The Pendragon's Hall

From the I-Can't-Believe-How-Dumb-They-Are section it was recently revealed that the state of Minnesota is forcing Midwest Oil Company to pay a $140, 000 fine for selling gas too cheap. That's right. Since 2001 Minnesota has been setting minimum gas prices to keep the little businesses going. Well, isn't that the problem of the little businesses? It's been shown in studies that when Wal-Mart, for example, comes into a community, the price of food at other stores in the area drops roughly 25%. If the little companies want to compete, they can lower their prices too and they can always depend on local clientele to keep them running. But when the prices are hiked up to the ears, the average Joe can't afford to have too many principles and would be driven to buy gas where he can get it the cheapest. This benefits the consumer, someone liberals claim to like while enacting policies that bleeds him white.

As one of the foremost critics of the Carter mal-administration, the Pendragon is furious that critics from every point are now comparing George W. Bush to the inept, incompetent preacher-boy who presided over both the failure of US domestic policy and the nadir of US foreign policy and then had the gall to accuse the American people of causing it. In a way I suppose they did--by electing "Malaise" Carter in the first place. Bush it was suggested would lash out and accuse the American people of causing the problems he has faced in his second term. N.B.: he has not. Bush is far smarter than Carter, indeed than most politicians of the last thirty years and has been for awhile. In running for President, Bush raised the ire of many on the Right by claiming that Republicans too often picture America "slouching towards Gomorrah." He was right: decrying the wrong with no clear plan for doing the right is no program and the American people know it. Now the Left are on tenterhooks, hoping that the man who did something Carter never did (i.e. earned a second term) will make the same mistake as their fallen hero and blame the workings of a fallen world on the people who put him in office. So far at least Bush has resisted the temptation. I can only hope he will continue to do so. Relief is coming.

President Bush announced yesterday that while his Justice Department investigates oil companies for price gouging (sort of like announcing you're investigating Bill Clinton for lying) he is allowing companies to stop sending percentages to the reserve. The hope is that we have enough in the reserve to meet any emergency and that with 2% or however much it is more oil going into the market prices will moderate such. It is a decent, if halfhearted, plan and the Pendragon applauds it. Of course it has prompted cries from the Left that the President really doesn't have much control over the price of oil and whatever he does it will only have a minimal effect. Still trying to have it both ways. It's true that these steps will probably not cause a dramatic reduction in price, but you can't yell that the President needs to do something about the price of oil and then say when he does it that he doesn't have much control anyway. It's getting kind of ridiculous. Hopefully Iraq will stabilize soon and their oil can only help.

As per my last entry, I actually find the Bull Moose to offer some insightful advice. The Pendragon drives a 2003 Hyundai Elantra which can go about eight to nine hours on one tank of gas. Pretty decent. But there is some truth to the criticism that Americans are too infatuated with huge, gas-guzzlers. Bush for one has never denied it. That's what "addicted to oil" means. It would be better all around, I think, if Americans tried to drive cars that conserved gas and realized that everything has a limit, even gas reserves. I don't know whether I agree with the Moose that a tax on oil is the way to go, but who knows? My main concern, however, remains unaddressed. We need to find alternative sources of energy not just to drive our cars but to heat our homes and run our power plants. Until that happens we will be dependent on a very limited supply of oil and coal and run the risk of very high prices.

Everyone knows it so let me in on the conversation: Gas prices are absolutely ridiculous. The cheapest gas in the region of western New York I currently inhabit is $2.99/gallon. Most are well over three dollars. This is quickly becoming an issue in the November elections and it should be. This actually may give Republicans the edge in that in January President Bush outlined a plan to deal with American dependence on foreign oil. Personally, I think we are heading for a bit of a plummet in prices soon: Iraq appears to be stabilizing and their oil is crucial. If we can keep from war with Iran, we will continue to have their oil. Russia and China are pumping as much oil as they possibly can and if the Republicans force through a bill allowing drilling in Alaska, we'll have enough oil to lower the prices substantially.

What can we do in the meantime? The Pendragon has a suggestion: Bush should take a page from Bill Clinton's book (not the one in the restricted section of the library, the other one) and release a substantial amount of oil from the government's reserves. In the summer of 2000 this artificially lowered the price in an election year and we're certainly in much more dire straits now. But in the long run the only strategies that will work is, first, success in Iraq, and secondly, hard work on a new source of energy. The Pendragon does not claim to be an expert in energy but it only stands to reason that even if we find new sources of oil, they can't last forever. We need to do what we can to bolster supplies and keep it cheap, but in the meantime let's start working on another way to do things.

