Truth Matters

Many of us grew up thinking that truthfulness was the highest of human virtues. Dishonesty was seen as a contemptible character trait and the liar was among the worst sort of people. To tell a lie as a child, especially to one's parents, was the source of considerable guilt. Without honesty and integrity, we believed, none of the other virtues could flourish, trust would diminish, character would become obsolete and society would unravel.

Unfortunately, this is pretty much what has happened. It's no longer the case that truth holds an exalted place in the catalogue of virtues. For many, especially among secular progressives, truth has been stripped of its status as an objective good in itself, and reduced to a pragmatic function, a tool to be employed in the service of promoting higher goods. Truth, in our post-modern world, is now seen as whatever works to advance whatever goal or project to which one aspires.

The change has had seriously deleterious, even tragic, consequences in our personal and corporate life. It has also had a terribly corrosive effect on our political life. Politicians, for some of whom power is the highest good because without it none of the lesser goods are possible, can lie about themselves and other people, and the lie, like base metal transmuted to gold, is transformed into something "true" and virtuous by the fact that it helps the liar succeed in acquiring the power, influence, and success he needs to promote his agenda.

Politicians all along the ideological spectrum lie, of course, but conservatives still generally believe that lying is a moral wrong. Liberals, particularly secular liberals, are less likely to feel bound by traditional moral assumptions, and thus more likely to distort and misrepresent the truth than are conservatives. Thus our recent politics is befouled by unseemly allegations which are at best irresponsible and at worst exceedingly harmful:

1. George Bush is labelled a liar for telling us there were WMD in Iraq when there apparently weren't. This charge was itself false because it was clear to anyone who looked at the matter that the intelligence services of the whole world thought Saddam had WMD. So did most Democratic senators. Bush may have been mistaken, but a mistake is not a lie.

2. Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh have had their reputations smeared by allegations of racism (O'Reilly) and insulting the troops (Limbaugh). Their accusers, including senators on the floor of the Senate, allege them to have said things the transcripts and witnesses affirm they clearly did not say. Nevertheless, the accusers have not relented or withdrawn their charges.

3. Senator Clinton insinuates that General Petraeus is dishonorable because his testimony doesn't conform to what she and others in the Senate expected to hear. MoveOn.org, without offering a shred of evidence, accuses the General of betraying his country in a full page New York Times ad which the Times originally gave them at a fraction of the going rate for ad space. Neither MoveOn or the Times has apologized.

4. Opponents of SCHIP are accused of not caring about the poor or the elderly because they do not wish to see health care be taken over by the government. Bush is accused of heartlessly cutting the program when in fact he wants to expand it but not as much as its proponents want.

5. False or misleading statistics are used to color the debate on everything from racial discrimination to the number of homeless, the severity of the threat of HIV, the prevalence of rape on college campus, the number of uninsured people in the U.S., and much else.

Lies and deception are an acid eating away at the fabric of our society. When our politicians lie to us and we lie to each other it dissolves trust and spawns suspicion. A society which has lost the ability to trust its leaders and to trust each other is a society doomed to disintegrate. John Adams wrote that our form of government was designed for a moral people and cannot survive under any other.

Progressives don't disagree with Adams, necessarily, but many of them simply don't think that lying about people or promoting falsehoods is really immoral as long as the cause is in their eyes just. Since the most just cause for them is the promotion of the liberal agenda, whatever works to advance that agenda is by definition good, even if they know, or should know, that it's not true.

RLC

Peace Prize

A blog called The Daily Gut speaks for many (including us) in presenting the case for who should have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize yesterday:

The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded this morning, and I'd like to congratulate Irena Sendler. Sendler was a former history teacher who rescued 2,500 children during the Holocaust and was a top contender for the wondrous prize. Back during the early 1940's, Sendler was a Catholic social worker who had gone into the Warsaw ghetto to rescue Jewish kids who were destined either to starve there, or die in death camps. She would sneak the kids past Nazi guards, sometimes hiding them in body bags, or would provide them with false documents - inevitably getting them to Polish families for adoption, or hiding them in convents or orphanages. She also made a list of the children's real names, put them in a jar and buried them, so that some day she could dig them up and find the kids to tell them their true names. The Nazis captured her and beat the crap out of her, but she later escaped, and she went into hiding. She's now in her late 90's , living in a nursing home in Poland.

I want to congratulate her, because she didn't win the Nobel Peace Prize. Instead it went to Al Gore, the guy who invented the Internet. Go figure.

Actually, it's not all that hard to figure. The Nobel committee swoons over liberal nominees who hold all the "correct" views and who also hold celebrity status. The Goracle is all of those and more. There's no way he wasn't going to receive the prize despite the fact that Ms Sendler displayed personal courage that Mr. Gore has never had to exhibit and has saved more lives and done more good for humanity than has Mr. Gore. Ms Sendler is now a feeble old woman and Mr. Gore is a famous member of the glitterati. Ms Sendler is yesterday and Mr. Gore is the future. Ms Sendler risked her life to save lives but Mr. Gore risks nothing to make millions lecturing a fawning world about global warming.

The Nobel Peace Prize is a joke.

HT: Hot Air

RLC

Dim Prospects for Social Conservatives

First Things has a series of fine essays by Nat Hentoff, John DiIulio, and Joseph Bottom on the current crop of presidential candidates.

Hentoff is the rarest of political commentators, a staunch pro-life atheist leftist. Every paragraph of his portion of the article is a gem. For example:

I wish - although I know it is not going to happen - that at least one contender for the presidency would repeat what Cardinal O'Connor asked at the Harvard Law School (not a friendly audience for him but a challenge he enjoyed) in April 1986: "How safe will the retarded be, the handicapped, the aged, the wheel-chaired, the incurably ill when the so-called quality of life becomes the determination of who is to live and who is to die? Who is to determine which life is 'meaningful,' which life is not? Who is to have a right to the world's resources, to food, housing, to medical care? The prospects are frightening."

Hentoff thinks Hillary would be a disaster for the pro-life cause, but DiIulio argues that, from the standpoint of meeting our obligation to help the poor, Hillary Clinton and Mike Huckabee are the best candidates in their respective parties.

Bottum dejectedly observes that we should "be honest and admit what we all know: The weakest set of candidates in living memory has taken the field, and we still have more than a year left of watching these people, lumbering and blumbering toward the goal line." He goes on to make a strangely contradictory claim. He argues that Hillary has a lock on the nomination but will almost certainly lose to any candidate the Republicans put against her except Ron Paul. But oddly Bottum then goes on to express doubt that Guiliani would beat her.

He makes an excellent point, though, about what Americans have to look forward to should a Republican win the presidency and the Democrats pick up more seats in the Senate:

Nonstop congressional investigations of everything the president does, rejections of Cabinet members and Supreme Court justices, the Democrats freed of responsibility for actually prosecuting foreign policy - all pushed by a netroots base of leftist activists convinced that, once again, the presidential election had been stolen from them. No wonder some conservatives seem to think it would be better to go ahead and elect Hillary Clinton.

Bottum concludes that 2008 looks grim for social conservatives:

A Fred Thompson nomination, a slim election victory over Hillary �Clinton, a stealth pro-lifer slipped on the Supreme Court through a Democratic Senate - that weak �scenario is about the best a social conservative can hope for today. Everything else is bad. Very bad.

In my opinion this is much too pessimistic. The right man in office can still prosecute the war on terror, enforce existing immigration laws, keep spending and taxes down, and appoint at least two good justices to the Supreme Court. This last may be difficult, but depending on who the President is, it may not be impossible.

The country may be Slouching Toward Gomorrah, to employ the title of Robert Bork's famous book, but the right man in the White House, though he may not be able to turn things around without a sympathetic Congress, can at least keep us from falling completely over until the American people, perchance, come to their senses.

RLC

Hubris and Stupidity

For sheer hubris and stupidity it may be hard to beat the letter from some prominent Muslim scholars in which they warn that the "survival of the world" is at stake if Muslims and Christians do not make peace with each other. This claim is true enough, of course, but then they go on to say that:

"As Muslims, we say to Christians that we are not against them and that Islam is not against them - so long as they do not wage war against Muslims on account of their religion, oppress them and drive them out of their homes."

I see. And this, one is expected to suppose, is what those evil Christians are doing everywhere one looks - waging war against Islam, driving poor Muslims out of their homes, teaching anti-Muslim hatred in their Christian schools, etc. Meanwhile, we find no mention in the report on the scholars' letter of the Muslim endorsement of executing Muslims who convert to Christianity or of the murders by Muslims of Christian missionaries in Afghanistan, Africa and Indonesia. Nor do we find mention of the fact that where Christians live as minorities among Muslims, as in Iran and Syria, they're being systematically driven from their homes and churches. There's no mention of the fact that in virtually every conflict being fought around the world Muslims are involved, often on both sides of the bloodshed, and that the hostilities are invariably initiated by Muslims. There's no mention of the fact that virtually every act of terrorism in the last twenty years has been perpetrated by Muslims, and virtually every case of murder and persecution involving actual Christians and Muslims has been perpetrated by Muslims against Christians.

For these scholars to suggest that Christians, qua Christians, are oppressing Muslims, qua Muslims, is ludicrous. Christianity does pose a threat to Islam, however, and it is this threat that probably provides the impetus for the scholars' letter. Wherever Muslims are actually free to choose between genuine Christianity and Islam, Islam is at risk, and it is this that the mullahs and imams interpret as an attack on their faith.

