Bobby Fischer Is Dead

Bobby Fischer, the first American chess world champion, has died in Iceland at the age of 64. For those who remember the 1960s and 70s, Fischer's battles with the Soviet masters, and his manifold eccentricities, are legendary. Younger readers can find out a little more about Bobby Fischer here.

RLC

The Fred Astaire of Politics

"So far, Obama is the Fred Astaire of politics - graceful and elegant, with a surface so pleasing to the eye that it seems mistaken, even greedy, to demand depth. No one, however, would have given Astaire control of nuclear weapons, so attention must be paid to Obama's political as well as aesthetic qualities."

George Will in Jewish World Review.

Thanks to Byron for the link.

RLC

Buying Other People's Houses

Michelle Malkin argues that the very worst solution to the sub-prime mortgage crisis is for government to take money from responsible people who try hard to live within their means, and who do without a lot of what others indulge themselves with, and then give that money to irresponsible borrowers who had no business buying houses that they couldn't afford.

Michelle is right. At some point people have to be held accountable for their actions. They can't make foolish decisions and then expect everyone else to pay for them. Politicians, including those in the White House, who are trying to find a way to make the rest of us pay for other peoples' homes have to be told that we're just not going to do it.

If individuals, churches or other private charities wish to help people who are overextended hold onto their homes, that's fine, but it should be a voluntary choice. No one should be coerced by government to subsidize the purchase of someone else's house, especially when some of those houses cost two and three times as much as the average taxpayer's own home.

RLC

Mind/Body Problem

Michael Engor points out that there are two types of problems related to human consciousness, these are what David Chalmers calls the easy problems and the hard problem. The easy problems are not called that because they are easily solved but rather because we can see how they may yield to future scientific research:

The easy problems are the sort treated routinely by neuroscientists. These are problems such as 'what is the neuroanatomical correlate of arousal?' or 'which neurotransmitters are associated with depression?' Of course, these questions are not easy in a scientific sense, but they are tractable by the methods of science, which are, for the most part, methodologically materialistic.

The hard problem is much different. There seems to be no way of solving it. It appears to be intractable:

The hard problem is this: why are we subjects, and not just objects? Why do we have subjective experiences? Descriptions of neurophysiology are all third-person - neurons do this, serotonin does that. Yet consciousness is experienced in the first person - 'I,' not 'it.' How is the 'third person' matter in our brains related to our actual first person experiences? The easy problems of consciousness relate to objective phenomena - neurotransmitters and action potentials. The hard problem of consciousness is qualitatively different - it's the problem of subjectivity. As Chalmers explains, the hard problem "persists even when the performance of all the relevant functions [e.g. neurochemistry] is explained."

In other words, we have certain subjective experiences which, if we are simply material beings, seem to be inexplicable. How, for example, does matter produce any of the following: self-awareness, appreciation of beauty, gratitude, disappointment, regret, resentment, a wish, a hope, a desire, a doubt, a belief, an intention? How does matter, a series of chemical reactions in the brain, result in understanding, frustration or boredom?

Engor points out that dualistic views are not without their problems:

Indeed, dualism has plenty of problems of its own, and dualists are honest about the problems. For example, how do the mind and brain actually interact?

This is indeed a puzzling question but it should not stop anyone from believing that they somehow do. After all, materialists believe that matter can warp space but I daresay no one knows how it does it. Nor does anyone know how gravity exerts its pull on objects or how similarly charged particles repel each other. The fact that we don't know how mind and matter can interact is no reason not to think that they do.

RLC

Santorum's Revenge

Former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum unloads on John McCain explaining why Senator McCain is not a candidate that conservatives should support. Santorum is a credible voice among conservatives and his criticism of McCain's obstructionism in the Senate could be (should be) harmful to the senator's chances for the GOP nomination.

RLC

Mike Nifong and the Golden Rule

I wonder how the disbarred erstwhile North Carolina prosecutor Mike Nifong is feeling now about abusing his power to try to destroy the lives of others evidently for the purpose of advancing his own political career. His life seems to be lying in tatters, which is exactly what he would have done to the lives of the Duke lacrosse players if he could have:

Former Durham prosecutor Mike Nifong has filed for bankruptcy, listing a debt of $180.3 million, according to documents filed Tuesday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Durham.

The filing comes on the same day the former Duke lacrosse prosecutor and others involved in the case were to submit responses to a federal lawsuit by the three men he sought to prosecute.

