Just Make Stuff Up

Cynthia Tucker is a syndicated columnist who was awarded a Pulitzer in 2007 for first-rate commentary. It's probably good that she won her prize before her most recent column came out because otherwise it'd surely have disqualified her. She writes about how Paul Ryan was influenced by Ayn Rand and manages to get almost everything wrong.

Here are a couple of lowlights:

Rep. Paul Ryan, now the GOP vice presidential nominee, is an Ayn Rand acolyte, a loyal adherent to the philosophies of a woman whose views have enthralled fringe segments of the conservative movement for more than half a century. He is famous for giving her novels to staffers in his office.

He has even called her works the inspiration for his government career, according to an August profile by New Yorker writer Ryan Lizza, who quoted from a 2005 speech the congressman gave to the Atlas Society, an Ayn Rand fan club.

It's hard to imagine why Tucker thinks that it's just the fringes of the conservative movement who have found elements of Rand's message appealing. Her most popular books, Atlas Shrugged and Fountainhead, still sell tens of thousands of copies 50 - 60 years after their release and Atlas is often said to be the second most influential book, after the Bible, ever written.

She goes on to quote Ryan:

“The reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand. The fight we are in here, make no mistake about it, is a fight of individualism versus collectivism,” Ryan told the group.

That helps to explain Ryan’s ideas about the federal budget, which he would radically downsize to shrink the programs that help the elderly, the poor, the unemployed, and just about everybody else who needs the occasional helping hand. In Rand’s philosophy, the brilliant, the well-born and the lucky have no obligation to the struggling stiffs whose jobs don’t guarantee riches. Indeed, she believed altruism was foolish.

Of course Tucker shamelessly misrepresents Ryan here. So far from wanting to cut off programs that help those who need an "occasional helping hand," he's arguing that unless costs are reined in these programs will not survive. This is a fact of economic life which seems to have completely eluded Ms. Tucker. She evidently thinks that doing nothing to save entitlement programs is the noble option for the poor and doing what's necessary to save the programs is somehow selfish.

But nothing explains how the author of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged came to captivate so many economic gurus of the modern conservative movement, including former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan.

A paragraph or so ago it was only the "fringes" who were captivated by Rand. Now the fringe includes Alan Greenspan. Later in the column she states that "Rand has been elevated to a central figure in conservatism." Ms. Tucker apparently has difficulty remembering what she's written from one paragraph to the next.

[Rand's] “objectivism” is nothing more than rank selfishness promoted to a grand economic and cultural philosophy. (Among her works is one titled “The Virtue of Selfishness.”)

Yes, and Ryan has specifically said he finds Rand's egoistic philosophy of objectivism unpalatable. It's not her selfishness or her atheism that attracts conservative readers. It's her championing of those who produce and the perennial latch on like lampreys to the producers and job creators by government which wants to take everything they can from those who create wealth in order to sustain a bloated welfare state.

What’s more, Rand was an atheist and libertine whose private life was testament to her fierce belief that individuals should be free to do whatever they please, no matter the consequences to others. Though married, she conducted a long-running affair with one of her young disciples, in view of their spouses. She mocked Christianity, proclaiming it anathema to reason. She once told an interviewer that faith “is a sign of a psychological weakness. … I regard it as evil to place your emotions, your desire, above the evidence of what your mind knows. That’s what you’re doing with the idea of God.” She’s a strange role model for members of a political party that claims to represent religious conviction and personal probity.

This is a very odd paragraph for a liberal progressive to write. In almost every place where Tucker refers to Rand one could substitute the name Marx and the paragraph would be unchanged, and yet progressives find much in Marx to admire.

Every thinker has baggage. Liberals resonate with Marx's analysis of the economic class struggle, but if someone were to try to tie liberals to Marx's views on the family, or violent revolution, or communism, or tie them to Marx's sordid personal life, the progressive would plead that we need to separate the gold from the dross. Ryan does the same thing with Rand.

Still, Ryan’s indifference to the plight of weaker members of society shows how the modern conservative movement has tortured and refashioned traditional Christian beliefs. There is very little of the teachings of Jesus — who told a rich man to sell all he had and give the proceeds to the poor — in a right-wing religious nationalism that holds the poor in contempt.

This is a slander for which Tucker has no justification, but evidently she doesn't feel the need to support such ugly charges. Ryan is personally steeped in Catholic social teaching which is itself steeped in the Gospel message. Anyone who's unaware of this hasn't listened to Ryan and should not be writing columns making such irresponsible allegations. No fair-minded person can read Ryan's letter to Archbishop Timothy Dolan, for example, and still say that Ryan is "torturing" or "refashioning" traditional Christian beliefs.

Last year, liberal activist James Salt confronted Ryan with a Bible and demanded that he read the Gospel of Luke. It was a cheap political stunt, but Ryan’s reaction was telling. He rushed to a waiting vehicle but refused to accept the Bible he was offered.

This is a nice touch - mindlessly wrapping a cheap political shot in a story about a cheap political stunt. It's commentary like Tucker's that makes people so weary of the liberal media. They seem to think that if you can't argue on the facts then just make stuff up, no matter how badly it misrepresents the target.

Why the Pressure on Akin?

Senatorial candidate Todd Akin is under pressure from Republicans to withdraw from the Missouri race against incumbent Democrat Claire McCaskill for comments he made the other day about rape and abortion.

What he said was, “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut the whole thing down.” He went on to say that if nevertheless a pregnancy ensues he didn't think that the child was the one who should be punished.

There are two things here for which he's being criticized. The first is his claim that somehow the trauma of rape causes a physiological "shutdown" that somehow prevents conception. The second is that even if pregnancy occurs an abortion is not a satisfactory solution to the problem.

He may be wrong about this, I don't know, and even if he's correct the context sounded a bit insensitive, but let's assume that he's mistaken about both the biological and the moral questions. Why is that a reason why he should withdraw from the race? Republicans afraid of their own shadows fear he'll be labelled "extremist" and that this will cost him the election in November, but the appropriate response is to seize the opportunity to point out that what apparently passes for acceptable views among Democrats are far more extreme than those of Rep. Akin.

Which, for example, is more extreme, to want to protect the defenseless unborn or to support killing infants?

Both of the Democrats' two most recent presidents in one way or another support infanticide, but despite the fact that the practice is still murder under the law, no one called these men "extreme," or demanded they leave office, or withdraw from a campaign.

We might also ask which is worse, to be accused of holding incorrect, even nutty views about a woman's physiological responses to rape or to actually be accused of committing rape? President Clinton is a hero to Democrats notwithstanding that he was accused of raping Juanita Brodderick, and not only is a hero he's been invited to give the keynote speech at the Democrat convention this month.

Todd Akin is closer to the mainstream on the issue of abortion than either Barack Obama or Bill Clinton, and his words are not nearly as repugnant as Mr. Clinton's deeds.

But there's something else about this that the Republicans don't seem to understand. If they force Akin out of the race they're opening the door for a fusillade of attacks on Paul Ryan who also believes that abortion is not morally justified even in the event of a rape-caused pregnancy. Of course, a lot of Catholic Democrats believe this as well, but that'll be ignored. What'll happen if the GOP somehow persuades Akin to leave the field is that the Democrats will start asking why Akin gets jettisoned but Ryan's allowed to stay on as a vice-presidential candidate.

In other words, forcing Akin out of the race isn't going to make the controversy go away.

Akin's biggest offense is that he was verbally maladroit and probably medically mistaken, but if saying something factually incorrect or dopey ipso facto disqualifies Republicans for public office then let's start holding Democrats to the same standard. We can start with the current Vice-President, the House Minority Leader, and the DNC Chair.

UPDATE: Todd Akin has declined to submit to almost universal GOP pressure for him to drop out of the race. Very well, now let's see the Republicans dare the Democrats to make his views on abortion an issue in this race when at the top of their ticket they have a man who voted twice in the Illinois state senate to allow abortionists to let babies born alive after a botched abortion die from inanition.

Let's see if the Republicans will dare the Democrats to make Akin's views on abortion and rape an issue when their former president and the keynote speaker at their convention twice vetoed bills that would ban partial-birth abortion and was accused at least once of having raped a woman.

Hit the Road

That Harvard history professor Niall Ferguson wrote a piece calling for the defeat of President Obama in November is not surprising. Ferguson is, despite teaching at Harvard, a conservative. What's surprising - shocking even - is that his essay appeared in Newsweek which has been reliably liberal for decades. Until now it has all but deified Obama and all but demonized Romney.

If Newsweek is now going to strive for more balance, who's next? The New York Times? Here's some of what Ferguson writes (in Newsweek's cover story no less):

In his inaugural address, Obama promised “not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth.” He promised to “build the roads and bridges, the electric grids, and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together.” He promised to “restore science to its rightful place and wield technology’s wonders to raise health care’s quality and lower its cost.” And he promised to “transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age.” Unfortunately the president’s scorecard on every single one of those bold pledges is pitiful.

