I know what you're thinking. &nbsp? What's that? Never you mind. Pretend you don't see it. It's between me and my friends on Gliese 581.

Aso'eqog! O'qo'aqosh! &nbsp! Mayday! Over! I've had enough! Uzoaespef! Get me out of here! &nbsp! ET phone home! &nbsp!

In an interview that I read yesterday, Christopher Hitchens observed, “Darfur, Zimbabwe, Burma, North Korea, anywhere that the concept of human rights doesn't exist, it's always the Chinese at backstop. And always for reasons that you could write down in three words: blood for oil.”

That last comment gave me a start, and I cannot get it out of my mind. To what extent is he right? And where it is in error, is the error merely technical? Could we simply substitute something else for oil?

I just came across this article about vigilante justice on American Indian reservations in Mother Jones. Yes, you read that right: Mother Jones. Before jumping to any conclusions, read the article, which strikes me as solid reporting, though I'm not in a position really to say; I don't know enough about the subject.

In particular, I don't fully understand the legal issues here. Perhaps someone on Ricochet can help me understand what, exactly, is going on:

The rate of violent crime among Native Americans is twice the national average; on some reservations, it's 20 times higher. At least one in three American Indian women will be raped in their lifetimes. Yet just 3,000 tribal and Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) officers—the only kinds of cops with jurisdiction on Indian land—patrol 56 million acres. In 2008, the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in the Dakotas had nine officers for 9,000 people in an area twice the size of Delaware. (A typical town with the same population has three times that number.) Tribal courts can only prosecute misdemeanors such as petty theft and public intoxication. They can't issue sentences longer than one year without meeting special criteria, and even then, three years is the maximum. More serious crimes must be handled by federal prosecutors, who turn down 65 percent of the reservation cases referred to them.

If the Feds are the only ones who can put the rapists behind bars, why exactly aren't they? Are the BIA cops unable to gather evidence sufficient to bring a criminal to trial, either because there aren't enough of them or because they don't take these crimes seriously?

Or do the Feds feel they've got better things to do with their time than get involved with this mess?  I'd say, on the face of it, that indifference to this would be inexcusable, but perhaps there's something about this situation that I'm not understanding. 

President Obama’s unapologetic redistributionist philosophy, which he informally unveiled with his comments to Joe the Plumber, has brought class warfare to a heightened level in this country. His other statist and anti-capitalist proclivities have generated, in a sense, a national debate about socialism – not that many people will openly defend it. But there do seem to be more open expressions of contempt these days for the inequitable distribution that inheres in a capitalist system. Obama appears to favor equality of outcomes over equality of opportunity. Liberals increasingly employ both taxing and spending policy to equalize outcomes.

I think the Obama Democrats’ flagrant advancement of socialism, and the explosion of national debt to which it has significantly contributed, have, more than any other factor, driven the Tea Party protests. On the other end of the political spectrum, we have seen a bit of a backlash from leftists who stubbornly cling to socialist ideas -- to the point that they believe Obama has betrayed the cause.

Whether or not you can get Democrats to directly condemn capitalism, more of them are out of the closet lamenting its alleged excesses and challenging the moral underpinnings of the free market. Some still romanticize socialism, as we saw recently with Kate Zernike’s piece in the New York Times challenging the view that American colonists experimented with, then rejected, socialism (it would be more accurate to describe it as communalism). Professor Rahe posted his informative piece setting the record straight.

All of these developments have caused me to think about this more than usual. That’s why I was intrigued when glancing through a book that has been in my library for some time – James Madison and the Future of Limited Government, edited by John Samples and published by the Cato Institute. It was these few sentences from Samples’ introduction, in which he discussed Madison’s Federalist No. 10, that particularly caught my attention:

Madison would be shocked by a federal government that consumes one-fifth of national wealth and regulates most economic activity. He would be less shocked that the federal government is largely in the business of redistributing wealth. Federalist No. 10 argued that redistribution arose from a flawed human nature and tended to destroy republican liberty.

This prompted me to reread Federalist No. 10, whose profundity, in my view, cannot easily be overstated. I was quite curious as to whether Madison indeed argued that redistribution arose from a flawed human nature and tended to destroy republican liberty. If so, it occurred to me, this would serve as additional proof (for those who need it) that our ancestors were indeed philosophical enemies of communalism and that the very father of our Constitution himself rejected it on moral grounds. For if there is one pressure point on which credulous people are vulnerable to the deceptive allure of liberalism, it is the notion that liberalism is more compassionate than conservatism. More than anything else, this is the hook by which the liberal intelligentsia, especially in academia, shame so many of our kids away from conservatism.

For those who don’t want to read the entire 3,000 words of Federalist No. 10, despite the fact that you will be quizzed on it at the end of this post, Let me share a few selected gems from it.

As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed. As long as the connection subsists between his reason and his self-love, his opinions and his passions will have a reciprocal influence on each other; and the former will be objects to which the latter will attach themselves. The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to a uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government. From the protection of different and unequal faculties of acquiring property, the possession of different degrees and kinds of property immediately results; and from the influence of these on the sentiments and views of the respective proprietors, ensues a division of the society into different interests and parties. …

The apportionment of taxes on the various descriptions of property is an act which seems to require the most exact impartiality; yet there is, perhaps, no legislative act in which greater opportunity and temptation are given to a predominant party to trample on the rules of justice. Every shilling with which they overburden the inferior number, is a shilling saved to their own pockets. …

Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths. Theoretic politicians, who have patronized this species of government, have erroneously supposed that by reducing mankind to a perfect equality in their political rights, they would, at the same time, be perfectly equalized and assimilated in their possessions, their opinions, and their passions.

