Don’t get caught flat-footed in front of the press!  Below is a quick rundown of today’s “must reads.” – John T. Doolittle, House Republican Conference Secretary

The Morning Murmur – Tuesday, November 8, 2005

1.  Bush 29, Chavez 5 – Investor’s Business Daily
If you heeded the hype from gloomy hand wringers or news photos of shop-trashing anti-American thugs, you'd think President Bush left the Argentina summit in failure. It's nothing but rubbish.  The real story is that 29 very different states — making up 90% of the hemisphere's GDP — endorsed free trade.

2.  Beware a 'Digital Munich' – Wall Street Journal Op-ed, Rep. Norm Coleman
An anonymous group of international technocrats are strategizing to take over management of the Internet from the U.S. and enable the United Nations to dominate and politicize the World Wide Web. Sound too bizarre to be true? Regrettably, much of what emanates these days from the U.N. does.

3.  An ‘electoral shift’ in 2006? – Washington Times Op-ed
"Voter Anger Might Mean an Electoral Shift in '06" screamed the headline of the lead story in The Washington Post on Sunday.  A quick look at the story shows that the Post has crossed "if" and "could" to produce "might," and on this rock rests the "Electoral Shift in '06."

4.  Political Paralysis – National Review, Steve Salerno
Ever wonder why one hears so little talk of right-wing demagoguery? Demagoguery actively fans the fires of oppression, creating whole categories of needs, if not “rights,” that people never knew they had. The demagogue gains his standing by cultivating victimhood – notions that do not fly very well among a conservative audience.

5.  France’s Intifada – New York Post Columnist
Utterly devoid of self-awareness, the French cherish their image of America as racist. But minorities in the United States have opportunities for which their French counterparts would risk their lives.

For previous issues of the Morning Murmur, go to www.gopsecretary.gov

FULL ARTICLES BELOW:

1.  Bush 29, Chavez 5 – Investor’s Business Daily

Posted 11/7/2005

Latin America: If you heeded the hype from gloomy hand wringers or news photos of shop-trashing anti-American thugs, you'd think President Bush left the Argentina summit in failure. It's nothing but rubbish.

Seldom has news been so distorted against facts. Most of the U.S. media claim that because the 34 states were obstructed from full agreement on a declaration to kick-start free trade by a few holdouts, it's some sort of victory for the chief obstructor, U.S. antagonist Hugo Chavez of Venezuela.

Just by the numbers, it's a false impression. Only five states at the Organization of American States summit in Mar del Plata withheld signing a statement to restart talks for a Free Trade of the Americas pact, and four of those — Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay — did so temporarily on valid concerns about farm subsidies.

The U.S. sympathizes with them, but is hamstrung by its larger trade relations with heavily subsidized Europe. That's why the U.S. is going to bat for those four at the World Trade Organization's 148-nation Doha Round of trade talks in Hong Kong this December.

That leaves just Venezuela obstructing free trade, and on ideological grounds. The real story is that 29 very different states — making up 90% of the hemisphere's GDP — endorsed free trade.

Even more encouraging, the summit's most articulate advocates for free trade spontaneously came from Latin American leaders whose nations have already experienced free trade. Among them, Mexico's President Vicente Fox emerged as a star, bluntly warning anti-trade factions they are "out of touch with reality."

Fox should know. Mexico's GDP has nearly doubled and its exports to the U.S. have tripled since the 1994 passage of NAFTA, expanding Mexico's economy to just a hair's breadth below that of Brazil, a country with almost twice Mexico's population.

Central American states south of Mexico aren't stupid, either, and NAFTA's success encouraged them to seek their own free trade pact with the U.S. — CAFTA. They know how it draws permanent investment and increases business activity across the board, even in industries like coffee not subject to tariffs.

"We did not come here to attend the burial of the FTAA," El Salvador's President Tony Saca defiantly told Chavez at the summit. "Our position is of a total and absolute support of the FTAA. The spirit of integration will prevail."