What Muslim scholars should be doing, if they feel compelled to compose such letters, is urging each other and their flock, if they really want peace, to emulate Christians instead of killing them.

RLC

Vestigial Structures

Darwinians ever since Darwin have pointed to structures like the human appendix to demonstrate that our bodies were once different from what they are today. The tailbone is a vestige of the tail that humans once possessed, we're told. Hip bones in whales are vestiges of legs possessed by the whale's ancestors which walked on land. And the appendix too, was believed to be a functionless appendage left over from some previous stage in our evolution.

Over time functions were found for many of these "vestigial structures" and they were quietly dropped from the textbooks. Now it looks like it has been shown that the appendix, too, has a function in the body, and must be added to the ranks of former vestiges which are no longer vestigial.

Maybe I'm wrong about this, but it seems that every new scientific discovery that bears somehow upon the controversy between intelligent design and Darwinian materialism either supports the ID position or counts against the materialist position. It's hard to think of any discovery of the last twenty years or so that actually supports the materialists.

But I might be uninformed. If anyone can think of a counter-example please pass it along.

RLC

The Israeli Raid

The plot line concerning the Israeli raid in Syria continues to gradually unfold. DEBKAfile has the latest.

RLC

The Aftermath of Withdrawal

Attempts by Democrats in Congress and the Left in general to force a withdrawal from Iraq seem to have subsided since General Petraeus gave his report to Congress last month. Unfortunately, some Democrats' reasons for not pursuing withdrawal are based more on political considerations than on a prudent regard for the potentially horrendous consequences of our leaving before Iraq is sufficiently stable to fend for itself. Nevertheless, it's good, in my opinion, that demands for an American retreat have faded. Here's why:

Let's think about what we can reasonably expect to happen if we withdraw our combat forces from Iraq. I'm not claiming that any of these consequences are certain to occur, but they are all plausible and they are all much more likely to happen if we pull out than if we stay:

1. Al Qaeda will move into Iraq in force and slaughter everyone they can find who cooperated with the U.S. They were slaughtering them before the surge, there's no reason to think that if we leave they'd suddenly have a change of heart. The victims would include government officials, police, military, trible leaders, professionals, etc. and the families of these people. Even if these amount to only 1% of the Iraqi population that would still be 250,000 people.

2. Shia militias and extremists like Muqtada al-Sadr will seek to settle old scores with the Sunni, especially the Baathists. In this they may be joined by the Kurds. The Sunnis will either flee the country or be murdered and have their property confiscated. This is a huge fear among the Sunni today and for many of them their only hope is that we stay to prevent this from happening.

3. It's very likely that there will be civil war over the oil fields.

4. It's very likely that Iran will see our withdrawal as an opportunity to seize the southern part of Iraq under the pretext of helping their fellow Shia.

5. It's likely that either Iran or Turkey, or both, would go to war with the Kurds in the north.

6. It's also likely that other Sunni Arab states would be pressured to come to the aid of their fellow Sunnis, thus intensifying the conflict and making Iraq an abattoir of war and death.

7. Because Iraq would become a battleground for both indigenous fighters and foreign forces the land would be thrown into chaos. The average Iraqi would find himself without food, medical care, and probably water, oil, and electricity. Education would shut down and Iraq's bustling economy would become a shambles. Starvation and disease would claim thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of lives, mostly children. War and retribution would claim thousands more. The total number of dead could easily top a million people.

8. It's also likely that, once we withdraw, the U.S. would be psychologically, logistically, and economically unable to go back into the Middle East to stop any of this. We would no more be able to go back into Iraq than we could have gone back into Vietnam or Cambodia.

9. Moreover, the Arab nations would sense that our withdrawal would be impossible to reverse, and see it as an opportunity to step up attacks on Israel without having to fear that we would wade back into the region to help. They would still have to fear our air force and navy, perhaps, but if they sense that our leaders in Washington have lost the will to use force they would be more likely to risk war with Israel if they think they could succeed in crippling or destroying them. Even if they are wrong about American willingness to come to the aid of Israel their misjudgment would still be catastrophic if it leads them to war with the Israelis.

10. Iran would see our withdrawal as a green light to continue developing nuclear weapons and the rest of the Middle East would be forced to do likewise to protect themselves from Iranian nuclear hegemony. Any war against Israel would be much more likely to involve nuclear weapons.

11. North Korea and China would both see us as unwilling to keep our commitments to our allies. The North Koreans might be emboldened by our lack of resolve to restart their nuclear program and threaten South Korea, and China would probably feel safe in initiating their long promised war to retake Taiwan. And who knows what effect our withdrawal would have in Moscow and Europe.

There are no certainties, of course, but the chances are good that our withdrawal would be a total disaster for the Middle East and the world.

It's hard to deny that at least some of what is forecast here would follow upon an American withdrawal from Iraq. More importantly, we can be assured that the chances of any or all of these horrors happening are far greater if we leave Iraq than if we stay. That alone, in my view, obligates us to continue our efforts to eliminate the terrorists, put down the insurgency, and help build the country. Contrary to what war critics allege, the stablity of the world depends upon the U.S. finishing the job in Iraq.

Opponents of our presence in Iraq don't usually try to deny that the awful events listed above are more likely to occur if we retreat. They simply argue that we've done enough, whether good or bad, and that we should pull out regardless of the consequences, and let the chips fall where they may. If we followed this policy, though, and a catastrophic bloodbath did ensue, our retreat would be seen by history as one of the most disgraceful moral blunders in the history of our nation.

RLC

For the Children (Partly)

Proponents of expanding SCHIP (States Children's Health Insurance Program) would have us believe that children are being hurt by the President's decision to veto the bill, but apparently taxpayers pay for more under SCHIP than just coverage for children.

According to a press release from Republicans serving on the House Energy and Commerce Committee 13 states will spend more than 44 percent of their SCHIP funds in 2008 on people who are neither children nor pregnant women.

Michigan tops the list with 71.6 percent of its SCHIP money earmarked for adults who have no kids. In New Mexico, 52.3 percent of the state's SCHIP dollars will be spent on childless adults.

It'd be helpful if the proponents of the program were up-front with us about who, exactly, the taxpayers are buying insurance coverage for under this program.

HT: Michelle

Who Huck Is

The New Republic has a good piece on Mike Huckabee. The reader gets helpful insight into who Huckabee is and what sort of principles he holds. There are some things about him which some people will find difficult to accept, of course. He has a history, for example, of wanting to raise taxes, a fact most fiscal conservatives will find hard to overlook. He also supported, as governor of Arkansas, giving college scholarships to children of illegal aliens, an unfortunate blemish which will also raise some red flags about how serious he'd be on stopping illegal immigration.

Nevertheless, there is also much about him to like. He is generally conservative on social issues and perhaps most importantly, seems like a genuinely good man. Read the article and see what you think.

RLC

Strange Column

Tony Judt starts out sensibly in a New York Times editorial explaining why a number of liberals supported the war in Iraq, but as he gathers steam he proceeds to run himself right off the rails.

Consider the following puzzling paragraph:

Those of us who pressed for American-led military action in Bosnia and Kosovo did so for several reasons: because of the refusal of others (the European Union and United Nations) to engage effectively; because there was a demonstrable and immediate threat to rights and lives; and because it was clear we could be effective in this way and in no other. None of these considerations applied in Iraq, which is why I and many others opposed the war.

This is very strange. Mr. Judt believes that there was adequate justification for getting militarily involved in Kosova and Bosnia in the '90s but that those same justifications did not obtain in Iraq. How does he come to such an odd conclusion?

Surely he remembers that it was the failure of much of the rest of the world to do anything serious about Saddam that caused Mr. Bush to feel compelled to take action himself. Surely, he is aware of the murders and tortures which the Saddam regime was engaged in right up to the invasion. He cannot be unaware of the mass graves of tens of thousands of corpses that our troops uncovered in Iraq. Surely, too, he is aware of the twelve year diplomatic process the U.S. pushed in the U.N. that resulted in resolution after resolution, each one of which was used by Saddam merely to light his cigars.

It seems that Mr. Judt is either living in a state of self-delusion or he believes that by simply asserting something as though it were fact, his readers will accept it as the truth. In any case it's hard to imagine anyone giving credence to his reasoning.

RLC

No Middle Ground

Ed Morrissey at Captain's Quarters has some pithy thoughts on the recent Israeli raid on the Syrian nuclear station, or whatever it was:

Between July and September, weeks of high-level talks took place [between the U.S. and Israel]. The Israelis wanted to destroy the facility immediately, and had some support from the American intelligence community that had managed to miss this development. However, Condoleezza Rice and others did not. They wanted to "confront" the Syrians first -- as the Jerusalem Post puts it, to scold Assad publicly for operating a nuclear facility.

Yes, I'm sure that would have been effective. Publicly scolding them over the Hariri assassination only resulted in five more car-bomb assassinations of anti-Syrian politicians in Lebanon since then. Fingerwagging has done so much to curtail their material support for Hezbollah, too.

The Israelis, who actually originated the "Bush doctrine" decades ago, appear to be the only nation still using it. They probably have concluded that they cannot rely on American will to protect them from Syria and Iran any longer, especially after this episode. The US opposed the raid up to the moment it occurred, afraid of destabilizing the region. Israel, more worried about the consequences of a nuclear Syria -- something that should worry us as well -- simply ignored Washington after weeks of argument and acted in its own self-interest.

