Steyn Hits a Pair

Mark Steyn has stroked a couple of home runs recently. The first is on "Rathergate":

Of all the loopy statements made by Dan Rather in the 10 days since he decided to throw his career away, my favorite is this, from Dan's interview with the Washington Post on Thursday:

"If the documents are not what we were led to believe, I'd like to break that story."

Hel-looooo? Earth to the Lost Planet of Ratheria: You can't "break that story." A guy called "Buckhead" did that, on the Free Republic Web site a couple of hours after you and your money-no-object resources-a-go-go "60 Minutes" crew attempted to pass off four obvious Microsoft Word documents as authentic 1972 typewritten memos about Bush's skipping latrine duty in the Spanish-American War, or whatever it was.

As the network put it last week, "In accordance with longstanding journalistic ethics, CBS News is not prepared to reveal its confidential sources or the method by which '60 Minutes' Wednesday received the documents." But, once they admit the documents are fake, they can no longer claim "journalistic ethics" as an excuse to protect their source. There's no legal or First Amendment protection afforded to a man who peddles a fraud. You'd think CBS would be mad as hell to find whoever it was who stitched them up and made them look idiots.

So why aren't they? The only reasonable conclusion is that the source -- or trail of sources -- is even more incriminating than the fake documents. Why else would Heyward and Rather allow the CBS news division to commit slow, public suicide?

You can read the rest of this very good column here.

The second outstanding piece by Steyn is on Iraq:

After the predictions of hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths and a mass refugee crisis and a humanitarian catastrophe and wall-to-wall cholera and dysentery all failed to pan out, the naysayers fell back on predictions of imminent civil war. But the civil war's as mythical as the universal dysentery.

Do you remember that moment of Fallujah-like depravity in Ulster a few years ago? Two soldiers were yanked from a cab in the wrong part of town and torn apart by a Republican mob. A terrible, shaming episode in the wretched annals of Northern Irish nationalists. But in the rest of the United Kingdom - in Bristol, in Coventry, Newcastle, Aberdeen - life went on, very pleasantly.

That's the way it is in Iraq. In two-thirds of the country, municipal government has been rebuilt, business is good, restaurants are open, life is as jolly as it has been in living memory. This summer the Shia province of Dhi Qar, south-east of Baghdad, held the first free elections in its history, electing secular independents and non-religious parties to its town councils.

Both of these articles are must reading.

The Best Universities in the World

Joanne Jacobs has links to a study listing the top 500 universities in the world. According to the report, nine of the top ten schools are American and seventeen of the top twenty are. All told the United States had 170 universities make the top 500. Click here to see the listing by region and by country.

Jacobs notes that:

Only 35 countries have at least one university among the 500 (more exactly 502) best. While Israel (population around 6 millions or 0.1% of mankind) has 7 of these, all the Islamic countries together (maybe 1/5 of mankind) have not a single one.

Viewpoint will leave the reader to ponder why that may be.

It's not clear, of course, how helpful this type of list is or what it really portends. The schools were evaluated mostly on the basis of their reputations for math/science excellence and some might argue that that's an incomplete measure of the quality of a school.

A number of the comments at Jacobs' site address the question how the U.S. schools can rank so high when our secondary education is so abysmal. Some of the speculation focusses on the high number of foreign-born professors on our university faculties, but we're not too sure that's the answer. Anyone who's ever sat in on lectures given by many of these foreign-born instructors is often outraged that he's paying tens of thousands of dollars in tuition for classes in which he cannot understand a single word of what's being taught.

There's no way to support this, perhaps, but I suspect that part of the reason our universities are so good is because public education in the U.S. is not really as bad as we're often led to believe. Students who want to get a good education and go on to a major university can usually get an excellent preparation in many of our high schools. Once these students complete their post-secondary education the universities draw from their ranks to supply their own faculties. Our high school test scores are poor overall because an increasing number of students in the last forty years are much less concerned with securing the best education they can and are much more concerned with academically peripheral matters like after-school jobs and extra-curricular activities, or they are handicapped by a substandard home life.

Most public schools and their teachers offer our young people a good to excellent opportunity for learning, but too many students are coming to school unprepared, unwilling or unable to avail themselves of that opportunity. Nevertheless, the students who do take advantage of the education American schools offer are the ones who are making our universities the best in the world.

The Rise and Decline of Modern Atheism

I recently finished Alister McGrath's The Twilight of Atheism and highly recommend it to anyone who would enjoy a good overview of the development of atheism, the rise of modernity, and the prospects for unbelief in a post-modern world. McGrath writes as a Christian who is not completely unsympathetic to the atheist critique of religion, having formerly been an atheist himself.

He argues that the appeal of atheism is historically rooted not in hostility toward the notion of God so much as it is in hostility to what people perceived to be a corrupt and illegitimate church. He suggests that throughout its existence the church has been debauched primarily by its lust for political power, and that atheism thrives today in Europe in large part because of the Church's illicit relationship in centuries past with secular governments, particularly in France and England. Atheism has not caught on to the same extent in the United States where the Church has never been seen as particularly tainted by the vices of politics, very likely because in the U.S. it is constitutionally barred from close proximity to the levers of power.

As McGrath recounts the story of the evolution of unbelief in 18th and 19th century Europe the reader is told much that he may not have known. He points out, for instance, that, contrary to conventional opinion, Voltaire and many of his cronies were not really atheists, but were led by their disgust with the church to a rather vague deism. One also learns that the famous story of John Calvin's alleged "refutation" of Copernicus, wherein he declared that the first verse of the 93rd Psalm proves that the earth is fixed and cannot be moved, a story which makes Calvin look like an arrogant buffoon, is completely apocryphal. So, too, is the even more well-known account of Bishop Wilberforce's challenge to Thomas Huxley when, in a public debate on the merits of Darwin's theory of natural selection, the good Bishop is alleged to have inquired of Huxley whether it was through his grandfather or grandmother that he claimed descent from a monkey. This story is told and retold with great gusto by atheists to illustrate the utter doltishness of religious clergy, but there is no historical evidence that the incident ever occurred.

