The Questions Never End

There's a good editorial on the hole Sen. kerry has dug for himself in today's Wall Street Journal. Some excerpts:

A good rule in politics is that anyone who picks a fight ought to be prepared to finish it. But having first questioned Mr. Bush's war service, and then made Vietnam the core of his own campaign for President, Mr. Kerry now cries No mas! because other Vietnam vets are assailing his behavior before and after that war. And, by the way, Mr. Bush is supposedly honor bound to repudiate them.

What did Mr. Kerry expect, anyway? That claiming to be a hero himself while accusing other veterans of "war crimes" - as he did back in 1971 and has refused to take back ever since - would somehow go unanswered? That when he raised the subject of one of America's most contentious modern events, no one would meet him at the barricades? Mr. Kerry brought the whole thing up; why is it Mr. Bush's obligation now to shut it down?

The irony here is that a main reason Mr. Kerry has focused so much on Vietnam is to avoid debating Iraq and the rest of his long record in the Senate. He wants Americans to believe that a four-month wartime biography is credential enough to be commander-in-chief. But a candidate who runs on biography can't merely pick the months of his life that he likes - any more than a candidate who makes Vietnam the heart of his campaign can confine the resulting debate to his personal home video.

It's worth reading the entire piece.

While we're on the subject, has anyone else noticed the irony that Democrats only a year ago were outraged that Arnold Schwarzenegger, a man tainted by genetic association to a Nazi, his father, was running for governor of California? Now it's a year later and a man who has admitted to actually having committed war crimes is running for president and the Democrats are trying to move heaven and earth to get him elected. Doesn't anything embarrass these people?

Another thing. If we hear John Kerry say one more time that he fought to defend this country as a young man we'll have to go on blood pressure medication. Whatever John Kerry did in Vietnam he wasn't fighting to defend this country, at least not in the eyes of the anti-war left of which he became a prominent member. The chief anti-war argument was that the war was immoral precisely because there was no national interest at stake in Vietnam, much less defense of the homeland. The argument that our young men were fighting and dying to defend America was greeted with scorn and derision by anti-war folks. Someone needs to ask Sen. Kerry exactly when and why he changed his mind on the nature of that conflict.

How Low Will They Go

If this story at PowerLine is true it is a specimen of a most disgusting species of political campaigning:

One important story that has flown under the major-media radar is the peddling by Democrats of the claim that the Bush administration has a secret plan to re-institute the military draft. That rumor is being spread to try to scare young voters into supporting John Kerry.

The Democrats' draft-rumor effort has now gone mainstream; the South Carolina Democratic Party has sent out a mailing that claims young voters are faced with induction if they don't vote for John Kerry:

The first page of the mailing shows a draft notice with orders to report to a military induction center. The next shows a helicopter with troops in the foreground beneath a headline that says "Officials in Washington are calling for more troops in Iraq." Below, the mailing asks "Which form would you rather fill out?"

It is hard to think of a more despicable campaign tactic. It hardly needs to be said that neither the Bush administration nor any other foreseeable administration has the slightest desire to re-institute the draft. The thought sends shudders down the spines of professional military men; America's all-volunteer army is without a doubt the best military force ever assembled. No one I know of supports the draft, except for Fritz Hollings, the Democratic Senator from--ironically enough--South Carolina. He introduced a bill to that effect. Not only did the Hollings proposal go nowhere; he couldn't even find a co-sponsor.

Democrats sometimes get upset when we say that they prey on ignorance. But this contemptible tactic is a perfect example of what we mean.

This is an unbelievably dirty tactic, and this is not a "disaffiliated" 527 group putting this out. This isn't Michael Moore doing this. This is the South Carolina Democrat Party. Where's the outrage among the Democrats who are so vexed about the Swift Boat vets' ads which, it's turning out, are being confirmed by Kerry himself?

Not only has his campaign had to backtrack from his Christmas in Cambodia story, but also his own journal now shows that his first purple heart was accidentally self-inflicted. Nine days after incurring the "injury" he logged in his journal that he and his crew had yet to be fired upon, i.e. they had yet to see combat.

According to Captain Ed at Captain's Quarters Kerry's credibility has been dealt a devastating blow by Joshua Muravchik in today's Washington Post. The article is a must-read for anyone following the controversy. Captain's Quarters quotes from it:

Now a new official statement from the campaign undercuts Brinkley. It offers a minimal (thus harder to impeach) claim: that Kerry "on one occasion crossed into Cambodia," on an unspecified date. But at least two of the shipmates who are supporting Kerry's campaign (and one who is not) deny their boat ever crossed the border, and their testimony on this score is corroborated by Kerry's own journal, kept while on duty. One passage reproduced in Brinkley's book says: "The banks of the [Rach Giang Thanh River] whistled by as we churned out mile after mile at full speed. On my left were occasional open fields that allowed us a clear view into Cambodia. At some points, the border was only fifty yards away and it then would meander out to several hundred or even as much as a thousand yards away, always making one wonder what lay on the other side." His curiosity was never satisfied, because this entry was from Kerry's final mission [emph mine - CE].

Captain Ed goes on to say:

If [Kerry] had spent time in Cambodia, he would have known exactly what lay on the other side of the banks, if indeed he ever even got that close to Cambodia in the first place. And the revelation that his later journals were actually written after his return to the States for an abortive book proposal makes this even more odd, since he had already begun his anti-war activities -- and an illegal Cambodian excursion would not only add to his radical street cred, but it would have made a book deal more likely.

This Washington Post opinion piece marks a signal from the mainstream media that they have turned the corner on this issue, thanks in no small part, I'm sure, to Kerry's decision to go nuclear against the Swiftvets. Expect coverage in the news sections to follow and the Kerry collapse to continue in the days ahead.

We'll see. Viewpoint suspects the campaign will grow much uglier if it appears that Kerry is about to start sinking. It may be that Fahrenheit 9/11, the Gore and Dean speeches, and all the sleaze from MoveOn.org and the South Carolinians will look like good-natured jocularity compared to what the Dems will do if the bow of the campaign boat tilts too far upward.

The Battle For Najaf

It's difficult to find news coming out of Najaf and Fallujah. The major media seem uninterested in ferreting out anything which requires their reporters to leave their hotels in Baghdad's Green Zone and get out into the field. Consequently, unless one does a little digging all he'll hear about are car bombings and it seems like that's all that's happening in Iraq. We do hear vague, general reports about battles raging in Najaf and Fallujah, but nothing about what is actually happening there and what the Iraqi people think of it all.

Thus, when a report like this one from former Marine veteran W.Thomas Smith comes along it gives us a rare glimpse into the circumstances surrounding the current military operations in Najaf. Here are some excerpts from Smith's report which can be found in its entirety on National Review Online:

The past 24 hours have seen U.S. warplanes and helicopter gunships pounding Mahdi positions. Fighting continues on the ground in various sectors of the city, and the consensus among U.S. military personnel is that the insurgency is weakening. The latter is due in large measure to an increase in solid intelligence, a more formidable Iraqi national military force, and positive developing relationships between U.S. forces and Iraqi civilians. Not good for al Sadr.

"Two nights ago on a patrol from midnight to 3 A.M., we actually saw Iraqis sitting out on rugs watching and listening to the Coalition aircraft doing their work in the cemetery," 1st Lt. Jeremy T. Sellars - a platoon commander with Battalion Landing Team 1st Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment - told National Review Online on Saturday. "Despite the obvious level of destruction they were inflicting, I watched Iraqis cheer every time the aircraft fired."

In the rural communities just beyond Najaf, the farming families are comforted by the presence of Americans. "The farmers are some of the most supportive of our patrols," said Sellars. "In these areas you can see women who respond to waves, babies and small children being held up to see the Americans. So in the sense of the local populace, I would say they look forward to the end of this conflict, but they understand why it is happening so close to their homes."

First Lt. John B. Johnston of the U.S. Army's 25th Infantry Division has experienced similar interaction with Iraqi civilians. In a Saturday conversation with NRO, he recalled a recent patrol in which his platoon was followed by droves of children. "There were about a hundred of them," he said. "They were chanting 'USA' and shouting great things about President Bush. These kids are the future of Iraq, and they clearly want us there."

He added, the "friendliness" witnessed by Americans in Iraq is rarely understood back home. "There is a lot editorial license being taken in terms of the media choosing what to report. I feel like a lot of the positive things we've been doing have been glossed over for more dramatic actions elsewhere. Car bombs are a lot more fun to report than our painting schools or whatever. But the positives definitely outweigh the negatives. If you want compare the bad days to the good days, I'd have to say 90 percent to the good."

Though some would argue otherwise, time - and the fact that positive news stories will eventually see ink - is in many ways on the side of the Americans in Iraq and the new Iraqi interim government. Not so for al Sadr.

