The Mouse and the Snake

Wretchard at Belmont Club talks about the recent terror in Russia. He offers this interesting insight into a nation's response to terrorism:

In many ways, the Russian policy is exactly the reverse of the American. They are less squeamish about retaliating but lack the Bush doctrine of creating functioning democracies to replace the chaotic sinkholes of Islamism. To a certain extent, the Russian and French policies are identical. They draw a curtain over the putrefaction fermenting in certain societies, dismissing them as a natural state or in terms of cultural relativism, as situations in which civilization - I use the word consciously - would be ill advised to interfere. But it has become apparent that terrorism is an externality of rotting societies, an effluent, which if unchecked will poison the whole world. No cologne, not even French perfume, will long prevail against it. Civilization cannot hang back but must step forward, if not for love then for survival.

We can either exterminate the Muslims or we can strive to bring them into the civilized world. Leaving them alone is suicide. George Bush, almost alone in the world, believes that we must try to bring them into the civilized world. The rest of the globe, especially the West, wants to essentially spray them with perfume.

When I was in college I kept a black rat snake in a glass aquarium. From time to time I would place a mouse in the enclosure. The mouse went about its business acting as if everything was normal. The snake lay coiled in the corner ignoring the mouse. The mouse, however, was living in denial. It was just a matter of time until the snake grew hungry. Sooner or later I would awake in the morning to find the mouse gone and a lump in the distended abdomen of the snake.

Europe is a mouse which finds a seething, pullulating mass of Arab Muslims living, like the snake, in their proximity. Every now and then the Europeans cast a nervous glance in the direction of the snake, but they live as if they believe that they and the snake can coexist. One day the world will wake up to find Europe gone and the belly of the Muslim world swollen with its corpse.

Europe can either wait like the mouse for this to happen or they can join the United States in trying to bring the democratic values of free elections, freedom of religion, and freedom of speech and ideas to the Muslim world. The alternatives to this course are too awful to contemplate.

Allahu Akbar, or Something

Viewpoint believes that if Satan were human there's a good chance he'd be an Islamic fundamentalist. The news carries the story of the horror in Russia where Islamists are holding hostage several hundred people, half of them terrified children. They've already killed some and threaten to kill more. We may think that adherents of a peaceful, compassionate religion like Islam could never follow through on threats to kill frightened children, but then as infidels doomed to hell we probably can't fathom Allah's inscrutable mercy.

Islamic morality has recently been on display elsewhere as well. In Najaf where Moqtada al-Sadr's holy warriors have recently made temporary peace with the Iraqi National Guard, ING soldiers moved into the buildings that al Sadr's pious disciples had vacated. They found:

"approximately 200 mutilated bodies taken by the Moqtada militia for speaking out against Moqtada al Sadr," said the intelligence report sent to the Pentagon and stamped 'secret.' Some of the prisoners had eyes and ears drilled out and others had their limbs and heads cut off. Some males had genitals cut off and shoved in their mouths. There was evidence of rape to men, women and children," according to the report.

The report continues:

The U.S. intelligence report obtained by The Times states that most of Sheik al-Sadr's recruits were criminals that Saddam released from prison weeks before the March 2003 invasion. The report states, "They slaughtered the innocent people. Most of the al-Mahdi were criminals jailed during the former regime and released by Saddam before his capture."

One wonders why the Iraqis wish to make peace with such savages. Ceasefires and truces only delay the inevitable and allow time for murderers to sacrifice more innocents to the glory of Allah. Najaf and Fallujah will have eventually to be cleansed of the human vermin which terrorize these cities, and Moqtada al Sadr will have to be "martyred", one way or another. To talk of allowing such a man to participate in the government is to spit on the memories of every Coalition soldier who served and died so that Iraqis can enjoy civilized life.

The Iraqi government is only fooling itself if it thinks that by pulling the insurgents' fat out of the fire these thugs will be grateful and loyal. So far from coveting the loyalty of people who commit such crimes, especially against children, government officials have a duty to punish them, and to punish them severely, and if the Iraqis and the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani need a push in the right direction the Marines should give it to them.

The entire report can be read here.

Twenty Paces, Pistols Drawn

Senator Zel Miller's speech at last night's Republican convention was truly astonishing. A Democrat disgusted with the ideology of the leadership of his party, he has come out in full support of President Bush. He delivered a blistering keynote address at the convention and scalded the Democrat leadership in general, and Senator Kerry in particular with heavy doses of white-hot political rhetoric . How much damage he did to Kerry is impossible to tell at this point, although I suspect that it was not insignificant. Perhaps a more pressing question is how much damage the Georgia senator did to himself. His career in the Senate is coming to a close because he's retiring so his political future is not at issue, but he doubtless made some very serious personal enemies tonight. Maybe the Senator should stay away from Fort Marcey Park for a while.

If you watched the MSNBC Hardball segment after Vice-president Cheney's speech you received a rare treat. Chris Matthews had Senator Miller on and was peppering him with questions about his extraordinary speech earlier in the evening. As he often does with guests, Matthews would ask Miller a question and then interrupt him as he tried to answer. Miller finally got visibly angry with this rudeness and told Matthews that he didn't know why he was submitting to the interview. He also informed the startled host that he wouldn't be bullied like the "young lady" (Michelle Malkin) Matthews had on last week whom he also wouldn't allow speak. Then in frustration the fiery ex-Marine proclaimed that he wished he was in the studio with Matthews and that these were the old days so that he could face him in a duel!

It's not clear that Matthews understood what Miller was saying, but he could tell that Miller was angry with him and he grew considerably more subdued and deferential. He realized that Miller wasn't going to be pushed around like many of his other guests. It's one thing, after all, to browbeat demure young women, it's something else to take on a crusty ex-Marine from Georgia. It was surely one of the most fascinating and entertaining exchanges in the history of cable news television.

