Posted on 09/06/2006 9:13:55 AM PDT by Reagan Man
Rudolph Giuliani has repeatedly extended the hand of friendship to Christian conservatives in recent months. But a leading member of a think tank closely associated with the former Mayor has just delivered a powerful jab to the face of the same constituency.
Mr. Giuliani, long viewed with suspicion by the religious right because of his pro-choice, pro-civil-union positions, went so far as to campaign for former Christian Coalition leader Ralph Reed back in May. The move was widely seen as an attempt to curry favor with a voting bloc that will play a crucial role in electing the Republican Presidential candidate in 2008.
But last month, Heather Mac Donald—a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, the organization that served as a semi-official brain trust to Mr. Giuliani during his time in Gracie Mansion—mounted a brazen frontal assault on the politics of piety. Moreover, she chose Pat Buchanan’s magazine, The American Conservative, as the unlikely platform from which to do so.
Ms. Mac Donald is a heroine to many in the conservative movement, in part because of her robust attacks on everything from feminist ideology (“lunacy”) to The New York Times (“a national security threat”).
She is also, not incidentally, a self-described nonbeliever.
“Skeptical conservatives—one of the Right’s less celebrated subcultures—are conservatives because of their skepticism, not in spite of it,” she wrote in the Aug. 28 issue of The American Conservative. “They ground their ideas in rational thinking and (nonreligious) moral argument. And the conservative movement is crippling itself by leaning too heavily on religion to the exclusion of these temperamentally compatible allies.”
The article ignited a firestorm that continues to sweep across conservative opinion journals and Web sites. Pundits including John Podhoretz, Ramesh Ponnuru and Jonah Goldberg have, to varying extents, made their disagreement plain. Philosophy professor (and Opus Dei member) Michael Pakaluk has complained that Ms. Mac Donald’s “mockery of common religious sensibilities … is so unfeeling as to border on the inhuman.”
Asked about the timing of her article, Ms. Mac Donald suggested that her exasperation with the religiosity of present-day conservatism had simply reached a boiling point.
“I’ve just been impatient over the last six years,” she told The Observer. “I don’t remember anything like this current assumption that candidates should talk about their relationship with God. What is that supposed to tell citizens?”
There is no suggestion that the Manhattan Institute fellow is doing Mr. Giuliani’s bidding in making the controversial case for secular conservatism. On the contrary, Ms. Mac Donald’s argument is more likely to be met with consternation by allies of the former Mayor, for fear that it could dynamite the bridges to the religious right that they have been so assiduously trying to build.
Baruch College political-science professor Gerald De Maio, who teaches a course on religion and politics, believes that the debates about a Giuliani candidacy—and about the issues raised by Ms. Mac Donald’s article—are manifestations of the longstanding divide in the G.O.P. between social conservatives and libertarians.
The libertarian wing, he said, “is muted. They count for much less than they used to. In many ways, Gerald Ford was the last President to represent that tendency. Now, one of the questions is: Could Rudy Giuliani get the nomination as a social liberal? I can’t see how social conservatives in the heartland can back him.”
Ms. Mac Donald admiringly told The Observer that the former Mayor “never invoked God, but transformed this city in ways that couldn’t have been imagined.” But she insisted that her main concern wasn’t electoral politics. She was, she said, more interested in the need for “a sound philosophical basis for conservative argument.”
That may sound like a nebulous aim. But it is also an honorable one.
When the President names Jesus Christ as his favorite political philosopher, uses a sly phrase like “wonder-working power” during a manifestly political occasion like a State of the Union address or invokes God in support of his decisions in Iraq, he seeks, at the minimum, to give his agenda a religious veneer.
The invocation of religion in support of political beliefs is, above all else, a dangerously effective tool for foreclosing debate, discouraging scrutiny and suggesting that one’s opponents lack moral fiber.
The battle of ideas should be fought with the weapons of reason and logic alone.
That is not an intrinsically liberal idea. There is much to support in Ms. Mac Donald’s contention that conservatism is strong enough to prosper without being propped up by the language of religious piety.
But as Mr. Giuliani already seems to have demonstrated by his actions, many conservatives will never see things that way.
I do not stop being an American citizen at the border of New York City... I am the NRA and I vote...
Giuliani is perfectly happy to have Mrs. Clinton remain as his senator and has not lifted a finger to unseat her.
Why should any Republican trust that incompetence? (And it is incompetent to let her retain that seat to use as a launch pad for a presidential campaign...)
Yeah, I’m stupid. Certainly when faced with intellects such as yourself.
