Gerald R. Ford (1913-2006)

Gary Varvel

Heading into the Past

Byron passes along an article by James Howard Kunstler, writing for Orion Magazine, who argues that because so much of our present culture is centered around the gasoline engine and because gasoline is going to become increasingly expensive to market in the years ahead, our future will be very different from the present but, perhaps, surprisingly similar to our past.

Whether Kunstler is correct or not about oil supplies being outstripped by demand, I think he's right that we need to begin now to become less dependent upon it. I also believe that he's correct when he asserts that there's not much hope that alternative fuels will be able, by themselves, to sustain our current standard of living.

I especially liked this:

If you really want to understand the U.S. public's penchant for wishful thinking, consider this: We invested most of our late twentieth-century wealth in a living arrangement with no future. American suburbia represents the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world. The far-flung housing subdivisions, commercial highway strips, big-box stores, and all the other furnishings and accessories of extreme car dependence will function poorly, if at all, in an oil-scarce future. Period.

This dilemma now entails a powerful psychology of previous investment, which is prompting us to defend our misinvestments desperately, or, at least, preventing us from letting go of our assumptions about their future value. Compounding the disaster is the unfortunate fact that the manic construction of ever more futureless suburbs (a.k.a. the "housing bubble") has insidiously replaced manufacturing as the basis of our economy.

In other words, our exalted standard of living and our related way of life are unsustainable and will at some point collapse. It's hard to see how this can be avoided given the growing world demand for oil.

Our dependence upon the gasoline engine is surely going to have to change. Mass transit, electric cars, nuclear energy, less sprawl, and more urban living are all in our future, and I think that's a good thing. On the other hand, I think there will be much greater use of coal, at least for a time, and much pressure to lower emissions standards for motor vehicles and coal-burning facilities. That won't be so good.

Although he doesn't put it quite this way, Kunstler's vision implies a return to the nineteen thirties' through fifties' style of social organization, decentralized government, local control, and dependence upon family and community rather than government. This may sound shocking to some who have been reciting for decades the conventional wisdom that we can't turn back the clock, but it should warm the hearts of those conservatives who want to see us at least try.

It would warm mine if I thought the transition would be painless, but I'm afraid it won't be. In fact, I fear that it will be quite convulsive with violence from both within and without instigated by enemies who will seek to take every advantage of our instability.

The challenge will be to dampen the convulsions as much as possible and to maintain our power as we do so. This will not be an easy task, but that the challenge is looming within the next decade or so seems all but certain. Read Kunstler's article and see if you don't agree.

Ideas Have Offspring

Christianity Today has a review by Edward Oakes of Richard Weikart's new book From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany the thesis of which is that Darwin's ideas led pretty much directly to the holocaust. It's a thesis guaranteed to produce howls of protest from Darwinians, but one which Oakes' review certainly confirms:

According to the myths of standard historiography, Darwin confined himself strictly to matters biological-even in The Descent of Man, when he finally came, late in life, to apply his theory to man's place in the evolutionary tree. So whatever damage came to the poor and downtrodden from Darwin's theory is due to others, above all Herbert Spencer. Here, in Spencer, can be found the villain of the piece: that second-rate thinker ruined a perfectly good biological theory by hijacking it for cutthroat capitalism, contempt for the poor, laissez-faire lassitude about social legislation, and so forth. Spencer, the claim goes, was the first to transpose ethics into evolutionary terms, defining as good whatever promoted the "progress" of evolution and as bad whatever hindered it.

Unfortunately for Darwin's own reputation, this thesis does not bear scrutiny. Spencer might well have been the first to coin the phrase "survival of the fittest." But Darwin enthusiastically adopted it in the 6th edition of his Origin of Species as a substitute term for "natural selection." Nor did he ever demur when other advocates of evolution's social application came pleading their case. Karl Marx asked if he might dedicate Das Kapital to Darwin, which request Darwin declined only because he did not want to offend the religious sensibilities of his deeply Christian wife.

Nor were Darwin's own musings on the social implications of his theory limited to private correspondence. In one particularly chilling passage in Descent of Man he asserted, "At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races." Even more ominously, this insouciantly expressed sentiment cannot be regarded as an illegitimate conclusion from the earlier and more reliable Origin of Species.

