Imagine

Ed Whelan at NRO poses the following scenario:

Imagine, if you will, that a Democrat President nominated a judge whose constitutional and policy views were, by any measure, on the extreme left fringes of American society.

Let's assume, for example, that this nominee had expressed strong sympathy for the position that there is a constitutional right to prostitution as well as a constitutional right to polygamy.

Let's say, further, that he had attacked the Boy Scouts and the Girl Scouts as organizations that perpetuate stereotyped sex roles and that he had proposed abolishing Mother's Day and Father's Day and replacing them with a single androgynous Parent's Day.

And, to get really absurd, let's add that he had called for an end to single-sex prisons on the theory that if male prisoners are going to return to a community in which men and women function as equal partners, prison is just the place for them to get prepared to deal with women.

Let's further posit that this nominee had opined that a manifest imbalance in the racial composition of an employer's work force justified court-ordered quotas even in the absence of any intentional discrimination on the part of the employer. But then, lo and behold, to make this nominee even more of a parody of an out-of-touch leftist, let's say it was discovered that while operating his own office for over a decade in a city that was majority-black, this nominee had never had a single black person among his more than 50 hires.

Imagine, in sum, a nominee whose record is indisputably extreme and who could be expected to use his judicial role to impose those views on mainstream America. Surely such a person would never be nominated to an appellate court. Surely no Senate Democrat would support someone with such extreme views. And surely Senate Republicans, rather than deferring to the nominating power of the Democrat President, would pull out all stops-filibuster and everything-to stop such a nominee.

Well, not quite. The hypothetical nominee I have just described is, in every particular except his sex, Ruth Bader Ginsburg at the time she was nominated to the Supreme Court in 1993.

President Clinton nominated Ruth Bader Ginsburg on June 22, 1993. A mere six weeks later, on August 3, 1993, the Senate confirmed her nomination by a 96-3 vote.

(The source for the information in the second through fourth paragraphs is "Report of Columbia Law School Equal Rights Advocacy Project: The Legal Status of Women under Federal Law," co-authored by Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Brenda Feigen Fasteau in September 1974. The information in the fifth paragraph can be found in the transcript of Ginsburg's confirmation hearing.)

Democrats don't see jurists like Ginsburg as "extreme", of course, because they agree with her. An extremist, in their lexicon, is anyone more conservative than they are, which is probably 80% or more of the nation and probably every man who as ever served as president of this country.

Purging Religion From Public Life

Here are four posts from Tongue-Tied which show just how unwilling some people are to honor and celebrate the diversity which makes us a great nation, at least when the diversity takes the form of Christian displays and themes:

Florida Today is reporting that the family of one graduating high school senior in that state wants its child's graduation moved from a local chapel to a more secular venue.

The parents of a Palm Bay High School student, with the help of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, are threatening to sue unless the school district covers up all religious symbols at Calvary Chapel in West Melbourne for the ceremony. Barring that, they say they want the ceremony moved.

"Nobody wants this graduation to be disrupted," said Alex Luchenitser, senior litigation counsel for AUSCS. "We just want this to take place in a way that all students feel comfortable, no matter what religion they believe in."

School officials say moving the ceremony would disrupt three more public school graduations scheduled at the church, and have said they will not change their plans.

How many Christian students, do you suppose, would feel uncomfortable were the graduation ceremony held in a Synagogue? Why is it that the only people who seem to be tolerant of other peoples' expressions of faith are Christians? Just asking.

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A weekly newspaper in Richmond, Va. has come across what it calls a "blooming violation" of the clause requiring separation of and state - a bed of azalea bushes in the shape of a cross on public property.

Style Weekly says the display in Bryan Park dates back more than half a century, but a local gadfly says the 12-by-20 foot show of spring color is long past its prime.

"You can understand in the sensibilities of the time 40 or 50 years ago," says Mike Sarahan, a former attorney with the city of Richmond. "But in the sensibilities of our time, in a multicultural and interfaith society, we should be more attuned" to the meaning such symbols evoke, he says.

Yes, and since the cross is often referred to as a tree in Christian hymns and writings, in light of our present sensibilities and our multicultural and interfaith society (whatever that means), we should demand that every tree in our public parks be removed forthwith.

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Malcontents in Arkansas are pressuring the University of Arkansas to bar a Christian group from using Razorback Stadium in Fayetteville for one of their meetings because they don't like what the group stands for, according to the Northwest Arkansas Times.

Various groups in the area say the Promise Keepers, an group of predominantly evangelical Christian men dedicated to preserving morality and family values, are intolerant and shouldn't be allowed to use campus facilities.

Melanie Dietzel, president of the local chapter of the National Organization for Women, insists that she is for freedom of speech and faith but "not when it's something designed to hurt other people ... (the Promise Keepers') rhetoric is certainly hurtful to people and I don't think that's something the university should encourage."

Evidently, swearing fidelity to, and respect for, one's spouse is hurtful rhetoric, but one wonders who is being hurt by it. The only people we can think of would be the women these men would otherwise be philandering with.

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Officials in Washington State are trying to determine whether a Bible verse can be considered offensive after a nimrod complained about one such verse on a vanity license plate, according to KOMO-TV.

