WE ARE NOT DRUNKS. WE'RE MULTIMILLIONAIRES. The official end of summer is weeks away, but Labor Day announces the bell lap. Students are schlepping in; the nights grow less sultry. Have we wrung all the possible good out of our blessed time near the sun? Maybe not. So let's make the most of the short space left before the dropping of the iron leaf, and face life with the proper attitude. Here is an inspirational message from Withnail & I:



Enjoy your weekend.

POSITIVELY THE LAST LARRY CRAIG POST. Conservatives continue to contend that there's no hypocrisy in Larry Craig's actions. First, Jonah Goldberg tells us that "one can simply believe as a matter of principle or faith that marriage is the union of a man and a woman and that’s that while at the same time having much love or sympathy in your heart for gay people." Then he calls Craig a "pervert." Rod Dreher adds to this his usual obsession with gay men and bathrooms.

And... but why bother? The tools of reason are useless against people who are in full flight from reason. Better to contemplate how this argument would go down with normal people who are not in the semantic hair-splitting business. Hell, try it at Free Republic. Those guys may be bigots but they're no intellectuals. I should like to see Dreher exhort these proud members of the Republican base to oppose gay rights only in a spirit of Christian love. Soon enough they'll come to the conclusion that there's somethin' funny about Brother Rod.

I'm sick of it already. Bring on the next gay Republican!

SHORTER JOHN DERBYSHIRE. I say, deuced liberals won't allow one to enjoy racial humor, wot? (puts on ridiculous nightshirt, brushes rotten teeth with Marmite, and buggers a lad)

THE HEALING POWER OF LAUGHTER. Remember when National Review’s David Frum argued in defense of Ted Haggard that there was no such thing as hypocrisy? That must have been a trial balloon, because some conservatives are now using the idea as a defense of Larry Craig.

Mona Charen claims that she can’t find evidence that Craig “ran on family values” so, despite Craig’s support of Idaho's version of the Defense of Marriage Act, he can’t officially be a hypocrite:

I have no trouble saying that Craig should resign in disgrace. But the rest of the folks out there, particularly the lefties, who disbelieve in sexual disgrace (except perhaps where children are involved) can exult in cases like Craig’s only because this supposedly makes him a hypocrite. But what if he’s not a hypocrite? Suppose, as my admittedly hasty search suggests, he’s been pretty quiet about family values?  Doesn’t that mean the Democrats should be defending him?

I imagine Charen asking these questions in the manner of “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” and getting, as was gotten in the original context, the Big Ig.

Meanwhile Dean Esmay 's Kevin D.* offers the argument that secularists are the real hypocrites, man:

When pushing out one idea the void must be filled with another. You can't, as [David] Limbaugh points out, complain one group is legislating morality when you yourself seek to do the same thing.

So if you think, say, we should legislate against the persecution of homosexuals, you must also respect my legislation persecuting homosexuals. Otherwise you’re a hypocrite. Q. E. Duh.

As usual in cases involving gay people, Roger L. Simon pleads for tolerance, causing (again as usual) his commenters to roar their displeasure. One circulates a talking point from James Taranto’s Wall Street Journal defense of escort enthusiast David Vitter:

Hypocrisy does not mean saying one thing and doing the opposite. It means saying something that one does not believe…

So don’t call him a hypocrite -- he’s just someone who “weakened” under the awful strain of pretended heterosexuality.

We’re used to winger sophistries, of course. But this one’s in a special category. These guys are eager to defend Craig against charges of hypocrisy even as they accede to, and even demand, his resignation. Clearly they don’t give a damn about Craig, but they care deeply about negating the idea that their champions are hypocrites. They do it, I think, because hypocrisy inspires derision, which makes one's high horse about other people's morals less of an electoral asset, and that's an asset without which the modern American conservative movement is seriously weakened.

Hell, they're even making jokes about Craig themselves. Probably to keep from crying.

UPDATE. New reality: Larry Craig was set up. Defenders still want him out of the Senate, though. Sympathy and condemnation at the same time! This must be what they mean by "compassionate conservatism."

