Author Archives: Rob Harrison

H. L. Mencken, Grover Cleveland, Sarah Palin, Barack Obama . . . and leadership

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Of all the blogs I’ve ever run across, I think Heaven Better Have Lightsabers has to have the most fun name. Fortunately, Hurley’s blog doesn’t waste its title. Today, he (?) has a post up called “H. L. Mencken on Leadership” which is a commentary on an extended quotation from a Mencken piece on Grover Cleveland, including these selections:

There was never any string tied to old Grover. He got into politics, not by knuckling to politicians, but by scorning and defying them, and when he found himself opposed in what he conceived to be sound and honest courses, not only by politicians but by the sovereign people, he treated them to a massive dose of the same medicine.

*****

No President since Lincoln, not even the melancholy Hoover, has been more bitterly hated, or by more people.

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He came from an excellent family, but his youth had been a hard one, and his cultural advantages were not of the best.

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He banged along like a locomotive. If man or devil got upon the track, then so much the worse for man or devil.

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Any man thus obsessed by a concept of duty is bound to seek support for it somewhere outside himself. He must rest it on something which seems to him to be higher than mere private inclination or advantage.

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He was not averse to popularity, but he put it far below the approval of conscience.

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It is not likely that we shall see his like again, at least in the present age. The Presidency is now closed to the kind of character that he had so abundantly. It is going, in these days, to more politic and pliant men. They get it by yielding prudently, by changing their minds at the right instant, by keeping silent when speech is dangerous. Frankness and courage are luxuries confined to the more comic varieties of runners-up at national conventions.

Hurley comments,

From my opinion it’s perfectly applicable to replace the ‘he/him/his’ with she and her, president with governor, and Grover Cleveland with Sarah Palin. I don’t know what the Governor wants in the future, but she doesn’t seem like the sort of lady who is going to let a hoard of ignorant tools define her as a person.

I have to agree, and to add that the last selection he cites is a dead ringer for Barack Obama (and, for that matter, for Joe Biden, definitely among “the more comic varieties of runners-up”). I am reminded in all this of a famous line about President Cleveland, from the speech in which he was nominated for what would be his second term (his third convention, since Benjamin Harrison held the office between Cleveland’s two terms), which I have often thought applies to Gov. Palin:

They love him for the enemies he has made.

Will the blood of martyrs water a new tree of liberty in Iran?

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We may only hope and pray so, because a river of blood is flowing in the streets of Tehran that could water a whole forest. The Anchoress has a good roundup, as usual—check it out, and follow the links. The Iranian regime has literally declared war on the opposition, sending the militia out to beat women to death, murder unarmed protestors with axes, and throw people off bridges. An Iranian woman told CNN,

This was exactly a massacre. You should stop this. You should help the people of Iran who demand freedom. . . .

In the previous days they are killing students with axes, they put the axe through the heart of young men, and it’s so devastating I don’t know how to describe it.

This is horrific, this is genocide, this is a massacre, this is Hitler. And you people should stop it. It’s time to act.

Another Iranian writes,

I am writing to beg for your attention and assistance in any way possible. An innocent, peaceful, historic momentum, unprecedented in recent history, has come alive in our world that is being brutally put down with violence, lies, and dirty politics for power and riches. You, no matter where you are, have been inflicted by the evil nature of this current going round in our globe.

My brothers and sisters, come together in any way you can. Join the arms of our innocent people whose blood is being shed for peace and human rights which you may be blessed with elsewhere. Our hands are stretched out, reaching out for your support from outside. We are confronting a formidable power as ancient and infectious as hatred, tyranny, intolerance, prejudice and racism. We need your help. . . .

We as a nation are pleading desperately to the world that we MUST not recognize this regime legitimate. We need to use all our strength and unity to pressure it to leave the office before our voice is shut down.

In response to such impassioned pleas, our president boldly decided that since the mullahs hadn’t accepted his invitation to the weenie roast, he’d rescind the invitation.

. . . !

Of course, as Mark Steyn notes, Barack Obama does have a timing problem:

he chose as a matter of policy to legitimize the Iranian regime at the very moment they chose to delegitimize themselves—first, by stealing the election to an unprecedented degree and, then, by killing people who objected to them doing so.