Jane Milhans of Tacoma has had a plate reading "John 3-16" for some 21 years without a complaint, but a woman recently called the state to say it was an illegal endorsement of religion by the state.

The woman's complaint read in part: "I was offended that I have to be 'prayed over' by a license plate... What happened to keeping church and state separate?"

Milhans will now have to defend her plate in front of a review committee, which will decide next month whether she can keep it.

UPDATE: The state has decided that Milhans can keep her plate.

That's a relief. It would be an additional relief to read that the woman who filed the complaint is receiving the psychiatric care she obviously requires.

Prager on Moral Absolutes

Viewpoint has frequently observed that in order for there to be any meaningful morality there must be a transcendent moral authority. Otherwise, each person simply decides right and wrong based upon his or her own preferences and predilections.

Dennis Prager has an interesting piece on this very topic in installment XI of his excellent series on Judeo-Christian values. One point Prager makes that is of some interest is that:

[B]elievers in Judeo-Christian moral absolutes often assume that situational ethics is the same thing as moral relativism and therefore regard situational ethics as incompatible with Judeo-Christian morality. They mistakenly argue that, just as allowing individuals to determine what is right and wrong negates moral absolutes, allowing situations to determine what is right and wrong also negates moral absolutes.

This is a misunderstanding of the meaning of moral absolutes. It means that if an act is good or bad, it is good or bad for everyone in the identical situation ("universal morality").

But "everyone" is hardly the same as "every situation." An act that is wrong is wrong for everyone in the same situation, but almost no act is wrong in every situation. Sexual intercourse in marriage is sacred; when violently coerced, it is rape. Truth telling is usually right, but if, during World War II, Nazis asked you where a Jewish family was hiding, telling them the truth would have been evil.

So, too, it is the situation that determines when killing is wrong. That is why the Ten Commandments says "Do not murder," not "Do not kill." Murder is immoral killing, and it is the situation that determines when killing is immoral and therefore murder. Pacifism, the belief that it is wrong to take a life in every situation, is based on the mistaken belief that absolute morality means "in every situation" rather than "for everyone in the same situation." For this reason, it has no basis in Judeo-Christian values, which holds that there is moral killing (self-defense, defending other innocents, taking the life of a murderer) and immoral killing (intentional murder of an innocent individual, wars of aggression, terrorism, etc.).

This will upset some who recoil from any suggestion that Christian ethics can be situational, but I think Prager is correct about what he says here. Even so, the important point is this: The choice people make as to how they should live is purely arbitrary unless they are following the will of God. If there is a God there is right and wrong. If there is no God then right and wrong are almost completely meaningless terms, and those who believe that God is irrelevant to our everyday life could not be more wrong.

<i>Newsweek's</i> Hypocrisy

Newsweek's decision to run a false story about military interrogators flushing a Koran down a toilet is of a piece with Dan Rather's decision to run a story, which also turned out to be false, about George Bush supposedly having shirked his National Guard duties. In their lust to discredit the Bush administration by any means necessary both have corrupted the profession of journalism and, in Newsweek's case, incited ignorant barbarians to riot and murder.

Ann Coulter spotlights the stark inconsistency displayed by Newsweek's editors in their decisions about whether or not a story should appear in their pages:

When ace reporter Michael Isikoff had the scoop of the decade, a thoroughly sourced story about the president of the United States having an affair with an intern and then pressuring her to lie about it under oath, Newsweek decided not to run the story. Matt Drudge scooped Newsweek, followed by The Washington Post.

When Isikoff had a detailed account of Kathleen Willey's nasty sexual encounter with the president in the Oval Office, backed up with eyewitness and documentary evidence, Newsweek decided not to run it. Again, Matt Drudge got the story.

When Isikoff was the first with detailed reporting on Paula Jones' accusations against a sitting president, Isikoff's then-employer The Washington Post -- which owns Newsweek -- decided not to run it. The American Spectator got the story, followed by the Los Angeles Times.

So apparently it's possible for Michael Isikoff to have a story that actually is true, but for his editors not to run it.

Why no pause for reflection when Isikoff had a story about American interrogators at Guantanamo flushing the Quran down the toilet? Why not sit on this story for, say, even half as long as NBC News sat on Lisa Meyers' highly credible account of Bill Clinton raping Juanita Broaddrick?

Somehow Newsweek missed the story a few weeks ago about Saudi Arabia arresting 40 Christians for "trying to spread their poisonous religious beliefs." But give the American media a story about American interrogators defacing the Quran, and journalists are so appalled there's no time for fact-checking -- before they dash off to see the latest exhibition of "Piss Christ."

Assistant Managing Editor Evan Thomas justified Newsweek's decision to run the incendiary anti-U.S. story about the Quran, saying that "similar reports from released detainees" had already run in the foreign press --"and in the Arab news agency al-Jazeera."

Is there an adult on the editorial board of Newsweek? Al-Jazeera also broadcast a TV miniseries last year based on the "Protocols of the Elders Of Zion." (I didn't see it, but I hear James Brolin was great!) Al-Jazeera has run programs on the intriguing question, "Is Zionism worse than Nazism?" (Take a wild guess where the consensus was on this one.) It runs viewer comments about Jews being descended from pigs and apes. How about that for a Newsweek cover story, Evan? You're covered -- al-Jazeera has already run similar reports!

