In the 1950s, the most puritanical place in America was somewhere in Kansas. Today it is Los Angeles.

Puritans are people who want to live according to a strict moral code of their own devising and want to make you live their way too.

The first round of Puritans murdered their king, Charles I, and ignited the English Civil War, which left many cities aflame and thousands dead. The next wave of Puritans nearly starved half of their number to death in a botched attempt at communal farming and (later) killed the Indians who had fed them one cold November afternoon. Next, came the infamous Salem witch trials (which find their echo on politically correct  campuses today). Held at bay for almost a century of progress, the Puritans roared back with a long campaign for prohibition. They finally got their way, with legislative maneuvers that Machiavelli would envy, and Prohibition passed in 1919. The result: the emergence of organized crime, the corruption of police, high officials and normal people, a tsunami of gangster attacks and the idea–new at the time–that ordinary citizens didn’t have to obey every law. The level of lawlessness has not yet retreated below its 1919 level. And, of course, the end of Prohibition, helped bring the New Deal.  But the Puritans were not done. Their children grew their hair long and sampled LSD, but had the same attitudes. America should not be able to test its atomic weapons. Invasions by communist armies of our democratic allies should be treated as “civil wars” and ignored. At first, they were simply Puritanical in their foreign policy, but, as they aged, the authoritarianism came home. When I wrote in the 1990s that smoking bans would be followed by wars on fatty foods and coffee, people laughed. Rhetorical excess. When I insisted I was serious, they smiled as if at an infant. (When Chicago banned fois gras and New York targeted trans-fats, no one called to apologize.) The modern form, what I call”hippie-Puritanism,” has one innovation: it is godless. That means that the last check of Puritan ambition is gone. With God went the idea that other people are ends, not means. The rest of us are  simply extras in their private movie of moral vanity.

Now L.A. and a host of other cities (some disturbingly east of the earthquake zone) are considering outdoor smoking bans. They have already banned smoking in offices, eateries, bars and beaches. Outdoors is next. Followed by a ban on smoking in your private car.

What is behind this Puritan impulse? Public health, you say. Well, that is what they always say. Witches were problems of moral health (the witches, not the witch hunters’, mind you) and alcohol was destructive to mind, body and society. Of course smoking and eating excessively can have negative health consequences. But Puritans have to morals of slaughterhouse operators: they want the cows to go to their deaths perfectly healthy. What does it matter if they were bored?

Puritanism, and those who are cowed before it, ignore the key question: Who decides? Who decides if a goose’s displeasure is better avoided than my displeasure at being deprived of fois gras? Who decides if a passerby’s momentary displeasure is of more value than my hour with a Churchill?

At the metaphysical level, these debates could go on forever. But on the practical level, the solution is simple: the owner of the property makes the rules.  When government became unlimited and this simple understanding of private property was lost, the stage for social civil war was set.  As usual, the Puritans are the aggressors. In the name of peace, the rest of us keep surrendering. At some point, enough people will realize they have run out of room.

That moment may come with Obama’s plan for a nationwide smoking ban.

Exhibit A: A proposal by the L.A. city council to ban smoking outdoors. Outdoors. Say on a patio or hotel balcony.

In Germany.

Now the L.A. Times seems to joining in, wondering if Obama lost his mojo.

Despite slavish coverage of his trip to Europe and the broad support of the media, the L.A. Times notes that polls are frozen–when Obama should be “breaking away.”

“Obama has not picked up any ground against McCain on foreign issues,” says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. “And some 52% think McCain would do a better job than Obama on the war in Iraq — virtually the same number who felt that way in April.”

Other polls show the same stubborn one-digit lead holding for the Democratic nominee-to-be with only 96 days left until the general election. Some crucial state polls even show McCain gaining.

After rehearsing Obama’s many advantages–fresh face, Americans want a change, speaking abilities to make Cato the elder weep with envy–the writer reluctantly raises the arrogance issue.

Is there a simmering concern over arrogance by the Ivy League lawyer and mere candidate who so blithely patted the French president on the back for a well-done news conference? Asked the other day if he ever doubted himself, Obama replied smartly, “Never!” And grinned broadly. Sounded more like a 20-year-old than someone about to turn 47 next week.

Or, put another way, Americans do not want to vote for someone who looks down on them. Obama needs to get in front of this before perceptions harden.

Consider this piece by Dana Milbank, in The Washington Post, which begins:

Barack Obama has long been his party’s presumptive nominee. Now he’s becoming its presumptuous nominee.

Fresh from his presidential-style world tour, during which foreign leaders and American generals lined up to show him affection, Obama settled down to some presidential-style business in Washington yesterday. He ordered up a teleconference with the (current president’s) Treasury secretary, granted an audience to the Pakistani prime minister and had his staff arrange for the chairman of the Federal Reserve to give him a briefing. Then, he went up to Capitol Hill to be adored by House Democrats in a presidential-style pep rally.

