For the third quarter, Ron Paul has raised just over $5 million, improving on last quarter’s numbers and giving him a respectable chance to compete in the early states.

But McCain was precisely correct to say that Judeo-Christian values were a cornerstone of Enlightenment thinking that led men like Madison, Jefferson and Adams to believe in individual autonomy [bold mine-DL].

These men were critical of some aspects of Christianity. But to deny that Christian principles were a powerful force behind the founding of this nation, from the impulse to flee Europe to the justification for war to the guiding principles at the Constitutional Convention [bold mine-DL], is to deny historical reality. 

The political thinking of the Founders was profoundly shaped by Christian teaching. Pointing that out would hardly be controversial were not so many people irrationally afraid of religion in general and Christianity in particular. But as John Adams said, men “may plan and speculate for Liberty, but it is Religion and Morality alone, which can establish the Principles upon which Freedom can securely stand.”  ~ New Hampshire Union-Leader

That first paragraph is remarkable.  Naturally, I don’t agree.  Far more overreaching than anything McCain said, which was ridiculous mostly because it was McCain saying it, the editorial maintains that “Judeo-Christian values were a cornerstone of Enlightenment thinking.”  To which I respond: “what part of the Enlightenment do we mean?”  I have been known to refer very broadly and negatively to “the Enlightenment,” when I am really objecting principally to political and social theories of Locke, Voltaire and Rousseau, and I have been reminded on a few occasions that it is worth keeping in mind the differences between Enlightenment thinkers.  Here this is especially worth doing. 

Leibniz, for example, was probably the closest to matching the image of an Aufklaerer who also respected what the editorial calls “Judeo-Christian values” (which is still pretty far removed from being “profoundly shaped by Christian teaching”), but he was an early figure and not representative of the kind of thought that influenced the Founding generation.  Algernon Sydney’s Discourse Concerning Government, which had a great influence on 18th century colonial political thought, is a weighty tome replete with references to Scripture, but it is not so much “profoundly influenced by Christian teaching” as it is Whig political philosophy trying to shield itself against Filmer with the Bible.  It is difficult to say that Harrington and Bolingbroke, significant for us because of their influence on Montesqieu and the later Country tradition, were “profoundly influenced by Christian teaching” beyond the reality that they belonged to Christian confessions and lived in a culture that was steeped in Christianity.  In my modern Greek history class, I could also say that Moisiodax and Korais were “profoundly influenced by Christian teaching”–profoundly influenced, that is, to run away from that teaching when it conflicted with their philosophical and political programs.  In general, wherever people have been “profoundly influenced by Christian teaching” they have had no time for prattle about natural rights, the social contract and “individual autonomy.”  It seems right and good to me that they should respond in this way.  Understandably, Christians try to construct some preeminent place for Christianity in the story of “the Founding,” which has itself been given quasi-mystical status by nationalist historians and ideologues, because they have come to recognise that it is only through having a claim to being a key part of “the Founding” that they will be permitted to have any real role in a system dominated by Americanist/proposition nation ideology.  The problem lies not so much with attempts to baptise “the Founding” as with the distorted and ideological treatment of the early republican period by later nationalist politicians and historians.  If Americanism and American identity itself are to be defined by political propositions, as the adherents of the proposition nation view would have it, it becomes necessary for people to interpret “the Founding” in a such a way that their beliefs are discovered as the ultimate sources of those propositions.    

As a recent instructor of mine was fond of saying, let’s take this step by step.  It makes sense to describe America as a Christian nation in the following ways:

1) Anglo-American culture, what Russell Kirk referred to as our “British culture,” owes an enormous debt to European Christianity and is inconceivable without it.  North American colonial societies were and are derived from European and Christian civilisation and ultimately belong to that civilisation.  Christianity was a public religion and was, at the state level, an established religion in one form or another in many of the colonies, and this arrangement prevailed for many decades after independence.  Those who think they have found justification in the early republican period for their drive to push religion into the corner and isolate it from public life don’t know what they’re talking about.   

