Those who care about the important role of traditional marriage in our society will find these poll results discouraging. Via Yahoo News:

Baby boomers think more like their kids than their parents on love and marriage, a Gallup Poll reports Tuesday.

Thirty-five percent of those ages 40-64 believe marriage is “very important” if a couple have a child together; 58% of adults 65 and older say so. Of those ages 18-39, 30% believe it is “very important.” Overall, 37% of respondents believe a child is a “very important” reason to marry.

….

There was much greater agreement on a question about whether it is “very important” to marry if the couple plan to spend their lives together. Overall, 65% agreed.

For ages 40-64, the response was similar: 66%. Of those ages 18-39, 57% agreed it is “very important” to marry if the couple are committed to each other, compared with 80% of those 65 and older.

We are living in an increasingly narcissistic age. It looks like now, for a solid majority of Americans, marriage is not about something larger than themselves, it’s only about themselves. Marriage in the minds of these folks seems to have become little more than a romantic gesture to prove their commitment to the one (or for some, more than one) they love. If you watch movies and television, this vision of marriage as merely a romantic gesture is universal. There’s nothing wrong of course with love and commitment between adults as a major reason for marriage, but that isn’t all marriage is about. The next generation will not automatically learn what it needs to carry on our nation, they need to be taught these things. When we read results like these, and hear about the ignorance of history among young people today, it looks more and more like no one is teaching them.

UPDATE: The Gallup orgainization, which conducted the poll, offers a somewhat different view of the data:

Relatively few Americans say it is not important to them whether people marry in each of these cases: only 14% say this with respect to couples spending their lives together, and 27% relative to couples having children. But in the latter case, a large segment says marriage is only somewhat important. The discrepancy in the percentage saying marriage is very important in each of the two situations (65% vs. 37%) indicates that to Americans, marriage is primarily a means of strengthening or sealing the bond for a couple, not a contrivance to facilitate child rearing.

So Yahoo News/USA Today only reported the “very important” responses and ignored the “somewhat important” responses. Their reporting was more sensational but less accurate. Combining the “very important” and “somewhat important” results, solid majorities view marriage as important for both establishing commitment and raising children. But it remains true that repondents see the institution of marriage as being more about them than their kids. The results are not comforting, but also not as bad as the USA Today article portrayed them. Another possibility is that respondents view marriage as important in their own lives, but don’t want to appear “judgmental” when talking about what’s good for others.

President Bush Honors Memorial Day at Arlington National Cemetery

Our nation is free because of brave Americans like these, who volunteer to confront our adversaries abroad so we do not have to face them here at home. Our nation mourns the loss of our men and women in uniform; we will honor them by completing the mission for which they gave their lives — by defeating the terrorists, by advancing the cause of liberty, and by laying the foundation of peace for a generation of young Americans. Today we pray that those who lie here have found peace with their Creator, and we resolve that their sacrifice will always be remembered by a grateful nation.

May God Bless the United States of America.

Read the entire thing here.

Memorial Day tributes:
Blackfive
Captain’s Quarters
The Indepundit
Michelle Malkin
Sister Toldjah
Hot Air

But not Google.

We have very little interest in rehashing Hanoi John Kerry’s failed presidential bid, but one paragraph in this fawning NY Times story stuck out in particular:

The Swift boat group insisted that no boats had gone to Cambodia. But Mr. Kerry’s researcher, using Vietnam-era military maps and spot reports from the naval archives showing coordinates for his boat, traced his path from Ha Tien toward Cambodia on a mission that records say was to insert Navy Seals.

You see, some records indicating that his boat went toward Cambodia at some point prove he was in Cambodia at Christmas-time in 1968.

One time, we drove from Los Angeles north towards Sacramento. This proves we were in Oregon in 1968.

More mockery:
Riehl World View
JustOneMinute
Red State
Patterico
Outside the Beltway

No surprise, the authoritarian left wants to use the power of the state to steamroller over the religious views and traditions of the majority of Americans.

Via Yahoo News:

While many religious groups are lobbying against gay marriage, some scholars say they also need to look ahead and ponder the practical problems if such unions are one day widely legalized.

Their take: If gay marriage becomes recognized under law across the country, religious groups could face challenges to customary ways of doing business, even to their finances.

