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Veterans blast Pentagon
Veterans blast Pentagon for giving in to ACLU
Defense denies Scout support diminished despite agreement to stop sponsoring 422 troops
The nation's largest veterans organization has delivered a stern letter to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld over an agreement with the ACLU to ensure military bases do not sponsor Boy Scout troops, but the Pentagon insists it has done nothing to diminish its support for Scouting.
Responding to news of a deal to settle an issue in a lawsuit with the American Civil Liberties Union, American Legion National Commander Thomas P. Cadmus wrote, ''The idea that sponsorship of Scouting by American military units is 'unconstitutional' goes beyond the absurd, even well past the point of stupidity.'' The ACLU contends the government has improperly supported a group that requires members to believe in God.
Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Joe Richard the agreement should be seen as a resolution to a narrow part of the lawsuit, which only requires the Defense Department to clarify its stated policy against sponsorship of non-federal organizations.
''We don't believe the Boy Scouts will suffer in terms of support within the military community,'' he said, noting troops still can meet in civilian venues on bases, and personnel will continue to serve in a private capacity as scoutmasters and assistants.
Nevertheless, the ACLU agreement means 422 Scouting programs will no longer be chartered, or sponsored, by the Department of Defense.
But Richard maintains other groups, such as the American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars are stepping in to take on the charters and keep the Scout troops on military bases.
In his letter to Rumsfeld, the American Legion's Cadmus asked, ''How is it the government can fund chapels on military bases, and chaplains in the military, but not accommodate Scouting? Why is it that the rank of Eagle Scout is an attribute highly sought in candidates for military academies, but will soon become unwelcome on military bases? How is it the Congress can sanction Scouting by issuing them a federal charter, but the courts can declare them 'outlaws?'''
Cadmus asked Rumsfeld, ''Where is the outrage?'' in Congress or the White House, noting there is plenty of anger among the 2.7 million Legion members over legal action taken against the Scouts in recent years.
In one of many cases related to its policy against avowed homosexuals in leadership, the U.S. Supreme Court in March allowed Connecticut to exclude the Boy Scouts of America from a state charitable program.
Cadmus urged Rumsfeld ''to hold the line of assault on the Scouts. Stand up to the ACLU. Find a way to give those who serve our nation the chance to serve their children
By for giving in to ACLU
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Bill Clinton's newly
Bill Clinton's newly opening library is in denial, which is not the same as saying there's no reason to clap your hands about the place, including its 80 million items soon to be available to scholars and a terrific quote taken from Clinton's first inaugural.
''There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America,'' the quote says, according to a news account that tells us that it is found at the start of a timeline of the Clinton presidency.
The words have the virtue of speaking truth and of calling us to our better selves, and they point us as well to Clinton's promise, to the sunny, hopeful, friendly disposition of this outrageously bright man, to his ambition to do good, often through tempered, even conservative means.
But there is something else in this $165 million Little Rock facility, a section dealing with the Monica Lewinsky scandal and attempting to show that impeachment proceedings amounted to a vicious, unjustified, well-planned attack to destroy the man and his presidency.
This section does not have the virtue of speaking truth. It was Clinton who undid Clinton through startling irresponsibility and lies told in court and to the nation. Republicans pounced on his errant behavior, and it can be argued they shouldn't have. Still, it was Clinton himself who provided the opportunity because of a side of his personality that proved weak, self-serving and dishonest.
In the end, Clinton's promise came to little. A large accomplishment, welfare reform, was forced on him by Republicans. The prosperity of the '90s had something to do with him - he worked for unfettered trade and didn't intervene much in the economy - but mainly it had to do with the robustness of America's free-enterprise system in an era of technological advance and globalization of markets. Much that should have been done, such as Social Security reform, never got done.
What was right with Clinton never wholly cured what was wrong with him, and that's a sorrowful thing, for he could have done so much.
By opening library is in denial
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Should Thanksgiving be made
Should Thanksgiving be made illegal as a national holiday and U.S. presidents stop issuing those annual Thanksgiving proclamations?
The idea may seem preposterous. But Thanksgiving is a typical part of the targeted phenomenon known as ''civil religion,'' referring to generalized acknowledgments of the national heritage of faith in God that fit as many religions as possible.
However, nonbelievers, or followers of religions with many gods, or with no gods, could find reason to object, even while they enjoy roast turkey and an extra day off.
A federal appeals court accommodated just that sort of objection when it outlawed the popular phrase ''under God'' in the Pledge of Allegiance. The U.S. Supreme Court scrapped the ruling on technical grounds this year, but a future legal attack on the pledge phrase is anticipated.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court is plunging into an equally emotional matter, the legality of the Ten Commandments displays on public property all over the nation.
Next year, the high court justices will hear arguments and rule on the memorials at the Texas state Capitol and the courthouses in Kentucky's McCreary and Pulaski counties. Church-state separationists have challenged many similar monuments in court.
