The Devil's Chaplain

The current issue of First Things has an excellent piece by Stephen Barr titled The Devil's Chaplain Confounded. The chaplain in this instance is Richard Dawkins an English biologist and notorious despiser of Christianity who has compiled an anthology of his essay and titled it after a thought expressed in a letter of Charles Darwin's in which he exclaims to a friend, "What a book a Devil's Chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering low and horridly cruel works of nature."

As Barr says of Dawkins, "For him, the great foundational truth is that the universe and the life it has spawned are without any ultimate purpose: the revelation given to the Devil's Chaplain is one of cosmic futility."

He points out that Dawkins says that we must accept Darwinism as true science but must rebel against its moral implications: "[A]t the same time as I support Darwinism as a scientist, I am a passionate anti-Darwinian when it comes to politics and how we should conduct our human affairs."

This is the sign of a mind at war with itself. If, as Dawkins says, we are merely biological machines then the whole concept of morality is reduced to nothing more than a set of feelings that genetic mutation and natural selection have instilled in us. We may rebel against those feelings, but why should we? What do we base our rejection of those feelings upon? Do we recognize that there is some higher moral order to which we are bound that renders our evolutionary moral heritage suspect? If so, where does that higher order come from? What is it based upon?

A materialist like Dawkins has no satisfactory answer to these questions. He can give no reason why a man should not live as a complete egoist acting for the benefit of others only to the extent that such actions also benefit him. The atheistic materialist who grounds morality in the survival of the species has absolutely no warrant for so doing. Why should an individual care what happens to the species? Why would it be "wrong" if someone did not care about the species? What do words like right and wrong refer to anyway? Where does an atheist get the idea that we should respect others and treat them well?

Dawkins argues against genetic determinism, but as Barr points out, "given his materialism, it is hard to see the point of this. Whether or not genes decide anything, atoms decide everything. Whether or not there is genetic determinism, there is physical determinism. One does not liberate anybody by throwing open the gates of a prison and leaving the inmates locked in their cells. It is of little importance what influence genes or the environment have, or what role is played by individual choices, if in the final analysis everything is just matter anyway, including the genes, the environment, and the individuals who choose. To a materialist, we are just congeries of atoms; and atoms must go whithersoever they are driven by the laws of physics and blind chance."

Moreover, given the determinism that is entailed by a materialist view of the world, it's hard to see what meaning morality could possess. In order for there to be a right act or wrong act there has to be the possibility of choosing. Otherwise, there are just things the environment compels people to do and there is no moral value in doing them any more than there is in a computer which runs the program it has been fed.

Dawkins is famous, or infamous, for his vitriolic screeds against religion. Without religion, says Dawkins, we would not have wars of religion or religious persecution. Barr's answer to this commonly heard complaint highlights the superficiality of Dawkins' thinking:

"True," Barr replies, "And without sex, fathers, families, material possessions, and governments, we would not have sex crimes, abusive fathers, dysfunctional families, greed for material possessions, and oppressive governments. Every natural and necessary thing can be perverted, even reason. Religion has led to hateful ideas, but has any Christian writer ever published ideas as hateful as the social Darwinism of H. G. Wells? Religion has led to persecutions, but none even nearly as massive as those produced by militant irreligion. More people were killed by the "scientific atheism" of communism on an average day than the Spanish Inquisition killed in an average decade. And largely responsible for this fact was a teaching of contempt for religion of exactly the kind that Dawkins propagates."

There is much more of value in Barr's response to Dawkins' book, and Viewpoint encourages the reader who is familiar with Dawkins, or those who think like him, to read it in its entirety. It is one of the great frauds modernity has foisted upon the culture, the notion that we can throw away God and still hold on to all that makes life meaningful and livable. Perhaps it's possible for an individual to do this, but only at the expense of, like Dawkins, denying in one's heart what one affirms in one's head. Either that, or not think about the consequences of denying God at all.

This is a dispiriting alternative. If one wishes to embrace atheism and avoid moral nihilism one either has to be schizophrenic or willfully ignorant.

Defending America In Vietnam

In the previous post I suggested that John Kerry is prevaricating when he repeats the claim that he fought to defend this country as a young man.

After posting that I stumbled upon this from his 1971 congressional testimony:

"In our opinion, and from our experience, there is nothing in South Vietnam, nothing which could happen that realistically threatens the United States of America.... I want to relate to you the feeling that many of the men who have returned to this country express because we are probably angriest about all that we were told about Vietnam and about the mystical war against communism."

"We found that not only was it a civil war, an effort by a people who had for years been seeking their liberation from any colonial influence whatsoever, but also we found that the Vietnamese whom we had enthusiastically molded after our own image were hard put to take up the fight against the threat we were supposedly saving them from."

It's hard to believe he thought then that he was fighting to defend America. If he believes it now the American people are entitled to know what changed his mind and when he changed it.

The Questions Never End

There's a good editorial on the hole Sen. kerry has dug for himself in today's Wall Street Journal. Some excerpts:

A good rule in politics is that anyone who picks a fight ought to be prepared to finish it. But having first questioned Mr. Bush's war service, and then made Vietnam the core of his own campaign for President, Mr. Kerry now cries No mas! because other Vietnam vets are assailing his behavior before and after that war. And, by the way, Mr. Bush is supposedly honor bound to repudiate them.

What did Mr. Kerry expect, anyway? That claiming to be a hero himself while accusing other veterans of "war crimes" - as he did back in 1971 and has refused to take back ever since - would somehow go unanswered? That when he raised the subject of one of America's most contentious modern events, no one would meet him at the barricades? Mr. Kerry brought the whole thing up; why is it Mr. Bush's obligation now to shut it down?

The irony here is that a main reason Mr. Kerry has focused so much on Vietnam is to avoid debating Iraq and the rest of his long record in the Senate. He wants Americans to believe that a four-month wartime biography is credential enough to be commander-in-chief. But a candidate who runs on biography can't merely pick the months of his life that he likes - any more than a candidate who makes Vietnam the heart of his campaign can confine the resulting debate to his personal home video.

It's worth reading the entire piece.

While we're on the subject, has anyone else noticed the irony that Democrats only a year ago were outraged that Arnold Schwarzenegger, a man tainted by genetic association to a Nazi, his father, was running for governor of California? Now it's a year later and a man who has admitted to actually having committed war crimes is running for president and the Democrats are trying to move heaven and earth to get him elected. Doesn't anything embarrass these people?

