Real Heroism

The next time you hear someone talk about celebrity or sports "heroes" tell them about Yanis Kanidis, a 74 year old phys.ed. teacher in Beslan, Russia. Here's his story:

In an act of unlimited devotion and dedication, to the bitter end, an elderly teacher insisted on remaining with his students. He protected them, bandaged their wounds, and with his death, saved their lives.

Children who escaped from the school told of how they owed their lives to elderly Yanis (Ivan) Kanidis, age 74 - a man of Greek origin who worked as a gym teacher at the school. He was among the hundreds of teachers, students and parents taken hostage last week when Chechen rebels invaded the large school.

On Thursday, in what was an unusual humanitarian move in the midst of the horror, the terrorists agreed to allow a group of women and babies to leave the building. The commander of the terrorist squad, saw Kanidis - a sickly elderly man - and offered to allow him to walk free as well.

But Kanidis refused. "I will stay with my students till the end," the teacher insisted.

"Whatever you say," said the terrorist, dismissing him with a wave of the hand.

"He was just like Janus Korzchak, who accompanied his pupils to Auschwitz," said one of the students who was saved.

Like Korzchak, Kanidis didn't just accompany his students, he guarded their lives. On Friday, when the children began to lose consciousness from the stuffy air and their thirst, Yanis went to the terrorists. "You have to give them something to drink, at least to the smallest children," he insisted angrily. One of the terrorists hit him with the butt of his rifle, but the teacher continued to yell: "How dare you!? You claim you are people of the Kafkaz region, but here in the Kafkaz even a dog wouldn't turn down the request of an old man!"

His efforts bore fruit. The terrorist allowed the teacher to wet one of the bibs of the children and pass it around to dampen the mouths of the little ones who were choking from thirst.

The hostages who escaped told how the teacher repeatedly risked his own life in order to save the children. He moved explosive devices that the terrorists had placed near the young students, and tried to prevent them from detonating others. When the first bomb exploded next to the windows of the school, parents and children began to run out. The terrorists, trying to prevent their escape, threw a grenade at them. The elderly teacher ran to the grenade to prevent it from exploding on the children. One of the terrorists shot at the teacher to try to stop him and Yanis was wounded in the shoulder - but didn't give up. With the last of his strength, he continued to run, jumped on the grenade, covering it with his body. The grenade exploded, and the body of the teacher absorbed the explosion, protecting the children around him from injury.

Men like Yanis Kanidis make the cultural icons of our day seem small indeed.

Down the Drain

Jonah Goldberg at National Review Online has some pithy remarks about the 60 Minutes scandal and the sudden implosion of Dan Rather's career. Here's a paragraph or so:

Dan Rather considers it outrageous and offensive that anyone would question the judgment that led to this situation. He defends what appear to be very shoddy methods (reading letters over the phone to sources, asking sources not to talk to the press, etc.), as if only a "partisan" or a fool would question them.

Well, if you agree with Rather, maybe you should give just a smidgen more slack to George W. Bush about the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Bush's sources were more solid by several orders of magnitude than Rather's, and yet it is "obvious" to so many that Bush lied while Rather deserves the benefit of the doubt. George W. Bush had the head of the CIA, the intelligence agencies of all our allies, the Clinton administration, the United Nations, and most of the establishment media generally backing his understanding of the threat from Iraq. Dan Rather had a couple shoddy Xeroxes - not all of which were examined thoroughly or at all. He interviewed a partisan - Ben Barnes - a huge backer of Kerry whose story has changed several times. But because many who hate Bush believe he lied, they are willing to believe any lies that confirm what they already know to be true.

Good stuff. As a stunned Dan Rather gazes at his credibility and his career swirling down the drain one wonders who's next? Will we ever know who actually composed the frauds? Whoever it was could be looking at serious criminal charges, since forging military documents is a felony. No doubt there is somewhere a political hack who will be sleeping fitfully tonight. Defaming the president is not as much fun, nor as easy, as these folks apparently thought it would be.