What an eloquent defense of private property and economic liberty and a rejection of communalism. Madison not only doesn’t apologize for differences in capacities among human beings, but celebrates them, going so far as to say that protecting these differences is the first object of government. Wow. Would such a statement not be countercultural on our college campuses, among other venues, today? Not only that, but he seems to connect the government’s protection of these “different and unequal faculties of acquiring property” to the inevitable consequence that men will possess “different degrees and kinds of property.” So he’s saying that differences in outcomes is not a necessary evil, but something to be desired and protected. I infer this is not because he believes it's inherently wonderful that some people will prosper more than others, but that a system that allows for it is essential to liberty and the greatest prosperity. How utterly refreshing – (refreshing, though penned some two and a half centuries years ago).! As an extra delicious smackdown of modern liberalism, Madison clearly denounced here, as elsewhere in the Federalist, pure democracy for the additional reasons that it is incompatible with liberty and a more equitable division of property.

Well, just when I nearly had some of you convinced that yes, Moderate Islam exists, Dirka-Dirka-Triple-Muhammed-Jihad tries to blow up a bunch of kids and a Christmas tree in Portland, setting back my campaign for drawing these important distinctions by about a thousand years. 

The Internet chatter is registering vexation with news reports that fail to say the obvious--that the bomber-manqué is a Muslim--but this time, give the media a break. I yield to no one in my vexation with the world's willingness to submit to a reign of euphemism, but when your story features the words "Allahu Akbar," "jihad," and a guy named "Mohamed Osman Mohamud," it's just superfluous to note that the the subject of the story is a Muslim. If I write, "After finishing his bagel and consulting the Talmud, Shmuel the rabbi applied himself to a kosher pickle," it's not so much political correctness as verbal economy that prevents me from adding, "Shmuel, by the way, is a Jew."

The MFAs, the insular New Yorkers, or neither? I'd tend to vote for the first of the three, as the traditional New York publishing world at least has the market discipline of the bottom line, however poorly the houses seem to understand it. Still, the insularity of both of these groups has got to have something to do with the fact that it's harder and harder to find bookstores. Obviously the massive revolution in book retailing, the huge uptick in internet reading, etc., have a lot to do with it, but readership of novels and the like has taken a dive.

Is this because, say, New York houses publish fewer and fewer novels (or more novels by fewer authors) that mainstream America wants to read, or because the MFAization of the novel is slowly turning it into poetry or short stories—i.e., Something No One Reads?

Or none of the above? The novel is a 19th century art form that’s dying? Y’all seem like pretty literate types. Whaddya think?

There are few experiences in life that simultaneously inspire such great boat loads of joy and dread as Christmas shopping. Do you get a lump in your throat when you finally come across that one item you know will light up your children's eyes? Do your own eyes moisten slightly when you find the Christmas card that so beautifully and perfectly encapsulates the depth of your feelings for a loved one? On the other hand, do you trudge wearily and aimlessly through vast, cavernous, fluorescent lit asylums, blocked at every turn by impromptu family reunions that take place in the middle of the only passable aisle in the joint or nearly run over by a whole family using a stroller full of packages as a blocker while the little fartling who should be in the stroller runs wildly about the place like the Tasmainian Devil on speed? Do you view a shopping mall as the very epitome of Dante's hellacious vision? This year, you have a special alternative. An alternative so refreshing, so out of the ordinary, so gloriously creative that you should not even contemplate it on a full stomach. You see, John Kerry needs your help.

The richest senator in the land is strapped for cash as he endeavors to celebrate, ...himself. Senator Kerry is hosting a little get together to celebrate 25 years in the Senate, and 45 years of public service. Acutely aware of appearances during this utopian recession, Kerry has decided that the commemoration will be an intimate affair, just a small gathering at a modest venue. Accordingly, he needs help with the expenses of renting the Boston Symphony on the evening of December 13th. The extravaganza will feature maestro Kieth Lockhart, singer James Taylor, and actor Ben Affleck. Unfortunately, many Democratic donors are a bit tapped out this holiday season, having poured enormous sums into losing campaigns across the country. Boston University Political Professor Thomas Whalen commented that, "The symbolism really works against him, which is typical of Kerry." Nonsense! That's where your help could make the difference.

I hear that even Sally Struthers is tuning up to stand in front of Kerry's mansion to solicit funds. For just a shovel full of Benjamins, you too can help commemorate decades of slander against our armed forces, decades of tactical and strategic ignorance in pursuit of geopolitical weakness, a political lifetime spent opposing virtually every weapons system, every political initiative, and every defensive system that defeated the Soviet Union and keeps Americans safe today. You can help celebrate a man of the people who laments the "know nothingism" of the tea party, and whose tributes to our armed forces included the reminder that if you don't study hard and do your homework, "...you get stuck in Iraq." After all, a guy who spent $7 million on a yacht but then parked the thing in another state to avoid $500,000 in taxes obviously needs our help.

