Fred Responds to MM

Michael Moore, the left-wing Hollywood film-maker and political activist, has challenged Fred Thompson to a debate and lays out his reasons here. He's apparently miffed, inter alia, that Thompson criticized Moore's coziness with Cuban dictator Fidel Castro while himself enjoying fine Cuban cigars.

Thompson's 38 second reply is a political work of art. It's hard to imagine any other candidate of either party being able to pull off such a riposte, and it's impossible, unfortunately, to imagine President Bush even trying it let alone succeeding.

I don't know if Thompson would be a good president, but he sure would be a good "communicator."

RLC

Swimming in a Cesspool

Even were I inclined to more secular liberal political views I think I'd abandon them when I realized who I'd be sharing the bed with. A good man dies and many on the secular left are dancing with delight. The moral depravity of these people, their utter inhumanity, is enough to turn one's stomach. Consider a few excerpts from around the blogosphere:

"F**k Jerry Falwell, too bad he didn't die years earlier. Enjoy your time in hell, you racist, homophobic a*****e. Hopefully someone runs a train on your corpse."

"Morning [sic] the death of Jerry Falwell is like morning [sic] the death of Adolf Hitler."

"screw you, Jerry and your whole Christian Taliban 'community'."

"whatever it was that got him was so excruciatingly painful that he went screaming in pain and terror. And now that he's roasting on the Ninth Level of Hell where he belongs...Today is a good [day] for an a*****e to die!!"

"F**k You Falwell.. hopefully Pat Robertson is next."

"So how soon is the funeral, and where? Some serious grave-dancing is in order, here."

"Burn in hell, a*****e."

The reaction from the reporters? Grins and chuckles mostly. One grizzled veteran journalist said, "I hope they (CNN) remember all the horrible things he said." Another reporter simply said, "It is a good day."

For such as these politics is total war and disagreement over politics or religion makes one a mortal enemy. Your opposition to their politics or their atheism makes your death a denouement fervently to be desired. You deserve no respect, no kindness. To them the fact that you hold views different from their own makes you nothing but scum and pus.

Jerry Falwell was not the most adroit spokesperson for Christianity, but he was a man who tried all his life to do good. He had a big heart as even Larry Flynt, of all people, attests. But none of that matters to those consumed by hatred for all things Christian and/or conservative. The man's death and the grief of those who loved him is cause for celebration and gloating. What is it about left-wing ideology and/or atheism that attracts such people?

They are more to be pitied than condemned, however, for they have chosen a path in life that leads them to be deeply unhappy and miserable. Despite their obnoxious response to Jerry Falwell's death, we should hope that they will somehow find their way out of the moral cesspool they have chosen to swim in.

RLC

Third Anniversary

Just a word to mention that today marks the third anniversary of Viewpoint. Our first post went up on May 16th, 2004. Today, 3,380 posts and some 185,700 reader visits later, I want to thank all who have taken an interest in what we've been doing here and especially thank my brother Bill for his help in keeping the site up and running. Without him there'd be no Viewpoint.

RLC

Jerry Falwell

Jerry Falwell was found dead today in his office at the age of 73. Falwell had a habit of saying the most indefensible things that became skewers in the hands of those wishing to discredit Evangelical Christianity, but he was a man whose heart was in the right place even when his mind wasn't. He accomplished a lot of good for the Church and for our country not the least of which was his success in encouraging fundamentalist Christians to forsake their traditional aversion to politics and to get involved in public debates.

He was a man of great optimism, vision, and enthusiasm, and his death will be a great loss to both the church and the university which he founded.

RLC

Best Rèsumè, Best Ads

What does it say about our politics that two essential novices with no political accomplishments to their credit (Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama) are leading the polls among Democratic candidates for the presidency while this guy is an also-ran?

Well, he may not be a media favorite but he certainly has some good ads. Check them out at the link.

RLC

Sustainable Development at the U.N.

Many people think the U.N. is a joke, and that august body itself seems determined to confirm them in their opinion. Recently Zimbabwe was designated to head the U.N. Commission on Sustainable Development. That's the same Zimbabwe which was once a prosperous nation named Rhodesia but whose fortunes collapsed after the former government was replaced, following a costly civil war in the late 70's, by a collection of thugs, tyrants, thieves, and incompetents under thug-in-chief Robert Mugabe.

It's the same Zimbabwe which is the proud possessor of the world's highest inflation, at more than 2000%, and mass unemployment. Human and civil rights abuses are rife. Entire families of farmers have been evicted from their homes and their land confiscated to be given to people who don't know the difference between a sheep and a cow.

As if to celebrate their new status as the head of the U.N.'s Commission on Sustainable Development it was announced on Wednesday that households in the country will be limited to four hours' electricity a day so that wheat farmers will have enough power to irrigate their crops.

That's the same U.N., by the way, that appointed Libya to chair its Commission on Human Rights in 2003. In the halls of the U.N. building irony, like cosmic radiation, is completely unperceived by those through whom it passes.

RLC

Reality-Based

The Democrats, or at least many of those who frequent the blogosphere, fancy themselves the reality-based party. They have a grip on the real-world and the rest of us, we're told, are delusional.

It's going to be harder than ever to make that claim sound convincing if what Rush Limbaugh reported the other day is correct. He cites a Rassmussen poll that found that 35% of Democrats believe that President Bush knew about the 9/11 attack beforehand and 26% aren't sure whether he knew or not. That's 51% of the rank and file Democrats in the U.S. who think that Bush was, or might have been, complicit in the 9/11 atrocity against this nation.

If this is the reality-based party one wonders what reality they're tuned into. They sound more like the kind of people who go around wearing tin-foil hats in order to pick up messages from outer-space. And they vote. God help us.

RLC

Hannity vs. Hitchens

Sean Hannity takes on Christopher Hitchens over the existence of God in this exchange from his Sunday night television show.

Hitchens' argument for why he hopes there is no God strikes me as silly. Why should anyone hope that there is no Guarantor for meaning, morality, justice, human worth and dignity, or eternal life? Why would anyone not hope that there is a Guarantor who insures that love and goodness will ultimately prevail in the universe? Why would anyone hope instead that all is meaningless, empty, pointless, and absurd?

Anyway, watch the video. It's a good introduction to the thinking of modern anti-theists like Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett.

RLC

Mullah Dead Fellah Dadullah

Mullah Dadullah, the top Taliban field commander and one of the most sadistic of the Taliban, has been killed by Afghan troops. He will be replaced, of course, but, in the meantime, according to Bill Roggio's analysis, his death is a serious blow to the Taliban's plans for a spring offensive.

RLC

See No Evil

Details of the capture of the six jihadis who threatened to attack Fort Dix can be found in this story. I was struck by the concerns of the clerk who alerted authorities. He's quoted as saying to a co-worker:

"Dude, I just saw some really weird s-," he frantically told his co-worker. "I don't know what to do. Should I call someone or is that being racist?"

If the "Flying Imams" and a large swath of Democrats had their way a person like this clerk could indeed be sued if it turned out that the individuals on the tape were innocent. Republican Peter King led a move in Congress to pass legislation that would immunize against lawsuit people who express concern about behavior that seems threatening, but, though the measure passed, 121 House Democrats voted against it. If these 121 sages had prevailed, there would be no legal protection for people like the teenage Circuit City employee who thought the authorities should know about the "really wierd" behavior he saw on that video.

In our politically correct world it may be safer to take the chance that these jihadis were really not up to anything malevolent than to assume they were and risk losing everything you own.

It's no wonder he was concerned about whether he was doing something for which he could get in trouble by informing the police about what he saw. In a Democrat state like New Jersey, he was.

RLC

Democrats Debate

A Hillary supporter debates an Obama voter in this amusing video.

RLC

That Eminent Tribunal

My friend Jason is a historian who recently came across this quote which he thoughtfully shared with me. Who do you think said it (Hint: It was an American president):

"At the same time, the candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the government upon vital questions, affecting the whole people, is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court ... the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their government into the hands of that eminent tribunal."

The words are those of Abraham Lincoln in his First Inaugural Address, in which The Great Emancipator is referring to the Dred Scott case that affirmed that slaves were the lawful property of their masters. What Lincoln said about the Supreme Court in his day could easily be said of courts in general in our own.

One salient difference between conservatives and liberals is that conservatives believe judges and justices should rule based on what the law says as much as possible, whereas liberals tend to believe that courts should act to make law if the legislature is too slothful in doing so. This is called "legislating from the bench," and it's the major political point of contention whenever President Bush appoints jurists to the federal bench or the Supreme Court.

Republicans want to be sure that the nominee will respect the Constitution and decide based on what that document actually says, whereas liberals want to be sure that the nominee will feel free to rule in ways that suit their progressive inclinations regardless of what the law and the Constitution say.

Thus, liberals will not vote, for example, to confirm a judge who believes that Roe v. Wade was a bad judicial decision. It doesn't matter to them that there's nothing in the Constitution to support Roe. Society needs abortion on demand, and it would never, it was apparent in 1973, be legalized by the legislature. So, in the liberals' view, it was perfectly appropriate for the Supreme Court to circumvent Congress and each of the state legislatures and grant women the right to terminate a pregnancy.

