Expect More?

It seems that Donald Rumsfeld isn't the only one grading government programs. The White House has this section on the OMB website, called ExpectMore.gov that officially grades US Government programs. Funny, I've never seen anyone mention these reports anywhere. For example, this item about US Public Diplomacy five years into the Global War on Terror:

Program Assessment

Program
Public Diplomacy

These programs articulate the foreign policy objectives of the US and create an international environment receptive to US interests through exchanges, training and outreach activities. Public Diplomacy also provides US policy-makers with information about how the US and its actions are perceived abroad.

Rating
What This Rating Means

NOT PERFORMING
Results Not Demonstrated

A rating of Results Not Demonstrated (RND) indicates that a program has not been able to develop acceptable performance goals or collect data to determine whether it is performing.

* These programs have had difficulty measuring their impact, if they have been evaluated at all. Frequently there is anecdotal evidence that a program is achieving success but there is no formal data to support those claims.
* Few of the State Department public diplomacy programs link budget to performance.
* There is no broad overarching US Government public diplomacy strategy. Because of this lack of a plan, programs such as this one may not be the most effective both in the long and short term.

Improvement Plan
About Improvement Plans

We are taking the following actions to improve the performance of the program:

* Developing an overarching US Government strategic public diplomacy plan.
* Determining if current programs are most effective to reach target audiences and ensuring that those targeted are the most influential to make the greatest impact.
* Presenting resource needs in a complete and transparent manner; and linking resource needs clearly to program activities.

Louis Rukeyser Remembered

From By David Zurawik's obituary in the Baltimore Sun:

At its peak in the 1980s, Wall Street Week was carried on more than 300 public television stations and boasted a weekly audience of 4.1 million viewers. The 30-minute program that aired Friday nights at 8 - four hours after the market closed for the week - was public television's longest-running weekly prime-time series, second only to CBS' venerable 60 Minutes in overall TV tenure. The series was canceled by MPT in June 2005 after three years of audience erosion that followed Mr. Rukeyser's departure.

"Before Louis Rukeyser, there was no such thing as a financial advice show on television," said Douglas Gomery, professor and media economist at the University of Maryland, College Park. "Along with Sesame Street, Wall Street Week was one of the first shows on PBS, a landmark series by anybody's definition. The reason for its success was Louis Rukeyser. He was the franchise - proof that the star system worked even for PBS."

Mr. Rukeyser's ability to translate economics into compelling television talk helped make investors out of millions of Americans: "In essence, what he did was bring Wall Street to Main Street - he made Wall Street understandable in terms of Main Street," said Frank Cappiello, a money manager who appeared as a panelist on Mr. Rukeyser's first PBS telecast in 1970 and his last in 2002, as well as his first and last on CNBC.

"You have to remember when the program started in 1970, we had just been through the Vietnam War and rising inflation, and so much changed financially during that 10-year span from 1970 to 1980. And every week, Lou would be there on TV explaining the changes - from commodities to money market funds - in very simple terms to millions of viewers, many of whom became investors as a result of what they learned from him and the experts he brought in."

A wide-ranging economic expertise only begins to describe the formula that made Mr. Rukeyser one of public television's first major stars - along with Alistair Cooke, host of Masterpiece Theatre, and Sesame Street's Big Bird.

The New York City native, who was dubbed "the dismal science's only sex symbol" by People magazine, was known within the ranks of PBS as "The Big Bird of Prime Time" because of the underwriting support, ratings and viewer pledges that he brought to the fledgling public broadcasting lineup in the 1970s.

In an interview shortly before his own death in August, Baltimore financial analyst Julius Westheimer, who was a recurring panelist on Wall Street Week for 29 years, said Mr. Rukeyser never forgot the audience: "Lou always said that the best educators throughout history were in part entertainers, and he stressed that to those of us who were regulars on the show. He also told us to talk about money, not economics. 'Economics puts people to sleep; money wakes them up,' he used to say."

A Reasonable Verdict...

...in the Moussaoui case. From the Jury form, as published in Newsday:

Section III. Mitigating factors.

Indicate the number of Jurors who find that the defense has established the existence of each listed mitigating factor by a preponderance of the evidence.

A. That if he is not sentenced to death, Zacarias Moussaoui will be incarcerated in prison for the rest of his life, without the possibility of release. Number of jurors who so find -- five.

