Worth the Cost

One of the current narrative threads concerning the situation in Iraq is that, even if we're winning, it wasn't worth the cost in blood and treasure. But how does one assess what price would be worth paying to accomplish what we have accomplished? Was the Revolutionary war worth the cost? How about the Civil war, or WWII, or Korea? How could anyone answer those questions at the time? They're difficult enough to answer even now. How do we assess how many American lives and how many American dollars are just the right price to:

• Liberate 25 million people
• Remove a bloodthirsty mass killer who was a threat to the entire region and a supporter of terrorism.
• Induce Libya and, if the NIE is to be believed (I'm skeptical), Iran to give up their nuclear weapons ambitions.
• Hand al Qaeda a crucial defeat on a battlefield of their choosing and kill tens of thousands of terrorist torturers and mass murderers.
• Gain an important ally (or quasi-ally) in the region.

The nay-sayers counter with the claim that we've lost prestige around the world, but where's the evidence of that? The left-wing European media despises us, of course, but then they always have. The European people themselves, however, have chosen Gordon Brown, Angela Merkel, and Nicholas Sarkozy to lead their countries, and all of these are pro-American leaders, the latter two even moreso than their predecessors. In South America Hugo Chavez's anti-American rhetoric is not being particularly well-received even by the people who elected him in Venezuela. In Australia staunch ally Prime Minister John Howard was defeated, but his successor, Kevin Rudd, is also pro-American.

In any event, so what if we're not loved? It's a sad fact of human nature that people who envy or who feel indebted to someone tend to resent the one they envy. Machiavelli was right when he said that it's better to be loved than hated, but it's much better to be feared than loved. When people perceive you as strong and willing to use your strength they'll fear and respect you even if they don't love you. If they perceive you to be weak they will despise you, especially if they envy and resent your success, and will work to destroy you.

The important thing is to use one's strength to make the world a more just place and to do it with as much compassion as circumstances allow. If people despise us for our efforts to bring about justice that's unfortunate but it shouldn't dissuade us.

The question concerning Iraq, then, is not whether it was worth the cost. Anyone who gives a yes or no answer to that question at the present moment doesn't know what he's talking about. Only time will give us the answer. What we can ask at this juncture, though, is why, given what we presently know, anyone would be convinced that the answer is no.

Having said that, the most important question we need to ask about Iraq is whether we have increased the amount of justice in the world by doing what we did. If the answer to that is yes, then all the arguments over WMD, etc. are unimportant. What we did was good. Whether the good achieved in this instance was worth the cost only time will tell.

RLC

Tancredo Calls it Quits

Tom Tancredo, the best candidate on immigration issues currently contending for the White House, has decided to bow out of the race. We wonder who'll pick up his support. To see an excellent overview of where each of the Republicans stands on the issue of both legal and illegal immigration go here.

The best choice from among all the remaining candidates is Duncan Hunter with Ron Paul next. The best of the front-runners is Fred Thompson with Mitt Romney coming in a distant second. Rudy Giuliani and John McCain are at the bottom, with Mike Huckabee somewhere in between.

RLC

Graphing the Violence

Bill Roggio at The Long War Journal has some helpful graphs which show the effects of the surge on violence in Iraq. Every measure shows that the violence is declining sharply. Whether it will continue to decline no one knows, but surely now is not the time to be calling for the U.S. to get out of Iraq.

RLC

Miracles and the Laws of Nature

An argument one often hears made against the occurrence of miracles such as those upon which Christian belief is based is that they require an unacceptable intervention and tinkering with the laws of nature, and God wouldn't work that way. This is also one reason why some people have difficulty with some versions of intelligent design theory. They simply have a philosophical problem with violations or overrides of the laws of physics.

Well, perhaps the implied claim that miracles violate or supercede the laws of nature is not necessarily correct. Miracles like those recorded in the Gospels could actually be an expression of the laws of nature and still be miraculous all the same.

Imagine an engineer who designs and builds a computer (the universe). Along the way he programs that computer to produce certain images (living things) on the screen. Suppose that upon some of these images the engineer bestows the gift of consciousness. The software program is information (laws of nature) that governs how everything in the computer functions. When the computer is booted up the software causes the computer to produce screen images which behave in accord with the constraints imposed by the information contained in the software program.

Now suppose that integrated into that program are certain if/then commands which only express themselves under certain highly specific conditions. They might have the form: If P then Q unless R. If R never occurs, P > Q would seem to all observers in the screen to be the algorithm that governs the functioning of the computer. If R never occurs then whenever P happens Q happens.

If, however, R does on one occasion occur then in that instance Q would not follow upon P and everyone who witnessed the "breakdown" would be astonished. It would appear to the conscious screen images that the program had spontaneously been altered or violated even though it was not. It would appear to them that a miracle had occurred.

Suppose that one of the laws that governs our universe is: Whenever a denser object is immersed in a less dense substance the denser object will necessarily sink unless the denser object manifests the Son of God. If that were the law that governs buoyancy we would never see an exception to denser objects sinking in less dense substances unless we were witness to the Son of God standing on water. If we were, it would appear to us that we were witnessing a miracle, but we would not be witnessing a violation of the laws of nature. We would be witnessing instead an instance of those laws expressing themselves in a manner they had not previously had occasion to do.

It could well be that the laws of nature are like information or software that the Cosmic Engineer has designed to run the universe in the fashion described above. If so, it could also be that at least some miracles would not be exceptions to physical laws, but rather expressions of the way the laws manifest themselves in certain very extraordinary circumstances.

The point is that one need not oppose miracles or intelligent design on the basis of a visceral aversion to the notion that God somehow changes or revises the laws of nature as He goes along. It could be that at least some of the miracles recorded in the Gospels, as well as the appearance of biological novelty, are part of the outworking of a seamless creative design planned, engineered and carried out by God from before the creation of the world.

RLC

Congress Defunds the Fence

Last year Congress approved spending to build 700 miles of double-tiered fencing along our southern border. Monday night they passed a spending bill which gutted last year's bill. Meanwhile, the bill they passed allocates $10 million for attorneys for illegal immigrants.

Citizens of this country must make it clear that they will refuse to vote for any congressperson or presidential candidate who refuses to secure our border or whose record on illegal immigration is weak. This encompasses all the Democratic candidates for president and most of the Republicans except Fred Thompson, Tom Tancredo, Ron Paul and Duncan Hunter.

The Democrats pander to Hispanics to get their votes and Republicans curry favor with businesses which rely on cheap labor. Between them they're selling out America for a mess of pottage.

See here for an explanation of why illegal immigration is a problem and here for what we should do about it.

Simply put, no candidate who goes squishy on the border fence without offering something better in its place will receive our vote.

RLC

Dumbing Down Education

It seems that the tension between faculty and administration over academic standards is close to universal. Teacjhers almost always want to make their courses more challenging than what their principals would prefer. It's unusual, though, for the administrator to be this blatant about wanting his teachers to moderate their standards and expectations:

Have teachers at an East Harlem school been ordered to lower their standards because many students there are poor? That's the impression some got from their principal's memo.

Last month, Principal Bennett Lieberman sent off a stern memo to teachers.

"If you are not passing more than 65 percent of your students in a class, then you are not designing your expectations to meet their abilities, and you are setting your students up for failure, which, in turn, limits your success as a professional."

Was he ordering teachers to dumb down their classes?