The evil emperor surfaces again. Osama bin Laden continues to breath massive threats against the West from wherever in Pakistan he is hiding in a cave. Big, bold leader this. Nevertheless he remains a potent threat in that he now refuses to differentiate between the leaders of the United States and their people. He never did anyway but at least now it's out in the open and we can stop pretending that a nation is a government and not a population. The US would do well to learn from Osama. We need to stop giving a pass to "innocent" populations supporting terrorists. If we cannot differentiate between the government that harbors terrorists and the terrorists themselves, we cannot afford to ignore the population that swells their ranks.

It was recently drawn to the Pendragon's attention that the contents of an Easter basket can be purchased with food stamps. The writer bemoaned "the Bush administration’s bald assertion regarding the capabilities of the federal government to transform human life, including marriage. The state has taken over the role of God. Government employs us, feeds us, regulates us, and now claims to be able to solve our problems, including gambling (is Bill Bennett listening?). " The Pendragon could not be more in agreement that candy and sweets should not be purchaseable by food stamps. They are not needs and their burden should not be imposed on the taxpayers of any given state. But the right-wing is beginning to live up to the adage that they are the only ones who regularly shoot their wounded and leave their leaders to die on the battlefield. This is not a problem with the Bush administration. Yes, he has not curbed spending and yes, I for one would be glad if he would do so. But we live in this mythical world where we think Ronald Reagan trimmed the size and power of the government and the fact of the matter is, he did not. For all his anti-government rhetoric he could not do without big government. Unfortunately, it is here to stay. We saw Bush try to privatize a certain aspect of it and the furies broke loose. What Bush is doing, indeed what Reagan did, was use the tool of liberalism (big government) to accomplish conservative ends: defense of the sanctity of marriage; lower taxes; more individual responsibility for health care, social security and education. What president in recent history trimmed the power of government? Bill Clinton, pressured by the oh-so-astute Newt Gingrich and his cronies in Congress. Clinton did an anti-Bush: he used the tool of conservatism to accomplish liberal ends. Suddenly, marriage was up to each state, meaning whatever weird decision one of their courts handed down; abortion became a private right...the list could go on and on. Romans 13 dictates that the government's mission is to do good and punish evil--this is something Bush agrees with. Unfortunately, many conservatives have grown up under the Enlightenment mantra that "the government governs best who governs least." Even more worrying, we have forgotten that the idea of self-government only works on a people moral enough to do the right thing without being forced. First Supreme Court justice John Jay warned that all nations must be governed either "by the Bible or the bayonet." You will either control your own more destructive impulses or everyone better learn to carry a baseball bat with them because you're going to have to beat it into people from the outside. When you live in a country where a woman can be callously starved to death by her own husband and this is allowable because we don't want the Federal government to "interfere" with our daily lives, when a majority of 4-3 on one state's supreme court can tell the entire state how to live because God forbid the federal government intervene to correct it, then you have a situation where, as much as I don't want to admit it, you live in a society that must be ruled from above. My solution: work on getting the people, the real power in this country, back into the kind of moral worldview they once held--that's the only long-run solution. But in the meantime it is up to Christians in the government, like Bush, to make sure the United States government does not become one that actually practices evil.

The Bull Moose is correct on this one: the Democrats cannot afford to lose Joe Lieberman. He's one of the few national sane voices for liberalism. Classified as a staunch conservative (something I'm fine with) the Pendragon has often been accused of wishing one-party dominance for infinity. Nothing could be further from the truth. I have no objection to liberalism having its say, what I'm sick of is hearing Teddy Kennedy and others like him hijack a legitimate point of view and turn it into treason. I'm also tired of being told that conservatives must give over or die. The Right's latest defector, Newt Gingrich, is displaying more of the idiocy that doomed his legacy in the 90s, self-righteously telling the Democrats they could run on the slogan, "Had enough yet?" But this slogan does nothing for the Democratic Party. It keeps them in as the Party whose sole agenda is undermining the current order of things, without any clear alternative of their own. The Democrats cannot long survive on this. They must create a plan for running America that is better than the one the Bush Republicans are employing currently. In the meantime, the Republicans actually have a plan and are trying to implement it. The Democrats, sans a few good men like Joe Lieberman and Andrew Cuomo, are simply screaming in anger. The voters have repeatedly demonstrated they are not going to be impressed with this, but the Democrats cling tenaciously to the hope that someday it wil actually work. I think it will take a lot more than domestic wiretapping and a few terror attacks in Iraq.

