Booming Economy --- in <i>Iraq</i>

Iraq is in the midst of civil war, we're told. We've already lost in Iraq, we hear. All that's left is to figure out a graceful exit, the media talking heads solemnly intone. Yet every now and then a dissonant note seeps through the despair and defeatism. Newsweek, of all people, has such a story here. The title? Iraq's Economy is Booming. Given what the MSM report every day who would have thought that?

Civil war or not, Iraq has an economy, and-mother of all surprises-it's doing remarkably well. Real estate is booming. Construction, retail and wholesale trade sectors are healthy, too, according to a report by Global Insight in London. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce reports 34,000 registered companies in Iraq, up from 8,000 three years ago. Sales of secondhand cars, televisions and mobile phones have all risen sharply. Estimates vary, but one from Global Insight puts GDP growth at 17 percent last year and projects 13 percent for 2006. The World Bank has it lower: at 4 percent this year. But, given all the attention paid to deteriorating security, the startling fact is that Iraq is growing at all.

Things in Iraq are not all rosy, of course, but neither is the picture anywhere near as dismal, evidently, as the American public is being led to believe. We can win in Iraq. It just takes a little more steel in the spine than many of our politicians and media types have shown so far.

In his outstanding book America Alone, Mark Steyn quotes Goh Chok Tong, the prime minister of Singapore in 2004, who, while on a visit to Washington, observed that "The key issue is no longer WMD or even the role of the U.N. The central issue is America's credibility and will to prevail." Exactly so, but, unfortunately, neither of those assets is much in evidence in either the Democrat party or the establishment media.

Mind-Numbed Robots

Liberals often pride themselves on how smart they are, while ridiculing the rubes who vote for conservatives. Blue staters are intelligent, red staters are yokels. At least that's the myth that liberals have comforted themselves with for the past six years. Yet frequently news reports like this one come along that blow the myth right out of the water and cause us to question whether liberalism is not itself a symptom of cognitive debility.

What other explanation can there be for such as we read in the following report?

HAGERSTOWN - A kindergarten student was accused earlier this month of sexually harassing a classmate at Lincolnshire Elementary School, an accusation that will remain on his record until he moves to middle school.

Washington County Public Schools spokeswoman Carol Mowen said the definition of sexual harassment used by the school system is, "unwelcome sexual advances, request for sexual favors and/or other inappropriate verbal, written or physical conduct of a sexual nature directed toward others." Mowen said that definition comes from the Maryland State Department of Education.

According to a school document provided by the boy's father, the 5-year-old pinched a girl's buttocks on Dec. 8 in a hallway at the school south of Hagerstown. Charles Vallance, the boy's father, said he was unable to explain to his son what he had done. "He knows nothing about sex," Vallance said. "There's no way to explain what he's been written up for. He knows it as playing around. He doesn't know it as anything sexual at all."

The incident was described as "sexual harassment" on the school form. School officials consider a student's age and the specific action when determining what administrative action to take, Mowen said.

Lincolnshire Principal Darlene Teach [Really?] and Mowen said they were unable to discuss he incident involving the Lincolnshire student. Teach said any student, regardless of grade level, can be cited for sexual harassment. "Anytime a student touches another student inappropriately, it could be sexual harassment," Teach said.

School administrators at a Texas school in November suspended a 4-year-old student for inappropriately touching a teacher's aide after the prekindergarten student hugged the woman. "It's important to understand a child may not realize that what he or she is doing may be considered sexual harassment, but if it fits under the definition, then it is, under the state's guidelines," Mowen said. "If someone has been told this person does not want this type of touching, it doesn't matter if it's at work or at school, that's sexual harassment."

The incident will be included in the boy's file while he remains at Lincolnshire, but Mowen said those files do not follow students when they move on to middle school. She described the incident as a "learning opportunity."

During the 2005-06 school year, 28 kindergarten students in Maryland were suspended for sex offenses, including sexual assault, sexual harassment and sexual activity, according to state data. Fifteen of those suspensions were for sexual harassment. During the 2005-06 school year, one Washington County prekindergarten student was suspended from school, and 12 of the county's kindergartners were suspended for various offenses, according to state data.

A four year old was suspended for inappropriate touching?Twenty eight kindergarten students were suspended for sexual harassment? How can a four year old inappropriately touch? How can kindergarten students sexually harass someone? What kind of people are these who are making the decisions to punish these children by labelling them some sort of sex offender, and do they have any insight at all into how four and five year-olds think? Do they really believe that children this young think in sexual terms at all?

Ms. Mowen considers writing a child up as a sexual harasser to be a "learning opportunity," but it's better described as the sort of sheer idiocy one has come to expect from people who are so brainwashed by mindless ideological dogma that they have absolutely no common sense. Liberal proprieties may demand that we punish a four, five, or six year old for pinching, as if they were sixteen or seventeen, but anyone with an IQ above the freezing point would perceive the utter foolishness of it.

Indeed, the only thing more astonishing than the punishment is the utterly vacuous rationale given to justify it. Like people straight out of a Franz Kafka novel, the sex nazis in Maryland have determined that what this child did fits the definition of sexual harassment and therefore must be treated as such, whether it really is or not.

In their stupid intransigence and bizarre eagerness to punish children just for being children, Ms. Teach and Ms. Mowen offer us, perhaps, the best possible argument for school choice.

Major Conversion

Scrapple Face has the scoop of the century. Al Qaeda's second in command (or, depending on the status of Osama's vital signs, #1) Ayman al-Zawahiri has converted to Christianity and gives his testimony in this video. It's a real shocker to hear him talk like this, but it warms the soul.

At least it does if you don't know Arabic and don't think about the fact that Scrapple Face is a master of satire.

Time's decision

Byron writes to defend Time Magazine's decision to select us all as Person of the Year. His defense can be read on our Feedback page, and, as usual, he makes a good case.

Significant Differences

Those who support open borders and unrestricted immigration like to remind us that we are a nation of immigrants and that we should not deny to others what was not denied to our ancestors. This is a specious argument for a number of reasons, and Pat Buchanan provides us with a few of them in his excellent book State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America. Buchanan notes that:

1. We have as many foreign-born people living in the U.S. today as came here in the first 350 years of our history. This is a tidal wave of immigration which is placing enormous stress on the cultural and social fabric of our cities and towns, especially in the southwest.

2. Most of of those who are coming are breaking in. They have no legal right to be here. Six million illegals were caught in 2006. That may only be a fraction of what actually made it past the border police. In 2006 there were as many illegals (12 to 20 million) inside our borders as all the Germans and Italians who ever came to this country.

3. Almost all immigrants, whether legal or illegal, come from cultures whose peoples have never before been assimilated into a First World nation. Most of our ancestors were from the same ethnic and cultural stock as the people who were already here. Many of today's immigrants have no particular sympathy for or loyalty to the European culture which has nurtured and sustained America. The founding documents of this country reflect European thinking and values and many of today's immigrants feel no attachment or allegiance to them.

4. There are strong pressures exerted on immigrants by their own communities and by our cultural elites not to assimilate. Unlike the social expectations which prevailed a century or more ago, today's multiculturalists are hostile to the idea of an American melting pot and disdain the idea, for example, that immigrants should be expected to learn English.

5. Among those arriving now many of them bring with them no desire to become Americans, to be one of us. Many come to work, others to exploit the welfare benefits of living in America, some come to prey upon Americans. When most of our ancestors arrived, on the other hand, they were not entitled to drink at the public trough. There was no public welfare. The immigrant communities themselves provided assistance to those of their number who needed it.

These are not insignificant differences. Immigration today is an almost completely different phenomenon than it was when our ancestors travelled to these shores. Immigration in the first 350 years of our history made us a stronger nation. Today it is threatening to undo us.

Simplistic Reportage

Reports in the media almost always depict the administration as resisting more troops in Iraq and the military leadership as wanting more but reluctant to buck former Secretary Rumsfeld's desire to keep our footprint small and lean. Well, apparently the media reports have once again proven themselves to be a little too simplistic.

It turns out that the administration is enthusiastic about putting more troops into Iraq and the Joint Chiefs are reluctant. The debate is apparently complex, but that's the point. The second guessers and military experts at the New York Times and elsewhere have till now painted the debate as a simple matter of the Bushies being unwilling to listen to their military people on the need for more troops when, in fact, things have been more complicated than that. We might even say that the media has "lacked nuance" in much of their reporting on this matter.

Read the article by Robin Wright and Peter Baker at the link.

Who Would You Pick?

Jason writes regarding the Time Magazine Person of the Year award:

What a lame excuse for a man of the year award. All that happened in 2006, and the editor's at TIME come up with that crock? They should be ashamed. And to think that CNN carried a 1-hr special on who should be picked, only to announce that it is "YOU."

I am curious. Who would the editors of Viewpoint pick for their person(s) of the year?

