The Cairo Speech

A worshipful media, or at least large segments of it, have been cooing over the Obama trip to the Middle East in general and his "historic" Cairo speech in particular. Not all journalists, however, are bending the knee. Caroline Glick of the Jerusalem Post has an excellent analysis of what the President said and some fascinating thoughts on what she fears his intentions are vis a vis Israel and Iran.

Ms Glick sounds a little bit too angry in the column for my taste, but then, if she's correct, perhaps she has reason to be. Here's an excerpt from her essay:

[President Obama] spoke of the need to grant equality to women without making mention of common Islamic practices like so-called honor killings, and female genital mutilation. He ignored the fact that throughout the lands of Islam women are denied basic legal and human rights. And then he qualified his statement by mendaciously claiming that women in the US similarly suffer from an equality deficit. In so discussing this issue, Obama sent the message that he couldn't care less about the plight of women in the Islamic world.

So, too, Obama spoke about the need for religious freedom but ignored Saudi Arabian religious apartheid. He talked about the blessings of democracy but ignored the problems of tyranny.

In short, Obama's "straight talk" to the Arab world, which began with his disingenuous claim that like America, Islam is committed to "justice and progress, tolerance and the dignity of all human beings," was consciously and fundamentally fraudulent. And this fraud was advanced to facilitate his goal of placing the Islamic world on equal moral footing with the free world.

In a like manner, Obama's tough "truths" about Israel were marked by factual and moral dishonesty in the service of political ends.

On the surface, Obama seemed to scold the Muslim world for its all-pervasive Holocaust denial and craven Jew hatred. By asserting that Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism are wrong, he seemed to be upholding his earlier claim that America's ties to Israel are "unbreakable."

Unfortunately, a careful study of his statements shows that Obama was actually accepting the Arab view that Israel is a foreign - and therefore unjustifiable - intruder in the Arab world. Indeed, far from attacking their rejection of Israel, Obama legitimized it.

The basic Arab argument against Israel is that the only reason Israel was established was to soothe the guilty consciences of Europeans who were embarrassed about the Holocaust. By their telling, the Jews have no legal, historic or moral rights to the Land of Israel.

This argument is completely false. The international community recognized the legal, historic and moral rights of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel long before anyone had ever heard of Adolf Hitler. In 1922, the League of Nations mandated the "reconstitution" - not the creation - of the Jewish commonwealth in the Land of Israel in its historic borders on both sides of the Jordan River.

But in his self-described exercise in truth telling, Obama ignored this basic truth in favor of the Arab lie. He gave credence to this lie by stating wrongly that "the aspiration for a Jewish homeland is rooted in a tragic history."

He then explicitly tied Israel's establishment to the Holocaust by moving to a self-serving history lesson about the genocide of European Jewry.

Even worse than his willful blindness to the historic, legal and moral justifications for Israel's rebirth, was Obama's characterization of Israel itself. Obama blithely, falsely and obnoxiously compared Israel's treatment of Palestinians to white American slave owners' treatment of their black slaves. He similarly cast Palestinian terrorists in the same morally pure category as slaves. Perhaps most repulsively, Obama elevated Palestinian terrorism to the moral heights of slave rebellions and the US civil rights movement by referring to it by its Arab euphemism, "resistance."

Be sure to read the rest. It's very insightful.

My biggest problem with the President's approach to the Arab world is that he seems to be all too eager to apologize for America's conduct vis a vis Muslims when in fact the United States has been the best friend Muslims have ever had.

It's only America's restraining hand on Israel's shoulder that has kept Israel from utterly destroying its Muslim enemies in Gaza and Lebanon. In the early 90s we rescued Kuwait from the rape and pillage of Sadaam Hussein's troops and intervened to save Muslims in Bosnia and Croatia from what would have surely been a genocidal holocaust. In the current decade we sent hundreds of millions of dollars to help Muslims devastated by the Indian Ocean tsunami. We've spent millions more to bring relief to African Muslims suffering the ravages of incompetent and corrupt government. More recently we liberated 50 million Muslims from oppression and tyranny in Afghanistan and Iraq.

All of this has cost Americans in blood and treasure. No nation in the world, certainly no Muslim nation, has done as much for other Muslims as has the United States and yet President Obama mentions none of this. Like most on the left, Mr. Obama can see only American missteps and faults and seems blind to the many facts which contradict his worldview. No wonder Glick sounds angry.

RLC

Contemporary Child Abuse

Mona Charen discusses some disturbing statistics about marriage and child-bearing in America:

The number of babies born to unmarried women in 2007 (over 1.7 million) was 26% higher than it was in 2002.

Forty percent of all births in America are to unwed mothers.

Unwed motherhood is primarily a phenomenon of those who can least afford it. In 2000 less than one mother in ten who had 16 or more years of education was unmarried, but 36% of mothers with between 9 and 14 years of schooling were living without husbands.

By the age of 12, 78% of children living with no live-at-home father have experienced one or more years of poverty. For children living in intact families it's only 18%.

Babies born to unwed mothers are more likely to be premature, suffer low birth weight, and other pathologies. They will have poorer school performance, be in more trouble with the law, suffer more emotional and mental disturbances, more physical and sexual abuse, and more likely to become unwed parents themselves.

I remember reading somewhere that the one thing most men have in common in our prisons is not race, socio-economic background, or level of education. It's that almost uniformly they grew up without a father at home.

A lot of people seem to think that having two biological parents at home with their children is optional, but unwed motherhood is, according to the statistics, a form of child abuse and should be stigmatized. Our cultural elites, however, are so heavily invested in the idea that a diversity of family structures is a proper goal of a progressive society that it'll be a long time before unwed motherhood is treated with the same degree of opprobrium as is, say, exposing a child to second-hand smoke.

RLC

Climate Fascists

Our friends on the left sometimes affix bumper stickers to their autos which say things like "Dissent is Patriotic," or "Resist Authority," or they recite (or used to recite) Voltaire's famous maxim about how "I may disagree with what you say, but I'll fight to the death for your right to say it." Noble sentiments, these, and typically American. The problem is that too many on the left don't mean a word of it.

Marc Marano at Climate Depot catalogues the many threats and other forms of intimidation that have been leveled against those who've expressed doubt about one aspect or another of the current global warming enthusiasm. Public figures who harbor reservations about the severity or the cause of climate change have been threatened with death, loss of their jobs, and imprisonment. It's astonishing that anyone, even on the left from whence we've come to expect demands for ideological conformity, can hold free speech and dissent in such low esteem.

Of course these forms of intimidation are exactly the tactics typically employed by Nazi brownshirts and other fascists, past and present. It's yet another example of why the new left are really the new fascisti. This modest proposal, for example, recently appeared on Talking Points Memo, a mainstream left-wing blog:

At what point do we jail or execute global warming deniers

What is so frustrating about these fools is that they are the politicians and greedy bastards who don't want a cut in their profits who use bogus science or the lowest scientists in the gene pool who will distort data for a few bucks. The vast majority of the scientific minds in the World agree and understand it's a very serious problem that can do an untold amount of damage to life on Earth.

So when the right wing f***tards have caused it to be too late to fix the problem, and we start seeing the devastating consequences and we start seeing end of the World type events - how will we punish those responsible. It will be too late. So shouldn't we start punishing them now?

This post has since been taken down, but Morano offers lots of other examples from the last couple of years, including calls for Nuremburg-style trials for those heretics and other deviants who fail to conform to the current orthodoxy. It's frightening to think that in the United States, the home of freedom of speech and the right to dissent, there are people who believe that if you don't go along with the program, if you're skeptical of authority, you should be executed or otherwise punished.

The sound you often hear when you visit these lefty neighborhoods in the blogosphere is the sound of glass breaking.

RLC

Moral Consistency

So, comes word that harsh interrogations do work after all. I wonder if all those media talkers and others who insisted that torture doesn't provide useful information and that Bush is evil for using it, even if it was applied to only a few selected terrorists, will now humbly recant and apologize. I'm not holding my breath.

It's one of the ironies of our times that some of the same people who are so appalled that we would waterboard a terrorist in order to save thousands of lives had no problem at all with withholding food and water from a completely helpless and innocent young woman for nearly two weeks until she died of thirst.

The first is seen as an unconscionable cruelty and the second as an act of mercy. Amazing.

RLC

Byron on the Tiller Case

My friend Byron brought to my attention the article to which I linked yesterday concerning George Tiller's murder. Concerned that readers may get the misimpression that he agreed with the writer of the piece, he sent me an email unambiguously stating his position. It's a very good summary of what has been the overwhelming pro-life response to this episode, and I want to post it here so that everyone will see it.

Byron writes:

As always, you have a knack for getting at important things in ways to make us think. The philosophy teacher in you helps us think through arguments and claims and consequences. Thanks.

