Reason and Ethics

Rebecca Goldstein recalls with fondness Baruch Spinoza's dream of founding ethics on reason. She concludes her essay with these words:

Spinoza had argued that our capacity for reason is what makes each of us a thing of inestimable worth, demonstrably deserving of dignity and compassion. That each individual is worthy of ethical consideration is itself a discoverable law of nature, obviating the appeal to divine revelation. An idea that had caused outrage when Spinoza first proposed it in the 17th century, adding fire to the denunciation of him as a godless immoralist, had found its way into the minds of men who set out to create a government the likes of which had never before been seen on this earth.

Well, not exactly. The Founding Fathers valued the virtues that Goldstein and Spinoza praise, but they realized that those virtues cannot ultimately be based upon reason. They can only be based upon the will and nature of a transcendent Creator. Reason can tell us how best to accomplish some goal, but it cannot tell us whether the goal itself is good or right. If one's goal, for example, is to set up a government wherein all men are equal then reason might be able to inform us of the most effective way of going about achieving that goal, but it cannot tell us that the goal itself is any better or more right than establishing a state wherein some men are slaves.

Contra Spinoza the proposition that "each individual is worthy of ethical consideration" is not a law of nature. Nature nowhere imposes upon us a duty to assign worth to other human beings. The ethical law of nature, if there is one, is that each of us should look to our own interests. Nature teaches that life is every man for himself. The only basis anyone has for imputing dignity and worth to others is the conviction that all men are created in the image of God, that each of us belongs to and is loved by God. He demands that each of us respect what is His, the objects of His love. If there is no God, as Goldstein seems to hope, then human beings are no different than cattle, a herd of animals to be manipulated, exploited and slaughtered by whomever has the power and the desire to do so.

Not only must moral value ultimately be grounded in a transcendent God if it is to have any existence at all, but so, too, must our confidence in reason itself. If all we are is material stuff, chemical reactions, then what grounds do we have for believing that our cognitive faculties are reliable? They have evolved to suit us for survival, not to lead us to truth. Sometimes reason produces truth, sometimes it leads to error. What grounds do we have for trusting it if all it is is a series of biochemical reactions occuring in nerve cells in the brain? Unless there is a God who has created us and instilled in us the cognitive apparatus required to discover truth we have no basis for thinking that any belief we hold on the basis of reason is correct. Indeed, in order to argue that reason is trustworthy we have to employ our reason, and thus we must assume the very thing we're trying to prove. The only appropriate philosophy for the materialist is a radical skepticism about everything.

Goldstein wishes to be a skeptic about God but not about reason, but people like her delude themselves if they think that human reason is the key that enables them to shed the chains of theistic belief. Autonomous reason, unanchored to theistic belief, is like a mirage which appears substantial enough until it is approached, at which point it just seems to evanesce. Trust in reason alone, if pursued all the way to the end, winds up in nihilism and despair.

Pyrrhic Victory

Strategy Page argues that Hezbollah suffered a serious defeat in its month-long war with Israel:

The success of the ceasefire in Lebanon hinges on a condition that Lebanon and Hizbollah both insist will not happen. Hizbollah is supposed to disarm, but says bluntly that it will not do so. The Lebanese government says it will not force Hizbollah to disarm. So what's going to happen? It appears that Israel is going to hold the UN responsible for carrying out its peace deal, and disarm Hizbollah. To that end, Israel will withdraw its troops from Lebanon, and leave it to UN peacekeepers to do what they are obliged to do. But here's the catch, not enough nations are stepping forward to supply the initial 3,500 UN forces, much less the eventual 15,000 UN force. However, it is likely that, eventually, enough nations will supply troops. But many of those contingents may not be willing to fight Hizbollah. Israel says it will not completely withdraw from Lebanon until the UN force is in place.

The Israeli strategy appears to be to allow the UN deal to self-destruct. If the UN peacekeepers can disarm Hizbollah, fine. If not, Israeli ground troops will come back in and clear everyone out of southern Lebanon. At that point, it will be obvious that no one else is willing, or able, to deal with the outlaw "state-within-a-state" that Hizbollah represents. Hizbollah will still exist after being thrown out of southern Lebanon, and it will be up to the majority of Lebanese, and the rest of the Arab world, to deal with Hizbollah and radical Shias.

Hizbollah suffered a defeat. Their rocket attacks on Israel, while appearing spectacular (nearly 4,000 rockets launched), were unimpressive (39 Israelis killed, half of them Arabs). On the ground, Hizbollah lost nearly 600 of its own personnel, and billions of dollars worth of assets and weapons. Israeli losses were far less.

While Hizbollah can declare this a victory, because it fought Israel without being destroyed, this is no more a victory than that of any other Arab force that has faced Israeli troops and failed.

Michael Ramirez is also a little skeptical of Hezbollah's claims to have won their confrontation with Israel:

Hezbollah's survival of the Israeli onslaught is indeed similar to the survival of other Arab nations whose militaries engaged the Israelis. That the governments of Syria, Jordan and Egypt withstood the Israeli military in the sixties and seventies could be claimed to be "proof" that these nations fought the Israelis to a draw, but that doesn't seem to be an interpretation supported by the fates of their respective armies.

The big question raised by SP's analysis is whether an Olmert government will have the will to reinitiate hostilities when it becomes clear that Hezbollah has no intention of disarming or being disarmed.

Darwinism on the Way Out?

The Guardian reports the shocking news that Darwinism is on the way out in England. Too many students are accepting the notion that God had something to do with their being here. Here are a couple of excerpts from the Guardian article:

In a survey last month, more than 12% questioned preferred creationism - the idea God created us within the past 10,000 years - to any other explanation of how we got here. Another 19% favoured the theory of intelligent design - that some features of living things are due to a supernatural being such as God. This means more than 30% believe our origins have more to do with God than with Darwin - evolution theory rang true for only 56%.

Opinionpanel Research's survey of more than 1,000 students found a third of those who said they were Muslims and more than a quarter of those who said they were Christians supported creationism. Nearly a third of Christians and 10% of those with no particular religion favoured intelligent design. Women were more likely to choose spiritual explanations: less than half chose evolution, with 14% preferring creationism and 22% intelligent design.

Steve Jones, professor of genetics at University College London, who gave a public lecture on "Why evolution is right and creationism is wrong" at the time, has been talking about evolutionary biology in schools for 20 years. For the first 10 of those he was lucky to find one student in 1,000 expressing creationist beliefs. "Now in any school I go to I meet a student who says they are a creationist or delude themselves that they are."

He blames the influence of Christian fundamentalists in America and political correctness among teachers here who, he says, feel they have to give a reasonable hearing to beliefs held by people from other cultures, particularly Muslims.

Imagine. As soon as a teacher gives a "reasonable hearing" to non-Darwinian accounts, students abandon the Darwinian version. I wonder why that is. There's no wonder, though, why the Darwinians don't want ID taught in American public schools. If it were, within a generation or two Darwinians would be as scarce as passenger pigeons.

HT to Uncommon Descent.

State of Emergency

Tony Blankley has high praise for Pat Buchanan's latest book, State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America. Here are some excerpts from Blankley's column:

Most people will be familiar with Buchanan's view on immigration. But even those who have read his earlier books and read his columns, as I have, will not be prepared for the remorseless presentation of unimpeachable facts with which he makes his convincing case for the reality of his book's subtitle: "The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America."

Here he deepens his case against illegal immigration (and his case for a moratorium on even legal immigration) with statistic after statistic concerning, among many topics, the shockingly disproportionate degree of disease and crime that illegal Mexican and other immigrants are transmitting into the country.

For example, in Los Angeles, 95 percent of all outstanding warrants for homicide, which total 1,200-1,500, are for illegal aliens. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, California now has almost 40,000 cases of tuberculosis (a disease only recently thought to be virtually extinct in America).

He presents compelling evidence that the "Reconquista" of southwestern United States is not merely the silly conceit of a few extremists but is widely desired by Mexicans (he cites a 2002 Zogby poll showing that by 58 percent to 28 percent of Mexicans believe the American Southwest belongs to Mexico).

Of course, there is nothing more dangerously controversial than trying to define the ethnic, language and cultural nature and desirability of America. But until we as a country come to terms publicly with what kind of a country we think America is and should be, we can never have a rational and full debate about what kind of immigration policy we should try to enforce.

Buchanan quotes the French poet Charles Peguy: "It will never be known what acts of cowardice have been motivated by the fear of looking insufficiently progressive."

By that standard, Buchanan, in this book, is positively fearless. He is also right. Americans, from whatever nation or ethnicity we originated, have formed a common culture worth preserving and a common history worth continuing.

I think I have just enough time to purchase it and get it read by Labor Day.

Breaking Mr. Rauf

Word is leaking out that one of the suspects apprehended in Pakistan in the British airliner bomb plot gave up his information under conditions of duress. The liberal Guardian doesn't know what to think of this:

Reports from Pakistan suggest that much of the intelligence that led to the raids came from that country and that some of it may have been obtained in ways entirely unacceptable here. In particular Rashid Rauf, a British citizen said to be a prime source of information leading to last week's arrests, has been held without access to full consular or legal assistance. Disturbing reports in Pakistani papers that he had "broken" under interrogation have been echoed by local human rights bodies.

