Big Government is Better? So Bend Over America!

Chicago/Illinois politics is the soil in which president elect Obama planted and nurtured his own political seeds. Perhaps we will begin to learn more about "who" we have elected to run our nation as revelations about Illinois' governor begin to spill. As I have written in the past, we already know "what" Sen.Obama is - a fast rising, intelligent community activist -Senator with a gift for rhetoric who will soon be tested as president.

Even Time Magazine now asks questions about Obama's past relationships. The press and media ran cover for him during the campaign. Is it a bit late to concern themselves now? As I have written in the past, the press and media might well turn on Obama should they find they have been duped by their own bias in their desire to protect what little credibility they have left.

Though the federal attorney, Fitzgerald, went out of his way to exonerate Obama and state there was no evidence of a connection, Obama certainly has selected a lot of former Clinton handlers to form his government and we know Old Bill was dubbed Slick Willy by his own fellow Arkansans yet, many refused to heed their warning.

Will un-investigated sources of the billion dollars Obama raised to finance his campaign reveal anything about whom we have elected? Does it reveal anything about ourselves, the way we finance our politicalsystem?

Will the effort to select Caroline Kennedy to replace Hillary become tainted because of revelations from Ilinois?

Does anyone care anymore? Time will tell. (See 1 and 2 below.)

Is the article by Camile Paglia just the tip of the iceberg? Has the drum beat of attacks begun before the president elect is sworn in? Is the press and media about to answer the question I posed the day after Obama's election when I wrote we would be eventually saying: "We Did What?" Are we in for four years that will seem more like ten? (See 3 below.)

Stop and think. Returning money to those who fund government - the taxayer, whether corporate or individual - will also help employment but politically speaking it will not build a power base. Government spending on infrastructure increases political power and establishes more constitutent dependency. This is the route Obama has seemingly chosen for getting America back on track. Whether it works or not remains to be seen but it will likely result in two consequences: more vote buying and inflation down the road.

There are no free lunches and sandwiches served in a government cafeteria always cost more and waste more in the long run and have less lettuce on them as well.

Paulson got the ball rolling and Obama appears willing to run with it.

Out with the old, in with the new? - like Lola, big government is back in town. Big is always better, right? Change is in the air! Bureaucrats must be enthralled - despair provides the grease for expanding government. Auto Czar etc. - so bend over America! (See 4 below.)

Tom Sowell on the lessons of Mumbai if anyone is listening or cares. Can we protect our freedoms from snooping by exposing ourselves to the greater threat of terrorism? Can we balance the equities? Daniel Pipes believes we are still asleep as well. (See 5 and 6 below.)

If you think American politics is corrupt and contrived, Israel's is far worse?

Gil Hoffman continues to beat Netanyahu on the head.(See 7 and 8 below.)

And just who is Feiglin? From this interview it would appear he is an extremist 'par excellence' and a serious problem for Netanyahu in the upcoming election. Is Feiglin, Long, Bilbo and Wallace with a yarmelke? You decide. (See 9 below.)

Dick


1) The Chicago Way, on Tape: This wiretap was golden.

The list of crooked politicians is long, and the list of stupid politicians even longer. But if the criminal allegations made yesterday against Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich are proven in court, rarely will a politician have combined the two qualities with such efflorescence.

The second-term Democrat knew that a grand jury probe was under way into corruption in Illinois politics, and that one of his fund raisers, Tony Rezko, had been convicted and is cooperating with prosecutors. Yet according to those prosecutors, Mr. Blagojevich talked openly in recent weeks about selling a U.S. Senate seat, trading government favors for campaign cash, and punishing the owner of the Chicago Tribune if it didn't fire members of the newspaper's editorial board.

The Governor's comments were taped in court-approved wiretaps and include such self-incriminating classics as: "I've got this thing [the power to appoint Barack Obama's Senate replacement] and it's [expletive] golden, and, uh, uh, I'm just not giving it up for [expletive] nothing. I'm not gonna do it. And, and I can always use it. I can parachute me there." We recommend the entire 76-page FBI affidavit for every high school civics course as proof of the need for political checks and balances.

If convicted, Mr. Blagojevich would be the second consecutive Illinois Governor to be found guilty of a felony, and the fourth in 35 years. We'd ask if it's something in the water, but that would be unfair to the Chicago River. It is certainly something in the Chicago political culture, where money and government power seem especially fungible.

Among the remarkable facts of the recent Presidential election is that Barack Obama emerged from this political culture virtually untainted -- and with Chicago's political mores all but unexamined by the press. Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald said yesterday there is no evidence that Mr. Obama knew about the Governor's allegedly crooked ambitions. However, as a Chicago-area pol himself, Mr. Obama did help Mr. Blagojevich plot his first statehouse victory in 2002.

Now would be a good time for the President-elect to say that Mr. Blagojevich and his cronies should have nothing to do with naming Mr. Obama's successor. And that, given the taint of corruption that now hangs over any choice, the state should hold a special Senate election.

2) Can Obama Escape the Taint of Blagojevich?
By Massimo Calabresi

On more than one occasion during his stunning press conference Tuesday, U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald bluntly said he has found no evidence of wrongdoing by President-elect Barack Obama in the tangled, tawdry scheme that Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich allegedly cooked up to sell Obama's now vacant Senate seat to the highest bidder. But for politicians it's never good news when a top-notch prosecutor has to go out of his way to distance you from a front-page scandal. And indeed, there are enough connections between the worlds of Blagojevich and Obama that the whole thing has the potential to grow beyond a colorful Chicago tale of corruption to entangle members of the Presidential transition team, to test Obama's carefully cultivated reformist image and to distract the President-elect just as he is preparing to take office.

The Obama Senate seat scheme is only one of the allegations lodged against the two-term governor, whose administration has been under investigation for alleged "pay to play" patronage practices for years. The complaint claims Blagoevich tried to extort the owners of the Tribune company to fire editors at the Chicago Tribune, and to withhold $8 million of state funds to a children's hospital in hopes of extracting a $50,000 campaign contribution from one of its executives. Blagojevich, who came into office in 2002 with promises to clean up the state's culture of graft, made no comment Tuesday during a bail hearing where he was released on his own recognizance. But late in the day his lawyer Sheldon Sorosky told reporters that the governor "is very surprised and certainly feels that he did not do anything wrong...a lot of this is just politics."

In laying out the federal criminal complaint, U.S. Attorney Fitzgerald said Blagojevich went far beyond the realm of hard-knuckle politics into a "political corruption crime spree." The central allegation is that the governor schemed to extort money and jobs for himself and his wife from the Obama transition team in exchange for naming Obama's preferred candidate (unnamed in the charges) to the open Senate seat. The complaint details Blagojevich's attempts to contact intermediaries to the transition and in one case shows him soliciting favors from a union official he identifies as an "emissary." All this alleged activity was taking place, amazingly, at a time when Blagojevich had every reason to believe he was being closely monitored by the U.S. Attorney's office.