One of McGrath's more controversial claims, perhaps, is his assertion that reformation Protestantism essentially opened the door for the emergence of atheism. His argument is that by desacralizing the world, by removing God from the Eucharist, by removing icons from their churches, Protestants turned God into "an absence in the world". Taking pains to avoid idolatry, these believers emphasized God's transcendence and inadvertently made it easier to think of God as removed from their everyday lives, a move which McGrath claims "inevitably encourages belief in a godless world". I suppose a lot of scholarship supports this view, but it strikes me as a little bit like blaming the Wright brothers for 9/11. Protestants did not, as McGrath states, remove any grounds for expecting to encounter the divine directly through nature or in personal experience, they merely insisted that people not confuse the divine with nature, that there is an important distinction to be made between creature and creator.

In any event, McGrath presents us with a fine introduction to many of the seminal figures in 19th century atheism: Ludwig Feurbach, Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, William Clifford, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Sigmund Freud, and explains how their thought advanced the idea in the popular mind that God was an obsolete concept. Marx, for example, was famous for having called religion the opiate of the people, but as atheism hurtled toward the dark night of nihilism in the twentieth century, the true opium, as Czeslaw Milosz puts it, "is a belief in nothingness after death - the huge solace of thinking that for our betrayals, greed, cowardice, murders, we are not going to be judged." The true opium of modernity is not Christianity, which tells us that we are accountable for every choice we make in life, but rather, McGrath says, "the belief that there is no God, so that humans are completely free to do precisely as they please."

The second part of the book describes what the author believes is the decline of atheism and the forces which have triggered it. Atheism reached its zenith in the first sixty years of the 20th century during which it became official policy in communist and fascist nations around the globe. The fruits of state atheism were readily observable in the horrors of Auschwitz and the Soviet Gulag. Over one hundred million people were murdered in the name of a consistent naturalistic humanism. The terrible irony in this is that modernity sought to exalt man, to elevate mankind to the status of divinity, but in so doing they dehumanized him and reduced him to the status of a beast, fit to be herded, manipulated, exploited, and slaughtered.

The reason for this is clear. Atheism has nothing upon which to base human dignity, and consequently nothing upon which to base human rights (See Viewpoint here for a fuller treatment of this problem). Man has dignity by virtue of the fact that he is made in the image of God and is loved by God. He has rights only because he belongs to God. Take God away and man is nothing more than a lump of blood, muscle, and bone. There is no inherent dignity or "rights" in that. The holocaust and the Soviet slave labor camps were simply the logical conclusion of the assumption that there is no God.

Another strange irony of the 20th century is that people reflect upon the grisly barbarisms of the totalitarian states which encompassed much of the globe from 1917 to 1989 and, blaming God for the evils these states perpetrated, they despise him for them. How, they ask, could such atrocities happen if God is truly good? (See Viewpoint here and here). Yet surely this is to misplace the blame and to sink into confusion. God is held responsible for the crimes of an ideology that rejects him. Belief in God becomes impossible because the consequences of godlessness are so horrific. People reject God because of the evil they witness in the world, but they worship man who is the primary cause of the evil.

McGrath notes that John Lennon called upon us to imagine a world in which there's no heaven and no religion, but imagining such a world is unnecessary. All one need do is observe the former Soviet Union, Red China, North Korea, Cuba, or Nazi Germany to see the sort of world we'd have if Lennon's dream were fulfilled.

The 20th century, McGrath writes, "gave rise to one of the greatest paradoxes of human history: that the greatest intolerance and violence of that century were practiced by those who believed that religion caused intolerance and violence."

Now we've entered a new era, the post-modern, which McGrath believes undermines the plausibility of atheism. "God," he observes, "was never argued out of existence; a cultural mood developed which tended to see God as something of an irrelevance." Now a new cultural mood is upon us, one much more congenial to the realm of the subjective, one much more insistent on tolerating diversity of opinions and much more skeptical of all dogmatic truth claims, whether religious or materialistic. The attraction of atheism, he reminds us, "lies in what it denies, not in what it offers as an alternative....What propels people toward atheism is above all a sense of revulsion against the excesses and failures of organized religion. Atheism is ultimately a worldview of fear - a fear, often merited, of what might happen if religious maniacs were to take over the world."

This worldview has been weighed in the balance, however, and found wanting. It has failed to demonstrate through reason that God does not exist. It has also failed as a practical principle because, as we've seen, the adoption by the state of an atheistic ideology leads to degradation and death on historically unprecedented scales. It has also failed metaphysically because the implications of atheism all tend toward nihilism (See Viewpoint here for a more detailed discussion of this claim). Atheism denies any meaning to existence, any ground for moral judgment, any hope for ultimate justice, and any basis for human dignity or human rights. It withholds any rationale for believing in a self, or a hope for life after death. It is a philosophy of despair, and despair is not an attractive option for most people. To the extent that atheism is indeed slouching through its twilight it is these failures which have brought it to this pass.

Nevertheless, McGrath cautions, even though the Church today may not be plagued by the liabilities which stigmatized it in Europe, atheism will still continue to appear, at least superficially, to be a reasonable alternative for those repelled by what they see as the savage moral character of the God of the Old Testament and the merciless doctrine of eternal damnation in the New Testament. One wonders how many people have fallen short of embracing belief in God because they could find no compelling answers to their questions about the nature of God, evil, and our eternal destiny. How many others have been repulsed by the insouciance, arrogance, and insensitivity with which Christians sometimes dispatch their deceased loved ones to everlasting punishment? God must agonize over the boneheadedness of those who sometimes claim to speak with such certainty on his behalf.

McGrath again: "Christianity must provide answers - good answers - to such fair questions and never assume that it can recycle yesterday's answers to today's questions."

The Twilight of Atheism is an enjoyable and worthwhile survey of how atheism came to enjoy preeminence in the twentieth century and how its very success has laid bare its intellectual, ideological, and metaphysical impoverishment. Interested readers may order copies of the book here.

A Look at the Polls

The media have been reporting that Bush's post-convention bounce has all but disappeared and that the race for the White House is once again a draw. This doesn't seem to be borne out by the polls, however, which continue to move in the President's favor. Gallup has Bush up by fourteen, a CBS/NYT poll just out has Bush up by nine, in Pennsylvania poll averages give Bush a three point lead and one New Jersey poll shows Bush leading by four. In the battleground states of Ohio, Florida, Missouri, and Wisconsin Bush is ahead. In those states where Kerry has a lead it appears to be shrinking, even in New York, and it looks like Ralph Nader will be on the ballot in Florida. All of this is very good news for the President.

