Kerry's Viet Nam Exploits

John Kerry and his allies at the Democratic National Convention have made his war exploits the centerpiece of his campaign, contrasting his meritorious service in combat with George Bush's service in the National Guard. However, a book is coming out next week which will cast serious doubts on the claims of heroism and gallantry that suffused the convention speeches. The book is co-authored by John O'Neill who took over Kerry's command after Kerry was sent home from Viet Nam and is called Unfit For Command.

Matt Drudge has some excerpts:

George Bates, an officer in Coastal Division 11, participated in numerous operations with Kerry. In Unfit For Command, Bates recalls a particular patrol with Kerry on the Song Bo De River. He is still "haunted" by the incident:

With Kerry in the lead, the boats approached a small hamlet with three or four grass huts. Pigs and chickens were milling around peacefully. As the boats drew closer, the villagers fled. There were no political symbols or flags in evidence in the tiny village. It was obvious to Bates that existing policies, decency, and good sense required the boats to simply move on.

Instead, Kerry beached his boat directly in the small settlement. Upon his command, the numerous small animals were slaughtered by heavy-caliber machine guns. Acting more like a pirate than a naval officer, Kerry disembarked and ran around with a Zippo lighter, burning up the entire hamlet.

Bates has never forgotten Kerry's actions.

John O'Neill, co-author of Unfit For Command, believes that "Kerry's Star would never have been awarded had his actions been reviewed through normal channels. In his case, he was awarded the medal two days after the incident with no review. The medal was arranged to boost the morale of Coastal Division 11, but it was based on false and incomplete information provided by Kerry himself."

According to Kerry's Silver Star citation, Kerry was in command of a three-boat mission on the Dong Cung River. As the boats approached the target area, they came under intense enemy fire. Kerry ordered his boat to attack and all boats opened fire. He then beached directly in front of the enemy ambushers. In the battle that followed, the crews captured enemy weapons. His boat then moved further up the river to suppress more enemy fire. A rocket exploded near Kerry's boat, and he ordered to charge the enemy. Kerry beached his boat 10 feet from the rocket position and led a landing party ashore to pursue the enemy.

Kerry' citation reads: "The extraordinary daring and personal courage of Lt. Kerry in attacking a numerically superior force in the face of intense fire were responsible for the highly successful mission."

Here's what O'Neill and the Swiftees say: "According to Kerry's crewman Michael Madeiros, Kerry had an agreement with him to turn the boat in and onto the beach if fired upon. Each of the three boats involved in the operation was involved in the agreement." O'Neill writes that one crewman even recalls a discussion of probable medals.

Doug Reese, a pro Kerry Army veteran, recounted what happened that day to O'Neill, "Far from being alone, the boats were loaded with many soldiers commanded by Reese and two other advisors. When fired at, Reese's boat--not Kerry's--was the first to beach in the ambush zone. Then Reese and other troops and advisors (not Kerry) disembarked, killing a number of Viet Cong and capturing a number of weapons. None of the participants from Reese's boat received Silver Stars.

O'Neill continues: "Kerry's boat moved slightly downstream and was struck by a rocket-propelled grenade. . . .A young Viet Cong in a loincloth popped out of a hole, clutching a grenade launcher, which may or may not have been loaded. . . Tom Belodeau, a forward gunner, shot the Viet Cong with an M-60 machine gun in the leg as he fled. . . . Kerry and Medeiros (who had many troops in their boat) took off, perhaps with others, and followed the young Viet Cong and shot him in the back, behind a lean to."

O'Neill concludes "Whether Kerry's dispatching of a fleeing, wounded, armed or unarmed teenage enemy was in accordance with the customs of war, it is very clear that many Vietnam veterans and most Swiftees do not consider this action to be the stuff of which medals of any kind are awarded; nor would it even be a good story if told in the cold details of reality. There is no indication that Kerry ever reported that the Viet Cong was wounded and fleeing when dispatched. Likewise, the citation simply ignores the presence of the soldiers and advisors who actually 'captured the enemy weapons' and routed the Viet Cong. . . . [and] that Kerry attacked a 'numerically superior force in the face of intense fire' is simply false. There was little or no fire after Kerry followed the plan. . . . The lone, wounded, fleeing young Viet Cong in a loincloth was hardly a force superior to the heavily armed Swift Boat and its crew and the soldiers carried aboard."

"Admiral Roy Hoffmann, who sent a Bravo Zulu (meaning "good work"), to Kerry upon learning of the incident, was very surprised to discover in 2004 what had actually occurred. Hoffmann had been told that Kerry had spontaneously beached next to the bunker and almost single-handedly routed a bunkered force in Viet Cong. He was shocked to find out that Kerry had beached his boat second in a preplanned operation, and that he had killed a single, wounded teenage foe as he fled."

"Commander Geoge Elliott, who wrote up the initial draft of Kerry's Silver Star citation, confirms that neither he, nor anyone else in the Silver Star process that he knows, realized before 1996 that Kerry was facing a single, wounded young Viet Cong fleeing in a loincloth. While Commander Elliott and many other Swiftees believe that Kerry committed no crime in killing the fleeing, wounded enemy (with a loaded or empty launcher), others feel differently. Commander Elliott indicates that a Silver Star recommendation would not have been made by him had he been aware of the actual facts."

Look for the Democrats to do everything they can to discredit this book. If past experience is any guide, they'll attack its timing, its source of funding, and they'll even seek to destroy the reputations of the men who are quoted in it, but it'll be interesting to see if they actually challenge what the book claims to be the facts.

It will also be interesting to see whether the Bush-haters in the media even care about the facts.

Keyes For U.S. Senate

This article reveals that Alan Keyes is mulling over an invitation from Illinois Republicans to run for the Senate in their state against Barack Obama. It would seem to be a difficult slog against a popular opponent for a man who has never even lived in the state, but Viewpoint hopes that Keyes accepts the challenge.

A campaign between Keyes and Obama would be fascinating for several reasons, not the least of which is that it would afford Keyes a forum for getting his conservative message out to an African-American audience that doesn't often hear such themes from able black advocates.

In addition, it would be interesting to see a campaign between two powerful, charismatic proponents of conservatism and liberalism, and especially one in which the race issue has been effectively neutralized.

As for the fact that Keyes has never lived in Illinois, state law apparently allows a candidate to be eligible as long as he is a resident on election day, and, besides, not having lived in the state didn't prevent New York voters from electing Hillary Clinton.

Go for it Alan!