Roe is just one example. The left, recognizing that the people's representatives would be unlikely to enact a leftist agenda through the process established by the Constitution, would be delighted to have us "resign our government into the hands of that eminent tribunal."

RLC

A Division of the House

There is division at the conservative website National Review Online, and it's over, of all things, Darwinism. Andrew Ferguson has a good essay on the cordial dispute in The Weekly Standard.

You can also find more on the matter here.

I expect there to be much tension in the conservative movement in the years ahead, especially if conservatives get hammered again in '08. There will be a lot of finger-pointing and one of the targets will be Christian conservatives. Secular conservatives will blame the Dobsons, Falwells, and Robertsons for any electoral misfortune and the ID/Darwin issue will probably become part of the recriminations.

This would be wholly inappropriate since the matters in contention should be judged on their own merits, independently of any political use to which one side or another has sought to put them. I fear, though, that they won't be.

RLC

Pardon Our Hiatus

Woe beset us here at Viewpoint this week when my computer decided that, having outlasted its warranty, it would simply die. Being without a machine I was unable to post on Viewpoint or respond to e-mail for the past four days.

I am now, however, the proud owner of a new computer, a Dell Optiplex 320, which, I'm assured by the guy I bought it from, is far superior to the old Compaq Presario which now rests in a computer morgue. I have no way of knowing whether he's correct about that, but at least I'm back on line and hope to be able to keep Viewpoint going.

RLC

Shoe Bomb

Here's video made by the FBI who tested a "shoe bomb" such as Richard Reid tried to detonate on an airliner. The FBI wanted to see exactly what an explosive device like the one Reid sought to employ would do to a plane. The video is chilling. Had the passengers aboard that plane not overpowered Reid, who is serving a life term in prison for his crime, 197 people would today be dead.

The test simulates an explosion in a pressurized cabin at 30,000 feet.

RLC

It's Sarkozy

Nicolas Sarkozy swept to victory yesterday in an election that saw 85% of eligible French voters turn out. He's the first mainstream candidate to run openly as a conservative in France in generations and his election signals a deep discontent with the political and social status quo in that nation. The Washington Post says that Sarkozy in his victory speech proclaimed that:

An unabashed admirer of America, Sarkozy, 52, had a special message for the United States, which has had troubled relations with France under President Jacques Chirac, who led international opposition to the U.S. war in Iraq.

"I'd like to appeal to our American friends to say that they can count on our friendship," he said. "But I would also like to say that friendship means accepting that your friends don't necessarily see eye to eye with you."

France's economy is troubled due largely to a 35 hour work week, the inability to fire slackers, and an onerous welfare system. According to the Post:

[Sarkozy's] election signals a shift to the right in French politics and could herald a major transition for French society. Sarkozy has promised to boost economic growth and employment by cutting taxes, reducing deficits, shrinking government and loosening labor laws -- the kind of free-market policies embraced by the United States and Britain, but long eschewed by French leaders.

In selecting the passionate, pragmatic and pugnacious Sarkozy, who is a lawyer by training, voters rejected Royal's prescription of continuing big spending programs to protect and expand France's vast social welfare state.

Another festering problem in Franmce is immigration and the emergence of a highly alienated underclass of North African Muslims among whom joblessness and poverty are commonplace.

Sarkozy, who takes office May 16, has promised tough law-and-order measures and tighter immigration controls that many opponents fear could alienate the country's underclasses and fuel social tensions. Opinion polls throughout the election showed that large numbers of voters were concerned that Sarkozy had an authoritarian streak that could fracture French society.

So, for some voters the choice was between solving very serious problems at the risk of stirring up popular discontent or maintaining social order and allowing the problems to fester and worsen. Most French voters, to their credit, apparently opted for the first course.

RLC

Great Ape Project

Ryan passes along a link to the site of an organization called the Great Ape Project, whose goal it is to secure for the great apes the same basic rights as humans award themselves. They say on their site that:

The Great Ape Project seeks to end the unconscionable treatment of our nearest living relatives by obtaining for non-human great apes the fundamental moral and legal protections of the right to life, the freedom from arbitrary deprivation of liberty, and protection from torture.

Now no one could object to protecting these animals from torture and gratuitous killing, but if they are given the right to freedom from arbitrary deprivation of liberty that would mean that it would be a violation of their legal rights to put them in zoos. I'm not sure what I think about that.

I also wonder where the granting of such rights would stop. Once we give rights to apes do we put ourselves on a slippery slope that winds up conferring similar rights on all mammals? All vertebrates? If not, why not?

Another question that occurs to me is upon what are such rights as the apes are said to deserve based? Where do the apes' rights come from? As with humans, rights are based either upon the fact that we are creatures of God and thus have worth and dignity or they are based on nothing more than the arbitrary preference of those who advocate for them.

If it's the former then, as stewards of God's creation, we have the responsibility to care for what He cares about. If it's the latter that is to serve as the ground for the apes' rights, however, then I'm afraid that these grand animals will gain little lasting benefit from the efforts of their advocates.

RLC

Rare Bird

A very rare bird, a Yellow-billed loon, has been gracing the Susquehanna river in Wormleysburg, PA for the past couple of days. The bird breeds in the arctic along the north slope of Alaska, and although it is sometimes spotted off the Atlantic coast, it is extremely rare inland. It is even rarer to find one in breeding plumage so close to shore and so easy to view.

People have come from all over the east to see it, and as far as I know, no one who has come for it has failed to observe it.

For those not able or not interested in making the drive, here's a photo courtesy of Thomas Brodie Johnson.

RLC

Celebrating Other Cultures

The idea, popular during the last thirty years of the twentieth century, that no culture is superior to any other, just different, has become increasingly implausible in light of our growing familiarity with the Middle-east. Indeed, many of those who live in the region make it hard for us to think that large numbers of these people are anything but savages:

A 17-year-old girl has been stoned to death in Iraq because she loved a teenage boy of the wrong religion.

As a horrifying video of the stoning went out on the Internet, the British arm of Amnesty International condemned the death of Du'a Khalil Aswad as "an abhorrent murder" and demanded that her killers be brought to justice.

Reports from Iraq said a local security force witnessed the incident, but did nothing to try to stop it. Now her boyfriend is in hiding in fear for his life.

Miss Aswad, a member of a minority Kurdish religious group called Yezidi, was condemned to death as an "honour killing" by other men in her family and hardline religious leaders because of her relationship with the Sunni Muslim boy.

They said she had shamed herself and her family when she failed to return home one night. Some reports suggested she had converted to Islam to be closer to her boyfriend.

Miss Aswad had taken shelter in the house of a Yezidi tribal leader in Bashika, a predominantly Kurdish town near the northern capital, Mosul.

A large crowd watched as eight or nine men stormed the house and dragged Miss Aswad into the street. There they hurled stones at her for half an hour until she was dead.

Go here for more on this story. I didn't bother searching for the video. The pictures at the link are disturbing enough.

These "honor killings" are unfortunately not aberrations in the Middle-east. They are a widely accepted practice among the various ethnic and religious groups in the region and should give pause to anyone who still believes we should "celebrate" multi-cultural diversity. It should also make each of us thankful that we were born here and not in some part of the world where women are held in such contempt that they could be stoned to death for loving a boy of a different religion.

RLC

The French Election

An interesting election is brewing in France for the office of the president. Voting for the two candidates, socialist Segolene Royal and her opponent, conservative Nicolas Sarkozy, will take place Sunday. Sarkozy, who is more favorably disposed to the United States than any French president since WWII, has a commanding lead and Royal has resorted to the time-honored tactic of warning that if her opponent wins there will be blood in the streets.

Scaring the bejabbers out of the voters may help her, but I suspect that a lot of French citizens think there's already blood in the streets, at least in the Muslim suburbs, and that the socialists who've been running France haven't done much to stop it. If so, Royal's prediction may actually help Sarkozy more than hurt him.

See this article for a good summary of where matters stand on the eve of an election that has important implications for future support of American foreign policy.

RLC

For Movie Buffs

You have to be a real movie aficionado to compile a list of the 50 most overrated and 50 most underrated films, but Joe Carter at Evangelical Outpost is up to the task. I'm afraid that I haven't even heard of most of his underrated selections and some of the films he deems overrated I thought were pretty good (Ghandi, Passion of the Christ, Witness). Anyway, those who enjoy this sort of list-making should evaluate his choices for themselves.

RLC

Oklahoma Has Had Enough

With several thousand immigrants crossing illegally into Oklahoma every day at a cost to the state taxpayers of $200 million annually for public benefits and other resources, the state legislature has sent the governor legislation designed to make Oklahoma a less attractive destination for illegals:

The Oklahoma bill builds on measures passed by other states but has a stronger focus on deterring unauthorized employment, he said.

