Teach Them Both

Christianity Today has this story on the progress of Intelligent Design in the Kansas public school system:

Eighty years after the infamous Scopes "Monkey Trial," Kansas has reopened a national debate over school science standards. Hearings were convened on May 5 by the state board of education to determine whether current criticisms of evolutionary theory may be taught in public schools. Proponents of Intelligent Design (ID) had the stage to themselves.

A pro-evolution group, Kansas Citizens for Science, boycotted the meetings, saying they were a thinly disguised assault on atheism. Pedro Irigonegaray, a Topeka attorney retained by the board to defend the current science standards, characterized Intelligent Design scientists as repackaged creationists.

The theory of evolution holds that all life developed via natural selection to its present diversity over billions of years. Intelligent Design holds that natural selection cannot account for the complexity of life.

"An intelligent design by definition requires a designer," Irigonegaray told CT. "I just disagree that science should involve a supernatural answer. I think it is essential that science remain neutral."

Board chair Steve Abrams told CT that while the subject has obvious religious implications, "the objective is to minimize the religion and politics and focus, as much as possible, on the science education." This summer the board is expected to approve teaching critical of evolution.

At least 13 states are looking at legislation requiring a more critical stance toward evolution in the classroom, or allowing alternative theories to be taught.

Jonathan Wells, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, a Seattle think tank that advocates Intelligent Design, told CT that he does not favor teaching students about ID because the theory is not fully developed yet.

Wells is correct that ID is not yet a fully developed scientific theory, but that's no reason not to present in the classroom the reasons why many people accept it. Neither the Big Bang nor String theory are completely understood, but we don't hesitate to teach their main points in the appropriate science classes. Nor is the incompleteness of ID a reason why students should not be taught the difficulties with Darwinism as well as its strengths. Indeed, Darwinism itself is a theory that has been mutating continuously since Charles Darwin first published Origin of Species in 1859, and, it could be argued, is itself still not fully worked out.

Viewpoint recommends that both ID and Darwinism be taught in high school biology classrooms as competing theories in the philosophy of biology. Teach students the difference between empirical investigation and the philosophy that undergirds it and show them how philosophical assumptions permeate all that scientists do and why science cannot be practiced or taught without bringing those philosophical assumptions into play. Students will find the controversy between the two explanations of origins fascinating, and they'll learn a lot of science and philosophy along the way. So will their teachers.

Finally

The long-awaited and strangely tardy autopsy report on Terri Schiavo will be released tomorrow, Wednesday, June 15th, according to the Washington Post.

We'll be surprised if there's anything in it that settles any of the big questions in dispute, chiefly the question whether Michael, her husband, abused her and perhaps caused the heart attack which led to her subsequent brain damage. Even so, we'll be interested to see what the coroner reports.

Sappy Nonsense

The Reverend Dr. N. Graham Standish offers a sterling illustration of how not to try to make your case. Along the way he employs several dubious tactics taken, no doubt, from Liberalism's manual on how to engage in political argumentation. He writes:

If you are a Christian, how should you vote, Republican or Democrat?

As a seminary student in the 1980s, the choice seemed clear, at least for many of my classmates. We could not be Christian and Republican. We especially could not be Christian and vote for Ronald Reagan. The only choice was to be a Democrat. You can imagine that I felt a bit odd being a registered Republican who happened to vote for Ronald Reagan ... twice. Apparently I wasn't much of a Christian back then.

How time changes everything. Today, Christians all over the country, in print and on conservative talk radio, suggest that the only political option for Christians is to be Republican. During the last election, churches nationwide urged their members, and Christians their friends, to vote for George W. Bush. They simultaneously attacked John Kerry's faith, suggesting that he should be barred from Roman Catholic communion because of his political beliefs. Apparently, to be a Christian now means to be a Republican.

This last sentence is disingenuous. It was Catholic bishops who determined that Kerry's position on abortion was outside the teaching of the Church and should therefore disqualify him to receive the sacrament. Does the Reverend Standish hold that the bishops should not be making such determinations? Moreover, to conclude from the fact that Kerry's pro-choice stance is not Catholic that therefore only Republicans can be Christians is a non-sequitur unless the Reverend believes that only Republicans can be pro-life and that only pro-lifers can be Christian.

Ironically, I left the Republican Party in 1992 and registered as an independent precisely because I sensed the Republican Party slipping away from the Christianity to which I had committed my life. Why? Among other things, I could no longer abide the Republican-sanctioned, Lee Atwater-orchestrated style of politics in which politicians attack, denigrate, eviscerate and even falsely accuse each other. This was a style of politics that became a mainstay of the 1988 elections and remains a staple of politics today. It skirts the issues in favor of assailing the character of the enemy.

These are charges frequently made but rarely supported. Exactly how have Republicans been involved in the type of campaigning where they "attack, denigrate, eviscerate and even falsely accuse" their opponents. Can the Reverend give us some examples?

This attack-and-accuse style of politics has grown fiercer over the years, yet it conflicts with a Christian Gospel that says "love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you and pray for those who persecute you," and to "be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing one another in love."

For a time I considered joining the Democratic Party, but they seemed to have little interest in people of faith, and my leanings are still more Republican than Democrat. I still share many of the Republican economic and social beliefs, but I'm left in a quandary, and I'm not alone.

Note that he doesn't balk at joining the Democrats because they, too, engage in dirty politics. The Democratic slanders of Bush's judicial nominees, the complete smearing of their characters, apparently doesn't faze the good parson.

There are millions of Christians who lean Republican, but have found that the Christianity of the Republican Party is a strand of Christianity that promotes a narrow Gospel, while ignoring much of what Christianity has always taught about caring for the poor, the virtues of sacrificing self for the welfare of others, and the need for humility, compassion and peace.

The "Christianity of the Republican Party"? Does the party have an official religion? The claim that Christians who are Republicans don't care for the poor, or sacrifice for others, and are not humble or compassionate is just plain stupid. Where is the evidence for such an incredibly arrogant and malicious claim? Were Republican Christians hesitant to give to tsunami relief last December? Has President Bush been niggardly in his commitments to solving the problems of the poor in Africa and the Middle East? How have the Democrats shown significantly greater levels of compassion and sacrifice than Republicans have? Dr. Standish declines to tell us.

Too many Republican Party leaders have aligned themselves with a fundamentalist brand of Protestant Christianity characterized by black-and-white, us-versus-them perspectives: we're saved, you're not; we're right, you're wrong; we conservatives are right and virtuous, you liberals are wrong and sinful.

Listen to Howard Dean the Chairman of the Democratic party: "I hate the Republican party and everything it stands for." Has anyone ever heard a Republican of high office ever say anything remotely close to something like this about his political opposition. Dean also claimed that the Republican party is the party of white Christians so presumably among the objects of his loathing are white Christians. He has also called Republicans "liars", "evil", "corrupt", and "brain-dead."

Hillary Clinton asserts that Republicans are "intent on abusing power, destroying the United states senate, and undermining our constitution." She didn't say that this would be the inadvertent consequence of Republican policies. No, that would have been too temperate. She said that Republicans were intent upon these goals. I.e. they deliberately intended to accomplish them.

Al Gore accused George Bush of having "betrayed this country", of having deliberately mislead us into a war that has claimed thousands of lives. This is an incredibly irresponsible and mean-spirited allegation unless Mr. Gore has some proof which, of course, he does not.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, while addressing an assembly of schoolchildren, called their president "a loser".

About these examples of Liberal rhetoric, which are probably fewer than a tenth of the examples which could be cited, the Reverend has nothing to say. He's either deaf to them or he's willfully unconcerned about them. Neither possibility is very flattering.

This kind of thinking bleeds into their political rhetoric as they assert a kind of divine mandate for proposed programs and platforms. The Republican Party has been guided in this way of politicking by fundamentalists like Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Ralph Reed, Rick Scarborough of the Patriot Pastors Network and James Dobson of Focus on the Family, among others, who have an agenda to make the United States a so-called "Christian" nation, with little room for Christians like me with different perspectives. Many of them call themselves evangelicals, despite the fact that the evangelical viewpoint actually is much broader and allows for much more diversity of opinion and belief.

What does the Reverend Standish mean when he states that these men are seeking to make the United States a Christian nation? He doesn't say. How does he know there'd be little room for Christians like him in such a nation if he doesn't even know what sort of nation it is that these men envision? Is it Christian to just throw out an accusation like this and not support it?

Fundamentalism isn't restricted to American politics. Religious fundamentalism has a grip on much of the world. We are in an international struggle against fundamentalist Muslim terrorists who want to create truly "Muslim" nations to counteract a modern world that has strayed too far from the Quran. Israel struggles to appease Jewish fundamentalists who believe that abandoning settlements in the West Bank erodes Israel's divine rights as a "Jewish" nation. Even the Roman Catholic Church is grappling with its own fundamentalists who want to return the church to its pre-Vatican II days.

Why do so many non-fundamentalist Christians follow fundamentalist agendas, especially when it comes to politics? One answer is that influential fundamentalists have learned to articulate rigid beliefs in a moderate and compelling language that softens the hardness of their position.