B. That Moussaoui has maintained a nonviolent record for the past four years while incarcerated in the Alexandria Detention Center with minimal rules violations. Number of jurors -- one.

C. That the Federal Bureau of Prisons has the authority and ability to maintain Moussaoui under highly secure conditions. Number of jurors -- one.

D. That given his conduct, and the likely conditions of his maximum security confinement, Moussaoui will not present a substantial risk to prison officials or other inmates if he is sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of release. Number of jurors -- three.

E. That a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of release, under the strict conditions the Bureau of Prisons is likely to impose, will be a more severe punishment for Moussaoui than a sentence of death. Number of jurors -- none.

F. That Moussaoui believes that his execution will be part of his Jihad and will provide him with the rewards attendant to a martyr's death. Number of jurors -- none.

G. That execution will create a martyr for radical Muslim fundamentalists, and to al-Qaida in particular. Number of jurors -- none.

H. That Moussaoui's unstable early childhood and dysfunctional family resulted in his being placed in orphanages and having a home life without structure and emotional and financial support eventually resulting in his leaving home due to his hostile relationship with his mother. Number of jurors -- nine.

(On Count III, eight jurors found this mitigating factor to be true. On Count IV, seven jurors found this mitigating factor to be true.)

I. That Moussaoui's father had a violent temper and physically and emotionally abused his family. Number of jurors -- nine.

(On County III, 7 jurors found this mitigating factor to be true. On Count IV, six jurors found this mitigating factor to be true.)

J. That Moussaoui's father abandoned him and his siblings, leaving Zacarias's mother to support and raise their children on her own. Number of jurors -- two.

K. That Moussaoui was subject to racism as a youngster because of his Moroccan background which affected him deeply. Number of jurors -- three.

L. That Moussaoui's mother had a violent uncle or men unrelated to the family living in the home with the family. Number of jurors -- none.

M. That his two sisters and his father all suffered from psychotic illnesses. Number of jurors -- four.

N. That even though he arrived in England with no money and lived in a homeless shelter, he endured the hardship and through perseverance graduated with a masters degree from South Bank University. Number of jurors -- none.

O. That his mother's failure to provide her children with any meaningful religious training or practice left Moussaoui without the theological or intellectual basis to resist the preachings and propaganda of radical Muslim fundamentalists in London who provided him with a sense of group identity he never had. Number of jurors -- none.

P. That Moussaoui suffers from a psychotic disorder, most likely schizophrenia, paranoid subtype. Number of jurors -- none.

Q. That Moussaoui's role in al-Qaida while in Afghanistan was as a security clerk at a guesthouse and as a driver for persons staying at the guesthouse. Number of jurors -- none.

R. That Moussaoui's testimony about his plan to fly a plane into the White House is unreliable and is contradicted by his statements about other plots he was involved in. Number of jurors -- none.

S. That Moussaoui's role in the Sept. 11 operation, if any, was minor. Number of jurors -- three.

T. That he was incarcerated on the day of the Sept. 11 attacks. Number of jurors -- one.

U. That he was an ineffectual al-Qaida operative. Number of jurors -- none.

V. That other persons who were equally culpable in the offense, whether indicted or not, will not be punished by death and/or have not been the subject of a capital prosecution. Number of jurors -- none.

W. That other factors in the background or character of Moussaoui suggest that life without the possibility of release is the most appropriate punishment. Number of jurors -- none.

X. List any additional mitigating factors found by at least one juror and the number of jurors who so found.

-- Defendant had limited knowledge of Sept. 11 attack plans, three jurors.

Viva Bush!

Drudge quotes Kevin Phillips' report that the President sung the Star Spangled Banner in Spanish on the 2000 Presidential campaign trail:

"When visiting cities like Chicago, Milwaukee, or Philadelphia, in pivotal states, George W. Bush would drop in at Hispanic festivals and parties, sometimes joining in singing “The Star-Spangled Banner” in Spanish, sometimes partying with a “Viva Bush” mariachi band flown in from Texas."