"It lays the foundations for state and local action in a very broad scope of public activities," Hethmon said.

The legislation addresses the root cause of illegal immigration - exploitation of illegal immigrant labor, he said. Among other things, the bill contains employment, labor law and civil rights provisions to protect citizens and legal immigrants who lose their jobs at companies that employ illegal immigrants to perform the same or similar work.

"Stealing American jobs is now a civil rights violation in Oklahoma," Hethmon said.

The measure targets employers who knowingly hire illegal aliens in order to gain a competitive advantage. Key elements of the bill focus on determining worker eligibility, including technology called the Basic Pilot program, which screens Social Security numbers to make sure they are real and that they match up with the person's name.

Created by the federal government to verify the eligibility of government employees, use of the program is mandated in Georgia, said the author of the Oklahoma legislation, Rep. Randy Terrill, R-Moore. It is free to employers who voluntarily sign up, he said.

Public agencies will be required to use the program beginning Nov. 1 and private companies by July 1, 2008.

Mike Seney, senior vice president of operations for The State Chamber, a business and industry group in Oklahoma City, said the group initially opposed the bill but took a neutral position after changes were approved in the Senate.

The changes widened so-called "safe harbor" provisions that allow employers to avoid sanctions for hiring undocumented immigrants if they use the Basic Pilot program and other methods to verify worker eligibility, Seney said.

"All of that goes out the window if you are participating in one of these safe harbor areas," he said.

Terrill said the measure would limit state driver's licenses and identity cards to citizens and legal immigrants and would require state and local agencies to verify the citizenship and immigration status of applicants for state or local benefits.

"The land of opportunity is becoming the land of entitlement," Rep. Rex Duncan, R-Sand Springs, said while debating for the bill.

The measure would not affect emergency medical and humanitarian services, such as visits to hospital emergency rooms and enrollment in public schools, that are required by federal law.

For our proposal for addressing the problem of illegal immigration see here.

RLC

Public Menace

Imagine that this was not a Democratic governor but, say, a Republican Vice-President:

Gov. Jon S. Corzine apologized to New Jersey residents on Monday as he left the hospital 18 days after a devastating traffic accident in which he was not wearing a seat belt and was being driven at more than 91 miles per hour on the Garden State Parkway.

"I set a very bad example," said a contrite Mr. Corzine, who broke his left femur, his sternum and 11 ribs in the accident, speaking from a wheelchair just outside Cooper University Hospital in Camden. His voice breaking with emotion, he added: "I hope the state will forgive me. I will work very hard to set the right kind of example."

And then what happened?

After the brief comments, Mr. Corzine was helped into a black GMC Savana van, with tinted windows, that he bought and had specially modified for his wheelchair, and left the hospital in a six-car caravan about 1:45 p.m. His vehicle followed a black state police Crown Victoria, and was followed by a Chevrolet Suburban - like the one he was riding in at the time of the crash - a Mercedes station wagon, and two other cars. The motorcade did not use emergency lights, as it had been just before the accident.

The governor's motorcade moved with the flow of traffic on Interstate 295, at some points sustaining speeds up to 70 miles per hour several minutes at a time, according to the speedometer of a vehicle traveling alongside; posted limits were 55 and 65.

Dick Cheney accidentally wounded a companion in a hunting accident and by the media reaction you would have thought that he had deliberately tried to murder the fellow. Corzine, on the other hand, appears to be a chronic threat to public safety, but the media scarcely takes notice. Makes you wonder about their ethics and sense of responsibility.

RLC

The NYT, No Less

What will John Murtha and Harry Reid, both of whom having declared the war lost, say about their biggest media ally running this piece on progress in Iraq:

Anbar Province, long the lawless heartland of the tenacious Sunni Arab resistance, is undergoing a surprising transformation. Violence is ebbing in many areas, shops and schools are reopening, police forces are growing and the insurgency appears to be in retreat.

"Many people are challenging the insurgents," said the governor of Anbar, Maamoon S. Rahid, though he quickly added, "We know we haven't eliminated the threat 100 percent."

Many Sunni tribal leaders, once openly hostile to the American presence, have formed a united front with American and Iraqi government forces against Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. With the tribal leaders' encouragement, thousands of local residents have joined the police force. About 10,000 police officers are now in Anbar, up from several thousand a year ago. During the same period, the police force here in Ramadi, the provincial capital, has grown from fewer than 200 to about 4,500, American military officials say.

At the same time, American and Iraqi forces have been conducting sweeps of insurgent strongholds, particularly in and around Ramadi, leaving behind a network of police stations and military garrisons, a strategy that is also being used in Baghdad, Iraq's capital, as part of its new security plan.

Quick! Pull the troops out! Bush might win this thing after all!

RLC

Tragedy? Not So Much

Last week's San Francisco Chronicle ran a story about a shooting in a pizzeria that began with this:

Catarino Piedra, 41, kept a gun underneath the counter at the Coliseum Pizza and Taqueria that he owned in East Oakland because his drivers had been robbed many times while making deliveries.

Allen Joseph Hicks III, 22, was an accused batterer on probation for a drug conviction and an aspiring rap artist whom everybody in his neighborhood knew as "Boonie."

The lives of the two men intersected tragically [emphasis mine] at about 9:30 p.m. Thursday when Hicks, armed with a pistol and joined by two other men, tried to rob Piedra inside the popular pizzeria at 89th Avenue and International Boulevard. Fearful that the assailants might hurt him, his wife and three children -- all of whom were inside the restaurant -- Piedra pulled out his 9mm semiautomatic pistol and opened fire, killing Hicks, police said.

In the chaos, Piedra may have accidentally shot and wounded his 17-year-old son, who was not seriously injured, police said.

Piedra acted in self-defense and won't be charged with a crime, Alameda County Assistant District Tom Rogers said Friday.

"I was scared," Piedra told The Chronicle in an interview Friday. "I had to defend my family. I was in fear for me and my kids."

I confess its hard to see just what the tragedy is when an armed thug threatens a man's family and gets killed by the father. Perhaps the SFC would have thought that had the police intercepted Cho Seung Hui as he was about to commit his horrific crime and shot him dead that that too would have been a tragedy. There is a sense, of course, in which any premature loss of life is usually a tragedy and a sense in which it is a tragedy that anyone lets his life deteriorate to the point where he's sticking up pizza stores, but is it tragic that an armed robber who threatens a man's family gets shot? As Glen Beck would say: not so much.

RLC

Selecting Generals

My friend Kyle sends along a link to an article by Lt. Col. Paul Yingling in which he offers a stinging critique of our armed forces' senior officer corps and how these officers are selected. He also makes some recommendations for reforming the process. His piece is guaranteed to be the talk of the officers' clubs.

The essay is remarkable for several reasons, not the least of which is that Yingling is an active duty officer who is taking quite a career risk by saying some of what he says.

I'm in no position, of course, to comment on whether his criticisms are valid, but I do wonder about his proposed remedy. He urges that Congress undertake to reform the process by which generals are selected. This strikes me as somewhat like asking the three stooges to reform public manners. Congress can't even reform itself let alone reform the military. Moreover, there are many in the majority party in Congress who hold the military in very low esteem, even to the point of loathing. Putting the armed forces in the hands of these people seems like a prescription for the complete emasculation of our military force.

Even so, Yingling's criticisms should be read by everyone who takes an interest in the defense of our nation and the success of the war on terrorists.

RLC

Falling Like Dominos

Well, it's an unconfirmed report, but if it turns out to be accurate then the successor to Abu al Zarqawi, who was sent packing to his 72 virgins by a laser guided munition last June, seems to have lasted all of eleven months in office before being introduced to the Grim Reaper by Sunni militiamen who are tired of al Qaeda's heavy-handed ways.

Abu Ayyad al-Masri, who took over the reins of al Qaeda shortly after al-Zarqawi found he had exhausted all of his good luck last June, was believed to have been killed in a battle between al Qaeda and Sunni militia who want al-Qaeda out of Iraq.

The short tenure of the leaders of al Qaeda in Iraq gives new meaning to the concept of term limits. We suggest that when al-Masri's successor takes over, if indeed al-Masri is dead, the first thing he should do is appoint his successor.

RLC

Re: For Bibliophiles

Several respondents commented on our post titled For Bibliophiles. Their comments are good reading and can be found on the April Feedback page.

RLC

Di Fi's Non-Scandal

If Senator Dianne Feinstein were a Republican she'd be on her way to the slammer, but since she's a Democrat, well, it seems no one can be bothered by the evidence of her, ah, lapses in judgment:

The problems stem from her subcommittee activities from 2001 to late 2005, when she quit. During that period the public record suggests she knowingly took part in decisions that eventually put millions of dollars into her husband's pocket - the classic conflict of interest that exploited her position and power to channel money to her husband's companies.

In other words, it appears Sen. Feinstein was up to her ears in the same sort of shenanigans that landed California Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R) in the slammer. Indeed, it may be that the primary difference between the two is basically that Cunningham was a minor leaguer and a lot dumber than his state's senior senator.