So join in, won't you? Undermining the Republic is an expensive and thankless task. So pick up the phone. Be a part of history and this historic celebration. Call now. Operators are standing. Bye.

Ricochet readers with an interest in intrigue and derring-do might find interesting a piece posted by Fox News yesterday, which describes in detail for laymen what we now know about Stuxnet, the damage it did to the Iranian nuclear program, and its likely origins. We are now in a new world of cyberwarfare, and I doubt that we will ever get out.

Thanksgiving is over. Black Friday has passed. Christmas and Hannukah approach. And let’s face it: you do not know what to buy for those who are near and dear.

If, however, you are a regular visitor to this website, the odds are excellent that your loved ones are readers. So you could do a whole lot worse than think about giving someone a book. In doing so, you would certainly not be alone. Something like two-thirds of the books sold in the United States are sold at this time of year.

But what to buy?

Well, you could start with Claire Berlinski, author most recently of There is No Alternative: Why Margaret Thatcher Matters  and of other books – including steamy novels with alluring titles such as Loose Lips and Lion Eyes. My bet is that she would not mind if you ordered, say, ten thousand copies.

Nor, I suspect, would Paul Rahe mind if you ordered a like number of those of his books that came out in paperback this year – Machiavelli’s Liberal Republican Legacy, Against Throne and Altar, Montesquieu and the Logic of Liberty, and Soft Despotism, Democracy’s Drift. – though I fear that they may be – how shall I say? – less entertaining. If the intended recipient of your gift is truly a voracious reader, you might even try the three volumes of his Republics Ancient and Modern: Classical Republicanism and the American Revolution.

For puzzles and games, there is Pat Sajak. For insight, you could turn to John Yoo – author of Crisis and Command, War by Other Means, and The Powers of War and Peace – or to Richard Epstein, who is even more prolific, or to Peter Robinson, David Limbaugh, Victor Davis Hanson, Mark Steyn, Rob Long, or James Lileks – to mention only a few of the contributors to Ricochet.

There are a number of good recent books on current American politics. I think Dinesh D’Souza is on to something in his depiction of the third-world radicalism of Barack Obama in The Roots of Obama’s Rage. Stanley Kurtz does a fine job of tracing our President’s links with the far left in Radical in Chief. And Angelo Codevilla’s The Ruling Class is a work of genuine insight.

If, however, the intended recipient of your gift has tastes that run to adventure, you could hardly do better than to send a complete set of Patrick O’Brian’s celebrated Aubrey-Maturin series – eighteen volumes, page-turners every one.

If statesmanship is the appropriate subject, you might try The Landmark Thucydides – a marvelous edition of the classic work replete with maps – or the first and the second volumes of Winston S. Churchill’s Marlborough: His Life and Times, which Leo Strauss once aptly described as “the greatest historical work written in our century, an inexhaustible mine of political wisdom and understanding, which should be required reading for every student of political science.”

If travel writing is what you are in search of, you can do no better than my old friend Patrick Leigh Fermor. A few years back, when I was a visiting fellow at All Souls College in Oxford, one of those permanently there described him as the greatest living master of English prose – and rightly so. His books on Greece – Roumeli and Mani – are a treasure, and the same can be said for his ruminations on monastic life – A Time to Keep Silence. Even better are the two volumes he published on the epic journey he took on foot in 1933 and 1934 from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople – A Time of Gifts and Between the Woods and the Water.

It was my privilege in the mid-1980s to carry the manuscript of the latter from Kardamyle, deep in the Peloponnesus, by bus to Athens, where someone at the British embassy sent it on in a diplomatic pouch to John Murray, Paddy’s publisher in London. The last time I stayed with Paddy in the Mani, almost five years ago, he was ninety-one-years old and halfway through the third and final volume of that saga. If you want to learn about his exploits on Crete during the Second World War, try W. Stanley Moss’s Ill Met by Moonlight, which will be back in print within a week, or purchase the movie of the same name, in which Paddy was played by Dirk Bogarde.

But enough from me. What do you recommend that we give to our loved ones this year?

I doubt the latest developments in the Sledgehammer case are making the headlines in America. It's never going to be a popular story outside of Turkey; it's just too confusing. But that doesn't mean it's not important.

The Sledgehammer case is part of the larger Ergenekon investigation, which I've tried my best to explain here:

If you're trying to make sense of this, remember that Turkish politics are like the adage about the Arabic lexicon: any given word may mean a thing, its opposite, or a camel. If that doesn't make sense, don't worry. Neither does Ergenekon.

The drama began in June 2008 when police discovered a crate of grenades in an Istanbul slum. Investigators claimed they belonged to a hydra-headed clique of ultranationalist conspirators named after a legend about the original pan-Turkish paradise. (Think Camelot.) Ergenekon, allegedly, was plotting a series of terrorist attacks throughout Turkey. They planned to use the ensuing chaos as a pretext to stage a coup and depose the governing AKP. Wave after wave of pre-dawn arrests followed.

