The Islamic Stereogram

A couple of years back people found themselves to be fascinated by stereograms, pictures of repeating patterns of color and shapes in which, if stared at for a few moments, a 3-D figure could be discerned. I thought of stereograms while reading an article in The Washington Times in which Lee Hamilton, vice chairman of the 9/11 commission, expresses puzzlement about the motives of the 9/11 hijackers:

What motivated 19 relatively well-off Arab men, all Muslims, to become such horrific suicide bombers? Lee Hamilton, vice chairman of the national September 11 commission, says motivation was the "big question" the panel could not answer.

"We were never able to answer why the 19 were willing to kill themselves. What was the motivation? I am talking in a very personal way," Mr. Hamilton, a Democrat who represented Indiana's 9th District in the House for 34 years, said in an interview with The Washington Times.

"What was the motivation for each one of these hijackers? I think the question of motivation was opaque to us. We just could not nail it. They were dead, of course."

I'm not sure how, after all that the terrorists themselves have said, anyone in the West who hasn't been asleep could say that their motives are "opaque" to us. For the benefit of those who have not been paying attention and for those like Mr. Hamilton who are staring at the stereogram but simply can't pick out the figures, let me suggest one short-term, one mid-term, and one long-term goal of the jihadis:

In the short-term they want the United States out of the Middle East. There are two main reasons for this: One, we are infidels and our very exhalations defile their sacred land. Two, it's difficult for them to achieve political power in those Muslim states which are still governed by less radicalized rulers as long as we're in the way.

In the mid-term they want to destroy Israel. The Israelis are not only infidels who occupy land in the very heart of the future Islamic caliphate, but the success of the Israelis, political, economic, and military, is an indictment of the ineptitude and incompetence of the Arabs and hence of their religion. This incurs Arab hatred of the Israelis far more than does the "Palestinian problem" which most Arabs couldn't really care less about.

Having achieved the first two goals and consolidated their power in the Middle East, their long-term ambition is to spread their religion across the globe. Their dream is that the whole world be Islamic. The world will essentially be given the Centanni option: Those who will convert will be allowed to live, those who won't, won't.

Thus, what motivated the 9/11 hijackers was goal number one which they saw as a necessary step to reaching goal number three. The hijackers were motivated purely by a religious ideology that sees the war against America as the biggest battle in the struggle to impose Islam on the world.

Why do they hate us? They hate us because we're infidels and we're successful. In their minds it is they who hold the truth and yet they've been failures since the 14th century, while the West believes the lies of Satan and has been incredibly successful. This fills them with a burning rage borne of jealousy and humiliation coupled to a profound anguish over the injustice of it all.

But now they believe Allah wants to change that, and they are willing to give their lives in his service and to his cause. Like the Communists who believed that they were on the right side of history, the Islamists believe that they can't fail because they're carrying out the will of Allah.

They themselves have said all this which is why it is surprising that Mr. Hamilton and the members of the 9/11 Commission profess to be unable to discern the pattern in the Islamic stereogram.

William Wilberforce Movie

A movie on the life of William Wilberforce is set to be released early next year:

Like Martin Luther and Nate Saint before him, real-life hero of the Christian faith William Wilberforce will be making his big-screen debut next year, with a new historical drama called Amazing Grace. Directed by Michael Apted, the film will receive a U.S. distribution from Samuel Goldwyn Films and Roadside Attractions.

The Walden Media movie-set to be released on February 23, the 200th anniversary of Britain's abolition of the slave trade-stars Ioan Gruffudd (Fantastic Four) as Wilberforce, an outspoken Christian and political activist who played a large role in bringing about the slave trade's end. Albert Finney, Romola Garai, Rufus Sewell, and Michael Gambon also star.

The distribution companies plan to market the film to a wide variety of audiences-arthouse crowds, human rights activists, and also religious groups. Roadside's Howard Cohen notes that "Wilberforce is a hero to many Christians because he combined political actions and his belief in God." Cinematical reports that there may be plans in the works for Walden Media to join in the film's marketing campaign.

Wilberforce is a man with whose life too few people are familiar.

He devoted his life to the cause of abolishing Britain's role in the institution of slavery almost from the time he converted to Christianity in 1784 until his death in 1833.

As a member of the British parliament he gave his first speech against slavery in 1789 and continued the fight for abolition throughout his life, often against massive and vicious opposition. In 1807, he achieved his first victory when it was made illegal for a British subject to transport slaves, but slavery itself was still legal throughout the Empire, and British slavers did a brisk, if illegal, business in slave trafficking. Sea captains were fined 100 pounds for every slave found aboard their vessels, so, to avoid the fines, the slave ships' crews, when they saw a naval patrol boat approach, would throw as many slaves overboard as they could. This practice outraged enough people that eventually it was recognized that slavery had to be outlawed altogether.