Melanie Sloan, the executive director of Citizens for Responsible Ethics in Washington, or CREW, usually focuses on the ethical lapses of Republicans and conservatives, but even she is appalled at the way Sen. Feinstein has abused her position. Sloan told a California reporter earlier this month that while"there are a number of members of Congress with conflicts of interest ... because of the amount of money involved, Feinstein's conflict of interest is an order of magnitude greater than those conflicts."

And the director of the Project on Government Oversight who examined the evidence of wrongdoing assembled by California writer Peter Byrne told him that "the paper trail showing Senator Feinstein's conflict of interest is irrefutable."

You can read the sordid details at the link. Here's how the story ends, probably in more ways than one:

In spite of the blatant appearance of corruption, no major publication has picked up on the story, the Senate Ethics Committee has reportedly let her slip by, and she is now chairing the Senate Rules Committee, which puts her in charge of making sure her colleagues act ethically and avoid the sorts of conflicts of interest with which she is personally and so obviously familiar.

When you're a liberal in Washington, evidently, the world is your oyster and taxpayers' dollars are yours for the taking. Meanwhile, our vigilant media is busy trying to ferret out the really important stuff like whether any Republican bigwigs' telephone numbers are on the "D.C. Madam's" rolodex.

RLC

No Time to Leave

An Iraqi pleads for us to stay:

Instead of coming up with ideas to help the U.S., Democrats are trying to stop the effort to stabilize Iraq and rescue the Middle East from a catastrophe.

I am an Iraqi. To me the possible consequences of this vote [to withdraw our troops from Iraq] are terrifying. Just as we began to see signs of progress in my country the Democrats come and say, 'Well, it's not worth it. Time to leave'.

To the Democrats my life and the lives of twenty-five million other Iraqis are evidently not worth trying for. They shouldn't expect us to be grateful for this.

For four years everybody made mistakes. The administration made mistakes and admitted them. My people and leaders made mistakes as well and we regret them.

But now, in the last two months, we have had a fresh start; a new strategy with new ideas and tactics. These were reached after studying previous mistakes and were designed to reverse the setbacks we witnessed in the course of this war.

This strategy, although its tools are not yet even fully deployed, is showing promising signs of progress.

We must give this effort the chance it deserves. We should provide all the support necessary. We should heed constructive criticism, not the empty rhetoric that the 'war is lost.'

It is not lost. Quitting is not an option we can afford-not in America and definitely not in Iraq.

I said it before and I say it again; this war must be won. If it is not the world as you in the United States know it today (and as we here in Iraq dream for it to become) will exist only in books of history. The forces of extremism that we confront today are more determined, more resourceful, and more barbaric than the Nazi or the communists of the past.

Add to that the weapons they can improvise or acquire through their unholy alliance with rogue regimes, combined with their fluid structure and mobility ... well, they can be more deadly than any forces we have faced in the past. Much more.

Read the rest of this impassioned plea at the link.

The lives of twenty five million Iraqis hang in the balance not to mention the fate of the rest of the Middle East and our security here at home. Nevertheless, Harry Reid and John Murtha don't seem to think that any of that is worth staying and fighting for.

RLC

Ideas Have Consequences

Mike Metzger of the Clapham Commentary writes an insightful piece on the connection between one's philosophical worldview and one's way of life. Here are the first couple of paragraphs:

...Today also marks the anniversary of the birth of Adolf Hitler in 1899. Hitler, Columbine and Virginia Tech share a common ancestor - Friedrich Nietzsche. But who cares what a German philosopher said?

We're like Andy Sachs, the young assistant to Miranda Priestley in The Devil Wears Prada. Skeptical that Paris fashion trends dictate her wardrobe choices, Andy smirks at the fancy belts that "all look the same to me." Miranda, one of New York's biggest fashion magazine editors, overhears the remark and wheels around to Andy who backpedals by saying she's "still learning about this stuff." Oops. "This... "stuff?" asks Miranda, "Stuff?" "Oh ... okay. You think this "stuff" has nothing to do with you. You ... go to your closet and select - I don't know - that lumpy blue sweater for instance because you're trying to tell the world that you take yourself too seriously to care about what you put on your back. But what you don't know is that sweater is not just blue, its not turquoise ... it's not lapis ... it's actually cerulean. And you're also blithely unaware of the fact that in 2002 Oscar De la Renta did a collection of cerulean gowns. And then I think it was Eves Saint Laurent who showed cerulean military gowns ... and then cerulean quickly showed up in the collections of eight different designers. And then it filtered down through the department stores ... and then trickled on down to some tragic Casual Corner where you no doubt fished it out of some clearance bin. However that blue represents millions of dollars and countless jobs ... and its sort of comical how you think that you've made a choice that exempts you from the fashion industry when, in fact, you're wearing a sweater that was selected for you by the people in this room. From a pile of ... stuff."

Too many Christians dismiss Nietzsche because he wrote "stuff." We see no connection between philosophy and terrorism - between worldview and way of life. Yet Nietzsche predicted unending horrors like Hitler and Columbine and Virginia Tech. He said people cannot believe in moral codes without simultaneously believing in a God who points at us with his fearsome forefinger and says "Thou shalt" or "Thou shalt not." Yet God is dead, Nietzsche said. Our problem is not seeing the inevitable consequences. Without God, life has no meaning or morality. Might makes right. Whoever has the biggest gun wins.

Metzger is exactly right except I think he might include Darwin's influence along with that of Nietzsche. Darwin saw the biological world as one vast, pululating struggle for survival where the fittest squeeze out the less fit in the battle for resources.

Stir together Darwin's concept of survival of the fittest with a dose of Nietszche's atheism and his might makes right ethic, and the toxic vapors of Nazism and nihilistic killers like Cho Seung-Hui quickly condense in the flask of our culture.

Read Metzger's entire essay. It's very good.

RLC

Now it All Makes Sense

In an interview recently, Christopher Hitchens, a writer of considerable ability, and an atheist, was asked:

Has anyone in the Bush administration confided in you about being an atheist?

His answer was:

Well, I don't talk that much to them - maybe people think I do. I know something which is known to few but is not a secret. Karl Rove is not a believer, and he doesn't shout it from the rooftops, but when asked, he answers quite honestly. I think the way he puts it is, "I'm not fortunate enough to be a person of faith."

We suspect that this revelation has tongues wagging in the editorial offices of Sojourners. Jim Wallis and his staff are perhaps thinking that that explains a lot about this administration.

RLC

Lucy

I once heard it said that if you wait long enough sooner or later every fossil that is touted upon its discovery as another link in the chain of human evolution will be discredited. The discovery of the fossil is invariably front-page news, and its evolutionary significance is thoroughly explored, but its fall from favor, if it is reported at all, is consigned to the more obscure sections of the paper.

I thought of this when I came across this report about Australopithecus afarensis better known as "Lucy." Lucy was discovered in Ethiopia in 1974 by a team led by Donald Johanson and immediately hailed as an evolutionary common ancestor of the great apes and man. Now it turns out, thirty three years later, that researchers are doubtful that Lucy was ancestral to man at all.

An entire generation has been taught that Lucy was a missing link in human evolution. Now that the link to man seems to have been an illusion the perception still remains, like the grin of the Cheshire cat in Alice in Wonderland, that there is nevertheless much fossil evidence that humans evolved from ape-like ancestors. It may be that we indeed have a common ancestor with the apes, but the evidence in support of that hypothesis seems about as substantial as the cat's grin.

Don't look for this story to get nearly as much play in the media as did the account of Lucy's discovery and the excitement in the scientific community over the confirmation they thought it provided of the evolutionary model of man's descent. Evidence of evolution is news, the debunking of that evidence is not.

RLC

Virtual Wall

Mexican President Felipe Calderon has likened the barriers that the U.S. is erecting along its southern border to the Berlin Wall. Does that mean that Mexico is like East Germany?

Speaking of barriers along the border the story linked to above says that most of them are going to be "virtual walls" which should detect 95% of those trying to cross into this country illegally. It'll consist of lights, sensors, cameras and more agents and will essentially halt illegal crossings along the Arizona border, the busiest section for clandestine entries.

Officials expect to complete 28 miles of the high-tech system in Arizona by June, and by next year it should run into New Mexico and parts of Texas.

The only problem with a virtual wall is that, unlike a real wall, it only works if the political leadership in Washington make it clear that they want the laws against illegal entry enforced by the border patrol. At this point there's not much reason to think they do.

RLC

Thank Heavens for Sen. Leiberman

Senator Joe Lieberman respectfully, politely, and powerfully grinds the arguments advanced on behalf of the Iraq war funding resolution by Harry Reid and the Democrats into fine powder. In the process he respectfully and politely exposes Senator Reid as an utter buffoon.

Here's an excerpt of Leiberman's speech yesterday on the floor of the senate, but one should read it in its entirety. It's a marvelous example of well-reasoned argumentation.

