But She's Not There

The New York Times has a stable of writers who seem to be spiralling into dementia in their desperation to unseat George Bush. Paul Krugman, Nicholas Kristoff, and Frank Rich have all written columns laced with paranoia and vituperation in recent weeks, but Maureen Dowd can get just as nuts as any of them. Ms. Dowd's motto is never pass up an opportunity to insult someone. Unfortunately, her insults often make her look profoundly dumb. Consider this statement from today's column:

After 9/11, Americans want tough guys who will protect them from Al Qaeda. They seem to be willing to settle for an impersonation of tough guys by Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, who were so busy with their vanity war in Iraq that they missed critical opportunities to vanquish Al Qaeda and spent money on a foreign occupation that could have been used to secure American ports and come up with plans before the Beslan tragedy to protect children from terrorists.

Never mind the drive-by cheap shot about missing critical opportunities to vanquish al Qaeda (What opportunities did they miss? How does Dowd know they missed them? Does she have access to secret information?); never mind the unsubstantiated allegation that had we not been involved in Iraq our ports would be safer (In what way would they be safer? Are we spending less money on protecting our ports than we would have had we not gone into Iraq? How does Dowd know that deposing Saddam has not made this country safer?); the part of this paragraph that makes her look positively buffoonish is her implication that had we not invaded Iraq we could have prevented the Beslan tragedy.

If Ms. Dowd ever deigns to descend from her Olympian vantage at the Times to mingle with us mortals perhaps she'll explain for the benefit of those of us not blessed with her divine insight how, exactly, our invasion of Iraq diverted resources that would have saved the Beslan children. Is she suggesting that we would have had Marines stationed outside the Russian school when the terrorists arrived had they not been stationed in Iraq instead? Does she have compelling information that had we never gone to Iraq our spies would've penetrated Chechen terrorist cells? Does Ms. Dowd feel herself to be under no obligation to ground her claims in something approximating reality?

So that our readers know, Viewpoint has received word just this evening that in her next column Ms. Dowd will allege that had George Bush not invaded Iraq, Hurricane Ivan would not now be threatening Florida and scientists would have discovered a cure for cancer. Reason enough to vote him out of office, I say.

Rather <i>Agonistes</i>

The Belmont Club has an excellent analysis of CBS tactics regarding the apparent duping they suffered with allegedly fraudulent documents purporting to prove that George Bush had disobeyed orders while serving in the National Guard. Both the analysis and the comment thread which follows is fascinating.

For other takes on the unravelling scandal at CBS see the comparison of the questionable memo and a computer generated copy overlay at Little Green Footballs, and by all means don't miss the column by Mark Steyn, one of the funniest columnists in the business. Here's a taste:

Dan Rather and the elderly gentlemen at "60 Minutes" were all atwitter because they'd come into possession of some hitherto undiscovered memos relating to whether George W. Bush failed to show up for his physical in the War of 1812. The media had been flogging this dead horse all spring, but these newly "discovered" memos had jump-started the old nag just enough to get him on his knees long enough for the media to flog him all over again.

Unfortunately for CBS, Dan Rather's hairdresser sucks up so much of the budget that there was nothing left for any fact-checking, so the "60 Minutes" crew rushed on air with a damning National Guard memo conveniently called "CYA" that Bush's commanding officer had written to himself 32 years ago. "This was too hot not to push," one producer told the American Spectator. Hundreds of living Swiftvets who've signed affidavits and are prepared to testify on camera - that's way too cold to push; we'd want to fact-check that one thoroughly, till, say, midway through John Kerry's second term. But a handful of memos by one dead guy slipped to us by a Kerry campaign operative - that meets "basic standards" and we gotta get it out there right away.

The Whole World is Watching

On this somber day of remembrance Viewpoint suggests another must-read essay from the pen of Victor David Hanson. Every paragraph is a gem. Here's a sampling from The Whole World is Watching:

Ask yourself: What do a Russian ten-year-old, a poor black farmer in Darfur, an elderly pensioner in Israel, a stockbroker in New York, and a U.N. aid worker in Afghanistan have in common? In the last three years, they have all died in similar ways: Unarmed and civilian, they were murdered by a common cowardly method fueled by a fascist ideology.

The recent slaughters in Russia were the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back of excusing or explaining away radical Islamic terror. If the Estonians can break away from post-Soviet oppression and free themselves from Russian authoritarianism without slaughtering schoolchildren and blowing up airplanes, then the Chechens can as well - but only if they wish to create democracy rather than an Islamic fascist state.

But there is something else going on here besides the cloak of so-called Chechen nationalism. The perversion not of religion per se, but of Islam; the singular method of suicide bombing rarely found elsewhere; the frequent resort to the unique grotesquery of beheading; the now-common display of abject incompetence on the battlefield coupled with craven slaughter of the noncombatant and civilian aid worker. At some point, the leaders of the Western world (if there are any left besides George W. Bush and Tony Blair) are going to look at all this madness worldwide and come to the bitter conclusion that there is a disgusting pattern: Not every Muslim is a fascist terrorist, but almost every fascist terrorist is a Muslim. Killers are not screaming "Hail Mary" when they machine gun children in the back, slit the throat of airline stewardesses, or blow pregnant women up on buses across the globe. And they are not the subjects of condemnatory fatwas in Iran or Saudi Arabia.

Much of the Islamic Middle East continues to blame others for its own induced catastrophe, apparently unaware - thanks to the lever of oil it didn't discover, doesn't know how to develop, and uses to intensify rather than alleviate its poverty - that its entire culture is becoming an international pariah. Islamic young men on European flights are looked at with distrust; they are not welcome in Russia. China wants none of them. They are wary of visiting India. Australia learned from Bali. The whole world is watching - in disgust.

