Immigration Vote Perilous for Dems

No Left Turns' William Voegeli explains why he thinks House Democrats will not support the immigration bill which the Senate recently allowed to pass into a coma. It will not surprise you that politics, Voegli thinks, is the chief motivation:

If Democrats really like this [immigration] bill, Nancy Pelosi and Rahm Emanuel could pass it in the House on a party-line vote without a single Republican. (There are no cloture votes in the lower chamber.) Their reluctance to do so says something about the politics of immigration.

There are 232 Democrats and 203 Republicans in the House. Republicans need a net gain of 15 seats in the 2008 elections to regain a majority. As Michael Tomasky has pointed out, 62 Democrats represent districts that gave majorities to Bush against Kerry in 2004, while only 8 Republicans represent districts that Kerry won. Many of those 62 Democrats are freshman in districts that have been colored red on the electoral map for a long time.

Emanuel knows, in other words, that many of these Democrats are going to be vulnerable if they vote for McCain-Kennedy and then have to explain their vote next year in a campaign against a secure-the-border-first Republican challenger. Every Republican vote for McCain-Kennedy in the House will let one more vulnerable Democrat off the hook. They can vote against the bill, mollify their conservative constituents, and blame it all on Pres. Bush and Republicans. The Democrats get to have the bill they want, with all the political benefits and none of the political dangers it entails.

House Republicans who enjoy being in the minority have clear reasons to go along with this scheme, as do those who find the policy arguments in favor of the Grand Compromise compelling, or those who lie awake at night worrying about the Bush domestic legacy. If there are 40 such Republicans, then a revived Senate bill could pass the House. If, however, the Stupid Party is not quite stupid enough to sign onto this suicide pact, then Pelosi and Emanuel will either have to gamble their majority on enacting immigration reform with Democratic votes only, or shelve the whole question.

Wanna bet they'll find an excuse to shelve the whole thing?

RLC

The Quantum and Consciousness

Denyse O'Leary links us to this article on the quantum and this one on the intellectual inadequacy of materialism.

RLC

Cheap Labor

A local talk show host read this on air the other day. He claimed that it was written by a Californian of Hispanic ancestry, but I could find no corroboration of that. It doesn't matter, though, because the argument stands on its own merits. I've edited it slightly:

As you listen to the news about the student protests over illegal immigration, there are some things that you should be aware of.

I am in charge of the English-as-a-second-language department at a large southern California high school which is designated a Title I school, meaning that its students average lower socio-economic and income levels. Most of the schools you are hearing about, South Gate High, Bell Gardens, Huntington Park, etc., where these students are protesting, are also Title I schools.

Title I schools are on the free breakfast and free lunch program. When I say free breakfast, I'm not talking a glass of milk and roll, but a full breakfast and cereal bar with fruits and juices that would make a Marriott proud. The waste of this food is monumental, with trays and trays of it being dumped in the trash uneaten.

I estimate that well over 50% of these students are obese or at least moderately overweight. About 75% or more have cell phones. The school also provides day-care centers for the unwed teenage pregnant girls (some as young as 13) so they can attend class without the inconvenience of having to arrange for babysitters or having family watch their kids.

I was ordered to spend $700,000 on my department or risk losing funding for the upcoming year even though there was little need for anything; my budget was already substantial. I ended up buying new computers for the computer learning center, half of which, one month later, have been carved with graffiti by the appreciative students who obviously feel humbled and grateful to have a free education in America.

I have had to intervene several times for young and substitute teachers whose classes consist of many illegal immigrant students here in the country less then 3 months who raised so much hell with the female teachers, calling them "putas" (whores) and throwing things that the teachers were in tears.

Free medical, free education, free food, day care, etc. Is it any wonder they feel entitled to not only be in this country but to demand rights, privileges and entitlements?

To those who want to point out how much these illegal immigrants contribute to our society because they like their gardener and housekeeper, and they like to pay less for tomatoes: spend some time in the real world of illegal immigration and see the true costs.

Higher insurance, medical facilities closing, higher medical costs, more crime, lower standards of education in our schools, overcrowding, new diseases, etc. For me, I'll pay more for tomatoes.

We need to wake up. The guest worker program will be a disaster because we won't have the guts to enforce it.

Does anyone in their right mind really think [illegals] will voluntarily leave and return?

There are many hardworking Hispanic/American citizens that contribute to our country, and many that I consider my true friends. We should encourage and accept those Hispanics who have done it the right and legal way.

It does, however, have everything to do with culture: A third-world culture that does not value education, that accepts children getting pregnant and dropping out of school by 15, and that refuses to assimilate, and an American culture that has become so weak and worried about "politically correctness" that we don't have the will to do anything about it.

Cheap labor?

Isn't that what the whole immigration issue is about?

� Business doesn't want to pay a decent wage.

� Consumers don't want expensive produce.

� Government will tell you Americans don't want the jobs.

But the bottom line is cheap labor. The phrase "cheap labor" is a myth, a farce, and a lie. There is no such thing as "cheap labor".

Take, for example, an illegal alien with a wife and five children. He takes a job for $5.00 or $6.00/hour. At that wage, with six dependents, he pays no income tax, yet at the end of the year, if he files an Income Tax Return, he gets an "earned income credit" of up to $3,200 free.

� He qualifies for Section 8 housing and subsidized rent.

� He qualifies for food stamps.

� He qualifies for free (no deductible, no co-pay) health care.

� His children get free breakfasts and lunches at school.

� He requires bilingual teachers and books.

� He qualifies for relief from high energy bills.

� If they are, or become, aged, blind or disabled, they qualify for SSI.

� Once qualified for SSI, they can qualify for Medicare. All of this is at (our) taxpayer's expense.

� He doesn't worry about car insurance, life insurance, or homeowners insurance.

� Taxpayers provide Spanish language signs, bulletins and printed material.

� He and his family receive the equivalent of $20.00 to $30.00/hour in benefits.

� Working Americans are lucky to have $5.00 or $6.00/hour left after paying their bills.

� The American taxpayers also pay for increased crime, graffiti and trash clean-up.

Cheap labor?

Whew. And people are called racist and xenophobic for wanting to do what's necessary to put an end to this?

RLC

$22.5 Million to Catholic Education - From Atheist

How bad must the public school system be if an atheist is willing to bequeath $22.5 million so that kids can afford to attend Catholic schools? Here's the story:

Philanthropist and retired hedge-fund manager Robert W. Wilson said he is giving $22.5 million to the Archdiocese of New York to fund a scholarship program for needy inner-city students attending Roman Catholic schools.

Wilson, 80, said in a phone interview today that although he is an atheist, he has no problem donating money to a fund linked to Catholic schools.

``Let's face it, without the Roman Catholic Church, there would be no Western civilization,'' Wilson said. ``Shunning religious organizations would be abhorrent. Keep in mind, I'm helping to pay tuition. The money isn't going directly to the schools.''

My opinion is that the future of public schools in America is bleak. As Denyse O'Leary says, public schools used to be the protestant alternative to Catholic schools and they inculcated protestant virtues and discipline into students. In the last fifty years, however, they have almost completely abandoned this role and in many places they are little more than holding-pens. There's very little discipline, very little, if any, moral instruction, and precious little education taking place, at least among the lower academic half of the school population.

Unless the trajectory of the public schools is miraculously reversed parents in the years ahead will increasingly turn to private schools for their children's education, leaving public schools to devolve into day care for the poor and dysfunctional.

If liberals think there's an unjust disparity between rich and poor today, wait until they see what it'll be like after a couple of generations from now. In twenty to forty years almost the only people who will be getting an education will be the children of families who have the means to send them to private schools, and the irony will be that since almost all the problems besetting public schools are due to liberal innovation and policies, beginning in the late sixties, the radical divide between socio-economic classes will be one of their own making.

RLC

Reviewing the Review

The reviews of Michael Behe's new book The Edge of Evolution are starting to appear, and some of those coming from the Darwinians are vitriolic. This is not unexpected, of course, since Darwinists are often people of the ideological left, and the left can't seem to engage people in intellectual debate without taking every opportunity to demean, degrade, and insult.

A good example of this polemical slash and burn tactic is a review by computer scientist Mark Chu-Carroll.

Despite his considerable intellectual gifts Mr. Chu-Carroll has the emotional maturity of a fifth grader, and he's not shy about proving it. Here's his concluding paragraph:

[Behe] seems to be incapable of actually really thinking about an argument in any way deeper than asking "Does this agree with my conclusion?"; and even then, he doesn't seem capable of recognizing when an argument doesn't support his conclusion. It's really appalling. Frankly, I'm really shocked that this guy ever managed to get tenure anywhere - judging by his writing, he's not particularly bright; he's a remarkably disorganized and muddled thinker; and he's incapable of comprehending or responding to arguments made by other researchers.

