Denying the Existence of Truth

David Yeagley at FrontPage Mag.com sums up a recent debate between former Marxist radical turned conservative David Horowitz and the notorious University of Colorado professor, Ward Churchill. The debate was on the role of the instructor in the university classroom, and this passage in the summary caught our eye:

Horowitz believes that a professor should teach subjects in which he has been trained, and in which he has expertise. A professor should teach the truth, and teach "about" the subject, objectively, rather than advocate personal opinions or conclusions. The classroom is not a place for the professor's political advocacy or recruitment of followers. The classroom is not for indoctrination, nor for the preaching of ideological prejudice.

Ward Churchill believes it is impossible for the professor not to advocate his own opinions. Unavoidably, he must "profess." Moreover, Churchill denounces the idea that there is such a thing as truth, about any subject. Truth is merely the opinion of those in power, and such opinion has never been kept out of the classrooms of America. The classroom is a place of advocacy.

If Churchill really believes that there is no truth about any subject, what does he think is the point of advocacy? In the absence of truth, advocacy of one's political opinions is like advocacy of one's preferences in ice cream. According to his own assumptions nothing Churchill says is really true, so all he's doing with his advocacy is telling his students something about his own mental states. Why does he think that anyone should care about that? Indeed, if there is no truth about anything then Churchill's claim that there is no truth is self-refuting.

And this is the quality of thinking that the taxpayers of Colorado pay the guy $100,000 a year to dispense to their sons and daughters.

The Krauthammer/Viewpoint Solution

Charles Krauthammer has evidently been reading Viewpoint. Okay, maybe not, but his solution to the illegal alien problem sounds pretty much like what we advocate, for instance, here.

Forget employer sanctions. Build a barrier. It is simply ridiculous to say it cannot be done. If one fence won't do it, then build a second 100 yards behind it. And then build a road for patrols in between. Put cameras. Put sensors. Put out lots of patrols.

Can't be done? Israel's border fence has been extraordinarily successful in keeping out potential infiltrators who are far more determined than mere immigrants. Nor have very many North Koreans crossed into South Korea in the last 50 years.

Of course it will be ugly. So are the concrete barriers to keep truck bombs from driving into the White House. But sometimes necessity trumps aesthetics. And don't tell me that this is our Berlin Wall. When you build a wall to keep people in, that's a prison. When you build a wall to keep people out, that's an expression of sovereignty. The fence around your house is a perfectly legitimate expression of your desire to control who comes into your house to eat, sleep and use the facilities. It imprisons no one.

Of course, no barrier will be foolproof. But it doesn't have to be. It simply has to reduce the river of illegals to a manageable trickle. Once we can do that, everything becomes possible -- most especially, humanizing the situation of our 11 million existing illegals.

If the government can demonstrate that it can control future immigration, there will be infinitely less resistance to dealing generously with the residual population of past immigration. And, as Mickey Kaus and others have suggested, that may require that the two provisions be sequenced. First, radical border control by physical means. Then shortly thereafter, radical legalization of those already here. To achieve national consensus on legalization, we will need a short lag time between the two provisions, perhaps a year or two, to demonstrate to the skeptics that the current wave of illegals is indeed the last.

This is no time for mushy compromise. A solution requires two acts of national will: the ugly act of putting up a fence and the supremely generous act of absorbing as ultimately full citizens those who broke our laws to come to America.

It boggles the mind that the senate attempt to craft a compromise bill on how to handle illegals leaves completely untouched the problem of stopping the influx in the first place. When people are pouring into your house uninvited the first step in dealing with them is to lock the door so that the ones which are already in can be limited to a more manageable number and the ones still outside remain outside. The august senators in their infinite wisdom think the best way to stem the flow of hungry visitors into our home is to throw open the refrigerator door and stand out of the way.

Absolutes For Me But Not For Thee

Andrew Sullivan opposes fundamentalisms of all kinds, including Christian fundamentalism, presumably because fundamentalists tend to be absolutists. This is a mindset Andrew finds repugnant:

There is an absolutist, fundamentalist, authoritarian tendency in all monotheisms. Right now, that tendency is ascendant in all the major faiths - but it has become particularly dangerous in Islam. The problem is not religion as such, or faith as such. The problem is fundamentalism, and its certitude. There is another kind of religious faith - more rooted in doubt, more subject to humility in front of the ineffability of an ultimately unknowable God, less abstract, more sacramental. That kind of religion, which sees the different faith of others as an invitation rather than a threat, is compatible with liberal democracy. And it's that faith we have to recover and reinvigorate if we are to combat the excesses of both Islamic and Christian fundamentalists, and their political ambitions.

