I've written before on the dangers of mainstreaming anti-Semitism. Professor Bainbridge treats the subject, with links to a recent piece by Jay Lefkowitz, in a typically thoughtful manner. The topic deserves more attention than it's received, especially with the conspiracy-mongering among some critics of "neoconservatives." Such knee-jerk criticism as we're used to seeing on the far right is now commonplace on the campus left. With its move into respectable circles, we're entering a more dangerous situation.

Fidel Castro allowed "Fahrenheit 9/11" to be shown first in Cuban cinemas and then over Cuban television. It wasn't difficult for reporters to find a couple of Cubans who were willing to share their thoughts:

"'We hope this film will lead Americans to see the reality of their government, and not only deny Bush reelection but put him on trial for the harm he has done to humanity,' retired worker Armando Rodriguez tells Reuters."

Sounding more like some of his American counterparts than he probably knew, a professor added: "'The film is a work of love for humanity. It confirms what many of us believe, that George W. Bush is a real threat to the world,' adds University of Havana professor Arnaldo Coro Antich."

Castro's use of Moore's mendacious docudrama remind me of the USSR's fondness for American reports that criticized life in the U.S. What's fodder for homegrown radical wannabes -- meaning those whose only suffering for their beliefs is the cost of a movie ticket and the actual viewing of the film -- can of course be used as propaganda by dictators. But Cubans know real brutality when they see it, having lived under Castro's totalitarian regime for 45 years. Government-induced poverty and hunger have become a way of life there, 90 miles from what many Cubans must see as unimaginable wealth and freedom.

This past Monday, Castro drew on Moore's book Stupid White Men to ridicule President Bush's reading skills. (George Bush must be the only graduate of Yale and Harvard to suffer such idiocy. Then again not everyone can grow up in Flint.) And he claimed that the President's drinking problem decades back explain his "sinister" religious fundamentalism and "bellicosity." Sounds as if Moore's found a true friend and follower.

Cuban dissidents, about whom we've written before, know the difference between a liar who merely gets rich from his work, and one who has the power of life and death over them. That's why some of them told Reuters that they applaud the press freedoms in America and wish they were allowed to criticize Castro. And it's why some Cuban Americans are dubious about John Kerry's beliefs, especially after seeing Moore seated next to Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter in the President's box at the Democratic convention.

That seems to be the ACLU's goal as leaks of its latest internal dispute turned into a front-page story in today's New York Times. At issue is a federal program that allows federal employees to contribute to certain charities under the condition that the recipients promise not to knowingly hire what the papers calls "people whose names appear on watch lists of suspected supporters of terrorism."

This wouldn't be a problem for an organization for whom common sense might be employed for the common defense. But the ACLU long ago abandoned any pretense to working for the common good and has become one of America's most vehement -- and effective -- enemies of civil society.

Part of the internal conflict stems from an April suit it filed to block use of the "no fly list" that contained names of suspected terrorists or sympathizers. Putting anarchic politics before public safety, the ACLU claimed that the lists were inaccurate and violated some people's constitutional rights. Of course, this is from an organization whose readings of such rights includes the "right" not to be offended by public displays of faith and other horrendous efforts at cultural hegemony and oppression that our reactionary majority foists onto helpless victims.

But it gets better because, as is often the case among the most pious amongst us, the trail of this conflict leads to money. Not that the $470,000 the ACLU receives each year via the federal donation program in question makes up a large percentage of its annual $102 million budget. But a half million is a half million, even to packs of rich lawyers, and there's tremendous potential in the program. With clever marketing playing off of what ACLUers see as the ubiquitous McCarthyism in American society, especially now that John Ashcroft wants to lock up everyone who isn't a born-again white Republican, the ACLU might greatly expand the rolls of donors from among federal employees. There's gold in them thar payrolls.

That might explain why Anthony D. Romero, the executive director, split hairs in his attempt to comply with the law's letter while thumbing his nose at its spirit. In a case of willful ignorance, he says that while he can't knowingly employ someone named on the list of possible terrorists, that's not a problem because he hasn't read the list. That means he does't know who's on it, so he isn't a McCarhyite. It's a nice trick -- getting your money, pretending to comply with the law, and remaining virtuous in the eyes of your compatriots. Perhaps honor enters into such an equation only when one's disengenuousness is directed at common-sense efforts to protect America from attack.

Not that the Office of Personnel Management, which administers the program (called the Combined Federal Campaign), is buying such sophistry. The director of the charity program says that they "expect that the charities will take affirmative action to make sure they are not supporting terrorist activities. That would specifically include inspecting the lists." Self-willed stupidity is no defense.

The Times also cites an old case in which the organization really did act out of principle in the face of domestic danger, only to regret and recant its actions later:

"In 1940, the group dropped Elizabeth Gurley Flynn from its board because she was a member of the Communist Party. (Ms. Flynn was posthumously reinstated.) At the same time, it passed a resolution calling it inappropriate for anyone to serve on the group's governing committees or staff who was 'a member of any political organization which supports totalitarian dictatorship in any country or by his public declarations indicates the support of such a principle.' 'It was a colossal error,' Samuel Walker, who wrote a history of the A.C.L.U., said of the 1940 decisions. 'It has since been almost universally viewed as a reprehensible mistake.'"

Just how civil liberties in America are strengthened and protected by either totalitarians or anarchists isn't clear, but I guess that's why I'm not a card-carrying member of the ACLU.

But let's give kudos for chutzpah where they're deserved. The Times also reports that Mr. Romero, the executive director, submitted an op-ed to both the Times and the Wall Street Journal that criticized the government's demands for participation in the Combined Federal Campaign as "an insidious chill on speech." Somehow, though, he forgot to add that he'd signed the certification forms and was therefore a willing participant in what was, at least according to his own words, censorship. His would-be editorial (neither paper published it) says:

"'The A.C.L.U. is currently challenging a version of these lists in its "no fly" litigation,' he wrote. 'Our concerns are that ambiguous definitions of "terrorism" and potentially inaccurate "terrorism watch lists" can also serve to shut down legitimate forms of advocacy and debate. Relying on employers to enforce "terrorist" lists also evokes eerie echoes of our McCarthy-era past.'"

Judging by the ACLU's actions, there's no substitute for standing on principle except being paid for compromising your principles while maintaining a fascade of sanctimony. Hey, a fella's got to make a living, right?

I'm late in blogging today -- sometimes life intervenes -- and want to skip over Kerry's speech, as enough has been said about it already. One comment on the coverage of Kerry's introduction, however, seems in order. I'm from Georgia and still think of Max Cleland as the Secretary of State, a position he held with honor for years. I was listening to CBS radio coverage of the convention last night and the reporter said something like: Mr. Kerry is referring to Max Cleland, a former senator from Georgia who lost an arm and both legs in Vietnam; he was defeated after his opponents accused him of being unpatriotic.

I don't think this myth, which is based on nothing more than the Democratic spin machine and Cleland's own inability to admit he's a liberal, will ever die. Max Cleland lost because he ran in a conservative Southern state with a voting record as liberal as Ted Kennedy's. The GOP pointed that out, as they should have, and the voters chose. I know Southern stereotyping is always easy, but do the national media really believe Georgia's voters are so stupid that they would believe charges that Cleland was unpatriotic? They didn't believe Cleland when he said he thought the way they did, after all.

I'll have more to say on political myths soon.

With word that the United Arab Emirates' unelected leader, Sheik Zayed bin Sultan Nahayan, has asked Harvard to return his gift of $2.5 million, there's much to celebrate. The gift was to fund a chair in Islamic studies at the Divinity School, which has long been one of the most politically correct divisions of the University. Sheik Zayed's money was clearly tainted, as a think tank named after him in the UAE hosted anti-Semitic speakers and spewed anti-American propaganda. Although the think tank was closed last year, Zayed never condemned those speakers.

Many news agencies and newspapers covered the story, since Harvard's actions spark interest abroad and at home and the return of a gift is rare in academe. But several elements of this story caught my attention.

First, while the New York Times, Washington Post, and other papers led with fairly straightforward headlines, Reuters -- the agency that refuses to call the 9/11 hijackers terrorists -- leads with this: "UAE Withdraws Harvard Gift after Jewish Complaints." It says that an official of the UAE "said the university's divinity school had not used the money because of pressure from Jewish lobby groups to reject it in protest at the UAE's role in hosting the Zayed International Center for Coordination and Follow-Up."

It then quotes that official: "'This is a clear Zionist campaign,' he added. 'They have exploited two lectures given at Zayed Center.'"

Reuters simply reports this verbatim without exploring or explaining anything. The Chronicle of Higher Education ($) files a more thorough and honest report on one of the troubling speakers: "Thierry Meyssan, a French author who contends that the U.S. military was behind the September 11 attacks." And it also notes that the executive director of the Zayed Center "has called Jews 'the enemies of all nations.'" The Times adds that another speaker charged that Jews use human blood to make pastries.

Golly, you mean they got that upset over nothing more than that?

Not that honorable people would need anything else, but there's more. Also noteworthy is the Washington Post's story, which adds to the impression of moral squalor at both the Divinity School and the now-closed Zayed Center.

