Jay Reding.com

Arthur Silber notices that the fawning adoration of Barack Obama is starting to get a little creepy. In fact, it’s getting downright creepy.

Now, I don’t think that Sen. Obama is the sort of type who will have his followers marching through Poland any time soon—but this kind of unthinking devotion to a candidate does not belong in a democratic system. The politics of personality is inherently anti-democratic as it puts the value of the leader above the value of the people.

It’s hardly unusual to see a candidate inspire their partisans—that’s what a good politician does. What is so unusual about Obama is the level of fervor that surrounds him. He is treated like a rock star in a way that even Clinton was not. The Obama campaign is less a traditional campaign that it is a movement. Political campaigns are, or at least should be, about ideals. The Obama movement is about nothing deeper than some vague vision of “change”—a value that could mean everything from marching through Poland to changing the national anthem to “Kumbaya” and inviting Osama bin Laden to a nationwide love-in. “Change” is an empty slogan, the intellectual equivalent of junk food—filling, but never offering anything of substance.

And if it were just about “change” there’s no reason to suspect that Obama would be ahead. Every candidate in this race talked about change. The real force behind the Obama campaign is not mere change, but force of personality. That is what gives Obama his political power, but it is also what makes him such a troubling force. We don’t need more uncritical worship of political figures in society, we need more individualism and vibrancy.

It’s as though Obama supporters have woken up with Brain Slugs attached to them. Instead of thinking rationally about the candidate, we have people people adopting his middle name on Facebook

. Instead of rationalizing one’s political choices, we have a bandwagon effect on a nightmare scale.

So what’s the problem? A few people have a political crush? It cuts deeper than that. Those who put their trust in politicians are quickly crushed—and make no mistake, Obama is nothing more than a typical politician when all the rhetoric is put aside. Just witness his contortions on gun control, and his change of heart on telecom immunity. Like any politician, he will say what needs to be said to get elected, and he is doing exactly what a jaded Washington insider would do—which is hardly change one can believe in. When his followers learn that he’s just another pol, all that energy and enthusiasm will quickly fade away and be replaced by even greater apathy—political movements based on personality typically do not last long.

Of course, the other alternative is more troubling. People who need a Leader tend not to be thinking all that rationally. At the risk of breaking Godwin’s Law yet again, even if Sen. Obama is far removed from the sort that would have people burning books, a cult of personality is not compatible with democracy. Not only that, but we’re already getting some disturbing indications of a mob mentality.

One should never put one’s trust in the political class. On one end it breeds disappointment, on the other zealotry. The Obama movement is the first real mass organized political movement of the 21st Century, and if it is the model for those to follow, American democracy may not emerge intact. It won’t be Obama who leads us there, but his little cult of personality is putting us down that path.

Today’s Supreme Court opinion in District of Columbia v. Heller is a landmark decision in that it restores the original individual rights interpretation to the Second Amendment. What is frustrating about Heller is what it doesn’t say. Justice Scalia hinted at a standard of review that’s quite probing—but could also be something less than the usual strict scrutiny given to other constitutional rights. Heller leaves the door open for more cases in the future.

For all the commentators calling Heller “judicial activism,” it’s anything but. It restores the original intent of the Framers in drafting the Second Amendment. In fact, even Justice Stevens admits in his dissent that: “The question presented by this case is not whether the Second Amendment protects a ‘collective right’ or an ‘individual right.’ Surely it protects a right that can be enforced by individuals.” What is most intriguing from a lawyering standpoint is that Justice Stevens’ dissent is written on Scalia’s grounds. Only Justice Breyer uses the typical policy-laden arguments of Court liberals. Justice Stevens’ dissent, like Scalia’s majority opinion, is based almost solely on the question of original intent.

Does this suggest that originalism will be the dominant mode of constitutional interpretation used by the Court? It seems doubtful, but the fact that Stevens waged his war on Scalia’s battlefield is interesting.

Stevens’ dissent was quite well done, but ultimately Scalia’s dissent seemed to have a firmer grasp on history. The language of the Second Amendment is less than clear, but the idea that the phrase “keep and bear arms” is confined solely to having weapons to be used for the militia seems historically and linguistically obtuse. Justice Scalia puts it wryly:

In any event, the meaning of “bear arms” that petitioners and JUSTICE STEVENS propose is not even the (sometimes) idiomatic meaning. Rather, they manufacture a hybrid definition, whereby “bear arms” connotes the actual carrying of arms (and therefore is not really an idiom) but only in the service of an organized militia. No dictionary has ever adopted that definition, and we have been apprised of no source that indicates that it carried that meaning at the time of the founding. But it is easy to see why petitioners and the dissent are driven to the hybrid definition. Giving “bear Arms” its idiomatic meaning would cause the protected right to consist of the right to be a soldier or to wage war—an absurdity that no commentator has ever endorsed. See L. Levy, Origins of the Bill of Rights 135 (1999). Worse still, the phrase “keep and bear Arms” would be incoherent. The word “Arms” would have two different meanings at once: “weapons” (as the object of “keep”) and (as the object of “bear”) one-half of an idiom. It would be rather like saying “He filled and kicked the bucket” to mean “He filled the bucket and died.” Grotesque.

