The Flesh and The Spirit

Back in April I posted If I May as a response to Living Like Jesus and in that post I mentioned The Deeper Journey by M. Robert Mulholland. Here's a quote from the back cover of the book that sums up what the book is about:

Robert Mulholland exposes the false selves that we hide behind and helps us discover the true self that comes from being hidden with Christ in God. If the goal of the Christian journey is Christ-likeness, then we must reckon with the unhealthy ways that we root our sense of being in things other than God. Along the way, we will discover a growing sense of intimacy and abandonment to God. Not only will we encounter the joy of discovering our own self, we will also find a greater love for others and compassion for the world.

Mulholland also mentions that the apostle Paul spoke of the same concept by contrasting "life according to the Flesh" (the false self) with "life according to the Spirit" (the true self) in Romans 8.

I mention this simply to provide some background for the following from Great Cloud of Witnesses in Hebrews Eleven by E. W. Bullinger where he addresses the problem somewhat differently. Whether his is a more effective approach I'll leave to those of our readers who have also read The Deeper Journey to decide.

Interestingly, this gem is found in the end of the chapter entitled Sarah: Faith's Conclusion.

We have already remarked on the place which Sarah occupies in the Divine order manifest in this chapter. This is clearly seen from the structure on page 109 where Sarah is placed in direct correspondence with Rahab.

In these correspondences the same characteristic of faith is obviously emphasized by the Holy Ghost.

In Sarah and Rahab we have FAITH'S CONCLUSION. This is common to both women. Sarah "judged Him faithful Who had promised" (v. 11). Rahab said, "I know...for we have heard" (Josh. ii. 9, 10).

Moreover, both women stand in connection with the two examples of FAITH'S OBEDIENCE, forming two corresponding pairs, with Abraham and Israel respectively.

But we must now give the text in full (verses 11 and 12).

"By faith, Sarah herself also received power for [the] foundation of a posterity, and [that], after the ordinary time of life, since she esteemed Him faithful Who gave the promise. Wherefore, even from one, who was as good as dead as to such things, there sprang [a posterity] even as the stars of heaven for the multitude, and as sand which is by the sea-shore, which cannot be numbered."

...

The birth of Isaac was the introduction of a new element in Abraham's household.

It corresponds with the introduction of the New nature in the believer today. Ishmael corresponds with the Old nature, which, when the New nature comes, it finds in possession.

Its introduction at once brings to light, and arouses to greater life and strength, the activities of the Old nature.

There was no conflict in Abraham's house till Isaac was born "not of the will of man, or of the will of the flesh, but of God" (John i. 13).

"But, as then, he that was born according to the flesh persecuted him [who was born] according to spirit, even so it is now" (Gal. 1v. 29). "The flesh lusteth against the pneuma (or New nature) and the spirit against the flesh, and these are contrary the one to the other" (Gal. v. 17).

"The mind of the flesh is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be" (Rom. viii. 7).

In Abraham's house this enmity was at once manifest.

The birth of Isaac did not improve Ishmael, or change his character, or his activities.

There was only one remedy, and that was "cast out the bond-woman and her son; for the son of this bondwoman shall not be heir with MY SON, even with Isaac" (Gen. xxi. 10). The bond-woman was an Egyptian, and savoured of Egyptian bondage; and the only remedy was to "cast out" both her and her son.

But what was possible in the allegory or type is impossible in the antitype.

The old nature cannot be "cast out" from believers now, but we have to reckon it to be so, by faith.

This is to be for us FAITHS CONCLUSION, Faith's reckoning (Rom. vi. 11), Faith's judgment (Heb. xi. 11).

This is what Abraham considered in Rom. iv. 19. "He considered his own body as already having become dead, and the deadness of Sarah's womb; but staggered not at the promise of God, through unbelief, but was strengthened by [his] faith, giving glory to God" (Rom iv. 20). This is to find its exact counterpart in us who believe God, as Abraham did.

This is to be faith's consideration, faith's judgment, faith's conclusion for us.

All that we are called on to do now, is to believe God; to consider our Old nature to be dead, and unable to conceive, beget, or to bring forth, or produce anything for God.

It requires great faith to do this; because, all the time we are conscious of its presence and its power. Our faith, therefore, has to be "against hope," as Abraham's was.

All the while they where believing God's promise, he and Sarah were faced with the undeniable fact that all was "against hope."

It is even so with us. We are faced with the ever present fact of the workings of the Old nature; and, therefore, we must, "against hope," "reckon ourselves to be dead [persons] to sin, but alive to God, through (or in) Christ Jesus."

To attempt to improve our Old nature is to give a flat denial to Rom.vi. 11.

To attempt to change Ishmael is direct disobedience to God (Gal. iv. 30).

To "consider" our Old nature as being alive and able to produce anything for God is a refusal to reckon it as being dead.

To "mortify" its members, in the popular sense, is to consider them as not being "already dead", but to recognizes them as being very much alive. But to "mortify" in the Scriptural sense is to consider them as good as dead! This is the meaning of the word in this connection, as is clear from our context, Heb. xi. 23 and Rom. iv. 19.

Abraham could not have considered his own body as already actually dead, or that he could mortify it by any activities which he could put forth; but only by considering it "as good as dead."

That is what we are called on to do in exercising FAITH'S CONCLUSION.

We are not to seek to improve our members by mortifying them by any process of rules for daily living. This is only to treat them as though they were alive. But we are to treat them "as good as dead," and as being as incapable of doing good, as they are capable of doing evil.

But this can be done only by believing God; and, by faith-obedience, reckoning ourselves as already dead in ourselves. Until this is done, there can be no peace. For it is as being "justified by faith, we have peace with God.". This is the conclusion of the whole argument of Rom. iv. as continued in ch. v. 1.

Until this is done, there can be no joy, no happiness, no "laughter".

As long as Ishmael was in Abraham's house there was only grief (Gen. xxi. 11). But when God's faithfulness was realized, then Sara could say "God hath made me to laugh" (Gen. xx1 6).

Yes, it is the same God Who hath "made us meet for the inheritance of the saints in light," Who makes us thus to laugh.

But if we stagger through unbelief, and do not come to FAITH'S CONCLUSION and believe Him, "against hope," and in spite of all our feelings and experiences, then there is only one alternative for us: we shall go on our way in grief and unhappiness, mourning for what we have done or not done, instead of "giving thanks unto the Father: for what HE HATH DONE (Col. i. 12). We shall sink under the burden of the incessant confession of our trespasses, because we steadfastly refuse to believe what we hear from God, that "you being dead in your sins...hath He quickened together with Him (Christ) HAVING FORGIVEN YOU ALL TRESPASSES" (Col. ii. 13).

Oh, that we may have Sarah's faith, and "against hope" be strengthened by faith, and have our mouths filled with God-given laughter, and give glory to God, because we have judged Him faithful Who hath promised.

CT's Top Fifty

Everybody enjoys lists of the top 10 of this or that (Well, maybe not everybody). Christianity Today offers a catalog of the top fifty books which have shaped the lives and thinking of Evangelicals. As with any such list you'll feel that they left some books off that they should have listed, including classics like Pilgrim's Progress and In His Steps, and that they included some that they shouldn't have. If you're an evangelical Christian and a reader - and if you're the first then surely you're the second - give it a look and see what you think.

Just War in an Age of Jihad

A friend links us to this article by David Aikman who writes that the moral criteria Just War thinking are teetering on the brink of obsolescence in an age in which one side regards such criteria with disdain. He argues that we must not discard the principles of Just War but that we need to rethink what "Just War" means in an age of jihad:

Just war principles work successfully only among nations that acknowledge the same moral laws at work, as in Europe, for example, in general before World War I. Now, however, we are all in a wider and starker conflict, in which ruthless Islamic ideologists are prepared to immolate their own children for the sake of ultimate victory. We should not be pressured by the enormity of the challenge they pose to civilized life to abandon our own rules of "just war." But we need to think through-and make public-how to cope with guerrilla adversaries who operate according to barbaric and totalitarian rules. Civilization is at stake-not only ours, but the world's. Do we have the moral imagination to oppose such adversaries without compromising the very integrity we fight to protect?

For my part I'm not sure exactly which Just War criteria are threatened by the Islamist assault upon the West (See here for a helpful discussion of Just War theory). I do agree, however, that we need to rethink some aspects of Just War theory. For instance, we need to clarify the concept of proportionate response, the question of who is a non-combatant, and what constitutes torture, but I agree with Aikman that the tradition of Just War and the principles which comprise it should not be abandoned.

Walid Shoebat

There is a CNN interview with Walid Shoebat at Hot Air that everyone should watch. Shoebat was a Palestinian terrorist who renounced terrorism and now tours the U.S. trying to educate Americans on the nature of Islamic jihad. It's a powerful piece.

Shoebat spoke last Wednesday night at Columbia University which, still smarting from the criticism they got for their miserable response to the near riot that prevented Minuteman Jim Gilchrist from speaking, decided to rescind some 77 invitations and admit only Columbia students to the lecture.

This was a very unpopular move (some are calling it gutless) since they withdrew the invitations by e-mail just two hours or so before the lecture, but at least the students at Columbia were able to hear him speak.

The Daily Infidel has an excellent report of the event at which Shoebat appeared. Apparently several former terrorists who have converted to Christianity told their stories and gave their opinions of modern Islam. There were a number of remarkable things said that evening, but one of the most interesting was a reply by one of the panelists to a questioner who pointed out that most Muslims, even clergy, are moderate. The former terrorist, a man who said that he had killed 233 people by the time he was 16, replied, "If you think your imam is moderate, ask him what would happen if his son converted to Christianity."

There's much more at The Daily Infidel.

