Or not...

So now I understand. If a Republican campaigns at all after his Democratic opponent dies, it's in bad taste. But then when the Democrats turn the memorial service into a political rally and boo the Republicans who show up to honor the dead person, that's appropriate.

We've reached the point where morality and your personal worth has nothing to do with your actions. It has only to do with your political stances. If you're a Democrat, you can walk out to the 50-yard-line of the Super Bowl just before the kickoff and murder someone, but as long as you support affirmative action and the living wage law, you're a good person.

Is America too cynical about politics? Yup. And maybe it has to do with the fact that WINNING is more important than honoring a supposedly honorable man.

Wellstone and Davis: A Study in Contrasts

Let's say that you go to the polls next Tuesday to vote and you have the choice between two guys. The first guy is as close as you have come to an ideological match. He thinks the way you think, supports what you support, and opposes what you oppose. The second guy is close to the opposite. He is as fundamentally opposite as one can be without exceeding the bounds of good taste. Only the first guy is a certifiable schmuck who has a well-earned reputation for throwing things at staffers and shaking them when things don't go right. And the second is liked and respected as a person of character and honor...even by many of the people who oppose him politically.

Who do you vote for?

The dichotomy is painted vividly in the stories surrounding the late Paul Wellstone and California Governor Gray Davis. When FOX News reported on the death of Wellstone, both Brit Hume and Newt Gingrich were visibly shaken. Neither is known as a bastion of liberalism and Gingrich has a reputation for surliness that made it easy to cast him as a villian. Tonight's memorial service for Wellstone will overflow the University of Minnesota men's basketball arena by nearly 50%, causing other venues to be required to seat as many as 6,000 people.

Davis, on the other hand, might have a problem filling a Volkswagen at his memorial service. According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, Gray Davis is the anti-Wellstone. He has, according to the story, earned a reputation for being abusive and overbearing. The article quotes a 1997 New Times article that says Davis has been known for "hurling phones and ashtrays at quaking government employees" and for "personally shoving and shaking horrified workers." When asked by a stranger about a Wall Street Journal article about an alternative for solving California's energy woes, Davis, who had just finished cordially answering questions for a CNN interview, referred to the Journal as "f---ing a--h---s." When a college columnist called the Governor's office for comment, he was met with a veiled threat of a lawsuit if he reported it.

None of these things is illegal. And I'm not suggesting that we should always vote for the nicest guy. But I am suggesting that, if we really want the political climate in this country to change...if we really want people who care about the country more than their party or their re-election opportunity, maybe we should think about finding people who genuinely care about other people.

I worked in a state legislature in the late 80s. The man I worked for was a man I agreed with politically, but he'd been in the legislature for a quarter century. He was a nightmare to work for, as his managerial style was just slightly less confrontation than Freddy Kreuger's. In 1988, he was a Bush delegate to the national convention. The brother of one of his staffers ran against him as a Dole delegate (enlightened choice there). A guy who spent a lot of time at our office told him that he had to fire the staffer to send a message to his brother. He refused, because it was the wrong thing to do.

We need men and women of character to be our leaders. We are reaching a point in our history when character may determine a lot about how our country moves forward. Our political system (not to mention our workplaces and our neighborhoods) need more Paul Wellstones and fewer Gray Davises. And we are the ones who can make it happen.

Speaking Out Against Anti-Muslim Terror, too

Last week, Kristi Goldstein was arrested in Tampa. Perhaps you haven't heard of the perky Ms. Goldstein, or her husband, podiatrist Robert Goldstein. That's good; if you'd have heard of them, it would have meant that they'd blown up a Tampa-area Islamic education center. Fortunately, in August, the Goldsteins got in a fight and Kristi's call to police uncovered 37 bombs and 25,000 rounds of ammunition.

Meanwhile, half a world away, Indonesia and Russia were rocked with events of Islamic terrorism. If Kristi Goldstein hadn't called police on her husband, this country would have been devasted by the deaths of more people, mostly children, because of hatred and terrorism.

Terrorism is wrong (no, really, it is) no matter who doing is terrorizing. The alleged actions of the Goldsteins are no less evil than those of the Chechen rebels, the Indonesian terrorists, or the monsters of September 11. The fact that the Goldsteins are Jewish is irrelevant. They are terrorists and should be prosecuted on that basis.

But the responsibility associated with the Goldstein case extends well beyond judicial officials in Florida's Hillsborough County. We have the responsibility to denounce them and their actions just as vehemently as we have denounced Islamic terrorism. We must hold up the anti-terror banner against anyone who decides to systematically target and kill innocents. And that holds true whether those innocents are in a theater in Moscow or a school in Tampa. Both are equally reprehensible.

The rank-and-file Islamic majority--the ones who do not support terrorism in the name of Allah--have a responsibility to police their own religion. In fact, they have to. We can deter and maybe prevent some future attacks, but only Muslims themselves can end them. In a similar way, non-Muslims must be clear that anti-Muslim terror is wrong.

The Islamic terror is going to happen. Sadly, it is a forgone conclusion that must be dealt with. But the anti-Islamic terror is not a forgone conclusion. We have the ability to end it before it starts. Our future as a free society depends on it.

The War We Are In

"War is not an option"

So read the sign carried by 26-year-old Simone X of New York City. She was one of an estimated 100,000 or more people who joined in anti-war protesting in, among other places. Washington, DC.

Simone X, Jesse Jackson, Susan Sarandon, and others did the American thing yesterday: they advanced their opinion in the marketplace of views and sought to influence buyers. Their process was right, but their point is wrong.

War is an option. And it's not a war that we have started. It's a war that doesn't have a concrete start date. You might point at September 11, 2001, but that would ignore the Cole, the Khobar towers, and a host of other incidents. A growing undercurrent, even in the "mainstream" media is starting to question whether the start of that war was on April 19, 1995, when Timothy McVeigh and others blew up the Murrah Building. Although Jayna Davis and others have not made the case that Iraq was a party to that attack, they raise enough points to not be easily dismissed.

Flash forward to October 2002, and the Beltway snipers. The current official line is that there is no Al Qaeda involvement in these attacks. But why, then, the threats against children, and what of the story of the duck in a noose, which poses the police as the distracted arrogant ones about to get a rude surprise? What happened to the white van and the box truck. While John Muhammed and John Malvo appear to be random cretins, the still might not be. It's just too early in the game to tell.

And in a sense, it doesn't matter whether they were linked to Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda watches our news. Through the convenience of the Internet, it can read our papers just as easily as we can. Its leadership has seen the havoc that a couple of dim bumbs were able to reek over three weeks. Al Qaeda has people who are not dim and who are as well trained as Messrs. Muhammed and Malvo were. It's not a reach to predict that there will be more news like we've seen in the past few weeks.

No one denies, however, that Mr. Mohammed has publicly stated sympathies with the murderers of September 11.

And lest we forget the world stage, more than 100 hostages were killed in Moscow by Muslim fundamentalists. A French oil tanker was blown up by Muslim fundamentalists. And the attacks by Muslim terrorists continues in the middle east. (And some of those attacks are underwritten by the Iraqis and Saudis.)

We are at the beginning of a war. It is a war that we should have seen coming, as the size of the world continues to shrink and our insulation by two oceans begins to mean less and less. We are not pursuing this war; it is pursuing us. And it will continue until we long for the days when all we had to worry about was just one sniper on the loose.

Simone X has it wrong. We are not starting the war. The option lies with the aggressor, and that isn't us.