This is bad? I thought he wanted politicos to be conciliatory and gentle in their disputes. Doesn't the Reverend think it a good thing that disputants soften their rhetoric? Apparently not. The only good thing the other side can do, in his way of thinking, is abandon the principles they hold with which he disagrees.

For example, in Kansas fundamentalists have put their weight behind a proposal that "intelligent design" be taught in biology classes. Intelligent design is an idea that sounds very much like what the Roman Catholic Church and most mainline Protestant churches worldwide believe: that while evolution may be the mechanism of creation, God is the architect, engineer and project manager. Fundamentalists hope that the teaching of "intelligent design" in schools will take them one step closer to barring the teaching of evolution in schools. What they don't reveal is their belief that there is only one truth: their religious truth. There is little room for thinking that integrates the insights of both religion and science.

This is another libel. The moral and upright Rev. Doctor Standish has no grounds for his allegation that Intelligent Design supporters want to get evolution banned from schools. Everything they've said on the matter indicates otherwise. Perhaps, though, this is Standish's reasoning: Conservative Christians are liars. Conservative Christians deny any intent to ban evolution. Therefore, conservative Christians will ban evolution. How perspicuous of Rev. Standish to discern the subtle and insidious malice in conservative rhetoric. Of course, he can't come out and make his case this explicitly because then he'd be guilty of the kind of politics which employs the tactics of "attack, denigrate, eviscerate and even falsely accuse" that he condemns above. So he couches the whole smear in innuendo and implication.

Fundamentalists have also learned to employ an issue-reduction strategy using people and their stories to oversimplify complex issues in order to promote a fundamentalist ideology.

The Terry Schiavo case was a great example of this. Fundamentalists who heavily influence the Republican Party used her to reframe the issue of euthanasia by reducing it to a portrayal of a virtuous family trying to keep a disabled (they refused to call her comatose) woman alive, while her evil husband tried to kill her. They prompted the media and Republican rhetoric with all sorts of unsubstantiated accusations that Michael Schiavo was a greedy and abusive husband who wanted to kill Terry for his own personal gain. In doing so, they reduced the larger issue of euthanasia to a simple equation they hoped all would agree with: extending life is virtuous, while euthanasia is evil.

Well, the Reverend is a master of the "unsubstantiated allegation" so he probably knows one when he sees one, but even so, the allegations against Michael Schiavo were hardly unsubstantiated. They were borne out by several eyewitnesses to his attitude toward his wife. It is odd, too, that the Reverend chose this example. Saving Terri Schiavo was hardly a cause championed solely by "fundamentalists". It was embraced by most of the Roman Catholic Church, including the Pope, Jesse Jackson, and atheist libertarians Nat Hentoff and Christopher Hitchens. Perhaps Standish just wasn't paying very close attention.

What they didn't expect was that the majority of Americans, especially mainstream Christians, many of whom have grappled with end-of-life issues in their own families, believe that this issue is not so simple. They also never proposed an alternative Christian suggestion, one that is very much in keeping with the biblical mandate to make "every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace." What would have happened if Christians had encouraged this traumatized and divided family to seek reconciliation and to prayerfully discern an answer together? What if Republican politicians had united all of us behind this kind of solution rather than reducing the issue to a divisive one of good versus evil?

This is sappy nonsense. The Schindler family wasn't divided. They were firmly united against the machinations of Terri's husband to have her life ended for what they believed were self-interested reasons. If they were right, then it was indeed an issue of good versus evil. Does Standish have some sort of inside knowledge into the matter that proves that the Schindlers were wrong? If so, he should state it. If not, then he sounds every bit as judgmental of those who felt that this was an unjust taking of a human life as the fundamentalists he's so fond of deprecating.

Isn't it odd, by the way, that Standish, after having criticized the Republicans earlier for not caring enough about the weak and the helpless, for not having enough compassion, now criticizes them for having too much? He seems to be a very confused man.

This current mixture of Christianity and politics is troublesome because the more religion identifies with a particular political movement, the more that movement erodes religion. Politics, by its very nature, is a realm that is often tainted by pride and a desire for power that can bring out the worst in humans because the pursuit of power corrupts. It's for this reason that Jesus said we should render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's, and render unto God that which is God's. Mixing politics and religion causes too many people to confuse Caesar's empire with God's kingdom.

Reverend Standish says something sensible here. Now we shall look forward to his protests when Democrats start showing up in black churches, as they always do, to preach the political gospel of good Democrats versus evil Republicans next campaign season. We're sure he'll have a sharp eye out for these illicit marriages of politics to religion.

Religion does have a place in political discourse, yet Christians need to be sure they don't confuse a politically expedient position with God's position. God's position is often unclear, especially in many of the gray areas of life. Presenting one political party as "the Christian party" is particularly troublesome because distilling religious faith down to political terms drains religion of its ability to lead people to move beyond a politics of self-interest.

Party affiliation doesn't make a person a Christian. There are millions of Christians who serve Christ faithfully as members of both major political parties; for each party represents particular concerns of Christianity, but neither captures them entirely. The Republicans are not the Christian party, even if millions of Christians are Republicans.

Of course Republicans never claimed to be the Christian party. It is their opponents, like Howard Dean, who keep making that claim in an attempt to somehow discredit Republicans among secular-minded people.

I believe that those of us who are Christian and take politics seriously need to resist the tendency to align our beliefs too strongly with any particular political movement.

Christians need to find a way to take the Gospel seriously, while simultaneously avoiding the assumption that one political party can embody the concerns of our faith. And if we are true to our faith, we need to embrace a political stance that expects politicians to seek solutions in line with our beliefs, and in a way that seeks unity rather than division.

Liberals like Standish have a test for whether the behaviour of politicians conduces to "unity rather than division." It is this: If politicians hold to principle and refuse to yield to the demands of their opposition then they are divisive. If they fail to come around to the way of thinking approved by such luminaries as Reverend Standish then they are divisive. If they believe that there is good and there is evil, and that evil should be opposed, then they are divisive. And, above all, if they are conservative, then they are divisive.

Perhaps it is time to expect more from Republican and Democratic politicians, demanding that if they proclaim a Christian mantle, they begin acting with Christian regard for others, even their enemies, even each other.

Even for Terri Schiavo?

The Reverend Doctor N. Graham Standish nicely illustrates the Left's favored mode of political polemic: Make accusations but offer no supporting evidence. Accuse your target of heinous behavior but give no examples. Misrepresent them whenever possible. Claim the moral high ground but offer no justification for placing yourself there.

Perhaps, to quote the Reverend, it is time to "expect more from our [clergy], demanding that if they proclaim a Christian mantle, they begin acting with Christian regard for others, even their enemies, even each other."

The Nutty Professor

The United States isn't the only country afflicted with history professors on leave from the local asylum. Read this interview with Egyptian History professor Zaynab Abd Al-Aziz on Saudi television to get a sense for how detached some people are from any semblance of reality:

Abd Al-Aziz: "The decision to impose one religion over the entire world was made in the Second Vatican Council in 1965."

Host: "Huh?"

Abd Al-Aziz: "Yes. A long time ago."

Host: "They decided to Christianize the world?"

Abd Al-Aziz: "Yes. The decisions of the 1965 Vatican Council included, first of all, absolving the Jews of the blood of Christ. This decision is well known and was the basis for the recognition of the occupying Zionist entity - Israel. The second decision was to eradicate the left in the eighties. I believe we've all witnessed this. The third decision was to eradicate Islam, so that the world would be Christianized by the third millennium."

Host: "Why is America hostile to Islam, although we never had and never will have the same conflict with them we had with Europe?"

Abd Al-Aziz: "Well, do you remember what we just said about the Second Vatican Council in 1965 and about Christianizing the world? It was agreed upon and pre-arranged. John Paul II prepared a five-year plan, on the eve of the third millennium, Christianize the world. His address in 1995 was based on the assumption that by the year 2000, the entire world would be Christianized. Since the plan was not accomplished, the World Council of Churches assigned this mission to the US in January 2001, since the US is the world's unrivaled military power. They named the decade between 2001-2010 "the age of eradicating evil" - "evil" referring to Islam and Muslims.

"The Crusader war is ongoing, because it has been a religious war since the dawn of Islam. Later, colonialism, missionaries, and Christianization were introduced. The Crusader war is ongoing. The Inquisition courts exist to this day. As I told you, the pope who was appointed a few days ago, headed the Inquisition Court, which is now called the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

"When in January 2001, the World Council of Churches delegated this mission to the US - what did the US do? It fabricated the show of... is it September 9 or 11?"

Host: "11. Please explain this to me."

Abd Al-Aziz: "Yes, of course..."

Host: "You mean to say that the World Council of Churches delegated the mission of Christianizing of the world to the US."

Abd Al-Aziz: "Yes. And how could the US win legitimacy for this without anyone saying that they are perpetrating massacres and waging a Crusader war? It fabricated the 9/11 show. I call it a fabrication because much has been written on this. We are also to blame. Why do we accept a single perspective? Countless books were written, some of which were even translated into Arabic, like Thierry Meyssan's 9/11 - The Appalling Fraud [2] and Pentagate. "Pentagate" like Watergate... He brings documents to prove that the method used in destroying the three (sic) towers was "controlled demolition.