If Morrissey is correct what he writes demonstrates the futility of trying to talk people out of doing what they're determined to do. In this case our State Department talkers no doubt told Syria that if they don't give up their plans to finish this facility they would lose it and Syria no doubt thought they could stop any attack with their new Russian air defense system (which proved totally useless). But here's the point, nothing deters these people except the credible threat of annihilation. There are things we could do short of war - sanctions, blockades, etc. - but all of these ultimately lead to war. Not Iraq under Saddam, not Syria under Assad, not Iran under the mullahs and A'Jad could be, or will be, deterred from their determination to establish radical Islamic hegemony throughout the entire Middle East and eventually the world apart from war or credible threat of war.

The tragic truth appears to be that we either accept a nuclear armed Syria and Iran or be prepared to go to war with them to prevent them from having nuclear weapons. Both options are fraught with danger and calamity, but in the end the Islamists seem determined to leave us no middle ground.

RLC

Re: Cold Case Smear

My friend Steve offers an eloquent defense of Cold Case and urges that the series not be judged on the basis of one episode that may, or may not, have wandered out of bounds. I've posted his response here and on our feedback page:

My wife and I might be the only parents in America who actually have to beg our 3-year-old son to watch tv from time to time. He really doesn't know how to watch it because it's almost never on in our house. But there is one show my wife and I have watched steadily for more than three years now: Cold Case.

I was traveling recently and missed the controversial show referenced in this blog in which some renegade Christians stone a girl to death. I'll definitely need to see that one before I comment at all on it. But as a Roman Catholic, I've always found Cold Case's portrayal of religious faith, particularly Catholicism, to be sensitive, insightful and quite compelling. My wife and I watch this show largely because of its very powerful storytelling. Its characters are complex, and the show is relentless in exploring the awful capacity for evil that humans have as well as the toughness and goodness that allows us to endure horrible things and try to right them.

Religion is of course a major part of our society, so Cold Case is bound to take on themes of faith in some episodes. When it does, the depiction of religion has frankly been overwhelmingly positive. If you watch the show consistenly as I have, you learn that the police lieutenant who serves as the boss for the show's detectives has a brother who is a Catholic priest - and he's quite proud of that. During one show, when a detective suggests that a young boy might have been murdered years before by a priest, the lieutenant snaps, "Just because he's a priest doesn't mean he's a pedophile." And by the end of the show, it turns out the priest is the good guy. In other episodes, a young girl in mortal danger from her father is left by her mother in a Catholic church that takes care of her. In another show about drug trafficking, a flawed but fearless Latin American priest stands up bravely for Latino women against savage drug dealers. There are other examples along these lines, but you get the idea: Cold Case takes religious faith very seriously.

I don't know much about the background of the show's producers and writers, but my guess is that at least some of them are religious themselves. Cold Case is rich in religious symbolism, and its stories are largely about evil, love and forgiveness. It sometimes shows us things we don't want to see or think about, but it does so artfully and memorably. Even if the show went astray a bit with its recent controversial episode - and I'll need to see it first to decide - it has a long track record of being a friend of faith. And in our modern television culture, the faithful among us need all the friends we can find.

Good points, all. So, has anyone actually seen the episode that the article our post was based upon made reference to? If so, was it as bad as the article claimed? Please share your thoughts with us.

RLC

Man-Made DNA

The Guardian has a story that sends the needle on our hype detector soaring into the red zone. According to the article Dr. Craig Venter, a DNA researcher:

"is poised to announce the creation of the first new artificial life form on Earth...The announcement, which is expected within weeks and could come as early as Monday at the annual meeting of his scientific institute in San Diego, California, will herald a giant leap forward in the development of designer genomes."

The technical achievement seems quite impressive, but it seems somewhat of a stretch to claim that Dr. Venter's lab has created a new life form. What Dr. Venter has done, and we don't minimize the achievement, is to construct a chromosome out of the raw chemical materials of DNA and insert it into a bacterium. This is a notable technical accomplishment, but it's a long way from creating a new form of life. The Guardian continues:

The wholly synthetically reconstructed chromosome ... is then transplanted into a living bacterial cell and in the final stage of the process it is expected to take control of the cell and in effect become a new life form.

It will not be a new life form. It will still be a bacterium. It may, if the synthetic chromosome can successfully integrate with the cell's biochemical machinery, have different characteristics than any bacterium that existed before, but that no more makes it a "new life form" than a new variety of roses is a new life form.

The Guardian seems to recognize that it has overstated things a bit and tries to pull back somewhat from its earlier claim:

The team of scientists has already successfully transplanted the genome of one type of bacterium into the cell of another, effectively changing the cell's species. Mr Venter said he was "100% confident" the same technique would work for the artificially created chromosome.

The new life form will depend for its ability to replicate itself and metabolise on the molecular machinery of the cell into which it has been injected, and in that sense it will not be a wholly synthetic life form. However, its DNA will be artificial, and it is the DNA that controls the cell and is credited with being the building block of life.

In other words, what Dr. Venter will be doing is a bit like inserting a new operating system into a computer. This is not the same as inventing a whole new kind of computer. It's not clear from the article that the new chromosome will even function in the cell, but if it does what Dr. Venter has done will be to have designed a program for a computer that will make the computer do things it didn't do before.

The Guardian then adds this disturbing quote from Dr. Venter:

"We are not afraid to take on things that are important just because they stimulate thinking," he said. "We are dealing in big ideas. We are trying to create a new value system for life. When dealing at this scale, you can't expect everybody to be happy."

A new value system for life? What does that mean? Aldous Huxley must be smiling.

RLC

Accutane for Marxism

Marxism, like acne, seems to be a perennial affliction of adolescents whatever might be their chronological age. So we're not surprised that a news report out of South Dakota (Okay. We're a little surprised that it's South Dakota), says that some people are concerned about the formation by high school students of a young socialists club in their high school:

A new group at Roosevelt High School discusses socialism every Thursday morning. Not everyone is comfortable with the Young Socialist Club's views, but federal law says school districts must allow all student organizations.

The Young Socialists Club at Roosevelt High School is looking for new members. Their flyer asks for students to quote "Come explore the vast realm that is socialism." But also on the flyer is a picture of Karl Marx, who is best known as a revolutionary communist. One of his famous quotes, "Workers of the World Unite," is printed boldly on the handout. But Roosevelt Principal Don Ryswyk says those references do not concern him.

He says, "At Roosevelt we have young Democrats club, we have the young Republicans club and they were asking for a young Socialists club and so I saw it as an equity issue and the students talked to me about some of the things they were going to research and I also saw it as an educational club."

I'm not sure why they felt they needed a club for young socialists if they already had a young Democrats club, but never mind. We have a suggestion for any school personnel who might be concerned about student socialists running around school quoting Marx. Hold a school-wide assembly and show the movie The Lives of Others. Certain scenes would have to be edited out for propriety's sake, but that film should serve as an effective antidote for whatever enchantments Marxist-Leninism might still hold over our idealistic young people.

It's a German film about what life was like for artists and writers in East Germany in the years prior to the fall of the Berlin wall, and it's a good vehicle for disabusing students of their fantasies of a Marxist worker's paradise. It's exceptionally well-acted and the cast's portrayal of the oppressive evil of the East German system is at once understated and riveting. Despite the depressing theme the movie has a redemptive ending that hits just the right note.

We give The Lives of Others two thumbs up. Somebody send the DVD to Principal Ryswyk.

RLC

Save Hirsi Ali

Ayaan Hirsi Ali has left the United States because she feels her life is in danger and she can not afford to hire a security detail. She tried to return to her native Netherlands, but according to this report the Netherlands' Prime Minister has told her to stay out because they don't want to pay for her protection as they did before she originally left there to come here.

It's hard to believe that this woman, a heroine in the fight against radical Islam, is going to be abandoned to the murderous psychopaths who have been threatening to kill her as soon as they have the chance. Where is President Bush on this?

If the reports are true she's in real danger, and no one who is in a position to help seems interested in doing so. Perhaps she should go to Israel where she'd be as safe from the Islamic orcs as any other citizen. Or maybe Blackwater Security ought to be made to take her on pro bono in partial retribution for their crimes in Iraq.

RLC

Guns and the Supreme Court

One of the cases the Supreme Court is likely to consider this term revolves around a Washington D.C. law that bars residents from keeping handguns in their homes. A lower court struck down the ban in March and Washington has appealed to the Supreme Court. If the justices hear the appeal, they could issue the first ruling on whether the Second Amendment right to bear arms protects individuals or only state militias.

Liberal law professor Jonathan Turley comes reluctantly to the conclusion that contrary to the arguments of his fellow liberals the Second Amendment of the Constitution does indeed protect an individual's right to own a firearm. Turley is to be commended for placing principle above personal preference. He writes:

Like many academics, I was happy to blissfully ignore the Second Amendment. It did not fit neatly into my socially liberal agenda. Yet, two related cases could now force liberals into a crisis of conscience. The Supreme Court is expected to accept review of District of Columbia v. Heller and Parker v. District of Columbia, involving constitutional challenges to the gun-control laws in Washington...

