Distorted Vision

This is one of those reports that makes you shake your head and say well "no kidding," but it's important that it be publicized nonetheless because there are a lot of folks on the left who have for a long time now denied everything that it says:

Boys exposed to porn are more likely to indulge in casual sex and less likely to form successful relationships when they grow older, according to research carried out in a dozen countries.

The report, Harms of Pornography Exposure Among Children and Young People, also found that young boys who see pornography are more inclined to believe there is nothing wrong with pinning down or sexually harassing a girl.

Michael Flood, who carried out the study at the Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society, said: "There is compelling evidence from around the world that pornography has negative effects on individuals and communities.

"We know it is shaping sexual knowledge. Some people may think that is good. But porn is a very poor sex educator because it shows sex in unrealistic ways and fails to address intimacy, love, connection or romance. Often it is quite callous and hostile in its depictions of women.

"It doesn't mean that every young person is going out to rape somebody but it does increase the likelihood that will happen."

Research in the UK suggests that 60% of boys under 16 have been exposed to pornography, accidentally or deliberately. The average age at which they first saw porn has dropped from 15 to 11 in less than a decade. The average amount of time they watch porn on the internet is 90 minutes a week.

There's more at the link. It's an interesting report, but I found myself feeling a bit skeptical of the last paragraph:

Petra Boynton, a psychologist, said: "Children are not necessarily looking at porn for gratification. They are doing so because they are bored and not supervised. Often when children look at more extreme porn it is done for bravado so they can laugh and say how disgusting it is."

This strikes me as far-fetched. If children thought it was disgusting they wouldn't look at it, any more than they go out of their way to taste a food they thought "disgusting." I suspect it's more likely that children look at pornography because they find it fascinating and exciting. They keep coming back to it because they get a frisson of pleasure from it, and continuous exposure to it eventually distorts their entire vision of what the relationship between a man and a woman should be. This is the almost universal testimony of pornography addicts I've heard speak on the subject.

We convinced ourselves over the last fifty years that we can saturate our culture with sex to no harmful consequence. Indeed, we were often told that it's actually healthy to cast our inhibitions aside, as soon as our sexual selves awaken, and bask in the pleasure. Those who demurred were scoffed at and dismissed as prudes and prigs. When anyone who had reservations about the wisdom of sexualizing our culture was himself caught in an episode of human weakness he was generally pilloried for his "hypocrisy" as though it were hypocritical to believe that one's own conduct was wrong and harmful but find that one is too weak to refrain from it.

Incredibly, those who thought sexual self-indulgence was perfectly acceptable placed themselves on the moral high ground over all those repressed and pinched Dimsdales who knew it was not a good thing to indulge ones appetites but who succumbed to the temptations of life regardless. Better to be an unabashed libertine, we were told, than wrestle with one's hormones and one's conscience.

Studies like the one featured in the Times Online, however, suggest that, in the words of a famous preacher, "the chickens are coming home to roost."

RLC

Cursed Land

A friend sends along a link to an article by Alex von Tunzelmann in the TimesOnline that leads the reader through the slums of Haiti prior to the earthquake. We feel like we're being led by Virgil on a tour of Hell.

Short of a miracle Haiti seems like a land without hope, the problems are so severe. There are lots of villains in the story (the big one may surprise you) and not least are the Haitians themselves. The worst part of reading this essay is that implicit in every paragraph is the sense that there's just nothing that can be done. Americans do not recieve that message with equanimity, of course. We tend to believe that if we have the will we can make any place different, but I confess, short of taking over the country and imposing martial law for several generations, I haven't the faintest idea how Haiti can be rescued.

At one point a senior American foreign policy expert tells von Tunzelmann that the only solution to the problems which plague that island is mass emigration, but who really thinks that any nation will open it's doors to millions of poor, uneducated, unskilled believers in voodoo?

One might easily conclude from von Tunzelmann's column that Haiti is a cursed land. That may be unfair, but it's certainly a terribly tragic place. Read the column, count your blessings, and pray for these wretched people.

RLC

Why Socialism Fails

Here's an allegory making the rounds on the Internet (again). It's worth repeating because it illustrates an important, and timely, lesson:

An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before, but had once failed an entire class. That class had insisted that socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer. The professor then said, "OK, we will have an experiment in this class on socialism." All grades would be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade so no one would fail and no one would receive an A.

After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy. As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little. The second test average was a D! No one was happy.

When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F. The scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else.

All failed, to their great surprise, and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great, but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed.

Somebody please send this along to the White House.

RLC

Neuroscience and Consciousness

One of the more interesting contemporary philosophical debates is that between those who believe that everything can be explained in terms of matter and physics, called materialists, and those who believe that there's more to reality than just atoms and energy. The latter philosophers hold to one kind of dualism or another, and argue that mind (or soul, or spirit) is an irreducible constituent of the cosmos.

Most Christians are dualists. They believe that there's more to an exhaustive explanation of human beings than just a physical description of our chemistry. They hold to the view that the phenomena of our mental experience point to the existence of something both immaterial and critical to a full understanding of living human organisms. The phenomena of consciousness, they argue, simply cannot be explained within the constraints of a materialist worldview.

A recent column by Ray Tallis at New Scientist takes this view and argues that materialist views of consciousness simply fail to account for what we know about our inner experience. He acknowledges that most people who think and write about these matters are materialists, but he thinks they're simply mistaken:

Most neuroscientists, philosophers of the mind and science journalists feel the time is near when we will be able to explain the mystery of human consciousness in terms of the activity of the brain. There is, however, a vocal minority of neurosceptics who contest this orthodoxy. Among them are those who focus on claims neuroscience makes about the preciseness of correlations between indirectly observed neural activity and different mental functions, states or experiences.

Tallis claims that there's a "deep philosophical confusion embedded in the assumption that if you can correlate neural activity with consciousness, then you have demonstrated they are one and the same thing, and that a physical science such as neurophysiology is able to show what consciousness truly is."

Demonstrating a correlation between chemical reactions in the brain and particular states of consciousness, no more demonstrates that consciousness just is a bunch of chemical reactions than demonstrating a correlation between the state of a television set and the image on the screen demonstrates that all that's involved in producing the image is the television set.

Tallis goes on to note that:

... there is an insuperable problem with a sense of past and future. Take memory. It is typically seen as being "stored" as the effects of experience which leave enduring changes in, for example, the properties of synapses and consequently in circuitry in the nervous system. But when I "remember", I explicitly reach out of the present to something that is explicitly past. A synapse, being a physical structure, does not have anything other than its present state. It does not, as you and I do, reach temporally upstream from the effects of experience to the experience that brought about the effects. In other words, the sense of the past cannot exist in a physical system.

Our failure to explain consciousness in terms of neural activity inside the brain inside the skull is not due to technical limitations which can be overcome. It is due to the self-contradictory nature of the task, of which the failure to explain "aboutness", the unity and multiplicity of our awareness, the explicit presence of the past, the initiation of actions, the construction of self are just symptoms.

It's a little technical but the article is nonetheless a good read if you wish to understand why dualists consider the materialist view highly implausible.

RLC

Christianity and Conservatism

January 20th was the first anniversary of Barack Obama's tenure in office, and I thought it might be fitting to repost a talk (slightly edited) I was invited to give at a church a couple of days before his election in 2008. I was asked to speak on why I thought conservatives opposed Barack Obama's candidacy. Here's what I said:

As the late Richard Neuhaus liked to say, the first thing to say about politics is that politics is not the first thing.

Having said that, the second thing I want to say is that there are basically two disparate political ideologies or worldviews in our politics - conservatism and liberalism, and that sincere, honest and thoughtful Christians are found in both camps. Christians who are conservative and liberal agree on the importance of peace, of helping the poor, of protecting nature, of valuing life, of improving education, of doing justice.

Indeed, the commands in Scripture distill to these two: Love God and love others. In the Old Testament love for others is usually discussed in the context of doing justice. In the New Testament the emphasis is on showing compassion. So as Christians who seek to achieve the ends we all agree upon, we are constrained by love for God to be compassionate and just toward our fellow man.

But, though we agree on the goals, and we agree that we should be compassionate and just, that's where agreement ends. Some very significant differences center around how we can best achieve the ends we all desire, and here the differences between us are often so great that one sometimes despairs that agreement could ever be reached.

I believe (but won't argue) that whether we see the world through conservative lenses or liberal is a function of our personality, our upbringing, our life experience and that since these things can't be changed, it's very difficult, though certainly not impossible, for people to change their ideology.

Because it's so hard to change minds, both sides resort to power politics. The only way to get what we think is best is to acquire the political power to impose our will on the rest of the nation.

One might wish that as Christians, informed by a Biblical vision of the world and of justice, we would pretty much agree on how to achieve the ends we mentioned above. Unfortunately, it's not that easy.