The last duel fought by a major political figure was, I think, fought by Andrew Jackson. Maybe Viewpoint should start a movement to get Zell Miller's face on the $20 bill.

Speaking of Hardball and shows like it, one gets the feeling watching and listening to the pundits who tend to lean toward Kerry that a certain fatalism is setting in. It's as if they know in their hearts that they have a deeply flawed candidate and they realize that his flaws will only receive increasing exposure as the campaign wears on. There was not much of a rebuttal to Miller's vigorous criticism of Kerry tonight, as if even the Kerry troopers in the media knew that Miller's indictment was too obviously true. Matthews tried to discredit some of Miller's allegations until he got all but challenged to a fight, much to the delight of the panelists in the studio, but the other lefties on cable had little to say by way of substantive criticism of Miller's performance.

We don't want to make too much of this, but it does seem as if some of these pundits are perhaps beginning to show signs of resigning themselves to four more years of a Bush presidency.

Holy Litigation, Batman!

Senator Edwards, who is playing Robin to John Kerry's Batman this electoral season, is a congressional non-entity who nevertheless has made a fortune extorting vast sums of money from hapless medical practitioners and insurance companies. He has, hearsay has it, almost single-handedly driven ob-gyn practitioners out of the state of North Carolina.

Jean Pearce lays out the history of this man who would, if elected, be a heartbeat from the presidency, and the picture she paints for us is deeply disturbing. Here are some excerpts:

The real story of Edwards' short political career is one of hypocrisy, cheap rip-offs, flip-flops and boneheaded moves. But in the media's version of the story, Edwards is the political prodigy who is going get John Kerry elected president, forgetting that had Kerry not picked him as his running mate last month, the tattered thread by which Edwards' political career had long been hanging would have snapped.

Much of Edwards' career has been based on bashing President George Bush for things that he himself voted for and advocated. Edwards voted for the No Child Left Behind Act in 2001, and then spent the next three years bashing Bush for the law.

"This 'No Child Left Behind'? This President is leaving millions of kids behind every single day," Edwards said at the Baltimore debate in 2003.

Like Kerry, Edwards came out against the war in Iraq after he had voted for it. But Edwards took it a step further. In the fall of 2002, Edwards was one of the most vocal members of Congress on the need to remove Saddam Hussein. In the hours after Bush's famous speech before the U.N., Edwards gave an impassioned oration on the Senate floor, demanding the president take unilateral military action to remove Hussein from power.

Then, just three weeks later, after voting to authorize the war, Edwards trashed Bush for taking unilateral military action in Iraq, referring to Bush's actions in a CBS interview as "gratuitous unilateralism, a determination to act alone for the sake of acting alone."

Edwards voted in 2001 to kill an amendment that would ensure that patients receive the majority of benefits from any new lawsuit allowed in the McCain-Kennedy-Edwards "Patient's Bill of Rights." He also led the fight against a liability exemption for doctors providing pro-bono services and helped kill medical malpractice reform in 2002 and 2003 that would have saved the federal government at least $6 billion in healthcare costs.

Edwards' campaign against the interests of the "little guy" didn't stop there. He also voted to kill a bill in committee that ensured that class action members receive the majority of the benefits of settlements instead of personal injury lawyers. Moreover, in 1999, he voted against a bill to limit lawsuits and damages from potential Y2K computer failures.

Edwards was also the only Democrat missing from debates on asbestos litigation reform. Perhaps that's because the co-finance chairman of Edwards' campaign was Fred Baron, who pioneered the practice of suing companies on behalf of supposed asbestos victims that resulted in the bankruptcy of 67 companies, $57 billion in economic losses and the loss of 60,000 jobs.

There's much more in Pearce's article to give us pause about this candidate. He strikes us as the sort of man that should be treated like a pariah rather than a messiah, but for reasons that Viewpoint finds excruciatingly perverse, millions of Americans will nevertheless vote for him.

It'll be interesting to see how much of Edwards' Senate record and professional history as a legal shake-down artist comes out in the vice-presidential debates. The elite media certainly can't be expected to trouble themselves to inform us about it. They'll be too busy trying to prove the really important stuff like that Bush did too say that we can't win the war on terror and searching under every rock to show some tenuous connection between Bush and the Swiftees. No wonder they're becoming increasingly irrelevant.

Meanwhile Viewpoint will be spending the evening reassessing the confidence we had placed in John O'Neill's judgment and integrity. O'Neill, the reader will recall, is the author of the Kerry expose Unfit For Command. There's nothing in the book which calls O'Neill's judgment into question, but he did make the statement a couple of weeks ago, while trying to explain that he was not working on behalf of Bush or the Republicans, that he would have indeed voted for John Edwards for president had he won his party's nomination.

We're flabbergasted.

Another New Blog

Here's another new blog that's just starting up. It's being managed by a couple of former students of mine, and I'll let them tell about it in their own words:

Dear Cleary Brothers,

After reading your weblog and linking it to my good friend D.W., both he and I were inspired by your commitment to providing a forum for expressing opinion. We decided to enter into a joint venture for our own weblog with commentary on culture, arts, and politics. While we can never pretend to have our site anywhere near the quality of yours, we're still quite proud of the work we've completed so far.

Our first article is up. The article process for our blog is unique. One of us drafts an article. It is then revised to include the voice of the other author. After two more revisions, the article is ready for publication.

Later this week we'll introduce our first political opinion, expressing our views on how the Republican Convention played out.

