Don't Kill the Geese

Ah, those greedy capitalists. First Bill Gates sets up a charitable foundation and then retires to help manage it. Then Dick Cheney makes the largest single charitable contribution of any politician in American history. Then the second richest man in the world, Warren Buffett, gives his fortune to Bill Gates' foundation. How does one keep one's equilibrium when the world simply refuses to conform to the popular wisdom that the wealthy are evil, tightfisted, robber barons?

It's worth noting, perhaps, that if the left had their way there'd be no Bill Gates or Warren Buffett. There'd be no private wealth and thus no private philanthropy. All charity would be at the beneficence of the government which would acquire its resources by taxing the people at levels that would remove all incentive to accumulate Gates/Buffett scale fortunes. No one would be wealthy. Everyone would be middle class at best and the government, unable to mine more silver in the exhausted ore of the middle class would be unable to keep up its support for the kinds of charitable work done by private foundations.

In other words, the poor need the rich. The rich invest. The rich create jobs, and the rich make it possible for charitable organizations to do their work. This is not to say that the rich are ipso facto virtuous. Of course they are not, but the problem is with individual morality not with wealth. Those who insist we soak the rich in taxes and confiscate their wealth are as short-sighted as the man who wanted to kill the goose that laid golden eggs in order to have a tasty dinner.

Enlisting Congress Against ID

The Edge runs a letter signed by a number of Darwinian worthies which, along with a book hostile toward Intelligent Design, they sent to every member of Congress. Here are some excerpts from the letter with my remarks:

June 16, 2006

To Members of Congress:

We, the authors and editor of Intelligent Thought, are sending you a copy of the book in hopes that you will consider its message. The book is largely about Intelligent Design (ID), the latest incarnation of creationism. ID is a movement that threatens American science education and with it American economic predominance and credibility.

This is a common scare tactic frequently employed to "poison the well" against ID. It's noteworthy that rarely does anyone ever say precisely how ID threatens science education. Suppose a biology teacher took time to point out to her class, after teaching the lessons on evolution, that some scientists and philosophers believe that this process is purely mechanistic while others, a smaller number, believe it required intelligent input, and explained some of the reasons why. Suppose, too, that a physics or earth-space science teacher discussed with his classes the astonishing fine-tuning of the cosmos and the remarkable fitness of the universe, our galaxy, our solar system and our earth for intelligent life. Suppose further that he concludes that some scholars see in this a fortuitous accident whereas others see in it intention and purpose. How, exactly, would any of this endanger science education?

The recent federal court decision in Dover, Pennsylvania found that ID was not a scientific theory, but a form of religion in disguise. Judge John Jones III, a churchgoing Republican appointed by President Bush, concluded that teaching this doctrine in the public schools represents both bad education and an unconstitutional violation of the First Amendment. President Bush's science advisor, John H. Marburger, has affirmed that 'evolution is the cornerstone of modern biology' and 'intelligent design is not a scientific concept.' And Newt Gingrich has stated that ID has nothing to do with science and shouldn't be taught in science courses.'

One of the three authorities cited above is a scientist. One is a judge and the other is a politician. This is a good example of a logical fallacy called an appeal to irrelevant authority. What Judge Jones or Newt Gingrich say about the nature of ID is totally beside the point. What is germane is what philosophers of science are saying about it and in that field there are a lot of top people who would argue that there is simply no good reason for banishing design arguments from science. See for example, Del Ratszch's outstanding work on this subject Nature, Design, and Science.

Reason and law triumphed in Dover. But ID and its spinoffs continue to threaten American education by ignoring the massive evidence for evolution-the central principle that unites all the biological sciences- and by substituting adherence to religious dogma for the scientific method.

It is simply false to state that ID ignores the evidence for evolution. What it opposes is the claim that evolution is a purely mechanistic process. It is also false to claim that it substitutes religious dogma for the scientific method. There's no "religious dogma" in any of the major ID sources and I challenge any of the signatories of the letter to provide an example to support their allegation.

