I’m afraid we in the Bookwormroom underestimate Obama.  We believe he is hopeless away from his teleprompters, but he did quite well in an unscripted (if ever-so-polite) exchange with the Republicans.   We think he can’t move to the middle, but he supported Bernanke, shifted his foreign policy away from the positions of his most extreme followers and is now furiously signalling his willingness to work with the Republicans (well, okay, we know he’s simply getting ready to shift, or at least share, blame, but it is a strong strategic move, nonetheless).  We discount that he defeated McCain, because of how weak a candidate McCain was, but we forget he also beat Clinton, a seasoned campaigner with a big head start.  

Anyway, we are rightly pleased that the country seems to be coming to its senses, but we shouldn’t take anything for granted.  Obama has a bully pulpit (did you see his long pre-game interview yesterday, in which he said with a perfectly straight face that the best thing to do about the deficit was to pass health care reform; the one thing we haven’t underestimated is his ability to lie), and he will use it to full advantage.

I’ve had four tabs open in my browser all day, and want to pass them along to you before they get lost.

The first two are from England, and touch upon two issues I often raise here:  the reasonable accommodations a democracy has to make for minorities and the fact that Britain is becoming Germany, cir. 1933-1938.

The third one I’ve been saving is a beautiful post Anchoress wrote about how sex-obsessed our culture is, and how hostile our media is not to Christians (not Buddhists or Muslims, but Christians) who voluntarily withdraw from that obsession.

And the fourth post I want you to read is about a town that is so rare it sounds more like Brigadoon, than a real place:  It’s a town that has no debt.

UPDATE:  Uh, make that five things:  the government is planning on embarking on a massive jobs program.  It’s a decennial kind of thing, with just a little Constitutional nudging, but you can bet the Obami will tout it as evidence of their superior job creation skills.

(Please pardon me as I periodically start lapsing into “blogging in tongues,” writing in a language that bears some similarities to English, but lacks its intelligibility.  I have corrected my most recent error but you all should feel free to point it out when I write nonsense.)

Last week, I wrote a long, ruminative post questioning how far a democracy must go to protect its minorities.  Stepping in, right on cue, the San Francisco School District, which is facing a disastrous budget shortfall, is considering a huge expansion in a program aimed and supporting the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered youth within the school district.  Put simply, the City is seriously contemplating further destroying academic opportunities for the many in order to engage in statistics and psychobabble for the few:

With everything from art classes, summer school and jobs on the chopping block this year, the San Francisco school board will decide this week whether to greatly expand school services, support and instruction on issues of sexual orientation.

The decision could cost the school district, which is facing a $113 million budget shortfall over the next two years, at least $120,000 a year – enough cash to cover the salaries of two classroom teachers.

The school board is expected to vote Tuesday on the fiscally controversial resolution calling for San Francisco Unified to add a new full-time staffer to manage “lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning” youth issues in the district’s Student Support Services Department.

It also would require the district to track harassment and discrimination based on sexual orientation and distribute an educational packet to parents, encouraging them to discuss “the issues of sexuality, gender identity and safety” with their children.

That commitment probably would cost about $90,000 a year for the staffer and maybe another $30,000 for the rest.

Read the rest here.  It is worth remembering at this point that, even by generous estimates, those gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered students constitute only a very small portion of the San Francisco student population:

Various estimates of percentage of US population that is gay:

Average guess by polled Americans: 21% of men, 22% of women

Alfred Kinsey’s Sexual Behavior in the Human Male: 10%

National Gay and Lesbian Task Force: 3% to 8%

The Family Research Report: 2% to 3% of men, 2% of women

The 2000 US Census Bureau: less than 1%

It’s also worth thinking about how San Francisco’s school system currently ranks (and this ranking is before the projected cuts to academics have gone into effect).  Out of 752 school districts in California, San Francisco comes in at 382 — a little over halfway to the bottom. It could certainly be worse, but considering San Francisco’s prestige and sophistication, that’s a pretty pathetic showing.