Since my name was mentioned as the one who sent you the piece about the ethics of the murder of Tiller, I thought I should say--for the record, since it is such a controversial and weighty matter--that I do not believe that those who follow Jesus should ever take up violence since he plainly taught his followers to be non-violent. Of course I realize that this is in the minority view in church history and although I am not anabaptist, I think the Mennonites and others of that sort get it right on this one. Christians must "overcome evil with good" and so therefore I think this author is dead wrong.

I wouldn't want anyone to think that I sent it to you because I agreed with it, although it is witty and thoughtful. And, if one thinks that killing is a legitimate thing to do to try to stop killing, then this is the quandary you are in. (The author does not advocate vigilante violence,but not because violence is wrong, but because it seems to be declaring war upon the state, violates the just war doctrine, and because it would only create more persecution.) I admire your honesty to face it, although I pray that this author, you and your readers don't take your ponderings too seriously. This is no time for more violence or armchair speculations in favor of violence. This is a time to be consistently pro-life.

Let us speak with one clear voice. Let us, as the Bible instructs, avoid even the appearance of evil. The murder of Mr. Tiller, no matter how horrendous the deeds of the doctor were, was wrong. Period.

I want to say this so clearly because it needs said, and I am glad that most pro-life organizations have been unqualified and clear in condemning this brutal assassination. Yet, the pro-choice community and some in the media have suggested otherwise. Let's not give them anything to wonder about: those who oppose abortion intend to turn around our culture through the long hard work of persuasion, cultural reformation, religious revival, innovative legislation and any other peaceful and legitimate means, but never, ever, by murder.

Surely Byron is correct if the resort to violence is always and absolutely wrong, as those in the pacifist tradition maintain it to be.

My difficulty is in understanding claims such as By makes in the last sentence of his penultimate paragraph when they're made by non-pacifists. If one does not believe that violence is always wrong then what are the justifications for its use? It seems to me that those in the pro-life camp (in which I place myself) are very vague about this. I think Byron would argue that this is one reason we should all be pacifists, but many if not most pro-lifers are not pacifists and would probably reject the suggestion that they should be. In any event, pacifism leads to conundrums of its own which are equally as perplexing and intractable.

If the pro-lifer, then, declines to embrace an absolute abjuration of violence, under what circumstances does he/she think it proper? If it's wrong to employ it to defend the lives of children about to be born then when would it ever be right?

It seems to me that pro-lifers who decline the pacifist option are on the horns of a dilemma: Either killing late-term fetuses, contrary to what many pro-lifers insist, is not really tantamount to murder, or it is tantamount to murdering innocent children, and those who are willing to risk all to prevent this atrocity are justified in their resort to violence.

I really don't like any of these alternatives myself and would welcome insight from our readers, particularly those who consider themselves pro-life. What do you think? Should all pro-lifers embrace an absolute pacifism? Should they back off from their claim that a late-term fetus is ontologically and morally indistinguishable from a new-born? Or should pro-lifers acknowledge that though violence may not be a prudent tactic in the struggle to end the abortion regime in this country, it is nevertheless neither an immoral nor evil one?

Blaise Pascal advised us that our first moral obligation is to think clearly. There are no issues concerning which it is more important that we fulfill that obligation than those issues dealing with human life.

RLC

Re: John Calvin's Theological Legacy

Almost three years ago I did a post on Calvinist theology and invited comments. A reader recently came across the post and chose to respond. His thoughtful email can be found on our Feedback page.

RLC

Pick the Right Fight

In the last couple of days several conservative talk show personalities have been engaging in much hand-wringing over President Obama's recent statement that:

"... if you actually took the number of Muslim Americans, we'd be one of the largest Muslim countries in the world."

It's time for those who are outraged by this to calm down. It's clear, to me at least, that what Obama was saying is that the United States has a Muslim population greater than that of most Muslim nations, just as our Jewish population is roughly equal to that of Israel. This should not be regarded as an incendiary claim. As it happens, like a lot of what the President says, this assertion is factually inaccurate (We have a Muslim population that ranks about 35th in the world), but it's not nefarious. He wasn't, as critics like Sean Hannity are alleging, proclaiming that we're a "Muslim nation," and for them to make an issue of this makes them look silly.

Conservatives only erode their credibility when they insist on trying to put the worst possible construction on their opponents' words. It makes them look petty and partisan and costs us a fair hearing when larger matters are at stake.

One such larger matter is raised by the words of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor:

"I would hope that a wise Latina woman, with the richness of her experiences, would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."

Here criticism is completely warranted. This is a claim she has made on more than one occasion, and it clearly reveals a mindset that's simply unacceptable in a Supreme Court justice. As many have pointed out, if these words had been uttered by a white male nominee he would have been forced to withdraw within hours of the words having come to light.

To suggest that because I am of a particular gender and ethnic heritage I will do a better job of interpreting the Constitution and dispensing justice than someone who is of a different gender and ethnicity is as clear an example of sexist, racist bigotry as one can expect to find outside the meeting halls of, say, the Aryan Nation.

No one who thinks she's better qualified than others to judge the law because she's an Hispanic female should be seated on the Supreme Court, and her appointment tells us much, not only about her, but also about the man who nominated her.

RLC

Senator DeMint and GOP Corporatism

Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina heads the Senate Steering Committee, made up of the Senate's most conservative Republicans, and is a member of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee. In a fine essay in the Washington Times he has some excellent advice for his party. The short version: Get out of bed with the corporate elites.

DeMint puts his finger on a festering problem in the GOP - they've abandoned their conservative principles in order to appease the corporate power-brokers. Here's part of what he writes:

Earlier this month, the United States Chamber of Commerce handed out its annual "Spirit of Enterprise" awards to those members of Congress who voted with the Chamber 70 percent of the time on its most important legislative initiatives of 2008. The only four Republican senators who did not receive the award were Jon Kyl, Jeff Sessions, Jim Inhofe and me - four of the most conservative members of the Senate.

What were the conservative offenses? We opposed the failed bailouts and stimulus. Which explains why many liberal Democrats scored higher, including Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The Republican who scored lowest of all - that is, the Republican lawmaker supposedly least aligned with the nation's business community - was Ron Paul, a strong constitutionalist famous for his strict adherence to a free-enterprise libertarian philosophy.

There is, in these facts, an important insight into the current unpopularity of the Republican Party. In an era of corporate welfare - which is lately taking on the characteristics of 1930s-style corporatism itself - the interests of big business are veering away from the interests of economic freedom and toward the interests of big government. Many Republicans in the past decade have followed a similar course, and the party - and our country - have paid dearly for the wrong turn.

Republicans were not a party of economic elites as much as they were a party of economic freedom. They represented a clear, philosophical contrast to the watered-down socialism of the Democrats. Even when Republicans fell short on their promises of limited government, Americans believed the promises to be sincere nonetheless.

Where Mr. Reagan fought to deregulate in the interests of industry competition, many recent Republican leaders have sought to regulate in the interests of industry leaders. That is why the lobbying industry has grown so successful in recent years: For the first time, both parties have become receptive to special interest pleadings.

Republicans shouldn't be the party of business any more than they should be the party of labor - we're supposed to be the party of freedom. We should get out of the business of picking winners and losers in the marketplace. We should not care who wins in fair fights between Microsoft and Apple, between CitiGroup and community banks, or between Home Depot and mom-and-pop hardware stores. All we should demand is a fair fight.

It is none of the government's business - let alone the Republican Party's - whether banks make or deny risky loans, but only that we ensure lenders and borrowers bear the consequences of their own decisions.

Republicans will succeed again when we realize our true allegiance is not to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, but to free markets, free people and freedom itself.

There's more good stuff from DeMint at the link, and his point is well taken. Too many corporate CEOs masquerade as economic free-marketeers, but they're really not. They're corporatists who welcome all sorts of government intervention into the marketplace because, among other reasons, those interventions make it harder for pesky smaller companies to compete, leaving the market as the exclusive grazing grounds of the wealthy giants. So far from being appalled at the idea of a marriage between business and government, the very relationship that Mussolini contrived in Italy and the Nazis duplicated in Germany, too many Republican politicians think that such an illicit union can only make the engines of commerce thrum with greater resonance, and they're only too happy to facilitate it.

It's, in fact, a symptom of what's wrong with the Republican party and why they're losing elections. They're simply indistinguishable from liberal Democrats.

RLC

So Long, Ben

Fed chairman Ben Bernanke told congress yesterday that large U.S. budget deficits threaten financial stability and the government can't continue indefinitely to borrow at the current rate to finance the shortfall. He added that:

"Unless we demonstrate a strong commitment to fiscal sustainability in the longer term, we will have neither financial stability nor healthy economic growth. Maintaining the confidence of the financial markets requires that we, as a nation, begin planning now for the restoration of fiscal balance."

The Bloomberg report goes on to say that:

Bernanke's comments signal that the central bank sees risks of a relapse into financial turmoil even as credit markets show signs of stability. He said the Fed won't finance government spending over the long term, while warning that the financial industry remains under stress and the credit crunch continues to limit spending.