Our country cannot afford substandard science teaching. Indeed, a national science test just administered by the Department of Education showed a decade-long erosion of scientific proficiency among American high school seniors. We won't cure this problem by questioning scientifically established facts (evolution) and theories (natural selection) and replacing them with unsupported conjectures based on faith.

Nor do we cure substandard teaching by ignoring the difficulties with exclusively physicalist explanations or by encouraging sudents to accept on faith that those difficulties will be somehow, someday resolved.

The controversy over ID vs. evolution is not a scientific controversy. Every scientific body in the US has opposed ID and affirmed the reality of evolution. The "controversy" is about whether sectarian religious views should be taught in the science classroom.

The controversy is not about whether sectarian religious views will be taught in the public school classroonm because clearly no one is pushing for that. The controversy is about whether one metaphysical view - materialism - should be immunized in our public schools against any challenge from competing metaphysical hypotheses.

A list of the signers of the letter can be found at the link. These people know that as long as they can misrepresent and distort the nature of ID they will be able to hold on to their philosophical monopoly in the public schools. They also know that if they were to portray ID accurately they would quickly lose their influence and thus their dominance. Consequently, we will continue to see ID misrepresented as a religious doctrine, a variety of creationism, a scientific fraud, and so on. It's the only way the metaphysical naturalists who dominate the scientific establishment can hold on. They know that the day the door is open to honest debate will be the day that Darwinian materialism begins its decline into scientific and philosophical obsolescence.

Tanks

Here are some interesting facts about the military's M-1 tank courtesy of Strategy Page:

Of the 1,100 American M-1 tanks that have served in Iraq, about seven percent have been badly damaged, at least badly enough to get them shipped back to the factory for rebuilding. Some 70 percent of the Iraqi based M-1s have been in combat. As infantry have known since World War I, tanks draw fire. But they are well protected, and fewer than twenty of the 4,400 tank crewmen involved have been killed, two thirds of those while standing up in a turret hatch, with at least head and shoulders exposed. The main cause of lost tanks is, as it has been since World War II, is mines and bombs. A few tanks have rolled over particularly large bombs, which in some cases flipped the tank. But other times, mines blow off one of the tracks, immobilizing the tank and making it the center of a fierce fight. But the terrorists and anti-government forces have come to avoid American tanks. Yes, these 69 ton behemoths can be hurt, but only at great risk and cost to the attacker. In addition to the M-1s three machine-guns, the 120mm gun has special shells for urban warfare, shells that are particularly deadly against gunmen trying to hide in buildings.

One reason the Iraqi military is not yet ready to fight on its own is that it lacks this kind of weaponry and the training it takes to use it. There's little doubt that eventually some of these needs will be met, but it will take time. To expect the Iraqis to fight their own fight without the armor, air power, UAV's, etc. that American forces have at their disposal is unrealistic. The need for this kind of combat support will keep at least some American troops in Iraq for a long time to come, or at least until the Last Helicopter party wins the presidency.

Russian Diplomats Murdered

How will the Russian government react to this:

A group linked to al Qaeda said it has killed four Russian diplomats it had held hostage, according to a statement and video on a Web site Sunday.

The group -- the Mujahedeen Shura Council -- said it had beheaded three of the men and shot one to death. A video also posted on the Web site appeared to show one of the men being beheaded, another man already beheaded and a third man being shot in the head. The fourth man did not appear in the video.

The same group posted a statement last Monday demanding Moscow withdraw its troops from Chechnya and "release all our brothers and sisters" from prison within 48 hours. In the statement last week, the group added, "God enabled the lions of unification to capture four Russian diplomats in Iraq and kill a fifth," alluding to an attack June 3, when a car belonging to the Russian Embassy in Iraq came under fire.

Embassy official Vitaly Titov was killed in the attack, and diplomats Fyodor Zaitsev, Rinat Agliuglin, Anatoly Smirnov and Oleg Fedoseyev were kidnapped.

We could not bring ourselves to watch it, but if you care to there's a video here.

Counterterrorism Blog reminds us that:

Russia has been known for dealing with terrorists with sometimes excessive force. And not only with Chechen rebels. For example, in September 1985 when four Russian diplomats were kidnapped in Beirut by Hezbollah, the then USSR responded in kind by first abducting a family member of an Hezbollah leader and then killing him very, very gruesomely. The hostages were given back right away and Russia was never targeted in Lebanon again.