Principle is a terrible thing, because it demands not what is convenient but what is right. It is hard to read the Second Amendment and not honestly conclude that the Framers intended gun ownership to be an individual right. It is true that the amendment begins with a reference to militias: "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed." Accordingly, it is argued, this amendment protects the right of the militia to bear arms, not the individual.

Yet, if true, the Second Amendment would be effectively declared a defunct provision. The National Guard is not a true militia in the sense of the Second Amendment and, since the District and others believe governments can ban guns entirely, the Second Amendment would be read out of existence.

There's much more to his argument at the link. One thing about the objection he mentions above concerning the intent of the Framers is that even if their words seemed to limit the right to bear arms to militias, how can liberals justify placing a narrow interpretion on this amendment when they insist on placing the most expansive interpretation on the First Amendment?

Clearly, the Framers had politics and religion in mind when they conferred upon us the right to free speech, but the Supreme Court has subsequently expanded that right to cover things like pornography which there's no reason to believe the Framers wished to include. How can we justify expanding First Amendment rights to pornographers while restricting Second Amendment rights to militiamen who no longer exist?

RLC

Tough Questions for Mrs. Clinton

Dick Morris suggests a number of tough questions that journalists might ask Senator Clinton if she deigns to make herself available to them again. Here are six of them:

1) Bill Clinton refused to accept political action committee (PAC) contributions in his campaigns of 1992 and 1996. Obama and Edwards are following his example. Why aren't you?

2) After all the bad experiences you had with Johnnie Chung and Charlie Trie and their campaign donations in the 1996 election cycle, why were you not more careful in vetting the donations generated by Norman Hsu? Didn't you learn your lesson in 1996?

(As a follow-up to No. 2) After you found that you had to return almost a million dollars to the donors bundled by Hsu, you said you would be more vigilant in examining the backgrounds of donors. Why didn't you come to that conclusion before the Hsu scandal, based on your 1996 experiences?

3) Norman Hsu was no ordinary donor. He was the biggest bundler in your campaign; he gave funds to the Clinton Global Initiative and the Clinton School of Government in Arkansas and took Patti Solis Doyle, your campaign manager, and other aides on an all-expense-paid trip to Las Vegas. He also donated to Democratic Gov. Tom Vilsack of Iowa, whose campaign debt you agreed to help repay.

In view of his high profile in your campaign, why didn't you check him out more thoroughly, and what does this say about your ability to make quality appointments?

4) You base your healthcare proposal on the need to cover 47 million "uninsured Americans." Since about a third of them are illegal immigrants and another third are eligible for Medicaid right now and just don't apply for it, aren't you overstating the problem?

(As a follow-up to No. 4) In 2005 you co-sponsored legislation to provide health insurance to the children of illegal immigrants who have lived in this country for five years. In other words, their children would get subsidized healthcare under the State Children's Health Insurance Program as a reward for dodging the cops for five years. Do you still support that proposal?

5) You say that your healthcare proposal will leave alone those who are happy with their current insurance. But if you provide health benefits for close to 50 million new people, thereby generating huge new demand for medical care without any increase in the supply of doctors, nurses or hospitals, it will drive up prices radically. Won't that force you to institute cost controls by limiting the care those now on health insurance can receive?

6) In Arkansas, you achieved fame by urging mandatory testing for teachers and demanded that those who failed the competency tests be dismissed. You and your husband did this and implemented this policy. As a result, he was denied the endorsement by the Arkansas Teachers Union during his time as governor. Do you still support your proposal of 1983 and 1984 for mandatory teacher competency tests for current teachers - not just for new ones?

I'm a little dubious that anyone will actually have the temerity to ask these questions of Mrs. Clinton and even more dubious that she'd give a straightforward answer to them, but we'll see.

RLC

Beyond the Gates

A piece in the New York Observer chastises the Democrats for some shallow thinking on Iraq. Here are some excerpts:

If opinions about what to do in Iraq could be untangled from views of the Bush administration, it might be possible to have an honest debate about the consequences of a rapid American pullout.

Instead, we are treated to glib remarks even from some of the nation's foremost politicians. "There is no military solution," Senator Hillary Clinton said on the night before the testimony. "That is why I believe we should start bringing our troops home."

It was a dispiriting non sequitur from a woman who is known as one of the more realistic voices in the Iraq debate. There is indeed no exclusively military solution. But that doesn't change the fact that American troops are an essential part of any attempt to get Iraq back on its feet, since they appear to be needed to provide the security that might allow political progress to gain traction.

The thinking of other leading Democrats seems to trundle along even more predictable and flawed lines. The progression seems to be: Bush is bad; Bush doesn't want withdrawal; therefore withdrawal is good.

In a Washington Post op-ed on Saturday, presidential candidate Bill Richardson exhibited an abundance of wishful thinking.

Mr. Richardson asserted that "only a complete withdrawal can ... break the deadlock that has been killing so many people for so long."

But it is not "deadlock" that has been killing people. It is gangs of heavily armed religious fanatics and assorted other thugs. To suggest that a U.S. withdrawal would lead those groups to come to some kind of amicable understanding is risible.

Those who favor an immediate American withdrawal from Iraq bridle at being described as "irresponsible." That is fair enough when Republicans throw out the term as a thinly disguised code for "cowardly" or "traitorous." But at a much more fundamental level, the U.S. does indeed have responsibilities toward Iraq. They do not just begin and end with Colin Powell's famous injunction that "you break it, you own it."

The U.S. sought to create a new, free Iraq. Millions of Iraqis joined with it in that project, at mortal risk to themselves. They were badly let down by America's blunderings and botches. But to abandon them too hastily, too selfishly or too thoughtlessly would be the greatest betrayal of all.

Reading this column I was reminded of the movie Beyond the Gates which tells a story based upon the tragedy of the Rwandan genocide of 1994. Thousands of helpless Tutsis had taken shelter from the murderous Hutus in a school occupied by U.N. troops. Hundreds of Hutus massed outside the gates of the school shouting threats and waving their blood-soaked machetes in the air night and day. At length the troops are ordered to withdraw, and the orc-like Hutus close in on the defenseless Tutsis, butchering 2500 of them.

I doubt anyone could watch this movie without feeling total anger and outrage at how these people were abandoned by the West and left to be slaughtered by the Hutus. If anyone doubts the complete fecklessness and uselessness of the U.N. they should watch this movie, but if they do, they need also to see it as a metaphor for Iraq. The left is insisting we do in Iraq the very same thing the U.N. did in Rwanda. The U.N. troops were caught in a civil war of extermination. They could have saved thousands of lives by staying and protecting the Tutsis but they chose to get out of the way, just as the Last Helicopter crowd is urging that the U.S. do in Iraq.

I invite anyone who believes we should pull out - John Murtha, Nancy Pelosi, Ted Kennedy, Harry Reid, John Kerry, Russ Feingold, Dick Durbin, Bob Casey, Chris Dodd, Barbara Boxer and the twenty or so other Democratic senators who demand a pullout - to watch this movie and then at the end - while the U.N. is wheeling their vehicles out of the school grounds, and the desperate children are lying in their path to stop them, and the Hutus are dancing with glee in anticipation of their imminent butchery - say that the U.N. was doing the right thing by getting out of the way.

If they can't say that about the U.N. in Rwanda how can they say we should retreat from Iraq where the consequences of our withdrawal would be probably at least as horrific as what happened in Rwanda? And if they can support the U.N.'s actions then I don't want to ever again hear any of these people talk about how they care about people. I think it would make me sick.

Rent the movie. It cuts through all the arguments and abstractions about Iraq, even though Iraq, of course, is never mentioned, and shows us vividly exactly what the likely fate of Iraqis would be as soon as we leave them to the savages whose chief delight is the butchering of innocents.

RLC

Wallis on the SCHIP Veto

There is much not to like in Jim Wallis' characterization of President Bush's veto of the SCHIP (State Children Health Insurance Program) bill. Here's what Wallis says:

"To veto the bill, with no alternative plan instead - to simply abandon millions of poor children, to leave them to a market system that is failing to provide health care to enough people - is simply morally unacceptable. We must not allow this to become an ideological battle over the larger issue of health care systems. This is about a specific program for poor children that a bipartisan majority believes is working. This is not about health care theories - this is about children. And now, overriding a presidential veto will become the next faith-based issue."

Wallis makes it sound as if there is no alternative to the bill the President vetoed, but this is misleading. There is an alternative plan. The previous plan which has been in effect for ten years is perfectly acceptable to the President who even favors increasing the funding for it. It's the expansion of that plan that the President has vetoed.

He also characterizes the children affected by the veto as poor, but poor children are covered by Medicaid. The affected children live in families with incomes between $40,000 and $60,000, which makes them middle class.

Many of the children who are uncovered lack coverage because their families choose not to buy it. Many of the affected children are in families headed by unwed mothers. Why the taxpayer should subsidize the production of children out of wedlock Wallis doesn't explain, but he obviously thinks we should, even when the family is living above the poverty line.

Wallis alleges that the President vetoed a program that has been working. He did not. He vetoed an expansion of that program. Wallis also insists that these are all children who will be affected by the veto, but that, too, is misleading. In its final form the expanded program would cover people up to the age of 21.

There's no reason why Congress and the White House couldn't compromise on some of the more egregious provisions in this bill, but the Dems won't be in a hurry to do so. They'll find it much more satisfying to join Wallis in misrepresenting the President's position and hammering him for trying to keep the country from slipping into government subsidized health care for everyone. If he wants to point us to something that's "morally unacceptable" maybe he could start with that.

