Dinesh D'Souza on Ronald Reagan & Cold War on National Review Online

Dinesh D'Souza on Ronald Reagan & Cold War on National Review Online
With the loss of Renauldus Magnus, Ronald the Great to us Anglophones, we have a mixed bag of commentary on his successes. The best analysis of how powerful was Reagan's legacy is the great Indian turned Reagan staffer turned US citizen, Dineash D'Souza.

Mr. D'Souza has inherited the literary greatness of de Tocqueville but taken it one step further -- he has choosen to become a part of the Great American Experiment. Mr. D'Souza came to America from India for college and quickly thereafter joined the Reagan White House. Only then did he become a U.S. citizen.

Based on Mr. D'Souza's different life experience in India, he is more easily struck to comment about what we natural-born U.S. citizens take as a given proposition. Mr. D'Souza then applies his impressive intellect to take these small observations and make enormously insightful yet simple comments. This is the hallmark of true intellect -- reducing insights into simple, understandable statements.

On Reagan, Mr. D'Souza points out the truly bizarre appointment of Mr. Gorbachev was done for a reason. Why would a octogenarian-ocracy appoint a fifty-year-old minister of agriculture? Because they faced a U.S. president that knew how to strike to the Soviet quick. They needed a new way of thinking that the quick-to-die octagenarians were not able to do in their 15 month "terms" as general secretary. They needed a new way of thinking that the defense establishment and KGB directorates could not offer. They needed someone that was already trying to change the creaky system.

Ironically, this move to Perestroika and Gorbachev violated a key tenet of the Soviet system's long-lasting power -- terror. Since Lenin and Stalin had killed off free-thinkers aka counter-revolutionaries, the Soviet population had tolerated the Politburo's stupidities because to do otherwise meant certain death. Perestroika failed the Soviet system by removing what the republican Nicolo Machiavelli had noted in the Prince as the most important component of tyranny -- fear of certain death. Once that fear was removed by Perestroika, it only took a quick four years for the Soviet Union to disappear from the face of the earth.

Can we or should we attribute the fall of the Soviet Union to Mr. Reagan? If the Politburo's choice of Gorbachev can be attributed to a reaction to Mr. Reagan and the implmentation of his policies, the answer is an unequivocal "yes." This seems the inevitable conclusion were we to rely on Mr. D'Souza's highlighted statements from Izvestia - the official voice of the Politburo through its Party apparatus --from the era surrounding the rise of Mr. Gorbachev.

The Weekly Dish - The Washington Times: Editorials/OP-ED - April 30, 2004

The Weekly Dish - The Washington Times: Editorials/OP-ED - April 30, 2004

Andrew Sullivan in this one column shows why you can both love him and hate him in just a few column-inches. His quotes from Iraq are wonderful. His commentary on Welch's re-marriage is insane, particularly taken from the perspective of Karl Marx's desire for the fall of the institution of marriage.

And here is the focus of this post: Marx believed that Communism would win through a process of destroying the protestant capitalism that dominated his Victorian era; here showing a bit of Darwinistic style. Marx wanted no marital institution, just 1960's Free Love (a Marx's phrase, by the way).

We are living out in homosexual marriage the injection of Communist philosophy into modern life without the acknowledgment of Communist sources.

Marx would have suggested loosening the bounds of marriage through easier divorce. If divorce is more easily had, then marriage is less significant. If marriage is not then that significant, why cannot just anyone participate in such an institution, i.e., gays? This is Sullivan's argument about Welch's disrespect for marriage as an institution. Why save marriage for people that use marriage just the way Marx described it in his day?

This is a strong argument about the status quo of marriage. It does not address marriage as the institution it should be. The concept of covenant marriage, which raises the hurdles to divorce to a more pre-1960's concept, would undermine the Welch argument. Easy divorce would disappear as a source of "why not gays, too" argument. That still does not address why marriage at all.

Why marriage at all is the question that this debate needs to focus on. This question is where I struggle. I still cannot answer why today as easily as a bumpersticker would. Allow me to divert into why marriage in the past.

