The Disappearing Relevance of Truth

I sometimes get the feeling that if Viewpoint were devoted purely to bringing Left-wing dopiness to our reader's attention we could work at it full time and still not exhaust the riches that are out there to be mined. The Honolulu Star-Bulletin, for example, reports on Ward Churchill's recent speech at the University of Hawaii. In the speech Churchill finally acknowledged that he's not an Indian after all:

Churchill did address the issue of his ethnicity, admitting that he is not Native American. "Is he an Indian? Do we really care?" he said, quoting those he called his "white Republican" critics. "Let's cut to the chase; I am not," he said. His pedigree is "not important," Churchill said: "The issue is the substance of what is said."

Ah, yes. After years of passing himself off as an Indian, after having secured his chairmanship of Colorado University's ethnic studies department under the pretense that he was an Indian, now it doesn't actually matter whether he is or not. The objective facts are of concern only to those who still think in the categories of an obsolete worldview, one in which the word Truth meant something other than one's own personal preference.

What really matters to Churchill and his epigones is not whether he's an authentic Native-American, but that he's an authentic America-hater. The man has been lying all his life about who he is, and now he's telling people that all that matters is what he says about American tyranny and the condign deaths of the financial wizards in the WTT on 9/11.

There's an important lesson here, I think. Truth just isn't what it used to be. For the Left, especially, truth is purely pragmatic. Whatever works to achieve one's agenda, to gain power for one's group, to advance one's cause, is true. Anything which hinders these is false. For the Leftist a lie is truth if it promotes the destruction of imperialist Amerika. The lie becomes true, and virtuous, because it is useful. The objective facts surrounding the lie are irrelevant. All that matters is whether it promotes the agenda.

It's important to bear this in mind when reading or listening to anything those on the left side of the ideological divide write or say. Their concept of truth and the moral virtue associated with it are not what they are for most of us who suffer from never having attended a major university.

As if to illustrate the point, at the end of the article we read this disturbing passage:

UH student Kirsten Chong said her professors assigned her to listen to the speech. "He was humorous and he certainly didn't pull any punches," she said, adding that because she is native Hawaiian, she agrees with much of what he said.

Ms Chong agrees with Churchill not because what he says is "true" but because she's a native Hawaiian. We may wonder what her ethnic heritage has to do with the truth of Churchill's words, but the answer is it really doesn't matter. He was talking, presumably, about alleged American imperialism, and she's an ethnic Hawaiian so what he said had "purchase" with her. Don't look for a logical connection because none is needed or desirable. His words charmed her, resonated with her on some visceral level, and that's all that's necessary for them to become her "truth" as well as his.

If this is what colleges and universities all across the United States are churning out year after year, Lord help us.

For more on Churchill see here.

Telling it Like it Isn't

The folks at TruthOut.org are a real hoot. One of their favorite tactics for gulling the gullible is to run a headline guaranteed to disturb the unwary and to follow it up with a story that does nothing to warrant the headline. A recent example was a story titled Experts See Military Draft as Inevitable which they borrowed from Delawareonline.com.

The story at the site gives no support at all for the headline. There is much talk among politicos and others about how we need to grow the force, to be sure, but a draft is hardly the only way to accomplish that. The closest the article comes to living up to the headline is this passage:

As a result, McNeil and other anti-war activists such as Sally Milbury-Steen, executive director of the Wilmington-based peace organization Pacem in Terris, said they think a draft is on the horizon.

"I think there's a very good chance of a military draft in the next two years. We have soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq and now they're heating up the rhetoric on Iran. Where else will the soldiers come from?" Milbury-Steen asked.

Whether McNeil and Steen are experts on military matters we can't say, though we have our doubts, but quoting their opinion that they "think" a draft is "on the horizon" and that they "think there's a very good chance" is hardly the same as saying that reinstating the draft is inevitable.

Maybe TruthOut.org should consider changing its name to something a little more precise. Let us suggest TruthOuttheWindow.org.

Degenerate Discourse

The Daily Standard has yet another example of the Left's depraved idea of political discourse. Does this degree of coarseness, tastelessness, and sheer hatred exist anywhere among conservatives? If readers know of an example we'd appreciate being apprised of it. As far as we can tell, however, the Left has had a pretty solid monopoly on degenerate political discourse for at least the last two decades.

For another disgusting example of the same sort of thing see here.

Good News From Afghanistan

An article in the U.K. Telegraph tells of heartening developments in Afghanistan:

One of the Taliban's most senior and charismatic commanders has become a key negotiator as more and more members of the Islamic militia in Afghanistan give up the fight against the Americans. The commander, Abdul Salam, earned the nickname Mullah Rockety because he was so accurate with rocket propelled grenades against Russian troops.

He later joined the Taliban as a corps commander in Jalalabad before being captured by the Americans after September 11. Now he is a supporter of President Hamid Karzai and is tempting diehard Taliban fighters to accept an amnesty offer and reconcile themselves to Afghanistan's first directly elected leader.

"The Taliban has lost its morale," he said, speaking by satellite phone from the heartlands of Zabul province, a Taliban redoubt. "But you have to go and find the Taliban and call to them and ask them directly. If they believe they will be secure and safe they will come down from the mountains."

After the Taliban's three-year struggle against a superior US force, there is growing optimism among the Americans and Afghan government that the end is close. More than 1,000 people have died in violence in the past 18 months, but attacks have tailed off since the guerrillas failed to make good their vow to disrupt the presidential election in October, which saw a huge turnout and was won by Mr Karzai.

Zalmay Khalilzad, the US ambassador to Afghanistan, said yesterday that a group of Taliban militia including senior officials will soon join the Afghan government's peace initiative. "They are in Kabul seeking peace and to boost the reconciliation process," he said, adding that he was hopeful that the Taliban surrender would take place before the parliamentary elections, expected in the summer.

Afghan officials claimed in recent days that four unnamed senior figures from the former Taliban government have accepted the US-backed offer of amnesty extended to them by Mr Karzai's government and will form a new party for the elections. "This step is a great encouragement to other Taliban to end their struggle," said Mullah Rockety. "I have said to the Taliban that now is the time for unity, the time for Afghan brother to stop killing Afghan brother."

