Presto!

The President has shown a fondness for talking about the number of jobs that he has "saved or created" with his stimulus spending, but as William McGurn of the Wall Street Journal observes this construction is at best meaningless and at worst dishonest:

His latest invocation came yesterday, when the president declared that the stimulus had already saved or created at least 150,000 American jobs -- and announced he was ramping up some of the stimulus spending so he could "save or create" an additional 600,000 jobs this summer. These numbers come in the context of an earlier Obama promise that his recovery plan will "save or create three to four million jobs over the next two years."

The reason this is either meaningless or dishonest is that the President surely knows that "the number is pure fiction -- the administration has no way to measure how many jobs are actually being 'saved.' "

Of course, the inability to measure Mr. Obama's jobs formula is part of its attraction. Never mind that no one -- not the Labor Department, not the Treasury, not the Bureau of Labor Statistics -- actually measures "jobs saved." As the New York Times delicately reports, Mr. Obama's jobs claims are "based on macroeconomic estimates, not an actual counting of jobs." Nice work if you can get away with it.

And get away with it he has. However dubious it may be as an economic measure, as a political formula "save or create" allows the president to invoke numbers that convey an illusion of precision. Harvard economist and former Bush economic adviser Greg Mankiw calls it a "non-measurable metric." And on his blog, he acknowledges the political attraction.

"The expression 'create or save,' which has been used regularly by the President and his economic team, is an act of political genius," writes Mr. Mankiw. "You can measure how many jobs are created between two points in time. But there is no way to measure how many jobs are saved. Even if things get much, much worse, the President can say that there would have been 4 million fewer jobs without the stimulus."

Mr. Obama's comments yesterday are a perfect illustration of just such a claim. In the months since Congress approved the stimulus, our economy has lost nearly 1.6 million jobs and unemployment has hit 9.4%. Invoke the magic words, however, and -- presto! -- you have the president claiming he has "saved or created" 150,000 jobs. It all makes for a much nicer spin, and helps you forget this is the same team that only a few months ago promised us that passing the stimulus would prevent unemployment from rising over 8%.

During a March hearing of the Senate Finance Committee, Chairman Max Baucus challenged Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on the formula.

"You created a situation where you cannot be wrong," said the Montana Democrat. "If the economy loses two million jobs over the next few years, you can say yes, but it would've lost 5.5 million jobs. If we create a million jobs, you can say, well, it would have lost 2.5 million jobs. You've given yourself complete leverage where you cannot be wrong, because you can take any scenario and make yourself look correct."

Now, something's wrong when the president invokes a formula that makes it impossible for him to be wrong and it goes largely unchallenged. It's true that almost any government spending will create some jobs and save others. But as Milton Friedman once pointed out, that doesn't tell you much: The government, after all, can create jobs by hiring people to dig holes and fill them in.

If the "saved or created" formula looks brilliant, it's only because Mr. Obama and his team are not being called on their claims. And don't expect much to change. So long as the news continues to repeat the administration's line that the stimulus has already "saved or created" 150,000 jobs over a time period when the U.S. economy suffered an overall job loss 10 times that number, the White House would be insane to give up a formula that allows them to spin job losses into jobs saved.

So the President manages to escape media accountability for the loss of 1.6 million jobs since he took office by claiming to have saved or created 150,000 jobs with more on the way, and the fawning media is too busy ogling his abs to ask him how in the world he arrives at that number. As Ed Morrissey has noted, he could as easily boast of having saved all 140 million jobs in this country. How could anyone gainsay the claim?

Are you still working? Thank President Obama.

RLC

Silent Sisters

Melissa Clouthier wonders why the sisterhood has been so strangely silent about the egregious Playboy rape list compiled by Neanderthal misogynist Guy Cimbalo targeting conservative women. Oops, did I just inadvertently give the reason?

It is odd - well, maybe not - that hardly any liberal males have condemned this putrid piece of hate speech, and it's even odder that feminists have had so little to say about it.

Clouthier compares their silence to the person who sees an assault on a woman but does nothing to help, the very type of person feminists generally profess to loathe. Here's Clouthier's close:

Meanwhile, besides the women on the list and other conservative women media members (Megyn Kelly, Michelle Malkin, Elizabeth Blakney, the Smart Girls ladies, etc.), who presented the most vociferous defense?

Conservative men. That's right. Conservative men wrote ardently [in defense of] the attacked women. Ed Driscoll, John Hawkins, Ed Morrissey, Caleb Howe, Allahpundit, Jim Treacher. One liberal man likely lost his job for decrying Playboy's misogynistic actions.

The feminist women remain silent. I don't expect them to find their voices anytime soon. These are the same women who defended Bill Clinton's sexual harassment and blamed the victims. These are the same women who savaged Sarah Palin based on her hair, her clothes, and her choice to have a special needs child. And now, these are the women who stand by and watch other women get attacked because they are beautiful and believe differently. The feminists say nothing.

If you haven't been following this sordid tale, click on the link. The original Cimbalo article has been taken down, but Clouthier provides enough details to give you an idea of what's been going on.

UPDATE: Just as I prepared to post this I learned that the National Organization of Women has chastised David Letterman for his klunky "jokes" about Sarah Palin and her daughter. That's good news.

RLC

Tasteless and Cowardly

So, David Letterman calls Sarah Palin "slutty-looking" and cracks a humorless joke about her daughter being raped at a baseball game, and his audience, comprised mostly of New York, liberal-minded, compassionate people roars at the hilarity of it all.

Now imagine that it was not David Letterman, but rather some conservative radio talker like Rush Limbaugh who made these remarks to a conservative audience. Imagine, though, that it wasn't Sarah Palin that he called "slutty" but rather Michelle Obama, and suppose it wasn't Willow Palin who was the object of the humiliating and completely stupid comment but one of the Obamas' daughters. Suppose further that the conservative audience howled with laughter. What do you suppose would be the response? What was the response when Don Imus said something similar about the Rutger's girls basketball team?

Liberals would go ballistic, and properly so, at the sheer tastelessness and cruelty of it. They would excoriate Limbaugh and hound him from the airwaves. Conservatives would never live down the embarrassment of having one of their premier spokespersons say such a disgusting thing and having their brethren caught on tape laughing and applauding.

But David Letterman says it about the Palin family, liberals laugh themselves to tears, and no one on the left seems to think that anything unusual has happened. Few on the left seem to worry about what such behavior says about the kind of people they are. Some on the left are so blinded by their own hatreds and self-righteousness that they can't even see that what they would find despicable if done by conservatives is completely acceptable when done by one of their own.

--------------

Meanwhile, on show after show last night liberals tried to tie the Holocaust Museum shooter to conservatism in order to discredit "the right," but they failed to notice that conservatives were among the man's primary targets. He hated Fox News, The Weekly Standard, and neo-cons in general. His anti-semitism is much more agreeable with the sort of thing that emerges in left-wing discourse than anything that is heard on the right.

Unable to actually trace this man's derangements to conservativism, they simply assert that he was a "right-winger" because, well, he just has to be. It fits their stereotype.

Unlike the play the Holocaust Memorial murder is getting, when a few weeks back a black muslim terrorist shot and killed a young white soldier in Arkansas the story simply evaporated like morning fog. There was no public investigation into this man's background, his hatreds, and mental disorders. There was no soul-searching about the nature of Islam, black racism, and the anti-military mindset which infects the American left and which may well have incited this attack. Why not?

Anyway, Letterman says that making jokes about people in the news is what he does. Very well. Let's see how long it takes him to say something as tasteless and coarse about Michelle Obama and her daughters as he was "courageous" enough to say about Palin and her's.

RLC

Go South Old Man

Mark Steyn sends a shiver down our spines with a little anecdote about how nationalized health care works in Canada:

In the Province of Quebec, patients suffering from serious incontinence - i.e., they have to aller aux toilettes jusqu'� 12 fois par nuit (that's 12 times a night) - have to wait three years for a half-hour operation. That's 3 years times 365 nights times 12 trips to the bathroom.

There are only two urologists in the province who perform the operation, in part because hospital budgets are so tight they decline to buy the necessary "neurostimulator".

The central point about socialized medicine is that restricting access is the only means of controlling costs. And, when comparisons of health "costs" between nations are made, the time you spend in the bathroom each night and the subsequent impact on your work performance the following day are not factored in.

Of course, if you get sick of the three-year wait, you can always drive a couple of hours south, with frequent rest stops, to Fletcher Allen Hospital in Vermont or Dartmouth-Hitchcock in New Hampshire, and write a check. For the moment. Once the U.S. system has been "reformed" so that its wait lists are up to Euro-Canadian standards, poor incontinent Quebeckers will have to drive to Costa Rica. And that's a lot more rest stops.

Two urologists in the entire province? When the government is paying the bill for health care the government decides what equipment to invest in and what procedures are urgent, and the government cares not a tittle how many times you have to go to the bathroom every night.

If President Obama continues on the road to Euro-Canadian socialism, including a nationalized health care structure, I suspect a lot of people, both Canadians and Americans, will start moving to Costa Rica. Costa Rica is a beautiful country and folks there don't have to spend the entire night in the bathroom.

