Wright Out, Warren In

Well, this is an interesting development. Barack Obama has selected Rick Warren to give the invocation at his Inauguration. I wonder who's going to be more confused by this, the evangelical right who voted heavily against Obama because he stands for many of the things Warren opposes, and because when they look at Obama they see Jeremiah Wright, or the left which put Obama in a position to be elected President and who sees Warren as the reincarnation of Robert Welch, the founder of the John Birch Society.

As of last report, evangelicals were still working through their confusion over what to make of this strange turn of events, but the left has lost no time in expressing their disappointment and outrage.

The Swamp has the immediate reaction of People for the American Way and they're definitely not happy. Ben Smith at Politico says that the gay and lesbian community is furious at Obama over the selection of Warren.

Barack Obama may, in the minds of some of his most ardent supporters, go from messiah to apostate even before he takes office. Of course, this might all be a political ploy to lull Christian conservatives into a sense of complacency, but we can certainly hope that it signals something a lot more significant. Maybe when Obama promised us hope during the campaign what he meant was that it was conservatives who should have hope. Right now liberals are wondering how they can still cling to the tatters of the hope that inspired them during the election.

The rather minor Warren appointment comes on the heels of much more major disappointments to the left. Obama retained Bush's Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, appointed the somewhat hawkish Hillary Clinton to Secretary of State, and chose retired Marine corps general James Jones to be National Security Advisor.

From the perspective of the left this represents very little change and offers very little hope. Of course, this could all change after January 20th. We'll see.

HT: Hot Air.

RLC

Repeat Offenders

The same folks who sell Christmas gift certificates that can be used to pay for an abortion have been found in flagrante delicto against Indiana state law not once but twice by the Mona Lisa Project. The MLP is the work of a pair of college students who've gone undercover into abortion clinics across the country with one of them posing as a thirteen year-old girl who's conceived a child with her fictitious thirty-one year-old boyfriend. The girls secretly film their encounters with PP counselors and others and have released two of the videos so far. They're pretty damning.

The counselors in both of the Indiana tapes flout the law that requires them to report knowledge of statutory rape and encourage the girl to cross state lines to get an abortion so that her mother won't find out about it. Here's the tape of their second visit:

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air has much more on MLP's unfolding expos�. It'll be interesting to see if Indiana is going to prosecute Planned Parenthood. In my opinion, the way MLP is doing this, dropping the videos into the public domain at intervals rather than all at once, is going to make it harder for the authorities to just ignore it until it blows over. The more of these videos that are released, and the more widespread the abuses appear to be, if in fact they are, the harder it will be to cover it up and to contain public outrage. The harder it will also be for our legislators to continue to fund PP to the tune of $330 million of your tax dollars every year.

It's almost amusing that these expos�s come on the heels of last spring's hoax in which PP personnel were taped as they clearly encouraged a donation that would go specifically toward aborting black children because we already have "too many of them". What an organization.

RLC

Bumble Had it Right

Kitty Genovese was a 1964 New York City murder victim whose calls for help were heard by dozens of people only a few of whom responded by calling the police. Even though the apparent lack of response was overblown by the media, subsequent psychological studies showed there is indeed something called a "bystander effect" in which people will often refuse to involve themselves in situations where others are in danger.

Whether this is true of people or not, it certainly seems that the cries of the long-suffering Zimbabwean people in Africa have gone pretty much ignored by their neighbors in Africa and around the world.

The African countries of Sudan and Zimbabwe (among others) are festering boils of human cruelty and wretchedness that need to be lanced. There's evidence that other African leaders may finally be screwing up the moral courage to condemn Zimbabwean strongman Robert Mugabe for the disaster he has inflicted on that once beautiful land but not much evidence that anyone in the West is actually going to do anything substantive about it if they don't. FrontPagemag lays out the awful facts:

The 84-year-old Robert Mugabe has ruled Zimbabwe since the country achieved independence from Britain in 1980. In that time, Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia) has gone from one of Africa's most admired and successful nations to a failed state of enormous proportions. Now, with a humanitarian crisis raging inside the country, pressure from Africa and abroad is mounting for Mugabe to end his tyrannical reign and spare his country from further misery.

International pressure on Mugabe is long overdue. Zimbabwe's inflation rate is an unfathomable 231 million percent, while unemployment is above 80 percent. Everyone from human-rights activists to opposition-party leaders are routinely abducted and murdered. Most pressingly, a cholera epidemic is ravaging the country. The latest World Health Organization report find 14,ooo cases of cholera infection, and some 800 dead, though some critics call those numbers far too low; meanwhile, millions of sick and impoverished Zimbabwean refugees are flooding into neighboring countries. The UN estimates that this particular outbreak will ultimately kill one in ten Zimbabweans.

Even though some African leaders such as the much respected Desmond Tutu have all but called for African military intervention, other voices are more timid, cautioning against outside involvement that would stir a backlash in the region against "democracy":

The African response, moreover, still leaves much to be desired. Despite the newfound willingness of some African leaders to criticize Mugabe, some African nations are hurriedly distancing themselves from Tutu and Odinga's calls for Mugabe's resignation. Dr. Roger Bate, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, is bluntly pessimistic that other African nations will follow through on their calls for Mugabe's overthrow. There is "no chance at all," says Bate, pointing out that many of Mugabe's critics have backtracked since last week's statements, including South Africa's Jacob Zuma. This is unfortunate, because if the African Union or South Africa and other neighboring states did force Mugabe out that "could have a positive effect, driving similar despotic leaders to seek elections and leave power peacefully."

By contrast, foreign [i.e. non-African] intervention to oust Mugabe could have a destabilizing effect. Bate points out that any military intervention on the part of the UN, especially one that involves American or British troops, could "encourage a backlash against democracy." Bate speculates that at some stage during such an incursion, members of the Zimbabwean army would back a breakaway faction of Mugabe's party, who would then "form some kind of power share government in exchange for aid from the West or China."

In the "old days" before we became a kinder, gentler nation much more sensitive to what the rest of the world thought of us, this situation would have been expeditiously handled by simply sending the CIA in to covertly depose the villain. Of course, we can't do that sort of thing nowadays because it would violate international law. So, we sit by and watch helplessly as perhaps millions of people die in agony and misery in order to avoid giving offense to words on paper. When the law protects tyrants and permits genocide then, as Dickens has Mr. Bumble observe in Oliver Twist, the law is an ass.

RLC

Seven Questions

John Fund suggests that had the media spent only half as much energy and resources looking into Obama's connections to Chicago's political machine as they did investigating Sarah Palin we might not have to be addressing possible scandal even before the new President has been inaugurated. Unfortunately, our major media were heavily invested in getting Obama coronated so actually investigating him was out of the question.

Now suspicions are being raised about his connection to the seamy Chicago political scene and the most transparent administration in history has suddenly assumed a Nixonian opacity. Politico states that there are at least seven questions Obama's team needs to answer, and answer soon, if their inauguration is to avoid the odor of corruption.

The seven questions follow. Their rationales can be read at Politico:

1 - Did you communicate directly or indirectly with Blagojevich about picking your replacement in the U.S. Senate?

2 - Why didn't you or someone on your team correct your close adviser David Axelrod when he said you had spoken to Blagojevich about picking your replacement?

3 - When did you learn the investigation involved Blagojevich's alleged efforts to 'sell' your Senate seat, or of the governor's impending arrest?

4 - Did you or anyone close to you contact the FBI or U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald about Blagojevich's alleged efforts to sell your Senate seat to the highest bidder?

5 - Did federal investigators interview you or anyone close to you in the investigation?

6 - When did you and Blagojevich last speak and about what?

7 - Do you regret supporting Blagojevich?

Obama could stonewall, of course, but that would hardly represent the sort of change most of his admirers voted for him to bring to Washington. We'll see by the end of next Wednesday whether Obama is going to really be a different kind of politician or if he's going to be just more of what Chicago often produces.

RLC

Sounds Like a Plan

Bankruptcy is the best option for the Big 3 auto manufacturers and law professor Todd Zywicki explains why in a Wall Street Journal column. He argues that management, labor, and politicians each oppose bankruptcy for all the wrong reasons.

The heart of Zywicki's brief is this:

Chapter 11 exists to allow [a corporation] to continue in business while reorganizing. Reorganization arose in the late 19th century when creditors of railroads unable to meet their debt obligations threatened to tear up their tracks, melt them down, and sell the steel as scrap. But innovative judges, lawyers and businessmen recognized that creditors would collect more if they all agreed to reduce their claims and keep the railroads running and producing revenues to pay them off. The same logic animates Chapter 11 today.

General Motors [is] ... in need of reorganization not liquidation. It needs to shed labor contracts, retirement contracts, and modernize its distribution systems by closing many dealerships. This will give rise to many current and future liabilities that may be worked out in bankruptcy. It may need new management as well. Bankruptcy provides an opportunity to do all that. Consumers have little to fear. Reorganization will pare the weakest dealers while strengthening those who remain.