"It appears to me that in April and May we killed the best and brightest [of the Mahdi army]," 1st Lt. Brian Suits of the Army's 1st Cavalry Division in Najaf, said during a radio interview with talk-radio host Kirby Wilbur on Seattle's KVI radio, last Thursday. "What al Sadr is doing now is sending in the guys who are left behind to make a statement. He's running out of guys. The guys he has are frankly running out of motivation. They are ill-prepared and ill-trained. They are beginning to question their authority. I think they're saying 'wait a minute, you told us that God was going to guide our bullets, but we haven't killed one American soldier in our area and we are dying left and right here.'"

Asked if Iraqi national military forces and police are measuring up to their U.S. and British allies on the battlefield, Suits said, "I've been in combat with these guys over the last couple of days, and I was as wary as anyone else. I saw their performance in the first Gulf War, but they have since coalesced into an effective force. I'm not lying. I'm not propagandizing. I'm not delivering a message someone else said. I have confidence in them being on my left or my right. They will go forward. They will close with the enemy. They will fix him. And they will kill him. They do not retreat. They do not cower. They support each other. They drag their wounded out of the line of fire. And I have confidence that these guys will be able to defend their country because they are doing it now."

As the Iraqi forces continue to improve and as the Iraqi people continue to taste the benefits of freedom the situation there will continue to improve. Iran and Syria will continue to try their best to destabilize it because they know that as long as we're tied up in Iraq we won't turn our attention toward them. This is a two-edged strategy, however, since the more apparent it becomes that Iran and Syria are thwarting the aspirations of the Iraqi people the more the Iraqis will resent both the insurgents and their neighbors and the more likely they will be to welcome American military action against them from our bases within Iraq.

Islamic Justice

Yesterday Viewpoint posted the story of a young Iranian girl sentenced to death by an Iranian court for some sexual offense. As disgusting as that story is, this one may equal it. AllahPundit features this out of Tehran:

TEHRAN, Aug 19 (AFP) - Iran's judiciary ordered a man to be released after he killed his unfaithful wife in the courtroom, because the woman's immediate forebears are not alive to claim retaliation, press reports said Thursday. According to the newspaper Shargh, the man, identified as Mahmoud, had filed a complaint against his wife and her lover when he had found out that she was cheating on him.

When she appeared in court in Shahr Ray city in Tehran province in 2003 he lost control and stabbed her to death. But a court sentenced him Wednesday only to pay compensatory "blood money" to the "parents of the blood", who are in fact himself and their three children, because the parents of the murdered woman, Fatemeh, 29, are dead, Iran's newspaper said.

It should not be assumed, however, that the disciples of the Prophet and the devotees of Islam have no sense of justice. The dead woman's lover is to receive several lashes for having allowed himself to be seduced by the unfortunate lady and thus contributing to her offense.

In Favor Of the War Before He Was Against It

KerryOnIraq.com has a 12 minute video collage of statements by Senator Kerry that trace his various positions on Iraq and the need to depose Saddam Hussein. It really is quite devastating although some of the statements seem to be clipped so as to possibly cut off context that might make the statement less damning. Even so, the overall effect of the video is to show a clear pattern of waffling and position switches that are quite disconcerting.

If you go to the site click on "Watch Now" to view the tape.

Tough Call

President Bush probably did the politically wise thing when he repeated his opposition to all 527 ads on both sides and called for them to stop. He, or his surrogates, can now point out that Sen. Kerry has never lifted a finger to stop MoveOn.org or Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 or any of the other dissimulations that have been perpetrated against him by the left and about which, it needs to be pointed out, he never once complained in public. Indeed, Bush even said at one point that we're free in this country to say what we want even, he implied, if it's unfair and hurtful.

Now Kerry's being stung by ads calling his integrity into question, and he's whining that the President should condemn them. Rather than come out and face the charges squarely he's trying to stop them by both legal intimidation and by getting the other guy's "mommy" to tell them to stop picking on him. Apparently he's very opposed to 527 ads when they're directed against him, but he's much more sensitive to the virtues of political free speech when "unaffiliated" Bush-haters run ads and movies which slime his opponent.

Anyway, I wish the President hadn't said what he said. As a matter of principle he shouldn't have done anything to undercut the witness of these men who, contra Sen. McCain, have behaved exceptionally honorably throughout the last two weeks. As combat veterans themselves, they have the right to defend their honor and the historical record against what they believe to be serious calumnies and distortions.

Unless the President actually knows they're lying, something which is highly unlikely, he really has no business suggesting that they should stop defending their reputations and the historical facts. This is not really about George Bush. It's a fight between John Kerry and the men who served with him, and it's a noble fight because it's about truth and honor. The President should stay out of it.

They Can't Be Serious

The North Korean chapter of the disciples of St. Francis of Asissi located in Pyonyang have weighed in on American presidential politics:

SEOUL (AFP) - North Korea (news - web sites) described US President George W. Bush (news - web sites) as an "imbecile" and a "tyrant" who was worse than Adolf Hitler, and ruled out holding new talks on nuclear weapons with the United States.

In an unusually strong attack, a North Korean foreign ministry spokesman said comments by Bush calling North Korea a tyrant during campaigning last week in Wisconin were "malignant slanders and calumnies".

"He is a political imbecile bereft of even elementary morality as a human being and a bad guy," said the spokesman, quoted by the official KCNA news agency.

The spokesman blamed Bush for starting wars in Iraq (news - web sites) and elsewhere, and said the United States was trying to topple the legitimate government of North Korea.

"Bush's assumption of office turned a peaceful world into a pandemonium unprecedented in history as it is plagued with a vicious circle of terrorism and war," said the statement.

The spokesman went on to describe Bush as "a tyrant that puts Hitler into the shade" as well as "an idiot, an ignorant, a tyrant and a man-killer."

He said that following Bush's comments, it would be "impossible" to hold working-level discussions to prepare for a new round of multilateral talks on the nuclear issue. The talks bring together the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States.

"This made it quite impossible for the DPRK (North Korea) to go to the talks and deprived it of any elementary justification to sit at the negotiating table with the US," he said.

Well. Sounds like the gentle souls that rule North Korea have taken time out of their busy schedule crushing their people under their Stalinist boots to read Howard Dean and Al Gore speeches from last Fall.

If one of the cruelest, most oppressive, most morally retrograde regimes on earth dislikes Bush so much he must be doing something right.

Word has it that Sen. Kerry, having called for Pres. Bush to denounce the Swift Boat vets' ads, is even now busily preparing a vigorous denunciation of this scurrilous attack on his political opponent.

Neighbor John

This is making the rounds on the internet. I don't know if there really is a B.T. Nicholson or if he really is John Edwards' neighbor, but the factual stuff he relates about Edwards from the middle of the piece on should be easy enough to corroborate for anyone who's interested. It would certainly be interesting to have an enterprising journalist look Nicholson up and interview him on the record.

Subject: Meet my neighbor

Written by: B. T. Nicholson, a neighbor of John Edwards

I'd like to introduce you to my neighbor. I'm from Raleigh, North Carolina, and for several years I've lived around the corner from Vice Presidential Candidate John Edwards. My neighbor John has been in the news a good deal lately, but it's hard to tell about the man himself from the coverage. Maybe I can help you get to know him better.

Even several years ago, before he was elevated to the national stage, my neighbor John didn't socialize much with other neighbors. He didn't gather with other neighbors at the Fourth of July and he didn't come out to the sledding hills to watch the kids play after a snow. My neighbor John preferred to jog through the neighborhood by himself. There's no sidewalk on Alleghany Drive, John's Street in Raleigh, and if you drove past him as he was jogging on the road and didn't slow down enough for his taste he'd flip you the bird.

Even after he became a U.S. Senator, he'd still come home to Raleigh every once in a while, would still jog through the neighborhood, and would still flip the occasional bird to passing cars. He last showed me his middle finger about four years ago.

Since then, my neighbor John is rarely in town. When he is home, though, we in the neighborhood all know it. My neighbor John invited reporters from TV, radio, and print news organizations to come to his house in January 2003 for the announcement of his Presidential bid. He didn't want any news vans parked on his property -- in fact, he made sure all the cameras and reporters waited in the street at the bottom of his driveway. That way everyone could get good footage of him strolling down the driveway to make his announcement, young children in tow. The news vans drove into the yards of John's neighbors and parked there. I heard two families ended up re-sodding their damaged yards, and John never apologized to anyone, much less offered any compensation. The family across the street from my neighbor John has since put up posts at their property line to try to keep that sort of thing from happening again.

The appearance was good for my neighbor John. Nobody else seems to matter to him. Since then, when my neighbor comes home (as he did July 10, to be interviewed with John Kerry for "60 Minutes"), Raleigh police officers block off the street. Those of us who live near him end up coming and going to and from our homes on a circuitous route, on a bad, unsurfaced road. Forsyth Street has been closed to through traffic, except when my neighbor is in town, because the road has been ripped up for installation of new gas and sewer lines. My neighbor's street is a public, city-maintained street, and it is the best way to get to homes just north of his. If my neighbor is around, though, apparently none of the rest of us can use the street at all.

It's good for my neighbor John. Nobody else seems to matter to him.