In short, the suicide bomber, the improvised explosive device, the car bomb, the televised beheading, the wacko fatwa, the sleazy propaganda streamer on the Internet, the new cult of death - all cowardly and lethal phenomena - these are now the innovations that the world associates with the Middle East in lieu of gene research, car production, or computer breakthroughs. If you look for gender equity in the Middle East, you won't find it in Arab Olympic delegations, Saudi schools, or the Iranian government, but in the opportunity for young women to blow themselves up right beside men. Indeed, killing infidels is the nascent women's-liberation movement of the radical Muslim world.

As fighters against armed Americans and Brits the flower of Islamic manhood is risible, succeeding only to the extent that they are willing to strap bombs to their sons and daughters and send them to grisly deaths. How can Muslims be anything but profoundly ashamed of what is being done in their name and in the name of Allah? How can they be anything but humiliated that their "warriors" are such savages? How many 9/11s, Balis, Madrids, and Beslans must the world endure before it demands that Muslims give up their dream of revanchism, world domination, and world-wide Islam or suffer the consequence of becoming complete and utter pariahs among civilized nations?

Wake up America!

God bless viewpoint, for it offers me an opportunity to vent an occasional rant now and then and perhaps I'll live a little longer as a result of it.

I have had the most difficult time understanding the importance of the issue of a trade deficit and finally I discovered exactly why it's a problem for every American today and even for future generations.

This revelation is so profound, so subtly insidious, that I feel compelled to share it on viewpoint. It's actually very simple.

We incur debt to foreigners which are excesses of imports over exports. The dollars earned by foreign businessmen usually are deposited in foreign commercial banks which deposit them in their central banks, which invest them directly in U.S. Treasury obligations or other claims and assets in the U.S.

It appears, on the surface, that you are not a part of this mechanism simply because you go to Wal-Mart and purchase some goods made in China at dirt-cheap prices but it is important to realize that the money you spend on those products go to Hong Kong and come right back with many other dollars for the purchase of U.S. Treasury bills, notes, or bonds. All of these are certificates of debt that you or your children are obligated to meet. In other words, the U.S. government is enabling you to participate in this mechanism and the majority of Americans don't have a clue of the consequences of their bargain purchases. In fact, those shrewd purchases only contribute to the hidden debt liabilities, via our government, that are adding to the hundreds of billions of dollars already owed!

To add to the problem, every good or service purchased from outside of the U.S. is one less item that needs to be manufactured here. This pressures American companies until they eventually lay off their employees or go out of business altogether.

Now here's the interesting part. Instead of allowing free markets to determine the value of the Chinese currency, China has pegged its currency value at approximately 8 of their currency units to 1 U.S. dollar. The effect of this is that as the U.S. dollar looses value against other world currencies which would make imports less attractive and our exports more attractive, the Chinese currency depreciates proportionally so their exports are always competitively priced when compared to American products. This guarantees that the trade deficit (and our debt obligation) will continue to widen until something dramatic occurs. They don't say "Buy American" for nothing!

We hear that all of this is because we, as a nation, must subscribe to the concept of "Free and Fair Trade". Well what's fair about China artificially manipulating their currency at our expense? Furthermore, what's fair about competition with a country that has zero labor laws? I read a news article about an investor who visited a Chinese company where they manufacture tennis rackets. It was evening when they walked into the manufacturing facility and the company owners had to turn on the lights of the facility which enabled the investor to see hundreds of people, previously working in the dark, stringing tennis rackets. Is it fair for America to compete on terms like that?

What's fair about trying to compete against companies in China that have no environmental restrictions against pollution and can operate much more economically than companies in the U.S. that must meet ecological standards set and enforced by our government?

The bottom line is that there is nothing fair about it and the only thing that's free is the free ride China is getting at the expense of Americans.

Just recently, groups have petitioned the Bush administration to bring a case before the World Trade Organization because the currency of China is generally considered to be undervalued by perhaps as much as 40%. This makes Chinese goods extremely competitive compared to U.S. goods. But the Bush administration quickly rejected the petition, declaring that it would not "retreat into economic isolationism" by bringing a case that could impose economic sanctions on Chinese goods.

This is totally unacceptable because America is being gutted at the speed of light yet the Bush administration is doing nothing whatsoever to impact the logical, disastrous conclusion. Sanctions are precisely the remedy for what is happening. Otherwise, nothing will change until an equilibrium is reached. The standard of living of every American is going to be reduced until it is comparable to the standard of living of people in China, and India, and Mexico. Once that happens, the trade deficit will be zero because foreign goods will no longer be attractively priced. Americans will be making the same products, in the dark, for perhaps $5 per hour. Just remember that during your next trip to Wal-Mart.

Grounding Human Rights

Digital Freedom Network has a piece by Luke Thomas on the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Specifically Thomas addresses how the signatory nations bridged some deep philosophical divides in order to arrive at the finished document, but in the course of the discussion he mentions something that Viewpoint has questioned in the past and wishes to do so in this instance as well. First some groundwork:

The preamble to the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) states:

Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world... [emphasis added]

And Article 1 of the UDHR reads:

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood. [emphasis added]

Thomas provides a gloss on these passages:

The UDHR, and most human rights advocates, generally argue that the human rights man enjoys, both positive entitlements and negative obligations, are a product of the inherent dignity of man. Without this dignity being upheld, man is being deprived of his various rights. The espousal and maintenance of dignity, or the lack thereof, is the measurement of human rights.

He then goes on to quote a philosopher named Jack Donnelly:

The source of human rights is man's moral nature, which is only loosely linked to the "human nature" defined by scientifically ascertainable needs. Human rights are "needed" not for life but for a life of dignity...violations of human rights deny one's humanity; they do not necessarily keep one from satisfying one's needs. We have human rights not to the requisites for health but to those things "needed" for a life of dignity, for a life worthy of a human being, a life that cannot be enjoyed without these rights.

As Donnelly sees it, Thomas explains, human rights arise from human action. Donnelly categorically denies that they originate from a deity, society, or nature. Instead, "human rights represent a social choice of a particular moral vision of human potentiality." Donnelly argues that man has profound potential for good towards others and for themselves, a "moral vision" or "potentiality" as he describes it. That potentiality can swing in a number of directions, but under the guidelines of an appropriate moral vision towards dignity and worth, it can largely be used for good. Thus, "human rights are a social practice that aims to realize a particular vision of human dignity and potential by institutionalizing basic rights."

