Just Wondering

This is going to sound to some as though I've taken leave of my senses, perhaps, but I feel it needs to be said. In fact, I'm a little surprised that I haven't heard anyone else say it.

How many men, listening to the facts surrounding the tragic case of Terri Schiavo, have not wondered what they would do if they were the father of a girl whose husband was doing to her what Michael Schiavo is doing to Terri? Suppose a man is convinced that it was an act of physical violence at the hands of her husband that put his daughter into this terrible condition. Suppose the father is convinced that in the years following, the husband has treated his daughter callously and cruelly, exploiting her condition for financial gain and then abandoning her to start another family. Suppose the husband refuses to relinquish custodial authority over the daughter so that he can retain the right to insist that she be killed. Suppose the father loves his daughter deeply and both father and mother are distraught at what has been, and is being, done to her. Suppose, finally, that the courts side with the husband and refuse to save the life of this man's precious "little girl" opting instead to let the husband kill her through a long slow process of starvation and dehydration. I don't know that all of these suppositions actually obtain in the Schiavo case, but suppose they did.

I don't wish to sound overly Clint Eastwoodian, but how many men have had the thought cross their mind in recent days that if their daughter were in such straits the contemptible husband would have long ago been given an ultimatum: If she dies, he dies.

The threat alone might effect a better circumstance for the suffering woman, but, on the other hand, perhaps the husband would be unmoved. In that event, I wonder how many fathers could stand by and watch another man who has no love whatsoever for their daughter, who only wishes her to be gone, coldly starve her to death. How many men would stand by helplessly watching their little girl's life ebb away knowing she could be saved if her killer's life were taken? What are the moral implications of such an act? If it would be wrong, precisely why would it be wrong?

Surely it is not an option open to a Christian, but then why isn't it? A Christian might enjoin us to ask what would Jesus do, but that's a poor guide in the present situation. Jesus would probably heal the woman. The father can't. A Christian might say that violence is not a legitimate option, but that's only true if one is a pacifist. What is the salient difference, given all our suppositions, between what is happening to the daughter in this instance and the case of a man using deadly force to protect his family?

Perhaps it could be argued that eliminating the odious son-in-law, so far from being an act of unjustifiable violence, would be, in fact, an expression of deep self-sacrificial love. At the cost of spending the rest of one's life in jail, or maybe even incurring the death penalty, one could insure by one's action that custody of the impaired woman would revert to the family who could then give her proper care and possible rehabilitation.

There's an outside chance that a jury wouldn't even convict a father who so acted to save his daughter's life, if it were the only recourse left to him. Jury nullification saved O.J., it might well work in favor of a man willing to sacrifice his freedom and risk execution in order to see his daughter's life saved. Indeed, we should ask ourselves whether, if we were on the jury, we honestly think we could vote to convict in such a case.

Just wondering if this solution ever occured to anyone else.

Women's Champion

Which is a better measure of a president's commitment to the rights and status of women, guaranteeing them the unfettered right to kill their unborn children or liberating 25 million women from tyranny in Afghanistan and Iraq and appointing women to positions of power and influence in government?

As long as liberal democrats think the answer is the former they'll continue to see their support among women erode until all that's left in their camp are a few embittered members of NOW and a motley collection of radical professors.

Atheism and Christian Salvation

Christianity Today has a piece by Alistair McGrath which he excerpts from his book The Twilight of Atheism. McGrath argues that atheism reached its zenith sometime before WWII and has been in decline ever since. The reason for its appeal is disapproval of the moral temper of Christianity, but Christians have done a much better job of representing Christ to the world in the last sixty years than atheists have in presenting a plausible alternative. McGrath says:

The failure of atheism to capture the public imagination in the West reflects its failure to articulate a compelling, imaginative vision of a godless future that is capable of exciting people and making them want to gather together to celebrate and proclaim it.

Listen to John Updike: "Among the repulsions of atheism for me has been its drastic uninterestingness as an intellectual position." I have to confess that I now share his catatonic sense of utter tedium when I reread some of the atheist works I once found fascinating as a teenager. They now seem simplistic, failing to engage with the complexities of human experience, and seriously out of tune with our postmodern culture.

The battle, however, is far from won:

The moral passion of atheism, especially when set alongside the laziness and complacency of European state churches in the 18th century, cannot be dismissed.

In the end, debates about whether God's existence can be proved remain marginal. The central issue is moral and imaginative. The most fundamental criticisms directed against Christianity have to do with the moral character of its God. They often focus on the issue of eternal punishment.

"Eternal punishment must be eternal cruelty," said secular humanist orator Robert G. Ingersoll (1833-1899), "and I do not see how any man, unless he has the brain of an idiot, or the heart of a wild beast, can believe in eternal punishment."

We cannot assert eternal damnation and expect Western culture to nod approvingly. This culture is not predisposed to reject Christian doctrines as a matter of principle; rather, it is surprised by what seems a massive retreat from society's fundamental notions of decency and evenhandedness. Atheism arises mainly through a profound sense that religious ideas and values are at least inferior to, and possibly irreconcilable with, the best moral standards and ideals of human culture.

In other words, Western culture finds implausible and repugnant the conviction, widely held among evangelicals, that no matter how much in love with God a person might be, if he or she has not accepted Christ as Lord, God rejects them, and they are eternally damned. McGrath, in fact, believes this doctrine to be the major reason why people who become atheists abandon theism.

I'm not sure he's right about this. I think that most people who reject theism simply don't want there to be a God even remotely like the God of the Bible and wouldn't embrace Him regardless of what the Church taught about salvation.

Even so, McGrath is doubtless correct that there are many who find Christian exclusivism morally incomprehensible if not repellant and reject the Gospel because of it. It is on behalf of these that the Church, in our view, should revisit its thinking on this very important issue. If the doctrine is clearly and unambiguously taught by scripture then so be it, but if scripture admits of other ways of thinking about what it means to be saved and what it means to be lost, then it would be a worthwhile project to reconsider some of the arguments, some of the exegesis, and some of the theology involved in deciding exactly what God's plan of redemption involves.

Scripture may be inerrant, but our understanding of it surely is not.

Here We Go Again

ABC has run a story that claimed that Republicans were using the Schiavo tragedy to further their political agenda, and they adduced as evidence an alleged "talking points memo" that they claimed had been circulating among Republicans in congress. The memo was said to have contained claims as to how the issue would benefit Republicans and hurt Democrats.

Well, a lot of questions have been raised about the origin of this document and PowerLine has been right on top of it. It looks suspicious. Check them out to get brought up to speed on what may turn out to be yet another black eye for media trustworthiness.

Rendition

There's a not so quiet groundswell building in the blogosphere, just beneath the MSM radar, concerning the practice of rendition or returning suspected terrorists and sympathizers to their country of origin for interrogation. There are certain advantages to this practice, but there are numerous legitimate concerns as well. There have also been tragic mistakes and abuses.

For insight into why rendition is done see Michael Ignatius' column in the WaPo. There is much to dislike about Ignatius' piece, but he does explain the rationale for rendition fairly.

For a tragic illustration of the potential for abuse of rendition and why many are calling for restricting it or eliminating it see here.

We imagine that we'll be hearing a lot more about this issue in the weeks and months ahead.

Flying By the Seat of Their Pants

There's a revealing special airing on HBO on March 31st that will be of "must see" interest to any Air America fans out there. Drudge has the inside scoop on the documentary.

American Justice

A story in The Guardian points out that Jeff Weise, the 16 year-old who went on a killing spree in his Red Lake, Minnesota high school was, according to those who knew him from his posts on a Nazi web site, fairly mature given his age.

"We knew [Weise] briefly through 34 posts he made on the forum. He expressed himself well and was clearly highly intelligent and contemplative, especially for one so young," the site's administrator said in statement posted today on Nazi.org.

Perhaps he is as mature as many twenty year olds. But even though he killed wantonly and cruelly his crime did not rise to the level of a capital offense.

One of his victims was 14 and four were aged 15. At least three were girls. A student, Sondra Hegstrom, heard shooting from an adjoining classroom, she told the local newspaper, The Pioneer.

"You could hear a girl saying, 'No, Jeff. Quit! Quit! Leave me alone. Why are you doing this?' Boom, boom, boom, and then no more screaming," she said.

Horrific, but nevertheless, due to the wisdom of Anthony Kennedy and four fellow Supreme Court justices, if Weise hadn't taken his own life he would never have had to worry that it would be taken from him. Killers under 18 are not mature enough to be fully responsible for their actions Justice Kennedy opines in Simmons.

What Weise did would not have warranted punishing him with death. No matter how many fourteen year-olds he would have murdered, the loss of their lives is not sufficient to justify the taking of his. Their loss just isn't significant enough to merit the imposition of the severest punishment. Weise's life has more value in the eyes of the law than do the lives of his victims.