Wilberforce himself felt that slaves couldn't simply be emancipated only to be left to fend for themselves uneducated and unskilled. Nevertheless, the forces he had set in motion in 1789 eventually proved ineluctable, and one month after his death in 1833 slavery was abolished throughout the British Empire.

William Wilberforce is a genuine hero in the fight for human rights, and he deserves to have a quality film made about his life. I hope the one coming out in February does him justice.

Manly Men and the Vanishing Christian Male

Joe Carter brings his sharp wit to bear on the trend in some circles to portray Jesus as some sort of Hell's Angel with a halo. He writes:

First, my bona fides. I'm a former Gunnery Sergeant in the Marine Corps. I've spent fifteen years in the Corps and fifteen seconds (cumulatively) riding bulls. I've spent my summers in 100 degree weather baling hay, shoeing horses, castrating hogs, and running laps for sadistic football coaches. I've fixed pump jacks in Texas oil fields and made auto parts in a Missouri factory. I've changed engines on F-18s, tires on Humvees, and a carburetor on a '76 Gremlin.

I've hunted snipe and fished for shark. I've eaten rattlesnake, alligator, and the pork pattie from an MRE. I've lived through tornados, typhoons, and a divorce. I own a .40 caliber Glock. My hero is John Wayne.

In other words, there is some evidence that I am-or at least once was-a fairly "manly man." I'm also a devout Bible-believing Christian. But for the life of me, I can't discern how the two are connected, much less why one is necessary for the other. Yet that is the impression I often get when I read about the "feminization of the church" and the move to provide young Christian men with "masculine" role models.

Carter has specifically in mind here a pastor named Mark Driscoll who evidently makes much of the need for a more masculine Christianity. Joe doesn't necessarily disagree with the general idea, but he does wonder, as I do, about the concept of masculinity that is sometimes promoted in the name of a "muscular" Christianity. Contrary to some who think otherwise, I don't believe there's much about a professional wrestler, for instance, or an ultimate fighter (except perhaps their courage) that a young boy should emulate.

Even so, I think it's important that we begin to reemphasize masculinity and masculine virtues, properly understood, because, Joe's concerns about the "move to provide young Christian men with 'masculine' role models" notwithstanding, there is a need for young men to see mature males in positions of leadership in the church. If this does not happen, the church will be increasingly regarded by young men as a women's club, and more of them will think it irrelevant to their lives.

This is already a concern in many churches whose pews and leadership positions are often filled with women. Perhaps the erosion of male interest is partly due to the gospel's emphasis on gentleness, submission and love for a male figure (Christ). I think such an emphasis is psychologically and subliminally difficult for many men, but this is meliorated somewhat when men see other men preaching, teaching and leading in the church. When they don't they tend to lose interest.

Thus there are two trends in today's church that'll eventually prove unhelpful if we wish to increase male interest in church. One is the growing number of gays in the ministry, and the other is the growing number of women in positions of leadership. Leave aside all the arguments pro and con for both of these trends, the fact is that, if they continue, young men will increasingly see the pastorate as a calling for either gays or women, they'll not see it as something that "straight" men do. Forget about whether this is right or wrong. It's simply a fact, I believe, of male psychology.

An anecdote: I used to coach high school football. Back in the 1970s all our managers were young men who were proud to be part of the team and to play a role in the team's success. Then we began accepting girls as managers and within just three years boys simply stopped doing it. The role of manager had come to be seen as one that girls fill, and the guys looked for other outlets for their energies. Today, it's unusual to find a male manager in any sport in any high school anywhere.

A similar evolution will take place, I suspect, in the pulpit of our churches. In those denominations which are ordaining relatively large numbers of women, there will be a corresponding decline in the number of young men who choose to go into the ministry. It's already happening, of course, but it's hard to tell at this point whether the decline in male candidates has led out of necessity to a rise in female clergy or whether the increasing numbers of female pastors has led to the decline in males. Perhaps both phenomena are responsible. The point is, however, that we need to be aware that ordaining women (and I'm not saying that we shouldn't) is going to accelerate the shrinking of the numbers of young men who take an active interest in matters of faith.

This may lead to a vicious cycle where the decrease in the number of committed young men will lead to a decline not only in the number of males entering the ministry but also the number of males in the pews. The same thing will happen, I suspect, in churches in which gays are prominent in positions of leadership.

This is not an argument for refusing ordination to women or to gays (if they're celibate). It is, though, a call to understand that unless we take into account its ramifications on the male psyche we can expect a dwindling number of straight men in the pew as well as in the pulpit and this would be a sign of a church in serious distress.

Re: Young People

A student of mine responds to the post titled Young People and the Church on our Feedback Page.

