Feedback

Byron writes to dissent somewhat from my portrayal of Jim Wallis in God's Politics. His letter can be read on our feedback page.

I also received from Caleb this question:

I have two very good friends here at college; one a pro-life Republican, and the other a pro-life Democrat. Both obviously stand in stark opposition to Senator Obama's stance on abortion. For the Republican, Sen. Obama's extreme pro-choice stance is but one of many reasons why he will be (albeit reluctantly) pulling the lever for Sen. McCain in November.

For the Democrat, while he strongly disagrees with Senator Obama's stance on abortion, he feels that he "cannot be a single-issue voter...and [neither] should other Christians." The question I have, therefore, is this. While there are serious doubts amongst conservatives that McCain is truly "conservative" enough, would his generally pro-life stance be enough of an issue to tip the balance in his favor? By extension, is it proper to be a "single issue" voter, or is that dangerous naivety, especially with an issue such as abortion?

I know I don't really have an answer to that; I hope you might?

Well, I don't know if I have a good answer, but here's basically how I replied to Caleb:

I don't see anything wrong with being a single issue voter as long as the issue is of paramount importance. There are a lot of people who will vote for Obama solely because he opposes the war. There are others who will vote for him solely because they know he'll keep abortion legal. These are single issues, and for those voters they trump everything else.

The question is whether a person thinks that protecting the unborn is of such great importance that it overrides all else. If they do, then there's nothing wrong with voting on the basis of the candidates' position on that issue.

People who complain about single issue voters are generally those who don't like the issue, or the position taken on the issue, that the single issue voters assign such significance to. In other words, they have no trouble with voting for a candidate on the basis of his stance on just one issue as long as the candidate is one they themselves would support and the issue is one they themselves feel strongly about.

You won't hear too much complaining from Obama supporters, for example, about the single issue voting of those who will vote for Obama simply because he's African American or because he's against the war in Iraq. It's only when someone says that they can't vote for Obama because he's willing to tolerate infanticide that his supporters intone about the shortcomings of being a single issue voter.

RLC

In God We Trust

MSNBC is conducting a poll asking whether the motto "In God we Trust" should be removed from our currency. You can vote on the question here, but I don't know how long the poll will be up.

It would be interesting to see how the results, which can be accessed at the link, break down according to liberal/conservative voting preferences.

RLC

Why We Should Study Evolution

Olivia Judson offers three reasons in a New York Times opinion piece why evolution should be taught in our schools. I agree with her conclusion, but her reasons are riddled with confusions.

First, she makes the same error that so many make by contrasting evolution and intelligent design. ID is not incompatible with evolution. It's incompatible with the belief that evolution is a purposeless, random process guided only by unintelligent forces. Perhaps the most prominent of ID theorists, Michael Behe, believes in descent by modification. So do many others.

Judson then makes the claim that because there's controversy over evolution, "[I]t's discussed as though it were an optional, quaint and largely irrelevant part of biology. And a common consequence of the arguments is that evolution gets dropped from the curriculum entirely."

I would certainly like to see the data she relies on to make this assertion. I can't imagine that there's a public school anywhere in America that has dropped evolution from the curriculum, nor do ID people want them to.

Having raised our suspicions about her reliability on this topic, Ms Judson goes on to offer three reasons why evolution should be taught:

First, it provides a powerful framework for investigating the world we live in. Without evolution, biology is merely a collection of disconnected facts, a set of descriptions.... Add evolution - and it becomes possible to make inferences and predictions and (sometimes) to do experiments to test those predictions.

Fair enough. Evolution provides a coherent framework for thinking about relationships, but evolution can be taught without the materialism, and despite what Judson says, biology can be taught from a creationist perspective with no reference to the idea of common descent at all. Indeed, most of the actual evidence we have of evolution fits both models equally well.

The second reason she gives for teaching evolution is that "the subject is immediately relevant here and now. The impact we are having on the planet is causing other organisms to evolve - and fast."