Meanwhile in Florida, other judges deem it perfectly appropriate to let a woman starve to death just because her husband, whom there is reason to believe may be directly responsible for her condition, wants her dead.

What a country.

The Logic of Choosing Life

Cheat Seeking Missiles sums up Terri Schiavo's case pretty well:

The logic of this case is so simple, and so defies the howls of the Left, that it's a wonder they're letting themselves be cast as ghouls of death. It all comes down to this:

If Terri is in as bad a shape as her husband says she is, she doesn't know and wouldn't care whether she is alive or not, so why not let her parents care for her if they want to?

And if she is not in as bad a shape as her husband says she is, why in the world would you kill her instead of transferring responsibility for her care to people who love her and will support her?

Good question. Here's another: Why are liberals so determined to have this woman killed?

More Upbeat News From Iraq

A friend passes on this list of things we probably didn't know about Iraq gleaned, it says here, from the Department of Defense website:

Forty seven countries have re-established their embassies in Iraq.

The Iraqi government employs 1.2 million Iraqi people.

Thirty one hundred schools have been renovated, 364 schools are under rehabilitation, 263 schools are now under construction and 38 new schools have been built in Iraq.

Iraq's higher educational structure consists of 20 Universities, 46 Institutes or colleges and 4 research centers.

Twenty five Iraq students departed for the United States in January 2004 for the re-established Fulbright program.

The Iraqi Navy is operational. They have five 100-foot patrol craft, 34 smaller vessels and a naval infantry regiment.

Iraq's Air Force consists of three operation squadrons, 9 reconnaissance and 3 US C-130 transport aircraft which operate day and night, and will soon add 16 UH-1 helicopters and 4 bell jet rangers.

Iraq has a counter-terrorist unit and a Commando Battalion.

The Iraqi Police Service has over 55,000 fully trained and equipped police officers.

There are 5 Police Academies in Iraq that produce over 3500 new officers each 8 weeks.

There are more than 1100 building projects going on in Iraq. They include 364 schools, 67 public clinics, 15 hospitals, 83 railroad stations, 22 oil facilities, 93 water facilities and 69 electrical facilities.

Ninety six percent of Iraqi children under the age of 5 have received the first 2 series of polio vaccinations.

Over 4.3 million Iraqi children were enrolled in primary school by mid October.

There are 1,192,000 cell phone subscribers in Iraq and phone use has gone up 158%.

Iraq has an independent media that consist of 75 radio stations, 180 newspapers and 10 television stations.

The Baghdad Stock Exchange opened in June of 2004.

Two candidates in the Iraqi presidential election had a recent televised debate recently.

If this is the first you've heard about these achievements you might ask your local MSM news outlet why they so assiduously publicize every car bombing in Iraq but never seem to get around to letting us know this sort of information.

Interpreting Media Casualty Reports

Instapundit links us to a note from Arthur Chrenkoff about how to read the casualty reports coming out of Iraq. It turns out that we must read beyond the headline. If we do we learn that over half of the reported casualties are insurgents. Chrenkoff writes:

Aren't you glad that you read more than the headline

"45 killed in insurgent attacks" or indeed the opening paragraph

"At least 45 people have been killed in insurgent attacks across Iraq as Washington defended its decision to go to war on the second anniversary of the US-led invasion." of this Agence France-Presse story. Because when you get to the second paragraph, you read:

"Twenty-four Iraqi insurgents were killed and six coalition soldiers wounded in a firefight in a Baghdad suburb overnight, the US military said."

That is, more than half of the people killed in insurgent attacks were the insurgents themselves. Actually, when you read on, you discover that another five insurgents died in two separate attacks, which means that the number is really 29 out of 45.

It's tragic that 15 Iraqis and one American have also died yesterday, but there is a very important implication flowing from all this: terrorism and insurgency rely for their effectiveness and survival on the ability to inflict mass casualties, preferably in a spectacular fashion, while sustaining minimal losses themselves. The arithmetic in Iraq, and everywhere else, is simple: there are hell of a lot more ordinary Iraqis (including Iraqi security forces) out there than there are terrorists. Hence, terrorists cannot afford to be dying at the same, or greater, rate than their target population.

But they are, of course, which is why the insurgency may well be dying.

Unfit for Life

This story from the Guardian reports that two doctors approved a late term abortion because the child suffered from a cleft palate. Charges were brought and dropped.

Of course, in this country charges would not have even been brought because a woman can abort her child at any time for any reason. Even so, we have a question for the doctors in England. If the child had been born with the cleft palate would they have agreed to kill it if the mother requested it? If not, why not? If having this particular defect was reason enough for them to think the child should be killed before it was born, wouldn't it be equally sufficient to justify killing the child after it was born?

Peter Singer the Princeton bioethicist who has achieved much notoriety for his advocacy of infanticide divides into three groups the newborns for whom decisions about ending life might be made.

The first consists of infants who would die soon after birth even if all existing medical resources were employed to prolong their lives.

In the second group are infants who require intensive care, such as a respirator, to keep them alive, and for whom the expectations regarding their future are "very grim." These are infants with severe brain damage. If they can survive beyond intensive care, they will still have a very poor quality of life.

The third group includes infants with a "hopeless prognosis" and who also are victims of "unbearable suffering." For example, in the third group was "a child with the most serious form of spina bifida," the failure of the spinal cord to form and close properly. Yet infants in group three may no longer be dependent on intensive care.

It is this third group, Singer says, that creates the controversy because their lives cannot be ended simply by withdrawing intensive care.

Whatever one's assessment of Singer's distinctions if we are coming to the point where a cleft palate warrants inclusion in the third group then the culture of death is even further advanced in its march through the western world than we had thought.

Parenthetically, here's an interesting piece on Peter Singer's unwillingness to draw the full implications of his ethics in his own life.

The Hidden War in Iraq

The March 20 installment of Strategy Page has some interesting commentary on the war being fought in the Sunni neighborhoods against al Qaida. The Strategy Page folks discuss the players and what their various motives. Give it a look.

Kerry's Form 180

Mickey Kaus at Slate reports that John Kerry is planning on finally signing the Form 180 that he refused to sign during the campaign and which would have released his full Vietnam service record. Kaus says:

Kerry's military records, when fully opened, better show something at least mildly embarrassing! If they're completely innocuous, why couldn't Kerry have signed Form 180 a year ago and cleared up many of the rumors that helped sink his candidacy (and his party)? ... Kerry's belated action could raise as many questions as it answers!

This really is strange. Why now?

Iraqis Are Optimistic

According to polls Iraqis are upbeat about their future:

The survey of 1,967 Iraqis was conducted Feb. 27-March 5, after Iraq held its first free elections in half a century in January. According to the poll, 62% say the country is headed in the right direction and 23% say it is headed in the wrong direction. That is the widest spread recorded in seven polls by the group, says Stuart Krusell, IRI director of operations for Iraq. In September, 45% of Iraqis thought the country was headed in the wrong direction and 42% thought it was headed in the right direction. The IRI is a non-partisan, U.S. taxpayer-funded group that promotes democracy abroad.

No doubt the Left is as downcast about this poll as the Iraqis are enthusiastic. Will Bush get any credit from his critics for this turnaround or will their response to news like this be more like: "Bush slips in a hog pen and comes up smelling like rose water" We'll see.

What is a Soul?

A former student who is studying theology wrote not long ago to ask my opinion on the nature of the soul. I'm not a theologian, and I freely acknowledge that my guess is no better than anyone else's, but rushing in where wise mean fear to tread, this was my reply:

Some people think of the soul as a sort of "ghost in the machine", as Gilbert Ryle dismissively described the dualistic view of mind. Some people identify the soul with the mind. Some say the soul is our personality plus our body. In other words, for them the soul is the entire self.

It certainly could be that any of these is indeed what our soul is, although I think that if we include the body in the concept we run into a difficulty since bodies age and deteriorate. We might wonder whether our soul is what we are at ten years of age, or seventy, or at death. Despite the difficulty, however, I'm not discounting the idea.

My own view, though, is that our soul is really the totality of information which describes us: our personality, our life history (whether remembered or not), our values, knowledge, character, aspirations, etc. This information is not "in" us in any way, but rather it resides in the mind of God, like a file in a vast database, and is thus eternal. When our bodies die, this information, or at least some of it, is instantiated in another format (a body or body-like entity) in another world so that we are capable of experiencing another existence. We can think of it as a kind of download of information which creates the phenomena of "body" much like the software we load onto our computers creates the images we see on our screens.

This view is compatible with both materialism and substance dualism since regardless of which, if either, is true it has no bearing on the existential status of the soul. If it should turn out that mind is just the word we use to describe the functioning of the brain then the existence of the soul is no more jeopardized by that discovery than if it turns out, as I think it would, that the mind is something related to, but other than, the brain.

