America is falling apart. The IRS abuses reveal that the government does not work. It is too big. It is politicized. There is no true professional class. And the structural decay is now apparent; the federal government is as corroded as the New Jersey bridges. Detroit is dead. Parts of Baltimore are dead and Philadelphia. That former American Secretary of State Hillary Clinton took the initiative in “sealing the deal” for Lady Gaga to perform at a gay pride rally in Rome, Italy, the vortex of Roman Catholicism, is a symptom. Former Rep. Andrew Weiner  (D-N.Y.) is a symptom. Benghazi is a symptom. The creepy desire for monarchy, and dynastic ruling families are a symptom. The embedded press is a symptom. The future is bleak, says former Rep. David Stockman (R-Mich.), because the United States is broke “ fiscally, morally, intellectually.” And when the latest bubble pops, “there will be nothing to stop the collapse." Possibly today we are on the edge of free fall.

What happened?

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) says the Tea Party is the main reason why things are not getting done in Congress and views it as a party of modern-day anarchists, The Hill's Alexander Bolton reports.

He hates those guys. “I believe that, my experience with the Tea Party, is that they are against government in any form. They throw monkey wrenches into the government,” Reid is reported to have said during an interview on the "Rusty Humphries Show."

The pictures today of five presidents together at the W. Bush library inspire something less than hope. 

The Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan recalls that Obama is there as a reaction to Bush the Second. His Portrait of the Artist as a Crazy Old Man in the Bathtub today reaches the tabloids. (“It changed my life,” says the artist.) And something approaches that could even suggest sadness when Bill Clinton asks that Bush II paint him, Clinton the First,  in the nude. 

But W. was there in the first place because of the adolescent and squalid Clinton. Each man, starting from H.W, seems a step downward from the place of balance and orderliness. Possibly we saw the last of political style and grace when William F. Buckley, Jr. passed in 2008.

I wish the entire Bush family well and am pleased that the former presidents are sharing the opening of the Bush presidential library. But, as I wrote in my last column for The Hill calling for confirmation of all judicial nominations, it was President George W. Bush and Karl Rove who have corrupted American justice more than any president since Richard Nixon. The Bush presidency was a disastrous presidency that caused a range catastrophes, including the Iraq war, the budget deficit and the financial crash.

"This is our f------ city, and nobody is going to dictate our freedom. Stay strong.” — David Ortiz, addressing the crowd at Fenway Park before the game this past Saturday

Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick took questions from the press at Fenway on Saturday afternoon. His comments are worth repeating:

“Whither goest thou, America, in thy shiny car in the night?” — Jack Kerouac, On the Road, 1957

I’m not sure why it hasn’t caught on yet, since revolutionaries like Ron Paul have gone from outlander to center-stage hero, that an original Irish outlaw like Whitey Bolger did not claim sovereignty for South Boston.

Truth is, Whitey was motivated by a sense of tribal Southie. He could be seen as a political operative gone amok and without a plan or following. His anger is pure. But suppose Whitey had called for a separate state back then: Southie as the 51st state, or better yet, an independent entity like a redneck Switzerland, using the Rumsfeld/Kerry model.

“We don’t smoke marijuana in Muskogee /
We don’t take our trips on LSD /
We don’t burn our draft cards down on Main Street /
We like livin’ right, and bein’ free.”

—“Okie from Muskogee,” Merle Haggard, 1969

These days, The Hag likes to suggest that he and Willie Nelson fired up a jumbo with Hillary Clinton, but back in 1969 they were on opposite ends. Right-thinking Oklahomans — Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren would have been a teenager in the mid '60s and a waitress in Oklahoma City — did not do these things “like the hippies out in San Francisco do.” But today, I’m not sure the distinction holds up.

One can debate whether President Obama delivered hope and change or whether congressional Republicans have delivered fiscal responsibility. but one cannot argue about this: America’s most famous groundhog, Punxsutawney Phil, screwed up big time. There are lessons in Phil’s plight for both parties. Groundhog Phil promised a warm spring right before a cold spring and now Phil’s handlers, advisers and pollsters are trying to spin his way out of it. Sound familiar?