Hunting animals to extinction may cause evolution in their former prey species. Experiments on guppies have shown that, without predators, these fish evolve more brightly colored scales, mature later, bunch together in shoals less and lose their ability to suddenly swim away from something. Such changes can happen in fewer than five generations. If you then reintroduce some predators, the population typically goes extinct.

Thus, a failure to consider the evolution of other species may result in a failure of our efforts to preserve them. And, perhaps, to preserve ourselves from diseases, pests and food shortages. In short, evolution is far from being a remote and abstract subject. A failure to teach it may leave us unprepared for the challenges ahead.

This is rather fevered rhetoric. In the first place what she's calling evolution here is not evolution as it's understood by most people. No one doubts that small changes can occur in populations of organisms because of stresses in their environment. Nor does anyone oppose teaching what we know about such variation (usually called microevolution). The controversy is over whether natural unguided forces can produce the molecules-to-man kind of evolution (macroevolution) that most people think of when they hear the word "evolution".

The third reason to teach evolution, Ms Judson tells us, is more philosophical:

It concerns the development of an attitude toward evidence. In his book, "The Republican War on Science," the journalist Chris Mooney argues persuasively that a contempt for scientific evidence - or indeed, evidence of any kind - has permeated the Bush administration's policies, from climate change to sex education, from drilling for oil to the war in Iraq. A dismissal of evolution is an integral part of this general attitude.

Moreover, since the science classroom is where a contempt for evidence is often first encountered, it is also arguably where it first begins to be cultivated. A society where ideology is a substitute for evidence can go badly awry.

This is plainly ridiculous. The science classroom is often the one place in our postmodern world where evidence is actually honored. If anyone is impervious to evidence it's the evolutionary materialists who believe steadfastly in their theory despite the lack of evidence for it. By this I mean that there's no evidence that blind, undirected forces plus chance are capable of creating a universe fit for life, originating life, or evolving the complex structures and pathways that are ubiquitous in living things. Nevertheless, every materialist believes that it happened despite the enormous odds against it and the total absence of evidence that it did.

But for me, the most important thing about studying evolution is something less tangible. It's that the endeavor contains a profound optimism. It means that when we encounter something in nature that is complicated or mysterious, such as the flagellum of a bacteria or the light made by a firefly, we don't have to shrug our shoulders in bewilderment.

Instead, we can ask how it got to be that way. And if at first it seems so complicated that the evolutionary steps are hard to work out, we have an invitation to imagine, to play, to experiment and explore. To my mind, this only enhances the wonder.

Very well, but this is an aesthetic reason for studying evolution. Why couldn't someone reply that the mystery of nature fills him with far more wonder when he considers that these things were engineered just for our enjoyment by a loving Creator? If a sense of wonder and optimism is to serve as justification for teaching something should we not insist that the view that there is a purpose underlying the world we study also be taught?

It's interesting that Ms Judson nowhere argues that we should study evolution because it's true. This, of course, would be the salient reason for including it in the curriculum, but its truth is, despite the adamantine asseverations of its proponents, notoriously difficult to establish.

Nevertheless, I agree that we should study evolution but for a reason having little to do with those advanced by Ms Judson. It should be studied because most practicing scientists believe some version of it, and we should therefore examine the theory and the evidence both for and against it in order to be familiar with the current state of scientific thinking. If and when it falls out of favor and is no longer thought to be true then we should no longer spend time on it, other than as a historical curiosity, regardless of whether it still performs the functions adduced by Ms. Judson.

RLC

Say it Ain't So, John

John McCain could very well defeat Senator Obama in November, and he has certainly helped himself toward this end by being resolute on all the issues that separate him from his rival. One of those issues is abortion, concerning which McCain said Saturday at Saddleback church that, "As president of the United States, I will be a pro-life president and this presidency will have pro-life policies. That's my commitment. That's my commitment to you." Such assurances are catnip to conservatives, and they sound so much more robust than the rather weasely refusal of Senator Obama to answer Rick Warren's question Saturday night about the point at which a human being should have the right to life.

