We Should Live - Ben Bateman

As the Democrats tear each other apart over their primary, fate has delivered to those of us on the Right another unexpected present.

You’ve probably heard about the fundamentalist Mormon cult that was raided by Texas Rangers. The whole story stank from the beginning, and the authorities wildly overreacted. The raid was apparently based on little more than an anonymous phone call, and it resulted in over 400 children being forcibly taken from their parents and put in state custody. If you’ve ever wondered why conservatives aren’t impressed with impassioned rhetoric from the left about human rights and constitutional protections, this story might help. All those rights invented out of thin air granted us by liberal philosopher-king judges always mysteriously evaporate when the iron fist of the state comes down on people that the Left doesn’t like. If police had even thought about raiding a far-left cult, then the mainstream press would have screamed about it for days. But not when the victims of capricious state brutality are on the extreme Right.

It could have gone worse, though. At least Janet Reno didn’t take charge and burn the children alive while trying to save them. These FLDS children were merely kidnapped at gunpoint on the flimsiest of evidence while their parents were apparently granted no opportunity to be heard—and certainly no presumption of innocence. Where conservative kooks are involved, the rule seems to be kidnap the children first, then let the parents try to establish their innocence.

I’m quite aware of how bizarre and controlling life probably was inside the FLDS compound. Probably more so than most. But that icky feeling is completely irrelevant to the deep legal point. Even creepy fundamentalist Mormons are entitled to a presumption of innocence and a right to be heard—before their children are stolen from them.

It’s also quite bizarre that so much of this government overreach is premised on alleged polygamy and teenagers getting pregnant. Since when did anyone get upset about teenaged girls becoming pregnant? If a justification for a baby-snatching raid by the Texas Rangers, then they’ve got quite a lot of work ahead of them. I’m sure that they can find entire inner-city zip codes packed full of pregnant teenagers—and most of them won’t know or care who the fathers of their children are. Isn’t that worse than whatever happened in the FLDS compound? I mean, at least the FLDS girls were married to the fathers of their children! Let’s get a little perspective here.

And how did polygamy suddenly become a crime so serious that its mere allegation dispels all due process rights that the accused would normally enjoy? If the judges in the more liberal states continue to trample democracy on the subject of marriage, then in a few decades they’ll be finding a constitutional right to marry barnyard animals. Yes, polygamy is still illegal, and yes, I would prefer that it stay that way. But where are our priorities here?

Recently the story got even better. The pretext for the raid was an anonymous plea for help from a girl trapped inside the compound. But it was a hoax by Rozita Swinton, a black Colorado woman with a history of doing this sort of thing. And the buzz around the conservative blogosphere—still not fully confirmed—is that she is a pledged delegate for Barack Obama.

This summer in Denver, the Democrat Party is going to burn, baby, burn.

UPDATE: After cooling off for a few minutes, let me state the obvious: I’m not an expert on this case, and the authorities probably know some stuff that they aren’t disclosing that could change our understanding of the situation.

But still, I see no justification for abducting the children at gunpoint, except as a strongarm tactic force the adults to incriminate themselves and each other.  Let’s assume for argument that everything said against the FLDS compound is true:  Teenage girls were regularly forced to marry creepy older men and were then effectively raped.  By what twisted logic would that justify taking the little children from their mothers?  If we are to believe that the mothers are the victims, then why harm them further by stealing their children?  Abduct the mothers!  That might at least make a little sense.  But it seems like wild abuse of power to steal the children when no one has alleged that the children are being mistreated in any way.

Mike Nifong has filed for bankruptcy, buried under $180 million worth of civil claims brought by the young men whose lives he attempted to ruin for political gain.

I’m not sure how much good it will do him. Last I checked, liability for willful and malicious torts is not dischargeable in bankruptcy 11 USC 532(a)(6). And Nifong’s conduct in the Duke Rape Case was about as malicious as I can imagine.

But even assuming that Nifong could put together some argument that his actions were merely negligent, he doesn’t have the money to mount a defense and make that argument. His bankruptcy schedules show a house worth $235,000 but secured debt over $302,000, from which I infer that his mortgage is more than the value of his house, so he doesn’t have any equity to borrow against to pay his lawyers. Probably his bankruptcy lawyer has some angle that I’m not seeing, but Nifong declaring bankruptcy mystifies me.

I haven’t yet written about Canada’s Human Rights Commissions (HRCs), because I haven’t thought of anything interesting or witty to say that hasn’t been said a dozen times elsewhere.  These Commissions are kangaroo courts set up by liberals to harass conservatives.  Until recently, they were a tool for activist liberals to bash poor, isolated far-right Canadians.

I’m not clear on whether the plaintiffs in these cases have won every time or merely nearly every time.  The plaintiff enjoys taxpayer-funded legal help, while the defendant must pay his own legal bills.  And there is no real law to be applied.  If you’re a liberal, then you need merely complain that your feelings were hurt, and the liberals on the HRCs will bring the might of the state down on whoever offended you.