The commentary that focusses on the closeness of some polls while failing to mention those which are trending in Bush's direction, represents, apparently, an attempt to keep Kerry's marginal support from defecting and to keep his core supporters from losing heart. Another week or so of numbers showing a strong showing for Bush and Kerry will be forced to hit a grand slam in the debates, or Bush will have to show up drunk, to keep the lukewarm from deciding to stay home in November.

If the polls don't turn around for Kerry look for the Democrats to start questioning their reliability. They can't allow voters to think that a Bush victory is inevitable because too many of the people they're counting on to turn out on election day are really not that enthusiastic about their candidate in the first place. They don't need much of a reason to do something else rather than drive to the voting booth so convincing people that the race is close and that their vote is important will be crucial.

From the Front

If one only gets his news about Iraq from the MSM they are likely to suspect that "Bush's war" is a complete disaster, that our efforts there are utter failures, and that the whole country is teetering on the brink of civil war. Media pundits are genetically disposed to see only the dark side of every moon, but their negativism and pessimism are misleading the American people. The following e-mail, posted at Captain's Quarters, is an antidote to the unfortunate predilections of the media Chicken Littles. It's from a Marine who is there:

The US media is abuzz today with the news of an intelligence report that is very negative about the prospects for Iraq's future. CNN's website says, "[The] National Intelligence Estimate was sent to the White House in July with a classified warning predicting the best case for Iraq was 'tenuous stability' and the worst case was civil war." That report, along with the car bombings and kidnappings in Baghdad in the past couple days are being portrayed in the media as more proof of absolute chaos and the intransigence of the insurgency.

From where I sit, at the Operational Headquarters in Baghdad, that just isn't the case. Let's lay out some background, first about the "National Intelligence Estimate." The most glaring issue with its relevance is the fact that it was delivered to the White House in July. That means that the information that was used to derive the intelligence was gathered in the Spring - in the immediate aftermath of the April battle for Fallujah, and other events. The report doesn't cover what has happened in July or August, let alone September.

The naysayers will point to the recent battles in Najaf and draw parallels between that and what happened in Fallujah in April. They aren't even close. The bad guys did us a HUGE favor by gathering together in one place and trying to make a stand. It allowed us to focus on them and defeat them. Make no mistake, Al Sadr's troops were thoroughly smashed. The estimated enemy killed in action is huge. Before the battles, the residents of the city were afraid to walk the streets. Al Sadr's enforcers would seize people and bring them to his Islamic court where sentence was passed for religious or other violations. Long before the battles people were looking for their lost loved ones who had been taken to "court" and never seen again. Now Najafians can and do walk their streets in safety. Commerce has returned and the city is being rebuilt. Iraqi security forces and US troops are welcomed and smiled upon. That city was liberated again. It was not like Fallujah - the bad guys lost and are in hiding or dead.

You may not have even heard about the city of Samarra. Two weeks ago, that Sunni Triangle city was a "No-go" area for US troops. But guess what? The locals got sick of living in fear from the insurgents and foreign fighters that were there and let them know they weren't welcome. They stopped hosting them in their houses and the mayor of the town brokered a deal with the US commander to return Iraqi government sovereignty to the city without a fight. The people saw what was on the horizon and decided they didn't want their city looking like Fallujah in April or Najaf in August.

Boom, boom, just like that two major "hot spots" cool down in rapid succession. Does that mean that those towns are completely pacified? No. What it does mean is that we are learning how to do this the right way. The US commander in Samarra saw an opportunity and took it - probably the biggest victory of his military career and nary a shot was fired in anger. Things will still happen in those cities, and you can be sure that the bad guys really want to take them back. Those achievements, more than anything else in my opinion, account for the surge in violence in recent days - especially the violence directed at Iraqis by the insurgents. Both in Najaf and Samarra ordinary people stepped out and took sides with the Iraqi government against the insurgents, and the bad guys are hopping mad. They are trying to instill fear once again. The worst thing we could do now is pull back and let that scum back into people's homes and lives.

So, you may hear analysts and prognosticators on CNN, ABC and the like in the next few days talking about how bleak the situation is here in Iraq, but from where I sit, it's looking significantly better now than when I got here. The momentum is moving in our favor, and all Americans need to know that, so please, please, pass this on to those who care and will pass it on to others. It is very demoralizing for us here in uniform to read & hear such negativity in our press. It is fodder for our enemies to use against us and against the vast majority of Iraqis who want their new government to succeed. It causes the American public to start thinking about the acceptability of "cutting our losses" and pulling out, which would be devastating for Iraq for generations to come, and Muslim militants would claim a huge victory, causing us to have to continue to fight them elsewhere (remember, in war "Away" games are always preferable to "Home" games). Reports like that also cause Iraqis begin to fear that we will pull out before we finish the job, and thus less willing to openly support their interim government and US/Coalition activities. We are realizing significant progress here - not propaganda progress, but real strides are being made. It's terrible to see our national morale, and support for what we're doing here, jeopardized by sensationalized stories hyped by media giants whose #1 priority is advertising income followed closely by their political agenda; getting the story straight falls much further down on their priority scale, as Dan Rather and CBS News have so aptly demonstrated in the last week.

This guy makes a good point. When we listen to reports from Iraq we have to remember that the reporters and the networks through whom the reports are transmitted have two agendas. One is to report the news, the other is to get Bush out of the White House. The latter is not advanced by reporting positive news about the reconstruction of Iraq. It's probably a good rule to keep in mind that whatever we hear about Iraq, it's never as bad as the reports make it seem.

The Noam Chomsky Reader

Some of Viewpoint's readers will be familiar with the MIT linguist Noam Chomsky who, since the 1960s has been one of the foremost critics of almost anything the United States does at home or abroad. Chomsky has been very influential among college students. His calm demeanor and unquestioned intellectual abilities have caused many to find his arguments seductive.

