Sticking With Us

Brit Tim Hames of the UK Times Online responds to colleague Matthew Parris who urges Britain to abandon their commitment to U.S. foreign policy goals in Iraq:

I am not inclined to castigate the US Administration for what has occurred in Iraq. As Matthew correctly says, it is far from obvious that deploying many more troops after Saddam Hussein was toppled would have made sense, or that the "de-Baathification" of the Iraqi Army and bureaucracy was a miscalculation. For a start, "de-Baathification" was scarcely a deliberate US policy. These institutions simply disintegrated when their leader disappeared. The largest single mistake, in retrospect, rests elsewhere. The problem has not been the Bush Administration underestimating how much Iraqis might come to loathe the West for the "occupation" but a failure to grasp the extent to which, thanks to Saddam, Iraqis had come to fear and hate each other.

That inter-communal hatred is the present cause of Iraq's troubles. American soldiers have died in tragic numbers this month not because of any so-called insurgency that wants to drive the US out of Iraq but because they have been attempting to prevent rival religious and sectarian militias from killing their enemies. The effort to hold together a central government in Baghdad (a drive, ironically, designed to reassure the defeated Sunnis) does not command sufficient consensus to sustain it.

What needs to be done now, as James Baker, a former US Secretary of State, appreciates, is to secure a decentralised settlement and convince the Shia majority to divide the oil revenues in a way that each camp will consider fair. In such a situation, as Kim Howells, the Foreign Office Minister, has outlined, US and British forces could be withdrawn steadily throughout 2007 without chaos.

I would not bet against Iraq's future. That country retains extraordinary attributes. To declare it dead and buried a meagre three years after Saddam's demise is, to me, premature folly.After all, would the recovery of Germany and Japan have been anticipated in 1948, three years after their surrender? Or the fate of Russia accurately assessed in 1994, during the chaos of the Yeltsin years, three years after the Soviet Union was disbanded? Or would anybody have expected that China would be where it is today in 1992, three years after the Tiananmen Square massacre?

The question that those of us in the pro-war camp have to confront is whether by, say, 2010 Iraq, the Middle East and the wider world will be demonstrably the better for Saddam's overthrow than if he and his sadistic sons had been left in power. My answer to that question remains, unambiguously, in the affirmative.

There it is then. Others can choose to condemn the Americans and head for the lifeboats, but not in my name. The offer of Mrs Beckett's assistance is kind, Matthew, yet I do not seek the shelter of a liferaft. I will stay with the ship and take my chances. If the vessel does ultimately capsize, despite my expectations, I will throw a bottle over the side containing the message: "I still think that 'we kicked the door in' is a more noble sentiment than the Little Englander's cry of 'leave those foreigners to their misery'."

Would that our own Democrats and our own media had as much sense and as much loyalty as does Mr. Hames.

What's in a Name?

The New York Post has an excerpt from Mark Steyn's new book America Alone: The End of the World as We Know it. Steyn is one of the wittiest commenters on contemporary events, and at one point he makes this rather obvious but no less disturbing observation:

Not long after 9/11, I said, just as an aside, that these days whenever something goofy turns up on the news chances are it involves some fellow called Mohammad.

A plane flies into the World Trade Center? Mohammad Atta.

A sniper starts killing gas station customers around Washington, D.C.? John Allen Muhammad.

A guy fatally stabs a Dutch movie director? Mohammed Bouyeri.

A gunman shoots up the El Al counter at Los Angeles airport? Hesham Mohamed Hedayet.

A terrorist slaughters dozens in Bali? Noordin Mohamed.

A British subject self-detonates in a Tel Aviv bar? Asif Mohammad Hanif.

A terrorist cell bombs the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania? Ali Mohamed.

A gang rapist preys on the women of Sydney, Australia? Mohammad Skaf.

A group of Dearborn, Mich., men charged with cigarette racketeering in order to fund Hezbollah? Fadi Mohamad-Musbah Hammoud, Mohammad Fawzi Zeidan and Imad Mohamad-Musbah Hammoud.

A Canadian terror cell is arrested for plotting to bomb Ottawa and behead the prime minister? Mohammad Dirie, Amin Mohamed Durrani and Yasim Abdi Mohamed.

There certainly does seem to be an appalling correlation between brutal, vicious criminality and people named Muhammed. Wonder why.

Persuading the Norks

Charles Krauthammer makes a case for allowing Japan to arm itself with nuclear weapons should North Korea persist in developing a nuclear arsenal. It is truly a shame that it has come to this, but it really makes little sense, for Japan or for us, for Japan to be forced to rely on American protection from North Korea. George Bush won't be president forever, after all.