Russia has no friends among the Islamic jihadis. They are hated by the Islamists for their war against the Chechens today and for what they did in Afghanistan in the 1970s. It's hard to imagine that the Russians will do nothing, but it's also hard to imagine what might be within their power to do.

Culture of Corruption

The Washington Times wonders why it is that a corruption-conscious media has, with very few exceptions, ignored the record of Rep. Jack Murtha. Of course the fact that he's an antiwar Democrat may not be irrelevant to the question.

Read the Times' editorial and for exercise ask yourself whether you would only be finding this stuff out for the first time now if Murtha were a pro-administration Republican. Here's the core of it:

Last June, the Los Angeles Times reported how the ranking member on the defense appropriations subcommittee has a brother, Robert Murtha, whose lobbying firm represents 10 companies that received more than $20 million from last year's defense spending bill. "Clients of the lobbying firm KSA Consulting -- whose top officials also include former congressional aide Carmen V. Scialabba, who worked for Rep. Murtha as a congressional aide for 27 years -- received a total of $20.8 million from the bill," the L.A. Times reported.

In early 2004, according to Roll Call, Mr. Murtha "reportedly leaned on U.S. Navy officials to sign a contract to transfer the Hunters Point Shipyard to the city of San Francisco." Laurence Pelosi, nephew of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, at the time was an executive of the company which owned the rights to the land. The same article also reported how Mr. Murtha has been behind millions of dollars worth of earmarks in defense appropriations bills that went to companies owned by the children of fellow Pennsylvania Democrat, Rep. Paul Kanjorski. Meanwhile, the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan campaign-finance watchdog group, lists Mr. Murtha as the top recipient of defense industry dollars in the current 2006 election cycle.

As Rep. Joe Wilson, South Carolina Republican, has said, "If there is a potential pattern where Congressman Murtha has helped other Democrats secure appropriations that also benefited relatives of those members, I believe this would be something that merits further review by the ethics committee."

It's odd that the media, which has been fairly unbiased in going after corrupt politicians recently, has gone silent on Mr. Murtha's questionable actions. Or maybe it isn't. Since December, Mr. Murtha has become the darling of the antiwar crowd, and, as we've seen with other such darlings, scrutinizing their behavior is considered disrespectful. But as we're on the subject, few might recall that after the massive 1980 Abscam scandal, Mr. Murtha was named by the FBI as an "unindicted co-conspirator."

The LA Times broke this story a year ago, but because Murtha has become useful to the anti-war crowd in the interim neither they nor anyone else in the liberal media have shown much interest in pressing the issue.

Treacherous <i>Times</i>

Andrew McCarthy over at NRO has an excellent column on the "Media's War Against the War." He writes specifically about the boneheaded outing by the New York Times and the LA Times of the government's tracking of financial transactions made by terror suspects. The process appears to have been completely legal but may have been rendered ineffective by the Times' stories:

For the second time in seven months, the Times has exposed classified information about a program aimed at protecting the American people against a repeat of the September 11 attacks. On this occasion, it has company in the effort: The Los Angeles Times runs a similar, sensational story. Together, the newspapers disclose the fact that the United States has covertly developed a capability to monitor the nerve center of the international financial network in order to track the movement of funds between terrorists and their facilitators.

The effort, which the government calls the "Terrorist Finance Tracking Program" (TFTP), is entirely legal. There are no conceivable constitutional violations involved. The Supreme Court held in United States v. Miller (1976) that there is no right to privacy in financial-transaction information maintained by third parties. Here, moreover, the focus is narrowed to suspected international terrorists, not Americans, and the financial transactions implicated are international, not domestic. This is not data mining, and it does not involve fishing expeditions into the financial affairs of American citizens. Indeed, few Americans even have information that is captured by the program - though there would be nothing legally offensive even if they did.

There is much more in McCarthy's piece which merits a careful read. Here are two more graphs from the column:

...the most salient thing we learn from today's compromise ... is that the program has been highly effective at keeping us safe. According to the government, it has helped identify and locate terrorists and their financial backers; it has been instrumental in charting terrorist networks; and it has been essential in starving these savage organizations of their lifeblood: funding.