Straw Poll

A straw poll carried by a lot of conservative-leaning blogs is showing that the favored candidate for the 2008 presidential nomination is Rudy Giuliani with Newt Gingrich coming in second. You can cast your vote below:

UPDATE: Apparently the page at which the results are posted has been taken down. Maybe somebody didn't like the fact that Giuliani was doing so well.

Sci Phi

Jason at Sci Phi conducts audio interviews with prominent thinkers on various scientific and philosophical topics. For example, William Lane Craig explains how God can know the future without precluding human free will here, and Alvin Plantinga explains why it is irrational to believe that both naturalism and evolution are true here. The sound on this one is sometimes a little scratchy.

William Hasker explains a possible solution to the mind/body problem called emergent dualism. The sound is unsteady, but you can hear Hasker well enough.

There is also a discussion on Intelligent Design with skeptic Michael Shermer and IDer Salvador Cordova. To link to the Cordova audio, however, you have to go here and follow the links since navigating around Sci Phi is difficult. They really do need an index of links to their shows.

Thanks to Uncommon Descent for the tip.

Dirty Harry

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, who was one of the principal spokesmen in the campaign to establish in the public mind the image of Republicans as incorrigibly corrupt, grew suddenly silent when it was disclosed that he had ties to the Luciferian Jack Abramoff. Now it turns out that there's even more odor clinging to the Senator. He appears to have profited handsomely from some land deals, the details of which he is obligated to reveal to the Senate, but which he chose to keep secret.

Old Harry Reid is starting to look a little dirty, and more than a little hypocritical, again.

For the scandal junkies among our readers Ed Morrissey has the details. And just in time, too, since despite the strenuous efforts of Chris Matthews and Keith Olberman at MSNBC to keep the story on life-support, the Mark Foley unpleasantness is beginning to expire. People are coming to realize that the scandal was pretty much over once Foley resigned, much to the disappointment of libs who were hoping to club Republicans over the head with it all the way up to election day.

AWOL in the Greatest Battle of Our Time

News reports indicate that the population of the United States will pass 300 million this week, and it occured to me that there has been scarcely a peep about this from environmentalists who, throughout the sixties, seventies, and eighties, were shouting from the rooftops that population growth was the most serious problem the world and this nation were facing. A burgeoning population puts enormous stress, we were told, on agricultural and natural lands, endangered species of wildlife and their habitats, resources like timber and water, and the over-all quality of life. People like Paul Ehrlich in his 1968 book Population Bomb warned us that if we did nothing to stop or reverse our growth we were headed for doom. Others claimed, a bit hyperbolically, that we'd already passed the point of no return.

I happen to agree that population growth is a serious environmental and ecological problem, perhaps one of our two or three most serious middle-term problems, and am very concerned about the consequences, both ecological and aesthetic, of adding 100 million people to our nation just since the 1960s. I support most efforts to conserve and protect our natural heritage from the voracious demands of a burgeoning population.

So I wondered why the people who led the struggle over the past generation to warn us of the perils we risk by not controlling population growth are silent as we pass the 300 million mark. I was curious as to why Leftish organizations, like the Sierra Club for instance, which have been fighting to limit population growth for decades, who have been warning us that we are facing a biological calamity, and who are concerned about conserving natural lands were as quiet as the Nevada desert.

Then it was all made clear by a feature column written by Valerie Richardson in the Washington Times (subscription required).

The reason, Richardson explains, why these groups have suddenly gone mute on what is arguably the greatest threat to the ecological health of natural lands and population stability in the U.S. is that much of the growth (40%) we are experiencing is due to immigration, both legal and illegal, and much of the rest is due to high reproductive rates among native-born poor. None of the environmental groups, most of which are staffed by liberals and Leftists, wish to be seen as racist by opposing illegal immigration and pointing fingers at minority groups with high reproductive rates.

In other words, these people, who were grabbing us by the lapels twenty years ago and pleading with us to do limit the skyrocketing numbers of people who were placing unsustainable demands upon the earth, actually care more about being falsely accused of racism than they care about doing what must be done to preserve the health of the North American biosphere. They're more concerned about being politically correct than about easing the pressure growing populations impose on endangered species and precious ecological resources.

Because of their fear of transgressing liberal orthodoxies on race they are AWOL on perhaps the most important issue of our time, the issue that has been their whole raison d'etre for the last fifty years. It is quite astonishing. It's also very sad that they would sell out their principles for a mess of PC pottage, but principles are quite expendable and very malleable things in the hands of liberals.

Off to Nuremberg With Them!

The liberal instruction manual on how to win debates evidently offers the following guidance:

When the facts aren't on your side shout the other guy down so that he can't be heard. If that doesn't work then haul him before a tribunal and threaten him with imprisonment for having the impertinence to doubt your truth.

At least that's the conclusion one would have to draw from this article:

A U.S. based environmental magazine that both former Vice President Al Gore and PBS newsman Bill Moyers, for his October 11th global warming edition of "Moyers on America" titled "Is God Green?" have deemed respectable enough to grant one-on-one interviews to promote their projects, is now advocating Nuremberg-style war crimes trials for skeptics of human caused catastrophic global warming. Grist Magazine's staff writer David Roberts called for the Nuremberg-style trials for the "bastards" who were members of what he termed the global warming "denial industry."

Roberts wrote in the online publication on September 19, 2006, "When we've finally gotten serious about global warming, when the impacts are really hitting us and we're in a full worldwide scramble to minimize the damage, we should have war crimes trials for these bastards -- some sort of climate Nuremberg."

Gore and Moyers have not yet commented on Grist's advocacy of prosecuting skeptics of global warming with a Nuremberg-style war crimes trial. Gore has used the phrase "global warming deniers" to describe scientists and others who don't share his view of the Earth's climate. It remains to be seen what Gore and Moyers will have to say about proposals to make skepticism a crime comparable to Holocaust atrocities.

Sure. Once the erstwhile champions of "free-speech" on the Left can make it illegal to disagree with them they'll probably want to make any dissent from their orthodoxies punishable by firing squad. Joseph Stalin must be pleased.

Guns in School

Alan Gottleib and Dave Workman argue that greater efforts to restrict guns leads, counter, perhaps, to conventional opinion, perhaps, to more gun crime. They make a good case that the "gun-free zones" set up around schools are a farce. Such feel-good nostrums accomplish nothing more than to assure the psychopaths who roam the halls of every large public school in the nation that if they decide to go on a killing spree no one will be able to hinder them.

The allure of exerting total, unstoppable power over others is irresistable to certain twisted minds, and gun-free zone laws don't do anything to keep them from bringing weapons into schools to carry out their horrific fantasies. They only prevent school staff from being in a position to stop them once the carnage begins.

Anyone who smuggles a gun into a school can massacre students for a long time before police arrive, and despite all the precautions that schools take to prevent such tragedies there's really no practical way an unarmed staff can stop a student who wishes to murder his fellow students from actually doing it.

As a parent of a high school student I know I would feel better if I knew that at least some appropriate school personnel had been thoroughly trained in the use of firearms, particularly in a school environment, and were allowed to keep weapons, under lock but easily accessible, in the building. If they were the chances that someone would attempt, or succeed in an attempt, to perpetrate mass murder in the halls and lobbies of a school would be greatly diminished.

Some people will understandably blanche at the idea of having guns in school, but they're already there. Some schools have armed guards roaming their hallways and some have armed kids roaming the hallways. The question is not whether we will have guns in our schools - we already do. The question is who in the school do we want to have access to them.

Sartre's Intellectual Heirs

Waller Newell writes in The Weekly Standard that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was strongly influenced by an Iranian intellectual by the name of Ali Shariati and that Shariati, like the genocidal Cambodian Pol Pot, was strongly influenced by the French existentialist Jean Paul Sartre and the Marxist Frantz Fanon:

The key figure here is the acknowledged intellectual godfather of the Iranian revolution, Ali Shariati. To understand Ahmadinejad's campaign to return to the purity of the revolution and why it leads him to flirt with nuclear Armageddon, it is necessary to understand Ali Shariati.

Ali Shariati (1933-1977) was an Iranian intellectual who studied comparative literature in Paris in the early 1960s and was influenced by Jean-Paul Sartre and Frantz Fanon. He translated Sartre's major philosophical work, Being and Nothingness, into Farsi, and coauthored a translation of Fanon's famous revolutionary tract The Wretched of the Earth. Sartre and Fanon together were responsible for revitalizing Marxism by borrowing from Martin Heidegger's philosophy of existentialism, which stressed man's need to struggle against a purposeless bourgeois world in order to endow life with meaning through passionate commitment.

By lionizing revolutionary violence as a purifying catharsis that forces us to turn our backs on the bourgeois world, Sartre and Fanon hoped to rescue the downtrodden from the seduction of Western material prosperity. Fanon was even more important because he imported from Heidegger's philosophy a passionate commitment to the "destiny" of "the people," the longing for the lost purity of the premodern collective that had drawn Heidegger to National Socialism.

This potent brew of violent struggle and passionate commitment to a utopian vision of a collectivist past deeply influenced Ali Shariati, just as it had influenced another student in Paris a few years earlier, the Cambodian Pol Pot. Fanon in effect replaced the international proletariat of classical Marxism with the existentialist Volk of Heidegger's Nazi period, repudiating both liberal democracy and Marxist-Leninist politics as too materialistic. As applied in practice by the Khmer Rouge, this led to the bloodbath of 1975-1979 in which the cities of Cambodia were forcibly evacuated and the Cambodian people were purified of the taint of Western corruption by being reduced to a primitive collective of slave labor. Just as the the Jacobins had literally started the calendar over at the Year One, so Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot, on assuming power, proclaimed the Year Zero.

