On Friday night, author Colleen Sheehan was on The Glenn Beck Show – featured as part of Founders’ Friday and focused on James Madison and the Spirit of Republican Self-Government. In a spirited defense of popular government, Sheehan weighed in on the relevance of Madison’s political philosophy for today’s politics – and the importance of reacquainting ourselves with the Constitution.

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VIEW HERE:

The Glenn Beck Show, June 11, 2010: Founders’ Friday on James Madison

Founding Father James Madison was not an imposing figure, standing only about 5 foot, 4 inches and weighing less than 100 pounds. He may not have been imposing to look at, but he was an intellectual force to be reckoned with.

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Rush transcript from “Glenn Beck,” June 11, 2010. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated. Via FoxNews.com > > >

GLENN BECK, HOST: Hello, America. It is Friday, “Founding Fathers Friday.”

Do you recognize that guy? This guy is James Madison.

I can’t relate to a guy who wrote to Thomas Jefferson this many letters. These are the — these are just the letters between James Madison and Thomas Jefferson. I — I can’t imagine what this man had in his noggin.

I will tell you he is — I’m at a disadvantage because he’s one of the Founders I know probably the least about and I’m actually ashamed of saying that because he’s one of the most important Founding Fathers.

I do know this: he was about 5′4″; he weighed less than 100 pounds. It would be hard to take him seriously, but you did. He was — well, I mean, think Victoria Beckham after like a really long, month long fast.George Washington called him a “withered little apple.”

He was not imposing at all, but he was an intellectual force to be reckoned with. He’s the father of the Constitution. A major player at the constitutional convention, referred to as the father of the Constitution.

He’s the guy we have to go today, because I’ve — I have been — I have been trying to restore history, at least in my own mind. I’ve been trying to restore God, at least in my own life. And we have to restore our Constitution — and one very important part of our Constitution is the 17th Amendment.

We have a — we have a studio audience here.

How many people before we called you and say you want to come to the show, how of people here could say, oh, yes, the 17th Amendment, I know what that is?

Two, three. You guys don’t count because you’re doing a constitutional thing. Nobody.

How many really know what it is now, the 17th Amendment? OK.

This is amazing. Like all bad things it started in 1913, Woodrow Wilson yet again. He supported this. Immediately now, when I see Woodrow Wilson, I immediately know — bad thing! You can be quite certain that something is not going to have a good outcome if Woodrow Wilson was involved.

Before 1913, U.S. senators were appointed by the state legislature. Madison said that the House of Representatives would always be a national institution, because the people would be directly elected by the people. But the Senate — the Senate, he said, will derive its powers from the states.

Here is the idea: you have — you have the senators be representatives of the state interest, kind of like a lobbyist for the state. You think progressives would like that. The 17th Amendment changed that and instituted a direct — a direct popular election of United States senators. Two senators right there, two Senate — or the United States Senate shall be comprised of two senators from each state elected by the people. OK?

Why did they do this? Well, they wanted to take the direct representation out. They wanted to make sure that the states didn’t have the direct representation.

This, Thomas Jefferson warned about. 1821, he said this — do we have it up here? “When all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided by one government on another, and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated.” Got it?

Progressive will tell you, well, we had to change this. We had to because the states were just becoming too corrupt.

Oh, well they fixed that, didn’t they? It allowed special interest to lobby senators directly, cutting out the middleman of the state legislatures.

Has anyone noticed that senators routinely get large influxes of campaign cash from outside the state? Does anybody notice that?

I’m from Connecticut. Chris Dodd was my senator. Ugh! I was fascinated because I didn’t know anybody who was ready to give money to Chris Dodd. No one.

Of course, not a lot of people talked to me in Connecticut, so that might have been a problem.

But I looked at where his money was coming from, it wasn’t coming from Connecticut. It was coming nationally. Now, how can you be a representative of Connecticut?

Let me give you an example of the 17th Amendment coming into play right now, today. Obama’s health care bill would have never seen the light of day. A lot of things that they do in Washington would never have seen the light of day. Why? Because it wouldn’t in the interest of your state.

Why would we consider something — have you heard this phrase, “unfunded mandates”? How did they get that passed?