The Guardian has quoted one, Asma Jehangir, of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, who has no doubt about the meaning of broken. "I don't deduce, I know - torture," she said. "There is simply no doubt about that, no doubt at all." If this is shown to be the case, the prospect of securing convictions in this country on his evidence will be complicated. In 2004 the Court of Appeal ruled - feebly - that evidence obtained using torture would be admissable as long as Britain had not "procured or connived" at it. The law lords rightly dismissed this in December last year, though they disagreed about whether the bar should be the simple "risk" or "probability" of torture.

But none of this stops governments acquiescing in torture to acquire information, rather than secure convictions, as British as well as American practice has shown. It has been outsourced to less squeamish countries and denied through redefinition: but it is still torture and still illegal.... The defence ....[is that] it works. But does it? Torture and other illegality can offer authorities a short-term seduction, perhaps even temporary successes. Information provided by torture may have helped foil the alleged airliners plot. But evidence provided uder torture is often unreliable, sometimes disastrously so - and its use always pollutes the broader credentials of torturers and their allies. This battle must be won within the law. Anything else is not just a form of defeat but will in the end fuel the flames of the terror it aims to overcome.

It's hard to tell whether this is an argument for legalizing torture so that when it's done it's done within the law, or throwing out the case against the terror suspects because the information against them was gained illegally. At any rate, it certainly looks as if the claim that torture doesn't work, a different claim, to be sure, than the claim that it is never right, has been refuted in the case of Mr. Rauf.

With regard to the claim of those like Andrew Sullivan, who argue that torture is absolutely, categorically wrong, here's a thought experiment: Imagine that Mr. Rauf's evidence was crucial to uncovering the plot to blow up ten airliners. Imagine, too, that Mr. Rauf could not be enticed to yield his knowledge of the plot through any means other than being subjected to whatever measures the Pakistanis brought to bear. Finally, imagine that the person you love most of all, in all the world, would have been aboard one of those planes. Would you insist that, these hypotheticals notwithstanding, if you had your way Pakistan would not have been permitted to employ the methods they apparently did to persuade Mr. Rauf to talk? A simple yes or no will suffice.

If you answered yes, try this: look your loved one directly in the eyes and tell him or her that.

Off With Her Head!

This video clip gives us a good insight into the sort of tactics used by modern universities to ensure intellectual conformity on the matter of Darwinian evolution.

Free speech and academic freedom are values cherished only in the event that one's opinions converge with the materialist zeitgeist. Genuine dissent is often crushed by the academic brown-shirts whose pious professions of tolerance and celebrations of diversity are intended only to encompass opinions which flaunt the traditional worldview of whites, males, and Judeo-Christian believers.

The instructor in the video had the temerity to suggest that perhaps one of the strongest acids employed to corrode that worldview is not all that it's cracked up to be. For this heresy the poor woman was led to the academic guillotine.

HT: Uncommon Descent

Agreeing With Cynthia

I'm glad to see the back of Cynthia McKinney, who did nothing but disgrace the House of Representatives through her sundry lunacies, most notably her asseveration that George Bush had prior knowledge of 9/11, and her assault on a Capitol Hill policeman.

Nevertheless, I find myself in agreement with her about one thing. Open primaries are absurd. It makes no sense to allow voters of one party to select the candidates of the other party. I don't know how many states besides Georgia have open primaries, nor can I imagine what the argument is for keeping them, but they should be banished from our electoral system forthwith.

Vacillation and Timidity

Bill Roggio offers his "after-action report" of the Israeli/Hezbollah war. His conclusion is that Israel blew it. We concur. It is especially shameful that the United States, which claims to be at war against terrorists, which lists Hezbollah as a terrorist organization, which has suffered grievously at the hands of Hezbollah terrorists, nevertheless voted for U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701 which permits Hezbollah not only to survive, but grants them legitimacy, and allows them to keep their arms. This is no way to fight a war on terrorism.

The Olmert government in Israel is not expected to survive a no-confidence vote and will thus pay the price for its vacillation and timidity. It should. We're afraid that the U.S. will pay a much more severe price for ours.

Rebuttal of the Rebuttal

Last week we linked to Joe Carter's three part series on Ten Ways Darwinists Help ID. Since then atheistic Darwinian PZ Myers at Pharyngula has undertaken a rebuttal which Carter claims is actually a better argument for Carter's position than his original three posts. He offers his rebuttal of Myers' rebuttal here.

Speaking of the Darwin debates, Telic Thoughts links to a blogger who warns that ID is a leading cause of cancer. TT offers a warning sticker that pro-ID bloggers can post on their sites to caution readers who might carelessly be taken in by the claims of those shameless ID hucksters.

Consider yourselves warned:

Lola/Hezbollah

The folks at Junkyard Blog are nothing if not creative. Recall the tune from the old Kinks' song "Lola" and sing along to "Fauxla", a parody of the faked photos from Lebanon run by Reuters and other MSM outlets. Here are a couple of stanzas to get you started:

MSM stringers down in old Beirut
Nasrallah had some photos that he wanted them to shoot
Called 'em on his Motorola:
"We've a narrative to control-lah"
But the bloggers were a-watching all the clone-stamped smoke
Little Green Footballs said j'accuse! like Zola
Just like Emile Zola.

Oh Reuters, Reuters I can't understand
Why you keep on showing us the Green-Helmet Man
Taking bodies in and out of his mortuary van
While your cameras roll-ah
Doin' it for Hezbollah
And how many times have we seen the same scene
Where the same old woman-you know the one I mean
Pretends her home is now a hole-a.
Acts like she can't be console-a.

Clever, isn't it? Sing the rest at the link.

Media Miscellany

1. Cal Thomas calls for us to get serious in the war against Islamo-fascism. He says it's time we broke out of the legalistic civil rights mindset that has constrained us for the last forty years.

The British are still shocked that people who are born in their country, go to their schools, have British accents and eat fish and chips would kill their fellow Brits. They do so because their allegiance is not to Britain, or to the Queen, but rather to their perverted view of God and the instructions from the hate preachers telling them to go bag some Jews, Christians, Westerners and other "infidels."

Health officials respond to plagues by isolation and eradication. Their objective is not only to control the spread of a disease, but also to kill it so it won't infect others. If that is an effective method for combating a plague, why is it not also a good strategy for combating the islamofascist plague?

This isn't about "civil rights" and constitutional protection. These people use our Constitution to protect themselves so they can kill us. And this is decidedly not a game. It is life and death. We want to live and they want us dead.

The war against Islamo-fascism is centuries old and yet completely new. The rules that western states have devised to maximize justice for their citizens so that people could live in safety may no longer work in an age in which the enemy's chief grievance is that you do not share his religion, his chief goal is to kill you and his chief blessing is to die in the attempt.

2. Are we safer now than before 9/11? Of all the nonsensical questions that keep getting asked by media types this has to rank near the top. How can anyone answer it? What would count as evidence one way or another? How could anyone possibly know? As long as there are people out there who wish to kill us, and have the means to do so, then we are not safe. Period.

3. A CNN talking head was discussing the need to eliminate poverty and joblessness among European Muslims in order to eliminate terrorism. Poverty, she averred, breeds hopelessness and hopelessness breeds alienation and alienation breeds terrorism. Unfortunately for this thesis the plotters were all middle class and all had jobs. One pundit noted that some of them lived in nicer homes than did most of the policeman who arrested them. Too many liberals seem locked in the Marxist categories popular during the sixties, and are just unable to grasp that terrorism is not about economics, or land, or American foreign policy. It's about religion and the Islamist desire to conquer the whole world for Islam.

Gervais Refutes Darwinism, Sort of

I'm reluctant to link to this "talk" by comic Ricky Gervais because it's irreverent, vulgar, and it makes fun of beliefs which I have some sympathy for. Even so, it is funny so I'm crossing my fingers and letting you know about it. We have to be able to laugh at ourselves, after all.

Be forewarned that Gervais' language is R-rated.

Will the Cease-Fire Last?

Captain Ed at Captain's Quarters explains why he thinks the cease-fire in Lebanon is doomed to be short-lived. He quotes the Times of London:

Today was supposed to be the day when the much-maligned army of Lebanon took control of its borders and policed the UN ceasefire. Instead, its military commanders were left humiliated and its troops stranded as Hezbollah told them not to try to disarm its fighters.

The first infantry units were preparing to head south yesterday when Hezbollah demonstrated who exercised the real control by announcing that it had no intention of surrendering a single weapon. General Michel Sleiman, the commander-in-chief of the Lebanese Army, and his lieutenants had been invited to join in Cabinet meetings to finalise plans to deploy their 15,000-strong force in a buffer zone south of the Litani river. However, they ended up being lectured by Hezbollah's two Cabinet ministers in the coalition Government on what the army could and could not do.

Ed adds this:

This national humiliation will not soon be forgotten by the Lebanese. If Hezbollah gained some sympathy and support during the Israeli invasion that they themselves provoked, it has dissipated in this mutinous reaction. The scales have fallen from the eyes of the political class in Beirut, and they see the danger to their existence standing baldly in front of them. Hezbollah has stripped them of their legitimacy, and now their theft of southern Lebanon has become crystal clear.

There's more at the link.

Islamic Justice

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad expresses dismay in his 60 minute interview with Mike Wallace that so many Americans are in prison. Perhaps his surprise is that we don't just execute them like they do in Iran. Consider the following example of Iranian justice.