Nifong lists David Evans, Collin Finnerty and Reade Seligmann, as well as three other members of Duke University's 2006 men's lacrosse team who filed a separate federal lawsuit - as unsecured creditors, each owed $30 million.

More than 30 other lacrosse players from that team are also listed as creditors, each owed $1; the North Carolina State Bar, owed $8,397.71 for costs related to his disbarment; and nearly 70 other people involved in or associated in some way the nearly yearlong investigation of rape, sexual assault and kidnapping claims by an exotic dancer.

Nifong values his assets, including his house, car and personal belongings, at $243,898.

There are rare occasions when, if we don't treat others the way we would want to be treated, we get treated the way we have treated others.

RLC

Sermon on the Mount (Muslim Version)

It's an unfortunate failing of the the American media that they do such a poor job of calling to the attention of the American public exactly what goes on in mosques throughout the Middle East and probably here in our own country. The Middle East Research Institute (MEMRI) is on the job, however, doing what the Western media lack the kidney for, and bringing us without comment events like this Friday sermon by a Palestinian sheik. Watch as the sheik lays out for the mosque full of men and boys the Muslim goal of universal Islam and note how attentively they listen to every word as his hatred washes over them.

Of course, I might be a little hasty here in judging the sheik's sermon. Maybe he's really just preaching the sermon on the mount and talking about the need for love and forgiveness, and the captions are somehow a devious Zionist trick, like the Roberto Benigni character Guido in Life is Beautiful interpreting the concentration camp officer's instructions to the prisoners. Maybe. Or maybe the sheik is really what he seems to be - a hate-filled psychopath.

Watch the video. It'll be profitable for those unaware of, or doubtful of, the future the Islamists have in mind for our children.

RLC

The Real Hillary

Sally Bedell Smith's new book The Clintons at the White House is being excerpted by The Daily Mail. The first installment gives disturbing, though not new, insight into the personality and paranoia of Hillary Clinton. It's amazing that someone with this sort of temperament is being given an almost free pass into the White House by the media.

The excerpt is ugly but it's fascinating. If it were about anyone else it would just be gossip, but it reveals the character of a woman who may well be the next president of the United States. Everyone should read it so they know who and what they're voting for or against in November.

RLC

Bush of Arabia

Keith Olberman the other evening observed approvingly that the Europeans don't much care who is elected to be our next president as long as whoever it is tacitly repudiates George Bush and makes a clean break with the last eight years.

Madeline Albright recently sniffed that George Bush is probably the worst president in our history (She said this before going on, humorously enough, to imply that Bush is not concerned about the interests of other nations and that if everyone in the world were poor and ignorant we wouldn't have the problems we do).

Daniel Schorr of NPR observed the other day that George Bush has little to show for his visit to the Middle East. (Schorr pronounced the trip a failure even before Bush had returned home!).

None of these critics has apparently consulted those who actually live in the Middle East before offering their opinions of Bush's impact upon that region. For a completely different take on the significance of George Bush and his presidency one should read this essay by Fouad Ajami in the Wall Street Journal.

Ajami claims that Bush is the most consequential president the Middle East has ever seen. There is no doubt that he means this in a positive sense nor can there be any doubt that he's correct. No president has ever done more good for more people in the Middle East and gotten less gratitude and credit for it than has George Bush. Among other things there are 50 million people living in freedom today in Afghanistan and Iraq who suffered in terror and misery under horrific tyrannies just a few years ago.

Of course, many Europeans, and apparently Keith Olberman, as well couldn't care less about that achievement, and Madeline Albright can point to no accomplishment during her tenure as Secretary of State that is even remotely comparable. As for Schorr, anyone who thinks that the results of a state visit to the Middle East must be instantly apparent in order to be real is simply not to be taken seriously.

Thanks to Byron for the link to the Ajami article.

RLC

Education Pays

Here's data from 2006 which makes it starkly clear that education pays off both in terms of higher income and lower unemployment. The average unemployment rate in 2006 was around 4.8%. The following is a list of 2006 unemployment rates for people of various levels of education. The dollar figure is their median weekly earnings for that year:

• Professional degree (1.1%) $1,474
• Doctoral degree (1.4%) $1,441
• Master's degree (1.7%) $1,140
• Bachelor's degree (2.3%) $962
• Associate degree (3.0%) $721
• Some college, no degree (3.9%) $674
• High-school graduate (4.3%) $595
• Less than a high school diploma (6.8%) $419

It's pretty clear that, on average, the more schooling you get the better you'll do. People like Bill Gates who amassed fortunes with very little formal education are, of course, the exception. A high school student counting on being a Bill Gates is like a high schooler counting on making it in the NBA. You're a lot better off getting all the education you can get.