Although 19 states have passed anti-gay marriage amendments, Marc D. Stern, general counsel of the American Jewish Congress and an influential ally of liberals on church-state separation, thinks widespread legalization of same-sex unions is inevitable.

From his perspective, that will cause major problems for religious agencies unless they start a campaign now so their ability to dissent is guaranteed. Already, he notes, Catholic Charities Boston ended a century of adoption services because an anti-discrimination law requires placements with same-sex couples in Massachusetts, the only state where gay marriage is now legal.

Some gay rights advocates agree that conflicts would be inevitable but argue that public interest in ending discrimination should take precedence over claims of religious freedom.

“We are in a zero-sum game in terms of moral values,” says Chai Feldblum of Georgetown University’s Law Center, a veteran gay rights advocate. Government must choose sides.

….

Douglas Kmiec of Pepperdine University finds it inconceivable that courts would extend a ruling on Bob Jones’ “morally repugnant” racial beliefs to religiously principled opposition to gay relationships.

But on the liberal side, the basis for opposing same-sex unions doesn’t matter.

Washington attorney Russell Upton wrote in the American University Law Review that the Boy Scouts “” who ban gay leaders and oppose gay sex “” should lose state tax exemption because “government should not subsidize discrimination.”

And Feldblum says that “without a doubt” that eradicating bias is “a compelling goal” for government.

To her, that trumps a religious foundation for excluding gay couples.

Again, laws discriminate. That’s what laws do. That’s what laws are for. We aren’t under any obligation to treat every possible human behavioral proclivity equally. We are obligated by the U.S. Constitution not to trample on other people’s religious traditions without a compelling state interest. And of course it’s not a “zero sum game.” Religious organizations that wish to serve gay couples can do so; they can do so now. And organizations that do not want to can choose not to. We thought liberals were pro-choice. That apparently only applies to abortion.

Feldblum and her like-minded totalitarians don’t want to eradicate bias, they want to use the power of the state to impose their biases on everyone else. They don’t want to convince their fellow citizens to vote for the policies they favor, they want them imposed undemocratically. And many Americans seem all too willing to, if you’ll pardon the exprssion, just lie down and take it. This is where years of over-lawyering and judicial activism have taken us.

Here is a good refresher on the myths being spread by the left in their efforts to bring the United States to defeat in Iraq:

Revisionist History
Antiwar myths about Iraq, debunked.
by Peter Wehner

Iraqis can participate in three historic elections, pass the most liberal constitution in the Arab world, and form a unity government despite terrorist attacks and provocations. Yet for some critics of the president, these are minor matters. Like swallows to Capistrano, they keep returning to the same allegations–the president misled the country in order to justify the Iraq war; his administration pressured intelligence agencies to bias their judgments; Saddam Hussein turned out to be no threat since he didn’t possess weapons of mass destruction; and helping democracy take root in the Middle East was a postwar rationalization. The problem with these charges is that they are false and can be shown to be so–and yet people continue to believe, and spread, them.

The NY Times has a story today about a group of liberal clergy who are against the idea of protecting the traditional definition of marriage with an amendment to the Constitution.

An interfaith coalition of clergy members and lay leaders announced a petition drive on Monday aimed at blocking a proposed constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage.

But of course the amendment doesn’t “ban same-sex marriage” so much as it protects the traditional definition of marriage from judicial activists.

There’s nothing much noteworthy about the NY Times putting some liberal spin in a news account, or about liberal clergy tosing aside tradition and crystal clear biblical proscriptions.

What happened to catch our eye on Memorandum was a link to Andrew Sullivan’s site. We wondered how Sullivan, who supports redefining marriage and has been doing a lot of complaining lately about Christian involvement in politics – going so far as to implicitly compare American conservative Christians to Islamists – would react to this blatant intrusion of liberal clergy into the political debate.

If you needed more evidence that Andrew Sullivan, with all his inane “Christianist” insults, is just a self serving hypocrite, note here his support of religious intrusion on the issue of marriage by those who agree with his view that marriage ought to be redefined. Sullivan is entirely fine with mixing church and state, as long as the church agrees with him. His epithets are not driven by some principled view that the Constitution requires a separation of peoples’ religious and political views. He simply thinks that those who disagree with his desire to redefine marriage are bigots, and those who agree with him are not. It’s a purely self-serving position.