Even many materialists would acknowledge that a complete description of every person exists, although they could certainly add that the description is inaccessible and useless. They would doubtless point out that such a soul only exists in the same sense that numbers or logical relations exist even if there were no minds to apprehend them. They would exist but be utterly useless. The set of propositions which gives an exhaustive description of someone still exists after a person's body dies but would only be useful if it could be somehow conjoined with consciousness and another "body" of some sort. The possibility of this happening most (though perhaps not all) materialists would deny.

On the other hand, if there really is an omniscient God, then when my body dies, all is not lost. I, the set of propositions which describes the essential me, the information that comprises my identity, continue to exist in the mind of God. I may have no conscious awareness of my existence, it may be like being placed into a deep coma, but I exist nonetheless. I am not gone. If and when God decides to download the information (or the greater part of it) to some "body", the file marked with my name and containing a complete description of my self, infused with a spark of consciousness (mind?), becomes a revivified person. At that point I will have been resurrected, returned to life.

This has been the grand hope of Christianity and other theistic religions down through the ages, and it is this hope, this opportunity, that God held out to the world in prototype on the first Easter when He raised Christ from the dead.

On Tipping Points

I've read several articles lately that mention the possibility of March 16 being a "tipping point". This is a term given to an event or events that mark a significant point in time where, in hindsight, it becomes apparent that things will no longer be what they were.

Here's one of them from Morgan Stanley's Stephen Roach.

Tipping points are a great concept, but virtually impossible to identify ahead of time -- let alone when they are occurring. It is only with the great luxury of hindsight that we can look back and know that the proverbial bell has rung. In my view, March 16, 2005 could end up in the running as a possible tipping point for America. Suddenly, the US has taken on a very different aura in an increasingly unbalanced world: The confluence of a record current account deficit, a disaster from General Motors, and yet another new high for oil prices all speak of an increasingly precarious role for the global hegemon. World financial markets have barely begun to sniff that out.

...

But the message from overseas is that this game is just about over. One by one, Asian central banks -- America's financiers at the margin -- have dropped the not-so-subtle hint that they are saturated with dollar-denominated assets. From Korea and Japan to China and India -- not to dismiss Malaysia, Hong Kong, and Singapore -- there is a growing protest to massive dollar overweights in official reserve portfolios. The standard American response borders on arrogance: "What choice do they have?" The presumption is that the US has externally driven Asian economies over a barrel -- unwilling to accept a deterioration in export competitiveness that currency appreciation might bring. This misses a key cost-benefit tradeoff -- weighing the hit to exports against the fiscal cost of a portfolio loss on holdings of dollar-denominated assets. The bigger the build-up of dollar reserves, the more this tradeoff is likely to tip toward dollar diversification -- spelling the end of America's cut-rate foreign financing.

Trusting Without Proof

The service which provides us with a quotation each day from various philosophical sources sent this one from Thoreau's Walden the other day:

No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof.

We were just wondering what proof Thoreau had that no way of thinking can be trusted without proof.

Oh...This Can't Be Good

Following up on the troubles at General Motors, check this link where you will see that GM has $300 billion in debt. More importantly, you can also see that GM has a debt to equity ratio of over 10.

The significance of a debt to equity ratio as high as 10 can be found at this link to www.investopedia.com where we learn that:

A high ratio of 2 or more would expose the company to risk such as interest rate increases and creditor nervousness.

Foreign nations are plenty nervous and have been announcing that they will be selling U.S. bonds to diversify the holdings of their central banks: Russia, India, China, South Korea, and Japan.

Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan and the US are truly in a no-win situation. Greenspan must raise interest rates to stem inflation and make Treasury bonds more attractive to foreign countries. If he doesn't raise rates, the US will continue to lose the financing from foreign countries that has been fueling our economy. Yet if he raises rates, GM and others will go belly up. Note that for every one point that interest rates rise, refinancing GM's debt will cost an additional $3 billion in annual interest payments.

If GM fails, it would mean default on their debt of $300 billion dollars. That would make the Enron, World Com, and LTCM debacles look like a tea party in comparison.

Given the above, my initial reaction was to expect two possible outcomes, that GM would eventually file bankruptcy or they would become a takeover candidate by the likes of China. But after further consideration, I couldn't see a reason why any thinking investor would be interested in buying GM at any price with the excess baggage of $300 billion in debt. Upon further reflection it becomes apparent that it would be much more expedient to simply stand by and let GM enter into bankruptcy proceedings and then buy them at a discount. After bankruptcy, the stock holders lose everything and the bond (debt) holders might be lucky to get pennies on the dollar.

In any event, GM will be well worth watching as the end-game is sure to unfold over the next twelve months.

Room For Growth

According to a new CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll, relatively few Americans are generally familiar with the phenomenon of blogging, in which individuals, ranging from famous to anonymous, post running narratives of their thoughts and observations on whatever interests them:

[F]ewer than one in six Americans (15%) read blogs regularly (at least a few times a month). Just 12% of Americans read blogs dealing specifically with politics this often. Among Internet users, the numbers are similarly low: 19% and 15%, respectively.

According to a December 2004 Gallup Poll, the percentage of Americans getting their news on a daily basis from the mainstream media is 51% for local television news, 44% for local newspapers, 39% for cable news networks, 36% for the nightly broadcast network news, and 21% for radio talk shows. By contrast, only 3% of Americans say they read Internet blogs every day, and just 2% read politics-focused blogs daily.

Blog readers are younger than the population at large. Although 17% of the public is aged 18 to 29, a quarter of all blog readers (those who read even occasionally) are in this age bracket. At the older extreme, 17% of Americans are 65 and older, but only 6% of blog readers are this old.

There's lots of interesting data at the link, but the article promotes a misconception. Many of the most popular blogs are not really news disseminators. They're not in the same category as newspapers and the evening news. They are more like the op-ed page of the paper or the commentary at the end of the news report. As such, the comparison of blogs to news outlets is a little like comparing hammers to screw drivers.

Power Line notes, too, that the low percentage of blog readers is actually a promising statistic since it indicates that there is still a vast untapped market out there for bloggers to tap into.

Memos From Our Troops

Instapundit posts a series of e-mails from readers connected in some way with servicemen serving in Iraq. They're worth reading. The whole link is good, the e-mails start several paragraphs from the top.

America's Has-Been Economy

Articles like the one below make me feel like I'm not "a voice crying in the wilderness". Or if I am, at least I'm not alone.

America's Has-Been Economy

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

A country cannot be a superpower without a high tech economy, and America's high tech economy is eroding as I write. The erosion began when US corporations outsourced manufacturing. Today many US companies are little more than a brand name selling goods made in Asia.

Corporate outsourcers and their apologists presented the loss of manufacturing capability as a positive development. Manufacturing, they said, was the "old economy," whose loss to Asia ensured Americans lower consumer prices and greater shareholder returns. The American future was in the "new economy" of high tech knowledge jobs.

This assertion became an article of faith. Few considered how a country could maintain a technological lead when it did not manufacture.

So far in the 21st century there is scant sign of the American "new economy." The promised knowledge-based jobs have not appeared. To the contrary, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports a net loss of 221,000 jobs in six major engineering job classifications.

Today many computer, electrical and electronics engineers, who were well paid at the end of the 20th century, are unemployed and cannot find work. A country that doesn't manufacture doesn't need as many engineers, and much of the work that remains is being outsourced or filled with cheaper foreigners brought into the country on H-lb and L-1 work visas.

Confronted with inconvenient facts, outsourcing's apologists moved to the next level of fantasy. Many technical and engineering jobs, they said, have become "commodity jobs," routine work that can be performed cheaper offshore. America will stay in the lead, they promised, because it will keep the research and development work and be responsible for design and innovation. Alas, now it is design and innovation that are being outsourced. Business Week reports ("Outsourcing Innovation," March 21) that the pledge of First World corporations to keep research and development in-house "is now pass�."

Corporations such as Dell, Motorola, and Philips, which are regarded as manufacturers based in proprietary design and core intellectual property originating in R&D departments, now put their brand names on complete products that are designed, engineered, and manufactured in Asia by "original-design manufacturers" (ODM).

Business Week reports that practically overnight large percentages of cell phones, notebook PCs, digital cameras, MP3 players, and personal digital assistants are produced by original-design manufacturers. Business Week quotes an executive of a Taiwanese ODM: "Customers used to participate in design two or three years back. But starting last year, many just take our product."

Another offshore ODM executive says: "What has changed is that more customers need us to design the whole product. It's now difficult to get good ideas from our customers. We have to innovate ourselves." Another says: "We know this kind of product category a lot better than our customers do. We have the capability to integrate all the latest technologies." The customers are America's premier high tech names.

The design and engineering teams of Asian ODMs are expanding rapidly, while those of major US corporations are shrinking. Business Week reports that R&D budgets at such technology companies as Hewlett Packard, Cisco, Motorola, Lucent Technologies, Ericsson, and Nokia are being scaled back.

