There is probably a lot one could say about the piece The New York Times ran yesterday about Barack Obama’s 12-year tenure teaching law at the University of Chicago. That Obama “never completed a single work of legal scholarship” may seem surprising given that he was teaching at a major research university where, as the Times notes, “most colleagues published by the pound.” Unsurprising is that, even back then, Obama exuded an aura of “self-absorption” and was surrounded by “groupies.” Also unsurprising is that fact that much of his teaching concerned issues of race and that, as the Times puts it, he “was especially eager for his charges to understand the horrors of the past, students say.” Just this past Sunday, at a Chicago fundraiser, he lectured his audience about the “sad,” even “tragic” nature of America’s past. “I personally would want to see our tragic history, or the tragic elements of our history, acknowledged,” he said.

Glenn Reynolds asks two pertinent questions:

(1) Does Barack Obama think that American history is unusually “tragic” as compared to the history of other great nations? And (2), what does it tell us that journalists were cheering him when he said that?

Regarding the first, how does American history stack up against other countries you know about when it comes to sadness and tragedy. Take Germany–no, that’s too easy. Take France and start in the time of Julius Caesar or, if that is too long ago, in the time of the Cathars and move forward noting the sadnesses and tragedy. Remember Arnaud-Amaury, the papal legate who over saw the siege of Béziers in 1209? Asked by one of his soldiers how they should distinguish the innocents from the Cathars, Arnaud-Amaury memorably replied, “Tuez-les tous. Dieu reconnaîtra les siens,” “Kill ‘em all. God will know his own.” Or take a look a French life under Louis XIV, or under Robespierre and his fellow virtucrats, or under Napoleon. Ask Alfred Dreyfus about sadness and tragedy. The Dreyfus affair is also convenient for those who thrill, as do many readers of the Times, at the prospect of an orgy of national guilt. And speaking of national guilt, let’s not forget Vichy France: there are lots of opportunities there to indulge in a bit of moral masturbation.

Not that France has a monopoly or even a majority interest in such sadness and tragedy, as a look at the history of the Balkans, or Russia, or India, or China, or Japan, or the entire continent of Africa demonstrates. Indeed, when it comes to the sort of sadness and tragedy that Obama dilated on in Chicago, America has been conspicuously on the mild end of such things. I don’t deny the sordidness of slavery, the horrors of the Civil War, and all the other blemishes one might exhibit to show that America has not been perfect and has suffered its share of historical unpleasantness. But in the scheme of things, does it not seem to be an unusually blessed society, one that has been unusually spared the sorts of sadness and tragedy that form such a grim recitative in many, maybe most other countries?

Obama mentions slavery early and often, but what is more significant: the fact that slavery existed in America in the 18th and half of the 19th centuries (as it did in many other parts of the world) or that Americans took it upon themselves to end it and that today Barack Obama is a millionaire and the presumptive Democratic candidate for President?

And as for “acknowledging” the bad things from the past, what else have we been doing for the last three decades. How much expiation does Barack Obama, or Al Sharpton, or Jesse Jackson want? Just a few days ago, the U.S. Congress formally “apologized” for slavery: I employ scare quotes, because the apology is as meaningless as it is hypocritical. Really, I suspect, what is wanted is not “acknowledgment” but perpetual obeisance to an ever receding, impossible ideal of political rectitude.

Which brings me back to the Times’s story on Obama’s career at the University of Chicago. In the course of that story, the reporter confronts the reader with “what may be the ultimate test of racial equality–whether Americans will elect a black president.”

I stopped short reading that because I think it gets the issue 100% wrong. The implication is that if Obama is not elected, then Americans fail the test. But that, I submit, is a racist idea. How many liberals do you know who plan to vote for Barack Obama because he is black, that is to say, for a racist reason? Sure, they also like the fact that he plans to institute a European-style confiscatory tax plan. They approve of his socialistic plans to increase the size and intrusiveness of the government. They share his skepticism about our presence in Iraq and contemplate his call for “civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded” as the United States military with equanimity, even pleasure. Really, though, all that is icing on the cake. They have closed ranks around Obama on account of the very thing that Obama pretends he wishes to transcend: the color of his skin.

