Courageous Heart

In 2007 we wrote about Irena Sendler, a Polish woman who risked her life to save Jewish children from the Nazis and who was nominated that year for the Nobel Peace Prize. In an unforgiveable spasm of political correctness she was denied the award because the judges thought it should go to Al Gore for his global warming slide show.

Now the rest of the country will soon be marvelling at the sheer boneheadedness of the Nobel committee's decision. CBS is showing a made-for-television movie that tells the story of Sendler's heroism during WWII. The movie will air this Sunday the 19th.

This post at First Things blog explains why this woman was such a great human being - not as great as Al Gore, apparently, but great nonetheless. The movie is titled The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler. Don't miss it.

RLC

The End of Philosophy

David Brooks assays the field of ethics in a New York Times column titled The End of Philosophy and quickly finds himself raising questions he doesn't realize he's raising:

Socrates talked. The assumption behind his approach to philosophy, and the approaches of millions of people since, is that moral thinking is mostly a matter of reason and deliberation: Think through moral problems. Find a just principle. Apply it.

One problem with this kind of approach to morality, as Michael Gazzaniga writes in his 2008 book, "Human," is that "it has been hard to find any correlation between moral reasoning and proactive moral behavior, such as helping other people. In fact, in most studies, none has been found."

Today, many psychologists, cognitive scientists and even philosophers embrace a different view of morality. In this view, moral thinking is more like aesthetics. As we look around the world, we are constantly evaluating what we see. Seeing and evaluating are not two separate processes. They are linked and basically simultaneous.

This is interesting. I haven't read Gazzaniga's book, but I suspect that the reason no link has been found between reason and morality is that the kind of behaviors most people think of as moral have no basis in human reason. Reason leads us to the conclusion that we should look out for #1. The only reason we should care about the welfare of others is if we'll somehow benefit from doing so. If we won't benefit or if we don't care about the benefit, then there's no reason to have any consideration for the interests of others at all.

This seems unacceptable to many people because even though our society is becoming increasingly secular we're still living off the moral capital of an earlier, more religious age. Our grandparents believed we should care about others because that was what God desires of us. Several generations of Americans have since been raised without God, but they've still been taught the precept. They no longer can explain why it's right to care about others, they just know intuitively that it is. Of course, as time goes on, more people are going to recognize that their intuitions are hanging in mid-air, like the cartoon character who has run off a cliff but hasn't yet started to fall, and they're going to abandon them as groundless and yield instead to their egoistic impulses.

Brooks continues:

Think of what happens when you put a new food into your mouth. You don't have to decide if it's disgusting. You just know. You don't have to decide if a landscape is beautiful. You just know.

Moral judgments are like that. They are rapid intuitive decisions and involve the emotion-processing parts of the brain. Most of us make snap moral judgments about what feels fair or not, or what feels good or not. We start doing this when we are babies, before we have language. And even as adults, we often can't explain to ourselves why something feels wrong.

Indeed. Brooks here is as much as acknowledging that right and wrong are completely subjective, like our taste in food or art. What's right in a world without God is whatever one feels is right.

In other words, reasoning comes later and is often guided by the emotions that preceded it. Or as Jonathan Haidt of the University of Virginia memorably wrote, "The emotions are, in fact, in charge of the temple of morality, and ... moral reasoning is really just a servant masquerading as a high priest."

Or, put differently, reason is simply a tool we use to try to justify our feelings to our intellect. As such its role in ethics is pretty much secondary.

The question then becomes: What shapes moral emotions in the first place? The answer has long been evolution, but in recent years there's an increasing appreciation that evolution isn't just about competition. It's also about cooperation within groups. Like bees, humans have long lived or died based on their ability to divide labor, help each other and stand together in the face of common threats. Many of our moral emotions and intuitions reflect that history. We don't just care about our individual rights, or even the rights of other individuals. We also care about loyalty, respect, traditions, religions. We are all the descendents of successful cooperators.

But if our moral sense is simply an artifact of evolution, what obligates me to pay any attention to it? The answer, of course, is nothing. If human morality is just the result of a process that shaped us for survival in the stone age what need do we have for it today? It's no more necessary or important than is the hair on our arms.

The first nice thing about this evolutionary approach to morality is that it emphasizes the social nature of moral intuition. People are not discrete units coolly formulating moral arguments. They link themselves together into communities and networks of mutual influence.

The second nice thing is that it entails a warmer view of human nature. Evolution is always about competition, but for humans, as Darwin speculated, competition among groups has turned us into pretty cooperative, empathetic and altruistic creatures - at least within our families, groups and sometimes nations.

Brooks is here begging the question. He assumes that altruism and the rest are moral desiderata and then enthuses about the fortuitous path evolution has taken to produce these very traits. But what makes altruism better or more "moral" than egoism? If Brooks just assumes that it is then he's assuming what he really should be trying to demonstrate.

The rise and now dominance of this emotional approach to morality is an epochal change. It challenges all sorts of traditions. It challenges the bookish way philosophy is conceived by most people. It challenges the Talmudic tradition, with its hyper-rational scrutiny of texts. It challenges the new atheists, who see themselves involved in a war of reason against faith and who have an unwarranted faith in the power of pure reason and in the purity of their own reasoning.

Finally, it should also challenge the very scientists who study morality. They're good at explaining how people make judgments about harm and fairness, but they still struggle to explain the feelings of awe, transcendence, patriotism, joy and self-sacrifice, which are not ancillary to most people's moral experiences, but central. The evolutionary approach also leads many scientists to neglect the concept of individual responsibility and makes it hard for them to appreciate that most people struggle toward goodness, not as a means, but as an end in itself.