For the time being, Obama and his aides have declined to comment on the complaint. Asked about the matter at a photo op Tuesday afternoon, Obama himself said he was "saddened and sobered" by the news but that he had not been in contact with Blagojevich and was "not aware of what was happening." But in the coming days and weeks the campaign will have to address whether Blagojevich or any of his representatives actually talked to an Obama adviser or other emissary on the matter. The transition team will also, undoubtedly, try to distance Obama from a man whom he helped first elect back in 2002 and supported for reelection in 2006, as well as from a brand of corrupt Chicago politics that John McCain tried unsuccessfully to link him to during the presidential campaign.

Blagojevich appears to have started thinking about approaching the President-elect's transition team almost immediately after the election, according to the FBI complaint unsealed Tuesday in Chicago, which is based on wiretapped conversations. In a discussion with his deputy governor Nov. 5, Blagojevich talks about getting an ambassadorship or a cabinet position (such as Secretary of Health and Human Services) in exchange for the Senate seat. The same day he said, "I've got this thing and it's f------ golden and, uh, uh, I'm just not giving it up for f------ nothing. I'm not gonna do it."

Things don't appear to have gone well over the following days, however. On Nov. 10, Blagojevich allegedly held a conference call with his wife, close aides and a handful of Washington-based advisers in which he complains that the advisers are telling him he has to "suck it up" and give this "motherf----- [Obama] his senator. F--- him. For nothing? F--- him." At this point in the complaint, it's not clear whether Blagojevich, his advisers or any other representatives have actually approached the Obama transition. Over the next two days, however, Blagojevich steps up his efforts. On Nov. 11, Blagojevich told his chief of staff and fellow defendant in the complaint, John Harris, that he knew that Obama wanted someone identified in the complaint only as "Senate Candidate 1" for the Senate seat. But, Blagojevich said, "they're not willing to give me anything except appreciation. F--- them." (See the Top 10 unfortunate political one-liners.)

That did not deter the governor, apparently. The same day, Blagojevich suggests starting a non-profit lobbying organization, known as a 501(c)(4), where he could eventually go to work, and proposes getting Obama's friend "Warren Buffett or some of those guys to help us on something like that." In a separate conversation the same day, he suggests that Obama and his associates "can get Warren Buffett and others to put $10, $12 or $15 million into the organization," and then suggests he could retire from the governorship to go over to the organization. (See the Top 10 scandals of 2008.)

Blagojevich then tries to use a union official as an intermediary to the Obama transition and "Senate Candidate 1." On Nov. 12, Blagojevich discusses the open Senate seat with an official of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). During the conversation, Blagojevich says he understands the SEIU official is an "emissary to discuss Senate Candidate 1's interest" in the seat, according to the complaint. Blagojevich said he would be interested in the 501(c)(4) arrangement, and the SEIU official agreed to "put that flag up and see where it goes." Late Tuesday an SEIU spokesperson said in a statement that "we have no reason to believe that SEIU or any SEIU official was involved in any wrongdoing," though the organization wouldn't discuss any specifics of the allegations.

The following day Blagojevich attempts yet another contact with the Obama transition in hopes of floating the 501(c)(4) idea. He says he wants to tell an unidentified adviser to the President-elect that he wants money to be raised for the (c)(4). The same day, he says in a phone conversation that mentioning the (c)(4) to the President-elect's adviser would be an unspoken way of raising the question of Senate Candidate 1, and others. In the same conversation, Blagojevich suggests using an unidentified individual as an intermediary to the President-elect's adviser.

As Illinois reels from the lurid revelations about its governor, the state's politicians are scrambling to figure out what to do about Obama's replacement in the Senate. Despite all the damning charges, Blagojevich still currently has the power to appoint that person. Unless he steps down, is impeached or convicted, the state constitution gives him, and him alone, that authority. Though it's possible that the Senate could simply refuse to seat anyone Blagojevich chose, no one wants to let it get that far. By late Tuesday, it seemed likely that the state legislature would convene a special session to pass an emergency law setting up a special election for the open seat.

3) What do the Clintons have on Obama?
By Camille Paglia

What experience does Hillary have to run State? Plus: Avoiding the Muslim issue on Mumbai, and anti-Proposition 8 activists threaten to set back gay rights.


Roads and bridges! What joy. Last week's announcement by President-elect Barack Obama of his massive public works initiative to stimulate the economy won loud applause from me. Not only does the decaying U.S. infrastructure need emergency attention but construction commissions will be far more substantive and enduring than the half-mythical 5 million "green" jobs that Obama was airily promising before the election.

But then I gulped when Obama also pledged educational reform by putting state-of-the-art computers in every classroom. Groan. Computers alone will never solve the educational crisis in this country: They are tools and facilitators, not primary conveyors of knowledge. Packing his team with shiny Harvard retreads, Obama missed a golden opportunity to link his public works project with a national revalorization of the trades. Practical training in hands-on vocational skills is desperately needed in this country, where liberal arts education has become a soggy boondoggle, obscenely expensive and diluted by propaganda and groupthink.



The plurality of moderates and conservatives on Obama's appointments list didn't surprise me, because I never thought he was the flaming radical socialist portrayed on right-wing talk radio (which I listen to and enjoy even when I disagree). As an Obama supporter and contributor, I've been very gratified by his dignified deportment and steadiness at the helm to date. But I must admit to puzzled disappointment with his recycling of Clinton era veterans, who reek of déjà vu. Surely we might have expected a better mix of fresh faces and progressive voices? Obama's team may have underestimated the labyrinthine personal interconnections and habit-worn loyalties of that cliquish crew.



As for Obama's appointment of Hillary Clinton as secretary of state, what sense does that make except within parochial Democratic politics? Awarding such a prize plum to Hillary may be a sop to her aggrieved fan base, but what exactly are her credentials for that position? Aside from being a mediocre senator (who, contrary to press reports, did very little for upstate New York), Hillary has a poor track record as both a negotiator and a manager. And of course both Clintons constantly view the world through the milky lens of their own self-interest. Well, it's time for Hillary to put up or shut up. If she gets as little traction in world affairs as Condoleezza Rice has, Hillary will be flushed down the rabbit hole with her feckless husband and effectively neutralized as a future presidential contender. If that's Obama's clever plan, is it worth the gamble? The secretary of state should be a more reserved, unflappable character -- not a drama queen who, even in her acceptance speech, morphed into three different personalities in the space of five minutes.



Given Obama's elaborate deference to the Clintons, beginning with his over-accommodation of them at the Democratic convention in August, a nagging question has floated around the Web: What do the Clintons have on him? No one doubts that the Clinton opposition research team was turning over every rock in its mission to propel Hillary into the White House. There's an information vacuum here that conspiracy theorists have been rushing to fill.



Meanwhile, an area where too many in the mainstream media have been oddly AWOL is in the response to the attack on Mumbai, India, two weeks ago by a squad of Pakistan-based terrorists, who killed nearly 200 people. Reaction in the U.S. was somewhat muted because the protracted standoff occurred over the Thanksgiving holiday, when many Americans were traveling or absorbed in family business. But I was troubled by a persistent soft-pedaling of the identification of the attackers as Muslims --as if the mere reporting of that fact would be offensive and politically incorrect.