Po-Mo Twaddle

Now that CBS's attempts to salvage its credibility seem to have arrived at an ignominious denouement the libs are going to have to try to rescue something from this burning building. Here's Viewpoint's prediction:

Slipping into post-modern jargon the liberals' talking point will be that "even though the documents themselves may not be genuine, they nevertheless reveal a deeper truth about George Bush that needs to be proclaimed. These documents, flawed as they are, testify to the deep inadequacies of the man who seeks another four years as president. This is the truth that emerges from a proper deconstruction of the text of these prescient memos. Who authored them isn't important. When they were written doesn't matter. What matters is that they speak to us in their honesty. They have purchase with those who are open and sensitive to the truth when they hear it. The integrity of their contents is manifest and all Americans should thank CBS and Dan Rather for calling them to our attention."

It won't be long until we start hearing something like this clap-trap from otherwise intelligent people. Other than blaming the whole scam on the omnipotent and diabolical Karl Rove, it's really the only tactic remaining to the left, unless it intends to leave Rather, who's been a good soldier over the years, twisting despondently in the wind.

You heard it here first.

One Iraqi's Plea

This piece by Ali at Iraq The Model should be read by everyone who thinks that all we're accomplishing by our presence in Iraq is spawning more terrorists. He starts off by discussing his theory as to why suicide bombings in Iraq decline while al Sadr is fighting and pick up when he's not, and then predicts that attacks against Americans in Iraq will increase as we get closer to our election but that attacks against American civilians will diminish as the elections approach. His reason is that mounting losses of troops will help Kerry, but terrorist attacks against civilians will help Bush. The insurgents and their allies want Kerry to win and so will not do anything that might unite the nation behind Bush.

Then in his last three paragraphs Ali makes a poignant plea in less than perfect English for America to remain steadfast and reminds us of what is at stake:

Most people supporting the resistance think that if Kerry wins he will pull the troops out of Iraq, or that's what they wish. They know that the decisive factor in this is the American's casualty, and that shifts their priorities now. They are betting that if they can inflict more losses among American soldiers, American public opinion will favor getting out of Iraq soon and will vote for John Kerry because they (Americans) probably think that too, and that with such public pressure he would find himself more committed to promises he never even made, but gave some impression that he's at least considering it. The assumption that Americans would pull out of Iraq if they receive heavy casualties is an old one that had stopped looking possible for quite a time, but now with the strong coverage by the media for the losses in Iraq and with the figure 1000 coming up every now and then together with unclear messages from the Kerry camp, the theory has been revived. The bottom line is that with Kerry they think they have a chance but with Bush there is none.

I don't want to predict anything here but I want to say that if America decided to get out of Iraq before the job is finished, that will be not only disastrous but will be (in my opinion) the worst thing America ever did. Freeing Iraq (again in my opinion) was the best thing America ever did. It gave oppressed people everywhere a hope and a belief that the mightiest power on earth, the symbols of freedom is on their side and that it will help them in one way or another to get their freedom. Their misery has stopped looking eternal. Retreating now will prove some people's theory that America is an imperialistic power that only care for its interests, and although there's nothing wrong with caring about one's own interests, most Iraqis and millions of oppressed people in Darfur, Iran, Syria...etc. like to think more than that of America. Keeping the course will turn this thought into a firm belief.

We understand perfectly that sacrificing lives and hard earned money for the sake of others (although there IS a personal interest here but it maybe not so clear) is a very difficult thing to do, and we know that it's too much to ask, but tens of Millions of oppressed people around the world with brutal sadistic regimes laying their heave boots on their chests preventing them from even breathing freely, not to mention speaking out or doing something about it, all these people have no one else but you, Americans, to turn to. You are our/their only hope.

God help us if we let them down.

Pride Goeth Before a Fall

This essay at Power Line on the fallout from the apparent attempt by CBS to discredit President Bush by proffering amateurish forgeries as legitimate documents indicting his National Guard service is worth reproducing here in full:

Before September 11, important aspects of our security arrangements were based on the assumption that people, even terrorists, want to live. For example, airlines followed the rule that if a passenger's bags were checked but the person failed to appear for the flight, his bags would be removed from the airplane. The idea was that a bomb could have been planted in the luggage. But as long as the passenger was on the airplane, it was assumed that his bags were safe, since no one -- it was thought -- would blow up an airplane with himself on it. After September 11, security arrangements were changed to take into account the new reality (or newly recognized reality) of the suicide bomber.

