Evil in Everyday People

Ed Morrissey at Captain's Quarters discusses a book by Barbara Oakley in which Oakley tells this story about her sister:

My sister stole my mother's boyfriend. It wasn't as if the boyfriend, Ted, was any great catch. At 85, he trundled about with a nose tube and oxygen tanks, hacking and snorting as he nursed his emphysema. Then there was the age gap - Ted was 40 years older than my sister. So what was the attraction? As it turned out, it was the gift Ted had planned for my mother - the Parisian vacation she had always dreamt of.

On hearing that my mother was planning a trip to Paris, my sister Carolyn suddenly realised that she, too, had always wanted to go to France. And what my sister wanted, she had a way of getting. When Carolyn clicked her spotlight on Mum's boyfriend, he was dazzled. Soon, my sister was tucked beside Ted and his breathing apparatus en route to Paris. Apr�s Paris, of course, Carolyn dropped Ted like a hot rock.

My mother withdrew, shamed and saddened by this ultimate humiliation. Not long after, she passed away.

I link to this because as I read it I was stunned that someone could do such a maliciously despicable thing to her 85 year old mother. It's truly astonishing how cruel and selfish people can be. I wonder if Oakley wrote the book at least in part in order to get some measure of retribution for her mother by exposing her sister's depravity. If so, I hope it works.

RLC

Enjoying Better Mental Health

People who enjoy good mental health tend to gravitate toward the Republican party, or vice versa. That's the finding, anyway, of a recent Gallup poll:

Republicans are significantly more likely than Democrats or independents to rate their mental health as excellent, according to data from the last four November Gallup Health and Healthcare polls. Fifty-eight percent of Republicans report having excellent mental health, compared to 43% of independents and 38% of Democrats. This relationship between party identification and reports of excellent mental health persists even within categories of income, age, gender, church attendance, and education.

The differences are quite significant.... While Democrats are slightly less likely to report excellent mental health than are independents, the big distinctions in these data are the differences between Republicans and everyone else.

Correlation is no proof of causation, of course. The reason the relationship exists between being a Republican and more positive mental health is unknown, and one cannot say whether something about being a Republican causes a person to be more mentally healthy, or whether something about being mentally healthy causes a person to choose to become a Republican (or whether some third variable is responsible for causing both to be parallel).

But the key finding of the analyses presented here is that being a Republican appears to have an independent relationship on positive mental health above and beyond what can be explained by [other] demographic and lifestyle variables [such as income level]. The exact explanation for this persistent relationship -- as noted -- is unclear.

So, liberals, evidently, are more likely than conservatives and moderates to consider themselves mentally ill. Interesting. Anyone have any suggestions as to why they feel this way?

There's a lot more information about the poll at the link.

RLC

Huckabee's Illegal Immigration Statement

Regular readers of Viewpoint know that we consider illegal immigration to be among the most critical issues our country faces and that any presidential candidate has to take a strong stand on securing our borders in order to gain our support. Readers also know that we've been tentatively touting Mike Huckabee's candidacy for the past couple of months as we wait to learn more about his position on illegal immigration in general and border security in particular. We were disappointed to read that a lot of immigration organizations are opposed to him because they believe him too soft on border security and too likely to grant amnesty to illegals.

It was encouraging, therefore, to find the follow summary of his views at his web site:

• Securing our borders must be our top priority and has reached the level of a national emergency.
• I support the $3 billion the Senate has voted for border security. This money will train and deploy 23,000 more agents, add four drone planes, build 700 miles of fence and 300 miles of vehicle barriers, and put up 105 radar and camera towers. This money will turn "catch and release" into "catch and detain" of those entering illegally, and crack down on those who overstay their visas.
• In this age of terror, immigration is not only an economic issue, but also a national security issue. Those caught trying to enter illegally must be detained, processed, and deported. As Governor, I ordered my state troopers to work with the Department of Homeland Security to arrest illegals and enforce federal immigration law.
• I oppose and will never allow amnesty. I opposed the amnesty President Bush and Senator McCain tried to ram through Congress this summer, and opposed the misnamed DREAM Act, which would have put us on the slippery slope to amnesty for all.
• I oppose and will not tolerate sanctuaries for illegals. The federal government must crack down on rogue cities that willfully undermine our economy and national security.
• I oppose giving driver's licenses to illegals and supports legislation to prevent states from doing so. In 2005, I signed legislation that prevents illegals in Arkansas from getting driver's licenses.
• I will stop punishing cities which try to enforce our laws and protect the economic well-being, physical safety, and quality of life of their citizens.
• I oppose and will not tolerate employers who hire illegals. They must be punished with fines and penalties so large that they will see it is not worth the risk.
• I oppose the economic integration of North America that would create open borders among the United States, Canada, and Mexico. I will never yield one iota or one inch of our sovereignty.
• I will take our country back for those who belong here. No open borders, no amnesty, no sanctuary, no false Social Security numbers, no driver's licenses for illegals.

It's difficult to imagine any of the current top-tier candidates taking a stronger position than this. More on his thoughts on this issue as well as his stance on all other major issues can be found at the link.

RLC

Informal Logic 101

In rhetoric or logic when one person responds to a claim or an argument from another by simply insulting the other instead of trying to answer the claim or refute the argument it's called the fallacy of ad hominem abusive. This article contains a textbook example of the tactic:

Kerry spokesman David Wade issued the following slap down today in response to Rush Limbaugh, who said on his radio show that Kerry's Swift Boat attackers in 2004, "were right on the money and nobody has disproven anything they claimed in any of their ads, statements, written commentaries, or anything of the sort."

Now set aside the question of whether Limbaugh is correct in saying this and look instead at the Kerry spokesman's response. Rather than seeking to show that Limbaugh is wrong Mr. Wade launches a stream of insults aimed at Limbaugh. Here's what he said:

"At first I thought, that's not Rush, that's just the OxyContin talking. Nonetheless, this is a despicable but unsurprising new lie from a man whose closest brush with combat came when customs officials tried to take away his Viagra.

This portly peddler of hate is once again wrong on the facts. John Kerry served his country with honor in Vietnam, and has fought for his fellow veterans ever since. The lies and smears of the Swift Boat Veterans for Bush were disproved conclusively in 2004 by the men who fought by John Kerry's side in Vietnam, by the military's own records, by investigative journalists, and by the incredible contradictions that exposed these right wing smear artists. It is long past time that we end the politics of fear and smear that we have seen used against decorated veterans from John McCain to Max Cleland and John Kerry.

Rush Limbaugh's ignorance and determination to divide Americans is just another reminder that you can't spell 'Rush Limbaugh' without the letters L-I-A-R."

Wade engages in much name-calling but he offers not a single rebuttal to Limbaugh's claim. He simply states that it has been rebutted by others and proceeds to prove it by calling Limbaugh a liar. Wade evidently possesses a black belt in the art of ad hominem. He has mastered the technique of filling the air with sufficient invective so as to convince the listener that the person on the receiving end of the insults must surely be wrong because he's apparently so despicable.

One of the sad things about this tactic is that it often works.

RLC

A Whiff of Totalitarianism

The New Republic has an interesting article by Damon Linker titled Atheism's Wrong Turn.

There are a few minor matters with which one might quibble - for instance his imputation of atheism to Socrates is puzzling - but his overall point is a good one:

"[T]he new atheism" is not particularly new. It belongs to an intellectual genealogy stretching back hundreds of years, to a moment when atheist thought split into two traditions: one primarily concerned with the dispassionate pursuit of truth, the other driven by a visceral contempt for the personal faith of others.

Today's atheists, he writes, have followed the second of these traditions and as such stand in defiant opposition to the grand tradition of classical liberalism. Their implicit desire to expunge from public life every vestige of religious faith and practice fills the pages of their books with more than a whiff of the totalitarian impulse.

Read Linker's article to find out why.

RLC

The Road to the Woodshed

After years of declaring the war in Iraq a failure and months of denying that there was any progress being made there, old John [Offer-Me-the-Bribe-Later] Murtha has had something of a Damascus Road experience:

U.S. Rep. John Murtha today said he saw signs of military progress during a brief trip to Iraq last week, but he warned that Iraqis need to play a larger role in providing their own security and the Bush administration still must develop an exit strategy.

"I think the 'surge' is working," the Democrat said in a videoconference from his Johnstown office, describing the president's decision to commit more than 20,000 additional combat troops this year. But the Iraqis "have got to take care of themselves."

Violence has dropped significantly in recent months, but Mr. Murtha said he was most encouraged by changes in the once-volatile Anbar province, where locals have started working closely with U.S. forces to isolate insurgents linked to Al Qaeda.

Kudos to Rep. Murtha for his honesty, but it probably is not very much appreciated by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi or Majority Leader Harry Reid for whom, Murtha's candor cannot be good news. No doubt they will soon be taking old John to the woodshed for some "counselling" on the importance of keeping such politically unhelpful epiphanies to oneself. It's a fact of political life that the Damascus road often leads straight to the woodshed.