The Senate is not really looking out for your state.

Think of a state like Massachusetts. Why would they pay more in taxes for mandated health care when they already have that system? Why would they do it? It wouldn’t have worked. It wouldn’t have passed.

And James Madison, the little teeny, oh, you little cutie pie — he knew! The founders didn’t intend for the federal government to ever have that much power. They put roadblocks.

Step-by-steps, it’s taken them over 200 years to remove all those roadblocks, but they’re almost done. Maybe it’s time to put a few of them back.

What would they say about us if they could see America today?

(MUSIC)

BECK: How are you? How are you, sir? Good to see you.

Let me — let me introduce our guests. Colleen Sheehan, she is professor of political science at Villanova University, the author of “James Madison and the Spirit of Republican Self-Government.”

And James Best is also here. He is the author of “Tempest at Dawn.”

OK, if it wasn’t for James Madison, we wouldn’t have — we probably wouldn’t have this. We certainly wouldn’t have “The New York Post.” I wouldn’t probably be able to hold up the Bible today, would I? I wouldn’t be able to have my show today, would I? If it wasn’t for James Madison, would I have freedom of speech? Would we have freedom of press?

BECK: Now, we have — we have the hat problem but we now we have a problem from the president. And this is the second time that it’s been tried by a president. FDR, I believe, was the first, that said it’s a negative, a charter of negative liberties. And it should say all the things that the government should do for you.

COLLEEN SHEEHAN, VILLANOVA UNIVERSITY: Well, we may have those things, but it was the Madison who introduced the Bill of Rights in the first Congress of the United States. And he did so at the urging of a number of people, including his best friend Thomas Jefferson, who thought that a Bill of Rights was really essentially to a free government. Madison was a little concerned because he didn’t want it to be interpreted that those were the only rights we have, and thus, the importance of 9th Amendment.

BECK: That is exactly the opposite, right? We are 180 degrees in the wrong direction.

JAMES D. BEST, AUTHOR, “TEMPEST AT DAWN”: Absolutely.

BECK: What did they say? Because you wrote — I love this, I haven’t read it yet. I love this theory. This is a novel, but it’s about the constitutional convention and all the facts are in here so you get everything. But you can read it in novel form. What were they — what were they really — what were they dead set for and against?

BEST: Well, they were dead set against any centralized power. I mean, they had just come from underneath the British. And they feared concentration of power.

And we talk about checks and balances today. But we use it as one word. And they wanted balance to also go into checks.

So if you didn’t have enough power, that check wasn’t any good. So, that’s one of the reasons senators were appointed by the legislature because it gave power to the states.

BECK: Do you think the 17th Amendment if it was — if it was repealed, do you think that would change things in America?

SHEEHAN: Sure. It would — it would add again another check on the national government. I served — I served a small bit of time in the Pennsylvania state legislature.

BECK: Oh, I’m sorry for that.

SHEEHAN: Yes. My condolences.

But our U.S. senators would come pay a visit every once in a while. And at the time, it was Senator Specter and Senator Santorum.

BECK: Oh. Well —

SHEEHAN: And they would come to the Republican Caucus, and it was more like a social visit.

BECK: Yes.

SHEEHAN: If their feet were held to the fire by the representatives of the people of Pennsylvania, it would have been much more than a social visit. They would have had to have been much more responsible and responsive to the people had there been the extra layer of checking and guarding against national power.

BECK: Where did — where did his drive come from? Where — I mean, where — you know, Washington seemed to just want to get back to the farm and to be an honorable man. Jefferson was just an explorer I think, an explorer on everything. Who is he?

BEST: Well, the first thing he wanted to do is a lot of people came to the convention wanting to fix a broken government system. He wanted to do something epic, historic. He wanted to build a republic that would last for generations and decades.

He had studied every republic that had ever existed in the history of the world and he believed that he had figured out a formula. Part of the formula was enumerated powers, not general powers, and decentralizing power.

BECK: Do you guys, does it bother you — if this is — when people used to say, “Oh, we’re a democracy.” I roll my eyes because somebody would inevitably say, no, we’re a republic. OK, I get it. Shut up.