How the Senate Race is Shaping Up

Real Clear Politics has the polls on thirteen senate races where there is still some doubt about the outcome. Of the thirteen contests the Democratic candidate is ahead in five and very close in a couple of others. Where they are ahead they have a substantial lead. In three of the five races where the Democrat is leading, the Republican is the incumbent. The Republican senators most at risk are Dewine (OH), Santorum (PA), and Burns (MT). One race (MN) in which the Democrat is ahead the contest is for a seat vacated by another Democrat. One Democratic incumbent is trailing (Menendez, NJ), and one Democratic incumbent is leading (Cantwell, WA).

So, the upshot is that it appears that if the election were held today, and if these polls held up, the Republicans would lose a net two seats in the senate. A lot can change between now and November, however, and if the Republicans start campaigning on the issues Newt Gingrich lays out here, especially if they campaign hard on border security, they may be able to cut their net loss of seats to zero. Perhaps they'd even pick up a seat.

Learn a Hundred New Things

Tom Bethell at The American Spectator, a man who knows a few things about the controversy surrounding the theory of naturalistic evolution, reviews the new book by Jonathan Wells, author of the very popular Icons of Evolution. Wells' new title is The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Evolution about which Bethell says:

Jonathan Wells' [new book] is surely the best book ever written on the problems of Darwin's theory of evolution. I was about to say the best for laymen, but it will also be invaluable for experts. The evidence and arguments deal with such a broad range of topics that few will be conversant with them all. Wells cites scholarly literature throughout, copiously footnotes his sources, uses plain-language quotations and translates technical terms where necessary. The book is accessible to readers with no prior knowledge of the field.

Open-minded readers will surely conclude that the propaganda campaign on behalf of Darwinism has become so furious precisely because the scientific evidence for it is so weak. Much is at stake-this is no mere storm in an academic teacup. Did we get here as a result of blind chance, as the more candid Darwinists maintain? Or was life on Earth intelligently designed?

Darwinists sometimes define evolution as "change over time" or a "change of gene frequencies." Since life and gene frequencies certainly do change over time, this allows Darwinians to claim that evolution is "a fact." What they really want to insinuate is something more ambitious: The factual basis of the claim that life, in all its complexity, was generated by chance and random mutations. And that has not been established-not even remotely.

Bethell goes on to summarize Wells' arguments that Darwinian evolution, i.e. the emergence of one species from another by purely material processes, suffers from a want of sufficient evidence.

He closes his review with this:

I strongly recommend this book. Even those already conversant with the subject will learn a hundred new things, all tending to persuade us that life is a matter of design, not chance.

I'm on my way now to my favorite bookseller to pick up a copy.

Kooks and Crooks

Where do the Democrats get these people?

"George Bush let people die on rooftops in New Orleans because they were poor and because they were black."
Claire McCaskill Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate in Missouri.

"A federal investigation has been launched into the financial dealings of New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez and a nonprofit agency he has helped over the years, sources said."

McCaskill has shown herself, with this kind of irresponsible Cynthia McKinneyism, to be an unserious candidate.

Menendez, for his part, is running in a close race with Republican challenger Tom Keane. The last time a N.J. Democrat was in a senate race and looked vulnerable to a Republican challenger the Dem godfathers made him an offer he couldn't refuse, and he dropped out of the race. That was Senator Bob Torricelli in 2002 who was replaced by the popular former Senator Frank Lautenberg a couple of weeks before the election. Lautenberg won the general election and has been a reliable liberal vote in the senate ever since.

No doubt Senator Menendez is in deep doo-doo with the Democratic dons in N.J. If any of them offer to take him out fishing on the lake he'd do well to decline the invitation.

Meanwhile, while we're on the subject of Democratic larcenies, what ever happened to Louisianna Democratic congressman William "Icebox" Jefferson? You'll recall that the honorable Mr. Jefferson was found to have stashed almost $100,000 in bribe money next to the ice cream in his freezer. He should be due for an indictment soon, shouldn't he?

Guilty, Even When Proven Innocent

David Broder at the Washington Post expresses my feelings on the Valerie Plame affair better than I can:

For much of the past five years, dark suspicions have been voiced about the Bush White House undermining its critics, and Karl Rove has been fingered as the chief culprit in this supposed plot to suppress the opposition.

Now at least one count in that indictment has been substantially weakened -- the charge that Rove masterminded a conspiracy to discredit Iraq intelligence critic Joseph Wilson by "outing" his CIA-operative wife, Valerie Plame.

I have written almost nothing about the Wilson-Plame case, because it seemed overblown to me from the start. Wilson's claim in a New York Times op-ed about his memo on the supposed Iraqi purchase of uranium yellowcake from Niger; the Robert D. Novak column naming Plame as the person who had recommended Wilson to check up on the reported sale; the call for a special prosecutor and the lengthy interrogation that led to the jailing of Judith Miller of the New York Times and the deposition of several other reporters; and, finally, the indictment of Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Cheney's chief of staff -- all of this struck me as being a tempest in a teapot.