RLC

The <i>Edge</i> Question for 2008

Edge is a website that often asks very bright people very interesting questions. Recently they invited 165 intellectuals to write about this question: What Have You Changed Your Mind About. Many of the answers are a bit abstruse, but many are also fascinating. For example, psychologist Martin Seligman, whose reply happens to be the first on their list, says this:

If my math had been better, I would have become an astronomer rather than a psychologist. I was after the very greatest questions and finding life elsewhere in the universe seemed the greatest of them all. Understanding thinking, emotion, and mental health was second best - science for weaker minds like mine. Carl Sagan and I were close colleagues in the late 1960's when we both taught at Cornell. I devoured his thrilling book with I.I. Shklovskii (Intelligent Life in the Universe, 1966) in one twenty-four hour sitting, and I came away convinced that intelligent life was commonplace across our galaxy.

The book, as most readers know, estimates a handful of parameters necessary to intelligent life, such as the probability that an advanced technical civilization will in short order destroy itself and the number of "sol-like" stars in the galaxy. Their conclusion is that there are between 10,000 and two million advanced technical civilizations hereabouts. Some of my happiest memories are of discussing all this with Carl, our colleagues, and our students into the wee hours of many a chill Ithaca night. And this made the universe a less chilly place as well. What consolation! That homo sapiens might really partake of something larger, that there really might be numerous civilizations out there populated by more intelligent beings than we are, wiser because they had outlived the dangers of premature self-destruction. What's more we might contact them and learn from them.

A fledging program of listening for intelligent radio signals from out there was starting up. Homo sapiens was just taking its first balky steps off the planet; we exuberantly watched the moon landing together at the faculty club. We worked on the question of how we would respond if humans actually heard an intelligent signal. What would our first "words" be? We worked on what would be inscribed on the almost immortal Voyager plaque that would leave our solar system just about now - allowing the sentient beings who cadged it epochs hence to surmise who we were, where we were, when we were, and what we were (Should the man and woman be holding hands? No, they might think we were one conjoined organism.)

SETI (the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) and its forerunners are almost forty years old. They scan the heavens for intelligent radio signals, with three million participants using their home computers to analyze the input. The result has been zilch. There are plenty of excuses for zilch, however, and lots of reason to hope: only a small fraction of the sky has been scanned and larger more efficient arrays are coming on line. Maybe really advanced civilizations don't use communication techniques that produce waves we can pick up.

Maybe intelligent life is so unimaginably different from us that we are looking in all the wrong "places." Maybe really intelligent life forms hide their presence. So I changed my mind. I now take the null hypothesis very seriously: that Sagan and Shklovskii were wrong: that the number of advanced technical civilizations in our galaxy is exactly one, that the number of advanced technical civilizations in the universe is exactly one. What is the implication of the possibility, mounting a bit every day, that we are alone in the universe? It reverses the millennial progression from a geocentric to a heliocentric to a Milky Way centered universe, back to, of all things, a geocentric universe. We are the solitary point of light in a darkness without end. It means that we are precious, infinitely so. It means that nuclear or environmental cataclysm is an infinitely worse fate than we thought.

Thinking about Seligman's new thinking on the matter of ETI I'm reminded of an excellent book written by Peter Ward and David Brownlee titled Rare Earth. Ward and Brownlee make it pretty clear that the earth is as close to unique as we have reason to believe and that the conditions necessary for intelligent life might well exist nowhere else in the universe. Anyone who still harbors the Star Wars notion that the uiniverse is probably full of intelligent aliens ought to read Rare Earth.

It is also interesting that Seligman now thinks we live in a geocentric universe. This is an idea that sophisticated people have scoffed at for a hundred years but which now seems to be more likely to be correct in at least one important way than ever before. I talk about why this is here.

You can read the other 164 responses at the link.

