Hard to Refute

How can anyone doubt that living things, or at least bananas, are intelligently designed after seeing this?

RLC

The Un-Principle

Allahpundit throws down the gauntlet to the Pelosicrats: He asks them, in effect, to please explain precisely what principles guide their policy on foreign interventions. His request was triggered by this astonishing statement by Senator Joseph Biden:

Joseph Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a Democratic presidential candidate, called Wednesday for the use of military force to end the suffering in Darfur.

"I would use American force now," Biden said at a hearing before his committee. "I think it's not only time not to take force off the table. I think it's time to put force on the table and use it."

In advocating use of military force, Biden said senior U.S. military officials in Europe told him that 2,500 U.S. troops could "radically change the situation on the ground now."

"Let's stop the bleeding," Biden said. "I think it's a moral imperative."

Allahpundit wants to know why it's a moral imperative to intervene in Darfur where we have no national interest but not a moral imperative to stay in Iraq even though leaving there too soon could precipitate a humanitarian disaster that would far exceed the one in Darfur.

He also wonders what guides the Dems' decision to refuse to talk to George Bush about funding our troops in Iraq when they're willing to travel all the way to Syria to talk to the murderous tyrant Bashar Assad who supports Islamic terrorism throughout the world. The Dems also refuse to debate on Fox News but they have no qualms about being seen and feted in Damascus, the hub of world terrorism. Exactly what principles are consulted in the making of these decisions?

The Democrats seem totally incoherent about how the U.S. should exercise its power and influence in the world because, I suspect, their prescriptions are not arrived at as a result of the application of any kind of principle at all, except the principle of political expediency. The rule seems to be: Observe what George Bush is doing, condemn it, and urge something different. That's a principle of sorts, I guess, but not one that commends the moral or intellectual gifts of those who govern by it.

RLC

Conclusive Proof

The debate is over. The Darwinians have won. This computer simulation proves it. All those who invested their epistemic lives in Intelligent Design must now slink abjectly onto the dust heap of history.

If you watch the sim be sure to read the comments. My favorite is #7: "...how showing something that was programmed to change proves that things change without programming is beyond me." Me too.

RLC

NorK Defectors

According to Strategy Page high-ranking defections are becoming a real worry in North Korea:

April 8, 2007: The North Korean regime has issued a strong "reminder" to its diplomats, and other personnel stationed abroad, that they are not to have more than one child with them on a foreign posting. This suggests North Korea is worried about possible defections by diplomats, consular officials, business agents, etc., who've got their wives and kids with them in some foreign country. If they can only take one child with them, those that remain home essentially become hostages to their good behavior. The North Korean government has become increasingly alarmed at the number of diplomats defecting and, even worse, those who stick around, but in the pay for American, South Korean and Chinese intelligence agencies.

The response to this order was startling; many of these parents have refused to send children back to North Korea. To old North Korea hands, such defiance to authority is startling. But these North Korea government officials know their country is a basket case, and are willing to risk losing their jobs, rather than send any of their children back to a home country that is, day-by-day, becoming a hellish parody of the communist "workers paradise."

Historians of communism consider North Korea the pinnacle of police state perfection. Josef Stalin would be envious, or maybe proud, because Stalin was one of the founding fathers of North Korea. The degree of state control in North Korea is far in excess of anything ever achieved in the Soviet Union. But this was achieved using a population already disciplined by centuries of efficient feudalism, and several decades of Japanese colonialism. The Japanese were very disciplined, very strict and very brutal.

By comparison, the North Korean communist government was something of a relief. Moreover, the North Korean communists worked the nationalist and cultural angle successfully. Because of the total control of the media, the North Korean communists created an alternate universe for their subjects to live in.

As small numbers of North Koreans managed to escape over the years, and make their way to South Korea, usually via China, it was amazing to see the culture shock. The North Korean refugees were numbed by the degree of difference between the fantasy view of the outside world created by the North Korea communists and the reality.

But in the last decade reality has seeped into the Perfect Police State, changing the attitudes of the guards as well as the inmates. True Believers have been gradually replaced by Practical Pretenders. What's happening now, with North Korean government officials openly defying their government while pretending not to, is the best example of how North Korea culture is evolving. It's weird, it's wretched, and, in a perverse way, wonderful.

Yes but is it enough to cause them to give up their pursuit of nuclear weapons?

RLC