Through the glass darkly we gaze into the unknown ahead, spear in hand at the front of the boat, and the new pope seems an auspicious beginning. Not a profane New York globalist, a "rock star" marketing agent, which The Wall Street Journal calls for, but possibly a true holy man, one to which the world might instead be naturally drawn.

What happens at CPAC 2013 will divide the past from the future. Conservatives will chose between nostalgic pleasantries or a dynamic horizon. Conservatives will consolidate one way or another. In my view, conservatives will choose the future and they will choose Ted Cruz and Sarah Palin.

Demographics are destiny. Nothing else makes history. When the changes ahead are shipped into denial is when chaos and disaster ensue. And the potential disasters America faces today do not come from global warming, nuclear weapons, the Russians, the hippies or the rednecks. They come from the economic division of America between the red states, which are rising in capital and prosperity, and the left and right coasts, which are receding in economic power. Demographer Joel Kotkin well outlines the transition in a Wall Street Journal essay yesterday title, “America’s Red State Growth Corridors.”

“In the wake of the 2012 presidential election, some political commentators have written political obituaries of the ‘red’ or conservative-leaning states, envisioning a brave new world dominated by fashionably blue bastions in the Northeast or California,” he writes. “But political fortunes are notoriously fickle, while economic trends tend to be more enduring. ... These trends point to a U.S. economic future dominated by four growth corridors that are generally less dense, more affordable, and markedly more conservative and pro-business: the Great Plains, the Intermountain West, the Third Coast (spanning the Gulf states from Texas to Florida), and the Southeastern industrial belt.”

Historically, these regions were little more than resource colonies or low-wage labor sites for richer, more technically advanced areas, says Kotkin. By promoting policies that encourage enterprise and spark economic growth, they’re catching up.

At least since 1973, when Marlon Brando declined his Oscar — he couldn't remember which picture it was supposed to be for — and sent up Sacheen Littlefeather to pitch the case for Indian rights instead, the giving of Oscars has been as iconic as medieval architecture, attempting with barely hidden symbolism to territorialize the political culture. Hollywood has changed and possibly invented America. Especially California. It has been said, by Fox Mulder, in an episode of “The X Files,” that this was the way of the "military, industrial, entertainment complex." Several cultural shifts can be intuited from last nights’ awards: The Clinton age is over, and President Obama will bomb Iran.

Young people need to learn to work. Their parents must not let them be idle all year for, as they say, idle hands are the devil's workshop.

When I was growing up, it was early to bed, early to rise. My family worked hard, every one of us, starting even before the sun rose. Sure, I wanted to rest many times, but my parents wouldn't let me until our work was done. They needed a rest more than anybody. They taught by example and instilled in us a strong work ethic.

As today is Presidents Day, it occurs to the MSM — which from here on out will be called “the legitimate press” (LP) thanks to that indomitable future president, Joe Biden — that we are called to harken back.

Few will, no doubt, recede in meditation on a singular vision of Franklin Pierce, the 14th president, who barely registers a Wiki acknowledgement. And a few this year have even suggested that the whole idea of a "Presidents Day” makes no sense.

Is change always good? Some change is good, certainly. The entire history of science and technology is one of accumulated knowledge. But in other aspects of life — philosophy, religion, culture — things are not always getting better. Progress is not inevitable; it takes work. Liberty is always only one generation away from extinction, as President Reagan said.

President Obama will deliver the annual State of the Union address on Tuesday. But no matter what he says, the event will be badly tarnished.

There’s already one turd in the punch bowl: Rep. Steve Stockman (R-Texas) has invited Ted Nugent to attend as his guest.

Retired Navy Rear Adm. Connie Mariano — the former White House doctor who now lives in Arizona and popped in the news last week when she offered a long-distance diagnosis of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie — was also the first person to see Bill Clinton on the morning of Jan. 21, 1998, when The Washington Post broke the Monica Lewinsky story. (Mariano served in the Clinton White House for eight years and briefly in the White Houses of both Bushes.)

Bill Clinton, according to an insider I interviewed for my book on Bill Clinton’s post presidency, saw Mariano as a wise, sympathetic ear. (She apparently served him well and counseled him successfully on losing weight.)

The PBS evening "NewsHour" had a segment this week about the wonderful music young Palestinian and Israeli musicians have been making together in recent years under the tutelage of maestro Daniel Barenboim. They travel the world, working together, talented young artists, practicing their profession and enjoying the camaraderie of their peers.

