Mugabe's Socialist Paradise

Belmont Club has a vivid look at what is happening in Robert Mugabe's socialist paradise of Zimbabwe. It's a little too long to repost here, but it's a very important read.

Back when Zimbabwe was Rhodesia the Left was all aflutter over the prospect of the white government being replaced by black leadership. This would be good for the country the Left declaimed, and good for all of Africa. In the event, however, it has been, like so many of the Left's nostrums, a nightmare for the people, both white and black, who live there. Indeed, today's Zimbabwe sounds very much like the Cambodia and South Africa of the 1970s.

Don't miss the e-mail from Sister Patricia Walsh.

Telling it Like He Wishes it Was

The first rule of warfare, political or otherwise, is Know your enemy. Howard Dean, Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, simply doesn't. About Republicans he recently said this:

The Republicans are not very friendly to different kinds of people...They're a pretty monolithic party...They all behave the same and they all look the same...It's pretty much a white Christian party.

Set aside that this is from the man who was taken to the woodshed by Al Sharpton in the Democratic primaries for the fact that he had no minorities in his administration as governor of Vermont. Set aside that this is from the head of a party which has no record of having elevated minorities to positions of prominence, nevertheless criticizing a party which has made African Americans and Hispanic Americans the last two secretaries of State and an Attorney General and appointed numerous other minorities to less exalted positions.

Set aside that it is Republicans who are fighting to get Janice Rodgers Brown to the federal appeals court and Democrats who are fighting her nomination.

Set all that aside and ask, what on earth does he mean by suggesting that Republicans are "the white Christian party?" Since he is a man who has said that he hates Republicans and who has never had a kind word to say about the Republican party we may reasonably infer that he meant this as more than a simple statement of fact. He obviously intended it as a slur. So let's ask, is there something wrong with being a party that attracts many people who are both white and Christian, perhaps the majority of voting citizens in the country? What exactly is it that makes this something to be derogated? And are we to infer from Governor Dean's remark that the Democrats are the party of non-white non-Christians?

This is extremely divisive rhetoric that the Chairman is engaging in, but Democrats have been setting one group against another for decades in the politics of this country. The irony is that every chance they get they accuse GWB of being divisive and yet there is nothing they can point to in support of this allegation.

George Bush's "divisiveness" apparently lies in the fact that he takes a stand on policy matters, does what he says he's going to do, and doesn't ask the Democrats for permission. Since Democrats find that sort of behavior in a Republican president immensely impertinent and irritating, and since they consider any president who doesn't agree with them to be polarizing, they naturally see GWB as divisive.

Howard Dean, however, is just telling it like it is.

Case For the Creator

Christianity Today has an interview with Lee Strobel author of The Case For the Creator. Here's an excerpt:

CT: It didn't seem hard to find top quality scientists and researchers who came to that conclusion.

LS: Absolutely. My problem was trying to pare it down to who I thought would be someone who would be able to articulate the evidence powerfully and persuasively and in a way that everybody could get. There's more than 300 scientists with doctorates from major universities who've now signed this statement saying that they are skeptical of the claims of neo-Darwinism.

I quote somebody in the book as saying that one of the fastest growing phenomena is scientists who are doubtful of the claims of Darwinism.

Darwinism is as strongly held as it is in large part because it is an essential prop to atheism. If Darwinism should ever collapse biology and a few other related sciences will be changed, to be sure, but the most significant consequence will be the philosophical reverberations such a collapse would generate throughout the culture.

Anyway, you'll want to read the whole interview. It's a pretty good discussion.

Brain Power

Now will the Left stop insulting Bush's intelligence? Nah:

(June 7) - Sen. John F. Kerry's grade average at Yale University was virtually identical to President Bush's record there, despite repeated portrayals of Kerry as the more intellectual candidate during the 2004 presidential campaign.

Kerry had a cumulative average of 76 and got four Ds his freshman year - in geology, two history courses and political science, The Boston Globe reported Tuesday.

His grades improved with time, and he averaged an 81 his senior year and earned an 89 - his highest grade - in political science as a senior.

In 1999, The New Yorker magazine published a transcript showing Bush had a cumulative grade average of 77 his first three years at Yale, and a similar average under a non-numerical rating system his senior year.

Bush's highest grade at Yale was an 88 in anthropology, history and philosophy. He received one D in his four years, a 69 in astronomy, and improved his grades after his freshman year, the transcript showed.

Liberals oohed and ahhed at John Kerry's superior intellectual gifts during the 2004 campaign, but aside from being more articulate there's not much evidence that Kerry was any brighter nor more motivated as a student than George Bush. What the infatuation with Kerry's vaunted cerebral skills illustrates is nothing more than a fondness for style over substance.