It was in view of the [program's] palpable value in protecting American lives, its obvious legal propriety, and the plain fact that it was being responsibly conducted that the administration pleaded with the newspapers not to reveal it after government officials despicably leaked it. Exposing the program would tell the public nothing about official misconduct. It would accomplish only the educating of al Qaeda - the nation's enemy in an ongoing war; an enemy well-known to be feverishly plotting new, massive attacks - about how better to evade our defenses. About how better to kill us.

PowerLine notes that:

In its editorial on the subject today, the New York Times offers no shred of an argument concerning the possible illegality or overbreadth of the program. It cites no instance of abuse. Rather, the Times argues "these efforts need to be done under a clear and coherent set of rules, with the oversight of Congress and the courts." The Times purports to invoke the rule of law where no law has been broken, and where the Times itself has both broken the law and damaged American national security.

And, we might add, they've compromised our safety for a single reason: They espied an opportunity to make life more difficult for George Bush. Had Bill Clinton been president and asked them not to run the story as the Bush people did, it is hard to imagine either paper refusing the request.

Michelle Malkin is receiving photoshop entries from around the country in response to the papers' despicable decision to publicize one of the tools we use to protect ourselves from the savages. Here's a sample:

Distancing Oneself From ID

Intelligent Design theorists believe that the designer's activity in the universe can be detected. Many Christian scholars, although they believe God to be the creator, reject ID because they hold that there is no way to detect God's activity, at least not in nature. This poses for them a very serious problem which Denyse O'Leary highlights here.

Here is what I think drives that sort of behavior: Some Christians in science are into emotional meltdown re ID because they have suddenly realized what is at stake:

The only way to rule out ID is to deny that God acts in the universe, period. If he acts at all, his action may in fact be detected.

If one insists as an article of faith that God's actions cannot be detected in principle or that it is wrong to attempt to detect them, that is a new article of faith, and one that is at odds with traditional Christian religion and conventional interpretations of the Bible.

but more generally,

For a long time, many fine Christian scholars got along well with materialists, more or less, because no one put the issue squarely, as the ID guys have done. So Christianity in the intellectual world has been dying the death of deniability: What can you deny and still be a Christian? But now the issue is so basic that it can't just be sophistically manipulated out of existence. Gradually realizing their dilemma, in an intuitive way, some sincere Christians retreat into meaningless abuse of ID hypotheses.

It gets better. Read the whole thing.

The main problem, though, for Christians who hold that God's work is undetectable in nature is that they have to deny the possibility of ever recognizing a genuine miracle. If miracles are indeed unrecognizable then no one could have known the miracles that Jesus performed to really be miracles, and thus the Biblical testimony about miracles must be unreliable. This conclusion seems a high price to pay in order to try to seem reasonable to one's secularist colleagues.

Follow-Up

I may have been remiss by not providing sufficient background about my latest post on Democracy (Screwtape Proposes a Toast) that might have facilitated the readers understanding of the article by C. S. Lewis.

Prior to his writing of Screwtape Proposes a Toast, Lewis wrote a book titled The Screwtape Letters, a work of fiction. But only fiction in the sense that the characters and the dialogue sprang from the imagination of one of the greatest modern Christian writers. Yet in our terrestrial reality the issues confronted in this book play out in our lives every day.

The book contains thirty-one letters from Screwtape to his nephew, Wormwood, who is Screwtape's underling in fiendishness. Screwtape is an upper-level functionary in the complex bureaucracy of the underworld. The "Screwtape Letters" are friendly advice from this elder statesman to a front-line tempter on how to procure the soul of his "patient", a young Christian man just trying to live out his everyday life.

Screwtape Proposes a Toast is a short story that Lewis wrote after the "letters" as kind of a finale. In both works, Lewis placed himself inside the head of Screwtape and communicates things as they would be seen by the Screwtape character. As a result, that which is morally bad is good and what is morally good is bad.

Sorry for any confusion.