One young Palestinian woman reported, however, that at home in the Palestinian territories they were criticized because their work bespoke and might lead to "normalization" between the countries.

What a pathetic reaction — as if normalization was not a goal but a hindrance to, what? More war, threats, hatred?

People die, but the truth lives and breathes freely on its own.

We now mourn the passing of 87-year-old Essie Mae Washington-Williams, who in December 2003 confirmed one of the oldest rumors of Southern political folklore: that she was the mixed-race daughter of former Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.).

If the Super Bowl is any indication of current American sensibilities, and it should be, America divides East and West today across the Mississippi, held together, at least till the lights go out, by the celestial light in between that is New Orleans. But the ads — the purest poetry of democratic capitalism — send a judicious warning: Mercedes pitches its new model with the anthem of a self-styled “street fighting man” who called for “Sympathy for the Devil” back in 1968. While Dodge truckers opine with Paul Harvey, very popular as well in 1968, in a whimsical heart-felt ode to the 19th century farmer, Mercedes-driving liberals, and pretend conservative agrarians, are products today of Wall Street-marketed nostalgia. America is clearly at a turnstile and facing fully new paradigms ahead, but the times haven’t turned yet. Whoever turns first will take the century. President Obama today has the opportunity if he ditches Chuck Hagel and brings in Jim Webb for secretary of Defense.

Will Tina Fey run for Congress? James Taylor? Geraldo? Another embassy is bombed in Turkey because those who want to kill us understand that we are not yet ready to defend ourselves. The important question today is, will we ever be? I think the answer is yes. But the collectivist desire — Facebook is the new collectivism, far outnumbering Marx, Jesus, pharaoh and Mohammed in new followers — to send comics, pop singers syrupy enough to draw bees, professional wrestlers and circus performers to Congress is an indication that we are not yet ready to fight.

Yeah sure, we have to go through the motions of Monday’s inauguration. It’s a ritual for the world’s greatest democracy, a tradition to show everyone that we hold together no matter what. Fiscal cliff? Debt ceiling? The Speaker of the House and the president of the United States refusing to speak to each other about an imminent crisis? No problem, we can still do swearing ins, luncheons and parades, with fake smiles all around.

Read more...

This is the year of Lincoln — so many books and movies, so little time. But to understand Lincoln and his America, it might be worth turning to the first words publicly put forth by his most effective public agent, William Lloyd Garrison: “Our country is the world. Our countrymen are mankind.” Without question, this speaks for Hollywood today and Bill Clinton and Amy Poehler and Tina Fey as well, who hosted the (world) Golden Globe awards, which The Washington Post said "our culture" (the world) deserves. The awards this year come with a touch of lament — possibly why Daniel Day-Lewis’s Lincoln appears to look so plaintively to the past, like that portrait of Whistler’s Mother. Because there is trouble here this year and this year, 2013, could be the year of big trouble.

It is not just because Hollywood has managed to lose China. Jackie Chan says we Americans are the worst people on earth. But Ang Lee has long cast America in cryptic and neurotic shadows. Hollywood is the dream that reflects our anxieties and dangers, and two issues could open this year that might haunt us for years, maybe decades. This year we might see executive orders on guns and the debt ceiling. President Obama will bring a challenge to America. America will accept the challenge.

When the Framers of our Constitution and the founders of our nation put the structure of government together, they included term limits.

Those limits, however, were to be imposed by the electorate and they stated that our system of government could only function with a well-informed and intelligent populace.

This would make it quite easy to remove people from office who were not effective. What our founders could not imagine is our current situation, where the populace is so uninformed that many can’t tell you who their representatives are. Also, in today's America, an overwhelming number of voters are unaware of the views of their representative.

The NRA proposal to send hundreds of thousands of guns into schools should be tossed into the dustbin of discarded bad ideas. Ron Paul and Frank Luntz are right: the NRA has responded horribly to the latest mass murders using military-style assault weapons. The NRA intransigence has not only poisoned our dialogue about guns, it has taken away attention from equally important solutions involving entertainment and mental health. Some of the same conservatives who agree with the NRA idea of sending hundreds of thousands of armed police into schools have also called for laying off police. Some those who applauded the courage of teachers in Newtown, Conn., have ridiculed teachers and call for teachers to be laid off along with police.