Ali Shariati aimed to politicize the Shiite faith of his fellow Iranians with this same existentialist creed of revolutionary violence and purification. He sought to turn Shiism from pious hopes for a better world to come to the creation of a political utopia in the here and now.

What a legacy - Pol Pot and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. One wonders whether Sartre and Fanon would be proud of their intellectual descendents. When people possess a passionate commitment to changing the world, the use of any means, including genocide, is justified if it produces the desired outcome. The only check on such fanaticism is the belief that such means are immoral, but for the existentialist and the Marxist there is no morality other than pragmatism. Whatever works to advance one's cause is right. Indeed, It was Karl Marx himself who wrote in the Communist Manifesto that "Communism abolishes all eternal truths, it abolishes all religion and all morality".

The only ideology or belief system that gives any grounds at all for believing that some means and ends are evil is the Judeo-Christian religion, but Sartre and Fanon, Pol Pot and Ahmadinejad all reject the moral teaching of the Judeo-Christian tradition root and branch. Thus we got the killing fields in Cambodia in the 1970s from Pol Pot and the threat of a nuclear holocaust in Israel today from Ahmadinejad. Ideas have consequences, and bad ideas in the minds of evil and powerful men often have catastrophic outcomes.

The 4% Panic Attack

A recent article in the New York Times by Laurie Goodstein calls attention to growing concern that evangelical Christianity is losing appeal among teens and frets that only 4% of today's teenagers will be conservative Christians as adults. Here are some excerpts from Goodstein's article:

At an unusual series of leadership meetings in 44 cities this fall, more than 6,000 pastors are hearing dire forecasts from some of the biggest names in the conservative evangelical movement.

Their alarm has been stoked by a highly suspect claim that if current trends continue, only 4 percent of teenagers will be "Bible-believing Christians" as adults. That would be a sharp decline compared with 35 percent of the current generation of baby boomers, and before that, 65 percent of the World War II generation.

While some critics say the statistics are greatly exaggerated (one evangelical magazine for youth ministers dubbed it "the 4 percent panic attack"), there is widespread consensus among evangelical leaders that they risk losing their teenagers.

Genuine alarm can be heard from Christian teenagers and youth pastors, who say they cannot compete against a pervasive culture of cynicism about religion, and the casual "hooking up" approach to sex so pervasive on MTV, on Web sites for teenagers and in hip-hop, rap and rock music. Divorced parents and dysfunctional families also lead some teenagers to avoid church entirely or to drift away.

Over and over in interviews, evangelical teenagers said they felt like a tiny, beleaguered minority in their schools and neighborhoods. They said they often felt alone in their struggles to live by their "Biblical values" by avoiding casual sex, risqu� music and videos, Internet pornography, alcohol and drugs.

That the Church is competing with enormously seductive rivals for the affections of its young people cannot be denied. That the pressures on teenagers to abandon their faith are high is obvious, but even so, to the extent that the statistics quoted in this article are accurate, and I'm not convinced they are, much of the responsibility for the decline in Christian commitment will lie at the door of the local church.

Too many local congregations, especially in "main-line" denominations, are unwilling to invest in their young people. They cannot see their way clear to make Christian education and Youth Ministry their top priorities. Any church today that allows finances to deter them from seeking out and hiring a full-time youth pastor savvy in contemporary culture, knowledgeable about the Bible, good at apologetics, talented on the guitar or keyboard, and who possesses a charismatic personality is essentially ceding their youth to the modern Zeitgeist.

It may be true that there aren't very many candidates such as I have described out there to be hired, but that's largely because churches haven't created the demand for such individuals. If the jobs were available, so, too, would be the talented young pastors to fill them. Moreover, the mainline congregations will find slim pickings if they search for candidates among their denominational seminary graduates. Mainline seminaries aren't churning out the kind of people, unfortunately, who are either adept at or inclined to nurture teens in their faith. Churches need to be willing to look outside their denominational plantations and seek candidates who grew up in independent or semi-independent churches and were themselves educated at schools which take the Bible and Christian faith seriously.

Nevertheless, despite the gloomy portents in the Times' article Christianity Today isn't too concerned. They think the statistics are overblown. I hope they're right.

Jaw-Dropping Ad

The producer and director of "Airplane" and "The Naked Gun", David Zucker, has made a political ad for the GOP that the GOP has declined to use. Matt Drudge tells us that:

In the ad, Zucker, producer of "Scary Movie 4", recreates former Clinton Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's 2000 visit to North Korea. During the visit, Secretary Albright presented North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il with a basketball autographed by former NBA superstar Michael Jordan.

An actress playing Secretary Albright is shown presenting Kim Jong Il with the Michael Jordan basketball, painting the walls of Osama bin Laden's Afghanistan cave and turning a blind eye to suicide bombers. In one scene her skirt rips as she changes the tire of a Middle Eastern dictator's limousine.

One GOP strategist said "jaws dropped" when the ad was first viewed. "Nobody could believe Zucker thought any political organization could use this ad. It makes a point, but it's way over the top."

You can view the ad here.

Coercive Interrogation

Vasko Kohlmayer at Front Page Mag makes a case for the moral propriety of waterboarding which he believes to be the most benign of the coercive interrogation techniques we have at our disposal. Regular readers of Viewpoint will find little different in his argument from what we have presented here from time to time, but perhaps there is value in reading it in someone else's words.

Here's an excerpt:

.... careful consideration shows that waterboarding is in fact one of the least injurious among interrogation techniques. To see why this is so, it is enough to contrast it with the most common approach which involves a combination of sleep deprivation and cold exposure. Frequently requiring days and even weeks to break the captive's spirit, it carries a real possibility of long-term physical and psychological damage. Worse still, it often fails to achieve the desired effect with the result that the captive is subjected to prolonged hardships, but we still end up without the information we so urgently need.

Waterboarding, on the other hand, is fleeting in duration with the actual discomfort seldom lasting more than a couple of minutes. And since a man can be safely deprived of oxygen for at least twice as long, there is almost no risk of long-term harm. The possibility of injury is further reduced by the fact that the procedure calls for no direct physical contact between the subject and his interrogators. Not even as much as pushing or chest slapping is required at any time, making waterboarding one of the safest and least confrontational among interrogation methods. Involving the lowest risk of long-term harm and the least amount of cumulative discomfort, it is also the most humane. Most importantly, it is the most effective.

While other interrogation procedures employ raw force, intimidation or long-term duress, waterboarding brings the terrorist face to face with that which he himself seeks to inflict upon his victims - the horror of dying. Viewed in this light, waterboarding may well be the most just form of interrogation for this kind of criminal, because it gives him a taste of his own evil. The difference is that his anguish is stopped the moment he expresses a desire for it to be so. This, tragically, is something which his victims would never be granted. While the terrorist turns his prey into mangled corpses, waterboarding gives him a chance to see another day without being so much as scathed by his momentary ordeal. But even as he goes on living, we have in our possession crucial intelligence that will save innocent lives.

Some people reply to this sort of argument by saying that the end of saving lives does not justify the means of causing suffering and fear to another human being. This is nice ivory tower theorizing, but all one needs do to show the hollowness of the objection is to ask whether the person who makes it would think the same thing if he/she knew that among the lives saved by coercing information from a murdering thug would be those of his/her own children.

If the objector to waterboarding replies that even then she would not condone waterboarding then I would ask her to imagine looking into the eyes of her child a moment before a terrorist's bomb's blast incinerates the child and telling him or her that the impending death could have been prevented, but as a matter of principle the means to prevent it could not be used because they would have caused the murderer to suffer discomfort and fear.

Kohlmayer poses the same question in slightly different terms. He writes:

And as far as opponents of waterboarding are concerned, I have these questions to ask: Are a few moments of a terrorist's discomfort more important than the lives of the innocents he seeks to destroy? Are two minutes of Moussaoui's anguish worth more than the three thousand lives lost on 9/11? Does his momentary pain override a lifetime of hurt in the hearts of those left behind?

To answer "yes" to either of these questions, which is the implicit answer one gives if they oppose waterboarding as a means of coercing information, is to manifest colossal moral confusion.

Crazy Christians

Brent Bozell gives us a preview of the upcoming Studio 60 television series created by producer-writer Aaron Sorkin. Like much else coming out of Hollywood, Sorkin's show serves as a platform for anti-Christian animus. In one segment a fictional producer wants to run a show called "Crazy Christians" but is cautioned against it.

Bozell writes:

Sorkin uses his first script to throw sharp knives and rusty razors at the Americans who've lobbied for less filthy television. The show begins with an improbable "standards and practices" censor telling the producer of the fictional "SNL" that he can't run "Crazy Christians" because "what do you want me to say to the 50 million people who are gonna go out of their minds as soon as it airs?" The producer cracks wise: "Well, first of all, you can tell 'em we average 9 million households, so at least 41 million of them are full of crap. Second, you can tell 'em that living where there's free speech means sometimes you're gonna get offended."

Gutsy, eh? Cutting edge, to be sure. We look forward to the episode where the bold, audacious creator of this show exercises his free speech rights to do something really intrepid, like offending Muslims instead of Christians. We're looking forward to it, but we're not holding our breath. That much gutsiness is in short supply in Hollywood.

Bozell goes on to observe that:

What Hollywood likes is having the almighty power to offend - to "challenge" society, as they like to describe it - freely. But only some people are sought out for offending. For every supposedly crazy parent who worries about sex, violence and smutty talk on TV, perhaps there's another supposedly crazy parent who worries about different offenses, such as Twinkie commercials or scenes with cool, beautiful people smoking cigarettes. But those parents don't get mocked by scriptwriters. It is those with religious objections who get singled out.