Consider an example: We all agree that the government needs money to do the things necessary to maintain a large population and to help those who need it. So, what's the best way to get the money? Is it to raise taxes or cut them? What does the Bible say? Well, the Bible is pretty much silent on the matter.

Should we raise taxes or should we cut them to fund needed programs? We should do whichever works provided it is compassionate and just, and assessing that is not always easy. Liberals say we should raise taxes, conservatives say we should cut them. Liberals say if the government needs more money you go to where the money is and take it. Conservatives believe that by cutting taxes on families and businesses people have more money to spend, they buy more, business prospers, hires more employees and pays them better salaries. The more people you have working and the more money they make, the more they pay in taxes and thus revenues actually go up. If, on the other hand, you raise taxes, conservatives argue, then the consumer has less to spend, business makes less money, they cut workers and reduce benefits which results in fewer people paying less tax in the long run.

So, what is the conservative philosophy of government? Different people would answer the question differently, but generally conservatives believe that in the three primary spheres of government responsibility - economic, social, and foreign policy - the government is best which governs least.

The economy does best when taxes and regulations on business are kept as low as possible. On foreign policy there are two schools of thought among conservatives: "Paleo" cons tend to be isolationists, "neo" cons tend to believe that we have a moral obligation to liberate people from oppression to the extent we can. That used to be the liberal position, by the way, but it no longer is. Domestically, as a general rule, conservatives hold that the less accountable a government entity is to the people the less it should interfere with their lives.

There's nothing in Scripture that mandates conservatism or liberalism, but the conservative ethos is certainly compatible with Paul's injunction in I Thess. 5:21 to "Examine all things carefully and hold fast to that which is good."

Well, we are on the cusp of an election and most conservatives are deeply concerned that Democrats will wind up controlling both Houses of Congress and the White House. Why is this such a serious concern for them? Why do they think it so important to defeat the Democrats?

The Democrat party, in its current incarnation, stands for a number of things which conservatives believe to be fundamentally unjust. Remember, when we vote on Tuesday we're not just voting for Obama or McCain, we're voting for the entire party.

Whoever wins is going to surround himself with people from his party. In the case of the Democrats that means people who wish to make some fundamental changes that conservatives think would be gravely harmful.

Conservatives may be wrong about this (though I don't think they are). It may be that the Democrats do not intend to do what conservatives think they'll do or it may be that the changes will not be as harmful as conservatives think they will be.

I'm not going to argue that the perceptions I'll mention are accurate renderings of Democratic aims. Nor do I wish to argue that they would be harmful. I merely point out that this is how conservatives see Democrat intentions and that they believe them to be much more harmful than beneficial.

So - most conservatives would agree that the Democrat party hopes to do the following:

• Remove all restrictions on abortion, including partial birth abortion.
• Alter the meaning of marriage so that it's no longer the union of one man and one woman.
• Appoint judges and Supreme Court Justices whose decisions will be based on political fashion rather than on the text of the constitution.
• Effect a redistribution of wealth from the middle and upper classes to the underclass.
• Treat terrorism as a police matter rather than as a global war on Western civilization.
• Pile onto American business onerous regulations and taxes that will make it impossible to compete in the global market and which will result in higher unemployment and higher costs. (Minimum wage, capital gains, health insurance)
• Continue the accelerating secularization of our society.
• Open our borders to anyone who wants to take up residence in our country and give illegal aliens the right to a driver's license, health care, and welfare.
• Nationalize health care.
• Deny to parents any choice in where they send their children to school.
• Push fuel costs back up so as to force us to conserve and develop alternative energy sources.
• Quell freedom of speech, particularly when it is conservative or religious, through vehicles like the Fairness Doctrine.
• Downgrade our military preparedness and end the program that would enable us to shoot down incoming nuclear missiles.
• Take away the right to own or buy most types of guns or to acquire a license to carry them on one's person.
• Strip union workers of the right to a secret ballot in union elections.

One or two of these may come to pass under a McCain presidency, to be sure, but conservatives believe that it's almost certain that all, or most, of them will come to pass if the Democrats control both the White House and the Congress.

If these measures sound good to you then you should pull the lever for Democrats on November 4th. If, on the other hand, you don't think this is the sort of change that America needs then you should resist the seductive lure of Hope and Change and vote for McCain.

RLC

Endurance Test

Walter Shapiro spends a few days watching the cable news stations while convalescing from surgery. The experience proves purgatorial for him and amusing for readers with more than a passing acquaintance with CNN, MSNBC, and Fox who read his account.

RLC

Swedish Health Care

Zachary writes to criticize the health care reform bill currently in congress by way of an anecdote that should give us all pause:

I met a Swedish foreign exchange student last year through my high school that simply explained the Swedish health care plan as similar to waiting in line for a restaurant without even being guaranteed a seat. He explained to me that he had torn a ligament in his knee and was placed on a six month waiting list to even have an evaluation on his knee. He had eventually received surgery, but it had been a nine month process for something that currently takes one to two months in the United States [Actually, it usually takes only a few days in the U.S. to get needed surgery on a serious knee injury, RLC].

One question that remains in my mind is if the health care package is free to all citizens, then what will happen to the illegal immigrants that still reside within America since it will be mandatory that everyone purchase health insurance via the government. I just do not see how it's worth it to institute a health care plan where we will be heavily taxed to compensate for "free" health care as well as the wait that will be necessary for proper treatment of illness' and injuries.

We've been spoiled in this country by our relatively easy access to outstanding medical care, but because there are millions who can't afford health insurance, the Democrats wish to impose a system similar to that in many European countruies rather than find a free-market path to helping those who need better coverage.

It doesn't seem to make much sense, but perhaps the recent election in Massachussetts will jolt them out of their stupor, like a drowsy driver startled awake by the sound of his vehicle drifting off the road, and send them on a different course.

RLC

Obama's Katrina? Nah.

By many accounts the people of Port au Prince still need much more help more than a week after the earthquake. They still lack enough rescue workers, medical supplies, doctors, security, food and water. My question is why is the media not blaming President Obama for being so slow to get sufficient help to these people?

Mind you, I don't blame Obama for this. I'm confident that given the logistics of the situation and our desire to respect the authority of the U.N. and the Haitian government we may well be doing everything we can. But then neither did I blame George Bush for waiting one day more than perhaps he might have for the state of Louisianna to request federal help to aid Katrina victims. Bush was savaged in the press for his alleged fecklessness, essentially because he was reluctant to override state and local prerogatives until it became clear that the people primarily responsible for the rescue effort were incompetent.

If the media and those who were so critical of Bush's response had a shred of fairness they would be asking why it is that some ten days after the earthquake we still have so few troops and doctors on station, why insufficient numbers of rescue workers have been sent to dig out possible survivors, why there's so little food and water available for the people, and why the state department was so slow to cut through their red tape to allow children in Haitian orphanages to be moved out of the country to their adoptive parents.

Instead, they simply report how tragic the situation is without realizing that, had Bush been president they'd no doubt be livid over the slowness of our efforts. They point out the immensity of the problems and insist that there's not much President Obama can do, and besides, Mr. Obama gave a fine speech right after the earthquake where he promised we'd be there for the Haitian people.

Okay, I agree with all that, and am willing to give the Obama administration the benefit of the doubt that they're doing everything they can to help the Haitian people in their time of need, but the point is that if George Bush were still president and the situation in Haiti were as bleak as it is, his critics wouldn't be giving him any leeway at all. They'd instead be proclaiming that this often disorganized and painfully slow rescue and recovery effort is proof of George Bush's incompetence, indifference, and even racism.

How long will it take before the media starts to recognize their double standard?

RLC

Projection

The liberal media have consistently tried to portray the Tea Party folks as rabid thugs and yahoos, which is, of course, nonsense. Nevertheless, one comes to expect such mischaracterizations from the left which seems to indulge itself in a classic case of psychological projection when it tries to talk about the Tea Party movement.

By this I mean that the left imputes to its perceived enemies the same character traits it sub-consciously knows that it, itself, possesses.

Consider, for example, these twenty photos taken at left-wing rallies during the Bush years and put together by John Hawkins. Says Hawkins:

It has been enlightening to see how differently the anti-war rallies and Tea Parties have been covered by the mainstream media. The anti-war rallies were given prominent coverage and the radical sentiment was hidden away from the public. On the other hand, positive news about the Tea Parties is buried by the MSM and the ugliest voices are put front and center.

However, here's a reality check: Radical sentiment was much more prevalent at the anti-war rallies and it was much more representative of the participants' opinions. You can tell that's the case because while offensive signs and conspiracy theories at Tea Parties have frequently been condemned by conservatives, you almost never heard liberals disavowing the offensive signage and comments at anti-war rallies.

Tell me if you saw anything as vile or violent as these at a Tea Party.

