"If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you...."

Why DeLay Quit
by Byron York
National Review Online

April 04, 2006




Rep. Tom DeLay says he made the decision to leave Congress after taking a poll in his Texas district which showed he had no better than a 50-50 chance of winning reelection this November.

In a long discussion with conservative journalists Tuesday afternoon, DeLay discussed the Republican primary he faced last month, which he won with 62 percent of the vote. While some observers called that an impressive win, given the controversy that surrounds DeLay, the congressman himself said that was when he knew he had a problem.

"After the primary — you get a sixth sense about this stuff," DeLay said. "You know your district...You don't need polls, but we ran a poll anyway. And the poll showed, basically, that I had a 50-50 chance of winning." DeLay said he had commissioned a similar poll late last year, and "the one after the primary was slightly worse than the one in December" — suggesting that his support was shrinking.

"Sixty-two percent was kind of a lift around here," DeLay said. "People gave me a lot of credit for 62 percent. But for a 21-year incumbent, 62 percent — I mean, it's good, but it should have been 70-percent-plus. Sixty-two percent means 38 percent voted against me. So I wanted a poll done. We did the poll. I was going to spend whatever it took to decide what I was supposed to do, whether to get in or get out."

DeLay said that after the primary, "I spent a lot of time in prayer. Spent all the time in prayer." He said he talked to a number of people who are close to him, and he got the impression that he should stay in the race. "I thought right after the primary, I was supposed to go through this," he said. "What's that saying? Hardened by fire? But as time went on it was quite evident that I was supposed to evaluate the election and face reality, and the reality was I wasn't supposed to go through this, that I am supposed to get involved outside the House. I can do more good outside the House in the next few months than being locked in the 22nd District trying to fight a reelection campaign."

"I have a very strong base, an incredibly strong base," DeLay continued. "I've never seen anything like it. People that would die for me. I also have a very strong opposition that would kill me if they could get hold of me."

Such polarization, DeLay said, left very few undecideds. "What's left are soft moderate Republicans," DeLay explained, "and independents that will vote for anybody but Tom DeLay, that believe for whatever reason that he's a crook, or where there's smoke, there's fire, so the beating that I've been taking has had that impact. And what I saw was it would take a ton of money to take that small group that I could appeal to and turn them around — in the face of getting beat up every day by the mainstream media and paid-for 527s."

DeLay attributed many of his problems to Ronnie Earle, the Texas county district attorney who has indicted DeLay on campaign-finance charges. "He used this case to drag my name through the mud," DeLay said, "and he has abused the grand jury-process to drag my name through the mud."

The problem, DeLay explained, was the interplay of Earle's investigation and a House GOP rule that requires members of the leadership to step down if they are indicted. "I truly believe that the only reason I was indicted is because we have that stupid rule — that is, politically, the stupidest thing we've ever done," DeLay said. The rule, he continued, in essence "allows the Democrats to pick the Republican leadership."

"But we have it," DeLay continued. "I honored it."

Now that he will soon be out, DeLay said, he feels confident that a Republican will win the seat from his district, which President Bush carried with 64 percent of the vote in 2004. "People say, isn't this a defeat?" DeLay said. "No, it's an incredible victory. Because the 22nd District is going to have a Republican fill that seat, guaranteed. That's what my polls show. Any Republican running as a Republican will walk into that seat."

DeLay also predicted that his departure from the race will hurt the candidacy of Democratic challenger Nick Lampson, who has benefited from support and money from Democrats all around the country who wanted to see DeLay go down in defeat. "Nick Lampson's money is going to dry up," DeLay said. "He's going to have to talk about what he believes in. He's got as bad a liberal Democrat voting record as Sheila Jackson Lee. We've done our opposition research, and he does not fit this district. I consider that a victory....We will have a Republican, and I will be out doing what I do best, and that is strategizing to lead the conservative cause and elect Republicans."

When the talk turned to the Abramoff scandal, and the guilty plea of former DeLay deputy chief of staff Tony Rudy, DeLay said he had no idea that Rudy had been engaged in any criminal activity.

"The leadership office is a whirlwind of activity all day long," DeLay said. "There are things going on constantly. Maybe my management style is suspect. But we hired and had and always have had one of the best staffs on the Hill. Why? Because I hired people that wanted to accomplish the same things that I wanted to accomplish, and I have given them responsibilities and have trusted them to carry out those responsibilities. Unfortunately that trust was mishandled, obviously, by Tony Rudy. He admitted to it. That disappoints me greatly. But it had nothing to do with me."

DeLay said he has not seen the Rudy plea agreement. One section of that agreement says that, "In March and April 2000, Rudy obtained a letter from Representative #2 [DeLay] to an Executive Branch official opposing a postal rate increase that would have harmed one of Abramoff's clients." When asked about that, DeLay said he suspected that Rudy knew DeLay would be opposed to such an increase and tried to profit from that knowledge. "Frankly, what it sounds like from what I read in the media was that they were trading off of knowing that I would already be in those positions," DeLay said. "I have always opposed postal rate increases. So you know this one's coming up, DeLay's going to be against it, so I'm going to make some money off of it, telling so-and-so and so-and-so that I can get DeLay to be against it. Maybe that's what they were doing, it sounds like to me."

As for another former aide, DeLay said he "ran off" Michael Scanlon. "Scanlon — we didn't fire him, but we found him another job," DeLay said. "I'm not surprised about Scanlon, but I am shocked and surprised about Tony Rudy."

As for himself, DeLay said he asked his lawyers to do a thorough review of all of his dealings in Congress. "I spent a lot of money and four months of lawyers investigating me as if they were prosecuting me," DeLay said. "They have looked at everything that I've got for 20 years, the whole time I'm here, and there ain't nothing."

"There is absolutely nothing illegal in my operation. There's nothing untoward. There's nothing unethical. We also cooperated with the Department of Justice, given them everything we've got."

"They asked for it?"

"No. We just gave it to them."

"You volunteered?"

"Yes."

DeLay said the material he gave the Justice Department included "anything connected to Tony Rudy, Ed Buckham, Abramoff, or Scanlon." Beyond that, DeLay said he has had no contact with prosecutors. "None," he said. "And they have told my lawyers I'm not a target of the investigation. Of course, we have been saying that for three months and the press refuses to write about it."

Finally, DeLay addressed the work he did on the issue of lobbying and the so-called "K Street Project." "I am actually very proud of the K Street Project," DeLay said. "When we came in, I realized right away in 1995 that we may have taken the majority, but we haven't changed the culture of Washington, D.C. And I immediately started strategizing to change that culture. I mean, how in the world could you maintain a majority up here if all of K Street were Democrat lobbyists that owed their power and their checkbook to the Democrats, and their friends who were out of power?"

"We put together, I think, one of the largest and strongest political coalitions ever. We turned the culture from K Street contributing 70 percent of its campaign funds to Democrats and 30 percent to Republicans to today 60 percent Republican, 40 percent Democrat....It was so well done that the Democrats hate it, and they're working as hard as they can to destroy it."

[Tom Delay]

Dynosaurs back in Jurassic Park....

AT WAR

The Wrong Time to Lose Our Nerve
A response to Messrs. Buckley, Will and Fukuyama.BY PETER WEHNER
Tuesday, April 4, 2006

A small group of current and former conservatives--including George Will, William F. Buckley Jr. and Francis Fukuyama--have become harsh critics of the Iraq war. They have declared, or clearly implied, that it is a failure and the president's effort to promote liberty in the Middle East is dead--and dead for a perfectly predictable reason: Iraq, like the Arab Middle East more broadly, lacks the democratic culture that is necessary for freedom to take root. And so for cultural reasons, this effort was flawed from the outset. Or so the argument goes.
Let me address each of these charges in turn.

The war is lost. "Our mission has failed," Mr. Buckley wrote earlier this year. "It seems very unlikely that history will judge either the intervention itself or the ideas animating it kindly," saith the man (Mr. Fukuyama) who once declared "the end of history" and in 1998 signed a letter to congressional leaders stating, "U.S. policy should have as its explicit goal removing Saddam Hussein's regime from power and establishing a peaceful and democratic Iraq in its place."

These critics of the war are demonstrating a peculiar eagerness to declare certain matters settled. We certainly face difficulties in Iraq--but we have seen significant progress as well. In 2005, Iraq's economy continued to recover and grow. Access to clean water and sewage-treatment facilities has increased. The Sunnis are now invested in the political process, which was not previously the case. The Iraqi security forces are far stronger than they were. Our counterinsurgency strategy is more effective than in the past. Cities like Tal Afar, which insurgents once controlled, are now back in the hands of free Iraqis. Al Qaeda's grip has been broken in Mosul and disrupted in Baghdad. We now see fissures between Iraqis and foreign terrorists. And in the aftermath of the mosque bombing in Samarra, we saw the political and religious leadership in Iraq call for an end to violence instead of stoking civil war--and on the whole, the Iraqi security forces performed well. These achievements are authentic grounds for encouragement. And to ignore or dismiss all signs of progress in Iraq, to portray things in what Norman Podhoretz has called "the blackest possible light," disfigures reality.





One might hope our own democratic development--which included the Articles of Confederation and a "fiery trial" that cost more than 600,000 American lives--would remind critics that we must sometimes be patient with others. We are engaged in an enterprise of enormous importance: helping a traumatized Arab nation become stable, free and self-governing. Success isn't foreordained--and neither is failure. Justice Holmes said the mode in which the inevitable comes to pass is through effort.
The freedom agenda is dead. The president's freedom agenda is now "a casualty of the war that began three years ago," according to Mr. Will. The Bush Doctrine is in "shambles," Mr. Fukuyama insists. We cannot "impose" democracy on "a country that doesn't want it," he says.