"This is an architectural engineering theory, which was invented by the Americans. They teach it in their universities. They make movies and documentaries about it. They incorporated it in movie scenarios and then carried it out in real life. Why do we accept this?"

Host: "My God, doctor. This is unbelievable! You're saying that this destruction..."

Abd Al-Aziz: "...was a controlled demolition. The building collapsed in its place, without hitting a single building to its left or right. The three towers fell in place."

Host: "In the same method they use in movies and plays?"

Abd Al-Aziz: "Yes, Exactly like that. That is how the US won international legitimacy. You could sense the (9/11) operation was pre-planned because many things were revealed in the days that followed. For example 4,000 Jews caught influenza on that exact day. They set a timer, and all 4,000..."

Host: "By God, you crack me up! They all set a timer and got influenza on the same day. So the building was completely empty of Jews."

Abd Al-Aziz: "Much has been written about this. 150 Congressmen demanded an inquiry."

We have to give credit to the host of this show for not taking his guest seriously. Let's hope that there's no fatwah issued against him by the mullahs to punish him for his insolence.

The host's obvious amusement causes us to try to imagine how much fun it would be to be able to sit in on an international conclave of history professors with speakers like this guy, Ward Churchill, and other inmates from the state hospital for the psychologically dysfunctional holding forth. It'd be a real hoot.

Savagery at Gitmo

TIME Magazine has blown the lid off the secret horrors that transpire everyday at Guantanamo Naval Base in Cuba with the publication of an interrogation log detailing the military's treatment of the "20th hijacker" Mohammed al-Qahtani. Those who accuse the military of systematic atrocities will have new ammunition with the release of this log:

Al-Qahtani's resilience under pressure in the fall of 2002 led top officials at Gitmo to petition Washington for more muscular "counter resistance strategies." On Dec. 2, Rumsfeld approved 16 of 19 stronger coercive methods. Now the interrogators could use stress strategies like standing for prolonged periods, isolation for as long as 30 days, removal of clothing, forced shaving of facial hair, playing on "individual phobias" (such as dogs) and "mild, non-injurious physical contact such as grabbing, poking in the chest with the finger and light pushing." According to the log, al-Qahtani experienced several of those over the next five weeks. The techniques Rumsfeld balked at included "use of a wet towel or dripping water to induce the misperception of suffocation." "Our Armed Forces are trained," a Pentagon memo on the changes read, "to a standard of interrogation that reflects a tradition of restraint." Nevertheless, the log shows that interrogators poured bottles of water on al-Qahtani's head when he refused to drink. Interrogators called this game "Drink Water or Wear It."

Brutal. Absolutely brutal, what they're doing to this poor boy down there in Cuba. What al-Qahtani underwent was as horrible as, well, as what most of us went through at the hands of our Phys-ed teachers back in the insensitive sixties.

After the new measures are approved, the mood in al-Qahtani's interrogation booth changes dramatically. The interrogation sessions lengthen. The quizzing now starts at midnight, and when Detainee 063 dozes off, interrogators rouse him by dripping water on his head or playing Christina Aguilera music.

Okay. I admit the Christina Aguilera music might be a bit hard to defend. It certainly violates the spirit, if not the letter, of the Geneva Conventions.

According to the log, his handlers at one point perform a puppet show "satirizing the detainee's involvement with al-Qaeda." He is taken to a new interrogation booth, which is decorated with pictures of 9/11 victims, American flags and red lights. He has to stand for the playing of the U.S. national anthem. His head and beard are shaved. He is returned to his original interrogation booth. A picture of a 9/11 victim is taped to his trousers. Al-Qahtani repeats that he will "not talk until he is interrogated the proper way." At 7 a.m. on Dec. 4, after a 12-hour, all-night session, he is put to bed for a four-hour nap, TIME reports.

A Puppet Show! Do they have no mercy? It makes one ashamed to be an American. I wonder if they had some of the puppets in black hoods cut off the head of another terrified puppet who confessed to being an infidel.

Then the ultimate humiliation. They make him stand for the national anthem. I feel faint.

Over the next few days, al-Qahtani is subjected to a drill known as Invasion of Space by a Female, and he becomes especially agitated by the close physical presence of a woman. Then, around 2 p.m. on Dec. 6, comes another small breakthrough. He asks his handlers for some paper. "I will tell the truth," he says. "I am doing this to get out of here." He finally explains how he got to Afghanistan in the first place and how he met with bin Laden. In return, the interrogators honor requests from him to have a blanket and to turn off the air conditioner.

Being physically close to a woman he couldn't beat up or shoot was evidently very stressful for the young man. Should we be putting detainees into such unaccustomed positions? What if the woman had bad breath? How would you like it?

And what was that about air conditioning? Air conditioning? For terrorists?

Soon enough, the pressure ratchets up again. Various strategies of intimidation are employed anew. The log reveals that a dog is present, but no details are given beyond a hazy reference to a disagreement between the military police and the dog handler. Agitated, al-Qahtani takes back the story he told the day before about meeting bin Laden, TIME reports.

A dog is present. Uh oh. Was the dog used to make the terrorist uneasy? To frighten him, perhaps? Those interrogators are sure big on irony, aren't they?

Well, after reading this article we agree with Jimmy Carter and others who are calling for Gitmo to be shut down. We have enough country club prisons paid for by American taxpayers.

TIME's scoop can be read in its entirety here.

A Special Three-Pointer

This is a great story. Don't miss it.

Thanks to Michelle Malkin for the tip.

Consequentialist Ethics

Evangelical Outpost recently featured a discussion of consequentialist ethics, the view that the rightness of an act is a function of the consequences it produces and not the motive behind the act. A specific example of this type of ethics is utilitarianianism, the view that an act is right if it maximizes happiness. That is, if it produces the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest number of people. Utilitarianism is one of the dominant schools of thought in our universities and law schools today. Even so, it is seriously flawed.

Imago Dei features a post which illustrates the failure of utilitarianism:

Let me offer a scenario that, unfortunately, affects the way I perform in my career every single day. There is no greater honor that I have that my patients trust me to give them anesthetic medications and perform surgery while they sleep. I believe it is a great crime, worthy of great punishment, when that trust is broken in cases where a patient is inappropriately touched while anesthetized by a doctor like this. To be specific I am discussing a scenario when a doctor fondles a female patient while they are asleep for surgery. I believe this is one of the most immoral acts a doctor can perform.

However, according to utilitarian ethical theory, if the patient does not find out about the fondling, was an immoral act committed? After all, the patient has suffered no physical harm, and she has no awareness that anything occurred in that scenario. According to [consequentialism]:

"the consequentialist emphasis leads to a position of moral tolerance for any kind of behavior until it results in tangible good or harm to a person, at which point moral evaluation is required. (Rule-bound moralists, on the other hand, have to spend their entire time checking every act and circumstance to see whether someone, somewhere, is having a good time - so they can put a stop to it.)"

Since there was no "tangible harm" that was done to the patient, there is no basis in which to state the doctor's actions were immoral. In fact, one could argue that since the doctor received some tangible pleasure from the experience, and the patient suffered no tangible harm, that is actions were actually moral. His actions increased the overall pleasure from the situation, and no tangible harm to another occurred. In other words, only positive consequences happen as long as the patient remains unaware of what has occurred.

But it gets even stranger. Lets say a nurse walks by the room and witnesses the doctor fondling his asleep patient. What is she to do? If she does not tell the patient or turn in the doctor, moral "good" appears to be maximized. The patient would remain unaware, and would not suffer the emotional trauma in knowing that she had been innappropriately touched. The doctor would not suffer harm or prosecution if she stays quiet. The moral "good" would be maximized by her keeping the fondling a secret.

In other words, she would have a moral obligation to keep quiet. Remember, it is not the act itself which is either moral or immoral; it is the consequences of the act. If she stays quiet, she decreases (or maybe even eliminates) the harm from the act, and if she informs the patient and the authorities, she increases the harm from the act. Clearly, from a utilitarian viewpoint, the moral thing for her to do is to stay quiet, and the immoral thing to do would be to inform the patient.

In fact, her actions in telling the patient could be considered even more immoral than the doctor's. I would argue that the doctor caused no tangible harm as long as the patient remains unaware of what happened. Therefore, the harm that occurs from the scenario is not the act of fondling itself, but the patient being informed of the act. The nurse is the one who is responsible for creating the harm if she tells the truth about the situation to the patient.

I give anesthetic meds to over 20 patients a week who place their absolute trust in me and my office staff. Do you believe they would agree with the utilitarian ethic as described here? Is there something intrinsically immoral in fondling an asleep patient, or is the morality based solely on the consequences (or lack thereof) of such an act? Would anyone trust a physician who they knew ascribed to a utilitarian ethical theory to perform surgery on them?

Any theory that results in such blatantly absurd conclusions needs to be rejected. Utilitarianism and Consequentialism fail miserably on this account.