Along the way, he traveled in a bubble more insulating than the actual president’s. Traffic was shut down for him as he zoomed about town in a long, presidential-style motorcade, while the public and most of the press were kept in the dark about his activities, which included a fundraiser at the Mayflower where donors paid $10,000 or more to have photos taken with him. His schedule for the day, announced Monday night, would have made Dick Cheney envious…

Add this piece to Cohen’s column (linked by me a few days ago), and slew of private comments from journalists I have picked up from others in the past few weeks, and it seems as if Obama has jumped the shark.

Pity for Obama that election is still four months ago, an eternity in American politics.

Mark Levin, sometimes called “The Great One,” writes about his friend Rush Limbaugh. Worth reading.

Richard Cohen, writing in the Washington Post, raises it in a fascinating piece.

Not everyone at Bild is besotten with Barrack Obama.

Joachim Nikolaus Steinhöfel a commentator for Bild’s Sunday edition, offers a bracing corrective in a video you can find here. For those of you who thought the German press was hopelessly left, this is a little schnaps in your coffee. Many Germans watched this video–and a good many might well agree with Steinhöfe.

At my request, Steinhöfel provided this translation of the German script:

Barack Obama is outstanding – when reading bromides from a TelePrompTer. The Messiah is a three-year senator. Legislative achievements ? Nothing ! Obama’s favorite topic is Obama anyway. Thus he already managed to write to books regarding this subject. What does Obama stand for ? That is questionable and maybe he does not even know that himself. His voting record in the Senate is far left: massive tax increases, paternalistic state, redistribution. Regarding a lot of other issues, from the war in Iraq to capital punishment and the Second Amendment, his positions change whichever way the wind blows. He was calculating, even when he denounced his white grandmother as being racist. And what for ? To back his black hate priest, who married him and his wife and baptized his children. He is humorless and self-righteous. Thin-skinned, when criticized. But Obama praises Obama’s judgement. Being wrong every time, when his patronizing lectures collide with reality. His victory in the primaries he called “a historical moment, when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.” An American columnist comes to mind, that “even Jesus practiced his healing just on the sick.” Obama sees himself in another league.

In an email, Steinhöfel explains that he mentioned the race of Obama’s grandmother and that of Rev. Wright–he suspects that most Germans may not know or remember even these basic facts about Obama. Their love is broad, but not deep. Economists would say this is a case of “rational ignorance”; Germans cannot vote in the November election, so they have little reason to study him closely.

Unfortunately for Obama, American voters do have that incentive. Intense crushes do not last. Even if this summer’s infatuation is replaced with a cooler, adult-kind of love come autumn, will that be enough for Obama to win the presidency?

Even in the heat of summer passion, he is essentially tied with John McCain in polls.

Robert Mugabe surrenders.

For more than a decade, Mugabe–a Christian preacher turned Maoist missionary turned president-for-life–has been choking the life out of Zimbabwe. To cover the costs of his war in Congo, Mugabe ordered the invasions of large commercial farms in Zimbabwe in 2000. These farms, some of which I have visited, were beacons of liberalism and modernity. Workers received homes, medical care, training and schooling for their children in addition to their wages. As a result, most workers favored democracy–they had grown up outside of the government system and had not been hoodwinked by it. So guess where the money and votes for the opposition party, the Movement of Democratic Change or MDC, came from? When the ruling party took over the farms, the workers were fired and the equipment seized. The political city-dwellers had no idea how to run a modern farm, so the equipment (even the pipes and power lines) were sold for scrap. So the farm invasions harmed the opposition, wreaked the economy (the farms generated almost all of the nation’s export earnings), and hoovered up millions for Mugabe’s war. Food production fell. Zimbabwe’s remaining croplands barely fed their own owners.

Zimbabwe, once a proud food exporter, starved. Mugabe responded by inflating the currency, but world markets soon caught on. Hyper-inflation and currency collapse marched together for eight grim years.

When the national papers reported the truth, they were bombed and reporters attacked by thugs paid by the ruling Zanu-PF. When foreign reporters covered the tragedy, they were arrested and deported. Even the BBC was banned.

When millions of Zimbabweans trooped to polls to elect new leaders, Zanu-PF threatened them and miscounted their votes. Parliament elections, by-elections, and presidential elections were each “won” by Mugabe’s party by fraud and intimidation.

Now years of quiet diplomacy seem to have made a difference. The Fishmongers Group–a collection of  Western nations including Britain and America–have exerted enough pressure on South Africa, that its president Thabo Mbecki has told Mugabe to step aside. And the word is, he is doing so.

It looks like another victory for democracy, although belated and hard won. The Sunday Times (of London) does not tell us what President Bush’s involvement was. That omission makes me wonder: Is Bush building a pro-democracy legacy that our press corps are too uninterested to record?