Obama bobbed and weaved and finally opined that such questions are "above his pay grade". The man is running for president, and such questions are matters that government leaders must decide. If he has no opinion on a question of human and civil rights then he should not be holding an office in which he must vote on legislation that involves such rights nor should he be running for an office in which he will appoint jurists who will rule on the matter. It's ironic that as an Illinois senator Obama felt it well within his pay grade to vote to allow born infants to be left to die, but now that he's running for president he suddenly finds himself unqualified to make such judgments.

The abortion issue is a winner for McCain, especially if he points out Obama's implicit support for infanticide. No one to the right of Peter Singer and Barack Obama thinks letting babies die is anything other than evil and when the American public finally learns that Obama voted against the Born Alive Infants Protection Act they'll no doubt lose a lot of their enthusiasm for him. So why then the talk in the McCain camp of selecting a pro-choice veep? McCain has mentioned both Joe Lieberman and Tom Ridge as possible running mates and both have been accompanying him on his campaign town hall meetings (both spoke to the audience at York, PA last week).

McCain is beginning to not only win conservatives' votes but also their enthusiasm. He'll lose both, though, if he picks a liberal like Leiberman who is as far left as Obama on almost every issue besides the war, or Ridge who is moderate to liberal. If he picks a pro-choice running mate, how, conservatives will wonder, do we know he would keep his implicit promise to appoint pro-life jurists to the Supreme Court?

The safe choice for McCain is Mitt Romney, but anyone less conservative than he is himself would be a disaster. The election is within his grasp today only because of his efforts to allay conservative fears that he'd sell them out. If he turns around and sticks his thumb in the eye of his pro-life supporters millions of them will just stay home in November.

The editors at NRO agree that a pro-choice veep would be an epic political blunder.

RLC

Who's Telling the Truth?

We have repeated here claims made by others that Barack Obama voted against a bill in the Illinois state senate that would have prevented abortion facilities from treating infants who survived abortions as though they were medical waste. The bill was in response to a case where a facility was discarding living children and allowing them to die.

Senator Obama was asked about this on Saturday evening by a reporter and claimed that those making this allegation are simply lying about his vote.

Thomas Lifson at The American Thinker adduces the record of the vote, however, and states that it's Obama who's lying. Lifson certainly seems to have the goods to back up his claim. He links the reader to the bill, the amended bill, and an almost identical bill that even NARAL supported that passed the U.S. Senate and which Obama says he would have supported had he been in the U.S. Senate at the time.

Lifson also shows the record of Obama's committee vote on the bill in the Illinois senate. It shows him voting for the amendment that would have granted protection for Roe v. Wade, a protection he insisted on, but after the amendment passed he voted against the bill itself, in effect denying protection to born infants.

The video of Obama insisting that the National Right to Life Committee is lying about his record is astonishing if in fact it is Obama who is misrepresenting the facts. Such convincing prevarication, if that's what it is, must make even Bill Clinton envious.

Despite Lifson's evidence, though, I'm still not prepared to conclude that Obama is consciously lying. It's possible, I suppose, that despite his degree from Harvard he's really not too bright and didn't know what he was voting for. It's also possible that the senator simply forgot this vote (although having voted "present" so much of the time one would think he'd remember the votes he actually did take a stand on). Nevertheless, if he sticks with his story that pro-life groups are lying about his vote against protecting new borns, he's either going to have to explain why the paper trail only seems to support his accusers or else forfeit altogether the presumption of integrity.

RLC

Doing Business the Old Way

William Voegeli at No Left Turns traces Senator Obama's rhetoric on fixing the social security problem. It turns out that despite what he said last year about Senator Clinton's reluctance to address social security, he himself appears to have no intention of fixing it at all.

