Mark Krikorian is optimistic that we are not approaching a point of no return with respect to amnesty and mass immigration.  I think he is probably too optimistic.  He cites as a supporting example Muslim support for the National Front of Jean-Marie Le Pen.  As Mr. Krikorian writes:

Jeez — if Arabs can vote for a guy like Le Pen, then a Republican Party that is optimistic and welcoming toward immigrants, but firm in its support of muscular enforcement and lower numbers, shouldn’t have any problem holding its own among Hispanics, especially if we reduce new inflows and let our still-strong (compared to Europe) assimilative forces do their work. 

Certainly there is a kind of irony of the old paratrooper who fought in Algeria making a deal with the children and grandchildren of some of the people he fought against, but as The New York Sun reported two months ago Le Pen had started moving towards an alliance with French Muslims.  As a cynical move to latch on to the fastest-growing population in the country, it is very clever.  As a massive sell-out to the entire platform to which the National Front was supposedly dedicated, it is hardly a very encouraging example for restrictionists in America.

The Sun article also said:

The National Front is surprisingly popular among Muslim immigrants or second-generation Muslim citizens. For all its campaigning about immigration, Mr. Le Pen’s party has always extended support to Arab and Islamic causes abroad, from Saddam’s Iraq to Arafat’s or Hamas Palestine, and from Al Qaeda to Iran. And it is as firmly anti-American and anti-Jewish as the Muslim community itself tends to be.

Even taking this with the grain of salt that any reporting about Le Pen in the Sun requires, it makes sense that there are other, non-immigration positions that draw Muslim voters to support the FN.  Le Pen making a deal with the Muslims in France is the equivalent of surrender and collaboration in the hopes of creating favourable conditions for yourself in the new order.  It is rather less encouraging news and feeds into pessimism that Europe really is finished if some of the most vehement opponents of mass immigration from the south are effectively throwing in the towel.  

Being critical of Israel is hardly unusual on either left or right in Europe, and opposition to the Iraq war is also hardly unique, but Le Pen has always been consistently much more, er, vehement in his denunciations of both.  By comparison, I know of very little in the Republican Party platform that would actually trump the many natural advantages the Democrats have with a growing Hispanic immigrant population.  Enforcement and reduced numbers probably are somewhat popular with second or third-generation, more assimilated Hispanic voters, but there is too little working in the GOP’s favour with these voters otherwise. 

None of this is to say that we shouldn’t have enforcement and reduced numbers (we certainly should), but it is to say that it will not be possible for the GOP to have its cake and eat it, too.  Le Pen’s example can only encourage the “pro-amnesty Republicans” who hope to make a deal with Hispanic voters.  If the French example is any indication of what will happen here, it also means that there will eventually be a tipping point when restrictionists will find themselves so badly outnumbered that they may feel compelled for other reasons to de-prioritise immigration restriction and try to join forces with the people they have been working to keep out of the country.

Liz Cheney’s anti-Syria op-ed was interesting for what it did not say.  It did not dwell on whether or not Pelosi was going beyond the law or her constitutional role in “negotiating” with Assad, but simply declared that no one should have any dealings with Syria.  It did not talk about U.S. complicity in the Israeli devastation of Lebanon, which was remarkable considering Ms. Cheney’s crocodile tears for poor suffering Lebanese democrats and the dream of “Lebanese independence.”  Lebanese freedom and independence are important only when they are being undermined by Syrians.  This tracks nicely with the same two-minded approach to Lebanon that the administration has already offered: the Siniora government must be freed from the terrible grip of Hizbullah, but if it is undermined and ruined by Israeli attacks that is all right (because this can be blamed on Hizbullah anyway).  The clarity of stating openly what we have all assumed to be the administration view (or does anyone actually think that Ms. Cheney is just giving us her personal opinion here?) is refreshing.  The op-ed did not actually talk very much about why engaging Syria would be bad for the United States, but went on and on about why it might be bad for Lebanon.  The latter point is worth bearing in mind, but it isn’t really clear why dealing with Damascus is obviously contrary to the American interest.  Of course, it’s not as if Ms. Cheney or her relations have lately been terribly concerned about that interest.