Why is Mr. Fukuyama so sure people in Iraq and elsewhere don't long for democracy? Just last year, on three separate occasions, Iraqis braved bombs and bullets to turn out and vote in greater numbers (percentage-wise) than do American voters, who merely have to brave lines. Does Mr. Fukuyama believe Iraqis prefer subjugation to freedom? Does he think they, unlike he, relish life in a gulag, or the lash of the whip, or the midnight knock of the secret police? Who among us wants a jackboot forever stomping on his face? It is a mistake of a large order to argue that democracy is unwanted in Iraq simply because (a) violence exists three years after the country's liberation--and after more than three decades of almost unimaginable cruelty and terror; and (b) Iraq is not Switzerland.

Beyond that, the critics of the Iraq war have chosen an odd time to criticize the appeal and power of democracy. After all, we are witnessing the swiftest advance of freedom in history. According to Freedom House's director of research, Arch Puddington, "The global picture . . . suggests that 2005 was one of the most successful years for freedom since Freedom House began measuring world freedom in 1972. . . . The 'Freedom in the World 2006' ratings for the Middle East represent the region's best performance in the history of the survey."

Mr. Will says it is time to "de-emphasize talk about Iraq's becoming a democracy that ignites emulative transformation in the Middle East." Saad Eddin Ibrahim, a democracy activist from Egypt, says different. Mr. Ibrahim, who originally opposed the war to liberate Iraq, said it "has unfrozen the Middle East, just as Napoleon's 1798 expedition did. Elections in Iraq force the theocrats and autocrats to put democracy on the agenda, even if only to fight against us."

Cultural determinism. The problem with Iraq, Mr. Will said in a Manhattan Institute lecture, is that it "lacks a Washington, a Madison, a [John] Marshall--and it lacks the astonishingly rich social and cultural soil from which such people sprout." There is no "existing democratic culture" that will allow liberty to succeed, he argues. And he scoffs at the assertion by President Bush that it is "cultural condescension" to claim that some peoples, cultures or religions are destined to despotism and unsuited for self-government. The most obvious rebuttal to Mr. Will's first point is that only one nation in history had at its creation a Washington, Madison and Marshall--yet there are 122 democracies in the world right now. So clearly founders of the quality of Washington and Madison are not the necessary condition for freedom to succeed.

A mark of serious conservatism is a regard for the concreteness of human experience. If cultures are as intractable as Mr. Will asserts, and if an existing democratic culture was as indispensable as he insists, we would not have seen democracy take root in Japan after World War II, Southern Europe in the 1970s, Latin America and East Asia in the '80s, and South Africa in the '90s. It was believed by many that these nations' and regions' traditions and cultures--including by turns Confucianism, Catholicism, dictatorships, authoritarianism, apartheid, military juntas and oligarchies--made them incompatible with self-government.

This is not to say that culture is unimportant. It matters a great deal. But so do incentives and creeds and the power of ideas, which can profoundly shape culture. Culture is not mechanically deterministic--and to believe that what is will always be is a mistake of both history and philosophy.

Americans have debated matters of creed and culture before. John C. Calhoun believed slavery was a cultural given that could not be undone in the South. Lincoln knew slavery had deep roots--but he believed that could, and must, change. He set about to do just that. Lincoln believed slavery could be overcome because he believed human beings were constituted in a particular way. In the "enlightened belief" of the Founders, he said, "nothing stamped with the Divine image and likeness was sent into the world to be trodden on, and degraded, and imbruted by its fellows." Lincoln believed as well that the self-evident truths in the Declaration were the Founders' "majestic interpretation of the economy of the Universe. This was their lofty, and wise, and noble understanding of the justice of the Creator to His creatures. Yes, gentlemen, to all His creatures, to the whole great family of man."

What has plagued the Arab Middle East is not simply, or even primarily, culture; it is antidemocratic ideologies and oppressive institutions. And the way to counteract pernicious ideologies and oppressive institutions is with better ones. Liberty, and the institutions that support liberty, is a pathway to human flourishing.





Critics of the Iraq war have offered no serious strategic alternative to the president's freedom agenda, which is anchored in the belief that democracy and liberal institutions are the best antidote to the pathologies plaguing the Middle East. The region has generated deep resentments and lethal anti-Americanism. In the past, Western nations tolerated oppression for the sake of "stability." But this policy created its own unintended consequences, including attacks that hit America with deadly fury on Sept. 11. President Bush struck back, both militarily and by promoting liberty.
In Iraq, we are witnessing advancements and some heartening achievements. We are also experiencing the hardships and setbacks that accompany epic transitions. There will be others. But there is no other way to fundamentally change the Arab Middle East. Democracy and the accompanying rise of political and civic institutions are the only route to a better world--and because the work is difficult doesn't mean it can be ignored. The cycle has to be broken. The process of democratic reform has begun, and now would be precisely the wrong time to lose our nerve and turn our back on the freedom agenda. It would be a geopolitical disaster and a moral calamity--and President Bush, like President Reagan before him, will persist in his efforts to shape a more hopeful world.

Mr. Wehner is deputy assistant to the president and director of the White House's Office of Strategic Initiatives.


Copyright © 2006 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.



[Iraq]

"They aren't playing by the rules that our families played by when they immigrated to this country"

Why Americans Hate This 'Immigration' Debate
By Herbert Meyer
One of the most striking features of the immigration debate now raging in Washington is that none of the Democratic or Republican proposals seem to hold any appeal for ordinary Americans--which is why this debate is generating so much frustration among voters that no matter which proposal Congress adopts, the issue itself threatens to shatter both parties' bases and dominate the November elections.


Simply put, the debate in Washington isn't about "immigration" at all - and that's the problem.

To ordinary Americans, the definition of "immigration" is very specific: You come here with absolutely nothing except a burning desire to be an American. You start off at some miserable, low-paying job that at least puts a roof over your family's head and food on the table. You put your kids in school, tell them how lucky they are to be here - and make darn sure they do well even if that means hiring a tutor and taking a second, or third, job to pay for it. You learn English, even if you've got to take classes at night when you're dead tired. You play by the rules--which means you pay your taxes, get a driver's license and insure your car so that if yours hits mine, I can recover the cost of the damages. And you file for citizenship the first day you're eligible.

Do all this and you become an American like all the rest of us. Your kids will lose their accents, move into the mainstream, and retain little of their heritage except a few words of your language and - if you're lucky--an irresistible urge to visit you now and then for some of mom's old-country cooking.

This is how the Italians made it, the Germans made it, the Dutch made it, the Poles made it, the Jews made it, and more recently how the Cubans and the Vietnamese made it. The process isn't easy - but it works and that's the way ordinary Americans want to keep it.

The Two Hispanic Groups

But the millions of Hispanics who have come to our country in the last several decades - and it's the Hispanics we're talking about in this debate, not those from other cultures--are, in fact, two distinct groups. The first group is comprised of "immigrants" just like all the others, who have put the old country behind them and want only to be Americans. They aren't the problem. Indeed, most Americans welcome them among us, as we have welcomed so many other cultures.

The problem is the second group of Hispanics. They aren't immigrants - which is what neither the Democratic or Republican leadership seems to understand, or wants to acknowledge. They have come here solely for jobs, which isn't the same thing at all. (And many of them have come here illegally.) Whether they remain in the U.S. for one year, or ten years - or for the rest of their lives - they don't conduct themselves like immigrants. Yes, they work hard to put roofs above their heads and food on their tables - and for this we respect them. But they have little interest in learning English themselves, and instead demand that we make it possible for them to function here in Spanish. They put their children in our schools, but don't always demand as much from them as previous groups demanded of their kids. They don't always pay their taxes - or insure their cars.

In short, they aren't playing by the rules that our families played by when they immigrated to this country. And to ordinary Americans this behavior is deeply - very deeply - offensive. We see it unfolding every day in our communities, and we don't like it. This is what none of our politicians either understands, or dares to say aloud. Instead, they blather on - and on - about "amnesty" and "border security" without ever coming to grips with what is so visible, and so offensive, to so many of us - namely, all these foreigners among us who aren't behaving like immigrants.

The phrase we use to describe foreigners who come here not as "immigrants" but merely for jobs is "guest workers." And we are told - incessantly - that we need these "guest workers" because they take jobs that Americans don't want and won't take themselves. This is true, but it's also disingenuous. Throughout our country's history, immigrants have always taken jobs that Americans don't want and won't take themselves. For crying out loud, no foreigner has ever come to our country out of a blazing ambition to dig ditches, mow lawns, bag groceries, sew clothing or clean other people's houses. If we hadn't always had a huge number of these miserable jobs available that none of "us" would do - there wouldn't have been a way for immigrants throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to step off the boat and find work.

A willingness by "immigrants" to start at the bottom - so they can move up the economic ladder or at least give their kids a shot at the higher rungs - is precisely how the system is supposed to work. And it always has. (My own family is one of the tens of millions that did precisely this. My grandfather came from Poland and found work as a pocket-maker in New York's garment district. The pay was low, the hours were long, and when the old man finally retired he could hardly move his fingers or see without thick glasses. Yet one of his sons, my uncle, became a lawyer with a fancy practice on Manhattan's Upper East Side. His kids did even better; his son wound up chairman of Stanford University's history department, and his daughter became a famous art critic, moved to London, and married an Englishman who became a member of the House of Lords. What is astonishing about this story is that - it isn't astonishing. It's the sort of thing that happens all the time, and it's why ordinary Americans don't want to change the system that made it possible.)

Blame the Birth Rate

One fact that hasn't been part of the immigration debate is this: During the past two decades our national birth rate has dropped to just below the 2.1 births-per-woman replacement rate. So we really do need to "import" people because - to put it bluntly - we haven't bred enough of them ourselves to do all the work that needs to be done in an affluent, ageing society like ours. But then, we've always needed "more" people to do the work we want done. And we've always brought them in from elsewhere - as immigrants.

