Creeping Dhimmitude

Diana West offers a lesson on the meaning of dhimmitude:

We need to learn a new word: dhimmitude....Wherever Islam conquered, surrendering dhimmi, known to Muslims as "people of the book [the Bible]," were tolerated, allowed to practice their religion, but at a dehumanizing cost.

There were literal taxes (jizya) to be paid; these bought the dhimmi the right to remain non-Muslim, the price not of religious freedom, but of religious identity. Freedom was lost, sorely circumscribed by a body of Islamic law (sharia) designed to subjugate, denigrate and humiliate the dhimmi. The resulting culture of self-abnegation, self-censorship and fear shared by far-flung dhimmi is the basis of dhimmitude. The extremely distressing but highly significant fact is, dhimmitude doesn't only exist in lands where Islamic law rules.

This is the lesson of Cartoon Rage 2006, a cultural nuke set off by an Islamic chain reaction to those 12 cartoons of Muhammad appearing in a Danish newspaper. We have watched the Muslim meltdown with shocked attention, but there is little recognition that its poisonous fallout is fear. Fear in the State Department, which, like Islam, called the cartoons unacceptable. Fear in Whitehall, which did the same. Fear in the Vatican, which did the same. And fear in the media, which have failed, with few, few exceptions, to reprint or show the images. With only a small roll of brave journals, mainly in Europe, to salute, we have seen the proud Western tradition of a free press bow its head and submit to an Islamic law against depictions of Muhammad. That's dhimmitude.

Not that we admit it: We dress up our capitulation in fancy talk of "tolerance," "responsibility" and "sensitivity." We even congratulate ourselves for having the "editorial judgment" to make "pluralism" possible. "Readers were well served... without publishing the cartoons," said a Wall Street Journal spokesman. "CNN has chosen to not show the cartoons in respect for Islam," reported the cable network. On behalf of the BBC, which did show some of the cartoons on the air, a news editor subsequently apologized, adding: "We've taken a decision not to go further... in order not to gratuitously offend the significant number" of Muslim viewers worldwide. Left unmentioned is the understanding (editorial judgement?) that "gratuitous offense" leads to gratuitous violence. Hence, fear - not the inspiration of tolerance but of capitulation - and a condition of dhimmitude.

How far does it go? Worth noting, for example, is that on the BBC Web site, a religion page about Islam presents the angels and revelations of Islamic belief as historical fact, rather than spiritual conjecture (as is the case with its Christianity Web page); plus, it follows every mention of Mohammed with "(pbuh)," which means "peace be upon him"-"as if," writes Will Wyatt, former BBC chief executive, in a letter to the Times of London, "the corporation itself were Muslim."

There's more of this excellent column at the link.

Muslim Moderates

Charles Krauthammer writing on Muslim moderates in the WaPo:

Have any of these "moderates" ever protested the grotesque caricatures of Christians and, most especially, Jews that are broadcast throughout the Middle East on a daily basis? The sermons on Palestinian TV that refer to Jews as the sons of pigs and monkeys? The Syrian prime-time TV series that shows rabbis slaughtering a gentile boy to ritually consume his blood? The 41-part (!) series on Egyptian TV based on that anti-Semitic czarist forgery (and inspiration of the Nazis), "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion," showing the Jews to be engaged in a century-old conspiracy to control the world?

A true Muslim moderate is one who protests desecrations of all faiths. Those who don't are not moderates but hypocrites, opportunists and agents for the rioters, merely using different means to advance the same goal: to impose upon the West, with its traditions of freedom of speech, a set of taboos that is exclusive to the Islamic faith. These are not defenders of religion but Muslim supremacists trying to force their dictates upon the liberal West.

And these "moderates" are aided and abetted by Western "moderates" who publish pictures of the Virgin Mary covered with elephant dung and celebrate the "Piss Christ" (a crucifix sitting in a jar of urine) as art deserving public subsidy, but who are seized with a sudden religious sensitivity when the subject is Muhammad.

If a true moderate is one who condemns desecrations of all faiths then there are precious few Muslim moderates in the world. Of course, by this standard there are doubtless too few moderates of any faith or ideology. It's a sad thing that it's so easy for us to be outraged when our sacred icons are attacked but to yawn indifferently when those of others are gratuitously insulted.

Claiming Too Much

From time to time we read the claim that evolution is the heart of modern biology and the even more extravagant claim that it actually drives all of science. Next time you read that and wonder if it's true remember this essay by Philip S. Skell, Emeritus Evan Pugh Professor at Pennsylvania State University, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. We noted Skell's paper some time ago, but it seems to be currently receiving new exposure and appeared in our Sunday paper just today:

Darwin's theory of evolution offers a sweeping explanation of the history of life, from the earliest microscopic organisms billions of years ago to all the plants and animals around us today. Much of the evidence that might have established the theory on an unshakable empirical foundation, however, remains lost in the distant past. For instance, Darwin hoped we would discover transitional precursors to the animal forms that appear abruptly in the Cambrian strata. Since then we have found many ancient fossils - even exquisitely preserved soft-bodied creatures - but none are credible ancestors to the Cambrian animals.

Despite this and other difficulties, the modern form of Darwin's theory has been raised to its present high status because it's said to be the cornerstone of modern experimental biology. But is that correct? "While the great majority of biologists would probably agree with Theodosius Dobzhansky's dictum that 'nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution,' most can conduct their work quite happily without particular reference to evolutionary ideas," A.S. Wilkins, editor of the journal BioEssays, wrote in 2000.[1] "Evolution would appear to be the indispensable unifying idea and, at the same time, a highly superfluous one."

I would tend to agree. Certainly, my own research with antibiotics during World War II received no guidance from insights provided by Darwinian evolution. Nor did Alexander Fleming's discovery of bacterial inhibition by penicillin. I recently asked more than 70 eminent researchers if they would have done their work differently if they had thought Darwin's theory was wrong. The responses were all the same: No.

I also examined the outstanding biodiscoveries of the past century: the discovery of the double helix; the characterization of the ribosome; the mapping of genomes; research on medications and drug reactions; improvements in food production and sanitation; the development of new surgeries; and others. I even queried biologists working in areas where one would expect the Darwinian paradigm to have most benefited research, such as the emergence of resistance to antibiotics and pesticides. Here, as elsewhere, I found that Darwin's theory had provided no discernible guidance, but was brought in, after the breakthroughs, as an interesting narrative gloss.

In the peer-reviewed literature, the word "evolution" often occurs as a sort of coda to academic papers in experimental biology. Is the term integral or superfluous to the substance of these papers? To find out, I substituted for "evolution" some other word - "Buddhism," "Aztec cosmology," or even "creationism." I found that the substitution never touched the paper's core. This did not surprise me. From my conversations with leading researchers it had became clear that modern experimental biology gains its strength from the availability of new instruments and methodologies, not from an immersion in historical biology.

When I recently suggested this disconnect publicly, I was vigorously challenged. One person recalled my use of Wilkins and charged me with quote mining. The proof, supposedly, was in Wilkins's subsequent paragraph:

"Yet, the marginality of evolutionary biology may be changing. More and more issues in biology, from diverse questions about human nature to the vulnerability of ecosystems, are increasingly seen as reflecting evolutionary events. A spate of popular books on evolution testifies to the development. If we are to fully understand these matters, however, we need to understand the processes of evolution that, ultimately, underlie them."

In reality, however, this passage illustrates my point. The efforts mentioned there are not experimental biology; they are attempts to explain already authenticated phenomena in Darwinian terms, things like human nature. Further, Darwinian explanations for such things are often too supple: Natural selection makes humans self-centered and aggressive - except when it makes them altruistic and peaceable. Or natural selection produces virile men who eagerly spread their seed - except when it prefers men who are faithful protectors and providers. When an explanation is so supple that it can explain any behavior, it is difficult to test it experimentally, much less use it as a catalyst for scientific discovery.

Darwinian evolution - whatever its other virtues - does not provide a fruitful heuristic in experimental biology. This becomes especially clear when we compare it with a heuristic framework such as the atomic model, which opens up structural chemistry and leads to advances in the synthesis of a multitude of new molecules of practical benefit. None of this demonstrates that Darwinism is false. It does, however, mean that the claim that it is the cornerstone of modern experimental biology will be met with quiet skepticism from a growing number of scientists in fields where theories actually do serve as cornerstones for tangible breakthroughs.

Good thing Professor Skell is retired. If he weren't he soon enough would be with opinions as heretical these.

Happy Darwin Day!

Viewpoint wishes all of our readers a safe and happy Darwin Day as you celebrate the 197th birthday of Charles Darwin today. We hope you enjoy the festivities that you surely have planned for this happy occasion, even though it would have no doubt mortified the self-effacing Mr. Darwin to know that his birthday was being marked by the sorts of raucous merrymaking being planned throughout Europe and the United States.

While we're at it, there's something odd about this particular memorial. Can you think of any other commemoration that is observed on the 197th anniversary? The 100th, 200th, 250th anniversaries, sure, but the 197th?

In any event, party up. Or down. Whatever.

Convincing Proof

Gosh. These photos are certainly damning. You thought the Muslim reaction to the Danish cartoons was violent, wait until MoveOn.org circulates among their faithful these pictures of Bush being chummy with Jack Abramoff. Screaming lefties by the zillions will be storming the White House gates like French peasants storming the Bastille.

