Rick,

What are the bases for your prediction?

Whether the leftist liberals are happy or unhappy, like it or don’t like it, have strong and strident opinions, are supported in those opinions by the MSM or throw themselves under trains is irrelevant to the process of governance of the United States. The Democrat Party is about to become the Democratic Party once again. Centrist liberals will have a voice and seat at the table but the lefties are going to be justly kicked to the curb by the party as a whole.

The Supreme Court was never envisioned nor was it intended to become a law making body. The Founders would abhor the Court as it stands today and would doubtless wonder why the other two branches had ever let it arrogate such power to itself. Roe was a bad decision, abortion is a legislative issue and the arrogance of the four idiots in MA in making the gay marriage decision may have proven to be the final straw. Both these issues (and many others of similiar ilk) involve questions that should be debated and resolved by the people we hire to perform the legislative function.

We will indeed ’see’ and I’m quite willing to live with any decision that our legislators come up with.

To my mind, the / one of the reasons that Brown v. Board it so much more accepted than Roe is that Brown was essentially ratified by the Congress with the 1960s Civil Rights Acts. Now, there will always be the dead-enders, but I think that most fair-minded Americans are willing to put matters to a vote and live with the results, even results that they don’t agree with. With Roe, however, the matter was revomed from the legislative sphere; it was put in a box, and the public was told that they could look but no touch. Maybe that sort of thing works in Europe (see EU Constitution, the), but Americans are a far more ornery lot (’else the flag would likely include a small union Jack), they want a say, one that goes beyond filing an amicus brief.

Catherine talked about Bush’s legitimacy (or lack thereof) after 2000. I think that most of the lack was a result of the SCC decision rather than the Electoral College / Popular Vote split, though lefties tried to use both rhetorically.

Thanks.

A follow-up on legitimacy.

I wonder whether some liberals will reconsider the strategy of having the courts impose liberal social changes on the country.

They have now had the experience of having the Supreme Court impose a president on them who lost the popular vote, and they didn’t like it.

THE RIGHT NATION argues that the reason we have culture wars over abortion while Europe doesn’t is not that we’re more concerned with morals.

It’s that Europeans got to vote on it.

I told that to my husband the other day: I said that Supreme Court decisions like Roe v. Wade result in culture wars because they lack the legitimacy of a democratic vote.

Then I said it’s a Really Bad Idea for liberals to handle gay marriage the same way.

He got that ‘Uh-oh, she’s right’ look.

Then he said the Supreme Court is “part of our democratic process,” but that was pretty lame and he knew it.,

We’ll see.

I now think the entire reason this election has been so intense is the 2000 vote. (Well, the 2000 vote intensified by an order of magnitude by 9-11.)

Reading the British press is a revelation.

European elites, who were engaging in an unseemly degree of handwringing and muted Michael-Moore like catastrophizing going up to the election, are all falling in line.

It’s astonishing to behold.

A week or so before the election, Martin Wolf, Mr. Why Globalization Works himself, wrote a whole long column in the FT saying that if the American public re-elected George Bush we would be “telling the world” that “we don’t care.”

Please. This is Martin Wolf!

I’ve read one column after the other, since the election, in which the columnist says that Europeans thought because Bush lost the popular vote in 2000 & the election was thrown to the Supreme Court he was in fact an “accidental” president. They use that very word: accidental.

Europe experienced the past 4 years as an aberration, a departure from normalcy. And of course when you “add in” 9-11, which was nothing if not a Big, Fat departure from normalcy, you can see where they went off the rails.

Watching sanity break out in the European press is a sight to behold. I include the Daily Mirror in that: “Doh! 4 More Years of Bush!”—-that is not Michael Moore.

The Guardian has announced that President Bush has a mandate; and all the FT folks, every last one, is saying, in so many words, “Well, then. Bush, it is.”

I will never, ever again underestimate the power and central importance of legitimacy.

All governments–all of them, including totalitarian governments like Saddam’s–have to have legitimacy.

(A totalitarian government has to have the legitimacy of brutality. That is why, political scientists say, authoritarian governments fall rapidly the instant they start to liberalize. They lose the legitimacy of brutality, and since that’s the only legitimacy they’ve got, the people revolt. The Ceascescus in Romania are an example.)