Luntz is right when he says that the NRA has not been listening to the people. Paul is right when he says that it is a very bad idea to send hundreds of thousands of police with guns into schools, though I believe Paul is very wrong when he opposes reasonable efforts to ban the most lethal assault weapons and ammunition. Laissez-faire and Austrian economics are not the proper response to mass murder.

The Huffington Post reports that a bill to move the District of Colombia toward statehood has been introduced in the Senate. Buzzfeed says “the 51st state would be called New Columbia” and be granted full voting representation in the Senate and House. A group called DC Vote has launched a White House petition to call on President Obama for support. It is indeed time that D.C. voters become fully enfranchised as the 51st state. But it is also high time that the nation’s capital be moved from its quaint antiquarian, Eastern enclave to the center of our country. Louisville would be the perfect spot for a “new District of Columbia.”

Last week I wrote over at the Inkwell about the Grinch who stole the Easy Bake Oven. In case you haven’t heard, an eighth-grade girl named McKenna Pope has staged a protest against the all-time favorite toy oven in an effort to make it more “gender-neutral.”
 
Contrary to Pope’s suggestion, I suspect that Hasbro is not looking to stem the tide of gender equality or send the message to young girls that their place is in the kitchen. Instead, one can only assume that substantial market-based research, which has led to 11 different models of the oven, ranging from 1960s “avocado green” to a faux “stainless steel” version today, has told the producers that girls like to bake.

The country with the most Nobel prizes awarded per capita is the tiny island of Saint Lucia, boasting two laureates among its population of 160,000. Only two countries in the top 14 have more than 100 prizes, and we, the United States, come in 15th, with a ratio of 11 laureates per 10 million people.

But that means the U.S. has been awarded 338 prizes since their inception, and that’s more than double any other country on the list (not counting the European Union). We hold the undisputed lead; but just like in any match, if we get complacent, we’ll lose it. And we can’t let that happen.

Last week the nation was delighted and entertained by the story of the police officer in New York City who bought a pair of boots for a homeless man who had no shoes. It just so happened that a tourist captured on film the moment when the officer happily slipped those warm boots on the feet of the delighted recipient. The story gained the attention of national media and was covered extensively as it was a rare, uncommon phenomenon.

The chilly winds of change blowing across the global economic landscape this fall have tested our threadbare garments to the point of fraying.

Many of our fellow travelers find themselves losing hope that things will ever get any better. Many are disillusioned that President Obama was reelected, and yet the majority, which truly matters in presidential elections, are elated that the president will be given a second term to complete his mission.

While I was in that minority that didn't support the reelection of our president, I couldn't be prouder of who we are as Americans and that our freedom of choice is our most precious and sacred gift.

The Hill's A.B. Stoddard takes your questions for the first time since the election.

More and more Americans are giving themselves over to the warm decadence of victimhood. Gone are this country's more republican days, when the working class fashioned a life from the honest friction of their hands against the earth.

Now we have machines to do the work for us. We do not strive, we slump on the couch, log onto the Internet and zone out. The closest we come to feeling is dragging ourselves once a week to codependency workshops where we yell and sob at stuffed animals that are supposed to represent our wounded inner children.

So when we think of America, we think of a broad tapestry of perspectives, united by the common belief in freedom, liberty and the pursuit of happiness under God.

With this liberty, however, comes a special responsibility. Here, the government does not hammer its values into the youth. It does not fabricate principles and indoctrinate the young in a rigid pattern of being. Here, in America, we are given so much liberty that the heroic task of instilling a value system is left to each individual family.

The enduring value of virtue and the timeless tragedy of vice are neither a vestige of Athens nor a unique phenomenon of the 21st century. They are, in fact, enduring principles that have governed the domain of angels and demons since the dawn of time.

Through the storm of war, famine, poverty and economic collapse these ageless signposts have guided and governed the actions of men from Eden to Babylon, from Rome to Washington.

After returning from vacation I was shocked and saddened by the news from our building doorkeeper, Mr. Mack, that a homeless man who frequents my neighborhood had died. I had no relationship with this man, but he would always, no matter what season of the year, go out of his way to speak to me and acknowledge my presence.

