I have posited in several conversations that the problem is the anti-war Boomers who

came of age politically during Vietnam.

 

A columnist recently noted that a leading demographer had seen fit to split the Boomers

into two groups - those directly affected by Vietnam (i.e. draftable by about 1968 or 1969

- I'll go find the article in a bit) and those not - like you and me.

 

I think he called us the Jones generation or something. We are more conservative and less

ideologically fixated than the older Boomers.

 

The point is that the older Boomers have been controlling the political discussion in

America for some time, and particularly post- Reagan. But now they are dying off and we

are beginning to see the generational change I have said many times will be necessary to

get America back to where it needs to be. Those that are not dying off are being rapidly

supplanted in the voting franchise by a more conservative youth. More college-age kids

are self-identifying as Republicans than as demos for the first time in our lifetimes. More

young women are choosing to stay home rather than enter the workforce. This is a

traditional, conservative choice that seems driven by kids who were latchkey themselves,

and don't want to do that to their own children. Respect for the military is an associated

virtue also ascendant.

 

Columnists in several columns – both on the right and the left – have referred to

something as the “Roe Effect.” In a nutshell, liberals abort their kids, conservatives don’t,

so guess what happens to the franchise?

 

(More detail: since Roe v Wade, 43M babies have been aborted. Assume that 1/3 would

have been of voting age in 2004 (14M), and that 75% of those would have been raised in

liberal households and become liberals. That’s 10.7M liberal voters that didn’t exist in an

election won by 3M votes. Run it out 20 years. Assume 51% of those 43M were women

and that they had a fertility rate of 2.1 (replacement). In twenty years you have 75% of

43M + 75% of new births = 78.3M liberal voters that just won’t exist. The current liberal

party is dead – they just haven’t figured it out. Those that have are getting more and more

angry that they haven’t taken control, and are more and more nasty about their failure to

have done so.)

 

I think it is very much this demographic change that has driven the vituperation of the

past two elections. The Left is disappearing - and the anti-war, anti-America Boomers

can't stand it. America's youth are turning right in a big way. The conventional wisdom of

youth voting left and of big turnout voting left was just reversed in November - and the

left still hasn't figured out what to do about it. In reality it looks like there is nothing they

CAN do about it.

 

My view is that this past election killed the party. Like a horror movie, however, they'll

try to rise again. Now that they have installed ScreamDean as their chairman and with the

nearly inescapable probability that they'll run Hillary, this hard-left group will have a

stake driven through its heart in 2008.

 

My prediction, for what it's worth, is that the current democratic party will cease to exist

as a potent political force by 2012, and the GOP will fracture along the moderate/far right

fissure. This will really just get us back to the early 1960s. Both parties were foreign

policy hawks but had different social visions. I think that's where we'll end up in a cycle

or two.

 

Regardless of what happens, the citizen's view of the military will continue to improve.

We'll get attacked again. Our military will defend us again -- and go kill bad guys. Since

Americans don't really like nuance and don't really care for half-measures, the folks who

just kill the bad guys will again become heroes.

 

Of course, to some of us, they always have been.

 

 

California politicians in their infinite liberal wisdom have just banned hand weeding on

California’s non-“organic” farms – the vast majority. Agriculture is one of California’s

top industries, supporting over one million jobs and contributing about $28 billion to the

economy.

 

Those crops to which technology has not yet been able to provide automated weeding,

including lettuce, carrots, celery and strawberries, no longer may be weeded by hand. I

guess we want to ensure the increase of wealth in those countries and states that provide

the same produce we provide currently, but will not be able to provide competitively after

this rule is implemented, and ensure the decrease in wealth in California.

 

The organic farm waiver gives away the politics. Organic farms have been proven to

transmit more disease and to provide produce less efficiently. Once you couple those with

higher prices for hippies and trendies, you have a far lower degree of efficiency for

producers.

 

Organics were exempted because they have more weeds due to not using chemicals.