Some of Krauthammer's strongest points are contained in these paragraphs:

Japan is a true anomaly. All the other Great Powers went nuclear decades ago -- even the once-and-no-longer great, such as France; the wannabe great, such as India; and the never-will-be great, such as North Korea. There are nukes in the hands of Pakistan, which overnight could turn into an al-Qaeda state, and North Korea, a country so cosmically deranged that it reports that the "Dear Leader" shot five holes-in-one in his first time playing golf and also wrote six operas. Yet we are plagued by doubts about Japan's joining this club.

Japan is not just a model international citizen -- dynamic economy, stable democracy, self-effacing foreign policy -- it is also the most important and reliable U.S. ally after only Britain. One of the quieter success stories of recent American foreign policy has been the intensification of the U.S.-Japanese alliance. Tokyo has joined with the United States in the development and deployment of missile defenses and aligned itself with the United States on the neuralgic issue of Taiwan, pledging solidarity should there ever be a confrontation.

The immediate effect of Japan's considering going nuclear would be to concentrate China's mind on denuclearizing North Korea. China calculates that North Korea is a convenient buffer between it and a dynamic, capitalist South Korea bolstered by American troops. China is quite content with a client regime that is a thorn in our side, keeping us tied down while it pursues its ambitions in the rest of Asia. Pyongyang's nukes, after all, are pointed not west but east.

The question Americans have to ask themselves is: Which is better, to try to dissuade the North Koreans by arming Japan or by threatening to bomb the bejabbers out of Pyongyang. No other strategy is likely to work, least of all negotiations.

Negotiations only succeed when the other side is willing to compromise or when they see that there is too great a price to pay for not agreeing to terms. In the case of the North Korean program to build nuclear weapons there can be no compromise. Thus the only way to persuade the Norks is to convince them that proceeding with their nuclear buildup will result in the neutralization of their military. This means either arming Korea's neighbors with nuclear weapons or administering a severe and sustained dose of shock and awe.

The former, entailing as it does the spread of nuclear weapons, is exceedingly undesirable, but the latter will mean war on the Korean peninsula and possibly beyond. Given the choices, a nuclear Japan seems to be the better of two very bad alternatives.

Sitting it Out

Ramirez offers his opinion of the silliness of the threat by some Republican voters to sit out this election because of disappointment with their party's shortcomings:

Smuggling Religion into Science Class

We've been told ad nauseum, as you well know, that Intelligent Design should not be taught in schools because it's religious, and religion has no place in public schools, especially in science class. ID is just a Trojan horse used to smuggle religion into public schools, the story goes, but Darwinism is genuine science and as such should be taught to our children in their science classes.

Well. Uncommon Descent has a page full of quotes taken from biology textbooks, many of them used in public high schools which it would be good to review. Here are a couple of examples. Read these and see whether you agree that Darwinists have no religious agenda and that Darwinism carries no religious freight.

"By coupling undirected, purposeless variation to the blind, uncaring process of natural selection, Darwin made theological or spiritual explanations of the life processes superfluous." (Evolutionary Biology, by Douglas J. Futuyma 3rd ed., Sinauer Associates Inc., 1998, p. 5.)

"Darwin knew that accepting his theory required believing in philosophical materialism, the conviction that matter is the stuff of all existence and that all mental and spiritual phenomena are its by-products. Darwinian evolution was not only purposeless but also heartless-a process in which the rigors of nature ruthlessly eliminate the unfit. Suddenly, humanity was reduced to just one more species in a world that cared nothing for us. The great human mind was no more than a mass of evolving neurons. Worst of all, there was no divine plan to guide us." (Biology: Discovering Life by Joseph S. Levine & Kenneth R. Miller 1st ed., D.C. Heath and Co., 1992, pg. 152; 2nd ed.. D.C. Heath and Co., 1994, p. 161; emphases in original.)

The real difficulty in accepting Darwin's theory has always been that it seems to diminish our significance. Earlier, astronomy had made it clear that the earth is not the center of the solar universe, or even of our own solar system. Now the new biology asked us to accept the proposition that, like all other organisms, we too are the products of a random process that, as far as science can show, we are not created for any special purpose or as part of any universal design." (Invitation to Biology, by Helena Curtis & N. Sue Barnes 3rd ed., Worth, 1981, pgs. 474-475.)

