If you haven’t spent time living in Canada, you’ve probably never read David Warren, columnist for the Ottawa Citizen and the Southam newspaper chain. That’s a loss, because Warren is one of the most astute, perceptive observers of politics and culture I’ve ever run across. For an introduction, check out his post-election column, “Four More Years.”

Long week—two funerals and sick kids—so I’m behind on where I wanted to be; but the New York Times‘ response to this election, in the form of columnists Nicholas Kristof and Thomas Friedman, was so egregious, I had to come back to it.

Kristof had the gall to title his column “Living Poor, Voting Rich,” and to talk about “the millions of farmers, factory workers and waitresses who ended up voting—utterly against their own interests—for Republican candidates.” Excuse me? How Marxist, and how condescending! Even if one grants his economic analysis that Bush has been and will be bad economically for those he mentions (which I most emphatically do not), who is Kristof to define people’s “own interests” for them? Who said we viewed our own interests in purely economic terms? Perhaps his view of the world begins and ends with his checkbook, but mine certainly doesn’t, and I’m not alone in that. For a great many of us, our “own interests” have a great deal to do with what sort of country we want to live in; to accept a country which is far less than what we believe it should be in exchange for a few more dollars in the pocket is a deal many of us wouldn’t want to make.

On this one, Kristof would do well to read the rest of the NYC media; Newsday columnist Joseph Dolman pegged him pretty good when he wrote, “National Democrats . . . keep thinking their losses stem from Republican demagoguery or from a misunderstanding of their message by voters in the hinterlands or—let’s be totally honest—from an epidemic of stupidity among the people whose minds they want to win.

“In short, they haven’t a clue.”

Dolman’s right, which is why, as he put it, the Democrats are “whistling Dixie after another defeat.”

On the flip side, Friedman was perceptive enough to realize this, though I think he was overstating things to declare us “two nations under God.” When he writes, “this election was tipped because of an outpouring of support for George Bush by people who don’t just favor different policies than I do—they favor a whole different kind of America. We don’t just disagree on what America should be doing; we disagree on what America is,” he’s absolutely correct. My problem with his column is where he goes next:

“Is it a country that does not intrude into people’s sexual preferences and the marriage unions they want to make? Is it a country that allows a woman to have control over her body? Is it a country where the line between church and state bequeathed to us by our Founding Fathers should be inviolate? Is it a country where religion doesn’t trump science? And, most important, is it a country whose president mobilizes its deep moral energies to unite us—instead of dividing us from one another and from the world?”

Let’s take this piece by piece, shall we?

“Is it a country that does not intrude into people’s sexual preferences . . .”

Umm, two problems with this statement. One, this country always has intruded into such preferences, both at the level of who can marry whom (polygamy, for instance, is out) and at deeper levels (isn’t pedophilia a “sexual preference”?). Two, since I know Friedman isn’t really talking about “sexual preferences” generically (unless he surprises me by coming out with defenses of pedophilia and incest), last I checked, the federal government does nothing whatsoever against homosexual sex.

“. . . and the marriage unions they want to make?”

Again, our government has always defined marriage, and to define is by definition to set limits. There is nothing new about this, nor is insisting on the current operating definition of marriage anything the slightest bit new; what’s new is that some people want to change that definition. This isn’t about giving people of homosexual preference the same rights as everyone else, because they already have the same rights as everyone else: the right to marry anyone who is legally available to be married to them. What they want is to expand that definition, to change the rights which are available to anyone, and if the argument works for homosexuality, it logically works for pedophilia and incest as well. Friedman’s cast of the argument is simply a canard.

“Is it a country that allows a woman to have control over her body?”

No doubt; but this begs the question of whether or not her unborn child is in fact part of her body. I used to watch Perry Mason when I was a kid, and Perry was always objecting that Hamilton Burger’s questions “assumed facts not in evidence.” Friedman’s guilty of the same thing here.

“Is it a country where the line between church and state bequeathed to us by our Founding Fathers should be inviolate?”