Because seven years have passed since 9/11 without another attack on native soil, many Americans, particularly urban professionals, seem to have been lulled into a false feeling of security. But jihadism as a world movement -- even if its membership is a tiny fraction of young Muslim men -- will continue to pose a serious threat to every open democratic society over the next century and more. Anyone who has studied ancient history knows that great civilizations, from Egypt and Persia to Rome and Byzantium, broke down in stages separated in some cases by many superficially tranquil decades. Because of the unprecedented fragility of our intertwined power grid and complex transportation system, the technological West is highly vulnerable to sabotage and chaos.



The tragic fate of so many innocent victims in Mumbai deserves our pity. But what should live in special infamy was the ruthless execution of the Lubavitcher rabbi, Gavriel Hertzberg, and his lovely wife, Rivka, who was 5 months pregnant. These were two idealistic young people of obvious warmth and humanity, who sought only to serve. The rescue by their Indian nanny of their orphaned 2-year-old son, Moshe, crying and smeared with his parents' blood, is already legendary. Was this zeroing in on the Chabad Jewish Center in Mumbai about Israel, or was it simply a gruesome eruption of the medieval tradition of anti-Semitism? Why have Muslim organizations, very quick to protest insulting cartoons, been mostly silent about the atrocities in Mumbai?



The slaughter of the Hertzbergs and other Jews at Chabad House should be a wake-up call to Western liberals who believe that jihadism can be defeated through reason and happy talk. Only other Muslims can launch the stringent internal reform necessary to stomp this barbaric extremism out. But the events in Mumbai confirmed my opinion about the looming problem of a nuclear Iran: While I oppose all American military operations and bases in the Mideast, I continue to believe that Israel, whose security is directly threatened, has every right to take preemptive military action against Iran.



Meanwhile, Sarah Palin's rehabilitation has been well launched. Step by step over the past five weeks since the election, headlines about Palin in the mainstream media and some Web news sites have become more neutral and even laudatory, signifying that a shift toward reality is already at hand. My confidence about Palin's political future continues, as does my disgust at the provincial snobbery and amoral trashing of her reputation by the media and liberal elite, along with some conservative insiders.



Once the Republican ticket was defeated, the time had passed for ad feminam attacks on Palin. Hence my surprise and dismay at Dick Cavett's Nov. 14 blog in the New York Times, "The Wild Wordsmith of Wasilla," which made a big splash and topped the paper's most-read list for nearly a week. I have enormous respect for Cavett: His TV interviews with major celebrities, which are now available on DVD, set a high-water mark for sheer intelligence in that medium that will surely never be surpassed.



However, Cavett's piece on Sarah Palin was insufferably supercilious. With dripping disdain, he sniffed at her "frayed syntax, bungled grammar and run-on sentences." He called her "the serial syntax-killer from Wasilla High," "one who seems to have no first language." I will pass over Cavett's sniggering dismissal of "soccer moms" as lightweights who should stay far, far away from government.



I was so outraged when I read Cavett's column that I felt like taking to the air like a Valkyrie and dropping on him at his ocean retreat in Montauk in the chichi Hamptons. How can it be that so many highly educated Americans have so little historical and cultural consciousness that they identify their own native patois as an eternal mark of intelligence, talent and political aptitude?



In sonorous real life, Cavett's slow, measured, self-interrupting and clause-ridden syntax is 50 years out of date. Guess what: There has been a revolution in English -- registered in the 1950s in the street slang, colloquial locutions and assertive rhythms of both Beat poetry and rock 'n' roll and now spread far and wide on the Web in the standard jazziness of blogspeak. Does Cavett really mean to offer himself as a linguistic gatekeeper for political achievers in this country?



My conclusion was that Cavett the Nebraska native had gotten far too processed by his undergraduate experiences at Yale, at a time when Yale was stuffily insular and a bastion of WASP pretension. An incident from 40 years ago flashed into my mind: During my first semester as a graduate student at Yale in 1968 (10 years after Cavett had graduated from Yale College), I was taking Anglo-Saxon from a dashing young professor with one of those classic WASP dynastic names -- like "The Philadelphia Story's" C.K. Dexter Haven. He was an affable fellow, a medievalist who went on to become a popular master of one of the undergraduate residential colleges.



But the cultural blinders in the Ivy League world through which this professor so serenely sailed were quite obvious in an incident that no one in the class, including me, responded to with the protest that it deserved. We were too paralyzed by our novice status and by Yale's genteel code of etiquette. One day, completely out of the blue, the professor produced a clipping from the New York Times, which he laughingly read and then tossed down on the seminar table for us to pass along and share.



The article, a wedding announcement with photo, was burned in my memory, but I never looked for it again until now. The date was Dec. 8, 1968. The headline: "Daphne C. Murray Wed in Westbury; '67 Bennett Alumna Bride of George Napolitano, Jr." The picture showed a handsome young Italian in a stylish black Nehru jacket leading his radiant bride down the aisle after the ceremony. She came from a family of high social standing: She was a descendant of the founder of the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C.; she was the grand-niece of a noted polo player and the granddaughter of a U.S. senator. He, on the other hand, worked in his father's automobile body shop in Mineola, Long Island.



The professor, pointing out the bride's billowingly full white gown, declared, "Of course he knocked her up!" Ha, ha! We students were clearly expected to share his mirth, which we politely did. But what did any of that have to do with Anglo-Saxon? And why was a graduate seminar being used as a forum for coarse frat house humor? My blood still boils at that episode. I'm not sure what was worse -- the smug sexism, class prejudice or ethnic calumny.



Yes, that is the lordly Yale that formed Dick Cavett's linguistic and cultural assumptions and that has alarmingly resurfaced in the contempt that he showed for the self-made Sarah Palin in "The Wild Wordsmith of Wasilla." I am very sorry that he, and so many other members of the educational elite, cannot take pleasure as I do in the quick, sometimes jagged, but always exuberant way that Palin speaks -- which is closer to street rapping than to the smug bourgeois cadences of the affluent professional class.



English has evolved, and the world has moved on. There is no necessary connection between bourgeois syntax and practical achievement. I have never had the slightest problem with understanding Sarah Palin's meaning at any time. Since when do free Americans subscribe to a stuffy British code of veddy, veddy proper English? We don't live in a stultified class system. In the U.K., in fact, many literary leftists make a big, obnoxious point about retaining their working-class accents. Too many American liberals claim to be defenders of the working class and then run like squealing mice from working-class manners and mores (including moose hunting and wolf control). What smirky, sheltered hypocrites. Get the broom!



Another hot-button issue: After California voters adopted Proposition 8, which amended the state Constitution to prohibit gay marriage, gay activists have launched a program of open confrontation with and intimidation of religious believers, mainly Mormons. I thought we'd gotten over the adolescent tantrum phase of gay activism, typified by ACT UP's 1989 invasion of St. Patrick's Cathedral, where the communion host was thrown on the floor. Want to cause a nice long backlash to gay rights? That's the way to do it.



I may be an atheist, but I respect religion and certainly find it far more philosophically expansive and culturally sustaining than the me-me-me sense of foot-stamping entitlement projected by too many gay activists in the unlamented past. My position has always been (as in "No Law in the Arena" in my 1994 book, "Vamps & Tramps") that government should get out of the marriage business. Marriage is a religious concept that should be defined and administered only by churches. The government, a secular entity, must institute and guarantee civil unions, open to both straight and gay couples and conferring full legal rights and benefits. Liberal heterosexuals who profess support for gay rights should be urged to publicly shun marriage and join gays in the civil union movement.



