After reading Kyle-Ann Shriver’s excellent piece on the hard-core left pinning their hopes on Obama, after hearing my neighbor talk about the “brilliance” of Barack Obama, after watching the YouTube videos and seeing a large number of people who are awfully zealous in their support of Obama, I’ve begun asking a question that I haven’t been able to answer.

What does Barack Obama expect of us? After all, we’re the ones we’ve been waiting for. Yes we can! We we we, all the way home. But surely our obligation to change and hope doesn’t end the moment we cast our ballot for the junior senator from Illinois. So what will the Obamaites do after their man wins in November (assuming that happens)?

To paraphrase John F. Kennedy: Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for Barack Obama!

So I’m asking. What does Obama expect of me, and frankly, what does he expect to do with the millions of glassy-eyed followers? Am I alone in thinking this is a fairly important question I haven’t heard asked?

Of course, you shouldn’t ask the question without looking for the answer. And the first thing I thought of was this post by Jim. In it, he quotes Michelle Obama:

Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zones. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed.

You have to stay at the seat at the table of democracy with a man like Barack Obama not just on Tuesday but in a year from now, in four years from now, in eight years from now, you will have to be engaged.

Assuming that Michelle Obama wasn’t simply pulling that thought out of thin air, what exactly does that mean? How will Obama try to accomplish this? Isn’t this worth asking?

When I was in college, my outstanding history professor, Dr. Simms, opened each semester by reminding us that history was subject to interpretation. He went on to argue that the First World War was the most important event of the Twentieth Century.

His case was as detailed as it was compelling. Among his reasons: The war precipitated the Soviet Revolution that unseated the Czar and led to the Cold War; It destroyed the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires, leading to the partition of the Balkans and the Middle East and handing down to future generations the smoldering problems of those regions; it led to the Washington Naval Treaty, which set the stage for Germany and Japan to build fleets that would threaten the world while the navies of the great seagoing powers, Great Britain and the United States languished in mothballs; it set the stage of the independence of India and the state of decolonization by the European powers; and, most importantly, it took from Europe and entire generation of its best and brightest young men, as more than 10 million were slaughtered in the trenches of the Somme, the Marne, Gallipoli, and countless other places.

Europe still remembers the Great War. France still celebrates Armistice Day each year on November 11. (It’s been changed to Veterans Day in the U.S. and Remembrance Day in the U.K. and the Commonwealth in order to include World War II veterans, though poppies are still worn in the U.K.) In Belgium, where much of fighting took place, the end of the war is commemorated by remembering the day of peace in Flanders Fields.

But in the U.S., we seem to have forgotten about the Great War altogether. Two magnificent pieces in today’s Washington Post explore the reasons why. But the facts are these: Nearly 5 million Americans were under arms during the Great War. 116,000 died. And There is no national memorial for World War I veterans or those killed in combat.

Corporal Frank Buckles has one final fact to add: 1. That’s the number of U.S. World War I veterans still alive today. And according to George Will, Cpl. Buckles is “feeling fine, thank you for asking.”

Whole industries have sprouted for remember the U.S. Civil War, World War II and Vietnam. Increasingly, thanks to amazing authors like David McCullough, Americans are rediscovering the period of our independence and founding. But somehow, we the brave men who fought in France in 1917 and 1918 are too often overlooked. We do those men and the memories a grave disservice by neglecting their sacrifice.

So on this Memorial Day, let’s make a special effort to remember the importance of the First World War, remember what they did, and maybe, take a bit of time to learn more about why they did it.

I’ve been perusing Barack Obama’s “The Audacity of Hope” today, hoping to go beyond the typical campaign rhetoric and find out what Obama thinks about issues and ideals. His chapter on the Constitution is pretty interesting, full of all sorts of quotes.

Ultimately though, I have to side with Justice Breyer’s view of the Constitution-that it is not a static but rather a living document, and must be read in the context of an ever-changing world.

In this regard, Barack Obama sides with Woodrow Wilson, who derided the “Fourth of July sentiments” of original intent. As Powerline’s Scott Johnson points out, Wilson was the chief proponent of the idea that our Constitution changes, not through amendments, but through the passage of time. This mentality brought us the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918, which made it illegal to criticize the war effort, the military, the government, or the form of government.

Obama also writes:

I’m reminded that deliberation and the constitutional order may sometimes be the luxury of the powerful, adn that it has sometimes been the cranks, the zealots, the prophets, the agitators, and the unreasonable-in other words, the absolutists-that have fought for a new order. Knowing this, I can’t summarily dismiss those posessed of similar certainty today-the antiabortion activist who pickets my town hall meetings, or the animal rights activist who raids a laboratory-no matter how deeply I disagree with their views. I am robbed even of the certainty of uncertainty-for sometimes absolute truths may well be absolute.