In his speech Monday, the Majority Leader described the several steps that this new strategy for Iraq would entail. Its first step, he said, is to "transition the U.S. mission away from policing a civil war-to training and equipping Iraqi security forces, protecting U.S. forces, and conducting targeted counter-terror operations."

I ask my colleagues to take a step back for a moment and consider this plan.

When we say that U.S. troops shouldn't be "policing a civil war," that their operations should be restricted to this narrow list of missions, what does this actually mean?

To begin with, it means that our troops will not be allowed to protect the Iraqi people from the insurgents and militias who are trying to terrorize and kill them. Instead of restoring basic security, which General Petraeus has argued should be the central focus of any counterinsurgency campaign, it means our soldiers would instead be ordered, by force of this proposed law, not to stop the sectarian violence happening all around them-no matter how vicious or horrific it becomes.

In short, it means telling our troops to deliberately and consciously turn their backs on ethnic cleansing, to turn their backs on the slaughter of innocent civilians-men, women, and children singled out and killed on the basis of their religion alone. It means turning our backs on the policies that led us to intervene in the civil war in Yugoslavia in the 1990s, the principles that today lead many of us to call for intervention in Darfur.

This makes no moral sense at all.

It also makes no strategic or military sense either.

He's just getting started.

RLC

Dobbs on Illegals

CNN's Lou Dobbs wonders why we're not being told the truth about illegal immigration:

The mainstream media report as if America would no longer be a welcoming nation if we stopped illegal immigration. Nothing could be further from the truth. Why do the national media conveniently and routinely neglect to report that the United States brings in more lawful immigrants than the countries of the rest of the world combined? Each year, we accept 2 million immigrants legally. We give a million legal immigrants permanent residency every year. We bestow citizenship on 700,000 people a year and provide almost half a million work-related visas a year.

Illegal immigration, in fact, has the potential to change the course of American history: Demographers at the Brookings Institution and the Population Reference Bureau paint a troubling picture of the future of our democracy. As more illegal aliens cross our borders and settle in large states like California, Texas and Florida, congressional seats will be redistributed to these bigger states following each decennial Census. States with low levels of immigration will ultimately lose seats as a result. Unfortunately for American citizens, this seismic shift in political representation will be decided by noncitizens that cannot vote.

Congress will soon take up so-called comprehensive immigration reform, and a bipartisan House bill would probably admit 400,000 guest workers a year. And since any plan calling for eventual legalization would include family members who live outside the United States, the legislation would open our borders to tens of millions of people. The Heritage Foundation's Robert Rector estimated that the 2006 version of the McCain-Kennedy bill would have added an additional 66 million immigrants over the next 20 years. The bill may change, but that estimate has yet to be refuted.

There's no question this type of mass immigration would have a calamitous effect on working citizens and their families. Professor Carol Swain, professor of law and political science at Vanderbilt University and author of "Debating Immigration," would like to see more people speak up for the sectors of society most affected by illegal immigration.

"How many African-American leaders have you seen come out and address the impact that high levels of illegal immigration [are] having in the communities when it comes to jobs, when it comes to education, when it comes to health care?" she asked. "And often, these low-skilled, low-wage workers compete in the same sectors for jobs."

Let's have a vigorous open debate on illegal immigration in this country, and let's begin with the facts. Estimates of illegal aliens in this country range from 12 million to 20 million people. Why doesn't our government know how many there are?

Shouldn't this Congress and this president at least recognize that the industries in which illegal aliens are employed in the greatest percentages also are suffering the largest wage declines? And shouldn't there be an economic impact statement researched and delivered to this Congress, this president and the rest of us before any legislation granting amnesty is even considered?

Shouldn't we first bring the facts of illegal immigration out of the shadows?

Well, yes. I'll start. I heard an interesting claim the other day to the effect that ten years ago the average hourly wage in the meat-packing industry was about $19 an hour. Today it's closer to $10 an hour because the industry is able to find so many illegals who will work so much cheaper. The availability of cheaper labor is driving down wages for everyone in the industry.

Why are not the advocates of the poor raising Cain about the effect that illegals are having on wages and jobs in this country?

RLC

For Bibliophiles

If you are a bibliophile (a lover of books) then you'll very much enjoy this essay in Comment by Mark Bertrand who sounds like a biblioaddict. Bertrand begins his tale this way:

Before the package from Amazon UK reached my doorstep, someone had given it a good kicking. The corners dimpled inward and a jagged gash ran like a scar down one side of the box, giving the cardboard a battered, sinister air.

I probably yelped at the sight. I don't remember. It all happened so quickly. I hoisted the package and moved it inside to the dining room table, then rummaged around for a knife to undo its taped edges. I peeled back the damaged layers, afraid of what I might find, only to breathe a sigh of relief upon discovering the contents safely wrapped in a protective sheen of plastic.

About this time, my wife came in, arms crossed, shaking her head at my anxiety.

"We have thousands of books already," she said. "The walls are lined with them. But you still had to order more."

When I lifted my new treasure out of the box, she rolled her eyes. But I paid no attention.

Instead, I was mesmerized by the orange slipcase, about a foot and a half long, and the row of tiny paperbacks contained within it, their spines arranged by color in a spectrum that ran from blue to orange. Seventy slender volumes, printed in honor of Penguin's seventy years in publishing, but to me they represented more than a milestone. This set was the answer to a baffling conundrum, a problem that had kept me up at night. This was my solution. This was my Godsend.

This was my summer reading.

If you love books you'll want to read the entire piece, nodding the while and thinking "That's me he's talking about."

RLC

Reasons for Unbelief (Pt. II)

A week or so ago we began a series of posts on three main reasons why people find belief in God difficult. We listed those reasons as:

1. The problem posed by human suffering
   
2. Christian exclusivism
   
3. Bad experiences with Christians or with a particular church
   

We talked about the last of these reasons in that first post, and I wish to take up the second reason in this one.

Some people find it very difficult to accept the belief, which is orthodox among conservative Christians, that only those who possess a firm belief in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior will have eternal life. Everyone else is pretty much damned to spend eternity separated from God.

This is a very difficult doctrine to explain to non-Christians and one which many of them find not only implausible but also repugnant. Almost everyone has a loved one, a friend or relative, who has died outside the Church. The thought that that person is lost forever pushes people away from accepting a faith that insists that they're doomed.

There are three ways one might respond to this reaction:

The first is to say that the truth cannot be compromised just because people find it unpleasant. One difficulty with this is that the problem is not so much that people find the doctrine unpleasant but rather that they find it unjust.

The second is to argue that exclusivism is incorrect and that salvation is not limited only to Christians. The problem with this is that the primary source book of Christian doctrine, the Bible, seems to say that it is.

The third response is to argue that whatever Christianity teaches about salvation it is not really germane to the question of whether there is a God. In other words, one is behaving irrationally if one rejects belief in God simply because one rejects a particular tenet of Christian theology.

It is of course the case that unpleasant truths are still truths and that the existence of God does not hinge on the truth of the doctrine of Christian exclusivism, but, even so, there have been some Christians, including luminaries like C.S. Lewis, who think that the second option may also be correct. People who believe this are called "inclusivists," and they hold that it is reasonable to believe that young children, the mentally infirm, and some, perhaps many, people who lived prior to the Christian era will have eternal life. Thus, it is possible, they reason, that those in the present era who never heard of Christ, or who for various reasons were psychologically unable to accept the truth of the revelation of God in Christ, might also be embraced by God.

These Christians insist that Christ's death on the cross is crucial because it's the reason why anyone who receives eternal life does so, but they also believe that there may be many who receive the gift without knowing how or why.

These Christians also insist that this view is compatible both with scripture and with much of the Christian tradition although it must be said that it is a minority view among conservative Protestant theologians, most of whom believe that the Bible squarely rules it out.

In any case, the recent decision of the Catholic church to abandon its teaching on limbo has interesting implications for this issue.

Consider this comment by a Notre Dame theologian:

"If there's no limbo and we're not going to revert to St. Augustine's teaching that unbaptized infants go to hell, we're left with only one option, namely, that everyone is born in the state of grace," said the Rev. Richard McBrien, professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame.

"Baptism does not exist to wipe away the "stain" of original sin, but to initiate one into the Church," he said in an e-mailed response."

If McBrien is correct, his words lead logically to the acceptance of Christian inclusivism. If it's true that people are born in a state of grace, or that some people who did not - because they could not - make a conscious decision to accept Christ as their savior, will nevertheless enjoy the "beatific vision," it's very difficult to exclude from that experience others who have, for the same or similar reasons, also not made such a decision.

The mentally infirm, or people in the ancient world, or people in the modern world who never heard the gospel, or, perhaps, people who are aware of Christianity but who for deeply seated psychological reasons have great difficulty believing that the God they love actually became a man and who have such a high view of God that the notion that He was human strikes them as blasphemous, might all, like the child, be psychologically unable to make the decision to believe.

