Feedback

Byron writes to dissent somewhat from my portrayal of Jim Wallis in God's Politics. His letter can be read on our feedback page.

I also received from Caleb this question:

I have two very good friends here at college; one a pro-life Republican, and the other a pro-life Democrat. Both obviously stand in stark opposition to Senator Obama's stance on abortion. For the Republican, Sen. Obama's extreme pro-choice stance is but one of many reasons why he will be (albeit reluctantly) pulling the lever for Sen. McCain in November.

For the Democrat, while he strongly disagrees with Senator Obama's stance on abortion, he feels that he "cannot be a single-issue voter...and [neither] should other Christians." The question I have, therefore, is this. While there are serious doubts amongst conservatives that McCain is truly "conservative" enough, would his generally pro-life stance be enough of an issue to tip the balance in his favor? By extension, is it proper to be a "single issue" voter, or is that dangerous naivety, especially with an issue such as abortion?

I know I don't really have an answer to that; I hope you might?

Well, I don't know if I have a good answer, but here's basically how I replied to Caleb:

I don't see anything wrong with being a single issue voter as long as the issue is of paramount importance. There are a lot of people who will vote for Obama solely because he opposes the war. There are others who will vote for him solely because they know he'll keep abortion legal. These are single issues, and for those voters they trump everything else.

The question is whether a person thinks that protecting the unborn is of such great importance that it overrides all else. If they do, then there's nothing wrong with voting on the basis of the candidates' position on that issue.

People who complain about single issue voters are generally those who don't like the issue, or the position taken on the issue, that the single issue voters assign such significance to. In other words, they have no trouble with voting for a candidate on the basis of his stance on just one issue as long as the candidate is one they themselves would support and the issue is one they themselves feel strongly about.

You won't hear too much complaining from Obama supporters, for example, about the single issue voting of those who will vote for Obama simply because he's African American or because he's against the war in Iraq. It's only when someone says that they can't vote for Obama because he's willing to tolerate infanticide that his supporters intone about the shortcomings of being a single issue voter.

RLC

In God We Trust

MSNBC is conducting a poll asking whether the motto "In God we Trust" should be removed from our currency. You can vote on the question here, but I don't know how long the poll will be up.

It would be interesting to see how the results, which can be accessed at the link, break down according to liberal/conservative voting preferences.

RLC

Why We Should Study Evolution

Olivia Judson offers three reasons in a New York Times opinion piece why evolution should be taught in our schools. I agree with her conclusion, but her reasons are riddled with confusions.

First, she makes the same error that so many make by contrasting evolution and intelligent design. ID is not incompatible with evolution. It's incompatible with the belief that evolution is a purposeless, random process guided only by unintelligent forces. Perhaps the most prominent of ID theorists, Michael Behe, believes in descent by modification. So do many others.

Judson then makes the claim that because there's controversy over evolution, "[I]t's discussed as though it were an optional, quaint and largely irrelevant part of biology. And a common consequence of the arguments is that evolution gets dropped from the curriculum entirely."

I would certainly like to see the data she relies on to make this assertion. I can't imagine that there's a public school anywhere in America that has dropped evolution from the curriculum, nor do ID people want them to.

Having raised our suspicions about her reliability on this topic, Ms Judson goes on to offer three reasons why evolution should be taught:

First, it provides a powerful framework for investigating the world we live in. Without evolution, biology is merely a collection of disconnected facts, a set of descriptions.... Add evolution - and it becomes possible to make inferences and predictions and (sometimes) to do experiments to test those predictions.

Fair enough. Evolution provides a coherent framework for thinking about relationships, but evolution can be taught without the materialism, and despite what Judson says, biology can be taught from a creationist perspective with no reference to the idea of common descent at all. Indeed, most of the actual evidence we have of evolution fits both models equally well.

The second reason she gives for teaching evolution is that "the subject is immediately relevant here and now. The impact we are having on the planet is causing other organisms to evolve - and fast."

Hunting animals to extinction may cause evolution in their former prey species. Experiments on guppies have shown that, without predators, these fish evolve more brightly colored scales, mature later, bunch together in shoals less and lose their ability to suddenly swim away from something. Such changes can happen in fewer than five generations. If you then reintroduce some predators, the population typically goes extinct.

Thus, a failure to consider the evolution of other species may result in a failure of our efforts to preserve them. And, perhaps, to preserve ourselves from diseases, pests and food shortages. In short, evolution is far from being a remote and abstract subject. A failure to teach it may leave us unprepared for the challenges ahead.

This is rather fevered rhetoric. In the first place what she's calling evolution here is not evolution as it's understood by most people. No one doubts that small changes can occur in populations of organisms because of stresses in their environment. Nor does anyone oppose teaching what we know about such variation (usually called microevolution). The controversy is over whether natural unguided forces can produce the molecules-to-man kind of evolution (macroevolution) that most people think of when they hear the word "evolution".

The third reason to teach evolution, Ms Judson tells us, is more philosophical:

It concerns the development of an attitude toward evidence. In his book, "The Republican War on Science," the journalist Chris Mooney argues persuasively that a contempt for scientific evidence - or indeed, evidence of any kind - has permeated the Bush administration's policies, from climate change to sex education, from drilling for oil to the war in Iraq. A dismissal of evolution is an integral part of this general attitude.

Moreover, since the science classroom is where a contempt for evidence is often first encountered, it is also arguably where it first begins to be cultivated. A society where ideology is a substitute for evidence can go badly awry.

This is plainly ridiculous. The science classroom is often the one place in our postmodern world where evidence is actually honored. If anyone is impervious to evidence it's the evolutionary materialists who believe steadfastly in their theory despite the lack of evidence for it. By this I mean that there's no evidence that blind, undirected forces plus chance are capable of creating a universe fit for life, originating life, or evolving the complex structures and pathways that are ubiquitous in living things. Nevertheless, every materialist believes that it happened despite the enormous odds against it and the total absence of evidence that it did.

But for me, the most important thing about studying evolution is something less tangible. It's that the endeavor contains a profound optimism. It means that when we encounter something in nature that is complicated or mysterious, such as the flagellum of a bacteria or the light made by a firefly, we don't have to shrug our shoulders in bewilderment.

Instead, we can ask how it got to be that way. And if at first it seems so complicated that the evolutionary steps are hard to work out, we have an invitation to imagine, to play, to experiment and explore. To my mind, this only enhances the wonder.

Very well, but this is an aesthetic reason for studying evolution. Why couldn't someone reply that the mystery of nature fills him with far more wonder when he considers that these things were engineered just for our enjoyment by a loving Creator? If a sense of wonder and optimism is to serve as justification for teaching something should we not insist that the view that there is a purpose underlying the world we study also be taught?

It's interesting that Ms Judson nowhere argues that we should study evolution because it's true. This, of course, would be the salient reason for including it in the curriculum, but its truth is, despite the adamantine asseverations of its proponents, notoriously difficult to establish.

Nevertheless, I agree that we should study evolution but for a reason having little to do with those advanced by Ms Judson. It should be studied because most practicing scientists believe some version of it, and we should therefore examine the theory and the evidence both for and against it in order to be familiar with the current state of scientific thinking. If and when it falls out of favor and is no longer thought to be true then we should no longer spend time on it, other than as a historical curiosity, regardless of whether it still performs the functions adduced by Ms. Judson.

RLC

Say it Ain't So, John

John McCain could very well defeat Senator Obama in November, and he has certainly helped himself toward this end by being resolute on all the issues that separate him from his rival. One of those issues is abortion, concerning which McCain said Saturday at Saddleback church that, "As president of the United States, I will be a pro-life president and this presidency will have pro-life policies. That's my commitment. That's my commitment to you." Such assurances are catnip to conservatives, and they sound so much more robust than the rather weasely refusal of Senator Obama to answer Rick Warren's question Saturday night about the point at which a human being should have the right to life.

Obama bobbed and weaved and finally opined that such questions are "above his pay grade". The man is running for president, and such questions are matters that government leaders must decide. If he has no opinion on a question of human and civil rights then he should not be holding an office in which he must vote on legislation that involves such rights nor should he be running for an office in which he will appoint jurists who will rule on the matter. It's ironic that as an Illinois senator Obama felt it well within his pay grade to vote to allow born infants to be left to die, but now that he's running for president he suddenly finds himself unqualified to make such judgments.

The abortion issue is a winner for McCain, especially if he points out Obama's implicit support for infanticide. No one to the right of Peter Singer and Barack Obama thinks letting babies die is anything other than evil and when the American public finally learns that Obama voted against the Born Alive Infants Protection Act they'll no doubt lose a lot of their enthusiasm for him. So why then the talk in the McCain camp of selecting a pro-choice veep? McCain has mentioned both Joe Lieberman and Tom Ridge as possible running mates and both have been accompanying him on his campaign town hall meetings (both spoke to the audience at York, PA last week).

