You tell ‘em, Mr. President

From the Washington Post:

“Some seem to believe we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along,” Bush told the Israeli lawmakers. “We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: ‘Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.’ We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.”

One of the greatest lessons of history seems to be that people who want to kill you will continue to want to kill you no matter how nicely you talk to them.  The Democrats’ response?

Democrats angrily called the comment a veiled shot at Obama, who has advocated dialogue with Iran and Syria, but not the Palestinian group Hamas.

[...]

Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, used an expletive to describe Bush’s comment. He went on to say: “For this president to leave the country and unleash a political attack on Senator Obama and the Democrats cannot go unanswered. We’re not going to tolerate this swiftboating,”

So we shouldn’t call out terrible ideas because it would be a “veiled shot” at the person who holds them?  Give me a break.

Also, I love that swiftboating has now become a verb to deride any attack that Democrats don’t like.  It doesn’t matter whether the charge is true or not, it only matters whether Democrats think it is fair or not.  And the ultimate arbiter of what is a fair attack and what isn’t is whether it hurts the Democratic candidate or not.

Note to Democratic leadership:  Please feel free to grow up.  Any day now would be great.

 

Graduation Madness

My graduation last Saturday turned out to be one of those events where I thought “I sure am glad to be leaving.”

I blame the speakers. Of the four people who took the microphone to speak at the ceremony, only one (the Senior Class President) managed to be humorous, interesting and relevant. The others were cringe-worthy and/or eye-roll-inducing.

First up was the Provost (as the President of the College was not present). She managed to be a downer with no stage presence, no original ideas, and no real talent at expressing even recycled ideas. She used her time to describe all of the things that were wrong with the world, including some which aren’t particularly bad for us. For example, she pointed out that we were entering a housing market crisis and a floundering economy. Except that hiring of new college graduates is still strong, and the bursting of the housing bubble actually means that my peers and I will be able to afford to buy homes. But I digress.

The Student Government Association President was also bad, but hers was a failure of style rather than content. Actually, it may have also been a failure of content, but I was too distracted by her endless stream of tired metaphors to notice what she was talking about.

The worst of them all, though, was the Commencement speaker, Peace Corps Director Ronald Tschetter. He gets the lowest grade because a man in his position should know how to give an appropriate commencement speech. Instead, we got the lengthy sales pitch for why we should join the Peace Corps.

Because the Cistern, where C of C traditionally graduates its students, is fairly small, we are each given 4 tickets to the actual graduation, and excess family members can watch the video streaming live from satellite locations. My younger brothers were at one of these locations, and told me after the ceremony that the video got a close-up of me rolling my eyes dramatically at something stupid Tschetter said. I guess disguising my disdain has never been my strong suit.

I’m inclined to dislike the Peace Corps. I disapprove of taxpayer-funded charity of any kind, and its even worse when the resources are as inefficiently allocated as with the Peace Corps. It strikes me as an organization tailored more to the needs of unemployed sociology majors than to the world’s poor.

But this year, C of C has the distinction of sending 25 students to the Peace Corps, so our commencement speech focused on 1) How awesome those 25 students are, 2) How awesome the Peace Corps is, and 3) Why we should all join the Peace Corps so that we too can consider ourselves good people.

Tschetter briefly brought up the idea of “servant leadership,” which I thought would be his segue into the bigger picture. But no, he went right back to how the best way to serve the world is by…can you guess?…joining the Peace Corps!

A commencement speech shouldn’t be about the speaker. It should be about the audience. To pull out my dusty Neo-Aristotelian rhetorical analysis, it should follow the epideictic model of rhetoric, which praises the moment. A graduation is a celebration of the students’ accomplishments, of the hard work that has gotten them to that stage, a recognition of the sacrifices their parents made to get them there, the moment of transition between the world of college and the rest of our adult lives.

We don’t need or want a sermon on why we should have joined the Peace Corps, or how cool it is that 25 of our peers did. Tschetter gave himself the perfect opening with his “servant leader” idea, then dropped the ball. He could have talked about how all of us graduates, in all of our different paths, can exercise servant leadership. How servant leadership isn’t just about joining the Peace Corps, it’s about volunteering in your community, giving to those less fortunate, standing up for ethical behavior in the work place. This sentiment, instead of being at the center of his speech, ended up as a throwaway line at the the end. I get it, you want to promote the Peace Corps. But the speech should be 90 percent about the moment and the students, no more than 10 percent about you. Tschetter inverted those percentages.

When my brother graduated from VMI, his commencement speaker was Donald Rumsfeld. Arguably a man in a far more important position than the Director of the Peace Corps (this was back when he was still Secretary of Defense). And yet he managed to give a truly inspiring speech that focused on the graduates, rather than his own agenda.