Marriage has historically been at its core about birth control and management. Without paternity tests, marriage allowed for control over men's obligation to support children and determine who could inherit from fathers. This protected children and women from men's sexual wanderlust causing financial devistation to the family. This was particularly true when men had all political control limited to the male sex. Few repercussions for his sexual wanderlust, just limited liability to the family for the wanderlust.

The classic examples in the extreme of kings like King Louis XIV having concubines while not letting his bastard children have any right to inherit the throne. Not unusual in that model of marriage.

The safety net for men was that the children born of their wives were presumed his.

Now with paternity tests, these legal constructs cannot do anything but fail. The true parental heritage is easily determinable. The institution as a safety net for presumed fidelity cannot survive the truth. So we see the question of why marriage in the past fails today. Science undermines legal expedience. Here I fear I have yet to answer why marriage today. Since I have little more time this morning to write, let me jump back to Sullivan's attack on Welch's example.

Does this allow us to use the bad examples to show the false reliance on the old insitution? Does a banana left in the kitchen for 3 weeks show that our institution of food delivery should be dismantled? That is non-sense. All the old banana proves is that one consumer failed to eat the banana as soon as the delivery system was designed. Welch's misuse of the system or the regularity of this abuse proves nothing about the propriety of homosexual marriage.

The answer must arise from determining why marry at all in today's environment? It cannot be about the fringe benefits: retirement plans, health insurance, etc. That can be handled in other ways. Why do we marry? Why do young and old alike seek marriage?

News from the war zone - The Washington Times: Editorials/OP-ED - May 04, 2004

News from the war zone - The Washington Times: Editorials/OP-ED - May 04, 2004

Need I say more than this editorial says?

OnNew York Post Online Edition: business

New York Post Online Edition: business
Just a quick thought . . . Gore wants to start a left-leaning channel focused at youth.

This is not the first time that a Democrat wants control over children's education: the NEA, for example.

What philosopher of the 20th century preached similar tenets?

"Our educational policy must enable everyone who receives an education to develop morally, intellectually and physically and become a worker with both socialist consciousncss and culture."
Mao Tse-Tung, On the Correct Handling of Contradiction (1959), quoted in the Little Red Book, chap. 16.

Interestingly, Mao had more interest in teaching facts than Democrats. See Little Red Book.

Free speech defeated - The Washington Times: Editorials/OP-ED

Free speech defeated - The Washington Times: Editorials/OP-ED

Should the recent case of McConnell v. FEC be seen by Republicans as a victory for the strict constructionists? Is Justice O’Connor pulling the left wing into understanding that speech is ideas communicated through movement of the lips, tongue, vocal chords, etc. Justice O’Connor has maneuvered the left wing to reading the Constitution as allowing Congress to regulate elections. She has put all this together to show that spending money is not about the movement of lips to communicate ideas.

Since the Warren Court, the left wing has been happily following Justice Brennan’s doctrine of the Constitution as a living document. Brennan believed that the Constitution should be read today with the understanding of the words’ meaning as based on the most recent edition of Webster’s and interpreted to allow that definition to apply. It lead to interpretations of flag-burning and pornography as protected speech. See Scalia’s dissent in McConnell.

This means that the Constitution never means the same thing from day to day, as President Bush discovered in this case. Speech had a fifty year or more precedent of allowing expression. Now expression is limited when it comes to spending money.

Never mind that in reading the rules of the Constitution, the first amendment is more important than Congress’s right to regulate elections, since the first amendment was enacted later. The first amendment is very simple. Congress shall pass no law. If it does, the law would seem to be void on its face. But this is irrelevant in this case because speech is not spending.

But if we look at the actual law more closely, the law does not prevent all spending. Just spending by corporations. This would seem to mean corporations have less freedom of speech than individuals. Strange result, but okay. Individuals vote. Not corporations. Individuals speak. Not corporations.