McCain is beginning to not only win conservatives' votes but also their enthusiasm. He'll lose both, though, if he picks a liberal like Leiberman who is as far left as Obama on almost every issue besides the war, or Ridge who is moderate to liberal. If he picks a pro-choice running mate, how, conservatives will wonder, do we know he would keep his implicit promise to appoint pro-life jurists to the Supreme Court?

The safe choice for McCain is Mitt Romney, but anyone less conservative than he is himself would be a disaster. The election is within his grasp today only because of his efforts to allay conservative fears that he'd sell them out. If he turns around and sticks his thumb in the eye of his pro-life supporters millions of them will just stay home in November.

The editors at NRO agree that a pro-choice veep would be an epic political blunder.

RLC

Who's Telling the Truth?

We have repeated here claims made by others that Barack Obama voted against a bill in the Illinois state senate that would have prevented abortion facilities from treating infants who survived abortions as though they were medical waste. The bill was in response to a case where a facility was discarding living children and allowing them to die.

Senator Obama was asked about this on Saturday evening by a reporter and claimed that those making this allegation are simply lying about his vote.

Thomas Lifson at The American Thinker adduces the record of the vote, however, and states that it's Obama who's lying. Lifson certainly seems to have the goods to back up his claim. He links the reader to the bill, the amended bill, and an almost identical bill that even NARAL supported that passed the U.S. Senate and which Obama says he would have supported had he been in the U.S. Senate at the time.

Lifson also shows the record of Obama's committee vote on the bill in the Illinois senate. It shows him voting for the amendment that would have granted protection for Roe v. Wade, a protection he insisted on, but after the amendment passed he voted against the bill itself, in effect denying protection to born infants.

The video of Obama insisting that the National Right to Life Committee is lying about his record is astonishing if in fact it is Obama who is misrepresenting the facts. Such convincing prevarication, if that's what it is, must make even Bill Clinton envious.

Despite Lifson's evidence, though, I'm still not prepared to conclude that Obama is consciously lying. It's possible, I suppose, that despite his degree from Harvard he's really not too bright and didn't know what he was voting for. It's also possible that the senator simply forgot this vote (although having voted "present" so much of the time one would think he'd remember the votes he actually did take a stand on). Nevertheless, if he sticks with his story that pro-life groups are lying about his vote against protecting new borns, he's either going to have to explain why the paper trail only seems to support his accusers or else forfeit altogether the presumption of integrity.

RLC

Doing Business the Old Way

William Voegeli at No Left Turns traces Senator Obama's rhetoric on fixing the social security problem. It turns out that despite what he said last year about Senator Clinton's reluctance to address social security, he himself appears to have no intention of fixing it at all.

This quote from last November is pretty funny given Senator Obama's numerous equivocations and tergiversations on other issues:

In an interview with National Journal on November 6, 2007, Obama said, "[The] American people have a right to judge how clear and how consistent have the candidates been in their positions. Because if they're not clear and consistent, then it's pretty hard to gauge how much they're going to fight on these issues. You know, Senator Clinton says that she's concerned about Social Security but is not willing to say how she would solve the Social Security crisis, then I think voters aren't going to feel real confident that this is a priority for her. . . . [The] voters should be concerned that she is running the textbook, classic Washington campaign, which is to avoid giving clear answers and getting pinned down, for fear that somehow you're going to be tagged, either in the primary or the general election. I think that's an old way of doing business."

What Senator Obama calls the old way of doing business looks remarkably like his new way of doing business.

Read the whole article at NLT to see how the senator has retreated from each solution to the social security problem he's proposed until arriving at a position that is essentially no solution at all.

RLC

The "White" Party

Howard Dean said the other day that, "If you look at folks of color, even women, they're more successful in the Democratic party than they are in the white, uh, excuse me, in the [laughs] Republican party."

The "white" party. Good one.

Dean white party
by dollarsandsense123

Whatever the opportunities may be for blacks within the Democratic party I think a good case can be made that Democrat policies have been a disaster for blacks over the last forty years. Entitlement programs, to take but one example, have fostered a dependence on government that made black males superfluous in the lives of many poor women. This led to a disproportionate number of illegitimate births and single parent families. It also pushed black men into lives of promiscuity, drug abuse, and violence. The rarity of stable black two-parent families perpetuates poverty across the generations and spawns a host of dysfunctionalities, including misogyny and crime.

None of these problems existed in the black population to anywhere near the extent they do today prior to LBJ's Great Society of the 1960s. Black opportunity was severely and cruelly attenuated in the first half of the twentieth century, yet blacks had stronger families and much lower levels of male violence then than we find today. Six trillion dollars has been transferred from the American taxpayers to the American poor in the last fifty years, but poverty remains as obdurate as ever.

Mr. Dean may boast about the occasional bone Democrats throw to their African American serfs, like medieval royalty tossing coins from their carriages to the paupers in the streets, but Democrat policies have not only failed to alleviate their abject circumstances, they actually exacerbate them.

Why blacks stay in a party that keeps boasting about how it helps them while in fact doing little to give them the kind of opportunities they really need (e.g. committed, two-parent families, choice in schools, a sense of self-reliance) is one of the big mysteries of modern politics.

RLC

Sure

And what will the pretext be when they invade Ukraine?

HT: Ramirez

RLC

Never Mind

Given the recrudescence of Russian imperialism and conquest here's one campaign ad the Obama people are probably going to quietly abandon:

I wonder how many of these promises Senator Obama will be repeating over the next couple of months. Events have a way of making idealists look naive.

RLC

Back to the Fifties

Just when you thought Russia had outgrown its appetite for other peoples' territory it invades Georgia and then threatens Poland with nuclear destruction. What was Poland's offense? It has accepted American missiles designed to shoot down incoming ICBMs.

As Powerline pithily puts it:

Yesterday the U.S and Poland announced that after 18 months of negotiations, they have reached on an agreement whereby the U.S. will furnish Patriot missiles to Poland and will locate a missile interceptor base in that country.

This outraged Russia, which believes that it has the right to point missiles at its neighbors, but its neighbors have no right to defend themselves against those missiles.

Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn, the deputy chief of staff, blustered that "Poland, by deploying (the system) is exposing itself to a strike-100 percent".

He added that Russia's military doctrine sanctions the use of nuclear weapons "against the allies of countries having nuclear weapons if they in some way help them." That would include elements of strategic deterrence systems, Nogovitsyn said.

This is a little bit like the U.S. threatening Cuba or Venezuela with a nuclear attack because they install Russian made anti-aircraft systems.

All that remains to complete this unpleasant trip down memory lane is for Putin to go to the United Nations and bang his shoe on the lecturn, and for our own home grown Russian apologists to tell us how this is all our fault.

I don't know at this point whether Poland really has much to fear from the Russians, but if I were a Ukrainian I'd be very, very concerned.

RLC

The Prince and the Pariah

Kathryn Lopez at NRO writes an insightful piece on the reaction to the John Edwards scandal and asks a few incisive questions:

The reaction of the American Left to John Edwards's sex scandal is nothing short of flabbergasting. Since when is sex outside of marriage a disqualifier for merely speaking at a political convention? Since when is having sexual relations with that woman in your office anything wrong? Since when do we judge?

The difference here seems to be that Elizabeth Edwards has cancer. So only fatal disease makes the bonds of marriage sacred?

Although the last thing I want to look to be doing is making excuses for adultery - what he did was wrong - the John Edwards incident begs Americans to look in the mirror. If we think what John Edwards did with Rielle Hunter is wrong, why do we think it's wrong? Because marriage is at the foundation of our society and we should do what we can to protect every last one? Or simply because having fun while your wife is fighting a fatal disease is a lousy thing to do?

I don't know how we can condemn John Edwards when Americans have been known to cheer for cheaters in movies, watch celebs do it all the time as a form of perverse entertainment, and even insist we're not sure what exactly "marriage" means.

There's another question about this sordid business that K-Lo doesn't ask but might have: Why is Edwards banished from the Democratic convention but Bill Clinton is awarded a prominent role to play? Edwards isn't a past president, to be sure, but he's not nobody either. Surely his infidelity was no worse nor more embarrassing to the party than the revelations of Clinton's priapic predilections, including credible allegations of rape and sexual assault. People say they're upset that Edwards lied to them about his affair, but so did Clinton - under oath, no less. Yet Clinton will be feted and honored like a prince of the party while Edwards is left to slink home a political pariah.

Liberals sure seem confused when it comes to morality in general and sexual morality in particular.

HT: Jason.

RLC

God's Politics

It's a good thing to be able to find silver linings in dark clouds, but Jim Wallis at Sojourners reminds me of the guy who has been wiped out by thugs and yet praises them for not punching him in the nose during the robbery.

