The Sniper's Tower
John McCain’s acceptance speech was a vivid (well, maybe soporific) reminder that the problem with the GOP ticket is at the top, not the bottom. Depsite McCain’s adopting the slogan “Country First” for his campaign, the economic portion of his speech could have been titled “Globalism First.” McCain repeatedly told us that the demands of the “global economy” needed to be met, come what may. What that means, in concrete terms, is more shuttered factories and stagnating wages, as American companies continue to offshore their operations to take advantage of lower costs overseas, secure in the knowledge that they can bring the services they’ve outsourced, or the goods they’ve made, back into the United States, without paying any sort of tariff. I recently was browsing through a trucking industry publication, which featured an editorial admonishing American trucking companies that not enough of them have taken advantage of the opportunity to outsource accounting jobs and the like to India, and reporting that the fall of the dollar has made manufacturing in Mexico (for exporting goods into the United States) a more attractive option. But not to worry, McCain tells us those accountants and factory workers losing out to India and Mexico can always go to the local community college and learn to do, well, something, at taxpayer expense. Why the GOP wishes to subsidize the professoriat and continue to send overseas jobs that have actually supported Americans and sustained American communities is not an easy question to answer, and McCain would be well advised to let Sarah Palin do the talking when he brings his “Global Economy First” message to my home state of Ohio and other areas that used to be called the industrial Midwest.
Yesterday, Sarah Palin delivered the most effective speech at any Republican Convention since Pat Buchanan addressed the GOP in Houston in 1992. And it was effective in much the same way: moving the spotlight from economic issues where the GOP has problems with much of the electorate to cultural themes that appeal to most Americans. In 1992, though, the GOP retreated from Buchanan’s rhetoric and let Bill Clinton keep the focus on the economy and win. By contrast, McCain’s embrace of Palin gives him a chance to win the White House in a year that, given the sputtering economy and the dreadful record of the Bush Administration, should belong to the Democrats.
Of course, the Democrats helped set the stage for Palin’s triumph with the bicoastal elite’s relentless criticism of everything about Palin before her speech, criticism that the Obama campaign joined in disgusting fashion, from attacking Palin for supporting “Nazi sympathiser” Pat Buchanan to running ads in selected states criticizing McCain’s professed pro-life views, no doubt hoping to capitalize on the media’s open criticism of Palin’s pregnant daughter and the ugly, whispered criticism of Palin for not aborting her son with Down syndrome. Before Palin took the podium, millions of Americans were reminded of what San Francisco really thinks of Scranton, and those of us who live in places like Scranton took notice.
My friend Scott Richert has an excellent piece at his Catholicism blog at about.com on Joe Biden’s past as a pro-life Catholic and his present as a supporter of abortion. Unquestioing fealty to abortion on demand is the price that the Democratic elite exacts of all those wanting national prominence in the party, and, sadly, Catholic Democratic politicians have been quite willing to pay that price.
But the Democrats pay a price as well. Cardinal Egan just lit into “ardent” Catholic Nancy Pelosi over her ignorant discourse on Meet the Press on Catholic teaching on abortion, using blunt language of the type very seldom used by American bishops. And the contrast between a politician’s professed devotion to Catholicism and that same politician’s open defiance of a teaching that even the most ill-informed know is central to Catholicism is grating, which was probably one of the reasons Catholic John Kerry lost the Catholic vote to Protestant George Bush is 2004. If the Democratic Party actually allowed Catholic politicians to vote in accord with Catholic teaching, it is possible that some of the children and grandchildren of those who were an integral part of the New Deal Coalition might consider voting again for the party of Al Smith and John Kennedy.
The challenge of the Democrats at this convention is the same challenge they have faced at every convention I can remember: to convince America that the Democratic Party at its national level consists of ordinary Americans. And, more often than not, the Democrats have failed this challenge, because the national Democratic Party has, since 1972, been the party of the counterculture. All the gestures of patriotism and piety at a Democratic convention seem forced and phony because, for the most part, they are. Michael Dukakis riding in a tank, John Kerry “reporting for duty” and gushing about his days as an altar boy, Michelle Obama discovering a “love” for America that she did not mention when she was telling us that she had not felt pride in America until her husband started winning primaries, Nancy Pelosi proclaming herself an “ardent” Catholic for unlimited abortion on demand--who can take these people seriously? The Republicans are little better, and in some areas may actually be worse, but the Democrats do excel at one thing: providing lots of ammunition to Republicans.