The Wall Street Journal:

Defenders of "outing" politicians argue that the cruelty is not gratuitous--that politicians are in a position of power, which they are using to harm gay citizens, and therefore their private lives are fair game. But if the politician in question is a mere legislator, his power consists only of the ability to cast one vote among hundreds. The actual amount of harm that he is able to inflict is minimal.

Clearly liberals should stop bothering gay anti-gay members of Congress until their number reaches at least a plurality. Which, given the trend, should be any day now.

Anyway, most lawmakers who oppose gay-rights measures are not homosexual. To single out those who are for special vituperation is itself a form of antigay prejudice. Liberals pride themselves on their compassion, but often are unwilling to extend it to those with whose politics they disagree.

OK, I've got a new idea: Keep the pressure on till growing conservative dismay at liberal "antigay prejudice" leads to sweeping legislative protections for homosexuals.

UPDATE II.Shorter Jonah Goldberg: Conservatives aren't uptight about sex. We laff at fags! Oh, and harumph harumph the humanity. (Must put that first.)

*UPDATE III. Fixed attribution on Esmay quote; thanks, apostropher.

LARRY CRAIG COVERAGE, CITIZEN-JOURNALIST STYLE. Democrats were Larry Craig first. Larry Craig is about the liberal media, semiotistics show. Larry Craig improves Republican prospects of retaining this Senate seat. Larry Craig should have punched plainclothes cop to demonstrate masculinity. Larry Craig is wrong on immigration, making his sexuality a legitimate issue. Larry Craig proves that active homosexuals must be purged from the Republican Party. Larry Craig proves that homosexuals are overrepresented in Congress. Larry Craig shows that closeted gay Congressmen can still be valuable allies in the war against non-closeted gay non-Congressmen.

Also, Citizen Journalist shocked to hear that gay people are targets of law enforcement.

BABY BOOM. A correspondent at Gates of Vienna charts declining birth rates in the West and blames "the disincentives to childbearing so readily provided by the welfare systems of Western countries." Those of us brought up on stories about welfare mothers churning out brats in order to collect more welfare may find this strange. GoV commenter Geraldo suggests that "Most of the problem is in school. Many girls/young women (ex, my daughter) dont want to have children because she was taught at school about a catastrophic world that is coming." As Gates of Vienna's primary subject matter is the coming clash of civilizations, I should think Geraldo's daughter, and anyone related to Gates of Vienna readers, would be used to such teachings.

HORATIO ALGER AT 9 PERCENT INTEREST. At National Review's Phi Beta Cons blog, George Leef notices a Harvard Business Online article about the choice to either stay in college or leave to seek one's fortune. The HBO author is sympathetic to the latter choice:

There are several arguments to be made on that side of the coin. First: as competition for college-educated employees increases, companies will become more and more motivated to use those without college degrees effectively in the workforce, in jobs that today would routinely require a diploma-in-hand as the price of admission. They will come to screen candidates in different ways, searching, perhaps, for the Simon Cowells among them: those who are bright, motivated, and will make them money.

A second argument: in their desperate search for college talent, companies will join professional sports franchises in recruiting individuals earlier and earlier in the pipeline. It will become a sign of your exceptional talent to proclaim that you were hired in your junior or even sophomore year in college. Only those in the lower ranks of the class will make it through as seniors.

The Phi Beta Con perspective in general is that all our citadels of learning are run by Marxist lunatics, which may explain why Leef highlights the author's claim that "a perception that at least parts of today's college education are actually not particularly relevant may pervade more and more young people's (and older employers') consciousness."

But an increasing number of Americans are going after college degrees -- including graduate degrees. The most recent Digest of Educational Statistics from the U.S. Department of Education:

College enrollment hit a record level of 17.5 million in fall 2005. Another record of 17.6 million is anticipated for fall 2006 (table 3). Enrollment is expected to increase by an additional 13 percent between 2006 and 2015... The traditional college-age population (18 to 24 years old) rose 15 percent between 1995 and 2005, which was reflected by an increase in college enrollment...

And (pdf):

Undergraduate enrollment rose 21 percent between 1996 and 2005. Graduate enrollment had been steady at about 1.3 million in the late 1970s and early 1980s, but rose about 59 percent between 1985 and 2005 (table 191)...