I can't vouch for this series of photos sent to me by a friend. No documentation accompanied the e-mail which contained them. I will simply tell you what the e-mail claimed which is that the boy in the photos is 8 years old and is being publically punished in Iran for having stolen bread in a market. The punishment consists of crushing his arm. You are cautioned that these photos are very disturbing and may be very difficult to look at. I run them here for the same reason that I think it important that we saw pictures of what the Nazis did to Jews and others in the extermination camps, or that we see the pictures of Negro slaves with scars covering their backs where they were lashed, or that we see pictures of what happens to a fetus in an abortion. Nevertheless, you may prefer to pass them by.

Whether the claims accompanying the e-mail are genuine or not what is being done to this child is barbaric, and the adults responsible for it are primitive savages. Is this the fruit of the religion which has declared war on all other faiths? Are these the sort of people this religion produces? Is this the sort of world that lies in store for our children and grandchildren if we shrink from the threat that these people pose to our civilization? And Ahmadenijad has the chutzpah to chide us for our prison population?

The Moon

Peter Ward and Donald Brownlee, in their book Rare Earth, note that not only does our earth possess physical properties that may well make it unique in all the universe, our moon is quite special as well. It's not only rare in terms of its size relative to its planet, but it is absolutely essential in a number of ways to the existence of higher life forms on earth.

A large moon with strong gravitational pull is necessary to keep the earth's axial angle stable. If the earth's axis wobbled, as it would if it had no large moon to offset the gravitational tugs of other planets, the earth would experience enormous climatic variations which would make the evolution of higher life forms quite improbable. Moreover, the moon at its formation, pulled away from the earth many of the noxious gases that formed the early atmosphere. If the moon did not exist, for example, the earth would have retained an atmosphere high in CO2 causing a runaway greenhouse effect which would make the earth as uninhabitable as Venus.

A large moon also causes significant lunar tides which enrich the seas with nutrients and help make them more than vast biological deserts. The gravitational influence of our moon also slows the rate of earth's rotation allowing the atmosphere to be placid enough to permit life to emerge on the earth. Finally, a large moon protects the earth from meteorites from elsewhere in the solar system by drawing many of them toward itself.

Guillermo Gonzalez notes in Privileged Planet that the size of the moon is precisely what it needs to be to permit a total eclipse of the sun which allows for the study of the sun's atmosphere. This single fact has been responsible for much of the advance of scientific knowledge over the centuries. The precise fit of moon and sun during a total eclipse allowed early geometric calculations of the size and distance of celestial objects. It also allowed scientists to determine the nature of the sun's composition which has enabled them to determine much about the size and composition of other stars in our galaxy and other galaxies in the universe, including the fact that those celestial objects are rapidly receding from us and that the universe is expanding. This knowledge has enabled us to infer an initial Big Bang origin to the universe, and much else.

All of this simply because the moon is the size it is and the distance it is from the earth.

The moon was believed to be formed in a collision with a Mars-size object which impacted the earth early in its development. This collision probably melted the earth's crust and allowed surface iron to sink toward the core of the planet. This enabled the earth to develop a protective magnetic field and, by removing much of the iron from the surface where it would have bound up any oxygen in the vicinity, it permitted the atmosphere to become oxygenated.

If the material that formed the moon had taken a reverse orbit after this primordial impact, it would have decayed and fallen back to earth. If the impact had occured at a later stage in the earth's development the earth would have been too massive to allow as much material to be ejected, and the resulting moon would have been smaller and less effective.

Remarkably, in other words, this impact had to occur at just the right time, at just the right angle, with just the right force, by an impactor of just the right size and momentum, at just the right spot for a moon of just the right size to form.

What amazing coincidences nature and chance are capable of!

With Bobby and Gene in the Sixties

Readers of a certain vintage will appreciate Michael Novak's somewhat melancholy reflections on his association with Bobby Kennedy and Gene McCarthy back in the late sixties.

He closes with a thought with which probably every believer can identify:

In those days, I was fascinated by the overlap, in actions at least if not in words, of many people I knew, some of who were believers and some unbelievers. The latter seemed to me, in action, far more Christian or Jewish than they would admit to being. (They certainly were not nihilist nor even amoral, and not relativist nor morally indifferent.) And the Christians seemed to me to live in a deeper, darker night than they much speak about, closer in many ways to unbelief than to belief-at least so far as feelings go. There are many days when the believer, trying to become conscious of God's presence within, feels nothing at all, sees nothing at all.

Sometimes it is easier to act as a particular way of life demands than to say one believes in it. And it may be a quite noble way of life, indeed.

Let God sort us all out, I used to think (and still do). He sees it all more clearly.

C.S. Lewis notes in Surprised By Joy that believers (and others) often make two mistakes: They first make a state of mind their goal and then secondly attempt to produce it. He might have said that the surest way to miss a feeling of the presence of God in one's life is to seek it directly. If we set out to muster a certain spiritual feeling we usually wind up frustrated and disappointed. As in so many other areas of life, perhaps, the best course is to act as we should and not concern ourselves with feelings. We have all eternity to experience the sense of God's presence.

The Incredible Shrinking Deficit

Amity Shlaes has written a helpful column on the shrinking deficit and the causes thereof at Bloomberg.com. She writes:

If a deficit falls in the forest, does anyone hear it? And if no one hears it, did the deficit really fall? That's the question that administration officials must be asking themselves after the report that the Congressional Budget Office issued earlier this month. The CBO announced that the federal deficit is indeed falling, or narrowing, the more precise verb for the phenomenon.

This year, the new report says, the deficit will be $260 billion, or $111 billion less than the CBO estimated in March. For 2006, the government deficit will be 2 percent of gross domestic product, down from the old baseline prediction for 2006 of 2.6 percent. On Aug. 17, when the more extensive annual Update of the Budget and Economic Outlook appears, that 2 percent figure is likely to show up more definitively. But neither the budgeteers' news nor the prospect of a confirmation of it is generating much discussion.

This is surprising. The Economic Report of the President shows the federal deficit for 2004 was 3.6 percent. A narrowing of more than 1 1/2 percentage points in such a short time is itself a story.

The U.S. deficit is worth comparing, for starters, with the data for European nations. In the Maastricht Treaty of 1992, European leaders set a deficit goal of 3 percent of GDP. EU member countries have had trouble meeting that target since.

A shortfall of 2 percent of GDP is also news in the U.S. context. Sure, there was the surplus in the second half of the 1990s. But 2 percent is below the average for the federal deficit between 1980 and 1995.

The 2 percent figure stands out when you compare it with the deficit level in other periods of war. In 1944, as the U.S. poured its energy into winning World War II, the federal deficit widened to 22.7 percent of GDP. In 1968, the year of the Tet Offensive in the Vietnam War, the deficit was 2.9 percent of GDP.

Much of the narrowing of the deficit in the 1990s -- and even the surplus of the late 1990s -- came because of reductions in military spending following the end of the Cold War. This was the short-lived peace dividend. The late 1990s boom also played a role: It brought in hundreds of billions more than forecast.

Also interesting is what caused the change between spring 2006 and summer 2006. Thrift on the part of lawmakers, needless to say, isn't the cause, though one reason the deficit narrowed is that the government hasn't been able to spend all the cash it had allocated for projects this year.

Unexpected tax revenue also contributed to the narrowing. Some of this money is payroll taxes. With employment so high, more workers are paying into Social Security and Medicare than predicted.

Yet another source of cash is income taxes. Over the years, the tax distribution tables shifted so that higher earners paid a much larger share of income taxes. Their payments are less predictable than those of lower earners, who don't exercise options, receive bonuses or have as much discretion in choosing when to realize a capital gain.

Extra corporate taxes also flowed in and are 27 percent higher than in the year-earlier period. Overall, the data suggest that tax revenue as a share of the economy for 2006 will be 18.4 percent of GDP, above the average for the past 30 years.

All this good news doesn't preclude budgetary bankruptcy in the future. Only structural change that includes both an overhaul of Social Security and reversal of the Bush administration's Medicare drug plan can do that....

....Yet such details obscure the larger meaning of the deficit change. The new data supply evidence that President George W. Bush is right: lowering tax rates doesn't cause deficits, and can even diminish them. Meanwhile, the U.S. economy is forging through a whole forest of difficulties right now -- the war, higher energy prices, a cooling housing market.

This is all to the good, of course, but the problem is that even if the deficit is just barely above zero percent of GDP the shortfall must be financed somehow and consequently the national debt continues to grow and the interest we must pay on that debt burgeons. Cutting taxes is a good step because it increases revenue, as Shlaes points out, but what we need now is for congress to cut spending so that we can achieve a revenue surplus and begin paying down the debt. Unfortunately, neither Congress nor the White House seem to be bothered by debt.

Preppie Rap

Rap: It's not just for gangsta's anymore. Go to Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish, click on the video and go to the Tea Party. It's pretty funny.

Bush Derangement Syndrome

There is an incredible statistic contained in the latest Fox News Opinion/Dynamics Poll. When asked (question #10) whether or not the respondent wished the president to succeed, 51% of Democrats answered "no" and 9% weren't sure. This is truly astonishing.