But now, it really drives me crazy, because we’re not a democracy. And there is a concerted effort by the progressives to make us a democracy. These guys believe — when he studied all the other republics, he and Jefferson were very, very clear: democracies never work. Republic always had fatal flaws, right?

BEST: Right.

BECK: And so, when he came to the constitutional convention, describe the scene a little bit. What was it like? They nailed the shutters closed, right?

BEST: It was a secret meeting because they were afraid if it was public, if somebody made a speech and took a position, then they couldn’t be — they couldn’t change their mind.

BECK: It was like the Bilderbergs.

(CROSSTALK)

BEST: And they were actually laid sod out in front of the street so that when the carriages went by it was quiet, and nailed the windows shut. And for the months, those 55 men just stayed in that room and deliberated unlike what we do today.

BECK: He — was he — because he had — I mean, 100 pounds, 5′4″, I hear he had a mousy voice, right?

SHEEHAN: A Frenchman once called him “Mr. Mutterson.”

BECK: Mr. Mutterson. Was he a pleasant fellow at all?

SHEEHAN: He was known to have a very sweet temperament. He’s very quiet and very shy. And so, he often had to be asked to speak up when he was on the floor of the House or in the convention and so on. But among his family and his close friends, he was actually quite humorous. He loved his nephews and nieces.

BECK: Because the thing that I have seen is — and again, I know very little about him and I’m ashamed to say that. But what I do know is: when he came to the convention, if this history is right, he was absolutely convinced, no, no, no. I have the plan. This is the plan, no deviation — no deviation from it. And so, he seems like he was a royal pain in the ass because he was — am I wrong?

BEST: No, no, you’re absolutely right.

BECK: Because he was like no! No, wait. I think we should — no. This is it. This is the plan, right?

BEST: Yes. He stuck with what he thought was a correct plan, long after many other people at the convention had changed their minds. For instance, Sherman came and convinced them to have two senators per state, which was another thing to improve state’s authority and control over the federal government. And he fought long after everyone else, including Washington, had agreed to the two-state compromise. But he wanted it by population.

SHEEHAN: I’ll disagree with you guys just a little bit.

BECK: All right.

SHEEHAN: I’m sure that’s why you have a woman on the show.

(LAUGHTER)

SHEEHAN: I don’t think he was a know-it-all. He did know a lot. And he was confidence in what he — he was confident in what he knew, but he wasn’t like John Adams, where John Adams actually was a bit of a know-it- all and therefore offended people. Madison was very well-liked.

BECK: When I — when I say in this particular, I don’t mean he was know-it-all, like, you just have to take mine. He had — I mean, did you see the letters he wrote back and forth? He had done his homework. He did know, if not all of it, most of it, where, you know, when you are put in a situation where you have done that much homework, you can kind of get a little testy with people are like, no, wait!

I don’t know if anybody else has ever been in a meeting before where you worked really hard on something and there’s some yahoo that you know has just been at the candy, you know, the candy machine for the last three weeks while you’ve been working. And they get in a meeting going, “I think that is a dumb idea.” You’re like, “Shut up, candy man, I’ve been working.”

This guy really works. So, he did know, you know, what he was talking about with the republics.

What did he find in the — with the republics that was the fatal flaw?

BEST: He believed the fatal flaw was factions. He called them factions. We call them special interest. And everything that he did in design of the government was an attempt to diminish the ability of factions or alliances of factions to take over the leaders of government.

SHEEHAN: And the problem with factions, particularly majority faction, if you have a country based on the idea of majority rule is that any pleading passion can almost immediately become law. And so, Madison what he wanted to do was not take away the idea of liberty to make our own choices and to mistakes even and how like —

(CROSSTALK)

SHEEHAN: — think through things. But to develop a system of refining and enlarging the public views so that the people themselves ultimately are the rulers. And it doesn’t have to be abdicated to the few who form the government.

BECK: These guys would be — he would be crazy with anybody who said, well, it’s very complex and you won’t understand it. That’s why you hired me to do, wouldn’t he? He’d be crazy on a politician saying that.

SHEEHAN: A true believer in the idea of self government. That’s what he dedicated his entire life to.