In an unguarded moment earlier this year, the president commented that the private sector of the economy was “doing fine.” Certainly, the stock market is well up (by 74 percent) relative to the close on Inauguration Day 2009. But the total number of private-sector jobs is still 4.3 million below the January 2008 peak. Meanwhile, since 2008, a staggering 3.6 million Americans have been added to Social Security’s disability insurance program. This is one of many ways unemployment is being concealed.

In his fiscal year 2010 budget—the first he presented—the president envisaged growth of 3.2 percent in 2010, 4.0 percent in 2011, 4.6 percent in 2012. The actual numbers were 2.4 percent in 2010 and 1.8 percent in 2011; few forecasters now expect it to be much above 2.3 percent this year.

Unemployment was supposed to be 6 percent by now. It has averaged 8.2 percent this year so far. Meanwhile real median annual household income has dropped more than 5 percent since June 2009. Nearly 110 million individuals received a welfare benefit in 2011, mostly Medicaid or food stamps.

Welcome to Obama’s America: nearly half the population is not represented on a taxable return—almost exactly the same proportion that lives in a household where at least one member receives some type of government benefit. We are becoming the 50–50 nation—half of us paying the taxes, the other half receiving the benefits.

And all this despite a far bigger hike in the federal debt than we were promised. According to the 2010 budget, the debt in public hands was supposed to fall in relation to GDP from 67 percent in 2010 to less than 66 percent this year. If only. By the end of this year, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), it will reach 70 percent of GDP. These figures significantly understate the debt problem, however. The ratio that matters is debt to revenue. That number has leapt upward from 165 percent in 2008 to 262 percent this year, according to figures from the International Monetary Fund. Among developed economies, only Ireland and Spain have seen a bigger deterioration.

Not only did the initial fiscal stimulus fade after the sugar rush of 2009, but the president has done absolutely nothing to close the long-term gap between spending and revenue.

His much-vaunted health-care reform will not prevent spending on health programs growing from more than 5 percent of GDP today to almost 10 percent in 2037. Add the projected increase in the costs of Social Security and you are looking at a total bill of 16 percent of GDP 25 years from now. That is only slightly less than the average cost of all federal programs and activities, apart from net interest payments, over the past 40 years. Under this president’s policies, the debt is on course to approach 200 percent of GDP in 2037—a mountain of debt that is bound to reduce growth even further.

Ferguson goes on in this vein for four more pages. His column is the most thorough indictment of the Obama presidency that I've seen, and Newsweek is to be commended for featuring it and for being willing to endure the storm of criticism they're bound to receive from the left for their decision.

Sub-Optimal Design

Barry Arrington at Uncommon Descent recaps an argument made by William Lane Craig in his debate with Darwinian biologist Francis Ayala. Ayala asserted that the conclusion that an intelligent designer engineered the biology of living things is rendered problematic by both suboptimal (less than perfect) design plus the presence of cruelty in nature.

Here's Arrington's summation of Craig's reply:

Craig first shows a picture of a dilapidated old East German Trabant, one of the worst cars ever made. He then shows a picture of a shiny new Mercedes E Class. Then he makes the following argument.

1. The Trabant is obviously designed.
2. The Trabant design is obviously sub-optimal.
3. Therefore, the fact that a design is sub-optimal does not invalidate the design inference.

Conclusion: Known designs exhibit various degrees of optimality. Therefore, there is simply no reason to restrict design inferences only to maximally optimal designs. If a structure meets Dembski’s criteria for inferring design, that inference is not refuted by the mere possibility that the structure could have been better designed.

Craig then shows a picture of a medieval torture device and makes the following argument.

1. The torture device is obviously designed.
2. The designer was obviously not good.
3. Therefore, the possibility that the designer is not good does not preclude a design inference.

Conclusion: The design inference says absolutely nothing about the moral qualities of the designer.

Ayala makes the mistake of thinking that intelligent design theory requires that the designer be the God of Christianity (which many, including me, believe it happens to be), but that's a theological supposition. To debate the scientific value of intelligent design theory by importing theological assumptions is neither germane nor helpful.

Intelligent design advocates, unlike creationists, argue that the case for design should be made scientifically and philosophically. It's ironic that it's the Darwinists who insist on turning the debate into a theological exercise. IDers want to limit the discussion to the scientific and philosophical evidence for the existence of a designer and leave the identity and nature of that designer to the theologians. Those are not matters upon which ID takes any formal position.

Here's Craig delivering his argument against Ayala:

It might be wondered what the value of the ID argument is if it doesn't demonstrate the existence of the God of Christianity. The answer, it seems to me, is that to the extent that intelligent design makes belief in a designer compelling, to that extent the strongest alternative to theism, materialism, is shown to be false. Once someone is persuaded that the universe is the product of an intelligent mind and not just some accident of impersonal nature then he has taken a giant step toward theism and away from naturalistic materialism.

The Blessings of Natural Gas

We've commented on this before, but perhaps it bears repeating. Despite the fears of some environmentalists, natural gas has, on balance, been a genuine blessing as this AP story explains:

In a surprising turnaround, the amount of carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere in the United States has fallen dramatically, to its lowest level in 20 years.

Government officials say the biggest reason is that cheap and plentiful natural gas has led many power plant operators to switch from dirtier-burning coal.

Many of the world's leading climate scientists didn't see the drop coming, in large part because it happened as a result of market forces rather than direct government action against carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that traps heat in the atmosphere.

The International Energy Agency said the United States has cut carbon dioxide emissions more than any other country over the last six years. Total U.S. carbon emissions from energy consumption peaked at about 6 billion metric tons in 2007. Projections for this year are around 5.2 billion, and the 1990 figure was about 5 billion.

China's emissions were estimated to be about 9 billion tons in 2011, accounting for about 29 percent of the global total. The U.S. accounted for about 16 percent.

There's more at the link. One of the interesting aspects of the story is how surprised almost everyone was that so many companies have switched over to natural gas so quickly and how much of a difference it has made in our air quality. I think there's a lesson in this. Business responds to the market. Fracking technology enabled gas to be produced abundantly and cheaply and business has responded without government having to obtrude with heavy-handed coercion.

Market solutions to problems may not always be better than government-imposed solutions but they sure were in this case. Meanwhile, the Obama administration, still convinced that government knows best, continues to squander millions of taxpayers' dollars on wind and solar energy companies which are floundering because they can't produce a product cheaply enough to interest consumers.

Fair and Balanced

In some quarters of the media balanced reporting means that if you discuss some awful behavior perpetrated by one side you must also condemn the other side whether they merit it or not. For example, consider this recent report at Yahoo News on the latest threats by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad:

Ahmadinejad told an annual anti-Israel protest in Tehran on Friday that the Jewish state was a "cancerous tumour" that will soon be excised....

"The nations of the region will soon finish off the usurper Zionists in the Palestinian land.... A new Middle East will definitely be formed. With the grace of God and help of the nations, in the new Middle East there will be no trace of the Americans and Zionists," he said.

So the Iranians have been threatening Israel with death and destruction, essentially another holocaust, for at least a decade now. The Israelis, reasonably enough, believe they mean it and have compared the threat, also quite reasonably, to that posed by the Nazis. They've tried to call the world's attention to the fact that the Iranians are threatening them with extinction, which, of course, they are. So how does Yahoo News close their article on the Iranian rhetoric?

Israel has been employing its own invective against Iran and its leaders, invoking the image of Hitler and the Nazis on the eve of World War II and accusing Tehran of being bent on Israeli genocide.

Invective? It's invective to state the obvious? Imagine a man assaulted in the street by a mugger who holds a knife to his throat. The victim calls out to passersby that the mugger is trying to kill him. In the minds of the folks at Yahoo that would be "invective."

I wonder if it's significant that this irresponsible and utterly perverse attempt to draw some sort of equivalency between those threatening death and those calling attention to the threats was penned by a man named Mohammed Davari.

Who'll Save Medicare?

For those interested in pursuing the details of the Romney/Ryan plan for Medicare I recommend Yuval Levin's analysis in National Review. Levin is an expert on health care issues and his essay is one of the clearest explications of the plan I've seen. Here's his conclusion:

The Democrats continuing to make such charges either do not know about the difference between Ryan-Wyden and past premium-support ideas or are knowingly lying. And those who argue that “Medicare as we know it” is the alternative to the Ryan-Wyden proposal are also either ignoring or denying reality.

The fact is that Obamacare cuts Medicare by $700 billion over its first ten years to fund other programs and imposes a board of price controllers — the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) — over Medicare to cut costs in ways that (particularly by driving providers out of the business of serving Medicare patients through inadequate payment rates) would reduce the access of both current and future seniors to care. And without further reforms, the Medicare program will soon run out of funds in ways that would either require dramatic benefit cuts or would drive the government bankrupt.