In their displeasure at the California vote, gay activists have fomented animosity among African-Americans who voted for Proposition 8 and who reject any equivalence between racism and homophobia. Do gays really want to split the Democratic coalition? I completely agree with a hard-hitting piece by the British gay activist Mark Simpson (which was forwarded to me by Glenn Belverio), "Let's Be Civil: Marriage Isn't the End of the Rainbow." Simpson, who has been called "a skinhead Oscar Wilde," is famous among other things for a riveting 2002 Salon article that put the term "metrosexual" into world circulation. I appreciate Simpson's candor about how marriage is a very poor fit with the actual open lifestyle of so many gay men, which is far more radical. Marriage may be desirable for some gay men and women, but at what cost? Activists should have focused instead on removing all impediments to equality in civil unions -- such as the unjust denial of Social Security benefits to the surviving partner in gay relationships.



And now for our usual pop finale, I've assembled a series of musical interludes by colorfully suffering divas, an ever-shrinking class in this era of bland celebutards. First, Renata Tebaldi singing "Poveri Fiori" in an exquisite 1955 recording of Francesco Cilea's opera, "Adriana Lecouvreur." Next Morgana King, who played Carmella Corleone in the first two "Godfather" films, doing an eerie version of "A Taste of Honey" that borders on witchcraft.



Check out Dusty Springfield tamping herself down for a bout of wispy bossa nova on Burt Bacharach's "The Look of Love," from the soundtrack for the 1967 James Bond film, "Casino Royale." (Nicole Kidman to play the soulful Dusty in a future biopic? Pass the smelling salts.) Next is Toni Braxton giving "Unbreak My Heart" the grand treatment (that's model Tyson Beckford playing her slain Adonis). This was one of 20 songs on my playlist for the New York Times Book Review's music feature, where I attributed Braxton's vocal and theatrical virtuosity to two centuries of African-American church singing.



Rounding out our passel of divas, here's Jim Bailey, the brilliant impressionist, doing late period Judy Garland singing "Over the Rainbow," which at that point had become a tragic lament. And let's not forget Bailey's comically spirited Barbra Streisand, singing "Happy Days Are Here Again" on the Carol Burnett Show in 1972. The video ends with Bailey singing the same song 30 years later, this time clad in the dashing suit jacket and slit skirt of the more mature Streisand in her Bill Clinton period.



Finally, a holiday treat. I've often complained about my childhood oppression by saccharine Christmas carols, which were forced on us at school and in Girl Scouts. (The narcotized "Silent Night" was the worst torture of them all.) So I was delighted to find this anti-carol on Nickelodeon, the children's cartoon network. The ominous scenario ("Brave New World" meets "Metropolis") wonderfully expresses the commercialized fascism of this hectic season. All year long, these hypnotic lyrics have become a standard chant at my house: "Bow down, bow down, before the power of Santa -- or be crushed, be crushed by his jolly boots of doom!" What gifted team created this witty fantasia? Congratulations for popular art at its best!

Meanwhile, Sarah Palin's rehabilitation has been well launched. Step by step over the past five weeks since the election, headlines about Palin in the mainstream media and some Web news sites have become more neutral and even laudatory, signifying that a shift toward reality is already at hand. My confidence about Palin's political future continues, as does my disgust at the provincial snobbery and amoral trashing of her reputation by the media and liberal elite, along with some conservative insiders.

Once the Republican ticket was defeated, the time had passed for ad feminam attacks on Palin. Hence my surprise and dismay at Dick Cavett's Nov. 14 blog in the New York Times, "The Wild Wordsmith of Wasilla," which made a big splash and topped the paper's most-read list for nearly a week. I have enormous respect for Cavett: His TV interviews with major celebrities, which are now available on DVD, set a high-water mark for sheer intelligence in that medium that will surely never be surpassed.

However, Cavett's piece on Sarah Palin was insufferably supercilious. With dripping disdain, he sniffed at her "frayed syntax, bungled grammar and run-on sentences." He called her "the serial syntax-killer from Wasilla High," "one who seems to have no first language." I will pass over Cavett's sniggering dismissal of "soccer moms" as lightweights who should stay far, far away from government.

I was so outraged when I read Cavett's column that I felt like taking to the air like a Valkyrie and dropping on him at his ocean retreat in Montauk in the chichi Hamptons. How can it be that so many highly educated Americans have so little historical and cultural consciousness that they identify their own native patois as an eternal mark of intelligence, talent and political aptitude?

In sonorous real life, Cavett's slow, measured, self-interrupting and clause-ridden syntax is 50 years out of date. Guess what: There has been a revolution in English -- registered in the 1950s in the street slang, colloquial locutions and assertive rhythms of both Beat poetry and rock 'n' roll and now spread far and wide on the Web in the standard jazziness of blogspeak. Does Cavett really mean to offer himself as a linguistic gatekeeper for political achievers in this country?

My conclusion was that Cavett the Nebraska native had gotten far too processed by his undergraduate experiences at Yale, at a time when Yale was stuffily insular and a bastion of WASP pretension. An incident from 40 years ago flashed into my mind: During my first semester as a graduate student at Yale in 1968 (10 years after Cavett had graduated from Yale College), I was taking Anglo-Saxon from a dashing young professor with one of those classic WASP dynastic names -- like "The Philadelphia Story's" C.K. Dexter Haven. He was an affable fellow, a medievalist who went on to become a popular master of one of the undergraduate residential colleges.



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But the cultural blinders in the Ivy League world through which this professor so serenely sailed were quite obvious in an incident that no one in the class, including me, responded to with the protest that it deserved. We were too paralyzed by our novice status and by Yale's genteel code of etiquette. One day, completely out of the blue, the professor produced a clipping from the New York Times, which he laughingly read and then tossed down on the seminar table for us to pass along and share.

The article, a wedding announcement with photo, was burned in my memory, but I never looked for it again until now. The date was Dec. 8, 1968. The headline: "Daphne C. Murray Wed in Westbury; '67 Bennett Alumna Bride of George Napolitano, Jr." The picture showed a handsome young Italian in a stylish black Nehru jacket leading his radiant bride down the aisle after the ceremony. She came from a family of high social standing: She was a descendant of the founder of the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C.; she was the grand-niece of a noted polo player and the granddaughter of a U.S. senator. He, on the other hand, worked in his father's automobile body shop in Mineola, Long Island.

The professor, pointing out the bride's billowingly full white gown, declared, "Of course he knocked her up!" Ha, ha! We students were clearly expected to share his mirth, which we politely did. But what did any of that have to do with Anglo-Saxon? And why was a graduate seminar being used as a forum for coarse frat house humor? My blood still boils at that episode. I'm not sure what was worse -- the smug sexism, class prejudice or ethnic calumny.