The AKP's supporters claim that Ergenekon -- apparently in cooperation with every terrorist group known to man -- was behind a series of bombings previously credited to the PKK, the assassination of the journalist Hrant Dink, a shooting at the Council of State, a grenade attack on a left-wing newspaper, and several recent headline-grabbing attacks on priests. For their next act, they say, Ergenekon planned to assassinate the prime minister and murder the Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuk.

So who, puzzled observers may be wondering, are the real conspirators here?

No one outside of Turkey, and few in Turkey, would have time to consider all the evidence in this case: The indictment itself is 2,455 pages long. I freely admit I haven't read the whole thing, so my own judgments on the case are necessarily tentative. 

There are two ways of looking at Ergenekon. In the first, it represents an important step forward for Turkey: At last, say supporters, the government has taken on the occult forces of Turkey's so-called Deep State. It is, they say, is analogous to Italy's Clean Hands operation in the '90s. 

No, say detractors. It is nothing of the sort: It is an excuse for the government to arrest and bully the opposition.

The way you view this case will to a large extent determine the way you view the AKP. And while the case is deeply confusing, some parts of it are easier to understand than you'd think--it's a matter of looking at the images until the details come into focus.

The evidence assembled by Dani Rodrik, for example, is easy to follow. He's clearly not impartial. His father-in-law is on trial. But no amount of family loyalty can make a company that didn't exist in 2003 exist, retrospectively. What Rodrik is saying is a fact: The Sledgehammer case relies largely upon a document that was supposedly written in 2003. It makes reference to a company that only came into existence in 2008.

This is hardly the only such inconsistency: The key document is full of what he calls "back to the future" anomalies--and he has shown these, very clearly, in this presentation. It will take you about ten minutes to read it, and it's worth it.

Supporters say that yes, there are a few problems with the case here and there, but this is to be expected, given the volume of evidence and the investigation's enormous complexity. These anomalies, they say, should not be exaggerated and do not detract from its basic legitimacy.

My view? If it is as important as they say to put these people behind bars, the prosecutors should damned well take more care with their evidence. Allowing the case to rest upon documents that are clearly forgeries cannot possibly lead to what supporters of the investigation say it will--the triumph of the rule of law in Turkey, a sustainable national consensus about these events, and a verdict widely accepted as legitimate. It can only lead to more division, suspicion and paranoia--the last thing, the very last thing, that a bitterly divided Turkey needs. 

I'm certainly willing to believe that some of the accused are guilty--perhaps not as charged, but guilty of something. There is plenty of guilt to go around in Turkey. But when brazen forgeries are entered into the evidence, it lends massive credence to the suspicion that the entire case is politically motivated. If any part of it is true, this is all the more reason to be angered that this has happened: It severely undermines faith in any part of the case that might be valid. Supporters of the investigation should be just as angry about this as detractors. 

This week, Turkish President Abdullah Gül reassured the press that the most recent Ergenekon charges shouldn't alarm anyone:

The suspension of three senior military officers by two government ministers for alleged involvement in the Sledgehammer coup case should not be exaggerated, President Abdullah Gül said Thursday.

“The ministers took a step within the framework of the law. There is no need to exaggerate the issue,” Gül told reporters before his departure for Switzerland.

How can such an assertion have enough credibility under these circumstances to put detractors' doubts to rest? 

Over on the member feed, Cas Balicki, Paules, Scott Reusser and I have been having a conversation about China.  

Cas got it started. When Prince Hans Adam suggested on Uncommon Knowledge that China would one day become democratic, Cas insisted, the good prince was displaying a crude naivete. I replied that I wasn't so sure. Here's one reason why.

Having a cup of coffee here at Stanford a couple of years ago, I found myself approached by an amiable young Asian man who spoke English with a thick Chinese accent.  He explained that he was doing graduate work in Sino-American relations, then requested my permission to ask a personal question.  "Someone told me you were a speechwriter for President Ronald Reagan.  Is that true?"  I allowed that it was.  "And that you wrote his 'tear down this wall speech.'  Is that true, too?"  Again, I said that it was.  "Oh," he replied, grinning with delight, "what an honor to meet someone who worked for that great man.  What an honor!"  He kept grinning, and he more or less bowed a couple of times. To change the subject--I can take flattery, but I draw the line at bowing--I asked what he intended to do when he completed his studies.  "Go back to Beijing" he replied. "You see, I am a member of the foreign ministry."

I know, I know. An anecdote is merely an anecdote, and there are plenty of aspects of the Communist regime--the one child policy, for example--that remain, simply, inhuman.  But an employee of foreign ministry, enthusing over Ronald Reagan.  That can't have been a bad sign, right?

Bet you hadn't even thought of this one:

Syphilis, lice, gonorrhea, ringworm, chlamydia, staph, strep, noro and papilloma viruses all are part of the possible fringe benefits when airline passengers next go through a full hands-on pat-down by agents of the federal government's Transportation Security Administration, according to doctors...

"There is no doubt that bacteria (staph, strep, v.cholerae etc.) and viruses (noro, enteroviruses, herpes, hepatitis A and papilloma viruses) can be spread by contaminated vinyl or latex gloves," Dr. Thomas Warner of Wisconsin told WND...

"If a traveler has diarrhea and is soiled, as can and does happen, the causative agent can be spread by this method since bacteria and viruses in moist environments have greater viability."