He claimed that negotiations are close to success with Mullah Mohammed Ghaus, the former Taliban foreign affairs minister. The amnesty offer is expected to be available to all but Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Taliban leader, and a list of about 150 named Taliban suspected of war crimes and links to al-Qa'eda.

Mullah Khaksar Akhund, once the Taliban deputy interior minister, said: "This [reconciliation] is a very good step for the people of Afghanistan. It is very good that the Karzai government has chosen to negotiate with the Taliban. "The government should not consist of one party, everybody has the right to a part of the government."

The Taliban are giving up in Afghanistan and the Baathists appear to be looking for a way to give up in Iraq. One doesn't wish to get one's hopes too high, but surely this is cause for optimism. We can only wonder why the American MSM haven't seized upon this story. Well, maybe we don't have to wonder.

Thanks for the tip to Captain's Quarters

It's Just as Well

The French are opposed to having their military train Iraqi security forces. No doubt this is just as well. We probably don't want the Iraqis to be trained to fight like the French anyway. Come to think of it, maybe we could persuade the French to train the insurgents.

Making Your Opponent's Case

A recent issue of Discover magazine carried an article by science writer Carl Zimmer on the work of a research team at the University of Michigan which is doing computer simulations of evolution with a program called Avida. Zimmer was rather excited about the implications of the Avida team's work, suggesting that they were on the verge of proving Darwinian evolution. A careful reading of the article, however, fails to give much support to this hope.

Jonathon Wells of the Discovery Institute has written something of a parodic review of the original Zimmer piece titled Darwinists Prove That Computers Work:

For centuries breeders have been modifying existing species by selecting desirable variations, yet this procedure has never produced a new species. Still less has it produced new organs or body plans. In 1859, however, Charles Darwin wrote that variation and selection explain the origin of species and all of life's diversity, and his faithful followers are still looking for evidence that he was right. Frustrated by the obstinate refusal of real organisms to obey Darwin's dictates, researchers at Michigan State University have turned to computers. Using a software program called Avida, they have now succeeded in proving that if a computer is instructed to generate a program capable of doing basic arithmetic it can eventually ... do basic arithmetic!

Naive amateurs might think that Darwin's theory is supposed to be about the evolution of living things, and that neither computers nor computer programs are alive. But Darwin's followers have cleverly overcome this naive objection by re-defining "life" to mean "that which evolves by mutation and selection." Reporting on the Michigan State research in Discover magazine, science writer Carl Zimmer writes: "After more than a decade of development, Avida's digital organisms are now getting close to fulfilling the definition of biological life."

Zimmer backs this up by quoting several of the Michigan State researchers. One of them is philosophy professor Robert Pennock, who said: "More and more of the features that biologists have said were necessary for life we can check off." Apparently mistaking a paper checklist for life itself -- as philosophers sometimes do -- Pennock concluded: "Avida is not a simulation of evolution; it is an instance of it."

Another Michigan State researcher is microbiologist Richard Lenski, who has spent decades trying to produce new species of bacteria through artificial selection. Having failed at that, Lenski is now tempted to get rid of his smelly and uncooperative cultures and turn to Avida: "In an hour I can gather more information than we had been able to gather in years of working on bacteria."

This leads Zimmer to conclude that "the Avida team is putting Darwin to the test in a way that was previously unimaginable." Having moved beyond the old-fashioned prejudice that evolution is about living organisms that are actually alive, the team is now "beginning to shed light on some of the biggest questions of evolution." Those questions include:

(1) How did eyes evolve? According to Zimmer, creationists irrationally claim that eyes show "signs of intelligent design." Avida has "hit a nerve in the antievolution movement" by proving that this is false. All we need is "a patch of photosensitive cells" that has "evolved into a pit." By simply plugging the parameters of this pre-existing eye into a carefully designed computer program, we can prove that eyes originated without the need for design.

(2) Why many species instead of one? If one plant in the forest does a better job of capturing sunlight than all the other species, Darwin's theory might predict that it would eliminate all of its competitors; yet this doesn't happen. Avida solves this problem by proving that a computer programmed to find more than one way to do simple arithmetic can (are you ready?) find more than one way to do simple arithmetic.

(3) Why be nice? The existence of altruism has always been a problem for Darwin's theory of survival of the fittest, because an organism can't enhance its own survival by sacrificing itself for another. According to Zimmer, Charles Ofria (director of the Digital Evolution Laboratory)thinks that it may someday be possible to program digital "organisms" to work together if we can "get them to communicate." The result could be an "altruistic" computer code that can solve "real-world computer problems." Who needs Mother Teresa?

(4) Why sex? Sexual reproduction has also been a big problem for Darwinian evolution, because an organism that can reproduce by simply splitting in two seems more fit than an organism that cannot reproduce without the help of another. The standard explanation is that sex increases fitness by mixing genes that enable organisms to deal with different environments. To test this, Michigan State biologist Dusan Misevic has spent the past few years programming Avida's digital "organisms" to "have sex" by exchanging chunks of computer code. Unfortunately, his efforts have met with such limited success that Misevic concludes: "We must look to other explanations to help explain sex in general." Thank goodness.

(5) Is there life on other planets? Cal Tech digital-evolution researcher Evan Dorn has found a pattern common to life on Earth and "life" in Avida that he thinks may help us to recognize extraterrestrial life. According to Zimmer: "If Dorn is right, discovery of non-DNA life would become a little less spectacular because it would mean that we have already stumbled across it here on Earth -- in East Lansing, Michigan." UFO buffs, however, may want to hold out for something more substantial.

(6) What will life on Earth look like in the future? Zimmer writes that project director Ofria "acknowledges that harmful computer viruses may eventually evolve like his caged digital organisms." Ofria himself said: "Some day it's going to happen, and it's going to be scary. Better to study them now so we know how to deal with them." Like, by writing anti-virus programs?