In a passage historians often cite to prove that at the time of the Origin Darwin was still struggling to maintain his belief in God, Darwin actually, if unwittingly, promulgated the charter for all later social Darwinists: "Let the strongest live and the weakest die.... Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows." In effect, this passage turns Christian theodicy on its head and gives St. Paul's line "Death is swallowed up in victory" a total reversal of meaning. Victory now belongs only to the fittest.

Don't miss Oakes' review. It's lengthy, but it's chock full of important information establishing the link between Darwin and the social Darwinists and through them to Nietzsche and ultimately the Nazis. Every twentieth century Western calamity seems traceable to some 18th or 19th century philosophical enthusiasm, and the Nazis' "final solution" is no exception.

Markets and the Family

The family and free markets are perhaps two important arenas of American life where conservatives have had a consistent and credible voice, and where liberal ideas have been largely found inadequate or harmful.

Yuval Levin has a fine column on the American family and the direction in which conservatism should be moving over the next decade with regard to both of these arenas at The Weekly Standard. Here are a couple of excerpts from the first half of the piece:

American conservatives have worked politically in recent decades to advance two sets of goods: the family and the market. They have advocated traditional values that sustain cultural vitality, and economic freedom that brings material prosperity. These two sets of ideals are mutually reinforcing to an extent. The market relies on a stable and orderly society made possible by sturdy families and strong social institutions; and freedom from unduly coercive authority is an essential prerequisite for making moral choices.

But markets and families are also in tension with one another. The market values risk-taking and creative destruction that can be very bad for family life, and rewards the lowest common cultural denominator in ways that can undermine traditional morality. Traditional values, on the other hand, discourage the spirit of competition and self-interested ambition essential for free markets to work, and their adherents sometimes seek to enforce codes of conduct that constrain individual freedom. The libertarian and the traditionalist are not natural allies.

The left at its height viewed capitalism and traditional social institutions like the family as equally unjust and oppressive, and sought to use government power to replace or to undermine both.

This allowed conservatives to serve the cause of family and market by opposing big government. That doesn't mean the conservative coalition always held together amicably, but a common enemy can go a long way toward smoothing over differences.

Because of welfare reform and conservative pro-family policies, it is no longer fair to say that government is the greatest threat to American families. In the wake of Reagan's and Bush's tax cuts, the federal government is not the drain on Americans' pocketbooks or the deadweight on economic dynamism that it was in 1981. The federal government remains too big and overbearing. But opposition to government can no longer do as the primary means of advancing the interests of families and markets--which has been and should remain the twofold aim of American conservatives.

The genuinely statist left, which opposed both the family and the market, has not exactly disappeared, but it is beleaguered and badly bruised. American "progressives"--triangulated out of bounds by Clinton and then driven out of their minds by Bush--are in sorry shape, notwithstanding their good cheer at the recent election results. They are cynical "realists" in foreign policy, badly confused in domestic policy, with no clear purpose but power, no clear adversary but Bush, no clear ideals but clinging desperately to every tattered remnant of a failed vision even they no longer take seriously. When their electoral fortunes wax, as they surely have this year, it is not because voters think highly of them but because of the country's low opinion of Republicans.

Limited government is inherent to any conservative governing vision, but if those who run the government no longer explicitly seek to undermine capitalism and traditionalism--if government is no longer the greatest danger to both--then what is that greatest danger? And what is the best way to serve the causes of family and freedom?

Read at the link how Levin answers that question and what he prescribes for conservatives over the next decade.

Carrier Landing

So you say you'd like to be a Navy pilot? Well, landing jets on moving aircraft carriers is not an easy job as this video from the British Royal Navy attests.

An Atheist's Pilgrimage (Pt. I)

Gary Wolf has a very interesting essay at Wired in which he discusses his wish to join the ranks of the militant anti-theists who have come to be called the New Atheists and why, ultimately, though he is no theist, he declines. Wolf interviews three exemplars of the New Atheism - Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett - and sympathetically elaborates on those interviews in the essay, explaining what he found agreeable and what he found to be disagreeable.

Any theist, particularly any Christian theist, who wishes to engage the culture apologetically would do well to read Wolf's account. It's a fascinating story, told with gentleness and apparent sincerity. It's a narrative that is probably common among intelligent, college-educated moderns. It's also a story which poses challenges to those who would have such people as Mr. Wolf come to believe that, in the words of Francis Schaeffer, He is there and He is not silent.