Putin Hires PR Firms

Vladimir Vladimirovitch Putin has hired Ketchum Public Relations in the US and GPlus in the EU to improve Russia's image in advance of the G-8 Summit:

London, May 1, 2006 – Ketchum, a global communications firm, today announced that it has been selected to lead a multi-agency team to support the Russian Presidency of the G8 (Group of Eight) and the upcoming G8 Summit in July in St. Petersburg. The team will support the three main priorities of the annual economic and political summit that Russia, as the host country, has selected: ensuring energy security, addressing infectious diseases, and improving education.

Teaming with Ketchum is GPlus, one of the most respected European Union political-communications specialist agencies in Brussels, and in Japan, Gavin Anderson, a leading corporate and financial public relations advisory firm, as well as Ketchum’s affiliate in Moscow, Maslov, Sokur & Associates. The London office of Ketchum was awarded the account following a competitive process.

“We look forward to working closely with the Presidency of the G8 to raise awareness of G8 priorities which are so important to the world today,” said Raymond L. Kotcher, Ketchum senior partner and chief executive officer.

Along with Russia, the G8 consists of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States. The G8 presidency rotates every year. Last year the presidency was held by the U.K. hosting the meeting in Gleneagles; this year, for the first time, it is held by Russia. The G8 meetings serve as a forum for developing solutions to the most pressing world issues of the day.

The primary scope and responsibility of the work entails ensuring a high level of logistical and communications support at the Summit and to promote the three priority issues throughout the year.

“The focus of the G8 meeting is the exchange between world leaders. We are pleased to be handling the communications along with our partners at GPlus,” said Jon Higgins, Ketchum partner and CEO, Europe. Added Peter Guilford, director of GPlus: “This is a prestigious assignment for us. We hope during the course of this year to give the kind of communications support that makes the life of journalists easier at this time of unprecedented focus on Russia and the G8.”

Ketchum's clients include Kodak, Cingular, Carlsberg, Frito-Lay, Levi-Strauss, Mattel, Pepsi, Procter*Gamble, Just for Men, Wendy's, Clorox, FedEx, Fireman's Fund, the Almond Board of California, the California Dried Plum Board, the Canned Food Alliance, the Norwegian Seafood Export Council, Tropicana, Pfizer, Intuit, and the US Potato Board...(ht Johnson's Russia List)

Christopher Hitchens on Iran

From Slate (ht LGF):

In some ways, the continuing row over his call for the complete destruction of Israel must baffle Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. All he did, after all, was to turn up at a routine anti-Zionist event and repeat the standard line—laid down by the Ayatollah Khomeini and thus considered by some to be beyond repeal—that the state of Israel is illegitimate and must be obliterated. There's nothing new in that. In the early '90s, I can remember seeing, in the areas around Baalbek in Lebanon that were dominated by Hezbollah and Amal, large posters of the by-then-late Khomeini embellished (in English) with the slogan, "Israel Must Be Completely Destroyed!" And I have twice been to Friday prayers in Tehran itself, addressed by leading mullahs and by former President Rafsanjani, where the more terse version (Marg bar Esrail—"Death to Israel") is chanted as a matter of routine; sometimes as an applause line to an especially deft clerical thrust.

No, what worries me more about Ahmadinejad is his devout belief in the return of the "occulted" or 12th imam and his related belief that, when he himself spoke recently at the United Nations, the whole scene was suffused with a sublime green light that held all his audience in a state of suspended animation. This uncultured jerk is, of course, only a puppet figure with no real power, but this choice of puppet by the theocracy is unsettling in itself. So is Iran's complete lack of embarrassment at being caught, time and again, with nuclear enrichment facilities that have never been declared to the inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency.

However, words and details and nuances do matter in all this, so I was not surprised to see professor Juan Cole of the University of Michigan denying that Ahmadinejad, or indeed Khomeini, had ever made this call for the removal of Israel from the map. Cole is a minor nuisance on the fringes of the academic Muslim apologist community. At one point, there was a danger that he would become a go-to person for quotes in New York Times articles (a sort of Shiite fellow-traveling version of Norman Ornstein, if such an alarming phenomenon can be imagined), but this crisis appears to have passed.

Crunchy Rod Dreher

Today's Washington Post Style section has Hank Stuever's profile of Rod Dreher, author of Crunchy Cons: How Birkenstocked Burkeans, gun-loving organic gardeners, evangelical free-range farmers, hip homeschooling mamas, right-wing nature lovers, ... America (or at least the Republican Party).