There's more insight into Sorkin's adolescent attitude toward religion at the link. Bozell wonders in his concluding paragraph whether Aaron Sorkin will ever do a show on those "Crazy Atheists". We can see the puzzled look on Sorkin's face even now. Crazy atheists? What crazy atheists?

Musharraf's Untenable Position

For those who would like to know more about, and understand better, the goings on in Pakistan we recommend Rick Moran's primer at The American Thinker. Moran covers the recent history and highlights the very difficult position Prime Minister Pervez Musharraf finds himself in.

In his conclusion Moran says this:

Beset as he is on all sides, is there anything to be done with Musharraf? Outside of supporting him as much as we can, there really is nothing to be done. Replacing him is out of the question because the chances of someone coming to power who would be much less friendly to the United States and more accommodating to the Taliban are too great. And the likelihood of elections throwing up even more radical extremists is very high.

In this way, Musharraf is almost like an American tar baby. We're stuck with him for as long as he can survive.

How long that will be depends on Musharraf's knack for avoiding the assassin's blade and his complex political maneuverings. Because like it or not, Musharraf is still the best ally we have in the War on Terror. And he will remain so as long as he can continue to juggle the clashing interests and competing factions that threaten to bring him down at any time.

Read the whole column. It's enlightening.

Bush Derangement Syndrome Continues Unabated

More examples of the sickness that seems peculiar to the contemporary Left can be found at an art showing in Chelsea, New York. Whether the artist who labored over these canvasses deserves recognition for his talent, I can't say, but I will say that he should immediately check himself into a mental health clinic.

What is Consciousness?

One of the enduring problems in the philosophy of mind is the nature of consciousness. Exactly what it is and where it comes from has baffled philosophers and neuroscientists alike. Philosopher David Chalmers, one of the leading thinkers in this field, has a good paper on the matter in which he lays out the arguments against the materialist view that consciousness is reducible to material entities like atoms and chemical reactions. He begins the paper with this:

Consciousness fits uneasily into our conception of the natural world. On the most common conception of nature, the natural world is the physical world. But on the most common conception of consciousness, it is not easy to see how it could be part of the physical world. So it seems that to find a place for consciousness within the natural order, we must either revise our conception of consciousness, or revise our conception of nature.

The word 'consciousness' is used in many different ways. It is sometimes used for the ability to discriminate stimuli, or to report information, or to monitor internal states, or to control behavior. We can think of these phenomena as posing the "easy problems" of consciousness. These are important phenomena, and there is much that is not understood about them, but the problems of explaining them have the character of puzzles rather than mysteries. There seems to be no deep problem in principle with the idea that a physical system could be "conscious" in these senses, and there is no obvious obstacle to an eventual explanation of these phenomena in neurobiological or computational terms.

The hard problem of consciousness is the problem of experience. Humans beings have subjective experience: there is something it is like to be them. We can say that a being is conscious in this sense - or is phenomenally conscious, as it is sometimes put - when there is something it is like to be that being. A mental state is conscious when there is something it is like to be in that state. Conscious states include states of perceptual experience, bodily sensation, mental imagery, emotional experience, occurrent thought, and more. There is something it is like to see a vivid green, to feel a sharp pain, to visualize the Eiffel tower, to feel a deep regret, and to think that one is late. Each of these states has a phenomenal character, with phenomenal properties (or qualia) characterizing what it is like to be in the state.

There is no question that experience is closely associated with physical processes in systems such as brains. It seems that physical processes give rise to experience, at least in the sense that producing a physical system (such as a brain) with the right physical properties inevitably yields corresponding states of experience. But how and why do physical processes give rise to experience? Why do not these processes take place "in the dark," without any accompanying states of experience? This is the central mystery of consciousness.

What makes the easy problems easy? For these problems, the task is to explain certain behavioral or cognitive functions: that is, to explain how some causal role is played in the cognitive system, ultimately in the production of behavior. To explain the performance of such a function, one need only specify a mechanism that plays the relevant role. And there is good reason to believe that neural or computational mechanisms can play those roles.

What makes the hard problem hard? Here, the task is not to explain behavioral and cognitive functions: even once one has an explanation of all the relevant functions in the vicinity of consciousness - discrimination, integration, access, report, control - there may still remain a further question: why is the performance of these functions accompanied by experience? Because of this, the hard problem seems to be a different sort of problem, requiring a different sort of solution.

A solution to the hard problem would involve an account of the relation between physical processes and consciousness, explaining on the basis of natural principles how and why it is that physical processes are associated with states of experience. A reductive explanation of consciousness will explain this wholly on the basis of physical principles that do not themselves make any appeal to consciousness.[*] A materialist (or physicalist) solution will be a solution on which consciousness is itself seen as a physical process. A nonmaterialist (or nonphysicalist) solution will be a solution on which consciousness is seen as nonphysical (even if closely associated with physical processes). A nonreductive solution will be one on which consciousness (or principles involving consciousness) is admitted as a basic part of the explanation.

It is natural to hope that there will be a materialist solution to the hard problem and a reductive explanation of consciousness, just as there have been reductive explanations of many other phenomena in many other domains. But consciousness seems to resist materialist explanation in a way that other phenomena do not. This resistance can be encapsulated in three related arguments against materialism, summarized in what follows.

Go to the link to read the rest of this interesting paper.

One of the important things to note about it is that if consciousness is not reducible to physical entities then it becomes more plausible that it has a non-physical cause, but non-physical causes would be beyond the scope of science and indeed could be considered extra-natural or super-natural. Chalmers himself doesn't go this far but much of the argumentation in his paper lends support to this hypothesis.

The Nature of the Conflict

Paul Marshall has a fine, concise explanation of the Islamic grievance against the West. Quoting Osama bin Laden's words he makes clear the motivations and nature of the struggle we find ourselves in. Here are a couple of excerpts:

The network's central grievance, continually expressed, is the collapse of the Islamic world in the face of "Christendom" - a collapse explained by Muslims' apostasy from Islam, and which can be reversed only by returning to their version of Islam.

At the end of 2004, bin Laden lamented the "control exerted by the Zionists and the Cross worshippers" on Muslims, and he described the world conflict as "a struggle between two camps. One camp is headed by America, and it represents the global Kufr (infidelity), accompanied by all apostates. The other camp represents the Islamic Ummah (nation) headed by its Mujahideen Brigades." Similarly, his December 27, 2004 "Letter to the Iraqi People" referred to the war "between the army Of Mohammed, the army of belief, and the people of the cross." He warned Iraqis not to participate in the January 30, 2005 elections since the Iraqi constitution is "a Jahiliyya (pre-Islamic) constitution that is made by man," and Muslims may elect only a leader for whom "Islam is the only source of the rulings and laws."

At the end Marshall asks this question:

How should we respond to this radical, worldwide movement with millions of adherents whose programme it is to unite Muslims worldwide into one people, with one divinely sanctioned leader, governed by a reactionary version of Islamic law, and organized to wage a permanent war on the rest of the world - a war that from its perspective can only end in the annihilation, conquest or conversion of all non-Muslims?

Good question. Read his answer at the link.

Toronto ID Conference Pt. IV

Denyse O'Leary offers the fourth installment of her experiences at the Toronto Intelligent Design conference. Links to her first three posts on the meeting can be found in the right margin of the page at the link. There's also a lot of other interesting reading to be found there, not least of which is her blog comment policy note at the bottom of the page.

All the Difference in the World

There appears to be at least this difference between Republicans and Democrats. When Republicans are involved in scandal they're soon gone. When Democrats are involved in scandal they are permitted to remain in office as long as they're not in jail. Republicans Bob Livingston, Newt Gingrich, Tom Delay, Duke Cunningham, Bob Ney, and Mark Foley are all gone.

Not satisfied with that, however, the Democrats continue to call for Majority Leader Dennis Hastert's head over his handling of the Mark Foley disgrace even though their party allows their crooks and scoundrels to cling to power as long as they can be reelected. Ted Kennedy is still in office 25 years or more after being responsible for the death of a girl because he was DUI. Gary Condit was never forced to resign even though he was implicated in the murder of a young woman with whom he'd been having an affair. John Murtha was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Abscam bribery scandal but he still holds forth in the House. William Jefferson refuses to resign after being caught hiding $90,000 in bribe money in his office refrigerator, and the list goes on - Alcee Hastings, Marion Barry, and many others (See here for a full, and very lengthy, list of Democratic malefactors.).

The only way a Democrat is removed from office for corruption, it seems, is if he's sent to jail for it. Even then, as in the case of Marion Barry and Bobby Rush, they're sometimes re-elected to office when they get out.

There's lots of hypocrisy here, especially in the matter of Mark Foley's salacious instant messages to young congressional pages. The Democratic spokespersons on the television talk shows would have us believe that they're deeply concerned about sick adults luring children into sexual activity. They tell us how reprehensible what Mark Foley did is, and of course it is, but, as a recent New York Times column (subscription required) by David Brooks reminds us to ask, where are the liberal outcries over the theatrical performances of The Vagina Monologues which is celebrated on campuses all across the nation and has garnered great acclaim from the "anything goes" Leftists among our cultural elites?

In the play, a thirteen year old girl (later changed to a sixteen year old) is seduced by an adult and persuaded to engage in Foley-like behaviors that are explicitly sexual and pedophilic. Despite its glorification of adult sex with children this play is extolled as "cutting edge" cultural criticism. Colleges which have made the gauche blunder of prohibiting its performance have suffered loud protests and obloquy from campus "free speechers" and civil libertarians.

But where do the liberals who are so concerned about sexual predation stand on this? Why have they not uttered even a peep about how contemptible a play like this is? The only complaints I have read about TVM, which clearly endorses adult/adolescent sex, have come from the pens of conservatives.

