Below, I linked to my article on NRO titled "Playing the Deployment Card" and I thought you might like to get a glimpse of what it's like to open your e-mail after such a piece.

Some notes are kind, uplifting, and brief:

Hello, I liked your cute article in NRO. It's good to hear that strangers still help damsels in distress.

and

Nancy, I am writing you to thank you for your family’s sacrifice on behalf of our country. Your article brought a tear to my eye. I pray our men and women in the military come home safe to a world without war. God bless you and your family!

and

I’ll be darned if my lips didn’t quiver when I got to the America the Beautiful verse. Thank you for writing this. I’ve forwarded it to my wife, my parents, and my son—who is in the USMC ROTC program.

May God bless you, your children, and your husband.

Does it not bother you that your husband's life has been put at risk for a war that the entire planet opposes, including the majority of Americans? Even the countries that have sent troops to Iraq did so in the teeth of massive and ongoing hostility from public opinion and leaders like Aznar and Blair saw their political careers ended for having done so. Gordon Brown, in his turn, has just suffered a massive electoral defeat because he did not do what the British poeple want him to do, namely pull the troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. The Iraqi government has repeatedly asked the US to leave and polls show that the overwhelming majority of Iraqis support that view. Two Popes have condemned the war and under the principles set out by Pope Benedict at the UN, the war is contrary to Catholic morality.

What is the sense of wasting human life in a war that nobody wants and that is unwinnable? Wouldn't your husband's admirable desire to serve his country be better put to use back home, where he wouldn't risk being killed?

And some are headscratchers:

i'm actually embarrased by you... your husband isn't fighting for your freedom to be a wimp... well... let me rephrase that... he is fighting for your freedom to be anything you want... but your choice to be a quivering mess... only leads your children down a sorry path...

instead you should be showing them how to be proud of your husband... their father... for trusting the three of you to be able to carry on in the midst of a relatively short absence... barring his death at the hands of our mortal enemies abroad...

Posted by Nancy French at 04:21 PM on May 09, 2008 | Permalink

I have a new article for this weekend's National Review Online, called "Playing the Deployment Card."

Dusk had turned to dark, and the campground signs faded into the forest. After eking along for an hour, leaning forward to make out the signs through the windshield, I sadly realized I had to set up my first pop-up camper in the dark. Alone.

“Sir,” I rolled down my window. “Where’s Campground B?”

“First, you’re in Campground A. Second, you’re driving the wrong way down a one-way road.” The man stood in front of grill sizzling hamburgers. Tow-headed boys popped out of the camper before their mother told them to wash their hands.

“All you have to do is back up right there and you’ll be headed in the right direction.” I bit my lip as envy arose in my heart toward the man, his burgers, and the picturesque image of his Winnebago-owning family.

“You don’t know how to reverse, do you?” he asked in more of a lament than a question as he noticed my kids in the back seat. Not only had I never put up a camper, I’d never pulled anything behind a vehicle in my life.

“Sir,” I began, “My husband’s in Iraq, and you’re right — there’s absolutely no way I can back this thing up.” I took a deep breath. “But if you support the troops, you’ll jump in this minivan and back it up for me.”

Which, amazingly, is exactly what he did.

My husband’s departure in October 2007 had the same effect on me as the radioactive spider bite had on Peter Parker. Although I can’t scale walls or spin webs, I do have a unique supernatural ability: I can make friends, family, and even total strangers bend to my will.

Read the rest here.

Posted by Nancy French at 03:46 PM on May 09, 2008 | Permalink

So, I'm sitting here watching Survivor, as I have done every week for every season since naked Richard Hatch won by using a -- shock! -- alliance back in 2000.

Every season, every year, I get misty eyed on "family night" -- the evening Jeff Probst uses family members of the tribesmen as a "reward" for a challenge. When the family members show up on the island, everyone runs and hugs and weeps hot tears.

At least, I used to always get misty eyed. However, I have to admit, David's year long deployment in Iraq makes a thirty day island adventure without your family look a little less emotionally treacherous.

(No, I'm not going to stop watching it, because then the terrorists would've won. )

Posted by Nancy French at 10:48 PM on May 04, 2008 | Permalink

Last night, I organized a group of friends to go see "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed" which was playing outside of Nashville. Knowing that "organization" is Kryptonite to me, I took pains to handle things carefully. I got reservations at P.F. Chang's, asked the church if we could borrow the van, asked a deacon to come with us so he could drive (Paul, I would've asked you anyway, of course!), and asked people to meet the van at an on-the-way McDonald's.

Six people were coming from our neighborhood -- so we were to ride to the McDonald's rendezvous together. Three of these people were new to the Zion community, and I'd looked forward to introducing them to other interesting people in our town.

When we stopped by their house, I jumped out of the van to knock on the door. Immediately, their sweet kids run out to meet me, followed by the mother-in-law who was babysitting them for the evening.

"Hello, I'm Nancy," I said.

"I'm Nancy."

"Really? I didn't realize that," I said. "We're swinging by here, but we’re meeting the others at McDonald's."

"Oh? That's nice."

We stand. Hug kids. Smile. Stand. But my friends didn't come out.

"Why don't you come in?" the other Nancy offered. She was being polite, but we declined.

"Well, we really don't have much time... We'll just wait here."

So we waited, and waited. We smiled some more.

"Where are you from?"

"How long are you staying?"

“How long have you been in the neighborhood?”

We exchanged pleasantries for a few minutes, before the other Nancy asked us once again to sit down.

We relented, and sat in the living room to exchange more pleasantries. The dog, in the meantime, had jumped up on the table and eaten the dinner the kids’ had abandoned to come meet and greet us.

“We interrupted dinner?” I asked, horrified. The kind, polite other Nancy waved it off, as if it were no big deal. That’s the way women from Texas are – gracious and kind. However, women from Tennessee are also aghast at the imposition, and we all began to wonder what was taking our friends so long.

“Well, we’re going to see a movie tonight,” I said, trying to fill in more time. “Going to see ‘Expelled.’”

“Expelled?” she asked. “That’s what Mike and Kittye went to see.”

“Went?”

“Yes,” she said. “They left a while ago.”

“They’re not in this house?”

“They went to a movie.”

She probably assumed we'd stopped by inexplicably during dinner for a visit. I apologized profusely, and we scampered off to McDonald’s where they had been waiting for half an hour with our other friends. They are new to the neighborhood and didn’t read the community bylaws which state you cannot have a front-facing garage and you must carpool when heading to the same destination.

That’s the way we do things here.

Anyway, this misunderstand confirmed what anyone who's read my book knows. My life is a sitcom.

Alas, the movie was interesting and we had a nice evening anyway. Here's the trailer:

Posted by Nancy French at 01:48 PM on May 03, 2008 | Permalink

Kathryn Lopez questions the "institution" of the White Houses Correspondence Dinner:

‘Colin Firth is here!”

“Have you seen Colin Firth?”

“Mr. Darcy!”

Such were the most frequently asked questions and exclamations at the White House Correspondents Dinner at the Reagan Hilton on Saturday night.

Every year, the dinner is an odd scene. As President Bush put it: “It’s an interesting crowd. You know, just think — Pamela Anderson and Mitt Romney in the same room. Isn’t that one of the signs of the apocalypse?”

Luckily for Romney — who was scheduled to sit at National Review’s table — the former Massachusetts governor was called off to Nevada to campaign for John McCain and didn’t make the dinner. But the policy wonks and politicos and Secretary of State were dressed to the nines there along with Ben (Affleck) and Jen (Garner), Will.i.am, Marcia Cross, Tracey Ullman, and, yes, Colin Firth — accent and all.