This is a very interesting question. The obvious answer, of course, is that it's George W. Bush. No one has had a greater influence on world events, for good or for ill, than has President Bush. But if we discount the president of the United States in our deliberation the choice gets more difficult. There are a couple of people that merit consideration, but rather than name them I'd like to survey you our readers and see what you think.

If you have a thought on this please submit your choice for person of the year through our speak up feature. Unlike Time Magazine's editors, though, who consider anyone who has exerted influence on world or national events no matter how pernicious that influence might have been, let's limit our choice to someone that we believe deserves the award because their efforts have advanced civilization and human welfare.

If we get any nominations we'll list them next week.

Liberal/Conservative

How liberal or conservative are you? You can go here to take a twenty question test to find out. My results were as follows:

Political Profile:

Overall: 85% Conservative, 15% Liberal
Social Issues: 100% Conservative, 0% Liberal
Personal Responsibility: 75% Conservative, 25% Liberal
Fiscal Issues: 100% Conservative, 0% Liberal
Ethics: 50% Conservative, 50% Liberal
Defense and Crime: 100% Conservative, 0% Liberal

I really don't know how I got the 50/50 rating in ethics since I can think of only one ethical question to which I gave the typically liberal reply. The test makes me seem more conservative than I think I really am and maybe it's slanted to do that, I don't know. Anyway, take it yourself and see what you think.

HT: Prosthesis

Good Quote

"I'm interested in reconciling this phenomenal event -- the incarnation of God -- with Santa Claus and blue-light specials at Kmart and the weird preoccupation we have with buying a lot of junk and giving it to each other." Prosthesis.

The Differences Between Them

For those of our readers who may have a hard time distinguishing between the various breeds of Muslim, Joe Carter at Evangelical Outpost provides us with a good summary of the main differences between Sunni and Shia.

In our opinion, the differences seem minor compared to what they share in common, i.e. a desire to convert the world by killing all infidels, if need be. Nevertheless, the distinctions between Sunni and Shia must be significant in their own eyes because when they aren't killing infidels they sure delight in killing each other.

Israel Should Have Attacked Syria

The founder of MEMRI (Middle East Media Research Institute), Meyrav Wurmser, believes Israel let down the U.S. by not attacking Syria. She is a leading "neo-con" who has lots of interesting things to say about the situation in the Middle East in an article in YNet News.

She believes, for instance, that the reason things are moving so slowly in Iraq is not because neo-cons had too much influence in the Bush administration, as has been alleged, but because they had too little.

Read what else she has to say, especially her rationale for an Israeli attack on Syria, at the link.

An Open Door

Sal Cordova at Uncommon Descent notes that the secularists are beginning to wake up to the fact that Judge Jones' ruling against the Dover school board a year ago is not the defeat for Intelligent Design that it has been touted to be.

The judge left the door wide open for teaching ID in philosophy, sociology, and religion classes. As Lauren Sandler says in her book Righteous:

[I]ntelligent design proponents keep quiet about the idea that [Judge] Jones's decision opens new legal support to teach their views in philosophy and religion classes. "We do not question that many of the leading advocates of ID have bona fide and deeply held beliefs which drive their scholarly endeavors. Nor do we controvert that ID should continue to be studied, debated, and discussed...." Jones wrote, suggesting that intelligent design is a legitimate field of study outside biology class. This is a victory to an intellignt design movement....

There are a couple of problems, of course, from the point of view of one who wants students to learn both the evidences for evolution and the difficulties with a purely materialistic view of the development of the universe and of life. First, not every high school has a quality philosophy program and not many sociology teachers would be equipped to teach a unit on the sociological aspects of the controversy. Even in those schools which do have a philosophy elective, not every student takes the course.

Nevertheless, it is often the brightest students who do sign up for it, and it is these who would benefit most from hearing both sides of this issue presented. And, if these students are turned on to the topic, discussions of it will inevitably spill over into their AP science classes.

Perhaps there will come a day when many young people going into public education will be motivated to pursue a minor in philosophy and, when circumstances allow, offer a course in it in the schools at which they teach. Perhaps, too, the questions and challenges surrounding exclusively materialistic explanations for the origin of life, the origin of higher taxa, the origin of consciousness, and the fine-tuning of the cosmos will all find their way into the curriculum.

If so, students who enroll in such a course will be immeasurably benefitted from the experience.

Spit in Your Hands

Reader JB writes with regard to our post from last week titled Fix Bayonets:

Oh, to spit in your hands and lower the pike. Hinderaker has voiced what many conservative Americans must be thinking. To leave Iraq now without finishing the mission would be tragic indeed and seen by many as a loss. To continue our presence in Iraq without increasing our operational tempo would only drag matters out more so. To fail to punish nations or groups of people who support insurgency or terrorism would be willful neglect of our leaders and a crime. I agree with Hinderaker that our President should exercise due diligence and begin taking the fight to the enemy. I further agree with his use of the expression that bayonets should be fixed.

When [Joshua] Chamberlain stood on Little Round Top [Gettysburg] he knew that the battle was at a critical point (a decisive point where one side needed to begin to win, and one sided needed to begin to lose, a point which would decide the battle's outcome). Chamberlain and the 20th Maine were the far end of the flank. Should Chamberlain and the 20th fail they would have left open the backdoor to the Union line. Chamberlain did not allow an absence of powder and ball or able bodied men to influence his decision. Chamberlain did not stand down, retreat, displace, or withdraw.

Chamberlain instead took the fight to the enemy and then some. Chamberlain gave his orders and charged down the hill and closed on the Confederates like a swinging door. We all know the outcome and we all know about the medals that were won. What we should all take from this example is a lesson in the face of adversity. Bush should look at Chamberlain's example and close that swinging door. Bush has established the door and he has given us another Little Round Top. The American forces hold the high ground. The American forces should close this door once and for all. Fix bayonets, "W", fix bayonets!

I will add that I of course see nothing tactically or politically wrong with Bush increasing our force's operational tempo. I also have no problem with tactical air strikes against Iran or anyone else (Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis example). Bush cannot be re-elected and this matter needs to be solved and finished before Obama or Hillary has a chance to take office. God knows they won't fix bayonets, they won't do anything except blame Bush.

God bless and be with the men and women who will spit in their hands and lower that pike...

JB

Nifong Update

A couple of days ago we speculated that Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong had abused his power in the Duke rape case in such a fashion as to pretty much prosecute himself right out of a job. Now Bill sends word from North Carolina that this public servant may be investigated by the feds for his egregious conduct of the case and the blithe disregard he demonstrated for the young men whom he was determined to convict regardless of their guilt or innocence.

The 18th century philosopher Immanuel Kant enjoined us to never treat other people as a means to an end but always only as ends in themselves. Mr. Nifong might do well to reflect on the wisdom of that advice. With luck he'll have plenty of time for reflection.

The Totalitarian Impulse

The following petition to be presented to Prime Minister Tony Blair is being circulated in the United Kingdom and has acquired so far about 900 signatures, among them that of Ian Barbour and Richard Dawkins:

In order to encourage free thinking, children should not be subjected to any regular religious teaching or be allowed to be defined as belonging to a particular religious group based on the views of their parents or guardians. At the age of 16, as with other laws, they would then be considered old enough and educated enough to form their own opinion and follow any particular religion (or none at all) through free thought.

In other words, these people are not content with merely indoctrinating their own children in atheistic materialism. They want to prevent others from teaching their children about theism under penalty of law. This would be an unconscionable abridgement of personal freedom, of course, and the sort of totalitarian measure that secularists resorted to with terrifying regularity throughout the twentieth century, but there's no need to be concerned that it would ever come to pass in 21st century Europe. The politicos in that spiritually impoverished continent are well-aware that their seething Muslim populations would undergo spontaneous combustion if it were ever seriously considered. Thus, it won't be.

Now if it were only Christians who would be affected, well, then, that might be an entirely different story.

Humbling Award

I am scarcely able to summon the words to announce that Time Magazine has selected me as their person of the year for 2006. It really is an astonishing honor, and I confess to being flabbergasted that the folks at Time have even heard of me let alone chose me as the recipient of such a wonderful prize. I'm truly humbled.

Of course, I should mention, in case you haven't heard, that the honor is diluted somewhat by the fact that they chose you, too. Yes, that's right. In fact, they chose everybody. Everybody is this year's person of the year. Sort of makes you proud to be an American, doesn't it?

Mystery Man

The thinness of the Democratic stable is illustrated by the fact that the two most talked about candidates for their party's nomination for president in 2008 are a one term senator, Hillary Clinton, and a two year senator, Barack Obama. Neither has ever been a governor and neither has really explained why voters should pull the lever for them. Yet they have been all but canonized by the media.

Bob Gorrell depicts how peculiar this phenomenon is:

Staring at the End of a Career

This should just about do it for the Durham District Attorney who refuses to drop charges against three Duke students accused of raping an "exotic" dancer:

The head of a private DNA laboratory said under oath today that he and District Attorney Mike Nifong agreed not to report DNA results favorable to Duke lacrosse players charged with rape.