I met Dreher about ten years ago, when he covered cultural issues for The Washington Times, before he worked for Arianna Huffington, the National Review, and the New York Post. He's now at the Dallas Morning News. He was very bright--he'd been to a special boarding school for geniuses in Lousiana--and seemed to know what he was talking about. He certainly got a good writeup in the paper today. Here's a sample:

The Dreher family likes its comfy, Ikea living-room sofa and nights spent reading. It's about front porches, not Porsches. They like jazz on (yechh) public radio. They are committed to saving the planet. They closely scrutinize what their kids watch and read, and Dreher brags that his sons routinely ask to hear his old college-radio faves on the stereo, the good stuff -- U2 and XTC. What might strike you as sort of post-hippie strikes them, paradoxically, as intrinsically conservative. It's God, family and Elvis Costello. And speaking of kooky old GOP furnishings, they like Peggy Noonan, too. (And she likes them; she's a godmother to their youngest child.)

Before Texas, Rod and Julie Dreher made a really good stab at being Brooklynites. He was a film critic and later columnist at the New York Post. Dreher says he was always the most conservative person at cocktail parties in Manhattan, "unless someone named Podhoretz was in the room."

Since "Crunchy Cons" was published earlier this year (it has gone back for two additional printings, according to a publicist at Crown publishers), Dreher has also taken a drubbing from his punditry cohort, including National Review's Jonah Goldberg, who views "Crunchy Con" as heretical to the "big tent" ideals of the one true Republican faith. Goldberg bites at "Crunchy Con" with occasional essays and blog entries of his own.

"To Rod's credit, he doesn't claim that 'mainstream conservatives' are racists; but he does claim that they are uptight, blue-blazered, two-dimensional men motivated by greed. They are Godless materialists, unthinking dupes of Madison Avenue, with no connection to spirituality or religion unless, that is, you think being an idolatrous votary of the free market counts as being religious," Goldberg wrote in March.

"Crunchy conservatism strikes me now -- as it did back when I first heard about it -- as a journalistic invention, a confabulation fit for some snarking liberal reporter at the Washington Post 'Style' section."

Ding-dong, we're here, a smidge late.

Forgot to bring wine, and we are perfectly okay with the idea that most people don't give the tiniest, insignificant poops about what Jonah Goldberg thinks.

Fouad Ajami: Bernard Lewis at 90

From The Wall Street Journal (ht Michael Barone):

We anoint sages when we need them; at times we let them say, on our behalf, the sorts of things we know and intuit but don't say, the sorts of things we glimpse through the darkness but don't fully see. It was thus in the time of the great illusion, in the lost decade of the 1990s, when history had presumably "ended," that Bernard Lewis had come forth to tell us, in a seminal essay, "The Roots of Muslim Rage" (September 1990), that our luck had run out, that an old struggle between "Christendom" and Islam was gathering force. (Note the name given the Western world; it is vintage Lewis, this naming of worlds and drawing of borders--and differences.) It was the time of commerce and globalism; the "modernists" had the run of the decade, and a historian's dark premonitions about a thwarted civilization wishing to avenge the slights and wounds of centuries would not carry the day. Mr. Lewis was the voice of conservatives, a brooding pessimist, in the time of a sublime faith in things new and untried. It was he, in that 1990 article, who gave us the notion of a "clash of civilizations" that Samuel Huntington would popularize, with due attribution to Bernard Lewis.

The rage of Islam was no mystery to Mr. Lewis. To no great surprise, it issued out of his respect for the Muslim logic of things. For 14 centuries, he wrote, Islam and Christendom had feuded and fought across a bloody and shifting frontier, their enmity a "series of attacks and counterattacks, jihads and crusades, conquests and reconquests." For nearly a millennium, Islam had the upper hand. The new faith conquered Syria, Palestine, Egypt and North Africa--old Christian lands, it should be recalled. It struck into Europe, established dominions in Sicily, Spain, Portugal and in parts of France. Before the tide turned, there had been panic in Europe that Christendom was doomed. In a series of letters written from Constantinople between 1555 and 1560, Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq, imperial ambassador to the court of Suleyman the Magnificent, anguished over Europe's fate; he was sure that the Turks were about to "fly at our throats, supported by the might of the whole East." Europe, he worried, was squandering its wealth, "seeking the Indies and the Antipodes across vast fields of ocean, in search of gold."