So why do the Detroit Three managements and the UAW insist that "bankruptcy is not an option"? Perhaps because of the pain that would be inflicted upon both.

The bankruptcy code places severe limitations on the compensation that can be paid to a manager unless there is a "bona fide job offer from another business at the same or greater rate of compensation." Given the dismal performance of the Detroit Three in recent years, it seems unlikely that their senior management will be highly coveted on the open market. Incumbent management is also likely to find its prospects for continued employment less-secure.

Chapter 11 also provides a mechanism for forcing UAW workers to take further pay cuts, reduce their gold-plated health and retirement benefits, and overcome their cumbersome union work rules....

Those Washington politicians who repeat the mantra that "bankruptcy is not an option" probably do so because they want to use free taxpayer money to bribe Detroit into manufacturing the green cars favored by Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, rather than those cars American consumers want to buy. A Chapter 11 filing would remove these politicians' leverage, thus explaining their desperation to avoid a bankruptcy.

So, if Zywicki is correct, management doesn't want bankruptcy because it will limit their compensation. Labor doesn't want bankruptcy because they'll be forced to renegotiate their ridiculous work rules and their lucrative benefit packages. Politicians, particularly Democrats, don't want bankruptcy because they're in bed with labor and because they see a bailout as providing a lever to force auto makers to make the cars they want rather than what the American car buyer wants.

Sounds to me like bankruptcy has a lot to recommend it.

RLC

The Multiverse and the Razor

We have from time to time noted that theories of a multiverse suffer from being in stark conflict with the law of parsimony. This is the law that tells us that given several competing explanations for some phenomenon, the simplest explanation that's compatible with the known facts is to be preferred.

Evidently, a commenter at Uncommon Descent has opined that the multiverse theory, the idea that there are, besides our own world, an infinity of universes exhibiting an infinity of laws and parameters, is not incompatible with the law of parsimony. I find this hard to accept, as does Barry Arrington. He explains his reasons here.

Arrington doesn't explain his objection quite as thoroughly as a reader unfamiliar with the multiverse concept might like, but what he's getting at is that any theory that multiplies entities to infinity in order to explain the existence of the unimaginable precision of the fine-tuning of this world is by definition unparsimonious. This is especially true given that there's no evidence of any other universes, much less an infinity of them. All we know is that some versions of string theory allow for them, but we don't even know if string theory is true.

Since the alternative theory is that there is just one world, the world of our experience and the only world we have evidence for, it would seem that that is the simplest hypothesis that fits all the facts and it really is hard to understand how some people justify thinking otherwise.

Anyway, Arrington's post gives us, besides us a bit of unnecessary hyperventilation, a helpful and succinct overview of the law of parsimony, also known as Occam's Razor, and a little background on William of Ockham himself.

Check it out.

RLC

Plan B

The U.S. and Britain have urged India not to go to war with Pakistan in the wake of the Mumbai attacks so, according to this report at DEBKAfile, New Delhi has developed a plan B. They've solicited help from Israel to train commandos in quick in/out strikes against terrorist centers and camps in several Pakistani regions. Condaleeza Rice has apparently given tacit approval for such reprisals and the Israelis are currently training the Indian forces.

NATO forces are waging war against the Taliban and al Qaeda in northwest Pakistan and now India will be waging war against various Pakistani terror groups in the southeast. How long can the government in Islamabad ignore all this and still remain stable? At what point does Pakistan have to make a decision to either be a fully committed partner in the war on terror or to side completely with the terrorists? The strip of middle-ground they've tried to occupy for the last ten years is growing increasingly narrow.

RLC

Intellectual Honesty

Anyone who engages in public commentary and debate is often tempted to color facts to better fit his position, to overstate his case, or to do something which might be intellectually not-quite-honest. In a post titled Ten Signs of Intellectual Dishonesty Mike Gene lists ten good rules to follow when participating with others in an exchange of ideas.

Here are three of the ten with his explanation:

Be willing to publicly acknowledge where your argument is weak. Almost all arguments have weak spots, but those who are trying to sell an ideology will have great difficulty with this point and would rather obscure or downplay any weak points.

Be willing to publicly acknowledge when you are wrong. Those selling an ideology likewise have great difficulty admitting to being wrong, as this undercuts the rhetoric and image that is being sold. You get small points for admitting to being wrong on trivial matters and big points for admitting to being wrong on substantive points. You lose big points for failing to admit being wrong on something trivial.

Demonstrate consistency. A clear sign of intellectual dishonesty is when someone extensively relies on double standards. Typically, an excessively high standard is applied to the perceived opponent(s), while a very low standard is applied to the ideologues' allies.

My own experience has been that even when I think I'm doing the best I can to abide by the rules Mike describes I sometimes find myself teetering close to the boundary nonetheless. Luckily, I have friends and students among my readers who are not shy about calling me on it when they think I've transgressed. Sometimes I think they're wrong, but sometimes not.

I think it's wise to keep in mind that none of us is perfect and to watch carefully how we express ourselves in discussions on matters we feel strongly about. I've printed out Mike's Ten Signs of Intellectual Dishonesty and have them posted over my computer. Maybe it would be a good idea for all of us to do that.

RLC

Vindication

Bill shares this video of economist Peter Schiff being made the object of scorn and derision two years ago by cable talk colleagues for predicting exactly what has come to pass in our economy. I hope Obama appoints this guy as one of his economic advisors. I also wonder how much money his antagonists have lost since those financial markets they were so high on collapsed.

I wonder if Mr. Schiff has this video playing in a continuous loop in his home and office. I hope he mailed a copy of it to each of the pompous critics he appeared on these talk shows with. In a just world those shows would play this clip every night. As it is few will remember how right poor Mr. Schiff was and how terribly and foolishly wrong his detractors were.

RLC

Obama's Prescription for Nuclear War

There's not much confidence in this little corner of the blogosphere in Barack Obama's ability to launch a successful foreign policy, and this story in Haaretz does little to bolster our sagging hopes that we might be underestimating the incoming President:

U.S. President-elect Barack Obama's administration will offer Israel a "nuclear umbrella" against the threat of a nuclear attack by Iran, a well-placed American source said earlier this week. The source, who is close to the new administration, said the U.S. will declare that an attack on Israel by Tehran would result in a devastating U.S. nuclear response against Iran.

But America's nuclear guarantee to Israel could also be interpreted as a sign the U.S. believes Iran will eventually acquire nuclear arms.

What this seems to mean is that Obama will do little of consequence to prevent an Iran determined to develop nuclear weapons from succeeding. His policy appears to be to leave himself with only one option if Iran employs its weapons against Israel, as it has strongly indicated it will: nuclear war. This strikes most sober observers as a strategy right out of Dr. Strangelove.

It can be summarized this way: Use diplomatic means and sanctions to deter Iran from building nukes, but this will fail, so threaten Iran with nuclear war - which, for religious reasons, they welcome - if they use their nukes against Israel, which, they have assured us, they will.

Of course, to be effective as a deterrent the threat has to be credible, and Iran knows it won't be. Once the Iranian mullahs have nukes they could simply respond to Obama's bluster by informing Washington that nuclear bombs have been smuggled into America and will be detonated in several major cities in the event of an attack on Iran. Whether such bombs have in fact been planted in our cities won't matter. We'd have to assume they were, and there'd be very little enthusiasm in this country for trading Chicago, L.A., and New York for Tehran just because Israel had been destroyed.

Another gambit the Iranians could employ to defuse the threat of American retaliation against Tehran for an attack on Israel would be to send a nuclear missile aboard a ship off our coast and detonate the missile a couple of hundred miles high over Kansas. The resulting electro-magnetic pulse would destroy the United States as a nation, driving us back to the 19th century and creating utter chaos in our social fabric (Use our search feature (search EMP) to view previous posts on the effects such a blast would have).

Given the Iranian options, Obama's threat to nuke Tehran if Iran uses nuclear force against Israel seems either naive or dumb.

To make matters worse, Obama's Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, not only wants to place a "nuclear umbrella" over Israel she wants to extend it to Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf states as well:

Clinton also proposed that the American nuclear umbrella be extended to other countries in the region, like Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, if they agree to relinquish their own nuclear ambitions.

Is this administration serious? Who in their right mind would be willing to risk any American city just because Riyadh has been destroyed? Most Americans would regard an attack on Saudi Arabia, the spawning ground of most of the 9/11 terrorists, as condign justice. They certainly wouldn't think we should risk an EMP strike to avenge the deaths of the same people who had been squeezing us at the gas pumps until just last month.

It would be far wiser to avoid all this empty posturing by preventing Iran, by whatever means necessary, from getting nuclear weapons in the first place, but nowhere in the article is this viewed as an option. Ironically, the Obama team seems to have no appetite for the use of military force unless it's catastrophic force.

Meanwhile, our major media seems utterly uninterested in this problem. We're too busy being titillated by reports of scandal in Illinois and the discovery of a murdered child's bones in Florida to bother ourselves with debating how best to avoid nuclear war.