Outsourcing is rapidly converting US corporations into a brand name with a sales force selling foreign designed, engineered, and manufactured goods. Whether or not they realize it, US corporations have written off the US consumer market. People who do not participate in the innovation, design, engineering and manufacture of the products that they consume lack the incomes to support the sales infrastructure of the job diverse "old economy." "Free market" economists and US politicians are blind to the rapid transformation of America into a third world economy, but college bound American students and heads of engineering schools are acutely aware of declining career opportunities and enrollments. While "free trade" economists and corporate publicists prattle on about America's glorious future, heads of prestigious engineering schools ponder the future of engineering education in America.

Once US firms complete their loss of proprietary architecture, how much intrinsic value resides in a brand name? What is to keep the all-powerful ODMs from undercutting the American brand names? The outsourcing of manufacturing, design and innovation has dire consequences for US higher education. The advantages of a college degree are erased when the only source of employment is domestic nontradable services.

According to the Los Angeles Times (March 11), the percentage of college graduates among the long-term chronically unemployed has risen sharply in the 21st century. The US Department of Labor reported in March that 373,000 discouraged college graduates dropped out of the labor force in February--a far higher number than the number of new jobs created.

The disappearing US economy can also be seen in the exploding trade deficit. As more employment is shifted offshore, goods and services formerly produced domestically become imports. Nothink economists and Bush administration officials claim that America's increasing dependence on imported goods and services is evidence of the strength of the US economy and its role as engine of global growth. This claim ignores that the US is paying for its outsourced goods and services by transferring its wealth and future income streams to foreigners. Foreigners have acquired $3.6 trillion of US assets since 1990 as a result of US trade deficits.

Foreigners have a surfeit of dollar assets. For the past three years their increasing unwillingness to acquire more dollars has resulted in a marked decline in the dollar's value in relation to gold and tradable currencies. Recently the Japanese, Chinese, and Koreans have expressed their concerns. According to Bloomberg (March 10), Japan's unrealized losses on its dollar reserve holdings have reached $109.6 billion.

The Asia Times reported (March 12) that Asian central banks have been reducing their dollar holdings in favor of regional currencies for the past three years. A study by the Bank of International Settlements concluded that the ratio of dollar reserves held in Asia declined from 81% in the third quarter of 2001 to 67% in September 2004. India reduced its dollar holdings from 68% of total reserves to 43%. China reduced its dollar holdings from 83% to 68%. The US dollar will not be able to maintain its role as world reserve currency when it is being abandoned by that area of the world that is rapidly becoming the manufacturing, engineering and innovation powerhouse. Misled by propagandistic "free trade" claims, Americans will be at a loss to understand the increasing career frustrations of the college educated. Falling pay and rising prices of foreign made goods will squeeze US living standards as the declining dollar heralds America's descent into a has-been economy. Meanwhile the Grand Old Party has passed a bankruptcy "reform" that is certain to turn unemployed Americans living on debt and beset with unpayable medical bills into the indentured servants of credit card companies. The steely-faced Bush administration is making certain that Americans will experience to the full their counry's fall.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: pcroberts@postmark.net

Brave New World

Judge George Greer has ruled that the feeding tube nourishing Terri Schiavo must be removed and she must be allowed to starve to death. Imagine for one moment that authorities ruled that food must be withheld from someone on death row, or from a suspected al Qaida detainee, until the prisoner starved to death. The left would be incandescent with rage. They would be screaming about the cruelty and inhumanity of the ruling. They would be shouting at the tops of their formidable lungs about egregious violations of human rights and the Geneva accords. Calls would go out from every organ of liberalism demanding the ouster or impeachment of every and any official who could be tied to this reprehensible decision.

But in the case of a completely innocent woman who is neither a criminal nor a terrorist, the Left is almost preternaturally silent. They seem perfectly content to let Terri Schiavo be killed through a long slow process of starvation and dehydration. Even worse, some democrats are allegedly attempting to exploit the tragedy of this woman and her family by turning it to partisan political advantage.

Rush Limbaugh said today that an editorial in a national newspaper (I missed the name of the paper) asserted that we are not actually killing Ms Schiavo by removing her feeding tube, we're simply allowing nature to take its course by not forcing her to live. This statement, if I heard it correctly, is uncommonly dumb even by liberal standards. If a mother refuses to feed her infant would that editorialist argue that the mother wasn't really killing the child, but was rather simply letting nature take its course? Anyone who doesn't wish to care for either the very young or the elderly need only withhold food from them and let them die and they bear no guilt. Welcome to our Brave New World.

The next time you hear someone from the Left say that capital punishment is cruel and unusual punishment and should be abolished, or that torturing a suspected terrorist violates his human rights and demeans us as a nation, ask this person where he or she was when an American judge unilaterally sentenced Terri Schiavo to starve to death while her parents stood by legally helpless. Anyone who is indifferent to Ms Schiavo's plight and that of her family has no moral credibility on any other human rights issue.

Italy's Staying

Contrary to recent reports, the Italians are not abandoning Iraq, or us, after all. The Left must be disconsolate:

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has sought to clarify his announcement on the withdrawal of Italian troops from Iraq. Mr Berlusconi says the timing of the troop withdrawal will depend upon Iraq's security situation.

Yesterday Mr Berlusconi announced Italy would begin a gradual pullout in September in line with public opinion and as agreed with British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Mr Berlusconi told US President Bush in a telephone call that he wants to begin removing his country's 3,300 troops in September if possible, his office said.

Mr Berlusconi "reiterated to President Bush his wish to begin a gradual and progressive withdrawal of the Italian contingent in Iraq as quickly as possible, and if possible from September," his office said in a statement. Mr Berlusconi said he would not act unilaterally.

"If it's not possible, it's not possible, everything has to be agreed with the allies," he said. "We will do everything in a concerted manner."

When Mr Blair was asked about the Italian withdrawal in the House of Commons overnight, he said Mr Berlusconi's comments had been misinterpreted. Both leaders now agree their countries troops will remain in Iraq until Iraqi forces are ready to take their place.

Italian soldiers are based in the relatively peaceful area of Nasiriyah in southern Iraq, which is under British command. Italy has been one of US President Bush's closest allies in Iraq, where it is the fourth biggest troop contributor.

Quite clearly, Italy isn't Spain.

China Syndrome

Bill Roggio at The Fourth Rail has a very interesting analysis of the future of Chinese/ American relations. He considers the prospects of a Chinese assault on Taiwan and finds them improbable. He also considers Chinese prospects in a conventional military conflict with the U.S. and finds them dismal. His arguments are compelling. Check them out.

Environmentalists Miss an Opportunity

The senate has voted 51-49 to open the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to oil drilling. It's not, however, a done deal:

Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, who has fought for 24 years to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil companies, acknowledged it still could be "a long process" before a final drilling measure clears Congress. Lawmakers must agree on the final budget, something they failed to do last year, or Wednesday's vote would have been for naught.

Nevertheless, environmentalists have lost a superb opportunity to capitalize on what was, or is, inevitable: that drilling would take place in ANWR. Our preference would have been to leave ANWR alone, but given that the thirst for oil would not be quenched and no other practical solution to our energy problems is currently available or economically painless, environmentalists should have seen this coming.

What they should have done, instead of fighting extraction of ANWR's reserves with all their energies and resources, was cut a compromise years ago. They should have agreed to no longer stand in the way of drilling in ANWR if the Interior Department would guarantee that another (or several) large wildlife refuge would be created somewhere else in the United States and if guarantees could be put in place that the oil companies would leave ANWR as much like they found it as is technologically and economically feasible.

Because of the environmentalist's insistence on total victory on this issue those who care about conserving wild lands and natural beauty wind up with nothing when they might have preserved another new refuge from the depredations of developers. With foresight like this, it's no wonder the environmental movement is dying.

This isn't the only tactical mistake the environmentalists have made in this contest. For years they've fought oil drilling in ANWR, contending it would lead to "a spider web of drilling platforms, pipelines and roads that would adversely impact the calving grounds of caribou, polar bears and millions of migratory birds that use the refuge's coastal plain." No one knows if this is true, of course, but the experience we have in other places is that wildlife adjusts and in some ways even prospers. By staking their credibility on dubious arguments and indemonstrable assertions the environmentalists succeed merely in squandering their credibility.

Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash. claimed that it is "foolish to say oil development and a wildlife refuge can coexist." But it is certainly as foolish to say that they can't. One of the jewels in the National Wildlife Refuge system is John Heinz refuge in Philadelphia which is bounded by Philadelphia International Airport, oil storage depots, a busy interstate highway and other scars upon the land. We ardently wish this weren't so, but as long as the refuge has been allowed to maintain something of a land buffer against encroachment the impact of these stressors seems to have been minimal.