My neighbor John has been a very successful trial lawyer, but his practice of law sometimes seems more like extortion. A friend of mine is a doctor in Raleigh. He recently spoke with another doctor, an anesthesiologist, who was named in a suit filed by my neighbor John. Apparently a surgeon at a local hospital had made a mistake, and my neighbor John represented the injured patient. Not only did my neighbor John sue the doctor who made the mistake, but also sued the hospital and a string of others, including the anesthesiologist. There was no problem with the anesthesia -- the anesthesiologist had done absolutely nothing wrong. His attorney said so in a meeting with my neighbor John. John's neighborly response was that he couldn't care less if the doctor had done nothing wrong. That wasn't the point. The point was that clients come to my neighbor John because of his record of success and his reputation for thoroughness. Every defendant in a suit he files pays, regardless of whether they are actually guilty or not. My neighbor John demanded a settlement of $250,000, and said his firm was willing to spend $2 million to get it. The doctor's insurance company promptly paid the $250,000.

The rate of growth in North Carolina's medical malpractice insurance rates is among the highest in the nation. The total cost of health care rises with those rates. My neighbor John's slimy extortion is part of the reason.

Forget about right or wrong, guilt or innocence. My neighbor John did what was best for himself. Nobody else seemed to matter.

My neighbor John may be a trial lawyer, but in front of juries he also claims to be something of a psychic. You see, my neighbor John specializes in cases involving the death or serious injury of children. He claims to receive messages from dead or brain-damaged children, and the messages are much clearer and more specific than those received by the famous"psychic" who nearly shares my neighbor's name.

When a child has been killed or is otherwise unable to speak for him or herself, my neighbor John says he has the ability to "channel" that child. He tells juries he feels the child inside him, and that he has messages from that child, which he relays to jury members. He tells juries about the car-accident death of his own son, Wade, and speculates that he may have received the ability to "feel" the souls of dead or injured children because of the close relationship he still feels with his son.

It sounds hokey and more than a little creepy, but it seems to play well with juries, and results in very high jury awards. These awards have made my neighbor extremely wealthy. He's so wealthy that he created a corporation of which he is the only member, and pays himself most of his earnings as corporate dividends, not as salary or wages. Medicare taxes are not levied on dividend income, so my neighbor has avoided paying $600,000 into the Medicare system since 1995 by setting up this tax shelter. But he says others aren't paying their fair share of Medicare taxes.

It's good for my neighbor John, and nobody else seems to matter.

My neighbor made a lot of promises on his way to the Senate. He promised strong support for our military, but then voted against body armor, combat pay, and better health care for our troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. He promised to support traditional North Carolina values, but then voted to the left of Ted Kennedy on partial-birth abortion, taxes, property rights, and a host of other issues. We in North Carolina feel betrayed. My neighbor John figuratively gave his constituents the middle finger while he ingratiated himself to Tom Daschle and the rest of the Democratic Party leadership.

My neighbor announced many months ago that he would not seek reelection, because he knows he's unpopular in North Carolina and would lose by a huge margin. According to a poll released this week, when the Kerry/Edwards ticket was announced, support for Kerry in North Carolina went down, not up.

We North Carolinians know John Edwards. We've been betrayed by him, and we do not support him.

But as he broke his promises to us, he gained favor with the Democratic Party leadership. Now he's a political star. I guess turning his back on the people he claims to represent has worked out well for my neighbor, John Edwards. Nobody else seems to matter.

B.T. Nicholson

Is This the Best They Can Do?

Captain Ed at Captain's Quarters has an excellent analysis of recent developments in the Swift Boat vets controversy. All three posts for August 22nd are worth checking out. You don't want to miss them.

On the matter of the SBVT controversy it's worth mentioning that so far the defense of John Kerry against the swiftees' charges has been at best, feeble. It amounts to the following nine arguments:

1) Kerry's accusers weren't on the boat with him. This argument has been largely abandoned as Kerry supporters have realized its irrelevance. The swift boat crews all served in close proximity to one another. Moreover, one of the swiftees, Mr. O'Dell, did serve on Kerry's boat.

2) The SBVT don't have any documents to support their claims. What sort of documents, one wonders, might they be expected to have. The only documents that exist which might support their claims Kerry refuses to allow to be released. Why?

3) The Naval documents that are in the public domain support Kerry's version of events. It is, however, the accuracy of these documents that is being called into question. It is foolish to reply to the charge that the documents contain errors of historical fact by saying that the documents support Kerry's account. The documents are alleged to be Kerry's account. Moreover, the documents do not support Kerry's claims to have been in Cambodia. These claims, which are almost certainly false, cast serious doubt on Kerry's credibility on everything else he has said about Vietnam.

4) Senator McCain says the SBVT are dishonest and dishonorable. No evidence is ever presented to show how Sen. McCain knows this. "Dishonest and dishonorable" are meaningless words in the absence of supporting evidence. They're nothing more than Sen. McCain's way of saying "I don't like this". The assertion alone is supposed to be self-validating because it's spoken by John McCain.

5) The SBVT are lying. This is all just a Republican smear campaign. Again, there is no evidence that the Republican party is behind the SBVT. Moreover, it can only be a smear campaign if the charges are false, but their falsity has not been demonstrated.

6) The vets are only doing this because they dislike Kerry. This is another attempt to evade the real question which is whether the charges are true. If they are, it doesn't matter why the SBVT are doing what they're doing. If the charges aren't true then their motive is merely a footnote.

7) Vietnam was 35 years ago. It's ridiculous to be talking about this now. Somebody should have told Sen. Kerry this when he reported for duty at the DNC. Kerry chose to make his four month stint in Vietnam his main, if not only, qualification for serving as president. He can scarcely complain if his adversaries take him up on it.

8) George Bush should denounce the SBVT now. The fact that he doesn't is reprehensible. First, Sen. Kerry stood by and let the most scurrilous things be said about Bush in the Democratic primaries. He didn't denounce Al Gore for accusing Bush of having committed treason. He didn't denounce Terry McAulliffe for claiming that Bush was AWOL from the National Guard. He didn't denounce Howard Dean for averring that Bush lied about Iraq, nor did he denounce Michael Moore for the odious allegations of 9/11. Now Kerry wants Bush to denounce the SBVT because they're saying mean things about him. It's a little late in the day for denunciations. Second, and more importantly, Bush should only denounce the SBVT charges if he knows them to be false. There is no reason to denounce them otherwise, and it would, in fact, be irresponsible of him to do so.

9) George Bush didn't serve in combat, Kerry did, so that makes Kerry a better man. This is Chris Matthews' argument, but it's absurd. First, serving in combat doesn't make you a better person than someone who didn't. If it did, then Lt. Calley would be a better man than the Pope. Second, George Bush has never made his service a reason to vote for him, Kerry has. To examine Bush's service, then, is irrelevant, but it's not irrelevant to scrutinize Kerry's since Kerry invited it.

Now a Mr. Rood who served with Kerry has come forward to offer him his support. Mr. Rood's testimony amounts to stating that the Viet Cong guerilla Kerry evidently shot to death, although no one saw any wound other than that inflicted by Kerry's machine gunner, was not dressed in a loin cloth and was not a teenager. If this is all that Kerry can drum up by way of support he's got a long way to go before he satisfactorily refutes the SBVT.

Don't skip the August 22nd posts at Captain's Quarters linked above.

Giving Public Schools a Black Eye

A story in the American Family Association Journal, if true, makes one wonder how much sense some public school teachers really have. In October of 2002 an Emmaus High School student by the name of Samuel Chen began organizing a lecture by Lehigh University biochemist Michael Behe. Behe has lectured all over the United States after having written a book titled Darwin's Black Box which lays out a compelling argument for rejecting any purely materialistic explanation for the origin and evolution of life. The article states that:

Behe agreed to come in February 2004 and give an after-school lecture entitled, "Evolution: Truth or Myth?" As the school year drew to a close in 2003, Chen had all the preliminaries nailed down: he had secured Behe's commitment, received approval from school officials, and reserved the school auditorium.

Then the offal hit the fan. The science department head, one John Hnatow, began a campaign to prevent Behe's appearance at the Allentown, PA school. He and a colleague, Carl Smartschan, asked the principal to cancel the lecture. When the principal refused, Smartschan

asked the faculty advisor for the student group to halt the lecture. Smartschan even approached Chen and demanded that the student organization pay to have an evolutionist come to lecture later in the year.

Smartschan took it upon himself to talk to every teacher in the science department, insisting that intelligent design was "unscientific" and "scary stuff."

This is an astonishing attempt to censor student enquiry by people who are de facto agents of the state. The lecture, which attracted 500 listeners and was considered a success, took place after school and was sponsored by a student organization, not the school district. Behe is a scientist, but the theory he advocates, Intelligent Design, is not incompatible with any scientific theory. It is, however, incompatible with the philosophical assumptions of Darwinian naturalism. Naturalism states that natural processes and forces are adequate to account for all living things, whereas ID asserts the causal inadequacy of such processes in producing highly complex biological structures with high information content. ID theorists claim that only intelligence can provide a sufficient explanation for the intricate, complex and highly patterned structures we find in living things.

