The Inexactitudes of Tod Lindberg's the Political Teachings of Jesus

Comment by Wayne Lusvardi:

In Tod Lindberg's new book The Political Teachings of Jesus, the Beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount are turned upside down and then inside out in a beguiling example of the social gospel of the Evangelical Left. Lindberg's sincere book could be misconstrued as somethng out of C.S. Lewis' The Screwtape Letters, although Lindberg is a far cry from being the incarnation of the devil. His book falls more into the category of apostasy and heresy than demonology. A synopsis of Lindberg's book can be found here.

The Beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount are contained in the Gospel of Matthew in the Christian New Testament. A number of blessings are issued by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount which inverts the standards of the world that are used to judge happiness (beatitudes means happiness).

Lindberg develops a set of eight "Anti-Beatitudes" to help us see the political implications of the Beatitudes in the Christian Gospels (Lindberg writes there are nine Beatitudes when there are only eight). Lindberg's eight "Anti-Beatitudes" are thus "Anti-Blessings." His focus is not so much to clarify the political implications of each blessing, but to issue curses upon those who disagree with his politics. Each of the above blessings sound beguiling and contain an element of truth. Below are the blessings contained in the Beatitudes in contrast with Lindberg's Anti-Beatitudes (or implied Curses) in parentheses:
1. Blessed are the poor in spirit (Cursed are the "rich," "prosperous," "privileged," and "arrogant"). Lindberg says that the opposite of those who are poor in spirit are those who are of a "privileged class," who are "arrogant in their righteousness," have a "sense of superiority" and are "prosperous." Where does Lindberg find the above terms? Certainly not from the Beatitudes. He is injecting his own social class and political bias into this first blessing.

The first of the Beatitudes "blessed are the poor in spirit" transcends all human conceptions of social class because even the rich can obviously be poor in spirit. In fact, even Jesus says "it is difficult for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God" (Matt:19:24). This must mean that the rich, possibly even more than the poor, are "poor in spirit." Anyone who has dealt much with ultra-wealthy families can testify that rich and poor families are more alike in their unhappiness than they are dissimilar (i.e., Tolstoy, Anna Kerenina).

2. Blessed are those who mourn (Cursed are those "who have cause for rejoicing"). Once again, Lindberg's juxtaposition of the words "mourning" and "rejoicing" are not reflective of Christ's words in the whole of the Gospels. Lindberg is not clear here, but what he appears to be driving at are those who rejoice rather than mourn at the death of a person; or possibly rejoice over a scandal or failure of a politician. If so, this Anti-Beatitude has true political implications.

The Gospels do not contain any sanction against rejoicing. In Luke 10:20 for example Jesus is quoted as saying "rejoice that your names are written in heaven." And in Romans 12:15 the Apostle Paul coincidentlly writes: "Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn." Joy is a Christian attitude. Lindberg's sanction against those who rejoice is more of a reflection of an "inexactitude" than a "beatitude."

3. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth (Cursed are the "overbearing"). Curiously, Lindberg uses the word "overbearing" here rather than bully, tormentor, or even terrorist. Anyone who is in a position of authority, a policeman, a tax collector, a soldier, a teacher, a social worker, a nurse, is going to have to be "overbearing" at times to accomplish any good. To Lindberg, it is apparently impossible for a person who exercises any kind of authority to be blessed or to be a Christian.

Alhough Lindberg's politics are solidly conservative, perhaps even Neo-conservative, anyone reading this Anti-Beatitude might reasonably get the false impression that the Sermon on the Mount is an anti-authoritarian message which legitimates some sort of extremist libertarian or anarchist politics. Even Jesus' political calculus had a tinge of Machiavellian realpolitik (see below).

4. "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness" (Cursed are the "complacent on account of their privileges and who defend them vigorously"). Once again, where does it say in this Beatitude that blessings should not flow to those who are propertied and who defend their property rights? This is what is called a non sequitur -- a statement that does not logically follow from what preceded it.

And where is the connection between "unrighteousness" and having "privileges?" Can the righteous ever be privileged? This sets up a false syllogism where only the unprivileged can be righteous. If the Beatitudes are only for the underprivileged how can they have universal appeal? Here Lindberg preaches a crude sort of proto-Marxism of the Proletariat.

5. "Blessed are the merciful, for they shall be shown mercy" (Cursed are the "unforgiving" and the "cruel" and "exploiters"). Surely, Jesus implored his followers to forgive "seventy times seven." But what is the "political" implication in the statement to be merciful and forgiving? Should we commute the prison sentences of every heinous murderer, terrorist, and assassin in mass? Lindberg does not say.

Modern society could not exist if every debt was forgiven. Taking things from the religious realm into the political realm as Lindberg does is going too far. It also assumes that man is all-knowing enough to know who to forgive? Witness the number of criminal recidivists after having their sentences commuted by parole boards. This is another example of an Inexactitude rather than a Beatitude.

6. "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God" (Cursed are "the cunning in pursuit of their private gain"). Lindberg's take on this Beatitude is that it is the actions of man, rather than God, that purifies a person. The entire thrust of the Gospels and the Letters of Paul are that man cannot by good works, or false piety, or false purity, inherit the Kingdom of God. As it is written in I John 1:7: "the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin." Lindberg seems oblivious to the political framework of Jesus ("be cunning as serpents and innocent as doves").

The point Lindberg seems to be making is to demonize private gain no matter what good comes from it. Lindberg's disparagement of private gain can be construed as a code word for the endorsement of socialism.

7. "Blessed are the peacemakers" (Cursed are "those who act to create or aggravate conflict"). Conflict is not synonymous with peace. It is impossible to live a conflict free life except if one is a vegetable, and even then there is the survival of the fittest against pestilence. Jesus said "he didn't come to bring peace, but a sword" (Matt. 10:34). Lindberg seems to be alluding that only pacifists can be blessed, a dubious proposition both empirically and theologically.

8. "Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness" (Cursed "are those doing the persecuting;" and "when people insult you...because of me...(they are) seeking to put down Jesus's teaching and those who follow it"). Contra Lindberg, Paul says to "bless those who persecute you" (Romans 12:14).

By the standard of the above anti-Beatitude, one can only guess that this critical review would be perceived as a sign of persecution of Lindberg and those of like mind. In fact, this review might be considered a sign of the righteousness of one's cause.

