Is America Breaking Up?

Pat Buchanan wonders, with good reason, I think, if America is breaking up. Here's the heart of his essay:

[T]he episode [the President's speech to school students] reveals the poisoned character of our politics.

We saw it earlier on display in August, when the crowds that came out for town hall meetings to oppose Obama's health-care plans were called "thugs," "fascists," "racists" and "evil-mongers" by national Democrats.

We see it as Rep. Joe Wilson shouts, "You lie!" at the president during his address to a joint session of Congress.

We seem not only to disagree with each other more than ever, but to have come almost to detest one another. Politically, culturally, racially, we seem ever ready to go for each others' throats.

One half of America sees abortion as the annual slaughter of a million unborn. The other half regards the right-to-life movement as tyrannical and sexist.

Proponents of gay marriage see its adversaries as homophobic bigots. Opponents see its champions as seeking to elevate unnatural and immoral relationships to the sacred state of traditional marriage.

The question invites itself. In what sense are we one nation and one people anymore? For what is a nation if not a people of a common ancestry, faith, culture and language, who worship the same God, revere the same heroes, cherish the same history, celebrate the same holidays and share the same music, poetry, art and literature?

Yet, today, Mexican-Americans celebrate Cinco de Mayo, a skirmish in a French-Mexican war about which most Americans know nothing, which took place the same year as two of the bloodiest battles of our own Civil War: Antietam and Fredericksburg.

Christmas and Easter, the great holidays of Christendom, once united Americans in joy. Now we fight over whether they should even be mentioned, let alone celebrated, in our public schools.

Where we used to have classical, pop, country & Western and jazz music, now we have varieties tailored to specific generations, races and ethnic groups. Even our music seems designed to subdivide us.

One part of America loves her history, another reviles it as racist, imperialist and genocidal. Old heroes like Columbus, Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee are replaced by Dr. King and Cesar Chavez.

Buchanan has a point. As we become more and more diverse, as we focus on the things which make us different rather than the things which we share in common, as fewer and fewer Americans revere our nation's history, traditions and founding documents, as fewer Americans speak a common language, we will become increasingly Balkanized. Every nation is subject to certain centrifugal forces that tend to rip it apart. What holds a people together against those forces is a dominant culture in which everyone shares. We no longer have such a culture, or it is rapidly disappearing, and what we do have diminishes its hold on the hearts and minds of Americans with every new generation.

America may well be breaking up, and that fact raises an interesting academic question: Can a democracy long endure when none of its sub-cultures is any longer dominant? In other words, can a democracy survive multiculturalism and its attendant relativism? My fear is that the answer is "no." At least it's hard to think of an historical precedent.

RLC

Re: The 9/12 Photo

Several readers have written to inform me that the photo I used to accompany my post titled 9/12 Tea Party was actually taken at a different rally.

I thought when I first saw it that the scene looked too sunny to have been taken last Saturday when the northeast was pretty much soaked in a steady drizzle, but then I thought that maybe in D.C. the sun might have come out more than it did where I live.

Anyway, the pic is not of the 9/12 protest and should not be used as a guage of how many people were in D.C. last Saturday. TCS kindly sent along a link that has some info on the photo. It appears that the shot may have been taken of a Promise-Keepers rally that took place in October of 1997, an event that, coincidentally, I happened to have attended.

I was going to take the photo off the website, but since I'm in it I decided out of vanity to leave it up.

RLC

No-Brainer

Last year Congress and President Bush agreed to suspend the ban on oil drilling on the continental shelf. Things were set to resume tapping into the oil reserves on the shelf this year, but unfortunately the Obama administration suspended the suspension by imposing a six month delay on the granting of leases needed to begin drilling.

That delay is set to expire on September 21st and the administration and Congress have an excellent opportunity to demonstrate how serious they are about creating jobs, stimulating the economy, balancing the budget, and making us energy independent of the Middle East.

According to a report by the American Energy Alliance (AEA) drilling would add $8 trillion to our GDP and generate $2.2 trillion in new tax revenues. This would go a long way toward reducing the deficit that Congress and the President have burdened us with.

Allowing drilling would also, according to the AEA report, create 1.2 million jobs each year and generate $70 billion in wages. The new jobs would not be limited to just the oil industry but would be realized in a wide spectrum of industries upon which oil drilling depends. It would be a substantial boost to the economies of coastal states like California which are teetering on the brink of insolvency.

The continental shelf holds at least 80 billion barrels of recoverable oil and 420 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Since we import about 4 billion barrels a year we could cut our imports in half and have enough oil to last for at least another forty years.

More oil and lower dependency upon foreign suppliers means cheaper gas. Cheaper fuel means lower prices for everything manufactured and/or shipped in the United States. This would be a boon not only to the middle class but especially to the poor.

Democrats in Congress, however, are very reluctant to go along with offshore drilling. They prefer a cap and trade system to reduce fuel consumption that would help reduce global warming. Cap and trade would raise the cost of fuel, kill job growth, make everyone poorer and reduce global temperatures a measly two tenths of a degree Celsius by 2100. It's hard to see why this is a more desirable policy than exploiting the resources we already have, and given the alternatives it's astonishing that there's any debate about which course of action we should follow.

Instead of just reiterating their refusal to allow drilling it would be helpful if the Democrats would share with us the reasons for that refusal.

[Some of the above information was gleaned from an article by Rep. Doc Hastings in the Washington Times.]

RLC

Seeking God in Science (Pt. II)

In chapter two of Seeking God in Science (See here for the first part of our discussion of the book) Brad Monton considers the question of whether ID is legitimate science and here, as in chapter one, he slays a number of hostile polemical dragons. He argues that attempts to define science have a dismal history and that, Judge Jones' decree in Kitzmiller vs. Dover School District notwithstanding, there's no good reason to think that intelligent design is not science. Monton takes on one contender after another and tosses each in turn out of the ring. His analysis of his opponents' arguments is incisive, sometimes brilliant, and the upshot is that, though he thinks ID wrong, there's no good reason for excluding it from the community of scientific theories.

The next chapter was perhaps the most interesting. He begins by saying that the important question is not whether ID is science but whether it's true, and he's exactly right about this. He thinks the arguments in its favor have some plausibility but not enough to persuade him to abandon his atheism or to accept that there is a non-theistic designer.

The problem, I think, with Monton's argument in this chapter is that he seems to make the term "somewhat plausible" synonomous with "not very likely." I don't know if this is intentional, but I do think it's misleading. For example, in considering the argument for a designer based on the fine-tuning of the universe he notes that most people simply lack the expertise to evaluate the claims that the relevant parameters must be set at precisely the values they are for life to exist and thus shouldn't make too much of the extraordinary coincidence that so many values are indeed calibrated to such fine tolerances.

That's true enough, but it's an objection one could make to any theory in science. Most philosophers and even many scientists know very little about relativity theory or quantum mechanics or string theory or even evolution. They rely on people who do know about these things, and they assume that the people who do have expertise are largely correct in their conclusions.

The fine-tuning argument has as an implied premise that the physicists who argue that the dozen or more values must be almost exactly what they are or else the universe wouldn't exist and/or life wouldn't exist, are most likely correct. If they are then an intelligent designer is the best explanation for the cosmic structure.

The argument isn't a proof in the deductive sense, but it's much more than "somewhat plausible" since the claim that the cosmos is fine-tuned for life seems to be admitted by even opponents of ID and is much more likely to be true than false.

Similarly, Monton asserts that we are not warranted in believing that the universe had a beginning because we can't know what happened prior to about 10 ^ -12 seconds after the initial event. Because we can't penetrate that time horizon we're not warranted in believing that the universe began to exist. I think this is not quite correct. We may well be warranted in believing that the universe began to exist in a big bang but we're not warranted in saying that it certainly did. And if we are warranted in believing that the universe began to exist then we may well be justified in believing that it had a cause of its existence.

His most problematic objection to ID has to do with the ID argument that life itself is astronomically improbable as a product of blind, impersonal forces. He doesn't dispute this, but he does argue that the universe is spatially infinite and rather homogenous throughout. Therefore there would be an infinite number of planets like our own and no matter how small the chances of life arising naturalistically, if the probability is at all greater than zero it must have happened. Indeed, it must have happened infinite times.

I find this argument implausible. It's based on the assumption that given infinite opportunities anything that is possible to be the case will be the case. Given an infinite number of planets there would be an infinity of planets like earth and in an infinite number of planets anything which is at all possible will be actual. One problem with this argument is that its based on the assumption that the universe is infinite and that it has a fairly uniform composition throughout, but we have no more reason to think this second assumption true than we did to think that the universe had a beginning. If Monton is not warranted in believing that the universe had a beginning then I don't see how he's warranted in believing that the universe is both infinite and uniform.