Brian Meehan, director of DNA Security of Burlington, said his lab found DNA from unidentified men in the underwear, pubic hair and rectum of the woman who said she was gang-raped at a lacrosse party in March....Meehan said the DNA did not come from Reade Seligmann, David Evans, or Collin Finnerty, who have been charged with rape and sexual assault in the case.

Meehan struggled to say why he didn't include the favorable evidence in a report dated May 12, almost a month after Seligmann and Finnerty had been indicted. He cited concerns about the privacy of the lacrosse players, his discussions at several meetings with Nifong, and the fact that he didn't know whose DNA it was.

Under questioning by Jim Cooney, a defense attorney for Seligmann, Meehan admitted that his report violated his laboratory's standards by not reporting results of all tests.

Did Nifong and his investigators know the results of all the DNA tests? Cooney asked. "I believe so," Meehan said.

"Did they know the test results excluded Reade Seligmann?" Cooney asked. "I believe so," Meehan said.

Was the failure to report these results the intentional decision of you and the district attorney? Cooney asked. "Yes," Meehan replied.

Meehan's testimony differed from a statement Nifong made at the beginning of today's hearing. "The first I had heard of this particular situation was when I was served with this particular motion" on Wednesday, Nifong told the judge. After court, Nifong clarified his remarks to say that he knew about the DNA results.

"And we were trying to, just as Dr. Meehan said, trying to avoid dragging any names through the mud but at the same time his report made it clear that all the information was available if they wanted it and they have every word of it," Nifong said.

Joseph B. Cheshire V, a lawyer for Evans, said he was troubled by today's testimony. "If any of the lacrosse players were excluded, they simply wouldn't put it in the report," he said. "It raises some troublesome questions about (Nifong), who has an obligation to disclose exculpatory evidence and turn it over to the defense."

So Mr. Nifong had strong reason to believe that the alleged victim was concocting the whole story of her sexual assault at the hands of the Duke students, but chose, against the obligations of his office, not to make exculpatory evidence public.

If the events of this prosecution are as they seem then Mr. Nifong is one despicable human being. He has made these boys' lives a living hell for the past year, he has harmed them financially, caused their and their teammates' lacrosse season to be forfeit, and allowed their reputations to be completely ruined while all along knowing that he had no case against them. We may sincerely hope that when the charges against the Duke students are eventually thrown out, as they will be by any judge with even the slightest trace of human decency, these young men will be able to sue Nifong for every penny he owns.

Beneath Tasteless

Joy Behar gives us a glimpse of what passes for humor among a certain kind of liberal by suggesting that the Republicans somehow caused senator Tim Johnson's brain hemorrhage.

It's beneath tasteless, of course, to try to squeeze a cheap laugh out of a man's misfortune, but it's evidently not so far beneath as to be too low for Behar and her audience.

Types of Critics

Mike Gene at Telic Thoughts offers a taxonomy of the various species of critics of Intelligent Design. You'll find it interesting if you follow the ID/Darwinism controversy at all.

Great Photo

My son passed along this beautiful shot reportedly taken by a hunter in Montana:

Quick Quiz: There are two birds in the picture. Can anyone identify them both?

All correct responders will receive a free subscription to Viewpoint.

In Praise of Evolution

Our friend Byron at Hearts and Minds bookstore passes along this paean written by C.S. Lewis in "praise" of evolution:

Lead us, Evolution, lead us
Up the future's endless stair;
Chop us, change us, prod us, weed us.
For stagnation is despair:
Groping, guessing, yet progressing,
Lead us nobody knows where.

Wrong or justice, joy or sorrow,
In the present what are they
while there's always jam-tomorrow,
While we tread the onward way?
Never knowing where we're going,
We can never go astray.

To whatever variation
Our posterity may turn
Hairy, squashy, or crustacean,
Bulbous-eyed or square of stern,
Tusked or toothless, mild or ruthless,
Towards that unknown god we yearn.

Ask not if it's god or devil,
Brethren, lest your words imply
Static norms of good and evil
(As in Plato) throned on high;
Such scholastic, inelastic,
Abstract yardsticks we deny.

Far too long have sages vainly
Glossed great Nature's simple text;
He who runs can read it plainly,
'Goodness = what comes next.'
By evolving, Life is solving
All the questions we perplexed.

Oh then! Value means survival-
Value. If our progeny
Spreads and spawns and licks each rival,
That will prove its deity
(Far from pleasant, by our present,
Standards, though it may well be).

Very clever, but of course one expects cleverness from C.S. Lewis.

Fix Bayonets

John Hinderaker at PowerLine offers the president some advice. Warning: It is not for the faint of heart, but it is advice that should have been acted upon long before now. Hinderaker begins with an historical analogy:

Most of our readers know the story of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain at Gettysburg. Ordered to hold Little Round Top at all costs, Chamberlain's 20th Maine fended off one attack after another. Finally, Chamberlain's men were nearly out of ammunition and it was clear they would not be able to withstand another assault. Prudence counseled retreat, but Chamberlain's orders forbade it. The Maine regiment could neither fall back nor stay where it was, so Chamberlain took the only course open to him: he told his men to fix bayonets and prepare to charge.

It strikes me that you, President Bush, are in a similar situation in Iraq.

Read the rest. It may be prophetic.

Disappearing Occupations

An AOL feature lists ten career fields which will be all but gone by 2012. They are:

• Farmer/rancher
• Sewing Machine Operators/ Textile Knitting and Weaving
• Machine Tenders
• Word Processors and Data-Entry Keyers
• Stock Clerks and Order Fillers
• Secretaries (Except Legal, Medical and Executive)
• Electrical and Electronic Equipment Assemblers
• Computer Operators
• Telephone Operators
• Postal Service Mail Sorters and Processing-Machine Operators
• Travel Agents

Read their reasons for selecting these ten for extinction at the link.

Unlock the Gas Chambers

First they came for the Jews. Then they came for the IDers. Or they will if commenter Steve B. at the anti-ID blog Panda's Thumb has his way. Read his clarification of a previous suggestion that Darwin's survival of the fittest idea be pursued to its logical conclusion:

Dayan,

NO it wasn't a parody - here let me try again.

Roughly:

1) Evolution is objectively real.

2) IDists deny the reality of evolution which makes them unfit.

3) It follows that since IDists are unfit they should not survive because they hinder evolutionary progress. (I think that We Need To Own This.)

Implementation:

A) How far is one willing to go to act on #3?

a) For the most part PT exists is to act on #3.

Example:

Participants on PT routinely use justifiably hateful and dehumanizing language to describe IDists or anyone who even suggests that TOE may not be correct.

Question:

With this much intensity why not advocate carrying our efforts to their fullest extent since doing so is consistent with the reality of evolution?

Now I know that anyone can write a comment to a blog, and this guy sounds like one of the Boys From Brazil, but...his argument is illustrative of a serious problem that naturalism cannot escape. If naturalism is true there's no reason why someone should not accept the implications of his argument, i.e. start killing off the IDers. If the people at Panda's Thumb, who are mostly atheistic naturalists, are correct then although they may be repelled by the Steve B.'s among them, they really have no answer to them. In a world without God surely might makes right, and in a world wherein the supreme law is the survival of the fittest, killing those who are deemed in whatever way unfit makes perfect sense. Steve B. just sees this more clearly than do his pals at PT.

HT: Uncommon Descent

This isn't the first echo of a Darwinian night of the long knives that we've had occasion to post about. See here for another.

Remains of St. Paul?

Here's a fascinating story out of the Vatican:

Vatican archaeologists have identified a sarcophagus under Rome's second-largest basilica as the tomb believed to contain the remains of the Apostle Paul. But they still don't know what's inside, experts said on Monday.

The Vatican does hope to be able to examine it more closely and maybe even to open it. But Vatican archaeologist Giorgio Filippi said the researchers' first concern now is to free it from centuries of plastering and debris, in the hope of finding other clues on the sarcophagus itself.

Then they will look for ways of getting inside. "We cannot make a hypothesis, it is useless to ask if there is the body of a woman inside, of two men, of three men or whatever. It is useless to ask because we have not seen inside. The sarcophagus has never been opened," said Filippi.

According to tradition, St Paul, also known as the apostle of the Gentiles, was beheaded in Rome in the 1st century. The sarcophagus, which dates from AD 390 and is buried under the main altar of St Paul's Outside the Walls Basilica, has been the subject of an extended excavation that began in 2002 and ended last month.

"This is not a discovery for us. We know and we have always known this sarcophagus contains St Paul's tomb." Cardinal Andrea Cordero Lanza di Montezemolo, head of the basilica, told reporters. The project's original purpose was to make the sarcophagus, buried under layers of plaster and further hidden by an iron grate, more visible to pilgrims and tourists visiting the basilica.