There are other reasons for rejecting consequentialism as well. For example, how do we determine which consequences are to be aimed for? Should we pursue happiness, pleasure or justice? What standard enables us to choose between them? The classic utilitarians opted for the first two, but consider this true story:

Some years ago four young men in L.A. were arrested and charged with homicide. Their crime was that they would travel into the areas of the city where they could find some homeless derelict and they would take him up on a tenement roof, play music, drink, tell stories and in general show the poor man a great time until he was thoroughly besotted and oblivious to what was happening. The young men would then culminate the evening by pushing the fellow off the roof and watching him fall to his death on the pavement below.

Assume these guys never got caught. Assume that no one was made unhappy by their act (the victim, remember, was so inebriated that he didn't know what was happening to him), and that they were made happy by carrying out their executions. How does a consequentialist avoid the conclusion that there was nothing wrong with what they did?

Here's another problem. This story is taken from Lewis Smedes' Mere Morality. In the wake of WWII a German woman, innocent of any crime, was nevertheless interned in a Soviet detention camp. As time went on she realized there was little chance of her being released. She took a chance, however, and seduced a guard, got pregnant, and petitioned for release on the basis of her pregnancy. Release was indeed granted and she was reunited with her family which was delirious with joy to have her back. They raised the child whom they loved and called their freedom child. Did the woman do the right thing? The utilitarian would have to say yes. No one was hurt and everyone's happiness was increased.

But suppose she had done what she did and gotten pregnant but was then denied release from the camp. Suppose further that she had contracted syphilis from the guard which she then passed on to her child who suffered terribly from the disease. Suppose both mother and child lived a miserable existence in the prison camp until they died. Now the utilitarian has to say that she did the wrong thing because no one, except perhaps the guard, is happier and everyone involved is unhappier. But how does she know whether her act is right or wrong when she does it? She can't because she can't know all the consequences before they occur. Shakespeare built a considerable reputation writing plays which illustrate just this difficulty.

The consequentialist can give us no reason for choosing the particular consequence we aim for. He can, if he's a utilitarian, offer no reason why someone is wrong to do a grave injustice if it makes more people happy, and he can offer no way of evaluating the rightness of the act until all the consequences are known, something which may take generations to ascertain.

Finally, utilitarianism suffers from an even more fundamental flaw, one which afflicts every non-egoistic system of ethics based on human reason. It can give no explanation why we should seek to promote the happiness of others rather than simply promote our own happiness. In other words, it can give no answer to the question, why should I care about other people? Utilitarians just assume that all thoughtful people will agree that we should care about other people's welfare, but when pressed to give a reason why we should they simply cannot produce one that makes any sense.

The decision to treat other people in a fashion likely to increase their happiness is a purely arbitrary choice on the part of the agent, grounded in nothing more than irrational or non-rational preferences and biases. If someone makes the choice to be a complete egoist the utilitarian has no grounds for claiming him to be wrong. The most the utilitarian can say is that he's simply made a different choice, one which the utilitarian personally dislikes.

None of this is to say that consequences are not important in deciding matters of moral import. Of course they are. But they are not all that matters. It is perhaps as incorrect to say that consequences don't matter at all as it is to say that they are all that matters.

Ken Taylor, 1917-2005

Kenneth Nathaniel Taylor, who founded Tyndale House Publishers after he had been unable to find a company willing to publish his Bible paraphrases, died at age 88 on Friday. Tyndale House is now a leading publisher of Christian books and resources. Taylor's biblical paraphrase, which became The Living Bible, sold more than 40 million copes in North America alone.

In 1950, Taylor also founded the Christian Booksellers Association, a trade association of Christian stores, publishers, and other retail companies now known simply as CBA. He also created the missions organizations Evangelical Literature Overseas and Short Terms Abroad (which merged with Seattle-based Intercristo in 1976).

A brief account of Taylor's life can be found at the link.

Who-Dean-ie?

There is a struggle going on for the soul of the Democratic Party. One way this struggle reveals itself is in the conflict over who, exactly, Howard Dean should be.

On the one hand there are left-wing zealots like TruthOut.org's John Corey who proclaims that he loves Howard Dean just as he is, especially as he has been exhibiting himself over the past few weeks. The Howard Dean who has declared that he hates Republicans, who alleges that Republicans haven't worked an honest day in their lives, who derides the Republican party for being a bunch of white Christians, is the Dean who was elected Chairman of the DNC, and it's who he should remain.

Corey is exasperated that his fellow Democrats seem to be disavowing Dean's attacks upon Republicans. He writes:

So what is the topic that grabs the news and the Democratic leadership's attention? Howard Dean said something mean. Extra! Extra! Read all about it!

Bush lied and people died. Nope - not news. Ohio Republicans involved in financial and voting scandal. Nope - not news. Republicans jam Democratic phone lines during 2004 election to stop the vote. Republicans hack into Democratic computers. No news there. Tom Delay has repeated ethical lapses and takes money from lobbyists like Jack Abramoff. Nope - not news. The White House edits critical environmental reports to refute scientific fact. Nope - no news there.

Wait a minute - this just in: Howard Dean said something mean. Oh my God! Stop the presses! Did you hear? Dean has gone mean, pass it on. Get Candy Crowley at CNN and Chris Matthews at MSNBC. Don't forget Scarborough. This is a week's worth of programming! Get Holy Joe Lieberman to speak for the good Democrats. Get Jive-Joe Biden, he'll be good for a sensible quote to contrast with the madness of Howard "Beal" Dean.

Quick, do you know why Republicans are against federal money for stem cell research? They're afraid the Democrats will use it to grow a spine. (ba-da-boom)

The Dainty Dems of Petticoat Junction got their knickers in a twist because Howard Dean spoke harshly about Republicans. Not that any of the Democratic leadership heard what Dean said or even asked him what he said. No, they got it from talk radio or from someone with good hair and white teeth on TV, or from some other reliable source.

I don't give a crap whether or not you like Howard Dean. It's about damned time the Democratic Party quit sucking up to corporations and Republicans and began sticking up for the people! You remember, we the people? Of the people, by the people, and for the people? It is there somewhere in a government document, as I recall. Make a Freedom of Information request and maybe one of your new conservative judges will let you look at it under the glass where they keep it.

You want to hold Howard Dean accountable for what he says, fine. How about holding Bush accountable for what he does? I want someone who will stand up not stand down. I want someone outspoken and outrageous and out there, for me. I want someone on my side, not on my back for more money. I want someone who fights, not folds at the first sign of fake indignation.

To paraphrase my good friend Titus: You whiny Democratic Leadership wussies - get down off the cross and use the wood to build a bridge to get over it! We love Howard Dean!

On the other hand there are the mainstream liberal Democrats who themselves have to stand up for election. They don't disagree with what Dean says, of course, they'd just rather he not say it. It's unnecessarily distracting and counterproductive since they find themselves constantly having to defend Dean's remarks to the press. A recent L.A. Times piece said this:

[A]t a private meeting Thursday on Capitol Hill, a number of worried Senate Democrats warned Dean that he had been going overboard and needed to choose his words more carefully.

The former Vermont governor and unsuccessful presidential candidate recently referred to the GOP as "pretty much a white, Christian party" and declared that a lot of Republicans have "never made an honest living in their lives."

Sen. Russell D. Feingold (D-Wis.) said that at the Capitol Hill meeting, "there couldn't be any doubt that there was some concern, even by Dean himself," about how his comments had been received.

Also Thursday, two Democrats seen as rising stars - Rep. Harold Ford of Tennessee and Virginia Gov. Mark R. Warner - made a point of distancing themselves from Dean's remarks. Ford, who plans a Senate run next year, said on the Don Imus radio show that if Dean could not "temper his comments, it may get to the point where the party may need to look elsewhere for leadership, because he does not speak for me."

Ford later told The Times that Dean was "leading us in a direction that makes it difficult to win.... His leadership right now is not serving any of us very well." Warner, who has been mentioned as a possible 2008 presidential candidate, said Dean was using "not the kind of tone that I would use, not the kind of tone a lot of the Democratic governors in mostly Republican states are using to get elected or to govern."

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said on her way into the Capitol Hill meeting with Dean that he "ought to stick to organization, raising funds and supporting Democrats, rather than creating friction and splitting the party." She added that she would advise Dean to "cool it."

Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), up for reelection next year, said that he cautioned Dean "not to get caught up in the Washington game of political polarization."

"This is a learning process," Sen. Joseph Biden said. If Dean were to continue to make the sort of comments he has made recently, he said, "he might find himself in a real difficult situation. But I think you'll see him be a little more careful in how he phrases things. Do I think this has caused long-term damage for the Democratic Party? No. If it becomes the steady diet for the next three years? Yeah."

So the question is, whose advice will Dean heed? Who will Howard Dean be for the next three years? Will he be the moderate, reasonable, sagacious leader the mainstream Democratic politicos want him to be, or will he be the down and dirty, punch 'em below the belt brawler that the far left foot soldiers want him to remain? Dean's reply to this question is going to make one faction or the other very unhappy, and could precipitate an enervating and self-destructive internecine conflict among Democrats. That'd be too bad.

The Most Harmful Book Ever Written

Regarding the Ten Most Harmful Books list to which we alluded a few days ago, Joe Carter at Evangelical Outpost writes that the most harmful book ever written wasn't in the top ten and didn't even make honorable mention. Check out his argument here.

