Religious Right? I Don't See Any Religious Right.

Kathleen Parker wrote an op-ed today calling out the "oogedy-boogedy" theocratic wing of the GOP and "armband religion" as impeding conservative electoral prospects for a generation.

Here's the deal, 'pubbies: Howard Dean was right.

It isn't that culture doesn't matter. It does. But preaching to the choir produces no converts. And shifting demographics suggest that the Republican Party -- and conservatism with it -- eventually will die out unless religion is returned to the privacy of one's heart where it belongs [...]

But, like it or not, we are a diverse nation, no longer predominantly white and Christian. The change Barack Obama promised has already occurred, which is why he won.

Among Jewish voters, 78 percent went for Obama. Sixty-six percent of under-30 voters did likewise. Forty-five percent of voters ages 18-29 are Democrats compared to just 26 percent Republican; in 2000, party affiliation was split almost evenly.

The young will get older, of course. Most eventually will marry, and some will become their parents. But nonwhites won't get whiter. And the nonreligious won't get religion through external conversion. It doesn't work that way.

This has sent conservatives into a tizzy, as they demand, DEMAND to know what Parker is referring to. The author of "Liberal Fascism," who has never ascribed bad motives to a political party in his life, has a representative comment.

What aspects of the Christian Right amount to oogedy-boogedyism? I take oogedy-boogedy to be a perjorative reference to absurd superstition and irrational nonsense. So where has the GOP embraced to its detriment oogedy-boogedyism? With the possible exception of some variants of creationism (which is hardly a major issue at the national level in the GOP, as much as some on the left and a few on the right try to make it one), I'm at a loss as to what Kathleen is referring to. Opposition to abortion? Opposition to gay marriage? Euthanasia? Support for prayer in school?

Hey, can I offer a piece of evidence?

The California Supreme Court will take up various legal challenges to the constitutionality of Proposition 8, with oral arguments to begin around March and a decision expected by next May. I'm sure we'll see a host of arguments between now and March, but the amicus brief on behalf of the Lord is a new one. It's a PDF, but here's the opening statement:

Acting on behalf of the Almighty Eternal Creator, who is holding sole ownership to His creations, all planets, including the earth and everything above, below and on it, myself as His heiress, and the Kingdom of Heaven World Divine Mission (also known as Rebuild My Church Divine Mission), a Non-Profit Corporation in the State of California, submit this Amicus Curiae brief to the address the legal standard for granting "yes" on Proposition 8, passed with 52% of California voters votes, as the State of California Constitution Amendment: "Marriage between one man and one woman only!"

Later on, there's this section:

After a night full of dreams, before dawn on November 11, 2008, before I woke up in the morning, the Almighty Eternal Creator ordered me, saying "You explain to them the consequences that follow each and all of their actions. Once they understand, they will listen!"

These two matters (gay-lesbian and abortion) are just a couple of many major cases where people are exercising their free-will rights for wrong purposes. This has gone on for a hundred-thousand years and has contributed heavily to extreme weather, global warming, financial crisis, recession, global hatred, lying, violence, war and murder, serious sickness and diseases - often for the purpose of gaining rights for wrong purposes, power and money.

I mean, if you want to deny that a non-trivial part of your coalition is out in la-la land, go ahead. But ultimately, conservatives are responsible for giving this kind of nonsense talk a presentable forum and a place in their party. They made a devil's bargain and now they're trying to act like the Dominionists in their midst are perfectly normal.

I don't know how right Parker is (the economic royalists and the neocons can shoulder some of the blame), but let's not pretend that the religious right is rational and benign. And let's not pretend that their desire to mandate their views of morality on the whole society, to use hate as a wedge to divide and sow fear, to define what you do in the privacy of your home and with your body, hasn't caused revulsion among a fairly large segment of the population who can't stand being constantly told how to think and act.

John Cole has an additional bill of particulars.

