Bipartisanship

What is bipartisanship? This questions came to the forefront of my mind during the recent House debate of the stimulus package. Is it really being partisan if the proposed legislation is the antithesis of one's beliefs? Is the spirit of bipartisanship the equivalent of rolling over for the majority party or is it being cordial and agreeing to disagree? I would say that it is the latter. Working together is important, but if the intended goals of party A is not in the interest of the intended goals of party B, why should party B acquiesce? Opposition members are not being obstructionists by not voting for legislation that can be overwhelmingly passed. Pres. Obama reaching out to the GOP conference is wonderful, but the outreach can be embraced while the party simultaneously votes against Obama's plan.

The spirit of bipartisanship that Pres. Obama is trying to usher in is admirable, but if the definition of bipartisanship is to merely roll over than call me partisan. Why can't we agree to disagree? That is the spirit that we need in the country, not hotheaded anger against opposite ideology. Working together to accomplish a better future while simultaneously realizing that there are some issues that will never bear witness to both sides coming together.

A Conservative Perspective on Pres. Obama

As I sit here on the dawn of the Obama administration, I must clarify one important issue for my conservative friends. The inauguration of Barack Obama is not the end of conservatism, far from it! Conservatism as a political movement will regroup and march forward into the annals of time and ideas. Conservatism, as a traditional philosophy, has been underlined and emphasized by the election of Pres. Obama. Now please let me explain.

Traditional conservatism meant that the adherent ought to hold onto something, a conserving of the past if you will. It is a philosophically rooted within the writings of Edmund Burke and furthered through people like William Buckley and other contemporaries. Although many view it with a vague notion as "anti-progress" (which is certainly the case with many nostalgia laden individuals), conservatism seeks to stop people in their tracks and think about this "progress" that people proclaim. Drawing from the past, they institute a core system of beliefs into current policies, this system is called First Principles. These principles are ideals and should be lived up to and we should strive for them every generation. For Americans, the unique declaration that boldly proclaimed that "all men are created equal" speaks resoundingly in the face of injustice and hatred. Although the nation did not live up to its ideals, the unjust nature of the government needed to be aligned with the first principles.

America has had a mixed history, mired by the blatant ignorance of the truth laid down through natural law. The truth that were self evident needed to be rediscovered and obeyed through the trials of bloodstained lands of Antietam and Atlanta. The truths needed to be proclaimed through the teaching of preachers and the example of civilly disobedient citizens. As St. Augustine reminded us that an unjust law is no law at all, many parts of our history had perversions of the truth that all men are created equal. We are fashioned in the image of God and that similar nature warrants equality. To be opposed to this is to be in flagrant violation of natural and fundamental law. Without this sure foundation, the notion of equality is left in a precarious state, left to the whims of the majority.

President Obama, in a way, captures this ideal. He is a strong symbol that clearly shows the ideals of the founding are true. All men can become presidents and leaders. All women can make a difference in this great nation, even amidst bigotry, whether soft or institutionalized. Pres. Obama's story is uniquely American. Throughhardwork , persistence and personal application, anyone can make it, that is the fruit of traditional conservatism. Perfect equality will never be realized in a fallen world, but that should not stop us from trying. Together, we can rise up and make this a better place. Come, we have much work to do.

Talents

In Matthew 25, Jesus gave a parable in regards to talents. The story is told that there was a master who had three servants. The master gave five, two and one talent to three different servants expecting a wise investment. While the first two individuals took their money and doubled the amount, the last one simply buried it. He did not capitalize on the blessing that he received, instead he played it safe.

The master returned from his trip and inquired about the outcome of the three potential investments. The first servant doubled his investment to ten and was rewarded with a handsome prize. The second servant accumulated six talents and was rewarded the same amount as the first, with "many things." The third person merely dug a hole and stuck the talent in the ground, not investing it and earning a return. The master took away the talent from the third servant and cast him away, upset that the servant did not invest his amount wisely. While the master expected proportional gain for the investments, his servant chose the easy way of merely existing. He did not take advantage of what was given to him, instead he sought to a role of merely 'being.'