But what is goodness? Is it caring for others? Why not think it consists in dominating others? Brooks and the people he's talking about seem to have a whole host of assumptions about what is good, but if the only reason these things are good is because we've evolved the desire for them then we have to say that selfishness, greed, lust, power, violence, etc. are also good because we've certainly evolved the desire for them as well. Why elevate some of the results of evolution to the staus of virtues and not others?

For more on Brooks' essay you can go here and here.

RLC

Civil Discourse Among the Lefties

This video of last night's Countdown with Keith Olbermann has to be seen to be believed (and savored). Tens of thousands (at least) of ordinary Americans turn out to protest the reckless spending that is almost sure to bury our children under a mountain of debt and Janeane Garofalo and Keith Olbermann slander them with almost every libel they can think of and then wind up concluding that these concerned citizens are all opposed to Obama's policies because he's black.

For Garofalo and Olbermann anyone who opposes spending our country into oblivion is a stupid, racist, latent mass murderer who's easily manipulated by the evil Fox News. Maybe Ms Garofalo is angling for a job in Janet Napolitano's Department of Homeland Security, or, more likely, this video is simply a glimpse into the fevered fantasy world in which the left lives and moves and has its being. I don't recall either of these luminaries saying anything at all bad about the G-20 protestors, or the anti-war protestors back in Bush's first term - people who have actually destroyed property and harmed, or threatened to harm, other human beings during their protests - but let ordinary folks gather peaceably to display their frustration and displeasure with their political leadership and that's prima facie proof to such as Garofalo and Olbermann that the protestors are a bunch of bigoted Neanderthals a single incendiary word away from reenacting the Holocaust.

Garofalo avers that opponents of the President's policies are suffering from a neurological disorder - perhaps she has a degree in psychiatry, I don't know - but what name should we assign the delusions under which she and Mr. Olbermann labor? These demonstrations weren't funded by the GOP nor were they organized by Fox News. Perhaps when one is consumed with hate and a sense of one's own intellectual superiority, paranoia comes naturally and any who dare dissent from their own point of view is little more than a contemptible "redneck."

Anyway, the good stuff starts about three minutes in:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Don't you wish you were as smart as Ms Garofalo? She knows so much it must be sheer joy to be her. On the other hand, we might pity the woman who, gifted with such a towering intellect - a virtue exceeded in its vastness only by her vanity - finds that nevertheless the only people who care to listen to her are a few members of Keith Olbermann's tiny audience, people who perchance are as hate-filled as is Ms Garofalo.

RLC

Freedom Is Slavery

Janet Napolitano, the Director of Homeland Security and the lady who informed us that we are no longer fighting a global war on terrorism but rather a war on "man-caused disasterism," has released a report to law enforcement agencies that warns of a growing danger in the U.S. from "right-wing extremists." The report has caused quite a stir since it apparently offers no substantiation for its claims and because it defines right-wing extremists in a manner that would include most of the Founding Fathers. The Washington Times column on the DHS report opens with these words:

The Department of Homeland Security is warning law enforcement officials about a rise in "rightwing extremist activity," saying the economic recession, the election of America's first black president and the return of a few disgruntled war veterans could swell the ranks of white-power militias.

A footnote attached to the report by the Homeland Security Office of Intelligence and Analysis defines "rightwing extremism in the United States" as including not just racist or hate groups, but also groups that reject federal authority in favor of state or local authority.

Has no one at the DHS ever read The Federalist Papers? A preference for state and local authority is a principle upon which this country was founded. It is the basis for the much ignored 10th Amendment to the Constitution. Apparently the Obama administration considers people who still harbor the hope that we will one day return to the Constitution to be dangerous rogues who need to be watched.

"It may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single-issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration," the warning says.

According to Ms Napolitano the gentle nuns who pray daily for the repeal of Roe v. Wade and those who are perplexed at our government's failure to secure our borders are also members of this nefarious class of extremists.

There's something peculiar about the fact that Barack Obama's associations with known left-wing extremists who planted bombs and terrorized innocent families was pooh-poohed during the campaign, but now his administration is planning to place opponents of abortion on demand and illegal immigration under the watchful eye of the police.

The report, which was first disclosed to the public by nationally syndicated radio host Roger Hedgecock, makes clear that the Homeland Security Department does not have "specific information that domestic rightwing terrorists are currently planning acts of violence."It warns that fringe organizations are gaining recruits, but it provides no numbers.

The report says extremist groups have used President Obama as a recruiting tool.

"Most statements by rightwing extremists have been rhetorical, expressing concerns about the election of the first African American president, but stopping short of calls for violent action," the report says. "In two instances in the run-up to the election, extremists appeared to be in the early planning stages of some threatening activity targeting the Democratic nominee, but law enforcement interceded."

It would be interesting to see exactly what data the DHS has to support any of these claims. No data appeared in the report. In fact, the report reads like a summary of liberal stereotypes of anybody who disagrees with them on the issues facing the country. Of course, a lot of Americans were concerned about the election results, but who, precisely, was concerned about them because Obama was an African-American? The report doesn't tell us. You just have to take their word for it and accept that you are possibly guilty of thought crime if you express concerns about being led by the most radically left administration in the history of this country.

The Homeland Security assessment goes on to say specifically that "rightwing extremists will attempt to recruit and radicalize returning veterans in order to exploit their skills and knowledge derived from military training and combat."

But in fact:

The FBI report said that from October 2001 through May 2008 "a minuscule" number of veterans, 203 out of 23,000, had joined groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, Aryan Nations, the National Socialist Movement, the Creativity Movement, the National Alliance and some skinhead groups.