Very well, certitude is bad, humility is good. No one should ever believe that they are right absolutely and that anything or anyone is always wrong absolutely. But then how's this for absolutism?

In this inevitably emotional debate, perhaps the greatest failing of those of us who have been arguing against all torture and "cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment" of detainees is that we have assumed the reasons why torture is always a moral evil, rather than explicating them. But, when you fully ponder them, I think it becomes clearer why ... torture, in any form and under any circumstances, is both antithetical to the most basic principles for which the United States stands and a profound impediment to winning a wider war that we cannot afford to lose.

A little side trip to the link reveals that these words were written by ... Andrew Sullivan. Torture is absolutely wrong, Andrew avers. Evidently, whether absolutism is an evil depends upon whose absolutes are under scrutiny. Absolutism is bad when it's a phenomenon displayed by Christian conservatives, but it's entirely appropriate, and indeed morally exalted, when the absolutes are such as sophisticates like Andrew embrace.

South Park

Michelle Malkin might become a South Park fan. Here's why. Heck, after reading this we might tune in, too.

Numbers

Belmont Club links us to this site where we read the following:

81, 76, 50, 49, 43, 25

What are these numbers? This week's Powerball winners? A safe deposit combo? New numbers to torment those poor b*stards stranded on the island in Lost?

No, they're the number of troops that have died in hostile actions in Iraq for each of the past six months. That last number represents the lowest level of troop deaths in a year, and second-lowest in two years.

But it must be that the insurgency is turning their assault on Iraqi military and police, who are increasingly taking up the slack, right?

215, 176, 193, 189, 158, 193 (and the three months before that were 304, 282, 233)

Okay, okay, so insurgents aren't engaging us; they're turning increasingly to car bombs then, right?

70, 70, 70, 68, 30, 30

Civilians then. They're just garroting poor civilians.

527, 826, 532, 732, 950, 446 (upper bound, two months before that were 2489 and 1129).

My point here is not that everything is peachy in Iraq. It isn't. My point isn't that the insurgency is in its last throes. It isn't. My point here isn't even to argue that we're winning. I'm at best cautiously-pessimistic-to-neutral about how things are going there.

My only point is that, at the very least, people who complain that good news coming out of Iraq gets shuttered by the press aren't crazy. I'm a regular denizen of the right-leaning blogosphere (though I spend about half my daily routine with left-leaning sites), and I was unequivically shocked when I saw this. Completely the opposite of what I'd expected. My non-scientific sample of three friends, all of whom are considerably more bullish about the prospects in Iraq than I am, revealed three people similarly surprised by these numbers. I'm guessing if I polled people on this site regarding the direction those numbers were going, and people didn't answer strategically (eg figure I was up to something from the question words), no one would predict any of those numbers were on a downward trend, or were even flat.

Again, my point isn't that we're winning. My only point is that if the data you've received left you completely surprised by these numbers, what does that really say about the completeness of the data you've received?

Incidentally, these statistics are compiled by the Brookings Institution, a liberal think tank.

Wretchard at Belmont Club quotes an Armed Forces Journal article entitled "It will be better when you leave" which says that it has become so comparatively quiet in former Iraqi hotspots that the troops are wondering what to make of it:

There are more than 130,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, 23,000 of whom are Marines. But even in the most insurgent-infested places in Iraq, the troops aren't doing much. The Fallujahs and Mosuls and Tall Afars are history. The insurgents seem to be lying low. They're not coming out in great numbers to confront U.S. troops. They're not mounting as many effective IED attacks.

Sometimes it seems the American forces are searching for things to do - going on patrol for the sake of going on patrol. At some point that patrol is going to hit an IED - it's a numbers game. But it's unlikely that a patrol was specifically targeted. It's just bad luck.

Could the insurgents be executing a similar strategy to the Taliban in Afghanistan? As Sean D. Naylor reported in the February issue of AFJ, Special Forces officers who work closely with tribal militias in Afghanistan's most remote provinces warn that the former regime that protected al-Qaida is lying in wait, marshalling resources for the day America leaves.