Medicare as we know it is thus not an option. The choice is between, on the one hand, a reform that leaves current seniors untouched for life and offers future seniors a guaranteed comprehensive benefit and more choices about how to get it or, on the other hand, cuts that affect both current and future beneficiaries and yet are still likely to fail to avert the program’s fiscal collapse. Mitt Romney offers the first — a plan for saving Medicare without increasing the risk to seniors. Barack Obama offers the second — a plan for raiding Medicare and watching it crumble.

The only way for Democrats to avoid the political consequences of this painful fact is to deny it, and to insist that the opposite is the case: that Romney and Ryan seek to arbitrarily cut Medicare and increase costs for seniors. In the wake of Paul Ryan’s selection as Mitt Romney’s running mate, some of them have seemed downright giddy at the prospect of unleashing that lie, and perhaps even building their entire fall campaign around it. Many of them surely don’t even know it’s a lie. But it is, and a strategy based on a lie can work only if it is left unchallenged. Romney, Ryan, and their supporters must not leave it so.

You'll have to read the article to understand why he makes these strong allegations, but there's little doubt that there's a lot of misapprehension, or misconstrual, of the Romney/Ryan Medicare solutions, at least in the media.

Culture Makes a Difference

My friend Byron passes along an article from The Clapham Institute's blog Peer Review which is worth sharing. I can find no links to the original so I'll just copy it in toto:

Mitt Romney caused a firestorm two weeks ago in Jerusalem by commenting on the cultural dimensions of Israeli economic growth with an implied criticism of Palestinian culture. The reaction in the press was swift. Mr. Romney was called a "racist." But in fact, Romney was basing his claims on two excellent books that illustrate the primacy of culture as both necessary and sufficient for economic development: "Guns, Germs and Steel," by geographer Jared Diamond, and "The Wealth and Poverty of Nations," by economist David Landes.

Israel's economic success is based in a biblical view of work - that productive work is respected and prized, criticism is encouraged, intellectual capital is treasured, risk-taking is promoted, and innovation is fostered. The Wall Street Journal noted: "With institutions built on such values - with a culture dedicated to making, not taking, money - a society can make use of whatever primary products a land offers."

The favored mode of Palestinian culture on the other hand is not voluntary but coerced and zero-sum relations, where the principle of "rule or be ruled" dominates political and economic life. The elites in such cultures hold hard work in contempt, and they distrust intellectual openness and uncontrolled innovation as subversive. They emphasize rote learning and unquestioning respect for those in authority. Protection rackets rather than law enforcement assure the public order and bleed the economy. Public criticism brings sharp retaliation. Powerful actors acquire wealth by taking, rather than making.

[A] 2002 United Nations report written by Arab intellectuals...points out how Arab culture intensifies these problems with its attitude of hyper-jealousy and misogyny toward women, which turns out entitled sons and cloistered daughters. [D]ifferences make a difference, the making of flourishing culture matters, and all faiths do not lead to healthy cultures and economies.

Well put. The multicultural fantasy that all cultures are equally "valid," equally good, and equally to be celebrated is demonstrably false. Some ways of living are simply better than others, and the fact that Romney was called a racist by the liberal media for asserting that culture matters shows how blinded some people are by their ideological myths and illusions.

Is Mr. Obama Losing the Youth Vote?

Lots can change between now and November but this seems significant:

For the first time since he began running for president, Republican Mitt Romney has the support of over 40 percent of America's youth vote, a troubling sign for President Obama who built his 2008 victory with the overwhelming support of younger, idealistic voters.

Pollster John Zogby of JZ Analytics told Secrets Tuesday that Romney received 41 percent in his weekend poll of 1,117 likely voters, for the first time crossing the 40 percent mark. "This is the first time I am seeing Romney's numbers this high among 18-29 year olds," said Zogby. "This could be trouble for Obama who needs every young voter he can get."

Young people are mercurial, but even so it's going to be a lot harder this time around for the President to cast the same Hope and Change spell over the young that he managed to conjure in '08. Even if they don't turn out for Romney, perhaps a lot of these disenchanted younger voters will just stay home on election day.

In 2008, 66 percent chose Obama over Sen. John McCain, the highest percentage for a Democrat in three decades. But their desire for hope and change has turned to disillusionment and unemployment. Zogby calls them "CENGAs" for "college-educated, not going anywhere."

In his latest poll, Obama receives just 49 percent of the youth vote when pitted against Romney, who received 41 percent.

I wonder, too, how many blacks will vote for Mr. Obama this election. I'm sure the President will get an overwhelmingly high percentage of the votes of those who go to the polls, although probably not as high a percentage as in 2008, but how many African-Americans will be as excited to actually turn out this time? After three and a half years large numbers of African-Americans still have very little hope and have seen very little change.

What If He Was a Conservative?

Imagine that Floyd Corkins, the man who walked into the offices of the pro-life, pro-traditional marriage Family Research Council and shot a guard, had walked instead into, say, an abortion clinic. Imagine further that he'd been a member of a pro-life group, or the NRA, or the Tea Party, or a fan of conservative talk radio, or just a Republican. What do you suppose the media reaction to this near-tragedy would be?

But Corkins, as it happens, is none of those things, nor did he attack an abortion clinic. He himself is a volunteer for a gay and lesbian community center, and he entered the offices of a conservative group which opposes both gay marriage and abortion with the intent, apparently, of doing harm because of the stance the FRC takes on these issues.

Consequently, the media has been relatively mute. Mr. Corkins doesn't fit their template of the angry, white (he's African-American), right-winger. So there are no Google searches to ascertain the extent of his left-wing associations, there are no accusations that the inflammatory rhetoric of left-wing talk radio or tv inspired his act, no national introspection to biopsy the cancer that festers in our collective soul that periodically erupts in malignancies like Mr. Corkins.

To the extent that Mr. Corkins is political he seems to be liberal and thus his deed is not nearly as newsworthy as it would've been had he been conservative.

Blind Faith

When biologists talk about the cell being a microscopic factory filled with tiny molecular machines they mean that quite literally as this brief video illustrates. The video doesn't explain what's going on, but it's all pretty amazing nonetheless:

Cells are far more complex than is shown here, but the first cell must have been at least this complex. How did such a thing ever arise through an unguided, blind process, especially before there were any reproducing cells for natural selection to act upon?

Faith is belief despite the lack of proof. Blind faith is belief despite the lack of evidence. There's no evidence that cells actually did arise through purely natural processes and good reason to think they didn't. So the belief that they did, the belief called naturalism, is an exercise of blind faith on the part of the naturalist, which is precisely what naturalists often criticize theists for. Pretty ironic.

Voter ID

The Pennsylvania voter ID law was upheld yesterday, pending appeals, of course. I can't help but wonder why those on the left have opposed it so strenuously, because none of their arguments make any sense to me.

Jonathan Tobin at Commentary Magazine sums things up:

Liberals have spent most of the year trying to convince Americans that voter ID laws are a false front for racist voter suppression. They argue there’s no such thing as voter fraud and that legislation aimed at combating election cheating is merely a Republican plot to steal the election.

But, as a new Washington Post poll on the subject demonstrates, the majority aren’t buying it. Almost three quarters — 74 percent — believe voters should be required to show official, government-issued identification when they vote. A clear majority of those polled also think, contrary to liberal allegations, that voter ID laws are rooted in concern about a genuine problem.

These numbers have to concern Democrats who are hoping to whip up a backlash against voter ID legislation by falsely claiming they are a new form of “Jim Crow” laws intended to foster discrimination.... The public knows that claims that voter fraud is nonexistent run counter to everything they know about politicians, elections and human nature.

The public has good reason to believe that claims that voter fraud is not a problem are themselves fraudulent, or at least mistaken. John Fund and Hans von Spakovsky document the problem in their book Who's Counting?: How Fraudsters and Bureaucrats Put Your Vote at Risk, a review of which can be found here.

Tobin continues:

The huge numbers supporting voter ID isn’t hard to figure out. Anyone who travels or has to conduct any sort of transaction with a bank or the government know they are going to be asked to identify themselves in this manner. The notion that something as important as voting should be exempt from such a requirement makes no sense to most people.

And though a not insignificant number worry about voters being discouraged or wrongly having their franchise denied, far more understand it is more likely that politicians and parties are looking to find a way to cook the books and steal a close election than their right to vote will somehow be taken away.

They rightly wonder why it is some think there is something sinister in having a voter prove they are eligible to vote, because it appears as if opponents of voter ID seem to be taking the position that citizens should never be asked to produce proof of residence in a state, city or district or even that they are actually American citizens. Interestingly enough, as the Washington Post notes in their own analysis of the poll, a solid majority of both the elderly and the poor — groups it is believed will be impacted by such laws — also support voter ID.