BECK: These guys, because Jefferson said pretty much the same thing when he was talking about the constitutional amendment system. He said you can amend it.

And I think the amendment system is so brilliant because — for instance, prohibition. That amendment is still there, plus the repeal. So, when you look at the Constitution, you’re like oh, really? We banned alcohol. That didn’t work out well. The scars are left there.

And I think it goes to what Jefferson said and I’m hearing the same thing from Madison, that the people — trust the people. They’re going to make mistakes. But they’ll eventually get it and they will correct it.

Right now, we live in a situation where everything was with the last president, with this president, been with presidents in the past — it becomes an emergency. Got to go it, got to do it. And you don’t even read it. And so, it just goes through.

Wasn’t everything that he did basically a roadblock or a speed bump?

SHEEHAN: He wanted to slow things down. And allow for communication between the representatives and their constituents. In the newspapers, circulating, he said throughout the entire nation, so that we take time to think about these things, to have second thoughts so that the judgments we might come to are more reasonable.

Jefferson once said the world of majority is in all cases to prevail, but that will to be rightful must be reasonable because the minority have their equal rights, which government must protect. So, it’s the idea of deliberation, as Jim put it.

What we don’t want to do is what happened in ancient Greece, Madison says in “The Federalist Papers,” which is to make the philosopher drink hemlock on one day and erect statues to him on the next.

BECK: Back in just a second.

KEEP READING AT FoxNews.com > > >

It’s not that huge a milestone.

Here’s her take on how women are still severely under-represented, and what political parties need to do to rectify the gender disparity.

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Via CNN: No new dawn for women in politics

By Jennifer L. Lawless, Special to CNN

June 9, 2010

Washington (CNN) — Today’s newspapers, websites, and cable news programs imply that yesterday’s election results signal remarkable progress for women in politics.

Referring to the victories of Meg Whitman, Carly Fiorina, Sharron Angle and Blanche Lincoln, CNN.com ran the headline, “Women Win Big in Tuesday Primaries.” MSNBC.com followed suit, flashing across its homepage, “It’s Ladies Night at the Ballot Box.” The Washington Post ran a story entitled, “Women Triumph in Races Across the Country.” And the Daily Beast summarized last evening’s events by concluding that “Women Rule Primary Night.”

It is the dawn of a new day, one in which both Democrats and Republicans understand the importance of electing women.

Except that it’s probably not.

I am all for celebrating women’s political progress and electoral fortunes. And I have no interest in minimizing the successes several women saw last night. Nikki Haley, a Tea Party candidate, overcame scandalous rumors and advanced to a runoff election which will be held in two weeks. If she wins the race — and many expect that she will — then Haley will be very well-positioned to become South Carolina’s first female governor.

Meg Whitman, the former CEO and president of eBay, spent $71 million of her own fortune to defeat Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner in California’s gubernatorial primary. Pollsters and pundits expect a tight general election race between Whitman and Attorney General Jerry Brown.

Whitman is the underdog, but if she wins, then she, too, will become her state’s first female governor. Blanche Lincoln’s surprising victory over Arkansas Lt. Gov. Bill Halter brings the U.S. senator one step closer to holding onto her Senate seat (although she still faces an uphill general election battle against Republican John Boozman). And there is no question that Carly Fiorina and Sharron Angle will give the incumbents they seek to defeat — U.S. Sens. Barbara Boxer and Harry Reid — much to worry about between now and November 2, 2010.

These women, however, represent only a fraction of the total number of candidates seeking positions of political power. Yet their famous faces tend to obscure, at least in part, women’s severe numeric under-representation in U.S. politics, as well as their prospects for major political gains in November.

In the 111th Congress, 83 percent of the members of the House of Representatives and U.S. Senate are men, according to the Center for American Women and Politics. The numbers are not much better at the state level, where more than three-quarters of state legislators across the country are men. Currently, men also occupy the governor’s mansion in 44 of the 50 states. And they run City Hall in 93 of the country’s 100 largest cities. Although 2010 will likely see a lower-than-usual incumbency advantage, the overwhelming majority of incumbents — most of whom are men — will still win.

