Heroes Must Be Punished

There's a certain type of person, unfortunately all too common, who's like a mechanical device. Whenever input A is received, output B is spit out. It doesn't matter what the circumstances are, A must always result in B. As with automatons, there can be no exceptions, no deviations, only a rigid, unthinking, invariable stimulus/response. These people would be no more willing to actually think about what they do than they would be willing to donate their monthly paycheck to a local street gang. They possess consciousness, but prefer not to use it, opting instead to act like mental zombies. Such are the corporate overlords who run Super America:

A local gas station employee is out of a job after he thought he was helping save someone's life. Mark Beverly was one of two employees inside a Roseville Super America when a robber came into the store on March 26.

Beverly was cleaning the bathroom when he heard the store clerk cry out. He came out to find a robber attacking the female employee.

"I just jumped on his back and trying to hit his head and pushed him over the counter. I jumped back over and he was out of there," he said.

Later that day, Beverly returned to work only to be punished for his actions.

"I didn't think I was going to get fired for it," he told 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS.

Super America issued a statement, saying that 'employees are never to take action that could endanger themselves or others. It's regrettable this happened.'

"I didn't care about the money, I know Super America is insured. But I thought he was attacking her, that's why I jumped on him," he explained.

The Roseville Police Department has not made any arrests regarding the robbery. Beverly has been denied employment with Super America.

Mr. Beverly is a hero, but he's treated as though he were caught sleeping on the job. It makes sense to have a policy of non-resistance to robbers, but that's not what was happening here. A co-worker was being beaten. What do the corporate sages at Super America, who have probably never risked anything to help anyone in their lives, suggest that Mr. Beverly should have done? Dialogue with the mugger? Call 911 and let the woman be beaten for five long minutes until the police responded? Continue to mop the floor and pretend nothing was happening?

It doesn't matter to the lobotomized suits who inhabit the Super America penthouse suite that Mr. Beverly did the only thing that any decent human being in his position could do. All they know is that he breached company policy and so must be made an example for any other would-be decent human beings in their employ. This is how we reward those, their dismissal of Mr. Beverly warns, who have the insolence to care about the well-being of other people enough to risk harm to themselves to help them.

I hope there are some businessmen in the twin cities region who possess brains as well as spine and who will see in Mr. Beverly the kind of humanity and courage that they would like to have working for them. He's obviously over-qualified for Super America.

HT: Hot Air

RLC

Re: Bailout

About a week ago we did a post on an opportunity for readers to express their displeasure with Congress' plans to bail out lenders and borrowers who can no longer make payments on their mortgages by signing a petition.

One reader who signed the petition offers his reasons on our Feedback page. I'm sure he speaks for millions of Americans, and his letter will help those who might not quite understand what the fuss is about to see the issue more clearly.

To read it click on the Feedback button to the left.

RLC

Evangelical Manifesto

The Evangelical Manifesto we wrote about earlier this week has been released, and although I haven't had time to examine it thoroughly it seems on first reading to be a very impressive document. The concerns I expressed in the earlier post have been largely allayed.

The Manifesto's twenty pages are much too rich to summarize in a single post, but I certainly urge everyone to study it. Christians should familiarize themselves with it because it's a lodestone for people of faith looking to navigate the currents of modern culture, and non-Christians should study it because it's a Rosetta stone for those who seek to go beyond media stereotypes of Christianity and to decipher and understand for themselves who Christians are and what they really believe.

The Manifesto can be read here. A list of signatories can be found here.

RLC

Self-Evident Moral Truth

There's a fascinating discussion going on at Uncommon Descent over the question of whether there are self-evident moral truths. The springboard for the conversation is a passage from Dostoyevsky's Brothers Karamazov in which Dostoyevsky has Ivan tell this story - which is believed to be based on actual events - in order to illustrate the utter depravity of human beings (Caution: This story describes acts of sickening violence):

People talk sometimes of bestial cruelty, but that's a great injustice and insult to the beasts; a beast can never be so cruel as a man, so artistically cruel. The tiger only tears and gnaws, that's all he can do. He would never think of nailing people by the ears, even if he were able to do it. These Turks took a pleasure in torturing children, too; cutting the unborn child from the mother's womb, and tossing babies up in the air and catching them on the points of their bayonets before their mother's eyes. Doing it before the mother's eyes was what gave zest to the amusement.

Here is another scene that I thought very interesting. Imagine a trembling mother with her baby in her arms, a circle of invading Turks around her. They've planned a diversion; they pet the baby, laugh to make it laugh. They succeed, the baby laughs. At that moment a Turk points a pistol four inches from the baby's face. The baby laughs with glee, holds out its little hands to the pistol, and he pulls the trigger in the baby's face and blows out its brains. Artistic, wasn't it? By the way, Turks are particularly fond of sweet things, they say.

The question is whether what the soldiers did was self-evidently and absolutely wrong. The answer is, if there is a God then yes; if there isn't then, no, it's not wrong at all. If there is no transcendent moral source then there are no absolute moral wrongs nor, indeed, is there such a thing as moral right and wrong. There are only things people do which we like or don't like.

My contribution to the debate is comment #90.

RLC

Rosie on Wright

Forget about Rosie's gaffes in this clip (it's 3/5, not 3/4; the Tuskegee program was reprehensible, but the government did not give the men syphillis). Set aside the implied slur against black preachers that Rosie delivers when she says that Wright is just doing what black preachers do, i.e. lie. Forget that when Rosie says that Wright made sense to her that was all anyone teetering on the fence about Wright might need to justify abandoning any hope of ever sympathizing with the guy.

Ignore all that and ask yourself: Aren't you getting a little weary of people insisting that if we're going to scrutinize Jeremiah Wright then we ought to also scrutinize John Hagee, who endorsed John McCain, and indeed every other preacher in the U.S.?

John McCain did not sit under John Hagee for twenty years, Hagee did not baptize his children or wed McCain and his wife. McCain has not, so far as I know, donated thousands of dollars to Hagee's church nor does he consider Hagee a close personal friend and spiritual mentor. In other words, there is no relevant comparison between McCain's relationship with Hagee and Obama's relationship with Wright. There's even less reason to insist that if Jeremiah Wright is going to be deconstructed then so too should Pat Robertson and others. These preachers are not ideological influences on John McCain in the way that Wright has been on Obama.

So why do people like the women in this video clip keep insisting that there's some sort of equivalence between Hagee and Wright and that fairness demands that we treat both McCain's relationship to Hagee and Obama's relationship to Wright the same?

HT: Hot Air

RLC

Beautiful Birds

I went for a bit of a field trip yesterday to a park near my home and had one of these gorgeous creatures land in a branch just a few feet from me. The picture is very good but even it doesn't give a full sense of the loveliness of this little bird:

The bird is a hooded warbler and is found in mature woodlands throughout much of the eastern U.S.

Since I'm posting bird pics, here are three other beauties I was lucky enough to see on my hike. I should note that I didn't take any of these photos:

This is one is an indigo bunting. It's very common on telephone wires near open fields in the eastern U.S., but it's so small and just looks dark when seen in poor light that most people never notice them, which is a pity because if they're seen in good light they're breathtakingly pretty.

This striking blackbird is called a bobolink. It breeds in extensive open areas like old hay fields, etc. Since extensive open areas are becoming increasingly scarce this fellow is, unfortunsately, not particularly common.

This last gorgeous little jewel is a denizen of woodlands and parks and can be found pretty easily if you learn it's song. It's called a scarlet tanager.

When a few hours of walking produces so much beauty it gives one an incentive to get out more often. Maybe tomorrow I'll post a few other photos of some of the beautiful birdlife that can be seen in spring if one just looks around a little.

RLC

Out of His Depth

David Berlinski responds to a scathing review of Expelled by National Review's John Derbyshire. Derbyshire is an intelligent, well-educated man who often writes sagely except when he turns his pen to the topic of intelligent design and related matters. Then he seems to come all unraveled and says and does the silliest things, like reviewing a movie he hasn't seen.

In any event, despite his acumen, he's no match for Berlinski, and he should have known better than to insult Berlinski in his review, tacitly referring to him as an eccentric non-Christian crank. Berlinski's riposte is a treat to read.

If you read both essays, do Derbyshire's first. If you have time for only one, read Berlinski's.

RLC

American Jew Hatred

David Horowitz brings us up to date on the parlous condition freedom of speech finds itself in on American university campuses. According to Horowitz the major threat comes from an alliance of leftists and Muslim student groups. Reading his report one can't help but think that if the holocaust ever recurs in the West, it'll start in our institutions of higher learning.