Of course, San Francisco isn’t alone in this desire to appease minority sensibilities at the expense of the majority.  Berkeley, right across the Bay, garnered significant headlines when its school district proposed cutting science programs (that is, solidly academic programs) because not enough minorities were signing up for them.  After an uproar from parents who care more about their children’s education than parading them as sacrificial lambs to Progressive politics, the school district has backed off the plan, at least for now.

What’s so fascinating about these Progressive initiatives is that they are not being put in place to address manifest wrongs.  That is, I don’t see any argument that black and Hispanic students are being discouraged from taking science classes in Berkeley, or that they are the subjects of rank discrimination.  Likewise, the San Francisco school district isn’t using an epidemic of anti-gay violence to justify redirecting funds from academics to a designated victim group.  Instead, this is simply the Progressive mindset at work:  minorities are victims; victims need reparations; within the context of public education, reparations come in the form of denying academic opp0rtunities to all students (including, of course, the victims themselves).

I know I’m sounding like a broken record, but I’m beginning to think that, provided Obama doesn’t bankrupt us or Iran bomb us, Obama’s election may be a blessing in disguise.  Progressives outside of power managed to convince vast swathes of America that Progressives were interested only in the good of all, while inherently evil conservatives were dedicated to the destruction of everyone but white males (plus a few pro-Life pseudo-females).

The election, however, has gone to the Progressives’ heads.  They are revealing themselves in all their ugliness.  When it comes to education, their goal isn’t to educate children, but to indoctrinate them in an anti-American, anti-Israel curriculum that elevates victim status over academics.  On abortion, they’re not pro-Choice, but pro-Death.  On national security, their anti-Bush diatribes proved to be rooted in an affinity with the terrorists over the interests and security of Americans.  Their ostensible concern about the economy is merely an umbrella to transfer all wealth to the government.

You can add to this list, ’cause you know where I’m going.  Before the election, we saw the eternally pure and youthful Dorian Gray; now we see the picture in which reposes all the actual ugliness and evil.

I think it’s pretty clear that Audi meant to show that its car is so environmentally pure, it can withstand any scrutiny.  (Michelle Malkin shows just how committed to environmental “purity” Audi purports to be.)  However, its Superbowl commercial very effectively (and probably inadvertently) managed to show precisely what life will be like in a totalitarian environmentalist dictatorship:

My strong suspicion is that some creative type at the ad agency is working as a double agent:  pretending to be ultra green as a way of exposing the ultimate danger of environmental fanaticism, especially when it is our government that becomes fanatic.

I find it amusing that, one day after my long rumination about the different parenting styles my liberal husband and I have, with both our styles accurately reflecting our politics, the blogosphere is awash in stories about the way in which Barack Obama, eschewing having the whole federal government act in loco parentis, tries himself to be everybody’s minatory daddy.  So far in my reading, Politico, American Thinker, Hot Air, and Jennifer Rubin have all tackled our nagger in chief.  Just as an adult feels himself superior to a small child, so too does Obama feel himself infinitely superior to every one of us.  And as our superior, he clearly feels that he is entitled to lecture us as to the errors permeating our every thought and action.

One of my favorite lines in TV was one uttered in Cheers.  Diane’s mother, meeting Sam for the first time, says to him, “Why, Sam, you’re almost as handsome as Diane says you think you are.”  Ah!  If only our president was even half as good as he thinks he is.  Jennifer Rubin was on fire today at Commentary pointing out all the ways in which he’s failed, most notably his complete and dangerous disinterestedness in foreign policy that doesn’t involve active worship at the Obama shrine, and his patently obvious dislike for a free press.  That may be an appropriate attitude for a Russian oligarch, but it’s an appalling attitude for the head of the first nation in the world to enshrine free speech, let alone for the first president in America to have had a media so obeisant that it willing gave up large chunks of its own freedom.  The wonderful Don Surber has more.

UPDATE:  Mary Katharine Hamm predicted all this two years ago.  (And of course, all those who read Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism could have seen this coming.)