Well, can it? Before you answer, take a look at the short video, available on YouTube, that the journalist Dale Hurd posted on CBN, the Christian Broadcasting Network, a few days ago.

Don’t let the word “Christian” frighten you: this is not a proselytizing documentary but rather an educational one. Hurd begins with the by-now-familiar news that Britains’s top judge and the Archbishop of Canterbury have both publicly declared themselves in favor of instituting some elements of Islamic sharia law in Britain. Lord Chief Justice Lord Phillips recently decided that “Islamic legal principles could be employed to deal with family and marital arguments and to regulate finance,” while the Primate of All England called for a “constructive accommodation with some aspects of Muslim law.” He also notes that British authorities have been bending over backwards to cater to Muslim sensitivities. You might think of Fido as Man’s Best Friend, but Muslims think dogs are unclean. Hence the recent flap in Dundee, Scotland, over a police advertisement which portrayed a cuddly puppy called Rebel. “Islamic leaders” declared the advertisement “offensive” and police officials fell over themselves apologizing for their insensitivity. Mr. Hurd points out that Islamic kunophobia is so severe that police dogs in Britain “might have to wear booties when they search Muslim homes.”

He also notes how unevenly the enforcement of so-called “hate speech” legislation has been. When a Danish newspaper published some cartoons of a 7th-century religious figure, Muslims living in Britain took to the street and demanded blood: “Slay those who insult Islam” read one placard. “We want Danish blood,” shouted some protesters. But when a British news program on channel four exposed the violent rhetoric that is a staple at many British mosques, the police did not charge the Imams who preached violence. No, that might offend Muslims. Instead, they charged the news program for fomenting “racial hatred.” And then there was a blogger called Paul Ray who had the temerity to describe the Muslim drug gangs in his home town as “savages” and was promptly arrested on suspicion of a hate crime. According to Hurd, Mr. Ray fled Britain after the providing CBN with interview because of threats against his life.

The rhetorical apex of Britain’s accommodationist spirit was achieved when Jacqui Smith, the British Home Secretary, announced that henceforth that Islamic terrorism–that is, terrorism carried out by Muslims–would be rebranded “anti-Islamic activity” in order to “woo” Muslims. Would that George Orwell were around to update his disquisition on Newspeak: War is Peace, Hate is Love, and when Muslims blow up a bus in central London that is an example of anti-Islamic activity.

But let’s return to the Lord Chief Justice and his call for the application of “Islamic legal principles” in the case of “family and marital arguments.” What do you suppose that might mean? If you listen to some well-meaning folks–the people who tell you that, really, “jihad” is not about blowing up stuff and murdering people but is rather about the “inner struggle” to be a better person–then you might think that what the Lord Chief Justice recommends is something out of Court TV. Mr. Hurd’s documentary reminds us that this is not the case. (Andrew McCarthy, in his book Willful Blindness puts paid to all these euphemisms about the meaning of jihad by quoting Omar Abdel Rahman, the “Blind Sheikh” who masterminded the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993. “Jihad,” quoth Rahman, “means fighting the enemies.” He explained what he meant: “There is no such thing as commerce, industry and science in jihad. This is calling things . . . other than by [their] own name. If God . . . says, ‘Do jihad,’ it means do jihad with the sword, with the cannon, with the grenades and with the missile. This is jihad. Jihad against God’s enemies for God’s cause and his word.” Thus the Sheikh.)

But I digress. Back to family matters. Mr. Hurd interviews a woman called Gina Kahn, who left an arranged marriage and now lives in hiding for fear of her life. As Ms Kahn notes, whenever radical Islam gets the upper hand in a neighborhood one sees more polygamy, more domestic violence, more forced marriages, and more honor killings. Memo to the Lord Chief Justice: this is what the application of “Islamic legal principles” to family arguments means: more dead women.