RLC

Fantasy World

The system in this video, passed along by Robert Crowther at Evolution News and Notes, is a good metaphor for the cellular machinery that operates in every one of the trillions of cells in our bodies, and it illustrates nicely the difference between Intelligent Design theorists and Darwinians. IDers would recognize that the sequence of events in the system evinces intelligent conceptualization and engineering. The Darwinians would say that given random mutation, natural selection, chance and enough time, this sort of thing could have developed on its own, and, indeed, has developed on its own billions, if not trillions, of times in living things throughout the evolutionary past.

Maybe a system like this could have developed on its own through purely physical processes with no intelligent input, but if experience rather than mere logical possibility is to be our guide, we have to admit that whenever metal parts are left to the forces of nature, they invariably wind up as scattered rust. Darwinian materialists chide theists for believing in the existence of a divine mind, but one has to wonder which belief is the more fantastic - that a biological system similar to that portrayed in the ad could have happened by accident or that such systems were designed intentionally by intelligent agents.

RLC

A Religious Case for Gay Marriage

The recent issue of Newsweek brings with it a polemic by Lisa Miller urging religious people to drop their opposition to gay marriage. Now there may be reasons out there why Christians and others should end their insistence that marriage remain a union of one man and one woman, but, if so, they've eluded Ms Miller. Her argument is largely irrelevant to the case she wishes to make.

For example, she dismisses Old Testament prohibitions of homosexual sex on the basis that the O.T. prohibited a lot of stuff we don't prohibit today, which is true enough, but then one could make the same argument for tolerating murder. Just because some O.T. prescriptions are not deemed appropriate today (e.g. stoning adulterers, etc.) it doesn't follow that none are.

If this were Ms Miller's only logical lapse perhaps we might simply avert our eyes to avoid adding to her embarrassment, but almost every paragraph of her essay is replete with non-sequiturs and other logical solecisms. Indeed, she seems almost relentless in her determination to offend the basic principles of rational thought. She struggles to derive from assertions like, Jesus wasn't married nor ever mentioned homosexuality, gay marriage is not a term found in the Bible, and Paul had more to say about divorce than about homosexuality, that therefore homosexuality is morally unproblematic.

Yet abortion and euthanasia are never mentioned in the Bible but they're hardly unproblematic. Jesus never mentions child abuse or slavery either, but it doesn't follow that therefore we should feel free to embrace these behaviors today.

Reminding us that scripture is full of instances of polygamy and divorce, Ms Miller avers that the Bible isn't a very good source for instruction on marriage, as if the fact that the Bible recounts the bad behavior of the people who appear in it somehow means that it can't be trusted to offer good rules for living. It's a bit like trying to argue that because the Bible tells us how the poor were often oppressed, we shouldn't attach too much importance to its adjurations to care for the poor and the widow.

She then dismisses Paul's teaching on homosexuality by noting that since a lot of Christians seem to ignore his appeals to shun divorce they may as well ignore his sanctions against gay sex as well. Surely, this woman needs to ask her editor why he let her sound so silly. Are we to assume that because some Christians ignore Jesus' teaching on turning the other cheek that they ought to ignore his teaching on showing compassion to the poor also?

Ms Miller tells us that:

Paul was tough on homosexuality, though recently progressive scholars have argued that his condemnation of men who were inflamed with "lust for one another" (which he calls "a perversion") is really a critique of the worst kind of wickedness: self-delusion, violence, promiscuity, debauchery.

The term "progressive" should alert us to impending danger and indeed it follows close upon. Paul's condemnations of homosexuality, we are told, are really condemnations not of homoerotic sex but of promiscuous, violent, self-delusional sex. But this puts words in Paul's mouth that aren't there, as anyone who actually reads what Paul wrote on the matter (Romans 1: 18-32, I Cor. 6: 9,10) can see.

She then adds this graph:

In his book "The Arrogance of Nations," the scholar Neil Elliott argues that Paul is referring in this famous passage to the depravity of the Roman emperors, the craven habits of Nero and Caligula, a reference his audience would have grasped instantly. "Paul is not talking about what we call homosexuality at all, " Elliott says. "He's talking about a certain group of people who have done everything in this list. We're not dealing with anything like gay love or gay marriage. We're talking about really, really violent people who meet their end and are judged by God."

Mr. Elliott is projecting what he wishes Paul were saying onto what Paul actually wrote. Paul is including homosexuality in a list of sins like adultery and fornication. He doesn't say that it's only promiscuous or violent homosexuals who are transgressing the law, just as he doesn't say that it's only violent adulterers who are sinning. Paul's teaching on homosexuality is that, like adultery, it's a perversion of God's intention for sex just as divorce is a perversion of God's intention for marriage.

"The Bible was written for a world so unlike our own," Ms Miller continues, "that it's impossible to apply its rules, at face value, to ours."

This, of course, is the standard liberal view of any document that constrains behavior. They say the same thing about the Constitution. It's true that some Biblical rules are culturally conditioned, but there's no reason to think that proscriptions concerning homosexuality are among them. After all, what is different about the modern era's thinking on homosexuality from that of Paul's day? In both eras religious people think it wrong and secular elites don't.

Ms Miller tries her luck with a few other arguments which emerge equally stillborn. She suggests, for example, that because David and Jonathan had a deep love for each other that therefore homosexuality is okay, as if a strong feeling of affection between men somehow not only implies homoerotic sex but validates it as well.

She asserts that the marriage of Mary and Joseph was unconventional and draws from this support for her conclusion that we should therefore embrace other unconventional forms of marriage, like marriage between people of the same gender.

In other words, in Ms. Miller's thinking, the fact that one kind of unconventionality is acceptable, means that all kinds of unconventionality should be acceptable. Would Ms Miller extend her logic to include incestuous or group marriages or other unconventional unions like marrying one's pets? If not, why not?

She also states that the Bible doesn't mention sex between women, but this is correct, if it is correct, only in the technical sense that the Bible never uses the phrase "sex between women." Any fair reader of Romans 1:24-27, however, would conclude that sex between women is exactly what Paul is deploring in that passage.

She argues that since "the Bible was all about inclusion, reaching out to outcasts, togetherness and community" those principles provide warrant for accepting gay marriage, but again her conclusion doesn't follow. The principle of inclusiveness and community provides warrant for reaching out to gays, but it doesn't provide warrant for accepting what gays do any more than reaching out to thieves, alcoholics, drug abusers or prostitutes provides warrant for accepting what they do.

She goes on to cite the fact that we're all God's children, made in his likeness and image, and insists that to deny access to any sacrament based on sexuality is thus exactly the same thing as denying it based on skin color, but Ms Miller clearly hasn't thought this through.

Does she really think that denying the sacrament to someone who has a sexual orientation toward promiscuous behavior, or toward young boys, and consequently acts upon his desires is the same as denying the sacrament to someone based on his skin color? Ms Miller seems to believe that just because we're made in God's image whatever we do sexually is okay. She also seems to think that homosexual behavior is genetically determined just like one's race, but there's no conclusive evidence that this is so. It may be that there's a genetic disposition toward homosexuality but that doesn't mean that homosexual behavior is determined any more than a genetic disposition toward violence or alcoholism preordains that one will be violent or alcoholic.

A priest friend of Ms Miller's believes that if Jesus were alive today (an odd hypothetical for a priest, I should think), he would reach out especially to the gays and lesbians among us, for "Jesus does not want people to be lonely and sad."

No doubt Jesus would reach out to them, but not because they were gays and lesbians but because they were lonely and sad. Moreover, he would urge them, like the woman at the well, the alcoholic, drug addict, the compulsive gambler and everyone else wrestling with some disordered element in their nature to fight to get their life in line with God's will for it. I seriously doubt that he would say that we should celebrate alcoholism just so the alcoholic feels less lonely and more accepted and so that we can all feel warm, liberal and tolerant.

RLC

Softball

Why Chris Matthews' show on MSNBC isn't laughed to scorn just for the absurdity of its name is one of the peculiar mysteries of this political year. The last thing Matthews does with his guests is play "Hardball", unless, of course, the guest is a Republican. On last night's show his guest was Bill Ayers and all Matthews did was pitch marshmallows at him. Watching it, I couldn't help feel that Ayers may have been giving Matthews one of those tingly feelings he's become famous for:

Here's a man whose wife celebrated Charles Manson's murders, was herself implicated in the murder of two policemen, and who is a friend of Michelle Obama. He's a man whose organization (and his wife) set fire to the house of the judge presiding over the trial of black panthers while the judge's wife and young son were inside. He's a man whose organization blinded an innocent man with acid at JFK airport and which included people who spoke blithely of executing as many as 25 million Americans if their revolution ever proved successful. He's a man who as late as 2001 said that he wished he had done more during his terrorist years. He's a man who once sang that he was guilty as sin and free as a bird. And Matthews asked him about none of this.

Nor did the "journalist" Matthews ask Ayers why he hosted Obama's political christening in his home, or what the nature of his relationship with Obama was on the various boards on which they served together. Nor did he ask him about what kind of "educational reform" he's working on in Chicago.

