A Few More Observations On Downtown Manhattan

Working in downtown Manhattan has pluses and minuses. The minuses are that it is kind of a pain in the ass to get to, though in my new digs it is actually a shorter commute than it was from my former digs. The area is very incongruent, as this area of Manhattan was built, or at least the streets were, in the 1600's, which means that there's no rhyme or reason to the roadways. (Remember, it was only in the last two hundred plus years that the machinery necessary for filling in lakes and ponds, blasting away rocks, hills, and/or mountains became available for use in civic planning. Manhattan north of Canal Street is laid out as a grid and is easy to navigate; downtown Manhattan south of Canal has no such ease of navigation.) The streets are unusually narrow, and while the area possesses many tall buildings, the sunlight barely gets through to the street as a result of this narrowness. This can lead to a certain sense of light deprivation. Sadly, the only place where one can see the sky unobstructed is where the World Trade Center once stood, but as this area is still the source of much anger for me, I try to avoid it if I can. One day the anger will subside, but not this day.

On the other hand, downtown Manhattan is steeped in the history of pre-revolutionary America, as well as immediately post-revolutionary America. It's a pretty special thing, particularly since there are only two other cities that have this kind of historical mark on them (Boston and Philadelphia). Federal Hall is one block away from my current place of employment, and during the warmer months it is actually quite thrilling for me, even after all these years, to sit on the same steps where Washington took his oath of office as the first American president (under the Contitution of 1789, that is). Across from Federal Hall are the former headquarters of J.P. Morgan, which were built only four or five stories high, deliberately so; it seems that Morgan wanted the world to know that he was so powerful financially that he didn't need to build a skyscraper. He possessed the air rights above this squat building, and while everyone was clamoring for space all over downtown Manhattan at the time, Morgan was content to take up valuable air space with....nothing. One day in 1921, a horse drawn wagon pulled up in front of the House of Morgan and exploded at a quarter to twelve. The New York Stock Exchange, which was directly across the street from the House of Morgan, hadn't let out its traders for lunch at that point, but six people still lost their lives. Federal Hall, perpendicular to the House of Morgan, still has shards of wood embedded in its walls from that singular act of latter-day terrorism.

Down the block and to the left, if you walk down Broadway towards Battery Park, you run into Bowling Greeen, an oval-shaped park with a fountain in the middle of it. In 1776, Bowling Green was slightly different than it is today. For one, they actually did bowl on Bowling Green (it was kind of like bocce ball, which they still play in Central Park in specially designed "bowling" areas), and a statue of George III stood where the fountain now is. As I wrote previously, zealous patriots dragged down the statue of George III and turned the metal into musket balls. But the most interesting thing about Bowling Green is that the fence that surrounds it today is the same iron-wrought fence that ringed it in 1776, and on the same day that colonial revolutionaries hauled down the statue of George III, they also knocked the imperial crown ornaments off the fence posts. Go there today, feel the tops of the posts, and they're still rough to the touch, jagged and uneven. In some small way, you feel as if you're connecting with history. Good stuff.

Anyway, those are my little downtown Manhattan observations. Nothing controversial today. That said, if any of you happen to find yourself in Old New York, these are the little things that you'll key in on, and they'll make your experience a bit more interesting.

Happy Thanksgiving

To all my readers (all three of you), I wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving.

The Environment

I never really bought into the theory that America is the world's single greatest polluter and is the world environment's greatest enemy. I will say that I've read no impartial statistic that backs me up on that, but I do think that with the Environmental Protection Agency and several environmental non-governmental watchdog groups about, America probably is more environmentally sensitive than it is given credit for. Additionally, the Kyoto Protocols, which were voted down by a margin of 95-0 in the US Senate in 1997 (more on this later), weren't written so much for the good of the planet, but were rather an underhanded way for Western European nations to put a muzzle on the roaring United States economy. Additionally, the Kyoto Protocols left open huge exemptions for perhaps the two biggest polluters in the world, China and India. Today in the news was a story that show that China has a major environmental problem on their hands. We'll see how it all hashes out, but I don't have a good feeling about the outcome. You can read about it here: http://news.ft.com/cms/s/a99bb0f0-5c54-11da-af92-0000779e2340.html