Now comes a collection of critiques of those arguments titled The Noam Chomsky Reader and edited by former left-wing radicals Peter Collier and David Horowitz. A review of the book can be found at Front Page Mag. Anyone who has ever been exposed to Chomsky's large body of work and either been persuaded by it or had the sense that something was wrong with it but couldn't quite put their finger on what it was, will find these essays useful.

God on PBS

Our local PBS affiliate on Wednesday night aired the first of a two part program called The Question of God. Based on the book of the same title by Harvard professor Armand Nicholi, the show traces the spiritual development and ideas of C.S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud. Last night's segment, which was two hours long, was interesting and instructive.

The narrative of the lives of these two men was punctuated by panel discussions led by Nicholi himself on some of the religious and philosophical issues raised by the biographies. The panel was an eclectic group consisting of two atheists, two new-age types, two traditional Christians, and a film-maker who looked like he was spending the evening wondering why he was invited.

Unfortunately, the atheists came across as having the better arguments throughout the show. Whether this was because of the way the program was edited or because the Christians simply had no compelling reply to the objections that were raised to their faith, I don't know. Even so, it seemed to me that the arguments of the atheists were vulnerable, but they were usually allowed to stand as the last word.

I also felt that the new-agers were given entirely too much face time. Their position, articulated with noticeable condescension, seemed to be that the truth of any religious belief is ascertained by one's intuitions and that whatever speaks with greatest forcefulness to your heart is true for you, and that's the end of the matter. Any talk of reason, logic and evidence is pretty much irrelevant.

Now there might be a grain of truth to this, but it's nonetheless a sure-fire discussion stopper. If God exists is a true claim simply because the idea of God has purchase upon my intuitive faculties, then how does one argue or discuss a contrary position? One can only nod politely that that's an all-well-and-good view for the person who holds it and then turn his attention to those at the table for whom the claim that God exists is objectively true or false and with whom one can have a conversation.

Despite these quibbles the show is worth watching, and even if you missed part one, you can still catch the second segment at 9:00 P.M. next Wednesday, September 22nd.

Poll Results

Latest polls at Real Clear Politics show Bush's lead widening from one point to three points in Pennsylvania and going from three points down in New Jersey to four points up. These results are within the margin of error and they reflect the results of only a single poll, not an average, but they're not good news for Kerry. If Bush takes Pennsylvania and New Jersey, two states won by Gore in 2000, Kerry's toast. In states where polls show him ahead, Bush's electoral vote count has also risen from 269 to 279. He needs 270 to win.

The bad news for Bush is that the bounce he enjoyed coming out of his convention seems to be dissipating and his lead over Kerry in several battleground states as well as nationwide is shrinking. Whether the gap will continue to close remains to be seen.

The Inspector Dreyfus Award

Viewpoint is considering initiating an Inspector Dreyfus award named for the character in the Pink Panther movies who went insane because his hated subordinate, the incompetent Inspector Clouseau (played by Peter Sellars), went from one completely serendipitous success to another. As Clouseau's accidental successes took an increasing toll on Dreyfus' sanity he first developed severe facial ticks, then he contrived plans to assassinate Clouseau, and finally he went completely over the edge and into a strait-jacket.

The Democrats seem to be playing Dreyfus to Bush's Clouseau (at least they regard Bush much the same as Dreyfus regarded the Peter Sellars character), and like Dreyfus they have been driven to varying degrees of madness.

There will be no shortage of candidates for the award, of course, and we may have to make daily presentations to accomodate the large number of deserving entrants. We'll see. In the meantime, Robert Kuttner of the Boston Globe makes a strong bid to receive today's honor. Here's an excerpt from his current column:

[T]he frustrating reality is that everything important about George Bush and his presidency is a lie. Bush himself is far more of a phony. As several biographies have documented, he virtually fell upwards, benefiting from family connections to survive a dissolute youth, draft avoidance, and several business failures. But Bush has seized the iconography of the honest cowboy, the regular guy clearing brush on his Texas ranch, the war hero arriving by fighter plane to rescue America. That Kerry actually served in combat, that he made his way upwards with far less family help, gets buried under the smears. Bush's presidency has been an even bigger lie, beginning with the dishonest way he assumed office and the gap between his moderate posture and his extremist policies. There is such a huge medley of lies that a challenger almost doesn't know where to start.

The tax cuts didn't create jobs. No Child Left Behind is big government without the resources. The deficit will sandbag the economy for decades. The Medicare drug plan is a fake. Privatizing Social Security will leave retirees worse off.

And his national security policy is worse. Whether the venue is Iraq, the phony case for war and the disastrous aftermath, the hit-and-run policy in Afghanistan, North Korea's quest for nuclear weapons, or the vaunted "war on terror" and the Keystone Kops Homeland Security Department, it all leaves America and the world less safe.

Okay. I know it's pretty tame compared to, say, Al Gore's stuff, but the award is not retroactive. It starts today. Gore still has plenty of time before the election to give another unhinged speech and stake his claim to the Dreyfus trophy. Readers should feel free to submit their own nominations through our Feedback section.

One Iraqi's View

Mohammed at Iraq the Model gives us a good idea of the level of support for the American effort among Iraqis and has some inside scuttlebutt on what's going on in Fallujah and Talla'far as well. He also says this:

We in Iraq accepted the sacrifices needed to remove Saddam. In Afghanistan we didn't see any real demonstrations protesting against the American Army for the accidental death of civilians when targeting Taliban fighters and the same applies for Iraq lately. Isn't it amazing that many people in the west and some Americans blame the American army and administration for the life losses and mess in Najaf, while Najafies are strongly blaming Sadr in their latest demonstration without a word to condemn the American army!? Aren't people, even seemingly simple people, smarter than what some media elite thinkers and reporters want us to believe!?

It's also worth mentioning that the news I heard from inside Fallujah confirm that the bombarded targets we hear about in the news every now and then did belong to Zarqawi followers and those targets were identified and chosen according to reports from the Fallujans most of the times.

Meanwhile, Arthur Chrenkoff's 10th edition of Good News From Iraq is available here. It's stuff you'll never hear from Dan, Peter, and Tom, much less the New York Times.