We have to wonder why congress and the White House are insisting on driving this financial train over the precipice. Surely, they all know what Bernanke and anyone else who has a bank account knows - you can't keep spending money you don't have, running up debts you have no way of paying off.

The article went on to offer some insight into how we're going to pay off Obama's shopping spree:

The budget deficit this year is projected to reach $1.85 trillion, equivalent to 13 percent of the nation's economy, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

"Either cuts in spending or increases in taxes will be necessary to stabilize the fiscal situation," Bernanke said in response to a question. "The Federal Reserve will not monetize the debt."

If Bernanke's telling the truth then the Fed will refuse to just print money to pay off Obama's debts. The bad news, however, is that the only other way to pay them off will be to raise taxes. A lot. In other words, if you think your paycheck is too fat now, just wait. It's about to go on a very severe diet.

Look, too, for the administration to answer Bernanke's impertinence by replacing him at the Fed with someone more compliant and less responsible.

RLC

Liberty U. Update

A couple of weeks ago I commented on my vacillation over Liberty University's decision to derecognize the student Democratic club. I defended the University's right as a private institution with a Christian mission to sponsor only those organizations which are compatible with that mission, but I also wondered if their decision to exercise that right was a little bit at odds with the name of the university. Since that post, which also ran in the local newspaper, some details have emerged that place Liberty's decision in a somewhat more favorable light than did the article upon which I based my original post.

For example, a pair of op-eds appear on the Liberty website that offer some important clarification. The first says, in part, this:

A number of media sources recently reported that Liberty University banned Democrats from meeting on campus. One headline erroneously read: "Democrats at Liberty University forced to meet off campus." Apparently many journalists do not let the facts get in the way of a juicy, agenda-driven story.

The story was spun out of control from the beginning, when Terry McAuliffe, a Democratic gubernatorial candidate for Virginia, called a telephone press conference to talk about the College Democrat club formed by students of Liberty University. The presses began to buzz. Much of what went to print was wrong. Most journalists were interested in scooping their competitors rather than seeking the truth. Even when some reporters learned the facts, they could not bring themselves to correct their stories because the fanciful reports were just too tempting.

The University has not banned Democrats from campus. Nor has the Democrat club been banned from meeting. And, never has the University or its officials said that a person cannot be a Christian and a Democrat. Sorry for those who want to run with these titillating sound bites, but these are the facts.

The students who formed the Democrat club last October are good students. They are pro-life and believe in traditional marriage. They can continue to meet on campus. The only thing that has changed came about as part of a University-wide review of all student organizations for official recognition status. Official recognition carries with it the benefit of using the University name and funds. While this group will not be an officially recognized club, it may still meet on campus.

While the students in the college Democrat club are pro-life and support traditional marriage, the constitution of the club pledged support to advance the Democratic platform and candidates. The 2008 Democratic platform has taken an extreme turn to the left on social issues. For the first time it supports federal funding of abortion and repeal of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, a law passed overwhelmingly by a bi-partisan Congress and signed by President Bill Clinton. Liberty University will not lend its name or financial support to undermine marriage or to promote abortion.

In my original post I made it clear that I thought this was precisely the sort of position that the school was duty-bound to adopt.

There's more significant information in the second article.

Having read these two pieces and having heard a report on NPR the other day on this matter, I feel a little chagrined at my original post. I also have had reinforced a lesson I thought I already knew pretty well - just because a story's on the evening news doesn't mean it's accurate.

Thanks to John for calling my attention to the above articles.

RLC

<i>Liberal Fascism</i> in Paperback

One of the most important books of the decade, in my opinion, was released in paperback yesterday, and now you have no excuse for not purchasing a copy. The book is Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism, an exploration of how ideological fascism was spawned by twentieth century progressivism/liberalism.

Those of a certain age will agree that it has been taken for granted for much of the twentieth century that Italian and German fascism were phenomena of the ideological right. It's not uncommon to hear leftists trying to stick the label of "fascist" on their conservative opponents. What these name-callers don't realize, and what even many conservatives don't realize, is that fascism is actually a child of leftist ideology and that the fascist temptation is alive and well today in America - not the fascism of the Nazis, to be sure, but what Goldberg refers to as happy-faced fascism.

In honor of the occasion of the paperback release National Review has an interview with Goldberg in which he talks about the book's reception and the impact it's having on campuses across the country. It's pretty interesting and serves as a good introduction to the ideas he writes about in the book.

RLC

I, Jerk

We all have at one time or another jumped to conclusions about something and wound up regretting it. That's why it's always wise, no doubt, to hold one's fire until sure of the target. Andrew Beitbart recounts a recent incident in which he had this lesson borne home to him in stinging fashion. Breitbart's telling of the tale is pretty funny and contains a good admonition for all of us. Give it a read.

RLC

Socialist Prophet

These words by an American socialist and six time candidate for president certainly seem prescient:

"The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism. But under the name of 'liberalism' they will adopt every fragment of the Socialist program, until one day America will be a Socialist nation, without knowing how it happened." Norman Thomas (d.1968).

In the last three months the Obama administration has taken over five banks, the largest insurance company in the world, and two automobile companies. It has borrowed in those three months more money than has been borrowed in total over the last thirty years. It has amassed a debt that is greater than the cumulative American debt since our founding. It has imposed a burden on every American household of almost $540,000.

We are well on our way to becoming the socialist nation Thomas foresaw. It's hard to envision how, unless the massive spending to which the Democrats have committed us is reversed by the elections of 2010, we can avoid hyperinflation, massive taxation, and the loss of our status as the most prosperous nation on earth.

Perhaps I'm just missing something that others see, but if not our children will pay an awful price for the political choice the nation made in November of 2008.

RLC

Perfection in Biology

Anika Smith at Evolution News and Notes links us to a surprising post. According to the Biologic Institute, physicists studying biological systems are assessing them to be perfect or near perfect in their design:

When we think of simple, elegant, unifying principles in science, we think of physics. It's not surprising then that physicists who examine living systems are looking for principles of this kind.

And it seems they have found one. Simply stated, it is that biological processes tend to be optimal in cases where this can be tested. Life's complexity can make it hard to pinpoint what "optimal" means, but sometimes physical limits provide a crisp definition. Because these limits cannot possibly be exceeded, they serve as an objective standard of perfection. Interestingly, in cases where it is clearly beneficial to edge right up to this standard, that's exactly what life seems to do.

For decades enzymologists have recognized that certain enzymes are catalytically perfect - meaning that they process reactant molecules as rapidly as these molecules can reach them by diffusion. That hinted at a principle of physical perfection in biology, but no one anticipated its breadth until recently. According to Princeton physicist William Bialek, one of the leading proponents of the emerging principle,...."While it is popular to view biological mechanisms as an historical record of evolutionary and developmental compromises, these observations on functional performance point toward a very different view of life as having selected a set of near optimal mechanisms for its most crucial tasks."

In other words, Bialek is saying that the optimal nature of the systems these physicists have looked at cannot plausibly be explained in terms of chance mutation and natural selection. Thus, the people at the Biologic Institute wonder, doesn't this mean that the evidence of perfection coheres better with a Design view of nature than it does with the Darwinian view?

It must be frustrating being a Darwinian. Here you have this beautiful, comprehensive theory that explains so much but which just refuses to conform to so many empirical facts.

RLC

Worldviews

Dennis Prager's column, to which we alluded the other day, got me to thinking about the matter of worldviews or what post-moderns like to call "metanarratives."

Worldviews are inescapable. Everyone has one. It's a lens through which we view the world, the set of assumptions we hold, consciously or unconciously, that help us to make sense of the world.

Any worldview offers answers to the following questions:

1. Who am I?
   
2. Why are we here?
   
3. Where am I going?
   
4. What's wrong with the world
   

Different worldviews offer different answers to those questions, but consider the answers given by just two of the major worldviews on offer in the U.S. - Judeo-Christianity and atheistic materialism.

In the Judeo-Christian view the above questions are answered as follows:

1. A child of the Creator of the universe.
   
2. Because God wanted to love us.
   
3. To be with Him forever.
   
4. It spurns God's love.
   

Those answers have been the well-springs of human creativity and discovery for two thousand years. Belief in those answers leads to a high view of humanity, it's what gives men reason to believe they have dignity and, consequently, human rights. The anticipation of eternity is a source of hope, meaning and happiness in life.

By contrast consider the answers that the atheistic materialist must give to those same questions:

1. A chance product of blind, impersonal forces.
   
2. No reason.
   
3. Nowhere.
   
4. Nothing.
   

Could anything be more sterile, more nihilistic, more likely to sap the life and vitality out of a culture than a view of things that declares that there's no hope, no real truth, no meaning, no dignity to being human? A culture which rejects the Christian worldview in order to embrace this view of life is a culture that will soon be empty and effete.