Scalia knows how to twist the knife a bit.

The majority opinion hints that the Second Amendment applies to the states as well. What’s odd about Heller is that the Court never discusses the issue of how D.C. should be treated. That issue was a major issue in the D.C. Circuit, but does not get raised by the Court. It is possible that the Court will settle the issue of incorporation in a later case.

And make no mistakes, there will be later cases. The Court has only provided one step, and the various sides will end up hashing out the rest.

Still, this is a good day for our Republic. Once banished, constitutional rights rarely return. To see the Court affirm that the Second Amendment recognizes an individual right to keep and bear arms is to see the Court reaffirm the values of our Founders. They incorporated the common-law right of self defense into the founding of this Nation, and for good reason. The Court has not made law, nor have they violated principles of stare decisis. They have done what the Court should do—”say what the law is.” Marbury v. Madison, 5 US 137, 177 (1803). The law is that individual American citizens have the right to keep and bear arms. That conclusion is not a conclusion of five Justices, but an affirmation of what the Bill of Rights says. Those who take issue with that conclusion should not take umbrage at the Court, but at the Founders who made that decision in 1783.

This morning, the Supreme Court will hand down its decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, a case which will likely decide as a matter of law whether the Second Amendment creates an individual right to keep and bear arms.

To follow the Court’s session, SCOTUSblog’s live coverage will provide instant results and links to the opinions.

My prediction: a clear majority of the Justices will decide for the individual rights interpretation. A closer majority will decide the issue of what standard of review should be used—and there may not even be a majority on that. Either the standard of review will be narrowly decided to be strict scrutiny, or we’ll see a plurality opinion that allows for some reasonable regulation of firearms along the lines of the Solicitor General’s amicus brief.

Gun owners will be happy that the Court has recognized the Second Amendment for what it is—but if the standard of review is too lenient, then it may be less of a victory than some had hoped. My guess is that the Roberts Court is not about sweeping changes, and will temper the individual rights aspect of the decision with than a less than searching standard of review.

UPDATE: Affirmed 5-4. Individual right upheld. More this evening.

Megan McArdle notes the tragic situation in Zimbabwe and how the preservation of “sovereignty” is getting in the way of actually doing something for the people of Zimbabwe.

The sad reality of the situation is that just about the only way to fix the situation is to put a bullet in Robert Mugabe’s head and start from scratch. Of course, that isn’t going to happen. Zimbabwe, like Burma and other hellholes are allowed to fester because it is in virtually no one’s self interest to do a damn thing to help.

The tragedy in Zimbabwe will continue so long as Mugabe continues to remain in power—and if he dies, his cronies will likely rip the country apart in brutal internecine warfare in the quest to succeed him.

It would be wonderful if there were a global peacekeeping force to deal with situations like this—ostensibly, that’s what the UN is supposed to do, but they are too incompetent and corrupt to be trusted with the job. If you doubt that proposition, visit Srebrenica sometime and see how well the UN had done there.

We like to say that as a world community we stand strongly against genocide. The sad truth is that we just let it happen. All our international law and lofty principles mean nothing if they are never applied.

David Bernstein notes that the effect of the Obama tax plan would be to raise marginal tax rates above 50% and in some states it could be as high as 60%.

Obama is playing to his liberal type by exploiting the politics of envy to try and “soak the rich,” but in terms of actual policy, to do so would be economic suicide. It would encourage people to either A:) work less and be less productive or B:) shield their assets from taxation. (Or perhaps a combination of the two….)

The fact is that $250,000 is hardly filthy rich these days. The people that Obama will hurt with this punitive taxation will be the small business owners that employ 50% of the American workforce. They will be less inclined to grow their businesses and less inclined to hire new workers—because the marginal utility of the extra work just went down dramatically. If the benefit of working 10% harder is a 2% increase in income after Uncle Sam takes his bite, it makes little sense to work harder. Because of that, we lose the benefits of that extra labor.

The bottom line is this: it will become much more difficult for people in the middle class to move up the socioeconomic ladder. For Warren Buffet or Bill Gates, an army of lawyers and accountants can shield income while the boss pats themselves on the back for their “social responsibility.” For the average owner of a small flower shop or coffee house who can’t afford those kind of tax shelters, it means that moving to that next level is more of a curse than a blessing. For an economy that is based on the promise of upward mobility, such punitive taxation is anathema.

Obama’s plans make no economic sense. Instead of shoring up entitlements, he would dramatically expand them. For all of the talk about how McCain is a clone of Bush, Obama seems to want to take the worst policy ideas of the Bush Administration (Medicare Part D, steel tariffs, more government spending) and do more of it.

Obama is running as a doctrinaire Michael Dukakis-style tax and spend liberal. Even though this is unquestionably a Democratic year, a lot of voters will be smart enough to see that Sen. Obama seems to want to punish those with the audacity to hope to build themselves up economically.

Comedy legend George Carlin died at the age of 71.