Hopefully you can take a look at our blog and find something to enjoy in it, much like we've found inspiration in your blog. Plus, a little publicity on your high-traffic site just might get us up and running a little faster!

Sincerely,

D.T.

Pay them a visit and wish them luck.

The Twilight of Atheism

Evangelical Outpost brings word that one of the most famous contemporary atheistic philosophers, Antony Flew, is apparently moving away from atheism toward some sort of deism.

Joe Carter explains the significance of the move:

So why does it matter that a retired philosopher is abandoning atheism for a Spinozian deism? The main reason is that few philosophers have thought longer or harder about atheism than Flew. When someone of his stature gives up the "faith" then it appears that we truly have entered what Alister McGrath refers to as "the twilight of atheism."

One shouldn't make too much of a single instance of a repudiation of atheism, if that's indeed what Flew is doing, but perhaps it isn't premature to suggest that naturalism, the view that nature is all there is, is in the early stages of terminal exhaustion. There are many atheists who will never give up the cause, of course, but there seem to be many others who are coming to realize that any view of life that leads to moral, epistemological, and metaphysical nihilism (see here, for example) is left with very little to commend it. When adherents of that same view find that it is also unable to offer a plausible explanation for the astonishing fine tuning of the universe, or a compelling explanation for the ubiquity on this planet of biological information, or any explanation at all for the existence of consciousness, they tend to become intellectually and spiritually restless.

Few people actually want to believe the things one is logically compelled to believe if he is an atheist, which is why most atheists don't follow their atheism to its logical conclusions. Some are beginning to realize, evidently, that there is something amiss with a worldview whose entailments are so repugnant to the human spirit. They're saying, like Flew, that we can no longer remain bound to the shibboleths of the nineteenth century but rather we need to go wherever the argument leads. For some (who knows how many) the argument is leading away from the sterile, arid deserts of naturalism to something brighter, richer, and more fertile.

It'll be interesting to trace this cultural development throughout the coming years. It may amount to nothing much, but on the other hand it may well presage a spiritual revolution.

Ninth Installment of Good News From Iraq

Don't miss Arthur Chrenkoff's ninth installment of Good News From Iraq. There's much cause for concern, of course, but much more cause for satisfaction and even rejoicing. When one reads what the United States is doing to bring the Iraqi people into the modern world it really does make one proud to be an American.

Bush's opponents want to challenge his foreign policy. They want to hammer him with the question "What have you actually accomplished in your four years as president?" This seems to me to be the most myopic of questions. George Bush has in three years liberated 50 million people from oppression and tyranny, and has perhaps eased the oppression on millions more through the subsequent ripple effect of his toughness. No president in history has accomplished more good for more people in the face of more criticism, except perhaps Ronald Reagan whose campaign against Soviet tyranny eventually resulted in several hundred million people being freed from the nightmare of communist totalitarianism.

If Bush hadn't gone to war in Afghanistan millions of people would still be groaning under the horribly cruel oppression of the Taliban, millions of women would still be treated like chattel, and terrorists would still have safe haven there. If he hadn't taken us to war in Iraq, the sanctions would still be in effect, and tens of thousands of Iraqis would be suffering the deprivations imposed by Saddam's misuse of the resources Iraq received under those sanctions. Tens of thousands more would have been tortured and/or murdered in the past year, and millions more would still be living in abject fear and crushing poverty.

History will show Bush's initiatives in Afghanistan and Iraq to be an unprecedented humanitarian endeavor, and as Rudy Guiliani said in his speech tonight at the Republican convention, whatever happens in the November election, George Bush has established himself as a truly great president. He has used American power and wealth to accomplish an amazing amount of good in that part of the world.

Now comes a television ad that criticizes Bush for spending too much of our resources on the Iraqis. This is certainly a strange criticism for the left to make. We have so much in this country and the Iraqis have so little, yet these putative champions of the poor and downtrodden are complaining because Bush is spending too much on them and not enough on us. With friends like these the world's poor need no more enemies.

The New Soldier

The controversial book compiled by John Kerry in the early seventies and which has subsequently almost disappeared from libraries and book stores can be read here. The book is called The New Soldier and is strongly anti-war. This in itself is unexceptional, but there are some things in the book which Senator Kerry apparently would rather not have publicized during the present election.

Chief among these, in our view, is his 1971 Senate testimony wherein he calls the Vietnam war "the biggest nothing in history." He also avers that "there is nothing in South Vietnam which could happen that realistically threatens the United States of America. And to attempt to justify the loss of one American life in Vietnam, Cambodia or Laos by linking such loss to the preservation of freedom...is to us the height of criminal hypocrisy."

Now these were, and are, legitimate opinions which good people may debate, but the problem they present for Kerry is that he has stated repeatedly throughout the current campaign that he "fought to defend this country as a young man," but, as the above quotes make plain, as a young man he evidently didn't see what he was doing as in any sense fighting for America. Quite the contrary.

His insistence now that his military service then was rendered for the defense of his country strikes us as patently false. The possibility that he is telling the truth, both then and now, about his convictions doesn't seem even remotely realistic unless the law of non-contradiction has somehow been suspended. Taken together with all of his other statements about his service which have come under question in recent weeks, some of which he himself has recently recanted, the picture we're getting of Senator Kerry is that of a man who is either delusional, grossly dishonest, or seriously confused. It doesn't much matter which it is, he's not presidential timber.

In the Absence of God

A couple of days ago Viewpoint posted a piece titled The Devil's Chaplain about Richard Dawkins, the well-known British biologist and anti-theist. Dawkins, we pointed out, finds it difficult, if not impossible, to live consistently with his atheism, denying the existence of God but living his political life as if there really were a transcendent moral law-giver.