So the Michigan State researchers have proved that a computer can simulate undesigned eye evolution as long as it starts with a functioning eye and a suitably designed program; that a computer instructed to solve a simple problem can sometimes solve it in more than one way; that computer codes programmed to communicate with each other might someday be able to solve real-world computer problems; that computers don't understand sex; that a computer in East Lansing, Michigan, may become the next Area 51; and that our future may be plagued by scary computer viruses.

These Earth-shaking results, according to Zimmer, "prove evolution works."

It is rumored that the Michigan State team tried to sell its stuff to a video game company but was told that its simulations wouldn't fool an eight-year-old. Not to worry, though: Given the publicly funded group's inestimable contributions to science and human welfare, American taxpayers will probably continue to support this important work.

Discover magazine seems to have over-hyped the results of the Avida research. Even so, attempts to show Darwinian evolution by using intelligently designed computers and software programs always struck us as something of an exercise in self-refutation, anyway. How, after all, does one prove that intelligence wasn't necessary for the development of biological diversity by showing that an intelligently designed software program can provide the instructions for the development of living things ?

Post-Modern Congressman

Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs has the transcript of yet another Democratic lemming plunging over the cliff of sanity. This time the poor deranged soul is a New York congressman named Maurice Hinchey who is as certain as he can be that Karl Rove somehow tricked Dan Rather and CBS into running the phony National Guard document story that has so discredited the liberal media.

When the congressman was asked if he had any evidence for his allegation he replied that he did not. Shouldn't that prevent him from making libelous charges and defaming a man's reputation, he was asked. No, it should not and would not, was the congressman's bold reply.

In other words, evidence doesn't matter. This man feels it in his gut that Rove planted the fraudulent documents, and that's all the evidence he needs to believe it and to level the accusation publicly. Fine folks, these Democrats:

Audience Member: So you have evidence that the papers came from the Bush administration?

Congressman Hinchey: No. I - that's my belief....And I said that. In the very beginning. I said, 'It's my belief that those papers, and that setup, originated with Karl Rove and the White House.'

Audience Member: Don't you think it's irresponsible to make charges like that?

Congressman Hinchey: No I don't. I think it's very important to make charges like that. I think it's very important to combat this kind of activity in every way that you can. And I'm willing - and most people are not - to step forward in situations like this and take risks.

Audience: [Clapping and cheering.]

Congressman Hinchey: I consider that to be part of my job, and I'm gonna continue to do it.

The congressman sees it as his job to spread unsubstantiated allegations accusing people of fraud? We pay congressmen to be malicious gossips? It's depressing to realize that an elected representative of the people could be this obtuse and be cheered for it, no less.

An Unheeded Plea for Sanity

Martin Peretz, editor-in-chief of The New Republic, perhaps the chief journalistic organ of American liberalism, has written a remarkable essay titled Not Much Left. The article is a lament for what he sees as a Left in its death throes and a call to return to some semblance of idealogical sanity. It is not too late to resuscitate the victim, he thinks, but time is rapidly running out. Here are some excerpts from a piece that should be read in its entirety:

It is liberalism that is now bookless and dying. The most penetrating thinker of the old liberalism, the Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, is virtually unknown in the circles within which he once spoke and listened, perhaps because he held a gloomy view of human nature. However gripping his illuminations, however much they may have been validated by history, liberals have no patience for such pessimism.

Ask yourself: Who is a truly influential liberal mind in our culture? Whose ideas challenge and whose ideals inspire? Whose books and articles are read and passed around? There's no one, really. What's left is the laundry list: the catalogue of programs (some dubious, some not) that Republicans aren't funding, and the blogs, with their daily panic dose about how the Bush administration is ruining the country.

So let's admit it: The liberals are themselves uninspired by a vision of the good society--a problem we didn't have 30 years ago. For several years, the liberal agenda has looked and sounded like little more than a bookkeeping exercise. We want to spend more, they less. In the end, the numbers do not clarify; they confuse. Almost no one can explain any principle behind the cost differences.

[A]mong liberals, the usual hustlers are still cheered. Jesse Jackson is still paid off, mostly not to make trouble. The biggest insult to our black fellow citizens was the deference paid to Al Sharpton during the campaign.

This patronizing attitude is proof positive that, as deep as the social and economic gains have been among African Americans, many liberals prefer to maintain their own time-honored patronizing position vis-a-vis "the other," the needy. This is, frankly, in sharp contrast to President Bush, who seems not to be impeded by race difference (and gender difference) in his appointments and among his friends. Maybe it is just a generational thing, and, if it is that, it is also a good thing. But he may be the first president who apparently does not see individual people in racial categories or sex categories. White or black, woman or man, just as long as you're a conservative. That is also an expression of liberation from bias.

The conservatives have their ideas [about improving education], and many of them are good, such as charter schools and even vouchers. But give me a single liberal idea with some currency, even a structural notion, for transforming the elucidation of knowledge and thinking to the young. You can't.

The heavily documented evidence of Fidel Castro's tyranny notwithstanding, he still has a vestigial cachet among us. After all, he has survived Uncle Sam's hostility for more than 45 years. And, no, the Viet Cong didn't really exist. It was at once Ho Chi Minh's pickax and bludgeon in the south. Pose this question at an Upper West Side dinner party: What was worse, Nazism or Communism? Surely, the answer will be Nazism ... because Communism had an ideal of the good. This, despite the fact that communist revolutions and communist regimes murdered ever so many more millions of innocents and transformed the yearning of many idealists for equality into the brutal assertion of evil, a boot stamping on the human face forever.

Peter Beinart has argued, also in these pages ("A Fighting Faith," December 13, 2004), the case for a vast national and international mobilization against Islamic fanaticism and Arab terrorism. It is typologically the same people who wanted the United States to let communism triumph--in postwar Italy and Greece, in mid-cold war France and late-cold war Portugal--who object to U.S. efforts right now in the Middle East. You hear the schadenfreude in their voices--you read it in their words--at our troubles in Iraq. For months, liberals have been peddling one disaster scenario after another, one contradictory fact somehow reinforcing another, hoping now against hope that their gloomy visions will come true.