The memo continued:

"Most of our students come from the lowest third percentile in academic achievement, have difficult home lives, and struggle with life in general. They DO NOT have a similar upbringing nor a similar school experience to our experiences growing up."

Some students took offense.

"That's not the way to pass," 12th grader Richard Palacios said. "That's not the way to get your education, so you're basically cheating yourself."

Lieberman told a newspaper Thursday he "confidently stands by" his words.

But late Thursday, the Department of Education weighed in. It sent him a letter demanding he clarify his views and state that he is not ordering his teachers to lower their standards.

Teachers at the school stand to receive $3,000 bonuses if their school improves.

During my career teaching in a public high school I heard lots of stories from colleagues in other districts, and some even in my own, who felt that they were pressured to be less demanding of their students, to lower their academic expectations, to fail fewer kids. Administrators don't like it when teachers set high standards (though they say they want them to) because when students don't do well parents complain and principals and superintendents get tired of taking angry phone calls and meeting with irate parents. It's easier to just make good grades a little easier to achieve. In one school of my acquaintance no student, no matter how poorly he or she did, could be given a grade of less than 50%. This is ridiculous, but it reflects the fear of administrators that if we demand too much of students too many of them will fail, and that makes the school and its leadership look bad.

This is what's wrong, by the way, with requiring that a state-wide test be passed in order to graduate. If the test is rigorous many minority students will not be able to pass it, and there will be immense political pressure to water down the standards. But if the test is diluted it'll be so easy as to be a meaningless joke for most of the state's students. It'll be interesting to see how many states are still requiring such tests ten years from now and how rigorous those tests will be by then.

My guess is that if they're still around they'll be so simple that a fifth grader could pass them.

RLC

Today's Inspiration

Bill Dembski at Uncommon Descent writes about Paul Potts:

Watch the faces of the judges as this fellow walks on the stage. Based on his looks and the fact that he is a cell phone salesman, they initially misjudge him. Sometimes you have to stop believing what everyone is telling you and start listening to your passion.

Great talent, like great ideas, sometimes comes in very humble and ordinary packages.

Click here and watch the video to see what I'm talking about. It'll bring tears to your eyes. Be sure to scroll down to read about Potts' background.

Paul Potts is an ambassador for every ugly duckling who holds within himself wonderful beauty and a lesson for all of us to not judge people by what they look like.

He's currently enjoying a successful career traveling the world singing opera.

RLC

Atheism's Love-Child

Ideas have consequences and the ideas of zealous anti-theists are no exception. Atheism's logical offspring is nihilism, the belief that nothing has meaning, nothing has value, nothing matters. Most atheists can't live with this consequence of their convictions so they practice a kind of psychological contraception that enables them to enjoy the thrill of casting off the shackles of tradition without having to face up to the results of their philosophical concupiscence.

Not all atheists are so timid, however. In recent years we've been witness to the horrors perpetrated by those who choose to embrace the full consequence of a rejection of God.

Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris were two such young men. On a video they made before their killing spree at Columbine High School in April of 1999 they left no doubt about at least part of their motivation:

"What would Jesus do?" asks Klebold, yelling and making faces at the camera. "What would I do?" Then he points an imaginary shotgun at the camera, takes aim, and says, "Boosh!"

"Yeah, 'I love Jesus. I love Jesus.' Shut the f-up," Harris says on the same tape, made on March 15.

"Go Romans," Harris says later. "Thank God they crucified that a-hole." Then the two teenagers both chant, "Go Romans! Go Romans! Yeah! Whoo!"

Klebold, who reportedly had a crush on Christian student Rachel Scott, singles her out for particular disdain, calling her a "godly whore" and a "stuck-up little b-."

Scott was one of the young people they murdered.

Another example is Finnish student Pekka-Eric Auvinen who shot and killed eight others, including the female principal of Jokela High School, and then killed himself.

On his YouTube page he says, "I am a cynical existentialist, antihuman humanist, antisocial social darwinist, realistic idealist and godlike atheist."

He believed that he was serving nature by killing others. Atheism can offer no reason for saying that what he did was wrong. The atheist can only shake his head and say he wished he hadn't done it.

The most recent instance of an atheist embracing the nihilism to which his worldview has led him is Matthew Murray. Murray, calling himself "nghtmrchld26," posted a message on the internet that said this:

"I'm coming for EVERYONE soon and I WILL be armed to the @.%$ teeth and I WILL shoot to kill."

"God, I can't wait till I can kill you people. Feel no remorse, no sense of shame, I don't care if I live or die in the shoot-out. All I want to do is kill and injure as many of you ... as I can especially Christians who are to blame for most of the problems in the world.

Well, one problem few Christians are to blame for is the surge in mass killings in our schools, malls, and churches over the last decade or so. Those crimes, like most other crimes, are committed by people for whom God long ago ceased to be relevant. They're committed by people who have lost the sense that shooting people is any different than shooting game animals. They're committed by people who, if nothing else, are consistent in carrying their atheism to its nihilistic end-point - the belief that nothing, not even their own lives, means anything at all.

They're committed by people like this:

HT: Cracked

RLC

Lady Macbeth

This column by Stuart Taylor of National Journal should be required reading for anyone planning to vote in the 2008 presidential election. Taylor reminds us that Hillary Clinton has attacked Barack Obama for alleged dishonesty because, after he'd claimed that he's not running to fulfill some long-held plans to become president, it turned out that he'd written something as a kindergartener about being President someday. Clinton's charge is ludicrous on the face of it, but especially so coming from one whose own record is so seriously marred by dishonesty. Taylor writes:

[L]et's take a trip down memory lane -- from the tawdriness of the 1992 presidential campaign through the mendacity of the ensuing years -- to revisit a sampling of why so many of us came to think that Hillary's first instinct when in an embarrassing spot is to lie.

Gennifer and Monica. Former lounge singer Gennifer Flowers surfaced in early 1992 with claims -- corroborated by tapes of phone calls -- that she had had a long affair with then-Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, who had arranged a state job for her. Bill Clinton told the media, falsely, that the woman's "story is untrue." He later denied having an affair with Monica Lewinsky, a White House intern. Hillary has insisted that her husband was romantically involved with neither woman, but friends and former aides have revealed publicly that she knew her husband was lying all along.

Travelgate. In May 1993, Chief of Staff Mack McLarty fired the seven employees in the White House office that arranges travel for the press corps. The White House cited gross financial mismanagement. (The charge was never substantiated.) The sudden firings created a media uproar, especially when the dismissed employees were quickly replaced by friends and relatives of the Clintons.

Hillary later claimed that she had no role in the decision to fire the employees, did not know the "origin of the decision," and "did not direct that any action be taken by anyone" other than keeping her informed. But her statements were contradicted by evidence, including a long-concealed memo to McLarty and a written chronology prepared by White House aide David Watkins that came to light years later. Hillary, Watkins wrote, had said that "we need those people out and we need our people in" and had made it clear that "there would be hell to pay" unless she got "immediate action." Another aide wrote that Hillary intimate Susan Thomases had said, "Hillary wants these people fired."

Independent counsel Robert Ray reported in October 2000 that Hillary's statements had been "factually false" and that there was "overwhelming evidence that she in fact did have a role in the decision to fire the employees."