The Democrats have come forward with their platform plank on abortion, and Wallis is delighted that they affirm the right of a woman to choose to have a child if she wants it:

The Democratic platform has taken an important first step. They took an important step beyond the traditional position on Roe vs. Wade by also supporting a woman's decision to have her child.

Why, isn't this wonderful. The Democrats recognize that a woman should be supported in her decision to bear a child that she's carrying. The big tent Dems recognize that a pregnant woman shouldn't feel obligated to have an abortion, and Wallis sees this as a noteworthy act of good will instead of the window into the liberal heart of darkness that it is.

Republicans have long made a strong opposition to abortion a central issue in their platforms and campaigns. Yet their symbolic commitment to making abortion illegal, even with a Republican in power, hasn't made any change in the rate of abortions in America.

Somebody needs to inform Mr. Wallis that it takes a lot more than having a pro-lifer in the White House to get Roe v. Wade changed. The way to reduce the number of abortions is to let each state decide it's own policy, and that means we must have Supreme Court justices who will overturn Roe, and that takes more than just a pro-life president, although it certainly does take that.

Of course, it is now up to the Democratic candidate to interpret the platform and shape the issue. In an interview with Christianity Today, Barack Obama said, "I do think that those who diminish the moral elements of the decision aren't expressing the full reality of it."

It's passing strange that in talking about Barack Obama's views on abortion Mr. Wallis neglects to mention that as an Illinois state senator Mr. Obama actually voted against a bill that would have prevented infanticide.

Is Jim Wallis really the non-partisan prophet he fancies himself or is he just carrying pro-choice water? It's hard to believe that passing up an opportunity to castigate a politician who voted to let babies die a slow death is God's Politics.

RLC

Big Fish

ABC's Brian Ross has some interesting thoughts on the capture in Afghanistan of an MIT graduate named Aifia Siddique. The woman is apparently a major terrorist and the data obtained from her apprehension provides a "treasure trove" of information on al Qaeda operations both abroad and within our borders. There are also some possible links to the Democrat convention in Denver this month:

When she was arrested in Afghanistan last month, Aafia Siddique allegedly had in her possession maps of New York, a list of potential targets that included the Statue of Liberty, Times Square, the subway system and the animal disease center on Plum Island, detailed chemical, biological and radiological weapon information that has been seen only in a handful of terrorist cases, as well as a thumb drive packed with emails, ABC News has learned.

That haul of information has led multiple government sources to describe Siddique, a 36 year-old MIT graduate, as a potential "treasure trove" of information on terrorist supporters, sympathizers or 'sleepers' in the United States and overseas.

"She is the most significant capture in five years," said former CIA officer John Kiriakou, who said she lives up to her reputation as an alleged terrorist 'Mata Hari.'

Exit question for liberals: Suppose the authorities had good reason to believe she had knowledge of a mass terror attack planned against the Democratic convention in Denver. Thousands of Democrats' lives hung in the balance. Should she have been waterboarded if that was the only way to elicit the information?

RLC

What Hillary Wants II

Maureen Dowd knows precisely what Hillary wants and skewers her for it in this essay in the International Herald Tribune. Dowd writes:

While Obama was spending three hours watching "The Dark Knight" five time zones away, and going to a fund-raiser featuring "Aloha attire" and Hawaiian pupus, Hillary was busy planning her convention.

You can almost hear her mind whirring: She's amazed at how easy it was to snatch Denver away from the Obama saps. Like taking candy from a baby, except Beanpole Guy doesn't eat candy. In just a couple of weeks, Bill and Hill were able to drag No Drama Obama into a swamp of Clinton drama.

Now they've made Barry's convention all about them - their dissatisfaction and revisionism and barely disguised desire to see him fail. Whatever insincere words of support the Clintons muster, their primal scream gets louder: He can't win! He can't close the deal! We told you so!

Hillary's orchestrating a play within the play in Denver. Just as Hamlet used the device to show that his stepfather murdered his father, Hillary will try to show the Democrats they chose the wrong savior.

Hillary feels no guilt about encouraging her supporters to mess up Obama's big moment, thus undermining his odds of beating John McCain and improving her odds of being the nominee in 2012.

She's obviously relishing Hillaryworld's plans to have multiple rallies in Denver, to take out TV and print ads and to hold up signs in the hall that read "Denounce Nobama's Coronation."

Read the rest at the link.

During the nineties when the Clintons were in power they could do no wrong. The left apologized and defended everything they did. Hillary was a heroine, a wonderful role model for women. But now she stands in the way of the coronation of a young charismatic black man who's much more reliably left than they perceive her to be, and she's quickly becoming the crazy aunt in the attic. They can't get rid of her, but they certainly wish she'd go away.

Here's a challenge for the historically minded: Name one Democrat who attained a position of prominence in the last forty years but is no longer in that position today, who is still admired in the Democratic party. I can think only of Al Gore, but he doesn't really count since he's probably more prominent today than he was as Vice President.

RLC

Voting for Infanticide

Senator Obama is striving to appear more moderate on a number of issues than his voting record permits. One of those issues is abortion/infanticide. As an Illinois senator Obama voted against a bill that would have prohibited facilities performing abortions to let infants which survived the attempt to kill them die from exposure. His vote was, in essence, a vote for infanticide, but his campaign is arguing that Obama voted against the bill only because it lacked certain provisions which would have protected Roe v. Wade.

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air concludes, though, that Obama is not telling the truth about this. Not only did the bill contain the relevant provisions, Morrissey tells us, Obama himself chaired the committee that had them inserted.

Nevertheless, even if this were not so, how does anyone justify voting against a bill that would have protected the lives of babies who would otherwise be left to die from lack of care?

RLC

Sgt. Luis Rosa-Valentin

Last spring my brother's wife's nephew suffered terrible wounds in Iraq. An IED took both of his legs, an arm, and his hearing. Ever since, he has been in Walter Reed hospital trying to get his life back together. He's an outstanding young man with a great attitude, as can be seen in this NBC News segment on him which aired on last night's newscast:

His name is Sgt. Luis Rosa-Valentin, and as you can imagine he will have a lot of expenses even after the assistance the military is providing. My sister (who is 60!) is training for a marathon which is a fund raiser for wounded soldiers and Marines. I copied the following from a letter she sent out and thought that some Viewpoint readers might like to help:

Luis is the proud father of a small daughter. His mother, who is a school teacher, had to leave work in order to be with Luis at Walter Reed while he recovered. Because his parents live within a 50 mile radius of Walter Reed, they are not eligible for the stipend available to immediate family members who travel to see their loved ones in the hospital. His parents' home, where he is currently staying on the weekends, must be renovated to accommodate a wheelchair. There will be months of rehab and expenses that the family will take on that the government will not cover.

For this reason, I have started a benefit fund for Luis and his parents at Fulton Bank and am asking all those who supported me in the past, as I prepared for and ran the marathon, to dig deep and agree to sponsor me one more time, as I run in honor of Luis.

As usual, the race is a 26.2 mile course. It will be run on Sunday, October 26th. You can show your support with a pledge per mile, or a flat sum donation, in care of the Luis Rosa-Valentin Benefit Fund at any Fulton Bank. You can take it directly to any branch, or mail it to Fulton Bank, 1 Market Square, Manheim, PA 17545. Direct your contribution to the attention of Cherie Melhorn.

I have never met Luis, but have learned a good deal about him as I planned this fund raiser during the past few weeks (You can learn more about him by accessing this web site). In addition to being a devoted father, he was dedicated to the military that he loved, and proud to serve his country. Barely out of high school when he joined the army, he knew that this was all he had ever wanted to do as a career. In spite of his injuries, he has no regrets about his decision, and says he would do it all over again if he could. His attitude is so positive, saying that he is very happy to be alive. He feels he has a whole lot of life ahead and he plans to live it. His Aunt Nora (my brother's wife) recently told us that his motto is "Know God. No fear." Luis has sacrificed so much for us, I am proud to run this race on his behalf.

Luis has an amazingly positive outlook on his future, and it's just remarkable that our country produces so many young men like him.

RLC

Greatest Woman

Peter Lawler at No Left Turns notes that Mother Teresa is considered the greatest woman of the 20th century and invites us to ponder this question: Who was the greatest female artist, novelist, poet, or philosopher of the 20th century?

Well, my vote for novelist and philosopher goes to the same woman: Ayn Rand - not because I'm particularly fond of either her main ideas or her books, but because no woman that I can think of has been more successful as a writer or more influential as a thinker. Atlas Shrugged, I read somewhere, has sold more copies in the U.S. than any book other than the Bible, and Randian devotees can be found everywhere in government and business.

I don't know that this is a good thing, but there you have it. Anybody have any other nominations?