But Busbecq, we know, had it wrong. The threat of Islam was turned back. The wealth brought back from the New World helped turn the terms of trade against Islam. Europe's confidence soared. The great turning point came in 1683, when a Turkish siege of Vienna ended in failure and defeat. With the Turks on the run, the terms of engagement between Europe and Islam were transformed. Russia overthrew the Tatar yoke; there was the Reconquista in the Iberian Peninsula. Instead of winning every war, Mr. Lewis observes, the Muslims were losing every war. Britain, France, the Netherlands and Russia all soon spilled into Islamic lands. "Europe and her daughters" now disposed of the fate of Muslim domains. Americans and Europeans may regard this new arrangement of power as natural. But Mr. Lewis has been relentless in his admonition that Muslims were under no obligation to accept the new order of things.

A pain afflicts modern Islam--the loss of power. And Mr. Lewis has a keen sense of the Muslim redeemers and would-be avengers who promise to alter Islam's place in the world. This pain, the historian tells us, derives from Islam's early success, from the very triumph of the prophet Muhammad. Moses was not allowed to enter the promised land; he had led his people through wilderness. Jesus had been crucified. But Muhammad had prevailed and had governed. The faith he would bequeath his followers would forever insist on the oneness of religion and politics. Where Christians are enjoined in their scripture to "render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's and unto God the things which are God's," no such demarcation would be drawn in the theory and practice of Islam.

It was vintage Lewis--reading the sources, in this case a marginal Arabic newspaper published out of London, Al-Quds Al-Arabi, in February of 1998--to come across a declaration of war on the United States by a self-designated holy warrior he had "never heard of," Osama bin Laden. In one of those essays that reveal the historian's eye for things that matter, "A License to Kill," Mr. Lewis would render into sublime English prose the declaration of bin Laden and would give it its exegesis. The historian might have never heard of bin Laden, but the terrorist from Arabia practically walks out of the pages of Mr. Lewis's own histories. Consider this passage from the Arabian plotter: "Since God laid down the Arabian Peninsula, created its desert, and surrounded it with seas, no calamity has ever befallen it like these crusader hosts that have spread in it like locusts, eating its fruits and destroying its verdure; and this at a time when the nations contend against Muslims like diners jostling around a bowl of food. . . . By God's leave, we call on every Muslim who believes in God and hopes for reward to obey God's command to kill the Americans and plunder their possessions whenever he finds them and whenever he can."

Three years later, the furies of bin Laden, and the cadence and content of his language--straight out of the annals of older wars of faith--would remake our world. There would come Mr. Lewis's way now waves of people willing to believe. They would read into his works the bewildering ways and furies of preachers and plotters and foot soldiers hurling themselves against the order of the West. Timing was cruel--and exquisite. The historian's book "What Went Wrong?" was already in galleys by 9/11. He had not written it for the storm. He had all but anticipated what was to come. This diagnosis of Islam's malady would become a best seller. In a different setting, Mr. Lewis had written of history's power. "Make no mistake, those who are unwilling to confront the past will be unable to understand the present and unfit to face the future." We were witnessing an epic jumbling of past and present. It was no fault of this historian that we had placed our bet on the death of the past.

Shelby Steele: White Guilt and Iraq

From OpinionJournal.com:

Today words like "power" and "victory" are so stigmatized with Western sin that, in many quarters, it is politically incorrect even to utter them. For the West, "might" can never be right. And victory, when won by the West against a Third World enemy, is always oppression. But, in reality, military victory is also the victory of one idea and the defeat of another. Only American victory in Iraq defeats the idea of Islamic extremism. But in today's atmosphere of Western contrition, it is impolitic to say so.

Britain's Ruling Class "Reverts"

Mark Steyn on the latest religious fad among England's upper-class:

Herbert Asquith is not the most famous British Prime Minister to American ears, but he’s the one who took his country into the Great War, which is the one that ended the Caliphate and delivered the Arab world into British hands. His great-granddaughter, Emma Clark, is now a Muslim. She’s a landscape artist, and has designed an “Islamic garden” at the home of the Prince of Wales. The Honorable Jonathan Birt, son of Lord Birt, the former Director-General of the BBC, is also a Muslim and is known as Yahya Birt. The Earl of Yarborough is a Muslim, and goes by the name Abdul Mateen, though whether he can get served in the House of Lords’ tea room under that moniker is unclear.