The HRCs have mostly gone after fringe individuals before, but now they’re trying to get into the mainstream.  The case against MacLean’s for publishing excerpts from Mark Steyn’s book has received lots of attention in recent months, and it still makes me too angry to write anything interesting about it.  But before Mark Steyn there was Ezra Levant, owner of the now-defunct Canadian magazine The Western Standard.  In early 2006, amid the furor over the Mohammed cartoons, The Western Standard was virtually alone among media outlets in actually publishing the “offensive” images.  Various Muslims ran crying to the Alberta HRC, and now the case has come to what seems to be its first hearing.

This hearing was videotaped, though the audio is very, very quiet.  Turn your speakers way up.  Mr. Levant is not going away quietly.  He has posted eight segments of the hearing up on YouTube for the world to enjoy.  I recommend starting with the opening statement.  He is eloquent, and he understands perfectly the larger issues at stake.  Canadians should be calling their politicians in outrage, demanding that these HRCs be disbanded.

Remember The New Republic?  It’s the bi-monthly political magazine that disgraced itself so severely in the Scott Beauchamp affair.  For those fortunate enough to have missed that mess last summer, TNR published an article in which a soldier serving in Iraq confirmed all the darkest stereotypes that the left holds about the US military.  The story turned out to be almost entirely false, but TNR stood by it as long as possible, twisting and turning for months to avoid the necessary retractions and apologies.  Last month the magazine reviewed the whole drama in some detail and concluded after thousands of words that the story was in fact, actually, really truly, false.  If there’s an apology in there somewhere, I couldn’t find it.

All that is background for the latest blockbuster article from The New Republic, this one savaging presidential candidate Ron Paul for articles in newsletters with his name on them:

Finding the pre-1999 newsletters was no easy task, but I was able to track many of them down at the libraries of the University of Kansas and the Wisconsin Historical Society. Of course, with few bylines, it is difficult to know whether any particular article was written by Paul himself. Some of the earlier newsletters are signed by him, though the vast majority of the editions I saw contain no bylines at all. Complicating matters, many of the unbylined newsletters were written in the first person, implying that Paul was the author.

But, whoever actually wrote them, the newsletters I saw all had one thing in common: They were published under a banner containing Paul’s name, and the articles (except for one special edition of a newsletter that contained the byline of another writer) seem designed to create the impression that they were written by him–and reflected his views. What they reveal are decades worth of obsession with conspiracies, sympathy for the right-wing militia movement, and deeply held bigotry against blacks, Jews, and gays. In short, they suggest that Ron Paul is not the plain-speaking antiwar activist his supporters believe they are backing–but rather a member in good standing of some of the oldest and ugliest traditions in American politics.

I don’t like Ron Paul.  I think he’s a nut, especially on foreign policy.  Men who say things like this just can’t be taken seriously:

You’d pull American troops out of Korea, Germany, the Middle East, everywhere?

I would. Under the Constitution, we don’t have the authority to just put troops in foreign countries willy-nilly when we’re not at war.

Conservatives already unhappy with Ron Paul will be tempted to use this TNR article to pile on his and drive him out of the race.  But that would be a serious error.  The fact that Ron Paul is a nut doesn’t mean that the hit piece against him is fair or accurate.  My reading of the article is that it’s the kind of overheated political hatchet job that got TNR in so much trouble over Beauchamp. (more…)

Via Ace of Spades and Newsbusters.  And if you don’t believe my summary, then watch the video for yourself on Newsbusters.  The pull quote, from MSNBC correspondent David Shuster on Morning Joe:

We all must believe in football, and I suppose if we all go to Pensacola, we’ll have a sidetrip where we’ll go to a revival and then go to Guantanamo Bay and torture some people just for fun.

Then co-host Mika Brzezinski immediately agrees with him.

I’m old enough to remember when most people responded with incredulity to accusations of liberal media bias.  But now the word is apparently out: Morning Joe’s audience is less than quarter of the audience for the Fox News show in the same time slot.

Byron York quotes a conversation on immigration between John McCain and a college student named David—a conversation that gets to the heart of what promises to be an interesting immigration debate within the Republican Party over the next few months:

“I’m just curious as to how any politician in America can support any sort of reward for illegal immigrants other than straight deportation,” David said, “considering the fact that there are legal immigrants out there who have waited years and years just to obtain green cards…They’ve waited patiently in line only to see illegal immigrants come and then basically get rewarded for not obeying the law.”

“Your position is correct,” McCain said. “But the reason why most Americans want border security is that they want to cut off the flow of people coming to this country illegally, and then address the issue of the need for a temporary worker program.”

. . .

McCain continued: “Now, on the disposition of people who have come here illegally. Anyone who has come here recently, within X number of years, I agree with you. What about the 80 year-old grandmother who has been here literally all her life, whose son or grandson is fighting in Iraq? I’m not interested in calling them up and telling them we’re deporting their grandmother. She can pass the naturalization, she can take the test, she can do all the things necessary to become a good citizen.”