"The advent of Darwinism posted even greater threats to religion by suggesting that biological relationship, including the origin of humans and of all species, could be explained by natural selection without the intervention of a god. Many felt that evolutionary randomness and uncertainty had replaced a deity having conscious, purposeful, human characteristics. The Darwinian view that evolution is a historical process and present-type organisms were not created spontaneously but formed in a succession of selective events that occurred in the past, contradicted the common religious view that there could be no design, biological or otherwise, without an intelligent designer. ... The variability by which selection depends may be random, but adaptions are not; they arise because selection chooses and perfects only what is adaptive. In this scheme a god of design and purpose is not necessary. Neither religion nor science has irrevocably conquered. Religion has been bolstered by paternalistic social systems in which individuals depend on the beneficiences of those more powerful than they are, as well as the comforting idea that humanity was created in the image of a god to rule over the world and its creatures. Religion provided emotional solace...Nevertheless, faith in religious dogma has been eroded by natural explanations of its mysteries, by a deep understanding of the sources of human emotional needs, and by the recognition that ethics and morality can change among different societies and that acceptance of such values need not depend on religion." (Evolution by Monroe, W. Strickberger 3rd ed., Jones & Bartlett, 2000, pg. 70-71)

There's much more at the link. For some reason this sort of thing elicits no lawsuiits from outraged parents who don't want their tax dollars used to smuggle religion and metaphysics into their children's science class and stuffed down their throats. However, let the school board require teachers to merely inform students that maybe what they're reading in their textbooks isn't the whole story about origins, and the entire scientific establishment, abetted by the ever-vigilant ACLU, mobilizes to support any parent who feels that their child is going to be scarred for life by the constitutional sacrilege.

Ted Kennedy and the KGB

CNS quotes presidential biographer Paul Kengor from his new book (The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism) as having come into possession of a memo written in 1983 from the Soviet KGB chief to General Secretary Yuri Andropov. Kevin Mooney of CNS writes:

In his book, which came out this week, Kengor focuses on a KGB letter written at the height of the Cold War that shows that Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) offered to assist Soviet leaders in formulating a public relations strategy to counter President Reagan's foreign policy and to complicate his re-election efforts.

The letter, dated May 14, 1983, was sent from the head of the KGB to Yuri Andropov, who was then General Secretary of the Soviet Union's Communist Party.

In his letter, KGB head Viktor Chebrikov offered Andropov his interpretation of Kennedy's offer. Former U.S. Sen. John Tunney (D-Calif.) had traveled to Moscow on behalf of Kennedy to seek out a partnership with Andropov and other Soviet officials, Kengor claims in his book.

At one point after President Reagan left office, Tunney acknowledged that he had played the role of intermediary, not only for Kennedy but for other U.S. senators, Kengor said. Moreover, Tunney told the London Times that he had made 15 separate trips to Moscow.

"There's a lot more to be found here," Kengor told Cybercast News Service. "This was a shocking revelation."

It is not evident with whom Tunney actually met in Moscow. But the letter does say that Sen. Kennedy directed Tunney to reach out to "confidential contacts" so Andropov could be alerted to the senator's proposals.

Specifically, Kennedy proposed that Andropov make a direct appeal to the American people in a series of television interviews that would be organized in August and September of 1983, according to the letter.

"Tunney told his contacts that Kennedy was very troubled about the decline in U.S-Soviet relations under Reagan," Kengor said. "But Kennedy attributed this decline to Reagan, not to the Soviets. In one of the most striking parts of this letter, Kennedy is said to be very impressed with Andropov and other Soviet leaders."

In other words, if this is true, Senators Kennedy and Tunney and other leftists in our government were conspiring with the Soviets at the height of the cold war to bring about the defeat of an American president. At the very least this is reprehensible. At worst it's treason. It also illustrates the point that liberals and leftists never see any enemies on the left. To them the enemy is always the United States and the Republican party.

Hot Air and Human Events have more on the story.

This whole business offers yet another reason why the Democrats simply cannot be trusted with the national security of this country. Had Ted Kennedy and his allies been successful Reagan would not have been re-elected in 1984, the Berlin Wall would not have fallen and the cold war would not have ended.

NYT: Oops, Our Bad.

The New York Times finally admits that they made a mistake in publishing their "expose" on our secret program of tracking terrorist banking activities. According to Michelle Malkin they only have one excuse: They hated Bush so much that it completely blinded them to their professional obligations and their responsibilities to the nation.

Read her account of of the pathetic mea culpa rendered by Times editor Byron Calame here.

Colbert and Dawkins

Stephen Colbert interviews atheistic Darwinian Richard Dawkins. It's pretty funny. Along the way Dawkins impresses the audience with the question, "If God designed the world then what designed God". Despite the audience's enthusiasm for the retort it's really little more than a red herring. The answer, of course, is 1) nothing, and 2) it doesn't matter.