Oddly, Tod Lindberg is a political conservative, editor of conservative publications such as Policy Review, the Washington Times, and Hoover Institute research studies. He has been involved on a number of national committees on national security, genocide, and anti-Americanism. His pedigrees are impeccable. His book has been endorsed by those on both the political right and left such as E.J. Dionne, Michael Novak, Norman Podhoretz, Rodney Stark, and by the Procustean at Townhall.com.

Lindberg's website does not disclose his religious affiliation. The theological approach in his book would likely resonate with those on the Evangelical Left such as Jim Wallis, Ron Sider, or even Rabbi Michael Lerner.

Lindberg's apparent theology is a seductive heresy based on the notion that Jesus' ministry and message was meant to be against the rich and for the poor. It infers that God's transcendence is at least a hindrance to, and perhaps incompatible with, Christian social concern and action.

Moreover, transcendence does not mean God and His universal message transcends and judges all social class divisions but rather that the rich can transcend social class by their attitudes toward the poor and the weak. To Lindberg, God and his Kingdom do not have a real, automomous existence apart from the thoughts and good works of humanity. Christianity to Lindberg is not God extending himself to create and reconcile man but the extension of rich elities to the poor. Religious language such as the Beatitudes refer to human experience, nothing else. There are no unintended consequences from carrying out the Beatitudes, hence no original sin.

This sort of heresy was condemned over thirty years ago by what was then called The Hartford Declaration (1975) which was spearheaded by sociologist-theologian Peter L. Berger and then-Lutheran (now Catholic) priest Richard John Neuhaus. At that time the false gospels were coming from the Liberal Left. That the secularization of the Gospel is now apparently emanating from the Evangelical Left should be no less of a cause of concern.

In his essay Different Gospels: The Social Sources of Apostasy, sociologist Peter L. Berger warned about subordinating Christ's Gospel to a political agenda:

"Wherever a political agenda is seen as constitutive of the Church, all those who dissent from it are excluded from the Church. In that very instant, the Church is no longer catholic; indeed it ceases to be the church. And here is the ultimate irony: all such politicalization is an act of implicit excommunication. But, in politicizing its message, the Church is in actuality excommunicting itself? The Gospel liberates by relativizing all the realities of this world and all our projects in this world."

Berger goes on to state:

If we are liberated by faith, we act in the full knowledge of the precariousness and tragic unpredictability of all human projects. Most important: we act in this world, not to be saved, not to attain some perfect purity or justice (which goals are not attainable), but to be of specific and necessarily limited service to others....The moral measure of actions is their probable consequences for others. This is especially so in the case of political actions, because there is a category of actions with particularly unpredictable and potentially disastrous consequences. Precisely because of this, we are most likely to be effective politically (effective, that is, in being of service to our neighbors) if we ground ourselves in a realm beyond politics, thus becoming free to deal with political reality soberly and pragmatically; we cannot do this if we look on politics as the realm of redemption."

Perhaps no apostolic anathema is required to damn the gospels of worksrighteousness: the curse is built-in. Put differently: those who put their faith into these works in the end damn themselves."

Beyond the Myth

Steven F. Hayward reviews The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression, by Amity Shlaes.

This new book is the finest history of the Great Depression ever written. Hold on--this is supposed to be a review, not a dust-jacket blurb; but it can't be helped. Although there are several fine revisionist works about the Great Depression and the New Deal, Shlaes's achievement stands out for the devastating effect of its understated prose and for its wide sweep of characters and themes. It deserves to become the preeminent revisionist history for general readers.

The "forgotten man" theme arises from the ideological sleight of hand at the core of the New Deal. The phrase originated with the supposed "Social Darwinist" William Graham Sumner, who had in mind the taxpayer who was the forgotten third party when politicians dreamt up schemes of social improvement that depended on the forgotten man to provide the means. The New Deal turned this on its head through its portrayal of the "forgotten man" as the little guy left behind in the collapse of economic growth. Instead of being the productive citizen best left alone by government, the forgotten man of the New Deal was the lowly citizen whose salvation depended on government.

Most revisionist histories of the Depression depend on subsequent economic insights coupled with hindsight--a problem Shlaes notes early in her narrative: "Neither the standard history [that glorifies FDR and the New Deal] nor the standard rebuttal entirely captures the realities of the period." Shlaes's answer is to begin with a portrait of the 1920s that puts us inside the perspectives of the key figures of the time. "The 1920s was a great decade of true economic gains," she writes, "a period whose strong positive aspects have been obscured by the troubles that followed." Shlaes prompts the thought that the real tragedy of the Great Crash was that Calvin Coolidge had not sought re-election in 1928; he could have spared us the "priggish" (Shlaes's word) personality--and social-engineering mentality--of Herbert Hoover. (Of him, Coolidge shrewdly observed: "That man has offered me unsolicited advice for six years, all of it bad.") Had we followed the course we did in the sharp recession of 1921, when Warren Harding's government let markets correct and adjust, the aftermath of the Great Crash might have been short and mild compared with what happened.

Shlaes's achievement stands out for the devastating effect of its understated prose and for its wide sweep of characters and themes. It deserves to become the preeminent revisionist history for general readers.

Shlaes rids us of the temptation of thinking that Hoover, had he contrived reelection in 1932, might have avoided the macroeconomic mistakes FDR made. Instead of letting markets correct, Hoover raised taxes, signed the disastrous Smoot-Hawley tariff, and inveighed against short-sellers and other ostensible market manipulators. Shlaes is not the first to observe that Hoover and FDR represented, in political scientist Gordon Lloyd's phrase, "the two faces of liberalism," but she offers rich detail to the comparison. Both men lacked confidence in markets, and Hoover's interventions between the Crash in 1929 and FDR's accession in 1933 paved the way for the New Deal: "From 1929 to 1940, from Hoover to Roosevelt, government intervention helped to make the Depression Great."

Two things propelled FDR's New Deal beyond the depredations that would have come from Hoover's social-engineering mentality: the presence of the intellectuals and political operatives whom Shlaes calls "the pilgrims," and FDR's own intellectual instability combined with his political opportunism. "The pilgrims" refers to the handful of future New Deal intellectuals, Rexford Tugwell being the most prominent among them, who made a junket to the Soviet Union in 1927 that culminated in a six-hour interview with Stalin. Here Shlaes's prose is at its understated best. She does not portray the pilgrims as crypto-Communists bamboozled by Potemkin tours, though an element of that gullibility is inescapably present. Rather she discerns the "dreamy" cast of mind that was soon to create the New Deal's belief in vague, non-Marxist central planning. "The heroes [of the USSR] were not precisely their heroes," Shlaes writes. "Still, the meetings had their effect. The travelers were now transformed from obscure analysts of the Soviet Union into bearers of news. . . . The conservatives were having their day, and the planners would get theirs." Giddy with excitement, the pilgrims returned to the U.S. on the steamship Leviathan, "and the irony of that name may not have escaped some of them."