But even if we grant Monton these assumptions it seems to me that they actually confirm the existence of a designer. Let's stipulate that there is a non-zero probability that some part of our spatially infinite universe was designed. In other words, we're stipulating that it's possible that a designer exists. If so, then given an infinite number of parts to the universe, at least one of them (actually an infinity of them) must be designed. Thus a designer exists. This doesn't prove that the designer has designed every part of the universe but its a very short psychological step from the existence of a designer of an infinite number of parts of the universe to the existence of the entire universe.

At any rate, an argument that demonstrates the existence of a designer of even just a part of the universe seems to be a defeater of Monton's belief that no such designer exists.

The fourth chapter addresses the question whether ID should be taught in public school science classrooms. Here again Monton relentlessly punctures many of the arguments raised by those who oppose doing so.

The book is a delight to read, as much for Monton's relentless devotion to the truth and the clarity of his argumentation as it is for the interesting perspectives brought to the topic by an atheist defending intelligent design. I recommend it to anyone interested in the controversy surrounding the debate between IDers and those who oppose them.

RLC

The ACORN Saga Continues

Perhaps you've heard that ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), President Obama's former associates, are once again in the news and the news isn't good. A pair of intrepid young indy filmmakers surreptitiously filmed the proceedings as they visited two ACORN offices, one in Baltimore and one in Washington, posing as a pimp and a prostitute. The pair claimed that they wished to run a prostitution business using teenage El Salvadoran girls and they needed advice on housing options. They were counseled by ACORN representatives as to how they could get away with running their business in Baltimore and how they could mislead the IRS and avoid paying taxes.

The conselors were fired when the video broke, but there's a much deeper, more systemic problem with ACORN than just a few ethically challenged housing advisors. ACORN representatives have over the years been convicted in numerous states of voter registration fraud and a host of other legal violations. The odor of corruption and/or mismanagement has clung to them for at least a decade.

Yet ACORN has been given access to millions of dollars in stimulus money and were contracted to help carry out the 2010 census (although in the wake of this latest scandal the census bureau has severed its connection with ACORN).

If you'd like to be brought up to speed on this latest episode in the ACORN saga go here and scroll down. There's plenty of information and video shot by the young undercover investigators in the ACORN offices.

By the way, the young man who did the filming, who did the kind of investigating reporting the traditional media seem loath to do, James O'Keefe, may be prosecuted by Baltimore City for secretly taping the exchange with the ACORN people. Law enforcement authorities had been questioned as to whether the city was going to do anything about what some thought to be ACORN's obvious breach of the law so the State's Attorney's office looked at the tape and decided, astonishingly, that the malefactor was the filmmaker.

Meanwhile, the traditional media slumbers while this travesty plays out.

Margaret Williams, an ACORN board member, predictably blames the whole contretemps on .... racism. Sigh.

RLC

Update on 9/12 Numbers

Jason writes to inform me that ABC is denying having ever claimed that there were 2 million people marching in Washington yesterday.

I have no way of knowing what the actual number was, but when taken together with the fact that there were other such gatherings around the country, it does seem that there's a lot of dissatisfaction out there with the direction the Democrats are taking this country.

It's also noteworthy, perhaps, that so many of the people who traveled across the country to attend this event say that they've never done anything like it before. They never protested anything more than an underdone steak in a restaurant, but they've finally decided that they can be silent no longer. Their children's futures are being placed at risk by this Congress and administration.

Let's just set the number in D.C. yesterday at "lots."

RLC

9/12 Tea Party

According to ABC as many as two million people showed up in Washington, D.C. today to protest out-of-control government spending and an unprecedented arrogation of centralized power. My local news was reporting "tens of thousands" but this appears to be a gross underestimation:

That's an awful lot of racists.

Go here for more pics of the party and enjoy the Doobie Brothers a while:

UPDATE: The photo above showing the crowd in the Capitol mall tuurns out to have been taken at a different rally which took place in 1997 and should not be used to guage the number of people at the 9/12 protest.

RLC

Re: Wednesday's Speech

Caleb, a young law student and friend, writes to share some thoughts on our post about the President's speech last Wednesday.

He has a lot of interesting things to say and closes with this:

I, like many, took umbrage with Rep. Wilson's comments. My issue, however, was not with what he said, but the manner and place in which he said them. While I deplore the current partisanship of politics, where names are flung around with increasing frequency, I realize that it would be hypocritical for one to slam Rep. Wilson for calling Obama a liar when Sen. Reid called President Bush a liar. However, yelling this during a joint address to Congress seems highly disrespectful. So did the various Republicans who were clearly Blackberrying, held signs that said "What bill?", etc. I'm not saying that the Democrats were never guilty of rude behavior towards the President. However, I feel that it is up to both sides, Republican and Democrat, to show more respect for the office. I do not agree with everything that Obama said during his speech, but to call him a liar during it is extremely rude and cheapens the political debate.

Caleb's right. The Democrats were just as rude to Mr. Bush when he tried to pitch social security reform to them in 2004, Mr. Obama was not being forthright about coverage of illegal aliens, and Senator Reid has never been forced to apologize for calling Mr. Bush a liar on national television. Nevertheless, it was unseemly and inexcusable for congressman Wilson to blurt out "You lie!" in that forum, and he apologized for it. We're still waiting for Senator Reid's apology.

Read the rest of Caleb's thoughts on the Feedback page.

RLC

Seeking God in Science (Pt. I)

Bradley Monton is an atheist philosopher of science who has written one of the best books on the controversy surrounding intelligent design I've come across. Monton's book is exceptionally fair to the point of being in places almost sympathetic to ID, though he's at pains to stress that he's not a proponent. Even so, I suspect that the book will have a lot of opponents of ID wondering exactly whose side Monton is on.

The book is titled Seeking God in Science: An Atheist Defends Intelligent Design (157 pages) and is divided into four chapters plus a preface. It opens with the claim that "This book is not providing a full-fledged endorsement of intelligent design. But intelligent design needs to be taken more seriously than a lot of its opponents are willing to."

His goal in writing the book is:

"not to serve one side [in the debate] or the other side, and in fact my goal isn't even to be useful. My goal is simply to evaluate the arguments on both sides as carefully and objectively as I can. If this ends up serving one side more than the other, I don't care; my goal is to do the best I can to get at the truth."

This is certainly a welcome approach, one rarely found among opponents of ID (Michael Ruse and Ronald Numbers are the only other anti-ID writers I can think of who might share Monton's desire to be fair to the arguments of their opponents), and Monton's treatment of the topics in his book is as fascinating as it is refreshing.

The first chapter consists of an attempt to refine the definition of intelligent design so that the arguments both pro and con can be evaluated more effectively and to dispose of a number of weak or misleading arguments with which opponents of ID have cluttered the landscape. It should be noted that this is not a book about the science involved in evolution. In fact, there's very little science in the book at all. It's a book of public philosophy and can be read with profit by any educated person who is aware of the controversies swirling around ID.

In chapter one Monton makes an interesting claim. He observes that if we're trying to find an explanation for certain features of the universe - like its existence and the fine-tuning of the cosmic constants and parameters - then an intelligent cause is clearly our best option. ID offers the best explanation for cosmic fine-tuning and the existence of the world, but he doesn't accept ID because, as an atheist he doesn't think there's any explanation for these phenomena at all. ID is the best explanation, but he believes all explanations are false. The universe just is and there's no explanation for it.

This is an interesting approach but it strikes me as a science-stopper, an accusation which is often leveled at ID. Scientists should always be looking for the explanations of physical phenomena. To say of some contingent state of affairs that it has no explanation seems to me, at least, to be rather ad hoc. Monton says our choice is between an intelligent cause of the world and believing that it just is and has no explanation or cause. If those are our choices, and I think Monton is right about that, it seems that the "no explanation" position is a very high price to pay in order to be able to hold on to one's atheism.

One of the weak anti-ID arguments Monton addresses is the claim by opponents that ID is a religious idea. Monton offers an interesting counter. He points out that, for all we know, our world could be a computer simulation designed by an inhabitant of some other world. Everything about the visible universe could in fact be the product of a very sophisticated software program. If that's a possibility, no matter how bizarre it may sound (and Monton cites some reasons for thinking it may be the case), then ID could be true and there would be nothing necessarily "religious" about it.

In other words, just because many IDers are religious people does not entail that ID must be a religious theory any more than the fact that many Darwinians are atheists entails that evolution is inherently atheistic.