Anyway, as far as the Kyoto Protocols were concerned, President Clinton sent it up for ratification to the Senate, only to have it turned down by 95-0. Losing a vote like that by that kind of margin can mean only one thing: Clinton never picked up the phone and made one phone call to get even one vote. No fool, that Clinton. He knew what it would mean to the American economy to try to fit such a draconian cap on American industry, and he wasn't going to destroy the biggest advantage he had with the public, mainly, the booming American economy at that time. Al Gore goes around these days blabbering like a loon about how the Bush Administration pulled the plug on Kyoto, but the blame for its demise falls not with Bush, who merely stated the obvious (that the treaty was dead, that is), but with Clinton, who did less than nothing to get it through Congress. (I give him credit for this little act of sophistry, by the way.) Whereas I'm sure that America does its fair share of eco-damage vis-a-vis carbon emissions, what I also know is that there are huge swathes of the interior of America that are undeveloped and have more vegetation per acre than both Europe and Asia. And what do all these trees and plants absorb? Carbon emissions, of course! And what do plants and trees expell after they take in carbon emissions? Oxygen! So it stands to reason that despite the massive amounts of people driving cars in America, there is ample vegetation from New York to California to absorb the emissions. This was hardly accounted for in the one-size-fits-all Kyoto Protocols, which though they were ratified by all the western European nations, these same European nations didn't even implement the onerous regulations themselves.

I'm not one of those people who think that everything is hunky dory with the world eco-system. Quite the contrary. But having traveled a fair amount in my adult life (been to South and Central America, as well as Central Europe), I can tell you that of all the developed countries in the world, or even semi-developed, America seems to be the most mindful of its emissions. In Hungary, they still drive cars (Trabant) made in the former East Germany that emit black soot; I joked at the time that these little Trabants in all likelihood emit more carbon monoxide than three New York City buses. And these Trabants are all over Central and Eastern Europe. In Brazil, there's an unbelievable stench that blows onto the beach every afternoon. The stench in question? Raw sewage being dumped into the Atlantic. One can only imagine what the pollution in places like China and Russia must be like. I shudder to think, and unlike here, there's no EPA, Greenpeace, or Al Gore to wail about it.

I'm not in the business of wholly exonerating America from its environmental duties, but if enviro-nuts like Al Gore and the obnoxious wife of Laurie David (who tools around in a private jet) want to make the world a safer place for humanity, they'd be better off attacking the worst offenders in the world. But that'd be hard work, and I have a sneaking suspicion that its not world-wide results they're after, but rather bashing America, and in particular, Bush. Yuck.

Alfred Anderson

Scotland's last veteran of the Great War, Alfred Anderson, passed away at the age of 109. He is noteworthy not only because he was but one of ten surviving members of the British Expeditionary Force that was deployed during the First World War in Western Europe, but also because he was the last known survivor of the Christmas Truces of 1914.

Stretched over a 500 mile front, members of the German and Austro-Hungarian armies breached "no-man's land", the mile (or so) space between the fortified trenches, to meet their nemeses, the French and the British, on Christmas Eve. Exchanging smokes, singing Christmas carols, and kicking a soccer ball around, mortal enemies met in the spirit of Christmas that December 24, 1914. The British top brass were none too pleased to get wind of this kind of "fraternization with the enemy", and declared the next year (1915) that anyone who breached the trenches and went into no-man's land to pal around with the Hun would face still disciplinary action. For the most part, the orders stuck. However, one part of the British line defied the order. The last known survivor of the 1915 Christmas Truce, Bertie Felstead, passed in 2002. I'll write more about him as Christmas gets closer. (Hey...have to have a good holiday story to tell!)

In the interim, you can read about Alfred Anderson here: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1866966,00.html. His story is a touching one, and melancholy at points. Eighty seven years after the end of the Great War, Alfred Anderson still suffered from "survivor's guilt"; he suffered from it 'til the end of his long life.