When he defended CBS's publication of forged documents, Dan Rather spoke of the "checks and balances" that ensure the reliability of news coming from CBS, as opposed to news and commentary from the blogosphere. What are those checks and balances? Ultimately, the main check on the danger that a powerful media giant like CBS might abuse its position of trust by deliberately propagating falsehoods is the assumption that the network values its reputation for accuracy and trustworthiness. In the past, most people have assumed that while broadcast networks, wire services like the Associated Press, and newspapers will occasionally make mistakes, and will certainly spin the news consistent with their political biases, concern for their reputation in the marketplace, and even more among their peers, would prevent them from spreading outright falsehoods.

In the wake of the CBS scandal, that assumption must be reevaluated.

I don't know how the forged document scandal will ultimately play out. I don't know whether CBS will be forced to acknowledge that the documents are fakes, or whether Dan Rather will resign in disgrace. But I do know this: everyone who cares already knows that the "Killian memos" are low-quality forgeries.

Very few Americans are news junkies. Most people will probably never know about the CBS scandal, or will never have enough information to form a judgment about it. For that matter, most don't care. But within the news business, and inside the relatively small slice of the American population where sophisticated consumers of the news dwell, everyone knows, already, that Dan Rather and CBS News tried to influence the November election by telling lies and publishing forged documents. CBS has been disgraced among its peers.

The fact that CBS was willing to barter away what remained of its reputation in exchange for an opportunity to help the John Kerry campaign requires us to re-examine our assumptions about the mainstream media, just as the emergence of the suicide bomber required us to re-examine certain assumptions about security. We never thought that a vast, powerful broadcast network would destroy its own reputation for political gain. Now we know that it can happen.

And it isn't just CBS News. The Associated Press has, for most of its history, been regarded as a neutral, factual reporting service whose dispatches--reporting, not commentary--could be trusted, and were trusted, by thousands of newspapers. That, too, has changed. We have chronicled the astonishing story of the West Allis, Wisconsin Bush rally, where President Bush announced that he had just received word of President Clinton's hospitalization. President Bush said that his thoughts and prayers were with the Clinton family, and the audience of Republicans cheered enthusiastically.

But that isn't what the Associated Press reported. AP reporter Scott Lindlaw, in an article carrying the by-line of Tom Hays, fabricated a lie. The AP reported that Bush's "audience of thousands booed. Bush did nothing to stop them." That lie was disseminated to thousands of newspapers and television stations, and while a revised version of the story was later issued, the AP has never apologized, explained what happened, or disciplined either Lindlaw or Hays. What is remarkable, under pre-2004 assumptions, is that the lie was so easily uncovered and proved. Thousands of people were present at the rally, including many reporters. Audiotapes and videotapes of the rally were easily available. They showed, beyond a doubt, that the AP's story was a lie. No one booed. Yet Lindlaw, Hays and the AP retailed the lie because they thought it would help John Kerry. Scott Lindlaw has been quoted as saying, "My mission is to see that Bush is not re-elected." He and his employer gladly sacrificed their reputation for accuracy to achieve that goal.

So we have entered a new era. We now know that our richest and most powerful news organizations are willing to blow themselves up - to destroy their own credibility, once considered a news organization's most precious possession - to achieve a political goal. The landscape will never look quite the same again. Those of us who still value truth must look at the mainstream media in a new, more skeptical and critical way, taking nothing for granted. Because, like suicide bombers, the mainstream news organs will go farther to achieve their political goals than we ever imagined.

CBS wanted so desperately for those documents to be genuine that they suppressed their doubts and ran with them. Now it has all blown up in their faces, torn away the pretense of journalistic "standards", and has ruined reputations that took decades to build. It's ironic that President Nixon's nemesis, Dan Rather, is perhaps the biggest casualty. The irony resides in the fact that Nixon was disgraced mostly because he would not come clean to the American public over Watergate. In his hubris he stone-walled investigations until finally his credibility lay in tatters on the Oval Office floor, cut to ribbons by, among others, Dan Rather. Now Mr. Rather, no stranger to hubris himself, seems to have stumbled into the same deadly pit and may, perhaps, suffer a similar fate. Pride indeed goeth before a fall.