Yet today we have millions of foreigners among us who have come here to work, but not to immigrate. Our politicians tell us that we must accept this because - for the first time in our history--we've reached that point when we need "guest workers" who aren't immigrants to keep our economy growing. If this is true--and isn't it odd that no one has troubled to explain why it's true - then we must find some way to distinguish between "immigrants" and "guest workers" so that they aren't treated the same just because they both are here. And if it isn't true that our continued economic growth requires "guest workers" who aren't immigrants--then the entire concept of "guest workers" that lies at the core of virtually every proposal now before Congress, including amnesty for those who are here illegally, must be abandoned in favor of something that makes sense.

Until our elected officials come to grips with the real issue that's troubling ordinary Americans - not a growing population of foreigners among us, but rather a growing population of foreigners among us who aren't behaving like immigrants - public frustration will grow no matter what bill Congress passes in the coming weeks. It could lead to the kind of political explosion that none of us really wants.

Herbert E. Meyer served during the Reagan Administration as Special Assistant to the Director of Central Intelligence and Vice Chairman of the CIA’s National Intelligence Council. His DVD on The Siege of Western Civilization has become an international best-seller.




[GOP, immigration]

"Islam envisages a global political order in which all humankind will live under Muslim rule"

Islam's Imperial Dreams
Muslim political ambitions aren't a reaction to Western encroachments.
BY Efraim KarshTuesday, April 4, 2006

When satirical depictions of the prophet Muhammad in a Danish newspaper sparked a worldwide wave of Muslim violence early this year, observers naturally focused on the wanton destruction of Western embassies, businesses, and other institutions. Less attention was paid to the words that often accompanied the riots--words with ominous historical echoes. "Hurry up and apologize to our nation, because if you do not, you will regret it," declared Khaled Mash'al, the leader of Hamas, fresh from the Islamist group's sweeping victory in the Palestinian elections:

This is because our nation is progressing and is victorious. . . . By Allah, you will be defeated. . . . Tomorrow, our nation will sit on the throne of the world. This is not a figment of the imagination but a fact. Tomorrow we will lead the world, Allah willing. Apologize today, before remorse will do you no good.
Among Islamic radicals, such gloating about the prowess and imminent triumph of their "nation" is as commonplace as recitals of the long and bitter catalog of grievances related to the loss of historical Muslim dominion. Osama bin Laden has repeatedly alluded to the collapse of Ottoman power at the end of World War I and, with it, the abolition of the Ottoman caliphate. "What America is tasting now," he declared in the immediate wake of 9/11, "is only a copy of what we have tasted. Our Islamic nation has been tasting the same for more than 80 years, of humiliation and disgrace, its sons killed and their blood spilled, its sanctities desecrated." Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden's top deputy, has pointed still farther into the past, lamenting "the tragedy of al-Andalus"--that is, the end of Islamic rule in Spain in 1492.

These historical claims are in turn frequently dismissed by Westerners as delusional, a species of mere self-aggrandizement or propaganda. But the Islamists are perfectly serious, and know what they are doing. Their rhetoric has a millennial warrant, both in doctrine and in fact, and taps into a deep undercurrent that has characterized the political culture of Islam from the beginning. Though tempered and qualified in different places and at different times, the Islamic longing for unfettered suzerainty has never disappeared, and has resurfaced in our own day with a vengeance. It goes by the name of empire.

"I was ordered to fight all men until they say, 'There is no god but Allah.' " With these farewell words, the prophet Muhammad summed up the international vision of the faith he brought to the world. As a universal religion, Islam envisages a global political order in which all humankind will live under Muslim rule as either believers or subject communities. In order to achieve this goal, it is incumbent on all free, male, adult Muslims to carry out an uncompromising "struggle in the path of Allah," or jihad. As the 14th-century historian and philosopher Abdel Rahman ibn Khaldun wrote, "In the Muslim community, the jihad is a religious duty because of the universalism of the Islamic mission and the obligation [to convert] everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force."





As a historical matter, the birth of Islam was inextricably linked with empire. Unlike Christianity and the Christian kingdoms that once existed under or alongside it, Islam has never distinguished between temporal and religious powers, which were combined in the person of Muhammad. Having fled from his hometown of Mecca to Medina in 622 c.e. to become a political and military leader rather than a private preacher, Muhammad spent the last ten years of his life fighting to unify Arabia under his rule. Indeed, he devised the concept of jihad shortly after his migration to Medina as a means of enticing his local followers to raid Meccan caravans. Had it not been for his sudden death, he probably would have expanded his reign well beyond the peninsula.
The Qur'anic revelations during Muhammad's Medina years abound with verses extolling the virtues of jihad, as do the countless sayings and traditions (hadith) attributed to the prophet. Those who participate in this holy pursuit are to be generously rewarded, both in this life and in the afterworld, where they will reside in shaded and ever-green gardens, indulged by pure women. Accordingly, those killed while waging jihad should not be mourned: "Allah has bought from the believers their soul and their possessions against the gift of Paradise; they fight in the path of Allah; they kill and are killed. . . . So rejoice in the bargain you have made with Him; that is the mighty triumph."

But the doctrine's appeal was not just otherworldly. By forbidding fighting and raiding within the community of believers (the umma), Muhammad had deprived the Arabian tribes of a traditional source of livelihood. For a time, the prophet could rely on booty from non-Muslims as a substitute for the lost war spoils, which is why he never went out of his way to convert all of the tribes seeking a place in his Pax Islamica. Yet given his belief in the supremacy of Islam and his relentless commitment to its widest possible dissemination, he could hardly deny conversion to those wishing to undertake it. Once the whole of Arabia had become Muslim, a new source of wealth and an alternative outlet would have to be found for the aggressive energies of the Arabian tribes, and it was, in the Fertile Crescent and the Levant.

Within twelve years of Muhammad's death, a Middle Eastern empire, stretching from Iran to Egypt and from Yemen to northern Syria, had come into being under the banner of Islam. By the early 8th century, the Muslims had hugely extended their grip to Central Asia and much of the Indian subcontinent, had laid siege to the Byzantine capital of Constantinople, and had overrun North Africa and Spain. Had they not been contained in 732 at the famous battle of Poitiers in west central France, they might well have swept deep into northern Europe.

Though sectarianism and civil war divided the Muslim world in the generations after Muhammad, the basic dynamic of Islam remained expansionist. The short-lived Umayyad dynasty (661-750) gave way to the ostensibly more pious Abbasid caliphs, whose readiness to accept non-Arabs solidified Islam's hold on its far-flung possessions. From their imperial capital of Baghdad, the Abbasids ruled, with waning authority, until the Mongol invasion of 1258. The most powerful of their successors would emerge in Anatolia, among the Ottoman Turks who invaded Europe in the mid-14th century and would conquer Constantinople in 1453, destroying the Byzantine empire and laying claim to virtually all of the Balkan peninsula and the eastern Mediterranean.

Like their Arab predecessors, the Ottomans were energetic empire-builders in the name of jihad. By the early 16th century, they had conquered Syria and Egypt from the Mamluks, the formidable slave soldiers who had contained the Mongols and destroyed the Crusader kingdoms. Under Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, they soon turned northward. By the middle of the 17th century they seemed poised to overrun Christian Europe, only to be turned back in fierce fighting at the gates of Vienna in 1683--on September 11, of all dates. Though already on the defensive by the early 18th century, the Ottoman empire--the proverbial "sick man of Europe"--would endure another 200 years. Its demise at the hands of the victorious European powers of World War I, to say nothing of the work of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the father of modern Turkish nationalism, finally brought an end both to the Ottoman caliphate itself and to Islam's centuries-long imperial reach.





To Islamic historians, the chronicles of Muslim empire represent a model of shining religious zeal and selfless exertion in the cause of Allah. Many Western historians, for their part, have been inclined to marvel at the perceived sophistication and tolerance of Islamic rule, praising the caliphs' cultivation of the arts and sciences and their apparent willingness to accommodate ethnic and religious minorities. There is some truth in both views, but neither captures the deeper and often more callous impulses at work in the expanding umma set in motion by Muhammad. For successive generations of Islamic rulers, imperial dominion was dictated not by universalistic religious principles but by their prophet's vision of conquest and his summons to fight and subjugate unbelievers.
That the worldly aims of Islam might conflict with its moral and spiritual demands was evident from the start of the caliphate. Though the Umayyad monarchs portrayed their constant wars of expansion as "jihad in the path of Allah," this was largely a façade, concealing an increasingly secular and absolutist rule. Lax in their attitude toward Islamic practices and mores, they were said to have set aside special days for drinking alcohol--specifically forbidden by the prophet--and showed little inhibition about appearing nude before their boon companions and female singers.

The coup staged by the Abbasids in 747-49 was intended to restore Islam's true ways and undo the godless practices of their predecessors; but they too, like the Umayyads, were first and foremost imperial monarchs. For the Abbasids, Islam was a means to consolidating their jurisdiction and enjoying the fruits of conquest. They complied with the stipulations of the nascent religious law (shari'a) only to the extent that it served their needs, and indulged in the same vices--wine, singing girls, and sexual license--that had ruined the reputation of the Umayyads.

Of particular importance to the Abbasids was material splendor. On the occasion of his nephew's coronation as the first Abbasid caliph, Dawud ibn Ali had proclaimed, "We did not rebel in order to grow rich in silver and in gold." Yet it was precisely the ever-increasing pomp of the royal court that would underpin Abbasid prestige. The gem-studded dishes of the caliph's table, the gilded curtains of the palace, the golden tree and ruby-eyed golden elephant that adorned the royal courtyard were a few of the opulent possessions that bore witness to this extravagance.

The riches of the empire, moreover, were concentrated in the hands of the few at the expense of the many. While the caliph might bestow thousands of dirhams on a favorite poet for reciting a few lines, ordinary laborers in Baghdad carried home a dirham or two a month. As for the empire's more distant subjects, the caliphs showed little interest in their conversion to the faith, preferring instead to colonize their lands and expropriate their wealth and labor. Not until the third Islamic century did the bulk of these populations embrace the religion of their imperial masters, and this was a process emanating from below--an effort by non-Arabs to escape paying tribute and to remove social barriers to their advancement. To make matters worse, the metropolis plundered the resources of the provinces, a practice inaugurated at the time of Muhammad and reaching its apogee under the Abbasids. Combined with the government's weakening control of the periphery, this shameless exploitation triggered numerous rebellions throughout the empire.

