Returning home this morning from

Returning home this morning from the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, I read the Sunday book sections of the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Washington Times. By far the best was the Washington Times’, with interesting reviews of two books that appear worthy of note. Robert Royal has a thoughtful review of Norman Podhoretz’s new book on the prophets: “Fifteen books of Bible’s prophets.” And there is no one I would rather read than Chester Finn for an evaluation of what appears to be an important new book by Peter Brimelow on the teachers’ unions: “Schools choked.” (The linked words in quotes are the review headlines, not the titles of the books.)
Reflecting on the three days of CPAC panels, I remain struck by the depth of the sentiments among the conservative troops on the subject of border control and immigration. Yesterday’s program featured a panel including two relatively pro-immigration speakers, John Fund of the Wall Street Journal and Grover Norquist of I’m not sure what at this point, and two serious advocates of border control and immigration control, Joe D’Agostino of Human Events and the lovely independent journalist Michelle Malkin. In my view, Michelle Malkin blew the guys away.
The subject that generated the next most sentiment among the subjects addressed by the conference’s various speakers was the French and German effort to subvert American goals in Iraq. On this subject there were almost equally intense feelings among the conference audience and no dissension whatsoever. But none of the speakers brought quite the level of analysis to the subject that Mark Steyn does in his column today, “French opposed to war–unless it’s their own.”
The soul of the Democratic Party appears more sincerely pacifist than the French do. During the Clinton administration, however, this pacifism was tempered by a willingness to use military force–so long as the force was not exercised in the national interest of the United States. Now Zev Chafets proposes that the Democrats go all the way toward enunciating a pure doctrine of anti-American pacifism by running Gary Hart as their candidate for president: “McGovern’s children.” (Courtesy of RealClearPolitics.)

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