RLC

Brother Minister

Christopher Hitchens wonders whether Michelle Obama is behind her husband's unfortunate association with Jeremiah Wright. This is an interesting question in itself, but even more interesting was something Hitchens reminds us of in his essay that I had completely forgotten:

So numbed have I become by the endless replay of the fatuous clerical rantings of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright that it has taken me this long to remember the significant antecedent. In 1995, there appeared a documentary titled Brother Minister about the assassination of Malcolm X. It contained a secretly filmed segment showing Louis Farrakhan shouting at the top of his lungs in the Nation of Islam's temple in Chicago on "Savior's Day" in 1993. Farrakhan, verging on hysteria, demanded to know of the murdered Malcolm X: "If we dealt with him like a nation deals with a traitor, what the hell business is it of yours?" His apparent admission of what had long been suspected-that it was the Black Muslim leadership that ordered Malcolm's slaying-is not understood or remembered (or viewed) as often as it might be.

I invite you to look at the film of Farrakhan's sweating, yelling, paranoid face and to bear in mind that this depraved thug, who boasts of "dealing with" one of black America's moral heroes, is the man praised by Jeremiah Wright and referred to with respect as "Minister Farrakhan" by the senator who hopes to be the next president of the United States.

I had forgotten that Farrakhan had been implicated in the murder of Malcolm X, though nothing was ever proven. What was never in doubt, however, was that Farrakhan approved of the killing of the man who was a hero to so many African Americans. In fact, Malcolm's daughter, Qubilah Shabazz, was arrested back in the 90's for trying to hire a hit man to assassinate Farrakhan to avenge her father's murder.

So why do blacks let Jeremiah Wright get away with being cozy with Farrakhan? Why do blacks let the Obamas get away with being cozy with Wright? It's as deep a mystery, perhaps, as why African Americans let the Democrat party get away with keeping them on the political plantation while doing almost nothing to assuage their grievances.

RLC

Devil's Delusion

David Berlinski is a charming example of that rare species among our intellectual flora and fauna - a genuine agnostic. Despite his own personal theological uncertainties he has written a book which offers a defense of modern religious belief. The work is titled The Devil's Delusion, an obvious play on Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion. Here's what the Product Description at Amazon says about the book:

Militant atheism is on the rise. Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, and Christopher Hitchens have dominated bestseller lists with books denigrating religious belief as dangerous foolishness. And these authors are merely the leading edge of a far larger movement-one that now includes much of the scientific community.

"The attack on traditional religious thought," writes David Berlinski in The Devil's Delusion, "marks the consolidation in our time of science as the single system of belief in which rational men and women might place their faith, and if not their faith, then certainly their devotion."

A secular Jew, Berlinski nonetheless delivers a biting defense of religious thought. An acclaimed author who has spent his career writing about mathematics and the sciences, he turns the scientific community's cherished skepticism back on itself, daring to ask and answer some rather embarrassing questions:

Has anyone provided a proof of God's inexistence? Not even close.

Has quantum cosmology explained the emergence of the universe or why it is here? Not even close.

Have the sciences explained why our universe seems to be fine-tuned to allow for the existence of life? Not even close.

Are physicists and biologists willing to believe in anything so long as it is not religious thought? Close enough.

Has rationalism in moral thought provided us with an understanding of what is good, what is right, and what is moral? Not close enough.

Has secularism in the terrible twentieth century been a force for good? Not even close to being close.

Is there a narrow and oppressive orthodoxy of thought and opinion within the sciences? Close enough.

Does anything in the sciences or in their philosophy justify the claim that religious belief is irrational? Not even ballpark.

Is scientific atheism a frivolous exercise in intellectual contempt? Dead on.

Berlinski does not dismiss the achievements of western science. The great physical theories, he observes, are among the treasures of the human race. But they do nothing to answer the questions that religion asks, and they fail to offer a coherent description of the cosmos or the methods by which it might be investigated.

This brilliant, incisive, and funny book explores the limits of science and the pretensions of those who insist it can be-indeed must be-the ultimate touchstone for understanding our world and ourselves.

I hope to have more to say about The Devil's Delusion once I get it read.

HT: Mindful Hack

RLC

Evangelical Manifesto

Some 80 conservative Christian luminaries have composed a manifesto which, according to this article, says that these leaders:

...believe the word "evangelical" has lost its religious meaning plan to release a starkly self-critical document saying the movement has become too political and has diminished the Gospel through its approach to the culture wars.

The statement, called "An Evangelical Manifesto," condemns Christians on the right and left for "using faith" to express political views without regard to the truth of the Bible, according to a draft of the document obtained Friday by The Associated Press.

"That way faith loses its independence, Christians become `useful idiots' for one political party or another, and the Christian faith becomes an ideology," according to the draft.

The declaration, scheduled to be released Wednesday in Washington, encourages Christians to be politically engaged and uphold teachings such as traditional marriage. But the drafters say evangelicals have often expressed "truth without love," helping create a backlash against religion during a "generation of culture warring."

"All too often we have attacked the evils and injustices of others," they wrote, "while we have condoned our own sins." They argue, "we must reform our own behavior."

The document is the latest chapter in the debate among conservative Christians about their role in public life. Most veteran leaders believe the focus should remain on abortion and marriage, while other evangelicals - especially in the younger generation - are pushing for a broader agenda. The manifesto sides with those seeking a wide-range of concerns beyond "single-issue politics."

Among the signers of the manifesto are Os Guinness, a well-known evangelical author and speaker, and Richard Mouw, president of Fuller Theological Seminary, a leading evangelical school in Pasadena, Calif. Organizers declined to comment until the final document is released.

I hope the manifesto is more specific than is this news article as to how often Evangelicals have failed to be loving in their proclamation of the truth and how, exactly, they have condoned their own sins. It's easy to criticize using nebulous allegations which reflect conventional prejudices, especially when one is reasonably assured that relatively few people will take the trouble to ask how prevalent and serious the problem really is.

I also hope the manifesto explains how a pastor can preach the gospel without preaching on the themes of justice and compassion and how, unless he speaks in terms so circumspect and vague as to be meaningless, he can preach on doing justice and compassion in this world without also urging people to be politically engaged. How political is "too political"?

Were not the early abolitionists like William Wilberforce, who is much admired by Os Guinness, politically engaged? Were not the churches havens for the American civil rights movement and, for better or worse, the anti-war movement of the sixties? How can we fight against hunger and oppression around the world without being politically involved? How can we effectively oppose the wanton killing of millions of unborn children without trying to elect pro-life politicians? How can we insist on decency and academic quality in our schools without being willing to elect like-minded school board members and legislators?

Perhaps we'll see on Wednesday. Meanwhile, Joe Carter has some good things to say in addressing the issue of evangelicals in politics.

RLC

Gambler's Ruin

I've long wondered why Darwinians place so much confidence in the ability of random mutation and natural selection to evolve the amazing panoply of living things. It always seemed to me that the conviction that an advantageous mutation - i.e. a mutation which conferred a slight advantage in the struggle for survival and which is granted by Darwinians to be relatively rare - would very likely be lost as soon as it appeared due simply to random events like the death of the organism because of accident, predation, etc.

A mutation that allowed an organism, for instance, to more effectively smell food might be lost simply because the organism perishes at the hands of a natural predator. In other words, having an advantage of one kind only makes survival of that organism very slightly more likely, and if the organism doesn't make it then the mutation is lost until it arises again in some future generation.

I've never seen much written about this problem, but Salvador Cordova has a fascinating discussion of it at Uncommon Descent. He talks about it in terms of what's called the Gambler's Ruin, the topic of a book written in the sixties by a mathematical genius at MIT named Edward O. Thorp. Thorp's book explained how one can beat the Las Vegas casinos, and the movie 21 is based on his work.

Cordova explains its relevance to Darwinian evolution in his article. The upshot is that natural selection is scarcely more likely to preserve a beneficial mutation than is random chance:

Darwin was absolutely wrong to suggest that the emergence of a novel trait will be preserved in most cases. It will not! Except for extreme selection pressures (like antibiotic resistance, pesticide resistance, anti-malaria drug resistance), selection fails to make much of an impact.

What this all means is that Darwin's great contribution to evolutionary biology, the theory of natural selection, is just wrong, or at least it's wrong if it's taken to be an unguided process. If evolution occurred at all it was not, nor could have been, a completely materialistic, mechanistic process.

Check out the entire post if this is a topic that interests you.

RLC

Regrets

Joe Trippi, former adviser to Sen. John Edwards', D-N.C., second presidential bid, http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2008/05/trippi-edwards.html says he should have "gone with his gut" and convinced the 2004 vice presidential candidate to stay in the race:

In an essay for "Politics" magazine, Trippi writes "I didn't tell him what I should have told him: that I had this feeling that if he stayed in the race, he would win 300 or so delegates by Super Tuesday and have maybe a one-in-five chance of forcing a brokered convention."