Matthews, the host of the risibly named Hardball, asked not a single question that would make Ayers uncomfortable, not a single question that would enlighten the public on why Ayers' association with Obama is potentially significant. The interview left me puzzling over why he even bothered to have Ayers on the show in the first place. No wonder people tune into talk radio and Fox News rather than MSNBC if they want to actually learn anything.

RLC

Restless Natives

Jason directs us to Politico where it looks as if liberal discontent with our new President is already stirring, and the man hasn't yet served a day in office. The lefties are growing restless with concerns that Obama is backing away from the positions that won him their support in the first place:

Obama insists he hasn't abandoned the goals that made him feel to some like a liberal savior. But the left's bill of particulars against Obama is long, and growing.

Obama drew rousing applause at campaign events when he vowed to tax the windfall profits of oil companies. As president-elect, Obama says he won't enact the tax.

Obama's pledge to repeal the Bush tax cuts and redistribute that money to the middle class made him a hero among Democrats who said the cuts favored the wealthy. But now he's struck a more cautious stance on rolling back tax cuts for people making over $250,000 a year, signaling he'll merely let them expire as scheduled at the end of 2010.

Obama's post-election rhetoric on Iraq and choices for national security team have some liberal Democrats even more perplexed. As a candidate, Obama defined and separated himself from his challengers by highlighting his opposition to the war in Iraq from the start. He promised to begin to end the war on his first day in office.

Now Obama says that on his first day in office he will begin to "design a plan for a responsible drawdown," as he told NBC's "Meet the Press" Sunday. Obama has also filled his national security positions with supporters of the Iraq war: Sen. Hillary Clinton, who voted to authorize force in Iraq, as his secretary of state; and President George W. Bush's defense secretary, Robert Gates, continuing in the same role.

The central premise of the left's criticism is direct - don't bite the hand that feeds, Mr. President-elect. The Internet that helped him so much during the election is lighting up with irritation and critiques.

To be sure most of the left is holding their fire to give him a chance, but they do seem to have their safeties off and their hammers cocked (or is a gun metaphor a little inappropriate for lefties?). Mr. Obama's honeymoon may be one of the shortest ever, and the irony is that it looks like it won't be his political opponents who'll find themselves most at odds with him but rather those who raised all the money and did all the legwork to get him elected.

They're wondering where all the hope and change went.

P.S. Glen Beck said this morning that he saw a bumper sticker in Seattle that read: Obama Is My Co-Pilot. I don't know whether to laugh at the stupidity of this or to tremble at the implications of people investing a complete unknown with Messianic attributes.

RLC

The Perfect Gift

It's long been the case in the U.S. that different groups of people choose to celebrate different aspects of the Christmas story. Merchants, of course, celebrate the giving of gifts by the Maji to the Christ child because the symbolism encourages shoppers to knock themselves out making the cash registers ring.

Secular humanists celebrate the notion of good will toward men even though they're hard-pressed to articulate a cogent reason why anyone should feel all warm and tingly toward anyone, much less complete strangers, in a godless, empty universe.

Christians celebrate the wonder of the creator of the universe becoming one of us in order to sacrifice himself for us in our lostness.

Yet, until now, there's been one aspect of the Christmas story that never gets celebrated - the slaughter of the innocents. King Herod, you'll recall, exercised his sovereignty over the children of Bethlehem by having everyone under the age of two put to the sword so that he wouldn't have to suffer a competitor to his throne.

Now comes word that in what certainly appears to be a celebration of Herod's exercise of his right as sovereign king to choose the deaths of those children, the Indiana Planned Parenthood affiliates are selling gift certificates this Christmas season which can be used for, inter alia, procuring an abortion.

It happens that lots of people are disgusted by this, but I think it's the perfect gift to celebrate that part of the Christmas narrative, Herod's infanticide, which rarely gets much positive recognition. Think for a moment of the happiness these certificates will bring in the days following Christmas. Young, expectant mommies who need to unburden themselves of an unwanted or inconvenient pregnancy will delight in the gift, as will young men on the verge of panic at having sired a child. Abortionists whose skills at ending nascent lives are inversely proportional to the compunctions of their consciences will continue to enrich themselves plying their ugly trade, and Planned Parenthood itself, a business which profits handsomely from dismembering children, will continue to rake in the cash. It won't have been such a happy Christmas for the child itself, but as anyone can tell you, the child is just a blob of tissue and doesn't count.

Indiana Planned Parenthood should be lauded for doing their part to make this an especially blessed and meaningful holiday season and for carrying on a wonderfully Herodian Christmas tradition.

RLC

President -Elect Gump

Its fairly well-known that Barack and Mrs. Obama were plagued by numerous unsavory associations throughout the Senator's campaign for the presidency. You'll remember the bigoted Reverend Wright, of course, and his fellow odd-ball cleric Michael Pfleger, and there were also the former terrorists William Ayers and Bernadine Dorhn as well as convicted felon Tony Rezko, and don't forget that Palestinian terrorist sympathizer Rashid Khalidi.

Now it seems that Obama is also connected to the corrupt and foul-mouthed Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich who was arrested yesterday for trying to profit from the sale of Obama's Senate seat. There's no evidence that Obama was involved in the matters which precipitated Blagojevich's arrest, but still. Blago and the President-elect evidently go back a long way, and we have to wonder how many more crooks and nuts Obama has been holding hands with over the years.

Like a political Forrest Gump, Mr. Obama keeps turning up in the company of Illinois' most odious characters. One almost expects that by the time he's completed his first term he'll have been found to have had ties to Al Capone and Lucky Luciano.

RLC

For Tanya

One almost has to chuckle at the spate of anti-theist ads littering this year's Christmas landscape. The anti-theists are evidently not content to see Christmas simply secularized, they want to persuade Christians to abandon the celebration altogether. Such a dreary, gray, sterile world they'd have us all live in.

On the other hand, Hot Air links to an atheist at Dizzying Intellect who posts a mild rebuke of his fellow non-believers and adopts the sort of attitude toward those with whom he disagrees that one might wish all people, atheists and Christians, would adopt.

Unfortunately, a commenter at DI named Tanya spoils the mellow mood by displaying a petulant asperity toward, and a sad ignorance of, Christian belief about the afterlife. Tanya writes:

I've lived my life in a more holy way than most Christians I know. If it turns out I'm wrong, and some pissy little whiner god wants to send me away just because I didn't worship him, even though I lived a clean, decent life, he can bite me. I wouldn't want to live in that kind of "heaven" anyway. So sorry.

Tanya evidently thinks that "heaven" is, or should be, all about living a "clean, decent life". Perhaps the following tale will illustrate the sophomoric callowness of her misconception:

Once upon a time there was a handsome prince who was deeply in love with a young woman. We'll call her Tanya. The prince wanted Tanya to come and live with him in the formidable city his father, the king, had built, but Tanya wasn't interested in either the prince or the city. The city was beautiful and wondrous, to be sure, but the inhabitants weren't particularly fun to be around, and she wanted to stay out in the countryside where the wild things grow. Even though the prince wooed Tanya with every gift he could think of, it was to no avail. She wasn't smitten at all by the "pissy little whiner" prince. She obeyed the laws of the kingdom and paid her taxes and was convinced that that was good enough.

Out beyond the countryside, however, dwelt dreadful, awful orc-like creatures who hated the king and wanted nothing more than to kill him and his heirs. One day they learned of the prince's love for Tanya and set upon a plan. They kidnapped her and sent a note to the king telling him that they would be willing to exchange Tanya for the prince, but if their offer was refused they would torture Tanya until she was dead.

The king was distraught and told the prince of the horrible news. The prince, all the rejections he had experienced from Tanya notwithstanding, still loved her deeply and his heart was broken at the thought of her peril. With tears he resolved to his father that he would do the exchange. The father wept bitterly because the prince was his only son, but he knew that his love for Tanya would not allow him to let her suffer the torment to which the ugly people would surely subject her. The prince asked only that the father try his best to persuade Tanya to live in the beautiful city.

And so the day came for the exchange and the prince rode atop his horse out of the beautiful city to meet the ugly creatures. As he crossed an expansive meadow toward his enemy he stopped to make sure they released Tanya. He waited until she had fled, oblivious in her near-panic that it was the prince himself she ran past as she hurried to the safety of the city walls. He could easily turn back now that Tanya was safe, but he had given his word that he would do the exchange and the ugly people knew he would never go back on his word.

The prince continued stoically and resolutely into their midst, giving himself for Tanya as he had promised. Surrounding his steed they set upon him, stripped him of his princely raiment, and tortured him for three days in the most excruciating manner. Not once did any sound louder than a moan pass his lips. His courage and resolve to endure whatver they subjected him to were fortified by the assurance that he was doing it for Tanya and that because of his sacrifice she was safe. Finally, wearying of their sport, they cut off his head and threw his body into a pool of offal.