If this is so then the "Last Helicopter" party, the Murthas, Pelosis, and Deans, really are "useful idiots." They're unwitting terrorism enablers whose policy prescription for withdrawal would facilitate and accomodate the Taliban/al-Qaeda strategy of waiting us out. If the Defeatocrats have their way, the enemies of peace and freedom won't have to wait long before the road is open once again to Kabul and Baghdad.

Limbaugh's Laws

Rush hits a home run with his Limbaugh's Laws on immigration:

I want to call this proposal the Limbaugh Laws. Here they are. First, if you immigrate to the United States of America, you must speak the native language. You have to be a professional or an investor. We are not going to take unskilled workers. You will not be allowed.

There will be no special bilingual programs in the schools, no special ballots for elections, no government business will be conducted in your native language. Foreigners will not have the right to vote, I don't care how long they are here, nor will they ever be allowed to hold political office.

According to the Limbaugh Laws, if you're in our country, you cannot be a burden to taxpayers. You are not entitled, ever, to welfare, to food stamps, or other government goodies. You can come if you invest here, but it must be an amount equal to 40,000 times the daily minimum wage. If you don't now have that amount of money, you can't come and invest. You have to stay home. If you do come and you want to buy land, okay, but we're going to restrict your options. You will not be allowed to buy waterfront property in the United States. That will be reserved for citizens naturally born in this country.

In fact, as a foreigner, you must relinquish individual rights to property. These are the Limbaugh Laws. Another thing. You don't have the right to protest when you come here. You're allowed no demonstrations, you cannot wave a foreign flag, no political organizing, no bad-mouthing our president or his policies, or you get sent home. You're a foreigner. You shut your mouth or you get out, and if you come here illegally, you go straight to jail and we're going to hunt you down 'til we find you.

I can imagine many of you think that the Limbaugh Laws are pretty harsh. I imagine today some of you probably are going, "Yeah! Yeah!" Well, let me tell you this, folks. Every one of the laws I just mentioned are the actual laws of Mexico, today. I just read you Mexican immigration law. That's how the Mexican government handles immigrants to their country. Yet Mexicans and others come here illegally, they protest in our streets, they get on our welfare program, and we have members of the United States Senate, both parties, doing handstands and back flips, going through every contortion possible to allow it to continue so that it doesn't make these people mad, resulting in votes against these linguini-spined populations [he meant to say politicians].

This is more than a double standard. It is an indication of just how gutless people in charge in this country are to protect the identity of this country. They don't care about border security, I know the ports deal notwithstanding, they're not doing a thing to shore up the border, because that might make somebody mad. It's a good thing there are [not] a whole lot of Arab voters in this country or the port deal would have gone through, too.

Mercifully, it looks as if the senate bill, which essentially cedes the American southwest to Mexico, is going to stall. Evidently, there are still enough Republican senators who think that America has a right to control its borders that the bi-partisan amnesty bill isn't going to make it to the floor for a vote. This will be seen as a defeat for the president and we say it is one defeat we are glad to see.

Any bill which does nothing to stem the flow of illegals across the border will only make the problem worse. What we do with the illegals who are here now is important. What we do to stop more from pouring in is absolutely crucial. The senate bill does nothing at all to dam the flood.

Taxonomy of the Religious Left

Steve Waldman constructs a taxonomy of the religious left over at Slate. He makes the demographical distinctions seem a lot more confusing than perhaps he has to - he divides the religious left into six different groups when in fact there are probably only two or three with a lot of overlap - but it's an interesting, and sympathetic, analysis nonetheless.

Waldman's six groups are: Bible-thumping liberals, Pious peaceniks, Ethnic churchgoers, Conflicted Catholics, and Religious feminists.

If you read the piece note how many times the implication of what he says about the secular left is that they're little more than unprincipled political opportunists.

Bridging the Generation Gap

In a time when much of what we read in the news about university professors makes us cringe, it is reassuring and inspiring to read an essay like this one (free subscription required) in the Catholic magazine Commonweal. The writer, Stephen Martin, is a personal friend and former student who crafts a wonderful encomium to a literature professor, Wallace Fowlie, under whom he studied in his undergrad days at Duke and the influence this man, now deceased, had on his life. It's a portrait of what a university professor should be.

