For Decisiveness

National treasure Victor Davis Hanson plumps for bold assertiveness in American foreign policy, and ticks off examples:

Every time the United States the last quarter century had acted boldly — its removal of Noriega and aid for the Contras, instantaneous support for a reunified Germany, extension of NATO, preference for Yeltsin instead of Gorbachev, Gulf War I, bombing of Milosevic, support for Sharon's fence, withdrawal from Gaza and decapitation of the Hamas killer elite, taking out the Taliban and Saddam-good things have ensued. In contrast, on every occasion that we have temporized — abject withdrawal from Lebanon, appeasement of Arafat at Oslo, a decade of inaction in the Balkans, paralysis in Rwanda, sloth in the face of terrorist attacks, not going to Baghdad in 1991 — corpses pile up and the United States became either less secure or less respected or both.

So it is also in this present war, in which our unheralded successes far outweigh our notorious mistakes. A number of books right now in galleys are going to look very, very silly, as they forecast American defeat, a failed Middle East, and the wages of not listening to their far smarter recommendations of using the U.N. more, listening to Europe, or bringing back the Clinton A-Team.

There's a long way to go, but Hanson's insight seems profound to me. History does not belong to the namby-pamby, even as it disappoints the reckless.

Dead Metaphors In the Making: McCarthyism, Holocaust, Nazi

Outgoing Colorado University President Betsy Thompson announced just before calling it quits that a new era of "McCarthyism" is besetting the universities.

This claim is patent nonsense when applied to the hounds baying for the resignation of pseudo-Indian art-forger Professor Ward Churchill. Churchill, in turn, is in Dutch for calling the dead, well, at least the stockbroker dead at the World Trade Center, "little Eichmanns." Doddering relic Sen. Robert Byrd has been the butt of criticism for comparing a possible Republican attempt to restrict the right to filibuster Presidential nominees to the behavior of Hitler when he first came to power.

Others have divagated at length on the accuracy of these particular statements, and I will leave that task to them. What interests me instead is the continued currency of three memes commonly used as epithets:

• "McCarthyism" and its variant, "witchhunt."


• Comparison of any pattern of cruelty or murder to the "Holocaust."


• The more general and someone less severe "Nazi" analogy, whether applied to George Bush, Bill Frist, or an arrogant dispenser of soup on the TV comedy Seinfeld.

These epithets are in constant use, and like any metaphor in constant use, they tend to flatten and become divorced from their original meaning. Take the term "shibboleth," which originated in a Bible story in which the choice of pronouncing the word as "shibboleth" or "sibboleth" meant death for those who used the wrong dialect.

Judges 12:4 (NIV) Jephthah then called together the men of Gilead and fought against Ephraim. The Gileadites struck them down because the Ephraimites had said, "You Gileadites are renegades from Ephraim and Manasseh."

Judges 12:5 (NIV) The Gileadites captured the fords of the Jordan leading to Ephraim, and whenever a survivor of Ephraim said, "Let me cross over," the men of Gilead asked him, "Are you an Ephraimite?" If he replied, "No,"

Judges 12:6 (NIV) they said, "All right, say "Shibboleth." If he said, "Sibboleth," because he could not pronounce the word correctly, they seized him and killed him at the fords of the Jordan. Forty-two thousand Ephraimites were killed at that time.

Today a "shibboleth" is defined here as no more than a " A word or phrase identified with a particular group or cause; a catchword." Only to those familiar with the Bible story does it connote a massacre of a particular tribe.

The term "McCarthyism" and its partner "witchhunt" are now a dime a dozen. "McCarthyism" is used mostly, but not exclusively, by liberals and leftists to tag critics with irresponsibility and a desire to suppress speech they disagree with. Most of the people who use it know very little about McCarthy or his era. McCarthy, of course, was right on the central themes of his message -- American communists were subservient to a hostile and murderous state, Stalin's USSR, and had obtained substantial influence in the New Deal government, the unions, and the nation's cultural life. In a time of conflict with the USSR and its philosophy, sometimes hot as in Korea, and sometimes "cold," as in occupied Germany, explaining these facts and exposing secret communists in such places was a legitimate exercise, as I discuss in more detail here.