By implication at least 51% of Democrats want the president to fail with his management of the economy, with social security reform, with the war in Iraq, and in the war on terror. Fifty-one percent of Democrats, evidently, would rather see this country mired in abject economic misery, see Iraq spiral into total chaos, and have terrorists committing mass murder in our cities than have President Bush succeed in preventing these calamities.

These people, the majority of Democrats, are either terribly deranged or so unimaginably stupid that they didn't understand the full significance of their response to this question.

More on Rev. Boyd

An article by Mark Tooley appears in the Weekly Standard about pastor Greg Boyd, author of The Myth of a Christian Nation: How the Quest for Political Power is Destroying the Church, and pastor of 4000 member Woodland Hills Church in suburban St. Paul.

We took a look at the controversy surrounding Pastor Boyd at the end of last month, but the Standard article introduces a couple of additional items that place Rev. Boyd's credibility in question. Mr. Tooley writes that:

Boyd is blunt in his critique of America. "Our country was founded pretty much as most nations were founded--thru barbaric violence," he recently told a radio interviewer. "It was a conquering kind and 10 to 20 million Native Americans were killed [which was followed by] the enslavement of African Americans."

Now I don't know how many Native Americans were killed by European colonists and later by Americans, but I'm quite sure it wasn't even close to 10 million. Wikipedia puts the figure of Native Americans killed by whites at around 16,000 (A similar number of whites were killed by Native Americans). It's simply irresponsible for Boyd to just throw around numbers like the ones he uses in order to tarnish the reputations of our predecessors when he has no idea what the actual figures are.

Tooley also notes that:

In Myth of a Christian Nation, [Boyd] says that the "horrendous" abuse by U.S. troops at Abu Ghraib led to the Iraqi terrorist beheading of John [sic] Berg. "You can begin to understand why, given our passionate convictions and given their passionate convictions, this bloody tit-for-tat game is almost inevitable," he writes, attributing both passions to "tribal" loyalties.

This is of course ridiculous. Firstly, the man's name was Nicholas, not John. Secondly, despite what Zarqawi said, to believe that he beheaded Berg because of the abuses of Abu Ghraib is risible. Zarqawi beheaded a lot of people who weren't even Americans. What was their connection to Abu Ghraib? Abu Ghraib was just an excuse for him to do what he wanted to do and would have done anyway. Thirdly, to implicitly equate humiliating treatment of terrorist suspects at Abu Ghraib with the butchering of an innocent man, as Boyd does, calling them tit-for-tat, is moral imbecility.

Greg Boyd may be a very effective preacher, but he should take his own advice and keep his politics out of his ministry. He'd save himself a lot of embarrassment.

The Correlation of Forces

Strategy Page has a helpful analysis of what Marxists might refer to as the "correlation of forces" in Lebanon. It's a little dated now that it seems that there will be a cease-fire, but it's interesting nonetheless:

Hizbollah has no incentive to broadcast the extent of its injuries in the current war. The losses have been substantial. For example, Syrians have noted an enormous exodus of Lebanese Shia into Syria. Some 10-15 percent of Lebanon's Shia appear to have fled the areas of southern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley, for refuge in Syria. They are not just getting away from Israeli bombs, but the rising possibility of another round of civil war with Lebanese Sunnis, Druze and Christians. Hizbollah is a terrorist organization, and for nearly two decades, other Lebanese have been on the receiving end of that terror. There are payback issues in play. Before Hizbollah attacked Israel, these issues were being worked out, but the deal involved Hizbollah disarming and giving up control of southern Lebanon. The Hizbollah militants didn't go for this, partly because they feared retaliation from Lebanese families they had terrorized (via murder, kidnappings or worse) over the last two decades. Better that all of Lebanon should suffer, than a few hundred Hizbollah thugs should pay for their crimes. The Lebanese know this, the Israelis know this, the international media ignores it. But it's these grudges that will destroy Hizbollah in the end. The Shia fleeing to Syria fear their fellow Lebanese more than they fear the Israelis.

Hizbollah doesn't have a large "army." Only a few thousand trained and trustworthy gunmen. About 20 percent of these have been killed or wounded so far. About half of the 70,000 man army is Shia, a consequence of depending on Syria to help form and train the army. That's one reason why most Lebanese don't trust their own army, and why the Israelis don't accept the Lebanese offer to send 15,000 of their soldiers into southern Lebanon to take over from Hizbollah. While the Shia Lebanese soldiers aren't all Hizbollah members, those that are Shia know that Hizbollah can reach their family members. Hizbollah is a terrorist organization, and good at that sort of thing.

While no Lebanese want another round of civil war, if it did happen, it would be everyone against the Hizbollah led Shia. The result would be up to half the Shia population exiled in Syria, and Shia power in Lebanon broken for a long, long time. The Shia sect (Alawites) that runs Syria wouldn't mind a few hundred thousand Shia refugees in their midst, as Shia are only about ten percent of Syria's population. The Sunni Arabs who are the majority of Syrians might mind. Iran would come through with lots of money to make it all better, and keep the Shia in charge of Syria.

Israeli troops advancing into southern Lebanon are finding a lot of late model Russian weapons. Especially abundant are recently manufactured Russian anti-tank missiles. Three post-Cold War Russian missile systems have been found in large numbers. These include the 9M111 Fagot, which has a 25 pound missile fired from a 24 pound launch unit for up to 2,000 meters. Then there is the 9M133 Kornet, a replacement for the 9M111. This is laser guided missile with a range of 5,000 meters. The launcher has a thermal sight for use at night or in fog. The missile's warhead can penetrate 1200 mm of armor, which means that the front and side armor of the Israeli Merkava tank are vulnerable. The missile weighs 18 pounds and the launcher 42 pounds. Then there is the 9M131 Metis 2, which is a 30 pound missile, with a 1,500 meter range. It is fired from a 35 pound control unit, that has a thermal sight. Missiles and launch units have been found in bombed out buildings. The 9M131 can be fired from inside buildings. The missiles are used to take long range shots at Israeli infantry, as Hizbollah knows that, up close, their gunmen tend to lose quickly, and with heavy casualties, to the better trained Israelis. Russia has been selling these new missile systems to Syria and Iran, and this is the first real combat test of these systems. A few Israeli tanks have been hit, but most of the missiles have been fired at Israeli infantry, causing over a hundred casualties. Israel won't release details of these operations until after the war is over, but has admitted that most of their casualties in southern Lebanon have come from these Russian missiles.

Israel is moving sufficient troops, to the Lebanese border, to clear an area about 20 kilometers north of the border. This would severely limit the ability of Hizbollah to fire 122mm rockets into Israel. The Israelis would systematically clear civilians and Hizbollah fighters out of the area. Hizbollah has already lost hundreds of millions of dollars in assets (buildings, vehicles and equipment). The Israelis are holding off on the "20 Kilometer Zone" operation to see if the UN can work out a ceasefire deal. That would have to include a force of "trustworthy" (Western) peacekeeping troops in southern Lebanon. There would have to be peacekeepers who could, like the Israelis, fight Hizbollah, and not be intimidated, or bribed by Hizbollah, as has been the case with the current UN peacekeeper force. Hizbollah refuses to accept this more robust force, and Israel will accept nothing less.

Although Israel has lost about fifty soldiers killed so far, this is a much lower loss rate than in previous wars. Better technology, weapons and medical care have all combined to reduce the casualty rate.

Israel is on the front lines of a war whose battle zone covers the globe. Right now the conflict is raging most obviously in the Middle East, but, as Thursday's revelations indicate, the Islamists are eager to extend the fight to Europe and the United States as well. Let us hope that Israel can eliminate Hezbollah and make at least that theater a little safer for civilized people to dwell in.

If Materialism is True

Materialism is the philosophical view that matter is all there is and that everything can therefore ultimately be reduced to, and explained in terms of, material entities. Terry Mirl offers six predictions based on materialism which, assuming that view were true, should eventually be confirmed. If, after a suitable period of time, these predictions have not come to pass, the lack of confirmation should be taken as an indication, Mirl claims, that materialism is false.

His six predictions are quite provocative. If you read them, ask yourself what you think the likelihood is of any of them ever being fulfilled and what the implications of that might be. You can find them at Uncommon Descent.

Have we Got a Deal For You!

Paul Nowak sums up the Israeli position after the recent passage of the U.N. Security Council cease-fire resolution:

Sex Slaves

Andrew Sullivan has a You Tube video of a comedian who has an interesting, and funny, take on the Muslim view of heavenly rewards for terrorists. Go here and click on the video.

Thoughts of a Lebanese Christian

These remarks by Brigitte Gabriel, a Lebanese Christian, delivered at the Duke University Counter Terrorism Speak-Out on October 15, 2004, are well-worth our attention today:

I'm proud and honoured to stand here today, as a Lebanese speaking for Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East. As someone who was raised in an Arabic country, I want to give you a glimpse into the heart of the Arabic world.

I was raised in Lebanon, where I was taught that the Jews were evil, Israel was the devil, and the only time we will have peace in the Middle East is when we kill all the Jews and drive them into the sea.

When the Moslems and Palestinians declared Jihad on the Christians in 1975, they started massacring the Christians, city after city. I ended up living in a bomb shelter underground from age 10 to 17, without electricity, eating grass to live, and crawling under sniper bullets to a spring to get water.