The successful candidacies of women such as Haley, Whitman and Fiorina also make it easy for us to forget that Democrats and Republicans do not shoulder an equal burden for the dearth of women in politics. Sixty-nine Democratic and 21 Republican women hold seats in the U.S. Congress. This means that 77 percent of the women in the U.S. House and Senate are Democrats.

Keep reading at CNN.com > > >

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Jennifer L. Lawless is co-author, with Richard L. Fox, of It Still Takes A Candidate: Why Women Don’t Run for Office – the only systematic, nationwide empirical account of the manner in which gender affects political ambition. In it, they find a gender gap in political ambition that persists across generations and over time, despite cultural evolution and society’s changing attitudes toward women in politics.  Lawless is an Associate Professor of Government at American University and the Director of the Women & Politics Institute.

Author trivia: she ran in the 2006 Democratic primary for the U.S. House of Representatives in Rhode Island’s second congressional district.

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The New York Times, March 28, 2010, Op-Ed Contributor

Overspending Is a Bipartisan Affliction

By JEFFREY STONECASH

New York has some of the highest state and local taxes in the country, as well as high (and rising) debt from years of borrowing. Why? Because both political parties have electoral bases that support spending.

For most of the 20th century, Democrats were out of power in the Legislature. But beginning with victories after Watergate in 1974, they began building a majority in the Assembly, drawing votes from people in New York City and upstate urban areas. That base wanted spending on Medicaid, social service programs and schools. Gradually, Democrats appealed to suburban voters who also wanted more school aid.

Until last year, the Senate had been held for decades by the Republicans, who win more seats in suburban districts that are generally more affluent. They might have been a voice for fiscal restraint — if it were not for the fact that Republican Party enrollment in the state has been steadily sliding, from 50 percent of voters in 1957 to only 25 percent today. Senate Republicans have fought to preserve what votes they have by delivering more school aid for the suburbs.

Keep reading at The New York Times > > >

Ultimately, though, these Seven are a conduit for a larger conversation that we need to be having about the prosecution of suspected terrorists: Where should we try members of Al-Qaeda and the Taliban?

Jordan J. Paust, Professor of International Law at the University of Houston and author of Beyond the Law: The Bush Administration’s Unlawful Responses in the “War” on Terror, asks just that in a new op-ed for Jurist: Legal News and Research. With vim, vigor, and vision, he suggests that we must look beyond the two forums offered by the Obama Administration – federal district court or US military commission – to consider a third option: military court-martial.

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Via Jurist: FORUM: Op-eds on legal news by law professors and JURIST special guests…

Court-martial: A Third Option for Trying Al Qaeda and Taliban Detainees

JURIST Contributing Editor Jordan Paust of the University of Houston Law Center says regularly constituted military courts-martial could be a plausible third option for federal prosecution of members of al Qaeda and the Taliban outside of federal district courts or US military commissions…..

Where should we be trying members of al Qaeda and the Taliban? Although there has been a great deal of attention to the Obama Administration’s alleged choice between a federal district court and a suspect military commission, there has been no noticeable public discussion of the third forum for federal prosecution of members of al Qaeda and the Taliban and its advantages over military commissions – a military court-martial.

Clearly, trial in a federal district court can be useful for prosecution under various extraterritorial federal laws, such as those that cover murder of U.S. nationals abroad, attempts or conspiracy to kill a U.S. national, and serious bodily injury to a U.S. national under the Antiterrorism Act; anti-hijacking legislation; aircraft sabotage legislation; and any of the federal laws that formed the basis for the indictment in absentia of bin Laden in 2000 in the Southern District of New York. Federal district courts can also be used to prosecute offenses against the laws of war under two sets of federal legislation (1) 10 U.S.C. § 818 (which the Supreme Court has recognized with respect to similar language in its predecessor has incorporated all of the laws of war by reference as offenses against the laws of the United States) coupled with 18 U.S.C. § 3231 (which assures federal district court jurisdiction over all offenses against the laws of the United States), and (2) the War Crimes Act (which merely incorporates some law of war offenses).