I don’t like Nanny States.  First the government tells you what’s good for you.  Then the government tells you you’re no longer good for it.  Goodbye, environmentally pure health farm!  Hello, concentration camp and gas chamber!

The American intelligentsia has a love affair with Communism that will not die.  The dead Soviets, the dead Hungarians, Czechs, Albanians, Poles, Bulgarians, etc., the dead Chinese, the dead Koreans, the dead Africans, the dead Cambodians, the dead Vietnamese, the dead Cubans, and the dead Latin Americans are all irrelevant.  Those are just mistakes from Communism done the “wrong” way.  The Left has absolute faith that, done the right way — the “American way” — Communism will bring about a paradise of plenty and perpetual peace.  All of which shows, as I’ve learned rather painfully over me life, that brains and sense are not the same thing.

One of the worst things that has happened since 1989 is that a new generation is growing up educated by the Left about the joys of Marxism in the abstract, but without any offsetting evidence of the horrors of Marxism in practice.  Yes, China and Cuba are still out there, but China has become such an important trading partner, and Cuba is so whitewashed by Hollywood, the average kid doesn’t see either as an example of Communism.  Those of us who grew up during the Cold War could hear people at Berkeley or Columbia waffle on about the glories of the Soviet (and the evil that was Reagan), but the evidence of our own eyes was pretty compelling.  When people keep trying to escape their own country, you suspect that more is going on than meets the ideologically blinded academic eye.

Glenn Beck is trying to meet and challenge this scary cultural ignorance.  Although I don’t watch his show, I’ve heard from many that he’s been on an educational crusade, trying to make his viewers appreciate just how disastrous Communism in action is.  (Actually, I would broaden this to say “socialism.”  Communism was just one variation of this political plague.  The word “socialism” better encompasses alternative forms of this type of government, including the Nazis.)  Jamie Glazov is especially appreciative what Beck is doing, because his family suffered so terribly under the Soviets:

The tortures included laying a man naked on a freezing cement floor, forcing his legs apart, and then an interrogator stepping on his testicles, applying increasing pressure until the confession surfaced. Imagine the consequences of no surfacing confession. Indeed, many people refused to confess to a crime they did not commit.

Daughters and sons were raped in front of their fathers and mothers — for the sake of extracting “confessions.”

***

Both of my grandfathers were exterminated by Stalinist terror. Both of my parents, Yuri and Marina Glazov, were dissidents in the former Soviet Union. They risked their lives for freedom; they stood up against Soviet totalitarianism. They barely escaped the gulag, a fortune many of our friends and relatives did not share. I come from a system where a myriad of the closest people to my family simply disappeared, where relatives and family friends died under interrogation and torture for their beliefs — or for simply nothing at all.

Please read the whole thing.  It’s not just an indictment of socialism, it’s also an attack against the “intellectuals” who shunned dissidents who actually experienced the evils of Communism.  How much better to live in a world of intellectual theory, with PepsiCo as the big enemy, than acknowledge the fact that the ideology you so cheerfully embrace is responsible for more than 100 million deaths, and uncountable incidences of torture and suffering.

I commented earlier that Focus on the Family handled the whole Tebow ad brilliantly, by letting the Left get hysterical in advance, only to be confronted by a completely innocuous ad in which Pam Tebow talks about times when she worried about Tim’s life.  With its preemptive frothing, the Left managed to show anyone who was paying attention that they care, not about choices (because Pam Tebow made a choice), but about preserving abortion in all forms, at all costs, under all circumstances.  (For my by-no-means doctrinaire views on the subject, see here.)

Showing that they can’t quit when they’re behind, the Lefties, this time in the form of an op-ed at The Nation magazine, continue to opine idiotically on the subject.  I’ve interjected a little common sense:

Folks – the Tim Tebow/Pam Tebow ad has finally aired and it is about as vanilla as an Andy Williams Christmas Special. This is none too surprising. After all, CBS actually co-produced the ad to run seamlessly with the rest of its slick Super Bowl coverage. This has the anti-choice right wing on the blogs mocking the National Organization for Women and Planned Parenthood for “making a big deal over nothing.”