I happen to believe that they won't. This will not curb the liberal complaint. That complaint is not a matter of circumstance. It is a permanent affliction of the liberal mind. It is not a symptom; it is a condition. And it is a condition related to the desperate hopes liberals have vested in the United Nations. That is their lodestone. But the lodestone does not perform. It is not a magnet for the good. It performs the magic of the wicked. It is corrupt, it is pompous, it is shackled to tyrants and cynics. It does not recognize a genocide when the genocide is seen and understood by all. Liberalism now needs to be liberated from many of its own illusions and delusions. Let's hope we still have the strength.

Will liberals listen to Beinart and Peretz? Will they rebound from their infatuation with big government and class warfare at home and tyrannical regimes abroad? Nah. They just had an opportunity to recover their equilibrium in their recent election for chairman of the party, and they responded by demanding Barabbas. This act alone may well have sealed their fate and doomed liberalism to eternal irrelevance.

Left-Wing Debating Technique

Howard Dean recently engaged foreign policy neo-con Richard Perle in a debate on America's conduct abroad. The exchange was marred by disruptive elements in the audience who booed loudly when Perle spoke and, in the case of one man, even threw his shoe at Perle (see here for a rather low quality video of the episode).

This is, of course, how brown-shirted lefties do politics. No one fears the free dissemination of ideas more than does the Left. No one will do more to prevent ideas from being heard than will the Left. Like totalitarians everywhere, whether Stalinists, Nazis, or the Taliban, they don't trust people with the freedom to make up their own minds because they know that majorities will not sympathize with their bankrupt ideas. Thus views which clash with their own must be suppressed, even if it means making a fool of oneself by throwing one's shoes.

This helps us, perhaps, to understand why leftists seek to impose their will on the public by way of the judiciary rather than through legislatures. In order to have laws and policy enacted through the legislative branch they need to persuade a majority to agree with them. In order to have it enacted by judicial fiat they need only persuade a single judge. It's much easier to find one congenial jurist than to persuade half of a legislature, especially when one is saddled with ideas as impoverished as most of those held by the political Left.

The shoe-tossing incident wasn't the only strange moment on the video linked to above. At one point Dean criticizes the Bush administration for attacking Iraq but leaving Iran and North Korea unscathed. He seems to be implying that we should have attacked Iran and North Korea instead of Iraq. If we had focused our military assets on these two legs of the axis of evil, he seems to be saying, he would have endorsed the effort.

Can this be? Can the hero of the anti-war crowd have only opposed Operation Iraqi Freedom because we had simply chosen the wrong target? Of course not. To conclude that he would have supported the administration if it had taken on Iran instead of Iraq would be to impute to Mr. Dean a level of consistency and integrity that would be misplaced in his case. He's simply trying to score rhetorical points by sounding tough and hoping that his audience is comprised mostly of unthinking lunkheads like the shoe-thrower.

Senator Kennedy Call Your Office

Time magazine reports that secret back channel talks with Baathist insurgents have been going on for some time in Iraq. It may be that they will come to naught, but it may be that the Baathist faction of the Iraqi insurgency is ready to throw in the towel. Most Iraqi insurgents are former Baathists. Abu al Zarqawi's al Qaida insurgents are comprised of a lot of foreigners, and their situation is bound to grow much more precarious if the Baathists reach an accommodation with the Coalition:

WASHINGTON (Feb. 20) - U.S. diplomats and intelligence officers are conducting secret talks with Iraq's Sunni insurgents on ways to end fighting there, Time magazine reported on Sunday, citing Pentagon and other sources. The Bush administration has said it would not negotiate with Iraqi fighters and there is no authorized dialogue, but the U.S. is having "back-channel" communications with certain insurgents, unidentified Washington and Iraqi sources told the magazine.

The magazine cited a secret meeting between two members of the U.S. military and an Iraqi negotiator, a middle-aged former member of Saddam Hussein's regime and the senior representative of what he called the nationalist insurgency.

A U.S. officer tried to get names of other insurgent leaders while the Iraqi complained the new Shi'ite-dominated government was being controlled by Iran, according to an account of the meeting provided by the Iraqi negotiator.

"We are ready to work with you," the Iraqi negotiator said, according to Time. Iraqi insurgent leaders not aligned with al Qaeda ally Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi told the magazine several nationalist groups composed of what the Pentagon calls "former regime elements" have become open to negotiating.

The insurgents said their aim was to establish a political identity that can represent disenfranchised Sunnis.

Things are looking as bad for the credibility and prognostications of the doom and gloomers like Ted Kennedy and John Kerry as they are for the future of the insurgency.

Whom the Gods Would Destroy

PowerLine has been following the Jeff Gannon affair and is amazed at how ugly it has gotten. Remember that what Gannon did was infiltrate the White House press conference by misrepresenting himself as a reporter and lob a belt-high pitch toward the President's wheel house. This simple political prank has opened the spigots of Left-wing venom in the blogosphere.

The Left has dug up every ounce of dirt on the man that they could find and have worked themselves into a frenzy with it. It is as if these people have actually gone mad in their hatred for anyone who would try to make Bush look good and they're determined to tear to pieces anyone who is sympathetic to the president. Here's Power Line's account of recent developments:

I can't count the number of emails we've gotten from Democrats on the Jeff Gannon "story." For the most part, they drip with venom and irrational hatred. I'd like to believe that there is some kind of a respectable left in this country, but where is it? It sure isn't showing up in our email inbox.

This missive, which came in this morning, is typical:

"I guess you 'holier-than-thou moral values conservatives' don't have a problem with gay male prostitutes who pose as conservative reporters as long as they are republican, huh? Hypocrites. If there is a god, you hypocrites are all going to hell. (I don't think God will forgive you, even if you ARE republican.)"