Another thing. If we hear John Kerry say one more time that he fought to defend this country as a young man we'll have to go on blood pressure medication. Whatever John Kerry did in Vietnam he wasn't fighting to defend this country, at least not in the eyes of the anti-war left of which he became a prominent member. The chief anti-war argument was that the war was immoral precisely because there was no national interest at stake in Vietnam, much less defense of the homeland. The argument that our young men were fighting and dying to defend America was greeted with scorn and derision by anti-war folks. Someone needs to ask Sen. Kerry exactly when and why he changed his mind on the nature of that conflict.

How Low Will They Go

If this story at PowerLine is true it is a specimen of a most disgusting species of political campaigning:

One important story that has flown under the major-media radar is the peddling by Democrats of the claim that the Bush administration has a secret plan to re-institute the military draft. That rumor is being spread to try to scare young voters into supporting John Kerry.

The Democrats' draft-rumor effort has now gone mainstream; the South Carolina Democratic Party has sent out a mailing that claims young voters are faced with induction if they don't vote for John Kerry:

The first page of the mailing shows a draft notice with orders to report to a military induction center. The next shows a helicopter with troops in the foreground beneath a headline that says "Officials in Washington are calling for more troops in Iraq." Below, the mailing asks "Which form would you rather fill out?"

It is hard to think of a more despicable campaign tactic. It hardly needs to be said that neither the Bush administration nor any other foreseeable administration has the slightest desire to re-institute the draft. The thought sends shudders down the spines of professional military men; America's all-volunteer army is without a doubt the best military force ever assembled. No one I know of supports the draft, except for Fritz Hollings, the Democratic Senator from--ironically enough--South Carolina. He introduced a bill to that effect. Not only did the Hollings proposal go nowhere; he couldn't even find a co-sponsor.

Democrats sometimes get upset when we say that they prey on ignorance. But this contemptible tactic is a perfect example of what we mean.

This is an unbelievably dirty tactic, and this is not a "disaffiliated" 527 group putting this out. This isn't Michael Moore doing this. This is the South Carolina Democrat Party. Where's the outrage among the Democrats who are so vexed about the Swift Boat vets' ads which, it's turning out, are being confirmed by Kerry himself?

Not only has his campaign had to backtrack from his Christmas in Cambodia story, but also his own journal now shows that his first purple heart was accidentally self-inflicted. Nine days after incurring the "injury" he logged in his journal that he and his crew had yet to be fired upon, i.e. they had yet to see combat.

According to Captain Ed at Captain's Quarters Kerry's credibility has been dealt a devastating blow by Joshua Muravchik in today's Washington Post. The article is a must-read for anyone following the controversy. Captain's Quarters quotes from it:

Now a new official statement from the campaign undercuts Brinkley. It offers a minimal (thus harder to impeach) claim: that Kerry "on one occasion crossed into Cambodia," on an unspecified date. But at least two of the shipmates who are supporting Kerry's campaign (and one who is not) deny their boat ever crossed the border, and their testimony on this score is corroborated by Kerry's own journal, kept while on duty. One passage reproduced in Brinkley's book says: "The banks of the [Rach Giang Thanh River] whistled by as we churned out mile after mile at full speed. On my left were occasional open fields that allowed us a clear view into Cambodia. At some points, the border was only fifty yards away and it then would meander out to several hundred or even as much as a thousand yards away, always making one wonder what lay on the other side." His curiosity was never satisfied, because this entry was from Kerry's final mission [emph mine - CE].

Captain Ed goes on to say:

If [Kerry] had spent time in Cambodia, he would have known exactly what lay on the other side of the banks, if indeed he ever even got that close to Cambodia in the first place. And the revelation that his later journals were actually written after his return to the States for an abortive book proposal makes this even more odd, since he had already begun his anti-war activities -- and an illegal Cambodian excursion would not only add to his radical street cred, but it would have made a book deal more likely.

This Washington Post opinion piece marks a signal from the mainstream media that they have turned the corner on this issue, thanks in no small part, I'm sure, to Kerry's decision to go nuclear against the Swiftvets. Expect coverage in the news sections to follow and the Kerry collapse to continue in the days ahead.

We'll see. Viewpoint suspects the campaign will grow much uglier if it appears that Kerry is about to start sinking. It may be that Fahrenheit 9/11, the Gore and Dean speeches, and all the sleaze from MoveOn.org and the South Carolinians will look like good-natured jocularity compared to what the Dems will do if the bow of the campaign boat tilts too far upward.

The Battle For Najaf

It's difficult to find news coming out of Najaf and Fallujah. The major media seem uninterested in ferreting out anything which requires their reporters to leave their hotels in Baghdad's Green Zone and get out into the field. Consequently, unless one does a little digging all he'll hear about are car bombings and it seems like that's all that's happening in Iraq. We do hear vague, general reports about battles raging in Najaf and Fallujah, but nothing about what is actually happening there and what the Iraqi people think of it all.

Thus, when a report like this one from former Marine veteran W.Thomas Smith comes along it gives us a rare glimpse into the circumstances surrounding the current military operations in Najaf. Here are some excerpts from Smith's report which can be found in its entirety on National Review Online:

The past 24 hours have seen U.S. warplanes and helicopter gunships pounding Mahdi positions. Fighting continues on the ground in various sectors of the city, and the consensus among U.S. military personnel is that the insurgency is weakening. The latter is due in large measure to an increase in solid intelligence, a more formidable Iraqi national military force, and positive developing relationships between U.S. forces and Iraqi civilians. Not good for al Sadr.

"Two nights ago on a patrol from midnight to 3 A.M., we actually saw Iraqis sitting out on rugs watching and listening to the Coalition aircraft doing their work in the cemetery," 1st Lt. Jeremy T. Sellars - a platoon commander with Battalion Landing Team 1st Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment - told National Review Online on Saturday. "Despite the obvious level of destruction they were inflicting, I watched Iraqis cheer every time the aircraft fired."

In the rural communities just beyond Najaf, the farming families are comforted by the presence of Americans. "The farmers are some of the most supportive of our patrols," said Sellars. "In these areas you can see women who respond to waves, babies and small children being held up to see the Americans. So in the sense of the local populace, I would say they look forward to the end of this conflict, but they understand why it is happening so close to their homes."

First Lt. John B. Johnston of the U.S. Army's 25th Infantry Division has experienced similar interaction with Iraqi civilians. In a Saturday conversation with NRO, he recalled a recent patrol in which his platoon was followed by droves of children. "There were about a hundred of them," he said. "They were chanting 'USA' and shouting great things about President Bush. These kids are the future of Iraq, and they clearly want us there."