RLC

Cold Case Smear

Our entertainment media continues its seeming efforts to see who in the industry can come up with the most bizarre distortion of Christianity to bring before the public. The latest entry in the contest, apparently, is an episode of Cold Case that portrays devout young people in an abstinence organization as a bunch of judgmental hypocrites (what else) who actually stone a girl to death while reciting Scripture and whose youth pastor is a pervert.

Sounds like any Christian youth group one might encounter at the church down the street, doesn't it?

Read the storyline as described by Colleen Raezler of the Culture and Media Institute here. If Raezler's account is accurate this episode of Cold Case tells us a lot more about the fantasies of the people who produced it than it does about the lives of Christian kids.

Maybe the people behind the show had good intentions. Perhaps they thought their ludicrous portrayal of Christianity might entice some kids who'd never otherwise darken the door of a church to think that, hey, if that's what's going on in Sunday School, they want to at least check it out.

Just kidding.

RLC

Mutually Exclusive

Alvin Plantinga lays out his famous and important argument that, contrary to what most people would think, naturalism (the belief that nature is all there is) is actually incompatible with evolution. Unfortunately, the argument may be a little hard to follow for philosophical novices, so here's a quick and doubtless inadequate summary:

If our cognitive faculties (our reason) are the product of evolution then they have arisen because they confer fitness upon us in the struggle for survival.

However, survival advantage is irrelevant to the pursuit of truth. To see this, imagine there's a genetic propensity in some people to believe that one's reward in the afterlife is directly proportional to the number of offspring one has. Such a belief would have very high selection value since those who held the belief would tend to produce more offspring than those who didn't, but the belief has nothing to do with the truth. Thus our cognitive faculties would over time tend to produce beliefs which promote survival but which have only a coincidental relation to the truth.

Thus we would have no good reason, given the evolution of our cognitive faculties, to think any of the beliefs produced by those faculties, particularly our metaphysical beliefs, to be true. But naturalism is a metaphysical belief produced by our cognitive faculties. Therefore, if evolution is true we have no good reason to believe that naturalism is true. They're mutually exclusive.

Indeed, Plantinga argues that the probability of naturalism being true is either low or unknowable (inscrutable) and therefore we lack epistemic justification for believing it.

Those intrepid enough to wade through the entire argument will find it, and a criticism of it, at the link.

RLC

Nature/Nurture

Is intelligence a function of one's environment or of the genes one has inherited from one's ancestors? Thomas Sowell weighs in on the debate to tell us that there's research out there that suggests an answer may be forthcoming to this traditionally uncrackable nut.

RLC

Attack on Iran Imminent

This story carried by DEBKAfile may have serious implications for the near future in Iran:

The Khorramshar News Agency, which is published by the ethnic Arab underground of Iran's oil-rich Khuzestan, reported early Oct. 1 that the entire staff of Russian nuclear engineers and experts employed in building the nuclear reactor at Bushehr had abruptly packed their bags Friday, Sept. 28, and flew back to Russia. The agency's one-liner offers no source or explanation. DEBKAfile have obtained no corroboration of its report from any other source.

The story appears to have originated with the ethnic Arabs who live near the reactor or who come in contact with its Russian staff. If true, DEBKAfile can offer three hypothetical scenarios to account for the Russians' precipitate departure:

1. Another crisis has cropped up in the patchy Russian-Iranian dealings over the Bushehr reactor. This is unlikely because Russian president Vladimar Putin is due for a high-profile visit to Tehran on Oct. 16, when he plans to sign a series of nuclear accords with the Islamic Republic. Furthermore, Moscow, like Beijing, stands foursquare behind Iran's efforts to delay harsher sanctions for its continued uranium enrichment. Only this week, the two powers gained Iran two to three months' grace by forcing a delay in the UN Security Council session that was to have approved a third round of sanctions.

2. Moscow or Tehran has been tipped off that a US or Israeli attack is imminent on the Bushehr plant and Iran's other nuclear installations and acted to whip Russian personnel out of harm's way.

3. Moscow has learned that an Iranian pre-emptive attack is imminent against American targets in Iraq and the Persian Gulf and/or Israel.

If the story is true the most likely explanation is number two. The second most likely is number three although I don't see it as being very likely at all. In any case, either two or three suggest that an attack on Iran is imminent.

RLC

Blog Burnout

Christianity Today has a short but interesting article on blogs. It starts with this:

As weblogs proliferated earlier this decade, Andy Warhol's famous aphorism was modified to read, "In the future, everyone will be famous to 15 people." Now it looks like Warhol was right after all: Thanks to widespread blog burnout, everyone will be famous to 15 people for 15 minutes.

Tech researcher Gartner Inc. reported earlier this year that 200 million people have given up blogging, more than twice as many as are active.

"A lot of people have been in and out of this thing," Gartner analyst Daryl Plummer told reporters. "Everyone thinks they have something to say, until they're put on stage and asked to say it." Given the average lifespan of a blogger and the current growth rate of blogs, Gartner says blogging has probably peaked.

Which isn't to say that blogging is dead. Quite the opposite. Blog aggregator Technorati estimates that 3 million new blogs are launched every month. The site's tongue-in-cheek slogan: "Zillions of photos, videos, blogs, and more. Some of them have to be good."

Actually, some Christian blogs are very good. What tired bloggers are increasingly discovering, however, is that it's not necessarily the quality of their blog posts that matter. It's matching their quality with frequency.

Well, maybe, but I think a bigger problem is exposure. With so many blogs out there it really is hard to get noticed, and it's difficult to work hard at producing either quality or frequency when the feeling that you're just writing for yourself is creeping all over you.

Nevertheless, we here at Viewpoint keep plugging away, hoping that if you see something that interests you you'll link us to friends and that perhaps by word of mouth, so to speak, we'll gradually grow. Meanwhile, we continue to strive to bring you both quality and frequency. Thanks for reading us and telling others about us.

RLC

Seventeen Questions for Barack

George Will poses 17 questions for Barack Obama and in the process gives the reader the disconcerting impression that the Senator really hasn't thought through the things he says in public. Here are a few of the 17:

You advocate leaving in Iraq "some" U.S. forces for three missions -- fighting al Qaeda, training Iraqi security forces and protecting U.S. forces conducting those two missions. Some experts believe that even 60,000 U.S, troops would be insufficient for those functions -- even if the Iraqis were not, as they will be for the foreseeable future, dependent on U.S. logistics, transport, fire support, air support, armor and medivac capabilities.

What is your estimate of the numbers required by your policy? How, and in consultation with whom, did you arrive at your estimate? As to fighting terrorists but not insurgents -- how would soldiers and Marines tell the difference? If, while searching for terrorists, they make contact with insurgents, would your rules of engagement call for a full force response? You say all "combat brigades" should be out of Iraq "by the end of next year." Even if al-Qaeda is still dangerous? Who, after the end of next year, will protect U.S. noncombat forces that you say "will continue to protect U.S. diplomats and facilities" and to "train and equip" Iraqi forces?

Will assures us at the end of the piece that once Senator Obama answers his 17 questions there will be lots more where those came from. That should be troubling news for supporters of Senator Obama.

RLC

The Marketplace of Ideas

Peggy Noonan has a fine column on the open exchange of ideas within a society. It's a good reminder that we were once a people who valued ideas, even those which challenged our own orthodoxies, and even when their advocates were personally odious.

The concept of a free exchange of ideas was a classically liberal notion, but somewhere along the line we've lost it. Now when conservatives appear behind campus lecturns they have pies thrown at them. Those who fail to bow at the altar of politically correct opinion, like Harvard's Larry Summers, have their speaking invitations rescinded. Intelligent Design proponents are stripped of their teaching positions. Pro-life advocates are often shouted down when the speak in public. Radio talk show hosts are condemned on the floor of the Senate for saying things that were at best misunderstood and at worst deliberately and maliciously distorted in order to smear the host.

We no longer seem to prize diversity of opinion, today we want only assent and agreement. If you dissent, especially from the orthodoxies which reign on today's campuses, then you must be shut up one way or another. We have indeed lost something precious to the totalitarian wannabes who walk among us.

RLC

Hall of Fame Induction

The series of posts titled Inference to the Best Explanation has been collated and added to the Hall of Fame at the upper left margin of this page. A click on the link will bring up the entire series.

While you're at it you might wish to peruse some of the other inductees among that list.

RLC

Concentrating the Mind

Duke University president Richard Brodhead has issued an official apology to the falsely accused students whose travails were national news throughout the past year. The AP article says this:

Brodhead, speaking at the university's law school, said he regretted Duke's "failure to reach out" in a "time of extraordinary peril" after a woman accused three players of rape at a March 2006 party thrown by the team.

"Given the complexities of this case, getting the communication right would never have been easy," Brodhead said. "But the fact is that we did not get it right, causing the families to feel abandoned when they were most in need of support. This was a mistake. I take responsibility for it and I apologize for it."

"Duke needed to be clear that it demanded fair treatment for its students," he said. "I took that completely for granted. If anyone doubted it, then I should have been more explicit, especially as the evidence mounted that the prosecutor was not acting in accordance with the standards of his profession."

Brodhead also said the school could have done more to show that some members of Duke's faculty who were openly critical of the lacrosse team did not speak for the university as a whole.