On another note, in the Times story, Rabbi Craig Axler of Congregation Beth Or in Maple Glen, Pa repeats the canard “It’s the first time we see the Constitution in danger of enshrining discrimination against one party, one class…”

But that’s obviously nonsense. There’s all sorts of “discrimination” in the Constitution.

• Article 1, Section 2: No Person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the Age of twenty five Years, and been seven Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State in which he shall be chosen.
• Article 1, Section 3: No Person shall be a Senator who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty Years, and been nine Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State for which he shall be chosen.
• Article 2, Section 1: No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.
• Amendment 26, Section 1: The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age.

The distinction between a same-sex relationship and an opposite-sex relationship is much more profound than the difference between an 29 year-old who wants to be a senator and a 30 year-old. And of course all laws discriminate for or against some behavior. That’s what laws do.

Here is yet another story about the Democrats, who are always complaining about “the separation of church and state” whenever a conservative refers to religion, trying to come up with a way to fool more religious voters into supporting Democrats. This mostly proves difficult for the party of the secular left to accomplish. But it serves as yet more proof that they don’t object to religion in politics so much as they object to conservatives in politics. Mixing religion and government is fine, as long as it serves to advance left-wing causes.

There are two problems for the Democrats as they attempt to appeal to religious voters. First, as Gary Bauer pointed out in the Post article:

“…I think that when you look at frequent church attenders in America, they tend to be pro-life and support marriage as one man and one woman, and so I think the religious left is going to have a hard time making any significant progress” with those voters…

Second, the Democratic party is the home of secular liberal voters, many of whom are not just non-religious, but hostile to religion. The more Democrats try to appeal to religious voters, the more they’ll alienate a big chunk of their base.

Remember when a bunch of Democrats booed the Boy Scouts carrying the American flag into their convention in 2000? Too much religion talk, and those voters will stay home on election day. And simply trying to slap a thin veneer of religion onto the same old left-wing political goals is not going to win over voters with traditional religious views. So the Democrats are in a bind – if they try to appeal to the majority of Americans, who are religious, they alienate their base. If they remain more secular to keep their base, they have less appeal to the mainstream.

We posted an article on the home page laying this out in detail a few years ago, Our Secularist Democratic Party. It’s still worth a read.

Via Yahoo News:

Mexico and four Central American nations condemned the U.S plan to build hundreds of miles of triple-layered fencing on its southern border, saying it would not stop illegal immigration.

….

“The position of Mexico and the other countries is that walls will not make a difference in terms of the solution to the migration problem,” said Mexican Foreign Secretary Luis Ernesto Derbez.

Well isn’t that nice? Those fine men are just selflessly looking out for the interests of us overburdened U.S. taxpayers. They don’t want us to blow a bunch of our hard earned American dollars on a fence that will do nothing. Other than that, they shouldn’t have any problem with us building one, since they believe it will have no effect.

But of course they do believe it will have an effect, an effect they don’t like. They want to continue policies that allow them to bleed off large numbers of their poor and unskilled citizens and continue receiving the remittances those citizens send back to their countries. Who do they think they’re kidding? We’re not all idiots and U.S. Senators here en El Norte.

Mexican President Vicente Fox also weighed in against the fence:

“Building walls, constructing barriers on the border does not offer an efficient solution in a relationship of friends, neighbors and partners,” Fox said in the border city of Tijuana.

What do you want to bet there’s a nice high wall around Fox’s house?

Also linked at The Mudville Gazette

Via The Corner:

From the Senate, during debate about an English-only amendment :

{16:21:50} (MR. REID) { NOT AN OFFICIAL TRANSCRIPT } DISTINGUISHED FRIEND, THE SENATOR FROM OKLAHOMA, KNOWS THAT. HE’S FLOWN AROUND THE WORLD HIMSELF AS A PILOT. I HAVE AFFECTION FOR MY FRIEND FROM OKLAHOMA, BUT I HAVE THE GREATEST DISAGREEMENT WITH HIM ON THIS AMENDMENT. WHILE THE INTENT MAY NOT BE THERE, I REALLY BELIEVE THIS AMENDMENT IS RACIST.