He added, the "friendliness" witnessed by Americans in Iraq is rarely understood back home. "There is a lot editorial license being taken in terms of the media choosing what to report. I feel like a lot of the positive things we've been doing have been glossed over for more dramatic actions elsewhere. Car bombs are a lot more fun to report than our painting schools or whatever. But the positives definitely outweigh the negatives. If you want compare the bad days to the good days, I'd have to say 90 percent to the good."

Though some would argue otherwise, time - and the fact that positive news stories will eventually see ink - is in many ways on the side of the Americans in Iraq and the new Iraqi interim government. Not so for al Sadr.

"It appears to me that in April and May we killed the best and brightest [of the Mahdi army]," 1st Lt. Brian Suits of the Army's 1st Cavalry Division in Najaf, said during a radio interview with talk-radio host Kirby Wilbur on Seattle's KVI radio, last Thursday. "What al Sadr is doing now is sending in the guys who are left behind to make a statement. He's running out of guys. The guys he has are frankly running out of motivation. They are ill-prepared and ill-trained. They are beginning to question their authority. I think they're saying 'wait a minute, you told us that God was going to guide our bullets, but we haven't killed one American soldier in our area and we are dying left and right here.'"

Asked if Iraqi national military forces and police are measuring up to their U.S. and British allies on the battlefield, Suits said, "I've been in combat with these guys over the last couple of days, and I was as wary as anyone else. I saw their performance in the first Gulf War, but they have since coalesced into an effective force. I'm not lying. I'm not propagandizing. I'm not delivering a message someone else said. I have confidence in them being on my left or my right. They will go forward. They will close with the enemy. They will fix him. And they will kill him. They do not retreat. They do not cower. They support each other. They drag their wounded out of the line of fire. And I have confidence that these guys will be able to defend their country because they are doing it now."

As the Iraqi forces continue to improve and as the Iraqi people continue to taste the benefits of freedom the situation there will continue to improve. Iran and Syria will continue to try their best to destabilize it because they know that as long as we're tied up in Iraq we won't turn our attention toward them. This is a two-edged strategy, however, since the more apparent it becomes that Iran and Syria are thwarting the aspirations of the Iraqi people the more the Iraqis will resent both the insurgents and their neighbors and the more likely they will be to welcome American military action against them from our bases within Iraq.

Islamic Justice

Yesterday Viewpoint posted the story of a young Iranian girl sentenced to death by an Iranian court for some sexual offense. As disgusting as that story is, this one may equal it. AllahPundit features this out of Tehran:

TEHRAN, Aug 19 (AFP) - Iran's judiciary ordered a man to be released after he killed his unfaithful wife in the courtroom, because the woman's immediate forebears are not alive to claim retaliation, press reports said Thursday. According to the newspaper Shargh, the man, identified as Mahmoud, had filed a complaint against his wife and her lover when he had found out that she was cheating on him.

When she appeared in court in Shahr Ray city in Tehran province in 2003 he lost control and stabbed her to death. But a court sentenced him Wednesday only to pay compensatory "blood money" to the "parents of the blood", who are in fact himself and their three children, because the parents of the murdered woman, Fatemeh, 29, are dead, Iran's newspaper said.

It should not be assumed, however, that the disciples of the Prophet and the devotees of Islam have no sense of justice. The dead woman's lover is to receive several lashes for having allowed himself to be seduced by the unfortunate lady and thus contributing to her offense.

In Favor Of the War Before He Was Against It

KerryOnIraq.com has a 12 minute video collage of statements by Senator Kerry that trace his various positions on Iraq and the need to depose Saddam Hussein. It really is quite devastating although some of the statements seem to be clipped so as to possibly cut off context that might make the statement less damning. Even so, the overall effect of the video is to show a clear pattern of waffling and position switches that are quite disconcerting.

If you go to the site click on "Watch Now" to view the tape.

Tough Call

President Bush probably did the politically wise thing when he repeated his opposition to all 527 ads on both sides and called for them to stop. He, or his surrogates, can now point out that Sen. Kerry has never lifted a finger to stop MoveOn.org or Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 or any of the other dissimulations that have been perpetrated against him by the left and about which, it needs to be pointed out, he never once complained in public. Indeed, Bush even said at one point that we're free in this country to say what we want even, he implied, if it's unfair and hurtful.

Now Kerry's being stung by ads calling his integrity into question, and he's whining that the President should condemn them. Rather than come out and face the charges squarely he's trying to stop them by both legal intimidation and by getting the other guy's "mommy" to tell them to stop picking on him. Apparently he's very opposed to 527 ads when they're directed against him, but he's much more sensitive to the virtues of political free speech when "unaffiliated" Bush-haters run ads and movies which slime his opponent.

Anyway, I wish the President hadn't said what he said. As a matter of principle he shouldn't have done anything to undercut the witness of these men who, contra Sen. McCain, have behaved exceptionally honorably throughout the last two weeks. As combat veterans themselves, they have the right to defend their honor and the historical record against what they believe to be serious calumnies and distortions.

Unless the President actually knows they're lying, something which is highly unlikely, he really has no business suggesting that they should stop defending their reputations and the historical facts. This is not really about George Bush. It's a fight between John Kerry and the men who served with him, and it's a noble fight because it's about truth and honor. The President should stay out of it.

They Can't Be Serious

The North Korean chapter of the disciples of St. Francis of Asissi located in Pyonyang have weighed in on American presidential politics:

SEOUL (AFP) - North Korea (news - web sites) described US President George W. Bush (news - web sites) as an "imbecile" and a "tyrant" who was worse than Adolf Hitler, and ruled out holding new talks on nuclear weapons with the United States.

In an unusually strong attack, a North Korean foreign ministry spokesman said comments by Bush calling North Korea a tyrant during campaigning last week in Wisconin were "malignant slanders and calumnies".

"He is a political imbecile bereft of even elementary morality as a human being and a bad guy," said the spokesman, quoted by the official KCNA news agency.

The spokesman blamed Bush for starting wars in Iraq (news - web sites) and elsewhere, and said the United States was trying to topple the legitimate government of North Korea.

"Bush's assumption of office turned a peaceful world into a pandemonium unprecedented in history as it is plagued with a vicious circle of terrorism and war," said the statement.

The spokesman went on to describe Bush as "a tyrant that puts Hitler into the shade" as well as "an idiot, an ignorant, a tyrant and a man-killer."

