TOURING AGAIN. The Rolling Stones are back, and some people seem to be upset that their new album contains a song (or two) that are sharply and expressly critical of the Bush administration. The offending cut is called "Sweet Neocon":


Frankly, it's hard to get too upset about this. What's really annoying about rock stars involving themselves in politics is their self-righteous seriousness -- Bruce Springsteen touring to raise money for John Kerry, Linda Ronstadt lecturing her concert audiences about foreign policy, the Dixie Chicks sounding off about Bush on foreign soil. "Sweet Neocon" might have been slightly irksome had Jagger recorded it on a solo album, but when it issues from the legendary Rolling Stones, it gets processed through the wry, mocking tone that infuses all their music. It doesn't matter what they say about it; the most sententious and serious lyric in the world becomes a satire of itself when Mick's voice snarls it and Keith's guitar spanks it on stage.

That's why I'll offer a sincere warning to the left -- don't make the mistake of thinking the Stones have joined your, or any, movement. They are first, last, and always the "greatest rock and roll band in the world," and the world they have lived in for the past forty-some years bears little relation to anyone else's. Just when you think you have their attention, they'll flash you an evil grin and disappear back into rock-star wonderland.

By the same token, I'll urge any offended Christians to remember that "Sweet Neocon's" charge of hypocrisy falls from the same wagging tongue that ended the radical era with these lyrics:


If you've forgotten this, he hasn't. While he was singing it at Altamont, people were dying in the audience. It became more than just a lyric that day, and it's impossible to know just what he means by seeming to mount a pulpit at this point in time.  It's probably impossible for him to know what he means by it.  Is he half aware that some of that old persona still clings to him and that anything he says will be taken -- by those who have half a memory or half a brain -- with a grain of salt the size of a stone? Ask him. He'll probably flash that grin again, the one that has made him the world's oldest bad boy and the only surviving (make that thriving) dinosaur of an age that is long gone and yet still viciously present under the skin of a brand new century. Maybe there's "no sort of meaning in it," and maybe there's another sort of meaning than he or we suspect.

THE BEST WE CAN HOPE FOR. Last night, the local Philadelphia news programs led their broadcasts with the jubilant report that vigils were underway in the city, led by mothers of U.S. troops in Iraq, demanding that the war be brought to an immediate end and that all the boys be brought back home. We saw mothers singing, mothers speaking in pulpits, candles burning... all very moving stuff in the liturgical trappings of a religion that seems to be despised except when it can serve as a useful prop. And that's all it was, because the nature of the moral authority that we were being urged to acknowledge was laid out clearly by Maureen Dowd in one of her recent columns:


This does seem to be the position of those who hold that it's impermissible to level criticism of any kind against a grieving mother who calls the President a terrorist and claims that America is not worth dying for.

Don't worry, my dear progressives. I'm not launching another attack on Cindy Sheehan. I'm just trying to reconcile a couple of contradictory elements that seem to be very much in play here, and I'm hoping to resolve them in a constructive manner.

Contradictions? Well, yeah. Anyone perusing the internet orgy surrounding the Sheehan Show can't avoid noticing that whenever a commentator does criticize maternal grief as a credential for making foreign policy, he is likely to be branded with the charge of being a "chickenhawk," a term that flew hither and yon at great velocity during the 2004 Presidential campaign, when progressives discovered they had a war veteran on their ticket while the Republicans didn't.

During that campaign, it seemed the only moral authority belonged to those who had served not just in the military, but in combat. Everyone else was disqualified from having or expressing any opinion whatsoever about the war.

So now I'm curious: what form of government would sort out the competing claims of moral authority and keep the childless non-veterans in their place? Could it still offer freedom and equality to any but a handful of its citizens?