Ideas have consequences. One may think that the only difference between the atheist and the Christian is that the atheist gets to sleep in on Sunday morning, but one would be profoundly wrong. The difference between the two worldviews ripples across every aspect of life. It's the difference between hope and despair, meaning and pointlessness, values and worthlessness, dignity and degradation.

The question that puzzles me the most about atheism is not why people believe it, although that is indeed a puzzle, but rather why people would want it to be true. Why, for example, would Christopher Hitchens say that he would find it very depressing if he should discover that God really did exist? Why would philosopher Thomas Nagel write that he doesn't want the universe to be the kind of place where God existed?

These men are essentially saying that they would be depressed and disappointed if the universe were in fact a place where life had meaning, where there was a hope for life beyond the grave, where justice will ultimately prevail, where morality is based on something far more substantial than subjective feelings, where humans have dignity and worth and thus rights, where love is something more than a chemical reaction in the brain, where reason can be trusted, where there is a reason for our existence, and on and on.

To hope that God doesn't exist is to hope that none of this is the case because surely none of it can be the case if God is not there.

RLC

Stand-Up Guy

Ah, the hypoc..., er, irony. President Obama said in a speech on the Sotomayor nomination last Saturday that...

he expects "rigorous evaluation" of his nominee but added: "What I hope is that we can avoid the political posturing and ideological brinksmanship that has bogged down this process, and Congress, in the past."

He derided "some in Washington who are attempting to draw old battle lines and playing the usual political games, pulling a few comments out of context to paint a distorted picture of Judge Sotomayor's record."

Yes, let's have none of the crass political gamesmanship that characterized the Roberts nomination whom Obama voted, after judging him qualified, not to confirm because he disagreed with Roberts' judicial philosophy; or the Alito nomination whom Senator Obama not only voted against for the same reasons but whose confirmation he also voted to filibuster (while claiming to oppose the filibuster).

When it's his nominee up for confirmation he hopes we can avoid all that and disparages anyone who would engage in the same behavior he engaged in when the candidate was a bush nominee.

What a stand-up guy.

RLC

The Death of George Tiller

By now you've probably heard that one of the most infamous abortionists in the country was shot dead Sunday morning as he entered church:

George Tiller, the Wichita doctor who became a national lightning rod in the debate over abortion, was shot to death this morning as he walked into church services. Tiller, 67, was shot just after 10 a.m. at Reformation Lutheran Church at 7601 E. 13th, where he was a member of the congregation.

I myself am a Lutheran and was surprised that this man was a member of the Lutheran Church whose official position on abortion is pro-life and which is certainly opposed to the sorts of late-term abortions Tiller performed. I would have thought that his grisly profession would have put him at odds with the church, but being at odds with the Lutheran church is apparently a very difficult feat to accomplish.

At any rate, his murder raises a very perplexing ethical question:

If one is convinced that late-term abortions are tantamount to murder how does one, assuming one is not a pacifist, condemn the killing of the murderer?

It doesn't help us to think clearly about this matter when people on both sides of the issue are saying foolish things.

Operation Rescue spokespersons, for example, are saying (see link) that they "denounce vigilantism and the cowardly act that took place this morning," but an act whereby the perpetrator knowingly and willingly sacrifices his future is hardly cowardly. Just as with the 9/11 hijackers who President Bush called cowards, the act may be evil, but it's surely not cowardly.

President Obama stated that violence never brings about social change: "However profound our differences as Americans over difficult issues such as abortion, they cannot be resolved by heinous acts of violence."

This, sadly, is simply not true. It's arguable that we never would have achieved the progress in civil rights that was made in the latter half of the twentieth century were it not for the violent upheavals in our cities in the late sixties and early seventies. Martin Luther King was a great man and he accomplished much, but part of the reason for his success was that his non-violence was seen as a desirable alternative to the urban riots occurring across the land.

For that matter it took a terribly violent war to end slavery in this country. It's a deeply troubling fact about human beings that too often violence works. Indeed, too often it's the only thing that works.

So, here's the fundamental question that each thinking American must settle: Did George Tiller's killer do something evil? Presumably he acted on the assumption that a late-term abortion is the equivalent of the murder for pay of a child and that the legal authorities would do nothing to stop it. If that assumption is wrong then what the killer did was indeed evil and he should, in my opinion, receive the death penalty for premeditated murder.

If, however, the assumption is correct then it's hard to say (again, unless one is a pacifist) exactly how what he did was morally different than, say, what German officers tried to do when they, and Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, tried to kill Adolf Hitler.

Everything hinges on whether this assumption is right or wrong, and each person who reflects upon this tragic event will have to come to his or her own conclusions about that.

Pro-Life groups are understandably deploring the act, arguing, rightly, that it gives their cause a black eye, but this is a tactical objection not a moral one. Were it not for the negative press that the pro-life position is going to suffer because of Tiller's death, one gets the feeling that their objections to it would be less strenuous.

Pro-choice groups are outraged as well, of course, but these folks need to be asked whether the late-term children who died in Tiller's clinic were, in fact, being murdered. If the answer is yes, then they should be asked why they're outraged that their murderer has been killed. If the answer is no, as no doubt it would be, then the pro-choice folks need to be asked to explain why, if it's okay to kill unborn babies that are near their delivery date, it's not okay to kill them after their delivery.

As bioethicist Peter Singer and even the ACLU have said, there's no morally significant difference between a child a couple of days before it's born and a child a couple of days after it's born. If killing the former is not murder why should killing the latter be considered murder? And if killing the infant is indeed murder then so must be the killing of the about-to-be-born child.

Anyway, the Tiller killing is a much more complex ethical issue than some on both sides of the abortion debate would have us believe.

RLC

With Small Men

Dennis Prager challenges us to name a single contemporary European who has achieved greatness in some field other than politics, sports, or popular entertainment. The challenge may not be quite fair because greatness often takes a generation of two to become apparent, but Prager's point is that Europe has declined to the point where it's no longer turning out men and women of high accomplishment:

Even well-informed people who love art and literature and who follow developments in science and medicine would be hard pressed to come up with many, more often any, names. In terms of greatness in literature, art, music, the sciences, philosophy, and medical breakthroughs, Europe has virtually fallen off the radar screen.

What has happened is that Europe, with a few exceptions, has lost its creativity, intellectual excitement, industrial innovation, and risk taking. Europe's creative energy has been sapped. There are many lovely Europeans; but there aren't many creative, dynamic, or entrepreneurial ones.

So, if this is true to what shall we attribute the blame for this tragic state of affairs? Prager gives us an answer:

There are two reasons: secularism and socialism (aka the welfare state). Either one alone sucks much of the life out of society. Together they are likely to be lethal.

His argument in defense of this claim deserves to be presented in full:

Even if one holds that religion is false, only a dogmatic and irrational secularist can deny that it was religion in the Western world that provided the impetus or backdrop for nearly all the uniquely great art, literature, economic and even scientific advances of the West. Even the irreligious were forced to deal with religious themes -- if only in expressing rebellion against them.

Religion in the West raised all the great questions of life: Why are we here? Is there purpose to existence? Were we deliberately made? Is there something after death? Are morals objective or only a matter of personal preference? Do rights come from the state or from the Creator?

And religion gave positive responses: We are here because a benevolent God made us. There is, therefore, ultimate purpose to life. Good and evil are real. Death is not the end. Human rights are inherent since they come from God. And so on.

Secularism drains all this out of life. No one made us. Death is the end. We are no more significant than any other creatures. We are all the results of mere coincidence. Make up your own meaning (existentialism) because life has none. Good and evil are merely euphemisms for "I like" and "I dislike."

Thus, when religion dies in a country, creativity wanes. For example, while Christian Russia was backward in many ways, it still gave the world Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Tolstoy, and Tchaikovsky. Once Christianity was suppressed, if not killed, in Russia, that country became a cultural wasteland (with a few exceptions like Shostakovich and Solzhenitsyn, the latter a devout Christian). It is true that this was largely the result of Lenin, Stalin and Communism; but even where Communism did not take over, the decline of religion in Europe meant a decline in human creativity -- except for nihilistic and/or absurd isms, which have greatly increased.

As G. K. Chesterton noted at the end of the 19th century, when people stop believing in God they don't believe in nothing, they believe in anything. One not only thinks of the violent isms: Marxism, Marxism-Leninism, Fascism, Maoism, and Nazism, but of all the non-violent isms that have become substitute religions - e.g., feminism, environmentalism, and socialism.

The state sucks out creativity and dynamism just as much as secularism does. Why do anything for yourself when the state will do it for you? Why take care of others when the state will do it for you? Why have ambition when the state is there to ensure that few or no individuals are rewarded more than others?

America has been the center of energy and creativity in almost every area of life because it has remained far more religious than any other industrialized Western democracy and because it has rejected the welfare state social model.

