Let us not, in our enthusiasm about yesterday's Iraqi elections and democracy generally, ignore the creeping threats to our freedom here at home.

This article bothers me a lot:

I was among those who was assigned a little friend. Or to be precise, I was monitored for about half of the inaugural party I was covering for The Post. For the first couple of hours of the Independence Ball, I roamed the vast width and length of the Washington Convention Center hall dangerously unescorted.

I had arrived early to get a head start on mingling among the roughly 6,000 people eating and dancing to celebrate the president's reelection. Unaware of the new escort policy (it wasn't in place during the official parties following the 2001 inauguration), I blithely assumed that in the world's freest nation, I was free to walk around at will and ask the happy partygoers such national security-jeopardizing questions as, "Are you having a good time?"

Big mistake. After cruising by the media pen -- a sectioned-off area apparently designed for corralling journalists -- a sharp-eyed volunteer spotted my media badge. "You're not supposed to go out there without an escort," she said.

I replied that I had been doing just fine without one, and walked over to a quiet corner of the hall to phone in some anecdotes to The Post's Style desk.

As I was dictating from my notes, something flashed across my face and neatly snatched my cell phone from of my hand. I looked up to confront a middle-aged woman, her face afire with rage. "You ignored the rules, and I'm throwing you out!" she barked, snapping my phone shut. "You told that girl you didn't need an escort. That's a lie! You're out of here!"

With the First Amendment on the line, my natural wit did not fail me. "Huh?" I answered.

Recovering quickly, I explained that I had been unaware of the escort policy. She was unbending and ordered a couple of security guards to hustle me out. I appealed to them, saying that I was more than happy to follow whatever ground rules had been laid down. They shrugged, and deposited me back in the media pen.

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: On a related note, Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard appears to despise democracy.

David writes:

"I was stunned to learn, also courtesy of the WaPo, that more than 46 million Americans receive Social Security benefits."

Additionally, not all Americans own their own boats.

It mostly goes downhill from there.

---

{update Feb 5 2005 1:15PM EST} by nadezhda -- Our Social Security conversation has wandered through a number of posts and comments over recent weeks. For those of you who are interested, most of my thoughts on SocSec are in comments threads.

If you're interested in more reasons why David is "the worst OxBlogger" see the comments section to this thread. Plus this new post by prak. My broader views on "what should be done" are here.

Shorter nadezhda: there is no crisis, there is no trust fund, there is no free lunch. So there.

I guess that's the last time Bill Thomas goes on Meet the Press ... this was in my inbox today (below the jump):

{UPDATE 1-25-04} by nadezhda: Also after the jump, my response to what was a perfectly civil and innocuous query from praktike. Just in case anyone was losing sleep over what I think about Social Security and how it fits more broadly into "what should be done" in the economic and social policy arena, you can learn everything you ever wanted to know and were afraid to ask.    more »

Bush, today:

"We will widen the ownership of homes and businesses, retirement savings and health insurance - preparing our people for the challenges of life in a free society. By making every citizen an agent of his or her own destiny, we will give our fellow Americans greater freedom from want and fear, and make our society more prosperous and just and equal ...In America's ideal of freedom, the exercise of rights is ennobled by service, and mercy, and a heart for the weak.

Reality:

President Bush's choice to take over the Department of Health and Human Services steadfastly refused yesterday to rule out budget cuts for Medicaid, the state-federal health program for the poor.

In two otherwise cordial confirmation hearings, Mike Leavitt, the current administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, argued that Medicaid is "inefficient" and could serve more people with better management and some ingenuity.

Wanker.

George Bush, today:

One lesson of history is that free societies do not export terror.

Richard Armitage, last week:

[I]n the wake of 9/11, instead of redoubling what is our traditional export of hope and optimism we exported our fear and our anger. And presented a very intense and angry face to the world.

Clearly, this man hates America.