RLC

Uh Oh

We've noted that Mike Huckabee's chances of winning the Republican nomination depend largely on his views on illegal immigration. This article doesn't make us sanguine about those chances:

Groups that support a crackdown on illegal aliens haven't settled on their champion in the race for the White House, but there's little doubt which Republican scares them most - former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.

"He was an absolute disaster on immigration as governor," said Roy Beck, president of NumbersUSA, a group that played a major role in rallying the phone calls that helped defeat this year's Senate immigration bill. "Every time there was any enforcement in his state, he took the side of the illegal aliens."

As Mr. Huckabee rises in the polls, his opponents are beginning to take shots at him on immigration. Just as problematic for the former Arkansas governor, however, is that the independent interest groups that track the issue are also giving him the once-over, and don't like what they see.

"Huckabee is the guy who scares the heck out of me," said Peter Gadiel, president of 9-11 Families for a Secure America, a group instrumental in fighting for the REAL ID Act that sets federal standards for driver's licenses.

Some leaders said Mr. Huckabee reminds them of President Bush, who pushed for legalization of illegal aliens and a new supply of foreign guest workers, despite his base calling for better border security and enforcement.

"I would say that Huckabee comes from the same perspective on the issue that George W. Bush came from - that out of a strong sense of compassion, he tries to identify with someone who comes to the United States, even if they came illegally," said Steven A. Camarota, research director for the Center for Immigration Studies.

Huckabee gives a defense of his position in the article.

RLC

Failure to Launch

My final column in the series I've been doing for the local paper was on a book, Boys Adrift, that I posted on about a month ago and appeared in yesterday's paper. I'd like to link to it but I can't find it on the their web site so here it is:

In the movie Failure to Launch, Matthew McConaughy plays a 35 year-old man named "Trip" still living with beleaguered parents who are growing increasingly desperate to have him leave the house. Unfortunately, McConaughy is in no hurry to give up this comfortable arrangement, and so the parents hire the services of a professional "interventionist" (played by Sarah Jessica Parker) to woo him out of the nest.

The movie is humorous, but Leonard Sax, a family physician and research psychologist, takes the theme seriously. In his book Boys Adrift he cites considerable evidence to support the claim that there's a growing and worrisome epidemic of boys and young men who seem listless, alienated from school, and unmotivated toward doing the things that one must do to achieve success in life. It's not that these boys aren't bright, many of them certainly are. It's not that they're completely unmotivated, many of them are highly driven, though not toward goals that parents and teachers would prefer or toward goals suitable for meaningful employment, marriage or fatherhood.

Sax assumes that boys themselves haven't changed much in the last thirty years but that their environment has. He discusses five changes in particular that have had a profound effect on young males and which he believes to be largely responsible for the lassitude many of them exhibit. Not every boy is affected to the same extent by these five factors nor do the five affect every boy, but, Sax argues, enough boys are harmed by at least one of them to have created a serious problem for many parents and teachers, not to mention the boys themselves. He concludes the book with some advice as to what parents might do to help their drifting sons.

The five factors Sax discusses are these:

Pedagogical changes: Many schools, Sax maintains, particularly in the early grades K through 2 or 3, are not structured to accommodate the normal need for boys of that age to be running and playing outdoors. Consequently, some boys fall behind early, and develop a dislike for school that they never overcome.

Video games: Sax points out that gaming often takes over a boy's life. He can have success, power, and thrills through video games that other activities can't come close to providing. As a result he's often motivated to do nothing but play the game and this he might do for hours every day to the exclusion of more important activities.

Medications for ADHD: Adderall and Ritalin are often over-prescribed and are now believed, according to Sax, to be damaging to a boy's brain.

Endocrine disruptors: Some of the chemicals which leach out of the clear plastic bottles which package so much of the liquid we drink mimic female hormones. Some scientists believe this might be at least in part responsible for the decline in male fertility in much of the developed world. It has also, Sax suggests, had a number of other side effects harmful to male development.

Revenge of the forsaken gods: Recent generations of boys are unique in our history in that many have grown up without positive male models in their lives to pass on what it means to be a man. They have few masculine heroes and many boys are isolated from older men and surrounded instead only by their peers. Such boys tend to become either "slacker dudes" or they seek to emulate Akon, 50 Cent and other thugs.

Sax doesn't mention this but one reason for the dearth of heroes in some boys' lives is that our media is simply uninterested in telling the stories of the heroism occurring almost daily in Iraq and Afghanistan. We read and hear plenty about the flaws and foibles of our sports and movie stars, but we rarely see specific accounts of the tremendous courage and toughness displayed by average young men who do absolutely astonishing things under the unimaginable strains of combat. Boys need to hear those stories, and our media are failing our society by refusing to publicize them.

There's much more to each of these five factors than what I've sketched above, and the material Sax lays out for the reader in each of the chapters devoted to them is often fascinating.

Perhaps the most interesting section is Chapter 6 in which Sax shares e-mails and other correspondence he has received from parents, girlfriends, and wives of boys and young men who exhibit the characteristics he describes in the book. The e-mails are riveting in their pathos and their tragic accounts of wasted lives.

If you're a parent, grandparent, teacher, or one who simply cares about boys, Boys Adrift is a must-read. It may be the best Christmas present you can give a parent of a boy you care about.

RLC

Thought For A Sunday

Taken from The Spirit of Prayer by William Law.

And all this, to make it known through all the Regions of Eternity, that Pride can degrade the highest Angels into Devils, and Humility raise fallen Flesh and Blood to the Thrones of Angels. This, this is the great End of God's raising a new Creation, out of a fallen Kingdom of Angels; for this End it stands in its State of War, a War betwixt the Fire and Pride of fallen Angels, and the Meekness and Humility of the Lamb of God: It stands its Thousands of Years in this Strife, that the last Trumpet may sound this great Truth, through all the Heights and Depths of Eternity, "That Evil can have no Beginning, but from Pride; nor any End, but from Humility."

Oh what a Blindness there is in the World! What a Stir is there amongst Mankind about Religion, and yet almost all seem to be afraid of That, in which alone is Salvation!

Poor Mortals! What is the one Wish and Desire of your Hearts? What is it that you call Happiness, and matter of Rejoicing? Is it not when every thing about you helps you to stand upon higher Ground, gives full Nourishment to Self-esteem, and gratifies every Pride of Life? And yet Life itself is the Loss of every thing, unless Pride be overcome. Oh stop a while in Contemplation of this great Truth. It is a Truth as unchangeable as God; it is written and spoken through all Nature; Heaven and Earth, fallen Angels, and redeemed Men, all bear Witness to it. The Truth is: Pride must die in you, or nothing of Heaven can live in you. Under the Banner of this Truth, give up yourselves to the meek and humble Spirit of the Holy Jesus, the Overcomer of all Fire, and Pride, and Wrath. This is the one Way, the one Truth, and the one Life. There is no other open Door into the Sheepfold of God. Everything else is the Working of the Devil in the fallen Nature of Man. Humility must sow the Seed, or there can be no Reaping in Heaven. Look not at Pride only as an unbecoming Temper; not at Humility only as a decent Virtue; for the one is Death, and the other is Life; the one is all Hell, and the other is all Heaven.

So much as you have of Pride, so much you have of the fallen Angel alive in you; so much you have of true Humility; so much you have of the Lamb of God within you. Could you see with your Eyes what every Stirring of Pride does to your Soul, you would beg of everything you meet, to tear the Viper from you, though with the Loss of an Hand, or an Eye. Could you see what a sweet, Divine, transforming Power there is in Humility, what an heavenly Water of Life it gives to the fiery Breath of your Soul, how it expels the Poison of your fallen Nature, and makes Room for the Spirit of God to live in you, you would rather wish to be the Footstool of all the World, than to want the smallest Degree of it

The Cost of Immigration

An article at NewsMax offers up some disturbing statistics about immigration in general and illegal immigration in particular. Here is a condensed version of the report:

A new study by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), based on the latest Census Bureau data, shows the number of immigrants in America, both legal and illegal, has swelled to a record 38 million this year - making one of every eight U.S. residents an immigrant.

The new numbers indicate the highest level in more than eight decades - with a third of those being illegal aliens.

One third of immigrants are on some form of welfare, costing states nearly $20 billion a year, the study claimed, adding that efforts to legalize the spiraling number of illegal aliens will only increase the amount of uneducated, uninsured legal immigrants burdening America's welfare rolls.

Since 2000, more than 10 million immigrants have entered the U.S., more than half of them illegally, according to the CIS. With no change in U.S. immigration policy, another 15 million immigrants will likely arrive in the next 10 years.

Almost 60 percent of the Illegal aliens entering the U.S. come from Mexico.