Had the cameras been on these leaders instead of the Argentine rent-a-mob, maybe a different perception of what happened would emerge. It's no exaggeration to say that the news was purposely slanted to show these thugs instead of the leaders of the 29 nations who had something real to say about free trade.

If anything, it's Chavez who is isolated. No one has taken him up on his counterfree trade proposals, which are not based on market mechanisms but pork-barrel spending.

In the end Bush won because free trade is moving along anyway, summit or no summit. Panama is close to signing its own trade pact with the U.S. The Andean states — Colombia, Ecuador and Peru — are in the last stages of a swift, 18-month effort to hammer out a pact. Besides these smaller, separate deals, the World Trade Organization talks will overtake anything that went on at this summit.

Fox of Mexico called it right when he said that free trade would just move on with the willing who want it.

http://www.investors.com/editorial/IBDArticles.asp?artsec=20&artnum=1&issue=20051107

2.  Beware a 'Digital Munich' – Wall Street Journal Op-ed, Rep. Norm Coleman

By NORM COLEMAN
November 7, 2005; Page A21

It sounds like a Tom Clancy plot. An anonymous group of international technocrats holds secretive meetings in Geneva. Their cover story: devising a blueprint to help the developing world more fully participate in the digital revolution. Their real mission: strategizing to take over management of the Internet from the U.S. and enable the United Nations to dominate and politicize the World Wide Web. Does it sound too bizarre to be true? Regrettably, much of what emanates these days from the U.N. does.

The Internet faces a grave threat. We must defend it. We need to preserve this unprecedented communications and informational medium, which fosters freedom and enterprise. We can not allow the U.N. to control the Internet.

The threat is posed by the U.N.-sponsored World Summit on the Information Society taking place later this month in Tunisia. At the WSIS preparatory meeting weeks ago, it became apparent that the agenda had been transformed. Instead of discussing how to place $100 laptops in the hands of the world's children, the delegates schemed to transfer Internet control into the hands of intrigue-plagued bureaucracies.

The low point of that planning session was the European Union's shameful endorsement of a plan favored by China, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Cuba that would terminate the historic U.S. role in Internet government oversight, relegate both private enterprise and non-governmental organizations to the sidelines, and place a U.N.-dominated group in charge of the Internet's operation and future. The EU's declaration was a "political coup," according to London's Guardian newspaper, which predicted that once the world's governments awarded themselves control of the Internet, the U.S. would be able to do little but acquiesce.

I disagree. Such acquiescence would amount to appeasement. We cannot allow Tunis to become a digital Munich.

There is no rational justification for politicizing Internet governance within a U.N. framework. The chairman of the WSIS Internet Governance Subcommittee himself recently affirmed that existing Internet governance arrangements "have worked effectively to make the Internet the highly robust, dynamic and geographically diverse medium it is today, with the private sector taking the lead in day-to-day operations, and with innovation and value creation at the edges."

Nor is there a rational basis for the anti-U.S. resentment driving the proposal. The history of the U.S. government's Internet involvement has been one of relinquishing control. Rooted in a Defense Department project of the 1960s, the Internet was transferred to civilian hands and then opened to commerce by the National Science Foundation in 1995. Three years later, the non-profit Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers assumed governance responsibility under Department of Commerce oversight. Icann, with its international work force and active Governmental Advisory Committee, is scheduled to be fully privatized next year. Privatization, not politicization, is the right Internet governance regime.

We do not stand alone in our pursuit of that goal. The majority of European telecommunications companies have already dissented from the EU's Geneva announcement, with one executive pronouncing it "a U-turn by the European Union that was as unexpected as it was disturbing."

In addition to resentment of U.S. technological leadership, proponents of politicization are driven by fear -- of access to full and accurate information, and of the opportunity for legitimate political discourse and organization, provided by the Internet. Nations like China, which are behind the U.N. plan to take control, censor their citizens' Web sites, and monitor emails and chat rooms to stifle legitimate political dissent. U.N. control would shield this kind of activity from scrutiny and criticism.