This is typical of his style throughout the review, but the substance of his critique also leaves us wondering how carefully he read the book. He takes Behe to task, for instance, for stating that "there is strong evidence that random mutation is extremely limited" in what it can accomplish. Chu-Carroll says:

What I found astonishing here is that he asserts his conclusions in this paragraph as settled fact, without even attempting to cite any evidence. It's typical, but pathetic...But this incredible statement: that "there is strong evidence that random mutation is extremely limited", he doesn't even attempt to support.

But the entire book is given to providing the evidence for this claim, and remarkably enough, after having excoriated Behe for not citing the evidence, Chu-Carroll acknowledges that very fact:

The rest of the book focuses an [sic] this alleged problem: that random mutation is somehow constrained, and can't produce the necessary changes to explain the diversity of life.

It's not clear that Chu-Carroll has even read himself, let alone Behe.

Anyway, being a mathematician, Chu-Carroll chooses to focus the bulk of his criticism on Behe's use of fitness landscapes in chapter three of The Edge. I have no expertise in such matters and don't know whether Chu-Carroll is being fair to him or not, but the previous passage doesn't inspire confidence that he is. Nor do I really know how crucial the landscape models are to Behe's overall argument, but Chu-Carroll evidently thinks that if he's mistaken about this the whole Edge argument falls apart. I'm not so sure, but I'll leave it to others to do the math.

Meanwhile, one of my favorite passages in Chu-Carroll's critique was one in which he blasts Behe for resorting to the huge improbabilities of mutations causing increasing and permanent fitness:

What's the favorite b******t mathematical argument of creationist a******s worldwide? Why big numbers, of course!

This is fun because it's a game two can play: What is the favorite [substitute your own pejorative here]reply of naturalists worldwide to the argument from cosmic fine-tuning? Why it's big numbers, of course! There must be a near infinite number of universes, we're told, which would mean that almost every possible universe would exist and ours would not then be unexpected no matter that it is so astonishingly unlikely.

And what is the Darwinian answer to critics like Behe who say that random mutation simply could not do the job of producing all the variety and complexity of life we see? Why big numbers, of course! Given billions of years and given uncountable trillions of mutations evolution from molecules to man is inevitable.

I wonder what epithets Chu-Carroll applies to people who employ big numbers in the service of naturalistic materialism. He probably calls them deep-thinkers.

The particular big number that has Chu-Carroll's adolescent juices flowing is Behe's calculation that the chances of mutations arising that would enable two proteins to bind together is 10 to the 20th power. Chu-Carroll thinks this is too high, but doesn't give us much of a reason for rejecting it. He then grants it for the sake of argument:

What's particularly astonishing about this is that even this rotten argument - taking an artifically inflated probability number based on the peculiarities of the biochemistry of one specific organism, and applying it to a completely different organism (waving hands furiously to try to distract from the fact that it's just nonsensical to cross that way), contains its own refutation. Yes, perhaps the odds of this happening are similar to the odds of winning at powerball. But the fact is someone wins the powerball lottery. He wants to pretend that it's unlikely by pointing at you specifically, and saying that it's like you winning the lottery. But in fact, the power of evolution is that it doesn't just try one thing. It's not a process of one mutation, wait and see if it works out and fixes in the population; it's not a process with a predetermined destination. It's a process of countless mutations happening at the some time - some propagate, some don't - and if any of them work, then they take over. The real chance of evolution producing something are like the chances of someone winning the lottery. The chances of them producing humanity taken a priori are like the chances of you winning the lottery; but since humanity was not a predestined result, the chances of the evolutionary sweepstakes producing something is like the chances of someone winning the lottery - i.e., virtually inevitable.

It's not exactly clear to me what Chu-Carroll is trying to say here, but I take him to be asserting that Behe is wrong because even though a double mutation might be highly improbable, the fact is that something will result from whatever mutations do occur.

Well, yes, but that hardly refutes Behe's point which is that beneficial double mutations are at the edge of what evolution can accomplish. The way to refute that claim is not by insisting that mutations produce genetic changes, it's by showing that Behe's figure of 10(20th) is unreasonable and this Chu-Carroll fails to do.

He continues:

Finally, I said that not just is Behe's book bad science and bad math, but it's bad theology. Behe claims to believe in an all-knowing, all-powerful God. But at the same time, his entire book is based on the argument that God created life on earth, and got it all going using an evolutionary process. But then, according to Behe, over and over again, his creation was woefully inadequate of facing [sic] the actual challenges that it would face, and so his all-powerful creator needs to constantly intervene, and tweak things in order to make them work. His God is a buffoon - a bumbling fool who isn't capable of creating worlds in a way that works. Reading his book, I'm actually shocked that he's a religious person: he's clearly never bothered to think through his beliefs, and what his theories say about them. Again and again, reading the book, I kept finding myself saying two things: "How can this guy call himself a scientist, when he argues so sloppily?", and "How can this guy be religious when he apparently believes that his creator isn't capable of getting anything right?" Following Behe's argument, it seems like it should be impossible for Behe's god to have done the things Behe claims that he did, because they're too hard for such a bumbler.

Aside from the silly, childish hubris of calling a being which could create a finely-tuned universe and the incredibly complex machinery of a cell "a bumbler," this criticism is completely unfair to Behe. Behe doesn't say that the Designer constantly intervenes. He allows for the possiblity that the Designer set the conditions necessary for evolution to proceed in the general direction it has at the outset, and that by bringing the universe into being He set the whole process going. In other words, Behe holds that some aspects of evolution could unfold along certain pre-selected paths from the initial conditions that the Designer established, but it is obvious to Behe that these conditions, and the phenomena they produce, would not exist were it not for the Designer's purposeful pre-planning.

Whatever its other merits and deficiencies might be, Behe's book will accomplish at least two things: It will expose as a canard the Darwinians' claim that one can believe in God and also in evolution. Behe believes in evolution. He believes that man evolved from primates, that the world is 4.5 billion years old, and all the rest. He also believes that natural selection plays a role in evolution. The only thing he rejects is that the emergence of living things and the appearance of higher life forms is the result of random, mechanistic chance. He believes the mutations that produced genetic variation were somehow intelligently planned. For this deviation from materialist orthodoxy he is flayed by emotionally stunted basket-cases like Chu-Carroll.

The second thing his book will surely accomplish is lay to rest the charge that Intelligent Design is the same thing as creationism. No creationist will agree with much of anything Behe believes except his claim that there is a limit to evolution and that life and the cosmos are intentionally designed.

RLC

Why We Can't Leave

Peter Rodman and William Shawcross make part of the same argument in the New York Times that we have been trying to make here at Viewpoint as to why we simply cannot do as some Democrats insist and leave Iraq. They write:

As in Indochina more than 30 years ago, millions of Iraqis today see the United States helping them defeat their murderous opponents as the only hope for their country. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have committed themselves to working with us and with their democratically elected government to enable their country to rejoin the world as a peaceful, moderate state that is a partner to its neighbors instead of a threat. If we accept defeat, these Iraqis will be at terrible risk. Thousands upon thousands of them will flee, as so many Vietnamese did after 1975.

The new strategy of the coalition and the Iraqis, ably directed by Gen. David Petraeus, offers the best prospect of reversing the direction of events - provided that we show staying power. Osama bin Laden said, a few months after 9/11, that "when people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature they will like the strong horse." The United States, in his mind, is the weak horse. American defeat in Iraq would embolden the extremists in the Muslim world, demoralize and perhaps destabilize many moderate friendly governments, and accelerate the radicalization of every conflict in the Middle East.

Our conduct in Iraq is a crucial test of our credibility, especially with regard to the looming threat from revolutionary Iran. Our Arab and Israeli friends view Iraq in that wider context. They worry about our domestic debate, which had such a devastating impact on the outcome of the Vietnam War, and they want reassurance.

When government officials argued that American credibility was at stake in Indochina, critics ridiculed the notion. But when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, he and his colleagues invoked Vietnam as a reason not to take American warnings seriously. The United States cannot be strong against Iran - or anywhere - if we accept defeat in Iraq.

Of course, there are many more terrible consequences to pulling out than just those these writers mention in this column. You can read our thoughts on what would likely ensue from premature pullouthere.

RLC

Teddy on Immigration

No, not Teddy Kennedy - the one on Mount Rushmore:

"In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person's becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American...There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag... We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language... and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people."

Theodore Roosevelt 1907

That pretty much sums it up, I think.

RLC

Europe's Fight Against Christianity

Paul Belien has a very insightful column in The Washington Times titled Europe's Culture War. Here are the first few graphs:

Europe is in the middle of a three-way culture war, between the defenders of traditional Judeo-Christian morality, the proponents of secular hedonism and the forces of Islamic Jihadism. In Western Europe, the fight between Christians and secularists is all but over. The secularists have won. Now, the religious vacuum left by the demise of Christianity is being filled by the Muslims. Since one cannot fight something with nothing, the European secularists are no match for Islam.

Meanwhile, the dark forces of secularism, such as the European Union (EU), are waging war in Central and Eastern Europe, where they target countries such as Poland, Slovakia and the Baltic states.