I was especially struck by a powerful passage Steve quotes from one of Fowlie's many books:

"The reading and teaching of Dante always restored for me the Catholic sense of history: everything a man does in his life moves him toward his true end in God, or moves him away from it. Everything is ultimately redeemed or lost. Hell and paradise are eternal places and eternal concepts."

Steve's essay is a must read, especially for students and teachers, and, indeed, for anyone who would like to inspire young people.

RLC

A New Transitional Fossil?

The Guardian has a fascinating story on a very important fossil find, but manages, unfortunately, to draw at least one silly conclusion from it:

Scientists have made one of the most important fossil finds in history: a missing link between fish and land animals, showing how creatures first walked out of the water and on to dry land more than 375 million years ago.

Palaeontologists have said that the find, a crocodile-like animal called the Tiktaalik roseae and described today in the journal Nature, could become an icon of evolution in action - like Archaeopteryx, the famous fossil that bridged the gap between reptiles and birds.

As such, it will be a blow to proponents of intelligent design, who claim that the many gaps in the fossil record show evidence of some higher power.

Well, no. It's not a blow to proponents of Intelligent Design. If it turns out that the fossil really is all that paleontologists presently think it to be, it presents a difficulty only for those who believe that major biological taxa were specially created. Whether there is now direct evidence that fish evolved into tetrapods or not has no bearing on the fundamental claims of Intelligent Design theorists who argue that the universe in general, and life in particular, display remarkable evidence of having been intentionally engineered. Nothing about this discovery conflicts with that claim or any other basic principle of ID.

Someday, perhaps, journalists will be sufficiently roused from their dogmatic slumbers to actually get themselves educated on this issue. Until then, we'll simply have to be vigilant in pointing out their manifold misunderstandings and errors.

There's a lot more on Tiktaalik at the link.

Clarifying the "Immigration" Debate

The American Thinker has an outstanding piece by Herbert Meyer on the "immigration" debate that brings some much-needed clarity to the issue. Here's the first half of it:

Simply put, the debate in Washington isn't about "immigration" at all - and that's the problem.

To ordinary Americans, the definition of "immigration" is very specific: You come here with absolutely nothing except a burning desire to be an American. You start off at some miserable, low-paying job that at least puts a roof over your family's head and food on the table. You put your kids in school, tell them how lucky they are to be here - and make darn sure they do well even if that means hiring a tutor and taking a second, or third, job to pay for it. You learn English, even if you've got to take classes at night when you're dead tired. You play by the rules-which means you pay your taxes, get a driver's license and insure your car so that if yours hits mine, I can recover the cost of the damages. And you file for citizenship the first day you're eligible.

Do all this and you become an American like all the rest of us. Your kids will lose their accents, move into the mainstream, and retain little of their heritage except a few words of your language and - if you're lucky-an irresistible urge to visit you now and then for some of mom's old-country cooking.

This is how the Italians made it, the Germans made it, the Dutch made it, the Poles made it, the Jews made it, and more recently how the Cubans and the Vietnamese made it. The process isn't easy - but it works and that's the way ordinary Americans want to keep it.

But the millions of Hispanics who have come to our country in the last several decades - and it's the Hispanics we're talking about in this debate, not those from other cultures-are, in fact, two distinct groups. The first group is comprised of "immigrants" just like all the others, who have put the old country behind them and want only to be Americans. They aren't the problem. Indeed, most Americans welcome them among us, as we have welcomed so many other cultures.

The problem is the second group of Hispanics. They aren't immigrants - which is what neither the Democratic or Republican leadership seems to understand, or wants to acknowledge. They have come here solely for jobs, which isn't the same thing at all. (And many of them have come here illegally.) Whether they remain in the U.S. for one year, or ten years - or for the rest of their lives - they don't conduct themselves like immigrants.

Yes, they work hard to put roofs above their heads and food on their tables - and for this we respect them. But they have little interest in learning English themselves, and instead demand that we make it possible for them to function here in Spanish. They put their children in our schools, but don't always demand as much from them as previous groups demanded of their kids. They don't always pay their taxes - or insure their cars.