Rest in peace, Mr. Anderson. It comes none too soon.

Rome

Don't know how many of you folks watch the HBO series 'Rome', but it was one heck of a season. As usual, the finale was anti-climactic, but the second to last episode of the season was one of the best episodes I've ever seen of any HBO series. If any of you have HBO On Demand, I strongly suggest that you tap into the second to last episode, which had one of the most brutal (but exhilarating) gladiator scenes this side of 'Gladiator'. If at all possible, I also suggest that you watch the entire season. One reviewer called it 'I Claudius' for the Sopranos generation. (Clever description.) It brought history alive, in all of its Machiavellian, Hobbesian glory, resplendent with skullduggery, power plays, and a lot of internal conflicts.

Great stuff. HBO has really stepped up the last few years, and whereas I still dig 'The Sopranos', I have to say that I'm more impressed with 'The Wire' and 'Rome' more than any other show they have in their roster.

And What Of The Album Cover?

I used to love album covers, and more than that, the entire act of buying an LP. If you were lucky, you got a cool piece of artwork, and if you were really lucky, you'd get one that opened like a book. Usually lyrics came with it, but not always. And as you spent hours and hours listening to your LPs, you could also read the lyrics, the liner notes, and sometimes an accompanying storyline. Somehow it made the music more in-depth. It was awesome.

Then CDs made their appearance in the mid to late 80's. The album cover had to be reduced to approximately 1/5th of its size, and the romance of it all seemed reduced as well. But at least you got the liner notes, the lyrics, and maybe a storyline. It wasn't quite the same, but it was still there.

Now we're in the age of the MP3. I think the MP3 is great, but the mysticism that comes with a cool piece of artwork is lost as a result. So in a fit of nostalgia, I've decided to list a few of my favorite album covers:

Brain Salad Surgery, Emerson, Lake & Palmer

This amazing piece of artwork came courtesy of H.R. Giger, one of the most bizarre, unnerving, and compelling artists I've personally ever seen. Giger was an obscure Zurich artist that somehow hooked up with ELP, and the artwork he created for the band went hand-in-glove with the material that ELP was working on, particularly the thoroughly diabolical Toccata piece. If one looks closely, one can see the outline of a phallus ever so close to the lips of the woman's face. This was the source of much consternation for ELP's record company, so it was airbrushed before it was put into print. Giger was not happy about this, but his work with ELP got him world-wide attention. He consequently went on design the phlegm-encrusted reptilian extra-terrestrial beings in Alien.

Court of the Crimson King, King Crimson

Done by a very young fellow by the name of Gary Godber, King Crimson's first album still stands as one of the most compelling pieces of artwork in rock history. The album is great, too. You can view it here.

Quadrophenia, The Who

Great album with great artwork, effectively capturing the protagonist of the concept album, Jimmy the Mod, in a moody cover photo. I love everything about it. The four members of the band can be seen in the rearview mirrors of Jimmy the Mod's scooter. I have a full size framed print of this on my apartment wall.

Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon, The Wall

The former pretty much captured the mood of the album, and I'm sure served as a great facilitator for many a kid to pick the seeds out of his buds. The latter, a treatise on the abject misery of being a rich rock star with paternal, female, and alienation issues, also captured the mood of the music. The calligraphy and illustrations were both disturbing and appealing.

Faux Utopia

During the last two presidential election cycles, we've been treated to various celebrities caterwauling about the state of America, how it's has decayed, "how this isn't the America I know!" and various other cries of indignation. Alec Baldwin said he'd move to France if Bush won in 2000, but never made good on the promise. Johnny Depp and Pierre Salinger did. Salinger is dead now, but Depp is alive and well. He's also leaving France due to the riots. I'm a fan of his work, but I think as a person he's a jerk-off. I also think he's a weak-ass American. But I'm sure he'll find his way back to Malibu or Tribeca soon enough. Ugh.