I'll talk more about Brad Monton's book on Monday. Meanwhile, if you're interested in the issues involved in this debate, no matter which side of it you're on, you really should think about ordering a copy.

RLC

Wednesday's Speech

President Obama's speech on health care Wednesday night was disappointing. Once he got past making the case for why we need reform, a need most people agree we have, almost nothing he said about how that reform would look was credible.

We were led to believe that the President would be offering his own plan, but although he referred often to "his plan" the details were virtually the same as those in the proposals currently hibernating in congressional committees.

The president several times averred that his critics are lying about the plan when they claim it will cover illegal aliens, abortions, and will provide for the practical equivalent of "death panels." Yet even some Democrats are saying that the plan will in fact either do these things or permit them to be done. After the speech Democratic senators closed a loophole in their bill that would have given coverage to illegal immigrants and House Democrats twice defeated attempts to tighten the language in their bill that would insure that illegals weren't covered. Such measures are very strange if the bills did not allow for coverage of illegals in the first place.

The President insists he wants competition between insurance companies but neither of the two measures that would put competition into the market, allowing people to buy across state lines and reducing mandates in coverage, were in the President's plan. Either of these or both together would increase competition, lower insurance cost, and not cost a single dime, but the President is disinclined to adopt them. No one knows why.

He insisted that he will be able to save billions of dollars by cutting fraud and waste in the medicare system, but he never explained how he would do this or why he hasn't just gone ahead and done it already. He simply alluded to lots of details that need to be worked out.

AP ran a fact check on several other of the President's assertions and found them less than persuasive. The claim that he will be able to increase coverage on 30 million people (the original target was 47 million) without adding to the deficit or reducing or rationing care of the elderly is quite literally incredible.

His attacks on his critics seemed petulant and beneath his office. It seems that the speech did little to help salvage health care reform and even less to salvage the perception of Mr. Obama as quite the opposite of the "post-partisan" president he campaigned as.

Meanwhile, Rep. Joe Wilson is getting a drubbing in the media for his impolite and intemperate outburst during the speech, when he shouted "You lie" at Mr. Obama, but were these critics of Mr. Wilson not listening to Mr. Obama? Several times throughout the evening Mr. Obama accused critics of the Democrat health care reform proposals of lying. Why castigate Mr. Wilson, but not Mr. Obama? Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid once called Mr. Bush a liar on Meet the Press and refused to apologize. There was no outrage on the left at Mr. Reid's remark. Indeed, the left pretty much agreed. Mr. Wilson has learned an interesting lesson. If you act like a Democrat, you better vote like one or else you can expect to get pummeled by the media.

RLC

What We Should Remember

With due respect to the President, I think he's trivializing 9/11 by designating it a national day of service. When I heard that that was his intent I tried to imagine what the WWII generation would have thought had December 7th been designated by FDR or Harry Truman a day for people to clean beaches and volunteer for Welcome Wagon. I think they would have treated the suggestion with condign derision.

What we should reflect upon on this day, in my opinion, are three things:

First, we need to keep it firmly in mind that we are in a war to the death with radical Islam. They will not stop trying to kill us, our children and our grandchildren until either we have converted to Islam, or either we or they are all dead. This is a generational conflict. It will not end when we withdraw from Iraq or Afghanistan. It has been going on at varying levels of intensity for 800 years and will not cease just because we'd like it to.

Second, we need to remember, and continue to hold up to our young, the character of the people who acted so bravely and unselfishly on that horrible morning. From the firefighters who climbed the tower stairways to try to help the people trapped therein, to the people on board flight 93 who refused to be passive in the face of evil, to the workers in the buildings who, despite danger to themselves, struggled heroically to help their friends and co-workers escape.

There are many others, men and women in the armed forces and intelligence agencies, who subsequently exhibited great valor in fighting those who were allied with the terrorists who launched the attacks, but on September 11 we should remember the men and women who were directly involved in the attack and praise their heroism. Somehow, picking up trash and raking leaves in the community park seem pretty anemic and inappropriate gestures given the import and magnitude of what this infamous day calls for.

Third, we should reflect seriously on the fact that God blesses the nation that seeks to live justly and morally and may remove His hand from the efforts of those nations which have decided to estrange themselves from Him. We need to affirm our trust in God and keep in mind that our dependence for our survival rests ultimately in Him. Military might alone is insufficient and inadequate to keep us secure. If we forget about God and the path He desires us to follow, He very well may forget about us. In that case we might expect that many more 9/11s lie in our future.

Community service is fine, but it's perhaps more suited to Labor Day. Let's not do to 9/11 what we've done to so many other holidays, the real meaning of which has been obscured by the manner in which we celebrate or observe the days.

RLC

Scorning Both Sides

Camille Paglia is one of the most interesting commentators on the contemporary socio-politico landscape. She's a lesbian leftist (maybe more libertarian-left) who writes very clear-sighted criticism of politicians both liberal and conservative. She's an Obama supporter, but she's very tough on both him and the Democrats in general in this piece at Salon. I highly recommend her essay. She's equally hard, as is her wont, on the GOP and certainly doesn't soften her fire when she directs it toward the Bushies and other GOP targets. Here she is on Republicans:

Having said all that about the failures of my own party, I am not about to let Republicans off the hook. What a backbiting mess the GOP is! It lacks even one credible voice of traditional moral values on the national stage and is addicted to sonorous pieties of pharisaical emptiness. Republican politicians sermonize about the sanctity of marriage while racking up divorces and sexual escapades by the truckload.

This is only a slight exaggeration. Her point is well-taken that a party that professes to defend traditional values has little credibility when so many of its major office holders have been caught in flagrante, as it were. It's true that GOP malefactors are not in the same league as the Democrats, but the Democrats don't claim to be concerned about "family values," so no one is particularly surprised when a Democrat is caught siring children with his paramour (John Edwards) or engaging in rough sex with prostitutes (Eliot Spitzer).

They assail government overreach and yet support interference in women's control of their own bodies.

This raises a very interesting question for conservative Republicans, one that really needs to be addressed more than it is. What exactly is the role of government in regulating personal morality? Most conservatives say they want government out of our lives, but then they want the government to enforce obscenity laws and to limit or ban abortions. I think there is a defensible principle involved here (the government has the obligation to protect our rights, especially the right to life, and therefore the government is acting within its proper sphere if it regulates abortion), but the principle needs to be articulated and argued for more than most Republicans seem inclined to do.

Advanced whack-a-mole is clearly needed for that yammering smarty-pants Newt Gingrich, who is always so very, very pleased with himself but has yet to produce a single enduring thought. The still inexplicably revered George W. Bush ballooned our national deficits like a drunken sailor and clumsily exacerbated the illegal immigration debate. And bizarrely, the hallucinatory Dick Cheney, a fake-testosterone addict who spooked Bush into a pointless war, continues to be lauded as presidential material.

Here again, Paglia is voicing some difficult truths (I'll let her characterization of Newt pass). George Bush ruined his presidential legacy, in my opinion, by increasing the deficit (although compared to what Obama has done, Bush's irresponsible contribution to the deficit was like the weight of a fly on the back of an elephant) and by his desultory approach to stemming the tide of illegal immigrants flowing into this country. Nevertheless, Bush kept this country safe for eight years from a determined terrorist enemy and liberated (for how long remains to be seen) fifty million people from oppression. No President in American history can say the same.

It is regarding Dick Cheney, however, that I think Paglia detours off the highway of truth she's been cruising. I think Cheney will go down in history as one of the most unjustifiably maligned men ever to serve in high office. Paglia's accusation that he spooked Bush into a pointless war is neither supportable by the facts nor fair to either Cheney or Bush. Nor is it by any means clear that the war was pointless. I think Cheney, whether he was right or wrong, has shown exceptional courage, calm, and clarity. Few men in elective office have demonstrated the ability to think as clearly about the nature of the conflict with radical Islam in which we are immersed, and will be immersed, for the next several decades, as Cheney has, and, yes, I wish he had been the Republican nominee in 2008 instead of John McCain. At the risk of suffering Paglia's derision I would have voted for him.

Anyway, now that you've read what Ms. Paglia has to say about the GOP, read what she has to say about her own party at the link.

Thanks to Byron for passing it along.

RLC

Hillary in 2012?

The Weekly Standard reports that Hillary Clinton is planning to step down as Secretary of State in order to run for the office of Governor of New York. This makes sense on several levels. First she seems to have been marginalized, perhaps deliberately, by the White House which has appointed "czars" to manage most of the world's trouble spots. While Hillary was sweating in Africa entertaining school children her husband was sent to North Korea to get much of the credit for the release of two young journalists that the North Koreans had accused of spying. Whatever her portfolio she seems to be much less prominent in foreign policy than any of her most recent predecessors.