 

As a representative of the Western Growers Association stated, “The same kind of crops

we have here are grown in other nations, other states. The crops aren’t unique to

California… [yet] we’re going to be the only place on the face of the Earth that has a

regulation or law that outlaws hand-weeding.”

 

Is this an effort to help the third world compete by lowering our ability to be efficient?

 

It's pretty clear that one of two things has just happened here: Either the wages of the

third worlders staying in the third world have been decided to be more important than the

wages of the workers in the California agriculture industry, including the secondary

services markets supported by those workers, or, the Luddites have won in the CA ag

sector.

 

Some questions naturally arise:

1. Does the exemption for “organic” farms mean that workers toiling there are not

worthy of protection?

 

2. Does the exemption for “organic” farms mean CA wants to increase “organic”

produce as a percent of all produce, hence consumer costs, making it even harder

for all workers to feed their families?

 

3. Will this further drive up the costs of “organic” farms as pay increases to supply

labor to what will become a seller’s market?

 

4. As smaller non-organics go under due to the increase in costs of implementing

this rule, what will happen to those farmers and their families? To those supplying

them services, from groceries to gasoline to clothing to cars?

 

5. Is this an anti-family farm agenda? An anti-small-town agenda?An anti-organics

agenda?

 

6. Will it drive down the costs of non-organics by allowing those farmers to pay

their crews less as it becomes a buyer’s market for these services, rather than the

seller’s market for organic farms?

 

7. By how much, and how quickly, will the earning of the workers in non-organic

farms decrease? How will that affect their ability to provide for their families?

 

8. Will the need for illegal alien farm workers decline with these laws limiting the

backbreaking labor they provide - putting out of work many already here and

providing fewer jobs for those still coming?

 

9. If the unforeseen consequence is to throw out of work tens of thousands of farm

workers, will that be better for them and their families than the work they perform

voluntarily now?

 

10. When this legislation results in a decrease of available jobs for farm workers –

what will be the political fallout of the decision, especially on the liberal CA

legislature? To raise taxes to put them all on welfare?

 

11. How long until the increase in costs drives affordable automation, killing the rest

of the low-skilled agriculture jobs in the state?

 

12. Is this an anti-illegal alien agenda from the Left?

 

 

The Liberal lexicon is filled with a number of words, phrases, causes, prescriptions and

proscriptions. Often it seems as if no one consistently can do the “right thing” as the

“right thing” is changing too often for all but a few to keep track of. Most, if not all, of

the lexicon consists of telling others how to think and feel. Little, if any, is based on facts,

evidence, empirical study, critical thinking or common sense.

 

The major news media, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, LA Times, NY Times, Wash Post, etc.,

people whose job is to sell soap, cars, and snack foods on the major broadcast television

networks, and the three major newspapers in the country, whose job it is to sell classified

advertising, are so in thrall to the Liberal lexicon that, for the most part, they don’t even

realize it, as shown by Bernard Goldberg - twice.

 

Above nearly all else, the news media have taken to glorifying celebrities. This has

grown to the point that there are agencies in Washington, DC, whose job it is to place

“stars” in testimony before Congress. Some Congresspersons may think that Ms. Streep

has a degree in microbiology and can comment on Alar intelligently. Most of the country,

however, understands this not to be the case. This star-struck mentality has far more to do

with the level of education of the average Congressperson and voter than any intelligent,

useful or thoughtful statement a celebrity may accidentally make while yammering about

their pet-concern-of-the-week.

 

The point is that no one on the Left actually believes this stuff. Belief requires conviction.

If one doesn’t have the courage of conviction regarding one’s beliefs, they are only so

much hand wringing and bloviating. A few examples:

 

Global Warming: Barbara Streisand, through her publicist, tells the public the “correct”

temperature at which to set their thermostats. The following day in response to a question

her publicist, notes that, no, she wasn’t talking about herself. Remember – this is a

woman who lives in a 30,000—square-foot house, until her recent marriage, alone. Given

her recently publicized hissy fit when the tile floor of the bathroom in her NY hotel was

too cold, it is reasonable to assume she keeps her 300,000 cubic feet of living space

comfortably heated and cooled. With the probable exception of John Kerry and his

multiple houses, private jet, SUVs (oh, they belong to his family, not to him), this is a

person who arguably uses more fossil fuel and generates more CO2 than any other single

person on the planet. It is rather an understatement that neither Ms. Streisand nor Sen.