Maybe if the strict constructionists play their public relations campaign well, they can usurp this decision for their own benefit. They can point out that this is the death of Brennan’s intellectual non-sense. Even Justice Ginsberg sees that reading the Constitution strictly makes more sense than trying to have a string of cases decide without any logical connection to the words of the Constitution. The speech cases have broke free of any reigns controlling the case law. This is the beginning of the end for that string of cases.

That, other happy thoughts, and a little pixie dust will get me to fly.

Crusaders versus Jihadists

Crusaders versus Jihadists

Just a quick thought. I have recently done some study of the early development of Christianity and its literature. With the focus on Al-Qaeda, all Americans have been receiving an education on Islam. From that learning by osmosis and reading many early Suras from the Quran, I have a new understanding of Islam's development. From a number of years studying many periods of history from all but Chinese and Central Asian history, I have a working understanding of many dynamics.

With all that basis for my statement, I have a couple conclusions about are working understanding of Islam and Christianity's historical interaction.

Christianity started as a Jewish movement which grew exponentially largely by persuasion of non-Jews to follow this martyred person named Jesus and nicknamed the Christ. For most of the period of Christianity before the conversion of Emperor Constantine in the 320's, Christianity did not have the ability to use force of arms to force adherence to the Christian doctrine, its orthodoxy.

Immediately after Constantine's conversion, Christianity had the power to coerce through government and force of arms. The Romans had historically used force of arms to enforce compliance. This same government to enforce religious compliance is not all that shocking.

This change in Christianity from an expansion by persuasion and example to an expansion that included force of arms made a huge difference in Christianity's expansion and acceptance. Unsurprisingly, a government that pushed an idea either creates or is supported by propoganda explaining the goodness of the government's actions. This is the experience of Christianity that continued for centuries. It is also the experience that Mohammed could observe during his life.

One of the most important differences between Islam and Christianity is not in its historic action: both used force of arms to expand and convert. The difference is in doctrine. Christianity in its holy book and first days after its "prophet" Jesus did not have an experience of use of force. In fact, it can be argued persuasively that using force of arms to convert goes against the New Testament doctrines and experience.

In comparison, Mohammed being the shrewd operator that he was observed the Christian experience and wrote his doctrine accordingly. Mohammed moved from being supportive of Christians and Jews around his community to being hostile to those religions, in fact building systems to be able to say that he did not suppress religions of the Book, his phrase, yet discourage persons from not converting to Islam.

Mohammed encouraged the use of force of arms and killing to spread Islam. In fact, he lead several military actions to acquire land that we wanted. In Islam, there is no equivalent for "those who live by the sword die by the sword." The counter-example in Islam is encouragement to fight and die to have 72 virgins in heaven awaiting the martyred soldier of Allah.

Those two examples do not define the entire interaction of the two religions, but it does explain the doctrines of force of arms.

In the 400 years before Mohammed's death, Christianity had a history of using force of arms to enforce Christian orthodoxy and conversion, mostly as an adjunct to the Roman 900-year history of enforcing its governing will on its subjects. Mohammed observed the success of spreading Christianity through Roman legions. He turned it into doctrine and add the virgins as persuasive marketing. Being from a merchant family, he apparently knew how to sell and persuade.

As Mohammed's system grew through the use of armies to conquer land, particularly Christian strongholds like Antioch and Alexandria, Christians became nervous about their neighbors.

Most of the fWest or the former Western empire -- that portion that historically was governed through the Latin language -- did not have to consider the threat of Islamic expansion because it had the buffer of the Eastern Roman Empire, also known as the Byzantine Empire. This continuation of Roman history covered the territory governed by the Romans under the Greek language.

The West experienced attacks from the western flank of Islamic expansion from Spain into southern France in the 800's. This made the West aware of the problem. Since the attacks did not continue relentlessly, the West quit worrying about this expansion from this direction after a few decades.

The West's concern from that point mostly focused on the threat to the Eastern Roman Empire. Since Byzantine forces gradually lost Christian land in the Holy Land, the desire of the West to protect the Holy Land for Christendom grew into a desire to bring force of arms to the Holy Land.