No one behaved well in the whole mess -- not Wilson, not Libby, not special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald and not the reporters involved.

The only time I commented on the case was to caution reporters who offered bold First Amendment defenses for keeping their sources' names secret that they had better examine the motivations of the people leaking the information to be sure they deserve protection.

But caution has been notably lacking in some of the press treatment of this subject -- especially when it comes to Karl Rove. And it behooves us in the media to examine that behavior, not just sweep it under the rug.

Sidney Blumenthal, a former aide to President Bill Clinton and now a columnist for several publications, has just published a book titled, "How Bush Rules: Chronicles of a Radical Regime." It is a collection of his columns for Salon, including one originally published on July 14, 2005, titled "Rove's War."

It was occasioned by the disclosure of a memo from Time magazine's Matt Cooper, saying that Rove had confirmed to him the identity of Valerie Plame. To Blumenthal, that was proof that this "was political payback against Wilson by a White House that wanted to shift the public focus from the Iraq War to Wilson's motives."

Then Blumenthal went off on a rant: "While the White House stonewalls, Rove has license to run his own damage control operation. His surrogates argue that if Rove did anything, it wasn't a crime. . . . Rove is fighting his war as though it will be settled in a court of Washington pundits. Brandishing his formidable political weapons, he seeks to demonstrate his prowess once again. His corps of agents raises a din in which their voices drown out individual dissidents. His frantic massing of forces dominates the capital by winning the communications battle. Indeed, Rove may succeed momentarily in quelling the storm. But the stillness may be illusory. Before the prosecutor, Rove's arsenal is useless."

In fact, the prosecutor concluded that there was no crime; hence, no indictment. And we now know that the original "leak," in casual conversations with reporters Novak and Bob Woodward, came not from the conspiracy theorists' target in the White House but from the deputy secretary of state at the time, Richard Armitage, an esteemed member of the Washington establishment and no pal of Rove or President Bush.

Blumenthal's example is far from unique. Newsweek, in a July 25, 2005, cover story on Rove, after dutifully noting that Rove's lawyer said the prosecutor had told him that Rove was not a target of the investigation, added: "But this isn't just about the Facts, it's about what Rove's foes regard as a higher Truth: That he is a one-man epicenter of a narrative of Evil."

And in the American Prospect's cover story for August 2005, Joe Conason wrote that Rove "is a powerful bully. Fear of retribution has stifled those who might have revealed his secrets. He has enjoyed the impunity of a malefactor who could always claim, however implausibly, deniability -- until now."

These and other publications owe Karl Rove an apology. And all of journalism needs to relearn the lesson: Can the conspiracy theories and stick to the facts.

It's not just publications that owe Rove an apology, but also indioviduals like Chris Matthews and Keith Olberman at MSNBC who had the hapless advisor to the president all but swinging from the gallows in their coverage of this non-event.

The really interesting thing about this editorial is that so many of the administration's critics don't really care about what the actual truth is, what they care about is that the "Rove is guilty" meme has enormous psychic resonance on the left and is therefore their truth. Whether Rove actually did what Joe Wilson mendaciously accused him of is not important to them because surely he did other things just as evil.

And these are the people the public trusts to provide them with the truth.

Liberal Fantasies

Another hate-filled liberal, obsessed with murder, gives voice to her fantasies:

In Cindy Sheehan's new book, Peace Mom ... the antiwar icon admits she has fantasized about going back in time and killing the infant George W. Bush, thereby preventing the Iraq War.

I wonder how many parents fantasized about killing the infant Woodrow Wilson, FDR, Harry Truman, JFK, or LBJ, all of whom took us to wars in which hundreds of thousands of young men, each one loved just as much as Ms Sheehan's son, met their deaths. Even Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton ordered military operations in which Americans were killed. I wonder if the parents of those soldiers wished they could go back in time and murder these men when they were babies. If so, they apparently at least have had the moral modesty to refrain from publishing such obscene dreams in a book.

There's a profound pathology afflicting people who hate so irrationally that they would tell the world that they are capable of killing a baby in order to prevent the child from growing up to be the person they loathe. Sadly, Ms Sheehan's obsession with murdering the president is not confined to her alone. This sickness seems epidemic on the anti-war left.

The Choice They Offer Us

The deal offered Steve Centanni and Olaf Wiig while they were imprisoned in Gaza is the deal that Muslims envision for all Westerners: Accept Islam or die.