In short, they aren't playing by the rules that our families played by when they immigrated to this country. And to ordinary Americans this behavior is deeply - very deeply - offensive. We see it unfolding every day in our communities, and we don't like it. This is what none of our politicians either understands, or dares to say aloud. Instead, they blather on - and on - about "amnesty" and "border security" without ever coming to grips with what is so visible, and so offensive, to so many of us - namely, all these foreigners among us who aren't behaving like immigrants.

What this second group of "immigrants" wants is to exploit American largesse to the fullest extent possible and ultimately to transform our culture to a simulacrum of the one it left behind. There is absolutely nothing wrong with Americans resisting such a change, and those politicians of either party who react with disdain and contempt for the concerns of Americans over what they see happening to their communities and their resources are inviting electoral retribution.

al-Zarqawi Demoted

The Sheik of Slaughters has evidently suffered a humiliating demotion in rank. The Christian Science Monitor has a lengthy story on this development which begins with this:

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq and one of the region's most prominent insurgents, has been demoted within Al Qaeda's ranks, according to recent reports.

The Times of London writes that Huthayfah Azzam, son of Abdullah Azzam, the mentor of both Osama bin Laden and Mr. Zarqawi, said Zarqawi was stripped of his political duties two weeks ago due to concerns that his actions were hurting the Iraqi insurgency's support in the Arab world.

"The Iraqi resistance high command asked al-Zarqawi to give up his political role and replaced him with an Iraqi because of several mistakes," said Mr Azzam in an interview with al-Arabiya, the Arabic news channel. "Al-Zarqawi's role has been limited to military action," he said.

The fugitive al-Qaeda leader, who has a $25 million American bounty on his head, is credited with masterminding some of the bloodiest episodes in the Iraqi war, including suicide bombings against the United Nations, Shia Muslims and US forces and the videotaped execution of Western and other hostages.

But his tactics have alienated many Iraqis, even those sympathetic to the insurgency. Mr Azzam, whose father is known as the "prince of the Mujahidin", said that he was accused of "creating an independent group" in Iraq, "making political mistakes" and hijacking the Iraqi insurgency for his own cause.

Al Jazeera reports that, among his "political mistakes," Zarqawi appeared to have taken it upon himself to speak for the Iraqi people. Zarqawi is Jordanian, however, and thus not perceived as an appropriate spokesman for the insurgency.

"Zarqawi also took the liberty of speaking in the name of the Iraqi people and resistance, a role which belongs only to the Iraqis," Azzam said.

As a result "the resistance command inside and outside Iraq, including imams, criticised him and after long discussions demanded that he be confined to military action".

"Zarqawi pledged not to carry out any more attacks against Iraq's neighbours after having been criticised for these operations which are considered a violation of sharia [Islamic law]," Azzam said.

You can get the rest of the story at the link.

American Atrocities

Perhaps you wonder what ever happened with the investigations of those recent reports coming out of Iraq of horrible massacres perpetrated by American troops. It turns out that they were lame, if fervent, attempts by the jihadis to propagate a little misinformation and to drag the world media into another round of lamentation over America's loss of the "moral high ground," etc.

The American Thinker has the details here, but you probably knew all along that the stories were a crock. Indeed, the best indicator that they were phony was that TruthOut.org touted them as if they were a modern My Lai. When TruthOut gets excited about something that reflects poorly on the United States, which they do with remarkable frequency, you can bet your home equity that there's nothing to it.

The American Thinker article describes the first horrifying episode this way:

Over the past few weeks, two serious accusations of mass murder by Coalition units have surfaced, both involving current operations - one against the Jihadis, the other against illegal militia. Both were given a wide airing in the international media.

At Ishaqi, a village near Samarra, at some time between 1:30 and 2:30 (reported times are inconsistent, as are other details of the story) on the night of March 16, a firefight took place between U.S. troops involved in Operation Swarmer and at least one member of Al-Queda in Iraq hiding out in an isolated house.

According to the locals, the troops fought their way into the house, owned by aschoolteacher, Faiz Mratt, and tied up, beat, and then shot Mratt, his wife, their three children, his sister, her three children, his father, and a woman who was visiting. Afterward they blew up the house, set fire to three cars, and, to top things off, killed all the livestock as well.

As it turns out the story is largely false. Read the article at The American Thinker to learn what really happened.

Paris As Mother Teresa

An Indian movie director said he hopes to persuade Paris Hilton to play the role of Nobel laureate and prospective Catholic Saint, Mother Teresa, in an upcoming film.