This quote from last November is pretty funny given Senator Obama's numerous equivocations and tergiversations on other issues:

In an interview with National Journal on November 6, 2007, Obama said, "[The] American people have a right to judge how clear and how consistent have the candidates been in their positions. Because if they're not clear and consistent, then it's pretty hard to gauge how much they're going to fight on these issues. You know, Senator Clinton says that she's concerned about Social Security but is not willing to say how she would solve the Social Security crisis, then I think voters aren't going to feel real confident that this is a priority for her. . . . [The] voters should be concerned that she is running the textbook, classic Washington campaign, which is to avoid giving clear answers and getting pinned down, for fear that somehow you're going to be tagged, either in the primary or the general election. I think that's an old way of doing business."

What Senator Obama calls the old way of doing business looks remarkably like his new way of doing business.

Read the whole article at NLT to see how the senator has retreated from each solution to the social security problem he's proposed until arriving at a position that is essentially no solution at all.

RLC

The "White" Party

Howard Dean said the other day that, "If you look at folks of color, even women, they're more successful in the Democratic party than they are in the white, uh, excuse me, in the [laughs] Republican party."

The "white" party. Good one.

Dean white party
by dollarsandsense123

Whatever the opportunities may be for blacks within the Democratic party I think a good case can be made that Democrat policies have been a disaster for blacks over the last forty years. Entitlement programs, to take but one example, have fostered a dependence on government that made black males superfluous in the lives of many poor women. This led to a disproportionate number of illegitimate births and single parent families. It also pushed black men into lives of promiscuity, drug abuse, and violence. The rarity of stable black two-parent families perpetuates poverty across the generations and spawns a host of dysfunctionalities, including misogyny and crime.

None of these problems existed in the black population to anywhere near the extent they do today prior to LBJ's Great Society of the 1960s. Black opportunity was severely and cruelly attenuated in the first half of the twentieth century, yet blacks had stronger families and much lower levels of male violence then than we find today. Six trillion dollars has been transferred from the American taxpayers to the American poor in the last fifty years, but poverty remains as obdurate as ever.

Mr. Dean may boast about the occasional bone Democrats throw to their African American serfs, like medieval royalty tossing coins from their carriages to the paupers in the streets, but Democrat policies have not only failed to alleviate their abject circumstances, they actually exacerbate them.

Why blacks stay in a party that keeps boasting about how it helps them while in fact doing little to give them the kind of opportunities they really need (e.g. committed, two-parent families, choice in schools, a sense of self-reliance) is one of the big mysteries of modern politics.

RLC

Sure

And what will the pretext be when they invade Ukraine?

HT: Ramirez

RLC

Never Mind

Given the recrudescence of Russian imperialism and conquest here's one campaign ad the Obama people are probably going to quietly abandon:

I wonder how many of these promises Senator Obama will be repeating over the next couple of months. Events have a way of making idealists look naive.

RLC

Back to the Fifties

Just when you thought Russia had outgrown its appetite for other peoples' territory it invades Georgia and then threatens Poland with nuclear destruction. What was Poland's offense? It has accepted American missiles designed to shoot down incoming ICBMs.

As Powerline pithily puts it:

Yesterday the U.S and Poland announced that after 18 months of negotiations, they have reached on an agreement whereby the U.S. will furnish Patriot missiles to Poland and will locate a missile interceptor base in that country.

This outraged Russia, which believes that it has the right to point missiles at its neighbors, but its neighbors have no right to defend themselves against those missiles.

Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn, the deputy chief of staff, blustered that "Poland, by deploying (the system) is exposing itself to a strike-100 percent".

He added that Russia's military doctrine sanctions the use of nuclear weapons "against the allies of countries having nuclear weapons if they in some way help them." That would include elements of strategic deterrence systems, Nogovitsyn said.

This is a little bit like the U.S. threatening Cuba or Venezuela with a nuclear attack because they install Russian made anti-aircraft systems.

All that remains to complete this unpleasant trip down memory lane is for Putin to go to the United Nations and bang his shoe on the lecturn, and for our own home grown Russian apologists to tell us how this is all our fault.