“And the other thing is, the reason why I mentioned that, is you’ll have to explain to me how you round up 12 million people. There’s not 12 million pairs of handcuffs in America. So we’ve got to secure the borders to stop the flow of people coming into this country illegally, and then devise a temporary worker program that works so that people come to work and then go back to the country they came from. If they want to become citizens, they go through the normal application process for a green card, etc., but that’s separate from a temporary worker program. And then you’re going to have to address the issue of the 12 million people who are here illegally…”

As he finished, McCain invited David to ask a follow-up question. “I agree that it’s impossible to round up 12 million immigrants and that the logistics of dealing with all that is virtually impossible,” David said. “The issue with the grandmother is just that it’s still pushing the philosophy that if you break the law, well, [that’s OK]. My family emigrated here and they had to wait in line…So I just don’t see it — ”

“I understand that,” McCain said. “You don’t have to worry about additional people coming, if you secure the borders. You see my point? You cut off the flow. There’s no job for them cause you set up a temporary worker program. You seal the borders so they can’t get in. Then those people can be judged as I said before.”

“I think our different thesis here is you believe they’ll keep coming illegally. I think our obligation is to stop it, because you’re never going to address the issue as long as people keep coming here illegally. You see my point?”

No, David said. “I’m not worried people in the future, because I believe that we can seal the border. I’m worried about people who have broken the law. I want to see them punished.”

“As I said, they cannot be rewarded for breaking the law,” McCain answered. “But if you’re prepared to send an 80 year-old grandmother who’s been here 70 years back to some country, then frankly you’re not quite as compassionate as maybe I am. I want to stop the flow of illegals into this country, but you have to look at the additional situations, in my view.”

It’s a good conversation, and that’s as deep as it’s likely to get in the upcoming primary season.  I think that David is naive in thinking that the borders will be sealed anytime soon.  Our open-borders policy did not come about by accident.  Our borders have been open—and remain open—because some enormous businesses find it to be very profitable.

My question for McCain is: Which of your big campaign donors are you prepared to slap with enormous fines for profiting from large numbers of illegal immigrants?  The immigration debate is warped because it focuses on the immigrants.  The immigrants, as the open-borders lobby loves to point out, are just poor people hoping for better lives.  Were I in their situation, I would probably do the same.

The people to punish are the employers.  They’re luring in the illegal immigrants.  They know full well which of their employees are in this country legally.  And I think that their political clout ensures that the immigration laws go unenforced.  So until a presidential candidate state clearly that he is prepared to tighten and enforce the laws against those employers, this talk of closing the border is just a fairy tale.

A wildfire in southern California has destroyed over 700 homes and 384 square miles. The press is treating this as a natural disaster, but it was entirely avoidable. It’s a simple matter to clear out the dead brush that starts and fuels these fires, but litigious environmental fanatics have made it illegal. The Sierra Club and similar organizations demand policies that virtually ensure that fires like this will break out. I think that this destruction is precisely what they want. Their religion demands it.

Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton’s campaign has been accepting contributions of around $1000 apiece from about 150 dishwashers, street vendors, and others who either don’t exist or don’t have the means to make such a contribution. The media storyline is that Hillary’s campaign just got a little overzealous, and there’s nothing to get too excited about. Yes, she’s blatantly breaking the law on a grand scale, but this is Hillary, and she is much too special to be limited by mere laws.
This is the same stuff that the Clintons gave us back in the nineties, back when the liberals were all excited about getting a new (and blatantly unconstitutional) campaign finance law. Now campaign financing restrictions are like immigration law: tough statutes with lax enforcement. So people in power and the businesses who fund them have nothing to fear; they know that the law won’t be enforced against them. But people who don’t funnel enough protection money to the right politicians can always be accused of having violated some law or other.

It’s the same situation that we had with antitrust law in the late nineties, when Microsoft learned that even the mightiest businesses must pay tribute to the princelings who run Washington. This is why socialists love it when government makes new laws and regulations. With enough laws we all become criminals, and so the government can hammer any of us at any time. It puts us all down on our knees, begging the government for mercy, kinda like how this woman managed to avoid arrest on a drug charge.

Update 10/24/07:  As if on cue, we have this story about how comedian Steven Colbert’s joke campaign for president has generated threats of legal trouble.  See, it’s a big legal problem if a corporation endorses a comedian’s hopeless campaign as a publicity stunt.  But thousands of dollars illegally flowing to Hillary Clinton is just an insignificant error in judgment.

Last August, Barack Obama said that he was so committed to the War on Terror that he would invade Pakistan without permission, if necessary. When even other Democrats questioned the wisdom of invading an ally—especially a nuclear-armed ally—Obama stood by what he had said.

Now the Democrat-controlled House Foreign Affairs Committee has passed a resolution condemning the Ottoman Empire for atrocities committed against the Turks. But the Ottoman Empire doesn’t exist. It hasn’t existed for 85 years. That same chunk of land is now called Turkey.