RLC

We're All Georgians

I took my daughter to see John McCain live at the townhall meeting yesterday in York, Pa. It was quite a show with warmup speeches by Senators Arlen Specter and Joe Leiberman and former governor Tom Ridge. When he took the stage Senator McCain chose to give a disquisition on the situation in Georgia. It was ironic that while Senator Obama vacationed in Hawaii and President Bush was taking in the Olympics in Beijing, it fell to Senator McCain to address the Russian aggression against the small democracy of Georgia:

It wasn't hard to imagine Obama being more polished, but it was almost impossible to imagine him giving a speech on any matter of foreign policy whose content was comparable to this one. The speech was directed at the conflict in Georgia, but it certainly made Senator Obama, who wasn't even mentioned, seem diminished and irrelevant.

RLC

What Does Hillary Want?

I was listening to the local talk radio show the other day and the host asked his guest the question, "What does Hillary want?" The question was prompted by the New York senator's hot and cold behavior toward the Obama campaign. The guest on the show said that she wanted recognition at the convention, etc., but I think this is all short term stuff. What Hillary wants, of course, is to be president, and as long as we keep that before us her strange behavior makes complete sense.

Assume with me that I am correct about her goal. Assume, too, that the Clintons really are as Machiavellian as even the liberal press is beginning to suggest. If so, then she probably sees that her best chance of reaching her goal is to have Obama lose in November.

If he does, Senator Clinton will have an almost uncontested road to the nomination in 2012, and McCain, if he wins, may well choose to serve only a single term. Thus, she may be running against a non-incumbent 2012. If Obama wins in November it would kill her hopes of ever becoming president since her chances of unseating him in the 2012 primaries would be nil.

Thus, it is in her interest to see to it that Obama loses, but she must give the impression that she's working in support of his campaign in order not to alienate the Democratic base. She must walk a tightrope, publicly supporting Barack and privately undermining him.

In light of this strategy, what we should look for from her in the weeks ahead is lip-service to the Obama election campaign, but lukewarm effort on his behalf. We might also anticipate a few stilettos to Obama's political ribs from Hillary's surrogates, not least her husband, but most of the damage will be inflicted outside of the public's view.

RLC

What's to Like?

A couple of days ago I wrote that a particular column by Jonah Goldberg, "tends to make postmodernism seem arrantly bad. It's not, but lots of it is...."

My friend Jason wrote to inquire what it was about postmodernism that I thought congenial. Here's my reply:

You ask a good question, Jason: What is there to like about postmodernism? The answer is not much, but there are a couple of things. First, though, I agree with you that postmodernism is a dead end, but like everything (even communism!) it's not completely bad.

I think, for example, that the postmodern critique of the "Enlightenment project" is partly correct. Modernity adopted the Enlightenment view that the world could be objectively known through our reason and known with certainty. It holds that the scientific method is the only way to genuine knowledge. Modernity thus tended to diminish the role of faith and led to religious skepticism.

Postmodern thinkers reject the idea of "objective" knowledge and argue that what we "know" is largely conditioned by our historical, social, cultural, economic perspective. I think they're right about that. They're also skeptical of the power of human reason to yield certainty and also our ability to experience the world as it really is. It's much more open to faith and very skeptical of "scientism". I think they're at least partly correct about these things as well.

Finally, I think they're right that people are persuaded to change their minds more by story, testimony, music, art and film than they are by logical argumentation. In other words, people are more effectively reached through their hearts than through their heads. This has profound implications for evangelism, of course.

It could be objected that none of what I've said I agree with here is really new and that therefore it's a bit of a stretch to call these ideas "postmodern" as if they were recent discoveries. I agree. I tell my students that what is new about postmodernism is not good, and what is good is not new. Even so, these are frequently assumed to be elements of the postmodern mindset, and since I agree with them I have to say that I don't think that what is usually meant by "postmodernism" is entirely misguided.

The problem with postmodernism is not that it doesn't contain some good but rather that the good is far outweighed by its problematic consequences. For example, postmodernism leads, in my view, to epistemological, moral and metaphysical nihilism.

What I mean by that is this: Since postmodernism relativizes and subjectivizes truth then the idea of truth loses all meaning. Truth is whatever one, or the group with which one identifies, feels most strongly about. From this it's but a short step to the conclusion that there is no real truth, just feelings.

If this is so, then there's no real truth about morals and thus morality becomes subjectivized as well. What's right for you isn't necessarily right for me and nothing is right for everyone. It's all a matter of how we feel about things.

Further, if there's no objective truth, something which is true regardless of how anyone feels about it, then the claim that God exists is not objectively true. If we cannot say that God exists (except in our own personal world) we have no ground for meaning in our life. Life is just a series of pointless events and then we die.

Thus postmodernism leads to the conclusion that nothing has meaning, nothing has value, nothing matters. The consequences of this are far more corrosive to individual life and to our social well-being than the positive aspects of postmodernism mentioned above are beneficial to it.

RLC

Coin Flips

One of the cosmic parameters that scientists have determined must have an extremely precise value if the universe is going to exist at all is one called the dark energy density. This refers to an exotic form of energy that must be present in the universe but which is undetectable by direct observation. The value is fine tuned to one part in 10 to the 120th power and the odds against it having emerged by chance are, according to science writer Paul Davies, the same as the odds of getting 400 consecutive heads on a coin flip.

This is pretty stunning, especially when the necessary values of other parameters are taken into consideration. Davies is impressed by the sheer improbability of a universe so exquisitely precise having arisen by chance, but not wanting to explain how the astronomically improbable becomes actual by positing an intelligent creator that no one can detect, he instead posits a near infinite number of "pocket" universes that no one can detect. With so many universes existing, and assuming the universes would all be different (but why make that assumption?), the odds of one like ours appearing would improve to the point of an almost certainty.

This is called the multiverse hypothesis, and as we've noted before, this is an act of intellectual desperation, but let's play along. Assume there are a near infinite number of universes exhibiting a near infinite variety of physical constants, laws, and other states of affairs. If so, then any possible state of affairs would have to exist somewhere among them. The existence of a maximally great being is a possible state of affairs, therefore in at least one of our pocket universes it must be true to say that a maximally great being exists. But if a being is maximally great it must exist not just in one universe but in every universe, otherwise it's not maximally great. Thus if there are a near infinite number of universes there must exist a maximally great being (i.e. God) which created them all.

In other words, resorting to the multiverse hypothesis to escape the conclusion that our universe is intentionally designed is like trying to disprove the existence of gravity by tossing a ball into the air. One winds up demonstrating the very explanation one sought to avoid.

RLC

Another Blow to the Principle of Mediocrity

There's an assumption made by scientists who study the cosmos that our sun, planet, solar system, galaxy, and our location in these are all pretty much the norm in the universe. There's nothing special about where we are or the conditions which exist in our galactic neighborhood. Our planet and our place in the universe are, it has been said, mediocre.

Unfortunately, for adherents to the Principle of Mediocrity, this idea has become more difficult to maintain of late, having suffered numerous insults at the hands of research scientists themselves over the past several decades. Books like Rare Earth and Privileged Planet summarize their findings and make a powerful case that the earth is special indeed in a host of important ways.

Now comes news that not only are planets like our earth probably quite rare in the universe so are solar systems like ours. Science Daily reports on an article scheduled to appear in an upcoming edition of the journal Science:

Prevailing theoretical models attempting to explain the formation of the solar system have assumed it to be average in every way. Now a new study by Northwestern University astronomers, using recent data from the 300 exoplanets discovered orbiting other stars, turns that view on its head.

The solar system, it turns out, is pretty special indeed. The study illustrates that if early conditions had been just slightly different, very unpleasant things could have happened -- like planets being thrown into the sun or jettisoned into deep space.

Solar systems must be similar to ours if life is going to flourish in them. For instance, ours is a relatively stable system compared to what almost every other system is like. Also, the large gas giants in the outer regions of our solar system act as vacuum sweepers attracting meteors and comets into their bosoms and protecting the earth from their impact. The distribution of the planets and the size of the sun ensure that gravitational effects do not exert a destructive influence on the earth's orbit. The list goes on, but read what Science Daily says:

The [computer] simulations suggest that an average planetary system's origin is extremely dramatic. The gas disk that gives birth to the planets also pushes them mercilessly toward the central star, where they crowd together or are engulfed. Among the growing planets, there is cut-throat competition for gas, a chaotic process that produces a rich variety of planet masses.

Also, as the planets approach each other, they frequently lock into dynamical resonances that drive the orbits of all participants to be increasingly elongated. Such a gravitational embrace often results in a slingshot encounter that flings the planets elsewhere in the system; occasionally, one is ejected into deep space. Despite its best efforts to kill its offspring, the gas disk eventually is consumed and dissipates, and a young planetary system emerges.