RLC

Pander Bear

After having previously assured voters that on the day she takes office oil prices will drop (as will the stock market, probably) Senator Clinton is now delivering assurances in Nevada that, among other things, she is completely convinced that children are our future:

Stroking the 4-year-old girl's head, Clinton said, "I feel so strongly that if we don't take care of our children, we don't take care of our future."

She also has it on good authority that we're heading into a recession:

"I think we're slipping toward a recession," she said. "A couple of people that I met on the street, they work in construction. They tell me it's slowed down."

Well, that clinches it for me.

Not yet done showering profundities upon the adoring crowd the "smartest woman in the world" pandered to her Latino admirers with a great analogy about the lending crisis:

Clinton said unscrupulous lending leads to bad mortgages, which lead to foreclosures, which lead to people with nowhere to go and vacant neighborhoods that can go rapidly downhill. "We treat these problems as if one is guacamole and one is chips, when ... they both go together," she said.

What foods would she have slipped into her comparison, we wonder, had she been speaking to a black audience? Fried chicken and watermelon?

Finally, in a climactic bit of drama she declared all women "legal":

A man shouted through an opening in the wall that his wife was illegal. "No woman is illegal," Clinton said, to cheers.

Goodness, what does that mean? Does it follow that female immigrants in this country without documentation can now get driver's licenses but males similarly situated cannot?

I guess it doesn't matter what it means; The crowd cheered, and for panderers that's what it's all about.

RLC

Observations From Iraq

Michael Yon, an independent war correspondent in Iraq, makes a couple of interesting and important points:

I've done many missions in 2005 and 2007, in many places in Iraq, along with the Iraqi Army: please believe me when I say that, on the whole, the Iraqi Army is remarkably better in 2007 and far more effective than it was in 2005. By 2007, the Iraqis were doing most of the fighting. And . . . this is very important . . . they see our Army and Marines as serious allies, and in many cases as friends. Please let the potential implications of that sink in.

We now have a large number of American and British officers who can pick up a phone from Washington or London and call an Iraqi officer that he knows well-an Iraqi he has fought along side of-and talk. Same with untold numbers of Sheiks and government officials, most of whom do not deserve the caricatural disdain they get most often from pundits who have never set foot in Iraq. British and American forces have a personal relationship with Iraqi leaders of many stripes. The long-term intangible implications of the betrayal of that trust through the precipitous withdrawal of our troops could be enormous, because they would be the certain first casualties of renewed violence, and selling out the Iraqis who are making an honest-go would make the Bay of Pigs sell-out seem inconsequential. The United States and Great Britain would hang their heads in shame for a century.

Alternately, in an equation in which the outcome is a stable Iraq for which they (Iraqi Police and Army officials) are stewards, the potential benefits are equally enormous. Because if Iraq were to settle down, and then a decade passes and we look back and even our most severe critics cannot deny that Iraq is a better place, a generation of Iraq's most important leaders would have deep personal bonds with their counterparts in America and Great Britain. This could actually happen.

--------------

Throughout most of 2007, as I've watched General Petraeus' strategy being implemented, I have observed the impact his change in strategy was having on our soldiers, on Iraqi security forces, and most importantly, on Iraqi people including some who were formerly our avowed enemies. I have seen how our own military morphed into something much more agile, and I came to see how American commanders tended to be the most trusted voices in Iraq for many Iraqis.

To be sure, the "Anbar Awakening" and other signs of progress were underway before the massive strategy overhaul occurred, and nobody can track and trace all the factors involved in this fantastically complex war, but one thing was certain: the momentum was shifting in favor of a stable Iraq for the first time. The institutional knowledge reservoir was becoming vast, and success was touted and shared. It may have been true that Americans knew very little about Iraq before the invasion, but it was for certain that American commanders had now developed an intimate understanding of the goings-on. It can be said with confidence that as a group, no non-Iraqis know more about Iraq than the US military.

You can read his entire dispatch at the link.

RLC

The Amazing Monarch

Scientists are beginning to unravel the mystery of how Monarch butterflies manage to navigate thousands of miles across Canada and the U.S. to pine groves in Mexico where they winter. It really is an astonishing feat, made more so by the fact that none of the butterflies which make the trip had ever made it before.

It turns out that these insects have a tiny molecular clock in their brains that works in tandem with molecular light sensors that allows them to use the sun as a kind of compass. The sun's position is constantly changing, of course, which is where the clock comes in. As it cycles through a series of chemical reactions it causes the light sensors to adjust for the changing position of the sun so that the butterflies don't get lost.