Here's an odd nut: Why are the National Socialists considered a right-wing group? National Socialists (neo-Nazis) are socialists; socialism is a phenomenon of the left; ergo neo-Nazis are leftist extremists, they're not "right-wingers."

The DHS report is filled with meaningless claims (meaningless because there's no way to determine their significance). For example:

DHS/I&A notes that prominent civil rights organizations have observed an increase in anti-Hispanic crimes over the past five years.

But who's perpetrating these crimes? Other Hispanics? Hostile blacks? White racists? The report doesn't say. We're just left to ponder why this fact is to be construed as evidence of the rise of right-wing extremism.

Those of you who consider yourselves pro-life, or are returning vets, or have serious qualms about allowing everyone into this country who wants to come in should be on notice that Big Sister Janet is watching you. Perhaps we can expect the Obama administration to soon be placing telescreens in every home and public space.

RLC

Dealing with Pirates

Strategy Page offers an interesting explanation as to why the world seems slow to do anything about the Somali pirates:

While ten percent of world shipping traffic goes through the Gulf of Aden each year, most of it is in ships too fast for the pirates to catch, and too large for them to easily get aboard. These ships pay higher fuel costs (for the high speed transit), higher insurance premiums, and two days of "danger pay" for their unionized crews, and that's it. This increases the annual operating costs of these ships by a fraction of one percent. But for smaller, and slower, freighters, mostly serving local customers, the pirates remain a problem. These ships tend to be owned by African and Arab companies, and manned by African and Arab crews.

In other words, in financial terms piracy is just not much of a problem. The article goes on to lay out the pros and cons of the various options for ending it:

In dealing with a piracy problem like this, you have three main choices. You can do what is currently being done, which is patrolling the Gulf of Aden and shooting only when you see speedboats full of gunmen threatening a merchant ship. The rule appears to be that you fire lots of warning shots, and rarely fire at the pirates themselves. This approach has saved a few ships from capture, and the more warships you get into the Gulf, the more pirate attacks you can foil. But it won't stop the pirates from capturing ships. Establishing a similar anti-piracy patrol off the east coast of Africa would cost over half a billion dollars a year, at least.

A second approach is to be more aggressive. That is, your ships and helicopters shoot (pirates) on sight and shoot to kill. Naturally, the pirates will hide their weapons (until they are in the act of taking a ship), but it will still be obvious what a speedboat full of "unarmed" men are up to. You could take a chance (of dead civilians and bad publicity) and shoot up any suspicious speedboat. Some of the pirates would probably resort to taking some women and children with them. Using human shields is an old custom, and usually works against Westerners. More pirate attacks will be thwarted with this approach, but the attacks will continue, and NATO will be painted as murderous bullies in the media.

The third option is to go ashore and kill or capture all the pirates, or at least as many as you can identify. Destroy pirate boats and weapons. This is very dangerous, because innocent civilians will be killed or injured, and the property of non-pirates will be damaged. The anti-piracy forces will be condemned in some quarters for committing atrocities. There might even be indictments for war crimes. There will be bad publicity. NATO will most likely avoid this option too. The bottom line is that the pirate attacks, even if they took two or three times as many ships as last year, would not have a meaningful economic impact on world shipping. For example, the international anti-piracy patrol in the Gulf of Aden costs $300 million a year, a fraction of a percent of the defense budgets of the nations involved. Politicians and bureaucrats can stand that kind of pain, and will likely do so and refrain from doing anything bold in Somalia.

It seems to me that the best option is to amend the Law of the Sea treaty to allow shipping companies to employ trained private security contractors, such as we used in Iraq, to fend off attacks. Once word gets out that ships are manned by security teams and that a lot of pirates are going to get killed if they try to hijack a ship, a lot of them would see their enthusiasm for piracy evaporate rather quickly.

Ron Paul offers a somewhat similar plan. He thinks the U.S. should employ bounty hunters.

RLC

Three Months In

Today protesters across the country are having "Tea Parties" to demonstrate their dissatisfaction with the economic policies of the current administration. The fear is that the enormous spending undertaken by the Obama administration is going to strap us with debt that will only be paid by inflating the currency or raising taxes, both of which will suffocate the hopes we have for our childrens' future.

But it's not just the government's economic nostrums that have people alarmed.

Just before the election last November we noted that most conservatives and many libertarians opposed Barack Obama because they foresaw an Obama administration, supported and abetted by a Democratic congress, eager to implement a number of measures that would erode our freedoms and be detrimental to our national health. Here's the listwe posted back then:

1. Remove all restrictions on abortion, including partial birth abortion.
   
2. Alter the meaning of marriage so that it's no longer the union of one man and one woman.
   
3. Appoint judges and Supreme Court Justices whose decisions will be based on political fashion rather than on the text of the constitution.
   
4. Redistribute wealth from the middle and upper classes to the underclass.
   
5. Treat terrorism as a police matter rather than as a global war on Western civilization.
   
6. Pile onto American business onerous regulations and taxes that will make it impossible to compete in the global market and which will result in higher unemployment and higher costs. (Cap and Trade, minimum wage, capital gains tax, health insurance)
   
7. Continue the accelerating secularization of our society.
   
8. Open our borders to anyone who wants to take up residence in our country and give illegal aliens the right to a driver's license, health care, and welfare.
   
9. Nationalize health care.
   
10. Deny to parents any choice in where they send their children to school.
    
11. Push fuel costs back up so as to force us to conserve and develop alternative energy sources.
    
12. Quell freedom of speech, particularly when it's conservative and/or religious, through vehicles like the Fairness Doctrine or "Localism."
    