Growing numbers of people are completing college degrees. Between 1994–95 and 2004–05, the number of associate’s, bachelor’s, master’s, first-professional, and doctor’s degrees rose (table 251). Associate’s degrees increased 29 percent, bachelor’s degrees increased 24 percent, master’s degrees increased 45 percent, and doctor’s degrees increased 18 percent during this period. The number of first-professional degrees was 15 percent higher in 2004–05 than it was in 1994–95.

I'll go out on a limb here and suggest that this upward trend in college enrollment and degrees has less to do with an increased thirst for the joy of learning than it does with students' (and parents') hopes that degrees will get them good jobs. The cost of degrees is steep and people are getting ridiculously deep in debt to obtain them. The shift toward private loans to pay for schooling has been a bonanza for a certain kind of lender:

Overall, student lending has been an extraordinarily profitable business. Sallie's return on equity, which was over 30 percent in 2006, is one of the highest among American companies, and its executives are compensated lavishly. From 1999 through 2004, former CEO and current chairman Albert Lord took home over $200 million. In 2006, current CEO Tim Fitzpatrick was paid $16.6 million in salary, bonuses and stock.

I have discussed here the popular notion among conservatives that our economy is doing so well that any negative perception by citizens of their own financial prospects is unjustified, and excited not by personal experiences but by liberal propaganda. From this point of view, I can see why they might also wish to believe that expensive degrees are unnecessary -- if your boy or girl has to drop out, he or she may still become a Simon Cowell. It's an optimistic view, in its way, of the sort that one might express casually when a friend finds that he just can't make the tuition payments. And in some happy cases it may even come true.

But people are digging deep to get those degrees if there's any way in hell they can be gotten. It's not easy for most of them, but they persist because they believe that opportunity comes with an ever-increasing price of admission, and they'd better pay it now before it goes up again. Because everything is going up, constantly. Maybe your grandpa went to the mill to earn the money to house and feed his family, but those days are gone: Your best bet is the diploma mill.

It doesn't look like a happy picture to me, but regular readers will know that I am not much of an optimist.

FACE OF THE ENEMY UPDATE. Jules Crittenden, on vacation, gives the floor to one Theo Spark:

The West’s biggest problem however is…..the cancer of liberalism that is infecting our society. These are the fools who, having failed to turn the planet into a socialist ‘wonderland’ are now concentrating their attentions on the myths of ‘global warming’, the continuing struggle against capitalism (which gave them the internet, their new weapon of choice), and their standard anti-US mantra. They relish in the death of every ‘allied’ serviceman, fighting to preserve the very freedoms which give them a voice...

...The liberals are weakening our society, allowing our enemies to gain strength for the final onslaught. The worlds despots are surviving due to this weakness and millions are suffering as a result.

The title of this piece is ‘Is the West heading for Civil War? Unless we face down and defeat liberals the world over, we are headed for a civil war between the good and the gormless and the only people who will benefit will be our enemies.

Not finding in this post Sparks' recipe for the defeat of liberalism -- much less examples of our alleged glee at the death of coalition forces -- I visited his own blog. While it is clear that he likes girls except when they talk, he is short on policy prescriptions, which is perhaps for the best.

WHY DON'T YOU GO TO THE STARDUST BALLROOM? IT'S LOADED WITH TOMATOES. Speaking of poor, misunderstood right wingers, a gay conservatarian says it's been hard for him to get a date because liberals are prejudiced against conservatives. At the end, though, he reveals he has found a boyfriend ("though more liberal than I"). I wonder if he observed the usual controls for such a study. Did he change his haircut, for example, or lose a few pounds during his dateless period? The data is unclear.

This stimulates discussion from the hetero perspective at Volokh Conspiracy, where Ilya Somin claims that "A great many people believe that it is wrong to date anyone whose political views differ significantly from their own." Again, the data is unclear, and Somin denies experiencing this alleged problem himself.

Plenty of discussion at both boards. My take is, getting laid is more fun than talking about how other people are to blame that you're not getting laid.