RLC

Update from Haiti

My friend Andy, a missionary in Haiti, writes with an update on what's going on in his village which is several hours drive from Port au Prince:

As things move along here, our town (and every rural town) is starting to receive refugees from Port-au-Prince. All of the young people from here who were in school in the capital are back in our town now...and for who knows how long. Then there people who know people from here, and they are showing up as well. Jean-Pierre's uncle is currently stranded in Port with no house, no food, no water. We sent a pick up (at quite a dramatic price..perhaps up to $200 US) to go pick them up this morning. I count on helping to house the family...man, wife, and four kids. Food is going to be an issue for everyone in the country before long, we expect. [If you're interested in helping, as some of you have mentioned, send funds to the Lutheran church* noted as a contribution to Andy Stump. I haven't yet found a way to cash checks since the quake, but we hope to be able to do so soon. I foresee the chance to help lots of folks...especially with a meal here and there and cash to resolve problems. Plus our church is having meetings everynight this week to 'welcome' people who are suffering.]

Our church may well become a refugee site for our sister churches in Port who have no church building and no homes to go home to. Nothing is planned yet, but they do need somewhere to go.

One of the ironic things about the earthquake is that prisoners became freemen. Our local convicted drug dealer who was in a Port prison showed up here yesterday. There are effectively no police in the country to do anything about it. And no one in town will do anything out of fears of retribution. SO, it makes an interesting twist. We'd heard that many of the prisoners were shot as they tried to escape. Apparently not all of them.

*If you wish to support Andy send your contribution to Andy Stump c/o Christ Lutheran Church, 126 Main St. Dallastown, PA 17313

RLC

Vote of No Confidence

It really is hard to overstate the significance of Republican Scott Brown's defeat of Democrat Martha Coakley in yesterday's special election in Massachusetts. The contest was for the Senate seat of Democrat hero Ted Kennedy who had held the post for 40 years. The election was held in a state in which a Republican hadn't been sent to the Senate since the early seventies, a state in which the Democrat party holds a 3-1 edge over the GOP in voter registration, and in which Barack Obama defeated John McCain by 26% just a year and a half ago.

Pundits are speculating as to what it all means. There are questions now about the fate of health care reform and the rest of President Obama's agenda. There are questions about how many more Democrats will resign or switch parties to avoid being clobbered in the regular election to be held this November. There are questions about how a little known state senator was able to overcome a 30 point Coakley lead just three weeks ago and beat her by 5 points.

Whatever the answers to these questions turn out to be, it's clear that the game has changed. People are fed up with Harry Reid's vote buying, congressional corruption, secret negotiations, and broken campaign promises. They don't want higher taxes and they don't want the government taking over major sectors of the economy like finance, insurance and the automotive industries. When they voted for Hope and Change what they wanted, I think, was not a fundamental restructuring of the American system along socialist lines, but rather a president who would project competence, eloquence, and non-partisanship. They wanted an end to all the sniping and bickering in the press. Instead all they got was the eloquence and a whole lot of other stuff they never expected (although they should have).

I think the resulting disillusionment with the President and his party's leadership is the main reason they were defeated in the recent races for Governor in Virginia and New Jersey and now in the Massachusetts Senate race. Democrats were on television last night saying that Coakley ran a terrible campaign, but the fact is she should have been able to prevail in Massachusetts without campaigning at all.

If a Democrat can't win in the bluest of blue states they're not safe anywhere which causes me to wonder how many of them will be willing in the weeks ahead to risk their careers to support the health care bill that the President and the congressional leadership are pushing on us. I doubt there are very many.

RLC

Two Myths

"The Day of Judgment will only come when Muslims fight the Jews and kill them. When the Jews hide behind the rocks and the trees and the rocks and the trees cry out, 'Oh Muslim, there is a Jew hiding being me, come and kill him.'" A saying of the Prophet Mohammed

Among the myths from which many Americans need to be liberated there are two that are especially pernicious.

The first is the myth that the left is the champion of free speech in America and the second is the myth that the haters among Muslims represent only a tiny fraction of the Muslim population and that they're largely overseas in any event.

David Horowitz is a former radical leftist who later in life realized that the left was the greatest enemy of human freedom in the West in the 20th century. He subsequently set about giving speeches and writing books about the threats we face from those who would, if they could, put the boot of oppression on our necks. His work takes him to many university campuses where he and others who share his views, must be protected by armed guards not only from leftist campus thugs but also from violently disruptive, hate-filled Muslim students.

He recently gave a speech at USC that I wish every American would read in its entirety. It gives a clear picture of how far along the process of denying freedom of speech and imposing other fascist strategies upon this country has progressed. The speech reveals some frightening truths, but even more frightening is the fact that so many Amercans are oblivious to what's happening on many of our largest campuses and how complicit university administrators are in facilitating the hatred that is being directed against Christians, Jews and anyone who opposes the Islamist agenda.

Please take fifteen minutes or so and read Horowitz's speech. It'll open your eyes.

RLC

Re: Haiti

Byron pens a caution that my criticism that the aid given to Haiti in the last two decades, totaling several billion dollars, has been largely for naught, is unfair. He points out that in fact much good has been accomplished:

I'm not sure "money thrown" at the problems in Haiti was really just "thrown" nor utterly wasted. Sure some programs and schemes were less effective, but not every aid program was pointless. Schools taught some kids, some clean wells were built, some vaccinations given, some roads built, some hospitals equipped. Those doing development work still have a lot to learn, and local folks do too. But it isn't as if we didn't save some kids from starvation, help some people in good ways, and make a bit of a difference. Tearing off the darkness doesn't come easily, but some successes have been seen, even in Haiti. Brooks is right to insist on cultural ideals that are wise, and to point out the bad infra-structure isn't anything new, really. He's right, but it isn't anything that "liberals" would disagree with. Did you mean to imply as much?

He's right, of course, that much good has been done in Haiti and that that miserable land would be in far worse shape than it is had Americans and others not helped, but we must distinguish aid, which is a government to government transfer, from the work of charities, mission organizations, disaster relief, etc. Most of the good that Byron talks about has been accomplished by private, non-government organizations (NGOs), not through aid which often winds up in the pockets of corrupt politicians, the military, and other thugs. Some of it might seep through the layers of corruption to the people, but it's hardly a good return on our money.

Byron goes on to say that:

I know a number of NGO workers, policy wonks and missionaries. Some are evangelicals, some are active more mainline congregations or traditions. I just don't know anybody who has that simplistic ideology that we can't critique any third world group or indigenous practices. Making liberal ideas about multi-culturalism a whipping boy is too easy and, while may having a grain of truth, I think you overstated it.

This is doubtless true. The people who actually work in other cultures are much less likely to suffer the illusion that all cultures deserve respect or that it's chauvinistic to think one culture superior to another. It is to illustrate this that I appended the letter from my missionary friend to the post. The "multicultural blather" doesn't come from people most familiar with the culture in which they labor to bring relief from misery, it comes from the academy, the media, and the political sphere and seeps down into our popular discourse and determines our assumptions about the world.

We fail to do what needs to be done to bring about genuine change in these places because we're cowed into thinking we'll be called racists, imperialists, paternalists, and colonialists by those who insist that we have no right to impose our cultural values on others - that our culture is no better than theirs. So instead we just send aid which is essentially welfare for corruptocrats, and saints like my friend and Byron's acquaintances stick their fingers in the dike heroically making their life's work trying to hold back the tide.

The rest of By's email can be read on the Feedback page.

Those who want to read up on the problems of giving aid to poor countries should read Dambisia Moya's Dead Aid, or Paul Collier's Bottom Billion.

RLC

Most Influential

Need a quick primer on who's who in contemporary ideological warfare? The Telegraph U.K. has ranked the most influential conservatives and the most influential liberals in the U.S. They actually rank the top 100 of each but they break the lists into installments of twenty. The top twenty conservatives are featured here and the top twenty liberals are here.

There are links to the other 80 people on each list as well.

I question a number of their choices (Joe Lieberman was ranked in the second twenty as a conservative?!), but overall I think they did a pretty good job.

The most influential liberal was a foregone conclusion, I think, but I was surprised by the Telegraph's choice of the most influential conservative.

Thanks to Jason for the link.

RLC

Journey From the Fall

Those of a certain age will remember with a bitter taste in their mouth the American betrayal of the Vietnamese people in the early to mid 1970s. After Nixon negotiated a cease-fire, congressional Democrats cut off funding for the war, refusing aid to the South Vietnamese who were left on their own to face their deaths at the hands of the North Vietnamese who ignored the cease-fire and who were supplied by the Chinese and Soviets. After the Americans left and the North invaded the South a curtain of misery and terror settled over the Vietnamese people, especially those who had worked with the Americans. It's perhaps the darkest, most disgraceful event in our national history, at least in the 20th century.