Anybody else think of Bill Ayers after reading that?

What’s interesting is that Obama speaks of individual rights, individual liberties, and the importance of the constitution. Yet he never mentions that if we want to change the constitution, there’s no need to try and “interpret” it in today’s terms. We can simply amend it. Yes, the process is long and arduous. But Obama seems to believe that we need national conversations about these issues, and it seems to me a constitutional convention would accomplish some of these goals. Why he never brings it up is a mystery to me.

Oh, one more quote that doesn’t have anything to do with the Constitution, except that he tells this story in concluding his chapter on that great document. He talks of meeting with Sen. Robert Byrd (who just endorsed him) in early 2005. He says:

We spoke about the Senate’s past, the presidents he had known, the bills he had managed. He told me I would do well in the Senate, but that I shouldn’t be in too much of a rush-so many senators today became fixated on the White House, not understanding that in the constitutional design it was the Senate that was supreme, the heart and soul of the Republic.

I guess he decided not to take that bit of advice to heart.

Via Rachel Lucas comes the story of a girl afraid of school, and the taxpayers willing to pay for her “acute school phobia”.

Rebecca Maykish is 17 and dreads school so much that she stopped going regularly.

In fourth grade.

Those days off have come at a price to her school district and the Palmerton taxpayers who support it. Since 2004, the Palmerton Area School Board has authorized payments of more than $45,000 to help Rebecca make up for her missed school days. Rebecca’s mother, Barbara, has used the money for at-home tutoring and education software purchases. She has also spent it on modeling classes for Rebecca, subscriptions to teen magazines, and travel to New York and Toronto with a summer camp.

All of the expenses were approved by the district.

That’s right. All because some doctor said she shouldn’t go to school. Of course now Rebecca and Babs are being fined by the school district for truancy, since they’ve reached the limit of the “compensatory education fund”.

But wait? A fine for not going to school? Why hasn’t Mommy Dearest simply started homeschooling her child?

Rebecca says she reads for pleasure, enjoying parodies such as ”Zen of the Zombie,” a mock self-improvement book. But her writing skills are weak and she can only do basic multiplication and division on downloaded worksheets. She estimates she spends three hours a day learning. Barbara Maykish has opted not to homeschool her, saying she worried that she would not be able to help Rebecca with her math and writing problems.

Rebecca said she has only one friend in Palmerton. She spent her 17th birthday in March with her mother, who is her only close companion. Her father lives in Peru.

So not only does she have “school phobia”, she’s got the education level of my 2nd grader. She only spends three hours a day “learning”, and mom’s not willing to help her out. She’s worried she wouldn’t be able to help? I’ve got news for ya, ma’am. Unless you too are as dumb as a fencepost… you’ll be able to help.

But wait! It gets better!

Barbara Maykish has been fined 111 times for truancy, with the earliest cases filed in 2003, a year before the compensatory education fund was set up.

She fought the fines, but has lost every case in Palmerton district court, and 10 appeals so far in Carbon County. Maykish, who is unemployed, has paid $1 so far. State law allows a jail term of five days for each unpaid fine, although no judge has threatened jail yet, said Serfass, the school district solicitor.

Payment schedules call for her to pay about $35 a month through the year 2037.

Maykish plans to appeal to federal court, arguing that Rebecca cannot be expected to go to a regular school.

That’s right… daughter’s not going to school and mom’s not going to work. Oh, but it gets even better.

Now that she is 17, Rebecca could legally drop out, but she says she wants to earn a diploma. She can attend Palmerton Area High School until she is 21, but she thinks a cyberschool or another boarding school would be better options.

Because her daughter has gone the past year without any formal education, Barbara Maykish said she thinks she might need another compensatory education fund.

That’s right. We need to give this precious little snowflake another $45,000. Otherwise, how will she continue to receive the valuable learning that a subscription to Seventeen magazine provides?

Here’s the quick lecture. This didn’t happen in a vacuum. The policies that allowed this situation to occur were approved at some point by a politician. Which ideology is responsible for this? The one that believes in individual rights and responsibilities, or the one that believes the government has an obligation to keep us “free from fear”?

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Along the lines of this post… let’s take a look at what progressives want to do with our food.

There’s a fascinating look at the rules for caterers hoping to get the business of the Denver 2008 Host Committee when the Democrats hold their convention in town in August.

Among the rules:

- no fried foods

- no bottled water (or bottled soda for that matter)

- food served must be local, organic, or both

The reaction from caterers?