Demonizing Political Participation

Jesse Taylor at Pandagon had a remarkably insightful piece today about the wingnut carping over the Barack Obama speech in Berlin, the media reaction, and his popularity generally. I really think this is important to understand. The right has always held a goal of minimizing political participation; normally this is done through voter suppression, onerous voter ID or ballot access laws, and generally disenfranchising those for whom it is hardest to engage in the process. Now they've taken it a step further, basically planting the seed that ANY participation whatsoever, not just voting but showing up for a rally or working a phone bank or donating money, is toxic and inherently fascistic. Because their deficit in this election year is enthusiasm, they're trying to make such support and excitement untenable. Behold:

But what (author of Liberal Fascism Jonah) Goldberg has done is provide intellectual cover for a growing meme: Obama is the leader of a new fascist revolution. Why, you may ask? Well, it’s all got to do with the defining downward of fascism towards a gooey puddle that virtually anyone not a movement conservative can step in.

The Goldbergian view of fascism (and I’m sure he’ll deny it, which will then be followed by a criticism of my argument, which will in turn be fascist, which will in turn be the exact point he was trying make) is that the marriage of any measurable popularity whatsoever to any state action whatsoever outside the boundaries of Reaganite conservatism is de facto fascist. The point was never to explore fascism or provide an analysis of the phenomenon that cast new light on it - a feat of which Goldberg was summarily incapable - but instead to provide the exact utility we see on display now, and provide a way to brand any popular Democrat or liberal as the handmaiden of evil.

In a way, Goldberg lucked out (but he’s used to that) - Obama’s popularity and McCain’s plodding campaign provide the perfect stand-in for his argument. A Republican candidate with any stature, any devotion from the base, anyone who’s invested in seeing him elected for reasons that extend beyond his party affiliation, and it’s entirely ruined. A boring Republican running a bad campaign (Bob Dole, Gerald Ford) inevitably creates a fascist Democrat, not by anything they’ve said or done but by the simple act of showing up and not being a dumbass.

Yep. And because McCain is running such an awful campaign, conservatives must then rationalize that there's something deeply wrong with the popular and competent campaign that Barack Obama is running. And so he becomes a leader of a fascist movement. His creation of fliers for his Berlin event in the language of the country where he's appearing becomes proof. So does the location of the event in front of a Nazi monument. And his head is tilted in profile in the picture - just like Hitler! Because electoral history has shown that imitating Hitler is a surefire vote-getter. Those supporters are being lured by music and food they have to pay for into worshipping this false idol who will lead us down a path to destruction.

But that's all subtext, of course. The idea is to create the connection between large crowds and enthralled supporters in the 1930s and in the Obama campaign today. And that is meant to induce feelings of revulsion and shame, not just in those voters who are more passive and see these images on television, but among the very participants themselves. Going to an Obama rally? You're a mindless pawn. Send him money? You are funding a cult. Work on his behalf? You have drank the Kool-Aid and are pathologically creepy.

This pervades the media conception of the Obama candidacy, too. Never in my life have I seen such a concern troll statement like this from a political reporter.

Candy Crowley on CNN: Barack Obama was, indeed, awesome in his Berlin speech tonight, but watch out! Americans might decide he was a little too awesome.

Obama has to be "careful." He mustn't be too presumptuous. He has to scale back with the soaring rhetoric and the inspiration and the winning, you see. It's decidedly unfair of him to run a decent campaign and soak up all the media attention at the expense of the guy who shows up at the German sausage restaurant on the same day as the Berlin speech.

The biggest fear of the GOP is that the great silent majority, the people who don't get involved in politics and don't even vote, are spurred to consistent action. This manifests itself in the concern that they're losing the new media war, which they'll surely throw billions at in the next decade. But there's another element of this project: marginalization. Here's an example: yesterday Color of Change and MoveOn put together a great protest of Fox News' racist attacks on Obama, delivering hundreds of thousands of petitions and enlisting rapper Nas, who actually has a new track called "Sly Fox" about the channel, to be their spokesman. So Bill O'Reilly had to respond.

Fox officials are not only attacking Nas for selling his album (which already topped the charts), some are likening the anti-racism activists to the KKK. MTV reports that Bill O'Reilly also responded, deriding protesters such as MoveOn as "the new Klan" with "a radical left agenda." He continued:

"The latest smear from Move On is telling their Kool-Aid-drinking zombie followers that Fox News is smearing Barack Obama and is a racist concern. Of course, that's a lie. This broadcast and FNC in general have been exceedingly fair to Senator Obama. ... But in order to intimidate anyone from criticizing Obama in any way, Move On is playing the race card."

It's a fairly rare coalition that can include Nas AND the Klan, but that's the world according to BillO.