Kerry believes what they say about global warming.

 

Affirmative Action: Remember the cute young white coeds weeping over the end of

Affirmative Action on the UC Berkeley campus? How many of them turned to the

Registrar and said, “Here, take my place and give it to a deserving minority? They need

the education much more than I, an oppressing member of the oppressive white European

race need it; take mine.” You don’t remember them? That’s because they weren’t there –

they, too, didn’t believe what they were saying.

 

Equal Rights: Do any of those yammering about Affirmative Action in the workplace

believe in equality? If they did, tens of thousands of minorities in government jobs at the

state and federal level would be turned out replaced with whites in order to achieve a

racial balance equivalent to society at large.

 

Gun control: One need not spend time thinking about the courage of Rosie O’Donnell’s

convictions regarding the handguns her bodyguards carry but that she abhors for

everyone else, to realize that she, too, doesn’t believe what she says. Time spent on these

thoughts simply is wasted, never to be recovered.

 

Multiculturalism: How many times must we listen to the Left tell us the Koreans can’t eat

dogs and that we shouldn’t send horses to France for their dining tables, and have the

junior Senator from New York tells us what the new governments of Afghanistan and

Iraq “must” do for women before we realize that what is masquerading in their minds and

in the press as “multiculturalism” is nothing more than American Imperialism, ironically

dressed up in an anti-American pastiche?

 

If the Left doesn’t even believe what they espouse, if they don’t act on it and incorporate

their views into their lifestyles, if they resent the lack of application of American liberties

abroad but rail constantly against America abroad and at home, why should anyone listen

to them at all?

 

The issue is not gay marriage. The issue is the rule of law; that we are a government of

laws, not of individuals.

 

The foundation of our country and of each state is popular sovereignty. The people voted

overwhelmingly to accept only the traditional meaning of "marriage." That is their right,

and only their right. It matters not that the subject is gay marriage. What matters is that

the people have spoken.

 

As in California Propositions 187, 209 and a dozen others over the years, one or a few

members of a Court, far fewer than the people passing the initiative or referendum or than

the majority of representatives of the people sitting in the legislative branch, have decided

that their wish somehow supersedes the will of the people, democratically expressed in

free and fair elections.

 

And we, the people, let them get away with it. Why?

 

At what point do we the people realize that the courts have usurped our fundamental right

of self-government? At what point do we the people realize that when it loses an election,

when it loses in the world of ideas, when the majority of the people reject their values,

the Left litigates – and wins?

 

The idea that the Left cares a whit about democracy, the rule of law or the rights of the

people is sheer fantasy. The Left is totalitarian in thought (speech codes, hate crimes),

deeds (illegal marriages) and action (trampling the freely-expressed will of the people by

litigating every loss).

 

The people's will? Who cares?

 

Unfortunate though the current subject is (why anyone cares if two adult men are

"married" to each other is unknown, and those protesting with the Bible as their authority

ignore the passages about stoning adulterers, owning slaves and a thousand other

breaches of what today is regarded as civilization and polite company), the issue is that it

is tyrannical to take the law into one's hands again and again and again, using a single

member or a few members of the judiciary to overrule literally millions or tens of

millions of the people. There is no other word for it.

 

The people of the United States of America run this country, not the judges. The people

overwhelmingly abhor the stands of the Far Left. The Culture War exists because of an

overweening judiciary intent on codifying the ideas of the Left that have lost when

submitted to the people.

 

We don't need an Amendment; a Constitutional remedy exists. The United States

Constitution, Article 3, Section 2, provides that the body representing the people –

Congress - establishes the jurisdiction of the Federal Court system. It is as easy as that.