To say that the South Vietnamese suffered scarcely begins to capture the horrors they experienced, but last night I watched an excellent film, made by Vietnamese filmmakers and actors, that gives us some insight into the atrocities perpetrated by the communists on those who had made the fatal mistake of trusting American politicians to honor our commitment to their protection. Just as the movie The Killing Fields, gives us insight into the unimaginable slaughter perpetrated by the Khmer Rouge as they swept into the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh, so, too, does Journey from the Fall (2007) strip away the comfortable rationalizations that were all very much in the air as we fled Saigon in 1975.

Journey follows the fate of a South Vietnamese official, his wife, son, and mother, in the wake of the collapse of South Vietnam. It's heartbreaking to watch, but it's a story repeated millions of times in millions of lives of people trying to flee the benevolences administered by the armies of the North.

The movie is a little confusing since the narrative does not follow a chronological sequence, but it does a marvelous job of showing us who the Vietnamese people were and the terrors to which they were subjected by the communists.

It's a splendidly crafted film about a very important part of our history, one most of us would probably like to forget, but which we must always remember. It's a shame that most of the politicians who refused to allow President Ford to protect the South from their vicious neighbors are no longer around to see it.

RLC

By Any Means Necessary

Readers sometimes chide me for thinking that lefties lack a certain starch in their moral fiber. Well, I know anecdotal evidence is not going to convince anyone, but here's a prominent liberal talk show host on MSNBC, Ed Shultz, boasting that he'd cheat in order to prevent the Republican candidate from winning the Massachussetts special election tomorrow:

I know, I know. Some will object that Shultz wasn't being serious (although he certainly sounds serious). The point is that people who revere our democratic system and who take their integrity seriously wouldn't joke about something like this, particularly in light of the allegations of voter fraud that have plagued recent elections, and certainly not in a public setting.

It's no wonder the Democrats haven't been upset by the allegations and evidence of ACORN's voter registration fraud. Some of them, at least, appear to think such tactics are morally justifiable.

HT: Radio Equalizer

RLC

Martin Luther King Day

I can think of no better way to honor the memory of the man whose life we celebrate today than to read his Letter From a Birmingham City Jail.

It's hard, I think, to read King's letter without drawing the conclusion that he was driven by his conviction that the Gospel demands that we do justice to our fellow man and that this is our highest obligation. His Christian faith permeated and informed his political thinking, and it would be good for those who admire King but who also believe that religion has no place in the public sphere to reflect on the fact that apart from Christianity there would have been no Martin Luther King. Indeed, a naked public square could never have produced an American civil rights movement.

RLC

Haiti

David Brooks has an excellent column on the Haiti disaster at the New York Times in part of which he writes:

This is not a natural disaster story. This is a poverty story. It's a story about poorly constructed buildings, bad infrastructure and terrible public services. On Thursday, President Obama told the people of Haiti: "You will not be forsaken; you will not be forgotten." If he is going to remain faithful to that vow then he is going to have to use this tragedy as an occasion to rethink our approach to global poverty. He's going to have to acknowledge a few difficult truths.

The first of those truths is that we don't know how to use aid to reduce poverty. Over the past few decades, the world has spent trillions of dollars to generate growth in the developing world. The countries that have not received much aid, like China, have seen tremendous growth and tremendous poverty reductions. The countries that have received aid, like Haiti, have not....

....Third, it is time to put the thorny issue of culture at the center of efforts to tackle global poverty. Why is Haiti so poor? Well, it has a history of oppression, slavery and colonialism. But so does Barbados, and Barbados is doing pretty well. Haiti has endured ruthless dictators, corruption and foreign invasions. But so has the Dominican Republic, and the D.R. is in much better shape. Haiti and the Dominican Republic share the same island and the same basic environment, yet the border between the two societies offers one of the starkest contrasts on earth - with trees and progress on one side, and deforestation and poverty and early death on the other.

As Lawrence E. Harrison explained in his book "The Central Liberal Truth," Haiti, like most of the world's poorest nations, suffers from a complex web of progress-resistant cultural influences. There is the influence of the voodoo religion, which spreads the message that life is capricious and planning futile. There are high levels of social mistrust. Responsibility is often not internalized. Child-rearing practices often involve neglect in the early years and harsh retribution when kids hit 9 or 10.

We're all supposed to politely respect each other's cultures. But some cultures are more progress-resistant than others, and a horrible tragedy was just exacerbated by one of them.

Fourth, it's time to promote locally led paternalism. In this country, we first tried to tackle poverty by throwing money at it, just as we did abroad. Then we tried microcommunity efforts, just as we did abroad. But the programs that really work involve intrusive paternalism.

In other words, part of the reason why the billions of dollars of aid that the U.S. has sent to Haiti in the last twenty years has done nothing to improve the situation there is that we are locked in a deadly (for the Haitian people) tango with our politically correct assumptions about other cultures. The Haitian culture is completely dysfunctional and corrupt, but we're too cowed by liberal/progressive multicultural blather about the beauty of diversity and the need to "respect all cultures" to point out the retrograde, primitive beliefs and assumptions that are destroying the Haitian people.

We're also too fearful of being seen as imperialist and colonialist to do what Brooks says and go in and fix the problems. If we do that, we fear, why, there may be resistance, there may be resentment, so instead of actually helping people we just keep sending millions of dollars that just evaporates once it hits the Haitian shore.

Liberal ideas are harmless until people start taking them seriously and putting them into practice. Then you realize that they not only prevent us from doing what is necessary to really help people but that they're massively wasteful, futile, condescending, and counterproductive.

I have a friend who has been a missionary in Haiti for over twenty years. He loves the Haitian people, but his love for them has not blinded him to their deeply degenerate culture. He's been emailing our church to keep us updated on what's going on in his village since the earthquake. I thought I'd share his last email:

Life is moving back toward normal now. We only had one 'shaking period' yesterday. People are sleeping outside just to be safe...because folks here are easily scared. They'd never think of sleeping outside on a normal night...too scary. Now they won't sleep inside...too scary. It's sad, a life being afraid of everything. I talked to a twelve year old boy who was alone in the woods when the quake happened. The ground shook. He tells me he immediately thought, "Demons!" He ran through briar and brumble cutting his legs to get away from the demons. Demons get a lot of credit here in Haiti for things they don't do. As he told me the story I remembered running by him as I went to get my camera.

Thanks for all of your ideas about helping folks here. I'm at a loss as to what people can do at this point. The big organizations obviously are used to doing this kind of thing. That's a good place to start, helping them cover their costs. I can't see how sending or shipping anything here would work anytime soon. All the 'systems' are down, and they were faulty before they went down.

Gas jumped up in price already. The trip to Port (Port Au Prince) used to cost around $40 in public transportation. Now it's $100 or $150. That should come down as gas gets back in circulation. The big gas 'center' apparently wasn't affected. But for the time being gas is rare.

We imagine food will be rare in the days ahead. It will get expensive, no doubt.

Jean's (John's) one sister and brother have made it out here to our part of the country already. She showed up with nothing but the clothes on her back...literally. She was barefoot. I imagine more and more people will be showing up like that. Locals will be ready to share whatever they have (which isn't much to begin with). I'm guessing this town will be saturated with people seeking a place to stay and start over in the days and weeks ahead. The southern end of the island is in great shape compared to the capital area.

I'm not sure even what WFL (Water For Life) will be able to do to help folks. It's early still. We haven't heard more from our president, Leon, than that he and his wife are fine.

SO, I encourage those of you praying for the relief effort. Helping here in Haiti can be really really frustrating. Pray for the patience of relief workers as they confront the complete absence of infrastructure and preparation for disasters. It sometimes makes you feel crazy, and you end up crying, "Why am I here trying to help these twisted people!?" But they need love, love, and more love.

Helping people find people is a great idea. Radio stations and websites are working hard to help folks. It'll take time.

I'll obviously be doing what I can to help folks in need as they come across my path. A few have today already. If you'd like to contribute to that effort, please do it through Christ Lutheran Church. They are accustomed to receiving funds for the work here with me.

If we wish to really help the Haitians, or the people of any third world country, we should first get it into our minds that we can respect them as individual persons created in the image of God while at the same time recognizing that they're trapped in a culture that is devastating their potential. The worst thing we can do, perhaps, is to "respect" a culture that eats its people alive.

RLC

You Know You're a Conservative If...