Well, Bush and Abramoff are in the same room, aren't they? He is shaking hands with Abramoff's Indian clients, isn't he? What more proof do you need that Bush is corrupt?

Media Dhimmis

More examples of media hypocrisy courtesy of Andrew Sullivan:

"Thursday, CNN broadcast a story on how common anti-Semitic caricatures are in the Arab press and illustrated it with - you guessed it - one virulently anti-Semitic cartoon after another. As the segment concluded, Wolf Blitzer looked into the camera and piously explained that while CNN had decided as a matter of policy not to broadcast any image of Muhammad, telling the story of anti-Semitism in the Arab press required showing those caricatures. He didn't even blush," - Tim Rutten, Los Angeles Times, today.

Rutten has a challenge to the mainstream media: will they avoid any images of the upcoming anti-Catholic movie, "The Da Vinci Code"? Of course, they won't. And, I might add, I hope they won't. Here's a bleg to readers: please keep your eyes open for media representations of objects or images blasphemous to strict Christians and Jews. Last week, for example, the cartoon series, "Drawn Together," depicted Jesus refusing to extend compassion for one of the characters and eventually puking. Have you heard of it? South Park has Jesus as one its regular characters, and a recent South Park episode portrayed a statue of the Virgin Mary, with blood exploding out of her [rectum] onto the face of the Pope.

So Fox won't portray tame images of Muhammad, but they will broadcast "Passion of the Christ II: Crucify This." Here's the full compendium of Jesus references on Family Guy. You wanna see Jesus turn water into "funk"?

Why is this hypocrisy? Because except for a few outlets and a number of blogs the media adamantly refuses to show the cartoon depictions of Muhammad that have stirred up turmoil around the world. They have no qualms about publishing degrading portrayals of Christ and the Virgin Mary in their news reports, but they're suddenly seized with multicultural sensitivity when it comes to a few banal drawings of the Islamic Prophet.

So much for liberal pieties about being willing to fight to the death for your right to be offensive. Those words are easy to utter as long as the danger is far away, but when it gets a little close the number of people on the left who really mean it shrinks to a close approximation of zero. The media should either refuse to participate in the gratuitous trashing of symbols sacred to all theistic religions, including Christianity, (our recommendation) or grow a spine, refuse to truckle to the threats of the Islamists, and show the cartoons.

Update: Michelle Malkin has more on the incomprehensible absurdity of the Islamic protestors here. You read this stuff and all you can do is shake your head that so many people can be so benighted.

The War on Drugs

Jonathan Last argues persuasively in The Weekly Standard that we are winning the war on drugs:

There's a wonderful scene in the movie Traffic in which a captured drug kingpin, played by Miguel Ferrer, is being interrogated by two federal agents. Ferrer says to them disdainfully: "You people are like those Japanese soldiers left behind on deserted islands who think that World War II is still going on. Let me be the first to tell you, your government surrendered this war a long time ago."

It's a brilliant bit of filmmaking; it's also bunk. Over the last five years, while no one was paying attention, America has been winning its war on drugs.

The cosmopolitan view has long been that the fight against drugs is a losing battle; that the supply of drugs pouring into America is never-ending; that drug lords are unrelenting zombie-supermen--kill one, and five more spring up.

The American drug problem grew to epidemic proportions throughout the 1960s and 1970s. In 1979, agencies of Health and Human Services and the National Institutes of Health performed a national household survey of illicit drug use; substances included marijuana, cocaine, heroin, banned hallucinogens and inhalants, and unauthorized use of sedatives, stimulants and analgesics. As of 1979, the numbers were horrifying: 31.8 percent of teens ages 12 to 17 had used drugs; 16.3 percent of them had used in the last month. Among those ages 18 to 25 it was worse: 69 percent had used at some point; 38 percent in the last month.

But throughout the '80s, those numbers shrank. Sophisticates derided "Just Say No," but by 1993, only 16.4 percent of 12- to 17-year-olds had used, and only 5.7 percent had used in the last month. In the 18-to-25 age bracket, 50.2 percent had tried drugs, but only 15 percent had used in the last 30 days. It was a remarkable success.

From 1993 to 2001, the numbers become less rosy: Among ages 12 to 17, the percentage of youths who had tried drugs increased almost twofold. In the 18-to-25 crowd, the increase was less marked, but still noticeable.

There's a reason we pay so much attention to these two age groups. As Tom Riley, the director of public affairs at the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), explains: "If people don't start using drugs as teenagers--the mechanism of addiction clicks much more quickly in the developing brain--then they are unlikely to ever go on to serious drug abuse. If we can reduce the number of teens who use drugs, we change the shape of the problem for generations to come."

After 2001, the tide turned again. Since then, teen drug use is off nearly 19 percent. Which means that 700,000 fewer teens are using drugs today than just a few years ago.

Last goes on to explain why. Check it out at the link. Meanwhile, we're wondering why we're not hearing about this marvelous news in the MSM. Or is the answer so obvious that we sound utterly foolish and disingenuous suggesting that we're puzzled by the MSM not reporting good news?

Aligning With the Strong Horse

There's not been much in the news lately about developments in Iraq, but Bill Roggio is on the job to update us about what is transpiring between the Sunnis and al-Qaeda in Anbar province. Here's his lead:

Further details emerge about the developing rifts between the native elements of the Iraqi insurgency and al-Qaeda and their Islamist allies. Army Major General Rick Lynch, the spokesman for Multinational Force Iraq, acknowledged the infighting has occurred in Anbar province; "Many times these citizens are urged by their local tribal leaders to rid the area of the insurgent influence... In Fallujah and Ramadi, citizens have established checkpoints to keep insurgents out and six al Qaeda leaders have been killed in the area since September."

According to Maj. Gen. Lynch, the increase in tips from over a year ago has skyrocketed by 240 times the number reported last year. The Department of Defense reports "Iraqi civilians provided more than 1,300 tips to coalition and Iraqi security forces... That is a huge improvement from the 47 tips received in January 2005... Of all the valid calls received by the Ministry of Interior's national tips hotline, 98 percent provided actionable intelligence... Most calls are about terrorist activity... but calls also come in about kidnapping, murder and other criminal activity."

Knight Ridder Newspapers indicates that neighborhood watches are forming in the Baghdad neighborhood of Hai al-Salam, which consists of "Shiite Muslims, Sunni Muslims and Christians." The increase in "kidnappings, assassinations and random violence" pushed the residents to band together across sectarian lines and defends their neighborhoods. When the Iraqi Army and police were unable to provide the security needed for the neighborhood, the residents of Hai al-Salam "erected roadblocks and checkpoints and put neighborhood men to work as guards."

The conventional media wisdom is that Iraq is unravelling faster than we can keep it tied up, but, unsurprisingly, the conventional media wisdom is evidently wrong. To be sure, it is taking longer to bring Iraq under control than most in the administration thought that it would, and it's virtually certain that more Americans have died than had to. Yet, despite the awful cost in blood and treasure, something unprecedented in human history is happening in that tragic land.

A diverse, mostly Arab nation of twenty five million people, riven by ethnic and religious animosities, is gradually shaking off the dysfunctional habits formed over decades of oppression and moving slowly but inexorably toward a stable democracy. It really is remarkable, and if it does happen, and if Afghanistan continues to develop along the lines already established, George Bush will ultimately be regarded as the most visionary foreign policy leader in the history of the free world.

Two Kinds of Democrats

This column in the New York Times by Adam Nagourney and Sheryl Stolberg quotes Democratic leaders who lament the missed opportunities and woeful state of the current Democratic party. These pols and party leaders believe that the Bush administration is weakened and that they should be poised to sweep the field in November, but for the reasons they adumbrate, they're just not likely to pull it off. The article has received a lot of acclaim, even from conservatives, and is worth the time to read.

Our take, though, is that much of what the Democrats quoted in the Times' piece are complaining about is really symptomatic of a more fundamental crisis within the party. Their problem is this: There are basically two kinds of Democrats. There are those who deep down know that were they president they probably would have read the intelligence reports on WMD in Iraq the same as Bush did and privately, at least, don't really blame him for taking the action he did. Nor do they really fault him for the messy post-war situation because a lot of it was unforseeable and some of it has been overblown. Nor do they blame him for the NSA surveillance that he's authorized. They know that were they in his shoes they'd probably do the same thing. They also have to acknowledge that his economic measures have brought us out of a recession and have given us a healthy economy, at least in the near term. In other words, Bush's policies have not been very much different than what a moderate Democrat might himself endorse if he were president.

The second kind of Democrat, by contrast, is fervently anti-war, anti-tax cut, anti-Patriot act, pro-appeasement, pro-gay marriage, pro-abortion, and pro-socialism.

The first group, the moderates, can't present a significant alternative to the American people because they simply don't have one. They're reduced to criticizing Bush around the margins, but largely they have no voice because whatever they would advance as policy is not substantively different from what the president is already doing.

The second kind of Democrat has a dramatic alternative to Bush's policy but they dare not present it in toto to the American people, at least not ingenuously, because they know the American people would contemptuously reject it. Thus, they're left with no recourse but to either shut up, which they won't do, or to so vilify and smear Bush that if people won't vote to elect them at least they'll vote to eject him and his party.