Being a member of MoveOn for almost its entire 10 years, it's pretty clear to me that they represent a kind of passive liberalism which engages people online who otherwise might not participate.

MoveOn's success (and, indeed, its limitations) is powered by its appeal to today's non-shouters. Though its politics are in many ways the opposite of the Nixon silent majority's, they share a disposition. They are people not inclined to protest but whose rising unease with the direction of the country has led to a new political consciousness. For citizens angered, upset and disappointed with their government but unsure how to channel those sentiments, MoveOn provides simple, discrete actions: sign this petition, donate money to run this ad, show up at this vigil. "Before I joined MoveOn," says staffer Anna Galland, "I was organizing in Rhode Island doing faith-based antiwar activism. In March 2003, MoveOn had put out an action alert for a vigil against the Iraq War. There were 500 people on the steps of the Capitol, and I remember thinking, 'I know all the activists in the state; where did all these people come from?' I think many people have a MoveOn moment where they look around and realize that this organization has managed to tap into a much broader range of people than they might have seen at past activist events."

MoveOn is essentially a conduit for ordinary Americans to collect their voices and mobilize political power. Color of Change is doing the same thing in the African-American community. They aren't the Klan - they're actually you, your friends and neighbors. They have fairly baseline liberal beliefs, nothing shocking. This kind of activism isn't going to change the world - it's a gateway into more civic engagement and participation - and when it's demonized as "the Klan" or some outpost on the radical left, the goal is made obvious - to strangle activism at the very outset. If MoveOn is smeared and made radical, there's not very much hope at REALLY engaging people (That's why it was so damn stupid for the Democratic Congress to condemn MoveOn for the "Betrayus" ad last year). And it's the same with the more intense activism of the Obama campaign.

We have to recognize this and understand it. There is a very concerted and completely ahistorical effort to make "fascism" synonymous with "popularity." As Jesse Taylor notes:

On the one hand, it’s an awful abuse of the concept of fascism, disrespecting the millions upon millions of people whose lives and livelihoods were destroyed because of the dream of nationalist identity and corporate power uber alles. On the other hand, it is remarkably entertaining to see them try to figure out how Barack Obama’s favorite ice cream flavor plays right into the hands of the fascist dream.

Entertaining, but also dangerous. They're taking a hip campaign and trying to make it radioactive. Those silent masses could easily be turned off by something they are browbeaten into considering the work of wild-eyed cultists. It's absurd, but it can be effective if we don't head it off. With growing numbers of the politically active and engaged, the Republican Party withers and dies. This is their latest suppression tactic.

Setting Up A Community Clean-Up Day Is Slavery

I normally wouldn't bother with Jonah Goldberg, whose best-selling book Liberal Fascism: There Are Funyuns Stuck To My Typewriter! is enough evidence to give him a lifetime of shame and self-loathing. But today he prints a very strange op-ed in the LA Times that suggests calling for a goal of voluntary service is akin to keeping public school students of all ages down on the plantation.

"There's a weird irony at work when Sen. Barack Obama, the black presidential candidate who will allegedly scrub the stain of racism from the nation, vows to run afoul of the constitutional amendment that abolished slavery.
For those who don't remember, the 13th Amendment says: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime ... shall exist within the United States."

I guess in Obama's mind it must be a crime to be born or to go to college.

In his speech on national service Wednesday at the University of Colorado, Obama promised that as president he would "set a goal for all American middle and high school students to perform 50 hours of service a year, and for all college students to perform 100 hours of service a year."

He would see that these goals are met by, among other things, attaching strings to federal education dollars. If you don't make the kids report for duty, he's essentially telling schools and college kids, you'll lose money you can't afford to lose. In short, he'll make service compulsory by merely compelling schools to make it compulsory."

First of all, Goldberg's meal ticket and the founder of National Review Bill Buckley called for the exact same kind of program. Second, as hilzoy notes, public school itself is compulsory. That's why they have truant officers. I don't expect Goldberg to remember as far back as that to a time when he was graded poorly for his reading comprehension skills, but they actually make you take tests in schools. And gym!

Attaching community service to education dollars is no different than, say, attaching mandatory school prayer to education dollars. Which Goldberg would doubtless find some hoop to jump through and justify as entirely non-fascist. I could add that, what's more, community service actually has an effect, but I wouldn't want to be sacreligious.

