Interesting Disparity

The Pew Research Center recently conducted a study of scientists and their religious beliefs. Some of the results were expected and some were a bit surprising.

Whereas most Americans (83%) profess a belief in God, just a third (33%) of scientists say they hold such a belief. There's nothing unexpected there since those figures have been around for a while. What was a surprise, though, was the finding that younger scientists are substantially more likely than their older counterparts to say they believe in God. Forty two percent of scientists (or students studying to be scientists) between the ages of 18 and 34 claim to be theists, but only 28% of those over 65 make that claim.

I don't know what this portends for the future of theistic belief among the nation's scholars, but I would like to see if these numbers are similar across other disciplines. Assuming these survey results accurately reflect the state of theistic belief among contemporary scientists, I'd also like to know what's happening in the culture that's responsible for the disparity between the younger generation of scientists and their elders. Any ideas?

RLC

Does She Or Doesn't She?

Does Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi appreciate disrupters or does she not? I guess it all depends on who's doing the disrupting (via Hot Air):

Since Speaker Pelosi also seemed shocked that someone was sporting a swastika at one recent town meeting, although this was never confirmed, I'll bet she was apoplectic at the demonstrations against President Bush that took place throughout his presidency in her very own district. I seem to remember, in fact, her fiery speeches denouncing the protestors whose photos appear here. I think I recall her outrage that people in her district would resort to such despicable tactics and ugly rhetoric. Or maybe I'm just hallucinating from being up too late and awake too long.

RLC

Why No Supermarkets?

An article at CNN raises disturbing questions. The piece addresses the predicament those who live in Detroit face as unemployment in the state continues to rise and fewer families have the money to buy food. It goes on to talk about how social agencies and volunteers from churches and parachurch organizations are working to meet the need (I didn't see any mention of the help being offered by the local secular humanist society, but, I hasten to add, that doesn't mean they're not doing anything.).

Anyway, the disturbing part was this paragraph:

"In this recession-racked town, the lack of food is a serious problem. It's a theme that comes up again and again in conversations in Detroit. There isn't a single major chain supermarket in the city, forcing residents to buy food from corner stores. Often less healthy and more expensive food."

Now why is that? Why would supermarket chains not exploit a market niche that they exploit in every other city and suburb in the nation? I'm sure someone will say that it must be racism, but of course that's absurd. Why Detroit and not Chicago? Or is the lack of supermarkets in cities more widespread than the article indicates?

Whatever the case, the urban poor are caught in a vicious cycle. They are poor, sometimes, because they can't find jobs. Because they're impoverished their communities are subject to all the dysfunctions often associated with poverty, including lousy education, crime, and feral fatherhood. Because their communities are ridden with crime and populated by uneducated, unskilled workers, businesses don't want to operate there. Because businesses don't locate in poor neighborhoods, the residents can't find employment and thus are poor.

What's the solution? The strongest predictor that a person will have weak education, turn to crime, and be economically poor is not having a father. When urban communities realize that fatherlessness is a blight on their neighborhoods and a curse upon their children perhaps pressure will mount on women to hold off having children until they're married and men will realize that if they want what women can give they have to be committed to a monogamous relationship. Until that day comes we'll not solve the problem of poverty in America no matter how much the government redistributes the nation's wealth.

RLC

New National Park

Some people think I never say anything nice about liberalism, but that's not true. I might not be able to remember when the last time was that I said anything nice about it, but I'm sure I did. One area, for instance, in which I think liberalism has it all over conservatism (although it really shouldn't be this way), is, ironically enough, the matter of conservation. I applaud President Clinton for preserving vast tracts of the southwest, President Bush for preserving vast tracts of ocean habitat, and now Senator Carper and Vice-President Biden for working to preserve Delaware's historical and natural heritage in a new National Park:

It's been a long time since tiny Delaware distinguished itself as it did way back in 1787 when state fathers huddling at Dover's Golden Fleece Tavern became the first to ratify the Constitution. Now, more than two centuries later, Delaware is back as the state of firsts. And not just because Joe Biden is the first vice president from Delaware. The mid-Atlantic coastal state could finally get its first national park, a goal championed by Biden in the 1990s. And he's now in a position to make sure it happens.

Delaware doesn't have what most national parks do-vast acreage. But at the suggestion of First State citizens, Interior is looking at a unique model that would connect historical and cultural landmarks in a collection of spoke and hub patterns, like a bike. "A hub with spokes leading to maybe the Golden Fleece Tavern where the Constitution was first debated and ratified in 1787," suggests Senator Tom Carper. "Or the spokes could lead to stops on the Underground Railroad."

Legislation is required, but with the support of Biden and [Secretary of the Interior] Salazar, says Carper, "I like our chances."

Details of the Park's unique design can be read here. Kudos to both Joe Biden and Tom Carper for their contribution to this effort. Why is it that more conservatives aren't interested in conserving our natural and historical treasures?

RLC

Materialism Isn't Science

There's a piece, in the LA Times, written by atheists, taking their fellow atheists to task for trying so strenuously to persuade people that science and religious belief are not only incompatible, but that science has shown religious belief to be empty:

This fall, evolutionary biologist and bestselling author Richard Dawkins -- most recently famous for his public exhortation to atheism, "The God Delusion" -- returns to writing about science. Dawkins' new book, "The Greatest Show on Earth," will inform and regale us with the stunning "evidence for evolution," as the subtitle says. It will surely be an impressive display, as Dawkins excels at making the case for evolution. But it's also fair to ask: Who in the United States will read Dawkins' new book (or ones like it) and have any sort of epiphany, or change his or her mind?

Surely not those who need it most: America's anti-evolutionists. These religious adherents often view science itself as an assault on their faith and doggedly refuse to accept evolution because they fear it so utterly denies God that it will lead them, and their children, straight into a world of moral depravity and meaninglessness. An in-your-face atheist touting evolution, like Dawkins, is probably the last messenger they'll heed.

Dawkins will, however, be championed by many scientists, especially the most secular -- those who were galvanized by "The God Delusion" and inspired by it to take a newly confrontational approach toward America's religious majority. They will help ensure Dawkins another literary success. It's certainly valuable to have the case for evolution articulated prominently and often, but what this unending polarization around evolution and religion does for the standing of science in the U.S. is a very different matter.

It often appears as though Dawkins and his followers -- often dubbed the New Atheists, though some object to the term -- want to change the country's science community in a lasting way. They'd have scientists and defenders of reason be far more confrontational and blunt: No more coddling the faithful, no tolerating nonscientific beliefs. Scientific institutions, in their view, ought to stop putting out politic PR about science and religion being compatible.

What people like Dawkins are doing is actually intellectually dishonest for at least two reasons. First, in The God Delusion Dawkins argues that the proposition God exists is a scientifically testable claim. If so, how can he now argue that propositions about ultimate reality are not scientific? Secondly, some of the "New Atheists" confuse people about what science is by conflating the practice of science with a metaphysical position held by many atheistic scientists called materialism.

Science is a search for truth that relies on testing theories about the physical world by observing how well those hypothetical explanations conform to the empirical evidence. As such, science, ironically perhaps, can provide us reasons for thinking that the universe is in fact the product of a transcendent mind, but no matter how much we learn about the cosmos, science will never be able to conclude that God does not, or even probably does not, exist. Once a scientist starts making claims like that he's no longer doing science, he's doing metaphysics.

Scientists, qua scientists, simply cannot say that there is no Creator or that miracles are impossible. On questions like these scientists must follow Wittgenstein's dictum that "whereof we cannot speak, thereof we should be silent." Scientists assume in their day to day work that physical phenomena will have physical, natural, proximal causes just as everyone assumes that the events that occur in their everyday lives have causes that could, in principle, at least, be observed. This is called methodological or procedural materialism. It's simply the assumption that, in general, things in our experience can be expected to follow physical laws. This procedural assumption has nothing to do with whether God exists or whether metaphysical materialism is true.

Atheists, however, are metaphysical materialists. That is, they believe that matter is the fundamental reality and that nature is all there is (also called naturalism). There is no room in their worldview for a supernatural reality. Now both materialism and naturalism are incompatible with theism, so what people like Dawkins do, is conflate metaphysical materialism with methodological materialism so that the unwary reader doesn't realize that a bait and switch has occurred. In other words, they piggyback their metaphysical materialism onto science and argue that because science has shown that many phenomena have material proximal explanations that therefore there are no immaterial ultimate explanations. At this point he's no longer speaking as a scientist but as a philosopher, even though he's using his standing as a scientist to authorize his metaphysics.