The Pendragon is on a roll, finding interesting books to read. My latest acquisition only got good in the last 100 pages which causes me to rate it only about 5/10 overall but it had some intriguing ideas. It's a novel entitled 1901 by Robert Conroy (Mass Market 1995). The book is a work of alternative history based on findings that suggest Kaiser Wilhelm II was planning a possible invasion of the US to force a handover to Germany of recent imperial acquisitions like Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines. This book imagines that it actually happened. The German navy blockades New York and takes Manhattan. The US navy and army are largely abroad and only weak militias left to face the might of Europe's second most-powerful nation. President William McKinley suffers a fatal heart-attack elevating the young and untried Theodore Roosevelt into the presidency. TR tries his best but the best talent available to him are the octogenarian veterans of the Civil War, one of whom (James Longstreet) is promoted to commander-in-chief of the US armed forces.

The novel is largely a politically-correct history lesson, with characters showing analytical skills far beyond the actual reach of the time. This makes for dry reading. For example, a veteran of the Spanish-American War ruminates, "History glorified the Rough Riders but conveniently forgot their colored comrades." I mean, seriously, how many people in 1901 were thinking that far ahead? Roosevelt comments on a possible longterm alliance with Britain, "Their empire is on the way out." Nobody would have guessed that in 1901. Nevertheless, there are some intruiging ideas. For example, Kaiser Wilhelm protests the use of submarine warfare against his navy as "unmanly." It was exactly what the Americans would do in real life 15 years later. There is also the intriguing idea that such a war would speed things up. At the end, the German military is creating what they call "the Third Reich" with an emphasis on anti-Semitism. Also pushed forward: civil rights, the president's right to nominate a replacement VP, a standing army and navy and increased world involvement and a worldwide alliance of English-speaking peoples (the last is still only in the possibility phase). I don't highly recommend alternative histories but this one had some interesting ideas that can't be ignored if one wants to theorize how different history would be if the US had to fight a war on its own soil. Another interesting thing, coming as the book did before the Iraq War, is TR's political foes (especially William Jennings Bryan) are originally supportive of the war effort but by the time it's a few weeks old they are beginning to say the overseas imperialism is not worth it and call for peace favorable to Germany. We can't be certain, but I suspect John Kerry might have done the same had he lived in the days of an invasion of our soil. He can't seem to see beyond cheap political gain.

1901 is worth reading if you have a lot of time and stamina. Otherwise, there are some good political pundits who make the same point without reverting to historical might-have-beens.

The Pendragon grows weary of the constant attacks on Bush's legacy. The Canadian magazine McClean ran a cover story this week asking the question, eventually answering in the affirmative, Is Bush the worst president in the last 100 years? The article pointed to 33% approval ratings and said Bush did not even have the achievements of a Truman or an LBJ to balance out the bad. The writer doubted he would ever be vindicated by history. For one thing, a plurality president accomplishing most of his program in his first term of office, then being re-elected with a majority is something no one has ever pulled off before. Putting two Islamic dictatorships on the fast track to democracy is something no one has ever tried before. Protecting a country the size of the US from terrorism for nearly five years, while supposedly "more well-liked Europe" has suffered dozens...that is something as well. But this has all been said before, principly by myself. But the whole question of the article is the most ridiculous thing. The last 100 years contained a resignation by a president, an impeachment of a president who could not even get a majority vote either time he took office, double-digit inflation, a diastrous war in Vietnam, near nuclear war over Cuba...and this magazine has the audacity to say that the Iraq War is the worst thing that has happened? Give me a break. Furthermore, if Bush is the worst president in the last 100 years, that makes him the worst president since...Theodore Roosevelt. I think we can live with that and perhaps the Canadian press can mind its own business.

The Bull Moose continues to tout John McCain as the answer to Republican woes. My response would be to cut the Senate loose altogether. Losing the Senate this Fall would not be the worst thing; losing the House would be. Senate Republicans already govern like a minority party, why not give them a chance to do it for real? As for McCain, even a hardened Republican like the Pendragon would have to pinch my nose hard to vote for him to be our next President. The President who takes over for Bush is going to have a tough fight on his hands and the whimsical RINO from Arizona who bends to every blast of wind from the polls is not going to be up to the challenge. Fred Barnes notes that Bill Clinton got exactly what he wanted out of the presidency--prestige and personal popularity--but that he was a failure as president in terms of actually accomplishing anything big. McCain would be the same way.