The above “reverts” – as Islam calls converts - are not merely the Muslim equivalents of the Richard Gere Buddhists and Tom Cruise Scientologists but the vanguard of something bigger. As English and Belgian and Scandinavian cities Islamify, their inhabitants will face a choice between living as a minority and joining the majority: Not all but many will opt for the latter. At the very minimum, Islam will meet the same test as the hippy-dippy solstice worship does in Vermont: It will seem environmentally appropriate. For many young men, it already provides the sense of identity that the vapid nullity of multiculturalism disdains to offer. As for the gals, I was startled in successive weeks to hear from both Dutch and English acquaintances that they’ve begun going out “covered”. The Dutch lady lives in a rough part of Amsterdam and says, when you’re on the street in Islamic garb, the Muslim men smile at you respectfully instead of jeering at you as an infidel whore. The English lady lives in a swank part of London but says pretty much the same thing. Both felt there was not just a physical but a psychological security in being dressed Muslim. They’re not “reverts”, but, at least for the purposes of padding the public space, they’re passing for Muslim in public.

War Gaming Iran

The American Thinker's James Holmes says Thomas Schelling's negotiating theory explains the Iran crisis in terms of hard bargaining:

Warfare is an instrument of negotiation. In his classic work The Strategy of Conflict, drawing in part on the lessons of Korea, Thomas Schelling declared that “most conflict situations are essentially bargaining situations.” Specialists now take Schelling’s theorizing a step further, defining “bargaining power” as the ability to modify the parties’ alternatives to a settlement – that is, their ability to walk away from the table.

The side that enjoys an acceptable “best alternative to negotiated agreement,” or BATNA, can retire without undue political, economic, or military pain; the side not so blessed has little choice but to strike the best deal it can. In hard bargaining, bolstering one’s own BATNA is essential, as anyone who’s ever dickered over the price of a house will attest. And damaging the other side’s BATNA can’t hurt.

Is War With Iran Inevitable?

No, says Brookings expert Ivo Daalder:

Politically, too, the context for war is very different today than it was in 2002-03. Then, the president was still riding high in the polls, and the American people looked to him as a trusted, competent, and strong leader. Now, Bush's approval ratings have collapsed and Americans have lost faith in his honesty, competence, and leadership. In one recent poll, fully 54 percent of Americans said they did not trust Bush to make the right decision on Iran. And given the trends in public opinion, these numbers are bound to get worse over time. Equally important, there wasn't much political debate about the wisdom of war three years ago. Most Senate and many House Democrats joined Republicans in giving Bush the blankest of blank checks — and a significant majority of Americans supported going to war. Today, the possibility of attacking Iran is hotly — and rightly — debated, and it would be inconceivable for Bush to gain congressional backing for such a move absent a far more dire and imminent threat from Iran.

And then there is the international context. While back then doubts about the direction of American foreign policy had already begun to set in, and opposition to going to war against Iraq was mounting, Bush could still count on getting the backing of many important players. In 2002, that included getting a unanimous vote on a UN Security Council resolution declaring Baghdad in breach of past UN resolutions and warning of serious consequences in case Iraq failed to come into full compliance. In 2003, it meant getting significant military backing from Britain, Australia, and some other key allies — and the political backing of still more countries. Today, even Tony Blair has made clear that Bush would be on his own if he attacked Iran.

None of this guarantees that Bush will not attack Iran — good arguments, huge potential costs, and the absence of political and international support have never been decisive in his calculations. But with the human, economic, political, and diplomatic consequences of the Iraq war so very evident to all, there is nothing inevitable about war with Iran. Indeed, there's a reasonable chance — even a good one — that Bush will make the right decision this time around.

Gerard Vanderleun on United 93

From American Digest (ht LGF):

That's the theme and the pace and the action of "United 93:" How ordinary people, at first strangers to each other, found the courage to act together in the face of certain death.

Despite the whines and the cavils of the weak and the vile and the corrupt among us, "United 93" has no "message."

Despite the rising and continuing attempts to cheapen the film from the spiritually and politically bankrupt that batten off America, "United 93" has no politics.

You don't "review" this film if you have an ounce of soul left to you. You watch it.