Critics of the Pennsylvania law are ostensibly concerned that some people who don't have IDs will be unable to exercise their right to vote, but how badly do these citizens want to vote if they can't bestir themselves to obtain a free ID which is no harder to get than it is to register to vote in the first place? Perhaps the left will next challenge voter registration requirements as placing an undue burden on the elderly, the poor, and the handicapped.

Instead of spending millions of dollars fighting the law perhaps those who care about the relatively few people who would vote but who lack a photo ID should do what they do during voter registration drives. They should identify those without proper ID and see that they get it.

What Is Racism?

Steve Browne at Taki Magazine shares some thoughts on racism. Specifically, he wonders exactly what it is:

It has to be evident to all thinking people by now that racism is the new witchcraft. Once you’re branded with the Scarlet “R,” some people do not regard it as immoral to assault you…or worse.

Calling someone a racist is sufficient to brand them as outside the pale of civilized company. In academia, the accusation is a career-wrecker. Socially it is enough to get you dropped from the A-list of the best parties.

But has anybody bothered to tell us what this vile thing is?

Browne goes on to consider some of the definitions of racism commonly employed and finds all of them inadequate. Little wonder. The term is so protean it can mean just about anything from harmful acts against another motivated solely by the other's race, to something only white people are guilty of, to any disagreement with Barack Obama.

Many people live in fear of being labelled a racist because, as Browne points out, it can kill one's career and do almost as much damage to one's reputation as being called a pedophile. Indeed, in some places it's worse than being a pedophile judging by the show of support among the celebrated glitterati for people like Roman Polanski and the alleged epidemic of pedophilia in Hollywood.

Browne is also dissatisfied with the dictionary definition of the term:

"A belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race."

But, Browne asks, which traits and capacities?

Is someone a racist who believes different races have different abilities — not superior or inferior, but different?

“Asians/whites/blacks are better than (blank) at (blank).” Racist?

Did Paul Robeson have such a magnificent voice because of his African ancestry? Do the Irish produce better tenors and the Welsh better baritones?

Excellence in athletics? Then we’d have to wonder if there is a superior race, and not the melanin-deficient one.

But away with sophistry! Everybody knows that when we speak of superior, we mean one trait among many — intelligence.

So is a person a racist if they believe a race other than his own is more intelligent?

John Derbyshire has noted that though black people have measured average IQs a full standard deviation lower than whites, Asians have average IQs higher than white people. Derbyshire got called a racist for the first observation, but what about the second?

Is it not racist if a white person says Asians are smarter, but racist if an Asian says it?

What about someone who thinks that one race might have on average lesser intellectual gifts than another, but that does not in any way justify oppressing them? Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln both might fall into that category, at least at some point in their lives.

The epithet "racist" is used primarily, it seems, as a means of discrediting one's opponents. It's a way of insulting people, of throwing them on the defensive, a justification for dismissing their opinions and concerns, without ever having to explain what one means by the word. Perhaps it would be illuminating, the next time you hear someone use it, to ask what, exactly, the user means. I doubt that one in ten people could give a reasonable answer.

Giving Sight to the Blind

Most of us know someone who's losing his or her sight because of macular degeneration, retinitis pigmentosa, or some other degenerative retinal condition. Thus, this report comes as wonderful news. Scientists are optimistic that a prosthesis may be available in a few years that will allow people with deteriorated retinas to see:

Blind mice had their vision restored with a device that helped diseased retinas send signals to the brain, according to a study that may lead to new prosthetic technology for millions of sight-impaired people.

Current devices are limited in the aid they provide to people with degenerative diseases of the retina, the part of the eye that converts light into electrical impulses to the brain. In research described today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, scientists cracked the code the retina uses to communicate with the brain.

Blind mice had their vision restored with a device that helped diseased retinas send signals to the brain.

The technology moves prosthetics beyond bright light and high-contrast recognition and may be adopted for human use within a year or two, said Sheila Nirenberg, a neuroscientist at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York and the study’s lead author.

“What this shows is that we have the essential ingredients to make a very effective prosthetic,” Nirenberg said.

The article goes on to say that "No foreseeable barriers should stop the movement into humans now that the technology has been created." Read the rest at the link.

Ryan's Plan

The liberal talk shows are in something of a frenzy trying to find some way to convince viewers that if Mitt Romney isn't a satanic incubus, a felon, a murderer of men's wives, then maybe Paul Ryan is.

Rather than let the progressives define Paul Ryan and what his vision for America might be, maybe we should let him do it himself. Here are three short videos in which he lays out the problems we face and his solutions.

Here he discusses the debt crisis:

In this video he outlines his plan for Medicare:

One of the things he's been getting hammered on is the charge that he wants to reduce taxes for the wealthy. He does indeed want to lower taxes to make the U.S. more competitive worldwide. Here's his argument:

Some on the left, of course, realize that Ryan is a very compelling, intelligent candidate and that they have no argument or plan to put up against him, at least not one that's both truthful and persuasive, so the best thing to do is to prevent him from being heard. It's how fascists have been doing it ever since the 1930s:

It needs be said that Ryan is not at the top of the ticket. The policies that a President Romney proposes to Congress will be his, and he certainly differs from Ryan on some details. Even so, they're united in believing that nothing will get fixed and will only continue to get worse if we reelect the incumbent.

Living Forever

George Dvorsky has an interesting piece at io9 in which he discusses whether living forever would be all that desirable. He writes:

Some futurists predict that we'll be able to halt the aging process by the end of this century — if not sooner. The prospect of creating an ageless society is certainly not without its critics, with concerns ranging from the environmental right through to the spiritual. One of the most common objections to radical life extension, however, is the idea that it would be profoundly boring to live forever, and that by consequence, we should not even attempt it.

Although Dvorsky's article is about prolonging physical existence indefinitely the same objection is sometimes raised to the Christian concept of eternal life. The argument is that in an infinite time people would eventually experience everything there is to experience and learn everything there is to know. At that point existence would no longer hold any fascination. It would cease to be interesting and become crushingly boring.

The discussion that ensues in Dvorsky's post is fascinating, and I commend it to you, but I'd like to share a couple of thoughts on the Christian notion of eternal life.

First, we need to keep in mind that boredom is a mental phenomenon. There's no reason to think that in an eternal existence boredom would be any more a part of life than would pain. Our mental structure in the eternal realm may be quite different than what it is in this physical life. In other words, although now each subsequent experience of, say, a beautiful piece of music may be less thrilling than the first experience, it could well be that in eternity every experience of some phenomena is equally as exciting as the first.

Second, boredom is a consequence of existing in time. We get bored because time drags by without offering anything to pique our interest, but eternity is not necessarily temporal. If eternal life is not a temporal experience, if those who experience eternal existence are outside of time (as we conceive God to be), then boredom may simply be irrelevant or non-existent.

Third, even if eternity is in some sort of time, it could be that there's an infinity of possible experience such that even in an infinity of time we would never exhaust it all. Like a man counting for an infinite time could never exhaust all possible integers, a man existing for an infinite time might never exhaust all possible experience.

At any rate, Dvorsky's column is interesting largely for some of the quotes he cites. For example, Chris Hackler, head of the Division of Medical Humanities at the University of Arkansas, states that:

Let's face it, most peoples' jobs aren't all that fascinating. They put in a 9-to-5 and they're glad to have the weekend. So you wonder if having twice as much of this is a good thing, or if you'd get totally burned out.

In other words, life's a drag as it is and most people aren't going to want to make it any longer than it needs to be. I have no doubt that this is true, at least if this life is all there is. If there's no transcendent realm in which infinite joy and richness reside and of which we can catch a glimpse now and then, then it's surely true that life is a meaningless, painful interlude of suffering between two states of nothingness.

If, on the other hand, there is such a realm then there's hope that life can be rich, fascinating, and pleasurable forever.

Anyway, check out Dvorsky's essay. It's thought-provoking.

The Ryan Pick

Mitt Romney's vice-presidential pick, Rep. Paul Ryan, has garnered almost universal plaudits from the right and almost universal boos from the left. Ryan is an outstanding man, an outstanding politician, and an outstanding intellect. He's serious and sharp and has a winning personality.

I think these are some of the reasons the left is deriding the choice. They fear Ryan, or at least they should. The last thing they want is a debate between Ryan and anyone on the Democratic ticket because they know it can only go badly for them. It's not customary for the presidential candidate to debate the other party's vice-presidential candidate, but one wishes that this year it'd happen.

If the economy is to be the major issue in the 2012 election the Obama/Biden ticket is no match for Romney/Ryan. Mr. Obama has had three and a half years to solve our economic woes, and the nation is worse off now than when he took office. He has managed to preside over the worst economy in forty years and has advanced no plan for what he would do to improve it other than tax the rich. This is a purely symbolic gesture which would accomplish nothing in terms of raising revenue and would probably depress it.