It's a kind of shell game that they play, they know they're playing it, and it's fundamentally disingenuous.

RLC

Ugly Protests

This is just insane. Ed Schultz says on national television that he thinks conservative talk show hosts want to see Barack Obama shot. Why does he say such a horrible thing? Is it because conservatives believe he's destroying the country's economic foundations? For liberals like Schultz it is apparently nothing short of a hate crime to disagree with the President on policy. Schultz is far from alone. Nancy Pelosi calls dissenters Nazis and UnAmerican. Others have called them "mobs" and racists.

What short memories these people have. As Bill Sammon at Fox News reminds us nothing that any opponent of the Democrats' health care plans has said or done is anywhere near what the left did during the Bush years. Sammon refreshes our memories about some of what went on during the Bush presidency that neither the Democrats nor the media at the time deemed deserving of even a mention, let alone censure:

News outlets that are focusing on the incendiary rhetoric of conservatives outside President Obama's town hall meeting Tuesday ignored the incendiary rhetoric -- and even violence -- of liberals outside an appearance by former President George W. Bush in 2002.

When Bush visited Portland, Ore., for a fundraiser, protesters stalked his motorcade, assailed his limousine and stoned a car containing his advisers. Chanting "Bush is a terrorist!", the demonstrators bullied passers-by, including gay softball players and a wheelchair-bound grandfather with multiple sclerosis.

One protester even brandished a sign that seemed to advocate Bush's assassination. The man held a large photo of Bush that had been doctored to show a gun barrel pressed against his temple.

"BUSH: WANTED, DEAD OR ALIVE," read the placard, which had an X over the word "ALIVE."

Another poster showed Bush's face with the words: "F--- YOU, MOTHERF---ER!"

A third sign urged motorists to "HONK IF YOU HATE BUSH." A fourth declared: "CHRISTIAN FASCISM," with a swastika in place of the letter S in each word.

Although reporters from numerous national news organizations were traveling with Bush and witnessed the protest, none reported that protesters were shrieking at Republican donors epithets like "Slut!" "Whore!" and "Fascists!"

Frank Dulcich, president and CEO of Pacific Seafood Group, had a cup of liquid thrown into his face, and then was surrounded by a group of menacing protesters, including several who wore masks. Donald Tykeson, 75, who had multiple sclerosis and was confined to a wheelchair, was blocked by a thug who threatened him.

Protesters slashed the tires of several state patrol cruisers and leapt onto an occupied police car, slamming the hood and blocking the windshield with placards. A female police officer was knocked to the street by advancing protesters, badly injuring her wrist.

The angry protest grew so violent that the Secret Service was forced to take the highly unusual step of using a backup route for Bush's motorcade because the primary route had been compromised by protesters, one of whom pounded his fist on the president's moving limousine.

All the while, angry demonstrators brandished signs with incendiary rhetoric, such as "9/11 - YOU LET IT HAPPEN, SHRUB," and "BUSH: BASTARD CHILD OF THE SUPREME COURT." One sign read: "IMPEACH THE COURT-APPOINTED JUNTA AND THE FASCIST, EGOMANIACAL, BLOOD-SWILLING BEAST!"

Yet none of these signs were cited in the national media's coverage of the event. By contrast, the press focused extensively on over-the-top signs held by Obama critics at the president's town hall event held Tuesday in New Hampshire.

There's more at the link. It's very difficult to respect people, whether politicians or journalists, who are so self-serving that they loudly condemn behavior that is orders of magnitude less offensive than behavior they were totally silent about just a few years ago.

RLC

Eleven Questions

If you get the chance you might wish to ask your congressperson a few questions about the health care reform bill he or she will be voting on this fall:

1. Has the congressman (or woman) actually read and studied the bill?
   
2. Will the bill result in a single payer system?
   
3. Will the bill result in rationing of care and longer wait times?
   
4. Will the bill reduce medicare benefits?
   
5. Does the bill open the door for the elderly and infirm to be pressured into accepting death?
   
6. Will the bill pay for health care for illegal aliens?
   
7. Will the bill pay for abortions?
   
8. Will the bill require that abortions be provided by objector institutions like Catholic hospitals?
   
9. Will the bill vastly increase the deficit?
   
10. Will the bill require congressmen (and women) to participate in the same program as the rest of us?
    
11. Will the bill cause our taxes to go up?
    

The fact is that for most of our elected representatives the answer to the first question is "no," and according to almost everyone who has read the bill the answer to the other ten questions is "yes." It's no wonder people are irate about it.

RLC

Re: The Volt

Jason emails us to clarify something in yesterday's post titled 230 mpg! He writes:

I just think everyone needs to recognize that a for-profit business (i.e., General Motors before the takeover) invented and innovated the vehicle. A government-owned entity may have been at the helm when the car was issued, but not when it was first created. An important distinction that must be made, I think.

He's correct, of course. My lament in the last line of the original post was due not to thinking that a government- owned company had produced such an innovative vehicle but rather due to the fact that when GM accepted a public bailout and then began closing down dealerships which were not well-connected to the Democrat party, I decided that I personally wouldn't buy any more of their products.

Now they tempt me to violate my pledge with the Volt. Luckily, there will be other models coming out from other manufacturers that I'm sure will be just as attractive.

RLC

Expelled

Author and actor Ben Stein who, you may recall, figured prominently in the documentary movie Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed has been let go from his job as a business columnist for the New York Times. Stein writes about being expelled by the Times in a piece at The American Spectator. It's only his side of the story, of course, but it sounds like he got fired for being critical of President Obama's policies. This wouldn't be so bad if the Times were at least honest that he was released for ideological reasons, but apparently they weren't.

Check out Stein's account at The Spectator. It's an interesting story.

RLC

Nudging the Old Folks

Lee Siegel at The Daily Beast is an Obamaphile who can't resist an opportunity to discredit conservatives, but even he can't go along with those who are trying to pooh-pooh conservative concerns that the Democrats' health care plans would push the elderly toward euthanasia:

[O]n one point the plan's critics are absolutely correct. One of the key ideas under consideration-which can be read as expressing sympathy for limitations on end-of-life care-is morally revolting. And it's helping to kill the plan itself.

Make no mistake about it. Determining which treatments are "cost effective" at the end of a person's life and which are not is one of Obama's priorities. It's one of the principal ways he counts on saving money and making universal healthcare affordable.

Siegel then goes on to wonder why a good guy like Obama would be sold on a provision that would in a dozen subtle ways, "nudge" older people toward declining care which would use up resources that might be better spent on younger people with more years to live:

Where is Obama coming from? Why is such an apparently humane man not more strongly condemning a utilitarian initiative straight out of Victorian England? A good part of the explanation has to do with the University of Chicago Law School milieu that Obama comes out of. By far, the most influential figure in that world is Judge Richard Posner, who teaches law at Chicago and publishes streams of pompous, robotically written books that are much praised and little read.

Judge Posner is both an enthusiastic advocate of euthanasia and an energetic eugenicist. He once wrote of Oliver Wendell Holmes' ideas about eugenics-Holmes believed that a just society "prevents continuance of the unfit"-that "we may yet find [Holmes'] enthusiasms prescient rather than depraved."

Cass Sunstein, who is Obama's nominee for regulatory czar, is a disciple of Posner and believes in what Time magazine describes as "the statistical practice of taking into account years of life expectancy when evaluating a regulation." In other words, Sunstein believes that the lives of younger people have a greater value than those of the elderly. This, obviously, would have a radical bearing on end-of-life considerations.

This is interesting. We have on several occasions (see here and here) pointed out that President Obama has surrounded himself with progressive eugenicist/euthanasists. His science czar and at least two of his closest medical advisors each favors culling the weak, whether passively or actively isn't clear, from the population. Now we see that this position is even more widespread in his administration than we thought. Cass Sunstein was on Obama's list of possible nominees for the Supreme Court and Judge Posner surely exerted influence on the President in his days as a law professor at the University of Chicago.

It's alarming that eugenic ideas are suddenly becoming respectable again. They were commonly held among progressives back in the early decades of the 20th century but fell into social and political odium because of their association with the Nazis in the thirties and early forties. Progressives found it in their interests to mask their affinities for fascist enthusiasms and to seek to convince people that fascism was an ideology of the right whereas they, the progressives, were men and women of the left. The fact is, however, that the fascists were all leftists and that the holocaust grew out of a German eugenics movement that included in its orbit Americans like Oliver Wendell Holmes, Woodrow Wilson, and Margaret Sanger.