The numbers portend a major shift in American demographics. More than 72 percent of native U.S. residents are white, 13 percent are black, 10 percent are Hispanic and 2 percent are Asian. But among the burgeoning immigrant population, over 48 percent are Hispanic, 23 percent are Asian, 21 percent are white and 7 percent are black.

Camarota, research director at the CIS, a Washington think tank that favors immigration restrictions along with improved services for legal immigrants, says immigrants now make up one in every five school-age children in America. Immigration accounts for all of the increases in public school enrollment nationwide over the past 20 years, the CIS reports.

In places such as Los Angeles County and New York City, the children of immigrant fathers make up nearly 60 percent of the school-age population.

More than 31 percent of adult immigrants have not completed high school, compared to just 8 percent of U.S. natives. Since 2000, immigrants have boosted the overall number of workers who lack a high school diploma to 14 percent.

Camarota's findings on the quality of life for uneducated immigrants shows that attempts at so-called amnesty for the current population of 12 million illegal aliens would prove costly and provide little benefit.

"Immigrants who have legal status, but little education, generally have low incomes and make heavy use of welfare programs," the CIS report states. "If we decide to legalize illegal immigrants, we should at least understand that it will not result in dramatically lower welfare use or poverty.

"Those who advocate such a policy need to acknowledge this problem and not argue that legalization will save taxpayers money or result in a vast improvement in the income of illegal aliens," the report continues. "Legalized illegals will still be overwhelmingly uneducated and this fact has enormous implications for their income, welfare use, health insurance coverage, and the effect on American taxpayers."

True to the CIS charter, Krikorian stresses that there "is no excuse whatever for intolerant attitudes toward legal immigrants -- we admitted them according to the rules established by our elected representatives, and we must, and will, continue to embrace them as Americans in training.

"Even illegal immigrants must be treated humanely as they are detained and returned to their homes," Krikorian says. "But future legal immigration is a different question -- mass immigration is simply not compatible with the goals of a modern society and should be minimized to the extent possible."

It's a somewhat droll aspect of this issue that those who don't wish to see America turned into a northern extension of Central America are often branded bigots and "nativists" for wishing to preserve their heritage and for being reluctant to push this nation to economic ruin. It's okay for citizens of every country in the world to wish to preserve their traditions and character except for the citizens of the U.S. and Israel. Any measures taken by them to prevent either of their two countries from being culturally overwhelmed by their neighbors are, for some reason, roundly condemned as racist or zionist. It's very odd.

RLC

Peggy Misfires

My friend Jason writes to share this column by the often wonderful Peggy Noonan who thinks that the intense interest in our political candidates' religious faith is both novel and unseemly. I think she's not quite correct on either count. She writes:

...we have come to an odd pass regarding candidates and their faith. It's not as if faith is unimportant, it's always important. But we are asking our political figures--mere flawed politicians--to put forward and talk about their faith to a degree that has become odd. We push them against the wall and do a kind of theological frisk on them. We didn't use to.

We have the emphasis wrong. It's out of kilter. And the result is a Mitt Romney being harassed on radio shows about the particulars of his faith, and Hillary Clinton--a new-class yuppie attorney and board member--announcing how important her Methodist faith is and how much she loves wearing her diamond cross. For all I know, for all you know, it is true. But there is about it an air of patronizing the rubes and boobs.

No one cared, really, that Richard Nixon was a Quaker. They may have been confused by it, but they weren't upset. His vice president, Spiro Agnew, was not Greek Orthodox but Episcopalian. Nobody much noticed. Nelson Rockefeller of New York was not an Episcopalian but a Baptist. Do you know what Lyndon Johnson's religion was? He was a member of the Disciples of Christ, but in what appeared to be the same way he was a member of the American Legion: You're in politics, you join things. Hubert Humphrey was born Lutheran, attended Methodist churches, and was rumored to be a Congregationalist. This didn't quite reach the level of mystery because nobody quite cared.

If we didn't care it was because no one thought that most politicians took their faith too seriously. We didn't think that their religious beliefs would make any substantive difference in how they governed. Moreover, we didn't care too much because everyone shared a common value system. Almost every candidate for president was a protestant until Jack Kennedy in 1960 and then there was a lot of concern about his Catholicism.

We should also note that many of the people who are making an issue of Romney's Mormonism or Huckabee's evangelicalism are opponents, or potential opponents, hoping to make these men look weird or otherwise attempting to drive a wedge between the candidate and the electorate. On the other hand, those who point to Hillary's manifestations of faith are often trying to make her look mainstream so that religious voters don't shun her.

In any event, on the question whether a candidate's religious assumptions should be talked about during a campaign, of course they should. The problem isn't that candidates are being asked about their faith, it's that the questions they're being asked are often about trivial aspects of their beliefs. They're too frequently being asked questions by people who themselves lack a fundamental understanding of the significance of religion in a believer's life and unfortunately that tends to cheapen the discourse.

One's religious convictions shape who a person is. A man who believes that Armageddon is just aound the corner may govern very differently than someone who doesn't believe Armageddon is going to happen at all. A man who believes we have an obligation imposed by God to work for peace, preserve our natural lands and help the poor is going to be a very different president than one who believes that God helps those who help themselves. A man whose belief in a personal God leads him to be pro-life and in favor of traditional marriage is probably going to make different appointments to the Supreme Court than someone whose concept of God is vaguely deistic.

I wonder if Ms Noonan has really thought this matter of the role of religion in a political campaign through very far. Suppose the Muslim congressman from Minnesota, Keith Ellison, were to run for nationwide office. Would Ms Noonan think then that certain inquiries as to his religious beliefs would be unseemly, out of place, or irrelevant? I doubt it.

RLC

Re: Sudanese Orcs

Kelly asks a good question about Islamic outrage over the Teddy bear named for Mohammed on our Feedback page. Meanwhile, the teacher who allowed her students to name the bear was sentenced to fifteen days in jail and is to be expelled from Sudan.

The savages are not happy with the sentence, however:

Thousands of Sudanese, many armed with clubs and knives, rallied Friday in a central square and demanded the execution of a British teacher convicted of insulting Islam for allowing her students to name a teddy bear "Muhammad." In response to the demonstration, teacher Gillian Gibbons was moved from the women's prison near Khartoum to a secret location for her safety, her lawyer said.

The protesters streamed out of mosques after Friday sermons, as pickup trucks with loudspeakers blared messages against Gibbons, who was sentenced Thursday to 15 days in prison and deportation. She avoided the more serious punishment of 40 lashes.

They massed in central Martyrs Square outside the presidential palace, where hundreds of riot police were deployed. They did not try to stop the rally, which lasted about an hour.

"Shame, shame on the U.K.," protesters chanted.

They called for Gibbons' execution, saying, "No tolerance: Execution," and "Kill her, kill her by firing squad."

That she was put in prison at all is an outrage although being expelled from Sudan is surely a great blessing.

RLC

Cure For Big Egos

Stefan links us to this video which takes the viewer through a size comparison of various celestial bodies. It gives a whole different perspective to life on earth and shows how microscopically puny our world and its inhabitants really are.

There are some other videos on the same page which are also pretty impressive.

RLC

More Media Bias (Yawn)

CNN hosted the Republican debate Wednesday evening and, through either incompetence or appallingly bad journalistic ethics, utterly squandered whatever credibility they had as an objective news organization. No less than four of the people they had ask questions of Republican candidates were Democrat plants and one was even a Hillary campaign worker.

It's hard to imagine CNN allowing Republicans to ask questions of Democrat candidates and it's just as hard to imagine them allowing Republicans to represent themselves as "undecideds" when in fact they aren't undecided at all. Indeed, it's also hard to imagine CNN allowing Democrats to be subjected to any of the questions that were asked of the Republicans the other night.

Michelle has the goods.

RLC

Morris Defends Huckabee

Dick Morris was Mike Huckabee's political advisor in the early nineties so he knows him pretty well. He argues that, contrary to a lot of the sniping at Huckabee for being a tax and spend populist, he really is a fiscal conservative:

A recent column by Bob Novak excoriated Huckabee for a "47 percent increase in state tax burden." But during Huckabee's years in office, total state tax burden - all 50 states combined - rose by twice as much: 98 percent, increasing from $743 billion in 1993 to $1.47 trillion in 2005.

In Arkansas, the income tax when he took office was 1 percent for the poorest taxpayers and 7 percent for the richest, exactly where it stood when he left the statehouse 11 years later. But, in the interim, he doubled the standard deduction and the child care credit, repealed capital gains taxes for home sales, lowered the capital gains rate, expanded the homestead exemption, and set up tax-free savings accounts for medical care and college tuition.

Most impressively, when he had to pass an income tax surcharge amid the drop in revenues after Sept. 11, 2001, he repealed it three years later when he didn't need it any longer.

He raised the sales tax one cent in 11 years and did that only after the courts ordered him to do so. (He also got voter approval for a one-eighth cent hike for parks and recreation.)