RLC

California Dreamin'

It may be hard for young people to believe, but it wasn't long ago that California was seen as the land of milk and honey. People flocked to the state to take advantage of the opportunities it offered. California was perhaps the most prosperous state in the country and it was a great place to live and raise a family. Today, however, California is a different place, an economic basket case on the brink of bankruptcy. What happened? Representative Tom McClintock tells the story:

A generation ago, California exemplified its nickname, the Golden State. State spending was less than half per capita, inflation-adjusted, what it is today. Its debt-service ratio was less than a third.

Californians enjoyed one of the finest highway systems in the world and one of the finest public education systems in the country. Water and electricity were so cheap many communities didn't meter consumption.

Only a few decades have passed, yet California is a dramatically altered place. The tax burden is one of the heaviest in the nation. State government consumes the largest portion of personal earnings of any time in its history and yet can no longer maintain its basic infrastructure. The once legendary California quality of life has declined precipitously and produced a historic first: More people are moving out of California than are moving in.

One thing - and one thing only - has changed in those years: public policy. The political left gradually gained dominance over California's government and imposed a disastrous agenda of policy changes that now are being replicated at the federal level.

There's much more to this sad tale at the link. McClintock explains how deficit spending, high taxes, onerous regulations on business, unions, and centralized, bureaucratic government have combined to destroy the west coast nirvana that was once one of the best places to live in the world. He closes by reminding us that the policies which have reduced California to its current low estate are precisely the policies that a Democratic congress and administration are now foisting on the rest of the nation. Just as California's best days may well be behind it, so, too, are those of the rest of us unless in 2010 and 2012 we vote to reverse the folly.

UPDATE: As if to add an exclamation point to McClintock's eulogy for his state McClatchy has a piece that says that California is considering ending its welfare program because it can no longer afford it. I doubt this will happen, but the fact that it's even being talked about is indicative of the gravity of California's crisis.

RLC

A Pair of Bigots

Two anti-semitic bigots are in the news today. The first is the deranged elderly white supremicist named James Von Brunn who shot and killed a guard at the Holocaust Museum yesterday. The left is playing this tragedy as a crime of "the right" even though there's nothing about Brunn that suggests he was a "right-winger." The tragedy is also getting round the clock coverage on the news outlets even though there are dozens of similar shootings in Washington everyday, shootings motivated by hatred, that no one seems to care much about.

The second bigot is Jeremiah Wright who was asked recently if he had spoken to the president, Wright replied that: "Them Jews aren't going to let him talk to me."

It's not comforting to know that the President's spiritual mentor is an anti-semite. Can you imagine what the media reaction would be had a pastor of former President Bush said such a thing? The media would be, rightly, drawing all sorts of conclusions about the character of the president from the fact that he was willing to subject himself and his family to such a man's teaching for twenty years.

Reverend Wright and Mr. Von Brunn are two peas in a pod. They're both haters - one incites hatred and the other acted on it. One, we'll probably be told over the days and weeks ahead, reveals something dark and ugly in the soul of white, conservative America. The other, who may reveal something dark and ugly in the soul of our president, we won't be hearing much about at all.

RLC

Feedback

There are a number of interesting emails on our Feedback page, including a bit of a pro/con debate over John Calvin's theology. Check them out and feel free to add your own thoughts.

RLC

More on the Canaanites

In my post on the Canaanite genocide I posited as one possible reply to the problem of how to reconcile God's Old Testament command to extirpate everything that breathes with the Christian belief in His goodness, mercy, and love that perhaps we simply don't know enough about the details of the matter. According to this reply, if we knew more about the situation prevailing in Canaan during the time the command was given maybe the whole passage would be less puzzling.

Bill writes to link us to a site that offers an intriguing possibility along these lines. Those of you with a theological bent should check it out.

RLC

Don't Jump Yet

Here's news that might coax those Republicans about to jump off window ledges to hold off a little longer. It comes in the form of a recent Rasmussen poll that may be a portent that the tide is turning against the current platitudinous hope and change policies of the current administration. I don't want to assign too much significance to polls, especially polls this far out from the next national election, but this one may indicate that the nation is beginning to come out of the collective hypnotic trance it's been under since last summer and starting to listen to people who actually know what they're talking about. Here's a summary of Rasmussen's findings:

Voters now trust Republicans more than Democrats on six out of 10 key issues, including the top issue of the economy.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 45% now trust the GOP more to handle economic issues, while 39% trust Democrats more.

This is the first time in over two years of polling that the GOP has held the advantage on this issue. Voters not affiliated with either party now trust the GOP more to handle economic issues by a two-to-one margin.

Republicans also now hold a six-point lead on the issue of government ethics and corruption, the second most important issue to all voters and the top issue among unaffiliated voters. That shows a large shift from May, when Democrats held an 11-point lead on the issue.

For the eighth straight month, Republicans lead on national security. The GOP now holds a 51% to 36% lead on the issue, up from a seven-point lead in May. They also lead on the war in Iraq 45% to 37%, after leading by just two points in May and trailing the Democrats in April.

[C]onfidence that the United States and its allies are winning the War on Terror is at its highest level since February.

Republicans lead the Democrats on immigration for the third straight month, pulling ahead to a 35% to 29% advantage on the issue.

On taxes, the GOP leads the Democrats for the fifth straight month, 44% to 39%. In May and April, Republicans held six-point leads on the issue.

Democrats continue to hold the lead on the issues of health care, Social Security and education. While Democrats have a 10-point advantage on health care, that's down from the 18-point lead the party had a month ago.

Democrats lead by six points on Social Security, down from nine points in May. The parties were tied on the issue in April.

Polls are volatile and could change literally overnight, but still, there's hope. It's not that I think the Republicans are so great. After all, they're the ones whose profligate spending was the pin hole in the dam that lead to the Obama deluge. It's just that it's clear that the Democrats are on a spending bender and that Obama is trying his hardest to bring as much of the country as possible under government control as soon as possible, so if this headlong sprint toward Euro-socialism is going to be stopped it'll have to be Republicans (Lord help us) who'll have to do it. This poll gives us reason to think it may still be possible.

Now climb down from that ledge.

RLC

Te Adoramus

Evan Thomas is an editor at Newsweek which, we hear, now holds solemn daily devotionals for its editorial staff given to the worship of our president, about whom Thomas speaks here like the Romans once spoke about their emperors:

It's great fun to giggle at how these journalists have abandoned all personal pride and professional objectivity in their headlong rush to ingratiate themselves with this administration, but we shouldn't. It's really quite pathetic to watch grown adults prostrating themselves at the feet of another human being to seek his blessing and favor. One gets the feeling that if President Obama told either Evan Thomas or Chris Matthews, who is himself quick to assent to Thomas' apotheosis of the community organizer from Chicago, to commit hari kiri, they'd trip over each other in their scurry to be the first to obey the great man's wishes.

Thanks to Hot Air for the clip.

RLC

Capitulating to Tyranny

The North Koreans, like the Iranians, appear determined to possess nuclear weapons, and the Obama administration appears determined to let them. President Obama has declared his resolve to work toward a world free of such weapons and has committed the U.S. to gradual disarmament, but nothing could be more counterproductive to his plan than to stand by while these two terrorist states develop their own weapons of mass destruction.

The refusal to take more than mere diplomatic measures almost guarantees that the neighbors of these two countries will feel the need to arm themselves to counter the existential threat they'll be facing.

Look for Japan to soon begin rebuilding its military and to seek its own nuclear capacity and the Arab Gulf states, Turkey, and eventually Iraq and South Korea will surely do likewise. Obama's acquiesence to the nuclear ambitions of rogue states all but guarantees that the entire Middle East and Pacific rim will become volatile nuclear tinder boxes.

We might expect, too, that as nuclear weapons proliferate they'll eventually find their way into the hands of Islamic terrorists and start going off in places like Tel Aviv, Seoul, and New York City. Over time they'll spread to South America via Venezuela and Cuba. The president has made it clear that his policy with regard to tyrannies is to speak softly and carry a nerf bat, and the world's thugs have taken gleeful notice.

RLC

Stockholm Syndrome

Andy McCarthy at National Review Online links us to a piece that you just have to laugh at even at the risk of being labelled "insensitive." McCarthy calls our attention to an article in The Brussels Journal about a lefty Dutch journalist, Joanie de Rijke, who "went to Afghanistan to conduct a sympathetic interview with Taliban jihadists who had just killed 10 French troops. Naturally, she was abducted and serially raped for six days. And now she is angry ... not at the chief Taliban thug - who showed her "respect," though, regrettably, "he could not control his testosterone" - but at the Dutch and Belgian governments who refused to pay the $2 million ransom the jihadists demanded."

Not only are the governments of Belgium and Netherlands getting heat over their refusal to play along with the Taliban extortion, but minister of Parliament Geert Wilders is the object of European opprobrium for a speech he gave on this incident to the Dutch Parliament. In the speech Wilders said:

"She was raped, but she was not angry. The journalist who went looking for the Taliban in Afghanistan saw her curiosity end in a cruel ordeal of multiple rape. While this would make others angry or sad, this journalist shows understanding. She says: 'They also respected me.' And she was given tea and biscuits."