This marvelous mechanism is, Darwinians assure us, a product of nothing more than random mutation and natural selection (RM&NS), and no one should doubt the ability of blind, purposeless forces and processes to produce it. If you're skeptical that such prodigies are possible by mere chance you can consult the decision of Judge John Jones in Kitzmiller v. Dover for reassurance.

Now, if they could only explain how RM&NS actually created that clock/compass mechanism in the butterfly's brain in the first place, that would really be something. And while they're at it maybe they can tell us how the Monarch caterpillar completely dissociates into a mush during its pupal stage and then reassembles the pulp into an adult Monarch in the process of metamorphosis. I know I'm supposed to have faith that this is just one of those things that natural selection can accomplish without any intelligent input from a Creator, but even though I squeeze my eyes tight shut and try real hard to believe, I just can't get myself to do it. Maybe I need a therapy session with Judge Jones.

RLC

McCain's Baggage

Despite winning the New Hampshire primary, John McCain is still not popular among Republicans. Ramirez illustrates why:

A lot of conservatives will vote for him if he's the nominee, but very few will be enthusiastic about it.

Who will benefit most among the Republicans if any of the top five decide they can't continue? Which of the remaining candidates will their supporters gravitate toward? It isn't at all clear at this point.

On the Democrat side I would think that Hillary wants Edwards to stay in the race as long as possible because when he gets out, which seems inevitable, his supporters will likely swing to Obama. I don't know that Mrs. Clinton's candidacy, much less her ego, can withstand that.

The next three weeks will tell, probably.

RLC

Huckabee's Tax Plan, etc.

One reason why Mike Huckabee is popular among Republicans is that he's commited to what's called the Fair Tax. The Fair Tax would eliminate both the IRS and the income tax and replace the income tax with a 23% sales tax. Not everyone thinks its a great idea to tax consumption rather than income, but a lot of people do. Steven Landsberg at Slate.com goes so far as to call it brilliant.

For a few minutes last week I thought Huckabee had locked up the GOP nomination. The Washington Times had published a story claiming that Huckabee had said that were he to be president he would push for a constitutional amendment that would eliminate citizenship grants to children born in the U.S. to parents who were here illegally. These "anchor babies" are entitled to all the benefits and services of any other citizen and once they become adults they can sponsor their families to come here legally, a process referred to as chain migration.

There is an injustice in entering the country illegally and then having a child here who, because he/she is an automatic citizen, qualifies for welfare benefits to be paid for by the American taxpayer.

It was thought that Huckabee had promised to try to end this travesty, but the story turned out to be false. Maybe Fred Thompson will pick it up. Whoever does, in the unlikely event that anyone does, will endear himself to conservative voters throughout the country.

RLC

Cage's 4'33''

I don't know which is more ridiculous, dozens of musicians sitting on stage for four and a half minutes doing absolutely nothing or an audience that probably paid $50 a ticket to watch them do nothing applauding them for doing it. Maybe I just don't appreciate good music.

Thanks to Matt for sending along the link.

RLC

Post-Modern Politics

The charismatic Barack Obama, a good archetype of the post-modern candidate whose appeal has everything to do with personal style and charm and almost nothing to do with his ideas about governance, which many who are seduced by him seem to know nothing about, has done the country a service by stripping away the aura of invincibility surrounding the Clintons. In just two weeks Hillary has gone from being thought an inevitable victor to a candidate fighting for her political life.

Republicans should not rejoice, however, even if Hillary's candidacy expires. The fact is she would probably be easier for the Republican nominee to defeat in November and will almost certainly have very short coattails even if she does win. Moreover, she will probably be a better president than Obama who is much further to the left than is Hillary and certainly much more reckless in terms of his foreign policy.

Even so, if Hillary is elected president it will mean that Bill Clinton and his henchmen will be reinstalled in the White House and may even wind up being the de facto president. What this country surely doesn't need is four, or eight, more years of the sort of corruption, scandal, tawdry, amoral behavior from the first couple that we saw in the 90s.

The best outcome would be that neither Clinton nor Obama make it to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. in November.