Cattle futures. The New York Times revealed in March 1994 that in 1978, just before her husband became governor, Hillary had made a $100,000 profit on a $1,000 investment in highly speculative cattle-futures contracts in only nine months. Hillary's first explanation (through aides) of this extraordinary windfall was that she had made the investment after "reading The Wall Street Journal" and placed all the trades herself after seeking advice from "numerous people." It was so preposterous that she soon had to abandon it. Eventually, she had to admit that longtime Clinton friend James Blair had executed 30 of her 32 trades directly with an Arkansas broker.

In an April 1994 press conference, Hillary denied knowing of "any favorable treatment" by Blair. But the astronomical odds against any financial novice making a 10,000 percent profit without the game being rigged led many to believe that Blair, the outside counsel to Arkansas-based poultry giant Tyson Foods, must have put only profitable trades in Hillary's account and absorbed her losses. The heavily regulated Tyson needed friends in high places, and Bill Clinton helped it pass a 1983 state law raising weight limits on chicken trucks.

Removal of Vince Foster documents. During the same press conference, Hillary was asked why her then-chief of staff, Maggie Williams, had been involved in removing documents from the office of Deputy White House Counsel Vince Foster after his suicide. Foster had been a partner of Hillary's at the Rose Law Firm in Little Rock, Ark. "I don't know that she did remove any documents," Hillary said. But it was reported three months later that Hillary had instructed Williams to remove the Foster documents to the White House residence. Then they were turned over to Clinton attorney Bob Barnett.

Castle Grande. In the summer of 1995, the Resolution Trust Corp. reported that Hillary had been one of 11 Rose Law Firm lawyers who had done work in the mid-1980s on an Arkansas real estate development, widely known as Castle Grande. Castle Grande was a sewer of sham transactions, and its ultimate collapse cost taxpayers millions. Hillary told federal investigators that she knew nothing about Castle Grande. When it turned out that she had put in more than 30 hours of legal work involving Castle Grande, she said she had known the project under a different name. A 1996 Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. report said that she had drafted documents that Castle Grande used to "deceive federal bank examiners."

Billing records. Hillary's billing records for Castle Grande were in a 116-page, 5-inch-thick computer printout that came to light under mysterious circumstances on January 4, 1996 -- 19 months after it had been subpoenaed by an independent prosecutor and amid prosecutorial pressure on Clinton aides who had been strikingly forgetful. For most of that time, Hillary claimed that the billing records had vanished. But a longtime Hillary assistant named Carolyn Huber later admitted coming across the printout in August 1995 on a table in a storage area next to Hillary's office; Huber said she had put it into a box in her own office, without realizing for five more months that these were the subpoenaed billing records.

This implausible tale, on top of other deceptions, prompted New York Times columnist William Safire to write on January 8, 1996, that "our first lady ... is a congenital liar."

The next day, the White House press secretary said that the president wanted to punch Safire in the nose for insulting his wife. Five days later, the president invited Monica Lewinsky to the Oval Office for what turned out to be one of their 10 oral-sex sessions. Two years and 13 days after that, Hillary was on the "Today" show suggesting that her husband's Lewinsky affair was a lie concocted by "this vast right-wing conspiracy."

And now she is citing Barack Obama's supposed kindergarten "essay" as evidence of dishonesty. Astonishing.

HT: Powerline

What's even more astonishing is that a lot of people in this country still support her and will vote for her to be President of the United States notwithstanding the steady stream of scandal and corruption which attended her tenure in the White House during her husband's administration.

RLC

Brains in a Petri Dish

I have no idea how this works, but it certainly sounds like an astounding development. Neurons are connected to a computer to form a hybrid "brain" and "taught" to fly a simulator?

If just a few dozen neurons can be taught to fly a plane why can't a brain with trillions of neurons be taught to clean up a bedroom? Just wondering.

RLC

Huckabee on Foreign Policy

Mike Huckabee has penned a major foreign policy piece in Foreign Affairs. Aside from the first two sentences of the second paragraph in which he makes a gratuitous swipe at Bush, it's pretty solid stuff. It's also noteworthy that not only is he putting his policy ideas in print but he's talking in specifics rather than generalities.

It'd be great if the rest of the candidates in both parties did likewise, although I don't believe any of the Republicans, except Ron Paul, would have any serious disagreements with Huckabee's paper. The interesting contrast would be between what Huckabee has written and what Obama, Clinton and Edwards would propose to do were they in the White House.

UPDATE: Bill Richardson also has a foreign policy piece in Foreign Affairs. It can be read here.

RLC

Thought For A Sunday

Taken from Dying To Self by William Law...

Barnabas - There is no need of a number of practices or methods in this matter. For to die to self, or to come from under its power, cannot be done by any active resistance we can make to it by the powers of nature. For nature can no more overcome or suppress itself than wrath can heal wrath. So long as self acts, nothing but natural works are brought forth, and therefore the more labor of this kind, the more the self life is fed and strengthened with its own food.

But the one true way of dying to self is most simple and plain. There is no need of arts or methods; no cells, monasteries, or pilgrimages; it is equally accessible to everybody; it is always at hand; it meets you in everything; and is never without success.

If you ask what this one true, simple, plain, immediate, and unerring way is, it is the way of a patient, meek, humble resignation to God This is the way to die to self; it is nowhere else but in this state of heart.

John - The excellency and perfection of these virtues I readily acknowledge; but how will this prove the way of overcoming self to be so simple, plain, immediate, and unerring as you say? Is it not the teaching of almost all men and all books, and confirmed by our own sad experience, that a great deal of time, and effort and a variety of practices and methods are necessary, to the attainment of any one of these virtues?

Barnabas - When Christ was upon the earth, was there anything more simple, plain, immediate, unerring than the way to Him? Did scribes, Pharisees, publicans, and sinners need any length of time or exercise of rules and methods before they could have admission to Him or have the benefit of faith in Him?

John - I don't understand why you ask the question. How can it relate to the matter before us?

Barnabas - It not only relates to, but is the very heart of the matter. I refer you to a patient, meek, humble resignation to God as the one simple, plain, immediate, and unerring way of dying to self, I refer you to Christ Jesus the Lord. You can as easily and immediately, without art or method, by the mere turning to the Christ within you in simple faith, have all the benefit of these virtues, as publicans and sinners by their turning to Christ could be helped and saved by him when he walked among men.

John - You mean that simply by turning to Christ within is as certain and immediate a way of my being possessed and blessed by these virtues as when sinners turn to Christ to be helped and saved by Him?

Barnabas - Yes, I would have you strictly to believe this! And also to believe that the reasons why you are vainly seeking and never attaining these virtues is because you seek them in the wrong way; in a multitude of human rules, methods, and contrivances, and not in the simplicity of faith in which they who came to Christ immediately obtained that which they asked of Him.

"Come unto me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." How short and simple and certain a way to peace and comfort from the misery and burden of sin! So what about all the rules and methods and round about ways to be delivered from the power of sin, and to find the redeeming power and virtue of Christ? Will you say that turning to Christ in faith was once indeed the way for men to enter into life and be delivered from the power of their sins, but that all this ended when Pilate nailed Jesus to the cross?

How strange to suppose that Christ, after having finished His great work, overcome death, ascended into heaven, with all power in heaven and on earth, has become less a savior than He was before! How could He bring less help to those who by faith turn to Him now than when He was clothed with the infirmity of our flesh and blood upon earth? Does He have less power after He has conquered than while He was only resisting and fighting with our enemies? Or does He have less good will to assist His Church, His own body, now that He is in heaven than He had to assist publicans and sinners before He was crucified? And yet this must be the case if our simple turning to Him in faith is not as sure a way of obtaining immediate assistance from Him now as when He was upon earth.