Trippi writes that the path "would be extremely painful, but could very well put him and his causes at the top of the Democratic agenda."

"In politics anything can happen," Trippi says in his essay, "Even the possibility that in an open convention with multiple ballots an embattled and exhausted party would turn to him as their nominee."

"My regret that I did not do so -- that I let John Edwards down -- grows with every day that the fight between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama continues," Trippi continues.

Trippi shouldn't let it get him down. By not urging Edwards to stick to his goal of becoming president he did what was best for the country.

RLC

Bug-Bots

I don't know how close we are to putting these new devices in the field but they sure would make life tough for the bad guys. AllahPundit asks us to imagine "the utter paranoia it'll engender in the enemy once the word gets out. Every time a spider crawls past or a dragonfly floats by, they'll look and wonder." Indeed:

RLC

Bail Out

If you think it's a bit unjust to be asked to bail out those who bought homes they couldn't afford and now find themselves unable to keep up with their mortgage payments, you can go here to sign a petition to Congress to that effect. If you think there's something absurd about being asked to help those living in $500,000 houses pay for their homes while you can't even afford to buy a house at all then you might consider signing the petition.

There may be some who have built up a lot of equity in their homes and stand to lose it, but for many of those facing default on mortgages on which they had to put little or nothing down, their situation seems to be no different than if they were renting the house for the time they lived in it. All they lose, if the house is repossessed by the lender, is the monthly mortgage payments they had been making, which were just like paying rent. The big loser is the lending agency which is now in possession of a house which they probably will not be able to sell for the value of the original mortgage.

But then that's the risk they took when they underwrote loans to people with dubious ability to pay.

RLC

Medical Marvel

We've reported previously on developments with skin stem cells showing that they can be programmed to behave like embryonic stem cells. Now comes word that skin stem cells have been used to regenerate heart tissue:

Stem cell researchers at UCLA were able to grow functioning cardiac cells using mouse skin cells that had been reprogrammed into cells with the same unlimited properties as embryonic stem cells.

The finding is the first to show that induced pluripotent stem cells or iPS cells, which don't involve the use of embryos or eggs, can be differentiated into the three types of cardiovascular cells needed to repair the heart and blood vessels.

The discovery could one day lead to clinical trials of new treatments for people who suffer heart attacks, have atherosclerosis or are in heart failure, said Dr. Robb MacLellan, a researcher at the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research and senior author of the study.

There is more on this at the link, including additional links to a number of related articles.

RLC

Starving Children

None of the answers given by the presidential candidates to the problem of high gas prices really addresses the problem. Simply put, the problem is that there's not enough supply to meet the global demand. As long as this imbalance exists, prices at the pump will continue to rise and the cost of food will rise with it, and reducing the federal tax on gas and other palliatives will only help temporarily.

Moreover, as long as corn and other grains are in demand as a source of ethanol the cost of those grains, including what is grown in poor countries, will also rise. While people starve, grain raised in their own country will be exported rather than used locally because the growers will get far more money for it if they export it than if they sell it domestically.

Unless we're prepared to see starvation on a large scale in the world's poorest countries we need to use grain for food, not fuel, and we need to increase the supply of oil and gasoline. No medium term solution that omits these will avoid the looming disaster.

RLC

Truth Hurts

Paul Shaheen criticizes Hollywood for presenting too many stereotypical images of Arabs and Muslims. He has praise for the movie Babel, which is much deserved, but he criticizes The Kingdom for making Arabs out to be bad guys. This makes me wonder whether he even saw the movie. The film is about terrorists in an Arab country. Mr. Shaheen may not have read any newspapers lately, so someone might tell him that this actually happens. Some very bad people are Arab Muslims, and it's to Hollywood's credit that they didn't shrink from portraying this reality. Moreover, one of the heroes of the film is an Arab.

Nevertheless, Mr. Shaheen seems miffed that every now and then Hollywood goes against its instincts and actually portrays things as they happen to be.

It is, no doubt, people who think as Mr. Shaheen does who have declared use of the words jihadist, mujahedeen, and Islamo-fascism to be henceforth unacceptable language in the U.S. State Department. There's a fear among the experts at Foggy Bottom, you see, that using words correctly and accurately will offend the delicate sensibilities of Muslim moderates.

See Andy McCarthy at NRO for more on this peculiar development.

You might also listen to what Robert Spencer has to say about the, ah, you-know-who who are waging world-wide you-know-what against Western civilization:

RLC

Galaxies in Collision

NASA has released some pics of galaxies interacting with each other taken with the Hubble space telescope. Amazing photos.

Bear in mind that each of these galaxies is roughly similar to our Milky Way and that if our sun were in the picture it would be so tiny it probably wouldn't be visible. The earth would most definitely not be visible.

RLC

The Case for Civility

I've met and spoken with Os Guinness on several occasions and even shared a meal with him once. He's a fine man, a brilliant speaker and a prolific author. He's also dismayed at the current state of discourse in this country, and his dismay is certainly warranted. Out of that concern has emerged yet another book from a man who has already authored or edited over two dozen of them.

The Case for Civility And Why Our Future Depends on it is one of the most important of the many themes he has addressed over his long career as a public intellectual, but unfortunately it's not one of his strongest efforts.

Os urges us to elevate the level of our discourse and disagreements. He's dismayed by the "culture wars" raging in the U.S. over issues like abortion, stem cell research, gay marriage, Iraq, etc. He calls for leadership from our politicians in promoting a civil public square. In all of this I cheer him on, but he cripples his case in the very beginning of the book, and continues to do so sporadically throughout its 175 pages, by taking precisely the kind of cheap shots at President Bush, though not always by name, that irritate people like me who think that this President has been one of the most civil, longsuffering, and least vindictive men ever to hold the office of president.

Bush has been relentlessly, and sometimes viciously and unfairly, vilified in the press by the Democratic opposition and even by some Republicans, yet he has never once, so far as I know, responded in kind, at least not publicly. He has tried repeatedly to demonstrate good will toward his political opponents only to be whacked in the head for his trouble. Nevertheless, rather than hold him up as an exemplar of the very attitude Os urges upon the rest of us, rather than cite his willingness to turn the other cheek as an example of how civility might work itself out in our politics, Os seizes whatever opportunities present themselves to take a few whacks himself.

On pages 5 and 6, for instance, he says: "I write as a longtime European admirer of the United States, with the deep conviction that the quest for civility in world affairs has to begin in America; but also with a growing sadness that America's recent leadership has not matched up to her global responsibilities." How so? In what way has our leadership failed to exercise civility on the world stage? Is this a reference to Afghanistan or Iraq? If so, in what sense do these ventures demonstrate an unfortunate lack of civility? They can do so only if they were inexcusably misguided, but if Os thinks they were then he needs to make that case because it's certainly not self-evident.

He also writes on page 6 that, "Like a later American president's 'Mission Accomplished' in Iraq, Allenby's rash claim was soon to be contradicted..." This is simply uncharitable. The Navy suggested the "Mission Accomplished" sign after deposing Saddam and the completion of the aircraft carrier's mission to Iraq. The White House okayed it, but Bush probably wasn't even informed of it. The President even said in his speech aboard the ship that the mission had to continue and that the work was not done. One can understand, perhaps, why partisans might exploit this opening to insult Bush, but why would a man calling for more civility in our politics do so? If the sign has to be mentioned at all why not try to put the best construction on it rather than the worst?

The book also suffers from a lack of specificity. Os bemoans "culture warring" throughout the work, particularly on pages 16 and 17, but he's never clear about exactly what he has in mind by the term. He talks about the need "to wrest back the culture wars from the domineering pundits and activists who have become the warlords of American public life," but who are these people and in what ways are they domineering and what's wrong, exactly with being an activist?

He warns us not to remain passive before the bullying of the culture warriors, but the reader has no idea what or whom he's talking about.

On page 18 he conflates the two biggest weaknesses of the book, his lack of specifics and his predilection for taking swipes at Bush: "The tie-in between the religious right and the person and policies of George W. Bush, has provoked a mounting backlash that has made the liaison a severe liability for both."

Is Os criticizing Bush's "person" here? What is it about Bush's person that makes him so odious? Which of his policies should Bush have not pursued? Appointing qualified pro-life judges? Opposing federal funding for embryonic stem cell research? Doing more than any president in history to help alleviate the suffering of the poor in Africa? What exactly?

Guinness adds that "...certain Christians form the bulk of one of the two great extremes in the American culture wars and are stirring up against themselves some of the most vehement antireligious animosity in the modern world." Who are these Christians? How are they stirring up animosity, and why is this bad? If the world hates Christians for taking a stand against modern social trends why is that the Christians' fault? Os doesn't explain.