Work in the small area under the altar, to clear the debris and insert a transparent glass floor for better viewing, unearthed new evidence of the authenticity of the sarcophagus, said Filippi, who headed the project. "There are no doubts that this is St Paul's tomb. We do not know what it contains, we have never explored it, but at least pilgrims can now see it," Cardinal Andrea Cordero Lanza di Montezemolo added.

I don't know how they know it's Paul's sarcophagus, but if they're correct about that it would be an astonishing find.

Big Government Or Conservation

A friend once asked why I don't like Big Government. Government does many good things, he opined, and we need more of it. Well, I don't think so. There are lots of reasons why bloated governments are undesirable in themselves and some reasons why they are undesirable as symptoms or side effects of forces which are doing harm to our nation. One example of the latter is that Big Government is a necessary enabler to forces currently degrading our natural heritage. Let me explain.

I'm deeply saddened by the loss of our fields and forests and natural places which are being gobbled up by developers at a gluttonous pace. I believe that one of our obligations as stewards of the earth is to protect our open spaces and wildlife habitat and to preserve them for future generations to enjoy.

This is a futile enterprise, however, as long as our population continues to expand. People need jobs and places to live and thus more and more land will need to be paved over and dug up and open spaces will become increasingly more scarce as we continue to grow.

Conservation is incompatible in the long term with population growth and thus if our natural beauty is to be saved we have to limit the size of our national population which means reproducing at the replacement level of approximately 2.1 births per woman and limiting immigration to a few thousand people per year.

So what does this have to do with Big Government? Government grows as entitlements grow. A vast entitlement system requires a vast bureaucracy to administer it. The most obese of our entitlements are social security and medicare. As the baby boomers grow into their golden years the demands on these entitlements will expand rapidly. In order to continue funding them at present levels we must expand the size of our wage-earning population, which is one reason why both Republicans and Democrats are loath to do anything about immigration reform. They see immigrants as the solution to the social security crisis looming on the near horizon.

Native-born Americans are reproducing just about at the replacement rate which means that we must import tens, or even hundreds, of thousands of new taxpayers every year to insure that revenues will continue to meet the needs of the older generation who will demand all the benefits promised to them.

As the population expands, however, it puts enormous stress on both wildlife and the land. These are subjected to cumulative insults that gradually diminish the diversity of the former and the quality and quantity of the latter. Housing, malls, roads all consume vast quantities of acreage every year in this country, permanently wiping out habitat and scenic beauty that nourish the human soul.

A better solution from a conservationist point of view would be to limit immigration, raise the age of eligibility for entitlements, cut back on some benefits, and thus reduce the size of the bureacracy that manages the system, but these measures no politician who values his or her job has the audacity to propose. The easy way out, which is too often the preferred egress for our political leaders, is to maintain the entitlement status quo, thus keeping government big and keeping the population growing, which means opening the borders to anybody who wants in. Thus our numbers burgeon and more and more of our natural lands get turned into asphalt and endless seas of housing developments to accomodate the growth.

It all seems terribly myopic, but to those who think only in terms of political expediency and economic profit the beauty of our countryside is an expendable resource there to be exploited.

The Decline of the Secular University

Stephen Carter reviews C. John Sommerville's Decline of the Secular University at Christianity Today:

A few years ago, while visiting an explicitly Christian university, I met two students who said they had been ridiculed for raising a biblical perspective in the classroom. Their travails remind us how diligently most contemporary scholars struggle to separate their pedagogy from their religious faith. American universities are famously in love with the ideology of secularism. On the flip side, they are notoriously skeptical or even hostile toward religion. In his masterful Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason, John Milbank defended the primacy of theology for the Christian scholar.

Since Milbank's call, unfortunately, the situation on campuses has worsened. C. John Sommerville, in The Decline of the Secular University, warns that campus life is swiftly bypassing secularism in favor of post-secularism. That is, the appeal to reason is being replaced by the appeal to fashion. The secular university, says Sommerville, "was a flawed concept from the beginning," because it focused on the education of young people without any sense of why they were being educated.

Worse still, to the extent that the university becomes post-secular, it will hopelessly flounder at preparing students to use the knowledge they gain. The modern campus, Sommerville says, does nothing to help students ponder the most significant questions in life-that is, the categories that religions believe they can address. Religious studies departments at most major universities do nothing to improve matters. He says professors prefer not to do theology and thus study religion from the outside rather than the inside. As for scientists, Sommerville is troubled by their refusal to take up the questions he finds truly interesting-for example, the ability of some part of the universe (us) to become "aware of itself."

Although Sommerville's concerns might be exaggerated, most of his criticism hits the target. We are questioning, wondering creatures, and Sommerville wants universities to help us question and wonder better. Because the secular project demanded "destroying traditions," it kicked away the props on which might rest answers to the great questions. As the university now becomes post-secular, it replaces those props with a celebration of feeling and "fashionable moralizing."

My date book contains cartoons first published in the New Yorker. One shows a young boy in front of his class, doing arithmetic at the blackboard. He has just written "7 x 5 = 75" and says to his astonished teacher, "It may be wrong, but it's how I feel." There, in a nutshell, is the problem with the post-secular university. Faith is dead, reason is dying, but "how I feel" is going strong. Should we ignore warnings like Sommerville's, "how I feel" will be all there is.

Indeed, in a secular setting nothing students study has any real meaning or significance. All that matters, in many cases, is having the right attitude about things, holding fashionable opinions, achieving status among one's peers, projecting a proper image, having sex. The knowledge content students are tested on in their classes is so much background static in their lives. It means nothing to them in any life-enriching sense. It's just a hoop they have to jump through in order to get a degree and get a job. This is certainly not true of all students, but it's true of many, maybe even most, and the secular university offers nothing that can help fill a student's emptiness except the opportunity to participate in weekend bacchanalia with other similarly emotionally and intellectually deracinated young people. It's all quite sad.

Tom Wolfe captures, perhaps unintentionally, the hollowness of campus secularism and the spiritual impoverishment which results with especial skill in his novel I Am Charlotte Simmons. It's a book every parent should read before sending a son or daughter off to a secular college.

Glick Gets It

This article by Caroline Glick in the Jerusalem Post is as clear a call to face up to the peril we are in as any we're likely to hear from anyone, especially from our political leadership. This is a must read essay. It begins with an indictment of the foolishness that is the Iraq Study Group report but moves quickly into what Israel must do to meet her responsibility to protect her people from the madmen in Iran:

When the history of our times is written, this week will be remembered as the week that Washington decided to let the Islamic Republic of Iran go nuclear. Hopefully it will also be remembered as the moment the Jews arose and refused to allow Iran to go nuclear.

With the publication of the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group chaired by former US secretary of state James Baker III and former congressman Lee Hamilton, the debate about the war in Iraq changed. From a war for victory against Islamofascism and for democracy and freedom, the war became reduced to a conflict to be managed by appeasing the US's sworn enemies in the interests of stability, and at the expense of America's allies.

Baker and his associates claim that the US cannot win the war in Iraq and so the US must negotiate with its primary enemies in Iraq and throughout the world - Iran and Syria - in the hopes that they will be persuaded to hold their fire for long enough to facilitate an "honorable" American retreat from the country.

Like his unsupported assertion that the US cannot win in Iraq, Baker also asserts - in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary - that Iran and Syria share America's "interest in avoiding chaos in Iraq." Because of this supposed shared interest, Baker maintains that with the proper incentives, Iran and Syria can be persuaded to cooperate with a US withdrawal from Iraq ahead of the 2008 presidential primaries.

Unless something is done in the next six months, Glick believes, both we and Israel are almost certainly headed for a nuclear attack on our homelands. Don't miss the rest of her disturbing but important essay.

A Lawyer's Christmas Greeting

A friend passes along this parody of what modern liberalism has done to Christmas:

Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, our best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low stress, non-addictive, gender neutral, celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasions and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all...

And a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling, and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2007, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make America great (not to imply that America is necessarily greater than any other country or is the only "AMERICA" in the Western Hemisphere), and without regard to the race, creed, color, age, physical ability, religious faith, or sexual preference of the wishes.

(By accepting this greeting, you are accepting these terms. This greeting is subject to clarification or withdrawal. It is freely transferable with no alteration to the original greeting. It implies no promise by the wisher to actually implement any of the wishes for her/himself or others, and is void where prohibited by law, and is revocable at the sole discretion of the wisher.

This wish is warranted to perform as expected within the usual application of good tidings for a period of one year, or until the issuance of a subsequent holiday greeting, whichever comes first, and warranty is limited to replacement of this wish or issuance of a new wish at the sole discretion of the wisher.)

Past performance does not guarantee future results.

And Happy HannuKwanzmas to you.