Harold Witkov at American Thinker talks about the "Eureka moment" a lot of people are having as they watch what the Democrats are trying to do to their country. People are suddenly experiencing the insight that, regardless of how they voted in the last election, regardless of which party they are registered with, they're actually conservatives. Witkov writes that you can tell if you're like one of these folks if you oppose:

• the federal redistribution of wealth.
• entitlement politics.
• American czars.
• apology tours that denigrate the greatness of our country.
• tax-and-spend politics.
• government takeovers.
• amnesty citizenship for those who have entered our country illegally.
• out-of-control printing of money.
• legislation designed to do away with free speech (Fairness Doctrine).
• big government.
• trillion-dollar government stimulus package slush funds.
• treating our allies like enemies and our enemies like friends.
• politicians who do not let us drill for oil.
• politicians who look the other way while Iran and North Korea develop nuclear weapons.
• government-run health care.
• health care bills that provide abortion funding.
• backroom deals by politicians that circumvent transparency and the Constitution.
• trillion-dollar deficits.
• high taxes.
• treating all people to the identical security scrutiny in airports.
• laws that provide special exemptions for legislators.
• laws that provide special privileges to certain states.
• those who would stifle an honest global warming debate.
• federal funding of corrupt organizations like ACORN.
• "Miranda rights" for foreign terrorists.
• confessed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed getting a civilian trial in NY.
• cap-and-trade legislation and taxing carbon footprints.
• closing GITMO and bringing terrorists to American soil.
• letting the U.N. tell us how to live.
• a president who does not believe in American exceptionalism.

Lest anyone (Like David Brooks) think that conservatives are defined simply by what they are against it should be pointed out that one is against things because one is for their opposites. It is because one believes in small government, low taxes, strong national defense and individual liberty that one opposes most of the items Witkov puts on his list.

RLC

How Technology Is Changing Warfare

The Wall Street Journal has an interesting article on how technology is making war "safer," at least for those who use the technology. Included among descriptions of various weapons systems is a brief history of how we came to have a fleet of Predator drone aircraft which have been widely used in the Afghanistan/Pakistan theater:

When the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, it had just a handful of drones. Today, U.S. forces have around 7,000 unmanned vehicles in the air and an additional 12,000 on the ground, used for tasks including reconnaissance, airstrikes and bomb disposal.

In 2009, for the first time, the U.S. Air Force trained more "pilots" for unmanned aircraft than for manned fighters and bombers.

After Syrian missile batteries in Lebanon took a heavy toll on Israeli fighter jets in the 1973 war, Israel developed the first modern unmanned aerial vehicle, or UAV.

When Israel next invaded Lebanon in 1981, the real-time images provided by those unmanned aircraft helped Israel wipe out Syrian air defenses, without a single downed pilot. The world, including the U.S., took notice.

The Pentagon set aside its long-held skepticism about the advantages of unmanned aircraft and, in the early 1980s, bought a prototype designed by former Israeli Air Force engineer Abraham Karem. That prototype morphed into the modern-day Predator, which is made by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc.

Unlike the U.S. and other militaries, where UAVs are flown by certified, costly-to-train fighter pilots, Israeli defense companies have recently built their UAVs to allow an average 18-year-old recruit with just a few months' training to pilot them.

There's more at the link.

RLC

Trends Bode Ill for Democrats

James Pethokoukis explains the formidable difficulties the Democrat party faces in trying to keep control of the House of Representatives in 2010.

He lists eight which I paraphrase here:

1. Momentum. Big GOP wins in the gubernatorial races greatly helped Republicans with candidate recruiting for 2010.
   
2. History. In 13 of the past 15 midterm elections going back to 1950, the party in control of the White House has lost an average of 22 seats in the House.
   
3. Party dominance. Particularly in the House, there are lots of Democrats in places with a proven willingness to vote Republican. Currently 47 of them are in districts won by both John McCain in 2008 and George W. Bush in 2004.
   
4. Obamacare. Americans disapprove of healthcare reform by a 51-38 margin. And only a little more than a third think the $787 billion stimulus plan has done much good .... There's also plenty of worry among the electorate that Washington spending is creating a dangerous level of government debt.
   
5. Rep. Parker Griffith. Griffith recently switched from Democrat to Republican and could be an electoral harbinger. His district, Alabama's 5th, gave 60 percent of its votes to Bush in 2004, and 61 percent to McCain.
   
6. Unemployment. It would take a year of 4 percent growth generating 200,000 to 250,000 jobs a month to bring the rate down to 9 percent. And even that would be twice as high as what Americans have been used to during the past two decades.
   
7. Voter apathy. a recent poll by the liberal Daily Kos blog found just 56 percent of Democrats definitely or probably voting in 2010 vs. 81 percent of Republicans.
   
8. Lag time. Even if the unemployment rate falls a full percentage point next year, it may not help Democrats much. Americans only slowly regain their economic confidence after a deep recession.
   

Pethokoukis goes into more detail on these in his article which, if you're a political junkie, is worth a read.

You might also be interested in developments in Massachusetts where they're having an election to fill the seat of the late Senator Ted Kennedy. In a state with a three to one edge in voter registration the Democrat is actually slightly behind in the polls. It seems that even in the bluest of states people may have had enough of the Democrats' shenanigans and policies.

RLC

The Myth of the Perfect Parent

When I was a young man just beginning a family I was convinced that how our children eventually turned out was pretty much a matter of how good a job my wife and I did as parents. As time went on and I saw more and more friends who were committed to doing the best parenting job they could, struggle with rebellious, defiant children or children who simply failed to adopt the values and beliefs they (and I) thought necessary for successful adulthood, I gradually began to see how wrong I was.

A lot of parents are filled with guilt at how their children turned out because they believe that if they had done something differently their children would have been different. They're like the person who believes that when answers to prayer don't come that it must somehow be because of something they're not doing right.

The truth of the matter, I've come to believe, is that our contribution to a child's formation is much less than what I used to think, and now a lot of "experts" on parenting are drawing the same conclusion. an article in Christianity Today by Leslie Leyland Fields discusses some of what psychologists and others are finding about the influence that parents have on the kind of young adults their children become.

Fields is writing specifically for Christians, but what she says is applicable to everyone who struggles with children who seem to be programmed to make every bad choice it's possible to make. She starts off her essay with a story, the details of which might vary from family to family, but the main theme of which seems sometimes to be nearly universal:

My family and I were traveling in Guatemala a few years ago. We visited a man who had given his life to serving a poor congregation. We sat at the kitchen table with him, a man who had been bent into humility by the burdens of pastoring in a struggling nation while raising four children. Still in the muddy trenches of parenthood with our five sons and one daughter, we confessed to him our feelings of inadequacy.

"Your children are grown. What have you learned looking back on your years of child-raising? Do you have any advice for us?" We looked at him, needy, expectant.

He would have none of it. "I'm not one to talk to. I don't exactly have a perfect record." One of his children was immersed in an addiction, he told us, visibly sad. Another had a failed marriage.

He was silent for a moment, nodding slowly, and then continued. "I never lived up to my mother's expectations either. I've been reading her journal lately, and I see how she prayed for me, what she prayed. And I've never lived up to what she hoped for me," he said, his voice a near-whisper. "I think she considered me a failure."

In my mother-mind, I supplied the last words: "And considered herself a failure as a parent." This conversation shook me profoundly, touching one of my deepest concerns.

Read the whole piece. Especially if you're a parent or aspire to be one.

RLC

Rendering Unto Caesar

Here's an ethical problem for our readers to ponder:

A businessman tells a customer that if the customer pays cash for the service he has been provided the businessman will not charge him tax. If the customer pays with a check or credit card the businessman has to charge the tax. Suppose the tax would amount to a significant sum - let's say $100.

Is the customer morally obligated to pay the tax whether he can avoid it or not? Is it wrong for the customer to pay cash in order to avoid the tax? If he would have paid cash in any event should he also volunteer to pay the $100 tax? Can he rightfully justify avoiding the tax by arguing to himself that he will use that $100 to purchase other goods from other merchants that will help them stay in business whereas the state will simply squander the money, perhaps even using it to line the pockets of legislators?

I welcome your responses to these questions, but please include the reasons which support your judgment.

RLC

The Right Stuff

Hot Air links us to an article at Wired which discusses some of the difficulties encountered by intelligence agencies in locating Iran's underground nuclear weapons facilities and some of the technology that's being brought to bear on the problem.

It's interesting reading, but the article goes on to address the problem of how to neutralize the facilities once the tunnels that house them are identified and mapped. There are a number of tools that have been or are being developed in order to accomplish this task including bombs called massive ordinance penetrators (MOPs) which can penetrate 60 feet of solid concrete before detonating.

MOP

There are also other options which rely on finesse rather than brute power:

The MOP may be capable of smashing through a lot of rock, but there are smarter approaches. The U.S. Air Force has developed skip-bombing techniques with bunker busters so that they arrive horizontally and can be aimed precisely at entrance doors. They may not destroy the entire facility, but if all the entrances are wrecked, then nothing can go in or out.

Thermobaric bombs like the BLU-118 "cave buster" have been specifically designed for attacking tunnel systems; the shockwave will travel far underground, going around corners and bends that would degrade normal blast waves. One test showed that it could kill human targets even when the blast had traveled through 1,100 feet of tunnels.

There are also more exotic options, like the Rocket Balls (or more correctly, "kinetic fireball incendiaries") developed for the Defense Threat Reduction Agency. A warhead would release a large number of these rubberized balls of rocket fuel; once ignited they bounce around at high speed, spreading out by going through doorways and other openings and raising the surrounding temperature to over a thousand degrees within seconds.