I once heard someone say that the only real difference between a theist and an atheist is that the theist gets up and goes to church on Sunday whereas the atheist sleeps in. The remark was meant to be taken only half-seriously but the tongue-in-cheek delivery masked an attitude that is not uncommon among atheists. The feeling is that the benefits of theism are either bogus (e.g. eternal life) or that they (e.g. morality) can be had by the atheist without all the strictures of religious dogma. The Dawkins piece shows, I think, that this is deeply mistaken.

Whether there is a God or not is not some minor question, like whether there is a tenth planet at the edge of the solar system, which really makes no practical difference in our lives. The question of God's existence has the most far-reaching ramifications, not just for eternity, but for this life here and now, of any question we could possibly encounter in life. It makes an immeasurable difference whether God exists or not. To understand why, consider the logical implications of assuming that he does not exist.

First, let's stipulate that the world is, to borrow a term from the existentialist vernacular, absurd. That is to say that the world as it is is incompatible with man as he is. Both the theist and atheist can agree on this. Each of us is a complex bundle of yearnings and needs all of which must go unfulfilled and unsatisfied in a world without God. It is only if there is a God that the problem posed by the world's absurdity can ultimately be resolved.

Consider ten reasons why this is true:

1)As human beings we long to ground morality in something more solid than our own subjective preferences, but in the absence of God there is nothing else. Morality is whatever feels right to the individual. This leads to a might makes right egoism, either on the level of the individual or at the level of the state. In either case, whatever the individual does is not morally right or wrong; it just is. Likewise, whatever the state does is not morally right or wrong, even if it commits torture or genocide, it just is. In other words, in the absence of God morality is either arbitrary and subjective, or it doesn't exist at all.

2)As human beings we seek to base our notion of human rights in something beyond our own prejudices, but in the absence of God there is nothing to sustain those rights. We have the right to life and liberty because we are the children of the Creator of the universe and He has invested those rights in us. If there is no creator then there are no human rights, just arbitrary rules some people agree to follow but which could easily be revoked since they're merely words on paper.

3)As human beings we have a deep longing for justice. We want to see good rewarded and evil punished. Our hearts break when evil appears to triumph over good, but it's the common human experience that many good people live lives of terrible fear, pain and grief, and then they die. Meanwhile, many who were the cause of that suffering die peacefully and content after a long life of pleasure. In the absence of God there is no ultimate justice. Everybody dies in the end, and there's no reward or punishment, just nothingness.

4)As human beings we strongly desire union with our loved ones. The more we love someone the more closely we wish to be united with that person on every level of our being. Yet we are alienated, separated from them. No matter how close we are we can never achieve that complete oneness we desire. The other is always "other". This alienation holds not only in our relationships with other people but also in our love for the earth and the realm of nature. In nature we are always an outsider. We are foreign, alien, no matter how much we might long for it to be otherwise. In the absence of God, it will always be thus until the day of our death.

5)As human beings we want answers to life's deepest, most perplexing questions, but in the absence of God there are no answers, there's no certainty about anything that matters, except that we'll eventually die. We shout the "why" questions of human existence at the vast void of the cosmos - why am I here, why do we suffer, why do we want from life what we can't have - but there's no reply, only silence.

6)As human beings we crave meaning and purpose for our lives. We can't bear living a life we know to be pointless and insignificant, but death nullifies everything and renders it nugatory. In the absence of God there is no purpose or value to anything we do. Some day the earth will burn up in a solar explosion and there'll be not a trace that humans once existed. What will all of our striving matter then? Everything we do is just a footprint in the sand at the edge of the surf of space-time. Eventually all trace of our lives will be washed away as though we were never here.

7)As human beings we long for peace, but throughout the history of mankind there's been nothing but conflict - conflict between individuals and conflict between nations. When the Berlin wall fell some thought conflict was at an end. There would be no more war, hot or cold. Few foresaw the rise of Islamo-fascism and the beginning of the modern struggle to convert the entire world to Islam. This struggle will last until either radical Islam dies out or Christianity, and every Christian, is dead. In the absence of God there is little basis for hope that someday there will be a lasting peace in the world.

8)As human beings we need a sense of dignity, but modern science tells us that we are little more than flesh and bone machines. There is no soul, there is nothing about us that makes us much different than any other mammal. We are more intelligent, of course, but that only makes the difference between us and a cow about the same as the difference between a cow and a trout. In the absence of God there's no reason why someone who has the power should not use it to manipulate and exploit us like the farmer exploits his cattle for his own purposes, slaughtering them when he can profit from doing so. The universe tells us we're nothing but "dust in the wind" and there's no dignity in that.

9)As human beings we yearn to live and yet we know we're going to die. In the absence of God, the fate of each of us is annihilation. There's no basis for hope that loved ones we've lost still somehow exist or that we'll ever see them again. There's no consolation for the bereaved, no salve for grief. Many face this bravely, of course, but, if they're reflective, their bravery must serve to mask an inner despair.

10)As human beings we all strive for happiness. In the absence of God it's perhaps the only thing about life that makes it endurable. Yet happiness is elusive. The world is full of misery. Even if our own lives are free of the afflictions which plague most of those who've ever been born on this planet we're confronted with the irony that we can only be happy ourselves if we cease to care about others. It is at best unseemly, in the shadow of the awful anguish, pain, sorrow, tragedy, and other misfortunes which routinely occur in our communities to declare that "even so, I'm happy". To care about others is to identify with them in their suffering, and it's hard to imagine how an empathetic person can be happy in a world of so much sadness. The paradox is that in the absence of God the only person who can achieve happiness is the person who can shut out the cries of his neighbor and turn inward upon himself.