Now here's the problem. When one cuts through the verbal undergrowth it turns out that the ascription of human rights to persons is purely arbitrary. It represents a mere "social choice" based upon the signatories' particular "moral vision" which is, of course, different for different people. Human rights turn out to be nothing more than words on paper. They're not grounded in anything more solid than the subjective preference of the authors of those words. If the writers had other preferences they would've come up with a different set of human "rights", or none at all.

In other words, if we want to live a life which has some dignity, we have to enjoy certain rights, but there's no right, nor can there be, to dignity itself. The dignity of the individual is an arbitrary value in the hands of the state. There's no reason, beyond the preference of those who hold power, why a state should care about the dignity of its citizens. Thus the rights which make dignity possible are contingent upon the whim of the state which grants them.

In this view, human rights can be nothing more than mere conventions. Contrary to the UDHR preamble, they don't really inhere in persons at all. They are not inalienable. If the government is the source of our rights then government can easily strip us of them, and should they do so, they would be doing nothing for which they could be reproached. The state is under no obligation to provide for the dignity of its citizens, and is therefore under no obligation to grant "human rights".

This is a considerably different picture of rights than that envisioned by the Founding Fathers, and the reason for the difference is not hard to spot. Donnelly may deny that rights originate from a deity, but the Fathers, following John Locke and others, were convinced otherwise. They realized that unless human rights and human dignity were grounded in something beyond human predilections, unless they had roots in the firm soil of transcendence, they were simply empty concepts hanging on sky hooks anchored in nothing.

John Locke, in his Second Treatise on Government, which exerted such powerful influence upon the Founding Fathers almost a century after its publication, wrote this:

"No one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions; for men being all the workmanship of one omnipotent and infinitely wise Maker...they are his property whose workmanship they are, made to last during his, not one another's pleasure...there cannot be supposed any such subordination among us that may authorize us to destroy another, as if we were made for one another's uses as the inferior ranks of creatures are for ours."

Locke is telling us that we have dignity only because we are made by the Creator of the universe, in His image. We are loved by Him and belong to Him. That is what gives us value. We have a right not to be harmed because no one has the right to harm what belongs to God, and they do so at their eternal peril.

Thomas Jefferson incorporates this same understanding of the source of our rights into the Declaration of Independence where he writes that "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

If Donnelly is right then Locke and Jefferson are wrong, and God is not the basis for our rights nor our dignity. But if that is true, then human dignity and human rights are mere illusions, empty conceits, hollow words that we comfort ourselves with to mask the truth that we are just ephemeral gobs of mud and blood, with no significance or value, in a vast, empty universe that laughs at our pretensions to "rights" and "dignity".

If Donnelly is correct then the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights is like a bunch of children saying "Let's play make-believe. Let's pretend that we have rights." Everything goes well with this make-believe fantasy until someone says that he doesn't want to play the game any more and then the fantasy collapses.

The attempt to ground human rights in something other than the transcendent is doomed to failure and frustration, and any rights not so grounded are chimerical. They have no reality, no substance. They are mirages of oases in the moral desert that is the history of human oppression.

Inspector Dreyfuss

The CBS National Guard document scandal has been all over the blogosphere for the last twenty four hours. The question is no longer whether the documents are fraudulent, that seems to be highly probable, the question everyone is speculating about now is how did these counterfeits get into the hands of 60 Minutes and who's behind the scam.

There are other interesting questions as well, like will there be any accountability, will this shorten Dan Rather's career, and so on.

Perhaps the most significant consequence of this episode, however, is that it will make it exceedingly difficult to persuade the American voters of the truth of any charge against George Bush. CBS and Rather are being made into laughingstocks over this and few elements of the major media are going to risk a similar fate trying to shore up Kerry's sagging campaign by running allegations based on anything less than absolutely certain evidence.

It is astonishing that, according to The American Spectator's Prowler, the DNC first came into possession of these documents and had suspicions about their authenticity, but passed them on to the Kerry campaign anyway which then forwarded them to CBS. In other words, they were willing to tarnish Bush with charges which they believed may not have been true. Nice people. They're getting what they deserve.

As a side note: Anyone who has read Bernie Goldberg's book Bias which exposes the inner workings of CBS News and Dan Rather's pomposity will think that any embarrassment which attaches to Rather over this will also be richly deserved.

This episode is turning out to be a black eye, or worse, for everyone involved except the man whom the punch was intended for. As Viewpoint has noted before, watching this campaign is like watching the 1976 Peter Sellars film Return of the Pink Panther with Bush's opponents in the role of Inspector Dreyfuss.

For more on the controversy go here, here, and especially AllahPundit here.

The Party of Optimism

Never let it be said that the Democrats are not the party of optimism. The latest incantation of the Kerry campaign is that George W. Bush's middle initial stands for "wrong". Presumably the Dems are hoping that if they hear it often enough their base will associate the word "wrong" with George Bush. Such a hope is a sign of unbounded optimism. Recall that these are the same voters who found the Florida ballots beyond their ken and the same people so detached and apathetic about politics that a pack of cigarettes and a ride to the polls were sufficient inducement to get them to pull the lever for Al Gore. It's not at all evident that these folk are even aware that the word "wrong" has a "w" in it, much less that they would ever associate the word with George Bush's name.

Latest On Fallujah

There've been a lot of reports of fighting in Iraq but not much detail. The Strategy Page is a good place to go to find it. Their report for September 9th makes for interesting reading. Here's an excerpt:

September 9, 2004: When reporting fighting in Iraq, it's common for journalists to report only Iraqi deaths known to local hospitals, and question American military reports of higher enemy casualties. The reporters apparently are unaware that the gunmen will not take their dead to a hospital, and often not take their wounded either. This is because American troops make every effort to identify dead or wounded enemy, so as to obtain more information on what individuals, and families, are involved in anti-government activity. U.S. troops maintain databases of who they are fighting, the better to pick targets for raids or surveillance.