1) The universe is the totality of all contingent (or designed) things and therefore the creative cause of the universe cannot itself be contingent or else it'd be part of the universe.

2) Once it is agreed that the universe has a creative cause, as is tacitly done in Dawkins' question, the argument is over. In order to pose his question Dawkins has to tacitly accede to the theist's main point which is that the universe has a cause responsible for all of its order, design, and personality. Whether that cause is itself caused by something greater than itself makes no difference to the argument that the universe has a cause outside of itself and does not alter the fact that the theist has won the point.

Soft on National Security

If this turns out to be as it appears it'll be just one more reason why Democrats can't be trusted to handle national security:

WASHINGTON - House Intelligence Chairman Peter Hoekstra has suspended a Democratic staff member because of concerns he may have leaked a high-level intelligence assessment to The New York Times last month.

In a letter obtained by The Associated Press Thursday night, Rep. Ray LaHood (news, bio, voting record), R-Ill., a committee member, said that an unidentified staffer requested the document from National Intelligence Director John Negroponte three days before the Sept. 23 story about its conclusions.

The staffer received the National Intelligence Estimate on global terror trends on Sept. 21.

"I have no credible information to say any classified information was leaked from the committee's minority staff, but the implications of such would be dramatic," LaHood wrote Hoekstra, R-Mich., late last month. "This may, in fact, be only coincidence, and simply 'look bad.' But coincidence, in this town, is rare."

A spokesman to Hoekstra, Jamal Ware, confirmed that a committee staff member was suspended this week. He said the staff member is being denied access to classified information pending the outcome of a review.

"Chairman Hoekstra considers security highly important, and the coincidence certainly merits a review," he said.

So far there hasn't been much said about this in the MSM, I mean not compared to, say, the really super-important scandals like Dick Cheney's hunting accident, Scooter Libby mentioning that Valerie Plame works for the CIA, and Mark Foley's licentious correspondence with a male page. Those scandals were about really important things and, besides, they featured Republicans.

I wonder what the media would be doing with this story were the suspected leaker of genuinely significant national security information a Republican?

This Week's Feedback

Today we highlight several of the many interesting reader responses we've received to last week's posts. We are taken to task by one reader for Limbo while others offer thoughts on Thirty Eight Ways to Win, YEC v. ID, and one young lady offers a different perspective on Orange Bowl Brawl. Their thoughts can be found on the Feedback page. Enjoy.

Limbo

Robert T. Miller writing at First Things is made uneasy by word that the Roman Catholic International Theological Commission might abolish the doctrine of limbo, a "place" where children go if they die unbaptized.

The attempt to harmonize the standard theological doctrines of salvation with the perfectly understandable hope that children who die have eternal life has resulted over the centuries in a number of theological contortions, limbo being one of them.

Miller describes limbo as a state wherein, according to Thomas Aquinas:

...the souls of the unbaptized infants enjoy the complete fulfillment of human nature, including a natural knowledge of God, the greatest possible for unaided human reason. The only thing such souls lack is the supernatural vision of God that is possible only through grace, and, according to Aquinas, they do not even regret not having that supernatural vision because they understand that it is a gift over and above anything human nature could merit and so not something they could ever have reasonably hoped to attain. They no more regret not having the beatific vision, Aquinas says, than a peasant regrets not inheriting a kingdom.

In limbo the child neither suffers the torments of hell nor exults in the joys of heaven. It is neither heaven nor hell, which is certainly a better fate than awaits the unfortunate child according to those whose theology follows the Westminster Confession of Faith:

Elect infants, dying in infancy, are regenerated and saved by by Christ....So also are all other elect persons, who are incapable of being outwardly called by the ministry of the word (Chap. X, sec. III).

This suggests the inference that there are infants who die who are not among the elect and which therefore go to hell for eternity. This is difficult, to understate the matter, to reconcile with the notion of a perfectly good and loving God. That such a God would cause to be created persons who live for a few hours and are then consigned to suffer the agonies of hell forever simply because they are human and thus a descendent of Adam is not a proposition one would think to be easy to defend.

Other Christians, wishing to avoid treacherous apologetic terrain, simply assert that all children who die before the "age of accountability" are saved forever by God. This seems much more in keeping with the teaching of Jesus about the love, mercy and compassion of God, but it also presents difficulties of a different kind.

For example, what is the age at which one becomes spiritually accountable and is there Biblical warrant for such an idea? More significantly, if it is granted that children and mental incompetents are saved without having to make a decision for Christ because they simply can't, that seems to crack the door open for the conclusion that perhaps such a decision is not necessary for others as well. If children can't make a decision for Christ because of a lack of comprehension, then neither can those who were born both before and after Christ who never heard the gospel.