Meanwhile, the grief-stricken king, his heart like wax within his breast, called Tanya into his court. He told her nothing of what his son had done, his pride in the prince not permitting him to use his heroic sacrifice as a bribe. Even so, he pleaded with Tanya, as he had promised the prince he would, to stay within the walls of the wondrous and beautiful city where she'd be safe forevermore. Tanya considered the offer, but she decided that she liked life on the outside far too much, even if it was risky, and she didn't really want to be too close to the prince, and, by the way, where is that pissy little whiner anyway?

Merry Christmas, Tanya.

RLC

Foreign Competition

There have been a lot of forecasts in recent years of the coming American economic senescence. We're hearing that the United States is destined to be eclipsed by China, India, a united Europe and maybe, one can hardly say it without gasping, even Russia. Rod Hunter at The American takes a contrary view. Citing a book by economist Robert Shapiro, Hunter points out that problems each of these would-be competitors faces over the long run are intractable and will act like heavy anchors on the economy of these nations.

Take demographics for example. China, Japan and Europe all have rapidly aging populations which will need to be supported by a shrinking cohort of younger workers. This is really a recipe for economic calamity since either the elderly are going to have to be forsaken or the young are going to be heavily taxed to support them. Either scenario bodes ill for the economic vitality of a nation.

Russia is no threat at all to American economic supremacy since the productivity of the average Russian worker is the same as that of the average Botswanian.

India has little manufacturing, and, like China, has very poor infrastructure which is essential for moving goods and sustaining a vibrant economy. Moreover, the heavy hand of government stifles initiative and flexibility both these economies need in order to thrive.

The United States is poised to avoid all of these problems and others Hunter discusses as well. Read his essay to see why.

Thanks for the tip to No Left Turns

RLC

New York Is Not Mumbai

The attack that shut down the city of Mumbai would never have succeeded in an American city of comparable size - our cops are too well trained and too well armed. So writes Jonathan Foreman in a piece for the New York Post titled Mumbai's Lessons for New York.

What Foreman doesn't mention but which is almost certainly true is that a similar terrorist attack in many places in the U.S. would encounter not only an effective police response but also armed citizens who, unlike those poor Indians, would not be sitting ducks for the terrorists to pick off at their leisure.

Even so, there are other scenarios for terror attacks on our cities to which we are vulnerable and Foreman discusses some of these. Check out his essay here.

RLC

Let it Rest

The Supreme Court has refused to hear the latest challenge to President-elect Obama's constitutional right to be president of the United States, based on alleged hankey-pankey with his birth certificate. Ron Kessler summarizes the contretemps and concludes what a lot of people had concluded some time ago - there's nothing to it. It would be a big relief if the matter is now laid to rest because the last thing this nation needs is a crisis of legitimacy in the White House.

Even if Obama was born out of the country because his mother was traveling in Kenya and was unfit to return home until after her delivery - and all the hard evidence I've seen runs counter to this hypothetical - I wonder if it wouldn't still be a miscarriage of justice to deny Obama the White House on such a technicality. Conservatives rightly complain when courts overturn the clearly expressed will of the people in voter referenda because the jurists manage to espy some technical punctilio of the law that the referenda violates. Conservatives should be equally opposed to allowing a technicality to thwart the democratic process and the will of the electorate on the matter of Obama's presidency. The last thing conservatives should wish to do is sound like those on the left who threw tantrums because they thought George Bush was an illegitimate president after the 2000 election.

Yet I confess to being conflicted about all this because I believe strongly that the constitution is not just a helpful guideline but is rather an essential anchor that keeps us from being blown about by the winds of ideological fashion. I don't want to treat the constitution as though its provisions could be ignored just because they prove inconvenient.

So, let's hope that President-elect Obama has no qualificational skeletons in his closet, and let's hope as well that future candidates are much more thoroughly vetted by the media and their parties than was Obama. In his case the media was so eager to see him elected that there was just no appetite to do any digging into anything that might impede that outcome.

RLC

Black Women and Gay Marriage

Charles M. Blow lays out a strategy in the New York Times by which gays might win the support of African American women, a demographic which in California last month voted overwhelmingly against Prop 8. Blow offers up some interesting reasons why black women are opposed to gay marriage, but he dances all around what is almost certainly the main reason without really coming out and acknowledging it. He points out that black women go to church, that they tend to be socially conservative, and that they frown on interracial marriage because they believe there aren't enough good black men to go around without having them marrying each other. He never really says clearly, though, that the reason these women voted against gay marriage is because they simply believe that it's wrong and they don't want government meddling with traditional marriage.

It's hard for our educated elite to believe that in this day and age anyone would really think that any consensual act might be wrong, but there you have it. There still are, apparently, a lot of people who believe that homosexual behavior violates the natural law, that it violates the law of God, and therefore should not receive our collective stamp of approval. Imagine.

RLC

Whither Genius?

Quick. Name at least three geniuses in the history of science - three people whose ideas changed the world.

If you tried you probably came up with names like Einstein, Newton, Darwin, Edison, Galileo, etc. Robert Roy Britt at Live Science notes that among the things these world-changing thinkers share in common is that they were essentially loners:

Major breakthroughs in science have historically been the province of individuals, not institutes. Galileo and Copernicus, Edison and Einstein, toiling away in lonely labs or pondering the cosmos in private studies.

But in recent decades - especially since the Soviet success in launching the Sputnik satellite in 1957 - the trend has been to create massive institutions that foster more collaboration and garner big chunks of funding. And it is harder now to achieve scientific greatness. A study of Nobel Prize winners in 2005 found that the accumulation of knowledge over time has forced great minds to toil longer before they can make breakthroughs. The age at which thinkers produce significant innovations increased about six years during the 20th century.

This is an interesting observation. Has the move toward large research teams, made necessary by the need for funding, stifled individual genius? Or has the accumulation of knowledge made it much more difficult for great discoveries to be made because there are fewer left and those that are still out there are much more difficult to elucidate?

Britt discusses these questions in an interesting essay here. I wonder if genius isn't still flourishing but because the great thinkers are usually part of a research team they tend to be relatively anonymous compared to past giants like Einstein and Newton who worked alone.

Anyway, read Britt's essay at the link.

RLC

Paper Dragon

The conventional wisdom is that China is an economic juggernaut that'll overtake the United States by mid-century as not only the world's foremost economic dynamo but also the world's premier military power. The problem with conventional wisdom, however, is that it's so often wrong. Jonathan Wellum at Comment throws cold water on the Golden Age of China speculation and argues that China suffers from systemic moral problems that are more likely to turn it onto a path similar to that which Japan followed twenty years ago.

Here's his introduction:

With the U.S. embroiled in economic turmoil, three decades of unprecedented economic growth behind it, a seemingly endless supply of cheap labour and bulging foreign currency exchange reserves due to massive trade surpluses, Chinese growth does indeed appear unstoppable. Even the world's largest bank by market capitalization is now Chinese. Yet it is the image of the "flawless" girl lip-synching her way through the opening of the Beijing Olympics while the real singer was set aside due to her chubby cheeks and less than perfect teeth that offers insight into the challenges ahead.

Remember that 20 years ago, the same experts predicting China's inevitable coronation were forecasting that Japan would dominate the world financially. At that time, Japan housed some of the world's most highly valued corporations, including the most expensive financial institutions. Its future also seemed inevitable. But the Japanese forgot the most pedestrian of all economic realities: if you are not prepared to reproduce, you guarantee your extinction. Its low birthrate now means that, according to its own statistics, Japan will lose 70 per cent of its workforce by mid-century, and already its share of the world economy has dropped from a high of 18% in 1994 to below 10% in 2008.

Read Wellum's essay to find our what he thinks China's specific problems are.

RLC

Ending the Search for the Real Killer

O. J. Simpson has been sentenced to nine to thirty three years in jail for armed robbery. It couldn't happen to a more deserving guy, but we wonder now how anyone will find the real killers of Ron Goldman and Nicole Brown now that O.J. won't be able to continue his tireless search of the nation's golf courses for the murderer.

Ron Goldman's father and sister talk about the sentence here:

For those too young to remember why Mr. Goldman is so gratified by the verdict and why the verdict is so significant you can catch up on the history here.

RLC

Fading Away

Materialists appear to be genuinely worried that confidence in their model of mind and brain - i.e. that mind is simply a word we use to describe what the brain does - is being eroded by contemporary challenges to that model.

Amanda Gefter is herself a philosophical materialist and a writer for New Scientist. She attended a September conference of neuroscientists who are skeptical that materialism can explain the problems posed by human consciousness and reports on the proceedings here. Her article includes this summary of remarks by Jeffrey Schwartz:

"YOU cannot overestimate," thundered psychiatrist Jeffrey Schwartz, "how threatened the scientific establishment is by the fact that it now looks like the materialist paradigm is genuinely breaking down. You're gonna hear a lot in the next calendar year about... how Darwin's explanation of how human intelligence arose is the only scientific way of doing it... I'm asking us as a world community to go out there and tell the scientific establishment, enough is enough! Materialism needs to start fading away and non-materialist causation needs to be understood as part of natural reality."