Ironically, among the reasons Newsweek gave for killing Isikoff's Lewinsky bombshell was that Evan Thomas was worried someone might get hurt. It seems that Lewinsky could be heard on tape saying that if the story came out, "I'll (expletive) kill myself."

But Newsweek couldn't wait a moment to run a story that predictably ginned up Islamic savages into murderous riots in Afghanistan, leaving hundreds injured and 16 dead. Who could have seen that coming? These are people who stone rape victims to death because the family "honor" has been violated and who fly planes into American skyscrapers because -- wait, why did they do that again?

No matter how I look at it, I can't grasp the editorial judgment that kills Isikoff's stories about a sitting president molesting the help and obstructing justice, while running Isikoff's not particularly newsworthy (or well-sourced) story about Americans desecrating a Quran at Guantanamo.

Even if it were true, why not sit on it? There are a lot of reasons the media withhold even true facts from readers. These include:

A drama queen nitwit exclaimed she'd kill herself. (Evan Thomas' reason for holding the Lewinsky story.)

The need for "more independent reporting." (Newsweek President Richard Smith explaining why Newsweek sat on the Lewinsky story even though the magazine had Lewinsky on tape describing the affair.)

"We were in Havana." (ABC president David Westin explaining why "Nightline" held the Lewinsky story.)

Unavailable for comment. (Michael Oreskes, New York Times Washington bureau chief, in response to why, the day The Washington Post ran the Lewinsky story, the Times ran a staged photo of Clinton meeting with the Israeli president on its front page.)

Protecting the privacy of an alleged rape victim even when the accusation turns out to be false.

Protecting an accused rapist even when the accusation turns out to be true if the perp is a Democratic president most journalists voted for.

Protecting a reporter's source.

How about the media adding to the list of reasons not to run a news item: "Protecting the national interest"? If journalists don't like the ring of that, how about this one: "Protecting ourselves before the American people rise up and lynch us for our relentless anti-American stories."

A year or so ago a bunch of Palestinian terrorists entered a Christian church in one of the Palestinian towns and proceeded to desecrate the place, spreading excrement and urine throughout the sanctuary and using pages from the Bible as toilet paper. Not a single Muslim, as far as I know, suffered even the slightest injury at the hands of an outraged Christian over this indecency. Nor did the MSM bestir themselves to expatiate on what disgusting swine those Palestinians must be. The American mainstream media only care about such things when they can be used to make their fellow Americans look bad in the eyes of the world.

Dr. Eller Replies

Last month we posted some commentary on the 31st National Convention of American Atheists, titled Atheists Convene. We specifically noted some of the comments made to the press by Dr. David Eller, an anthropologist from Boston University. Dr. Eller has replied to our criticism of his remarks and his response can be found in our May feedback forum.

He makes three points which merit a reply:

First, he takes the word "belief" to signify a conviction held in the absence of evidence. This is, in my opinion, an idiosyncratic use of the word. The usual sense of belief is something one holds to be true. Period. It may be something that can be demonstrated (e.g. I believe the Pythagorean theorem), it may be something for which there is good evidence which nevertheless falls short of proof (e.g. I believe the universe had a beginning), or it may be something for which there is little or no evidence (e.g. I could believe that there is life elsewhere in the universe).

Dr. Eller specifies in his reply that he is to be understood as intending this last sense only. Very well, but then his claim that he holds no beliefs is rather uninteresting. There probably aren't very many people who hold a belief for which there is no evidence. We can quarrel about what constitutes good evidence and how much evidence is necessary to warrant a belief, but most beliefs people hold are based on some kind of evidence.

Even so, not all beliefs are based upon evidence, and I suspect that Dr. Eller holds some beliefs for which there not only is no evidence, but for which there can be no evidence. He believes, I'm willing to bet, that kindness is right and cruelty is wrong, that a Mercedes is more attractive than a garbage truck, that a Mozart symphony is more pleasant to listen to than gangster rap. He probably holds beliefs about all of these things, or perhaps their contraries, and yet I doubt that those beliefs are based upon any evidence more substantial than his own subjective preference.

Second, Dr. Eller writes: "if I cannot provide some facts or some logic to support a claim, I should not support that claim; rather, I should reject it, at least provisionally" but what facts or logic can he adduce to support this claim itself? If what he says is true then he should reject it as lacking factual support, yet he obviously doesn't.

We might also ask why a person is not justified in holding to a belief in the absence of supporting facts until the evidence against it becomes persuasive? Why cannot beliefs be considered innocent until proven guilty? Take, for instance, my belief that the world is more than five minutes old, that it did not come into being five minutes ago complete with an apparent history that it does not really have. I have no way to prove this nor are there any facts which support my belief that cannot also be explained by the hypothesis that the world really is only five minutes old. Yet, until I'm shown evidence which contradicts my belief, I'm perfectly justified in holding it, and indeed, would be perverse not to.

Third, Dr. Eller states that my unsympathetic treatment of his claim that atheism is rational but theism "holds onto peoples' hearts even as they lose their minds" is "ugly and condescending" and smacks of "a petty mind that enjoys bringing better minds down".

