According to the New York Times President and Mrs. Obama actually have this painting hanging in the White House:
The painting is all about indecisiveness. If people select pets that look like themselves and which reflect their own personalities I wonder if the same is true of the paintings they choose for their homes and offices.
At any rate, this work seems a fitting adornment for the home of the man who voted "present" 130 times during his three terms in the Illinois state senate.
RLC
ABC News reports that the U.S, is spending a lot of money on a weapons delivery system that would be useful only in places like Iran and North Korea. Not only is it spending $88 million on the weapons and the necessary alterations to the platforms which would deliver them, but the spending request was labeled "urgent." Here's the ABC report:
Is the U.S. stepping up preparations for a possible attack on Iran's nuclear facilities?
The Pentagon is always making plans, but based on a little-noticed funding request recently sent to Congress, the answer to that question appears to be yes.
First, some background: Back in October 2007, ABC News reported that the Pentagon had asked Congress for $88 million in the emergency Iraq/Afghanistan war funding request to develop a gargantuan bunker-busting bomb called the Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP). It's a 30,000-pound bomb designed to hit targets buried 200 feet below ground. Back then, the Pentagon cited an "urgent operational need" for the new weapon.
Now the Pentagon is shifting spending from other programs to fast forward the development and procurement of the Massive Ordnance Penetrator. The Pentagon comptroller sent a request to shift the funds to the House and Senate Appropriations and Armed Services Committees over the summer.
The comptroller said the Pentagon planned to spend $19.1 million to procure four of the bombs, $28.3 million to accelerate the bomb's "development and testing", and $21 million to accelerate the integration of the bomb onto B-2 stealth bombers.
Why now? The notification says simply, "The Department has an Urgent Operational Need (UON) for the capability to strike hard and deeply buried targets in high threat environments. The MOP is the weapon of choice to meet the requirements of the UON." It further states that the request is endorsed by Pacific Command (which has responsibility over North Korea) and Central Command (which has responsibility over Iran).
The request was quietly approved. On Friday, McDonnell Douglas was awarded a $51.9 million contract to provide "Massive Penetrator Ordnance Integration" on B-2 aircraft.
This is not the kind of weapon that would be particularly useful in Iraq or Afghanistan, but it is ideally suited to hit deeply buried nuclear facilities such as Natanz or Qom in Iran.
That the Obama administration would actually go through with an attack on Iran is a thought that generates its own kind of shock and awe, but I have been arguing for several years that the only thing worse than the calamity that such an attack might bring upon the world would be the calamity that would almost certainly befall us were Iran to aquire nuclear weapons. A nuclear Iran would not only be an existential threat to Israel, it's almost a sure thing that terrorists would be supplied with the weapons and seek to smuggle them into the U.S. where they would be detonated in American cities.
An alternative possiblity is that a single nuclear-tipped missile would be launched from an innocent-looking freighter off our coast and detonated high over the nation's midsection. The blast would produce a pulse of electromagnetic energy (EMP) that could theoretically fry every device in the country that uses or produces electricity. We would in an instant be thrust back into the 19th century and the resulting chaos and upheaval would result in the deaths of tens of millions of Americans (You can read more about EMP here and here).
If the MOPs will prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, if war is the only way to prevent them from realizing their dream of precipitating Armageddon, then it seems to me that the Obama administration has no other choice.
RLC
The other day we featured some quotes from several famous and accomplished historical figures. Here are two more sent me by a reader from the pen of Ben Franklin:
"Idleness and pride tax with a heavier hand than kings and parliaments."
"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Some things never change. One reason today's "kings and parliaments" levy taxes is to compensate for the anchor imposed on our society by those Franklin might have described as idlers. The second quote is one that should be kept in mind by those who believe that government should take over as much of our lives as possible in order to make us more economically secure.
RLC
This will probably be of no interest to anyone but me, but my brother Bill informs me that, in the course of scanning through the arcana of our blog's software he discovered that in the last three weeks Viewpoint has been visited by individuals whose IP addresses are located in over 60 different countries and a couple dozen states.