The Bush chapter on the fight for democracy in Zimbabwe would make fascinating reading. I hope someone writes it.

The Associated Press seems to be declaring victory in Iraq.

This is an epochal moment.

While scattered attacks will continue, two veteran AP correspondents–one of whom, Robert H. Reid, has covered the war from Baghdad since 2003–believe that the tide has turned, based on extensive interviews with American and Iraqi commanders throughout Iraq. The AP lays out the evidence:
But the underlying dynamics in Iraqi society that blew up the U.S. military’s hopes for an early exit, shortly after the fall of Baghdad in April 2003, have changed in important ways in recent months.

Systematic sectarian killings have all but ended in the capital, in large part because of tight security and a strategy of walling off neighborhoods purged of minorities in 2006.

That has helped establish a sense of normalcy in the streets of the capital. People are expressing a new confidence in their own security forces, which in turn are exhibiting a newfound assertiveness with the insurgency largely in retreat.

Statistics show violence at a four-year low. The monthly American death toll appears to be at its lowest of the war — four killed in action so far this month as of Friday, compared with 66 in July a year ago. From a daily average of 160 insurgent attacks in July 2007, the average has plummeted to about two dozen a day this month. On Wednesday the nationwide total was 13.

Beyond that, there is something in the air in Iraq this summer.

In Baghdad, parks are filled every weekend with families playing and picnicking with their children. That was unthinkable only a year ago, when the first, barely visible signs of a turnaround emerged.

Obviously, much work lies ahead and U.S. forces may well be in Iraq, in some capacity, for years.

As a side note: The number of American combat deaths does not indicate that our nation is winning or losing. Victorious advances usually come with increased military deaths and retreats often mean fewer deaths. In this case, the low number of deaths is simply a proxy measuring the enemy’s ability to carry out attacks against our forces. In this case, good news.

Inevitably, some will begin to analyze this in terms of the presidential campaign. Will it hurt Obama, because it is more evidence that he was wrong about the surge, or help him, because it means that the public can turn the page on Iraq and focus on domestic issues (his strength)? I will let others worry about that question.

For now, we must not miss the two important points: As bad as media bias seems to many conservatives, it is good news that the press finally does cautiously report what it sees and hears. Doesn’t this suggest that the press was also telling the truth in the dark days of the war? In any event, the AP, the wire service that the blogosphere lives to poke, is not living in an anti-war version of Plato’s Cave. The AP’s reporting changed as the war did.

And, the biggest point: More than four thousand Americans wearing out nation’s uniform did not die in vain. They helped America achieve a vital turning point in Iraq. Force can sometimes do what diplomacy cannot. If we are lucky, Iraq’s democracy will survive and begin a transformation of the region.

Let’s hope their surviving comrades live to see a free Iraq and are not left with the cold comfort of that Vietnam-era bumpersticker: “We were winning when I left.”

In a breathless account, a woman reporter recounts her experience watching Obama work out in a German hotel gym. This piece appears in the usually sober German publication, Bild.

It is beyond parody:

Obama (with toned arms and a strong back) puts on his headphones for his iPod to listen to pop music. He hums quietly. Then he jumps on a fitness bike. He pushes three times on the pedals – but then can’t be bothered with it.

He goes and picks up a pair of 16 kilo weights and starts curling them with his left and right arms, 30 repetitions on each side. Then, amazingly, he picks up the 32 kilo weights! Very slowly he lifts them, first 10 curls with his right, then 10 with his left. He breathes deeply in and out and takes a sip of water from his 0,5 litre Evian bottle.

Shortly before five o’clock Obama comes over and sits directly next to my cross-trainer on the mat. First he does 10 sit-ups, then stretches. Then he looks at his watch and says to his bodyguard: “It’s time, let’s go.” Quickly I ask: “Mr. Obama, could I take a photo?”. “Of course!” he answers, before asking my name and coming over to stand next to me.

“My name’s Judith” I reply. “I’m Barack Obama, nice to meet you!” he says, and puts his arm across my shoulder. I put my arm around his hip – wow, he didn’t even sweat! WHAT A MAN!

Yes, those boldface letters caps are in the original piece.

And that little detail of Obama not sweating… it is belied by the picture, which shows a large damp triangle across his chest.

But let’s widen the frame. Why would a reporter write such a girlish rock-star-crush of an article? Only because she believes that Obamamania has so widely infected the press corps that she cannot be mocked for this bit of treacle. (Sadly, that calculation might be right.)

Exactly what reader is served by this, umm, report? What have we learned about Obama from this?

And it is not just the MSM that has been sucked in. Wonkette and others in the gyno-blogo-sphere simply link to this laughable piece without comment or, worse, with approving squeals. Before quoting the Bild exclusive, Wonkette writes: “Let’s enjoy her sexytime memories, together.”

Embarrassing for all concerned.

And doesn’t it make you wonder about the quality of their other coverage?