American smart bomb attacks continue on Fallujah. The attempt, last Spring, to have former members of the Iraqi army provide security in Fallujah, failed. The Baath Party and al Qaeda gangs terrorized the "Fallujah Brigade" and firmly control the city of 300,000. But the anti-government forces have many enemies in Fallujah, and the U.S. is apparently getting lots of targeting information. Daily, the smart bombs blow apart houses used by the gangs for housing, headquarters or ammo dumps. The gangs have become very paranoid, believing there are spies everywhere. They are correct, but some of the most revealing spies are unreachable.

Above Fallujah, U.S. warplanes and UAVs circle constantly, able to clearly view what is below, day or night. The telescopic bomb sights allow pilots to see what kind of weapon people are carrying, or whether women and children are in a crowd. The gangs have learned to never gather in large groups, at least not without plenty of women and children nearby for protection. But that doesn't always work, for the AC-130 gunships can kill a man without harming someone ten feet away.

The gangs fear that the American troops are coming back to Fallujah, and they are right. The not-so-secret plan is to go back in before the end of the year, kill all gang members that can be found, and then turn the city over to Iraqi troops, composed mostly of Shia and Kurds. Fallujah has long been controlled by Saddam supporters, and the non-Sunni Iraqi occupation force is not expected to be afraid to use force against their long time tormenters.

The site has updates daily. Good stuff.

60 Minutes Hoax

CBS's 60 Minutes presented documents the other night purporting to be memos written by George Bush's commanding officer in the National Guard and suggesting that, among other things, Bush had disobeyed direct orders. Now it turns out that the consensus among documentarians is that these particular documents are fraudulent. CBS is sticking to their story, however, so it'll be interesting to see how this plays out.

Meanwhile, readers who are interested in the story and curious as to how the documents were determined to be fraudulent can go here and here.

Bush's National Guard Service

Byron York has what should be the last word on Bush's National Guard service but doubtless won't be. You can read his column here. It's very informative.

Viewpoint would add to this (thereby guaranteeing that York's is not the last word)that there are several salient differences between Bush's service and Kerry's. The temptation, of course, is to forgive both men the misjudgments of their youth, but the Kerry campaign won't allow it. They insist on presenting Senator Kerry's war record as his chief qualification for the presidency, and, at the same time, they insist on attacking President Bush for alleged shortcomings in his role as a National Guard aviator.

Given that the Kerry campaign insists on the comparison, let's make it. George Bush has often said that he did things as a young man for which he's not proud and he has never claimed that the voters should elect him on the basis of his record in the National Guard.

Kerry has acknowledged doing things as a young soldier for which he should be ashamed but has repeatedly said that he's nevertheless proud of his service and advances that service as the chief reason why America should elect him president.

Given the difference in the attitudes of both men toward their checkered records it seems to us that basing one's vote for or against Kerry on his record is warranted, whereas it's not warranted in the case of Bush. Bush doesn't commend himself to us on the basis of his service, Kerry does. In Bush's case the temptation to forgive the distant past is appropriately yielded to. Kerry's position, however,is that the distant past should not be forgotten, so in his case we shouldn't forget it.

Moreover, Bush has publically acknowledged that Kerry's months in a combat zone deserve his respect and he grants it. For his part, Kerry has refused to return Bush's graciousness and has chosen instead to denigrate the President's service as a jet fighter pilot, an accomplishment that few men are capable of achieving, and which itself deserves respect.

Additionally, no member of Bush's campaign that I'm aware of has criticized Kerry for his tenure in Vietnam, yet the Democrats take every opportunity to criticize Bush for delinquencies, both real and imagined, in the early seventies.

Finally, Bush never turned on his comrades like Kerry did in 1971, while still an officer. Bush never accused his fellow soldiers of war crimes nor did he give aid and comfort to the enemy. What Kerry did is arguably treasonous, and it's a wonder that he's not been prosecuted for it.

If the Democrats want to use Bush's service record as a means to discredit him among the voters they may succeed, given the nature of the voting public, but the potential cost to Kerry seems quite high. The more they nitpick about Bush's spotty attendance at meetings the more they invite scrutiny of Kerry's admitted war crimes. Sean Hannity said the other day that Kerry's record of admitted offenses makes him unfit to be a guard at the Abu Ghraib prison much less commander-in-chief. He's suffered enough from the indignant Swiftvets over his record, he certainly doesn't need the Republican National Committee jumping on him, too.

Ed Gillespie's Memo

Hugh Hewitt has posted a memo from Ed Gillespie the chairman of the RNC warning of an intense campaign to villify and personally destroy the president. The left has consistently demonstrated that it does not consider itself to be constrained by the normal standards of decency and is willing to say anything, no matter how despicable, in order to destroy its opponents. Gillespie's memo reminds us of the depths to which these people have already sunk:

In response to President Bush's Agenda for America's Future and a critique of his policies and Senate record, Senator Kerry's campaign is implementing a strategy of vicious personal attacks against the President and Vice President. The [Democratic] campaign is bringing in a bevy of former Clinton henchmen, including CNN commentators James Carville and Paul Begala. In August alone, Begala called President Bush a "gutless wonder," said he has a "lack of intelligence," and called Vice President Cheney a "dirt bag." Carville said the President is "ignorant big time" and said "George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are a couple of nobodies."

It's not like Bob Shrum needed encouragement to engage in personal attacks. At a Kerry rally Friday morning in Ohio, campaign surrogate John Glenn compared the Republican Convention to a Nazi rally, and Kerry called the President unfit to lead our nation and once again sought to divide the country by who served and how 35 years ago.

Of course, the President was called a "cheap thug," a "killer" and a "liar" at a Kerry-Edwards campaign event in New York, Mrs. Kerry has called the President's policies "unpatriotic" and "immoral" and DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe falsely accused the President of being AWOL.