"Seven of the divinity school's 39 faculty members and hundreds of students and alumni had signed petitions urging Harvard to reject the gift. The petitions cited the activities of the Abu Dhabi-based Zayed International Center for Coordination and Follow-Up, which sponsored lectures and publications claiming that Zionists -- rather than Nazis -- were responsible for the Holocaust and that the U.S. military staged the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. "

Iraqi the Model is a superb blog written by three Iraqis brothers. I'd encourage anyone who's interested in a fresh perspective on events in Iraq -- not one you're likely to get from the networks, the Times, or the AP -- to visit the site often. The brothers, all educated professionals, offer blunt, sometimes heart-rending commentary on their country.

The brother I quote below is responding to today's bombing in Baquba, which killed at least 68 Iraqis, many of whom were lined up to apply for jobs in the newly constituted security forces. He comments on the actions of the Spanish, Philippine, and Egyptian governments and has a few choice few words on Michael Moore and other anti-war activists.

"Can you answer the question what will be the response of Iraqis towards these horrible attacks? I’ll help you; These victims came to volunteer to serve their country as IP members and this is not the 1st time this happens and the response of Iraqis to such attacks was always more volunteers and longer lines. What does that tell you Philippine and Spanish government? If this is bravery and wisdom, then how should your actions be labeled? Maybe it’s not your business? That would’ve been a more honest answer had you said it, but you’re not just cowards or stupid, you’re also hypocrites. This include all the 'anti-war' crowd with all the clowns there such as Michael Moore and George Galloway and their likes. You make me SICK when you support the 'Iraqi resistance' and call these killers a revolutionists. Did you watch your 'resistance' today? This is what you support and this is how history will view you; supporters of murderers and criminals, and for what? Fame and money! Enjoy it. It won’t last, as the truth will soon be revealed and you'll be exposed to all as the disgusting parasites you are.

"I doubt that we can forgive you all for your cowardice, stupidity and hypocracy just as we’ll never forget the sacrifices and the help of the Americans, Australians, British, Italians, Japanese and all the other coalition members."

Spurred by the 9/11 Commission Report, I've commented before on the need for a better name for the war on terrorism. Daniel Pipes weighs in with some cogent commentary on the Report's findings. He suggests the "War on Islamism" as a good name for our current conflict. That sounds plausible, inasmuch as it identifies the threat as the ideology of radical Islam rather than any particular manifestation of it.

In praising the report, Pipes makes an important point about the source of radical Islamism: "In contrast to those analysts who wishfully dismiss the Islamists as a few fanatics, the 9/11 commission acknowledges their true importance, noting that Osama bin Laden's message 'has attracted active support from thousands of disaffected young Muslims and resonates powerfully with a far larger number who do not actively support his methods.' The Islamist outlook represents not a hijacking of Islam, as is often but wrongly claimed; rather it emerges from a 'long tradition of extreme intolerance' within Islam, one going back centuries and in recent times associated with Wahhabism, the Muslim Brethren, and the Egyptian writer Sayyid Qutb."

And he praises the Report for positing dual threats to America and the West: "The commission carefully distinguishes between the enemy's twofold nature: 'al Qaeda, a stateless network of terrorists' and the 'radical ideological movement in the Islamic world.' It correctly finds the first weakened, yet posing 'a grave threat.' The second is the greater concern, however, for it is still gathering and 'will menace Americans and American interests long after Usama Bin Ladin and his cohorts are killed or captured.' American strategy, therefore, must be to dismantle Al Qaeda's network and prevail over 'the ideology that gives rise to Islamist terrorism.' In other words, 'the United States has to help defeat an ideology, not just a group of people.'"

This means we're in for a long struggle that will, as the Report says, rely upon Muslims who favor pluralism and change to change the minds and hearts of their fellow believers. Educational programs like those proposed by Democracy Project can play a crucial role in this process. Absent knowledge of the foundational elements of civil society -- rule of law, a free press, property rights, freedom of religion, freedom of speech -- Muslim societies will remain susceptible to the Sirens' song of the Islamists.

As others have argued, the ideological dimensions of this war are comparable to those we enjoined in the Cold War and during WWII. We still live in an age of ideology, and once again ideologues want to kill and enslave us. Recognizing that ideology is at the heart of the terrorists' threat is a necessary first step to working for its defeat. It's time to devote considerable energy and talent to dissecting this malignant -ism so that it can be driven into obscurity.

Whenever a book is subjected to a harsh review by someone whose views generally agree with the author's, or when a critical review appears in a publication from which one might expect sympathetic treatment, it sticks in my memory. That's not always because I might otherwise be sympathetic to the book's thesis. The New York Times, for example, rejected the efforts of Tony Hiss to present his father Alger in a sympathetic light in The View from Alger's Window, written to save his father's memory from scandal. When even the Times admits Hiss's guilt, partisans who still rally to his cause appear even more bizarre and detached from reality than they did in earlier years.

So when I saw Scott Simon's commentary on Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" in today's WSJ (free), I knew I was in for a treat. Simon is a Quaker, and as such has always been a pacifist -- that is, until the war against terror (I'm still waiting for a better name). I heard him tell his NPR audience some months back that he realized that his pacifism was made possible by the sacrifice of others on the battlefield; that freedom is bought at great cost, and that his stance ensured that such a cost would always be borne by others. It was a moving and honest bit of soul-searching that reflected my own long-held views of pacifism. And even though I find Simon's opinions on most matters to be predictably mired in 1960s nostalgia, I continue to admire his willingness to buck office politics (especially at NPR) and change his mind on key issues.

His piece in today's Journal, titled "'Gonzo Demagoguery' Writ Large," begins: "Michael Moore has won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, and may win an Oscar for the kind of work that got Stephen Glass, Jayson Blair, and Jack Kelly fired." He says of Moore's work "seems to regard facts as mere nuisances to the story he wants to tell." And that he "ignores or misrepresents the truth, prefers innuendo to fact, edits with poetic license rather than accuracy, and strips existing news footage of its context to make events and real people say what he wants, even if they don't." All that appears in the first few paragraphs.

Simon also hits Moore hard for his faux populism, which he shares with much of the elite left. It's the same point that Zell Miller made yesterday in his WSJ ($) op-ed. Miller hails from my home state of Georgia and was taught college English by my aunt, herself a native of Young Harris. I've never met him, but I admire his willingness to stand by principle when the easier route would be to follow many other Southern Democrats into the schizophrenic life of presenting themselves as a left-liberal on the floor of Congress and a good old boy (or girl) to the folks back home.

Miller excoriates the Democrats for their move to the left, including their abandonment of our troops in Iraq as demonstrated by the ticket's vote to deny funding for supplies and equipment. He notes that most of those troops come from middle class backgrounds and reads, correctly I believe, the anti-troops stance among many Democrats as further proof of their lack of empathy with middle class Americans. But it's in his concluding words that he nails the problem:

"All the speeches we hear this week won't be able to hide the truth of what today's Democratic Party has become: an enclave of elites paying lip service to middle-class values."

Scott Simon and Zell Miller writing against left-wing elitists in the pages of the Wall Street Journal? An interesting office pool could be run on who'll be the next big name to purge his soul in public.

Via Instapundit, the BBC carries a report from Poland quoting some viewers of "Farenheidt 9/11" who saw their own country's recent past in Moore's overtly propagandistic style:

"Gazeta Wyborcza reviewer Jacek Szczerba called the film a 'foul pamphlet'. He said it was too biased to be called a documentary and was similar to work by Nazi propaganda director Leni Riefenstahl."

And: "'Michael Moore will not convince Poles with his film,' the Rzeczpospolita newspaper said in its review. 'People are very sensitive to aggressive propaganda, especially when it pretends to be an objective documentary or a work of art.'"

After all they've lived through over the past 65 years, the Poles aren't likely to swallow Moore's fast-and-loose "documentary." They know a charlatan when they see one.

Whether the Democratic Convention this week in Boston will relegate the 9/11 Commission's report to the back pages will be determined by its use usefulness to Democrats in prime time speeches from the floor. If they can cite elements that are critical of Bush, we'll hear more about it; if not, it will fade from view (at least temporarily) more quickly than its brisk sales would indicate. (The Borders in Chestnut Hill, Pa., had sold out of the Report by Saturday morning.)

But the report's principal usefulness lies less in its contents and recommendations than its ability to stimulate discussion of 9/11 and its aftermath. I've written before that the primary sources for the report, chosen as they were by partisans from each side, weakens it as a historical document. It's a bit like a biography written from sources hand-picked by the subject or his heirs to ensure that the final picture is, if not flattering, at least not devastating.

Amir Taheri adds to the intelligent criticism of the report this morning in his New York Post op-ed: "Reading the 570-page 'The 9/11 Commission Report' is like going through a French nouveau-roman. It starts with the promise of uncovering an ingenious plot but offers nothing but re-heated platitudes served with a pseudo-philosophical garnish."

Taheri notes correctly that the Commission's goal of constructing an exhaustive report is premature, since only historians will do that in the years and decades to come. That's particularly true given the source-deprived nature of the Commission's resources. Historians and others will be writing about 9/11 for generations to come. Believing that it's possible to offer anything like a full and complete accounting of events at this stage is naive at best and cynical or manipulative at worst. Today we have neither the historical perspective that only time can bring nor the sources that must be made available for truly worthwhile scholarship to be possible.