THE SOFTER SIDE OF RUSH. Our subject found himself at the tender age of 37 accused of being "racist, sexist, bigot, homophobe, mean-spirited, angry." But he overcame:

There are certain areas in the business that I am the most successful person in the world where I cannot work because of what I think. Now, I have not run around and bellyached and whined and moaned about it. I have accepted it as a badge of honor because I do not allow myself to believe that those people are better or more important than I am. Just the exact opposite. And I have found a way to work around it and found my niche here. I know what I'm good at. I'm doing what I was born to do...

Everybody has obstacles to overcome. Now, Eric said that he's heard me bellyache and whine and complain about things. Not within the context of being discriminated against! I've found ways to work around it. Everybody has to.

The speaker is Rush Limbaugh, and he's tired of people who can't see this is a land of opportunity, because if Rush Limbaugh can make it, despite his disadvantages, then anyone can. The tirade is set off by a mention of racism. And he accuses Democrats of exploiting the feelings of "a country half full of unsatisfied, malcontent, miserable, unhappy people" with bellyaching about racism and poverty, and rock concerts.

I am in general sympathetic to the notion that we should try to rise above our circumstances. Still, I would be shy about citing my own history as a white man with a college education (notwithstanding my humble beginnings) as a counterweight to historic racial discrimination.

Of course I don't know what it's like to be as rich and powerful as Rush Limbaugh. And it may be that when you've attained such heights, you might lose your awareness -- if you ever had it to begin with -- of what it's like to be without money and power. Then the people who do know what it's like, either by experience or observation, might look to you like miserable malcontents.

To give him some credit, I imagine he has noticed that there are more malcontents than there used to be. He may also understand that a healthy chunk of those malcontents in the half-a-country have been peeled away from the large Republican majority that was in effect when he was battling discrimination as a radio celebrity back in the Reagan era.

In politics as in market share, the game is to win such people back. If you're confident, you restate your case more boldly. If you're less confident, you complain -- that people don't understand you, that your enemies lie about you, that you, too, are a victim. It's actually your opponents who are the bigots, while you are "America's Real Civil Rights Leader." In advertising they call it repositioning, and Sears did have some success proclaiming its Softer Side. But it tends to work best when you can justify it with your product line. And it never helps to be so defensive.

STOOPID ACE IZ STOOPID. Lofty social thinking, of the White Guy Trying to Be Helpful variety, from Mr. Ace O. Spades:

I guess this might be a reason to discuss the aggressively anti-intellectual -- or more accurately, pro-ignorance -- "Cult of the Authentic" which is more responsible for black failure than all the racism in the world.

Thereafter comes discussion of "thug life" and "culture of authenticity" -- as well as helpless laughter, as we discover Mr. Spades is talking about a black guy's entries in a freaking Facebook quiz -- a matter of cultural concern, according to Mr. Spades, because such language from a college man means that, among our dusky brethren, "this idea that intelligence is a sell-out to The Man persists."

I hope Mr. Spades will next bring his analytic skills to LOLcats, which phenomenon features lots of misspellings, and therefore must have been created by African Americans trying to make themselves look dumb for Al Sharpton or something.

I mean what else could it be? Humor? Maybe Ace can't see it because no one made fun of faggots.

CENSORSHIT. Iraq bitter-ender Armed Liberal says that "we don't do purges, and that's a good thing," and has invented a derogatory "Moon Unit" award which he will give " to people who think that gagging someone -- with or without a spoon -- is an appropriate political response."

His first honoree is Atrios, who wrote:

Is Tom Friedman a Bad Person?

All signs point to "pretty hideous human being, one which all good people should shun."

Even Armed Liberal's commenters cannot achieve consensus as to whether Duncan Black's gag constitutes an attempt to silence Tom Friedman. Nonetheless, Armed Liberal predicts that "the progblogs are going to be racking up a huge number of these 'Moon Units.'"

I should think "gagging" would look more like this:

Life in an FBI muzzle is no fun. Two Connecticut librarians on Sunday described what it was like to be slapped with an FBI national security letter and accompanying gag order. It sounded like a spy movie or, gulp, something that happens under a repressive foreign government. Peter Chase and Barbara Bailey, librarians in Plainville, Connecticut, received an NSL to turn over computer records in their library on July 13, 2005. Unlike a suspected thousands of other people around the country, Chase, Bailey and two of their colleagues stood up to the Man and refused to comply, convinced that the feds had no right to intrude on anyone's privacy without a court order (NSLs don't require a judge's approval). That's when things turned ugly.