I wonder whether the University would have been slow to support the students and their coach had this not been a crime involving the politically correct trifecta of race, class, and gender. I'm sure that Brodhead has had many more headaches as a result of this episode than what have been made public.

Might his regrettable mistake - and that of many on the Duke faculty - have been a result of seeing the original charges against the boys as a chance to show the university community and the nation that he was one white man who, despite his privileged status, stood in solidarity with the poor and the oppressed? Such opportunities to assuage "white guilt" don't come along very often, and perhaps, blinded by the sudden opportunity to demonstrate that his heart was in the right place, he simply forgot about his responsibility as president to withhold judgment until the evidence was in.

At least he seems to have forgotten about it until it became clear to him that his solidarity with the accuser and against the accused was going to cost his University a bundle. No doubt that realization served to concentrate his mind and helped him to see clearly the error of his thinking.

Thanks to Bill for passing along the article.

RLC

More on Jena

Dissatisfied with media coverage of the Jena 6 matter, Joe Carter has posted links to many of the relevant documents. It's a good source for material on the case that's hard to find anywhere else.

RLC

The Slaughter in Myanmar

The slaughter in Myanmar is worse than originally thought. Apparently thousands of Buddhist monks, non-violent by creed and tradition, have been butchered by the government of the country formerly known as Burma.

This article gives details and it also provokes a couple of questions. Why, for example does Marcus Oscarsson, the journalist who wrote the piece, print the name of a defector who provided the information when the defector's family remains in Burma?

This strikes me as terribly reckless at the very best. It's amazing to me that anyone would want to talk to journalists when so many show such insensitivity and concern for those they exploit as sources. Oscarsson says that his source "had no fears for his family's safety because his brother is a powerful general who will protect them," but why does Oscarsson take it upon himself to take that chance?

The second question this entire tragedy raises is for those who lean toward a pacifist solution to conflict. The Burmese interviewed for the story fear that the current protest movement, like the last one in 1988, has been extinguished for another generation. No one is more non-violent than Buddhist monks, but their attempts to reform their government have met with nothing but repression and murder each time they try to have their oppression eased. What are the lessons to be learned from both this terrible atrocity and the atrocity perpetrated by the Burmese junta's masters at Tianamen square?

Perhaps one lesson is that peaceful, non-violent protest generally succeeds only in countries where the government has a tradition of respecting human rights and where the government is accountable to the people - in other words, in Western democracies and states like India and Israel which are based on Western traditions.

In repressive regimes ruled by thugs, the non-violent solution may work, but experience seems to indicate that it's more likely to produce little more than the corpses of martyrs.

RLC

Centers of Moral Clarity

What does it say about American universities that, on the one hand, Columbia U. was willing to provide a platform for a terrorist who ought to be tried for war crimes and who is seeking the destruction of Israel, while on the other Sacramento/UC rescinded an invitation to former Harvard president Larry Summers, whose unpardonable offense was to observe that males may have a better aptitude for math and science than females? For this crime against humanity the Sacramento faculty pressured the administration to have him disinvited. I'll bet, though, they would have gladly taken A'jad had he been available.

It's comforting to know that the centers of moral clarity that are our universities have no trouble telling who the real criminals are.

RLC

Pass the Prozac

More good news from Iraq:

US-led forces have killed one of the most important leaders of al-Qaida in Iraq, a Tunisian believed to be connected to the kidnapping and killings last summer of American soldiers, a top commander said Friday.

Brig. Gen. Joseph Anderson said the death of the suspected terrorist and recent similar operations have left the organization in Iraq fractured.

"Abu Usama al-Tunisi was one of the most senior leaders ... the emir of foreign terrorists in Iraq and part of the inner leadership circle," Anderson said.

Anderson said recent coalition operations also have helped cut in half the previous flow of foreign fighters into Iraq, which had been at about 60 to 80 a month.

He credited the work of the Iraqi Department of Border Enforcement and US teams.

Maybe we can get the Iraqi Department of Border Enforcement to come over here.

Anyway, the news out of Iraq since the surge began has been very positive and encouraging. Somebody please hand the anti-depressants to Congressman Murtha and Senator Reid.

RLC

She Can't Be Serious

Hillary seems determined to undermine her own reputation for seriousness with this kind of crass political pandering:

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton said Friday that every child born in the United States should get a $5,000 "baby bond" from the government to help pay for future costs of college or buying a home.

Clinton, her party's front-runner in the 2008 race, made the suggestion during a forum hosted by the Congressional Black Caucus.

"I like the idea of giving every baby born in America a $5,000 account that will grow over time, so that when that young person turns 18 if they have finished high school they will be able to access it to go to college or maybe they will be able to make that downpayment on their first home," she said.

The New York senator did not offer any estimate of the total cost of such a program or how she would pay for it. Approximately 4 million babies are born each year in the United States.

Break out your calculators students. Four million babies a year at a rate of $5000 per baby comes to 20 billion of the taxpayers' Abe Lincolns every year if Hillary has her way. And if she has a Democratic congress she'll have her way.

Looks like if Hillary wins in 2008 we'll be keeping even less of our paychecks starting in 2009.

RLC

Inference to the Best Explanation (Conclusion)

This series of posts has been devoted to defending the claim that the simplest explanation for the nature of the world and the deepest yearnings and feelings of the human psyche is that they are what they are because they conform to some existential reality. Those profound convictions we hold are most simply explained by positing the possibility of satisfaction, but they can only be satisfied if there is a being that corresponds to the traditional notion of God. If theism is correct we can find intellectual and emotional contentment in believing that the tragic condition of the world and of our lives is only temporary, that death is not the end and that a beautiful future lies ahead.

If God exists then we can assume that He made us for a reason, that there is a purpose to our existence and that we have dignity and inalienable rights as human beings because we are made in the image of God and loved by Him. If God exists then there is a transcendent moral authority which will ultimately mete out justice and which provides us in this life with an objective standard upon which to base moral judgment. We feel guilt because we're actually guilty. We feel free because we're actually free. We have an identity that endures because that identity exists in the mind of God. If God exists there is a basis for hope and some sense can be made of an otherwise senseless world.

The atheist, if he's consistent with his belief that there is no God, finds himself completely at odds in almost every important way with the structure of his own being. He finds himself inexplicably out of synch with his world. He is alone, forlorn, abandoned in an empty, unfeeling universe that offers no solace nor prospect that there might be meaning, morality, justice, dignity, and solutions to the riddles of existence. The atheist lives without expectation or hope that any of the most profound yearnings of our hearts and minds can ever be fulfilled. How, then, do we come to have them? Why would natural selection shape us in such a way as to be so metaphysically and psychologically incompatible with the world in which we are situated?

It's possible, of course, that the atheistic answer is correct, that this is just the way things are, and we should simply make the best of a very bad situation. Yet surely the skeptic should hope that he's mistaken. Surely he would want there to be a God to infuse the cosmos with all the richness it is starved of by His absence. Nevertheless, I've never known or read one who held such a hope. It's incomprehensible that some, like philosopher Thomas Nagel, for instance, actually cling to the fervent desire that there be no God. This is tantamount to wishing, bizarrely enough, that life really is a meaningless, senseless, cruel and absurd joke. Nagel says in his book The Last Word:

"I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn't just that I don't believe in God and, naturally, hope that I'm right in my belief. It's that I hope there is no God! I don't want there to be a God; I don't want the universe to be like that."

Nagel's ability to see his motivations clearly is uncommon and commendable, but his honesty and insight are little compensation for the profound sadness one feels at what he finds in his own heart. How anyone can actually wish the universe to be the sort of place where meaning, morality, justice, human worth and all the rest are vain illusions, is very difficult, for me at least, to understand.

For previous posts in the series use the following links: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, Part VI, and Part VII.

RLC

Truth Matters

A left-wing blog called Media Matters recently provided us with a vivid illustration of Churchill's aphorism that a lie gets half-way around the world before truth can get its pants on. Media Matters ran a smear of Bill O'Reilly that was so dishonest it should have been criminal. Nevertheless, CNN and NBC picked up the libel and repeated it themselves.

When eventually confronted with the transcripts of what O'Reilly actually said everyone refused to recant. The damage had been done and O'Reilly has been trying hard on his show to recover something of his reputation. Columnist Juan Williams who was a witness to the remarks for which O'Reilly has been vilified recounts what really happened here.

But blood was in the water so this week Media Matters decided they'd shamelessly repeat the same dishonest tactic by completely distorting something Rush Limbaugh said on his radio program. Referring to frauds who claim to be combat veterans with eye-witness experience of war-time atrocities, but who had in fact never been in the military, Limbaugh called them "phony soldiers."

Never mind the context, Media Matters smeared Limbaugh for having called military critics of the war "phonies," and not only MSNBC repeated the slander but several Democrats rose to the floor of the House and the Senate to blast Limbaugh for his appalling lack of patriotism and whatever else they thought they could stick him with.

In a post-modern world where truth is whatever you feel it to be, and all that counts is winning, where peoples' reputations are fair game in the no-rules world of political combat, I guess this sort disreputable behavior is to be expected. Those of us, though, who believe that truth is of paramount importance should maintain a prudent skepticism toward anything we hear on CNN or MSNBC or indeed CBS, after Dan Rather, or The New Republic, after twice having carried columns by fabulists whose claims were subsequently found to be fabricated. These journalists apparently subscribe to the belief that even if you have to retract a claim later no one will notice, and the damage you had hoped for will already be done.