Clearly also, prosecution in federal district courts would allow the United States to comply with a number of U.S. obligations under customary and treaty-based international law that the President has a constitutionally-based duty to faithfully execute and that the Supreme Court has already recognized in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld are required under international law, including the need for use of at least minimal due process guarantees under human rights law and applicable laws of war in order to have a fair trial. Fair trials would also serve short and long-term U.S. foreign policy interests and serve fundamental American values that must not be thrown aside.

Federal district court prosecutions would also allow U.S. nationals to avoid criminal and civil liability here and abroad for violations of international law that can pertain with respect to use of present military commissions. It is important to recall in this regard that Article 23(h) in the annex to the 1907 Hague Convention No. IV Respecting the Laws and Customs of War recognizes the customary and treaty-based war crime of declaring “abolished, suspended, or inadmissible in a court of law the rights and actions of the nationals of the hostile party.” Why would the Obama Administration want to set up possible war crime responsibility for military commission judges, military and civilian judges who might review military commission proceedings, and certain members of Congress who had the relevant mens rea when creating the Military Commissions Act? Since international law is a two-way street and can shift with changing patterns of practice and opinio juris, why would the Administration potentially place our soldiers and civilians in harm’s way by approving use of military commissions that simply cannot meet present human rights and law of war standards and might simply be copied in Syria, Iran, or some other country that might obtain jurisdiction over a U.S. national in the future?

Keep reading at Jurist: Forum > > >

via The New York Times, from Nicholas Kristof’s Our Politics May Be All in Our Head:

We all know that liberals and conservatives are far apart on health care. But in the way their brains work? Even in automatic reflexes, like blinking? Or the way their glands secrete moisture?

That’s the suggestion of some recent research. It hints that the roots of political judgments may lie partly in fundamental personality types and even in the hard-wiring of our brains.

Researchers have found, for example, that some humans are particularly alert to threats, particularly primed to feel vulnerable and perceive danger. Those people are more likely to be conservatives.

One experiment used electrodes to measure the startle blink reflex, the way we flinch and blink when startled by a possible danger. A flash of noise was unexpectedly broadcast into the research subjects’ earphones, and the response was measured.

The researchers, led by Kevin B. Smith of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, found that those who had a stronger blink reflex at the noise were more likely to take such conservative positions as favoring gun rights, supporting warrantless searches, and opposing foreign aid.

That makes intuitive sense: If you are more acutely sensitive to risks and more fearful of attack, you also may be more aggressive in arming yourself and more wary of foreigners.

Scholars also measured changes in the electrical conductance of research subjects’ skin, after they were shown images meant to trigger disgust — like a person eating a mouthful of worms. Our bodies have evolved so that when we’re upset, glands secrete moisture to cool us down, and that increases conductance.

Liberals released only slightly more moisture in reaction to disgusting images than to photos of fruit. But conservatives’ glands went into overdrive.

(Interestingly, women say that they feel more disgusted on average when they see such images, but they do not secrete more skin moisture than men do. One possibility is that women are raised to affect more revulsion than they feel, because it is considered feminine, while men are socialized to pretend that they are never grossed out.)

This research is tentative and needs to be confirmed, but it fits into a fascinating framework of the role of personality types in politics, explored in a recent book, “Authoritarianism and Polarization in American Politics,” by two political scientists, Marc J. Hetherington of Vanderbilt University and Jonathan D. Weiler of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. They start by exploring data showing a remarkably strong correlation between state attitudes toward spanking children and voting patterns. Essentially, spanking states go Republican, while those with more timeouts go Democratic.

Professors Hetherington and Weiler contend that the differences stem from profound differences in cognitive styles. Spankers tend to see the world in stark, black-and-white terms, perceive the social order as vulnerable or under attack, tend to make strong distinctions between “us” and “them,” and emphasize order and muscular responses to threats. Parents favoring timeouts feel more comfortable with ambiguities, sense less threat, embrace minority groups — and are less prone to disgust when they see a man eating worms.

Keep reading at The New York Times>>

In Authoritarianism & Polarization in American Politics, a revealing work of political science published last year that unfortunately went somewhat unnoticed, Marc J. Hetherington and Jonathan D. Weiler describe a specific worldview — authoritarianism — which they argue lies at the heart of political polarization in modern American politics. (It should be noted: their use of the term is not related to the more quotidian and overly negative connotation associated with despotic regimes; rather, it describes a particular lens through which certain people view the world, based on a wide range of scholarly work spanning the fields of psychology, sociology, political science, and other cognitive sciences.)

