OUR ENEMIES AT LANGLEY
Re: Jed Babbin’s Jail Time:

A big thumbs up to Jed Babbin’s article on Mary McCarthy, traitor. Her appalling actions have given aid and comfort to our enemies, and possibly alienated some of our staunchest allies (a few weeks after the Washington Post story broke, I recall reading that Polish officials made it very clear they would think long and hard about working with us in this manner ever again).

But nearly appalling as her actions has been the liberal media’s double standard. After months of tut-tutting Mr. Bush’s alleged outing of Valerie Plame — some even wondered aloud whether this compromised our national security — the members of Big Media were strangely silent when the Washington Post committed the far more egregious act of printing Dana Priest’s story.

Already, CBS’ Bob Schieffer and NPR’s Nina Totenberg are lashing out at Bush for his more-than-appropriate firing of Ms. McCarthy. Let us pray that her actions and the “reporting” of certain members of the press will be seen for what they are: treasonous acts against a nation at war.
— Greg Hoadley
Boca Raton, Florida

Where are all the Mary McCarthy pictures? There is one old shot of her, which originated from CSIS. But the CSIS site has been cleansed of any mention of her. And there are two screen grabs of her from a video dated 2003. Other than those, there’s nothing to be had. Why haven’t we seen anything more recent, like maybe from last Friday when she was fired? Why haven’t the media been hounding her every breathing moment for those embarrassing shots to plaster all over the news?
— Kitty Myers
Painted Post, New York

Jed Babbin writes, “The liberal media is so consumed with its hatred for George Bush that it has lost any sense of loyalty to our nation.” Exactly so. And ditto that for the Democratic Party.

Look back on WWII and note the national cohesion. What caused it? Well yes, it was a different America then. But perhaps the prime reason for WWII unity was that the U.S. was indirectly fighting to save the USSR. So more than anything, it was concern for the wellbeing of the Communist mother state that induced the left to be cooperative with the war effort. Otherwise the left would have been ankle biting the war effort — just like it is today.

As for this CIA analyst Mary McCarthy, she is a traitor, as Jed Babbin writes. The sooner she and her ilk are given prison time, but the healthier the nation will be.
— Peter Skurkiss
Stow, Ohio

The mainstream media are, in reality, no longer free but have been captured by the Democrats, socialists, Communists, anarchists, and environmental wackos.
— Howard Lohmuller
Seabrook, Texas

Excellent!

Information reported on several blogs indicates Ms. McCarthy was a Democratic insider well connected with Clinton-era political operatives, high-level appointees (of which she was one), and outspoken retired partisan generals. McCarthy and apparently her husband recently made significant donations to Democratic causes. McCarthy told her story and committed her treasonous crime with reporter/accomplice Dana Priest. Priest works at a paper highly critical of the Bush administration. Priest’s husband operates a company that employs former ambassador Joe Wilson as a speaker. Priest received a Pulitzer for reporting classified information that embarrassed the administration and compromised U.S. interests abroad. If there was any lingering doubt about the bias of Washington MSM, those doubts can be safely put away. If there was any lingering doubt about the infection of many main stream democratic politicians and bureaucrats with the disease identified by Charles Krauthammer as “Bush Derangement Syndrome,” those doubts can be safely put away.

All that remains now is aggressive prosecution of Ms. McCarthy and hopefully Ms. Priest.
— Doug Santo
Pasadena, California

Mr. Babbin’s latest column is another one of his home runs in my humble opinion. My only worry is that George Bush will NOT make his administration enforce the legal sanctions available. I know that an argument will be made that to take the latest leak case to trial risks state secrets being made public. It seems to me that they are being made public now anyway. I believe that Bush’s lack of ordering full prosecution gives the public the (correct?) impression that he is not serious about going after his opponents, instead preferring to attack his base. Remember when he ordered the Justice Department to NOT go after the Clinton staffers that trashed the White House as they left? Did we see Sandy Berger hauled before a judge and then incarcerated for theft of classified government documents? How about almost five-plus years of refusal to enforce our borders against the illegal alien invasion.

I am also not sanguine as regards doing anything effective about the MSM and their sell out of the country to wage an insurgency against Bush. I am personally convinced that most within the press are thoroughly indoctrinated into the camp of the one-worlders that abhor the very notion of sovereign nation states. Also, we must remember that journalists today are not in the business to report the news and happenings of the day. They are in the business to “make a difference.” They are determined to make, or at least affect, the news. Why else would such a major part of each news report be consumed with reporting on public opinion polls? Just tell me what happened and who did it, I can handle the rest on my own. And where are we to find courts and juries that are willing to convict and sentence working members of the press in such instances like the one Jed reports on in this column?