2) It is not possible to understand the evolution of America’s “language of liberty” without referring back to the 17th century religiously-charged constitutional struggles of the British Isles.  In this sense, our constitutional inheritance, which was at the heart of the War for Independence, depended on and derived from precedents that were set during a civil war that had both political and religious dimensions. 

However, the constitutional settlement that emerged out of these conflicts involved to a very large extent the complete abandonment of all political theology.  Any endorsement of ideas of “individual autonomy” would represent a significant departure from “Christian principles.”  “Judeo-Christian values,” fairly meaningless phrase that it is in this formulation, do not lead anyone to believe in individual autonomy.  On the contrary, whether in the Old Testament or the New, what we call individual autonomy is what Scripture defines as sin and pride.  Scripture is brimming with commands for social obligation, fraternity, charity, self-sacrifice and the corporate unity of the People of God.  Traditional Christian social teaching does not recognise an idea of “individual autonomy.”  Unity in the Body of Christ does not obliterate distinctions and personality, but it does preclude autonomy of any kind.  Enlightenment social theories along these lines were considered–and were–subversive because they contradicted the Christian teaching that allegedly so profoundly influenced the thought of Jefferson (!).  It should be enough that Jefferson was a great proponent of decentralism and liberty; we should not need to remake him into a crypto-theologian to appreciate his contribution to our country.  

It is correct to observe that Christian respect for the dignity and integrity of the human person and scholastic arguments on natural law paved the way for later applications of these reflections in political and legal reform.  It is true, as studies of the rhetoric of the Revolution have shown, that the use of originally religious language of covenants, which had already been introduced into political discourse during the English civil war, shaped broader popular understanding of the patriot cause more than did familiarity with Lockean contractual theory.  It is true that the broad mass of the population of the colonies was made up of professing Christians.  In this sense, the people constituted a nation of Christians.  To the extent that they still do, they may be called a Christian nation.  As Dr. Fleming said on this subject:

The United States was never a ‘Christian country’ in a confessional sense, though it was once a nation of mostly Christians.

Apparently, Cameron has given a speech at Blackpool that has impressedmany and even awedsome of his audience.  He had no text or cues or podium, and worked from a few notecards.  The prospect of a general election this year seems to agree with Cameron.  In any case, the swirling rumours of just a few days ago that Cameron was headed for a fall, which I assumed to be true, show just how many people in his party underestimated his campaign skills.  The Cameroons have always struck me as a ridiculous bunch, and I remain skeptical that they can win an election, but as of right now this is probably the most competitive–and least demoralised–the Tories have been in ten years.

Exit Strategiesis the very good foreign policy blog of Dan McCarthy, Jim Antle and Richard Spencer.  If you’ve been reading their blog, you’ll know that Jim Antle was talking about the Ogonowski Phenomenon before anyoneelse, and he was also explaining why Ogonowski is not likely to succeed.  Ogonowski seems to be a very strong candidate, but it is unlikely that he will be able to overcome the many natural barriers that a Republican in Massachusetts faces, especially in what is likely to be another cycle of hemorrhaging for the House GOP.

Richard Spencer has a new post talking about Prof. Bacevich’s forthcoming cover article for TACon Gen. Petraeus.

Except for McNamara, most senior administration officials from Secretary of State Dean Rusk on down privately agreed with Johnson’s intelligence adviser, Clark Clifford, who was quoted in minutes of a National Security Council staff meeting as saying it was “inconceivable” that the attack had been a case of mistaken identity.

The attack “couldn’t be anything else but deliberate,” the NSA’s director, Lt. Gen. Marshall Carter, later told Congress.

“I don’t think you’ll find many people at NSA who believe it was accidental,” Benson Buffham, a former deputy NSA director, said in an interview.