It was Israel who came to help the Christians in Lebanon. My mother was wounded by a Moslem's shell, and was taken into an Israeli hospital for treatment. When we entered the emergency room, I was shocked at what I saw. There were hundreds of people wounded, Moslems, Palestinians, Christians, Lebanese, and Israeli soldiers lying on the floor. The doctors treated everyone according to their injury. They treated my mother before they treated the Israeli soldier lying next to her. They didn't see religion, they didn't see political affiliation, they saw people in need and they helped.

For the first time in my life I experienced a human quality that I know my culture would not have shown to their enemy. I experienced the values of the Israelis, who were able to love their enemy in their most trying moments. I spent 22 days at that hospital. Those days changed my life and the way I believe information, the way I listen to the radio or to television. I realized I was sold a fabricated lie by my government, about the Jews and Israel, that was so far from reality. I knew for fact that, if I was a Jew standing in an Arab hospital, I would be lynched and thrown over to the grounds, as shouts of joy of Allah Akbar, God is great, would echo through the hospital and the surrounding streets.

I became friends with the families of the Israeli wounded soldiers: one in particular Rina, her only child was wounded in his eyes.

One day I was visiting with her, and the Israeli army band came to play national songs to lift the spirits of the wounded soldiers. As they surrounded his bed playing a song about Jerusalem, Rina and I started crying. I felt out of place and started walking out of the room, and this mother holds my hand and pulls me back in without even looking at me. She holds me crying and says: "It is not your fault." We just stood there crying, holding each other's hands.

What a contrast between her, a mother looking at her deformed 19 year old only child, and still able to love me, the enemy, and between a Moslem mother who sends her son to blow himself up to smithereens just to kill a few Jews or Christians.

The difference between the Arabic world and Israel is a difference in values and character. It's barbarism versus civilization. It's democracy versus dictatorship. It's goodness versus evil.

Once upon a time, there was a special place in the lowest depths of hell for anyone who would intentionally murder a child. Now, the intentional murder of Israeli children is legitimized as Palestinian "armed struggle."

However, once such behaviour is legitimized against Israel, it is legitimized everywhere in the world, constrained by nothing more than the subjective belief of people who would wrap themselves in dynamite and nails for the purpose of killing children in the name of God.

Because the Palestinians have been encouraged to believe that murdering innocent Israeli civilians is a legitimate tactic for advancing their cause, the whole world now suffers from a plague of terrorism, from Nairobi to New York, from Moscow to Madrid, from Bali to Beslan.

They blame suicide bombing on "desperation of occupation." Let me tell you the truth. The first major terror bombing committed by Arabs against the Jewish state occurred ten weeks before Israel even became independent.

On Sunday morning, February 22, 1948, in anticipation of Israel's independence, a triple truck bomb was detonated by Arab terrorists on Ben Yehuda Street, in what was then the Jewish section of Jerusalem. Fifty-four people were killed, and hundreds were wounded. Thus, it is obvious that Arab terrorism is caused not by the "desperation" of "occupation" but by the VERY THOUGHT of a Jewish state.

So many times in history in the last 100 years, citizens have stood by and done nothing, allowing evil to prevail. As America stood up against and defeated communism, now it is time to stand up against the terror of religious bigotry and intolerance. It's time to all stand up and support and defend the state of Israel, which is the front line of the war against terrorism.

HT to Andrew Sullivan.

No Way to Win a War

Ed Morrissey is mildly optimistic about the U.N. cease-fire resolution unanimously approved by the Security Council this evening. I hope he's right that the resolution works to Israel's advantage, but I have my doubts. Israel has lost a lot of momentum by their on-again off-again incursion into Lebanon. If the Lebanese army fails to disarm Hezbollah and take control of the south as the resolution calls for, and of course it will, it will be enormously difficult for Israel to recover the political will and the military heart to do what they should have done several days ago - drive Hezbollah out of southern Lebanon.

Unless Nasrallah offers another clear provocation, which he'd be foolish to do, world opinion will be solidly against any future attempt by Israel to defeat Hezbollah no matter how much they flaunt the U.N. resolution. A once in a decade opportunity has been squandered by the Israelis and in a year or two we will be right back to the status quo ante. Voting for this resolution is no way for the United States to win a war against terrorists.

Ten Ways Darwinists Help ID

Joe Carter at Evangelical Outpost has put together a series of posts titled 10 Ways Darwinists Help Intelligent Design, and it's quite perceptive. The series is in three parts. Part one is here, part two can be found here and part three is here.

The following is a list of Carter's ten ways. Go to his site to read his explanations of them:

1. By remaining completely ignorant about ID while knocking down strawman versions of the theory.
   
2. By claiming that ID is stealth creationism.
   
3. By resorting to "science of the gaps" arguments.
   
4. By claiming that ID isn't science since it's not published peer-reviewed literature...and then refusing to allow publications of ID papers in peer-reviewed journals.
   
5. By making claims that natural selection is responsible for all behaviors and biological features.
   
6. By invoking design in non-design explanations.
   
7. By claiming that the criticism of ID has nothing to do with a prejudice against theism - and then having the most vocal critics of ID be anti-religious atheists.
   
8. By separating origins of life science from evolutionary explanations.
   
9. By resorting to ad hominems instead of arguments (e.g., claiming that advocates of ID are "ignorant").
   
10. By not being able to believe their own theory.
    

Also, on the evolution/ID front, here's a brief video geared toward kids that succinctly explains the difference between materialist and theistic explanations of the origin of life.

Thanks to Uncommon Descent for the tip.

The Nature of the Foe

Gary Varvel explains why the casualties among Lebanese civilians are "disproportionately" high:

Botching the War on Terror

Not content with having botched, from all appearances, the post-war in Iraq, the Bush administration is now trying to botch the Israeli war against Hezbollah, at least it seems that way if this Jerusalem Post story is accurate:

After 30 days of fighting, the war with Hizbullah seemed to be nearing its conclusion Thursday.

Just a day earlier, the situation had looked drastically different. The security cabinet had approved the army's request to send thousands of troops up to the Litani River and beyond in an effort to destroy Hizbullah's infrastructure and to stop the Katyusha attacks. After the cabinet meeting, one division actually began moving north from Metulla. Its goal - to clear out al-Khiam and Marjayoun and to reach the Litani.

But then, under pressure from the US, Defense Minister Amir Peretz made a frantic call to Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Dan Halutz and ordered him to stop the division in its tracks. "We need to give the diplomatic process one last chance," Peretz told Halutz. The orders trickled down the chain of command and by the time they reached 366, it had already reached Marjayoun, a stone's throw from the Litani.

With the UN Security Council on the verge of passing a cease-fire resolution, the IDF understood on Thursday that Operation Change of Direction was ending, for better or for worse.

Any United Nations cease-fire resolution will inevitably allow Hezbollah to survive and insure that more Israeli civilians will die from terrorist rockets in the future. The only solution to Hezbollah's murderous aggression is to eliminate Hezbollah. One might think that if anyone would understand that it would be George Bush. Apparently, however, the Bush administration is of the view that the cause of peace and justice is best served by enabling those who care about neither to continue their assaults on the villages and towns of northern Israel.

The pressure from the White House to stop the Israeli advance is inexplicable. Surely there is no one in the administration who actually believes that if only the Israelis end their military action that Hezbollah will lay down its weapons and live in peace with its Jewish neighbors. Surely this administration recognizes that the only road to peace with terrorist fanatics is to extirpate the terrorists. Why then, do they stand in the way of an opportunity to do just that?

The Second Stage

Canadian journalist David Warren writes that we are in stage two of the clash of civilizations, the war of Islam against the West, and that even many liberals are now rubbing their eyes, rousing themselves from their torpor, and sitting up to take notice. His essay begins with this warning:

Not all my readers appreciate that we are seeing now, in southern Lebanon and northern Israel, and across swathes of Afghanistan and Iraq, a harbinger of our future. The war with fanatical Islam is spreading, and must come to us. It already has, in its terror phase. We have huge police and security forces working around the clock to prevent terror attacks from happening in Canada; all convinced that such attacks are inevitable.

We cannot know how the war will develop; only that it will. It will be quite unlike previous world wars. We can only observe that we are now in transition from the terrorist stage, to the guerrilla warfare stage. I can only guess, but would think the next threshold will be crossed when a country, most likely Iran, brings true "weapons of mass destruction" into play. The word "threshold" could mislead. Each new stage adds another layer, so that the terrorism will continue, joined to guerrilla war; and then both will continue, with WMD added.

Does that sound alarmist to you? If so, I can only reply, wake up, gentle reader. The very people who guard you in your sleep are alarmed on your behalf.

The West has three choices in the face of the threat posed by an extremely determined Islamic enemy. It can simply refuse to defend itself and capitulate to the vicious savages that we've seen so much of on grainy al-Jazeera videos; Or, it can try to postpone the inevitable through limited police actions, playing prevent defense while the jihadis move the ball of war inexorably closer to our end zone; Or, we can conclude that we really are at war not just with a rag-tag band of criminals, not just with stateless militias, but with a large portion of the world's population, a population which is not confined to the boundaries of a state but which is diffused throughout the West which it wishes to destroy.

Many of the world's Muslims are committed to world-wide conquest and they're convinced that their moment is now. They may not themselves become suicide bombers or terrorists, but they quietly rejoice whenever one of these succeeds. They hate the West and everything about it, and nothing in their religion prevents them from using or supporting the use of violence to change it.