What the students were planning to do after school was not the business of these faculty bullies who should have been delighted that these young had the intellectual curiosity and initiative to take it upon themselves to invite someone of Behe's stature to come to their school to explain his ideas to them. These teachers, whether they agree with Behe or not, should have seized on this as an opportunity to stress the importance of considering all sides of a controversial issue instead of doing whatever they could to thwart these young people. So much for academic freedom and the search for truth, at least among the thought-police in the Emmaus High School science department.

John Stuart Mill wrote that "...the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error."

Unfortunately, it is doubtful that Mr. Hnatow and Mr. Smartschan have ever read Mill. It is much likelier that these men have been teaching orthodox materialistic Darwinism throughout their careers and are loath to have their students hear Behe's presentation because they fear it will make them look silly. Rather than suffer professional embarrassment of that sort they'd rather interfere where they have no right to deny their students a wonderful learning opportunity. It's no wonder that so many parents are suspicious of public education and opt out of it when they can.

The article goes on to describe the toll that the conflict has taken on Chen's health and is worth reading in its entirety.

The Axis of Evil

AllahPundit relates this story about the trial and execution of a sixteen year old girl in Iran:

On Sunday, August 15, a 16-year-old girl in the town of Neka, northern Iran, was executed. Atefeh Sahaleh was hanged in public on Simetry Street off Rah Ahan Street at the city center.

The sentence was issued by the head of Neka's Justice Department and subsequently upheld by the mullahs' Supreme Court and carried out with the approval of Judiciary Chief Mahmoud Shahroudi.

In her summary trial, the teenage victim did not have any lawyer and efforts by her family to recruit a lawyer was to no avail. Atefeh personally defended herself. She told the religious judge, Haji Rezaii, that he should punish the main perpetrators of moral corruption not the victims.

The criminal judge personally pursued Atefeh's death sentence, beyond all normal procedures and finally gained the approval of the Supreme Court. After her execution Rezai said her punishment was not execution but he had her executed for her "sharp tongue".

Like many girls in the Muslim world Sahelah was evidently put on trial because she was the object of some man's (or men's) sexual advances. She may have been complicit or the advances may have been forced upon her. In Islamic law it's all the same. She's been soiled and is deserving of death. Allah must be pleased.

Lest one think that this is just an aberration among the merciful and compassionate followers of the Prophet, AllahPundit links us to this site where recent examples of Islamic justice are catalogued so that the infidels may get a foretaste of the glorious world that awaits the divinely-ordained global establishment of Sharia law.

And Americans, whose sixteen year old daughters are ensconced safely in their $350,000 homes, in their ignorance, ridiculed George Bush for proclaiming Iran to be part of an axis of evil. Ronald Reagan declared the Soviet Union to be an evil empire, and although this was obviously true to those who lived under its boot for seventy years, Reagan was loudly chastised by the left for his temerity in stating that truth. Nevertheless, that speech was instrumental in precipitating the collapse of totalitarian communism six years later.

George Bush has the moral clarity to speak the truth about the evil in Iran and we may hope that his words, like Reagan's, will have shaken the foundations of Iranian oppression so that even now fissures are spreading throughout that ghastly system that will one day cause its collapse, and with it the culture of death that is contemporary Islam.

The SBVT Controversy

The Democrats and their media accomplices are finally emerging from their journalistic slumbers and beginning to work themselves into a froth over the Swift Boat vets and their ads. Although no one at the NYT, WaPo, or the Nets seems to be interested in actually investigating the vets charges, of course, all manner of questions are now being raised about who's funding them, what their motives are, whether there are connections to the Bush campaign, etc. Everything about this group and their claims is being scrutinized except the only thing that really matters: The truth of the claims themselves. That little issue is being buried under an avalanche of slime from the lefties, who are more interested in trying to obscure the issues than to shed light on them.

Chris Matthews' treatment of Michelle Malkin is a good example of the embarrassing silliness of the left's response to the Swift Boat vets charges. Malkin, a guest on Matthews' Hardball show Thursday night made the obvious assertion that there are those who think that some of John Kerry's wounds in Vietnam were self-inflicted. Anyone who has been following this story would know exactly what she was referring to, but Matthews, apparently hearing this news for the first time, became almost hysterical. Everytime Malkin tried to explain to the viewers what it means to have a self-inflicted wound Matthews interrupted her, drowning her out, and ranting that it was ridiculous and despicable to say that Kerry deliberately shot himself to get out of Vietnam. In trying to discredit and obfuscate Malkin's words he managed to show himself to be a complete buffoon.

To say that a wound is self-inflicted is to say that the agent was the cause of his own injury. No one claims that Kerry deliberately injured himself, much less was anything said about shooting himself. The testimony of the swiftees is that Kerry accidentally superficially wounded himself through his own reckless action. Such wounds, not resulting from enemy fire, do not merit a purple heart. This is all that Malkin was attempting to clarify, over Matthews' boorish, fatuous, and frenzied protests. It's an obvious distinction, but nevertheless too esoteric, apparently, for some minds to comprehend.

While Matthews' has comported himself on this issue like a man on the edge of insanity, his colleague at MSDNC (oops, MSNBC), Joe Scarborough of Scarborough Country, has set the standard for journalistic objectivity and decorum. In Viewpoint's opinion he has done the best job on television of establishing the conditions for a useful debate between antagonists and allowing the viewer to decide for himself where the truth lies. He serves as a moderator, keeping the disputants on the topic and staying out of the fray himself. Kudos.

On the subject of the Swift Boat controversy here are two interesting items courtesy of Powerline which has been posting some great stuff on the issue over the last couple of weeks.

The first has to do with the charge that the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth are funded by a "wealthy Republican" as if this were somehow shocking to a party propped up by people like billionaire George Soros who has promised to spend his entire fortune if it would unseat George Bush. If the Democrats are going to of a sudden wax sanctimonious and assure us that it is offensive them that big money donors are supporting ads critical of their candidate, it should be noted that it is the Democrat party which is disproportionately reliant upon the fat cats. Power Line relays this from Little Green Footballs:

Now that John Kerry and the Democrats have started denouncing section 527 committees, it's worth pointing out that of the twenty-five largest contributors to 527's, only one -- that's right, one -- is a Republican. The top two donors are Peter Lewis ($14,030,000) and George Soros ($12,600,000). Altogether, the 24 Democrats contributed $56,693,000. The lone Republican donated $1,020,000.

And here's an exquisite piece of hypocrisy from the Dems who are complaining now that the Swift Boat vets know people who know members of the Bush family, which ties are, for the desperate minds in the Kerry camp, ipso facto proof of collusion. Power Line writes:

Reader Cecil Bordages sent us a link to this MSNBC story titled "Kerry says Bush broke the law in TV ad dispute." Cecil comments:

Here's the amazing part...about half way through the main article is this section: "Out of desperation, the Bush campaign has picked the wrong fight with the wrong veteran," said Jim Jordan, former Kerry campaign manager who now runs an outside group airing ads against Bush. "Today's the start of the mother of all backlashes."

Let me see if I got this straight...the proof of the connection between SBVT and Bush is ...the same person had donated to both SBVT and the Bush campaign...another person once worked for Bush advisor Karl Rove ...and other similar tenous connections, must certainly mean that the Bush campaign and SBVT are working together.

However, when Kerry's former campaign manager is now running an organization which airs anti-Bush adds, there's not even a whif of concern about a connection. Unbelievable.

Unbelievable indeed. Sometimes I wonder whether reporters even read the stuff they write.

There's much more about Kerry's military service that the elite media have just not yet been able to find space for, evidently. His claim to have been in Cambodia on Christmas eve of 1968, repeated several times, once from the floor of the Senate, and his claims to have on more than one occasion inserted special ops personnel into Cambodia, have been shown to be almost certainly false. This is devastating to Kerry's credibility and, coupled with his numerous reversals on important issues, paints a portrait of a man who will say or do just about anything to realize his ambition. Kerry is day by day revealing himself to be a hollow man.

For anyone interested in following developments on the matter of Kerry's claims about his military accomplishments, which he has himself declared his chief qualification for the presidency, Viewpoint recommends PowerLine and Hugh Hewitt, and the great sites to which they link.

Let's Do What Works

Here's a fine example of why so many don't trust government to use our tax dollars wisely:

With help from a $10 million federal grant, the University of Arizona will try to make math instruction culturally and linguistically sensitive to Hispanics, thereby raising math achievement. The Tucson Citizen reports.

The Citizen quotes Ron Marx, an education professor:

Among the goals of the new center are to create teaching materials and ways of teaching that bring in a cultural and linguistic context specific to Latinos, said Ron Marx, dean of the UA College of Education.

"Historically the dominant culture of the country has been western European and English. Curriculum materials reflect (those) cultural patterns, which isn't good or bad, it just means that kids from those kinds of backgrounds tend to have more advantages because the content and the way it is delivered matches the way their culture represents the world and what they learn at home," Marx said.