Gefter interviews materialist neuroscientists for their reaction, which is unsurprisingly hostile, to the speakers at the conference. Nevertheless, despite their disdain for the views expressed by those speakers, everyone of the researchers she interviews admits there's no evidence for their conviction that mind is fundamentally reducible to the operations of the material brain. Their conviction is obviously an assertion of faith, a product of their a priori commitment to materialism.

Gefter's article raises two essential questions: First, is materialism false, and, second, does substance dualism, if true, refute evolutionary Darwinism? David Chalmers, who's considered one of the top thinkers in the field, answers yes to the first and no to the second. Michael Egnor disagrees and answers yes to both of them. Egnor's article is heavy surf but it's worth the effort it takes to row through it.

The fact that so many people in the field of neuroscience are having doubts about the materialist paradigm is an intriguing development. A generation ago hardly anyone doubted it, but today dualism is experiencing a resurgence. This is significant because metaphysical materialism and naturalistic evolution comprise the two intellectual pillars holding up contemporary atheism, and both are teetering from serious challenges to which it has proven difficult for them to muster adequate responses.

It may well be that we're living in what Alister McGrath calls the twilight of atheism.

RLC

Why Johnny Doesn't Know Politics

A couple of weeks ago a man named John Ziegler commissioned a Zogby poll of Obama voters which revealed that many of them didn't have a clue about who Barack Obama was or what the political facts of life in this country are. Ziegler took some heat for this poll because it focused only on Democrats, but the criticism was somewhat unfair because it misconstrued his intent. He wasn't trying to show that Obama voters were particularly dumb, as some of his critics alleged, but rather that much of the American media, particularly the liberal outlets, have failed their audience. People who relied on the liberal media, which most Obama voters did, were obviously and grossly underinformed or misinformed.

Having been criticized for focusing on Obama voters in the original poll, Ziegler recently commissioned Wilson Research Strategies to conduct a poll of McCain voters who were asked the same twelve questions as Zogby had put to his sample, and the difference in the results is stark. The GOP voters scored much higher than did the Democrats. Zeigler is adamant that the disparity has nothing to do with one group being smarter than the other but has everything to do with where the respective groups get their information.

Voters who watch Fox news and listen to talk radio scored much better than those who watch CNN and/or network news. McCain voters largely belonged to the former group and Obama voters largely belonged to the latter. Ziegler talks about his results here and the complete results can be found at his web site (you may have to scroll down to find the most recent poll results). Here's a quick sample:

35 % of McCain voters got 10 or more of 13 questions correct.

18% of Obama voters got 10 or more of 13 questions correct.

McCain voters knew which party controls congress by a 63-27 margin.

Obama voters got the "congressional control" question wrong by 43-41.

The most amazing result Ziegler's study turned up was that those who get their news from liberal outlets were stunningly uninformed about most of the questions asked about Obama and American politics, but they scored very high on questions about Sarah Palin.

Only 13.7% failed to identify Sarah Palin as the person upon whom their party spent $150,000 in clothes. Only 6.2% failed to identify Palin as the candidate with a pregnant teenage daughter, and 86.9 % thought Palin said that she could see Russia from her "house," even though it was Tina Fey who said that on Saturday Night Live.

Check out the results. It'll make you wonder how well democracy in America is being served by a large segment of our media, particularly television networks.

RLC

Proposition 8

You're aware, perhaps, of the virulent reaction by the left, particularly the gay left, to the passage in California of Proposition 8 which effectively prevents the legalization of gay marriage. Since the Mormon church played a role in the campaign they've come in for special abuse by the erstwhile apostles of tolerance and progressivism. It is deeply ironic that some who call for tolerance of those whose beliefs on sexuality are different from our own are calling for violence against those whose beliefs on sexuality are different from their own.

Jonah Goldberg has a fine column about the very unliberal tactics employed by these folk against those who want nothing more than to preserve marriage as a union of one man and one woman.

Goldberg asks:

Did you catch the political ad in which two Jews ring the doorbell of a nice, working-class family? They barge in and rifle through the wife's purse and then the man's wallet for any cash. Cackling, they smash the daughter's piggy bank and pinch every penny. "We need it for the Wall Street bailout!" they exclaim.

No? Maybe you saw the one with the two swarthy Muslims who knock on the door of a nice Jewish family and then blow themselves up?

No? Well, then surely you saw the TV ad in which two smarmy Mormon missionaries knock on the door of an attractive lesbian couple. "Hi, we're from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints!" says the blond one with a toothy smile. "We're here to take away your rights." The Mormon zealots yank the couple's wedding rings from their fingers and then tear up their marriage license.

As the thugs leave, one says to the other, "That was too easy." His smirking comrade replies, "Yeah, what should we ban next?" The voice-over implores viewers: "Say no to a church taking over your government."

Obviously, the first two ads are fictional because no one would dare run such anti-Semitic or anti-Muslim attacks.

The third ad, however, was real. It was broadcast throughout California on election day as part of the effort to rally opposition to Proposition 8, the initiative that successfully repealed the right to same-sex marriage in the state.

There's much more at the link, and, as usual with Goldberg, his essay is good reading.

Truth to tell, the liberal opponents of Prop 8 didn't discriminate. Outraged that the demographic group most notably in favor of the ban on gay marriage was African Americans (70% of African Americans who voted in California voted to pass the ban) some of the lefty progressives even hurled vulgar racial epithets at blacks who were in fact protesting the passage of the Proposition.

Part of the left's outrage, perhaps, stems from the fact that for years progressives have been pushing against an open door in getting their agenda enacted in this country, but now, on this one issue, they're meeting resistance. Some of them are venting their frustration like spoiled children accustomed to having their way but who find themselves thwarted in a matter of particular importance to them.

Their anger is directed at the church, of course, because only people of the Book have any grounds for mounting opposition to the push for gay marriage. Secularists have long since recognized that they have no moral basis other than their own subjective preferences for opposing anything, let alone gay marriage. Realizing that their dislike of the notion of two members of the same gender engaging in connubial bliss was nothing more than a matter of personal taste, secularists quickly abandoned their opposition. Religious people remain the last impediment to the redefinition of marriage, but their opposition is intractable because it's based not on personal taste but upon what they believe to be the will of God.

Like the brat who screams that he hates his parents when they stand in the way of his obtaining something he wants, those who claim the right to reorder social arrangements that have thousands of years of tradition behind them may well increase the volume and frequency of their hatefulness toward conservative Christians and Jews if these groups continue to refuse to give them their way.

RLC

Congealed Information

Physics students have probably heard their teachers refer to matter as "frozen energy", i.e. matter is really energy that has been "compacted" to take solid form, somewhat like rain drops are condensed water vapor. It was one of Einstein's great insights that matter and energy are interconvertible, a relationship he famously expressed in the equation E=mc2.

The mass/energy relationship came to mind the other day as I was reading a paper in which the author somewhat in passing suggested that our bodies may in fact be congealed soul. This is, to me at least, an interesting thought because my view of the soul is that it's not a substance of any kind but is rather information.

I think that our soul is our essence. It's the sum of every true proposition about us. It's like a data file that contains an exhaustive description of our personal history, our personality, our likes and dislikes, our physical appearance at every moment of our lives, and so on. I envision this information existing eternally in the mind of God. Perhaps upon death this information is "downloaded" in such a way that it forms a new body of some sort in some other reality. Somewhat like the teleportation device in Star Trek reassembled atoms to reform the teleported crew of the Enterprise, perhaps bodies can be formed, at least in part, from the information comprising our soul.

Taking this thought a step further, maybe everything, the whole world, is really a manifestation of information. Perhaps God's mind is like a vast supercomputer with near infinite data storage capability. All the information about the world exists in His mind and in some corner of that Divine intellect there's a module that acts something like a computer monitor. We might imagine God, at the moment of creation, performing a mental keystroke and the data describing the world expressing itself in images on the monitor, just as the images you're viewing right now are really manifestations of the information stored on your hard drive and on the server which hosts Viewpoint. The images on the monitor in God's mind include us. Our physical bodies are, in this view, actually "congealed" information.

In any event, I think one of the manifold blessings of modern technology is that it affords us new metaphors and rich resources to help us understand better than our ancestors ever could the nature of God and the world He has created.

RLC

For Want of a Birth Certificate...

There's an item that's been simmering on the back-burner of our politics for a while and which every now and then boils up so that the public catches a glimpse. I don't know what to make of it, but I think we'll be hearing more about it as time goes on, and despite the fact that it sounds a bit crack-pottish it could turn out to be very significant.

This is the matter of Barack Obama's birth certificate. There have been a number of attempts to get the President-elect to produce his birth certificate to prove that he was really born in the U.S. as the constitution requires of all serving presidents. The allegation is that Obama was actually born in Kenya and that his claim to have been born in Hawaii is false. His campaign has produced a certificate on the internet they claim to be legitimate, but a number of lawsuits have been initiated claiming that it's not.