The Terror Web

Lawrence Wright at The New Yorker has written an absolutely riveting piece on Islamic terror titled The Terror Web. Wright explains how the internet is being used by the jihadis to facilitate their operations and also discusses at length the Madrid train bombings and how the perpetrators were apprehended. The Terror Web is chilling but important reading. Some excerpts:

Muslim immigration is transforming all of Europe. Nearly twenty million people in the European Union identify themselves as Muslim. This population is disproportionately young, male, and unemployed. The societies these men have left are typically poor, religious, conservative, and dictatorial; the ones they enter are rich, secular, liberal, and free. For many, the exchange is invigorating, but for others Europe becomes a prison of alienation. A Muslim's experience of immigration can be explained in part by how he views his adopted homeland. Islamic thought broadly divides civilization into dar al-Islam, the land of the believers, and dar al-Kufr, the land of impiety. France, for instance, is a secular country, largely Catholic, but it is now home to five million Muslims. Should it therefore be considered part of the Islamic world? This question is central to the debate about whether Muslims in Europe can integrate into their new communities or must stand apart from them. If France can be considered part of dar al-Islam, then Muslims can form alliances and participate in politics, they should have the right to institute Islamic law, and they can send their children to French schools. If it is a part of dar al-Kufr, then strict Muslims must not only keep their distance; they must fight against their adopted country.

Later, Kepel and I discussed the reason that Europe was under attack. "The future of Islam is in Europe," he said. "It has a huge Muslim population. Either we train our Muslims to become modern global citizens, who live in a democratic, pluralistic society, or, on the contrary, the Islamists win, and take over those Muslim European constituencies. Then we're in serious trouble."

Intelligence officials are now trying to determine who is the next target, and are sifting through "chatter" in search of a genuine threat. "We see people getting on the Internet and then they get on their phones and talk about it," a senior F.B.I. official told me. "We are now responding to the threat to the U.S. elections." The idea of attacking before Election Day, the official said, "was born out of Madrid." Earlier this year, an international task force dubbed Operation Crevice arrested members of a bomb-making ring in London. During the investigation, officials overheard statements that there were jihadis in Mexico awaiting entry into the U.S. That coincided with vague warnings from European imams about attacks before the elections. As a result of this intelligence, surveillance of border traffic from Mexico has been increased.

Read the whole article. It's worth the time.

Kerry's Record

John Kerry suggested in his Convention speech that he would keep the American military strong, well-equipped and well-manned. "We will add 40,000 active duty troops," he assured us, "not in Iraq, but to strengthen American forces that are now overstretched, overextended, and under pressure....To all who serve in our armed forces today, I say, help is on the way." In light of his record in the Senate, however, these promises are simply laughable, and Kerry himself looks foolish to anyone who has had a glimpse of what he has done when he's been given the opportunity to do something for our military besides make empty rhetorical gestures.

One of the most egregious bits of hypocrisy in a convention that was larded with it was Kerry's outrage that military families were forced to hold bake sales to buy body armor for their soldiers because of President Bush's implied failure to equip the troops properly for the invasion of Iraq. This claim was all the more reprehensible because funding for body armor and other equipment was contained in the $87 billion appropriations bill that Kerry so famously voted against. Also in that bill was funding for hazardous duty pay for soldiers and $1.3 billion to provide for medical care for military families. Kerry voted against all of it.

In fact, for Kerry to actually do what he suggests, now that he wants to be elected president, he will have to reverse completely the utter disdain toward the military and our intelligence services that he consistently demonstrated during his nineteen year tenure in the senate. The following information about Kerry's voting record on military issues is taken from the book Reckless Disregard by Lt. Col. Robert Patterson:

During the 1980s: Senator Kerry called for cuts to the military totaling $50 billion and voted against the Peacekeeper missile, the B-1 and B-2 bombers, the F-15, F-14A, F-14D and the AV-8B fighter aircraft, the Aegis air defense cruiser, and the Trident missile.

In 1990: He voted against the B-1 and B-2 bombers, the F-14, F-15, F-16, the Patriot missile, the Aegis Air Defense cruiser, the Trident submarine missile, the M1 Abrams tank, the Bradley fighting vehicle, and the Tomahawk cruise missile.

In 1991: He voted to cut $3 billion from the defense budget.

In 1992: He voted to cut $6 billion from defense.

In 1993: He voted to cut defense by $8.8 billion. He also voted to downsize the Army light infantry, Air Force tactical fighter squadrons, and the number of Navy submarines.

In 1994: Kerry proposed cutting $43 billion from the defense budget.

In 1995: He voted against the Marine AV-B8 Harrier and the AH-64 Apache helicopter. He also tried to cut the Air Force F-22 Raptor.

In 1996: He proposed a reduction of $6.5 billion in the defense budget. He also voted against funding an anti-ballistic missile defense system, denying that there was any ballistic missile threat against the U.S. Two years later North Korea had the Tae po Dong missile which is capable of reaching the west coast. China also has ballistic missiles capable of striking our mainland, largely as a result of technology transfers from the Clinton administration.

Throughout these years he voted twelve times against military pay increases (George Bush has raised military pay by 21%)

In 1994, 1995, and 1997 Kerry voted to cut several billion dollars from our intelligence gathering agencies, and yet after 9/11 he told Face the Nation "...at the moment, the single most important weapon for the United States of America is intelligence. It's the single most important weapon in this particular war." Nevertheless, he served eight years on the Senate Intelligence Committee and never cast a single vote to increase human intelligence capability or to reform the intelligence community or to provide greater funding for their efforts. This record is especially deplorable in light of his charge that President Bush has not moved fast enough in the wake of 9/11 to shake up the Intelligence establishment and to make us more secure against our enemies. What has Senator Kerry himself been doing in the last eight years other than emasculating the very agencies which might have prevented the Islamist attack?

When Senator Kerry talks about a strong America it must be borne in mind that whatever kind of strength he's talking about it's not the kind that he wants us to think it is.

Redefining Politics

The Democrat left has gradually over the last few years revised the lexicon employed in our political debates and Viewpoint, as a public service, wishes to announce the following updates in no particular order:

Lie: Anything that turns out not to be true or might not be true, or which has not yet been proven to be true. Note that it is only a lie when a Republican, especially the president, says something which satisfies these criteria. When a Democrat does it, it's interpretive spin or personal narrative, or if, say, a meteorologist is wrong about a weather forecast that would be an honest mistake resulting from inadequate data.

Censorship: Any instance of someone expressing any manner of disagreement with what a liberal says. E.g. If people refuse to buy Dixie Chick CDs, that's censorship. If, on the other hand, a conservative speaker gets shouted down on a college campus that's a sign of a healthy exercise of first amendment rights.

Leadership: Securing permission from the French, no matter how much groveling it may take to get it, to defend ourselves from those who are determined to kill us.

Political Mainstream: Any current of opinion found on the left of the ideological spectrum. More specifically, any idea held by Ted Kennedy, Hillary Clinton, Howard Dean, Michael Moore, or John Kerry.

Extremist: Anyone who opposes the mainstream idea that we should be able to kill unborn children for any reason whatsoever, or who rejects the mainstream view that the 2nd amendment is obsolete, or who is so far out of the mainstream as to believe that marriage should be between one man and one woman, or who flouts the mainstream by holding any traditional religious conviction.