Lucky Mitt.

I'm not sure how I feel about this correspondent's dinner, as I've always typically enjoyed the lightness of the event. However, read her very good observations here.

Posted by Nancy French at 10:58 AM on May 03, 2008 | Permalink

The wonderful Mark Steyn has this article up, which begins this way:

Four score and seven years ago… No, wait, my mistake. Two score and seven or eight days ago, Barack Obama gave the greatest speech since the Gettysburg Address, or FDR’s First Inaugural, or JFK’s religion speech, or (if like Garry Wills in The New York Review of Books, you find those comparisons drearily obvious) Lincoln’s Cooper Union speech of 1860. And, of course, the Senator’s speech does share one quality with Cooper Union, Gettysburg, the FDR Inaugural, Henry V at Agincourt, Socrates’s Apology, etc: It’s history. He said, apropos the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, that “I could no more disown him than I can disown my white grandmother.” But last week he did disown him. So, great-speech-wise, it’s a bit like Churchill promising to fight them on the beaches and never surrender, and then surrendering a month and a half later, and on a beach he decided not to fight on.

Read the rest here.

Posted by Nancy French at 10:50 AM on May 03, 2008 | Permalink

Honestly, I haven't been following the '08 race as closely as I once did -- it obviously doesn't hold the same drama or potential it once did. Many of my Republican friends say I'm missing out on a very entertaining Democratic contest, which I think I'm finally able to tune into. Maybe.

This helps:

Posted by Nancy French at 01:05 PM on May 02, 2008 | Permalink

Jennifer from Slate Magazine sent me this, a great and entertaining run down:

Posted by Nancy French at 10:11 AM on May 01, 2008 | Permalink

Byron York discusses Obama's pastoral problem here.

Why? Here is a snippet from his longtime and former pastor's speech today:

Meanwhile, at the Press Club, with that opportunity to contextualize his controversial statements, Wright chose instead to dig in. On his famous 9/11 “chickens coming home to roost” comment, he told the audience that the United States is a terrorist nation that got what it had coming on September 11. “To quote the Bible, ‘Be not deceived. God is not mocked. For whatsoever you sow, that you also shall reap,’“ Wright said. “Jesus said, ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.’ You cannot do terrorism on other people and expect it never to come back on you. Those are biblical principles, not Jeremiah Wright bombastic, divisive principles.”

Wright also held firm to his suggestion that the United States government created the AIDS virus to kill black people. “Based on this Tuskegee experiment and based on what has happened to Africans in this country, I believe our government is capable of doing anything,” he said.

He even defended the most incendiary of his comments, “God damn America.” “That’s biblical,” Wright said. “God doesn’t bless everything. God condemns something — and d-e-m-n, ‘demn,’ is where we get the word ‘damn.’ God damns some practices. And there is no excuse for the things that the government, not the American people, have done. That doesn’t make me not like America or unpatriotic.”

Posted by Nancy French at 11:51 PM on April 28, 2008 | Permalink

Posted by Nancy French at 12:08 PM on April 28, 2008 | Permalink

The Atlantic has a pretty sobering but not surprising article about John McCain's supposed momentum:

Even with the Democratic Party locked in a fierce civil war, John McCain still hasn't pulled ahead of either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama in national polls.

Posted by Nancy French at 09:45 AM on April 23, 2008 | Permalink

We already posted this once, but here's the video. After seeing it, I think I'm finally ready to take off the Mitt Romney bumper sticker today. (Not the Mitt '08 one, which is still in good shape, but the longer rectangular one. I'm not totally ready to let it go!)

Posted by Nancy French at 11:55 AM on April 21, 2008 | Permalink

Have you ever had one of those moments where you're really thankful for something small?

Or -- more accurately -- when you're thankful for something that would seem small for someone who isn't in your shoes, but really isn't?

I had one of those moments this week.

On Monday, I had a root canal. I'd never had one before -- frankly, I didn't really know what it was. In fact, I had never even had a cavity until just recently, so I'm very new to the realm of dental discomfort.

When I was initially told I might need a root canal, all I knew about it was that I should be afraid. When I told my boss I might need to miss a day to have one done, she cringed. That's the second thing I learned about root canals -- everyone cringes at the thought of one.

Men being curious, and this man being part of the Internet Age, I decided to find out a little more. Where, you ask? Wikipedia, of course. But one glance at the relevant entry -- which features a rather gruesome picture -- and my curiosity went the way of the dodo.

So, I walked into the doctor's office on Monday pretty clueless. And to this day, all I really know about root canals is what I read -- mostly inadvertently -- on a diagram that happened to be sitting in the corner of the room. And that I'm thankful for the little black plastic thing.

Yes, the little black plastic thing. Not the yellow plastic thing -- the thing that got in the way of my breathing that they used to make a "tunnel" to my tooth. That was kind of lame. And not the drill, certainly. No, it was this thing they put between my top and bottom teeth on the opposite side of my mouth from the "unhappy" tooth. (That's the word the doctor used. I told him my tooth was actually relatively happy, except for the fact that it had to have a root canal -- it didn't hurt or anything, left alone -- but he seemed unconvinced.) I think the idea is that they can't trust you to affirmatively hold your mouth open when they start doing whatever they do, but they can trust you to bite something. So they told me to bite this thing.

At first, it seemed wrong. You want me to push my mouth shut? The dentist always tells me to keep it open! But I did as they said.

And you know what? It didn't take long before I was thanking God for that little black plastic thing. Why? Because like I said, I really didn't want to know what they were doing to my tooth. But left to my own devices, I'd think about it. Are they drilling through the top? Are they extracting the pulp? Is it going to look like that Wikipedia picture? That looks painful. Are they putting metal posts in the root cavities? Why does he keep telling me my roots are long? Is that a compliment? Am I in trouble? Should I have dyed them like that lady at work? Wait...

The little black plastic thing delivered me from such unproductive thoughts. All I had to think about was chomping down on it. Was I chomping? Was I retreating? Chomp, Charles. You can handle it, really.

Sorry if this is strange, but it really was comforting. And in some ways, I wonder if it doesn't point -- in a tiny, tiny way -- to what Christians are given through the cross.

Do you know what I mean? I may be crazy, but I think it makes sense.

Think about it. When things aren't going well, God calls us to focus our thoughts on the cross -- the thing by which he delivered us. The thing that makes it true that all things work together for our good (Romans 8:28), even painful things. The thing that makes it true that our trials are temporary and necessary for the refining of our faith, to the glory of God (1 Peter 1:6-7).

Just so with the little black plastic thing. Maybe God gave me that -- so I could focus my thoughts on something other than the drill and the blood and the pulp and the What in the world is going on over there. That's what I did -- and I thanked him for it. Seriously.

Of course, this begs the question -- in the face of a trial like a root canal, why didn't I cling to the cross itself, rather than the little black plastic thing? Why didn't I think of how much greater was the pain Jesus bore -- and that that pain was as much my fault as this stinking root canal? Why didn't I think of the fact that because he did that, I'm okay -- no matter what befalls me in this world?

I guess that's why I need the cross in the first place.

Father, thank you for the little black plastic thing -- a tiny emblem of your love for me. And Lord Jesus, forgive me for not thinking nearly often enough about your cross -- the real proof.