God's Omnipotence

Author and professor Tony Campolo speaks on the topic of God's omnipotence:

All the sin and suffering that have marked human history since Eden are the result of God relinquishing control over what we do. People like you and me abuse our God-given freedom and thus increase the hurt and destruction that is in the world.

To all of this, most readers will say, "We agree!" Yet, when I dare to say that God is no longer in total control over this world, so many of my fellow Christians go ballistic. They refuse to stop and think. If they did, they would realize that God must be self-limited if we are to come of age and become fully human. Without God choosing to be limited, we could not love God, because love is something that must be freely chosen-nor could we freely choose to love each other. And love is what is ultimately important.

I'm not sure what Campolo means by "no longer in total control." If he means that God has granted man a measure of autonomy to run things as he will then I think he's right. God doesn't directly cause every event or every decision that is made on earth.

If, however, he means that God could not change things even if He wanted to then I think he's wrong. In any case, there's more at the link.

On Democracy

I have been against the concept of a Democratic form of government ever since I realized that a democracy is simply two wolves and a sheep deciding what they will have for dinner. Remember that this country was founded as a Constitutional Republic because our founding fathers realized that a democracy was inherently destined to fail and only lately has our government morphed into a democratic form of government.

Recently I read Screwtape Proposes a Toast by C. S. Lewis and realized that I found an ally for my position from an altogether different perspective. It's fascinating to realize that C. S. Lewis wrote this almost 50 years ago and, to me, it's prophetic.

The entire story makes for an interesting read but you can scroll down to the following paragraph:

But by the latter part of the century the situation was much simpler, and also much more ominous. In the English sector (where I saw most of my front-line service) a horrible thing had happened. The Enemy, with His usual sleight of hand, had largely appropriated this progressive or liberalizing movement and perverted it to His own ends. Very little of its old anti-Christianity remained. The dangerous phenomenon called Christian Socialism was rampant. Factory owners of the good old type who grew rich on sweated labor, instead of being assassinated by their workpeople -- we could have used that -- were being frowned upon by their own class. The rich were increasingly giving up their powers, not in the face of revolution and compulsion, but in obedience to their own consciences. As for the poor who benefited by this, they were behaving in a most disappointing fashion. Instead of using their new liberties -- as we reasonably hoped and expected -- for massacre, rape, and looting, or even for perpetual intoxication, they were perversely engaged in becoming cleaner, more orderly, more thrifty, better educated, and even more virtuous. Believe me, gentledevils, the threat of something like a really healthy state of society seemed then perfectly serious.

Advice For Students

Calvin Seerveld offers some good advice for Christian students attending a secular university. Actually, I think it's good advice for any kind of student in any kind of university. Here are three of his six suggestions:

Major in the best profs, who make you think self-critically and who give solid course content in a field-area that you have gifts for or can be busy with, without noticing the passage of time.

Take a double major, if possible, to promote the ability to do interdisciplinary thinking, a kind of informal philosophy major (if the philosophy available is sophistic, skeptical or "undeep").

Get in-depth knowledge of a certain period: 5th to 4th century B.C. Athens, Renaissance England, Europe around the time of the French Revolution, or America during the 1920s. That is, rather than staying with survey knowledge, get close to a slice of cultural life somewhere, once upon a time, in many of its facets-a form of encyclopedia-historical study. Maybe work for a couple summers or part of a year in an African village, do volunteer work in Central America, or take a job on the south side of Chicago or in Toronto's Regent Park.

Check out the link for the rest of his recommendations.

Should We Pre-empt?

Ashton B. Carter and William J. Perry, former Clinton assistant secretary of defense and secretary of defense, respectively, call for the United States to blow up on the launch pad the North Korean missile that has recently been fueled and made ready for launch:

[I]f North Korea persists in its launch preparations, the United States should immediately make clear its intention to strike and destroy the North Korean Taepodong missile before it can be launched. This could be accomplished, for example, by a cruise missile launched from a submarine carrying a high-explosive warhead. The blast would be similar to the one that killed terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq. But the effect on the Taepodong would be devastating. The multi-story, thin-skinned missile filled with high-energy fuel is itself explosive -- the U.S. airstrike would puncture the missile and probably cause it to explode. The carefully engineered test bed for North Korea's nascent nuclear missile force would be destroyed, and its attempt to retrogress to Cold War threats thwarted. There would be no damage to North Korea outside the immediate vicinity of the missile gantry.