“I think it’s a great idea for our community and our environment. The question is, how practical is it?” asks Nick Agro, the owner of Whirled Peas Catering in Commerce City. “We all want to source locally, but we’re in Colorado. The growing season is short. It’s dry here. And I question the feasibility of that.”

You know, when the guy who runs “Whirled Peas Catering” thinks you’re being unrealistic, it’s a pretty good indication you’ve gone off the deep end.

Yes yes, I know. This isn’t a law. It’s just a Request for Proposal from some of the progressives running the convention. That’ll be very comforting to me when I read that Krispy Kremes across the country are being raided by the Department of Homeland Wellness and Nutrition.

So Barack Obama says we need to appease the world by changing our behavior.

Here’s the actual quote.

“We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times … and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK,” Obama said.

“That’s not leadership. That’s not going to happen,” he added.

As Mark Steyn points out, apparently “leadership” in Obama’s world is finding out what the world wants us to do… and then doing it.

Jim has an outstanding post that I believe goes right along with Obama’s statement about “global leadership”. First, the relevant quote from Obama:

“Strong countries and strong Presidents talk to their adversaries. That’s what Kennedy did with Khrushchev. That’s what Reagan did with Gorbachev. That’s what Nixon did with Mao. I mean think about it. Iran, Cuba, Venezuela – these countries are tiny compared to the Soviet Union.

And a key point from Jim:

The Soviet Union never killed 3,000 Americans in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania by crashing jets into skyscrapers. The definition of a “serious threat” is different today than it was a generation ago.

These two quotes from Obama scare the crap out of me. They indicate a naivete about the ways of the world that I would expect from my seven-year old son, not a U.S. Senator and presidential candidate.

Obama’s firstly saying the rest of the world should be able to impose its vision of America on us. Fine. He doesn’t want us to be a superpower. But that will create a leadership vacuum, and there’s no shortage of countries out there who would love to step up. More importantly, there’s an ideology that will jump at the chance to exploit our weakness, and as Jim points out, they don’t need to be a massive country in terms of land or resources in order to do us immeasurable harm.

Considering some experts are calling a nuclear detonation in Washington, D.C. inevitable in the next two decades, a man who thinks of threats in terms of geographic size isn’t just naive. He’s dangerous to the future safety of my own children.

So we create a leadership vacuum our enemies will exploit, and then we will fail to recognize the threat our enemies pose to this country. Yeah, that sounds like a plan.

“Obama ‘08: Restoring America’s Place In the World… One Radioactive American City At A Time”

I swear I’m not just being contrary, but I’ve got to take issue with a couple of Marshall’s recent blog posts. Honestly, this has me questioning my own intelligence, because Marshall’s one of the brightest guys I know.

First… the foie gras ban. I’ve been talking about this since it went into effect, so I should be the happiest talk show host in America… but I’m not. Not after reading about how this went down. Daley acted like the typical petty tyrant that he is in ramrodding his repeal through the City Council, including not letting the original author of the bill speak in opposition to the repeal.

The problem with applauding strongarm tactics like this when it benefits you is that a tyrant doesn’t really care about you. Sure, there may be times where you’ll find agreement, but that’s of no consequence to the tyrant. If he moves to the left or to the right… he’s moving and you’re following along.

Well, (pardon my French) screw that. Screw the applauding of the right result and the wrong process. Screw the applauding of simply getting our way, when we disregard the American way in the process. Yeah, I want the foie gras ban to go away. I also want more politicians to have some respect for the rule of law. And I care more about that than eating my fatty duck liver. I’d rather exercise civil disobedience and eat in a “duckeasy” than rely on one man to dole out my freedoms at his whim.

As for the listing of the polar bear, it’s a sad damn day when an animal population that is NOT currently losing population (all of the polar bear populations are currently stable and the number of polar bears has grown approximately fivefold over the past 30-odd years) can be listed as threatened. The listing of the polar bear will hurt the Native American populations in Nunavut and elsewhere, and will actually reduce federal funding for polar bear research. All because someone says 30 years from now we may see the bears threatened. And as the Foundry points outthese things sometimes come with unintended consequences.

A quarter of the world’s wildlife has disappeared since 1970, according to a new report prepared by the Zoological Society of London — a scientific, not political, organization — for the World Wildlife Fund.

Before I go any further, let me preempt inevitable comment: This isn’t about global warming. Well, not just about global warming, anyway.

The report details the wide range of causes. Habitat loss is the most significant, but there are many other factors — nearly all related to human activities.

Can we agree that this is a bad thing? It seems to me that we certainly ought to.

But inevitably, the question turns to what we should do in response. Should we limit human development? Can we? As Jim likes to point out, if we think we’re going to get China to play ball with touch environmental restrictions to protect species, we’re kidding ourselves.