Adam Gadhan, the American Muslim traitor, offers such an invitation, veiled though it may be, on this video. Parenthetically, it's interesting that Gadhan praises George Galloway, Robert Fiske, and Seymour Hersh and also approves the effort to fire Donald Rumsfeld. Perhaps we can conclude something about the character of all four of these men from the feelings of this terrorist sympathisizer toward them.

The Centanni/Wiig episode illustrates a vast difference between Islam and Christianity. A Christian would never dream of holding a gun to a kidnap victim's head and giving him the choice of accepting Christ or suffering death. Such a choice would be utterly nonsensical and contrary to everything Christ teaches. But Muslims think it makes perfect sense to murder someone who refuses the offer to worship Allah. They are convinced beyond doubt that a gunpoint conversion finds favor with God. That's the good news, such as it is, offered us by the Islamists: If you assent to Islam we won't kill you.

The Christian is commanded to bear the insults of others and to love them despite their contempt for the faith that the Christian cherishes. The Muslim demands that those who insult Islam be butchered:

That, tragically, is our future unless we resolve to win the war against Islamo-fascism.

Newt's Plan For Victory

Newt Gingrich offers an eleven point plan for Republican success in November. Whatever you think about the guy he certainly does generate ideas and think strategically, probably more than anyone else in politics - in either party. His eleven proposals are these:

Republicans should spend the next two months focused on 11 straightforward, morally grounded issues about which the American people have clearly defined beliefs.

Some of these issues will make Republican elitists uncomfortable, but these were the same elitists who were uncomfortable with President Reagan and who scoffed at the Contract with America and rejected its bold proposals.

A Republican majority in the House that spent the next two months on these eleven issues would go a long way toward clarifying the choice between the San Francisco values of Nancy Pelosi and those of a GOP majority. This refreshing approach would reject the "incumbentitis" of relying on pork-barrel spending for reelection and return to the basic populist conservative values which gave us a majority in the first place.

These 11 issues are all clear and all doable.

1. Make English the Official Language of Government.
   
2. Control the Borders.
   
3. Keep God in the Pledge.
   
4. Require a Voter ID Card.
   
5. Repeal the Death Tax, for Good.
   
6. Restore Property Rights.
   
7. Achieve Sustainable Energy Independence.
   
8. Control Spending and Balance the Budget.
   
9. Tie Education Funding to Teacher Accountability.
   
10. Defend America From the Irreconcilable Wing of Islam.
    
11. Focus on Iran and North Korea.
    

He explains each of these at the link. It would be fun to watch the Democrats run against anyone who campaigns on these issues. There'd be lots of name-calling, of course, but very little attempt to explain to the voters why any of these proposals would be bad for America.

Leaving the Left

Erstwhile British leftist Stephen Pollard issues his declaration of independence from his former associates. Here's what he calls his Maida Vale Manifesto:

We the undersigned have always thought of ourselves as being on the Left. We have held it as axiomatic that the Left believed in fighting tyranny, liberating the oppressed, and spreading wealth and power.

We have had a rude awakening. When terrorists murdered thousands of American citizens, many of our fellow leftists blamed not the terrorists so much as Americans themselves. They had it coming seemed to be the view of many, if not most, of the Left.

This attitude was typified by the Left's house magazine, the New Statesman, which wrote this in its editorial after 9/11:

"American bond traders, you may say, are as innocent and as undeserving of terror as Vietnamese or Iraqi peasants. Well, yes and no. Yes, because such large-scale carnage is beyond justification, since it can never distinguish between the innocent and the guilty. No, because Americans, unlike Iraqis and many others in poor countries, at least have the privilege of democracy and freedom that allow them to vote and speak in favour of a different order. If the US often seems a greedy and overweening power, that is partly because its people have willed it. They preferred George Bush to Al Gore and both to Ralph Nader."

This piece of moral degeneracy was far from being a one-off. In the aftermath of 9/11, we were shocked by the frequent incidence of similar sentiments. The New Statesman again typified this after last July's tube murders, with a picture of a rucksack on its cover, accompanied by two words in large font: Blair's bombs.

There are many decent people on the Left, who understand the difference between good and evil, and who do not ally themselves with terrorists, murderers and oppressors. The Prime Minister himself is an outstanding example of this, risking his political support within his party to do the right thing at the right time.

But the very fact that supporting the liberation of Iraq from Saddam entailed such a political risk says almost all that needs to be said about the outlook of most Labour Party MPs and members.

Add to this the relish with which large, mainstream sections of the Left - typified by the Mayor of London - now choose to ally themselves with Islamists who seek to destroy the essence of Western civilisation, who would put to death homosexuals and Jews, and who would put women in metaphorical - and sometimes literal - chains, and the moral cancer that has taken hold of the Left becomes clear.

The evidence of reality is something with which we have had to wrestle. It is not easy to acknowledge what the Left has become, and the mindset of Leftists. But that evidence is so overwhelming that we can no longer conceive of describing ourselves as being on the Left in any recognisable form.