On April 25, the European Parliament (EP), the EU's legislature, adopted a resolution condemning "homophobia." With 325 votes against 124 and 150 abstentions, the EP warned Poland that it will face sanctions if it adopts a law barring the promotion of homosexuality in schools. Churches, too, were reprimanded for "fermenting hatred and violence [against homosexuals]." Poland's prime minister, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, commented on the resolution: "Nobody is limiting gay rights in Poland. However, if we're talking about not having homosexual propaganda in Polish schools... such propaganda should not be in schools." Cardinal Angelo Scola of Venice retorted: "There is no homophobia in the Catholic Church and it is time that all this [recrimination of Christians in the European Parliament] ended."

It is not likely to end. The fight against "intolerance" -- i.e. adherence to traditional Christian morality -- is intensifying. On May 3, the European Court of Human Rights found Polish President Lech Kaczynski guilty of violating human rights because he banned a "gay pride" parade in Warsaw in 2005. Last March, the same court ordered Poland to compensate a woman who was denied an abortion. Last year, Poland was denounced by the Council of Europe because it prohibited the distribution in schools of a leaflet about homosexuality.

How long will it be before it is illegal in Europe to hold the moral beliefs that almost every Christian has held for the last two thousand years? How long will it be before the same oppression emigrates to our shores?

RLC

Lower Than Whale Dung

The MSM is constantly reminding us that the President's job approval hovers around 34 %, but what they don't tells us is that Bush is standing on Mt. Everest compared to the highest ranking Democrat in the Senate, Harry Reid. Senator Reid has a favorability rating of only 19%. That's almost as low as one can go. Scooter Libby is also at 19% and Paris Hilton is only a few points lower at 12%. By comparison, Vice-President Dick Cheney has a favorability rating of 38%.

You'd never know this if you only get your news from network television or most print media.

RLC

Miller's Bile

Dennis Miller can sometimes be funny, but this screed against Senator Harry Reid is neither amusing nor entertaining. It is, in fact, tasteless and repugnant. I have no fondness for Reid whom I consider to be a great liability to the Senate and the nation, but Miller's brand of political discourse has no place in a civil society, nor should conservatives, of all people, be touting his "smackdown" of Reid. His job is to be funny, and he fails, at least in this instance, because hatred and viciousness is never funny to emotionally and morally mature people which conservatives should aspire to be. If this is Miller's idea of political humor he needs to get retrained in some other line of work.

RLC

Topoisomerases, etc.

Bear in mind that the conventional wisdom is that blind, natural, purposeless forces are all that's necessary to explain how this system came to exist. Darwinians have been selling us the biological equivalent of swampland real estate for over a hundred years and we keep buying it. At some point, though, we need to stop and ask exactly what it is they're asking us to believe.

In this case, one of perhaps thousands which could be cited, they're asking us to accept that unguided random chance could have solved the problem of DNA supercoiling very early on in evolutionary history. In other words, systems like this, of which there are hundreds if not thousands in living cells, arose through pure accident, we're told. Uh huh. And the gullible among us say it must be so for nop weightier reason than that Richard Dawkins says it is.

For another astonishing glimpse at the complexity of cellular micro-structure check out this video simulation of protein translation and remember that what is being shown is only a fraction of the complexity of the system that works continuosly in every cell in every living thing in the world.

It's literally breathtaking.

RLC

Hobgoblin of Little Minds

Tony Blankley highlights the inconsistency of the arguments made by those who oppose the war in Iraq and who favor the late and unlamented immigration reform bill. After a zinger or two aimed at the puzzling inconsistencies of John Edwards and Al Gore, Blankley asks us to:

Consider the current arguments about the immigration bill. For oh so long, the supporters of the bill have been making two points: 1) It is impossible for the U.S. government to actually identify and round up all the illegals in the country; and, 2) a fence on the border is bound to be ineffective as well as being immoral. Indeed opponents of the fence have idiotically compared it to the Berlin Wall - although one protects a free country from illegal intrusion, while the other kept enslaved people from escaping their slavery.

Now, suddenly, these same people claim that the same previously nitwit bureaucracy will not only be able to find all 12 million (or 20 million) illegals, but will be able to flawlessly run background checks, positively identify each individual, as well as monitor all American businesses to make sure no new illegals are being hired and the newly legal are in perfect compliance with their limited status. Oh, yes, and they also will be able to test all 12 million to assure us they can all speak the Queen's English at least as well as does William F. Buckley Jr.

Also, suddenly, they have lost all their moral outrage about the fence: "You want a morally offensive fence, no problem, you got a fence. What, me worry about moral consistency?"

Of course, it has to be pointed out that those of us who have called for strict enforcement of existing law are now putting forward the argument that the bureaucracy that we used to think could protect the country if only the federal government would let them do their job now insist that there is no way our federal bureaucrats could possibly enforce the proposed new law.

Regarding the fence, the supporters of the new immigration law, are, with the exception of the president and Sen. McCain, mostly people who oppose the Surge in Iraq. Yet, while they require that the Iraqi surge have specific performance measures to justify continued funding (e.g., perfectly functioning Iraqi government, no more violence, etc.), they are perfectly happy to measure the success of the new proposed Mexican border fence by inputs - rather than results.

That is, once the 5,000 new border agents and the new fences are in place, they will deem the border secure, thus triggering the Great Amnesty of 2007-8. They would hardly apply that logic to Iraq. If they did, they would have to deem Iraq a success as soon as the five new surge battalions are equipped and deployed to Iraq. (Obviously, they don't care whether the border fence works or not - they just want the amnesty - and the voters that follow. And they don't want success in Iraq, so they will tightly define success with performance criteria that would measure WWII an utter failure.)

Emerson famously noted, Blankley reminds us, that being consistent can be taken too far, and can become a "hobgoblin" for small-minded people - an excuse for ceasing to think. If so, however, utter inconsistency and special pleading are frequently the hobgoblins and calling cards of demagogues more interested in political victory than in the welfare of the nation.

RLC

Albania Loves Bush

Bush is despised by the pampered sophisticated elites in the West, but he is adored by people who have recently emerged from the darkness of oppression, or are still toiling in its grip. We might ask why that is. What do people who have known soul-grinding tyranny see in George Bush what left-wing secular elites don't?

No doubt part of the Albanians' enthusiasm for Bush is explained by the fact that he represents the United States, which, under Bill Clinton, acted to relieve the horrible nightmare that ethnic Albanians were experiencing under the Serbs in Kosovo. The Albanian gratitude to the U.S. is expressing itself in declarations of love for its President. Surely that's part of it.

But in addition perhaps another part is that those who have been ground down by the boot of the tyrant see in George Bush someone who will actually do something about their misery other than just talk about it. No world leader in history has liberated more people from oppression than has George Bush - 50 million in Afghanistan and Iraq - and, while most of the world seems indifferent to the misery of those who suffer under dictators of various sorts or content themselves with passing meaningless resolutions, Bush gives hope to the shackled masses throughout the globe that they may be next.

Bush symbolizes hope to a greater extent than any European or Middle Eastern leader, and people who give others a reasonable hope exert a powerful pull upon their affections.

RLC

Richard Rorty (1931-2007)

Richard Rorty, Stanford University philosopher and professor of comparative literature, and the man who once declared that "Truth is whatever your peers will let you get away with saying," is dead at age 75 of pancreatic cancer.

Rorty was also known for his idea of "liberal irony," the term he used to describe our attempt to justify our belief in human rights which, as an atheist, Rorty recognized could not be justified. Nevertheless, he suggested that liberal institutions were superior to other forms of government because they reduce cruelty in the world, even though he had no basis for saying that cruelty ought to be reduced.

Rorty was a good example of what happens to a man's philosophy when he starts from the assumption of atheism and seeks to draw consistent conclusions from its implications.

RLC

Materialism and Iron Spikes

Michael Egnor employs the strange case of Phineas Gage to argue that materialism is self-refuting. He observes, for example, that:

Brain matter cannot be the complete cause for ideas because matter and ideas share no properties. Cause and effect can't be 'linked' between substances that have no properties in common.

I believe that materialism is incapable of providing an adequate explanation for the mind. Clearly ideas can influence the movement of matter (via the brain), and vice-versa, but materialism alone is inadequate to explain the link. The link between the mind and the brain must involve agency that has such non-material properties as purpose and judgment, and, as such, an adequate explanation for the mind must necessarily be open to immaterial causes.

Egnor makes an interesting argument for what philosophers call substance dualism, the belief that reality is comprised of two disparate essences, mind and matter. Materialists, of course, believe that matter is all there is. His essay can be read at the link.

RLC

Yielding to the Gentleman

In Alabama they still settle disputes in the state legislature with, uh, body language. When one senator took offense to the words of a colleague a third observed that, "It's certainly a black eye on the Legislature and the Senate in particular."

Yes, and to one of the senators most particularly, it appears.

You can watch the video here.