Tension between the center and the periphery was, indeed, to become the hallmark of Islam's imperial experience. Even in its early days, under the Umayyads, the empire was hopelessly overextended, largely because of inadequate means of communication and control. Under the Abbasids, a growing number of provinces fell under the sway of local dynasties. With no effective metropolis, the empire was reduced to an agglomeration of entities united only by the overarching factors of language and religion. Though the Ottomans temporarily reversed the trend, their own imperial ambitions were likewise eventually thwarted by internal fragmentation.

In the long history of Islamic empire, the wide gap between delusions of grandeur and the centrifugal forces of localism would be bridged time and again by force of arms, making violence a key element of Islamic political culture. No sooner had Muhammad died than his successor, Abu Bakr, had to suppress a widespread revolt among the Arabian tribes. Twenty-three years later, the head of the umma, the caliph Uthman ibn Affan, was murdered by disgruntled rebels; his successor, Ali ibn Abi Talib, was confronted for most of his reign with armed insurrections, most notably by the governor of Syria, Mu'awiya ibn Abi Sufian, who went on to establish the Umayyad dynasty after Ali's assassination. Mu'awiya's successors managed to hang on to power mainly by relying on physical force, and were consumed for most of their reign with preventing or quelling revolts in the diverse corners of their empire. The same was true for the Abbasids during the long centuries of their sovereignty.

Western academics often hold up the Ottoman empire as an exception to this earlier pattern. In fact the caliphate did deal relatively gently with its vast non-Muslim subject populations--provided that they acquiesced in their legal and institutional inferiority in the Islamic order of things. When these groups dared to question their subordinate status, however, let alone attempt to break free from the Ottoman yoke, they were viciously put down. In the century or so between Napoleon's conquests in the Middle East and World War I, the Ottomans embarked on an orgy of bloodletting in response to the nationalist aspirations of their European subjects. The Greek war of independence of the 1820's, the Danubian uprisings of 1848 and the attendant Crimean war, the Balkan explosion of the 1870's, the Greco-Ottoman war of 1897--all were painful reminders of the costs of resisting Islamic imperial rule.





Nor was such violence confined to Ottoman Europe. Turkey's Afro-Asiatic provinces, though far less infected with the nationalist virus, were also scenes of mayhem and destruction. The Ottoman army or its surrogates brought force to bear against Wahhabi uprisings in Mesopotamia and the Levant in the early 19th century, against civil strife in Lebanon in the 1840's (culminating in the 1860 massacres in Mount Lebanon and Damascus), and against a string of Kurdish rebellions. In response to the national awakening of the Armenians in the 1890's, Constantinople killed tens of thousands--a taste of the horrors that lay ahead for the Armenians during World War I.
The legacy of this imperial experience is not difficult to discern in today's Islamic world. Physical force has remained the main if not the sole instrument of political discourse in the Middle East. Throughout the region, absolute leaders still supersede political institutions, and citizenship is largely synonymous with submission; power is often concentrated in the hands of small, oppressive minorities; religious, ethnic, and tribal conflicts abound; and the overriding preoccupation of sovereigns is with their own survival.

At the domestic level, these circumstances have resulted in the world's most illiberal polities. Political dissent is dealt with by repression, and ethnic and religious differences are settled by internecine strife and murder. One need only mention, among many instances, Syria's massacre of 20,000 of its Muslim activists in the early 1980's, or the brutal treatment of Iraq's Shiite and Kurdish communities until the 2003 war, or the genocidal campaign now being conducted in Darfur by the government of Sudan and its allied militias. As for foreign policy in the Middle East, it too has been pursued by means of crude force, ranging from terrorism and subversion to outright aggression, with examples too numerous and familiar to cite.

Reinforcing these habits is the fact that, to this day, Islam has retained its imperial ambitions. The last great Muslim empire may have been destroyed and the caliphate left vacant, but the dream of regional and world domination has remained very much alive. Even the ostensibly secular doctrine of pan-Arabism has been effectively Islamic in its ethos, worldview, and imperialist vision. In the words of Nuri Said, longtime prime minister of Iraq and a prominent early champion of this doctrine: "Although Arabs are naturally attached to their native land, their nationalism is not confined by boundaries. It is an aspiration to restore the great tolerant civilization of the early caliphate."

That this "great tolerant civilization" reached well beyond today's Middle East is not lost on those who hope for its restoration. Like the leaders of al Qaeda, many Muslims and Arabs unabashedly pine for the reconquest of Spain and consider their 1492 expulsion from the country a grave historical injustice waiting to be undone. Indeed, as immigration and higher rates of childbirth have greatly increased the number of Muslims within Europe itself over the past several decades, countries that were never ruled by the caliphate have become targets of Muslim imperial ambition. Since the late 1980's, Islamists have looked upon the growing population of French Muslims as proof that France, too, has become a part of the House of Islam. In Britain, even the more moderate elements of the Muslim community are candid in setting out their aims. As the late Zaki Badawi, a doyen of interfaith dialogue in the UK, put it, "Islam is a universal religion. It aims to bring its message to all corners of the earth. It hopes that one day the whole of humanity will be one Muslim community."

Whether in its militant or its more benign version, this world-conquering agenda continues to meet with condescension and denial on the part of many educated Westerners. To intellectuals, foreign-policy experts, and politicians alike, "empire" and "imperialism" are categories that apply exclusively to the European powers and, more recently, to the United States. In this view of things, Muslims, whether in the Middle East or elsewhere, are merely objects--the long-suffering victims of the aggressive encroachments of others. Lacking an internal, autonomous dynamic of its own, their history is rather a function of their unhappy interaction with the West, whose obligation it is to make amends. This perspective dominated the widespread explanation of the 9/11 attacks as only a response to America's (allegedly) arrogant and self-serving foreign policy, particularly with respect to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

As we have seen, however, Islamic history has been anything but reactive. From Muhammad to the Ottomans, the story of Islam has been the story of the rise and fall of an often astonishing imperial aggressiveness and, no less important, of never quiescent imperial dreams. Even as these dreams have repeatedly frustrated any possibility for the peaceful social and political development of the Arab-Muslim world, they have given rise to no less repeated fantasies of revenge and restoration and to murderous efforts to transform fantasy into fact. If, today, America is reviled in the Muslim world, it is not because of its specific policies but because, as the preeminent world power, it blocks the final realization of this same age-old dream of regaining, in Zawahiri's words, the "lost glory" of the caliphate.

Nor is the vision confined to a tiny extremist fringe. This we saw in the overwhelming support for the 9/11 attacks throughout the Arab and Islamic worlds, in the admiring evocations of bin Laden's murderous acts during the crisis over the Danish cartoons, and in such recent findings as the poll indicating significant reservoirs of sympathy among Muslims in Britain for the "feelings and motives" of the suicide bombers who attacked London last July. In the historical imagination of many Muslims and Arabs, bin Laden represents nothing short of the new incarnation of Saladin, defeater of the Crusaders and conqueror of Jerusalem. In this sense, the House of Islam's war for world mastery is a traditional, indeed venerable, quest that is far from over.

To the contrary, now that this war has itself met with a so far determined counterattack by the United States and others, and with a Western intervention in the heart of the House of Islam, it has escalated to a new stage of virulence. In many Middle Eastern countries, Islamist movements, and movements appealing to traditionalist Muslims, are now jockeying fiercely for positions of power, both against the Americans and against secular parties. For the Islamists, the stakes are very high indeed, for if the political elites of the Middle East and elsewhere were ever to reconcile themselves to the reality that there is no Arab or Islamic "nation," but only modern Muslim states with destinies and domestic responsibilities of their own, the imperialist dream would die.

It is in recognition of this state of affairs that Zawahiri wrote his now famous letter to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the head of al Qaeda in Iraq, in July 2005. If, Zawahiri instructed his lieutenant, al Qaeda's strategy for Iraq and elsewhere were to succeed, it would have to take into account the growing thirst among many Arabs for democracy and a normal life, and strive not to alienate popular opinion through such polarizing deeds as suicide attacks on fellow Muslims. Only by harnessing popular support, Zawahiri concluded, would it be possible to come to power by means of democracy itself, thereby to establish jihadist rule in Iraq, and then to move onward to conquer still larger and more distant realms and impose the writ of Islam far and wide.





Something of the same logic clearly underlies the carefully plotted rise of Hamas in the Palestinian Authority, the (temporarily thwarted) attempt by the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt to exploit the demand for free elections there, and the accession of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran. Indeed, as reported by Mark MacKinnon in the Toronto Globe & Mail, some analysts now see a new "axis of Islam" arising in the Middle East, uniting Hizballah, Hamas, Iran, Syria, the Muslim Brotherhood, elements of Iraq's Shiites, and others in an anti-American, anti-Israel alliance backed by Russia.
Whether or not any such structure exists or can be forged, the fact is that the fuel of Islamic imperialism remains as volatile as ever, and is very far from having burned itself out. To deny its force is the height of folly, and to imagine that it can be appeased or deflected is to play into its hands. Only when it is defeated, and when the faith of Islam is no longer a tool of Islamic political ambition, will the inhabitants of Muslim lands, and the rest of the world, be able to look forward to a future less burdened by Saladins and their gory dreams.

Mr. Karsh is head of Mediterranean Studies at King's College, University of London, and his new book, "Islamic Imperialism: A History," on which this article is based, is about to be published by Yale. This article originally appeared in the April issue of Commentary.


Copyright © 2006 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

[Islam, Radical Islam]

"The more the world professes its R-E-S-P-E-C-T, the more the Islamists sock it to us."