Yes, that would be me being one of the mockers, sort of.  I’m delighted that they made a big deal over nothing, because it helped highlight what matters to those folks rejoicing under the Orwellian name of “pro-choice.”

But the concerns of NOW and Planned Parenthood were absolutely spot on when you saw the final shot of the ad: “This message is brought to you by Focus on the Family.” The idea that Focus on the Family – an organization that believes in reparative therapy for LGBT people, that likens abortion rights to the Nazi holocaust, and that has shadowy connections to open hate groups – gets this kind of a mammoth public forum is an absolute disgrace.

This is where the Left is suffering from a pretty embarrassing logic gap.  The only reason anyone paid any attention to that ad (raising the possibility that people might check out Focus on the Family) is because the Left got so hysterical.  Had they adopted a wait-and-see attitude, and then let the ad sink like a very expensive stone when it was obvious how “vanilla” it was, that would have been the end of the fight.  The Tebows would have had their little say, and everyone would have gone home.

But the whole kerfuffle wasn’t about the ad itself.  It was about pro-life and true pro-choice advocates baiting the Left to show that it’s agenda isn’t the misnomer “pro-choice,” but is instead a eugenic commitment:  the Left finds it heinous that people would go ahead with high risk pregnancies.  The true believers, when it comes to abortion rights, think that high risk pregnancies should narrow down to one choice — abortion.  And if you don’t believe me, look at the splenetic response “pro-choice” people had regarding Sarah Palin’s choice to have a child she knew would be mentally disabled.

As for the ad, Pam Tebow speaks about the choice to ignore her doctor’s advice and risk her own life. She has every right to stand on a soap box with her hunky, Heisman winning son, and tell other women about the benefits of ignoring your doctor. But the idea that CBS would provide the platform for such a message without so much as a medical disclaimer, is simply wrong.

I can see the medical disclaimer now:  “Two out of five doctors believe that, if you’re advised that your baby might be stillborn, you should have an abortion to preclude the possibility that it might be born alive and healthy.”

What kind of verkakte talk is that?  Please keep in mind that Pam Tebow, in both ads, here and here, talked about her worries about Tim’s health, not about her worries about her own health.  In other words, unless viewers, intrigued by the uproar, went to the focus on the family website, they’d never hear Pam say, as The Nation falsely states, that she chose “to ignore her doctor’s advice and risk her own life.”

Also, the idea that Focus on the Family, an organization which stands unequivocally for the view that other women should be denied Pam Tebow’s choice would get this kind of prime commercial real estate, exposes CBS as a frighteningly fraudulent operation. They should offer free commercial time to Planned Parenthood.

Focus on the Family paid to run what even The Nation admits is a completely innocuous commercial that talks about what even The Nation admits is “Pam Tebow’s choice.”  The pro-choice nature of  the ad so infuriates The Nation’s editors that they proclaim that the only antidote is to give the frequently governmentally-funded Planned Parenthood free airtime?

Again, I like it.  How about this ad:  “Margaret Sanger founded Planned Parenthood because she recognized that sometimes, Mother Nature just doesn’t get things quite right.  Left to her own devices, Mother Nature produces ‘retarded’ people, Negroes, Jews, and other undesirables.   So when the doctor tells you there’s a possibility that you’re going to be bringing another undesirable into the world, Planned Parenthood is there to serve you, and to make sure that Mother Nature gets a helping hand.”

And if Roe vs. Wade is ever deemed unconstitutional, I hope the executives at CBS ponder their role in this process. Maybe it’ll cross their minds when they are taking their daughters on a first class trip to France for legal, safe abortions. Somewhere, Edward R. Murrow weeps.

Roe v. Wade has been unconstitutional from the get-go.  Honest lawyers, even pro-”choice” honest lawyers acknowledge that it creates a right out of whole cloth.