An Offer Difficult to Refuse

Strategy Page explains how the war against the Sunni terrorists in Iraq is proceeding. Apparently Iraqi government representatives are offering the Sunnis in town after town a choice which many are finding difficult to refuse:

June 9, 2005: More towns in Iraqi's "wild west" are making peace with the government. The usual drill is not another Fallujah, but a government official meeting with local tribal and religious leaders, where an offer is made. It is announced that Iraqi and American troops are coming. Neighborhoods that support the government will see little or no fighting as a search is made for weapons, bombs and the like. Neighborhoods that wish to resist will be hit hard.

By now, everyone knows how smart bombs work. Increasingly, Sunni Arab leaders are being told, by their followers, that all this violence is not worth it. After Saddam fell, Sunni Arabs continued to believe in fantasies. For the last two years, the collective delusion was that the Americans had no stomach for guerilla war, and the Kurds and Shia Arabs could never get a government together.

Today, Sunni Arabs who can get away on a little vacation, go north to the Kurdish north, or south to Shia Basra. In both places you can sit in an outdoor cafe without fear of a suicide bomb going off down the street. The Kurds and Shia have more jobs, more reconstruction and less crime. The Sunni Arabs don't want to live in their own mess any more. They don't want to live in a combat zone, especially while the Kurds and Shia are not.

For Sunni Arabs to support the government, it often means fighting with the terrorist groups, and sometimes the criminal gangs they are allied with. The government offer includes help in building up local security. It has not gone unnoticed that Iraqi police are a lot more effective than they were a year ago. The government also has police commandoes who can go into any area, no matter how well defended, and take out terrorists or other heavily armed enemies. No longer does the government have to depend on the Americans for this sort of thing.

Read the rest at the link. Also check out the post for June 7th.

Standing Sentinel Over the Public Square

The state of Vermont has joined forces with those seeking to stifle and suppress any and all expressions of religion, no matter how subtle, in the public square. In what is a particularly funny example of bureaucratic dull-wittedness the keen-eyed authorities in Vermont have descried a nefarious threat to American democracy and a possible plot to establish a Christian theocracy in their fair state:

BURLINGTON - A federal judge said Tuesday he isn't sure many people will understand the religious message from the vanity license plate a West Rutland man has filed a lawsuit to get for his 1966 Ford pickup. Shawn Byrne filed his lawsuit against the state Department of Motor Vehicles in January after the state rejected his request for a vanity license plate.

The state contended, and Byrne's lawyers have since conceded that two of his requests on his vanity plate application, "JOHN316" and "JN316" did not adhere to a provision for vanity plates in Vermont that they not contain more than two numerals to avoid confusion with standard-issued license plates. However, the state also rejected Byrne's third vanity license plate choice, "JN36TN," arguing that it contains a religious viewpoint. Byrne's attorneys argued the denial of the plate is a violation of his First Amendment rights.

Federal Magistrate Judge Jerome J. Niedermeier said during a hearing in the case Tuesday that he wasn't sure people looking at such a vanity plate would immediately realize it was reference to a bible passage. "It takes a little mental gymnastics to get to the point of what it refers to," Niedermeier said of the requested vanity plate, "JN36TN."

The judge listened to arguments Tuesday for about 45 minutes in federal court in Burlington from attorneys on both sides of the matter. No rulings were made Tuesday. "Obviously, it's a very intriguing and interesting issue," Niedermeier said. "We'll take it under advisement and issue a decision as soon as we can."

Byrne is represented by attorney Jeremy Tedesco of the Arizona-based Alliance Defense Fund, a conservative organization that states it defends religious liberty. Assistant Attorney General Harvey Golubock argued the case for the state Department of Motor Vehicles. Tedesco asked the judge to grant a preliminary injunction against the state, allowing Byrne to get his requested vanity plate.

"This is a straightforward case of viewpoint discrimination," Tedesco said in court. The attorney said Byrne wants to put the vanity plate on his restored 1966 Ford pickup. "He wants people to understand God has given him the gifts to do it," Tedesco said of Byrne's restoration effort.

"John 3:16" refers to a Bible scripture passage, "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." Tedesco added that while the state does own the license plates it issues, it doesn't own the message people pay to put on a vanity license plate. "The message is associated with the person behind the wheel," the attorney said.

The state has asked that the motion for a preliminary injunction be denied, and requested that the lawsuit be dismissed. "The state doesn't want to be in the business of endorsing a particular religion or deity," Golubock said. The assistant attorney general said that Byrne has other options for expressing his viewpoint, including putting a bumper sticker on his vehicle. "He could paint it on the side of the car," Guluback added. "The state wouldn't have a problem with that."

According to the lawsuit, when Byrne applied to the state DMV for a vanity license plate he was asked to list three choices on the application. Byrne listed "JOHN316," "JN316" and "JN36TN." The application also asked Byrne what his request represented and he wrote, "Bible passage."

A month after applying for the plate Byrne received notice from the state DMV stating that all three requests had been turned down. Vermont regulations state that license plates are not allowed to have a combination of letters or numbers that refer to any language to race, religion, color, deity, ethnic heritage, gender, sexual orientation, disability status or political affiliation.

About 35,000 vanity plates are issued in Vermont. Payment of an annual fee of $30, in addition to the annual fee for registration, is required for vanity plates. Byrne's attorneys listed in court filings a series of Vermont vanity plates seen on vehicles which appear to convey religious messages. Those plates include: "HIREPWR," "PSALM," and "RI-CHUS," which presumably refer to 'higher power,' the books of Psalms in the Bible, and righteous, according to Tedesco.

"The mere fact that the state makes mistakes doesn't mean the state can't regulate license plates," Golubock said in court Tuesday.

The taxpayers of Vermont should be pleased with the vigilance of Assistant Attorney General Golubock who, at some expense to the public treasury, no doubt, tirelessly labors to ensure that the state of Vermont will not on his watch be infected by anything Christian. Evidently, real crime is so low in Vermont that Mr. Golubock has plenty of time to spend on these more insidious matters. He's certainly earning his six figure salary.

Thanks to Andrew Sullivan for the tip.

Public Confidence Falling

A recent Gallup poll shows public confidence in both the news media and in public officials plummeting:

Public trust in newspapers and television news continued to decline in Gallup's annual survey of "public confidence in major institutions" in the United States, reaching an all-time low this year. Those having a "great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in newspapers dipped from 30% to 28% in one year, the same total for television. The previous low for newspapers was 29% in 1994. Since 2000, confidence in newspapers has declined from 37% to 28%, and TV from 36% to 28%, according to the poll.

However, some other institutions fared far worse this year, suggesting a broad level of cynicism or malaise. Confidence in the presidency plunged from 52% to 44%, with Congress and the criminal-justice system also suffering 8% drops. Confidence in the U.S. Supreme Court fell from 46% to 41%. The 22% confidence rating for Congress is its lowest in eight years, and self-identified Republicans have only a slightly more positive view of the institution than do Democrats.

The military topped the poll with a 74% confidence rating, with the police at 63% and organized religion at 53%. Big business and Congress (both at 22%) and HMOs (17%) brought up the rear.

Part of the reason for the drop, we suspect, is that since cynicism and skepticism convey an air of sophistication, many people who haven't read anything in a newspaper but the comics and sports pages in the last ten years will nevertheless answer a poll question about their confidence in the media with supercilious disdain. It makes them feel vaguely superior.

The same goes for political figures. It would be interesting to know how many of those who answered that they have little confidence in Congress, say, can even name their own senators.

Another part of the reason for the low esteem in which the fourth estate is held, of course, is that they deserve it. People who pay attention to the news are often dismayed at the tendentious reporting and blatant dishonesty of much of what they see and hear.

People want their news to be objective and they want editorial writers to be fair. With the rise of alternative media news consumers today are much more likely than their parents were to learn that they're being hoodwinked by the MSM, and consequently the media no longer enjoys the popularity or credibility that it once did.

Athenians and Visigoths

Neil Postman has been gone for some time now but he once wrote a commencement speech which Joe Carter has posted at Evangelical Outpost. Joe says this:

While it could be argued that youth is wasted on the young, it is indisputable that commencement addresses are wasted on young graduates. Sitting in a stuffy auditorium waiting to receive a parchment that marks the beginning of one's student loan repayments is not the most conducive atmosphere for soaking up wisdom. Insight, which can otherwise seep through the thickest of skulls, cannot pierce mortarboard.

Most colleges and universities recognize this fact and schedule the graduation speeches accordingly. Schools regularly choose speakers who are unlikely to motivate, inspire, or provide advice that will be remembered after the post-graduation hangover. That is why graduates are subjected to such deep thinkers as film director Spike Lee (University of Miami), actor Warren Beatty (U.C. -Berkeley), and novelist Erica Jong (The College of Staten Island). Calvin College made the mistake of inviting philosopher Nicholas Wolterstorff to the latest ceremony before recognizing their error and bumping him for a less intellectually rigorous orator.

Although he had been forced to sit through dozens of such speeches, the late communications theorist Neil Postman was never invited to provide a commencement address. He did prepare some remarks, though, that he planned to use if ever given the opportunity. In typical Postman fashion he even provides it as a true "open source" document: "If you think my graduation speech is good, I hereby grant you permission to use it, without further approval from or credit to me, should you be in an appropriate situation."