It seemed an impossible task at first, but the more I thought about it, the more I began to see a way through the complexities. The first step is to figure out what it is progressives mean when they talk about freedom and the role of government in securing that freedom. They understand freedom in terms of what human beings should be free from rather than free to do, since doers are almost invariably oppressors. Therefore, the basic human rights they are concerned with are the right to be free from unequal treatment of any kind, ill health, pollution, sudden death of any kind, offensive rhetoric of the kind that might diminish self esteem, and any kind of restraint on rhetoric that might be construed as immoral in traditional (i.e., religious) terms.

It's also important to understand the meaning of equality in their context, which has to do with long-term social justice. For example, it's useful to think of the people who are alive now as mere representatives of all the foregoing generations of whatever groups they belong to by virtue of race and sex. Since women have been, reputedly, treated less than equally in the past, they can be treated more than equally now and in the foreseeable future in order to make up for the continuing agonies of their dead forebears. (And conservatives claim progressives don't believe in life after death...!)

Obviously, such definitions of freedom and equality make it clear that liberty in the American tradition is obsolete. To ensure true freedom and equality, certain discriminations do have to be effected. Howard Stern can expect to be free from Christian moralizing that might make him feel like a sinner, while Christians cannot expect to be free from Howard Stern's particular brand of life philosophy. White men cannot expect to be admitted to colleges until after many compensations have been made to women and people of color; any sense of liberty they feel to pursue their own archaic definition of equality is harmful to society as a whole and should be strenuously discouraged.

Note that once we have defined equality in historical rather than census terms, most of the problems associated with establishing a progressive and free democracy have been swept away. Ironically, there is even constitutional precedent for what must be done. The founders declared black Americans to be counted as three-fifths of a person for counting purposes and did not accord them a vote. The right of infinite compensation thus enables the progressive state to assign percentages of voting weight according to the degree of historical injustice that must be compensated for. For example, white men who have never served in combat could be assigned a voting weight of 0 percent, while mothers who have lost children in combat could be assigned a voting weight of 100 percent, and all other groups and constituencies would lie somewhere in between.

We're ready now to start envisioning the actual government(s) that could enforce the progressive concepts of freedom and equality. First, at the level of national government, the only citizens who could be authorized to hold office are combat veterans and parents who have lost children in combat (except possibly grieving white fathers, who are probably deadbeat dads anyway, if not the child abusers who brainwashed their sons into volunteering for death in battle.)

This may seem a fractious group to put into high office, but in fact, it works out rather neatly. Yes, many combat veterans tend to be hawks about foreign policy, but many veterans still fall into the category of converted pacifists. And yes, not all parents of those killed in combat are reliably pacifist either, but chances are that the hawkishness they display on occasion has more to do with not tarnishing the memory of their lost child by craven surrender than with being  gung ho to start a new conflict. The split between hawks and doves in this groups will, at any rate, form the basis for political parties, and it looks very much as if the result will be the Doves as majority party and Hawks as the permanent flag-waving minority. (Somebody still has to make speeches and touch off fireworks on the Fourth of July, after all).

There will be those who carp that this model gives us a pool of potential officeholders that numbers in the mere tens of thousands. But all these things are relative. The aggregate number of voters isn't going to very large either, since only those people who have actually served in the military or have children who (have) serve(d) in the military will be eligible to vote in national elections. This will ensure a fine and moral focus on foreign policy issues and will entirely prevent them from being decided by any tide of public sentiment in the event of destabilizing emotional events like terrorist attacks.

I also anticipate the criticism that a national government so completely oriented around foreign policy issues might result in neglect of domestic matters that greatly affect various freedoms, as defined above. This potential problem is resolved by two long established progressive strategies. First, most domestic legislation dealing with freedom can be written directly from the bench, by federal district courts and, obviously, the U.S. Supreme Court, which will have to rewrite the Constitution on the fly, as it were. But the courts will be well stocked with progressives who can be trusted implicitly to sort out the various freedoms at issue in a way that accommodates social justice in the historical sense -- without a lot of reactionary foot-dragging.