One of the ancillary benefits of the recent riots in France is that it has revealed that the socialist paradise of France is nothing more than an illusion. In the last two years, France has endured a heatwave that killed well over 10,000 elderly citizens of its republic, and more recently, went through a two-week violent gyration, courtesy of its disenfranchised North African (and mostly muslim) youth, who are currently enduring an unemployment rate of 30 plus percent for those under the age of 30. More than anything, what these two events have underlined is that socialism does not and cannot work. As for the first event, it has proven Alexis de Tocqueville's theory that, "once one becomes dependent on the government for survival, he is already dead". In the United States, there are hundreds of thousands of senior citizens that live in Florida and Arizona, and like the heatwave that swept across France in the summer of 2003, temperatures routinely reach upwards of 100 degrees. But unlike France, everyone has an air conditioner, and thus do not fry to death. Why don't they have air conditioners in France? Chances are because a.) they don't have them in great supply because they're a protectionist government and don't allow a great deal of competition in their markets, thus curtailing emergency access to a large supply of them, and b.) their populace has grown so dependent on their government that they were rendered useless to themselves when their government couldn't come through for them. (Sidenote: It is still a source of amazement that this story didn't make headlines here in the States. If this isn't an example of liberal bias in the print press, I don't know what is.)

As for the riots, I applaud the muslim youths for their acts. It's high time somebody stuck it to the French, who can rightly be called the most racist society in Europe. Once again, protectionism and anti-free market policies have rendered jobs scarce in the private sector, and government jobs go to caucasian French, not North African ones. Proof once again that free enterprise is the most democratic mechanism in the world. France is dying, as is the rest of Western Europe. If they want to get themselves off life support and on their feet, they should abandon this ridiculous European Union idea, turn Europe into a free trade zone, destroy all the protectionism regulations, and open up their markets to foreign competition. Needless to say, they won't do that, but that's fine for us, so long as we don't have to bail them out a third (fourth, if you count the Cold War) time with our own blood and treasure.

A Few Random Thoughts

It's been a down and up week for me business-wise (as opposed to "up and down", as the week started slow and ended up well), and as tonight is the first free night that I've had this week to actually write/blog with any sense of real energy, I figured I might as well take the opportunity to do so before my limited reserves crap out altogether. So here goes:

• I'm up to page 700 in Paul Johnson's masterwork, "The History of the American People", a 1000 plus page comprehensive opus of the United States from its earliest beginnings. Every once in a while it is good to read stuff like this, as it puts into proper context the amazing story of this truly unique nation. Never before has a nation such as the United States existed, a nation predicated (for the most part) on merit, as opposed to birth. The United States was and is the first nation ruled by those with ability and guts, versus noble birth. As a result, America has managed to have great men (and women) attain leadership positions in government, business, law, and academia (well, maybe not so much in the latter of late) based on merit and not some kind of patrician or royal bearing. Sure, there's plenty of cronyism, but it gets found out sooner or later. (See Michael Brown at FEMA.) Americans demand competence; they usually get it. In Johnson's book, he makes the point that one of the reasons the American colonies were able to win the war of independence was that the British suffered from poor leadership both in the military and in the British government. Quoth Johnson: "George III employed second-raters and creatures of his own making, mere court-favorites or men whose sole merit was an ability to manage a corrupt House of Commons". Contrasting mediocrities like Lord North and George Grenville, Lord Townshend, Gens. Howe and Corwallis with Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, and Franklin, and it becomes readily apparent that all the ability and brainpower was on the side of the colonial rebellion. Interesting stuff.