On a few occasions when I wasn't so consumed with my own world, I would acknowledge him by speaking or gesturing. Many of the young adults in the neighborhood, along with police officers, knew him and were fond of Peter. He didn't, to my knowledge, pose any threat to anyone but always friendly and willing to carry on a conversation.

Reading Volume Four of Robert Caro’s masterpiece, The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, one passage caught my attention. The volume deals with the years when I served in the federal government in Washington for men prominently featured in this volume. It is remarkable that Caro presents stories of those times and people one couldn’t have known then.

Liberals agree that culture matters; they just want a different kind of culture. If liberals didn’t think that culture was a factor in the success of a nation, they wouldn’t be trying so hard to change ours. Their efforts to strangle Hollywood, to smother politically incorrect speech in academia and to run the media are three examples just off the top of my head. Everybody with a modicum of common sense knows that culture matters.

One needn’t be a reductionist to see that our politics is the result of our other beliefs: it is downstream from culture. America is in trouble not because of some mistake made by the Founding Fathers, some unforeseen development; no, it is a result of culture. It is, without a doubt, our fault.

The question we, as Americans, need to ponder this Fourth of July is what the Founding Fathers really wanted for America.

We must keep in mind that part of the Founders’ vision was not to effect a welfare state reliant upon the government. The Founders wanted nothing to do with anything resembling a monarchy. Power was not to be given to one entity to rule over the rest of the country. What the Founders envisioned was a limited government that would provide essential services to the people, but leave most decisions for the people to decide themselves. If the Founders saw the size and shape of our current government and how much it taxes us, they would probably be rolling in their graves.

I have no idea about the religions or politics or other activities of Neanderthals. But recent discoveries of cave art by Stone Age people, Neanderthals over 40,000 years ago, tell us that of all human activity the creation of art is the most fundamental and persevering. Whether in the caves of Grotte Chauvet in France, or in the cave, El Castillo, in Spain, scientists using modern methods of time-testing of antiquities, especially dating cave surfaces, have concluded that these expressions of art can be demonstrated as symbolic evidence of the societies of those prehistoric humans.

I'm not an anthropologist, but these findings tell me that of all the human endeavors, the most atavistic and fundamental, and the most revealing of all endeavors in all times, is art. Art endures, and we are fortunate it does.

Two moments come to my mind with Eisenhower. How he described the conduct of war was one: "The enemy has to know it is licked." Had it registered in 1914 the 60 million who died 30 years later — 2.5 percent of the world's population — would have been saved.

The second is that great picture on D-Day, probably the most important day in American history since Cemetery Ridge. It is an iconic photograph of Ike straight up and unsentimental as he addressed the Marines, many of whom would be seeing their last day on earth. It talks to everyone and everyone reads it differently. What are these men thinking, and what words does Eisenhower bring to them to fortify their will and courage? (But as kids who take the tour of the Capitol learn from the tour guide, Ike was talking to the men about fly-fishing.)

Have you ever stopped to think about the many who sacrificed their lives in order to give us the blessings of boundless freedom we enjoy?

This weekend we should reflect on the sacrifices that many continue to make in providing us with that enviable freedom.

To say that someone is “obstructionist” is to assume that what they are obstructing is good. Unless you’re at a Tea Party rally, and sometimes there is high praise for halting disastrous spending.

Similarly, to hurl the epithet of “extremist,” which is what liberals do when we actually live up to our principles, is to assume that what we are being extreme about is bad. “Extremeness” is relative, and, like obstruction, morally neutral in the abstract. Gandhi was extreme, Martin Luther King was extreme, and so on.

The New York Times has commentators in Paris but not in Texas. It would be inconceivable to imagine a NYTs op-ed voice in Louisville, on the slow-moving Ohio River, or Indianapolis, dead center of East, West, South and The Great White North. Or Iowa, like Alaska, commandeered now by Ron Paul renegades. Or South Carolina, where the women wear red dresses and refer to Sarah Palin by her first name. As much of the continent was at the beginning, New York City is still a French colony. “Lafayette, we are [still] here!”