Skewering the ISG

John Podhoretz skewers the ISG and its hapless report in an essay in the New York Post. The whole column is worth reading but especially the beginning and the end. He starts with this:

The profound quality of the suggestions offered by the Iraq Study Group - the panel headed by former Secretary of State James Baker that presented its report with such fanfare to the president yesterday morning - can be inferred from the following passage on page 60:

"RECOMMENDATION 19: The President and the leadership of his national security team should remain in close and frequent contact with the Iraqi leadership."

Truly, a grateful nation should fall on its knees and thank the benevolent Creator that the nine wise men and one woman who comprise the Iraq Study Group were willing to sacrifice themselves and come together so that such a recommendation could be placed before our leaders and the world.

The nation's capital hasn't seen such concentrated wisdom in one place since Paris Hilton dined alone at the Hooters on Connecticut Avenue.

After all, only genius approaching the level of Paris could have written this sentence: "The Support Group should consist of Iraq and all the states bordering Iraq . . . and, of course, Iraq itself." Yes, that's some Support Group, what with Iraq and Iraq in it together to support, um, Iraq.

And ends with this fine summary of the ISG's findings:

Oh, and what about that war in Iraq, the ostensible subject of the Study Group's work?

Well, we're losing it, and there's no way we can win it, and we don't have enough troops to do it, and we can't get any more troops, and the ones we can get will be tired and mad, but we shouldn't pull out of Iraq because, after all, that would be a disaster. But don't worry, everybody! Iran and Syria will save our bacon! All that needs to happen is for Israel to cease to exist!

This report has been catnip to the liberal media but other than the fact that it's critical of the Bush administration I can't see why. Reading through the full report one is struck by how many of the 79 recommendations are either redundant, irrelevant, banal, or impractical. I guess it doesn't take much to gain applause from the left as long as it's possible to portray the object of their ovation as a slap in Bush's face.

The Gathering Storm

Rick Santorum delivers his farewell speech to the Senate and sounds like a modern day prophet. He is certainly, among politicians, a voice crying in the wilderness. The speech is long - it takes 10 to 15 minutes to read - but it may be the most important speech anyone has ever given on the Senate floor. In explaining why he was one of only two senators to vote against the nomination of William Gates to be Secretary of Defense, he outlines the parlous position we are in today, where the threats to our national existence lie, and what we must do if we are to survive. Here's an excerpt:

If there has been a failing--obviously, for the last several weeks and months we have been talking about the failings of the administration with respect to the policies within Iraq--I would make the argument that the larger failing, not just of the administration but of the Members of Congress and leaders in this country, is that we have not had the courage to stand up and define the enemy as to who they are and study and understand them and explain to the American people who they are.

I defined the enemy back at the National Press Club speeches as Islamic fascism. I said that is the biggest issue of our time, this relentless and determined radical enemy that is not just a group of rag-tag people living in caves but, in fact, people with an ideology, a plan, and increasingly the resources to carry out that plan, as well as, increasingly, a bigger and larger presence throughout the Islamic world, these radical Islamic fascists.

Whether we know it or not, they have been at war with us, and the State of Iran specifically has been at war with us, since 1979 when they declared war against the United States. They have not rescinded that declaration. So when we talk about engaging Iran as the Secretary, the new, future Secretary of Defense has talked about, we are talking about engaging someone who is at war with us, who has declared war with us, and who has been at war and, and as I will talk about here, and I think it has been widely reported in the press, has been doing a lot to substantiate the claim that they have been at war with us.

The question is, are we at war with them? What are we doing to insure that they don't win? Take the time to read Santorum's entire speech. It's crucially important.

Follow Up To Heavens Declare

I came across this passage earlier this week and thought it dovetailed nicely with brother Dick's earlier post The Heavens Declare.

Theologians typically summarize the general works of God in three broad categories: creation, providence, and miracles.

...

Providence
Christ is the ruler and preserver of creation. This is the work of providence. The Westminster Larger Catechism offers a succinct definition of God's works of providence: "God's works of providence are his most holy, wise, and powerful preserving and governing all his creatures; ordering them, and all their actions, to his own glory" (question 18). The key words are preserving and governing. Providence is the necessary corollary to creation. Because God is the creator, He owns creation and has the authority to rule it and keep it according to His own purpose. Let us be careful here not to equate a belief in divine providence with a "whatever happens happens" theology. That is fatalism and fatalism is paganism. There is a world of difference between believing in an uncontrollable operation of blind fate and believing that all things are working together toward a prescribed and purposeful end by One who is infinitely wise, infinitely good, and infinitely powerful so that His purpose cannot be threatened, frustrated or jeopardized. It ought to be most comforting for believers to know and rest in the constant truth that they are part of God's unfailing purpose.

The same two New Testament texts that declare Christ as the Creator also prove that the Lord Jesus is engaged in the ongoing work of providence. Creation and providence are inseparable truths. In Colossians 1:17 Paul says about the pre-eminent Christ, "He is before all things, and by him all things consist." The word "consist" means "to cohere or stand together." It is by Christ that the created world stands or sticks together. Hebrews 1:3 tells us exactly how Christ not only makes things stick together but moves them along to their prescribed end. The apostle says that He upholds all things by the word of His power. The word "uphold" means literally "to bear or carry along." The word "word" refers to an individual spoken word. The word "power" speaks of ability. As the Lord spoke the world into existence, so his spoken word ably and successfully keeps and directs the world. An interpretative translation of this text, then, would sound like this: "By speaking an irresistible and unfrustratable word, He carries everything along."

Beginning At Moses - A Guide to Finding Christ in the Old Testament
By Michael P.V. Barrett
pp.66-68

What I find truly amazing about all of this is that such a Being could care so much for you and me that He took human form as a man and became the ultimate sacrifice to God for the sins of man and in so doing makes reconciliation with God possible for those who believe.

Economic Justice

Here's an interesting illustration of the law of unintended consequences, a law that seems to attach like velcro to liberal legislation:

At the time, it was common for Aborigines...to work in the Australian cattle industry as cowboys etc. They were however viewed as unreliable employees (principally because of their custom of "going walkabout" (decamping) at unpredictable and inconvenient times) and were paid less than white employees. It was however one of the few employment avenues open to many of them because of their low levels of education etc.

Subsequently, empoyers were forced by law to pay Aborigines at the same rate as white employees -- thus bringing to an almost total end Aboriginal employment in the cattle industry. They are now heavily dependant on welfare payments from the Federal government.

What makes this piece of social engineering especially pernicious is that the judges who handed down the equal pay ruling said at the time that they knew that the Aborigines were less valued employees and that the ruling would throw most of them out of work.

Nevertheless, they chose to consign the Aborigines to abject penury in order to save them from the "injustice" of an unequal wage scale. Classic. In order to satisfy the liberal hunger for socio-economic egalitarianism they made a bone-headed ruling that they knew was going to harm the poor and help them not at all. This is a fine example of piling malevolence on top of stupidity in the name of ideological principle.

Becoming As Gods

According to this NPR All Things Considered report some very reputable physicists are toying with the notion of actually building their own universe in the laboratory. Here are some excerpts:

Is this a joke? No, say a bunch of physicists. One day, it may be possible for a person to create a universe!

This is not going to happen tomorrow. Not even close. But according to Columbia University physics professor Brian Greene, it is theoretically not impossible (which is his way of saying the possibilities are not zero) that one day, a person could build a universe.

The very idea is so startling it's hard to know what this means. Think about it this way: One day (far off, no doubt), it may be possible to go into a laboratory on Earth, create a "seed" -- a device that could grow into a universe -- and then there would have to be a way to get that seed, on command, to safely expand into a separate, infinite, unexplorable but very real alternate universe.

In the July 8, 2006 issue, New Scientist writer Zeeya Merali put that question to Stanford cosmologist Andre Linde. "I sat down and really thought about why we should even care about creating a universe in the laboratory, " he told New Scientist, "We don't seem to be able to communicate with it at all."

Once it's formed, the inventor couldn't meet its inhabitants, mine its minerals, collect souvenirs or judge his or her success. The biblical god who many believe created our universe inspected us on the first through sixth day and decided that what He'd done "was good."

That's not an option for the human scientist who creates. So why do it? Well, Greene says given the chance to make a universe of his own, "I might have a little trouble resisting this possibility. Just because it's so curious, this idea that because of your volitional act, you are creating a universe that could give rise, perhaps, to things we see around us."

Linde seconded that in his New Scientist interview. "Just imagine if it's true and there's even a small chance it really could work," he said. "In this perspective, each of us can become a god."

Yikes! Isn't that what they were saying back when they were building the Tower of Babel?

We'll Miss Her

Cynthia McKinney is an embarassment to politicians everywhere and to Democrats in particular. Other than those who have been amused by her antics, few will lament that she'll be gone from Congress in January. As if to confirm the wisdom of the voters who elected her opponent in the Democratic primary, she has introduced, as her parting shot, a bill calling for the impeachment of President Bush.