He wants to repeal the income tax, abolish the IRS, and institute a "fair tax" based on consumption, and he opposes any tax increase for Social Security.

Huckabee is gaining momentum because he appears to be one of the few genuine social conservatives in the race. If he turns out also to be a fiscal conservative he will be a force to be reckoned with in the Republican primaries. It remains to be seen, though, what his detailed position on illegal immigration is. On that issue very few candidates find themselves in harmony with the electorate and it could prove to be the undoing of more than one of them.

The rest of Morris' column can be read here.

RLC

Henry Hyde (1924-2007)

A good man has passed away and we would be remiss if we didn't note his passing. Henry Hyde died today at the age of 83. This column describes part of Hyde's contribution to the pro-life movement.

RLC

Correction

Trent Lott is a senator from Mississippi, not Missouri, as we mistakenly had it in our post titled Political Terrorists.

We've corrected the original post and thank Jason for pointing out the error.

RLC

Sudanese Orcs

This is the thanks Gillian Gibbons gets for forsaking a comfortable life in England to go to Sudan, a suburb of Mordor, to work among the poor. She and her students named a Teddy Bear Mohammed and members of the religion of perpetual outrage are now calling for her to be whipped and even executed:

Gillian Gibbons faces 40 lashes and a year in jail after after being charged with insulting Islam.

Extreme Islamic groups said Mrs Gibbons "must die" and urged Muslims to hold street protests after prayers tomorrow.

Read the whole story. You'll marvel at the utter savagery of the Sudanese who think it glorifies God to call for the death of a kind, generous woman for having named a Teddy Bear Mohammed. What a vicious, cruel, bloodthirsty, stupid and petty deity they must think Allah to be. What vicious, cruel, bloodthirsty, stupid and petty people they themselves must be.

RLC

Defining Dangerous Down

Here's a nifty example of solving a problem by defining it away. Some of our nation's schools have been designated "persistently dangerous schools" (PDS). They are PDS because they have high rates of violent assaults. So how does Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-N.Y.) address the problem? She has introduced a bill that changes the designation "persistently dangerous schools" to "schools which do not have a safe climate for academic achievement."

"This will remove the stigma," she explains, "associated with high violence."

Well. We certainly don't want to stigmatize violence in our schools. When you stigmatize something you usually get less of it and why would we want less violence? Besides, if we stigmatize violence somebody might get the idea that our schools are filled with dysfunctional cretins and sociopaths and that would be misleading. They're not really filled with them, after all.

The article linked to above tells us that:

Chuck Buckler, Maryland's director of student services and alternative programs, said the original term is unpleasant -- akin to telling parents that they were sending their children to a war zone.

To be sure, we absolutely don't want parents to think that they're sending their children into Fallujah everyday, even if all the evidence tells them that they are. It's a comfort to these parents, we're sure, to be told by school administrators that all the stories of classroom and cafeteria violence they hear from their children, though not exactly untrue, are just not helpful in creating a positive image of the school.

Another good way to avoid the appearance of being a war zone is to simply resist all but the most severe criteria that would identify your school as such:

In Virginia and the District of Columbia, offenses that meet the threshold (of being labelled a PDS)are those that would result in imprisonment: among them, homicide, arson and assault with a deadly weapon. In Maryland, they are offenses that would result in expulsion or a suspension of 10 days or more: bringing a weapon or drugs to school or engaging in repeated fights. Brawling, bullying and making threats generally do not count toward the designation.

So the day to day fear that many students and teachers live in doesn't count toward identifying your school as dangerous. Evidently, only if you've been murdered can you say that you attend a dangerous school.

More than half of the states require their benchmarks to be met for three consecutive years in order to receive the label PDS. In Maryland, a proposed policy that would have defined persistently dangerous schools based on only one year of data was thrown out because it would have identified 36 schools, according to the Department of Education report.

How clever. Everyone agrees that there can't possibly be 36 dangerous schools in the fair state of Maryland, or any other state, so let's simply not identify them as dangerous and then there won't be. What a wonderful solution. Let's try it with other things. Since there are too many poor people living in the U.S. let's lower the standard for poverty to, say, $5000 a year instead of $20,000 and we'll have solved the problem of poverty overnight!

At one school last year, Anacostia Senior High School, private security guards working under D.C. police recorded 61 violent offenses, including three sexual assaults and one assault with a deadly weapon. There were 21 other nonviolent cases in which students were caught bringing knives and guns to school. But Anacostia is not considered a persistently dangerous school and rightly so. After all, no one was killed.

Exactly. How can anyone say a school is violent if no one has ever been murdered there?

RLC

Political Terrorists

Republican Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi is resigning from the Senate and some lefty bloggers are gleefully insinuating that it's because he's been caught in a business relationship with a male escort. They offer not a shred of evidence, however, and the alleged escort has categorically denied it, but these people drag Lott's name through the slime anyway. See Right Wing Nut House for details.

For such people politics is total war. Whatever it takes to win is justified. They're the ideological equivalent of General Sherman burning everything in sight on his march to the sea. In total war there's no such thing as a banned weapon or a war crime. No tactic is too low for them to employ. They would be delighted, it seems, to assist in the utter ruination of every member of the Republican party if they could.

It's ironic that when conservatives talk about a culture war over values raging in this country it's people on the left who look shocked that such a thing would ever be suggested. Meanwhile, like political terrorists, some of them continue to assassinate their opponents every chance they get while denying that there's any ideological conflict going on at all.

RLC

Pat's New Book

The conservative movement in the United States is split between what are called neo-conservatives and paleo-conservatives, and there's not much love among the latter for the former. Neo-cons tend to be prone to use force abroad in the name of justice and to use government at home to meliorate social ills. Paleos find both of these tendencies abhorrent.

Pat Buchanan is perhaps the most prominent of the paleo-cons, a segment of the conservative population which tends to be isolationist, nationalist, nativist, and fiscally libertarian (low taxes, small government). His new book, Day of Reckoning: How Hubris, Ideology, and Greed Are Tearing America Apart looks to be a very controversial and very provocative read. I haven't read it yet so I don't know whether it's aimed at neo-cons or at liberals. Probably both.

You can read a summary of it here.

RLC

The Irrationality of Science

Paul Davies points out the flaw in any science which claims to be based upon reason rather than faith in an essay in the New York Times. Here are a few highlights:

Science, we are repeatedly told, is the most reliable form of knowledge about the world because it is based on testable hypotheses. Religion, by contrast, is based on faith....In science, a healthy skepticism is a professional necessity, whereas in religion, having belief without evidence is regarded as a virtue.

The last sentence is an irritatingly common misrepresentation of faith. Faith is not believing despite the lack of evidence, faith is believing despite the fact that the evidence falls short of proof. Anyway, Davies is going to argue that science, like religion, is ultimately based on faith:

You couldn't be a scientist if you thought the universe was a meaningless jumble of odds and ends haphazardly juxtaposed. When physicists probe to a deeper level of subatomic structure, or astronomers extend the reach of their instruments, they expect to encounter additional elegant mathematical order. And so far this faith has been justified.

The most refined expression of the rational intelligibility of the cosmos is found in the laws of physics, the fundamental rules on which nature runs....But where do these laws come from? And why do they have the form that they do?

Over the years I have often asked my physicist colleagues why the laws of physics are what they are. The answers vary from "that's not a scientific question" to "nobody knows." The favorite reply is, "There is no reason they are what they are - they just are." The idea that the laws exist reasonlessly is deeply anti-rational. After all, the very essence of a scientific explanation of some phenomenon is that the world is ordered logically and that there are reasons things are as they are. If one traces these reasons all the way down to the bedrock of reality - the laws of physics - only to find that reason then deserts us, it makes a mockery of science.

Can the mighty edifice of physical order we perceive in the world about us ultimately be rooted in reasonless absurdity? If so, then nature is a fiendishly clever bit of trickery: meaninglessness and absurdity somehow masquerading as ingenious order and rationality.

A second reason that the laws of physics have now been brought within the scope of scientific inquiry is the realization that what we long regarded as absolute and universal laws might not be truly fundamental at all, but more like local bylaws. They could vary from place to place on a mega-cosmic scale. A God's-eye view might reveal a vast patchwork quilt of universes, each with its own distinctive set of bylaws. In this "multiverse," life will arise only in those patches with bio-friendly bylaws, so it is no surprise that we find ourselves in a Goldilocks universe - one that is just right for life.

The multiverse theory is increasingly popular, but it doesn't so much explain the laws of physics as dodge the whole issue. There has to be a physical mechanism to make all those universes and bestow bylaws on them. This process will require its own laws, or meta-laws. Where do they come from? The problem has simply been shifted up a level from the laws of the universe to the meta-laws of the multiverse.

Clearly, then, both religion and science are founded on faith - namely, on belief in the existence of something outside the universe, like an unexplained God or an unexplained set of physical laws, maybe even a huge ensemble of unseen universes, too. For that reason, both monotheistic religion and orthodox science fail to provide a complete account of physical existence.