Posted by Charles Mitchell at 08:53 PM on April 20, 2008 | Permalink

Loyal reader Rex sent me this, from last night:

WASHINGTON (CNN) — At Wednesday night's Radio and Television Correspondents Dinner in Washington, D.C., former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney gave his "Top 10 Reasons for Dropping Out of the Race":

10. There weren't as many Osmonds as I thought.
9. I got tired of corkscrew landings under sniper fire.
8. As a lifelong hunter, I didn't want to miss the start of the varmint season.
7. There wasn't room for two Christian leaders.
6. I was upset that no one had bothered to search my passport files.
5. I needed an excuse to get fat, grow a beard and win the Nobel prize.
4. I took a bad fall at a campaign rally and broke my hair.
3. I wanted to finally take off that dark suit and tie, and kick back
in a light-colored suit and tie.
2. Once my wife Ann realized I couldn't win, my fundraising dried up.
1. There was a miscalculation in our theory: "As Utah goes, so goes the nation."

Posted by Nancy French at 08:03 PM on April 17, 2008 | Permalink

Forbes.com has an article titled "It Makes Economic Sense," about McCain possibly choosing Gov. Romney for a running mate. It concludes:

A McCain-Romney ticket makes sense for both men. McCain gets a boost on economic issues and Romney gets a seat next to McCain in the White House—assuming they manage a victory in November. The increased exposure would serve Romney well should he choose to seek the presidential nomination in the future. Considering John McCain’s age, Romney’s chance could come as soon as 2012 if a victorious McCain decided to only serve one term.

Posted by Nancy French at 10:32 PM on April 14, 2008 | Permalink

U.S. News says 98 percent of historians think the current Bush presidency has been a failure. Is that the same 98 percent who voted against him? (That's about the number most surveys indicate -- and I wonder what kind of sample you get when you ask historians to comment on current events.)

Posted by Charles Mitchell at 05:05 PM on April 14, 2008 | Permalink

A root canal? Sheesh. Are you blogging while medicated?

I think we should somehow invert one of our photos, and make it look like we're shooting at each other.

CHARLES replies: Depends how you define the term. My self-prescribed medicine is bourbon, and I don't feel too bad. Nancy, does that make me twice the Tennessean you are?

NANCY: Um... yes, I believe it does. Although I bet the concoction my mother gave me as cough medicine was strong enough to take the paint off wood. I think we're tied.

Posted by Nancy French at 04:00 PM on April 14, 2008 | Permalink

The Washington Times is running an interesting article today. Here's how it begins:

Don't expect any public testimonies of faith from presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, who is not demonstrative about his religion but who embraces a Baptist faith that is based on salvation.

The religious intentions of Democratic candidate Sen. Barack Obama were dissected after he publicly explained his decadeslong relationship with the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., but the senator from Arizona likely will talk little about the details of his own spiritual path other than to acknowledge that he is on one.

"The most important thing is I'm a Christian," Mr. McCain told reporters in September on the campaign trail when asked about his religious affiliation.

Terry Mattingly has flagged the piece, asking, "What kind of mainstream Christian body is not, to one degree or another, 'based on salvation?'” That is a fair question, but I'm not sure it's as unanswerable as Professor Mattingly seems to think. I've been exposed to a number of churches where there was little, if any, mention of how to be saved. I suppose that technically such churches are Universalist -- even if they call themselves by other names -- but I'm not sure you can call your church "based on salvation" if you basically assume that everyone is saved and don't make it a point of focus.

Another interesting issue, just in those three paragraphs: We're not to expect "public testimonies of faith," but isn't one then quoted? Perhaps this gets down to how you parse the word "testimony" -- certainly I can't see Senator McCain delivering an account on the campaign trail like the one I was asked to deliver before I was baptized -- but I must say I don't find "The most important thing is I'm a Christian" to be an unappealing kind of public statement for a would-be president.

There is also a mention in the article of James Dobson's loud denunciation of Senator McCain. I must confess -- I haven't thought a great deal about this, but I am humbled thinking of how we noted that outburst here, as well as the similar "Heck, no" statements Dr. Dobson issued about other presidential candidates. Reading them now, in that wonderful 20/20 hindsight, I'm not sure I agree with the tone of them or that I feel great about having highlighted them.

Another snippet from the Times:

Mr. McCain's near silence also indicates that he is "wary of phony outward display," said Wilfred McClay, a professor of humanities at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. He added that such an action could be simply generational for the 71-year-old lawmaker. In his day, public discussion of the details of one's personal faith was considered inappropriate.

"The evidence suggests that his true religion is kind of civil religion, a religion of American patriotism and of sacrifice for the nation in the name of living for something larger than yourself," Mr. McClay said. "That general idea — that you find your greatest fulfillment and purpose in dedicating your life to something more than yourself — is in some ways very Christian, but McCain always expresses it in the secular terms of country."

You know what? I'm fairly amenable to that line of thinking. I do not think that "dedicating your life to something more than yourself" per se makes you a Christian -- I don't mean that. I mean the idea of a president who expresses his faith in a unifying way, not a way that only gets one particular sect excited. That's what George Washington did -- if you want to read a great book on that, check out Michael and Jana Novak's Washington's God.

I also think the article hits on something in pointing to "phony outward display." I for one am sick of tired of candidates who quote the Bible left and right because they know it'll make people like me vote for them -- but then disappoint us bitterly once they get into office, both with their morality and their governance.

Anyway, I don't have any really refined thoughts on this, but the article is fascinating. Take a look.

Posted by Charles Mitchell at 03:08 PM on April 14, 2008 | Permalink

Look at me -- I'm off work today (for a root canal) and getting to blog during the day! It's like I'm Nancy, except I'm still not cool.

Anyway, I just wanted to give some props to the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Those guys have sent me more letters asking for dough than I can count, but after the pathetic performance they've turned in lately, I've tossed 'em all in the trash. But I really like this, and I should give credit where it's due:

Nice work, guys. Keep it up.

Posted by Charles Mitchell at 02:40 PM on April 14, 2008 | Permalink

When Obama said, "So people end up, you know, voting on issues like guns, and are they going to have the right to bear arms," it got me thinking.

A few weeks ago, I joined the NRA for the first time since I was covered by my dad's membership when I was a kid.

Perhaps this would be a good time to join -- in honor of Barack Obama's comments about the embittered, religious gun owners?

Or you could join to honor the memory of Charlton Heston.

For fun, I am posting some pics of EFM gun enthusiasts. (I'm surprised people didn't listen to us better.) Here is Charles with his AK-47, me with a rifle, and David inexplicably holding his M4 by the magazine (He says, "Here’s a hint for you aspiring Soldiers—you cannot fire a weapon by gripping the magazine.")

Anyway, I thought it might be fun to click here to join the NRA -- do it for Barack!

UPDATE: Yes, I do realize the boys seriously out-gun me.

Posted by Nancy French at 09:32 AM on April 14, 2008 | Permalink

So, this weekend I have been reading up on Senator Obama's recent remarks in San Francisco. (As I mentioned yesterday, I didn't really follow the story when the news first hit.)

Just so you can have the words in front of you, here is what he said at a fundraiser there in response to a question about lower-class, white voters:

It’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations. So people end up, you know, voting on issues like guns, and are they going to have the right to bear arms. They vote on issues like gay marriage. And they take refuge in their faith and their community and their families and things they can count on. But they don't believe they can count on Washington.