Our dream is to see as much land as is possible permanently preserved from development, but sometimes one must take a step back in order to move forward. Yielding a relatively small tract of land in the midst of an inaccessible wilderness in order to acquire more critical habitat elsewhere would have been a fantastic trade-off, benefiting both wildlife and humans. Environmentalists had a chance to do this before the 2004 elections when the oil advocates were politically weaker, and they refused to do it. Now those who care about land preservation must take a step back at ANWR with no good prospect of any step forward anywhere else.

This was not the environmental movement's finest hour, but as Ted Stevens suggests above, perhaps they still have a chance to salvage a victory for preservation when lawmakers hammer out a final budget. Our suggestion is that the oil companies who will profit from ANWR oil be required to purchase and donate land in the lower 48 to the Department of the Interior for use as a refuge, or that their leasing fees be put to this purpose so that valuable wild lands can be incorporated into the National Wildlife Refuge system and preserved their for generations to come.

The Judicial Usurpation of Democracy

Viewpoint has been arguing ever since our first post last May that legalizing gay marriage will have the ultimate consequence of destroying the institution of marriage altogether. The rationale given for the recent decision by judge Richard A. Kramer of San Francisco County Superior Court overturning California's marriage laws provides all the confirmation of the validity of this concern that one could ask for.

According to the New York Times Judge Kramer stated that "the denial of marriage to same-sex couples appears impermissibly arbitrary," thus violating the equal protection clause of the state's Constitution. In other words, defining marriage as a bond between one man and one woman is unsupported by anything more than cultural habit and preference.

The fact is, of course, that any secular definition of marriage is going to be arbitrary. No matter how a legislature chooses to define marriage, if religion and tradition are ruled to be inadequate grounds for the definition, it can be based on nothing more than sociological fashion. Thus if marriage cannot be limited to one man and one woman because that would be an arbitrary restriction, on what grounds will we be able to limit marriage to just two people?

If the gender of the spouses is a matter of cultural caprice why is not the number of spouses? If two thousand years of tradition isn't enough to eliminate what is seen as the discretionary nature of heterosexual marriage, how will courts be able to uphold laws establishing marriage as a union of just two persons?

The answer is, of course, that they won't. If Judge Kramer's reasoning is accepted by the appeals courts the door will have swung wide open for redefining marriage any way some judge finds agreeable. There will certainly be no difficulty in finding courts sufficiently sympathetic to those who wish to push the social envelope by demanding the right to participate in group marriage. But when marriage means whatever anybody wants it to mean then it will really mean nothing at all and will cease to exist, at least in the form we recognize today.

The addled and myopic reasoning which afflicts Judge Kramer's opinion is not untypical of contemporary liberal jurisprudence, which is why it is imperative that conservative judges be appointed to the federal bench and Supreme Court. The Left knows its ideas, such as they are, would not prevail in state or national legislatures so it circumvents these by enacting its agenda through judicial fiat.

If Democrats are allowed to continue to obstruct and block President Bush's nominees, who are the only hope we have of turning back this "judicial usurpation of democracy", we will continue to get more sophomoric judicial opinions such as the vacuous judgment handed down by Justice Kennedy in the recent Simmons case and the witless nullity delivered by Judge Kramer in this one.

The Wasteland

Why is it that the MSM and especially the cable news shows have given us every sordid detail of the cases of Scott Peterson, Michael Jackson, Martha Stewart, and Robert Blake, but seem singularly uninterested in Terri Schiavo? Is it because Terri Schiavo just isn't glamorous?

A woman is about to be deliberately starved to death over the horrified objections of her parents, simply because her legal husband, who has long ago abandoned her for another woman with whom he's had a couple of children, wants her dead, as does the judge in the case. The legal and cultural implications of Ms Schiavo's plight are immeasurably more significant than those of the stories receiving all the media notoriety and scrutiny, but she is neither rich, famous, nor attractive and so the media can't be bothered to do any real reporting on her awful circumstances.

It's much more important to the television news "journalists" that we see video every ten minutes of Jacko showing up in court in his pajamas and that we check out the ensemble Martha is sporting as she leaves her prison gig behind. What incredibly shallow people they must be who put together the stuff that America watches every night. Do they really take their work and themselves seriously?

Marshall McLuhan noted some forty years ago that television was a vast wasteland. He should see it today.

Racial Hectoring

Here's a twist. White students, offended by a lecture given by the secretary of state for New Jersey, an African American woman, walked out of school and refused to go to classes. Evidently, the speaker, Ms Regina Thomas, accused students in ungentle accents of being ignorant of black history and being racists. The students refused to take the insults meekly and walked out of school, essentially shutting the place down for the day.

Imagine that. White kids finally getting tired of abasing themselves whenever some minority spokesperson takes it upon herself to lecture them about what evil racists they are and how guilty they should feel about it.

If more audiences would just get up and walk out when race hustlers like Ms Thomas take the stage maybe there'd be a lot less racial hectoring and consequently a lot less white hostility and a lot more racial comity. No one likes being insulted because of their race, after all. Surely Ms Thomas should understand that.

See here for more.

The Party Continues

For 2004, the current account deficit surged to a new high of $665.9 billion from the 2003 gap of $530.7 billion, the Commerce Department said. Given my rants in the past about this issue, I doubt if any of our readers are actually surprised with this news but there is an interesting observation to make.

Historically, international trade accounts were settled with gold bullion. In other words, there was no "credit" in international trade. If you ran out of gold, you didn't do business. Since those days of good sense are gone, and in today's world of fiat currencies, it has been customary that when a country would run a trade deficit that spiraled out of control, their currency would devalue against the currency of other countries. This devaluation would raise the cost of imports making the debtor countries exports more competitively priced. This would create demand for the goods they manufactured causing their manufacturing sector to hire more people to meet the demand. This would stimulate the economy and the trade deficit would return to a more balanced state. Manufacturing was essential to the economic health of a country.

Since the year 2000, our currency has devalued against the currencies of other foreign countries by over 20% as a result of the mechanics mentioned above yet we see that our trade deficit continues to explode. Why? For two reasons, first, China and Japan won't allow our currency to devalue against theirs as they will purchase US dollars on the open market which strengthens the dollar in relation to their currencies and secondly, because we have no manufacturing sector of any significance anymore. As it was being dismantled over the last ten years we were told that it didn't matter because we were transitioning into a "service" economy.

Well, it does matter. There used to be an old expression, "As GM goes, so goes the country". Today General Motors abandoned projections of a break-even or even slightly profitable first quarter and slashed its full-year earnings outlook by more than half, citing poor North American business. Its share price tumbled to its lowest in more than a dozen years, from its old high of 94, General Motors closed just above 29 today -- a total loss of 70%. If it wasn't for their financing division - GMAC, they'd probably be out of business by now.

If one were to conspire to destroy this once great country, they could think of no better plan than to enact the fiscal and trade policies our politicians have promoted over the last decade. The terrorists don't have to do anything to destroy our country, we're managing quite nicely without their help.

Americans need to turn off the TV, stop believing what their told and start doing some critical thinking about what they see happening. These issues need to be core platform issues of candidates running for office and I'm not talking about Al Gore's lame "medicare lock box" drivel and then they need to be held accountable to ensure their implementation.

Slavery was never really abolished in this country, the criteria simply shifted from the color of one's skin to the amount of debt that they have. The master is now the banker and people in debt are enslaved to them. That reminds me, congress recently passed new legislation that prevents individuals from filing chapter 7 bankruptcy. That means your debt will be restructured in a way that you can pay it back but make no mistake, you will pay it back unless you'd rather be living in a cardboard box in an alley somewhere.

Trade deficits like we have today mean our children will inherit the responsibility to pay for them. Five percent interest on $665 billion dollars is $30 billion dollars a year. That's just the cost of the interest and that's just one obligation we're leaving to our children not to mention the cost of all of the other un-funded liabilities they will incur. We are a country with a "service" economy alright. We have become a country of people whose life's work will be to "service" the interest on a debt that can never be paid back. Personally, I'm truly ashamed to be part of a generation who's legacy was to enslave their children in poverty.

Chrenkoff's 23rd

The 23rd installment of Arthur Chrenkoff's Good News From Iraq is up. The installments keep getting longer and longer as the good news keeps building. Iraq is in every way undergoing an amazing transformation. The economy is growing, the infrastructure is improving, and the security situation is steadily improving. Even some of President Bush's critics are now admitting that maybe there is cause for optimism after all.

Going It Alone

We read that the Italians are planning to withdraw their troops from Iraq in September. We're also told in the same article that fourteen other nations have withdrawn their forces in the past year, and that twenty three nations besides the U.S. still remain there, contributing almost 23,000 troops.

Huh. And here we thought from listening to Chris Matthews that our "go-it-alone" president had us there all by ourselves.