Democratic strategist Susan Estrich outlined the strategy last Wednesday in a column warning Republicans to "watch out." "I'm not promising pretty," she wrote before going on to call President Bush and Vice President Cheney alcoholics, then ask "is any alcoholic ever really cured?" ("I can see the ad now.") She deems the President's service as a National Guard fighter pilot "draft dodging," and says, "a forthcoming book by Kitty Kelly raises questions about whether the President has practiced what he preaches on the issue of abortion." (Interestingly, the New York Daily News reported back in February that the Kerry campaign intended to spread such a rumor in pro-life chat rooms late in the campaign.)

So the former Dukakis campaign manager has an advance copy of Democrat donor Kitty Kelly's book, which promises to throw unsubstantiated gossip at President Bush in the same way she falsely maligned the late President Reagan as a date rapist who paid for a girlfriend's abortion and wrongly castigated Nancy Reagan as an adulterer who had an affair with Frank Sinatra. A recent story says Kelly's book alleges President Bush used cocaine at Camp David while his father was President, which is as credible as her story that then Governor and Nancy Reagan smoked marijuana with Jack Benny and George and Gracie Burns.

And tonight on CBS, longtime Democratic operative Ben Barnes-a friend of, major contributor to and Nantucket neighbor of Senator Kerry's and vice chair of the Kerry Campaign--will repudiate his statement under oath that he had no contact with the Bush family concerning the President's National Guard service. (Anyone surprised that Barnes would contradict a statement he made under oath probably doesn't know his long history of political scandal and financial misdealings.)

So brace yourselves. Any mention of John Kerry's votes for higher taxes and against vital weapons programs will be met with the worst kind of personal attacks. Such desperation is unbecoming of American Presidential politics, and Senator Kerry will pay a price for it at the polls as we stay focused on policies to continue growing our economy and winning the War on Terror.

These kinds of personal, ad hominem attacks are a symptom of souls wallowing in bitterness, spite, envy, and hatred, and are beneath contempt. How any decent person can join with those for whom such cruel and hurtful words come so easily, and support a candidate who condones them, is beyond comprehension.

Logically Impaired

Senator Kerry seems determined to enhance his reputation as a man perfectly comfortable advancing two completely contradictory opinions almost simultaneously. Hugh Hewitt has this:

Kerry on Monday:

"It's the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time."

Kerry yesterday:

"More than 1,000 of America's sons and daughters have now given their lives on behalf of their country, on behalf of freedom in the war on terror."

Kerry Spokesman David Wade, today:

"Kerry was referring to U.S. soldiers fighting in parts of Iraq that have now become a breeding ground for terrorists."

Hewitt:

Oh, okay. All 1,000+ died "fighting in parts of Iraq that have now become a breeding ground for terrorists," but other than that , it's the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time. That clears up everything.

No wonder people are saying that before Kerry takes on Bush in debate he ought to settle the debate with himself.

The Sociological Facts of Life

Ryan Sager at Miscellaneous Objections takes Bush to task for not pushing school choice harder and for not enforcing No Child Left Behind. Well, okay.

Viewpoint realizes that it's flirting with conservative heresy here, but having spent parts, or all, of five decades teaching in a public school we're unconvinced that any effort to reform schools is going to work until there is a fundamental transformation of the culture.

Here's what happens. The only way to assess how well a school is doing is to test students. In Pennsylvania they devised a battery of standards that students at various grade levels are tested upon. The standards themselves are problematic, but that's a topic for a different post. The problem the state faces is this. How difficult should they make the test? If they make it rigorous, most suburban students will do okay, but urban students will struggle.

This is just a sociological fact of life, but it would be politically untenable to have it splashed across newspapers every year. Poor performance in minority communities would elicit complaints of racist tests and racists in the government, and so on. Bureaucrats react to the charge of racism as if it were political HIV. So what will they do? Eventually the difficulty of the test will be diluted until anyone with an IQ in double digits can pass it. At this point it'll become a joke and a complete waste of time for the suburban kids. It won't measure much of anything, educational reform will suffer another setback, and all the pundits will be wondering what went wrong.

We've said it before but it bears repeating: The quality of education tracks the quality of family life in a community. A school filled with kids from disadvantaged and/or dysfunctional families will find it very difficult to succeed with those youngsters no matter how many reform measures the bureaucrats toss at them. Schools filled with kids from affluent and/or well-adjusted and healthy homes, on the other hand, will do well almost without trying. It's another sociological fact of life, and the sooner it becomes acknowledged that the family is the key to educational success, the sooner we'll be able to direct our energies away from band-aid nostrums and devote our energies to the radical surgery on our culture that's needed to restore health and strength to our families.

We Can Say it But You Can't

So Dick Cheney opines that the United States would be less safe from terorism under Kerry/Edwards than under Bush/Cheney, and Senator Edwards takes major umbrage:

"What [Cheney] said was meant to scare voters, period. And it's completely contrary to what's in the best interest of the American people....It was way over the top and I think un-American."

This reaction seems a bit ridiculous in light of the constant iterations of the Democratic mantra over the last year that George Bush's war has made us less safe, not more. Maybe there's a difference between what the Dems have been saying loudly and often and what Cheney said the other day, but we here at Viewpoint are scratching our heads trying to figure out what it is.

Points of Light in a World of Darkness

Thankfully, Muslim voices are beginning to be heard condemning terrorism in general and the Beslan atrocity in particular. MEMRI has a good summary of the Arab reaction to Beslan including a few impassioned pleas by Muslims to disavow terror. Perhaps the best is this one:

Bater Wardam, a columnist for the Jordanian daily Al-Dustour, wrote: "It is always easy to flee to illusions and to place responsibility for the crimes of Arabic and Muslim terrorist organizations on the Mossad, the Zionists, and on American intelligence, but we all know that this is not the case and that those who murder innocent civilians in Iraq after having kidnapped them, those who turned civilian airplanes into destructive bombs, those who exploded trains crowded with innocent civilians and those who fired on children in a school in Ossetia - they came from our midst. They are Arabs and Muslims who pray, fast, grow beards, demand the wearing of veils, and call for the defense of Islamic causes. Therefore we all must raise our voices, disown them and oppose all of these crimes... Whoever remains silent when faced with the murder of children, he is an accomplice to the crime. Even worse, we are employing the same moral double standard regarding people's lives that the West uses."