That’s awfully bad timing, and one sympathizes, as one would if Nixon had gone to China a week before Tiananmen Square. But the fact is it’s happened and adjusting to that reality makes more sense than banking on being able to re-legitimize Khamenei and Ahmadinejad.

What really strikes me about this whole bloody, evil vortex—the swirling firestorm of the nihilistic will to power clashing with the desire of a people to be free, a mad dream of some Islamic Nietzsche—is that people are being murdered, shot off rooftops, for shouting “God is great!” (“Allahu akbar!”). A regime ostensibly founded on religion—but more accurately, on the religio-tribal identity that is Shi’ism—has had its true power-mad heart exposed; it’s starting to look like its own religion is turning against it, and like the mullahs will sacrifice even Islam for the sake of power. Perhaps that’s just a fanciful thought, but it’s how things look to me.

It’s important to remember, though, that if Springsteen’s right and “freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose,” then Ahmadinejad and the mullahs are still the freest ones in this whole fight. They’re free to do anything, because if they lose this battle, nothing else matters; they and their supporters literally have no other options but victory or death. The leaders of the opposition can always go into exile, but the likes of Ahmadinejad and Khamenei have nowhere else to go. As such, Spengler is right: this is an extremely complex and dangerous situation, and it’s impossible to predict what will happen next. As he points out, the real wildcard in all this is Israel; the Netanyahu government had best be considering their next move verycarefully, because the consequences, for good or ill, could be beyond reckoning.

Still, in all this, Robert Kaplan is right to say that there is great reason for hope—and that this is all happening as a consequence of our intervention in Iraq (which is why, incidentally, his fellow Atlantic contributor Jeffrey Goldberg was wrong to portray that intervention as a mistake; it was, rather, a calculated risk):

It is crucial that we reflect on an original goal of regime change in Iraq. Anyone who supported the war must have known that toppling Saddam Hussein, a Sunni Arab—whether it resulted in stable democracy, benign dictatorship or sheer chaos—would strengthen the Shiite hand in the region. This was not seen as necessarily bad. The Sept. 11 terrorists had emanated from the rebellious sub-states of the sclerotic Sunni dictatorships of Egypt and Saudi Arabia, whose arrogance and aversion to reform had to be allayed by readjusting the regional balance of power in favor of Shiite Iran. It was hoped that Iran would undergo its own upheaval were Iraq to change. Had the occupation of Iraq been carried out in a more competent manner, this scenario might have unfolded faster and more transparently. Nevertheless, it is happening. And not only is Iran in the throes of democratic upheaval, but Egypt and Saudi Arabia have both been quietly reforming apace.

 

On Barack Obama’s (mis)handling of Iran

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The president is to be commended for giving HuffPo’s Nico Pitney the high sign before yesterday’s press conference so that Pitney would be primed to pass along this question from an Iranian dissident:

Under which conditions would you accept the election of Ahmadinejad? And if you do accept it without any significant changes in the conditions there, isn’t that a betrayal of—of what the demonstrators there are working to achieve?

As Paul Mirengoff points out, Pitney is also to be commended for hitting the president with that question:

What a terrific question—a query that not one in a thousand American journalists could be expected to match—and kudos to Pitney for selecting it. The question elegantly but pointedly (1) refutes the suggestion of Obama’s apologists that the president helps the protesters by remaining above the fray while (2) reminding Obama that he cannot really remain above the fray in any event because he must eventually accept the election of Ahmadinejad by dealing with him as planned or reject that fraudulently reached outcome by changing his course.

However, as Mirengoff continues, the president is not to be commended for his response to that question:

The president could only bob and weave. He responded that the U.S. did not have observers on the ground and therefore could not know whether the election was legitimate. But the U.S. knows that the candidates were pre-screened by the regime, making the election inherently illegitimate.

He responded further that it is up to the Iranian people, not the U.S., to view the election as legitimate or not. But a portion, and probably very large portion, of the Iranian people has already decided that the election is not legitimate; yet the “result” will stand and Ahmadinejad will serve another term. Thus, the ball is now in the Obama administration’s court to treat the election as legitimate, by dealing with Ahmadinejad even as he represses his own people, or to demur.