The atrocities against the Armenians are still a very sensitive topic in Turkey. It is a crime in Turkey to call them genocide, as the government insists that it intended only only to deport the Armenians, not to kill them. So the Turks were not amused with this bit of Democrat moral grandstanding. They have withdrawn their ambassador, and now there are worries that this will hamper our rights to fly over Turkey and use strategically important Incirlik air base.

We’re accustomed to the Democrats trying to demoralize the American public to defeat the US military, but this is far more serious. The Democrats are so determined to make us lose in Iraq that they’re snubbing our allies while appeasing our enemies.

Update 10-18-07: This NRO article gives more historical background to the Armenian deaths in 1915. In summary, the Ottoman Empire was under attack from many enemies, especially from Russia. It was ruled by a triumvirate of incompetent thugs. Some Armenians remained loyal to the empire, while others fought against it with hopes of an independent Armenian state.

Amid this chaos, the government decided to resettle Armenians in the rebellious regions away from the fighting, and was unable to provide them with adequate food, water, and shelter during the journey. So the closest analogy to the Armenian deaths is not the Holocaust, but the Bataan death march: Lots of people died horribly due to governmental incompetence and the natural chaos of war, but there was never a specific intention to kill so many of them.

Update to the Update: I should have pointed out that I’m not claiming the NRO article as absolute truth, just as one side of an insoluble argument.  No doubt there are many reputable voices on the other side, such as Spengler.

It’s often said in conservative circles that any organization that isn’t explicitly conservative will eventually become liberal. And internet businesses seem to follow that rule.

Young giant Google has already used its clout in advance liberalism by agreeing to censor its search engine according to the dictates of the Chinese government. Then Google subsidiary YouTube began deleting videos posted by conservative commentator Michelle Malkin.

And now Google has refused a political ad that criticizes MoveOn.org:

The banned advertisements said, “Susan Collins is MoveOn’s primary target. Learn how you can help” and “Help Susan Collins stand up to the MoveOn.org money machine.” The ads linked to Collins’ campaign Web site with a headline reading “MoveOn.org has made Susan Collins their #1 target.” The Collins Web site claims that MoveOn has contributed $250,000 to her likely Democratic opponent and has run nine ads against her costing nearly $1 million. The Web site also displays MoveOn.org’s controversial “General Betray Us” ad.

Google’s excuse for refusing the ad is feeble to the point of being pathetic: The ad contained “MoveOn.org”, which is a trademark, so Google concluded that the ad must violate its trademark policy. This will be news to the people at YouTube.

Here you can see the ads that were rejected, the page they led to, and a Kafkaesque web chat between a Google representative and Lance Dutson, the man who actually placed the ads on behalf of the Collins campaign:

Lance Dutson: So if anyone complains, you simlply pull the ad?
AnnaMarie: The term MoveOn is a trademarked term.
AnnaMarie: We proactively disapprove ads that have a trademarked term in them, unless the advertiser in question has permission to use the term.
Lance Dutson: Let me show you something:

[Lance shows some URLs of Google ads that use trademarks in a critical way. AnnaMarie insists that all trademarks in Google ads are used with the owners’ permission.]

Lance Dutson: So you’re telling me Blackwater sent you permission to run negative ads against them?

I doubt that the people at Google are bad; I think they’re just unprincipled. People are prone to moral error, so they need something a little more detailed than “Don’t be evil.” From the inside, I’m sure that the people making these decisions think that they’re acting very reasonably under the circumstances. But their mistake—the mistake of all relativists—is that they try to make major moral decisions on the fly. Those decisions, and the principles on which they should be based, are very difficult to get just right even in moments of calm reflection. But if you procrastinate and wait to do your moral thinking until the moment of crisis, then you’re almost guaranteed to get it wrong.

An article on NRO makes a trenchant point about the recent shooting at a Cleveland school, and the killings at Virginia Tech a few months ago.  I love the title: There’s a Reason They Choose Schools:

What is depressingly similar to the mass murders at Virginia Tech and Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania and too many others was the killer’s choice of venue — that steadfastly gun-free zone, the school campus. Although murderer Seung-Hui Cho at Virginia Tech and Asa Coon, the Cleveland shooter were both students reported to have school-related grudges, other school killers have proved to be simply taking advantage of the lack of effective security at schools. The Bailey, Colorado multiple rapes and murder of September 2006, the Nickel Mines massacre of October 2006, and Buford Furrow’s murderous August 1999 invasion of a Los Angeles Jewish day-care center were all committed by adults. They had no connection to the schools other than being drawn to the soft target a school offers such psychopaths.

. . .

In Cleveland this week and at Virginia Tech the shooters took time to walk the halls, searching out victims in several rooms, and then shooting them. Virginia Chief Medical Examiner Marcella Fierro describes the locations of the dead in Virginia Tech’s Norris Hall. Dead victims were found in groups ranging from 1 to 13, scattered throughout 4 rooms and a stairwell. If any one of the victims had, like the Appalachian School of Law student, used armed force to stop Cho, lives could have been saved.