The four librarians under the gag order weren't allowed to talk to each other by phone. So they e-mailed. Later, they weren't allowed to e-mail.

After the ACLU took on the case and it went to court in Bridgeport, the librarians were not allowed to attend their own hearing. Instead, they had to watch it on closed circuit TV from a locked courtroom in Hartford, 60 miles away. "Our presence in the courtroom was declared a threat to national security," Chase said.

Or it might look more like this bullshit libel suit against PZ Myers.

Or it might look more like what the Army does to milbloggers. They're largely rightwing, of course, and censored by their own superiors, but I'm sure there's some angle by which liberals of the unArmed kind can be blamed.

But what do I know? I say mean things about conservatives all the time. Obviously I'm a one-man Legion of Indecency, trampling the free speech of wingnuts 'round with the world with the legally-non-binding force of my invective.

UPDATE. Gulagmaster Norbizness says of Christopher Walken's latest poor choice of vehicle, "I think it's official... nobody should remember anything good that Christopher Walken has ever done in his acting career." Not even Hollywood is safe from liberal terror! And I'm pretty sure I heard some hippie say, "Christ, what an asshole" about Bush. Developing...

AND NO, RED DAWN DOESN'T COUNT. Perfesser Glenn Reynolds on the War on Whatchamacallit:

In a decade or two we'll get a new revisionist history in which America was united against the threat, much like we're hearing today about the Cold War.

My memory's not what it used to be, but I think there were several Democratic Congresses during the Cold War, and even a few Democratic Presidents. How is it that the Sovet Union never invaded? America was obviously ripe for the plucking.

Yet not even the traitors' victory in Vietnam brought us even close to Soviet domination. A less convinced soul than the Perfesser might get the impression that the United States sometimes engages its forces in error.

ANNALS OF LIBERTARIANISM. Talking about the Giuliani health care plan, Megan McArdle argues that "As a class, the old and sick are already luckier than the young and healthy":

Moreover, as a class, the old and sick have some culpability in their ill health. They didn't eat right or excercise; they smoked; they didn't go to the doctor as often as they ought; they drank to much, or took drugs, or sped, or engaged in dangerous sports. Again, in individual cases this will not be true; but as a class, the old and sick bear some of the responsibility for their own ill health, while younger, healthier people have almost no causal role in the ill-health of others.

Perhaps they deserve it by virtue of suffering? But again, most of them are suffering because they have gotten old, often in high style...

Try to imagine this woman on a lifeboat.

WRITING LESSON. Two interesting views of what was so awesome about 9/11, from two very different writers. First Christopher Hitchens:

In order to get my own emotions out of the way, I should say briefly that on that day I shared the general register of feeling, from disgust to rage, but was also aware of something that would not quite disclose itself. It only became fully evident quite late that evening. And to my surprise (and pleasure), it was exhilaration. I am not particularly a war lover, and on the occasions when I have seen warfare as a traveling writer, I have tended to shudder. But here was a direct, unmistakable confrontation between everything I loved and everything I hated. On one side, the ethics of the multicultural, the secular, the skeptical, and the cosmopolitan. (Those are the ones I love, by the way.) On the other, the arid monochrome of dull and vicious theocratic fascism. I am prepared for this war to go on for a very long time. I will never become tired of waging it, because it is a fight over essentials. And because it is so interesting.

Second, the man who quotes him, Rod Dreher:

I didn't, and don't, ultimately value the same things as Hitchens, but in reading this passage, I recognize his sentiment. To walk around New York City on that day and on the days that followed -- and probably to walk around where you live too -- was to see things with crystal clarity. As I've written elsewhere, that clarity, or perception of clarity, was more of an illusion than we could have recognized, and it led many of us to make bad decisions. Nevertheless, whatever one's view of the Iraq War, the feeling all, or nearly all, of us had on 9/11 and in its immediate aftermath was one of ultimate meaning returned to the world. Irony was suspended, and it was possible to feel not only real love for your neighbor, but love for your country, and a recognition of what you really did love, but took for granted -- until it was threatened. It couldn't last, but it was -- I have to confess -- a great feeling. All the usual bitching and moaning we do as part of our everyday lives ceased. We saw pure, uncut evil, and we knew it wanted to kill us, and we didn't know what we were going to do in response, but we knew we'd do something. And we were clear that Everything Mattered. Whatever else life was, it was no longer boring. We lived in interesting times.