REMEMBER THE ALAMO — BUSH WON’T
— Ken Shreve

Not prosecuting Mary McCarthy is an insult to all of us who paid the price during the Cold War working on classified projects from the development and production of nuclear weapons to the black projects that developed weapons to protect our fighting men and our nation. We all signed and adhered to the secrecy agreement not only because of the penalties but because we were loyal, patriotic Americans doing our jobs. Many of us sacrificed time with our families to spend endless hours designing and testing weapons and defense technologies in remote locations that we could not divulge to our loved ones. Even today we our still restricted from telling our children and grandchildren the information we obtained during our work on classified projects.
— Thomas Bullock
West Covina, California

HOUSE CLEANING REQUIRED
Re: The Prowler’s The New McCarthyism:

Mary McCarthy’s association with the Democrats and the former administration comes as no surprise, and it gives further foundation to the recommendation made by so many of my fellow conservatives in federal service when President Bush assumed office: remove all of the Clinton appointees and those in management who entered into service during the ’90s. We knew that they would work against President Bush, as they do to this day.

I wonder if this point is yet being made in the White House.
— Ken Lizotte
Bristol, Vermont

NOT WEEPING FOR ABE
Re: Shawn Macomber’s The Vain Assassin:

Take a moment and put the revered Lincoln in the precise situation in another country prior to creating his war (and it was undeniably his). One should also bear in mind that the invasion was begun to return the former states to the Union, not to end slavery. In another country, historians would point out the Confederate States had the right to secede and simply wanted to go in peace.

Lincoln’s tyranny, jailing anyone who publicly disagreed, suspending Habeas Corpus completely, and allowing the rich to buy their way out of the draft would be viewed for that which it was. Of course the “Emancipation Proclamation,” which may have freed no slaves, was a perfect metaphor for Mr. Lincoln’s “principles.”

One can make a case that Mr. Lincoln started the war to satisfy his Northern industrialist backers who feared losing the captive providers of cotton and other raw materials and wanted high protective tariffs. This disgraceful war cost 600,000 lives and the South did not recover until the 1950s, not to mention the freed slaves who were arguably left in worse shape than before the war. Prior to the destruction of the south, at least the economy was decent.

Had Lincoln not seen the benefit of war, the slaves would have been freed within a generation, or possibly two, into a thriving economy. That would not serve Lincoln’s purposes however…

The next time you hear about the importance of supporting “breakaway republics,” think about the much maligned Confederacy.
— Bruce Karlson
Navarre, Florida

SOONER WHOOPS
Re: Brandon Arnold’s Tom Coburn Means Business:

Three cheers for Dr. Coburn. Go, Tom, Go!!!
— Ken Shreve

THOSE HARSH WINDS
Re: Doug Powers’s Al Gore’s Hot Flick:

Doug Powers correctly points out that the “Al Gore we know thinks that the biggest threat to the world isn’t Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, North Korea’s Kim Jong-Il, or al Qaeda, but rather their leaf-blowers.”

But Al isn’t the only one. The cover of the well known scientific journal, Vanity Fair, this month also warns us that Global Warming is, “A Threat Greater Than Terrorism.”

For those of you yokels who don’t know, the aptly named Vanity Fair is also a source (if you can believe it) of fashionable clothes, looks and “thoughts” for our ever so fashionable and vain elites. But I’m surprised. What with conflicting evidence don’t they know the fashionable phrase now is climate change?

So we can guess, “Global Warming, er, Climate Change is a Threat Greater Than Terrorism” will be a liberal campaign theme this fall and in 2008.

But doesn’t this have the ring of saying during the 1930s when another generation of vain elites dithered and ignored aggression and excused assaults on civilization that it was the Dust Bowl and not totalitarianism that was the greater and more immediate threat?

Please Leave Me
— unsigned

MY TRUTH, YOUR TRUTH
Re: Mark A. Kalthoff’s To Tell the Truth:

Truth is traded in the public domain like a commodity on the Stock Exchange. Its value is determined not by the highest bidder but the lowest “common” denominator in our society. Our criminal justice system, also being an important institution like our system of higher education, is suppose to be a search for the truth being that justice and the consequences handed down demand it. Is the circus going on down in North Carolina at Duke and all the public comments being made a search for the Truth, pushing an agenda or monetary gain? I don’t know who is guilty of what at this point but I do know that there are no innocents involved in that mess. Was the trial of the last century, the O.J. Simpson double murder trial a search for the Truth? Was Bill Clinton held to a standard of behavior consistent with how an ordinary citizen would have been treated with his “truth” telling under oath? Are the Tom DeLay or Scooter Libby cases a search for the Truth? Does the Truth even have a place in politics any more?