I have no idea how these folks found us, what it means, or if they're even stopping to read anything on the home page, but it's still pretty surprising in any event.
Here's a list of the countries:
Maybe somebody has launched a virus that causes computers around the globe to ring up Viewpoint, I don't know, but there you have it, for what it's worth.
RLC
Stephen Meyer, author of Signature in the Cell, and Jonathan Wells, author of Icons of Evolution gave a presentation recently at the University of Oklahoma. As is typical of these events there was lots of name-calling from the Darwinians and attempts to abort the program before it got off the ground, but evidently none of these tactics worked. Wells files an interesting report on the proceedings at Evolution News and Views. Here's an excerpt:
Darwinist blogger P.Z. Myers, who had scolded the museum for letting us show the film [Darwin's Dilemma], did not come all the way from the University of Minnesota, Morris, to attend. Yet he wrote afterwards about Steve's September 28 lecture:
"I knew ahead of time exactly what it was going to be: complexity, complexity, complexity, complexity, complexity, complexity, complexity, therefore, DESIGN. It doesn't follow. The logic is nonexistent. It's the kind of thing you'd expect a competent person with a Ph.D. in philosophy to recognize, but no, it's the same ol' thing, trotted out every time they get up to speak."
Of course, Myers is absolutely correct: Complexity, therefore design, doesn't follow. And yes, "you'd expect a competent person with a Ph.D. in philosophy" to know this.
That's why Steve Meyer devoted an entire chapter to it in his book. In fact, it's the chapter from which the book takes its name (Chapter 4.). If Myers had bothered to read Steve's book, he would have known this. Indeed, you'd expect that a competent person with a Ph.D. who's paid by the taxpayers of Minnesota to teach their children would read a book before ridiculing it. But no, it's the same ol' thing, trotted out every time Myers blogs on the subject.
I was particularly interested in this statement made by an evolutionist professor on campus who gave a talk to balance that of Meyer and Wells:
[Professor] Westrop concluded by taking exception to J.B.S. Haldane's claim that finding a fossil rabbit in the pre-Cambrian would prove Darwin's theory wrong. If such a fossil were found, Westrop said, paleontologists would simply revise their reconstruction of the history of life. During the Q&A, one student asked him whether any fossil find could falsify Darwin's theory, and Professor Westrop said "No."
This is revealing inasmuch as Darwinians frequently argue that, unlike Intelligent Design, their theory is genuine science because it can be falsified, that is we can imagine a discovery that would prove their theory false if it were actually made. Often they cite the discovery of a mammal fossil in a layer of rock believed to have formed much earlier than mammals existed. Westrop is saying, however, that such a find would not disprove Darwinism at all. In other words, Darwinism is not falsifiable, at least by the fossil record, and is thus no more "scientific" than is ID.
Wait until Judge Jones hears this.
RLC
I've been eager to find something for which I can commend our President and have been disappointed that his first eight months have offered so few opportunities. Nevertheless, I've persevered and have recently stumbled upon something on which he and I agree. The President believes, and I think he's right, that if we're going to improve education in this country we need to extend the school year.
This will, of course, be a very unpopular proposal with students and even more unpopular with employers who utilize student labor during the summer months, but it makes no sense to build multi-million dollar facilities and only use them, at least at full capacity, for 180 days, or so. It also makes no sense to bemoan the sorry state of our students' academic achievement but only devote half the year to their education.
There are arguments against pushing the academic year deeper into the summer, some more compelling than others, but if the quality of our children's education truly is a high priority then doing all we can to get them that education should trump those arguments.
Our current school year is a vestige of a time when students were needed during the summer to work the family farm and also a time when school buildings became saunas in the summer months. With most school districts now sporting air conditioned buildings, and relatively few students working in agriculture neither of those circumstances obtains any longer.
The article linked to above offers two arguments, however, that are admittedly serious objections to implementing a longer school year: The economic effect on businesses that rely on student employees (and those which rely on students with cash in their pockets to buy their wares), and the cost to taxpayers of having to pay teachers for working more days.