Read their whole argument here.

Former Vice-President Walter Mondale has endorsed similar action. Charles Pritchard in the WaPo argues against a pre-emptive strike.

Shameless

PowerLine has come across this quote from a 2003 transcript of a meeting of the Council of Foreign Relations:

I fear that in the run-up to the 2004 election, the administration is considering what is tantamount to a cut-and-run strategy. Their sudden embrace of accelerated Iraqification and American troop withdrawal dates, without adequate stability, is an invitation to failure. The hard work of rebuilding Iraq must not be dictated by the schedule of the next American election.

I have called for the administration to transfer sovereignty, and they must transfer it to the Iraqi people as quickly as circumstances permit. But it would be a disaster and a disgraceful betrayal of principle to speed up the process simply to lay the groundwork for a politically expedient withdrawal of American troops. That could risk the hijacking of Iraq by terrorist groups and former Ba'athists.

The speaker was presidential candidate John Kerry. PowerLine observes that the shameless Senator Flipper was apparently against cutting and running before he was for it.

Do They Care?

The descriptions of the horrors to which our two young soldiers were subjected in Iraq - the two who were captured, tortured, beheaded, and so brutalized that they were unrecognizable - would seem to put Abu Ghraib and other such episodes in a somewhat different light.

How anyone can think that putting underwear on somebody's head and having a dog bark at prisoners is in the same moral universe as what was done to these men escapes me. Yet, the word "torture" is used to describe both as if they are in some bizarre sense morally equivalent.

We were subjected to Abu Ghraib horror stories and photos for months and years after it came to light. We were urged to reflect on what kind of a nation we are that we would spawn people who could do such awful things as put detainees in humiliating and embarrassing poses. Calls went forth demanding that we leave Iraq because we'd lost the moral high ground. Then came revelations of allegations that Korans had been flushed down toilets in Guantanamo and prisoners having been forced to endure loud music. We flagellated ourselves for our barbarity. We condemned ourselves because we were "torturers."

Now we see what genuine evil looks like. We see Americans subjected to unimaginable agony at the hands of sub-human savages. And the MSM can scarcely bring themselves to acknowledge what has happened. A day or two in the news and the story's gone. No photos, no descriptions, no nightly reminders of the evil against which we fight, nothing that would give the American people insight into what real evil is. The left-wing bloggers yawn and return to their fantasies of indicting Karl Rove. The media returns quickly to its fascinations with Tom Cruise and Angelina Jolie. It has no time to be drawing the important distinctions between what our interrogators do and why they do it and what the Islamists do and why. The media spent almost as much time fretting over whether our troops treated Zarqawi roughly before he died than they have on the fate of Kristain Manchaca and Thomas Tucker.

It almost seems as if they just don't care.

Highway to Hell

Blackfive has gun camera footage of the takedown of al-Qaeda in Iraq heavyweight Sheik Mansur and several of his colleagues. Scroll down, read the explanation, and then watch the video.

Sic semper tyrannus.

A Modest Proposal

Rebecca Smithers at The Guardian reports on a statement by British scientists calling for better teaching of evolution. Here are a few excerpts:

The world's leading scientists yesterday urged schools to stop denying the facts of evolution amid controversy over the teaching of creationism.

The national science academies of 67 countries - including the UK's Royal Society - issued a joint statement warning that scientific evidence about the origins of life was being "concealed, denied, or confused". It urged parents as well as teachers to provide children with the facts about the origins and evolution of life on Earth.

It points out that "within science courses taught in certain public systems of education, scientific evidence, data, and testable theories about the origins and evolution of life on Earth are being concealed, denied, or confused with theories not testable by science".

Martin Rees, said: "There is controversy in some parts of the world about the teaching of evolution to pupils and students, so this is a timely statement that makes clear the views of the scientific community. I hope this statement will help those who are attempting to uphold the rights of young people to have access to accurate scientific knowledge about the origins and evolution of life on Earth."