(thanks to Tim Dunlop for the link)

Condi Rice, yesterday:

"I think we do have to remember that it is also not the Soviet Union. The Russians have come quite a long way from where the Soviet Union was, and we need to always keep that in mind when we judge current policies."

MOSCOW (Reuters) -

Moscow plans to erect a new statue of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, returning his once-ubiquitous image to its streets after an absence of four decades, a top city official said Wednesday.

Since President Vladimir Putin was elected in 2000, a number of Soviet symbols — including the national anthem and an army flag — have been restored to use, reflecting widespread nostalgia for Russia's communist years.

But rehabilitation of Stalin, who was denounced after his death in 1953 by the Soviet leadership for encouraging a cult of personality and killing millions of real and imagined opponents, has previously been out of bounds. Statues of Stalin were removed from Moscow's public spaces in the 1960s.

"A monument will be erected to those who took part in (leading the war against Adolf Hitler), including Stalin," Oleg Tolkachev, Moscow's senator in the upper house of parliament, told Ekho Moskvy radio.

Interfax news agency reported earlier that a Stalin monument would also be built in the Belgorod region near the Ukrainian border to mark the Soviet victory against Nazi Germany 60 years ago — seen as the country's greatest military triumph.

In another sign of Stalin's growing appeal, state television channels have shown a number of prime-time television shows in recent months depicting him in a positive light.

Ok, if you read the entire transcript, you'll see that my cropping there is more than a little unfair, but still. Bad timing.

Thanks to Edward Underscore for the link.

UPDATE: Via Volokh, Stalin statute plans scrapped.

I thought that yesterday's plea by Lincoln Chafee on behalf of the Venezuela people was a bit strange:

SEN. CHAFEE: I'd like to follow up on some of Senator Biden's comments about there seems to be a hypocritical approach to our foreign policy in some ways, in particular how we deal with some of those democracies such as Russia -- Senator Biden said uneven or undemocratic -- or some of the -- Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tadjikistan, even Musharraf, President Musharraf, and then, on the other hand, have a completely different view of, say, Iran. As Senator Biden was saying, it seems the way we magnify our differences on one hand, and then, on the other hand, we magnify our similarities. And in particular, after having just come back from South America and meeting with President Chavez, here he has been drawn before his people, high, high turnout, just had a referendum. And as one of the people from our embassy said, he cleaned their clocks and kicked their butts. And it seems to me to say derogatory things about him may be disrespectful to him, but also to the Venezuelan people. How do you react to that?

MS. RICE: Well, I have nothing but good things to say about the Venezuelan people. They are a remarkable people. And if you notice, Senator Chafee, I was not making derogatory comments, I was simply recognizing that there are unhelpful and unconstructive trends going on in Venezuelan policies. This is not -- this is not personal. [...]

SEN. CHAFEE: You and Senator Boxer were having a little bit of a debate over credibility. And to me it seems as though trust is built with consistency. Is it possible for you to say something positive about the Chavez administration?

MS. RICE: It's pretty hard, Senator, to find something positive. Let me say this --

SEN. CHAFEE: I don't understand that, after -- after --

MS. RICE: Let me say this -- let me say this --

SEN. CHAFEE: -- Tajikistan, Pakistan, Russia. It seems as though, as I say, magnifying our differences to some countries, and magnifying our similarities with other. And as I said, I think trust is built with consistency. I don't see consistency in some of your comments.

MS. RICE: Well, the state of behavior in the Western Hemisphere, the state of affairs in the Western Hemisphere is such that we've had democratic revolutions in all of these places and we don't want to see them go back. We have some places where the democratic revolution is still to take place, and we just have to understand that there are differences in that regard.

But I have said we hope that the government of Venezuela will continue to recognize what has been a mutually beneficial relationship on energy, and that we can continue to pursue that. We certainly hope that we can continue to pursue counter-drug activities in the Andean region, and Venezuela participates in that. But I have to say that for the most part, the activities of the Venezuelan government in the last couple of years have been pretty unconstructive.

