The Pendragon's Hall

The Pendragon is at a loss. The lack of postings is a reflection of a complete lack of interesting news. Same old same--the world goes to hell in a handbasket as far as I can tell. Presidential candidates show their lack of historical knowledge, or scratch that: any kind of knowledge.

There is one article that cheered the despondent Pendragon immensely. Hillary Clinton would not have liked the Founders--they opposed higher taxation. Incidentally, how much is a Clinton worth?

A good perspective on Bloomberg's announcement yesterday. I'd be willing to bet history does not repeat itself, however. Conservatives are not likely to abandon the Republican nominee, who will probably not be Giuliani, for someone who can't even pretend to be conservative. If anything, Bloomberg will drag voters away from the mealy-mouthed Clinton, by offering himself as the true, liberal alternative to Hillary.

The Pendragon saw the movie "Spiderman 3" this past week (I know I am woefully behind the times but it's hard to get away). As in all the Spiderman movies, there was a central theme. This one was: You always have a choice to do the right thing. In the end, confronted with a criminal who became an outlaw to get money for his dying daughter, the criminal complains, "I didn't want this to happen, but my daughter is dying. I had no choice." The look of compassion on Spiderman's face made the Pendragon a little wary, thinking perhaps he was going to let the guy off. But the superhero replied staunchly, "You always have a choice. You can always do the right thing." This is a lesson brought home to Spiderman himself when he is offered the chance to live the life of a loner dedicated to vengeance, or to fight for justice. In these movies, the criminal is always wrong, but Spiderman always realizes how fine a line separates him from the underworld. This is a very healthy worldview to promote: "There but for the grace of God go I." This is not the same as suggesting the criminals are somehow innocent victims in all this, but it does teach a moral responsibility for men to choose to do the right thing even when it hurts, to give up their own desires to serve the good of others, and to accept the responsibility that comes with great power. The Pendragon is duly impressed by the Christian worldview presented in these superhero movies and strongly encourage my readers to see them all. We need more stories like Spiderman.

In political news, what do you want to bet Michael Bloomberg is the new hero of the Left for leaping from Republican to Independent? When Democrats do it, they become persona non grata. When Republicans do it, they are hailed for bravery. Of course, the difference between a lapsed Democrat like Joe Lieberman and a lapsed Republican like Jim Jeffords is that the lapsed Democrats still have a prayer of being elected.

I do not trust the Palestinians farther than I could drop-kick them. They have not proven themselves worthy of any trust or responsibility. They have, indeed, never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity. So why is everyone scrambling to prop up an incompetant Palestinian authority. I may be accused of conspiratorial thinking, but the Pendragon would not be a bit surprised to find that the whole thing was a setup to get the West to lift sanctions on the Palestinian government and Hamas will soon allow itself to be overthrown so the West will go back to pressuring Israel to give in to the Palestinians' every demand. Cal Thomas is right; George Bush is not.

Phyllis Schlafly is no stranger to winning long shots. She singlehandedly defeated the Equal Rights Amendment in the early 1980s. She provides a good perspective on the immigration bill here.

Mitt Romney delivered a speech this past week at the National Right to Life Convention in Kansas City, Missouri, that continues to mounth the evidence why a conservative of any stripe should choose him and not RINOs like McCain and Giuliani to lead this country. The full text of the speech is here. The Pendragon is proud to support him. Romney is one man who notes that a pro-life conviction underlines many important issues, not just the overturning of Roe v. Wade. The belief that life is a gift from God and should be safeguarded as much as possible bleeds into many issues. Those who find it "ironic" that pro-lifers support war in some circumstances and often the death penalty as well have not been paying attention. Life is worth protecting in the innocent child waiting to be born as well as the innocent people who sleep at night because a murderer has paid the ultimate penalty. This position believes in just war--war undertaken to prevent mass slaughter in the future and to end it in the present. It's more than just one issue--it's an entire worldview.

Now they want a straight up-or-down vote. You have to love Democrats. After making life miserable for the majority these last twelve years, they have essentially handed the new Republican minority the tools to scuttle their every measure. After all, we've endured seven years of Democrats saying they don't want to rush into things and they don't want to vote publicly on measures, and now Republicans are saying the same things. It's actually good. We've got the Dems by the short and curlies. They can't protest that the procedures are wrong since they used it to great effect against President Bush and a Republican majority. Even the charge of hypocrisy can't be used since it could easily be responded that the Dems are hypocritical for discouraging the same procedures they used for years. And they have nowhere near a great enough majority to invoke cloture, even with RINOs like McCain and Specter taking their side. So their program is dead in the water as their approval ratings fall, pretty much in lockstep with the President's. Enjoy your "majority", boys.

The Republican candidates are a lackluster group and the Pendragon is growing increasingly despondent. Were it not for the candidacy of Mitt Romney, I would be longingly eying the Democrats. At least they have a reason for what they say. We know they all hate Bush--we've known that from the beginning, irrespective of what Bush actually has done in office. But the Republicans! They are something else. Mike Huckabee destroyed any chance the waffling Pendragon would support his candidacy when he took Bush to task for Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. For the last time, Bush does not control the weather and has very limited control over federal agencies designed to respond in an emergency. The governor of Mississippi told the nation in the immediate aftermath of the storm that when it came ashore there was no way of knowing how hard it would hit. The Pendragon agrees with Romney that Bush's plan for illegal immigration, now snagged in the Senate by procedural vote (it is deliciously ironic that the new pet of Senate Democrats is being held up by its failure to achieve closure), is faulty and deserves criticism. There are certainly things that Bush has done that could merit criticism from his own party--not reining in government spending for example. But they chose to criticize him on the Iraq War and a hurricane! Gingrich, again demonstrating what an ass he is, says Republicans need to distance themselves from Bush to win in 2008. All due respect, Newt, but that didn't work too well for Al Gore in 2000. People look at a candidate trying to distance himself from his own party's former standard-bearer and think he is not a loyal party member. It splits things. Of course, the good thing is that Giuliani has been hewing as close as possible to the Bush Doctrine so if recent history doesn't repeat itself and Gingrich is proven right, it'll be goodnight, Rudolph. I don't know. The Pendragon is dangerously close to endorsing John Edwards.