Which is why so many are so worried about President Barack Obama and the Democratic Party's desire to transform -- in their apt wording -- America into a secular welfare state. The greatest engine of moral, religious, economic, scientific, and industrial dynamism is being starved of its fuel. The bigger the state, the smaller its people.

Indeed. I'm reminded by Prager's essay of the closing words of John Stuart Mill's On Liberty:

A State which dwarf's its men, in order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands -even for beneficial purposes - will find that with small men no great thing can really be accomplished.

RLC

Atheistic Ethics

David Harsanyi of the Denver Post writes an odd column explaining how he was driven by moral considerations to abandon his pro-choice views in favor of a pro-life ethic. This is all very well but the odd part is that he seems completely unaware that his new-found sense of moral obligation toward the unborn is completely incompatible with the first two sentences of his essay:

As an atheist and a secular kinda guy, I practice moral relativism regularly. Still, I've always struggled mightily with the ethics and politics of abortion.

This statement simply negates all that comes after. If Harsanyi is correct that there is no God, then there's simply no reason why anyone should think that abortion is wrong or that one has any obligation to respect human life. Harsanyi says, for example, that:

After a life of being pro-choice, I began to seriously ponder the question. I oppose the death penalty because there is a slim chance that an innocent person might be executed and I don't believe the state should have the authority to take a citizen's life. So don't I owe an nascent human life at least the same deference? Just in case?

Well, no, not if atheism is true, you don't. As Dostoyevsky put it, "If God is dead then everything is permitted." There are no obligations, no moral debts that we owe anyone. How could there be? What is it, precisely, that imposes the obligation that Harsanyi thinks he has to nascent human life?

What happens when we can use abortion to weed out the blind, mentally ill, the ugly, or any other "undesirable" human being?

What happens is that we go ahead and do it if we can get enough influential people to feel the same way we do. In a Godless world, might makes right. If a group of people have the power to practice the kind of eugenics Harsanyi's talking about here, there's no reason why they shouldn't do it.

Now, I happen to believe (as the civil libertarian and pro-life activist Nat Hentoff once noted) that the right to life and liberty is the foundation of a moral society.

Actually, the foundation of a moral society, indeed the foundation of the right to life and liberty, is the existence of God. Take that away and there are no rights and there's certainly no "moral society." This is not to say that one must believe in God to live by the values Harsanyi esteems. That's not the point at all. The point is that, given atheism, one can live by any values one chooses. The choice to live by this value rather than that is completely subjective and arbitrary. Harsanyi's preference for protecting the unborn is simply a matter of his own taste, like his preference for one flavor of ice cream rather than another. He could, were he inclined, support the murder of toddlers and it would not be any more or less wrong, in a moral sense, than his desire to protect them.

Charles Darwin writes in his autobiography that "One who does not believe in God or an afterlife can have for his rule of life ... only to follow those impulses and instincts which are the strongest and which seem to him to be the best." Darwin is correct in thinking that for the atheist morality is simply a matter of personal preference and subjectivity, but such thinking leads us to the edge of the abyss. If one man's impulses and instincts incline him to be a child molester and another's predispose him to be a great humanitarian what basis does Darwin, or Harsanyi, have for saying that one is any better, or worse, than the other?

RLC

<i>Patriots</i>

By now, some of our readers may have read Patriots: A Novel of Survival in the Coming Collapse by James W. Rawles...

Part novel, part survivalist-handbook, Patriots tells of a small group of friends facing every American's worst nightmare-the total collapse of society. The stock market plummets and hyperinflation cripples commerce and then a seemingly isolated financial crisis passes the tipping point when an unprepared government fails to act. Practically overnight, the fragile institutions of democracy fall apart and every American is forced to survive on their own.

Evading mobs of desperate, out-of-control citizens who have turned Chicago into a wasteland of looting and mayhem, this novel's protagonists make their way to a shared secure ranch in the wilds of northern Idaho. Here the survival-driven group fends off vicious attacks from the outside and eventually assists in restoring order to the country. The compelling, fast-paced action-adventure novel has readers jotting notes and referencing the book's impressive index for informative survivalist tips on everything from setting up a secure shelter to treating traumatic flesh wounds.

The primary message of the book is about being prepared to be self-sufficient should we find that some of the services we've come to expect and rely upon no longer are available like running water, electricity, fully stocked grocery shelves, law enforcement, etc. I found several interesting things about this book:

• It's a self-sufficiency manual wrapped inside a novel. So even if some threads of the story might seem to wander a bit, there's always an underlying educational "how-to" to be learned.


• The events that are unfolding in our economy as I write this have the potential to cause the very social collapse that Rawles describes in his story. Government administrations have ignored the Constitutional mandate for honest money for decades and have embraced Keynesian economics at their (and our) peril. The big banks have hijacked our government and the Administration does their bidding with little or no regard for the cost to the American citizen.


• There is a surprising turn of events toward the end that I just didn't see coming (you'll have to read the book to find out).


• Perhaps, most importantly, the book should motivate the reader to contemplate their degree of preparedness and what they would do should such a scenario unfold.

For those with confidence that such a disruption couldn't happen here in America, you only have to recall the breakdown of law and order, the killing, raping, and looting that took place in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. At least two observations may be made: First, it is ultimately the individual's responsibility to provide for their own security, protection, and welfare. It is not the job of the government and it obviously was a mistake for those who thought that it was. And second, if there was anything positive about Katrina, it's that it was localized to the Gulf area rather than being national in scope.

In the story, the incompetents running our country are held responsible for the unraveling of our social fabric but it could just as easily be caused by a terrorist attack or even a major sun spot or solar storm event. Rawles makes an interesting point when he says that our society's civility is only a thin veneer. Take away food and water for four days and it will be stripped away in an instant. If that happens, what are you going to do?

Check it out.

Latina Justice

Karl Rove maintains that both President Obama and the Republicans get something from the Supreme Court nomination of Sonia Sotomayor:

Mr. Obama said he wanted to replace Justice David Souter with someone who had "empathy" and who'd temper the court's decisions with a concern for the downtrodden, the powerless and the voiceless.

"Empathy" is the latest code word for liberal activism, for treating the Constitution as malleable clay to be kneaded and molded in whatever form justices want. It represents an expansive view of the judiciary in which courts create policy that couldn't pass the legislative branch or, if it did, would generate voter backlash.

There is a certain irony in a president who routinely praises America's commitment to "the rule of law" but who picks Supreme Court nominees for their readiness to discard the rule of law whenever emotion moves them.

Rove is correct to point out the irony. Liberal judicial philosophy is not about determining what the law says but about enacting into policy what they wish it said. A judge who rules on the basis of empathy is a judge who is derelict in her responsibility. An impartial judge should not allow personal feelings to obtrude into her interpretation of the law. If she does then she'll be showing a favoritism or bias toward one or the other of the parties who appear before her. That this is improper is the whole point of the symbol of justice as a blind-folded woman.

The Sotomayor nomination also provides Republicans with some advantages. They can stress their support for judges who strictly interpret the Constitution and apply the law as written. A majority of the public is with the GOP on opposing liberal activist judges. There is something in our political DNA that wants impartial umpires who apply the rules, regardless of who thereby wins or loses.

Mr. Obama understands the danger of heralding Judge Sotomayor as the liberal activist she is, so his spinners are intent on selling her as a moderate. The problem is that she described herself as liberal before becoming a judge, and fair-minded observers find her on the left of the federal bench.

Republicans also get a nominee who likes showing off and whose YouTube moments and Google insights cause people to wince. There are likely to be more revelations like Stuart Taylor's find last Saturday of this Sotomayor gem in a speech at Berkeley: "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion [as a judge] than a white male who hasn't lived that life." Invert the placement of "Latina woman" and "white male" and have a conservative say it: A career would be finished.

Few revelations in recent weeks show the media's total abandonment of their traditional role as neutral watchdogs of the political power players than the revelation to which Rove refers. If, mutatis mutandis, this fatuous remark had been made by a white male, especially a conservative white male, he'd have been keel-hauled by the media and the left. The President would have yanked his nomination within hours, but the same comment from a Hispanic woman elicits nothing more from our media guardians than a few tut-tuts before they commence stomping upon any hapless Republican who might suggest that just maybe Ms Sotomayor is a bit of a bigot.

The media has also quickly adopted the story line that Republicans will damage themselves with Hispanics if they oppose Ms. Sotomayor. But what damage did Democrats suffer when they viciously attacked Miguel Estrada's nomination by President George W. Bush to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, the nation's second-highest court? New York Sen. Chuck Schumer was particularly ugly, labeling Mr. Estrada a right-wing "stealth missile" who was "way out of the mainstream" and openly questioning Mr. Estrada's truthfulness.

Democrats can get away with this because both Hispanics and African-Americans, like drug-dependent women living with abusive boyfriends, are perfectly willing to suffer the indignities heaped upon them by the party overseers as long as those "boyfriends" keep promising them more "candy."