With the election of FDR, the pilgrims had their chance. Those conservatives who lately have inclined to some sentimental affection for FDR (this includes Conrad Black and, occasionally, this writer) will be roundly disabused by the damning portrait Shlaes offers. "Roosevelt was not an ideologue or a radical," she judges, but his affinity for experimentation and improvisation yielded inconsistent and destabilizing economic policy at a time when certainty was the most needful thing. FDR's intellectual instability was terrifying in its fullness; fortunately, it was tempered by the rivalries and disagreements within his menagerie of New Dealers, and by the countervailing power of American political institutions (which prevented him from, e.g., packing the Supreme Court).

When presidential candidate Ronald Reagan remarked that "fascism was really the basis of the New Deal," liberals and the media hooted; the Washington Post huffed that "several historians of the New Deal period questioned by the Washington Post said they had no idea what Reagan was referring to." Thanks to Shlaes's book, journalists in the future will not be able to plead such ignorance: She notes that FDR's first attempt at centralized economic planning, the National Recovery Administration (NRA), owed its inspiration in part to Mussolini's Italian model. The NRA's ineffectuality could be demonstrated in a number of theoretical or technical ways, but Shlaes captures the futility of the enterprise in two magnificent sentences: "In a period of a year, 10,000 pages of law had been created [by the NRA], a figure that one had to compare with the mere 2,735 pages that constituted federal statute law. In twelve months, the NRA had generated more paper than the entire legislative output of the federal government since 1789."

But when the Supreme Court saved FDR from this folly by ruling it unconstitutional, FDR veered farther left, with punitive tax measures that deterred capital formation and investment, and prosecutions of the rich (especially Samuel Insull and Andrew Mellon) that were purely political. The result of these and other ill-conceived measures was a needlessly prolonged Great Depression.

Shlaes offers a new gloss on the old theme of how FDR used the Depression to craft the durable New Deal coalition. Here her narrative sparkles, as she recounts how FDR transformed the failures of his economic policy to his political advantage in the 1936 election. The failure of the New Deal to deliver meaningful economic growth lent paradoxical validity to FDR's class-warfare rhetoric: "Many in the country believed that the United States was actually becoming the society of social classes that Roosevelt now described in his speeches. And they responded accordingly," that is, by re-electing Roosevelt. The secret was purposely dividing people into interest groups, and pandering to enough of them to create a majority.

As the story approaches the end of the 1930s, Shlaes's most interesting subtext comes to the fore: the evolution of FDR's 1940 challenger Wendell Willkie. In the early chapters Willkie is seen as a naïve utility executive with reformist sympathies who thought he could cut deals with FDR, only to be bitterly disappointed when he was ground up along with the rest of the malefactors of great wealth. He couldn't say he wasn't warned. Insull told Willkie in 1934: "Mr. Willkie, when you are older you will know more."

Insull was right. By 1938, by which time the Depression was coming to seem permanent, Willkie had joined the Republican party, and, because of his trenchant criticisms of the New Deal, was emerging as a surprise candidate for the GOP presidential nomination. The GOP had done well in 1938, and, according to Shlaes, "the reputation of the New Deal was continuing to drop": "People were taking in the longer-term consequences of all the experiments." Willkie's themes in the campaign that followed in some ways prefigure Reagan in 1980: "I saw that we must substitute for the philosophy of distributed scarcity the philosophy of unlimited productivity," Willkie said in his kickoff speech; "I stand for the restoration of full production and reemployment by private enterprise in America." Willkie manfully attempted to reclaim the "forgotten man" theme for Republicans: "What that man wanted us to remember was his chance--his right--to take part in our great American adventure." The Gipper could hardly have put it better.

But looming in the background, Shlaes thinks, was the European war, and the Republicans' latent isolationism diluted their appeal. Although Willkie was an internationalist, FDR was a more convincing one. "As leaders and oppositions since have discovered," Shlaes writes, "war trumps everything--economics as well as politics." In the absence of the specter in Europe, Shlaes thinks Willkie might have defeated Roosevelt. Shlaes's judgment about Willkie and the 1940 election is probably correct, but it is the only thinly argued part of The Forgotten Man. To complete this account, more needs to be said about the cognitive dissonance that characterizes public opinion toward America's global involvement. (FDR, for example, was quietly consulting pollsters during this time to determine how far he could go with his European policy.)

Shlaes leaves it to the reader to project lessons forward to our own time. The Democratic party lived large on FDR's high-tax, class-warfare playbook for nearly two generations. The Reagan Revolution put some of it into receivership, but the impulse to tax, regulate, and plan the economy remains embedded in contemporary liberalism, with John Edwards, among others, doing his best to revive New Deal-style populism and animus against wealth. We are now so far removed from the economic ruin of the New Deal's ill-considered economic interventionism that resistance to grand central fixes for health care, global warming, or outsourcing may be on the wane. With this prospect in mind, Shlaes's book could be called The Forgotten Lesson.

http://www.aei.org/publications/filter.,pubID.26494/pub_detail.asp

Transfusions bring experts' blood to boil

Contrary to their benign image, blood transfusions are overused and often harm patients, expert say

REFUSE at your own risk: for years that's the message doctors have relayed to Jehovah's Witnesses and others who've declined blood transfusions.
But transfusions are not the wonder procedure of popular, or even medical profession, imagination. Mounting evidence shows they significantly increase the risk of post-operative complications - including infections, kidney failure, lung injury and death.

Yet instead of being saved as a last resort, they are still being performed when other safer options could be used instead.

In fact, more than 25 per cent of blood transfusions currently performed are unnecessary, according to a visiting US expert who spoke at the annual scientific meeting of the Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists (ANZCA) two weeks ago.

Internationally renowned emergency medicine and anaesthiology professor Bruce Spiess told the conference that while blood transfusions have long been "believed to be helpful and a pillar of modern medicine'', there was now relatively little evidence to support such claims.

"Drug options are carefully tested and regulated through prospective, randomised double-blind testing, but blood transfusion stands apart,'' Spiess says. "It has never been safety or efficacy tested.''

It's a point that has been echoed by several Australian experts, including anaesthesists associate professor Larry McNicol and doctor Peter McCall at Austin Health in Melbourne.

"From the point of view of the risk of transmitting infections, blood transfusions are safer than they have ever been,'' McCall says.