Educators can take advantage of the way Latinos express concepts of the world and the way they interact with parents and the community to build a better math program for them, Marx said.

"If you build on their home culture, then you are going to have more success," he said.

Joanne Jacobs, whose blog this comes from, writes:

[Some think] this is about teaching math in Spanish. I think it's more devious than that. They're going to come up with a "Hispanic way of knowing" math. None of that Anglocentric 2 + 2 = 4.

Linda Seebach, a former mathematician, describes "ethnomathematics" in this 2000 column. She quotes Ron Eglash of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute:

"What goes under the name of multicultural mathematics is too often a cheap shortcut that merely replaces Dick and Jane counting marbles with Tatuk and Esteban counting coconuts," he writes.

At least, 2 coconuts plus 2 coconuts equals 4 coconuts.

Viewpoint notes that some of the best mathematics students in our schools are immigrant or first generation Asians who can barely speak English. Asian children are consistently accomplished in math. I don't recall there ever being any push to spend $10 million on improving their skills.

The way to improve any group's academic performance in math, or anything else, is to find ways to improve their families. The quality of a child's family life is one of the best, if not the best, predictors of academic success.

If families are dysfunctional all the money in the world isn't going to help their children very much, and if families are strong special funding isn't needed. High percentages of Asian (and Hindu) children succeed in school precisely because they come from quality families.

Since we're on the subject, here are eight things parents of any ethnic group can do to increase the chances their child will succeed in school:

1) Get married and stay married.

2) Read to your children and insist that they in turn read quality books.

3) Take them to museums, historical sites, and libraries.

4) Enforce daily homework time and take the time to check it.

5) Curtail internet and other entertainments during the school week.

6) Give school officials the benefit of the doubt when an issue of discipline arises.

7) Insist on high standards of dress and language usage both at school and at home.

8)Encourage your child to learn to play a musical instrument, preferably an orchestral instrument, when young, insist he/she practices diligently, and don't let him/her give it up.

Implementing these eight simple suggestions is far more effective and far cheaper than spending $10 million on programs of dubious value. Just ask the average Asian immigrant.

Hard On Philosophers' Self - Esteem

"In the English-speaking world the great majority of books that have been published in philosophy in the twentieth century are like academic paintings: they show unmistakable talent and are professionally competent, the result of long processes of learning, application and work; everything in them is accurate, in its right place, and as it should be; but it makes not the slightest difference whether they exist or not."

Bryan Magee --Confessions of a Philosopher

There are a lot of people who agree with Magee that the great and influential works in philosophy were all written before 1900.

Here's an assignment for the philosophy majors out there. Name three technical books written in the twentieth century in the discipline of philosophy which, for better or worse, have made a difference in how we look at the world.

Fourteen Questions For Kerry

Hugh Hewitt lists a number of very good questions he would like to see asked of Senator Kerry should the senator ever deign to hold a press conference. His list of questions follows:

"Senator, last week your staff said you hadn't been in Cambodia on Christmas Eve, 1968, even though you had written and spoken emphatically about having been there on many occasions, including the floor of the Senate. How did you make such a mistake?"

"What persuaded you last week that your memory from all those years was wrong?"

"In June of last year you showed a Washington Post reporter a hat you carry in a compartment of your attache case and told her that a CIA man gave you that hat when you took him on your swift boat across the border into Cambodia. Do you have the hat with you?"

"Could you please tell us everything about that trip, your conversation with CIA man, and whether any members of your crew participated in that conversation?"

"Which day did that occur?"

"Your staff said this week that you made a trip into Cambodia carrying quote commandos close quote. Was that the same trip as this trip with the CIA man?"

"How many commandos were there? What date did this occur on?"

"Historian Douglas Brinkley has said that your journals indicated three or four cross border missions to Cambodia, where you acted as a ferry-man for SEALs, Green Berets and CIA men. Is he right about his number?"

"Can you detail these missions for us?"

"In June of 2000, you told a reporter for U.S.News & World Report that you had run weapons to anticommunist forces in Cambodia. Can you provide us the details of those missions? Which forces were you resupplying? Which weapons did you take? Where did you drop them off?"

"Did you provide reports of all these missions? Did you make entries in your log about the ship's movements? Have you discussed these covert missions with the crew since they occurred?"

"You have not authorized the release of all your military and medical records by signing an SF-180. Why not? Will you do so now?"

"Will you hold another press conference tomorrow so we can follow up on your answers?"

"What do you think about war veterans who exaggerate their accomplishments in order to advance their careers?"

It is highly unlikely that any reporter from the elite media would ask any question of Kerry which would make him uncomfortable which every one of these questions probably would. Instead they'll be complicit, as Chris Matthews is on his Hardball show, in allowing Kerry and his people to slide past all the tough questions while trying to obfuscate the issues by shouting down Kerry's critics with deliberate distortion and misrepresentation. It's as predictable as it is shameful.

The Decline of Good Reading

A friend directs Viewpoint to a troubling report about the decline of reading in America. Here's an excerpt:

A new report from the National Endowment for the Arts supplies statistics that demonstrate that the number of readers in America is declining. The report is introduced in an article from The Chronicle of Higher Education titled "Literary Reading Is Declining Faster Than Before, Arts Endowment's New Report Says." As the article explains, the report portrays a steep decline in "literary reading" (described as the reading of any type of fiction, poetry, and plays) over the past two decades; it also describes some reactions to the report's findings.

"Reading at Risk: a Survey of Literary Reading in America" reports data gathered from 17,000 adults across major demographic groups categorized by age, gender, education, income, religion, race, and ethnicity. It addresses what and how much those sampled read, other civic activities in which they participate, factors and trends in literature participation, and includes a summary and conclusions. It comprises a preface and executive summary, five chapters, and appendices.

If this is true it has the potential to be a cultural catastrophe. Immersing oneself in literature is one of the most effective ways to be introduced to the big ideas of religion, politics, philosophy, and even science. It's a great way to learn history. A society which stops reading is much less likely to develop depth in any of these areas of their intellectual life. If we truly are no longer exposing ourselves to the literary heritage handed down to us by former generations we are impoverishing our minds by a kind of intellectual depression which does to a nation culturally what an economic depression does to it financially.

Perhaps the decline in good reading is partly responsible for the superficiality of so many young people who live like intellectual water-striders, gliding across the surface of life, never breaking through to experience the depths below.

Not a few young women, for example, seem interested in little more than shopping, their social life, the celebrities they read about in People magazine, and their romantic interests, not necessarily in that order. The preoccupations of many young men, on the other hand, go no deeper than sports, cars, beer, and sex.

Literature raises us above this brutishness. It sharpens our minds and attunes them to an awareness that there is more to life than merely gratifying impulses and appetites. It enriches us in ways that money and physical satisfactions never can. A man or woman may be economically poor but spiritually and intellectually rich. Such people's lives are noble despite their poverty.

And that is what we're losing, if indeed we are losing our appreciation for literature. We're losing our nobility.

World War IV

Peter Schramm at No Left Turns discusses an interview with two English educated Muslims he saw last night on CNN. Here's what he wrote:

Last night, on CNN's Headline News, I saw a two minute clip on a meeting/demonstration in London put on by British Muslims. The whole thing was generically anti-Western, but the effect became especially powerful when two Muslims were interviewed. Both were intelligent, well-dressed and well-spoken, with educated English accents. Here is the gist of what they said (a near quote): "You Westerners don't understand that your understanding of democracy, freedom, human rights, capitalism, and all those things you hold dear are nothing more than figments of your imagination. There is no freedom, no democracy, no human rights, except in Islam. And we mean this and you will lose. Islam will rule." I was looking into the eyes of an ideologue, of a fanatic, of a tyrant. Such scenes, and such graphic and and clear voices, will be replayed over the next many years, and we should be reminded of not only who they are, and what they stand for, but also of who we are, and why they hate us. It was shocking. More such interviews should be done and shown. I looked for it on CNN's web site, and couldn't find it.

Maybe, if there are more such airings, the West will gradually come to realize that it's in what Norman Podhoretz describes as World War IV, a long struggle to the death with people who are not at all interested in peaceful coexistence. They're interested only in spreading Islam throughout the globe. They will not be content until every person in the world is either a Muslim or dead.

Meanwhile, our news programs cannot escape their fascination with the Scott Peterson murder trial. Come to think of it maybe the Muslims are right. Maybe Western culture isn't worth saving.

Kerry's Non-Response

Senator Kerry has once again delivered himself of a resounding nullity. His speech this morning to a gathering of firefighters was all outrage and no substance. Like a boxer in the ring all by himself, he comes out swinging, but accomplishes nothing.

His speech has been billed as a response to the charges of the Swift Boat vets that he didn't do what he claimed he did in Vietnam, but Kerry's response didn't settle anything. Speaking of the organization airing the ads that challenge his war record, Kerry said, "Of course, this group isn't interested in the truth and they're not telling the truth.

Okay. What reason does the senator give us for not believing the Swift Boat vets?