So, any liberal who regales us about the Republicans' culture of corruption and the sexual deviants in their ranks or who demands Dennis Hastert's resignation should be required to explain why he or she doesn't also object to the showing of a play which clearly promotes the very sort of thing that Foley evidently only fantasized about. They should also be compelled to explain why they don't condemn and urge boycotts of musical groups like the Rolling Stones for performing songs with explicitly pedophilic lyrics like Stray Cat Blues.

Their failure to do either causes them to forfeit all credibility on the subject of sexual deviancy with minors and whatever censure they express on the matter should be regarded as empty hypocrisy.

By the way, there is a reason, I suppose, why TVM doesn't get bombarded with the same sort of moral brimstone from the Left that Foley and Republicans in general are being pelted with. TVM is a feminist rhapsody. The adult who seduces the young girl in the play is a woman. Apparently, for liberals, that makes all the difference in the world.

The Columbia U. Video

One of my students provides a link to the deplorable behavior of the Left/liberal mob at Columbia University when Minuteman founder Jim Gilchrist tried to speak there last week. When facts and reasoned argument are not on one's side people sometimes resort to thuggery as though that were a suitable substitute. This is the sort of behavior that might be expected of citizens of some third world banana republic, but it's not what one hopes for in a country whose citizens value free speech, the open exchange of ideas and who have been brought up to be polite and tolerant of other opinions. Unfortunately, those virtues seem to be missing among the portion of the Columbia student body who chose to take the stage last Wednesday night.

You can check out the video here. Thanks to Isaac for the tip.

Peace That Passes All Understanding

Rod Dreher, author of Crunchy Cons, has a lovely essay in the Dallas Morning News about the Amish response to the murders of five of their little girls. The Amish certainly have been an amazing example, to those of us who claim to be followers of the same Christ, of the meaning of reconciliation.

Divine Names and Titles

Some of our readers may be aware of the fact that the God of the Hebrew Canon had many names that were used to describe God according to the context of the particular passage in question. From Appendix 4 - "The Divine Names and Titles" of The Companion Bible by Kregel Publishing we find that:

I. Elohim occurs 2,700 times. Its first occurrence connects it with creation, and give it its essential meaning as the Creator. It indicates His relation to mankind as His creatures (see note on 2 Chron. 18:31, where it stands in contrast with Jehovah as indicating covenant relationship). Elohim is God the Son, the living "WORD" with creature form to create (John 1:1. Col. 1:15-17. Rev. 3:14); and later, with human form to redeem (John 1:14). "Begotten of His Father before all worlds; born of His mother, in the world." In this creature form He appeared to the Patriarchs, a form not temporarily assumed. Elohim is indicated (as in A.V.) by ordinary small type, "God". See table on page 7.

II. Jehovah. While Elohim is God as the Creator of all things, Jehovah is the same God in covenant relation to those whom He has created (Cp. 2Chron. 18:31). Jehovah means the Eternal, the Immutable One, He Who WAS, and IS, and IS TO COME. The Divine definition is given in Gen. 21:33. He is especially, therefore, the God of Israel; and the God of those who are redeemed, and are thus now "in Christ". We can say "My God," but not "My Jehovah", for Jehovah is "MY God."

III [my note: other Divine Names are examined in detail in the appendix but I have not included them here due to size considerations.]

Jehovah is indicated (as in A.V.) by small capital letters, "LORD" and by "GOD" when it occurs in combination with Adonai, in which case LORD GOD = Adonai Jehovah. The name Jehovah is combined with ten other words, which form what are known as "the Jehovah Titles." in the Hebrew Canon (Ap. 1). All are noted in the margin, in all their occurrences:--

1. JEHOVAH-JIREH = Jehovah will see, or provide. Gen. 22:14.
2. JEHOVAH-ROPHEKA = Jehovah that healeth thee. Ex. 15:26.
3. JEHOVAH-NISSI = Jehovah my banner. Ex. 17:15.
4. JEHOVAH-MeKADDISHKEM = Jehovah that doth sanctify you. Ex. 31:13. Lev. 20:8; 21:8; 22:32. Ezek. 20:12.
5. JEHOVAH-SHALOM = Jehovah [send] peace. Judg. 6:24.
6. JEHOVAH-ZeBA'OTH = Jehovah of hosts. 1Sam. 1:3, and frequently.
7. JEHOVAH-ZIDKENU = Jehovah our righteousness. Jer. 23:6; 33:16.
8. JEHOVAH-SHAMMAH = Jehovah is there. Ezek. 48:35.
9. JEHOVAH-ELYON = Jehovah most high. Ps. 7:17; 47:2; 97:9.
10. JEHOVAH-RO'I = Jehovah my Shepherd. Ps. 23:1.

We have seven of these, experimentally referred to, in Ps. 23, inasmuch as Jehovah, the "Good," "Great," and "Chief Shepherd," is engaged, in all the perfection of His attributes, on behalf of His sheep:--

In verse 1, we have No. 1 above.
In verse 2, we have No. 5.
In verse 3, we have Nos. 2 and 7.
In verse 4, we have No. 8.
In verse 5, we have Nos. 3 and 4.
[my note: verses 1 and 6 reference No. 10]

1. The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.
2. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.
3. He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.
4. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
5. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.
6. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever.

If you look at a transliteration of the Hebrew Canon, you will in fact see the actual Jehovah Titles. In the process of translating the Hebrew text to English, the following "mapping" has been employed and so all of the Divine Names and Jehovah Titles are rendered accordingly.

• God = Elohim.
• GOD = Jehovah (in combination with Adonai, "Lord").
• GOD* = Jehovah in the Primitive Texts, altered by Sopherim to Elohim as the Printed Text. (See Ap. 32.)
• GOD = El.
• GOD (Old English font) = Eloah.
• LORD = Jehovah.
• THE LORD = Jah.
• LORD* = Jehovah in the Primitive Texts, altered by Sopherim to Adonai as in the Printed Text. (See Ap. 32.)
• Lord = Adonai.
• LORD = Adonim.
• ALMIGHTY = Shaddai.
• MOST HIGH = Elyon.

This practice leads to a totally unacceptable, unnecessary, and unfortunate loss of information especially when all ten Jehova Titles are rendered simply as LORD. It's a shame that this has been done as it hides from the reader information about the Personality of Him whom they are reading and the greater concern is that the practice has never been corrected.

Isn't it odd that scholars would spend their lives tediously studying the earliest manuscripts and scrolls to discover what the Word of God has to say to us only to turn around and obfuscate something as fundamentally significant as His Name?

Fortunately The Companion Bible provides the Divine Names and Jehovah Titles in the margin.

Brownshirts at Columbia

This story in the Columbia Spectator suggests to us that freedom of speech at Columbia University takes peculiar forms. Minuteman founder Jim Gilchrist was invited to give a speech on the matter of illegal immigration last Wednesday night but was prevented from doing so by the usual suspects on the Left. These thugs know they can't win a debate on the merits of their arguments so they seek to prevail by stifling the opposition. Here's how one protestor defended the action:

"We were aware that there was going to be a sign and we were going to occupy the stage," said a protestor who was on stage and asked to remain anonymous. "I don't feel like we need to apologize or anything. It was fundamentally a part of free speech.... The Minutemen are not a legitimate part of the debate on immigration."

So, a legal organization which has done more to bring the issue of illegal immigration to the nation's attention than perhaps anyone else in the nation, certainly more than the Bush administration whose job it is to secure our borders, is not a "legitimate" part of the debate. Thus these dopes feel justified in silencing their spokesmen. Sounds just like the tactics used by the Nazi brownshirts to pave the way for Adolf Hitler in the early '30s.

See also Powerline's detailed reports on the incident here and here.

Nancy and Harry

Yahoo reports that Democratic House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi appears to be very concerned with protecting congressional pages from the likes of Mark Foley:

Not long before sitting down for a lunchtime interview, she turned down a suggestion from Speaker Dennis Hastert that they jointly appoint former FBI Director Louie Freeh to recommend improvements in the page program. "That was about protecting their majority" rather than the pages, she said dismissively.

Instead, she wants to put Hastert and other Republicans under oath and make them say what they knew of Foley's actions, when they learned it and what they did to stop him.

Nancy Pelosi is very concerned about protecting young people from sexual predation by older men, or so she would have us believe. Her concern for young boys, however, doesn't rise to the level of refusing to have anything at all to do with people who promote legalizing sex between men and boys.

For instance, Ms. Pelosi's piety on the issue, one might have thought, would have prevented her from marching in the San Francisco Gay Pride Parade in 2001 almost right next to Harry Hay, an outspoken advocate of man/boy "love".

Hay is the gentleman who once wrote this: "Because if the parents and friends of gays are truly friends of gays, they would know from their gay kids that the relationship with an older man is precisely what thirteen-, fourteen-, and fifteen-year-old kids need more than anything else in the world."

Lest you think I'm attaching too much significance to Ms Pelosi choosing to march within conversation distance of such a person in the parade, let's imagine some conservative, say, Dick Cheney, who, it is discovered, marched in a "white-pride" parade alongside an outspoken member of the KKK. What do you suppose the media reaction would be? And how credible would the Vice-President, or anyone in an administration of which he was a member, be when it spoke on matters bearing on race relations in America?

Nonsense Density

The world record for "nonsense density", i.e. the number of nonsensical statements per line of print, is placed in serious jeopardy by this article at NewsMax.com. The nonsense is not generated by NewsMax, so much, but by the people they quote for the column:

Mexico lobbied for six years for a comprehensive immigration reform that would allow millions to cross into the United States legally. Instead, they're getting a fence. Mexicans - from leading politicians to migrants preparing to cross illegally - consider the U.S. plan to fence off much of the border shameful, offensive and ill-conceived.