The stupidity of these people, as well as their malice, is mind-boggling. Can anyone discern what this guy, and the dozens if not hundreds of Democrats who have sent more or less identical emails, are talking about? Why are liberals obsessed with the fact that Jeff Gannon was once a gay escort? Beats me. Why does this character think that as conservatives, we are duty-bound to hate gay escorts? Beats me. We've done close to 10,000 posts on this site, and I doubt that we've ever mentioned gay escorts one way or another. Would I want my son to be one? No. Do I think that having once been a gay escort should disqualify Jeff Gannon from becoming a reporter, or entering any other occupation? No. Why do liberals find this so hard to understand? And how on God's green earth does this make us "hypocrites"?

Of course, what we've criticized the left-wing blogs for is posting nude photographs of Gannon. How does the twisted "logic" manifested by these emailers justify that contemptible practice? Once again: beats me. The only conclusion I can come to is that a great many liberals are so consumed by hate that they have gone stark raving mad.

UPDATE: The meltdown continues. Here is the latest from our email inbox: Jeff Gannon and Karl Rove are secretly lovers! I'm not making this up; not only have we heard about this theory via hate mail from lefties, a reader (a sane one, that is) also says this is popping up all over AOL's political discussion sites. It's just about time for the men in white coats to intervene, I think.

To get a deeper sense of the foulness of the sewers these people inhabit check out Cheat Seeking Missiles for the Left's latest bizarre slander. Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad (Euripides).

With Friends Like This

A man who claims to have been a friend of President Bush secretly taped phone conversations with Mr. Bush before his election in 2000 and has now made the tapes public. His reasons seem painfully inadequate to the task of justifying the betrayal of the confidence of a friend.

The conversations revealed on the tapes show Bush to be pretty much the man that most observers deem him to be. He means what he says and isn't easily swayed by political considerations. Nor does he say much that we don't already know. Even so, we expect that the MSM will try to squeeze something out of this material that will discredit Bush either as a politician or as a man. It's hard to see from accounts like this one, however, what that would be, but they will surely try to manufacture something.

The individual who comes out looking tawdry in this business is the man who released the tapes, one Doug Wead, a "friend" and former aid to Bush 41. That he secretly taped private conversations with a friend is bad enough. That he made them public without seeking the President's permission is inexcusable, even if the tapes make the President look good, which in most respects they do. He will especially be admired, in my opinion, for his stand on gays, on the one hand, and gay marriage on the other:

Early on...Mr. Bush appeared most worried that Christian conservatives would object to his determination not to criticize gay people. "I think he wants me to attack homosexuals," Mr. Bush said after meeting James Robison, a prominent evangelical minister in Texas.

But Mr. Bush said he did not intend to change his position. He said he told Mr. Robison: "Look, James, I got to tell you two things right off the bat. One, I'm not going to kick gays, because I'm a sinner. How can I differentiate sin?"

Later, he read aloud an aide's report from a convention of the Christian Coalition, a conservative political group: "This crowd uses gays as the enemy. It's hard to distinguish between fear of the homosexual political agenda and fear of homosexuality, however."

"This is an issue I have been trying to downplay," Mr. Bush said. "I think it is bad for Republicans to be kicking gays." Told that one conservative supporter was saying Mr. Bush had pledged not to hire gay people, Mr. Bush said sharply: "No, what I said was, I wouldn't fire gays."

As early as 1998, however, Mr. Bush had already identified one gay-rights issue where he found common ground with conservative Christians: same-sex marriage. "Gay marriage, I am against that. Special rights, I am against that," Mr. Bush told Mr. Wead, five years before a Massachusetts court brought the issue to national attention.

When asked why he would make the recordings without the knowledge of Mr. Bush, Mr. Wead said he recorded his conversations with the president in part because:

...he thought he might be asked to write a book for the campaign. He also wanted a clear account of any requests Mr. Bush made of him. But he said his main motivation in making the tapes, which he originally intended to be released only after his own death, was to leave the nation a unique record of Mr. Bush.

"I believe that, like him or not, he is going to be a huge historical figure," Mr. Wead said. "If I was on the telephone with Churchill or Gandhi, I would tape record them too."

Why disclose the tapes? "I just felt that the historical point I was making trumped a personal relationship," Mr. Wead said. Asked about consequences, Mr. Wead said, "I'll always be friendly toward him."

Or maybe it was to achieve his own fifteen minutes of fame. It's doubtful that the President is much in need of friends such as Mr. Wead. Friends, after all, don't betray the trust of their friends.

Standing Out From the Crowd

Hillary Clinton seeks to align herself with the tide of history, a move which distinguishes her from most of her colleagues in the Democratic Party:

Sen. Hillary Clinton said that much of Iraq was "functioning quite well" and that the rash of suicide attacks was a sign that the insurgency was failing.

Clinton, a New York Democrat, said insurgents intent on destabilizing the country had failed to disrupt Iraq's landmark Jan. 30 elections.

"The concerted effort to disrupt the elections was an abject failure. Not one polling place was shut down or overrun," Clinton told reporters.

"The fact that you have these suicide bombers now, wreaking such hatred and violence while people pray, is to me, an indication of their failure," Clinton said.

Senator Clinton has seen the future and knows that the success of our efforts in Iraq will destroy the political aspirations of those on the Left who adamantly opposed them and who have offered nothing but carping and cavil since OIF began. Her words are a thumb in the eye of the Kerry/Kennedy faction of her party which has been relentlessly negative and morose about our efforts in the Middle East.

Clinton realizes that the majority of Americans want a positive message, not Kerry-style gloom and doom, and that the way to an American's heart is by making him feel good about what his country is doing. She also sees something that most on the Left either can't see or are too churlish to admit: American policy in Iraq is, as a matter of fact, succeeding.

Bullish on the Economy

David Malpass, an economist with Bear, Stearns, is bullish on the American economy:

Some economy watchers have been looking for a slowdown, but a speed-up is more likely. Right now the U.S. is in the early to middle stages of a long, durable, and relatively fast expansion - one that has positive implications for U.S. and foreign equities (but not for bonds). The growth engines include the dollar's exit from deflationary territory in 2002, low interest rates, the 2003 tax cuts, and the increasing level of U.S. employment.