Will Iran give up its nuclear weapons program? If they don't will we try to take it out? If we do what will be the blowback from such an operation? Does Barack Obama have the right stuff to deal wisely with these questions? Let's hope.

RLC

More on Reid Faux Pas

A friend emails me to comment on the post Jumping on Reid, and his thoughts afford me the opportunity to say a little more about the matter. Mike writes:

I think the really horrible point in Trent Lott's statement a few years ago was the reference to the "good old days" before the civil rights movement. Whether said in jest or not, a public statement like this from a senator from Mississippi was legitimate reason for Lott to step down.

Maybe Reid's comments aren't sufficient for his dismissal, but certainly if we wanted to see a senator resign for reasons of poor character and incompetence, Harry Reid would be one of the first on the list.

I wrote back to him:

Mike,

I would agree with you that it would have been reprehensible had Lott said what he said with civil rights in mind, but I have no reason to think that he did. Lot's of people are nostalgic for the "good old days" and mean nothing hurtful by it. The plight of minorities isn't even on their horizon when they use the phrase. I don't have any reason to think Lott was doing anything but trying to make an old guy feel good on his 100th birthday.

I think that our political discourse needs to change from a "gotcha" mentality where all we care about are the politically correct rules of the game to a point where we give people the benefit of the doubt until we have good reason to believe that they're unfit for office. In other words, I think we need a lot more of the Golden Rule in politics.

I believe with you that Reid is unfit to be a senator, much less majority leader, but not because of his comments about Obama. If we don't want people to criticize us unfairly for things we say which may have implications we didn't intend then we shouldn't criticize them when they make the same kinds of statements.

Parenthetically, I just read chapter 5 of Sarah Palin's book Going Rogue, and I have to say that if she's only half right about the way her political opponents tried to destroy her after the 2008 election then there really are some very wicked and contemptible political activists in our society. Conservatives should strive to be nothing like them.

RLC

More on the Hume Affair

Russ Douthat weighs in at The New York Times on the controversy surrounding Brit Hume's advice to Tiger Woods to embrace Christianity. Douthat thinks the outcry over this is a bit ridiculous:

Liberal democracy offers religious believers a bargain. Accept, as a price of citizenship, that you may never impose your convictions on your neighbor, or use state power to compel belief. In return, you will be free to practice your own faith as you see fit - and free, as well, to compete with other believers (and nonbelievers) in the marketplace of ideas.

That's the theory. In practice, the admirable principle that no one should be persecuted for their beliefs often blurs into the more illiberal idea that nobody should ever publicly criticize another religion. Or champion one's own faith as an alternative. Or say anything whatsoever about religion, outside the privacy of church, synagogue or home.

A week ago, Brit Hume broke all three rules at once. Asked on a Fox News panel what advice he'd give to the embattled Tiger Woods, Hume suggested that the golfer consider converting to Christianity. "He's said to be a Buddhist," Hume noted. "I don't think that faith offers the kind of forgiveness and redemption that is offered by the Christian faith."

A great many people immediately declared that this comment was the most outrageous thing they'd ever heard. Hume's words were replayed by Jon Stewart on the Daily Show, to shocked laughter from the audience. They were denounced across the blogosphere as evidence of chauvinism, bigotry and gross stupidity. MSNBC's Keith Olbermann claimed, absurdly, that Hume had tried to "threaten Tiger Woods into becoming a Christian." His colleague David Shuster suggested that Hume had "denigrated" his own religion by discussing it on a talk show.

The Washington Post's TV critic, Tom Shales, mocked the idea that Christians should "run around trying to drum up new business" for their faith. Hume "doesn't really have the authority," Shales suggested - unless of course "one believes that every Christian by mandate must proselytize." (This is, of course, exactly what Christians are supposed to believe.)

You can read the rest of Douthat's fine column at the link. The secular left has long wished to eliminate religion from public life and in order to accomplish this they've tried to conflate the constitutional proscription against federal meddling in religious matters with a total secularization of all public spaces. The idea that the federal government must be neutral on matters of religion is subtly extended in the public mind to encompass the idea that no one speaking in public should be religiously partisan.

This is nonsense, of course, but that's the understanding of the place of religion in society that progressives are trying to foist upon us.

Their strategy sometimes seems to involve the following four steps which may be implemented either in sequence or simultaneously:

First, make religious belief seem risible and backward in the eyes of the people. Second, convince them that religious talk, particularly in social settings, is impolite. Next, gradually and imperceptibly persuade people to think that not only is there something vaguely inappropriate about talk involving one's personal religious beliefs but that it's also offensive to people. Finally, encourage people to think that any discourse which offends others is ipso facto hurtful and should therefore be illegal.

This evolution has already succeeded in some European precincts where, for example, it's now considered unlawful hate speech for a pastor to tell his congregation that the Bible considers homosexual behavior to be a sin.

Perhaps one reason so many secularists were outraged by Hume's remarks is that they defied the smooth progress the secularists thought they were making toward their religiously sterile omega point.

RLC

Brewing Upset

A very surprising development, one absolutely critical for the future of President Obama's agenda, if not for health care, is brewing in Massachusetts. On January 19th a special election will be held to fill the seat of the late Senator Ted Kennedy. Until recently it was a foregone conclusion that, with a 3-1 edge in voter registration in her pocket, the Democrat, Martha Coakley, would defeat the Republican Scott Brown.

Now it turns out that Brown, who seems to have come out of nowhere, is clobbering Coakley among independents and is consequently running neck and neck with her overall seven days out from the election (But see this poll for a rather different picture). Moreover, Brown raised an amazing $1 million yesterday alone toward his campaign.

If Brown should win he'll almost certainly vote against Obamacare in the Senate thus killing the legislation (Although the Democrats are not bereft of tricks up their sleeve to prevent that from happening should Brown win). Moreover, a GOP win in a state that hasn't had a Republican senator in decades, coming on the heels of Democrat retirements and defections in Congress and the huge losses in the governors' races in Virginia and New Jersey, will absolutely rock the American political scene. It'd be a tremendous blow to the Democrat party.

The Democrats will surely pull out all stops in order to mobilize their base, including a trip or two to Massachusetts by the President to get Democratic voters excited enough to turn out on the 19th. His entire presidency may well be riding on the outcome of that election.

RLC

Jumping on Reid

When Trent Lott, the GOP Senate Majority Leader back in 2002, made the remark on the occasion of Strom Thurmond's 100th birthday that the country would have been better off had Strom been elected president when he ran in 1948 he was excoriated by the press and forced to resign as majority leader by his party because Strom Thurmond had been a segregationist in the 1940s. Lott wasn't even thinking of that, he was simply trying to say something nice about an elderly colleague, but numerous Democrats, including Mr. Obama, screamed for his head, and so the GOP threw him to the wolves.

In 2007 Virginia Governor George Allen was savaged by the press for calling a heckler "macaca," a word that Allen claims he didn't even know the meaning of and no one else did either (Apparently it's regarded in some parts of the world as a mild insult, like calling someone a monkey). The incident is thought by some to have cost Allen the election in his Senate race against Jim Webb.

Now the victim of the racial insensitivity police is Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid who, it was reported in a recently released book on the 2008 election, said that Barack Obama was "light skinned" and had "no Negro dialect" and therefore had an electoral advantage. For this indiscretion Reid is apologizing and groveling and being blasted by Republicans.

Indeed, there is poetic justice in this, and I would be happy to see Harry Reid hounded out of the Senate, but not for this. Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't know what was so terribly wrong with what Reid said (nor with what Lott or Allen said). It was grossly unfair and puerile of the Democrats, including Harry Reid himself, and the liberal media, to make a big deal about the Republicans' remarks, and it is just as unfair for the Republicans to do the same now to Reid (and hypocritical of the liberal media to be largely quiet about it since they blasted both Lott and Allen night and day over their comments).

Let me be clear (as our President likes to say), Reid is vulnerable to a lot of criticism. The squalid manner in which he bought off senators' votes on the health care bill, his comparison of health care opponents to those who opposed civil rights for blacks, his hypocrisy in condemning Bill Bennett for remarks not unlike his own, his lack of class in his criticisms of George Bush, and his willingness to play fast and loose with the truth on any number of occasions, are all legitimate targets, but I simply don't see why it's racist or "insensitive" or otherwise offensive to note a man's color and his mode of speech. Nor do I see why it's racist to declaim upon how these characteristics could work to a man's political advantage with an electorate that clearly wanted to vote for a black man but perhaps not one who was too black. To be sure, it may, like neglecting to cover a yawn, flout a social convention to say out loud what everybody can plainly see, but I don't see how it's racist or otherwise beyond tolerable.