"This story" Wilders went on to say, "is a perfect illustration of the moral decline of our elites. They are so blinded by their own ideology that they turn a blind eye to the truth. Rape? Well, I would put this into perspective, says the leftist journalist: the Taliban are not monsters. Our elites prefer to deny reality rather than face it. One would expect: a woman is being raped and finds this unbearable. But this journalist is not angry because the Muslim involved also showed respect. Our elites, whether they are politicians, journalists, judges, subsidy gobblers or civil servants, are totally clueless. Plain common sense has been dumped in order to deny reality. It is not just this raped journalist who is suffering from Stockholm syndrome, but the entire Dutch elite. The only moral reference they have is: do not irritate the Muslims - that is the one thing they will condemn."

The Brussels Journal then notes that:

Rather than trying to refute Wilders, the Dutch establishment attacked him, accusing him of "immorally abusing de Rijke's ordeal for his own political goals."

Her reaction confirms precisely what Wilders was trying to say. In reality the Taliban are not monsters because they call themselves Taliban, but because they behave like monsters. People like de Rijke, however, no longer judge people by their behavior and their actions, but condone them for the noble motives which they imagine have driven them to commit their acts. As Wilders said, "They are so blinded by their own ideology that they turn a blind eye to the truth."

Those who have been abducted and suffer from Stockholm syndrome usually have not placed themselves in danger willingly. They had the misfortune to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. The phenomenon illustrated by the case of Joanie de Rijke is that of people who for ideological reasons deny the existence of danger and subsequently put themselves in danger. Unlike ordinary Stockholm syndrome sufferers they do not begin to shown signs of loyalty to the criminal while in captivity, but have already surrendered to the criminal before their captivity, and, indeed, have ended up in captivity as a consequence of their ideological blindness.

And so, in a way Joanie de Rijke is right. She did not develop Stockholm syndrome while in captivity. She had the syndrome even before she left for Afghanistan. It is natural that she should resent her state of mind being described as Stockholm syndrome, because she considers it to be the state of mind of a righteous and intelligent modern intellectual. It is the state of mind which she shares with almost the entire political and intellectual class of Europe today, that of the hostage to political correctness.

The Brussels Journal article is worth reading in its entirety. It contains further details about Ms de Rijke and her experience, some of them funny and none of them flattering.

RLC

The Canaanite Genocide

A reader writes to ask my thoughts on the stories in the Biblical Old Testament that recount God's commands to the Israelites to slay every man, woman, child, and animal of the Canaanites (e.g. see Deut. 20:16: "[I]n the cities of these peoples that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, you shall not leave anything alive that breathes."). Nothing could be more unChristian, more contrary to the God that Jesus reveals in the Gospels, than the behavior God commands in this passage. How, a lot of people wonder, can we reconcile this savagery with the Christian view of God?

This is the toughest question, in my opinion, with which a skeptic can challenge a Christian. I don't know that there's any satisfactory reply, and every answer of which I'm aware has serious shortcomings and/or implications. Consequently, the tendency is to simply push the problem out of one's mind. Few preachers discuss it in their sermons, and, I suppose, many laypersons simply ignore those parts of the Bible which describe the horrific killing that God ostensibly commanded of His people as they prepared to occupy the Promised Land.

I don't have an answer, at least not a good one, to the question of how to reconcile the Old Testament Yahweh with the God revealed in Jesus, but for those who are interested here are some of the explanations on offer from theologians. Perhaps one of them is correct:

1) The Old Testament record is, in this respect at least, inaccurate. The Israelites claimed to be acting on the command of God as a way of rationalizing their atrocities, but they were either mistaken about God's will in this matter or they were deceitful. God did not, in fact, ordain this behavior.

The problem with this approach is that it entails that the Old Testament, or at least parts of it, are not inspired and inerrant in the sense that Christians have traditionally believed.

2) God is sovereign and can do whatever He wants.

This is certainly true, but it doesn't address the problem. The question that cries out for an answer is why a good God, the God revealed in Jesus Christ, would want to do something so cruel and why He would have human beings participate in the brutality.

3) The Canaanites were so wicked that they deserved death and the Israelites, God's chosen people, were simply the agents of His judgment.

But what could be just about slaughtering terrified women, children, the aged, and the infirm? Did they "deserve" death? John Wesley declared that to attribute such atrocities to God is an outrage against His character and makes Him "more false, more cruel, and more unjust than the devil."

And why would God use human beings to execute such cruelties? What effect did it have on Israelite soldiers to put children to the sword? Why did He not simply handle the chore Himself or send plagues as He did against the Egyptians just a few decades earlier?

Moreover, if anything is absolutely wrong, i.e. wrong regardless of circumstances, it's genocide, but if God authorized the complete elimination of a race of people then all moral and ethical absolutes are relativized and all distinctions between good and evil become meaningless.

4) We only know part of the story. If we knew all of the details God's reasons would be more comprehensible.

This is an attractive option and it may be the truth, but it carries at least the scent of a cop-out about it. We are given no reason to think that there's more to the story than what we're told, at least no more that would change the moral complexion of it.

Moreover, its hard to imagine what additional facts there could be that would make God's command more comprehensible and more compatible with the God of justice, love and mercy that the New Testament portrays.

5) There's no answer. It's an inscrutable mystery. Just trust God and don't worry about it.

This is an appeal to fideism, or blind faith. No matter what the difficulties might be we're urged to ignore them and refuse to allow them to crowd into our noetic structure. I find this suggestion difficult to heed. I don't think God gave us minds merely to have us disengage them whenever we encounter tough questions.

Perhaps there are other possible explanations that readers could come up with for Deuteronomy 20 and passages like it. If so, please feel free to send them along via our Feedback page.

RLC

The Cairo Speech

A worshipful media, or at least large segments of it, have been cooing over the Obama trip to the Middle East in general and his "historic" Cairo speech in particular. Not all journalists, however, are bending the knee. Caroline Glick of the Jerusalem Post has an excellent analysis of what the President said and some fascinating thoughts on what she fears his intentions are vis a vis Israel and Iran.

Ms Glick sounds a little bit too angry in the column for my taste, but then, if she's correct, perhaps she has reason to be. Here's an excerpt from her essay:

[President Obama] spoke of the need to grant equality to women without making mention of common Islamic practices like so-called honor killings, and female genital mutilation. He ignored the fact that throughout the lands of Islam women are denied basic legal and human rights. And then he qualified his statement by mendaciously claiming that women in the US similarly suffer from an equality deficit. In so discussing this issue, Obama sent the message that he couldn't care less about the plight of women in the Islamic world.

So, too, Obama spoke about the need for religious freedom but ignored Saudi Arabian religious apartheid. He talked about the blessings of democracy but ignored the problems of tyranny.

In short, Obama's "straight talk" to the Arab world, which began with his disingenuous claim that like America, Islam is committed to "justice and progress, tolerance and the dignity of all human beings," was consciously and fundamentally fraudulent. And this fraud was advanced to facilitate his goal of placing the Islamic world on equal moral footing with the free world.

In a like manner, Obama's tough "truths" about Israel were marked by factual and moral dishonesty in the service of political ends.

On the surface, Obama seemed to scold the Muslim world for its all-pervasive Holocaust denial and craven Jew hatred. By asserting that Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism are wrong, he seemed to be upholding his earlier claim that America's ties to Israel are "unbreakable."

Unfortunately, a careful study of his statements shows that Obama was actually accepting the Arab view that Israel is a foreign - and therefore unjustifiable - intruder in the Arab world. Indeed, far from attacking their rejection of Israel, Obama legitimized it.

The basic Arab argument against Israel is that the only reason Israel was established was to soothe the guilty consciences of Europeans who were embarrassed about the Holocaust. By their telling, the Jews have no legal, historic or moral rights to the Land of Israel.

This argument is completely false. The international community recognized the legal, historic and moral rights of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel long before anyone had ever heard of Adolf Hitler. In 1922, the League of Nations mandated the "reconstitution" - not the creation - of the Jewish commonwealth in the Land of Israel in its historic borders on both sides of the Jordan River.

But in his self-described exercise in truth telling, Obama ignored this basic truth in favor of the Arab lie. He gave credence to this lie by stating wrongly that "the aspiration for a Jewish homeland is rooted in a tragic history."

He then explicitly tied Israel's establishment to the Holocaust by moving to a self-serving history lesson about the genocide of European Jewry.

Even worse than his willful blindness to the historic, legal and moral justifications for Israel's rebirth, was Obama's characterization of Israel itself. Obama blithely, falsely and obnoxiously compared Israel's treatment of Palestinians to white American slave owners' treatment of their black slaves. He similarly cast Palestinian terrorists in the same morally pure category as slaves. Perhaps most repulsively, Obama elevated Palestinian terrorism to the moral heights of slave rebellions and the US civil rights movement by referring to it by its Arab euphemism, "resistance."

Be sure to read the rest. It's very insightful.

My biggest problem with the President's approach to the Arab world is that he seems to be all too eager to apologize for America's conduct vis a vis Muslims when in fact the United States has been the best friend Muslims have ever had.