They're blinded by their contempt for Bush personally and frustrated by their inability to thwart him. Driven by their loathing, they emerge regularly in the media to disparage his administration in the most uncivil, hate-filled accents, and to seek to salvage whatever political victories they may by whatever means necessary, whether it be through obstructionism, personal vilification, or perhaps, should they win enough seats in 2006, impeachment. If their only motivations were hate and a lust for power they would behave in no different fashion than the one in which they are presently behaving. Their behavior conveys the clear impression that the nation's welfare and that of its people is not for them a genuine, or at least not a primary, concern.

The fundamental problem for the Democratic party, then, is that those who could wield power have no clear alternative to what Bush is doing to offer the voters, and those who have a clear alternative are not attractive, either in terms of the image they present nor in terms of the alternative they offer. Compounding the problem is that it is this latter group which dominates and controls the levers of power within the party.

The only solution to this crisis is for the party to sever its left wing, to rid themselves of the influence of the extremists in the blogosphere and Hollywood, and to mute liabilities like Howard Dean, Al Gore, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Ted Kennedy, et al. Even this, however, is a measure fraught with dangers. Should the left, disenchanted with, or divorced from, the Democratic party, start up a third party with their not inconsiderable bankrollers, it would siphon away so many votes from the Democrats that they'd be relegated to permanent minority status.

It seems as if no matter what they do they lose unless Bush is caught in some scandal. It's a shame that they've come to the point where their only hope of finding favor with the electorate is that the other guy disgrace himself.

Moral Non-Equivalence

The local paper had a blurb yesterday on the cartoon wars. I can't link to it because the paper's web site can only be navigated by those who can also solve Rubik's Cubes in under sixty seconds, and consequently I am unable to locate an e-copy of the article. Here is the relevant portion, in any event:

A well-known Dutch-Belgium Islamic militant organization, the Arab-European League, posted anti-Jewish cartoons on its website, calling the crude drawings an exercise in free speech. One showed Anne Frank, a young Jewish victim of a Nazi concentration camp whose diary was published posthumously, lying naked in bed with Adolf Hitler.

A couple of things to note here: First, we're surprised that Islamic militants are suddenly enthusiastic about free speech. We shouldn't be, of course, since one of their favorite tactics has been to use the values of the West against it. The same cultural-religious milieu that produced the Taliban and al-Qaeda is likely to quickly grow weary of free expression, especially since it is the greatest threat to the tyrannies they would impose.

Secondly, anyone who thinks that the largely innocuous cartoons depicting Mohammed which have inspired mindless frenzy in the Islamic world are in any way similar to the coarse depiction of a young girl murdered by the Nazis in a sexual embrace with her murderer is a hopeless bonehead.

Surely one reason why Islamic culture still languishes in the deserts of medievalism is that it cultivates little imagination for anything other than creative ways of destroying and killing, and what it does inspire, such as the Anne Frank drawing, is too often suitable fare only for the very dim-witted.

There is cleverness, however, in the use of violence and threats to intimidate the Western media. Now that Muslims have shown that they can impose their will and their religious beliefs on much of the non-Muslim world (see here for an appeasement update), the question arises as to what they will demand next.

Having insured that few newspapers will see fit in the future to run anything that might outrage tender Muslim consciences, will they next demand that all images of women in slacks or skirts be expunged from public spaces because they offend Muslim sensibilities? Will they insist, on pain of rioting in the streets, that advertisements for alcohol be prohibited? Or that Western markets cease their sale of pork? On what grounds will the West resist such extortions if they will not defend freedom of speech and freedom of the press in the present circumstance?

If Muslims are successful in bullying the West into suppressing the basic freedoms it has long cherished, they will have made a giant stride toward coercing the West into tacitly accepting the bleak standards of their primitive religion and submitting to a state of de facto, and abject, dhimmitude.

Michael Behe's Defense

In a twelve page tour de force Michael Behe presents his response to Judge Jones' criticisms of him in Kitzmiller. Since Behe was the defendants' lead witness much of the Judge's opinion derogated his testimony. Behe considers the relevant passages from the decision and TKOs the Judge's finding in about the first page or two. In his calm, professional manner Behe implicitly confirms the point we made in our own analysis of the decision - the Judge, whose experience in scientific matters was doubtless limited in his previous capacity as state liquor control board chairman, was clearly out of his depth. Sensing his inadequacy, perhaps, the judge simply chose to play it safe by accepting uncritically whatever the plaintiff's witnesses told him and rejecting whatever he heard from the defendants. His claim that Intelligent Design is not genuine science has about it the scent of a purely arbitrary judgment on his part, and Behe explains why.

Here's his conclusion:

The Court's reasoning in section E-4 is premised on: a cramped view of science; the conflation of intelligent design with creationism; an incapacity to distinguish the implications of a theory from the theory itself; a failure to differentiate evolution from Darwinism; and strawman arguments against ID. The Court has accepted the most tendentious and shopworn excuses for Darwinism with great charity and impatiently dismissed evidence-based arguments for design.

All of that is regrettable, but in the end does not impact the realities of biology, which are not amenable to adjudication. On the day after the judge's opinion, December 21, 2005, as before, the cell is run by amazingly complex, functional machinery that in any other context would immediately be recognized as designed. On December 21, 2005, as before, there are no non-design explanations for the molecular machinery of life, only wishful speculations and Just-So stories.

Behe's paper is a masterwork of well-reasoned argument and will repay anyone interested in this issue for the time invested in reading it.

The House of Islam

A friend forwards us an essay by Sam Harris on the current crisis boiling over in dar al-Islam. I don't agree with Mr. Harris on some very important issues (He's strongly antipathetic to Christianity, for instance), but in this excellent essay he consistently hits the nail squarely. Here are a few excerpts. If you go to the link, be sure to read his comment at the end as well:

Let us take stock of the moral intuitions now on display in the House of Islam: On Aug. 17, 2005, an Iraqi insurgent helped collect the injured survivors of a car bombing, rushed them to a hospital and then detonated his own bomb, murdering those who were already mortally wounded as well as the doctors and nurses struggling to save their lives. Where were the cries of outrage from the Muslim world?

Religious sociopaths kill innocents by the hundreds in the capitols of Europe, blow up the offices of the U.N. and the Red Cross, purposefully annihilate crowds of children gathered to collect candy from U.S. soldiers on the streets of Baghdad, kidnap journalists, behead them, and the videos of their butchery become the most popular form of pornography in the Muslim world, and no one utters a word of protest because these atrocities have been perpetrated "in defense of Islam." But draw a picture of the Prophet, and pious mobs convulse with pious rage. One could hardly ask for a better example of religious dogmatism and its pseudo-morality eclipsing basic, human goodness.

It is time we recognized - and obliged the Muslim world to recognize - that "Muslim extremism" is not extreme among Muslims. Mainstream Islam itself represents an extremist rejection of intellectual honesty, gender equality, secular politics and genuine pluralism. The truth about Islam is as politically incorrect as it is terrifying: Islam is all fringe and no center. In Islam, we confront a civilization with an arrested history. It is as though a portal in time has opened, and the Christians of the 14th century are pouring into our world.

Islam is the fastest growing religion in Europe. The demographic trends are ominous: Given current birthrates, France could be a majority Muslim country in 25 years, and that is if immigration were to stop tomorrow. Throughout Western Europe, Muslim immigrants show little inclination to acquire the secular and civil values of their host countries, and yet exploit these values to the utmost-demanding tolerance for their backwardness, their misogyny, their anti-Semitism, and the genocidal hatred that is regularly preached in their mosques.

Political correctness and fears of racism have rendered many secular Europeans incapable of opposing the terrifying religious commitments of the extremists in their midst. In an effort to appease the lunatic furor arising in the Muslim world in response to the publication of the Danish cartoons, many Western leaders have offered apologies for exercising the very freedoms that are constitutive of civil society in the 21st century.

The U.S. and British governments have chastised Denmark and the other countries that published the cartoons for privileging freedom of speech over religious sensitivity. It is not often that one sees the most powerful countries on Earth achieve new depths of weakness, moral exhaustion and geopolitical stupidity with a single gesture. This was appeasement at its most abject.

The idea that Islam is a "peaceful religion hijacked by extremists" is a dangerous fantasy-and it is now a particularly dangerous fantasy for Muslims to indulge. It is not at all clear how we should proceed in our dialogue with the Muslim world, but deluding ourselves with euphemisms is not the answer. It now appears to be a truism in foreign policy circles that real reform in the Muslim world cannot be imposed from the outside. But it is important to recognize why this is so-it is so because the Muslim world is utterly deranged by its religious tribalism.

This is outstanding commentary on the events of these past few days. Harris' whole piece is an important read and we encourage you to check it out.

The Evolutionary Leap to Sex

The local paper had an article last Monday about the Avida program run by Robert Pennock at Michigan State. It's a computer simulation of Darwinian evolution in which organisms, called Avidians, diversify and evolve much as real organisms are believed to do in the natural world. The program is interesting, but, despite the attempts by some to employ it in the battle against Intelligent Design, it's really quite irrelevant to that issue. We wrote about Avida a year ago (see here) and cited a critical piece by Jonathon Wells which makes this point pretty clearly.