Jonah'd

This is supremely funnier than anything that's ever been on Punk'd. Jonah Goldberg is so desperate for any positive opinion of his book Liberal Fascism: The Totalitarian Temptation From Head-On to Who Wants To Order In Chinese? that he'll literally print any email on his self-fulfilling prophecy of a Liberal Fascism blog, including those from, er, non-supporters.

Hilarious.

A Televised Thrashing That's Never Been Made With Such Detail Or Care

Jon Stewart obliterated Jonah Goldberg last night, and apparently there's 12 minutes of the interview that we at home didn't get to see. PLEEEZE, put it on the Web somewhere. I'd pay to see it and I'd give all the money to the striking writers. Because what we did see was genius.

Most touchy moment for Jonah came when Stewart asked him if one of the things he was against was people throwing around the charge "fascism" far too easily. Jonah said yes, then Stewart picked up a copy of the book and simply pointed to the title, "Liberal Fascism" -- adding, so why are you doing this?

Jonah got all pissy and does what he always does, accusing Stewart of not reading his book (not that Goldberg managed to read any of the primary source material about fascism, in particular Mussolini's "The Doctrine of Fascism"). But I want to focus on another thing he said. He criticized Hillary Clinton for wanting to "put big TV screens everywhere and tell us all how to raise our kids." This is hyperbolic, of course, and Stewart dialed it back. Turns out what she was talking about were the kiosks we're starting to see at gas stations and supermarket checkout lines, which right now have paid advertising. So she's basically talking about replacing the ads... with public service announcements. PSAs, you see, are fascist. I wonder if that means Pantload considers Nancy Reagan and her "Say No To Drugs" campaign was fascist.

The Whole Head Of The Fascist Party Thing Just Slipped My Mind

It seems like the only counter-argument Jonah Goldberg and his defenders are able to make at the skewering of Liberal Fascism: At Least 3 Mix-ins For My Cold Stone Pistachio Ice Cream is that people haven't even read the book. This is amusing in the light that Goldberg clearly hasn't read any of the primary source material in making his argument. Saying that you "made a flub" by not knowing why Mussolini was called a fascist, when he created the Fascist party, kind of undercuts any possible argument you could hope to make about fascism. Furthermore, looking past inconvenient quotes from Mussolini like this:

Granted that the 19th century was the century of socialism, liberalism, democracy, this does not mean that the 20th century must also be the century of socialism, liberalism, democracy. Political doctrines pass; nations remain. We are free to believe that this is the century of authority, a century tending to the “right”, a Fascist century.

And the fact that he murdered socialists and liberals in Italy tends to undercut, you know, this idea that he was a big ole socialist.

Somebody should probably invest in a library card and maybe a backpack for something other than midday snacks before he decides that OTHER people need to read his deeply serious argument that's never been made with such care.

World's Dumbest Argument

I wish I had the energy of those in the liberal blogosphere who have gone beyond the call of duty to take apart Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism: The Totalitarian Temptation from Granimals to What's For Dinner Mom? Alex Koppelman in Salon gave Goldberg enough rope to hang himself with an interview about the book, and in the first line he proudly describes the book as "a revisionist history," seemingly with no sense of irony. You almost have to look away from the interview as if it were an actual car wreck, especially in moments like this:

He points out that this organic food movement, the whole-grain bread operation, the war on cancer, the war on smoking, that these things were as fascist as death camps and yellow stars. They were as central to the ideology of Nazism as the extermination of the Jews. Now, that is not the same thing. And I want to be really clear about this: That is not the same thing as saying that banning smoking is as morally disgusting and reprehensible as trying to wipe out the Jewish people. You can say that something is as much part and parcel of an ideology and not say that it is as evil.

I mean, you wince when you see someone explain that the organic food movement is as central to Nazi ideology as killing 6 million Jews, while trying to also say that it's not the same thing. And there are more and more of these intellectual cul-de-sacs, like when he tries to call problem-solving fascistic (which would certainly account for all the unsolved problems of the conservative era, no? Goldberg's trick in this interview is to broadly define any facet of what he considers contemporary liberalism as fascist, while conveniently forgetting the words and actions of actual fascists like Benito Mussolini (it's hilarious when he responds to a question about Mussolini's "The Doctrine of Fascism" by saying that he hasn't read it in a while and doesn't remember it, despite having researched and written a book, with Mussolini's name in the subtitle, about how Mussolini was a socialist and not a fascist at all. You'd think that'd be a primary text).