"Such a turbulent history would seem to leave little room for the sedate solar system, and our simulations show exactly that," said Rasio. "Conditions must be just right for the solar system to emerge."

Too massive a gas disk, for example, and planet formation is an anarchic mess, producing "hot Jupiters" and noncircular orbits galore. Too low-mass a disk, and nothing bigger than Neptune -- an "ice giant" with only a small amount of gas -- will grow.

"We now better understand the process of planet formation and can explain the properties of the strange exoplanets we've observed," said Rasio. "We also know that the solar system is special and understand at some level what makes it special."

"The solar system had to be born under just the right conditions to become this quiet place we see. The vast majority of other planetary systems didn't have these special properties at birth and became something very different."

The more we learn about the cosmos and about life the more difficult it is to think that it's all just a fortuitous accident and the easier it is to think that conscious purpose lies behind it all.

Artist's rendition of the formation of the solar system

Graphic representation of the solar system (not to scale)

RLC

Bedrock

Marriage between a man and a woman may have had value fifty years ago, but today it's just one option among several. Children can get along just as well without dad around. The family is a quaint anachronism. Those are opinions one heard frequently in the seventies and eighties but less so today. The research being done on the importance of a two parent family is just too hard to ignore. Rebecca Hagelin talks about what we've learned about the family and why it matters that children live with both parents. Here's an excerpt:

Adolescents in intact families, for example, perform better on a number of measures when compared with their counterparts in non-intact families. As family expert Jennifer Marshall of The Heritage Foundation notes, children in intact families "have better health, are less likely to be depressed, are less likely to repeat a grade in school, and have fewer developmental problems." Their peers in non-traditional households, meanwhile, "are more likely to experience poverty, abuse, behavioral and emotional problems, lower academic achievement, and drug use."

This is not to say that being raised in an intact family is a guaranteed ticket to success, or that children in non-traditional families have no hope of doing well. But as a group, the odds strongly favor the children raised in intact families. It's really a question of giving our children the best possible chance to succeed. Cohabiting couples may wish it were otherwise, but in general their lifestyle doesn't serve their children -- or the wider society in which they are raised -- as well as the traditional family does.

In our headlong rush to escape traditional morality and social structures we've jettisoned the wisdom of two millenia because a) we wanted to and b) a few social scientists told us it was outmoded and unnecessary. Dumb.

HT: Jason.

RLC

Fighting in Georgia

If trying to figure out what's going on with the current fighting between Russia and Georgia has you puzzled Strategy Page has a succinct primer on the situation there. Read it, and in four minutes you'll know more about the conflict than 99 out of 100 of your fellow Americans.

UPDATE: This letter from the Georgian president, Mikheil Saakashvili, on the genesis of the conflict there is a must read. Read it and you'll know more than 499 out of 500 Americans.

RLC

Creeping Tyranny

I'm occasionally asked if maybe Viewpoint isn't a little too hard on liberalism. Many good people are liberals, I'm reminded, and maybe I'm being needlessly offensive in hammering away at them.

Yes, I reply, this is so, but we need to see clearly what is at stake. To help us, let's make a distinction similar to the Christian distinction between sin and sinner (no offense intended by the analogy). Just as we should abhor sin but love sinners, we need to abhor liberalism even as we try to love those who embrace it - even when those who embrace it are exceedingly difficult to love.

An article in the Washington Times a week ago offers an example or two to illustrate the point I wish to make:

In one case, a Georgia counselor has filed a federal suit against the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), saying that she was fired after she found someone else to counsel a lesbian about her sexual relationship. In the other, a Los Angeles police officer is suing the department, saying it has denied him promotions and pay raises because of a sermon that he gave at a church that cited a biblical verse on homosexuality.

In the first case, the counselor, a woman named Marcia Walden who worked for an agency contracted by the CDC to counsel its employees, was asked to take on a client who needed help with her same sex relationship. Ms Walden, who had counseled lesbians and homosexuals in the past but not about their relationships, felt that her beliefs about homosexuality precluded her from being able to give the client the care she wanted and so she obtained for her another counselor from the same firm who was better suited to address the client's problems.

Ms Walden apparently followed all the proper protocols and the client said she received exemplary advice from the substitute.

Nevertheless, according to the complaint, Ms Walden was subsequently accused of homophobia and extensively questioned about her Christian faith by her supervisor. Within three days of her referring Ms. Doe [the lesbian], Ms. Walden was suspended without pay by Computer Science Corp. and fired outright three weeks later.

In the second case a LA police officer who works as a minister when off-duty was presiding at the funeral of a fellow officer he had once supervised:

Sgt. Holyfield quoted a passage from Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians that says "the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God" before going on to list such unrighteous people: adulterers, homosexuals, thieves, drunkards and others.

Sgt. Holyfield was off-duty and in clerical garb for the funeral, which was not LAPD-sponsored, and was giving the sermon at a private chapel at the invitation of his colleague's family.

But several senior police officers were in attendance, leading to complaints that the sergeant had made comments disparaging homosexuals and adulterers.

Consequently Sgt. Holyfield has been demoted and passed over for promotion numerous times.

It's hard to believe that this is happening in the United States, but it is, and these certainly aren't the only instances. There's a cancer of persecution and oppression metastasizing throughout our society and it will continue to grow until enough people stand against it.

But what do these travesties have to do with liberalism? Let's ask ourselves a question. How many of the people who are responsible for the firing of the counselor and the demotion of the police officer do you suppose are conservative Republicans? I don't have the facts so I admit I'm speculating, but I'm willing to bet that the number is zero.

Liberals are, in the name of tolerance and diversity, often the most intolerant and conformist people in our society. Ever since the progressives co-opted the word liberal at the end of the 19th century, liberalism has featured a prominent fascist strain (Don't take my word for it. Read Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism). Like all fascisms it promises a bright utopian future, but in fact, under liberalism, our future is likely to be similar to that of farmer Jones' livestock in Animal Farm. You recall that in the name of freedom the animals revolted against farmer Jones and set up their own government, but it wasn't long before the animal government turned to tyranny and all their freedoms were lost. George Orwell's vision of the future is precisely what lies in store for us if ever liberalism gains political dominance: a (government) boot stamping on a (Christian) human face, forever. Just as it has stamped on Ms Walden and Sgt. Holyfield.

That's just one reason why Viewpoint finds liberalism so horrid, and why we feel it a moral duty to set our friends and family wise to its false promises and enchantments.

RLC

The Postmodern Candidate

A couple of days ago I mentioned that Senator Obama seems to hold to a postmodern view of truth, i.e. there are no fixed meanings in the text of his words. They mean whatever the listener wants them to mean, whatever has "purchase" with the listener. They're not to be taken literally - they're too broad and contradictory for that. Rather their vagueness and ambiguities invite us, like poetry, to bask in their resonances and read into them our own hopes and desires. For the postmodern, style trumps content and rhetorical power trumps logic. People in a postmodern world tend to think with their hearts rather than their minds, and come to know by intuition and emotion rather than through reason. This is perhaps why so many find Obama such an appealling candidate even though they can't point to a single accomplishment that would qualify him to be the leader of the United States.

Jonah Goldberg amplifies the idea of Barack as a postmodern in an essay at USAToday. Here's an excerpt:

Asked to define sin, Barack Obama replied that sin is "being out of alignment with my values." Statements such as this have caused many people to wonder whether Obama has a God complex or is hopelessly arrogant. For the record, sin isn't being out of alignment with your own values (if it were, Hannibal Lecter wouldn't be a sinner because his values hold that it's OK to eat people) nor is it being out of alignment with Obama's - unless he really is our Savior.

I encourage you to read the whole thing, but with the caveat that the column tends to make postmodernism seem arrantly bad. It's not, but lots of it is, and the idea that truth is whatever harmonizes with your own experience is particularly corrosive. Unfortunately, that's the aspect of postmodernism most frequently on display in Senator Obama's speeches and pronouncements.

RLC

Media Bias

Recall a couple of weeks ago a lunatic walked into a Unitarian church and started shooting people. The media made sure we all understood that the man hated liberals and, we were to conclude, was a right-wing nut case. No story on the tragic affair left unimplied that the man was driven by dangerous antipathies fairly typical of the right.

Okay, but now it turns out that Bruce Ivins, the biochemist who sent the anthrax letters to a number of people in Washington, killing several, was a committed Democrat. Have you heard any mention of this from the MSM? I haven't.

Ace of Spades, who has a very thorough report on the entire case, writes about this development:

So if you're wondering why Ivins' political affiliation has not been reported -- as many of you were certain would be the main storyline here, assuming he had turned out to be Republican -- there's your answer. Surely the MSM would be calling him a Republican in every report, but, alas, it turns out he's a Democrat, and hence no reportage on this aspect of his political beliefs whatsoever.

I wouldn't read too much into his political affiliation; his main party was of course "Crazy."