Perhaps, someone out there, liberal or conservative, will explain it all to me and make the case for why Reid should step down as Majority Leader because of his comment about Obama's hue and speech. Meanwhile, I'd prefer conservatives focus on the man's real liabilities, which are legion. In the present instance, however, the offense wasn't racism, but rather hypocrisy, both on the part of Reid and those who were quick to condemn Bennett, Lott and Allen but give Reid a pass.

Conservatives should avoid acting like children by parsing every syllable a person utters for signs of racism just so they can use the words as a political smear. It's really small-minded and ugly, and besides, it's the sort of thing the Left does.

RLC

Are the Taliban Winning?

Much of the news coming out of the Afghanistan theater suggests that we're losing the war there to a resurgent Taliban. Strategy Page tells us that much of this reportage is the result of the media being "played" by the Taliban whose circumstances may be much more dire than one might think from news reports:

[t]he Taliban had a bad year in 2009, although they managed to play the media well enough to hide a lot of their problems. The biggest defeat for the Taliban was in a continued loss of support by the Afghan people. Opinion surveys have had the percentage of Afghan approving the Taliban going downward for several years, and it's now under ten percent. This is no surprise to anyone living in Afghanistan. The Taliban were always disliked by the majority of Afghans, but now their fellow Pushtuns overwhelmingly hate them as well. This has a lot to do with where the Taliban are operating. That is, mostly in the province of Kandahar, Helmand (where most of the heroin is produced) and Khost. About 80 percent of the violence is taking place in 13 percent of the country, and the Pushtuns in those areas are tired of the Taliban and all their self-righteous violence.

The activity you hear about in the north is usually in those few areas up there occupied by small Pushtun tribes. If the Taliban show up anywhere else (among Uzbek, Turk, Hazara or Tajik people, who dominate the north) they are easily identifiable, and subject to prompt scrutiny by lots of guys with guns. The Taliban not only have to be careful where they go in the north, but in the south as well. An increasing number of southern Pushtun tribes have organized militias to keep the Taliban out of their lands. Often, this is being done with the aid of Afghan or foreign troops. This is what the new American strategy is about, and what all the additional troops are for. Since the Taliban are already restricted to a small area, the new strategy constricts their movement even more.

There's more at the link.

President Obama doesn't like to think in terms of victory, perhaps, but victory is as possible in Afghanistan as it was in Iraq. It just takes a resolute, patient Commander in Chief willing to commit the necessary resources. If the stakes weren't so high it'd be very tempting to say that the fight in those far-off, desolate lands is not worth it, but we must constantly remind ourselves that the Islamists have determined that their struggle against us will be generational. It won't end next year or the year after or even, perhaps, in this century. The fight will go on as long as they're able to mount terrorist operations against the West. They are fanatics whose only purpose in life is to serve Allah by killing infidels. Their war against us will never end until they succeed or they're rendered unable to carry out their "mission."

The day we decide we no longer want to fight is the day we concede victory to those who will destroy us as soon as they possibly can.

RLC

Singer on Moral Duties

Peter Singer, the utilitarian philosopher who gained public notoriety for his views on the morality of infanticide, has written a book in which he argues that we have a duty to help the poor around the world. The book is titled The Life You Can Save: Acting Now to End World Poverty and an interview with Singer about his book is summarized at The Philosopher's Magazine(TPM).

Throughout the summary we read statements made by Singer like:

[W]e should accept the deceptively uncontroversial-sounding principle that "if it is in our power to prevent something very bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything morally significant, we ought, morally, to do it."

"I and everyone else in similar circumstances ought to give as much as possible, that is, at least up to the point at which by giving more one would begin to cause serious suffering for oneself and one's dependents - perhaps even beyond this point to the point of marginal utility, at which by giving more one would cause oneself and one's dependents as much suffering as one would prevent in Bengal."

"I want to persuade as many people as possible to do something about world poverty."

"Most people can give 50% of their income away. I wouldn't say they can't, it's predictable that most of them won't, but I think in the sense that 'ought implies can', they can."

"If it is in our power to prevent something very bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything morally significant, we ought to do it."

"If you're thinking ethically you ought to try to take this point of view from which you consider whether you could prescribe the action if you were in the position of all of those affected by it. I think that if you consider the situation of poverty and affluence, if you were really to put yourself in the position of the poor person and the affluent person, and ask yourself whether you could support the view that the affluent person doesn't give anything to the poor, you couldn't."

Put simply, Singer believes we have a duty to help the poor, and his book is an attempt to answer objections to his belief that we should give away far more of our wealth than we do to ameliorate the world's suffering. Perhaps we should but this is a very peculiar claim for someone of Peter Singer's metaphysical commitments to make because Singer is an atheist.

Singer seems to assume that everyone agrees with him that we have a moral obligation to help the poor and that the only question concerns the extent of the help we should give. But the fundamental question, as we have written about often here at Viewpoint, is where does an atheist get the notion that we have any moral duties at all?

Duties and obligations are imposed upon us, either by ourselves or by a higher authority. If the duty to help the poor is self-imposed then how can Singer say that anyone but himself ought to give of their resources? If the duty to help the poor is self-imposed then it is purely subjective and arbitrary and is no more rational, probably less so, than imposing a duty upon oneself to be selfish.

If the obligation to minimize suffering is imposed by a higher authority than our individual selves then we need to ask Mr. Singer what that higher authority is. Could it be the state? If the state is to be our moral arbiter then whatever duty the state imposes is right, but surely Mr. Singer doesn't think this is true. It doesn't take too much imagination to picture a state imposing the duty to commit genocide, as some Islamic states would do if given half the chance and which Germany did do in the late thirties and early forties.

This is one of several fundamental quandaries an atheist finds himself in. The only non-arbitrary, objective authority which has the power and the right to impose moral duties upon us is God. For an atheist to talk about our responsibility to the poor and our obligation to give to them until it hurts is simply nonsense. Unless God wills it, which He does, I have no moral obligation to do anything I don't want to do.

Someone may object and say, "but if you were poor you would want the better off to help you." That's certainly true, but it's no reason at all why I should help others. The objection invokes the Golden Rule and admonishes us to abide by it, but what reason is there why we should? Why should I simply not live by the rule that says "Look out for #1?"

To this question the atheist has no answer, and Singer's moralizing about duties to the poor is at bottom just so much hand-waving.

RLC

El Dorado?

Those readers with an interest in archaeology will find this article interesting. Apparently, deforestation of the Amazon basin has allowed satellites to detect the remnants of an ancient civilization that dates back to 800 A.D. Some archaeologists suspect it may be the remains of the mythical city of El Dorado.

The article doesn't mention this, but I wonder what the ecological implications are for those of us disheartened by the steady loss of the rain forest biome. What I mean is if an entire city, stretching for 150 miles, was carved out of the forest and then reclaimed by the forest when the civilization died, is it possible that portions of the rain forest could likewise recover some of their former beauty and vigor if those parts which have been destroyed in the last century were allowed to regrow?

Perhaps the loss of the rain forest is not permanent. Tragically, though, the extinction of any species which die out because of habitat loss is.

RLC

Sinking Ship

Gary Varvel comments upon the wisdom of the Democrats' plan for adding several million more people to our health insurance system:

A picture is indeed worth a thousand words.

RLC

Thwarting Terror Attacks in Israel

Strategy Page has an interesting article on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict in which it's noted that Israel suffered no Islamic terror attacks within its borders in 2009 - the lowest level of Islamic terrorism in Israel since the Palestinians began their current round of violence in 2000.

Several reasons for this respite are the new tactics adopted by the Israelis to defeat the Palestinian suicide bombing campaign as well as their flexibility in adapting to new Palestinian methods:

The Palestinian terrorist groups still say they are going to destroy Israel. But as a practical matter, the current round of Palestinian terrorist violence is over. You can see this by the sharp decline in successful terrorist attacks, and the frequent pronouncements from the terrorists groups that they are going to behave, for a while anyway (until they can figure out how to bypass Israeli defenses).

What the terrorists really want is to avoid any more of the Israeli tactics that shut down their terrorist operations. This included going after terrorist leaders and technical specialists, and either capturing or (failing that) killing them. Raids and air attacks were made against buildings used by the terrorists, and tight security on Israelis borders were instituted. This last measure crushed the Palestinian economy, which put popular pressure on the terrorists to stop their attacks, and promise to keep it that way. That hasn't worked, but Israeli counter-terror techniques continue to.

In addition to these tactics Israel has established a very effective intelligence-gathering network in Gaza that allows them to preempt terrorist designs. Police states like Egypt, Algeria and Syria have crushed indigenous terrorist movements within their borders at great cost to innocent bystanders, but it's much harder for a free and open society to extinguish a terrorist threat.

One question this raises is whether the Israeli people would stand for their leaders forfeiting the relative peace they've achieved in order to launch a risky attack on Iran's nuclear weapons program. Such an attack is almost certain to result in war with both Hamas and Hezbollah. But then war with these radical groups dedicated to Israel's destruction is ultimately inevitable anyway.

