The Illusions of Adulthood

Today's Philosophical Quotation tells us that the 19th century philosopher Auguste Comte once remarked that, "Religion is an illusion of childhood, outgrown under proper education."

With due respect to Comte, it's probably more accurate to say that the religion of one's childhood is often exchanged for another religion when one becomes an adult. Indeed, Comte is himself a prime example, having attempted in his later years to develop a religion based on humanism and positivist science.

When Comte was fourteen he abandoned the French Catholicism of his parents and embraced atheism, but he evidently lacked a "proper education" because he never outgrew his need for the numinous. His goal eventually became to develop a new atheistic religion, a new faith based on the apotheosis of man. A humanistic clergy would be needed, he believed, to replace the Catholic clergy. Comte proposed that these be taken from a scientific-industrial elite that would announce the invariable laws of a new social order. This clergy of elites, the technocrats, was necessary to meet the problems which ensued from the collapse of the ancien regime as well as those created by the growth of an industrial society.

With his attempt to found his own religion Comte drifted away from his philosophical and scientific interests toward mysticism. He appointed himself the high priest of his new faith which had its holy days, its calendar of saints -- Adam Smith, Frederick the Great, Dante, Shakespeare and others -- and its positivist catechism. It was a non-theistic religion of man and society, an illusion, to be sure, of adulthood.

For another example of the difficulty even atheists have of escaping their need for the religious see here.

As G.K. Chesterton said, "When a man ceases to believe in God, he doesn't believe in nothing. He believes in anything."

Another Leftist Travels the Damascus Road

An erstwhile lefty explains why he has chosen to defect in a remarkable essay in the San Francisco Chronicle. Some excerpts:

I'm leaving the left -- more precisely, the American cultural left and what it has become during our time together.

I choose this day for my departure because I can no longer abide the simpering voices of self-styled progressives -- people who once championed solidarity with oppressed populations everywhere -- reciting all the ways Iraq's democratic experiment might yet implode.

My estrangement hasn't happened overnight. Out of the corner of my eye I watched what was coming for more than three decades, yet refused to truly see. Now it's all too obvious. Leading voices in America's "peace" movement are actually cheering against self-determination for a long-suffering Third World country because they hate George W. Bush more than they love freedom.

A turning point came at a dinner party on the day Ronald Reagan famously described the Soviet Union as the pre-eminent source of evil in the modern world. The general tenor of the evening was that Reagan's use of the word "evil" had moved the world closer to annihilation. There was a palpable sense that we might not make it to dessert.

When I casually offered that the surviving relatives of the more than 20 million people murdered on orders of Joseph Stalin might not find "evil'" too strong a word, the room took on a collective bemused smile of the sort you might expect if someone had casually mentioned taking up child molestation for sport.

My progressive companions had a point. It was rude to bring a word like "gulag" to the dinner table....I look back on that experience as the beginning of my departure from a left already well on its way to losing its bearings.

Stated simply: The force wielded by democracies in self-defense was declared morally equivalent to the nihilistic aggression perpetuated by Muslim fanatics.

Susan Sontag cleared her throat for the "courage" of the al Qaeda pilots. Norman Mailer pronounced the dead of Sept. 11 comparable to "automobile statistics." The events of that day were likely premeditated by the White House, Gore Vidal insinuated. Noam Chomsky insisted that al Qaeda at its most atrocious generated no terror greater than American foreign policy on a mediocre day.

All of this came back to me as I watched the left's anemic, smirking response to Iraq's election in January. Didn't many of these same people stand up in the sixties for self-rule for oppressed people and against fascism in any guise?

I'll admit my politics have shifted in recent years, as have America's political landscape and cultural horizon. Who would have guessed that the U.S. senator with today's best voting record on human rights would be not Ted Kennedy or Barbara Boxer but Kansas Republican Sam Brownback?

He is also by most measures one of the most conservative senators. Brownback speaks openly about how his horror at the genocide in the Sudan is shaped by his Christian faith, as King did when he insisted on justice for "all of God's children."

This past January, my liberalism was in full throttle when I bid the cultural left goodbye to escape a new version of that oppressiveness. I departed with new clarity about the brilliance of liberal democracy and the value system it entails; the quest for freedom as an intrinsically human affair; and the dangers of demands for conformity and adherence to any point of view through silence, fear, or coercion.

True, it took a while to see what was right before my eyes. A certain misplaced loyalty kept me from grasping that a view of individuals as morally capable of and responsible for making the principle decisions that shape their lives is decisively at odds with the contemporary left's entrance-level view of people as passive and helpless victims of powerful external forces, hence political wards who require the continuous shepherding of caretaker elites.

The author of this piece is a writer by the name of Keith Thonmpson. You'll want to read the whole thing.