Theoretical arguments about what is or is not a proper Left-wing position are now meaningless. The mainstream Left has demonstrated clearly which side of the battle to preserve Western civilisation and freedom it is on. The Left, in any recognisable form, is now the enemy.

Pollard's description of the moral and intellectual inanition of the British secular left applies no less aptly to their American counterparts.

American Muslims

Stories like this one about the attitudes of American Muslims toward terrorism are heartening.

Young People and the Church

Commonweal, a Catholic magazine on religion, politics, and culture, has a piece by Dennis Doyle that probably captures the experience of many parents as well as many young people. It starts with this:

Two months after the wedding of my nephew, Joe, and his lovely bride, Laura, I went out to dinner with them. Their wedding had been well planned and beautiful, a ceremony containing so many thoughtful elements, I'd assumed they must be very religious. Later, though, I discovered it was Laura's mother who was behind many of those touches. Being a nosy Catholic theologian, I quizzed the two of them over dinner. It was true, they admitted: they had enjoyed picking the readings for the ceremony, but as for religion itself-well, they saw themselves not as religious, but as spiritual.

Hesitantly, I started to venture a response, then pulled back.

"You're going to use your twenty-four-hour rule!" said Laura with a laugh.

We had just been discussing the topic of e-mails sent in anger and how regrettable they can be, and I'd explained my personal rule: If a message you're about to send feels too heated, wait a day and give yourself a chance to send a more measured one.

"Correct," I laughingly agreed.

Yet all of about twenty-four minutes later, there I was, plunging into the subject, animatedly sharing with them how both spirituality and religion had become very important for me around their age. I was gently attempting to prod them, and Joe felt the implicit critique. "You had your epiphany, and that's great," he said. "We haven't had ours yet."

My nephew was quick to explain that he is a true fan of religion and of sincerely religious people-even envious, sometimes, of those who are able to live out their religion in an intelligent, committed manner. But he considered himself a spectator, not a participant, and moreover saw a basic distinction between spirituality-which he viewed as a felt connection to something deeper-and religion, a human construct rooted in tradition and ideology. He had other objections. In his view, while religion can sometimes provide a structure for spirituality, it can also be divisive and limiting. Further, most people inherit their religion, making it difficult for them to freely choose a faith later.

For her part, Laura emphasized the difficulty of making exclusive commitments in this complex, pluralistic world. Like Joe, she said she wouldn't mind believing in a religion, but it was difficult for her to imagine a particular religion being the "right" one. She saw "spirituality" as a vague concept, something akin to "finding yourself," but also a positive one, suggesting a habit of being in touch with your inner core. For Laura, belonging to a particular religion would involve a type of equivocation, since invariably she would have to accept things she didn't really believe. Should Jesus be thought of as God by Hindus and Muslims as well as by Christians? If she believed that, she mused, she'd have to hope that someday the entire world would be converted to Christianity. Yet she valued religious pluralism, and considered it both healthy and beneficial. She was comfortable with Hindus remaining Hindu and Muslims Muslim. Did this acceptance of other faiths neutralize the Catholic beliefs with which she grew up?

The conversation is familiar to me. The day before I started to write this, one of my sons, a college student, informed me that he was no longer going to Mass. He said he would probably attend later in life, but for the time being, it didn't really make any difference whether he went to church or not. I was fairly calm about it-even appreciative that he saw his disaffection as a stage he was going through. But a colleague I shared the news with barked in anger (no twenty-four-hour-rule there): "Doesn't your son realize that if he goes to church every Sunday over the next twenty-five years, it will make all the difference-and that there's no way for him to know unless he does it?"

I recognize a bit of a Yogi Berraism to this logic, if not a full-scale Catch-22: my son should know something there's no way for him to know unless he does it for twenty-five years. But, paradoxically, that is the truth of it; that is how religious knowledge is acquired. And that's what I really would like to tell Joe and Laura. You won't know whether to believe unless you let yourself try.

Doyle goes on to discuss some of the reasons young people often feel disaffected from the religious traditions of their parents, and much of what he says is worth reading whether your a parent or a grown child.

He doesn't mention this explicitly, but perhaps part of the reason young people attach little importance to religion is that they see their lives as lying all ahead of them and see little need or relevance for religion. It seems like something for old people. Young adults are excited about the prospects of home, career, family, and so on. Like pioneers, they stand on the frontier of a vast and beautiful life stretching out before them filling them with a sense of meaning and purpose. It's not until they approach their middle years that some of them begin to wonder if they haven't been fooling themselves about what really is meaningful in life or whether there even can be genuine meaning apart from intimacy with God.

