This essay has been adapted from comments that I've made around the net while debating and playing defense in the issue of Harriet Miers' nomination and to offer a defense for the horribly maligned William Bennett. The post was going to be "Enough Already", but I decided to
echo Mr. Buckley, as a sort of a hat tip from a blogger to one of his teachers. I noticed that it was Columbus day, by the way. To all who appreciate it, I raise the glass for a toast. To a new generation, huh?
Lately I've been thinking about the old and the new. This is a good place to make a note, that I'm sure I'll repeat again another time, central to my understanding of Conservatism, aka neo-liberalism/classical liberalism. That is that the appropriate educational aim should have been a progression from the Founding Era - and not a fundamental deterioration and departure from it.
In his lecture, The Rise of The West, Professor Raico, which I cited in my post on National Review's 50th, makes a sobering remark which far too many students in America's most prestigious education institutions are no longer be hearing today in calumnies and condemnationsn of their own civilization rather than defenses and elucidations about it:
The very fact that European man was able to inflict atrocities from time to time, besides other things, came from the fact that he had the power to do it. The question is, where did this power come from?... When we look around the world and see the crimes that European man is guilty of [; They] come from and reflect the essentially fallen nature of all men. European man happened to have the power to sail ships around the world starting 500 years ago, with firepower that no other people could match, and did terrible things from time to time. As Lord Acton said, power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
The cruel and oppressive inherent evils of the Soviet mega-state resulted from the fact that "if there is no truth, there is only power." I think also that the fact that there were and are unwise men and women, ourselves at one time or another inevitably, only validates the value of wisdom. When we throw it out of the window, as Mr. Raico would say, we become like the flies of the summer. The fact that men and women sin, does not mean that sin does not exist but some people have decided for themselves to buck the truth. It really comes to that. (II Ch 7:14- "If my people, which are CALLED BY MY NAME, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek MY FACE, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.") Any living relationship is one that demands mutual engagement from its parties. And as someone pointed out to me, the relationship between God and Man as Christianity teaches, is not one of brother and brother as some people demand it to be due to romantic intellectual misconceptions, it is one of Fatherhood and Sonhood; between the "Bride of Christ" and the vanquisher of Her mortal enemies. Especially the ever beguiling Prince of Nihilism and Falsity.
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Google "Bennett + racist" (or racism) for an instance of this falsity at work.
The confusion about what he said vanishes when people are informed that he was making the reductio ad absurdom argument to show a caller on his show that an argument which the caller thought was a good one, really wasn't.
That caller was trying to base the argument against abortion on demand on practicality rather than on morality; thinking that it would impress the left enough to change its mind about the deliberate destruction of an innocent, totally dependent, and helpless human being in its mothers womb. The suggestion was made to Mr. Bennett that if it wasn't for the deliberate destruction of future Americans, the Social Security system wouldn't be in as bad a shape as it is.
People have to ask: what is Mr. Bennett actually saying and commited to which causes the left to slander and to create such malignant hysteria about him? This might help people understand where the malice and or ignorance (and the two things often compliment one another) is really coming from.
As far as the President and other people reacting to reports about Bennett's alleged plan to abort Black babies (and who is really most responsible for this actually going on!?), I can't really blame them very much if that is the way that libs in the media distorted Mr. Bennett's actual point.
Did Mr. Bennett lie? All he did was point out what selfishness and materialism leads to.
Anyone with doubts right now should purchase the September 28, 2005 tapes or cd of that show from to find out for themselves by finding a radio station which carries his program, and digging just a little bit on the net for info on how to request a copy of that days "episode". I'll make it easy. 1. Go to the station guide, and 2.Search the name of the station most convenient to you.
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I would urge patience when dealing with the paranoid and confused. It appears to be a quality that is pretty lacking these days. Even among political economic and social conservatives. Our little coalition appears to be in a bit of turmoil as some feel betrayed and hyper-anxious because of the President's recent announcement on a particularly contentious domestic matter, which we are pretty familiar with by now.
I think that critics should at least wait until Miers' confirmation hearings to make a better evaluation of the President's choice. The boat is still slowly turning around in the right direction on that matter, anyway, IMHO. Here I'll confess to this good public that I admire Ms. Miers' background and think that President Bush's argument in support of his decision to select her as his appointment to a long vacant seat (can I kid a little bit?) is a good one. Ms. Miers carries with her very important practical experience in terms of business, law, and the war on terror.
Yet I keep running into the same ridiculous argument that the President's Supreme Court nominee is one that lacks substance. I find that claim to itself be lacking in the substance department. And as long as we're on the topic of the terms of this debate, the word intellectual has been thrown around too lightly, I think. So much so that it has become unavoidable for me to use it more than I usually like, because some pretty formidable intellectuals have been running out of gas intellectually in trying to maintain their position that Ms. Miers doesn't have the "right stuff" to handle the job that she's been selected to carry out.
I understand the excitement here, I really do, but people are pouring it on very liberally and that doesn't appear very judicious. What can I say, there's quite a bit of clowning going around, sometimes its hard not to joint the party. Please excuse me, good citizens. Not to compare apples to oranges here (and I don't mean that in a qualitative way), but there was a similar problem that we had with the nomination of Judge Roberts, wasn't there? That was that he hadn't been a particularly publicly ideological activist. We really are upset because neither is Harriet Miers, apparently. But the President has viewed her as a valuable asset in the highest levels of government and I think that that should count for something.