If the theist is correct, however, then all of this changes. We can find happiness in knowing that the tragic condition of the world and of our lives is only temporary, that death is not the end and that a beautiful future lies ahead. If God exists then we can assume that He made us for a reason, that there is, therefore, a purpose to existence and that we have dignity and inalienable rights as human beings because we are made in the image of God and loved by Him. If God exists then there is a transcendent moral authority which will ultimately mete out justice and who provides us in this life an objective standard upon which to base moral judgment. If God exists there is a basis for hope.

The atheist, if he's consistent with his assumption that there is no God, finds himself in a world which is completely at odds in almost every important way with the structure of his own psyche. He finds himself inexplicably out of synch with his world. He is alone, forlorn, abandoned in an empty, unfeeling universe that offers no solace nor hope that there might be meaning, morality, justice, dignity, peace, and solutions to the riddles of existence. The atheist lives without hope that any of the most profound yearnings of our hearts and minds can ever be fulfilled.

It's possible of course, that he is correct, that this is just the way things are, and we should simply make the best of a very bad situation. It's possible, but surely the atheist should hope that he's mistaken. It's incomprehensible that some, like philosopher Thomas Nagel, for instance, actually hope that there is no God. This is tantamount to hoping, bizarrely enough, that life really is a meaningless, senseless, absurd joke. Nagel says in his book The Last Word:

"I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn't just that I don't believe in God and, naturally, hope that I'm right in my belief. It's that I hope there is no God! I don't want there to be a God; I don't want the universe to be like that."

Nagel's ability to see his motivations clearly is uncommon, but his honesty and insight are little compensation for the profound sadness one feels at what he finds in his own heart. How anyone can actually want the universe to be the sort of place where meaning, morality, justice and all the rest are vain illusions, is very difficult to understand.

Government Trust Part II

My last post was totally influenced by my outrage of the statements from the Chairman of the Federal Reserve regarding Social Security and Medicare and I failed to follow through with an alternative recommendation or solution. Business 101 tells us if you declare a problem, you should offer a solution.

With that in mind, let's get one thing clear. The government has no business tinkering with things in the social arena. All you have to do to understand the previous statement is to look at the Social Security debacle. And if you can't see that clearly, then ask yourself why all members of the United States Congress don't pay into Social Security. In fact, they have their own plan that, upon retirement, pays them 100% of their salaries with complete health benefits after they retire. You, the tax payer pick up the tab. Isn't that nice?

Meanwhile, it is those very same congressmen that have robbed the funds from the Social Security program to pay for other programs and replaced them with I.O.U.s And now we're being told that the program will have to be "recalibrated".

All ranting aside, there can be no way any thinking person can believe that the Social Security program should ever have existed. It's a classical example of socialism gone wrong. It has sucked earnings from hard working Americans through their entire working lifetime and given it to others. Now when those very same Americans are coming to the time when they will need to rely on those same benefits, they will be told "Sorry, the system has been "recalibrated" and you can't collect for another 5, 10, or 20 years." Where is the outrage?!

The Bush plan to privatize Social Security is a non-starter. Redirecting contributions into the stock market will only enrich the brokerage firms of Wall Street and distort the markets in the process. More importantly, it fails to address the issue that the government has no right to take these funds from Americans in the first place. Why won't they give Americans the freedom to invest for their own future?

I see only one possible solution to the problem. First, the government must realize that they aren't in the "social" business. (Extremely unlikely given the almighty vote.) Next, they need to commit to grandfather the program out of existence. For example, if you are 60 years old, you get 90% of the benefits. If your 55 years old you get 75% of the benefits. And if you are 16 and are working your first job you pay nothing because you'll get nothing..

The problem is that, as I understand it, the system is truly broke in that it has only I.O.U.s from the government so the above plan simply can't be implemented. I'd like to offer a solution but, in fact, there is none.

In closing, I maintain you have been lied to by your government. Your only recourse is to:

1. Forget about the government taking care of you. It won't, it can't, and in my opinion, it shouldn't even try.
2. Get out of debt as soon as possible. Debt is slavery and the sooner you are out of it the sooner you are free.
3. Hedge against the government's proclivity to devalue the dollar through inflation by acquiring assets that have demonstrated an ability to maintain true value independently of the dollar.

Good luck.

Karma Chameleon 2004

The current campaign offers some fascinating irony. In order to get George Bush out of office, the left will abandon its principles and vote in overwhelming numbers for a man who has admitted to being a war criminal but who is running as a war hero. This might be a little understandable if he had at some point repented of his crimes and/or repudiated his war service, but Senator Kerry has actually done neither of these. In fact, when asked about how he would have handled the current situation in Iraq the only discernable distinction he offers between what he would have done and what George Bush actually did was to try a little harder to get France and Germany to help us.

The irony is especially acute when we consider the circumstance of the Christian left which is largely pacifistic and for whom morality, particularly concerning life issues, plays a significant role in forming political judgments. Not only does it turn out that Senator Kerry offers these people scant hope on the war questions, he is also very strongly in favor of abortion rights and embryonic stem cell research. He is ambiguous on capital punishment, as on most issues, and has repeatedly shown himself willing to say whatever he thinks his audience wants to hear on almost every matter he discusses. His performance at the DNC was the paradigmatic example of this, as he stood at the podium and all but sang the lyric from Boy George's Karma Chameleon:

"I'm a man without conviction, I'm a man who doesn't know, how to tell a contradiction, I come and go, I come and go."