"However, there is an ever-increasing body of research about adverse outcomes in association with them. Still there is a tendency to think that blood transfusions are mystical and lifesaving, and it is better to give them than to withhold them.''

The reasons not to make blood transfusion routine are becoming increasingly apparent: a person who has had a blood transfusion after surgery has up to four times the risk of wound infections. People who have blood transfusions during cancer surgery face up to twice the risk of the cancer recurring.

In his conference presentation, Spiess discussed Swedish research on cardiac patients that compared Jehovah's Witnesses who refused blood transfusions to patients with similar disease progression during open-heart surgery. The research found those who refused transfusions had noticeably better survival rates.

There are a few major reasons complications arise following transfusion. For one thing, immune response is impaired as the body responds to the blood as a foreign body, much in the same way it responds to a transplant, experts say. The properties of red blood cells also become altered when blood is stored, reducing their ability to distribute oxygen through the body.

Yet at least 25 per cent of transfusions that are done could be avoided, Spiess says.

A 2005-2006 audit of the use of fresh frozen plasma in hospitals in Tasmania and Victoria found that one-third of the transfusions performed were inappropriate under underguidelines issued by the National Health and Medical Research Council, says associate professor Larry McNicol, who also chairs the Better Safer Transfusion program run by the Victorian Government.

"Essentially these patients really perhaps didn't need it and there might not have been therapeutic benefits,'' McNicol says.

But there are still circumstances when blood transfusion is necessary, and the patient would probably die if they did not receive one, says University of Sydney professor James Isbister, a consultant on haemotology and blood transfusion who chairs the Red Cross advisory board.

Isbister says blood transfusion can be vital for patients undergoing major surgery after experiencing major trauma or shock when there is major bleeding that is difficult to control quickly. It can also be instrumental in managing hemophilia, where blood does not clot, as well as acute hemorrhages.

"A lot of major surgery would never have developed without the possibility for blood transfusion either - for instance, open heart surgery,'' Isbister says.

But many of the cases in the Better Safer Transfusion audit involved transfusions that could have been avoided. For example, it was once thought that blood transfusions should be performed any time a patient's hemoglobin level dipped below 10 grams of hemoglobin per decilitre of blood - but now guidelines in varying countries put that between 6 and 8g.

"It used to be that 10g was the acceptable minimum, but now we know that patients are at no detriment by a running a lower count and we can avoid these additional risks,'' McCall says.

"When the blood count is lower, the heart is able to beat more strongly - so it can actually pump more efficiently to distribute the blood better.''

The audit also uncovered a tendency for some doctors to use transfusions as a precaution in patients who were at risk of bleeding, but not yet bleeding - for example, they might have had abnormal test results. In those cases the guidelines recommend doctors wait until bleeding starts.

Other studies have also shown that the likelihood of receiving a transfusion during elective orthopaedic surgery or cardiac surgery can vary enormously between hospitals, despite there being little difference between the patients, Isbister says.

"There's huge variation between hospitals and surgeons depending on where you have your operation - in one hospital you can have an 80 per cent chance of being transfused, and in another hospital 10 per cent chance.''

"Most patients undergoing hip and knee surgery should only have a 10 to 20 per cent chance of needing a transfusion - but there's evidence it can be much higher.''

There are a number of ways to avoid transfusions, including drugs that minimise blood loss and others that stop clots from being dissolved, as well as anesthetic and surgical techniques to minimise blood loss.

"You don't always have to bring a person's blood pressure up to normal - you can keep it low and that minimises bleeding,'' he says.

In surgery where there's a risk of major blood loss, doctors frequently use a technique called "red cells salvage'', which allows them to reuse the patient's own blood rather than transfusing someone else's. The patient's blood is collected in a machine where it is then washed in a saline solution before being given back to the patient.

But the battle to reduce unnecessary transfusions often begins before surgery.

"One of the ways to minimise transfusions is to prepare patients better before surgery - for example you can give them supplements to get their blood count up before surgery,'' McCall says.

To that end a 2005 South Australian audit found that 18 per cent of people who had been on waiting lists for elective surgery had anemia, which increases the chances of needing a transfusion. If the anemia had been better managed before surgery some of those patients could have avoided blood transfusions, according to Kathryn Robinson, medical adviser of South Australia's BloodSafe.

But for all the bad news, experts say that change is on the horizon. Various states are developing initiatives to help decrease unnecessary transfusions, and at a conference of federal and state health ministers in March the federal Government said it would fund two initiatives expected to improve the safety of the blood supply and improve outcomes for people who do ultimately need transfusions.

One of those initiatives is the universal testing of platelets, which carry particularly high risks of complications. Unlike other blood products, platelets can't be refrigerated, so they are susceptible to contamination by bacteria. International guidelines recommend all platelets be universally tested for the bacteria, but currently only about 5 per cent of the supply is tested, McNicol says.

At the same meeting the government announced that by 2010 all blood will be processed to remove white blood cells, known as leuko-reduced blood, which has been shown to dramatically reduce complications and is already in widespread use in Canada, New Zealand, Western Europe and elsewhere.

"There are three randomised controlled studies in heart surgery, where patients who were deemed appropriate to be transfused got either leuko-reduced blood or blood with white cells present,'' Spiess says.

"The death rate in those with leuko-reduced blood was roughly half that in those with blood with white cells,'' Speiss says. "In the patients that got no blood, there were no deaths at all.''

Source

From Abscam On: The career and modus operandi of Rep. John P. Murtha

By STEPHEN SPRUIELL

Johnstown, Pennsylvania's "Showcase for Commerce" started in 1991 as a small trade show for area businesses, but since then it has grown into one of the U.S. defense industry's most important events of the year. Many big names are represented -- Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, and Lockheed Martin all have booths within a few yards of each other -- but the star of the show is John P. Murtha, Johnstown's U.S. congressman, who attends every year and visits every exhibit booth. An entourage follows Murtha around the crowded arena, including a photographer, several senior staff members, and one assistant whose sole job appears to be gathering promotional materials and taking copious notes. At each booth, powerful defense-industry executives greet him with smiles and handshakes, eager to show him their latest prototypes and proposals.

The showcase is symbolic of Johnstown's transformation from a hard-hit former steel town into, as one contractor who attended this year's showcase put it, "the beating heart of the U.S. defense industry," or at least one of its major regional hubs. Murtha gets a hero's welcome at the showcase, not just because it was his idea, but also because his position as chairman or ranking member of the defense appropriations subcommittee for the past 18 years has a lot to do with the defense industry's interest in the region.