So what should Western countries do? First, they need to place a moratorium on Arab Muslim immigration. Just as it would have been foolish to allow Germans to immigrate into Britain during WWII it is foolish to allow Arab populations to burgeon throughout Europe and the U.S. Many of these immigrants have no desire to assimilate into the cultures in which they live. They're there not to become English or German, French or Danish. They're there simply to exploit the host country. They hate the culture and its people and those countries are only sowing the seeds of inevitable civil strife by taking them in. They are committing the folly of the Trojans who unwittingly afforded the Greeks the opportunity to slay them all.

Second, the West should close down madrassas and other centers of hate. Constitutional guarantees of religious freedom do not, or should not, confer upon citizens the right to preach violence and sedition. Their religious rights end where others' right to live without fear of being blown to bits begins. The first amendment to the United States' constitution was not ratified in order to protect those whose religion entails the murder of those who don't accept it. A religion which is clearly antithetical to all that is noble and good in the human species, a religion which inculcates hatred and a love of bloody violence, disqualifies itself, or should disqualify itself, from constitutional shelter.

Third, all Arab Muslims who are not citizens should be immediately and permanently deported if they violate the host country's criminal code. There should be zero tolerance for criminal activity among non-citizens.

People will object that all of this is discriminatory since it singles out a particular ethnic group and a particular religion for special treatment. Yes, it does. That's the point. We're in a war for our survival and the enemy isn't the Amish. To pretend that those who wish to destroy us do not belong to a specific ethnic and religious group is absurd. We need to recognize who and what our enemy is and take appropriate steps to prevent them from doing the sorts of things to us that they planned to do to the passengers on those flights from England, what they did on 9/11, as well as in Madrid and London. We can not allow the Islamists to live freely among us and simply hope that our police forces will always be able to thwart their plots to commit mass murder. As long as the Muslim haters have the opportunity they will continue to exploit it to kill our children until finally they sap us of our desire to survive the onslaught.

We must limit their opportunities. We must recognize that we're fighting for the lives of our families and the survival of our civilization.

Delta's Strict Standards

On our return trip from Rome recently we flew Delta Airlines and received quite a shock when the third movie of the flight came on. Let me explain by sharing with you the e-mail I sent to Delta Wednesday:

Sirs,

I wish to express my deep disappointment at the judgment shown by Delta in featuring the movie Lucky Number Slevin on a flight (8/7/06) from Rome to JFK. There were numerous young people on board and unless they were asleep they could hardly miss seeing a man and woman having graphic sex on the screens throughout the plane. I don't know whether Delta assigns actual grown-ups to make the selections for their movies rather than employing teenage boys for the job, but if not you should. To show something like this in such a way that entire families are subjected to what is explicit pornography demonstrates a serious lack of judgment on the part of whomever is responsible. I am not one to "cancel my subscription" because I'm displeased with something, but I have to say that if this is what I'm in for when next I fly overseas with my wife and daughter, I'm simply not going to fly on an airline that has so little regard for what they show in the cabin.

Sincerely, Richard L. Cleary

Here's the reply I received today from a Delta representative:

Dear Mr. Cleary,

Thank you for your message via delta.com. We are grateful for your taking the time to share your concerns with us.

The films shown on Delta reflect those currently produced. We realize many contain material that may be objectionable to individuals for various reasons. Delta maintains strict codes in screening and booking films, and most of the ones we accept have been edited for our use. We show a preview of the movie so passengers have information about the content before choosing to view it. The feedback we receive from our passengers play a direct role in our decisions regarding future programs, and we will continue to exercise as much discretion as possible in this area.

Your selection of Delta is appreciated, and we will always do our best to merit your confidence and support.

Sincerely, Mark Rodgers Online Customer Support Desk

I'm not sure Mr. Rodgers understands the nature of the problem. We did not choose to view the film. The film is shown on screens all through the cabin including a big screen at the front of the coach section. A passenger can block out the sound by not putting on the earphones, but there's no way to block out the visual assault on one's children. If this movie passed muster with Delta's screeners those screeners must have been sub-contracted from the editorial staff of Hustler magazine.

At any rate, if any of you are planning a flight with your family, you may want to bear in mind that Delta's "strict standards" leave plenty of room for some pretty salacious stuff, and when they show it your kids are going to see it whether you "choose" it or not.

Pertinent Questions

The question that I haven't heard anyone ask on any of the wall-to-wall coverage of the Brits' foiling of the plot to explode bombs inside U.S. bound airliners: Did the British authorities use warrantless eavesdropping surveillance measures? Did they track financial transactions of suspected terrorists? If so, then we will eagerly await the howls of outrage from the British left at such gross invasions of their citizens' privacy.

Speaking of the tv coverage of this story: Do you think that the news anchors at the various networks compete with each other to see which of them can ask the greatest number of dumb questions? Just wondering.

Another question: Has anyone heard anybody in the MSM mention the fact that all the men arrested in this plot were Muslims? Have I missed mention of this fact or is it that 21 mass murderers all happened to Muslims just not considered relevant? I wonder if the media would be equally reticent had the suspects all belonged to opus dei.

Absolution For Stone

In case you're interested in seeing the movie, Anthony Sacramone at First Things gives Oliver Stone's World Trade Center two thumbs up and claims that the film about 9/11 absolves Stone of the guilt incurred by the making of the execrable Alexander.

Lopsided Coverage

Bruce Kesler at Democracy Project quotes top NBC correspondent Ike Seamans explaining why we can't trust the media coverage of the Israeli war in Lebanon:

As a veteran journalist who has been in countless war zones around the world (especially the Middle East) as an NBC network correspondent, it pains me to see what passes for accurate coverage in the early stages of a conflict like the one between Israel and Hezbollah.

Because almost none of the American television networks have a vast stable of experienced reporters any longer who understand the region, they employ the old "parachute them in" philosophy, i.e. dispatching perfectly good -- and frequently very young -- journalists, few of whom have any experience in covering this story and don't stand a snowball's chance in Gaza of getting it right initially. They engage in what I call "nerve end journalism." reporting what they think they see in one of the most confusing places on earth, with very little context. Their movements are also very restricted by both sides.

In the case of Beirut and other parts of Lebanon under the control of terrorists, Hezbollah usually runs daily press tours, making sure reporters and photographers see the worse that Israel has inflicted -- killing civilians, etc. -- in order to slate the coverage, but never reveals that Hezbollah uses private homes, mosques, schools, hospitals and other public buildings for their headquarters or to launch their lethal missiles.

Then there's the danger factor if a reporter angers his terrorist tour guides. Christopher Albritton, a freelance contributor for Time magazine, wrote in his blog a couple of weeks ago, "To the south, Hezbollah is launching Katyushas, but I'm loathe to say too much about them. The Party of God has a copy of every journalists' passport and they've already hassled a number of us and threatened one." They also take pictures of all journalists, warning they better follow the ground rules or else. Terrorists in that part of the world have been doing this for years.

"Hezbollah has a very sophisticated and slick media operation in suburban Beirut," says CNN's Nic Robertson, one of the few seasoned TV reporters out there. "They deny journalists access." He adds that the terrorist group, "designated the places that we went to and we certainly didn't have time to go into houses or lift up the rubble to see what is underneath. They realize this is a good way for them to get their message out." So what you see back home is precisely what Hezbollah dictates.

There's a lot more on the lopsided coverage of this conflict at the link.

August 22nd

Matt Drudge cites a Wall Street Journal op-ed by Bernard Lewis, a Princeton scholar who has written several excellent books on Islam. Lewis warns that Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may have 'cataclysmic events' in mind for August 22. Drudge says:

In a WSJ op-ed Tuesday, Princeton's Bernard Lewis writes: "There is a radical difference between the Islamic Republic of Iran and other governments with nuclear weapons. This difference is expressed in what can only be described as the apocalyptic worldview of Iran's present rulers."

"In Islam as in Judaism and Christianity, there are certain beliefs concerning the cosmic struggle at the end of time -- Gog and Magog, anti-Christ, Armageddon, and for Shiite Muslims, the long awaited return of the Hidden Imam, ending in the final victory of the forces of good over evil, however these may be defined."

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad "and his followers clearly believe that this time is now, and that the terminal struggle has already begun and is indeed well advanced. It may even have a date, indicated by several references by the Iranian president to giving his final answer to the US about nuclear development by Aug. 22," which this year corresponds "to the 27th day of the month of Rajab of the year 1427. This, by tradition, is the night when many Muslims commemorate the night flight of the prophet Muhammad on the winged horse Buraq, first to 'the farthest mosque,' usually identified with Jerusalem, and then to heaven and back (c.f., Koran XVII.1).

"This might well be deemed an appropriate date for the apocalyptic ending of Israel and, if necessary, of the world. It is far from certain that Mr. Ahmadinejad plans any such cataclysmic events precisely for Aug. 22. But it would be wise to bear the possibility in mind."

We'll see. Lewis obviously thinks Ahmadinejad is a lunatic and he has no difficulty believing that the Iranian president is capable of launching a nuclear holocaust to further his religious dreams. There should be no doubt in anyone's mind that if Ahmadinejad gets his hands on nuclear weapons he'll use them.

The Coliseum

I mentioned yesterday that I had just returned from a five day visit to Rome. The city is a place of many wonders for the tourist looking for magnificent art and architecture as well as history and charm. There are important lessons, too, to be teased out from among the ruins and the opulence.