I don't know how, exactly, those two objections could best be addressed, but I do think that, in principle at least, President Obama is on the right track in trying to get students, at least the better students, more hours in school.
RLC
Here are excerpts of a review of a new movie hostile to Christianity called The Invention of Lying:
If you saw Ricky Gervais's delightful romantic comedy "Ghost Town" last year and were looking forward to his new comedy, "The Invention of Lying," be warned. The movie is a full-on attack on religion in general and Christianity in particular. It might be the most blatantly, one-sidedly atheist movie ever released by a major studio, in this case Warner Bros.
Gervais delights in what a faith-based society would call blasphemy, setting up an imaginary world in which no one ever lies. Except his character, who spreads what Gervais obviously sees as the biggest lie of all: Belief in God.
Gervais's character is the first man ever to think of lying. In order to comfort the dying, he randomly hits on the idea of telling them that they will go to a better place and enjoy an afterlife. Citizens who automatically believe what they're told (since no one, even advertisers, has ever told an untruth) start to spread the word, and soon Gervais is doing a gruesomely unfunny parody of Moses and the Ten Commandments. Except his rules are ten lies written on pizza boxes.
Gervais sighs and winces as he spins his absurd made-up stories to the ignorant peoples of the world: There is a "Man in the Sky," he says, who is looking down at all of us and is responsible for everything that happens. Yes, he explains to one woman, he gave your mom cancer - but he's also responsible for curing her. The people aren't happy that "The Man in the Sky" is behind all human suffering. "F- The Man in the Sky!" cries one citizen, and the crowd begins to get angry. A magazine cover exclaims, "Man in the Sky Kills 40,000 in Tsunami!" But Gervais's character insists that whatever damage the Man in the Sky causes, he eventually makes up for it all in the end by providing a beautiful mansion for everyone after they die, at least for those who don't commit three or more immoral acts, and by making it so that everyone can reunite with their loved ones in the next life. Later in the movie, Gervais will be outfitted like Jesus. The movie doesn't have a joke to offer at this point; it just thinks it's funny to show Gervais in long hair and a bedsheet. At the end, in a church, a minister is seen wearing a cross, so apparently somehow the Gervais character also came up with the Crucifixion story.
Gervais is an atheist, which is fine, but his mean-spiritedness (even before the atheism theme enters the movie, is sour and misanthropic) and the film's reduction of all religion to an episode of crowd hysteria are not going to be warmly received. Except maybe by critics.
I'm sure the movie will be lots of laughs for the same sort of people who guffawed at David Letterman's revelations that he'd been cheating on his family with some of his staffers. I'm sure the same folks who find jokes that mention moose hunting and Sarah Palin in the same sentence will hoot wildly and slap their knees at Gervais' humor. For those, though, whose intelligence has not been diluted by generations of incest the movie sounds more like something concocted by a bunch of seventh grade boys.
RLC
A recent survey on Americans' attitudes about abortion by the Pew Research Center for People and the Press has come up with some interesting results:
Polls conducted in 2009 have found fewer Americans expressing support for abortion than in previous years. In Pew Research Center polls in 2007 and 2008, supporters of legal abortion clearly outnumbered opponents; now Americans are evenly divided on the question, and there have been modest increases in the numbers who favor reducing abortions or making them harder to obtain. Less support for abortion is evident among most demographic and political groups.
The latest Pew Research Center survey also reveals that the abortion debate has receded in importance, especially among liberals. At the same time, opposition to abortion has grown more firm among conservatives, who have become less supportive of finding a middle ground on the issue and more certain of the correctness of their own views on abortion.
Another interesting finding (among many) is this:
The poll finds that four-in-ten Americans are unaware of Obama's position on the abortion issue. Conservative Republicans, however, are more likely than any other group to know Obama's position, with 75% correctly identifying him as "pro-choice" rather than "pro-life."