The master understood that each person is only given so much and is capable of a finite possibility. He gave disproportionate ability to each servant but would reward them equally if they used their investment wisely. He expects more from the person who is given much than the person who is given the least. Nevertheless, the master would reward them equally, "You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things." The overwhelming rationale behind this story is that each person must live their lives to the fullest. We only have one chance on this planet and the talents that have been entrusted to us for a short time should be used wisely. God will reward all people the same for that faithfulness, as long as we give the fullest of our ability and potential. He wants us to live, not merely exist. I hope that we all take advantage of this challenge, starting with you and me.

Israel v. Gaza

It seems like the Israel v. Middle East conflict occurs every few years. Rockets are fired, tanks inevitably roll in and civilian casualties are left in their wake. Lather, rinse, repeat. In this particular instance,Hamas picked a fight with Israel and Israel was more than able to unleash its superior forces in the Gaza strip. Quite honestly, Israel will probably never have their version of peace until they impose a post-WWII style occupation and completely dismantle the territory like in Japan or Germany. The Palestinians, on the other hand, will never have peace until Israel is either destroyed (check the translations of Arabic media at these websites for more http://www.memri.org/ or http://www.memritv.org/ ) or effectively handcuffed. Frankly, both of these realities are neither feasible nor just. I do not know if anybody can bring peace between the two sides., even President-Elect Obama. I do believe that there needs to be a significant moral and cultural change within the camps. As Salon.com's Glenn Greenwald pointed out, Israel must ask itself whether military incursions create more enemies than they destroy. Hamas and other groups must turn towards coexistence with the State of Israel and the reality that there must be a two state solution. I have witnessed Middle Eastern opinion firsthand and it is rather startling.

Hamas caused the invasion by firing rockets from civilian areas and Israel has killed many civilians by returning fire. While there is fault on both sides, in my opinion, one side is more guilty than the other. In order for peace to happen there must be a seismic cultural shift. Mark Steyn wittingly outlines this concept in his recent column below.

Gaza has its version of rocket scientists
Westerners seem to expect more civilized behavior from Israel than from its adversaries.

So how was your holiday season? Over in Gaza, whether or not they're putting the Christ back in Christmas, they're certainly putting the crucifixion back in Easter. According to the London-based Arabic newspaperal Hayat, on Dec. 23 Hamas legislators voted to introduce Sharia – Islamic law – to the Palestinian territories, including crucifixion. So next time you're visiting what my childhood books still quaintly called "the Holy Land" the re-enactments might be especially lifelike.

The following day, Christmas Eve, Samuel Huntington died at his home at Martha's Vineyard. A decade and a half ago, in his most famous book "The Clash Of Civilizations," professor Huntington argued that Western elites' view of man as homo economicus was reductive and misleading – that cultural identity is a more profound behavioral indicator than lazy assumptions about the universal appeal of Western-style economic liberty and the benefits it brings.

Very few of us want to believe this thesis.

"The great majority of Palestinian people," Condi Rice, the secretary of state, said to commentator Cal Thomas a couple of years back, "they just want a better life. This is an educated population. I mean, they have a kind of culture of education and a culture of civil society. I just don't believe mothers want their children to grow up to be suicide bombers. I think the mothers want their children to grow up to go to university. And if you can create the right conditions, that's what people are going to do."

Thomas asked a sharp follow-up: "Do you think this or do you know this?"

"Well, I think I know it," said Secretary Rice.

"You think you know it?"

"I think I know it."

I think she knows she doesn't know it. But in the modern world there is no diplomatic vocabulary for the kind of cultural fault line represented by the Israeli/Palestinian dispute, so even a smart thinker like Dr. Rice can only frame it as an issue of economic and educational opportunity. Of course, there are plenty of Palestinians like the ones the secretary of state described: You meet them living as doctors and lawyers in Los Angeles and Montreal and Geneva … but not, on the whole, in Gaza.