You might wonder how people can be this way. One of the heroes of the secular left, Karl Marx, once stated that the left's view of the world (communism) "abolishes all eternal truths, all religion and all morality." This pretty much explains everything.

RLC

Workers of the World Unite!

What do Zimbabwe, Sudan, Burma (Myanmar), North Korea, and Iran all have in common? They are, of course, all murderous regimes (See what's going on in Burma here) which brutally oppress their own people and, in the case of Iran, export terror around the world. In addition, they all share one other thing in common. They are each one a client state of Communist China.

The most pathological, genocidal thugs in the world are all aided and abetted by a state which, since 1950, has been held up to us by our own secular leftists as a model toward which we should ourselves aspire. It's true that they've been rather mute on the point lately, but just as one rarely found criticism of the atrocities of the former Soviet Union in the leftist media so, too, one rarely hears criticism of Communist China, even though it is by far the worst oppressor and abuser (directly and indirectly) of human rights in the world today.

Perhaps I'm wrong and the left-wing blogosphere is actually full of denunciations of their ideological brethren across the Pacific for their support of the Burmese government and others. Perhaps the only reason I haven't seen any of these excoriations is because I haven't been to their blogs lately. Perhaps the secular left really does care about human rights enough to take time out from their fulminations over Guantanamo Bay and the Patriot act to direct their outrage at real tyranny, and I'm just not aware of it. It's possible.

On a related matter, I wonder, as Hugo Chavez arrogates more and more power for himself in Venezuela, if the Venezuelan people aren't just a little bit nervous given the nightmarish record of communist dictatorships in the old U.S.S.R., North Korea, Cuba, Cambodia, and, of course, China.

RLC

Re: No Blood For Oil! Why Not?

Byron takes some issue with our the post directly below titled No Blood For Oil! Why Not?. His comments are on our Feedback page.

I should add that I agree with him that our long term goals should be the sorts of solutions he suggests, but the post was really geared more to addressing the question how we free ourselves from dependence on Middle Eastern oil in the meantime, within the next ten years or so.

And while we're taking these measures we need to ask whether the objection summed up in the cry, "No blood for oil" has any validity in the current circumstances we find ourselves in.

RLC

No Blood For Oil! Why Not?

We often hear that the Iraq war is all about oil. Alan Greenspan is said to have made the comment in his recent book, although he has since claimed that he's being misunderstood and that although oil is the reason why Iraq is important, it's not the reason Bush launched the invasion.

Be that as it may, even if it were the reason we are in Iraq what, exactly, is wrong with fighting over oil? The left declaims that there must be "no blood for oil," and the idea that we are in Iraq, as we were in Kuwait, to protect our access to oil causes steam to shoot from their ears like exhaust from a jet engine. But why?

Suppose it were not oil but some other resource that was at issue. Suppose the Middle East had the bulk of the world's drinking water, or food, and suppose a bunch of psychopathic terrorists threatened to seize total control of this resource and use it as a lever to insure their will be done around the world. Would it it be worth fighting to prevent that from happening?

If the answer is yes then how is oil any different? If our oil supply were to dry up our civilization would die just as surely as if our water were to dry up. It would take longer, but the end would be the same. Oil is the life-blood of the modern world, and we can't survive without it. Without oil there'd be no way to do agriculture on a scale large enough to feed 300 million people, much less get the food to market. Without oil most people would have no way to get to their employment and most businesses and industries would not be able to operate. Nor would we be able to heat many of our homes in the winter or maintain our schools and hospitals. It's simply naive to suggest that oil is not worth fighting over.

We can all agree that as long as we are dependent upon foreign oil we are vulnerable, but the left's solution to reducing that vulnerability is to force Americans to use less oil by raising the gasoline tax to the point where it becomes prohibitively expensive for all but the well-off. It's hard to see how this would reduce our dependency upon oil since we'd still need it. It's not hard to see, though, that though higher gas prices would reduce consumption, they would raise the price of everything else we need which would cause people to be thrown out of work, and our economy to be thrown into recession.

There are other measures we could take to reduce our dependence upon foreign oil, but the left vigorously opposes them. We could build new refineries, allow oil companies to drill offshore, open up the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge, and build new nuclear plants. My environmentalist friends are aghast at the very mention of these options, but the serious harm any of them would cause to the natural environment would be minimal, as far as I have been able to determine. Meanwhile, the harm done to the United States by our continued dependence upon foreign oil or the consequences of inflation and recession, are, and would be, enormous.

RLC

Good Ol' Boys

Red State Update has a funny parody of the Lee Bollinger/Ahmadinejad contretemps.

RLC

Having the Right Tool

Catch Rich Lowery's piece on Iran at NRO. Lowery points out that while Iran is killing Americans and threatening to utterly destroy Israel, the Democrats have steeled themselves to fight the dread enemy tooth and nail - George Bush.

In a column that makes a number of salutary observations perhaps Lowery's best line is this:

"Liberals like to say of the Bush administration's allegedly militaristic foreign policy that if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Likewise, if the only tool you have is dialogue, everyone looks like a reasonable interlocutor."

By noting that Iran is killing Americans in Iraq Bush is "saber-rattling." By announcing that Iran is a state sponsor of terror Bush is "increasing tensions." The Democrats apparently want Bush to just shut up about Iran and give peace a chance. The rhetoric coming from the left sounds a lot like Europe in the 1930s when Hitler was making frightful noises and no one wanted to call attention to it for fear that it would be seen as a provocation.

Kudos to Columbia President Lee Bollinger, a man of the left, for calling a criminal a criminal. Would that more in his party would follow his example.

As an aside, I acknowledge the point that some have made, including Ahmadinejad himself, that it's discourteous to invite someone into your home and then subject him to the kind of treatment that Bollinger accorded Ahmadinejad. Generally, I would agree, but the little Hitler is an exceptional case. With people like him, a cruel mass murderer both in fact and intent, it is necessary sometimes to speak prophetically, to dispense with the usual courtesies and pleasantries and, like Nathan did to David, tell him firmly and plainly, "You are that man."

It would have been bizarre, in fact, to treat Ahmadinejad with handshakes and smiles. The man is responsible for the deaths and maimings of hundreds of American young men and women, and is eager to utterly destroy Israel.

Bollinger's indictment was exactly the right thing, the prophetic thing, to do.

RLC

Al Qaeda Lost

Amidst the claims and counterclaims about how the war in Iraq is going certain independent voices emerge that should be heeded. Michael Totten is one such. He's a journalist who reports regularly from Iraq on developments there. His latest dispatch, "Al Qaeda Lost," is as valuable a contribution to the discussion as it is fascinating. Totten doesn't wear rose-colored glasses, not everything is going as well as could be hoped, but if he's anywhere near correct, things are much better there than many war critics will acknowledge.

Other reports are equally encouraging. This one at Operation Iraqi Freedom points out that despite the numbers of Iraqi policemen and their families who have been targeted and murdered by suicide bombers, there continue to be more applicants than there are positions to fill. Moreover, their training continues to improve and they're having a measurable effect on reducing violence in Baghdad.

Everyone who wonders whether there's reason for optimism in Iraq should read both of these posts. Unfortunately, we won't be hearing this stuff on the evening news. They just don't seem to be interested in airing any information that would suggest to the American people that there might be light at the end of this dark tunnel.

RLC

Why Not Be Honest?

A recent article in The Examiner revealed that President Bush's staff regularly briefs the Democratic candidates on Iraq so that they know enough about the situation there that they may avoid saying something in the campaign that would bind them to a course of action as President that would have very undesirable consequences.

Thus at Wednesday night's debate none of the Democratic front-runners would commit to having the troops out of Iraq by 2013. This must not only have come as a severe disappointment to the MoveOn.org types in their electoral base who are demanding an immediate pullout, but it is extraordinary for what it tacitly suggests.

It suggests that those Democrats who know what's going on in Iraq and who might in a year bear the weight of having to make the right decisions about what to do there, don't see ending the war and withdrawing troops as a responsible option, nothwithstanding their rhetoric and votes in the senate.

If so, much of their opposition to the war appears to be little more than opposition to the President, and if this is true, then they've been playing politics with our soldiers' lives simply to gain political advantage.

A good example of their lack of candor occurred when Senator Clinton was asked by the moderator of Wednesday night's debate to commit herself before the nation to have our troops out of Iraq by the end of her first term, that's five years from now. Like Barack Obama and John Edwards, she declined to do so, giving as her reason that, "It is very difficult to know what we're going to be inheriting."

But if the President is keeping the Democrats informed why would Hillary say this? Evidently, either the Examiner article is mistaken and the briefings are not really occurring, or Hillary isn't paying attention at those briefings, or she's being disingenuous.

If she is being briefed then surely she has a pretty good idea of what she would be inheriting. So why has she backed away from her promise of a few months ago when she vowed that if the war's not over before she becomes president it will be over as soon as she takes office? Evidently she realizes now that committing to withdraw our forces from Iraq, even within the next five years, would be a very irresponsible course of action.

But then why not be honest about that with the American people?

RLC

Inference to the Best Explanation (Pt. VII)

In this series of posts we've suggested that there are at least fifteen facts about the world and human beings that are more compatible with a theistic worldview than with an atheistic view. In other words, we've been arguing that theism is a better explanation for the way the world and human beings are than is atheism.