It seems to consistently surprise people to be told that the President is the most radically pro-choice individual ever to serve in that office. They are often incredulous when it is pointed out to them that he twice voted while in the Illinois state senate to allow babies born alive after a failed abortion attempt to be left to die.
The number of people who feel there should be more protections granted to the unborn is also growing:
The latest (August 2009) Pew Research Center survey also finds that four-in-ten Americans (41%) now favor making it more difficult for a woman to get an abortion, up six points from 2007 (35%) and the highest level of support in Pew Research Center surveys for increased restrictions since 1987. However, those who favor making it more difficult to obtain an abortion are still outnumbered by those who oppose making it more difficult (50% vs. 41%).
Support for putting up barriers to abortion varies substantially across political and religious groups. Fully 65% of conservative Republicans want to make abortions harder to get, but just 39% of independents and 19% of liberal Democrats say the same. Almost two-thirds of white evangelical Protestants (64%) back greater restrictions on abortion, but fewer than half as many white mainline Protestants (27%) and the religiously unaffiliated (23%) say the same. Catholics fall in between, with 44% in support of more restrictions on abortion.
There's much more at the link.
RLC
The President is getting criticism from the left and derision from the right after his failed attempt to persuade the International Olympic Committee to grant the 2016 Olympics to Chicago.
The criticism from the left centers around the failure of the administration to really do their homework by learning in advance where Chicago actually stood in the minds of the IOC. His advisors and others wasted the President's time and risked his prestige in pushing him to go to Copenhagen only to have him rebuffed, and although the sting of the defeat will diminish, the debacle adds to the perception that this administration is fundamentally incompetent.
The derision from the right centers around the haughty presumption that led the administration to think that the President and First Lady could simply blow into town and sweep the IOC off their feet like they have done with Europeans in the past. I think the scorn that some of the talk radio people are heaping on the President for his flop seems shrill, strident, childish, and nit-picky, but I do think they have a point that it was unseemly of Mrs. Obama to claim that she was making "a sacrifice" to go to Copenhagen.
They also have a point that since the President has been bad-mouthing the U.S. ever since he first arrived in Washington, he can hardly expect now to convince the IOC that his city and his country are really not so bad after all. Even so, so much of the gloating on the right sounds as though some of these talkers care more that Obama look bad than that the U.S. be awarded the games.
This is just wrongheaded. The President did the right thing in campaigning on behalf of Chicago, even if he did ultimately fail, and all Americans should be disappointed that he didn't succeed. If he had persuaded the IOC to grant the Olympics to Chicago it could have been an economic blessing for a city that badly needs the help (what the city government would have done with the wealth that would flow into the city is a different question, of course). I commend him for going to Copenhagen and fighting for the games. Now I hope he'll continue to fight for and affirm his pride in the country at large just like he did for Chicago. I just hope he does it a lot more effectively.
RLC
The popular idea that the close genetic similarity between humans and chimps is evidence of a close evolutionary relationship between them has been taking a beating of late. A new book by Jeremy Taylor titled Not a Chimp: The Hunt to Find Genes That Make Us Human adds to the drubbing. Taylor pronounces the inference from genetic similarity to close relationship to be without any merit. The book is reviewed at New Scientist by Ewan Calloway who writes that:
[T]he former BBC producer [Taylor] synthesizes recent genetic, behavioural and neuroscientific research to argue that far more than a handful of genes divides humans from our evolutionary cousins, 6 million years removed.
Take that 98.4 per cent [the percentage of our DNA we share in common with chimps], an oft-repeated figure that has been used to argue that chimps deserve human rights. True, Homo sapiens and Pan troglodytes share an extraordinary amount of genetic similarity - yet humans and mice share almost as much.
Complete genomes of both species are enabling researchers to map the chasm between human and chimp, which seems to deepen by the year. A good example is FOXP2, a regulatory gene linked to speech and language disorders in humans. FOXP2 in chimps has barely changed in the 130 million years since primates and mice diverged from their common ancestor. But after humans and chimps split, two key changes accumulated on the human line.