13. Downgrade our military preparedness and end the program that would enable us to shoot down incoming nuclear missiles.
    
14. Take away the right to own or buy most types of firearms or to acquire a license to carry them on one's person.
    
15. Strip union workers of the right to a secret ballot in union elections by implementing card check.
    

We're now three months into the new administration and it's clear that the list above failed to do justice to Democrat ambitions. Already the President, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and their minions in Congress have taken steps toward implementing most, if not all, of the above goals. The Democrats are anxious to fundamentally reshape the contours of our society, and there's very little that can be done to dissuade them until the elections of 2010.

To be sure, there's much about our society that's in need of reshaping, but none of the changes listed above are among them. In my opinion, at least, achieving any of the items on the list would be at best harmful and at worst calamitous.

RLC

Change We Could Believe in

When people don't pay income taxes they have little stake in the economic health of the nation and a lot of incentive to vote for whatever politicians will keep their tax at zero. In the U.S. approximately half of wage-earners pay no income tax at all, while ten percent of wage-earners account for 70% of tax revenue.

Students of government going all the way back to Plato have pointed out that no polity can sustain itself when people who don't pay taxes are able to vote to tax the wealthier citizens in order to provide them with the amenities of life. When the less wealthy have access to the public purse it won't be long until they clean it out, which is what we've done in this country.

Former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer compares the tax burden in the U.S. to an inverted pyramid with the narrow top 10% supporting the rest of the structure. Such a pyramid poised on the point is inherently unstable and so is our tax structure.

Fleischer argues that everyone who earns anything should be required to pay something and he's right. I have not yet come across a cogent objection to the Flat Tax plan that would assess everyone who has an income a particular percentage (say, 20%) with no deductions and few exceptions.

Another intriguing proposal is the Fair Tax.

Whatever plan is adopted it's clear that the current system is unworkable. If a sizable portion of the president's cabinet selections, including the secretary of the Treasury (Timothy Geithner), plus much of Congress, including the chairman of the committee that writes the tax code (Charley Rangel), can't figure out what they owe then the code needs to be overhauled.

That would be the sort of meaningful change that we could actually believe in.

RLC

Salient Details

Every report I've seen or heard about the horrible abduction and murder of 8 year-old Sandra Cantu has mentioned that her killer, Melissa Huckaby, was a Sunday School teacher and pastor's daughter. I'm not sure why the media feels this is a salient detail that the public should be aware of unless they just can't resist an opportunity to stick a thumb in the eye of Christians. After all, how many times are the religious associations, or lack thereof, of any of the mass murderers who've befouled our society from the Columbine killers to the most recent shooting in the immigration office at Binghamton, NY featured on the evening news? Are we ever told how many of these killers are, say, Buddhists, Hindus, Jews, or atheists?

Let a putative Christian do something horrific, however, and the person's faith is almost certain to be made an explicit part of the story, as if to impress upon us that Christians are just as bad as everyone else and that Christianity makes no difference in one's moral life.

Perhaps I'm misjudging the media's motives. Perhaps they reported Ms Huckaby's religious background because they thought it an anomaly that someone of her persuasion would do something so terrible. It's possible. It's possible that the media don't report the religious stance of those who commit similar horrors because, well, because most of them have no religious stance and their crimes are really not so surprising given that fact.

Even so, I propose that from now forward every murderer's religious beliefs be made an integral part of the news accounts of his or her atrocities. It'll be interesting to see the results in print, although anyone who thinks about it can predict what they'll be.

RLC

Condescending Contempt

Anyone who has spent much time browsing YouTube, or listening to people like Bill Maher, will recognize the sort of condescending contempt A.N. Wilson describes in an essay in the Mail Online about the attitude of the British secular elite toward people of faith.

During the course of his column Wilson tells us something of his own story:

For much of my life, I, too, have been one of those who did not believe. It was in my young manhood that I began to wonder how much of the Easter story I accepted, and in my 30s I lost any religious belief whatsoever.

Like many people who lost faith, I felt anger with myself for having been 'conned' by such a story. I began to rail against Christianity, and wrote a book, entitled Jesus, which endeavoured to establish that he had been no more than a messianic prophet who had well and truly failed, and died.

Why did I, along with so many others, become so dismissive of Christianity?

Like most educated people in Britain and Northern Europe (I was born in 1950), I have grown up in a culture that is overwhelmingly secular and anti-religious. The universities, broadcasters and media generally are not merely non-religious, they are positively anti.

To my shame, I believe it was this that made me lose faith and heart in my youth. It felt so uncool to be religious. With the mentality of a child in the playground, I felt at some visceral level that being religious was unsexy, like having spots or wearing specs.

This playground attitude accounts for much of the attitude towards Christianity that you pick up, say, from the alternative comedians, and the casual light blasphemy of jokes on TV or radio.

It also lends weight to the fervour of the anti-God fanatics, such as the writer Christopher Hitchens and the geneticist Richard Dawkins, who think all the evil in the world is actually caused by religion.

Wilson then concludes by pointing out that the confidence adherents to atheistic materialism have in the rationality of their belief is quite unjustified:

As a matter of fact, I am sure the opposite is the case and that materialist atheism is not merely an arid creed, but totally irrational.

Materialist atheism says we are just a collection of chemicals. It has no answer whatsoever to the question of how we should be capable of love or heroism or poetry if we are simply animated pieces of meat.

The Resurrection, which proclaims that matter and spirit are mysteriously conjoined, is the ultimate key to who we are. It confronts us with an extraordinarily haunting story.