In today's New York Times, Bill Kristol is pointing out that this argument sounds a lot like the Marx-Engels Readers that lefty students were embracing on elite campuses in the 1980s:

I haven’t read much Karl Marx since the early 1980s, when I taught political philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania. Still, it didn’t take me long this weekend to find my copy of “The Marx-Engels Reader,” edited by Robert C. Tucker — a book that was assigned in thousands of college courses in the 1970s and 80s, and that now must lie, unopened and un-remarked upon, on an awful lot of rec-room bookshelves.

My occasion for spending a little time once again with the old Communist was Barack Obama’s now-famous comment at an April 6 San Francisco fund-raiser....

This sent me to Marx’s famous statement about religion in the introduction to his “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right”:

“Religious suffering is at the same time an expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the sentiment of a heartless world, and the soul of a soulless condition. It is the opium of the people.”

Or, more succinctly, and in the original German in which Marx somehow always sounds better: “Die Religion ... ist das Opium des Volkes.”

Now, this is a point of view with a long intellectual pedigree prior to Marx, and many vocal adherents continuing into the 21st century. I don’t believe the claim is true, but it’s certainly worth considering, in college classrooms and beyond.

But it’s one thing for a German thinker to assert that “religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature.” It’s another thing for an American presidential candidate to claim that we “cling to ... religion” out of economic frustration.

Whether you want to connect it right to Marx or not, I think it's indisputable that this remark does evince a mindset very much linked to political correctness. One of the buzzwords at universities like the one I attended is "false consciousness" -- the idea that the rabble out there think they're okay, but they're really not. Their problem? They don't correctly understand their oppression. The solution? Well, they need a magnificent leader to lead them toward the light.

Why am I (gently) calling David out on this? In our previous discussion, he seemed a bit loath to concede that the Obamas seem to have imbibed deeply from their time in the Ivy League. As you'll recall, I argued that their receptivity to the preaching of Reverend Wright suggested to me that they have some ideological beliefs -- nurtured in their time on campus -- that most Americans don't exactly share. I'd suggest that this more recent brouhaha lends a bit of credibility to my point -- and that it is altogether proper for us to take into account Senator Obama's unguarded uttering in San Francisco.

It's also clear that there is a pattern here. With the San Francisco remarks, just as with the Reverend Wright controversy, Senator Obama's initial reaction to criticism was to suggest that there was nothing wrong with what he (or his minister) said. It was only later, under intense scrutiny, that he backed off. That's pretty revealing as to his true beliefs. It means that he really didn't see anything off key about what he said in San Francisco -- and even if he didn't buy Reverend Wright's stuff hook, line, and sinker, he surely didn't see it the way most other Americans would (namely, as being completely ridiculous). That is meaningful.

Okay, David -- over to you.

One final note. This is fantastic:

UPDATE: Peter Wehner flags an interesting -- and telling -- choice of words on Senator Obama's part:

Speaking in Muncie, Indiana, after the story broke, Obama said “Lately, there has been a little, typical sort of political flare-up because I said something that everybody knows is true, which is that there are a whole bunch of folks in small towns in Pennsylvania, in towns right here in Indiana, in my home town in Illinois who are bitter.”

The flare-up, you see, happened because Obama is the Great Truth-Teller amidst the masses, many of whom can’t handle the truth. Once it dawned on Obama’s aides that expediency demanded an apology, the Senator offered a qualified mea culpa: “Obviously, if I worded things in a way that made people offended, I deeply regret that.”

So if Senator Obama worded things in a way that made people feel offended (rather than worded things in a way that is offensive), well, he regrets that.

I'm not sure it's our place -- as Mr. Wehner does -- to say that "[b]eneath the enormous charm and cool persona of Obama beats the heart of an arrogant man." I for one can't see his heart. But it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see -- on the basis of his own sayings and choices -- that he does have some beliefs that are worth noting, and there's clearly a lot here of my old econ professors' "false consciousness" idea.

Hugh Hewitt also has some good thoughts.

Posted by Charles Mitchell at 06:40 AM on April 14, 2008 | Permalink

In Indiana, she said:

"The people of faith I know don't 'cling' to religion because they're bitter. People embrace faith not because they are materially poor, but because they are spiritually rich."

If you're not sure why she's saying that, see this AP piece for background. (I haven't really followed the controversy, personally.)

Posted by Charles Mitchell at 07:57 AM on April 13, 2008 | Permalink

One guess.

Posted by Nancy French at 12:29 PM on April 11, 2008 | Permalink

Apparently, Paul Weyrich, whom I criticized last week for participating in the "No Mitt" ads with former Huckabee supporters, has switched his mind.

Recently I received a phone call from someone asking if former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney should be Arizona Senator John McCain’s selection for Vice President of the United States.

I said, “No” because I did not think this was the best path for Romney right now; nor was it, in my view, the right fit for McCain. My understanding was that this was to be a personal letter to the Senator; it was not clear to me that this was to be an advertisement.

Thus, I now request that my involvement in this effort be disregarded as this effort to influence the Senator moves on.

I did support Romney in the early primaries and then supported former Arkansas Governor Huckabee when he and McCain were the last two candidates in the field.

That Senator McCain most likely will be in a position to select a Vice Presidential nominee is a failure of our movement, including myself, to unite behind a single candidate. In the unlikely development that the Senator would ask for my view on this matter, I would convey it to him in private as I have traditionally done.

What happened?

Associating with people who insist Gov. Romney can't authentically change his mind on an issue is probably not the best course for a man who supported Romney before he opposed him.

Posted by Nancy French at 11:15 AM on April 11, 2008 | Permalink

Check out the ending of last night's episode:

Posted by Nancy French at 11:38 AM on April 10, 2008 | Permalink

I'm not sure how David is still finding time to write for National Review, but apparently he is!

Diyala Province, Iraq — For most of my career, I’ve worked in perhaps the most despised profession in America: the large-firm corporate lawyer. Anyone who’s spent any time within the much-maligned mahogany corridors of legal power knows that life is dominated by long hours, demanding clients, and . . . mission statements.

Yes, mission statements. It would be hard to overstate the number of hours spent at “retreats” or in meetings with partners, associates, consultants, and “facilitators” agonizing over the purpose and direction of the firm or the local branch office of the firm or the department within the local branch office of the firm. We would endlessly discuss the immortal questions so powerfully raised by Admiral James Stockdale: Who are we? Why are we here? For some reason, my answer — “This firm exists to make as much money as it can within the rules of honor, law, and ethics” — never made the cut. Too crass, I suppose.

Despite my best efforts, I still can’t shake the mission-statement mentality — the urge to reduce complex efforts to a single-sentence summary — and I find myself doing that even here in Iraq. I just passed the 23rd week of my mobilization, and I think I finally came up with a sentence that sums up our current fight pretty well: “Our mission is to help rebuild a shattered country while overcoming vast cultural differences in the midst of constant combat.”

If there is just one story that sums up the reality of this place, it is a story told by a veteran trooper in my unit, 2d Squadron, 3d Armored Cavalry Regiment (LTC Paul T. Calvert, Commanding).

Read the rest of the story here.

Posted by Nancy French at 10:21 AM on April 10, 2008 | Permalink

Via reader James, Chuck Todd has some interesting things to say to evangelicals who still want to be relevant to this process.

Conservatives may not be thrilled with what a McCain presidency means, but if social conservatives care about the makeup of the House and Senate, as well state legislatures and the courts, then they should rally around McCain. They know better than most the importance of controlling the legislative and judicial branches to achieve long-term influence

So, what's the prescription?