Then there's 2012. Ms Clinton may well smell blood in the political water. If the President is limping toward 2012 Ms Clinton may want to challenge him in the primaries just as a weakened Jimmy Carter was challenged in 1979. It would be very awkward to do this as a cabinet secretary, but a governorship would be the ideal vehicle from which to launch a bid for the presidency, an office she doubtless still covets. If Obama is strong going into the primary season the governor's office will still serve her even better as a launch pad in 2016.

If the Weekly Standard report is borne out her resignation will surely be stage-setting for a 2012 run at the White House, and a challenge from within the party to a sitting president. That should produce a lot of fireworks.

RLC

Hard to Argue with Her

These people are a chuckle a minute. Lefty blogger Jane Hamsher at Firedoglake offers a fascinating defense of Van Jones by inadvertently admitting that what conservatives have long suspected about Progressives is in fact true:

Now he's [Van Jones] been thrown under the bus by the White House for signing his name to a petition expressing something that 35% of all Democrats believed as of 2007 -- that George Bush knew in advance about the attacks of 9/11. Well, that and calling Republicans "a..holes." I'm pretty sure that if you search through the histories of every single liberal leader at the CAF dinner that night, they have publicly said that and worse.

So where are all the statements defending Van Jones by those who were willing to exploit him when it served their purpose? Why aren't they standing up and defending one of their own, who has done nothing that probably the majority of people in the Democratic party haven't done at one time or another? Is he no longer "one of their own?"

What's she saying? That Jones is no worse or no kookier than a lot of other Democrats? Is she saying that most Democrats have either been communists or have communist sympathies? It sure seems that way.

Her phone must be ringing off the hook with calls from her fellow Dems demanding that she get that post off her blog.

HT: JustOneMinute

RLC

The New Scarlet Pimpernel

If I were a member of the Sierra Club (my environmental contributions go to The Nature Conservancy) I would withdraw my membership forthwith after having read this essay by Sierra Club president Carl Pope. Pope, like so many others on the left, seems unable to imagine why anyone would object to a man who was, and may still be, a radical Leninist revolutionary serving in a high level position in our government. Nor does he see any reason, evidently, to object to someone on the public payroll who believes that the Bush administration was in some sense complicit in the 9/11 attacks.

Why else would people like Pope draw the conclusion that any criticism of someone like Van Jones must be motivated by racism? Are they so cynical that they can't imagine anyone objecting to the appointment of a man of Jones' philosophy of governance and political judgment to a position of responsibility in the Obama administration?

Here are some excerpts from Pope's column:

Well, that [the administration's failure to defend Jones] was a mistake. So was the decision by the White House to treat the initial attacks not as part of an assault on the president but, instead, to allow them to be viewed as being about Van Jones. What we underestimated was the power of the fact that both Jones and Barack Obama are black. Yes, the hysteria was about politics -- I don't think Fox News really cares about Jones's ethnicity -- but it was enabled by race. Calling Bush a "crack-head" is seen by a large part of America as worse than calling him "addict-in-chief" because crack is not just a drug -- it is a drug used largely by black people. It reminds those Americans who are still uncomfortable with Barack Obama that we have a black president.

[A]t the end of the day, [that] was his crime. He spoke to and was of a part of an America that Fox and the reactionary right would like to put back on the plantation or pretend is not part of our nation.

But we shouldn't forgive either ourselves or the Administration if the next time we sense this happening we don't fight back harder, faster, and in a way that calls a mob a mob, racism racism, and an attack on the president an attack on America.

Barack Obama campaigned as one who would put racial divisions behind us, but his votaries are determined to make any criticism of this administration all about race. To criticize the President or any of his African American appointees has become for many prima facie evidence of racism. What these race hustlers fail to realize, however, is that the charge of racism is losing its punch. If everyone's a racist, if every opinion one holds is rooted in racism, then the word "racism" loses its power to intimidate. People are beginning to realize that no matter how respectful they try to be to the racial sensibilities of others they're going to be branded as a racist as soon as they express any opposition to any black in American politics, so why bother worrying about it?

Arguments like Pope's are as silly as they are sad. After three decades of trying to get past skin color we find out that, for the left, skin color is often the explanation of first resort for anyone who disagrees with them. So strong is this heuristic that even the lack of empirical evidence of racism is itself considered evidence for how diabolically subtle modern racists are. I'm reminded of the line from the novel/movie/play The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orzy about the Englishman who masqueraded as a fop risking his life to rescue French nobles from the Jacobin terror:

"They seek him here, they seek him there. Those Frenchies seek him everywhere. Is he in heaven or is he in hell? That damned elusive Pimpernel ..."

Substitute "liberals" for "Frenchies" and "white racist" for "Pimpernel" and the lines could have been written for today's politics.

If Pope wants to find genuine racism perhaps he should look at Jones' comments about "white" polluters, or Jeremiah Wright's sermons, or Professor Gates' stereotyping of officer Crowley. Pope wouldn't see the racial bias in these men, though, because if he did, if he faulted any of them for the race-based sentiments they express, that would, by his own standard, make him a racist for criticizing a black man.

You can watch this video for yet another example of how the left seems unwilling to entertain any explanation, other than racism, for opposition to this administration or any African American who is a part of it:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

RLC

Vicious Smear Campaigns

This is bizarre. Van Jones, President Obama's recently-resigned Green Jobs czar, claims that health care reform opponents are responsible for his resignation:

"On the eve of historic fights for health care and clean energy, opponents of reform have mounted a vicious smear campaign against me," Jones wrote. "They are using lies and distortions to distract and divide."

Lies and distortions? All anyone did was show his signature on a 9/11 "truther" petition, quote his own words about being a Leninist revolutionary and black nationalist, and play the audio tapes of him insulting whites and Republicans. Apparently, for lefties like Jones telling people what he actually believes is a "vicious smear campaign," and quoting him is to "lie and distort." Pretty funny.

Now it would be nice to engage in a similar "vicious smear campaign" to get rid of a couple of other "czars" starting with John Holdren and Hugo Chavez booster Mark Lloyd. All that needs to be done is to show the American people, honestly, fairly, and without rancor, what these guys stand for and let the people give voice to whether they want such individuals working at taxpayers' expense, accountable to no one, in the White House.

RLC

The Evolution of Morality

Robert Wright is an atheist who argues that there is a moral law that somehow pervades the universe and which obligates us to do "right." P.Z. Myers is an atheist who sees things, at least this thing, much differently. Here's Myers:

Nope, says I. First, there is no moral law: the universe is a nasty, heartless place where most things wouldn't mind killing you if you let them. No one is compelled to be nice; you or anyone could go on a murder spree, and all that is stopping you is your self-interest (it is very destructive to your personal bliss to knock down your social support system) and the self-interest of others, who would try to stop you. There is nothing 'out there' that imposes morality on you, other than local, temporary conditions, a lot of social enculturation, and probably a bit of genetic hardwiring that you've inherited from ancestors who lived under similar conditions.

Other than changing the word "compelled" to "obligated" I agree with what Myers writes. Given his atheism he's absolutely correct to conclude that there is no moral law. There's no right or wrong, there's no moral obligation, there are just things that people do. An atheist, as Myers implies, has absolutely no grounds for believing in moral obligation or for making moral judgments.

Wright thinks otherwise:

[E]volutionary psychologists have developed a plausible account of the moral sense. They say it is in large part natural selection's way of equipping people to play non-zero-sum games - games that can be win-win if the players cooperate or lose-lose if they don't.

So, for example, feelings of guilt over betraying a friend are with us because during evolution sustaining friendships brought benefits through the non-zero-sum logic of one hand washing the other ("reciprocal altruism"). Friendless people tend not to thrive.

Be this as it may, it does nothing to explain why we're doing something wrong if we choose not to cooperate with others. Even if evolution has given us a moral sense, so what? That's hardly a reason why we should adhere to it. Evolution has given us wisdom teeth, too, but that doesn't mean that we need them.

Wright continues:

Well, a moral sense seems to emerge when you take a smart, articulate species and throw in reciprocal altruism. And evolution has proved creative enough to harness the logic of reciprocal altruism again and again.

Vampire bats share blood with one another, and dolphins swap favors, and so do monkeys. Is it all that unlikely that, even if humans had been wiped out a few million years ago, eventually a species with reciprocal altruism would reach an intellectual and linguistic level at which reciprocal altruism fostered moral intuitions and moral discourse?