Far from the news of war and presidential runs, a new issue has again moved to the forefront: the age-old question of origins. On Memorial Day, the Christian ministry Answers in Genesis launched its long-anticipated creation museum. So far as the gleeful Pendragon can ascertain, the opening went off without a hitch. Yet there has been fury over this from day one. Over a month ago, in the first Republican presidential debate, three men--Tom Tancredo, Mike Huckabee and Sam Brownback (all candidates going nowhere) dared to say they did not believe in evolution. Instant uproar from academia: These men want to lead the United States but they don't believe in evolution?! Preposterous?!! Given that the current theory of evolution did not originate until 1859, and only became widespread in the United States much later, one wonders how the country survived at all. When the helpful Pendragon dared to note that belief in origins, one way or another, was a private belief (however important to one personally) that should not be dragged into a political arena, I was told that people who don't believe in evolution are guilty of crimes against humanity. Look at George Bush after all--he has destroyed the world. Fine--let's really look at evolution's track record then, shall we? Darwin's disciples sent people to Australia with lists of wildlife that included the aborigines with instructions on how to hunt them, how to kill them, how to skin them and then how to mount them for inclusion in England's museums as "the missing link" between apes and man. The Tasmanian aborigines were wiped out by this crusade. Social Darwinism was used to justify the continuance of segregation in this country. Meanwhile, Hitler's philosopher of racism was based firmly on the ideal that one race had evolved ahead of all the other ones and needed to wipe them out--"survival of the fittest." Marx wanted to dedicate his book to Darwin and look at the bloody worldwide revolutions that still champion his doctrines. The Pendragon also does not believe in evolution (at least not as the origin of all life)--for one thing, the creation story makes as much, or more, sense than the evolutionary story. But even if I did, the reverse snobbery of intellectuals, who would surely protest a belief in creation as a litmus test for the presidency, is not attractive. And while Christianity has, regrettably, sometimes fostered discord and violence, so-called science and its evolutionary philosophy have been just as guilty. To Christianity may belong the bloodshed of the 16th and 17th centuries but to evolution and science belong the bloodshed of the bloody 20th-century. Ken Ham and his ministry have every right to present their beliefs to the society in large. I always hear that Christians should read anti-Christian literature because if their belief in God is real, it will survive the onslaught. Physician, heal thyself! If evolution is really true and the evidence for it is overwhelming, it will survive the latest attempt of the Christian community to fight the ostracism pushed on us since the Scopes Trial. Where's Clarence Darrow when you really need him?

The Pendragon stumbled across a two-days old edition of USA Today and picked it up, being interested by the frontpage interview with soon-to-be Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson. I must say, Thompson sounds like a good second choice if Mitt Romney doesn't work out. But the continued portrayal of Mitt by Democrats is not only annoying, it's entirely unfair. Democratic strategist Bob Beckel wrote in an exchange with conservative commentator Cal Thomas that Romney "makes John Kerry look bolted down." The Pendragon has heard this charge a lot lately. But it has no basis in fact. Beckel goes on to say that as "a Republican governor in Democratic Massachusetts" Romney favored abortion, gay rights and gun control, but has disowned these things since becoming a Republican presidential candidate. To which the indignant Pendragon replies Romney has flipped no more than McCain, who is now trying to court the Christian Right. But the charge has no merit. Romney was left on abortion and gay rights (not in favor necessarily) when running for Senate in 1994. As governor, he was staunchly pro-life and pro-traditional marriage. I do not condone him making lavish claims about his support for gun owners, of course, but he has governed as a conservative, even if he once ran as a liberal. He has changed no more than Ronald Reagan did from the 1940s and 50s when he campaigned for Harry Truman as a pro-choice, liberal Democrat to the late 1960s when he became the staunch conservative governor of California. Kerry's problem was really not that he flip-flopped on the issues: people do change. Jesse Jackson changed from pro-life to pro-choice, as did Al Gore. Romney and Reagan changed the other way. Kerry's problem was that he was a staunch liberal who tried to pretend he was not in order to get the votes of middle America. His problem was not that he actually changed, but that he was essentially asking the American people to forget his betrayal of the soldiers in Vietnam and thirty years of liberal voting and believe that somehow, someway, he would magically espouse traditional American values. Of course, on the side he was assuring his liberal billionaire backers that he would continue to promote their agenda. But there would be nothing wrong with Kerry honestly changing his opinion--Bush may have hurt himself by suggesting there was. The problem lay in the fact that the only thing he ever changed was his political rhetoric. Underneath he was as inflexible as critics say George Bush is. This does not exempt Romney from criticism. He raised the eyebrows of an incredulous Pendragon when he announced his support in the last Republican debate for No Child Left Behind--the useless education bill Ted Kennedy hoodwinked George Bush into signing (at least Romney is right on the latest Kennedy tripe to win Bush's support). But the claim that he is a flip-flopper on the issues or that he governed one way and talks another is absolutely false. That's more like Giuliani. Maybe Beckel got them mixed up: Romney's the good-looking one.