I don't know at this point whether Poland really has much to fear from the Russians, but if I were a Ukrainian I'd be very, very concerned.

RLC

The Prince and the Pariah

Kathryn Lopez at NRO writes an insightful piece on the reaction to the John Edwards scandal and asks a few incisive questions:

The reaction of the American Left to John Edwards's sex scandal is nothing short of flabbergasting. Since when is sex outside of marriage a disqualifier for merely speaking at a political convention? Since when is having sexual relations with that woman in your office anything wrong? Since when do we judge?

The difference here seems to be that Elizabeth Edwards has cancer. So only fatal disease makes the bonds of marriage sacred?

Although the last thing I want to look to be doing is making excuses for adultery - what he did was wrong - the John Edwards incident begs Americans to look in the mirror. If we think what John Edwards did with Rielle Hunter is wrong, why do we think it's wrong? Because marriage is at the foundation of our society and we should do what we can to protect every last one? Or simply because having fun while your wife is fighting a fatal disease is a lousy thing to do?

I don't know how we can condemn John Edwards when Americans have been known to cheer for cheaters in movies, watch celebs do it all the time as a form of perverse entertainment, and even insist we're not sure what exactly "marriage" means.

There's another question about this sordid business that K-Lo doesn't ask but might have: Why is Edwards banished from the Democratic convention but Bill Clinton is awarded a prominent role to play? Edwards isn't a past president, to be sure, but he's not nobody either. Surely his infidelity was no worse nor more embarrassing to the party than the revelations of Clinton's priapic predilections, including credible allegations of rape and sexual assault. People say they're upset that Edwards lied to them about his affair, but so did Clinton - under oath, no less. Yet Clinton will be feted and honored like a prince of the party while Edwards is left to slink home a political pariah.

Liberals sure seem confused when it comes to morality in general and sexual morality in particular.

HT: Jason.

RLC

God's Politics

It's a good thing to be able to find silver linings in dark clouds, but Jim Wallis at Sojourners reminds me of the guy who has been wiped out by thugs and yet praises them for not punching him in the nose during the robbery.

The Democrats have come forward with their platform plank on abortion, and Wallis is delighted that they affirm the right of a woman to choose to have a child if she wants it:

The Democratic platform has taken an important first step. They took an important step beyond the traditional position on Roe vs. Wade by also supporting a woman's decision to have her child.

Why, isn't this wonderful. The Democrats recognize that a woman should be supported in her decision to bear a child that she's carrying. The big tent Dems recognize that a pregnant woman shouldn't feel obligated to have an abortion, and Wallis sees this as a noteworthy act of good will instead of the window into the liberal heart of darkness that it is.

Republicans have long made a strong opposition to abortion a central issue in their platforms and campaigns. Yet their symbolic commitment to making abortion illegal, even with a Republican in power, hasn't made any change in the rate of abortions in America.

Somebody needs to inform Mr. Wallis that it takes a lot more than having a pro-lifer in the White House to get Roe v. Wade changed. The way to reduce the number of abortions is to let each state decide it's own policy, and that means we must have Supreme Court justices who will overturn Roe, and that takes more than just a pro-life president, although it certainly does take that.

Of course, it is now up to the Democratic candidate to interpret the platform and shape the issue. In an interview with Christianity Today, Barack Obama said, "I do think that those who diminish the moral elements of the decision aren't expressing the full reality of it."

It's passing strange that in talking about Barack Obama's views on abortion Mr. Wallis neglects to mention that as an Illinois state senator Mr. Obama actually voted against a bill that would have prevented infanticide.

Is Jim Wallis really the non-partisan prophet he fancies himself or is he just carrying pro-choice water? It's hard to believe that passing up an opportunity to castigate a politician who voted to let babies die a slow death is God's Politics.