Unilateral: Any action taken either by oneself or with any number of partners but which does not include France.

Hero: Anyone who applies for a Purple Heart after suffering a self-inflicted wound requiring a band-aid. Alternatively, anyone who is awarded a Silver Star for conduct which is in violation of the Geneva conventions and the United States' Military code.

Perhaps readers can think of some additional revisions. We'll post updates as they are available.

Kerry on Iraq

TruthOut.Org is touting an article by Ron Brownstein of the Los Angeles Times on Senator Kerry's recent remarks to that paper about his plans for Iraq. His intentions are, essentially, to persuade more foreign countries to help shoulder the load:

Within a first term as president, Sen. John F. Kerry thinks he could attract enough international help in Iraq to make it a "reasonable" goal to replace most U.S. troops stationed there with foreign forces, he told The Times in an interview.

Steve Schmidt, a spokesman for Bush's reelection campaign, said Kerry's promises to increase foreign participation ignored the contributions being made by "more than 30 nations [that] stand shoulder to shoulder with the United States, engaged in helping the Iraqis build a secure democratic future."

Sensing, perhaps, that the Times was expecting a little more contrast with the White House's goals for Iraq, especially after the sharp battles fought in the Democrat primaries over just this issue, Kerry went on to explain how he would accomplish this.

Kerry said he would offer several tangible inducements to encourage European and Arab nations to do more to help secure and rebuild Iraq. Among those steps would be the appointment of a U.N. high commissioner to give the international community a greater say in the development of a permanent Iraqi government, granting other countries greater access to reconstruction contracts and the convening of an international conference "that brings leaders together for an immediate raising of the stakes of diplomacy."

Setting aside the incoherence of the last sentence, we might ask why the Senator thinks the U.N. should have any say at all in how Iraq is rebuilt? If the U.N. had had its way, Saddam would still be cutting out Iraqi tongues and filling huge trenches with bullet-riddled bodies. Iraq is now a sovereign nation. It doesn't need the U.N. telling it what to do. The only countries who should profit from the rebuilding process, aside from those to whom Iraq deigns to award contracts, are those who stood with us in OIF and who are standing with us now. The American taxpayer is footing much of the bill for this "rebuilding" and for Kerry to think that we should subsidize French industry after their attempt to sabotage the liberation of Iraq in the Security Council is looney.

Kerry said he believed other nations had failed to respond as much as they should to Iraq's needs, and that he would challenge them with a "message of responsibility." He also said he could exert such pressure more effectively than Bush by combining it with efforts to build more international cooperation on other issues.

"A message of responsibility"?! That'll stir European consciences. "More international cooperation on other issues"? Like what, the Kyoto Treaty? Tariffs? Is Kerry telling us that he'll be able to get the cooperation of other countries in Iraq by capitulating to their demands on everything else?

Indeed, how much of our sovereignty is Senator Kerry willing to cede to the United Nations? This is not an idle question. In 1971 he stated that he was an internationalist and would like to see our troops disbursed around the world "only at the direction of the United Nations." In 1971 he was eager to turn over de facto control of our military to the likes of Kofi Annan. It might be instructive for one of the journalists on his campaign bus to ask him where he stands on that issue today.

"I've done this for a long time," Kerry said. "I have negotiated personally with leaders of other countries.... And I believe I come to this table with greater experience and a greater sense of direction than George Bush."

This is pure flummery. Kerry has been a senator for nineteen years and has done nothing to distinguish himself. Now he expects us to believe that he will suddenly be a forceful, influential leader in the international arena when he was little more than a "back-bencher" for three terms in the senate.

"I know what it means to convene a meeting of chiefs of agencies and chiefs of police and set expectations and demand a plan for the protection of nuclear and chemical plants and implement it," he said. "It hasn't happened" under Bush.

Many people, of course, know what it means to convene meetings and demand plans. The only reason for saying such a vacuous thing as this is to try to sound like a tough guy and make Bush seem weak. Nor does the senator know what Bush has demanded of his subordinates in the years since 9/11. Kerry's statement is just simply fatuous, and this nullity comes from a man who prides himself on being smarter than everyone else.

Kerry also said his administration would be more open than Bush's. He pledged to hold monthly news conferences. (Bush's have been sporadic.) And although the Bush administration has fought in court to avoid disclosing records of meetings held by Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force, Kerry said that as president, he would open some of the meetings his officials would conduct with outside groups....Kerry said he is committed to unprecedented transparency.

If Kerry wanted to demonstrate his commitment to openness he could start by releasing his medical records from Vietnam. Kerry has made his military service a major, if not the chief, reason why Americans should vote for him. His service, therefore, is relevant to this campaign and should be thoroughly examined, including his medical records. As long as he refuses to let us see what's in those he shouldn't talk to us about unprecedented transparency and openness.

Deja Vu

Kerry Spot at National Review Online has a good analysis of why President Bush seems to be unable to close ground with Senator Kerry in the polls. For some reason, one hopes it's not ineptitude, the Bush team has been very lackadaisical about getting his record out before the public. A reader of Kerry Spot looks at the Bush ads and makes a strong case that unless things change this month, Bush could be in real trouble. It's worth quoting almost the entire piece:

The ABC News poll lists six major issues that the voters cite as influencing their votes (as well as a few other issues). It's constructive to compare the leading issues with the TV ads run by the Bush campaign this year. (By my count, Bush has run about 22 ads total, according to his website).

1. The economy. Cited as the most important issue by 25 percent of voters. These voters break 60-33 Kerry. Number of ads run by the Bush campaign touting the Bush record: 1 out of 22. Although a few Bush ads mention the tax cuts and speak vaguely of economic growth, only one ad pushes the job creation record and the Bush boom ("Pessimism", which didn't run unit 4 June 2004!).

2. Iraq. Cited as most important issue by 23 percent of voters. These voters break 72-26 Kerry. They think we made a mistake in going into Iraq, and that the casualties mean the war isn't worth it. Number of Bush ads defending the decision to go to war in Iraq: 0 (as in zero). Bush's best ad of the whole campaign slams Kerry for voting against funding our troops - but that doesn't address the concerns of the Iraq issue voters.

3. Terrorism. Cited as most important issue by 20 percent of the voters. These voters break Bush 83-15. Number of ads run by Bush: 3-6 (depending upon how you count them).

4. Taxes. (ABC doesn't note the percent listing this as most important). These voters gave Bush a 6+ lead in trust before the convention, Kerry a 6+ lead after the convention. Number of ads run by Bush: 6. The Bush team pounded Kerry on his gas tax and other tax hikes.

5. Education. (Percentage not listed). Kerry has a 13 point lead in trust on this issue. Bush ads: 0. Incredible - what is the point of hiking education spending by 50+ percent and then not citing that as a major reason for re-election?