The related "witchhunt" analogy comes from the late Arthur Miller's play, The Crucible. The pressure on certain witnesses to "name names," or identify other communists and ex-communists, was analogized to the use of torture on accused witches to force them to identify others. It was a silly analogy to start with because few "victims" in the McCarthy era were accused entirely falsely, nor was torture a part of the process.

People today use "McCarthyism" to denounce any unwelcome questioning of the political views of others. Incredibly, Betsy Hoffman, a university president, no less, compared the statements of those who said they'd like Ward Churchill fired to the McCarthyism of myth -- a reputed use of power to suppress legitimate dissent and social criticism.

Whether one thinks that not firing Churchill for his disgusting remark is a price we pay for First Amendment liberties, or whether one thinks that the Republic will survive if, in a time of war, a repulsive fraud is canned for his repulsive remarks, the remarks are repulsive and unworthy of any substantive defense, and those who object to them neither intend to nor are likely to usher in an age of intolerance and autos-da-fé.

All this may be true, but the "McCarthyism" meme used to define any systematic attack on critical speech is no doubt here to stay, used not just by liberals and leftists, but by center-rightists as well as a kind of terminological judo.

A second series of historical events, the murder of millions of Jews by the Nazis, now conventionally and inappropriately called the "Holocaust" (because the Biblical holocaust was part of a religious ritual, and there was nothing sacred or holy about the Nazi mass murders), is used to refer to everything from other genocides, to Israeli misdeeds against Palestinians, to the factory farming of chickens, as in PETA's notorious "Holocaust on your plate" campaign.

The Holocaust is a far more horrible and emotional concept than McCarthyism, and the battle over who can appropriate it for what purpose rages on. There are those who contend it is unique and incommensurable with any other event or series of events in history, while others would confine its use to mass genocides such as in Rwanda or Cambodia. In part this notion of the Holocaust as sui generis is part of an effort to use horror at the Nazi murders as an emotion-evoking symbol to try to unify an otherwise discordant Jewish community, and to discredit criticism of Israeli policy.

Even Israeli opponents of Ariel Sharon's planned evacuation of Gaza use Nazi-era phrases like Judenrein (clean, or empty of Jews). The phrase, and the concept, in short, are undergoing generalization, to the extent that it is becoming a virtually "dead metaphor."

Dead metaphors, by definition, normally go unnoticed; people are typically unaware of the origin of words. For instance, consideration is a metaphor meaning "take the stars into account", mantel means "cloak or hood to catch smoke", gorge means throat, and so forth for thousands more.

"Holocaust" is just coming to refer to any acts of cruelty applied to large groups.

Inappropriate, and in the case of PETA, disgusting, but probably inevitable.

The related "Nazi" term is less emotionally charged than "Holocaust," and is now used to refer to any form of harsh or authoritarian behavior. On the comedy show Seinfeld, a nasty soup-seller is referred to as the "Soup Nazi." Rush Limbaugh coined the term "feminazis" to refer to aggressive, know-it-all feminists. And Sen. Byrd compares a possible restriction on filibusters to the political process that led to dictatorship and the death of 40 million people in World War II. If people were more circumspect, the Nazi analogy would be reserved for the Saddam Husseins of the world, torturers, totalitarians, and exterminationist racists. But people are not circumspect, and "Nazi" is on its way to becoming a dead metaphor. It's no doubt a dishonor to the victims of the real Nazis, but it's a common usage, and there's not much to be done about it.

Speak Truth to Failure

This piece praises the nomination of John Bolton as UN Ambassador.

Apparently some Democrats are trying to make this appointment an issue. We need an appointee who knows a failed institution when he sees it, and tells the truth. It's a cartel of tyrants, a sinecure for third-world bureaucrats who live pampered lives in New York and Geneva, a corrupt, ineffective, bloated dinosaur.

The UN bureaucracy and the liberals who fetishize the "dream" of the UN and ignore the reality won't like the appointment, which is one reason it's such a good one. The American people, who have lost patience with the UN, to the extent they follow it at all, will like it. Once again the Dems will cut their own throats.

Coptic Murder Update: It Wasn't Sectarian, Cops Think

It appears that the horrific murders of the Coptic Christian Armanious family in Jersey City, New Jersey, were the work of small-time criminals, two of whom were arrested last week for the murders, and not the work of Muslim extremists.