But yeah, I do know that if he had been a Republican, the MSM and the left would be going beserkers and blaming this all on us.

And I find it a bit unsettling that members of the "Reality Based Community" immediately begin offering conspiracy theories based on little more than the fact that Ivins was a Democrat, so of course he can't be guilty.

Brad Blog's argument is slightly more nuanced than that -- he asks why a liberal (presumably, based on his letters to the editor) Democrat would send anthrax to liberals Daschle, Leahy, and Tom Brokaw ( a curious sudden admission from the left that a big MSM figure is in fact "liberal").

But the writer seems trapped in the thinking that political orientation determines bad behavior (of course Ivins must have been a Republican; only mean Republicans do stuff like this!), rather than accepting that insanity and not political belief is the main motivating impulse in this sort of crime.

So why did Ivins send the letters to liberals, mostly? Why not? For one thing, he was bonkers. For another thing, he wanted a lot of publicity, and, at the time, Daschle and Leahy were in the Senatorial majority. Republicans, at that time, were in the minority....

And what conservative media figures were prominent enough to warrant an anthrax letter? George Will? Jonah Goldberg? Pshah. If you want to make a splash, you send letters to TV news anchors, and all of them, of course, were/are liberals.

For another thing, as the netroots proves day-in, day-out, the netroots hate what it considers heretics and apostates in the Church of Liberalism nearly as passionately (sometimes moreso) than actual Evil Republican Malefactors.

The left's determination to find a Republican villain behind every single crime or misfortune that befalls the world is borderline insane -- nearly Bruce Ivins level paranoid, actually.

Ace is right. The church shooter was nuts and so was Ivins, but it is annoying that the media thinks that one nut's ideology is relevant and the other's isn't.

It's sort of like the elite media's refusal to say anything about John Edwards' "love" affair until he admitted it, and his apparent illegitimate child. Does anyone really think that if a Republican of Edwards' prominence had engaged in such sordid behavior while his wife suffered from incurable cancer that the media would have sat on the story?

RLC

The Fruit of Bigotry

In the course of commenting on an article by Peter Wood on the obstacles confronting those who would like to see an increase in the number of American born and educated scientists, Bruce Chapman mentions an obstacle that Wood omits. Chapman thinks that the current hostility to religion among many educators, especially scientists, acts as a deterrent to many Christian young people who would otherwise be inclined to go into a scientific field. In other words, the climate is such that Christian students don't feel comfortable in the presence of so many militant materialist professors and fellow students.

Chapman admits he has nothing but anecdotal data to support his theory, but there's nothing implausible about it. Students who peruse the internet and view the rantings of people like Richard Dawkins, P.Z. Myers and their epigones are certainly not going to be eager to study science in college if they think they might be singled out and humiliated by such people. Nor would they be inclined to make science a profession if they thought that they would have to spend much of their career concealing their ideas from their colleagues and facing tenure denial if they speak out. It surely must seem much easier to a sizeable minority of bright Christian young people to choose some other line of work.

If Chapman is right then the Torquemadas among today's university professoriat are doing the nation a profound disservice in more ways than just their stifling of ideas.

RLC

For Book Lovers

My friend Byron passes along a list compiled by Neil Bowers of the 100 best novels ever written. This list is different from others in that it combines a number of other such rankings and orders the books by how many other lists they appear on and how high they're rated. Bowers' list can be found here, and his rationale and methodology are explained here.

Surprisingly, only one book was found on every list so Bowers has it ranked number one. How many of the 100 have you read?

Bethanne Patrick at Publisher's Weekly says she's read all but one of the titles on Bowers' list. That's quite an achievement, but I have to say that I was surprised at the title she hadn't yet read. I think you'll be, too.

RLC

Whither Natural Selection

Darwin's theory of natural selection (NS) continues to get dissed by scientists disillusioned by the failure of NS to account for the enormous diversity of living things. The latest outrage is occuring in England at a conference of over 300 biologists, chemists, philosophers and other scholars who are trying to come up with an alternative or a supplement to NS.

The story quickly offers its obligatory dismissal of any nonsense about intelligent agency behind life, but then buried in the text are passages like these:

Prof Mark Bedau of Reed College in Portland, Oregon, will argue at this week's meeting - the 11th International Conference on Artificial Life - that .... although natural selection is necessary for life, something is missing in our understanding of how evolution produced complex creatures. By this, he doesn't mean intelligent design - the claim that only God can light the blue touch paper of life - but some other concept. "I don't know what it is, nor do I think anyone else does, contrary to the claims you hear asserted," he says. But he believes ALife (artificial life) will be crucial in discovering the missing mechanism.

Dr Richard Watson of Southampton University, the co-organiser of the conference, echoes his concerns. "Although Darwin gave us an essential component for the evolution of complexity, it is not a sufficient theory," he says. "There are other essential components that are missing."

"Evolution on its own doesn't look like it can make the creative leaps that have occurred in the history of life," says Dr Seth Bullock, another of the conference's organisers. "It's a great process for refining, tinkering, and so on. But self-organisation is the process that is needed alongside natural selection before you get the kind of creative power that we see around us.

The more we learn about the complexity of life the more inadequate purely material processes seem to be in explaining it. Living things certainly appear to be engineered, and it is, I think, just a matter of time before scientists can no longer evade the inference.

HT: Evolution News and Views.

RLC

You May be a Racist If...

I was watching a cable talk show the other night and one of the interlocutors was struggling mightily to make the point that McCain's ad briefly showing Paris Hilton and Brittany Spears was racist because it showed a black man (Barack Obama) right after two blonde white women and we all know what message that sends, don't we? Timothy Noah at The New Republic in all seriousness opined that it's racist to call Obama "skinny" because that calls attention to his appearance, and there can only be nefarious motives for wanting to do that.

There are apparently a lot of people who think that any criticism of Obama is rooted in racism, even if the sin is buried deep in the subconscious. There are some who think that all whites are racist just by virtue of being white, and thus if a white criticizes Obama it's confirmation of the suspicion. To assist our readers in confronting their own inherent racism, no matter how strenuously they deny its existence, we run the following partial list of reliable indicators of this awful and insidious affliction. We thank Peter Kirsanow at National Review Online for coming up with it and refer you to the full list at that site:

• If you think Obama's the most liberal member of the senate you...may be a racist.
• If you object to Obama raising your payroll, capital gains and estate taxes you...may be a racist.
• If you'd prefer a president have at least some foreign policy experience you...may be a racist.
• If you wonder why Obama was hanging around William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn you...may be a racist.
• If your pastor is nothing like Rev. Wright or Father Pfleger you... may be a racist.
• If you don't want the majority of justices on the Supreme Court to be like Stephen Breyer you...may be a racist.
• If you're not impressed with Obama's 100% NARAL rating you...may be a racist.
• If you're not sure whether Obama opposed or supported FISA reauthorization you...may be a racist.
• If you oppose racial preferences in employment, school admissions and contracting you...may be a racist.
• If you think "we are the change we've been waiting for" is a line from a Monty Python skit you...may be a racist.
• If you prefer that a president have a smidgen of executive experience you...may be a racist.
• If you're appalled that Obama voted against treating infants born after an abortion attempt the same medically as other infants born alive you...may be a racist.
• If you were proud of your country even before Obama's candidacy you...may be a racist.

To this list might be added: If you use words like "black hole" or "niggardly" then you're definitely a racist. Re-education and sensitivity training will begin next week. If you don't show up it's because you're racist.

RLC

Democracy in America

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi "explains" why she will not allow a vote in the House of Representatives on whether or not oil companies should be permitted to drill offshore for oil:

If the Speaker had a good reason for preventing a vote why doesn't she state it instead of insulting the nation the literal nonsense she stammers to Stephanopolous? It certainly appears as if Speaker Pelosi knows she doesn't have the votes to defeat the bill, and so, rather than let the representatives of the people decide what we should do about oil supply, she adjourns the House and goes on vacation. Is this how democracy works in America when liberals are in charge.

Ms Pelosi was adamant two years ago that Congress under her leadership would be bipartisan and open to debate, yet when an issue arises for which there is much bipartisan support but to which she is strongly opposed, she refuses to allow it to come to a vote.

She's also a champion of the "Fairness Doctrine" which would require radio stations to balance conservative points of view with liberal counterweights. Well, where's the fairness in refusing to allow the people to decide whether we should drill for the oil we have within our territorial waters?

RLC

Crypto-Conservatives

There's a longish but interesting essay at Bookworm on what it's like to be a conservative in an overwhelmingly liberal community. Here's a sample of what the blogger, a mother and a housewife, says:

Given that liberals are in the catbird seat, and given their much-vaunted tolerance, one might think that they'd be kind to, indeed solicitous of, the few Republicans in the midst. Sadly, however, that's not the case. As regular readers know, I've chosen to keep my political life separate from the day-to-day aspects of my life. I simply can't (and don't want to) run the risk of tainting my carpools, my neighborhood barbecues, my kids' comfort level at school, the camaraderie of the sports teams with which we're involved, etc., by exposing myself to the obloquy that is routinely heaped on conservatives here - and this is a hostility that increases as elections draw near, of course.