The last sentence is a little mysterious, but at least the overall sense of the paragraph is on the right track. This one from an Iraqi newspaper man is also on the mark:

"The Arabs and the Muslims today contribute nothing to civilization and progress except for blood, severed heads, scorched bodies, and the abduction and murder of children. The Jihad for religion and Arab chivalry have turned into the art of exploding, booby-trapping, and spilling blood. What an innovation and what a social contribution the Arabs have made in the 21st century!!"

On the other hand, there are still those so blind that they will not see. For instance, several writers, like this one, blame the Russian military, incredibly enough, who are said to be as guilty as the abductors:

Columnist Fawwaz Al-Ajami wrote in the Qatari daily Al-Sharq: "It is impossible to correct a mistake with another mistake and it is impossible to treat terrorism with terrorism. There are many ways and methods with which it would have been possible to save these innocent children's lives. The barbaric Russian storming of this school was no less ugly and no less terrorist than the terrorism of these child-abductors. In this way state terrorism becomes the equivalent of individual terrorism with the victim being innocent civilians..."

Apparently there's no difference, in this man's mind, between soldiers trying to rescue children and terrorists who arrange to murder them. And, of course, no round-up of Islamic opinion on terrorism would be complete without somebody blaming the Jews:

In the Jordanian government daily Al-Dustour, columnist George Haddad wrote: "More than one Russian commentator and a number of journalists on the satellite channels pointed out that Russian intelligence had information concerning 'contributions' that some of the Chechen factions received from Jewish oligarchs from the fields of finance, communications, and oil... [These are] the owners of the corporations and billions which were stolen from the Russian people, that after Putin's rise to power and the establishment of his rule became wanted on charges of deceit, fraud, and tax evasion.

"The most important goal of the wanted Jewish gang was to distort Putin's [public] image and to present him as someone who is not in charge of the situation, [and who is incapable] of reining in the anarchy, and who is leading the country and its residents back to the days of repression, dictatorship, and state control."

Of course. Why didn't we think of that. After all, we know the Jews were behind 9/11 because no Jews showed up for work in the Trade Towers that day. How plain can it be?

So there are some rational minds sprinkled throughout the Islamic world, but evidently they have an awful lot of work to do to overcome the darkness that clouds the minds and hearts of so many of their brethren.

Chance or Intention

Our local Sunday paper had an extensive piece on the controversy over whether Intelligent Design is an appropriate topic for science classroom instruction in public schools. The article itself was well-done, but some of the individuals who were quoted in it made what I thought were somewhat misleading statements. The article can be found here and my response to it, which has been submitted to the paper for publication, follows:

The York Sunday News and Laurie Lebo are to be commended for compiling such a thorough and fair treatment of the controversy surrounding Intelligent Design and Darwinian evolution (9/5/04). I would like to say just a couple of things in response to the thoughts expressed by two of the gentlemen who were quoted in the article.

John Staver of Kansas State University argues that ID "requires faith which contradicts the critical thought demanded in science". This statement is very misleading. It implies, first of all, that there is no faith involved in science, which is completely untrue, as will be shown below, and it also implies that ID is based primarily upon faith with no critical thought or empirical component, which is also untrue.

Karl Kleiner of York College is quoted as saying that ID violates the scientific method because no experiment can prove or disprove God's existence. The implication here is that only ideas which can be confirmed by experiment are permissible in science classrooms. This, however, is a pretty stringent rule that no science teacher could possibly follow. If, for example, we wish to limit science to just what can be confirmed by experiment then we need to exclude any discussions of the existence of other universes, string theory, and much of quantum mechanics. If we cannot introduce non-empirical metaphysical assumptions into the science class then we cannot talk about a Grand Unified Theory in physics, the pursuit of which is motivated by an aesthetic preference for "elegance" or simplicity in our explanations. Nor can we examine the superiority of Copernicus' system over Ptolemy's which is based not upon different facts but upon the same preference for simplicity. Likewise, little could be said about cosmology since much about the subject relies upon the metaphysical assumption of uniformity, i.e. that the laws of physics are the same throughout the universe. Nor could we justify the commonplace assumption that every effect has a cause. Indeed, we cannot even talk about the material reality of an external world since our belief in one is an exercise of faith in the reliability of our senses. There appears to be a world independent of our minds, so we believe there is, but it's awfully difficult to demonstrate its existence. Moreover, the scientist's confidence in reason itself is empirically unjustifiable. Any attempt to demonstrate that reason is a reliable guide to knowledge founders on the inherent circularity of trying to reason our way to the reliability of reason. Yet no one objects to any of these metaphysical assumptions and hypotheses being employed in science classes. For some reason it is only when the metaphysics turns toward the possibility of intelligent agency that the defenders of Darwinian orthodoxy become aroused and agitated.

Furthermore, if we are not allowed to affirm the possibility that intelligence is behind the biological phenomena we see under our microscopes then neither should we be able to deny that it is. Yet that is what we tacitly do when we instruct students that natural processes are entirely adequate to explain life's complex and specified patterns, a claim which many students find counterintuitive and at least superficially implausible. We teach our students to assume that there is no need to posit intelligence, but this assumption itself displays another philosophical preference, in this case a preference for materialism.