"Her features resemble Mother Teresa," director T. Rajeevnath told AFP from the southwestern coastal state of Kerala.

The filmmaker said Hilton is on his shortlist after a computer-generated image showed a close facial match between the hotel heiress and the Albanian-born nun.

Yes, the resemblance between the two is uncanny. And who better to play the role of Mother Teresa than a rich, dumb, narcissistic socialite whose previous movie experience included a home-made sex video made by a former boyfriend that appeared on the Internet, and parts in several Hollywood B-films.

She's the perfect choice.

This Year's Pollys

Diversity run amok, suppression of free speech, discrimination against Christians, conservatives, and patriots and other rancid fruits of contemporary liberalism continue to be the norm in American higher education. The Collegiate Network (CN) has once again chronicled the worst of those abuses in its 9th Annual Campus Outrage Awards called The Pollys.

Tongue-Tied has a summary of this year's winners:

The Collegiate Network's annual nod to the PC ninnies of American academia, the Pollys, are out today. Yale University takes the top award for admitting a former Taliban bigwig with a fourth-grade education -- in the name of diversity, of course.

DePaul University also gets a nod for, as the judges put it, declaring war on free speech.

"First, the university suspended -- without a hearing -- a veteran adjunct professor for daring to debate students handing out pro-Palestinian literature on campus. Next, the administration branded as 'propaganda' a College Republican protest of a Ward Churchill speech on campus. Finally, college officials shut down an affirmative action bake-sale sponsored by the campus conservative club and charged the club member who organized the event with harassment," the network says.

The third place award is shared by officials from Stanford University and at the College of the Holy Cross, both of which tried to silence conservative alternative newspapers on their campuses after The Stanford Review and Holy Cross' The Fenwick Review mocked or criticized sacred PC cows on campus.

For the full story on why these worthies were selected to receive the highly coveted Polly go here.

The Clock is Ticking in Tehran

Kevin Drum at the Washington Monthly reports that Washington insiders are forecasting a late summer air strike against Iran's nuclear facilities. The good news is that there is still time for the mullahs in Tehran to give up their dreams of a nuclear bomb with which to attack Israel and to blackmail, and possibly attack the U.S., through terrorist intermediaries.

If they don't, however, it looks as if war will be inevitable.

Pianka's Predicament

University of Texas biologist Eric Pianka denies that he endorses bio-terrorism, and maybe he doesn't, but there's a lot of evidence to suggest that he does. Bill Dembski writes the following:

The scientific establishment is closing ranks and now portraying Pianka as a benefactor of humanity despite his recommendation that 90% of humans be eliminated by airborne Ebola (see previous entries about Pianka on this blog). For an example of the spin, look here. Interestingly, a video interview with Pianka that is available at that site has now been doctored. At the close of the interview (before it was doctored, and which was available earlier today), Pianka is heard saying: "We need to plan our collapse rather than just let it happen to us." One could almost think this is an invitation to bioterrorism.

Before you buy the upcoming media spin on Pianka ("he's just a kindly, saintly old biologist deeply concerned about overpopulation who is being misrepresented by right-wing extremists"), ask yourself if it doesn't strike you as odd that prior to making his speech before the Texas Academy of Sciences (the speech that led to all the uproar), Pianka requested cameras and tape recorders be switched off because folks aren't ready to hear what he has to say. And now, when word of what he said gets out, he wants to play the part of the injured, misunderstood party.

Let's be clear: Pianka has not recanted anything. But he is now overtly denying what he said. Not to worry. The local newspaper and Texas Monthly have tapes of a second speech in which he made essentially the same points about ridding the earth of humans. Transcripts of the second speech are being made and will be available shortly.

Professor Pianka, according to the local paper linked to at the beiginning of this post, seems to have cleaned from his web-site a lot of information that could reasonably be interpreted as inculpating. We'll be interested to see what the afore-mentioned transcripts have to say.

Berlinski, Part 3

David Berlinski continues his tongue-in-cheek interview with himself in part 3 at Intelligent Design the Future. Along the way he discusses how odd it is that there has been such a vigorous allergic reaction in the evolutionary community to Intelligent Design.

