November 12, 2003
Boykin Case Causes
Schizophrenia At National Review; etc
This is what is in the print
edition of National Review’s November 10th
issue—the treezine, as we e-types call it:
“During
the Korean War, Douglas MacArthur wanted to attack
Manchuria, and he let that be known to everyone who
would listen. That was not U.S. policy, however, and
President Truman promptly sacked the great man. During
the Cold War — in fact often pretty hot — NATO general
Edwin Walker was instructing his troops in the theorems
of the John Birch Society. That the U.S. government was
60 percent under Communist control was not the view of
the Kennedy administration, and Walker was gone. Flash
forward to today. A three-star general, William ‘Jerry’
Boykin, has been lecturing, in public and in uniform, to
the effect that we are in a war with Islam, than whose
god his God is bigger, that this is a war against Satan,
of whom he has a photograph in the sky above Mogadishu.
President Bush has made it national policy that we are
not in a war with global Islam. Furthermore, it is
hardly good for the morale of troops to understand that
their commander is a wacko who goes around photographing
Satan zooming overhead. General Boykin is manifestly
insubordinate, and should be sacked. Yesterday.”
This editorial has the appearance
of having been written by William F. Buckley, the only
man on the staff likely to remember General Walker, and
the only man in America capable of writing a phrase like
“than whose god his God is bigger,” or talking
about the “theorems of the John Birch Society.”
Oddly enough, it was the subject of
an almost immediate retraction on NRO (the
e—well, web—zine):
“CORRECTION ON BOYKIN [NR Editors]
”National Review, in the issue out today, runs an
editorial paragraph that it did not mean to run. We had
a debate among the editors—as we debate many
things—about Gen. William Boykin, who recently made some
highly provocative remarks about the war on terror. Some
editors felt that he should be fired forthwith; others
demurred. A draft editorial paragraph was prepared,
stating the position that Boykin should be fired; at
just about the last minute, we decided to withhold
judgment--to see how the investigation into the
general’s behavior proceeded, and to reach a conclusion
then.
”Because of a production error, that paragraph--the one
calling for Boykin’s head--went to the printer. And thus
appears in the magazine. We removed it from our html
edition, [That’s apparently the one they want you to
pay for, for some reason it’s
still up on NRO] but about the “hard copy
edition,” we could do nothing.
”We will weigh in again--finally and definitively--on
General Boykin, when we, along with everyone else, know
all that we should know.
Posted at
02:24 PM
This leaves us in some doubt as to
what NR’s editorial board actually believes. Mr.
Buckley’s experience as a yachtsman should have told him
that when you have two hands on the wheel, you generally
end up on the rocks.
The obvious
difference between the Boykin case and the MacArthur and
Walker cases is that MacArthur and Walker were both
removed for criticism of their civilian superiors,
Boykin was being threatened with removal for criticism
of the enemy. This, by an odd coincidence, is
more or less why
Ann Coulter was fired by NRO—for a
column she wrote on September 14, 2001.
Reference the above piece using this permanent URL:
http://www.vdare.com/fulford/boykin_case.htm#boykin
The Boys In The Backwater
From the latest
web-available issue of First Things Magazine:
“Law professor Michael A.
Scaperlanda takes a close look at one overlooked arena
of change in “Kulturkampf in the Backwaters:
Homosexuality and Immigration Law” (Widener Journal
of Public Law, Vol. 11, No. 3). Immigration is
viewed as the ‘backwaters’ of public policy, but changes
being pressed there are viewed as the wave of the future
by some partisans. As recently as twelve years ago,
homosexuality was grounds for excluding immigrants. Now
immigration provisions for uniting ‘married’ couples are
being applied to homosexuals and their partners. This is
a change at the edges that, if entrenched, could have
large ramifications elsewhere. Prof. Scaperlanda’s
carefully argued article will be of interest to those
who are tracking the progress of what is aptly described
as the
gay agenda.”
The Widener Journal
article is not on the web, unless you subscribe to
Westlaw, or
Lexis at terrific expense. But it’s worth noting
that the immigration authorities are starting to
consider Latin American homosexuals as
victims of persecution because they are from
countries with the same sodomy laws as were in force in
every
state in the union until 1961, New York until 1980,
and in 23 other states until the
Lawrence v. Texas decision.
Can we have some kind of
moratorium here, where foreign states are given a few
years to catch up to the latest liberal ideas
promulgated by the Supreme Court?
In the meantime, one of
Howard Dean’s
positions on gay rights is that he will “remove
bias from our immigration laws.” It’s not clear
whether he’s talking about admitting same-sex spouses,
or
Andrew Sullivan’s plan of admitting HIV positive
immigrants.
Reference the above piece using this permanent URL:
http://www.vdare.com/fulford/boykin_case.htm#boys
NotCitizens.com
Lefty blogger Ezra Klein (send him
mail) posted this on
NotGeniuses.com.
“We're going negative.
Weapon? Strange causal links viewed in the worst light
possible. Let’s go.
“Is Instapundit a
racist? Well, he might be. He links approvingly to
this post by
Vodka Pundit, which is really just a pointer to this
post by
Henniger [sic,
actually Daniel Henninger] (got all that?) which
says:
‘The most significant
voting bloc in California's famous recall election isn't
Hispanics or angry male Democrats but the people who
were so eager to weigh in that they've already
voted--with their feet. According to a report out this
month from the U.S. Census Bureau, an astounding
2,204,500 Californians threw in the towel from 1995 to
2000 and highballed it out of the "Golden State." The
state's net migration figure for the period is
--755,536, and would be worse if Latin American
immigrants didn't still drop in for a look. This is the
first time the net migration number for California has
ever gone negative...
‘If you look down the
Census Bureau's coming-and-going column nearby, the
consistent breakdown of Democratic blue-state population
losers and Republican red-state gainers is striking
(there are exceptions; Oregon and Washington state
gained, while Louisiana lost). This may leave the blue
states bluer than ever, but not very pleasant places to
live if their most industrious, motivated citizens
are loading up one-way U-Hauls.’
“So the article seems to say
that Latinos are coming in and everyone else is leaving.
The everyone else, for some reason, are called
California's ‘most
industrious, motivated citizens.’ Now, I'm not calling
Henniger a racist, but the only differentiation he makes
is that the ‘good’ citizens are leaving and the brown
citizens are coming. Draw your own conclusions.
My simplistic conclusion: It’s the American
citizens who
are leaving. It’s the Mexican
citizens who are
coming.
Reference the above piece using this permanent URL:
http://www.vdare.com/fulford/boykin_case.htm#not_citizens
Dean, Taranto, Krugman, the
WSJ, and the South
Presidential candidate Howard Dean,
who has done the
math, and decided that he
needs white votes,
said recently that:
"Southerners must stop
basing their votes on 'race, guns, God and gays' and
forge a multiracial coalition that focuses next year's
presidential election on jobs, health care and a foreign
policy reflecting American values."
I meant to do an item pointing out
that he’s asking them to not vote on all the issues
where he and the Democrats are sticking it to the South.
However, James Taranto, of OpinionJournal.com,
beat me to it. Here are some links provided by
Taranto. (Well done.*)