Civilizations that discount the central truths of life disappear into history without a trace more often than not. My truth, your truth or moral relativism will destroy the foundation of trust needed for a people to prosper. Some of our more “enlightened” religious sects are already further along to being irrelevant because they stand for nothing that is consistent with the teachings of church doctrine they say they are associated with. If it “feels good, do it” can be found in more church leadership positions than one might suspect. We are all “sinners” is a truth, not an excuse for not removing willful debasers of society and threats to its people from society as the leadership of some churches seem to be at odds with. I never was able to understand why so many Methodist ministers rushed in to defend Bill Clinton when he clearly violated at least two of the Ten Commandments. It wasn’t like he was going to be hung upon a cross or anything like that. He was guilty of both moral as well as secular laws and not held accountable in any sense of the word. That’s the Truth of Bill Clinton and he makes millions now simply because the Truth never mattered.

The founders of this nation weren’t saints. At the very least they were flawed human beings with many faults and failings but as a group of people they rose to the occasion of their times and accomplished something that like all human endeavors has flaws in it but on balance advanced civilization further along the development curve more than any other single event in history. Those that dwell on the micro details and flaws will never find a single example of the utopia they seek. It is not possible to perfect anything where there is two or more free spirit people involved. The founders would be both impressed at the current state of our union and overwhelmingly disappointed and angry at our abandon of the central Truths of life. They would burn down Washington, D.C. if they returned today starting with the Supreme Court. They would then turn their torches on our public education and university system for abandoning the standards that make them relevant to life.

Be it multiculturalism, diversity or some other euphuism for excusing the failed value system of other cultures, if we don’t demand the Truth be present in our lives, both public and private, there will be no standard to advance toward. We are advancing but not toward Truth. The Truth is first and forever judgmental in nature. Our unwillingness to be judgmental in our thinking will ultimately fail us in the worst kind of way. Our education system, both public and private may be the “nest” from which our society is debased but the outland is where it gets its nourishment and financial support. I believe most of our founders were home schooled and self-educated. Schooling does not necessarily equal being educated. Millions of kids every year can attest to that. Perhaps that is the key to this.
— Thom Bateman
Newport News, Virginia

I must respectfully disagree with the Professor Kalthoff’s argument in “To Tell The Truth.” Outside the realms of math and science (and perhaps not even there), there is no such thing as “Truth” that is shared by all people, at all times in history. On the contrary, different cultures and civilizations, both in the past and at present, have very different understandings of good and evil, virtue and vice, the meaning of life, and so on.

As Professor Kalthoff acknowledges, “the interesting debates concern whether a deed is just or courageous, whether an act is temperate or prudent.” Today’s radical Islamists, to take the most pointed example, have very different answers to these questions than Americans and westerners like ourselves.

Hence, Professor Kalthoff does not quite get it right when he asserts that “truth and virtue matter, for they bind men and sustain civilizations.” Rather, it is a shared understanding of truth and virtue that bind men together and sustain civilizations. But these understandings can be quite different — in ways that have enormous implications for the quality of human life on this planet. I for one have no hesitation in saying that our way of life is better than the Islamist way of life, and that we must fight to ensure that our way of life prevails in the ongoing clash of civilizations.

Thus, the problem with university dogma about “diversity” is not its philosophical foundations. As a matter of historical fact, people and cultures are indeed different in their opinions, values, habits, customs, and beliefs. The “relativists” are correct on this point. Where they are wrong, however, is in failing to recognize that our way of life is superior, and requires defending against the barbarian onslaught that is radical Islam (as well as against other dangerous and corrosive ideologies).

The universities’ failure, therefore, is not that they do not teach the “Truth,” but that they do not “propagate” the ideas, values — and patriotism — that binds Americans and westerners together and sustains our glorious civilization.
— Steven M. Warshawsky
New York City

PREEMPTIVE SURRENDER
Re: Lawrence Henry’s The Logistics of Backlash:

Wow! All I can say is, wow! Lawrence, what an uplifting and highly motivational article on why we should just give up when considering the issue of illegal immigration and illegal aliens in this country. I can only imagine the tone that would have been set for the movie Patton if you had been the writer of the introduction when the movie was made back in the late ’60s.

Try to imagine, General Patton walks out on stage in front of a giant American flag and announces the following, “Troops, due to the political forces we are currently facing, the battle against the Nazi’s may not only not be able to be won, it may not be possible even to fight this war. I therefore declare that we capitulate like French surrender monkeys and go home before we get the living bejeezers kicked out of our soft American tushies.”