He laments the militancy of atheists like Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins and seems to blame it on the Religious Right (p.18) as if had Jerry Falwell never existed Dawkins would never have felt the need to write The God Delusion. Could it not be argued just as easily that the Religious Right is the backlash and that the debasement of our culture by the secularists is the stimulus?

He also gets a little too full of himself on page 19 where he writes that he's "setting out a vision of civility in the American public square that, if realized, could be the key to resolving the cuilture wars, could be a stunning tribute to the brilliance of the 'great experiment' devised by the American founders, and also could stand as an encouragement and as a model for public civility in other parts of the world." He sounds here like he's campaigning for the Nobel Peace Prize.

There needs to be made a case for civility, and I thank Os for keeping that need before us. I just wish he'd be more specific and civil himself.

After a historical longuer on the first amendment and the challenges of pluralism, Os gets to the heart of his topic in Chapter 4.

He sees two impediments to a more civil discourse in this country. First, is the desire by some (don't expect him to name names or cite examples) to try to sacralize the public square. Here he steps into a trap to which many fair-minded commentators seem prone. In trying to be credible he wants to pronounce a pox on both the houses of the left and the right which implies a kind of moral equivalence between them. Thus he either has to dredge up some specific example of right-wing perfidy or continue to speak in mind-numbing nebulosity. He chooses to do both:

"As one who holds the Hebrew prophets in the highest esteem, I am outraged by the false prophets of fundamentalism, who violate the biblical canons of prophecy and pronounce in the name of the Lord what is theologically obscene and historically untrue.... I am appalled by the way the Religious Right attacks its fellow believers and demonizes its enemies. Shame on the scurrilous attacks in much Christian direct mail, and on fundamentalist pastors and their followers who hold placards in public such as 'God Hates Fags,' 'Thank God for Maimed Soldiers,' and 'God Hates You.'"

This sort of behavior is indeed deplorable and I join Os in deploring it, but who's doing it and what wickedness does the direct mail contain? Without that information we're left in the dark as to whether this really is a significant phenomenon. Is it limited to people like the dozen or so family members who comprise the Westboro Baptist Church or is it much more typical of the Christian right?

He complains (p. 94) that "many in the Religious Right are more obviously fundamentalists than they are Christians." This may well be true, but it would help if he would give us examples of what he means so that we can judge whether it's true that "many" religious conservatives are actually guilty of the charge.

He gives some advice to Christians on this page that is worth repeating. In talking about how Christians sometimes portray themselves as victims of secular persecution he enjoins us to, in effect, get a grip. He reminds us that what Christians are facing in the U.S. is nothing compared to what they're facing in China, North Korea, Burma, and Sudan.

He makes another interesting point on page 96 where he points out that it is a bit of a mistake to think that the genocidal tendencies of Islam are a throwback to the 7th century. He writes: "Its view of its advocates as a revolutionary vanguard, and their belief in the power of violence to remake humanity are highly modern ideas and closer to the views of the nineteenth century anarchists and nihilists than to those of their Muslim forebears. As such Islamism is truly a modern reaction to the modern world."

He's also helpful when he notes on page 102 that, "whichever side it comes from, politicized preaching is faithless, foolish, and disastrous for the church." These are words that should be meditated upon by the Jesse Jackson's, Jeremiah Wrights and Al Sharptons of the world as well as those normally thought to be on the Religious Right.

The best line in the book comes in his chapter on saying no to the naked public square when he says that he finds it "curious to be treated by Muslims as a second-class citizen and by atheists as a second-class thinker - a dhimmi to one and a dummy to the other."

He's at his best in defending the open public square and this chapter (Chapter 5) is worth the price of the book. Unfortunately, he never overcomes his penchant for vague generalizing and thus never brings himself to explaining exactly what civil discourse would or should look like (perhaps because it might look too much like G.W. Bush). On pages 150-152 he talks about what it is not, but leaves us to form our own opinions as to where the boundaries of civil discourse actually lie.

Nevertheless, Os is to be commended for directing our attention to the need and importance of civil disagreement, and we would all do well to keep in mind that we do nothing to advance our own causes when we resort to aspersions, name-calling and attempts to embarrass and humiliate those with whom we disagree.

RLC

Ten Ways

Joe Carter has a good series of posts on Ten Ways Darwinists Help Intelligent Design at Evangelical Outpost. If you're interested in the controversy go to the link and scroll down.

RLC

He Who Hesitates

Nine days ago "Mookie" al Sadr threatened a third uprising unless coalition forces stopped forcing his Mahdi militiamen to obey the law. Since then 186 of those militiamen have died trying to kill Americans and Iraqis. Mookie better soon get on with the uprising or else he won't have anyone left to uprise with.

RLC

Rove's Fingerprints

If Reverend Jeremiah Wright was working for the Clinton campaign he probably wouldn't do anything differently than he has been over the last four days. His speeches seem to be deliberately designed to sabotage Obama's candidacy. There's speculation that Wright feels betrayed and embittered by Obama who dissed him by relegating him to the basement during the announcement of his candidacy and who has consistently tried to distance himself from Wright's views ever since.

When Wright opined that Obama is just saying that he disagrees with the Chicago preacher because as a politician he has to say that sort of thing, he effectively called the Illinois senator a liar and implied that Obama really does share his radical, racialist, paranoid views.

It's true that the simplest explanation for what Wright has been doing is that he's very angry at the treatment he's received from his protege and is resolved to make him pay for the lese majeste. I admit, though, that it is possible he's been turned by the Clinton machine. They're like that.

But my own opinion is that thirty years ago the perfidious Karl Rove foresaw this whole scenario unfolding and planted Reverend Wright as a GOP sleeper in Trinity Church to destroy the candidacy of any potential presidents that might emerge from that congregation. I wouldn't put it past him.

I can see lefty heads everywhere nodding knowingly in agreement.

RLC

McGovern or Carter?

Is Senator Obama more like George McGovern (1972) or Jimmy Carter (1976)? Andrew Busch at No Left Turns thinks it's Carter:

Like Carter, Obama is a substantively vacuous charmer with minimal big-time experience. Carter had four years in the Georgia governor's mansion; if he is elected, Obama will have had four years in the U.S. Senate.

Like Carter, Obama has based his campaign on a general promise of change and a general posture of piety.

Like Carter, Obama is devoted to "healing" the nation after a harsh period of divisiveness.

Like Carter, Obama has suffered gaffes, but has maintained a reservoir of support that refuses to desert him. Like Obama waxing eloquent about the benighted folks in small-town Pennsylvania, Carter uttered his comment about maintaining the "ethnic purity" of neighborhoods in the weeks leading up to the Pennsylvania primary. Carter won Pennsylvania; Obama lost but retained his national lead in delegates and polls.

And, like Carter, despite his flaws, he is still the odds-on favorite to win the presidency in November. Republicans have not gone into a presidential election facing such stiff headwinds since-well, 1976. On Election Day of that year, Carter squeaked by Gerald Ford after possessing a large set of objective advantages. Obama, should he go on to win the Democratic nomination, will go into the election with at least as large a set of objective advantages.

Busch sees other similarities which you can read at the link.

RLC

Hume on Miracles

My Philosophy of Religion class has been reading and critiquing David Hume's argument against miracles this past week. Those students and others may be interested in perusing this post at Uncommon Descent on that very subject. Some of the comments that follow are also worthwhile.

RLC

Is Wright Wrong

There's been much written in the last day or two about Rev. Jeremiah Wright's recent speeches and his sundry and persistent offenses against reason and common sense, but with it all I haven't seen any comment on something he said at the NAACP speech Sunday night. The Reverend cited research in that speech which shows that whites tend to be left-brained, logical, and analytical while blacks are right-brained, intuitive, and feeling-oriented. The races differ, the preacher intoned, in both their learning styles and their dispositions toward particular modes of thought.

I expected that this disquisition on racial difference would set off a firestorm of protest, especially among African-Americans, because in his attempt to defend the different ways black children learn he tacitly acknowledged that blacks simply can't measure up to whites in the kind of thinking required for careers in engineering, math, physics, etc. The implicit corollary of this is that if there are different types of learning then there may be good reason to resurrect the old and discredited idea of "separate but equal" schools. If blacks and whites have different aptitudes then what works well for whites won't succeed with blacks and vice versa so why not educate them differently? In a single speech Rev. Wright catapulted the racial conversation all the way back to 1953, before Brown v. Board of Education, and inadvertently laid the premise for a return to racial segregation, at least in education.

If Jeremiah Wright is correct then we can never hope to see robust numbers of blacks in fields that require left-brained thinking, and if those fields are to be ceded to whites and Asians as their exclusive domain then how will blacks avoid being tagged with the stigma of intellectual inferiority? If a white speaker had made the point Wright made there would be howls of protest at the inherent racism of the claim, but Wright's NAACP audience appeared to receive the news of black inferiority with enthusiasm.