He said that following Bush's comments, it would be "impossible" to hold working-level discussions to prepare for a new round of multilateral talks on the nuclear issue. The talks bring together the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States.

"This made it quite impossible for the DPRK (North Korea) to go to the talks and deprived it of any elementary justification to sit at the negotiating table with the US," he said.

Well. Sounds like the gentle souls that rule North Korea have taken time out of their busy schedule crushing their people under their Stalinist boots to read Howard Dean and Al Gore speeches from last Fall.

If one of the cruelest, most oppressive, most morally retrograde regimes on earth dislikes Bush so much he must be doing something right.

Word has it that Sen. Kerry, having called for Pres. Bush to denounce the Swift Boat vets' ads, is even now busily preparing a vigorous denunciation of this scurrilous attack on his political opponent.

Neighbor John

This is making the rounds on the internet. I don't know if there really is a B.T. Nicholson or if he really is John Edwards' neighbor, but the factual stuff he relates about Edwards from the middle of the piece on should be easy enough to corroborate for anyone who's interested. It would certainly be interesting to have an enterprising journalist look Nicholson up and interview him on the record.

Subject: Meet my neighbor

Written by: B. T. Nicholson, a neighbor of John Edwards

I'd like to introduce you to my neighbor. I'm from Raleigh, North Carolina, and for several years I've lived around the corner from Vice Presidential Candidate John Edwards. My neighbor John has been in the news a good deal lately, but it's hard to tell about the man himself from the coverage. Maybe I can help you get to know him better.

Even several years ago, before he was elevated to the national stage, my neighbor John didn't socialize much with other neighbors. He didn't gather with other neighbors at the Fourth of July and he didn't come out to the sledding hills to watch the kids play after a snow. My neighbor John preferred to jog through the neighborhood by himself. There's no sidewalk on Alleghany Drive, John's Street in Raleigh, and if you drove past him as he was jogging on the road and didn't slow down enough for his taste he'd flip you the bird.

Even after he became a U.S. Senator, he'd still come home to Raleigh every once in a while, would still jog through the neighborhood, and would still flip the occasional bird to passing cars. He last showed me his middle finger about four years ago.

Since then, my neighbor John is rarely in town. When he is home, though, we in the neighborhood all know it. My neighbor John invited reporters from TV, radio, and print news organizations to come to his house in January 2003 for the announcement of his Presidential bid. He didn't want any news vans parked on his property -- in fact, he made sure all the cameras and reporters waited in the street at the bottom of his driveway. That way everyone could get good footage of him strolling down the driveway to make his announcement, young children in tow. The news vans drove into the yards of John's neighbors and parked there. I heard two families ended up re-sodding their damaged yards, and John never apologized to anyone, much less offered any compensation. The family across the street from my neighbor John has since put up posts at their property line to try to keep that sort of thing from happening again.

The appearance was good for my neighbor John. Nobody else seems to matter to him. Since then, when my neighbor comes home (as he did July 10, to be interviewed with John Kerry for "60 Minutes"), Raleigh police officers block off the street. Those of us who live near him end up coming and going to and from our homes on a circuitous route, on a bad, unsurfaced road. Forsyth Street has been closed to through traffic, except when my neighbor is in town, because the road has been ripped up for installation of new gas and sewer lines. My neighbor's street is a public, city-maintained street, and it is the best way to get to homes just north of his. If my neighbor is around, though, apparently none of the rest of us can use the street at all.

It's good for my neighbor John. Nobody else seems to matter to him.

My neighbor John has been a very successful trial lawyer, but his practice of law sometimes seems more like extortion. A friend of mine is a doctor in Raleigh. He recently spoke with another doctor, an anesthesiologist, who was named in a suit filed by my neighbor John. Apparently a surgeon at a local hospital had made a mistake, and my neighbor John represented the injured patient. Not only did my neighbor John sue the doctor who made the mistake, but also sued the hospital and a string of others, including the anesthesiologist. There was no problem with the anesthesia -- the anesthesiologist had done absolutely nothing wrong. His attorney said so in a meeting with my neighbor John. John's neighborly response was that he couldn't care less if the doctor had done nothing wrong. That wasn't the point. The point was that clients come to my neighbor John because of his record of success and his reputation for thoroughness. Every defendant in a suit he files pays, regardless of whether they are actually guilty or not. My neighbor John demanded a settlement of $250,000, and said his firm was willing to spend $2 million to get it. The doctor's insurance company promptly paid the $250,000.

The rate of growth in North Carolina's medical malpractice insurance rates is among the highest in the nation. The total cost of health care rises with those rates. My neighbor John's slimy extortion is part of the reason.

Forget about right or wrong, guilt or innocence. My neighbor John did what was best for himself. Nobody else seemed to matter.

My neighbor John may be a trial lawyer, but in front of juries he also claims to be something of a psychic. You see, my neighbor John specializes in cases involving the death or serious injury of children. He claims to receive messages from dead or brain-damaged children, and the messages are much clearer and more specific than those received by the famous"psychic" who nearly shares my neighbor's name.

When a child has been killed or is otherwise unable to speak for him or herself, my neighbor John says he has the ability to "channel" that child. He tells juries he feels the child inside him, and that he has messages from that child, which he relays to jury members. He tells juries about the car-accident death of his own son, Wade, and speculates that he may have received the ability to "feel" the souls of dead or injured children because of the close relationship he still feels with his son.

It sounds hokey and more than a little creepy, but it seems to play well with juries, and results in very high jury awards. These awards have made my neighbor extremely wealthy. He's so wealthy that he created a corporation of which he is the only member, and pays himself most of his earnings as corporate dividends, not as salary or wages. Medicare taxes are not levied on dividend income, so my neighbor has avoided paying $600,000 into the Medicare system since 1995 by setting up this tax shelter. But he says others aren't paying their fair share of Medicare taxes.

It's good for my neighbor John, and nobody else seems to matter.

My neighbor made a lot of promises on his way to the Senate. He promised strong support for our military, but then voted against body armor, combat pay, and better health care for our troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. He promised to support traditional North Carolina values, but then voted to the left of Ted Kennedy on partial-birth abortion, taxes, property rights, and a host of other issues. We in North Carolina feel betrayed. My neighbor John figuratively gave his constituents the middle finger while he ingratiated himself to Tom Daschle and the rest of the Democratic Party leadership.

My neighbor announced many months ago that he would not seek reelection, because he knows he's unpopular in North Carolina and would lose by a huge margin. According to a poll released this week, when the Kerry/Edwards ticket was announced, support for Kerry in North Carolina went down, not up.