So what is the answer in '08? The Republicans can still hope Hillary will run but her plummeting popularity seems to make her an unsatisfactory choice as well. The best choice for Democrats would be a ticket that includes Bill Richardson (Hispanic governor of New Mexico to attract minorities, those who expect the president to actually govern and the more conservative southwest states) for president and perhaps John Edwards as VP again (to keep the white, rich liberals on board). The Republicans need to target the Northeast but not a RINO like Pataki or Giuliani. They need someone like Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, a staunch conservative with enough of a moderate stance of economic issues to attract middle-of-the-road voters all over the northeast. He would be my first choice for President. They must also not neglect the south so their VP candidate should be Senator Frist from Tennessee or even Senator Lott. Actually I think Frist the better choice. So there you have it: for a truly competitive, not insane, election, look for Romney/Frist vs. Richardson/Edwards in 2008.

It's exciting when I find the views expressed on this blog written in book form. I recently finished "Rebel-in-Chief: Inside the Bold and Controversial Presidency of George W. Bush" by Fred Barnes, a reporter for the "Daily Standard." The Pendragon has long felt that in a traditional list of Presidents who changed the nature and perception of the office (a list that usually runs Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, the two Roosevelts and Woodrow Wilson) George W. Bush would one day figure prominently. Barnes sets out to show how that might work. While admitting that history still hasn't finished with George Washington, let alone George Bush, Barnes thinks that Bush will one day be considered one of the foremost presidents for what he attempted, if not for what he achieved. Probably the most brilliant stroke in this book is his differentiation between "presidents who govern" (people like the first Bush who are content to hew close to the letter of their responsibilities and do nothing too controversial) and "presidents who lead" and this would include both Roosevelts and George W. Bush. These presidents have a vision for their nation and the world and they do what they can to help it along. At any rate the Pendragon strongly recommends this book to any who really want to understand the place of a president like Bush in American History.

Normally the Pendragon at least respects the view of the Bull Moose. His views are somewhat left of mine but there is no doubt in my mind he is a patriotic, loyal American with a legitimate alternative to the conservative program Bush is advancing. Nevertheless, his treatment of Tom DeLay goes beyond all reason. I have no particular attachment to the man but as far as I can tell his shortcomings, if shortcomings there were, seemed to be political and not personal. Yet DeLay is somehow being seen as being a step above Hitler. The Bull Moose may want to halt his character assassination. His own hero, John McCain, is far from perfect politically or personally. Somehow it has fallen by the wayside that John McCain's first wife managed to get him released from the Viet Cong prison and on the way home (via Hawaii) he fell in love with someone else and decided to divorce his wife. Stellar man of character this! Politically, McCain has pushed for the elimination of free speech in this country with his Campaign Finance Reform bill. Not exactly a great role model. It's an old saying that those who live in glass houses should not throw stones at their neighbors and the Progressives for all their vaunted theory of openness and "sunshine government" do not have a great track record on the personal immorality and the political corruption.

With the DVD release of Disney's The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe this past week, and the Pendragon's affinity for all things fantasy, I might be expected to comment on the event. I have only seen the movie once, in the theatres, but I do have some thoughts.

First of all, it was well-produced. Having grown up with the BBC production where all the talking animals look like mechanized stuffed animals, it was nice to see Aslan run with muscles rippling like an actual lion and the beavers not be six feet tall. Overall they followed the book fairly well and it was entertaining.

I was disappointed, however, by the handling of the content. Aslan tells Peter at one point that the "fate of Narnia hangs on your courage." Tumnus the Faun tells the Witch she has imprisoned him "because I believe in a free Narnia." The army screams, "NARNIA!" when it charges. The whole emphasis is on a nationalistic fight for Narnian sovereignty, sort of like "Braveheart." In my reading of Lewis' book, the fight was for the soul of Edmund and the outcome was not in doubt because of Aslan's sacrifice. It was not about the courage of the children. The climactic battle sequence seemed like something out of "Lord of the Rings Junior," not the Christian parable that the book was. The book also does not seem to emphasize any feelings of inadequacy on the part of the children when told of their role in the struggle by the beavers. The movie, taking a line from Harry Potter and LOTR (where it does exist), portrays Peter and Susan in particular as reluctant to embrace their destiny. This works in the other movies but not really in this one, where it seems, to me at least, to weaken the character of the children. All except one anyway. Edmund comes off better because of an extended beginning to the story where it is revealed that Edmund is really missing his father's guiding hand. This may be true but Lewis' storyline is less sympathetic, simply portraying Edmund as a weak-willed bully.