This is correct if ultimate reality is physical but not if the ultimate reality is God. If beyond our universe lies something else that is physical then it's true that we lack an exhaustive explanation of physical reality because we have not explained that part of it which transcends our world, but if underlying all physical being is a non-physical Being then that Being provides an exhaustive explanation, at least in theory, of the physical reality.

Davies concludes:

But until science comes up with a testable theory of the laws of the universe, its claim to be free of faith is manifestly bogus.

Beyond the fact that this essay is guaranteed to send materialists into a tizzy it's also notable that Davies is saying what many philosophers - most prominently, perhaps, Alvin Plantinga - have been saying for decades: If the physical is all there is then ultimately the universe is non-rational. The rationality that scientists impute to the universe and which forms the epistemic foundation for their investigations of it can only be justified if the ultimate explanation for the universe is an intelligent, rational mind.

RLC

Coming to a Theater Near You

Here's a seven minute preview of the forthcoming expos� titled Expelled featuring Ben Stein. The film addresses the attempt by Darwinian materialists to suppress and purge any and all challengers to Darwinian orthodoxy from positions of influence in the academy. It's must viewing for anyone who still clings to the idealized view of the university as a forum for the free exchange of ideas.

Since the 1960s many universities have come to see themselves not as places where students are taught to think critically, challenge ideas, and learn "the best that has been thought and written," but to serve as reeducation camps for indoctrinating students in left-wing ideology and materialist philosophy. It's an unfortunate development and one that has taken place largely beneath the radar of the parents who are paying for their child's indoctrination.

Expelled will be released in February.

HT: Uncommon Descent

RLC

Birth of a Friendship

This article in the Chicago Tribune has a fascinating account of how a Sunni insurgent became an ally of American troops:

Earlier this year, Abul Abed, a disgruntled Sunni insurgent leader, began secret talks with the Americans about ending Al Qaeda's reign of terror in this run-down, formerly middle-class Baghdad neighborhood, renowned as one of the city's most dangerous. He had been gathering intelligence on the group for months.

One day in late May, he said, he decided it was time to act.

He hailed the car carrying the feared leader of Al Qaeda in the neighborhood, a man known as the White Lion, on one of Amariyah's main streets. "We want you to stop destroying our neighborhood," he told the man.

"Do you know who you are talking to?" said the White Lion, getting out of his car. "I am Al Qaeda. I will destroy even your own houses!"

He pulled out his pistol and shot at Abul Abed. The gun jammed. He reloaded and fired again. Again, the gun jammed.

By this time, Abul Abed said, he had pulled his own gun. He fired once, killing the White Lion.

"I walked over to him, stepped on his hand and took his gun," Abul Abed, which is a nom de guerre, said at his new, pink-painted headquarters in a renovated school in Amariyah, as an American Army captain seated in the corner nodded his head in affirmation of the account. "And then the fight started."

It was the beginning of the end for Al Qaeda in Amariyah. The next day, a firefight erupted. Al Qaeda fighters closed in on Abul Abed. Most of the 150 men who had joined him fled. Holed up in a mosque with fewer than a dozen supporters, Abul Abed thought the end was near.

"The blue carpet was soaked red with blood," he recalled. Then the imam of the mosque called in American help.

A friendship was born.

It is common to hear critics of the war argue that the reason things are better in Iraq today has nothing to do with the surge and everything to do with the fact that many Sunnis have turned against al Qaeda, but this is a puerile argument. It seems much more likely that both the American surge and Sunni desperation at al Qaeda tyranny have combined to turn the course of this conflict.

As the above account makes clear people like Abul Abed would not have survived were they not able to call upon beefed up American forces to defend them against al Qaeda. Nor would the Sunnis have been eager to challenge al Qaeda despite the terrorists' atrocities were it not for the knowledge that the U.S. would be there to support them and wasn't going to abandon them.

The surge may not be the only reason things are looking up in Iraq, but it is certainly a necessary reason. Without it there no progress would have been made at all.

RLC

How Science Explains Stuff

In an article on the origin of life (OOL) in Scientific American physicist Paul Davies says this:

In 1995 renowned Belgian biochemist Christian de Duve called life "a cosmic imperative" and declared "it is almost bound to arise" on any Earth-like planet. De Duve's statement reinforced the belief among astrobiologists that the universe is teeming with life. Dubbed biological determinism by Robert Shapiro of New York University, this theory is sometimes expressed by saying that "life is written into the laws of nature."

In other words the laws of nature are such as to make the origin of life an inevitability, notwithstanding that no one at present has any idea how it happened or could have happened. Even so, De Duve and others say, it had to have happened through purely material processes and forces because the laws of nature dictated it. And how do we know they dictated it? Because it happened.

So, when materialism can't explain the exquisite fine-tuning of the cosmos materialists posit a multitude of other universes that are empirically undetectable in order to increase the probability that one like ours would arise by chance.

When materialism can't explain consciousness materialists simply deny that such a thing exists.

Now, because they can't explain how life might have evolved by purely mechanistic processes they posit the existence of laws that have never been detected that make the appearance of life a matter of course.

This is great sport, but it causes us to wonder where it will end. Will someone someday rub his chin and say, "Hmm, maybe the simplest explanation for all these phenomena is not an infinite number of worlds, or inscrutable laws of nature, or the denial of a consciousness that we're all conscious of having? Maybe the simplest explanation is that there's an intelligence out there somewhere behind all these phenomena which are so hard to explain in terms of materialism."

Such a possibility is certainly no less speculative than mumbo jumbo about other universes and mysterious, unknown laws of physics. It would also be, in its way, a Grand Unifying Theory of dozens of otherwise hard to explain phenomena.

RLC

Right/Left Hemisphere

This optical illusion is pretty amazing. According to the article, if you see the girl spinning clockwise, that means you're using the right side, or more creative side, of your brain. If she appears to be moving counter-clockwise, then that means the left side, or more logical side of your brain, is dominant.

What the article doesn't say is that if you focus on where her legs pass each other and visualize the elevated limb passing in front of the other when it appears to be passing behind it you can actually get her to switch directions. I guess this means that your brain is switching hemispheres.

Of course, you have to ignore the fact that the young lady appears to be in her altogether to get the illusion to work at all.

RLC

Huckabee's Populism

We here at Viewpoint have been following Mike Huckabee's progress in the Republican nomination wars and have found much about him to like and some things about which are troubling. Some conservatives, however, like Jonah Goldberg, find him, or rather his economic populism, actually scary.

I agree that there are reasons for concern, and it will be important for Huck to allay some of the fears being expressed by conservatives. Goldberg says this about him:

So what's so scary about Huckabee? Personally, nothing. By all accounts, he's a charming, decent, friendly, pious man.

What's troubling about The Man From Hope 2.0 is what he represents. Huckabee represents compassionate conservatism on steroids. A devout social conservative on issues such as abortion, school prayer, homosexuality and evolution, Huckabee is a populist on economics, a fad-follower on the environment and an all-around do-gooder who believes that the biblical obligation to do "good works" extends to using government -- and your tax dollars -- to bring us closer to the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth.

For example, Huckabee has indicated he would support a nationwide federal ban on public smoking. Why? Because he's on a health kick, thinks smoking is bad and believes the government should do the right thing.

It will be interesting to see how Huck responds to this sort of critique over the course of the campaign. I am especially anxious to hear his views on illegal immigration. He has said that he favors a robust enforcement of the border but then everybody says that. We'll see.

RLC

A Man's Got to Know His Limitations

A lot of people have drawn the conclusion that because intelligent design proponents lost the Kitzmiller v. Dover Board of Education case a couple of years ago that therefore ID was somehow refuted. This is an unfortunate misconception. As we have written elsewhere, the case may have been rightly decided but much of the reasoning and at least one of Judge John Jones' conclusions was deeply flawed.

The judge almost certainly exceeded both his proper role and his expertise when he gave as part of the rationale for his ruling the claim that intelligent design is not a truly scientific hypothesis. This is not something that a judge is competent to decide, and for Judge Jones to try to do so was as absurd as if he tried to rule on what constitutes art or sport.

The Judge, in fact, tacitly admits that he strayed beyond his purview in an interview on the Lehrer Report. Casey Luskin reports about it here.

RLC

Re: Common-Good Conservatism

Byron offers some dissenting thoughts on our post titled Common-Good Conservatism on our Feedback page. As always, he makes some good observations.

RLC

Do the Right Thing

We noted over a week ago the good news that recent developments in stem cell research have made the use of human embryos as a source of stem cells unnecessary. The LA Times has a story on this by Richard Hayes, the executive director of the Center for Genetics and Society in Oakland. In the course of the story Hayes makes a rather stunning admission:

But the great unreported story of the cloning debate is that research using cloning also has been viewed skeptically by many scientists and public interest advocates who identify as liberals, progressives and supporters of women's health and reproductive rights.