In turn, Murtha's patronage for his district has made him one of the most powerful members of the House of Representatives and a huge roadblock standing between the Democrats and the kind of meaningful ethics reform they promised during their 2006 "culture of corruption" campaign. The money he secures for Johnstown comes back to him in the form of campaign contributions, which ensure his reelection and provide him with surplus cash to give out to other members. Murtha has been reelected 16 times, giving him seniority in the House and the plum committee assignments that go with it. His chairmanship of the defense subcommittee gives him control over half of the earmarks in every defense appropriations bill, which buy him even more loyalty and influence in the House. On top of all that, Murtha has a strong relationship with Speaker Nancy Pelosi, dating back to when he helped get her a seat on the powerful Appropriations Committee. He is an integral part of the new Democratic majority -- and it cannot be the party of institutional reform as long as he is in power.

Evidence of that was on recent display when Murtha twice violated a new rule governing earmarks -- provisions lawmakers can attach to bills directing agencies to fund specific projects -- and got away with it when his party defeated a Republican's attempt to hold him accountable. During one of their sporadic attempts at ethics reform since taking over Congress, House Democrats passed a new rules package in January that included a measure forbidding members to condition earmarks for other members on how they vote. In early May, Rep. Mike Rogers, a Michigan Republican, offered a motion to remove a $23 million earmark for the National Drug Intelligence Center from the intelligence authorization bill on the grounds that several government agencies tasked with auditing the center have declared it to be an inefficient and duplicative waste of taxpayer money. The only problem with Rogers's attempt to cut the center's funding was that the center is in Johnstown, and the guy who sponsored the earmark was John Murtha.

First, Murtha allegedly threatened Rep. Todd Tiahrt, a Kansas Republican and fellow member of the Appropriations Committee, for voting with Rogers. (Tiahrt, whose district houses a Boeing assembly plant with business before Murtha's subcommittee, declined to comment for this article and isn't discussing the incident.) Then Murtha went after Rogers: "I hope you don't have any earmarks in the defense appropriation bill because they are gone, and you will not get any earmarks now and forever," Murtha said. When Rogers told Murtha that this was not the way to handle their dispute, Murtha responded, "That's the way I do it."

Rogers says, "As a former FBI agent, and with about twelve years' experience in politics now, I can tell the difference between what is passionate, emotional, sometimes even angry political speech, versus what is certainly intended to be an act of intimidation." He says Murtha's threat clearly crossed that line. Yet when Rogers introduced a motion to reprimand Murtha for violating the new rule, all but two House Democrats voted to kill the resolution without a debate. "I wasn't surprised that [the Democrats] took the partisan position on [the resolution]," Rogers says, "but I was a little surprised that they didn't allow the debate . . . or at least refer it to the ethics committee on their own. They took neither option. They basically said, "We're not even going to talk about it.'"

Among Democrats voting to shield Murtha was Zack Space, the freshman Democrat who replaced scandal-plagued Ohio Republican Bob Ney and who has taken a prominent role as a spokesman for the Democrats' new lobbying-reform bill. A week before Murtha's run-in with Rogers, Space went on a C-SPAN program and said, "Members of Congress must know that if they break the rules, they will be caught and punished." Given that Space and a number of freshmen like him owe their seats to their party's rhetoric on the subject of GOP corruption, one might be surprised that not a single one of them voted to reprimand Murtha. But their actions make more sense in light of Representative Murtha's recent fundraising activities.

Last year Murtha formed a leadership political-action committee called Majority PAC, through which he contributed over $150,000 to other Democrats' campaigns. According to the Majority Accountability Project, a conservative-leaning watchdog group, this included nearly $50,000 to the campaigns of 19 freshmen, including Space. Even though leadership PACs became more popular in 2006 among all members of Congress, it turned out to be an especially advantageous time for Murtha to establish one. Just as a new crop of reform-minded Democrats looked like it was headed for Congress, Murtha added a new weapon to his arsenal of influence.

Considering Murtha's history of ethical transgressions, perhaps this showed some foresight on his part. Ever since his notorious involvement as an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1980 Abscam sting operation, Murtha has consistently opposed tougher ethics rules and has actually co-sponsored legislation to make it harder to investigate members of Congress. In 1998, he and Pennsylvania Republican Joe McDade (who was indicted but acquitted on bribery charges in the early 1990s) sponsored a bill to create a congressionally appointed review board with oversight into Justice Department investigations of lawmakers' activities. At the time, congressional watchdog groups called it the Corrupt Politicians' Protection Board. More recently, Murtha referred to the Democrats' latest attempts at ethics reform as "total crap."

All of these various aspects of Murtha's m.o. -- the earmarks, the campaign cash, and the network of personal connections -- were on display at this year's trade show in Johnstown. Take the story of Kuchera Industries, founded in 1985 just outside of Johnstown. Kuchera's executives paid little attention to their congressman until one of Murtha's former aides, Carmen Scialabba, approached CEO Bill Kuchera in 2001 about a non-profit Scialabba created to help disabled people find work. It must have seemed like the opportunity of a lifetime for the small manufacturing firm. The Washington Post reported last December that Kuchera subsequently joined the non-profit's board, started employing more disabled workers, and hired a lobbying firm chaired by a retired congressman -- Joe McDade.

FEC records show that Kuchera's top officials proceeded to donate more than $45,000 to Murtha and his PAC over the next three election cycles, and an analysis of Murtha's recent fundraising efforts shows an even more dramatic increase in Kuchera's contributions. In just the first three months of 2007, Kuchera's top executives have given Murtha and his PAC close to $20,000 -- nearly half the amount they contributed over the previous six years. Last year, according to a study done by Taxpayers for Common Sense, Murtha earmarked $1.3 million for Kuchera in the defense appropriations bill. This year, the day after Murtha stopped by all three companies' booths at the Johnstown showcase, Kuchera announced at a press conference that it had been awarded two new contracts, totaling $14 million, by Northrop Grumman and Raytheon -- both of which have substantial business before Murtha's subcommittee.

Murtha declined to be interviewed for this article, but in response to a question about his involvement in the deal, a spokesman for Murtha wrote, "Our staff works with community organizations and leaders to effectively market our region. The announcements made at the Showcase were a direct result of area businesses providing quality work coupled with superior responsiveness at a price that is frequently unmatched."

Of course, Murtha has never apologized for steering money into his district. But for the Democrats, he creates an uncomfortable political problem by demonstrating how powerless they are to challenge his way of doing business. It might be good politics to campaign against the other guy's network of campaign cash and influence, but apparently it's even better politics actually to have such a network. Just ask 17-term congressman Jack Murtha.