Except for the third quarter of 2003 when GDP grew at 7.5 percent, annualized quarterly growth has been between 3.3 percent and 4.5 percent for each quarter since the second quarter of 2003. In all likelihood, growth for the fourth quarter of 2004 (soon to be revised) and the first quarter of 2005 will fall within that range.

When the U.S. breaks out of that range, it is more likely to be toward the high side than the low side. The U.S. economy will probably register a 5 percent growth quarter before it turns in a 2.5 percent quarter.

Read Malpass' analysis at National Review Online to discover the reasons for his optimism.

Letting the Consumer Decide

Here's some good news in the battle against pain:

Withdrawn arthritis drug Vioxx may make a comeback on the market after advisers to the Food and Drug Administration narrowly voted it was safe enough to be sold despite an increased risk of heart attack and stroke. The FDA panel concluded Friday that popular painkillers Vioxx, Celebrex and Bextra pose an increased risk for heart problems but should remain on the market because the benefits outweigh the dangers.

The panel strongly favored keeping Celebrex on the market, split over Bextra and favored Vioxx - which is currently not on sale - by a vote of just 17-15. Vioxx is substantially worse than the others, panel chairman Alistair J.J. Wood of Vanderbilt University School of Medicine said. "The data is very compelling," Wood said.

Vioxx is manufactured by Merck and Co. while Celebrex and Bextra are manufactured by Pfizer Inc....It was a stunning turnaround for Vioxx, which was withdrawn in September by Merck after a study showed Vioxx doubled heart attack and stroke risk compared to a placebo.

"Merck has appreciated the opportunity to present data at this advisory committee meeting," the company said in a statement. "We look forward to discussions with the FDA." The FDA usually follows advice from its panels. Officials have said the agency will make final decisions on Celebrex and other pain relievers in a matter of weeks. All three drugs are part of a class called Cox-2 inhibitors.

The panelists suggested restrictions on the drugs such as placing a severe "black box" warning on them, including more patient information with the drugs, restricting which patients could get the drugs and possibly banning direct-to-consumer advertising for the products. The panelists were unanimous in saying the drugs, known as Cox-2 inhibitors, pose risks of heart trouble. Studies of Bextra were limited, but showed a greater risk than Celebrex, the committee noted.

Wood of Vanderbilt University Medical School said it is important to find some way to help the public better understand the nature of risk. "People worry about crime and then drive drunk," he said, indicating they don't really understand relative risks.

Dr. Steven Nissen, medical director of the heart center at the Cleveland Clinic, said "What we really want is to make sure it's available for patients that need it and is unavailable to patients who whom it's inappropriate."

The committees were asked to assess the drugs after Merck pulled Vioxx from the market last fall because of health concerns. Since then questions have been raised about Bextra and Celebrex. The excess risk from Celebrex varied in different studies and the panel didn't seek to determine just how much more hazard a user faces than someone on another drug.

However, the panel was told that no cardiovascular problems were seen at the normal prescription dose of 200 milligrams. Heart trouble began to appear in colon polyp study patients who took 400 milligrams. (emphasis ours)

Earlier in the meeting, Wood said the safety problems reported in connection with Cox-2 inhibitors exceed those of products that have been withdrawn from the market. However, since the side effect involving heart attacks, irregular heartbeat and stroke is a relatively common problem, that makes it harder to pin it to the drugs than if it were a rare side effect.

Dr. Peter S. Kim, president of Merck Research Laboratories, had told the FDA committees earlier that new studies indicated the side effects aren't unique to its product."There are unique benefits to Vioxx," he said. "The science has progressed and we need to take that science into consideration."

While the committees heard evidence that all drugs in the group can increase the risk of heart attacks, irregular heart beat and strokes, it noted that Vioxx seemed to have more such reports than the other drugs. On the other hand, Kim said, Vioxx is the only one of the drugs approved for people with certain allergies and did better at preventing the stomach and intestinal problems often caused by over-the-counter painkillers.

The FDA's decision seems to us to be the right one. Inform consumers of the risks, and then let them decide whether they wish to place themselves at increased hazard or to live in pain.

Peculiar Choice

Does it not strike you as odd that the navy is commissioning an attack submarine named for former president Jimmy Carter, known around the world as something of a pacifist? It does this cartoonist.

It's almost like naming a destroyer after an Amishman. We understand there are plans afoot, by the way, to name the next aircraft carrier the U.S.S. Mother Teresa.

Don't Fix It, End It

Ask yourself one simple question. Why does our government insist on total control of our well being when it comes to the issue of Social Security? Where, in the Constitution of the United States, is it mandated that the Federal Government insure our retirement years? And if, by some stretch of imagination, one could make the claim that it does exist, then our government has failed miserably with regard to their charge.

President Bush speaks of an "ownership society" and at the same time is trying to control and direct that "ownership". It is a fact that conflicting messages from parents can make a child schizophrenic. The mixed message here is "I advocate an 'ownership society'. One where Americans take 'ownership' of their Social Security accounts by privatizing them, but we will control those private accounts." Ok. Just give me another shot of thorazine and I'll be fine...honest.

Presently, employees pay 6.5% of their wages into Social Security up to a cap of $90,000. The standard operating procedure of our government when faced with a failed system like Social Security is to raise the cap so they collect more dollars, raise the age at which individuals are able to collect their benefits so they pay out fewer dollars, and decrease the amount of benefits the individual eventually receives...if they live long enough. That's not my idea of a "fix".

The fact of the matter is that over the years our government has broken many promises to the American people and Social Security is just one of them. Raising the age at which one is eligible to collect what they have paid into all their lives, raising the cap and paying out a lesser amount in benefits are perhaps the most recent examples.

You can be sure you will be hearing more about these "solutions" as our government attempts to "fix" Social Security".

In addition, the Social Security reform plan anticipates the need to borrow $2 Trillion dollars to keep Social Security solvent. Ask yourself who is actually expected to pay off that "loan"? The interest alone could probably go a long way to keeping the plan solvent but the interest doesn't go into the Social Security system. So where does it go? And who pays it?