A couple of passages from his interviews struck me as noteworthy for what they revealed about the vacuousness of atheism. Consider, for example, this from the section in which Wolf meets with Richard Dawkins:

"I'm quite keen on the politics of persuading people of the virtues of atheism," Dawkins says, after we get settled in one of the high-ceilinged, ground-floor rooms. He asks me to keep an eye on his bike, which sits just behind him, on the other side of a window overlooking the street.

I don't know if Wolf intentionally juxtaposed these sentences, but if he did it was as brilliant as it was subtle.

I doubt Dawkins would have worried about his bike being stolen had he left it in an Amish neighborhood, or a Mormon town, or in the parking lot of any evangelical church which takes it's Christian faith seriously. But "the virtues of atheism" being what they are he worries because his bike is situated in the middle of a campus upon which those virtues are extolled and embraced. It is because atheism offers its votaries no grounds whatsoever for, say, the virtue of honesty that Dawkins is concerned about his bike being stolen. And yet this is what he wants the whole world to be like.

"How much do we regard children as being the property of their parents?" Dawkins asks. "It's one thing to say people should be free to believe whatever they like, but should they be free to impose their beliefs on their children? Is there something to be said for society stepping in? What about bringing up children to believe manifest falsehoods?"

"Manifest" falsehoods? It's philosophically absurd to say that God's nonexistence is "manifest." Moreover, if society is justified in preventing parents from teaching their children theism why would they not be justified, in a society that believes that atheism is a manifest falsehood, in preventing parents from teaching their children that there is no God. No doubt Dawkins would be outraged should an effort be made to pass such legislation.

...the weak-minded pretense that religious viruses are trivial, much less benign. Bad ideas foisted on children are moral wrongs. We should think harder about how to stop them.

Dawkins evidently wishes to make it illegal to take one's children to church. He's apparently unaware of studies such as the one discussed here which show that children raised in religious homes, on average, are far better off than those which are not.

In any case reading Dawkins reminds me of a passage from Noam Chomsky who once wrote that: "If we don't believe in the freedom of expression for people we despise then we don't believe in it at all." Dawkins is a classic totalitarian who wants to micromanage every aspect of peoples' lives including what they say in front of their children. If he lived seventy years ago he'd have doubtless been a Stalinist.

the big war is not between evolution and creationism, but between naturalism and supernaturalism. The sensible" - and here he pauses to indicate that sensible should be in quotes - "the 'sensible' religious people are really on the side of the fundamentalists, because they believe in supernaturalism.

Here Dawkins is correct. The "war" is between naturalism and supernaturalism. It's between materialism and theism. It's a philosophical struggle, and it's a shame that having enlisted in the battle he's still allowed to trade on his standing as a writer of science books to give him standing as a philosopher. His writings on the question of God's existence have absolutely nothing to do with science and everything to do with a metaphysical preference that he wishes to persuade everybody else to accept.

Richard Dawkins is an interesting, and tragic, person to watch. Having become obsessed with eradicating Christianity he has willingly embraced the role of village atheist and is making himself, a once accomplished writer of important books on biology, a bit of a laughingstock.

We'll have more on Wolf's journey in Part II tomorrow.

True Fiction

A man named Michael, a father of a teenage daughter, Jennifer, had been a member of a top-secret anti-terrorism task force in the military and his duties caused him to be away from home much of the time Jen was growing up. He was serving his country in a very important, very dangerous capacity that required his absence and a great deal of personal sacrifice. As a result, his daughter grew up without him. Indeed, his wife Judy had left him a couple of years previous and took the girl with her.

Finally, after several years abroad, Mike was able to go home. He longed to hold his princess in his arms and to spend every possible moment with her to try to make up for lost time, but when he knocked on the door of his ex-wife's house the girl who greeted him was almost unrecognizable. Jen had grown up physically and along the way she had rejected everything Michael valued. Her appearance shocked him and her words cut him like a razor. She told him coldly and bluntly that she really didn't want to see him, that he wasn't a father as far as she was concerned, that he had not been a part of her life before and wouldn't be in the future.