This is all pretty interesting, but, even so, it's not at all clear to me that people are naturally altruistic. They seem much more obviously to be naturally egoistic. If we are what we are through evolution then evolution has shaped us to be self-centered and selfish.

But even if we grant Wright's argument that we've evolved to be altruistic how is this an argument for moral obligation? If people don't cooperate with others all that we can conclude is that they don't carry the genes for it. We can't conclude that they're doing anything wrong. Nor can we say that because blind, impersonal forces have caused us to tend toward mutual cooperation that therefore we're obligated to cooperate with others. That's as ridiculous as saying that because nature has given us facial hair we're obligated not to shave it off.

Evolution (maybe) can explain why humans behave the way they do, but it cannot "demand" that we ought or ought not to behave that way. It cannot provide a ground for saying that some choices are right and others wrong. Nor can it provide a ground for saying that people are morally obligated to do what helps others. Only God can impose moral obligation, and if there is no God then P.Z. Myers is right.

RLC

Why People Think There'll Be Death Panels

On FOX News Sunday DNC Chairman Howard Dean repeated the charge that opponents of Democratic health care reform proposals are fabricating the idea of "death panels," and that there are no such entities in the Democrats' proposals.

The problem with this is that it's certain that if those proposals pass there will be rationing of care and that the rationing will impact medicare recipients especially hard. In other words, the government agency given the authority to decide who gets care and who doesn't and on what basis will function pretty much as a panel which will make life or deazth decisions for people. Just because the words "death panel" don't appear in any of the bills doesn't mean that, for all practical purposes, such entities will exist if the bills become law.

Jennifer Rubin at PajamasMedia explains that despite the outrage of liberal pundits over Sarah Palin's reference to "death panels" a lot of President Obama's supporters are letting the cat out of the bag as the discussion on health care has proceeded through the month of August. She writes:

As for Obama, a candid Mickey Kaus observes: "I can't help but feel that the reason the president doesn't effectively rebut the 'rationing' argument is that he kind of believes we have to move toward rationing. But couldn't he fake it?" Well, Obama would have to fake it and muzzle a great number of his own advisors who seem to think there's nothing wrong with limiting care for all of us and, specifically, pulling the plug on the grandmas and grandpas who account for a disproportionate amount of health care spending.

It's interesting that Kaus, an Obama supporter, seems to think that Obama should essentially lie about his intentions, but never mind that. Rubin continues:

Obama, for example, would have to hush up Rahm Emanuel's brother Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, one of the president's health care advisors. He too is all in favor of cutting off care to those whose days are limited and whose medical expenses are high. The Wall Street Journal reported on Dr. Emanuel:

True reform, he argues, must include redefining doctors' ethical obligations. In the June 18, 2008, issue of JAMA, Dr. Emanuel blames the Hippocratic Oath for the "overuse" of medical care: "Medical school education and post-graduate education emphasize thoroughness," he writes. "This culture is further reinforced by a unique understanding of professional obligations, specifically the Hippocratic Oath's admonition to 'use my power to help the sick to the best of my ability and judgment' as an imperative to do everything for the patient regardless of cost or effect on others."

Dr. Emanuel thinks we need to stop all this chatter about the worth of the individual. Instead we should focus on communal needs. And he has just the scheme for allocating scare resources. Dr. Emanuel describes his ghoulishly named "complete lives" system:

"When implemented, the complete lives system produces a priority curve on which individuals aged roughly 15 and 40 years get the most substantial chance, whereas the youngest and oldest people get chances that are attenuated." ... Dr. Emanuel concedes that his plan appears to discriminate against older people, but he explains: "Unlike allocation by sex or race, allocation by age is not invidious discrimination. ... Treating 65-year-olds differently because of stereotypes or falsehoods would be ageist; treating them differently because they have already had more life-years is not."

If Mr. Obama wants to end concerns about "death panels" he should stop surrounding himself with people who favor doing exactly what "death panels" would do - ration care to the elderly based on actuarial tables.

My own octogenarian mother needed to have a heart valve replaced and medicare picked up the tab. Given that she was in her eighties it's doubtful that people who share Ezekiel Emanuel's views would have approved such a procedure, at least if medicare would be paying for it. My mother's operation was five years ago, and she's still going strong, walking several miles each day. If she hadn't had it she'd be dead. Any bureaucrats who make the decision as to whether medicare will pay for an operation that makes the difference between life and death would indeed constitute a "death panel," and for Howard Dean, or anyone else, to obfuscate this is simply deceitful.

RLC

Rifqa Bary

You may have heard of Rifqa Bary. She's the young woman who converted from Islam to Christianity and then fled her home in Ohio to find shelter with a Christian family in Florida because her father threatened to kill her for her apostasy. She has petitioned the state of Florida to allow her to remain there.

Now some may have a difficult time believing that a loyal member of the religion of peace, such as her father must be, would want to kill his daughter simply because she became a Christian. After all, it's not as if Muslims actually did this sort of thing, or at least it's not as if they did it very often, or at least did it very often here in the U.S., but the girl's fear is nevertheless palpable (see the opening 20 seconds or so of this video):

Pam Geller has been doing great work advocating on behalf of this girl and bringing her plight to the public's attention (though it's been largely ignored by the traditional media). Go here and scroll down to read about her ordeal.

So far the Florida courts have ruled that Rifqa can remain in Florida while her family is investigated to see if her terror is justified. If you wonder why she's in fear of her life go here and scroll down. Or you can ask Salman Rushdie, Geert Wilders, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, or Wafa Sultan, if you can get past their round-the-clock guard. I would've also mentioned Theo Van Gogh, but it's too late to ask him.

RLC

School Address

What lesson is there for the President in the massive public outcry over his plans to address the nations school children on Tuesday? Well, first, it should teach the Democrats about sauce and geese. President George H.W. Bush made a similar address to schools in 1991 and was hammered by Democrats who accused the Republican president of making the event into a campaign commercial.

The second lesson is that the President has used up much of the trust and confidence that the American people placed in him last November. There is growing fear among Americans that either Mr. Obama is not who they thought he was when they voted for him or that he is who they thought he was when they didn't vote for him.

For myself, I have no problem in principle with the President addressing school students. My difficulty is with taking students out of class yet again to hear a talk that will have very little impact on their lives. Students miss so much class time as it is for mandated tests, field trips, sports, student council activities and a multitude of other dubious reasons that to take them out of class once more to hear a lecture that is highly unlikely to make any lasting impression on more than a few of them is really a bad idea. Students thinking seriously about quitting school are not going to change their minds because some guy in Washington says they shouldn't do it.

I also had a concern about the lesson plans designed for the event. There was some reason to think that President Obama was going to use this event as an opportunity to solicit support for his political agenda. The lesson plans prepared for the event originally recommended having students "write letters to themselves about what they can do to help the president," and how the president "inspired them," but because the public objected these questionable assignments have been deleted.

So, the public's protestations were a good thing. The event, as it now seems to be unfolding, is fairly innocuous, but given my druthers I'd prefer that the kids be in class learning the things they won't be learning sitting in an auditorium sleeping through the President's speech.

RLC

So Long, Van

Perhaps by now you've heard that Van Jones, the President's very controversial Green Jobs czar, has resigned. If you're wondering who Van Jones is you probably get your news from the traditional media. Byron York explains:

Coverage of the Jones controversy was a case study of some of the deep divisions within the media. Fox News' Glenn Beck devoted program after program to Jones' past, and a number of conservative blogs were responsible for finding some of Jones' most inflammatory statements. Yet even as the controversy grew -- and even after Jones himself apologized for some of his words -- several of the nation's top media outlets failed to report the story. As late as Friday, as the Jones matter began to boil over, it had not been reported at all in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the evening newscasts of ABC, CBS, and NBC. Although the Post and CBS went on to report the Jones story on Saturday, the Times did not inform its readers about the Jones matter until after Jones resigned.

The traditional media are either too lethargic or too ideological to have reported prior to his resignation that as the New York Times now tells us:

Mr. Jones did not go through the traditional vetting process for administration officials who must be confirmed by the Senate. So it was not until recently that some of Mr. Jones's past actions received broad airing, including his derogatory statements about Republicans in February and his signature on a 2004 letter suggesting that former President George W. Bush might have knowingly allowed the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to occur in order to use them as a "pre-text to war."

Three questions press themselves upon us in the wake of this brouhaha: Why was Jones not vetted? If he was vetted why were his views and statements, including his Leninist sympathies, not considered disqualifying? And why did the traditional media ignore the story while it was raging on Fox and on the internet until after the man resigned?