RLC

Killed Bill

John Hawkins of Right Wing News has a post based on information he was given by a congressional aide on why the Immigration Reform Bill was killed. He says in his piece that:

I asked my source if his boss has been hearing from his constituents on this bill and what the for and against ratio was. He said that they have received thousands and thousands of calls and the ratio was something like 95%-98% against the bill.

I also asked my source why he thought so many Republicans had been supporting such an incredibly unpopular bill. He gave three reasons:

First off, there was what he referred to as the "Rovian School of thought," which says that passing this bill would capture the Hispanic vote for the GOP for decades to come.

Next up, there's the "Chamber of Commerce" vote. He says these Republicans were heavily influenced by business groups that want cheap labor no matter what the cost is for the rest of the country.

Then there was the last group, the smallest group in his opinion, who were willing to sign onto a terrible bill just so they could say they were part of a big reform that had bipartisan support.

Is there a noble reason in there anywhere? Makes one proud to be a Republican, doesn't it?

RLC

The Witch is Dead

The immigration reform bill that would have, in effect, provided amnesty to illegal aliens, cost American taxpayers literally trillions of dollars, and likely done next to nothing to stop the flow of illegals, is dead for now.

Senate majority leader Harry Reid tried to end debate last night and bring the bill to a vote, but his attempt to call cloture failed and the bill has been withdrawn from the floor.

Michelle Malkin has the details, including the roll call on the vote.

RLC

Horrific Beauty

We would not be surprised to learn that this is Mahmoud Amadinejad's favorite video. Indeed, it wouldn't be surprising to learn that he had it made. Who else would want to depict nuclear explosions in such beautiful scenes?

We might visualize him rubbing his hands together in rapturous glee as he watches and imagines American or Israeli cities under those mushroom clouds.

RLC

Senator Cheney?

Republican senator Craig Thomas died Monday night after a lengthy battle with leukemia. There's now talk around Washington that his replacement may be Lynne Cheney, wife of Vice-President Dick Cheney.

Apparently, Wyoming law prohibits the governor, who is a Democrat, from appointing someone from the opposite party of the man being replaced, so he has to appoint a Republican.

Ms Cheney would be an excellent choice, and we hope she is indeed selected.

RLC

Eurabia

The most popular name given to baby boys in England this year? Mohammed.

RLC

Betraying the Public Trust

It's hard to believe but a majority of the United States senators voted today to reject an amendment to the immigration reform bill now before Congress that would require that all current immigration laws, laws passed by these same senators, be enforced. The amendment failed 54-42. Most of those voting in favor of it were Republicans (11 Democrats), but here's the shocker: 16 Republicans joined 38 Democrats in voting against the call to enforce our laws protecting our border, and one, John McCain didn't vote.

Michelle Malkin has the vote tally and the provisions of the amendment here. What message are we sending by refusing to affirm and enforce our own laws? These people, Democrats and Republicans alike, really do have to go. They're betraying the public trust. I can see no other way to view this vote.

RLC

Women Drivers

For the next thing to time travel try this video. Watch it and you'll think you're back in 1920s America or maybe on a different planet altogether as a Lebanese man and woman debate whether Muslim women should be allowed to drive automobiles in Lebanon.

No wonder Muslims despise Western culture.

Be sure to listen to the man who speaks at the end.

RLC

ISU Hypocrisy

An acquaintance of mine at Messiah College, a historian of science by the name of Ted Davis, offers his opinion of Guillermo Gonzalez's ordeal at Iowa State. Davis is a theistic evolutionist who has little sympathy for Intelligent Design, but he's rightly outraged at the treatment Gonzalez has received at the hands of the Iowa State inquisition.

Read the letter he sent to ISU president Geoffrey here.

RLC

Hitchens vs. Hitchens

Well known anti-theist Christopher Hitchens has written a book titled God Is Not Great and now his brother Peter, a Christian, critiques the work. Given the relationship between the two men the review is interesting, made moreso because Peter considers the book deeply flawed.

One of the ironies of their fraternal relationship is that Christopher is in favor of the war in Iraq and opposed to belief in God. Peter is opposed to the war in Iraq and is devout. So there's something to like about both of them.

Read Peter's review at the link.

RLC

Survival Strategy

In this passionate editorial Caroline Glick outlines what she sees as a major cause of European self-destruction - multiculturalism. She has a good point, but I suspect there's more to the decline of Europe than just a commitment to "cultural diversity," as fatuous and insidious as that often turns out to be.

I think there is also a collective madness that seizes effete societies which have abandoned a belief in anything transcendent, and Europe is a confirming instance of that belief. How else to explain what Glick says here:

Wednesday's decision by Britain's University and College Union to call for a boycott of Israeli universities and colleges was not only hypocritical. It was suicidal. It is not simply that the British prefer to boycott Israeli universities than say, Palestinian, Egyptian, Syrian, Iranian, Saudi and Jordanian universities where students are indoctrinated to seek the annihilation of the Jewish people and the subjugation of Christianity through the destruction of Western civilization.

It is not merely that they ignored the poor, brave Iranian students who just three weeks ago were brutally attacked by regime forces as they sought to hold elections for their pro-democracy campus organizations.

By calling for a boycott of Israeli universities, Britain's academic establishment is turning its back not only on Israel, but on Britain. When Britain's professoriate rejects Israel's right to exist as a Jewish, democratic nation-state and glorifies Palestinian society which supports global jihad and the destruction of Western civilization, it is rejecting the British state.

Only those who are suffering some sort of psychological impairment which causes them to experience moral inversion can call for a boycott of Israeli academics while feting those from Muslim nations. I can come up with no other explanation.

Europe reminds me of a certain kind of schoolboy, a weakling himself, who always takes the side of the schoolyard bully in hopes of ingratiating himself to the tough so that he won't turn on him. This child is willing to sacrifice anyone else to the bully's abuse, and to abase himself in the process, but it's worth it to him if it avoids a beating. That's modern Europe, or at least much of the elite class in Europe.

They know they have nothing to fear from Israel but plenty to fear from the Palestinians and their allies, so they perversely play the role of protector and advocate of those who want to destroy them in hopes that the destroyers will change their mind and find the quavering Euros useful against Israel. It's cowardly and unprincipled but that's modern Europe.

RLC

Cut and Run

According to The Drudge Report there were 16,185 murders in the U.S. last year, 400 of them in Philadelphia alone. Since the onset of the Iraq war in 2003 there have been about 3500 Americans killed.

In absolute terms it seems safer to be an American in Iraq than to be a resident of our cities. Perhaps John Murtha will soon call for Americans to redeploy from the U.S. to Okinawa.

RLC

They're Coming For Us

Andrew McCarthy has a must-read piece up at NRO. Here's an excerpt:

We now learn that for radical Islamists, lovers of death, the heart is the jihad's most coveted prize. Tear it out, and you get to kill not once but twice. So says 63-year-old ringleader, Russell Defreitas, whose nom de guerre is, of course, Mohammed.

"Any time you hit Kennedy, it is the most hurtful thing to do to the United States. To hit John F. Kennedy, wow!... They love John F. Kennedy like he's the man.... If you hit that, this whole country will be in mourning. It's like you can kill the man twice."

Defreitas, er, Mohammed is a naturalized United States citizen. He is another splash in that gorgeous mosaic of American Islam - the one over whose purportedly seamless assimilation the mainstream media was cooing just a few days ago, putting smiley-face spin on an alarming Rasmussen poll.

Alas, Defreitas/Mohammed turns out to be the part of the story the press dutifully buried in paragraph 19: He is that nettlesome one of every four American Muslim males who thinks mass-homicide strikes against civilians, like the one he and his cell were scheming, are a perfectly sensible way to settle grievances.

Does this mean he never really assimilated during his long journey from Guyana to treason against the adopted country he so abhors? Not hardly. For that one in four Muslim males turns out to be in pretty much the same place as one of every two members of the United States Congress - already tacking toward two of every three as we look ahead to September. All are content to let Islamist savagery carry the day.

Militant Islam, you see, is mustered in Iraq, where al Qaeda - the inspiration for Defreitas and his cohorts - has called America out. Like Defreitas & Co., Osama bin Laden and his ranks see themselves in a world war between the United States and a vision of Islam shared by tens of millions. (Think one-in-four, writ large). Iraq, they have decided, is their frontline, though very far from their only line. Everywhere, America is their target. Everywhere, terror - the indiscriminate slaughter of innocent men, women, and children - is their weapon of choice.

For the new Democratic Congress and its growing wake of jittery Republicans, that turns out to be a choice worth living with. Oh yes, they'll sputter about how barbaric and unsavory it all is. But, like those one in four Muslim males, they're prepared to let terror rule the day. That's the plan: Al Qaeda blows up things and people; we leave, grumbling all the way home about civil wars and intractable hatreds between the Religion of Peace's murderous sects; and al Qaeda triumphs ... with bin Laden reminding his acolytes: See, I told you, they're a paper tiger - make it bloody for them and we win.

Naturally, we'll tell ourselves they're not winning at all. They want Iraq? Let 'em have it. Just like - when they killed enough of us - we let 'em have Lebanon in 1983 and Somalia in 1993. Who, after all, needs these hellholes?