The question thus stands unanswered by Obama, though it answers itself: if Obama treats Ahmadinejad as the legitimate leader of Iran in the absence of significant changes in conditions there, that would indeed constitute a betrayal of what the demonstrators are working to achieve.

It doesn’t help that even as he finally offered a strong statement against the mullahs’ treatment of Iranian protestors, he still wanted to have them over for hot dogs (and negotiate with their terrorists).

This is the most unrealistic sort of political “realism” imaginable. Michael Rubin lays out the reasons why:

1. The command and control over any military nuclear program would be in the hands of the Office of the Supreme Leader and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the same groups who are now facing down the Iranian people. In other words, we share a common adversary with the Iranian people. We need to recognize that. The problem has never been the Iranian people—they indeed are far more moderate than their government. We should do nothing to antagonize them (which is why all the talk among some realists of outreach to the Mujahedin a-Khalq or playing an ethnic strategy is wrong, hamfisted, and counterproductive). We need to focus on how to counter and neutralize our common adversary.

2. Realism is about maximizing U.S. interests. Preserving an enemy regime is not realism. It is simply stupid. We should not be throwing a lifeline to the Islamic Republic, the fall of which would enable Iran to emerge as a force for moderation in the region, and allow the Iranian people to take their rightful place among nations.

 

Bullet dodged

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Obviously the big political news of the day was the bizarre story of South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford’s attempt at a secret jaunt to Buenos Aires (over Father’s Day, no less!) to tryst with his mistress—news that was especially painful coming so soon after the revelation of Senator (R-NV) John Ensign’s extramarital affair (a revelation that came only when the husband he’d cuckolded tried to extort money from him). Aside from saying that the GOP will be better off when neither of these two men represent it in any significant way, the only comment I trust myself to offer is this: I am deeply grateful that the speculation last summer that Sanford might be John McCain’s running mate did not bear fruit. Whether it was Sen. McCain’s instincts or A. B. Culvahouse’s vetting, it’s a very good thing that the old maverick went another way; for all the attempts to convince people that Sarah Palin hurt the ticket, if Sanford had been on it, this would all have blown up and the campaign would have been over before the convention.

Oh, and one other thing: the worst sort of hypocrite is the sort who uses their hypocrisy for personal gain, and the worst type of those would have to be those who use it to gain political power. There but for the grace of God go I, I know, but I pray that my soul is never so twisted that I can really comprehend how a man can leave his wife to raise his children while he jets off to another country to have sex with another woman. I know, I am a man, nothing human is alien to me—but I don’t really understand that, and I don’t want to understand that. That’s not the treason of Judas, but it’s not too far short of it, and Judas looks too uncomfortably familiar to me as it is.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom

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Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord! O Lord, hear my voice!
Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my pleas for mercy!
If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand?
But with you there is forgiveness, that you may be feared.

—Psalm 130:1-4 (ESV)

I found myself, upon reading this psalm (along with Psalms 131 and 134) to my older girls this evening, explaining to them the whole concept of the fear of the Lord. It’s rather a difficult one, especially for an eight-year-old and a five-year-old, since obviously I don’t want them to go around terrified of God—and yet, they need to understand this. I need to understand this. I’m sure there are many who could do a much better job than I did, but here (more or less) is what I told them.