The current common understanding in America is that the Crusaders created a desire for use of Islamic use of arms to defend themselves. This is utter non-sense. Islam spread by force of arms. Christian Crusades were a response. This is simply the old territorial fight with religion as a new motivation. By the time of the Crusades in 1032 through 1230 or so, neither side could be considered an innocent party.

Christianity had not ever tried to add territory through force of arms until it tried to reconquer lands formerly within the Roman Empire and now under Islamic rule. Islam learned the value of force of arms from a bygone era of Christianity. Chicken or egg? Newton would tell us in physics that each force is met with an equal and opposite reaction. Newtonian physics do not apply to politics or war. Clausewitz suggests a political corollary to his doctrine that would apply to politics: each application of force is met with a mirror image reaction thatpushes back with greater force.

Every poor politician believes that he can overwhelm his opposition with forceful action because such action works in military conflict. However, this is incorrect, or if correct, short lived. If you attempt to destroy your political opposition and they survive, you should expect them to develop a doctrine that seeks your own destruction at least to a level just greater than what you attempted on them. Macchiavelli's Prince understood this by pointing out that a tyrant needs to apply overwhelming force to prevent this type of back and forth. (Never forget Macchiavelli was a republican that wrote The Prince to show that despotism could never lead to healthy society. It was so successful in describing how despots work that it has become a how-to manual for those despots.)

Between Christianity and Islam, each side has tried to use Macchiavellian force to destroy the other. Since each has failed, they have only accomplished the Clausewitz corollary reflecting a strong, more strident response from the other side.

All of this leads to a simple point. Christianity can more easily move away from force of arms as a tenet of its orthodoxy than can Islam. Once the superimposed doctrines of force that Romans and medieval crusaders invented to support their unChristian action are removed, Christianity does not have any doctrine that supports aggressive warfare for conversion or conquest.

Islam on other hand is an entire religion that frames its own doctrine using vocabulary of struggle, conflict, and warfare. The history of Islam, beginning with Mohammed's own actions, reflects that this is more than mere literary license at work. Struggle against non-Muslims is expected and desired. Specially treatment is given the two Religions of the Book. They are not equals. They are to be protected from attack, but they are like wayward children who need to grow up. They are less than Muslims, but they are sufferable.

Once land become Muslim, once a church becomes a mosque, once a family becomes Muslim, none can return to a non-Muslim state. This is not tolerance. This is conquest preservation.

Crusaders are now seen among Christians as a disgusting and misguided attempt to comply with the Bible. We now see that there is no basis in the Bible for this action. Jihadists create a split in Islam, but it is harder to argue persuasively that military force is not to be used under the plain meaning of the Quran. The Quran is written in just that language. A Muslim must see that as a literary device and not a commandment in order to avoid a militaristic doctrine. This is difficult to do for even the most persuasive imam.

The Crusaders are a part of history that Christianity can disavow with credibility. Can Islam truly do the same with the Jihadists?

Insidious judicial activism - The Washington Times: Commentary

Insidious judicial activism - The Washington Times: Commentary

As an alum of the Indiana International and Comparative Law Review, I find the study of foreign law and procedure as well as their histoies invaluable. In my recent study of the English system of equity formerly embodied in the Chancery Court, I find the state of lawyer's understanding of their own history woefully inadequate.

What David Limbaugh writes about is another permutation of that inadequate understanding. In my experience on the law review, I found that there is little common methodology of analyzing international law. This means that looking at other countries' laws can be used to reinforce whatever law is espoused as the solution.

Without some methodology, we lose what of the most valuable aspects of the common law system which is its predictability. It is this growing loss of predictability that is destroying our system.

With no methodology and 150 or more different countries in the world, let alone their component states and provinces, a legal essayist or judge can probably point out a good standard for us to follow.

What about security of property? Well, in China, they can prevent terrorism easily because they have little protection of home and hearth. We need more security. Let's be like China.

What about freedom of speech? Well, in England, libel and slander laws are very tight. This prevents famous persons, including the Prince of Wales, from being spoken ill of in some respects. We need less libel and slander, so let's be more like England.