One of the things I still admire about Hitchens' writing is that I believe him: not his belligerent analyses, but his portrayal of his own thoughts and feelings. He identifies clearly the personal obsessions that informed his strange reaction to the horrible event -- the multicultural versus the monochrome. He puts responsibility for his feelings on himself, and dares the reader to find him insane, because he doesn't care what the reader thinks. Hitchens seeks not to beg his reader's attention and understanding, but to command it.

Dreher has none of this. To speak in the first place of "the feeling all, or nearly all, of us had on 9/11" is a glaring sign that even in confessional mode, Dreher thinks in groupthink, and his announcement that our group feeling was "one of ultimate meaning returned to the world" shows that he can't even get groupthink right. "It couldn't last, but it was -- I have to confess -- a great feeling... And we were clear that Everything Mattered." Even if you weren't there, you'd have to doubt this, it's so phony. The problem is that Dreher can't take ownership of his own strange thoughts -- he has to project them on all of us. I think in the back of his mind he knew he was saying something awful, and so sought to offload responsibility for them.

If you can't take responsibility for what you're saying, you might as well shut up.

THE FACE OF THE ENEMY. The Times ran a lengthy disquisition by filmmaker Errol Morris about the famous picture of the "Hooded Man" from Abu Ghraib, and the guy who said he was that guy but wasn't really:

The problem was not a lack of research. Yes, there was archival material that could have cast suspicion on the claim that Clawman was the Hooded Man. But the mistaken identification was driven by Clawman’s own desire to be the iconic victim, to be the Hooded Man, and our own need to believe him. It is an error engendered by photography and perpetuated by us. And it comes from a desire for “the ocular proof.” A proof that turns out to be no proof at all. Indeed. What we see is not independent of our beliefs. Photographs provide evidence, but no shortcut to reality. Photographic evidence – like all evidence – needs to be seen in context. It needs to be evaluated. If seeing itself is belief-laden, then there is no seeing independent of believing, and the “truism” has to be reversed. Believing is seeing and not the other way around.

Uh huh. Well, it was a picture of somebody with electrical wires stuck to him. Which is why I was at first puzzled by a post at the site of war journalist/supporter Michael Yon which linked to it:

While we sleep, enemies define us.

What enemies did Yon mean, I wondered? Ali Shalal Qaissi, aka Clawman? Was his quest for fame some sort of Al Qaeda psy ops? Did his moment in the spotlight convince people there was torture at Abu Ghraib, or did all the photos of other tortured subjects, and the subsequent courts-martial, do most of the convincing? Was Yon suggesting that Qaissi's story proved the whole thing was a hoax -- one that took in even the United States Army?

I got a clue as to his meaning from the commenters on the Morris story who, it is reasonable to assume, would not have bothered with some artist's musings in the treasonous Times unless directed there by a higher authority:

...How many Iraqi prisoners died as a result of “torture” at Abu Ghraib? Now compare that to the number of American soldiers who have died as a result of an emboldened insurgency, emboldened by an agenda driven New York Times splashing 40 straight front page stories on this self-esteem “war crime"...

...To the left, gwbush is the real enemy. nothing else matters. More muslims are free than any time in history but their diseased minds can only fixate on that which he had no direct control (and if you THINK about it, was direct result of the clinton policy of eliminating regular army divisions and using national guardsmen and women to do jobs professionals used to handle)but what difference does any of that make. If a republican does it, its EVIL...

... Show me beheadings, severed ears, fingers, genitals, etc., then I’ll buy “torture”. Oh wait, that’s the ENEMY who does that. Until then, this constant braying about how this is “torture” only serves to embolden the enemy...

...The self loathing hate America leftists so overplayed this story that my perception of the overwhelmingly leftist American media becoming cemented in it’s disgust...

For them, Abu Ghraib's just another Beauchamp -- another MSM assault on our fighting men who guard us, as Kipling said, while we sleep. And that is what they mean by "enemies."