It may be, inclusivists argue, that God saves all who love Him and who want to spend eternity with Him. If so, the essential Christian contribution is the emphasis on the fact that it is only through what God did on the cross in Christ that makes it possible for anyone, Christian or non-Christian, to have eternal life. The difference between Christians and non-Christians in this regard, then, is that Christians have a deeper, more thorough understanding of how God has worked in the world than do their theistic cousins. But that doesn't mean that those others who are non-Christians are necessarily outside the grace of God.

Whether inclusivism will ever be accepted by the majority of Christians remains to be seen. It certainly has a very big hurdle in its way for it has to show that it does not distort the meaning of Scripture and this, its detractors believe, it will never be able to do.

RLC

Feel the Pride

Michael Roberts, a black owner of several television and radio stations, has finally had enough. See the letter he wrote to his employees here. Let's hope that others follow his example.

RLC

White Lies

Novelist Andrew Klavan has a very interesting essay in City Journal which he begins this way:

The thing I like best about being a conservative is that I don't have to lie. I don't have to pretend that men and women are the same. I don't have to declare that failed or oppressive cultures are as good as mine. I don't have to say that everyone's special or that the rich cause poverty or that all religions are a path to God. I don't have to claim that a bad writer like Alice Walker is a good one or that a good writer like Toni Morrison is a great one. I don't have to pretend that Islam means peace.

Of course, like everything, this candor has its price. A politics that depends on honesty will be, by nature, often impolite. Good manners and hypocrisy are intimately intertwined, and so conservatives, with their gimlet-eyed view of the world, are always susceptible to charges of incivility. It's not really nice, you know, to describe things as they are.

This is leftism's great strength: it's all white lies. That's its only advantage, as far as I can tell. None of its programs actually works, after all. From statism and income redistribution to liberalized criminal laws and multiculturalism, from its assault on religion to its redefinition of family, leftist policies have made the common life worse wherever they're installed. But because it depends on-indeed is defined by-describing the human condition inaccurately, leftism is nothing if not polite. With its tortuous attempts to rename unpleasant facts out of existence-he's not crippled, dear, he's handicapped; it's not a slum, it's an inner city; it's not surrender, it's redeployment-leftism has outlived its own failure by hiding itself within the most labyrinthine construct of social delicacy since Victoria was queen.

I don't know that calling these euphemisms "white lies" isn't a bit overstated, but Klavan's point is nevertheless well-taken. We have allowed ourselves to fall into the grasp of a PC culture that makes it a "sin" to use certain words which mask the truth of things. We're so reluctant to appear insensitive or judgmental that we shrink from saying anything that'll make us sound callous or unsophisticated.

What Klavan doesn't tell us, however, is that this is not an exclusive practice of the left, although they are doubtless the biggest offenders in our socio-cultural life, but the right, especially the military, also employs euphemisms, some of which are almost laughable. One example that sticks in my mind was that offered by a military spokesman who, at a news briefing, explained how our troops "addressed" an enemy position with an M-1 Abrams tank.

Anyway, read the whole article.

RLC

Evil Molecules

"....if it's difficult to know where God is when bad things happen, it is even more difficult for atheism to deal with the problem of evil. The reason is that in a purely materialist universe, immaterial things like good and evil and souls simply do not exist. For scientific atheists ... Cho's shooting of all those people can be understood in this way - molecules acting upon molecules."

Dinesh D'Souza writing on the Virginia Tech murders.

He's correct, of course. If all we are is a collocation of atoms then what we do is just the product of chemical reactions in the brain. Those reactions follow the laws of physics, and there's no room in this picture for something like morality and no reason to think that what we do is either good or bad. It's just molecules doing what molecules do.

RLC

Biological Animations

Over the last three years Viewpoint has from time to time featured animations of various processes of cell biology that we've come across in our travels around the internet. Now Denyse O'Leary has catalogued the animations and makes a lot of the links available at one location.

Anyone interested in cell biology who would like to use these as a reference or, in some cases, as a means of having your breath taken away, will find this site very useful.

RLC

A Very Merciful Religion

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a Dutch refugee of Somali descent who fled the Netherlands where her life was in danger because she renounced Islam. Now in the U.S. subtle threats are being made against her life by imams in this country, particularly one Fouad ElBayly of Pittsburgh, PA:

A community debate over religious freedom surfaced in Western Pennsylvania last week when Dutch feminist author Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali refugee who has lived under the threat of death for denouncing her Muslim upbringing, made an appearance at the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown. Islamic leaders tried to block the lecture, which was sponsored through an endowment from the Frank J. and Sylvia T. Pasquerilla Lecture Series. They argued that Hirsi Ali's attacks against the Muslim faith in her book, "Infidel," and movie, "Submission," are "poisonous and unjustified" and create dissension in their community.

Although university officials listened to Islamic leaders' concerns, the lecture planned last year took place Tuesday evening under tight security, with no incidents.

Imam Fouad ElBayly, president of the Johnstown Islamic Center, was among those who objected to Hirsi Ali's appearance.

"She has been identified as one who has defamed the faith. If you come into the faith, you must abide by the laws, and when you decide to defame it deliberately, the sentence is death," said ElBayly, who came to the U.S. from Egypt in 1976.

Hirsi Ali, an atheist, has been critical of many Muslim beliefs, particularly on subjects of sexual morality, the treatment of women and female genital mutilation. In her essay "The Caged Virgin," she also wrote of punishment, noting that "a Muslim's relationship with God is one of fear."

"Our God demands total submission. He rewards you if you follow His rules meticulously. He punishes you cruelly if you break His rules, both on earth, with illness and natural disasters, and in the hereafter, with hellfire," she wrote.

In some Muslim countries, such as Iran, apostasy -- abandoning one's religious belief -- and blasphemy are considered punishable by death under sharia, a system of laws and customs that treats both public and private life as governable by God's law.

Sharia is based largely on an interpretation of the Quran, the sayings of the Prophet Mohammed, a consensus of Islamic scholars and reasoning, according to the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations. In some countries, sharia has been associated with stoning to death those who are accused of adultery, flogging for drinking wine and amputation of a hand for theft.

One of the most noted cases of apostasy in recent years involved author Salman Rushdie, whose novel "The Satanic Verses" offered an unflattering portrayal of the Muslim Prophet Mohammed. The book prompted Iran's Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to issue a fatwa -- a religious decree -- in 1989 calling for Rushdie's assassination.

Although ElBayly believes a death sentence is warranted for Hirsi Ali, he stressed that America is not the jurisdiction where such a crime should be punished. Instead, Hirsi Ali should be judged in a Muslim country after being given a trial, he added.

"If it is found that a person is mentally unstable, or a child or disabled, there should be no punishment," he said. "It's a very merciful religion if you try to understand it."

Zahida Chaudhary, a member of the education council and education secretary at the Muslim Community Center of Greater Pittsburgh in Monroeville, insisted that Islam is a peaceful religion.

"The Prophet Mohammed was a peacemaker and a role model for humanity," she said. "My understanding is that he was a peaceful person who believed that religion was a choice. He tried to teach people and bring them into it, not punish them."

Perhaps so, but the peaceful Prophet was also reported to have said "Whoever changed his Islamic religion, then kill him'" (Bukhari 9.84.57). Peace Be Upon Him.

Islam is a merciful religion like Nazism was a compassionate ideology. The mercy and compassion are for members only.

RLC

Truth Will Out

Melanie Phillips has a story in the American Spectator which should be read by every American. It's about what happened to the Iraqi WMD, and it's the kind of story which makes both the administration and its anti-war opponents look both good and bad at the same time.

Unfortunately, neither side wants to look bad and neither side wants to make the other look good, so nobody, apparently, is checking to see if the account in the American Spectator is correct. Politics is trumping the national interest which makes both sides look even worse.

Phillips acknowledges that she doesn't know if the story is true, but like she says, somebody should certainly be trying to find out.

RLC

Scientists Should Share

Haldane's dilemma was discovered by the geneticist J.B.S. Haldane in 1957. It states that in a period of ten million years there could only be about 1,670 beneficial mutations in a population of animals that would be ancestral to humans. This is far too few mutations to produce the thousands of adaptations that make humans distinct from their ape-like precursors. In other words, the mutation rate is too slow for humans to have evolved in the time frames normally allotted by evolutionists.

This has been a serious irritant to Darwinian biologists for forty five years, but recently evolutionary geneticist Leonard Nunney claims to have developed a computer simulation that shows that mutations could have occurred much more rapidly than the Haldane limit permits.

This has been hailed as a breakthrough, but there is a problem. Nunney won't share the program with ID critics so there's no way to confirm whether it does what he says it does. Critics are evidently expected to simply take his word for it.

This is truly astonishing. Science is built on being able to repeat the work of others in order to confirm it, but despite Nunney's intransigence, other scientists are touting his work as being a refutation of the Haldane limit and of those who argue that the limit makes human evolution from any proposed ancestor highly dubious.

One wonders what Nunney could possibly fear about sharing his software, and why his colleagues think that he has made a great leap forward when he won't let that leap be examined. One also wonders whether researchers in any other scientific discipline would give a pass to a colleague who wouldn't share data and methodology.