Register to Vote

If you're 18 and a U.S. citizen but are not registered, time is running out. In Pennsylvania you must be registered by October 4th. The race is going to be very close in PA and every vote will matter. Pennsylvania residents can download a registration form by going here and following the link. This will only work, however, for those who would vote for President Bush in November. If you are a Kerry supporter the link is unfortunately down and probably will be until October 5th.

Real Heroism

The next time you hear someone talk about celebrity or sports "heroes" tell them about Yanis Kanidis, a 74 year old phys.ed. teacher in Beslan, Russia. Here's his story:

In an act of unlimited devotion and dedication, to the bitter end, an elderly teacher insisted on remaining with his students. He protected them, bandaged their wounds, and with his death, saved their lives.

Children who escaped from the school told of how they owed their lives to elderly Yanis (Ivan) Kanidis, age 74 - a man of Greek origin who worked as a gym teacher at the school. He was among the hundreds of teachers, students and parents taken hostage last week when Chechen rebels invaded the large school.

On Thursday, in what was an unusual humanitarian move in the midst of the horror, the terrorists agreed to allow a group of women and babies to leave the building. The commander of the terrorist squad, saw Kanidis - a sickly elderly man - and offered to allow him to walk free as well.

But Kanidis refused. "I will stay with my students till the end," the teacher insisted.

"Whatever you say," said the terrorist, dismissing him with a wave of the hand.

"He was just like Janus Korzchak, who accompanied his pupils to Auschwitz," said one of the students who was saved.

Like Korzchak, Kanidis didn't just accompany his students, he guarded their lives. On Friday, when the children began to lose consciousness from the stuffy air and their thirst, Yanis went to the terrorists. "You have to give them something to drink, at least to the smallest children," he insisted angrily. One of the terrorists hit him with the butt of his rifle, but the teacher continued to yell: "How dare you!? You claim you are people of the Kafkaz region, but here in the Kafkaz even a dog wouldn't turn down the request of an old man!"

His efforts bore fruit. The terrorist allowed the teacher to wet one of the bibs of the children and pass it around to dampen the mouths of the little ones who were choking from thirst.

The hostages who escaped told how the teacher repeatedly risked his own life in order to save the children. He moved explosive devices that the terrorists had placed near the young students, and tried to prevent them from detonating others. When the first bomb exploded next to the windows of the school, parents and children began to run out. The terrorists, trying to prevent their escape, threw a grenade at them. The elderly teacher ran to the grenade to prevent it from exploding on the children. One of the terrorists shot at the teacher to try to stop him and Yanis was wounded in the shoulder - but didn't give up. With the last of his strength, he continued to run, jumped on the grenade, covering it with his body. The grenade exploded, and the body of the teacher absorbed the explosion, protecting the children around him from injury.

Men like Yanis Kanidis make the cultural icons of our day seem small indeed.

Down the Drain

Jonah Goldberg at National Review Online has some pithy remarks about the 60 Minutes scandal and the sudden implosion of Dan Rather's career. Here's a paragraph or so:

Dan Rather considers it outrageous and offensive that anyone would question the judgment that led to this situation. He defends what appear to be very shoddy methods (reading letters over the phone to sources, asking sources not to talk to the press, etc.), as if only a "partisan" or a fool would question them.

Well, if you agree with Rather, maybe you should give just a smidgen more slack to George W. Bush about the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Bush's sources were more solid by several orders of magnitude than Rather's, and yet it is "obvious" to so many that Bush lied while Rather deserves the benefit of the doubt. George W. Bush had the head of the CIA, the intelligence agencies of all our allies, the Clinton administration, the United Nations, and most of the establishment media generally backing his understanding of the threat from Iraq. Dan Rather had a couple shoddy Xeroxes - not all of which were examined thoroughly or at all. He interviewed a partisan - Ben Barnes - a huge backer of Kerry whose story has changed several times. But because many who hate Bush believe he lied, they are willing to believe any lies that confirm what they already know to be true.

Good stuff. As a stunned Dan Rather gazes at his credibility and his career swirling down the drain one wonders who's next? Will we ever know who actually composed the frauds? Whoever it was could be looking at serious criminal charges, since forging military documents is a felony. No doubt there is somewhere a political hack who will be sleeping fitfully tonight. Defaming the president is not as much fun, nor as easy, as these folks apparently thought it would be.

Po-Mo Twaddle

Now that CBS's attempts to salvage its credibility seem to have arrived at an ignominious denouement the libs are going to have to try to rescue something from this burning building. Here's Viewpoint's prediction:

Slipping into post-modern jargon the liberals' talking point will be that "even though the documents themselves may not be genuine, they nevertheless reveal a deeper truth about George Bush that needs to be proclaimed. These documents, flawed as they are, testify to the deep inadequacies of the man who seeks another four years as president. This is the truth that emerges from a proper deconstruction of the text of these prescient memos. Who authored them isn't important. When they were written doesn't matter. What matters is that they speak to us in their honesty. They have purchase with those who are open and sensitive to the truth when they hear it. The integrity of their contents is manifest and all Americans should thank CBS and Dan Rather for calling them to our attention."

It won't be long until we start hearing something like this clap-trap from otherwise intelligent people. Other than blaming the whole scam on the omnipotent and diabolical Karl Rove, it's really the only tactic remaining to the left, unless it intends to leave Rather, who's been a good soldier over the years, twisting despondently in the wind.

You heard it here first.

One Iraqi's Plea

This piece by Ali at Iraq The Model should be read by everyone who thinks that all we're accomplishing by our presence in Iraq is spawning more terrorists. He starts off by discussing his theory as to why suicide bombings in Iraq decline while al Sadr is fighting and pick up when he's not, and then predicts that attacks against Americans in Iraq will increase as we get closer to our election but that attacks against American civilians will diminish as the elections approach. His reason is that mounting losses of troops will help Kerry, but terrorist attacks against civilians will help Bush. The insurgents and their allies want Kerry to win and so will not do anything that might unite the nation behind Bush.