Our hotel was just a block or two from the ancient Coliseum which is something of a focal point of activity. A Metro station is nearby the ancient arena and there are several restaurants across the street so we found ourselves in its shadow every day.

(My wife and youngest daughter dining out on our last evening in Rome)

It was difficult to contemplate this enormous structure, which could seat over 50,000 people, without reflecting upon the events that occured there nearly 2000 years ago. From the time it was built around 80 AD until about 400 AD over ten thousand men were slaughtered in the gladiatorial fights, and countless wild animals - lions, tigers, elephants and the like - were killed in the staged "hunts" which entertained the Romans until the 6th century.

The relentless, brutal killing was accompanied by thunderous roars of approval from the huge crowds of men, women, and, presumably, children excited by the bloodshed and suffering which took place on the floor of the arena beneath them.

(The floor of the Coliseum is mostly gone revealing the chambers underneath where gladiators and beasts were held until they fought.)

It may be difficult to imagine human beings so depraved that they would cheer at a severed arm or head. Yet it's probably not so far from the fascination that people have today for "sports" like extreme fighting and other expressions of human brutality. I read an article just this morning about how children in Uganda are kidnapped by rebels and forced to kill other children by biting off their skin and flesh until the terrified victim bleeds to death. The evil of which men are capable seems boundless.

The gladiatorial contests held in the Coliseum were, like forcing children to bite other children to death, the logical consequence of man's alienation from God. Human nature is bestial and unless it is constantly re-oriented toward the lodestone of divine love its natural tendency will be toward ever-increasing depravity. The Romans knew nothing of true divinity. Their gods were made in their own corrupt image, and thus their amusements included cheering for people to be cruelly dismembered and die.

Roman society, by the time the Coliseum was built, was thoroughly sick and effete because it was not bound by any transcendent moral law. The Romans exulted in their power and moral autonomy and bloodlust was the consequence. Whenever man declares his independence from God, it seems, moral degeneracy eventually follows.

So it was for the Romans and perhaps there's a lesson for us, too, in the ruins of their ancient Coliseum.

Fire Rainbow

Bill Dembski posts this photo of a "fire rainbow" and wonders how a materialist can account for the human appreciation for beauty. How does random mutation and natural selection explain our sense of wonder and awe at such phenomena?

Dembski writes:

This is a fire rainbow - one of the rarest naturally occurring atmospheric phenomena. The picture was captured this week on the Idaho/Washington border. The event lasted about one hour. Clouds have to be cirrus, at least four miles in the air, with just the right amount of ice crystals; and the sun has to hit the clouds at 58 degrees. It's the gratuitousness of such beauty that leads me to rebel against materialism.

The world is filled with beauty. Why, on Darwinian terms, we should appreciate it as something special, why it should move us, is difficult to imagine. The poet Keats observed that beauty is truth and indeed there is a truth to be discerned in the beauty of a fire rainbow. That truth is that our ability to appreciate beauty such as this is no accident of vibrating atoms and blind forces, but rather the product of a purposeful, intelligent artistic mind which has created us to enjoy the aesthetic richness of the natural world.

Fauxtography

For those of you who enjoy media shenanigans Michelle Malkin has some examples of faked photos - she calls it "fauxtography" - from the war in Lebanon which have appeared recently in the New York Times and U.S. News.

We shouldn't be too derisive of these major news organizations' inability to know when they're being duped. After all, it's not the facts that matter but the "deeper truth" of what's happening at the hands of the Israeli military to the poor people of Lebanon that's important. Any photo which conveys that "deeper truth" is itself truth whether or not the picture was actually staged. At least that's apparently how the post-modernists in the American media see things.

Is Bono a Republican?

If U2 lead singer Bono were an American no doubt he'd be a Republican, at least that seems a legitimate conclusion to be drawn from the following Newsmax article:

U2 and its lead singer Bono have been pushing the U.S. and EU countries to fork over more money for Third World nations to relieve debt and fight AIDS. But when it comes to paying their fair share of taxes to help those efforts, U2 wants a free ride.

That's the word from Ireland, where the group has been based since it was founded in the early 1980s. The Irish Examiner reports that U2 and Bono are furious that Ireland is doing away with its law exempting artists and authors from taxation.

Under the Irish government's last budget, artists and authors can get up to 250,000 euros ($325,000) in income tax free, but after that they pay like everyone else. Most taxpayers would be joyous they could get the exemption Ireland provides.

But U2 rakes in tens of millions globally, and the new schedule doesn't sit well with the millionaire singer and his band members. The Examiner reports that beginning in June of this year the group began moving parts of their business to Netherlands. The paper said now U2 pays "virtually no tax on royalties" in Holland.

And there's more news that U2 may be more of a savvy business than a social cause. Forbes magazine - the "capitalist tool" - revealed this week that U2 front man Bono and others in a financial investment company called Elevation Partners have purchased a large minority stake in Forbes Media, which owns the magazine.

Elevation Partners is a private equity firm which invests in intellectual property and media and entertainment companies. The Times said the investment amounted to $250 to $300 million. "This investment by Elevation Partners will now accelerate our pursuit of a number of very exciting opportunities for growth," said Forbes Chief Executive Steve Forbes, who is also editor in chief of Forbes magazine.

Forbes has good reason to be gleeful: he's been a champion of free market ideas forever. But the Times noted the irony of Bono's investment "in a magazine that celebrates wealth and consumption . . . "

Roger McNamee, a co-founder of Bono's Elevation Partners, responded: "The way you solve poverty is giving people the tools to overcome it." It's a good point, but one never pushed by Bono.

On the other hand, it's ironic that Bono has urged governments to contribute more and more of their citizens' taxes to Africa while he shelters his own obscene wealth from Ireland's exchequer by shuffling it offshore. He seems to be a very generous man with the money of other people so perhaps, if he were an American, he would be a Democrat after all.

Donohue and Colbert

Catholics and others among our readers might be interested in this amusing interview of William Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, by Stephen Colbert.

Something I didn't know: Colbert is evidently a devout Catholic. He's also a funny one.

Thanks for the link to Bill Dembski at Uncommon Descent.

Why?

Ramirez asks, and answers, the question: Why are the Israelis' bombs killing civilians?

Faking the News. Again.

Reuters has chosen to pull some nine hundred photos in their file of photographer Adnan Hajj after Little Green Footballs showed that several of his photos from the war in Lebanon were doctored.

Hot Air has links on the story.

There's no reason why Reuters couldn't have seen for themselves that these photos were phony. The photoshopping is pretty obvious, but Reuters ran them anyway perhaps because they show Israel inflicting "disproportionate" damage on Lebanese cities. It's no wonder nobody trusts the liberal media to report either the war in Iraq or the war in Lebanon accurately or fairly.

What's at Stake

Andrew Sullivan sums up an outstanding column by Bernard-Henri Levy on the Lebanese/Israeli war with this observation:

For the first time, we're not really discussing a conflict over land or territory or even the treatment of individuals. We're not talking about Arab nationalism. We're not talking about the Palestinians. We're not even talking about the political existence of the Jewish state. We're talking about the divine mandate that the Islamists believe they are following, an eschatological struggle toward the End-Times, where the Jews must be destroyed as a people and as a sovereign state in order for the Apocalypse to occur.

Levy says many good things in his essay, but one of the most important is this:

...the problem, the real one, is that these incoming rockets make us see what will happen on the day - not necessarily far off - when the rockets are ones with new capabilities: first, they will become more accurate and be able to threaten, for example, the petrochemical facilities you see there, on the harbor, down below; second, they may come equipped with chemical weapons that can create a desolation compared with which Chernobyl and Sept. 11 together will seem like a mild prelude. For that, in fact, is the situation. As seen from Haifa, this is what is at stake in the operation in southern Lebanon.

Israel did not go to war because its borders had been violated. It did not send its planes over southern Lebanon for the pleasure of punishing a country that permitted Hezbollah to construct its state-within-a-state. It reacted with such vigor because the Iranian President Ahmadinejad's call for Israel to be wiped off the map and his drive for a nuclear weapon came simultaneously with the provocations of Hamas and Hezbollah. The conjunction, for the first time, of a clearly annihilating will with the weapons to go with it created a new situation. We should listen to the Israelis when they tell us they had no other choice anymore.

Unless Israel completely defeats Hezbollah in Lebanon Hezbollah will just grow stronger and more determined to extirpate the Jews in the Middle East.

Back Home

My family and I are back from a five day visit to the marvelous city of Rome, and I'm trying to get caught up on what's been happening in the world while I was gone. I scarcely glanced at a newspaper in the past week.

I want to thank Bill for posting on Viewpoint a number of pieces that I had prepared before leaving and for adding a couple of his own.

I haven't been in every major European capital, but I can't imagine a city more beautiful, more full of art, architecture, history and charm than Rome. Perhaps London comes as close as any other city I've ever been in (I've never been to Paris). Tomorrow, when our luggage is supposed to arrive (having been loaded onto the wrong plane at JFK), I hope to share a couple of photos and some reflections on our trip.

Altruism

Not long ago I had the opportunity to consider a fascinating question. I was sitting in my Sunday school class when the conversation turned to the concept of altruism - the idea of total unselfishness as a motive for doing something. Then another person in the class posited the question that the "carrot" of eternal life in heaven might influence our motivation to "accept Jesus"* as our Savior and pursue a personal relationship with God. And finally we found our selves faced with the question: is there anything that we do with unselfish motives?