The IAP statement highlighted that "evidence-based facts about the origins and evolution of the Earth and of life on this planet have been established by numerous observations and independently derived experimental results from a multitude of scientific disciplines..."

I fully agree. Students should be taught the facts about the origin of the earth and of life, among the most salient of which is that scientists have no idea how the cosmos or life on earth came about. Let's present our students with all the facts about how incredibly fine-tuned the cosmos is, how necessary it is that the universe be just the way it is within tolerances so fine that they defy comprehension, or else there would be no earth. Let's teach our students the manifold scientific difficulties of any theory of abiogenesis and how extraordinarily difficult it is to imagine a naturalistic origin to life.

Unfortunately, I don't think this is what the august members of the various academies of science have in mind when they call for teaching the facts. They know that if students are taught the facts about the origin and structure of the universe and the difficulties of any purely physicalistic theory of the origin of life, only the most rabid materialist students would be able to avoid the conclusion that there is an intelligence behind it all.

In fact, I propose a test. Let's do what these scientists urge us to do. Let's teach thousands of students the facts of cosmological fine-tuning and the intractable difficulties with all purely material theories of the origin of life and, at the conclusion, poll them on what they now believe the philosophical implications are. I'm willing to bet that significantly more students in the test group than in a control group will be persuaded that any explanation that omits intelligence is inadequate.

Censored Valedictorian

There's been a lot of discussion about the young lady whose valedictory address was stopped short by her high school administration. The usual story line is that the administrators didn't like her overtly Christian references and cut off her microphone when she started to voice them.

This may surprise some Viewpoint readers, but, if what I've read about the case is correct, I don't blame the administrators.

Brittany McComb submitted her speech for approval and agreed to the changes the school authorities made to it. When she got up to deliver her address, however, she disregarded her agreement and re-inserted those passages she had agreed to delete. Consequently, the administrators cut off her microphone.

Ms McComb calls her act an instance of rebelling against authority, but I'd call it an instance of dishonesty. If she felt strongly about the content of her speech then she should not have agreed to the administrators' editing. Having agreed to it she was obligated to keep her word. To do otherwise was deceitful and does not reflect well on the faith she was so anxious to publically acknowledge.

We can debate whether the administration should have insisted she delete the explicitly Christian references. They may have been wrong to deny her the freedom to say what she wanted about her faith, but whether they were wrong or not, she was wrong to go back on her word, and the authorities were justified in preventing her from continuing.

Smart Dust

This is interesting: U.S. Forces may be using "smart dust" in Iraq and Afghanistan according to Strategy Page:

"Smart Dust" is basically very miniaturized electronic devices. This is similar to stuff like RFID, smart cards, EZ Pass and those rice grain size tracking devices you can have injected into your pets. But Smart Dust takes this all to a new level by being small enough to be disguised as dirt, the kind you can pick up in your shoes or clothing. Each bit of Smart Dust can be given a unique serial number that, when hit with an "interrogation signal" from troops on the ground, or aircraft overhead, is broadcast back. Some forms of Smart Dust are believed to be in use in Iraq and Afghanistan. It's also believed that Smart Dust played a role in the recent death of al Qaeda leader Abu Musab al Zarqawi.

In this case, if someone were able to sprinkle some Smart Dust on Zarqawi's clothing, it would have been a simple matter to track him with great precision. Iraqis have already heard of this stuff, but regard it more as "magic dust." Iraqis have a tendency to exaggerate American capabilities, especially when it comes to technology. But U.S. troops have learned to use this exaggerated reputation to their advantage, threatening Iraqis with magical capabilities that don't exist. That often works, just like smart dust.

It doesn't strike me as likely that this stuff was sprinkled on Zarqawi. If we were close enough to him to do that, if we knew where he was when the smart dust was sprinkled, it seems we would have taken him out then. But maybe not.