A Public Disgrace

Michelle Malkin has a photo of Cynthia McKinney's Get Out of Jail Free card:

The radio news reported last night that McKinney is going to file charges against the police officer who tried to stop her from entering the Capitol Building without going through the metal detector. This poor guy probably barely makes enough money to provide a comfortable living for his family, yet he nevertheless is prepared to defend our politicians with his life. He performs his duties as he is required by stopping this arrogant, pompous, self-important knucklehead, and she smacks him for his impertinence and calls him a racist. Then she threatens to press charges against him. These are the tactics of a low class bully.

Laboring under the delusion that she's nobility rather than a public servant, this woman evidently thinks that being elected to public office makes her somehow superior to those whose job it is to protect American citizens. She doesn't have to follow the rules that apply to the rest of us commoners. Her attitude toward this policeman, and others with whom she's had similar unseemly altercations, is a fitting metaphor for the left's attitude toward national security.

She claims that her only crime was being in Congress while black when, in fact, her crime is being in Congress while simultaneously being an imbecile.

Ms McKinney doesn't belong in the position she's in. Not only does she lack the intellectual heft required for the job, she also lacks the moral qualifications necessary for the role of a Congressperson. That someone as d�class� as she would be elected to a position of such high responsibility is a national disgrace and embarrassment.

The Right Brothers on Video

The Right Brothers rock on for Bush. Good stuff, as far as it goes. Sounds a lot like Billy Joel's We Didn't Start the Fire.

Now, if only Bush were as right on immigration and spending as he has been on the matters the Brothers praise him for we'd be singing right along.

9 in 10 Need to Die

You're going to die an awful, painful and premature death, and what's more, you should.

One of the arguments we hear from those scientists who oppose teaching Intelligent Design in public schools is that ID will turn students off to science. Students won't want to engage in research, we're assured, if they think that biological phenomena do not have a completely physical explanation. This is nonsense, of course, but we wonder what those who are so worried about what young minds are exposed to in science class rooms think of Professor Eric Pianka down at the University of Texas.

Professor Pianka instructs his students that we have far too many people in the world right now, and that the solution is to kill off 90% of us through some natural means such as the Ebola virus. The mind reels. Do UT officials blanche at this endorsement, by one of their esteemed faculty members, of genocide on a massive scale? Yes, indeedy. They'll have none of it, sort of.

For instance, Neal Armstrong, vice provost for faculty affairs, lays down the law:

Profesor Pianka is free to say whatever he wants in his classes, Mr. Armstrong allows, but when he's advocating the deaths of 90% of the world's people in public lectures, why, then he better make it clear to his audience that he's not speaking for the University. Or else ... or else, we'll get really, really miffed.

And don't you dare think that UT doesn't have a social conscience. Mr. Armstrong goes on to leave no doubt where the University stands on the matter of encouraging genocide:

"Students should be able to discern on their own the validity of views like Pianka's, but if allegations of Pianka actively advocating human death were to be confirmed, there might be some discussion about the appropriateness of that subject. I would hope that's not what's intended. I don't think that's appropriate for the classroom, but that's my personal statement."

There might be some discussion? Not appropriate? Armstrong doesn't think it's appropriate, but, hey, that's just his opinion, and we all know that nobody's opinion is any better than anyone else's, so what does it matter? Translated, all that this mealy-mouthed administrator-speak means is that UT won't touch this issue with a ten foot pole.

Those critics, however, who, unlike administrators, are given to plain-speaking and clear thinking raise disquieting questions:

Does Pianka believe, for example, that nature will bring about this promised devastation all by herself? Or is humanity's own dissemination of a deadly virus the only answer? And more importantly, is this the motive behind his talks?

As if responding to these impertinent queries, Pianka says forthrightly: "Good terrorists would be taking [stealing] Ebola ... so that they had microbes they could let loose on the Earth that would kill 90 percent of the people."

Good terrorists?!

There seems to be some disagreement as to whether Pianka is encouraging students to facilitate the spread of an epidemic, or encouraging them to accept mass death when it comes, or whether he's simply pointing out the consequences of over-population. If it's the first, how's what he's doing any different than a terrorist urging the masses to rise up and kill the larger population?

He may be right that a worldwide pandemic is likely to happen relatively soon, but he steps beyond his field of competence, and beyond any fundamental principles of humanity, if and when he suggests that such a horror should happen.

If this is, indeed, what he believes and what he's teaching, he'd certainly have made a good and useful German in Hitler's Third Reich.