For the sake of African-Americans let's hope that those at the NAACP meeting didn't realize what they were applauding, and let's hope, too, that Rev. Wright is as wrong about this as he is about so much else.

RLC

The Times They Are a'Changin

Demand for oil, fueled by increasing affluence in India, China, and Russia as well as the production of cheaper cars making it possible for millions of people in these countries to own their own vehicles, will push oil prices as high as $8.00 a gallon within just four years according to this forecast at Breitbart. This will happen, it's claimed, despite the fact that consumption in the U.S. will decline due to high pump prices and flatter economy.

The U.S. can partly mitigate the coming calamity by opening up the Alaskan North Slope and our offshore fields, building more refineries, and constructing nuclear power generating facilities (which even the founder of Greenpeace favors). The question is whether a Democratic congress, thick with people who are averse to nuclear power and who have been calling for years for high gas prices as an environmental and conservation measure, will now reverse themselves. It'll take some strong leadership in Washington, and I don't know who among the current political class has the credibility, talent and political power required to turn the supertanker of state in time to keep it from running aground.

We can also forestall the crisis by developing public transportation and rapid transit infrastructure in some of our fastest growing regions. The sun may be setting on the day of the daily one to two hour round trip highway commute.

Meanwhile, if this prognostication is correct say good-bye to your SUVs, Hummers, and pick-up trucks. Inflationary gas prices will be a major inconvenience to us, to be sure, and will doubtless radically change the way we live, but it will be a total disaster to much of the world's poor who will likely starve to death as a result. It will moreover be very likely to precipitate increased warfare, perhaps even WWIII, as some nations seek to secure an oil supply and others seek to use their oil resources as a weapon.

We can't afford to wait to increase the supply of oil on the world market, but the ball is in the Democrats' court.

Exit question: Why are not any of the presidential candidates being asked what they will do to prevent this looming catastrophe?

RLC

Making Ben Stein's Case

Bill Dembski cleverly descries an irony in Yoko Ono's lawsuit against the producers of the recently released movie Expelled, featuring Ben Stein. She's suing because they used, presumably without permission, a clip from her husband's song Imagine which is copyrighted. The irony is in the lyrics of the song:

Imagine no possessions, I wonder if you can. No need for greed or hunger, A brotherhood of man. Imagine all the people, sharing all the world.

Apparently, Yoko's not actually cool with John's dream.

Dembski also recalls Elvis Costello's query in The Other Side of Summer: "Was it a millionaire who said 'imagine no possessions'"?

The funny thing about this is that Yoko and others are trying to stifle a movie which documents the contemporary threat to academic and intellectual freedom. By trying to hamper the film they're unwittingly doing precisely what the movie says they do. You can't buy that kind of publicity.

RLC

FOBs

This will certainly make the Israelis uneasy. A man by the name of Hatem El-Hady, formerly a big fund raiser for Hamas, an organization that specializes in blowing Israeli children to bits, has now devoted himself to raising money for the Barack Obama campaign. El-Hady was chairman of the Toledo-based Islamic charity Kindhearts, until it was closed down by the U.S. government in 2006 for terrorist fundraising.

El-Hady's web page listed three special friends, and one of the three turned out to be none other than Michelle Obama. One wonders what it feels like to be a "special friend" of a man who finances the murders of children. Since the story broke El-Hady has taken his web page down, but Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs has the screen shots if you care to view them.

The FOBs (Friends of Barack) continue to make life difficult for the presidential candidate. One wonders if he has any associates at all who are neither under indictment (Tony Rezko), nor paranoid fabulists (Jeremiah Wright), nor terrorists (William and Bernadine Ayers and now El-Hady).

Senator Obama makes us hope - hope that we don't find out next that he's receiving contributions from Osama bin Laden.

HT: Powerline

RLC

Debt of Gratitude

By now you've probably heard that the CIA has reported to Congress that the Israeli air strike into Syria last September took out a plutonium reactor supplied by North Korea which would have been capable of eventually producing weapons grade fissile material had the Israelis not destroyed it. Once again the world owes Israel a debt of gratitude.

The North Koreans are embarrassed at being caught cooperating with Syria's pursuit of nuclear weapons and the Syrians are afraid there will be further reprisals by the U.S. So, one story has it, Syrian police took one of Saddam's most-wanted henchmen, Izzat Ibrahim, who had been hiding out in Syria, and pushed him across the border into Iraq as a good-will offering of sorts to the U.S.. There's been no U.S. confirmation of this story, but you can read about all of these developments at the DEBKAfile.

RLC

Stalking Horse

Back on April 3rd I opined that if Hillary doesn't win the nomination this time around I expect her to do everything she can, sub rosa, to help McCain win in November. It's in her interest, if she wants to be president in 2012, to see Obama lose this election, but she must appear to be supportive even as she undermines his candidacy by leaking unflattering information about him to the media or to McCain's people.

So, I was interested in this comment by Rick Lowry at National Review:

If Hillary can't win the nomination - and it's clearly very, very hard for her - she's basically a stalking horse for McCain. She's preparing the demographic ground for McCain, by getting white working-class Democrats used to (if you will) not voting for Obama. And she's softening Obama up for McCain, prodding at and exposing her fellow Democrats' weaknesses.

One consequence of staying in the race is that it makes it much harder for Obama to win in November. Lowry doesn't say that she's doing this intentionally, but why wouldn't she? If she stays in the fray there's a remote chance she could win the nomination, but even if she doesn't, by continuing to fight she increases the likelihood that Obama will lose in November which would open the door for her in 2012.

If you wish to understand the Clintons' political thinking, just ask yourself what course of action would be most likely to get her to the White House. It's also helpful to read Machiavelli. I'm sure she does:

UPDATE: Dan Abrams at MSNBC was saying last night that this same thesis is being bandied about by several congresspersons in D.C. I must say that I'm flattered that members of Congress are reading Viewpoint.

RLC

Road to the Holocaust

This is a clip from an early Nazi film seeking to justify forced sterilization on the basis of Darwin's theory of natural selection. Whatever the film says, though, don't fall for that anti-Darwinian humbug that there's any connection between Darwin's ideas and Nazi praxis. Gracious, no. That would be so uninformed of you:

HT: Evolution News and Views.

RLC

What a Country

No Left Turns asks a question that I've also wondered about:

Several blogs have linked to material about William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, noting that Dohrn and Ayers helped Obama start his political career in the 1990s.

The focus on Obama, and whether there is any significance to his connection (whatever it is) with Ayers, has obscured the real scandal here. Both Ayers and Dohrn are now faculty members in good standing at Universities in the Chicago area. Their views are virtually unchanged from those they held in their younger days. Moreover, their views are probably hard to distinguish from those held by a significant number of their colleagues. The scandal, in other words, is that no one has asked why that is the case, and how we might change it. Are our colleges and universities damaged beyond repair?

William Ayers teaches education courses to prospective teachers at University of Illinois at Chicago, a taxpayer funded school, by the way, and his wife teaches at Northwestern. Ayers was a self-confessed terrorist who bombed a number of buildings back in the sixties and tried to kill police. He would have gone to jail for attempted murder except for a technical mistake in the investigation which got him off. He has said recently that he wishes he had done more. His wife did go to jail for about a year for aiding and abetting the Weather Underground in a number of their crimes and according to Powerline has publicly and enthusiastically approved of the Charles Manson folks for their grisly murders of a pregnant movie actress and her companions. Today she teaches law at Northwestern.

One wonders whether the schools which employ Ayers and Dohrn would hire someone who bombed abortion clinics or the editorial offices of The New York Times. One wonders especially whether they would be permitted to teach education and law. I have a hard time picturing it.

Meanwhile, Guillermo Gonzalez, an astronomer who is by all accounts a fine man with a number of academic distinctions to his credit, was denied tenure by Iowa State University because he commited the grievous sin of thinking that the universe shows evidence of having been intentionally planned. So he's out of a job, and while he searches for a position through which he can make a positive contribution to society these two unrepentant psychopathic terrorists are being paid to teach our children to destroy their society, and the administrators and state legislators of Illinois are evidently fine with that.

What's more, this pair of violent felons is evidently chummy with the man who may well be the next president of the United States.

God help us.

Michelle Malkin has much more on Mr. and Mrs. Ayers and others who are connected to the man who promises us hope and change.

RLC

Solipsism

Abby passes along this cartoon which I thought I'd share for the benefit of those students who find the idea that "my" mind is all that exists a trifle amusing:

RLC

Three Cheers for Elitism

Senator Obama is being called an elitist by both Republicans and Democrats alike for his remarks concerning bitter Pennsylvanians who cling to guns, religion and xenophobia. I think this is a bit unfair, actually, because although it might be that he actually does think people who embrace religion, own firearms, and oppose illegal immigration are motivated by bitterness, one can not logically infer that from what he said. In other words, people who are bitter may do X,Y, and Z, but it doesn't follow that those who do X,Y, and Z are bitter.