When Christ was upon earth nothing was more simple, plain, immediate, and certain than the way of coming to Him. There was no length of time, no rules or methods to be observed; all who came in the simplicity of a faith that knew it could not help itself, and turned from itself to Him, found immediate access and relief. And now that Christ is in heaven and has taken His place on the throne of grace, there has been no change in the way to come to Him; now that we cannot see Him, more than ever the way to Him and to be helped by Him is a way of faith. Faith in Him can bring an immediate and effectual deliverance from self.

He is able to deliver them who trust in Him from the dominion of self. His exaltation to the throne calls us to a confidence and assurance such as those who were with Him never could have had. Let your heart be strengthened with the faith that He who is mighty to save can save you from the dominion of self, and that faith in Him is the one simple, only and immediate way to obtain this deliverance.

But do not be mistaken as to how this deliverance comes. Many think that it comes by the death and entire removal of self. This is not the way. The death of self is something very different from the death to self which God's word holds out to you. When Jesus died to sin, He did not slay sin in the sense of annihilating it. Sin is still living and reigning in all who submit to it. He died to it so that it had no more power to tempt or persecute Him. You are partakers of His death to sin, and to self, in which sin works; and the healing he now gives is the power of His death to sin and His living unto God in such a way that He frees you from the dominion of self. Now you are living in Him and His life is released to flow out through you.

And now, you may have accepted this gift of deliverance but still feel the need to have opened up to you what it implies and how you can fully enjoy it. Or you may want more insight as to how you can more fully possess this blessing. The important thing is to turn at once, even this moment, to the Christ who dwells within you as the one and only most certain deliverer from the power of self and sin.

...

John - It seems to me that you have stepped aside from the point. The question was not concerning turning to Christ in faith but whether my turning in faith and desire to patience, meekness, humility, and resignation to God would bring about the release and change as fully for me now as faith in Christ did for those who were his followers upon earth.

Barnabas - As a matter of fact, I have stuck closely to the point before us. Let's suppose I have given you a form of prayer in these words; "O Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world . . . " or, "O Bread that comes down from heaven . . . " Would you say that this was not a prayer to Christ because it did not call Him Jesus or the Son of God?

John - Yes, this is a prayer to Jesus, the Son of the living God! Who else but He is the Lamb of God and the bread that came down from heaven?

Barnabas - Well answered, my friend. When I exhort you to give up yourself in faith and hope to patience, meekness, humility, and surrender to God, I am pointing you directly to faith and hope in Jesus, the Lamb of God who is the perfection of patience, meekness, humility, and surrender to God!

Would you not say that a faith that makes you hunger and thirst for these virtues is a faith that makes you desire to be delivered from self by Jesus, the Lamb of God? So, therefore, every sincere desire, every inward inclination of your heart that presses after these virtues, and longs to be governed by them, is an immediate, direct appeal to Jesus, is worshiping and falling down before Him, is giving up yourself to Him, and is in itself the very perfection of faith in Him.

Hear the words of Christ Himself: "learn of me, for I am meek and lowly of heart; and you shall find rest unto your souls." It is clear that to desire patience, meekness, humility, and surrender to God is the same thing as to learn of Christ, or to have faith in Him. This is the one simple, short, and infallible way to overcome or be delivered from all the evil and burden of self expresses in these words, "And you shall find rest unto your souls."

This simple tendency or inclination of your heart to sink down into patience, meekness, humility, and surrender to God is truly dying to self. It is leaving all that you have to follow and be with Christ. It is your highest act of faith in Him. It is the most ardent and earnest declaration of your cleaving to Him with all your heart and seeking for no other salvation but from Him and in Him.

Therefore all the goodness, pardon and deliverance from sin that ever happened to anyone by looking to Christ is sure to be had from this state of heart which stands continually turned to Him in a desire to be governed by His spirit of patience, meekness, humility, and surrender to God.

Another Baltimore Bus Assault

There's been yet another gang attack on bus passengers in Baltimore. Once again a pack of black teens has beaten two whites, apparently for the crime of being white.

The Maryland Transportation Authority took three days to release photos of the attackers and is not treating the attack as a hate crime but rather as "simply...a common assault."

Well, it seems that in Baltimore such assaults certainly are common. We return to a question we asked the other day about the Sarah Kreager beating: If seven white kids had beaten two black men for riding a bus how long would it take the authorities to release photos of the assailants and for the media to be screaming about the horrific bigotry that underlies such an atrocity?

There certainly is a double standard when it comes to interracial crime in our country, and until all such crimes are treated with the same social opprobrium bitterness and seething resentments are only going to increase. This is not how to produce racial harmony. Nor does it augur optimism for the future of race relations when a story like this can appear in the paper and everyone who reads it knows the race of both perpetrators and victims without having to be told anything more than that it was interracial.

Meanwhile, Michelle Malkin reports that the authorities are going to try as adults some of the thugs who beat Sarah Kreager. I wonder if Al Sharpton will organize a march to protest the injustice of it all.

One last thought. Maryland happens to be a difficult state in which to obtain a concealed weapon carry permit, but I wonder how long that will last as more people get fed up with living in fear.

RLC

Waterboarding Abu Zubaydah

For those interested in the controversy surrounding the resort to torture in general and waterboarding in particular an ABC interview with former CIA agent John Kiriakou may prove instructive. Kiriakou doesn't like it, he'd prefer we not do it, but nevertheless, not only does he claim it is effective but in some cases it's morally necessary (my gloss on his words).

According to Kiriakou waterboarding has been employed in only a handful of cases, one of which was that of Abu Zubaydah, a high ranking al Qaeda terrorist caught soon after 9/11. Zubaydah was subjected to the sensation of drowning for 35 seconds after which he told the interrogators everything he knew and the intell was used to prevent dozens of terrorist attacks and save perhaps hundreds of lives.

The question those who believe torture to be absolutely wrong have to be asked is why they think it wrong to subject a mass murderer to 35 seconds or less of physical discomfort, after which he is perfectly unharmed, in order to save his victims from being blown to bits. What moral calculus could possibly lead us to conclude that it is better to let perhaps hundreds of women and children be ripped apart by shrapnel than to induce a gag reflex in their would-be murderer for 35 seconds?

UPDATE: Ramirez weighs in on the waterboarding debate:

In point of fact, as Kiriakou explains in the interview, no water even enters the person's nose during waterboarding.

RLC

Design Matrix

How about this for a promo for a new book on Intelligent Design? The book is The Design Matrix: A Consilience of Clues by Mike Gene (a pseudonym) and it's getting a lot of publicity in ID circles. Check out the ad. It rocks.

RLC

Pope Benedict on Atheism

ABC News tells us that Pope Benedict XVI has released his second encyclical and in it he notes that modern atheism has:

...led to some of the "greatest forms of cruelty and violations of justice" ever known to mankind.

This, it would seem, would be a no-brainer, yet many of the neo-atheists who have been publishing attacks against theism in general and Christianity in particular, appear oblivious to the fact.

A worldview that strips human beings of any inherent dignity or worth while at the same time also stripping away any grounds for objective moral obligation is bound to wind up promoting a might-makes-right ethic. And it's almost inevitable that a might-makes-right ethic will devolve ultimately into cruelty and tyranny. Yet the current batch of anti-theists simply fail to see this consequence of what they prescribe.