"United 93," from the first frame to the last, simply and clearly lets you see what happened high in the air on that day. It is, as the phrase on the poster says, "The plane that did not reach its target." Instead, it reached something unintended and much higher. It became and will remain a legend; an integral part of the tapestry of the American myth from which we all draw what strength remains to us, and, in the future, will surely need to draw upon even more deeply. Like the best of our legends, it arises out of our ordinary people doing extraordinary things.

"United 93" lets you see, without footnotes or the faintest tinge of an agenda of any sort, how ordinary people in one of the most banal yet dangerous modern settings, refused at the last to be cowed or frightened and, knowing full well that all was probably up for them, still fought to save their lives or, in the end, thwart the designs that evil had brought on board.

For when I think, not about the film "United 93" -- that remains a pattern of light and dark in the caves where we come together to share our dreams and myths and more paltry entertainments -- but about the actual flight on that actual day high in the air to the west of the city, I can understand why the passengers, knowing what they knew, would become united in an effort to save themselves.

But I also think that, in the end, saving themselves was not so much on their minds. I think that, at that time and in that place, they understood that those chances were slim indeed. Instead, I like to think that the men and women of United 93 had their souls set upon, in those last moments, the refusal to die as passive victims with seatbelts fastened as the monsters in the cockpit pushed their evil mission to its appointed end.

In a film of brief but telling moments, there's one moment towards the end where you see one man reach down and remove his seatbelt. In that moment you can sense that he goes from being a passive victim to a man who has decided to stand up and engage the evil that has taken control of his life; to take the controls back from thugs and the cut-throats and the mumbling fanatics of a wretched and burnt-out god.

That man, like the firemen who went up the stairs, and his fellow passengers who attacked up the aisle in those last moments, became, in the end, one of the Americans who decided on that day and the days that followed, to stand up. Soon after, that man and all the others on United 93 went into the smoke of that fire in the field.

"United 93" is a simply told, near-documentary look at how that fire in the field came to be. As I said above, the film has no message, but if you -- as I finally did -- choose to go, it will pose you a question: What would you do, an ordinary person in an extraordinary moment when life and death, good and evil, were as clear as the skies over America on September 11? Will you, as so many of our fellow citizens yearn to do these days, stay seated? Or will you stand up?

On one of our days to come, there will be another test. You'd best have an answer prepared.

Jean-Francois Revel

The noted French journalist and anti-Communist died April 30th. You can read some of his writings in English at the Jean-Francois Revel website. (ht Michelle Malkin)

A Brief History of May Day

From Wikipedia:

International Workers' Day (a name used interchangeably with May Day) is the commemoration of the Haymarket Riot of 1886 in Chicago, Illinois, and a celebration of the social and economic achievements of the international labor movement. The 1 May date is used because in 1884 the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions, inspired by labor's 1872 success in Canada, demanded an eight-hour workday in the United States to come in effect as of May 1, 1886. This resulted in a general strike and the riot in Chicago of 1886, but eventually also in the official sanction of the eight-hour workday. The May Day Riots of 1894 and May Day Riots of 1919 occurred subsequently.

Due to these left-wing overtones, May Day has long been a focal point for demonstrations by various socialist, communist, and anarchist groups. In some circles, bonfires are lit in commemoration of the Haymarket Riot usually right as the first day of May begins[1]. [citation needed] In the 20th century, May Day received the official endorsement of the Soviet Union; celebrations in communist countries during the Cold War era often consisted of large military parades and shows of common people in support of the government.

The Red Scare periods ended May Day as a mass holiday in the United States, a phenomenon which can be seen as somewhat ironic given that May Day originated in Chicago. Meanwhile, in countries other than the United States and United Kingdom, resident working classes fought hard to make May Day an official governmentally-sanctioned holiday, efforts which eventually largely succeeded. For this reason, May Day in most of the world today is marked by huge street rallies of workers led by their trade unions and various large socialist and communist parties — a phenomenon not generally seen in the U.S. (which has a history of strong anti-communism) or the UK.

In most countries other than the U.S. and UK, May Day is often referred to simply as "Labor Day".