“I just always assumed that the Israeli pilots knew what they were doing,” said Harold Saunders, then a member of the National Security Council staff and later assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern and South Asian affairs. ~The Baltimore Sun

Ezra Klein makes the obvious, but apparently still necessary point:

Walt and Mearsheimer, by contrast, are arguing that there exists a powerful political lobby, ranked second in multiple surveys of Congressmen and staffers, that exerts disproportionate power over American policy towards Israel, in much the way AARP, the NRA, or the Cuban Lobby does on their issues. This Lobby, they argue, does not represent the expressed opinions of most Jews, and it includes a large constituency of Christian Zionists. That is not anti-Semitism. You may disagree with it, but it is not an attack on the shared characteristics of Jews. And it is disgusting and cheapening to pretend otherwise because marginalizing the authors as anti-semitic is more effective than arguing back their viewpoint.

What’s most bizarre about the polemical response to the book is that, if the critics of the book are largely right about the many egregious exaggerations, mistakes and oversights Mearsheimer and Walt have made, there should be no need to resort to these tactics.  If the argument were as weak as critics simply assume it to be, the denunciations for alleged prejudice would be as redundant as they have been frequent.    

As I’ve said before, I think the authors do overreach when they downplay the influence of the Saudis and oil interests, but the existence of these other interests by no means proves their larger arguments wrong.  On the contrary, evidence of significant influence from other lobbies makes claims about the role of pro-Israel groups in shaping policy that much more reasonable.  If others have shaped policy, then surely a “loose coalition” of some very influential groups, including one of the most effective lobbies of all, will be quite successful as well.  The claims the authors make may be in need of qualification, but citing the influence of these other lobbies comes nowhere near refuting their position.  Dan McCarthy drives this point home:

But it doesn’t follow that if the Saudis have tremendous, and probably detrimental, influence on American foreign policy in the Middle East, the Israelis must not have similar influence. The Saudi and Israeli lobbies disagree on much–though certainly not everything–but the one does not negate the other.

Those who are critical of the book are very big fans of Leslie Gelb’s review, which some seem to take as a definitive smackdown.  Those who stop to read the mighty Gelb review discover that it does nothing of the sort, and instead unwittingly backs up much of what the book argues.  As Dan McCarthy puts it:

Actually, Gelb is not comparing the Israeli lobby to the Cuban lobby–he’s comparing the claims made by Mearsheimer and Walt to Fidel Castro’s contention that the U.S. can’t really be a democracy because a small number of Cuban expatriates shapes our policy toward Havana. Trouble is, Castro has a valid point, and Leslie Gelb, of all people, knows it.
 

I share Klein’s frustration that it hasn’t been possible to have a real discussion of the merits (and flaws) of the book.  (There are rare moments when the occasional critic makes a partly substantive argument, but this tends to merge with the general wave of irrational hostility that the book’s release has provoked and get lost in the noise.)  A proper discussion about the book hasn’t been possible because the entire “debate” has turned into a clash between polemicists denouncing the authors and distorting their words and the rest of us attempting simply to defend the principle that the authors hold a legitimate point of view that ought not to be demonised.

When I said that as President I would lead direct diplomacy with our adversaries, I was called naïve and irresponsible. But how are we going to turn the page on the failed Bush-Cheney policy of not talking to our adversaries if we don’t have a President who will lead that diplomacy? ~Barack Obama

By electing someone other than Obama, someone who might know how to frame and present the issue well?  Framed this way, it appears to be part of a reflexive endorsement of whatever it is that Bush didn’t do.   

He continued:

When I said that we should take out high-level terrorists like Osama bin Laden if we have actionable intelligence about their whereabouts, I was lectured by legions of Iraq War supporters. 

And by many Iraq war opponents, too, who thought the idea as stated was batty.  Because it was batty–and dangerous.  Pakistan policy requires special finesse because of the internal political problems of the state, and instead of a scalpel Obama brought a sledgehammer to the problem.  That was his idea of introducing a new approach to foreign policy? 

Obama:

They said we can’t take out bin Laden if the country he’s hiding in won’t. A few weeks later, the co-chairmen of the 9/11 Commission – Tom Kean and Lee Hamilton – agreed with my position.