RACE MEN. Daniel Henninger offers an especially incoherent Wall Street Journal column today, perhaps owing to the high excitement in which it was commenced.

We may surmise that, good culture cop that he is, Henninger was on the prowl for proofs that Diversity is Bad when he hit the jackpot: Robert Putnam’s alleged findings that ethnic variety causes a lack of faith in some institutions among some people.

Henninger, like Rod Dreher before him, is overjoyed to find academic support for his own miscegnophobia:

Now comes words that diversity as an ideology may be dead, or not worth saving... Short version: People in ethnically diverse settings don't want to have much of anything to do with each other. "Social capital" erodes. Diversity has a downside.

If you, like tens of millions of other Americans, actually live among different kinds of people, yet consider your social life happy and vigorous, don’t bother to tell Henninger –- not only will he characterize your tone of voice in the traditional rightwing way; he will also rebut your daily personal experience with a 43-year-old anecdote:

Give me a break! you scream. What about New York City or L.A.? From the time of Sherwood Anderson's "Winesburg, Ohio" through "Peyton Place" and beyond, people have fled the flat-lined, gossip-driven homogeneity of small American "communities" for the welcome anonymity of big-city apartment building--so long as your name wasn't Kitty Genovese, the famous New York woman who bled to death crying for help.

The fellow who killed her was black, you know. So you just wait, liberals –- your precious ethnic friends will murder your daughter, and then who’ll be the racist? (Both of you, Henninger clearly hopes.)

After this noirgasm, Henninger’s thematic force dwindles, and seemingly at the edge of sleep he murmurs all sorts of right-romantic nonsense: Don’t trust foreigners, but trust them enough to leave immigration unrestricted; we could make a religious exception for anti-diversity, but better we should magically make everyone middle-class, etc.

Clearly, for Henninger the Big One was the opportunity to broach the politically-incorrect solution of getting everyone segregated for their own good. Even church talk offers but faint thrills after that.

What animates conservative commentators against diversity so? Their complaints against silly seminars and such like are easily shared, but columns like Henninger's suggest that in their heart of hearts "diversity" is not just a nuisance, but a code word for "integration," which people such as they have been fighting since Brown vs. Board of Ed at least. It's telling that Henninger starts by denouncing diversity classes and comes (or cums) so quickly to Kitty Genovese.

The sulfuric whiff pervades even the work of younger conservatives who do not -- I don't think, anyway -- feel racism in their very loins. Take Ross Douthat, opining on Glenn Loury’s findings on race and imprisonment rates in America:

Loury's essay emphasizes the racial elements at work in the system, and they're real enough, but our incarceration policy is sustained by cool reason as much as racism. Mass incarceration emerged out of prejudice, yes, but also as a rational, albeit draconian, response to a social crisis: We lock up young black men by the hundreds of thousands because it's the only sustained response that we were willing to muster to the large-scale familial and social breakdown that helped sustain America's thirty-year crime wave.

Cool reason? Rational albeit draconian? He seems to be saying that we just had to lock up lots of dark-skinned people to make our white asses (feel) safe.

To be fair, Douthat does offer an alternative plan to mass black arrests: Bill Clinton’s ("more cops on the beat"!), of which plan (and its success) Douthat seems never to have heard, but which he thinks conservatives should claim in a “Nixon can go to China” sense. Still, he might have argued against the relevance of race, and focused on the classes of crimes that draw disproportionately heavy prison sentences (like drug offenses).

I guess he couldn't help himself; it's a right-wing thing. Between the fall of Jim Crow and the publication of Charles Murray's famous sociological treatise, Niggers are Stupid, most conservative writers were -- perhaps out of a (justifiable) sense of guilt -- somewhat reluctant to touch on race. Now they're fascinated by it and spout all kinds of gibberish to the effect that the dark are indeed different from you and me (assuming you and me are white) and we only need new, academically-approved ways to explain it to Americans who, unfortunately for their cause, have been brainwashed by decades of integration against accepting their message in its original Lester Maddox version.