And if we allow the possibility that at least some of these might benefit from the work of Christ on the Cross though they know nothing about it, then why not those who have heard the gospel but who for reasons of psychology rather than spiritual hostility find themselves unable to believe it?

We have now wandered far from the reservation staked out by the Westminster Confession and into the regions of what is called Christian inclusivism. Inclusivism is the belief that Christ's death on the cross atones for the sins of all humanity, not just some as in the Reformed view, and that all people are born saved by God's grace until they themselves explicitly reject God and/or spurn His forgiveness and offer of salvation.

This notion may be completely wrong, although it's not easy to see that it is, but it has at least one advantage. It allows us to put aside notions like limbo and unelect children suffering forever for the sin of an ancestor over 10,000 years ago.

According to this view Jesus takes to his bosom every child who dies early. His sacrifice has covered whatever price must be paid for these little ones, so that they can enjoy the presence of God forever. No limbo, no eternal damnation, just unending joy and happiness in the presence of God.

This seems to me to be a much better fit with what the Bible tells us about God than the belief that God allows some infants to be born for no purpose other than to be dispatched to an eternity of misery. If this is wrong, though, and if the Westminster Confession accurately states the way things really stand then parents would actually be doing the moral thing by seeking to have their unwanted children aborted. If the aborted child is one of God's elect then the abortion would not succeed. If the child is not among the elect then the abortion spares them a completely meaningless eternal suffering. Unless, of course, the child is damned from the moment it is conceived in which case it becomes even more difficult to imagine why God would do such a thing.

For Miller's part, he holds fast to the doctrine of limbo:

So, in my view, the argument from the universal salvific will of God is inadequate to support the view that all unbaptized infants are saved....the view that all unbaptized infants are saved is decidedly a modern one, a view very much in the spirit of our times. Ours is a culture that can't bear the thought of anyone going to hell, even the people who, for all the world, seem to deserve it. Thus we have the near universal custom at Christian funerals of proclaiming that the decedent, no matter how morally dissolute his life, is now enjoying the banquet of heaven in the company of the saints, without even a short stay in Purgatory. The spirit of the age hates hell, and so hates limbo as well, which it cannot adequately distinguish from hell.

With due respect to Mr. Miller it seems to me that part of what it means to be a Christian is that one not be able to "bear the thought of anyone going to hell, even the people who, for all the world, seem to deserve it". Does Mr. Miller suggest that we should rejoice that our non-Christian loved ones are destined to everlasting suffering?

Indeed, the spirit of the age does hate hell. This may be the only point of agreement between the spirit of the age and Jesus Christ who Himself hated hell so much that He died so that men, and children, may be spared from it's terrifying maw.

The Possessed

This piece of cheery news comes to us by way of the Drudge Report:

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called Israel a "counterfeit and illegitimate regime that cannot survive", in a live broadcast on state television.

"The Zionist regime is counterfeit and illegitimate and cannot survive," he said in a speech to a crowd in the town of Islamshahr in southwestern Tehran.

"The big powers have created this fraud regime and allowed it to commit all kind of crimes to guarantee their interests," he added.

Ahmadinejad sounds for all the world like a psychopath bent upon plunging the world into nuclear war. He's striving strenuously to build a nuclear weapon and scarcely anyone in the world is interested in doing much to stop him except George Bush and the Israelis.

We have said this before, but it bears repeating: The only thing worse than going to war to disarm Iran would be to allow Iran to obtain nuclear weapons.

The Threat to Liberty Posed by Gay Rights

We have several times throughout our two and a half years of existence at Viewpoint argued that legalizing gay marriage would have the almost inevitable consequence of opening the door to the legalization of any union which any combination of persons wished to form. Marriage is currently the union of one man and one woman, but once the gender of the persons in the union no longer matters neither will the number. There would be no logical reason why the number of people entering into marriage should be limited to two. Once the Rubicon of gay marriage is crossed courts would eventually and ineluctably compel legislatures to legalize polyamorous unions.

Now comes an article by Maggie Gallagher in the Weekly Standard which claims that another consequence of legalizing gay marriage, or at least legitimizing the arguments which culminate in legalized gay marriage, will be the erosion of both religious liberty and our freedom of speech. As one lawyer puts it in the article "when religious liberty and sexual liberty conflict sexual liberty should almost always prevail because that's the only way that the dignity of gay people can be affirmed in any realistic manner". Despite the fact that the First Amendment of the constituition guarantees freedom of religion and despite the fact that there is no corresponding constitutional guarantee of sexual liberty, this lawyer asserts that the latter should nevertheless trump the former. This is more than a little disturbing.