SEN. CHAFEE: Well, thanks very much. I'll go back to what I said earlier; it seems disrespectful to the Venezuelan people. They have spoken.

Oy. You really have to hear the plaintive tone in his voice to get the full effect. I don't see why Chafee is so bent on apologizing for Chavez, although his point about consistency is an important one. Chavez is a terrible leader who is leading his people astray, and Rice is correct to point that out, though it's by no means clear that the Bush administration knows how to steer Chavez in a more constructive direction. One wonders if the demonization of Chavez actually serves to boost his anti-American credentials and allow him to punch above his weight in the region.

Now, it just so happens that I'm reading Morton Halperin et al's new CFR-sponsored book, The Democracy Advantage. The authors dispute Fareed Zakaria's conception of "illiberal democracy" as "an oxymoron that only muddies the waters," but it seems to me to be an apt enough label in this case. Here's what they say about Venezuela, which provides as good a summary of the situation as any:

The economy has been steadily contracting there since 1980, with per capita incomes shrinking from $4,400 to $3,300. Railing against the sharp income disparities within Venezuelan society, populist Hugo Chavez, a former junior army officer who had led a failed coup attempt in 1992, was elected 1999, promising to improve the lives of the country's poor. Chavez has undertaken high-profile programs to address poverty such as Plan Bolivar. This mobilized military personnel to construct various infrastructure projects including highways, schools, and hospitals as well as to provide various social services. Conditions have only seemed to worsen, however.

Concurrently, Chavez took actions that weakened Venezuela's long-established democratic institutions, including amending the constitution so as to centralize power in the presidency, stacking the courts with his allies, politicizing Venezuela's armed forces, removing civilian checks on the military, attacking the credibility of the country's political institutions, and bypassing the legislature through referendums. [yes, yes, he sort of sounds like Bush, except for that last part. But the Putinization of Venezuela is far, far worse. -p] Despite the controversy created by such actions, Chavez maintains widespread support among the 30 percent of the population living under the poverty line, keeping him in power. Thumbing his nose at his political opponents who have not been able to displace him at the polls, he boasts of his revolutionary ideology and intention to stay in power until 2021.

A short-lived coup against Chavez in April 2002 [did the U.S. play a role? -p] vividly demonstrated the strains between the social classes in Venezuelan society. While many from the middle and upper echelons of society and even important elements of organized labor backed it, the poor rose up in Chavez's defense. Clashes resulted in the deaths of at least 12 people. This resistance, the ineptitude of the coup leaders, the uneasiness of the general population with the autocratic nature of the coup plotters, and widespread condemnation of the international community resulted in a sudden evaporation of support for the coup. Chavez was returned to power within two days. A subsequent three-month strike in late 2002 and early 2003 again brought the country to a standstill and exposed the depths of Venezuela's division. To their credit, both the government and the strikers sought to curb violence. However, once the strike was broken, Chavez had a number of the strike leaders, led by executives from the state oil company, arrested. In 2004, a referendum to recall Chavez failed--perpetuating Venezuela's political impasse.

All of this turmoil hurt the economy. Venezuela experienced a contraction in real GDP per capita of 27 percent between 1998 and 2003. The social, political, and economic cleavages of Venezuelan society appear destined to pull the country into still deeper malaise. It thus represents the worst of both scenarios--deteriorating economic perforamance and hardening dictatorial rule. It is the prospect of such a democratic reversal that many fear will engulf the entire region.

That sounds like a textbook illiberal democracy to me, though the authors go on to explain why Venezuela is an outlier of sorts. But let's not quibble over labels. In short, Chavez is a bad dude and bad for his country, but the prospects for alternative leadership are dim as long as he's the people's choice. Maybe the learned Randy Paul will address this problem when he gets back from partying in Brazil, where erstwhile radical socialist Lula has actually turned out to be a pretty decent president.