Mr. Spruiell is National Review Online's media reporter

Not encouraging cultural assimilation a liability

HENRY BRECHUN, Cambridge

I question if we are on the right path by encouraging immigrants to retain their old cultural identities.

Years ago, people "knew" that it would be just a matter of time before new immigrants would cast aside their old world habits and would take up the "sensible" habits of the new world.

This assumption no longer applies to our politically correct world and Western societies across the globe are experiencing difficulties with new immigrants who show no intention of assimilating.

We are now too tolerant of newcomers and the only culture that is dispensable is the Canadian one. Our values and traditions are the only ones to be pushed aside by order of Big Brother.

We'll remove all reference to Christ at Christmas. We'll obscure glazing at YMCAs so religious folks need not be offended by the appearance of women clad in exercise suits. We'll force changes to soccer rules to allow ostensibly religious headgear to be worn on the pitch, but we will not ask any newcomer to change.

Can't Canadians establish societal norms and reasonably expect that others who choose to move here will adapt to them instead of the other way around?

We used to think that democracy was a government by the people for the people, but ours is turning out to be a government for charter malcontents, run by lawyers.

You may think my comments to be uncharitable to newcomers, but I speak as a son of immigrants. My first language was neither English nor French and my parents arrived before there was any social safety net. In my experience, Canadians know a thing or two about the immigrant experience, but official Canada is another story.

Canada today must stop being a doormat for the world; we should establish some house rules for our newer citizens. I admit it takes a heart much bigger than my own to open up unconditionally to newcomers who chant "Death to America" in their homelands, but I am more concerned about the brain and not the heart.

We have every right to spell out expectations for our newcomers. It is in our best interest to assimilate immigrants so they become new Canadians and not hyphenated Canadians. It is right to give prime consideration to citizens who are likely to be compatible with Canadian values, instead watching our own values transform under the mass of insoluble religions or cultures.

We have much to be proud of and should be keenly aware that our success is the reason people are attracted to this nation and they don't come here as a favour to Canadians. We should not remain indifferent and neutral to what we see around us in our country.

If our multicultural policy remains blindfolded in a politically correct sense of fairness, we can expect nothing more than to transplant old world cultures and old world problems.

To see our potential future, look to Britain, where one in six British Muslims polled believes the London Tube and bus bombers were motivated by a just cause.

Or look closer to home to Minnesota, where ethnic cab drivers refuse to pick up blind fares who are accompanied by their seeing eye dogs - for religious reasons.

Sometimes being tolerant isn't a virtue - it's a liability.

http://www.cambridgetimes.ca/cam/viewpoint/viewpoint_801095.html

Jimmy Carter: Radical Islam's Ally

By Michael D. Evans

The Left in America is screaming to high heaven that the current situation in Iraq and the war on terrorism has been caused by the right wing and that President George Bush, the so-called “dim-witted cowboy,” has created the entire mess. The truth is the entire nightmare can be traced back to the liberal democratic policies of the leftist Jimmy Carter, who created a firestorm that destabilized our greatest ally in the Muslim world, the shah of Iran, in favor of a religious fanatic, the Ayatollah Khomeini.

Mr. Carter viewed Khomeini more as a holy man in a grassroots revolution than a founding father of modern terrorism. His ambassador to the UN, Andrew Young, said “Khomeini will eventually be hailed as a saint.“ Mr. Carter’s Iranian ambassador, William Sullivan, said, “Khomeini is a Gandhi-like figure.” His adviser James Bill proclaimed in a Newsweek interview on February 12, 1979, that Khomeini was not a mad mujahid [ranking cleric], but a man of “impeccable integrity and honesty.“

The shah was terrified of Mr. Carter. He told his personal confidant, “Who knows what sort of calamity he [Carter] may unleash on the world?”

Let’s look at the results of President Carter’s misguided liberal policies: the Islamic Revolution in Iran; the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (Mr. Carter’s response was to boycott the 1980 Moscow Olympics); the birth of Osama bin Laden’s terrorist organization; the Iran-Iraq War, which cost the lives of millions dead and wounded; and yes, the present war on terrorism and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

When Mr. Carter entered the political fray in 1976, America was still riding the liberal wave of anti-Vietnam War emotion. He asked for an in-depth report on Iran even before he assumed the reins of government and was persuaded that the shah was not fit to rule Iran. 1976 was a banner year for pacifism: Mr. Carter was elected president, Bill Clinton became attorney-general of Arkansas, and Albert Gore won a place in the Tennessee House of Representatives.

In his anti-war pacifism, Jimmy Carter never got it that Khomeini, a cleric exiled to Najaf in Iraq from 1965-1978, was preparing Iran for revolution. Proclaiming “the West killed God and wants us to bury him,” Khomeini’s weapon of choice was not the sword but the media. Using tape cassettes smuggled by Iranian pilgrims returning from the holy city of Najaf, he fueled disdain for what he called gharbzadegi (“the plague of Western culture”).

President Carter pressured the shah to make what he termed human rights concessions by releasing political prisoners and relaxing press censorship. Khomeini could never have succeeded without Mr. Carter. The Islamic Revolution would have been stillborn.

Gen. Robert Huyser, Mr. Carter’s military liaison to Iran, once told me in tears: “The president could have publicly condemned Khomeini and even kidnapped him and then bartered for an exchange with the [American Embassy] hostages, but the president was indignant. ‘One cannot do that to a holy man,’ he said.”

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has donned the mantle of Ayatollah Khomeini, taken up bin Laden’s call, and is fostering an Islamic apocalyptic revolution in Iraq with the intent of taking over the Middle East and the world.

Jimmy Carter became the poster boy for the ideological revolution of the 1960s in the West, hell bent on killing the soul of America. The bottom line: Carter believed then and still does now is that evil really does not exist; people are basically good; America should embrace the perpetrators and castigate the victims.

In the ‘60s it was mass rebellion after the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King. When humanity confronts eternity, the response is always rebellion or repentance. The same ideologues who fought to destroy the soul of America with the “God is dead” movement in the ‘60s are now running the arts, the universities, the media, the State Department, Congress, and Senate, determined more than ever to kill the soul of America while the East attempts to kill the body. Mr. Carter’s world view defines the core ideology of the Democratic Party.

What is going on in Iraq is no mystery to those of us who have had our fingers on the pulse of both Iran and Iraq for decades. The Iran-Iraq war was a war of ideologies. Saddam Hussein saw himself as an Arab leader who would defeat the non-Arab Persians. Khomeini saw it as an opportunity to export his Islamic Revolution across the borders to the Shi’ites in Iraq and then beyond to the Arab countries.