The people of Virginia actually had a chance to implement such a plan last year. House Bill 1572 was introduced in the legislature to extend the state’s concealed-carry provisions to college campuses. But the bill died in committee, opposed by the usual naysayers, including the Virginia Association of Chiefs of Police and the university itself. Virginia Tech spokesman Larry Hincker was quoted in the Roanoke Times as saying, “I’m sure the university community is appreciative of the General Assembly’s actions because this will help parents, students, faculty, and visitors feel safe on our campus.”

It’s the classic dispute between conservatives: Would you rather feel safe, or be safe?  And you can’t have both, because being safe requires an awareness of ugly realities that many people would rather ignore.

Most voters don’t want the immigration situation of the past several decades, where we have reasonable laws on the books, but those laws go unenforced while huge numbers of illegals pour over the border. In a democratic republic you would assume that a majority of voters will eventually get what it wants, but not in this case. And that’s the puzzle: Why has democracy failed here?

The puzzle has two pieces. The left wants massive immigration for long-term political advantage, while the right’s natural allies in big business enjoy the benefits of cheap labor with the taxpayers bearing most of the costs.

Neither side of this unholy alliance has any reason to talk too freely about what they’re doing, because the whole scheme relies on them pretending that non-enforcement of our immigration laws some mysterious otherworldly phenomenon, rather than the specific intention of those in power. But Michelle Malkin reports on Senator Barbara Boxer slipping up and revealing a little too openly how the game works.

Boxer recently introduced an amendment (SA 3246) to a spending bill in which the Senate would openly instruct the immigration enforcement authorities not to enforce the law:

It is the sense of the Senate that as part of the effort to count all persons physically in the United States during the 2010 Census, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Bureau of the Department of Homeland Security should limit aggressive enforcement of federal immigration laws to promote full participation by non-citizens in the census.

And more illegals in the census means more House seats for California.

That’s where all the illegals come from, folks. Don’t fall for any silly stories about how the border is too big and the logistics of enforcement are too difficult. The immigration laws go unenforced because the politicians want them to go unenforced.

Michelle Malkin relays a story on a lawsuit accusing Target of violating the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).  But there’s nothing wrong with the stores themselves.  They have plenty of ramps, wide doors, and whatnot.  Target stands accusing of insufficiently accommodating the disabled on their web site:

U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel in San Francisco rejected Target’s request to dismiss the case. She also certified the case as a class action, ruling that all legally blind people in the U.S. who have been denied access to services at Target stores because of deficiencies in the company’s website can join the suit.

Target has failed to use “technologically simple and not economically prohibitive” code embedded in websites allowing the blind to use software that vocalizes the content, according to court filings by the National Federation of the Blind.

The group filed the suit on behalf of Bruce Sexton, a UC Berkeley student who claimed that he couldn’t access some features of Target.com. “It was just gibberish for blind users trying to use the website,” said Larry Paradis, a lawyer for the group.

“Target has argued that no law — neither the Americans with Disabilities Act nor state law — could require it to make its website accessible to the blind,” Paradis said. “Today’s decision completely rejects Target’s argument.”

The problem with laws like the ADA is that they have no inherent limits.  As with any liberal sob-story group, the militant disabled can never be satisfied.  However much you give them, they’ll always want more.

If you doubt it, consider this story out of Baltimore:

Members of the National Federation of the Blind are picketing  today outside the South Baltimore offices of the Maryland Department of Environment.

They want environmental officials to order the makers of hybrid cars to make changes to the environmentally friendly car.

Chris Danielson says the cars are too quiet when running on their electric battery, and that can be dangerous for blind people trying to cross the street.

Danielson tells WBAL News that  he has no statistics on pedestrian accidents involving hybrid cars, but he does say there have been several near misses.

So the facts are irrelevant.  The picketers have no idea what benefits they’re claiming or what burdens they’re pushing on their fellow citizens, so I assume that they don’t care.  They know only the will to power, the desire to control what other people do.

Michelle Malkin reports on a new project by far-left group Iraq Veterans Against the War:

HELP END THE WAR!
BEFRIEND A RECRUITER!

Recruitment is essential for the military and politicians to carry out the war and occupation of Iraq. Recruitment levels are low thanks to “truth in recruiting” efforts, but now it is time to shut recruitment down. By flooding recruiters and recruitment centers with phone calls, appointments, questions, and smiling faces, recruiters will waste their time and resources on you. By calling and asking every question you can think off about all the false opportunities the military is offering, you are stealing away recruiters ability to do recruitment.

Like Michelle, I don’t see how this could fail to be sedition, though blogger Allah has done some research and claims that nobody could be convicted of a crime.  I’m not convinced.  Maybe you couldn’t prove a crime by the people who actually do this, but surely you could prove a crime by the people who put the web site together.  Those people are very open about their intent to disrupt the operations of the US military.  As I recall from law school, criminal conspiracy statutes are usually pretty darn broad.  The real problem is that prosecution wouldn’t politically feasible.