Without legitimacy, you have chaos.

For Democrats, George Bush did not have legitimacy.

For them he was not the elected president. He lost the popular vote, and a conservative Supreme Court put him in office.

He wasn’t the real president.

I read today, either in The Corner or at opinionjournal, that the Kerry folks may have consciously planned to lose the popular vote themselves, but win the electoral college by taking Ohio.

Think how we would have felt if they’d pulled it off.

Bush would still have had his 3 million vote margin in the popular vote, but he would be out of office, and Kerry would be in.

That would have been a nightmare for the country, and if Kerry and his crew actually did intend this as a strategy, they deserve what they got and then some.

I’m going to be interested to see what happens in Europe in the next two years.

Remember Kagan’s essay about the U.S. lacking legitimacy?

We were all irritated by it, to greater or lesser degrees, but Kagan was right in historical terms: governments need legitimacy, and, in the world, countries need legitimacy.

History tells us this is true. It doesn’t matter whether we here on Roger’s blog “care” about legitimacy or not. Legitimacy is real, and it’s not the same thing as “being liked.”

I now think that Kagan and everyone else may have mistaken the reasons for America’s lack of legitimacy.

Universally, people have assumed that America lost legitimacy by “acting unilaterally” and “going around” the U.N.

I can’t possibly count the number of op-eds I’ve read about our catastrophic loss of “standing” in the world.

All of a sudden, our standing seems to be back. At least, the tone has changed utterly; the tone now is: The American People Have Spoken.

That’s the whole point of the Daily Mirror cover, and it’s the reason I like that cover. There it is for all to see: 59,000,000 people voted for George Bush.

We may be stupid people.

But there are a hell of a lot of us.

And we won.

I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the catastrophic-loss-of-standing meme fades away. The American people have voted against the world and the U.N. (against CBS & Hollywood & the Times as well), and the message has been received & understood. We have awarded George Bush the standing he needs.

And we have withdrawn legitimacy from the United Nations.

Remember when Roger constantly argued that Bush had to be re-elected because a win for Kerry would automatically tell the world that we were abandoning the WOT?

He was right.

It didn’t matter what Kerry said in his campaign, how ‘tough’ he was. The only thing that mattered, in terms of the world, was the vote. A vote for Bush said: it’s a war, we’re in it, and we’re staying in.

The vote for Michael Howard in Australia said the same thing, and the vote for Tony Blair in England will ratify this sentiment for the third and final time. At that point the world will indeed have spoken.

I don’t know what will happen here in the United States.

The Dems have been through hell for the last four years. For the first time, I understand how they’ve experienced this presidency. I would be out of my mind now if Bush had 3.5 million votes and Kerry were the president-elect.

But I think it’s possible a lot of Democrats will simmer down.

If my husband is any indication (I don’t know whether he is or not), they will. He’s a naturally cheerful sort, except when it comes to Fighting An Insurgency, for god’s sake, and on the day after the election he said to me, matter of factly, “It’s a decisive win.”

He hasn’t been complaining since, and he’s already decided that Americans never vote a president out of office during the war, so Kerry couldn’t have won anyway.

He’s not taking it personally.

But it’s more than that.

He is acting as if this election makes sense.

That might just be the definition of legitimacy.

A definitional difference. Fund refers to the state legisilatures as being AAA for legislative seats. I’m referring to the Senate and Governorships as AAA for the Presidency. What Fund glides over is that gerrymandering limits disputable House seats to less than 10% of the total. So we have have AAA clubs for both parties that have more than 3,650 players – more than 7,300 in total that are vying for 35-40 slots in the ‘bigs’. The Dems did OK at the local level this go around but the Presidential race sucks a lot of party resources from local campaigns. If they repeat in ‘06 there will be cause for hope. The 68 seat swing that Fund describes is a positive sign but it amounts to less than a 1% total pickup.

The President has accepted Ashcroft’s resignation.

WSJ says Dems are winning everything at local level, which makes a problem for future talent . . .