What in my comment
Hitler, Jews and gun control is largely nonsense. The defining law was the 1928 Law on Firearms and Ammunition, which required registration of of gun owners/purchasers, ammunition purchasers, and hunters. Annually. Ironically enacted in part to disarm militias such as the brownshirts. And I know, if the Jews, a massive 1.5% or so of the population had only taken up arms, Hitler wouldn't have risen to power. Most of the clowns spouting that line are either historically ignorant, or would be acknowledging that the Jews of Germany got what they deserved, rebelling against the government and all back in 1928. However individually, a firearm might well have been the difference between escape and death. By 1938 any German Jew able to flee had fled. Largely to other parts of Europe, North America and Palestine being closed to Jews. By the time of the 1938 law, gun ownership in Germany had been over for a decade.
do you object to.
By 1938 it WAS over for Jews in Germany, about 2/3 had already left. Of those remaining, gun ownership had been long banned, as the 1928 law required permits and Jews weren’t issued permits once the Nazis came to power. Jews were denied most benefits of government.
And the 1938 law WAS an extension of the 1928 act, as you link demonstrates, the first line being
With a basis in § 31 of the Weapons Law of 18 March 1928 (Reichsgesetzblatt I, p. 265),
Of course you can’t refer to the 1928 law as a Nazi law.
And no, as I noted, armed Jews, likely a fraction of a percent of the 1938, couldn't have done a thing about the government. At maybe 2%, couldn't in 1928 either. Though it would have provided a causis belli for the Holocaust which Jew haters would use today. The only benefit of being armed would be personal, the ability to save oneself and ones family. While fleeing.
So nice to be called ignorant by a poster like you.
Plenty of urban areas in concealed carry states (a large majority of the 50 states) and well over a decade of experience. Firefights simply don't break out. But of course there are many restrictions. Same with firearms in the home, people just aren't shooting the pizza delivery boy. NY, DC, Chicago, wouldn't be any different. Ironically, those cities are overrun with firearms, many illegal, as it is.
Cheney would work for me too. Probably Gingrich, his marriages aren't a defining issue for me. But Rumsfeld and Cheney aren't running.
2) I think you underestimate the utility of personal firearms; the Nazis were certainly interested in making darn sure the Jews were disarmed before going after them. The Nazis were murderous and evil, but they weren't stupid. They sought to disarm their generally law-abiding intended victims before launching the pogrom.
3) Hitler's NAZI gun law (1938) specifically mentions Juden; one might even conclude that he wanted to make sure that individual Jews did not take advantage of a firearm that "might well have been the difference between escape and death." Your efforts to pooh-pooh the relationship between Nazi gun control and Nazi genocide are irrational.
I'm pretty sure the original question was about his favorite "political philosopher."
And I was sitting about twenty feet away when the question was asked...
I read the NY papers online and it seems like not a week goes by where some innocent isn't killed in a cross fire. And that is when guns are harder to get. Don't forget that, as you say, EVERYWHERE, there are some restrictions. The absolutest want none and I wouldn't want to be part of that experiment.
Last week I found myself defending Gays and now I find myself defending gun laws. I want to do neither.
It's just that the extremists against Giuliani use what was a common sense policy for a Mayor of a huge diverse city to extrapolate that he would have abhorrent policies nationwide as President- policies that I believe actually would never even cross his mind were he President.
Rudolph Giuliani support of abortion and his gun grabbing support of the Brady Bill gives me a lot of pause.
Hitler disarmed everyone, not just Jews. An armed Jew could, and I know a few who did, save himself and his family. Through flight. At less than 1% of the population in 1928 German (or Austrian) Jews could have done nothing collectively, other than leave, which they did in the 1930s. Hitler mentioned Jews in all repressive acts. It aroused his supporters. By 1938 most Jews who were able to leave, had. Post 1933, Jews couldn't have gotten the annual permit to possess guns or ammunition. Post 1935 they were no longer citizens, a bar I believe under the 1928 law. The defining gun control law in Germany was the 1928 law. It limited ownership of guns and ammunition, and required annual registration, which Hitler later put to good use. And it was adopted by a democratic government when Hitler was little more than a rabblerouser. To control rabblerousers like him, and prevent the rise of armed militias. It failed because criminals, including the then fledgling Nazis, don't obey laws. The impact of the 1928 law presents the dangers of gun control far better than the 1938 law, which was simply an adjustment, but can be referred to as Nazi gun control, rather than Democratic gun control. The 1938 law was irrelevant, by then Germany's fate was sealed.
Yes, I believe the right to keep and bear arms is absolute for all sane, non-felon adults just as the authors also believed. They intended the 2nd Amendment to be a guarantee to Americans that their right to arms would be protected against infringement by the federal government, but nanny-state courts have abrogated that right and made it into a privilege for the favored few in cities like NY.