So the problem with paleos is that “we” haven’t “done” much because of our “refusals to compromise.”  I suppose I would have to plead guilty, at least for myself, on this point.  Thanks to my refusal to compromise I have not managed to overthrow the managerial state in my spare time, and through my dilatory efforts the empire somehow continues to thrive.  Somehow a few dozen academics and writers have not managed to defeat or even check the combined forces of international corporations, modern mass culture and the federal government, but if we had just gotten around a little more and made a few more deals we would have been successful.  Obviously, it’s because we refuse to compromise that we haven’t been successful. 

Not that Koz tells us what we could or should have done or why we should have compromised core principles to do the things that we should have been doing.  Perhaps in his next installment he can tell us how betraying principle and collaborating with the enemies of liberty and justice would have “done” something worthy of his respect.

Since we’re playing a kind of blogging tag, I will note that Koz has pointed out that I laughed at Tom Bevan’s prediction that Fred Thompson would vault into third place if and when he entered the race.  Indeed I did, because the idea that legions of people are just waiting for Fred Thompson to save us sounded ridiculous at the time.  It still sounds pretty ridiculous, even though it appears to be true. 

Obviously, as I made perfectly explicit in a later post (in one of those supposedly non-existent examples of a paleo admitting error), I was mistaken about Fred Thompson’s ability to seize the imagination of Republican voters, since he has subsequently moved not just into third place but even into second place (!) as of the most recent polling.  This is almost certainly a testament to the pathetic weakness of the major Republican candidates, the limited value of early polling and the celebrity-driven quality of Republican primary politics this cycle, but I am willing to acknowledge that my prediction was quite wrong.  However, I am positive that people who want Fred Thompson as President have little idea what Fred Thompson believes or would do as President, because even greater numbers of people want Giuliani as their man and know virtually nothing about him.  In a short time, Fred Thompson probably will become the “frontrunner” because the position of “frontrunner” in April of the year before the election is fairly unimportant and will probably switch hands many times over the next few months as people learn more about different candidates.  So, as I said a few weeks ago, this polling is either pretty meaningless or the people responding to these polls are the most foolish, impressionable, irrational voters one could hope to find.  These early polls are measuring, as polls usually do, vague, changeable sentiments that may have little value for predicting future voting habits. 

I will continue to insist that Fred Thompson-mania makes no sense, it is irrational and it is the Republican Party’s political version of a cry for help.  That will remain true even in the event that Fred Thompson winds up winning the nomination, because he brings nothing to the table that ought to make him the obvious champion of the field.  He possesses many of the same liabilities of the other candidates (e.g., somewhat questionable credentials on life, the tie to campaign finance reform, an undistinguished tenure in the Senate, etc.), and he has had no particular accomplishments in his political or non-political career.  He has only a middling-to-bad record on immigration, he has been foursquare behind the war and he has been an active partisan of Scooter Libby—that is the man Republicans want to anoint as their saviour?  Go ahead, and watch him lead the party to catastrophe. 

In his favour, he has the virtue of being a passable actor and probably enjoys high name recognition thanks to his work in television.  If those are qualifications to be the President of the United States, this country is in a lot more trouble than I thought.

Whereas Larison imputes Goldberg’s thoughts as necessarily vapid, swimming in the mainstream of American culture as they are. ~Koz

Perhaps Koz has misunderstood me somewhere.  It is true that Goldberg’s frequent TV chatter and “timewasters” at The Corner make him seem rather less than a serious observer of the political and cultural scene, but we are talking about blogging after all and that is not really why I agreed with Alterman’s assessment that Goldberg has turned to intellectually bankrupt “movement shtick.”  I agreed with Alterman’s assessment because I think this is an accurate observation about the shallowness and, yes, vapidity of what passes for mainstream conservative intellectual activity today.  Goldberg seems to embody those things to a remarkable degree and much more than, say, Ramesh Ponnuru or John Derbyshire, for example, who routinely show that they can engage in actual debate without resorting to lazy name-calling and guilt by association; they have some ideas of their own, and they can defend and explain them through something called “argument.” 