History lesson, Mr. Friedman: Not “Founding Fathers,” but “Founding Father,” as in, one of them: Thomas Jefferson—and he wasn’t around when the Constitution and Bill of Rights were being drafted. The “line between church and state” is in fact a constitutionally dubious interpretation of the religion clause of the First Amendment, one which has been used to deny the actual sense of that clause: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion [in other words, it isn’t allowed to do anything about the establishment of religion one way or the other], or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” There’s been a heck of a lot of “prohibiting the free exercise thereof” done in the name of “separation of church and state,” which ain’t even a constitutional principle.

“Is it a country where religion doesn’t trump science?”

That’s not really the issue. The issue is competing religions—one particular branch (or collection of branches) of Christianity versus the religion of scientism, which is aggressively atheistic. For most on the Christian side of these battles, all we’re fighting for is a level playing field.

“And, most important, is it a country whose president mobilizes its deep moral energies to unite us—instead of dividing us from one another and from the world?”

When those who oppose this president and everything he stands for have done everything in their power to mobilize the country against him, why is it that our divisions are suddenly all his fault? In my experience, it generally takes two to be divided.

Given these questions, it’s probably no wonder that Friedman goes on to declare, “None of the real problems facing the nation were really discussed.” Personally, I’d disagree. Fortunately, we do agree on this:

“Meanwhile, there is a lot of talk that Mr. Bush has a mandate . . . . Yes, he does have a mandate, but he also has a date—a date with history.” Yes, indeed; and following Friedman’s motto, “Never put yourself in a position where your party wins only if your country fails,” I know we’ll both be rooting for President Bush to meet that date honorably and well.

Interesting election, huh? I’ve been amused by the debate over whether or not the President and the Republican Party have a “mandate”—lots of crossing commentary on that point, with some saying it’s no mandate because the country is deeply divided, while on the other hand some have even gone so far as to deny that the country is divided because Bush won a record number of votes (never mind that that’s a matter of population growth and turnout, and that his 3% margin of victory wasn’t exactly overwhelming). I’m amused because none of that really matters: he and the party won a majority, which is pretty much the bottom line.

Anyway, courtesy of sites like RealClearPolitics, I think I’ve read most of the major stuff that’s been published on this election the last couple of days. There’s been a lot of great analysis; as usual, the basic primer has already been written by the indispensable Howard Fineman of Newsweek (“A Sweet Victory . . . and a Tough Loss”). Fineman is right to make the point that Kerry in many ways ran a poor campaign, a point also made well by the LA Times‘ Matea Gold (though with no help from a grammatically-challenged headline writer: “Kerry Failed Boldly to Portray Himself”) . There’s also been, in general, a pretty thoughtful and respectful spirit, marked by the understanding that the worst that could happen isn’t Our Guy Losing, but another case of election-by-litigation reminiscent of 2000 (see Anne Appelbaum’s column in the Washington Post, “Accept the Verdict”—registration required, but it’s free).

Unfortunately, there have been exceptions, and they haven’t all been limited to blogosphere eruptions like Altercation. To be sure, from the more liberal parts of the blogosphere, one can only expect statements that “The problem is just this: Slightly more than half of the citizens of this country simply do not care about what those of us in the ‘reality-based community’ [i.e., liberals] say or believe about anything”—a statement breathtaking for its arrogance and contempt. What is concerning is that this same attitude has shown up in the more respectable print media.

The editor of The New Republic, Peter Beinart, for instance, felt justified in opening his latest column, “What Went Wrong?” with this paragraph: “The other side may be euphoric, but the intensity of their happiness can’t match the intensity of our despair. Honest conservatives, even those who admire President Bush, know he didn’t earn a second term. They know he staked his presidency on a catastrophe, and that, by all rights, Iraq should be his political epitaph. Their victory, while sweet, can’t be fully enjoyed because it isn’t fully deserved.” Excuse me? The presumptuousness in those sentences is nothing short of breathtaking. It reminds me of arguing with my younger brother when we were kids—he would say, “I know I’m right, you know I’m right, you just won’t admit it.” Apparently, Beinart believes that just because he thinks Iraq is “a catastrophe,” therefore everybody else must think so too. As it happens, there are other views of the situation.