Michael, a man who had faced numerous hazards and threats in the course of his work and had been secretly cited for great heroism by the government, was staggered by her words. The loathing in her voice and in her eyes crushed his heart. He started to speak but the door was slammed in his face. Heartbroken and devastated he wandered the streets of the city wondering how, or if, he could ever regain the love his little girl once had for him.

Weeks went by during which he tried to contact both his ex-wife and his daughter, but they refused to return his calls. Then one night his cell phone rang. It was Judith and from her voice Mike could tell something was very wrong. Apparently, Jennifer had run off with some unsavory characters several days before and hadn't been heard from since. Judy had called the police, but she felt Mike should know, too. She told him that she thought the guys Jen had gone out with that night were heavily into drugs and she was worried sick about her.

She had good reason to be. Jen thought when she left the house that she was just going for a joy ride, but that's not what her "friends" had in mind. Once they had Jen back at their apartment they tied her to a bed, abused her, filmed the whole thing, and when she resisted they beat her until she submitted. She overheard them debating whether they should sell her to a man they knew whom they thought sold girls into slavery in South America or whether they should just kill her now and dump her body in the bay. For three days her life was a living hell. She cried herself to sleep late every night after being forced into the most degrading conduct imaginable.

Finally her abductors sold her to a street gang in exchange for drugs. Bound and gagged, she was raped repeatedly and beaten savagely. For the first time in her life she prayed that God would help her, and for the first time in her life she missed her father. But as the days wore on she began to think she'd rather be dead than be forced to endure what she was being put through.

Mike knew some of the officers in the police force and was able to get a couple of leads from them as to who the guys who she originally left with might be. He set out not knowing Jennifer's peril, but determined to find her no matter what the cost. His search led him to another city and took days, days in which he scarcely ate or slept. Each day that passed Jennifer's condition grew worse and her danger more severe. She was by now in a cocaine-induced haze in which she hardly knew what was happening to her.

Somehow, Michael, weary and weak from his lack of sleep and food, managed to find the seedy, run down tenement building where Jennifer was imprisoned. Breaking through a flimsy door he saw his daughter laying on the filthy bed surrounded by three startled kidnappers. Enraged by the scene before his eyes he launched himself at them with a terrible, vengeful fury. Two of the thugs went down quickly but the third escaped. With tears flowing down his cheeks, Mike unfastened the bonds that held Jen's wrists to the bed posts. She was barely alert enough to comprehend what was happening, but too groggy to respond. Michael helped her to her feet and led her to the doorway.

As she passed into the hall with Michael behind her the third abductor appeared in front of her with a gun. Michael quickly stepped in front and told Jennifer to run back into the apartment and out the fire escape. The assailant tried to shoot her as she ran, but Michael shielded her from the bullet, taking the round in his side. The thug fired twice more into Michael's body, but Mike was able to seize the gun and turn it on the shooter.

Finally, it was all over, finished.

Slumped against the wall, her father lay bleeding and bruised, the life draining out of him. Jennifer saw from the fire escape landing what had happened and ran back to Michael. Cradling him in her arms she wept and told him over and over that she loved him and that she was so sorry for what she had said to him and for what she had done.

With the last bit of life left in him he gazed up at her, pursed his lips in a kiss, smiled and died. Jennifer wept hysterically. How could she ever forgive herself for how she had acted? How could she ever overcome the guilt and the loss she felt? How could she ever repay the tremendous love and sacrifice of her father?

Years passed. Jennifer eventually had a family of her own. She raised her children to revere the memory of her father even though they had never known him. She resolved to live her own life in such a way that Michael, if he knew, would be enormously proud of her. Everything she did, she did out of gratitude to him for what he had done for her, and every year on the anniversary of his birthday she went to the cemetary alone and sat for a couple of hours at his graveside, talking to him and sharing her love and her life with him. Her father had given everything for her despite the cruel way she had treated him. He had given his life to save hers. His love for her, his sacrifice changed her life.

And that's why Christians celebrate Christmas.

Producing Good Kids

I wonder what the Brits who signed that petition calling for legislation that would make it illegal for parents to instruct their children in religious belief would say about this recent study. I wonder, too, what Richard Dawkins, who claimed in his recent book The God Delusion, that religious instruction is a form of child abuse, would say about the findings contained in this report.