Taheri argues persuasively that the political nature of the Commission hinders its ability to conceive of the problem -- terrorism -- correctly. Politicians in democracies compromise, of course, and that's for the good. It's better (on most issues) than war, which (people too often forget) is the real alternative to partisanship. If you and I can't duke it out via the political process, we might just resort to the, historically speaking, preferred means of reaching a settlement, which is to raise armies and kill one another.

But scholarship isn't like politics, or at least it shouldn't be when it's done with an eye on accuracy. The best public policy writers aren't out to score ephemeral political points; they're out to question received wisdom, probe sensitive areas, and recommend paths to an improved future. The implementation of those policies will, of course, require the art of politics to be practiced with all its twists, turns, nuances, and compromises. But that's work for the politicians, not for scholars. At this point, we need non-partisan historical work on the antecedants to 9/11 and the vision and courage to win this war.

The report from the 9/11 Commission states, correctly, that we’re threatened not by abstract terrorism, but by those who perpetrate it in the name of Islam. David Brooks picks up this line in today’s New York Times, arguing that naming our enemy correctly is a crucial step toward understanding its nature and defeating it:

“It seems like a small distinction - emphasizing ideology instead of terror - but it makes all the difference, because if you don't define your problem correctly, you can't contemplate a strategy for victory.

“When you see that our enemies are primarily an intellectual movement, not a terrorist army, you see why they are in no hurry. With their extensive indoctrination infrastructure of madrassas and mosques, they're still building strength, laying the groundwork for decades of struggle. Their time horizon can be totally different from our own.”

I’m glad to see these points restated, because they deserve the attention of policy makers, academics, public intellectuals, and pundits of all sizes. They’re not new, as these links to the writings of Binyamin Netanyahu and the current issue of Policy Review make clear. Daniel Pipes nailed the problem well ahead of Brooks when he said:

“I think the US government and many other institutions have made a profound mistake in declaring this to be a war on terrorism. In part, it is nonsensical if you think about it. You cannot have a war on terrorism. Terrorism is a form of violence. It is not the enemy. It would be like having war on trenches or war on battle ships, or war on surprise attacks perhaps in 1941 after Pearl Harbor. Terrorism or battleships is the means or a fact of war. It is not the enemy. But the US government has a reason in doing this. It is being euphemistic, it is being cautious. It avoids making new enemies; it is avoiding the problem of having bias internally against Muslims. Although there are virtues in this careful description of the enemy as violence; it is not a good idea.”

In 2001, Bernard Lewis of Princeton wrote in the New Yorker of bin Laden’s belief that America is in decline yet still seductive, an image that borrows on that of Satan in the Koran:

“For Osama bin Laden, 2001 marks the resumption of the war for the religious dominance of the world that began in the seventh century. For him and his followers, this is a moment of opportunity. Today, America exemplifies the civilization and embodies the leadership of the House of War, and, like Rome and Byzantium, it has become degenerate and demoralized, ready to be overthrown. Khomeini's designation of the United States as ‘the Great Satan’ was telling. In the Koran, Satan is described as ‘the insidious tempter who whispers in the hearts of men.’ This is the essential point about Satan: he is neither a conqueror nor an exploiter—he is, first and last, a tempter. And for the members of Al Qaeda it is the seduction of America that represents the greatest threat to the kind of Islam they wish to impose on their fellow-Muslims.”

I haven't read the 9/11 Commission report -- that would be quite an accomplishment considering its nearly 600-page length -- but the commentary on it is vast and often insightful. According to the WSJ, which titles its editorial "The Pre-emption Commission," the report implicitly makes the case for the Bush doctrine of pre-emptive strikes to protect the nation from terrorists. The Journal writes:

"T]he Commission performs a service by defining the threat we now face in refreshing fashion. 'The enemy is not just "terrorism," ' it says. 'It is the threat posed specifically by Islamic terrorism.' Bush Administration officials say the same thing privately, but they have been reluctant to state this publicly lest they offend the broader body of peaceable Islam. But it is hard to defeat an enemy without defining who it is. And the fact that Islam has a problem with its radical factions is something that Muslims themselves have to face up to.
This failure to speak candidly has ramifications at home, too, specifically in the Transportation Department's continued failure to endorse racial profiling in airport security checks. The policy reduces the government's credibility among ordinary Americans who understand that the policy defies common sense. Commissioner John Lehman noted at one hearing that any airline that set aside more than two Middle Eastern-looking passengers for secondary security clearing at any one time still faces large anti-discrimination fines."

The Washington Post also hails the report, asking the crucial question, are we willing to bear any burden in order to defeat the terrorists?

"The spasm of policymaking energy that followed the attacks is waning, and America faces a profound choice about whether to face the great challenge of confronting terrorism -- and organizing government accordingly -- or to drift back into complacency. The commission rightly urges not only fighting a war against terrorism but aggressively combating the conditions and ideas that give rise to violent anti-American Islamism; it urges, that is, that the United States promote democratic values and liberal education in nations where Islamist radicalism now seems the only alternative to authoritarianism."

Good points all, as they deal with our willingness to seriously confront the dangers we face. Will we be politically correct, or will we do what must be done? Will the nihilists, opportunists, and appeasers thwart our efforts to win, or will stronger wills prevail?

At the same time, excellent questions about the Commission itself are being raised, as for instance by Rep. Christopher Cox in yesterday's Journal. Pointedly, he asks just what Sandy Berger was doing choosing the documents that the Commission could see? As a historian, I think that's a crucial point, since those documents, along with the papers chosen by the Republicans, form the primary sources upon which the Commission based its work. In Rep. Cox's words:

"[T]he Commission's report--released on the last day of the session before the national political conventions--been provided in time for Congress to act this year. House Speaker Dennis Hastert implored the Commission's leadership to provide their recommendations this spring, so that committees could have hearings and mark up legislation. The official position of the Commission was that they needed more time. But even when the report was finished last weekend, it was still withheld from Congress in order to orchestrate a carefully timed public relations blitz heralding its simultaneous release at bookstores across the country. It is difficult to imagine a national security rationale for providing the final text in electronic form to commercial publisher W.W. Norton & Co. but refusing to release it even to Congress, which commissioned the report."

Good questions are also raised today by John Podhoretz in the New York Post. As he says, someone who gave the Commission information is lying -- Bill Clinton and Sandy Berger, or George Bush and Condi Rice. At issue is just how much emphasis the outgoing administration placed on Al Qaeda when it briefed the new kids on national security matters. I'm with Podhoretz -- given the track records of all involved, wouldn't you believe Bush and Rice?

Much more to be said on this, of course, and I'll do so in the days ahead. But first I have some light summer reading to do.

Charles Krauthammer hits the nail on the head in his column today. Although multilateralism and collusion among a “community of nations” isn’t a bad undertaking, when such efforts fail we must be willing to act on our own behalf. As the old adage goes, nobody will look out for you except, well, you.

Iran is a threat, no doubt. Its urgency is a matter for debate, it seems, but President Bush hasn’t ignored the danger Iran poses — Iran is, after all, a charter member of the Axis of Evil. Iran's dictators will get their due one way or another, and its oppressed people, like those in Iraq, will be set free from the bondage of tyranny.

As Teddy Roosevelt said, sometimes you should walk softly and carry a big stick. Most liberals, John Kerry included, won’t. But we must, and for this reason, Krauthammer pens:

Amen.

If you heard that the cash-strapped New York Historical Society was receiving a renowned collection of historical documents, a million dollar vault in which to house them, a board that demonstrates newfound commitment with its checkbooks, and important new exhibits with blockbuster potential, you might think this is good news. You might assume that everyone involved with the Society would be grateful to the new benefactors and the opportunities their largesse creates. After all, raising the profile of the venerable institution, founded in 1804, through significantly increasing the importance of its collection and the size of its revenues, thereby making it a must for historians and the interested public alike, is something most similar organizations crave but never achieve.

If you assumed all of that, however, you’d be naïve – not about the study of history, but about the politics of the historical profession. You see, Richard Gilder and Lewis E. Lehrman, the two wealthy businessmen who've bestowed their gifts on the Society, are also well-know conservative Republicans. And according to the New York Times, they think that dead white men such as Alexander Hamilton, subject of an upcoming exhibition, played key roles in American history and should be studied and better understood. They've even tapped Richard Brookhiser, a biographer of Hamilton and -- unspeakably -- a senior editor at National Review, to serve as curator of the Hamilton exhibition. [Never mind that the Times cites its own glowing review of Brookhiser’s book, by Michael Beschloss no less, thus undercutting its criticism.] All of this amounts, critics charge, to the hijacking of a prized institution.

In fact, Gilder and Lehrman are leading the charge to take the Society away from over-specialized, elitist professionals better known for producing tendentious, unreadable propaganda than for educating the broad public or increasing anyone’s curiosity about New York’s history. In returning the Society to the people of New York by emphasizing historical subjects that are genuinely important and interesting, Gilder and Lehrman have won one for the little guy at the expense of a pretentious gild whose members have gone a long way toward discrediting the academic study of the past. Given the comments from professionals that I cite below, it’s little wonder that devoted amateurs – a word that deserves a high place in our lexicon – should make up the most dynamic group of historians and historically-minded people today.