As it happens, Gina Kahn is (so far) among the more fortunate victims of Islamic legal principles. Not so lucky was another women portrayed in “Can Britain Survive multiculturalism?” Mr. Hurd shows a clip of the woman speaking from her hospital bed after the first time her father and uncle tried to kill her for refusing an arranged marriage. She went to the British police and begged for their help. “They ignored her,” Mr. Hurd notes, “because the police thought they should respect ethnic diversity and not get involved.” Well, the police do not have to worry about that particular troublemaker any longer. If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again: that was her father and uncle’s motto, and eventually they succeeded in murdering her, stuffing her body into a suitcase and burying it in the back yard.

“Can Britain Survive Multiculturalism?” I’d say the answer is No. But that doesn’t mean it can’t fight, and fight successfully, against multiculturalism and the ruinous cultural relativism it has insinuated into the sinews of British society. If it is to be successful, though, that struggle will have to encompass not only the negative fight against the Islamic enemies of Western civilization. It will also have to involve the reanimation of the central principles of Western civilization:  virtues like patriotism, public affirmation of the rule of law, and an outspoken allegiance to the formative values of Western democratic society: values like freedom of religion, respect for individual initiative, and equality before the law. In his peroration, Dale Hurd goes to the heart of the matter: “It’s clear,” he says, “that multiculturalism and political correctness have backfired badly. The hard-core Islamists have not been assimilated into society. But Britain’s confidence in democracy and Christian civilization have been seriously weakened.”

What happens next is anyone’s guess.

Gordon Kromberg: remember that name. Mr. Kromberg is a federal prosecutor who has investigated several radical Muslim groups in Virginia. In 2006, for example, Mr. Kromberg won a conviction against Sami Al-Arian, a Kuwaiti-born Palestinian activist, who pleaded guilty to aiding Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a Damascus-based terrorist group that has been responsible for dozens of bombings and scores of fatalities since the 1990s.

“Well, bully for Gordon Kromberg,” you might be thinking, “at last we can see some good come from the expenditure of the tax-payer’s money. What the world needs is fewer supporters of terrorists groups like Palestinian Islamic Jihad walking the streets.”

Something like that, I confess, flitted through my mind when I first heard about Mr. Kromberg’s activities on behalf of the public weal: “Good job, Gordon!” more or less summed up my attitude. He didn’t make all of the 17 charges against Sami Al-Arian stick, but at least he put him behind bars for a while.

A little background. In 2003, Sami Al-Arian was accused of heading up a domestic cell of an organization that routinely murders people. His lawyers negotiated a deal in which he pleaded guilty to a lesser charge. Judge James S. Moody Jr. sentenced Al-Arian to the maximum allowed under the sentencing guidelines. Responding to the objection that Al-Arian was merely attempting to aid women and children who had suffered in the Middle East, Judge Moody said that “The only connection to widows and orphans is that you create them.”

Fast forward to 2008. Lawyers for Sami Al-Arian are now attempting to turn the tables on Gordon Kromberg, accusing him, as an article in The New York Sun reports, of being “relentless” and “displaying his personal animus” in his pursuit of Islamic radicals.

Let me pause to declare an interest here. When it comes to fighting terrorism, I actually prefer prosecutors who exhibit the terrier instinct: I want them to be relentless, and if “personal animus”–i.e., a settled dislike of people who blow up school buses and otherwise maim and murder innocent people–helps nurture the relentlessness, so much the better.