  • Awe. A couple years ago at Thanksgiving, we took a trip through Arches, Canyonlands, Bryce Canyon, and the Grand Canyon. The kids absolutely loved it. I reminded them of how they’d felt looking out across those great canyons—including the element of fear of what would happen if they fell in. In the same way, only far, far more so, God is great and glorious and beautiful—and not safe.
  • Holiness. Our God is a consuming fire, as Deuteronomy and Hebrews tell us; if we as we are, unholy, impure, and frail, were to enter his presence, we would burn like moths in a flame. There’s a reason Isaiah was terrified at even just a vision of the holiness of God: it’s more than we can bear.
  • Wrath. Along with this goes the wrath of God against sin, which is the mainspring of his judgment on sin, which we have richly earned for the waywardness of our hearts—even the best of us. God is the one who cannot and will not tolerate sin, and the judge of all the earth; we should feel in our bones the truth that we deserve only his judgment.
  • Discipline. To be sure, you might well say that those who are in Christ have been given instead his grace, and that is true; and yet, our sin still deserves his wrath, and just because we have received grace does not mean we’ve been given a “get out of punishment free” card. Rather the contrary: “The Lord disciplines the one he loves.” As Hebrews notes, discipline is painful rather than pleasant, even though it brings good fruit.
  • The untamed God. We cannot control God; we cannot make him do what we want, or keep him from doing what we do not want, and we cannot ensure that he will only ask us to do what we want to do and feel comfortable doing. As Mr. Beaver says of Aslan, God is good, but he isn’t safe—and there is nothing less safe than surrendering control to him that he may call us and lead us where and as he will. (Not that our control is ever anything more than an illusion anyway, but it’s an illusion to which we cling desperately for all that.) We fear what he may do to us, and where he may take us; we fear the loss of all we’ve ever known and wanted—and quite reasonably so, for God may indeed require all that of us and more, even to the point of asking us to lay down our lives in his service. Of course, he promises to give us a far better life in exchange, but that’s an unknown quantity, and we fear the unknown.

As we are, we could not bear the full presence of God; we could not even survive a glimpse of his face. In Jesus Christ, he has made a way for us to enter his presence, he has opened a way for us through the veil—but he is still the Lord of the Universe and the Creator of all that is, his glory is still a light to blast our eyes out the backs of our skulls and his holiness is still a fire that would burn us beyond even the memory of ash; if he has made it safe for us to come to him, it’s not because he himself is safe or because we are somehow worthy to stand in his presence, but rather because he paid the price in himself for us to do so.

Even with all that Christ has done for us, it remains true that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom—because the beginning of wisdom is not to take God lightly, or to take his grace for granted.

Leftist faith and Sarah Palin

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In observing the sheer bloody-mindedness with which some on the Left cling, in the face of almost all evidence*, to the “Sarah Palin is a moron” meme, I’ve come to a conclusion: some liberals are just firmly convinced that all conservatives are stupid, or else we wouldn’t be conservatives. This just seems to be an article of absolute faith, core dogma, for some on the Left, judging by the way they treat folks on the Right. Given that, no amount of evidence to the contrary can shake their conviction; they dogmatically insist that Sarah Palin is a moron, with no supporting evidence offered save the fact that she’s conservative, and therefore by definition must be a moron. It’s simply a matter of faith that they are the enlightened ones, and she is not.

Which is to say that perhaps we’ve been wrong in talking about conservative Christians as the “faith-based community”; there’s a section of the Left that’s every bit as much a faith-based community as all that. The difference is, their faith isn’t in God, but rather in their own superiority.

*Sure, there’s the Katie Couric interview, in which Gov. Palin most assuredly did not acquit herself well—though even there, she did a lot better than the editing made her look. But hey, even the brightest folks look really dumb sometimes; at least she didn’t say there are 57 states, or that Austrians speak Austrian, or give the British government a middling assortment of DVDs that can’t be played in Britain, or try to get into the Oval Office through a window. Even Barack Obama looks like an imbecile at times, and Joe Biden like a blithering idiot—though to be sure, VP Biden actually is a blithering idiot . . .

A few links on Iran

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On The Corner, Kathryn Jean Lopez posted a brief interview with Daniel Pipes, director of theMiddle East Forum and a Fellow of the Hoover Institution, on the current situation in Iran. As always, Pipes has some interesting things to say, including his statement that “the startling events in Iran in the week since the election have transformed [Mir Hossein] Mousavi from a hack Islamist politician into the unlikely symbol of dreams for a more secular and free Iran,” and his judgment that Ahmadinejad and the mullahs have been seriously weakened by the protests. (Bernard-Henri Lévy agrees.) Perhaps his most interesting comment, though, is his concluding observation:

I am taken aback by the nearly complete absence of Islam in the discussion. One hears about democracy, freedom, and justice, all of which do play a role, but the key issue is the Iranian population’s repudiation of the Islamist ideology that has dominated its lives for the past 30 years. Should the regime in Tehran be shaken by current challenges, this will likely have profound implications for the global career of radical Islam.