• "Pioneering don't pay", said Andrew Carnegie, and I have to agree. Carnegie achieved unbelievable heights as a businessman and innovator, coming from nothing as a poor Scottish immigrant to the wealthiest man in the world once he sold Carnegie Steel to J.P. Morgan, who in turn turned into U.S. Steel. But what Carnegie meant by this observation didn't have to do with the westward expansion of the United States at the time, but rather inventing. Thus this quote made me think of two "pioneers" in the world of technology: Shawn Fanning and Bob Moog. The former was a college kid who found a way to reduce music from a CD to a digitally transmittable file, thus sparking a conflagration in the music world over whether file sharing of intellectual property was legal or not. Inevitably Fanning and his company Napster lost, and we haven't heard much from Fanning since. But one must give credit to the kid for coming up with a technological breakthrough that has changed the music industry forever. Mores the pity that he'll never profit from it, but such is the lot of the inventor and/or scientist who makes the breakthrough but can't navigate the business end of things. Similarly, Bob Moog invented the synthesizer, but went out of business in the early 70's, unable to properly mass market the unweildy and wildly expensive Moog IIIC to the consumer. Pioneering may not pay, as Carnegie rightly said, but where would we be without pioneers all the same?

• "If I have an apple and you have an apple, and we trade apples, we still only have one apple a piece. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we trade ideas, now we both have two ideas"--George Bernard Shaw

• Jennifer Aniston officially irritates me. Okay, she got dumped by Brad Pitt. Big deal, happens to the best of us. I wish she'd show some class, keep a stiff upper lip, and quit yakkin' about it to every celebrity magazine and talk show out there. She's a mildly attractive girl, but not even close to Angelina Jolie when it comes to sex appeal. But she really could've shown a great deal more class, and gone up the scale of appeal, if she hadn't endeavored to talk to anyone and everyone about getting thrown over the side by Brad Pitt. Shaddap, shud-n-up, Jen. Spare us the victim role. You're looking increasingly pathetic. Angie Dickinson slept with JFK (which I find infinitely more interesting and salacious than Brad cheating on Jen) but she hasn't said a word about it to the press over four decades. It may not have been the classiest thing to do, but it certainly showed a great deal of class for her not to open her mouth about it all these years. But behavior like that has gone the way of the horse and buggy. Sad.

I'm officially crapped out. G'night, y'all.

"Quoth The Capitalist...Evermore"

"Character is credit"

--J. Pierpont Morgan

Kazakhstan Strikes Back

At Borat, that is.

In Flanders Fields

The last stanza of "In Flanders Fields", by Lt. Colonel John McCrae, medic, Royal Canadian Army, written at the Battle of Ypres, Belgium, 1915:

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

McCrae died of pneumonia whilst still on active duty during the war, France, 1918. His poem, originally discarded, was picked up by another Canadian soldier, and subsequently became the best known poem of the Great War, now known as World War I.

Lest We Forget

Armistice Day in Great Britain, Remembrance Day in Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, and Veteran's Day here in the U.S. Let's take a moment to remember all that have served, all that have fallen, and all that continue to serve with distinction, in defense of freedom. Let us also remember what, and who, gave us this day.

It all started, and in another sense ended, on November 11, 1918, at 11:00 pm.

Ralph Peters On The Uprising In France

Is he right? Read and judge for yourself:


Paralyzed French officials complain of "unfair" media attention (welcome to the reality club, Pierre). Yet, hardly two months ago the French media celebrated the suffering in New Orleans — ignoring the brave response of millions of Americans to Hurricane Katrina to concentrate exclusively on the Crescent City's lower 9th ward and one nutty, incompetent mayor. Utterly devoid of self-awareness, the French cherish their image of America as racist. But minorities in the United States have opportunities for which their French counterparts would risk their lives. Our problem is that demagogues convince the poorest of our poor to give up on getting ahead. In France, the non-white poor never have a chance of any kind. France has no Colin Powell or Condi Rice, no minority heading the equivalent of a Fortune 500 company, no vibrant minority political culture. When Americans who adore la vie en France go to Paris (the intelligentsia's Orlando), they don't visit the drug-and-crime-plagued slums. If tourists encounter a Moroccan or a Senegalese "Frenchman," he's cleaning up the sidewalks after the dogs of the bourgeoisie. Willfully blind to reality, liberals continue to praise the racist culture of France by citing the Parisian welcome for Josephine Baker or the Harlem jazz musicians in the 1920s. But the French regarded those few as exotic pets. The test is how they treat the millions of immigrant families whose members don't play trumpets in bars or sell their flesh in strip clubs. There is no Western country more profoundly racist than France. …Does anyone really believe that the country that enthusiastically handed over more of its Jewish citizens to the Nazis than the Nazis asked for is going to treat brown or black Muslims as equals? Meanwhile, the Chirac government is stunned. Its members truly believed that supporting Arab and African dictators and defying America's efforts to liberate tens of millions of Muslims would buy safety from the 5 million immigrants and their children who have not the slightest hope of a decent future. … Desperate apologists for France's apartheid system claim that the present uproar is merely about youthful anger, that Muslim fundamentalism isn't in play. Just wait. Islamist extremists aren't stupid. Thrilled by this spontaneous uprising, they'll move to exploit the fervor of the young to serve their own ends. Expect terror. Whether the current violence ebbs tonight or lasts for weeks to come, the uprising of the excluded and oppressed in the streets of France has only begun.