Straining Gnats

Nina Shea adds some perspective to the American response to the Dharfur genocide in a fine piece at National Review Online. Here is a portion of her essay:

On Thursday, the United States made human-rights history. Secretary of State Colin Powell, testifying to a packed Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing room on Thursday morning, reported that in July the United States had launched an investigation into charges that the Arab Islamist government of Sudan and its proxy militia of Arab tribesmen, known as the Janjaweed, were responsible for carrying out atrocities against the three African tribes of Sudan's western province of Darfur. He said that despite denials and attempts to obfuscate by Khartoum, the investigative team found "a consistent and widespread pattern of atrocities (killings, rapes and burning of villages)" against the non-Arab villagers and that 74 percent of those victims interviewed reported that the Sudanese military forces were involved in the attacks. Powell's next statement was breathtaking: "[T]he evidence leads us to the conclusion that genocide has occurred and may still be occurring in Darfur. We believe the evidence corroborates the specific intent of the perpetrators to destroy 'a group in whole or in part'. This intent may be inferred from their deliberate conduct. We believe the other elements of the convention have been met as well."

The significance of the administration's action cannot be overstated. This marks the first instance that a party to the 1948 Genocide Convention, the most fundamental of all human-rights treaties, has formally charged another party with "genocide" and invoked the convention's provisions while genocide has been in progress. In the past, the convention and the term "genocide" have been applied only retroactively by state parties, long after the violence ended. Former President Bill Clinton underscored this recently when he apologized for his administration's inaction to stop the 1994 genocidal massacres of the Tutsis in Rwanda.

Moreover, in taking efforts to stop the genocide, the administration is going well beyond what is required under international law. The convention does not require parties to take any specific action other than to end their own responsibility for the human destruction. Nevertheless, the United States is taking the lead in trying to rally the international community to exert pressure on Khartoum, all the while continuing America's unilateral economic sanctions.

The United States is also providing some 80 percent of the humanitarian aid and other support to keep Darfur's 1.5 million refugees alive. While many other nations have so far failed to make good on their pledges, the U.S. is exceeding its aid commitment.

The entire article bears careful reading. As I read through it one question that came to mind was, Where are all the millions of protestors who were so concerned about the welfare of Iraqis prior to Operation Iraqi Freedom? Why are they not overflowing the streets of European and American cities demanding an immediate end to the genocide? Is it because the victims are black? Is it because they're Christians? Or is it because the left doesn't really care about oppressed people at all unless they can be used as a cudgel to beat the United States over the head with? Take your pick.

Then a second question occured to me as I reflected upon this awful situation. If it should require that we insert military forces into Sudan to bring about an end to the slaughter being perpetrated by the Islamic government in Khartoum, would the left object? Or would they argue, like they did before, during, and since OIF, that we have no business jeopardizing the lives of innocent civilians in order to save them from being murdered by their oppressors? Elie Wiesel, in giving his acceptance speech for the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize, said this:

"Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Whenever men or women are persecuted because of their race, religion or political views, that place must - at that moment - become the center of the universe."

If only the New York Times and the Washington Post read Wiesel.

A final question: Will Bush get credit for this historic demarche from his leftist critics in the MSM? The answer here is easy: Probably not. The liberal elite media is following their marching orders from the DNC and has become riveted, like a cat fixated on a moth fluttering around the ceiling, on Bush's National Guard service of thirty three years ago. They can't allow themselves to be distracted by the extraordinary events taking place in the world today as long as there's a chance that they'll be able to discredit Bush with his supposed National Guard derelictions. These are the sort of people Christ referred to when he spoke of straining out gnats while swallowing camels.

Confronted with a man who has accomplished the extraordinary feat of liberating 50 million people while simultaneously waging a global war on terror and pulling us through an inherited recession that was pushed even deeper by the devastating blows of 9/11, the media carps not about his current deficiencies, whatever they may be, but instead they obsess over whether he showed up for every one of his weekend Guard meetings more than three decades ago. These are not serious people, some of them may even be teetering on the brink of psychological pathology, but in any event they are certainly not the sort we want advising us on matters of great moment in the years ahead.