I sure hope that the left’s “Don’t you dare question my patriotism” line has worn itself out by now.

The good news is that their plan is pretty silly.  Rabid leftists are brave in groups, but I doubt that they could do much as individuals.  Besides, in essence they would be pitting their own resources against the US Treasury.  I would be surprised if more than a handful tried this preposterous stunt, and they would fail.  Only the fanatics would be bold enough to try it, and they would be the least capable of keeping their cool.

The global-warming scaremongers experienced a setback recently when NASA admitted to an error in its data on temperatures in the continental United States. Mark Steyn explains:

The “hottest year on record” is no longer 1998, but 1934. Another alleged swelterer, the year 2001, has now dropped out of the Top Ten altogether, and most of the rest of the 21st century—2000, 2002, 2003, 2004—plummeted even lower down the Hot One Hundred. In fact, every supposedly hot year from the Nineties and Oughts has had its temperature rating reduced. Four of America’s Top Ten hottest years turn out to be from the 1930s, that notorious decade when we all drove around in huge SUVs with the air-conditioning on full-blast. If climate change is, as Al Gore says, the most important issue anyone’s ever faced in the history of anything ever, then Franklin Roosevelt didn’t have a word to say about it.

And yet we survived.

So why is 1998 no longer America’s record-breaker? Because a very diligent fellow called Steve McIntyre of climateaudit.org labored long and hard to prove there was a bug in NASA’s handling of the raw data. He then notified the scientists responsible, and received an acknowledgment that the mistake was an “oversight” that would be corrected in the next “data refresh.” The reply was almost as cool as the revised chart listings.

Who is this man who understands American climate data so much better than NASA? Well, he’s not even American: He’s Canadian. Just another immigrant doing the jobs Americans won’t do, even when they’re federal public servants with unlimited budgets? No. Mr. McIntyre lives in Toronto. But the data smelled wrong to him, he found the error, and NASA has now corrected its findings—albeit without the fanfare that accompanied the hottest-year-on-record hysteria of almost a decade ago. Sunlight may be the best disinfectant, but, when it comes to global warming, the experts prefer to stick the thermometer where the sun don’t shine.

We will probably never really know whether this was malicious or accidental, but it hardly matters. The keeping quiet about it is most certainly intentional. And that silence is further proof, if any were needed, that global warming and most other eco-fears are primarily political in nature, and only secondarily scientific—if at all.

Theories abound as to why so many people are eager to peddle eco-scares like global warming, and why those stories appeal to so many people. On the seller’s side there is certainly some profit incentive, e.g. NASA knows that it’ll receive more government money if it provides support for global warming. But I don’t think profit alone adequately explains it. A desire for power is probably also a big factor. Not necessarily power in a political sense, but also the interpersonal power of being able to terrify people, and thereby make them eager to believe and do whatever you say. This is why eco-scaremongering’s natural home is on the Left, along with all the other groups that hope to seize power and wield it over the nation.

On the buyer’s side, Mark Steyn has a reasonable theory on why people are so eager to scare themselves with these types of stories. After recounting the recent debunking of the New Republic’s lurid tale of war atrocities, Steyn concludes:

As Pogo said, way back in the 1971 Earth Day edition of a then famous comic strip, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.” Even when we don’t do anything: In the post-imperial age, powerful nations no longer have to invade and kill. Simply by driving a Chevy Suburban, we can make the oceans rise and wipe the distant Maldive Islands off the face of the earth. This is a kind of malignant narcissism so ingrained it’s now taught in our grade schools. Which may be why, even when The New Republic’s diarist goes to Iraq and meets the real enemy, he still assumes it’s us.

UPDATE: Drudge has picked up the story, so it’s going to get some general circulation.  And the Washington Times reports on the following headline from the Washington Post, Nov. 2, 1922: “Arctic Ocean Getting Warm; Seals Vanish and Icebergs Melt.”

Last month’s immigration bill was defeated, but there are no signs that the political classes learned their lesson. Contrary to what that bill’s supporters said during that debate, enforcing our immigration laws wouldn’t be particularly difficult—if we really wanted to enforce them. Every other country on Earth manages it somehow. US Rep. Marsha Blackburn explains on NRO today what a serious effort at immigration enforcement would look like:

Some prominent financial institutions, most notably Bank of America, are consciously exploiting loopholes in federal money-laundering law and “gray areas” within IRS regulations to allow illegal immigrants access to credit cards and loans. Despite intense media pressure and citizen backlash, these institutions continue this practice to this day, without repercussion.

Banks have the option of accepting a range of documents to verify a customer’s proof of identity under current law. And yet, operating within the letter but outside the spirit of the law, certain banks are choosing to allow anyone with an “individual taxpayer identification number” (ITIN) and an additional government-issued form of identification to apply for a credit card or loan.

The catch is that this second form of identification is often the matricula consular, issued by Mexico, and frequently counterfeited and easily obtained on the black market. Without ever having produced a Social Security number, passport, visa, or credit history, an applicant can simply maintain a $500 balance in a checking account for three months for the bank to issue a credit card.