Many have noted the immense technical hurdles that would have to be overcome before cloning could ever be used therapeutically. Others are concerned about access and affordability, given that cloning-based stem cell therapies would likely cost upward of $100,000 a treatment. Still others recognize that the development of cloning techniques for research would open the door to human reproductive cloning and an array of high-tech eugenic and "designer baby" applications. And many women's health leaders are concerned about the risks posed by the fact that millions of women's eggs, which are the raw materials of cloning, would be needed each year if the promised era of personalized medicine through cloning were ever to materialize.

As soon as religious conservatives called for embryo cloning to be banned, however, liberal leaders reacted by uncritically embracing it. From that point on, it was an uphill struggle for liberals who otherwise supported stem cell research to raise questions about cloning without being portrayed as dupes or fellow travelers of the Bush administration.

In other words, at least some of the apparent support for cloning human embryos was based on nothing more than a desire not be associated with Christians or George Bush. Apparently some liberals would rather keep their concerns to themselves rather than be found on the same side of an issue as George Bush or religious conservatives. It gives us a warm feeling to think that so many of our nation's citizens are so highly principled.

I wonder how many scientists are also skeptical of Darwinism but dread being associated with creationists, or skeptical of some aspect of the current global warming enthusiasms, but quaver at the thought of being on the same side of the issue as the Bush administration.

It's all reminiscent of high school social dynamics. These people would rather be popular and politically correct than do the right thing.

RLC

Common-Good Conservatism

Further evidence to support the belief that most people who vote have no idea what they're voting for: In one of the most inscrutable political moves ever made by the voters of Pennsylvania the man who wrote the following lost his senate seat a year ago to an all but anonymous liberal Democrat for no discernable reason other than that the challenger was a Democrat:

Let's be honest: How much credit do Republicans get for helping the poor? Let me tell you from firsthand knowledge - none, in terms of votes.

Understanding the reason requires a quick look back over how voter attitudes changed over the last 70 years. In the 1930s and 1960s, the Democratic Party, with huge congressional majorities, began giving tax dollars to the poor based solely on need. A dispirited Republican minority acted like cheap Democrats: agreeing to these big-government programs, but for less money. As a result, Democrats have been rewarded with the enduring allegiance of poor and working-class voters. It is easy to conclude that money talks in politics. I would suggest that initiative and caring do, too.

But after 50 years, Americans woke up to the ill effects of no-questions-asked government giveaways: welfare dependency, family disintegration and hopelessness among the poor. They also awoke to the effects of liberal class warfare: high taxes and a stagnant economy with high inflation.

The Reagan revolution rung in an era of lower taxes across the board and a push to scale back the size and scope of government. The revolution succeeded in cutting taxes and transforming the economy, but it was less successful in actually shrinking government than it was in limiting its growth. However, the rhetoric further convinced the poor and working poor that even though they knew the current system wasn't working, Republicans were not on their side. That was in spite of the passage of the most successful policy aimed at helping the working poor, the Earned Income Credit.

In addition to policy successes, the Reagan revolution realigned the country politically. "Reagan Democrats" came to the party because of their belief in core American values of respect for life, support for the traditional family, and a strong national defense. Many of these voters were Catholics who also brought with them more of a concern for the poor and less of an aversion to government programs.

In the 1990s this integration resulted in a conservative movement based on the Catholic concept of subsidiarity. Described by Pope Leo XIII in the late 1800s, the principle of subsidiarity suggests that social ills should be addressed by institutions that are as close to the need as possible, starting with the family and working out.

What I call "common-good" conservatism not only relies as much as possible on private charities and faith organizations, market forces, individual choice and decentralized decision-making, but also sees a role for government in empowering the nongovernmental institutions of civil society that serve the common good.

For example, with the use of government vouchers, individuals are better able to choose a nonprofit service provider that is better for their families than a government program is. Similarly, taxpayers are at least as capable as Washington bureaucrats of choosing an effective charity that aids the poor in their communities. So why not eliminate most government grants and give a tax credit to individuals who give to poverty-fighting nonprofits? Unlike past conservative proposals, that measure would be aiming not to save money but to save lives.

Common-good conservatism creates the opportunity for services to be more effectively delivered to those in need, while helping to re-create a community, a place to reconnect. And for Republicans, it creates an opportunity to reconnect to the millions of Americans who think we don't care.

This is former senator Rick Santorum sounding like Mike Gerson sounding like Mike Huckabee sounding like George Bush. For fifty years the preferred solution to poverty among Democrats has been to take from the rich and give to the poor. Unfortunately, six trillion dollars later, the poor are as numerous now as ever because simply throwing money at them does nothing to resolve the reasons they are poor in the first place.

Government has largely usurped the role of meliorating poverty previously filled by community organizations like churches and charitable organizations which are best suited to provide the oversight and discipline necessary to help people lift themselves into the middle class. Not only does government tend to perpetuate by its policies a culture of poverty, not only is it poorly equipped to teach the values needed to eliminate that culture, but, as Marvin Olasky writes in his wonderful book The Tragedy of American Compassion, government usurpation of the role played by local institutions has caused those institutions to largely abandon those roles and to atrophy like a limb that's no longer used.

Whether we call it Compassionate Conservatism (Bush), Heroic Conservatism (Gerson), or Common-Good Conservatism (Santorum) the key to winning the struggle to truly help the poor requires empowering those institutions closest to the people to instill in them the set of attitudes, disciplines, and moral values they must have in order to join the middle class. Simply sending people a check every month almost guarantees that they and their children will remain stuck where they are for the rest of their lives.

Booting out of the senate people who have a strong record of assisting the poor and replacing them with an empty suit - just because the empty suit belongs to the party that wants to send the monthly checks - doesn't help much either.

RLC

The Ultimately Real

Go here and look at the upside down pictures of George Bush. They appear to a casual observer to be pretty much identical, but they're very different as you quickly see if you click on the image.

What is it about the brain that causes it to process upside down images differently than the same image right side up? How much of the world do we fail to see because our brains simply don't recognize it? How much different is reality from what we perceive it to be?

Perhaps the world in which we live and move is to the ultimately real world like the world of actors in a movie projected onto a screen is to the three dimensional world of the audience in the theater. Perhaps the ultimately real is comprised of additional dimensions in which we are embedded that our brains are simply unable to process and to which we are oblivious.

If so, the ultimately real could surround us and yet be impossible for us to imagine. We could no more conceptualize it than a blind man could conceptualize the color red. Trying to imagine it would be like a man born deaf and blind trying to imagine what he feels and smells as he sits on a crowded seashore is really like.

Among our philosophical prejudices is the prejudice that the world is pretty much as we experience it. This was the conviction of the prisoner chained in Plato's cave until he was able to break free and climb out of his prison and behold the world in the light of the Good, the Beautiful, and the True.

Perhaps reality is in fact something like it is portrayed in this parable titled Plato's Cave for Modern Man.

RLC

Huck and Chuck

Mike Huckabee's first campaign ad is out. I'm not sure it makes much sense, but then few campaign ads do, I guess.

Joe Carter takes issue with a National Review piece critical of Mike Huckabee's fiscal populism as governor of Arkansas and makes a case that between Huck and Romney the Huckster was the more fiscally conservative governor.

If Huckabee finishes strong in Iowa, which polls show him doing, he will be a major player the rest of the way out because he will have a great deal of appeal for Republican moderates and social conservatives. He will also seem an attractive alternative for many Evangelicals who would have otherwise gone to Romney.

I just wish he didn't look so much like Richard Nixon.

RLC

Thanksgiving Wishes

Bill and I wish all our readers a wonderful Thanksgiving. Each year on this day we've run the original Thanksgiving Day Proclamation issued in 1789 by George Washington. It's worth reading. Here it is:

THANKSGIVING DAY 1789 BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA - A PROCLAMATION:

Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor - and Whereas both Houses of Congress have by their joint Committee requested me "to recommend to the People of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness."

Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th day of November next to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be - That we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks - for his kind care and protection of the People of this country previous to their becoming a Nation - for the signal and manifold mercies, and the favorable interpositions of his providence, which we experienced in the course and conclusion of the late war -for the great degree of tranquillity, union, and plenty, which we have since enjoyed - for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national One now lately instituted, for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and in general for all the great and various favors which he hath been pleased to confer upon us.

And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech him to pardon our national and other transgressions - to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually - to render our national government a blessing to all the People, by constantly being a government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed - to protect and guide all Sovereigns and Nations (especially such as have shewn kindness unto us) and to bless them with good government, peace, and concord - To promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the increase of science among them and Us - and generally to grant unto all mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as he alone knows to be best.

Given under my hand at the City of New York the third day of October in the year of our Lord 1789. GO. WASHINGTON.

All Presidential Thanksgiving proclamations can be found here. No doubt those who say that this country was not founded by religious men nor upon Judeo-Christian presuppositions would rather you not read these, but here they are.