Then in his last three paragraphs Ali makes a poignant plea in less than perfect English for America to remain steadfast and reminds us of what is at stake:

Most people supporting the resistance think that if Kerry wins he will pull the troops out of Iraq, or that's what they wish. They know that the decisive factor in this is the American's casualty, and that shifts their priorities now. They are betting that if they can inflict more losses among American soldiers, American public opinion will favor getting out of Iraq soon and will vote for John Kerry because they (Americans) probably think that too, and that with such public pressure he would find himself more committed to promises he never even made, but gave some impression that he's at least considering it. The assumption that Americans would pull out of Iraq if they receive heavy casualties is an old one that had stopped looking possible for quite a time, but now with the strong coverage by the media for the losses in Iraq and with the figure 1000 coming up every now and then together with unclear messages from the Kerry camp, the theory has been revived. The bottom line is that with Kerry they think they have a chance but with Bush there is none.

I don't want to predict anything here but I want to say that if America decided to get out of Iraq before the job is finished, that will be not only disastrous but will be (in my opinion) the worst thing America ever did. Freeing Iraq (again in my opinion) was the best thing America ever did. It gave oppressed people everywhere a hope and a belief that the mightiest power on earth, the symbols of freedom is on their side and that it will help them in one way or another to get their freedom. Their misery has stopped looking eternal. Retreating now will prove some people's theory that America is an imperialistic power that only care for its interests, and although there's nothing wrong with caring about one's own interests, most Iraqis and millions of oppressed people in Darfur, Iran, Syria...etc. like to think more than that of America. Keeping the course will turn this thought into a firm belief.

We understand perfectly that sacrificing lives and hard earned money for the sake of others (although there IS a personal interest here but it maybe not so clear) is a very difficult thing to do, and we know that it's too much to ask, but tens of Millions of oppressed people around the world with brutal sadistic regimes laying their heave boots on their chests preventing them from even breathing freely, not to mention speaking out or doing something about it, all these people have no one else but you, Americans, to turn to. You are our/their only hope.

God help us if we let them down.

Pride Goeth Before a Fall

This essay at Power Line on the fallout from the apparent attempt by CBS to discredit President Bush by proffering amateurish forgeries as legitimate documents indicting his National Guard service is worth reproducing here in full:

Before September 11, important aspects of our security arrangements were based on the assumption that people, even terrorists, want to live. For example, airlines followed the rule that if a passenger's bags were checked but the person failed to appear for the flight, his bags would be removed from the airplane. The idea was that a bomb could have been planted in the luggage. But as long as the passenger was on the airplane, it was assumed that his bags were safe, since no one -- it was thought -- would blow up an airplane with himself on it. After September 11, security arrangements were changed to take into account the new reality (or newly recognized reality) of the suicide bomber.

When he defended CBS's publication of forged documents, Dan Rather spoke of the "checks and balances" that ensure the reliability of news coming from CBS, as opposed to news and commentary from the blogosphere. What are those checks and balances? Ultimately, the main check on the danger that a powerful media giant like CBS might abuse its position of trust by deliberately propagating falsehoods is the assumption that the network values its reputation for accuracy and trustworthiness. In the past, most people have assumed that while broadcast networks, wire services like the Associated Press, and newspapers will occasionally make mistakes, and will certainly spin the news consistent with their political biases, concern for their reputation in the marketplace, and even more among their peers, would prevent them from spreading outright falsehoods.

In the wake of the CBS scandal, that assumption must be reevaluated.

I don't know how the forged document scandal will ultimately play out. I don't know whether CBS will be forced to acknowledge that the documents are fakes, or whether Dan Rather will resign in disgrace. But I do know this: everyone who cares already knows that the "Killian memos" are low-quality forgeries.

Very few Americans are news junkies. Most people will probably never know about the CBS scandal, or will never have enough information to form a judgment about it. For that matter, most don't care. But within the news business, and inside the relatively small slice of the American population where sophisticated consumers of the news dwell, everyone knows, already, that Dan Rather and CBS News tried to influence the November election by telling lies and publishing forged documents. CBS has been disgraced among its peers.

The fact that CBS was willing to barter away what remained of its reputation in exchange for an opportunity to help the John Kerry campaign requires us to re-examine our assumptions about the mainstream media, just as the emergence of the suicide bomber required us to re-examine certain assumptions about security. We never thought that a vast, powerful broadcast network would destroy its own reputation for political gain. Now we know that it can happen.

And it isn't just CBS News. The Associated Press has, for most of its history, been regarded as a neutral, factual reporting service whose dispatches--reporting, not commentary--could be trusted, and were trusted, by thousands of newspapers. That, too, has changed. We have chronicled the astonishing story of the West Allis, Wisconsin Bush rally, where President Bush announced that he had just received word of President Clinton's hospitalization. President Bush said that his thoughts and prayers were with the Clinton family, and the audience of Republicans cheered enthusiastically.

But that isn't what the Associated Press reported. AP reporter Scott Lindlaw, in an article carrying the by-line of Tom Hays, fabricated a lie. The AP reported that Bush's "audience of thousands booed. Bush did nothing to stop them." That lie was disseminated to thousands of newspapers and television stations, and while a revised version of the story was later issued, the AP has never apologized, explained what happened, or disciplined either Lindlaw or Hays. What is remarkable, under pre-2004 assumptions, is that the lie was so easily uncovered and proved. Thousands of people were present at the rally, including many reporters. Audiotapes and videotapes of the rally were easily available. They showed, beyond a doubt, that the AP's story was a lie. No one booed. Yet Lindlaw, Hays and the AP retailed the lie because they thought it would help John Kerry. Scott Lindlaw has been quoted as saying, "My mission is to see that Bush is not re-elected." He and his employer gladly sacrificed their reputation for accuracy to achieve that goal.

So we have entered a new era. We now know that our richest and most powerful news organizations are willing to blow themselves up - to destroy their own credibility, once considered a news organization's most precious possession - to achieve a political goal. The landscape will never look quite the same again. Those of us who still value truth must look at the mainstream media in a new, more skeptical and critical way, taking nothing for granted. Because, like suicide bombers, the mainstream news organs will go farther to achieve their political goals than we ever imagined.