Safer in Iraq

Some 75 Americans have been killed in hostilities so far this year in ..... Philadelphia. There have been five people murdered in the last six days in York, PA. It's safer to be an American soldier in Iraq right now than it is to be a resident in America's cities.

Greenspan on SS

Dr. Greenspan's latest testimony was thoroughly disturbing and I would like to respond to it more completely but for now I can only post the following in response to the link:

However, by almost any measure, the required amount of saving that would be necessary is sufficiently large to raise serious questions about whether we will be able to meet the retirement commitments already made. Much has been made of shortfalls in our private defined-benefit plans, but the gross underfunding currently at $450 billion, although significant as a percentage of the $1.8 trillion in assets of private defined-benefit plans, is modest compared with the underfunding of our publically administered pensions.

So what is Dr. Greenspan saying here? Relative to the rip off of the public by their employers, the government rip off isn't as bad?

At present, the Social Security trustees estimate the unfunded liability over the indefinite future to be $10.4 trillion. The shortfall in Medicare is calculated at several multiples of the one in Social Security. These numbers suggest that either very large tax increases will be required to meet the shortfalls or benefits will have to be pared back.

It looks like the link I've posted several times in the past interview (requires Real Player) with Mr. Lawrence Kotlikoff turns out to be quite acurate.

Because benefit cuts will almost surely be at least part of the resolution, it is incumbent on government to convey to future retirees that the real resources currently promised to be available on retirement will not be fully forthcoming. We owe future retirees as much time as possible to adjust their plans for work, saving, and retirement spending. They need to ensure that their personal resources, along with what they expect to receive from government, will be sufficient to meet their retirement goals.

What I read here is that Dr. Greenspan is suggesting that congress tell the people that the government isn't going to keep its promise of return on the investment workers have made all of their working lives and the sooner the better. Yet our government fully intends to continue taking our dollars out of every pay check to fund the promise that they now can no longer keep.

In other words, we the government made a promise to you, the poor working sap, that we will take your money and give it back to you when you need it. But now we see that there is no way we can keep our promise so we have a responsibility to tell you that you are screwed as soon as possible so you can adjust your expectations. But we're going to continue taking your money. Where's the outrage?

If Dr. Greenspan is so concerned about our "personal resources being sufficient to meet our retirement goals, then why does the government continue to take them from us? Why does the Fed maintain a policy of low interest rates that encourages further debt rather than savings? Why is there rampant inflation as a result of Fed policy that encourages people to spend today because tomorrow their dollars will be worth less? Why has the Fed created the biggest housing bubble in history so people can take out home equity loans that enables them to consume more stuff and at the same time, acquire further debt?

During the first Bush administration, Secretary of Treasury Paul O'Neil commissioned a study to determine the extent of the unfunded liabilities of the US and discovered it was $44 trillion dollars (today it's about $55 trillion). Upon making the administration aware of this crisis, he was dismissed. Paul O'Neil was a good man (ex CEO of Alcoa) but a lousy politician. You see, were his findings to become public knowledge, Bush may not have been reelected.

Now that Bush is in his second term, the timing is more appropriate to let the word out in a "kinder and gentler" way. According to Dr. Greenspan, the shortfall in Medicare is calculated at "several multiples of the one in Social Security". Good luck America.

Another Example of Islamic Justice

The Iranian legal system continues to impress us with the wisdom and mercy of Koranic justice:

After months of solitary confinement, Iranian Christian pastor Hamid Pourmand now finds himself incarcerated in a group cell with other political prisoners at Tehran's maximum-security Evin Prison.

A former army colonel who converted from Islam to Christianity nearly 25 years ago, Pourmand was found guilty by a military court on Feb. 16 of "deceiving" the Iranian armed forces about his faith. The Islamic regime in Iran has made it illegal for a non-Muslim citizen to serve as a military officer, since that puts him in a position of authority over Muslim soldiers.

Although the accused Christian produced documents proving that his military superiors knew about his conversion, the court declared them false and handed Pourmand a maximum penalty of three years in jail.

Sources inside Iran remain fearful for Pourmand's life, despite the written three-year jail sentence. "Three years has no meaning, because in a political jail like Evin, they can keep them for many more years, or they can even kill them," one stated.

Hamid Pourmand's life is in jeopardy, but it could be worse. He should be thankful he's not a thirteen year old rape victim, for instance. The Iranians condemn these poor waifs to flogging or death for the crime of seducing the rapist. Allah might beam with pride at the moral purity and crystalline logic of Iranian justice, but for our part, we think Allah would prefer to see the people rise up and kick these cruel, narrow-minded mullahs in their holy posteriors.

Ominous Fleet Deployments

The India Daily has a report about naval movements that sound ominous:

The U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt is on the move in Atlantic Ocean and is possibly headed towards the Mediterranean Sea. The convergence of three carrier groups in the corridor of the Middle East will send very strong message to the Syrians and Iranians. There are indications that soon US is moving two more aircraft carrier battle groups to the Eastern Mediterranean Sea and the Persian Gulf. This will spell a formidable strike force for Iran and Syria who are in defiance on issues of Lebanon and Nuclear weapons development.

Outbound from Singapore, the USS Carl Vinson is currently crossing the Indian Ocean headed towards Middle-East. This will be the first time since February 2004 that US will have three major carrier groups stationed on and around Middle East.

Each of these carrier groups carry nearly 85 aircraft and is capable of delivering precision-guided munitions. In addition there are anti-submarine aircraft, airborne-early-warning and rotary-wing aircraft. Because of in-air refueling capabilities these aircraft can operate from a long distance. The carrier groups are independent and can operate indefinitely.

U.S. military air bases in Turkey, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia and the three carrier groups will create a formidable force far superior to any military in the region. In addition more than 100,000 battle hardened force in Iraq will be another major force in case US has to use force against Iran and Syria.

It seems the Americans are preparing to deal with Syria and Iran in the next several months. The first priority right now is diplomacy in association with the Europeans and the rest of the world. But the leadership in Teheran and Damascus are taking notice of the power build up in the region. There are seeds of democracy in Lebanon, Iran and Syria. The whole region is getting a quick lesson on the benefits of democracy.

This last sentence is a masterful bit of dry sardonicism. Iran and Syria appear indeed to be about to get a very serious lesson in the benefits of democracy. One of those lessons is that if you are a functional democracy you spare yourself a visit from the American fleet. Let's hope that force is not needed to get Syria out of Lebanon and to turn over Saddam's weapons of mass destruction. Let's also hope that force is not needed to persuade Iran to give up it's nuclear ambitions. If suasion should fail, however, let's further hope that the administration is better prepared for the aftermath of a military strike in those two countries than they were for the aftermath of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Little Green Footballs links us to this site for a breakdown of which ships are being deployed.

The Cedar Revolution

Photos from today's massive anti-Syrian demonstration in Lebanon can be viewed here. Also, Hugh Hewitt has an interview with a journalist on the scene.

The message seems pretty clear to the former ophthalmologist in Damascus. Lebanon is on the verge, it appears, of rising up and throwing the Syrians out of their country. It will be interesting to see if Assad seeks to suppress this nascent revolution by force with the American navy sitting just offshore and 100,000 troops on his eastern border. In any case, it seems clear that Bush 43 is not going to make the same grievous error his father made when he allowed Saddam to massacre thousands of Iraqis who sought his overthrow after the first Gulf war.

Our guess, and our hope, is that Assad will choose retreat rather than confrontation. Either way, though, it appears he will be seriously weakened politically and may not survive in office, or in any other way for that matter.

Mid-East Tensions Mount Again

The Times OnLine has released a story that claims that Israel is planning a joint air/ground assault on Iran's nuclear facilities:

Israel has drawn up secret plans for a combined air and ground attack on targets in Iran if diplomacy fails to halt the Iranian nuclear programme. The inner cabinet of Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister, gave "initial authorisation" for an attack at a private meeting last month on his ranch in the Negev desert.

Israeli forces have used a mock-up of Iran's Natanz uranium enrichment plant in the desert to practise destroying it. Their tactics include raids by Israel's elite Shaldag (Kingfisher) commando unit and airstrikes by F-15 jets from 69 Squadron, using bunker-busting bombs to penetrate underground facilities.

The plans have been discussed with American officials who are said to have indicated provisionally that they would not stand in Israel's way if all international efforts to halt Iranian nuclear projects failed.

Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, said that America would support Britain, France and Germany in offering economic incentives for Tehran to abandon its [nuclear]programme....yesterday Iran rejected the initiative, which provides for entry to the World Trade Organisation and a supply of spare parts for airliners if it co-operates. "No pressure, bribe or threat can make Iran give up its legitimate right to use nuclear technology for peaceful purposes," said an Iranian spokesman.