Nonetheless, Republicans must treat her with far more care than Democrats treated John Roberts or Samuel Alito and avoid angry speeches like Sen. Ted Kennedy's tirade against Robert Bork. The GOP must make measured arguments against her views and philosophy, using her own words and actions.

The Ricci case is an example: Whites were denied fire department promotions because of a clear racial quota. Ms. Sotomayor's refusal to hear their arguments won her stinging criticism from fellow Second Court of Appeals judge Jos� Cabranes, a respected Clinton appointee.

The Ricci case is right now before the Supreme Court and knowledgeable observers predict that it's going to be overturned. Perhaps Ms Sotomayor should have had a little empathy for the firefighters in this case who worked very hard (overcoming dyslexia in the case of Mr. Ricci) to prepare for the test and pass it. According to NPR:

Frank Ricci, the lead plaintiff in this case, is not a naturally gifted test taker. In an affidavit, he said he has dyslexia, that he studied as much as 13 hours a day for the firefighter promotional exam, that he paid someone to read the textbooks onto audiotapes, prepared flashcards and worked with a study group. And he passed.

Ms Sotomayor disdained the test results because all the people who passed were white (one Hispanic). Her empathy evidently does not extend to such as Mr. Ricci who, due to an unfortunate accident of birth, is a white male.

Anyway, unless the Republicans block her in committee she'll be the next Supreme Court Justice, and she'll have ample opportunity to demonstrate how a Latina judge is better situated than those doofus white men on the Court to interpret the Constitution. I can't wait.

RLC

The Crucial Factor

Noemie Emery cuts to the heart of the debate over torture with a fine essay at the Washington Examiner. She notes that in all the sturm und drang the most crucial element in determining the nature of the act is often omitted - intent. Whether an act is evil or not depends not merely upon the act itself, as so many of President Bush's critics seem to assume, but mostly on the reasons why it is done.

This is such an elementary ethical principle that one is taken aback by the realization that it still needs to be articulated. Here's some of Emery's column:

The key to the way we judge the morals of violence is that, while the impact on the victim always is similar, force used offensively and force used defensively have always been two different things. Shoot someone, or failing that, fracture his skull with a fire tong, and you inflict pain, harm, and possibly death on your victim, but the reason you do it determines your fate.

Stand at the top of a hill with a rifle, and spray shots at the people beneath you?

If it's campus, you're a monster, and serial killer. If it's a battlefield, and you're facing an enemy onslaught, you'll get a medal, if you survive. Charge at someone with bayonet fixed and pointed? If you're an Axis soldier impaling civilians, it's an act of the utmost depravity. If you're a Union soldier at Little Round Top at Gettysburg, fighting off the oncoming Confederate army, you're a national hero, saving the last, best hope of mankind.

In the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln was offered the use of a bullet that exploded inside the body, doing the victim incredible damage. Lincoln approved it: It would shorten the war. For the same reason - to shorten the war - President Harry S Truman incinerated not one but two Japanese cities. Neither man is considered a war criminal (except by Bill Maher), as they took some lives to save more lives, specifically those entrusted to them, and to preserve a political system less unjust than the ones they were fighting.

Their guilt is absolved by their intent, which was to save lives, and a more benign social order. Yet liberals, who apply the motive defense in trying to exonerate perpetrators of criminal violence - the accused was stressed out, he ate Twinkies, he was deprived as a child, etc. - seem strangely unwilling to extend this to those who made use of 'harsh' tactics to forestall further attacks after thousands had perished in the most torturous manner on Sept. 11, 2001.

"The horror of Sept. 11 resides in me like a dormant pathogen," writes Richard Cohen, shortly before comparing George Bush to a Nazi for trying to make sure such a horror would never recur. "Here, once again, were the squalid efforts of legal toadies to justify the unjustifiable," as he informs us. "I know it is offensive to compare almost anyone or anything to the Nazis, but the Bush-era memos struck me as echoes from the past."

But the Nazis' intent was to invade countries and subjugate and degrade whole populations, set up death camps where as many as 11 million civilians would perish, and orchestrate the elimination through starvation and torture of the ethnically impure from the universe. The intent of Bush and his people in water-boarding three hard core terrorists was to prevent another 9/11, that was sprung on his unaware and his innocent country.

Cohen's characterization is at best simplistic and reveals an inchoate, underdeveloped moral understanding. His argument, if one might wish to characterize it as such, is that since the Nazis inflicted suffering, and the Bush people inflicted suffering, therefore the Bush people are Nazis. It's pretty embarrassing, but there you have it, and Cohen isn't the only one to comment on this issue whose logical abilities are similarly attenuated.

The crucial question that needs to be asked to determine whether the Bush administration acted in a morally reasonable way is not so much what did they do, but rather why did they do it, and this question seems to concern very few of Bush's critics.

RLC

Voter Apathy

It turns out that large numbers of people who voted for President Obama in November disagree with much of his program and policies. Given that anyone who was paying attention last Fall had to know what Obama would do once he was in office, we must conclude that these people either weren't paying attention or they voted for Obama notwithstanding their disagreements with his plans for the country. The first is irresponsible, the second is irrational.

With an electorate like this out there it's no wonder Democrats want to make it easier to vote.

RLC

Uncivil Discourse

What can be done to instill civility into our political discourse? The last eight years were characterized by a viciousness that may have been unprecedented in most of our lifetimes, and though Republicans have, I honestly believe, treated President Obama with much greater respect than Democrats treated President Bush, it remains the case that with the advent of blogs, cable TV, and talk radio civility seems to have become an anachronism.

Some people, perhaps, might think that it's only those who suffer most from the kind of eye-gouging that occurs daily in the blogosphere and on the airwaves who call for civility. Civility, in this view, is the plea of those who hold to what Nietzsche called slave morality, the attempt by the weak to mitigate the harshness of their masters by foisting a moral system on them that would constrain their will to power. In other words, pleas for civility are the recourse of society's losers who don't want the strong to be all the time beating them up, but who are otherwise powerless to prevent it.

I think, though, that the opposite is true. Civility is a mark of strength. Calmness and courtesy are indicators of confidence in one's positions. Lies, insults, and rudeness are red flags hoisted by people who subliminally recognize that their arguments are inherently weak. The flimsiness of a point of view can often be measured by the level of shrillness and meanness with which it's presented. If one's ideas are compelling then he has nothing to fear by extending courtesy and respect to the other side.

No one makes this case with more clarity or eloquence than John Stuart Mill in his wonderful book On Liberty. Mill writes, for instance, that:

The worst offense of this kind which can be committed by a polemic is to stigmatize those who hold a contrary opinion as bad and immoral men .... [O]pinion ought, in every instance, to determine its verdict by the circumstances of the individual case; condemning everyone, on whichever side of the argument he places himself, in whose mode of advocacy either want of candor, or malignity, bigotry, or intolerance of feeling manifest themselves, but not inferring these vices from the side which a person takes, though it be the contrary side of the question to our own; and giving merited honor to every one, whatever opinion he may hold, who has calmness to see and honesty to state what his opponents and their opinions really are, exaggerating nothing to their discredit, keeping nothing back which tells, or can be supposed to tell, in their favor. This is the real morality of public discussion: and if often violated, I am happy to think that there are many controversialists who to a great extent observe it and a still greater number who conscientiously strive towards it.

I write all this after having read a post by Rod Dreher who recently found himself exposed to radio talker Mark Levin:

I don't listen to talk radio a lot, because I have a short commute between office and home. But last fall, I got into the car with a colleague to go pick up a pizza (we were working late), and heard some conservative talker with a screechy voice just making an ass of himself. Even when I disagree with Limbaugh, he's interesting to listen to -- funny and entertaining. So too with Laura Ingraham, and even Anne Coulter. But this guy was just horrible. He sounded horrible, and he whined and moaned and basically carried on like the shrill crackpot at the bar that you excuse yourself to go to the bathroom to get away from, and then head for the door.

"That's Mark Levin," my friend explained.

After recounting a decidedly unpleasant exchange Levin had with a caller, Dreher says this:

A cretin who would say something like this on his radio show is a big deal among a lot of conservatives. Good grief. Having spent about 15 unpleasant minutes listening to this creep, I cannot imagine why anybody pays attention to him. Seriously, where is the pleasure in listening to this kind of trashmouth? If I were on the left, I would make sure that people thought that Mark Levin was the face of the Republican Party and the conservative movement.

I guess not even Dreher can resist the temptation to resort to name-calling, but that's not my point, exactly. The fact is that he's right about Levin (to get a sense of Levin's style go here), and not just Levin, and certainly not just conservative talk radio personalities.

Nevertheless, speaking just of conservatives, it's counter-productive of them to dress themselves in such uncomely rhetorical robes because it closes off any chance that their ideas, which are usually superior to those of the left, will get a hearing among the great mass of people who see themselves as neither conservative nor liberal, but who could potentially be swayed by compelling arguments humorously and irenically presented.