Not everyone asks this question, of course, and not everyone who asks it asks it in the same way or is even aware that that's the question that's been gnawing at them. But for some, maybe even for many, the question raised by the old Peggy Lee song becomes the crucial existential question of their lives: Is that all there is? Is life just a matter of acquiring things? Is happiness solely a matter of having the right house in the right neighborhood with the right spouse and going each day to the right job and watching each night the right television shows? When people start wondering if there's not supposed to be something more then they begin to realize that, as Augustine put it, "Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in thee."

Neutralizing the Chinese Threat

Strategy Page brings us up to date on the latest developments in President Bush's missile defense program:

The latest test of the American missile defense system, which saw a defensive missile destroy an incoming ICBM warhead, is probably the biggest step yet in the quiet neutralization of the ballistic missile arsenals of China, North Korea, and Iran. In this test, a missile launched from a base in Alaska hit and destroyed a target coming from the Pacific Ocean.

One thing to keep in mind is that this test was intended for data collection, not to test if the system could actually kill an incoming missile. The successful takedown was a bonus. The next test, intended to determine how well the system can pick out real targets from decoys, is slated for December.

The system, as it now stands, will have 18 ground-based interceptors (GBIs) by the end of 2007, and is already sufficient to have neutralized China's force of 24 DF-5 ICBMs. How is this so, considering that China has 24 DF-5 ICBMs? Simple subtraction would seem to indicate that at least six ICBMs would get through to their targets in an attempted strike.

It is true, that if the GBIs work and kill their targets, six missiles would get through. But which six will they be? That is a question China would need a clairvoyant or a fortune teller to determine. With the increased level of uncertainty about the success of the attack, China would very well decide not to launch the attack in the first place.

We note that those who scoffed at, and fought against, Ronald Reagan's concept of missile defense have had little to say about the current program. It's true that Reagan's plan called for a space-based defense and the current program employs ground based missiles, but the emphasis on weapons in space was not what earned Reagan's proposal so much opprobrium. Reagan thought it was not only feasible but morally obligatory to defend ourselves against foreign ICBMs. His critics, however, thought, back in the days of the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction, that self-defense was "destabilizing" and likely to result in a pre-emptive attack by the Soviets before our defense shield was up and running. Nobody seems to worry much about that anymore in this post 9/11 world.

Rocket Ride

Our media, unfailingly skeptical about anything our administration, or that of our allies, has to say about the various struggles in the Middle East, have been astonishingly credulous of reports by Hezbollah that the Israelis deliberately targeted Red Cross ambulances for missile attacks.

The Jawa Report has some video that shows how absurd the reports were and how gullible the news outlets which reported these "atrocities" had to be. Watch the whole thing.

Thanks to Michelle for the tip.

Why We Can't Leave

Last week I posted an article titled Living in a Fantasy World in which I argued that the opponents of the president are reluctant to offer a genuine alternative to his Middle East policy, other than vague and meaningless adjurations to negotiate more effectively or set a time line for withdrawal from Iraq. Their reluctance to be more specific is due to the fact that what many of them really want him to do, although they don't want to explicitly say it, is pull out of Iraq as soon as such a pullout can be accomplished.

A withdrawal before Iraq is stable and self-sufficient, however, would be a disaster of historical proportions and anyone who has thought about it surely realizes this. Thus many of the president's critics keep their counsel about what he should do, and instead content themselves with bashing him for doing what he is doing.

Why would a precipitous withdrawal from Iraq be a calamity? Consider the likely aftermath of an American military pullout. Once we are gone the following are not just possible, they're highly likely:

1. Sunni and Shia would be quickly at each others' throats in a desperate civil war for political dominance. It would be a fight for survival because whoever wins would surely oppress, if not utterly eliminate, the loser.

2. Iran would move into Iraq on behalf of the Shia and to settle old scores with the Iraqi Sunnis dating back to the Iraq/Iran war in the 1980s. They would doubtless annex the oil fields in the south. Meanwhile pressure would mount on Sunni nations like Egypt and Saudi Arabia to come to the aid of their beleaguered brethren. Turkey would take advantage of the chaos to settle their chronic Kurdish problem by invading northern Iraq. Syria would be sorely tempted to grab some oil fields wherever they could. Iraq would get carved up like a Thanksgiving turkey among its neighbors and would be almost completely helpless to prevent it.

3. Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations would exploit Iraq's weakness to establish training areas and safe havens in the country from which to launch terrorist attacks around the world.

4. Anyone who collaborated or cooperated with the coalition would be marked for torture and death by the insurgent forces. This would come to perhaps hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Iraqis.

5. The chaos of war and the rape of the country's resources would result in severe shortages of food, water, medical care, sanitation, and electricity. Perhaps millions of Iraqis would starve or perish from disease if these conditions persisted more than a few months.