Some organizations, like the Nature Conservancy, are using private donations to buy land, which they then preserve from development. That seems like a good approach. So do responsible government moves to declare certain areas national parks, wildlife preserves and the like. But that only works to a certain degree. What else can be done? I don’t know. I wish I had the solution.

But it does seem worthy of our attention. In addition to our responsibility to be stewards of God’s creatures, there are practical effects of species loss as well.

And, needless to say, the problem of species loss is only going to get worse and the effects of global warming become more pronounced. Just ask the polar bears, who this week were designated a threatened species by the U.S. government.

Finally, an interesting side-note. This report was covered today by the BBC, Telegraph, Guardian and several other outlets here in the UK, including shockingly the Daily Mail. When that group agrees on anything, it’s a notable story. And apparently, the report has not yet been released in the U.S., as there has been exactly zero coverage of it. I suspect my friends in the U.S. will be hearing more about this in the coming days. When you do, remember, you read it here first.

Outstanding food writer Michael Ruhlman tipped me off to the story. Apparently, the Chicago City Council voted yesterday 37-6 to repeal the ban, which Mayor Richard Daley had previously called “the silliest law the City Council has ever passed.”

The Chicago Tribune has the parliamentary details, and they are interesting.

But the bottom line is that the council did the right thing, and a city with some of the world’s best and most creative chefs (I’m looking at you Chef Achatz), finally came to its senses. I’m sure there will be foie gras celebrations across Chicago in the coming days.

I shall raise a glass of Sauternes tonight to celebrate.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about “endgames”. It’s very easy these days to get caught up in the back-and-forth of legislative battles that move the football a yard or two either way, but I’m convinced that most people don’t give much thought to what a touchdown for their party would really mean (sorry for the inartful football analogy. I blame Paul Helmke).

It seems kind of silly to me that we’d invest so much time, energy, and emotion on pieces of legislation that move us one step closer towards an ideal, while ignoring the larger discussion of whether or not these ideals even work. Are free-markets really a good idea? Are the “needs of the community” worth more than the “rights of the individual”? What are the real world implications of a progressive ideal?

There’s one place in this country where the progressive ideal reigns supreme. It’s a college campus. And it scares the hell out of me.

The left has long complained about “free speech zones” set up by the evil Republicans. Too bad the idea came from colleges back in the 1960’s. Today, according to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, the 1st Amendment is threatened at 75% of our nation’s colleges and universities. Even worse, the larger the school, the more likely it is to have speech codes.

How about the 2nd Amendment? Yeah, I know. But not only are legally owned firearms banned on the vast majority of college campuses, you can’t even talk about them. At Tarrant County College in Texas, for instance, students who wanted to protest the ban on legally owned firearms on campus were told they could only wear their empty holsters in the designated “free speech zone” and students were told they could NOT wear their “Students for Concealed Carry on Campus” t-shirts… at all.

So in a progressive world, free speech has its place, as long as it’s pre-approved by the powers that be and regulated to specific locations. The right to keep and bear arms is relegated to the dustbin of history, and don’t even think about protesting the decision made by those in charge.

On college campuses, equality has been replaced with multiculturalism. If you want to see a segregated society, take a look at your local state university. This is nothing new, but the trend is for more seperation, not less. We have seperate graduation ceremonies for people of different skin colors these days, and it’s celebrated, not condemned! Viva la diversity… as long as you keep your diverse self over there.

And what of the actual purpose of higher ed? You know… educating folks? How do the progressives fare? Frankly, it seems not well. Piggybacking on this thought, if progressives aren’t allowed to hurt people’s feelings… how can people be allowed to fail?

The result can be something like this.

Who is to blame when students fail? If many students fail — a majority even — does that demonstrate faculty incompetence, or could it point to a problem with standards?

These are the questions at the center of a dispute that cost Steven D. Aird his job teaching biology at Norfolk State University. Today is his last day of work, but on his way out, he has started to tell his story — one that he suggests points to large educational problems at the university and in society. The university isn’t talking publicly about his case, but because Aird has released numerous documents prepared by the university about his performance — including the key negative tenure decisions by administrators — it is clear that he was denied tenure for one reason: failing too many students. The university documents portray Aird as unwilling to compromise to pass more students.

I’d encourage you to read the whole thing. Norfolk State faculty say that the administration “encourages” professors to pass at least 70% of their students… regardless of whether or not they deserve it. Buck the trend, lose your job.

Needless to say, I’m not an expert on college campuses, and there may be plenty of evidence out there that would prove me wrong. I hope to hear it, because I look at college campuses and see places where progressive politics and policies have been entrenched for decades, places where they are much closer to a “progressive endgame” than society-at-large… and I don’t see much of America anymore.