Marubry v Madison is not an excuse; in many areas legislators have removed jurisdiction

from the Federal Judiciary. Sen. Daschle has used this power to remove brush clearance

from federal jurisdiction, for goodness sake!.

 

In the instance of gay marriage, which the overwhelming majority of the people

disapprove, all that has to be done is to pass legislation removing the federal DOMA

from the jurisdiction of the Federal Courts, pass legislation removing gay marriage from

Full Faith and Credit, and remove FF&C as it pertains to gay marriage from the

jurisdiction of the Federal Courts, and put the matter back into the hands of the States

where it Constitutionally belongs. The people of the states then could decide what they

want to do about it -- and do it with the knowledge that the courts couldn't contravene

their authority.

 

If the people of California wanted to pass a law making illegal gay marriage, with

penalties for breaking this law, it would be up to the people of California. If the people of

California wanted to have gay marriage, the people in South Dakota wouldn't have to

recognize those marriages if they didn't want to.

 

And the courts couldn't overturn these laws - the people will have spoken and the people

will be obeyed. Not a judge, not the federal government telling the people of the states

what they can and can't do in marriage (in itself a violation of the 10th Amendment as the

word "marriage" does not exist in the Constitution).

 

Popular sovereignty. The foundation of our country. All we need is a Congress willing to

read and enforce the Constitution of the people of the United States of America.

 

Not that hard to do, one would think. It's their job after all, their only job – representing

we the people.

 

For a Great Power to remain great it must be willing to do what is right, to act in its own

behalf, to challenge - and remove - those who would do it harm, regardless of the

opinions of others.

 

When those who would do harm to that power mean also to tear down the institutions of

liberty and freedom, of equality and human rights, of civilization itself to replace that for

which millions have died for thousands of years, with a culture keeping women behind

veils, locked in burning schools, that practices slavery and “honor” killings, the Great

Powers must either choose to remove the problem or the end of their place in the world is

signaled.

 

As Huntington has pointed out, without America, the West cannot survive. There are

those who think this a good thing. The inconvenient facts that liberty, human rights,

freedom of speech, assembly, and petition exist only in the West mean nothing to them;

they truly think they can have all of this in the context of a non-Western culture. This

level of ignorance and stupidity is mind-boggling.

 

The French, the Germans, the Belgians have succeeded in convincing many Americans

that Europe knows best. The denizens of the demi-continent that has been unable to live

without internal wars during its entire existence except when caught between the Warsaw

Pact and NATO (the only 45-yr period of peace in Europe’s history) somehow has

succeeded in convincing many Americans that Europeans are reasonable people.

 

This is incorrect. Never having faced extermination on their own because of America’s

infusion of military prowess followed by trillions of American tax dollars in the Marshall

Plan, NATO, etc., Europeans have no concept of what liberty requires. Freedom and

liberty exist in the world -- and in Europe – due only to the credible threat of American

force.

 

Did Europe protect the Muslims in Yugoslavia? No. Muslims in Mogadishu? No again.

Has Europe ever protected anyone? No. Europeans matter only to themselves; they are

irrelevant on the world stage.

 

A very large part of the world understands only force. For America, or for any Great

Power, not to understand this is to commit suicide. 9/11 happened because we had proved

to Islamist fanatics living in the 7th Century that we were a paper tiger.

 

There are people who think that not standing up to bullies causes bullies to cease and

desist. That this never once has been true in the history of the world is unimportant to

them. How is a bully best dealt with? Ask Churchill or Thatcher or FDR or Reagan; for

God’s sake don’t ask Chamberlain or George Clooney or the Vichy French or Barbara

Streisand or Julia Roberts.

 

What does one do to those with an expressed willingness to destroy America, with the

capability to build the weapons to bring death to thousands? One kills them first, fast,

efficiently - - before they can kill you.