That, anyway, is my feeling about the matter. But we live in an age in which soft jihad is on the rise–jihad that pursues its aim of establishing Islamic law worldwide not only by plowing jumbo jets into skyscrapers but also by using and abusing the institutions of democratic society in order to undermine those institutions. The legal system, for example, is used not as a tool to maintain the rule of law, but as a sort of sophistical stun-gun to stymie it. Thus we are treated to the spectacle of “human-rights” commissions who employ anti-discrimination legislation to silence journalists who have the temerity to call attention to the actions and goals of radical Muslims. And thus we find lawyers for Sami Al-Arian asking a federal judge to ponder the question of whether “anti-Muslim bias” fuelled the government’s case against him.

Of course, it’s not “anti-Muslim” bias that is at issue. If you want to use the language of bias at all, then what we are talking about is a “bias” against supporting terrorism. But really it’s not a question of “bias”–a word that suggests an irrational or unfounded dislike–but rather an entirely rational and well-founded hatred of evil.

Yes, yes, I know that “hatred” is not an OK, politically correct word today. We even have a whole new category of malefaction called “hate crimes.” What does that tell us?

It used to be that one could distinguish frankly between good and evil, affirming one, hating and rejecting the other. It has been one of the greatest triumphs of soft jihad to blur this distinction. It accomplishes the confusion by encouraging us to substitute the language of “bias talk” for the language of forthright moral discrimination. After a while the main issue–the Israeli school children who had been blown to bits in bus a bombing, for example–recedes to a limbo of endless pettifogging adjudication. Meanwhile, the stupefying mantras of multiculturalism–”diversity,” “bias,” “prejudice,” and the rest–assume center stage and we are lulled into believing, or half-believing, that somehow we are to blame for the depredations that take our very existence as their justification.

Here’s a headline for the ages:

Putting Money Where Mouths Are: Media Donations Favor Dems 100-1

What a surprise!

As William Tate goes on to note in his story in Investor’s Business Daily, the statistics are “overwhelming.” Nevertheless, and “true to form,” the media rankles at the natural conclusion–that there is deep and pervasive left-wing bias in the media. Their response is that “one candidate, Obama, is more newsworthy than the other. In other words, there is no media bias. It is we, the hoi polloi, who reveal our bias by questioning the neutrality of these learned professionals in their ivory-towered newsrooms.”

Right. And if you believe that, . . . But wait, before making me an offer, ponder some more of Tate’s story:

Given the pack mentality among journalists and, just like any pack, the tendency to follow the leader — in this case, Big Media — and since Big Media are centered in some of the bluest of blue parts of the country, it is highly likely that the media elite reflect the same, or an even greater, liberal bias.

A second is to analyze contributions from folks in the same corporate cultures. That analysis provides some surprising results. The contributions of individuals who reported being employed by major media organizations are listed in the nearby table.

The contributions add up to $315,533 to Democrats and $22,656 to Republicans — most of that to Ron Paul, who was supported by many liberals as a stalking horse to John McCain, a la Rush Limbaugh’s Operation Chaos with Hillary and Obama.

What is truly remarkable about the list is that, discounting contributions to Paul and Rudy Giuliani, who was a favorite son for many folks in the media, the totals look like this: $315,533 to Democrats, $3,150 to Republicans (four individuals who donated to McCain).

Let me repeat: $315,533 to Democrats, $3,150 to Republicans — a ratio of 100-to-1. No bias there.

The amazing thing is that anyone not part of the media clique pays any attention whatsoever to the hosannas directed at St. Obama.

Now that I think of it, though, perhaps no one who is not part of that rancid fraternity actually does pay attention to their pious bleatings. “Americans Distrust the Media“: an old story with new traction.

The next time you go to Berlin, why don’t you see if Obamania will work for you. Tell the “tens of thousands of elated Europeans” who have mysteriously shown up to hear you that you are addressing them “not as a candidate for president, but as a citizen, a proud citizen of the United States and a fellow citizen of the world.” Being “elated,” your audience will not pause to point out that no one, not even Barack Obama, is a “citizen of the world,” because a citizen by definition is someone who owes loyalty to and enjoys the protection of a specific state. Nor will the elated Europeans depart from their elation long enough to wonder why they had congregated in their vast multitude to hear someone who’s announced claim on them is only that he is a “proud citizen of the United States.” Generally, of course, the combination of pride and the United States is something that makes Europeans grumpy, not elated.