We North Carolinians know John Edwards. We've been betrayed by him, and we do not support him.

But as he broke his promises to us, he gained favor with the Democratic Party leadership. Now he's a political star. I guess turning his back on the people he claims to represent has worked out well for my neighbor, John Edwards. Nobody else seems to matter.

B.T. Nicholson

Is This the Best They Can Do?

Captain Ed at Captain's Quarters has an excellent analysis of recent developments in the Swift Boat vets controversy. All three posts for August 22nd are worth checking out. You don't want to miss them.

On the matter of the SBVT controversy it's worth mentioning that so far the defense of John Kerry against the swiftees' charges has been at best, feeble. It amounts to the following nine arguments:

1) Kerry's accusers weren't on the boat with him. This argument has been largely abandoned as Kerry supporters have realized its irrelevance. The swift boat crews all served in close proximity to one another. Moreover, one of the swiftees, Mr. O'Dell, did serve on Kerry's boat.

2) The SBVT don't have any documents to support their claims. What sort of documents, one wonders, might they be expected to have. The only documents that exist which might support their claims Kerry refuses to allow to be released. Why?

3) The Naval documents that are in the public domain support Kerry's version of events. It is, however, the accuracy of these documents that is being called into question. It is foolish to reply to the charge that the documents contain errors of historical fact by saying that the documents support Kerry's account. The documents are alleged to be Kerry's account. Moreover, the documents do not support Kerry's claims to have been in Cambodia. These claims, which are almost certainly false, cast serious doubt on Kerry's credibility on everything else he has said about Vietnam.

4) Senator McCain says the SBVT are dishonest and dishonorable. No evidence is ever presented to show how Sen. McCain knows this. "Dishonest and dishonorable" are meaningless words in the absence of supporting evidence. They're nothing more than Sen. McCain's way of saying "I don't like this". The assertion alone is supposed to be self-validating because it's spoken by John McCain.

5) The SBVT are lying. This is all just a Republican smear campaign. Again, there is no evidence that the Republican party is behind the SBVT. Moreover, it can only be a smear campaign if the charges are false, but their falsity has not been demonstrated.

6) The vets are only doing this because they dislike Kerry. This is another attempt to evade the real question which is whether the charges are true. If they are, it doesn't matter why the SBVT are doing what they're doing. If the charges aren't true then their motive is merely a footnote.

7) Vietnam was 35 years ago. It's ridiculous to be talking about this now. Somebody should have told Sen. Kerry this when he reported for duty at the DNC. Kerry chose to make his four month stint in Vietnam his main, if not only, qualification for serving as president. He can scarcely complain if his adversaries take him up on it.

8) George Bush should denounce the SBVT now. The fact that he doesn't is reprehensible. First, Sen. Kerry stood by and let the most scurrilous things be said about Bush in the Democratic primaries. He didn't denounce Al Gore for accusing Bush of having committed treason. He didn't denounce Terry McAulliffe for claiming that Bush was AWOL from the National Guard. He didn't denounce Howard Dean for averring that Bush lied about Iraq, nor did he denounce Michael Moore for the odious allegations of 9/11. Now Kerry wants Bush to denounce the SBVT because they're saying mean things about him. It's a little late in the day for denunciations. Second, and more importantly, Bush should only denounce the SBVT charges if he knows them to be false. There is no reason to denounce them otherwise, and it would, in fact, be irresponsible of him to do so.

9) George Bush didn't serve in combat, Kerry did, so that makes Kerry a better man. This is Chris Matthews' argument, but it's absurd. First, serving in combat doesn't make you a better person than someone who didn't. If it did, then Lt. Calley would be a better man than the Pope. Second, George Bush has never made his service a reason to vote for him, Kerry has. To examine Bush's service, then, is irrelevant, but it's not irrelevant to scrutinize Kerry's since Kerry invited it.

Now a Mr. Rood who served with Kerry has come forward to offer him his support. Mr. Rood's testimony amounts to stating that the Viet Cong guerilla Kerry evidently shot to death, although no one saw any wound other than that inflicted by Kerry's machine gunner, was not dressed in a loin cloth and was not a teenager. If this is all that Kerry can drum up by way of support he's got a long way to go before he satisfactorily refutes the SBVT.

Don't skip the August 22nd posts at Captain's Quarters linked above.

Giving Public Schools a Black Eye

A story in the American Family Association Journal, if true, makes one wonder how much sense some public school teachers really have. In October of 2002 an Emmaus High School student by the name of Samuel Chen began organizing a lecture by Lehigh University biochemist Michael Behe. Behe has lectured all over the United States after having written a book titled Darwin's Black Box which lays out a compelling argument for rejecting any purely materialistic explanation for the origin and evolution of life. The article states that:

Behe agreed to come in February 2004 and give an after-school lecture entitled, "Evolution: Truth or Myth?" As the school year drew to a close in 2003, Chen had all the preliminaries nailed down: he had secured Behe's commitment, received approval from school officials, and reserved the school auditorium.

Then the offal hit the fan. The science department head, one John Hnatow, began a campaign to prevent Behe's appearance at the Allentown, PA school. He and a colleague, Carl Smartschan, asked the principal to cancel the lecture. When the principal refused, Smartschan

asked the faculty advisor for the student group to halt the lecture. Smartschan even approached Chen and demanded that the student organization pay to have an evolutionist come to lecture later in the year.

Smartschan took it upon himself to talk to every teacher in the science department, insisting that intelligent design was "unscientific" and "scary stuff."

This is an astonishing attempt to censor student enquiry by people who are de facto agents of the state. The lecture, which attracted 500 listeners and was considered a success, took place after school and was sponsored by a student organization, not the school district. Behe is a scientist, but the theory he advocates, Intelligent Design, is not incompatible with any scientific theory. It is, however, incompatible with the philosophical assumptions of Darwinian naturalism. Naturalism states that natural processes and forces are adequate to account for all living things, whereas ID asserts the causal inadequacy of such processes in producing highly complex biological structures with high information content. ID theorists claim that only intelligence can provide a sufficient explanation for the intricate, complex and highly patterned structures we find in living things.

What the students were planning to do after school was not the business of these faculty bullies who should have been delighted that these young had the intellectual curiosity and initiative to take it upon themselves to invite someone of Behe's stature to come to their school to explain his ideas to them. These teachers, whether they agree with Behe or not, should have seized on this as an opportunity to stress the importance of considering all sides of a controversial issue instead of doing whatever they could to thwart these young people. So much for academic freedom and the search for truth, at least among the thought-police in the Emmaus High School science department.