People shouldn't continue to allow themselves to be wearied or agitated at this point by the use of the term "mediocre", especially as it is coming from those with the inflexible attitude that leads some otherwise erudite and well tempered friends to accept nothing more than ideological or political carbon copies of the confirmation debate expectations that they/many of us had about taking the left, intellectually, to the woodshed for all of its abuses and offenses by serving them up Ann Coulter or Chris Hitchens in a robe. So some of our intellectual warriors were pumped but obviously not always going on with President Bush. They should remember that just as George Bush is not always right, they aren't either. Right now would be a pretty good time.
It's safe to say that his temperament is a bit different from theirs, and ironically, he appears to have unintentionally gone over the heads of our little political Einsteins. Its difficult to see eye to eye with someone when you are consumned only by what you want, I guess. Not all firebrands are identical or play the same roles. I think that a good understanding of the economic concept of the division of labor might be useful because I don't see a substantial political divide on the right here. Just a noisy tactical battle that some people took too far and now must slink away as gracefully as they can. I think this is just a case of some well intentioned and usually credible people being too eager to dig themselves into holes of philosophical speciousness.
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Useful information which supports previous arguments that Ms. Harriet Miers does indeed have "the right stuff" continues to become available. No one can deny, for long, that she is a professional and exceptional woman, and maintain their credibility.
Quote: (via liberal loather to Beldar)
"In Disney Enterprises, Inc. v. Esprit Finance, Inc., 981 S.W.2d 25 (Tex. App.—San Antonio 1998, pet. dism'd w.o.j.), the key issue was whether a wholly owned Disney subsidiary incorporated in Delaware could be subjected to the personal jurisdiction of the Texas courts. That in turn took the case into a thicket of both constitutional and nonconstitutional issues — including an analysis of whether there were sufficient 'minimum contacts' between the subsidiary and Texas so that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment would not be violated by forcing that subsidiary to respond to a lawsuit in the Texas courts. And that in turn depended on a complicated mix of factual and legal issues involving both agency and contract law. Ms. Miers lost on the personal jurisdiction issue at the trial court level, but then took an extraordinary interlocutory appeal, and won in the San Antonio Court of Appeals. Although her opponents tried to persuade the Texas Supreme Court to hear the case, Ms. Miers apparently persuaded that court to decline to hear it on jurisdictional grounds — meaning, in all probability, that she filed a persuasive brief in the Texas Supreme Court, and then did not have to appear for oral arguments on the merits (and risk losing) precisely because her brief was so persuasive.
"What does it say about Harriet Miers and her intellect and her skills? Some may say that this was 'meat and potatoes' stuff, even on the constitutional issues, and it's not the sort of case that was likely to make it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. BUT NEVERTHELESS, IT OBVIOUSLY WAS COMPLICATED ENOUGH TO PERPLEX THE TRIAL JUDGE, WHO (ACCORDING TO THE APPELATE COURT) GOT IT WRONG. It was a close enough case that Ms. Miers' opponents thought they had a shot at getting the Texas Supreme Court to hear it, even after losing at the court of appeals level. The facts and law were complicated enough that this case would have made a reasonably good law school exam question. And I'm reasonably sure that to Ms. Miers' corporate client, getting this six- or maybe seven-figure fraud case thrown out of what it would have regarded as a hostile, pro-plaintiff venue — the famously dusty streets of Laredo in Webb County, Texas — was a pretty significant victory.
"But what do they know? They're just cartoons and stuff."
Some of us righties just have no patience when it comes to pulverizing the left. But discipline is very important in any campaign or battle. And President Bush, not Bill Kristol (nor any other intellectual champion of the right), is the Commander in Chief at the moment. All in due course.
It is helpful, for those who don't know, to understand that this is an important issue to "W", and he knows that millions of Americans have put alot of energy into making sure that we don't get burned again, here. They are less steeped in fanciful and taudry social notions and interested more in just going to work and getting things that need to be done, done. Such is life in a free republic. Some people might actually view the selection of that sort of person to the United States Supreme Court as refreshing, actually. We need remind those who are forgetting, or behaving as if they have, that some very influencial people who were not not judges made some of the most drastic "contributions" to what is taught in law schools today through the Supreme Court.
The president has decided to step out of the scholarly and theoretical (think Souter and FDR's "Brain Trust" gang) and into a more practical world in his decision. Many, including myself, didn't expect that. And that doesn't seem like a very bad idea in a deeply politicized academic environment which would mean that the President has a good understanding about what he is doing and is seeking an intellectually well-grounded, rather than unhinged, person to carry his torch when he is no longer in the White House.
This is one of the things that he wanted to make an impact on, as I understood, when I voted for him in 2000 and 2004, though I didn't agree with some of his early "Compassionate Conservative" platform items; I think that people would be cheating themselves of actually knowing what's going on by assuming that the weakness is married to the strength in that context. One can exist without the other, and in this case they definitely do. The assumption and basic argument that they don't here is to assume that President Bush is a retard.
The president has decided to step out of the scholarly and theoretical (think Souter and FDR's "Brain Trust" gang) and into a more practical world in his decision. Many, including myself, didn't expect that. And that doesn't seem like a very bad idea in a deeply politicized academic environment which would mean that the President has a good understanding about what he is doing and is seeking an intellectually well-grounded, rather than unhinged, person to carry his torch when he is no longer in the White House.
This is the reason why I believe that it is most likely that Harriet Miers has some out of the box and not necessarily un-intellectual insights to contribute to the 9 member body that is the third branch of the American government.