If so, it's a relief, although that doesn't make the murders less horrific.

It doesn't solve the long-standing issues between Copts and Muslims, but this crime may not be the harbinger of personal, sectarian murders (as opposed to terrorist attacks) in the U.S. Keep your fingers crossed, and let's hope the cops got the right guys.

Frank's Eulogy for the MSM

Frank Rich, our favorite whipping boy (it's nasty work, but someone has to do it), has come up with a typically snarky, but if analyzed, refreshingly candid take on the news media.

The conceit of the piece is a eulogy of sorts for the late Hunter S. Thompson, self-proclaimed "gonzo" journalist and professional character. Frank allows as how HST originated a revival of the type of journalism in which the reporter's personality and experience of the story become part of the piece. The first person is joined with the third person. Frank's appreciation of HST is by way of comparison to what he sees as an inbred and timid in-group of mainstream print and network journalists whose behavior is herd-like and timid.

Frank does not attempt to defend Dan Rather/CBS's fake document story, acknowledging its shabbiness, but soon segues into the Jeff Gannon story, lamenting the fact that it has disappeared from sight, and attributing that to the laziness and timidity of most reporters. In fact, aside from the strange journey of Mr. Guckert/Gannon himself, it's not much of a story. A reporter for a Republican website throws the Press Secretary and the President some softball questions. Oh the horror!

Rich, letting his leftism overcome his usual obsession with gay martyrdom, discounts the gay-bashing aspect of the coverage of the Gannon story because some of the center-right comments on this aspect of the story strike him as insincere.

What Rich doesn't discuss, of course, is the charge, well-supported in my opinion, that MSM journalism is not merely timid and in-groupy, but the in-group tends sharply to the liberal side of the political spectrum, whose norm is increasingly similar to the anti-Bush crazy left. To me, that's pretty well established, and Rich doesn't address it. Nor does he address the sad decline of his own newspaper.

But we can't demand too much of the man. That he's acknowledged the increasing timidity and irrelevance of the MSM, and the shameful conduct of CBS in the fake documents matter is to his credit.

So award the credit when it's due, and here's my bet: Frank will descend into foaming-at-the-mouth moonbattery within two weeks.

We need some themes in this blog. I'm confident neither Polynesia, Harvard, nor Mr. Insufferable will disappoint us.

I Haven't Disappeared

The gap in blogging came about because, alas, il faut manger (one must make a living). Had I managed my affairs better, no doubt I could be riding bicycles, blogging and learning languages full time.

Alas, I was improvident, if not a wastrel, in my youth, and so business sometimes calls. But I'm back.

Temaru Elected in Polynesia

Tahitipresse reports:

Le candidat de l'UPLD (Union pour la démocratie) Oscar Temaru a été élu, jeudi, sans surprise, président de la Polynésie. Sur un total de 57 représentants siègeant à l'Assemblée de Polynésie, il a obtenu 29 voix, contre 26 pour le candidat du Tahoeraa huiraatira, Gaston Tong Sang, avec également deux bulletins blancs. Cette éection vient couronner le succès de l'UPLD acquis dans les urnes, le 13 février dernier, aux Îles du Vent (Tahiti et Moorea), scrutin au terme duquel l'UPLD avait dévancé d'environ 6 000 voix le Tahoeraa huiraatira de Gaston Flosse. Elle est également une revanche personnelle pour Oscar Temaru qui avait été éélu une première fois à ce poste, au mois de juin dernier, mais pour finalement n'y rester que quatre mois, jusqu'au mois d'octobre, son gouvernement chutant après l'adoption d'une motion de censure initiée par le parti de Gaston Flosse.

The candidate of the UPLD (Union for Democracy), Oscar Temaru was elected Thursday, as expected, President of Polynesia. Out of 57 representatives seated in the Polynesian Assembly, Temaru got 29 votes, while the candidate of the Tahoeraa huiraatira, Gaston Tong Sang, got 26, with two blank ballots. This election confirms the UPLD's electoral success on Feb. 13, in the Windward Islands (Tahiti and Mo'orea). At the end of the election the UPLD had a margin of about 6,000 votes over Gaston Flosse's Tahoeraa huiraatira. It is also a personal vindication of Oscar Temaru, who was elected to the post for the first time last June, but served only four months, until October, his government falling after the adoption of a censure motion made by Gaston Flosse's party.