It's all very puzzling and alarming. Either the Obama administration is displaying a distressing lack of competence or it's displaying a distressing fondness for people on the far left of the ideological spectrum.

RLC

Isa al Masih

A number of readers have pointed out to me that Isa al Masih is Arabic for Jesus the Messiah. I should have known but didn't.

Don't ask me why I didn't google the term before I wrote the response. I have no good answer.

RLC

Rule #12

Students sometimes wonder why and how our politics have gotten so nasty. Actually, this is not a recent development. Many conservative commentators trace the nastiness back to the ugly slanders to which Supreme Court nominees Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas were subjected by Senate Democrats, particularly Ted Kennedy and Joe Biden, in the late 80s and early 90s. Liberal pundits, on the other hand, point to the impeachment of Bill Clinton by Republicans as another event that created wounds so deep that it may be decades before our public discourse ever recovers.

Whatever the more public catalysts may have been, it seems that a lot of people in politics today have taken rule #12 in Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals to heart: "Pick the target. Freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions. (This is cruel, but very effective. Direct personalized criticism and ridicule works.)"

It's worth noting that Alinsky was a left-wing radical writing a manual for progressive activists. There's nothing that I'm aware of in all of conservative literature that comes anywhere close to Alinsky's adjuration to dehumanize and degrade one's political opponents. One searches in vain through Edmund Burke, William Buckley, Barry Goldwater, Russell Kirk, or even Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levine for anything that matches in cruelty or odiousness Alinsky's rule #12.

Yet Alinsky is the left's tactical lodestar and guru. Obama incorporated his teaching into his work as a community organizer. Hillary Clinton wrote her thesis on him. Reading Alinsky is a tacit requirement for leftists in good standing. Thankfully, not all of them follow him but evidently enough do that our political discourse has been gravely coarsened.

It's perhaps no coincidence that the left's attacks not only on Bork and Thomas, but also Ronald Reagan, Ken Starr, George Bush, Dick Cheney, Joe the Plumber, Sarah Palin, Carrie Prejean, the tea partiers and town hall protesters, were so personal, vicious, and vile. Like Alinsky said, it works. Anyone who gets in the way of the progressive agenda can expect to be smeared, insulted, libeled, slandered, and ridiculed. It's the tactic their esteemed mentor urged them to employ and Alinsky's votaries, or at least too many of them, employ it with distressing gusto.

Unfortunately, we're likely to continue seeing this ugliness in our politics until the media and the public demand an end to it. Meanwhile, it's imperative that those on the right who value civil discourse ensure that their side, no matter how much they're angered by the behavior of the left over the last two decades, doesn't fall into the same destructive, degrading rhetorical cess-pool and that we dissociate ourselves from those on the right who may already be swimming in it.

Let's shine a light on this depraved behavior when we encounter it, but let us not succumb to the temptation to respond to it in kind.

RLC

Tough Love

An unidentified reader, who I infer from the screen name is a Muslim, sent me the following in response to the post on enhanced interrogation techniques titled Of Course They Work:

If your views on torture represent Christianity, I do not want anything to do with it as I do not want anything to do with terrorists that claim to be of the Islamic faith.

Concerning your support for torture, does that mean that a North American soldier or citizen can be tortured by your enemies in order to protect their nation from an U.S.A. invasion?

Are your views on torture the foundation of your theology about the death of Isa alMasih?

I deeply regret that the reader feels that my disagreement with the absolutist position against torture makes it impossible for him to consider the truth claims of Christianity. Nevertheless, I simply do not see rationality in the absolutist's position. Here's my reply to the writer (slightly edited and amended):

Thanks for your email. I appreciate the questions you raise.

I'm afraid, though, that you'll have to explain which views on torture you're talking about. I am very much opposed to torture, but I don't believe torture is an absolute moral evil. I believe there are extreme circumstances which justify its use. Do you disagree? Would you allow your child to be brutally murdered if torturing the murderer's accomplice was the only way to save her? Would you condemn someone who saved your child by employing painful measures on the accomplice? Would you look your child in the eyes and say that you would have rather she died than be saved through such means?

Would you allow millions of people to be vaporized in a nuclear explosion if torturing the terrorist who planted the bomb was the only way to learn its location before it went off? Do you think it permissible to use lethal force to prevent an intruder from harming your family? If so, if you think that killing a man in self-defense is morally justifiable, why would you balk at using pain to prevent a man from killing dozens or thousands of innocent people?

Christianity is a religion that enjoins us to love others and to honor their human dignity, but sometimes those two imperatives are in conflict with each other. When that's the case, I think the proper course is to love those you are responsible for and that may mean doing all you can to save them from a terrible death. It may mean violating the dignity of their would-be killer. Life is filled with tough moral choices, but for me this one isn't tough at all.

You asked about my theology about the death of Isa al Masih. I can't answer that because I don't know who al Masih is.

The question of torture, paradoxically, is really a question about who we will love. Will we love innocent human beings or will we love those who threaten them? Sometimes, in certain extreme cases, we can't do both. We have to choose who'll be the beneficiary of our mercy and compassion. When we're confronted with a forced choice, one we can't avoid, to choose the terrorist over one's children or the children of our neighbors strikes me as perverse. There are times in life when compassion and mercy require of us that we do very difficult things. Love is not always about warm, fuzzy feelings.

If you disagree please reread the questions I asked my correspondent and explain to your children why you would rather sacrifice them if the alternative was causing a terrorist discomfort.

A second correspondent's email can be found on the feedback page.

RLC

Senator Kennedy

The funeral is over and a decent interval has passed. Perhaps it's not unseemly now to offer a counterpoint to the public canonization that took place in the wake of Senator Ted Kennedy's passing.

To watch the television news and talk shows it might seem as if someone of the moral and political stature of George Washington had died. Ted Kennedy was not the sort of man that deserves the encomiums being heaped upon him by an adoring media. He was, like all of us, a flawed human being. He should be recognized for his commitment to the causes he championed, but it is a distortion of history to portray him as "great."

As a young man Kennedy was an indifferent student and was kicked out of school for cheating. He was probably intoxicated while driving home a young woman named Mary Jo Kopechne after a party on Chappaquiddick Island. Kennedy, you've probably heard, drove off a bridge into the water. He escaped but Kopechne didn't. Even so, the woman could possibly have been rescued if Kennedy had called for help, but he left the scene and spent the next several hours worrying to a friend about how this would effect his career while Kopechne slowly asphyxiated in an air bubble in the back seat of the car.

During much of his subsequent life Senator Kennedy was a heavy drinker and a philanderer. He and Senator Chris Dodd were reported to have notoriously assaulted a waitress in a Washington restaurant, wrestling her under the table as they squeezed her between them in a "waitress sandwich."

The Senator arguably committed treason during the 80's when he wrote to Soviet premier Yuri Andropov offering to work with him to defeat Ronald Reagan's attempts to neutralize Soviet influence in Europe.

He was prone to smearing political opponents, as Robert Bork can attest, and despite George Bush's attempts to reach out to him, all the Massachussetts pol ever gave him was the back of his hand. His legislative successes were almost always of dubious worth to the country and his greatest achievement in the Senate may have been his longevity.

Perhaps most disturbing of all, however, was the recent revelation from friend and former Newsweek editor Ed Klein that Kennedy actually used to joke about the Chappaquiddick tragedy:

Except that he was born to privilege, Edward Kennedy was a man like the rest of us, full of faults and flaws. That his life would be celebrated by the media in the manner it was and that he would be held up as something of a hero reflects poorly on the state of American culture. It would be better if we asked of our heroes a little more virtue than Mr. Kennedy possessed.

We should certainly be saddened by his death, but let's not think he was someone that he wasn't.

Thanks to Hot Air for the audio.

RLC

Is China Crazy?

This report is big...

A report suggests that the Chinese government is pushing the general public into buying gold and silver bullion, which could have a dramatic effect on the markets.

This is an absolutely fascinating report. Just yesterday I was making the case that our government mistakenly believes we can spend our way back from bankruptcy to prosperity. Now here's a government, China no less, not only advocating that the people save, but that their savings be gold and silver.