Ugly, nasty rhetoric, gratuitous insults and name-calling, refusing to let opponents be heard, are all tactics which generate only resentment and a desire to tune the offender out. They put off the very people we want to reach and they rarely persuade. For this reason I no longer read Ann Coulter (though Dreher seems to like her), nor listen to Michael Savage or Mark Levin and have a great deal of difficulty tolerating Sean Hannity. Despite the ratings and success of these people I don't want any of them to be the face of modern conservatism. I have no problem with their frequent criticisms of liberalism - indeed, I often agree with them - but I have a big problem with the manner in which they often make those criticisms and the way they too often treat liberals as persons.

Nor can the left plead rhetorical chastity. Left-wing blogs are often stomach-turning in their vileness, and I can scarcely watch Chris Matthews on MSNBC who is, in my opinion, one of the rudest people on cable TV. And when it comes to sheer meanness Matthews' colleague Keith Olbermann is all that Dreher accuses Mark Levin of being, and worse.

It's hard to treat people with respect and dignity, of course, when they refuse the same courtesy to others, and it's easy to succumb to the temptation to call one's opponents names when they behave in ways that make the name appropriate. It's not always wrong, after all, to call a stupid idea stupid or to call a despicable human being despicable. Sometimes, when stakes are high and the battle hot some rhetoric and behavior are warranted which would not be otherwise, but incendiary language should be used sparingly and judiciously, never gratuitously. If it's deemed appropriate to use a pejorative in our discourse the reason for it should be explained, and it should not simply be employed as a pinch-hitter for an argument. To employ a different metaphor, our political discourse should be more like those laser-guided missiles the military uses and less like indiscriminate carpet bombing.

Nevertheless, drawing lines our rhetoric should not cross isn't easy, and fair-minded people will disagree as to when the line is being breached. No one wants to narrow the bounds to the point where satire is prohibited or the mot juste that would prick the egos of pompous gasbags is disallowed. Then, too, there are those like Perez Hilton, who, because of their cruel treatment of others, deserve a brutally frank assessment of their own relevant inadequacies. Any line we draw should not rule out of bounds condign frankness about those who mistreat others.

But the difficulty in knowing precisely where to place the foul line does not relieve us of the prima facie duty to give the benefit of the doubt, to exercise restraint, and to refrain from calling people names, as Levin and Dreher both do, over legitimate differences of opinion.

We can accurately describe someone's behavior as stupid, sleazy, or sickening without imputing those adjectives to the person himself, at least until such time as a long train of examples makes it impossible to separate the person from the behavior.

Politics (or any arena in which ideas are at issue) is, switching metaphors again, like boxing. There's nothing wrong with trying to hit your opponent with all you've got. There's nothing wrong with trying, within the rules, to diminish his ability to impose his will, there's nothing wrong with using language that packs a wallop, but it's always wrong to hit below the belt, to try to hurt and humiliate the other person. It's not wrong to deflate arrogant political egos, but it's always wrong to try to destroy people who are honestly and sincerely trying to do the best job they can. Too many people in our politically-oriented media think that the way to prevail in our nation's policy battles is by grievously crippling their opponents or by destroying them personally. Doing this may certainly bring one power, but it's a benefit gained at the cost of one's humanity. It's a devil's bargain.

There's more on the Dreher/Levin contretemps here. For what it's worth I think Dreher overstates Levin's importance to conservatism. He's not the face of contemporary conservatism, as Dreher alleges. That distinction, in my opinion, goes to Rush Limbaugh - whom both Dreher and I often appreciate - and increasingly to Glenn Beck.

RLC

Augustine on Creation

Alister McGrath has a fine article in Christianity Today on Augustine (354 A.D. - 430 A.D.) and "how the great theologian might weigh in on the Darwin debate." It's surprising, perhaps, to read how prescient Augustine was:

In The Literal Meaning of Genesis, which was written between 401 and 415 .... Augustine draws out the following core themes: God brought everything into existence in a single moment of creation. Yet the created order is not static. God endowed it with the capacity to develop. Augustine uses the image of a dormant seed to help his readers grasp this point. God creates seeds, which will grow and develop at the right time. Using more technical language, Augustine asks his readers to think of the created order as containing divinely embedded causalities that emerge or evolve at a later stage. Yet Augustine has no time for any notion of random or arbitrary changes within creation. The development of God's creation is always subject to God's sovereign providence. The God who planted the seeds at the moment of creation also governs and directs the time and place of their growth.

The idea of a seed, an acorn perhaps, is a nice metaphor for an increasingly popular theory among some Intelligent Design advocates called "front-loaded" evolution. In this view God created the universe with all the potential for everything that would emerge in the universe packed into the initial conditions which obtained at the Big Bang. Thus the physical universe unfolded in precisely the way God intended, ultimately producing human beings.

Augustine also argues that Scripture teaches that time is also part of the created order, that God created space and time together. For some, however, the idea of time as a created thing seemed ridiculous. Again, Augustine counters that the biblical narrative is not open to alternative interpretations. Time must therefore be thought of as one of God's creatures and servants. For Augustine, time itself is an element of the created order. Timelessness, on the other hand, is the essential feature of eternity.

This is an incredible insight for a man of the fifth century given that this view of time is exactly that held by modern cosmologists. Time requires matter in motion. To see this try to imagine time in a world in which all matter is frozen in a motionless state. It's a condition not unlike that of the characters in a movie when the pause button on the remote is pushed. For these characters there is no time until the action resumes. If there's nothing, no matter nor energy, then there can be no time, at least not as we understand it. Thus apart from the universe, and the movement of its material components, the kind of time with which we are familiar does not exist.

Now, Augustine may be wrong in asserting that Scripture clearly teaches that the Creation was instantaneous.... Other options certainly exist-most notably, the familiar idea that the six days of Creation represent six periods of 24 hours, or the related idea that they represent six more extended periods, possibly millions of years. Nevertheless, Augustine's position ought to make us reflect on these questions, even if some of us believe him to be incorrect.

So what are the implications of this ancient Christian interpretation of Genesis for the Darwin celebrations? .... For Augustine, God created a universe that was deliberately designed to develop and evolve. The blueprint for that evolution is not arbitrary, but is programmed into the very fabric of creation. God's providence superintends the continuing unfolding of the created order.

This is a point similar to the one we illustrated a couple of months ago with the analogy of a braided river.

Where some might think of the Creation as God's insertion of new kinds of plants and animals readymade into an already existing world, Augustine rejects this as inconsistent with the overall witness of Scripture. Rather, God must be thought of as creating in that very first moment the potencies for all the kinds of living things to come later, including humanity.

This means that the first Creation account describes the instantaneous bringing into existence of primal matter, including causal resources for further development. The second account explores how these causal possibilities emerged and developed from the earth. Taken together, the two Genesis Creation accounts declare that God made the world instantaneously, while envisaging that the various kinds of living things would make their appearance gradually over time-as they were meant to by their Creator.

The image of the "seed" implies that the original Creation contained within it the potential for all the living kinds to subsequently emerge. This does not mean that God created the world incomplete or imperfect, in that "what God originally established in causes, he subsequently fulfilled in effects." This process of development, Augustine declares, is governed by fundamental laws, which reflect the will of their Creator: "God has established fixed laws governing the production of kinds and qualities of beings, and bringing them out of concealment into full view."

Augustine would have rejected any idea of the development of the universe as a random or lawless process. For this reason, Augustine would have opposed the Darwinian notion of random variations, insisting that God's providence is deeply involved throughout. The process may be unpredictable. But it is not random.

McGrath's article is good and would reward the reader who tackles the whole thing, especially those interested in how a strong commitment to the truth of Genesis can be reconciled with a contemporary belief in descent through modification.

RLC

Preliminary Thoughts on the Sotomayor Pick

David Frum caused eyebrows everywhere to rise by making the counterintuitive claim that the nomination of the very liberal Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court is perhaps the best thing that could have happened for conservatives. His reasoning, however, makes sense:

On the other hand, here's the possible good news in the Sotomayor nomination. A conservative legalist friend notes that the all-important 5th vote on the Supreme Court is Justice Anthony Kennedy's. The Reagan-appointed Kennedy has drifted to the left in recent years - in part (it's gossiped) because of his negative reactions to the brilliant but sometimes acerbic Antonin Scalia.

Having lost in 2008, Republicans had no hope of a conservative or even a moderate judicial nominee. What we should therefore be hoping for, my friend continues, is the most personally obnoxious liberal, someone certain to offend and irritate Kennedy - and push him careening back rightward. For this reason, the politic Elena Kagan would be the very worst pick from a conservative point of view. As dean of Harvard Law School, she proved herself adept at wooing conservative support. By contrast, if Jeffrey Rosen's reporting is correct, Sotomayor was almost unanimously disliked by her colleagues on the Second Circuit and even more by their clerks. And she's unlikely to gain humility from this latest promotion... so who could be better?

