see plenty of sober, thoughtful support for Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid from conservatives, right?

p.s.—Drum titles his post, “Just Asking.” Looks like someone’s been reading the Times-Dispatch editorial page under the covers at night!

Underscoring the point of the previous post is this piece from USA Today.

Excerpt:

[T]he program encourages development in areas subject to flooding — not just in New Orleans, but everywhere — by offering insurance at bargain rates in areas where private insurers fear to tread. That increases the population in vulnerable areas, leading to more costly disasters.

Free-marketeers sometimes act as though the private sector’s superiority to the public sector were something like an immutable law of physics, applying in every time, place, and instance. Of course, that is not the case. As countless examples have demonstrated, ineptitude and corruption are human failings—so as long as private enterprise is run by humans, private enterprise will be plagued with ineptitude and corruption as well.

The virtue of the private sector is not that superior individuals go into business while inferior individuals go into government. The virtue of free enterprise is that it usually confines ineptitude and corruption to isolated institutions. Norm recently linked to an interesting essay alluding to this point. (By contrast, a government policy subjects everyone to the consequences of folly. One of the most frequent complaints about Virginia’s Standards of Learning is that they impose a “one-size-fits-all” regime on schools, classes, teachers, and students that are not all one size. Those making that complaint never seemed to ponder its broader implications relating to school choice.)

It takes government to socialize the costs of bad decisions by private entities. Classic examples: federally subsidized flood insurance and corporate bailouts. In the short term they look like compassion. In the long term they erode the barriers that confine failure and the incentives to avoid it.

. . . and those are just some of the words recently passed along to linguaphiles who subscribe to the free word-a-day e-mail service from Wordsmith.Org. If you’re a word person, you might want to sign up, too.

For those with a little more time, there’s also much to be gained from Knowledge New’s e-mail service. The daily dispatches explain, in a clear encyclopedia-like fashion, subjects such as Ramadan, how North Korea went nuclear, and the history of the swimsuit. Often keyed to news events, they give valuable background and context—without any ax-grinding. 

The first President Bush famously made himself seem out of touch when he appeared surprised by a grocery store’s UPC scanner. The current one recently did so when he explained one of the things he uses “on the Google.” (Hat tip: Waldo Jaquith.)

p.s.—Perhaps it’s unfair to needle the Commander-in-Chief for not keeping up with the latest technology. It’s not as though he doesn’t have enough on his plate already—like this.

Newsweek is absolutely right to point out that just because it was spectacularly wrong about global cooling three decades ago does not mean scientists are now wrong about global warming. A lospided scientific consensus holds that the rise in global temperatures since the middle of the past century has at least some anthropogenic (i.e., man-made) impetus. Newsweek’s past embarrassment doesn’t change the current facts on the ground.

Nevertheless, there’s just no graceful way for the magazine to argue, as it now does, that having its own past environmental alarmism debunked only proves how much more intently people should heed its alarmism now.