He will have to do well in the Rust Belt and dominate the economic issue in a way he's never done before. McCain could fix some of his problems connecting on the economy by his choice of a running mate, and there may not be a better "conventional" pick than Mitt Romney.

Read the whole thing here.

Posted by Nancy French at 06:48 PM on April 09, 2008 | Permalink

Gov. Romney will be delivering remarks on behalf of John McCain in Lancaster County, according to K-Lo:

ARLINGTON, VA — U.S. Senator John McCain's presidential campaign today announced that former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney will deliver remarks on John McCain's behalf at an event hosted by the Lancaster County GOP on Thursday, April 10th, 2008.

Thursday, April 10, 2008

LANCASTER, PENNSYLVANIA

WHO: Governor Mitt Romney

WHAT: Keynote Speech

WHEN: Thursday, April 10, 2008 at 7:00 p.m. EDT
Press Set Up Time: 6:15 p.m. EDT*

WHERE: Willow Valley Resort and Conference Center
2416 Willow Street Pike
Lancaster, Pennsylvania 17602

Posted by Nancy French at 12:34 PM on April 09, 2008 | Permalink

... to join this?

Me either.

Posted by Nancy French at 01:50 PM on April 08, 2008 | Permalink

Two of Thomas Sowell's "random thoughts on the passing scene" really struck me. The first:

Senator John McCain could never convince me to vote for him. Only Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama can cause me to vote for McCain.

And the second:

The idea behind giving professors lifetime tenure is that this will enable them to speak out freely. But it would be hard to name any other occupation with a more cowardly record than academics, who have been giving in to politically correct campus bullies ever since the 1960s.

He's a national treasure, this guy.

Posted by Charles Mitchell at 06:09 AM on April 08, 2008 | Permalink

Not to get back to an old argument with David, but I think National Journal writer Stuart Taylor -- who's nearly endorsed Senator Obama -- has a good point here:

And he still has not adequately explained why he didn't walk away from Wright, or challenge his anti-American tirades, a long time ago. Yes, as Obama has said, Wright has redeeming qualities, including his programs for the needy, homeless, and sick. And yes, the minister's fiery sound bites are a bit less stark -- though still surpassingly ugly -- when seen in full context.

But it also appears that Obama shares the unfortunate tendency of many liberals to see far-left extremists (and of many conservatives to see far-right extremists) as kindred spirits. And there may be some resonance between Wright's angry vitriol and Michelle Obama's bleak vision of America.

Most important, perhaps, Obama's assertion that "I can no more disown [Wright] than I can disown the black community," together with his acknowledgment of "shocking ignorance" among many blacks, implies what other Wright apologists have said more directly: White-bashing, far-left rhetoric, and paranoid racial conspiracy theories are commonplace in many black churches and among many otherwise sensible black people.

Obama won't disown these people, because that would be inconsistent with his lifelong quest to belong to the black community, movingly detailed in his 1995 memoir, Dreams From My Father. And because he needs their votes.

All of this is understandable. But would the same Obama who lacked the fortitude to break with Jeremiah Wright be a good bet, if elected, to take on his party's own special interests? To break, when circumstances warrant, with the across-the-board liberal orthodoxy he has long embraced? Curb entitlement spending? Temper excessive affirmative-action preferences? Tame the lawsuit lobby? Assign the teachers unions their share of the blame for what Obama calls "crumbling schools that are stealing the future"?

Could he get tough, when necessary, with fashionably leftist foreign dictators, highly politicized international institutions, and sanctimonious European America-bashers? Or would he instead heed such soothing platitudes as his wife's February 14 assertion that "instead of protecting ourselves against terrorists," we should be "building diplomatic relationships"?

I have a hard time believing at this point that Obama is up to these tasks.

Posted by Charles Mitchell at 06:04 AM on April 08, 2008 | Permalink

Death by blogging?

Although this article does have an interesting nugget of information. Check this out:

Bloggers at some of the bigger sites say most writers earn about $30,000 a year starting out, and some can make as much as $70,000. A tireless few bloggers reach six figures, and some entrepreneurs in the field have built mini-empires on the Web that are generating hundreds of thousands of dollars a month. Others who are trying to turn blogging into a career say they can end up with just $1,000 a month.

Charles, if you are getting paid six figures to blog, now is the time to come clean and share the wealth.

Posted by Nancy French at 12:37 AM on April 07, 2008 | Permalink

There was an amazing article published recently on the front page of the Washington Post. I missed it until now, but do take a look. Here's how it begins:

Denny and Diana Glusko start and end their day with prayer. Despite the wrenching transformation of their lives, that much has never changed.

He bends low over his wife's bed, her hand sometimes clasped in his, as both give thanks to God. Denny prays that Diana will breathe free of pain. For himself, he prays for patience. Just beyond the door are the usual disruptions of a hospital unit -- the noise, the glare. But inside Room 2-007, it is different.

"Yours is the honor and the glory," Denny says. Diana whispers, "Amen."

Never have they questioned whether God has a purpose for this journey, which started one afternoon last May when their car veered across a rural road in Fauquier County, slammed into a ditch and flipped. He was driving when a cup of coffee diverted his attention and Diana gasped, "Oh, Denny!" He braced himself with the steering wheel and crawled out his shattered window without a scratch. She had nothing to grab for protection. Neither she nor Denny was wearing a seat belt.

The impact broke Diana's second cervical vertebra, paralyzing her from the neck down.

In the days that followed, both asked God to forgive them for their disobedience of the law. Then they asked for guidance and strength for whatever lay ahead. Three seasons have passed, and Diana still is not home. Yet instead of despair, they talk of miracles -- and faith.

"The Bible says, 'If you're going to share in my glory, you share in my suffering,' " Denny explained.

Read the rest.

Hat tip: GetReligion.org

Posted by Charles Mitchell at 06:31 PM on April 05, 2008 | Permalink

I've been trying not to comment on this, mainly because I'm so profoundly disappointed in our religious right leaders that I feared I wouldn't be able to write about it without showing the respect some of them deserve. Here's what happened:

Last month at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in New Orleans, several dozen leaders of the "Christian right" met to strategize next steps—but the meeting inevitably included discussion of missteps in the GOP presidential campaign. Michael Farris of the Home School Legal Defense Association, an early supporter of Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, chided the group for cold-shouldering his candidate until it was too late. Others, including Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, disagreed. The meeting quickly threatened to dissolve into accusations, rebuttals, and recriminations.

Then, venerable Paul Weyrich—a founder of the Heritage Foundation, the Moral Majority, and the Council for National Policy (CNP)—raised his hand to speak. Weyrich is a man whose mortality is plain to see. A freak accident several years ago left him with a spinal injury, which ultimately led to both his legs being amputated in 2005. He now gets around in a motorized wheelchair. He is visibly paler and grayer than he was just a few years ago, a fact not lost on many of his friends in the room, some of whom had fought in the political trenches with him since the 1960s.

The room—which had been taken over by argument and side-conversations—became suddenly quiet. Weyrich, a Romney supporter and one of those Farris had chastised for not supporting Huckabee, steered his wheelchair to the front of the room and slowly turned to face his compatriots. In a voice barely above a whisper, he said, "Friends, before all of you and before almighty God, I want to say I was wrong."

In a quiet, brief, but passionate speech, Weyrich essentially confessed that he and the other leaders should have backed Huckabee, a candidate who shared their values more fully than any other candidate in a generation. He agreed with Farris that many conservative leaders had blown it. By chasing other candidates with greater visibility, they failed to see what many of their supporters in the trenches saw clearly: Huckabee was their guy.