According to Hetherington and Weiler, authoritarians tend to rely more on emotion and instinct in decision-making, view politics in black and white, resent confusion or ambiguity in the social order, and are suspicious of specific groups who they believe could alter that order (typically gays and immigrants). The difference between authoritarians and nonauthoritarians, according to the authors, becomes far more pronounced during tumultuous economic or social periods when there are more perceived “threats.” During such times, authoritarians in particular lose accuracy motivation and, “become much less interested than nonauthoritarians in seeking information that [is] balanced in its approach, and much more interested in pursuing one-sided information that reinforc[es] existing beliefs.” Or in other words, they are highly susceptible to misinformation campaigns, the likes of which pervaded the health care reform debate last summer.

Most every characteristic of an authoritarian worldview lends itself well to the impassioned rhetoric of the Tea Party movement and the shrewd players operating behind the scenes and atop the soap box.

Visit The Huffington Post for the full article>>

In 2004, the world watched as the Orange Revolution unfolded in Ukraine, pitting an insurgent, pro-Western opposition, led by Viktor Yushchenko and Yulia Tymoshenko, against a pro-Russian autocratic government, represented by Viktor Yanukovych. After months of protest, Yushchenko became president in January 2005. Last month, the three faced off against one another in the first round of presidential elections. Yushchenko lost badly, with Yanukovych and Tymoshenko coming out on top, receiving 35 percent and 25 percent of the vote, respectively. A runoff election between the two was held on February 7 to determine Ukraine’s next president. For both better and worse, this election marks a sharp break from 2004: Ukraine is now less dominated by a choice between East and West, yet more mired in rampant cynicism and fears of institutional and political chaos.

Since 2004, Ukraine has evolved into a functioning democracy. Overt government interference in the media has ended, and elections are now much more transparent. The first round of voting demonstrated that access to state financial and “administrative resources” matters less than it once did: under former President Leonid Kuchma, who held office between 1994 and 2004, politicians needed government support to gain the necessary patronage, organizational resources, and media attention to mount a serious campaign. Access to the state’s spoils was a sine qua non for political viability.

This time around, with Ukraine in the middle of an economic crisis, incumbency proved to be more of a liability than an asset. Yushchenko was unable to use his office to manufacture support — he ended up in fifth place with just five percent of the vote, surely among the worst performances by an incumbent in modern democratic history. Tymoshenko, who as prime minister has been responsible for managing the economy over the last two years, received enough support to advance into the second round but fewer votes than her party received in the 2007 parliamentary elections when she was out of government.

Keep reading at Foreign Affairs >>

George’s Body-Self Dualism in Contemporary Ethics and Politics was released in paperback in September 2009.

*****

The Conservative-Christian Big Thinker

by David D. Kirkpatrick

On a September afternoon, about 60 prominent Christians assembled in the library of the Metropolitan Club on the east side of Central Park. It was a gathering of unusual diversity and power. Many in attendance were conservative evangelicals like the born-again Watergate felon Chuck Colson, who helped initiate the meeting. Metropolitan Jonah, the primate of the Orthodox Church in America, was there as well. And so were more than half a dozen of this country’s most influential Roman Catholic bishops, including Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York, Archbishop John Myers of Newark and Cardinal Justin Rigali of Philadelphia.

At the center of the event was Robert P. George, a Princeton University professor of jurisprudence and a Roman Catholic who is this country’s most influential conservative Christian thinker. Dressed in his usual uniform of three-piece suit, New College, Oxford cuff links and rimless glasses­, George convened the meeting with a note of thanks and a reminder of its purpose. Alarmed at the liberal takeover of Washington and an apparent leadership vacuum among the Christian right, the group had come together to warn the country’s secular powers that the culture wars had not ended. As a starting point, George had drafted a 4,700-word manifesto that promised resistance to the point of civil disobedience against any legislation that might implicate their churches or charities in abortion, embryo-destructive research or same-sex marriage.

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