The papal encyclical, titled Saved by Hope, is described by ABC News as:

...a deeply theological exploration of Christian hope in the afterlife - that in the suffering and misery of daily life, Christianity provides the faithful with a "journey of hope" to the Kingdom of God.

Atheism, it should be clear to everyone who thinks about it for more than a couple of minutes, provides us with nothing better than a journey of despair to the Kingdom of hell, in this life as well as the next.

RLC

Kant For President

Suppose Immanuel Kant were alive today and ran for president. He'd probably be subjected to political advertising something like this from his opponent:

Pretty funny.

HT: No Left Turns

RLC

Sarah Kreager/Rosa Parks

How many of these attacks is going to take before we realize that we have a real problem in this country? In case you missed it last week here are the details:

As Sarah Kreager, 26, tried to sit down on a Baltimore City bus [last Tuesday], police say, a middle-schooler told her she couldn't. When she attempted to take another seat, a middle-schooler wouldn't let her. Finally, according to police, Kreager just sat down.

She was "immediately attacked" by nine students - three females and six males - from Robert Poole Middle School. They punched and kicked her at 2:59 p.m. at the intersection of 33rd Street and Chestnut Avenue, according to Maryland Transit Administration police.

Kreager was dragged off the bus and .... sustained "serious injuries" and had to be transported to the University of Maryland Shock Trauma Center, according to a police report.

Kreager suffered two broken bones in her left eye socket, police said.

"She had eye muscles that were damaged," a police report states. "She had deep lacerations on the top of her head and another above her neck."

Two seats and the bus' rear glass were destroyed during the attack, police said.

The bus driver on the No. 27 line quickly called police, who responded and arrested the nine juveniles, said Jawauna Greene, an MTA police spokeswoman.

All nine suspects, ages 14 and 15, were arrested and charged with aggravated assault.

Their bus tickets - provided by the school - have been revoked. Greene said the investigation into the incident was ongoing and she didn't know whether the attack had anything to do with the victim's race.

The suspects in the incident are black. The victim is white.

Let's ask a couple of questions. Do you think that anyone would have expressed any reservations at all about making this a racially motivated incident if the woman had been black and her assailants white? For that matter, when was the last time you recall a black woman being severely beaten by a gang of white teenagers? When Rosa Parks made her historic stand for equality and just treatment by sitting in the "whites only" section of the bus outraged white racists didn't physically attack her. Accounts of whites being beaten or assaulted by blacks are, however, a regular feature of the daily police reports in our cities.

The fact is there is a deep pathology of violence and racism in the black community that for some reason is deemed impolite to mention. Yet it's there. That six boys would beat a young woman like this just for sitting down on the bus reveals something hideous about the world in which they are growing up, and that girls would join in is sickening beyond words.

How soon will it be until Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson and the rest of the race hustlers demand justice for Ms Kreager? How long will it take before the Al Sharptons of the world express their outrage that this woman was savagely attacked (see her picture at the link) for no reason? How many editorials will the newspapers run condemning the dysfunctionality and bigotry in the black community underlying this attack and so many others like it? Here's our prediction: In a day or two this horrific episode will be totally forgotten by the media. Black racism and black on white crime simply are not regarded as newsworthy by the liberal media.

There are three reasons for this, I suspect. Some in the media, though they would never admit it, subliminally believe that you can't really expect much better of black people so there's no use campaigning against such behavior. The second reason is that liberals embrace a social/racial paradigm that sees all blacks as victims of the white oppressor. Crimes such as this one are jarring to that paradigm and the cognitive dissonance they unleash is best handled by forgetting about it or treating it as an aberration. The third reason is that liberals fear that by publicizing such atrocities they will only fuel white stereotypes of blacks and encourage a backlash of white racism that could undo much of the progress we've made in the last fifty years.

The first of these reasons is the bigotry of low expectations and is itself insidiously racist. It assumes that blacks simply can't be held to the same standard of behavior as others because they're inherently incapable of it. The second is an example of the absurd ideological blindness of liberals. When nine people are beating one young woman, who are the oppressors and who is the victim? The third reason is a legitimate fear and would be understandable if the media were equally concerned about the consequences of publicizing cases of white bigotry. The fact is they're not, indeed, they seem almost gleeful when they have the opportunity to do it, which itself points to an implicit assumption that whites somehow deserve black hostility, but blacks must never be made to look evil in the eyes of whites.

Maybe the day will come when the media will simply call savagery, thuggery, and moral depravity by its name, wherever it exists, and leave their ideological biases and motivations out of it, but we won't hold our breath waiting.

UPDATE: As predicted, this story has all but faded from view in the week since the beating happened. No Al Sharpton, no Jesse Jackson, no marches for justice, no introspectives on the virulence of racism in our society. I did read, though, that the perpetrators might be charged with a "hate crime." That's something, at least.

UPDATE: There's video of Sarah Kreager here. The news story contains statements like these:

"What took place was unacceptable and that has to be dealt with," said Mayor Sheila Dixon.

"Clearly, this is one incident in a population of 80,000 students. Things happen. It is a tragedy, as I said. It casts a light that I would rather not be cast on the school system," said Baltimore City Schools CEO Dr. Andres Alonso.

School leaders say they plan to talk to students and remind them to be courteous when they are on city buses.

This belies an astonishingly cavalier attitude toward an act of sheer savagery. This was not merely an "unacceptable" failure to be "courteous" or a "thing that just happened." Those who make such statements are downplaying the fact that there's a deep problem in their community that goes far beyond a mere lack of civility. The problem is a culture of violence perpetrated by kids who have only a rudimentary sense of human sympathy compounded by racism, and until people start naming the problem and calling the community to account, as has been done with white racism for the last fifty years, it will never go away.

RLC

NR Goes For Mitt

National Review, perhaps the premier conservative journal in the U.S., has been hard on Mike Huckabee's fiscal liberalism the last couple of weeks, and has now decided to endorse Mitt Romney. They make an excellent case as to why Romney is the most viable conservative in the field. It's hard to disagree with any of this:

Rudolph Giuliani did extraordinary work as mayor of New York and was inspirational on 9/11. But he and Mike Huckabee would pull apart the [conservative] coalition from opposite ends: Giuliani alienating the social conservatives, and Huckabee the economic (and foreign-policy) conservatives. A Republican party that abandoned either limited government or moral standards would be much diminished in the service it could give the country.

Two other major candidates would be able to keep the coalition together, but have drawbacks of their own. John McCain is not as conservative as Romney. He sponsored and still champions a campaign-finance law that impinged on fundamental rights of political speech; he voted against the Bush tax cuts; he supported this year's amnesty bill, although he now says he understands the need to control the border before doing anything else.

Fred Thompson is as conservative as Romney, and has distinguished himself with serious proposals on Social Security, immigration, and defense. But Thompson has never run any large enterprise - and he has not run his campaign well, either. Conservatives were excited this spring to hear that he might enter the race, but have been disappointed by the reality. He has been fading in crucial early states. He has not yet passed the threshold test of establishing for voters that he truly wants to be president.

Romney is an intelligent, articulate, and accomplished former businessman and governor. At a time when voters yearn for competence and have soured on Washington because too often the Bush administration has not demonstrated it, Romney offers proven executive skill. He has demonstrated it in everything he has done in his professional life, and his tightly organized, disciplined campaign is no exception. He himself has shown impressive focus and energy.