This is not looking good. It appears that the Mid-east is moving ineluctably toward another conflict. If Iran refuses to stop producing nuclear weapons how else can things turn out? Iran has stated that if they ever acquire such weapons they will use them against Israel, so Israel clearly cannot allow them to have them.

We wonder how the paleo-cons and the anti-war Left will react to an Israeli attack. We're curious, too, as to how the Times got the story. Was it leaked? If so, by whom and why? It will also be interesting to see whether the publicity will cause Israel to abort their plans. We doubt it.

The Decline of Environmentalism

Nicholas Kristoff has a fine essay in the NYT on the decline of the environmental movement in the U.S. Much of what he says is on the mark. Kristoff is a lefty so his criticisms of the contemporary environmentalist movement, which is comprised largely of leftists, are the more telling. Here are some of them:

The fundamental problem, as I see it, is that environmental groups are too often alarmists. They have an awful track record, so they've lost credibility with the public. Some do great work, but others can be the left's equivalents of the neocons: brimming with moral clarity and ideological zeal, but empty of nuance....I was once an environmental groupie, and I still share the movement's broad aims, but I'm now skeptical of the movement's "I Have a Nightmare" speeches.

In the 1970's, the environmental movement was convinced that the Alaska oil pipeline would devastate the Central Arctic caribou herd. Since then, it has quintupled.

When I first began to worry about climate change, global cooling and nuclear winter seemed the main risks. As Newsweek said in 1975: "Meteorologists disagree about the cause and extent of the cooling trend ... but they are almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century."

This record should teach environmentalists some humility. The problems are real, but so is the uncertainty. Environmentalists were right about DDT's threat to bald eagles, for example, but blocking all spraying in the third world has led to hundreds of thousands of malaria deaths.

Likewise, environmentalists were right to warn about population pressures, but they overestimated wildly. Paul Ehrlich warned in "The Population Bomb" [1969] that "the battle to feed humanity is over.... Hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death." On my bookshelf is an even earlier book, "Too Many Asians," with a photo of a mass of Indians on the cover. The book warns that the threat from relentlessly multiplying Asians is "even more grave than that of nuclear warfare."

Kristoff hints, though he doesn't say it explicitly, that part of the problem with the environmental movement in the U.S. is that it has come to be seen as too ideological. It gives people every reason to think that the real agenda is not so much saving the environment but rather the destruction of corporate capitalism and private property. As a result they've alienated a lot of people who would otherwise share their environmental goals. Kristoff finishes with this:

The loss of credibility is tragic because reasonable environmentalists - without alarmism or exaggerations - are urgently needed....So it's critical to have a credible, nuanced, highly respected environmental movement. And right now, I'm afraid we don't have one.

No, but we do have some very laudable environmental organizations. Our money goes to The Nature Conservancy, an organization which works quietly to preserve the Last Great Places, as they put it, by buying them up. There's a lot more out there to buy and a lot of nature to protect, so perhaps some of our readers might be inclined to give them a hand.

Are the Insurgents Becoming a Spent Force?

The Strategy Page puts the recent carnage in Iraq into broader perspective.

March 10, 2005: While spectacular suicide car bombings continue, the overall level of attacks continues to decline, as it has since the January 30 elections. The terror attacks now are being done mostly for the benefit of the foreign media, for the killings are only making the population more hostile to the al Qaeda and Sunni Arab groups that are responsible for nearly all the violence. The terrorists are being hit as never before, with more police raids into neighborhoods known to be terrorist strongholds. Weapons and bomb making materials are seized and arrests made.

Sometimes, the resistance is heavier than expected. A raid today in Baghdad resulted in 14 policemen and at least four terrorists getting killed, as well as 65 policemen, and over a hundred terrorists and civilians wounded. The resistance was so fierce because the terrorists are running out of places to hide. Many have already had to flee "friendly neighborhoods" several times in the last few months. Terrorists are having a harder time recruiting because of this, and many terrorist cells are down to the hard core. These guys will stand and fight, and get killed.

Iraqi media is playing the battle between the terrorists and the security forces for what it is, gang-busters. Confessions of captured terrorists are televised, and camera crews increasingly accompany the Iraqi police on their raids, or to crime scenes where the bodies of terrorist victims have been discovered. The fact that the terrorists are now killing women and children is pointed out, as this is considered over-the-line behavior, and the mark of true outlaws.

It would be nice if the evening news would provide a little of this context along with their reports of car bombings and assassinations. By largely omitting the background they leave their viewers with the impression that all is chaos and carnage in Iraq, and that the situation is hopelessly out of hand. This is not fair to anyone involved and certainly not fair to the viewers. The fact that people have to go elsewhere for a fuller understanding of this conflict is one reason why the evening news in particular and the MSM in general is going the way of the dinosaurs.

Liberalism's Lunatic Fringe

For the truly troubled libs even a Bush/Cheney bumper sticker is like a strobe light to an epilectic:

TAMPA - Politics has always been divisive, splitting families and turning friend against friend. This week, though, a Tampa woman learned that simple Bush-Cheney bumper sticker can bring trouble, if not danger, from a total stranger. Police say Michelle Fernandez, 35, was chased for miles Tuesday by an irate 31-year-old Tampa man who cursed at her as he held up an anti-Bush sign and tried to run her off the road.

His sign, about the size of a business letter, read: Never Forget Bush's Illegal Oil War Murdered Thousands in Iraq.

"I guess this was a disgruntled Democrat," Tampa Police spokesman Joe Durkin said. "Maybe he has that sign with him so he's prepared any time he comes up against a Republican."

Police arrested Nathan Alan Winkler at his home on N Cleveland Street near Hyde Park within an hour of the incident. After finding the antiwar sign in his car, they booked him into the county jail on one count of aggravated stalking, a third-degree felony punishable by up to five years in prison, Durkin said.

Durkin said Winkler told police officers he got upset with Fernandez because she "gave him the finger." Fernandez told the Times Wednesday that "whatever gestures I made, I made them because I was trying to figure out why he was honking at me and pointing to his sign."

"At first I didn't know why he was screaming at me," she said. "Then it clicked." In her frantic nine-minute call Tuesday to a 911 dispatcher, Fernandez said it was the Bush Cheney '04 bumper sticker on her green Ford Expedition that set the other driver off.

"I was just almost run off the road by a man," she told the dispatcher at 5:14 p.m. She was taking her son, 10, and daughter, 3, to a ballfield. "He just ran me off because I have a Bush bumper sticker in my car. He had some type of - he drove up next to me with - he had a sign on it like hanging from his - from the passenger window, that said something about the war in Iraq....I'm shaking like a leaf."

Durkin said Winkler started following Fernandez at the intersection of Columbus Drive and Armenia Avenue shortly after 5 p.m. "He told our officers that he just got mad at her, so he went after her," Durkin said. As Fernandez drove south on Armenia, the other driver pulled alongside her in his black 1996 Nissan, beeping his horn and "flailing his arms," according to a police report.

He held the antiwar sign up to his passenger-side window, she said, following her along busy streets in south and west Tampa and veering into her path, forcing her to swerve to avoid a collision. She pleaded with the dispatcher for help and tried to get away by running through stop signs and changing directions.

"Oh, now he's following me! I'm gonna get back on Kennedy now. I don't know what to do!" she told the dispatcher, her voice rising. At one point the man pulled his car in front of Fernandez's, got out and started running toward her, Fernandez told police."He just pulled over next to me, he's stopping the car, it's ridiculous, this man!" she said. "He's running after my car. Oh my goodness, he's a fanatic, he's in the middle of the street!"

She drove along Arrawana Avenue and Habana Street, then back onto Kennedy Boulevard, but she couldn't shake him, Durkin said. "He's trying to hurt us. Look at this, what a moron," she said. "Look at him!... Idiot!"

The dispatcher told Fernandez to drive to the Tampa police office near Raymond James Stadium, but she drove instead to the ballfield where she had been headed with her children before the chase. She met with a police officer and carefully described the Nissan and its tag number, Durkin said.

Officers traced the tag to Winkler, went to his home within an hour and arrested him. "This could have been tragic, for her and her children and for other people on the road as this was going on," Durkin said. "But she did all the right things. She showed remarkable poise, she didn't engage him. She called us."

"I respect him for having his beliefs and feeling so strongly," Michelle Fernandez said Wednesday night, her nerves still frayed. "But here he is protesting the war and lost lives, and he is going to put me and my children in danger? This man has a serious problem."

Yes, he does, and he's not alone. Thanks to Little Green Footballs for the tip.

Disposable Society

Some time ago, I learned that my daughter's boyfriend had been "kicked" out of his home by his father. I don't know the reason why but the fact was he was "out of doors". He had nowhere to go and his prospects where dim. I lent him some money to make a down payment on an apartment and he paid the loan back monthly.

Today, while in church waiting for the service to begin my daughter related to me a particularly disturbing story of two friends of hers - one child who's father had married the mother of the other child and both children have recently been "kicked" out for no better reason than the parents wanted time alone with each other.