It's only America's restraining hand on Israel's shoulder that has kept Israel from utterly destroying its Muslim enemies in Gaza and Lebanon. In the early 90s we rescued Kuwait from the rape and pillage of Sadaam Hussein's troops and intervened to save Muslims in Bosnia and Croatia from what would have surely been a genocidal holocaust. In the current decade we sent hundreds of millions of dollars to help Muslims devastated by the Indian Ocean tsunami. We've spent millions more to bring relief to African Muslims suffering the ravages of incompetent and corrupt government. More recently we liberated 50 million Muslims from oppression and tyranny in Afghanistan and Iraq.

All of this has cost Americans in blood and treasure. No nation in the world, certainly no Muslim nation, has done as much for other Muslims as has the United States and yet President Obama mentions none of this. Like most on the left, Mr. Obama can see only American missteps and faults and seems blind to the many facts which contradict his worldview. No wonder Glick sounds angry.

RLC

Contemporary Child Abuse

Mona Charen discusses some disturbing statistics about marriage and child-bearing in America:

The number of babies born to unmarried women in 2007 (over 1.7 million) was 26% higher than it was in 2002.

Forty percent of all births in America are to unwed mothers.

Unwed motherhood is primarily a phenomenon of those who can least afford it. In 2000 less than one mother in ten who had 16 or more years of education was unmarried, but 36% of mothers with between 9 and 14 years of schooling were living without husbands.

By the age of 12, 78% of children living with no live-at-home father have experienced one or more years of poverty. For children living in intact families it's only 18%.

Babies born to unwed mothers are more likely to be premature, suffer low birth weight, and other pathologies. They will have poorer school performance, be in more trouble with the law, suffer more emotional and mental disturbances, more physical and sexual abuse, and more likely to become unwed parents themselves.

I remember reading somewhere that the one thing most men have in common in our prisons is not race, socio-economic background, or level of education. It's that almost uniformly they grew up without a father at home.

A lot of people seem to think that having two biological parents at home with their children is optional, but unwed motherhood is, according to the statistics, a form of child abuse and should be stigmatized. Our cultural elites, however, are so heavily invested in the idea that a diversity of family structures is a proper goal of a progressive society that it'll be a long time before unwed motherhood is treated with the same degree of opprobrium as is, say, exposing a child to second-hand smoke.

RLC

Climate Fascists

Our friends on the left sometimes affix bumper stickers to their autos which say things like "Dissent is Patriotic," or "Resist Authority," or they recite (or used to recite) Voltaire's famous maxim about how "I may disagree with what you say, but I'll fight to the death for your right to say it." Noble sentiments, these, and typically American. The problem is that too many on the left don't mean a word of it.

Marc Marano at Climate Depot catalogues the many threats and other forms of intimidation that have been leveled against those who've expressed doubt about one aspect or another of the current global warming enthusiasm. Public figures who harbor reservations about the severity or the cause of climate change have been threatened with death, loss of their jobs, and imprisonment. It's astonishing that anyone, even on the left from whence we've come to expect demands for ideological conformity, can hold free speech and dissent in such low esteem.

Of course these forms of intimidation are exactly the tactics typically employed by Nazi brownshirts and other fascists, past and present. It's yet another example of why the new left are really the new fascisti. This modest proposal, for example, recently appeared on Talking Points Memo, a mainstream left-wing blog:

At what point do we jail or execute global warming deniers

What is so frustrating about these fools is that they are the politicians and greedy bastards who don't want a cut in their profits who use bogus science or the lowest scientists in the gene pool who will distort data for a few bucks. The vast majority of the scientific minds in the World agree and understand it's a very serious problem that can do an untold amount of damage to life on Earth.

So when the right wing f***tards have caused it to be too late to fix the problem, and we start seeing the devastating consequences and we start seeing end of the World type events - how will we punish those responsible. It will be too late. So shouldn't we start punishing them now?

This post has since been taken down, but Morano offers lots of other examples from the last couple of years, including calls for Nuremburg-style trials for those heretics and other deviants who fail to conform to the current orthodoxy. It's frightening to think that in the United States, the home of freedom of speech and the right to dissent, there are people who believe that if you don't go along with the program, if you're skeptical of authority, you should be executed or otherwise punished.

The sound you often hear when you visit these lefty neighborhoods in the blogosphere is the sound of glass breaking.

RLC

Moral Consistency

So, comes word that harsh interrogations do work after all. I wonder if all those media talkers and others who insisted that torture doesn't provide useful information and that Bush is evil for using it, even if it was applied to only a few selected terrorists, will now humbly recant and apologize. I'm not holding my breath.

It's one of the ironies of our times that some of the same people who are so appalled that we would waterboard a terrorist in order to save thousands of lives had no problem at all with withholding food and water from a completely helpless and innocent young woman for nearly two weeks until she died of thirst.

The first is seen as an unconscionable cruelty and the second as an act of mercy. Amazing.

RLC

Byron on the Tiller Case

My friend Byron brought to my attention the article to which I linked yesterday concerning George Tiller's murder. Concerned that readers may get the misimpression that he agreed with the writer of the piece, he sent me an email unambiguously stating his position. It's a very good summary of what has been the overwhelming pro-life response to this episode, and I want to post it here so that everyone will see it.

Byron writes:

As always, you have a knack for getting at important things in ways to make us think. The philosophy teacher in you helps us think through arguments and claims and consequences. Thanks.

Since my name was mentioned as the one who sent you the piece about the ethics of the murder of Tiller, I thought I should say--for the record, since it is such a controversial and weighty matter--that I do not believe that those who follow Jesus should ever take up violence since he plainly taught his followers to be non-violent. Of course I realize that this is in the minority view in church history and although I am not anabaptist, I think the Mennonites and others of that sort get it right on this one. Christians must "overcome evil with good" and so therefore I think this author is dead wrong.

I wouldn't want anyone to think that I sent it to you because I agreed with it, although it is witty and thoughtful. And, if one thinks that killing is a legitimate thing to do to try to stop killing, then this is the quandary you are in. (The author does not advocate vigilante violence,but not because violence is wrong, but because it seems to be declaring war upon the state, violates the just war doctrine, and because it would only create more persecution.) I admire your honesty to face it, although I pray that this author, you and your readers don't take your ponderings too seriously. This is no time for more violence or armchair speculations in favor of violence. This is a time to be consistently pro-life.

Let us speak with one clear voice. Let us, as the Bible instructs, avoid even the appearance of evil. The murder of Mr. Tiller, no matter how horrendous the deeds of the doctor were, was wrong. Period.

I want to say this so clearly because it needs said, and I am glad that most pro-life organizations have been unqualified and clear in condemning this brutal assassination. Yet, the pro-choice community and some in the media have suggested otherwise. Let's not give them anything to wonder about: those who oppose abortion intend to turn around our culture through the long hard work of persuasion, cultural reformation, religious revival, innovative legislation and any other peaceful and legitimate means, but never, ever, by murder.

Surely Byron is correct if the resort to violence is always and absolutely wrong, as those in the pacifist tradition maintain it to be.

My difficulty is in understanding claims such as By makes in the last sentence of his penultimate paragraph when they're made by non-pacifists. If one does not believe that violence is always wrong then what are the justifications for its use? It seems to me that those in the pro-life camp (in which I place myself) are very vague about this. I think Byron would argue that this is one reason we should all be pacifists, but many if not most pro-lifers are not pacifists and would probably reject the suggestion that they should be. In any event, pacifism leads to conundrums of its own which are equally as perplexing and intractable.

If the pro-lifer, then, declines to embrace an absolute abjuration of violence, under what circumstances does he/she think it proper? If it's wrong to employ it to defend the lives of children about to be born then when would it ever be right?

It seems to me that pro-lifers who decline the pacifist option are on the horns of a dilemma: Either killing late-term fetuses, contrary to what many pro-lifers insist, is not really tantamount to murder, or it is tantamount to murdering innocent children, and those who are willing to risk all to prevent this atrocity are justified in their resort to violence.

I really don't like any of these alternatives myself and would welcome insight from our readers, particularly those who consider themselves pro-life. What do you think? Should all pro-lifers embrace an absolute pacifism? Should they back off from their claim that a late-term fetus is ontologically and morally indistinguishable from a new-born? Or should pro-lifers acknowledge that though violence may not be a prudent tactic in the struggle to end the abortion regime in this country, it is nevertheless neither an immoral nor evil one?

Blaise Pascal advised us that our first moral obligation is to think clearly. There are no issues concerning which it is more important that we fulfill that obligation than those issues dealing with human life.

RLC

Re: John Calvin's Theological Legacy

Almost three years ago I did a post on Calvinist theology and invited comments. A reader recently came across the post and chose to respond. His thoughtful email can be found on our Feedback page.

RLC

Pick the Right Fight

In the last couple of days several conservative talk show personalities have been engaging in much hand-wringing over President Obama's recent statement that:

"... if you actually took the number of Muslim Americans, we'd be one of the largest Muslim countries in the world."

It's time for those who are outraged by this to calm down. It's clear, to me at least, that what Obama was saying is that the United States has a Muslim population greater than that of most Muslim nations, just as our Jewish population is roughly equal to that of Israel. This should not be regarded as an incendiary claim. As it happens, like a lot of what the President says, this assertion is factually inaccurate (We have a Muslim population that ranks about 35th in the world), but it's not nefarious. He wasn't, as critics like Sean Hannity are alleging, proclaiming that we're a "Muslim nation," and for them to make an issue of this makes them look silly.