Postman's graduation speech is good. Too good, in fact, to be wasted on the young.

Carter is right about the speech. Here it is:

Members of the faculty, parents, guests, and graduates, have no fear. I am well aware that on a day of such high excitement, what you require, first and foremost, of any speaker is brevity. I shall not fail you in this respect. There are exactly eighty-five sentences in my speech, four of which you have just heard. It will take me about twelve minutes to speak all of them and I must tell you that such economy was not easy for me to arrange, because I have chosen as my topic the complex subject of your ancestors.

Not, of course, your biological ancestors, about whom I know nothing, but your spiritual ancestors, about whom I know a little. To be specific, I want to tell you about two groups of people who lived many years ago but whose influence is still with us. They were very different from each other, representing opposite values and traditions. I think it is appropriate for you to be reminded of them on this day because, sooner than you know, you must align yourself with the spirit of one or the spirit of the other.

The first group lived about 2,500 years ago in the place which we now call Greece, in a city they called Athens. We do not know as much about their origins as we would like. But we do know a great deal about their accomplishments.

They were, for example, the first people to develop a complete alphabet, and therefore they became the first truly literate population on earth. They invented the idea of political democracy, which they practiced with a vigor that puts us to shame. They invented what we call philosophy. And they also invented what we call logic and rhetoric. They came very close to inventing what we call science, and one of them, Democritus by name, conceived of the atomic theory of matter 2,300 years before it occurred to any modern scientist. They composed and sang epic poems of unsurpassed beauty and insight. And they wrote and performed plays that, almost three millennia later, still have the power to make audiences laugh and weep. They even invented what, today, we call the Olympics, and among their values none stood higher than that in all things one should strive for excellence. They believed in reason. They believed in beauty. They believed in moderation. And they invented the word and the idea which we know today as ecology.

About 2,000 years ago, the vitality of their culture declined and these people began to disappear. But not what they had created. Their imagination, art, politics, literature, and language spread all over the world so that, today, it is hardly possible to speak on any subject without repeating what some Athenian said on the matter 2,500 years ago.

The second group of people lived in the place we now call Germany, and flourished about 1,700 years ago. We call them the Visigoths, and you may remember that your sixth or seventh-grade teacher mentioned them. They were spectacularly good horsemen, which is about the only pleasant thing history can say of them. They were marauders-ruthless and brutal. Their language lacked subtlety and depth. Their art was crude and even grotesque. They swept down through Europe destroying everything in their path, and they overran the Roman Empire. There was nothing a Visigoth liked better than to burn a book, desecrate a building, or smash a work of art. From the Visigoths, we have no poetry, no theater, no logic, no science, no humane politics.

Like the Athenians, the Visigoths also disappeared, but not before they had ushered in the period known as the Dark Ages. It took Europe almost a thousand years to recover from the Visigoths.

Now, the point I want to make is that the Athenians and the Visigoths still survive, and they do so through us and the ways in which we conduct our lives. All around us-in this hall, in this community, in our city-there are people whose way of looking at the world reflects the way of the Athenians, and there are people whose way is the way of the Visigoths. I do not mean, of course, that our modern-day Athenians roam abstractedly through the streets reciting poetry and philosophy, or that the modern-day Visigoths are killers. I mean that to be an Athenian or a Visigoth is to organize your life around a set of values. An Athenian is an idea. And a Visigoth is an idea. Let me tell you briefly what these ideas consist of.

To be an Athenian is to hold knowledge and, especially the quest for knowledge in high esteem. To contemplate, to reason, to experiment, to question-these are, to an Athenian, the most exalted activities a person can perform. To a Visigoth, the quest for knowledge is useless unless it can help you to earn money or to gain power over other people.

To be an Athenian is to cherish language because you believe it to be humankind's most precious gift. In their use of language, Athenians strive for grace, precision, and variety. And they admire those who can achieve such skill. To a Visigoth, one word is as good as another, one sentence in distinguishable from another. A Visigoth's language aspires to nothing higher than the clich�.

To be an Athenian is to understand that the thread which holds civilized society together is thin and vulnerable; therefore, Athenians place great value on tradition, social restraint, and continuity. To an Athenian, bad manners are acts of violence against the social order. The modern Visigoth cares very little about any of this. The Visigoths think of themselves as the center of the universe. Tradition exists for their own convenience, good manners are an affectation and a burden, and history is merely what is in yesterday's newspaper.

To be an Athenian is to take an interest in public affairs and the improvement of public behavior. Indeed, the ancient Athenians had a word for people who did not. The word was idiotes, from which we get our word "idiot." A modern Visigoth is interested only in his own affairs and has no sense of the meaning of community.

And, finally, to be an Athenian is to esteem the discipline, skill, and taste that are required to produce enduring art. Therefore, in approaching a work of art, Athenians prepare their imagination through learning and experience. To a Visigoth, there is no measure of artistic excellence except popularity. What catches the fancy of the multitude is good. No other standard is respected or even acknowledged by the Visigoth.

Now, it must be obvious what all of this has to do with you. Eventually, like the rest of us, you must be on one side or the other. You must be an Athenian or a Visigoth. Of course, it is much harder to be an Athenian, for you must learn how to be one, you must work at being one, whereas we are all, in a way, natural-born Visigoths. That is why there are so many more Visigoths than Athenians. And I must tell you that you do not become an Athenian merely by attending school or accumulating academic degrees.

My father-in-law was one of the most committed Athenians I have ever known, and he spent his entire adult life working as a dress cutter on Seventh Avenue in New York City. On the other hand, I know physicians, lawyers, and engineers who are Visigoths of unmistakable persuasion. And I must also tell you, as much in sorrow as in shame, that at some of our great universities, perhaps even this one, there are professors of whom we may fairly say they are closet Visigoths.

And yet, you must not doubt for a moment that a school, after all, is essentially an Athenian idea. There is a direct link between the cultural achievements of Athens and what the faculty at this university is all about. I have no difficulty imagining that Plato, Aristotle, or Democritus would be quite at home in our class rooms. A Visigoth would merely scrawl obscenities on the wall.

And so, whether you were aware of it or not, the purpose of your having been at this university was to give you a glimpse of the Athenian way, to interest you in the Athenian way. We cannot know on this day how many of you will choose that way and how many will not. You are young and it is not given to us to see your future. But I will tell you this, with which I will close: I can wish for you no higher compliment than that in the future it will be reported that among your graduating class the Athenians mightily outnumbered the Visigoths.

Thank you, and congratulations.

Very good stuff.

The Search For Moderate Muslims Continues

World Net Daily has this story on a group of American Muslims who produced a video that shows its members on a New York City street corner declaring Islam's dominance over America as they tread on a U.S. flag and then rip it apart. Some excerpts:

In the video, released by the New York-based Islamic Thinkers Society, one of the Muslims is shown placing a sign on the flag that says, "Oh Muslims! Do you know your enemy? Isn't it obvious?"

The five-minute piece begins with a man speaking in clear English: "Just to show where our loyalty belongs to -- you see this flag here? It's going to go on the floor [sic]. And to us, our loyalty does not belong to this flag, our loyalty belongs to Allah ... ."

Later, after noting he has a legal permit for the demonstration, the speaker shouts, "You Muslims who are hiding in your houses, don't be afraid. Come and join us. Join us in the revival of all Islam. ... Join us to revive the Muslims from darkness into light."

Another speaker refers to the mandate for "Islam to dominate over all other religions, to dominate the world, even though the non-Muslims may hate it."

At one Al-Muhajiroun event at Queensborough Community College sponsored by the MSA and attended by WND, a Muhajiroun speaker working with Yousuf said, "We reject the U.N., reject America, reject all law and order. Don't lobby Congress or protest because we don't recognize Congress! The only relationship you should have with America is to topple it!"

The speaker continued, "The so-called terrorists are the only people who truly fear Allah. ... They are the only worthy causes, and the mighty superpower only fears them."

In a private interview with WND, a Queens based Al-Muhajiroun leader said he would be "absolutely honored" to give up his life in a "martyr operation" against American civilians. The leader warned that "a jihad is coming to America because of the moves of the Bush administration."

Last year, Al-Muhajiroun planned a convention in London titled, "The Choice is in Your Hands: Either You're with the Muslims or with the Infidels," to mark the third anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

In 2003, the group had planned a similar anniversary event called "The Magnificent 19 [Suicide Attackers]," but canceled it at the last minute.

We assume that the lack of publicity about this demonstration in the MSM is due to the fact that the Muslims didn't urinate on the flag while they were stomping on it so there's really no call, to their way of thinking, for outrage.

To those who don't work in the newsrooms of the liberal media, however, this demonstration is a sickening affront to the families who lost loved ones on 9/11 and in the war on terror being waged by American forces. It tells us much about the mind-set of many American Muslims that the community would allow this sort of thing to be done in the name of Islam without distancing themselves from it.

The video itself has apparently been taken off the Islamic Thinkers web-site since we couldn't access it when we went to see for ourselves what the religion of peace is up to these days.