A prelude to the coming storm occured last March when Catholic Charities in Boston decided it was getting out of the adoption business because the courts decreed that they had to allow gay couples to adopt children. This violated the teaching of the Catholic church, and so, rather than accede to what they saw as immoral and unbiblical policy, they simply stopped serviung as an adoption agency.

The consequences will not be limited, however, to adoption. Read this excerpt from Gallagher's very informative column:

Consider education. Same-sex marriage will affect religious educational institutions...in at least four ways: admissions, employment, housing, and regulation of clubs. One of (general counsel for the American Jewish Congress, Marc) Stern's big worries right now is a case in California where a private Christian high school expelled two girls who (the school says) announced they were in a lesbian relationship. Stern is not optimistic. And if the high school loses, he tells me, "then religious schools are out of business." Or at least the government will force religious schools to tolerate both conduct and proclamations by students they believe to be sinful.

Stern agrees...that public accommodation laws can and should force truly commercial enterprises to serve all comers. But, he asks, what of other places, such as religious camps, retreats, and homeless shelters? Will they be considered by courts to be places of public accommodation, too? Could a religious summer camp operated in strict conformity with religious principles refuse to accept children coming from same-sex marriages? What of a church-affiliated community center, with a gym and a Little League, that offers family programs? Must a religious-affiliated family services provider offer marriage counseling to same-sex couples designed to facilitate or preserve their relationships?

"Future conflict with the law in regard to licensing is certain with regard to psychological clinics, social workers, marital counselors, and the like," Stern wrote last December--well before the Boston Catholic Charities story broke.

Will speech against gay marriage be allowed to continue unfettered? "Under the American regime of freedom of speech, the answer ought to be easy," according to Stern. But it is not entirely certain, he writes, "because sexual-harassment-in-the-workplace principles will likely migrate to suppress any expression of anti-same-sex-marriage views." Stern suggests how that might work.

In the corporate world the expression of opposition to gay marriage will be suppressed not by gay ideologues but by corporate lawyers who will draw the lines least likely to entangle the company in litigation. Stern likens this to "a paroxysm of prophylaxis--banning 'Jesus saves' because someone might take offense."

Or consider a recent case at William Paterson University, a state school in New Jersey. A senior faculty member sent out a mass email inviting people to attend movies with a gay theme. A student employee, a 63-year-old Muslim named Jihad Daniel, replied to the professor in a private email asking not to receive messages "about 'Connie and Sally' and 'Adam and Steve.'" He went on, "These are perversions. The absence of God in higher education brings on confusion. That is why in these classes the Creator of the heavens and the earth is never mentioned." The result: Daniel received a letter of reprimand for using the "derogatory and demeaning" word "perversions" in violation of state discrimination and harassment regulations.

Precisely because support for marriage is public policy, once marriage includes gay couples, groups who oppose gay marriage are likely to be judged in violation of public policy, triggering a host of negative consequences, including the loss of tax-exempt status. Because marriage is not a private act, but a protected public status, the legalization of gay marriage sends a strong signal that orientation is now on a par with race in the nondiscrimination game. And when we get gay marriage because courts have declared it a constitutional right, the signal is stronger still.

The culture war against religion that the secular state has been waging at relatively low intensity for the last three decades is soon about to erupt into a very bitter battle. If gay marriage is codified it may well be unconstitutional to preach against it from the pulpit or to do anything which puts teeth into one's belief that it is incompatible with God's will for men and women.

This is why it's crucial that the next Supreme Court justice be an originalist, which is why it's crucial that the president who nominates this justice and the senators which confirm him or her be themselves constitutional conservatives.

Which is why your vote in November is so very crucial.

What's at Stake

Go to Michelle's blog and click on the video to see the new Republican ad. It'll get your attention. Michelle compares it to a Democrat ad that is best described as pathetic but symbolic of the current campaign. They have offered no answer to the question of what they'd actually do if they're returned to power in Congress. Their whole campaign seems to have been pretty much a plea to the voters to elect them for the single reason that they're not Republicans.

The Democrat ad is a good example of the vacuousness of this kind of politics.

The Twilight of the Neo-Darwinian Synthesis

"...the evidence that macroevolution has happened is all around us, in the patterns of biogeographical distribution of species and in the fossil record. What is not so obvious is the mechanism(s) by which such macroevolution has occurred. Prof. Giertych is probably right in asserting that the "modern synthesis" mechanisms grounded in theoretical population genetics are insufficient to explain macroevolution. However, scientists within the field of evolutionary biology have been saying the same thing for over a century." Allen MacNeill, Cornell University evolutionary biologist.