The Sadlynauts have the definitive takedown of this interview, complete with Hitlet smiley face ratings. But I want to also note John Holbo's review of this absurdly broad argument, which takes in so many facets of what Goldberg dislikes about liberalism as fascism that he basically creates a globe full of fascists (in that, he's a doughy Holden Caulfield):

What explicit definition of ‘fascism’ is Goldberg operating with, if any? To judge from reviews, the author’s own comments, his ‘results’, he must be applying the term to any sort of ‘statist’ or ‘collectivist’ political rhetoric, policy proposal, or legislative act, especially such of these as entangle the state in coercive action on behalf of ‘communitarian’ values or ‘identity’ politics: values that subordinate the individual to the whole. The trouble is: pretty much the only sort of conservative who is not going to come out fascist, under this umbrella, is (maybe) the likes of F. Hayek, when penning essays with titles like “Why I Am Not A Conservative”. Otherwise, the whole tradition of conservative thought, from Burke to Kirk and beyond, is ‘fascist’. Hillary says it takes a village, but Burke would never have settled for small-time socialism. He thundered about “the great primeval contract of eternal society.” No doubt ‘it takes a village’ is pretty weak, qua anti-fascist vaccine. But switching to the belief that you would do best to unquestioningly submit yourself to some sort of primordial, vaguely mystical, hierarchical social order is not going to inoculate you either [...]

Now we get to what is maybe an actually half-interesting point. There are two reasons why ad hitlerem arguments tend to be rude and crude. (Everyone knows Godwin’s Law is law. Here’s why, more or less.) First, the Holocaust. It’s pretty obvious how always dragging that in is not necessarily clarifying of every little dispute. Second, a little less obviously, ad hitlerem arguments are invariably arguments by moral analogy. Person A espouses value B. But the Nazis approved B. Not that person A is necessarily a Nazi but there must be something morally perilous about B, if espousing it is consistent with turning all Nazi. The trouble is: with few exceptions, the Nazis had all our values – at least nominally. They approved of life, liberty, justice, happiness, property, motherhood, society, culture, art, science, church, duty, devotion, loyalty, courage, fidelity, prudence, boldness, vision, veneration for tradition, respect for reason. They didn’t reject all that; they perverted it; preached but didn’t practice, or practiced horribly. Which goes to show there is pretty much no value immune from being paid mere lip-service; nominally maintained but substantively subverted. Which, come to think of it, isn’t surprising. How could a list of ‘success’ words guarantee success, after all?

Most people pass simple algebra classes and understand this is not a rational line of argument anymore, and go on to political debates on a different plane. Moral reprobates like Goldberg simply must pursue this faulty reasoning for little more than the scoring of poltiical points, so he makes up definitions, excludes his allies and includes his opponents, and then dares anyone to refute a logical system that only exists inside his own head. It's enervating to actually argue, and the best rejoinder is then NECESSARILY mockery. So, a tip of the cap to those doing the Lord's work here.

I Can Has Job Mom

That's maybe the funniest thing ever. These are the top 5 reader tags for Jonah Goldberg's tome Liberal Fascism: The Totalitarian Temp- Hey, Gimme Back My Funyuns!

• doughy pantload (140)
• propaganda (117)
• wingnut welfare (115)
• editor promised cake (95)
• i can has job mom (94)

Anyone who not only believes that the real goals of conservatism should be hidden from voters and lied about publicly, but says it out loud:

Jonah Goldberg: The benefit of Bush’s compassionate conservatism [in 2000] was that it was majorly a marketing slogan…

Alex Chadwick: You mean you’re worried Mike Huckabee might actually mean it?

Goldberg: Yes, that’s what I’m terrified of.

Is a very serious person who's never made an argument in such detail or such care.

The Truth About Those Liberal Fascists

Reading the screen caps of the jacket copy of Jonah Goldberg's lame-ass book, it's clear that conservatives really, REALLY don't like teachers.

The quintessential liberal fascist isn't an SS stormtrooper. It is a female grade-school teacher with an education degree from Brown or Swarthmore.