But this is still a closely divided country, and while the GOP won the major league pennants, Democrats did well in the AAA league of politics, the state legislatures. Republicans have to pay attention not only to where they are gaining votes, but also to the states and demographic groups where they are losing them.

Is that wrong?

http://www.opinionjournal.com/forms/printThis.html?id=110005866

I’m hoping (though not expecting) someone will give the names of some European artists who’ve spoken out.

Not me.

The situation over there is completely different from here. That’s one of the things that’s been obscured since 9/11: Europe is in a much more vulnerable situation than we are here.

I absolutely agree with TedM’s Danish solution: the film should be shown everywhere. Everywhere.

It’s obviously getting to be time for me to transcribe the notes I took on the anti-semitism in France lecture. One of the lines: “Jews live in fear.”

What is intensely unsettling to me is the fact that Muslims in Holland aren’t poor & aren’t discriminated against. There are no Muslim ghettos.

I’ve known since 9-11 that terrorism doesn’t come from poverty (my husband has read the historical literature on this). Now I realize I had been assuming nevertheless that ‘more money’ would help.

Now I see that more money has not helped in Holland.

Rather than blather on myself, here are excerpts from my notes.

The speaker was Henri Eisenberg, who was head of CRIF (I believe that’s the acronym.) This is the major Jewish organization in France. It was Eisenberg who persuaded Chirac to apologize for Vichy; Eisenberg also persuaded the Catholic Church to acknowledge its own role in the Holocaust.

EXCERPTS:

160 acts of antisemitism (violence?) in the past 7 months, compared to 75 acts in the same period in 2003

10 were committed by neo Nazis

50 were committed by North African immigrants

100 were committed by individuals for whom the motivation was not clear

Belgium has a similar phenomenon

anti-semitism today is very different from what the French have known previously

the desecration of the cemeteries is being done by neoNazis, who are also desecrating Cathoic & Muslim cemetaries (figures: 8 Jewish cemetaries, 7 Muslim cemetaries, 30 Catholic cemetaries)

The fact that they are desecrating Catholic & Muslim cemetaries as well doesn’t get reported in the international media, so people conclude that the desecrations are specifically anti-semitic acts

10% of French population is now Muslim

no one knows how many of these people are open to radicalization, or are radicalized already. I think there are estimates that 5% may be potential Islamists, but I can’t find this in my notes, and no one knows anyway. If 5% is the figure, 5% is an estimate.

There is tremendous difficulty integrating the children of these immigrants, because they live in ghettos where they never see Christian French, and they are frequently homeschooled as well

40% of French prisoners are Muslim

few Muslims vote in elections; they do not “feel” French

recently Muslim spectators booed when the Marseillaise was played at a soccer game

2nd intifada released immigrant anti-semitism. It was always there, but the intifada released it.

Everyone had been operating on the assumption that once the intifada was over, the antisemitic acts would die down. Now no one is sure. People hope the anti-semitism will die down, but they don’t know.

satellite TV is a huge problem; French Muslims watch Al Jazeera; the “death” of the boy Mohammad (I believe his death was staged) was played incessantly on Arabic TV

in France, Israelis are always called “Jews.”

It is not uncommon for a Christian French person to say to a French Jew, “Why do you treat the Palestinians so badly?”

Eisenberg’s entire lecture focused on attacks on Jewish children. That is where the real problem is; this is, apparently, a “children’s war,” Arab children against Jewish children, and the Arab children are winning. Jews fear for their children.

In October 2003 the principal of a well-known high school near the Luxembourg Gardens expelled 3 Arab boys, ages 11 and 12, who were constantly harrassing a Jewish student.

The 3 boys went to court, and the court reversed the principal’s action. Eisenberg thinks this was terrible. The principal need to be supported by the courts, and the public needed to know the principal would be supported.

The 3 Arab boys are back in the school, and the Jewish boy had to leave.

One of the most frightening aspects of the situation: there is no organization that is behind these acts. None. Jewish organizations can’t go to a Mosque or a Muslim political organization and demand that these acts stop. There is no ‘face’ on the problem.

The “extreme Left” supports Palestinians, routinely demonizes Israel, Sharon, Bush.