Now with the emergence of the Obama presidency, the advocates of eugenic policies feel safe to reemerge from their closets and speak openly about their vision of an America where people who are elderly should be expected to get out of the way of the younger generation. How much longer will it be before those who suffer mental retardation and other serious debilities will also be expected, for the common good, to be euthanized? How long will it be before we slide down the slippery slope right back to the Germany of the 1930s? It's no wonder the older folks at those town halls are so angry.

People scoff at such a suggestion and say that couldn't happen here. That's simply false. What will happen here is whatever is logically entailed by the worldview of those who have the power to impose their will on the rest of us. Secular utilitarians see nothing special about human beings. We're not, in their view, created in the image of God, and we're not persons who possess inherent rights and dignity by virtue of our possession of the imago dei. In the eyes of such men as the President is surrounding himself with, we're resource consumers whose value to the collective, and thus our indispensibility, is determined by the value of the contribution we're able to make to the whole. Eugenicists see humanity in much the same way as a farmer sees livestock. The herd is there to be bred, managed, milked, sold and slaughtered to suit the needs of the moment.

When the government takes it upon itself to "nudge" the elderly toward death we're well on our way toward the world of Lois Lowery (The Giver), Aldous Huxley (Brave New World), and George Orwell (1984). If you haven't read any of these works you really should. Start with Orwell.

RLC

Post Offices and Public Options

One of the general arguments opponents of President Obama's health care reform plans have been making is that government-run enterprises rarely perform efficiently or profitably. At his recent town hall meeting the President himself inadvertently pressed this very argument into service without recognizing that he was agreeing with a major objection to his own proposals. It was pretty funny:

Perhaps by now Mr. Obama realizes his blunder, but if so, why does he not also recognize the reason the postal service has problems that UPS and Fed Ex don't have? Privately-owned companies, subject to market forces, often do well; publicly-owned companies usually don't. One wishes the President would at least appear concerned that when the government manages health care it will in fact be just as troubled as the postal service, maybe moreso.

I say perhaps he realizes his blunder because unlike the Bush years when the media could be counted on to be all over a bungle like this if it embarrassed Mr. Bush and made him look stupid, I don't think we'll hear anything at all about this one from the major media. So it could be that no one has pointed out to the President that this wasn't his finest performance.

RLC

230 mpg!

Allahpundit throws some cold water on the excitement being generated by the new Chevy hybrid the Volt before he gives us his take on the upside:

.... If it's true, then you're looking at the first car with triple-digit gas mileage, fully four times the amount of its nearest competitor. Actually, it's even better than that: It can run on electricity alone for up to 40 miles, so if your round-trip commute's within that range, you don't need gas at all. Thrilling news, not because the Volt's going to solve America's dependence on Middle Eastern oil overnight but because the baseline technology's now not only available but almost cost-effective.

Why do I say almost? Let's do the math. Initial sticker-price estimates are $40,000; assume it'll be a bit more than that, then deduct $7,500 for the federal tax credit you'll get for buying one. Let's say that leaves us with a cost of $35,000. Figure a new car with standard fuel efficiency will get 20 mpg and run you $18,000. Now assume gas prices of $3 per gallon. Buying the cheaper car will save you enough money to afford 5,667 gallons of gas, which, at 20 mpg, means it would be a better deal than the Volt for the first ... 113,000 miles. That also doesn't account for (a) the (comparatively tiny) cost of electricity to charge the battery, (b) the headaches for apartment-dwellers in finding a place to charge the thing, (c) the possibility of higher maintenance costs as the Volt's new technology suffers glitches, and (d) the strain on urban electrical grids a decade or two down the road when these suckers become popular.

There are, of course, some definite positives to cars like the Volt and some of these are mentioned at the link. I just wish it wasn't government-owned GM that's come out with the darn thing.

RLC

Iranian Prisons

You doubtless remember the revelations about how terrorists were treated at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. As bad as the detainees were, the treatment some of the received at the hands of a few American Guardsmen was unconscionable and illegal, and at least most of the persons responsible have been held to account.

You've also heard that the prison at Guantanamo Bay is scheduled to be closed in January because it fails to meet the exacting standards of American penology even though it's apparently a model penal institution whose detainees live better than do many inmates in our civilian penitentiaries.

In any event, amidst all the talk of prisoner mistreatment in American detention camps what's often omitted is any insight into how political prisoners are treated in most countries around the world.

Alexander Sohlzenitsyn was imprisoned in the former Soviet Union during the late forties and early fifties and survived to write an extraordinary book, titled The Gulag Archipelago, about the ghastly horrors of communist "justice."

Richard Wurmbrand was imprisoned behind the iron curtain because he was a Christian minister. His book titled Tortured for Christ describes the incredible cruelty of which men hostile to God are capable.

Armando Valladares was a Cuban who was deemed a political enemy of the Castro regime and was imprisoned in a system Dantesque in its hellishness. He wrote about his experience in Against All Hope.

In the aftermath of the war in Iraq we read of the unspeakable tortures perpetrated by Saddam Hussein, his sons, and his henchmen. We read about the horrible manner in which people who opposed them or stood in their way were tortured, mutilated, run through wood chippers, and suffered other grisly torments to the amusement of the Baathist psychopaths.

Some of the victims of these governments lived to tell their stories. Millions of others around the globe, especially in communist and Islamic countries, have not been so fortunate. The tortures they've suffered, and are suffering today, for no reason other than that they are political or religious liabilities are unimaginable.

Now word is beginning to leak out about the prisons in Iran and the brutalities to which hundreds of dissidents rounded up in the wake of the recent political protests there have been subjected. If the reports are accurate, they should be mailed to every person who applauded Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on his visit to New York City and Columbia University last year. If the reports are accurate this man and his political patrons among the mullahs are as demonic as Saddam Hussein, and they deserve the same fate.

Here's part of the report:

Until the defeated Iranian presidential contender Mehdi Karroubi broke the wall of silence surrounding the Islamic Republic's prisons to demand an investigation into allegations of rape, little attention was paid to the abuses meted out to protestors who dared to claim that the June 12 election was rigged.

These abuses are inflicted routinely and systematically in seven secret prisons where political detainees are held at the behest of the revolutionary Islamic regime. Those prisons are described by DEBKAfile's Iranian sources as inhuman hellholes:

Kahrizak

This is the jail which supreme leader Ayatallah Ali Khamenei wanted razed to the ground to conceal the outrages committed there against scores of reform-seeking protesters who had the cruel fortune to be dumped there. Kahrizak on the southern outskirts of Tehran was notorious as the penal facility for Iran's most violent thugs and gangsters. Those inmates were let loose on the political prisoners who were incarcerated in cells ten meters square. An unknown number suffered rape and bloody beatings, which not all survived.

The commander of Iran's internal security forces Esmail Ahmadi-Moghaddam said Sunday, Aug. 9, that he would not deny his share in the blame for the "terrible things that took place in Kahrizak" where two protesters were admittedly found dead. He claimed that two of the security officials responsible for "widespread prisoner abuse" had been fired and awaited trial.

The prison remains open and our sources doubt those responsible for the outrages will be brought to trial.

Six more jails and detentions centers operate in the Tehran area.

Ghamar prison

A low, inconspicuous door behind the Ghamar Bani Hashem Hospital on Resaalat Street near the security ministry leads into a top-secret holding facility for interrogating political prisoners. It is closely guarded by Iran's intelligence ministry.

It has two floors and a yard, containing four interrogation rooms, eight isolation cells and eight holding cells in which dozens of detainees are crammed, allowed access to showers once a week and toilets three times a day. Here, the detainees undergo their first inquisition and beatings before they are transferred to other prisons. Their eyes and mouths are bound with leather straps to prevent them from identifying their tormentors. Their agony ends when they sign written confessions.

Most of the victims' families do not know their whereabouts.

Esharat-Abad prison

Several hundred political prisoners are crowded into this facility for drug offenders which is designed for 250 to 350 inmates. It is situated in the Narcotic Unit's headquarters in central Tehran.

The building consists of three large units broken up into cells of 1.5 x 2 meters, into each of which up to five detainees are squeezed for an agonizing three to seven days. Under interrogation, their arms and legs are broken to make them confess and give up information. Accustomed to beating and humiliating dope traffickers, the wardens carry on abusing the political detainees.

Sanitary conditions are appalling and the inmates are fed scraps from the prison staff canteens. The stench of vomit and sweat in the unventilated cells is unbearable. Whenever a detainee dies of torture or disease, prison authorities file a fictitious report. After the questioning finishes, those who survive are transferred to the central prison at Evin. No one has been brought to book for their deaths.