Anyway, it's the assumption that elitism is somehow a bad thing that I'd like to consider in this post. Like prejudice and discrimination, whether elitism is an undesirable character trait depends a lot on the kind of elitism we're talking about. To explain what I mean I've dredged up a column I wrote for the local paper about ten years ago and which I've revised only slightly:

The current election campaign has spotlighted a rift between races in this country and sparked some agonizing over what should be done about it. Perhaps I'm naive, but I can't help wondering how much of the apparent gulf between Americans is a function of race and how much of it is actually a function of class. I'm willing to be proven wrong, but I suspect that for many people of all colors, the great social fault line in our society runs between classes; classes as defined not by one's income, but as defined by the moral principles which inform and govern an individual's life and conduct. And surely Americans of every hue populate both sides of this divide.

Unfortunately, use of the word class distresses some who complain that it is just an insidious code word for race, and that when people try to justify distinctions based on class they're really trying to rationalize old-fashioned racial bias. This criticism is valid, however, only in the unlikely event that all members of a given race hold identical moral convictions so that to mention their race is to identify their values. Failing that, the objection reduces to the rather disingenuous ploy of defining another's words to mean whatever one wants them to mean.

Other critics will point out that in our politically correct post-modern world "everyone knows" that no individual's values are any better than anyone else's and that to think otherwise is to be guilty of elitism; to which the appropriate response is: So what.

In The Moviegoer, novelist Walker Percy puts it somewhat differently, if no less bluntly, when he has a Louisiana matriarch named Aunt Edna address herself to this very issue. She says:

"I'll make a little confession. I am not ashamed to use the word class. I will also plead guilty to another charge. The charge is that people in my class think they're better than other people. You're damn right we're better. We're better because we do not shirk our obligations to ourselves or to others. We do not whine. We do not organize a group and blackmail the government. We do not prize mediocrity for mediocrity's sake....Ours is the only civilization in history which has enshrined mediocrity as its national ideal....They say out there that we think we're better. You're damn right we're better and don't think they don't know it."

This proud woman wasn't about to apologize for the obvious political incorrectness of her "elitist" sentiments. Neither should anyone else. Elitism based upon moral principle, so far from being some awful sin, is in fact a virtue, a salutary antidote to the infection of moral relativism currently metastasizing within our culture. This may scandalize those who feel that nobody should be so chauvinistic as to think his principles to be actually better than the next person's, but the irony needs to be noted that those who feel this way evidently believe their own moral egalitarianism to be preferable to my moral elitism.

Aside from those enumerated by Aunt Edna, though, what exactly are the virtues which distinguish her "better" class of people? Without attempting an exhaustive list, it's probably correct to say for starters that, no matter what their race, men and women of this class take a great deal of pride in their work, their property, and their character. They assume responsibility for their actions. They strive to be cordial, courteous, and considerate of others. They're dependable, trustworthy, and temperate, willing to defer short-term gratification for long-term benefit. They're frugal, faithful to their spouses, and committed to the well-being of their families. They're mindful of the fact that children do not raise themselves very well and that properly ushering a child into adulthood requires an enormous investment of time, energy, and self-sacrifice. They enjoy and appreciate excellence, especially in the arts and other forms of entertainment. They esteem education, especially for their children, and possess at least a modest appreciation for the life of the mind.

Why should anyone shrink from affirming the pre-eminence of these qualities and from regarding those who share them to be of superior moral timber to those who don't? And why should the social levelers among us be allowed to succeed in making people feel there is something wrong with choosing to avoid the society of those whose lives and habits are the very antithesis of these values?

It must be said again that this is not a matter of race or economics. People of all colors and incomes cherish these virtues and feel uncomfortable around those who don't. Indeed, it is perhaps true to say that many people who share them feel more comfortable in each other's company, regardless of their ethnicity, than they do in the company of members of their own race who don't share them.

Moreover, when people are made to feel guilty for believing their convictions to be more noble than their contraries, or when substantial numbers of people are persuaded that the precepts one lives by are merely arbitrary preferences, none of which is any better than any other, then, as with money, the worse will inevitably drive out the better. The lowest moral classes will eventually succeed in establishing the behavioral norms of the culture, and the principles, or lack of them, which govern their own lives and which are in large measure responsible for their being lower class in the first place, will eventually percolate upward, like some toxic gas, and permeate the rest of society.

The denouement will be a social unraveling, corruption and disintegration that will substantially diminish the quality of life of everyone.

Three cheers, therefore, for Aunt Edna.

RLC

Genealogy of the Holocaust

The Darwinists are in high dudgeon over the implication in the documentary Expelled that the Nazis were among the intellectual heirs of Charles Darwin.

Nevertheless, if people believe that all morality is subjective; that humans are simply animals with no soul; that there's no imago Dei; that we are locked in a struggle for survival one species against another, one race against another; that some races are more gifted by nature than others, and others more debased; and that killing and extinction are part of nature's grand scheme - then it's easy to see how those people might come to see a genocidal holocaust as consistent with the way the world is and not at all "wrong" in any moral sense.

Darwin believed all of these things and though he himself would have doubtless recoiled from any genocidal implications, some of those who were influenced by him were prepared to follow the logic all the way to its grisly end. Darwin's ideas, as distinct from his own character, were completely compatible with the thinking of the Nazis. Given the truth of Darwinian materialism might makes right and there is simply no inconsistency in promoting the "final solution."

On the other hand, it's hard to see how the holocaust could ever come about in a world in which people believe that there is an objective, transcendent right and wrong; that man is created in the image of God and that all men are equally loved by God; who believe that there is no innate competition between races or species but all were created to live in harmony with each other; that death is an evil intrusion into the created order rather than part of the normal order of things and that deliberately killing innocent women and children is morally abhorrent.

Had the Nazis and the German people fervently held those convictions the holocaust would never have happened, and had that set of convictions prevailed anywhere else that there have been similar genocides before and since the German atrocities, none of them would have ever occured either.

Genocide, at least in the West, has almost always been carried out by people who hold to the same worldview as Charles Darwin did. Maybe there's something wrong with the worldview.

RLC

Leadership Losses

Strategy Page brings us this news about the state of the battle against al Qaeda in Iraq:

April 22, 2008: Between mid-March and mid-April, al Qaeda suffered major losses in Iraq. American and Iraqi troops killed or captured 53 al Qaeda leaders. These include men in charge of entire cities (or portions of large cities like Mosul or Baghdad), as well as men in charge of various aspects of terror operations (making bombs, placing them or minding the bombers).

Most important, nine of the ten most senior men involved were captured, and interrogated. This led to locating more al Qaeda staff and assets. Hundreds of weapons and explosives caches have been discovered this year as a result of interrogating captured terrorists. The result has been a sharp fall in suicide bomber attacks, and the ones still carried out are against soft targets (civilians), including the recent funeral of two men earlier killed by terrorists. This was part of an al Qaeda campaign to force Sunni Arabs to switch sides again and support terrorism. But these attacks have the opposite effect, causing more hatred for al Qaeda.

This is pretty significant news, I should think, and I thought those readers concerned about the war would want to know it. I'm pretty sure you haven't heard it on CBS, ABC, NBC, or CNN or read about it in Newsweek, Time, U.S. News or in the major papers. For those media outlets the only significant news about Iraq, apparently, is news about setbacks and American casualties.

RLC

Associations Matter

A lot of Obama supporters were outraged that their man was asked in his last debate with Hillary Clintion about his associations with terrorist William Ayers and anti-American preacher Jeremiah Wright. Complaints in the MSM and blogosphere were loud and numerous that the debates should be about issues and that the matters dwelt upon by ABC's debate moderators are just distractions.

I don't think so. Debates, to the extent they're useful, which isn't often, should only be about issues if there's a clear difference between the candidates' positions. In the case of Senators Clinton and Obama there's not a sliver of ideological daylight between them, and, besides, whatever differences may exist won't matter anyway when the winner moves into the White House. Very few presidents do what they said they would do during those debates, George Bush being an exception.

The purpose of a debate in a campaign such as we have today between the two Democrats aspiring to the presidency should be to show the party faithful something of the character of the candidates and which of the two is most electable. In that case questions about Obama's friendship with Ayers and Wright are very relevant.

After all, if it transpired that John McCain was found to have been friendly with an abortion clinic bomber and that he had had as his pastor for twenty years a man who consorted with known anti-semites, despised his country and held bigoted views toward blacks, I doubt that Obama supporters would think those associations to be mere distractions.

