Week of October 4, 2010

Not since the Berlin Wall came down had there been such impassioned cries of “Europe! Europe! Europe!” The fact that the chant came on British soil, was inspired by an Ulsterman and paid tribute to a Scot only made the display more extraordinary.

The sesquicentennial of the Civil War (1861-65) is nearly upon us. Lincoln's bicentennial, in February 2009, generated scores of celebrations and dozens of books. But that was only a single day. It is safe to say that for the next four years, we will be inundated with reflections and publications.

The bookish, twice-unsuccessful Democratic presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson once sighed that if most thinking people supported him, it still wouldn't be enough in America because"I need a majority."

For some reason, Democrats have chosen to follow the disastrous model of Stevenson and not that of feisty man-of-the-people Missourian Harry Truman — though the former nearly wrecked the party and the latter got elected.

To be"the most powerful man in the world" is to be simultaneously worshiped and despised. To occupy the Oval Office is to become the modern-day equivalent of a Sun King, commanding deference, while also becoming the subject of endless gossip, envy, jealousy, and intrigue, all to be reported at length and ad nauseam by Bob Woodward.

Having dined with Adam Smith on a number of occasions, Samuel Johnson once described him"as dull a dog as he had ever met with." Smith's biographers might be inclined to agree.

After enjoying a good run in the 1980s and 1990s, democracy has been playing defense lately. Dictators have grown wise to people power. China, Russia, Iran and Cuba have been more successful exporting and extolling their systems than democracies have been in promoting theirs.

Why are U.S. soldiers still on the DMZ, 57 years after the Korean War? Why are Marines still on Okinawa, 65 years after Gen. MacArthur took the surrender? Cannot Korea and Japan, prosperous and populous, conscript the soldiers for their own defense?

National security, yes. Empire security we can no longer afford.

The only problem with Sen. McGovern’s “Come home, America!” slogan was the timing.

Joe Miller would do well to actually read the Constitution before he pretends to know what it says. The Constitution gives Congress the power “[t]o regulate commerce…among the several states,” a power which even ultraconservative Justice Antonin Scalia agrees gives Congress broad authority to regulate “economic activity.” Moreover, the Supreme Court unanimously upheld the first federal minimum wage law in a 1941 decision called United States v. Darby.

That decision did not just uphold the minimum wage, it also expressly overruled an egregious 1918 decision striking down federal child labor laws. Darby therefore provides a frightening window into just what America would look like if it were ever ruled by Joe Miller’s twisted constitution. If Congress lacks the power to enact the basic employment laws like the minimum wage, then it also lacks the power to enact other fundamental labor protections such as regulating child labor.

The growth of the tea party movement isn't really due to the recession (in fact, polling evidence shows that tea partiers are generally better off and less affected by the recession than the population at large). It's not because Obama is black (white Democratic presidents got largely the same treatment). And it's not because Obama bailed out General Motors (so did George W. Bush). It's simpler. Ever since the 1930s, something very much like the tea party movement has fluoresced every time a Democrat wins the presidency, and the nature of the fluorescence always follows many of the same broad contours: a reverence for the Constitution, a supposedly spontaneous uprising of formerly nonpolitical middle-class activists, a preoccupation with socialism and the expanding tyranny of big government, a bitterness toward an underclass viewed as unwilling to work, and a weakness for outlandish conspiracy theories.