As it happens, I tend to prefer my Europeans grumpy rather than elated. This is particularly true when the Europeans in question are German. An elated German, especially many elated Germans in one room together, makes me nervous. They hear someone promise, as Obama just promised in his Berlin speech, to “remake the world” and hearken after “our destiny” and their elation becomes a kind of fever. No wonder Obama has called for a “civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded” as the United States military: following your destiny and remaking the world are projects  likely to require a lot of help.

When I first encountered Obama’s rhetoric, my chief feeling was one of mild nausea. Over time, feelings of alarm have outstripped the nausea: Obama’s clichés, I realized, were not simply, not only, empty platitudes. They were also menacing adumbrations of a megalomaniac narcissist who really did believe he was a man of destiny and wouldn’t have the slightest hesitation about embarking on the effort to “remake the world.”

All that is worrisome enough. Combined with the utter lack of critical perspective—rather, combined with the stunning adulation–accorded to Obama by the so-called mainstream press and you have a recipe for disaster.

Has the mainstream press really been uncritical, indeed adulatory? Here I resort to the “a picture is worth a thousand words” motif, and offer this widely reproduced image of the Man of Destiny surrounded by some of his acolytes–I mean upstanding members of the Fourth Estate:

What is multiculturalism? It is the belief that different cultures have different values and that it is “ethnocentric” to judge another culture by one’s own, necessarily limited, cultural values. Here in the West, we may think that people should be free to marry whomever they like. But that is only our Western custom. Elsewhere, people believe that young women can be killed by their fathers or brothers should they display too much independence in the matters of the heart. Elsewhere? Well, multiculturalism is a portable commodity: what had been the custom in Africa or Pakistan can easily be transplanted. The New York Post reports on a successful transplant to the state of Georgia:

On July 6, police say, a Pakistani named Chaudhry Rashid strangled his 25-year-old daughter San-deela Kanwal with a Bungee cord in her bedroom because she wanted to end her arranged marriage. This “honor killing” came not in Pakistan, but in Jonesboro, Ga. - a suburb 16 miles outside Atlanta.

“Honor killing”? Where, pray tell, is the honor? And where, as the Post’s reporter asks, is the outrage?

“It’s such a strange animal: When attacked, it defends itself.”

I first heard this bit of proverbial wisdom at the apartment of Samuel Lipman, the founding publisher of The New Criterion. I don’t remember exactly what the subject of discussion was and I don’t even remember whether it was Sam or one of his guests who uttered the witticism. Witticism? Yes, that’s right: the idea, the shared assumption, back then (we’re talking twenty years ago) was that of course an animal (a community, a society) will defend itself when attacked.

Can we indulge in the same assumption today? I wonder. If the recent activity of the Supreme Court is any indication, the answer might well be: probably not. I am thinking, of course, of the Supreme Court’s latest suicide pact, aka, Boumediene, the June 12 ruling brought to you by the most powerful man in America, Justice Anthony Kennedy, who in his wisdom cast the deciding vote in a 5-4 split that enemy combatants (he had our guests at Guantanamo Bay in mind) deserve the same legal rights and protections that American citizens on US soil enjoy.

In his dissent, Justice Scalia witheringly noted that the decision “will make the war harder on us. It will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed.” Let’s say Justice Scalia is correct (as I think he is). Would it matter to Justice Kennedy and his high-minded peers who voted with the majority? Or are they subscribers to the Fiat justitia ruat caelum school of jurisprudence–the school that Justice Robert H. Jackson warned against in 1949 when he dryly observed that the Constitution is “not a suicide pact“?