Nevertheless, many Christian leftists, pacifists, and "seamless garment" advocates, rather than hold firm to their principles and abstain from voting for either presidential candidate, will, it seems, abandon those principles and vote for a man who opposes almost everything they claim to stand for, or who is at best unclear and unreliable about those issues the Christian left holds dear. If they do endorse and/or vote for Senator Kerry, however, they will lose, perhaps for decades, whatever moral credibility and authority they presently possess.

Government Trust

I don't post on the main page of viewpoint regularly as I feel I don't have that much to say that others would be interested in reading but recent developments have occurred that compel me to speak out.

Specifically, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Dr. Alan Greenspan, believes it's time, once again, to declare the need to "trim" the social security and medicare benefits for the baby boomer generation. See: Yahoo news

From the link above: "Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said Friday the country will face "abrupt and painful" choices unless Congress acts quickly to trim Social Security and Medicare benefits for the baby boom generation. He said the government has promised more than it can deliver."

The full text of the Chairman's speech can be read at:

Greenspan speach

Notable statements from the link above are:

"Early initiatives to address the economic effects of baby-boom retirements could smooth the transition to a new balance between workers and retirees. As a nation, we owe it to our retirees to promise only the benefits that can be delivered. If we have promised more than our economy has the ability to deliver to retirees without unduly diminishing real income gains of workers, as I fear we may have, we must recalibrate our public programs so that pending retirees have time to adjust through other channels. If we delay, the adjustments could be abrupt and painful. Because curbing benefits once bestowed has proved so difficult in the past, fiscal policymakers must be especially vigilant to create new benefits only when their sustainability under the most adverse projections is virtually ensured."

I particularly like the statements "Early initiatives" which translates into "the sooner we screw these people, the better off we'll be". As well as the statement: "we must recalibrate our public programs". He doesn't mention the fact that, for all their lives, people have paid into these programs, yet, by somebody's decree, the programs will be "recalibrated".

And this statement:

Aside from the comparatively lesser depth of required adjustment, our open labor markets should respond more easily to the changing needs and abilities of our population; our capital markets should allow for the creation and rapid adoption of new labor-saving technologies, and our open society should be receptive to immigrants. These supports should help us adjust to the inexorabilities of an aging population. Nonetheless, tough policy choices lie ahead.

And here's another subtle message: "and our open society should be receptive to immigrants". So we, as a nation, are going to rely on immigrants to bail us out simply because our government has mismanaged the programs to which all of the American citizens have contributed during their entire working lives. And I can't help but wonder why we need immigrants with thousands of Americans out of work.

Juxtaposed with this latest development is this article from Steven Roach of Morgan Stanley. From the link:

Saving is the sustenance of long-term growth for any economy. And yet America is lacking in saving as never before. It has finessed that shortfall by consuming the wealth generated by asset appreciation and by drawing heavily on the world's pool of surplus saving. In my view, there is nothing stable about this arrangement. In fact, there is a growing risk that America's saving shortfall will only intensify in the years ahead -- especially given Washington's total lack of fiscal integrity. As always, the flows will give the impression that this outcome is sustainable. In the end, nothing could be further from the truth.

So, it looks like we, as a nation, have no savings to speak of and, at the same time, Chairman Greenspan is declaring that congress pull the benefits rug out from under the baby boomer generation. Katy...bar the door!

What cracks me up about Chairman Greenspan's statements is that there is no mention of dealing with the current and future payments being made by the baby boomer generation. Only the reduction of the benefits they will receive for their contributions by, perhaps raising the eligibility age to 70 or 80 or 100. In other words, you will be expected to pay into the system until you drop dead.

Ironically, it looks like we are about to revert to an earlier time of self sufficiency when people took responsibility for their own welfare although we'll still be paying the taxes into a system that will probably never provide a return on our investment. This seems to make any discussion of government social programs moot, I would say.

New Philosophy Blog

A former student has a new blog for those who are interested in philosophy. You can access it here. It looks good and he has some interesting posts up. Caution: It's not for the philosophically unserious.

What's He Hiding?

Why, if Senator Kerry is telling the truth about his Vietnam service and has nothing to hide from the voters, will he not permit the reprinting of his book The New Soldier which is so hard to obtain that the single copy available on Amazon is selling for almost $2500? Why will he not sign a form to release his medical records which would help to settle the questions surrounding the awarding of his Purple Hearts? And why will he not permit release of the journal used by Douglas Brinkley in writing his book on Kerry, titled Tour of Duty?

The Democrats demanded that George Bush release his records from his National Guard service and he promptly complied. John Kerry told Tim Russert on Face the Nation that he had indeed released all of his records, but it turned out that he had released only a few pages of a much more copious account.

What other presidential candidate in the history of our nation has ever written a book whose contents he has subsequently done whatever he could to prevent people from seeing? If Kerry wants to repudiate the book now, fine. He should let us see it and then tell us why he no longer holds the positions and sentiments found in it.

What sense does it make to tout one's military service as the central qualification for serving one's country as president and then, when that record is called into question, refuse to make available the very records and journals which would silence the critics?

His refusal to allow the voters to see these documents is inexplicable unless he really is trying to hide something.

Demagoguing Stem Cell Research

The stem cell debate has been demogogued by the Democrats since before their convention, but John Leo puts his finger on exactly what is wrong with the way the left is addressing this issue. Leo writes:

John Kerry has repeatedly spoken of President Bush's "ban" on stem cell research. Kerry knows very well it isn't a "ban" or that Bush isn't "shutting down" research. But "ban" is a powerfully emotional word. It has more impact on swing voters than "allowing private research, but not using taxpayer money for work on stem cell lines derived after Aug. 9, 2001."