The U.S. must do more to advance the values of an open Internet in our broader trade and diplomatic conversations. We cannot expect U.S. high-tech companies seeking business opportunities in growing markets to defy official policy; yet we cannot stand idly by as some governments seek to make the Internet an instrument of censorship and political suppression. To those nations that seek to wall off their populations from information and dialogue we must say, as Ronald Reagan said in Berlin, "Tear down this wall."

Allowing Internet governance to be politicized under U.N. auspices would raise a variety of dangers. First, it is wantonly irresponsible to tolerate any expansion of the U.N.'s portfolio before that abysmally managed and sometimes-corrupt institution undertakes sweeping, overdue reform. It would be equal folly to let Icann be displaced by the U.N.'s International Telecommunication Union, a regulatory redoubt for those state telephone monopolies most threatened by the voice over Internet protocol revolution.

Also, as we expand the global digital economy, the stability and reliability of the Internet becomes a matter of security. Technical minutiae have profound implications for competition and trade, democratization, free expression and access to information, privacy and intellectual-property protection.

Responding to the present danger, I have initiated a Sense of the Senate Resolution that supports the four governance principles articulated by the administration on June 30:

• Preservation of the security and stability of the Internet domain name and addressing system (DNS).
 
• Recognition of the legitimate interest of governments in managing their own country code top-level domains.
 
• Support for Icann as the appropriate technical manager of the Internet DNS.
 
• Participation in continuing dialogue on Internet governance, with continued support for market-based approaches toward, and private-sector leadership of, its further evolution.
 
I also intend to seek hearings in advance of the Tunis Summit to explore the implications of multinational politicization of Internet governance. While Tunis marks the end of the WSIS process, it is just the beginning of a long, multinational debate on the values that the Internet will incorporate and foster. Our responsibility is to safeguard the full potential of the new information society that the Internet has brought into being.

Mr. Coleman is a Republican senator from Minnesota.

http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB113133007519089738-lMyQjAxMDE1MzAxNzMwMzcwWj.html

3.  An ‘electoral shift’ in 2006? – Washington Times Op-ed

By Tod Lindberg
November 8, 2005

"Voter Anger Might Mean an Electoral Shift in '06" screamed the headline of the lead story in The Washington Post on Sunday. Ah, how it took me back -- to a late winter day in 1994 when Adam Meyerson, then editor of Policy Review, called me at my office at The Washington Times' editorial page to ask me to write an article for him about what would happen if the Republicans won control of Congress that November.

I won't quite say I fell off the chair at the outlandishness of Adam's suggestion, but I do recall that my initial impression was along the lines of: well, uh, gee, that seems kind of out there. I wasn't keen on writing an article premised on something wildly implausible. Republicans, after all, were 40 seats down in the House, and while Bill Clinton and the Democrats were having a rough time in early 1994, such a prediction would put the crystal-ball gazer at some risk of humiliation.
But Adam pressed me on the point, and I said I'd think about it. And the more I looked at the data, the more, indeed, it looked to me like the Republican Party had a serious chance of winning the House for the first time in 50 years. The result appeared in the summer 1994 edition of Policy Review, with the cover line, "Newt Eyes the Speakership." It's the first mention in print, by the way, of what would become the "Contract with America." At about the same time, John Fund of the Wall Street Journal editorial page published a piece similarly speculating that the Republican Party might take over. We were, indeed, out there. And we were right. (I watched the election-night returns roll in at a giddy and raucous party at David Brock's house in Georgetown -- but that's another story.) What, then, to make of The Post's offering? Well, I would say that The Post is, to put it bluntly, at some risk of humiliation -- far greater than the risk I was running in summer 1994 in Policy Review.

In the first place, my article appeared about five months before the election and was based on the political mood created through the spring, with the implosion of Clinton-style health-care reform and the loss of control of the House over a crime bill. If you'd asked me to speculate as of November 1993 about the macro political climate in November 1994, I would have shrugged at the sheer impossibility of the assignment. Anybody who claims to know what the mood will be one year out is full of prunes.