RLC

Oil Change

Here's an article that will interest everyone who owns a car. Car owners often hear conflicting advice as to how often one should change the oil in their automobiles. This piece explains why the old standard of every 3000 miles is no longer applicable:

For years the accepted oil change interval (as per the carmakers) has been every 3 months or 3 thousand miles, whichever comes first. Why? Because the oils of yesterday degraded and broke down when left in the crankcase environment for longer than the prescribed interval. The combination of heat, friction, and the oil oxidizing over time resulted in an unholy clothing of the engine's internal parts called sludge.

As an automotive machinist for a good part of my career, I can tell you that sludge is an engine killer. Sludge takes a greasy, cake-like oily form and plugs oil return passages and acts like a sponge and soaks up good oil to grow its grotesque form starving the engine of vital lubricants.

Once established, engine heat crystallizes it to a hardened rock of ughhhhhh, I have spent many an hour scraping and yes, sometimes chiseling established sludge from the inside of an engine before performing a machining operation on it! As the machinist prepares to perform a machine operation on a cylinder head, crankshaft, engine block or the likes he/she must clean their work meticulously before performing the prescribed operation. If the sludge is not cleaned properly, the result will be a failed engine.

Why this lesson about sludge? Because without clean good quality oil in your car's engine, it will develop sludge and cause premature engine failure.

Go to the link for the author's recommendation and his rationale for it.

RLC

Liberal White Men

I need to visit the Huffington Post more often; there's some remarkable stuff there. Take Sunday's piece by novelist Nora Ephron, for example. What she reveals about the seamy truth of her party is just scandalous. She writes:

This is an election about whether the people of Pennsylvania hate blacks more than they hate women. And when I say people, I don't mean people, I mean white men. How ironic is this?

Here's how ironic it is. The men she's talking about, the "white men" who'll be voting against either the woman or the black man in today's primary in Pennsylvania, are all Democrats. Liberal Democrats, for the most part. Ephron is revealing what she believes to be an ugly truth about white male liberals: They're racist, misogynist bigots.

According to Ms Ephron Democrat males who vote for Hillary are not doing so because they like her but rather because they hate blacks and those who vote for Obama are not doing so because they like him but because they hate women. This is a quite astonishing admission. The assumed repository of tolerance and righteousness in our polity, the Democratic party, is thoroughly infected with the bacillus of race hatred and sexism. Who'd have thought it?

She goes on:

To put it bluntly, the next president will be elected by them: the outcome of Tuesday's primary will depend on whether they go for Hillary or Obama, and the outcome of the general election will depend on whether enough of them vote for McCain. A lot of them will: white men cannot be relied on, as all of us know who have spent a lifetime dating them.

White men cannot be relied upon? I think you can pretty much rely upon conservative white men to vote for the most conservative candidate. Ms Ephron evidently means that liberal white men, as every woman knows, cannot be relied upon. Fascinating.

And McCain is a compelling candidate, particularly because of the Torture Thing. As for the Democratic hope that McCain's temper will be a problem, don't bet on it. A lot of white men have terrible tempers, and what's more, they think it's normal.

I wonder if a post that said similar things about blacks or women would be allowed at HuffPo. Perhaps the sacred categories of racism and sexism don't pertain when the object of ridicule and insult is white men. It is quite acceptable to smear them as much as one cares to. In the liberal universe racism and sexism are crimes of which only white men can be guilty so Ms Ephron is immunized against the charge that her post is perhaps one of the most bigoted pieces of writing ever to appear in the mainstream blogosphere.

Hillary's case is not an attractive one, because what she'll essentially be saying (and has been saying, although very carefully) is that she can attract more racist white male voters than Obama can.

Yes, and this is in the Democratic party, too. Who would have guessed that a Democrat of Ms Ephron's stature would so blatantly acknowledge that her party is chock-full of bigoted cretins? Next time a male of your acquaintance identifies himself as a Democrat ask him why he's such a racist pig.

RLC

Axis of Evil

Which is the most odious regime on planet earth today, you wonder? Ed Morrisey makes a good case for it being Communist China. The ChiComs have just sent a shipment of weapons and ammo to Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe to help him prop up his faltering tyranny there. This follows their support for Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Myanmar and their brutal oppression of Tibet. That's quite a record of support for human depravity.

Morrissey writes:

Wherever peoples are oppressed these days, two constants appear. One is the inevitable chorus of apologists with ready excuses for the oppressors, blaming colonialism from a century ago or Crusades from a millenium past. The other is the Chinese government.

In Iran, the Chinese refuse to meaningfully support the sanctions regime intended on both ending nuclear proliferation and the reign of the mullahcracy. In Sudan, Beijing props up the government that conducts genocides against its own people and allied with Arab Janjaweeds to conduct a parallel Islamic ethnic cleansing. They have kept Kim Jong-Il in power for decades while North Koreans starve to death. Now they want to prop up Robert Mugabe while Zimbabwe melts from a self-sufficient nation to a failed state of starving masses.

Why do the Chinese seem so insistent on subsidizing oppression? It's not just oil. That could certainly be the reason in Iran and Sudan, but not in North Korea or Zimbabwe. Rather, it seems to be a deliberate policy to support regimes that murder, starve, and oppress people. There is a word for that - evil.

After this latest proof of Chinese policy, the International Olympic Committee has even more reason to hide their heads in shame this summer when they supply Beijing with its propaganda platform.

Indeed. After the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in the 1970s we boycotted the Moscow Olympics in 1980. We should do the same thing to the Chinese whose support for Mugabe and the others is contemptible.

RLC

On the Ropes

The media has suddenly lost their voice with regard to the fighting in Basrah in the south of Iraq. You'll recall that three weeks ago Basrah was being portrayed as the Waterloo of the Iraqi army (IA) which had been halted in its tracks, suffering casualties, numerous defections and ignominious defeat at the hands of Muqtada al Sadr's powerful Mahdi army.

The media at the time were at full volume crowing about the IA's inadequacies, but sage observers cautioned against concluding too much from just one phase of the battle. This turns out to have been good advice. The IA seems to have surrounded the Mahdi fighters in Basrah and, with U.S. logistical and air support, are decimating them in Baghdad. Perhaps because it's good news you probably haven't heard about this from the MSM, but if you go to Long War Journal, Bill Roggio will fill you in on what's been happening.

Here's a key paragraph:

Iraqi and Coalition forces have inflicted serious casualties on the Mahdi Army since launching Operation Knights' Assault. Four hundred Mahdi Army fighters have been killed since March 25, while Iraqi soldiers have lost 15 killed in fighting and have had another 400 wounded. More than 400 Mahdi Army fighters were captured and 1,000 wounded in the clashes in Basrah alone.

Somebody please explain to the folks at the New York Times that a mortality ratio of 7:1 is a disaster for the Mahdi army, not a decisive victory.

RLC

Expelled Opens Big

If you have been keeping up with the media churn over the recently released documentary Expelled you will have noticed that there have been some critical reviews, particularly in the more liberal media outlets. Perhaps these have you wondering about the trustworthiness of either the movie or the review. Before you decide which you should place your confidence in you might wish to read a very helpful review of the reviews. If that one's a little too lengthy you might settle for a shorter chortle at the New York Times' silly assessment of the film.

It should be kept in mind that this is not a movie about creationism, nor is it really primarily about the intelligent design/Darwinism debate. It's really about academic freedom and the suppression of a free exchange of ideas by the Darwinian power structure.

It opened this past weekend and scored the second highest opening box for a political documentary ever. Only Fahrenheit 9/11 did better and that was on a topic of broader interest and had much more favorable media buzz prior to its release.

RLC

Re: False Witness

A student of mine, a former Marine who served in Iraq during the early period of the war, responds to the video of Democratic leaders prior to 2003 pronouncing their conviction that Saddam Hussein had WMD and that he must be dealt with.

His reply is on the Feedback page.

RLC

False Consciousness

George Will avers that modern liberal elitism got its start not so much with FDR but with Adlai Stevenson back in the 1950s. Barack Obama, Will writes, is actually Stevenson's successor:

Obama may be the fulfillment of modern liberalism. Explaining why many working class voters are "bitter," he said they "cling" to guns, religion and "antipathy to people who aren't like them" because of "frustrations." His implication was that their primitivism, superstition and bigotry are balm for resentments they feel because of America's grinding injustice.

By so speaking, Obama does fulfill liberalism's transformation since Franklin Roosevelt. What had been under FDR a celebration of America and the values of its working people has become a doctrine of condescension toward those people and the supposedly coarse and vulgar country that pleases them.