What I said that elicited these strong words was that "There are few sensations more gratifying to an academic than the satisfaction of knowing that one is intellectually superior to one's fellows. We should avert our eyes from professor Eller's unseemly arrogance, acknowledging that the pleasure he derives from flaunting his superior rational gifts doubtless makes the practice of it irresistible for him."

Perhaps Dr. Eller didn't intend for his suggestion that theists are irrational and atheists are paragons of Reason to sound like an arrogant manifestation of intellectual snobbery, but it does. Moreover, when he declares that labeling as arrogant his claim that atheists are intellectually superior "smacks of a petty mind which enjoys bringing better minds down" he confirms the very assessment he objects to. What sort of person is it, after all, who would insist that his mind is better than that of his opponents if not one who enjoys flaunting what he perceives to be his superior intellectual gifts?

Back From Costa Rica

I'm back from five days of birding the cloud forests of Costa Rica and am trying to shift gears from peering through binoculars at the unbelievably gorgeous Resplendent Quetzals which inhabit those remote mountain jungles to peering at a computer monitor trying to catch up with current events.

Evidently, the big news is that the MSM has disgraced itself yet again with a bogus story that this time has cost peoples' lives. Of course, bogus news stories are no longer news. Nor, unfortunately, is it news that the people at Newsweek, which ran the story about Americans having desecrated the Koran, were taken by surprise at the violence their story provoked. These people are amazingly naive about the world in which we live and they're oblivious to the harm their recklessness and mendacities do to real people who have to live in a world of gullible savages.

Newsweek has now admitted that its story was unfounded. We wonder whether they feel any remorse for the fifteen deaths which resulted from it, and we wonder what measures they will take to punish those responsible for its publication.

All in all it's a pretty depressing tale, and it makes me want to hop on a plane back to the rain forest. I think I'd much rather be marvelling at the beauty of Costa Rica's birds and other wildlife than read about journalists, eager to discredit the American military, printing stories which incite riots and lead to the deaths of innocents.

Reply to an ID Critic

Dr. Keith Lockitch of the Ayn Rand Institute wrote a column for our local paper last Friday critical of Intelligent Design. His essay can be read here. I replied with the following:

Dr. Lockitch writes that ID theorists are being disingenuous when they claim that their theory does not require that the designer be the Judeo-Christian God. He argues to the contrary that:

Imagine we discovered an alien on Mars with a penchant for bioengineering. Could such a natural being fulfill the requirements of an "intelligent designer?"

It could not.... Any natural being capable of designing the complex features of Earthly life would...require its own designer.... intelligent design cannot be satisfied with a designer who is part of the natural world.

Such a designer .... would not explain biological complexity as such. The only designer that would stop their quest for a design[er]... is one about whom one cannot ask any questions or who cannot be subjected to any kind of scientific study -- a designer that transcends nature and its laws... in short: a supernatural designer.

This is somewhat misleading. Here are four reasons why:

1. ID theorists ask whether biological information such as we find in the DNA, proteins, cellular machinery, and cellular assembly lines of living things can be produced by blind, purposeless, undirected forces or whether they require intelligent input. It may be that we can never learn anything about the designer at all, but we need know nothing about it's characteristics in order to deduce that there must be one.

If it turns out that we are able to identify the designer of earth-bound life then of course we might ask whether or not this designer itself shows evidence of design, but it is hardly a criticism of ID that it seeks a more satisfactory explanation for the complex, information-bearing structures of life than that these are just accidental products of the laws of physics and chemistry.

2. If ID theorists are going beyond the bounds of science by seeking to take the chain of causation as far as our human limitations allow, then so are cosmologists out of bounds for seeking to probe the origin of the universe as far back to the beginning as we are able. What should cosmologists do if their researches lead to the conclusion that the universe had a cause outside of itself? Abandon their quest for causes?

3. An intelligent entity, even a supernatural one, is not necessarily the God most people think of. The God of theism is not merely intelligent but is in fact the greatest possible being. Nothing in ID theory leads to such a being. For all anyone knows the designer of life could be similar to a Platonic demiurge that fashions pre-existing matter into living things. Just because some ID theorists personally believe that the designer is the God of theism, however, should no more discredit ID than the fact that many biologists think that Darwinian evolution justifies atheism should discredit Darwinism.

4. Even if it should turn out that the designer is a being similar to the God of theism that wouldn't make ID religious. The assertion that a Creator exists is no more religious than asserting the existence of other universes. The belief that there is more to reality than matter and energy is not in itself a religious claim and affirming the possibility of its truth is hardly a manifestation of religion. It would only constitute "religion" if the ID theorist were to advocate some sort of human obligation or responsibility to the designer, which, of course, no ID theorist has.

Indeed, what do we mean by the word religion, anyway? How do we recognize it? Not one person in a hundred who voices the objection that ID is religion masquerading as science can give a compelling definition of what "religion" is. The Encyclopedia of Philosophy acknowledges that the term eludes definition. Some religions have a moral code, some don't. Some religions have a god, some don't. Some religions involve worship of their deity, some don't. ID neither entails the existence of the God of any major monotheism nor does it prescribe worship of one. The fact that ID may lead to an intelligence which transcends the universe is hardly grounds for calling it religious.