Even greater differences may lurk in the areas of the genome once discounted as "junk" DNA, which don't make proteins but instead determine gene activity. One recently discovered RNA-coding sequence that may be involved in cerebral cortex development was found to vary little between chimps and chickens, yet humans possess 18 unique changes.
Geneticists are right to home in on differences that affect brain development: nowhere is the gulf between humans and chimps wider than in their mental abilities. Psychologists suggest that the ability to infer the mental states of others may underlie language and culture. Children gradually acquire this capacity...but evidence for it in chimps is equivocal.
....Not a Chimp should be mandatory reading for journalists who often reinforce the general public's misconception that chimps are practically human.
It may be that chimps and man have a common ancestor, but the more we learn the harder it is to make that case without resorting to question-begging - e.g. The similarities in DNA between chimp and man result from their evolutionary kinship. This must be the explanation for the similarities because we know they are evolutionarily related.
Another recent development in this regard, bye the bye, is the mounting skepticism in the scientific community surrounding the proper interpretation of the fossilized remains of an early hominid named Ardipithecus ramidus (Ardi, for short) that was initially touted as a missing link between man and chimp. It's now beginning to look, however, like Ardi is not at all close to being a human ancestor.
I wonder how many more times we're going to be told by journalists on the front page of the newspaper that the "missing link" has been discovered only to learn six months later on page twenty that such claims were premature.
RLC
Courtesy of Patterico we have a video of Democrat Senator Tom Carper telling us that it's unreasonable to expect legislators to actually read the laws they write. I am not kidding. The language, he says, is incomprehensible so lawmakers simply read the summary of the bill which is written in prose more befitting a congressman's reading comprehension skills. Carper says in the video:
I don't expect to actually read the legislative language, because reading the legislative language is among the more confusing things I've ever read in my life. . . . When you get into the legislative language, Sen. Conrad actually read some of it, several pages of it, the other day, and I don't think anybody had a clue, including people who had served on this committee for decades, what he was talking about.
This is inexcusable. If the language is so turgid that it cannot be understood, even by legislators who went to law school, then do what any sixth grader would realize you should do and change the language. Here's the video:
I have three questions: If the "English" version is an accurate summation of the "legislative" language why not just write the law in plain English? Second, if Senators like Carper, most of whom are lawyers, cannot understand the legislative language how do they know that the summation accurately represents it? Third, how can anyone justify voting for a bill that will revolutionize the American economy, as health care reform will do, if they don't understand the bill and haven't read it?
This strikes me as almost criminal malfeasance. We don't send these people to Washington to advance their social life and attend cocktail parties. We pay them a very handsome salary to read the legislation they foist on us. If this is how they operate these people should not be in office, they should be in jail.
RLC
Strategy Page reports on progress in Columbia:
The eight year offensive against leftist rebels and drug gangs has been a success, and this can be seen in economic performance. In the last ten years, GDP has gone from $90 billion to over $250 billion. Investments by foreigners went from $1.5 billion to over $10 billion. In the 1980s and 90s, foreign investors stayed away, and many Colombian entrepreneurs and investors fled the country.
The economic changes of the last decade have improved the lives of most Colombians, and, along with a sharp reduction in violence and kidnapping, led to many exiles, and their talents, returning home. The growing tyranny in neighboring Venezuela, has brought thousands of Venezuelan professionals and investors to Colombia. After three quarters of GDP contraction (about two percent overall) because of the global recession, GDP growth has resumed.
There's much more at the link. Since Columbia is a democracy and a neighbor of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez has tried repeatedly to destabilize it. So far he has failed. Given that Mr. Obama has aligned himself with Chavez against the Hondurans struggling to preserve their own democracy I wonder which side of the Venezuela/Columbia conflict our new administration is on.
RLC
Those interested in the films of Ethan and Joel Coen (Fargo, No Country for Old Men) will be pleased to note that they have another movie coming out soon. Josh Hurst, movie critic at Christianity Today tells us a little bit about the Coen oeuvre:
The Coen brothers celebrate 25 years of filmmaking this month with the release of their 14th movie, A Serious Man. It's perhaps their most religious work, juggling existential and theological questions in a story that invokes a modern-day Job. As protagonist Larry Gropnik's world begins to fall apart, he consults three rabbis with his Big Questions, only to find that the answers aren't easy - if there are indeed answers.