During the 2004 elections, people who were unaware of my political inclinations announced in front of me that "Bush is the worst President ever," "Republicans are stupid," "Republicans are evil," "Bush is stupid," "Republicans are corrupt," "Republicans are fascists" and "Bush should be impeached." Children ran up to me on the sidewalk chanting "Bush is evil, Bush is evil" - so you know what their parents were saying at the dinner table. In this election cycle, one of my children announced after school that she was voting for Barack Obama "since every one is because he's black." I quickly scotched that line of reasoning.

I know I should be speaking out when I hear statements such as these, but the sad fact is that I like these people. Barring their monomaniacal animosity towards Bush and the Republicans, they're otherwise very nice: they're hard workers, loving parents, good neighbors and helpful and reliable friends. Being the social creature that I am, I don't want with one word ("Republican") to turn these friendships upside down and inside out. (I'm not the only one with this problem.) I don't want to be on the receiving end of some hideous Jekyll to Hyde transformation, so I just keep my mouth shut.

Those people I know who have spoken aloud their new conservative political views have been horrified by the animosity turned against them by formerly friendly neighbors and colleagues. My in-laws who are, like me, 9/11 neocons (down in Los Angeles) have stared open-mouthed at colleagues who use staff meetings to revile Bush and the Republicans - all to the cheers and huzzahs of the other staff members. (Indeed, what they describe sounds remarkably like Orwell's Two Minutes Hate.) On the occasions when they've suggested that maybe, just maybe, Bush isn't the Antichrist, they've found themselves shunned by these same colleagues.

This is all anecdotal, of course, but there is, as anyone who watches, say, MSNBC, can attest, an astonishing transformation that comes over some otherwise pleasant, rational people as soon as the subject turns to George Bush. There seems to be a venomous hatred roiling just below the surface of their psyches that transmogrifies some of these folks into thoroughly unpleasant commentators and companions. Whatever the cause, and we've speculated on some of the possibilities here over the years, it would be funny to behold were it not so pathetic.

Anyway, read the essay at the link.

RLC

McCain Edges Ahead

I don't think there's much point in getting too excited about polls this early in the presidential campaign, but the most recent Rasmussen poll has some interesting results:

The Rasmussen Reports Daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Monday shows the race for the White House is tied with Barack Obama and John McCain each attracting 44% of the vote. However, when "leaners" are included, it's McCain 47% and Obama 46%.

This is the first time McCain has enjoyed even a statistically insignificant advantage of any sort since Obama clinched the Democratic nomination on June 3. A week ago today, Obama had a three-percentage point lead and the candidates were even among unaffiliated voters. Today, McCain leads 52% to 37% among unaffiliateds.

The huge swing of unaffiliated voters is especially noteworthy. Of course, this could all change tomorrow, but as of now it looks like the media infatuation with Obama is not helping him as much as one might have thought.

RLC

About Face

In yet another volte face, Senator Obama has pretty much reversed himself on off-shore drilling:

The change is dramatic because Obama often pointed to his opposition to drilling as a key difference between himself and presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain.

"I will keep the moratorium in place and prevent oil companies from drilling off Florida's coasts," Obama said in Florida in June.

Obama also said, in a separate statement issued by his campaign, that he supported the bipartisan energy plan offered by 10 senators Friday.

"Like all compromises, it also includes steps that I haven't always supported," he said. "I remain skeptical that new offshore drilling will bring down gas prices in the short-term or significantly reduce our oil dependence in the long-term, though I do welcome the establishment of a process that will allow us to make future drilling decisions based on science and fact."

Obama is racing headlong to minimize the substantive differences between himself and McCain. He apparently doesn't want McCain to be able to point to any reason why anyone should vote for him rather than Obama. If the public perceives there is no difference between the two then they'll be much more likely to vote for the youthful, charismatic Obama. It's a clever strategy, but if this is what he's doing it makes him look like a first class political opportunist with no guiding principles except the imperative of getting elected.

Read the last two paragraphs of this post from July 27th.

RLC

Alexander Solzhenitsyn

One man perhaps more than any other made it impossible in the second half of the 20th century to defend Soviet communism. That man was Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Douglas Burch at Time magazine writes:

Solzhenitsyn's unflinching accounts of torment and survival in the Soviet Union's slave labor camps riveted his countrymen, whose secret history he exposed. They earned him 20 years of bitter exile, but international renown.

And they inspired millions, perhaps, with the knowledge that one person's courage and integrity could, in the end, defeat the totalitarian machinery of an empire.

Beginning with the 1962 short novel One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Solzhenitsyn devoted himself to describing what he called the human "meat grinder" that had caught him along with millions of other Soviet citizens: capricious arrests, often for trifling and seemingly absurd reasons, followed by sentences to slave labor camps where cold, starvation and punishing work crushed inmates physically and spiritually.

His Gulag Archipelago trilogy of the 1970s shocked readers by describing the savagery of the Soviet state under the dictator Josef Stalin. It helped erase lingering sympathy for the Soviet Union among many leftist intellectuals, especially in Europe.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn was one of the greatest heroes of the last century. His books are a must read for anyone who wishes to catch a glimpse of the hell to which atheistic totalitarianism leads. He is dead at the age of 89.

RLC

Please Move Aside

Quick: What's the most dangerous fuel to use to generate power? Coal, oil, nuclear?

How many people have died from accidents in American nuclear power plants? World nuclear power plants?

How many deaths occur in coal mining accidents each year in the U.S.? In China?

An article at FrontPage Mag provides some interesting perspective on these questions and others. For example, did you know that:

A coal-fired plant releases 100 times more radioactive material than an equivalent nuclear reactor-and not into a self-contained storage site but directly into the atmosphere. By generating electricity whose production otherwise would have required the use of fossil fuels, the 104 nuclear plants now operating in the U.S. prevent the release of approximately 700 million additional tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year; that is the equivalent of removing 96 percent of all passenger cars from U.S. roads.

If Three Mile Island was a disaster, it was largely in terms of public relations: the meltdown had resulted in no injuries and precisely zero deaths - indeed, there was no sign of harm to any living thing in the plant's vicinity. The worst that occurred was that the two million residents in the surrounding were exposed to approximately one-sixth the amount of radiation that they would have absorbed from a single chest X-ray at their local hospital. Thanks to the plant's built-in safety features, the public was never in danger.

The worst nuclear power plant accident in history, the Chernobyl accident in Ukraine, resulted directly in the deaths of more than 30 people, and it exposed millions more to radiation that, by the highest estimates, could eventually result in several thousand cancer-related deaths. Moreover, it rendered some 20 square miles of land uninhabitable for an extended period.

But the Soviet reactor in Chernobyl was an outmoded relic: it bore no resemblance to the reactors that are used in the West. Most notably, it lacked containment shells to prevent radioactive materials from escaping in the event of an accident. The far superior Western reactors were equipped not only with such safeguards, but also with numerous built-in sensors designed to shut down the plant immediately in the event of trouble.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, American nuclear plants have long been safer workplaces than most other manufacturing plants. The nuclear industry's safety record is far better than that of the competing coal industry, for instance. Each year in the United States, an average of 33 coal miners die in the line of work, yet there have been no calls to end coal mining on grounds that it is too dangerous.

In other nations, the numbers are much worse. During Chernobyl's heyday, thousands of men were killed in coal mining accidents in the Soviet Union. In China, some 5,000 coal miners perish in accidents each and every year. Since the dawn of the nuclear era, the world's 400-plus civilian nuclear plants have logged well over 10,000 aggregate years of activity, and Chernobyl remains the only accident ever to have harmed members of the public. In addition, the U.S. Navy has been powering ships with nuclear reactors for more than 50 years and has experienced no nuclear accidents.

Nor is there any discernible health risk associated with living close to a nuclear plant. According to the Nuclear Energy Institute, a person would have to live next door to such a plant for more than 2,000 years to get the amount of radiation exposure he gets from a single X-ray.

Coal today is used to produce about 49 percent of America's electricity, while natural gas and petroleum account for another 20 percent and 2 percent, respectively. A coal-fired plant releases 100 times more radioactive material than an equivalent nuclear reactor-and not into a self-contained storage site but directly into the atmosphere. By generating electricity whose production otherwise would have required the use of fossil fuels, the 104 nuclear plants now operating in the U.S. prevent the release of approximately 700 million additional tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year; that is the equivalent of removing 96 percent of all passenger cars from U.S. roads.