This is basically a non sequitur: "The real fascist isn't an iron-fisted despotic ruler, but a plumber with a drinking problem." But the stab at teachers is familiar. This weekend, Tony Snow told students at Old Dominion University that "The average Iranian is more pro-American than virtually any college faculty in this country." There's a real antipathy here.

These are the same faculty members, by the way, who came rushing to this Princeton student's aid when he claimed to have been a victim of a physical attack for trying to instill conservative values among undergrads on campus. In particular, Robert George, a jurisprudence professor, vigorously defended the student.

Turns out he made the whole thing up, and in fact inflicted the wounds upon himself. He made up a death threat against himself in high school, too. And here's the reality about the Princeton campus:

With an active Republicans Club, a pro-life club, three major Evangelical groups, and the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions that is led by Professor George, Princeton University is considered one of the Ivy League's more conservative campuses.

But it wasn't enough just to be the persecuted majority, the student had to feel like he was the hunted majority. And this professor played right into it.

Somehow, despite all this, it's educators on the LEFT described as belonging to hate groups, as liberal fascists, and as anti-American.

You figure it out.

The Pundits, They Burn!

I've been collecting really bad editorial columns for a new feature I think I'll call "This Week In Abominable Punditry," but I never got around to last week's. So I'll just bullet-point it here for your perusal:

• If I had to give out an award for abominable punditry, clearly it would have to be called the Golden Hiatt. In this edition, Fred blames Harry Reid for being so mean and angry and bullying Senators around on Iraq, disabling them from coming up with a nice sensible centrist solution for themselves. In other words, he's claiming that if Harry Reid and the Democrats weren't pushing for a change of course, Republican moderates who have voted in lockstep with Bush for over four years would suddenly break with the President and come up with their own plan. Talk about waiting for Godot.

• It's never a carnival of abominable punditry without John Stossel, who actually argues that life expectancy isn't a function of health care, just simply that "in America we kill each other more." Murder to BOLSTER an argument! Why didn't I think of that? He also laments that patients don't "shop around" for health care, and he's right because when I break my ankle, it is my right and duty as a capitalist not to get it set and fixed immediately but to comparison shop. (This, by the way, is part of a common thread of Michael Moore-bashing that has a root in journalistic exceptionalism, where they must scrupulously fact-check his numbers without concern for their own.)

• David Brooks' column, where he peers into the soul of George W. Bush and finds a man at peace, certainly qualifies for abominable, but Matthew Yglesias makes an interesting point about one passage:

Conservatives are supposed to distrust government, but Bush clearly loves the presidency. Or to be more precise, he loves leadership. He’s convinced leaders have the power to change societies. Even in a place as chaotic as Iraq, good leadership makes all the difference.

Now I suppose their must be some conservatives for him this "are supposed to distrust government" dictum applies, but for the past fifty or so years that's clearly not the case. The mainstream conservative belief is that the government needs to be given dramatically greater scope to gather information and to deploy force -- including deadly force -- and threats thereof.

Indeed, and that's something Jonah Goldberg conveniently forgets in his abominable column, where he asserts that liberals only hate strong executive power when applied to George Bush (and he backs it up with tales of FDR, which certainly resonate for everyone over the age of 80, but not many others). In fact, conservatives' views on the Presidency have transmorgrified to a far greater degree over time, even constructing wild theories validating the Imperial Presidency and reconciling it with conservatism. It should not surprise you that Goldberg gets this backwards. If it does, please go directly to The Corner and come back after total immersion in the bullshit.

• Our "Abominable Punditry in History" series takes us back to the words of Thomas Friedman, one of America's most-respected foreign policy writers, mind you, who said this about Kosovo:

Like it or not, we are at war with the Serbian nation (the Serbs certainly think so), and the stakes have to be very clear: Every week you ravage Kosovo is another decade we will set back your country back by pulverizing you. You want 1950? We can do 1950. You want 1389? We can do 1389 too.

Classy. I guess achieving every objective without the loss of a single American life was too neat and clean.

• And finally, there's the all-timer from Bill Kristol, Why Bush Is A Winner, a raft of lies and uncomfortably bad predictions that managed to only convince one person in the entire country:

Bill Kristol's the-war-is-being-won piece in The Washington Post brought him plenty of ridicule, but at least one person liked it.

President Bush read the July 15 Outlook article that morning and recommended it to his staff.