And given the government's proclivity to conservative estimates when it comes to spending, the cost is likely to go much higher. The "estimate" to fix Medicare was $400 billon dollars. Now, before prescription one has been written under the new, improved, "fixed" Medicare plan, the cost is now estimated at $700 billion to $1 trillion dollars.

I submit that the best way to fix Social Security is to discontinue payments into the system...immediately.

Those who are 65 get full benefits. Those who are 64 get 98% of the benefits, 63 get 96%, etc. Those who are 16 pay nothing into the system and get nothing from it. They have their entire working lives to provide for their own well being when they retire. Responsibility for one's own well being. Now there's a concept.

How can this work? Simple. Instead of individuals paying 6.5% of there wages into the plan each year they get to allocate their new found savings into their own retirement plans. That's "ownership".

In addition, presently, employee Social Security tax contributions must be matched by their employers. Eliminating those contributions would mean a 6.5% windfall to corporate America that goes right to the bottom line. Businesses will be better able to compete in the global economy, thus, more likely to create more jobs hiring more Americans who will be able to contribute to the economy in the form of increased purchasing power as well as increasing revenues of the government through income taxes. Businesses would also have a new-found ability to raise matching contributions to employee IRAs.

Currently, self employed individuals have to pay 13% into Social Security. That savings would also surely be used to fund their personal retirement plans and perhaps stimulate the economy as well.

Once again we see that when government butts out of private individuals lives, things have a much better chance of working just fine.

For more reading on the subject of Social Security, see here, here, and here.

Lastly, my proposal for Social Security just might not be viable. If, as has been alleged, the Social Security fund has been looted by our government and replaced with I.O.U.s in the form of bonds (loans), then there is no money in the system at the present time to pay anyone. You be the judge.

A Natural Ally

Bill Roggio at The Fourth Rail makes a case for cultivating India as an ally in the war on terror. The Russians have demonstrated themselves to be unreliable companions in the fight against Islamism, having foolishly decided to cooperate with Iran in its pursuit of nuclear weapons, and that leaves India as the most logical choice:

Russia has indicated that it will continue with assisting Iran's nuclear program, increasing the likelihood of a nuclear-armed Iran. Between the soft efforts of the European Union 3 (EU-3) to stop the Iranian nuclear program and Russia's encouragement and support, the Mullahs of Iran are sure to continue their quest to become a nuclear power.

The impact of Russia's support of Iran's nuclear program is both far-reaching and short sighted. Russia is indicating that it is separating itself from the West by co-opting the theocratic regime of Iran.

Russia's myopia is clear: they do not recognize the interrelated threat from Islamist states and terrorist groups. The murderers of Beslan ultimately receive support from the Iranians via their tacit support of al Qaeda and Hezbollah. The net of the Islamic terrorist groups is cast far and wide.

In light of Russia's defection, the United States must think long and hard about finding a new and powerful strategic ally in Asia. India is that natural ally.

India is a large, democratic, developing nation strategically positioned in Asia, bordering on Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and close to other nations in Southeast Asia where terrorists operate. Pakistan is a nuclear power that is potentially susceptible to an Islamist takeover. No doubt any operation to secure or destroy Pakistan's nuclear weapons in the event of an Islamist takeover would be conducted in cooperation with India. Bangladesh is becoming a haven for radical Islamists.

India has a longstanding problem with Islamist terrorists, most notably in Kashmir. These Kashmiri terrorists work in close conjunction with al Qaeda and its International Islamist Front. Denying Kashmir as a base of operations for al Qaeda is a strategic goal in Asia.

The Indian people also are supportive of an Indian-American alliance. A recent poll was conducted in India about America, and the results are encouraging. Americans were viewed in a positive light by a large majority of Indians. The main reason cited was terrorism.

The time is right to actively pursue a strategic relationship with India. The loss of Russia as an ally on the war on terror is both disappointing and difficult to offset, but a strong relationship with India can mitigate the damage and improve our odds in fighting against the enemies of civilization.

As terrorists find the room in which they can freely move about shrinking, Pakistan will look increasingly necessary to the Islamists, especially given the prize of access to nuclear weapons. If an American attack on Iran occurs, an Islamist uprising in Pakistan would seem likely as the jihadis seek both refuge and nukes. India would be indispensable in countering such a dangerous move.

The Pirate-ization of Social Security

I just don't get it...or... maybe I do.

President Bush wants to "fix" Social Security by privatizing it, i.e. allowing people to divert a portion of their Social Security contributions into stocks and bonds. If Social Security will be in trouble down the road, such a maneuver would have no impact on the solvency of Social Security whatsoever.

The problem, if it exists, is that the population of the future that will be contributing to Social Security will not be making sufficient contribution to cover the demand of payouts to a retiring baby-boomer generation.

It is a classic bait and switch scam. First, communicate that the plan is in trouble. Then claim that the "fix" is to change the program to guarantee solvency yet the recommended change has absolutely no impact on the problem.

Then we hear from Dr. Alan Greenspan in this article who "embraced President George W. Bush's vision of an "ownership society" on Thursday, saying private accounts could foster feelings of wealth among poor Americans."

Read those words carefully. It's classic Greenspan speak.

How and why does a privatized Social Security account make an "ownership society"? The individual has no more "ownership" of the account than they did of the Social Security account.

Such private plans have already been tried in Britain and Chile among other countries and have resulted in net losses for the participants.

While the plan to privatize Social Security might foster "feelings" of wealth among poor Americans, it won't do anything to actually increase the wealth of poor Americans. The only Americans who's wealth will increase are the fund managers who manage the private accounts and take a cool 1.5% of the total value of the account each year for providing the "service" to those poor Americans for "managing" their private accounts. 1.5% might not seem like much but consider that if the personal account gains 3% for the year, the account managers get 50% of the profit. If the account breaks even or loses money for the year, the account managers still get their percentage. In other words, President Bush's idea of an "ownership society" creates an opportunity for "poor Americans" and every other American (unless you're a congressman who has doesn't have to participate in Social Security because we fund a better retirement plan for them) to pay a previously non-existent load on their retirement account.

In fairness to Dr. Greenspan, the article says:

While he did not specifically endorse Bush's plan and admitted private accounts, in and of themselves, would not improve Social Security's shaky finances.