J. S. Bach believed the story, and set it to music. Most of the greatest writers and thinkers of the past 1,500 years have believed it.

But an even stronger argument is the way that Christian faith transforms individual lives - the lives of the men and women with whom you mingle on a daily basis, the man, woman or child next to you in church tomorrow morning.

All in all it's not a bad essay with which to conclude the Easter season.

RLC

The Year of Astronomy

New Scientist celebrates the Year of Astronomy by releasing a series of eight of the best astronomical photographs of the year. They're dazzling.

Jupiter's Ghost

RLC

Irena Opdyke

Dennis Prager tells a story of a woman in Nazi-occupied Poland that raises some serious moral questions. The story has been made into a play that's currently on Broadway entitled Irena's Vow:

Playwright Dan Gordon and director Michael Parva have made goodness riveting in the new Broadway play, "Irena's Vow." The Irena of the title is Irena Gut Opdyke, who, at the time of the play's World War II's setting, was a pretty 19-year-old blond Polish Roman Catholic to whom fate (she would say God) gave the opportunity to save 12 Jews in, of all places, the home of the highest-ranking German officer in a Polish city. Ultimately discovered by the Nazi officer, she was offered the choice of becoming the elderly Nazi's mistress or the Jews all being sent to death camps.

As it happens, I interviewed Opdyke on my radio show 20 years ago and again 12 years later, and she revealed to me how conflicted she was about what she consented to do not only because she became what fellow Poles derided as a "Nazi whore" but because as a deeply religious Catholic she was sure she was committing a grave sin by regularly sleeping with a man to whom she was not married and worse, indeed a married man, which likely rendered her sin of adultery a mortal sin.

What she did therefore, was not only heroic because she had to overcome daily fear of being caught and put to death, but because she also had to overcome a daily fear of committing a mortal sin before God.

Here's the question this story compels us to ponder: Is what Irena did wrong or right? Do you, like Prager, see her adultery as heroic and deeply good or do you see it as deeply wrong and sinful? Or neither? Is your answer one you could explain to someone else or is it just an intuition?

RLC

Easter Poll

I find this a bit hard to believe, but since it's Easter I thought I'd put it up on Viewpoint anyway:

As Christians gather to celebrate Easter this Sunday, the latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 88% of adults nationwide think the person known to history as Jesus Christ actually walked the earth 2,000 years ago. That's up five points from a year ago. Today, 5% disagree and 7% are not sure.

Eighty-two percent (82%) also believe that Jesus Christ was the son of God who came to Earth and died for our sins. Another 10% think otherwise and 8% aren't sure.

Nearly as many, 79% believe the central claim of the Christian faith--that Jesus Christ rose from the dead. Only 10% say they do not believe the first Easter resurrection really happened, while 11% are not sure.

Almost 80% of Americans believe in the historical resurrection of Jesus? Eighty two percent believe in the deity of Christ and substitutionary atonement? I wonder what the response would have been had folks been asked what difference these beliefs make in the way they live their life. I also wonder what the response would've been had these questions been posed to, say, a thousand college students surveyed on a range of campuses. Alas, Rasmussen apparently wasn't curious about the same things I am.

There's more on this poll at the link.

RLC

More on Hitchens/Craig

Doug TenNapel over at Big Hollywood offers a retrospective of the Hitchens/Craig debate held last Saturday at Biola University. TenNapel, who was present for the event, thinks that although Craig won the argument, Hitchens won the debate. He says this because Craig's arguments, based as they are on reason and logic, have little purchase in a culture that has learned to think emotively rather than rationally. Hitchens based his case for atheism on the ubiquity of suffering and returned to this theme at every opportunity. It's a theme that deeply resonates with people and possesses a great deal of emotional and psychological power even if, as an argument, it possesses very little logical force.

TenNapel writes:

But in my opinion, though Dr. Craig won the argument (he was the only one who even presented a formal argument), Hitchens won the debate. It's not the argument of the debaters, it's the condition of the audience that wins the day. While few of Dr. Craig's arguments are dispersed through culture, even religious culture, I've been raised on most of Hitchens' arguments. Dr. Craig's arguments are true and well-reasoned but difficult to comprehend on a first hearing. Hitchens' arguments are what we'll find spoken against God on prime time television, at the water-cooler, I've even heard some of them on Animal Planet. Culture generally makes Hitchens' argument by default....

I think if there were atheists in the audience on the brink of salvation that Dr. Craig's well-argued positions would find little purchase. Opposite that, the room of Christians would likely have a large segment of doubters, and the cultural arguments against God presented by Hitchens would likely change more minds in my opinion.

So are debates judged by the merit of the arguments or the embrace of the audience? In this all important subject, I think the effect on the audience is the preferred measurement. But the evening left little doubt to most of us that Hitchens did not make a case for atheism at all. He barely even acknowledged his own atheism which was oddly refreshing. It reminds me of G. K. Chesterton who said, "Somehow one can never manage to be an atheist."

It reminds me of a quote from Feuerbach who said that all atheists deny their faith by their actions. In other words, they can't live consistently with the logical entailments of their atheism.

At any rate, TenNapel is probably correct about the effect of non-rational appeals on a post-modern audience, and the power of Hitchens' wit and British accent to charm his listeners are not to be underestimated either. Even so, I think there's something ironic in the fact that an atheist who lays claim to having the rationally superior position utterly fails on the grounds of rationality and can only succeed by resorting to emotional appeals. Some might have thought that emotional appeal would have been the recourse of the defender of theism.

Anyway, you can read TenNapel's full summary of the debate at the link.

RLC

The Whole World in His Mind?