He continued. "The traveler readjusting clothes can easily get the infectious agents on their hands and therefore into their mouth, nose or eyes."

Added a pulmonary critical care physician from Connecticut who did not want to be identified by name, "That doesn't make sense that they're not changing gloves."

"Anything can be transmitted. If there are open wounds and they [TSA agents] are not aware, there's syphilis, gonorrhea, herpes, chlamydia, lice, ringworm."

This may be off topic - is anything on topic here at Ricochet? - but it made me laugh, in that humorless-bark-of-disgust way. You’ve probably heard of Terry Jones: he was one of the members of the Monty Python troupe, a director, a writer, and a naked guy playing an organ. He later distinguished himself with predictable, if effervescent, critic of the West for its primary sin, i.e., existing. If you’re wondering whether he’s still sticking it to The Man:

Whether taking on Chaucer, challenging Ireland's most doggedly held beliefs of the Middle Ages, or having a child out of wedlock with a woman more than half his age, Terry Jones is not afraid to take on the establishment.

“The establishment” is a term that means something only for people who had their first kiss while the Strawberry Alarm Clock was in the top 40, and the idea that there’s some frumpy, hidebound organization of greybeards who zealously guard interpretations of Chaucer seems overheated. Oh no! Doggedly held beliefs of the Middle Ages are being challenged that fellow over there! Alert the authorities! The last line makes you clench your molars, though. Having a child without marrying is an act of taking on the establishment, eh.  The illegitimacy rate could hit 99.9% and these people would still behave as if enormous posters of Ward and June Cleaver dominated every public square.

I just came across this bizarre article in the Washington Post by Richard Cohen: Attack on Michelle Obama shows Palin's ignorance of history. If I understand it correctly, Cohen is arguing that Michelle Obama's infamous comment about feeling pride in her country "for the first time" is one for which Palin ought to have more sympathy--and would, if only she understood the history of slavery in the United States:

It's appalling that Palin and too many others fail to understand that fact--indeed so many facts of American history. They don't offer the slightest hint that they can appreciate the history of the Obama family and that in Michelle's case, her ancestors were slaves--Jim Robinson of South Carolina, her paternal great-great grandfather, being one. Even after they were freed they were consigned to peonage, second-class citizens, forbidden to vote in much of the South, dissuaded from doing so in some of the North, relegated to separate schools, restaurants, churches, hotels, waiting rooms of train stations, the back of the bus, the other side of the tracks, the mortuary, the cemetery and, if whites could manage it, heaven itself.

I have no idea what Michelle Obama was really thinking when she made that comment, and I'm happy to give her the benefit of the doubt--probably she didn't mean it the way it was taken. But it's clear Cohen thinks she should have meant it the way it was taken: By his logic, anyone whose ancestors (literal or metaphorical) were slaves or second-class citizens in the United States is justified in feeling scant pride in America today.  

The argument is incoherent and at best indifferent to history. By its logic, Sarah Palin (and I, for that matter) would be equally justified in contemplating the history of the United States and concluding that we have no reason to take pride in it. By "we," I mean women. In the early history of the United States, men owned their wives much as they did their horses. The 14th and 15th Amendments granted citizenship and suffrage to blacks but not women. Women had no right to vote until 1920. 

Does Cohen realize that when Jim Robinson was alive, married women could not hold property in their own names, sue or be sued, make contracts, sit on a jury, or write a will? Does he appreciate that women were under the control of their fathers until they married and became their husband’s property? Does he know that they could not dream of leaving an abusive marriage, no less having access to higher education or holding political office? And can he follow this argument to its logical conclusion--that Sarah Palin is therefore just as entitled to feel ashamed of America as Michelle Obama, or conversely, that Michelle Obama is just as entitled to feel pride? 

I could drown the reader in arguments to the effect that the subjugation of women in the United States was extensive and grievous, enshrined in law and tradition, terrible to contemplate, and no less appalling, by the standards of the late 20th and early 21st century, than slavery itself.   Would it therefore be natural for every woman now alive in America to feel ashamed of her country? By Cohen's logic, yes. 

Or one might feel--with better justification, I'd say--exceedingly proud of a history in which, through a massive moral awakening, slavery was abolished and women's rights secured. 

The concept of "rights for women" was essentially inexistent in the world in the period he is considering, or seen as a joke; the United States was far from unique in this regard. Women were chattel the world around and in many places still are. Likewise, slavery has historically been the global rule, not the exception. But the United States rid itself of these monstrous evils in simultaneous and linked struggles, the fruits of which have been an extraordinary advance and gift to human civilization:

In the early Anti-Slavery conventions, the broad principles of human rights were so exhaustively discussed, justice, liberty, and equality, so clearly taught, that the women who crowded to listen readily learned the lesson of freedom for themselves, and early began to take part in the debates and business affairs of all associations. Women not only felt every pulsation of man's heart for freedom, and by her enthusiasm inspired the glowing eloquence that maintained him through the struggle, but earnestly advocated with her own lips human freedom and equality. When Angelian and Sarah Grimke began to lecture in New England, their audiences were at first composed entirely of women, but gentlemen, hearing of their eloquence and power, soon began timidly to slip into the back seats, one by one. And before the public were aroused to the dangerous innovation, these women were speaking in crowded, promiscuous assemblies. The clergy opposed to the abolition movement first took alarm, and issued a pastoral letter, warning their congregations against the influence of such women. The clergy identified with anti-slavery associations took alarm also, and the initiative steps to silence the women, and to deprive them of the right to vote in the business meetings, were soon taken. This action culminated in a division in the Anti-Slavery Association. In the annual meeting in May, 1840, a formal vote was taken on the appointment of Abby Kelly on a business committee, and was sustained by over one hundred majority in favor of woman's right to take part in the proceedings of the Society. 