Moreover, none of the president's budgets have received even Democratic support in the Senate, and his party hasn't passed a budget in three years. Neither has the president kept his promise to get unemployment below 8%.

President Obama has offered no indication of how he would save entitlements from financial ruin, and in fact his greatest achievement, Obamacare, will cut $710 billion from Medicare over the next ten years. Ryan's plan would also cut Medicare, but by giving people an annual voucher so that they could purchase their own insurance. He would also raise the reimbursement rate for doctors back to previous levels so that the exodus of physicians willing to treat Medicare patients is reversed.

Ryan has worked hard on these issues. He has a vision for what needs to be done to get Americans back to work and to get our debt reduced, and he's skilled at eloquently articulating both. It'll be painful, no doubt, and it will take time, but the Obama alternative of doing nothing other than continuing to spend money we don't have, driving us deeper into debt, while blaming Bush for all our troubles, will ultimately be far worse.

The question that I ponder is whether the American electorate will ultimately prefer competence or charisma, freedom or big government, economic justice or crony capitalism. I guess we'll see on the first Tuesday in November.

Killing the Goose That Lays the Golden Eggs

French president Hollande has apparently chosen to follow the thinking of Bane in The Dark Knight Rises and raise the top tax rate in his country to 75%, essentially confiscating most of the wealth of thousands of Frenchmen. His reason has nothing to do with economic need. It's simply class warfare, at least according to this New York Times article:

A chill is wafting over France’s business class as Mr. Hollande, the country’s first Socialist president since François Mitterrand in the 1980s, presses a manifesto of patriotism to “pay extra tax to get the country back on its feet again.” The 75 percent tax proposal, which Parliament plans to take up in September, is ostensibly aimed at bolstering French finances as Europe’s long-running debt crisis intensifies.

But because there are relatively few people in France whose income would incur such a tax — an estimated 7,000 to 30,000 in a country of 65 million — the gains might contribute but a small fraction of the 33 billion euros in new revenue the government wants to raise next year to help balance the budget.

The French finance ministry did not respond to requests for an estimate of the revenue the tax might raise. Though the amount would be low, some analysts note that a tax hit on the rich would provide political cover for painful cuts Mr. Hollande may need to make next year in social and welfare programs that are likely to be far less popular with the rank and file.

In that regard, the tax could have enormous symbolic value as a blow for egalité, coming from a new president who has proclaimed, “I don’t like the rich.”

Whatever revenue Mr. Hollande realizes from such a tax he'll only realize it once. After that there won't be anyone left in the upper tax brackets to squeeze money from:

Many companies are studying contingency plans to move high-paid executives outside of France, according to consultants, lawyers, accountants and real estate agents — who are highly protective of their clients and decline to identify them by name. They say some executives and wealthy people have already packed up for destinations like Britain, Belgium, Switzerland and the United States, taking their taxable income with them.

They also know of companies — start-ups and multinationals alike — that are delaying plans to invest in France or to move employees or new hires here.

....Mr. Hollande was elected in May on a wave of resentment against “les riches” — company executives, bankers, sports stars and celebrities whose paychecks tend to be seen as scandalous in a country where the growing divide between rich and poor touches a cultural nerve whose roots predate Robespierre.

Taxes are high in France for a reason: they pay for one of Europe’s most generous social welfare systems and a large government. As Mr. Hollande has described it, the tax plan is about “justice,” and “sending out a signal, a message of social cohesion.”

But what will France do when there are no rich left to tax?

“The thing French politicians don’t seem to understand or care about is that when you tax away two-thirds of someone’s earnings to appeal to voters, productive people who can enrich businesses and the economy won’t come — or they will just leave,” said Diane Segalen, a corporate headhunter.

She said she had been close to sealing a deal for a seasoned executive in London to join one of France’s biggest companies earlier this year, when Mr. Hollande made his 75 percent vow.

“When the guy heard that, he said, ‘I’m not coming,’ and withdrew from the process,” said Mrs. Segalen, the head of the Segalen et Associés, a consulting firm.

For Mrs. Segalen, the proposal is the latest red flag in a country that has long labored under the image of being a difficult place to do business. France has a 33 percent corporate tax rate — the euro zone’s second-highest, after Malta’s 35 percent. That contrasts with the 12.5 percent rate in Ireland, which has deliberately kept a lid on corporate taxes as a lure to businesses.

“It is a ridiculous proposal, but it’s great for us,” said Jean Dekerchove, the manager of Immobilièr Le Lion, a high-end real estate agency based in Brussels. Calls to his office have picked up in recent months, he said, as wealthy French citizens look to invest or simply move across the border amid worries about the latest tax.

“It’s a huge loss for France because people and businesses come to Belgium and bring their wealth with them,” Mr. Dekerchove said. “But we’re thrilled because they create jobs, they buy houses and spend money — and it’s our economy that profits.”

We're seeing something similar happening in California where people with means are fleeing the state to get away from confiscatory taxes and oppressive regulations. When the rich leave everyone else is poorer. You may not like the rich, you may have good reason not to like them, but it's an economic fact of life that the more of them there are, the better off everyone else is. They may not be likeable, but we need them.

Ten Things

Gavin McInnes is a libertarian who believes that there are some things liberals get right. He's correct about this, of course, although I don't know that he's correct on the specific things he mentions in this article. At any rate he lists ten examples of issues on which he agrees at least somewhat with the liberal position.

It's an amusing read, the tone of which he establishes at the outset:

[U]nlike extremist Muslims and Hasidic Jews, some of the things [liberals] believe are actually correct. For example:

1. AMERICAN FOOD PORTIONS ARE TOO LARGE
2. CEO SALARIES ARE TOO HIGH
3. OBAMACARE IS A GOOD IDEA
4. WAR IS BAD
5. WOMEN WHO GET PREGNANT FROM A RAPE SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO ABORT
6. GAYS SHOULD BE ABLE TO GET MARRIED
7. BLACKS ARE VICTIMS OF SYSTEMIC RACISM
8. BIG BUSINESS HAS TOO MUCH INFLUENCE ON CAPITOL HILL
9. MACHINE GUNS SHOULD BE ILLEGAL
10. DRUGS SHOULD BE LEGAL

When you read McInnes' rationale for each of these you'll probably find yourself agreeing with more of them than you might have expected to.

Welfare State

This chart, courtesy of The Blaze, will probably ruin your day. It provides a stark illustration of the explosion in dependency on the federal government from 2009 to 2011. Keep in mind that it doesn't include Social Security or Medicare.

Today there are over 110 million people in the U.S. currently receiving some form of government welfare. That's up from 97 million in just three years. According to the article at The Blaze, Medicaid has increased from 34 million people in 2000 to 54 million today and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, or food stamps) has grown from 17 million to 45 million.

Moreover, spending on food stamps alone is projected to reach nearly $800 billion over the next decade. Not only citizens, but non-citizens are eligible for food stamps paid for by the American taxpayer:

USDA has acknowledged a formal partnership with Mexico to boost food stamp enrollment amongst non-citizens, migrant workers and foreign nationals. In a ‘radio novela’ USDA even depicted an individual who resisted food stamp enrollment (saying her husband earned enough to take care of them) but who was successfully pressured into enrollment.

Why not? It's only money. If we need more we can just print it.

Even Some Libs Are Outraged

How dishonest are the Obama super pacs' campaign ads? They're so bad that even the folks at CNN and MSNBC are disgusted by them. It takes a lot to make Mika Brzezinski recoil from anything associated with President Obama, but after the ridiculous "felon" business and the Bain capital attacks, the latest ad where a steel worker seems to blame his wife's death from cancer on Mitt Romney, she's apparently had enough:

Here's Wolf Blitzer at CNN raking Bill Burton over the coals for producing such an egregious piece of propaganda. The video is a little long, but it shows the ad and it affords a good idea of what the controversy is all about and why the ad is inaccurate. Even more, it shows that the folks at these liberal outlets are not happy with what's being done on behalf of Mr. Obama's candidacy:

Christian Terrorism

An academic by the name of Mark Juergensmeyer foists this bit of flapdoodle upon readers at the blog Religion Dispatches:

The killing spree by Wade Michael Page on the Sikh Gurudwara in Milwaukee that left seven dead including Page’s own death in a hail of bullets is an act of Christian terrorism. Page was a member of a skinhead band, End Apathy, that advertised the evils of multiculturalism and advocated white power.

It is fair to call Page a Christian terrorist since the evidence indicates that he thought he was defending the purity of white Christian society against the evils of multiculturalism that allow non-white non-Christians an equal role in America society. Like the Oklahoma City bomber, Timothy McVeigh, and the Norwegian militant, Anders Breivik, Page thought he was killing to save white Christian society.