RLC

Religious Intolerance

A number of commentators are in high dudgeon over Brit Hume's comment that Tiger Woods should embrace the redemption offered uniquely by the Gospel. Michael Gerson has a fine column in the Washington Post on the reaction to Hume's remark.

Gerson writes:

For this, Hume has been savaged. Post media critic Tom Shales put him in the category of a "sanctimonious busybody" engaged in "telling people what religious beliefs they ought to have." Blogger Andrew Sullivan criticized Hume's "pure sectarianism," which helps abolish "the distinction between secular and religious discourse." MSNBC's David Shuster called Hume's religious advice "truly embarrassing."

Criticism and insults from any of these three should be regarded as an affirmation that one is largely correct, but there's more here than just the prattle of bitter souls. Read the rest of Gerson's column and, meanwhile, let's pose some questions:

1) Would these gentlemen have been outraged had Hume been a Muslim and urged Woods to embrace Allah? Or if Hume were a Buddhist and Woods were not (he allegedly is) would anyone have objected had Hume encouraged Woods to find inner peace in the Buddhist faith? I doubt it. It's Hume's endorsement of Christianity that they find so offensive. Why?

2) Why is it wrong or embarrassing to encourage a man to adopt one's own faith? I can't say for sure, but it seems to me that the only answer to this question is that Hume believes something that they don't and has the temerity to take that belief seriously. If that's indeed what they find so offensive aren't they being awfully small-minded?

3) Why is advising someone to accept a particular religious belief any different than advising someone to accept a political doctrine? All three of these men endorse liberal dogmas everyday and implicitly or explicitly encourage others to accept those dogmas. How is that different than what Hume did?

4) Perhaps what lies at the root of their snit is the unspoken assumption that public figures shouldn't be talking about religion (unless it's Martin Luther King or Barack Obama doing the talking), but why not? What is it about religion, especially the Christian religion, that makes it illicit as a matter for public discussion?

I doubt any of these men that Gerson mentions could give a coherent answer to these questions. Their distaste at Hume's advice and their reaction to it is visceral rather than rational, witless rather than thoughtful. It's very sad.

Hume talks about this episode and the fallout from it in an interview at Christianity Today.

RLC

No More Mr. Nice Guy

Telic Thoughts links us to an essay in The Philosopher's Magazine by atheist Russell Blackford who urges a more outspoken and confrontational atheism. He wants atheists to challenge theistic belief more aggressively, the better to discredit it. Here are some excerpts from his column:

In the 1970s, or even the 1990s, it was possible to think religion had been declawed, and that further challenges to religious philosophies, institutions, and leaders were unnecessary. On this view, all the hard work had been done, and religion was withering away after the scientific revolution, the Enlightenment, Darwin, and the social iconoclasm of the 1960s. Against that background, it became taboo to criticise religion in the public sphere; it was widely assumed that religion was retreating, in any event, and didn't need to be fought anymore. Attacks on people's "deeply-held beliefs" even smacked a little of cultural imperialism.

In the academy, bright minds in philosophy turned to other topics. Bright young atheists and sceptics were certainly not steered into philosophy of religion, which looked like an intellectual dead end.

But the situation now looks very different, even in the supposedly enlightened nations of the West. For a start, a revived Christian philosophy is well entrenched within Anglo-American philosophy of religion. More importantly, perhaps, religious organisations and leaders continue to exert social power. All too often, they seek to control how we plan and run our lives, including choices about how we die. At various times, religious lobbies have opposed a vast range of beneficial, or at least essentially harmless, activities and innovations. Even now, one religion or another opposes abortion rights; most contraceptive technologies; stem-cell and therapeutic cloning research; physician-assisted suicide; and a wide range of sexual conduct involving consenting adults. We still see intense activism from the religious lobbies of all Western democracies, and even in relatively secular countries, such as the UK and Australia, governments pander blatantly to Christian moral concerns.

It seems a little odd that Mr. Blackford considers abortion and physician-assisted suicide harmless. One might think that whether they're harmless or not depends upon whether one is doing the abortion or being aborted. In the next paragraph he makes claims that are no less peculiar:

The situation is far worse in the US, where religious conservatives regrouped with dramatic success during the 1970s and 1980s, establishing well-financed networks, think tanks, and even their own so-called universities. Slick attempts are made to undermine public trust in science where it contradicts the literal Genesis narrative; a rampant dominionist movement wants to establish an American theocracy; the recent Bush administration took the country some considerable way down that path; and the election of a relatively liberal president has produced hysteria on the religious right (polling shows that many American conservatives now believe that Barack Obama is the Antichrist). American religiosity is real, and there is nothing subtle or liberal-minded about its most popular forms.

I have to say that I meet a lot of Christians and occasionally read some Christian literature, and maybe I'm not as in tune with what's going on as I should be, but I have never actually encountered one of these "dominionists" who wants to establish a theocracy in the U.S. Nor for the life of me do I see how it is that the Bush administration took us any distance at all down the path to such a state. Nor have I ever seen a poll that shows that "many" American conservatives perceive Mr. Obama to be the Antichrist. But even if all of this were true and amounted to something more substantial than the mental residue of Mr. Blackford's night terrors what does any of it have to do with the basic question of whether or not God exists?

He continues:

When religion claims authority in the political sphere, it is unsurprising - and totally justifiable - that atheists and sceptics question the source of this authority. If religious organisations or their leaders claim to speak on behalf of a god, it is fair to ask whether the god concerned really makes the claims that are communicated on its behalf. Does this god even exist? Where is the evidence?

This is ground I don't think Mr. Blackford really wants to tread. If we're going to be questioning the authority upon which claims in the political sphere are made then Mr. Blackford will have some answering to do as well. For instance, by what authority does an atheist like Mr. Blackford say that we have an obligation to care for the poor and/or the environment, if indeed he thinks we do? If Mr. Blackford thinks it wrong that some in our society don't have health care on what basis does he think it wrong? Indeed, on what authority does he imply that it's wrong for Christians to oppose embryonic stem cell research, euthanasia, abortion, and same sex marriage or, for that matter, to promote a theocracy?

Mr. Blackford may not like any of these, but if atheism is true there's no authority by which he can judge any of them to be in some sense morally wrong. In a world without God right and wrong are determined by those who have the power to impose their will on others. Indeed, the only people who have the moral grounds to say that establishing a theocracy would be wrong are theists. The most an atheist can say is that he doesn't like theocracies and hopes we don't get one.

Mr. Blackford concludes with this:

In short, there is plenty of reason to challenge religions and contest their doctrinal claims, not just as an academic exercise, but as a matter of real urgency. Atheists and sceptics should deny the authority of religious organisations and leaders to pronounce on matters of ultimate truth and correct morality. This will require persistent, cool argument, but also moments of outright denunciation or even unashamed mockery of religion's most absurd actions and truth-claims.

We should never flinch from expressing the view that no religion has any rational warrant - that these Emperors really have no clothes - and that many churches and sects promote cruelty, misery, ignorance, and human rights abuses.

Well, I say to Mr. Blackford please do speak out publicly about your atheism. Let's have that debate. Let's examine the authority by which we make moral judgments and the reasons why we believe what we believe. Let's examine the historical record and compare the benefits Christianity has brought to the world against the contributions of atheism. I'm all in favor, but I think Mr. Blackford, once he considers how such a debate would really go, will probably think better of it. Most atheists do.

RLC

Promise-Breaker-in-Chief

C-Span president and founder Brian Lamb sent a letter to the White House last week asking that his television cameras be allowed to film the negotiations taking place between the leaders of the House and Senate who are hammering out a compromise between their two versions of the health care reform bill. He was turned down flat. The negotiations are being held in secret, and no one, least of all the public, is being allowed to see the ingredients being kneaded into this particular legislative sausage.

Not only is this a dismaying abuse of power on the part of the Democrats, it represents yet another of the President's broken promises. At least eight times while he was campaigning for the presidency he promised voters that all negotiations that involve bills affecting the American people will be conducted with transparency and even be televised on C-Span so that everyone can see what's going on. Here's the video:

(If this doesn't work go here)

Now, when it's time to man up and keep his commitment to the American public, the President has nothing to say. Little wonder that fewer and fewer people put any confidence in our president's words. Candidate Obama was apparently no more serious about transparency than he was about not hiring lobbyists, giving citizens time to study every bill before it was voted on, closing Gitmo, withdrawing from Iraq, and not raising taxes on the middle class.

Like many other politicians before him Mr. Obama seems willing to say anything he thinks people want to hear in order to get elected, and then, once in office, he turns out to be just another run-of-the-mill pol. It'll be a long time, I suspect, before another politician campaigns on the promise of hope and change, a phrase that Mr. Obama is sadly turning into a joke.

See Big Government for more on the President's failure to abide by his commitment to transparency.

RLC