Be Sober, Be Vigilant
“Be sober, be vigilant;” (KJV 1 Peter 5:8 ) The Apostle Peter admonishes us to always be aware of what is going on in the world around us. In the text, following the words above, he tells us why we should be sober and vigilant. We won’t go into the entire passage today, only to say that there is a very good reason for being wary and alert. It is sometimes extremely difficult to know if what you are reading and hearing is truth or not. We have written about it extensively here.
In the next few years, there will be monumental decisions made by our governemt, elected representatives, and voters; it would behoove us to follow the advice of the Apostle above. We have a couple of examples to present today which might give us cause to reflect on what we see and hear over the next few months and years.
First, Hugh Hewitt, has a fine post this morning about the Democrat’s and the MSM’s level of criticism of President Bush over Iraq. It seems nothing good can happen in Iraq without being followed in a short period of time by everything bad happening there. There is such a distorted view being promoted by the MSM, we thought you should have part of Mr. Hewitt’s post today, complete with links to those who are reporting the truth concerning Iraq. Here is part of his post:
“The absurd thing about Reid’s statement is that pretty much every American who cares to know the situation in Iraq knows it, but gets an enormously skewed view of the situation from MSM. Chrenkoff is the reliable guide to all things Iraqi, not just the car bombs, and Belmont Club the Fourth Rail, VictorDavisHanson, and Winds of Change provide the strategic analysis. Dems trying to peddle “Iraq as Vietnam” find it slow going because the new media provides the real news, not the “beat Bush and the GOP” version of it. The few MSM voices that challenge the Dem tilt of the MSM –Jack Kelly, Michael Barone, etc– have seen the blogosphere amplify and extend their objective analysis beyond their old orbits. Completely new perspectives from bloggers building powerful followings –LaShawn, Mudville Gazette, Major K– are also helping to shape the public’s very sophisticated understanding of the Iraq rebuilding process. Not only is there no Walter Cronkite in 2005, ready to return from some Baghdad version of Tet and declare that the peace cannot be won, even if there was, he wouldn’t be believed because the facts are available for all to read.
Speaking of Greyhawk, don’t miss his write-up of Sgt. Peter Damon. That amazing soldier may inspire some new sign-ups at SoldiersAngels, which keeps on connecting home-front patriots with soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines in Iraq and Afghanistan who could use some extra mail and a care package or two.”
The second article we want to look at comes from the Sunday Times of London, written by Andrew Sullivan. His article entitled, Hillary, perfectly positioned for the big one. Here is the pertinent part which applies to our discussion today:
“A couple of things have broken in her favour. The first is that she has proved herself a capable senator. With close to 70% approval ratings in New York state, she has been particularly adept at reaching out to rural voters in the northern parts of her constituency.
Those voters are much more like Midwesterners than they are the residents of the Upper East Side of Manhattan — and are a test case of how Democratic candidates can appeal to the swing voters George Bush won in 2004. She speaks about practical issues — from healthcare to jobs and the needs of children. She does all this in decidedly non-ideological language. And she has formed a strange alliance with, of all people, Newt Gingrich, in formulating practical steps to tackle America ’s expensive, inequitable but high-quality health system.
She has even joined forces with Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, part of the far right, in speaking about the difficulty of shielding children from degrading images on television or the internet.”
You see, Senator Clinton talks like a conservative, walks like a conservative, and is running for President in the guise of a conservative, but that does not make her a conservative. We can only hope that true Midwesterners, and Southerners are not quite as suceptible to the Senator’s guile.
The final article is one by the The Horserace Blogger, who now writes for Red State. In an article he wrote last Friday entitled, Nuclear Option? Beware the Fallout!, he makes a very persuasive argument that the gang of fourteen saved the Senate. We want to state from the beginning that we have a great deal of respect and admiration for what the Horserace Blogger has written in the past. He was among the first blogs we followed on a daily basis prior to the election of 2004, and his analysis was above reproach.
We do however disagree with his latest alalysis concerning the compromise deal, which “saved the senate.” The following are some questions asked in the article mentioned above:
“And for what? If Frist had a choice between shattering the norm of deference for the sake of saving the Union itself, I’d tell him to go for it. But he ain’t no Lincoln, and this ain’t 1861. He was willing to do all of this for five stinking appellate court judges. There are literally hundreds of such judges in America. How on Earth could five of them be worth the Senate? How could fifty of them be worth the Senate? How could the whole appellate system be worth the Senate? And I do not mean Republican control of the Senate, I mean the Senate itself, the Senate as we have known it all of our lives.
Again, if we are interested in dispensing quantities of blame, the Democrats, particularly Reid, get the balance of it. This is because they acted first. They chose to break the norm of deference of the Senate by invoking something that had never really been invoked before. And they threatened that, if the Republicans respond, they would wholly upend the Senate itself by defecting across the board. They should be ashamed of themselves. Is keeping Priscella Owen off the bench really worth the United States Senate? Believe you me, if I saw Harry Reid walking down the street, I’d cross to the other side.”
We have read his entire article, and if you intend to read it, be prepared to sit for a while, because good analysis does take some time. The Horserace Blogger has succumbed to well-articulated, well-reasoned pieces he has read or heard either from the media, history books, writings of law professors, and his current professors.
In the article he gives a short overview of recent senate history, and does quite a good job of teaching us how the senate works. He states that the senate works on a system of “deference”. The problem with his analysis, is that he assumes “deference” is still working in the senate. He begins his overview of senate history and the first breakdown of the deference system with Robert Bork in 1987. He continues with each successive breakdown of that system until he arrives where we are today.
We believe the system of deference began to break down at an earlier time in senate history. There has not been so much of a breakdown in legislative matters, but when it comes to other matters, there has long been animosity between senate members. We believe that history has taught us that Senate Democrats have long shown that they will defer to a fellow senator, as long as the fellow senator agrees with their agenda. As senate democrats have continued losing power, that animosity has grown, and with it a continued breakdown of the deference system.
The breakdown reached it’s zenith with the democrats deciding, as a group to filibuster President Bush’s judicial nominees. That act by the minority party, is what defied 200 plus years of senate comity. Senator Frist in bringing the issue to the forefront is what saved the senate. No democrat would have ever come to any agreement without the threat of the Byrd option. The assumption made by the Horserace Blogger is that Democrat senators are honorable, and will still defer to their Republican counterparts. It remains to be seen if they will. History has shown they are not.
To answer the questions above posed by the Horserace Blogger, we would ask a different question. Is saving the judicial system from activist judges worth a breakdown in the senate? We would say yes. There is no more important issue at stake today than restoring our judicial system to constitutionality. The “five stinking appellate court judges” are representative of what is at stake, and are only the forerunner for how Supreme Court Nominees will be treated in the senate.
“Be sober, be vigilant” is the advice of the Apostle. We should all take his warning to heart. So much of the future of our great nation depends on our careful understanding and analysis of the events of the day. We need to be guided by the Apostle’s advice.