Conservatives only erode their credibility when they insist on trying to put the worst possible construction on their opponents' words. It makes them look petty and partisan and costs us a fair hearing when larger matters are at stake.

One such larger matter is raised by the words of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor:

"I would hope that a wise Latina woman, with the richness of her experiences, would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."

Here criticism is completely warranted. This is a claim she has made on more than one occasion, and it clearly reveals a mindset that's simply unacceptable in a Supreme Court justice. As many have pointed out, if these words had been uttered by a white male nominee he would have been forced to withdraw within hours of the words having come to light.

To suggest that because I am of a particular gender and ethnic heritage I will do a better job of interpreting the Constitution and dispensing justice than someone who is of a different gender and ethnicity is as clear an example of sexist, racist bigotry as one can expect to find outside the meeting halls of, say, the Aryan Nation.

No one who thinks she's better qualified than others to judge the law because she's an Hispanic female should be seated on the Supreme Court, and her appointment tells us much, not only about her, but also about the man who nominated her.

RLC

Senator DeMint and GOP Corporatism

Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina heads the Senate Steering Committee, made up of the Senate's most conservative Republicans, and is a member of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee. In a fine essay in the Washington Times he has some excellent advice for his party. The short version: Get out of bed with the corporate elites.

DeMint puts his finger on a festering problem in the GOP - they've abandoned their conservative principles in order to appease the corporate power-brokers. Here's part of what he writes:

Earlier this month, the United States Chamber of Commerce handed out its annual "Spirit of Enterprise" awards to those members of Congress who voted with the Chamber 70 percent of the time on its most important legislative initiatives of 2008. The only four Republican senators who did not receive the award were Jon Kyl, Jeff Sessions, Jim Inhofe and me - four of the most conservative members of the Senate.

What were the conservative offenses? We opposed the failed bailouts and stimulus. Which explains why many liberal Democrats scored higher, including Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The Republican who scored lowest of all - that is, the Republican lawmaker supposedly least aligned with the nation's business community - was Ron Paul, a strong constitutionalist famous for his strict adherence to a free-enterprise libertarian philosophy.

There is, in these facts, an important insight into the current unpopularity of the Republican Party. In an era of corporate welfare - which is lately taking on the characteristics of 1930s-style corporatism itself - the interests of big business are veering away from the interests of economic freedom and toward the interests of big government. Many Republicans in the past decade have followed a similar course, and the party - and our country - have paid dearly for the wrong turn.

Republicans were not a party of economic elites as much as they were a party of economic freedom. They represented a clear, philosophical contrast to the watered-down socialism of the Democrats. Even when Republicans fell short on their promises of limited government, Americans believed the promises to be sincere nonetheless.

Where Mr. Reagan fought to deregulate in the interests of industry competition, many recent Republican leaders have sought to regulate in the interests of industry leaders. That is why the lobbying industry has grown so successful in recent years: For the first time, both parties have become receptive to special interest pleadings.

Republicans shouldn't be the party of business any more than they should be the party of labor - we're supposed to be the party of freedom. We should get out of the business of picking winners and losers in the marketplace. We should not care who wins in fair fights between Microsoft and Apple, between CitiGroup and community banks, or between Home Depot and mom-and-pop hardware stores. All we should demand is a fair fight.

It is none of the government's business - let alone the Republican Party's - whether banks make or deny risky loans, but only that we ensure lenders and borrowers bear the consequences of their own decisions.

Republicans will succeed again when we realize our true allegiance is not to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, but to free markets, free people and freedom itself.

There's more good stuff from DeMint at the link, and his point is well taken. Too many corporate CEOs masquerade as economic free-marketeers, but they're really not. They're corporatists who welcome all sorts of government intervention into the marketplace because, among other reasons, those interventions make it harder for pesky smaller companies to compete, leaving the market as the exclusive grazing grounds of the wealthy giants. So far from being appalled at the idea of a marriage between business and government, the very relationship that Mussolini contrived in Italy and the Nazis duplicated in Germany, too many Republican politicians think that such an illicit union can only make the engines of commerce thrum with greater resonance, and they're only too happy to facilitate it.

It's, in fact, a symptom of what's wrong with the Republican party and why they're losing elections. They're simply indistinguishable from liberal Democrats.

RLC

So Long, Ben

Fed chairman Ben Bernanke told congress yesterday that large U.S. budget deficits threaten financial stability and the government can't continue indefinitely to borrow at the current rate to finance the shortfall. He added that:

"Unless we demonstrate a strong commitment to fiscal sustainability in the longer term, we will have neither financial stability nor healthy economic growth. Maintaining the confidence of the financial markets requires that we, as a nation, begin planning now for the restoration of fiscal balance."

The Bloomberg report goes on to say that:

Bernanke's comments signal that the central bank sees risks of a relapse into financial turmoil even as credit markets show signs of stability. He said the Fed won't finance government spending over the long term, while warning that the financial industry remains under stress and the credit crunch continues to limit spending.

We have to wonder why congress and the White House are insisting on driving this financial train over the precipice. Surely, they all know what Bernanke and anyone else who has a bank account knows - you can't keep spending money you don't have, running up debts you have no way of paying off.

The article went on to offer some insight into how we're going to pay off Obama's shopping spree:

The budget deficit this year is projected to reach $1.85 trillion, equivalent to 13 percent of the nation's economy, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

"Either cuts in spending or increases in taxes will be necessary to stabilize the fiscal situation," Bernanke said in response to a question. "The Federal Reserve will not monetize the debt."

If Bernanke's telling the truth then the Fed will refuse to just print money to pay off Obama's debts. The bad news, however, is that the only other way to pay them off will be to raise taxes. A lot. In other words, if you think your paycheck is too fat now, just wait. It's about to go on a very severe diet.

Look, too, for the administration to answer Bernanke's impertinence by replacing him at the Fed with someone more compliant and less responsible.

RLC

Liberty U. Update

A couple of weeks ago I commented on my vacillation over Liberty University's decision to derecognize the student Democratic club. I defended the University's right as a private institution with a Christian mission to sponsor only those organizations which are compatible with that mission, but I also wondered if their decision to exercise that right was a little bit at odds with the name of the university. Since that post, which also ran in the local newspaper, some details have emerged that place Liberty's decision in a somewhat more favorable light than did the article upon which I based my original post.

For example, a pair of op-eds appear on the Liberty website that offer some important clarification. The first says, in part, this:

A number of media sources recently reported that Liberty University banned Democrats from meeting on campus. One headline erroneously read: "Democrats at Liberty University forced to meet off campus." Apparently many journalists do not let the facts get in the way of a juicy, agenda-driven story.

The story was spun out of control from the beginning, when Terry McAuliffe, a Democratic gubernatorial candidate for Virginia, called a telephone press conference to talk about the College Democrat club formed by students of Liberty University. The presses began to buzz. Much of what went to print was wrong. Most journalists were interested in scooping their competitors rather than seeking the truth. Even when some reporters learned the facts, they could not bring themselves to correct their stories because the fanciful reports were just too tempting.

The University has not banned Democrats from campus. Nor has the Democrat club been banned from meeting. And, never has the University or its officials said that a person cannot be a Christian and a Democrat. Sorry for those who want to run with these titillating sound bites, but these are the facts.

The students who formed the Democrat club last October are good students. They are pro-life and believe in traditional marriage. They can continue to meet on campus. The only thing that has changed came about as part of a University-wide review of all student organizations for official recognition status. Official recognition carries with it the benefit of using the University name and funds. While this group will not be an officially recognized club, it may still meet on campus.

While the students in the college Democrat club are pro-life and support traditional marriage, the constitution of the club pledged support to advance the Democratic platform and candidates. The 2008 Democratic platform has taken an extreme turn to the left on social issues. For the first time it supports federal funding of abortion and repeal of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, a law passed overwhelmingly by a bi-partisan Congress and signed by President Bill Clinton. Liberty University will not lend its name or financial support to undermine marriage or to promote abortion.

In my original post I made it clear that I thought this was precisely the sort of position that the school was duty-bound to adopt.

There's more significant information in the second article.

Having read these two pieces and having heard a report on NPR the other day on this matter, I feel a little chagrined at my original post. I also have had reinforced a lesson I thought I already knew pretty well - just because a story's on the evening news doesn't mean it's accurate.

Thanks to John for calling my attention to the above articles.

RLC

<i>Liberal Fascism</i> in Paperback

One of the most important books of the decade, in my opinion, was released in paperback yesterday, and now you have no excuse for not purchasing a copy. The book is Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism, an exploration of how ideological fascism was spawned by twentieth century progressivism/liberalism.

Those of a certain age will agree that it has been taken for granted for much of the twentieth century that Italian and German fascism were phenomena of the ideological right. It's not uncommon to hear leftists trying to stick the label of "fascist" on their conservative opponents. What these name-callers don't realize, and what even many conservatives don't realize, is that fascism is actually a child of leftist ideology and that the fascist temptation is alive and well today in America - not the fascism of the Nazis, to be sure, but what Goldberg refers to as happy-faced fascism.