Temaru was quoted as saying independence was not now in the cards, and would only be discussed when there was a popular demand for it.

It appears that the corrupt Flosse, a sidekick of Jacques Chirac, is now history. Whether his legendary corruption will be the subject of an inquiry remains uncertain. It is also uncelar whether there will be a change in French "welfare colonialism" in Polynesia.

Something Random: Today's Bard

Here:

"LADY PERCY
Then should you be nothing but musical for you are altogether governed by humours. Lie still, ye thief, and hear the lady sing in Welsh.

HOTSPUR
I had rather hear Lady, my brach, howl in Irish.

LADY PERCY
Wouldst thou have thy head broken?

HOTSPUR
No.

LADY PERCY
Then be still.

A 'brach" is a "bitch."

Don't know why this stuck in my head from 10th grade English. "Random," as my daughter would say.

Things haven't changed much. I'd say what Hotspur says here, and my wife would shut me up as Lady Percy does here.

Is Byrd Senile Or Just a Racist Idiot?

Michelle Malkin goes into detail about the aged West Virginia Senator and patronage king, Robert Byrd. Like Hugo Black, who later became a "First Amendment absolutist" on the Supreme Court, he had a youthful flirtation with the KKK. Unlike Black, he seems to have retained the ideology, if not his actual membership.

Byrd's latest is an oration comparing the Republican quest for a majority vote on judicial nominees to Hitler's use of German law to assume power and carry out his program. An inept and inexact comparison that recruits Hitler and his murderous régime to yet another cause, in this case an unprecented obstruction of the majority will.

No doubt they'll be wheeling in his wasted body and addled mind for a few more years yet. Hillary must be beside herself. Can she distance herself from the rampant moonbattery of her party enough to triangulate her way into the White House? I don't underestimate Hillary, but I doubt it, as long as she's chained to Byrd, Dean, Schumer, Sharpton and Moore.

The Anti-Defamation League of course piped up. How dare Byrd cop from their Hitler franchise? Everybody does it, so that restricting Nazi analogies to Jewish causes is a hopeless task. When a cranky soup merchant is the "soup Nazi," and 9/11 victims are "little Eichmanns," the ADL might as well dismount their high horse, 'cause it's just a mule that will go nowhere. The Hitler and Holocaust trademarks are diluted to the point where they are common parlance. My advice: it's good for an essay or too. Otherwise, fuggedabait.

In any event, for the record, here's a bit of Michelle's piece on Sen. Byrd. She's hot.

The ex-Klansman later filibustered the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act -- supported by a majority of those "mean-spirited" Republicans -- for more than 14 hours. He also opposed the nominations of the Supreme Court's two black justices, liberal Thurgood Marshall and conservative Clarence Thomas. In fact, the ex-Klansman had the gall to accuse Justice Thomas of "injecting racism" into the Senate hearings. Meanwhile, author Graham Smith recently discovered another letter Sen. Byrd wrote after he quit the KKK, this time attacking desegregation of the armed forces.

The ex-Klansman vowed never to fight "with a Negro by my side. Rather I should die a thousand times, and see Old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds."

If this ex-Klansman were a conservative Republican, he would never hear the end of his sordid past. "Ex-Klansman who opposed civil rights and black justices" would appear in every reference to Sen. Byrd. And even the "ex-" would be in doubt. Maxine Waters and Ralph Neas and Julianne Malveaux and Al Sharpton and all the other left-wing bloodhounds who sniff racism in every crevice of American life would be barking up a storm over Sen. Byrd's latest fulminations. Instead, the attack dogs are busy decrying latent racial bigotry where it doesn't exist, while the real thing roams wild and free in their own political backyard.

She's right. The Racists Beset Me Riff, like the Adolf Analogy, is used to attack one's enemies, not one's buds.

Hacks, who'd make H.L.Mencken proud.

Update 3/4/2005: corrected typo in "Holocaust."

Darfur and Indifference

Nick Kristof of the New York Times is reminding us all of the horrors of the genocide now going on in Darfur in the Sudan.