WILLING SUSPENSION OF DISBELIEF. Wayne Barrett's epic examination of Rudy Giuliani's 9/11 claims hasn't been refuted much by Giuliani's online fans. Maybe that's because it would be difficult: Barrett's work is very solid. But they're more likely hoping the story, being contrary to the well-engineered "America's Mayor" narrative, will fade away. Ross Douthat is plain about it:

No doubt such a story would draw the most blood if it appeared in N[ational] R[eview], but really, it would draw more blood, or at least attract more right-wing attention, if it appeared almost anywhere other than the Village Voice. I'm no great Rudy booster, but I'm much, much more likely to take this kind of story with a grain of salt because it appears in an extremely left-wing alternative weekly (but I repeat myself) that did nothing but bash Hizzoner, sometimes fairly but usually not, throughout his mayoralty.

Even without answering a single point in the story -- or in any other "unfair" piece of reportage -- Douthat says that its publication in the Voice "makes me automatically inclined to approach it with more skepticism that it may deserve."

As I've said before, Giuliani's fans love his blazing authoritarian streak so much that they'll overlook his inconvenient abortion politics. Why should this topic be any different?

Speaking of which, ten years after Giuliani lost his Federal suit to sustain a Koch-era executive order that "barred city employees from turning in illegal immigrants who seek city services like police protection, schooling and medical care" -- a reversal Giuliani had said would "create chaos in New York City" -- the former Mayor has pledged to end illegal immigration. At National Review Rich Lowry proclaims, "When Rudy says that, you can believe it."

I might fatalistically welcome a Giuliani Presidency on the grounds that it will inevitably force these folks to reckon with the fact that Rudy Giuliani is implacably and irreversibly devoted to nothing except Rudy Giuliani. But that day will never come. If Giuliani dismembered a fetus in the Oval Office, they'd register a strong complaint and then get back to cheering our invasion of wherever. They want a bully, and seem to understand, if dimly, that he will sometimes choose to practice on them.

UPDATE. Fixed some of the historical data.

THE TROUBLE WITH LIBERTARIANS, PART 45,882. If there's one thing libertarians care about more than your rights and mine, it's the rights of people with lots of money:

The Washington Times reports that Clarian Health, an Indiana hospital chain, has started charging obese employees and smokers more for their health insurance coverage—$30 and $5 more, respectively, per paycheck. As in the case of companies that refuse to hire smokers (or fire them when they test positive for nicotine), I think decisions like these should be left to individual employers, who cannot force people to work for them and, by the same token, should not be forced to hire people on terms unilaterally imposed by one party. Still, I understand the complaints about increasingly nosy bosses who seek to pressure or punish workers into changing their off-the-clock behavior even when it has nothing to do with job performance...

Jacob Sullum understands those complaints, but as von Hayek once said, money talks and bullshit walks. Why should corporations have to take care of a bunch of feebs? Healthy, strapping youths -- that's what's wanted. Surely you see the laissez-faireness in that.

And anyway, the real danger is universal health care. As Sullum points out, the government can be positively nannyish about smoking and such like, nagging and scolding. How much better to be financially penalized for it by employers. And if you don't like it, you can always quit your job and find another one, hopefully before this trend spreads widely enough (who doubts that it will?) that clean piss, blood, and lung-tissue samples become a de facto condition of employment, leaving those of us who drink, smoke, etc. to fight for scraps with the ex-cons and illegals.

Libertarians do seem to understand that each man should be free to go to hell in his own way. Unfortunately they never seem to catch on sometimes people are sent to hell by whims and quirks of fate -- catastrophic illness, say, or a shift in the employer class' understanding of what they can get away with. No doubt the staff of Reason is comprised of Randian supermen who will rise above all adversity, but when the rest of us schmoes observe a working world where it becomes easier to lose what few protections we have, the horror of intrusive government is very, very far from our minds.

SHORTER JAMES "BUZZ" LILEKS: I and Minnesota ain't dumb. Are we, Minnesota?

("My, they do have a grand opinion of themselves," says Lileks of "Poses," who turns out to be "a Santa Monica-based entrepreneur" who won the licensing rights for a New Yorker cartoon board game to be sold at Target. The actual New Yorker staff quoted in the LA Times story think the game's a great idea. To be fair, maybe "have a grand opinion of themselves" refers to some lady with a Democratic bumper sticker on her car, and a hippie.)