Nevertheless, this passage in the article in our paper piqued our interest:

For instance one of [Pennock's] students is trying to show the evolution of sex. In the basic Avida program, organisms reproduce asexually, but the student changed the code to allow simulated sexual reproduction in order to understand the evolutionary advantages. While there are many theories on the subject, "everyone agrees we don't have an answer on [how sex evolved]," Pennock said.

Hmmm. Let's see. In order to get the Avidians to switch from asexual to sexual reproduction an intelligent programmer had to intervene and "mutate" the software code to facilitate the switch. From the Avidians' standpoint this looks an awful lot like a miracle, doesn't it? Isn't this confirmation of the sort of thing that IDers have been saying about evolution for the past two decades - that it doesn't happen apart from intelligent input? Just asking.

The Jihad Against Cartoons

If you haven't yet seen the cartoons that have "precipitated" the spontaneous riots among Muslims offended by depictions of their Prophet, and most people haven't because very few people are showing them, you can view them here. If you're expecting something truly horrifying or degrading you'll be greatly surprised.

Omar at Iraq The Model has some interesting thoughts on all this:

We have a piece of wisdom here that says "The bird got mad at the grain field!" which as you can see means that sometimes people make stupid decisions that can harm only their own interests, yet they think that by doing what they did they would harm those they're boycotting. This saying applies to all Muslim countries in general and to our interim government in particular.

Our brilliant transportation minister Salam al-Maliki who is a Sadrist, by the way, announced that his ministry will suspend all projects and contracts with Denmark and Norway and said that Iraq will stop accepting any donations or offers concerning Iraq's reconstruction! Who are they harming by doing this? Denmark? No, ... they are harming no one but Iraq and Iraqis.

I give up! I have to comment on the general situation...I swear that 90%+ of the protestors in Muslim countries have not seen the cartoons and do not know the name of the paper, and when I say that I'm sure of it because I have access to the web 24/7, and I spent a really long time searching for the cartoons and couldn't find them until a friend emailed me a link.

You know that those cartoons were published for the 1st time months ago, and we here in the Middle East have tons of jokes about Allah, the prophets and the angels that are way more offensive, funny and obscene than those poorly-made cartoons, yet no one ever got shot for telling one of those jokes or at least we had never seen rallies and protests against those infidel joke-tellers.

What I want to say is that I think the reactions were planned to be exaggerated this time by some Middle Eastern regimes and are not mere public reaction. And I think Syria and Iran have the motives to trigger such reactions in order to get away from the pressures applied by the international community on those regimes. However, I cannot claim that the Muslim community is innocent for there have been outrageous reactions outside the range of Syria's or Iran's influence but again, these protests and threats are more political than religious in nature.

One last thing, even if the entire EU apologizes it won't change a thing; fanatics in our countries here had always considered the west their infidel arrogant crusader enemy and no apology no matter how big or sincere can change that.

Omar is no doubt right. This is not about the cartoons. This is another skirmish in Islam's long war against the West, and the West will never win that war by trying to appease the Islamists.

Speaking of appeasement, the hypocrisy in some of the American MSM is fulsome. Many press organs which refuse to run the drawings out of sensitivity to Muslim beliefs nevertheless had no such compunctions about showing Andres Serrano's Piss Christ or Chris Ofili's dung splattered Holy Virgin Mary. The reason the major newspapers are not showing the cartoons is that they have been intimidated and cowed by Muslim threats. They'll show material offensive to Christians because they do not fear Christians. They fear Muslims and with good reason. The least they could do is be honest about it.

Metaphysics in Science Class

The morning paper brings word that the Dover School Board has unanimously approved the biology curriculum for next year and that the good people of Dover, having struggled mightily to successfully purge their science classrooms of the metaphysical taint of ID, have added a unit in which they will discuss the ethical implications of cloning!

To arms, citizens! How can the same people who campaigned against the previous board because they wanted a mere mention of intelligent design to fall upon their students' ears now approve a unit in a biology class that is so clearly a matter of values (metaphysics) and so obviously unscientific? Where are the hearty defenders of scientific purity? Where are the staunch advocates of allowing only those matters to be discussed in public school science classes which can be subject to empirical testing? Where are Judge Jones and the ACLU?

Perhaps the failure of the board and the Dover biology teachers to see the richly amusing inconsistency of their position is understandable. One can scarcely pick up a book written on some topic of science today without finding discussions of topics which are not in any sense empirically testable but which many scientists evidently find to be suitable topics for a book on science nonetheless. Presumably, many of these topics would not precipitate the levitation of a single eyebrow were they to be discussed in a public school science classroom (except possibly #14 below) yet every one of them is a metaphysical, not a scientific, idea. Here's a tentative list of such topics off the top of my head:

1. Many universes: The idea that ours is just one of a nearly infinite number of universes all of which are closed off from each other defying detection.

2. Oscillating universe: The theory that our universe has expanded and collapsed an infinite number of times.

3. String theory: The idea that the fundamental unit of material substance are unimaginably tiny vibrating filaments of energy.

4. Other dimensions: The theory that the four dimensions of space-time are only part of physical reality.

5. Principle of uniformity: The assumption that the laws and properties of the universe are homogenous throughout the universe.

6. Assumption of uniformitarianism: The idea that the same processes and forces at work in the world today have always been at work at essentially the same rates.

7. Scientific method: The idea that there is a particular methodology that defines the scientific process which ought to be followed.

8. Law of parsimony: The principle that assumes that the simplest explanation which fits all the facts is the best.

9. Assumption that human reason is trustworthy: The notion that a faculty which has evolved because it made us better fit to survive is nevertheless a dependable guide to truth which is an entirely different matter than what's most propitious for human survival.

10. Assumption that we should value truth: The idea that truth should be esteemed more highly than any competing value, like, for instance, personal comfort.

11. Preference for naturalistic explanations: A preference based upon an untestable assumption that all knowable truth is found only in the natural realm.

12. Materialistic abiogenesis: The belief that natural forces are sufficient in themselves to have produced life.

13. Assumption that if something is physically possible then given the age of the universe it probably happened.

14. Anthropic principle: The idea that the fine-tuning of the cosmos points to the conclusion that the universe has purpose.

15. Assumption that the cosmos is atelic. I.e. that it has no purpose.

16. Assumption that there's a world external to our own minds.

17. Reductionism: The conviction that all phenomena, including mental phenomena, can be ultimately explained solely in terms of physics and chemistry.

18. Assumption that the universe arose out of a "vacuum matrix" rather than out of nothing.

19. Ethical claims regarding the environment, nuclear power, cloning, and genetic engineering.

20. Memes: According to biologist Richard Dawkins memes are the cultural analog to genes. They are ideas or customs that are believed by Dawkins and others to get passed along according to their survival value rather than their truth value. An example of this, unfortunately, is the concept of the meme itself.

No doubt a little thought would yield a lot more examples, and if readers can think of any others, please let us know.

Mind you, we're not passing judgment on the truth of any of the above, nor are we saying they shouldn't be discussed in a science classroom. They should. We're merely noting that with so much philosophical theorizing flying about in the scientific literature and in public school science classes, it seems a little ironic that people are catapulted into outrage and hysterics at the mere suggestion that a teacher might also mention to our children that some scientists believe that intelligence played a role in the creation of the universe and the appearance of life. Some metaphysical ideas, apparently, are less acceptable in a science classroom than others, although one wishes there were consistent, reasonable criteria for determining acceptability.

There's been much written about the need to keep non-science topics out of the science classroom lest students' thinking be contaminated by exposure to unscientific views. This plea is really a ploy, of course, designed to keep a particular allegedly non-scientific view, Intelligent Design, out of the public school while allowing other non-scientific views and topics, which pose no danger to the regnant materialist orthodoxy, free access to our students' hearts and minds.

The Dover board, oblivious to the bias they're displaying, sees no contradiction in having students talk about ethical issues in a science class after having just replaced a board that was voted out because they sought to introduce a topic from the philosophy of science into the science classroom.

It's sad that such is the blindness of those who make these decisions, but we have to laugh nonetheless. It's too funny not to.

Explaining the Left's Incivility

Michael Novak has a great analysis of the left's tactics in general and those of Senator Kennedy in particular in First Things. They may sound like madmen and lunatics but their hysterical viciousness takes a calculated toll:

Conventional wisdom seems to say that the Left has gone around the bend, is jumping off cliffs, is stark raving mad.

But there is a method in the madness of the Left. There has always been a method in it. The Left is not engaged in an "argument," it is engaged in a revolution in the name of all that is just and right and good. Therefore, it does not aim to out-argue its opponents, but to shame them, to drive them from the field in ignominy, to make them figures of ridicule, moral indignation, and revulsion.

Go back and read your Lenin. Revisit the show trials. The point is that no one dares defend such bad people. (This tactic works. Think twice before defending Bush on a college campus. How much indignation can you bear?)

Better yet, watch Ted Kennedy in action. His attacks on Judge Alito, like his earlier attacks on Judge Bork, were not intended as arguments, and certainly showed little regard for fact. They were all bluster, moral indignation, character assassination, ridicule, ostracism. If words could kill, his were the words of an assassin.

