Rosebud redux

Citizen Charles Foster Kane has returned to the blog wars after a long absence, and he's immediately going after Gregg Jackson for an approving reference to "evangelical Christian field hands who bring in the harvest."

Anyway, I scanned through Jackson's column and was equally amused at Jackson's reference to Mitt Romney as "by far the most left wing GOP presidential candidate in American history."

Obviously Jackson is referring to the moderate, pre- presidential- campaign version of Romney. Even so, it's not difficult for a sentient being to think of any number of Republican presidential candidates over the years who have been well to Romney's left — even the Romney of 1994 or 2002. How about — well, gee, Rudy Giuliani? Remember him? Pro-choice, pro-gay rights, nice and soft on illegal immigration; you get the picture. And if I remember correctly, his presidential campaign wasn't all that long ago.

In 1980, an obscure Republican congressman named John Anderson challenged Ronald Reagan for the nomination. He became such a liberal darling that, when he ran as an independent that fall, he helped Reagan by pulling votes away from the Democratic incumbent, Jimmy Carter.

Are you paying attention, Gregg? Get this: Mitt Romney wasn't even the most left-wing GOP presidential candidate in American history named Romney. That would have been his father, George, who ran in 1968 and who was a true progressive. Mitt even said his father marched with Martin Luther King Jr. He didn't, but he could have.

The early front-runner in 1964 was Nelson Rockefeller, so liberal at that stage of his career that many observers thought he should become a Democrat.

Or how about Dwight Eisenhower in 1952 and '56? Alas, the divisive cultural issues of today were not on the table in the 1950s. But Ike stifled the Republican Party's nascent right wing, consolidated the New Deal, enforced federally ordered school desegregation and warned against the power of the "military-industrial complex."

Anyway, I come not to bury Gregg Jackson, which is ridiculously easy to do, but to praise Citizen Chuck on his return.

Two arguments down

Charles Foster Kane has done such an impressive job of picking apart one of Gregg Jackson's spurious propositions that I'm inspired to take on another one. Like Kane, I'll rely on columnist Thomas Sowell's description of what's in Jackson's book, "Conservative Comebacks to Liberal Lies," since Jackson himself won't send me a copy.

According to Sowell, one of the "liberal lies" that Jackson exposes is the idea that "the Constitution of the United States provides for 'separation of church and state.'" Sowell continues:

Among the historical facts [brought forth by Jackson] is that there is absolutely nothing in the Constitution about a "separation of church and state," despite how often that phrase has been repeated in the media, in politics, and even in courts of law.

Over the years, liberal judges have twisted the First Amendment's phrase about "free exercise of religion" to mean the opposite -- that you are not free to exercise your religion if atheists or members of non-Christian religions say that they are offended.

Whatever the best social policy might be as regards Christmas displays or the use of vouchers in parochial schools, none of this is banned by the Constitution. Some judges, however, use the Constitution as a blank check, authorizing them to ban whatever they don't like and call it Constitutional law.

Now, I think we've all known since the sixth grade that Jackson and Sowell are correct about the wording of the Constitution. Here is what the First Amendment actually says:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

But does it therefore follow that the "separation of church and state" is a myth foisted upon an unsuspecting public by liberals, the media and -- well, you know, the liberal media? You will probably not be surprised to learn (although Jackson might be stunned) that the phrase and the concept go back to the Founders.

Because the Constitution is terse and at times cryptic, all good legal scholars -- even conservatives -- rely on contemporaneous source material to help them determine the meaning and context behind particular sections. (One might even say especially conservatives, since it is they who say they are most interested in sticking to the Framers' original intent.)

The Federalist, of course, is the best-known example of this extra-constitutional source material: a series of essays written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay with the intent of persuading the state of New York to adopt the Constitution. The Federalist, however, was written before the Bill of Rights. Thus we must look elsewhere.

It turns out that Madison, sometimes called "the Father of the Constitution," as well as the author of the First Amendment, is also the father of the separation of church and state. Here are a few quotes on the subject from our fourth president:

The civil Government, though bereft of everything like an associated hierarchy, possesses the requisite stability, and performs its functions with complete success, whilst the number, the industry, and the morality of the priesthood, and the devotion of the people, have been manifestly increased by the total separation of the church from the State (Letter to Robert Walsh, Mar. 2, 1819).

Strongly guarded as is the separation between religion and & Gov't in the Constitution of the United States the danger of encroachment by Ecclesiastical Bodies, may be illustrated by precedents already furnished in their short history (Detached Memoranda, circa 1820).

Every new and successful example, therefore, of a perfect separation between the ecclesiastical and civil matters, is of importance; and I have no doubt that every new example will succeed, as every past one has done, in showing that religion and Government will both exist in greater purity the less they are mixed together" (Letter to Edward Livingston, July 10, 1822).