Except ... militant Islam doesn't just want the hellholes. It wants everything. It will take the hellholes. For now. But don't think for a second they'll be appeased.

The appetite grows as it feeds. Jihadists won't stop until they break our will. Give them Somalia and they want the World Trade Center. Give them Iraq and they want JFK ... and Fort Dix. They're coming for us, they're only too delighted to tell us they're coming for us, and still we're stunned when their insatiable hatred draws a bead smack in the middle of our shrinking comfort zone - this time, where a thousand flights move 125,000 people every single day.

They were stopped this time, but they will keep on trying until either they are dead or we are. That's the nature of the conflict we're in. Unfortunately for us, most Americans, including some Democratic presidential candidates, either don't believe it, don't care, or don't realize it.

Read the whole thing.

RLC

The Edge of Evolution

This link takes you to a video that shows transport proteins moving along a cilium (It's called a flagellum at the site) in an alga called Chlamydamonas. Michael Behe talks about this system of proteins in his new book The Edge of Evolution, and it's astonishingly complex. Imagine small railroad cars carrying building supplies moving along a track that runs up and down an under-construction skyscraper.

The whole system would consist of hundreds of parts whose movements must be coordinated and timed with the availability and need for different supplies. The supplies would need to be loaded onto the cars and off-loaded at the site, and so on.

These proteins carry the materials necessary for the construction of a cilium and no one, evidently, has a clue as to how this system got set up or what keeps it organized, synchronized and functioning.

Behe describes the system in some detail, and it's fascinating reading. I'm about half-way through his book and if the second half is as interesting as the first it's going to be extremely hard to put down.

RLC

The Iranian Gambit

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad seems to be trying to provoke Israel into an attack upon Iran as this NewsMax story suggests:

Iran's hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Sunday said the world would witness the destruction of Israel soon, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported.

Ahmadinejad said last summer's war between Israel and Hezbollah showed for the first time that the "hegemony of the occupier regime [Israel] had collapsed, and the Lebanese nation pushed the button to begin counting the days until the destruction of the Zionist regime," IRNA quoted him as saying.

By threatening Israel's destruction Ahamdinejad seems to be hoping that Israel will launch a preemptive strike that will justify Iran's retaliation, or at least earn Israel further international contempt.

The Iranian leader is playing his hand cleverly. If Israel doesn't rise to his bait Iran will just grow stronger until it is able to destroy Israel on some other pretext. Israel will be damned if it does attack and damned if it doesn't.

The danger for Iran is that Israel will decide that if it's going to be damned either way it might as well be damned for doing something rather than for doing nothing. And it might decide to hit Iran much harder than they anticipate.

RLC

The Atheist's Con

Johann Hari, an anti-theist leftist, is in a quandary about Tony Blair's successor as British prime minister, Gordon Brown. Apparently Brown is a devout Christian heavily influenced by Jim Wallis of Sojourners magazine. Hari sees this as both good and bad.

The irony of Hari's post on Brown is that he sees no irony in statements like this:

All this puts left-wing atheists like me in a quandry [sic]. I think faith is a dangerous form of bad thinking - it is believing something, without evidence or reason to back it up.

[But] If religion drives Brown's best instincts and whittles down his worst, should we still condemn it?

The "best instincts" Hari refers to are Brown's concern for the poor, the worst are what Hari assumes, because of Wallis' influence, would be Brown's opposition to abortion, gay marriage, and a preference for non-secular schools.

So what's the irony? Hari, as an atheist, is making a moral judgment about Brown's instincts. It is, he implies, more moral to be in favor of the poor and less so to be against gay marriage, but where does Hari get this from? Why, on his assumption that there is no moral standard beyond ourselves, would it be wrong to despise the poor? What is the source from which he draws his moral valuations? In actual fact, having denied any transcendent ground for moral value, he's left with no ground at all. He simply draws upon his own preferences and tastes and seeks to gain for those subjective inclinations some sort of privileged standing. When an atheist employs moral language it's really nothing more than a con game that they are fond of pulling on everyone else, even though most of them don't even realize what they're doing.

RLC

Gonzalez Appeal Rejected

Iowa State astronomy professor Guillermo Gonzalez has had his appeal of the decision to deny him tenure rejected by university president Gregory Geoffroy. Why did this happen? ISU will not open up the records of their deliberations despite being legally required to do so thus we're left to draw our own conclusions. Most of the rationales we've heard sound pretty flimsy. Gonzalez has led his department in authoring scholarly papers and textbooks (See also here) and consistently receives good reviews for his teaching.

We're left to conclude that the ISU authorities succumbed, like the 17th century town sages in Salem, Massachusetts, to the hysterics of a few of Gonzalez's faculty colleagues who wanted to get him fired because, of all things, Gonzalez is not a naturalistic materialist.

Gonzalez believes the order and fine-tuning of the cosmos point to an intelligence behind it and for that, it appears, he is being led to the academic equivalent of the stake. Meanwhile, professional frauds like Ward Churchill are still drawing paychecks at the University of Colorado for telling students that the people who died on 9/11 deserved it.

Who says universities are about diversity and tolerance and the marketplace of ideas? Schools like ISU are in the business of regimentation, indoctrination, and conformity. If you're doubtful perhaps the accounts of the Gonzalez affair at the above links and elsewhere on the web will change your mind.

Thanks to Evolution News Network for the picture.

RLC

Tyranny vs. Free Speech

Like tyrants and tyrant-wannabes everywhere, whether on American college campuses, North Korea or the old Soviet Union, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela will do whatever he can to eliminate free speech and the free exchange of ideas.

His latest move, however, closing down a popular television station, may prove to be the catalyst that leads to his downfall among the Venezuelan people.

RLC

Divisive Issue

The editors of National Review Online have challenged the editors of the Wall Street Journal to a public debate on the merits of the pending immigration legislation. As of this writing there has been no response from the WSJ. Apparently they're not so sure they can defend their support for this bill and their hostility to its opponents. I'm not surprised. It's pretty much indefensible.

Speaking of hostility, immigration reform is ripping the conservative movement apart. There are some things being said by those who favor the current bill put together by Ted Kennedy and John McCain that are creating wounds that may never heal. The otherwise estimable Linda Chavez has joined President Bush, Michael Chertoff, Ken Mehlman, and others in completely disparaging the motives of her opponents and misrepresenting their position.

I have to say that I have yet to hear an actual argument from supporters of the Kennedy bill on either the left or right as to why illegal aliens are good for America. President Bush and his spokespersons say they are, but they never really tell us why except to offer platitudes about doing jobs Americans won't do. Nor do they ever tell us why it is wrong to want to secure our borders, nor tell us why it is wrong to want to control who comes into this country.

Our country is our home. I'll be more impressed with the President's reluctance to build a fence to keep people from breaking into our home when he has the barriers around the White House removed and orders the secret service to stop shooting people who try to get in without permission.

RLC

Re: Reducing Poverty

Byron offers some comment on, and criticism of, Saturday's post titled Reducing Poverty. His thoughts can be read on our Feedback page.

Those interested in the book to which he refers in his last paragraph can order it here.

RLC

Thought For A Sunday

Earlier this week I stumbled across a 2x3 card that the church I attend gives out after each service. This particular one was from last October. It has a Key Scripture as well as a reference to a Psalm and Daily Scriptures for each day of the week. Quite a bit of stuff packed onto both sides of that little card.

The Key Scripture was from Micah 6:8; "What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?".

I was quite taken by this verse and decided to read more of the book of Micah to get the context of the passage. The book is only seven chapters long. I saw that Micah was a contemporary of Isaiah. Both were prophesying around the same time and for the same reasons. For the most part the book seems to be pretty much doom and gloom and then the reader comes to the verse I mentioned above and sees a ray of hope.

And then I came to Micah 7:7 and what may be the most complete verse in all of the Bible; "Therefore I will look unto the LORD; I will wait for the God of my salvation: my God will hear me".

Despite the impending doom of judgment Micah chooses to turn to the LORD. He does so with patience knowing any response may not be immediate. He's prepared to wait on God. And he does so with confidence that he will be heard. What an example and prescription for peace of mind.

Reducing Poverty

Jim Wallis of Sojourners (available by subscription) believes that poverty can be dramatically reduced both at home and across the globe:

"Our plan is nothing less than to put poverty on the national agenda, and to compel candidates from both parties to present the nation with their plans for dramatic poverty reduction both at home and globally. I believe we can vote out poverty, but only if we are all in it together."

This seems a little odd. If Wallis knows how poverty can be "voted out" I would certainly like to hear his suggestions. If he doesn't know but wants to support a candidate who advances some plan, that seems to me a little naive. What criteria will he use to evaluate whether the plan would be effective? Would he support any candidate who advances any plan?