"I like the cut of this guy's jib! Never thought about it that way! I'm actually doin' a good job! This guy's like Einstein! I wonder what else he thinks about me?"

Peace out.

Jonah Goldberg Proves He Can Read

While the LA Times editorial page must be commended for joining the reality-based community and finally calling for an end to the occupation of Iraq, on the othr hand they still print Doughy Pantload Jonah Goldberg, whose scintillating column today reads like a fifth-grade book report on Jonathan Chait's netroots article. He literally regurgitates it, selectively picking and choosing the most off-base parts.

The conservative movement was a response to generations of growing statism at home and abroad. From the Progressive era to the Great Society, government seemed to be expanding in tandem with the threat of communism. The conservative project was first and foremost an intellectual one because, as Hoover Institution fellow Thomas Sowell has written, it takes an ideology to beat an ideology (he also called for a military coup last week, but let's forget that - ed).

The conservative infrastructure that arouses so much envy among liberals today was an afterthought. It was created because the far more valuable real estate — universities, foundations, newspapers and TV networks — were held by liberals. Conservatives used their institutions to have serious arguments about what conservatives should believe.

Apparently loss leaders like the National Review (where Jonah Goldberg makes his money) were just something conservatives threw together with billions of dollars. Never mind that Goldberg mentions a think tank, the Hoover Institution, one of dozens which the conservative movement has constructed over the past 40 years, including AEI, Heritage, Cato, Ayn Rand, The Federalist Society, ACU, Hudson all of which employ people who write for those same "afterthought" publications. This idea that movement conservatism was all about deep thinkers sitting in a salon somewhere proffering arguments back and forth without ever wanting to amplify them is about as dishonest as you can get. And as it's manifested into blogs and talk radio and Fox News, it of course is a noise machine, primarily concerned with collecting media scalps and calling people traitors.

Then Goldberg lets his slip show:

Meanwhile, the supposedly all-powerful Republican noise machine's greatest victory is allegedly the George W. Bush presidency — which he barely won the first time. And, recall, Bush had to campaign as a "compassionate" conservative in order to get as far as he did. If we're so good at PR, why did conservatism need the adjective?

Exactly. Conservatism is deeply hated in this country, and must be dressed up and hidden away in order to appeal to anybody. That's the whole point of spending billions of dollars to come up with a way to sell it!

There are elements of the conservative movement that can be useful to progressives, but mainly they're just organizational and (largely) financial. The rest of it we can manage on our own.

News of the Odd

Just some fun stuff, some political, some not, I've noticed over the past couple weeks.

• This Jonah Goldberg mini-controversy is hilarious. Anyone who says he's writing a book that "is a very serious, thoughtful, argument that has never been made in such detail or with such care," especially when the book has a cover of a smiley face with a Hitler moustache on it and is called "Liberal Fascism,"... well, is there any need to mock? Oh yeah, by the by, the book is about 24 months late in publication. Probably because he is so diligently making it more thoughtful and more serious. And Wolcott has the last word:

Parenting Bleg [Jonah Goldberg]

Okay, so my four year old daughter desperately wants me to do more magic tricks. All I can really do for her are variations of "Hey, I found a quarter in your ear" stuff. And even then, the prestidigitation isn't really up to snuff. If she were five, she'd be on to me. So, I need really simple, stupid in fact, magic tricks that can be done with little skill, that will impress a four year-old. Any suggestions? -03/24 01:09 PM

Perhaps you could pull a completed manuscript out of your ass and watch those little eyes light up with wonder.

• Ann Althouse bullies yet another person who dares mention the fact that she criticized a liberal blogger for the unforgivable sin of having breasts. This one's on video, and it's pretty hilarious.

• Missile defense strike called on account of rain. Seriously, how much money have we sunk into this crappy system, which can't even FIND targets, yet alone blow them up? And if it rains, it gets washed out? Fortunately, thanks to global warming, that may not be a problem anymore.

• Batshit crazy Minnesota Rep. Michelle Bachmann, bucking for the Katherine Harris scattered-mind-a-like award, wrote campaign supporters asking them to send in astroturf letters to local newspapers as a show of support. The only letters this plea elicited were from a State Senate staffer and the son of a Bachmann aide.