People who want to break our laws and plunder our treasury think it's shameful that we resist? They think it's offensive that we insist that if they wish to come here they do so legally?

President Bush on Wednesday signed a bill that would allot $1.2 billion for hundreds of miles of fencing along the U.S.-Mexican border and for more vehicle barriers, lighting and infrared cameras. But migrants resting at a Tijuana shelter after being deported from the United States said more walls wouldn't deter them. Alfonso Martinez, a 32-year-old from southern Mexico, had been working as a farmhand for six months in Vista, Calif., when he was arrested and deported last week. "Wall or no wall, I will try at least three times," said Martinez, who said he would try to cross by himself through Tecate, a mountainous town about 35 miles east of Tijuana. "I have three girls that I have to support, and in Mexico there is no work."

This is truly sad, but it's a problem the Mexican government, which sits on vast reservoirs of oil, silver and other mineral assets, could do something about were they so inclined. Rather than create prosperity for all in Mexico, however, they prefer to keep the wealth in the hands of a corrupt few and send the discontented masses north while lecturing the gringoes on our obligation to receive them with open arms.

Mexican immigrants in the United States and the Mexican government had lobbied lawmakers for more ways to cross the border and work legally. While Bush had proposed a temporary worker program, it didn't garner enough support in Congress for passage. The idea has been dropped by Washington, at least until after the November congressional elections.

It didn't garner support because enough representatives had been instructed by their constituents that there was no sense in trying to mop up the water until someone managed to turn off the spigot.

Congress focused on security over immigration, arguing that the porous border could be used by terrorists who want to sneak into the U.S. undetected. There is no evidence that has happened, however.

Now there's a good argument. Terrorists could easily enter this country from Mexico, but, since we haven't caught any of them trying to do that, we might as well assume that they haven't done it. I take back what I said above about the nonsense not coming from the NewsMax writers.

The Mexican government this week sent a diplomatic note to Washington criticizing the plan for 700 miles of new fencing along the border. Foreign Secretary Luis Ernesto Derbez called it an "offense" and said Wednesday his office was considering taking the issue to the United Nations.

The United Nations?! Mexico is going to complain to the United Nations that the U.S. is building a fence along its border? What sort of herbs has Mr. Derbez been mixing with his pipe tobacco? What jurisdiction does the U.N. have in this matter? Mr. Derbez is like the neighbor who complains to the authorities because you're tired of having him coming into your house and using your bathroom whenever nature calls. Now you've locked your door and he's going to complain to the neighborhood association.

But Ruben Aguilar, the spokesman for President Vicente Fox, said Thursday that Mexico had ruled out that possibility. He added he was "confident" the additional fencing would never become a reality because an immigration accord would eventually replace it.

If an immigration plan will solve the problem of the massive illegal entry into this country why do Mr. Aguilar and Mr. Fox object to the fence? What do they care if the U.S. builds the fence if Mexicans will not be trying to sneak into the country illegally once an immigration accord is in place? Their only reason for caring is that they want Mexicans to be able to enter the U.S. illegally if they cannot get in legally.

President-elect Felipe Calderon Thursday criticized the U.S. plan, but said the case is a bilateral issue that should not be taken to any international organization. "I think it is a deplorable decision that has been made by the United States Congress for the construction of this wall, and it does not solve our common problem, which is emigration," Calderon told a news conference in Santiago, Chile.

This is exactly wrong. The problem is not a "common problem" at all nor is emigration a problem for the Mexicans. Emigration is rather a solution to the problem of poverty in Mexico. The Mexican solution is to export their poverty to the U.S. so that we will pay for it. The problem is ours in toto. The wall will be a problem for Mexico but emigration is not.

Guillermo Alonzo, a migration expert at the Tijuana-based Colegio de La Frontera Norte, said fences instead will force migrants to look for new ways to sneak into the United States and find new routes through deadlier terrain. "When migrants are determined to cross, they find a way to jump the fences," Alonzo said. "Walls don't stop anything." Alonzo cited the construction of a fence between Tijuana and San Diego, known in Mexico as "the tortilla wall." It was completed in the 1990s and forced migrants into the sparsely populated and dangerous Arizona desert.

If the fence will force migrants to cross where crossing is more hazardous and difficult then evidently the fence will indeed stop migrants from crossing where the fence is. The more difficult the crossing the fewer people who will try it and the fewer times they will try it. The solution to the problem of Mexican illegals risking death in the desert is for the Mexican government to stop them from attempting the crossing. This, however, is not a live option for the Fox administration.

While there are walls at various points along the border, the one in Tijuana is the longest stretch, running 14 miles west from the Otay border crossing and plunging into the Pacific Ocean. It has become a symbol of the divisive immigration issue, a blank slate for graffiti, crosses, photos and other remembrances of those who have lost their lives trying to sneak into the United States. Some families, divided by the border, even meet at the fence, talking through the metal wires.

The point being...?

While the wall downgraded Tijuana from the illegal migration mecca it was in the 1990s, hundreds of migrants still come here, Alonzo said. "Now smugglers hide migrants in trunks of cars or get false documents," he said.

Yes, but surely Alonzo doesn't think he's providing an argument against building the fence. He seems to be claiming that since smugglers will hide people in cars if we build the fence we may as well let them just walk across the border. Does that make sense to you? Me neither, but Alonzo sounds brilliant compared to Luis Kendzierski:

Luis Kendzierski, a priest who directs a Tijuana migrant shelter, said building a wall is an unfriendly gesture that will lead to a hike in smugglers' fees and more migrant deaths.

An unfriendly gesture? Is locking your door when you leave your house an unfriendly gesture? Is refusing to allow your neighbor to raid your refrigerator whenever he gets the urge an unfriendly gesture? If Mexicans are dying in the American desert then the Mexican government should stop them from trying to cross the desert. If they're unwilling to do that then why are we obligated to open our doors to them? This is just nutty.

Between 2001 and 2006, almost 2,000 migrants died while trying to sneak into the United States, according to El Colegio de la Frontera Norte. "We are supposed to be neighbors and friends, and instead of building bridges and doors, we're building obstacles," Kendzierski said.

And this is even nuttier. The good Father is saying that anyone at all who wishes to take what's yours, who wishes to move into your home uninvited, who wishes to commit crimes against you and your family, who wishes to strain your resources and degrade your standard of living, should not only not be prevented from doing this but should actually be encouraged and assisted.

If we follow Fr. Kendzierski's logic to its conclusion then we should abolish police forces and eliminate all laws. Whatever you own really belongs to anyone who wants it. Whatever others want that they can't afford you are obligated to pay for. There should be no laws preventing people from taking what's yours, and, indeed, you should help them to take it.

Yes, we have an obligation to help the poor, but we do not have an obligation to help the poor ruin us. Our kindness must be our choice or else it's not kindness. Charity should not be a vehicle for national suicide.

There may be people reading this who agree with Fr. Kendzierski. If so, just answer a simple question. Do you lock your house or your car when you leave them? If so, why do you?

The Conservative Soul

Mark Gavreau Judge reviews Andrew Sullivan's latest book, The Conservative Soul, at Christianity Today. To sum up: Judge doesn't like it. Little wonder. Sullivan calls himself a conservative but he is so only on fiscal issues. He's a libertarian on social matters, and, although he's a Roman Catholic, he's at odds with almost all of the Church's teaching on sex. He's also viscerally contemptuous of the current administration as well as conservative Christians whom he disdainfully refers to as "Christianists".

Judge writes this about the book:

[I]n The Conservative Soul...there is ...tautology, narcissism, and enough moral relativism to light Manhattan for ten years. Sullivan's premise is simple: We just can't know anything for sure. There's no real truth, and anyone who claims otherwise is not really a conservative but rather a fundamentalist. "The essential claim of the fundamentalist is that he knows the truth," Sullivan writes. "The fundamentalist doesn't guess or argue or wonder or question. He doesn't have to. He knows." In opposition stands the true conservative, whose "defining characteristic" is that "he knows he doesn't know."

It should be pointed out that Sullivan has an expansive definition of "fundamentalist". The term as he uses it refers pretty much to anyone who holds to a more conservative theology than he does.

If you're familiar with Sullivan, who is one of the most popular bloggers on the net, you might want to check out the rest of Judge's review at the link.

The Plot Thickens

Matt Drudge has the inside scoop which shows that Florida congressman Mark Foley was apparently played for a fool by a bunch of young guys who were out for laughs. Somehow, the prank went awry and the instant messages wound up in the hands of some people sympathetic to the Democrats.

Not worried, apparently, that a sexual predator might be preying on young men under his charge, whoever had the IMs decided to sit on them until they could be used for political gain.

It's hard to tell who in this sordid tale is sleaziest: The pederastic Mr. Foley, the young men who egged him on, or the people who held onto the instant message exchanges until they could be used to destroy not just Foley, who deserves it, but also any other Republicans they could tarnish.

We say it's a tie between #1 and #3.

Clarice Feldman at The American Thinker believes this is going to have painful ramifications for Democrats:

Present state of play-the Dems and CREW* are implicated; ABC's Brian Ross has his own Rathergate, the FBI and Ethics Committee are going to find out which Dems were involved and CREW will probably lose their tax exempt status. The Dems have shown themselves to be perfectly willing to use homophobia to win when they have no saleable platform or issues; the Republican base is charged up and once again Soros turned his gold into Dem dross.

Foley will become a living example of the Dems' willingness to smear a homosexual for gain and will write a book, go on Oprah and make a mint. He will be this year's wronged victim. Mark my words: A fit ending to a sordid smear.