Throughout the war both leaders did everything possible to incite the inhabitants of each country to rebel – precisely what Iran is now doing in Iraq. Khomeini encouraged the Shi’ites across the border to remove Saddam from power and establish an Islamic republic like in Iran.

Mr. Carter’s belief that every crisis can be resolved with diplomacy - and nothing but diplomacy - now permeates the Democratic Party. Unfortunately, he is wrong.

There are times when evil must be openly confronted and defeated.

Khomeini had the help of the PLO in Iran. They supplied weapons and terrorists to murder Iranians and incite mobs in the streets. No wonder Yasser Arafat was hailed as a friend of Khomeini after he seized control of Iran and was given the Israeli Embassy in Teheran with the PLO flag flying overhead.

The Carter administration scrambled to assure the new regime that the United States would maintain diplomatic ties with Iran. But on April 1, 1979, the greatest April Fools’ joke of all time was played, as Khomeini proclaimed it the first day of the government of God.

In February 1979 Khomeini boarded an Air France flight to return to Teheran with the blessing of Jimmy Carter. The moment he arrived, he proclaimed: “I will kick his teeth in” – referring to then Prime Minister Shapour Bakhtiar, who was left in power with a US pledge of support. He was assassinated in Paris by Iranian agents in 1991.

On September 23, 1980, I had dinner with Isser Harel, the former head of Israel’s Mossad, at his home with Dr. Reuven Hecht, a senior adviser to then Prime Minister Menachem Begin. I asked Harel who he thought would be elected president of the United States. He said the word on the street was that Iran would vote in favor of Ronald Reagan by releasing the American hostages during the inauguration.

Little did I know that for months President Carter had tried to cut a financial deal to get the hostages freed, knowing it would likely mean the presidency if he succeeded. On Inauguration Day, Mr. Carter reached a final agreement and transferred $7.977 billion to Iran from the Federal Reserve, along with signing an agreement to respect Iran’s territorial integrity and granting amnesty against law suits to Iran by the hostages or their families.

I asked Isser Harel two more questions that evening. The first was what would happen to then Egyptian president Anwar Sadat. The answer was that he would be killed for preaching President Carter’s democratic delusions. My last question was would terrorism ever come to America. “You have the power to fight it,” he said, “but not the will. They have the will, but not the power. All of that will change in time. Yes, I fear it will come to New York and your tallest building, which is a symbol of your fertility.”

Michael D. Evans is a prominent Christian commentator on the Middle East

Only one in British police 40 officers free to answer calls

Only one in 40 police officers on duty in some forces is available to respond to 999 calls, according to a study published yesterday.

The report, from HM Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC), found that only 2.5 per cent of uniformed officers in one area were allocated to "response duties". This meant that out of 800 officers at work only 20 were free for emergency response, which included patrolling alcohol-scarred towns and cities at night.

In another force, which was also unnamed, 50 officers were on duty but only three - six per cent - were allocated to "incident management".

The HMIC findings, in a report entitled Beyond the Call, will reignite the debate over bureaucracy and station-bound duties which keep the vast majority of the record 140,000 officers in England and Wales off the streets.

The inspectorate now plans a study of bureaucracy, including a look at concerns that not enough experienced constables and sergeants are available to supervise a front-line presence of probationers and newly-qualified officers.

Yesterday's report found that some patrol officers failed to make good use of their time on duty unless closely supervised by their sergeant. This was a "highly inefficient use of scarce resources", it said.

It also found difficulties in the way forces handle the flood of 999 calls, which has risen steadily in recent years. It showed that police dispatchers routinely downgraded emergency calls. HM inspectors were told that patrol officers sometimes questioned why they were being sent on some calls. Some officers even failed to respond.

"In some cases, where patrols do not respond or make themselves unavailable, dispatch or control staff admit that they downgrade incidents in order to alleviate pressure on themselves," it said. "In other cases, they upgrade non-emergency incidents in the knowledge that only immediate and priority calls will have any chance of being resourced." The extent to which the police deal with callers only by telephone also emerged.

The report encouraged "telephone resolution" but warned that it has to be carried out in a way that does not leave the public dissatisfied.

"A number of forces have developed strategies around telephone resolution, thereby releasing valuable resources to engage in emergency response or in longer-term, pro-active problem-solving initiatives," it said. "Some eight million incidents per year are being resolved without officer attendance."

The inspectors, who looked at 999 calls and other calls to police, amounting to 67 million a year, also criticised the way officers kept victims updated about progress on investigating crimes. Their report suggested continuing to use technology such as text messages and the internet to make improvements.

Police in England and Wales deal with 33 million incidents a year. Of those, 17 per cent are classed as emergencies requiring an immediate response, with 20 per cent as "priorities" requiring a response within the hour.

Yesterday's findings echo the conclusions of independent research for the Police Federation, and reported recently in The Daily Telegraph, that as few as three uniformed police officers were available to patrol the streets, respond to 999 calls and tackle night-time disorder in some towns.

The federation research showed that officers were heavily diverted into work to meet Home Office targets and provide the Government with statistics.

David Davis, the shadow home secretary, said: "These alarming statistics prove what we have been saying all along - that as a result of constant Government interference and diktats our police are operating nowhere near as efficiently as they could."

The Liberal Democrat home affair spokesman, Nick Clegg, said: "This is what comes from tying up police officers in reams of paperwork and Government tick-box bureaucracy. Both the police and the public want our police officers ready and able to respond to emergency calls, not locked in a station filling out forms."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1547097/Only-one-in-40-officers-free-to-answer-calls.html

The Goal Is Freedom: Progressive Illiberalism

by Sheldon Richman

The Progressive movement, which dominated the American scene in the years from the turn of the century to United State entrance in World War I, was not primarily a liberal movement, writes Arthur A. Ekirch Jr. in his magisterial work The Decline of American Liberalism. [I]n contrast to former American efforts at reform, progressivism was based on a new philosophy, partly borrowed from Europe, which emphasized collective action through the instrumentality of government. (For previous my articles about important Ekirch's book, see this and this.)