The second point I'd make is that both Mr. Fund and I were opinion journalists who made no bones about our rooting interest in the November election. I would have been astounded if The Post, or for that matter,TheWashington Times,hadpublisheda "news" article, even a "new analysis," in June 1994 concluding that speculation about a GOP takeover that fall "isn't... completely idle," as I boldly put it (noting as well that it was "far safer" at that point "to predict continued Democratic dominance"). Yet The Post's article appears eight months sooner in the electoral calendar as straight news.

To be sure, The Post's article looks to have been subtly and carefully reported before the editors took over. By paragraph two, the story is already noting poll results showing "significant discontent with the performance of both political parties." It continues, "Frustration has not reached the level that existed before the 1994 earthquake" -- true, good. But "strategists say" -- uh-oh, read carefully -- "that if the public mood further darkens, Republican majorities in the House and Senate could be at risk." So, that's what the headline is all about: The Post has crossed "if" and "could" to produce "might," and on this rock rests the "Electoral Shift in '06." OK. But then the third paragraph goes on to note, "One bright spot for Republicans is the low regard in which many Americans hold Democrats." According to The Post's poll results, disapproval of Republicans in Congress is high, at 61 percent, but this compares to disapproval of Democrats in Congress at 54 percent. Democrats have advantages on domestic policy issues and have pulled even in handling on terrorism (a serious GOP decline), but 51 percent of voters say Democrats aren't offering a clear and different direction, and 51 percent say the Republican Party has stronger leaders, compared to 35 percent for the Democrats.

The Post story itself is actually a portrait of the hurdles Democrats face in picking up the 15 House seats they need to retake the majority (to say nothing of six Senate seats). And so the basis of the "Go Big D!" headline is now -- what? Well, let's just say that the editors' rooting interest in favor of Democrats in 2006 seems no less heartfelt than Mr. Fund's or mine was the other way in 1994 -- the difference being that we acknowledged it.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20051107-094347-2879r.htm

4.  Political Paralysis – National Review, Steve Salerno
Democrats and demagogues.

November 07, 2005
By Steve Salerno

Ever wonder why one hears so little talk of right-wing demagoguery? Oh, now and then some particularly dyspeptic liberal will lodge such charges against Rush, or get in a snit over some other outspoken conservative stalwart. But the Right has no true counterparts to the likes of Jesse Jackson, Terry McAuliffe, Patricia Ireland, Al Sharpton, et al. There simply is no conservative whose stock in trade is the chronic spewing of grandiose pronouncements or pithy sound bites having no purpose other than to remind constituents of how much they need him in their corner.

And there’s a good reason why. Although people at all points of the political spectrum seek strong voices to articulate their respective interests, demagoguery, in its classic form, actively fans the fires of oppression, creating whole categories of needs, if not “rights,” that people never knew they had (and, in truth, probably don’t have). The demagogue gains his standing by cultivating victimhood. He inflates his power by reminding you of your impotence, your personal and political irrelevance. He tells you that society is responsible for elevating you, not the other way around. Collectively, those are not notions that fly very well among a conservative audience.

The culture of blame, though much-chronicled, seldom is traced back to its roots in pop psychology — specifically, the recovery movement and its twelve steps. Step one in traditional twelve-step lore consists of accepting that you’re powerless over your addiction. Step two is placing your fate in the hands of a higher power. To be fair, as conceived in 1935 by the mother of all twelve-steps, Alcoholics Anonymous, this powerlessness was problem-specific (i.e., booze) and the higher power was explicitly spiritual (i.e., God). Over the years, though, as recovery was bastardized to encompass any number of addictions, dysfunctions, conditions, syndromes, and so-called diseases, it inevitably bled over into the culture at large. Powerlessness, at least in some quarters, became an all-pervading mantra. The higher power, meanwhile, grew more secular and pragmatic: It was anything external to you that could help get you to where you needed to be (inasmuch as you couldn’t, in your weakened state, get there on your own).