Patrick Godfrey puts it all together in this fine summation titled The Worst October Surprise, Ever. That is, it's the worst surprise for the Democrats, ever.

*CREW is Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. The claim to be non-partisan which gives them tax-exemption, but if they're implicated in this fiasco their tax exempt status could be in jeopardy.

Senate Races

The Democrats need to gain six seats to take over the senate in November. Real Clear Politics has them picking up five. The averages of the major polls on the senate races can be viewed here.

Even if the Democrats don't gain control of the senate an increase of five seats would be very worrisome for the Bush agenda. Throw in the half dozen or so liberal Republicans and the Democrats could have enough votes to block a Supreme Court, or federal judgeship nomination, or almost any piece of legislation that Bush tries to get passed.

For those who are hoping that Bush gets to make another nomination to the Supreme Court the possibility of a 50-50 senate is not comforting.

Peace on Earth

Well, it's the holy month of Ramadan and Muslims are presumably greeting each other with wishes of peace on earth and good will toward men. Or not. It turns out that on the Muslim feast of Ramadan the celebrations turn, at least in some Muslim precincts, toward ratcheting up the pace at which the brethren in Allah blow each other to bits. Ethel Fenig has the cheerful details at The American Thinker.

For example:

....a gunbattle erupted at Gaza City's main hospital when relatives of one of Sunday's victims arrived to retrieve his body. Fatah gunmen accompanying them opened fire on Hamas militiamen patrolling the hospital. No one was hurt, hospital officials said.

In the northern West Bank city of Nablus, Fatah militants shot at Deputy Prime Minister Nasser Shaer's bodyguards as they rode in a government car, injuring two of them, said Shaer, who was not present during the attack. Hospital officials said a Fatah militant was also injured.

In Jericho, a Fatah gunman trying to enforce the general strike shot a shop owner in the head, seriously wounding him, Fatah officials said. The wounded man was also a Fatah member, the officials said.

The Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, a Fatah-linked militant group, also circulated a flier threatening to execute Interior Minister Said Siyam, Syria-based Hamas political leader Khaled Mashaal and Youssef Zahar, the head of the Hamas militia.

See how they love one another. Fenig wonders "If all this violence occurs during a holiday period what will happen when the festive month is over?"

Let's all join in singing a couple of verses of Silent Night.

Toronto ID Conference

Denyse O'Leary reports on her experience at an academic conference in Toronto on the ID/Darwinsm controversy. Her report comes in three brief but interesting parts at Uncommon Descent and should be read in this order: Part I, Part II, and, perhaps the most interesting for those who follow the debate, Part III.

Disturbing Fact

According to a NewsMax article:

It is not a widely disseminated, downloaded or discussed fact that the average life expectancy for all pro football players, including all positions and backgrounds, is 55 years. Several insurance carriers say it is 51 years.

The article talks about the injuries associated with football, and suggests that these play a role in the early demise of retired players, but I doubt it. The article never comes out and states flatly what the causes of these deaths are so here's my guess: Most of the early deaths are caused by accidents, homicide, or drug and/or alcohol-related problems. Among those who die from natural causes, however, I suspect the leading killer is heart disease brought on by steroid use and excessive weight.

Despite the tacit message of the article which was that retired players are dying from the cumulative effects of injuries they suffered while playing, I doubt that many of them actually do. It would be interesting, though, to see a study done on the cause of death of retired NFL players and to see a comparison of the causes of death by position. My guess is that offensive linemen and defensive tackles, the behemoths of pro football, have the shortest life expectancies among those who die from natural causes.

Miscellaneous Thoughts on the Foley Furor

A few further thoughts on the Mark Foley Follies:

1) Despite the MSM's asseverations to the contrary, Mark Foley is not a pedophile. Pedophilia is a sexual attraction to prepubescent children. Foley was attracted to sixteen and seventeen year old boys.* The correct label for his type of sexual perversion is pederasty - sexual relations between an adult male and a boy.

2) The mention of perversion reminds us that Foley has been called a pervert by observers on both the Left and the Right, but this is a dangerous tactic for those on the Left who are otherwise engaged in the project to morally legitimize homosexual conduct. An adult heterosexual would not necessarily be considered a pervert if the adult found a seventeen year old of the opposite sex physically attractive. To call Foley a pervert is to strongly suggest that his perversion is not his attraction to the much younger individual but rather his attraction to, and sexual explicit conversations with, another male. This is tantamount to calling homosexuality a perversion, and that's a judgment that the liberal-Left, at least, has been fighting against for four decades.

3) The exchanges between Foley and the pages were not merely sexually "suggestive" as one news reader on the radio put it this morning. They were as explicit and revolting as they could be without involving violence.

4) Foley, in an attempt to achieve the victimhood trifecta, has announced that he's gay, alcoholic, and was abused by a priest when he was a boy. I suppose this is intended to make us feel sorry for him, but it's an odd threesome given today's PC orthodoxies. Alcoholism is a disease and sexual abuse is a crime so how does being gay fit in with these? Is it a disease? Is it a crime? Why does Foley think his sexual orientation is relevant to this situation? Does being gay explain why he has had internet sex with an adolescent? Does Mr. Foley believe that being gay makes his being a sexual predator more understandable and forgiveable?

5) The Democrats are anxious to use this episode to impugn the Republican Congressional leadership which, they happily allege, was much too slow to take action against Foley. Yet William Jefferson, the Louisianna congressman who had $90,000 of bribe money stashed in his office refrigerator, is still in congress. The Democrats have done nothing to purge him. Gerry Studds, a Democratic congressman from Massachusetts, was sexually involved with a 17 year old male page in 1973. He was censured by the House in 1983 but was unrepentant, refused to resign, and was re-elected by his strongly liberal district five more times. His Democratic colleagues in the House gave him a standing ovation when he gave a speech saying that what he does in a mutually consensual relationship is nobody else's business even if his paramour was only seventeen.

Bill Clinton, despite his forceful denials, had sexual congress with Monica Lewinsky, who was a subordinate, of course, and the Democrats vigorously defended him. Clinton had "phone sex" with Monica Lewinsky at least fifteen times, and the pervert, the man whom Democrats called upon to resign, was special prosector Ken Starr for publishing the details. Clinton was also accused of rape (Juanita Broderick) and sexual harrassment (Paula Jones), but the Democrats rallied to his defense to beat back the allegations and tarnish the reputations of the women who made them.

At the end of his presidency, Clinton pardoned a number of ne'er do wells from prison, among whom was Mel Reynolds, a former Democratic congressman. In August of 1994, Reynolds was indicted for having sex with a sixteen year old campaign volunteer, yet his party allowed him to continue running for re-election. In November of 1994 he was reelected by Democratic voters. Reynolds initially denied what he claimed were racially motivated charges of sexual misconduct. On August 22, 1995 he was convicted on 12 counts of sexual assault, obstruction of justice and solicitation of child pornography. He resigned his seat on October 1, 1995.

Reynolds was sentenced to five years in prison, but in April of 1997 he was convicted on fifteen counts of bank fraud and lying to SEC investigators. As a result, he was sentenced to an additional six and a half years. After serving 42 months of his 78 month sentence President Clinton commuted his sentence, yet there were no loud protestations from Democrats upset about the message this commutation of a sexual predator sent about the seriousness of Reynold's offenses.

So, when liberals wax indignant over Mr. Foley's contemptible behavior, their fury seems totally inconsistent with their past record in similar situations. It sounds contrived and insincere.

Mr. Foley's only real transgression, in the eyes of a lot of people on the Left, is not the age of the boy, nor his gender, nor his subordinate status, nor that the boy and Mr. Foley were conducting a salacious and disgusting dialogue over the internet. They've been just fine with each of those sorts of things in the past. For many on the Left Foley's real crime, the offense for which he and the House leadership must be made to pay, is that he was a Republican.

* UPDATE: Drudge tells us that the page with whom Mark Foley carried out his infamous IM exchange was 18 or barely shy of it at the time.

Biological Measures and CounterMeasures

In an article titled Biological Design Research: The Bat's Intercept and the Moth's ECM, Cornelius Hunter tells us this:

Military aircraft under enemy missile attack may use a variety of strategies to escape. There is, of course, the strategy of executing an evasive maneuver to avoid or disrupt the incoming missile. The aircraft may also use a variety of electronic signals to jam or fool the missile's sensor and tracking computer. These electronic strategies fall under the general category known as electronic counter measures (ECMs). As usual biology has its own incredible, organic, version of such technology. In the case of the bat and moth encounter, it is being elucidated by some excellent research.

Many bat species have a phenomenal biosonar, or echolocation, capability used to track insects. As they fly they may emit hundreds of ultrasonic squeaks per second. The squeaks are frequency-modulated and at frequencies in the hundreds of kilo Hertz. During the pursuit the bat shortens its squeaks and increases the transmission rate as it closes on the prey. In the terminal stage the bat rapidly adjusts its trajectory and posture to capture the insect. The return echoes are passed through a range-compensated automatic gain control to reduce signal strength variations during closure. The result is a tracking capability that is several times more accurate than our best military equipment.

While executing these tracking and intercept functions the bat is performing a complex signal processing task. For instance, the bat can discriminate the prey from background clutter. It also has a sort of synthetic aperture technology with which to construct image information. And it also uses complicated geometrical calculations to solve an advanced guidance scheme, as it closes on the target.

And what about the prey? Often on the receiving end of this carbon-based interceptor is the lowly moth. Some moths, however, sport their own battery of impressive capabilities to counter the bat's onslaught. They are not only able to hear the bat's ultrasonic squeaks, they also can perform complex, aerobatic escape maneuvers, and some moths even counter the bat's squeaks with their own ultrasonic reply. These designs are not simple, and while years of excellent research have elucidated much of the details, many of the complexities have yet to be fully understood.