This leftist tactic has worked for over one hundred years, because there are not many people who can stand unafraid before it. Most do not want to attract attention to themselves, lest its indignation and vituperation and moral ridicule be turned loose upon them. The tirades in which these words are launched-Senator Kennedy's neck muscles bulge, his flesh turns bright red, his voice rises ever higher so as to forbid anybody-anybody-from interrupting him-are meant to enforce acquiescence, not consent. They are meant to intimidate, not to present an argument. They are meant to reduce to subservience all who are obliged to listen, even friends and associates (however embarrassed they might be).

Senator Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin had mastered this Leninist trick himself, and turned it upon the Left. His every tonality and accent dripped ridicule and moral disdain.

It is a method that can be learned by anyone. But Lenin was the first to put it in handbooks and train hundreds of agitators, organizers, cells, and units to use it.

Playing tapes of Senator McCarthy in some of his famous hearings and Senator Kennedy in the recent judiciary hearings would, I believe, be quite instructive as to the method.

But why does this method work? As a method of last resort, it has the merit of intimidating good people into silence. It strikes fear into most hearts. Ridicule and moral opprobrium, and manifestations of sheer hatred for one's very being, are not easy to bear, especially for conscientious and upright and morally sensitive people. Such persons, like Mrs. Alito, feel like bursting into tears. Those near them feel powerless and weak, unable to help, unable to make appeal.

Moreover, hatred spreads. Once the speaker licenses moral ridicule toward the accused, and destroys in him any semblance of moral character, truthfulness, or decency, on what ground will such a person stand? What shred of dignity is left to cover him? Such a person is unfit to be seen in the company of better people-the intention is to banish him. Don't even consider him! Reject him! Cast him out!

To say that Senator Kennedy has become a bully is not enough. He is a destroyer of the moral dignity of persons.

When I was a boy, Democrats dominated everything. But Democrats since 1952 have held the White House only fitfully. They have lost the Senate. They have lost the House. They have lost the Supreme Court (which, although it is supposed to be independent of politics, was reconfigured to become the major motor of progressive reform). They have lost religious people, once their main base of support. They are losing popular appeal.

But by turning back to their Old Left handbooks, the Democratic leadership has found the acids that destroy opposition. Even though the nation is in a deadly war, they constantly attack the credibility and truthfulness of the President, ridicule him, call him names, morally assassinate him. That acid seeps through society.

As to building a better country, there is not much in this method to commend it. But for destroying the moral standing of the other side, it has had proven effect for many decades. It is not crazy for Democrats to conclude that, having lost so much, they have little more to lose.

And even if it is crazy, there is method in it. Canonical method, approved method. In a democracy, alas, destroying the "in" power sometimes is sufficient for boosting the electoral success of the "outs."

That, plus the fact that character assassins are simply execrable human beings, and such people, not wishing to be bound by the sorts of constraints imposed by traditional morality feel most at home among those who hold with Lenin that the only thing that's moral is what advances the revolution, and whatever hinders it is immoral. In other words, people given to a vicious and vile style of politics are generally going to be more comfortable on the left.

Unconscionable

President Bush attended the funeral of Coretta Scott King today whereupon he was assaulted by a succession of speakers from Jimmy Carter, who almost daily diminishes in the estimation of those who value human decency and a sense of Christian brotherhood, to Joseph Lowery, Jesse Jackson, and Al Sharpton. Each of these men took the opportunity to personally blast the President and his policies, inciting the audience to hoot and howl, sometimes for over a full minute. Meanwhile, Mr. Bush, his wife, and his father just sat in the pew and endured this despicable treatment as these poseurs and charlatans, none of whom has half the character the president does, desecrated the memory of Mrs. King by using the occasion of her funeral as a prop to enable them to politically excoriate the President. It was a disgrace.

This is the face of the modern Democratic Party, and it's not something we would want our children to behold.

The Garden of Eden

This story is so astonishing it sounds almost like a hoax. A team of scientists have journeyed into a virgin area of New Guinea and discovered a treasure trove of new biological species. The full article can be read here. Following is a summary of their finds:

Birds: The scientists discovered a new species - the red faced, wattled honeyeater - and found the breeding grounds of two birds of almost mythical status - the golden-fronted bowerbird and Berlepsch's six-wired bird of paradise, long believed to have disappeared as a separate species. The expedition also came across exotic giant-crowned pigeons and giant cassowaries - a huge flightless bird - which are among more than 225 species which breed in the area, including 13 species of birds of paradise. One scientist said that the dawn chorus was the most fantastic he had ever heard.

Mammals: Forty species of mammals were recorded. Six species of tree kangeroos, rare elsewhere in New Guinea, were abundant and the scientists also found a species which is new to Indonesia, the golden-mantled tree kangeroo. The rare and almost unknown long-beaked echidna, or spiny anteater, a member of a primitive group of egg-laying mammals called monotremes, was also encountered. Like all the mammals found in the area, it was completely unafraid of humans and could be easily picked up, suggesting its previous contact with man was negligible.

Plants: A total area of about one million hectares of pristine, ancient, tropical, humid forest containing at least 550 plants species, many previously unknown and including five new species of palms. One of the most spectacular discoveries was a so far unidentified species of rhododendron, which has a white scented flower almost six inches across, equalling the largest recorded rhododendron flower.

Butterflies: Entomologists among the scientists identified more than 150 different species of butterfly, including four completely new species and several new sub-species, some of which are related to the common English "cabbage white" butterfly. Other butterflies observed included the rare giant birdwing, which is the world's largest butterfly, with a wingspan that stretches up to seven inches.

Frogs: The Foja is one of the richest sites for frogs in the entire Asia-Pacific region, and the team identified 60 separate species, including 20 previously unknown to science, one of which is only 14mm big. Among their discoveries were healthy populations of the rare and little-known lace-eyed frog and a new population of another frog, the Xenorhina arboricola, which had previously only been known to exist in Papua New Guinea.

At this point in the history of biological exploration such a discovery is simply astonishing.

Is Atheism Rationally Superior?

John Loftus at Debunking Christianity posts an argument against the Christian Illusion of Rational Superiority. He claims that many Christians hold that Christianity is rationally superior to atheism, and that if an atheist doesn't believe in God it must be due to some reason other than the logic of his arguments.

He promises more elaboration on this in future posts, but in this one he contents himself with simply noting that some very smart people have been unbelievers and implying that, therefore, atheism must be more rational than its alternatives. It's true enough that smart people have been atheists, but that fact is evidence for nothing. Smart people have also been theists.

Whether or not Christianity is rationally superior to atheism, I think it is the case that theism, belief in a personal God, is superior, both rationally and existentially, to atheism.

It's superior rationally because, unlike atheism, theism offers grounds for trusting our reason. If God has given us our cognitive faculties then we have reason to expect that they are reliable guides to truth. We may be wrong about that, but we have reason to believe that we're not.

The atheist, on the other hand, has no grounds for trusting that reason can lead to truth, or even for asserting that truth should be our goal.

If our reason is a product of blind, unguided processes that responded to survival pressures in our evolutionary past then we can conclude only that our reason is a reliable aid to survival in a stone age environment. We can infer nothing about it's usefulness as a guide to truth.

It could well be, for instance, that beliefs we hold that enhance our survival are, in fact, not true. A person who believes that rats are evil spirits in the form of rodents and should be avoided at all costs will have an advantage in surviving plagues born by rats even though his belief is false.

The atheist cannot even argue that reason is reliable since in order to form an argument on behalf of reason he has to rely on reason. In other words, he has to assume that reason is reliable in order to argue that it is. This is the fallacy of begging the question. He may be right that reason is reliable, but he can only believe it is as an a priori act of faith.

Nor can he say that truth should be our goal since to do so is to bind others to a value or ethical judgment that he has no business making for anyone but himself. Upon what would he base the assertion that it is "right" to believe what's true and "wrong" to believe what's false? Why should anyone value truth instead of, say, personal comfort? If a belief gives people solace, like belief in an afterlife, even though it may not be true, why should that belief be regarded as inferior to a true one? What is it about truth that makes it superior to other values? Would the truth in this case make a person's life better in any way if it robbed them of their comfort?

The theist, however, especially the Christian theist, grounds his esteem for truth in his belief that God wants and commands us to value it preeminently. He grounds it in his conviction that Christ is the Truth and that that Truth liberates us, even if we don't know how.

Theism is existentially superior to atheism because, as we've written on previous occasions (e.g. here), atheism, unlike theism, gives us no basis for ultimate meaning in our lives or in the universe, it offers no ground for moral judgment, no hope for genuine justice, no hope that death does not win in the end, no grounds for believing in human dignity, or worth, or human rights. It gives us no basis for thinking we have free will or for thinking that we have an enduring self. It gives us no reason to love others (since love is just a chemical reaction occuring in the brain and as such has no meaning beyond providing a source of pleasure and grief). In the atheistic view we are just gobs of mud and blood with no soul, no mind, and no non-arbitrary value. The atheistic view is utterly de-humanizing if taken to its logical endpoint, and the bloody, tyrannical history of state atheism in the twentieth century vividly illustrates the consequences of that dehumanization.

Loftus may be correct that atheism is rationally superior to Christian theism, but in order to make his case he has a long uphill climb ahead of him. We'll be interested to see how he manages.