A several observations may be made about this report:

• China is recommending physical gold and silver bullion as appropriate investment and savings vehicles, not stocks, ETFs, futures, options, etc. Why do you suppose that is? Answer: because the bullion is safer than the paper. A mine can be nationalized effectively sending the value of its shares to zero. Similarly, other paper investment vehicles are only promises to pay and subject to force major and can be defaulted. These risks are very real and that's why they tend to have a higher return than the bullion. The bullion is safe, and therefore, smart.
• China wouldn't dare make such recommendations if they didn't have confidence that gold and silver would be profitable as well as be a safe store of their wealth. Note that the Chinese people buying gold and silver will probably make the recommendation something of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
• China wants to become an economic super power. One of their tactics to accomplish this is to steadily swap their enormous dollar holding for raw materials thus turning worthless dollars into real assets. But they know a nation can hardly achieve such a goal if the majority of its people live in poverty. China knows the fast track to wealth for its citizens is through gold and silver, especially in the years ahead as the Western economies inflate their currencies into oblivion and crash and burn.
• This offers at least one explanation for why China continues to purchase our US Treasuries or at least hasn't dumped them yet - they are, in effect, supporting the dollar which in turn suppresses the price of gold making it relatively affordable for many Chinese. After, they start buying en masse though, the price will become prohibitively expensive if any of the metal is even available at all.

Now we have to wonder, why doesn't our government encourage us accordingly?

The Company We Keep

The Obama administration has populated itself with some of the most radical extremists ever to step onto the stage of our political life. We've talked on previous occasions about the worrisome views of men like John Holdren, Ezekiel Emanuel, and David Blumenthal (see here and here)

The latest to come to light is a communist by the name of Van Jones who is President Obama's "Green Jobs" czar. Jones may be the most radical of the bunch.

Here's an audio clip that reveals something of the kind of man Van Jones is and what his ambitions for this country are. The short of it is that he seems to want to turn America into Cuba:

Jones also believes that the Bush administration was actually behind the 9/11 attack or at least knew it was coming and deliberately chose not to prevent it.

When conservatives fretted that Barack Obama was too cozy with people like Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright the media pooh-poohed their concerns. Now Mr. Obama is surrounding himself with people just like Ayers and Wright and the pooh-poohers have egg on their faces. You really can judge a man by the company he keeps.

It's deeply disturbing that such a man as Jones would be considered unexceptionable by the administration's vetters. If Jones is allowed to stay in his post after it has now become clear that he's a communist revolutionary and a fringe 9/11 "truther" then we will have learned, or confirmed, something very important, and very troubling, about Barack Obama.

RLC

Junk DNA Evidently Isn't Junk

There's a fascinating report in Science Daily. It seems that researchers have discovered that the difference between chimps and humans is due to the fact that some segments of what is called "junk" DNA, DNA that doesn't code for proteins, were somehow "switched on" in the early history of primates. The resulting proteins coded for by this newly activated DNA were responsible for the emergence of the human species:

Humans and chimpanzees are genetically very similar, yet it is not difficult to identify the many ways in which we are clearly distinct from chimps. In a study published online in Genome Research, scientists have made a crucial discovery of genes that have evolved in humans after branching off from other primates, opening new possibilities for understanding what makes us uniquely human.

The prevailing wisdom in the field of molecular evolution was that new genes could only evolve from duplicated or rearranged versions of preexisting genes. It seemed highly unlikely that evolutionary processes could produce a functional protein-coding gene from what was once inactive DNA.

However, recent evidence suggests that this phenomenon does in fact occur. Researchers have found genes that arose from non-coding DNA in flies, yeast, and primates. No such genes had been found to be unique to humans until now, and the discovery raises fascinating questions about how these genes might make us different from other primates.

They estimate there may be approximately 18 human-specific genes that have arisen from non-coding DNA during human evolution.

This is quite a revelation since Darwinians had long claimed that junk DNA has no function and Intelligent Design advocates had been predicting thatit would eventually be found to have a function in the cell. That there are 18 human-specific genes in what was previously thought to be genetic clutter is pretty embarrassing to Darwinism.

It's also interesting because the DNA was present in the cell prior to having any function. This is hard to square with Darwinian evolutionary theory since it suggests that the cell produced and carried macromolecules for which it had no use, a phenomenon which Darwinism disallows.

Finally, the finding fits nicely with the idea of front-loaded evolution, i.e. the theory that God laid the groundwork for biological evolution at the time of creation and that subsequent evolutionary change has simply been the unfolding of the genetic potentialities latent in life from the beginning.

Whatever the case, the news that junk DNA is not really junk should disturb those who wish to deny teleology in biology. The discovery that preexisting DNA was activated at a certain point in evolutionary history and subsequently gave rise to the human species certainly seems more compatible with a telic view of life than with the notion that evolution is purposeless and random.

RLC

The Hustle

Well, here we are in the beginning of September, notable for historically being a month in which the price of gold goes up so as we might expect, gold has been pretty perky lately. It was up around $20 per ounce yesterday and as I write this, it's up about $20 again for today. It appears that gold is attempting yet another assault on the $1000 level sometime soon.

One interesting observation is that the fundamental issues that have existed since the beginning of the gold bull market that started in 1999 have not changed and, if anything, they have gotten worse. Gold is the safe haven from geo-political and economic risk and it reflects the degree of concern at any given time.

Our government is particularly troubled about the perception of risk because people putting their money into gold are not putting their money into the economy. Since 70% of our GDP comes from the consumer, it follows they the government wants people to consume, not save. (It's ironic that excessive consumption is largely why we're in the economic mess that we are.) So it is predictable that we will see the government making every effort to instill confidence in the people about the economy. They're even rolling out VP Joe Biden to tell us about how the stimulus played a "significant role" in the recovery (in the past tense).

Yes, it's really all about confidence. Confidence in our politicians, our economy, and the strength of our dollar. The game will go on as long as there is confidence so we could accurately say this is a game of confidence or, a con game. A con game works until it doesn't. From the link:

In a sign of how times really haven't changed all that much from earlier in the decade when, in 2001, Federal Reserve Governor Laurence Meyer prodded Americans to "go out and buy an SUV" to help pull the economy out of the recession, today we have the wildly popular "Cash for Clunkers" program where, after spending like drunken sailors over the last few years leading the world into the current mess, the solution to our current economic woe is to borrow and spend even more.

The gold price reflects the degree of confidence inversely or better, we could say it reflects the lack of confidence. It's an invaluable tool for surviving and winning the con game being run on us.

The Myth of AI

There's a refreshingly contrarian view at New Scientist to all the claims that machines will soon be as intelligent as humans and that humans will eventually be almost indistinguishable, intellectually, from machines.

Noel Sharkey is a professor of artificial intelligence and robotics at the University of Sheffield and he's very skeptical that we will ever succeed in creating machines that can think like human beings. Here's part of a recent interview he gave:

What do you mean when you talk about artificial intelligence?

I like AI pioneer Marvin Minsky's definition of AI as the science of making machines do things that would require intelligence if done by humans. However, some very smart human things can be done in dumb ways by machines. Humans have a very limited memory, and so for us, chess is a difficult pattern-recognition problem that requires intelligence. A computer like Deep Blue wins by brute force, searching quickly through the outcomes of millions of moves. It is like arm-wrestling with a mechanical digger. I would rework Minsky's definition as the science of making machines do things that lead us to believe they are intelligent.

Are machines capable of intelligence?

If we are talking intelligence in the animal sense, from the developments to date, I would have to say no. For me AI is a field of outstanding engineering achievements that helps us to model living systems but not replace them. It is the person who designs the algorithms and programs the machine who is intelligent, not the machine itself.

Are we close to building a machine that can meaningfully be described as sentient?

I'm an empirical kind of guy, and there is just no evidence of an artificial toehold in sentience. It is often forgotten that the idea of mind or brain as computational is merely an assumption, not a truth. When I point this out to "believers" in the computational theory of mind, some of their arguments are almost religious. They say, "What else could there be? Do you think mind is supernatural?" But accepting mind as a physical entity does not tell us what kind of physical entity it is. It could be a physical system that cannot be recreated by a computer.

The rest of the interview is at the link.

The danger many people see in the idea of machines having innate intelligence is that it blurs the distinction between human and machine. If humans are not essentially different from machines then humans become de-humanized. When humans lose their uniqueness and are considered to be "just animals" or "just machines" then there's very little reason not to manipulate them and exploit them just as we would animals or computers. Dehumanization always leads to tyranny.

Humans have dignity and worth because they're uniquely created in the image of God. They have intelligence and reason because they were endowed with these gifts by God. To the extent that a machine could be made to think it is only because it was endowed with this ability by an intelligent programmer. As Sharkey says, "It is the person who designs the algorithms and programs the machine who is intelligent, not the machine itself."

RLC

The Starry Heavens Above Me

There are some lovely astronomical photos and other shots of the night sky at this site. Here's one:

Looking at the pictures I'm reminded of the words of Immanuel Kant: "Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe the oftener and more earnestly I think of them - the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me."