The Philadelphia Bulletin notes that problems with this certificate are too many to ignore:

The short list is first that the document is not signed. Secondly, it has no seal. Third, is that the security border doesn't match similar documents from the same time period. Other objections are that the race of Mr. Obama's father is listed as African. In the early '60s the State of Hawaii listed African- Americans as Negroes.

What is missing from the document is the doctor's signature and physical characteristics at birth that every original birth certificate reveals.

Some interested parties have submitted the internet document to the scrutiny of Adobe and graphic experts who all agree the document is highly questionable or a complete fraud. Is it? Who knows at this point? What is far more intriguing is the resistance being thrown at uncovering the true vault document. This is what is spawning suspicion and doubt.

Now one of the lawsuits that has been filed to force him to present a paper copy is going to the Supreme Court on Friday. Despite the fact that this sounds nutty, there are several reasons it's significant.

First, if it turns out that Mr. Obama was not born in the U.S. then he's disqualified from serving as president according to Article 2, section 1 of the constitution. He'll soon (December 15th) be certified as the president-elect by the members of the electoral college, and there's no enforcement mechanism for removing a president who has been duly certified except the impeachment process. Since impeachment certainly won't happen with a Democratic congress the constitutional provision requiring the president to be a natural-born citizen will have been effectively ignored.

This means that in 2012 there would be very little standing in the way of, say, an Arnold Schwarzenegger throwing his hat into the ring. And if the provision against non-native born presidents is to be disregarded why not dispense with the provision that requires a president to be 35 years of age and/or to have been a resident for fourteen years?

Secondly, there are questions whether anything Obama signs as president - legislation, treaties, directives - would have any legitimacy since he, himself, would be serving illegitimately. Everything would be open to challenge, and the courts would be working through the mess for years.

In other words, President-elect Obama's birth certificate could trigger a constitutional crisis of unprecedented proportions. As the Bulletin points out, he could end the controversy today and spare everyone a lot of trouble and expense by simply producing the original or by requesting that Hawaii do so. Why doesn't he?

CORRECTION: This post originally stated incorrectly that the electoral college has already officially elected Barack Obama to be our next president. It has been corrected to show that this will not occur until December 15th.

RLC

Public Education and ID (Pt. IV)

This post will conclude our examination (see previous posts in this series) of philosopher Thomas Nagel's arguement that the objections to ID are religious/theological rather than scientific and that to exclude it from public school classrooms on religious grounds is indefensible. Nagel is an atheist and a Darwinian, as we have previously pointed out, so his paper in Philosophy and Public Affairs is all the more noteworthy. He writes that:

The consequence of all this for public education is that both the inclusion of some mention of ID in a biology class and its exclusion would seem to depend on religious assumptions. Either divine intervention is ruled out in advance or it is not. If it is, ID can be disregarded. If it is not, evidence for ID can be considered. Yet both are clearly assumptions of a religious nature. Public schools in the United States may not teach atheism or deism any more than they may teach Christianity, so how can it be all right to teach scientific theories whose empirical confirmation depends on the assumption of one range of these views while it is impermissible to discuss the implications of alternative views on the same question?

The question is even more difficult for the ID critic if we keep in mind that IDers take no formal position on who the designer is. Nagel assumes it's God, but ID is officially agnostic on the point. For all anyone knows the designer might be the result of a science project conducted by a precocious student inhabiting one of the universes posited by multiverse theorists. The point of ID is not to prove that God exists but to show that this world shows evidence of having been intelligently planned and engineered and any metaphysics or science which rules out intention and purpose as an explanation is inadequate.

Nagel goes on to ask:

What would a biology course teach if it wanted to remain neutral on the question whether divine intervention in the process of life's development was a possibility, while acknowledging that people disagree about whether it should be regarded as a possibility at all, or what probability should be assigned to it, and that there is at present no way to settle that disagreement scientifically? So far as I can see, the only way to make no assumptions of a religious nature would be to admit that the empirical evidence may suggest different conclusions depending on what religious belief one starts with, and that the evidence does not by itself settle which of those beliefs is correct...

This is precisely how all controversial issues would be addressed in a healthy educational system, but the Darwinians are repelled by Nagel's sensible suggestion. They act as if they're terrified by the prospect that students exposed to the possibility that the biosphere reveals intention would quickly believe it and then a century of indoctrination in materialism would be undone.

Nagel again:

Judge Jones (in the Dover ID trial) cited as a decisive reason for denying ID the status of science that Michael Behe, the chief scientific witness for the defense, acknowledged that the theory would be more plausible to someone who believed in God than to someone who did not. This is just common sense, however, and the opposite is just as true: evolutionary theory as a complete explanation of the development of life is more plausible to someone who does not believe in God than to someone who does.

Many who followed the Dover trial were mystified by the fact that the plaintiffs and Judge Jones made such a big deal about Behe's statement because, as Nagel points out, it's simply common sense. Theists are going to be less resistant to the notion that the world was intentionally designed than would non-theists. This is hardly the gaffe it was portrayed as, but Judge Jones was so shocked by Behe's remark that he thought it all the proof he needed to rule that ID didn't qualify as science.

Either both of them are science or neither of them is. If both of them are scientific hypotheses, the ground for exclusion must be that ID is hopelessly bad science, or dead science, in Kitcher's phrase. That would be true if ID, like young earth creationism, can be refuted by the empirical evidence even if one starts by assuming that the possibility of a god who could intervene cannot be ruled out in advance.

So far as I can tell, however, no such refutation has even been offered, let alone established. What have been offered instead are necessarily speculative proposals about how the problems posed by Behe might be handled by evolutionary theory, declarations that no hypothesis involving divine intervention counts as science, and assurances that evolutionary theory is not inconsistent with the existence of God. It is also emphasized that even if evolutionary theory were false, that would not mean that ID was true. That is so, but it is still not a sufficient reason to exclude it from discussion.

If reasons to doubt the adequacy of evolutionary theory can be legitimately admitted to the curriculum, it is hard to see why they cannot legitimately be described as reasons in support of design, for those who believe in God, and reasons to believe that some as yet undiscovered, purely naturalistic theory must account for the evidence, for those who do not. That, after all, is the real epistemological situation.

Nagel's paper is altogether reasonable and fair-minded, which probably insures that it will receive little attention from those in whose hands these virtues rest awkwardly.

RLC

Why They're Not Competitive

Ramirez tells an important truth in this cartoon, but it might be more accurate if he had hooked two more trailers onto the first. One of them should be labelled government regulations and the other labelled executive mismanagement.

RLC

The Bush Legacy (Pt. II)

Jeffrey Kuhner of the Washington Times has written an excellent overview of the ideological legacy of the Bush presidency. We began a consideration of it in a previous post by looking at his fiscal and economic record, and we'll conclude today with a summary of where his social (domestic) and foreign policy place him on the ideological spectrum.

From a conservative point of view President Bush's domestic record has been mixed. His Supreme Court appointments (Roberts and Alito) were excellent - save the stumble with the abortive Harriet Miers nomination - but his refusal to do anything much about our porous borders and his willingness to grant amnesty to 20 million illegal aliens put him once again outside the conservative mainstream. So, taken as a whole, his record on the economy, spending, reducing the size of government, illegal immigration, etc. is one that liberals should laud him for but in which conservatives find little to like. Indeed, Kuhner believes Mr. Bush has almost single-handedly driven a stake through the heart of the conservative movement that had been ascendent since 1980:

Mr. Bush's enduring political legacy is the death of the conservative movement. He was not a small-government individualist in the mold of Ronald Reagan. In fact, he was the very embodiment of the "Third Way" fusing cultural conservatism and social liberalism that was espoused but never really implemented by the likes of former President Bill Clinton and British Prime Minister Tony Blair: an activist big government combined with a defense of traditional values.

It is on foreign policy, however, that George Bush has secured the gratitude of those on the right and, indeed, should have won the gratitude of the entire nation. Conservatives generally (but not universally) supported the war in Afghanistan and, because, like everyone else in the world, they feared Saddam Hussein's WMD program and despised Saddam's tyranny, they supported the invasion of Iraq. There was disagreement among conservatives on this war, but I think it fair to say that most of them saw both Afghanistan and Iraq, unlike Korea, Vietnam, and Bosnia, as theaters of national interest. But the real source of conservative support for Bush throughout his tenure was his prosecution of the overall war on terrorism. It was because he had such a clear-eyed vision of the threat Islamism poses, coupled with the lack of a credible liberal alternative policy, that led conservatives to ignore Bush's other shortcomings, particularly his inability or unwillingness to rally the country to his side. Once more to Kuhner's essay:

Conservatives did not mount a frontal assault on the Bush administration for one simple reason: the war on terror. Most on the right supported Mr. Bush's foreign policy - and, therefore, they overlooked many of his flaws. Mostly, he was an ineffective communicator. It is not just that he mangled words, displayed a poor vocabulary, and uttered silly phrases such as "strategery" or "misunderestimated." He presided over the most rhetorically inept administration in recent memory - a public diplomacy failure that enabled his opponents to misrepresent his national security strategy and fill the vacuum with lies and half-truths, especially about the Iraq war. It eventually cost Mr. Bush his popular standing at home and abroad, thereby reducing his presidency to rubble.