In honor of the occasion of the paperback release National Review has an interview with Goldberg in which he talks about the book's reception and the impact it's having on campuses across the country. It's pretty interesting and serves as a good introduction to the ideas he writes about in the book.

RLC

I, Jerk

We all have at one time or another jumped to conclusions about something and wound up regretting it. That's why it's always wise, no doubt, to hold one's fire until sure of the target. Andrew Beitbart recounts a recent incident in which he had this lesson borne home to him in stinging fashion. Breitbart's telling of the tale is pretty funny and contains a good admonition for all of us. Give it a read.

RLC

Socialist Prophet

These words by an American socialist and six time candidate for president certainly seem prescient:

"The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism. But under the name of 'liberalism' they will adopt every fragment of the Socialist program, until one day America will be a Socialist nation, without knowing how it happened." Norman Thomas (d.1968).

In the last three months the Obama administration has taken over five banks, the largest insurance company in the world, and two automobile companies. It has borrowed in those three months more money than has been borrowed in total over the last thirty years. It has amassed a debt that is greater than the cumulative American debt since our founding. It has imposed a burden on every American household of almost $540,000.

We are well on our way to becoming the socialist nation Thomas foresaw. It's hard to envision how, unless the massive spending to which the Democrats have committed us is reversed by the elections of 2010, we can avoid hyperinflation, massive taxation, and the loss of our status as the most prosperous nation on earth.

Perhaps I'm just missing something that others see, but if not our children will pay an awful price for the political choice the nation made in November of 2008.

RLC

Perfection in Biology

Anika Smith at Evolution News and Notes links us to a surprising post. According to the Biologic Institute, physicists studying biological systems are assessing them to be perfect or near perfect in their design:

When we think of simple, elegant, unifying principles in science, we think of physics. It's not surprising then that physicists who examine living systems are looking for principles of this kind.

And it seems they have found one. Simply stated, it is that biological processes tend to be optimal in cases where this can be tested. Life's complexity can make it hard to pinpoint what "optimal" means, but sometimes physical limits provide a crisp definition. Because these limits cannot possibly be exceeded, they serve as an objective standard of perfection. Interestingly, in cases where it is clearly beneficial to edge right up to this standard, that's exactly what life seems to do.

For decades enzymologists have recognized that certain enzymes are catalytically perfect - meaning that they process reactant molecules as rapidly as these molecules can reach them by diffusion. That hinted at a principle of physical perfection in biology, but no one anticipated its breadth until recently. According to Princeton physicist William Bialek, one of the leading proponents of the emerging principle,...."While it is popular to view biological mechanisms as an historical record of evolutionary and developmental compromises, these observations on functional performance point toward a very different view of life as having selected a set of near optimal mechanisms for its most crucial tasks."

In other words, Bialek is saying that the optimal nature of the systems these physicists have looked at cannot plausibly be explained in terms of chance mutation and natural selection. Thus, the people at the Biologic Institute wonder, doesn't this mean that the evidence of perfection coheres better with a Design view of nature than it does with the Darwinian view?

It must be frustrating being a Darwinian. Here you have this beautiful, comprehensive theory that explains so much but which just refuses to conform to so many empirical facts.

RLC

Worldviews

Dennis Prager's column, to which we alluded the other day, got me to thinking about the matter of worldviews or what post-moderns like to call "metanarratives."

Worldviews are inescapable. Everyone has one. It's a lens through which we view the world, the set of assumptions we hold, consciously or unconciously, that help us to make sense of the world.

Any worldview offers answers to the following questions:

1. Who am I?
   
2. Why are we here?
   
3. Where am I going?
   
4. What's wrong with the world
   

Different worldviews offer different answers to those questions, but consider the answers given by just two of the major worldviews on offer in the U.S. - Judeo-Christianity and atheistic materialism.

In the Judeo-Christian view the above questions are answered as follows:

1. A child of the Creator of the universe.
   
2. Because God wanted to love us.
   
3. To be with Him forever.
   
4. It spurns God's love.
   

Those answers have been the well-springs of human creativity and discovery for two thousand years. Belief in those answers leads to a high view of humanity, it's what gives men reason to believe they have dignity and, consequently, human rights. The anticipation of eternity is a source of hope, meaning and happiness in life.

By contrast consider the answers that the atheistic materialist must give to those same questions:

1. A chance product of blind, impersonal forces.
   
2. No reason.
   
3. Nowhere.
   
4. Nothing.
   

Could anything be more sterile, more nihilistic, more likely to sap the life and vitality out of a culture than a view of things that declares that there's no hope, no real truth, no meaning, no dignity to being human? A culture which rejects the Christian worldview in order to embrace this view of life is a culture that will soon be empty and effete.

Ideas have consequences. One may think that the only difference between the atheist and the Christian is that the atheist gets to sleep in on Sunday morning, but one would be profoundly wrong. The difference between the two worldviews ripples across every aspect of life. It's the difference between hope and despair, meaning and pointlessness, values and worthlessness, dignity and degradation.

The question that puzzles me the most about atheism is not why people believe it, although that is indeed a puzzle, but rather why people would want it to be true. Why, for example, would Christopher Hitchens say that he would find it very depressing if he should discover that God really did exist? Why would philosopher Thomas Nagel write that he doesn't want the universe to be the kind of place where God existed?

These men are essentially saying that they would be depressed and disappointed if the universe were in fact a place where life had meaning, where there was a hope for life beyond the grave, where justice will ultimately prevail, where morality is based on something far more substantial than subjective feelings, where humans have dignity and worth and thus rights, where love is something more than a chemical reaction in the brain, where reason can be trusted, where there is a reason for our existence, and on and on.

To hope that God doesn't exist is to hope that none of this is the case because surely none of it can be the case if God is not there.

RLC

Stand-Up Guy

Ah, the hypoc..., er, irony. President Obama said in a speech on the Sotomayor nomination last Saturday that...

he expects "rigorous evaluation" of his nominee but added: "What I hope is that we can avoid the political posturing and ideological brinksmanship that has bogged down this process, and Congress, in the past."

He derided "some in Washington who are attempting to draw old battle lines and playing the usual political games, pulling a few comments out of context to paint a distorted picture of Judge Sotomayor's record."

Yes, let's have none of the crass political gamesmanship that characterized the Roberts nomination whom Obama voted, after judging him qualified, not to confirm because he disagreed with Roberts' judicial philosophy; or the Alito nomination whom Senator Obama not only voted against for the same reasons but whose confirmation he also voted to filibuster (while claiming to oppose the filibuster).

When it's his nominee up for confirmation he hopes we can avoid all that and disparages anyone who would engage in the same behavior he engaged in when the candidate was a bush nominee.

What a stand-up guy.

RLC

The Death of George Tiller

By now you've probably heard that one of the most infamous abortionists in the country was shot dead Sunday morning as he entered church:

George Tiller, the Wichita doctor who became a national lightning rod in the debate over abortion, was shot to death this morning as he walked into church services. Tiller, 67, was shot just after 10 a.m. at Reformation Lutheran Church at 7601 E. 13th, where he was a member of the congregation.

I myself am a Lutheran and was surprised that this man was a member of the Lutheran Church whose official position on abortion is pro-life and which is certainly opposed to the sorts of late-term abortions Tiller performed. I would have thought that his grisly profession would have put him at odds with the church, but being at odds with the Lutheran church is apparently a very difficult feat to accomplish.

At any rate, his murder raises a very perplexing ethical question:

If one is convinced that late-term abortions are tantamount to murder how does one, assuming one is not a pacifist, condemn the killing of the murderer?

It doesn't help us to think clearly about this matter when people on both sides of the issue are saying foolish things.

Operation Rescue spokespersons, for example, are saying (see link) that they "denounce vigilantism and the cowardly act that took place this morning," but an act whereby the perpetrator knowingly and willingly sacrifices his future is hardly cowardly. Just as with the 9/11 hijackers who President Bush called cowards, the act may be evil, but it's surely not cowardly.

President Obama stated that violence never brings about social change: "However profound our differences as Americans over difficult issues such as abortion, they cannot be resolved by heinous acts of violence."

This, sadly, is simply not true. It's arguable that we never would have achieved the progress in civil rights that was made in the latter half of the twentieth century were it not for the violent upheavals in our cities in the late sixties and early seventies. Martin Luther King was a great man and he accomplished much, but part of the reason for his success was that his non-violence was seen as a desirable alternative to the urban riots occurring across the land.

For that matter it took a terribly violent war to end slavery in this country. It's a deeply troubling fact about human beings that too often violence works. Indeed, too often it's the only thing that works.

So, here's the fundamental question that each thinking American must settle: Did George Tiller's killer do something evil? Presumably he acted on the assumption that a late-term abortion is the equivalent of the murder for pay of a child and that the legal authorities would do nothing to stop it. If that assumption is wrong then what the killer did was indeed evil and he should, in my opinion, receive the death penalty for premeditated murder.

If, however, the assumption is correct then it's hard to say (again, unless one is a pacifist) exactly how what he did was morally different than, say, what German officers tried to do when they, and Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, tried to kill Adolf Hitler.

Everything hinges on whether this assumption is right or wrong, and each person who reflects upon this tragic event will have to come to his or her own conclusions about that.