Though there is no evidence that Page was a pious Christian, that is true of many religious terrorists. If the hard-talking, swaggering al Qaeda militants can be called Muslim terrorists, certainly Page can be called a Christian terrorist.

This is just silly. Muslim terrorists often are indeed very pious and claim to be acting in the name of Allah and Islam. As far as is known at this point Page has made no such claims, but the silliness doesn't end there.

Despite acknowledging that there's no evidence that Page (or McVeigh or Breivik) was a "pious Christian," despite the fact that - as far as I know - there's no evidence that any of these men were Christians in any genuine sense at all, nor that they were acting on behalf of "white Christian society," the writer goes on at some length repeating his assertion that Page was acting on behalf of "white Christendom."

I hope this is not the sort of thinking that passes for erudition in Mr. Juergensmeyer's field of sociology. It amounts to this: Page was an American, America is somewhat Christian, ergo Page "was killing to save white Christian society." Not only does this chain of "reasoning" perpetrate a brutal abuse of Aristotelian logic, it also demonstrates either an amazing ignorance on the part of a sociologist as to what Christianity actually is, or it evinces an astounding level of intellectual sloppiness on the part of someone who fancies himself an intellectual.

In either case, to suggest that Page is to Christianity what the al Qaeda terrorists were to Islam is ridiculous, and to insist that people like Page are somehow spawned by Christian belief is perverse.

Class and No Class

American Olympic hurdler Lolo Jones finished fourth the other night. Jones is a 29 year-old Christian who has publicly acknowledged that she's "saving herself" for marriage. This has made her an object of derision in some precincts on the left, particularly at the New York Times. Times writer Jere Longman wrote this about Jones:

Essentially, Jones has decided she will be whatever anyone wants her to be — vixen, virgin, victim — to draw attention to herself and the many products she endorses.

He went on to compare her to tennis player Anna Kournikova as just an empty suit.

Why? Why be so unkind to a young woman who has done nothing but succeed with class and grace throughout her career? I can't prove it, but I suspect that what's at play is the same irrational disdain that causes people to despise Tim Tebow and Carrie Prejean. They're good people who are trying to live according to the values prescribed by their Christianity and the secular world hates them for it. Their willingness to share their faith and values publicly is an indictment of a secular culture that devolves daily into deeper levels of sleaze and violence. If Jones had been involved in the debauchery taking place in the Olympic village she'd probably be ignored and the media would turn its attention back to women in bikinis playing volleyball on the beach.

Rob Doster at National Review offers this opinion:

Naturally, Jones was stung by the coverage, making an emotional appearance on the Today Show the morning after her loss and offering a passionate self-defense. “I have the American record. I am the American record holder indoors, I have two world indoor titles,” she said. “Just because I don’t boast about these things, I don’t think I should be ripped apart by media. I laid it out there. I fought hard for my country and I think it’s just a shame that I have to deal with so much backlash when I’m already so brokenhearted as it is.”

No, like Kournikova, Jones is merely a world-class athlete who has failed to check the right boxes to satisfy the Times’s sensibilities.

As this episode has made clear: They might not be champions, but both Jones and Kournikova are far better at their craft than Longman is at his.

They're far better at being human beings, too, I might add.

Speed Gene

Former Olympic sprinter Michael Johnson created a bit of a kerfuffle a few weeks ago when he opined that "a ‘superior athletic gene’ in the descendants of West African slaves means black American and Caribbean sprinters will command the sport at the London Games."

He was certainly right about who's commanding the sport in the 2012 Olympics (and just about every prior Olympics as well), but then Johnson went on to add that, "It’s a fact that hasn’t been discussed openly before. It’s a taboo subject in the States but it is what it is. Why shouldn’t we discuss it?"

Well, Michael might not be aware of the can of worms such a discussion would open. There are a couple of reasons why the dominance of athletes with West African ancestry is not often mentioned, at least not above a whisper, in the United States.

If Johnson is correct - and it seems to me as obvious as the noon day sun that he is - that the disproportionate success of black athletes is due to a genetic advantage enjoyed by the descendents of slaves, then the logical implication is that the disproportionate success in other areas of life enjoyed by other groups must also be largely due to their gene pools. The further unfortunate implication is that other disproportions, for example the disproportionate numbers of blacks who commit violent crimes, might also have a genetic basis.

These conclusions are certainly impolitic in contemporary American society, and no one wants to call attention to them on pain of being called a racist. Yet if athletic ability is genetic why not regard intellectual ability or a proclivity to violence as genetic? And if we should talk, as Johnson wants us to do, about the genetic gifts of Olympic sprinters, should we not also discuss genetic liabilities as well?

This gets very dicey. If over-representation is an indication of genetic inheritance then does that mean that under-representation in fields requiring, say, analytical and mathematical abilities, fields in which participants of African descent are sparse, indicate that people of African descent are genetically disadvantaged?

Are Asians and Jews, two groups which are probably over-represented in intellectual disciplines like science, genetically superior to those groups which are under-represented?

You can see the treacherous ground onto which such questions would lead us and why there's reluctance for people to mention out loud that the dominance of American and Caribbean blacks in certain sports must be genetic.

Of course, one reason why no one wants to talk about this is because, it's feared, it'll play into the hands of racists, but I don't know why it should be allowed to do so.

In any family there are diverse gifts and aptitudes. The expectations and hopes we have for one child aren't the same as we have for another. A child born with a hearing disability may not be as strong a musician as her older sibling. A successful athlete may not do as well in the classroom as the less athletic sibling. Children are often born with different intellectual and physical aptitudes and abilities. That doesn't mean that any of these children are more valuable and more loved than the others. If Asians aren't particularly good sprinters but often excel at intellectual challenges they shouldn't be deemed less valuable for that and neither should those who have amazing athletic ability but are not the equal to Asians in the classroom.

In fact, it's the refusal to recognize differences that leads to racial animosities. If blacks are underrepresented in a particular field, the assumption is that it must be white racial prejudice that has excluded them, whether it is or not, and thus the remedy must be quotas, affirmative action, race-norming, and equal representation. These solutions, however, not only create mistrust between groups, but they also breed resentments among those who get to where they are because they have the ability to do it.

It also hampers and frustrates those who lack a physical or intellectual ability because they can't meet society's expectations for them.

Johnson said:

All my life I believed I became an athlete through my own determination, but it’s impossible to think that being descended from slaves hasn’t left an imprint through the generations. Difficult as it was to hear, slavery has benefited descendants like me – I believe there is a superior athletic gene in us.

You may be right Michael, but you're raising an issue that our society is simply not mature enough to handle.

Curiosity's Motivation

You may have been wondering as you watched the amazing story of how NASA scientists landed the exploratory vehicle Curiosity on the surface of Mars why we were spending $2.5 billion to investigate the Red Planet. What was the chief purpose of the mission? Almost every spokesperson I heard talk about this said that what they hoped to achieve was to discover whether life could have at one time been present on Mars.

Okay, that's an interesting question, but $2.5 billion? Well, yes, when you understand that what's at issue here is not just a matter of scientific exploration but most importantly the need to buttress a major metaphysical or religious worldview.

David Klinghoffer explains:

Make no mistake, NASA has committed $2.5 billion to this little project in large part to satisfy a need in the culture of Big Science -- a culture that extends far beyond the professional ranks of actual scientists -- for validation of a particular worldview. In that worldview, life arises and evolves spontaneously -- it must do so -- reflecting no purpose or design, given a handful of (not especially elevated) ingredients and enough time.

In this Darwinian picture, life is nothing special. Countless men and women stake the meaning of their own lives, or rather the meaning they imagine and invest in their lives, on this idea. Yet two empirical problems intrude. First, the more science learns about the inner space of the cell with its "machinery" (for want of a better word), the more profoundly special life appears to be. Second, the Darwinian view requires, since life is so prosaic, that it should have arisen all around the cosmos, in intelligent and other forms, and probably in our own solar system too other than on Earth alone. Yet persistent efforts by SETI to detect evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence have conspicuously failed.

Turning from these discouraging data, NASA offers hope in the form of Curiosity and its mission. To shore up a beleaguered philosophical perspective, Darwinian materialists would be delighted -- no, tremendously relieved -- by the discovery of past or present Martian microbes. Failing that, they would receive news that life's "ingredients" have been found on Mars with reverent gratitude.

It's interesting that NASA is spending billions of taxpayer dollars to essentially seek confirmation of what is basically a religious doctrine, i.e. materialism. I wonder how much the government would be willing to spend to investigate the claim that there's a massive wooden barge frozen on Mt. Ararat. That would also confirm a major metaphysical belief, and there's at least some tenuous evidence that such an artifact is actually there, but I doubt that there'd be funds available to investigate that. Taxpayer money can only be used to support attempts to discredit traditional religion, not to reinforce it.