6. Health care. (Percentage not listed). Kerry has a 19 point lead in trust on this issue. Bush ads: 0. Okay, the Medicare drug plan has problems - but isn't it evidence that Bush cares about health care?

Conclusion: Pluralities of Americans don't believe Bush's record deserves re-election. Part of the problem is that the Bush air war is not investing TV ads in defending his record. Of the six major issues, Bush ads have only addressed taxes and terrorism with any force. People don't think his record on the economy deserves re-election - but only one Bush ad pushes the Bush boom. People think Iraq isn't worth it - but only one Bush ad defends our war. People don't trust Bush on education - but Bush's 50 percent increase in education funding has never been set before the voters. Elections with an incumbent are largely referendums on the incumbent's record. If Bush's record hasn't convinced people to re-elect him, it might be because his campaign hasn't told them about his record.

This is interesting. Scary, but interesting. The scary thing is that the Republicans have run three consecutive lackluster campaigns. The elder Bush, an incumbent president with eight years as vice-president to one of the most popular presidents of the 20th century, and a successful and fairly popular war to his credit, lost in 1992 to a relatively unknown southern governor with some serious personal baggage.

In 1996, the Republicans were unable to nominate a candidate that could exploit the weaknesses of the incumbent and they got trounced. It seemed as if the only reason Bob Dole was running was because it was his turn. Both campaigns, 1992 and 1996, seemed listless and full of squandered opportunities.

In 2000 the Republicans should have won handily against a man tarnished by his association with Bill Clinton and unable to assure the voters of his own mental stability. Florida should not have been close, given that it had a natural Republican constituency and that its Republican governor was also the brother of the Republican candidate. Yet, George W. Bush came within a millimeter of losing the state.

Viewpoint doesn't wish to appear to be a Nervous Nellie, but this is not a record that inspires a great deal of confidence. So one reads a piece like the one above and hopes that someone at the helm of this campaign knows what they're doing and why they're doing it.

The Good News From Iraq

Senator Kerry assures us that President Bush has either no plan or a lousy plan for post-war Iraq and that he, if he were president, would handle things differently. He never tells us what he would do, exactly, but if he were as smart as he wants us to believe he is, he would do in Iraq precisely what the United States is doing right now. The media focusses on the car bombs and the killings, but these are a relatively small, though certainly tragic, part of the picture of what is happening in Iraq. In fact, when one reads an account like Chrenkoff's 7th installment of Good News from Iraq one feels a deep sense of pride in our soldiers, our leaders, and our people for what they're accomplishing in this troubled land.

I don't understand how anyone can read Chrenkoff's reports and not feel that we have undertaken something profoundly good. I don't know how anyone can think that the Iraqi people are not better off today than they were two years ago. Bush's critics have to deliberately ignore the evidence in order to deprecate the progress that has been made in Iraq. What we've done and are doing in that land is an historic achievement and one that makes all of the carping we hear from Kerry and the Democrats seem so small and whiny.

Perhaps among the most telling anecdotes in Chrenkoff's report is this:

"Two months ago, independent Iraqi pollster Sadoun Dulame asked 3,075 Iraqis from all over the country which US candidate they preferred. Most Iraqis scorned the question, but about 15 percent responded passionately - almost all Bush backers.

"When we asked this 15 percent why they cared, they said, 'Because the American election will affect conditions in Iraq,' ' says Mr. Dulame, director of the Iraqi Center for Research and Strategic Studies. 'They prefer that Bush stay. Because if Bush leaves, maybe the Democrats will adopt a new policy, and not pay so much attention to Iraq.'

"In a perfect reversal of US demographics, the Bush lovers tended to be more educated and clustered in cosmopolitan areas. Call them Red Iraqis. 'Most of them were intellectuals,' says Dulame. 'US intellectuals, maybe most of them adopt Democratic values. But in Iraq, that's the reality'."

Do As I Say, Not As I Do

John Kerry said today that if George Bush was serious about reforming our Intelligence operations and responding to the 9/11 Commission recomendations he'd summon Congress back from their vacations and force them to adopt the needed reforms. Perhaps, but if Bush did follow Kerry's recommendation it's highly unlikely that the good senator himself, or his running mate, would show up. Their level of concern for the safety and well-being of our country can be descried from the fact that on approximately 442 recorded votes taken in the senate since May of 2003 Senator Kerry has bestirred himself to vote on only 65 of them. Senator Edwards' voting record is similarly dismal. I wonder if this duo had a clear conscience as they deposited their paychecks.

Then there's this bit of liberal hypocrisy from Ben Affleck courtesy of Joe Carter at The Evangelical Outpost:

At a breakfast with Democratic delegates in Florida, the actor Ben Affleck told the crowd that Bush tax cuts had provided him with $1 million last year that he didn't need. When a reporter from the New York Times asked him if he ever considered sending the $1 million back to Washington, the actor said "No,"

"I'm not Jesus Christ of the tax code. I can't completely martyr myself." For the moment, let's set aside the idiotically blasphemous way in which he frames the issue and focus on the idiotic hypocrisy of his statement.

In essence, Affleck is saying that he wants the government to forcibly take from him what he isn't willing to give. While I don't expect intellectual consistency from anyone who collects a paycheck by pretending to be someone else, I'm curious how far he would take this idea. Would he, for example, support the idea of a military draft?

I like Ben. I really do. In fact, I think he's an intelligent guy and (semi)talented actor. But he shares a failing common to the wealthy members of his adopted political party. If you're a Democrat and you disagree with the tax cuts why not give the money back to the government? If you don't believe that you should keep the money why not send it to the IRS? All it would require is a stamp, an envelope, and the courage to live up to your convictions. Which of these items are the Democrats lacking?

It really is amazing how many Democrats complain about not paying enough in taxes but who won't voluntarily return their tax refunds to the government. These people are making themselves harder and harder to take seriously.

Intelligence <i>Success</i>

There's a fascinating story in the New York Times about the source of the information on the new terror threat to American financial centers. Some excerpts:

The unannounced capture of a figure from Al Qaeda in Pakistan several weeks ago led the Central Intelligence Agency to the rich lode of information that prompted the terror alert on Sunday, according to senior American officials.

One senior American intelligence official said the information was more detailed and precise than any he had seen during his 24-year career in intelligence work. A second senior American official said it had provided a new window into the methods, content and distribution of Qaeda communications.

"This, for us, is a potential treasure trove," said a third senior American official, an intelligence expert, at a briefing for reporters on Sunday afternoon.

The documentary evidence, whose contents were reported urgently to Washington on Friday afternoon, immediately elevated the significance of other intelligence information gathered in recent weeks that had already been regarded as highly troubling, senior American intelligence officials said.