In fact, to make sure that libel and slander is reduced, we should be more like the Taliban . . . .

Clearly, with these examples, we can justify capital punishment for libel and slander and no protection against unreasonable search and seizure.

This debate about whether to consider foreign law is not new. Even professors on the history of equity debate whether Roman law may be considered to reach decisions in equity because the first chancellors (i.e., judges in equity courts) were priests and versed in Canon Law, an outgrowth of Roman law. See C.J.S. Equity sec. 3. There is no evidence of this assertion in the Chancery's records, because chancellors did not explain their decisions for centuries. McClintock on Equity sec. 1-3. They are just inferences. No historian worth his salt can back up this assertion.

This is just a simple example of how this problem of lack of knowledge about our own legal system exists. In future, I will write about why this lack of knowledge is dangerous. But imagine this lack of knowledge of legal systems can start running rampant through our own legal lsystem! What will that do the predictability of our law? Add that to lack of methodology, we have disaster.

A French Revolution in Iraq?

A French Revolution in Iraq?

This article needs further comment and reflection on the comparative residual attitudes and philosophies arising from the American and Glorious Revolutions against the French Revolution.

Particularly in the American Revolution, an attitude arose and developed of fear of institutions that ultimately leads to stable institutions by creating the institutions natural opposition.

In the French Revolution, the idea of partisan conflict controlling partisan authority created an inherent instability. This lead to five different republican constitutions, two imperial governments, and two installations of monarchs in the same period of time that America had one republic.

The French are very idealistic and found of pure, unmoderated ideas. Reality has little impact in the methodology of analysis taught in French government schools. Pure thought is correct thought.

In the British and American experience thought is empirical, when successful for long periods of time. How else does an idea arise, moderate, and fall without government-destroying revolutions?

The French recent political stability and liberty from Soviet nuclear threats has allowed a natural and almost inevitable philosophical divide between the slow evolutionary change that common law countries exhibit to conflict openly with the revolutionary, idealistic philosophies that the French have perpetuated.

Even so, we are not irreversibly on this course. The Gaullist movement to tear out broken Socialist patterns in employment rules, labor relations, and tax rates shows some evolutionary changes. This is particularly true since Chirac is doing this well into his term and not by sudden, revolutionary changes.

At the same, Chirac's Gaullist psychology (as replete with an inferiority complex -- should I say "Napoleanic complex" -- as it is) is screaming loudly. This is almost the last throes of a dying philosophy.

As the French evolve, may be they change.

Senate GOP Angles for Federal Marriage Amendment

Senate GOP Angles for Federal Marriage Amendment shows that news coverage of gay marriage is generating Congressional action.

I believe strongly that the definition of marriage should not change. I have struggled to make an explanation that is more than a gut reaction. I have thought through the history of Western marriage, and I understand how the gay activists suggest that marriage should not be limited to heterosexuals based on these legal trends.

Think about it. In medieval England, marriage was a specialized form of property conveyance. The woman was property being exchanged to the groom for hard assets like livestock and land. Add on top of this the political alignments that would follow reinforced the barter aspect. "I will give your son my daughter if you will give me political support and military resources."

In this context, even ignoring the religious prohibitions against homosexual activity, it did not make sense to have man capable of owning property thereby own another legally free man by a marriage contract.

The old notions of women as property have thankfully fallen away. Nevertheless, the religious prohibitions against homosexual activity prevented the issue of gay marriage from arising simultaneous to female freedom.

Only now after the rise of the "gay lifestyle" are we going back to re-examine the full legal ramifications of female equality in the marriage contract.

From the proponents of gay marriage, marriage is nothing but a contract. Why should gays not be able to participate in such contracts? Seems logical, right?

Being Protestant, I don't often get the opportunity to see the "old church" of Catholicism in action. I went to a Catholic wedding yesterday. That ceremony reinforced the old Catholic doctrine that creating and raising children is one of the central parts of marriage in the Catholic tradition.