Hello, Dalai

Bush meets Tibet's leader in exile, The Dalai Lama, and the Chinese get pissed.

These are the little things that make a big difference. When the President of the United States stands for democratic principle over cynical realpolitik, it sends a wave of hope throughout the repressed peoples of the world.

When Moose Attack

No, this isn't from The Onion. Two drunken moose in Sweden went on a rampage through a home for the elderly.

The apocalypse is at hand.

Bag Checks For Me, But Not For Thee!

From an editorial in the New York Sun:

Hypocrisy is on show in a Manhattan courtroom today. The New York Civil Liberties Union will argue for the second day before Judge Richard Berman that the city's subway bag search policy is an "unjustifiable erosion of the privacy rights of the American public." Yet take a walk into the NYCLU's Manhattan headquarters - which it shares with other organizations - and you'll find a sign warning visitors that all bags are subject to search. One of the city's lawyers, Jay Kranis, pointed this out yesterday in court while cross-examining a witness. Either the NYCLU believes its headquarters are at greater risk of a terrorist threat than the city's subway system, or it believes ordinary New Yorkers don't deserve the same safety precautions that they do.

And The Violence Continues....

Winston Churchill once said that appeasement is the rough equivalent to feeding your friends to the crocodiles in the hopes that you'll be eaten last. In France's case, it looks as though they're about to be eaten first, and boy, did they ever have it coming. But unlike WWII, France is being eaten from the inside by a populace they willingly took in but failed to assimilate for fear of offending their culture. Idiots.

We're now going on day 11 of nationwide violence in France, with the muslim populace now in open revolt. How did this happen? It's a simple equation. France let too many people into their borders but didn't have the wherewithal to absorb them into their society. They couldn't provide jobs for them because they're an anti-free enterprise nation (and thus have a stagnant economy as a result), and they didn't insist that their way of conducting themselves adhere to "French-ness". Once again, multi-culturalism has proven to be an utter failure.

The blunt fact about Europe is this: it isn't rigged for immigration. America, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia are all immigrant-founded nations. The only thing that binds people in these nations is not ethnicity or religion, but language, and more important than anything else, a belief system founded on Anglo-Saxon premises, which have proven to be more equitable than any in history. It accepts all people of all nations, whatever their religion, race, or language, provided they work hard, speak the language, adhere to and pay deference to the constitutions of said countries.

(Some of the feedback that I've received for my last post had a subtext to it that inferred that I was condemning the premises for the muslim revolt in France. I was not. What I was condemning was the French system, and by extension, the western European systems of socialism. So for the record, I will state in the most economical manner possible why this is happening: socialism begets protectionism, which begets a hostile climate for venture capital and entrepeneurilism, which begets little to no job creation. And it's not just the muslim population that has high unemployment. France has 10% plus unemployment and 30% plus amongst its under 30 population. Combine that with 30% unemployment amongst the muslims, and it is very hard to say there are any "best" parts of France's arrangement.)