Doubtless many ID adherents are religious as individuals and would like to see ID used as a means to point others to the Judeo-Christian God, but then many Darwinians are atheistic and see Darwinism as a useful tool for turning people toward materialism or naturalism. Neither the religious motivations of individual scientists on both sides of the debate nor the religious implications of their theories are relevant to the intellectual merits of their ideas.

The Collapse of the Sunni Boycott

The fallout from appointing a Sunni as defense minister in the new government includes a surge in military enlistments among Sunnis. Arthur Chrenkoff has the story:

After the Iraqi government confirmed the appointment of a Sunni in the position of defense minister. Iraqi Arab Sunnis started heading for the army enlisting centers to join the new Iraqi Army. This was evident by the long lines and large crowds of young men outside these centers in the largely Sunni area of Baghdad. This is the main reason for the increase in the terrorist activities in and around these centers.

The high unemployment amongst the Sunnis is due to non-participation in the electoral and governmental process. This is due to their religious leaders forbidding them from joining the government and the security forces in the past. This situation has now changed. We witnessed thousands of Iraqi Arab Sunnis coming from different provinces to military enlisting station in Baghdad.

Ahmend Mahmud, age 30, from Aathamiah came to the enlisting office to join the new Iraqi military. "I came because I desire to join in protecting the peace and my country," he said. Adnan Hussein from Meqdadieh who was in the old Army said; "Since the fall of the old regime I had no employment to feed my kids, thus I decided to join the new military, which pays a decent wage, and I heard a number of (Sunni) religious leaders call for us to join the new army". Luaai Ahmed from Aathamiah said, "I voluntarily enlisted in the new military because I wanted to and upon advise from my relatives".

Chrenkoff concludes with this observation: "The Sunni involvement in the new government and new security forces is a nightmare scenario both for the neo-Baathist insurgents and Al Zarqawi's jihadis - it means the loss of their only constituency."

We are not at the end of this struggle, but all indications are that we are moving in the right direction. We suspect that if Zarqawi has been captured or killed the morale of the insurgents, which is already very low, will hit rock bottom and thousands of them will just pack it in. The foreign fighters, too, will look for other ways to fight their jihad against a foe that they might be able to defeat at least on occasion. We'll see, perhaps soon.

Correction

Brother Dick is out of town for a couple of days and asked me to post our anniversary message. In my enthusiasm of the fact that we have been online for an entire year, I hastily posted the notice but as it turns out, I was a bit premature as Monday, the 16th is the one year anniversary of viewpoint.

Nonetheless, a special thanks goes out to all of our viewers, yes, you, who consider what we have to say worth your time.

Thank you,

One Year Anniversary

Today is the one year anniversary of Viewpoint. In the last twelve months Bill and I have compiled over 1060 posts and received over 28,000 hits on our traffic meter. Our sincere thanks to everyone who has visited us. We deeply appreciate your interest and hope to continue offering fare worthy of your time and attention.

The Necessity of Free Will

Last month we cited the thread at Evangelical Outpost addressing the free will /determinism problem. It's a difficult puzzle, for which a satisfactory resolution has eluded philosophers for over two thousand years.

The fundamental question is this: Is there more than one possible future, or is the future wholly determined by our environment, our genes, and/or God?

Those who argue for determinism often make two arguments, one stronger than the other. The weaker is simply an untestable assertion that we always act in accord with our strongest desire. Our strongest motives determine our action. As many people have pointed out, however, this is based upon a tautology since our strongest desire is defined as whichever one we act upon. It's therefore true that we always act upon our strongest desire, but its a trivial truth.

We might break out of the tautology and define strongest desire as whichever one we feel most urgently, but then, since it is possible to act on desires that we're not aware of at all, the claim that we always act in accord with our strongest desire becomes problematic. The determinist has no way to demonstrate that we always act in accord with the desire we feel most strongly and his position is thereby undermined.

The determinist's second, more compelling argument, is based on the difficulty of stating exactly what is meant by a free choice. The determinist rightly points out that an absolutely free choice cannot be one which has no causes. If our choices, or at least some of them, were completely uncaused then they would be spontaneous, constantly surprising, and totally unpredictable. But if our choices do have causes then, the argument goes, isn't it those causes which determine the choice? If so, in what sense is the choice free?

We might say that if atheism is true there would really be no point in defending the idea that we are in some sense, at least, free and that the future is open. If atheism is true then the world is almost certainly a closed system of cause and effect under the tyranny of unyielding physical laws. There's no more reason to believe that human freedom can exist in such a system than there is to believe that opposite poles of magnets can choose not to attract.

What difference, then, does God make? The theist believes, first of all, that we are morally responsible. This is implied in the teaching of the Bible, but such teaching would be incoherent were we not free to make moral choices. Responsibility entails freedom to choose. We may be unable to accurately describe what that freedom consists in, but that it exists must be the case if we are significantly responsible for our actions.

Secondly, the theist believes that human beings have dignity and worth, but if our behavior is purely the result of mechanistic forces over which we have no control then we are little more than a particularly interesting form of laboratory rat with no dignity at all. We simply respond to the stimuli in our environment and the pressures of our genetic complement just like the rat does. Since human dignity and worth are the grounds for human rights, if we are just flesh and bone machines there really is nothing upon which to build any notion of "rights". Thus significant moral freedom is a pre-condition for human rights.

