Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

The address below was given at Meriden’s Fourth Annual Lincoln Day Dinner The day is named after Abe Lincoln, and well named too. I suppose this year those attending these remarks will thank God – who else? – that they are not called upon to celebrate the Jefferson, Jackson Bailey Dinner, which used to be a day of feasting and merriment for Connecticut Democrats. This was before conscience stricken Democrats re-named their annual event. They did so because Democrats decided, three quarters of a century after President Jackson died, that he had owned slaves – who knew? -- and was not kind to American Indians. Though somewhat debased, Jackson, revered as a populist, is still regarded as the founder of the modern Democratic Party. Lincoln owned no slaves and, in fact, prosecuted a bloody Civil War to emancipate them. He had a wicked sense of humor, unlike the stern, forbidding, disputatious and humorless Andy Jackson. On one occasion, in the midst of a speech, a heckler in the aud...

“What the three [Madison, Hamilton, Jay] did not know, could not know, was that the right to have the Constitution ratified would . . . rival any that would follow in the history of the country” -- Triumvirate, p. 38 The Articles of Confederation were a failure. They needed not to be improved but wholly rewritten. The Constitution was the best form of government ever offered to the world. But to get it ratified, nine of the 13 states were needed. Madison, Hamilton, and Jay started writing essays, all under the name of Publius, (with widespread support from the biased newspapers). How they got started, was not revealed in the mass of letters available to author Bruce Chadwick for his new book, “Triumverate” (Naperville, IL, Sourcebooks, 2009). Fears by Anti-Federalists and Federalists were intense. If the Constitution were not ratified, what would become of the states that voted against it? Anarchy? Like a ship without a rudder or pilot. The chief obstacle was the need for...

If you are an accolade of one of our more modern secular faiths -- say, the ministerial alliance of MoveOn.org or the Non-Sectarian, Non-Religious Atheists Association of Dawkins, Harris and Hitchens -- whether you like Barack Obama or not, and there is a there there to like, will depend less on Obama and more on your own deeply held secular and/or anti-religious beliefs. If you think the whole religious business is hokum, you will not appreciate Obama’s brand of hokum. In the anti-religious theatre of thought and action, it is not possible to loathe the war but love the soldier. Hitchens, for one, cheerfully threw off that imposture when, shortly after the death of the Rev. Jerry Falwell, he vigorously and publicly attacked the corpse. A convert to America from Merry Old England, Hitchens is in some ways more American than apple pie; so, for that matter, was DeToqueville. As a confirmed atheist, Hitchens has never been comfortable with religious prattle. Since hypocrisy remains the o...

First Sen. Chris Dodd, now running for president, announced the event on the Don Imus show; then he gave several interviews in Washington DC, the senator’s theatre of operation, where the anti-President George Bush war room is located; then he went on the stump in Iowa and South Carolina where, along with congressional pal Sen. Joe Biden, he called upon the citizens of that great state to remove the confederate flag, now on display within sight of the capital building, to a museum of their choosing, where it belongs; then he went back to base camp in Washington DC to hobble the efforts of the president to raise troop levels in Iraq, though he has not yet demanded that Bush be removed to a museum; and finally – ta’da, a flourish of trumpets please! – the tribunes of the people have reported that Dodd will on Friday, Jan. 18 – mark it on your calendars -- return to his home state to tell the good old boys that he is running for president. A little late, grumbled the Hartford Courant’s ch...

When is a compromise not a compromise? There are two answers to this question: 1) When the Hartford Courant says it is a compromise; and 2) when compromise is impossible. Examples of the impossibility of compromise abound. For instance, if the Courant were compelled by a judge to reveal a source of information whose testimony was sought at trial, the paper would resist the order as a matter of principle. No compromise would be possible. The Courant would not yield to the variety of forces that could be brought to bear against it. Papers that cannot provide anonymity to their sources are not long for this world. The Catholic Church regards abortion as a moral disorder and a crime against canon law. Any attempt to compel the church to allow abortion in any of its facilities would be resisted, and compromise on the point would be impossible. So, when the Courant editorialized recently, “We had hoped Roman Catholic hospitals would find a way to provide emergency contraception known as Pla...

U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd has vigorously opposed the nomination of John Bolton as a United States U.N. delegate. This is not the first time Dodd has opposed Bolton, a friend of liberty, and a vigorous critic of Fidel Castro, Kim Jong Il and other dictators. Bolton’s critique of the Cuban and Korean dictators has been unsparing, truthful and very undiplomatic. A diplomat is supposed to be someone whose iron fist is sheathed by a velvet glove. Bolton, some of his critics assert, conceals his iron fist in a mailed glove. Someone once suggested that the United States might want to offer a carrot to North Korea from time to time, in addition to beating it with a big stick, to which Bolton replied, “I don’t do carrots.” That blunt talk, Trumanesque in its inspiration, frightens the Dickens out of Dodd and others, who believe that the velvet glove of the diplomat should conceal a velvet fist. In selecting Bolton as a UN delegate, Dodd said, Bush had made a poor choice. His opposition to Bolton has...