Later on in his piece, Beinart declares, “Cultural sensitivity is one thing; principle is another. . . . The fact that [gay marriage] is widely unpopular cannot obscure the fact that it is morally momentous and morally right.” Uh-huh. A flat assertion, “I’m right and you’re in the wrong.” Why do I have the feeling that he would consider an equal but opposite assertion (“The fact that gay marriage is widely popular among the elites cannot obscure the fact that it is morally momentous and morally wrong”) to be the worst form of bigotry? What, in his view, makes his beliefs right and his opponents’ bigoted except who holds them? I’m a firm believer in moral absolutes, but it does seem to me that for those of us not wearing the prophetic mantle, the language of absolutes needs to be spoken with just a little more humility—we need to speak and write out of the awareness that our perceptions are always, at best, fuzzy around the edges, and that our understanding is never equal to the truths we perceive. As such, even if he were correct (which I don’t believe he is), that statement would be hubristic.

Of course, anyone who feels justified in describing “Tom DeLay’s America” as “craven toward the economically powerful and vicious toward the economically weak, contemptuous of open debate and thuggish toward an increasingly embittered world” clearly has never encountered the concept that one should always give one’s opponents credit for good motives until proven otherwise; he truly does seem to believe that conservatives, deep down, must logically share his view of the world, and thus that conservative opposition to his favored policies must stem from base motives. Not fair, not just, and not right. Wasn’t stereotyping supposed to be a bad word?

Note: in his column of 11/12, Beinart wrote this: “In my last column (“What Went Wrong,” November 15), I wrote, ‘Honest conservatives, even those who admire Bush, know he didn’t earn a second term.’ That was a poor way of expressing my point: that, judging from the president’s low approval rating and the large percentage of people who felt the country was on the ‘wrong track,’ Bush had not convinced most Americans he deserved a second term. They gave him one because of their reservations about Kerry. My argument was a political, not a moral, one. I have no doubt that many honest conservatives believe Bush is a good, even great, president, and that, in their eyes, he has earned a second term.” I still disagree, but the restatement does take the arrogance of the column down a notch.

I’ve been intending to post something regarding the PC(USA)’s recent shameful entanglement with Hizb’allah, and some of the defenses which have been offered, but I’m still mulling that. In the meantime, those who don’t follow politics north of the 49th parallel might be interested in Fr. Raymond J. DeSouza’s commentary on the recent Canadian federal election. During our time in BC, I used to tell people that Prime Minister Jean Chrétien was the world’s only elected dictator, since parliamentary rules essentially turned the Canadian House of Commons into his personal fiefdom. It appears things have changed, which is a profoundly good thing. Here’s hoping, despite Fr. DeSouza’s concerns, that this opens the way for a recovery of strength by Canada’s somewhat beleaguered social conservatives.

Oh, and a side note: in the article, Canadian Supreme Court Justice Ian Binnie is quoted as calling the Charter of Rights and Freedoms “the glue that holds the country together.” Silly man; every true Canadian knows that Tim Hortons is the glue that holds Canada together . . .

It’s been quite a month, but life’s settled down again, mostly. I haven’t seen The Passion of the Christ yet, nor am I looking forward to it, but I imagine when I do it will spark a few thoughts. What caught me today was this article on the lack of regulation of American abortion clinics; I’m not sure which horrifies me more, the stories of how bad some of those clinics have gotten, or the fact that the abortion industry has been fighting regulation tooth and nail. Shouldn’t “women’s reproductive health” be more than a slogan? I have relatives who are nurses and doctors, and I’ve spent plenty of time in hospitals, both as a patient and as staff, and while I respect and appreciate most of my colleagues in healthcare (well, former colleagues, now), I have no illusions as to the necessity of regulation–and neither do they.