The study shows that teens from religiously observant families with two biological parents who are married or cohabiting ("intact families") are much less likely than other teens to engage in any of ten different undesirable behaviors.

For example, teens from intact families with frequent religious attendance were least likely to have ever gotten into a fight (27.1 percent) when compared to (a) their peers from intact families with infrequent religious attendance (32.1 percent), (b) peers from non-intact families with frequent religious attendance (34.3 percent), and (c) peers from non-intact families with infrequent religious attendance (43.5 percent).

Teens from intact, religiously observant families also had lower levels of drug use, larceny, run-aways, sexual activity, drinking, disciplinary trouble at school, and were generally the highest academic achievers.

Since the study was conducted in the U.S. the religious teens were presumably mostly Christians.

Is anyone surprised at these results? No high school teacher would be. The survey simply puts numbers to what teachers have known for years - the best kids very often come from stable, religious families. You might think this need not be said, but sadly there are some, like Dawkins and his acolytes, who see religion as a great evil which must be purged from our society. One might think that even if they're convinced Christianity is false that they would still support it on purely pragmatic grounds, but it's not just that it's false, it's that it is, in their minds, an evil so great that it must be banned.

Paul in his letter to the Romans alludes to those who, professing themselves wise, are in fact fools. For obvious reasons that seems apposite in this context.

The details of the study can be found at the link.

Why He's Special

Last Christmas we ran the following post and thought it might be good to do it again this year with a few minor edits:

Why do the words of a 1st century Jewish rabbi carry such enormous metaphysical weight with Christians today? The answer, we believe, is that for two thousand years Christians have held that Jesus was not just a rabbi, not just some specially chosen messenger from God, not just a prophet, but that he was God Himself.

Certainly this is what the Bible teaches about Him and what He said about Himself. Consider a couple of examples from Paul writing about Jesus:

He is the image of the invisible God, the first born of all creation. For in Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth...all things have been created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. (Col.1:15-17)

...our great God and savior, Christ Jesus (Titus 2:13)

And here's John describing Christ:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him; and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. (Jn 1:1-3)

And the Jews were seeking to kill Him, because He...was...making Himself equal with God. (Jn 5:18)

And Thomas:

Thomas answered and said to Him, "My Lord and my God!" (Jn 20:28)

And here is Jesus speaking of Himself:

The Jews therefore said to Him, "You are not yet fifty years old and have you seen Abraham?" Jesus said to them, "Truly, truly I say to you, before Abraham was born, I AM." Therefore they picked up stones (to stone Him for blasphemy since I AM was a name God assigns to Himself in the Old Testament to indicate His timelessness) (Jn 8:57-59)

"I and the Father are one" (and the same). The Jews took up stones again to stone Him. Jesus answered them..."for which [of my works] are you stoning me?" The Jews answered Him..."for blasphemy; and because You, being a man, make Yourself out to be God." (Jn 10:30-33)

"He who has seen Me has seen the Father." (Jn.14:9)

It is the belief in the incarnation of God in the person of Jesus that separates Christians from other monotheists. It is a belief unique to Christianity among modern world religions. It is also what makes Christmas so significant and special to believers. As the world turns toward Christmas eve we've resolved to keep well in mind why it is that Christians have always thought this birth, this child, to be full of mystery, wonder, awe and love. The Creator of the world, despite our rejection and betrayal of him, is born into the world as a human, to human parents, in the meanest surroundings, so that ultimately He may one day coax us back to Himself.

Christmas reminds us all of the depth of His devotion to us. It reminds us that God chose to identify Himself with us in our humanity by sharing in our suffering and enduring an awful physical death, all of which He did as an expression of purest love. It was completely gratuitous. He needn't have done it, but for reasons we can't really understand on this side of eternity, it was apparently the only way He could win us back.

Christmas reminds us that God became man and dwelt among us, but couldn't Jesus have been mistaken about who He was? Couldn't He have been lying? Couldn't He have been deranged? Yes, He could have been any of these which is why we are not just left with a record of what He said about Himself but also a record of what happened at the end of His life. It was these events which authenticated the claims that He and others made about who He was.

For more on that topic go here and scroll to Christian Belief VI. In the meantime, we wish all of our readers a wonderful Christmas filled with the love of family and friends.