The article strains to spin the generosity of Gilder and Lehrman as a sinister, right-wing plot to force the Society to deviate from its New York City-centric emphasis in order to treat American history in general, and to treat only great men at the expense of modern academic history's favorite subjects -- women, minorities, and the "marginalized." "There is a potential for conflict of interest," Terry L. Davis told the Times. "The important thing is that the board really knows what it's doing and doesn't let the money coming in rule the mission of this institution." She's the president and CEO of the American Association for State and Local History in Nashville. The historian Mike Wallace said, "I am troubled by the direction apparently being charted by the historical society."

The San Francisco Examiner put it best after terrorists attacked freedom Sept. 11, 2001: Bastards! And that’s the word that raced through my mind when I saw the AP news headline that footage had been released showing the hijackers pass through security checkpoints as they boarded the jetliners that became their weapons of mass destruction.

It’s been almost three years since that morning, and I am still sobered by the framed poster that hangs on my office wall. It’s called “Darkest Page in American History” — a matrix of 25 newspaper front pages depicting the terrorist strikes. I look at those front pages every day and remember the war we face, the threat of terror.

In those moments, I am more certain than ever that this is a war we must win.

An impressive group of policy experts, academics, and public intellectuals has re-constituted the Committee on the Present Danger. Formed to educate the nation about the war on terror and to counter nay-sayers and nihilists of right and left, its mission statement says:

"The Committee on the Present Danger is dedicated to winning the global war on terrorism. We are a bipartisan organization from the policy, political, academic, business and professional communities committed to resisting and defeating terrorist organizations, ending collusion between rogue regimes and terrorists, and supporting reform in regions that threaten to export terror.

"Our mission is to educate the American people about the threat posed by a global Islamist terror movement; to counsel against appeasement and accommodation with terrorists; and to build support for a strategy of decisive victory against this menace not only to the United States, but to democracy and freedom everywhere."

Although its co-chairmen are Senators John Kyl and Joe Lieberman, the Committee's membership does not include elected or appointed federal or state officials. James Woolsey is the chairman.

Revolving photos on the home page go straight to the heart of the issue: death and destruction through terrorism. Be sure to check it out, as you'll see photos that seldom appear in the mainstream press: Ground Zero, the Pentagon, the U.S.S. Cole, the Khobar Towers, and more. Members include such thoughtful supporters of the war on terror as Kenneth Adelman, Midge Decter, Victor Hanson, Mark Palmer, Ed Meese, and Stephen Solarz. That's quite a mix. Ed Meese's presence further discredits claims by so-called realists that all true Reaganites oppose the ostensibly neocon-inspired war; Stephen Solarz, who served in Congress from 1975 - 93, reminds us that good Democrats can unapologetically support the defense of their own country.

Of the threat we face, the Committee says: "No conflict quite like this one has been waged before, and no foe quite like global Islamist terrorists, with their shadowy, multi-regional networks of fanatics, has been engaged before. The Committee on the Present Danger is dedicated to advocating policies and actions that will ensure that Bin Laden's expectation will not come to pass; and to public debate and conversation about the war against terrorism that is honest, informed and directed toward success. If that is the case, then the American people, their political leadership and all others who love freedom around the world will defeat this creed of oppression and death, just as they have defeated others before it."

It's appropriate that such people team up to defend liberty.

Below is a Fisking of British reporter Robert Fisk written exclusively for Democracy Project by John Agresto, who recently returned from Iraq where he served as the Coalition Provisional Authority's senior advisor for higher education and scientific research. He's also the former president of St. John's College in Santa Fe, NM.

I asked Prof. Agresto to comment on this article by Robert Fisk on the recent murders of Iraqi professors, because I found it tendentious (it refers to the "invasion" of Iraq) and peculiarly unwilling to speculate on the identity of the killers.

Fisk says: "Just who the modern Mongols [i.e. killers] are remains a painful mystery of our story. Disgruntled students they are not. Baathist-hunters some of them might be - all heads of academic departments were forced to join Saddam's party - but none of the murdered Baghdad university staff were believed to be anything more than card-carriers."

John Agresto's reply begins: "Most of the facts are correct as
stated -- it's only the rhetoric that's over-blown and the interpretation
that's questionable." That's Fisk's reportorial style.

Agresto continues: "A fairly large number (but not "countless," as Fisk states, unless he can't count too high) of professors have been killed. Most, though not all by any means, do seem to have been killed because of their former Ba'athist status. But remember that Mosul, under Gen Petreus, was not 'de-Ba'athified' and so many of the killings there (not only the female dean of the law college, but the head of political science a while back as well) are most likely
anti-Ba'ath reprisals. The aggrieved and the fanatical will go after the
Ba'athists whether the Coalition de-Ba'athified them or not.

"My guess is that these reprisals will continue. Worse, many are in danger
of death at the hands of the religious, mostly Shiite, fanatics. Student
Union elections had to be cancelled this year because of widespread threats
of small bands of fanatical students that anyone who ran against them would
be killed -- and women would be forcible prevented from voting. None of
this is directly attributable to the liberation except in so far as the
liberation freed the religious lunatics that Saddam had so long suppressed
and which the Coalition was, right up to the end, unable to handle properly.
I hope the new government acts with all the force necessary to put down what
are, by all accounts, still a small minority.

"In the end, Fisk seems unable or unwilling to explain what he recounts --
No, these are not Kuwaitis doing the killing; no, not Israelis. Nor are
they Americans, or Italians or Poles. Most are probably religious fanatics
and those with a grudge against Ba'ath Party. Knowing that might not tell
us how to stop the killings; but I did think a little clarity is better than
pointless fulminations."

I'll be posting additional commentaries by John Agresto soon.

Word is in that Beijing has released Jiang Yanyong, M.D., from custody. Jiang became an international hero for his efforts to expose government mendacity in hiding the SARS epidemic. He has also called on China's leaders to come clean on the Tiananmen Square Massacre and admit that putting down pro-democracy protests was a mistake. As June 4 -- the 15th anniversary of the massacre -- approached, Jiang and his wife, Hua Zhongwei, were seized as they were en route the U.S. embassy to obtain a visa to visit their daughter in California. I blogged on their ordeal here and here.

His release demonstrates that Beijing is susceptible to internal and external pressure. The leadership couldn't escape censure for its unlawful detention of this brave and honorable man, and for once in China the people are getting their way. A clear lesson emerges: keep the pressure on, demand democratic reforms (no matter how small), and use every resource available -- including blogs -- to spread the word about human rights abuses in China and elsewhere.

Either President Bush took Peggy Noonan’s advice or she’s a prescient woman. Or it might be pure coincidence. But either way, President Bush called himself a “peace president” today, a wise move Noonan (eloquently) urged in her Wall Street Journal piece last week:

Today the president did just that. He took a softer, more pensive tone when speaking of America’s War on Terror. "The enemy declared war on us," he said at a rally in Iowa, according to Reuters. "Nobody wants to be the war president. I want to be the peace president."

Before Bush can be a peace president, though, he must win the war. And he needs time to accomplish that goal. President Bush has taken great and gallant strides toward securing America, a struggle for which history likely will give him great credit.

The threat of terror remains, though, and the battle wages still. President Bush, even in another four years, likely cannot declare victory in the War on Terror — no more than Ronald Reagan could sew up Soviet defeat of the Cold War during his two terms.

What we know, though, is that Bush is willing to get the job done. And John Kerry is not the man to inherit this monumental clash of good and evil.

My phone service has been interrupted since Sunday night (I'm still not on cable for the pc), so my blogging took a temporary hiatus. I have much to say and will begin posting again shortly. Sorry for the disappearance.

Good luck and best wishes to the conservative counter-protesters who plan to demonstrate in response to the thousands of Bush haters who will converge on New York City during Republican National Convention.

Although the conservatives likely won’t have the numbers of the left-wing looneys, at least they’ll have the heart. "We are the right-wing freedom fighters — we are out there and are just as animated as the protesters can be," Jason Sager, of Brooklyn, told The Associated Press.

Perhaps they should pray for the uninformed throngs who would as soon spit on President Bush as vote for him. Perhaps in addition to waving signs, they should offer to educate and inform those whose hatred is based on little more than perverted ideology. Seems like this is a good way to start (this also from the AP):

Don't miss the Protest Warrior online store. Certainly are some gems in there.

In their new book The Right Nation: Conservative Power in America, John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge write of the New York Times’s decision earlier this year to appoint a reporter to cover conservatives, “one could argue that it was a tacit admission by the nation’s paper of record that it had somehow missed the biggest story in American politics of the past half century.” That reporter, David D. Kirkpatrick, extends his paper’s coverage of the (heretofore, by the Times’s standards) nonevent with a front-page story today entitled “Young Right Tries to Define Post-Buckley Future.”

The story’s thesis is indisputable – that the right is engaged in internal bickering in an era of conservatism’s seeming triumph in many areas of American life and politics. I’ve written before that the most interesting intellectual battles today are less between left and right than among conservatives, whose opinions on myriad issues, most notably the war on terrorism and the role of government, demonstrate true intellectual diversity.

Kirkpatrick quotes several people that I, along with many readers of this blog, have known for years. He leaves out some interesting details and background, but by and large he succeeds in leaving his readers with a more complete understanding of the right than many of them probably had when they went to bed last night.