Yes, that is the lordly Yale that formed Dick Cavett's linguistic and cultural assumptions and that has alarmingly resurfaced in the contempt that he showed for the self-made Sarah Palin in "The Wild Wordsmith of Wasilla." I am very sorry that he, and so many other members of the educational elite, cannot take pleasure as I do in the quick, sometimes jagged, but always exuberant way that Palin speaks -- which is closer to street rapping than to the smug bourgeois cadences of the affluent professional class.

English has evolved, and the world has moved on. There is no necessary connection between bourgeois syntax and practical achievement. I have never had the slightest problem with understanding Sarah Palin's meaning at any time. Since when do free Americans subscribe to a stuffy British code of veddy, veddy proper English? We don't live in a stultified class system. In the U.K., in fact, many literary leftists make a big, obnoxious point about retaining their working-class accents. Too many American liberals claim to be defenders of the working class and then run like squealing mice from working-class manners and mores (including moose hunting and wolf control). What smirky, sheltered hypocrites. Get the broom!

Another hot-button issue: After California voters adopted Proposition 8, which amended the state Constitution to prohibit gay marriage, gay activists have launched a program of open confrontation with and intimidation of religious believers, mainly Mormons. I thought we'd gotten over the adolescent tantrum phase of gay activism, typified by ACT UP's 1989 invasion of St. Patrick's Cathedral, where the communion host was thrown on the floor. Want to cause a nice long backlash to gay rights? That's the way to do it.

I may be an atheist, but I respect religion and certainly find it far more philosophically expansive and culturally sustaining than the me-me-me sense of foot-stamping entitlement projected by too many gay activists in the unlamented past. My position has always been (as in "No Law in the Arena" in my 1994 book, "Vamps & Tramps") that government should get out of the marriage business. Marriage is a religious concept that should be defined and administered only by churches. The government, a secular entity, must institute and guarantee civil unions, open to both straight and gay couples and conferring full legal rights and benefits. Liberal heterosexuals who profess support for gay rights should be urged to publicly shun marriage and join gays in the civil union movement.

In their displeasure at the California vote, gay activists have fomented animosity among African-Americans who voted for Proposition 8 and who reject any equivalence between racism and homophobia. Do gays really want to split the Democratic coalition? I completely agree with a hard-hitting piece by the British gay activist Mark Simpson (which was forwarded to me by Glenn Belverio), "Let's Be Civil: Marriage Isn't the End of the Rainbow." Simpson, who has been called "a skinhead Oscar Wilde," is famous among other things for a riveting 2002 Salon article that put the term "metrosexual" into world circulation. I appreciate Simpson's candor about how marriage is a very poor fit with the actual open lifestyle of so many gay men, which is far more radical. Marriage may be desirable for some gay men and women, but at what cost? Activists should have focused instead on removing all impediments to equality in civil unions -- such as the unjust denial of Social Security benefits to the surviving partner in gay relationships.

And now for our usual pop finale, I've assembled a series of musical interludes by colorfully suffering divas, an ever-shrinking class in this era of bland celebutards. First, Renata Tebaldi singing "Poveri Fiori" in an exquisite 1955 recording of Francesco Cilea's opera, "Adriana Lecouvreur." Next Morgana King, who played Carmella Corleone in the first two "Godfather" films, doing an eerie version of "A Taste of Honey" that borders on witchcraft.

Check out Dusty Springfield tamping herself down for a bout of wispy bossa nova on Burt Bacharach's "The Look of Love," from the soundtrack for the 1967 James Bond film, "Casino Royale." (Nicole Kidman to play the soulful Dusty in a future biopic? Pass the smelling salts.) Next is Toni Braxton giving "Unbreak My Heart" the grand treatment (that's model Tyson Beckford playing her slain Adonis). This was one of 20 songs on my playlist for the New York Times Book Review's music feature, where I attributed Braxton's vocal and theatrical virtuosity to two centuries of African-American church singing.



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Rounding out our passel of divas, here's Jim Bailey, the brilliant impressionist, doing late period Judy Garland singing "Over the Rainbow," which at that point had become a tragic lament. And let's not forget Bailey's comically spirited Barbra Streisand, singing "Happy Days Are Here Again" on the Carol Burnett Show in 1972. The video ends with Bailey singing the same song 30 years later, this time clad in the dashing suit jacket and slit skirt of the more mature Streisand in her Bill Clinton period.

Finally, a holiday treat. I've often complained about my childhood oppression by saccharine Christmas carols, which were forced on us at school and in Girl Scouts. (The narcotized "Silent Night" was the worst torture of them all.) So I was delighted to find this anti-carol on Nickelodeon, the children's cartoon network. The ominous scenario ("Brave New World" meets "Metropolis") wonderfully expresses the commercialized fascism of this hectic season. All year long, these hypnotic lyrics have become a standard chant at my house: "Bow down, bow down, before the power of Santa -- or be crushed, be crushed by his jolly boots of doom!" What gifted team created this witty fantasia? Congratulations for popular art at its best!

4) Government Is Back
By Paul Waldman


On Jan. 20 the Age of Reagan ends, and the Age of Obama begins. We don't know if it will last, but we do know that conservatives can no longer force everyone to play by their rules.

Years from now, we will look back on Jan. 20, 2009, as the day the era of conservative dominance we might call the Age of Reagan finally came to an end. Twenty-eight years ago, the 40th president looked out over the National Mall and proclaimed, "Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem." He went on, "It is no coincidence that our present troubles parallel and are proportionate to the intervention and intrusion in our lives that result from unnecessary and excessive growth of government."

It was a message the country was ready to hear, and in the years that followed, Reagan's party and his ideology dominated our political life. But this year's election -- and what has happened since -- makes it clear that a new era is beginning. Obama has seized on the economic meltdown to propose not just tougher regulations but an aggressive program of federal spending to restore infrastructure, rebuild crumbling schools, and create green jobs. We don't know yet know what it will cost, but it will be a lot. And after we just threw $700 billion at Wall Street, few are grumbling about the price tag. Government is back.

But it took a while to get here. Even Bill Clinton's extremely successful presidency played out on the field Reagan and his acolytes had designed. Many remember that in his 1996 State of the Union address, Clinton declared dramatically, "The era of big government is over." But it wasn't just that one statement -- in the paragraph before, Clinton said, "We know big government does not have all the answers. We know there's not a program for every problem. We have worked to give the American people a smaller, less bureaucratic government in Washington. And we have to give the American people one that lives within its means." The words could have come straight from Reagan's mouth.

It was this idea -- that if government was big, it must be bad -- that Clinton was forced to accept. Reagan and his acolytes had sewn antipathy toward government into the political fabric. For all Clinton accomplished, he could never change that.

The president to whom Obama has drawn so many comparisons, John F. Kennedy, was not ashamed to praise the behemoth in Washington. Campaigning in 1960, Kennedy referred to "this great bureaucracy of ours ... this great government of ours." When was the last time you heard someone refer to a bureaucracy as "great"? Kennedy didn't see government as bloated and slothful. He talked about it as though it could be an engine of technocratic problem-solving, a magnificently powerful tool with which Americans' lives could be improved. "We have to prepare it for motion," he said, "we have to prepare it to move, we have to get the best people we can get, and then we have to organize our structure so that they can act."