6. The United States would be thoroughly discredited and blamed for the misery and strife in Iraq because of our retreat. No nation would ever trust us again to honor a commitment. Pressure from their people would cause governments in Kuwait, Oman, and Qatar to insist we abandon our bases there. Other Muslim nations, like Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Indonesia, seeing that we are undependable partners in the war on terror, would ratchet back their cooperation. As the last American helicopter flies out of Baghdad, every Arab nation that has the money will begin looking for nuclear weapons to protect themselves from the blackmail and threats of the Iranians.

7. Our lack of credibility in the region would embolden Israel's neighbors to settle the "Zionist problem" once and for all. Once we start pulling out of the Middle East it would be psychologically almost impossible to reverse course and go back in, and the Arab enemies of Israel know this. Thus they would see our withdrawal as presenting them with a golden opportunity to wipe Israel off the face of the earth and Israel may have to resort to nuclear weapons to keep that from happening.

It may be, of course, that none of these things would occur. It may be that in the vacuum created by our absence the Shia and Sunni would turn their swords into plowshares and live amicably with each other.

It may be that other nations would not be at all tempted to grab what they can of Iraq's oil wealth.

It may be that al Qaeda feels safe enough in the hills of Pakistan that they wouldn't move in force into Iraq.

It may be that the insurgents would forgive and forget the collaboration of their fellow Iraqis with the coalition.

It may be that Israel's neighbors would feel sorry for Israel in their weakened and vulnerable state and offer to make peace instead of war.

It may be that tomorrow will be the day of the Second Coming, but all of our experience tells us that it probably won't be, and it is our experience which should inform our judgments and policies.

To withdraw from Iraq before Iraq can fend for itself would be the most immoral course of action we could follow as a nation. It would consign tens of thousands, if not millions, of Iraqis to almost certain death and would earn us the contempt of history for such a reprehensible betrayal. This prospect doesn't seem to bother some, but it should confer a deep sense of obligation, it seems to me, upon anyone who strives to fulfill the Biblical mandates to do justice and love our neighbor.

The Advantage of Playing Away

Strategy Page makes the interesting point that:

Since the United States took the offensive in the war on terror, nearly all the Islamic terror attacks have been in Moslem countries [The attack in Madrid being a notable exception. ]. The American move in to Iraq and Afghanistan is an ancient tactic, and is also called "forward defense," or "taking the war to the enemy." In addition to Iraq, where Sunni Arab nationalists have joined forces with Islamic radicals to try and gain control of the country, there is also lots of Islamic terrorism in Pakistan, India and Bangladesh. There's some, but much less, activity in places like Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, the Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia.

They go on to explain why they think al Qaeda will eventually lose the global war which they've initiated.

RLC

The Mystery of Consciousness

Robert Wright interviews evolutionary icon John Maynard Smith on the mystery of consciousness and seems driven toward the conclusion that perhaps there is a God after all. Smith demurs. Their exchange can be viewed here.

Consciousness poses a challenge to materialism in that it's very difficult to conceive of an explanation for how matter could produce sentience, self-awareness, and abstract thought purely by chance and the laws of nature. The materialist believes that consciousness is just a product of the chemical and electric phenomena occuring in the brain, and it may be, though I doubt that it's that simple, but the salient question is not just what consciousness is and what generates it, but how did it ever emerge.

It is as if, the materialist would have us believe, an ocean of computer parts was somehow, through the action of blind physical forces, able to gradually construct a machine that was aware of itself and of its environment. This, if it happened, would be a feat every bit as miraculous, if not moreso, than turning water to wine or parting the Red Sea, events at which materialists are generally given to scoff.

The origin of consciousness, along with the origin of life itself, may well be the two greatest mysteries confronting human understanding today and are certainly two of the greatest difficulties with a materialist worldview.

Barely Juvenile

This article prompts us to ask what message, exactly, is walking around in one's altogether supposed to send? Does a naked body make some sort of political statement? If so, what could it possibly be? "Hey, look at me I'm a liberal!"

Does the individual who strips him or herself down to the bare essentials simply crave attention? Are they psychological cousins to "flashers" who, like monkeys in the zoo, find amusement in flaunting their most personal accoutrements in front of others? Are they deluded exhibitionists who think that their naked anatomy is a turn on for bystanders? Are they nothing more than rude, and perhaps deranged, souls who simply enjoy embarrassing others?

If exposing oneself is merely a symbol of rebellion it seems pretty childish: "Okay, George Bush, if you're going to go to war in Iraq I'm going to show the world my willy!" What deeply suppressed obsessions and neuroses do these people feel the need to liberate?

Maybe a psychiatrist could tell us why the folks who do this sort of thing think it is anything other than a sign of a deeply troubled id and/or arrested development and why communities think that it's somehow "progressive" to permit it.