Don't deny that some Muslims are hot for jihad

April 2, 2006

BY MARK STEYN SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST

If I were an anti-war leftie, I'd be very depressed by the Iraq anniversary protests. A few hundred people show up hither and yon to see Cindy Sheehan get arrested for the 15th time that week, or Charlie Sheen unveil his critically acclaimed the-World-Trade-Center-was-a-controlled-explosion conspiracy theory. The "Hot Shots! Part Deux" star is apparently an expert in that field, and he'd never seen commercial property break up that quickly since Heidi Fleiss' hooker ring. Anyway, Susan Sarandon's going to play Cindy in the movie, or maybe she's playing Charlie, or both -- either way, they might as well give her the Oscar during the opening titles.



But, while Charlie Sheen is undoubtedly a valiant leader, you couldn't help noticing it was followers the anti-war crowd seemed to be short of on the third anniversary. The next weekend half a million illegal immigrants -- whoops, sorry, half a million fine upstanding members of the Undocumented-American community-- took to the streets, and you suddenly realized what a big-time demonstration is supposed to look like. These guys aren't even meant to be in the country and they can organize a better public protest movement than an anti-war crowd that's promoted 24/7 by the media and Hollywood.

Well, OK, half the anti-war crowd aren't meant to be in the country either, if they'd kept their promise to move to Canada after the last election. But my point is there's no mass anti-war movement. Some commentators claimed to be puzzled by the low turnout at a time when the polls show Iraq increasingly unpopular. But there are two kinds of persons objecting to the war: There's a shriveled Sheehan-Sheen left that's in effect urging on American failure in Iraq, and there's a potentially far larger group to their right that's increasingly wary of the official conception of the war. The latter don't want America to lose, they want to win -- decisively. And on the day's headlines -- on everything from the Danish cartoon jihad to the Afghan facing death for apostasy -- the fainthearted response of "public diplomacy" is in danger of sounding only marginally less nutty than Charlie Sheen.

The line here is "respect." Everybody's busy professing their "respect": We all "respect" Islam; presidents and prime ministers and foreign ministers, lapsing so routinely into the deep-respect-for-the-religion-of-peace routine they forget that cumulatively it begins to sound less like "Let's roll!" and too often like "Let's roll over!"

Jack Straw, the British foreign secretary, gave a typical Western government official's speech the other day explaining that "a large number of Muslims in this country were -- understandably -- upset by those cartoons being reprinted across Europe and at their deeply held beliefs being insulted. They expressed their hurt and outrage but did so in a way which epitomized the learned, peaceful religion of Islam."

"The learned, peaceful religion of Islam"? And that would be the guys marching through London with placards reading "BEHEAD THE ENEMIES OF ISLAM" and "FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION IS WESTERN TERRORISM" and promising to rain down a new Holocaust on Europe? This is geopolitics as the Aretha Franklin Doctrine: The more the world professes its R-E-S-P-E-C-T, the more the Islamists sock it to us.

At a basic level the foreign secretary's rhetoric does not match reality. Government leaders are essentially telling their citizens: Who ya gonna believe -- my platitudinous speechwriters or your lyin' eyes?

To win a war, you don't spin a war. Millions of ordinary citizens are not going to stick with a "long war" (as the administration now calls it) if they feel they're being dissembled to about its nature. One reason we regard Churchill as a great man is that his speeches about the nature of the enemy don't require unspinning or detriangulating.

If I had to propose a model for Western rhetoric, it would be the Australians. In the days after Sept. 11, the French got all the attention for that Le Monde headline -- "Nous sommes tous Americains" -- "We are all Americans," though they didn't mean it, even then. But John Howard, the Aussie prime minister, put it better and kept his word: "This is no time to be an 80 percent ally."

Marvelous. More recently, the prime minister offered some thoughts on the difference between Muslims and other immigrant groups. "You can't find any equivalent in Italian or Greek or Lebanese or Chinese or Baltic immigration to Australia. There is no equivalent of raving on about jihad," he said, stating the obvious in a way most political leaders can't quite bring themselves to do. "There is really not much point in pretending it doesn't exist."

Unfortunately, too many of his counterparts insist on pretending (at least to their citizenry) that it doesn't exist. What proportion of Western Muslims is hot for jihad? Five percent? Ten, 12 percent? Given that understanding this Pan-Islamist identity is critical to defeating it, why can't we acknowledge it honestly? "Raving on about jihad" is a line that meets what the law used to regard as the reasonable-man test: If you're watching news footage of a Muslim march promising to bring on the new Holocaust, John Howard's line fits.

Is it something in the water down there? Listen to Howard's Cabinet colleagues. Here's the Australian treasurer, Peter Costello, with advice for Western Muslims who want to live under Islamic law: "There are countries that apply religious or sharia law -- Saudi Arabia and Iran come to mind. If a person wants to live under sharia law these are countries where they might feel at ease. But not Australia."

You don't say. Which is the point: Most Western government leaders don't say, and their silence is correctly read by a resurgent Islam as timidity. I also appreciated this pithy summation by my favorite foreigner minister, Alexander Downer: "Multilateralism is a synonym for an ineffective and unfocused policy involving internationalism of the lowest common denominator." See Sudanese slaughter, Iranian nukes, the U.N.'s flop response to the tsunami, etc. It's a good thing being an Aussie Cabinet minister doesn't require confirmation by John Kerry and Joe Biden.

My worry is that the official platitudes in this new war are the equivalent of the Cold War chit-chat in its 1970s detente phase --when Willy Brandt and Pierre Trudeau and Jimmy Carter pretended the enemy was not what it was. Then came Ronald Reagan: It wasn't just the evil-empire stuff, his jokes were on the money, too. In their own depraved way, the Islamists are a lot goofier than the commies and a few gags wouldn't come amiss. If this is a "long war," it needs a rhetoric that can go the distance. And the present line fails that test.

© Mark Steyn, 2006



[Radical Islam]

Confronting Evil

March 28, 2006
Islamic Threat Is Greater Than German & Soviet Threats Were
By Dennis Prager

Only four types of individuals can deny the threat to civilization posed by the violence-supporting segment of Islam: the willfully naive, America-haters, Jew-haters and those afraid to confront evil.

Anyone else sees the contemporary reality -- the genocidal Islamic regime in Sudan; the widespread Muslim theological and emotional support for the killing of a Muslim who converts to another religion; the absence of freedom in Muslim-majority countries; the widespread support for Palestinians who randomly murder Israelis; the primitive state in which women are kept in many Muslim countries; the celebration of death; the "honor killings" of daughters; and so much else that is terrible in significant parts of the Muslim world -- knows that civilized humanity has a new evil to fight.

Just as previous generations had to fight Nazism, communism and fascism, our generation has to confront militant Islam.

And whereas there were unique aspects to those evils, there are two unique aspects to the evil emanating from the Islamic world that render this latest threat to humanity particularly difficult to overcome.

One is the number of people who believe in it. This is a new phenomenon among organized evils. Far fewer people believed in Nazism or in communism than believe in Islam generally or in authoritarian Islam specifically. There are one billion Muslims in the world. If just 10 percent believe in the Islam of Hamas, the Taliban, the Sudanese regime, Saudi Arabia, Wahhabism, bin Ladin, Islamic Jihad, the Finley Park Mosque in London or Hizbollah -- and it is inconceivable that only one of 10 Muslims supports any of these groups' ideologies -- that means a true believing enemy of at least 100 million people. Outside of Germany, how many people believed in Nazism? Outside of Japan, who believed in Japanese imperialism and militarism? And outside of universities, the arts world or Hollywood, how many people believed in Soviet-style totalitarianism?

A far larger number of people believe in Islamic authoritarianism than ever believed in Marxism. Virtually no one living in Marxist countries believed in Marxism or communism. Likewise, far fewer people believed in Nazism, an ideology confined largely to one country for less than one generation. This is one enormous difference between the radical Islamic threat to our civilization and the two previous ones.

But there is yet a second difference that is at least as significant and at least as frightening: Nazis and Communists wanted to live and feared death; Islamic authoritarians love death and loathe life.

That is why MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) worked with the Soviet Union. Communist leaders love life -- they loved their money, their power, their dachas, their mistresses, their fine wines -- and were hardly prepared to give all that up for Marx. But Iran's current leaders celebrate dying, and MAD may not work, because from our perspective, they are indeed mad. MAD only works with the sane.

There is much less you can do against people who value dying more than living.

The existence of an unprecedentedly large number of people wishing to destroy decent civilization as we know it -- and who celebrate their own deaths -- poses a threat the likes of which no civilization in history has had to confront.

The evils committed by Nazism and Communism were, of course, greater than those committed by radical Islam. There has been no Muslim Gulag and no Muslim Auschwitz.

But the threat is far more serious.

Copyright 2006 Creators Syndicate


[Radical Islam]
[Iran]

"...Engaging China and India in the Energy Security System..."

The Times
April 01, 2006
The world is waking up to new era of power politics
By Daniel Yergin
The institutions and policies set up after the 1973 Arab oil embargo can no longer meet the needs of energy consumers or producers, says our correspondent

Old questions, new answers

ON THE eve of the First World War, Winston Churchill, the First Lord of the Admiralty, made an historic decision: to shift the power source of the Navy’s ships from coal to oil. He intended to make the fleet faster than its German counterpart. But the switch also meant that the Royal Navy would rely not on coal from Wales but on insecure oil supplies from what was then Persia. Energy security thus became a question of national strategy.

Churchill’s answer? “Safety and certainty in oil,” he said, “lie in variety and variety alone.” Since Churchill’s decision, energy security has repeatedly emerged as an issue of great importance, and it is so once again. But the subject needs to be rethought, for what has been the paradigm of energy security for the past three decades is too limited and must be expanded to include many new factors. Moreover, it must be recognised that energy security does not stand by itself, but is lodged in the larger relations among nations.