It is true that he has less foreign-policy experience than Thompson and (especially) McCain, but he has more executive experience than both. Since almost all of the candidates have the same foreign-policy principles, what matters most is which candidate has the skills to execute that vision.

Read the rest at the link. It will be interesting to see whether socially and fiscally conservative evangelicals will vote for Romney in significant numbers or whether his Mormonism will prove too great an impediment for them to surmount.

I have been impressed with Huckabee and have felt somewhat reassured by his clarifications of his views on taxes and immigration, but I don't like the way he has sought to distance himself from the President. It seems too opportunistic, especially since Huck is the presidential candidate whose political convictions seem most like those of George Bush. I've also been impressed with Romney and agree with NR that he seems to be the most viable of those in the race who are both socially and fiscally conservative.

Fortunately, there's still much time to decide between these two men. Unfortunately, mostly for the reasons NR gives in its endorsement of Romney, I can't see supporting any of the other Republican candidates in the primary field. Nevertheless, every one of them is sturdier presidential timber than either Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama or John Edwards.

RLC

Great Recruiting Ad

This ad for the National Guard makes even a superannuated tubby like me think about signing up:

HT: Evangelical Outpost

RLC

Journalistic Bad Odor

Journalists and other media people are often perplexed that they are held in low esteem by many Americans, and certainly many of them are fine professionals who deserve better. Nevertheless, it's decisions like the one to write and run pieces like this AP story that attaches to all of them such a bad odor.

Jeanne Assam is a brave woman who acted heroically to save dozens of lives at a church in Colorado Springs on Sunday and what thanks or respect does she get from our media? They go dumpster-diving into her past to dredge up whatever they can find to embarrass her and then publicize the story in newspapers all across the nation.

The story they felt just had to be told about Assam was that she was fired from her previous job as a police officer. This, of course, has absolutely nothing to do with what she did last Sunday, but the media had the chance to reward a true hero with national humiliation and they jumped at the chance to do it. They spent paragraphs revealing the details of an event that Ms Assam must surely prefer not to have made public, but what is the reputation of a hero when a journalist who has never done anything as remotely praiseworthy as Ms Assam can show that she's just as flawed as the rest of us?

The story came out yesterday. Perhaps more responsible adults in editorial offices around the nation are even now hammering out columns condemning this contemptible piece of tripe solemnly revealed by Amy Forliti of the Associated Press. Perhaps they will call for media reporters to stop trying to tear down everyone who somehow manages to rise above the rest of us. Perhaps they will decry the gang-like behavior of journalists who prey on innocent victims by beating them senseless for nothing more offensive than having the temerity to do something they themselves have never done. Maybe these columns will be out within the next twenty-four hours. Or maybe they won't. We'll see.

RLC

Huck and Homosexuality

The Politico thinks that positions Mike Huckabee took on AIDS and homosexuality back in the early nineties make him an unattractive candidate today.

Huckabee argued that 1) the government was spending a disproportionate amount of money on AIDS research, 2) that AIDS carriers should be isolated from the general population and 3) that homosexuality was both aberrant and sinful.

I think a good public policy case could be made for both 1) and 2) although the idea of quarantining AIDS carriers was becoming less urgent by the early nineties as we were learning more about the virus. Still, there was enough uncertainty as to how the disease was being transmitted that Huckabee's position was not unreasonable at the time.

On the matter of homosexuality it is certainly true that it is aberrant and that every major religion represented in the United States has traditionally regarded it as sinful. The definition of aberrant is a deviation from the norm, and homoeroticism is not normal either in terms of the design of our bodies, its acceptance among the general population, or in terms of the percentage of people who consider themselves homosexual.

The only demographic in which a majority would be upset by Huckabee's judgment would be the secular elites in Hollywood and on University campuses and he is very unlikely to have much support among these folks in any event.

Depending on how Huckabee articulates these positions when he's asked about them by the media - which he certainly will be - his views could well make him even more attractive with groups that Republicans usually have a hard time reaching, blacks and Hispanics, both of which are predominately of the same opinion regarding homosexuality as is Huckabee. The worst thing he could do when asked to defend himself would be to waffle.

RLC

Petraeus Wins Another Convert

Michael Golfarb of The Weekly Standard remarks on an editorial in the Washington Post in which Pete Hegseth, executive director of Vets for Freedom, has coauthored an op-ed with Major General John Batiste.

Batiste is the formerly antiwar general who spoke out against Donald Rumsfeld, and who, until recently, was a Board Member of VoteVets.org (the antiwar MoveOn.org vets front group).

Goldfarb notes that in his Post column Batiste and Hegseth write that:

First, the United States must be successful in the fight against worldwide Islamic extremism. We have seen this ruthless enemy firsthand, and its global ambitions are undeniable. This struggle, the Long War, will probably take decades to prosecute. Failure is not an option.

Second, whether or not we like it, Iraq is central to that fight. We cannot walk away from our strategic interests in the region. Iraq cannot become a staging ground for Islamic extremism or be dominated by other powers in the region, such as Iran and Syria. A premature or precipitous withdrawal from Iraq, without the requisite stability and security, is likely to cause the violence there -- which has decreased substantially but is still present -- to cascade into an even larger humanitarian crisis.

Third, the counterinsurgency campaign led by Gen. David Petraeus is the correct approach in Iraq. It is showing promise of success and, if continued, will provide the Iraqi government the opportunities it desperately needs to stabilize its country.

Goldfarb comments:

There are two stories here: 1) A formerly anti-war general flips on supporting the war, and now believes Petraeus has the right strategy; and 2) Batiste has left VoteVets.org, and the antiwar movement, and joined up with the pro-troop, pro-surge, pro-victory Vets for Freedom.

The antiwar movement has lost one of its most powerful voices today, and it will be interesting to see whether they turn on one of their own, or come around to the view, supported by a preponderance of evidence, that the surge is working.

A year from now, if Iraq continues on its present trajectory, Bush could well be looking like a less eloquent version of Winston Churchill, and the Dems who so bitterly opposed him will be jumping off bridges.

RLC

Colorado Springs

Slapstick Politics has a lot of information on the tragic Colorado Springs shooting including some insight into how the shooter was stopped. It turns out that the killer "hated Christians." Anyone surprised? I wonder if he was a fan of Richard Dawkins and The God Delusion.

It also turns out that the woman who stopped him had a carry permit and her own firearm. She saved perhaps dozens of lives, which will certainly put the media in a quandary. They'll want to tout her heroism because she's a woman (and maybe even because she was indeed a hero), but they won't want to publicize the fact that she used a concealed firearm because that will make it harder to pass restrictive gun legislation.

Anyway, the next time someone goes on about the alleged crimes of Christianity ask them how far back in history one has to go to find an instance of a Christian shooting up a meeting of atheists and killing two teenage sisters.

UPDATE: Video of a press interview with the woman who shot the gunman can be seen here.

RLC

Waiting For Godot

We don't know much about fiscal policy and economics so we're easily led on these matters. In fact we've been wringing our hands for the last four or five years as one economic poobah after another has proclaimed the economy to be teetering on the brink of recession. Then we get all confused when the numbers come out for the most recent quarter and invariably they show an economy that's as robust and healthy as anyone could reasonably hope for.