There's more at the link. Abu Ghraib was abominable, but I suspect that if prisoners in almost any jail in the communist or Islamic worlds were offered the opportunity to be transferred there, they'd accept without a moment's hesitation.

RLC

You Know You're a Racist If ...

There are legitimate grounds for criticizing some of the antics of the people who attend the town halls. Some of them have been rude and discourteous, and worst of all, a few of them have acted as if they worked for ACORN, but these people are frustrated and they have legitimate concerns. Thus, it's as insulting as it is weird to have someone like Chris Matthews even raise the question of whether these people are motivated by racism, but the answer he receives from nationally syndicated columnist Cynthia Tucker is even worse:

CHRIS MATTHEWS: Put 100 of these people in a room. Strap them into gurneys. Inject them with sodium pentathol. How many of them would say "I don't like the idea of having a black president"? What percentage?

CYNTHIA TUCKER: Oh, I'm just guessing. This is just off the cuff. I think 45 to 65% of the people who appear at these groups are people who will never be comfortable with the idea of a black president.

Tucker admits she has no idea, but she's willing to aver on national tv that about half of the people who show up at these meetings are racists. Why? What evidence does she have of this? In the strange and febrile imaginations of liberal progressives most white people (except them) are racists, and if they're pressed to support this self-righteous assumption they point to the widespread opposition to a government takeover of our economy. How does this opposition demonstrate that whites are racists? Well, people like Tucker and Matthews will tell you, it must be motivated by racism since, after all, it's a black man who's leading the takeover.

Paul Krugman strikes the same chord in the New York Times where he argues that because some of the angry town hall attendees are a little confused on some of the implications of health care reform they're probably racists:

[P]eople who don't know that Medicare is a government program probably aren't reacting to what President Obama is actually proposing. They may believe some of the disinformation opponents of health care reform are spreading ... But they're probably reacting less to what Mr. Obama is doing, or even to what they've heard about what he's doing, than to who he is.

That is, the driving force behind the town hall mobs is probably the same cultural and racial anxiety that's behind the "birther" movement, which denies Mr. Obama's citizenship. Senator Dick Durbin has suggested that the birthers and the health care protesters are one and the same; we don't know how many of the protesters are birthers, but it wouldn't be surprising if it's a substantial fraction.

Does this sound familiar? It should: it's a strategy that has played a central role in American politics ever since Richard Nixon realized that he could advance Republican fortunes by appealing to the racial fears of working-class whites.

Krugman's implication here is that no objection to our headlong rush over the economic cliff can possibly be legitimate. It must instead be grounded in white distaste for a black man as President.

And here's an MSNBC anchor suggesting that perhaps the word socialism has become the new "n-word." He doesn't come right out and say it, but he seems to be laying the predicate for the idea that if you call President Obama a socialist or call his policies socialist, you might just be a closet racist:

Here's what appears to be happening. Racism is anathema in this country, so the left, in order to get its agenda passed, sees an opportunity to weaken the opposition to it by identifying opponents, in the public mind, with racism. Pretty soon, if you're a Republican you'll be assumed to be a racist. If you don't have an Obama sticker on your car it'll be assumed you're a racist. If you don't accept the President's vision of what America should be it will be perceived as an indication that you're a racist, and if you call a black man a socialist it's the same as calling him a "nigger."

This is the state to which the left has reduced our public discourse.

RLC

Journey Inside the Cell

A new video titled Journey Inside the Cell narrated by Dr. Stephen Meyer, the author of Signature in the Cell, gives a glimpse of a small part of the amazingly complicated process by which proteins are produced in the cell. As Meyer's book makes clear the process is much more complex than this, but even so, the video does a nice job of illustrating why so many people today have trouble believing the materialist story that the astonishing complexity of the cell is all a product of blind chance and natural selection.

The kind of information required to operate a structure like the cell is only known to be the result of intelligent minds. To think that it could come about by sheer accident would be risible were it not for the fact that so many bright people think it did. Even so, the acumen of these thinkers notwithstanding, none of them has ever been able to explain how it could have happened. Their reasoning goes something like this: Only material, physical processes can be considered in science. Enormously complex structures like cells exist. Therefore these structures must have been produced solely by physical processes.

The error here, of course, is to confuse what science has limited itself to considering with what the best explanation for biological entities might be. Just because some people think that science should be restricted to physical causes it certainly doesn't follow that only physical causes operate in the world.

Nor does any scientist who insists on dealing only with physical causes - and not all scientists think this exclusivity is wise - have any right to rule out intelligent causes. The most a materialist can say is that he chooses not to theorize about causes that can't be observed or measured. He cannot say that they don't exist or haven't operated or can't be inferred from what we can observe or measure. Yet materialists do say this all the time.

RLC

Longevity

Openness, conscientiousness, and extrovertedness all tend to increase longevity, this article claims, whereas neuroticism shortens it. Curmudgeonliness, thank goodness, seems to have no effect.

RLC

Who They Are

Over at Hot Air Doctor Zero lays out with admirable clarity who those who oppose what the current administration is attempting to do are. He's perhaps a bit more ascerbic than he needs to be, but given the shameless calumnies levelled against those who've shown up at the town halls to protest the direction in which the Democrats are taking us, that may be understandable. Here's the first half of the piece:

There seems to be a bit of confusion among Democrats about the nature of the opposition to their plans. Maybe I can help clear things up by telling them a few things about us.

We're not paid minions of any corporate interest or lobby. Most bloggers working to stop the Obama health-care disaster are like me, writing when they can find the time, because we care about the future of our country. The same is true of the people showing up at town hall meetings, and organizing rallies. Some of us are well-dressed in tailored suits. Others wear jeans and T-shirts. Most of us are dressed in what we wore to work.

Our support for a massive government program does not increase when you tell us we're not allowed to ask questions about it.

We're not racists. We're also not racialists. We don't think a wise Latina is inherently more qualified to do anything than a wise Asian woman, a wise white woman, or a wise white man. We're tired of being fed excuses for high government offices staffed by anything but the best people for the job. There are too many high government offices, so we'd like some of Obama's absurdly incompetent appointees to take their titles with them when they leave. We remember what it was like when we got rid of the Clinton mob, so we'll be conducting inventories on the contents of those vacated offices, before we turn out the lights and pour cement in the locks.

We don't like having to fight desperate battles to save our freedom and future from socialist politicians every ten or twenty years. We don't like having our time wasted with trillion-dollar statist fantasies, when our government is already trillions of dollars in the red. We're tired of checking the papers each day, to see which group of us has been targeted as enemies of the State. We're growing impatient waiting for the Democrats to come up with ideas that don't require their supporters to hate someone. We've had our fill of "progressives" who act as if we're living in 1909, and none of their diseased policies have ever been tried before.

Read the rest at the link. It's as punchy as it is testy, and there's much truth in what he writes.

RLC

Ten Mysteries About Us

The fascinating thing about this story is not that there are still mysteries about human behavior but rather that some people are not embarrassed by the possible explanations that they offer for them. Anyway, when you assume that everything about us somehow enhances our sex appeal or our survival I guess you're bound to come up with theories like some of the ones below.

If we're looking for an evolutionary explanation for human behaviors it seems to me that many of these are much more likely to be behaviors that supervene upon other genetic adaptations. There's no reason to think that they have any survival value in themselves.

But if we're not looking for evolutionary explanations it could be that the Creator simply gave us laughter, altruism, and art because they make life richer, more human, and less brutish.

Here are some of the "mysteries" discussed in the article:

Blushing: Charles Darwin struggled to explain why evolution made us turn red when we lie, which alerts others. However, some think it may help diffuse confrontation or foster intimacy by revealing weakness.

Laughter: mood-improving endorphins are released when we laugh, which seems an obvious reason to do it...

Kissing: the explanation for kissing is unlikely to be genetic as not all human societies do it. There are theories that it is associated with memories of breastfeeding and that ancient humans weaned their children by feeding them from their mouths, which reinforced the link between sharing saliva and pleasure.

Picking your nose: the unappealing but common habit of ingesting 'nasal detritus' offers almost no nutritional benefit, so why do a quarter of teenagers do it, on average four times a day? Some think it boosts the immune system.

Altruism: giving things away with no certain return is odd behaviour in evolutionary terms. It may help with group bonding or simply give pleasure.

Art: painting, dance, sculpture and music could all be the human equivalent of a peacock's tail in showing what a good potential mate someone is. However, it could also be a tool for spreading knowledge or sharing experience.