Christian Existentialism

Jean Paul Sartre writes in Existentialism is a Humanism that "Existentialism is nothing else but an attempt to draw the full conclusion from a consistently atheistic position." For Sartre and like-minded thinkers existentialism is necessarily atheistic and there is much that follows from this, not the least of which is the conclusion that man is forlorn, abandoned, alone in a world which is incompatible with his deepest yearnings and needs. In a word, the world is absurd and life is meaningless. I've discussed this consequence in several places on Viewpoint (see, for instance, In the Absence of God and Grounding Human Rights).

There is another strand of existentialist thinking, however, which goes back to Kierkegaard, Pascal, even to Augustine, emerging out of the Christian worldview of these thinkers.

Like the atheistic existentialism of Nietzsche, Sartre, and others, it places a strong emphasis on man's subjectivity, that is upon his feelings, intuitions, emotions, and experience. Christian existentialism, no less than the atheistic variety, elevates the heart over the head, the realm of interior experience over the coldly rational, objective, and logical. Like his atheistic colleagues the Christian existentialist considers the preeminence of the subjective to be the essential characteristic of an existential approach to life, but in contrast to his skeptical friends he couples subjectivity to a belief in God. Indeed, belief in God is seen as the paramount example of the triumph of the subjective over the dehumanization of the purely rational approach to life and the world.

In his book The Universe Next Door James Sire discusses some ways in which Christians who tend toward the existential in their thinking differ from Christians who do not. For Sire, Christian existentialism focuses on the personal and the relational. The non-existential is more impersonal and more oriented toward the rational. Sire applies this distinction to a number of aspects of Christian belief and compares the two approaches. Using Sire's work as a springboard but not confining ourselves to it, let's consider the following examples of the difference between what Sire calls depersonalized Christianity and personalized, or existential, Christianity as applied to various doctrines of faith and practice:

Sin: The depersonalized view sees sin as a breaking of a rule, like one of the commandments, whereas in the personalized, or existential view, sin is seen as a betrayal of a relationship. Sin is anything which harms, or would harm, oneself or another, and, as such, it damages and subverts our relationships to our fellow men and certainly to God, who requires of us that we love each other.

Repentance: The depersonalized view sees repentance as an admission of guilt, whereas the personalized approach sees it as a deep sorrow or anguish over our unfaithfulness to God or our betrayal of our obligation to love our fellow man.

Forgiveness: In the depersonalized view one is forgiven in much the same way that one is absolved of a traffic ticket, i.e. by simply paying the fine. One breaks the rule, is fined, and that's the end of it. In the existential view forgiveness is a restoration of a ruptured relationship that can only be accomplished with tears and embraces, whether literal or metaphorical.

Faith: For the non-existential Christian, faith is merely giving one's assent to a set of propositions, as in the recitation of the Apostle's Creed. For the existential Christian, however, faith is committing oneself to a person in a love-relationship. The difference between the two views is like the difference between signing a contract and falling in love. It's living moment by moment with the deep angst that comes from knowing that what one loves could be lost, that what one believes can never be made sure by reason, it can only be certified by the heart.

Christian Life: In the non-existential approach the Christian life is a matter of observing certain rules of behavior. For the Christian existentialist it is living for, and with, another person (i.e. God). It is immersing oneself in the other to the extent that the other is the entire purpose and focus of one's being. The difference between the two views is like the difference between being in a business partnership and being involved in a passionate romance.

The Authority of the Bible: In the existential approach the meaning of Scripture is determined by how it speaks to the individual reader. The significance of the text is different for different people, and all meanings or interpretations are equally valid because they're all subjectively discerned. In a non-existential approach to the Bible, the text is seen to have an objective meaning, or meanings, quite apart from any subjective impression it makes on the reader. In other words, the meaning of the text is to be discovered through proper hermeneutics and not simply by consulting our feelings and intuitions.

Many Christians are wary of existentialism because of the overt atheism of its twentieth century practitioners and because of what they see as a rather "squishy" view of Biblical interpretation, but there is much else about this view of life which resonates with the profound human desire for union with God. Augustine wrote that: "Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless till they find their rest in thee." Christian existentialism is a response to this deep yearning of the heart for a relationship with the God who has created us for himself.

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.