Would Wallis, for instance, support whichever candidate proposes to spend the most money on the problem? Lyndon Johnson established the Great Society's War on Poverty back in the early sixties. Since then we've spent over six trillion dollars trying to eliminate poverty, and we still have lots of poor people. In fact, it can be argued fairly persuasively, I think, that the Great Society was, on balance, a disaster for the American poor.

Would Wallis support a candidate who believes that the best way to help people out of poverty is to foster a strong economy? Republicans from Reagan to Bush have taken that approach, with considerable success, but Wallis doesn't seem enthusiastic about their philosophy of cutting taxes and reducing stifling regulations.

Would Wallis support a candidate who argues that most poverty in America today is due to unfortunate choices people have made throughout their lives which have rendered them unable to take advantage of the opportunities which are there for anyone who has the skills, discipline, and ambition to take advantage of them? Would he agree that the problem is, to a large extent, exacerbated by a degenerate culture which bathes people in assumptions which are often harmful to their prospects for achievement? He does acknowledge the insidious effects of our culture, I'm sure, but I doubt that he would be satisfied with any presidential candidate who believed that the most government can do for the poor is to change the culture.

I don't know this, of course, but my hunch is that were Wallis confronted with three candidates who each represented one of the three positions outlined above, he'd opt for the one who promised to raise taxes and initiate a vast transfer of wealth from the haves to the have nots, just as LBJ did. But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the candidate who will win Sojourners' support will not be the one who promises to throw the most money at poverty, but I'll be surprised, pleasantly so, if it's not.

RLC

Atheist Taxonomy

Joe Carter claims that there are four kinds of atheists: Disproof atheists, Methodological atheists, Mystical atheists, and Faith atheists. A description of each, along with an interesting discussion on the topic, can be found in his post.

RLC

Preparing for War , Again

Hamas has launched a total of 310 rockets at the Israeli town of Sderot in the last couple of weeks, but Israel has done little to stop it. One reason, according to some Israeli observers, may be that Israel is gearing up for a war with Syria this summer. Meanwhile, according to Transport minister (formerly Defense minister) Shaul Mofaz, Hezbollah has returned to Israel's northern border area and is even better positioned than they were prior to their war with Israel last summer.

Of course this was not supposed to be allowed to happen, but it was the U.N. which was supposed to prevent it, so no one is surprised that it has happened.

Word in Israel is that it looks to be growing increasingly more likely that there will be another Israeli incursion into Lebanon this summer with the Israelis this time going all the way to Syria to cut off the head of the snake. The rest of the world, which has done absolutely nothing to protect Israel from its enemies, will surely scream if Israel decides that it must protect itself, but their outrage may fall on deaf ears this time around. We'll see.

RLC

Bush Bashes His Base

If you are a conservative and/or a Republican then Peggy Noonan's latest column is a must-read. It essentially discusses why the administration has resorted to insulting it's own strongest supporters over the immigration issue, and it's wonderfully written.

In the course of her column she says this:

The White House doesn't need its traditional supporters anymore, because its problems are way beyond being solved by the base. And the people in the administration don't even much like the base. Desperate straits have left them liberated, and they are acting out their disdain. Leading Democrats often think their base is slightly mad but at least their heart is in the right place. This White House thinks its base is stupid and that its heart is in the wrong place.

For almost three years, arguably longer, conservative Bush supporters have felt like sufferers of battered wife syndrome. You don't like endless gushing spending, the kind that assumes a high and unstoppable affluence will always exist, and the tax receipts will always flow in? Too bad! You don't like expanding governmental authority and power? Too bad. You think the war was wrong or is wrong? Too bad.

But on immigration it has changed from "Too bad" to "You're bad."

The president has taken to suggesting that opponents of his immigration bill are unpatriotic--they "don't want to do what's right for America." His ally Sen. Lindsey Graham has said, "We're gonna tell the bigots to shut up." On Fox last weekend he vowed to "push back." Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff suggested opponents would prefer illegal immigrants be killed; Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez said those who oppose the bill want "mass deportation." Former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson said those who oppose the bill are "anti-immigrant" and suggested they suffer from "rage" and "national chauvinism."

The problem that Bush presents to conservatives dismayed by his support for a bill that is so obviously awful is that he has been steadfast on four things that are so important to them: The war on terror, supreme court justices, tax cuts, and support for Israel. He's also been right to shun the Kyoto sham and to pursue a missile shield.

His failures - his exorbitant spending, his embrace of Donald Rumsfeld's policy of a lean military presence in Iraq and his inability to articulate a compelling defense of his policies and thus be an inspiring leader for the nation - have been galling, but tolerable. Until now.

As Noonan says, the administration is consciously trashing those who feel that illegal immigration is a calamity for this nation and is opening a breach that will not likely be mended if the immigration bill passes.

The President would have done much better to have taken her advice:

If they'd really wanted to help, as opposed to braying about their own wonderfulness, they would have created not one big bill but a series of smaller bills, each of which would do one big clear thing, the first being to close the border. Once that was done--actually and believably done--the country could relax in the knowledge that the situation was finally not day by day getting worse. They could feel some confidence. And in that confidence real progress could begin.

Bush could have been a great president, but as Noonan points out in a different context, he squandered the opportunity. It's too bad.

RLC

More Hitchens vs. Wilson

The debate between atheist Christopher Hitchens and theologian Douglas Wilson continues at Christianity Today with part IV and V.

Hitchens, I'm sorry to report, insists on missing the point. His argument in part IV is that atheists can be good without God. Wilson replies that it is not a question of how atheists can behave, rather it is a question of whether there can even be such a thing as "good" if there is no God.

Think of it this way. You and I disagree on how a word is spelled. How do we resolve our disagreement? We agree to consult a dictionary and accept its authority. Now suppose you say lying is wrong and I say it is not. How do we adjudicate our dispute? Must we not hold our two opinions up to some higher standard of moral authority, a moral dictionary, and see which of our views is compatible with that authority? Yet the problem for the atheist is that there is no moral dictionary. There's no right or wrong answer. Thus each of us is our own moral authority and whatever we think is good is ipso facto right.

Hitchens would reply that our sense of morality is innnate in us, a product of our evolution, but this helps his case not at all. As Wilson points out, just because we have a moral sense is no reason to think that sense is authoritative or that it somehow obligates us to live by it. Why should a moral sense which evolved to suit us for life in the stone age have any bearing on how we live today? Moreover, there is a lot about us - aggressiveness, lust, greed, etc. - which are also innate. Why are these things not morally obligatory? How do we choose between innate tendencies which are moral and those which are not?

Wilson makes this explicit in pt. V:

I have been asking you to provide a warrant for morality, given atheism, and you have mostly responded with assertions that atheists can make what some people call moral choices. Well, sure. But what I have been after is what rational warrant they can give for calling one choice "moral" and another choice "not moral." You finally appealed to "innate human solidarity," a phrase that prompted a series of pointed questions from me. In response, you now tell us that we have an innate predisposition to both good and wicked behavior. But we are still stuck. What I want to know (still) is what warrant you have for calling some behaviors "good" and others "wicked." If both are innate, what distinguishes them? What could be wrong with just flipping a coin?

He then goes on to point out how Hitchens' view leads him to a physical determinism which completely negates the validity of his opinions. If determinism is true then whatever views we hold we hold because of the dance of atoms in our brains and not because of any truth-value inherent in those opinions:

If you were to take a bottle of Mountain Dew and another of Dr. Pepper, shake them vigorously, and put them on a table, it would not occur to anyone to ask which one is "winning the debate." They aren't debating; they are just fizzing. You refer to "language in which to write this argument," and you do so as though you believed in a universe where argument was a meaningful concept. Argument? Argument? I have no need for your "argument hypothesis." Just matter in motion, man.

In other words our thoughts about right and wrong are just chemicals fizzing in our brains as a result of all the chemical reactions that have occured in our brains throughout our lives. They don't correspond to any "truth" about morality at all.

Wilson then adds this:

You praise reason to the heights, yet will not give reasons for your strident and inflexible moral judgments, or why you have arbitrarily dubbed certain chemical processes "rational argument." That's absurd right now, and yet there you are, holding it. So for you to refuse to accept Christ because it is absurd is like a man at one end of the pool refusing to move to the other end because he might get wet. Given your premises, you will have to come up with a different reason for rejecting Christ as you do.

But for you to make this move would reveal the two fundamental tenets of true atheism. One: There is no God. Two: I hate Him.

Read the whole debate at Christianity Today. It's very good - unless you're on Hitchens' side of the argument.

RLC

Hitler's Religion

I and a friend who I would describe as a somewhat pallid deist (almost an atheist) have been enjoying a sporadic dialogue by e-mail over the last couple of years.

He recently said something that one often hears in such discussions that I think needs to be explored.

In response to his point that the history of Christianity was littered with the "insanity" of the "murders of millions upon millions" of people, I said that:

"I don't wish to minimize the abuses and horrors that stain the history of the Church but "millions and millions" is a gross exaggeration of the historical record. I think you'd be hard put to document that number. It's not an exaggeration, however, to note that that number accurately reflects the fruit of state atheism in the twentieth century, so one might well ask when the 'insanity' of atheism is ever going to end."