This is interesting, but there's really no need to find out whether Frum is correct, since the GOP could easily block Ms Sotomayor's appointment. In order to get a nominee to the full Senate for a confirmation vote the Senate Judiciary committee has to give her ten votes, at least one of which has to be from the minority party. With Senator Specter having defected to the Democrats the remaining Republicans could, if they had the resolve, refuse to give that vote to Sotomayor, just as Democrats bottled up numerous Bush appointees to the federal bench and just as many of them voted against John Roberts and Samuel Alito in the full Senate.

It is one of the ironies of politics that Senator Obama, having declared Roberts and Alito both qualified, legally and temperamentally, to serve on the SCOTUS, nevertheless voted against both and led the filibuster against Alito. Now that he's nominated a woman who gives us good reason to doubt her temperament, Republicans are being warned by such as Senator Schumer that they better not oppose her.

Actually, given Sotomayor's judicial philosophy they should, but given the GOP fear of alienating minority groups, they probably won't.

It's remarkable that Democrats had no qualms about savaging Clarence Thomas, Condaleeza Rice, Miguel Estrada, or Alberto Gonzalez, nor did they pay a political price for doing so, but Republican knees turn to jelly at the thought of losing votes they don't have anyway by opposing a Hispanic woman who believes that the role of the judge is to usurp the role of the legislature by making policy. If Republicans don't block Sotomayor it'll be a good example of the GOP's willingness to sacrifice principle to politics and another reason why they languish in the minority in Congress.

RLC

The Sting

President Obama assured us that once in office we would henceforth take the "high road" in our treatment of terrorist detainees. Under his presidency, he promised, we would return to our "highest values," etc. Unfortunately, we're beginning to learn that what the President promises is often not quite what he does. Consider this example from the New York Times:

The United States is now relying heavily on foreign intelligence services to capture, interrogate and detain all but the highest-level terrorist suspects seized outside the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, according to current and former American government officials. The change represents a significant loosening of the reins for the United States, which has worked closely with allies to combat violent extremism since the 9/11 attacks but is now pushing that cooperation to new limits.

In the past 10 months, for example, about a half-dozen midlevel financiers and logistics experts working with Al Qaeda have been captured and are being held by intelligence services in four Middle Eastern countries after the United States provided information that led to their arrests by local security services, a former American counterterrorism official said.

In addition, Pakistan's intelligence and security services captured a Saudi suspect and a Yemeni suspect this year with the help of American intelligence and logistical support, Pakistani officials said. The two are the highest-ranking Qaeda operatives captured since President Obama took office, but they are still being held by Pakistan, which has shared information from their interrogations with the United States, the official said.

The current approach, which began in the last two years of the Bush administration and has gained momentum under Mr. Obama, is driven in part by court rulings and policy changes that have closed the secret prisons run by the Central Intelligence Agency, and all but ended the transfer of prisoners from outside Iraq and Afghanistan to American military prisons.

When George Bush sent terrorists to other countries for interrogation the Left went orbital with outrage. President Obama assured us that he would not accept the "failed policies of the past," but how is what the Times reports any different than what Bush did? Instead of sending the prisoners to foreign countries to have their fingernails pulled out our people just tell their people where to find the bad guys and let their people make the arrest and take the terrorists home to be hooked up to the electrodes.

Further on in the article it mentions the difficulty Obama administration officials are struggling with trying to figure out where high level detainees will be kept now that the president has promised to close down Guantanamo. Of course, just because he promised to close Gitmo ...well, by now you probably get the picture.

Hot Air points out that this is the second Bush policy in the last three days for which the Left trashed Bush but which Obama appears to be continuing. The other one is to continue to hold detainees indefinitely without trial.

What a slickster. His modus operandi is to fire up the opposition to Bush, give everyone the impression that he's the antithesis of Bush, and then continue doing much the same things Bush did while his adoring supporters ooh and ahh over how he's purged us of the evil policies of the past and brought us "change." How long will it be before it dawns on those same supporters in the media and elsewhere that they've been conned pretty much like Paul Newman conned Robert Shaw in The Sting?

RLC

While Europe Slept

First Things features a sobering but important essay by Jean Bethke Elshtain titled "While Europe Slept." What she says about Europe is, one fears, equally true of the U.S., or will be in another generation or so. Here's how her essay opens:

In the great cathedrals in Europe, a few people-usually elderly women-can be found at worship. Everybody else is a tourist, cameras hanging around their necks, meandering through. I was recently in Scotland, and I read a newspaper story commenting on three hundred deserted churches dotting the Scottish countryside, asking if they should be destroyed or turned into bars and cafes. Europe herself, in her proposed constitution, refuses to acknowledge the heritage of Judaism and Christianity-although Greece and Rome and the Enlightenment are acknowledged.

Europe cannot remember who she is unless she remembers that she is the child not only of the ancient Greek and Roman worlds and the Enlightenment but also of Judaism and Christianity-the child, therefore, of Catholicism and the Reformation. If Europe abandons her religious heritage, the idea of Europe dies. And Europe has abandoned, or forgotten, her religious heritage. Europe is now "post-Christian." What does this mean? What does it portend?

If a culture forgets what it is, as I believe Europe has done, it falls first into an agnostic shrugging of the shoulders, unable to say exactly what it is and believes, and from there it will inevitably fall into nihilism. Detached from its religious foundations, Europe will not remain agnostic. The first result is manifest in those ideologies of multiculturalism that make "difference" a kind of sacred, absolute principle, although no principle is considered to have any such status. Difference tells us nothing in and of itself. Some ways of life and ways of being in the world are brutal, stupid, and ugly. Some a human rights-oriented culture cannot tolerate. A culture must believe in its own enculturating responsibility and mission in order to make claims of value and to institutionalize them in social and political forms. This a post-Christian Europe cannot do.

Multiculturalism is then, in practice, a series of monoculturalisms that do not engage one another at all; rather, the cultural particulate most enamored of gaining and holding power has an enormous advantage: One day, it proclaims, we will bury you. A sign carried by radical Islamist protestors in London during the fracas over the Dutch cartoons proclaimed, "Europe is a cancer / Islam is the answer." A perverted idea of Islam confronts a Europe that has lost a sense of who she is and what she represents.

For that Europe, the window to transcendence is slammed shut. Human values alone pertain. But these human values are shriveled by a prior loss of the conviction that there is much to defend about the human person, and they are seen as so many subjectivist construals without any defensible, objective content. Unsurprisingly, what comes to prevail is a form of reduced utilitarianism that rationalizes nihilism.

The territory as one's own property is the self itself, or an understanding of the self shorn of any encumbrances of the past, any shackles of old defunct moralities. The self blows hither, thither; it matters not, if it blows my way. The question of what the self is, and whether it has any transcendent meaning, is answered with a shrug.

The late John Paul II saw the result of the belief that we are sovereigns of ourselves, wholly self-possessing. In Evangelium Vitae he writes: "If the promotion of the self is understood in terms of absolute autonomy, people inevitably reach the point of rejecting one another. Everyone else is considered an enemy from whom one has to defend oneself." Society "becomes a mass of individuals placed side by side, but without any mutual bonds."

Someone may attach a value to us - we may have a market price, so to speak - a price, but not a dignity. Should no one attach value to us and we be too bereft or wounded to attach it to ourselves, we become dispensable. The final triumph of this notion will be a world in which the powerful have their way simply because they can and because the ethical and moral barriers to taking what they want have all been lost. The final fate of the disabled in a liberal society will not be a happy one. We champion "access" even as we redraw the boundaries of humanity to exclude wide swaths of human persons from this access.

Over time human rights, now almost universally accepted among Europeans, will themselves come to be seen as so many arbitrary constructions that may, on utilitarian grounds, be revoked-because there is nothing intrinsic about human beings such that they are not to be ill-treated or violated or even killed. Even now, many do not want to be bothered with the infirm elderly or damaged infants, so we devise so-called humane ways to kill them and pretend that somehow they chose (or would have chosen) to die. Elderly patients are being killed in the Netherlands without their consent. A new protocol for euthanizing newborns with disabilities is institutionalized in the Netherlands, and the doctor who authored the protocols, Eduard Verhagen, tells us how "beautiful" it is when the newborns are killed, for, at last, they are at peace.

Read the rest of this prophetic article. It's crucial that moderns and post-moderns alike see clearly the hell to which post-Christian assumptions are leading us. Very nearly every paragraph Elshtain writes is worth underlining.

RLC

Obamaman Can

This has apparently been all over the internet, but I just came across it recently at Hot Air. Comedian Greg Morton does a riff on Candyman that's been viewed over a million times on You Tube.

Funny and disturbing at the same time.

My favorite Obama song, though, is still this one:

236.com: Barack Obama-sistible - The most popular videos are a click away

RLC