Energy Security will be the No 1 topic when the G8 highly industrialised countries meet in St Petersburg in July. The renewed focus on energy security is driven by an exceedingly tight oil market and by high oil prices. It is also fuelled by the threat of terrorism, instability in some exporting nations, a nationalist backlash, fears of a scramble for supplies, geopolitical rivalries and fundamental need for energy to power economic growth. In the background is renewed anxiety over whether there will be sufficient resources to meet energy requirements in decades ahead.

Concerns over energy security are not limited to oil. Power blackouts in the United States, Europe and Russia, as well as chronic shortages of electric power in China, India and other developing countries, have raised worries about the reliability of electricity supply systems. When it comes to natural gas, rising demand and constrained supplies mean that North America can no longer be self-reliant, and so the US is joining the new global market in natural gas that will link countries, continents and prices in an unprecedented way.

At the same time, a new range of vulnerabilities has become evident. Al-Qaeda has threatened to attack what Osama bin Laden calls the “hinges” of the world economy, that is, its critical infrastructure — of which energy is among the most crucial elements. The world will increasingly depend on new sources of supply from places where security systems are still being developed, such as oil and natural gasfields off West Africa and in the Caspian Sea. And the vulnerabilities are not limited to threats of terrorism, political turmoil, armed conflict and piracy. Last year hurricanes Katrina and Rita delivered the world’s first integrated energy shock, simultaneously disrupting flows of oil, natural gas and electric power.

Events this year underline the significance of the issue. The Russian-Ukrainian natural gas dispute temporarily cut supplies to Europe. Tensions over Tehran’s nuclear programme brought threats from Iran, the second-largest Opec producer, to “unleash an oil crisis”. Attacks on oil facilities reduced exports from Nigeria, a major supplier to the US.
Since Churchill’s day, the key to energy security has been diversification. This remains true, but a wider approach is now required that takes into account the rapid evolution of the global energy trade, supply-chain vulnerabilities, terrorism and integration of new economies into the world market.

Although in the developed world the usual definition of energy security is simply the availability of sufficient supplies at affordable prices, countries interpret what the concept means for them differently.
Energy-exporting nations focus on maintaining “security of demand” for their exports, which generate the overwhelming share of their government revenues. For Russia the aim is to reassert state control over “strategic resources” and gain primacy over main pipelines and market channels through which it ships its hydrocarbons to international markets.

The concern for developing countries is how changes in energy prices affect their balance of payments. For China and India, energy security lies in their ability to adjust rapidly to their new dependence on global markets. For Japan, it means offsetting its scarcity of domestic resources through diversification, trade and investment. In Europe, the major debate centres on how to manage dependence on imported natural gas — and in most countries, apart from France and Finland, whether to build new nuclear power plants and perhaps to return to (clean) coal. And the US must face the uncomfortable fact that its goal of “energy independence” — a phrase that has become a mantra since first articulated by Richard Nixon after the 1973 embargo — is increasingly at odds with reality.

Shock to supply and demand
After the Gulf War, concern over energy security seemed to recede. Saddam Hussein’s bid to dominate the Gulf had been foiled and it appeared that the world oil market would remain a market (rather than becoming Saddam’s instrument of political manipulation) and that supplies would be abundant at prices that would not impede the global economy.
But 15 years later prices are high and fears of shortages dominate energy markets. What happened? The answer is to be found in both markets and politics.
The past decade has witnessed a substantial increase in world demand for oil, primarily because of dramatic economic growth in developing countries, in particular China and India. As late as 1993 China was self-sufficient in oil. Since then its GDP has almost tripled and its demand for oil has more than doubled. Today China imports three million barrels a day, almost half its consumption. Its share of the world oil market is 8 per cent, but its share of total growth in demand since 2000 has been 30 per cent.

World oil demand has grown by seven million barrels a day since 2000; of this growth, two million barrels a day have gone to China. India’s oil consumption is less than 40 per cent of China’s, but its demand will accelerate. The impact of growth in China, India and elsewhere on global demand for energy has been far reaching. In the 1970s North America consumed twice as much oil as Asia. Last year, for the first time, Asia’s consumption exceeded North America’s. The trend will continue: half the total growth in oil consumption in the next 15 years will come from Asia, according to Cambridge Energy Research Associates (Cera). However, Asia’s growing impact became widely apparent only in 2004, when the best global economic performance in a generation translated into a “demand shock” — that is, unexpected worldwide growth in petroleum consumption that represented a growth rate more than double the annual average growth rates of the preceding decade. China’s demand in 2004 rose 16 per cent from 2003, driven partly by electricity bottlenecks that led to a surge in oil use for improvised electric generation. US consumption grew strongly in 2004, as did that of other countries, resulting in the tightest oil market in three decades (except for the months after Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990). Hardly any wells were available to produce additional oil.

That remains the case today, and there is a further catch. What additional oil might be produced cannot be easily sold because it would not be of sufficient quality to be used in the world’s available oil refineries.
Refining capacity is a major constraint on supply, because there is a mismatch between the product requirements of the world’s consumers and refineries’ capabilities. Although often presented solely as a US problem, inadequate refining capacity is a global phenomenon. The biggest growth in demand worldwide has been for “middle distillates”: diesel, jet fuel and heating oil. Diesel is a favourite fuel of European motorists, half of whom now buy diesel cars, and is increasingly used to power economic growth in Asia. But the global refining system does not have enough deep conversion capacity to turn heavier crudes into middle distillates. This shortfall has created additional demand for the lighter grades of crude, further boosting prices.
Other factors, including problems in several major energy-exporting countries, have also contributed to high prices. Indeed, the current era of high oil prices really began in late 2002 and early 2003, just before the start of the Iraq war, when President Hugo Chávez’s drive to consolidate his control over Venezuela’s political system, state-owned oil company and oil revenues sparked strikes. The loss of oil to the world market from the strikes was significant, greater than the impact of the war in Iraq on supplies. Venezuela’s output has never fully recovered, and is currently 500,000 barrels per day below the pre-strike level.
Saddam’s failing regime in Iraq did not torch oil facilities in the 2003 war, as many had feared, but a postwar surge in Iraqi output has not occurred. The tens of billions of dollars required to bring output back up to its 1978 peak of 3.5 million barrels per day have not been invested. As a result, Iraqi oil exports are 30 to 40 per cent below pre-war levels.
Over the past five years, Russia’s oilfields have been central to growth of worldwide supply, providing almost 40 per cent of the world’s total production increase since 2000. But growth of Russia’s output slowed substantially last year because of political risks, insufficient investment, uncertainties over government policy and geological challenges. Meanwhile, other sources that get less attention, such as Brazil’s and Angola’s offshore fields, were increasing output — until Katrina and Rita shut 27 per cent of US production (as well as 21 per cent of US refining capacity). As late as January, US facilities that before the hurricanes had produced 400,000 barrels of oil a day were still out of operation.
All of these problems have provoked new fears that the world is running out of oil. But global output has actually risen 60 per cent since the 1970s, the last time the world was supposedly running out of oil.
Although talk of an imminent peak in oil output followed by a rapid decline has become common in some circles, Cera analysis indicates that net productive capacity could increase as much as 25 per cent over the next decade. Despite current pessimism, higher oil prices will do what higher prices usually do: fuel growth in supplies by increasing investment and by turning marginal opportunities into commercial prospects (as well as moderating demand and stimulating development of alternatives).
A good part of this capacity growth is already in the works. A substantial part will come from the exploitation of non-traditional supplies, ranging from Canadian oil sands to deposits in ultra-deep water to a very high-quality diesel-like fuel derived from natural gas.
Conventional supplies will grow as well: Saudi Arabia is on track to increase its capacity by about 15 per cent, to over 12 million barrels per day, by 2009.
Although energy companies will be prospecting in more difficult environments, the major obstacle to development of new supplies is not geology but what happens above ground: international affairs, politics and energy investment and technological development. However, current projections do show that after 2010 the major growth in supplies will come from fewer countries than today, which may accentuate security concerns.
New framework
The current energy security system was created in response to the 1973 Arab oil embargo to ensure co-ordination among the industrialised countries in the event of a disruption in supply, encourage collaboration on energy policies, avoid bruising scrambles for supplies and deter any future use of an “oil weapon” by exporters.
Key elements are the International Energy Agency (IEA), whose members are the industrialised countries; strategic stocks of oil; monitoring of energy markets and policies; and energy conservation and sharing of supplies in the event of disruption. The emergency system was set up to offset major disruptions that threatened the global economy and stability, not to manage prices and the commodity cycle.
Since the system’s inception, co-ordinated emergency drawdown of strategic stockpiles has occurred only twice: on the eve of the Gulf War in 1991 and in autumn 2005 after Katrina.
Experience has shown that to maintain energy security, countries must abide by several principles. The first is diversification of supply. But diversification is not enough.
A second principle is resilience, a “security margin” in energy supply that provides a buffer against shocks and facilitates recovery after disruptions. Resilience can come from many factors, including spare production capacity, strategic reserves, as well as plans for responding to disruptions. Hence the third principle: recognising the reality of integration. There is only one oil market, a complex and worldwide system that moves and consumes 86 million barrels of oil every day. For all consumers, security resides in the stability of this market. Secession is not an option.
A fourth principle is the importance of information. High-quality information underpins well-functioning markets. On an international level, the IEA has led in improving the flow of information about world markets and energy prospects.
That work is complemented by the new International Energy Forum, which will seek to integrate information from producers and consumers. Information is no less crucial in a crisis, when consumer panics can be instigated by disruptions, rumours and fear. In such situations, governments and the private sector should collaborate to counter panics with high-quality information.

Important as these principles are, the past several years have highlighted the need to expand the concept of energy security in two critical dimensions: the recognition of the globalisation of the energy security system, which can be achieved especially by engaging China and India, and acknowledgment that the entire energy supply chain needs to be protected.