While this doctrine is "old fashioned," it is practically sound. Without reciting research and practical examples of two heterosexual parent stability, children are better with male and female influence. Does that make it impossible for a gay couple to serve as good parents? No. Is it even necessary to have two parents? No. It is still the optimal solution when comparing healthy heterosexual couples to healthy homosexual couples.

In my observations of successful behavior, work, business, economics, and loving relationships, one common characteristic predominates: systematic and adaptive structure. In any of these cases, systems well implemented do not guarantee success. They merely increase the probability of success. We know from research that the most probable family structure that leads to good behaviour and healthy attitudes is the "traditional stay-at-home mother, father working" system. It does not have universal success. We are human.

Every factor that moves away from that scenario increases the probability of a small problem having increased difficulty in the long term health and success of the children of that household.

Unlike many of my "religion dictates government rules" friends, I believe that we as a society should state what optimal family situation is desirable and structure the society to encourage optimal behaviour and attitudes. If we can set the vision of success, the likelihood of that becoming predominate increases. Laws are written accordingly. However, that does not mean criminalizing other views. To be extreme, law should not prohibit homosexual child raising. It should make it the less favored approach.

Lifelong heterosexual marriage with healthy relationships should receive the benefits of all doubts. It should be treated differently because the wider the application of that method of family building, the greater health of our society. That is is a fact.

Here's a thought exercise: will you as a driver never have an auto accident if you religiously change the oil in your car, rotate the tires on schedule, and replace the brake pads at the slightest sign of wear? Never say never. Other factors are signficant: other people on the road being just one. However, is your ability to avoid likely problems that lead to accidents? Absolutely. Desired systems of behavior make safer roads. The same with marriage and children.

Discussion of the matter without children is a discussion for another day.

Arnold is IN; Conservatives Should Welcome Him

Arnold is IN; Conservatives Should Welcome Him

Arnold may nearly rhyme with Ronald. He is not Ronald. That is wonderful for conservatives!

W. has said that he wants a big tent. Since the decline of the Rockefeller wing of the GOP, the communist wing of the Democratic Party (compare the Communist manifesto to the Democratic Party platform) has easily complained about the radical right.

Arnold can devestate the Communist non-sense. His victory with the support of the White House will help more moderate persons that feel more comfortable with GOP economics can feel more comfortable disagreeing with their new-found party over social issues. That is good.

Recent trends of philosophical communication and debate are showing that the GOP conservative wing is persuading more and more of the population to be conservative. Rush, Hannity, Michael Reagan, and one of my favorites Laura Ingraham are devastatingly insightful. Compared to what the left offers, this is good news for future growth.

The biggest problem in accelerating that growth is psychological reluctance. We are already committed to our ideas. Admitting that one is wrong requires internal struggle. In getting people to admit their error, a classic psychological comfort building technique is to show that the person is not unique. One nationally known sales guru David Sanders used to get up on stage and say, "Last night I was speaking and 20 people did not know how to solve this problem. How many here have the same difficulty?" Sanders could get half the room to raise their hands when most speakers would be lucky to get one.

Sanders demonstrated that you need to make it easy for some one to surrender.

Arnold is what the GOP needs to get more people to surrender their 1960's communist theology in favor what their rationale intellect says is correct.

Arnold is not ideologically pure. But is comfortable, familiar, and inviting. He is the man that you want at the door to your tent party. With him you will need a bigger tent. You will have more people listening to your persuasive policy wonks. You will have greater conservative influence.

Another apparent weakness that is helpful is the building of the legislative center. For Arnold to win what he wants legilslatively, he will have to win over Democrats. That will look bad to conservatives because social programs will grow. I don't like that. However, the current legislative momentum nationally is still strongly New Deal. To control the creek in your backyard, you are best not to put a Toyota in front of it. You are most likely to succeed in using the Toyota to move dirt into place to build a levee to push the water off its course. Nudge it from the side. Slowly you will move the creek as far as you want. You will make a lot of effort that does not seem productive at first.

A moderate Republican with great appeal is helpful to conservative because it is part of the process of moving dirt. Each person persuaded is a necessary step to turn the movement of the political waters.