Body hair: fine hair on the body and thick hair on the genitals is the opposite of what occurs in primates, our close animal relatives. Suggested reasons for pubic hair include a role in radiating scent, providing warmth or even protecting from chafing.

Superstition: unusual but reassuring habits make no evolutionary sense; however, ancient humans would have benefited from not dismissing a lion's rustle in the grass as a gust of wind. Religion seems to tap into this impulse.

Perhaps, but if superstition is believing in causes which are totally inadequate to the effect then what would we call the belief that all of these behaviors must be produced by genetic mutation? Unguided mutations over time degrade the specificity of information, they don't enhance it. The belief that mutations actually increase the information content of the genotype is, well, a superstition that biologists certainly tap into.

RLC

Credible Military Option

With everything that's going on with the economy, there hasn't been much focus lately on what we'll do if Iran doesn't relent in its pursuit of nuclear weapons. Much of the discussion there has been has emphasized reasons why military measures would be inadequate and ineffective. Retired four-star Air Force General Chuck Wald, however, disagrees with these assessments. General Wald was the air commander for the initial stages of Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan and deputy commander of the U.S. European Command. He has an article in the Wall Street Journal that outlines how the military could be used to supplement diplomatic pressure on Tehran and, if diplomacy fails, how it could be credibly employed to spare the world the specter of nuclear arms in the hands of a terrorist state that sees it as their religious duty to precipitate the end of the world. Here's some of what he writes:

There has been a lack of serious public discussion of the military tools available to us. Any mention of them is either met with accusations of warmongering or hushed with concerns over sharing sensitive information. It is important to discuss, within legal limits, such a serious issue as openly as possible. Discussion strengthens our democracy and dispels misinformation.

The military can play an important role in solving this complex problem without firing a single shot. Publicly signaling serious preparation for a military strike might obviate the need for one if deployments force Tehran to recognize the costs of its nuclear defiance. Mr. Obama might consider, for example, the deployment of additional carrier battle groups and minesweepers to the waters off Iran, and the conduct of military exercises with allies.

If such pressure fails to impress Iranian leadership, the U.S. Navy could move to blockade Iranian ports. A blockade-which is an act of war-would effectively cut off Iran's gasoline imports, which constitute about one-third of its consumption. Especially in the aftermath of post-election protests, the Iranian leadership must worry about the economic dislocations and political impact of such action.

Should these measures not compel Tehran to reverse course on its nuclear program, and only after all other diplomatic avenues and economic pressures have been exhausted, the U.S. military is capable of launching a devastating attack on Iranian nuclear and military facilities.

Many policy makers and journalists dismiss the military option on the basis of a false sense of futility. They assume that the U.S. military is already overstretched, that we lack adequate intelligence about the location of covert nuclear sites, and that known sites are too heavily fortified.

Such assumptions are false.

General Wald then goes on to discuss the pros and cons of a series of military strikes on Iranian facilities. It's quite interesting.

I wonder: Given that President Obama's political base is the progressive left, and given that this base is strongly opposed to military interventions, what are the chances that Tehran will make a calculation that Mr. Obama would not do more than use the military as a bluff? If he did set up a blockade or bomb the Iranian weapons facilities would the progressives abandon their principles and find some excuse to justify acquiesing to war or would they oppose Obama the way they opposed President Bush?

We'll see.

RLC

Robin's Journey

Robin, a psychotherapist living in Berkeley, explains how she (I think she's a she) seemingly journeyed from the progressive left to conservatism in a relative twinkling of an eye. Actually, she tells us, it was a conversion that had been brewing all her life:

Now that I look back, I had the seeds of both a conservative and a liberal in me all along. On the liberal side: I was raised a secular Jew, and, for some God forsaken reason, most of us are Democrats. My upbringing lacked meaning and substance, which propelled my devotion to social causes. Of course, arriving in Berkeley in my 20's only hardened my liberal propensity.

I became a therapist, made friends with therapists, and spent tons of money having shrinks dissect my psyche. So my life was focused on problems, complaints, and kvetches. As Milton said, our minds can make a hell of heaven or a heaven of hell. My preoccupation with the darkness put me in a liberal state of mind.

But the conservative was alive and well in me too: My grandparents came from Russia with only the shirts on their backs. Yet they never complained about the hardships or expected any government help. My parents, in their own wacky way, were devoted, dutiful, and fiercely patriotic.

I was also victimized early on by do-gooder liberal politics (though I didn't put two and two together until last year). I attended public schools with forced busing that ignited tremendous animosity and racial violence. As an adult, I've been harassed and molested innumerable times on urban streets both east coast and west, and was mugged several years ago in broad daylight.

Unlike most liberals, I never blamed myself or the dominant culture. I placed culpability directly on the thugs and on those in authority who remained silent. Whenever my friends excused immoral behavior, I would get seriously ticked off.

Lastly, my personality has always had elements both left and right. Now that I think about it, it's been dizzying living in my brain. I'm a straight shooter and detest phoniness (conservative), though I wanted to be liked (liberal). I've never been a group think person and don't like to be controlled (right), but at the same time, I wanted to fit in (left).

Read the rest of her story at the link.

I'm sure there are lots of Robins out there, not just ideological Robins but also religious Robins. They're people who've abandoned the beliefs and principles of their parents and grandparents but who feel the aching emptiness that's left inside when God is expelled and one ersatz philosophy after another is stuffed into the bottomless pit that's left by His absence.

They know where their home is but they want to be liked, they want to fit in, they want to seem sophisticated, and the best way to achieve all that, they think, perhaps subliminally, is to be liberal both in their politics and in their religious views. Like Robin, some of them may eventually come to a point in their life where they realize it just doesn't work. Neither the political ideology nor the secularism can serve as a substitute for the Real Thing.

RLC

One Woman Stimulus Package

When President Obama talks about all the jobs his administration has created he's missing a good bet if he doesn't include the entourage his wife has amassed in the White House. Indeed, she may have created more jobs than he has.

According to Canada Free Press our first lady has employed an army of attendants, at your expense, far in excess of anything needed by any of her predecessors:

Michele Obama does not get paid to serve as the First Lady and she doesn't perform any official duties. But this hasn't deterred her from hiring an unprecedented number of staffers to cater to her every whim and to satisfy her every request in the midst of the Great Recession. Just think, Mary Lincoln was taken to task for purchasing china for the White House during the Civil War, and Mamie Eisenhower had to shell out the salary for her personal secretary.

How things have changed! If you're one of the tens of millions of Americans facing destitution, earning less than subsistence wages stocking the shelves at Wal-Mart or serving up McDonald cheeseburgers, you might want to keep in mind that the benefit package for these servants of Ms Obama are the same as members of the national security and defense departments and the bill for these assorted lackeys is paid by you:

• $172,000 - Sher, Susan (Chief of Staff)
• $140,000 - Frye, Jocelyn C. (Deputy Assistant to the President and Director or Policy and Projects for the First Lady)
• $113,000 - Rogers, Desiree G. (Special Assistant to the President and White House Social Secretary)
• $102,000 - Johnston, Camille Y. (Special Assistant to the President and Director of Communications for the First Lady)
• Winter, Melissa E. (Special Assistant to the President and Deputy Chief of Staff to the First Lady)
• $90,000 - Medina, David S. (Deputy Chief of Staff to the First Lady)
• $84,000 - Lelyveld, Catherine M. (Director and Press Secretary to the First Lady)
• $75,000 - Starkey, Frances M. (Director of Scheduling and Advance for the First Lady)
• $70,000 - Sanders, Trooper (Deputy Director of Policy and Projects for the First Lady)
• $65,000 - Burnough, Erinn J. (Deputy Director and Deputy Social Secretary)
Reinstein, Joseph B. (Deputy Director and Deputy Social Secretary)
• $62,000 - Goodman, Jennifer R. (Deputy Director of Scheduling and Events Coordinator for the First Lady)
• $60,000 - Fitts, Alan O. (Deputy Director of Advance and Trip Director for the First Lady)
• Lewis, Dana M. (Special Assistant and Personal Aide to the First Lady)
• $52,500 - Mustaphi, Semonti M. (Associate Director and Deputy Press Secretary to the First Lady)
• $50,000 - Jarvis, Kristen E. (Special assistant for Scheduling and Traveling Aide to the First Lady)
• $45,000 - Lechtenberg, Tyler A. (Associate Director of Correspondence for the First Lady)
• Tubman, Samantha (Deputy Associate Director, Social Office)
• $40,000 - Boswell, Joseph J. (Executive Asistant to the Chief of Staff to the First Lady)
• $36,000 - Armbruster, Sally M. (Staff Assistant to the Social Secretary)
• Bookey, Natalie (Staff Assistant)
• Jackson, Deilia A. (Deputy Associate Director of Correspondence for the First Lady)

The person who sent the link notes that this list doesn't include makeup artist Ingrid Grimes-Miles, 49, and "First Hairstylist" Johnny Wright, 31, both of whom traveled aboard Air Force One to Europe. He also asks why Ms Obama needs so much help, at taxpayer expense, when even Hillary, had only three employees, Jackie Kennedy one, Laura Bush one, and,prior to Mamie Eisenhower,social help was paid out of the President's own pocket.