RLC

Big Fish

ABC's Brian Ross has some interesting thoughts on the capture in Afghanistan of an MIT graduate named Aifia Siddique. The woman is apparently a major terrorist and the data obtained from her apprehension provides a "treasure trove" of information on al Qaeda operations both abroad and within our borders. There are also some possible links to the Democrat convention in Denver this month:

When she was arrested in Afghanistan last month, Aafia Siddique allegedly had in her possession maps of New York, a list of potential targets that included the Statue of Liberty, Times Square, the subway system and the animal disease center on Plum Island, detailed chemical, biological and radiological weapon information that has been seen only in a handful of terrorist cases, as well as a thumb drive packed with emails, ABC News has learned.

That haul of information has led multiple government sources to describe Siddique, a 36 year-old MIT graduate, as a potential "treasure trove" of information on terrorist supporters, sympathizers or 'sleepers' in the United States and overseas.

"She is the most significant capture in five years," said former CIA officer John Kiriakou, who said she lives up to her reputation as an alleged terrorist 'Mata Hari.'

Exit question for liberals: Suppose the authorities had good reason to believe she had knowledge of a mass terror attack planned against the Democratic convention in Denver. Thousands of Democrats' lives hung in the balance. Should she have been waterboarded if that was the only way to elicit the information?

RLC

What Hillary Wants II

Maureen Dowd knows precisely what Hillary wants and skewers her for it in this essay in the International Herald Tribune. Dowd writes:

While Obama was spending three hours watching "The Dark Knight" five time zones away, and going to a fund-raiser featuring "Aloha attire" and Hawaiian pupus, Hillary was busy planning her convention.

You can almost hear her mind whirring: She's amazed at how easy it was to snatch Denver away from the Obama saps. Like taking candy from a baby, except Beanpole Guy doesn't eat candy. In just a couple of weeks, Bill and Hill were able to drag No Drama Obama into a swamp of Clinton drama.

Now they've made Barry's convention all about them - their dissatisfaction and revisionism and barely disguised desire to see him fail. Whatever insincere words of support the Clintons muster, their primal scream gets louder: He can't win! He can't close the deal! We told you so!

Hillary's orchestrating a play within the play in Denver. Just as Hamlet used the device to show that his stepfather murdered his father, Hillary will try to show the Democrats they chose the wrong savior.

Hillary feels no guilt about encouraging her supporters to mess up Obama's big moment, thus undermining his odds of beating John McCain and improving her odds of being the nominee in 2012.

She's obviously relishing Hillaryworld's plans to have multiple rallies in Denver, to take out TV and print ads and to hold up signs in the hall that read "Denounce Nobama's Coronation."

Read the rest at the link.

During the nineties when the Clintons were in power they could do no wrong. The left apologized and defended everything they did. Hillary was a heroine, a wonderful role model for women. But now she stands in the way of the coronation of a young charismatic black man who's much more reliably left than they perceive her to be, and she's quickly becoming the crazy aunt in the attic. They can't get rid of her, but they certainly wish she'd go away.

Here's a challenge for the historically minded: Name one Democrat who attained a position of prominence in the last forty years but is no longer in that position today, who is still admired in the Democratic party. I can think only of Al Gore, but he doesn't really count since he's probably more prominent today than he was as Vice President.

RLC

Voting for Infanticide

Senator Obama is striving to appear more moderate on a number of issues than his voting record permits. One of those issues is abortion/infanticide. As an Illinois senator Obama voted against a bill that would have prohibited facilities performing abortions to let infants which survived the attempt to kill them die from exposure. His vote was, in essence, a vote for infanticide, but his campaign is arguing that Obama voted against the bill only because it lacked certain provisions which would have protected Roe v. Wade.

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air concludes, though, that Obama is not telling the truth about this. Not only did the bill contain the relevant provisions, Morrissey tells us, Obama himself chaired the committee that had them inserted.

Nevertheless, even if this were not so, how does anyone justify voting against a bill that would have protected the lives of babies who would otherwise be left to die from lack of care?