Yesterday, the headmaster at the kids' schools mentioned this to me, and I got a little overheated discussing it. I said I wasn't sure what had gotten into Weyrich, but now I know. David Brody has the scoop:

Check out the open letter to McCain here from these family leaders. The names attached to this open letter are big ones in the social conservative world but one stands out: Paul Weyrich. He endorsed Romney during the primary and now has signed this letter trashing Romney for VP.

Click here, and on the first link, to see the ad.

Weyrich apparently is under the impression that Gov. Romney illegally ordered same-sex marriage in Massachusetts, which is patently absurd. We have talked about this before, and I'll link to this again.

Not supporting Gov. Romney because he didn't fight gay "marriage" enough is like not supporting Elvis because he wouldn't dance.

While I'm not overly familiar with Weyrich, he apparently has been taken in by MassResistance propaganda which seriously misrepresents Gov. Romney's record. (The MassResistance leader signed the letter.)

No disrespect to Mr. Weyrich, but he needs to be held accountable for propagating lies against Gov. Romney. David -- who you may know is a Harvard Law School trained attorney who specializes in these issues -- responded to the MassResistance deceptions before he went to Iraq:

No American governor has faced more critical cultural issues than Mitt Romney, Massachusetts’ chief executive from 2003 to 2007. In the midst of Governor Romney’s efforts to rescue his state from a fiscal crisis and create lasting and innovative health care solutions, activist judges and a far-left legislature forced issues of same-sex “marriage,” abortion, religious liberty, stem cell research, and gay rights into the forefront. Each time he was challenged, the Governor not only made the conservative choice, but also did so with an optimistic, unifying message. In doing so, he became a national leader on these vital cultural issues without squandering his ability to govern the Commonwealth.

In four years, Governor Romney turned a deficit into a surplus without raising taxes, created a health coverage plan that is applauded by experts on both sides of the aisle and is designed to reduce costs while preserving personal choices, and effectively responded to the deadly collapse of one of the most expensive construction projects in American history. He did all these things in one of America’s most liberal states at the same time that he vetoed expansive stem cell legislation, vetoed the expansion of abortion rights in Massachusetts, defended the religious liberties of Catholic Charities from an assault by homosexual activists, and launched a multi-year (and multi-state) campaign to preserve traditional marriage after Massachusetts’ Supreme Judicial Court’s decision to legalize same-sex marriage.

In spite of this impressive conservative record, a group called “MassResistance” has been circulating a lengthy document called “The Mitt Romney Deception.” Combining old statements, half-truths, and some completely misreported stories, the document has gained some traction in the conservative community, with anti-Romney activists forwarding the document dozens of times (apparently without any independent verification of its facts). In much the way as urban legends gain traction through repeated e-mail “forwards,” the seriously-flawed MassResistance piece has led a few individuals to question the Governor’s commitment to conservative principles. MassResistance’s document, however, suffers from at least five fundamental errors.

Click here to read what these five flaws are.

The "religious leaders" meeting at the Ritz Carlton and concluding that Huckabee should've been their man is the clearest picture of the need for a serious reformation of our movement. Instead of lamenting that they didn't support the guy most qualified, they lamented not getting behind a high-taxing Governor who played identity politics and lost... a guy who's soft on the border and softer on the criminals in his own Arkansas system... a guy whose two plans for foreign policy are "everybody, be nice," and secondly, "be nice, everybody."

In the south, there's a saying about people who "run around like chickens with their heads cut off." I would use this comparison for our religious leaders, except that chickens don't voluntarily enter into a suicide pact based on flawed information.

We have, as a movement, lost our heads.

Posted by Nancy French at 09:35 AM on April 04, 2008 | Permalink

A transcript of Governor Romney's interview on "Kudlow and Company:"

Kudlow: A lot of conservatives think that Senator John McCain and Mitt Romney would make a lovely couple. So here to tell us about this relationship is a great friend of this program, former presidential candidate, Governor Mitt Romney of Massachusetts. Welcome back to the show, sir.

Romney: Thanks Larry. Good to be with you.

Kudlow: Let me begin with this. “The Great Mentioner in the Sky” has you very high on the veep candidate list. Before I ask you about that part of it, I want to kind of turn the tables. If you were the presumptive nominee of the GOP, what are the one or two key qualities that you’d be looking for in your vice president?

Romney: Well, I’m not the presumptive nominee. So I haven’t given a lot of thought to that. But I think history says that the most important characteristic that you look for in a VP is someone who could become the president, in the case that were necessary. That’s what people look for. They’re not looking for anything other than that. Could this person lead the country in a critical time? And these are critical times. So I think you’ll find both parties, the candidates of both parties, selecting individuals who they think could be great presidents if necessary. And people who hopefully could add some political clout as well.

Kudlow: Right now, Mr. McCain is really getting all of it his way. Hillary and Obama are just killing each other. Senator McCain is surging in the polls. But as we move down the road, and we get to the conventions, and we get to the fall campaign, aren’t the two key issues going to be Iraq and the economy?

Romney: You know, I think you’re right. I think people will come home to their party. People talk before an election about how divided the parties are by virtue of the primary. But, after each party has selected their nominee, I think what happens is that people focus on the issues and the differences as to where the candidates would take the nation. And in the case of Senator McCain, he’s made it very clear. He’ll do whatever is necessary to protect the American people. And he’ll also strengthen our economy by reining in spending, and by keeping our tax burden low. By helping people get health insurance, but not by adding hundreds of billions of dollars of new costs in Washington. He will restrain government and grow the economy in the private sector. That’ll make the difference.

Kudlow: What would you recommend to deal with the mortgage mess which appears to be pulling down the economy? Fed head Bernanke today suggested the “r” word for the first time—maybe a small contraction in the first half. How would Governor Mitt Romney solve the mortgage mess?

Romney: Well, I think when you look at the economy, you have to consider that there are two long-term trends that you’re concerned about. One is the up and down cycles. And that’s what’s happening in the subprime mortgage crisis. And the other is the long-term trend for the economy. And, on the short-term, the ups and downs of the mortgage crisis, I think what you have to do is first of all, help homeowners who may lose their homes. Help them stay in their homes, if they can meet the, if you will, the most basic payments of their mortgage. And you want them to stay in homes, instead of having more homes fall into foreclosure. It hurts families. Of course it hurts the market as well. And Secretary Paulson has made a number of recommendations to do just that. You also want to make sure there’s enough credit in the market to keep the credit crunch in one area of the economy—mortgages—from affecting the overall economy. And the Fed has taken action in that regard as well. Longer term however, I think you have to say why is it that people are taking their investments out of dollars, out of America? Why are they concerned about our future? And I think it’s because of overspending in Washington. Over-government spending. And that’s something which is going to have to change.

Kudlow: Do you think a stronger dollar becomes a campaign issue at any point? A lot of people believe the weak dollar has created currency risk, along with the credit risk of the mortgage problem. And that’s kind of stopped foreigners from investing here.

Romney: You know, I think as an overall campaign theme, people are not going to get focused on strong dollar—I think most people don’t really give a lot of thought to currency relationships. But I do think that they’re concerned about, “Is America strong”? And, are we going to be a strong and vibrant economy going forward? And, who is the person most capable of keeping America strong economically? And of course, if you want to see strength in our economy, strength in our dollar, you want to see people of the world recognize that the obligations that our government has made, are obligations it can keep. And right now that means we’re going to have to reform entitlements. And we’re going to have to rein in this tendency of Washington to keep on spending, spending, and spending. And when it comes to spending, I don’t think anyone in Washington has a better record than John McCain at restraining unnecessary and pork-barrel spending.