Neville Baker

It can now be revealed that there was a secret meeting between James Baker and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that is believed to be behind Baker's suggestion that to bring stability to Iraq we should seek the help of the man who promises to wipe Israel off the face of the earth.

David Zucker was hired to document the meeting and his video has just been released. Viewpoint readers can watch it here.

You are witnesses to history.

HT: Powerline

I Was Thirsty and You Gave Me Drink

An organization called Voice of the Martyrs sent this report through a NewsMax e-mail subscription so I can't link you to the original:

Nasir Ashraf, a Christian stone mason, was brutally attacked by radical Muslims just outside Lahore.

While working on the construction of a room at a school near Manga Mandi in Pakistan, Nasir took a break after becoming thirsty. He drew water and drank from a glass chained to a cemented public water tank next to a mosque, which was reserved for "all" poor people. Returning to the construction site, a Muslim man asked him, "Why did you drink water from this glass since you are a Christian?" The man accused Nasir of polluting the glass. The Muslim man yanked the glass off the iron chain, broke it and threw it in a garbage can. The man summoned other radical Muslims to the scene, furiously saying, "This Christian polluted our glass." Hearing this, the incensed mob began beating Nasir, yelling that a Christian dog drank water from their glass.

Nasir Ashraf

The radical Muslims encouraged bystanders to beat Nasir because it would be a "good" deed that would benefit them in heaven. The attackers pushed Nasir off a ledge onto the ground. The impact of the fall dislocated his shoulder and broke his collar bone in two places. This knocked Nasir unconscious and he did not regain his senses until he reached a clinic. A doctor told Nasir that some people had brought him there.

Nasir's father took him home and a VOM representative was alerted about the incident. VOMedical is helping with Nasir's medical treatment and is monitoring his recovery from the attack.

Nice people, those Muslims. One wonders how two monotheistic religions like Islam and Christianity can be so diametrically different in the way they are enjoined to treat "the stranger" in their midst, and what they teach about good deeds and heavenly reward. One is based on loving one's neighbor and the other is based, at least judging by how it is often practiced, on hating anyone who holds different convictions. One is based on doing justice to the poor, oppressed, and weak regardless of their theology, and the other is based, from all appearances, upon breaking their bones and slitting their throats.

One also wonders what the appeal of Islam could possibly be for anyone living in the civilized world.

Booming Economy --- in <i>Iraq</i>

Iraq is in the midst of civil war, we're told. We've already lost in Iraq, we hear. All that's left is to figure out a graceful exit, the media talking heads solemnly intone. Yet every now and then a dissonant note seeps through the despair and defeatism. Newsweek, of all people, has such a story here. The title? Iraq's Economy is Booming. Given what the MSM report every day who would have thought that?

Civil war or not, Iraq has an economy, and-mother of all surprises-it's doing remarkably well. Real estate is booming. Construction, retail and wholesale trade sectors are healthy, too, according to a report by Global Insight in London. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce reports 34,000 registered companies in Iraq, up from 8,000 three years ago. Sales of secondhand cars, televisions and mobile phones have all risen sharply. Estimates vary, but one from Global Insight puts GDP growth at 17 percent last year and projects 13 percent for 2006. The World Bank has it lower: at 4 percent this year. But, given all the attention paid to deteriorating security, the startling fact is that Iraq is growing at all.

Things in Iraq are not all rosy, of course, but neither is the picture anywhere near as dismal, evidently, as the American public is being led to believe. We can win in Iraq. It just takes a little more steel in the spine than many of our politicians and media types have shown so far.

In his outstanding book America Alone, Mark Steyn quotes Goh Chok Tong, the prime minister of Singapore in 2004, who, while on a visit to Washington, observed that "The key issue is no longer WMD or even the role of the U.N. The central issue is America's credibility and will to prevail." Exactly so, but, unfortunately, neither of those assets is much in evidence in either the Democrat party or the establishment media.

Mind-Numbed Robots

Liberals often pride themselves on how smart they are, while ridiculing the rubes who vote for conservatives. Blue staters are intelligent, red staters are yokels. At least that's the myth that liberals have comforted themselves with for the past six years. Yet frequently news reports like this one come along that blow the myth right out of the water and cause us to question whether liberalism is not itself a symptom of cognitive debility.

What other explanation can there be for such as we read in the following report?