The EMP Threat

Some months ago we wrote about increasing fears in the defense community about this nation's vulnerability to EMP. EMP stands for Electromagnetic Pulse and refers to the powerful surge of radio waves produced by a nuclear detonation. These waves have the potential to overwhelm any electrical/electronic system within a line of sight of the blast so that a detonation about 300 miles over the center of the U.S. could conceivably shut down everything in the country that runs on electrical power. This would take months or years to repair and in the meantime the nation would probably be thrown into chaos.

Winds of Change has a piece by Frank Gaffney which describes the nature of the threat and discusses what must be done to prevent what would certainly be a national catastrophe should even a single nuclear weapon be detonated in space above the United States.

Grounds For Hope

The Strategy Page has the results of an Al-Arabiya News poll taken throughout the Arab world that give grounds for hope that the struggle against Islamist tyranny is succeeding.

What do Arabs really think about the problems that afflict them, and how is this related to the issues Islamic terrorists are fighting and dying (and killing) for? A recent "Opinion Survey of the Arab Street 2005" by Al Arabiya news network provides some interesting answers. The survey sought to see what Arabs thought about the relative lack of economic progress in the Arab world. In answer to the question, "What is stalling development in the Arab world?," 81 percent chose "Governments are unwilling to implement change and reform", 8 percent citing "The ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict," 7 percent "Civil society is failing to convince governments", and 4 percent chose "Terrorism".

Another question, "What is the fastest way to achieve development in the Arab world?", had 67 percent choosing "Ensuring the rule of law through justice and law enforcement", 23 percent chose "Enhancing freedom of speech", and 10 percent chose "Resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict".

Islamic terrorists represent a small minority of Arab thinking, and interests. But most Arab media and governments, for obvious reasons, avoid the "bad government" issues and instead concentrate on the Arab-Israeli conflict as the cause of all that is bad in the Arab world. While few Arab governments support all Islamic terrorists, many support some (like the Palestinian terrorists, or Hizbollah in Lebanon).

An Arab government will support terrorists as long as there is no terrorist attacks against themselves, and the terrorists are working against the government's enemies. Syria has played this game enthusiastically, perhaps too much so, for decades. By getting behind terrorism and hostility towards Israel, Arab dictatorships believe this will distract their people from problems closer to home. But this ploy is working less well of late. The invasion of Iraq in 2003, the forcible removal of an Arab dictator and enthusiastic participation in democratic elections has terrified Arab despots throughout the Middle East. The Islamic terrorists are generally hostile to Arab dictators, but have made deals with the devil in order to survive. Increasingly, Arab people are fed up with the tyrants and terrorists, and are willing to do something about it.

Let's hope.

The Need For Vigilance

Michelle Malkin has lots of information and some good links on the story coming out of Lodi, California about the arrest of a possible father/son terror threat.

One does not wish to see a repeat of WWII internment camps filled this time with Muslims instead of Japanese, but we also have to face the grim reality that many Muslims in this country do not see themselves as Americans. Nor do they want to be Americans. Many of them feel a solidarity with Islamist jihadis around the globe and see their situation here in the States as an opportunity to strike a blow for Allah against the infidels.

That being the case, it's hard to fault those who look upon Arabs and other Muslims in our midst with suspicion, PC abhorrence of "profiling" notwithstanding. We can only hope that law enforcement and the larger Arab/Muslim community are vigilant and able to preempt any act of terrorism which may be planned to take place on our soil.

If they're not, it will surely be difficult to dissuade enraged Americans from tragic and pointless reprisals against innocent Arabs.

Mugabe's Socialist Paradise

Belmont Club has a vivid look at what is happening in Robert Mugabe's socialist paradise of Zimbabwe. It's a little too long to repost here, but it's a very important read.

Back when Zimbabwe was Rhodesia the Left was all aflutter over the prospect of the white government being replaced by black leadership. This would be good for the country the Left declaimed, and good for all of Africa. In the event, however, it has been, like so many of the Left's nostrums, a nightmare for the people, both white and black, who live there. Indeed, today's Zimbabwe sounds very much like the Cambodia and South Africa of the 1970s.

Don't miss the e-mail from Sister Patricia Walsh.

Telling it Like He Wishes it Was

The first rule of warfare, political or otherwise, is Know your enemy. Howard Dean, Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, simply doesn't. About Republicans he recently said this:

The Republicans are not very friendly to different kinds of people...They're a pretty monolithic party...They all behave the same and they all look the same...It's pretty much a white Christian party.

Set aside that this is from the man who was taken to the woodshed by Al Sharpton in the Democratic primaries for the fact that he had no minorities in his administration as governor of Vermont. Set aside that this is from the head of a party which has no record of having elevated minorities to positions of prominence, nevertheless criticizing a party which has made African Americans and Hispanic Americans the last two secretaries of State and an Attorney General and appointed numerous other minorities to less exalted positions.

Set aside that it is Republicans who are fighting to get Janice Rodgers Brown to the federal appeals court and Democrats who are fighting her nomination.

Set all that aside and ask, what on earth does he mean by suggesting that Republicans are "the white Christian party?" Since he is a man who has said that he hates Republicans and who has never had a kind word to say about the Republican party we may reasonably infer that he meant this as more than a simple statement of fact. He obviously intended it as a slur. So let's ask, is there something wrong with being a party that attracts many people who are both white and Christian, perhaps the majority of voting citizens in the country? What exactly is it that makes this something to be derogated? And are we to infer from Governor Dean's remark that the Democrats are the party of non-white non-Christians?

This is extremely divisive rhetoric that the Chairman is engaging in, but Democrats have been setting one group against another for decades in the politics of this country. The irony is that every chance they get they accuse GWB of being divisive and yet there is nothing they can point to in support of this allegation.

George Bush's "divisiveness" apparently lies in the fact that he takes a stand on policy matters, does what he says he's going to do, and doesn't ask the Democrats for permission. Since Democrats find that sort of behavior in a Republican president immensely impertinent and irritating, and since they consider any president who doesn't agree with them to be polarizing, they naturally see GWB as divisive.

Howard Dean, however, is just telling it like it is.

Case For the Creator

Christianity Today has an interview with Lee Strobel author of The Case For the Creator. Here's an excerpt:

CT: It didn't seem hard to find top quality scientists and researchers who came to that conclusion.

LS: Absolutely. My problem was trying to pare it down to who I thought would be someone who would be able to articulate the evidence powerfully and persuasively and in a way that everybody could get. There's more than 300 scientists with doctorates from major universities who've now signed this statement saying that they are skeptical of the claims of neo-Darwinism.

I quote somebody in the book as saying that one of the fastest growing phenomena is scientists who are doubtful of the claims of Darwinism.

Darwinism is as strongly held as it is in large part because it is an essential prop to atheism. If Darwinism should ever collapse biology and a few other related sciences will be changed, to be sure, but the most significant consequence will be the philosophical reverberations such a collapse would generate throughout the culture.

Anyway, you'll want to read the whole interview. It's a pretty good discussion.

Brain Power

Now will the Left stop insulting Bush's intelligence? Nah:

(June 7) - Sen. John F. Kerry's grade average at Yale University was virtually identical to President Bush's record there, despite repeated portrayals of Kerry as the more intellectual candidate during the 2004 presidential campaign.

Kerry had a cumulative average of 76 and got four Ds his freshman year - in geology, two history courses and political science, The Boston Globe reported Tuesday.

His grades improved with time, and he averaged an 81 his senior year and earned an 89 - his highest grade - in political science as a senior.

In 1999, The New Yorker magazine published a transcript showing Bush had a cumulative grade average of 77 his first three years at Yale, and a similar average under a non-numerical rating system his senior year.

Bush's highest grade at Yale was an 88 in anthropology, history and philosophy. He received one D in his four years, a 69 in astronomy, and improved his grades after his freshman year, the transcript showed.

Liberals oohed and ahhed at John Kerry's superior intellectual gifts during the 2004 campaign, but aside from being more articulate there's not much evidence that Kerry was any brighter nor more motivated as a student than George Bush. What the infatuation with Kerry's vaunted cerebral skills illustrates is nothing more than a fondness for style over substance.

The Truth About Ward Churchill

The Rocky Mountain News has been hard at work ferreting out the truth about Ward Churchill, the radical University of Colorado professor who became the object of national scrutiny when a piece came to light which he'd written on 9/11. In the essay he claimed that those who died that day were "little Eichmanns" and, by implication, deserved their fate.

The RMN investigation has uncovered much unsavory information about Mr. Churchill which, among other shortcomings, reveals him to be an academic fraud and ethnic poseur:

University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill fabricated historical facts, published the work of others as his own and repeatedly made false claims about two federal Indian laws, a Rocky Mountain News investigation has found.

The two-month News investigation, carried out at the same time Churchill and his work are being carefully examined by the university, also unearthed fresh genealogical information that casts new doubts on the professor's long-held assertion that he is of American Indian ancestry.

The findings come as Churchill is, essentially, on trial - in the court of public opinion and in the halls of academia. Prickly debates swirl around him on the standards of academic integrity, the limits of free speech and the responsibilities of scholarly writers.