It's true that no scientific experiment can prove God's existence, but it's also irrelevant. ID theorists aren't trying to prove God's existence. They're trying to show that the biosphere is a highly complex organization of information systems and to investigate whether such information systems could be the product of natural mechanisms alone or whether the best explanation for them must not include intelligence. As even materialists like Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett affirm, biological machines bear the impress of design. The question that arises, then, is what is the nature of the designer? Is the designer blind, purposeless, mechanical nature or is the designer an intelligent, intentional mind? To allow the first answer in our classrooms, but not the second, is an unwarranted and inexcusable act of philosophical prejudice. To suppress the question altogether because it leads us into the realm of metaphysics is hard to justify since so many other metaphysical notions are admitted into science. It is also a repudiation of the fundamental principle of scientific investigation that we should follow the evidence wherever it leads, even if it upsets our most cherished theories.

Professor Kleiner states that science tests theories by trying to prove them false but that advocates of ID are unable to do that. This is not quite correct. First, there are many hypotheses which scientists hold which they do not try to falsify because there is no way to do so. Scientists believe, for example, that life arose from non-life, some scientists believe that there has been, is, or will be, life existing elsewhere in the universe, some believe that life began in a primordial sea, some believe that there is a multitude of other universes, or that our universe somehow brought itself into being, or that mass/energy is infinitely old. None of these theories is even in principle falsifiable, but we don't therefore banish them from science classrooms.

Nevertheless, the claim that ID is not falsifiable is not correct anyway. If scientists ever manage to show how molecular machines like the much celebrated bacterial flagellum could have been produced in a non-teleological (i.e. purposeless) way, through the action of purely non-intelligent processes, then ID would be, if not technically falsified, at least deeply discredited. So far as I know, no one has done this satisfactorily. If it turns out that it can't be done then that would show that the Darwinian's conviction that natural mechanisms are adequate to generate biological complexity is not based on empirical evidence, but is, in fact, an act of faith. Indeed, the fact that many scientists believe that natural processes gave rise to the myriad of bio-molecular machines in any living cell, even though they have no idea how it happened, pretty much refutes Mr. Staver's suggestion above that faith has no place in science.

Professor Kleiner asserts that "evolution doesn't deny the existence of a God. It just doesn't require one". The implication is that Darwinism is neutral with respect to the question of God, but this is misleading. By insisting that the evolutionary process is impersonal, undirected, random, and mechanistic, and by insisting that this process prevails not only in the production of biological diversity but also in the biochemical origins of life, and by insisting that only materialistic processes be permitted in science, Darwinism eliminates any role for God in the universe and makes him irrelevant. For most people there's not much practical difference between an irrelevant God and one which doesn't exist.

Professor Kleiner also expresses the concern that ID could potentially curtail critical thinking and quash scientific curiosity. ID, however, is actually the result of critical thinking and curiosity. What stifles curiosity is institutional and philosophical dogmatism, revealing only one side of a story as though that side were the only side, or declaring to our children that certain kinds of explanations in the pursuit of truth are taboo because they might have religious implications. As William James wrote: "Any rule of thinking that would prevent me from finding a truth, if that truth were really there, is an irrational rule." Any rule which demands that our children not be permitted to hear the case for listing intelligence as among the causes of biological diversity while insisting, as the Darwinian paradigm does, that nature can do the job all by herself, is itself curtailing critical thinking and quashing curiosity.

Finally, Mr. Staver is quoted as saying that ID theorists "want to recast the paradigm of science to include God within it". It would be more precise to say that they want to admit intelligent agency as a possible causal factor in our accounts of the structure of the universe and of living things. Whether that intelligence is the God of traditional monotheism or not is not a question with which ID needs to deal.

Even so, why, if there is evidence to suggest that purely natural processes may not be up to the task of providing an adequate explanation for the phenomena we see in the world around us, should we nevertheless insist that those explanations be the only ones we be permitted to entertain in our science classes? It may be that the evidence that ID theorists cite is not best explained by intelligent agency, but let's at least have that debate. Let's let our children hear the arguments on both sides. To prevent them from seeing and considering the evidence for both sides of the issue is perhaps the surest, most effective way to curtail critical thinking and quash scientific curiosity.

Kerry's Woes

In addition to the double-digit lead Bush now enjoys over Kerry in both the Newsweek and Time Magazine polls and the seven point lead in the Gallup poll, NewsMax.com announces news which suggests that Senator Kerry's troubles with veterans are not yet at the high water mark. In an e-mail alert NewsMax claims that:

A new documentary will soon be released that may do more damage to John Kerry than even the devastating Swift Boat Veterans' ad.

It's called "Stolen Honor" - and remember, you heard it here first.

The documentary, just weeks from release, details what his Vietnam critics say was John Kerry's betrayal of America.

In a description of the new film, the producers explain that "when John Kerry appeared before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee in the spring of 1971, his testimony sent shock waves throughout America and the world. ... Lt. Kerry's widely televised statements were dramatic and persuasive, made all the more credible by the fact he had been there, said he had witnessed many of these same atrocities."

This comes on the heels of news that the Navy has launched an investigation into his citations. They want to know how the recommendations were written up and by whom.

A couple of years ago an Admiral named Borda committed suicide when he was discovered to be wearing a "V" that he hadn't merited. The same charge has been levelled at Kerry, who, sources have alleged, has a "V" (for valor) with his silver star. The problem is, evidently, that the Navy never gave a "V" with a silver star and so questions, and eyebrows, have been raised in the Pentagon.

For an excellent update on the Kerry campaign's reaction to the Swiftvets go to Captain's Quarters. One of the many interesting points that the Captain makes is that it has become commonplace to hear Kerry supporters refer to the Swiftvets' charges as nothing but lies, and yet not a single one of their charges has been shown to be substantively false. On the other hand Kerry has had to back down on a number of the points in contention. The Kerry strategy seems to be to just call these men liars and maybe the voters will start to ignore them. It's a pretty despicable strategy but these are desparate people. The Captain adds:

The only factual refutations that have occurred so far apply to John Kerry's narrative, not that of the 250-plus Swiftvets with whom he served. So who's lied to the electorate so far? It doesn't appear to be the Swiftvets, which makes the only "egregious" liar in this campaign John Kerry.