Mr. Bush, however, was farsighted in foreign policy. He toppled two dictatorships in Afghanistan and Iraq, liberating more than 50 million Muslims from totalitarian regimes. His actions broke the back of al Qaeda, disrupted countless terrorist cells, and exposed Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein's corruption of the United Nations through the massive Oil-for-Food scandal.

There's an irony here. There was a time when it was liberals who championed the oppressed and tyrannized of the world. There was a time when liberals could say, as John Kennedy did in his much-quoted inaugural address, "Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty." Nowadays when a president takes those words seriously liberals execrate him. I suspect that no one was more surprised than George Bush when, after liberating 50 million people in Afghanistan and Iraq from horrific oppression, the left in this country gave him nothing more than the back of their hand.

But there's more for which the President deserves credit:

Also, his administration dismantled A.Q. Khan's international black market nuclear network. It convinced Libya to abandon its weapons of mass destruction program. It managed to contain rogue states, such as Syria, North Korea and Iran. It forged a path toward an independent Palestine - providing it embraces democracy and renounces terror. Most importantly, it achieved its primary goal: preventing another attack on American soil. Mr. Bush kept the American people safe. And he did this in the face of ferocious Democratic opposition and a hostile mainstream media.

Mr. Bush's central insight is that the key to defeating Islamic fascism is to bring democracy to the Middle East. Arab autocracies have fostered the conditions for a culture of jihadism to take root. Political and economic reform will drain the swamps of Islamist terror at its source. This is why the Iraq war is pivotal to winning the larger war on terrorism: A stable, democratic Iraq will serve as a strategic linchpin for transforming the wider region. The Bush Doctrine is similar to President Harry Truman's containment policy in one crucial respect: Mr. Bush has laid down the foundations for eventual victory - but only if his initiatives are sustained.

Just like Truman, Mr. Bush is a reviled leader. In fact, Truman's popular approval ratings were even lower when he left office than Mr. Bush's. Both men oversaw protracted, unpopular wars (Truman in Korea; Mr. Bush in Iraq). Both men ushered in transformative foreign policies opposed by media elites. Both men alienated key aspects of their base (Truman with economic liberals and Southern Democrats; Mr. Bush with fiscal conservatives and border security Republicans). And both men saw their respective political parties decline under withering partisan attacks (Truman from McCarthyism; Mr. Bush from the netroots, loony left).

Yet Truman is now viewed as a courageous, successful president. His staunch opposition to Soviet communism was vindicated. Mr. Bush's principled stand against Islamofascism will be vindicated as well.

So, what will Mr. Bush's legacy be? Two years ago I thought he had a chance to be one of the great presidents of the last 100 years, but I'm no longer so sure. I think that in too many ways he has acted unwisely and has not even attempted to explain his policies to the people, assuming, apparently, that we would all just understand why he was doing what he was doing with immigration, the surge in Iraq, the bailout and the budgetary deficits. Nevertheless, on perhaps the most important issue of our time, the threat of global terror, he has, despite vicious opposition from his political opponents, acted wisely and heroically. It will be for his farsighted determination to prevail in the most critical conflict of our time - despite ferocious opposition from the media and the Democrats - that he will be most remembered.

RLC

Contemporary Hero

Once upon a time one could find on almost every street corner someone proclaiming the words attributed to Voltaire that he might "hate what you say but will defend to the death your right to say it". It sounded good and won the admiration of all who heard the speaker's vow to defend with his life the right of others to say even those things he despised. But then came Islamic fascism and the very real possibility that one might actually be required to make the ultimate sacrifice to defend free speech and suddenly the street corners were empty and silent. To paraphrase Machiavelli, when times are peaceful there are plenty of people who can be found to swear their undying loyalty to the First Amendment, but when the savages are howling at the gates free speech will find but few defenders. And so it has been since 9/11.

One such heroic defender of the right to speak the truth, however, is a man by the name of Geert Wilders. Wilders was a member of the Dutch Parliament who has put his life and career on the line to warn of the threat to the Netherlands posed by the growing Islamic population in his country. The Wall Street Journal has recently run an excellent warts-and-all column about Wilders that everyone should take the time to read.

Here's an excerpt that gives a sense of Wilders' blunt outspokenness that certainly won't endear him to the multicultural PC crowd:

As he sees it, the West suffers from an excess of toleration for those who do not share its tradition of tolerance. "We believe that -- 'we' means the political elite -- that all cultures are equal," he says. "I believe this is the biggest disease today facing Europe. . . . We should wake up and tell ourselves: You're not a xenophobe, you're not a racist, you're not a crazy guy if you say, 'My culture is better than yours.' A culture based on Christianity, Judaism, humanism is better. Look at how we treat women, look at how we treat apostates, look at how we go with the separation of church and state. I can give you 500 examples why our culture is better."

Wilders acknowledges that "the majority of Muslims in Europe and America are not terrorists or violent people." But he says "it really doesn't matter that much, because if you don't define your own culture as the best, dominant one, and you allow through immigration people from those countries to come in, at the end of the day you will lose your own identity and your own culture, and your society will change. And our freedom will change -- all the freedoms we have will change."

The article mentions the short film Wilders produced last spring titled Fitna. If you missed it when it came out last April you can view it here.

Despite his frank, and doubtlessly accurate, assessment of the problem created by the massive influx of Arab Muslims into Europe, Wilder's solution is troubling. He says that the problem is the Koran and that "You have to give up this stupid, fascist book" -- the Quran. This is what you have to do. You have to give up that book."

As the writer of the WSJ column notes:

Mr. Wilders is right to call for a vigilant defense of liberal principles. A society has a right, indeed a duty, to require that religious minorities comply with secular rules of civilized behavior. But to demand that they renounce their religious identity and holy books is itself an affront to liberal principles.

Quite so if Wilders is actually saying that Muslims should be legally required to renounce their scriptures, but perhaps he is merely saying that they need to be challenged and urged to reconsider their interpretations of the Koran and indeed the validity of its claim to divine authority. If so, there's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with engaging Muslims theologically and exposing them to the problematic nature of those beliefs which ill-suit them for life in a pluralistic, civilized world. Such engagement should occur, though, in the arena of ideas, not in legislatures. If Europeans were to compel Muslims by legislative fiat to renounce the Koran then Christians would have very little ground to stand upon should some future tyrant demand they give up their Bibles.

Even so, Mr Wilders is a modern hero who is placing his life at risk to save European culture and the principles of freedom. Read the whole article.

RLC

Public Education and ID (Pt. III)

Thomas Nagel's paper in Philosophy and Public Policy makes the case that Intelligent Design has the same philosophical or theoretical status as the Darwinian view it challenges. Nagel's argument is all the more provocative given that he is himself an atheist and a Darwinian. We've looked at the first part of his paper in earlier posts and consider more of it here. Nagel asserts that the critic of ID often bases his opposition on philosophical, rather than scientific, grounds. He writes that:

Those who would not take any amount of evidence against evolutionary theory as evidence for ID ... seem to be assuming that ID is not a possibility. What is the status of that assumption? Is it scientifically grounded? It may not be a matter of faith or ecclesiastical authority, but it does seem to be a basic, ungrounded assumption about how the world works, essentially a kind of naturalism.

In other words, the rejection of ID is grounded not on scientific reasons, but on reasons which are best described as theological. Either there is no God, the critic maintains, in which case ID is impossible, or, if there is, we can be assured that He doesn't work the way the IDers think He does. Nagel explains:

The denier that ID is science faces the following dilemma. Either he admits that the intervention of such a designer is possible, or he does not. If he does not, he must explain why that belief is more scientific than the belief that a designer is possible. If on the other hand he believes that a designer is possible, then he can argue that the evidence is overwhelmingly against the actions of such a designer, but he cannot say that someone who offers evidence on the other side is doing something of a fundamentally different kind. All he can say about that person is that he is scientifically mistaken.

I think there are only two possible justifications for this asymmetry. Either there is strong scientific evidence against the existence of God; or there is a scientific default presumption that the prior probability of a designer is low, and the only possible basis for assigning it a higher probability - high enough to make it eligible as an explanation of what is empirically observed-is faith, revelation, or ecclesiastical authority. Is either of those things true, however?

The claim that ID is bad science or dead science may depend, almost as much as the claim that it is not science, on the assumption that divine intervention in the natural order is not a serious possibility. That is not a scientific belief but a belief about a religious question: it amounts to the assumption that either there is no god, or if there is, he certainly does not intervene in the natural order to guide the world in certain directions.

This is a point similar to that made by Cornelius Hunter in Darwin's God: Evolution and the Problem of Evil. The irony is that Darwinians base their argument on particular theological suppositions about God whereas IDers maintain theological neutrality and say nothing about God. Yet the Darwinians wrap themselves in the mantle of science while calling the IDers religious zealots. Pretty amusing.

More on Nagel's paper anon.

RLC