Christopher Levenick’s review essay in the new CRB is available on the web. As I noted earlier, he offers us a critical tour through a number of books written by leading lights on the religious left, including Jimmy Carter and Jim Wallis. Here’s a sample of Levenick’s critique:

Take the Religious Left’s approach to poverty. To their great credit, these writers are dead serious about feeding the hungry and clothing the naked. Unfortunately, however, they perceive this obligation as primarily and properly the work of government. Carter speaks for the group when he alleges that "[i]n efforts to reach out to the poor, alleviate suffering, provide homes for the homeless...government office-holders and not church members were more likely to assume responsibility and be able to fulfill the benevolent missions." Little acknowledgment is made of the private sector’s role in creating affluence, or of the fact that a zealous redistribution of present assets will inhibit the creation of future wealth. Yet these errors of practical economics are of less consequence than the grave theological misapprehension beneath them. The challenge and the burden of almsgiving are and ought to be personal. Christian charity does not consist of petitioning the state to redress economic grievances. Rather, it calls upon the individual believer to comfort the afflicted. An ethic geared primarily toward government undermines the crucial sense of personal responsibility for the least of one’s brethren. True charity, like true faith, must be voluntary if it is to be efficacious.

The speech is here. It was stylistically and substantively better than I’d been led to expect. The domestic policy proposals (e.g., tax deductions for private health insurance and school vouchers) were, as NRO’s Peter Robinson noted, conservative (for the most part). I couldn’t help but notice that they didn’t make Nancy Pelosi happy.

I was heartened by the way he spoke about our war against the terrorists, both in describing their aims and in showing that the struggle evolves as each side adapts to the other’s initiatives. This is grown-up talk:

If American forces step back before Baghdad is secure, the Iraqi government would be overrun by extremists on all sides. We could expect an epic battle between Shia extremists backed by Iran, and Sunni extremists aided by al Qaeda and supporters of the old regime. A contagion of violence could spill out across the country -- and in time, the entire region could be drawn into the conflict.

For America, this is a nightmare scenario. For the enemy, this is the objective. Chaos is the greatest ally -- their greatest ally in this struggle. And out of chaos in Iraq would emerge an emboldened enemy with new safe havens, new recruits, new resources, and an even greater determination to harm America. To allow this to happen would be to ignore the lessons of September the 11th and invite tragedy. Ladies and gentlemen, nothing is more important at this moment in our history than for America to succeed in the Middle East, to succeed in Iraq and to spare the American people from this danger. (Applause.)

This is where matters stand tonight, in the here and now. I have spoken with many of you in person. I respect you and the arguments you’ve made. We went into this largely united, in our assumptions and in our convictions. And whatever you voted for, you did not vote for failure.

From an AP story today:

Republican Sen. Norm Coleman of Minnesota, also took issue with Bush. "I can’t tell you what the path to success is, but it’s not what the president has put on the table."

Dean Barnett, over at Hugh Hewitt’s blog posits a series of questions to himself about tonight’s State of the Union address. It is, he admits, a tad snarky. But he does a reasonable job of defending his snarky tone.

Among the bigger points of contention he has with the coming address is this. Both he and Hugh have been bewildered and irritated by the President’s penchant for releasing outlines of coming speeches to the press. Why does he do this? If he thinks it will make the media more fully digest and appreciate his complex thinking on important matters, he couldn’t be more wrong. Mostly, it gives people an excuse to tune out. After looking at this and Barnett’s post, I know I’m thinking about it! Further (and Barnett makes good use of this fact in his post), I haven’t exactly been torn up with curiosity about what the President will do about malaria--however needful a policy concerning it may be.

The most salient point in Barnett’s post, however, is his discussion of the President’s seeming acceptance of his intractable unpopularity and why that simply won’t do: "I think he’s reached a point, however, where he’s convinced he can’t be popular in his own time but that he will inevitably be vindicated by history. He’s using that as a jumping off point to conclude that public opinion in his own time doesn’t matter. He’s sorely mistaken on that count. If he doesn’t rally the people, or at the very least his own party, he won’t be able to salvage the wider war effort. If the surge succeeds but the wider war against radical Islam is abandoned, the surge’s success will be a very small victory."

I cannot imagine how dreadful it must be to be in the President’s position right now. I believe he has done his level best to do what is right and that he has been, by and large (though not always), correct in his assessment of what is needed. I cannot imagine that I will ever be persuaded that he is not a good man and so I feel for him. But the fact remains that he has not been able to persuade anyone that we should fight. Asking people to enter into a long and frightful war is asking a lot of people--even if they have no choice but to accept the fight. The fact that it is necessary to fight is not, in and of itself, a sufficient explanation. Persuasion is not the art of reciting and pointing out facts.

In appealing to our reason with facts, he should not neglect to walk through the logic. In appealing to our hearts with fear, he should not neglect to offer solace. I hesitate to say that he should "feel our pain" (Yuck, spit, eeeww!) but there’s a reason that phrase resonated with people even as they mocked it. He need not "feel our pain," I suppose, but he should pay us the respect of trying to understand why we need more than a business briefing in a State of the Union address.

Rich Lowry considers Hillary the calculator and her attempt to seem natural and how she will react when there is no script, for that time will come.

Is it possible that this is Hillary Clinton’s strategy against Barack Obama?

I challenge my fellow NLT bloggers and readers to take Dana Hork’s SOTU quiz.

What happens when ACTA meets the AAC&U? Read about it here. My favorite snippet:

Post-talk reviews from other attendees were generally critical. While several gave Neal and her colleagues points for coming to talk to a skeptical audience, and others shared outrage at this point or that, the more common criticism was that the debate Neal was trying to engage was all a bit 1980s. No one is against reading classic works of history or literature, even by dead white men, they said. It’s just that the tough questions today aren’t core or non-core, at least to most of those here.

“I was sort of shocked at the lack of familiarity of where higher education is,” said Jeremy Bell, a philosophy professor and Academic Senate president at the College of San Mateo. With the Web and other sources, students have “limitless access to content,” Bell said, and it’s “archaic” to think that the key question is which required book will be put in front of students. “We need to teach them the skills to evaluate, not go to a model of 40 years ago,” he said.