CBS wanted so desperately for those documents to be genuine that they suppressed their doubts and ran with them. Now it has all blown up in their faces, torn away the pretense of journalistic "standards", and has ruined reputations that took decades to build. It's ironic that President Nixon's nemesis, Dan Rather, is perhaps the biggest casualty. The irony resides in the fact that Nixon was disgraced mostly because he would not come clean to the American public over Watergate. In his hubris he stone-walled investigations until finally his credibility lay in tatters on the Oval Office floor, cut to ribbons by, among others, Dan Rather. Now Mr. Rather, no stranger to hubris himself, seems to have stumbled into the same deadly pit and may, perhaps, suffer a similar fate. Pride indeed goeth before a fall.

Straining Gnats

Nina Shea adds some perspective to the American response to the Dharfur genocide in a fine piece at National Review Online. Here is a portion of her essay:

On Thursday, the United States made human-rights history. Secretary of State Colin Powell, testifying to a packed Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing room on Thursday morning, reported that in July the United States had launched an investigation into charges that the Arab Islamist government of Sudan and its proxy militia of Arab tribesmen, known as the Janjaweed, were responsible for carrying out atrocities against the three African tribes of Sudan's western province of Darfur. He said that despite denials and attempts to obfuscate by Khartoum, the investigative team found "a consistent and widespread pattern of atrocities (killings, rapes and burning of villages)" against the non-Arab villagers and that 74 percent of those victims interviewed reported that the Sudanese military forces were involved in the attacks. Powell's next statement was breathtaking: "[T]he evidence leads us to the conclusion that genocide has occurred and may still be occurring in Darfur. We believe the evidence corroborates the specific intent of the perpetrators to destroy 'a group in whole or in part'. This intent may be inferred from their deliberate conduct. We believe the other elements of the convention have been met as well."

The significance of the administration's action cannot be overstated. This marks the first instance that a party to the 1948 Genocide Convention, the most fundamental of all human-rights treaties, has formally charged another party with "genocide" and invoked the convention's provisions while genocide has been in progress. In the past, the convention and the term "genocide" have been applied only retroactively by state parties, long after the violence ended. Former President Bill Clinton underscored this recently when he apologized for his administration's inaction to stop the 1994 genocidal massacres of the Tutsis in Rwanda.

Moreover, in taking efforts to stop the genocide, the administration is going well beyond what is required under international law. The convention does not require parties to take any specific action other than to end their own responsibility for the human destruction. Nevertheless, the United States is taking the lead in trying to rally the international community to exert pressure on Khartoum, all the while continuing America's unilateral economic sanctions.

The United States is also providing some 80 percent of the humanitarian aid and other support to keep Darfur's 1.5 million refugees alive. While many other nations have so far failed to make good on their pledges, the U.S. is exceeding its aid commitment.

The entire article bears careful reading. As I read through it one question that came to mind was, Where are all the millions of protestors who were so concerned about the welfare of Iraqis prior to Operation Iraqi Freedom? Why are they not overflowing the streets of European and American cities demanding an immediate end to the genocide? Is it because the victims are black? Is it because they're Christians? Or is it because the left doesn't really care about oppressed people at all unless they can be used as a cudgel to beat the United States over the head with? Take your pick.

Then a second question occured to me as I reflected upon this awful situation. If it should require that we insert military forces into Sudan to bring about an end to the slaughter being perpetrated by the Islamic government in Khartoum, would the left object? Or would they argue, like they did before, during, and since OIF, that we have no business jeopardizing the lives of innocent civilians in order to save them from being murdered by their oppressors? Elie Wiesel, in giving his acceptance speech for the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize, said this:

"Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Whenever men or women are persecuted because of their race, religion or political views, that place must - at that moment - become the center of the universe."

If only the New York Times and the Washington Post read Wiesel.

A final question: Will Bush get credit for this historic demarche from his leftist critics in the MSM? The answer here is easy: Probably not. The liberal elite media is following their marching orders from the DNC and has become riveted, like a cat fixated on a moth fluttering around the ceiling, on Bush's National Guard service of thirty three years ago. They can't allow themselves to be distracted by the extraordinary events taking place in the world today as long as there's a chance that they'll be able to discredit Bush with his supposed National Guard derelictions. These are the sort of people Christ referred to when he spoke of straining out gnats while swallowing camels.

Confronted with a man who has accomplished the extraordinary feat of liberating 50 million people while simultaneously waging a global war on terror and pulling us through an inherited recession that was pushed even deeper by the devastating blows of 9/11, the media carps not about his current deficiencies, whatever they may be, but instead they obsess over whether he showed up for every one of his weekend Guard meetings more than three decades ago. These are not serious people, some of them may even be teetering on the brink of psychological pathology, but in any event they are certainly not the sort we want advising us on matters of great moment in the years ahead.

Christian Existentialism

Jean Paul Sartre writes in Existentialism is a Humanism that "Existentialism is nothing else but an attempt to draw the full conclusion from a consistently atheistic position." For Sartre and like-minded thinkers existentialism is necessarily atheistic and there is much that follows from this, not the least of which is the conclusion that man is forlorn, abandoned, alone in a world which is incompatible with his deepest yearnings and needs. In a word, the world is absurd and life is meaningless. I've discussed this consequence in several places on Viewpoint (see, for instance, In the Absence of God and Grounding Human Rights).

There is another strand of existentialist thinking, however, which goes back to Kierkegaard, Pascal, even to Augustine, emerging out of the Christian worldview of these thinkers.

Like the atheistic existentialism of Nietzsche, Sartre, and others, it places a strong emphasis on man's subjectivity, that is upon his feelings, intuitions, emotions, and experience. Christian existentialism, no less than the atheistic variety, elevates the heart over the head, the realm of interior experience over the coldly rational, objective, and logical. Like his atheistic colleagues the Christian existentialist considers the preeminence of the subjective to be the essential characteristic of an existential approach to life, but in contrast to his skeptical friends he couples subjectivity to a belief in God. Indeed, belief in God is seen as the paramount example of the triumph of the subjective over the dehumanization of the purely rational approach to life and the world.