Muslims Behaving Like Muslims

Whatever is behind the latest episode of Muslims-Behaving-Badly it's not that their outrage results from the fact that Muhammed was represented in cartoons. Muhammed has been depicted many times in Islamic history (see here). What's different, perhaps, is that this time it's been done by European infidels. Then again, maybe it has just been a while since they've had an opportunity to act like true Muslims, and the cartoons were as good an excuse as any to shoot a few Christians:

A teenage boy shot and killed the Italian Roman Catholic priest of a church in the Black Sea port city of Trabzon in Turkey yesterday, shouting "Allah Akbar" (God is Great) as he escaped, according to police and witnesses. The priest, 60-year-old Andrea Santoro, was shot hours after Mass at Santa Maria Church....A woman who answered the telephone at the church said the priest was inside when he was attacked, and prosecutor Burhan Cobanoglu said he was shot twice from behind, with bullets ripping through his heart and liver.

"Allah Akbar," indeed. We're sure Allah is pleased that his devotees are acting like the spawn of twenty generations of incest among a population of imbeciles.

By the way, can you imagine a Muslim doing this?

You Better Shop Around

A former student sends this along after having read our post titled Orwell Warned Us About People Like This:

Your recent article entitled Orwell Warned Us About People Like This reminded me yet again why I find your site so enjoyable. Your assertion that "universities do not exist to challenge established thought-forms, they're not supposed to be "opening" minds" is, in my opinion, completely accurate at most universities. While there are some professors that are the exception, often they are denied tenure, made to silence their views, etc.

Most of the professors in today's universities seem to simply peddle a blatant left-wing agenda, which wouldn't be so bad if they didn't try to pass it off as unbiased. For example, my Contemporary Arab World Professor nonchalantly will defend the Arabs/Palestinians and rant on against the "evils of Israel" - how they butcher civilians, stole the land from the Arabs, have no right to that land, etc.- and she doesn't present this as an opinion, but as accepted belief. The sad part is, for most of the left-wing ideologues at American University (and other schools), they view their extremist beliefs as in the mainstream, unquestionable, and perfectly acceptable.

As always, I find your site informative and entertaining. Keep up the superb work.

We wonder what this student's university would do if a professor of Israeli or Jewish studies promoted the same sorts of hate-inspiring propaganda against the Palestinians. Doubtless, he or she would be the object of loud protests, demands for disciplinary hearings, and on and on. Universities, or at least certain departments in many of them, have lost their soul along with their intellectual integrity. They've abandoned the academic ideals of scholarship, objectivity, and fairness and have transformed themselves into crass megaphones for left-wing ideology.

Mama, before you send your child off to college, you better check into what you'll be getting for your thirty five thousand dollars a year. You might also do well, if you have a high tolerance for sleaze, to read Tom Wolfe's I Am Charlotte Simmons. It's an eye opener for a lot of parents.

Kripgenstein

The New York Times has an interesting profile of perhaps the most prominent of contemporary philosophers, Saul Kripke. Kripke is a true genius and a genuine eccentric. The Times article is a good read. Here's part of it:

Mr. Kripke, a rabbi's son, grew up in Omaha, and by all accounts was a true prodigy, so brilliant and precocious that the so-called prodigies of today are by comparison mere shadows flickering on the wall of our collective cave. In the fourth grade he discovered algebra, which he later said he could have invented on his own, and by the end of grammar school he had mastered geometry and calculus and taken up philosophy. While still a teenager he wrote a series of papers that eventually transformed the study of modal logic. One of them, or so the legend goes, earned a letter from the math department at Harvard, which hoped he would apply for a job until he wrote back and declined, explaining, "My mother said that I should finish high school and go to college first."

The college he eventually chose was Harvard. "I wish I could have skipped college," Mr. Kripke said in an interview. "I got to know some interesting people, but I can't say I learned anything. I probably would have learned it all anyway, just reading on my own."

While still a Harvard undergrad, Mr. Kripke started teaching post-graduates down the street at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and after getting his B.A. didn't bother to acquire an advanced degree. Who could teach him anything he didn't already know? Instead, he began teaching and publishing. His 1980 book "Naming and Necessity," based on work he began in high school, is among the most influential philosophy books of the last 50 years, and his book-length interpretation of Wittgenstein, published two years later, is so thoroughgoing that some scholars now refer to a sort of composite figure known as Kripgenstein.

He certainly sounds like an amazing character.

Living in a Fantasy World

Amy Goodman, whoever else she is, must be the poster child for left-wing naivete. She thinks the American media are declining in popularity because people are fed up with positive coverage of the war in Iraq and that the Arab media have an opportunity to take over as the premier global news source, presumably because the world hungers for the sort of honest, objective reporting they would get from, say, al-Jazeera. Here are the opening paragraphs of The Guardian's report on a News Forum sponsored by al-Jazeera at which Ms Goodman spoke:

Arabic-language media have an unprecedented chance to take over as the world's premier news source because trust in their US counterparts plummeted following their "shameful coverage" of the war in Iraq, a conference heard today.

The US media reached an "all-time low" in failing to reflect public opinion and Americans' desire for trusted information, instead acting as a "cheerleader" for war, said Amy Goodman, the executive producer and host of US TV and radio news show Democracy Now!, at a news forum organised by al-Jazeera. Ms Goodman said in the run-up to the Iraq war a study of NBC, CBS, ABC and PBS newscasts over a fortnight recorded 393 interviews on the conflict, of which only three reported the anti-war movement.

"This is a media cheerleading for war and does not represent mainstream opinion in the US," she added. Ms Goodman said she believed the policy of embedding reporters with coalition forces was "a total failure for independent journalism ... western audiences need to see the other side of the story - from communities and hospitals".

"If people in the US had a true picture of war - dead babies, women with their legs blown off, dead and dying soldiers - they would say 'no'," she said. "There is nothing more important than the media - it is more powerful than any bomb or missile and we have to take it back ... we need a media that is independent and honestly showing us the images, the hell, ugliness and brutality of war, not selling us war."

Well, of course. No one wants to be confronted with the ugliness of war in their living rooms every evening, and many people who don't otherwise think very much about the reasons for going to war would be repelled by the visuals of death and carnage, but if the nightly news bombarded us with the horrors of automobile accidents night after night many people would probably support serious restrictions on automobiles, too. Her complaint, at bottum, is that she's against the war and she's upset that the media haven't done everything they could to turn the rest of public opinion against it.

If Ms Goodman thinks the American media are in decline because of their alleged support for the war, she hasn't been paying attention. Every night we're reminded of the death toll. Every night we hear of bombings and mayhem, but rarely is there a report on the many positive developments taking place in Iraq and Afghanistan. Instead we hear report after report about how dire the situation is "on the ground" and how chaotic Iraq is.

Moreover, both the LA Times and New York Times are, in fact, anti-Bush, anti-war papers, and their circulation numbers are in decline, especially those of the LA Times. People are resigning their allegiance to the old media for a number of reasons, but dissatisfaction with their "cheerleading" is hardly one of them. If it were, how would we explain the fact that conservative talk radio is prospering?

The old media is suffering because of the proliferation of competitive alternatives on cable news networks, talk radio, and the internet. They're also declining in influence because people are disgusted with their liberal tendentiousness and the realization that they can't be trusted to present the whole truth.

If Ms Goodman thinks that the solution to the woes of mainstream print and broadcast media is to embrace the likes of al-Jazeera then she's living in a fantasy world. As a perusal of the article linked above will show, even others at al-Jazeera's News Forum said as much.

Orwell Warned Us About People Like This

Another University instructor is excommunicated for heresy by the Darwinist Inquisition. This time it's Caroline Crocker at George Mason University. The Washington Post has a lengthy piece on the ugly business which is summarized here.

One part that caught our eye was this:

GMU spokesman Daniel Walsch denied that the school had fired Crocker. She was a part-time faculty member, he said, and was let go at the end of her contract period for reasons unrelated to her views on intelligent design. "We wholeheartedly support academic freedom," he said. But teachers also have a responsibility to stick to subjects they were hired to teach, he added, and intelligent design belonged in a religion class, not biology. Does academic freedom "literally give you the right to talk about anything, whether it has anything to do with the subject matter or not? The answer is no."

Well. If GMU is going to refuse to renew the contract of every lecturer who talks about something other than what he/she was hired to teach there will certainly be a lot of job openings at that university next Fall. We can hardly wait to see the panic on the faces of all those English and sociology instructors who use their podium as a stage for criticizing George Bush's foreign policy when they find out about this.

On the other hand, we suppose the GMU faculty really need not worry. Everyone knows that what Mr. Walsch meant to say was that academic freedom doesn't give an untenured instructor the right to talk about weaknesses in materialistic evolutionary theory when she's supposed to be drilling into students' heads that it's true, for heaven's sake.

We need to realize, Mr. Walsch reminds us, that contrary to what the rubes who send their children to them think, universities do not exist to challenge established thought-forms, they're not supposed to be "opening" minds. The task of the modern university is to indoctrinate, stifle curiosity, and regiment student thinking along lines that are left-wing in their ideology and materialist in their metaphysics. Anything else is treated as a heresy.

Mr. Walsch tells us in no uncertain terms that teachers at his university must conform to the accepted dogmas and orthodoxies and refrain from trying to pry open closed minds with heterodox ideas or they can look for employment elsewhere.

Sounds like one of those communist re-education camps, doesn't it?