This is the same woman who accused President Bush of knowing ahead of time of the terrorist attack on 9/11 but keeping quiet so that his rich friends would somehow profit from the destruction. This is the woman who introduced a bill to create a collection at the National Archive for the art of rapper Tupac Shakur, who called for a federal investigation into his murder, who punched a Capitol policeman who insisted she pass through the security apparatus at the Capitol building like everyone else, and who accuses everyone who disagrees with her and/or who thinks she's minus a few million synapses of being a racist.

Her bill has no chance of ever even coming to a vote which is a fitting epitaph to her congressional legacy.

Jeanne Kirkpatrick (1926-2006)

Former U.N. ambassador Jeanne Kirkpatrick passed away Thursday at 80 years of age. Throughout her professional life she set an example of intellectual rigor and ideological strength that probably did as much, or more, for the image of women in positions of statecraft as did anything accomplished by any other woman in the twentieth century with the exception of Margaret Thatcher. Even so, she was largely ignored by most mainstream feminist groups because she was too conservative to catch their notice or merit their praise.

There is an obit of Ms Kirkpatrick here and much comment about her life and service to her country at The Corner.

Why Parents Home School

And public school educators wonder why parents would ever want to pay the extra tuition to send their kids to private schools, or invest the enormous effort it takes to home school their kids. Why knock yourself out, they wonder, when there are professionally trained educators waiting and eager to teach your children the really important things.

As long as there are stories like this, though, public schools will continue to lose the esteem of most Americans:

Sixth-graders at a Queens school were getting quite an education - in homosexuality, French kissing and cursing - thanks to three books widely available in classroom libraries. But after numerous complaints from parents at Public School 150 in Sunnyside, the books - a profanity-laced poetry book, short stories about homosexuality and a novel called "First French Kiss" - were pulled from the shelves last week.

Several parents learned of the racy books after overhearing their kids snickering about the sexual themes. The poem "I Hate School" in a book called "You Hear Me?" includes the rhyme, "F--- this s---, up the a--. I don't think I'll ever pass."

Another poem compares eating an orange to having sex, while several passages repeatedly use vulgar slang for genitalia. And the book "Am I Blue?" is an anthology of stories about gay teenagers that parents found too adult-themed for 11- and 12-year-olds. Parent Gladys Martinez wrote a letter to her son's teacher after hearing him talk about "First French Kiss," which chronicles a teen's bumbling first makeout session in a closet.

"I mean, he shouldn't be sheltered from the world, but if he's going to learn that stuff, it shouldn't be at school," Martinez said.

"You Hear Me?" was suggested for sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders by the Columbia University Teachers College's Reading and Writing Project because it is the only anthology with poems written by minority teenagers, said Lucy Calkins, its founding director.

"It's a tricky balance to walk so we are putting books in their hands that they'll want to read," said Calkins, who had not seen the language in the book.

A tricky balance? The school officials can't find books that children will want to read unless they're laced with vulgarity? What does that say about the homes these kids come from? What does it say about the state of minority teenagers that the only poetry they can write is filled with vulgarity? What does it say about the school officials' familiarity with childrens' literature? What does it say about those who publish this stuff for sixth graders?

No answers educators can give to these questions are going to do much to instill confidence in their judgment on the part of parents who really care about the environment schools are creating for their children.

Thanks to Michelle for the tip.

The Iraq Surrender Group

According to those who've read the document in its entirety, the Iraqi Study Group's report never once mentions the possibility of an American victory in Iraq. It seems as if the report is entirely about how we can skeedaddle out of Iraq with a minimum loss of honor and dignity.

Lisa Benson succinctly states her opinion of James Baker, Lee Hamilton and the rest of the committee and their report in the following fashion:

Am I mistaken or am I correct that there is not one person on the committee who is actually an expert on the military, Iraq, Islam, or the Middle East? One member of the committee was Vernon Jordan whose major claim to expertise is that he's Bill Clinton's golfing buddy. There was also Sandra Day O'Connor, who recently retired from the cocoon of the Supreme Court, Leon Panetta was Pres. Clinton's chief of staff, and most of the rest of them were politicians. Only William Perry, a former CIA chief, Lawrence Eagleberger and James Baker, former secretaries of state, served in any capacity which remotely qualifies them to make recommendations that have military and strategic implications. They probably could have appointed five people out of the phone book who would have been as qualified for the task as most of the members of this committee.

Moreover, when the committee went to Iraq to gather data for their recommendations they reportedly never wandered outside Baghdad's Green Zone. It certainly causes us to wonder how they could get a feel for what's going on in the country without having actually visited the country. If all they were going to do was hide out in their hotel they could have just stayed in Washington and interviewed the bigwigs in Baghdad by conference call.

The People Don't Want It

New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson demands that we forget about a border fence, insisting that the people don't want it. But what "people" is he talking about? Certainly not the American people. It turns out that he's apparently referring to the wishes of the Mexicans who live along the border and make their living off the trade brought their way by those preparing to cross into the United States:

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson says a fence at the Mexican border authorized by Congress this fall "gets in the way" of U.S.-Mexico relations, and he wants the new Democratic Congress to reverse the legislation.

"The fence is very unpopular on the border in Texas and New Mexico, in Chihuahua," Richardson, a Democrat, said after meeting Wednesday with leaders from the Mexican state of Chihuahua. "So one of the most significant and constructive acts the U.S. Congress should take is to get rid of it."

Richardson said he will call on Congress not to build the fence during an address Thursday. He also will press lawmakers to approve a bill that secures the border and provides a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants.

Gov. Richardson, who is planning on a run for the presidency, believes that the way to win the office is to appease the Mexicans who demand the right to dump their poor and oppressed in our lap and leave us to support them. Viewpoint prognosticates that Richardson's candidacy has just gotten terminally ill and will soon wind up looking like that unfortunate Russian spy who irritated Vladimir Putin.

Jack Cafferty at CNN pretty much takes Richardson apart one limb at a time on Wolf Blitzer's The Situation Room.

Pearl Harbor Day, 2006

Today is the anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor 65 years ago. It's fitting that on this day we stop to reflect on the perils we face in today's world. I've been reading Mark Steyn's oustanding book on this very subject titled America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It. Steyn has the unusual gift of being able to amuse the reader whilst informing him that calamity is on his doorstep, and indeed it seems to be. The following gloomy assessment is not necessarily Steyn's, but it was inspired by what he reveals in his book about the exploding growth of the Muslim population around the world and the diminshing populations of Europeans.

We are, as some have observed, in the same situation as was Europe in 1938. In the late thirties Hitler was testing Europe's resolve and finding their will agreeably weak he decided it was propitious to seize as much of their land as he could. Europe's lassitude was their undoing. War was to them such a distasteful prospect that they convinced themselves that it really was not in the offing, that Hitler was not really the threat to them that people like Winston Churchill were telling them he was. They deluded themselves into a sense of false security just as we're doing today.

The modern threat is not German Naziism, rather it is Muslim fascism. The Islamic world has been waiting for 500 years for their chance to destroy the Jewish and Christian worlds so that they can establish Islam and Sharia law everywhere across the globe. They believe that the fullness of time has come and that we are living on the cusp of a new Islamic age when all will worship Allah, bow to the imams and revere the Koran.Yet despite the lateness of the hour, Europe and much of the U.S. acts as if there really were no Panzer divisions poised to strike across the Rhine, no Japanese fleet poised to launch their aircraft at Pearl Harbor.

The Islamo-fascists are daily probing our will, testing our resolve, searching out our weaknesses. The recent bizarre behavior of the six imams who were removed from the USAir jet is just a recent example of the constant testing to which they are subjecting our security. The pressure is building, especially in Europe, and large tracts of that continent have displayed a deep desire to appease and a total unwillingness to resist. Spain, for example, capitulated to the dictates of the jihadis after the Madrid train bombings. They elected just two days after the carnage a socialist government that had campaigned on the promise to pull Spanish troops out of Iraq. Once in office they promptly withdrew their troops, and sent the Muslim world the message that they had had enough and would not offer any impediment to the spread of the Muslim caliphate when the time came.

And the time is coming. Right now the Muslim world is biding its time waiting patiently for several factors to coalesce. They know that soon they will have achieved ireversable demographic superiority in Europe which will give them political power to dictate European foreign policy. They also know that soon some of them will have nuclear weapons which will intimidate nations which might otherwise be inclined to resist them. And they know that soon George Bush will be either weakened by his political enemies or, by 2008, out of office, and the last man with the spine and strength to stand in their way will be gone.

As these three factors conflate over the next two years the Islamic juggernaut will grow unstoppable. There will either be war or bitter and humiliating surrender to these primitives everywhere across the globe. Time is on their side. Psychological certainty that they are doing the will of Allah works to their advantage, and the West is either oblivious to the danger or lacking the will to do what's necessary to forestall it. Most of Europe, including Russia, will fall into their hands with scarcely a whimper. Israel will face extermination. The U.S. will be isolated, alone, confronted not only by the threat of total war with the Islamic world but also by threats from China and North Korea. We will be unable, short of launching a nuclear war, to halt the Islamic annihilation of western civilization in its cradle.