This speech, which Kennedy gave at Wittenburg College in Ohio a few weeks before he was elected, could well have been delivered by Barack Obama. Kennedy decried the lack of diversity in government, laid out an eight-point plan for ensuring an ethical administration, and made a plea to the students to serve their country by joining its government. "I ask you to consider how you can best use the talents which society is now helping develop in you in order to maintain that free society," Kennedy said. "All of us are involved in the discipline of self-government. All of us in this country, in a sense, are officeholders. All of us make an important decision as to what this country must be and how it must move and what its function shall be, and what its image shall be, and whether it shall stand still, as I believe it is now doing, or whether it shall once again move forward."

Kennedy was operating in a political world whose contours were still shaped by Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, which is suddenly on lots of people's minds. As it becomes increasingly common to hear the word "depression" in discussions of the current economic crisis, it's worth remembering why the Great Depression finally came to an end. Although we are now seeing some disagreement about Roosevelt's record, both progressives and conservatives agree that it was World War II that finally put the Depression into the past. Conservatives sometimes point this out as a way of belittling the New Deal, but as Paul Krugman has reminded us in recent days, from an economic standpoint, the war was a gigantic public-works program. The economic benefits came from the federal government spending staggering amounts of money -- borrowed money, by the way -- on factories, materials, and Rosie the Riveter's salary.

And let's remember just how vast that public-works program was. In 1940, the last year before the U.S. entered the war, the federal budget was $9.5 billion. Five years later, it had increased almost tenfold, to $92.7 billion. Over those five years, the country's economy doubled in size. Federal spending in both 1944 and 1945 amounted to 43.6 percent of gross domestic product, a figure seen neither before nor since (historical data on the federal budget can be found here).

So if we want to duplicate what FDR did, we've got a long way to go. In terms of GDP, in order to match the spending at the height of World War II, we'd have to increase next year's budget by $3.5 trillion. Obama's plan is big but not that big.

But it's more than the sheer number of dollars spent that matters. Far more important is the broad acceptance of the idea that when the country faces a crisis, it's the government's job to step in and do everything it can to solve it. Bill Clinton faced a difficult economy when he took office, but he had no choice but to accommodate himself to the prevailing ideological mood, one whose terms and perspective were dictated by conservatives. Unable to make an affirmative case for government itself, Clinton's hopes for ambitious new spending were quickly shelved in his first days in order to accomplish deficit reduction. (Clinton's first budget did raise taxes slightly on the wealthy; it passed without the vote of a single Republican in either house of Congress.)

In contrast, look how Obama responded to the announcement at the end of last week that the economy had shed half a million jobs:

"Now is the time to respond with urgent resolve to put people back to work and get our economy moving again. At the same time, this painful crisis also provides us with an opportunity to transform our economy to improve the lives of ordinary people by rebuilding roads and modernizing schools for our children, investing in clean energy solutions to break our dependence on imported oil, and making an early down payment on the long-term reforms that will grow and strengthen our economy for all Americans for years to come."

In other words, this crisis is an opportunity for some high-powered, fuel-injected action, deficits be damned. Government is the solution.

Many have gotten used to thinking of Obama as cautious, careful, and considered, but this is only part of who he is as a politician. He can also be extremely bold in seizing opportunities. Consider that when he made the decision to run for president in 2006, most astute observers thought it a fool's errand. Here was a first-term senator just two years removed from the Illinois statehouse, thinking he could beat a woman who possessed the party's most formidable political machine, the support of the establishment, and a steely resolve. But Obama could see what those who counseled that he needed more seasoning could not. He correctly surmised that 2008 presented a unique opportunity for him, and he took it.

We have no way to know whether the openness to government that makes Obama's new aggressiveness possible will survive his administration's first year, let alone a generation. The country's feelings about government in the days to come will be determined by whether this incoming government can actually succeed in boosting the country's fortunes. What we do know is that the time when the likes of Reagan, Gingrich, and Bush forced everyone to play by their rules is over.

5) The Meaning of Mumbai
By Thomas Sowell

Will the horrors unleashed by Islamic terrorists in Mumbai cause any second thoughts by those who are so anxious to start weakening the American security systems currently in place, including government interceptions of international phone calls and the holding of terrorists at Guantanamo?

Maybe. But never underestimate partisan blindness in Washington or in the mainstream media where, if the Bush administration did it, then it must be wrong.

Contrary to some of the more mawkish notions of what a government is supposed to be, its top job is the protection of the people. Nobody on 9/11 would have thought that we would see nothing comparable again in this country for seven long years.

Many people seem to have forgotten how, in the wake of 9/11, every great national event-- the World Series, Christmas, New Year's, the Super Bowl-- was under the shadow of a fear that this was when the terrorists would strike again.

They didn't strike again here, even though they have struck in Spain, Indonesia, England and India, among other places. Does anyone imagine that this was because they didn't want to hit America again?

Could this have had anything to do with all the security precautions that liberals have been complaining about so bitterly, from the interception of international phone calls to forcing information out of captured terrorists?

Too many people refuse to acknowledge that benefits have costs, even if that cost means only having no more secrecy when making international phone calls than you have when sending e-mails, in a world where computer hackers abound. There are people who refuse to give up anything, even to save their own lives.

A very shrewd observer of the deterioration of Western societies, British writer Theodore Dalrymple, said: "This mental flabbiness is decadence, and at the same time a manifestation of the arrogant assumption that nothing can destroy us."

There are growing numbers of things that can destroy us. The Roman Empire lasted a lot longer than the United States has lasted, and yet it too was destroyed.

Millions of lives were blighted for centuries thereafter, because the barbarians who destroyed Rome were incapable of replacing it with anything at all comparable. Neither are those who threaten to destroy the United States today.

The destruction of the United States will not require enough nuclear bombs to annihilate cities and towns across America. After all, the nuclear destruction of just two cities was enough to force Japan to surrender-- and the Japanese had far more willingness to fight and die than most Americans have today.

How many Americans are willing to see New York, Chicago and Los Angeles all disappear in nuclear mushroom clouds, rather than surrender to whatever outrageous demands the terrorists make?

Neither Barack Obama nor those with whom he will be surrounded in Washington show any signs of being serious about forestalling such a terrible choice by taking any action with any realistic chance of preventing a nuclear Iran.

Once suicidal fanatics have nuclear bombs, that is the point of no return. We, our children and our grandchildren will live at the mercy of the merciless, who have a track record of sadism.

There are no concessions we can make that will buy off hate-filled terrorists. What they want-- what they must have for their own self-respect, in a world where they suffer the humiliation of being visibly centuries behind the West in so many ways-- is our being brought down in humiliation, including self-humiliation.

Even killing us will not be enough, just as killing Jews was not enough for the Nazis, who first had to subject them to soul-scarring humiliations and dehumanization in their death camps.

This kind of hatred may not be familiar to most Americans but what happened on 9/11 should give us a clue-- and a warning.

The people who flew those planes into the World Trade Center buildings could not have been bought off by any concessions, not even the hundreds of billions of dollars we are spending in bailout money today.

They want our soul-- and if they are willing to die and we are not, they will get it.