It is possible that Goldberg’s forthcoming book will demonstrate that there is more to Goldberg today than someone who engages in little more than posturing and rather heavy-handed attacks in which he tars his enemies with what he would consider to be particularly nasty associations and labels.  His obnoxious slaps at Ross and Reihan, who are probably on his side on many issues, are par for the course–he doesn’t know how to respond to or critique any idea, regardless of what it is, without resorting to these methods, because he doesn’t seem to know how to handle ideas except as ciphers of movement loyalty or disloyalty.  I suppose every political movement will have these people, but these people will not normally be taken as people with something interesting to say.  The problem with the movement today is that Goldbergian shtick, which is basically the striking of the politically appropriate pose and the uttering of the politically appropriate word, is widespread and a surprisingly large number of conservative pundits engage in it in the mistaken belief that this is the same as making demonstrative arguments.  Most of modern conservatism operates in two rhetorical modes: panegyric (hurray for Romney [or whomever we are praising this week]!) and invective (down with the evil-cons!).  Everyone else uses these modes as well (I am a big fan of invective myself), but at least some are also capable of demonstrative reasoning. 

If paleocons and leftists find themselves to be in agreement about certain things, especially about the debating tactics of Jonah Goldberg, this is because he uses the same tactics against both and both groups find these tactics to be cheap, weak and unpersuasive.  Of course, he isn’t trying to persuade, but to reinforce collapsing ideological structures–that tends to confirm the picture of intellectual weakness that Alterman and I and others have been describing. 

What I found especially unconvincing about Koz’s critique was this bit:

This last [about swimming in the mainstream of American culture] is a paleocon trope that I wish more of them could see for themselves, since the paleocons often have very useful cultural commentary, but no accountability for any of it. Being a paleo means never having to say you’re sorry. If they had been in charge, the problem (whatever problem it is) would have never happened in the first place. This is good as far as it goes, but it means that we have to retreat into our own personal little Barbie and Ken dollhouse where we have total fiat over our environment.

I don’t really know what this last line even means, but I assume it is another form of the usual criticism of supposed paleo “quietism” or withdrawal from the arena.  It is surely the only time “Barbie and Ken dollhouse” has been used in the same paragraph with paleoconservatism.  It also isn’t really about whether we paleos are in charge of anything.  We are certainly capable of mistakes and faulty judgements, but where I think we differ from other conservative “factions” and other Americans, to the extent that you can generalise about a group as genuinely diverse in perspectives as paleos actually are, is that we retain more strongly a recognition of the limits, needs and purpose of human nature, we seem to remember history more keenly, we instinctively refuse to trust governments regardless of which people run them, and we are less inclined to justify moral abominations when they are committed by our government or by people in our society (perhaps because we are not in positions of influence or power and do not feel compelled to justify the unjustifiable to retain those positions).  If speaking out against what the critic believes to be rank immorality or injustice is disqualified because the critic is somehow “unaccountable” because he is so marginalised or otherwise uninfluential that he has virtually nothing to lose when he is mistaken in his criticism, then I suppose I plead guilty to being “unaccountable” in this way.  If it means that we are not somehow  just as obliged to pay respect to truth and acknowledge when we have been wrong, I reject this categorically.  What would it be like to have “accountable” cultural critics?  How are they currently not being held to account?  When those cultural critics say something like, “The family is the central institution of society and must be strengthened by actively discouraging divorce and encouraging traditional Christianity,” are they being “unaccountable”?  

Koz says that “being paleo means never having to say you’re sorry,” which I might be inclined to spin as a compliment meaning that paleos never have anything for which they should be sorry.  But obviously that is not his meaning.  It means that paleos should feel bad that they keep more or less accurately pointing out the grievous dangers to this country long before these evils become obvious to everyone else, while no one pays any attention to the paleos and instead listens to the impressive frauds who continue to bungle everything and fail their country on a regular basis.  Perhaps it means that we should feel contrite that we opposed the war before it was trendy to do so. 

On the contrary, it is not being paleo that allows you to go along without ever admitting being wrong.  It might be the case that no one would notice even if we did get things horribly wrong, but I would like to think that paleos would have the integrity to acknowledge those errors, not least because they are well aware of the terrible evils that come from pride and vanity, which are the two passions that usually prevent men from facing up to their mistakes.  Politicians and many professional pundits seem to enjoy this luxury of never having to say that they’re sorry, because they for the most part are unaccountable for their errors, even though the policies carried out partly because of their errors usually have many more disastrous consequences for the commonwealth and the world. 

Gna, Blbool-Goosan Sheram (1906) 

Gna, blbool, trir gna
Es aryoonot ashkharen
Trir, blbool, el mi kena
Bazhanetsin kez varden

Go, nightingale, fly away 
From this bloody world.
Fly, nightingale, and do not stay…
They have separated you from the rose.

K’o sirekan siroon vardet
Kamin pchets choratsoots
Arnov ltsrats vardarant,
Ayginert pchatsoots.