Preparing For the War That'll Never Come

Ralph Peters has an absolute must-read article at The Weekly Standard. His essay ranges over the war against Islamist terror, the looming potential conflict with China, and the role of the global media and intelligentsia. He puts his finger on every weakness that besets us and argues persuasively that we are simply not suited temperamentally or philosophically to face the challenges that await us in the decade ahead. We rely too much, for example, on technology to defeat an enemy driven by a passionate, if misguided, faith against which the effete secularism of the West is no match.

Here are just a few excerpts:

There is...not a single enemy in existence or on the horizon willing to play the victim to the military we continue to build. Faced with men of iron belief wielding bombs built in sheds and basements, our revolution in military affairs appears more an indulgence than an investment.

Not a single item in our trillion-dollar arsenal can compare with the genius of the suicide bomber--the breakthrough weapon of our time. Our intelligence systems cannot locate him, our arsenal cannot deter him, and, all too often, our soldiers cannot stop him before it is too late. A man of invincible conviction--call it delusion, if you will--armed with explosives stolen or purchased for a handful of soiled bills can have a strategic impact that staggers governments. Abetted by the global media, the suicide bomber is the wonder weapon of the age.

The Chinese version of the counterrevolution in military affairs puts less stress on a head-to-head military confrontation (although that matters, of course) and more on defeating the nation behind our military. Despite the importance Beijing attaches to a strong military, China won't fall into the trap that snared the Soviets--the attempt to compete with our military expenditures. Why fight battles you'll lose, when you can wage war directly against the American population by attacking its digital and physical infrastructure, its confidence and morale? In a war of mutual suffering, which population would be better equipped, practically and psychologically, to endure massive power outages, food-chain disruptions, the obliteration of databases, and even epidemic disease?

Plenty of Americans are tougher than we're credited with being, but what about the now-decisive intelligentsia? What about those conditioned to levels of comfort unimaginable to the generation that fought World War II (or even Vietnam)? Would 21st-century suburban Americans accept rationing without protests? Whenever I encounter Chinese abroad I am astonished by their chauvinism. Their confidence is reminiscent of Americans' a half century ago. Should we pretend that Chinese opinion-makers, such as they are, would feel inclined to attack their government as our journalists attack Washington? A war with China would be a massive contest of wills, and China might need to break the will of only a tiny fraction of our population. It only takes a few hundred men and women in Washington to decide that a war is lost.

America's triumph shames the Middle East and Europe alike, and has long dented the pride of Latin America. But the brotherhood of Islamist terrorists and the tribe of global intellectuals who dominate the media are the two groups who feel the most fury toward America. The terrorists dream of a paradise beyond the grave; intellectuals fantasized about utopias on earth. Neither can stomach the practical success of the American way of life, with its insistence on individual performance and its resistance to unearned privilege. For the Islamists, America's power threatens the promises of their faith. For world-intellectuals, America is the murderer of their most precious fantasies.

Is it any wonder that these two superficially different groups have drifted into collusion?

Every word of Peter's article is enlightening and urgently needed. It's a little long, but don't miss it.

More Islamic Lunacy

All this because of a few sketches of a man that Muslims don't even regard as divine:

Mahmoud Zahar, leader of the militant Palestinian group Hamas, told the Italian daily Il Giornale the cartoonists should be punished by death. We should have killed all those who offend the Prophet...." he said.

Yes. By all means. Kill, kill, kill. That's all a savage knows. It's what he does best. It's why the Islamic world is still mired in the 6th century.

Michelle Malkin has everything on this lunacy that you could ever want to read or see. As we've said, we don't think the newspapers should have deliberately flipped the world's Muslims the bird, but on the other hand the bloodthirsty reaction by the mindless regiments of Orcs among the Muslim masses shows that they haven't advanced an inch in 1500 years.

If Muslim communities had peacefully made their case, explained why they were offended, even imposed economic boycotts on European goods in their markets to make their point, we would be sympathetic to those who felt, rightly or wrongly, that a good and holy man was being maliciously degraded by outsiders.

But not now. Not after the way members of the religion of peace all around the world are responding. The Danes, Norwegians and the rest simply should not yield to threats and violence. If Muslims are incensed that their prophet is being caricatured they have no one to blame but themselves. It is they, after all, who shout to the world their faithfulness to Muhammed even as they blow innocent people to pieces. How can they expect that any civilized people would respect their religion or their prophet when both of them inspire such barbarity?

It's a good thing for Kanye West that he portrayed himself as the Christ whom Christians revere and not as Muhammed. The difference between Christianity and Islam couldn't be more stark than in the reactions of both to what they perceive as insults.

Meanwhile, in News That Matters

While the news media focusses our attention on such weighty matters as whether or not Samuel Alito belonged to an all-male club two decades ago or the latest self-inflicted embarrassments of Cindy Sheehan, the war in Afghanistan continues to simmer:

Afghan Army and police units, along with the U.S. military are engaged in combat with Taliban forces in Afghanistan's southern province of Helmand. The Associated Press states the fighting began after Afghan "police were deployed to the Haji Fateh area to hunt for Taliban rebels" and the Taliban attacked the police forces. Afghan police and Army units poured into the region to engage what is believed to be a force of about 200 Taliban fighters, and U.S. air support, including A-10 Warthog ground-attack aircraft have been pounding the Taliban positions.

Reuters reports there have been four engagements in the area, and twenty Taliban and three police have been killed in the fighting. According to Mullah Mir, Helmand's deputy provincial governor, "We're sending more reinforcements. The fighting is still going on." The latest report indicates "Two well-known Taliban commanders, Mullah Torjan and Haji Nasru, are among those enemy forces who were killed today [during clashes in Helmand]," along with thirty Taliban fighters. A Taliban spokesman denies their forces took heavy casualties.

Well, the Taliban spokesman may be correct, but it probably depends on his definition of "heavy." If A-10s were employed in the battle the meaning of "heavy" in this context is probably something like "destroyed to the last man," as in, "A Taliban spokesman denies their two hundred man force was completely wiped out by the American Warthogs. A couple of Mujahadeen managed to survive, albeit with severe wounds."

While the fighting continues in Helmand, the Dutch Parliament has approved the deployment of 1,400 troops to neighboring Uruzgan province. The increase in suicide attacks and current fighting have not deterred the Dutch from fulfilling their commitment to NATO. There are fears the 5,500 British troops preparing to deploy to Helmand province may be facing in influx of foreign fighters. Ghulam Dusthaqir, Nimroz's provincial government, states there is a batch coming in from Iraq; "They're linked to al-Qa'eda and fought against US forces in Iraq. They have been ordered to come here. Many are suicide bombers."

It's interesting that al-Qaeda is redeploying fighters from Iraq, where they had to fight against Americans, to Afghanistan to fight against the Dutch and British. Perhaps they think this will allow for a more successful display of their talents. In any event, it suggests a sense on the part of al-Qaeda that Iraq is a lost cause, at least as long as the Americans are there.

Should Blackmail Be Legal?

Blackmail is illegal and for good reasons, right? Well, you may not have ever thought about it, but actually it seems as if there really are few good reasons for making blackmail a crime other than we think it should be. UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh of The Volokh Conspiracy explains why our intuitions on the matter don't have much logical warrant. Here's the basic argument:

1. I am generally free to publish embarrassing information about you - in fact, I generally have the constitutional right to do so. Likewise, I am free to keep quiet about it.

2. I am generally free to ask you for money in exchange for my doing something (here, keeping quiet) that I have no preexisting legal obligation to do. I am also free to ask you to perform some service in exchange for my doing something that I have no preexisting legal obligation to do. I am even free to ask you to cast a vote in exchange for my doing at least some things that I have no preexisting legal obligation to do: For instance, a pro-choice newspaper editor may generally say that he will endorse a politican for reelection if the politician votes against an abortion restriction.

3. But if I ask you for money or a service in exchange for my not revealing embarrassing information about you (and recall that I have no preexisting legal obligation to keep quiet), then that's a crime.

The question is: Why is the combination of 1. and 2. a crime if neither of them alone is a crime?

Volokh, who is a wiz (He got his B.S. in math/computer science from UCLA when he was 15), thinks blackmail should be illegal, but confesses that he doesn't know exactly why. The question arises as a result of a blog post by one Michael Rogers who threatened to out a closeted gay Republican U.S. Senator if he did not vote against the confirmation of Samuel Alito. You can read Volokh's ruminations on this legal conundrum at the link.

For what it's worth, only one Republican voted against Alito. If we hear nothing more about this sordid affair the assumption will be that Rogers' condition was met. Since only one Republican voted the way the blackmailer directed, that senator will be assumed to be the target of the blackmail, and, rightly or wrongly, he will be "outed" even though he voted the way Rogers demanded.

This could be very unfair to that senator because one of the Yay voters may well have been the target, but Rogers might have, for whatever reason, changed his mind about outing him. If Rogers does change his mind, and doesn't publicize the fact that he has changed his mind, then people are likely to wrongly suspect that the lone Nay voter is in fact the closet homosexual.

We wonder if that senator could then sue Rogers for defamation. Or doesn't it constitute defamation anymore to cause people to think that someone is gay?

Do We Need God to be Moral?

John Loftus is a 1985 graduate of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School with a Th.M. who subsequently rejected Christianity and turned to atheism.