While our leaders ponder the burning question of how deeply into the Caucasus we want to extend NATO, evidence continues to mount that the economic strength that allowed America to triumph in the Cold War, and that has allowed a large American middle class to flourish, is continuing to ebb away as a result of globalism. Yesterday Louis Uchitelle reported in the New York Times that the decline in the dollar has brought about an increase in American exports, but that this increase has been largely limited to an increase in commodity exports--Uchitelle cites “corn, wheat, ore, and scrap metal"--and not a corresponding increase in the export of manufactured goods. One of the reasons for this is, as Fanklin Vargo of the National Association of Manufacturers relates, that “We have achieved a worldwide manufacturing base, and we are not going to shut down our factories overseas.” Indeed, the percentage of multinational corporations’ operations taking place in the United States has declined from 75% in 1999 to 70% today. An increasing reliance on commodity exports is not a formula for either political or economic strength, and our leaders would be well-advised to focus on preserving our manufacturing base and the middle class manufacturing helped create, rather than indulging in the fantasies of globalism.
After John McCain stated last week that he would not rule out a pro-abortion running mate, NRO featured several articles and comments arguing that this would be a bad idea and focusing on the defects of Joe Lieberman and Tom Ridge, who are thought to be the two pro-abortion politicians McCain would most likely choose as a running mate (though there has also been speculation that he may be considering Rudy Giuliani as vice president).
The most interesting thing about this commentary is what it shows about the level of trust in McCain. After all, McCain just squarely told Rev. Rick Warren at his televised forum that he would be a pro-life president. If the NROites actually trusted McCain, they would view McCain’s professed willingness to consider a pro-abortion running mate as a meaningless gesture intended to convince social liberals to vote for McCain. That they are instead genuinely concerned that McCain might actually choose a supporter of Roe v Wade to be a “heartbeat away from the presidency” shows just how much the rest of us should trust McCain to be a pro-life president.
For me, today is an occasion to consider matters of permanent importance, since it is the feast of a hero of mine, St. Maximilian Kolbe, the Franciscan priest who volunteered to take the place of a man condemned to death at Auschwitz. Kolbe’s story is a powerful one, which is why John Paul II proclaimed him “the patron saint of our difficult century” and why Christopher Hitchens dismissed him in his atheist manifesto as a “rather ambivalent priest...who had apparently behaved nobly in Auschwitz,” without even bringing himself to mention Kolbe’s name. I would invite anyone wondering whether John Paul II or Hitchens is right to read this account of Kolbe’s life, which makes clear that what made Kolbe’s heroic death possible was all that had come before, including numerous prior acts of selflessness in Nazi captivity.
In the final issue of his newspaper, before it was supressed by the Nazis, Kolbe wrote this: “No one in the world can change Truth. What we can do and should do is to seek truth and to serve it when we have found it. The real conflict is the inner conflict. Beyond armies of occupation and the hecatombs of extermination camps, there are two irreconcilable enemies in the depth of every soul: good and evil, sin and love. And what use are the victories on the battlefield if we ourselves are defeated in our innermost personal selves?”
John Derbyshire, writing at NRO, provides a brilliant summary of the foolishness of neoconservative foreign policy in the wake of the Russian invasion of Georgia, quoting Pat Buchanan’s Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War and concluding by writing that “We are governed by fools.”
Well said. However, looking at the rest of the commentary on NRO over Georgia, one can only conclude that, at NRO, Derbyshire is surrounded by fools.
The border dispute between Russia and Georgia over South Ossetia has inspired much breathless commentary, including Andrew McCarthy at NRO proclaming this the “Soviets’ rebirth.”
Before hyperventilating, McCarthy would be well advised to read some back issues of National Review. As that magazine long argued, what made the Soviet Union such a dangerous threat was the Communist ideology the Soviet Union embodied, an ideology that gave the Soviets many Western admirers and allies and also propelled the Soviets toward confrontation with the West. Soviet Communism is dead, and what is going on in South Ossetia is an old-fashioned border squabble of the type that the United States has wisely stayed out of for most of our history.
Anarchic violence is making a comeback in Norway, but not among the descendants of the Vikings. The BBC is reporting that one group of asylum seekers attacked another at a refugee center near Oslo, with some 40 attackers scaling the fence surrounding the center and then beating 20 of the residents using “iron bars and knives.” Other outlets are reporting that the attackers were Chechens and their victims Kurds. Is this what the multiculturalists have in mind when they warble about the glory of diversity?