 

If the media and those of a pro-European bent get their way and restrain America’s

defense of the West, what’s next? A Democrat in the White House and Democrats in

control of Congress.

 

Think our schools are bad? For fifty years every single major urban school district has

been in the hands of Democrats. Schools are bad because of the policies of Democrat

administration of the schools, their Unions and their teachers, period.

 

This is not a minor issue - these people, these kids who are so incredibly ignorant that

they can’t pass a graduation exam, will vote. A test of basic knowledge is too

overwhelming for them, but we will give them a ballot through which they will help

decide the future of the world. What do Democrats propose to address this? Dump the

test.

 

The socialist policies of European governments have given them stagnant employment,

stagnant economies and negative native population growth. Democrats admiring similar

policies will do the same to America, and our ill-educated voters won’t know or

understand.

 

Many Americans believe that force is wrong, that all cultures are equal, that the West are

the oppressors of the world – always have been, always will be. What if they get their

way? America will be attacked again. Next time tens of thousands will die. The Left will

tell us it was our fault. If we strike harshly then, it will be seen as the last gasp of a dying

empire, and perhaps rightly so; for if we are unwilling to defend ourselves, perhaps we

don’t deserve to exist and prosper.

 

 

8 August 2006

 

War is the continuation of politics by other means. Societies are political entities.

Societies create armed forces as tools to implement their political objectives – offensive

and defensive. Simply, an army is a policy tool, not a policy maker.

 

Killing an army, uniformed or not, does not destroy the politics or the processes through

which policy is created. Failure to destroy, or to cause the general collapse of the

opponent's society is the failure of the political goals for which the war was fought.

 

Wars are won only by inducing inconvenience to an enemy (American Revolution, War

of 1812, Vietnam, etc.) or by destroying the enemy (Civil War, WWII). Creating a cease

fire every other week, worrying about disarming – rather than utterly destroying – a foe,

concerning oneself with “hearts and minds,” is working the inconvenience side of the

equation.

 

Limited war, from Korea to Vietnam (French and American experiences) to Iraq, never

has worked for modern countries. A non-Western, non-civilized country cannot be

inconvenienced to the levels that can a modern industrial society with smaller families,

more distractions and a Western liberal outlook on life and its value.

 

If the enemy cannot be inconvenienced to the point of withdrawing from the battle, either

that enemy must be destroyed or collapsed – or we do not believe in our policy goals to

the extent that we should be willing to go to war, even in defense of those policies. No

third option exists.

 

If we do not believe in our policy goals, the sacrifice of the lives of our soldiers is

immoral. If we do believe in our policy goals then the enemy societies must be collapsed

– they must be defeated, not just have their policy tools, their military forces, run off an inconvenient battlefield to lick their wounds and rearm.

 

WWI is an excellent example. The German army never was defeated on the field of

battle, its cities and towns were not occupied. They thought they had acceded to Wilson's

14 points and were angered and frustrated to learn that they inadvertently had surrendered

to the Allies. The general German misperception that they had not been defeated - and the

fact that the German society in truth had not - led to the resumption of hostilities a

generation later.

 

In WWII Allied leaders understood this lesson. The result was absolutely no question that

the enemy polities and societies had been destroyed and caused to collapse. The countries

were occupied. The military tool was destroyed, yes, but the war was won- and its

political goals achieved - through the general destruction of the enemy societies in

Cologne, Berlin, Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, etc. And many more civilians lost their lives in the Tokyo firebombings than in either Hiroshima or Nagasaki.

 

No one worried about the Japanese Street or the German Street. Our worry about the

Arab Street just shows our lack of seriousness – or a general lack of confidence in

Western Civilization by our yammering classes – in both parties.

 

If enemy civilians are more important than those risking their lives to implement our

policies - in this case defend ourselves against their suicidal tyranny - then it becomes difficult to make the case that we believe in our policies.