The American officials said the new evidence had been obtained only after the capture of the Qaeda figure. Among other things, they said, it demonstrated that Qaeda plotters had begun casing the buildings in New York, Newark and Washington even before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Among the questions the plotters sought to answer, senior American intelligence officials said, were how best to gain access to the targeted buildings; how many people might be at the sites at different hours and on different days of the week; whether a hijacked oil tanker truck could serve as an effective weapon; and how large an explosive device might be required to bring the buildings down.

One of the things Americans need to keep firmly in mind is that this war has, in the minds of the jihadis, been going on for seven centuries. They're not going to surrender, nor are they going to stop attacking us any time soon. We need to unburden ourselves of our traditional notion of fighting a war for a distinct period of time and then enjoying peace for a generation thereafter. This war will not end until either Western civilization is destroyed or the Islamists are rendered impotent. Even if we critically degrade their ability to strike us, there will only be a temporary cessation of hostilities until they can regain enough strength to attack us again.

The Islamists are fanatics obsessed with killing Christians and Jews. There is no remedy for this. It's not a matter of reasoning with them or negotiating with them. It's not a matter of restoring land or improving economic conditions. It's not a matter of leaving them alone. They believe it is Allah's will that they kill all infidels. The only way to stop them, unfortunately, is to kill them first.

IRS, RIP

Matt Drudge has a bombshell. Evidently part of George Bush's plans during his second term is to eliminate the IRS and replace it with a national sales tax. According to Drudge:

A domestic centerpiece of the Bush/GOP agenda for a second Bush term is getting rid of the Internal Revenue Service, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.

The Speaker of the House will push for replacing the nation's current tax system with a national sales tax or a value added tax, Hill sources tell DRUDGE.

I don't know how a sales tax could possibly compensate for the loss of income tax revenue, but I'm sure Hastert isn't just talking off the top of his head. They must have thought this through. Well, at least one hopes they have. It'll be interesting to see how the Kerryites respond.

No Extremists on the Left

The Americans for Democratic Action (ADA), a liberal advocacy group, assigns a Liberal Quotient (LQ) to all voting members of congress. Senator Kerry has a lifetime ADA rating of 92% which makes him the most liberal pol in the current senate and third all-time among members of congress. Edwards is fourth among current congressmen and senators with an 88% LQ. Their combined averages make the Kerry/Edwards ticket the left-most pair of nominees for the American presidency in the history of the ADA.

The Washington Times writes:

From the premier liberal rating organization, Americans for Democratic Action (ADA), Mr. Edwards received an average annual (1999-2002) rating of 85 percent before falling to a career-low 65 percent last year. But that score was misleading because ADA penalizes legislators for missing any of its 20 annual key votes. In fact, on the 13 ADA votes for which the itinerant Mr. Edwards was present last year, he supported ADA 100 percent of the time. (On the 17 ADA key votes cast by Mr. Kerry last year, he also supported ADA's position 100 percent of the time. Thus, between the two of them, they were 30-for-30 on ADA votes.) With Mr. Edwards' lifetime ADA rating at 81 percent and Mr. Kerry's at 92 percent, the 2004 Democratic ticket boasts higher lifetime ADA ratings than the avowedly liberal 1984 Democratic ticket of Walter Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro.

If the Republican nominees in any election were as far to the right as Kerry/Edwards are to the left wouldn't we be hearing the word "extremist" used about every five seconds to describe them and their positions on the issues? Wouldn't candidates whose voting records were the most conservative in history be pilloried by the major media for being way "out of the mainstream"?

There's still time for the media to whisper a mention of the extremism of the current candidates, of course, but from the current silence on the matter one might be forgiven for thinking that extremists only reside on the right of the ideological divide and that the mainstream in this country runs from left of center all the way left to the far horizon. The reigning attitude among the media worthies is that, to paraphrase Barry Goldwater, extremism in pusuit of a left-wing agenda is no vice.

Let's count how many times between now and November we hear the E-word applied to the current Democrat tandem by Rather, Jennings, and Brokaw, the NYT, LAT, and the WaPo. Viewpoint's guess is that it'll be a round number.

Dead or Alive

There's a report, as yet unconfirmed, that the terrorist al Zarqawi, the man responsible for many of the kidnappings and beheadings of American hostages, has been captured near the Iraqi/Syrian border. A number of Iraqi bloggers are carrying the report, but no major media have said anything about it yet as far as I know. They could be waiting for independent confirmation or the report may be groundless. We should know soon enough.

Yielding Home Field Advantage

Some of us have often wondered why it is that when Jerry Falwell urges his flock to vote Republican he is engaging in an unconstitutional breach of Church/State separation, but when Jesse Jackson urges black parishioners to vote Democrat he's standing in the best tradition of African American preachers. Creationists are accused of illicitly trying to impose a religious point of view on students by suggesting that metaphysical naturalism may not be true, but Darwinians who tacitly advocate metaphysical naturalism are not. It seems that religion in the public square is just fine as long as it's used to reinforce the liberal side in the culture war, but not if it is invoked by conservatives. Thus Bill Clinton's religious affirmations were never seen as a threat to the health of American politics, but George Bush's are.

Even granting that religion should have a legitimate place in our public life, however, there is a right way and a wrong way to express it. Steve Waldman has some interesting thoughts on this at National Review Online He writes:

The Left and Right have both followed the advice of the Founding Fathers at different points in history. Abolitionism and the civil-rights movement - two moral highpoints of our history - were driven by people attempting to impose their religious views on others. So is the right-to-life movement.

There is, however, a problem with the way some religious conservatives approach the political sphere. The problem is not dogmatism, but laziness. Someone who rests the argument for a certain position entirely on the fact that his religion told him to is not really attempting to persuade. Even if one is motivated by faith, one still has to convince others using secular, or at least broad-gauge, moral arguments. It is fine for someone to oppose gay marriage because Leviticus frowns on homosexuality. It's neither appropriate nor smart to say Leviticus calls homosexuality an abomination and so you should too. That is demanding that other people accept your religion. Some religious conservatives forget to persuade because they live in a political cloister, speaking mostly with others who agree with them, and for whom Leviticus is an effective shorthand. One of the reasons the Founding Fathers thought religion important to a functioning democracy is that it would tamp down passions and ensure that people would listen to each other. Religious conservatives need to understand that part of the Founding Fathers' wisdom, too.

Waldman is right. Unless people can argue from mutually shared assumptions they'll just be talking past each other. Thus Christians may hold to a particular belief primarily for religious reasons, but unless they can find non-religious premises from which to advocate their beliefs they'll be unpersuasive to people who don't share their religious worldview. If Christians wish to be effective players in the public arena they have to learn to meet those with whom they disagree on their opponent's turf.

In other words, every big game for the Christian has to be an away game. The only time they can play at home is when they debate each other. If they insist on engaging non-Christians on their own field by quoting Scripture, etc. they're going to find that nobody is going to show up for the game.