The May issue of Discover magazine has a very interesting article on a topic we've addressed from time to time on this page. We've noted that much, if not all, of our experience of the universe is in fact subjective, that not only the phenomena of sense experience - things like color, sound and fragrance - but also that which appears to us to be objectively real - matter, space and time - are in fact ultimately created by our minds. If this is true then the irreducible ground of reality is mind, not matter.

This seems to be the implication, not only of much philosophical speculation, but also of much of contemporary physics, especially quantum physics. As physicist James Jeans once said, the universe looks more like a grand idea than a grand machine.

The article in Discover (which is not yet available online) makes a similar case and concludes that the universe is "biocentric," i.e. that it's a creation of human minds. I think this is probably true of qualia (sensations) and what we call time, but to say that it's true of the universe as a whole seems to me to be a bit of a stretch. To be sure, it may well be that all of cosmic reality is indeed mind-dependent, but that it's dependent upon our minds for its existence seems to me to be the least likely alternative. It seems more plausible to suppose that Jeans' grand idea is the product not of human minds but of a cosmic mind, the mind of God.

The authors of the Discover article shy from considering this possibility, not wishing, perhaps, to suggest anything that has religious connotations, but it makes much more sense of the evidence they adduce than does their biocentrism.

Consider just one example from the quantum world. Pairs of sub-atomic particles formed simultaneously share a property known as entanglement. These particles are somehow mysteriously connected to each other even if they are separated by vast distances across space. If one of the pair undergoes some alteration the other undergoes a corresponding alteration even though any message sent from the one to the other would have to travel at near infinite speed in order for the second particle to know that the first has been altered. How does this happen? There's no physical explanation for this instantaneous connectivity. If, however, these particles, and everything else, are really part of God's consciousness, the problem of entanglement is explained. Every event is immediately known by God, and His mind imposes the laws that govern the behavior of these particles.

It seems like an obvious solution for anyone who already believes that quantum phenomena are observer-dependent, but perhaps we're going to have to unravel more of the mysteries of the universe's structure and behavior before those scientists still in the grip of a metaphysical naturalism begin to wean themselves away from their theophobia.

RLC

State of the Union

I haven't posted my thoughts lately as a variety of issues have precluded me from taking the time to share, but events are such these days that I feel compelled to speak out. I'm talking about the state of our Union and what it means for the average American citizen.

The simple fact of the matter is that the United States is bankrupt and, interestingly I think, it really doesn't matter who is responsible. After all if, for example, Bernard Madoff spends the rest of his life in jail, will that undo the disaster he wrought on his thousands of victims? So rather than waste time and energy talking about who is responsible for the mess we find ourselves in, consider this a time to reflect as it may be more profitable to ask why and how have we have come to this point in time.

Our founding fathers were keenly aware that the very nature of government was to expand and encroach upon every facet of the lives of its citizens so it limited the powers of the central government in the Constitution. They also knew that sound money, by definition, would protect the people by containing the central government.

Now consider this quote from Ludwig von Mises in his work: The Theory of Money and Credit.

"It is impossible to grasp the meaning of the idea of sound money if one does not realize that it was devised as an instrument for the protection of civil liberties against despotic inroads on the part of governments."

Please read the entire article here.

Perhaps what we find most interesting is the display of outrage by Americans over the proposed $800 billion TARP I bailout during the Bush administration and even more outrage about the $180 million AIG bonuses. To be sure, this money doesn't exist and it will have to be borrowed by the Treasury and the obligation to pay it back with interest will fall on our children. And before this is all over, they will indeed be slaves. We have seen estimates of government spending and guarantees totaling over $13 Trillion dollars and that seems to have taken place somewhat under the radar. Does anyone recall any meetings of Congress to approve it? And let's not forget the $1 Trillion dollar shortfall of government guaranteed pensions. We don't think that's included anywhere.

And please note that this article is bipartisan. The Republicans and the Democrats are equally guilty of squandering the nations wealth and this has been going on for forty years.

It almost seems as though there is someone who decides when and where there will be outrage

But the bigger question is: where is the outrage about the un-funded liabilities of the US for Social Security and Medicare? That figure is $65-$70 Trillion dollars (see http://research.stlouisfed.org/publications/review/06/07/Kotlikoff.pdf)

The current spending pales in comparison when one considers what's coming at us. See the coming generational storm

And has anyone considered why the crisis hasn't been solved with all of the spending of money to which we have committed? Why is it that Henry Paulson, past Secretary of the Treasury and Timothy Geithner present Secretary of the Treasury seem so afraid, impotent, and inept? Perhaps Paulson was concerned about the $500(?) million dollars in options he had on Goldman Sachs that would go worthless and as Secretary of Treasury he had to escrow to avoid conflict of interest as former Goldman Sachs CEO if a bailout didn't happen.

Or, more to the point, perhaps it is simply that the money spent thus far on the banks doesn't even touch the real problem. Further, Paulson and Geithner don't even know for sure how bad the problem is. The reason for this is that the banks have invested heavily in derivatives of all kinds. This happened after the Securities and Exchange Commission under the Bush administration waved the reserve requirements for the big banks on Wall Street, which enabled them to extend their leverage from $10 for every $1 of capital to $40 for every $1 of capital. These derivatives are leveraged investment vehicles, for lack of a better term, gambling bets, "derived" from an underlying asset. If the asset is, say, a $100 Billion mortgage portfolio, that's a value of $4 Trillion dollars. And when that mortgage portfolio is sub-prime loans lent to people who had no chance to maintain them, the investment blows up.