This notion of looking outward, not inward, for advancement has always held special appeal for blocs of people who already felt disenfranchised in one way or another. A shrewd liberal political activist can readily see the potential in encouraging these blocs to regard him as their higher power: He plays to the paranoia of those who feel downtrodden and persecuted, and consolidates his franchise by encouraging them to go right on feeling that way.

And, having surrendered themselves to their favorite higher power, today’s self-styled victims follow blindly and unquestioningly. No matter how outré the platform a liberal demagogue promotes, no matter what hypocrisy he may be caught in, his followers — who, remember, no longer really think for themselves — swear continued allegiance, offering the most improbable of justifications for their loyalty. As Wendy Kaminer observed in her fine book I’m Dysfunctional, You’re Dysfunctional, this lemming mentality on the part of “people who feel victimized and out of control. . . hardly makes for responsible political leadership.” Ergo, Marion Barry. You will recall that Barry, always wildly popular among his African-American voter base, served as mayor of Washington, D.C., for a dozen years, until his videotaped crack-fest landed him in prison in 1990. Upon his release, Washingtonians made him a councilman and gave him another shot as mayor. This same principle helps explain why legions of women, including feminists, stood by Bill Clinton through his adulterous antics and his camp’s shameless, near-misogynist vilification of his paramours. Clinton was their higher power. That’s all they needed to know.

Of course, when we survey the landscape of victimization and demagoguery, we have more than just fuzzy logic to worry about. One of the sobering risks of a full-blown demagogic outreach is that it may end in maddeningly imprecise, surreally expensive legislation, like the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). As the ADA took shape, it became clear that the law would ignore almost no one: The information sheet accompanying the bill noted that it would effect 43 million Americans, one sixth of the population. Subsequent challenges to the ADA’s “restrictions” have threatened to expand its purview to as many as 160 million people, nearly two thirds of the population. This is what happens when demagogues stumble upon a cause that enables them to make almost everyone feel helpless.

Worst of all, the rise of the modern demagogue has spawned a self-perpetuating class of forever-victims. Americans historically showed profound sympathy for the underdog, in large part because we assumed that underdog status was a temporary condition that people aspired to overcome. If our patience with some of our distressed neighbors has sometimes worn a bit thin, it is because the nature of the bargain changed: The longstanding dynamic between demagogue and constituent created a permanent underdog caste that keeps voting for the party that rewards its victimization. It’s a never-ending cycle, an infantilizing one, too.

There is no doubt that victimization’s founding vision, of a society comprising millions of unfortunates stymied by both nature and nurture, helped solidify the notion of government-as-surrogate-parent. In this dismal conception of American life, it falls to Washington — the ultimate higher power — to ameliorate any gross disparities between the “lucky” and “unlucky” children in the family of man.

— Steve Salerno is author of SHAM: How the Self-Help Movement Made America Helpless.

http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/salerno200511071004.asp

5.  France’s Intifada – New York Post Columnist

By RALPH PETERS

FRANCE has cancer and insists it's just a rash. After two weeks of expanding immigrant violence, the government's inept response has turned a local riot into a nationwide insurrection.

French abuse of Arab and African minorities — mostly Muslims — made it only a matter of time before the country's prison-like ghettos exploded. If your skin is brown or black in la belle France, you haven't got a chance at a decent life. Now the wretched of the earth have exploded in rage.

Given the abysmal conditions in France's Muslim concentration-camps-without-walls, the government had only one chance of suppressing the uproar: An immediate, uncompromising crackdown on the Paris suburb where the trouble began. That would have bought the state a little time.

Instead, the Gallic cock behaved like a headless chicken, stunned by the ingratitude of 5 million brown and black residents who failed to appreciate discrimination, jobless rates of up to 50 percent, public humiliation, crime, bigotry and, of course, the glorious French culture that excluded them through an informal apartheid system.