We hope that each of us takes time this day to reflect upon all that we have to be grateful for and to reflect, too, upon our relationship to the God from whom all our blessings flow. Have a great Thanksgiving Day.

RLC,

Let's Humiliate Our Friends

First the Democrats sought to pass a bill that would censure Turkey for an atrocity committed 90 years ago. Then they wanted to cut off aid to Pakistan as long as Pervez Musharraf was running the show, now they want to cut off aid to Ethiopia. Quick quiz: What do Turkey, Pakistan and Ethiopia have in common? Time's up. They're all allies of the U.S. in the war against radical jihadism. Ethiopia, especially, is fighting the Islamists in Somalia which takes a lot of pressure off of us.

Next question: What principle is driving the Dems to embarrass and weaken those who are helping us in our fight against the extremists? If you said the desire for justice you might be right, but you'd have a hard time proving it. The Democrats have been relatively silent in the face of injustices elsewhere in the world. Cuba, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Iran, China, North Korea, and Sudan are all tyrannical states or on their way to becoming so, yet there's very little stomach on the left for doing much of anything significant to change them. Why, then, are they suddenly aroused from their slumbers when they find abridgements of democratic principles among our friends but not when they occur among our foes?

Perhaps you reply that we don't have as much leverage with our enemies as we do with our friends. This is true, of course, but if one is concerned with justice there are ways to embarrass the perpetrators of injustice other than withholding aid. The condemnation of Turkey wasn't a matter of withdrawing money, it was a matter of passing a resolution. If Ethiopia's lack of a totally free press is the reason for the left's displeasure where are the vocal denunciations of Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro, Robert Mugabe and the rest of their fellow malefactors?

Third question: Since all the bad guys in the second paragraph are hostile to the U.S. is there a pattern here? Do the Democrats seek to punish those who are useful to our national security while giving those who despise us a pass? If so, why?

Last question: Can people so perverse or so maladroit be trusted to run the foreign policy of this country?

RLC

My Grandfather's Son

I recently finished reading the much talked about memoir by Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas titled My Grandfather's Son. Thomas describes a rather turbulent life from his days as a poor boy growing up in Pinpoint, Georgia through the rebellion of adolescence to his historic tribulations as a Supreme Court nominee.

The entire book is a good read, offering as it does valuable insights into the complex character and thinking of one of the most powerful men in America, but to anyone who followed the debacle of his Supreme Court nomination, the last several chapters are riveting.

One comes away from the book with his political cynicism intact, if not reinforced. Consider, for example this passage where Thomas, while employed at the Department of Education during the 1970s, asks a staffer to find a study that would show that black students do better in integrated schools than in segregated schools:

[I was told] that none existed. I asked why it was so widely accepted that black children were better off in integrated schools. He replied that integration had nothing to do with education: the point of busing white and black children to each other's schools was to encourage their parents to move to those neighborhoods. I was aghast, and had no doubts whatsoever that most blacks would have felt exactly the same way. All the black parents I knew tolerated the disruption of busing solely because they wanted better educational opportunities for their children, not so they could live next door to whites.

When Thomas gets to his confirmation hearings in 1991 the reader's cynicism soars even higher. The account of what he was put through, the attempt to destroy him personally, the lies and treachery he experienced at the hands of Anita Hill and others (Senators Howard Metzenbaum and Joe Biden don't fare well in Thomas' telling of the story), is beyond disgraceful. Yet Thomas treats those who acted so shabbily toward him with fairness and grace.

Even if Anita Hill were telling the truth when she accused Thomas of once, a decade earlier, making inappropriate remarks in her presence, the fact that she never expressed any disapproval to him and instead treated him as a friend - someone she admired - until the day he was nominated for the Supreme Court is beyond contempt. That she made the accusations for no apparent reason other than to destroy his career and to prevent him from taking a seat on the Court is an astonishing betrayal of a man who had helped her several times in her career. One wonders how she and those who used her can sleep at night.

In any event, there are heroes in the book as well as villains. Thomas' grandfather is one of the former (although it's sometimes hard to see why). Senator Jack Danforth is another, and there are more.

All in all it's a very good read, especially for those interested in recent American history and for those who like biography. I know that Hearts and Minds has the book in stock.

RLC

The Nose of the Camel

Why can't they ever just tell us what they're really trying to accomplish? Why does the left so often package their agenda in camouflage gift wrap?

All through the S-CHIP debate conservatives were saying that the ultimate goal of the Democrats was to impose universal socialized health care on the nation by gradually expanding the coverage beyond just the poor and the young. Progressives denied the allegation by arguing that their intent was to do nothing more than help poor kids. Now, however, former Democratic governor of Iowa, and early presidential candidate, Tom Vilsack has tacitly admitted that conservatives were right and that S-CHIP was just a ploy to get the camel's nose inside the tent. In a speech at Drake U. last week Vilsack acknowledged that:

"I think there is going to be a commitment to universal coverage. I don't think it's necessarily going to be a sector by sector process. I think you either need to go in whole hog or not. We tried to sort of squeeze the middle here with doing children and doing seniors, and trying to squeeze it. If anything happens, it would more likely look something like this: you would extend eligibility for children from 200% of poverty to 300% of poverty, and create resources to insure the parents of those children."

In other words, the plan was to expand coverage to middle class children, then their parents and eventually to everyone.

Universal coverage is what they have in Canada and England. It doesn't appear to be working well there and there's little reason to think it'd work well here. What it would do is raise everyone's taxes and, if other countries' experience is any indication, lower the quality and accessibility of health care.

It's the dream of the left to fold more and more of the economy into the government in order to realize socialist nirvana but nowhere has socialism ever lived up to its promise. In every western nation in which it has been implemented it has sapped the country of its economic energy and vigor. For the left, however, it's better to have a limping economy than economic disparity.

Even so, there may be a case to be made for universal health care in the U.S. I just wish that its proponents would be forthright about what they're trying to do and let the case be judged based upon its merits. To try to sneak universal health care into our social structure without people realizing what's going on only causes one to doubt that there's a compelling case to be made for it.

HT to the ever vigilant Michelle Malkin who has more on this.

RLC

Tears of the Sun

The movie Tears of the Sun is about a team of Navy SEALs sent into Nigeria during a fictional civil war to extract an American doctor. The team is leading a group of civilians out of the country when they come upon a village in which the people are being raped and murdered by Nigerian soldiers. The team's orders for the mission are to take no action unless in self-defense, but the viewer can't help but think that the right thing for them to do is to intervene to save the lives of these poor people. As the Americans watch from a hillside the thugs douse a man with gasoline and prepare to burn him alive. A girl has her breasts cut off and is then raped while she bleeds to death.

As this scene of the movie unfolded I couldn't help wonder, is it not immoral to be able to stop such atrocities and yet refuse to do so? Is it not itself an atrocity to have it within one's power to protect people from the horrors of evil men and yet demur? Do we not have a moral obligation to save those we can from such a fate, even if it means the resort violence?

If the answer to these questions is yes, then should we not have intervened in Rwanda in 1994 to save the Tutsis from the Hutus (Watch Hotel Rwanda or Beyond the Gates)? Should we not have intervened in Darfur to save the victims of that genocide from the Sudanese Islamists in Khartoum? If the answer to those questions is yes, then why should we not also have intervened in Iraq to save the millions of people who were being slaughtered by Saddam Hussein?

I also wondered what pacifists like Howard Yoder or Jim Wallis at Sojourners would say if they were watching Tears of the Sun with me. Would they maintain that the SEAL team should bypass the village and allow the slaughter to continue? If the SEALs intervened and rescued some of the Nigerian children and women would Yoder and Wallis condemn them for their choice?

What would Jesus do, I hear someone ask. I don't know, but I can't imagine that He would just pass on by and let those women and children be savagely slaughtered, or that He would want us to.

If you think that the SEALs should avoid confrontation with the soldiers in that tragic village I urge you to watch the movie and then explain to someone why you think it would have been wrong for the Americans to use violence to help those people. I wonder if your words won't sound hollow even to yourself.

RLC

Joe Carter on Waterboarding

As a contribution to the ongoing debate on torture and waterboarding Joe Carter at Evangelical Outpost offers up a couple of posts. In the first he asserts, amidst some disappointingly insulting rhetoric, that torture should never be legal. In the second he seeks to clarify his position, but his clarification seems a little muddled.

He says this:

I have almost no reservations when it comes to opposing torture or saying that it is immoral in almost all circumstances. But because I am neither a utilitarian nor a deontologist (my ethical view could best be described as a form of virtue ethics), I cannot say that there are no situations where these actions would not be morally justifiable. But torture should always be illegal and the price of breaking this law should be so high that we can expect that it will be used only in the most absolutely urgent of circumstances.

Because the torture victim must bear the cost of incredible pain and even death, the benefits to the torturer must be worth bearing some of the costs. Torture must not be cheap. But if the "ticking-time bomb" scenario is real, the interrogator should be willing to pay the price--even if it means his own death--to protect the lives of the innocent.