John Stuart Mill wrote that "...the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error."

Unfortunately, it is doubtful that Mr. Hnatow and Mr. Smartschan have ever read Mill. It is much likelier that these men have been teaching orthodox materialistic Darwinism throughout their careers and are loath to have their students hear Behe's presentation because they fear it will make them look silly. Rather than suffer professional embarrassment of that sort they'd rather interfere where they have no right to deny their students a wonderful learning opportunity. It's no wonder that so many parents are suspicious of public education and opt out of it when they can.

The article goes on to describe the toll that the conflict has taken on Chen's health and is worth reading in its entirety.

The Axis of Evil

AllahPundit relates this story about the trial and execution of a sixteen year old girl in Iran:

On Sunday, August 15, a 16-year-old girl in the town of Neka, northern Iran, was executed. Atefeh Sahaleh was hanged in public on Simetry Street off Rah Ahan Street at the city center.

The sentence was issued by the head of Neka's Justice Department and subsequently upheld by the mullahs' Supreme Court and carried out with the approval of Judiciary Chief Mahmoud Shahroudi.

In her summary trial, the teenage victim did not have any lawyer and efforts by her family to recruit a lawyer was to no avail. Atefeh personally defended herself. She told the religious judge, Haji Rezaii, that he should punish the main perpetrators of moral corruption not the victims.

The criminal judge personally pursued Atefeh's death sentence, beyond all normal procedures and finally gained the approval of the Supreme Court. After her execution Rezai said her punishment was not execution but he had her executed for her "sharp tongue".

Like many girls in the Muslim world Sahelah was evidently put on trial because she was the object of some man's (or men's) sexual advances. She may have been complicit or the advances may have been forced upon her. In Islamic law it's all the same. She's been soiled and is deserving of death. Allah must be pleased.

Lest one think that this is just an aberration among the merciful and compassionate followers of the Prophet, AllahPundit links us to this site where recent examples of Islamic justice are catalogued so that the infidels may get a foretaste of the glorious world that awaits the divinely-ordained global establishment of Sharia law.

And Americans, whose sixteen year old daughters are ensconced safely in their $350,000 homes, in their ignorance, ridiculed George Bush for proclaiming Iran to be part of an axis of evil. Ronald Reagan declared the Soviet Union to be an evil empire, and although this was obviously true to those who lived under its boot for seventy years, Reagan was loudly chastised by the left for his temerity in stating that truth. Nevertheless, that speech was instrumental in precipitating the collapse of totalitarian communism six years later.

George Bush has the moral clarity to speak the truth about the evil in Iran and we may hope that his words, like Reagan's, will have shaken the foundations of Iranian oppression so that even now fissures are spreading throughout that ghastly system that will one day cause its collapse, and with it the culture of death that is contemporary Islam.

The SBVT Controversy

The Democrats and their media accomplices are finally emerging from their journalistic slumbers and beginning to work themselves into a froth over the Swift Boat vets and their ads. Although no one at the NYT, WaPo, or the Nets seems to be interested in actually investigating the vets charges, of course, all manner of questions are now being raised about who's funding them, what their motives are, whether there are connections to the Bush campaign, etc. Everything about this group and their claims is being scrutinized except the only thing that really matters: The truth of the claims themselves. That little issue is being buried under an avalanche of slime from the lefties, who are more interested in trying to obscure the issues than to shed light on them.

Chris Matthews' treatment of Michelle Malkin is a good example of the embarrassing silliness of the left's response to the Swift Boat vets charges. Malkin, a guest on Matthews' Hardball show Thursday night made the obvious assertion that there are those who think that some of John Kerry's wounds in Vietnam were self-inflicted. Anyone who has been following this story would know exactly what she was referring to, but Matthews, apparently hearing this news for the first time, became almost hysterical. Everytime Malkin tried to explain to the viewers what it means to have a self-inflicted wound Matthews interrupted her, drowning her out, and ranting that it was ridiculous and despicable to say that Kerry deliberately shot himself to get out of Vietnam. In trying to discredit and obfuscate Malkin's words he managed to show himself to be a complete buffoon.

To say that a wound is self-inflicted is to say that the agent was the cause of his own injury. No one claims that Kerry deliberately injured himself, much less was anything said about shooting himself. The testimony of the swiftees is that Kerry accidentally superficially wounded himself through his own reckless action. Such wounds, not resulting from enemy fire, do not merit a purple heart. This is all that Malkin was attempting to clarify, over Matthews' boorish, fatuous, and frenzied protests. It's an obvious distinction, but nevertheless too esoteric, apparently, for some minds to comprehend.

While Matthews' has comported himself on this issue like a man on the edge of insanity, his colleague at MSDNC (oops, MSNBC), Joe Scarborough of Scarborough Country, has set the standard for journalistic objectivity and decorum. In Viewpoint's opinion he has done the best job on television of establishing the conditions for a useful debate between antagonists and allowing the viewer to decide for himself where the truth lies. He serves as a moderator, keeping the disputants on the topic and staying out of the fray himself. Kudos.

On the subject of the Swift Boat controversy here are two interesting items courtesy of Powerline which has been posting some great stuff on the issue over the last couple of weeks.

The first has to do with the charge that the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth are funded by a "wealthy Republican" as if this were somehow shocking to a party propped up by people like billionaire George Soros who has promised to spend his entire fortune if it would unseat George Bush. If the Democrats are going to of a sudden wax sanctimonious and assure us that it is offensive them that big money donors are supporting ads critical of their candidate, it should be noted that it is the Democrat party which is disproportionately reliant upon the fat cats. Power Line relays this from Little Green Footballs:

Now that John Kerry and the Democrats have started denouncing section 527 committees, it's worth pointing out that of the twenty-five largest contributors to 527's, only one -- that's right, one -- is a Republican. The top two donors are Peter Lewis ($14,030,000) and George Soros ($12,600,000). Altogether, the 24 Democrats contributed $56,693,000. The lone Republican donated $1,020,000.

And here's an exquisite piece of hypocrisy from the Dems who are complaining now that the Swift Boat vets know people who know members of the Bush family, which ties are, for the desperate minds in the Kerry camp, ipso facto proof of collusion. Power Line writes:

Reader Cecil Bordages sent us a link to this MSNBC story titled "Kerry says Bush broke the law in TV ad dispute." Cecil comments:

Here's the amazing part...about half way through the main article is this section: "Out of desperation, the Bush campaign has picked the wrong fight with the wrong veteran," said Jim Jordan, former Kerry campaign manager who now runs an outside group airing ads against Bush. "Today's the start of the mother of all backlashes."