In his book The Universe Next Door James Sire discusses some ways in which Christians who tend toward the existential in their thinking differ from Christians who do not. For Sire, Christian existentialism focuses on the personal and the relational. The non-existential is more impersonal and more oriented toward the rational. Sire applies this distinction to a number of aspects of Christian belief and compares the two approaches. Using Sire's work as a springboard but not confining ourselves to it, let's consider the following examples of the difference between what Sire calls depersonalized Christianity and personalized, or existential, Christianity as applied to various doctrines of faith and practice:

Sin: The depersonalized view sees sin as a breaking of a rule, like one of the commandments, whereas in the personalized, or existential view, sin is seen as a betrayal of a relationship. Sin is anything which harms, or would harm, oneself or another, and, as such, it damages and subverts our relationships to our fellow men and certainly to God, who requires of us that we love each other.

Repentance: The depersonalized view sees repentance as an admission of guilt, whereas the personalized approach sees it as a deep sorrow or anguish over our unfaithfulness to God or our betrayal of our obligation to love our fellow man.

Forgiveness: In the depersonalized view one is forgiven in much the same way that one is absolved of a traffic ticket, i.e. by simply paying the fine. One breaks the rule, is fined, and that's the end of it. In the existential view forgiveness is a restoration of a ruptured relationship that can only be accomplished with tears and embraces, whether literal or metaphorical.

Faith: For the non-existential Christian, faith is merely giving one's assent to a set of propositions, as in the recitation of the Apostle's Creed. For the existential Christian, however, faith is committing oneself to a person in a love-relationship. The difference between the two views is like the difference between signing a contract and falling in love. It's living moment by moment with the deep angst that comes from knowing that what one loves could be lost, that what one believes can never be made sure by reason, it can only be certified by the heart.

Christian Life: In the non-existential approach the Christian life is a matter of observing certain rules of behavior. For the Christian existentialist it is living for, and with, another person (i.e. God). It is immersing oneself in the other to the extent that the other is the entire purpose and focus of one's being. The difference between the two views is like the difference between being in a business partnership and being involved in a passionate romance.

The Authority of the Bible: In the existential approach the meaning of Scripture is determined by how it speaks to the individual reader. The significance of the text is different for different people, and all meanings or interpretations are equally valid because they're all subjectively discerned. In a non-existential approach to the Bible, the text is seen to have an objective meaning, or meanings, quite apart from any subjective impression it makes on the reader. In other words, the meaning of the text is to be discovered through proper hermeneutics and not simply by consulting our feelings and intuitions.

Many Christians are wary of existentialism because of the overt atheism of its twentieth century practitioners and because of what they see as a rather "squishy" view of Biblical interpretation, but there is much else about this view of life which resonates with the profound human desire for union with God. Augustine wrote that: "Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless till they find their rest in thee." Christian existentialism is a response to this deep yearning of the heart for a relationship with the God who has created us for himself.

But She's Not There

The New York Times has a stable of writers who seem to be spiralling into dementia in their desperation to unseat George Bush. Paul Krugman, Nicholas Kristoff, and Frank Rich have all written columns laced with paranoia and vituperation in recent weeks, but Maureen Dowd can get just as nuts as any of them. Ms. Dowd's motto is never pass up an opportunity to insult someone. Unfortunately, her insults often make her look profoundly dumb. Consider this statement from today's column:

After 9/11, Americans want tough guys who will protect them from Al Qaeda. They seem to be willing to settle for an impersonation of tough guys by Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, who were so busy with their vanity war in Iraq that they missed critical opportunities to vanquish Al Qaeda and spent money on a foreign occupation that could have been used to secure American ports and come up with plans before the Beslan tragedy to protect children from terrorists.

Never mind the drive-by cheap shot about missing critical opportunities to vanquish al Qaeda (What opportunities did they miss? How does Dowd know they missed them? Does she have access to secret information?); never mind the unsubstantiated allegation that had we not been involved in Iraq our ports would be safer (In what way would they be safer? Are we spending less money on protecting our ports than we would have had we not gone into Iraq? How does Dowd know that deposing Saddam has not made this country safer?); the part of this paragraph that makes her look positively buffoonish is her implication that had we not invaded Iraq we could have prevented the Beslan tragedy.

If Ms. Dowd ever deigns to descend from her Olympian vantage at the Times to mingle with us mortals perhaps she'll explain for the benefit of those of us not blessed with her divine insight how, exactly, our invasion of Iraq diverted resources that would have saved the Beslan children. Is she suggesting that we would have had Marines stationed outside the Russian school when the terrorists arrived had they not been stationed in Iraq instead? Does she have compelling information that had we never gone to Iraq our spies would've penetrated Chechen terrorist cells? Does Ms. Dowd feel herself to be under no obligation to ground her claims in something approximating reality?

So that our readers know, Viewpoint has received word just this evening that in her next column Ms. Dowd will allege that had George Bush not invaded Iraq, Hurricane Ivan would not now be threatening Florida and scientists would have discovered a cure for cancer. Reason enough to vote him out of office, I say.

Rather <i>Agonistes</i>

The Belmont Club has an excellent analysis of CBS tactics regarding the apparent duping they suffered with allegedly fraudulent documents purporting to prove that George Bush had disobeyed orders while serving in the National Guard. Both the analysis and the comment thread which follows is fascinating.

For other takes on the unravelling scandal at CBS see the comparison of the questionable memo and a computer generated copy overlay at Little Green Footballs, and by all means don't miss the column by Mark Steyn, one of the funniest columnists in the business. Here's a taste:

Dan Rather and the elderly gentlemen at "60 Minutes" were all atwitter because they'd come into possession of some hitherto undiscovered memos relating to whether George W. Bush failed to show up for his physical in the War of 1812. The media had been flogging this dead horse all spring, but these newly "discovered" memos had jump-started the old nag just enough to get him on his knees long enough for the media to flog him all over again.

Unfortunately for CBS, Dan Rather's hairdresser sucks up so much of the budget that there was nothing left for any fact-checking, so the "60 Minutes" crew rushed on air with a damning National Guard memo conveniently called "CYA" that Bush's commanding officer had written to himself 32 years ago. "This was too hot not to push," one producer told the American Spectator. Hundreds of living Swiftvets who've signed affidavits and are prepared to testify on camera - that's way too cold to push; we'd want to fact-check that one thoroughly, till, say, midway through John Kerry's second term. But a handful of memos by one dead guy slipped to us by a Kerry campaign operative - that meets "basic standards" and we gotta get it out there right away.