Anyway, Klinghoffer goes on to discuss why the discovery of evidence of Martian life would have no effect whatsoever on intelligent design theory and would really settle nothing in the debate between IDers and materialists. Give it a look.

How to Play Offense

Wayne Allyn Root, former Libertarian Vice-Presidential candidate and graduate of Columbia University the same year as President Obama schools Mitt Romney on how to react to the Democrats' scurrilous attacks on his integrity, particularly the campaign being waged by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid who has accused Romney of having paid no taxes for the decade between 2000 and 2010, and demanding that he release his tax returns (while refusing to release his own returns):

Romney should call a press conference and issue a challenge in front of the nation. He should agree to release more of his tax returns, only if Obama unseals his college records. Simple and straight-forward. Mitt should ask “What could possibly be so embarrassing in your college records from 29 years ago that you are afraid to let America’s voters see? If it’s THAT bad, maybe it’s something the voters ought to see.” Suddenly the tables are turned. Now Obama is on the defensive.

My bet is that Obama will never unseal his records because they contain information that could destroy his chances for re-election. Once this challenge is made public, my prediction is you’ll never hear about Mitt’s tax returns ever again.

Why are the college records, of a 51-year-old President of the United States, so important to keep secret? I think I know the answer.

If anyone should have questions about Obama’s record at Columbia University, it’s me. We both graduated (according to Obama) Columbia University, Class of ’83. We were both (according to Obama) Pre-Law and Political Science majors. And I thought I knew most everyone at Columbia. I certainly thought I’d heard of all of my fellow Political Science majors. But not Obama (or as he was known then - Barry Soetoro). I never met him. Never saw him. Never even heard of him. And none of the classmates that I knew at Columbia has ever met him, saw him, or heard of him.

But don’t take my word for it. The Wall Street Journal reported in 2008 that Fox News randomly called 400 of our Columbia classmates and never found one who had ever met Obama.

Now all of this mystery could be easily and instantly dismissed if Obama released his Columbia transcripts to the media. But even after serving as President for 3 1/2 years he refuses to unseal his college records. Shouldn’t the media be as relentless in pursuit of Obama’s records as Romney’s? Shouldn’t they be digging into Obama’s past–beyond what he has written about himself–with the same boundless enthusiasm as Mitt’s?

The first question I’d ask is, if you had great grades, why would you seal your records? So let’s assume Obama got poor grades. Why not release the records? He’s President of the free world, for gosh sakes. He’s commander-in-chief of the U.S. military. Who’d care about some poor grades from three decades ago, right? So then what’s the problem? Doesn’t that make the media suspicious? Something doesn’t add up.

Secondly, if he had poor grades at Occidental, how did he get admitted to an Ivy League university in the first place? And if his grades at Columbia were awful, how’d he ever get into Harvard Law School? So again those grades must have been great, right? So why spend millions to keep them sealed?

Third, how did Obama pay for all these fancy schools without coming from a wealthy background? If he had student loans or scholarships, would he not have to maintain good grades?

I can only think of one answer that would explain this mystery.

You'll have to go to the link at The Blaze to read Root's theory. If you don't like it how do you answer the questions Root poses?

Meanwhile, why is it that the Democrats are campaigning by slandering Romney, portraying him as the human incarnation of Lucifer, but are almost completely silent on why Mr. Obama deserves a second term? Why are they so willing to make the most outrageous slurs against Romney, suggesting he might be a "felon," holding him responsible for the death of an out-of-work steelworker's sick wife, as a new ad does, accusing him, with no evidence, of having paid no taxes for ten years, as Senator Reid is doing, but have nothing positive to say about Mr. Obama's last three years in office? Is dishonesty what now wins elections with the American electorate?

Splitting the Tasks

Debkafile has a reputation for being a little unreliable, but nevertheless this particular report makes sense. It's also interesting:

An authoritative US military source told debkafile Sunday, Aug. 5 that the American armed forces are standing ready for war with Iran. Without going into the thorny question of who should lead the operation to dismantle Iran’s nuclear program, the US or Israel, it is understood that one of the US Air Force’s tasks will be to destroy Iran’s Shehab-3 ballistic missile batteries which have Israel and Saudi Arabia within range.

This task is not as formidable as Iranian spokesmen would have the world believe. Tehran’s entire stock of those missiles is no more than 30-40. That quantity is not nearly enough to take on the entire gamut of potential wartime foes, the United States Middle East bases, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan and Turkey. They would quickly be picked off by American Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense Systems and Israeli Arrow guided interceptor rockets, which are synchronized through the advanced US X-Band radar systems installed in the Israeli Negev and southeast Turkey.

There's more info on this at the link. I'm a little surprised that there's not more talk in the media about the impending war with Iran. It seems that if it happens, which it almost certainly will, it'll catch many Americans by surprise.

God and Quantum Physics

University of Delaware physicist Stephen Barr at Big Questions Online poses this thought-provoker: Does quantum physics make it easier to believe in God? Here's his prelude to his answer:

Not in any direct way. That is, it doesn’t provide an argument for the existence of God. But it does so indirectly, by providing an argument against the philosophy called materialism (or “physicalism”), which is the main intellectual opponent of belief in God in today’s world.

Materialism is an atheistic philosophy that says that all of reality is reducible to matter and its interactions. It has gained ground because many people think that it’s supported by science. They think that physics has shown the material world to be a closed system of cause and effect, sealed off from the influence of any non-physical realities --- if any there be. Since our minds and thoughts obviously do affect the physical world, it would follow that they are themselves merely physical phenomena. No room for a spiritual soul or free will: for materialists we are just “machines made of meat.”

Quantum mechanics, however, throws a monkey wrench into this simple mechanical view of things. No less a figure than Eugene Wigner, a Nobel Prize winner in physics, claimed that materialism --- at least with regard to the human mind --- is not “logically consistent with present quantum mechanics.” And on the basis of quantum mechanics, Sir Rudolf Peierls, another great 20th-century physicist, said, “the premise that you can describe in terms of physics the whole function of a human being ... including [his] knowledge, and [his] consciousness, is untenable. There is still something missing.”

How, one might ask, can quantum mechanics have anything to say about the human mind? Isn’t it about things that can be physically measured, such as particles and forces? It is; but while minds cannot be measured, it is ultimately minds that do the measuring. And that, as we shall see, is a fact that cannot be ignored in trying to make sense of quantum mechanics. If one claims that it is possible (in principle) to give a complete physical description of what goes on during a measurement --- including the mind of the person who is doing the measuring --- one is led into severe difficulties. This was pointed out in the 1930s by the great mathematician John von Neumann. Though I cannot go into technicalities in an essay such as this, I will try to sketch the argument.

Barr goes on to show in what follows how, if there are no non-physical minds, i.e. if everything is material or physical, then the laws of quantum physics lead to the absurdities of the Many Worlds Hypothesis. He closes with this:

In the Many Worlds picture, you exist in a virtually infinite number of versions: in some branches of reality you are reading this article, in others you are asleep in bed, in others you have never been born. Even proponents of the Many Worlds idea admit that it sounds crazy and strains credulity.

The upshot is this: If the mathematics of quantum mechanics is right (as most fundamental physicists believe), and if materialism is right, one is forced to accept the Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics. And that is awfully heavy baggage for materialism to carry.

If, on the other hand, we accept the more traditional understanding of quantum mechanics that goes back to von Neumann, one is led by its logic (as Wigner and Peierls were) to the conclusion that not everything is just matter in motion, and that in particular there is something about the human mind that transcends matter and its laws. It then becomes possible to take seriously certain questions that materialism had ruled out of court: If the human mind transcends matter to some extent, could there not exist minds that transcend the physical universe altogether? And might there not even exist an ultimate Mind?

In other words, the most common sense interpretation of quantum phenomena suggests that materialism is false and that mind is an ontologically real substance. If that's the case then there's good reason to think that the appearance of design in the cosmos is not appearance only, but rather a genuine product of intentional, conscious creative activity. And if that's the case we're on the threshold of acknowledging the existence of a Mind that sounds very much like the Mind described in Genesis 1.

If you have even just a basic understanding of quantum theory you'll find the rest of the article very interesting.

Stifling Business

Often someone will observe that government regulations are stifling business, but it's sometimes unclear as to exactly how and why. Rep. Tom Price has a column in the Washington Times in which he dots the i's and crosses the t's.

The cost is $1.75 trillion. That’s the price of complying with Washington red tape — and that’s not a misprint.

While the federal government has the responsibility to establish reasonable regulations to help protect the American people, federal rule-making is so costly and cumbersome that it actually impedes job creation and economic growth.

That grim reality comes into focus when one looks at the Federal Register, the official compilation of federal regulations. It’s only July, yet this year’s edition already is 41,662 pages long. Complying with these new rules will cost $55.6 billion and require 114.1 million paperwork hours to complete. That is money and time lost on unproductive activity — all done to avoid the punishing arm of an intrusive federal government.