Well, they may have been saying this for over a century, but, if so, they haven't been very public about it.

At any rate, MacNeill isn't saying that evolution never happened. He believes quite the opposite. What he's saying is that the traditional Neo-Darwinian view that evolution is the product of a synthesis of natural selection and genetic mutation is an inadequate explanation. Large scale evolution (macroevolution) simply cannot be explained in terms of any purely mechanistic processes of which we are aware.

MacNeill is not known to be overly sympathetic to Intelligent Design, but what he's claiming is what ID theorists have been asserting for two decades to considerable resistance from the Darwinian establishment which, according to MacNeill, has largely been in agreement with them. That's pretty strange.

Read the rest of MacNeill's comment here.

Meanwhile, you can catch an audio interview with a leading ID proponent, Michael Behe, author of Darwin's Black Box, on The Sci Phi Show. To hear it go here and click on the link to Michael Behe on the Sci Phi Show.

Thanks to Uncommon Descent for posting the links for the Sci Phi shows.

The Imperiled French

Arnaud de Borchgrave at The Washington Times updates us on the state of the intifada in France. Here are a few excerpts from this deeply disturbing story:

An average of 14 policemen a day are injured in bloody clashes with jobless youths. France's Interior Ministry said 2,500 police officers had been "wounded" this year. The head of the hard-line trade union "Action Police" Michel Thooris wrote to Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy to describe conditions in housing developments turned slums as "intifada." Police cruisers are pelted daily with stones and "Molotov cocktails" (gasoline-filled bottles with burning wicks that explode on impact) and Mr. Thooris said cops assigned to what was rapidly degenerating into "free fire zones" should be protected in armored vehicles. Entire tall buildings empty into the streets to chase police and free an arrested comrade.

"We are in a state of civil war, orchestrated by radical Islamists," Mr. Thooris told journalists. Mr. Sarkozy, the leading center-right candidate for next year's presidential election, responded by dispatching cops in body armor, equipped with automatic weapons and rubber bullets, stun and teargas grenades into several Paris suburbs with orders to "restore control" from "organized crime."

Jean-Marie Le Pen's far right National Front (FN) appears to have opted for a can't-lick-'em-join-'em strategy, a rapprochement with France's large immigrant Muslim community -- with undertones of anti-Semitism. Mr. Le Pen's reasoning appears to be the recognition that Islamicization is in France to stay with 25 percent of France's under-20 population Muslim (40 percent in some cities), second- and third-generation North Africans.

FN's tough stance on immigration is tempered by support for Arab and Islamist causes in the Middle East (Hamas and Hezbollah are two favorites). There are an estimated 6 to 8 million Muslims among France's 62 million and Islam is now France's second religion. Mosques are well attended on Fridays; churches aren't on Sundays. More than 50 percent of France's prison inmates are Muslims.

Anti-Semitic incidents have proliferated in France in recent times, but the news seldom makes it across the Atlantic and when it does, it must still fight to be heard above the constant melodrama of constant trivia. A Jewish sports club in Toulouse attacked with Molotov cocktails; in Bondy, 15 men beat up members of a Jewish soccer team with metal bars and sticks; a bus that takes Jewish children to school in Aubervilliers attacked three times in the last 14 months; synagogues in Strasbourg and Marseilles and a Jewish school in Creteil firebombed in recent weeks; in Toulouse, a gunman opened fire -- all ignored in mainstream U.S. media. The metropolitan Paris police tabulated 10 to 12 anti-Jewish incidents per day in the last 30 days throughout the country.

The No. 1 best-selling book in France is "September 11: The Frightening Fraud," which posits no plane ever crashed into the Pentagon. A similar book in Germany sold more than 1 million copies.

Neither multiculturalism nor integration of Muslim communities seems to be working anywhere in Europe. Moderate Muslim voices cannot rise above radical hubbub.

Nothing like this has happened yet in the United States but if the situation is allowed to fester and deteriorate in Europe it won't be long before the same troubles visit our shores.

I read an article recently, I can't remember where, that claimed that Europe is all but lost. Whereas today we look forward to enjoying a holiday in Paris, London, or Rome, that is a luxury our children will not have. By 2030, Europe will be predominately Muslim and very probably hostile to Americans. The secularist or Judeo-Christian European remnant will either emigrate or live out their years in dhimmitude (Enforced second class subservience to Muslims and Sharia law). Europe will be a much different place, a much more dangerous place, twenty years from now than it was twenty years ago.

Whether this prediction comes to pass or not it certainly does seem that the trend lines all point in that direction.