• The former "Pimp of the Year" is headed to prison for running a prostitution ring. Couldn't they have busted him the moment that he won the "Pimp of the Year"? For that matter, shouldn't the runner-up, and indeed every applicant for Pimp of the Year, be similarly arrested? Incidentally, this is serious, he abused these women he employed, but this is among the best quotes ever:

"If he gets out, I know he'll do it again," she said. "That's all he ever talks about - pimping and ho-ing."

• Scientists made a sheep that's 15-percent human. This is yet another example of the President not following through on his promises. He totally said he would ban human-animal hybrids (by the by, if you read that link, you'll see that human-animal hybrids actually have a role to play in medical science and should not be banned at all).

• Rahm Emanuel says Democrats should stay away from Stephen Colbert. Colbert fights back, calls him "Emanuelle," as in Emanuelle in Space.

• Three Jeopardy contestants ended up tied for the first time ever. Full disclosure: this should have happened to me. I was on Jeopardy (almost four years to the day before this tie) and ended up tying for first, and the third contestant would have tied as well, but in Final Jeopardy she crossed out the correct answer and put in a wrong one. I'm just peeved that I didn't get in an AP story.

Jonah Goldberg Day - the Aftermath

It happened yesterday, but this is a great example of how the conservative side of the blogosphere only tears down, while we on the left both tear down and build up (multitaskers).

Two years ago yesterday, Jonah Goldberg (who is who he is only because his mom is a super-rich publisher and he writes for all of those money-losing conservative mags, making him the recipient of both nepotism and welfare) made a bet with Juan Cole that went as follows:

Anyway, I do think my judgment is superior to his when it comes to the big picture. So, I have an idea: Since he doesn't want to debate anything except his own brilliance, let's make a bet. I predict that Iraq won't have a civil war, that it will have a viable constitution, and that a majority of Iraqis and Americans will, in two years time, agree that the war was worth it. I'll bet $1,000 (which I can hardly spare right now). This way neither of us can hide behind clever word play or CV reading. If there's another reasonable wager Cole wants to offer which would measure our judgment, I'm all ears. Money where your mouth is, doc.

One caveat: Because I don't think it's right to bet on such serious matters for personal gain, if I win, I'll donate the money to the USO. He can give it to the al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade or whatever his favorite charity is.

Ha, ha, liberals are terrorists!

Well, yesterday the bill came due, and clearly Goldberg lost the bet. Iraq is in civil war, the constitution is doing nothing for security or political reconciliation and is a worthless document, and the majority of Americans and Iraqis believe the war was a mistake. Goldberg kind of admitted this, but claimed that because Cole never took the bet, as he found the notion of wagering on human lives revolting, he doesn't have to pay up.

As a matter of intellectual honesty, I'm perfectly willing to admit that, had Cole had the courage to accept the wager, he would have won and I would have made good on it. But, since he didn't, I won't be jumping through hoops for this crowd beyond this post.

It's intellectually honest to admit that he lost the bet, but dishonest not to admit that his judgment on Middle East matters, which was the entire point of his bet, pales in comparison to Juan Cole's. In fact, he's yet to admit that.

So Goldberg got a good thrashing in the blogosphere. But then Nitpicker made the best decision of this entire affair; he decided he'd get a group to COVER JONAH'S BET. And he did.

Here's the list of the people who've covered Jonah's bet:

David Rees
Matt Ortega
Charles Kuffner
Christopher Dumler
TRex
Sean-Paul Kelley
Jesus' General
Markos Moulitsas Zuniga
Adam Bonin
Tom Tomorrow
Ian Welsh
Stephanie Taylor
Hoffmania
Taylor Marsh
Robin Marty
David Neiwert
Walter Ludwig

And there are others, some who asked not to be named and some who said they simply could not bring themselves to post "in honor of" Jonah. I'll post others as they come in, but it should suffice to say that far more than $1000 was raised.

It's a good cause and I hope you consider donating more to the USO. It really is a great boon to service members and their families.

So Goldberg comes out of this looking like a fool, a cheapskate, out of his depth on matters of foreign policy AND a petulant whiner, giving him the perfect resume to continue his career as an LA Times columnist. Meanwhile Nitpicker and the aforementioned bloggers look like people who are smart, classy and generous.

This is the entire division between right and left, at least on the blogs, in microcosm. I'm glad to be on the side I'm on.