Even more importantly, many of the key freedoms -- health, economic, environmental -- are really best handled at the global level, by the many institutions already in place seeking international laws capable of enforcing social justice in worldwide terms. It also makes sense to transfer authority for taxation and regulation of commerce, trade, healthcare, religion, and the protection of the earth from mankind to such global institutions. Of course, Americans in this scenario will have to get used to seeing themselves in this larger perspective as the racist, sexist, rich white men of the world and expect to be treated accordingly, but they will learn to get used to it, because the kind of morality represented by the list of "freedoms from" and social justice in historical terms is pretty inescapable.

The various state, local and municipal governments can go on pretty much as they do now, and it's possible that as much as forty, no, say thirty, percent of the populace will be authorized to vote for candidates at this level. And to be perfectly clear about one bone of contention, make no mistake: all felons past and present WILL be allowed to vote in state, local, and municipal elections. The bad old days of tyranny will be done for in this new government model.

I leave it to others to work out the many huge positive impacts the progressive government model will have on our great nation. You know the one I mean. The one we all love so very very much.


UPDATE. Michelle Malkin is sick of the whole subject, and we don't blame her. Please email her and let her know that it's all going to be fixed soon, courtesy of what we've worked out here. The freedom and equality idealists will probably stop sending her unspeakably obscene messages when their moral purpose has been achieved.

MEN. A pair of items in Drudge today are supposed to give new hope to ordinary guys. First, there's this from the NY Daily News:


Before moving on, though, I'll draw your attention to the highlighted text. Why is it "scary" to Ms. Spindel that women don't care about looks? Particularly in view of her statement that men are "very superfcial and very shallow" presumably because they do care about looks. Does this mean it would be less scary if women were as shallow as men? And are women really less shallow and superficial if they want "a man who makes more money than they do"? This makes it sound as if it's the men who want romance and the women who want a plush bank account. Which is not news.

So -- somewhat less hopeful -- we turn to the other Drudge item, another NY Daily News article:


What's all the excitement about? A couple of new movies, including one called the "40 Year old Virgin." Here's what Mr. Osterhaut has to say:


Excuse me, Mr. Osterhaut, but when the title of a movie is "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" I would be extremely surprised if it weren't about a person who has never had sex. Or does the word "virgin" have a different meaning in New York City than it does everywhere else?


Unique? Because he's not bad, dangerous or threatening? Or because he's a virgin? I suspect the country is full of men who aren't bad, dangerous, or threatening; these have always been the nice guys who "finish last." If I had to guess, though, few of them remain virgins till the age of 40. Mostly, they find women who turn to them at last after getting burned one too many times by the bad boys.

Still no news here, it would seem. But wait -- buried in the article is this striking paragraph:


The geek is sexy because he can be pitied? This is news. Women want men who are pitiable!? And this is supposed to be good news? That would pretty much wipe out the driving force behind the creation of advanced civilization -- the feats of leadership, heroism and genius men have forced themselves to accomplish for the purpose of making themselves attractive to women. Now we are to believe that it would be better to let it all go, put on a few more pounds, and practice acting awkward and helpless instead?

Oddly enough, Drudge also seems to have offered up some confirmation of this notion in yesterday's report. Consider this otherwise contextless item from the U.K.'s News Telegraph:


And now all that women need or want from the male sex is a shopworn teddy bear who makes a decent living as a nonthreatening drone? Interesting idea. But the next line of Michael Buerk's rant also seems relevant. He says:


This is certainly true. And it's intriguing that such a definite declaration comes from an employee of the BBC, a member in good standing of the ultra-liberal journalism establishment. Women may be in charge now at the BBC, but they're not in charge of all elite media. So why does the mass media coverage of the Bush Administration (for example) seem so stereotypically female in tone -- hysterical, histrionic, hyper-emotional, and irrational -- its argumentation entirely developed and arranged for the purpose of attacking one man -- at all costs -- rather than making any attempt to think through the situation without second-guessing every motive and digging up every old grievance.

The so-called progressive opposition to Bush is remarkably akin to that of a woman who has discovered her lover cheating on her. She's through with him. There's nothing he can say or do, ever again, to command her affection or respect. She will go to any length, no matter how self-destructive, to obtain her revenge. In furtherance of her purpose she will care about things she's never cared about, stand her own principles on their heads, and use every vicious trick she can think of to do more hurt to her target.