A couple days ago, I finished reading Surprised by Joy by C.S. Lewis, an autobiography of his conversion to Christianity. In the final pages of the book he says:

My conversion involved as yet no belief in a future life. I now number it among my greatest mercies that I was permitted for several months, perhaps for a year, to know God and to attempt obedience without even raising that question. My training was like that of the Jews, to whom He revealed Himself centuries before there was a whisper of anything better (or worse) beyond the grave than shadowy and featureless Sheol. And I did not dream even of that. There are men, far better men that I, who have made immortality almost the central doctrine of their religion; but for my own part I have never seen how a preoccupation with that subject at the outset could fail to corrupt the whole thing. I had been brought up to believe that goodness was goodness only if it were disinterested, and that any hope of reward or fear of punishment contaminated the will. If I was wrong in this (the question is really much more complicated than I then perceived) my error was most tenderly allowed for. I was afraid that threats of promises would demoralize me; no threats or promises were made. The commands where inexorable, but they were backed by no "sanctions". God was to be obeyed simply because he was God. Long since, through the gods of Asgard, and later through the notion of the Absolute, He had taught me how a thing can be revered not for what it can do to us but for what it is in itself. This is why, though it was terror, it was no surprise to learn that God is to be obeyed because of what He is in Himself. If you ask why we should obey God, in the last resort the answer is, "I am." To know God is to know that our obedience is due to Him. In His nature His sovereignty de jure is revealed.

...

On the other hand, while it is true to say that God's own nature is the real sanction of His commands, yet to understand this must, in the end, lead us to the conclusion that union with that Nature is bliss and separation from it horror. Thus Heaven and Hell come in. But it may well be that to think much of either except in this context of thought , to hypostatize them as if they had a substantial meaning apart from the presence or absence of God, corrupts the doctrine of both and corrupts us while we so think of them.

As I understand what Lewis is saying, there is a valid, totally unselfish motivation for a personal, loving relationship that involves worship and obedience to God even if there were no promise of eternal life in heaven, even if our existence is finite, simply because God is who He is. Fascinating.

* The following is what I consider (most humbly) to be one of many great rants from E.W. Bullinger's Great Cloud of Witnesses on the subject of "accepting Jesus".

Man's conventional talk of this twentieth century (of the present era) is about the sinner's acceptance of Christ. God's Word, for nearly sixty centuries has been about the sinner believing what He had said.

God has spoken. He has told us that He cannot and will not accept the fallen sons of men in their sins. In ourselves we are not only ruined sinners because of what we have done, or not done; but we are ruined creatures because of what we ARE. The question is, Do we believe God as to this solemn fact?

What God accepted was Abel's "gifts" (Heb. xi. 4); Abel was accepted only in his gifts (Gen. iv. 4).

So, God has told us that He can accept us, as such, only in the merits and Person of that perfect Substitute -- His Christ -- whom He has provided. Do we believe Him as to this?

If we do we shall by faith lay our hand on Him, confess our belief in God as to our own lost and ruined nature, and as to Christ as God's provided Salvation; knowing that, by this faith, God pronounces us righteous, accepts us in the person of our Substitute; and declares us as accepted in the Beloved, because God accepted His one offering when He raised Him from the dead.

Christ's resurrection is the proof and evidence that God has accepted Christ. Christ risen is the sinner's receipt which God has given to show that He has accepted Christ's payment of the sinner's debt.

There is no other receipt.

Christ's blood is not the receipt. That is the payment.

The sinner's faith is not the receipt. It is no use for a man to go to his creditor and say he believes he has paid what he owes. He must produce the receipt.

What is the receipt which we can produce to God which will prove that our debt is paid?

Nothing but the blessed fact that God's Word assures us that He has accepted payment on our behalf in the person of our Substitute, when He raised Christ from the dead.

We are to believe what He says when He assures us of this, and He is pleased to accept us in Him.

It is always the Creditor who accepts the payment which the debtor makes. And, when payment has been once accepted, no further demand can be made upon the debtor.

This is how Abel was accepted; and this is how the sinner is saved to this day.

By the same faith in what God has said, we lay our hand on that Lamb of God as our substitute; and we obtain God's witness that we are righteous. God bears His testimony to this in that He raised Christ from the dead, and has accepted the believing sinner IN HIM.

It is not a question of whether the sinner accepts Christ, but whether he believes God when he says that He has accepted Christ.

Flouting Geneva

So there I was the other night in thrall to the taut drama and machinations unfolding in the second season DVD of 24.

Determined to be patient with several gaping holes and other silliness in the storyline, I let myself be caught up in the suspense as terrorists planted a nuclear bomb somewhere in Los Angeles and set it to go off "today". The Counter Terrorism Unit led by superhero Jack Bauer is tasked with saving the lives of millions of people.

Well, what should happen but that one of the terrorists who knows where the bomb is located falls into Jack's hands. Time is short and he has to discover the whereabouts of the weapon before it explodes, incinerating everything and everyone within a radius of a couple of miles and spreading a deadly cloud of radiation for hundreds of miles more.

Naturally, the terrorist refuses to talk. Jack cuffs him about the head once or twice but he knows that such measures are futile. He could, of course, employ waterboarding but that seems to be unknown to the script writers and besides it would violate the Geneva Conventions which sagely affirm that the lives of millions of Americans are simply not worth the terror experienced by a single thug who wishes to slaughter them.

So, what does our superhero do? Those of you who are fans will find this to be very old news, but for those of you who have more important things to do on Monday nights than to watch a television show, I shall tell you and then ask a question.

Jack has anticipated his prisoner's reticence and has had, unbeknownst to the viewer, the police in the terrorist's home country (which for some reason is never named) arrest the man's family (two sons and a wife). They bind and gag the hapless innocents in chairs and train a television camera on them. The video feed is uplinked and sent to a computer screen that the prisoner in L.A. can see. Already I can envision Andrew Sullivan and the editorial staff of the New York Times yelling at their televisions that Bauer can't do this, he's flouting the Geneva Conventions, he's a cruel, amoral imperialist pig, he's no better than the terrorists, etc. But it gets worse.

Agent Bauer then tells the prisoner that unless he spills the beans right now about where the bomb is to be found he will order the police in the unnamed foreign country to execute the man's eldest son. The terrorist's resolve is shaken but not broken. Bauer gives the order by phone, and the viewer sees on the computer screen a policeman kick over the boy's chair and shoot twice. The terrorist's family screams, the viewer is stunned, mostly at how little regard Bauer seems to have for the Geneva Conventions, international law, and enlightened moral opinion.

Now Bauer is screaming at the terrorist to tell him where the bomb is or he will order the execution of the youngest boy. The terrorist cannot withstand the psychological and emotional torture any longer. He breaks and gives Bauer the information he needs. The terrorist is then taken out of the room, and the scene focusses on the computer screen where we see the foreign police untying and releasing the man's family, including the boy who was supposedly shot. The whole thing was a set-up, a ruse to deceive the prisoner into thinking that his family was being murdered when in fact they were not.

Now this ploy was certainly a violation of the Geneva Conventions on torture, even if no one was physically harmed (although no doubt both the prisoner and his family were terrified). So here's my question: Given the circumstances, was Bauer justified in deceiving the prisoner in this way?

Is what he did so beyond the pale that it would have been better to allow millions of people to die a horrible death than to lie to this man in such a way as to make him believe that his silence was costing the lives of his loved ones when it really wasn't? An awful lot of people would answer that question with a resounding "yes, it would be better that millions die than that this man have to endure the pain of that awful deception". Certainly the auhors and signatories of the Geneva Conventions would answer this way.

Doesn't that strike you as absurd?

The Crucial Difference

In the clash of civilizations between the Muslim world and the West the latter enjoys many advantages - technological prowess not the least of them. Nevertheless, the Muslim world has one advantage that may eventually tip the scales in its favor. Muslims fervently believe in life after death and much of the West doesn't.

The secular world, especially Europe, having largely abandoned religious faith a century ago, believes that this life is all there is. The psychological, if not logical, entailment of this belief is that there is nothing that is worth dying for. No matter what principles one holds, if one is dead, the principles are worthless. Since there is nothing to look forward to beyond death, this life must be clung to at all costs because once it's over there's nothing.

Muslims, on the other hand, hold this life cheap. For them it's just a temporary way-station on the road to eternal bliss. Being willing to die to promote their cause of world-wide dominance makes them exceedingly difficult to deal with. Negotiation, which is predicated on people acting in their self-interest, is futile when people who want to live seek to arrive at a modus vivendi with people who believe it in their self-interest to die. Negotiation is predicated on willingness to compromise, but people who believe that God is guiding their every step are generally not willing to yield ground.

A secular democratic society will be tempted to appease, retreat, and ultimately surrender rather than, by fighting, risk war and death. A tyrannical jihadi society will risk everything, including death, in order to prevail. In such a contest the advantage is clearly on the side of those who see death as a passage into a new life. For this reason it may be that secular societies may prove to be no match for global jihad. It may turn out that only societies which also hold to a belief in the transience of this life and the permanence of the next will have the will to resist and withstand the long-term onslaught of the Muslim fanatics.