I doubt it.

RLC

Illegal Aliens

Human Events claims that the media are not telling us about the seriousness of the illegal immigration crisis. For example, they cite the following facts that are difficult to find in media stories:

• Only 2 percent of illegal aliens are actually picking fruit and vegetables, but 41 percent are on welfare.
• 1 in 10 babies born in the U.S. are to illegal aliens.
• 60 percent of Housing and Urban Development funds go to illegal aliens.
• 13 Americans are killed each day by uninsured drunk driving illegals.

If you wish to sign a petition that demands that the media fulfill its responsibility to report the story accurately you can find one here.

RLC

Music of the Spheres

Lem passes along a link to a site where the natural internal vibrations of the sun are translated into sound. Stars, were they not suspended in a vacuum, would produce an enormous number of bell-like resonances which would fill the cosmos with music.

Follow the links and you can hear some of the solar resonances. As you listen to them imagine what these would sound like, if they could be heard, coming from billions of stars in a single galaxy.

RLC

Compassionate Conservatism

Rush Limbaugh reports that over the course of one three hour broadcast on Friday his show raised $3 million dollars for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society to assist in their search for a cure for blood cancers (Limbaugh himself donated $320,000). Three million dollars for a charity from an audience of allegedly stingy, tight-fisted mean-spirited, selfish, uncompassionate conservatives is quite a remarkable achievement.

Conservative talk-radio host Sean Hannity has also raised large sums for children of soldiers killed in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

We await results of similar fund-raisers held under liberal auspices. No doubt the Great Souls in the party of compassion, liberality, and generosity have done even better. Or not.

In fact, does anyone know whether similar fund-raisers for charity have ever even been held by any broadcast medium under liberal auspices? Al Franken's bunch at Air America? Keith Olbermann or Chris Matthews at MSNBC? The New York Times or Washington Post? Newsweek or Time? Or is the liberal idea of charitable fund-raising just urging government to raise your taxes?

RLC

The Loss of Moral Clarity

Julian Baggini writes in The Guardian about what he sees as the death of moral clarity at the hands of post-modern philosophers. When the intellectual movers and shakers of our age abandoned the notion of objective truth and replaced it with the idea that all truth is a matter of one's own interpretation and experience, morality took to its death-bed:

Of course, the works of truth-deniers such as Michel Foucault and Richard Rorty are hardly bestsellers. Yet their ideas do filter through to society as a whole. Consider, for instance, how what passes for common sense about morality has been turned on its head. For millennia, most people believed that right was right and wrong was wrong, and that was all there was to it. Now, university lecturers report that their fresh-faced new students take it as obvious that there is no such thing as "the truth" and that morality is relative. In educated circles at least, only the naive believe in objectivity. What was shocking when Nietzsche first proclaimed it at the end of the 19th century became platitudinous by the start of the 21st.

Perhaps the most powerful idea to filter through from the universities to the streets was articulated by Foucault, who adapted and popularised the Nietzschean idea that what passes for truth is actually no more than power. There are no facts, only attempts to impose your view on the world by fixing it as "The Truth". This idea is now so mainstream that even a conservative like Donald Rumsfeld could complain about those who lived in the "reality-based community", arguing "that's not the way the world really works anymore ... when we act, we create our own reality."

Some philosophers, such as Bernard Williams and Simon Blackburn, have waded into the public debate in an attempt to put the relativist genie back into the bottle. Books such as Why Truth Matters, by my colleagues Jeremy Stangroom and Ophelia Benson, have also tried to stem the tide. But this is not really a highbrow academic debate about whether there is Truth with a capital T - it is about how abstract ideas relate to the business of everyday life.

Richard Rorty, for example, argues against Truth brilliantly, and it is far from clear that he is simply wrong. The problem is that he does not concede as unequivocally as he should that in practice his theories usually leave the world more or less as it is. Rorty believes as much as anyone else that the Holocaust happened more or less as described in history books, he just refuses to use an allegedly outmoded vocabulary of truth to say so.

Ironically, like many left-leaning intellectuals, Rorty thinks that denying objectivity and truth is politically important, as a way of liberating people from the ways of seeing the world promoted as the Truth by the powerful. However, it turns out that Rorty and his ilk seriously misjudged what happens if intellectuals deny truth stridently and frequently enough. Far from making liberal openness more attractive, such denials actually make it appear empty, repugnant and weak compared to the crystalline clarity and certainty of dogma.

They owe us an apology for failing to either see themselves, or make it clear to others, that in the everyday world we can and must distinguish truth and falsity, right and wrong, even if on close examination these terms do not mean what we thought they did. Science may not be God-like in its objectivity, but it is not just another myth. Moral values must be questioned, but if discrimination against women, homosexuals or ethnic minorities is wrong here, then it is wrong anywhere else in the world. Truth may not be the simple phenomenon we assume it to be, but falsehoods must be challenged.

Unless we can make a convincing case that the choice is not between relativism or dogmatism, more and more people will reject the former and embrace the latter. When they do, those who helped create the impression that modern, secular rationality leaves everything up for grabs in the marketplace of belief will have to take their share of the blame.

That last sentence is puzzling. Modern, secular rationality does indeed leave everything up for grabs, at least in terms of ethics. There can be no right or wrong unless people are morally obligated to do one thing rather than another, but in a secular world there is no moral obligation to do anything. Nothing obligates us, and there's no one to say that what we do is moral or immoral, right or wrong.

Nor am I sure I agree with Baggini when he says that the choice is between relativism and dogmatic certainty. The choice, rather, is between relativism (more accurately, subjectivism) and the belief(not the certainty)that there is objective truth about morals, and that Truth does exist.

If one denies the existence of objective moral truth, as one must if one also denies the existence of God, then one is left with a subjectivism that means the end of any meaningful ethical discourse. Right and wrong become matters of personal taste and preference, like questions about whether one likes Pepsi or Coke. In such a world morality is an anachronism and the idea that there are moral "falsehoods" and that moral "values should be questioned" is absurd. It would be like questioning someone's preference for Coke over Pepsi or saying that their preference for Coke is "false."

RLC

A Decent Interval

While the casualties at Virginia Tech were still being ambulanced to the hospitals The Nation's John Nichols was fulminating about how the NRA would despicably seek to spin and exploit this tragedy:

Do not doubt that the National Rifle Association is preparing its "this-had-nothing-to-do-with-guns" press release. The group has no compunctions about living up to its reputation for being beyond shame -- or education -- when it comes to peddling its spin on days when it would be better to simply remain silent. But the NRA will not be alone in responding in a self-serving manner.

Nichols then spent the rest of his article doing himself exactly what he predicted the low-lifes at the NRA would be doing - peddling his own spin in a self-serving manner on a day when it would be better to remain silent. Evidently people like Nichols see nothing wrong with criticizing others who might engage in the same behavior he does engage in.

He succeeds, in other words, in making himself look shameless and ridiculous both at once. Kudos.

RLC

The Paley Watchmaker

Are you tired of people like us always trying to throw cold water on Darwinian explanations of the origin of life? Are you weary of anti-Darwinians always quoting British astronomer and atheist Fred Hoyle as acknowledging that the chances of blind, mechanical forces producing a living cell are about the same as a tornado sweeping through a junkyard and leaving in its wake a fully assembled, fully functional 747 jet airplane? Do you warm to anti-theistic philosopher Daniel Dennett's description of those who accept the Darwinian paradigm and reject theism as "Brites"?

If so, then this site, called The BRITES (Biological Research Institute for Theoretical Evolutionary Studies), is for you.

If you visit you might note that the Brites have come up with a machine that simulates the origin of life through purely natural processes and it should shut up for good those, like us, who doubt that unguided physical mechanisms could have ever produced a living cell.

Here's a picture of their machine:

You just add the parts of the watch, shake vigorously, and, after enough time has passed for the laws of nature to work their magic, a watch is assembled and ticking. It's scientific.

RLC

What a Guy

This is a voice mail of actor Alec Baldwin talking to his eleven year old daughter on the phone. This is the same Alec Baldwin who once suggested on Conan O'Brien's show that the audience ought all go down to Washington, find conservative congressman Henry Hyde and stone him to death, him and his whole family (Go here and scroll down to watch his rant and the audience's howls of approval).

Alec Baldwin has often expressed his contempt for George Bush. Sometimes the quality of a man is measured by the kind of people who hate him. If so, I'm sure George Bush would prefer to be hated by Alec Baldwin than liked by him.

Listen to what he says to his child and ask yourself who the real pig is.

RLC

Who's the Sickest?

Here's more anecdotal evidence that we in the West are losing our humanity just as the throngs of people laughing and hooting for blood in the Roman Coliseum lost their's. If you read this put yourself in the position of a family member of, say, Daniel Pearl or any of the other victims of terrorist barbarism, and ask how it makes you feel that this guy thinks it's a joke:

One of Britain's best known authors has been shortlisted for a national writing prize for a story that takes a blackly comic approach to the execution of hostages in Iraq.