It’s clear to those who follow the conservative movement that its leaders must better articulate, in policy and cultural terms, a sufficient response to the attacks of September 11. Proponents of the war on terrorism, and this blog is clearly among them, need to formulate a more coherent strategic framework within which the war itself will be fought and through which it will be explained. Analogies to the Cold War are on target as far as they go, but they don’t go far enough in demonstrating the threats to America’s sovereignty and safety posed by terrorists and the rogue states that harbor them. The spread of democracy will play a key role in this effort.

We’ll write more on conservatism in the future. And let’s hope the Times, and other major news outlets, do the same.

John Hawkins of RightWingNews.com compiled through actual quotes and hard evidence the 40 Reasons to Vote for George Bush or Against John Kerry. Here, at Democracy Project we're not allowed to and don't endorse candidates, but we do endorse and castigate ideas.

In the list developed by Hawkins, I was surprised most by #3 on his list:

"3) John Kerry's official blog links to the Democratic Underground, a left-wing website with very popular forums that is often quoted from by conservative bloggers and radio hosts because it's such a cesspool of lunacy. If you're looking for people who think Americans are just as bad as Al-Qaeda, the US Gov't had Nick Berg killed, or just a little America trashing, there's no better place on the internet to go than the Democratic Underground. In fact, just to give you a better idea of what it's like, here's the #1 quote from The 10 Worst Quotes From The Democratic Underground For 2003...

"I realize that not every GI Joe was 100peeercent behind Prseeedent Booosh going into this war; but I do know that that is what an overwhelming number of them and their famlies screamed in the face of protesters who were trying to protect these kids. Well, there is more than one way to be "dead" for your country. They are not only not accompishing squat in Iraq, they are doing crap nothing for the safety, defense of the US of A over there directly. But "indirectly" they are doing a lot.

The only way to get rid of this slime bag WASP-Mafia, oil barron ridden cartel of a government, this assault on Americans and anything one could laughingly call "a democracy", relies heavily on what a sh*t hole Iraq turns into. They need to die so that we can be free. Soldiers usually did that directly--i.e., fight those invading and harming a country. This time they need to die in defense of a lie from a lying adminstration to show these ignorant, dumb Americans that Bush is incompetent. They need to die so that Americans get rid of this deadly scum. It is obscene, Barbie Bush, how other sons (of much nobler blood) have to die to save us from your Rosemary's Baby spawn and his ungodly cohorts." -- Starpass

If John Kerry thinks it's appropriate to link a website where those sort of views are expressed, is he fit to be President?"

I'll let the readers of Democracy Project answer that question for themselves.

I knew from my teaching days that immigrants were heavily represented among the sciences and engineering. At Michigan's Honors College, many of the large number of students of Indian and Korean descent were majoring in one of the hard sciences or aiming toward engineering school. And I knew that earlier studies revealed that a large percentage of graduate students in science and technology were from an array of countries, including China, Taiwan, India, Pakistan, Korea, and Egypt.

But I was surprised by just how many of the outstanding younger students in these fields are either immigrants themselves or the children of recent arrivals. Today's WSJ ($) editorializes on this phenomenon in advance of Monday's release of a new study, "The Multiplier Effect," by the National Foundation for American Policy. The report, whose principal author is Stuart Anderson, contains (via the Journal) the following data:

"Children of immigrants comprise 65% of the 2004 U.S. Math Olympiad's top scorers (13 of 20) and 46% of the U.S. Physics Team (11 of 24).

"At this year's Intel Science Talent Search, which recognizes the nation's top math and science students, 60% of the finalists and seven of the top 10 award winners were immigrants or their children. Last year, three of the top four awardees were foreign-born."

Regarding these remarkable percentages, the Journal says: "Traditionally, these rigorous competitions have served as a font for the next generation of scientists and mathematicians. More than 95% of Intel Science Talent Search winners pursue science as a career, and 70% go on to earn an advanced degree. But the high rate of success among foreigners is even more extraordinary when you consider the tiny segment of the population that generates it.

While the whiz kids and their parents hail from nations as far-flung as India, Romania, China, Vietnam, Israel, Turkey and Russia, many are here on a very limited number of H-1b visas that are reserved for immigrants with technical skills. These visas are given out to fewer than 100,000 foreigners each year, which is less than .04% of the 293 million individuals who live in the U.S."

It also notes that over half of the engineers with doctorates working in the U.S. and 45% of computer scientists with doctorates are foreign-born -- another eye-popping statistic.

Talent gravitates to America because our society rewards rather than punishes hard work and innovation. This is true in spite of a chic prejudice for equality of results rather than opportunity pushed by academics (mostly in the humanities), NGOs, media stars, and leftwing politicians. There's also a small but vocal group of nativists on the right, represented mostly in the pages of Chronicles and The American Conservative. Together, these folks would cut off our access to global science and engineering talent, the former by reducing incentives for success through punitive taxation and bureaucratic meddling, the latter by prohibiting immigrants with the wrong skin color or eye shape from reaching our shores.

The Journal quotes Stuart Anderson on what America would be like today had anti-immigrant policies been adopted 20 or so years ago: "[W]e would have wiped out two-thirds of the top future scientists and mathematicians in the United States because we would have barred their parents from ever entering America." Such policies produce no winners -- only a less vigorous, less talented America.

Peggy Noonan offers a fine column in today's OpinionJournal.com.

And this, best of all:

Ms. Noonan couldn't be more right.

The questions: Who are Hosni Mubarak's political enemies; who are his allies? The answers: pro-democracy activists at home and abroad; foreign policy realists and academic multiculturalists in the West.

One of the most effective and bravest members of the first group, Saad Eddin Ibrahim, has repeatedly criticized Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak's corrupt and, it now seems, declining regime. Writing in today's WSJ ($) [check Opinionjournal.com for free articles a day or so after their initial publication in the subscribers-only section] in a piece aptly titled "Mubarak the Pharaoh," Prof. Ibrahim says that Egyptians want democracy and freedom. And he broaches the topic that got him thrown into an Egyptian prison in 2000 -- the possible succession of Mubarak's 41-year-old son Gamal upon the father's death or retirement.

The cult that Mubarak and his cronies have cultivated over the years -- of youth (via Grecian Formula), vigor, and strength -- is crumbling amid reports that the dictator has just returned from two weeks' medical treatment in Germany. This follows his fainting spell, carried on live TV, during a speech to Parliament in November. His ill health brings the possibility that Egypt may reform its sclerotic political system. In spite of assurances that Egypt "is not a monarchy . . . . We are not Syria and Gamal Mubarak will not be the next president of Egypt," no one takes seriously Mubarak's word on much any topic these days, especially where it concerns his own power.

Worth taking seriously, however, are those who would keep the new Pharaonic dynasty on its thrown. According to Prof. Ibrahim, one of Mubarak's principal defenses against pro-democracy activists is his claim that liberty is part of an "American agenda" that should be rejected as "alien and antithetical to the region's cultural specificity." Mubarak declared this as Egypt's pro-democracy community distanced itself from America's plan for democratizing the Middle East as set forth in the President's Greater Middle East Initiative, not because they don't agree with its principals, but because of the risk of appearing as American puppets. That danger is very real and should inform the administration's dealings with would-be reformers throughout the region, but it's a fact of life in the area that should be understood and dealt with, not an excuse to allow the region to fester and decline.

U.S. News & World Report’s John Leo pens an intriguing article about bloggers posting from Iraq — and the news gap they are filling:

This is a telling story of how the Internet is reshaping the way we receive and digest information. And such a feat never would have been possible under Saddam Hussein’s rule. The Internet and blogging, bulwarks of free speech and press, are serving the same vital duty as the countless newspapers that have sprouted in Iraq since the dictator fell from power: advancing the cause of freedom. It’s a beautiful thing.

On Monday a group of about 200 American students studying abroad issued an open letter claiming that President Bush's "arrogant" foreign policy is damaging U.S. interests overseas and making it increasingly difficult to defend their country.

The letter from "Win Back Respect" stated: "We witness daily how decisions that reinforce a perception of American arrogance are undermining rather than strengthening America's security goals and the safety of our citizens at home and abroad." To boot, "Our country was given an exceptional opportunity after September 11 to marshal the support of the world and strengthen international organisations, but instead the actions of the Bush administration have been divisive and polarising."

In response, a different group of students who see America's response to September 11 as a sign of international leadership and strength are issuing their own open letter. Stuart Jones, an American studying at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, led the effort to respond to the critical letter. It states, in part: "Unlike our colleagues we are proud to support America's principled action and efforts to spread freedom, equality and prosperity throughout the world. Ultimately, our foreign policy can not be driven by a desire to appease or pursue universal consensus at the expense of freedom and security. As history has repeatedly shown, "what is right may not be popular and what is popular may not be right."

It's good to see a healthy diversity of opinion abroad.

Bill Safire’s column today in the New York Times chalks up to “groupthink” the reasons why both the 9/11 Commission and the Senate Intelligence Committee found there to be no “formal” relationship between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. Safire points out quite rightly that of course there wasn’t – that’s not how terrorism works.

Safire wryly says, “Think about that. Do today's groupthinkers believe that Osama bin Laden would sit down with Saddam in front of the world's cameras to sign a mutual assistance pact, establishing a formal relationship? Terrorists and rogue states don't work that way. Mass killers collaborate informally, without a photo op, even secretly.”