Or, to be a fly on the wall in the Texas Longhorn locker room during halftime at the 2006 BCS championship game against the USC Trojans when you, as head coach, come out to give the motivational speech before resuming play in the second half. “Team, due to the exceptionally gifted play of the USC Trojans in the first half I believe that we may not only not be able to win the game in the second half, but it looks as if we should just walk out on the field and concede defeat. Oh what the hell, why even bother leaving the locker room?”

Lawrence, has North Andover along with the whole state of Massachusetts been subjected to the putrid stench of Kennedy’s socialist liberal defeatism for so long that you folks up there have forgotten what its like to breath fresh air of freedom? Has the spirit that helped define a nation in 1776 dried up and become rotten to the core like the corpse of a dead animal on the side of the road after being run over by the Ted Kennedy Socialist Oligarchy steamroller?

I could just see Patrick Henry taking the same attitude as Chris Wallace of Fox News fame and telling his fellow Bostonians the following, “The British are coming? So what does that have to do with me?” Better yet, instead of the famous quotation “Give Me Liberty, Or Give Me Death,” we get: “Give me a tidal wave of cheap undocumented immigrant labor with no hope of assimilation into the American culture, or, at least allow me to continue to outsource as many American jobs and as much sensitive technology to India and the ChiComs as fast as I possibly can!”

I can definitely say that I am extremely grateful for one thing, YOUR OPINIONS ARE NOT FINAL OPINIONS. Because with over 80 percent of American public stating that they believe that illegal immigration is a serious problem in this country, then it will be the opinions of the American citizens that count, and not the opinions of defeatists like you and your fellow travelers.
— William Weaver
Mount Laurel, New Jersey

The Republicans could run Lincoln himself and lose, because they have become the party of the deaf. At least the Democrats listen to their anti-American constituency.

Even with control of both houses of Congress and the presidency, Republicans have done little domestically to secure America’s borders, so that our children will live in some semblance of the republic we inherited.

Why bother to vote when neither monkey listens?
— David Govett
Davis, California

BEN STEIN, REPORTING FOR DUTY
Re: Ben Stein’s Greetings From Rancho Mirage:

Thank you so much for putting things into perspective for us today. I realize that you wrote this article at the beginning of the month, but it was just now that it got passed around to us, via e-mail, much to my pleasant surprise. My husband is a decorated war veteran, and currently a Command Sergeant Major in the U.S. Army. We have been pretty depressed lately about our financial situation, and have lost focus on what is truly important in life. Our freedom, the freedom that my husband and so many others have fought for countless times, and train to fight for again. I have always been so proud of my husband, not just of all his accomplishments throughout his career as a soldier in the Army, but I am greatly proud just of the fact that he is a soldier. I don’t think it can get any more honorable than that! Today’s soldiers and their families make so many sacrifices, and they don’t even think twice about it-they will tell you that they are just doing their job. Even though I am married to a soldier, have a Dad that is a Vietnam veteran, and a brother that is a Marine veteran, and other extended family members that have all served our country so honorably, I thank every person that I meet that is a veteran of the Armed Forces-that is the only way I know of to honor all they have done for me and our country. I don’t take the gift of our freedom lightly; as the saying goes: “Freedom is not free.” My husband and many other soldiers know that all too well, as they have lost comrades throughout this war.

So thank you again, Mr. Stein, for bringing it to the forefront of my mind, and many others, too, just how much we have to be thankful for-our freedom-and just who we have to thank for that. I agree with you, our soldiers are very important! I can tell you firsthand-they don’t take their jobs lightly. Our financial problems seem pretty trivial, as you remind us of the greatness of our Armed Forces men and women, and what they bring to the table every day-courage, honor, duty first, love of country, and self-sacrifice, that no one else can begin to understand.
— Wendy Garrity-Pelletier (CSM Pelletier’s wife — the title I am most proud of!)

I just read a multi-forwarded email claiming to be from you thanking the troops. If you did send this, then you are welcome. And thank you sir, for being a great American.
— CPT Harper
Baghdad, Iraq

RETREADED
Re: James Bowman’s review of Pride and Prejudice:

I have just read Mr. Bowman’s critique of the new Pride and Prejudice. I must applaud him for telling the truth. The ’95 version was extremely well done because the people in charge of making it wanted to tell Jane’s story as she wrote it. It is clear that the new people don’t give a damn about her genius. Mr. Bowman evidently does, to which I can only say — BRAVO!
— Robert E. Vick