6) Still Asleep After Mumbai
By Daniel Pipes

Victims caught in terrorist atrocities perpetrated for Islam typically experience fear, torture, horror, and murder, with sirens screaming, snipers positioning, and carnage in the streets. That was the case recently in Bombay (now called Mumbai), where some 195 people were murdered and 300 injured. But for the real target of Islamist terror, the world at large, the experience has become numbed, with apologetics and justification muting repulsion and shock.


The one Mumbai terrorist still alive, Ajmal Amir Kasab, in action.

If terrorism ranks among the cruelest and most inhumane forms of warfare, excruciating in its small-bore viciousness and intentional pain, Islamist terrorism has also become well-rehearsed political theater. Actors fulfill their scripted roles, then shuffle, soon forgotten, off the stage.

Indeed, as one reflects on the most publicized episodes of Islamist terror against Westerners since 9/11 – the attack on Australians in Bali, on Spaniards in Madrid, on Russians in Beslan, on Britons in London – a twofold pattern emerges: Muslim exultation and Western denial. The same tragedy replays itself, with only names changed.

Muslim exaltation: The Mumbai assault inspired occasional condemnations, hushed official regrets, and cornucopias of unofficial enthusiasm. As the Israel Intelligence Heritage & Commemoration Center notes, the Iranian and Syrian governments exploited the event "to assail the United States, Israel and the Zionist movement, and to represent them as responsible for terrorism in India and the world in general." Al-Jazeera's website overflowed with comments such as "Allah, grant victory to Muslims. Allah, grant victory to jihad" and "The killing of a Jewish rabbi and his wife in the Jewish center in Mumbai is heartwarming news."

Such supremacism and bigotry can no longer surprise, given the well-documented, world-wide acceptance of terror among many Muslims. For example, the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press conducted an attitudinal survey in spring 2006, "The Great Divide: How Westerners and Muslims View Each Other." Its polls of about one thousand persons in each of ten Muslim populations found a perilously high proportion of Muslims who, on occasion, justify suicide bombing: 13 percent in Germany, 22 percent in Pakistan, 26 percent in Turkey, and 69 percent in Nigeria.

A frightening portion also declared some degree of confidence in Osama bin Laden: 8 percent in Turkey, 48 percent in Pakistan, 68 percent in Egypt, and 72 percent in Nigeria. As I concluded in a 2006 review of the Pew survey, "These appalling numbers suggest that terrorism by Muslims has deep roots and will remain a danger for years to come." Obvious conclusion, no?

Western denial: No. The fact that terrorist fish are swimming in a hospitable Muslim sea nearly disappears amidst Western political, journalistic, and academic bleatings. Call it political correctness, multiculturalism, or self-loathing; whatever the name, this mentality produces delusion and dithering.

Nomenclature lays bare this denial. When a sole jihadist strikes, politicians, law enforcement, and media join forces to deny even the fact of terrorism; and when all must concede the terrorist nature of an attack, as in Mumbai, a pedantic establishment twists itself into knots to avoid blaming terrorists.

I documented this avoidance by listing the twenty (!) euphemisms the press unearthed to describe Islamists who attacked a school in Beslan in 2004: activists, assailants, attackers, bombers, captors, commandos, criminals, extremists, fighters, group, guerrillas, gunmen, hostage-takers, insurgents, kidnappers, militants, perpetrators, radicals, rebels, and separatists – anything but terrorists.

And if terrorist is impolite, adjectives such as Islamist, Islamic, and Muslim become unmentionable. My blog titled "Not Calling Islamism the Enemy" provides copious examples of this avoidance, along with its motives. In short, those who would replace War on Terror with A Global Struggle for Security and Progress imagine this linguistic gambit will win over Muslim hearts and minds.

Post-Mumbai, analysts such as Steven Emerson, Don Feder, Lela Gilbert, Caroline Glick, Tom Gross, William Kristol, Dorothy Rabinowitz, and Mark Steyn again noted various aspects of this futile linguistic behavior, with Emerson bitterly concluding that "After more than 7 years since 9/11, we can now issue a verdict: Islamic terrorists have won our hearts and minds."

What finally will rouse Westerners from their stupor, to name the enemy and fight the war to victory? Only one thing seems likely: massive deaths, say 100,000 casualties in a single WMD attack. Short of that, it appears, much of the West, contently deploying defensive measures against fancifully-described "activists," will gently slumber on.


7) Right of center dominate Likud primary, alongside moderates, religious right


Likud voters rewarded its 12 workhorse legislators in the opposition party primary which took place Monday, Dec. 8, by placing party whip Gideon Saar, Gilead Erdan and Reuven Rivlin in the top three slots. Of Binyamin Netanyahu's new arrivals, only Benny Begin and former chief of staff Moshe Yaalon made it to the top ten in fourth and eighth places. Veteran MK Yuval Steinitz and Leah Ness were placed ninth and tenth.

This group of favorites holds that final status talks with Arab leaders, especially Palestinians, is untimely; Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip paved the way for the fundamentalist Palestinian Hamas and its missile offensive against Israel and was a blunder which must not be repeated on the West Bank.

Announcing the results, Netanyahu said Likud's team was the best suited for government of any other party and promised solutions for the country's three predicaments: the world economic crisis which hangs over the Israeli worker and his savings, a security crisis which renews itself day by day and a political-diplomatic crisis. A Likud government, he promised, would continue to pursue diplomacy "combined with accelerated economic development."

Netanyahu has said he advocates a joint economic effort to bring prosperity to the Palestinians before broaching other issues, such as territory.

He will have a hard time navigating a workable course between the popular right-of center group, the newcomers whose views are less clear-cut or moderate, the religious hardliners and his own pragmatism.

Former foreign and finance minister Silvan Shalom, who once challenged Netanyahu for the party lead, was disappointed with seventh place, former justice minister, left-of-center Dan Meridor rejoined Likud for the 17th spot while the far right religious faction leader Moshe Feiglin ended in 20th place. Former police commissioner Asaf Hefetz and former general Uzzi Dayan failed to reach realistic positions on the list.

Of the 99,000 registered party members, 49% turned out for the vote that was stalled by voting computers too complicated for general use.

8) 'Bibi to blame for Feiglin's success'
By Gil Hoffman

Senior figures in Likud on Wednesday morning squarely blamed the party's chairman, MK Binyamin Netanyahu for the election of rival Moshe Feiglin to the realistic 20th slot in the party's Knesset list. They charged that had Netanyahu arranged for a larger number of polling stations around the country, Feiglin - the leader of the Jewish Leadership movement within Likud - would have been chosen to an unrealistic spot on the slate.

Netanyahu's incessant involvement with Feiglin was counterproductive, they said, drawing undue media attention to a candidate who would otherwise have received far less coverage, and causing Feiglin's supporters within Likud to mobilize en masse and vote him onto the list.

Netanyahu took legal steps to change the party's Knesset slate on Tuesday night, hours after the announcement of the results of Monday's primary in which hawks won big, while more dovish candidates faltered.

Netanyahu's associates expressed concern that the party would take a big hit in the polls after Feiglin won the 20th spot on the list and Feiglin-endorsed candidates won 19 of the top 36 slots, defeating candidates supported by Netanyahu.