Well, these so-called groupthinkers are the same types of people who fill the State Department, believing diplomacy is manifested in treaties signed at Camp David between relaxed looking foreign leaders donning their leisure suits. And sadly, this group also includes so-called paleo-conservatives who believe the Cold War was won by Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan sitting across some long table from each other bargaining over each missile in the arsenal. Hell, they couldn’t even speak the same language.

Reagan won the Cold War not through words alone, but through action. He ran guns to the Afghani rebels and Contras in Nicaragua, he overthrew (by force, I might add) a Communist government in Grenada, and he installed Pershing missiles in Germany. Gorbachev wouldn’t have believed Reagan’s threats to implement a missile defense system if he had not done the military build-up in the first place.

But is groupthink really to blame for the newest national past time of American punditry: hurl lies, accusations, and conspiracies at President Bush and see what sticks? Or is it something considerably more nefarious: a willingness to shirk the truth for power (whether the prize is the presidency for the Democrats or control of the conservative movement for the paleo-conservatives by deposing a president who has left them behind). No, Mr. Safire “groupthink” isn’t winning the day in American politics, nihilism is.

A quick post to get your blood boiling this morning…

A friend in the State Department forwarded me this overlooked article in the Washington Times reporting that State Department officials are restricting intelligence activities of military officers placed in embassies under diplomatic cover.

I am sure the Ambassador mentioned in this article -- who is refusing to let military personnel leave the embassy -- also got a bootlegged copy of Fahrenheit 911 shipped to them overseas.

Take a people normally known for their industry and business acumen, promise them freedom and self-rule, and then renege on those promises. The result? According to William McGurn in today’s WSJ ($), it’s the politicization of “almost all aspects of Hong Kong life.” Beijing’s paranoid rulers and their Hong Kong lackeys, led by the island’s chief executive Tung Chee Hwa, are forcing citizens of the former British colony to choose between obsequiousness or activism, and they’re choosing the latter. (Links to my blogs on Hong Kong may be found here.)

As Mr. McGurn says, that’s a shame, both because of the encroachment of Beijing into daily life in Hong Kong, and because it’s so destructive of the island city’s prosperity. A former editor with the Asian Wall Street Journal and the Far Eastern Economic Review, McGurn is well placed to spot changes in Hong Kong’s culture and psyche.

He reports: “The signs of this increasingly politicized society abound. Just last week, the government passed laws designed to gain control over the Catholic schools, which educate a good chunk of the citizenry. Allen Lee, a pro-business candidate who until recently represented Hong Kong in the National People's Congress, resigned when he received a phone call from a Beijing 'friend’ he didn't know talking about his wife and daughter, which he (correctly) interpreted as a threat. Even worse is how people whisper and pull punches in an effort to avoid crossing a line that is nowhere defined and always in danger of shifting.”

“But the worst thing Mr. Tung has done,” writes Mr. McGurn, “is to help politicize almost all aspects of Hong Kong life. As this year's peaceful march demonstrated, Hong Kong people are hopelessly decent, well-behaved and middle-class. But the more Beijing and its local mandarinate betray the promise given to them in 1984 – ‘Hong Kong people ruling Hong Kong’ -- the more they court what they most fear: a base for anti-China activities.”

As if they were straight from central casting, China’s rulers are reacting to Hong Kong’s growing discontent by flinging wild accusations about the character of the island’s pro-democracy leaders. Again, quoting McGurn: “[I]f Beijing continues to label as ‘unpatriotic’ or ‘traitors’ (as has happened to Bishop Joseph Zen [who led the recent peaceful protest] and prominent democrats such as Emily Lau and Martin Lee) those who want only for China to live up to its promises of self-rule for Hong Kong, the logical next step is to conclude that the only hope lies in regime change. In a city where half a million people turn out in 100-degree heat to show their aspirations, the danger of suppressing liberals is to create radicals.”

Although Hong Kong's people didn't know true democracy under British rule, they did enjoy civil rights. As McGurn argued in his 1991 book Perfidious Albion, the handover of Hong Kong always carried greater risk of a gradual encroachment on the island's freedoms than a dramatic military action along the lines of the Tiananmen Square massacre. It looks increasingly like he was right then -- and now.

The Daily Telegraph reports from London that British Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown has called for the world's leading countries and institutions to join an "urgent" moral crusade and for "sacrifice from the world's richest countries" to, as the paper says, "end world poverty."

What follows are exhortations to action by Mr. Brown, who says his government will almost double spending on AIDS to 1.5 billion pounds within three years. He added: "What we are proposing is not unprecedented and is possible and it is similar to the Marshall plan of the 1940s but this time not to the ravaged countries of Europe but to the ravaged countries of Africa and the poorest countries of other continents."

If this sounds like LBJ-era Great Society programs, it's because it is premised on the same confidence that aid given to the poor will lift them out of poverty. This didn't work too well when administered in the U.S.A., where graft and inefficiencies are only intolerably widespread. Expanded to the world stage, such largesse is bound to aid the corrupt and illegitimate rulers of Third World countries far more than their long-suffering peoples. Whether Saddam's back-scratching with the UN's Oil-for-Food-Program, or the billions of squandered aid used by African dictators, simply handing out money through the rulers of such places enriches only those already fortunate enough to be in on the game.

While I don't doubt Mr. Brown's sincerity, for his dreams of eliminating poverty by 2015 to actually come true (I don't know how he defines "poverty"), he and his fellow world leaders would better spend their time, and their people's money, working to overthrow the dictators and autocrats whose bloody regimes have kept their people in dire straits for decades. A populace that knows nothing of the rule of law, religious freedom, private property, a free press, and other building blocks of civil society will grow richer only through dramatic, and lasting, societal changes. Poverty will never be eliminated in any one country, much less the whole world, by sacrifices of the nature Mr. Brown advocates.

Indeed, such sacrifices are painless and perfectly in line with the status quo of most nations' foreign offices. They require neither bold initiatives, risky policies, nor a determination to overthrow existing regimes. Diplomats can remain chummy with local strong men, editorialists can praise the do-gooders among us while lambasting as heartless those who think such plans ineffectual at best and terribly harmful at worst, and Western elites can congratulate themselves for their altruism.

But until we get serious about spreading liberty and empowering suffering peoples to begin constructing civil societies and free economies to lift their nations out of poverty, all the good will and moralizing of the Gordon Brown's of the world will make only the slightest move toward "solving" world poverty. Poverty in the modern world is more a symptom of poor government than a cause in and of itself. The real disease is the continued presence of brutal, corrupt regimes -- the very ones Mr. Brown's scheme would rely on to solve a problem of their own making.

Absence of the rule of law most harms the weakest members of society. Further proof of that is found in a story about two authors in China who were bold enough to write a book describing the abuse, and even murder, of Chinese peasants by low-level communist party functionaries in rural areas. As outlined in today's NYT, Chen Guidi and Wu Chuntao, who are husband and wife, find themselves subject of a corrupt lawsuit they're bound to lose and holders of a copyright they can't enforce. Their book, An Investigation of China's Peasantry, exposes the plight of China's 750 million peasants who, without benefit of the rule of law, are open to constant abuse by local powers who act independently of Beijing. This means that, whatever "reforms" the dictators proclaim to help the mass of their countrymen, peasant farmers continue to suffer. Of course, if Beijing was truly serious about helping out China's poorest citizens, it would institute the rule of law, an independent judiciary, fundamental freedoms, and the like. But doing so would undermine their own illegitimate rule, so don't look for any such measures anytime soon.

Ms. Wu and Mr. Chens's book sold briskly when it appeared, but by March the government's censors knew they had trouble on their hands in the form of an honest, uncensored look at peasant life. They therefore ordered the government-owned publisher of the volume to cut off production and cease all advertising. That opened the door to another abuse common in nations that lack any rule of law -- pirating. As a result, of the seven million volumes in print, the couple has earned royalties on only 200,000.

Ms. Wu and Mr. Chen have amassed sufficient information to write another book, Fighting for Peasants in Court. They'll never get it published in China, of course, but wouldn't it be nice to see it, along with their first volume, appear in Chinese and English both on the Net and in hard copy? Any brave publishers out there?

The press is abuzz with news that Americans of every demographic group are reading less than we did in past years. (WSJ , NYT, Chronicle of Higher Education [$].) As demonstrated in "Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America," released yesterday by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and based on information gathered by the Census Bureau in 2002, the number of readers of literature declined some 14 percent between 1982 and 2002. The data were gathered by the Census Bureau in those years as well as in 1992, which allowed researchers to determine that the slide in readership accelerated during the 1990s.

There is much in the report to lament, but little to surprise. (It’s available in both hard copy and PDF from the Endowment.) I don’t mean that as a cynical jab at the intelligence of my fellow Americans, a la Michael Moore’s smarmy depiction of us as stupid and unread. To boot, I’m not thinking of our predilection for the practical arts (I’ve written on that here), nor of the encroachment of electronic entertainment or hyperactive lifestyles into our reading time. Others have already commented on those matters.

