Two Gems of NRO Wisdom

A couple of excellent works are to be found at National Review Online today.

Andrew McCarthy takes on what should have been tackled, throttled, strangled, and pounded into the ground like a fence post a long, long time ago: the left's utter hijacking of the term "mainstream":

Resolved: Let’s turn "mainstream" into Little Big Horn for the notion that literal nonsense must always be cemented into popular dogma. The opportunity is here, and there will never be a better case on the facts. For when one closely scrutinizes this mainstream that the Bush nominees are so far out of, it turns out to be a place not inhabited by very many Americans, either.

As Edward Whelan has painstakingly detailed elsewhere on this site (see here and posts cited therein), the mainstream that has been constructed by judges effusively lauded by the Left is in fact a redoubt where American sensibilities rarely carry the day. This “mainstream” invents new rights of access to U.S. courts for captured alien terrorists even as their confederates continue killing American soldiers. It provides for abortion on demand even as Americans show, again and again, that they prefer laws reining in the practice — especially in its most noxious “partial birth” form.

It is a “mainstream” that dispenses with rational caps Americans, alarmed by diminishing health-care availability, choose to place on noneconomic damages in medical-malpractice suits — the judges thus making American communities too costly for doctors but very lucrative for trial lawyers. It is a “mainstream” that imposes restrictions on the capital sentences Americans, in the laws they enact, believe are fitting for heinous murders.

This “mainstream” rejects the modest anti-obscenity laws by which Americans seek to insulate their neighborhoods and their children from the worst excesses of the pornography industry — on the spurious ground that digitized pedophilia must be licit if we are also to have Romeo and Juliet. It handcuffs lawful police pursuit of narcotics traffickers tormenting American neighborhoods. It seeks to enforce a farcical equality of results on Americans whose common sense appreciates that we are not all equal in talent and work ethic, and that the best one can reasonably demand is equality of opportunity. It is a “mainstream” that snickers at the patriotic traditions and religious symbols of Americans, finding them offensive to its preferred cathedral of nihilism.

And who are the champions, the architects, of this “mainstream”? Based on the 2004 electoral map, you can walk a 3,000-mile straight line in this country without bumping into one of them. Hence the need to blockade this “mainstream” by filibusters, its enactment at the ballot box being inconceivable.

When liberal activists bloviate about the “mainstream,” that is the place to which they are referring. Not a steady stream that courses reliably through our daily lives, but a tidal wave that would leave Main Street unrecognizable. Outside the federal bench, hardening blocs of the Democratic caucus, and the similarly Orwellian “mainstream” press, it is not “mainstream” in any real-world sense.

In short, what libs call "mainstream" is really "extreme." It is consistent with the cultural contempt they openly displayed for "Jesusland" last November after once again failing to defeat it. It is reflective of how literally true is the notion that we've become "two nations, divided," and what they would do to the "nation" they so nakedly detest if they ever got proactive power over it again. It is, in an etymological sense, their declaration of secession and civil war without (for now) armed resistance.

Why else do you think I refer to the so-called "MSM" as the Extreme Media? I wish the whole center-right blogosphere would follow my example. It would do wonders for my blood pressure.

As would the White House following this suggestion from the NR editorial board:

In these circumstances, the best option is a recess appointment. John Bolton deserves to serve at the U.N. None of the many, many arguments advanced against him over the last two months have any merit. And at this time of international flux, the U.S. shouldn't go without an ambassador to the U.N. while Democrats manufacture their newest objection to Bush's nominee. If the White House acts now, it can argue that Bolton had majority support in the Senate, but was blocked by filibustering Democrats. With a recess appointment, Bolton can serve through end of the Senate session in 2006, and there is no reason that he can't be confirmed by the Senate at a later date. The non-scandals of the last few weeks will fade, and the case against Bolton will weaken as he performs — as we have every reason to believe he will — effectively at the world body.

Very nice and neat. Take the matter out of the hands of Joe Biden and Chris Dodd and Harry Reid and the rest of the baying herd of Donk dissemblers, stop feeding them bad faith opportunities, and shove Mr. Bolton down their throats. A fait accompli is always a more difficult fight, and as NRO concludes, the other side's game-playing (which appears to be eroding GOP support) has gone on far longer than the majority should ever have tolerated.

The President's "New Tone" fetish did him surprisingly little damage in his first term, but it's crippling him four months into his second. It's long past time for him to stop extending his hand to his political enemies and start giving them the back of it instead.