"But here's what you really need to know about them. They're funded by hundreds of thousands of dollars from a Republican contributor out of Texas. They're a front for the Bush campaign. And the fact that the President won't denounce what they're up to tells you everything you need to know. He wants them to do his dirty work."

In other words:

They're liars because 1) they're funded by a wealthy Republican Texan.

They're liars because 2) they're a front for the Bush campaign.

They're liars because 3) the President won't denounce them.

What does 1) have to do with anything? Does Kerry think that being wealthy or being a Republican negate their credibility? Are Texans not Americans? Why does the source of funding make the Swiftees liars? What is the source of Kerry's funding? Is it not a wealthy Hungarian named George Soros and a wealthy Madagascaran named Teresa Heinz? Does the source of Kerry's funding make him and his supporters liars?

How does Kerry know that 2) is true? Even if it were true that these vets were somehow working for the Bush re-election campaign that would still not be an argument for the falsity of what they allege.

Finally, why should the President denounce an independent group whose allegations he is not in any position to judge? If Kerry wants the President to denounce the Swift Boat ads and charges he should first demonstrate why their accusations are false, and then he should denounce George Soros, Michael Moore and Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, and all the books written by people who support Kerry which rip George Bush. Otherwise, Bush has no reason at all to denounce anything. Why should he do what Kerry himself refuses to do?

Kerry said in his speech to the firefighters, "Of course, the president keeps telling people he would never question my service to our country. Instead, he watches as a Republican-funded attack group does just that."

Perhaps, but under the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform law which Kerry supported it is illegal for a candidate or a campaign to interfere with what the "527" groups do. Bush could, if he wished, dissociate himself from the ads, but he cannot order that the ads be pulled.

How can Kerry settle this matter? He can release all of his records, for starters. It would be interesting to see exactly how he was commended for his citations. That would be a beginning, but Kerry refuses to do it. Why?

Tort Reform

I recently received a notice from my employer informing me that insurance premiums are going up. It stated that:

Several factors driving these increases include: 1) aging baby boomers; 2) direct-to-consumer prescription drug advertising; 3) expensive new technology that increases providers' costs; and 4) growing litigation against doctors and hospitals.

Which of these factors could politicians who care about their constituents most easily do something about? Certainly, they could institute tort reform to curb the litigation explosion, but every time tort reform is proposed it is defeated by the trial lawyers and their lackeys in Congress.

Why is that? Which political party is most vigorously opposed to tort reform? Paradoxically, it's the party of the working man. Which party's current candidates for the presidency are both opposed to tort reform? Same answer. Which party is running a candidate for vice-president who is a trial lawyer who made his millions suing medical practitioners on the basis of junk science? Same answer.

If the Democrats win in November we can expect that litigation against doctors, drug companies, and hospitals will continue apace, and your and my insurance premiums will continue to rise. The Democratic party receives fat contributions from trial lawyer associations, and they're not about to do anything to upset their donors.

Who benefits from a lawsuit-intoxicated society? A few plaintiffs, to be sure, but the big winners are the trial lawyers who will continue to rake in their obscene fees at the expense of the rest of us out of whose pockets they ultimately come. The people are the losers. We lose by having to pay higher prices for drugs, services and goods, and we lose because those who provide those things are forced out of business or out of the area by the fear of legal judgments that they could never pay.

There really are four elements to this fleecing of the American citizen: There are avaricious and dopey plaintiffs like the woman who spilled a McDonald's coffee in her lap; there are unprincipled lawyers who, like professional assassins and prostitutes, hire themselves out to whoever can pay their fee; there are otiose jurors who are torn away from watching Oprah and the soaps long enough to listen to the facts of the case, render justice, and then return home in time to catch Jerry Springer reruns; and finally there are liberal judges who love nothing more than an opportunity to redistribute wealth even if it means killing the geese who are laying the golden eggs.

The legal system needs to be purged of the symbiotic coupling of greed and stupidity that currently pollutes it. It needs to be changed so that those who do have a legitimate case can get redress, but also so that those who don't, can't. We mustn't count on the Democrats, however, to come to the aid of the common man on this one, not as long as their buddies in the law firms stand to lose a couple of payments on their yachts if reform ever becomes a reality.

Help is on the way. Indeed.

More Best Movie Lists

Evangelical Outpost has a list gleaned from the National Catholic Register of the top ten "pro-Catholic" movies and the top ten "anti-Catholic" films. Here's the list:

The top 10 Top 10 "Pro-Catholic Movies" (as determined by an online poll of more than a 1,000 participants) include:

1. The Passion of the Christ (2004)

2. The Sound of Music (1985)

3. A Man For All Seasons (1966)

4. The Song of Bernadette (1943)

5. It's a Wonderful Life (1946)

6. The Ten Commandments (1956)

7. The Scarlet and the Black (1983)

8. Jesus of Nazareth (1977)

9. Schindler's List (1993)

10. The Bells of St Mary's (1945)

The ten most "anti-Catholic" movies, as chosen by a panel of judges, include:

1. The Order (2003)

2. The Magdalene Sisters (2002)

3. Sister Mary Explains it All (2001)

4. Chocolat (2000)

5. Stigmata (1999)

6. Dogma (1999)

7. Elizabeth (1998)

8. The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)

9. Priest (1994)

10. Agnes of God (1985)

It's been a long time since we've seen Sound of Music and Wonderful Life so maybe we're forgetting something, but Viewpoint wonders why they're on the list of top ten "pro-Catholic" films, but The Mission and Romero aren't.

Reply to a Friend

Yesterday Viewpoint posted an e-mail sent in reaction to a post of August 15th which compared two quotes, one from Ronald Reagan and one from John Kerry and added an editorial comment. My friend's reaction to this post falls victim to several fallacies. He writes, for instance that:

I suppose you presume that [your readers are] upper middle class...[and don't] believe in allowing the government to do justice, help the poor, build roads, pay teachers, enforce EPA guidelines, prosecute criminals, fund research on public health, wage wars, and all the other good stuff government sometimes does (and sometimes does well). Are there really people out there that don't appreciate the proper use of legitimate taxes?

Of course government does some things which are necessary and good. No one denies that. But to assume that we should just trust government always to do what is necessary and good, to always use our money wisely, is just wrong-headed. It doesn't follow that because government does some things with our tax dollars that we value, therefore everything, or even most things, it does with our money is good and valuable. The founding fathers of this nation had a healthy skepticism about placing power in the hands of fallible, sinful human beings and we do well to follow their example.

The answer to the question he asks at the end of the quoted section, of course, is that there probably are very few people who don't appreciate the proper use of taxes, but the question is beside the point. The relevant question is: What is the proper use of taxes and how do we restrict politicians to using the power to tax properly? Much of what government spends our money on is wasteful and counterproductive. From 1968 to 1996 the federal government spent 6 trillion dollars on the war against poverty and only made the problem worse (To understand the reasons why this is so read The Tragedy of American Compassion by Marvin Olasky which you can order here).

This is unconscionable, but my friend seems to suggest that because one opposes such inept, immoral exercises in futility which, though no doubt helping some, have devastated the families and lives of millions and wasted trillions of dollars, that one must be some sort of selfish, niggardly penny-pincher who lacks empathy for the poor. He writes:

Why this regular gripping about taxes and government? Are you really opposed to food stamps, a verifiably helpful and cost-effective government aid program? Do you think that the government ought not to be involved in any disaster relief? Can you imagine how those below the poverty line hoping for a small assistance grant for job training or allowance for heat take your attack?

I'd say, pick on somebody your own size, and let the children who are forced to live below poverty line alone. Let the handicapped elderly alone; stopping complaining about our modest help to the emaciated in the third world. Because, finally, that is who this... critique is aimed at.

In other words, because some government programs may be useful and good we should just shut up and fund whatever the government decides to do next, trusting Big Brother to always know what's best. We should all be "good Germans", do as we're told, and like it. No one is suggesting that we not help those who are in difficult straits. The question is how best to do it, and simply raising everyone's taxes and throwing the money at the problem has not shown itself to be a particularly effective approach to the problem.

The second, related, error my friend makes is in assuming that because people resent paying excessive taxes to a wasteful bureaucracy that therefore they resent paying any tax at all. No one but anarchists on the left and a few on the libertarian fringe thinks that we can simply end all taxation. No one resents paying his fair share, but what citizens consider their fair share and what a burgeoning government thinks is their fair share can be two different things.

Few people mind having their money go to programs that actually help those who need it, but they want this to be done as efficiently and fairly as possible. In the days before welfare reform something like 27 cents out of every welfare tax dollar actually went to the people who needed it, and even when it did it often was not used in ways that would bring relief to children.

The power to tax, however, is just one of government's prerogatives upon which citizens need to keep a wary eye. Another way government can have a corrosive, deleterious effect upon the lives of its citizens is through its attempts to "help" improve society by issuing mandates and regulations that small municipalities and businesses have to meet, but which make the goods and services they provide increasingly burdensome.