The wind blew, drying
Your beloved beautiful rose…
Your rose garden is filled with blood,
Your gardens are ruined.

Arden eghav agravi tegh,
Estegh el vard chi batsvi,
Zoor mi voghba, kheghchook blbool,
Tsavert ar heratsir.

Already was the place of the crow,
Here also the rose will not open.
Do not lament in vain, miserable nightingale,
You escaped your pains.

Translated by Larison

There is an online collection of Armenian poetry in Armenian script available here, including Sayat Nova’s entire Armenian corpus listed alphabetically.  This should make it easier for me to post translations in the future.  Unfortunately, the design of the site does not allow for copying the Armenian script text itself.  But, here, for instance is a link to Ashkharooms akh chim kashi.

Contact with the PFLP is not a requirement for being holed up by the Israel Defense Forces. Bethlehem University students cannot get to Jerusalem, a few minutes’ drive away, unless they sneak in illegally. The students from the separated Gaza enclave have to take classes from Bethlehem via the Internet.

Republican Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey was at the university the same day I was, and faculty members could hardly believe a real live member of Congress was there. Smith later was given a tour of Jerusalem to see with his own eyes that the separation barrier in most places is a big, ugly and intimidating wall, not merely a fence.

Smith, an active Catholic layman, was drawn here because of the rapid emigration of the Holy Land’s Christian minority. They leave more quickly than Muslims because contacts on the outside make them more mobile. Peter Corlano, a Catholic member of the Bethlehem University faculty, told Smith and me: “We live the same life as Muslims. We are Palestinians.”

Concerned by the disappearance of Christians in the land of Christianity’s birthplace, Smith could also become (as I did) concerned by the plight of all Palestinians. If so, he will find precious little company in Congress. ~Robert Novak

I feel the ascension of Jonah Goldberg is an example of just how intellectually bankrupt…how much conservatism is just a kind of movement shtick rather than a thoughtful position. ~Eric Alterman

I would like to be able to say that Alterman is all wrong, even if it would mean giving Goldberg some minimal credit, but as far as the official conservatism of the mainstream goes it is difficult to find fault with this description. 

Then again, no one really wants to make a list of the conservatives whom liberals consider respectable and decent, and no one wants to be on a list that includes Andrew Sullivan.

Update: Speaking of Sullivan, Alterman reminds us of just how outrageously pro-war and insulting to antiwar people Sullivan was in the old days before he realised that the pro-war bandwagon was going off a cliff.  He notes (correctly) the absurdity that the more or less repentant hawks and newborn skeptics still presume to speak with authority on foreign policy after having been so completely wrong on Iraq.  He adds (rightly) that their admitting being wrong on Iraq isn’t sufficient to restore confidence in their judgement: they have to be able to demonstrate that they understand why they got it so wrong and also demonstrate how they have changed in their thinking that would avoid these same pitfalls later.  I know Sullivan thinks he has addressed this with his laughable “conservatism of doubt” and his terrible book, but as with so many other things Sullivan is very wrong.

Alterman also paints an amusing picture of Christopher Hitchens “getting high with Paul Wolfowitz and Bill Kristol.”  I assume he means this figuratively.

The invitation extended to Vice President Dick Cheney to be the commencement speaker at Brigham Young University has set off a rare, continuing protest at the Mormon university, one of the nation’s most conservative.

Some of the faculty and the 28,000 undergraduate and graduate students, who are overwhelmingly Republican, have expressed concern about the Bush administration’s support for the war in Iraq and other policies, but most of the current protest has focused on Mr. Cheney’s integrity, character and behavior. Several students said, for example, that they were appalled at Mr. Cheney’s use of an expletive on the Senate floor in a June 2004 exchange with Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont. ~The New York Times

As were many of us.  This is moderately encouraging news.  It shows that there are still some things this crowd will do that conservative people in this country will not abide.  It might even be enough to convince Damon Linker and Jacob Weisberg to rethink their anti-Mormonism.  (Not likely.)  In fact, that might become a sort of slogan for the protesters: “Conservatives cannot abide Dick Cheney.”  It could catch on.

Or, as Prof. Woodworth at BYU put it:

We espouse honesty, chastity, integrity, ethics, virtue and morality, and he does not epitomize those values.

Update: Unfortunately, the protest appears to be made up mostly of Democrats, which makes it far less remarkable and less interesting.