Pennsylvania's Embarrassment

Were it not for the fact that he keeps popping up on television talk shows and pushed to the fore by his Democratic colleagues, the kind thing to do with John Murtha would be to drop one's eyes and politely tune him out, like one does a senile grandfather. Unfortunately, Murtha does not allow us to ignore him. Like Cindy Sheehan he seems to be everywhere we turn, and, since his statements are not disavowed by his fellow Democrats, we are justified in assuming that he speaks for a significant segment of that party.

His recent appearance on Meet the Press reflects the utter thoughtlessness and disingenuousness of the modern Democrats with regard to the war in Iraq. In calling for a "redeployment" of our troops from Iraq Murtha suggested that they be removed to "the periphery" and gave Okinawa as a possible site. Okinawa is certainly peripheral, about like Pluto is peripheral.

As Jack Kelly at Real Clear Politics observes, Murtha's recommendation is just crazy:

Let us be clear about the Murtha "strategy." It is insane. It would be easier to defend Germany from Chicago; Alaska from Miami, or Hawaii from Pittsburgh than to defend Iraq from Okinawa. It would take 10-12 hours -- and six refuelings -- for F-16s to fly from Kadena AFB on Okinawa to Baghdad (assuming China and India would grant overflight rights, a dubious assumption). Mr. Murtha may regard this as "very quickly," but the Air Force does not.

As Bugs Bunny would say: "What a maroon!"

Another howler is Mr. Murtha's assertion that U.S. troops currently serving in Iraq would be "welcomed" in Okinawa. For decades Okinawans have been seeking a reduction in the U.S. military presence, both because they covet the land on which U.S. military bases sit, and because of a long history of pacifism. The U.S. recently agreed to withdraw 7,000 Marines from Okinawa.

Mr. Murtha's absurdities were not limited to just these. His claim that our killing of Abu Zarqawi shows we don't need ground troops in Iraq is risible. Just because an Air Force jet delivered the munition that ended Zarqawi's reign of terror doesn't mean that all the tracking and intelligence work and so on would have happened if we hadn't had troops on the ground. If we had heeded Murtha's demands to flee Iraq, Zarqawi would be ensconced today in one of Saddam's palaces leisurely slicing off the heads of everyone who has cooperated with the coalition for the past four years. Murtha doesn't care about this. Betraying those who placed their trust in us doesn't seem to bother him. We can commiserate with them, he says, from Okinawa.

Of course Rep. Murtha doesn't really intend that our troops defend Iraq. If he did he wouldn't be calling for a pullout in the first place. What would be the sense in pulling out only to have to rush back in again? He knows that once we're out there's nothing that would ever get us back in. John Murtha, Kelly's column suggests, is either dishonest, stupid, or senile. In any case he's an embarrassment. Read the rest of his piece to see how Kelly comes to that assessment.

Thirteen For Surrender

A total of thirteen senators, all Democrats, voted for the Kerry/Feingold amendment which would have compelled President Bush to withdraw all American troops from Iraq by July 31st, 2007 regardless of what the consequences of that withdrawal would be for the region or the Iraqi people. Listed here are the thirteen:

Akaka(D-HI), Boxer(D-CA), Durbin(D-IL), Feingold(D-WI), Harkin(D-IA), Inouye(D-HI), Jeffords(I-VT), Kennedy(D-MA), Kerry(D-MA), Lautenberg(D-NJ), Leahy(D-VT), Menendez(D-NJ), Wyden(D-OR)

Shortly after that ballot thirty nine senators voted for a meaningless resolution which would have essentially conveyed to the president the Senate's wish that we get out of Iraq as soon as conditions are right for a withdrawal. Six Democrats joined fifty four Republicans to vote against the resolution. The six Democrats were Mark Dayton, Mary Landrieu, Mark Pryor, Joe Lieberman, Bill Nelson and Ben Nelson. Lincoln Chaffee was the sole Republican to vote for the resolution.

During the debate Senator Russ Feingold made the statement that "It is time to tell the Iraqis that we have done what we can do militarily." What on earth makes the senator say this? The presence of our troops defends the Iraqis from predatory neighbors and is the best immediate protection from the ravages of insurgents and terrorists. If the senator thinks that withdrawing before Iraq is prepared to stand on its own is in our, or anyone's (besides the thugs') best interests, then, however smart he may be, he is exceptionally foolish.