Yet he goes on about the silly wealth effect:

"These accounts, properly constructed and managed, will create ... a sense of increased wealth on the part of middle and lower-income classes of this society, who have had to struggle with very little capital," Greenspan told the House of Representatives Financial Services Committee.

"While they do have a claim against the Social Security system ... as best I can judge, they don't feel it is personal wealth the way they would with personal accounts," he said as he took questions from the panel.

"It's crucial to our stability that people all have a stake in this system," he said. "I don't perceive that Social Security is conceived that way and I think it is very important to people to have a sense of ownership."

This is cacca doodle. Just ask any AARP member if they don't believe they have ownership of their Social Security benefits and are entitled to them because they've paid into the system all of their working lives.

Ownership is not a promise, it is tangible property in hand. It's about directing ones affairs as they see fit.

If their words of an "ownership society" are sincere, then we should be able to allocate our private accounts in a way we choose. The acid test for the rhetoric of President Bush and Dr. Greenspan is simple...can I allocate the contributions to my private Social Security account to the acquisition of gold?

The quick answer is No. Why? Read this link for an explanation from Dr. Greenspan himself.

So much for an "ownership society".

The Moral <i>Sine Qua Non</i>

Dennis Prager has been writing an excellent series of columns on the indispensibility of Judeo-Christian faith as the only realistic ground for a vigorous moral sense in our culture. This link will take you to his archive where you can open each essay starting with the first (There are five).

In Part I of the series Prager examines the current moral confusion in our culture and explains the need for grounding morality in the God of Judeo-Christian belief:

Chesterton was right. The collapse of Christianity in Europe led to the horrors of Nazism and Communism. And to the moral confusions of the present -- such as the moral equation of the free United States with the totalitarian Soviet Union, or of life-loving Israel with its death-loving enemies.

The oft cited charge that religion has led to more wars and evil than anything else is a widely believed lie. Secular successors to Christianity have slaughtered and enslaved more people than all religions in history (though significant elements within a non-Judeo-Christian religion, Islam, slaughter and enslave today, and if not stopped in Sudan and elsewhere could match Nazism or Communism).

In Part II he argues that without God all morality is purely subjective:

If there is no transcendent source of morality (morality is the word I use for the standard of good and evil), "good" and "evil" are subjective opinions, not objective realities.

In other words, if there is no God who says, "Do not murder" ("Do not kill" is a mistranslation of the Hebrew which, like English, has two words for homicide), murder is not wrong. Many people may think it is wrong, but that is their opinion, not objective moral fact. There are no moral "facts" if there is no God; there are only moral opinions.

Part III is a case against relying upon reason to yield moral guidance. Reason, Prager maintains, is a wholly inadequate ground for morality:

Another example of reason's incapacity to lead to moral conclusions: On virtually any vexing moral question, there is no such a thing as a [missing] purely rational viewpoint. What is the purely rational view on the morality of abortion? Of public nudity? Of the value of an animal versus that of a human? Of the war in Iraq? Of capital punishment for murder? On any of these issues, reason alone can argue effectively for almost any position. Therefore, what determines anyone's moral views are, among other things, his values -- and values are beyond reason alone (though one should be able to rationally explain and defend those values). If you value the human fetus, most abortions are immoral; if you only value the woman's view of the value of the fetus, all abortions are moral.

Part IV addresses the dehumanizing consequence of a thoroughly secular ethics. In a Godless cosmos man is nothing but a flesh and bone machine, a herd animal different from others of the kind only in being relatively more intelligent:

The second reason that the breakdown of Judeo-Christian values leads to a diminution of human worth is that if man was not created by God, the human being is mere stellar dust -- and will come to be regarded as such. Moreover, people are merely the products of random chance, no more designed than a sand grain formed by water erosion. That is what the creationism-evolution battle is ultimately about -- human worth. One does not have to agree with creationists or deny all evolutionary evidence to understand that the way evolution is taught, man is rendered a pointless product of random forces -- unworthy of being saved before one's hamster.

Part V looks at what Judaism and Christianity have in common and argues that together they are chiefly responsible for America's greatness:

Both religions are based on the Old Testament, which Judaism and Christianity hold to be divine or divinely inspired. Clearly, then, they will share values -- unless one holds that the New Testament rejects Old Testament values. But that is untenable since, in addition to Christianity believing the Old Testament is God's word, Jesus was a believing and practicing Jew. He would not practice a religion whose values or Bible he rejected.

One way to understand Judeo-Christian values, therefore, is as values that emanate from a Judeo-based Christianity. Christians have always had the choice to reject the Jewish roots of Christianity (which, when done, enabled Christian anti-Semitism), to ignore those roots, or to celebrate and embrace them. American Christians have, more than any other Christian group, opted for the latter.

One point that bears elaboration, perhaps, is that if there is no God then the categories of moral Good and Evil are empty. Unless there is a God to provide us with moral sanction then anything we do, as Nietzsche is at pains to convince us, is neither good nor evil. It just is. A wolf kills a young elk or our cat torments a mouse before thrashing it to death. Neither behavior is evil. There is no crime committed nor any offense against morality. Likewise, if we are just animals, when one man slays another there is no evil in the deed. There are only acts of which we approve and acts of which we disapprove, but our disapproval is no reason why someone should refrain from doing them. Nor does our disapproval make them wrong.

If there is no God then there is no reason why those who have the ability or the power should not impose their will upon the rest. A Godless world is a world of might makes right and there is no escaping it. That we haven't devolved into that hellish circle of the Inferno yet is due only to the fact that there is still a significant Judeo-Christian presence in this country and because those who have embraced secularism simply don't think the moral implications of their convictions through to their logical endpoints. If, as time goes by, secularism continues its advances then this state of affairs will inevitably and gradually deteriorate, and the weak will fall prey to the strong. We will see history reprise the Europe of the twentieth century.

Dennis Prager has given us an outstanding series of articles, and we urge all of our readers to take the time to read his columns with close attention. His message is as important as any message could be.