But what can we expect when we offer our youth tepid, politically correct, bowdlerized texts in lieu of robust literature that portrays life as it’s really lived? When that less enlightened NEA, the National Education Association, flexes its muscles not to enforce high standards for teachers or to insist on merit pay, but to defeat every attempt at meaningful reform lest its membership find itself facing the demands of the marketplace? When teachers’ unions work to lower the intellectual threshold for entry while raising the bureaucratic hoops through which any prospective teacher must jump, should we be shocked, shocked! to find that students leave school less likely to care about reading than did their forebears?

The sorry state of affairs in K-12 education, and in the education of future teachers by colleges of education, is well documented. Diane Ravitch and Chester Finn, among others, have done superb work on the decline of public education. The problem isn’t so difficult to understand, I think, as it will be to solve. Politicizing and dumbing down public education has deprived children of the opportunity to begin a lifelong habit of personal enrichment and instead instilled in them a false belief that books are boring, the environment’s in dire straits, and discerning right from wrong too difficult for even the greatest minds.

That’s a danger, for if children aren’t exposed to the wonder of literature, with its power to expand intellectual horizons and develop the moral imagination, they’ll be forced to postpone discovery of its wonders until adulthood. That’s not an impossible feat, of course, but it’s surely less likely to occur after graduation, when the practical arts do indeed occupy our attention, and for understandable reasons. The NEA (the one that actually wants children to read) has done a great service in releasing “Reading at Risk.” But rather than wringing our hands, we’d do better to demand a thorough reformation of our public schools.

Via Professor Bainbridge comes word of a project begun by Jacksonville State University professor Safaa Al-Hamdani. (Poliblog has covered the story, as have the major news outlets.) A native of Baghdad and graduate of Baghdad University, he reports that, not surprisingly, university libraries suffered terribly under Saddam and are in dire need of books and journals. Prof. Bainbridge also reports that high shipping costs to Iraq mean that Prof. Al-Hamdani is likely to welcome checks to help defray that expense as much as he is boxes of books themselves. Better yet, ship those books you'll never read and include a check!

One caution: A former colleague went to Eastern Europe not long after the Wall fell to "update" beleagured academics who were thirsty for Western scholarship. Unfortunately, his bibliography consisted mostly of the worst pseudo-scholarship America and France had to offer: Derrida, Lacan, Fish, de Man -- the whole lot. So if you ship your books, don't use this as an opportunity to rid yourself of the tripe you were forced to read in grad school. Remember: Iraq needs a liberally educated leadership, not an out-of-touch gang of elitist nihilists. After all they've been through, they need the core works of both the Western and Islamic traditions.

Books and/or checks should be made payable to "Books for Baghdad" and sent to:

Dr. Safaa Al-Hamdani
c/o Department of Biology
Jacksonville State University
700 Pelham Road North
Jacksonville, AL 36265

Victor Davis Hanson addresses America's need to spell out, quietly but in some detail, how we would retaliate should America suffer another September 11-type attack. His reasoning is flawless: our failure to promise massive retaliation to any country proved to shelter or aid the terrorists who strike us increases the likelihood that we'll be hit again. It's better to promise death and destruction now than to suffer it ourselves or to inflict it on others.

He argues that it would perhaps "be best to inform hostile countries right now of a (big) list of their assets — military bases, power plants, communications, and assorted infrastructure — that will be taken out in the aftermath of another attack, a detailed sequence of targets that will be activated when the culpable terrorists' bases and support networks are identified and confirmed."

Hanson is attempting to solve is a problem with the ongoing war: absent an aggressive nation-state that has declared war on the U.S., we have been reluctant to demand that the illegitimate governments of the Middle East destroy the terrorist infrastructures within their borders. This has allowed the region to support terrorists with little fear of suffering a military attack on assets that support the regime.

In his words: "Thus the genius of the jihadists is that they provide psychological rewards on the cheap for millions in the Arab Street without costs, and in turn thrive on 'credible deniability' of their tacit hosts. They smirk that postmodern Western liberality precludes Shermanesque collective punishment against the pre-modern." If we let them attack us again and fail to respond overwhelmingly, doing everything necessary to utterly destroy them, Hanson writes that we "would also accept the sure end of our civilization as we know it. Compared to that scenario, discussing a bleak response right now doesn't seem so stupid. Keeping silent about it does."

Ralph Peters makes something of the same argument in the current issue of Parameters: The U.S. Army War College Quarterly. Peters argues that we've become squeamish over the term "war of attrition," and that this fear, if allowed to dictate policy, would rob us of battlefield victory and safety at home.

He states convincingly that Operation Iraqi Freedom was not the "war of maneuver" (i.e. a high-tech display that would shock and awe the enemy into surrender) the retired officer punditry made it out to be, but was in the end won by soldiers and Marines who routed the enemy. And he makes two central points regarding the current war: "Far from entering an age of maneuver, we have entered a new age of attrition warfare in two kinds: First, the war against religious terrorism is unquestionably a war of attrition—if one of your enemies is left alive or unimprisoned, he will continue trying to kill you and destroy your civilization. Second, Operation Iraqi Freedom, for all its dashing maneuvers, provided a new example of a postmodern war of attrition—one in which the casualties are overwhelmingly on one side."

In an example of what intelligent, dedicated, entrepreneurial people can do, two men created a small nonprofit that is responsible for 50 percent of the foreign language holdings in Chinese university libraries. This week's Chronicle of Higher Education ($) reports on Jeffrey A. Smith and Newton X. Liu, who met 20 years ago while Mr. Smith, who'd just received a Harvard Ed.D. in education, was teaching English in China. It's a mostly serendipitous story, as Mr. Liu eventually came to Berkeley and earned a Ph.D. Today Mr. Liu, who lives in America with his wife, helps run Bridge to Asia, which he and Mr. Smith founded in San Francisco 1985. I say "mostly," because in their admirable zeal to bring medical and scientific learning to struggling Asian universities, the two demonstrate a profound misunderstanding of the vital role private property plays in America's knowledge industry.

To date they have sent six million volumes to China and another million to Vietnam, Cambodia, and the Philippines. With an annual budget of between $250,000 and $500,000, Bridge to Asia (BA) ships mostly used textbooks in the sciences and medicine. That choice reflects the need of Chinese schools, which have little money to buy English-language books that are increasingly in demand, in no small part because of the Ministry of Education's wish that universities use English in some classes in science and law. As fluency in English increases among educated Chinese, the demand for textbooks cannot be met.

That's the good news, and it's good indeed. But two mitigating factors, one within BA's control and the other beyond it, mar an otherwise compelling story. The first stems from BA's hostility to intellectual property rights. Like those who advocate infringing patent laws and by-passing market-based pricing to force pharmaceutical companies to give away drugs in Third World counties, BA wants Western publishers to ship books and journals to Asia for free or at a loss. Worse, in advocating this policy, which wreaks of Berkeley and Harvard Yard, their web site states: "If essential human learning were liberated from private control, the Internet could realize its potential for providing universal access to knowledge. BTA continues to advocate for these and other reforms, working toward the day when knowledge becomes a public good and developing countries become self-sufficient."

This is truly a case of killing the proverbial golden egg laying goose. Human learning in the West far surpasses what is possible in dictatorships such as China precisely because it is mostly in private hands, whereby the profit motive drives individuals and companies to take risks in the calculated bet that they'll be rewarded for their efforts. Destroy the rewards, and you'll destroy the means by which the knowledge that BA seeks to import is produced. As is the case with so many idealistic intellectuals, Smith and Liu take for granted the continuation of American and Western knowledge-creating industries regardless of the business environment in which they operate. Their recipe for spreading vital knowledge worldwide -- a command and control effort by which government wise men allocate resources as they discern the need -- has never worked elsewhere and won't work here. The affluence brought about through private property makes possible the scientific advances we enjoy; it's the means to a better educated world, not an impediment.

Like most people who've moved around a bit and had a couple of careers, I've met all manner of fantasy-prone folks whose worldview revolves less around historical reality than some imagined Eden. The twentieth-century's most malignant ideologies, communism, fascism, and Nazism, claimed to be roadmaps to a future that was coming anyway (communism) or to one that's possible if the right types are in charge (fascism) or if the superior race runs the world (Nazism). All were swallowed by some very bright people, repudiated in their early stages by too few, and eventually defeated both on battlefields and in books.

That's not to say that their influence has disappeared. Viewed with a bit of historical perspective, WWII didn't end too long ago, and the world the Cold War built is in many ways still crashing down around us. The old European order's demise has been prolonged and painful. If America emerged in 1945 as the supreme element of European-derived civilization -- albeit in a very different, hybrid form -- then Europe's cultural decline has only recently gone into full gear.

We shouldn't be shocked that vestiges of the older ideologies are still around, not so much in their original form as in their denial of human nature and historical reality. Fantasizing, after all, require much less work than reading and thinking; widely accepted illusions can appear to offer excellent benefits at little or no cost, both to those who cynically promote them and to others who ignorantly believe them.

That's at least part of what Victor Davis Hanson is driving at in his essay Fantasyland. A third of the piece is devoted to examining what he calls "the so-called loyal opposition," by whom he means the Michael Moore sycophants and associates among our cultural elite. This New, New Left, as he calls it, "has transcended both the old Marxism of the 1930s and the counterculture of the 1960s, and transmogrified into a strange sort of aristocratic, boutique damnation of Main Street, USA." What's more, "These furious critics of America are heiresses, work at trendy foundations, and include movie stars, upscale academics like a Chomsky, or global currency gougers such as George Soros. Al Gore’s recent bouts of insanity are a metaphor of the scary era we are in."