Kerry's Acceptance Speech

Usually when John Kerry speaks he reminds me of the history teacher played by Ben Stein in Ferris Buehler's Day Off, but last night he was pretty good, style-wise.

The actual content of his speech, however, was bizarre. It was as if he'd undergone a political sex-change operation.

Like the old football star who brings his game films to the 30th class reunion, Kerry wanted to remind us, and keep reminding us, that he had been a soldier, but he seemed to go right from the Mekong Delta to the campaign trail for president. I almost expected to see thousands of Special Forces troops rappelling down out of the Fleet Center ceiling instead of a balloon drop. Where was there any insight into his nineteen years as a U.S. senator? What did he accomplish during his three terms in the senate? Most importantly, how does his record in the senate support the guarantees he made in his speech?

From the emphasis that was placed on his military service by himself and others it's clear that he considers this his chief qualification to serve as president, but it all seemed surreal, as did the reaction to it in the arena. These people are not big fans of military service, much less of service in Vietnam, and if they really believed that military sacrifice makes Kerry more fit to be president than Mr. Bush they would have all voted for Bob Dole in 1996.

Kerry proudly proclaimed, as if to distinguish himself from George Bush, that he defended his country as a young man, but almost no one over fifty in that arena would agree with him that, his combat heroics notwithstanding, whatever he was doing in Vietnam, it was not defending his country. By 1975 that war was seen by almost everyone as completely unwarranted and unrelated to any conceivable threat to the United States. Kerry knows this. He said as much in his war protest years, so why insist now that he was indeed defending his country?

Aside from the mass hypocrisy of the left-wing of the Democrat party masquerading as pro-military hawks for the rubes out in the heartland there were a number of things about Kerry's speech which were plainly cheapshots.

For example, Kerry slapped Bush for preaching family values but, he said, you don't value families if you force them to take up a collection to buy body armor for a son or daughter serving in Iraq. Well, true enough. What you do is ask the senate to approve an 87 billion dollar appropriation to provide those kinds of things and hope that Senator Kerry and his left-wing companions will not vote against it. Your hopes are disappointed, of course, because, despite his grand rhetoric last night Kerry has voted against every single appropriation that has come before him in his 19 year tenure in the senate that would better prepare our military for the battles they must face.

After having clearly implied that Bush lied to us about getting into Iraq, after having stated flatly that Bush only went to war because he wanted to, he called on the president to agree with him to conduct an honorable campaign. This is the Democrats' idea of an honorable campaign: They get to call the president a liar and a betrayer of his country, they get to allege that the president was AWOL from his National Guard service during time of war, they get to accuse the president of sending thousands of people to their deaths just because he wanted to, and they get to allege that the president's talk of values is hypocritical. The president, however, for his part, must refrain from citing the total disconnect between Kerry's votes on the senate floor and the promises he made on the convention floor because that would be a below-the-belt slander. In the democrats' vision of an honorable campaign the president may not even defend himself against the accusations against him for that would be to imply that those making the charges are liars which would be mudslinging of the worst kind.

Senator Kerry claimed that he would restore trust, credibility, and respect to the White House. If he did he would be the first Democrat since Truman to do so, but, the sorry record of his predecessors aside, how can we expect a man who so willingly distorts his opponent's record and motives to be honest with us when things get tough?

Why did Kerry imply that the Bush people have ever said that our economy can do no better than it's doing? When did any high ranking White House spokesperson ever say such a thing? Is this how we restore credibility to the White House?

Kerry observed that we need to bring our allies to our side and assured us that he's just the man to do this, but it's wrongheaded to think that our allies are not at our side because the wrong man is in the White House. As I wrote yesterday, there is a bitter hostility toward the United States percolating throughout Western Europe based primarily upon jealousy over our success and resentment that our success has shown up their own inadequacies. Europe (i.e. France and Germany) are disinclined to follow America's lead in any venture unless, and until, America subordinate itself to their wishes. Thus the only way Kerry will succeed in his arrogant claim to be the right man to bring France and Germany to our side is by diminishing our national sovereignty and weakening our economic, military, and cultural influence. We must, to appease them, repudiate capitalism in favor of the same socialism that has made them such economic juggernauts. In other words, no matter who is in the White House, the French, Germans, and even the Canadians will remain cold and aloof until we become as weak as they are. Like our own domestic politics, it's not about personalities it's about power.

Ultimately, though, neither convention speeches nor debate performances should matter much to a voter. Good speeches are not necessarily good indicators of whether a person would be a good president nor is a good debate performance. These events are media shows, and they do very little to help us determine how fit a man is for office. A man should be judged not on his style, nor his appearance, nor anything else but his record. It's insulting to the electorate to have political managers conducting focus groups and micromanaging a candidate's image, seeking to package a candidate to make him appealing to the least well-informed segment of the voting population, and tacitly telling us that they believe that all that matters to us are the most superficial qualities of the man. Both of the contenders in this campaign have an extensive record, and anyone who doesn't know by now what George Bush stands for or what sort of president John Kerry would be hasn't been paying attention and probably shouldn't vote in November anyway.

Stem Cells

On night two of the Democrat Convention Ronald Reagan, Jr. delivered what he promised would be a non-partisan speech which he concluded by, in effect, urging people to vote for John Kerry. If Americans want to realize the miraculous cures latent in embryonic stem cell research, Reagan averred, then George Bush must be turned out of office. The casual viewer was given the impression by Reagan that the Bush administration had prohibited all stem cell research, but of course this isn't true. Michael Fumento explains why in an essay at National Review Online.

Fumento also points out that adult stem cells are available from many tissues in the human body, all of which are morally unproblematic, and that these cells are showing a great deal of promise in the treatment of some diseases. An excerpt:

Far from blocking federal embryonic-stem-cell research funding, Bush specifically authorized it so long as it used existing lines of embryonic cells. But more remarkably, Ron Reagan made absolutely no reference to an alternative to embryonic stem cells that is decades more advanced and carries absolutely no moral baggage. "Adult stem cells" can be extracted from various places in the human body as well as blood in umbilical cords and placentas. They were first used to treat human illness in 1957.

By the 1980s, adult stem cells were literally curing a variety of cancers and other diseases; embryonic stem cells have never been tested on a human. Adult stem cells now treat about 80 different diseases; again embryonic stem cells have treated no one. Adult stem cells obviously aren't rejected when taken from a patient's own body, though they may be from an unmatched donor; embryonic stem cells have surface proteins that often cause rejection. Implanted embryonic stem cells also have a nasty tendency to multiply uncontrollably, a process called "cancer." Oops.

What goes mostly unmentioned in the criticism of Bush's decision to deny federal funding to the development of new lines of embryonic stem cells is his chief reason for doing so. The President believes, not unreasonably, that it is morally wrong to create human embryos which will be deliberately destroyed in order to harvest their cells.