Indeed, its hard for me to understand how someone could contemplate either without at least wondering whether God exists.

RLC

Jason and the Socialists

Jason Mattera really is a piece of work. For those who aren't familiar with him, he's a young political conservative who masquerades as a left-winger at various progressive rallies and demonstrations. The results are often hilarious. Here he's "undercover" at a pro-health care reform rally:

For more of Jason's escapades use the search button and type in Jason Mattera in the search field.

HT: Hot Air

RLC

Of Course They Work

Anyone who still believes that what the CIA euphemistically calls enhanced interrogation techniques (EITs) don't work needs to read this article in the Washington Post.

The anti-EIT absolutists (those who believe that EITs are always wrong and never justified) have pretty much lost the moral argument with the American people. Most of those who think about it would affirm that if their child's life could be saved by applying physical or psychological pain to those who threaten her then by all means have at it. Having failed to convince the American people that they are morally perverse for placing the well-being of their children above the well-being of a murderous thug the absolutists fall back on the argument that EITs don't work anyway and therefore should never be employed.

This argument has always carried with it more than a whiff of implausibility (after all, how do we know they don't work unless we use them?) The WaPo article, however, strongly suggests that they do indeed work. It turns out that Sheik Kalid Mohammed, the chief planner of the 9/11 attacks, after having been subjected to milder forms of interrogation to no effect, was then allowed to experience the bracing effects of sleep deprivation and waterboarding after which he pretty much ratted out the entire al Qaeda network in the U.S. Here's one relevant section of the piece:

Mohammed described plans to strike targets in Saudi Arabia, East Asia and the United States after the Sept. 11 attacks, including using a network of Pakistanis "to target gas stations, railroad tracks, and the Brooklyn bridge in New York." Cross-referencing material from different detainees, and leveraging information from one to extract more detail from another, the CIA and FBI went on to round up operatives both in the United States and abroad.

"Detainees in mid-2003 helped us build a list of 70 individuals -- many of whom we had never heard of before -- that al-Qaeda deemed suitable for Western operations," according to the CIA summary.

Mohammed was an unparalleled source in deciphering al-Qaeda's strategic doctrine, key operatives and likely targets, the summary said, including describing in "considerable detail the traits and profiles" that al-Qaeda sought in Western operatives and how the terrorist organization might conduct surveillance in the United States.

All of this information and more saved countless lives, and it was only obtained because Mohammed's interrogators grew weary of politesse and decided to resort to measures calculated to more compellingly concentrate the minds of the terrorists. Of course, this won't matter to the absolutists who are apparently willing to sacrifice the lives of millions of innocents on the altar of their own narrow-minded, dogmatic concept of inviolable human rights.

RLC

Miscarriage of Justice

Why, opponents of capital punishment sometimes ask, can we not be satisfied with putting criminals in prison for life? Why must we execute them? One reason, perhaps, can be found in the case of Phillip Garrido, the man arrested for the kidnapping, imprisonment, and rape of 11 year-old Jaycee Lee Dugard 18 years ago.

It turns out that on the day of the abduction, Phillip Garrido was on parole. He had been convicted of federal and Nevada state charges in connection with a Nov. 22, 1976, incident when he was 25 and kidnapped a woman, drove her to a warehouse in Reno and sexually assaulted her. Garrido was sentenced to 50 years in federal prison and five years to life in Nevada prisons. But, after stints in federal prisons in Leavenworth, Kan., and Lompoc, as well as a Nevada state prison, he was released on lifetime parole in 1988.

Having served less than twelve years of a minimum 50 year sentence, Mr. Garrido was released to inflict more horror on a girl and her family whose lives have been ruined by this man and by a system which seems indifferent to the people who must live with such monsters among them.

Whoever was responsible for this man's release, a judge or parole board or whoever, should be held liable for his crimes. If you or I, through an exercise of poor judgment, were to be responsible for harm befalling another person we would be liable and would probably lose all we have in lawsuits brought against us. Just so it should be possible to bring suit against those whose poor judgment results in crimes against others. The best way to stop early release of criminals from prison is to hold those who make those judgments financially accountable for their decisions.

RLC

Subsidizing Abortion

We've seen that the Democrats' health care proposals, despite insistent denials, would indeed cover care for illegal aliens and would also have government bureaucrats making decisions about who gets what treatment, especially at the end of life.

Now it turns out that supporters of the Democrat plan are acknowledging that yet another serious concern about the plan is well-founded. The plan currently before Congress would, as opponents have alleged, pay for abortions.

Pro-lifer Jim Wallis, an Obama booster, claimed on CNN's Lou Dobbs show that the Congressional plan would indeed cover abortions. However, he goes on to say, incorrectly, that the President doesn't want his plan to do that. In fact, contrary to what Wallis believes, the President has made it clear that he definitely does want abortion to be covered:

One of the reasons so many people are so mistrustful of our political leadership, especially on the issues being advanced by this administration, is that it seems the claims made by supporters of the President are too frequently out of phase with the President's own words. Indeed, it's not uncommon for the President himself to contradict things he had said on previous occasions. There may be reasons for this, it may not be deliberate dishonesty, but if the President is going to regain the confidence of the people he needs to be consistent in what he says. Otherwise, confidence in his word will continue to fade among the American electorate.

RLC

Lycan on Materialism and Dualism

William Lycan is a materialist philosopher, i.e. he rejects the dualist view that there are two fundamental essences to reality - matter and mind. He believes that matter is all there is and that mind is just a word we use to describe the functioning of the brain.

Nevertheless, in an upcoming paper he acknowledges that, though it pains him to say it, materialism is little more than a prejudice. The arguments for materialism, he notes, are no better than the arguments for dualism:

I mean to have shown here that although Cartesian dualism faces some serious objections, that does not distinguish it from other philosophical theories, and the objections are not an order of magnitude worse than those confronting materialism in particular. There remain the implausibilities required by the Cartesian view; but bare claim of implausibility is not argument. Nor have we seen any good argument for materialism. The dialectical upshot is that, on points, and going just by actual arguments as opposed to appeals to decency and what good guys believe, materialism is not significantly better supported than dualism.

Yet, I am inclined to believe, the charge of implausibility is not irrational or arational either, and I would not want this paper to turn anyone dualist. Have a nice day.

In the paper Lycan observes that the strongest argument against dualism is the incomprehensibility of two fundamentally disparate substances, mind and matter, interacting in the brain to produce mental phenomena. It's hard to imagine how an immaterial substance like mind could act causally on matter. Lycan doesn't think that this is much of an objection because we scarcely understand causality in the first place.

Another problem that the materialist has if he's going to cite "interactionism" as an objection to dualism is that materialists have long believed themselves that disparate entities could interact even though their interaction was incomprehensible. How, for example, does space generate quantum particles? Indeed, how does matter bend space? Whatever one's conception of space it's very difficult to conceive how such things happen. If a materialist, nevertheless, believes they do, as everyone since Einstein does, then it seems a case of special pleading to exclude mind/brain interaction on the grounds that we have no theory to explain how it could occur.

HT: Uncommon Descent

RLC

Teen Employment at Record Low

In a development which was thoroughly predictable by anyone who has thought about it fewer youth were employed in July than in any July since 1948:

The Labor Department said 4.4 million youths were unemployed in July 2009, or about 1 million more than in July 2008, putting the youth jobless rate at 18.5 percent, about double the overall national percentage. Fewer young people were even trying to be part of the labor force this year than in recent years, perhaps choosing summer school, odd jobs around the house or idleness instead.

Two factors are surely responsible for this: The first is the tight economy and the second is the recent increase in the minimum wage. Ed Morrissey at Hot Air focuses on the latter:

Since 2007, Democrats have led the charge to increase the minimum wage in the US, claiming that the poor hadn't gotten a fair shake from employers. Nancy Pelosi and the late Ted Kennedy pushed hardest for mandating increases in wages despite warnings that the net effect would be to lower employment for teens and entry-level workers while creating inflationary pressures on prices, negating the gains through loss of buying power. For the second year in a row, those predictions have come true.

It is a simple matter of common sense that if employers are required to pay their workers more money they'll try to get by with fewer workers, especially in a recession. Those lucky enough to find a job will perhaps benefit from the higher wage but millions of others will get left out. Moreover, the higher wage rate usually results in higher prices which reduces everyone's real income.

Raising the minimum wage is a lousy idea, as it increases both unemployment and inflation, but Democrats push it because it makes them popular with people who don't really think about, or care about, the hidden consequences of such measures.

RLC