Perhaps it's thought that I overstate the danger to the lives and well-being of our children posed by the Muslim world. Perhaps, but I can think of no better way for anyone who thinks so to spend whatever spare time one might have over the coming holidays than by reading America Alone. It may be too late to stop the Muslim tsunami about to inundate Europe, but if it can be stopped it will only be because people, unlike the Europeans in 1938, see clearly the gathering storm.

The ISG Report

The long anticipated report of the Iraq Study Group (ISG) is in and with the exception of the very strange recommendation to bring Iran and Syria into negotiations for implementing stability in Iraq, there doesn't seem to be much that they recommend Bush do that his administration isn't already doing.

The members of the ISG urge that we accelerate the training of Iraqi military and police so that they can take over more of their own security but by all reports such training is already proceeding as quickly as it can.

They call for a withdrawal of combat troops by 2008 if conditions permit. Does anyone seriously think that the Bush administration is not anxious to get combat troops out of Iraq as soon as conditions permit? If the ISG really means to recommend that troops stay as long as the situation there requires then they're simply affirming Bush's policy. If they're saying that we should leave in 2008 whether Iraq is stable or not then they're calling for abject surrender. Either way the recommendation is pointless.

They also appear to regard Israel as a serious impediment to peace in the region, and, although they urge that all of Iraq's neighbors be involved in working out a peaceful solution in Iraq, they pointedly exclude Israel. It seems a bit perverse to urge that Iran and Syria, who are the cause of most of the problems in the Middle East, be included in the process but Israel be shunned.

There are 79 recommendations all told and many of them are doubtless good ideas, but they're not original ideas. For the most part, where the ISG makes a worthwhile recommendation they recommend what the administration is already doing. Where the recommendations are not good, as in treating Iran and Syria as if they were anything but thugs, criminals and assassins, they should be ignored.

Powerline says that the report is about as bad as advertised. Ed Morissey at Captain's Quarters has some excellent analysis as well.

Worst Mistake in History

Al Gore has to be one of the most pompous windbags on today's political scene. On the Today show this morning he opined that the Iraq war was "the worst strategic mistake in the entire history of the United States".

A question comes to mind: How does Mr. Gore know that the Iraq war is not going to result in the long run in a much less dangerous government in Iraq replacing the tyranny of Saddam Hussein? He doesn't, of course. But even if Iraq does turn out badly, to call this the worst strategic mistake in our history is just false. Even if we cut and run and leave the job unfinished it won't be as big a strategic blunder as was the Vietnam war which cost us over 50,000 lives and won us nothing. It may not even be as big a mistake as JFK's failure to support the Bay of Pigs invasion.

Gore was then asked if he would pull U.S. troops out of Iraq even it was seen as a defeat for the U.S., but he dodged the question. His limp response was that were he president, he would have "the full flow of information" and he would be able to test these ideas.

What does that mean other than that Mr. Gore lacks the courage to follow his convictions to their logical conclusions?

It's easy to take shots when you don't have the responsibility of actually making crucial decisions. Gore is a Monday morning quarterback who thinks he should be in the White House, and who insists on reminding us almost every time he speaks why we should be thankful that he's not.

Hubble Space Photos

One of yesterday's posts featured a photo of deep space taken by the Hubble Space telescope. A friend passes along this link to the entire gallery of photos taken by Hubble. The pictures are breathtakingly beautiful and majestic.

Voting Democrat in '08

This will cause some readers to think I'm either delirious or that I'm joking, but actually I'm neither. Well, at least I'm not joking. If the highly improbable, virtually impossible, happens and the Democrats nominate a fairly conservative candidate for the presidency in 2008 I will probably vote for him (her) even if the Republican candidate is equally as conservative. Here's why:

No matter how conservative a Republican president is, the left in this country, in the media and in the Democrat party, make it almost impossible for him to accomplish much good. Of the most important issues facing us today - the war in Iraq, the war on terror, the economy, immigration, social security reform and federal judgeships - Democrats are in a position to block every initiative a Republican president advances. And they will, just as they have in the past.

So why vote for a Democrat candidate? Because if a conservative (don't ask me who that could possibly be) were nominated by the Democrat party, both the media and congress would be much less hostile to his initiatives because they wouldn't see battling them as a partisan duty, and Republicans would, for the good of the country, be cooperative. In other words, a Democrat conservative in the White House could advance the same policies as a George Bush on social security reform, employ the same measures on the war on terror, wage the same war on the insurgents in Iraq, nominate a John Roberts to the Supreme Court, and keep the Bush tax cuts, and he would doubtless meet with little serious opposition from the establishment left (The Michael Moore left is a different matter, but without the MSM and congress they wouldn't be much of a factor).

Just as no one but a hardline anti-communist like Richard Nixon could achieve a rapprochement with communist China, so, too, it will probably take a Democrat president to achieve social security and immigration reform since congressional Democrats will not allow a Republican to solve these problems. Moreover, no Republican conservative would be likely to do much on another issue important to me personally - land use, conservation and preservation - but a Democrat might.

It may be, then, that our best hope to get anything worth doing accomplished in the next ten years is for the Democrats to pull a conservative rabbit out of the hat for '08. Unfortunately, however, that's about as likely as George Bush winning the Most Admired Man in Blue State America award. Since Zell Miller retired there just aren't any conservatives of prominence left in that party.

The Heavens Declare

From time to time it's been mentioned at this space that the universe is extraordinarily fine-tuned for life and that this fine calibration points to intention and purpose in its design. There are numerous examples of this almost unbelievable precision and whole books have been written on the topic. See, for instance, Hugh Ross' The Creator and the Cosmos for an easy to understand introduction.

In this post I'd like to try to convey a sense of the awe that scientists who study the cosmos (cosmologists) feel when they work with some of these delicately balanced parameters. Here's a description of just one of dozens that could be highlighted. It's called the cosmic expansion rate.

The universe since the Big Bang has been expanding outward at a particular rate of speed. If it were to have expanded too rapidly, matter would spread out so uniformly that not enough would clump together and galaxies and stars would never form. If it expanded too slowly, the universe would collapse back onto itself in a huge lump and no life would ever emerge. So the rate of expansion has to be just right in order for there to be a universe which could sustain higher life forms like ourselves.

How precise does this expansion rate have to be? The astonishing thing is that the rate is calibrated so delicately that were it to deviate from its actual value by more than one part in 10[55] - that's a one with 55 zeroes after it - no universe suitable for life would exist.

To give you an idea of how breathtakingly exact the balance is between a universe which can sustain life and one which cannot, imagine seeing a dime held against the night sky from a distance of 75 feet. The space covered by the dime at that distance would look like this if viewed through a very powerful telescope:

Each of those specks is a single discrete galaxy containing billions of stars. The orangeish one at the center is similar to our Milky Way. The whole sky is 27 million times the size of this patch and would thus contain 27 million times this number of galaxies, or about 27 billion galaxies.

These galaxies are enormously huge collections of stars. From one edge of our Milky Way to the opposite edge is 100,000 light years (one light year is 6 trillion miles). If we assumed that all the galaxies were on average similar in size to our own, and that they were strung end to end across space, they would extend for roughly 1.6 x 10[27] miles or about 2.6 x 10[34] millimeters.

A dime is about a millimeter thick. Suppose we imagine a stack of dimes stretching all the way across this vast expanse. Suppose our stack continued across another thousand billion, billion universes full of galaxies like our own strung end to end. If so, there would be about 10[55] coins in the stack. Imagine further that each coin represents a possible value of the expansion rate and that a needle points to the single dime in this unimaginably long skein that represents the value the rate must have in order for any universe to be such as to sustain life.

The rate of expansion is so fine that if the needle deviated from this coin by a only a single dime our universe would have long ago either expanded out of control or collapsed back upon itself. And this example of cosmic fine-tuning is just one of dozens of constants, parameters, and properties that have to be set with similar precision in order for the universe to be compatible with living things.

This sort of phenomenal exactitude is almost impossible to plausibly account for apart from an intelligence which sets the values deliberately and intentionally. To think that nature could have come up with such precision solely by chance, not just for one value but for dozens, requires an extraordinary faith in the power of chance.

Some scientists, reluctant to embrace the implications of the discovery of these finely calibrated values, have resorted to an explanation that posits, without any supporting evidence, the existence of a multiverse, i.e. a near infinite number of universes among which are worlds comprised of all possible values for these dozens of parameters. If there are a near infinite number of worlds then there must be one, it is reasoned, whose constants and forces have the values ours does.