Pro-Life groups are understandably deploring the act, arguing, rightly, that it gives their cause a black eye, but this is a tactical objection not a moral one. Were it not for the negative press that the pro-life position is going to suffer because of Tiller's death, one gets the feeling that their objections to it would be less strenuous.

Pro-choice groups are outraged as well, of course, but these folks need to be asked whether the late-term children who died in Tiller's clinic were, in fact, being murdered. If the answer is yes, then they should be asked why they're outraged that their murderer has been killed. If the answer is no, as no doubt it would be, then the pro-choice folks need to be asked to explain why, if it's okay to kill unborn babies that are near their delivery date, it's not okay to kill them after their delivery.

As bioethicist Peter Singer and even the ACLU have said, there's no morally significant difference between a child a couple of days before it's born and a child a couple of days after it's born. If killing the former is not murder why should killing the latter be considered murder? And if killing the infant is indeed murder then so must be the killing of the about-to-be-born child.

Anyway, the Tiller killing is a much more complex ethical issue than some on both sides of the abortion debate would have us believe.

RLC

With Small Men

Dennis Prager challenges us to name a single contemporary European who has achieved greatness in some field other than politics, sports, or popular entertainment. The challenge may not be quite fair because greatness often takes a generation of two to become apparent, but Prager's point is that Europe has declined to the point where it's no longer turning out men and women of high accomplishment:

Even well-informed people who love art and literature and who follow developments in science and medicine would be hard pressed to come up with many, more often any, names. In terms of greatness in literature, art, music, the sciences, philosophy, and medical breakthroughs, Europe has virtually fallen off the radar screen.

What has happened is that Europe, with a few exceptions, has lost its creativity, intellectual excitement, industrial innovation, and risk taking. Europe's creative energy has been sapped. There are many lovely Europeans; but there aren't many creative, dynamic, or entrepreneurial ones.

So, if this is true to what shall we attribute the blame for this tragic state of affairs? Prager gives us an answer:

There are two reasons: secularism and socialism (aka the welfare state). Either one alone sucks much of the life out of society. Together they are likely to be lethal.

His argument in defense of this claim deserves to be presented in full:

Even if one holds that religion is false, only a dogmatic and irrational secularist can deny that it was religion in the Western world that provided the impetus or backdrop for nearly all the uniquely great art, literature, economic and even scientific advances of the West. Even the irreligious were forced to deal with religious themes -- if only in expressing rebellion against them.

Religion in the West raised all the great questions of life: Why are we here? Is there purpose to existence? Were we deliberately made? Is there something after death? Are morals objective or only a matter of personal preference? Do rights come from the state or from the Creator?

And religion gave positive responses: We are here because a benevolent God made us. There is, therefore, ultimate purpose to life. Good and evil are real. Death is not the end. Human rights are inherent since they come from God. And so on.

Secularism drains all this out of life. No one made us. Death is the end. We are no more significant than any other creatures. We are all the results of mere coincidence. Make up your own meaning (existentialism) because life has none. Good and evil are merely euphemisms for "I like" and "I dislike."

Thus, when religion dies in a country, creativity wanes. For example, while Christian Russia was backward in many ways, it still gave the world Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Tolstoy, and Tchaikovsky. Once Christianity was suppressed, if not killed, in Russia, that country became a cultural wasteland (with a few exceptions like Shostakovich and Solzhenitsyn, the latter a devout Christian). It is true that this was largely the result of Lenin, Stalin and Communism; but even where Communism did not take over, the decline of religion in Europe meant a decline in human creativity -- except for nihilistic and/or absurd isms, which have greatly increased.

As G. K. Chesterton noted at the end of the 19th century, when people stop believing in God they don't believe in nothing, they believe in anything. One not only thinks of the violent isms: Marxism, Marxism-Leninism, Fascism, Maoism, and Nazism, but of all the non-violent isms that have become substitute religions - e.g., feminism, environmentalism, and socialism.

The state sucks out creativity and dynamism just as much as secularism does. Why do anything for yourself when the state will do it for you? Why take care of others when the state will do it for you? Why have ambition when the state is there to ensure that few or no individuals are rewarded more than others?

America has been the center of energy and creativity in almost every area of life because it has remained far more religious than any other industrialized Western democracy and because it has rejected the welfare state social model.

Which is why so many are so worried about President Barack Obama and the Democratic Party's desire to transform -- in their apt wording -- America into a secular welfare state. The greatest engine of moral, religious, economic, scientific, and industrial dynamism is being starved of its fuel. The bigger the state, the smaller its people.

Indeed. I'm reminded by Prager's essay of the closing words of John Stuart Mill's On Liberty:

A State which dwarf's its men, in order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands -even for beneficial purposes - will find that with small men no great thing can really be accomplished.

RLC

Atheistic Ethics

David Harsanyi of the Denver Post writes an odd column explaining how he was driven by moral considerations to abandon his pro-choice views in favor of a pro-life ethic. This is all very well but the odd part is that he seems completely unaware that his new-found sense of moral obligation toward the unborn is completely incompatible with the first two sentences of his essay:

As an atheist and a secular kinda guy, I practice moral relativism regularly. Still, I've always struggled mightily with the ethics and politics of abortion.

This statement simply negates all that comes after. If Harsanyi is correct that there is no God, then there's simply no reason why anyone should think that abortion is wrong or that one has any obligation to respect human life. Harsanyi says, for example, that:

After a life of being pro-choice, I began to seriously ponder the question. I oppose the death penalty because there is a slim chance that an innocent person might be executed and I don't believe the state should have the authority to take a citizen's life. So don't I owe an nascent human life at least the same deference? Just in case?

Well, no, not if atheism is true, you don't. As Dostoyevsky put it, "If God is dead then everything is permitted." There are no obligations, no moral debts that we owe anyone. How could there be? What is it, precisely, that imposes the obligation that Harsanyi thinks he has to nascent human life?

What happens when we can use abortion to weed out the blind, mentally ill, the ugly, or any other "undesirable" human being?

What happens is that we go ahead and do it if we can get enough influential people to feel the same way we do. In a Godless world, might makes right. If a group of people have the power to practice the kind of eugenics Harsanyi's talking about here, there's no reason why they shouldn't do it.

Now, I happen to believe (as the civil libertarian and pro-life activist Nat Hentoff once noted) that the right to life and liberty is the foundation of a moral society.

Actually, the foundation of a moral society, indeed the foundation of the right to life and liberty, is the existence of God. Take that away and there are no rights and there's certainly no "moral society." This is not to say that one must believe in God to live by the values Harsanyi esteems. That's not the point at all. The point is that, given atheism, one can live by any values one chooses. The choice to live by this value rather than that is completely subjective and arbitrary. Harsanyi's preference for protecting the unborn is simply a matter of his own taste, like his preference for one flavor of ice cream rather than another. He could, were he inclined, support the murder of toddlers and it would not be any more or less wrong, in a moral sense, than his desire to protect them.

Charles Darwin writes in his autobiography that "One who does not believe in God or an afterlife can have for his rule of life ... only to follow those impulses and instincts which are the strongest and which seem to him to be the best." Darwin is correct in thinking that for the atheist morality is simply a matter of personal preference and subjectivity, but such thinking leads us to the edge of the abyss. If one man's impulses and instincts incline him to be a child molester and another's predispose him to be a great humanitarian what basis does Darwin, or Harsanyi, have for saying that one is any better, or worse, than the other?

RLC

<i>Patriots</i>

By now, some of our readers may have read Patriots: A Novel of Survival in the Coming Collapse by James W. Rawles...

Part novel, part survivalist-handbook, Patriots tells of a small group of friends facing every American's worst nightmare-the total collapse of society. The stock market plummets and hyperinflation cripples commerce and then a seemingly isolated financial crisis passes the tipping point when an unprepared government fails to act. Practically overnight, the fragile institutions of democracy fall apart and every American is forced to survive on their own.

Evading mobs of desperate, out-of-control citizens who have turned Chicago into a wasteland of looting and mayhem, this novel's protagonists make their way to a shared secure ranch in the wilds of northern Idaho. Here the survival-driven group fends off vicious attacks from the outside and eventually assists in restoring order to the country. The compelling, fast-paced action-adventure novel has readers jotting notes and referencing the book's impressive index for informative survivalist tips on everything from setting up a secure shelter to treating traumatic flesh wounds.

The primary message of the book is about being prepared to be self-sufficient should we find that some of the services we've come to expect and rely upon no longer are available like running water, electricity, fully stocked grocery shelves, law enforcement, etc. I found several interesting things about this book:

• It's a self-sufficiency manual wrapped inside a novel. So even if some threads of the story might seem to wander a bit, there's always an underlying educational "how-to" to be learned.


• The events that are unfolding in our economy as I write this have the potential to cause the very social collapse that Rawles describes in his story. Government administrations have ignored the Constitutional mandate for honest money for decades and have embraced Keynesian economics at their (and our) peril. The big banks have hijacked our government and the Administration does their bidding with little or no regard for the cost to the American citizen.


• There is a surprising turn of events toward the end that I just didn't see coming (you'll have to read the book to find out).