The Wall Street Journal on the Art Czar

Alice Goldfarb Marquis sent us news of this positive new review of her new biography of Clement Greenberg, by New Criterion editor James Panero, in the Wall Street Journal:

The power of critics such as Clement Greenberg in art or Edmund Wilson in literature -- both did much to shape elite and popular taste in the mid-20th century -- is hard to imagine today. Contemporary art is self-parodic and insulated against Greenberg's style of criticism, and art-world success is now determined almost exclusively in the marketplace, not on the printed page.

And yet in the precincts where art -- and thinking about art -- still matters, Greenberg is "indispensable," as Ms. Marquis notes. In an age when much art criticism is "conducted in a self-referential mumble," she says, "his rhetoric remains a benchmark for persuasive prose in the field of aesthetics." Her biography is a benchmark as well, for discussions of the life and legacy of Clement Greenberg.

Flight 93: Hollywood Got It Right

A member of the 9/11 Commission, John Farmer, writing in today's Washington Post, says the Bush administration lied about what happened on 9/11--and Universal Pictures is telling it like it happened in Flight 93:

How accurate is "United 93," Universal Pictures' new movie depicting the drama and heroism aboard the fourth plane hijacked on Sept. 11, 2001? The answer tells us a lot about Hollywood and government in the age of terrorism: The film is closer to the truth than every account the government put out before the 9/11 commission's investigation. Its release marks our passage through the post-9/11 looking glass, with our wildest fairy tales now spun not in Hollywood, but in Washington.

The facts of 9/11 are as simple as they are grim. The military officers in charge of the air defense mission did not receive notice of any of the four hijackings in time to respond before the planes crashed. The passengers and crew aboard United Airlines Flight 93 really were alone. They were all that stood between the hijackers and the Capitol (or possibly the White House). That is the core reality of that morning, and "United 93" gets it right.

A Short History of Language Controversies in the USA

James Crawford's Language Loyalties gives some useful historical background to the debate over Nuestro Himno:

Bilingual education is not a recent invention, but originated in the colonial era. During the 19th century, German-English schooling was authorized by law in several states and flourished unofficially elsewhere. Other European tongues were also taught (sometimes sometimes as the language of instruction and sometimes as a subject) in response to pressure from immigrant communities.<1> But libertarian attitudes did not extend to indigenous languages, as Jon Reyhner demonstrates. Anglicizing the Indian was regarded as a "civilizing" device, an alternative to military measures in pacifying warlike tribes. Children were removed from their reservations, often forcibly, and shipped to faraway boarding schools, where they were punished if caught speaking their native tongues. J. D. C. Atkins, federal Indian Commissioner in the 1880s, describes the policy of eradicating students' "barbarous dialects," along with every other remnant of Indian-ness.

Intolerance also characterized policies toward conquered peoples, notably Spanish speakers in the Southwest and Puerto Rico. The 1848 Treaty of Guadelupe Hidalgo, which ended the Mexican- American War, made various guarantees to the inhabitants of the annexed territory. While there was no explicit mention of language and cultural rights, many believed that these were implicit in the treaty – as illustrated by the debate over California's 1879 Constitution. In practice, Spanish language rights were seldom observed except in New Mexico, where English speakers were greatly outnumbered before the twentieth century. As detailed by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, New Mexico waged a long struggle for statehood against a Congress reluctant to grant self-rule to a non-English-speaking majority. When finally admitted in 1912, the state adopted a constitution with protections for Spanish speakers, for example, the bilingual publication of official documents.

31st Anniversary of the Fall of Saigon

Dennis Sevakis, in The American Thinker, quotes a Vietnamese expert--who says it was a war that the US could have won if political considerations had not hampered the US military:

Bui Tin went on to describe the single biggest error the U.S. committed in the prosecution of the war in Vietnam:

Q: How could the Americans have won the war?

A: Cut the Ho Chi Minh trail inside Laos. If Johnson had granted [Gen. William] Westmoreland’s requests to enter Laos and block the Ho Chi Minh trail, Hanoi could not have won the war.

Q: Why was the Ho Chi Minh trail so important?

A: It was the only way to bring sufficient military power to bear on the fighting in the South. Building and maintaining the trail was a huge effort, involving tens of thousands of soldiers, drivers, repair teams, medical stations, communication units.

The Harvard Crimson Remembers John Kenneth Galbraith

Apparently, in addition to being an economist and novelist, he was also the funniest professor at Harvard...