Let me see if I got this straight...the proof of the connection between SBVT and Bush is ...the same person had donated to both SBVT and the Bush campaign...another person once worked for Bush advisor Karl Rove ...and other similar tenous connections, must certainly mean that the Bush campaign and SBVT are working together.

However, when Kerry's former campaign manager is now running an organization which airs anti-Bush adds, there's not even a whif of concern about a connection. Unbelievable.

Unbelievable indeed. Sometimes I wonder whether reporters even read the stuff they write.

There's much more about Kerry's military service that the elite media have just not yet been able to find space for, evidently. His claim to have been in Cambodia on Christmas eve of 1968, repeated several times, once from the floor of the Senate, and his claims to have on more than one occasion inserted special ops personnel into Cambodia, have been shown to be almost certainly false. This is devastating to Kerry's credibility and, coupled with his numerous reversals on important issues, paints a portrait of a man who will say or do just about anything to realize his ambition. Kerry is day by day revealing himself to be a hollow man.

For anyone interested in following developments on the matter of Kerry's claims about his military accomplishments, which he has himself declared his chief qualification for the presidency, Viewpoint recommends PowerLine and Hugh Hewitt, and the great sites to which they link.

Let's Do What Works

Here's a fine example of why so many don't trust government to use our tax dollars wisely:

With help from a $10 million federal grant, the University of Arizona will try to make math instruction culturally and linguistically sensitive to Hispanics, thereby raising math achievement. The Tucson Citizen reports.

The Citizen quotes Ron Marx, an education professor:

Among the goals of the new center are to create teaching materials and ways of teaching that bring in a cultural and linguistic context specific to Latinos, said Ron Marx, dean of the UA College of Education.

"Historically the dominant culture of the country has been western European and English. Curriculum materials reflect (those) cultural patterns, which isn't good or bad, it just means that kids from those kinds of backgrounds tend to have more advantages because the content and the way it is delivered matches the way their culture represents the world and what they learn at home," Marx said.

Educators can take advantage of the way Latinos express concepts of the world and the way they interact with parents and the community to build a better math program for them, Marx said.

"If you build on their home culture, then you are going to have more success," he said.

Joanne Jacobs, whose blog this comes from, writes:

[Some think] this is about teaching math in Spanish. I think it's more devious than that. They're going to come up with a "Hispanic way of knowing" math. None of that Anglocentric 2 + 2 = 4.

Linda Seebach, a former mathematician, describes "ethnomathematics" in this 2000 column. She quotes Ron Eglash of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute:

"What goes under the name of multicultural mathematics is too often a cheap shortcut that merely replaces Dick and Jane counting marbles with Tatuk and Esteban counting coconuts," he writes.

At least, 2 coconuts plus 2 coconuts equals 4 coconuts.

Viewpoint notes that some of the best mathematics students in our schools are immigrant or first generation Asians who can barely speak English. Asian children are consistently accomplished in math. I don't recall there ever being any push to spend $10 million on improving their skills.

The way to improve any group's academic performance in math, or anything else, is to find ways to improve their families. The quality of a child's family life is one of the best, if not the best, predictors of academic success.

If families are dysfunctional all the money in the world isn't going to help their children very much, and if families are strong special funding isn't needed. High percentages of Asian (and Hindu) children succeed in school precisely because they come from quality families.

Since we're on the subject, here are eight things parents of any ethnic group can do to increase the chances their child will succeed in school:

1) Get married and stay married.

2) Read to your children and insist that they in turn read quality books.

3) Take them to museums, historical sites, and libraries.

4) Enforce daily homework time and take the time to check it.

5) Curtail internet and other entertainments during the school week.

6) Give school officials the benefit of the doubt when an issue of discipline arises.

7) Insist on high standards of dress and language usage both at school and at home.

8)Encourage your child to learn to play a musical instrument, preferably an orchestral instrument, when young, insist he/she practices diligently, and don't let him/her give it up.

Implementing these eight simple suggestions is far more effective and far cheaper than spending $10 million on programs of dubious value. Just ask the average Asian immigrant.

Hard On Philosophers' Self - Esteem

"In the English-speaking world the great majority of books that have been published in philosophy in the twentieth century are like academic paintings: they show unmistakable talent and are professionally competent, the result of long processes of learning, application and work; everything in them is accurate, in its right place, and as it should be; but it makes not the slightest difference whether they exist or not."

Bryan Magee --Confessions of a Philosopher

There are a lot of people who agree with Magee that the great and influential works in philosophy were all written before 1900.

Here's an assignment for the philosophy majors out there. Name three technical books written in the twentieth century in the discipline of philosophy which, for better or worse, have made a difference in how we look at the world.

Fourteen Questions For Kerry

Hugh Hewitt lists a number of very good questions he would like to see asked of Senator Kerry should the senator ever deign to hold a press conference. His list of questions follows:

"Senator, last week your staff said you hadn't been in Cambodia on Christmas Eve, 1968, even though you had written and spoken emphatically about having been there on many occasions, including the floor of the Senate. How did you make such a mistake?"

"What persuaded you last week that your memory from all those years was wrong?"

"In June of last year you showed a Washington Post reporter a hat you carry in a compartment of your attache case and told her that a CIA man gave you that hat when you took him on your swift boat across the border into Cambodia. Do you have the hat with you?"

"Could you please tell us everything about that trip, your conversation with CIA man, and whether any members of your crew participated in that conversation?"

"Which day did that occur?"

"Your staff said this week that you made a trip into Cambodia carrying quote commandos close quote. Was that the same trip as this trip with the CIA man?"

"How many commandos were there? What date did this occur on?"

"Historian Douglas Brinkley has said that your journals indicated three or four cross border missions to Cambodia, where you acted as a ferry-man for SEALs, Green Berets and CIA men. Is he right about his number?"

"Can you detail these missions for us?"

"In June of 2000, you told a reporter for U.S.News & World Report that you had run weapons to anticommunist forces in Cambodia. Can you provide us the details of those missions? Which forces were you resupplying? Which weapons did you take? Where did you drop them off?"

"Did you provide reports of all these missions? Did you make entries in your log about the ship's movements? Have you discussed these covert missions with the crew since they occurred?"

"You have not authorized the release of all your military and medical records by signing an SF-180. Why not? Will you do so now?"

"Will you hold another press conference tomorrow so we can follow up on your answers?"