I must admit moreover that it may not be easy, in every possible case, to trace the line of separation between the rights of religion and the civil authority with such distinctness as to avoid collisions and doubts on unessential points. The tendency to a usurpation on one side or the other or to a corrupting coalition or alliance between them will be best guarded against by entire abstinence of the government from interference in any way whatever, beyond the necessity of preserving public order and protecting each sect against trespasses on its legal rights by others. (Letter Rev. Jasper Adams, Spring 1832).

To the Baptist Churches on Neal's Greek on Black Creek, North Carolina I have received, fellow-citizens, your address, approving my objection to the Bill containing a grant of public land to the Baptist Church at Salem Meeting House, Mississippi Territory. Having always regarded the practical distinction between Religion and Civil Government as essential to the purity of both, and as guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States, I could not have otherwise discharged my duty on the occasion which presented itself (Letter to Baptist Churches in North Carolina, June 3, 1811).

Thomas Jefferson's views are often dragged into the debate by those who oppose church-state separation, since Jefferson himself was no friend of the Constitution. Far better to rely on Madison, as strong a supporter of the Constitution as there was in the early days of the Republic, as well as the undisputed expert on the meaning of the First Amendment.

Note what I am not saying. I'm not saying that every single action taken by the courts in the name of "the separation of church and state" is proper. I think we need to be reasonable. Obviously every person's idea of reasonable is different, but lines have to be drawn somewhere. Personally, crèches on public property and the phrase "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance don't bother me, but mandatory school prayer does, even if there's an opt-out provision.

The point is that the concept has a long and noble history going back to the drafting of the Constitution. Gregg Jackson's assertion that the Constitution does not provide for the separation of church and state is technically accurate -- but manifestly untrue.

Action Jackson

Not long ago I let a right-wing radio host named Gregg Jackson trash me in several lengthy rants on Media Nation's comments section. Jackson is pushing a book called "Conservative Comebacks to Liberal Lies," and no doubt he was hoping to move some product at my expense. I've had worse done to me. I actually offered to read his book and take the time to research and write a point-by-point refutation.

Well, this is funny. I just found out that on June 16 he trashed me again, on his own blog -- and I can't leave a comment! Apparently it's fine to come into my house and start screaming and yelling. But when I knocked on his door, I encountered this: "Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time." I guess he was afraid of getting inundated, given that he actually got one person to reply to his attack on me. (That person disagreed with Jackson, by the way.)

As for my offer to review his book, here's what he wrote: "Message to Dan. If you want to purchase my book you can do so by ordering it and paying for it. That’s how free market capitalism works my friend. You can pre-order on Amazon or B&N. Why would I give you a copy?"

Uh, message to Gregg. When someone offers to review your book, whether friend or foe, the proper response is to sprint to the post office and send it off post-haste. That's how the conservative commentator Russ Smith got a copy of my book on dwarfism, "Little People," a few years ago. Russ reviewed it for the Wall Street Journal and called it "extraordinary." Gregg, I'm going to go out on a limb and predict that's a damn sight better than you're going to do.

By the way, Jackson ironically titles his post on me "How to Win A Debate With a Liberal" (sic on the capitalization). Well, here are two ways: (1) Don't let him post a comment to your blog, and (2) don't provide him with a review copy of your book even after he promises to read it and write about it.

Gregg, my offer still stands. But I will not buy it. Nothing personal. I don't pay for books I write about. Neither does anyone else. Get a clue -- and get a grip.

Can't read -- or can't tell the truth?

In a response to one of his critics in this thread, Gregg Jackson makes a number of outrageous assertions about me. Today I would like to deal with just one, because it is provably false, and because there is reason to assume Jackson knew it was false when he wrote it. Amusingly enough, it is the very thread that he has closed and to which I cannot respond.

Jackson writes:

Yet Mr. Kennedy denies the fact that the only person who "lied" who tried to manipulate the evidence for going to war was partisan Democratic hack Joe Wilson -- a proven liar himself.

Jackson originally brought up former ambassador Wilson in this thread on Media Nation, in which he attempted to refute some points I'd made in reviewing Eric Boehlert's book about President Bush and the press, "Lapdogs." In response to Jackson's post, I wrote (among other things):

I have been calling Joe Wilson a liar for years. Do you not realize that? Just yesterday, I referred to his "headline-seeking and dissembling." Indeed, a joint congressional investigation found that Wilson's trip to Niger lent more support, not less, to the notion that Saddam had sought yellowcake. Still, though -- the White House outed an undercover CIA operative.