A faculty committee is working behind closed doors, conducting a detailed and time-consuming examination of four allegations - fabrication, plagiarism, mischaracterization of federal Indian laws and misrepresentation of his ancestry.

The stakes are high. For Churchill, it's a process that ultimately could cost him his job. For Colorado's flagship university, it's a process that could bear heavily on its integrity and reputation.

Read the details of the evidence against him at the link.

Liberal Heroes

Steve Hayward at No Left Turns makes a salient point about the Mark Felt revelations:

I shouldn't be amazed that with all the media chest-thumping about their heroism in the Watergate story, made possible by the brave Mark Felt, that no one has mentioned the irony that Charles Colson went to prison on the charge of leaking a single FBI file. Felt was leaking confidential information, and raw files, not once, but repeatedly over a period of months. No wonder Felt wanted to keep his secret all these years; indeed, one wonders whether he would have done so now if he still had his full mental faculties available to him (or if there were no statute of limitations.)

Whether someone's act is heroic or not depends as much upon why one acts as upon what one does. Doing the right thing for the wrong reason, even if the act requires much courage, is not morally commendable and is certainly not heroic. A man who saves another man's life only because the man who is saved owes his rescuer a large sum of money is not a hero. Saving the man's life is the right thing to do, but the man who does it can claim no virtue in his act. If Mark Felt did indeed help to bring down the Nixon administration only because he was angry at having been passed over for the directorship of the FBI then whatever he is, he's not a hero.

For the Libs, though, whether you're a hero or not seems often to depend only upon whom you're trying to hurt.

Transgressing Orthodoxy

Here's an article guaranteed to drive the politically correct into a frenzy. It raises the question of whether intelligence might be genetically based not just in individuals but in entire ethnic groups. If it is, the article suggests, might the history of the Jews allowed intelligence to be selected for to a greater extent than in the rest of us?

If social security is the third rail of politics this question is the third rail of academic careers. It takes enormous audacity to ask this question in the current socio-academic climate. Recall how Harvard's president Larry Summers was practically burned at the stake a few months ago for suggesting that the sexes differ in their intellectual aptitudes. Recall, too, how Charles Murray back in the late eighties was excoriated for pointing out that some racial groups fare more poorly on IQ tests than others and are probably cognitively less well-endowed.

Any hint that there may be a genetic component to intelligence that is a function of race or ethnicity is almost certain to bring down the wrath of a thousand furies upon the head of a hapless scholar. This is unfortunate because in a free society no intellectual question should be considered taboo, even if it may have unpleasant or unwanted consequences. Free people should not fear truth, nor should there be questions that one dare not ask, nor ideas one dare not discuss. Free men and women should not allow themselves to be shackled by the sociological orthodoxies of a dogmatic, closed-minded elite.

We'll watch with interest the trajectory of this story.

Flushing Them Out and Wearing Them Down

Here's an update on ongoing operations in Iraq. The bad guys continue to suffer grievous losses of men and resources. They also continue to see their leadership attrited:

The joint U.S.-Iraqi force operating in Latifiyah to the south of Baghdad was backed by American air power and said it had rounded up at least 108 Iraqis, mainly Sunnis, suspected of involvement in the brutal insurgent campaign to topple the Shiite-led government.

To the west of the capital, the 2nd Marine division said its forces had discovered 50 weapons and ammunitions caches over the past four days in restive Anbar province. The military said the find included a recently used "insurgent lair" in a massive underground bunker complex that included air-conditioned living quarters and high tech military equipment, including night vision goggles.

That bunker was found cut from a rock quarry in Karmah, 50 miles west of Baghdad. The Marines said the facility was 170 yards wide and 275 yards long.

In its rooms were "four fully furnished living spaces, a kitchen with fresh food, two shower facilities and a working air conditioner. Other rooms within the complex were filled with weapons and ammunition," the announcement said.

The weapons included "numerous types of machine guns, ordnance, including mortars, rockets and artillery rounds, black uniforms, ski masks, compasses, log books, night vision goggles, and fully charged cell phones."

In Latifiyah, 20 miles south of Baghdad, Iraqi and American forces launched a raid as part of Operation Lightning, a week-old assault aimed at rooting out insurgents conducting raids on the capital and sapping militant strength nationwide.

Interior Minister Bayan Jabr has said at least 700 suspected insurgents have been rounded up in the sweep, which has also killed at least 28 militants. U.S. Lt. Col. Michael Infanti said at least 221 people had been detained since last Wednesday by forces carrying out a sweep of Baghdad's southern districts. It was unclear if that number was in addition to the 700 given by Jabr.

An Iraqi believed to be a terror leader in the north was captured by U.S. and Iraqi forces in Mosul, 225 miles north of Baghdad. He was identified as Mullah Mahdi and was caught along with his brother, three other Iraqis and a non-Iraqi Arab, Iraqi army Maj. Gen. Khalil Ahmed al-Obeidi said.

Mahdi was affiliated with the Ansar al-Sunnah Army, one of Iraq's most feared terror groups, and had links to the Syrian intelligence service, al-Obeidi said without elaborating. Iraqi and U.S. officials have accused Syria of facilitating the insurgency by allowing foreign fighters to cross its borders, but Damascus denies the allegation.

Mahdi was wanted in connection with car bombs, assassinations "beheadings of Iraqi policemen and soldiers and for launching attacks against multinational forces," in Mosul, al-Obeidi said.

In addition, 19 suspected insurgents - including a Jordanian and a Syrian - were arrested in raids in Baghdad's western Abu Ghraib district, Iraqi Lt. Col. Abu Fahad Alkhasali said.

Time is running out for the insurgency which has in fact taken on the flavor of a foreign invasion as more and more of the terrorists apprehended and killed turn out to be non-Iraqis.

Political Philosophy For Autodidacts

For anyone interested in pursuing an education at home in political philosophy Dr. Greg Forster offers a wonderful annotated reading list of the most important works in the field. Joe Carter at Evangelical Outpost hosts Dr. Forster's piece. Don't overlook the comments from readers at the end.

Great News From Afghanistan

Afghanistan has come an astonishing distance since the spring of 2002. We don't hear about this part of George Bush's historic humanitarian mission on the evening news, of course, unless there's a setback to report, but the story that we're not told is truly a testament to the goodness of the American people, this administration, and the resilience of the Afghan people.

There are other nations chipping in to do good works, of course, but none of their efforts would have materialized, or even been possible, were it not for the work of the Bush administration and the efforts and sacrifice of the American military. The only historical analogy we can think of to what we've undertaken in Afghanistan and Iraq is the Marshall Plan in Europe after WWII. No other nation in history has a record like that compiled by the United States since 1945.

You can read about it here.

The Left's Selective Reverence

Viewpoint has stated that although we believe the media outrage over shabby treatment of the Koran in our detention camps amounts to unwarranted hysterics, nevertheless, our troops should show the Koran respect, not so much for the book itself, which many scholars have determined is probably a plagiarized Old Testament, but out of respect for people around the world who revere it.

Even so, we have to wonder why liberals are so beside themselves over this issue. As a caller to the Glenn Beck program pointed out this morning, when Andres Serrano placed a crucifix in a jar of urine and incensed many Christians, the Left yawned and called it art. When another "artist" defiled a picture of the Virgin Mary with elephant dung Christians who complained were called narrow-minded xenophobes.

Now we read of several dubious cases where there may have been irreverent treatment of a Koran and the Left is thrown into high dudgeon. Why is this? The Left, being predominately skeptics and atheists, don't give a fig about the Bible much less the Koran. Nor do they care about the sensibilities of religious believers whom they largely regard as rubes and dolts. At least they don't care about the sensibilities of Christians, why should they care about those of Muslims?

The only reason for their loud ululations over the fact that a Koran may have been "defiled" is that these allegations present themselves as a club with which to beat the administration over the head. They are so bereft of weapons with which to fight their ideological campaign against Bush and Co. that they'll grasp at anything that offers itself, no matter how flimsy the tool and no matter how cynical, hypocritical, and dishonest using it makes them look. And they think we should vote for them to run the country.

T-Shirts

A friend passes along the "Best T-shirts of the summer":

So Many Men, So Few Who Can Afford Me

I Fought the Lawn and the Lawn Won

I Suffer Occasional Delusions of Adequacy

God Made Us Sisters, Prozac Made Us Friends

If They Don't Have Chocolate In Heaven, I Ain't Going

At My Age, I've Seen It All, Done It All, Heard It All. I Just Can't Remember It All

My Mother Is A Travel Agent For Guilt Trips

I Just Do What The Voices Inside My Head Tell Me To Do

If It's Called Tourist Season, Why Can't We Hunt 'em?

Princess, Having Had Sufficient Experience With Princes, Seeks Frog

No, It Doesn't Hurt (on a "well-tattooed gentleman")

(on the back of a passing motorcyclist) If You Can Read This, My Wife Fell Off

I Used To Be Schizophrenic, But We're OK Now

Veni, Vedi, Visa: I came. I Saw. I Did a Little Shopping

What If The Hokey Pokey Really Is What It's All About?

I Didn't Climb to the Top of the Food Chain to Be a Vegetarian