But wait, there's more. Suppose said financial institution also bought CDSs (credit default swaps), which insures against default of a financial product (can you say AIG?). Now you have a total debt of $8 Trillion dollars all predicated on $100 Billion of bogus mortgages that should never have been made in the first place. And that's just one financial institution. And nobody really understands how far this has gone so they don't have any way of knowing the extent of the damage. Some estimates of the total derivatives in existence near $1,500 Trillion dollars. Truly insane. No wonder Geithner looks scared. So, in effect, he's simply buying time hoping that something will happen that prevents a financial Armageddon. And let's not forget, it was the Maestro, Allan Greenspan who sat before Congress advising them not to regulate derivatives, as they were a way to "spread risk"...Absolutely unbelievable.

But we digress. When looking at the how and why of our problems it should be intuitively obvious to even the casual observer that we would not be where we are if ours was a country that had stayed true to its Constitution. If our government had kept a policy of sound money, they would not have been able to commit to spend money they do not have and does not exist.

So this brings us to the question, how will we finance our spending? There are three ways, none of which are particularly attractive.

1. Increase taxes. Not likely as the American citizen is tapped out.

2. Borrow from foreign investors. The Treasury sells Treasury bonds to other nations. While this has been the way we paid for our deficits in the past, it's not likely to continue, primarily because the buyers of our Treasury bonds are starting to question their value and with good reason given that our spending has gone parabolic. In other words, they question our ability to repay with anything of value. Also, the rest of the world cannot, even if they wanted to, "finance" the insatiable debt demands now pouring out of the current Administration.

And 3. we just heard this announcement a couple weeks ago, the Federal Reserve will print the money to purchase the Treasury bonds that the rest of the world doesn't want to buy because they perceive them as worthless. This is called monetizing the debt. It's the beginning of the end as it leads into an inflationary spiral. If we have to "take up the slack" by buying our own Treasuries by printing money, that devalues our currency, the dollar. As a result, fewer buyers will show up for the next Treasury auction so the Federal Reserve will have to print more money to buy a greater share of the unsold bonds. Eventually, you have a Zimbabwe-like scenario where nobody is interested in our Treasury bonds and the US is printing the money to finance its spending entirely. That's called hyperinflation. Welcome to the banana republic of the USA.

In conclusion, we see our government leaders meeting for their G20 and their G8 meetings and, and one thing we can be sure of; they are united in a single resolve. With the loss of control over the issuance of money comes the loss of control over the political power they wield. Maybe that's not such a bad thing.

So you have to ask yourself, what are you going to do about all of this? Realistically, there is nothing any of us can do to change a government that, for the most part, is made up of evil people who care only about power and nothing about its citizens and are throwing us and our children into financial slavery. But there is something we can do to protect ourselves from our government. And I'm not talking about voting as, for the most part, the candidates are all of the same ilk.

From the link above...

"Inflation is the fiscal complement of statism and arbitrary government. It is a cog in the complex of policies and institutions which gradually lead toward totalitarianism."

"The excellence of the gold standard is to be seen in the fact that it renders the determination of the monetary unit's purchasing power independent of the policies of governments and political parties."

"What all the enemies of the gold standard spurn as its main vice is precisely the same thing that in the eyes of the advocates of the gold standard is its main virtue, namely, its incompatibility with a policy of credit expansion."

And this quote is more timely than ever...

Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men's protection and the base of a moral existence. Destroyers seize gold and leave to its owners a counterfeit pile of paper. This kills all objective standards and delivers men into the arbitrary power of an arbitrary setter of values. Gold was an objective value, an equivalent of wealth produced. Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it. Paper is a check drawn by legal looters upon an account, which is not theirs: upon the virtue of the victims. Watch for the day when it bounces, marked: 'Account Overdrawn.'
Ayn Rand

To Allan Greenspan's credit, he must have been intrigued by Ayn Rand's philosophy and most likely, she inspired him to write this.

Dear readers, the "day" has arrived. The bottom line is that while we may not be able to influence our government of "destroyers" that is hell-bent on the destruction of our currency and our nation, you can, in fact, defend yourself against the ravages of a government gone wrong. Buy gold and buy silver as your understanding permits.

Canadian Common Sense

Canadian-American Steven Crowder says it in ways that even a couch potato can understand. If you can get past all the gesticulations there are several important truths to be gleaned from Mr. Crowder's presentation:

RLC

Moral Beliefs and Proper Basicality

One of the arguments we've made here over the years is that if there is no God the notion of moral obligation becomes meaningless. Apart from a transcendent ground for moral right and wrong, there can be no duty to act one way rather than another.

Now atheistic philosophers, no doubt weary of having their theistic colleagues point out to them the nihilistic implications of their atheism, have adopted a strategy to answer this criticism of the attempt to develop an atheistic ethics or morality. A paper in Faith and Philosophy (available by subscription only) authored by Erik Wielenberg, makes the bold claim that moral beliefs are what epistemologists call properly basic.

Properly basic beliefs are beliefs which do not require that they be based on any other beliefs. We are within our epistemic rights to hold them even if we can give no reasons or evidential support for them.

Traditionally, many philosophers held that such things as my belief that I'm experiencing pain-like sensations in my tooth (beliefs evident to the senses), that I had cereal for breakfast (memory beliefs), or that I exist (beliefs that are incorrigible or can't be wrong) are all properly basic.

It's self-evident, Wielenberg claims, that cruelty is wrong and kindness is right. There's no need to defend or justify that belief, and no one with properly functioning cognitive faculties would deny it. Thus, there's no need to ground moral beliefs in God or anything else. They're just brute facts and that's all there is to it.