You concede in those cities you hold up as examples that the right is not absolute, you need a license.
I don't concede anything of the sort. But in spite of Constitutional protection against federal infringement the reality is that most state governments require their citizens to obtain the state's permission in order to legally to carry a firearm. Of course, since criminals are by definition those who do not obey laws they carry guns without permission. I don't believe that a state or municipality has the legitimate power to deny a law abiding adult his or her natural right to be armed without it's permission. But since the USSC has so far refused to incorporate the 2nd Amendment into the 14th, that right is not Constitutionally protected against infringement by state or local government. As a practical matter I have a state permit to carry a concealed firearm. But I believe, no make that I KNOW, that the state is unjustly infringing upon my absolute, natural right to self defense by requiring me to pay for it's permission to exercise that right.
Your contention that cities which deny lawful citizens their right to defend themselves and their families benefit by having less crime is simply not true. States which have enacted CCW laws have seen their overall crime rate drop dramatically since those laws were enacted, and violent home invasion type crime in particular has become less frequent in most of those states. It's only common sense that when the criminals know that their victims are armed and can fight back crime will decrease.
The media's predictions of wild west shootouts on sidewalks and at traffic lights in states that enacted CCW laws has been shown to be nothing but hysterical raving by anti-gun rights fanatics. I was living in south FL during the time when the FL CCW law was being debated in the legislature. The Miami-Dade area media were unrelenting in their hour by hour predictions of mass slaughter and blood running like rivers in the gutters if that law was passed. But when the FL murder rate dropped every year after passage of the law and is now 27% below the prior level there has been no acknowledgment from the media that they were 100% wrong. I have no doubt that law abiding NYC residents would benefit in a similar manner if the infamous Sullivan law and the even more drastic gun laws that followed it were repealed.
The fact is, it doesn't matter how vigorously gun laws are enforced or how severely criminals who are convicted of breaking those laws are punished, history shows that criminals will always obtain the weapons they need to conduct their business. That was true in 12th century BC Israel during the time when members of those Jewish tribes who lived under the rule of Philistine overlords were forbidden to possess bows or edged weapons on pain of death, and it's still true today. In the UK where a total handgun ban was imposed almost 9 years ago the violent crime rate has gone up year by year, especially crimes committed with firearms. Even in Japan where exceptionally draconian gun laws make it virtually impossible for private individuals to legally possess a firearm, Japan's organized crime cartels are as well or better armed as any NYC or LA street gang.
BTW, for non-Jews, the 1938 law was more lenient that the 1928. That fact is occasionally used by neonazis in countering the arguement that Hitler was pro-gun control.
And this is not a red flag for you?
Great post.
Apparently, some conservatives won't be content unless we elect Pharisees who pray in the public streets.
I don't doubt that. Here in Chicago people are killed by handguns every week. Handguns have been illegal since the 1970s, other than a handful registered at the time. The criminals don't obey the law. My guess many homeowners don't either, but I've no way of knowing. Restrictions are proper, the quesion in Chicago is whether a handgun ban keeps weapons out of the hand's of criminals, no, out of the hands of otherwise law abiding citizens, probably.
I don't remember Rudy's position much, and since I've already noted both the lack of viable "conservative" candidates and the fact that I'll vote for him over anything the Dems put out, it may not matter. The President isn't Mayor of New York, different job and his position could change. In my view constitutionally acceptable restrictions on gun ownership, like gay marriage and abortion, are properly state issues. If I were convinced he'd appoint conservative judges, I'm not either way, and that he'd keep the federal government out of these issues, he'd defuse them politically for most people.
BTW, the "conservative" GWB would have signed the assault weapon ban, and in my view he hasn't spoken much, a President can and should speak about these things, about abortion. Gay marriage is all he's brought to the table on these issues, and he knew an amendment was going nowhere. He's not all that much different that Rudy.
Unfortunately, that says more about the President than it does about Rudolph Giuliani's suitibility to be the nominee of the conservative party.
Let's not beat around the bush. MacDonald knows that religious conservatives will not support Giuliani and will, instead, sink his candidacy.
I would point out to MacDonald that the only reason the President is in office is because religious conservatives turned out in droves to support him.
With Giuliani, I am certain to get more judges like John Paul Steves, republican liberal.
With Allen, Frist, Gingrich, I'm certain to get more strict constructionists in the tradition of Scalia.
It is simple to me. Giuliani (and his soul-twins, McCain & Romney) must NOT become our candidate. He MUST lose in the primaries.
I don't believe that any of them actually believe that the extreme liberal Rudy Giuliani has any hope of winning the GOP nomination.
Instad, by pushing him now, they are simply trying to move the qualifications for that nomination leftward.
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