Kudlow: You have a strong investment background. Would you buy the stock market right now? For the long run?

Romney: Well the answer is yes. You know, when things are soft, when people are fleeing, that’s a good time typically to be investing. I believe in the long-term strength of America. I think we’ll make the right choices this November. I think we will continue to lead the world by virtue of being the most innovative economy in the world. And so I think America’s future is bright. But we’re going to have to make some tough decisions in Washington. And instead of promising people things that we can’t possibly deliver, and putting burdens on our kids and on taxpayers, we’re going to have to finally spend what we take in, instead of spending more than we take in.

Kudlow: We’ve got a brief [video] clip. You endorsed Senator McCain back in mid-February. And he made some comments about you. Let’s take a look at this for a moment.

[Text of McCain’s comments: “I look forward to campaigning with Governor Romney. And I look forward to his continued, very important, role of leadership in our party that he has exercised in the past, and will exercise even more so in the future. Governor Romney, I thank you…I am honored, I am very honored, to have Governor Romney and the members of his team at my side.”]

Kudlow: Mr. Romney, you were with [McCain] in Salt Lake City, what a week or ten days ago? What did you guys talk about when you were out there?

Romney: Well, we had some fun. We were in Salt Lake, and in Denver. We were talking to donors and I expressed confidence in the future of the McCain campaign. I’ve asked my donors to be generous in supporting his campaign. I want to make sure we elect John McCain the next President of the United States. And so we spent some time talking about the economy. We talked about the fun of the campaign—some of the humorous experiences we’d had. I spent some time getting to know his campaign team. And it was fun being back on a campaign airplane, seeing members of the press again—some of whom used to follow my campaign.

Kudlow: When you were with him, did you get good vibes from him? How’s your relationship with him?

Romney: You know, we get along very well. Senator McCain was kind enough to campaign for me in ’94, when I ran against Ted Kennedy. He campaigned again for me when I ran in the governor’s race. We’ve been friends on a number of fronts. We worked together on the Olympics. And while we didn’t see everything eye-to-eye, throughout the campaign, we do believe the same things about strengthening our national defense, about strengthening our economy by keeping the scale of government down, and lowering taxes. We care very deeply about America becoming energy independent. We want to see more people have health insurance. So, on major issues of the day, Senator McCain and I are on the same page.

Kudlow: So if he asks you to serve as his veep, would you take it?

Romney: You know, I think, I frankly think any Republican leader in this country would be honored to serve with Senator McCain as his running mate. And he’s got a long list of people he can turn to. I’m not going to conjecture as to who it might be. But I think there’s some terrific people, and he’ll make a choice there. But I’m certainly not holding my breath.

Kudlow: Could you carry Massachusetts?

Romney: I’m not going to make any predictions in that regard.

Kudlow: Do you think Mr. McCain needs a strong governor with executive experience who knows the economy?

Romney: Oh, I’m always partial and in favor of governors. I think governors bring a lot to a national ticket. But there are also some great senators and other leaders in our party who I’m sure he’s considering.

Kudlow: Alright, Governor Mitt Romney. We appreciate it. It’s wonderful to see you again sir. All the best of luck.

Romney: Thanks Larry. Good to be with you.

Posted by Nancy French at 03:19 PM on April 03, 2008 | Permalink

So I'm literally watching American Idol while trying to write my next book and I look up when I hear Ryan announced three singers were about to perform, "This Little Light of Mine, I'm Gonna Let It Shine."

The guys looked hip and cool, and I prepared myself for some sort of strange punk rock perversion of a childhood favorite. Much to my surprise, however, the guys start singing the real song -- Vacation Bible School style, including the "don't let Satan blow it out" part.

Then, to make it even more surreal, they switched over to the old gospel favorite, "Jesus on the Main Line, Tell Him What You Want." (Including the lyrics, "If you're sick and want to get well, tell him what you want.")

As I was preparing to end this post and get back to writing my next book, Dolly Parton starts singing a song called "Jesus and Gravity," which begins:

I'm to the point where it don't add up.
I can't say I've come this far with my guitar on pure dumb luck.
That's not to say I know it all 'cause every time
I get too high up on my horse I fall.
'Cause I've got somethin' lifting me up,
somethin' holdin' me down.
Somethin' to give me wings and keep my feet on the ground.
I've got all I need, Jesus and gravity.

But I'm as bad as anyone
takin' all these blessin's in my life for granted one by one.
When I start to thinkin' it's all me, well,
somethin' comes along and knocks me right back on my knees.

This meant that at one point on American Idol, Dolly was singing, repeatedly, "He's my friend, He's my light. He's my wings, He is my flight," and literally shouting "Hallelujah!"

Several were crying, including Brooke White who was in the bottom three tonight. When Ryan asked her about it, she told him she was crying for several reasons -- including the song about Jesus.

Anyway, this was so distracting (in a good kind of way) that I've successfully blown yet another perfectly good night of work.

However, if you buy my next book, and it's all about Dolly Parton... you can't say you weren't warned.

Posted by Nancy French at 11:21 PM on April 02, 2008 | Permalink

Great post today from Al Mohler. Take a look.

Posted by Charles Mitchell at 08:09 AM on April 02, 2008 | Permalink

Well, good readers, I hope you got a good glimpse of why I hate arguing with David. I'm still smarting from the zygote thing. ;-)

Seriously, I don't think David and I are as far apart on this issue as all of our bluster would suggest. I'll try to come up with a more substantive response soon. However, it's tabled right now because I'm devoting a bunch of time to putting together the "next phase" of this effort. Yes, there will be one -- as we've been saying since Governor Romney's campaign ended -- and it is coming soon. We've tried to do it right rather than doing it in a huge hurry; hence this time lag. I hope you'll decide it was worth it.

So, by way of reminder, please do send us your e-mails so we can send you a notification of our new project. You can enter them on our "What to Do" page or just send a message to editor [at] evangelicalsformitt.org. Thanks!

Posted by Charles Mitchell at 07:11 AM on April 01, 2008 | Permalink

Again, from the Diyala Province in Iraq:

Charles, my young Padawan, let me teach you the ways of the Force.

Way back in 1980, back when I was but a young lad in grade school, and you were not even a zygote, an inspirational candidate by the name of Ronald Reagan launched his general election campaign in the sleepy town of Philadelphia, Mississippi, at the Neshoba County Fair. This place is, of course, famous as the town where three civil rights workers were slain by white supremacists. During his campaign speech, Reagan included a reference to “states rights.” To this day, many liberals are still seething at what they see as the obvious racist symbolism of the location and the word choice. To this day, the mere mention of President Reagan’s name causes millions of leftists to cringe in anguish and spew out a stream of obscenities. He was a conservative who they believe was motivated by dark forces of racism--just google “Ronald Reagan Racism” and feast your eyes on the results. There’s the catalogue of unsavory characters he dealt with, the supposed racist symbolism of his language (“welfare queen”), and the supposed racism of his policies. In addition, all of this came in a package that included a wife who tyrannized staff and ordered the White House calendar according to astrological signs.