Thirdly, theists believe we are created in God's image. Part of what that entails, perhaps, is having the power to choose. God is not constrained by anything outside of Himself, nor by anything in His past that He does not choose. It is possible that we, too, share in God's freedom, at least to some extent.

Fourthly, theists believe that God is good and just, but we confess that these words must mean something completely different to God than they do to us if we are not morally free. If God has created beings to live a vanishingly brief time on earth with no freedom to choose their destiny and then to be divinely consigned to eternal punishment for living and choosing in ways for which they were programmed by their environment, genes, or by God Himself, then we at are a loss to understand what is meant by God's goodness and justice.

Immanuel Kant said that we cannot prove we have free will but we have to assume that we do in order to make sense out of our lives, but the assumption itself makes no sense unless there is a God who somehow grants us a measure of moral freedom.

Our belief that we possess a significant degree of such freedom is based on our belief that God is good and just in ways which are meaningful to us, that we are created in His image, that we are morally responsible for our actions, and that we have dignity and worth. No doubt there are atheistic materialists who believe in free-will but it seems that such a belief is inconsistent with their atheism. Take God away and there is no moral responsibility, there is no human dignity or worth, and there is no basis for believing we are free except the powerful conviction that we are.

In a Godless world, however, that conviction is a chimera.

Operation Matador

The Fourth Rail has some analysis of the fighting going on in western Iraq in Operation Matador in which three Marines and over 100 insurgents have already lost their lives.

Perhaps one of The Fourth Rail's more interesting observations is this:

Col. Stephen Davis states, "The insurgents we're fighting today are not the guys getting $50 to put [a roadside bomb] on the side of the road... These are the professional fighters who have come from all over the Middle East. These are people who have received training and are very well-armed." The insurgents are fighting to the death from bunkers, basements and other concealed positions that do not provide for easy escape. Similar tactics were used by dead-enders in Fallujah, and similar results - the enemy's defeat - will occur during Operation Matador, dealing yet another blow to al Qaeda's jihad in Iraq.

Belmont Club has maps and additional details.

The war is gradually, maybe even quickly, evolving from an indigenous insurgency to a foreign invasion. This is going to make it much harder for the radicals on the loopy Left to claim that the insurgents are just Iraqis patriots trying to expel foreign infidels. We're confident, though, that somehow they'll find a way to turn these alien fighters into naturalized Iraqi citizens.

See UPDATE below.

Unconfirmed Rumor

Word is passing around the blogs about a report that Abu al-Zarqawi has either been seriously wounded or killed in the fighting in western Iraq. The report is encouraging but there's been no confirmation of it as yet. Read Bill Roggio at The Fourth Rail for more on this and related developments pertaining to Operation Matador.

Alzheimer's Vaccine

A story at Fox News.com on work being done to develop a vaccine to slow or prevent Alzheimer's disease is encouraging:

A vaccine that triggers the immune system to fight against the plaque-building protein implicated in Alzheimer's disease may still be a viable option in the future for treating -- or perhaps even preventing -- the devastating disease, according to new research.

[T]wo new studies that followed the participants suggest that the approach may slow the memory loss associated with Alzheimer's disease by reducing the buildup of beta-amyloid plaques in the brain.

"The idea of inducing the immune system to view beta-amyloid as a foreign protein, and to attack it, holds great promise," says researcher Sid Gilman, MD, a neurologist at the University of Michigan Health System, in a news release. "We now need to see whether we can create an immune response safely and in a way that slows the progression of Alzheimer's disease and preserves cognition."

Follow the link to read the rest of the story.

Priscilla Owen

Senator John Cornyn of Texas makes the case at NRO for giving Priscilla Owen a straight up or down confirmation vote. The fact that a nominee of her caliber has been held hostage for four years to partisan power struggles by the Democrats really is unconscionable. Cornyn begins his piece with this:

I know Priscilla personally, because we served together on the Texas supreme court. Throughout her life, she has excelled in virtually everything she has ever done. She was a law-review editor, a top graduate from Baylor Law School at the remarkable age of 23, and the top scorer on the Texas bar exam. She entered the legal profession at a time when relatively few women did, and after a distinguished record in private practice, she reached the pinnacle of the Texas bar - a seat on the Texas supreme court. She was supported by a larger percentage of Texans than any of her colleagues during her last election, after enjoying the endorsement of every major Texas newspaper.

Unsurprisingly, then, the American Bar Association, after careful study, unanimously rated her well qualified to serve on the federal bench - their highest rating.

Unsurprisingly, she enjoys the enthusiastic support of a bipartisan majority of senators.

Yet a partisan minority of senators now insists that Owen may not be confirmed without the support of a supermajority of 60 senators - a demand that is, by their own admission, wholly unprecedented in Senate history. Why? Simple: The case for opposing her is so weak that changing the rules is the only way they can defeat her nomination.