Carlin was one-of-a-kind. Anyone can be raunchy, but Carlin was the rarest combination: raunchy, but smart. His barbs were pointed, and they always hit their target.

As he once observed:

The most unfair thing about life is the way it ends. I mean, life is tough. It takes up a lot of your time. What do you get at the end of it? A Death! What’s that, a bonus? I think the life cycle is all backwards. You should die first, get it out of the way. Then you live in an old age home. You get kicked out when you’re too young, you get a gold watch, you go to work. You work forty years until you’re young enough to enjoy your retirement. You do drugs, alcohol, you party, you get ready for high school. You go to grade school, you become a kid, you play, you have no responsibilities, you become a little baby, you go back into the womb, you spend your last nine months floating …and you finish off as an orgasm.

George Carlin may not have gone out that way, but he certainly had one hell of a life.

Even as terrorists try to their best to sow fear, the signs of a major turnaround in Iraq continue as the inertia in the conflict now favors stability rather than violence.

Al-Anbar Province, once the center of violence in Iraq and a pipeline for terrorists, guns, and money is now a place of relative tranquility. The reason is simple: US resolve helped empower Iraqis to fight terrorism:

The U.S. military assault on Fallujah in 2004 yielded a significant U.S. victory both in moral and tactical terms, David Bellavia, a former staff sergeant with the U.S. Army who served with the First Infantry Division for six years, said in an interview.

“I call it my generation’s Normandy because it identified for the enemy what the American fighting man was all about,” he said. “They completely underestimated us and had this idea that because we couldn’t use our technology, we wouldn’t have intestinal fortitude to see the battle through, but this is what ultimately delivered us.”

In 2005, Bellavia received the Conspicuous Service Cross, the highest award for military valor in New York state. He is also the author of “House to House,” which chronicles the Battle of Fallujah in graphic detail.

The Rumsfeld strategy, while based on a sound premise, was ultimately based on the wrong premise. The worry was that more troops would mean more casualties, which emphasized the worries of American politicians rather than what really mattered—the security of Iraqi civilians. Even during the darkest days of the war, brave and resourceful military commanders like Col. H.R. McMaster were developing the tactics to fight and win in Iraq. In Fallujah, we demonstrated that we would not back down. That lesson was brought home time and time again, until finally the Iraqis started joining our side. Once that began to happen in a significant fashion, al-Qaeda was damned.

This ABC News report puts the usual spin on the good news: sure, violence is down, but will it last. What the media, Sen. Obama, and the rest of the antiwar partisans fail to understand is that the reduction in violence is the direct result of our fortitude on Iraq. For all of the President’s legion of faults, especially in the conduct of this war, his stubbornness may have saved Iraq from a humanitarian nightmare that would make Darfur look like nothing. His stubbornness and our military’s skill, combined with the bravery of the Iraqi people have paid off with a great peace dividend.

This peace will last so long as national reconciliation is in the interest of all the parties. The Sunnis are outnumbered. They tried violent resistance and were nearly ethnically cleansed. The Shi’ites also know that violence does not help them. They have political leverage, and because of that they have the most to lose if Iraq flies apart. They may have the numeric superiority, but if they start a civil war, the Sunnis will end up back in bed with al-Qaeda, and even if the Shi’ites win, it will be at a great cost, and would cause Iraq to fall into the hands of the Iranians. Iraqi and Iranians share a common religion, but nothing else.

Iraq can be peaceful, not because of some noble ambition, but because of enlightened self interest—and that is the most powerful force in the universe.

Yet all this could be undone by a public more interested in bread and circuses than world peace. The Democratic Party, by playing to the basest isolationist and xenophobic interests, is threatening the progress that has been made. A premature withdrawal from Iraq would undermine all this progress. If the US leaves, the Iraqis cannot yet keep the peace. A US presence is a necessity to provide the Iraqis with the security needed for progress. The argument that the US presence somehow undermines Iraq’s progress is ridiculous on its face—Iraq has made great political progress, and that progress is only possible because the Iraqis have security. If the Iraqi people cannot be secure in their homes, how can they possibly be expected to trust each other? I, for one, would love to see Sen. Obama spin his way out of that question.

Contrary to the ignorant and arrogant arguments that Iraqis are not pulling their weight, they are making great strides towards restoring the greatness of the nation of Iraq. Day by day, the Iraqis that work towards the betterment of their nation and fight against terror bring Iraq closer to the days when Baghdad can once again be a center of learning and commerce and a great world city.

We in America must never belittle their sacrifice. In a spirit of solidarity, we must continue to support our Iraqi allies in their fight against terror and oppression. Instead of giving them up, we should continue to support their struggles—after all, we were once a struggling young power as well.

It is fair to ask what we are fighting for. What we are fighting for in Iraq is this: that one day a joint US-Iraqi biotechnology venture can discover a cure for cancer, AIDS, or another terrible affliction. That some day, in a place like Darfur, US and Iraqi peacekeepers can work alongside each other again to restore another war-shattered country. That some day, Iraq will become a brother nation to us, an ally as great as those we liberated 60 years ago.

That dream is within the grasp of both the people of the United States and Iraq—but only if we do not let our short-term politics interfere.