This is American history. Is this not a history of which to be proud? Are these not Americans of whom to be proud? I have no idea how well Sarah Palin understands this history, but it seems Richard Cohen doesn't understand it at all. 

I remain perversely thankful to have been born in America when I was; it seems to me I got a better deal than any woman born in any other time and place in history. 

The Washington Post has just hired our old friend, Ricochet fan Jennifer Rubin, to contribute to the Post's website.  Jen, formerly of Commentary, will be writing about--brace yourself--conservatives.

Strange but true.  After the flap earlier this year in which it emerged that the Post's previous blogger on conservatives, David Weigel, had used "Journolist," the left-wing email exchange, to let his fellow journalists know just how thoroughly he disdained conservatives--Weigel resigned when this became public--the Post has finally hired an actual conservative to write about conservatives.

In addition to being capable of writing about conservatives without looking down her nose at them, Jen Rubin is tough-minded, brilliant and irresistibly readable.  We wish her luck--and hope the Post recognizes its wonderful good fortune.

A couple of weeks ago, I posted a piece asking this question. It drew some comments – mostly having to do with my suggestion that, if the full-body scanners really do pose a risk, it would be better to profile Muslim travelers than to expose everyone who steps onto a plane to a dangerous dose of radiation. No one was able to reassure me that there is no danger.

I have lived long enough now to have become skeptical with regard to the claims of scientists. When I was younger, no one paid any attention to the danger the X-rays posed, and there have been unpleasant consequences – both for health workers and for medical patients. Now one group of scientists – those on whom TSA relies – tell us that it is safe: that the dose is modest, that it does not penetrate the skin, that passing through the scanners a thousand times is the equivalent of a single X-ray.

There are others, however, no less distinguished in the scientific world, who take the opposite stance. According to a story posted yesterday, four scientists at the University of California at San Francisco – with expertise in biochemistry, biophysics, oncology, and X-ray crystallography – have warned that the dosage delivered to the skin by the full-body scanners may be much greater than advertised.

Glenn Sjoden, who is a professor of nuclear and radiological engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology, makes the same point. The dose radiation may not be all that large, but it is concentrated on the skin. The real question is how large a dose travelers get at the level of the skin, and no one has tested that.

Ed Nickoloff, professor of radiology at Columbia University and chief hospital physicist at Columbia University Medical Center, agrees with Sjoden. In the story cited above, he is quoted as saying, "At this point, until I knew more information, I'd tell people to take the pat-down."

Here is the question you should be asking yourself. How far do you trust the judgment of Janet Napolitano?

There are reports that today the TSA – wary of the threat of disruptions and concerned about the bad publicity that they would incur should large numbers of travelers ask for a pat-down during a period of peak holiday travel – has turned off the scanners at a number of airports.

If this is true, what does it say regarding the necessity for this species of security? Indeed, why did the pat-downs not start last December shortly after the underpants bomber landed in Detroit?

Ricochet member Kenneth writes:

The Cold War is over.  Why on earth should we expend American blood and treasure to defend South Korea?
George Washington warned us about this kind of entanglement.

Why should we expend American blood and treasure to defend South Korea? Let us count the ways and considerations:

1. We are not talking of sending hundreds of thousands of soldiers to Korea, but mostly sophisticated naval and air contingents with overwhelming firepower. There are only between 25,000 and 35,000 American military personnel there on the ground, depending on how we calibrate U.S. area defense forces, that augment one of the largest forces of any democratic nations, roughly 700,000 active and more than 3 million reserve South Korean military personnel. South Korea is no paper tiger, but spends vast amounts on its own defense. Our mission thus is not to defend Korea alone, but to act as advisors, supply sophisticated technology and follow through on our treaty obligations by visible examples of U.S. forces on the ground. Note unlike Afghanistan or Iraq, this is a conventional crisis, one in which Western air and naval power would be far more effective, as was true in winter 1951, against concentrations of communist forces.
2. We help South Korea  also because of the past heroic sacrifices of thousands of Americans who saved South Korea when at one point it was little more than the Pusan perimeter. Their heroism, and the subsequent vigilance of generations of Americans, have helped South Korea to become one of the most successful democratic and capitalist nations in the world, as we see from brands from Hyundai to Samsung, constitutional and peaceable changes in government, and 50 million free and prosperous South Koreans. Had we not done that, 50 million South Koreans would now be eating grass in the manner North Koreans are sometimes forced to. South Korea, then, is not a matter of optional engagement such as Somalia or the Sudan, but the pillar of US Asian defense policy, in both moral and strategic terms.
3. Should we fail to support the South, then governments in the Philippines, Taiwan, and Japan will assume the U.S. either cannot or will not honor its obligations that have led to these successful democracies, and will in turn either make accommodations with the communist Chinese or seek to go nuclear to obtain their own deterrence--a capability well within the ability of all four such countries.
4. If North Korea were to invade and if we were to do nothing in support--whatever the outcome--China would see this as a green light to raise its global profile among vulnerable Western nations with deleterious consequences for democracy in general. Remember, just as Chinese clients like North Korea or Iran cause untold trouble in the world, by things like threatening Japan or arming Hezbollah, U.S. allies such as South Korea are positive global players who obey laws, enrich the world with their industry and genius, and prove model global citizens.