He currently manages a blog called Debunking Christianity at which he reminds us several times that he studied under prominent Christian philosopher and apologist William Lane Craig. It's not clear if he's claiming to be an atheist because of Mr. Craig's influence or in spite of it.

At any rate, Loftus has posted an essay on the matter of the relationship of God to moral behavior. In it he addresses the question whether one must be a Christian or a theist to be moral.

He quotes Craig:

"If life ends at the grave, then it makes no difference whether one has lived as a Stalin or as a saint...." "Who is to judge that the values of Adolf Hitler are inferior to those of a saint? "The world was horrified when it learned that at camps like Dachau the Nazis had used prisoners for medical experiments on living humans. But why not? If God does not exist, there can be no objection to using people as human guinea pigs."

Loftus then adds:

There are two bases for grounding Christian ethical standards. The first is known as the Divine Command Theory. The second basis is Natural Law Theory, which I will dispense with briefly later. I will show that neither of these bases for Christian ethics offers believers a special access to moral truth that unbelievers don't also share. Christian moral foundations are not superior ones based on their own assumptions!

He goes on to argue for his claim that neither of these ethical theories give the Christian an access to moral truth that the unbeliever, through the use of his reason, doesn't also have. In other words, an atheist can discover and live by moral truth equally as well as the Christian, and God is therefore superfluous to morality.

He then quotes the late Louis Pojman:

"God commands the Good (or right) because it is good (or right), and the Good (or right) is not good (right) simply because God commands it. Furthermore, if this is correct, then we can discover our ethical duties through reason, independent of God's command. For what is good for his creatures is so objectively. We do not need God to tell us that it is bad to cause unnecessary suffering or that it is good to ameliorate suffering; reason can do that. It begins to look like the true version of ethics is what we called 'secular ethics.'" Pojman rightly asked: "If [a Christian] wants to claim that it is goodness plus God's command that determines what is right, what does God add to rightness that is not there simply with goodness?....If love or goodness prescribes act A, what does A gain by being commanded by God? Materially, nothing at all."

If one need not resort to God to discover ethical truth then God is an unnecessary entity in our ethical lives and may as well be discarded like some vestigial anatomical structure that just gets in the way of proper functioning.

A careful reading of what Loftus and Pojman write here, however, will show that neither of them really answer the challenge that Craig lays down in the beginning of the post. Loftus may think he's debunking Christianity with this post, but all he's really doing is missing the point.

The problem for the atheist is not whether he can, through the exercise of his reason, discern moral truth independently of God, the problem is that if there is no God there is no moral truth to discern. Right and wrong are ontologically dependent upon a transcendent moral authority. If there is no such being then there simply is no way anyone can say that anything at all is morally right or wrong. There's no non-arbitrary answer to the question, what is it that makes an act wrong?

Pojman says that:

"if both modified divine command ethics and secular ethics have human flourishing as the goal, what difference should it make whether the very same [ethical] principle issues from a special personal authority (God) or from the authority of reason?"

The difference is that if the atheist is correct and God does not exist then there's no reason to insist that human flourishing should be the goal of human conduct. If someone decides that he doesn't care in the least about human fluorishing he does nothing wrong. If someone were to decide that all he cares about is his own personal pleasure, even at the cost of others' well-being, what is it about his decision that could possibly make him "wrong"? Indeed, if atheism is correct, there are no grounds for saying that any goal is right or wrong. Ethics reduces to one's own subjective inclinations and preferences and everyone's subjectivity is just as valid as anyone else's.

The next time someone passes a moral judgment on another's behavior, the next time you hear, for instance, someone say that the war in Iraq is immoral, ask them if they believe there is a God. If they answer "no" ask them then on what grounds they conclude the war is immoral. If they reply that it's wrong to kill people, then ask again, why is killing wrong? What is it about hurting people that makes it wrong? The usual reply is that we wouldn't want someone to hurt us, but, true as that is, it's no reason at all why one person shouldn't hurt another. What, precisely, is the connection between what I want done to me and what I should do to others? In a world without God I am free to do whatever I have the power to do, even if that involves visiting harm upon another human being.

Indeed, the only reason it's wrong to harm another is because persons are created in the image of God, they belong to God and are loved by Him. No one has the right to harm that which belongs to God. No one can harm God's beloved with impunity. Take God out of the picture, however, and all our ethical disputes reduce to matters of taste and temperament. As Dostoyevsky observed, If God is dead then everything is permitted.

The Bondage of Materialism

Michael Behe has an article in the December issue of First Things that illustrates the bondage to materialist philosophy that enthralls contemporary science.

This passage, describing some of the extraordinary reactions that Behe has elicited from antagonistic audiences, is especially remarkable:

Socially acquired materialism often manifests itself by an emotional reaction when challenged. When I lecture in favor of the idea that intelligence is explicitly needed to explain some aspects of biology, the response is not typically, "Gee, that's interesting, but I disagree." Instead, people become angry, denouncing the mildest of challenges to materialism as unspeakable heresy. Once after a lecture in Virginia a student declared she was going to dedicate her life to demonstrating I was wrong.

In Canada an academic ran after me with a loaded rat trap, inviting me to stick my finger in it to see if it worked (I use a mousetrap as an example of the sort of system that can't be made by Darwinian processes). After a lecture to the biochemistry department of a major west-coast university, a group of students I spoke with sullenly agreed that the evidence for Darwinism wasn't there. Nevertheless, they viewed the alternative with contempt and passionately swore to seek a materialistic answer.

At a debate before the Royal Society of Medicine in London, I argued for the incontestable position that science doesn't yet objectively know whether Darwinian processes can explain the human mind, simply because philosophers and neurobiologists don't yet even know what constitutes the human mind. After all, I said, one can't contend that science knows how an undefined entity could be produced by an unspecified process. By a show of hands, about 95 percent of the assembled scientists disagreed. Of course science already "knows" natural selection can explain the human mind-because science already "knows" Darwinian processes explain everything.

Behe's article confirms a point we've made here several times in the past. The attachment people have to their metaphysics is much stronger than the attachment they have to their science. Moreover, what people believe does not depend as much on evidence as it does on what they deeply want to be the case. Most scientists want some materialist explanation for life to be true, and thus their reactions to contrary arguments are as often characterized by irrational outbursts and obstinate denial as they are by reasoned counter-arguments.

Freud alleged that religious belief was nothing more than wish-fulfillment, but surely the same is no less true of materialism.

Behe's whole piece is worth a read.

Po-Mo Statistics

Of course if Bush had said something like this the media would be on it like piranha on a side of beef. "Bush Lies Again," the headlines would scream. Well, we don't think John Kerry deliberately attempted to mislead his listeners, as Kerry and other Dems assert that Bush has repeatedly done. We just think that the junior senator from Massachusetts, like the senior senator, doesn't have the faintest idea what he's talking about.

This report is from Drudge:

Sen. John Kerry claimed [Wednesday] morning on NBC TODAY that 53% of America's children do not graduate from high school -- a claim that raised eyebrows in the NBC control room, sources tell the DRUDGE REPORT.

Kerry made the comments after host Katie Couric asked the former presidential candidate about Bush's State of the Union call to train 70,000 additional teachers in math and science.

COURIC: He wanted to train 70,000 additional teachers in math and science.

KERRY: That's terrific. But 53 percent of our children don't graduate from high school. Kids don't have after-school programs... He didn't ask America to sacrifice anything to achieve great goals and the biggest example is making the tax cut permanent for the wealthiest people in America. The average American struggles to find time to take carry of families, working two or three jobs... It's a disgrace. He did not tell the real state of the union.

Kerry's 53% claim conflicts with a recent press release from the U.S. Census Bureau: "High School Graduation Rates Reach All-Time High"

And the Census Bureau's own website states: 85.9 Percent Of Americans Aged 20-24 Are High School Graduates.

Living in the Democrats' postmodern universe evidently means never having to get your facts right.

King Coal

Here's an interesting piece of news. The governor of West Virginia has asked that all coal mining operations in the state be stopped while the mines are inspected for safety. Sixteen miners have died in accidents in the state since January 2nd.

Whatever the inspections find, mining operations will certainly continue in the state's 544 mines, and coal will continue to be used to provide energy to feed our voracious appetite for it. This means acid rain and global warming will continue to ravage our ecosystems, it means our infrastructure will continue to corrode faster than it otherwise would, it means miners will continue to die, and perhaps thousands of other citizens will suffer respiratory ailments and other health problems from the effects of the contaminants coal introduces into the air.

Despite these hazards, there will be no serious call for the abolition of coal from the political left. There will be no serious arguments raised by them about the enormous damage we're doing to our people and our planet through the use of coal. Yet, were the utility companies to announce that they planned to build a nuclear power plant to help meet the energy demands for the 21st century, the cacaphony in liberal media precincts would sound like a dog kennel that's got a cat running loose.

No one in this country has ever died from a nuclear power accident. Nuclear plants put no contaminants in the air, and, unlike coal fired power plants, their normal use causes no environmental damage. There are drawbacks, to be sure. Safely disposing of spent fuel will remain a challenge, for example, but the problems are not insurmountable and, compared to coal, the safety record of nuclear power in this country is impeccable.

So why is the left so afraid of it? We have no idea, unless it has something to do with the fact that an energy independent U.S. would become an even greater economic colossus than it already is and stand as the ultimate refutation and reproach of socialism.