RLC

Ron Paul in Hot Water

Not that it matters much, but it looks like Ron Paul has done himself in. The New Republic has unearthed ten years worth of newsletters put out under Paul's name in which sentiments are expressed which, if not exactly racist, are certainly not flattering to blacks (or gays). However one chooses to characterize these opinions, Paul evidently feels guilty enough about them to try to disavow them:

The quotations in The New Republic article are not mine and do not represent what I believe or have ever believed. I have never uttered such words and denounce such small-minded thoughts....When I was out of Congress and practicing medicine full-time, a newsletter was published under my name that I did not edit. Several writers contributed to the product. For over a decade, I have publically taken moral responsibility for not paying closer attention to what went out under my name.

Be that as it may, John Podhoretz thinks Paul's protestations pretty much irrelevant:

Ah, so the Ron Paul Political Report featured articles expressing views a man named Ron Paul found abhorrent, did it? This is reminiscent of the hilarious denunciation by Charles Barkley of his own ghostwritten autobiography. The only difference is that Charles Barkley was a basketball player at the time, while Ron Paul is a sitting member of Congress and a candidate for president of the United States. If he did know about what was published under his name and he's lying about it now, he's a blackguard as well as a disgusting public figure. If he didn't know, he's a pathetic buffoon who sold his own name to racists and intellectual thugs. Not sure which is better.

Despite his ability to raise money, Ron Paul has been pretty much a marginal figure in this primary season. After the TNR revelations he'll probably decide that he doesn't want to have to answer questions about these 15 year-old newsletters everywhere he goes and just drop out of the race.

RLC

Ayaan Hirsi Ali on Modernity

Ayaan Hirsi Ali has written a fine review of a new book (Suicide of Reason) by Lee Harris on the threat to civilization posed by radical Islam. Both Harris and Ali say many things worth reading, including this graph by Ali in response to Harris' pessimism about the prospect of Muslims moderating their extremism:

I was not born in the West. I was raised with the code of Islam, and from birth I was indoctrinated into a tribal mind-set. Yet I have changed, I have adopted the values of the Enlightenment, and as a result I have to live with the rejection of my native clan as well as the Islamic tribe. Why have I done so? Because in a tribal society, life is cruel and terrible. And I am not alone. Muslims have been migrating to the West in droves for decades now. They are in search of a better life. Yet their tribal and cultural constraints have traveled with them. And the multiculturalism and moral relativism that reign in the West have accommodated this.

Unfortunately, she also misfires at least once in her essay. She condemns the moral relativism that cripples Western thought and impedes intellectuals from condemning radical Islam, while at the same praising the Enlightenment which produced modernity. What she seems to miss is that the relativism she deprecates is a logical consequence of the modernity she extols. When modernity banished transcendent morality and subjectivized ethics modern man was left with few places to which he could turn other than to relativism.

Ali, who is an atheist, also blames religion for being an enemy of reason, but this, too, is a misunderstanding of the role religion, at least the Christian religion, has played in the rise of reason in the West. She writes:

Harris is correct, I believe, that many Western leaders are terribly confused about the Islamic world. They are woefully uninformed and often unwilling to confront the tribal nature of Islam. The problem, however, is not too much reason but too little. Harris also fails to address the enemies of reason within the West: religion and the Romantic movement. It is out of rejection of religion that the Enlightenment emerged; Romanticism was a revolt against reason. Both the Romantic movement and organized religion have contributed a great deal to the arts and to the spirituality of the Western mind, but they share a hostility to modernity.

No doubt they do, but that's not a bad thing, necessarily. There's lots about modernity toward which one should be hostile. It was, after all, the exercise of reason in the 19th century that gave us Marx and ultimately Stalin. It was the exercise of reason in the modern era that gave us the eugenics movement in the late 19th century which led eventually to the Nazis' Final Solution. The Cambodian Killing Fields came to us courtesy of people instituting the perfectly "reasonable" principles of Plato's Republic. Modernity has had, morally speaking, its ups and downs and has certainly been something less than an unalloyed boon to human civilization.

The problem is that modernity (or the Enlightenment)unhitched reason from its roots in Christian belief. An untethered reason was thus free to run in any direction unchecked by any transcendent moral norms and this led to evils just as horrific as the irrationalities that plague Ali's native religion. Reason is a wonderful blessing, like oxygen, but an atmosphere of pure oxygen, undiluted by other gases, would be hellish. Reason, likewise, needs to be compounded with the moral guidance provided by Christian theism or else, like pure oxygen, it is incendiary and toxic to human existence.

RLC