The Beginning Of The End

France's sizeable muslim population, which numbers up to 10% of the total population, is in a state of (near) revolution. Nine straight days of rioting, clashing with police, and acts of arson have paralyzed the country. How strange is it, that France, the paragon of all that American liberals hold dear, with its universal healthcare and its cradle to grave entitlements, would have such a situation on its hands? The "socialist utopia" also has 30% unemployment for citizens under the age of 25, not to mention 11% plus percent unemployment amongst the general populace. Their GDP is virtually non-existent....and yet, given these factors, we have people like Michael Moore and the rest of the limo-libs telling us we should be more like....France. No thanks. I have no interest in living in a nation that enables over 10,000 of its elderly to die of heat exhaustion, as France did in August of 2003.

I'm stating this for the record. France's failure, as well as Western Europe's, to integrate their muslim populations into their culture, and their failure to insist that these peoples adopt some semblance of "French-ness" or "European-ess" will result in more and more situations such as what France is enduring now. And as these riots and murders (remember Theo Van Gogh?) continue to occur, you will see a backlash amongst the indigenous Europeans at the polls. Nationalist candidates, preaching hatred and expulsion, will begin to gain traction politically in Europe. The EU will splinter and die. And people not unlike Hitler (they already exist in the persons of Jorg Haider and Jean Marie Le Pen, in Austria and France respectively) will gain tremendous power, if not total power, over their home countries. A race and religious war between the indigenous Europe and its muslim inhabitants is not out of the question. And it could be bloody.

Don't think it can't happen. People in Germany laughed at Hitler and his goofy little mustache in the 1920's and '30's. But when things went awry, the man they laughed at was the man they turned to. Ditto Mussolini. (Although it is apocryphal that he was democratically elected chancellor. It was actually a coup d'etat; I'll delve into this another time.) Europe has a history of this type of behavior for hundreds, nay, thousands of years. You can look it up.

Roe V. Wade....Killing The Democratic Party

Contrary to the idea that the defense of "reproductive rights" (there's a deceptive euphemism if there ever was one) is a feather in the cap of the Democratic Party, it has gone a long way towards severely damaging the Democrats as a national party. Traditionally, the Democratic Party consisted of the following coalition of constituencies: Italians, Jews, Irish, Roman Catholics, unions, Hispanics, Afro-Americans. Of course, there were others that subscribed to the Democratic Platform, but historically, this is what the coalition has been made up of. Unions still are very much in the Democratic camp, but are clearly on the wane, as the United States makes the transition from an industrial-based to a service-based economy; that leaves civil service unions to pick up the slack where private sector unions once were, and they can't. Afro-Americans will, in all likelihood, never abandon the Democrats, although their unwavering fealty to the party has probably cost them more than it has benefited them. (After all, why make political concessions to a voting bloc when they're going to vote for you anyway?) That leaves Jews, Hispanics, Italians, and Irish. 3/4th of this coalition are....Roman Catholics. Whereas Roman Catholics made up a large portion of the former industrial workforce in this country (and therefore were union-men and women), they're also predominantly and vehemently pro-life. This religiously conservative, flag-waving, beer-drinking, football watching, steel-worker type can't be overly pleased with the staunch defense of abortion on demand by their party. At the same time, their jobs and their industries (steel, automotive, etc.) are either downsizing and/or moving their operations overseas, while nary a word of disapproval from their natural Democratic representatives in Congress. What does make the Democrats go into a frenzy is the mere mention of overturning Roe v. Wade. Who can blame the Rust-Belt voter for voting against them, or at best, being lukewarm about Democratic candidates? Pennslyvania is a good example of this phenomenon. Pennslyvania has a Democratic governor, has two Republican senators (one liberal, one conservative), and barely went for the Democratic presidential candidate in the last election. You don't get a much more blue collar state than Pennslyvania. Michigan is another example. Industrial, unionized, and blue-collar, Michigan turned for Kerry, but just barely. What is hurting the Democrats so much that they have to fight for states they should have to spend little to no money on to score electorally? There are other factors in play, not the least of which is the national Democratic party playing footsie with America-hating subversives like Michael Moore. (Lest we forget Moore occupying a seat of honor in the presidential box on the first night of the DNC next to Jimmy Carter?) The old-school, flag-waving union man, who goes to church every Sunday, works in a steel mill, and believes in the greatness of America and takes umbrage at the mere thought that America is anything remotely approaching what the Chomskyites claim it to be, couldn't be thrilled that the party that he thought represented the working man, the union man, HIM, has been taken over by these same Chomskyite types. But I digress.