Consider just three examples from the dozens cited in Philip Howard's The Death of Common Sense (It can be ordered here) and the thousands that doubtless could be found.

In 1988 Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity agreed with the city of New York to purchase two fire-gutted buildings in order to turn them into temporary shelters for sixty four homeless men. The shelter would've had a kitchen a lounge, a dorm area, etc. The only problem was that the Missionaries of Charity, in addition to their vows of poverty, refuse to use modern conveniences. There would be no dishwashers, laundry facilities, etc. All of this would be done by hand. For two years the city bureaucracy held up the transfer of the property while they held hearings filled out forms and so on. Finally, after two years they were given permission to start their renovation only to be told every new or renovated building in the city requires an elevator. The Sisters said that they would never use it, it would cost $100,000, but the law was clear, they couldn't use the building unless they installed the elevator. The Sisters politely declined and withdrew their plans. Who was "helped" by this stupidity?

Upper New York State has a tradition of bed and breakfast tourist lodgings managed by families in old farmhouses. Fire codes were imposed, however, which required enclosed "fire stairs" and other renovations that were prohibitively expensive to comply with, causing many of these charming businesses to close. The tourists went to one-story motels and the families who ran the bed and breakfasts went out of business.

A restaurant in the northeast lacked handicapped access, but employees were assigned to help disabled patrons into the building whenever needed. Nevertheless, even though no one was inconvenienced or denied service at the eatery, OSHA demanded that they make their building wheel-chair accessible which the owners simply could not afford to do. Thus they were forced to close, putting all their employees out of work and denying their patrons, abled and disabled, a place to dine.

Extrapolate these horror stories about government "helpfulness" across the nation and over the thirty four years since 1970 and you get some idea of why Ronald Reagan said that the most feared words in America are "We're from the government and we're here to help you," and why John Kerry's assurance that government help is "on the way" should make us a little suspicious, if not uneasy.

It's a neat polemical trick to suggest that one is insufficiently concerned with the elderly, poor, and unfortunate because he is skeptical of government's ability to engineer and manage programs to help these people. It's easy to point to some of the good things expansive government has accomplished and conclude that therefore government always does good. The fact is, however, that government can more easily do harm than do good, but unless citizens are skeptical of its motives and abilities the harm it does will never be diminished.

Are All Killings Morally Equal?

A former student asks how those who are both pro-life on abortion and who also advocate capital punishment can reconcile these two views. It would seem, she suggests, that to revere life would lead one to oppose all killing of human beings and that it is inconsistent to oppose abortion but not state-sponsored execution.

I think the answer is that those who are pro-life, or more precisely, those who are strongly pro-life, believe that no one has the moral right to deliberately kill an innocent person. If an unborn child is, in fact, an innocent person, which they believe it is (although its personhood is debated by philosophers), then it is morally wrong to deliberately kill it.

Nevertheless, although life is precious, its preservation is not an absolute. Killing in self-defense or in defense of others is morally permissible because the individual who constitutes a threat against you or another is not himself innocent. Killing in war, assuming the conflict meets the criteria of a just war, is morally permissible under certain prescribed circumstances because the war is a form of self-defense or defense of others. Likewise, a convicted murderer is not an innocent person and is thus not protected by the moral presumption against killing innocents.

To oppose capital punishment on the grounds that it is inconsistent with placing a high value on life is, I think, a confusion. The more serious the crime the more serious the punishment must be. A society that truly values life would surely make murder one of the most serious offenses an individual could commit and therefore the crime would merit the most serious punishment.

To decline to execute a convicted murderer on the grounds that his life is too precious to forfeit is to implicitly deny that any crime is so wicked that it merits ultimate punishment. It is to implicitly affirm that the loss of the victim's life was not so serious an offense that it is worth taking that of his killer. In other words, we're claiming that we believe life is too precious to sacrifice, but our behavior is actually demonstrating the opposite. Our unwillingness to execute a convicted murderer is a tacit acknowledgement that we don't value the life of the victim enough to make ending it a crime punishable by the most severe penalty.

We would be outraged if courts began to punish rapists by merely fining them, as is done in some Muslim countries. We would insist that this is manifestly unjust. A fine is not commensurate with the crime of violence against the victim. The law, we would argue, is devaluing women by, in effect, establishing that they aren't worth incarcerating their attackers over. It would be ludicrous to say, on one hand, that we believe women are valuable as human beings and then, on the other, treat rape as a misdemeanor. Rape is a serious offense and anything less than a serious penalty for it sends the message that women aren't valued by the society in which they live.

It really is much the same with murder. The refusal to execute a murderer actually devalues the life of his victim. Just as the promiscuous use of the death penalty would cheapen human life, so, too, would its abolition.

There may be other reasons for not executing certain types of criminals, but the argument from a consistent reverence for life seems to me to be one which, paradoxical as it may sound at first, actually cuts in favor of capital punishment.

From the Mail

The following is from a friend in response to this post of August 15, the offending part of which is here:

The scariest words in the English language are "I'm from the government, and I'm here to help." -- Ronald Reagan

"Help is on the way." -- John Kerry

When politicians talk about "helping" it's time to hide your wallets.

My friend writes:

I've been away a bit and haven't kept up with your daily postings. Good stuff! But I feel I must comment on your post of 8-15 suggesting that it is bad for the government to help. Of course your quote from former President Reagan speaks volumes, capturing as it does the whole neo-con view, which you obviously promote here, and it's claim that it is somehow bad for the government to help people. Or, that "helping" equals taking from your wallet (stealing, is it?) Well. I suppose you presume that the "you" is an upper middle class reader, who doesn't believe in allowing the government to do justice, help the poor, build roads, pay teachers, enforce EPA guidelines, prosecute criminals, fund research on public health, wage wars, and all the other good stuff government sometimes does (and sometimes does well). Are there really people out there that don't appreciate the proper use of legitimate taxes?

If one, however, believes that it is a good thing, in principle, that the government administers funds for the public good (a proposition I have previous maintained in this column to be a Biblical one) then this assumption of Reagan and Cleary that the government is stealing from your wallet, and you'd better look out, is cyncial and just dead wrong. I think you should renounce this odd claim. (And, while your at it, renounce the cheesy partisan dig, as if to imply that the Bush administration doesn't want to help anybody. Was it wrong for him to fly to Florida yesterday to offer help to the storm victims there? Doesn't he claim to want to help the people of Iraq?)

And, further, if the reader is actually one who has been seriously helped--beyond the common assistance of good school books, nice roads, safe traffic lights, well-trained police, pure water (more or less) and due process when necessary--of the reader really is economically poor, and has received food stamps, then the claim is worse than theoretically inadequate, it is offensive.

You are a man that desires to love neighbor and you want our public order to be normed by justice. Why this regular gripping about taxes and government? Are you really opposed to food stamps, a verifiably helpful and cost-effective government aid program? Do you think that the government ought not to be involved in any disaster relief? Can you imagine how those below the poverty line hoping for a small assistance grant for job training or allowance for heat take your attack?

I'd say, pick on somebody your own size, and let the children who are forced to live below poverty line alone. Let the handicapped elderly alone; stopping complaining about our modest help to the emaciated in the third world. Because, finally, that is who this "priceless" critique is aimed at. I sincerely ask you to reconsider.

I'll post an apologia tonight.

Loathing Bush

Victor David Hanson has an excellent piece at NRO titled On Loathing Bush. Hanson argues that there are rational reasons why millions of people won't vote for Bush in November, but the impetus which will drive many to push the lever for Kerry has nothing to do with reasons or rationality but pure irrational hatred. The phenomenom that Hanson then addresses is the genesis of that hatred. It derives, he writes, not so much from what Bush does but because of who he is.

He argues that there are four characteristics of the President that make him loathsome in the eyes of the left: He's perceived as a southern conservative; he's a Christian; he sees the world in black and white, good and evil; and he has spurned his aristocratic, northeastern heritage and disdains the elite culture indigenous to that part of the country. Some of these may seem implausible bases for hatred, perhaps, until one reads Hanson's reasoning behind them.

The most salient of the above sources of the left's pathological animus toward George Bush, in Viewpoint's opinion, is his Christianity. Hanson says this about Bush's religion:

Bush's Christianity seems evangelical and literal. It comes across as disturbing to liberals of the country who see religion as a mere social formality at best, useful for weddings and funerals, perhaps comforting at Christmas and Easter of course, but otherwise a potential threat to the full expression of lifestyle "choices."

American politicos like their candidates to be Episcopalian, Unitarian, or Congregationalist, perhaps even mainstream but quiet Methodists or Presbyterians. Baptists of the southern flavor, or anything not found in a New England township, reflect a real belief in the literalness of the Bible - primordial ideas that religion is not a social necessity but a fire-and-brimstone path to eternal salvation.

It could be argued that the last two reasons that Hanson gives for the unprecedented invective that has been directed at this man can really be conflated into the second, his religious faith. Bush's Christianity is the basis for his rejection of a jaded, effete culture. It's the reason why he tends to see things in terms of good and evil, two categories that have faded into desuetude in the increasing secularization of the last twenty five years. Bush's Christianity is also the well from which he derives his opposition to abortion and gay marriage. Indeed, there is no non-arbitrary reason to oppose either of these unless one's aversion flows from transcendent moral springs.