Good question. Meanwhile, how are you making out with your mortgage payments this year?

RLC

Counter-Proposal (Pt. II)

The other day I mentioned Keith Hennessey's counter-proposal to the President's plan for health care reform. Here are the basics:

Do:

1. Repeal the current law tax exclusion for employer provided health insurance, and replace it with a $7,500 (single) / $15K (family) flat deduction for buying health insurance.

• The deduction is independent of the premium cost. If you buy a $5,000 individual policy, you get a $7,500 deduction. If you buy a $10,000 individual policy, you get the same $7,500 deduction.
• The overwhelming majority of premiums fall under these threshholds, so 100m+ people would pay lower taxes.
• The minority with premiums above these thresholds would pay higher taxes.
• In total the government does not collect more revenue, although the tax burden shifts to those with high-cost policies.
• Index the thresholds to inflation (CPI). This bites more tightly over time. I'd funnel the long-term increased revenues into some broad-based tax relief to stay revenue-neutral over time.

2. Allow the purchase of health insurance sold anywhere in the U.S.This would force States to compete for the right regulatory balance of consumer protection and premium cost. Rep. John Shadegg has a bill that does this.

3. Make health insurance portable. This requires relatively small tweaks to law, but insurers would need to develop new portable insurance plans that you could take with you from one job to the next. The policy change is easy. Getting employers and insurers to change their long-standing business models is hard.

4. Expand Health Savings Accounts. Allow higher contribution limits, and allow financially equivalent coinsurance structures driven by market demand. Continue to mandate an initial deductible and catastrophic protection. No benefit-specific exemptions as advocated by some.

5. Aggressively reform medical liability, aka "medical tort reform." Details TBD.

6. Aggressively slow Medicare and Medicaid spending growth, and use the savings for long-term deficit reduction. Details TBD.

Assume that my package would be significantly more aggressive ("deeper cuts," in the terms of opponents) than anything being discussed in Congress today.

Don't:

• Raise taxes
• Create a new government health entitlement
• Mandate the purchase of health insurance
• Mandate that employers provide health insurance to their employees
• Have government set private premiums
• Create a government-run health plan option
• Have the government mandate benefits
• Expand Medicaid

Results:

• Lower premiums, higher wages
• Portable health insurance reduces "job lock"
• +5 million insured (net)
• 100 million people will pay lower taxes
• 30m with expensive health plans pay higher taxes
• No net tax increase overall
• Reduces short-term and long-term deficit
• Fair to small business employees & self-employed
• Incentives and individual decisions "bend the cost curve down"
• More individual control & responsibility for medical decisions

Whether all of these measures could be done or not I don't know, but it does seem a little disingenuous for supporters of the Democrats' bills to say that the opposition offers no alternatives. Keep in mind, too, that this is just one of several proposals which have been offered as counters to the plans currently in committee.

Let us tip our hats to liberal Democrats for impressing upon us the need for action on health care, and for forcing the national conversation, but when it comes to actually concocting a remedy, let's leave that to people who know how to do it without destroying the system and bankrupting the country.

RLC

Fears Confirmed

It was bound to happen. Violence broke out at a town hall meeting yesterday, a black man was beaten by a group of thugs, and racist epithets filled the air. The talking heads have been fretting about this for days and exactly what they feared would happen has happened. Patterico has the details.

The only part of this ugly episode that did not conform to the expectations of the commentators is that the thugs were Obama supporters wearing SEIU shirts, the black man was a conservative selling "Don't Tread on Me" flags, and the racial epithets were employed by a black man who was among the attackers.

Somebody videoed part of the proceedings including the arrest of one of the union muggers:

I guess events don't always go according to the way our stereotypes would have them.

RLC

Birthers Right and Left

I thought this by Chip Bok was pretty funny:

RLC

Heroes

There's an amazing story of heroism on this video. It's the story of a Marine named Channing Moss who suffered an astonishing combat wound and the men who overcame their own fear and risked their lives to save his. It's very much worth watching.

Thanks to PowerLine for the link.

RLC

Deconstructing the Obama Poster

Philip Kennicott scrutinizes the Obama as Joker objet d'art for the Washington Post and comes to the startling conclusion that it is, in fact, a deeply racist composition. Well, of course. Why didn't we see that? Obama is black. The picture satirizes him. Ergo, the picture is racist. Even a schoolboy could have figured it out:

So why the anonymity? Perhaps because the poster is ultimately a racially charged image. By using the "urban" makeup of the Heath Ledger Joker, instead of the urbane makeup of the Jack Nicholson character, the poster connects Obama to something many of his detractors fear but can't openly discuss. He is black and he is identified with the inner city, a source of political instability in the 1960s and '70s, and a lingering bogeyman in political consciousness despite falling crime rates.

The Joker's makeup in "Dark Knight" -- the latest film in a long franchise that dramatizes fear of the urban world -- emphasized the wounded nature of the villain, the sense that he was both a product and source of violence. Although Ledger was white, and the Joker is white, this equation of the wounded and the wounding mirrors basic racial typology in America. Urban blacks -- the thinking goes -- don't just live in dangerous neighborhoods, they carry that danger with them like a virus. Scientific studies, which demonstrate the social consequences of living in neighborhoods with high rates of crime, get processed and misinterpreted in the popular unconscious, underscoring the idea. Violence breeds violence.

It is an ugly idea, operating covertly in that gray area that is always supposed to be opened up to honest examination whenever America has one of its "we need to talk this through" episodes. But it lingers, unspoken but powerful, leaving all too many people with the sense that exposure to crime creates an ineluctable propensity to crime.

Superimpose that idea, through the Joker's makeup, onto Obama's face, and you have subtly coded, highly effective racial and political argument. Forget socialism, this poster is another attempt to accomplish an association between Obama and the unpredictable, seeming danger of urban life. It is another effort to establish what failed to jell in the debate about Obama's association with Chicago radical William Ayers and the controversy over the racially charged sermons of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

Obama, like the Joker and like the racial stereotype of the black man, carries within him an unknowable, volatile and dangerous marker of urban violence, which could erupt at any time. The charge of socialism is secondary to the basic message that Obama can't be trusted, not because he is a politician, but because he's black.

There you have it plain as can be. Now, some pitiably unsophisticated bloggers have objected to this sort of analysis by recalling that when Vanity Fair ran a similar picture of George Bush in July of 2008 no one offered such astute psychoanalysis as we have from Mr. Kennicott, and certainly no one alleged racism. But what the uneducated rabble in the blogosphere doesn't realize, as our trenchant critic notes, is that the Bush image used the Jack Nicholson Joker. The Obama rendering uses the Heath Ledger Joker, and that, don't you see, makes all the difference in the world. If you don't understand why well, then, you're just not tuned in to the exquisite subtleties of racial signaling and codes to the enviable degree Mr. Kennicott is.

I'm tempted to believe that this article is actually a hoax and that the writer is, in fact, constructing a clever parody of the left's tendency to find racism in every nook and cranny of our public life. If, however, he's serious his essay is surely the sort of thing that causes regular people who don't appreciate their betters to smirk at intellectuals and call them chuckleheads. No one knows who even did the Obama poster much less what he was trying to say in composing it, but then when you're an intellectual like Mr. Kennicott, whose erudition doubtless surpasses what most of us could ever dream to attain, you're freed from the constraints of logic and common sense that bind mere mortals. If you're a "thoughtful man," especially one who endorses and reinforces all the racial dogmas and shibboleths of the left, you're permitted to espouse in venues like the Washington Post pretty much whatever goofball ideas pop into your head.