There are at least two things wrong with what Joe says. The first is that it is a confusion. If there are circumstances in which torture should be carried out then torture in those circumstances is, as Carter acknowledges, morally justifiable. This means that it may, under those circumstances, be the right thing to do, and it is folly to say that the right thing to do should nevertheless be illegal and that the person who does the right thing and perhaps saves thousands of lives thereby should be punished and perhaps even executed.

In his first post he had claimed that "As Christians we must never condone the use of methods that threaten to undermine the inherent dignity of the person created in the image of God." Now he is saying that a man who uses torture against a terrorist to save thousands of innocent lives might himself be legally put to death. This is an odd thing for one to say who has just insisted that we should never do anything to undermine the dignity of someone created in the image of God. Nothing undermines someone's dignity like taking his life away.

What Carter should say is that the torturer bears the responsibility of knowing that he must never resort to torture unless extraordinary circumstances obtain. To do otherwise would be to incur the risk of punishment, but, given those extraordinary circumstances, torture may be considered not only justifiable but perhaps even morally obligatory.

The second thing that's wrong with his clarification is that it seems that Carter has been arguing all along for a position he himself doesn't really hold. After excoriating Christians who refuse to adopt an absolutist position against torture he admits that he doesn't take an absolutist position either. He admits that there may be times when torture should be used and that's all anyone in the debate has ever said.

No one, certainly no Christian, thinks that torture should be undertaken lightly. Everyone agrees that torture should never be used as punishment, revenge, amusement, or as an ordinary interrogation tool. But neither should someone be guilty of a capital crime if, in order to save thousands or millions, he employs a technique like waterboarding which induces panic in someone who has the information needed to save those lives.

After many words and much insult Carter's argument seems to reduce to the truism that torture is wrong except when it isn't. But if that's all he's saying why does he bother to say it?

RLC

New Stem Cell Source

Amazing news out of Japan, via England, offers real hope for developing stem cells which can be used to heal numerous diseases without destroying human embryos. The technique is so promising that the scientist who developed the first cloned sheep, Ian Wilmut, has decided to adopt it for his own work.

Here are the basics:

Prof Yamanaka has shown in mice how to turn skin cells into what look like versatile stem cells potentially capable of overcoming the effects of disease.

This pioneering work to revert adult cells to an embryonic state has been reproduced by a team in America and Prof Yamanaka is, according to one British stem cell scientist, thought to have achieved the same feat in human cells.

This work has profound significance because it suggests that after a heart attack, for example, skin cells from a patient might one day be manipulated by adding a cocktail of small molecules to form muscle cells to repair damage to the heart, or brain cells to repair the effects of Parkinson's. Because they are the patient's own cells, they would not be rejected.

In theory, these reprogrammed cells could be converted into any of the 200 other type in the body, even the collections of different cell types that make up tissues and, in the very long term, organs too. Prof Wilmut said it was "extremely exciting and astonishing" and that he now plans to do research in this area.

This approach, he says, represents, the future for stem cell research...

There's much more about this development at the link.

RLC

What's That Smell?

Hard on the heels of the Norman Hsu campaign contribution scandal comes word that three of the people pardoned by Bill Clinton as he was on his way out the White House door have contributed thousands of dollars to his wife's presidential campaign.

Why is it that scandal and impropriety cling to the Clintons like a bad odor? Do we really want four, or eight, more years of all that all over again?

RLC

Observing Thanksgiving

This Thanksgiving it might be a good idea, just to deepen our understanding of why we celebrate the day, to watch a movie. Not just any movie but a movie that will impress upon us how glad we should be that we live in the United States and not somewhere else.

Here are a few suggestions:

• The Lives of Others
• The Pianist
• Schindler's List
• Beyond the Gates
• Hotel Rwanda
• Blood Diamond
• Tears of the Sun

They're each R-rated, with all that that entails, so be advised, but each of them in its own way will make you thankful every minute that you watch it that you're an American living in this country at this time in history.

If anyone can think of other suggestions send them in via our feedback function by Wednesday, and I'll post them.

RLC

Coming to a Mosque Near You

This is a glimpse of what radical Muslims are blowing themselves up for in order to impose it upon your children:

A court in the ultra-conservative kingdom of Saudi Arabia is punishing a female victim of gang rape with 200 lashes and six months in jail, a newspaper reported on Thursday.

The 19-year-old woman -- whose six armed attackers have been sentenced to jail terms -- was initially ordered to undergo 90 lashes for "being in the car of an unrelated male at the time of the rape," the Arab News reported.

But in a new verdict issued after Saudi Arabia's Higher Judicial Council ordered a retrial, the court in the eastern town of Al-Qatif more than doubled the number of lashes to 200.

A court source told the English-language Arab News that the judges had decided to punish the woman further for "her attempt to aggravate and influence the judiciary through the media."

Saudi Arabia enforces a strict Islamic doctrine known as Wahhabism and forbids unrelated men and women from associating with each other, bans women from driving and forces them to cover head-to-toe in public.

This story actually gets worse. Read the rest at the link.

RLC

A Uniquely Human Gift

Perhaps you've been wondering lately about the state of research into demonstrating the close kinship between apes and humans by teaching apes how to express themselves in language.

If so, you might be interested in an article by Clive Wynne in Skeptic. Wynne concludes that, contrary to popular misconception, all attempts to teach genuine language to apes have failed.

He notes that:

[T]he French philosopher Ren� Descartes observed that, "it is very remarkable that there are none so depraved and stupid, without even excepting idiots, that they cannot arrange different words together, forming of them a statement by which they make known their thoughts; while, on the other hand, there is no other animal, however perfect and fortunately circumstanced it may be, which can do the same." Descartes' opinion had survived three centuries unthreatened by possible contradiction....

But then researchers set about in the 1960s and 70s to teach apes to express themselves using signs and symbols. The hope among some was that if apes had the ability to develop language skills of some sort it would provide evidence of our evolutionary relationship. After some initially exciting results enthusiasm subsequently waned, and Wynne concludes:

Descartes was right, there really are no beasts, no matter how fortunately circumstanced, that can make known their thoughts through language. Next time you see [an ape] on a television documentary, turn down the sound so you can just watch what he is doing without interpretation from the ape's trainers. See if that really appears to be language. Somewhere in the history of our kind there must have been the first beings who could rearrange tokens to create new meanings, to distinguish Me Banana from Banana Me. But the evidence from many years of training apes to press buttons or sign in ASL (American Sign Language), is that this must have happened sometime after we split off from chimps, bonobos, and gorillas. Since then we have been talking to ourselves.

The problem is that apes can be taught to manipulate symbols but they cannot be taught (or have not been taught) grammar, which is the essence of language. This appears to be a uniquely human capability and thus the distance between us and our alleged anthropoid cousins seems to widen the more we learn about both them and us.

As we've noted before, it must be frustrating to be a Darwinian materialist nowadays. So little of what science is discovering about the world seems to support that view.

RLC

Twelve Myths

Ralph Peters discusses twelve myths of the 21st century:

1. War doesn't change anything.
2. Victory is impossible today.
3. Insurgencies can never be defeated.
4. There's no military solution; only negotiations can solve our problems.
5. When we fight back, we only provoke our enemies.
6. Killing terrorists only turns them into martyrs.
7. If we fight as fiercely as our enemies, we're no better than them.
8. The United States is more hated today than ever before.
9. Our invasion of Iraq created our terrorist problems.
10. If we just leave, the Iraqis will patch up their differences on their own.
11. It's all Israel's fault. Or the popular Washington corollary: "The Saudis are our friends."
12. The Middle East's problems are all America's fault.

Anyone who pays attention to the news outlets or reads what Democratic senators and congresspersons have been saying for the last five years has heard each of these in one form or another. Often they're stated with no supporting evidence and they're rarely questioned. Yet each of them is either false or, like #5 and #6, they make a point that's relatively trivial.

Read Peters' discussion of the errors of these twelve myths at the link.

RLC

Two Questions

There's something revealing about this line from a story at American Scientist:

"Civil engineers may be able to design more innovative and improved structures by borrowing from genetics."

Why are structures like bridges and buildings, whose engineering is borrowed from the biological world, considered to be well-designed, but the biological structures which they copy are just the product of blind chance?

Why do we repeatedly find structures in nature which have a design far superior to anything that intelligent engineers have developed yet those biological structures are assumed to be the result of blind, unintelligent, unintentional accident while the relatively inferior efforts of engineers are evidence of intellectual brilliance?

Just asking.

RLC

How They Did It

Kimberly Kagan at The Weekly Standard writes a thorough account of how the Surge accomplished the task of largely eliminating the threat of al Qaeda in Iraq. The strategy and tactics she describes may well be a major part of the curriculum in our war colleges in the decades ahead.

RLC