YEC v. ID

Sal Cordova at Uncommon Descent offers an answer to a reader's question about the nature of the rift between Young Earth Creationists and Intelligent Design advocates. Along the way he offers a list of the IDers (and ID sympathizers) who favor an old age (on the order of billions of years) for the earth.

It's an interesting post and it sheds light on a perplexing dispute between two groups which should be allies against the common Darwinian opponent.

Collateral Damage

A recent report on the number of Iraqi deaths since the war began has renewed discussion about the morality of any policy which entails the deaths of innocent civilians. The report, put out by Lancet, estimates that 655,000 civilians have died in Iraq as a result of both coalition and insurgent action since the war began.

The study is critiqued here, but on the face of it the number seems absurd. The math works out to a death rate of 15,600 civilians a month or 520 dead Iraqis a day since March of 2003. This seems preposterous. Other estimates place the figure closer to 60,000.

Nevertheless, whether the number is 60,000 or ten times that figure the fundamental questions are legitimate: Is a policy that entails civilian deaths moral, and, if so, at what point does it cease to be so?

One answer given by objectors to the war in Iraq is that our policy there is morally wrong because it is always wrong to be the cause of deaths of innocent people. We are therefore wrong to go to war, not just in Iraq but anywhere, if it is probable that civilian lives will be lost as a result.

This argument is problematic. To illustrate why consider a couple of extreme, but entirely plausible, scenarios where what the military euphemistically calls "collateral damage" is a certainty.

Suppose first that terrorist hijackers have commandeered an airliner and are guiding it toward a skyscraper in which thousands of people are working. There is only one way to prevent the impending mass murder and that is to shoot down the plane.

Second, historians tell us that during the early years of American involvement in WWII it was feasible to have bombed some of the Nazi concentration camps, effectively putting them out of operation and mitigating, perhaps substantially, the horrific carnage taking place in those camps. Had the order to bomb them been carried out, however, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of innocent prisoners might have been killed.

Should the order be given to shoot down the plane? Should orders have been issued to destroy the concentration camps? If either order had been given would they have constituted unjust, immoral or criminal actions?

If downing the plane and/or bombing the camps would have been justified, then causing the deaths of some innocents in order to prevent even greater harm cannot be ipso facto wrong. If someone were to say that it would not have been unjust or immoral or criminal to give those orders then he is agreeing that, as agonizing and heartwrenching as it may be, the sacrifice of innocent lives is sometimes necessary or justified in order to thwart an enemy's larger aims.

If one were to respond, on the other hand, that those orders should not be given and that, if they were, it would be morally wrong or criminal, it would be interesting to hear the rationale for he bases his reply upon.

If it is agreed that sometimes, under some circumstances, killing innocent civilians may be justified then the debate shifts to a consideration of what those circumstances would be, whether they obtained prior to the commencement of the war in Iraq, and whether they still do today.

Some might argue that the deaths of 60,000 Iraqi civilians, reagrdless of who is responsible for them, is too many, and it's time for us to get out. But how many is too many? On what do we base whatever figure we consider to be the limit?

These are important questions but they lead to a different discussion than the one based on the assumption that it's always wrong to kill innocent civilians.

George Smoot

University of California at Berkeley physicist George Smoot was recently awarded the 2006 Nobel prize for work he did with John Mather in clarifying some of the details of the Big Bang theory of the origin of the universe.

Smoot, like a lot of others who study the fine structure of the cosmos, finds the cosmological evidence for intentional design hard to resist. He observes:

"There is no doubt that a parallel exists between the big bang as an event and the Christian notion of creation from nothing."

Smoot draws attention not only to the fact that his team had provided more evidence for the creation event, but for a "finely orchestrated" creation event. Stephen Hawking was so impressed with this finding that he called it "the most important discovery of the century, if not of all time."

"In order to make a universe as big and wonderful as it is, lasting as long as it is-we're talking fifteen billion years and we're talking huge distances here-in order for it to be that big, you have to make it perfectly. Otherwise, imperfections would mount up and the universe would either collapse on itself or fly apart, and so it's actually quite a precise job. And I don't know if you've had discussions with people about how critical it is that the density of the universe come out so close to the density that decides whether it's going to keep expanding forever or collapse back, but we know it's within one percent."

"The big bang, the most cataclysmic event we can imagine, on closer inspection appears finely orchestrated."

There are many similar quotes from other physicists at The Veritas Forum.

Thanks to Intelligent Design The Future for the tip.

Danielle Pletka

Danielle Pletka of the American Enterprise Institute takes on Bill Maher, Ben Affleck and an unsympathetic audience and acquits herself well. The Republicans should be getting this woman on television more.