HAGERSTOWN - A kindergarten student was accused earlier this month of sexually harassing a classmate at Lincolnshire Elementary School, an accusation that will remain on his record until he moves to middle school.

Washington County Public Schools spokeswoman Carol Mowen said the definition of sexual harassment used by the school system is, "unwelcome sexual advances, request for sexual favors and/or other inappropriate verbal, written or physical conduct of a sexual nature directed toward others." Mowen said that definition comes from the Maryland State Department of Education.

According to a school document provided by the boy's father, the 5-year-old pinched a girl's buttocks on Dec. 8 in a hallway at the school south of Hagerstown. Charles Vallance, the boy's father, said he was unable to explain to his son what he had done. "He knows nothing about sex," Vallance said. "There's no way to explain what he's been written up for. He knows it as playing around. He doesn't know it as anything sexual at all."

The incident was described as "sexual harassment" on the school form. School officials consider a student's age and the specific action when determining what administrative action to take, Mowen said.

Lincolnshire Principal Darlene Teach [Really?] and Mowen said they were unable to discuss he incident involving the Lincolnshire student. Teach said any student, regardless of grade level, can be cited for sexual harassment. "Anytime a student touches another student inappropriately, it could be sexual harassment," Teach said.

School administrators at a Texas school in November suspended a 4-year-old student for inappropriately touching a teacher's aide after the prekindergarten student hugged the woman. "It's important to understand a child may not realize that what he or she is doing may be considered sexual harassment, but if it fits under the definition, then it is, under the state's guidelines," Mowen said. "If someone has been told this person does not want this type of touching, it doesn't matter if it's at work or at school, that's sexual harassment."

The incident will be included in the boy's file while he remains at Lincolnshire, but Mowen said those files do not follow students when they move on to middle school. She described the incident as a "learning opportunity."

During the 2005-06 school year, 28 kindergarten students in Maryland were suspended for sex offenses, including sexual assault, sexual harassment and sexual activity, according to state data. Fifteen of those suspensions were for sexual harassment. During the 2005-06 school year, one Washington County prekindergarten student was suspended from school, and 12 of the county's kindergartners were suspended for various offenses, according to state data.

A four year old was suspended for inappropriate touching?Twenty eight kindergarten students were suspended for sexual harassment? How can a four year old inappropriately touch? How can kindergarten students sexually harass someone? What kind of people are these who are making the decisions to punish these children by labelling them some sort of sex offender, and do they have any insight at all into how four and five year-olds think? Do they really believe that children this young think in sexual terms at all?

Ms. Mowen considers writing a child up as a sexual harasser to be a "learning opportunity," but it's better described as the sort of sheer idiocy one has come to expect from people who are so brainwashed by mindless ideological dogma that they have absolutely no common sense. Liberal proprieties may demand that we punish a four, five, or six year old for pinching, as if they were sixteen or seventeen, but anyone with an IQ above the freezing point would perceive the utter foolishness of it.

Indeed, the only thing more astonishing than the punishment is the utterly vacuous rationale given to justify it. Like people straight out of a Franz Kafka novel, the sex nazis in Maryland have determined that what this child did fits the definition of sexual harassment and therefore must be treated as such, whether it really is or not.

In their stupid intransigence and bizarre eagerness to punish children just for being children, Ms. Teach and Ms. Mowen offer us, perhaps, the best possible argument for school choice.

Major Conversion

Scrapple Face has the scoop of the century. Al Qaeda's second in command (or, depending on the status of Osama's vital signs, #1) Ayman al-Zawahiri has converted to Christianity and gives his testimony in this video. It's a real shocker to hear him talk like this, but it warms the soul.

At least it does if you don't know Arabic and don't think about the fact that Scrapple Face is a master of satire.

Time's decision

Byron writes to defend Time Magazine's decision to select us all as Person of the Year. His defense can be read on our Feedback page, and, as usual, he makes a good case.

Significant Differences

Those who support open borders and unrestricted immigration like to remind us that we are a nation of immigrants and that we should not deny to others what was not denied to our ancestors. This is a specious argument for a number of reasons, and Pat Buchanan provides us with a few of them in his excellent book State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America. Buchanan notes that:

1. We have as many foreign-born people living in the U.S. today as came here in the first 350 years of our history. This is a tidal wave of immigration which is placing enormous stress on the cultural and social fabric of our cities and towns, especially in the southwest.