This is a clever move, especially since some Christian philosophers want to assert that belief in God is also properly basic. Wielenberg compares the basicality of belief in God to belief that, say, cruelty is wrong. He then goes on to argue that if belief in God is properly basic then so, too, is a belief that cruelty is wrong.

Now if moral beliefs are indeed, properly basic then it will do no good to ask what the atheist bases his beliefs upon. He'll simply answer that there's no need to justify them or warrant them. Kindness is better than cruelty and that's the end of the matter.

But I'm not so sure. What does it mean to say that something is wrong if there is no God? Presumably it means that you shouldn't do it, but if we ask why we shouldn't, the answer is simply that you just shouldn't.

Suppose I can profit from harming someone and get away with it. Why is that wrong? Wielenberg replies that it just is, that most people agree that it is, and that no further reasons are necessary. This strikes me as inadequate and question begging.

Moreover, setting that aside, the problem is not so much with beliefs about this or that moral act but with the notion of moral obligation. An obligation is something which binds us to act. It must be imposed.

If there is no God then what obligates us to behave one way rather than another? If one person is kind and another is cruel what obligates the first to behave the way he does and obligates the second not to behave as he does?

How can we have a moral duty if there is no transcendent moral authority to impose that duty and to enforce it? In lieu of God where does such a duty come from and why should I feel bound by it?

Finally, what can it mean to say that a behavior is wrong if there's no sanction for performing it?

If there were no law enforcement or judicial system laws would be meaningless. If there's no God then to whom, or what, are we accountable for our acts? Society? Ourselves?

Why should anyone care what society thinks, and if I impose the obligation on myself, surely I can release myself from it if it proves inconvenient.

If Wielenberg is correct, to say that cruelty is wrong is simply to say that a lot of people don't like it, but what people like and don't like can hardly be the ground for what's moral, much less for moral obligation.

The fact remains that moral obligation can only exist in a world in which there is a transcendent moral authority. Atheists can live just the same as theists in terms of their ethics. They can adopt the very same values, but if they chose to adopt the opposite values they would be neither wrong nor right to do so.

In a Godless world, there simply is no wrong or right. There are just things that people, like any other animal, do.

The End of McCain-Feingold?

For those who follow such things there's a chance that the Supreme Court will do the right thing this summer and nullify McCain-Feingold. At least the editors at National Review are hopeful:

From its conception, the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance law was an assault on the First Amendment. Signing that unconstitutional bill into law, knowing it to be unconstitutional, was one of the worst moments of George W. Bush's presidency. Yet this malignancy lurks in the legal code, widely accepted, even celebrated. Now Deputy Solicitor General Malcolm Stewart has gone before the Supreme Court arguing that McCain-Feingold gives the government the right to ban books and films. He's right, it does. And for that reason, McCain-Feingold should be nullified.

At issue is a film called Hillary: The Movie, a documentary produced by the nonprofit group Citizens United, which did not wish to see Senator Clinton elected president. Because McCain-Feingold prohibits so much as mentioning a candidate's name in pre-election communications paid for by certain disfavored groups - unions and "corporations" - the filmmakers were informed by a federal judge that showing their work would constitute a crime. The filmmakers sued, and the case is Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. Mr. Stewart is defending the government's ban on this film; the same rules that apply to a campaign commercial apply to a documentary film, his reasoning goes.

Justice Alito alertly pressed Mr. Stewart on that issue: If commercials and films are covered, how about books? How about campaign biographies? Yes, Mr. Stewart answered, the U.S. government is prepared to ban books, under certain circumstances, and is legally empowered by McCain-Feingold to do so. Jaws dropped, black robes fluttered.

There is in politics a principle referred to as the law of unintended consequences which states that meddling with things will almost invariably produce completely unforeseen and completely unwanted outcomes. McCain-Feingold was a well-intentioned attempt to limit the impact of big money on elections by banning political ads within 60 days of an election.

President Obama's Federal Election Commission lawyers argue, however, that the law must be interpreted as also covering films and books and that, if so, this interpetation gives the administration the right to censor films and ban books that mention a candidate and are in circulation 60 days prior to elections. National Review Online agrees that logic compels that the law be interpreted as covering films and books but argues that this is sufficient reason to overturn a law whose implications are so clearly at odds with the First Amendment.

NRO is right. The Court is expected to hand down its decision by the end of June.

RLC

For Tanya, a Reprise

Last Christmas we did a post based on a remark made by a woman named Tanya on another blog. I thought that as we approach Good Friday it might be worth running the post again slightly edited.

An atheist at Dizzying Intellect had issued a mild rebuke of his fellow non-believers for their attempts to use the occasion of Christmas to deride Christian belief and, in so doing, he exemplified the sort of attitude toward those with whom he disagrees one might wish all people, atheists and Christians alike, would adopt. Unfortunately, a commenter named Tanya spoiled the mellow mood by displaying a petulant asperity toward, and an unfortunate ignorance of, the orthodox Christian understanding of the atonement.

Tanya wrote:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We wish Tanya and all of our readers a meaningful Good Friday, and a very happy Easter.

RLC

Your Lying Eyes

It's bad enough that the President of the United States abased himself before a foreign dictator, but now the White House is compounding the embarrassment by denying that the President actually did it. This is an astonishing bit of chutzpah considering that videos of the event leave no doubt that the President, contrary to protocol, bowed deeply before the Saudi king.

Come on, fellas. The President's credibility is sinking low enough without the staff at the White House performing a variation of "Who are you going to believe: me, or your lying eyes?"

Here's the video that apparently no one at the White House has seen:

Next they'll be trying to convince us that the President suffered a back spasm just as he shook the royal hand.

RLC