There is no shortage of suspicion: some in the US see a Chinese strategy to pre-empt America and the West when it comes to new oil and gas supplies, and some strategists in Beijing fear that the US may some day try to interdict China’s foreign energy supplies. The actual situation is less dramatic. Despite the attention paid to China’s efforts to secure international petroleum reserves, for example, the entire amount that China currently produces per day outside its own borders is equivalent to just 10 per cent of the daily production of one of the supermajor oil companies.

If there were a serious controversy between the US and China involving oil or gas, it would likely arise not because of competition for resources themselves, but because of larger foreign policy issues. Indeed, from the viewpoint of consumers in North America and Europe, Chinese and Indian investment in development of energy supplies around the world is not a threat but something to be desired, because it means there will be more energy available for everyone as India’s and China’s demand grows.

It would be wiser to engage these two giants in the global network of trade and investment rather than see them tilt toward a mercantilist, state-to-state approach. Engaging India and China will require understanding what energy security means for them. Both countries are rapidly moving from self-sufficiency to integration in the world economy, which means they will grow increasingly dependent on global markets even as they are under pressure to deliver economic growth for their huge populations.

Thus, the primary concern for both China and India is to ensure that they have sufficient energy to support economic growth and prevent energy shortfalls that could trigger political turbulence. For India, international production is also a way to hedge against high oil prices. And so India and China, and other key nations such as Brazil, should be brought into co-ordination with the IEA energy security system to assure them that their interests will be protected in the event of turbulence and to ensure the system works more effectively.
Security and flexibility
The current model of energy security focuses on how to handle any disruption of oil supplies from producing countries. Today, the concept needs to be expanded to include protection of the entire energy supply chain and infrastructure.
In the US alone, there are more than 150 refineries, 4,000 offshore platforms, 10,400 power plants and 1.4 million miles of natural gas pipelines. None of the world’s complex, integrated supply chains were built with security, defined in this broad way, in mind.
Katrina and Rita brought a new perspective to the security question by demonstrating how fundamental the electric grid is to everything else. After the storms, Gulf Coast refineries were unable to operate — not because of damage, but because they could not get power.
Energy interdependence and the growing scale of energy trade require continuing collaboration among both producers and consumers to ensure security of the entire supply chain.

There are also many chokepoints along the routes of seaborne oil and, in many cases, liquefied natural gas (LNG) that create vulnerabilities. Ships scuttled in strategic waterways could disrupt supply lines. Securing pipelines and chokepoints will require augmented monitoring and rapid-response capabilities. The challenge of energy security will grow more urgent because global trade in energy will grow as world markets become more integrated.
Assuring security of global energy markets will require coordination on an international and a national basis among companies and governments.

The lines of responsibility — and sources of funding — for protecting infrastructure are far from clear. The private sector, government and local agencies need to co-ordinate activities. Maintaining commitment to do so in periods of low or moderate prices will require discipline. Energy security will be part of both the price of energy and of homeland security.
Markets need to be recognised as a source of security in themselves. The energy security system was created when energy prices were regulated in the US, energy trading was only just beginning, and futures markets were years away. Today large, flexible and well-functioning energy markets provide security by absorbing shocks and allowing supply and demand to respond more quickly and with greater ingenuity than a controlled system could. Such markets will guarantee security for the growing LNG market and boost the confidence of countries that import it.
After Katrina, markets were back in balance sooner and prices came down more quickly than almost anyone expected. Emergency supplies from the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve and other IEA reserves were released, sending a “Do not panic”. At the same time, two critical regulatory restrictions were eased. One was the Jones Act (which bars non-US-flagged ships from carrying cargo between US ports), which was waived to let non-US tankers ship supplies bottlenecked on the Gulf Coast. The other was the set of “boutique gasoline” regulations that require different qualities of gasoline for different cities, which were temporarily lifted. The experience highlights the need to incorporate regulatory and environmental flexibility into the energy security machinery.

The US Government and the private sector should also make renewed commitment to energy conservation. Finally, the investment climate must become a key concern in energy security. There needs to be a continual flow of investment and technology for new resources to be developed. How to facilitate energy investment will be a critical question on the G8 agenda in 2006.

Daniel Yergin is chairman of Cera and author of The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power. He is writing a new book on oil and geopolitics


[Energy Security]
[China, India,Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iraq]
[Oil, Liquid Natural Gas, IAE]

Anybody who gives "LOO-oSER" John Dean the time of day does not deserve to stay in office...

...and we have no comment on Senator Feingold....

John Dean says to censure Bush
Watergate figure testifies in Senate on eavesdropping
Saturday, April 01, 2006
By Maeve Reston, Post-Gazette National Bureau



WASHINGTON -- Former White House Counsel John Dean, a central figure in the Watergate scandal who served time for his involvement in the Nixon administration cover-up, told a panel of senators yesterday that President Bush should be censured for authorizing the government to eavesdrop on Americans' international phone conversations.

Mr. Dean was the most controversial witness at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing yesterday, as members debated a proposal by Sen. Russell Feingold to censure Mr. Bush, which has angered Republicans and whipped up support for the Wisconsin senator in the Democratic base.

Mr. Feingold has argued that the president broke the law when he secretly authorized the National Security Agency to listen to phone calls of Americans -- as long as one of the parties is suspected of having ties to terrorism -- without first seeking a warrant from a special court created under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Several Republican senators bluntly questioned why they should give an audience to a convicted felon. Although Mr. Dean provided critical evidence about President Richard Nixon's participation in the cover-up of White House involvement in the burglary in the Watergate affair, a political scandal that ultimately led to the president's downfall, he served four months in jail for obstruction of justice.

Mr. Dean took the comments in stride yesterday, telling senators it was important that they sometimes hear "from the dark side."

"I think I have probably more experience first-hand than anybody might want in what can go wrong and how a president can get on the other side of the law," Mr. Dean said. "Had a censure resolution been issued about some of Nixon's conduct long before it erupted to the degree and the problem that came, it would have been a godsend."

Mr. Dean said wiretapping by the Bush White House was "a part of a very consistent, long-term, early-announced policy of this presidency that they are seeking to build presidential power for the sake of presidential power." And he said censure was appropriate to restore the balance of power.

But the comparisons with Watergate irritated Republican senators, including Sen. Lindsey O. Graham, R-S.C., who had a heated exchange with Mr. Dean.

"To say that there's a political or moral equivalent [between] a president breaking in ... to find out what their political opponent may be up to [in the Watergate scandal], or lying under oath in a private lawsuit -- to say that that's the political and moral equivalent to this president's decision to surveil the enemy, I think is absurd," the senator said.

He contended that if Congress were to censure the president, it would "kill" the wiretapping program and impair national security. "You would do a lot of damage to future presidents, because they could not go down a road of honest debate without facing extreme political consequences."

Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said Mr. Feingold's censure proposal was "without merit," but agreed to the hearing because he said it was an important part of exploring the legality of the president's actions and the scope of his power in wartime. Mr. Specter has said Congress cannot determine whether the president is authorized to conduct the surveillance program because most senators lack access to the classified information about why the program is needed.

But the Judiciary chairman has authored legislation that would require the administration to justify the eavesdropping program before the special court created under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which routinely reviews sensitive information in secret. Mr. Specter said those judges should determine whether the administration's program is constitutional. "I want to be sure the president has the authority he needs to protect America, but that's up to the court to decide," he said.

Just two Democrats, Sens. Tom Harkin of Iowa and Barbara Boxer of California, have signed on as co-sponsors of Mr. Feingold's plan -- and only two Judiciary panel Democrats showed up for yesterday's hearing.

One was the panel's ranking Democrat, Sen. Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, who took a step toward supporting Mr. Feingold's proposal when he said he was "inclined to believe" that censure of the president was an appropriate response to a program that he believes violates the law.

Despite scant support for his proposal, Mr. Feingold said he would not give up until the administration is held "accountable."

The senator argued yesterday that "The lawbreaking is shocking in itself, but the defiant way that the president has persisted in defending his actions with specious legal arguments and misleading statements is part of what led me to conclude that censure is a necessary step."

Mr. Specter has said he expects the panel to vote on Mr. Feingold's measure, but has not said when.


[Feingold]

Back to Basics: Federalism revisited

Back to Federalism
The proper remedy for polarization.
by David Gelernter
04/10/2006, Volume 011, Issue 28
The Weekly Standard


FEBRUARY'S COMMENTARY has one of the most frightening essays of recent years, in which James Q. Wilson makes the case that Americans are polarized to an unprecedented extent; bitterly divided. Responsible conservatives should confront this problem and show the country how to solve it. Not to solve it is to invite catastrophe. Why does the burden fall on conservatives? Because they are running the federal government and it is their duty to lead.

Wilson lists several causes of today's profound polarization. He mentions the divided, politicized press, one-issue pressure groups, the polarizing effects of higher education, and the rise of ideological parties in place of the old-style sectional coalitions Americans are used to.

There is another cause too: the collapse of federalism. The Founders designed a vast garment for America that hugs where it should hug and stretches where it should stretch; each state creates its own society, and the Constitution stitches them all together into a comfortable, sensible union suit. "As this government is composed of small republics, it enjoys the internal happiness of each," writes Alexander Hamilton in Federalist 9, "and with respect to its external situation, it is possessed, by means of the association, of all the advantages of large monarchies."

But the collapse of federalism has ruined this valuable arrangement. The collapse gathered momentum with the Supreme Court's 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion and was a tragedy for reasons beyond those that are usually discussed; a tragedy even for Americans who believe in completely unregulated abortion. Roe was a power grab in which uniformity was imposed on a facet of society that had been allowed to vary. "Diversity" is a big selling point on the left, but not among believers in an activist Supreme Court.

At the start of the 1960s, some states permitted abortion where the mother's life was in danger, or in rape or incest cases. Others banned it completely. (Of course illegal abortions were always available, sometimes under hideous conditions.) Then things started to change. In 1967, Colorado passed the first liberalized abortion law of modern times. In 1970, New York became the first state to allow abortion on demand, for the first 24 weeks of pregnancy. Several other states followed, but their laws included residency requirements to restrict eligibility. New York's did not. Accordingly, large numbers of people made their way to New York in the early '70s for legal abortions.