Here was the real kicker for me: Of over a thousand students graduating, we had one man walk across the Cistern in his Marine Corps uniform. While Ronald Tschetter fawned over the huge sacrifice that Peace Corps volunteers make giving up Internet access for two years, we actually had a student sitting on the stage prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice for his country. That’s real courage.

 

Phyllis Schlafly awarded honorary degree; feminists flip out

Breaking news from Feministe (ok, fine, it’s a few days old, but I’ve been busy):

Washington University announced last week that they are giving Phyllis Schlafly, professional anti-feminist, an honorary doctorate degree. The release calls Schlafly “a national leader of the conservative movement.” What they fail to mention however, is that she is also an anti-feminist leader who believes married women can’t be raped (”By getting married, the woman has consented to sex, and I don’t think you can call it rape.”), that there should be bans on women working in nontraditional fields (like construction work or firefighting), and - oh yeah - that the ERA is dangerous.

The comments section for this post is particularly lovely, and the basic gist seems to be this: if you disagree with us, you don’t deserve an honorary degree.  But it takes a feminist, I guess, to ignore the fact that Schlafly was (and still is) a hugely important figure in shaping the conservative movement.  She is incredibly intelligent, a prolific writer, and a important figure in the history of modern conservatism.  But because she isn’t a feminist, she shouldn’t be recognized for her accomplishments.

Also, tomorrow I graduate from the College of Charleston.  Go me!

 

Take Note

This is what we call “the market working.“  It’s what we crazy right-winger, anti-government extremists refer to when we beg Congress not to go around mucking up the works with new regulations.  Price of gas goes high enough, and you don’t need to start forcing minimum efficiency requirements on anyone.

 

I wish I were a Congressman, because then I could drive a Cadillac

From a NY Times article on the cars that House members lease on the taxpayer dime:

Charles B. Rangel, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, is not so caught up in the question of gas mileage. He leases a 2004 Cadillac DeVille for $777.54 a month. The car is 17 feet long with a 300-horsepower engine and seats five comfortably.

“It’s one of the bigger Cadillacs,” Mr. Rangel, of Harlem, said cheerfully this week. “I’ve got a desk in it. It’s like an airplane.”

[...]

Mr. Rangel said he frequently offers rides to constituents so they can discuss their concerns in the luxurious confines of his DeVille.

“I want them to feel that they are somebody and their congressman is somebody,” Mr. Rangel explained. “And when they say, ‘This is nice,’ it feels good.”

The article mentioned several different members of Congress and their varying reasons/excuses for leasing the cars they did, but Rangel was the most hilarious simply because he doesn’t even bother trying to make his choice sound reasonable.  He just wants his constituents to think their Congressman “is somebody.”

Also, because Charlie Rangel made Conservative Amazon news last November for sponsoring an earmark for the City College of New York, which would allow them to build a Center for Public Service named after none other than Charlie Rangel himself.

I’m not sure how wise it is to name a center for public service after a man whose idea of public service seems largely tied up in having nice things and getting buildings named after him.  Maybe they could call it the Charles Rangel Center for Self-Aggrandizement at the Taxpayer Expense?

 

What’s annoying me lately

Gas prices are rising. What happens when gas prices rise? Everyone starts looking to Washington to find a way to lower gas prices so that we can keep burning fossil fuels willy-nilly:

Soaring gasoline prices spilled over into Washington and the presidential race yesterday, as Congress moved toward a showdown with President Bush over legislation aimed at forcing oil companies to help ease the burden on consumers.

First, can anyone tell me where the Constitution guarantees the right to inexpensive gasoline? Second, the people who want to pander to voters by trying to lower gas prices tend to be the same ones who want more environmental regulation to prevent the advancement of global warming. Putting aside completely the merits of any given regulation, isn’t an increase in gasoline prices exactly what we should be hoping for?

When oil is cheap, there is no economic incentive to either conserve it or find alternative energy sources. When the price starts soaring, we have the good people of GM cutting production of their giant trucks and SUVs in favor of smaller vehicles, and presumably people will find other ways to use less gas: carpooling, public transportation, walking or biking when possible. High gas prices are not an environmental panacea, but they can only really help the push for innovation and conservation.

Also, when you have the government jumping in the make things better, you tend to get situations like this:

[ethanol] has linked food and fuel prices just as oil is rising to new records, pulling up the price of anything that can be poured into a gasoline tank. “The price of grain is now directly tied to the price of oil,” says Lester Brown, president of Earth Policy Institute, a Washington research group. “We used to have a grain economy and a fuel economy. But now they’re beginning to fuse.”