Possibly we will always have Paris. Its magnetism is immense. We return to Paris again, to drink, like Hemingway, to fight like George S. Patton. And when they come to us as Sarkozy did as he geared up his fight for the presidency of France, it is not to pay homage to the American friend, it is to visit her colony. We live in the shadow of the City of Lights and France’s new president-elect, François Hollande, will soon visit France’s American colonies.

I was invited via an email from Cabela’s to trick out my AR. It took a minute to figure that they were talking about an automatic rifle. The picture looked like the M-16 I carried 40 years ago in military service, but more upscale. I don't own an AR. I don't even have a gun. It is usually nice shirts and camping equipment I get from them. So it was a little surprising.

I like Cabela’s. When we lived in Michigan I'd take my kids to see their beautiful four-story displays of bears, coyotes, foxes in hinterland settings. It seemed a representative part of glorious northern Michigan known as the UP. I tend to like guns as well. But the AR is not a hunting gun. It is a war weapon and a lot of people are buying them. In fact, guns today are said to be the only bright spot on the economy and Cabela’s stock is booming.

For anyone interested in understanding why one of the great institutions of democratic government in the world — the United States Senate — has become so dysfunctional and paralyzed by partisanship, Ira Shapiro’s recently published book The Last Great Senate: Courage and Statesmanship in Times of Crisis (Public Affairs, New York 2012), should be mandatory reading — not only by pundits and political science classes, but by every member of today’s Senate.

I knew the ’60s was over when the hippies started staying home to watch “Upstairs, Downstairs.” In our time we are staying home again to watch “Downton Abbey.” It seems a lesser tale than that narrated by William F. Buckley, Jr. of Evelyn Waugh’s “Brideshead Revisited” in 1981. Another recent offering, “The Tudors,” today goes to our beginning: Which strong force will dominate? That of the Catholic wife, Catherine, and her daughter, Mary? Or reformer Anne and her daughter, the Protestant monarch who institutionalized the modern world, Elizabeth I? These shows are longings that arise when we face uncertainty. And when we do we return to England.

Unless the American people regain a strong commitment to the traditional American values of self-reliance, individual liberty and equality of opportunity, our democracy will inevitably lead to socialism.

We are seeing an erosion of respect for other people’s property rights and a decline in individual responsibility. We are seeing an increase in entitlement mentality and class envy in our society. Instead of looking in the mirror, we look for scapegoats to explain our misfortune.

Unfortunately, this decline in our traditional values is being championed by the political establishment, including the president of the United States, the intellectual elite and the mainstream media.

Christian Davenport reports in The Washington Post on the crowds waiting to take out books at the Fairfax County Public Library. Out-of-towners should note that Fairfax County is target center for globalists on the make in America with more candle power on hand than Brooklyn managed in the early part of last century. As I recall, several years ago, Fairfax County High School had 41 valedictorians. So what are tiger cubs and their dominating, upscale mothers reading? E-books. But what?

“Want to take out the new John Grisham? Get in line. As of Friday morning, 288 people were ahead of you in the Fairfax County Public Library system, waiting for one of 43 copies. You’d be the 268th person waiting for The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, with 47 copies. And the Steve Jobs biography? Forget it. The publisher, Simon & Schuster, doesn’t make any of its digital titles available to libraries.”

Tony Blankley taught me the art of the spin.

He said to me, with his slight British accent, “First, you have a conversation off the record with the reporter, where you establish the facts, and then you give them something on the record which gives them your analysis.”

Blankley was Newt’s press secretary at the time, and I was Tom DeLay’s newly minted communications director, one who had never spoken to a reporter “on the record” before. Tony’s advice was priceless, and I would use it throughout my career on Capitol Hill.

Spending the holidays with my 85-year-old mother and never leaving her side for a week was truly an eye-opener. The average newborn baby sleeps about 20 hours daily and does not produce much in their environment — it is interesting that as people become very elderly, the amount of time they spend sleeping increases dramatically and their productivity decreases dramatically. The elderly are rapidly approaching the same existence they experience when they were first brought into the world. For the most part we have no problem caring for newborn babies, and we should understand that we also should care for the elderly as they approach terminal stages of their lives.

It is tragic when children abandon their parents and grandparents at the very time when those individuals are at their most vulnerable.