This extremely virulent side of the feminine mindset may be more firmly implanted in the mainstream media than it is elsewhere in the culture, but there is virtually no institution that does not increasingly manifest at least the milder versions of the female personality. Our corporate meeting rooms are geared to consensus and cooperation rather than breakthrough leadership (and its inevitable hurt feelings), our schools are drenched in feel good flummery rather than the demand for accomplishment, our politics are awash in policy-making by heart-tugging anecdote rather than sober cost-benefit analysis, and our tolerance for the very real human costs of defending the nation in a tough and violent world has disappeared into a swamp of tears and impotent tantrums.

What's more, I think there are a lot of women who detect that this is the case and suspect that it's not Utopia. Yes, they wanted to participate in the institutions and the decision-making, but in their heart of hearts, they didn't want men to become just like them. Now they see men who are as obsessed with appearance, clothes, and grooming as they are, famous athletes who whine and storm like teenage girls, leaders in a variety of fields who care more about what other people will say (and have said)  than how to get the mission accomplished, whatever it is, and they know that something's wrong.

But do they even remember men? What does a man look like to a woman who was born after the feminist revolution? Perhaps he looks like he doesn't care how he looks, perhaps he has a driving interest in something other than money and status, perhaps he lacks the degree of narcissism to plunge himself into the beauty pageant relations between the sexes have become. Maybe she sees a geek and thinks maybe she's looking at a man.

If so, love handles and pitifulness might not be the answer. It might be that what men need to do is relearn the difficult and complex skill of thinking and acting like a man.

COOL. Nobody loves cute things more than InstaPunk. Why, if we could recast all our political issues in terms of pictures of kittens and puppies, the world would be a better nicer smarter more nauseatingly bathetic cesspool of melodrama than it already is. But cute.

The best news is that the people at Snopes.com have coined a term for promulgating sentimentalized half-truths that can't pass the gag test. They call it glurge. The one thing that seems to cheer up those who suffer from a disgusting ailment is finding out that it has been given its own name by the experts. Hope this helps. And thanks for the link.

A GREAT GAME. We thought we'd watch an hour of Little League championship play before switching over to the Eagles-Steelers preseason game. It didn't happen that way. We stayed with the 11- and 12-year-old ballplayers who were giving their all to win the Mid-Atlantic Regional Final. And even though we were rooting for Toms River, NJ, against Newtown, PA, we couldn't be disappointed by Newtown's classy come-from-behind win. Both teams played with heart, skill, and discipline, and they did it before a national television audience:


The network coverage had to put a lot of pressure on the youngsters, but they delivered the best game we'd seen all year. It featured good sportsmanship, crisp uniforms, and a little of everything that's best about baseball, including clutch hits, stolen bases, a pair of homeruns by the losing pitcher, and multiple star plays in the field by both sides -- a big league catch in the right field corner, a peg from left field that nailed a runner at third, a masterful block of home plate by a pitcher (!) that prevented a critical run from scoring, and an overall level of defensive play that was solid and intelligent. Likewise, the batteries of both teams were outstanding, as pitchers worked through deep counts for strikeouts and catchers called smart games while keeping most of the errant pitches in front of them. One pitcher, relieved of mound duty after four-plus innings of fine work, became the catcher for his reliever.

ESPN's microphones were frequently able to pick up the interaction between coaches and players, who were repeatedly told to lay off the high fastballs... and have fun.

You can read full accounts of the game from the Pennsylvania side and the New Jersey side, but neither quite captures, well, the fun of seeing good kids performing like champs with their parents and friends cheering them on, with none of the ugliness we've come to expect from the stands and from spoiled superstars on the field.

The play is moving to Williamsport now for the national championship games. If you need some cheering up about American sports, American kids, and American families, look for the games on one of your ESPN channels. You'll be glad you did.