Thanks, guys, I know I really appreciate paying more for my groceries because someone had the boneheaded idea that ethanol would cure our gasoline-price ills.  To say nothing of the poor in third-world nations who are getting pushed past malnutrition and into actual starvation by rising food prices.

 

Maybe today should be hypocrite day

First we have Maureen Dowd’s indecision over whether it’s permissible to revert to gender stereotypes (yes when you’re talking about Clinton, no when you’re talking about Dowd).  Now we have Michael Gerson making an otherwise excellent point:

On the evidence of the Virginia speech, McCain’s worst temptation is not anger but moral arrogance. Opponents are not merely wrong; they are venal, self-interested and corrupt. In a righteous cause, McCain can be self-righteous.

Which is unfortunately made less insightful by the fact that Gerson is afflicted with the same flaw: anyone who disagrees with his pet projects must be a “shriveled soul” and an “anti-government extremist.”

So the real question is, if we put McCain and Gerson in a moral arrogance cage match, who would emerge the victor?  It’s a real toss-up.

 

Dear Maureen Dowd,

Hey girl, I was reading your column today (I blame my masochistic tendencies), and one phrase in particular stuck out at me:

[Hillary Clinton'] message is unapologetically emasculating: If he does not have the gumption to put me in my place, when superdelegates are deserting me, money is drying up, he’s outspending me 2-to-1 on TV ads, my husband’s going crackers and party leaders are sick of me, how can he be trusted to totally obliterate Iran and stop Osama?

Now, I’m know fan of Clinton either (The Mr. or the Mrs.), but I couldn’t help but recall that you once wrote a column decrying the gender stereotypes that keep women from writing opinion columns, and complaining about how men perceived you:

While a man writing a column taking on the powerful may be seen as authoritative, a woman doing the same thing may be seen as castrating. If a man writes a scathing piece about men in power, it’s seen as his job; a woman can be cast as an emasculating man-hater. I’m often asked how I can be so “mean” - a question that Tom Friedman, who writes plenty of tough columns, doesn’t get.

So let me get this straight: gender stereotypes about who is supposed to be the aggressor are  bad when they are applied to you, and it isn’t fair that women who write tough columns should be called “emasculating.”  But when Hillary Clinton campaigns exactly the same way that hundreds of male politicians across the ages have before her, you get to call her message “emasculating,” thereby contributing to the gender stereotypes that hurt tough women.   Which basically means that you are above the standards you would apply to everyone else.

Ok, got it.

-Marianne

 

In Honor of Earth Day

You know you want to send all of your environmentally-conscious friends hilarious Earth Day cards.  And by doing it online instead of with real paper, you can give yourself a pat on the back for your earth-friendly actions.

 

Idiot of the Day: On Taxes, Force and Missing the Point

I’m a little late on this, but I had to share this doozy from the NY Times.  In honor of tax day, Richard Conniff argues that we should start calling taxes “dues” because the word brings to mind social obligation rather than force and punishment.

The whole thing is kind of annoying, but the worst was the last paragraph:

So this will be an uphill struggle. But we need language to remind us that this is our government, and that we thrive because of the schools and transit systems and 10,000 other services that exist only because we have joined together. Instead of denouncing taxes, politicians would do better to appeal to the patriotic corners of our hearts that warm to phrases like “we the people.” “Taxation” is a throwback to the time when kings picked our pockets. “Paying my dues,” a phrase popularized in the jazz music world, is language by which we can stand together as Americans.

First, we don’t thrive in this nation because of government - we thrive because of entrepreneurial spirit, good ideas, liberty, moral values, etc.  This things are sometimes aided by taxes and government spending, and sometimes harmed.

Second, by singling out schools and transit systems, he ignores the main reason conservatives fight for lower government, missing the point of our outrage altogether.  I don’t object to the use of tax money to pay for public goods like roads and national defense, which meet the twin criteria of non-excludability and non-rivalry in consumption - things that are generally considered market failures.  I do object, most heartily, to the use of my tax money for those “10,000 other services,” which include transfer payments like welfare, earmarks, subsidies and other forms of corporate welfare, and programs aimed at social engineering.

Conservatives and libertarians also often object to the form that taxation takes, such as the unconstitutionality of an income tax, the progressive tax code that punishes success at the margins and the unnecessary complications that force Americans to waste time and money just trying to avoid breaking the law.

“Taxation” may be a throwback to an earlier time, but it conveys what “dues” cannot: the underlying threat of force behind taxes.  If you don’t pay your dues, you don’t get to stay in the club.  If you don’t pay your taxes, the government can throw you in jail.  That’s a distinction that goes far beyond semantics.

No thinking conservative sits around saying “there shouldn’t be any taxes on anything!”  But there is plenty of room for objections that go far beyond the feel-good rhetoric of doing your part and fulfilling your social obligations.