The fact is that stem cell research is swimming in readily available funds. With luck, the elite press corps will discover this some time in October, and maybe even ask Kerry about it. The federal government is providing $24.8 million in research funds, which is $24.8 million more than President Clinton offered. Money is pouring in from state governments, universities and pharmaceutical companies. If Kerry thinks this financial gusher still amounts to a ban, maybe he could get the Heinz Foundation or George Soros to pitch in.

Kerry spins the stem cell issue by saying, "Here in America, we don't sacrifice science for ideology." This is a line he has been using for weeks. It delivers two messages, both false: (1) there is no legitimate moral issue here (though plenty of bioethicists and plenty of Kerry supporters think there is); and therefore (2) this is a one-sided issue, pitting enlightened people against backward ideological types.

The lobby for embryonic stem cell funding is deeply dishonest. It involves a "ban" that isn't a ban, a claim of cures "right on our fingertips" (John Kerry) that falsely implies an early cure for Alzheimer's, and a discounting of promising stem cell research that doesn't involve the creation and destruction of embryos (cells from adult bone marrow, teeth and umbilical cords). Kerry and the Democrats have a case to make. They just don't want to make it honestly.

Why is it that the left seems unable to debate this issue or almost any other without distorting the facts? It's as if they believe that unless they twist the truth or mask it altogether they'd be unable to persuade anyone to vote for them. Well, maybe they're onto something.

Leo's column makes several other points about this debate which are very much worth reading.

Does Offshoring Create U.S.Jobs?

No Left Turns links us to an article that discusses a study commissioned in California on the economic impact of exporting jobs offshore. The counter-intuitive conclusions are that offshoring not only is good for the economy but it also creates more jobs than it costs. An excerpt:

How can offshoring preserve jobs? Consider the case of a company that's increasingly beset by foreign competition and can no longer turn a profit. Its choice might be to close down - taking all its jobs with it - or farm out some of its tasks to overseas workers, thus preserving the remaining positions.

"By sacrificing a small proportion of the jobs offered by the company, the other jobs remain," the paper said.

That's not all. The researchers also suggest that offshoring can even create new American jobs.

Companies looking to invest money in expansion base their decision on the projected rate of return. If, by offshoring some jobs those companies can earn a higher return, they are more likely to go ahead with the investment, which then will create more jobs at home.

That's not just economic theory. The numbers in the real world support this view. Between 1991 and 2001, wrote Haveman and Shatz, U.S. firms that expanded their employment abroad also increased their domestic employment by 5.5 million workers. Their share of overall U.S. employment also increased during this period.

This is interesting, but whether it's true or not I have no way to judge. Read the whole article and decide for yourself.

The Political Neutron Star

Senator Kerry's campaign may be beginning to deflate. A week ago Kerry was ahead in almost all the polls. Some of his leads were within the margin of error, but nevertheless, he was ahead. Now the situation is reversed. Bush seems to be moving out in almost every poll, and, with the Republican convention looming and more Swiftvet ads on the way, the likelihood is that his lead will continue to expand.

The latest national polls show the following:

NBC News/Wall St. Journal: Bush - 47; Kerry - 45; Nader - 3

Gallup: Bush - 50; Kerry - 47

Fox News: Kerry - 45; Bush - 44

LA Times: Bush - 49; Kerry - 46

The really bad news for Kerry is in the polling data from the battleground states. Kerry was ahead in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida coming out of the convention. He's now behind (though within the margin of error)in each of these states according to the LA Times' polls.

There are still some 65 days until the election and a lot can yet happen. The debates may be decisive. Even so, it appears that Bush has the "Mo", at least for now.

What can the Democrats do to get it back? The most effective way, assuming there's no drastic change in either the economy or Iraq is to try to attach Bush to some scandal or in some other way tarnish his image with the voters. They've been doing this for almost a year, of course, with uncertain results, but liberals tend to believe that if slime isn't sticking it's because you're not throwing it hard enough. No doubt the Democrats will get increasingly more personal in their attack ads and in the media. The liberals on television and in the print media will become increasingly more unrestrained, strident, and partisan. Whether it will work or not is anyone's guess.

The danger for the Democrats is that, like a collapsing star, the implosion will accelerate with time, and a point will ultimately be reached where it becomes impossible to reverse it. A dying star will sometimes compress into a super dense residue spinning wildly in space. These remnants of once brilliant stars are reduced to superdense masses called neutron stars which emit no light, just toxic emanations like gamma rays.

So it may turn out to be with the once brilliant promise of the Senator from Massachusetts. Perhaps ultimately all that will remain of the Kerry campaign will be a solid residue of bitter, hate-driven supporters, spewing a dark, toxic hatefulness, spinning lifelessly in a political void.

Check out RealClear Politics for more specifics on the latest polls.

Democrat Fear and Smear

Captain's Quarters has this bit of information on the Democrats' strategy for answering the Swiftvets' allegations:

The New York Daily News reports that "a group of Democratic loyalists" plan to target one of the less public figures from the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth by using humiliation to intimidate him into silence:

Sen. John Kerry called a member of the Swift Boat Veterans For Truth over the weekend to try to reason with him over the group's attacks on his record. But fellow Democrats aren't hesitating to try far more aggressive tactics.

A group of Democratic loyalists is compiling incriminating dossiers on the members of the veteran group - and they sent us a preview of what might be in store for Swift Boat activist James Zumwalt, son of illustrious Adm. Elmo Zumwalt - and it isn't pretty.

Zumwalt "attempted to kill himself with an overdose of prescription drugs," after the murder of his ex-wife's fiance, John Kowalczyk, according to the dossier, which is footnoted to news sources, and was "convicted of reckless driving after chasing Kowalczyk at a high speed on the highway."