This dovetails with what I’ve heard from other sources (as do the comments by Jared Cohen which I noted last week) that disillusionment with Islam is widespread in Iran, especially among younger Iranians; I would imagine that if the regime were in fact to collapse, what would remain would still be a Muslim country, but a rather exhausted one (perhaps analogous to Europe after the end of the religious wars of the 17th century).

As regards the president’s tepid response to the protests in Iran, Michael Ledeen posted the following:

I’ve received what purports to be a statement from Mousavi’s Office in Tehran. Like everyone else covering the revolution, I get a lot of material that can’t be authenticated, and one must always take such material with a healthy dose of skepticism. That said, the person who sent this to me is undoubtedly in touch with the Mousavi people on the ground, that much is certain. His information has been proven reliable throughout this period. So while the following open letter carefully puts distance between the author(s) and Mousavi himself, I am quite sure that at a minimum it accurately reflects the state of mind of the Mousavi people.

The letter expresses strong displeasure with Barack Obama:

In the name of the Iranian people, we want you to know that when you recently made the statement “Achmadinejad or Mousavi? Two of a kind,” we consider this as a grave and deep insult, not just to Mr. Mousavi but especially against the judgment of the Iranian people, against our moral conviction and intelligence, especially those of the young generation that comprises a population of 31 million.

It is a specially grave insult for those who are now fighting for democracy and freedom, and an unwarranted gift and even praise for Mr. Khamenei, whose security forces are now killing peaceful Iranians in the streets of every major city in the country.

Your statement misled the people of the world. It was no doubt inspired by your hope for dialogue with this regime, but you cannot possibly believe in promises from a regime that lies to its own people and then kills them when they demand the promises be kept.

By such statements, your administration and you discourage the Iranian people, who believe and trust in the values of democracy and freedom. We are pleased to see that you have condemned the regime’s murderous violence, and we look forward to stronger support for the rightful struggle of the Iranian people against the actions of a regime that is your enemy as well as ours.

Ledeen’s post includes several other important things as well, including an excerpt from a speech Mousavi made yesterday. Meanwhile, the inimitable Rich Lowry posted on The Corner imagining how President Obama might have handled several other touchy international situations throughout history, including the Nazi air assault on London:

Any time a city is bombed for 57 straight nights, we take notice. That is something that interests us. We hope all national air forces involved in this dismaying conflict behave responsibly.

Fortunately, British PM Gordon Brown is taking up the slack; leaving the field free for him might be the nicest thing the Obama administration has done for the British government yet (not that there’s any competition for that particular honor).

“We are with others, including the whole of the European Union unanimously today, in condemning the use of violence, in condemning media suppression,” Brown said in Brussels after an EU summit.

“It is for Iran now to show the world that the elections have been fair . . . that the repression and the brutality that we have seen in these last few days is not something that is going to be repeated.

“We want Iran to be part of the international community and not to be isolated. But it is for Iran to prove . . . that they can respect these basic rights,” he said. . . .

During his rant, Ayatollah Khamenei called Britain “the most treacherous” enemy of Iran.

The Iranians have set their sights on Britain because they know they have a cream puff in the White House. Britain poses problems because it can push for EU trade sanctions against Iran.

Brown didn’t roll over when the ayatollah attacked. He hit back. On Friday, Brown’s Foreign Office summoned the Iranian ambassador and sharply critiqued Iranian attacks on Britain and the election process.

After demonstrating weakness, an embarrassed Obama administration slowly and reluctantly has ramped up its criticism of the tyrannical regime in Iran. . . .

Given the opportunity to simply support democracy, Obama decided to take a pass.

The unanswered question is why Barack Obama has been determined to coddle this crazed regime in Tehran.

Every cloud has a silver lining, though, and the one here is considerable; as Jeffrey Goldberg points out, fear of Iran has largely outweighed the hostility of Sunni Arab governments toward Israel, creating the possibility of a Sunni-Israeli alliance. At the very least, as I noted late last year, those Arab governments would dearly love for Israel to take down Iran and its proxies before Iran has the chance to come after them. How this will all play out, I don’t know (certainly, it isn’t as if we have a long history of things breaking right in modern southern/southwestern Asia), but at least there’s the possibility of good things happening.