But in spite of all that, Ronald Reagan was wildly popular—the most popular president in modern American history—and is (rightly) honored by even independents and moderates for changing our country for the better and for leading us out of a dark time. Why the disconnect between the perceptions of liberals and the perceptions of conservatives and moderates? Because the Ronald Reagan they knew and experienced was nothing like the monstrous simpleton caricatured by the left. Voters judged the man himself. Not his (perceived) symbols, not his wife, and not the worst of his associates.

After reading this much of the coverage of Obama and Pastor Wright, I had one of those *gulp* moments. I thought, “are we conservatives making the same mistake that liberals made with Reagan—constantly poking beyond the attractive and charismatic surface to try to find the alleged monster lurking within?” I hate to say this, but the Barack Obama that Americans are coming to know and experience isn’t much like the caricature that is emerging on the right.

Look, I get it that Reverend Wright is extremist, unsavory, and just flat-out wrong. But who among us would deny that we would feel a bond with the man that led us to Christ? And I can also link (if I had a faster internet connection) dozens and dozens of words from Obama saying he does not share those views, that those views were flat-out wrong, and that they do not reflect the America he knows. We ignore those words at our peril just as liberals ignored Ronald Reagan’s many rebukes of racism at their peril. I get it that Barack and Michelle Obama are hip, Ivy-League libs, and his wife wrote an atrocious senior thesis. I feel like I met a lot of people like Barack and Michelle Obama at law school (in fact, he left HLS only the year before I arrived)—people caught up in the fashionable anti-American race/gender critiques of the academy, people who either dabbled in those ideas themselves or sat their comfortably and without outrage as they heard them day after day, month after month.

But it is vitally important that we understand something: Barack Obama is a politician and a personality utterly distinct from the Clinton machine that he is currently routing from the political landscape. Michelle Obama wrote a fashionably race-conscious thesis? Hillary Clinton helped defend the black panthers during law school. And have your read Hillary’s commencement speech from Wellesley? Bill is a guy that dodged the draft and stated—in writing, no less—that he “loathed” the military. Regarding unsavory pastors, how about the Clintons’ loving embrace of a thoroughly corrupt Jesse Jackson, a man whose anti-semitic statements would make Reverend Wright blush? And don’t even get me started on their alliances with Al Sharpton, a man with the blood of innocents on his hands.

Another thing, Obama’s campaign itself is much, much more uplifting about Americans and American potential than the Clinton campaign is. So it emerges that Obama’s long-time pastor is more like Ward Churchill than Billy Graham, and his wife has made some strange comments. Does that mean that Obama’s words about this country and the entire tenor of his campaign are nothing but a charade? We’re veering dangerously close to viewing Obama the way someone like Paul Krugman views Reagan.

Reagan’s toughest times came when his own actions did not match his rhetoric and when he himself fell short of the ideals that he espoused. Reagan was a conservative, and liberals were never going to support him. But independents’ and moderates’ support wavered during Iran-Contra. It wavered in the face of budget deficits. It wavered in the first debate in 1984, when it seemed for a moment that he was no longer the “Great Communicator.” How will independents and moderates waver in the face of Obama’s considerable charm? When they find out about his own record--not his pastor’s record and not his wife’s thesis. How can he “unify” when he holds views about abortion laws that are well to the left of most Americans? How can he “improve education” when he is almost completely beholden to the same teachers’ unions that got us in this mess? How can he respond to complex geopolitical challenges with zero executive experience and with foreign policy views that sound more like coffee house idealism than considered reflection? Hillary’s 3:00am “red phone” ad was exactly right. (But of course Hillary shouldn’t answer that call either). The question we should be asking Americans isn’t: “Is this man who you think he is?” (Because he’s most likely the genuinely thoughtful and charismatic person that he appears to be). The question we should be asking Americans is: “Does he believe what you believe, and is he ready for this job?”

As for using Reverend Wright’s strangeness as some kind of clue to Barack Obama’s true beliefs and character . . . Well, I don’t think we need to read tea leaves, his wife’s speeches, or his pastor’s sermons. We can read his own book. After all, who among us (except Nancy) has written a memoir before they were, you know, actually famous? As for his political beliefs, we know he’s quite liberal. When it came to Ronald Reagan, it was an absolutely shattering revelation to the left (well, to some on the left; the rest are still in denial) that Reagan’s conservative views also happened to represent the American character more then their liberal views did. I truly hope that in this new century we conservatives don’t have the same experience in reverse.

Posted by Nancy French at 09:34 AM on March 31, 2008 | Permalink

Hello, Guys! Hope you had a great weekend. To start the week off right, here are two videos. This one demonstrates why you should not mess with Southern ladies. Especially those who shop at Wal-Mart:

Secondly, let's try to have as much Christian enthusiasm as this second kid:

And lastly you might enjoy "Elephant Paints a Self-Portrait."

Really? He wants to hold a flower in his trunk? Please. They just don't make elephants like they used to.

Posted by Nancy French at 11:14 PM on March 30, 2008 | Permalink

I'm about to do something I really hate doing -- and that's disagreeing with David French. Ugh.

David made a lot of excellent points in his recent post. And as always, he was eloquent and convincing. Furthermore, it's tough to quibble with something that was sent in from Diyala Province. However, if there's anybody who loves a vigorous give and take, it's David. So here goes, brother.

I totally disagree that the crux of the issue about Senator Obama's pastor is whether he should leave the church. I'm as good a Calvinist as any and agree with David on who really chooses where we worship. I've never said that Senator Obama should leave his; I am ambivalent on the question and find David's reasoning rather persuasive. At most, I have criticized an op-ed that defended him for not doing so, but the only reason I did that was the shoddy reasoning it used, not its conclusion -- with which I may or may not agree.

So if leaving the church isn't the issue, what is? Easy: Senator Obama's worldview is. Especially given how short his tenure in elected office has been, that's crucial. And again, I think David is missing the real issue.

The real question isn't whether Senator Obama agrees lock, stock, and barrel with Reverend Wright's outlandish statements about, say, AIDS. As David points out, there is no evidence he does. But it is worth probing why he would parade around telling everyone how important this church is to him and how this pastor has been such a mentor to him knowing that these kind of statements were out there. It just is not tenable to claim he didn't, given his long -- and, by his own proud statement, close -- association with both church and pastor. It's also notable that it took a storm of controversy for Senator Obama to say what every mainstream American believes -- namely that these statements by his pastor are way out of line. Note that he refused to admit anything was awry for days. Then he wrote for the Huffington Post; then he made his speech in Philadelphia.

Frankly, I think it's clear he had heard statements like them before -- and that they didn't initially strike him as being way out of line. And you know what? That is worth a close look. I don't want a president who doesn't think it's absolutely absurd to call our nation the "U.S. of K.K.K.A." Whether he feels led to stay in the church where it happens or not is irrelevant, and whether he distances himself only after days of bad press is not all that revealing.

And you know what? When we take a close look, we can get at least a glimpse at an answer. And David, my friend, you should be able to see it more clearly than anyone else because of the work you do in higher education.

Think about it. The Obamas attended elite universities (Columbia, Harvard, and Princeton) in the 1980s and 1990s, later than any other president in history and anyone else who might be elected this year. President Bush, President Clinton, and Senator Clinton all received their undergraduate degrees in 1968 or 1969; Senator McCain graduated from the Naval Academy a decade earlier. The tumultuous Sixties were the advent of campus radicalism and political correctness. But by the Eighties, it had triumphed. That's when the Obamas were in the academy. They're the first prospective First Couple to have been educated in that environment -- where extremely negative views of America are ove