For example, Larry Kudlow, writing at National Review Online, tells us that:

Americans are working. The 4.7 percent unemployment number remains at an historical low. On a three-month rolling basis, the U.S. economy has added over 100,000 jobs. Meanwhile, the household job count shows that an average of 303,000 jobs have been added in the last three months. This is noteworthy because it suggests that the job market is turning around.

Hours worked are growing more than 1-percent annually, while workers' wages are running 3.8 percent, a full percentage point ahead of inflation. As for this week's productivity report, it was nothing short of spectacular: the 6.3 percent productivity gain was the best in four years. A rise in productivity is good for growth. It's good for profits. And it's good for low inflation.

Speaking of inflation, business inflation is down from 3.5 percent just over a year ago to 1.5 percent today. Meanwhile, oil prices have retreated to $88. And, to top it all off, last night we received a tremendous new number showing household net wealth has headed even higher. It stands at a record $59 trillion dollars. That's more than seven percent above a year ago.

Another factoid worth considering is that mortgage refinancings are soaring at lower rates. Since June, they are up nearly 70 percent, while mortgage rates on 15 and 30-year loans are down nearly a 100 basis points. That is a very positive, very welcome development that ought to cushion the plunge in home sales, and maybe even prices.

This just doesn't sound to our untutored ear like the beginnings of a recession, but then we're not beset with Bush Derangement Syndrome. If we were, then facts like these wouldn't matter. BDS sufferers are convinced that the economy can't be good because Bush is stupid, or something like that. Anyway, the numbers look pretty good to us, and we're beginning to wonder if waiting for the recession isn't a bit like waiting for Godot in Samuel Beckett's play. The actors expect Godot's arrival at any minute but for some reason Godot never comes.

RLC

Broken Compass

Philip Pullman is an atheist/agnostic who writes children's books with anti-Christian themes. One of his books (The Northern Lights) has been made into a movie (The Golden Compass) which was released this past weekend and a number of groups are urging people not to take their children to see it.

A couple of high school-aged young men of my acquaintance saw the movie and said that the anti-theism was pretty blatant. The biggest concern many have about the film is that it will entice youngsters to read Pullman's books. For our part we think it'd be a fun idea to have a double feature. Take the (teenage) kids to see The Golden Compass and then follow it up with something that shows the logical outcome of man's attempt to kill God. We recommend Schindler's List as a suitable sequel and a vivid picture of what happens when anti-theism leaves the realm of fantasy and plays itself out in the real world.

Details can be found here.

RLC

Religious Candor

Chip Bok comments on all the scrutiny, superficial as it has been, of our candidates' religious beliefs:

Pretty funny.

RLC

Thought For A Sunday

Taken from An Humble, Affectionate, and Earnest Address to the Clergy by William Law.

His intellectual faculties are, by the fall, in a much worse state than his natural animal appetites, and want a much greater self-denial. And when own will, own understanding, and own imagination have their natural strength indulged and gratified, and are made seemingly rich and honorable with the treasures acquired from a study of the belles lettres, they will just as much help poor fallen man to be like-minded with Christ, as the art of cookery, well and daily studied, will help a professor of the gospel to the spirit and practice of Christian abstinence. To know all this to be strictly the truth, no more need be known, than these two things: (1) that our salvation consists wholly in being saved from ourselves, or that which we are by nature; (2) that in the whole nature of things, nothing could be this salvation, or savior to us, but such an humility of God manifested in human nature, as is beyond all expression. Hence, the first unalterable term of this savior to fallen man, is this, "Except a man denies himself, forsakes all that he has, yea and his own life, he cannot be my disciple." And to show, that this is but the beginning, or ground of man's salvation, the savior adds, "Learn of me, for I am meek, and lowly of heart." What a light is here, for those that can bear, or love the light! Self is the whole evil of fallen nature; self-denial is our capacity of being saved; humility is our savior. This is every man's short lesson of life; and he that has well learned it, is scholar enough, and has had all the benefit of a most finished education. Then old Adam with all his ignorance is cast out of him; and when Christ's humility is learned, then he has the very mind of Christ, and that which brings him forth a son of God.

Blair Talks About Faith

Tony Blair talks about talking about God. In the course of the article on Blair, the writers say:

However, Mr Blair, who is now a Middle East peace envoy, has been attacked by commentators who say that religion should be separated from politics and by those who feel that many of his decisions betrayed the Christian community.

In other words, some of Mr. Blair's critics think that a politician should somehow separate his policy decisions, which are often moral - approaches to poverty, disaster relief, war, environmental protection, stem cell research, for example - from his deepest convictions about what grounds right and wrong. This would be humorous were the plea to separate the two not so pervasive and those who demand it not so strident.

As it is it's simply fatuous. One can no more separate one's beliefs from the grounds for those beliefs than one can separate one side of a coin from the other.

What those who advocate such a purge of religious values from the public square would do is reduce every public debate to a struggle for power to determine whose tastes, feelings and biases will prevail.

If one person says we should help the poor and another says we shouldn't, how do we decide who is right if we're not permitted to bring our deepest beliefs to bear upon the matter? Indeed, the only person who can answer the question is the religious man. The secularist can give no answer to the question why we should help the poor other than to say that it just seems right to him to do so.

It's not a very compelling reason, but that's really the best the secular man can do, poor chap.

RLC

D'Souza vs. Dennett

Dinesh D'Souza recently debated Daniel Dennett on the topic of whether God is a human artifact.

A blogger sympathetic to Dennett's views watched the debate and writes about his disappointment in the quality of Dennett's performance.

"And here's the weakness of the entire Atheist movement on display. Argument via ridicule only takes you so far, and only keeps the already converted entertained. Time and again I was disappointed not only by Dennett's inability to articulate the science, but in his inability to respond to D'Souza's very interesting thought experiments, analogies and use of example from the history of Philosophy itself. What a disappointment from such a well-trained professor of philosophy!"

D'Souza also shares some thoughts about the contest and offers video of it here.

RLC

The NIE

The recently released National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) made the claim that Iran gave up its ambitions to develop a nuclear weapon four years ago and primarily for this reason the document has drawn a lot of critical attention. Former U.N. ambassador John Bolton, for example, levels some pretty serious criticism of its alleged flaws in a column in the Washington Post, to which I refer readers interested in seeing why the document has generated so much skepticism.

Rush Limbaugh also points out that not only are the authors of the document politically hostile to the current administration but one of them was drawing exactly the opposite conclusions about iran only four months ago:

On July 11, 2007, roughly four or so months prior to the most recent NIE's publication, Deputy Director of Analysis Thomas Fingar, one of the three authors of the NIE, gave the following testimony before the House Armed Services Committee: 'Iran and North Korea are the states of most concern to us. The United States' concerns about Iran are shared by many nations, including many of Iran's neighbors. Iran is continuing to pursue uranium enrichment and has shown more interest in protracting negotiations and working to delay and diminish the impact of UNSC sanctions than in reaching an acceptable diplomatic solution. We assess that Tehran is determined to develop nuclear weapons -- despite its international obligations and international pressure. This is a grave concern to the other countries in the region whose security would be threatened should Iran acquire nuclear weapons.'

according to the Wall Street Journal, Thomas Fingar is one of the three officials who were responsible for crafting the latest NIE. The Journal cites 'an intelligence source' as describing Fingar and his two colleagues as 'hyper-partisan anti-Bush officials.'