The left has always hated Christianity and Christians, but the American people have always been at least respectful or reverential toward the faith, if only out of a guilty conscience resulting from their own personal luke-warmness toward it. As long as the overwhelming majority of people were sympathetic to the church and the Christian religion its enemies have bided their time and masked their hostility. Popular sympathy, however, is passing away with the WW II generation, and the left is now emboldened to bare its teeth against its enemy. George Bush, being the most prominent representative of that which they detest, has therefore become the focal point of their loathing.

Winning Hearts and Minds for Islam

A must read on the Sudan crisis by Donna Hughes at NRO. Hughes gives an overview of the history and looks at an aspect of the genocide not much discussed by other sources - the Islamist terror against women and girls.

The widespread and systematic rape and sexual enslavement of women and girls in Darfur has been documented by Amnesty International in a report called "Rape as a Weapon of War: Sexual Violence and Its Consequences." As part of the campaign of ethnic cleansing, rapes are carried out in public, in front of family and community members. Those who resist or intervene are beaten and killed. Victims' arms and legs are broken to prevent escape. The intent is to impose terror on a village, and destroy the victims' and communities' integrity and identity. One rape victim was told by her attacker: "You, the black women, we will exterminate you, you have no God."

Additionally horrifying is the participation of Arab women in the atrocities. According to Amnesty International, Hakama - female traditional singers who praise male fighters - accompany the raiders and rapists. By singing and ululating, they provide encouragement and a song track to rape and pillage.

In western Sudan, many of the women and girls previously have been subjected to female genital cutting, including clitoridectomy and infibulation. These crude, mutilating practices of cutting away of genitalia leaves scars and inelastic tissues. Rape for these women is excruciatingly painful and can cause severe physical injuries.

There is also cultural meaning to these acts of violence: females' genitalia are considered "unclean," and by cutting them away, the girls are supposed to be made "clean" and their virginity and chastity preserved. The victims' own belief in these cultural norms causes them additional psychological trauma when they are raped.

Rape is a violation that destroys the whole of the person in the eyes of society. Sadly, the families of the victims often complete the devastation of these victims' lives by rejecting them. Fearing this, women who have been raped may avoid seeking help in refugee camps because they fear family or community members will discover their rapes.

We...need to take a sobering look at the atrocities in Sudan, past and present, and understand that this is Islamic fundamentalism in practice. It is a threat to all women, everywhere.

Just as world-wide totalitarian communism and fascism were threats to all people everywhere in the twentieth century so too is totalitarian Islamofascism an even greater threat in the twenty first. When will the fifty percent of the electorate that thinks the greatest enemy to peace in the world is George Bush wake from their inexplicable slumber and realize this?

Historic Undertaking in Iraq

Arthur Chrenkoff has part 8 of Good News From Iraq. He introduces this installment by saying:

The challenges still ahead in Iraq are considerable, but the media in its manic rush from one disaster to the next and from one "quagmire" to another rarely provides the context that would help us understand the situation. Having followed the mainstream media coverage, one can be forgiven for thinking that our task in Iraq is merely to return the country to its pre-war status quo. More often than not lost in reporting is the realization that Iraq has to recover not just from the violence and destruction of the last year and a half, but of the past 30 years. Iraq of March 2003 was not a normal, well-functioning state thrown into chaos and mayhem only by the arrival of the Coalition forces. In reality, the pre-invasion Iraq was a wreck of a country whose great potential of the 1950s and 1960s has been all but completely squandered for the sake of the aggrandizement of one man and the hegemony of his party. It's important to bear that in mind before rushing to criticize the Coalition authorities for failing to rebuild in a year what took three decades to destroy.

There's lots of good information here. For example:

In oil news, the Iraqi Oil Ministry announced that it plans to dig 2000 new oil wells and extend the existing oil pipelines by 3000 kilometers in 2005. In the meantime, the Iraqi authorities are planning to construct four new oil refineries in central and southern Iraq.

The media is missing this story completely. This is perhaps the greatest humanitarian undertaking in history, certainly since the Marshall Plan after WW II. One would think that the media would be cheering this effort on, but instead they act as if the only thing they want you to know about are the casualty statistics, and the only thing they want you to see are photos of rag-tag criminals and thugs strutting about with RPGs.

The news blackout will probably persist as long as the Democrats can't claim any credit for this historic accomplishment.

Undereducated Teachers

Here's a blurb which inadvertently, apparently, acknowledges a sad fact about the background knowledge of American teachers:

History teachers need an independent hotline to evaluate books and instructional materials on Islamic history, writes Sandra Stotsky on History News Network.

After September 11, it is clearly urgent to teach K-12 students about Islamic history and culture. It is also crucial for their teachers to have suitable instructional materials that do not inadvertently promote some person's or group's religious or political agenda.

Workshops for teachers confuse faith with history, she writes. One source given to teachers, The Arab World Studies Notebook, "claims not only that Muslims from Europe were the first to sail across the Atlantic and land in the New World, but also that they reached Canada where they intermarried with the Iroquois and Algonquin nations." It's not true, but few teachers know enough about Islamic history to evaluate the credibility of what they're given.

Viewpoint asks why it is that teachers, especially history teachers, would have to know anything at all about Islamic history to know that Muslims were not the first to arrive in the New World or to ask for some corroborating evidence when told that Muslims intermarried with Indians.

It would seem that the only thing teachers would have to know in order to avoid falling for this fantasy would be simple, rudimentary American history. The fact that educators are susceptible to Muslim propaganda about something they should have learned themselves in elementary school is troubling.

Help!

The Evangelical Outpost relays this clever observation from Infinite Monkeys:

David from Infinite Monkeys posted this priceless contrast of quotations:

The scariest words in the English language are "I'm from the government, and I'm here to help." -- Ronald Reagan

"Help is on the way." -- John Kerry

When politicians talk about "helping" it's time to hide your wallets.

Need More To Worry About?

A report in The Guardian of England indicates that "the numbers of sufferers of brain diseases, including Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and motor neurone disease, have soared across the West in less than 20 years, scientists have discovered. In the late 1970s, there were around 3,000 deaths a year from these conditions in England and Wales. By the late 1990s, there were 10,000."

This is an incredible increase in just one generation. The Guardian goes on to say that:

The team stresses that its figures take account of the fact that people are living longer and it has also made allowances for the fact that diagnoses of such ailments have improved. It is comparing death rates, not numbers of cases, it says.

The causes were most likely to be chemicals, from car pollution to pesticides on crops and industrial chemicals used in almost every aspect of modern life, from processed food to packaging, from electrical goods to sofa covers, Pritchard said.

Food is also a major concern because it provides the most obvious explanation for the exclusion of Japan from many of these trends. Only when Japanese people move to the other countries do their disease rates increase.

You can read the whole article here. Thanks to The Drudge Report for the tip.

What's Ahead In Najaf

As he has throughout the Iraqi war, Wretchard at Belmont Club offers up interesting analysis of how coalition forces will likely proceed now that the cease-fire in Najaf has broken down. An excerpt:

It is what must not happen next that matters. The tactical problem facing coalition commanders is how to kill or capture Sadr's forces with Iraqi personnel while avoiding unnecessary deaths and damage to the Shrine. That rules out the textbook solution of leveling it with fires. Because of the subdivided interior of buildings and the fact that Sadr may have wired the Shrine with demolitions a direct assault will probably be excluded for the present. The problem with an assault is that once friendly forces are in contact, one is bound to support them and that imperative will compel the scene commander to order the fires he sought to avoid in the first place. Besieging forces have traditionally used time to weaken resistance without applying direct force. In this case time can also work against the investing forces because Sadr will attempt to run countersiege operations by organizing marches and cavalcades by his supporters to Najaf. Given enough time, he probably reckons that the international media and possibly the United Nations will ride to his rescue. (Heritage site, blah-blah).

Without knowing what the operational commanders will do next, one can still surmise that they will attempt to compress the effects of time by applying unrelenting pressure on the garrison using disturbances, sniping and probes. They would be justified in using nonlethal agents such as CS (tear gas) to stir the pot. Things may still go wrong. Janet Reno's assault on Waco resulted in starting an accidental conflagration that turned the Koresh compound into a charnel house. What is important is to avoid building up the pressure to a climax, to avoid precipitating a self-inflicted Gotterdammerung by Sadr. I suppose one could set up loudspeakers and blast out Koranic verses at levels the EPA would rule illegal, etc. The whole idea is to make a day into an eternity until the days all run together in a jumble.

One hopes that the coalition forces will not vacillate as we seem to have done in Fallujah which has become a festering sore. Once Sadr falls or is taken, the insurgency will have lost a key to whatever legitimacy it still might have with the Iraqi people (although see here and here for Iraqi opinion on al Sadr), and it's disintegration will be accelerated.