But unlike the 1973 Roe decision, the 1970 New York State law did not become the springboard for a nationwide antiabortion movement. Those who believe that some deed is a crime want it to be illegal, not inconvenient. And after 1970, legal abortion on demand was inconvenient--but available. So there is no reason in principle that the New York law shouldn't have been just as agitating and hateful to pro-lifers as the 1973 Court decision.

No reason except federalism. True federalism accommodates profound national disagreement by allowing each state to tailor the local climate to suit itself. Federalism is an escape-valve that lets polarizing bitterness blow off into the stratosphere. In 1971, conservative Texans (for instance) might have been unhappy about New York's abortion law. But at least their own state--their own society, which they had built for themselves and their children--wasn't implicated in the crime. Conservative Texans believed they had done the right thing even if New Yorkers hadn't.

Come 1973 this invaluable peace of mind was stolen from them. In 1973, the Supreme Court imposed a uniform view of abortion on every community in the nation. (Like the ancient Romans forcing images of their gods into every temple in the Empire.) Of course there are cases in which moral considerations require all states to do the same thing. But anyone could have seen that, in the case of abortion, there were serious arguments on both sides. And nowadays even (some) liberals admit that there is no "right to abortion" in the Constitution. Roe was a power grab pure and simple, an exercise in "raw judicial power" as Justice Byron White wrote in his Roe dissent, which seriously damaged federalism in America. A few weeks ago, South Dakota's Republican governor signed a highly restrictive new abortion law. That's what federalism is for: letting South Dakota's citizens do what they think is right in their own state, not what Vermont or the Harvard faculty thinks is right. But the law is a direct challenge to Roe, and its hold on life is tenuous.

HOW TO SAVE THE COUNTRY from poisonous polarization, or at least to take a first step? The Constitution's Framers were well aware of the dangers of "consolidation" versus federation. (Consolidation meant abolishing separate state societies in favor of one national society.) The authors of The Federalist knew that each state must be allowed to run its own show. How could this result be guaranteed? By the nature of Congress. Each house (the authors explain) will consist of legislators who represent particular constituencies. The members of such a legislature invariably speak up for their constituents first, the nation at large second. Delaware won't need to worry about the federal government's butting in where it doesn't belong, because Delaware's members of Congress will guard Delaware's interests. "Everyone knows that a great proportion of the errors committed by the State legislatures," writes James Madison in Federalist 46, "proceeds from the disposition of the members to sacrifice the comprehensive and permanent interests of the State, to the particular and separate views of the counties or districts in which they reside." Congress would work the same way; Delaware would have nothing to fear.

The House and Senate do indeed work this way. The Federalist authors were right. What they failed to foresee was the transformation of the Supreme Court into a third chamber, a U.S. version of Britain's House of Lords in its heyday, with unelected members who serve for life and do not represent constituencies.

We used to have a Supreme Court; today we have a House of Justices, not a Supreme Court but a Supreme Council, which dominates the two other branches. No wonder the nation goes temporarily haywire whenever a vacancy opens up.

While Britain has gradually reduced the Lords to impotence, America has gone the other way, allowing the Supreme Court to increase its power. And incidental details lend the analogy disturbing resonance. The architectural and ceremonial accouterments of the Supreme Court make it seem like an uppermost chamber--those tony robes, that fancy building that has never (unlike the Capitol and the White House) been trampled by a good old-fashioned American mob.

Yet the Court never used to be as important as it is today. Many educated people can't say who was chief justice under Lincoln or during the Second World War, or who wrote the Dred Scott decision, or when the Supremes moved into their gorgeous white temple. Previous generations rarely saw bitter, polarizing fights over Court nominations, not merely because the nation was less polarized; because the Court itself was less important. The nation has just got through a fight over Samuel Alito. He was confirmed, as he should have been. Conservatives worked furiously on his behalf to defeat frantic liberal efforts against him. But few on either side pointed out that the whole fight (as well as previous Democratic Borkings and attempted Borkings) was bizarrely off key: Supreme Court nominations were never supposed to matter this much.

Of course conservatives must fight to put the best possible conservative judges on the Court. But they have another and higher duty: to put the Court in its place; to abolish the self-created, all-powerful House of Justices.

Federalism has been losing ground ever since FDR hugely expanded the scope and power of the central government in the 1930s and '40s, and segregationists used states' rights as a weapon against integration in the 1950s and '60s. Modern conservatives are likely to complain about court-ordered damage to democracy, not to federalism. And of course it's true that, when unelected judges override elected legislatures, democracy loses.

But an era where deep and fundamental moral questions divide the nation is in need of a revival of federalism. Federalism supplies the expansion joints that make America supple rather than brittle; make it a bridge that can ride out hurricanes without falling to pieces, that can sustain enormous twisting, turning, and tearing forces without cracking.

HOW CAN THE NATION beat back the courts' attack on federalism? We could choose some issue the federal courts have appropriated, hand it back to the states, and forbid the federal courts ever to touch it again. That would be a first step. But what mechanisms to use, and what issue to choose?

There are two possible mechanisms: a constitutional amendment, and congressional legislation limiting the federal courts' jurisdiction. The Constitution gives Congress explicit power to limit the Supreme Court's jurisdiction (Article III, section 2) and plainly implies that Congress may also define and limit the jurisdiction of lower federal courts. In recent years several writers (Ramesh Ponnuru in National Review, for instance) have pointed out that congressional legislation is a legitimate, plausible approach to controlling out-of-control federal courts.

Both a constitutional amendment and jurisdiction-limiting legislation have their points. Amendments are hard to pass--which might be a kind of advantage; basic court reform must have wide public support if it is going to last. (If conservatives are serious about rolling back judicial power, and don't aim merely to confiscate the left's judicial blackjack and hand it over to the right, then broad public support is essential.) Jurisdiction-limiting legislation, on the other hand, offers fast relief.

Although abortion is an intensely controversial issue, it's also a logical one on which to base a campaign to restore federalism. Annulling Roe, returning control over abortion law to state legislatures, and forbidding federal courts to touch the issue offers advantages to liberals and conservatives both.

Liberals will go ballistic over this suggestion. Erase their beloved Roe? But many states would pass their own liberal abortion laws. Legal abortions would still be readily available. And liberals would no longer need to throw fits over each new Supreme Court nomination. Justices would no longer have the power to override the people's will on this topic.

Some conservatives, too, are likely to be outraged at the prospect of such a law, as it would end their daydream of a Court-decreed abolition of legal abortion. But they'd still have the power to restrict or even ban abortion in their own states, if they were persuasive enough to carry the local citizenry with them. Although voluntary abortion would still be legally available in America, conservatives would have the power in principle to change things all over the country, wherever they were able to convince a majority of a state's population to follow their lead.

And even if conservatives failed to pass significant restrictions on abortion, they'd know that abortions were legal because the people willed them to be, not because five justices did. Assuming that strong restrictions on abortion are morally imperative (I think they are), Supreme Court rulings are the wrong way to get them. Granted, Roe was a corrupt ruling that must still be overturned. But conservatives can't argue any more convincingly than liberals can that the Constitution addresses abortion.

Some states, of course, are just barely red or blue. Some states would see bitter fighting instead of relieved agreement over local abortion law. Yet many states do seem to be fairly decided and consistent in their liberalism or conservatism. In all events, federalism is no panacea, and can't possibly make all polarizing disputes disappear. It is merely a help. And we need all the help we can get.

There is no reason for conservatives to attack polarization by abandoning their agenda and moving to the center. Conservatives are on a roll. In broad terms (forget this week's headlines, and this month's, and this year's), conservatives have become (to the horror of the cultural establishment) the smart party, the high-IQ party, the party of ideas. Open-minded thinkers turn increasingly to the right. Conservatives can serve their country best by defending their ideas, not by dumbing them down to fit a centrist preconception of what Americans really want. Americans say they like centrist ideas but don't; they like exciting ideas that seem likely to move the country forward, and make it a closer approximation to the "shining city on a hill" it was always supposed to be.

A restoration of federalism is the best hope we have to help heal the bitterness that could otherwise tear this country apart. We've already had one civil war. Anyone want to try for two?



David Gelernter is a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard.



© Copyright 2005, News Corporation, Weekly Standard, All Rights Reserved.


[Immigration]

Ayn Rand and the blogosphere.....

A reader of our blog whom we are trying to convince to become a contributor has sent us the link to one of his favorite blogs www.mysandmen.blogspot.com

Suppose that you are an astronaut whose spaceship gets out of control and crashes on an unknown planet. When you regain consciousness and find that you are not hurt badly, the first three questions in or mind would be: Where am I? How can I discover it? What should I do?

You see unfamiliar vegetation outside, and there is air to breathe; the sunlight seems paler than you remember it and colder. You turn to look at the sky, but stop. You are struck by a sudden feeling: it you don't look, you won't have to know that you are, perhaps, too far from the earth and no return is possible; so long as you don't know it, you are free to believe what you wish--and you experience a foggy, pleasant, but somehow guilty, kind of hope.

You turn to your instruments: they may be damaged, you don't know how seriously. But you stop, struck by a sudden fear: how can you trust these instruments? How can you be sure that they won't mislead you? How can you know whether they will work in a different world? You turn away from the instruments.

Now you begin to wonder why you have no desire to do anything. It seems so much safer just to wait for something to turn up somehow; it is better, you tell yourself, not to rock the spaceship. Far in the distance, you see some sort of living creatures approaching; you don't know whether they are human, but they walk on two feet. They, you decide, will tell you what to do.

You are never heard from again.

This was offered for consideration to cadets in 1974 as the opening of a Commencement speech delivered by Ayn Rand to the Graduating Class Of The United States Military Academy at West Point. It has since come to be titled, Philosophy: Who needs It?
[Ayn RAND]
[Philosophy]
[Politics]