RLC

Desperation

I'm not defending every person who has vented his or her anger at the recent town hall meetings. Some of the behavior, especially at the Steny Hoyer meeting, makes me wince, and I wish some of the more obstreperous folk would be a little more respectful and less obnoxious in expressing their frustrations. But, having said that, the Democrat National Committee ad that's been airing on tv the last couple of days impugning these people is really shameless.

The ad alleges that these irate folks are actually extremists who are being manipulated, orchestrated, and funded by "high level GOP operatives" and organizations. This is simply an absurd slander as Mary Katherine Ham documents at The Weekly Standard.

It turns out that the "high level Republican operative" who produced the memo that appears on the DNC ad is a libertarian who writes on Facebook to about twenty friends. The fact that he is a very minor figure in his state's politics, however, didn't hinder the DNC from producing a piece that deliberately gives viewers the impression that what's happening at town halls across the country is some sort of nationwide conspiracy organized and funded by nefarious and powerful Republican fat cats.

Here's the ad:

It's pretty ludicrous, actually, to label thousands of mostly senior citizens "extremists" because they refuse to go gently into Democrat health care nirvana. It's also a sign of desperation. Check out Ham's account at the link.

RLC

Only in America

For the last couple of years the United States, through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), has been funding an effort to translate moderate Islamic writings into other languages so that more Muslims would be exposed to teachings, for example, that forbid suicide. This, it was thought, would help counter the more extremist Islamists and help diminish their appeal to the masses of Muslims.

It turns out, though, that lawyers at USAID have consulted their law books, read their tarot cards, held seances to commune with the Founding Fathers, and have concluded, incredibly, that this violates the prohibition of using public money to establish a religion. Really, I'm serious. Well, except for the tarot cards and seances.

Apparently, we are in violation of the Constitution if we use public money to try to help one version of Islam prevail over the more violent extreme version. I wonder if this means that tax-payer funded efforts to arrest and kill the radicals before they kill us are unconstitutional. I'm sure we could find a lawyer somewhere who would maintain that the war on terror violates both the establishment of religion clause and the free speech clause of the First Amendment.

Keith Pavlischek writes about it at First Things. It's no wonder people make jokes about lawyers.

RLC

How It Used to Be

Byron links us to a story of racial discrimination from the early forties that would be hard, perhaps, for many of today's young people to imagine. The writer, the daughter of the man who was the victim of what can only be described as some very stupid decisions made by men whose intellectual furniture apparently made such decisions inevitable, draws a number of conclusions about the episode that one wishes were more widely held. You'll like the story.

RLC

Taking The Pols to the Woodshed

I could hardly believe what I was hearing last night and this morning as various liberal talking heads had their righteous indignation at full throttle because a bunch of septuagenarians followed Barack Obama's advice to his supporters in the campaign to get in people's faces and argue. The golden-agers heeded the call of their president and have turned out at various town hall meetings to give their elected representatives a piece of their mind over health care reform.

Democrats were aghast that the tactics of the left would be so unfairly employed against them and have been alleging that people were bussed in from outside, that what happened at the meetings was "orchestrated," that it was "mob-rule," that the geezers were trying to "shut down debate," and so on, but this is mostly absurd. In all the video clips I saw of these town hall meetings the anger of the people was aroused because their representatives were telling them they had to rush health care reform through Congress without really reading what they were imposing on the American people. It certainly seems that it's the congressional leadership and the President who are trying to shut down debate.

Allahpundit highlights the irony. He writes:

• People who want Congress to take more time debating healthcare are shutting down debate.
• Pres. Obama says the time for talk on healthcare is over, but his critics are trying to shut down debate.
• Harassing and threatening the families of AIG employees is awesome; razzing Representatives and Senators is totally bogus!
• Asking Representatives and Senators to read bills before voting on them is killing democracy.
• Sen. Specter saying "we have to make judgments very fast" is awesome. Booing him for saying so is shutting off debate.
• Healthcare protesters are thugs shutting off debate; antiwar protesters are merely "rowdy."

Hot Air has some clips of these encounters with the grey-haired ladies and gents who have so terrorized and scandalized the disciples of Saul Alinsky, as does TCP. Michelle Malkin, meanwhile, posts clips to instruct us on how to do real political thuggery. The clips, of course, are all of various left-wing "protests."

If the folks at these town halls were excoriating Republicans over some Bush initiative you can bet your mortgage that the Democrats and liberal media would be praising them as outstanding examples of American citizenry, but since their ire is directed at the Democrats they're being insulted and minimized. It certainly seems that a lot of reporters and politicians are just psychologically incapable of objectivity and genetically prone to making themselves look and sound like dolts.

RLC

Saving Your Memory

A recent study has confirmed what many suspected: People who engage in activities that exercise the brain, such as reading, writing, and playing card games, may delay the rapid memory decline that occurs if they later develop dementia:

The study involved 488 people age 75 to 85 who did not have dementia at the start of the study. They were followed for an average of five years; during that time 101 of the people developed dementia.

At the beginning of the study, people reported how often they participated in six leisure activities that engage the brain: reading, writing, doing crossword puzzles, playing board or card games, having group discussions, and playing music. For each activity, daily participation was rated at seven points, several days a week was rated at four points, and weekly participation was rated at one point.

The average was seven points total for those who later developed dementia, meaning they took part in one of the six activities each day, on average. Ten people reported no activities, and 11 reported only one activity per week.

The researchers then looked at the point when memory loss started accelerating rapidly for the participants. They found that for every additional activity a person participated in, the onset of rapid memory loss was delayed by 0.18 years.

"The point of accelerated decline was delayed by 1.29 years for the person who participated in 11 activities per week compared to the person who participated in only four activities per week," said study author Charles B. Hall, PhD, of Albert Einstein College of Medicine in Bronx, NY.

Further studies are needed to determine if increasing participation in these activities could prevent or delay dementia."

Few things are more terrifying to people as they age than the awareness that they're losing their memory. Keep reading, discussing and thinking. It's good medicine.

RLC

Good and Evil among the Lefties

Over at Evolution News and Views Michael Egnor is piqued by the fact that much of the secular left has been very hostile toward the appointment of Francis Collins to head the National Institute of Health, but totally mute on the appointment of John Holdren as the President's chief science advisor.

Collins has being severely criticized because, even though he's a highly accomplished scientist, he's also a devout Christian. Holdren is a totalitarian who holds extreme views, some would say genocidal views, about limiting human population. Here are a few that he has committed to print:

• People who "contribute to social deterioration" (i.e. undesirables) "can be required by law to exercise reproductive responsibility" - in other words, be compelled to have abortions or be sterilized.
• Women-particularly women of insufficient means due to poverty, nationality, marital status, or youth--could be forced to abort their children and undergo sterilization.
• Implementation of a system of "involuntary birth control," in which girls at puberty would be implanted with an infertility device and only could have it removed temporarily if they received permission from the government to have a baby.
• Undesirable populations could be sterilized by infertility drugs intentionally put into public drinking water or in staple foods.
• Single mothers and teen mothers who managed to have their children despite measures to prevent fertility should have their babies seized from them and given away to others to raise.
• A transnational "Planetary Regime" and a transnational police force should be assembled to enforce population control.

So why is Collins, a man who would find such views abhorrent, unacceptable to the secular left while Dr. Holdren, a man who would seemingly find himself quite at home in the company of Josef Mengele, is apparently just fine with them?

I don't think it overstates the case to surmise that, for at least some on the left, Christianity is the great evil while totalitarianism and genocide are actually necessary for the betterment of mankind. Read Egnor's analysis at the link.

RLC

Counter-Proposal (Pt. I)

Keith Hennessey is a former advisor to President Bush who writes on insurance matters at KeithHennesy.com In a pair of recent posts he offers first a critique of President Obama's health care reform proposals and second a compelling alternative, the essence of which is incorporated into the Ryan-Coburn proposal crafted by Rep. Paul Ryan and Senator Tom Coburn. Hennessey writes:

President Obama is correct that the underlying problem with health care is rising costs. Because of this problem, your paycheck grows more slowly, millions of Americans cannot afford to buy health insurance, and the escalating costs of Medicare and Medicaid will force enormous tax increases onto you and your children. The President wants to slow the growth of health care spending, and so do I. Congress has gone in the opposite direction. Rather than changing incentives to reduce the cost of health insurance, they are trying to shift those costs onto someone else: you. The facts are not in dispute. The bill being developed in the House of Representatives would mean:

• No reduction in the growth of average private health insurance premiums;
• More than $1 trillion of new government spending over the next decade;
• $239 billion more debt in the short run, with ever-increasing additions to the deficit forever; and
• More than $500 billion of tax increases, including higher income tax rates on successful small businesses.