President Obama boasts that he has taken major steps to improve America’s regulatory climate. The truth is that his administration has expanded the federal government’s reach and oppression. He has instituted four times the number of major regulations of President George W. Bush, and they cost five times as much.

A “major regulation” is one that federal agencies estimate will create an economic impact of more than $100 million annually. Since taking office in January 2009, Mr. Obama has instituted 106 major new federal regulations, adding more than $46 billion in compliance costs for American families and businesses. That’s $46 billion taken out of a productive economy. No wonder jobs aren’t returning.

Follow the link for specific examples of regulations that are making it economically impractical for companies to hire new workers. Here are two of the biggest:

One of the most egregious red-tape initiatives of this administration is the Dodd-Frank law. According to the House Committee on Financial Services, just 224 of Dodd-Frank’s 400 rules have been written, and they already consume 7,365 pages. It will take job creators 24.2 million hours every year just to comply with the first half of Dodd-Frank regulations.

Another outrageous example is the president’s health care law, which greatly expands the government’s reach into every American’s life. This disastrous law will result in a minimum of $17.1 billion in regulations imposed on the private sector and $7.2 billion in compliance costs borne by the states.

Add to the regulatory burden the highest (or second highest) corporate tax rate in the world (35%) and it's little wonder that real unemployment continues to hover around 15%. That number could be substantially reduced with a few strokes of the presidential pen, but it'll never happen as long as Mr. Obama occupies the White House. High taxes and onerous regulations are embedded in his political marrow.

Simply Uninformed

Perhaps the person who posted this picture on the internet, along with the superimposed commentary, is still an adolescent in which case he/she may have an excuse for the ignorance and lack of thought it seems to evince:

After all, who does the poster of this pic think runs the food banks and homeless shelters? Readers of Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens? The secular Marxist/Leninists? Most ministries to the poor in this country are staffed by Christians. Most charitable giving is given by Christians. Many hospitals and retirement homes were founded and run by Christians.

A week before this unfortunate picture was circulated on the internet Glenn Beck held an event in Texas which included a day of service in which thousands of people from all over the country came to Texas to work among the poor, painting their houses, delivering food, etc. Fourteen tractor trailers loaded with food were sent off to 11 cities to help feed people.

Perhaps the poster of the above message didn't know about this, which is understandable since the major media hardly mentioned it - tens of thousands of people gathering to recapture a sense of community without the government being involved is evidently not something they deem newsworthy - but it happened, and perhaps our uninformed friend should visit this site to see a few pictures of part of the "Day of Service" and to find out what it is Christians are actually doing. Maybe he/she will be chagrined enough to want to take down the photo.

Drive-Thru Hero

Some people are so earnestly self-righteous that they just can't help embarrassing themselves. This particular example, a man named Adam Smith, is an adjunct professor at a college in Arizona and also CFO/Treasurer at Vante Corp. His idea of standing up for his convictions is to harangue a young woman, an employee at Chick-fil-A who has nothing to do with her employer's views on gay marriage.

Nor, by the way, are the CEO's personal views on gay marriage the views of Chick-fil-A as a corporation. CFA doesn't discriminate in their hiring nor in whom they will serve, but a lot of news coverage is treating CEO Dan Cathy's remarks about his personal beliefs as though they were corporate policy.

Anyway, this guy is so infatuated with his own moral superiority that he videotapes himself preparing to lecture a young employee on the hatefulness of her CEO's stand for traditional marriage and how he doesn't know how she can live with herself working for this company:

This noble warrior against hate then posted the video on YouTube where it outraged many, including his bosses at Vante who fired him yesterday, probably for being an obnoxious jerk.

Malevolent Design

Evolution News and Views has a Drew Berry TED Talk notable not only for the beauty of his art but also for its philosophical implications.

Berry is a biologist and computer animator and the structures and processes his videos illustrate are breathtaking. This particular video is also interesting, though, because the last couple of minutes shows via animation how malaria infects a human body. In my opinion, this animation poses difficulties for both creationists and Darwinian naturalists.

The creationist has a problem because he wants to say that an omnibenevolent God designed this, but if so why would a good God design such a manifestly horrible organism as the malaria parasite? The creationist may have an answer, to be sure, but the fact that he needs to answer this question suggests that his theory doesn't neatly accommodate phenomena such as this. Moreover, his answer may sound contrived or ad hoc to some.

The problem for the Darwinian naturalist is trying to come up with a plausible pathway by which the parasite and its behavior might have evolved solely by chance. Any explanation the naturalist proffers sounds like just so much pixie dust and magic wand waving.

The advocate of intelligent design, however, has no problem with this at all. Philosopher David Hume argued in his book Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion that the existence of such organisms as the malaria parasite is strong evidence against the existence of a benevolent designer, but even if the designer is malevolent it's still an intelligent designer. Once it's accepted that the universe does indeed seem to be the product of intelligent agency then the discussion can move on to questions about the nature of that agent. In other words, the biological world certainly appears to be designed, just as the intelligent design theorist postulates, but whether the designer is benevolent or malevolent is not something upon which the ID advocate, qua scientist/philosopher, takes a stand.

Most IDers would, in their personal lives, seek to offer a theodicy similar to that of the creationist, but the important point is that ID, as a scientific or philosophical hypothesis, doesn't rely on any such theodicy being offered because it makes no claim as to the identity or moral nature of the designer. It merely makes this simple assertion: the world, both physical and biological, shows manifest evidence of having been intelligently designed. That some designs appear to be malicious is no more an argument against the design hypothesis than is the belief that nuclear weapons are horrible an argument against their having been designed.

Anyway, watch the video and marvel at what you see.

So Why Did He Do It?

Mona Charen reminds us of the climate of opinion surrounding the welfare reform debate in 1996. It's worth remembering:

Once safely elected, Clinton downgraded welfare reform, and, in fact, increased funding for all of the traditional welfare programs in the federal budget. But when Republicans gained control of the House of Representatives in 1994, they took the initiative. By 1996, after vetoing two welfare reform bills, Clinton was advised by Dick Morris that if didn't sign the legislation, he wouldn't be re-elected; it was that important to voters. Immediately after signing the bill, Clinton's approval rating on welfare jumped by 19 points.

The law changed the old AFDC, Aid to Families with Dependent Children, to TANF, Temporary Assistance to Needy Families. In place of the open-ended entitlement to benefits for unmarried women and their children, the law imposed a five-year limit and the requirement that those able to work seek employment. In 2005, the work requirements were strengthened.

The prospect of asking welfare recipients to seek work struck most liberals in 1996 (including Obama) as degrading, cruel and doomed to failure. Three high-ranking Clinton administration officials resigned in protest. The New York Times called the reform "atrocious," objecting that "This is not reform, this is punishment." Tom Brokaw, interviewing the president, said "all the projections show that ... (the reform) will push, at least short term, more than a million youngsters ... below the poverty line." The Children's Defense Fund called the law "an outrage ... that will hurt and impoverish millions of American children ... and leave a moral blot on (Clinton's) presidency." Sen. Daniel P. Moynihan called the law "the most brutal act of social policy we have known since the Reconstruction. ... In five years' time, you'll find appearing on your streets abandoned children ... in numbers we have no idea." Sen. Edward Kennedy, with characteristic understatement, called the bill "legislative child abuse."

Well, what really happened? Welfare caseloads declined by 50 percent within four years of the law's passage and by 70 percent by the time Obama took office. The overwhelming majority of those who left welfare rolls did so because they found jobs -- and not just the worst jobs, either. By 2001, a Manhattan Institute study found, only 4 percent of former welfare mothers were earning minimum wage. The poverty rate declined from 13.8 percent in 1995 to 11.7 percent in 2003. Black child poverty dropped to its lowest levels in history. Childhood hunger was cut in half. It was the greatest social policy success of the past 50 years.

Sounds like just the sort of success story that both liberals and conservatives would want to take credit for, so why did President Obama undermine this manifestly successful program by issuing an executive order negating the work requirement? Charen thinks it's part of his plan to increase dependency on government:

Obama is trying to persuade Americans that while he has expanded food stamps to unprecedented levels, extended unemployment insurance to 99 weeks, vastly increased the already overwhelmed Medicaid program, created a new trillion dollar entitlement with Obamacare and expanded the size of the federal government to a percentage of gross domestic product not seen since World War II, that he is not the dependency president. [But] by stepping back into history to embrace the Democrats' nemesis -- unrestricted welfare -- he has clinched the argument for the opposition.

Some have suggested that what Mr. Obama is doing is reestablishing a kind of plantation slave culture, making the people on the government plantation completely dependent on the government for their every need. I don't think the comparison works, though. The slaves on the plantation at least were required to work.