As y’all know, I am not rabidly anti-abortion.  I believe it has a definite place, and I believe that there are gray areas where black-and-white law makes for very bad outcomes.  However, I also believe that the Left’s obsession with fetal deaths, its hysterical assertions that changing the law one iota will throw us back to some 1850 horror show of coat hangers and bloodied rooms, is ridiculous.  Times have changed.  Birth control has changed.  Single parenthood has changed.  Social stigmas have changed.  Maternal mortality has changed.  It’s a cheap and shoddy debate to pretend that, as to abortion alone, time has frozen, and there can be no movement.

My admiration for Focus on the Family, a group that holds views that are much more extreme than any I hold regarding abortion, gays, etc., continues to grow.  Conservatives generally could learn from this technique of allowing the Left to rip back its own curtain, exposing the totalitarianism hiding behind the cooing words of love and compassion.

UPDATE:  Fellow Watcher’s Council member Omri Ceren, at Mere Rhetoric, has a great post explaining that the new meme, attacking the commercial for celebrating violence against women, simply exposes — again — the staggering hypocrisy that animates the Left.  Oh, wait!  I forgot.  They’re not hypocritical at all.  If I remember correctly the Left was saying that the violent imagery in the attacks against Palin was okay, because she wasn’t really a woman.  And what was one of the things that made her not a woman?  Her refusal to abort a Down child.  It always comes full circle, doesn’t it?

Congratulations to jlibson, who was the only one to pick the Saints in the Bookwormroom poll.  No prize, but a years worth of bragging rights to put to use at any time.  And congratuations to the Saints, for a storybook ending to a feel-good story.

I think that Focus on the Family took a page out of Andrew Breitbart’s book.  They dangled a little information in front of the liberals, and then let them self-immolate.  In response to the notion that Tebow and his mom were going to make a pro-Life commercial, the Left went completely unhinged, with obscene aged hippies, deranged letters, and hate-filled videos about the end of abortion as we know it.  And then what actually happened was this:

A more innocuous commercial it’s impossible to imagine.  It’s so low key, there’s almost no message there.  And it’s that very innocuous-ness that matters.  The takeaway is that the Left is obsessed, not with choice but with abortion, while the Right is obsessed with . . . well, they’re not really obsessed with anything at all, although they do think it’s a good thing when miracle babies go on to do great things.

Brilliant.

As you have probably guessed from my blog silence this weekend, I have been heavily engaged in various family activities, many of which seemed to involve soccer balls or (this weekend) footballs.  I haven’t had lots of time to think about current events (which must, in any event, take a back seat to the Superbowl), but I have had a lot of time to think about parenting.  These thoughts have let me to the conclusion that, at least in my household, our parenting styles reflect quite precisely our political beliefs.

With some glaring exceptions (most notably second hand smoke which bugs me so much I’m willing to allow the government to prohibit smoking in public places), I’m fairly libertarian.  I believe in individualism, without tight government oversight.  I trust that people, armed with adequate information, will make appropriate decisions regarding their own well-being.  If they choose not to make appropriate decisions, I believe that they should be responsible for the consequences.  I think our government should be there in the case of unforeseen disasters, that it has a responsibility to protect the nation from national security and epidemic health dangers, and that a humane nation must always care for those who cannot care for themselves (such as the mentally or physically disabled).  Mostly, though, I believe that citizens thrive when left alone.

It turns out that, as the parent of pre-adolescent children, I bring precisely the same attitude towards parenting.  I make sure that my children are very clear on the big rules and the big moral issues.  Some of the rules tell them what they must do (go to school) and some tell them what they may not do (drink, drugs, sex, violence, etc.).  The morality is predicated on both the Golden Rule (”Do unto others…”) and the Hillel Rule (”Do not do unto others…”).  I hold them responsible for handling many of their own affairs.

Here are a few examples of how this parenting works:  I will remind the kids to do their homework, but I will not force them to do it.  Their homework is not my problem; it’s theirs.  If they fail to do it, they have to deal with the teacher.  Both of my kids do their homework.