RLC

Sgt. Luis Rosa-Valentin

Last spring my brother's wife's nephew suffered terrible wounds in Iraq. An IED took both of his legs, an arm, and his hearing. Ever since, he has been in Walter Reed hospital trying to get his life back together. He's an outstanding young man with a great attitude, as can be seen in this NBC News segment on him which aired on last night's newscast:

His name is Sgt. Luis Rosa-Valentin, and as you can imagine he will have a lot of expenses even after the assistance the military is providing. My sister (who is 60!) is training for a marathon which is a fund raiser for wounded soldiers and Marines. I copied the following from a letter she sent out and thought that some Viewpoint readers might like to help:

Luis is the proud father of a small daughter. His mother, who is a school teacher, had to leave work in order to be with Luis at Walter Reed while he recovered. Because his parents live within a 50 mile radius of Walter Reed, they are not eligible for the stipend available to immediate family members who travel to see their loved ones in the hospital. His parents' home, where he is currently staying on the weekends, must be renovated to accommodate a wheelchair. There will be months of rehab and expenses that the family will take on that the government will not cover.

For this reason, I have started a benefit fund for Luis and his parents at Fulton Bank and am asking all those who supported me in the past, as I prepared for and ran the marathon, to dig deep and agree to sponsor me one more time, as I run in honor of Luis.

As usual, the race is a 26.2 mile course. It will be run on Sunday, October 26th. You can show your support with a pledge per mile, or a flat sum donation, in care of the Luis Rosa-Valentin Benefit Fund at any Fulton Bank. You can take it directly to any branch, or mail it to Fulton Bank, 1 Market Square, Manheim, PA 17545. Direct your contribution to the attention of Cherie Melhorn.

I have never met Luis, but have learned a good deal about him as I planned this fund raiser during the past few weeks (You can learn more about him by accessing this web site). In addition to being a devoted father, he was dedicated to the military that he loved, and proud to serve his country. Barely out of high school when he joined the army, he knew that this was all he had ever wanted to do as a career. In spite of his injuries, he has no regrets about his decision, and says he would do it all over again if he could. His attitude is so positive, saying that he is very happy to be alive. He feels he has a whole lot of life ahead and he plans to live it. His Aunt Nora (my brother's wife) recently told us that his motto is "Know God. No fear." Luis has sacrificed so much for us, I am proud to run this race on his behalf.

Luis has an amazingly positive outlook on his future, and it's just remarkable that our country produces so many young men like him.

RLC

Greatest Woman

Peter Lawler at No Left Turns notes that Mother Teresa is considered the greatest woman of the 20th century and invites us to ponder this question: Who was the greatest female artist, novelist, poet, or philosopher of the 20th century?

Well, my vote for novelist and philosopher goes to the same woman: Ayn Rand - not because I'm particularly fond of either her main ideas or her books, but because no woman that I can think of has been more successful as a writer or more influential as a thinker. Atlas Shrugged, I read somewhere, has sold more copies in the U.S. than any book other than the Bible, and Randian devotees can be found everywhere in government and business.

I don't know that this is a good thing, but there you have it. Anybody have any other nominations?

RLC

We're All Georgians

I took my daughter to see John McCain live at the townhall meeting yesterday in York, Pa. It was quite a show with warmup speeches by Senators Arlen Specter and Joe Leiberman and former governor Tom Ridge. When he took the stage Senator McCain chose to give a disquisition on the situation in Georgia. It was ironic that while Senator Obama vacationed in Hawaii and President Bush was taking in the Olympics in Beijing, it fell to Senator McCain to address the Russian aggression against the small democracy of Georgia:

It wasn't hard to imagine Obama being more polished, but it was almost impossible to imagine him giving a speech on any matter of foreign policy whose content was comparable to this one. The speech was directed at the conflict in Georgia, but it certainly made Senator Obama, who wasn't even mentioned, seem diminished and irrelevant.

RLC

What Does Hillary Want?

I was listening to the local talk radio show the other day and the host asked his guest the question, "What does Hillary want?" The question was prompted by the New York senator's hot and cold behavior toward the Obama campaign. The guest on the show said that she wanted recognition at the convention, etc., but I think this is all short term stuff. What Hillary wants, of course, is to be president, and as long as we keep that before us her strange behavior makes complete sense.