Weddings and Beheadings by Hanif Kureishi - writer of My Beautiful Laundrette and The Buddha of Suburbia - tells the story of a jobbing cameraman in Baghdad who films executions to earn a living and jokes about it as a way to cope.

The author had the idea for the work, shortlisted for the National Short Story Prize, after seeing grainy video footage on the television news of the scenes leading up to beheadings. This led to him imagining the life of the man behind the camera.

"The idea started with a joke," said Kureishi, 52. "I thought, what if you were a cameraman, having to do these kind of jobs and you had a business card that said 'Weddings and Beheadings'? I thought it was hilarious and told my children about it, but they just stared at me blankly."

He added: "Seeing the footage, I started to think what about that wobbly camera - what is the story of that bloke trembling behind the camera? You're only going to get one take, you know, would be the line."

Kureishi denied his story was disrespectful to victims and their families. "Very black comedy can be a way to look at these things," he said. "We have to have some way of looking at awful things in the world."

The winner of the short story prize, which is worth �15,000, will be announced on April 23. "You can't write anything these days without getting a prize," quipped Kureishi. "Can you imagine, �15,000 for a short story? They're usually published for �75 or �200."

The characters develop black humour partly as a way to cope with the horror of their work. In one scene, the cameraman jokes to a friend: "Don't bury your head in the sand, my friend. Don't go losing your head now, chin up".

It's hard to decide who's the sickest in this story - the savages who perpetrate these crimes, Kureishi for trying to make someone's horrible murder into a comedy, or the people who award prizes for this kind of depravity.

HT: Michelle Malkin

RLC

Hoping For Defeat?

Sen. Harry Reid is a confused man, at least if what he said yesterday is any indication:

The war in Iraq "is lost" and a US troop surge is failing to bring peace to the country, the leader of the Democratic majority in the US Congress, Harry Reid, said Thursday.

"I believe ... that this war is lost, and this surge is not accomplishing anything, as is shown by the extreme violence in Iraq this week," Reid told journalists.

Reid said he had delivered the same message to US President George W. Bush on Wednesday, when the US president met with senior lawmakers to discuss how to end a standoff over an emergency war funding bill.

"I know I was the odd guy out at the White House, but I told him at least what he needed to hear ... I believe the war at this stage can only be won diplomatically, politically and economically."

If the war is lost how can it be won "diplomatically, politically and economically"? But let's not quibble over logic. Here's another question: Who in Washington ever said that the war could be won by military tactics alone? What the good Senator apparently doesn't understand is the difference between necessary and sufficient conditions. Military force is a necessary condition for success in Iraq, but it's not sufficient, and no one, Senator Reid's epiphany notwithstanding, ever said that it was.

We'd also like to know how he knows that the surge, which is only 60% complete, isn't working. Of course there's been a lot more mayhem in the last week but one week is no measure of long-term success in war any more than it is in baseball.

I'm afraid that what Senator Reid is doing with his defeatism is projecting his hopes onto the reality in Iraq. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I can't help thinking that Reid is so heavily invested in our failure that the last thing he wants to see or encourage is success. Victory in Iraq would mean that Democrats would be banished to political outer-darkness in '08. Bush would win the praise of history, the Republicans would win back Congress as well as the White House, and the anti-war Democrats would be viewed by historians as the biggest bunch of losers since Neville Chamberlain and his cronies.

Does Reid, or any prominent Democrat besides Joe Leiberman, really hope for an outcome to the war that entails the euthanasia of his party and quite likely his career? Maybe, but I doubt it.

RLC

Rapper Ethics

Rapper Cam'ron says there's no situation -- including a serial killer living next door -- that would cause him to help police in any way, because to do so would hurt his music sales and violate his "code of ethics."

It's good to know that rappers indeed adhere to a code of ethics, but I must admit to having been a little surprised that Mr. Cam'ron thought it ethical to withhold from the authorities information on the whereabouts of a serial murderer.

Different strokes for different folks in our relativistic age, I suppose.

Speaking of different strokes, rappers and ethics, here's another paragon of virtue from the rap world, a gentleman by the name of Akon, demonstrating his code of ethics. Be cautioned that it's pretty much X-rated. So are the lyrics posted at the site.

How long will our culture treat these people as though they were worthy of our admiration?

RLC

What're You Reading ?

John Mark Reynolds was asked on the Hugh Hewitt show to name thirty books every college student should read. He names the bible first and then offers this list.

Iliad, Odyssey, History of the Peloponnesian War, Ethics (Aristotle), Metaphysics (Aristotle), Meno, Republic, Timaeus, Oedipus Rex, Bacchae, Orestia, On Friendship and On Duties (Cicero), Aeneid, Meditations, History of the Church (Eusebius), Confessions, City of God, Histories (Tacitus), Consolation of Philosophy, Summa Theologica (selections!), Divine Comedy, Canterbury Tales, The Prince, The Institutes (selections from Calvin), Shakespeare (Hamlet, Lear, As You Like It, Henry V, Julius Caesar), Faerie Queen (at least Book I), Leviathan, Second Treatise on Government, Pensees.

I wonder how many students graduate from college having read even half of these.

Reynolds goes on to identify ten novels everyone should read on their own and ten works American students should read. He lost me a little bit here because I don't understand what Marx, Darwin, Nietszche, Freud and Sartre have to do with American students in particular. Anyway, it's a good list and it's hard to quibble with his recommendations (Except I would definitely include the unabridged Les Miserables by Victor Hugo in his list of important novels).

If you're a college student you might want to ask yourself how your reading measures up.

Joe Carter at Evangelical Outpost makes some interesting additions.

RLC

Newsweek Poll

Newsweek has recently released poll results which may be of interest to some of our readers:

A belief in God and an identification with an organized religion are widespread throughout the country, according to the survey.

Nine in 10 (91 percent) of American adults say they believe in God and almost as many (87 percent) say they identify with a specific religion.

Christians far outnumber members of any other faith in the country, with 82 percent of the poll's respondents identifying themselves as such. Another 5 percent say they follow a non-Christian faith, such as Judaism or Islam.

This is intriguing but I wonder what the breakdown is between nominal Christians and those who take their faith seriously. It seems doubtful that 82% of the country is committed to living out the mandates of the Gospel to love God with all our heart, soul and mind and to love our neighbor as we love ourselves.

In any event, the following statistics were stunning:

Nearly half (48 percent) of the public rejects the scientific theory of evolution; one-third (34 percent) of college graduates say they accept the Biblical account of creation as fact. Seventy-three percent of Evangelical Protestants say they believe that God created humans in their present form within the last 10,000 years; 39 percent of non-Evangelical Protestants and 41 percent of Catholics agree with that view.

In other words, even among college graduates belief in what is called Young Earth Creationism is held by substantial numbers of people.

This must drive the Darwin boosters at the National Center for Science Education batty. After seventy five years of almost exclusive inculcation of evolution into students in American public schools a third of college grads still believe in that form of special creation most derided by Darwinians.

It would be interesting to see, were the question properly put, how many college-educated respondents would say that they accept some form of intelligent design, or even old-earth creationism.

There's more to this poll at the link.

RLC

Visiting Fathers

This essay by Joe Carter is must-reading for men, especially fathers. I wanted to save it for Father's Day, but it's too good and too important to hold onto.

Not everyone will agree with him, but he makes an important point nonetheless, and he makes it powerfully - children need fathers. Read the comments at the end. Also, the book he mentions by David Blankenhorn is excellent.

RLC

Partial-Birth Abortion

Late in pregnancy the baby's body is removed from the mother except for its head. Scissors are then inserted into the base of the skull, killing the child. The brains are then vacuumed out, the head is crushed, and removed from the mother.

This is called dilation and extraction or partial-birth abortion.

Most people, if they understood the details, would call it infanticide, but it had been legal until 2003 when President Bush signed legislation that banned it. Challenges to the law wound their way through the courts until finally yesterday the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the law prohibiting this barbaric practice was constitutional.

How did the major candidates for President respond? All of the Republican candidates - McCain, Giuliani and Romney - praised the decision. All of the Democrats deplored it. Senator Clinton saw it as an erosion of our constitutional rights. Senator Obama said that he strongly disagreed with the Court's ruling. John Edwards said he could not disagree more strongly and that "This hard right turn [!] is a stark reminder of why Democrats cannot afford to lose the 2008 election. Too much is at stake - starting with, as the Court made all too clear today, a woman's right to choose."

Indeed. In the last year from which statistics are available, 2000, there were 2200 of these gruesome procedures. Edwards is telling us that if a Democrat is elected president in '08 the next Supreme Court justice to be nominated will be one who thinks partial-birth abortion is just fine. Perhaps this is why some people are saying that the Democrats have embraced the culture of death.

This is also why elections matter and why it matters whether Republicans or Democrats control the levers of power. Both of George Bush's Supreme Court appointees voted to uphold the law banning this procedure but now that the Democrats control the judiciary committee there's very little chance that a like-minded justice will be appointed to fill the next opening.

RLC