This isn't the first time elements of a nation's cultural elite have, as Hanson says, "gone absolutely crazy." Think of the intellectuals who (at least at some point in their lives) supported extremist ideologies -- Albert Speer, Martin Heidegger, Giovanni Gentile, Paul de Man, Dimitri Shostakovich, Eric Hobsbawm, Whittaker Chambers. But, as Hanson argues, "we live in dangerous times" because of the left's increasing anti-intellectualism. The mass-circulating, rumor-mongering, conspiracy- theory-based worldview bandied about by Moore, Gore and his associates at Move-On.org, parts of the old Howard Dean crowd, Ted Kennedy, some of the Hollywood set, and others stands out because of its lack of intellectual underpinning. They offer no countervailing theory of history or civilization, no alternative economic structure, no new explanations of the psyche.

The parent company of Canada's National Post reports today that over 40% of Canadian teens believe America is "evil." This isn't surprising as Canada's last two prime ministers used "anti-Americanism" as the crux of their electoral bids. Who hates America more?

But while not surprising, it's still shocking to this American. Here in the United States we embrace the best Canada has to offer: from Michael J. Fox and Alanis Morisette (and a whole host of other actors and entertainers, but I do reject Peter Jennings) to being the primary tourists to their beautiful cities. We bear no grudges against them, but they do us because of the success of our culture. They resent the fact they watch Seinfeld, drive Dodges (of course many of them are made in Ontario), and eat at McDonald's -- just like nativists such as Pat Buchanan resent seeing taquerias here in the Washington area. But what Pat and his friends to the North must accept is that we share this continent together and for better or worse our cultures will collide and mix and the market will dictate who are the winners and losers. Heck, Dallas does has a hockey team. And they won the Stanley Cup!

But fundamentally what this poll belies is exactly why America remains the sole superpower. Because we are unafraid to take what's best from other cultures and make it our own. And we don't do it begrudgingly; we do it better. Take the example of Japan in the 1980s. Americans learned pretty quick that Japanese cars were built better, and therefore, millions of Americans gave Chevy and Ford the door. At first American car manufacturers cried and moaned that the Japanese were being unfair and they even stirred up nativist fears. But, with the exception of Chrysler (who we should have let die), GM and Ford started to build cars that lasted by taking the best Japan had to offer and incorporating it into American cars. And it's no mistake that today Ford owns many of the finest European automakers including Volvo, Aston Martin, Land Rover, and Jaguar, and GM owns Saab, Holden, Opel, and Vauxhall -- with most loyal to these brands not missing a beat. In America we do it better because feelings don't matter, actions do. We see a problem, we fix it -- just ask Saddam or the Taliban or the Nazi's.

We can only hope and pray reports by Al-Jazeera are correct that U.S. Marine Corporal Wassef Ali Hassoun has been returned to his base.

Perhaps the terrorists in Iraq realized capturing a fellow Arab and threatening to behead him was going too far. Al-Zarqawi and Osama bin Laden aren't stupid; beheading a fellow Muslim wouldn't look real good on the so-called "Arab street." The terrorists in the Middle East know their jig is up when the Arab street gets fed up and has enough; it's then when cleric, turned thug Sadr and al Qaeda will no longer receive safe harbor. It happened with Saddam; the "Arab street" was fed up and turned on him and sooner or later the desire for order will trump the terror that these punks bring to the citizens of Iraq and they'll be brought to justice as well.

I've written before about Beijing's attempts to silence the prominent medical doctor Jiang Yanyong, who came to fame for his efforts to expose the cover-up of the SARS epidemic. He and his wife, the physician Hua Zhongwei, were on their way to the American embassy to process their visa for a trip to California to see their daughter on June 1 when they were detained. Their detention alone was a desperate move by authorities, who feared his power to act as the conscience of the nation on the fifteenth anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre on June 4. Jiang had written a letter to Party leaders arguing that they should admit that the massacre was a mistake -- an act that would weaken their hold on power and further de-legitimize their brutal regime in the eyes of the people.

The Washington Post reports that sources in China say that Jiang is being subjected to brain-washing techniques in the form of constant mental harassment, intensive interrogations, and around-the-clock supervision until he "'changes his thinking' and 'raises his level of understanding' about the Tiananmen crackdown," according to the Post. But the paper says that Jiang "has refused to back down, and said in a recent note to his family that he would continue to 'face the problems confronting me with the principle of seeking truth from facts,' according to a person close to the family."

It's encouraging that a high level Chinese military official says that support for Jiang is widespread in official government circles. Jiang's actions in exposing the corruption during the SARS cover-up, which cost lives and embarrassed the leadership, won him the respect of millions across China. The official told the Post: "'I consider him a man of honesty and courage,' he said. 'Ninety-nine percent of the people support him.'"

Jiang went against the advice of friends in releasing the letter calling for the Party to come clean on Tiananmen because he wanted to capitalize on his newfound fame stemming from the SARS controversy. With reports about his detention spreading worldwide, even Beijing's best efforts to contain the story will fail. Increased monitoring of email, web sites, and mobile phone text messaging, as outlined in this report, won't be enough to erase him from public memory.

The Tiananmen massacre was followed years later by the brutal suppression of Falun Gong and the gross mishandling of the SARS epidemic. Coupled with the ongoing and outrageous detention of Jiang, the latest chapter in this sorry tale, these acts reveal a leadership terrified of public opinion, much less organized opposition. Colin Powell should call in the Chinese ambassador and tell him bluntly that Jiang's release is a non-negotiable step toward China's entry into the world community. But further behind the scenes, Americans and our democratic allies must make clear that men such as Jiang, who are successors to such brave Soviet dissidents as Andrei Sakharov and Natan Sharansky, won't be shunted aside in the pursuit of "realism." Jiang and others like him need to know that their suffering is not in vain.

Another Times story today on the massive march by pro-democracy forces in Hong Kong on July 1 reports that the September 12 elections are shaping up as a contest between pro-freedom and pro-Beijing forces. The Legislative Council consists of 60 seats, 30 of which are contested, with the rest elected by what the Times calls "funtional constituencies," most of which are pro-Beijing business lobbies with investments in China.

An encouraging note in the story is that one Michael Davis, a professor of law and public affairs at Chinese University of Hong Kong, said that recently in Beijing he found that word of the pro-democracy march had spread despite the government's efforts to keep it under wraps. (Yesterday's news stories reported that China's official news organs didn't report the march.) But Prof. Davis said: "'I lectured a room full of prosecutors on the mainland, and they were all cheering democracy in Hong Kong.'"

That's a good sign that pro-democracy sentiments exist in at least some of the professional class in Beijing and not just among student activists and intellectuals. This summer's campaign will allow the people of Hong Kong to vote to extend their freedoms or curtail them to curry favor with China. Let's hope they understand what's at stake and turn out for democracy.

Hundreds of thousands of protesters took to the streets of Hong Kong yesterday to mark the seventh anniversary of the British handover of the former colony to Beijing. Estimates ranged from 200,000 to 530,000 people who endured what the New York Times called "sweltering heat and severe smog" to voice their displeasure with the China's efforts to block democratic reforms and intimidate residents into silence.

An example of that intimidation reported by the Times involves callers to talk Hong Kong radio shows. Some who were critical of China say their relatives there were contacted by security officers and "told to make sure that family members in Hong Kong did not vote for democrats in September," according to the Times. Others say Chinese relatives are being asked to show photos of ballots cast in Hong Kong to prove residents there voted against pro-democracy candidates.

When was the last time you saw someone photograph his ballot before he cast it? I don't know if it's even legal to do so in most democracies, but it would certainly draw attention from poll workers and other voters. Imagine if you knew that voting for freedom would endanger the well being of relatives in a dictatorship. This type of gross violation of the rights of Hong Kong's citizens is standard fare from dictators worldwide, especially in areas where families or ethnic groups are split between free and oppressed polities. Intimidation of this sort should bring about swift condemnation from American and British officials.

Both the Times and the Wall Street Journal ($) quote parents who participated in yesterday's march in order to teach their children the importance of fighting for freedom today to help secure a democratic future. From the Journal: "China's hard-line response to Hong Kong's nascent activism may have helped to politicize Hong Kong's traditionally apolitical population. Raymond Chan, 40 years old, arrived with his five-year-old daughter, Jessie. 'I want to let her see what's happening, to understand that people need to speak out for what they want,' he said."

And from the Times: "Leola Ng, 42, a human resources manager, marched Thursday for what she said was the first time in her life, and she said she had done so for her 3-year-old son, Curtis. 'I hope my son can still have freedom of speech, freedom of religion,' said Ms. Ng, who attended a Catholic and Protestant prayer ceremony before the march."

Last year's marchers were, reporters say, angrier because they were reacting to China's effort to squelch freedom of speech by passing "security legislation," double-speak for wide-reaching laws to crack down on Beijing's critics. In the face of that march, China withdrew the legislation -- a sure sign that massive protests with world-wide media coverage can force the government's hand, at least in Hong Kong. Whether the territory's trad