What's more, they know it, too. Before her nomination became caught up in partisan special-interest politics, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee predicted that Owen would be swiftly confirmed. On the day of the announcement of the first group of nominees, including Owen, he said he was "encouraged" and that "I know them well enough that I would assume they'll go through all right." Indeed, just a few weeks ago, the Minority Leader announced that Senate Democrats would give Justice Owen an up-or-down vote - albeit only if Republicans agreed to deny the same courtesy to other nominees.

The senator goes on to discuss her critics' objections to her appointment - a flimsy and insubstantial lot. The only reason for objecting at all, of course, is that the Democrats have to offer some reason for opposing her other than the real reason, which is that she's Bush's nominee.

The sooner we see that metaphorical mushroom cloud in the senate chamber, the better.

The Saudis Are Not Our Friends

The Saudi government underwrites the propagation of radical Wahhabist Islamic beliefs in mosques all across the United States. A recent examination by Freedom House's Center For Religious Freedom of the literature that is pressed into the hands of the members of these American mosques has turned up some chilling material. Here's part of Freedom House's report:

The 89-page report, "Saudi Publications on Hate Ideology Invade American Mosques," is based on a year-long study of over two hundred original documents, all disseminated, published or otherwise generated by the government of Saudi Arabia and collected from more than a dozen mosques in the United States.

The propagation of hate ideology by Saudi Arabia is known to be worldwide, but its occurrence within the United States has received scant attention until now. Within worldwide Sunni Islam, followers of Saudi Arabia's extremist Wahhabi ideology are a distinct minority, as is evident by the millions of Muslims who have chosen to make America their home and are upstanding, law-abiding citizens and neighbors.

Among the key findings of the report:

Various Saudi government publications gathered for this study, most of which are in Arabic, assert that it is a religious obligation for Muslims to hate Christians and Jews and warn against imitating, befriending, or helping them in any way, or taking part in their festivities and celebrations.

The documents promote contempt for the United States because it is ruled by legislated civil law rather than by totalitarian Wahhabi-style Islamic law. They condemn democracy as un-Islamic.

The documents stress that when Muslims are in the lands of the unbelievers, they must behave as if on a mission behind enemy lines. Either they are there to acquire new knowledge and make money to be later employed in the jihad against the infidels, or they are there to proselytize the infidels until at least some convert to Islam. Any other reason for lingering among the unbelievers in their lands is illegitimate, and unless a Muslim leaves as quickly as possible, he or she is not a true Muslim and so too must be condemned. For example, a document in the collection for the "Immigrant Muslim" bears the words "Greetings from the Cultural Attache in Washington, D.C." of the Embassy of Saudi Arabia, and is published by the government of Saudi Arabia. In an authoritative religious voice, it gives detailed instructions on how to "hate" the Christian and Jew: Never greet them first. Never congratulate the infidel on his holiday. Never imitate the infidel. Do not become a naturalized citizen of the United States. Do not wear a graduation gown because this imitates the infidel.

One insidious aspect of the Saudi propaganda examined is its aim to replace traditional and moderate interpretations of Islam with extremist Wahhabism, the officially-established religion of Saudi Arabia. In these documents, other Muslims, especially those who advocate tolerance, are condemned as infidels. The opening fatwa in one Saudi embassy-distributed book, published by the Saudi Air Force, responds to a question about a Muslim preacher in a European mosque who taught that it is not right to condemn Jews and Christians as infidels. The Saudi state cleric's reply rebukes the Muslim cleric: "He who casts doubts about their infidelity leaves no doubt about his." Since, under Saudi law, "apostates" from Islam can be sentenced to death, this is an implied death threat against the tolerant Muslim imam, as well as an incitement to vigilante violence.

Sufi and Shiite Muslims are viciously condemned.

For a Muslim who fails to uphold the Saudi Wahhabi sect's sexual mores (i.e. through homosexual activity or heterosexual activity outside of marriage), the edicts published by the Saudi government's Ministry of Islamic Affairs, and found in American mosques advise, "it would be lawful for Muslims to spill his blood and to take his money."

Regarding those who convert out of Islam, the Saudi Ministry of Islamic Affairs explicitly asserts, they "should be killed."

Saudi textbooks and other publications in the collection, propagate a Nazi-like hatred for Jews, treat the forged Protocols of the Elders of Zion as historical fact, and avow that the Muslim's duty is to eliminate the state of Israel.

Regarding women, the Saudi publications instruct that they should be veiled, segregated from men and barred from certain employment and roles.

We're sure that just as soon as the Michael Jackson trial is over the MSM will get right on this story. Until then we can thank Little Green Footballs for their vigilance.

The full report from Freedom House can be read here.

James FitzJames Stephen

"The way in which the man of genius rules is by persuading an efficient minority to coerce an indifferent and self-indulgent majority."

James Fitzjames Stephen, Liberty, Equality and Fraternity

If we substitute liberalism for the words "man of genius" in Stephen's quote, and replace "efficient minority" with the words mainstream media then perhaps we have a pretty fair explanation for the last half-century of American history.

Keep Talking Harry

Senator Harry Reid claimed recently that President Bush's judicial nominees, including Janice Rogers Brown, were "bad people". Senator Reid is evidently intent on proving himself a buffoon. It seems that every time he opens his mouth he says something astonishingly intemperate.