In Gaza, they don't vote for Hamas because they want access to university education. Or, if they do, it's to get Junior into the Saudi-funded, Hamas-run Islamic University of Gaza, where majoring in rocket science involves making one and firing it at the Zionist Entity. In 2007, as part of their attempt to recover Gaza fromHamas, Fatah seized 1,000 Qassam rockets at the university, as well as seven Iranian military trainers.

At a certain unspoken level, we understand that the Huntington thesis is right, and the Rice view is wishful thinking. After all, when French PresidentSarkozy and other European critics bemoan Israel's "disproportionate" response, what really are they saying? That they expect better from the despised Jews than fromHamas . That they regard Israel as a Western society bound by civilized norms, whereas any old barbarism issuing forth from Gaza is to be excused on grounds of "desperation."

Hence, this slightly surreal headline from The New York Times: "Israel Rejects Cease-Fire, But Offers Gaza Aid." For whatever that's worth.Wafa Samir Ibrahim al-Biss, a young Palestinian woman who received considerate and exemplary treatment at an Israeli hospital in Beersheba , returned to that same hospital packed with explosives in order to blow herself up and kill the doctors and nurses who restored her to health. Well, what do you expect? It's "desperation" born of "poverty" and "occupation."

If it was, it would be easy to fix. But what if it's not? What if it's about something more primal than land borders and economic aid?

A couple of days after Hamas voted to restore crucifixion to the Holy Land, their patron in Tehran (and their primary source of "aid") put in an appearance on British TV. As multicultural "balance" to Her Majesty The Queen's traditional Christmas message, the TV network Channel 4 invited PresidentAhmadinejad to give an alternative Yuletide address on the grounds that it was a valuable public service to let viewers hear him "speak for himself, which people in the West don't often get the chance to see."

In fact, as Caroline Glick pointed out in The Jerusalem Post, the great man "speaks for himself" all the time – when he's at the United Nations, calling on all countries to submit to Islam; when he's presiding over his international conference of Holocaust deniers; when he's calling for Israel to be "wiped off the map" – or (in his more "moderate" moments) relocated to a couple of provinces of Germany and Austria. CarolineGlick forbore to mention that, according to President Ahmadinejad's chief adviser, Hassan Abbassi , his geopolitical strategy is based on the premise that "Britain is the mother of all evils" – the evils being America, Australia, Israel, the Gulf states, Canada and New Zealand, all the malign progeny of the British Empire. "We have established a department that will take care of England," Mr.Abbassi said in 2005. "England's demise is on our agenda."

So when Britain's Channel 4 says that we don't get the chance to see these fellows speak for themselves, it would be more accurate to say that they speak for themselves incessantly but the louder they speak the more we put our hands over our ears and go "Nya nya, can't hear you." We do this in part because, if you're as invested as most Western elites are in the idea that all anyone wants is to go to university, get a steady job and settle down in a nice house in the suburbs, a statement such as "England's demise is on our agenda" becomes almost literally untranslatable. When PresidentAhmadinejad threatens to wipe Israel off the face of the map, we deplore him as a genocidal fantasist. But maybe he's a genocidal realist, and we're the fantasists.

The civilizational clashes of professor Huntington's book are not inevitable. Culture is not immutable. But changing culture is tough and thankless and something the West no longer has the stomach for. Unfortunately, the Saudis do, and so do the Iranians. And not just in Gaza but elsewhere the trend is away from "moderation" and toward something fiercer and ever more implacable.

To be fair to President Ahmadinejad's hosts at Channel 4, the "department that will take care of England" probably doesn't get the lion's share of the funding in Tehran. On the other hand, whenHashemi Rafsanjani describes the Zionist Entity as "the most hideous occurrence in history," which the Muslim world "will vomit out from its midst" with "a single atomic bomb," that sounds rather more specific, if not teetering alarmingly on the "disproportionate." Unlike its international critics in North America and Europe, Israel has no margin for error.

©MARK STEYN