The NGOs are only concerend with Palestine. Some NGO or other actually had a slogan, “One Jew, one bullet,” a play on the “One settler, one bullet” slogan in South Africa.

Alain Finkielkraut says that the “Extreme Left,” the Greens & the NGOs have only two categories: oppressors & victims. So Jews are the new Nazis.

These groups don’t see themselves as anti-semitic because they have Jewish members.

Extreme leftists, NGOs & greens are closely connected to teachers, who are all on the left, and are “indulgent” of anti-semitism. The teachers see Arab children as victims, and feel guilty.

“The French are not more or less anti-semitic than they were 20 years ago.”

At the end of the 90s “you would have thought the French were less anti-Semitic.” French society denounced anti-semitism, there was no discrimination against Jews, Jews were successful.

“Nevertheless we have to clarify this optimistic picture.”

NOTE: my husband disagrees with my interpretation of Eisenberg on this point. I had the impression Eisenberg was saying that Jews were wrong to conclude, at the end of the 90s, that the French were now much less anti-semitic than they had been before. My husband says Eisenberg made the opposite claim.

And, in fact, at the end of his talk he said these words, “The country is not an anti-semitic country.” The new anti-semitism in France is coming from the “extreme right,” the “extreme left,” and from Muslim immigrants.

So I’m going to say he was unclear on this point. I also think it’s possible that the fact that the new French consul was sitting in the front row may have added some pressure. I don’t know.

Interestingly, the French consul stood up and told us all that in the next presidential election, “3 Jews” would be running: Sarkozy, Fabius, and one other person whose name I didn’t catch.

This was a bit of a shock, because none of these men is Jewish in the normal sense of the term. They are Catholics who have a Jewish ancestor, the same way John Kerry is a Catholic with a Jewish ancestor.

Eisenberg flatly rejected the consul’s characterization of Sarkozy and Fabius as Jewish, and they argued back and forth about it a bit. Eye-opening for the American audience, I’d say.

I’ve left out some parts, but this is the jist.

At the end Eisenberg said that even Jews who are living in expensive neighborhoods in the heart of Paris, as he and his wife do, “know that around us is violence. We know that Jewish children are victims of humiliation, and we think, ‘What about our children.?”"

This is close to a direct quote: “They have fear [speaking of Jews living in expensive neighborhoods.] For the moment we have hope that it will change, but we don’t know it will change. The general climate is a bad climate.”

One last thing.

A woman from AIPAC (sp?) asked a question about what kinds of lobbying CRIF is doing with the French government.

Eisenberg’s answer was revealing.

paraphrasing, but close: “Jews in America ask why we don’t have more influence with the government. You have to understand, you have the American people. You have allies, you have Christians with you, especially evangelical Christians. In France we have no one. We lobby alone.”

For me, this was a powerful moment: “you have the American people.”

Of course it’s true in one sense: “Jews” have the “American people” on their side, and so does Israel.

But we wouldn’t put it that way; we wouldn’t think of “Jews” and “Americans” as separate categories.

In France, Jews are not exactly French, it seems.

The next day I read an article about France and Israel in the FINANCIAL TIMES. At the end of the article the writer said that Sarkozy, “who is of Jewish descent,” would soon be visiting Israel.

My impression is that Jews in Europe are like blacks here: no longer discriminated against, but still seen as separate. I’m thinking of the ‘one drop of blood’ rule we use here, which defines people as black if they have one black ancestor. (I’ve forgotten how the rule goes, but I think that’s it.)

I have a ‘black’ friend here who is in fact mixed: her mother is black, her father white.

She is married to a white man, so her children have 3 white grandparents and 1 black grandparent. They have the same relationship to being black that John Kerry has to being Jewish.

But they are black, while John Kerry is Catholic.

I realize it’s not the same thing. Race and religion are apples and oranges.

Still, I think that for the society it is similiar. The larger society defines blacks as not-white no matter what, and in France the larger society defines Jews as not-French, no matter what.

They’ll be celebrating w/Kerry on the 2nd, but on the 3rd, the “progressives” are going to start separating and start their own party.

Bill Quick – Dailypundit has it in his archives.

10/6 article, I think.