This is the human rights story of the century so far. It's racial, at least in part. Where are the Randall Robinsons and the Jesse Jacksons? Where are Michael Moore and Barbara Boxer? Kofi Annan?

"The heart of man is evil from his birth."

More Beirut Pictures

Here, from the English-language Beirut Daily Star.

OK, I'll Talk About Ward Churchill If I Must, But Just This Once

Tapscott rounds up some of the latest blogosphere chatter about Ward Churchill, the University of Colorado ethnic studies professor who called the 9/11 victims "little Eichmanns" (later making an exception for the murdered busboys and such, but holding fast to celebrating the deaths of the bond broker victims and their ilk.)

The hounds are baying after Churchill, a stance that is certainly justified morally. There's evidence, so they say, that:

• Churchill was hired in part because he claimed to be an American Indian, a claim he's made in the past. He's no Indian.


• He's plagiarized art work.


• He assaulted a TV reporter who questioned him about the art theft.
  

• Has no academic qualifications to speak of. His scholarship is full of inaccuracies such as made-up citations.
  

This all raises fascinating legal and policy questions. Let's stipulate that the guy is a swine. That's a given.

Can (and should) he be fired for his disgusting statement about the 9/ll victims? The University of Colorado is a public institution, so anything it does is "state action" and is subject to the restrictions of the First Amendment, including free speech, which our courts have held to be applied to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment. This "incorporation" doctrine is in itself problematic, but won't change in this case. And a court would likely find Churchill's remark to be protected speech. Freedom of speech protection is unneeded for conventional utterances, goes the argument, but only for unpopular ones.

Should the law protect a professor's job in this circumstance? I think not. A professor is supposed to teach, and be something a model of scholarship and probity to the students and the community. This remark is inconsistent with that. It's not as if he had a dissenting view on Indian casino gambling or Lewis and Clark. It's an affront to the nation and not a contribution to any rational discussion. However, the "where do you draw the line" argument will prevail here.

A separate question is whether Churchill can be fired for falsifying his résumé or plagiarizing art. Generally, I'd say, yes, even if these things were discovered because the offensive remark led to their discovery. As long as these would be firing offenses for tenured faculty generally, he's fair game.

The lie about being an American Indian is interesting. Normally you couldn't fire someone for being, or not being, of a particular ethnic background. It's so clear here that ethnic background was the reason Churchill was hired, though, that if it's material on the hiring end, lying about it ought to be material on the firing end. Even if in my view ethnicity shouldn't have been a basis for hiring in the first place. Alfred Kroeber, the great Berkeley anthropologist, was an expert on American Indians, but wasn't Indian himself. Churchill, Indian or not, appears not to be an expert about anything.

Two asides about this discussion: The first: why the hell was this jerk hired in the first place? He has no academic distinctions that I know of; apparently his books are unscholarly, polemical rants, and he made his reputation as an agitator of no great skill. The answer is because of guilt, sit-ins, and a misplaced commitment to multiculturalism and affirmative action, universities have caved in to the ethnic studies racket, whereby every group with enough clout and enough victimhood gets its own department, mostly limited to its own ethnic group, where normal standards of scholarship do not apply, and hacks like Churchill can get hired. The whole thing is a racket and a scandal. The normal standards of scholarship don't apply -- the rule is, give them their department, hold your nose, and get on with life. This is an abdication by universities, but one of long standing.

Second: the "little Eichmanns" remark. Once again, the murder of Europe's Jews during World War II is exploited for rhetorical purposes. Just about everybody does it. Various Jewish circles do it to support their agendas, in part because it's an emotionally satisfying substitute for putting forth the positive content of Jewish religion and culture, and a conversation-stopper. Who's going to criticize Elie Wiesel, for instance? After all, he survived the camps. The Pope just did it, referring to abortion, the killing of the not-yet-alive. PETA does it to refer to killing animals for food. Churchill did it to blacken the 9/11 dead. All poor analogies. Better analogies: Darfur, Rwanda, Cambodia. (No, I'm not going to get into the debate about whether the Holocaust was sui generis, unique; isn't every historical event unique in some ways?) It's easy and often a cheap device, to appropriate the emotional impact of these murders for some unrelated purpose. Often it's cheap, inaccurate, and in bad taste. ("Soup Nazi.") It's routine, and it won't stop.