So either Harry Reid is mentally incompetent and thinks English is a race, or he’s a dishonest, race-baiting demagogue, reflexively playing the race card like so many of his fellow Democrats tend to do. In Reid’s case, we’d say it’s a toss-up.

Update: The Senate rejected Reid’s race-baiting and passed the amendment, 63 to 34.

Others:
Patterico
Outside the Beltway
Memorandum

Via MSNBC:

Lawmaker: Marines killed Iraqis ‘in cold blood’

A Pentagon probe into the death of Iraqi civilians last November in the Iraqi city of Haditha will show that U.S. Marines “killed innocent civilians in cold blood,” a U.S. lawmaker said Wednesday.

….

On Wednesday, Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., said the accounts are true.

….

Murtha, a vocal opponent of the war in Iraq, said at a news conference Wednesday that sources within the military have told him that an internal investigation will show that “there was no firefight, there was no IED (improvised explosive device) that killed these innocent people. Our troops overreacted because of the pressure on them, and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood.”

The blog Irish Pennants summed up the situation as we planned to:

There are two things to keep in mind.

First, if the charges are (mostly) true, this is appalling, and those responsible should be punished.

Second, if the charges are (mostly) true, the incident in Haditha has no bearing whatsoever on whether our military presence in Iraq is justified or not. There were many incidents of murder and rape of civilians by U.S. troops in the European theater in World War II. None of them individually, or all of them collectively, made the fight against the Nazis less necessary, or less noble.

Exactly right. If these charges are true, the actions of one unit on one mission do nothing to discredit the entire operation in Iraq. And if at the end of the investigation it turns out that some serious wrongdoing occurred in Haditha, that will not excuse Murtha’s prejudging the investigation and using it to further his political agenda.

Go read some the top left-wing blogs today. Notice how quick they are to believe the very worst about our troops with a minimum of evidence. Notice how quick they are to tar the entire operation with the (alleged) actions of one single unit. (But they support the troops!)

However the investigation into this alleged incident comes out, it is despicable and dishonorable for Murtha to use the matter to score political points or try to advance his anti-war agenda.

Others:
Outside the Beltway
Michelle Malkin
Captain’s Quarters
Hugh Hewitt
Memeorandum

The good news – Mexicans are learning and adopting the ways of America.

The bad news (via California Conservative) – The part they’re adopting is the hyper-litigious part:

A representative from Mexican President Vicente Fox claims that if the US National Guard troops detain illegal aliens crossing the US-Mexico border, the Fox government will file a lawsuit against the Bush Administration in US federal court.

….

There are some political observers who believe that the American Civil Liberties Union is preparing to assist the Mexican government in such a lawsuit. In fact, the ACLU sent a statement to the Mexican government regarding their stance on immigration enforcement.

One yet unanswered question: Will the lawsuit be filed in English or Español?

But seriously, this helps prove that the Mexican government is not our “partner” in trying to diminish illegal immigration from Mexico.

Also linked at The Mudville Gazette Open Post

Overall a good, reasonable approach to the illegal immigration problem was outlined by the president tonight. We would quibble with a few aspects of it, but most of it was on the mark.

The “guest worker program” is in essence an extension of temporary work visas, which have been used for many years in this country. It’s arguable whether it’s a good idea to grant temporary work visas to larger numbers of unskilled and semi-skilled workers (we tend to lean against it) but it is not some radical sellout of American ideals to simply raise the number of visas granted.

The president did trot out the “we must have comprehensive reform” canard, but he did focus most of the speech on beefing up enforcement of the border. As we’ve said before, we don’t need comprehensive reform. We’d rather see an increase in border enforcement first, and then have the discussion later about expansion of temporary work visas, how to deal with the illegals who have been here for years, etc., perhaps in a couple of years.

Many conservatives are adamant that anything less than deportation equals amnesty, but that is not the case. Amnesty means legalization without penalty. If there is a requrement to pay a substantial fine and back taxes, that is not amnesty. At the very least this should be a point on which reasonable people can differ.

Finally, the only thing that really matters is concrete action that increases border security and substantially diminishes the flow of illegal aliens across the border. The president spoke the right words, now those words must be followed up by real actions and real results.

Others:
Hot Air has the video highlight reel (or lowlight reel, as opinions vary)
The Washington Post has the transcript and some Mexican reaction