While a multiverse is theoretically possible, there's no evidence for it. It is invoked simply to enable us to escape the conclusion that our cosmos is intentionally designed. The suggestion of a multiverse defies the law of parsimony that tells us that the simplest explantion of the facts is the preferable explanation. It also violates the principle that the accepted theory should be one for which there is at least some evidence rather than one for which there is none.

We have plenty of evidence, of course, that precision and fine-tuning can result from the actions of intelligent agents. But we have no evidence whatsoever either that fine-tuning on this scale of precision can result from sheer chance or that there are any universes out there besides our own.

Much More Civilized

"The British are much more intelligent and civilized than the Americans," says 34-year-old actress Gwyneth Paltrow. I guess Ms Paltrow has never attended an English soccer game.

The Marketplace of Ideas

Why do leftists in our universities hold the concept of free and unfettered exchange of ideas in such low esteem? That they do is evidently the case given the fact that conservative speakers are attacked, shouted down, or in one way or another routinely prevented from speaking by the champions of tolerance and diversity on many of our major campuses.

It's good to remember when we hear of yet another of these abridgements of the spirit of classical liberalism that the people who do this sort of thing generally do so because their own case is so flaccid that they dare not present it to an unsympathetic audience. Their tactics are an admission of intellectual weakness. They realize that the only way their views can prevail is if they can succeed in preventing the other side from being heard.

Here are details of the latest instance of this example of democracy in action at Michigan State University.

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Democrats Down on Defense

Pajamas Media has a good primer on the state of missile defense and the Democrats' plans to eliminate it. It may seem astonishing that in an age when nations ruled by people who are calling for a nuclear holocaust against Israel and the U.S. and who are assiduously seeking the means to carry out that threat, the Democrats are striving just as hard to make it impossible for us to defend ourselves against nuclear missiles should they ever be launched against us.

I wonder how many people who voted for a Democrat in the last election knew that the leadership of this party has as its goal the gutting of the program to develop a protective shield against incoming nuclear missiles.

Why worry about nukes, after all, when there are so many more pressing issues demanding our attention and resources? To listen to the Democrats and their allies in the MSM, for example, we might conclude that we should be much more concerned that the average temperature of the earth has gone up one degree over the last 100 years than we should be concerned by the prospect that psychopaths like Kim Jong-il or Mahmoud Amadinejad will soon have nuclear weapons at their disposal.

Check out the story at PM. It's very good.

Kauffman's Emergentism (Pt. II)

The other day we took a look at the thinking of a scientist named Stuart Kauffman who believes the God of classical theism does not exist and who seeks to substitute in His place a universe which somehow (It's not clear exactly how) gives rise to meaning, value, consciousness, etc. Kauffman writes:

Meaning and value have a scientific base. And ethics? At a recent meeting on science and religion on Star Island, we heard more than one lecture on animal emotions and the sense of fairness in chimpanzees. Group selection, we were told, is now making its way into evolutionary biology. With it, natural selection can get its grip on behaviors that are advantageous to the group, like fairness, so it emerges. Far from evolution being anathema to ethics, evolution is the first source of human morality. But not the last, for we can argue whether we should want what we want.

As we said last week, whether fairness "emerges" among Homo sapiens or not is pretty much irrelevant. In order for there to be morality what has to emerge is an obligation to be fair. There can, however, be no obligation unless someone imposes it upon us or we arbitrarily impose it upon ourselves. To suggest that natural selection or evolution can somehow impose moral obligations is simply risible.

Shall we use the God word? It is our choice. Mine is a tentative "yes". I want God to mean the vast ceaseless creativity of the only universe we know of, ours. What do we gain by using the God word? I suspect a great deal, for the word carries with it awe and reverence. If we can transfer that awe and reverence, not to the transcendental Abrahamic God of my Israelite tribe long ago, but to the stunning reality that confronts us, we will grant permission for a renewed spirituality, and awe, reverence and responsibility for all that lives, for the planet.

In other words, Kauffman believes that we need to pretend that the universe is sentient because otherwise it doesn't inspire us quite enough. I think it's true that beauty and grandeur are far more inspiring when we think them to be deliberate products of artistic and mathematical genius than if we think them to be purely accidental, but to suggest that we think of the universe as God in order to somehow fool ourselves into thinking that its beauty is intentional seems a bit perverse. If it's all an accident, a freakish fluke, then let's just say so and resign ourselves to live with the existential consequences.

Does one know that such a transformation of human sensibilities will happen? Of course not. But the sense of justice matured in the Abrahamic tradition from 10 eyes for an eye, to an eye for an eye, to love thine enemy as thyself. Then can a heightened consciousness bring about a global ethic? I believe so. I believe, I hope correctly, that what I have sketched above is true, points to a new vision of our co-creating reality, that it invites precisely an enhancement of our sense of spirituality, reverence, wonder, and responsibility, and can form the basis of a trans-national mythic structure for an emerging global civilization.

Kauffman seems to ignore the fact that "love thine enemy" arises out of a theistic religious milieu and is found nowhere else. Nor is there reason to adopt such an ethic unless one believes that a personal, intelligent Creator demands it. If there is no such moral authority it's hard to see how we could ever justify any ethical principle other than look out for #1. Furthermore, why should we wish to enhance our sense of spirituality, etc.? Why is enhancing these things the right thing to do? All a materialist like Kauffman can say by way of reply is that he appreciates these things, so we should too.

To ever succeed, this new view needs to be soft spoken. You see, we can say, here is reality, is it not worthy of stunned wonder? What more could we want of a God? Yes, we give up a God who intervenes on our behalf. We give up heaven and hell. But we gain ourselves, responsibility, and maturity of spirit. I know that saying that ethics derives from evolution undercuts the authority of God as its source. But do we need such a God now? I think not.

If this is the sort of empty rhetoric to which his view leads then he better re-think. What does Kauffman actually mean when he writes that "we gain ourselves, responsibility, and maturity of spirit"? These are just empty words employed to paper over the profound hollowness of the naturalistic worldview he advocates.

What more could we want of a God? How about a ground for morality, for meaning, for purpose, for justice, for human worth, dignity, and human rights? How about a reason to believe that reason leads to truth, to believe that death is not the end, and that love is not doomed to end in death? Kauffman's pantheism gives us none of that because Kauffman's "god" doesn't care and is not aware of you and I. Kauffman's religion leads anyone who might actually embrace it into the abyss of moral, metaphysical, and epistemological nihilism. It is a god of meaninglessness, hopelessness and despair because it is, alas, no God at all.

Some god that is.

Christmas Gift Idea

This ad in Human Events caught my eye:

The U.S. economy and the stock market are booming, right? But conventional wisdom holds that gold moves in the opposite direction of economic prosperity. So why is gold on the rise, now?

Today, gold is on the move for many reasons. A falling U.S. dollar, rising debt levels and the instability of governments in many energy producing countries are all factors that could effect precious metal prices. The conditions that exist today may cause gold's value to actually double or even triple!

With all of the uncertainty around the world, experts are now calling for $1,000 plus gold prices by 2010. "Gold could easily move above $700/oz. by year's end," reports Bloomberg.com.

So. A piece of lovely gold jewelry as a Christmas gift will cost more this year, but it could also be worth a lot more a couple of years from now. Think of the purchase as an investment.

That's all the recommendations I have for Christmas gift buying. From here on you're on your own.

Joy to the World

'Tis the season to suppress the reason why the season exists in the first place. The august fathers of the city of Chicago have decided that a street fair where people of all faiths sell wares in honor of Christmas, a fair called Christkindlmarket (Christ child market) where Christmas is celebrated, carols are song, and nativity scenes are on display, must not allow as one of its sponsors New Line Cinema, which wishes to promote its new movie The Nativity Story.

Yes, clips from a movie about the birth of Christ is in violation of the delicate sensibilities of the politically correct because it might offend people of other faiths - people, it must be stressed, who of their own volition come to a fair called Christkindlmarket which celebrates the birth of the Christian savior.

The Chicago Tribune has the details, but the reader should be cautioned. The editorial actually mentions once by name the person whose birth is being celebrated so reader discretion is advised for those who may be sensitive to strong language.

The editorial also makes the people who banned New Line Cinema from the fair sound like total buffoons, but that was no difficult feat.

Ethically Challenged

A bunch of grad students at Columbia University School of Journalism have been caught cheating ... on an ethics test, no less. No one should be surprised, I suppose. Look at the role models these students have: Dan Rather slandered President Bush with a totally fabricated story about alleged derelictions during his National Guard days; The MSM ran photoshopped pics purporting to show Israeli atrocities during the recent unpleasantness in Lebanon; AP last week ran a story about Sunnis dragging Shia worshippers out of the mosques and into the streets and burning them alive, without any evidence that the event ever happened and despite denials from our military that it did happen.

There are many fine, conscientious people with real integrity in journalism. They no doubt despair at the shoddy ethical standards of so many of their colleagues and the black eye it gives their profession.

History Repeats

Paul Nowack urges us to learn from the lessons of history: