What The Nyt Wouldnt Print - Road to the Middle Class

THE FLAP over The New York Times refusing to print an oped by John McCain is a gem. Their refusal to print McCain’s responding to an Obama oped published last week is the sort of thing that conservatives love.

And the absurd rationale offered by the NYT editor was a gem. David Shipley didn’t like the oped because it didn’t mirror Obama’s oped but instead criticized Obama.

But now the New York Post has published McCain’s oped and concerned voters can compare the two political documents side by side.

I’d have to say that Obama’s oped is the more tendentious. After all, he has to wriggle through the fact that he thought that Iraq was lost a year ago, and now it turns out that it isn’t.

The difference in narrative is substantial. Writes Obama:

Ending the war is essential to meeting our broader strategic goals, starting in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the Taliban is resurgent and Al Qaeda has a safe haven. Iraq is not the central front in the war on terrorism, and it never has been.

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he writes, says that we can’t step up the effort in Afghanistan until we draw down the troops in Iraq.

That’s true, but now that we are winning in Iraq we can spare the troops needed in Afghanistan. And that is exactly what President Bush proposes to do.

McCain points out the obvious. Obama doesn’t seem interested in winning.

I’m dismayed that he never talks about winning the war - only of ending it. But if we don’t win the war, our enemies will - and a triumph for the terrorists would be a disaster for us.

That is true. Obama does not mention the word “win” in his oped. But when you are in a war, it’s a question of winning or losing. When Obama says he would “pursue a new strategy, and begin by providing at least two additional combat brigades to support our effort in Afghanistan,” you have to ask: Well, what’s the point of those combat brigades? Are they there just to pursue a strategy or are they there to win the war?

Thirty years ago, liberals insisted that the US “end” the war in Vietnam. That meant, in fact, losing the war in Vietnam. It took Ronald Reagan to turn the US around and erase the defeat in Vietnam with a “surge” that ended up winning the Cold War and putting the Soviet Union on the ash heap of history.

Do we have to go through the whole process again with the war on Islamic extremism?

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

TAGS

Action

The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

China and Christianity

At first, we thought [the power of the West] was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system. But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity.
David Aikman, Jesus in Beijing

Churches

[In the] higher Christian churches� they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

Civil Society

“Civil Society”—a complex welter of intermediate institutions, including businesses, voluntary associations, educational institutions, clubs, unions, media, charities, and churches—builds, in turn, on the family, the primary instrument by which people are socialized into their culture and given the skills that allow them to live in broader society and through which the values and knowledge of that society are transmitted across the generations.
Francis Fukuyama, Trust

Class War

In England there were always two sharply opposed middle classes, the academic middle class and the commercial middle class. In the nineteenth century, the academic middle class won the battle for power and status... Then came the triumph of Margaret Thatcher... The academics lost their power and prestige and... have been gloomy ever since.
Freeman Dyson, “The Scientist as Rebel”

Conservatism

Conservatism is the philosophy of society. Its ethic is fraternity and its characteristic is authority — the non-coercive social persuasion which operates in a family or a community. It says ‘we should...’.
Danny Kruger, On Fraternity

Conservatism's Holy Grail

What distinguishes true Conservatism from the rest, and from the Blair project, is the belief in more personal freedom and more market freedom, along with less state intervention... The true Third Way is the Holy Grail of Tory politics today - compassion and community without compulsion.
Minette Marrin, The Daily Telegraph

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Drang nach Osten

There was nothing new about the Frankish drive to the east... [let] us recall that the continuance of their rule depended upon regular, successful, predatory warfare.
Richard Fletcher, The Barbarian Conversion

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

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