 

Which brings us to weapons of war. Precisions Guided Munitions (smart bombs) are

police weapons, not weapons of war. In fact, once they have been used on selected high-

value targets which can slow the execution of the war, such as anti-air batteries, PGMs in fact

hamper the prosecution of war. Once those high-value targets have been destroyed,

PGMs must go back into the depot and weapons of war brought out.

 

Civilians are killed by weapons of war. Civilian deaths are and must be seen as

unavoidable for the simple fact that the goals of the enemy society can only be defeated

by defeating their society – not just its armed policy tool.

 

This means not just that civilians can die, it means they must know they will die, must

understand that their deaths will not be avoided to the detriment of legitimate military

operations. This knowledge must be real enough to cause them to change their policies –

which is the whole point of the war in the first place.

 

In order to win a war, enemy civilians must occupy a lower rung of importance than the

goal of the war. Otherwise we tell our soldiers - and theirs - that their civilians are more

important than our soldiers. Civilian deaths, though not sought after, must be accepted if

doing so means we are making our policy tool – our military forces – more effective in

accomplishing the political goals which we are trying to achieve through their use.

 

In fact, no great effort must be made to avoid civilian casualties. If civilians are in the

battlespace their loss may be unfortunate, but not as unfortunate as losing the war.

 

As long as our enemy knows we will avoid legitimate military targets, putting our forces

more at risk, in order to avoid civilian casualties, war cannot be won. It really is that

simple.

 

If we collapse their society, destroy their polity, we win. If not, we lose.

 

We are not in a police action – we are in a war. The lives of the soldiers of my country

are more important than the lives of enemy civilians. Targeting the enemy tools of

warfare cannot win a war. Only targeting the enemy society and polity can.

 

We can kill the enemy society without incurring any casualties whatsoever – which is the moral way to fight a war. Causing those brave enough and committed enough to our values

to die when we can do otherwise is immoral.

 

Truman understood that sacrificing unnecessarily perhaps half-a-million Americans in

order to achieve the political aims of WWII was an immoral and inefficient way to win a

war that was projected to last at least another two years. The realization caused him to

use nuclear weapons – and avoid those tremendous costs in lives lost.

 

The strategy worked, the Japanese society was crushed, and Japan has been a democratic

polity and an economic and military partner for 60 years.

 

No valid reason exists not to use nuclear weapons on our enemies, particularly Riyadh

and, if it gets much closer to the nuclear club, Iran.

 

From a military standpoint the only thing that matters is the size of the bang that destroys

the foe. From a political standpoint, winning the war against this evil will require the

general destruction and collapse of the societies that breed it, much as killing NAZIsm

required the destruction of the society that bred it, and killing Imperial Japan required the

collapse of the society that created it.

 

It is unserious to speak of societies or civilians in guiltless terms – to assume that any society is a flock of lambs not responsible for their government. All societies are responsible for their

government, and all societies can overthrow their governments. Colonists threw out the

British Empire. Peasants overthrew Russia. The Chinese harshness at Tianenman Square

was because Chinese leaders understood this fact.

 

Either we begin to take this war seriously and win it or it will become too inconvenient

for a modern liberal democracy and we will lose it, with disastrous consequences for

democracy, liberty, freedom and the world.

 

Why we are willing, evidently, to wait on the detonation of an Iranian bomb before we

use the weapons at our disposal is unknown and will be dealt with very harshly by future

historians – if the West survives.

 

And there is no reason – historical, divine, or other -- to assume that the West, its

liberties, freedoms, science, technology, advancements across the breadth of human

effort, must survive.

 

There is no way America and the EU are going to pony up literally millions of soldiers to

invade and crush this evil ideology using the tactics of WWII minus the understanding

that the goal is more important than civilian casualties. WWII would not have been won

under those rules.

 

Killing the German society and the Japanese society freed hundreds of millions of people

from tyranny and subjugation. Killing such a tyrannical, evil enemy is necessary. How

that enemy feels about us is immaterial.

 

If we believe in our youth and our future, our casualties must be minimized.

If we believe in ourselves and in our traditions, this war must be won.