2. Most of of those who are coming are breaking in. They have no legal right to be here. Six million illegals were caught in 2006. That may only be a fraction of what actually made it past the border police. In 2006 there were as many illegals (12 to 20 million) inside our borders as all the Germans and Italians who ever came to this country.

3. Almost all immigrants, whether legal or illegal, come from cultures whose peoples have never before been assimilated into a First World nation. Most of our ancestors were from the same ethnic and cultural stock as the people who were already here. Many of today's immigrants have no particular sympathy for or loyalty to the European culture which has nurtured and sustained America. The founding documents of this country reflect European thinking and values and many of today's immigrants feel no attachment or allegiance to them.

4. There are strong pressures exerted on immigrants by their own communities and by our cultural elites not to assimilate. Unlike the social expectations which prevailed a century or more ago, today's multiculturalists are hostile to the idea of an American melting pot and disdain the idea, for example, that immigrants should be expected to learn English.

5. Among those arriving now many of them bring with them no desire to become Americans, to be one of us. Many come to work, others to exploit the welfare benefits of living in America, some come to prey upon Americans. When most of our ancestors arrived, on the other hand, they were not entitled to drink at the public trough. There was no public welfare. The immigrant communities themselves provided assistance to those of their number who needed it.

These are not insignificant differences. Immigration today is an almost completely different phenomenon than it was when our ancestors travelled to these shores. Immigration in the first 350 years of our history made us a stronger nation. Today it is threatening to undo us.

Simplistic Reportage

Reports in the media almost always depict the administration as resisting more troops in Iraq and the military leadership as wanting more but reluctant to buck former Secretary Rumsfeld's desire to keep our footprint small and lean. Well, apparently the media reports have once again proven themselves to be a little too simplistic.

It turns out that the administration is enthusiastic about putting more troops into Iraq and the Joint Chiefs are reluctant. The debate is apparently complex, but that's the point. The second guessers and military experts at the New York Times and elsewhere have till now painted the debate as a simple matter of the Bushies being unwilling to listen to their military people on the need for more troops when, in fact, things have been more complicated than that. We might even say that the media has "lacked nuance" in much of their reporting on this matter.

Read the article by Robin Wright and Peter Baker at the link.

Who Would You Pick?

Jason writes regarding the Time Magazine Person of the Year award:

What a lame excuse for a man of the year award. All that happened in 2006, and the editor's at TIME come up with that crock? They should be ashamed. And to think that CNN carried a 1-hr special on who should be picked, only to announce that it is "YOU."

I am curious. Who would the editors of Viewpoint pick for their person(s) of the year?

This is a very interesting question. The obvious answer, of course, is that it's George W. Bush. No one has had a greater influence on world events, for good or for ill, than has President Bush. But if we discount the president of the United States in our deliberation the choice gets more difficult. There are a couple of people that merit consideration, but rather than name them I'd like to survey you our readers and see what you think.

If you have a thought on this please submit your choice for person of the year through our speak up feature. Unlike Time Magazine's editors, though, who consider anyone who has exerted influence on world or national events no matter how pernicious that influence might have been, let's limit our choice to someone that we believe deserves the award because their efforts have advanced civilization and human welfare.

If we get any nominations we'll list them next week.

Liberal/Conservative

How liberal or conservative are you? You can go here to take a twenty question test to find out. My results were as follows:

Political Profile:

Overall: 85% Conservative, 15% Liberal
Social Issues: 100% Conservative, 0% Liberal
Personal Responsibility: 75% Conservative, 25% Liberal
Fiscal Issues: 100% Conservative, 0% Liberal
Ethics: 50% Conservative, 50% Liberal
Defense and Crime: 100% Conservative, 0% Liberal

I really don't know how I got the 50/50 rating in ethics since I can think of only one ethical question to which I gave the typically liberal reply. The test makes me seem more conservative than I think I really am and maybe it's slanted to do that, I don't know. Anyway, take it yourself and see what you think.

HT: Prosthesis

Good Quote

"I'm interested in reconciling this phenomenal event -- the incarnation of God -- with Santa Claus and blue-light specials at Kmart and the weird preoccupation we have with buying a lot of junk and giving it to each other." Prosthesis.