That's a good way to describe the brothers' opus: a chronic search for truth. Some might argue that the Coens' world is amoral, but a discerning look reveals morality aplenty. Good and evil stand apart from one another as clearly as black and white - or red and white, in the case of their classic crime story, Fargo.
No Country for Old Men would not have been a bad example of the Coen brothers' fascination with good and evil either. Both movies portray evil in all of its stark, stunning ugliness, and unlike, say, the films of Quentin Tarantino, no one watching these two movies would find evil in any way attractive or appealing. The Coens seem to want to say as loudly as they can that this world is broken, shattered, and forlorn. The don't offer any remedies for this brutal fact but they sure do a good job of illustrating the need for one.
Caution: Neither Fargo nor No Country are easy films to watch. Both are gut-wrenching in their portrayal of man's inhumanity to man.
RLC
Bill Roggio's Long War Journal has an analysis of the effectiveness of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) attacks on Taliban and al Qaeda targets in Pakistan. There's a lot of information at the link, but this graph shows the striking increase in tempo and effectiveness of the strikes in the past year:
Unfortunately, the Obama administration is reported to be drawing the conclusion from the success of these assaults that we can fight the entire war against the Taliban in Afghanistan in this fashion with a minimal commitment of troops on the ground. Few military people agree with him, but Mr. Obama knows that if he fights to win in Afghanistan he risks alienating his progressive base at a time when he needs them on board for health care reform and cap and trade legislation.
It would be a terrible disgrace if the military strategy in Afghanistan were dictated by the political exigencies of getting a dubious domestic agenda passed in Congress.
RLC
A few delectations to kick off your weekend:
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil, is for good men to do nothing." --Edmund Burke
"I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents..." --James Madison
"...the Constitution, to be worth anything, must be held sacred, and rigidly observed in all its provisions. The man who wields power and misinterprets it is the more dangerous the more honest he is" -- attributed to Davy Crockett
"Our political way of life is by the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God, and of course presupposes the existence of God, the moral ruler of the universe, and a rule of right and wrong, of just and unjust, binding upon man, preceding all institutions of human society and government." --John Quincy Adams
Who follows in the train of such men today?
RLC
Rep. Joe Wilson was chastised by his colleagues in the House of Representatives for loudly expostulating with the President during a speech Mr. Obama made to a joint session of Congress on health care. The President averred that illegal immigrants will not be covered by his plan, and Rep. Wilson took umbrage, accusing him of lying.
It turns out that the congressman was right to feel that the President was playing fast and loose with the facts. After all, if the President was correct why do the Democrats keep voting down amendments to the various health care bills that would require anyone seeking coverage to present proof of citizenship? The Hill reports:
Senate Finance Committee Democrats [today] rejected a proposed requirement that immigrants prove their identity with photo identification when signing up for federal healthcare programs.
Finance Committee ranking member Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said that current law and the healthcare bill under consideration are too lax and leave the door open to illegal immigrants defrauding the government using false or stolen identities to obtain benefits.
Grassley's amendment was beaten back 10-13 on a party-line vote.
If the Democrats don't intend to cover illegals why not write the legislation so as to guarantee that illegals can't game the system?
We've also been assured that the President's plan will not cover abortions, a matter of some concern to those taxpayers who believe, not unreasonably, that an abortion gruesomely snuffs out a child's life and shouldn't be subsidized by their tax dollars. Yet here we find the Democrats defeating GOP efforts to insure that the proposed health care reform bill contains unambiguous language to that effect:
Sen. Orrin Hatch (R., Utah) said the [prohibitions on abortion] in the current law could easily lapse. He called on Mr. Baucus to fold the language into the health bill, making it permanent law. "Let's codify it," he said.