It is conceivable that Tom Kean and Lee Hamiton–old establishment hands and kings of conventional wisdom that they are–are just as wrong as Obama.  Shocking, I know.  They were on a blue-ribbon investigative commission; they are not necessarily trained Pakistan experts (indeed, I feel confident in saying that they are not) and are endorsing a general principle that would, in this particular case, be potentially very counterproductive, if not disastrous.  Context is everything in these matters.  Ignoring context is part of the reason why the Bush Doctrine has been such a flop–it attempted to apply a universal standard to a kind of problem that needs to handled differently on a case-by-case basis.     

Putting it the way that he did, Obama makes it sound as if the unwilling government is actively aiding and abetting Bin Laden, when this isn’t obviously the case.  The government may be unwilling to have American military strikes inside their territory for entirely different reasons.  Declaring your intention to ignore an allied government about military actions inside their country doesn’t sound as if you are “turning the page” of the Bush-Cheney era, but rather sounds more like an extension of the same ham-fisted approach to international relations: we rule, you obey; your sovereignty means nothing if we say it means nothing.     

Also, if the “foreign policy elite” failed us, as Obama says, why does he have so many members of the “foreign policy elite” that got it wrong advising him?

Obama:

And when I said that we can rule out the use of nuclear weapons to take out a terrorist training camp, it was immediately branded a “gaffe” because I did not recite the conventional Washington-speak. But is there any military planner in the world who believes that we need to drop a nuclear bomb on a terrorist training camp?

Almost certainly not, but that is to miss the entire point.  There is no “conventional Washington-speak” on this question, because you don’t talk about it in public!  If no one with any expertise believes that we should do it, and no one has proposed doing it, why even talk about it?  When it comes to nuclear weapons, you don’t talk about when you would use them–the uncertainty actually can add to their deterrent effect.  Ruling out such things, even though we might all agree that doing them is fantastically stupid, is the equivalent of MacArthur and Acheson describing the U.S. defense perimeter and excluding Korea from it, implying that everything outside the perimeter was up for grabs.  Result?  The Korean War.  But the officials of the Truman Administration was “straight” with the people, all right, and that’s what matters! 

Is it just me, or does Obama’s latest speech come off sounding rather too narcissistic?  Granted, I am not an Obama fan, so I tend to respond as negatively to his speeches as other people respond positively, but he spends the first half of the speech talking about how insightful and prescient he was and then launches into how the mean establishmentarians have been picking on him for his allegedly bold, new ideas.  It isn’t until the second half of the speech that he gets down to any of his really substantive proposals, including some that are actually sensible (his work with Lugar on securing nuclear materials is to his credit and ought to have had a much larger role in this speech).  His idea about making the DNI a position with a fixed term and semi-independence has some merit.  However, his talk about “strengthening” the NPT seems like rather wishful thinking to me.  Does Obama intend to scupper the nuclear deal made with the Indians, since that deal pretty blatantly violates the NPT? 

We don’t know the answer to that, because he immediately goes back to talking about Obama’s wonderful experiences in life.  I do realise that personality and personal history are relevant and are important factors for many voters, but this speech seems to be far too much about the man and far too little about what he will do.  Some of the things he does tell he will do will invite yawns if they do not invite derision.  For instance, this seems odd:

I’ll give an annual “State of the World” address to the American people in which I lay out our national security policy.

How better to underscore one’s interventionism than to make what will be perceived as a claim that the President rules the world?  Why not include this as part of the State of the Union, or incorporate it into the standard speech at the U.N.? 

And perhaps I am not appreciating the cleverness in this proposal:

I’ll draw on the legacy of one our greatest Presidents – Franklin Roosevelt – and give regular “fireside webcasts,” and I’ll have members of my national security team do the same.

I’m sure most political bloggers will find this proposal interesting, since it will give them new online material on a regular basis, but what’s the point?  In an Obama Administration (something that will, of course, never come to pass, but just for fun let’s imagine), do we really want the National Security Advisor doing webcasts, or do we want him to do his job well?  Viewed skeptically, this proposal seems to be an attempt to make national security officials into part of a P.R. effort, when we have already had quite enough of this sort of fluff from the current batch.