"What do you think about war veterans who exaggerate their accomplishments in order to advance their careers?"

It is highly unlikely that any reporter from the elite media would ask any question of Kerry which would make him uncomfortable which every one of these questions probably would. Instead they'll be complicit, as Chris Matthews is on his Hardball show, in allowing Kerry and his people to slide past all the tough questions while trying to obfuscate the issues by shouting down Kerry's critics with deliberate distortion and misrepresentation. It's as predictable as it is shameful.

The Decline of Good Reading

A friend directs Viewpoint to a troubling report about the decline of reading in America. Here's an excerpt:

A new report from the National Endowment for the Arts supplies statistics that demonstrate that the number of readers in America is declining. The report is introduced in an article from The Chronicle of Higher Education titled "Literary Reading Is Declining Faster Than Before, Arts Endowment's New Report Says." As the article explains, the report portrays a steep decline in "literary reading" (described as the reading of any type of fiction, poetry, and plays) over the past two decades; it also describes some reactions to the report's findings.

"Reading at Risk: a Survey of Literary Reading in America" reports data gathered from 17,000 adults across major demographic groups categorized by age, gender, education, income, religion, race, and ethnicity. It addresses what and how much those sampled read, other civic activities in which they participate, factors and trends in literature participation, and includes a summary and conclusions. It comprises a preface and executive summary, five chapters, and appendices.

If this is true it has the potential to be a cultural catastrophe. Immersing oneself in literature is one of the most effective ways to be introduced to the big ideas of religion, politics, philosophy, and even science. It's a great way to learn history. A society which stops reading is much less likely to develop depth in any of these areas of their intellectual life. If we truly are no longer exposing ourselves to the literary heritage handed down to us by former generations we are impoverishing our minds by a kind of intellectual depression which does to a nation culturally what an economic depression does to it financially.

Perhaps the decline in good reading is partly responsible for the superficiality of so many young people who live like intellectual water-striders, gliding across the surface of life, never breaking through to experience the depths below.

Not a few young women, for example, seem interested in little more than shopping, their social life, the celebrities they read about in People magazine, and their romantic interests, not necessarily in that order. The preoccupations of many young men, on the other hand, go no deeper than sports, cars, beer, and sex.

Literature raises us above this brutishness. It sharpens our minds and attunes them to an awareness that there is more to life than merely gratifying impulses and appetites. It enriches us in ways that money and physical satisfactions never can. A man or woman may be economically poor but spiritually and intellectually rich. Such people's lives are noble despite their poverty.

And that is what we're losing, if indeed we are losing our appreciation for literature. We're losing our nobility.

World War IV

Peter Schramm at No Left Turns discusses an interview with two English educated Muslims he saw last night on CNN. Here's what he wrote:

Last night, on CNN's Headline News, I saw a two minute clip on a meeting/demonstration in London put on by British Muslims. The whole thing was generically anti-Western, but the effect became especially powerful when two Muslims were interviewed. Both were intelligent, well-dressed and well-spoken, with educated English accents. Here is the gist of what they said (a near quote): "You Westerners don't understand that your understanding of democracy, freedom, human rights, capitalism, and all those things you hold dear are nothing more than figments of your imagination. There is no freedom, no democracy, no human rights, except in Islam. And we mean this and you will lose. Islam will rule." I was looking into the eyes of an ideologue, of a fanatic, of a tyrant. Such scenes, and such graphic and and clear voices, will be replayed over the next many years, and we should be reminded of not only who they are, and what they stand for, but also of who we are, and why they hate us. It was shocking. More such interviews should be done and shown. I looked for it on CNN's web site, and couldn't find it.

Maybe, if there are more such airings, the West will gradually come to realize that it's in what Norman Podhoretz describes as World War IV, a long struggle to the death with people who are not at all interested in peaceful coexistence. They're interested only in spreading Islam throughout the globe. They will not be content until every person in the world is either a Muslim or dead.

Meanwhile, our news programs cannot escape their fascination with the Scott Peterson murder trial. Come to think of it maybe the Muslims are right. Maybe Western culture isn't worth saving.

Kerry's Non-Response

Senator Kerry has once again delivered himself of a resounding nullity. His speech this morning to a gathering of firefighters was all outrage and no substance. Like a boxer in the ring all by himself, he comes out swinging, but accomplishes nothing.

His speech has been billed as a response to the charges of the Swift Boat vets that he didn't do what he claimed he did in Vietnam, but Kerry's response didn't settle anything. Speaking of the organization airing the ads that challenge his war record, Kerry said, "Of course, this group isn't interested in the truth and they're not telling the truth.

Okay. What reason does the senator give us for not believing the Swift Boat vets?

"But here's what you really need to know about them. They're funded by hundreds of thousands of dollars from a Republican contributor out of Texas. They're a front for the Bush campaign. And the fact that the President won't denounce what they're up to tells you everything you need to know. He wants them to do his dirty work."

In other words:

They're liars because 1) they're funded by a wealthy Republican Texan.

They're liars because 2) they're a front for the Bush campaign.

They're liars because 3) the President won't denounce them.

What does 1) have to do with anything? Does Kerry think that being wealthy or being a Republican negate their credibility? Are Texans not Americans? Why does the source of funding make the Swiftees liars? What is the source of Kerry's funding? Is it not a wealthy Hungarian named George Soros and a wealthy Madagascaran named Teresa Heinz? Does the source of Kerry's funding make him and his supporters liars?

How does Kerry know that 2) is true? Even if it were true that these vets were somehow working for the Bush re-election campaign that would still not be an argument for the falsity of what they allege.

Finally, why should the President denounce an independent group whose allegations he is not in any position to judge? If Kerry wants the President to denounce the Swift Boat ads and charges he should first demonstrate why their accusations are false, and then he should denounce George Soros, Michael Moore and Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, and all the books written by people who support Kerry which rip George Bush. Otherwise, Bush has no reason at all to denounce anything. Why should he do what Kerry himself refuses to do?

Kerry said in his speech to the firefighters, "Of course, the president keeps telling people he would never question my service to our country. Instead, he watches as a Republican-funded attack group does just that."

Perhaps, but under the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform law which Kerry supported it is illegal for a candidate or a campaign to interfere with what the "527" groups do. Bush could, if he wished, dissociate himself from the ads, but he cannot order that the ads be pulled.

How can Kerry settle this matter? He can release all of his records, for starters. It would be interesting to see exactly how he was commended for his citations. That would be a beginning, but Kerry refuses to do it. Why?