That said, the movie is not a total wash, better than I would have expected from Disney. As I said, the creatures are very realistic and Aslan in particular is well-done. He is certainly portrayed in Christlike terms. The little girl who plays Lucy is an amazing actress for her age. Overall rating: 7/10.

Fareed Zakaria has a great article in this week's Newsweek, entitled "To Become An American." Zakaria declares that the US does a great job with immigration already, because the process of immigration can lead, if the immigrant so desires, to US citizenship. In Germany, Zakaria notes, and in most of Europe, immigration is encouraged only so that people from other countries will come and work and boost the economy. German citizenship is based on being born to German citizens so a green card and employment can never lead to being fully integrated into German society. The same sort of thing happens in France. Zakaria notes that in the four and a half years since 9/11 the US has not sustained a single terror attack while Europe has suffered dozens. He traces this to a lack of connection with European nations among the immigrant community. He urges the US to keep to its current way of integration, so that newcomers will know they are welcome as potential citizens not just as workers to boost the economy.

The Pendragon could not be more in agreement. Immigration is a key component to our society and we should not completely close our borders. We should, however, be careful to show these newcomers that they are welcome to assimilate and join us if they are committed to live here and keep a clean record. This will give no grist for the mill to those who complain the US is anti-immigration. It will also have the added security benefit of convincing immigrants, whether Asian, African, Mexican or European that they are capable of gaining the great benefits being a citizen of America entitles them to. Hopefully we can then avoid the riots in France where workers who feel out of the loop on the economy are rioting against their second-class status. In the long run, this will probably make us safer even than completely closing the borders.

The Pendragon wins unlikely support from Bill Cosby. The black entertainer, who is exhibit A of a black man taking advantage of his gifts to propel himself forward, lectured a New Orleans community last night and told them that their problems had not come from mishandling of the hurricane. According to Newsmax, Cosby told the crowd that out-of-wedlock pregnancy, murder and drug dealing had run rampant in the community and this was something blacks were doing to themselves and needed to stop so they could move forward on the social scale. For being a comedian, he certainly manages to see much more clearly than other black leaders like Jesse Jackson, who spend their time trying to make blacks feel like helpless victims.

There is a positive diatribe going on about the lack of "political capital" President Bush has to spend in his last term. Media pundits are falling all over themselves to predict that were an election held today Bush would be soundly defeated. Even normally sane commentators like the Bull Moose have taken up the cry. The credibility problem these people have is that many of them were saying the same thing in November of 2004 when Bush registered a majority of the largest electoral turnout in American history. But even those who have recently joined the crew ignore the precedent of history. A President's second term is almost always fraught with unpopularity and controversy. Washington's second term saw both the Whiskey Rebellion and the furor over the Jay Treaty; Jefferson's second term, after the glories of his first, was an umitigated disaster; Madison's second term began in war; Jackson's saw the advent of the second-worst financial panic in US history; Lincoln and McKinley were assassinated in their second term; TR lost even his popularity; Wilson's slogan "He Kept Us Out of War" was drastically revised and his foreign policy plans all went in the toilet; FDR got slapped back in his ambitious social program by the United States Supreme Court; Truman became the most reviled President up to that time; Johnson started the war in Vietnam; Nixon was forced out of office; Reagan had Iran-Contra; Clinton was impeached. Get the idea? Even Carter--wait, Carter didn't have a second term did he? My bad. The problem is, after the excitement and euphoria of a popular election, reality reasserts itself. In Latin America, leaders govern exclusively on the basis of personality and so a popular leader maintains himself in office without ever actually confronting the world outside. All he needs to do is be charismatic enough to sway the populace. In the United States, it works differently. We calm down from the rhetoric of the campaign trail and expect our leaders to actually produce. And we are disappointed if they don't. Fortunately for Bush, all of the above are still considered decent or even great Presidents. This is because when the dust has settled, the American people look back and take their Presidents all for all, good and bad. This is different again, from Latin America, whose unpopular leaders will only be rehabilitated by western scholars trying to be objective. We still prize objectivity in this country.