Assume with me that I am correct about her goal. Assume, too, that the Clintons really are as Machiavellian as even the liberal press is beginning to suggest. If so, then she probably sees that her best chance of reaching her goal is to have Obama lose in November.

If he does, Senator Clinton will have an almost uncontested road to the nomination in 2012, and McCain, if he wins, may well choose to serve only a single term. Thus, she may be running against a non-incumbent 2012. If Obama wins in November it would kill her hopes of ever becoming president since her chances of unseating him in the 2012 primaries would be nil.

Thus, it is in her interest to see to it that Obama loses, but she must give the impression that she's working in support of his campaign in order not to alienate the Democratic base. She must walk a tightrope, publicly supporting Barack and privately undermining him.

In light of this strategy, what we should look for from her in the weeks ahead is lip-service to the Obama election campaign, but lukewarm effort on his behalf. We might also anticipate a few stilettos to Obama's political ribs from Hillary's surrogates, not least her husband, but most of the damage will be inflicted outside of the public's view.

RLC

What's to Like?

A couple of days ago I wrote that a particular column by Jonah Goldberg, "tends to make postmodernism seem arrantly bad. It's not, but lots of it is...."

My friend Jason wrote to inquire what it was about postmodernism that I thought congenial. Here's my reply:

You ask a good question, Jason: What is there to like about postmodernism? The answer is not much, but there are a couple of things. First, though, I agree with you that postmodernism is a dead end, but like everything (even communism!) it's not completely bad.

I think, for example, that the postmodern critique of the "Enlightenment project" is partly correct. Modernity adopted the Enlightenment view that the world could be objectively known through our reason and known with certainty. It holds that the scientific method is the only way to genuine knowledge. Modernity thus tended to diminish the role of faith and led to religious skepticism.

Postmodern thinkers reject the idea of "objective" knowledge and argue that what we "know" is largely conditioned by our historical, social, cultural, economic perspective. I think they're right about that. They're also skeptical of the power of human reason to yield certainty and also our ability to experience the world as it really is. It's much more open to faith and very skeptical of "scientism". I think they're at least partly correct about these things as well.

Finally, I think they're right that people are persuaded to change their minds more by story, testimony, music, art and film than they are by logical argumentation. In other words, people are more effectively reached through their hearts than through their heads. This has profound implications for evangelism, of course.

It could be objected that none of what I've said I agree with here is really new and that therefore it's a bit of a stretch to call these ideas "postmodern" as if they were recent discoveries. I agree. I tell my students that what is new about postmodernism is not good, and what is good is not new. Even so, these are frequently assumed to be elements of the postmodern mindset, and since I agree with them I have to say that I don't think that what is usually meant by "postmodernism" is entirely misguided.

The problem with postmodernism is not that it doesn't contain some good but rather that the good is far outweighed by its problematic consequences. For example, postmodernism leads, in my view, to epistemological, moral and metaphysical nihilism.

What I mean by that is this: Since postmodernism relativizes and subjectivizes truth then the idea of truth loses all meaning. Truth is whatever one, or the group with which one identifies, feels most strongly about. From this it's but a short step to the conclusion that there is no real truth, just feelings.

If this is so, then there's no real truth about morals and thus morality becomes subjectivized as well. What's right for you isn't necessarily right for me and nothing is right for everyone. It's all a matter of how we feel about things.

Further, if there's no objective truth, something which is true regardless of how anyone feels about it, then the claim that God exists is not objectively true. If we cannot say that God exists (except in our own personal world) we have no ground for meaning in our life. Life is just a series of pointless events and then we die.

Thus postmodernism leads to the conclusion that nothing has meaning, nothing has value, nothing matters. The consequences of this are far more corrosive to individual life and to our social well-being than the positive aspects of postmodernism mentioned above are beneficial to it.

RLC