I do not dictate what my children should wear.  I have some moral parameters (she may not wear slut clothes; he may not wear gang clothes), but otherwise I’ll simply give them information, whether that’s about the expected temperature or the type of event we’re attending).  They may make their own choices.  If they’re too hot or too cold, or under-dressed or over-dressed, next time they will probably take more seriously the information I gave them.

I do not tell my kids what they should do with their friends.  I may say they cannot watch TV or play computer games, and they know that they’re not allowed to engage in criminal, cruel or dangerous acts, but otherwise they’re supposed to find their own amusement.  Their ability to have fun with their peers is not my responsibility.

I understand that this laissez-faire attitude won’t work under all circumstances, just as it won’t for a government vis a vis all of its citizens, at all times.  When my children were little, they needed me to have a much heavier parenting hand.  When they’re sick, they need my care.  When they’re in danger, they need my protection.  When they violate rules that don’t come with an automatic “natural consequence,” I may have to step in and provide that consequence.

But always, always, I endeavor to give my children as much freedom as they can possibly handle.  I also try, at all times, to communicate as clearly as possible with them.  Because I don’t bury them in a flurry of prohibitions and directives, it’s pretty easy for me to be clear about the things that matter.  They know what I expect, and they can easily make choices to abide with my expectations — or to ignore them and face the consequences.

My husband is a very bright man who suspects that most people process information poorly and don’t make good decisions.  He believes that certain races and cultures (cultures = Sarah Palin hicks) simply can’t function without an educated hand guiding them — preferably a hand educated at a reputable East Coast institution.  He is a firm believer that government exists to provide as many services and rights (even if those rights are conflicting) as possible.  Government should provide education to everyone (legal or illegal), health care to everyone (legal or illegal), and housing to everyone (again, legal or illegal).  He believes firmly in anthropogenic climate change and wants the government, by hook or by crook, through incentives or punitive measures, to change our economy and way of life to protect against imminent immolation.  He is a relativist, who believes that there are few absolute rights and wrongs, and that America fought her last good war between 1939 and 1945.  He is, in other words, a modern liberal.

What’s interesting is how closely my husband’s parenting style mirrors his belief that government, acting for its citizen’s own benefit, must constantly micromanage their lives.  While I will inform my children that it’s cold outside, he will tell them what they must wear.  While I will remind them that they have to do their homework before bedtime, he will sit them down with threats of reprisals.  While I will tell them to get away from their computer games, he will try to plan out their activities. He is very directive and protective.  He tends not to give the children information or a big picture idea behind his rules and directives.  Instead, he just says “Do this” or “Do not do that.”  He and the kids run into trouble sometimes when they interpret something contrary to his meaning.

Here are two examples of the way in which children and adults miscommunicate, although neither is from my own home.  The first concerns the mother who says “Don’t let me see you hit your sister.”  A grown-up understands this to be a prohibition against hitting.  A child, however, may quite logically read it as a prohibition against hitting his sister within Mom’s line of sight.  Likewise, a parent who tells a child to “get your backpack out of the front hall” may be surprised when the child merely moves it to the living room.  Children are literalists and it can make for some huge communication problems, especially with a directive parent.

My husband approaches parenting with tremendous love for the children, just as my laissez faire approach is a loving one.  That is, he does not perceive himself to be a bully, nor do I believe myself to be neglectful.  Each of us thinks that our approach is the best way to shape our little ones into happy and productive adults.

The kids, to their credit, are shaping up nicely.  They do well in school, have normal social lives and good friends, stay out of trouble, and dress appropriately.  It’s impossible to tell whether the freedom I grant them or the direction he gives them is responsible for their current well-being.  Perhaps it’s an amalgam of the two — which is also a good metaphor for a healthy government being one that balances between anarchy and totalitarianism.  There are circumstances where the laissez-faire approach is neglectful to the point of cruelty; and other circumstances in which a heavy hand is stifling to the point of dysfunction and despair.

(I’ll keep you posted on all this as my children approach their teen years.  My husband and I may find ourselves doing some fancy footwork to adapt our parenting styles to those changing circumstances.)