Sometimes it just makes me giddy to contemplate the miracles that blind, random processes like natural selection and genetic mutation can accomplish. I also stand in awe of the enormous credulity displayed by those who believe that such systems as Hunter describes could have evolved solely from such processes without any intelligent input. It's just astonishing what one can make oneself believe if only one tries hard enough. Would that we all had such faith.

Islam's Long War Against the West

Jonathan Last writes a column in The Philadelphia Inquirer about Islam's centuries-long war against the West. Last offers some good perspective on the nature of the conflict, and he begins with this:

Soon after 9/11, the Bush administration labeled the conflict into which it plunged this country the "war on terror." But this is no more descriptive than calling the fight in Iraq a "war on IEDs." The more pressing question is: Are we, or are we not, engaged in a larger clash of civilizations?

If the answer is "We are," the clash long predates 9/11, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and George W. Bush. It predates America itself. It is a clash between Western civilization and the Islamic world.

Harvard professor Samuel Huntington first made this case in 1993, in his famous article "The Clash of Civilizations" in the journal Foreign Affairs. "Conflict along the fault line between Western and Islamic civilizations has been going on for 1,300 years," he wrote. After the founding of Islam, Muslims spread their faith by the sword. Islam conquered North Africa and pushed into Europe, where it ruled in Sicily, Spain, Portugal, and parts of France. Twice, the forces of Islam laid siege to Vienna. For 1,000 years, Islam advanced and Christendom retreated.

As Pope Benedict XVI explains in his book Without Roots, the very concept of "Europe" emerged as a reaction to the surge of Islam. Not until the failure of the second Turkish siege of Vienna in 1683 did the Islamic tide recede definitively. For the next 300 years, Western civilization was ascendant and the Islamic world stagnated.

But the conflict between the two cultures never fully abated. Throughout the 20th century, Western countries tussled with Islamic states or their non-state proxies. And, as columnist Mark Steyn points out, when you gaze at conflicts around the globe today, the one constant is Islam. Muslims are fighting, or have recently fought, Jews in the Mideast, Hindus in Kashmir, Christians in Nigeria, atheists in Russia, Buddhists in Thailand and Burma, Catholics in the Philippines, and Orthodox Christians in the Balkans.

The rest of the essay is very much worth reading.

Liberals And the Foley Fiasco

Left-wing blog The Daily Kos and its readership are in a righteous stew over Mark Foley's "despicable" behavior. This has led me to wonder what it is, exactly, that they find despicable in Mr. Foley's pederast fantasies.

Are they outraged that Mr. Foley is a homosexual? That can't be it, of course, because they're deeply commited to the liberal doctrine of moral equivalence between homo- and hetero- sexuality.

Are they incensed that his lubricious attractions are directed at subordinates? That can't be it either since they weren't upset at all about Bill Clinton's similar attractions for his subordinates.

Perhaps they're furious because the boys Mr. Foley was instant messaging were only sixteen years old. Indeed, this is the high ground liberals on the talk shows are trying to occupy, but I don't think it works. Attraction to young boys is a common aspect of gay culture. If the Kos Kids are upset about that then they're essentially rebuking or renouncing the Left's entire history of facilitating and championing sexual deviancy and libertinism.

Not every liberal, of course, supports laws that would make it easier for adult men to have sexual liaisons with adolescent boys, such as lowering the age of sexual consent (which, by the way, is sixteen in Washington, D.C.). Even so, virtually everyone who does favor them is on the political Left and everyone who strenuously opposes them is on the political Right. Sexual freedom and the abolition of laws limiting sexual expression are Left-wing issues, so it's a little unusual to see Lefties condemning the very behavior they or their ideological allies think should be legal.

Maybe their moral "outrage" is simply a convenient ploy to try to make political hay against the Republicans whom they hate, in part because Republicans stand in the way of the emergence of the kind of society in which laws against sex with minors would be a thing of the past.

New ID Site For HS Students

There's a new site for high school students interested in Intelligent Design called Overwhelming Evidence. It's a site that enables high schoolers to network and communicate their views on Intelligent Design and evolution.

The site managers write that they believe that "today's students are smarter than they are given credit for, and that rather than being told what to believe, they have the ability to explore the range of possibilities and figure out what to believe on their own. The site is meant to encourage students to explore the facts, report the facts, and debate the facts."

If you're in high school, or just out, and interested in the controversy swirling around ID and Darwinism, give this site a look.

Fearing For His Life

Robert Redeker is a French philosopher who can no longer spend more than two nights in any one place. He must be constantly on the move to elude those who seek his life. What was his offense? In an article in Le Figaro titled "Faced with Islamic intimidation, what should the free world do?" he said this:

"Pitiless war leader, pillager, butcher of Jews and polygamous (people), this is how Mohammed is revealed by the Koran."

For this Redeker is in fear of his life, not in some dysfunctional Arab state, but in France. The Islamists know nothing of the freedoms we in the West take for granted and they're determined to wipe them out. Their weapon now is to intimidate those who speak against Islam by killing some and threatening others. Eventually their goal is to reduce the West to a state of abject servitude to Islamic overlords who will demand that it be written into our laws that no one be permitted to speak ill of Islam or the Prophet.

Read Redeker's story here.

Vindicated!

Ever since 1969 I have been silently convinced that the whole world was wrong about a certain historical event and that I was right. I could never prove it, of course, and besides it wasn't a big deal, but it was always an irritant for me whenever I heard the mistake repeated.

When Neil Armstrong stepped down onto the moon's surface and uttered his famous words, quickly engraved in stone by, I think, Walter Cronkite, as "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind," I recall saying to my future wife, who was with me at the time, "That's not what he said. That doesn't even make sense. It's like saying 'One small step for mankind, one giant leap for mankind. What he said was one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind." Subsequently, every time I heard the apocryphal rendering repeated, I cringed, just as I cringe when someone says "I could care less" when what they mean to say is "I could not care less".

Anyway, now, after all these years, I have been vindicated, and I want to tell the world:

HOUSTON (Sept. 30) - That's one small word for astronaut Neil Armstrong, one giant revision for grammar sticklers everywhere.

An Australian computer programmer says he found the missing "a" from Armstrong's famous first words from the moon in 1969, when the world heard the phrase, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." The story was reported in Saturday's editions of the Houston Chronicle.

Some historians and critics have dogged Armstrong for not saying the more dramatic and grammatically correct, "One small step for a man ..." in the version he transmitted to NASA's Mission Control. Without the missing "a," Armstrong essentially said, "One small step for mankind, one giant leap for mankind."

The famous astronaut has maintained he intended to say it properly and believes he did. Thanks to some high-tech sound-editing software, computer programmer Peter Shann Ford might have proved Armstrong right.

Ford said he downloaded the audio recording of Armstrong's words from a NASA Web site and analyzed the statement with software that allows disabled people to communicate through computers using their nerve impulses.

In a graphical representation of the famous phrase, Ford said he found evidence that the missing "a" was spoken and transmitted to NASA.

"I have reviewed the data and Peter Ford's analysis of it, and I find the technology interesting and useful," Armstrong said in a statement. "I also find his conclusion persuasive. Persuasive is the appropriate word."

See? I knew it.

Self-Destruction

Rep.Mark Foley (R-FL) resigned from congress when e-mails and instant messages he had been sending to congressional pages all under the age of 18 came to light last week.

The internet dialogue reveals a sick man who desperately needs help. Like former NJ governor Jim McGreevy who resigned when the sordid details of his double life were exposed last year, Foley's life and reputation are destroyed.

On one hand one can't help but be disgusted by the sleaziness to which these men have descended (the incriminating dialogue Foley engaged in with a minor can be accessed through the above link, but I don't recommend it unless you have a high tolerance for human degradation), on the other, one must feel very sorry for them. Their lives, even before they were found out, must have been filled with fear of being caught and self-loathing at what they had become.

It's easy to feel contempt for powerful people when, despite their transgressions, they are arrogant, defiant, and unrepentant, but surely when they're broken and devastated, contempt must give way to compassion. To the extent that Jim McGreevy and Mark Foley are humiliated and laden with self-reproach they need, and should have, our prayers. Unfortunately, it's not clear that either of them are yet at that stage.

In any event, as if the Mark Foley imbroglio hasn't done enough to harm Republicans going into the mid-term elections, it turns out that House speaker Dennis Hastert and House Majority leader John Boehner are both being accused of having known of Foley's illicit involvement with underage House pages and lied to cover it up.

If this is true, and I'm not persuaded yet that it is, it would be absolutely astonishing, especially in light of the ordeal the Catholic Church has been undergoing for the last decade over similar revelations about some of their clergy. It's hard to believe that in light of the Catholic Church's nightmarish experience the Republican party would make the same mistake.

Ed Morrissey at Captain's Quarters has details and is calling for the resignation of both Hastert and Boehner from their leadership positions. I think this is a little premature since it's not clear yet how much anyone knew about what Foley was doing. If it turns out, however, that anyone, including Democrats and media types, knew for months what was happening and didn't do anything to stop it, then those people should indeed be required to pay a price.

UPDATE: Dennis Hastert has just come out with a statement insisting that the Republican leadership knew nothing of the salacious instant messages, but, he notes, somebody did know about them and evidently did nothing to stop them. It's beginning to look as if these messages have been withheld in order to use them for political purposes close to the election. That's almost as immoral as the messages themselves.

Feedback

There are a couple of good replies on our Feedback Page to the posts this week on the Open Letter to the Religious Right and Mr. Cell Phone Guy.

Give them a look.