Just as with terrorism, the heart of the serious solution is in the financial system. On terrorism, where the government is serious, some subtle changes to our banking laws have caused our foreign enemies some serious headaches. But on immigration, where our government is not serious, Bank of America welcomes illegal aliens with open arms, and our government looks the other way.

UPDATE: Another article on NRO today points to another simple change in regulations that could have a dramatic effect on illegal immigration:  The Social Security Administration (SSA) already knows which employers hire large numbers of illegal immigrants, because those employers must submit social security numbers under which to pay employment taxes on their illegal alien employees.  These employers scoff at immigration law, but they take the tax laws much more seriously. (more…)

Anyone who follows the stock market has heard about the subprime mortgage problems that have sparked several panics in the past few months.  Thomas Sowell points out on NRO that government restrictions on building are at the root of the subprime problem.  He points to the recent rise of risky income-only mortgages, which were less than 10% of mortgages in 2002, and by 2006 that figure had risen to 31%.  In the San Francisco area, that figure is 66%.

Why so many of these concentrated around San Francisco?  Sowell thinks it’s partly due to skyrocketing housing prices in that area, which in turn result from severe government restrictions on building.

He also points out that the Community Reinvestment Act allows politicians to pressure lenders to make riskier loans.  I remember seeing a spate of stories along those lines a few years ago: Evil banks were refusing to lend at good rates for mortgages in poor minority neighborhoods, no doubt due to their seething and irrational racism.  This 1999 article from the Cato Institute claims that the Clinton administration was aggressive in enforcing the CRA.  It makes me wonder if our current stock market woes could be one last bit of the Clinton legacy catching up to us.

This weekend I watched the first two parts of Frank Capra’s Why We Fight: Prelude to War and The Nazis Strike. These movies produced by the US Army explain the government’s view of World War II: How it happened, why the United States was fighting it, and what was at stake.

Prelude to War presents the struggle as being between the free and slave worlds, and then explains two of the events that led up to it: The 1931 invasion of Manchuria by Japan, and the 1935 invasion of Ethiopia by Italy. Both invasions were acts of naked aggression that violated various treaties and statements of international law. The League of Nations, predecessor to the United Nations, condemned these actions, but otherwise did nothing.

The Nazis Strike presents tells a similar story about Germany. Emboldened by the West’s apathy toward Italian and Japanese ambitions, Hitler began a series of provocations in Europe. He sent troops in the Rhineland and built fortifications there, violating the Treaty of Versailles. He annexed Austria without a shot being fired.

Then he annexed the eastern portion of Czechoslovakia, called the Sudentenland, which included most of that country’s defensible terrain and fortifications. This sparked an international crisis, with much hand-wringing by pacifistic British and French leaders, whose countries had signed defense treaties with Czechoslovakia. The resulting Munich agreement between Germany, Italy, Britain, and France amounted to a betrayal of those promises. Britain and France delivered Czechoslovakia to Hitler, and Hitler promised not to take over any more of Europe. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain famously declared on returning to Britain that the Munich agreement was “peace for our time.” And lest you think that Chamberlain has been unfairly maligned for his fanatical pacifism, that same month he declared in a radio broadcast:

How horrible, fantastic it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas-masks here because of a quarrel in a far away country between people of whom we know nothing. I am myself a man of peace from the depths of my soul.

Hitler conquered the rest of Czechoslovakia six months later. Then he signed a non-aggression pact with Russia, and prepared to invade Poland. Only then did the war start.

It is pleasant and appropriate to note how much shorter and less costly the war might have been but for the murderous foolishness of Chamberlain and his fellow British pacifists. But we Americans were just as foolish, if not more so. Our pacifists killed even more people than Chamberlain. (more…)

In the immigration debate, I’m not so much overwhelmed by the anti-amnesty crowd’s arguments as disgusted at the pro-amnesty side’s disdain for any kind of public debate or persuasion. Linda Chavez cemented my perception with an article declaring that amnesty opponents are motivated primarily by racism and xenophobia:

Some people just don’t like Mexicans — or anyone else from south of the border. They think Latinos are freeloaders and welfare cheats who are too lazy to learn English. They think Latinos have too many babies, and that Latino kids will dumb down our schools. They think Latinos are dirty, diseased, indolent and more prone to criminal behavior. They think Latinos are just too different from us ever to become real Americans.

No amount of hard, empirical evidence to the contrary, and no amount of reasoned argument or appeals to decency and fairness, will convince this small group of Americans — fewer than 10 percent of the general population, at most — otherwise. Unfortunately, among this group is a fair number of Republican members of Congress, almost all influential conservative talk radio hosts, some cable news anchors — most prominently, Lou Dobbs — and a handful of public policy “experts” at organizations such as the Center for Immigration Studies, the Federation for American Immigration Reform, NumbersUSA, in addition to fringe groups like the Minuteman Project.

Stripped bare, this is what the current debate on immigration reform is all about.