Incidentally, today we learn that Chafee is on the ropes, which is good because we might as well pick up a nominal as well as de facto Democrat for that seat.

As for the Halperin book, so far it's vastly superior to the Sharansky book, The Case For Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror, which is a poorly-written moral and anecdotal rather than factual argument replete with bland platitudes, and one that ultimately fails to acknowledge key tradeoffs. It's basically the free lunch/magic approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that we all talked about in the thread below. The idea is that if only the Palestinians have democratic institutions, they'll give up all of these crazy ideas about getting their land back and so forth. But as we've seen so far, the democratically-elected Mahmoud Abbas faces many of the same constraints that confronted his less-well-meaning predecessor. We shall see, but I'm not optimistic.

In any case, there does need to be more of a focus on Latin America, as even Rice acknowledged, as it appears to be backsliding. This is no surprise given Bush's broken promises in the region due to his focus on terrorism and his entrustment of Latin America policy to a bunch of Reagan-era retreads. Let's hope we can apply a little more Halperin, a little less Sharansky, and no Chafee-esque apologism. In the meantime, let's be sure, as Richard Lugar strongly suggested, that we have a backup plan in case Chavez and Khamenei try some nonsense with oil supplies. It wouldn't be the first time those two nations, so instrumental in forming OPEC, came together to cause us grief. As Venezuela spirals further downward, Chavez may be looking for cash. Stay tuned.

I'm surprised nobody in left blogistan seems to have commented on the fact that the NYT recently busted the Cato Institute in pretty embarrassing fashion. Check it:

Cato, a libertarian policy center founded in the late 1970's, has been arguing for 25 years that Social Security is on the verge of crisis. In a recent position paper, Tanner wrote that Social Security faces a horrendous unfinanced liability of $26 trillion over 75 years. In a footnote, he cited the 2003 trustees' annual report. Actually, the trustees' intermediate projection is for a deficit, over 75 years, of $3.7 trillion. Though that is a lot of money, it could be covered by an immediate surcharge to the payroll tax of less than two percentage points, or by various combinations of tax hikes and benefit cuts, each of them quite manageable. But $26 trillion is too big a hole to fix. When I asked Tanner about the footnote, he admitted that the trustees didn't actually say $26 trillion; Tanner derived the figure by counting the cash-flow deficits that the trustees project from 2019 on out. In other words, he ignores the next 15 years or so, during which time Social Security will be running a surplus. And he assumes that the assets in the trust fund, which should be accruing interest into the 2040's, won't exist, either. Tanner counts only the bad years and only the bad numbers. Another doomsayer, former Republican Representative John Kasich, pegged the Social Security deficit at $120 trillion in a recent op-ed -- some 32 times the agency's figure. (Kasich toted up annual deficits in nominal -- not inflation-adjusted -- dollars for every year through 2080, by which time a hamburger could cost $40.)

And that, my friends, is why you can't trust Cato. They're not libertarians like many of our fine and principled readers here; they're just liars and cranks shilling for a bunch of big, non-dynamic regulated industries that don't want to pay their fair share.

This example is par for the course with right-wing think tanks, which is why if I'm arguing with someone online and they whip out a cite from Cato or Heritage, I just laugh and move on ... the thing that bugs me is how willing people are to swallow this nonsense and repeat it. If you just say "I want to smoke weed, buy porn, avoid paying taxes, shoot deer, do as I please with my property, and conduct politics on as local a plane as possible," I can respect that.

But don't make stuff up.

By the way, I've found that the more local you get with these types of groups, the more transparently bad their research. Our own Scaife-funded Allegheny Institute is like the Cleveland Lumberjacks to Cato's New York Rangers. You barely even have to be smart or knowledge to see where the BS lies.

At least Cato values creativity and has some smart employees.