Abortion-rights supporters said the rights of women were in danger. "This is not maintaining the status quo," said Sen. Maria Cantwell (D., Wash.). "It is a major, major change, and a poison pill."
The Hatch amendment failed 13-10 on a mostly party-line vote. Sen. Olympia Snowe (R., Maine) joined Democrats in opposing it, while Sen. Kent Conrad of North Dakota was the lone Democrat in favor.
The panel also rejected an amendment Mr. Hatch said was needed to ensure the government doesn't discriminate against health-care providers who refuse to perform abortion procedures for moral or religious reasons.
Again, the same question arises. Why oppose language in the bill that would accomplish what the Democrats say they want to accomplish?
And then there's President Obama's promise from early on that he wouldn't sign any legislation that the public didn't have a chance to read, but Republican efforts to have the health care bill put online for a mere three days prior to the vote so the public can study it - even if legislators won't - are meeting with stout resistance from the Democrats. Informing the public about what their elected representatives are up to is evidently asking more than what Democrats can be expected to bear.
In other words, the Democrats, both in the Congress and the White House, seem to be making it clear that they simply can't be trusted to tell us the truth about their intentions, and that they can't be trusted to govern in the best interests of the people they're supposed to be serving. It really is a shame.
RLC
Richard Dawkins, the atheist evolutionary biologist who wrote the best-seller The God Delusion, has a new book out, titled The Greatest Show on Earth, in which he discusses the evidence for evolution. Dawkins is interviewed by Newsweek's Lisa Miller who poses an interesting question or two:
Why were you motivated to write this book?
Well, it's about the evidence for evolution. Evolution is one of the most fascinating ideas in all of science. It explains your existence and mine, and the existence of just about everything we see. How can you possibly ask what motivated me? It's just a wonderful subject to write a book about.
Is this supposed to be the definitive refutation of creationist arguments?
Well, it's amazing that there needs to be a definitive refutation of them, but yes, if you put it like that, it is a propitious time from that point of view. Any time would have been a good time for this book.
Excerpts from the rest of the interview are at the link. I haven't read the book yet, but I have read The God Delusion (and wrote an extensive critique of it here). If the case for evolution in Greatest Show is as well-argued as was the case against God in God Delusion, those creationists won't have much about which to worry.
RLC
It is surely a symptom of a hopelessly decadent culture that a man in his forties, Roman Polanski, can drug a thirteen year-old girl, anally rape her as she pleads with him to stop, admit to the crime, flee the country, and then have much of Hollywood and even some feminists protest his arrest and extradition back to the U.S. to be held accountable for his crime.
Joan Z. Shore writes at HuffPo that she's outraged at the Swiss for arresting Polanski who, she tells us, is really very charming:
The 13-year old model "seduced" by Polanski had been thrust onto him by her mother, who wanted her in the movies. The girl was just a few weeks short of her 14th birthday, which was the age of consent in California. (It's probably 13 by now!) Polanski was demonized by the press, convicted, and managed to flee, fearing a heavy sentence.
I met Polanski shortly after he fled America and was filming Tess in Normandy. I was working in the CBS News bureau in Paris, and I accompanied Mike Wallace for a Sixty Minutes interview with Polanski on the set. Mike thought he would be meeting the devil incarnate, but was utterly charmed by Roman's sobriety and intelligence.
And this from a co-founder of Women Overseas for Equality. You've come a long way, baby.
The poor, maligned Mr. Polanski in a 1979 interview reflected on his crime and demonstrated the depth of his remorse by expressing his feelings about young girls. It's not pretty.
If you check the link just imagine that Polanski were not a celebrated filmmaker but rather a Catholic priest or even worse, a Republican. Do you think there'd be anyone in Hollywood not in favor of hanging the guy from the nearest tree? Why should this man get sympathy just because he makes movies?
One might be forgiven for thinking that the deep concern for the status of women in this country is, for at least some of those foremost among women's advocates, merely a pose struck by phonies who wish to be seen holding fashionable opinions. There's no conviction in their high-minded paens to women's rights and women's equality. This was clear during the nineties when women's groups which had flayed Clarence Thomas for having allegedly made an off-color remark in the presence of the delicate and sensitive Anita Hill completely ignored the credible allegations of rape and sexual abuse made by several women against President Clinton.