I watched a bit of the big dog show after the big parade today. Is it just me, or did anyone else see the judges grabbing the dogs by the proverbial package and immediately think of airport screening?

Nothing says Thanksgiving quite like American greatness and grope-happy holiday travel. Now, thanks to our good friends at PJTV, you can tune in as I chew over the former with the NYT's Ross Douthat and the latter with the Washington Examiner's J.P. Freire. More thrills than a Pats/Lions game!

The Daily Beast has put together a star-studded holiday photo album of classic American thanksgiving scenes. Here are some of my favorites:

The turkey's in the oven, and I'm about to begin on the cranberry sauce. I'm doing Bobby Flay's turkey and The Pioneer Woman's cranberry sauce. (Thanks to member katievs who tipped me off about the wonders of The Pioneer Woman.)

Of course, my mom is helping me. "Helping" often means doing-it-herself, but it's my first attempt at Thanksgiving.

For a little mental break, I popped over to the computer and came across this gem on the City Journal site by our own Claire Berlinski. Here's how it starts, and, here's to moms who bail us out:

I used to wake up in the middle of the night, here in Istanbul, wondering how I’d pay my bills. As I’ve noted in City Journal, the demand for foreign news is shrinking. The wire services provide coverage from Turkey at low operating costs. To be honest, I also spend a lot of money on things I can’t afford, like my cleaning lady. She’s been working for me for five years and has three kids, so I can’t fire her. If I go down, she’ll go down, and so will my landlord, the guy who sells cleaning supplies to my cleaning lady, and the Iranian refugee who does my odd jobs. The ripple effect on the local economy, in other words, would be calamitous.

Then I saw the great news about GM’s success and I stopped worrying. Because GM and I are in the same position, and things seem to be working out splendidly for them.

You see, about a month ago, I asked my mother to bail me out. I knew she’d do it. She’s done it before. She sent me money she’s been saving toward my retirement. I resolved to stop spending money on stupid things. (There was really no excuse for that lamp, Mom, I know. Sorry! In my defense, I was sure there was a genie in it.)

On Thanksgiving, it is customary that Americans recall to mind the experience of the Pilgrim Fathers  Last year, thinking it especially appropriate that we do so at the outset of the Age of Obama, I posted a piece on Powerline entitled America’s First Socialist Republic, which Scott Johnson reposted this morning – in which I seized upon our commemoration of the first thanksgiving celebration as an occasion for reconsidering what their initial experience in the New World can teach us today.

We have, I believe, a great deal to learn from the history of the Plymouth Plantation. For, in their first year in the New World, the Pilgrims conducted an experiment in social engineering akin to what Barack Obama has attempted; and, after an abortive attempt at cultivating the land in common, their leaders reflected on the results in a manner that Americans today should find instructive. If you have the time, read my piece; glance at the blogposts by John Stossel, Frank Minister, and ReasonTV which restate my argument; and let me know what you think.

And no, I am not talking about some pallid tofu substitute.  Today, and only today, I open the comment thread for Turkey puns.

Happy Thanksgiving!

(No animals were harmed in the making of this video.) 

North Korea's attack on South Korea this Thanksgiving week caused me, as a Korean immigrant, to be grateful for the United States' lonely defense of the West during the Cold War.  In 1950, President Harry Truman immediately sent troops in response to a Chinese-sanctioned invasion of the South by the North.  Intervention in Korea did not just advance American interests in the short term. It also benefited human welfare in Korea and throughout Asia. South Korea, a small agrarian nation with a population of 21 million in 1955, today has a population of 48 million and is the thirteenth largest economy in the world with a GNP of $888 billion (nominal GNP in 1962 was only $2.3 billion).  North Korea’s population, by contrast, has stagnated for the decade at around 21-22 million, with annual economic growth of less than half of one percent; its economy is barely functional with a GNP of no more than $40 billion (which ranks it at the very bottom in the world), and its society is governed by the most extreme communist dictatorship left on earth.

The Vietnam war, too, took its toll on the lives and treasury of the United States, and arguably destroyed two presidencies, but the effects of American withdrawal may have been even steeper—millions of Vietnamese were killed, sent to concentration camps, or fled as boat people.  Wars in both Korea and Vietnam sent important signals to the Soviet Union and China that the United States would continue to resist communist expansion forcefully.  While Korea was a stalemate, and Vietnam a defeat, communism did not spread in Asia and America's defense allowed nations such as Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, at first, and now others like Indonesia and Maylasia to rise out of poverty.   This all may have served the interests of the United States, but it should not be forgotten that the United States sent its men and women to fight and die on foreign lands so that people they never knew might live a more prosperous, peaceful life.