• Perhaps, most importantly, the book should motivate the reader to contemplate their degree of preparedness and what they would do should such a scenario unfold.

For those with confidence that such a disruption couldn't happen here in America, you only have to recall the breakdown of law and order, the killing, raping, and looting that took place in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. At least two observations may be made: First, it is ultimately the individual's responsibility to provide for their own security, protection, and welfare. It is not the job of the government and it obviously was a mistake for those who thought that it was. And second, if there was anything positive about Katrina, it's that it was localized to the Gulf area rather than being national in scope.

In the story, the incompetents running our country are held responsible for the unraveling of our social fabric but it could just as easily be caused by a terrorist attack or even a major sun spot or solar storm event. Rawles makes an interesting point when he says that our society's civility is only a thin veneer. Take away food and water for four days and it will be stripped away in an instant. If that happens, what are you going to do?

Check it out.

Latina Justice

Karl Rove maintains that both President Obama and the Republicans get something from the Supreme Court nomination of Sonia Sotomayor:

Mr. Obama said he wanted to replace Justice David Souter with someone who had "empathy" and who'd temper the court's decisions with a concern for the downtrodden, the powerless and the voiceless.

"Empathy" is the latest code word for liberal activism, for treating the Constitution as malleable clay to be kneaded and molded in whatever form justices want. It represents an expansive view of the judiciary in which courts create policy that couldn't pass the legislative branch or, if it did, would generate voter backlash.

There is a certain irony in a president who routinely praises America's commitment to "the rule of law" but who picks Supreme Court nominees for their readiness to discard the rule of law whenever emotion moves them.

Rove is correct to point out the irony. Liberal judicial philosophy is not about determining what the law says but about enacting into policy what they wish it said. A judge who rules on the basis of empathy is a judge who is derelict in her responsibility. An impartial judge should not allow personal feelings to obtrude into her interpretation of the law. If she does then she'll be showing a favoritism or bias toward one or the other of the parties who appear before her. That this is improper is the whole point of the symbol of justice as a blind-folded woman.

The Sotomayor nomination also provides Republicans with some advantages. They can stress their support for judges who strictly interpret the Constitution and apply the law as written. A majority of the public is with the GOP on opposing liberal activist judges. There is something in our political DNA that wants impartial umpires who apply the rules, regardless of who thereby wins or loses.

Mr. Obama understands the danger of heralding Judge Sotomayor as the liberal activist she is, so his spinners are intent on selling her as a moderate. The problem is that she described herself as liberal before becoming a judge, and fair-minded observers find her on the left of the federal bench.

Republicans also get a nominee who likes showing off and whose YouTube moments and Google insights cause people to wince. There are likely to be more revelations like Stuart Taylor's find last Saturday of this Sotomayor gem in a speech at Berkeley: "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion [as a judge] than a white male who hasn't lived that life." Invert the placement of "Latina woman" and "white male" and have a conservative say it: A career would be finished.

Few revelations in recent weeks show the media's total abandonment of their traditional role as neutral watchdogs of the political power players than the revelation to which Rove refers. If, mutatis mutandis, this fatuous remark had been made by a white male, especially a conservative white male, he'd have been keel-hauled by the media and the left. The President would have yanked his nomination within hours, but the same comment from a Hispanic woman elicits nothing more from our media guardians than a few tut-tuts before they commence stomping upon any hapless Republican who might suggest that just maybe Ms Sotomayor is a bit of a bigot.

The media has also quickly adopted the story line that Republicans will damage themselves with Hispanics if they oppose Ms. Sotomayor. But what damage did Democrats suffer when they viciously attacked Miguel Estrada's nomination by President George W. Bush to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, the nation's second-highest court? New York Sen. Chuck Schumer was particularly ugly, labeling Mr. Estrada a right-wing "stealth missile" who was "way out of the mainstream" and openly questioning Mr. Estrada's truthfulness.

Democrats can get away with this because both Hispanics and African-Americans, like drug-dependent women living with abusive boyfriends, are perfectly willing to suffer the indignities heaped upon them by the party overseers as long as those "boyfriends" keep promising them more "candy."

Nonetheless, Republicans must treat her with far more care than Democrats treated John Roberts or Samuel Alito and avoid angry speeches like Sen. Ted Kennedy's tirade against Robert Bork. The GOP must make measured arguments against her views and philosophy, using her own words and actions.

The Ricci case is an example: Whites were denied fire department promotions because of a clear racial quota. Ms. Sotomayor's refusal to hear their arguments won her stinging criticism from fellow Second Court of Appeals judge Jos� Cabranes, a respected Clinton appointee.

The Ricci case is right now before the Supreme Court and knowledgeable observers predict that it's going to be overturned. Perhaps Ms Sotomayor should have had a little empathy for the firefighters in this case who worked very hard (overcoming dyslexia in the case of Mr. Ricci) to prepare for the test and pass it. According to NPR:

Frank Ricci, the lead plaintiff in this case, is not a naturally gifted test taker. In an affidavit, he said he has dyslexia, that he studied as much as 13 hours a day for the firefighter promotional exam, that he paid someone to read the textbooks onto audiotapes, prepared flashcards and worked with a study group. And he passed.

Ms Sotomayor disdained the test results because all the people who passed were white (one Hispanic). Her empathy evidently does not extend to such as Mr. Ricci who, due to an unfortunate accident of birth, is a white male.

Anyway, unless the Republicans block her in committee she'll be the next Supreme Court Justice, and she'll have ample opportunity to demonstrate how a Latina judge is better situated than those doofus white men on the Court to interpret the Constitution. I can't wait.

RLC

The Crucial Factor

Noemie Emery cuts to the heart of the debate over torture with a fine essay at the Washington Examiner. She notes that in all the sturm und drang the most crucial element in determining the nature of the act is often omitted - intent. Whether an act is evil or not depends not merely upon the act itself, as so many of President Bush's critics seem to assume, but mostly on the reasons why it is done.

This is such an elementary ethical principle that one is taken aback by the realization that it still needs to be articulated. Here's some of Emery's column:

The key to the way we judge the morals of violence is that, while the impact on the victim always is similar, force used offensively and force used defensively have always been two different things. Shoot someone, or failing that, fracture his skull with a fire tong, and you inflict pain, harm, and possibly death on your victim, but the reason you do it determines your fate.

Stand at the top of a hill with a rifle, and spray shots at the people beneath you?

If it's campus, you're a monster, and serial killer. If it's a battlefield, and you're facing an enemy onslaught, you'll get a medal, if you survive. Charge at someone with bayonet fixed and pointed? If you're an Axis soldier impaling civilians, it's an act of the utmost depravity. If you're a Union soldier at Little Round Top at Gettysburg, fighting off the oncoming Confederate army, you're a national hero, saving the last, best hope of mankind.

In the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln was offered the use of a bullet that exploded inside the body, doing the victim incredible damage. Lincoln approved it: It would shorten the war. For the same reason - to shorten the war - President Harry S Truman incinerated not one but two Japanese cities. Neither man is considered a war criminal (except by Bill Maher), as they took some lives to save more lives, specifically those entrusted to them, and to preserve a political system less unjust than the ones they were fighting.

Their guilt is absolved by their intent, which was to save lives, and a more benign social order. Yet liberals, who apply the motive defense in trying to exonerate perpetrators of criminal violence - the accused was stressed out, he ate Twinkies, he was deprived as a child, etc. - seem strangely unwilling to extend this to those who made use of 'harsh' tactics to forestall further attacks after thousands had perished in the most torturous manner on Sept. 11, 2001.

"The horror of Sept. 11 resides in me like a dormant pathogen," writes Richard Cohen, shortly before comparing George Bush to a Nazi for trying to make sure such a horror would never recur. "Here, once again, were the squalid efforts of legal toadies to justify the unjustifiable," as he informs us. "I know it is offensive to compare almost anyone or anything to the Nazis, but the Bush-era memos struck me as echoes from the past."

But the Nazis' intent was to invade countries and subjugate and degrade whole populations, set up death camps where as many as 11 million civilians would perish, and orchestrate the elimination through starvation and torture of the ethnically impure from the universe. The intent of Bush and his people in water-boarding three hard core terrorists was to prevent another 9/11, that was sprung on his unaware and his innocent country.

Cohen's characterization is at best simplistic and reveals an inchoate, underdeveloped moral understanding. His argument, if one might wish to characterize it as such, is that since the Nazis inflicted suffering, and the Bush people inflicted suffering, therefore the Bush people are Nazis. It's pretty embarrassing, but there you have it, and Cohen isn't the only one to comment on this issue whose logical abilities are similarly attenuated.

The crucial question that needs to be asked to determine whether the Bush administration acted in a morally reasonable way is not so much what did they do, but rather why did they do it, and this question seems to concern very few of Bush's critics.

RLC

Voter Apathy

It turns out that large numbers of people who voted for President Obama in November disagree with much of his program and policies. Given that anyone who was paying attention last Fall had to know what Obama would do once he was in office, we must conclude that these people either weren't paying attention or they voted for Obama notwithstanding their disagreements with his plans for the country. The first is irresponsible, the second is irrational.

With an electorate like this out there it's no wonder Democrats want to make it easier to vote.

RLC