Now, because the rapist is one of their own, an artist of great talent, they think he should be permitted his perversions. These people give a whole new meaning to the term "double standard."
RLC
Bruce Feiler reports on a story at Fox News that will disturb some and excite others depending on whether one is a Christian or a secularist. A study called The American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) reveals that:
Protestants now represent only half of all Americans, down almost 20 percent in the last twenty years. In the coming months, America will become a minority Protestant nation for the first time since the pilgrims settled Massachussetts.
Meanwhile, the number of people who claim no religious affiliation has doubled since 1990 to fifteen percent, its highest point in history.
Here are some other findings of the survey:
1) The number of Christians has declined 12% since 1990, and is now 76%, the lowest percentage in American history.
2) The growth of non-believers has come largely from men. Twenty percent of men express no religious affiliation; 12% of women.
3) Young people are fleeing faith. Nearly a quarter of Americans in their 20's profess no organized religion.
4) But these non-believers are not particularly atheist. That number hasn't budged and stands at less than 1 percent. (Agnostics are similarly less than 1 percent.) Instead, these individuals have a belief in God but no interest in organized religion, or they believe in a personal God but not in a formal faith tradition. People are leaving institutional religion but they're not leaving God, at least they claim not to be.
The fact that so many people are finding traditional religion inadequate comes as no surprise, but it should serve as an alarum for organized religious institutions. They simply aren't meeting peoples' needs, especially the need of young people to be offered a belief system that seems vibrant, powerful, and relevant to their lives.
Feiler says that catering to older believers, which many churches do because the old people are the big contributors, is a recipe for failure. Younger Americans feel excluded and are tuning out. This is precisely what Mark Kinnaman documents in his book Unchristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity.
Feiler also observes that Americans are interested in God, but they don't think existing institutions are helping them draw closer to Him. This may be true of traditional denominational religion, much of which seems to have lost its way in seeking to ingratiate itself with Modernity. Traditional denominations like the United Church of Christ, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, etc. have been slow to recognize that forms, structures, and practices that were adequate for prior to the 1970s often seem alien and bizarre to people born after 1960. Even so, what is true of "mainline" protestantism is much less true of contemporary independent churches many of which have shown an admirable flexibility and adaptibility without compromising traditional Christian faith.
The column closes with a hope and a warning:
"Americans' interest in religion has not always been stable. It dipped following the Revolution and again following Civil War. In both cases it rebounded because religious institutions adapted and found new ways of relating to everyday Americans."
They need to do the same today or "risk becoming Europe, where religion is fast becoming an afterthought."
RLC
Lloyd Grove at The Daily Beast gives us a little insight into Michelle Malkin who is one of the most influential people in the blogosphere:
So who is this softspoken, self-deprecating woman talking to me on the phone?
"I'm a human being," Malkin says from her home in tranquil Colorado Springs (tranquil, except for the shrieking of Air Force jets-"the sound of freedom," Malkin says), far, far away from the media-political complex. "I mean, every once in a while it might get under my skin. But I can't stop ad hominem attacks against me."
I've just asked if it ever bothers her that so many people dislike her - even worse, despise her. She did, after all, once write a book defending the World War II internment camps for Japanese-Americans, and calling for racial profiling of Arabs in the war on terror.
The recipient of occasional death threats, she has twice felt the need to move her family to undisclosed locations-and in recent years decamped from suburban Washington to the flyover wilds of Colorado. When she goes on book tour or lectures on college campuses, she is accompanied by a private security guard. "I limit the amount of traveling and speaking that I do, but you just never know," she says.
There's much in this piece that'll interest readers who want to see how one woman has made a difference in the way America is informed about its political leadership. It also gives a sense of the sort of vitriol the left seeks to throw in the face of anyone who challenges their dogmas and criticizes their apostles.
RLC