What I wonder is: do the people that work at these places enjoy and feel good about what they do? If so, why? If your job required you to constantly manipulate and distort information in order to advance your agenda, wouldn't that cause you to reassess your ideology? Wouldn't you feel bad about the people you were hurting? Wouldn't you be unhappy, knowing that your job was essentially to lie on behalf of others who are making far more money than you, the smart but unscrupulous think tank weenie, were making? Wouldn't you feel like you were being cheated? How would you wake up and go to work every morning?

Related thoughts from Mark Schmitt and Ed Kilgore.

UPDATE: Matthew Yglesias channels Marx to answer my questions (don't know if he saw the post or not).

Condi to focus more on public diplomacy:

She declined to be interviewed for this article, but her associates and even some of her rivals say she shows every sign of setting a course aimed at putting diplomacy at the top of the Bush administration's foreign policy agenda after a period dominated by military action in Iraq and Afghanistan.

You can't make this stuff up. If you're afraid of getting a hostile reception from the New York Times, how are you going to explain U.S. policies on Al Jazeera, where it really counts?

Additionally, what Matt said.

See also Greg Djerejian's concerete ideas about What Should Be Done:

In this vein too, Bush must more effectively communicate to the world audience the nature of his global war on terror. Between a widely (though, it should be noted, not quite as widely as sometimes suggested) supported Afghanistan campaign and the so controversial war in Iraq--America's war on terror lost much support in the court of international opinion. I'm not talking here of the cheap Euro-Gaullist broadsides about Iraq simply consituting a bid for hegemony in the Middle East, or for access to cheap oil (that worked out well, eh?), or simply a dynastic clean up of Poppy's unfinished business. But the reality is, of course, that there exists much misapprehension and confusion about why, for Bush, the war in Iraq has been conflated with the war on terror. Bush must now, as his second term begins, communicate better what he means when he says Iraq is now the "central front" in the war on terror. This is particularly critical in the conspiracy-ridden Middle East. On that front, Bush (and, perhaps more important, his Arab-speaking diplomats) must increasingly pound in the message that: a) Iraq is already sovereign, is embarking on historical elections, and that a national assembly and consitution will take shape thereafter, b) U.S. forces remain in theater solely to help bring about the successful conclusion of this hugely difficult political process (but won't be rushed out until such goals are accomplished), c) that no permanent American bases will remain in Iraq, d) Iraq will have its own independent foreign policy (even an anti-Israeli, pro-Iranian one, if that's how things pan out, though I don't think they necessarily will); e) the perpetrators (at least the direct ones) of Abu Ghraib are being tried and jailed--in sharp distinction to the treatment afforded Saddam's torturers)--and that all efforts will be made to ensure no repeats of such horrific human rights violations, f) America's move to pressure the Arab world to democratize is not an exceptional singling out of that region--indeed it represents the reversal of a pre-existing 'democracy exception' whereby we didn't spearhead democracy there (unlike our democracy-promotion initiatives through the Cold War in Latin America and Asia) g) America has supported Muslims from Aceh to Zepa in the past odd decade and h) the U.S. will more forcefully re-engage in attempting to bring about a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace.

Wishful thinking?

By Martin Luther King

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of captivity. But one hundred years later, we must face the tragic fact that the Negro is still not free.

One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land.

So we have come here today to dramatize an appalling condition. In a sense we have come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.

This note was a promise that all men would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check which has come back marked "insufficient funds." But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation.

So we have come to cash this check -- a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to open the doors of opportunity to all of God's children. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood.

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment and to underestimate the determination of the Negro. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights.

The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges. But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.

We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. we must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.

The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny and their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.

We cannot walk alone. And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" we can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.

Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair. I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal." I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a desert state, sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day the state of Alabama, whose governor's lips are presently dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, will be transformed into a situation where little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls and walk together as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today. I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together. This is our hope. This is the faith with which I return to the South. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with a new meaning, "My country, 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim's pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring." And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania! Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado! Let freedom ring from the curvaceous peaks of California! But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia! Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee! Let freedom ring from every hill and every molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"