So here we are, thirty two years after Justice Blackmun found an unwritten constitutional right to abortion on demand. Where has it gotten the Democratic Party? Well, for one, it has destroyed the probability that any Catholic and/or pro-life Democratic candidate can make a serious run at the Democratic nomination. (Iowa's Tom Vilsack comes to mind.) Secondly, it has alienated its Roman Catholic support, which it has relied on since before the Civil War. And thirdly, it has put the Democrats in the unenviable position of having to defend the indefensible. If you don't believe me, read the following excerpt from a recent interview with Howard Dean on Chris Matthews' Hardball:

MATTHEWS: So the Democrats are the pro-choice party, period?

DEAN: The government…

MATTHEWS: The Democrats, your party, is the pro-choice party.

DEAN: No, my party respects everybody’s views, but my party firmly believes that the government should stay out of people’s personal lives.

MATTHEWS: But you’re a pro-choice party, are you not? You sound like you’re against them for being pro-life. Are you pro-choice?

DEAN: I’m not against people for being pro-life. I actually was the first chairman who met for a long, for a long time, who met with the pro-life Democrats…

MATTHEWS: This is a complicated thing for people. The people believe the Republican party because of its record supports the pro-life position. Does your party support the pro-choice position?

DEAN: The position we support is, a woman has a right to make, and a family has a right to make up their own mind about their health care without government interference.

MATTHEWS: That’s pro-choice.

DEAN: , A woman and a family have a right to make up their own minds about their health care without government interference. That’s our position.

MATTHEWS: Why do you hesitate to use the phrase “pro-choice”?

DEAN: Because I think it’s often misused. If you’re pro-choice it implies you’re not pro-life — that’s not true. There are a lot of pro-life Democrats. We respect them, but we believe the government should…

MATTHEWS: Do you believe in abortion rights?

DEAN: I believe the government should stay out of personal, of the personal lives of families and women. They should stay out of our lives. That’s what I believe.

MATTHEWS: I find it interesting that you have hesitated to say what the party has always stood for, which is the pro-choice position…

DEAN: The party believes the government does not belong in making personal decisions.

MATTHEWS: Okay, I’m learning things here about a hesitancy I didn’t know about before.

In conclusion, if the party chairman of the Democratic National Committee can't articulate his postion on abortion out of fear of being pigeonholed (correctly, might I add), how can you possibly make a moral argument in favor if it? And if you can't, how do you expect people to be convinced in the rightness of your party's position when, in essence, you come off like you're not even convinced in the rightness of it yourself? And beyond that, how can you possibly bring the Roman Catholic vote, of which a large chunk of the Hispanic, Italian, Slavic, Polish, and Irish voters are, to vote for you when one of the central planks of your party is so significantly offensive to their beliefs? Democrats keep scratching their heads as to why blue-collar workers in traditionally unionized states are voting against, by their analysis, their own interests. Their rabid defense of Roe v. Wade goes a long way in explaining why. And one needn't look too much further than that. Far from having a deleterious effect on the Democrats, the best thing that can happen to them is to have Roe v. Wade overturned, the abortion issue revert back to the states, and to cut the radical feminist plank out of their national platform. In the end, it will help them considerably more than hurt them.

Quote Of The Day

File this one under "singing a different tune":

"I never claimed to have 'debunked' the allegation that Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa."

--Joe Wilson in 2004, in a letter to the Senate Intelligence Committee investigating pre-war assertions that Iraq attempted to by uranium from Niger.