My friend replied with this:

"Fifty to sixty million people died during WWII started by Hitler. Hitler was not an atheist; in fact he was a Christian who believed himself to be some kind of a Messiah on a mission to kill all the Jews."

Now, in fact this is true, if at all, only in the most tenuous sense. Hitler was in fact a deist. His God was the laws of the universe. He used Christian churches, but he despised Christianity and believed that it was incompatible with National Socialism.

You can read about his religious views in his own words here. The link is to excerpts from Hitler's Table Talk, informal discussions written down for posterity for the most part by Martin Bormann between July 1941 and June 1942. Here are a few of Hitler's thoughts Bormann recorded:

Man has discovered in nature the wonderful notion of that almighty being whose law he worships.

Fundamentally in everyone there is the feeling for this almighty, which we call 'God' (that is to say, the dominion of natural laws throughout the whole universe).

The heaviest blow that ever struck humanity was the coming of Christianity. Bolshevism is Christianity's illegitimate child. Both are inventions of the Jew. The deliberate lie in the matter of religion was introduced into the world by Christianity.

Christianity is a rebellion against natural law, a protest against nature. Taken to its logical extreme, Christianity would mean the systematic cultivation of human failure.

So it's not opportune to hurl ourselves now into a struggle with the churches. The best thing is to let Christianity die a natural death. A slow death has something comforting about it. The dogma of Christianity gets worn away before the advances of science. Religion will have to make more and more concessions. Gradually the myths crumble. All that's left is to prove that in nature there is no frontier between the organic and the inorganic. When understanding of the universe has become widespread, when the majority of men know that the stars are not sources of light but worlds, perhaps inhabited worlds like ours, then the Christian doctrine will be convicted of absurdity.

[T]he only way of getting rid of Christianity is to allow it to die little by little.

And so on. There's much more at the link. These are not the words of a Christian nor of a theist. They are the words of a man who set nature as his god and who was so situated that he was able to carry out the logic of his beliefs. They resulted in the holocaust.

RLC

Cindy Sheehan

Gary Randall of Faith and Freedom Network and Foundation hits all the right notes in his commentary on Cindy Sheehan's departure from the anti-war movement. Thanks to Byron for passing it along to "his few conservative friends." I suspect that means that I'm the only one who received it.

Anyway, here's the first half of Randall's piece:

The woman who became the "face" of dissent toward the Iraq war and President Bush is quitting - and going home.

In an essay entitled, "Good Riddance Attention Whore" that she posted on Daily Kos, a popular secularist blog, she said she was broken and disillusioned and was going "to take whatever I have left and go home."

I, of course, have never been a fan of hers. I have not agreed with what she has said nor most of her methods. Her photo opts with Castro and Chavez were offensive to me personally. But, as I read her hurt and confusion, I looked through the politics that have broken her and saw a human being who, I feel, desperately needs something and someone to believe in.

I have noticed that most major news outlets are not quoting the part of her essay that says, "When I started to hold the Democratic Party to the same standards that I held the Republican Party, support for my cause started to erode and the Left started labeling me with the same slurs the Right used ... It amazes me that people who are sharp on the issues and can zero in like a laser beam on lies, misrepresentations, and political expediency when it comes to one party refuse to recognize it in their own party. Blind party loyalty is dangerous whatever side it occurs on."

I do not know this woman, nor do I suggest I have all the answers, but I do know this one thing. Every human being has a need to believe in someone and something.

In her case, she believed in Howard Dean, moveon.org, and the other components of the extreme Left in this country. While she was grieving the loss of her son, she was quickly pushed to the front to advance the extreme Left-wing agenda. When she wasn't valuable, they threw her "under the bus," as they say. That can happen in both parties.

Read the rest at the link. Her letter is here. One of the things she says is that her opponents frequently claimed that she was just being used by the secular anti-war left. It turns out, evidently, that her opponents were right and that she's come to think the same thing.

One can't help but feel sorry for this woman who, although I profoundly disagree with her about the war and much else, always struck me as a basically good person who tried so hard and sacrificed so much in her belief that she is right and that she could make a positive difference. Now she is worn out and exhausted and her former allies are saying "good riddance" to her. Nice people, those lefties.

God bless her.

RLC

Conservative Primers

For the political philosophers among our readers, and those just interested in the history of political thought, probably the best way to gain an understanding of conservative thought is to read Russell Kirk's early fifties classic The Conservative Mind.

Perhaps the second best way is to read the excellent essay by Mark Henrie at The New Pantagruel on Understanding Traditionalist Conservatism. It's an historical overview of the origins of modern conservative thought and it's an enchanting, if somewhat lengthy, read. Even though it's long it's still a lot shorter than Kirk's wonderful book.

The third best way, of course, would be to frequent National Review Online. The folks at NRO bring the principles elucidated by Kirk and Henrie to bear on the issues facing America and the world today. It's very good stuff.

RLC

Why Do People Resist Science?

Paul Bloom and Deena Skolnick Weisberg ask in an article at Edge, why some people, perhaps a lot of people, resist science.

I think the question is miscast. Very few people resist science. People are, by and large amenable to empirical demonstration. Even counterintuitive theories like Einstein's relativity theory are not rejected by the average person even if he doesn't understand it.

What people tend to resist is a metaphysical agenda masquerading as science and the two examples of resistance that Bloom and Weisberg site are perfect confirmations of that.

The authors are concerned because so many Americans refuse to accept the notion that there is no immaterial soul and they resist the idea that natural processes are sufficient to explain all of life and the cosmos.

Neither of these is a scientific idea, however. They are the metaphysical conclusions of some scientists who are a priori committed to a materialist worldview. If materialism were obviously true then of course it would be puzzling that so many people reject it, but materialism is not science. It's not something that can be proven by empirical investigation like whether the earth is round or revolves around the sun.

The truth or falsity of materialism is a philosophical question so Bloom and Weisberg would have done better to ask why so many people resist the philosophical entailments of materialism.

The answer to that question is much easier to see. They resist it because they see its sterility. They see that it leads to a view of life that renders all meaning, morality, human dignity, and hope just so much illusory baggage. They resist it because, quite frankly, a lot of people think that anything so at odds with their common sense intuitions about life is just false, and if the only evidence scientists can offer in its support is their testimony that it's true they're not going to persuade any but those who want to be persuaded.

And most people simply don't want to be persuaded that their lives are hopeless and meaningless.

RLC

Soda Is Very Bad For You

This will make your day. It turns out that a common additive in Coke, Diet Pepsi, and other soft drinks is believed to cause damage to the DNA of our cells and precipitate a host of degenerative neurological diseases as well as cancer. The additive is sodium benzoate. I leave you to read the article while I go check my Diet Rite Cola to see if it contains the stuff.

UPDATE: Diet Rite contains Potassium benzoate. Since potassium behaves chemically very much like sodium it looks like my favorite soft drink may be my undoing.

Maybe the only healthy diet is to starve yourself.

RLC

Quantum Theory

I may have mentioned this before but the March issue of First Things has a particularly clear exposition by Stephen Barr on quantum theory. Along the way Barr shows how quantum theory leads some physicists to conclude that there are a near infinite number of alternative worlds, why it is incompatible with physical determinism, and why it is antithetical to materialism.

It's a good article for the layman who knows little about quantum mechanics but would like a simple, basic understanding of its philosophical implications.

The irony of modern physics is that beginning in the early 19th century science in general, and physics in particular, were used as dispositive justifications for a deterministic, materialistic, naturalistic worldview. Science, we were told, had proven that there's nothing to reality but matter and energy, nature is all there is.

Then came the discovery of the world of quantum phenomena and the crucial importance of observers in the twenties and thirties and suddenly the role of mind took on new significance. Physical determinism collapsed along with the idea that matter is the sole component of reality.

The main prop of metaphysical naturalism was now revealing that naive materialism was an inadequate explanation of reality. It was telling us, in effect, that "there are more things in heaven and on earth than we dream of in our philosophy."

Now, in the early years of the 21st century, more and more non-scientists are beginning to grasp the obsolescence of the earlier views. Today, the universe often looks less like a Newtonian machine and more like a grand idea, an idea, perhaps, in the mind of God.

RLC

Cyber-Terrorism

England's Daily Mail offers a cyber-threat scenario which security experts say is almost certain to one day soon become a reality:

At first it would be no more than a nuisance. No burning skyscrapers, no underground explosions, just a million electronic irritations up and down the land.

Thousands of government web pages suddenly vanish to be replaced with the Internet's version of the Testcard - that dreaded screen '404 - Not Found' or, more amusingly, some pastiche or parody.

Then the Labour website starts to promise a wholesale renationalisation of the railways. The popular response this generates turns to amusement then bemusement as everything from Jaguar to BT is, the sites claim, to be taken back into state hands.

When conservatives.org.uk starts to promise compulsory repatriation and the return of capital punishment, bemusement turns to alarm.