It's true that the embryos that would be used, at least at first, would be excess products of in vitro fertilizations of ova done to produce embryos for couples that cannot otherwise have children. The concern among many ethicists, however, is that this would put us on a slippery slope where eventually embryos would be produced exclusively for the purpose of harvesting their cells, and, given current law regarding abortion, there would be no legal basis for stopping at the use of mere embryos and their cells.

It would be only a matter of time before fetuses and their tissues would be harvested as well, and it would not be much longer after that until there would be a legal trade in body parts extracted from unborn children. It's not hard to imagine women getting pregnant for the sole purpose of selling the tissues and organs of their unborn offspring. Given that abortion is currently legal for any reason the mother wishes, there's no non-arbitrary reason the courts could site for prohibiting such a grisly business. It would, of course, be justified by its advocates on the most humanitarian of grounds: ending the suffering of millions of people who are afflicted with terrible diseases and other maladies that might prove amenable to treatment with harvested tissue.

This is not the sort of activity Bush feels the federal government should be subsidizing with taxpayer dollars, and he's right.

Deconstructing Edwards

Those who listened to John Edwards speech at last night's session of the Democrat National convention might be forgiven for getting the impression that Kerry/Edwards are about to usher in the Millenial reign of Christ. If it is true that the American voter is too sophisticated and too cynical to swallow the "chicken in every pot" rhetoric of politicians who promise everything and anything, word has not yet reached John Edwards. I was waiting for him to promise that when he and Kerry are elected every American would receive a free trip to Disney World.

Certain of his claims, of course, generated a bigger spike on the baloney meter than others. For instance, he averred:

"We hear a lot of talk about values. Where I come from, you don't judge someone's values based on how they use that word in a political ad. You judge their values based upon what they've spent their life doing."

Is this an invitation to examine John Kerry's record? What has Kerry spent his adult life doing? He did four months in Vietnam, was sent home after receiving a dubious third purple heart for a wound that was treated with a band aid, and proceeded to confess that he and thousands of other Americans were guilty of war crimes. The grisly deeds he admits to committing make the offenses of the soldiers at Abu Ghraib wane into insignificance by comparison. After his stint in the anti-war movement he began a political career notable only for two things. As a senator he amassed, over nineteen years, the most left-wing voting record in the senate and at the same time accomplished absolutely nothing of any legislative significance. He was a senatorial non-entity. His most noteworthy accomplishment, since leaving Vietnam, that has come to light is having persuaded two very wealthy women to marry him to save him the trouble of ever having to actually do any real work.

"But we've seen relentless negative attacks against John. So in the weeks ahead, we know what's coming - don't we - more negative attacks. Aren't you sick of it?"

The "attacks" against Kerry have focused on his political record. They have examined his votes and his positions on issues. If Democrats think that scrutinizing someone's record and quoting their words is foul play then why do they relentlessly attack Bush's record? Speaking of attacks, Bush has been called a liar, a Nazi, a bigot, and a simpleton. He has been accused of betraying the nation, and deliberately taking us to war, with its attendant grief and loss of life, just to help his corporate friends. Aren't you sick of it?

"I have spent my life fighting for the kind of people I grew up with. For two decades, I stood with families and children against big HMOs and big insurance companies. And as a Senator, I fought those same fights against the Washington lobbyists and for causes like the Patients' Bill of Rights."

John Edwards' legal career is, in fact, an example of why medical malpractice insurance is so high and consequently why medical costs are daunting. He won huge claims for clients whose children were born with cerebral palsy, because, he convinced juries, the mothers of these children should have been advised by their obstetricians to have Caesarean sections. Such procedures have since increased unnecessarily with no discernable effect on the incidence of CP, but plenty of impact on medical costs and doctors' insurance premiums. See here for a more detailed account of exactly what Edwards has "spent his life fighting" on behalf of.

"We shouldn't have two public school systems in this country: one for the most affluent communities, and one for everybody else. None of us believe that the quality of a child's education should be controlled by where they live or the affluence of their community. We can build one public school system that works for all our children. Our plan will reform our schools and raise our standards. We can give our schools the resources they need. We can provide incentives to put quality teachers in the places and the subjects where we need them the most. And we can ensure that three million kids have a safe place to go after school. This is what we can do together."

These assertions reveal an incredible misunderstanding of why some schools are better than others. New York City's Schools spend more money per student than do many suburban schools, but the suburban schools are often more successful. Schools which are failing are not failing for lack of money, they're failing because of the quality of family life in the school district. Communities populated by healthy families will have better schools than those in which family life is chaotic regardless of how grandiose the buildings, how highly paid the staff, and where the school is located. If the Democrats want to improve education they can work to strengthen families but they would have to repudiate many of their philosophical principles and much of their legislative history to do that.

"So now you ask how are we going to pay for this? Well, here's how we're going to pay for it. Let me be very clear, for 98 percent of Americans, you will keep your tax cut-that's 98 percent. But we'll roll back the tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, close corporate loopholes, and cut government contractors and wasteful spending. We can move our country forward without passing the bill and the burden on to our children and grandchildren."

Has anyone run the numbers on this? What loopholes would they close? How much revenue will they produce by rolling back the tax cuts for the top 2% of taxpayers? How, exactly, are they going to cut wasteful spending? Haven't these same promises been made ever since the Great Depression? How many times will candidates be able to snooker their listeners with vague, meaningless promises before we catch on that this is all political legerdemain. Show us the numbers or forfeit your credibility.

"I mean the very idea that in a country of our wealth and our prosperity, we have children going to bed hungry. We have children who don't have the clothes to keep them warm. We have millions of Americans who work full-time every day for minimum wage to support their family and still live in poverty - it's wrong."

That children are poorly clothed or go to bed hungry is no doubt true. The question is whether this is because there is no alternative for them or because they are in families which do not avail themselves, for whatever reason, of the assistance which their fellow citizens provide for them through government programs or charitable organizations. For Edwards to make it sound as if government is somehow failing these children is disingenuous. Likewise his claim that there are millions who work full-time and who still live in poverty is hard to credit. Few adults who work full-time earn only minimum wage. Most workers at the minimum wage are teenagers and others who are not the chief wage-earners in their family. If Edwards wants to do more than just rouse the masses of faithful at the Fleet Center, if he actually wants to demonstrate the truth of his claims, he's going to have to show that heads of households in significant numbers, despite working full-time, nevertheless have total household income, including government benefits, under the poverty line (about $22,000 for a family of four).

"With a new president who strengthens and leads our alliances, we can get NATO to help secure Iraq. We can ensure that Iraq's neighbors like Syria and Iran, don't stand in the way of a democratic Iraq. We can help Iraq's economy by getting other countries to forgive their enormous debt and participate in the reconstruction. We can do this for the Iraqi people and our soldiers. And we will get this done right."