The Supreme Court, whose own chamber features a carving of Moses holding the Ten Commandments, refused to hear an Indiana case in 2001, but finally decided to end the confusion. Four federal circuit courts have said commandments displays are legal while three have outlawed them as an unconstitutional ''establishment of religion.'' State courts also differ.
Opponents of displays complain that the commandments include explicitly religious demands about worshipping the one God. They also cite the Supreme Court's 1980 Stone v. Graham ruling. In that case, a 5-4 majority said Kentucky public schools couldn't display the commandments because a 1971 court dictum barred government action that lacks ''a secular legislative purpose.''
On that point, display advocates agree with the 1980 dissent from William Rehnquist (now chief justice). He argued that the commandments have a ''secular significance'' due to their impact on the development of the West's legal codes.
The 1980 decision is also criticized in an important new conservative work, ''The Supreme Court and Religion in American Life'' (Princeton University Press, two volumes) by historian James Hitchcock.To Hitchcock, the insidious intent of the Stone ruling was ''to insulate the public sector from all religious influence.'' He finds it significant that the court banished the commandments without even ordering the usual arguments and briefs, showing how firmly entrenched strict interpretation of church-state separation has become.
The biblical commandments are central to Judaism and Christianity, but U.S. Muslim leaders have raised no strong objections to displays, perhaps because the Quran also says that God gave the law to Moses and teaches the same principles, though not in a single passage.
A partial exception is the Bible's command to worship and avoid work on the Sabbath (Saturday, transferred to Sunday by Christians). The Quran doesn't require Muslims to stop work for the entire day of weekly worship, but otherwise has a similar dictum:
''When the call is proclaimed to prayer on Friday (the Day of Assembly), hasten earnestly to the remembrance of Allah and leave off business'' (62:9).
By illegal as a national holiday
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Liberal Racism A Perspective
Liberal Racism A Little Perspective
Both before and after her elevation to secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice has been the target of a series of racist caricatures by liberal cartoonists. Rush Limbaugh points out three: a Doonesbury strip by Garry Trudeau that refers to her as ''Brown Sugar,'' a Jeff Danziger cartoon that portrays her as Prissy from ''Gone With the Wind'' (also the topic of a Wall Street Journal editorial last month) and, most recently, a Tuesday political cartoon from Pat Oliphant that depicts the secretary-designate as a parrot with enormous lips. (This seems to be a running feature; yesterday's Oliphant cartoon does it also, this time with President Bush as a pirate.) Blogger Winfield Myers catalogues other examples.
Limbaugh is incensed by these displays of bigotry and hypocrisy (emphasis his):
It is grotesque. It is insulting. It is vile. It is angry. It is childish, and it is typical I think of what the left has become. They claim to be holy [sic] than thou. They claim to be above all of us when it comes to understanding the downtrodden and minorities. They claim to be the only ones that have the ability to have the compassion and understanding, and yet they get away with racism. They get away with bigotry. They get away with sexism, and they get away with homophobia--and in the case of Condoleezza Rice, they get away with an attempted character destruction of a truly brilliant and accomplished woman who came from nothing to become the first black female secretary of state.
Myers echoes the point: ''This is part and parcel of the left's embrace of moral and intellectual nihilism, which in turn has led to a belief that the ends for which they labor justify the means.''
We don't really disagree with any of this, but it strikes us that the outrage, while understandable, is perhaps a bit overwrought. It's not as if the works of Trudeau, Danziger and Oliphant are going to provoke an outbreak of lynching or cross-burning. These expressions of racial prejudice don't actually diminish Rice's accomplishments, and they are not going to prevent her from becoming one of the most powerful people in the world. These cartoonists have merely proved to the world that they are prejudiced against blacks who don't share their views--and that's good to know.
The absence of outrage from the liberal sensitivity police, who would be up in arms if a conservative cartoonist committed a similar offense (cf the reaction to National Review's 1997 cover depicting the Clintons as Asians, second item), shows that liberals are hypocrites when it comes to race--and that, too, is useful to know.
We got an insight into contemporary liberal attitudes toward race on a taxi ride not long ago. We were en route to Shea Stadium along with fellow conservative commentator Joel Mowbray, and our driver was a youngish Haitian woman who had her radio tuned to Air America. Mowbray started a political discussion with her, and she told him that she doesn't like Republicans because ''they hate black people.''''Does President Bush hate Condi Rice and Colin Powell?'' Mowbray asked, to which she replied that Rice and Powell aren't ''really black'' because they ''don't think like black people.''The idea that black people are supposed to think in a certain way is, of course, a racist assumption in itself. But what's most interesting about this exchange is that our driver had in effect redefined race so that it has nothing to do with race. When she said, ''They hate black people,'' she meant merely, ''They disagree with liberal ideology.''
The charge of racism carries a certain sting because America has a long history of real racism. But the progress the country has made on race, especially over the past 40 years, has been nothing short of stunning. Here we have a president whose detractors describe him as a ''radical conservative'' appointing a black woman to replace a black man as the most senior member of his cabinet.
By caricatures by liberal cartoonis
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