The better approach, Hennessey argues, is to make health insurance companies compete for individual clients as do automobile insurance companies:

While others offer you the hollow promise of government-provided and underfunded health care security, I'm telling you that you're going to have to take more responsibility for decisions about your own health. A well-functioning system will offer financial incentives to keep yourself healthy, and to avoid risky behaviors that are the source of so much of the costs in today's system. You will have to spend more time talking with your doctor and making hard choices yourself, although that's far preferable to spending that time fighting with your insurer or with a government bureaucracy.

You will have to shop intelligently for health insurance and decide what tradeoffs make sense for your family situation. You will have lower insurance premiums but more financial responsibility for relatively minor medical costs, and you can have a tax-free reserve fund that you can spend wisely on everyday non-critical medical expenses.

It means more personal responsibility and control, and less dependence on the government. It means your health security comes from you buying insurance to protect your family against catastrophe, rather than hoping the government won't ration your care when it's needed. Others want to tell you that you have the right to have someone else pay for your health insurance. I think you have the responsibility to provide for your family's health security, and that it's government's job to set rules so that you have affordable options, and to subsidize the poorest who cannot afford basic catastrophic protection.

The right kind of health care reform means your wages will grow faster as insurance premium growth slows. It means portable health insurance that you can take with you from one job to another, so you don't get locked into your current job because you're afraid to lose your health insurance. It means that millions more Americans will be insured because premiums are less expensive and the uninsured can better afford to buy it, not because we are shifting those costs onto other hard-working Americans and small businesses through higher taxes. It means no increase in the short-term budget deficit. It means dramatic reductions in unsustainable long-term budget deficits, rather than the explosive deficit increases contained in the current legislation.

Hennesey's follow-up post in which he lays out what congress should and should not do about health care reform can be read here. This is very helpful stuff and everyone concerned about the current debate over health care should take the time to read it.

Thanks to Hot Air for the links.

RLC

Wasting Time

Are you the sort of person who feels guilty if you spend an hour doing nothing productive or edifying or are you the sort of person who wishes there were more hours in the day just so you'd have more time to squander? Whichever you are you'll enjoy Jonathan David Price's meditation on wasting time at First Principles. Here's Price's lede:

Do not say this to a philosopher but we have more time now than ever before. One would think that since modern men-and modern women too-have more time, they would think less of it. In fact, quite the opposite is true. The same applies to health and money. We are healthier and wealthier than ever, and these facts have neither calmed our fears nor added peace to our souls. Actually, we seem more anxious than ever about how we spend our time.

This newly-won time, occurring on weekends, evenings, and during paid vacations, is called "free time," and it is a byproduct of industrialization. Delayed marriage and fewer children may have also helped. The majority waste their free time without a second thought, egged on by television, video games, and personal billboards (a.k.a. social networking sites), which they may or may not feel vaguely guilty about. But there is another group-perhaps fifteen percent of Americans-that busies itself with doing and getting and self-betterment.

This cadre of overachievers has the opposite problem: it is terrible at wasting time. And even worse at wasting it well. Their days are planned, their evenings booked, futures fixed. From this group comes our leaders, teachers, businessmen, and preachers. Thus, if the likes of YouTube and the proverbial bear pit fill their lists of time wasters, it is commendable. The problem is that they consider leisure to be a waste of time as well. What Joseph Pieper called the basis of culture, leisure-activity outside the field of servile work, the retreat from the world to study it, reflect on it, worship its source, and return refreshed to serve it-is considered to be wasting time. In recent memory, even the everyday connotation of the word has changed to "doing nothing."

Further on he makes the point that when we waste money it doesn't seem so bad because we can always make more, but the time we waste can never be recovered. The question is what exactly is a "waste" of time?

I wonder if spending a couple of hours a day writing a blog qualifies as "wasting time." Maybe it depends on the blog. I'll have to think about that. Anyway, you'll like Price's essay.

Thanks to No Left Turns for the tip.

RLC

Noses Are Growing

When President Obama insists his health care reform plans would not eliminate private insurance he's being very disingenuous. He certainly wants to eliminate private insurance and have the government take over control of all health care in this country. This is video of Mr. Obama and others explaining that their ultimate goal is to do precisely that. He states clearly that his goal is to get to a single-payer system with the government as single payer:

Two things are disturbing about this: The prospect of government controlling such a huge part of our lives and Mr. Obama's complete lack of candor in his recent pronouncements about his true intentions. He has repeatedly tried to assure voters that he has no intention of getting rid of private insurance, but this is certainly at odds with what he said before his election. How does he expect people to believe him on anything he says if so many of his most important statements are calibrated to meet the demands of political exigency?

RLC

Chavez's Version of the Fairness Doctrine

The left continues its assault on basic freedoms in Venezuela:

More than a dozen of 34 radio stations ordered shut by the Venezuelan government went off the air on Saturday, part of President Hugo Chavez's drive to extend his socialist revolution to the media.

The association of radio broadcasters said 13 stations had stopped transmitting, following an announcement Friday night by government broadcasting watchdog Conatel that 34 radio outlets would be closed because they failed to comply with regulations.

Critics said the crackdown infringed on freedom of speech and that owners were not given the right to a proper defense.

"They're closing the space for dissidents in Venezuela," William Echeverria, head of the National Council of Journalists, told RCTV, a private cable TV station, which did not have its broadcasting license renewed in 2007.

Chavez defended the closures, calling them part of the government's effort to democratize the airwaves.

"This government has turned into a mutilator of rights," Juan Carlos Caldera, of the opposition political party Primero Justicia, said on Globovision TV.

Antonio Ledezma, the opposition mayor of Caracas, called on Venezuelans to protest the move in the streets.

Another 120 radio stations were being investigated for administrative irregularities and the radio frequency of stations being shut down would be transferred to new community broadcasters, Cabello had said.

No doubt the community broadcasters will be favorable to the Chavez regime. Meanwhile, here in the states proponents of the Fairness Doctrine are taking notes. They must envy the ease with which Venezuela has been able to silence its political opposition.

RLC

Best That They Can Do

In logic there's an informal fallacy called tu quoque, meaning, roughly, "you're one too." It occurs when someone seeks to deflect the force of an allegation or claim made by an opponent by asserting that the opponent or the opponent's allies are just as bad. The irrelevance of the reply is a tacit admission that the accused person, or his supporters, really has no defense against the charges. I thought of this while watching the video of Michelle Malkin's recent appearance on The View.

Ms Malkin has written a book on the extensive corruption in the Obama administration (Culture of Corruption) which won her an invitation to appear on the show. It was amusing that during her six or seven minute segment none of the liberals among the ladies at the table chose to defend the President or his administration against her indictments. Instead they were reduced to protesting that, well, the Bush administration was corrupt too, you know:

If this is the best defense the President's friends can mount against the very serious accusations Malkin amasses in her book then Mr. Obama is in quite a pickle.

Thanks to Hot Air for the tip.

RLC

Racial Profiling

If you think that racial profiling by cops is one of the great evils of our time read this. Written by a retired cop it explains how New York's finest do it every day. What's more, it makes the argument that cops shouldn't profile seem pretty simple-minded.

RLC

The Third Replicator

Writer and psychologist Susan Blackmore has an interesting article at New Scientist on the emergence of what she thinks is a third type of "replicator." The first type is the gene, the parcels of DNA that code for the structure and function of biological organisms. The second type is Richard Dawkins' "meme," which is an idea, or cluster of ideas, that get selected by cultures for various reasons and spread throughout the human population (We might ignore for the moment the fact that the concept of the meme has come to be widely dismissed by scientists).

Blackmore thinks there is a third type of replicator that is spreading across the globe threatening to run out of control - computer technology. She makes an interesting case and her article is worth a read, but the most interesting part of it to me is this:

Memes are a new kind of information - behaviours rather than DNA - copied by a new kind of machinery - brains rather than chemicals inside cells. This is a new evolutionary process because all of the three critical stages - copying, varying and selection - are done by those brains. So does the same apply to new technology? There is a new kind of information: electronically processed binary information rather than memes. There is also a new kind of copying machinery: computers and servers rather than brains.

If all three replicators are analogous to each other, and all three are expressions of information, and if information is known to be a product of minds, as it is with memes and technology, then is it not reasonable to infer that the gene may likewise be a product of mind? If evolution at the level of the meme and technological information is mind-driven, why would it be unreasonable or even unscientific to assume that evolution at the level of the gene is mind-driven? Just asking.

RLC