I’m not looking forward to parenting my kids through the high school years. From what I can tell, being a teenager gets more complicated with each generation.

I assumed that team sports might give them a healthy outlet for competitive impulses and also provide a constructive way to spend huge chunks of teen time. In other words, perhaps it will spare them from getting tangled up in those silly, brainless activities that get hatched when someone has too much time and too little supervision.

A good kid, in fact, might find a launching pad for greatness because of sports. He will make those around him better; he will learn a life lesson in being gracious in victory and defeat.

Then again, high school sports can also give adolescents the exact wrong kind of outlet. 

I read about examples of both this week.

First, I was puffed up with co-blogger pride when I read about Peter Robinson's son. In the Member Feed, Duane Oyen shared a newspaper article on the football talent of young Pedro. Duane also included a YouTube video of Pedro’s EENER Sports Player of the Week interview.

Like his dad, young Pedro is a class act—gracious in victory, quick to deflect praise to others, cheerful but not ecstatic, and eloquent but not hoity-toity.

But then there was this story today in my local newspaper, the New Canaan Advertiser. New Canaan High School plays neighboring Darien High each Thanksgiving in a friendly yet spirited football game. New Canaan has won this contest for the past six years. However, Darien enters tomorrow's game with a 10-0 record. Spirits are especially high, and the rivalry has boiled over in an unfortunate way.

According to police reports, a handful of Darien football players snuck onto the New Canaan High School campus around midnight last night and spray-painted the team motto in several key locations. The largest single piece of vandalism was a large D painted over a walkway of memorial bricks.

The cost of damages is “sizable.”

"You are going to have to factor in man hours of cleanup but you are also going to have to look at what can’t be cleaned up and would have to be replaced,” said Assistant NCHS Principal Ari Rothman. “…The paint that was used was an oil-based paint and, as I understand, it was particularly heavy duty. There was deliberate maliciousness in using that type of paint. Any type of paint is wrong, but by using that type of paint it indicated a real desire to damage property and to cost us money.”

Harmless prank? Perhaps, but it seems a step beyond the knocking-down-of-the-goal-posts or stealing-the-stuffed-mascot hijinks that have always given these kinds of high school rivalries spice. This reeks of a deep disregard for others – the people who will clean up the mess, the players who will have to play the biggest game of the year without their teammates, and the parents who (perhaps, perhaps not) tried their very best to raise these young kids right.

Peter, how’d you do it?

....but don't let that dissuade you.  This short video is about the UK public sector, but it could just as well be about the US.  If you're surrounded by lefty relatives this Thanksgiving, save your breath. Just click on this:

Nicole Gelinas has a piece in City Journal about the rebirth of a well-governed, manageable New Orleans, in which crime is down and the economy is improving.  As someone who served in the Bush White House during Katrina and in the early stages of the rebuilding, I find this both encouraging and somewhat vindicating of our efforts.  Real Clear Politics has chosen to highlight Nicole's piece on this Thanksgiving eve, and we can all be thankful for this bit of good news as we join friends and family for one of our most important and meaningful American holidays.

The other day, you'll recall, Scott Reusser announced that he was "torn" over repealing the Seventeenth Amendment, which weakened the role of the states in the federalist system.  Before the Amendment, the state legislatures chose U.S. senators.  The Amendment provided instead for the direct popular election of U.S. senators.  Most of us (by my rough count) came down on the side of repeal.

After reading all this, Ricochet fan and law professor Todd Zywicki dropped me a line, giving me two items--and both are so rich I thought I'd pass them right along.

For Todd's expert argument on behalf of repeal--read it, Scott Reusser, and you'll no longer feel torn--click here.

Todd's second item?  An article in the National Law Journal reporting on the nascent repeal movement.  The article lies behind a paywall, but herewith a few choice excerpts:

The long-forgotten 17th Amendment--the one that gave us direct election of senators--has suddenly moved to center stage in the new debate over constitutional first principles fostered by the Tea Party movement...

Zywicki said he was surprised at first when the Tea Party movement, with its populist orientation, embraced repeal of the 17th Amendment, which appears to be 'somewhat anti-democratic,' because it would take away popular election of senators.

But he agrees with the analysis that, if the 17th Amendment had never been adopted, the Senate--and Congress--would not be the institutions they are today. Instead of being elected the same way as House members, they would be much more strongly tied to the interests of their states. 'It's my firm belief that 'Obamacare' would not have happened,' Zywicki said, because it overrides state prerogatives in significant ways. Unfunded mandates would not have proliferated, he added. 'There has been more federal activity of all kinds, ' since the 17th Amendment came into being, Zywicki said...

[I]n the end even Zywicki, who has beat the drums for repealing the 17th Amendment for so long, thinks it's very unlikely to happen 'in my lifetime,' in part because it seems anti-democratic, and in part because the constitutional amendment process would require two thirds of the existing Senate to approve. New senators like Mike Lee [the Tea Party candidate, just elected to the U.S. Senate from Utah, who, like Todd Zywicki, opposes the 17th Amendment] offer a glimmer of hope, but even Lee in a postelection interview also said he did not envision repealing the amendment in his lifetime. Zywicki is 44, and Lee is 39.

Still.  We can dream, can't we?