Update: At least something convinced President Obama to take a stand against the Iranian government and its use of violence against its own people; I don’t know if it was the killings, the poll numbers, or what, but whatever the case, it’s welcome.

 

Thought on the true nature and purpose of the conscience

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As I’ve noted before, “conscience” is a problematic word in our culture—not because it’s a hard concept to understand, but because we find it a hard one to accept. We don’t want our conscience to be something that pokes at us and makes us face the fact when we’re doing something wrong; we tend to want to do what we want to do, and we want to believe that if we can convince ourselves we feel good about doing what we want to do, then it must be OK.

As such, what a lot of folks in this world end up doing is essentially turning their conscience off—refusing to pay attention to its promptings, finding ways to dismiss it, teaching themselves to feel good (at least on the surface) about doing what they want to do, and then calling that good feeling their conscience. That way, they can tell themselves (and whoever else might happen to come around) that their conscience is clear about their actions.

Unfortunately, if we really want to, it’s not all that hard to get ourselves to the point where we’re standing proudly defiant of the will of God in the absolute (if self-generated) conviction that we’re obeying his will; and to the casual observer, it can be difficult to distinguish such stands from true acts of conscience. After all, Martin Luther launched the Reformation, in part, with an appeal to conscience, refusing to bow to the power of the Roman church because “to go against conscience is neither right nor safe”; these days, there are a lot of folks running around who want to be little Luthers, condemning the church for its teachings and declaring, “Here I stand.” Some are very convincing.

What too many people lack, though, is the central point of Luther’s statement: “My conscience is captive to the word of God”; this is the foundation for everything else. If your conscience is captive to the word of God, if your focus is on obeying God even when it’s the last thing you want to do, if you’ve been training and strengthening your conscience in faithful study of the Scriptures and in prayer—as Luther had—then yes, to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. If not, then you may very well be going against conscience and not even know it.

The key point is that conscience is not self-generated, because we aren’t the arbiters of reality—no, not even of “our own” reality, because there’s no such thing; whether we like it or not, our reality is the same as everyone else’s. The purpose of conscience isn’t to give us the perception of moral reality that suits our preferences, but rather to help us perceive moral reality as it is—to tell us what truly is right and wrong, not to confirm us in our own ideas and wishes on the subject.

This isn’t something we always want (which is why any person who truly functions as the conscience of an organization is going to be intensely unpopular at times), but it’s something we need, and badly, because we aren’t pure; we’re sullied by sin in all its various forms, and that distorts and occludes our judgment. As much as we may want to be the highest authority in our lives, we just aren’t qualified for the job—and it’s not so much what we don’t know that gets us into trouble (significant though that often is) as what we do know that ain’t so; it’s especially those things that we convince ourselves we know, not because of the available evidence, but because we desperately want to believe them. Those are the areas where we most need correction—and the areas in which we’re least willing to accept it; the role of conscience is precisely to convict and correct us at the points where we least want it, to inflict discomfort in order to prevent greater pain.

 

(Derived from “God’s Grace, Our Counterfeit”)

The wikification of U.S. intelligence

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This is highly encouraging:

The key, of course (as the video notes) is not the existence of Intellipedia but rather a shift in mindset among our various intelligence agencies—a shift which has yet to occur—from the fiefdom/guildhall-type thinking that has long prevailed to a truly wikified approach to the production of intelligence. This will be difficult for them, but as Marc Ambinder points out, the potential rewards of such a shift are high:

Rasmussen proposes a new production method called “transparent review” that would remove the walls between collaboration and agency vetting. On the same “page,” it would allow different agencies to revise and review the Wiki in question, and then, if they approved of the substance, endorse it, right there on the page. Or, if they differed, they’d be given the space, right there on the page, to explain why. The beauty of this construct is that the dynamism of the intelligence analytical product is kept but the totality of the product becomes authoritative. Dissent is still allowed; consensus is not necessarily encouraged.