When a supporter told Adlai Stevenson, the losing Democratic presidential nominee in 1952 and 1956, that thinking people supported him, Stevenson said, "Yes, but I need to win a majority." When another supporter told Stevenson, "You educated the people through your campaign," Stevenson replied, "But a lot of people flunked the course." Michael Barone, in "Our Country: The Shaping of America From Roosevelt to Reagan," wrote: "It is unthinkable that Roosevelt would ever have said those things or that such thoughts ever would have crossed his mind." Barone added: "Stevenson was the first leading Democratic politician to become a critic rather than a celebrator of middle-class American culture -- the prototype of the liberal Democrat who would judge ordinary Americans by an abstract standard and find them wanting."

Will explains how the progressive elite bypasses the people to implement its goals and objectives. The people, progressives believe, are literally too dull to know what's best for them. They have a "false consciousness," that misleads and blinds them to the nature of their true good:

... Because the manipulable masses are easily given a "false consciousness" (another category, like religion as the "opiate" of the suffering masses, that liberalism appropriated from Marxism), four things follow:

First, the consent of the governed, when their behavior is governed by their false consciousnesses, is unimportant. Second, the public requires the supervision of a progressive elite which, somehow emancipated from false consciousness, can engineer true consciousness. Third, because consciousness is a reflection of social conditions, true consciousness is engineered by progressive social reforms. Fourth, because people in the grip of false consciousness cannot be expected to demand or even consent to such reforms, those reforms usually must be imposed, for example, by judicial fiats.

Read the rest of Will's essay to see how this relates to Senator Obama and his analysis of the "bitter" American.

HT: Jason

RLC

False Witness

If you've ever wondered why President Bush thought Saddam Hussein was a terror threat to the U.S. and was working on weapons of mass destruction, this video very clearly explains it. He was listening to the Democrats.

Watch this and you'll have to wonder whether, if Bush lied us into the war, all these Democrats were lying as well. You'll also have to wonder how these same people can possibly keep a straight face while accusing Bush of going into Iraq under false pretenses.

RLC

Darwin's Dangerous Consequences

The movie Expelled being released this weekend has the Darwinists in a swivet because it draws a link between Darwinian evolution and Nazism. This, the modern day Darwinists protest, is simply beyond the pale. Richard Weikert, author of From Darwin to Hitler, rejoins that indeed the connection is historically demonstrable. He offers for our consideration six key elements of Darwin's thought that were enthusiastically embraced by the Nazis:

1. Darwin argued that humans were not qualitatively different from animals. The leading Darwinist in Germany, Ernst Haeckel, attacked the "anthropocentric" view that humans are unique and special.

2. Darwin denied that humans had an immaterial soul. He and other Darwinists believed that all aspects of the human psyche, including reason, morality, aesthetics, and even religion, originated through completely natural processes.

3. Darwin and other Darwinists recognized that if morality was the product of mindless evolution, then there is no objective, fixed morality and thus no objective human rights. Darwin stated in his Autobiography that one "can have for his rule of life, as far as I can see, only to follow those impulses and instincts which are the strongest or which seem to him the best ones."

4. Since evolution requires variation, Darwin and other early Darwinists believed in human inequality. Haeckel emphasized inequality to such an extent that he even classified human races as twelve distinct species and claimed that the lowest humans were closer to primates than to the highest humans.

5. Darwin and most Darwinists believe that humans are locked in an ineluctable struggle for existence. Darwin claimed in The Descent of Man that because of this struggle, "[a]t some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races."

6. Darwinism overturned the Judeo-Christian view of death as an enemy, construing it instead as a beneficial engine of progress. Darwin remarked in The Origin of Species, "Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows."

These six ideas were promoted by many prominent Darwinian biologists and Darwin-inspired social thinkers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. All six were enthusiastically embraced by Hitler and many other leading Nazis. Hitler thought that killing "inferior" humans would bring about evolutionary progress. Most historians who specialize in the Nazi era recognize the Darwinian underpinnings of many aspects of Hitler's ideology. . . .

Weikert's book, despite being assiduously ignored by Darwinists, is a thoroughly documented elaboration of the connection between Darwin's ideas and the attitudes toward racial purity and eugenics that were widespread among German intellectuals in the early twentieth century and which were carried to their logical conclusion by the Nazis in the 1930s and early 1940s. His book should be read by anyone who wishes to know more about the Darwinism/Nazism nexus. Ideas really do have consequences.

RLC

University Chipmunks

Here's an irony. College students at George Washington University, who would presumably not hesitate to sign a declaration demanding an end to our engagement in Iraq, nevertheless refuse to sign a declaration against genocide. Even the Young Republican organization on campus came down with a sudden case of writer's cramp when asked to append their signatures to the declaration:

When George Washington University senior Sergio Gor tried to get campus student groups to sign a Declaration Against Genocide last week, he thought it would be a no-brainer. Who, after all, wouldn't support a statement endorsing such uncontroversial tenets as the "right of all people to live in freedom and dignity," the equal dignity of men and women, and the freedom of conscience?

All too many, as it turned out. Having approached all the largest student groups at the school to support the declaration, Gor, the president of the George Washington chapter of the Young America's Foundation, was refused time and again. For most students, the message of the declaration, which is a central component of the Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week sponsored by the David Horowitz Freedom Center, was simply too "controversial to support."

Read the rest of the article here.

I once watched a hawk swoop down and seize a chipmunk. The chipmunk, once secured in the hawk's talons, didn't even twitch. There was no struggle, no fight, just resignation to its fate.

Apparently there are a lot of chipmunks at George Washington. The University's namesake must be spinning in his grave down the road at Mt. Vernon.

RLC

Funny Man

Bill Maher continues his quest to become the world's most odious man with his recent attack on Pope Benedict. Having already expressed his wish for the death of Dick Cheney and Rush Limbaugh, Maher now calls the Pope a Nazi, the leader of a cult of pedophiles, and his supine audience exults in the hilarity of it all.

Maher's "humor" is as craven as it is sick since he knows he'll get nothing but kudos from all the beautiful people, and he'll anger only those yokels in the Catholic Church. He's been hammering Catholicism in particular, and American religion in general, for years but has not yet found the time to do likewise to Islam. I'm sure, though, that ridicule of Islam is in the pipeline. His writers are no doubt working even now on a few wisecracks about Mohammed and his nine year-old wife.

We'll let you know when Maher delivers the lines. His audience will certainly be rolling in the aisles, or at least part of them will.

RLC

Rumors of War

NewsMax reports that signs continue to point to an imminent war with Iran:

Contrary to some claims that the Bush administration will allow diplomacy to handle Iran's nuclear weapons program, a leading member of America's Jewish community tells Newsmax that a military strike is not only on the table - but likely.

"Israel is preparing for heavy casualties," the source said, suggesting that although Israel will not take part in the strike, it is expecting to be the target of Iranian retribution.

"Look at Dick Cheney's recent trip through the Middle East as preparation for the U.S. attack," the source said.

Cheney's hastily arranged 9-day visit to the region, which began on March 16, included stops in Israel, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Oman, Turkey, and the Palestinian territories.

Read the rest of the article. It may be that war is not on the near horizon, but much of the Middle East appears to be acting as if it were.

RLC

Negligible Negatives

My friend Byron is a bookseller and probably knows as much or more about the Christian book market as anyone in the country. He was therefore especially interested in the post (Easy Way Out) on the study by David Kinnaman titled Unchristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks About Christianity.

He shares his thoughts on our Feedback page. Along the way he gently chides me for not being more sympathetic to the opinions expressed by the respondents in Kinnaman's study. He makes several worthy points, but in my defense I have to say that I'm just a wee bit weary of hearing the complaints that Kinnaman's research turned up. There is so much good taking place in most American churches and most of the people in those churches are such good and decent people that I suspect that anyone who offers up the complaints that Kinnaman's respondents did simply hasn't taken the trouble to look into the matter very deeply or is looking to rationalize their rejection of the church.

Sure, there are problems and embarrassments (I'm doubtless one of them), but compared to the good that is being done in our communities by our churches it seems almost churlish for outsiders to dwell on them. Here's a short list off the top of my head of good organizations and good things being done in the city and county where I live that probably wouldn't exist or get done were it not for Christians: Food Banks, soup kitchens, homeless and abuse victim shelters, food and clothing drives, disaster relief such as missions to rebuild Katrina-ravaged areas, crisis pregnancy counselling, homes for the elderly, medical facilities, private schools staffed by volunteers, immigrant resettlement programs, Salvation Army, Red Cross, Habitat for Humanity, prison ministry, child care programs, and on it goes. I'm sure you can think of even more.

Thus, when I hear people disparage Christianity because Christians are "too judgmental" or "too political" or "too hypocritical," I just have to think that these people simply don't know what they're talking about. They remind me of the man who was asked after visiting Yosemite National Park for his impressions, and his only comment was that the road going in had potholes in it.

Byron tells me I sound grumpy, but the fact is that the people who sound grumpy are the people who overlook the enormous good the church is doing to focus on the relatively negligible negatives.

RLC