What relevance something like this has to the allegations about Kerry's military service, one can only wonder. To the character assassins in the Democratic party perhaps it doesn't need to have any relevance to be useful. Captain Ed goes on to write:

Well, well, well. Perhaps Max Cleland can stop off on his way to Crawford, TX and put a stop to the "fear and smear" tactics being used by the Democrats. This certainly convinces me that John Kerry has nothing to hide. Riiiiiiiight...

On the other hand, at least the Democrats have agreed in principle that medical records should be released as a basis for public debate in this presidential cycle. Bush released his, now Zumwalt's are out in the open -- so where are Kerry's? They must contain some pretty damaging information if the Democrats are willing to violate HIPAA laws in order to keep them secret.

Sign the 180, Senator. Be a man, take responsibility for having started this entire mess with the Democratic smear campaign back in February and April against President Bush, and sign the 180. If you can't do that, how can we trust you to ever act responsibly? (via Kerry Spot and CQ reader Jim L.)

Viewpoint admires Captain Ed's wish to see Kerry and the Democrats actually resort to evidence and debate to settle the controversy, but that requires that the facts be on your side. When they're not, when you can't out-argue your opponent, why then, you just destroy him. That's the liberal way.

The Da Vinci Code

I received an e-mail today from a former student, now at college, who tells me about having recently read and enjoyed Dan Brown's hugely popular novels The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons. My correspondent, in addition to being a very bright, outstanding young woman, is Hindu, which may be relevant to some of what she says about the book. Part of her e-mail follows:

The da Vinci code, I felt, was less direct [than Angels and Demons] about pointing out the importance of the Church. It also emphasized how the Church had suppressed opposition, often violently. I know a lot of people have read this as Church-bashing, especially the part about how the stories in the Bible are at best, incomplete, or often completely inaccurate and fabricated. However, to me, this shouldn't even dent the face of true religion. Religion is about faith, it's about believing what may or may not be true. If you had factual data to support everything, then miracles would cease to exist and you would be a believer in science. Plus, the fact that the Catholic Church has suppressed opponents can hardly be denied. But for that matter, so have most of the other successful churches. While I don't necessarily agree with this violence or prejudice of others based on their choice of God, the Catholic Church can hardly be solely condemned for this action. Also, Brown repeatedly alludes to the power of faith and the purpose it serves to unite people and reassure them.

All in all, I think both books are good. The da Vinci code is definitely better written. Yes, the point can be made that if the information about Jesus having married and had a child were true, then the verses of the Bible would be shaken. But the way I understand the Bible (admittedly, not as a Christian), most of the stories are metaphors, told to teach the believer something. For example, it is widely known that Jesus's birthday was not December twenty-fifth but in the spring. And while informed religious people may be aware of this, that does not stop them from celebrating Christmas. . .nor should it. As I said before, you can't make Kierkegaard's leap of faith in earnest if you have hard scientific data to fall back upon.

What follows is the relevant portion of my reply to her:

I was interested in your take on Dan Brown's books. I also enjoyed The Da Vinci Code, it was a real page turner, and I liked the way the author built suspense. I take a somewhat more critical position than you, though, on his use of history. Almost none of his account of Christianity and the Church is true. This would be okay in a novel, I guess, but in the preface of the book he gives the reader the impression that everything he says about the Church and about Jesus is historical fact, and it's not.

For instance, there's absolutely no evidence that Jesus had a conjugal relationship with Mary Magdalene. Brown's claim that millions of women were burned in the Inquisition is completely ahistorical. His assertion that Christians didn't accept the deity of Christ until the fourth century is simply not the case. Anyway, none of this would matter too much, I guess, except there is a very subtle danger in this for the Christian.

If, as Brown claims, Jesus and Mary M. absconded to France and lived out their lives there then that completely collapses the entire edifice of the Christian Faith. Christianity is built on the doctrine of the Resurrection of Christ. If Jesus didn't really return physically from the dead then there's no point in being a Christian, and if Brown is right then there was no Resurrection. Brown's Christ was a man like every other who eventually died in France.

The Christian Christ, however, was the incarnation of God and lives and acts today. If he wasn't divine then he was either a nut or a charlatan. He couldn't have been just a good moral teacher like Ghandi if he wasn't in some sense God. He told people that if they give their lives for him they'd be rewarded in heaven. He claimed to be able to forgive sins and to grant eternal life. He claimed to be the Son of God. If he wasn't divine then he was indeed crazy or he was the biggest religious fraud in history.

Brown doesn't make this conclusion explicit, but it's certainly implicit in his claim that Jesus was just a man. In other words, Brown is trying to convince his millions of readers that Christianity is essentially false and has value only as a kind of service club or moral system, but like St. Paul says, "If Christ hasn't risen from the dead then the faith of Christians is in vain." The threat to the Christian faith is the more insidious because Brown tells such a captivating story.

In any event, there've been a ton of books published in the last six months debunking Brown's interpretation of history. If you're interested, and have the time, you can check out some reviews here.

Chutzpah

Let's get this straight. John Kerry admits to committing war crimes in which people died. He burned villages, killed animals, and either himself shot at, or ordered crew mates to shoot at, civilians.

Now Kerry is demanding that Secretary Rumsfeld resign his office because soldiers at Abu Ghraib subjected prisoners to sexually degrading behavior.

Perhaps the Senator will explain the logic behind demanding that the secretary should resign because, unbeknownst to him, some perverts mistreated a few prisoners, while Kerry himself should be elected president even though he admits to having participated in war crimes.

It's doubtful that he'd ever actually be forced to explain this astonishing example of chutzpah, of course, since the major media wouldn't dream of actually asking him for an explanation. The Senator and his media supporters almost daily afford us deeper insights into the meaning of the word hypocrisy.