Not surprisingly, five of the six sitting Senators currently running for President decided that absence was the better part of valour in the defense appropriation vote: Obama, Biden, Dodd, Clinton and McCain all managed to miss it.  Feingold, Byrd and Coburn were the only three to vote against the measure.

P.S. Can anyone explain Tom Coburn’s ‘nay’ vote?

Sayeeda Warsi, given a peerage by David Cameron to enable her to join his front bench as spokesman on cohesion, has taken on the issue head on, volunteering her view that immigration has been “out of control” and that people feel “uneasy” about the pace of immigration into Britain. Her intervention has outraged black groups who say she is using the language of the BNP. It also threatens to derail Mr Cameron’s attempts to shake off the Conservatives’ “nasty-party” image, while exposing divisions between left and right.

“What this country has a problem with is not people of different kinds coming into this country and making a contribution, but the problem that nobody knows who is coming in, who is going out – the fact that we don’t have a border police; we don’t have proper checks; we don’t have any idea how many people are here, who are unaccounted for,” she says. “It’s that lack of control and not knowing that makes people feel uneasy, not the fact that somebody of a different colour or a different religion or a different origin is coming into our country.” As her press officer squirms in his chair, she continues: “The control of immigration impacts upon a cohesive Britain.”

Warming to her theme, she declares that the decision to house large groups of migrants on estates in the north of England “overnight” has led to tension in local communities. Similar tensions have been found in the London in Barking and Dagenham, where the far right has been making political in-roads. “The pace of change unsettles communities,” she says.

Lady Warsi’s outspoken intervention is somewhat surprising as she is the daughter of immigrants herself [bold mine-DL]. Her father is a former Labour-supporting mill-worker from Pakistan who, after making a fortune in the bed and mattress trade, switched his allegiance to the Tories. The lawyer, 36, who is married with a nine-year-old daughter, devoted her early career to improving race relations, helping to launch Operation Black Vote in Yorkshire and sitting on various racial justice committees. So her analysis of race relations on the eve of the Tory conference cannot be dismissed as a right-wing rant [bold mine-DL].

In an interview with The Independent on Sunday, Lady Warsi claims that the conspiracy of silence on the subject of immigration plays into the hands of the far-right British National Party.

“The BNP will look at what issue it is locally that they can exploit and the other political parties are not seen to be dealing with and they will play to that,” she says. Far from ignoring the issue of immigration, she thinks it should be confronted head on. “I think we need to have the debate. One of the problems why the BNP has been allowed to grow is sometimes certainly the Labour Party took the view that if we ignore them they will just go away,” she says.

But while BNP supporters, including the English National Ballet dancer Simone Clarke, have been sharply criticised for backing a racist party, Lady Warsi says that BNP voters should be listened to. “The BNP and what they represent, they clearly have a race agenda; they clearly have a hate agenda. But there are a lot of people out there who are voting for the British National Party and it’s those people that we mustn’t just write off and say ‘well, we won’t bother because they are voting BNP or we won’t engage with them’,” she says.

Indeed, she says, people who back the extreme-right party, criticised for its racist and homophobic agenda, may even have a point. “They have some very legitimate views. People who say ‘we are concerned about crime and justice in our communities – we are concerned about immigration in our communities’,” she said. ~The Independent

This has apparently annoyed many people in Britain (not least of which was probably David Cameron, who wanted his conference week to be blissfully free of anything remotely interesting).  What could the shadow community cohesion minister be thinking, talking about, well, community cohesion like this?  How could someone whose career has been in race relations make statements about, er, race relations?  Obviously, it is considered unpardonable to suggest that immigration restriction or even modest reform is legitimate, which is why these remarks are even considered that noteworthy, and it is considered even worse when it is done by the daughter of immigrants, even though it cannot be dismissed as easily when she says it.  Not just a “right-wing rant,” you see, because no daughter of immigrants could actually have come intellectually to see any reasonableness in “right-wing” views.  (It is the fact that it cannot be dismissed out of hand, as would normally be done, that I think really vexes Baroness Warsi’s critics.)  If all immigrantss started assimilating and respecting the opinions of their fellow citizens, where would it lead?