If not for nuclear energy, America's dependence on foreign oil would be even greater than it currently is. During the 1973 oil embargo, nuclear technology produced only 5 percent of the U.S. electric supply, while oil accounted for 17 percent. Today those figures are 19 percent and 2 percent, respectively. If more nuclear plants are constructed, they could replace coal and natural gas as America's major source of electricity production.

So why aren't we building more nuclear power plants? For the same reason we're not drilling for more oil and building new refineries. The Democrats refuse to allow them. They need to be told politely to get out of the way.

RLC

No Excuses

Another young Muslim woman is murdered by a family member, in this case her father, and the cable news outlets which can't give enough coverage to the murders of Caucasian women slain by relatives, can't be bothered to even report the news. John Avlon at the New York Post wonders why. He concludes that the media doesn't want to emphasize a story that discredits the multicultural narrative that the left has promoted for the last two decades.

Perhaps this is so, but I'm beginning to wonder. Could there not be a tincture of lower expectations among journalists when it comes to certain demographic groups? Might there be a feeling of well, that's just how these people are and one can't expect much better from them? Civilization is an achievement of white Europeans, and those others who have adopted their assumptions. Perhaps, buried in the psyches of a lot of journalists, is the assumption that a desert plant transplanted to a rain forest is still a desert plant and nothing will change it much.

Surely if a Caucasian American father murdered his daughter because she wanted out of an unhappy arranged marriage the media would be all over the story, especially if the father were a putative Christian. Perhaps the reason is that this is unusual behavior for white Christians, but when blacks in our cities kill each other by the tens of thousands every year, or Muslims kill their own daughters the media treat it as little more than a sad statistic. It's as if they think it would be somehow racist to call attention to the dysfunctionalities in these communities, and appearing racist is the very last thing a good liberal wants.

Yet isn't the real racism the refusal to hold people to the same standard as everyone else? Isn't the real racism the belief that some groups just can't be expected to behave in a civilized, moral manner? Isn't the real racism what President Bush has called the "soft bigotry of diminished expectations"?

Perhaps we do others no favors with all our talk of uneven playing fields, historical disadvantages, tolerating diversity and the equal value of all cultures. Perhaps the best thing we can do for other ethnic and racial groups in our society is to tell them that the standard white Americans are expected to meet is the standard that they are expected to meet, and that there are no excuses for failing to meet it.

As a society we need to adopt the same slogan that athletes live by: Excuses are for losers.

RLC

Taliban Tactics

Strategy Page has an interesting piece on how the Taliban are trying to adjust to offset the deadly capabilities of the NATO and Afghan forces along the Afghanistan/Pakistan border:

The Taliban have developed more effective tactics this year. After a disastrous outing last year, the Taliban were under a lot of pressure to reduce their casualties this year, and they have. The Afghans have always been adaptable, especially when it is a matter of life and death, and there have been many small changes in Taliban tactics to counter the greater lethality of NATO forces (who use UAVs, smart bombs and better trained troops). Taliban forces now operate in smaller groups, keeping weapons (which can be identified from the air by UAV or aircraft cameras) hidden, and concentrate forces just before an attack. Cell phones and walkie-talkies make this easier. Taliban will also break off an attack quickly, knowing that the smart bombs are on the way.

The Taliban will stay near the Pakistani border, because the Americans and NATO rarely pursue, although smart bombs are more frequently dropped on the Pakistani side. But once a group of armed Taliban have made it into Pakistan, they can melt into the civilian population. Which leads to another popular Taliban tactic, using civilians as human shields. It doesn't always work, and when it doesn't the Taliban are quick to claim another NATO atrocity. The Taliban have also been using a growing number of deceptions to try and get NATO smart bombs or artillery to hit friendly targets. A favorite one on the border is to fire mortar shells at NATO troops on one side of the border, and at nearby Pakistani border guards just across the frontier, to try and deceive NATO and Pakistani troops into believing they are firing at each other. NATO counter-fire radars have spotted the shells, and traced them all back to the same location. But such radars are not always available, and sometimes this trick works. Another deception is to feed bad intel to the followers, and try and trigger a missile or smart bomb attack on civilians.

There's more at the link.

RLC

Iran Practices Nuclear Strike

Kenneth Timmerman at Newsmax.com reports that intelligence agencies believe that Iran is practicing a nuclear strike against the U.S. They appear to be planning a single strike that would be launched from a merchant ship off the coast. A nuclear warhead would be mounted on a Scud missile and sent into the upper atmosphere where it would be detonated creating an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) that would fry all of our electronics across the entire continent. In the worst case we would be instantly thrown back into the 19th century and the resulting chaos and starvation would eventually kill off over 70% of our population.

We've written about EMP before and there's some doubt as to how successful such an attack would be, but evidently the Iranians think it would work.

There are several measures we can take to prevent it. We can stop Iran from securing nuclear warheads. We can continue to develop our missile defense system. We can tell Iran that any such attack in which they are suspected will result in a total obliteration of their country. Of course, this last option depends on being able to demonstrate that the attack came from Iran, and if they sink the ship that launched the missile we might not be able to do that.

In any event, the last alternative is certainly the worst since if it fails to deter the Iranians a nuclear holocaust would ensue. The best way to prevent such a catastrophe is to prevent the Iranians from developing a nuclear weapon in the first place. The second best is to build a missile shield and create enough uncertainty of success in the minds of the Iranian mullahs that they wouldn't attempt the attack. Of the three options, guess which two Senator Obama and the Democrats are on record opposing.

RLC

Bush and the Chronically Homeless

A New York Times report notes that, due largely to a Bush administration initiative, chronic homelessness in the U.S. has declined by 52,000 people from 175,914 to 123,833, a 30% drop, between 2005 and 2007.

I wonder what the decline was during the halcyon years of the Clinton administration.

In any event, this is another data point that future historians will factor into their assessment of Bush's presidency. Combined with his achievements on behalf of the poor in Africa and his liberation from tyranny of 50 million people in the Middle East, those who really care about human rights and human welfare, as opposed to those who simply pay lip service to these concepts, will be forced to conclude that Bush has done more good for the people they're concerned about than any president or world leader in the last 100 years.

For many this will no doubt be an awkward and uncomfortable realization.

Perhaps this is one reason liberals despise him. While they have talked endlessly about their concern for the poor, he has made them look impotent and hypocritical by actually doing something to alleviate their suffering.

RLC

Religious Renaissance

A generation or so ago it looked as though theistic belief in general and Christian belief in particular were on the ropes. The atheists had all the good arguments, it was thought, the liberal church was embracing them, and it was just a matter of time until skepticism trickled down from the ivory towers of the academy to the pulpits and pews of parish churches and wiped out religious belief altogether.

Along the way to this denouement, however, a funny thing happened. A number of Christian philosophers remained unimpressed by the force of the secularists' arguments and were quietly churning out powerful philosophical arguments in defense of traditional Christian belief. This effort was epitomized, perhaps, with the publication in the late sixties of Alvin Plantinga's God and Other Minds, a work which completely altered the terms of the debate. Other philosophers contributed additional efforts over the next couple of decades and some, like William Lane Craig and J.P. Moreland, became powerful public debators.

In addition, the creationist critique of Darwinism and the rise of the intelligent design movement hewed away at an essential prop in the atheistic worldview. All this, coupled with the utter failure of secular assumptions to provide a framework for social well-being - the devastation wrought by the sexual revolution and the horrors of street crime and the ubiquity of white collar crime - cast into unmistakeable highlights the moral inadequacies of secular atheism.

Douglas Groothius at Books and Culture gives us an interesting glimpse of the current state of the controversy with emphasis on books by three of the participants, Alistir McGrath, Antony Flew, and a debate between William Lane Craig and Walter Sinnott-Armstrong. It's a good read.

RLC

Terrorism's Most Effective Weapons

This article at Strategy Page discusses some interesting aspects to the war in Iraq from the standpoint of the military:

Throughout the current conflict, the military made no secret of what they were doing, and just kept focused on winning. They knew they would be dealing with an unusual enemy, a stateless force based on ideology and religion based hatred. This foe was weak, in the conventional military sense, but was armed with two powerful weapons.

First, there was the suicide bomber, and terrorism in general. Against civilian populations, this was a very effective weapon. Against a professional and resourceful military foe, it was much less so. But the enemy had another weapon; the media and political opposition in their opponents homeland. The media is eager to report real or imagined disasters and mistakes. This is how the news business has stayed solvent since the mass media first appeared in the mid 19th century. Al Qaeda was run by people who were aware of this, and knew how to exploit it, both among friendly (Moslem) populations, and in nations they had declared their enemy. This they did by exploiting the proclivities of the political oppositions in the West.

There is much more at the link, especially regarding how the liberal media and our political leadership has been one of terrorism's most effective weapons.

RLC