The fifteen reasons we've based this conclusion on are these:

1. Our conviction that the universe must have had a cause and that it didn't cause itself.
   
2. The exquisite fine-tuning of the cosmic parameters, forces and constants.
   
3. The existence of coded biological information.
   
4. The fact of human consciousness.
   
5. Our sense that reason is trustworthy.
   
6. Our conviction that we are free to make genuine choices and that the future is open.
   
7. Our deep sense that we are obligated to act morally.
   
8. Our experience of feelings of guilt.
   
9. Our yearning for answwers to life's most profound questions.
   
10. Our desire for justice.
    
11. Our need for a meaning to our existence.
    
12. Our sense that we have a self which perdures through time.
    
13. Our belief in human dignity.
    
14. Our belief in human worth.
    
15. Our belief in the existence of objective human rights.
    

In this post we add one more: Our longing for life beyond death.

16. Human beings want desperately to live and yet we know we're going to die. In a Godless universe, the fate of each of us is annihilation. There's no basis for hope that loved ones we've lost still somehow exist or that we'll ever "see" them again. There's no consolation for the bereaved, no salve for grief. Many face this bravely, of course, but, if they're reflective, their bravery must serve to mask an inner despair. If death is the end then life truly is "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." If death is the end then human existence is completely absurd. But, of course, death is the end if the materialist is right. Only if God exists is there a realistic basis for hope of something beyond this life. Only if God exists can our longing for life be fulfilled.

So, we are confronted with a choice: Either we believe that there is no God and that consequently our existential yearnings are inexplicable and unfulfillable, a view which leads logically to nihilism, or we believe that there is a God and that we possess those yearnings because they lead us to the source of their satisfaction. They point us toward God. In other words, the existence of God is the best explanation for the data of human existence. Atheism has no good explanation for these data and in fact the person who denies this explanation has to take a leap of faith to avoid the nihilism and despair that her worldview pushes her toward. She has to live as if God exists while denying that He does.

We'll have some concluding thoughts in the next post in the series.

RLC

The Jena 6 and Lost Hope

Joe Carter has an excellent post on the Jena 6, the six young thugs who beat a boy senseless and whose charges were protested by thousands of demonstrators from all over the country.

More than 40 witnesses saw Mychal Bell (age 16), Robert Bailey, Jr. (17), Carwin Jones (18), Bryant Purvis (17), Theo Shaw (17), and Jesse Ray Beard (14) viciously attack Justin Barker (17).

According to the witness statements, several people claim to have seen Bell punch Barker from behind, instantly knocking him to the concrete walkway. Witnesses say the other students then stomped on Barker, kicking him in the face and head as he was on the ground.

(This, by the way, is the event that Colbert King, the despicable columnist for the Washington Post, referred to as a "schoolyard fight.")

So the facts of the situation are that one cowardly thug sucker-punches a kid from behind and then joins with five other cowards in stomping the unconscious body. For this crime the "Free the Jena Six" crowd believes the proper punishment is....nothing.

But wait, it gets better.

Much of the outcry has come because Mychal Bell, the main cowardly thug, was tried as an adult. But let's examine why this was considered by the prosecution.

On Christmas Day 2005 Bell punched a 17-year-old girl in the face. (Yes, this cowardly thug not only sucker-punches boys from behind, he punches girls from the front too.) For this action Bell was charged with battery and put on probation until his 18th birthday. Nine months later he was charged with criminal damage to property. Two months after that, Bell was charged again with battery and again with criminal damage to property.

He was convicted of two of these charges in early September 2006. A few days later Bell was leading the Jena Giants to a shutout victory in a football game against the Buckeye Panthers. (You see, in the South, you can punch a girl in the face, destroy property, and, as long as you're a star athlete, you'll usually get off with a slap on the wrist.)

So one of the reasons that Bell was being tried as an adult after assaulting Barker was that he was already on probation for four previous violent crimes.

This vicious assault was dismissed by columnist Leonard Pitts as merely a case of "six American children [sic] with dark skin ... charged with attempted murder after jumping a pale child whose injuries amounted to a black eye and a concussion." This is ludicrous. The boy was knocked unconscious and had medical bills, according to his lawyer, of over $14,000. I wonder what Pitts would have said about the attack if it had been his child knocked unconscious by six white thugs.

Read the rest of Carter's post and weep for the lost hope of color-blind justice in America.

RLC

That's What I'm Talking About

On Sunday I said that I thought having Mahmoud Ahmadinejad speak at Columbia University might be a good thing if it promoted a greater discussion of who and what this man is. A lot of people disagreed with Columbia's decision to invite him, but President Lee Bollinger's introductory comments went far, in my opinion, to vindicate it. What Bollinger told this psychopathic terrorist to his face no one else has told him in a public forum, and had Ahmadinejad not gone to Columbia he never would have been subjected to such a blistering and humiliating rebuke.

See here and here for the video. It's impressive for its moral clarity.

I think that the little Nazi was regretting his decision to go to Columbia before Bollinger was even half-way through his indictment of Mahmoud's depravity.

But who were the people who cheered Ahmadinejad when he delivered his feeble retort? Whoever they were surely they are the ideological and moral spawn of the people who cheered Hitler as he launched his final solution.

Michelle has lots of links and photos.

RLC

Dicey Docket

Tom Goldstein at SCOTUS Blog offers a preview of the upcoming Supreme Court docket and raises some serious concerns for conservative-leaning Americans:

I am not trying to rewrite the history of the past Term, which in fact concluded almost uniformly with significant victories for the right. Instead, my point is that the characterization of this Court is part caricature and is deeply dependent on the near-accident of the particular cases that are decided in any given Term. Although the era in which true liberalism was an ideological force on the Court (e.g., Brennan, Marshall, and Douglas) is now over, this is manifestly not a period of conservative hegemony. Like Justice O'Connor, Justice Kennedy's commitment to any ideological world view is too fragile for either wing of the Court to have genuine confidence in the outcome of an entire Term's worth of cases. And moreover, many important cases are not decided on ideological grounds or by five to four majorities.

There is in fact the genuine prospect that the Court will hold (potentially by a five-to-four vote each time) that the government may ban the possession of pistols (possibly guns altogether, if [they find that]there is no individual Second Amendment right), that child rapists cannot be executed, that certain federal legislation regulating child pornography is unconstitutional, that the Administration's treatment of alleged terrorists is unlawful, and that sentences for crack cocaine should be reduced.

Goldstein's post lays out the reasoning behind his opinion that all five of these cases could be decided in favor of the liberal position on them. If they are, it would be, as Goldstein asserts, a boon to the Republican presidential candidate who would surely campaign on the need to appoint more conservative jurists to the Court as Stevens and Ginsburg retire.

HT: PowerLine

Jena and White Guilt

We've talked before about the phenomenom described by Shelby Steele in his book titled " target="_blank"> White Guilt, the feeling many whites have that they bear within them the stain of racism and the need many whites have to seek absolution by proving that they're not, in fact, guilty of this sin.

If there's anyone who is completely free of this politically correct affliction and who's able to think clearly on matters of race it's Heather MacDonald. MacDonald has an excellent column in City Journal on the episode in Jena, LA where six blacks, angered by the appearance on their high school campus of three nooses, beat a white kid who had nothing to do with the insult until he was unconscious. The young thugs were charged as adults with attempted murder, a charge which was seen as excessive by many, and which precipitated large protests and another round of media lamentations over what Jena says about racism in our judicial system and in our society.

MacDonald thinks the demonstrators' outrage and media concern are misplaced and that they're really smokescreens that obscure some hard truths about the condition of blacks in the United States. She concludes her column with this:

The orgy of Jena coverage will not just fail to improve the lagging performance of blacks; it will impede such improvement by strengthening the victim mentality. Both whites and blacks are complicit in this sabotage. These ecstatic festivals of racism-bashing are a crippling ritual in the codependency between absolution-seeking whites and angry blacks, a phenomenon that Shelby Steele has powerfully analyzed. The demonstrators exhibit a palpable desire for the moral clarity of the civil rights era, as do the reporters, who have covered their every utterance. "This is the first time something like this has happened for our generation," one student told the New York Times. "You always heard about it from history books and relatives. This is a chance to experience it for ourselves."

He's right; there has been nothing like Selma or Montgomery for the current generation, because much of America has accomplished almost an about-face on race since the 1950s. The current martyrs to American bigotry are a far cry from Rosa Parks. Like the "Jena Six," they tend to have committed acts of violence or other crimes for which they are allegedly being excessively punished. Think of the six high school hooligans from Decatur, Illinois, whom Jesse Jackson tried to beatify in 1999 when their schools expelled them for a violent stadium fight; their backgrounds included robbery, trespassing, truancy, and failing whole school years. We are only belatedly learning that Mychal Bell, the sole member of the "Jena Six" to have been prosecuted for knocking out and kicking Justin Barker, has a previous arrest record that includes battery and property damage. Barker's injuries led to $14,000 in medical bills, according to a lawyer.

The Jena situation is undoubtedly a bit more complex than the tale that the press has woven of hate-filled whites and peace-loving blacks. But even if it were not, the catharsis that this morality play has offered to its participants is spurious. The real tragedy is the dysfunctional culture that holds back too many blacks from seizing the many opportunities open to them.

Her column is too important to miss. It should be read and discussed by every American, black, white and otherwise, from beginning to end.

RLC