This reveals a disturbing naivete on Edwards' part as to why we are unable to get some of our erstwhile allies to follow our lead in world affairs. It's not because Bush is abrasive or because he lacks diplomatic skills. That's just a rationalization. It is rather because many of our supposed "allies" resent and even despise us for our hyperpower status. The United States is an economic, military, and cultural colossus, and much of the rest of the world resents the dominant role we play around the globe, a role they believe, in some cases, is rightly and historically theirs. This is especially true of France and Germany. Russia is reluctant to follow us because they resent their defeat in the ideological struggle of the Cold war. Nobody likes to feel inferior, everybody experiences shadenfreude when the top guy stumbles. As these nations see things, it is in their national interest for the U.S. to fail and it would take more than John Kerry to persuade them to act against that interest. John Edwards, and every other American for that matter, would do well to read Jean Francois Revel's book Anti-Americanism. It would perhaps cure him of the na�ve idea that American "unilateralism" is a result of inept American diplomacy and that a more agreeable face in the White House is all we need to mollify the Europeans and others.

"What we believe - what John Kerry and I believe - is that you should never look down on anybody, that we should lift people up. We don't believe in tearing people apart. We believe in bringing people together."

Bush gets a lot of criticism for dividing people, but the criticism is silly. People in this country are divided because of the multiculturalist emphasis on celebrating our differences. We are divided because of the practice of special interest politics, the appeals to people on the basis of their race, class, gender, sexual orientation, age, etc. These are not Republican phenomena. This is the basic weaponry of the Democrat party and has been ever since the sixties. Democrats who accuse Bush of being divisive are projecting their own habits onto their opponent. Their definition of "divisive" is any condition in which you don't agree with them.

If, for example, you think it's immoral to kill children as they're being born then you're being divisive. If you think we should have judges who will rule according to what the law and the constitution say rather than according to the political whim of the day then you're being divisive, if you think that marriage is important and that we should preserve the understanding of marriage that has prevailed for two thousand years then you're being divisive. If you think the first amendment is being wrongly interpreted as it touches upon matters of religious expression then you're being divisive. They're trying hard in this convention to moderate their rhetoric, but all one need do is compare the words of Democrat leaders like Kennedy, Carter, Dean, Gore, Jackson, and Kerry during the primary months to those of Republican leaders to see who has been a force for division and who has been a force for national unity.

Dukakis Redux

If you haven't seen the NASA photos that have the Kerry folks steamed but would like to, you can see them here. I can understand why the Dems are so upset about the release of these pictures. They make Kerry look like a gopher.

Ten Economic Truths

One of the hammers that the Democrats have used, and will continue to use, to beat the Bush administration over the head is the matter of job flight beyond our borders. As Senator Kerry has alleged, "Benedict Arnold CEOs" are outsourcing work to third world countries and depriving Americans of job opportunities. Bush's general commitment to free trade and globalization, the Democrats have argued, is resulting in tens of thousands of people being added to the unemployment rolls as their employers export their jobs offshore. The conventional wisdom among many is that job outsourcing is enormously harmful to the American worker and economy and Bush should be punished for it at the polls.

The conventional wisdom, however, is quite mistaken according to Brink Lindsey in a Reason article entitled Ten Truths About Trade. The article is clear, concise and very helpful in answering the main arguments raised by the left against free trade. An excerpt:

Is globalization sending the best American jobs overseas? If you get your news from CNN's Lou Dobbs, the answer is "of course" and the only real issue is how many trade restrictions should be applied to stem the bleeding. But the recent scare about "offshoring" is just the latest twist on an inaccurate, decades-old complaint that global trade is stealing jobs and causing a "race to the bottom" in which corporations relentlessly scour the world for the lowest wages and most squalid working conditions. China and India have replaced 1980s Japan and 1990s Mexico as the most feared foreign threats to U.S. employment, and the old fallacy of job scarcity has once again reared its distracting head.

The truth is cheerier. Trade is only one element in a much bigger picture of incessant turnover in the American labor market. Furthermore, the overall trend is toward more and better jobs for American workers. While job losses are real and sometimes very painful, it is important -- indeed, for the formulation of sound public policy, it is vital - to distinguish between the painful aspects of progress and outright decline.

Lindsey then goes on to discuss ten reasons why free trade is beneficial to the country and, in the long run, to our workers.

Thanks to Dan Drezner for the tip. Drezner himself has a much lengthier, more scholarly piece on the same topic in Foreign Affairs for those who are interested in a deeper economic analysis of the effect of outsourcing on American workers.

Goldberg, P.S.

Jonah's latest. It's masterful. An excerpt:

[T]his is not a party weighed down by the ballast of facts. Indeed, you have to carry a light pack when racing against the clock. For more than a year, Democrats have been fueled by a violent, irrational hatred of George W. Bush. These feelings were almost never based upon facts, so much as on an almost glandular paranoia.

Librarians set fire to their records, lest Attorney General John Ashcroft's Gestapo find out who borrowed The Catcher in the Rye. They insisted that Bush was some sort of criminal mastermind and buffoon who could orchestrate a war for oil while not being smart enough to work as a spellchecker at an M&M factory. Countless anti-Bush canards contradicted each other, but consistency was a luxury the Democrats could not afford.

The problem for them is that not even the now decidedly anti-Bush press can conceal the fact that virtually none of these allegations were true. The Senate Intelligence Committee report, the British Butler Report and the 9/11 Commission report undermine every key allegation of the anti-Bush flat-earthers. The 9/11 Commission, which was being hailed as an oracular council of truth and light when it made Bush look bad, has essentially said the Patriot Act does not go far enough (and Ashcroft, by the way, never even poked his nose in a library); that Bush never lied and that several of Bush's more famous accusers did - including those who, knowing otherwise, insisted that Bush's "16 words" about Saddam Hussein's pursuit of uranium were lies.

He does a fine job in this piece of deconstructing the hypocrisies of both Clinton and Carter. It makes one eager for his critique of Teresa Heinz Kerry's speech last night which seemed like it was being delivered on valium.

It may seem picky, but I thought it just a little bit odd that the Democrats appealed last night to their African American base by touting two speakers who lay claim to the coveted identity but who are African-American in only the most technical sense. Obama Barak had a Kenyan father whom he never really knew, but he shares almost nothing else in common with the heritage of American blacks. Teresa Kerry immigrated from Mozambique, but very few blacks would regard this white multi-millionaire heiress as a racial "sister." It's a small point, but one can imagine the hooting that would ensue if the African-Americans featured at the Republican convention included a white South African and a man whose maternal ancestors were white and whose paternal ancestors were never enslaved, nor ever experienced Jim Crow or the civil rights movement.

I guess that for people who consider Bill Clinton to be the first black president, almost anybody counts as an African-American, except Clarence Thomas, Condaleeza Rice, Rod Paige, Colin Powell, and J.C. Watts.