Is Justice Kennedy the sort of animal that, when attacked, defends himself? Maybe not. But does that fact mean he has the prerogative to decree that the American people should join him in his existential helplessness and moral nihilism?

I say No, and I am delighted to note that Andrew McCarthy has intervened with a characteristically brilliant piece over at NRO making the legal argument against Justice Kennedy’s latest effort assert the claims of judicial supremacy and make Americans more vulnerable to their enemies.

McCarthy’s piece is sure to bring howls of anguish from the politically correct partisans who believe in rule by judges. His bold opening gambit is custom made to cause apoplexy: “It’s time,” he writes, “to suspend the writ of habeas corpus.”

“Oh my God, can this right-wing fanatic be serious?” Hold on to your copy of The New York Times, Virginia, and listen to what he says:

I’m not talking about suspending the old writ of habeas corpus, the one that protects all Americans inside the United States.

I’m talking about suspending the new writ invented on June 12, 2008. The faux writ that Justice Anthony Kennedy and his four associates in the Boumediene majority weaved out of whole cloth. The writ that runs only to the protection of America’s foreign enemies in a war Americans overwhelmingly support. The writ that purports to extend the jurisdiction of the courts - which is to say, the rule of judges - anyplace on the planet where the federal government acts and where the American military fights.

I am talking about restoring the separation of powers and the proper, limited role of the United States courts.

Separation of powers, eh? Limited role for the United States courts? What a novel idea, Mr. Madison! Grand proposition, Mr. Hamilton! Why didn’t we think of that?

McCarthy’s entire piece is a must-read document for anyone who cares about 1) the separation of powers 2) American security, 3) the rule of law (as distinct from the rule of lawyers and judges). But let me conclude with these wise reflections on the significance of the Court’s decision in Boumediene and what we can do about it:

Let’s back up for a second. If someone were to posit a general suspension of the writ of habeas corpus enshrined in Article I, Section 9, of the Constitution, that would indeed be a radical proposal. It is not what I am suggesting.

What is radical, though, is Boumediene. Prior to June 12, 2008, when the ruling was announced, there was no writ of habeas corpus outside sovereign American territory. But five voracious justices now say not only that there is a global writ - i.e., that the legitimacy of government action always and everywhere depends on its capacity to win judicial approval. The justices further audaciously declare that this new global writ vests judges with the power to probe and reverse combatant determinations no matter how fastidiously any system defers to our enemies’ “rights” - and regardless of whether that system has been designed by the military or even Congress.

That is not democracy. It is judicial oligarchy - and nothing in our Constitution requires that we stand for it.

What I am thus proposing is that Congress simply return us to the law of the United States as it existed, soundly and through innumerable crises, for 219 years preceding June 12. Make clear that we are not suspending the traditional writ: we must not disturb the core function our courts perform in ensuring our domestic rule of law. But suspend the writ outside the United States (where it never ran in the first place) as to all non-Americans (who were never entitled to its protection in the first place). We must reject the perilous new world of enemy habeas and extra-territorial judicial fiat that has been in place not for 219 years but for one month.

Remember this: Boumediene “is not democracy. It is judicial oligarchy - and nothing in our Constitution requires that we stand for it.” Write your Congressman. Get your friends to write their Congressmen. Let’s show them that, notwithstanding the preening tergiversations of Justice Kennedy, we are still animals that, when attacked, have the will to defend ourselves.

Journalists love giving advice to political candidates. You know the drill: “The Five Things McCain Should Do To Boost The Economy, Bring Peace and Tranquility to the Middle East, and Prevent Balding,” “The Three Things Obama Should Do To Lower Gas Prices, Make Friends With Iran, and Cure Cancer”–that sort of thing. Fortunately, candidates seem blissfully unaware of all of this earnest advice. They follow their consciences–or maybe it’s only the results of the latest focus-group poll as filtered through the intelligence of their strategists. In any event, the shrift candidates bestow upon the punditocracy is characteristically (and, let’s face it, appropriately) short.