While my daughter and I were working on her application for room and board for the college she will be attending this August, there was a section where she could indicate a roommate if she had a preference. My daughter had planned to room with a friend of hers from high school but she informed me that she might not be attending college because she, too, had recently been "kicked" out of her home and would have to be responsible for her college expenses.

I'm just one person who has learned of this sick phenominon in which four children are "out of doors". What does that extrapolate to nation wide?

I have a degree in psychology yet I simply cannot understand what enables a parent to abandon their children. What possible rationale can someone construct that enables them to justify in their own minds such behavior?

I have wondered why America isn't referenced in the book of Revelations in the events that unfold at that time. I've come to the conclusion that we, as a nation, will simply be irrelevant by the time those events unfold. We will have been judged, long before then for our selfishness, greed, and avarice, and found woefully wanting.

Ward Churchill and Phil Mitchell

The good professor's troubles keep mounting at the University of Colorado:

University of Colorado officials investigating embattled professor Ward Churchill received documents this week purporting to show that he plagiarized another professor's work. Officials at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia sent CU an internal 1997 report detailing allegations about an article Churchill wrote.

"The article . . . is, in the opinion of our legal counsel, plagiarism," Dalhousie spokesman Charles Crosby said in summarizing the report's findings.

Dalhousie began an investigation after professor Fay G. Cohen complained that Churchill used her research and writing in an essay without her permission and without giving her credit. Although the investigation substantiated her allegations, Cohen didn't pursue the matter because she felt threatened by Churchill, Crosby said.

Crosby said Cohen told Dalhousie officials in 1997 that Churchill had called her in the middle of the night and said, "I'll get you for this."

Cohen still declines to talk publicly about her experience with Churchill, but she agreed the Dalhousie report could be shared with CU officials, Crosby said, because "whatever concerns she may have about her safety are outweighed by the importance she attaches to this information getting out there."

Meanwhile, university officials pull long faces and ponder gravely what they should do about the old Lefty warhorse - academic freedom and all those other cherished values of the academy must be respected, don't you know. Nevertheless, there are some teachers that even the most tolerant institution cannot abide, and one of those is Dr. Phil Mitchell who appeared last Wednesday night on MSNBC's Scarborough Country.

Dr. Mitchell who teaches in the history department at a major American university was informed by his chairman recently that his teaching contract will not be renewed in the Fall because his teaching is not up to university standards.

It's about time, you say. More universities should clear out the deadwood, you declaim. But Dr. Mitchell received an award in 1999 recognizing him as an outstanding teacher. He's also been acknowledged by his colleagues as an excellent instructor. So why is his teaching not up to university standards? It turns out that he is a racist and, worse, a theist.

In one of his classes, apparently, Dr. Mitchell, the father of two adopted black children, cited the opinion of Thomas Sowell, a black economist, who holds a dim view of affirmative action. This offended some students and, of course, the last thing that universities want on their faculty is a professor who offends people.

He also committed the unpardonable offense of quoting from a text on 19th century liberal protestantism, and, in the course of the discussion, made reference to G_d. Apparently, the reference was not part of a profanity, which would've been protected free speech, but was instead respectful, which evidently is not.

For these crimes against the spirit of political correctness and Left-wing orthodoxy his university decided he had to go. The announcement aroused no student demonstrations on behalf of academic freedom, as did the kerfuffle surrounding the martyr Ward Churchill, the ACLU found themselves otherwise occupied and unable to come to his aid, and faculty petitions castigating the administration for the "chilling effect" their dismissal of Dr. Mitchell would have on the spirit of open inquiry on campus were notable for their absence.

Even so, the administration later relented, but still prohibited him from teaching in the history department.

Which university is it that maintains such rigorous standards that anyone who gives offense or shows signs of having a favorable view of religion risks being cashiered? Which university is it that will not tolerate the likes of a Dr. Mitchell? The University of Colorado. The exact same institution which is currently wringing its hands over what to do about an academic fraud and bully who managed to offend just about the entire nation with his comments about 9/11. Evidently, Dr. Mitchell's mistake was being fond of his country, being religious, and not making up a story that he was part Indian.

The taxpayers of Colorado are presumably pleased at the vigilance displayed by university officials in the case of the unfortunate Dr. Mitchell and also with their diligence in making sure that only instructors of the finest character stand before the young minds in Colorado's history department.

For more on this travesty go here.

The Case For Judeo-Christian Values, cont'd

Dennis Prager's series of columns on The Case for Judeo-Christian Values continues with Part VI and Part VII.

Part VI addresses the contemporary emphasis on the appeal to feelings rather than to external moral authority in determining how one should act. He writes:

With the decline of the authority of Judeo-Christian values in the West, many people stopped looking to external sources of moral standards in order to decide what is right and wrong. Instead of being guided by God, the Bible and religion, great numbers - in Western Europe, the great majority - have looked elsewhere for moral and social guidelines.

For many millions in the twentieth century, those guidelines were provided by Marxism, Communism, Fascism or Nazism. For many millions today, those guidelines are ... feelings....feelings are the major unifying characteristic among contemporary liberal positions.

His examples are guaranteed to raise eyebrows... and perhaps blood pressure. For example:

Aside from reliance on feelings, how else can one explain a person who believes, let alone proudly announces on a bumper sticker, that "War is not the answer"? I know of no comparable conservative bumper sticker that is so demonstrably false and morally ignorant. Almost every great evil has been solved by war - from slavery in America to the Holocaust in Europe. Auschwitz was liberated by soldiers making war, not by pacifists who would have allowed the Nazis to murder every Jew in Europe.

He closes Part VI with this:

Reliance on feelings in determining one's political and social positions is the major reason young people tend to have liberal/left positions - they feel passionately but do not have the maturity to question those passions. It is also one reason women, especially single women, are more liberal than men - it is women's nature to rely on emotions when making decisions. (For those unused to anything but adulation directed at the female of the human species, let me make it clear that men, too, cannot rely on their nature, which leans toward settling differences through raw physical power. Both sexes have a lot of self-correcting to do.)

Feelings also play a major role in many conservatives' beliefs. Patriotism is largely a feeling; religious faith is filled with emotion, and religion has too often been dictated by emotion. But far more conservative positions are based on "What is right?" rather than on "How do I feel?" That is why a religious woman who is pregnant but does not wish to be is far less likely to have an abortion than a secular woman in the same circumstances. Her values are higher than her feelings. And that, in a nutshell, is what our culture war is about - Judeo-Christian values versus liberal/leftist feelings.

In Part VII he considers the concept of evil and how this concept creates a great divide between the Judeo-Christian view of morality and other, competing, conceptions:

In much of the Arab and Muslim world, "face," "shame" and "honor" define moral norms, not standards of good and evil. That is the reason for "honor killings" - the murder of a daughter or sister who has brought "shame" to the family (through alleged sexual sin) - and the widespread view of these murders as heroic, not evil. That is why Saddam Hussein, no matter how many innocent people he had murdered, tortured and raped, was a hero to much of the Arab world. As much evil as he committed, what most mattered was his strength, and therefore his honor.

In the contemporary Western world, most people who identify with the Left - meaning the majority of people - hate war, corporations, pollution, Christian fundamentalists, economic inequality, tobacco and conservatives. But they rarely hate the greatest evils of their day, if by evil we are talking about the deliberate infliction of cruelty - mass murder, rape, torture, genocide and totalitarianism.

That is why communism, a way of life built on cruelty, attracted vast numbers of people on the Left and why, from the 1960s, it was unopposed by most others on the Left. Even most people calling themselves liberal, not leftist, hated anti-communism much more than they hated communism.

[T]he Left throughout the world generally has contempt for people who speak of good and evil. They are called Manichaeans, moral simpletons who see the world in black and white, never in shades of grey. Western Europeans and their American counterparts loathe the language of good and evil and correctly attribute it to religious - i.e., Judeo-Christian - values. Among those values is fighting evil and "burning evil out from your midst." And to do that, you have to first hate it. Because if you don't hate evil, you won't fight it, and good will lose.

This is an excellent series of columns. If you missed any of the first five installments you can link to them by going to Prager's archive which you will find here.

Note to Guiliana: Please Shut Up

Guiliana Sgrena's story, like a species in thrall to the pressures of Darwinian natural selection, undergoes slow gradual modifications until finally something completely new appears to emerge. Whereas she originally said that hundreds of rounds were fired at the car, photos show only two bullet holes in the vehicle. It also develops that the firing was from the side and rear of the car, consonant with the claim that the vehicle did not stop and instead tried to pass through the checkpoint. Not only did the U.S. military not know anything about Sgrena's release, neither, apparently did the Italian military.

The woman is turning this tragedy into a national embarrassment....for the Italians. No wonder they want her to just shut up.

Captain Ed has the details.