What's even more strange about the NIE is the reaction to it by Bush's political opponents. They're alleging that somehow this report discredits Bush's Iran policy, but how is that so? What exactly is Bush's Iran policy? It's to muster international pressure to insure that Iran does not pursue nuclear weapons. His opponents say that this is now pointless because Iran's not pursuing nukes. They then go on to add that now we can stop the "saber-rattling" and use diplomacy. Well, when has Bush rattled any sabers over Iran? And if Iran is not pursuing nukes what do we need diplomacy for? The call for diplomacy seems bizarre coming from people who believe that there's nothing to negotiate with Iran about.

Even if Bush's diplomacy did involve saber-rattling, why is that bad? Surely diplomacy with Iran without the credible threat of force is useless. What incentive does Iran have to behave itself unless it fears punishment? This question brings us to another interesting point about the NIE.

In their eagerness to use this report against Bush his political detractors have overlooked the fact that if the report is to be believed Iran gave up its nuclear program in 2003. There was no U.S./Iranian diplomacy taking place in 2003. The only thing that took place in 2003 was that we invaded Iraq and deposed Saddam Hussein in less than a week. That sent shock waves through the axis of evil and if Iran dropped its nuclear ambitions that year then there's every reason to believe that they did so because they didn't want to be next.

If the NIE is right in recent years Iraq and Afghanistan have been liberated from tyranny, and Libya, North Korea, and Iran have all stepped down their march toward nuclear weapons. That's a pretty good legacy, perhaps unprecedented, for whatever administration supervised it, but don't expect the left to give Bush credit. They're more likely to argue that it was out of fear of a diplomatic offensive from future president Hillary Clinton that moved these wise leaders to capitulate to her years in advance than they are to acknowledge that George W. Bush is responsible for a truly remarkable and historic achievement.

RLC

Let a Thousand Questions Bloom

So much has been made of Mitt Romney's Mormonism that he felt it necessary yesterday to give a speech about it. Mike Huckabee, too, has had to explain his beliefs to journalists who seem discombobulated by the fact that convictions that have been commonly held by intelligent Americans for two thousand years are still held by some today.

I think these inquiries into the faith commitments of the candidates for leadership of the free world are a good thing. We should know what resources these people draw upon to help them through difficult times and to shape their view of the world, and I would enjoy hearing the media ask Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton exactly what are their views of the person and nature of Jesus Christ.

Unfortunately, I don't think this is going to happen. The point of the media asking Romney and Huckabee about their faith, I suspect, is to embarrass them among the elites. If they can make them look like religious "extremists" or exotic rubes they may undermine their appeal with a group of voters to whom they might otherwise be attractive. On the other hand, they don't want to undermine the Democrat candidates' appeal among the great unwashed so they won't risk asking them a question that might make them look unsympathetic to the superstitions of the masses.

On a related matter, the protestations of those who complain that we shouldn't care about a person's religion or that the constitution prohibits religious tests for the office of the presidency are getting tiresome. I doubt very much if those who insist we shouldn't delve into a person's deepest beliefs would still say that if a Wahhabist Muslim was running for president. I think the religion-is-irrelevant crowd would be falling all over themselves to demand that such a candidate clarify his religious views ad infinitum. And they should.

Also, while it is true that the constitution prohibits a religious test for the office of president that proscription is a legal limitation. A person cannot be legally prevented from being elected president just because of his religion, but that doesn't mean that voters can't or shouldn't base their vote upon what a candidate believes.

In the case of Mitt Romney, who I happen to like, no one argues that he should be barred from running because he's a Mormon, but it doesn't follow that his beliefs should therefore be considered irrelevant by the voters.

RLC

Adam Rutherford: Stazi Agent

Atheist Adam Rutherford writing in The Guardian comments on the denial of tenure to Guillermo Gonzalez by Iowa State University:

Saying, whether in 4004 BC or 13 billion years ago, that "God made it" is not falsifiable and therefore not science.

No, it's not a scientific belief, but what of it? Neither is the statement that the universe just popped into existence of its own accord a falsifiable assertion. It, too, is an affirmation of a particular metaphysical commitment. So why is one non-falsifiable assertion enough to get one exiled from the scientific community but the other is perfectly acceptable?

Rutherford's column gets worse:

I know that, were I in a position to offer Guillermo Gonzalez tenure, I would deny it for the precise reason that his, yes, religious views about purpose in the universe explicitly mean he is a crap scientist, regardless of his ability to generate valid data.

Rutherford is, astonishingly enough, claiming that whether or not someone is a good researcher, whether or not they are a good teacher, whether or not they can "generate data," they are a "crap scientist" and should be fired if they don't embrace the particular metaphysical view of the world that he favors. Since when must scientists be atheists and view the universe as a purposeless machine? Since when is there a philosophical litmus test for who can teach science?

Mr. Rutherford's take on the nature of science is breathtakingly narrow-minded. His bigotry would have led him to deny tenure to Galileo Galilei, Isaac Newton, Johannes Kepler, Michael Faraday, Robert Boyle and a host of other brilliant thinkers who saw the cosmos as the handiwork of a Creator.

Nor can Mr. Rutherford adduce any empirical evidence to show that the inference of intentionality drawn from the structure of the cosmos is mistaken. Nevertheless, even if it were mistaken, it'd be mistaken about a philosophical interpretation of the scientific data, not about the science itself.

Inquisitors like Rutherford, however, don't care about such distinctions. For them science is not just about producing data, it's about promoting with missionary zeal a metaphysical worldview that science itself can in no way justify or support. It's about evangelizing the masses on behalf of a materialistic atheism. The religion of materialism wraps itself in the garb of science hoping that no one will notice and pronounces all challenges to its hegemony to be illicit attacks on the sacred cow of science. Conflating metaphysics with empirical science the self-appointed preachers of materialistic orthodoxy set out like Torquemada to punish as heretics anyone who deviates from their doctrine by sending their careers up in flames.

There's a wonderful movie out titled The Lives of Others. It's about how the tyrannical East German secret police, the Stazi, punished citizens who flouted official communist doctrine or who were so indiscreet as to utter an irreverent word about the East German government. Watching the movie one is astounded at the pettiness and small-mindedness of the people who made up this oppressive apparatus. Sadly, they were people whose minds worked just like that of Adam Rutherford.

At the end of the movie the Berlin Wall has fallen and the communists are thrown out of power. A victim of the Stazi oppression encounters a former official, a vindictive man who was in charge of rooting out political heretics. The victim, with palpable and justifiable disgust, says to this odious and pathetic figure, "To think that people like you once actually ran a country." Reading Rutherford's column those words echoed in my mind - to think that people like this actually dictate what beliefs are philosophically acceptable among scientists.

RLC

Fat and Fit

Here's good news for all of us who find that our shoes seem to have receded progressively further from our hands, harder to see, and harder to tie as the years have passed:

Being fit helps you live longer - even when you're fat, an American study has found.

Striking findings show the fittest fat men and women aged 60 and over are more likely to live to a ripe old age than their averagely weighted or slim - and less fit - peers.

The message seems to contradict current anxieties about an obesity epidemic and constant messages to lose weight.

But U.S. researchers led by Dr Steven Blair claim all older people, including those who are obese, can benefit from increasing their activity levels.

I wonder if increasing one's visits to the refrigerator counts as increased activity.

RLC

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