Moral and Mental Idiots

Viewpoint has asked where the expressions of soul-searching are in the Muslim community and is gratified to find a particularly good example of it here. It would, however, be a little bit more credible if the writer, Abdel Rahman al-Rashed, were not general manager of the Al-Arabiya News Channel which has not been particularly hostile to the jihadis. Nevertheless, the article sets a salutary example for the rest of the Muslim world. Here are some excerpts from Al-Rashed's column:

It is a certain fact that not all Muslims are terrorists, but it is equally certain, and exceptionally painful, that almost all terrorists are Muslims.

We can't call those who take schoolchildren as hostages our own.

We cannot tolerate in our midst those who abduct journalists, murder civilians, explode buses; we cannot accept them as related to us, whatever the sufferings they claim to justify their criminal deeds. These are the people who have smeared Islam and stained its image.

We cannot clear our names unless we own up to the shameful fact that terrorism has become an Islamic enterprise; an almost exclusive monopoly, implemented by Muslim men and women.

We cannot redeem our extremist youths, who commit all these heinous crimes, without confronting the Sheikhs who thought it ennobling to re-invent themselves as revolutionary ideologues, sending other people's sons and daughters to certain death, while sending their own children to European and American schools and colleges.

The entire piece is worth reading and one hopes it receives a wide audience. It's evidently needed in London where the disease of radical Islam infects simple-minded clerics like Omar Bakri Mohammed. Mohammed, The Sunday Telegraph informs us, supports the targeting of children in terror attacks although he draws fine but ridiculous distinctions, as befits a cleric of the religion of peace. Here are a couple of his observations:

In an interview with The Sunday Telegraph, Mr Mohammed said: "If an Iraqi Muslim carried out an attack like that in Britain, it would be justified because Britain has carried out acts of terrorism in Iraq. The Mujahideen [Chechen rebels] would not have wanted to kill those people, because it is strictly forbidden as a Muslim to deliberately kill women and children. It is the fault of the Russians," he said.

I'm sure this is news to the Israelis whose women and children have been deliberately targeted by pious Muslims for decades now. I'm sure it's news to the survivors of the horror at Beslan who watched their tormentors wire bombs to the basketball rims and laugh at the agonies of their children that this was all a big accident. It must have been an accident, too, that fleeing children were shot in the back. Mr. Mohammed is a moral and mental idiot.

The Telegraph tells us that the cleric made the remarks to promote a "celebratory" conference in London next Saturday to commemorate the third anniversary of the September 11 attacks. Why this man is allowed to walk the streets in London is not clear as of this writing. For that matter, it's not clear that he is any longer walking the streets.

Then we came across this pathetic piece of human detritus who has difficulty taking comfort in the fact that he has found favor with Allah for his participation in the heroic deeds at Beslan.

"Of course I pitied the children, I swear to Allah. I have children myself. I didn't shoot. I swear to Allah," he said. "I don't want to die. I swear to Allah, I want to live."

Anybody feel sorry for him?

Do the Right Thing

Not that the President would ever see, much less heed, Viewpoint's advice, but we think it would be a wonderful thing for him to personally travel to Russia, if there is a memorial service for the slaughtered children of Beslan, and carry with him the sincere and profound sympathies of the American people.

To grieve with them in their devastation, to symbolically wrap our arms around them in a gesture of sympathy and consolation, would not only be the right thing to do, it would bond our two peoples together to an extent that words could never accomplish.

Some have pointed out that Putin is not to be mistaken for a friend of the U.S., that he feels we are partly responsible for Russian weakness and for Islamic antipathy toward Russia itself. This may be nonsense, but be that as it may, a visit from George Bush to identify with the citizens of Beslan in their bereavement would go a long way toward diminishing those kinds of suspicions.

It would be a wonderful expression of compassion and solidarity, and we hope he does it.

Feel free to forward this suggestion to the White House if you agree.

Intelligent Design and the Pursuit of Truth

Stephen Meyer of the Discovery Institute is a philosopher of science who has published a paper on Intelligent Design in the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington. According to The Scientist this provoked Eugenie Scott, the director of the National Center for Science Education, to lament that: "It's too bad the Proceedings published it. The article doesn't fit the type of content of the journal. The bottom line is that this article is substandard science."

The article was peer-reviewed, however, by three reviewers who each hold faculty positions in biological disciplines at prominent universities and research institutions, one at an Ivy League university, one at a major U.S. public university, and another at a major overseas research institute. All found the paper meritorious, warranting publication, according to Richard Sternberg an editor of the Proceedings.

Reaction to the publication of the paper is interesting. Opponents of ID have always been quick to point out that ID theorists have never been able to publish their work in peer-reviewed journals, implying that their work is of poor quality. ID theorists have responded to this charge by arguing that it's very hard to overcome the bias that editors have against any work that challenges the neo-Darwinian orthodoxy. Now a paper has passed muster and rather than welcome the opportunity to engage ideas which may help us move closer to the truth, the Darwinians are in a snit because the journal didn't reject the paper out of hand.

So much for the unfettered pursuit of truth that scientists are supposed to be engaged in.

John Stuart Mill wrote in his masterful work On Liberty, perhaps the finest statement of the advantages of free speech and free inquiry ever written, that when a belief system is protected from criticism and challenge "the creed remains, as it were, outside the mind, incrusting and petrifying it against all other influences addressed to the higher parts of our nature; manifesting its power by not suffering any fresh or living conviction to get in, but itself doing nothing for the mind or heart, except standing sentinel to keep them vacant." Those who are outraged that the Proceedings published Meyer's paper could do worse than spend a couple of hours with On Liberty.

Reflecting on the reaction to his paper, Meyer notes that: "I have received a number of private communications from scientists expressing their agreement or intrigue with the arguments that I develop in my article. Public reaction to the article, however, has been mainly characterized by hysteria, name-calling and personal attack."

Viewpoint wonders if the three peer reviewers have changed their phone numbers yet and if they still even have their jobs. If you're interested in reading Meyer's paper itself go here, but the reader should be aware that it's a technical work.