That Jackson would then go ahead and write that I had "denied" Wilson is a liar shows not just that he's willing to lie himself, but that he's reckless as well. Or maybe he can't read.

Now, as to my contention that I've been a Wilson critic for several years, here are a few things I've written about the former ambassador, all of them easily found online:

• From Dec. 4, 2003: "Wilson was already hurting the cause with his aggressive media whoredom."
• From July 16, 2004: "The Senate Intelligence Committee report released last week, which was highly critical of the faulty intelligence on which the White House built its case for war, nevertheless found that former ambassador Joseph Wilson's February 2002 trip to Niger actually bolstered the case that Iraq had attempted to purchase yellowcake.... For good measure, the intelligence committee suggests that Wilson has been disingenuous in denying that his wife, CIA employee Valerie Plame, had recommended him for the Niger mission."
• From Sept. 30, 2005: "Wilson wrote an op-ed piece for the Times in July 2003 criticizing the administration for ignoring a mission he had undertaken to Niger, a mission that led him to conclude that Saddam Hussein had not sought to obtain uranium from that country. One theory is that Karl Rove and Libby blew Plame's cover to Novak and other journalists in order to retaliate against Wilson. Then, too, it later turned out that Slick Wilson didn't tell the whole truth in his op-ed."
  
• From Oct. 28, 2005: "Discerning Media Nation readers know that I am not an admirer of Joseph Wilson, the Bush administration critic married to former undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson."
• From June 14, 2006: "Former ambassador Wilson's own headline-seeking and dissembling ... has always made this a more complicated matter than most critics of the Bush administration are willing to admit."

Although it's hard to tell from Jackson's syntax, I think he's also claiming that I've accused President Bush of lying to make the case for the war in Iraq. I don't believe that is an assertion I ever made, and it's not a view I hold.

I've always believed Bush went to war for three reasons:

1. Because he was convinced it would be easy.
2. Because he genuinely believed the neocon idealists who told him it would enable the United States to establish a beachhead in the Middle East from which democracy, human rights and all kinds of wonderfulness would inevitably spread.
3. Because he was absolutely certain that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction -- so certain that he was uninterested in the actual evidence.

Does Jackson care about the truth? The next couple of days should tell.

Too funny

Gregg Jackson of Pundit Review recently posted a ponderous item comparing democracy in the United States to that in ancient Athens. Jackson's so-called point is that we are deteriorating pretty much the way Athens did, as outlined by some 18th-century Scottish historian.

Well, folks, it doesn't get much better than this: Charles Swift reports that Jackson's entire item was based on an urban legend that's been circulating around the Internet. So credulous was Jackson that he didn't even bother to notice that he'd made it appear there are only 48 states.

With the radio on

If you get a chance, check out Gregg Jackson and some guy named Paul, who are filling in for Todd Feinburg this morning on WRKO Radio (AM 680). They'll only be on until noon — I caught their act while driving around Salem looking for a place to park.

I won't attempt to describe what I heard except to say that I thought my radio might be pulling in a shortwave signal by mistake.

Rosebud

Citizen Charles Foster Kane says he's all done with blogging — but not before taking a final shot at Gregg Jackson, the right-wing cohost of the radio show "Pundit Review." (It's fair and balanced — the other host is a normal conservative.)

Kane's was a voice of intelligent incivility, and he'll be missed. Perhaps he'll change his mind.

Defense deleted

Never is heard a discouraging word at Massachusetts GOP News. Last week, I made fun of this blogger or bloggers for suggesting that the state Republican Party might be better off if a Democrat were elected governor.

A few days ago, I ran across a response that reads in part:

Among the least provocative responses was from Dan Kennedy at Media Nation who called it a dumb idea and then seemingly proceeded to make the same argument. Another drunken Kennedy I assume.

So I posted a comment that, among other things, asked an innocent question: Is your libel insurance paid up, smartass?

The comment was #7. It's gone. So is comment #8, which I never got a chance to see. (A defender, perhaps?)

Apparently Mass. GOP News has been taking lessons in how to win an argument from Gregg Jackson -- who, by the way, recently took down his blog, although he still posts to Pundit Review.

Update: A response!

Certain comments have been deleted as I wished not to get into a puerile pissing contest with Dan Kennedy from Media Nation. It had nothing to do with his hissy fits; empty threats of libel suits or his name calling.

Assuming my retort will get deleted again, here's what I just posted:

Well, now. I'm probably "another drunken Kennedy," but when I try to talk back, I'm engaging in "name calling." Very interesting. And yes, my threat of a libel suit was completely empty, but what the heck. BTW ... care to share what was in Comment #8?

Update II: Deleted again! And, oh yes, I learned from another commenter that #5 has been deleted, too. What was that one about? Wow. Talk about not being able to take it.