The disruption continues: thousands of popular websites, from eBay to YouTube, start malfunctioning or are replaced by malicious parodies.

Tens of millions of pounds are wiped off the share price of companies like Amazon as fears grow that the whole Internet credit card payment network is now vulnerable and insecure.

Eventually, reports start to flood in that hundreds of thousands of personal bank accounts have been raided overnight.

Panicked bank chiefs and PR men go on TV to try to reassure, promising that this is no more than an electronic glitch, but thousands of anxious citizens take to the streets, many in tears, and pour angrily into the banks to demand their savings in cash.

When the ATM system goes down, the government steps in. A task force is appointed. There is a rush on hard cash that leads to a shortage of notes and coins.

Soon, it is clear that the United Kingdom (and much of Europe) has been subjected to a sustained and effective cyber-terrorist attack. Disaster is narrowly avoided when a series of sophisticated viruses disrupt the workings of the National Air Traffic Control System.

Slowly, the computer network is disinfected; the viruses, botnets and worms that are the electronic versions of bombs and bullets are defused and rendered harmless. No one has died, but the attack has cost Britain �10bn, and share prices take months to recover.

Such a scenario, say some experts, is not only possible but likely in the near future.

In fact, the article notes, a similar scenario actually occured in Estonia last year. The account is in the story at the link.

Imagine if U.S. banks or Wall Street were attacked and your life's savings were wiped out over night. Were this to happen on a large scale it could easily produce immense panic and chaos in the country. Just thought I'd mention this in case you were feeling too cheery this morning.

RLC

Re: Letter to a Young Woman

My friend Matt writes to comment on last week's post titled Letter to a Young Woman:

[In Letter to a Young Woman] you paint, perhaps without knowing it, a solid picture of a Christian approach to cognitive behavioral therapy. Spiritual Depression by D. Martin Lloyd-Jones is the best book I've read in a similar vein. Cognitive behavioral therapy is VERY trendy right now. And with research on brain plasticity, and on the effectiveness of CBT over meds, it's a very intriguing approach to depression and anxiety, but also to life in general. (Listen here)

The basic thesis is that emotions are the physical responses that our body has to thoughts. Change the thoughts, the feelings follow. Follow your feelings, and they'll control you and bury you in falsehood. You have to, as Lloyd-Jones says in taking his cue from Psalms 42 and 43, upbraid yourself. Take yourself by the shoulders and speak truth to yourself even if you don't feel it. And then, instead of trying to be happy and spending all your time asking if you DO FEEL happy, get on with your life and do good things. Be virtuous. Love God. Happiness follows.

Anyway, thanks again for sharing that letter.

I'm glad it was well-received.

RLC

Re: The Real Thing

Byron writes to offer some balance to yesterday's post titled The Real Thing. I think he's largely correct in his criticisms of Michelle Malkin's post to which I linked, and I've posted his e-mail on our Feedback page.

In my reply to him I wrote that:

There is very little in your reply that I can argue or disagree with. I think you're right that Malkin tends to be selective in her outrage and that there's a difference between protesting what is done with our tax dollars and what is done by those over whom we have no control.

That's why in my post I referred to the silence, not of American human rights advocates, but of the international human rights community. Their silence (at least so far) on the tactics of al Qaeda is inexcusable, in my mind, because they stand against all human rights abuse, not just that sponsored by nations to which they pay taxes.

They should, by their raised voices, be setting a standard by which Muslims around the world can measure the conduct of those who act in their name. If they remain silent when manuals such as this are discovered it sends the message that Muslims are not expected to abide by the same standards of decency that others are.

So far, though they were outspoken about Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, I have heard nothing about the horrific acts perpetrated by AQ. But perhaps they have said, or will say, much that I just haven't heard about.

RLC

Memorial Day Tribute

These are the sort of men we honor on Memorial Day. Take a little time to read through their stories and thank God that our nation can still produce such valor.

To all who have served our country in uniform, and especially to those who are combat veterans, we at Viewpoint offer you our profoundest gratitude.

RLC

Suspicious Eyes

Taliban leader Mullah Dadullah was killed a couple of weeks ago by coalition forces. Now comes word that he may have been betrayed by associates and that paranoia is spreading through the Taliban leadership. No one knows who can be trusted and who can't.

I'd like to think that this is the result of our intelligence agencies planting the seeds of suspicion among the Orcs. Perhaps it is.

RLC

The Real Thing

So where are the voices of those international human rights advocates who consider it torture to yell at a prisoner or to deprive him of a Koran when real torture rears its hideous head? As Michelle notes, what we're hearing from them is pretty much the sound of silence. Torture, apparently, is only a matter of grave concern when it is Americans placing underwear on someone's head.

Go to Smoking Gun and see what real torture looks like and then ask yourself what was done to detainees at Guantanamo Bay that is even remotely like this.

You might also reflect on what kind of world we will be living in if these people are allowed to prevail, as they will if the Reid/Pelosi wing of the Democratic party has its way, anywhere around the globe.

RLC

Mookie on the Hot Seat

Bill Roggio has some interesting analysis of Muqutada "Mookie" al Sadr's return home from his earlier hiatus in Iran to which he had fled when Baghdad grew too dangerous for him. It seems that his return to Iraq has triggered a preset coalition plan to make it all but impossible for him to resume his role as leader of the Mahdi army. Read Roggio's piece as well as reader comments.

I wonder whether the increased tempo of these operations would be possible if President Bush hadn't increased troop levels in Anbar province.

RLC

Immigration Reform

Charles Krauthammer gives a nice overview of what the new immigration bill being debated in congress will, and will not, accomplish. Here's a part of his column:

Today, preference for legal immigration is given not to the best and the brightest waiting on long lists everywhere on Earth to get into America, but to family members of those already here. Given that America has the pick of the world's energetic and entrepreneurial, this is a stunning competitive advantage, stunningly squandered.

The current reform would establish a point system for legal immigrants in which brains and enterprise count. This is a significant advance. However, before we get too ecstatic about finally doing the blindingly obvious, note two caveats:

(a) This new point system doesn't go into effect for eight years -- eight years of a new flood of immigrants chosen not for aptitude but bloodline. And who knows if a different Congress eight years from now will keep the current bargain.

(b) It's not enough to just create a point system in which credit is given for education, skills and English competence. These points can be outweighed by points given for -- you guessed it -- family ties, which are already built into the proposed new point system. There are already amendments on the Senate floor to magnify the value of being a niece rather than a nurse. (Barack Obama is proposing to abolish the point system entirely in five years.) A point system can be manipulated to give far more weight to family than skills -- until it becomes nothing but a cover for the old chain-migration system.

In our view the bill is unsatisfactory because it does not really guarantee that our porous borders will be fixed. It also grants amnesty to those who are here illegally which itself would not be a problem if it weren't for the fact that it allows illegals to eventually apply for citizenship and become eligible to dip their hands into taxpayers' pockets.

They're calling this proposal compromise immigration reform, but it's really no compromise at all. It gives the open borders advocates just about everything they want.

Our own suggestion, if I may humbly say it, is a genuine compromise and the only plan we've seen that is both just and compassionate. We offered it here last month. Peggy Noonan says much the same thing in a recent column but with far more grace and style than we could ever hope to achieve. Her piece is worth reading.

RLC

Justifying Murder

Jason passes along a Fox News report that contains this troubling passage:

Younger U.S. Muslims under the age of 30 are much more willing to accept homicide bombing in the defense of Islam than are their older counterparts, the study found. While 69 percent of Muslims under 30 say homicide bombings are never justified, 2 percent say they're often justified, 13 percent say bombings are sometimes justified and 11 percent say they are rarely justified. Only 9 percent of older U.S. Muslims said homicide attacks are at least rarely justified.

In addition to young Muslims' attitudes towards homicide bombings, the study found that only 40 percent of U.S. Muslims believe that Arabs carried out the Sept. 11 attacks. Another 28 percent said they don't believe it.

That's one in four young Muslims in the U.S. who are willing to support homicide bombings against other Americans, at least sometimes, and more than one in four who don't believe Muslims were responsible for 9/11.

Muslims complain when they are looked upon with suspicion in airports and other venues, but they need to direct their complaints not at those who feel the anxiety but at their own communities which are producing young men who are willing to condone such savagery.

It is certainly understandable that Americans feel uneasy around their Muslim countrymen when twenty-five percent of them are morally and psychologically prepared to see you and your family blown to smithereens if they believe you to be "a threat to Islam."

RLC

Resplendent Quetzal

I've just returned from a wonderful trip to Costa Rica where I spent a week touring the Pacific side of the country searching out the marvelous bird-life to be found there.

The bird below is considered by some to be the most beautiful bird in the world, and this picture, as fine as it is, doesn't fully capture the creature's beauty. It's a Resplendent Quetzal and they were flying around my cabin at Savegre Lodge each morning we were there.

It was truly a wonderful sight, but only one of the many that my travelling companion and I enjoyed throughout the week.

The photo was taken by Ralph Paonessa.

RLC