Ekirch sees progressivism as an extension of the concentration of power in Washington, D.C., that had taken place since the Civil War. The embodiment of that centralization was Theodore Roosevelt, champion of the fateful war against Spain, who became president in 1901 after William McKinley was assassinated. Roosevelt as president exemplified to a superlative degree the nationalistic side of progressivism, Ekirch writes. An enthusiastic believer in a strong centralized government, under firm executive leadership, Roosevelt was a patrician reformer who frankly preferred the principles of Alexander Hamilton to those of Thomas Jefferson. While he embraced the elitist's noblesse oblige toward people of lower station, he had only the greatest scorn for the kind of middle-class individualism and liberalism that emphasized minding one's own business both at home and abroad. In foreign affairs Roosevelt, despite a range of interests that was world-wide, was not fundamentally an internationalist in either thought or action. His major policies seldom rose above narrowly nationalistic considerations, and his venturesome diplomacy incited widespread animosity against the Unites States. (It's worth mentioning that Roosevelt is the hero of Karl Rove and John McCain.) As Ekirch suggests, H.L. Mencken did not exaggerate when he likened TR to Frederick the Great and the Kaiser. He was, Ekirch writes, the leader of both progressive and imperialist forces in the United States.

    More than anyone else, he was responsible for Dewey's fleet being stationed at Hong Kong ready for its fateful dash to the Philippines – a voyage that did so much to launch the United States upon the course of imperialism. In domestic affairs, Roosevelt understood the radical temper of the nineties and the intensity of the public revolt against the monopolistic practices of big business. Determined therefore to avert the danger of an agrarian return to Jeffersonian liberalism or of a socialistic expropriation of private property, Roosevelt by a judicious mixture of trustbusting and benevolent regulation helped to safeguard American big business.

Ekirch draws attention to the fact that government intervention was the source of big-business expansion, a point overlooked by most historians: Thus, tariffs and government subsidies continued to be an important factor in preventing foreign competition with American business. President Henry O. Havermeyer of the American Sugar Refining Company claimed with some exaggeration that 'The mother of all trusts is the customs tariff bill.' Perceptively, Ekirch adds, Also vital to big business was Unites States patent law, with its provisions granting exclusive rights to an inventor for seventeen years; this enabled companies to buy up and hoard patents, using such control to maintain a monopoly. In identifying tariffs and patents as agents of monopoly, Ekirch echoed an earlier individualist critic of government interference with the free market, Benjamin Tucker (1854-1939), editor of Liberty magazine. (On the case against ideas being property, see Roderick Long's article here. A bibliography of articles with links is here.)

For Ekirch there was bitter irony in the fact that government regulation was the greatest single factor in the decline of the very liberal economy that it sought to preserve and protect. Moreover, the progressive type of legislation, instead of encouraging democracy or competitive capitalism, in some ways perhaps, only made the whole economic system more difficult to operate.

Roosevelt is newly idolized these days in part because he is seen as a pioneering conservationist. But Ekirch shows that TR's interest in the environment was closely related to his jingoism: [T]he conservation movement … was in itself largely a nationalistic device popularized with much fanfare and publicity by Roosevelt and his friend Gifford Pinchot, chief of the United States Forest Service. After a century in which rapid exploitation of the resources of the West was encouraged in every way, the United States suddenly faced the prospect of potential exhaustion at a time when it was actively engaging in international rivalry with the other great powers of the world. Imperialism, with overseas markets and colonies was one means of building up the nation's military might, but generally overlooked was the way in which conservation was also intimately related to economic preparedness in the event that the nation might be plunged into a major war.

Approach to Big Business

The Progressive Era was decisive in regard to government's approach to big business. A lack of appreciation of how government stimulated — and distorted — the growth of enterprise kept most people from seeing the proper remedy for the country's economic ills. The range of choices was limited to two: 1) aggressive government action to break up concentrations of wealth and 2) regulation of ever-larger corporations. Missing from the menu was laissez faire: [D]espite growing popular resentment over the favored position of big business, most Americans in the final analysis preferred to avoid a radical effort to solve their problems. Certainly, there were few who dared to propose what might have been the most drastic of reforms — the removal of all government aid to economic enterprise. Instead, the panacea for the hard times of the nineties, as it was again to be the attempted remedy in the 1930's, was a tightening of the bonds that tied politics to economic life (emphasis added). Advocates of this course could find examples in Bismarckian Germany and the England envisioned by the Fabians.

The Progressives had no problem with big business. Indeed, the corporate elite could be found within their ranks, and many business leaders supported Roosevelt's nationalistic progressivism in the 1912 presidential campaign. They assuredly were not for laissez faire. Rather, they thought big business must be paralleled by a consolidation of regulatory powers in a centralized national government. Thus they favored replacing antitrust law with a national incorporation act, which would establish a corporate regulatory commission similar to the Interstate Commerce Commission. (Small business favored antitrust enforcement. No one called for laissez faire.)

Progressive policies embodied an underlying philosophy repugnant to Jeffersonianism. As Ekirch describes this philosophy, Society in the future would have to be based more and more on an explicit subordination of the individual to a collectivist, or nationalized, political and social order. This change, generally explained as one of progress and reform, was of course also highly important in building up nationalistic sentiment. At the same time, the rising authority and prestige of the state served to weaken the vestiges of internationalism and cosmopolitanism and to intensify the growing imperialistic rivalries. In their statist cause the progressives, who were now appropriating the name liberal, enlisted Social Darwinism, economic determinism, and relativism. According to this outlook, the old Jeffersonian truths were no longer truths. A new day called for new principles.

If Ekirch's work can be said to shine in one particular area, it is in understanding of the connection between domestic policy and foreign affairs. Historians, who make too rigid a distinction between foreign and domestic policy, he writes, have overlooked this intimate relationship between the aggressive foreign policy of the progressives and their emphasis on nationalism in home affairs. …[I]n such instances as the progressives' increasing acceptance of compulsory military training and of the white man's burden, there were obvious reminders of the paternalism of much of their economic reform legislation. Imperialism, according to a recent student of American foreign policy [R.E. Osgood], was a revolt against many of the values of traditional liberalism.

In the progressive milieu, who defended liberalism? Ekirch writes: [D]efense of liberalism was left in the hands of a dwindling minority of its traditional adherents, aided by a strange mixture of libertarians, which included radical socialists as well as old-fashioned conservatives. In the presidential election of 1912, Woodrow Wilson's New Freedom seemed to promise a return to older ways. Wilson criticized Roosevelt's platform and defended the limitation of governmental power. But, Ekirch concludes, the New Freedom was destined to suffer its own contradictions, and it was also cut short perhaps by American entrance into World War I. By the conclusion of that crusade, the confusion and rout of the liberals would be all but complete.

http://fee.org/library/detail/the-goal-is-freedom-progressive-illiberalism