In an effort to show that he has remained centrist while his party has shifted rightward, Netanyahu said at an economic forum on Thursday night that he would form the widest national unity government possible.

The Likud leader sent his former aide Ophir Akunis to petition the party's internal court to advance candidates elected to slots representing districts, interest groups and women, and move down to unrealistic slots candidates elected on the national list, including Feiglin and former "rebel" MKs Michael Ratzon and Ehud Yatom.

"Today, we chose a new leadership for Israel," Netanyahu said in his speech at the Tel Aviv Fairgrounds after the list was announced. "This is the best team any party can field in our country."

But in closed conversations, Netanyahu said he was disappointed that Feiglin did so well. He said he had done everything possible to prevent him from winning, and he took credit for Feiglin not being higher on the list.

Netanyahu also revealed that he had tried to mollify his former No. 2, Silvan Shalom, who fell to the seventh slot on the list, after five candidates endorsed by Feiglin.

Shalom reportedly accused Netanyahu in their conversation of taking steps to ensure his defeat.

"You tried to assassinate me politically," Shalom reportedly told the party chairman. "I complimented you everywhere recently and you purposely harmed me."

Netanyahu persuaded Shalom not to boycott the announcement of the primary's results and to go up on stage together with him. Netanyahu reassured him that his cabinet appointments - if the Likud formed the next government - would not be based on the order of the Knesset list.

But sources close to Shalom warned that if Netanyahu did not state publicly that he would be given a senior portfolio, he could act as an internal opposition in the party, along with other disgruntled MKs, including Limor Livnat, who lost her place as the party's top woman to Leah Nass, after Feiglin's supporters worked against her.

Feiglin's allies beat Netanyahu's in races for several regional slots, including in Jerusalem, where former Finance Ministry director-general Shmuel Slavin lost to Beit Shemesh activist Keti Sheetrit, and on the coast between Tel Aviv and Haifa, where World Likud chairman Danny Danon beat former basketball star Tal Brody.

Feiglin vowed to win any legal battles necessary to keep what seems to be a certain seat in the next Knesset, which he won following eight years of campaigning and working behind the scenes to become a powerful force in the party.

He denied that his presence on the list would lose seats for the Likud. He called on supporters of parties to the right of Likud to vote for the party and even join it.

"The fact that after such a flood of attacks and brainwashing against me so many Likudniks voted Moshe Feiglin proves that the entire nationalist camp should join the Likud," Feiglin said.

"I didn't beat Netanyahu," he said. "The Likud won. And the primary is now in the past."

9) Feiglin: State should demand loyalty of Arab citizens
By Amnon Meranda

Moshe Feiglin secured the 20th slot on roster, and says there is room to consider withdrawal from UN, as well as eradication of Waqf from Temple Mount.



Moshe Feiglin, who landed the 20th slot on the Likud roster expresses his views on Israel's most pressing issues in an exclusive interview. His aspirations for the State's future include Netanyahu's Nightmare. Netanyahu is still pushing to oust Feiglin.

Election of rightist list and propulsion of Moshe Feiglin to a realistic slot on Likud roster have party brass, including Netanyahu, losing sleep. Efforts to run Feiglin off continue though court appeal.



Feiglin supports regaining control of the Temple Mount and perhaps withdrawal from the UN, but not the expulsion of the Arab population.



What should the boundaries of this country be?

"Just as it says in the Likud's constitution: The State should reign over all of the parts of Israel currently in our hands, as we have done in the Golan Heights."



Should Gush Katif be rebuilt?

"I think so, but I know there is no use in returning to Gaza if the public does not believe this region belongs to us. Entering Gaza today means killing our soldiers senselessly… As long as we don't see this place as our own and want to return in order to build it and to stay there, there is no use going back.



"This is also true for the issue of the Qassams. As long as we don't have faith that this country is ours there can be no military solution, not for the Qassams or anything else."



The opinions Feiglin expressed differ from those he has previously presented, calling for the "elimination of Arab hope". In a document published by the Jewish Leadership Movement, over which he presides, Feiglin wrote that "if their hope is to expel us, the elimination of their hope will come when we clarify that we hold all of Israel forever. The elimination of Arab hope will thus eradicate Arab terror."



'Expel Waqf from Temple Mount'
Despite the dangers it involves, Feiglin believes Israel should act aggressively to secure the Temple Mount. "We just have to get the Waqf out of there and leave only the Israel Police," he says.




Should Arabs then be allowed to continue to pray there?

"The Torah says the house of God will be open to all nations – not just Arabs but all of the world's nations."



Though Feiglin has previously trumpeted the idea of transferring all of the Arabs out of Israel, despite admitting that the idea was not practical in times of peace, he has since toned down his message in this respect.



Should the Israeli Arabs be transferred out of Israel?

"Of course not, nor the Arabs of Judea and Samaria. We need to create a situation in which those who are loyal to us can find their place here, and those who are not are encouraged to find another place."



How should the State regard the Israeli Arabs?

"The State should demand that its Arab citizens be loyal to the State of Israel as a Jewish State. The current situation, in which Azmi Bishara still carries Israeli identification and enjoys all of the privileges involved, is maddening."



'Israel UN's punching bag'
What do you think about Israel's global relations? Should we disengage from the UN?


"I think that when most of the decisions made by the UN are anti-Israeli, and Israel has essentially become the UN's punching bag, then we should consider joining countries such as Switzerland, which doesn't feel any particular need to be members of the UN."



What do you think about the peace with Egypt? Should it be canceled?

I don't think you can cancel something that never existed… I think Sadat was right. We're not eating hummus in Damascus but neither are we doing so in Cairo. The difference is that in the Golan Heights we have a more peaceful region, and in the south we are being forced to fortify Ashdod."



'Separate religion from State'
The Jewish Leadership Movement's website has linked Israel's success to its connection with "the God of Israel," presenting religion as an essential condition for the continued existence of the State. However, Feiglin has since taken an uncompromising stance on the separation of religion and state.




What should be the Rabbinate's place in Israel's leadership?

"It should be in no way involved in politics."



Should the laws of the Torah become the laws of the State?

"I am thoroughly opposed to the idea of a Halacha state. I do want to see the laws of the State reflect its national values, however."



What is a Jewish state in your opinion?

"A Jewish state is a state that has adopted Jewish values as its fundamental values… It means being faithful to all of the sacred values thanks to which we have continued to exist, returned to Israel, and established this State."



Who should be seated in the High Court?

"Judges that represent the collective values of the nation… We need a system that is similar to the American system, in which a Supreme Court justice undergoes a public hearing, a system that eventually creates judges that represent the nation's values, and not those of the extreme Left."




What should the education system look like?

"We must stress the issue of Jewish heritage. We need to make sure every child here can recite the prayer 'Shema Israel', get to know the basic texts in the Torah, and as Hanukkah is approaching, know who the Maccabees were – and not just the basketball team."



Since his plunge into politics Feiglin has had to deal with many public inquiries into his often controversial opinions. When asked about claims that he has presented a fascist stance, Feiglin responded: "The fact that on the one hand people berate me for calling for conscientiousness and on the other hand call me a fascist shows that they are not truly examining my opinions, but rather spewing slander."