And she’s just getting warmed up. She really hits her stride when she declares that “[W]e need to quit pretending that the “No Amnesty” crowd is anything other than what it is: a tiny group of angry, frightened and prejudiced loudmouths backed by political opportunists who exploit them.” (more…)

In the heat of the furor over the (now apparently defeated) immigration bill, Ace of Spades offers a theory on why the Left focuses so much more than the Right on nuts-and-bolts politics:

Maybe this is all bluster and we on the right will just never get this “netroots” thing down. Maybe it’s just not in our character, maybe it goes against our temperament (which, despite the MSM’s constant claims, is decidedly less Joiny McJoinerton than that of the lefites, who seem born to take up crusades and causes so long as they have that thrill of being part of “a movement”).

It’s not that we’re “uninformed” and “easily led,” as the Washington Post notoriously claimed some years ago. (No bias there!)

It’s that most of us don’t care about politics as much as liberals, who tend to sublimate the relgious impulse, the quest for redemption and utopia, into the political process. Half of all conservatives already have a real religion and don’t need another; the other half have families, and the other other half have… well, porn, videogames, and a desire to get rich. (Some of course share all five interests.) We don’t do much in the way of “grassroots activism” and pot-banging protests and consciousness-raising drum-circles because we have lives, not because we’re sheep.

Ace then goes on to hope that the amnesty fiasco will lead the Right to be more politically active. I think that it won’t, and it shouldn’t. It’s often said that Democrats are more skillful than Republicans, smarter, better organized, etc. But I disagree. The Left’s power results directly from its utopian outlook. Utopians love their vision of how the world should be, and therefore hate the world as it is, and therefore are eager to destroy it. They want to destroy; we want to build. Their task is inherently easier.

Protest Marches

This is why, for example, the Left loves protest marches. They’re odd events, if you stand back and think about them from a distance. I mean, what’s the point? If you want to intimidate congressmen, then it would be far more efficient to devote the same time and energy into letters, phone calls, and advertisements. That’s exactly how we just stopped the immigration bill. The sort of people who write coherent letters are far more likely to vote than the sort who have enough free time to stand around for hours holding a sign. Congressmen may be corrupt, dishonest, and even stupid, but they can’t hold their jobs for long if they don’t understand Voter Math 101.

Is the point of a protest march to generate media attention? Partly, but not primarily. There are easier ways to get attention, especially in the Information Age. Al Gore and Michael Moore want attention, but you don’t see them marching around with signs very often. They have better ways.

The real point of a protest march is to threaten the government. That doesn’t make any sense in America, where the government won’t be toppling any time soon. But look to other countries, especially historically, and there is no other interpretation. Protest marches leading to widespread riots are a common way to bring down a fragile government. Less common than the military coup, perhaps, but still quite common.

You could say that the point of democratic government is to eliminate the need for coups, riots, and revolutions to effect a change in government: If one side wins a majority of the votes, then we can just assume that they would have won the revolution, and so we can change governments without all the usual bloodshed and chaos.

The big weakness in that theory is that military victory doesn’t always go to the side with the most people. A small minority can still seize power if they are lucky and well-organized. The Russian revolution of 1917 is an excellent example. So a protest march in a democracy is essentially anti-democratic. It is an admission that a majority of voters do not support the cause, and it is a threat to the majority that the disciplined and angry minority will disrupt the country until its demands are met.

American schoolchildren are taught to revere the idea of the protest march, with Martin Luther King, Jr and Mahatma Ghandi held up as exemplars—and near-saints. But that simple story for children crumbles under examination. Ghandi forced Britain to abandon India—and then immediately lost control to more radical elements who partitioned India and created Pakistan. King won passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act—and then the movement he started quickly morphed in to the racial grievance industry demanding racially discriminatory laws under which our country still suffers.

Conservatism differs from every other political ideology in its fundamental anti-utopianism.  We believe that this is a great country, and any radical changes to it are likely to do more harm than good—especially changes imposed by government.  The country will grow on its own, slowly but very steadily and durably, as long as its citizens are free to build it, one little business at a time, one little family at a time.  All those little seedlings will grow as long as they’re safe from violence in its many forms: safe from political instability, safe from oppressive taxation, safe from lawlessness—and safe from utopianism.

In case you missed the news, the Republicans, Democrats, and GW Bush have all ganged up to betray the voters on immigration.  It has all been scripted: a massive bill, written in secret and impossible to understand, will be forced to the floor for an immediate vote before any of the voters and most of the senators have any idea what the bill contains.  That’s the script; time will tell whether it succeeds.

The issues here aren’t very complicated: Right now we have immigration laws on the books, but they aren’t enforced.  Our border with Mexico is essentially a speed bump.  This allows labor intensive businesses to benefit from cheap labor without suffering any of the related costs, such as health care, welfare, and crime.  So the businesses think that this is a great deal: They get all the gravy, and the taxpayers have to pay the costs.

The Democratic leadership also sees this as a wonderful situation for their party, long-term.  Their histori