This fact is one reason I generally try to refrain from dispensing advice to candidates. But the recent dust-up–first reported, I believe, by the Drudge Report–over The New York Times’s refusal to print an op-ed by John McCain responding to an op-ed they published the week before by Barack Obama prompts me to depart, at least partially, from this tradition.

I say “at least partially” because my advice is negative: I do not have a 5-point program for ending taxes, avoiding death, or obtaining waterfront property in Maine free of charge. But I hate to see wasted energy just as much as Al Gore says he hates it, and I have a simple one-stop program for saving the McCain campaign–and the campaigns of other Republican candidates–quite a lot of energy. (By the way, you can read the McCain op-ed in The New York Post here.)

It’s as simple as it is efficient: Ignore The New York Times. More and more of your constituents are doing so, why shouldn’t you? Join the many happy folks who have Kicked the Times: Don’t read it, don’t refer to it, don’t regard it as an authority on anything. You’ll feel cleaner and your blood pressure will thank you. Above all, do not write, and do not allow your staff to write, op-eds for the Times. On the off chance that the paper actually publishes your piece, you will only help to bolster its sense of smug self-righteousness and perpetuate the illusion that the paper treats the candidates, or the issues, even-handedly. They don’t, and you shouldn’t collude in fostering the destructive myth that they do.

Here’s a headline from Fox news about Obama’s upcoming trip to Europe:

Obama Trip Could Push Rock-Star Persona to New Heights

The story explains:

“What you’re about to see is enormous publicity,” Democratic strategist Susan Estrich said. “He’s got three anchors coming with him. He’s got the glitterati of the press corps.”

With his visit, the presumptive Democratic nominee is recreating the kind of public whirlwind that he enjoyed at the height of the Democratic primary — only on a global scale.

Yesterday, reflecting on Obama’s call for “civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded” as the United States military, I quoted Hannah Arendt’s observation that “a mixture of gullibility and cynicism” as a reliable feature of totalitarian movements, with the quota of cynicism increasing as one ascended from the ran and file to the leadership of the movement.

The swooning intoxication of the press as it contemplates the spectacle of Obama in Europe–its anticipation of a Beatlemania-sort of populist publicity blitz–reminds me of something else Arendt discusses in The Origins of Totalitarianism, namely “the temporary alliance between the mob and the elite.” Arendt has many pertinent things to say about the effects of this alliance, and perhaps I will come back to her analysis in a later post. For now, let me simply quote what she has to say about the reason for the superiority of totalitarian propaganda:

The fundamental reason for the superiority of totalitarian propaganda of the propaganda of other parties and movements is that its content, for the members of the movement at any rate, is no longer an objective issue about which people may have opinions, but has become as real and untouchable an element in their lives as the rules of arithmetic.

That is, the propaganda, the image, the ideology, is beyond criticism because it is accepted not as a description of a political platform but a charismatic performance whose goal is not expression of limited policies but a sort of magical unity. In such cases, hesitation is evidence of faithlessness while criticism assumes the lineaments of heresy.

The question remains, however, whether most Americans wish to see their political institutions transformed into props for such pre-critical, mystical posturing.

Noting that “There’s nothing new about narcissism in politics,” Charles Krauthammer has a few questions about Barack Obama:

Obama is a three-year senator without a single important legislative achievement to his name, a former Illinois state senator who voted “present” nearly 130 times. As president of the Harvard Law Review, as law professor and as legislator, has he ever produced a single notable piece of scholarship? Written a single memorable article? His most memorable work is a biography of his favorite subject: himself.

It is a subject upon which he can dilate effortlessly. In his victory speech upon winning the nomination, Obama declared it a great turning point in history — “generations from now we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment” — when, among other wonders, “the rise of the oceans began to slow.” As economist Irwin Stelzer noted in his London Daily Telegraph column, “Moses made the waters recede, but he had help.” Obama apparently works alone.