Captain Ed at Captain's Quarters posts excerpts from an editorial in the liberal Sacramento Bee showing just how silly Reid is and how impoverished is his judgment. The post is worth reading by anyone interested in determining Ms Brown's fitness for the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

17,000 Scientists Oppose Kyoto

Little Green Footballs tips us to an article that our environmentalist friends ought to read if they can manage to wrest themselves away from bashing the president for his refusal to sign the Kyoto accords. The article comes from Canadafreepress.com and is written by Gary Pritchard. Pritchard says:

Last Thursday, I received a telephone call from Douglas Leahey, Ph.D., representing a group of Canadian scientists under the umbrella of "Friends of Science." It seems that they had been talking to Peter Worthington of the Toronto Sun, and he had mentioned to them that they should get in touch with me.

Dr. Leahey began by asking me how they could get a 27-minute documentary on television. I have 15 years experience of fighting with federal and provincial slush funds for that very thing. I asked some routine questions at first: Did they have a letter of licence? Had they rolled a camera before they got permission? Had they talked to the big broadcasters? Did they have a "pitch" and a budget?

Then I found out what their documentary was about. The story was incredible: it documented scientists--from Canada--speaking out against the $10-billion scam known as the Kyoto Protocol. Yes, the very same Kyoto Accord that our government has committed Canada and Canadians to support.

I understood instinctively that getting two scientists to agree at what time the sun is coming up tomorrow is--at best--difficult. But here were tens of thousands, from around the world, all agreeing on one issue: that there is no scientific evidence of man-made global warming.

The numbers of scientists staggered me--17,100 basic and applied American scientists, two thirds with advanced degrees, are against the Kyoto Agreement. The Heidelberg Appeal--which states that there is no scientific evidence for man-made global warming, has been signed by over 4,000 scientists from around the world since the petition's inception. I strongly questioned these high numbers, since I've had benefit of the Canadian government's public relations machine on this issue. Dr. Leahey has since sent documentation to back his figures up.

All those scientists were in total agreement: the Kyoto Protocol was complete fiction. The scientists are so committed to fighting the Kyoto Accord and its misrepresentation of the truth, that they produced a 27-minute documentary and paid for its production with their own money.

The rest of the column explains how the scientists have been blocked from airing their documentary on Canadian television. Apparently, these thousands of scientists have drawn conclusions about man-made global warming which are much at variance with liberal orthodoxy on the subject and must therefore be prevented from corrupting the minds of impressionable viewers with their noxious documentary.

The great liberal tradition of encouraging a free flow of competing ideas is dead in Canada as elsewhere. Today the only ideas that stand a chance of being disseminated in the Canadian media are those bearing the Left's stamp of approval.

We wish the Canadian scientists would bring their documentary to the States. We bet Fox would run it if nobody else would. There's a link at LGF to the full video.

Republicans Need to Act Like Winners

Rush Limbaugh discussed a Roll Call magazine report today that Senators Trent Lott and Ben Nelson are working on a deal that would block the Republicans from invoking the "nuclear option" in the senate. Rush said:

"They [Roll Call] are reporting that the two senators believe they're close to a deal that could avert triggering of the so-called nuclear option. The deal would do this. It would involve having a half dozen members of each party sign a memo of understanding that would bind all of them to certain actions on judicial nominations. The six Republicans would agree to block Majority Leader Bill Frist's plan to invoke the nuclear option and to give up trying to seek confirmation of three of the seven federal appeals court nominees who were filibustered in the last Congress. For their part the six Democrats would pledge to allow votes on the other four nominees, and vote to cut off filibusters on all other judicial nominees named by President Bush for the next year and a half, except in 'extreme circumstances'". The deal would include nominees for the Supreme Court, which could see one or two vacancies this summer. No commitments would be made for any nominations made after the 2006 elections.

This is essentially the deal floated last week by David Broder and Joe Biden and would allow the Democrats to veto Janice Rogers Brown and any other nominee they deemed to be "extreme". Rush had a lot to say about this that's worth reading (see here), and he says it much better than we could.

We'll repeat what we said last week about this, however. We're quite certain that if the Republicans cave on the matter of getting judges confirmed it will be the end of the Republican party as we know it. The need for conservative judges is the reason why a substantial number of voters cast their ballots for George Bush and other Republicans in November. It was the reason why Arlen Specter almost lost his primary race against Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania last spring and probably would have lost were it not for the endorsements he received from Rick Santorum and George Bush.

If Republicans show themselves unwilling to act like a majority party on this issue then conservatives will abandon it in numbers that will make the Israelite exodus from Egypt look like a few stragglers on a Crop Walk. Republicans scoff and ask where the conservatives will go. They'll go nowhere. They'll simply stay home from the polls and keep their check books in the desk drawer. And the Republican party will once again be the minority party it will deserve to be.

UPDATE: ConfirmThem.com has this from Sen. Lott's office:

Susan Irby, Lott's communications director, issued a statement saying there was in fact no deal and that Lott remained committed to having an up-or-down vote on all the pending judicial nominees.

We're relieved but still wary. These are Republicans, after all, that we're dealing with. These are people who couldn't find the political jugular if it was circled with magic marker. They think winning is not getting beat too badly. In other words, we'll believe it when we see the votes taking place for the judges on the senate floor.