Now the devil's been conjured. The government's vacillation revealed the power of the street. Teenage rioters control much of France by night — a situation more akin to an insurgency than to the strikes and demonstrations so beloved of French workers and students.

France's oppressed minorities have discovered their power, dominating the streets and the media. The country will never be the same. With thousands of cars torched, schools and shops burned, government buildings attacked and French policemen shot by snipers, this is an uprising — not some repeat of the white-kids' tantrum of 1968, when spoiled brats rebelled against their parents.

Media apologists for France's "more humane" system attempt to play down the importance of what's happening by comparing it to that romanticized tomfoolery in '68. But those theatrical disorders were white-on-white, a family argument, and a perfect fit for the French myth of themselves as born revolutionaries.

This time, it's different. And serious. Darker-skinned outsiders are pounding on the door of Monsieur Hulot's maison.

Paralyzed French officials complain of "unfair" media attention (welcome to the reality club, Pierre). Yet, hardly two months ago the French media celebrated the suffering in New Orleans — ignoring the brave response of millions of Americans to Hurricane Katrina to concentrate exclusively on the Crescent City's lower 9th ward and one nutty, incompetent mayor.

Utterly devoid of self-awareness, the French cherish their image of America as racist. But minorities in the United States have opportunities for which their French counterparts would risk their lives. Our problem is that demagogues convince the poorest of our poor to give up on getting ahead. In France, the non-white poor never have a chance of any kind.

France has no Colin Powell or Condi Rice, no minority heading the equivalent of a Fortune 500 company, no vibrant minority political culture. When Americans who adore la vie en France go to Paris (the intelligentsia's Orlando), they don't visit the drug-and-crime-plagued slums. If tourists encounter a Moroccan or a Senegalese "Frenchman," he's cleaning up the sidewalks after the dogs of the bourgeoisie.

Willfully blind to reality, liberals continue to praise the racist culture of France by citing the Parisian welcome for Josephine Baker or the Harlem jazz musicians in the 1920s. But the French regarded those few as exotic pets. The test is how they treat the millions of immigrant families whose members don't play trumpets in bars or sell their flesh in strip clubs.

There is no Western country more profoundly racist than France. There's nothing resembling equal-opportunity programs or affirmative action. Even if the government attempts some half-hearted reforms in the wake of the current uproar, the average French employer will have none of it (they don't even want to hire more white citoyens). And French voters will turn hard right at the next election.

Does anyone really believe that the country that enthusiastically handed over more of its Jewish citizens to the Nazis than the Nazis asked for is going to treat brown or black Muslims as equals?

Meanwhile, the Chirac government is stunned. Its members truly believed that supporting Arab and African dictators and defying America's efforts to liberate tens of millions of Muslims would buy safety from the 5 million immigrants and their children who have not the slightest hope of a decent future.

As I wrote in my last book, this violence was inevitable. Continental Europe has no model for integrating immigrants into the social and economic mainstream. Instead of creating tomorrow's jobs, Europe protects yesterday's. Talented young Europeans struggle to come to the United States to work (but they'll settle for Britain). And "Old Europe's" prejudices go deeper than those in our Deep South of 50 years ago.

The current phase of France's immigrant insurgency — with riots in 300 cities and towns — will sputter out eventually. But any return to peace will be a false peace. France has been changed irrevocably. The internal enemy created by Gallic bigotry has been mobilized.

Desperate apologists for France's apartheid system claim that the present uproar is merely about youthful anger, that Muslim fundamentalism isn't in play. Just wait. Islamist extremists aren't stupid. Thrilled by this spontaneous uprising, they'll move to exploit the fervor of the young to serve their own ends.

Expect terror. Whether the current violence ebbs tonight or lasts for weeks to come, the uprising of the excluded and oppressed in the streets of France has only begun.
Meanwhile, every American who believes in racial equality and human dignity should sympathize with the rioters, not with the effete bigots on the Seine.

Ralph Peters' latest book is "New Glory: Expanding America's Global Supremacy."

http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/30898.htm

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