The New Fusionism

Joseph Bottum has a piece in the current First Things entitled The New Fusionism in which he dissects the coalition that comprises contemporary conservatism. Of the three distinct spheres of political life that define one's ideology - social, foreign policy, and economic - Bottum focuses on the first two. He stresses that those who are pro-life in the social sphere (many paleo-cons) have joined with those (mostly neo-cons) who are supportive of the administration's prosecution of the global war on terror to form an alliance that has reversed the defeatism of the post-Vietnam era. Economic concerns have largely been subordinated to the higher imperatives of remoralizing the nation by defeating the culture of death at home and defeating the violent enemies of Western civilization abroad. Here are a few highlights:

Down somewhere in the deepest understanding of what America is for-somewhere in the profound awareness of what it will take to reverse the nation's long drift into social defeatism-there are reasons that one might link the rejection of abortion and the demand for an active and moral foreign policy. Things could have fallen into different patterns; our current liberal-conservative divisions are not the only imaginable ways to cut the political cake. But neither are they merely accidental.

The opponents of abortion and euthanasia insist there are truths about human life and dignity that must not be compromised in domestic politics. The opponents of Islamofascism and rule by terror insist there are truths about human life and dignity that must not be compromised in international politics. Why shouldn't they grow toward each other? The desire to find intellectual and moral seriousness in one realm can breed the desire to find intellectual and moral seriousness in another.

But taking the word in both the old sense and the new, we should note at least one visible change: The people called neoconservative are much more opposed to abortion than they were even ten years ago. The shift has occurred across the spectrum. The ones who started out solidly pro-choice are now uneasy, the ones who started out uneasy are now more uneasy, and the ones who started out quietly anti-abortion are now strong pro-lifers.

Maybe it was all the time spent with Catholics, or maybe it was the rise of the worries about biotechnology that Leon Kass and others have brought to light, but-whatever group we use the word to encompass-the neoconservatives have generally grown in their alliance with the social conservatives to accept a central place for the pro-life position in any theory of conservatism.

Meanwhile, the social conservatives have grown up, too. When the Evangelicals burst on the political scene in the 1970s, they hardly knew what the words "foreign policy" meant. But now "one cannot understand international relations without them," as Allen Hertzke observed in Freeing God's Children, his 2004 report on American religious impact around the world. From the Virginia congressman Frank Wolfe to the Kansas senator Sam Brownback, the religious conservatives in Washington have led the fight against international sex trafficking and a host of other human-rights abuses.

They achieved real results in southern Sudan, and they are straining to find similar traction in the Darfur region of western Sudan. Far beyond their Democratic counterparts, they have demonstrated seriousness about human rights in North Korea and China. "Members of the Christian right, exemplified by Mr. Brownback," the left-leaning columnist Nicholas Kristof reluctantly admitted in the New York Times this Christmas, "are the new internationalists, increasingly engaged in humanitarian causes abroad."

And then there's Israel. "No one outside the Jewish community has been more supportive of Israel than U.S. evangelical Christians," the Jerusalem Post bluntly noted in 2002-

In the new fusionism of the pro-life social conservatives and the foreign-policy neoconservatives, a number of traditional issues seem, if not to have disappeared, then at least to have gotten muted along the way. Where exactly is tax reform and social security and the balanced budget in all this? Where is much concern for economics, which once defined the root of American conservatism?

Perhaps they are missing because, however important, they do not bear hard on the immediate question of social defeatism-on the deep changes that might reawaken and remoralize the nation. The one thing both the social conservatives and the neoconservatives know is that this project comes first.

The article is very good and can be read at the link.

Desecrating the Koran

If American troops have gratuitously beaten, tortured and murdered enemy soldiers they must be prosecuted. They have tarnished the military, besmirched their country, and violated the law of God. Such crimes cannot be allowed to go unpunished. Having said that, it must be asked why there is such a kerfuffle over alleged "desecration" of the Koran. It is not that we think it acceptable to treat this book disrespectfully, but distinctions need to be made.

Let's start with a question. What exactly is wrong with mistreating the Koran? Is the offense spiritual? Is it moral? Or is it merely political? Unless one believes that the Koran really is the word of God then it's hard to see how it could be spiritually offensive to treat it with contempt. Nor is it easy to see how flushing a book down a toilet (Has anyone asked whether this is even possible)could be immoral, even if it enrages the devout. After all, people are enraged by those who burn the flag and profanate the Bible, but that such acts are immoral seems a hard case to make in a secular society.

That leaves us with political offense. It is argued that it's wrong to mistreat the Koran because such behavior does not endear us to the world's Muslims, and, of course, here we agree. We should be sensitive to the religious sensibilities of those whose hearts we wish to win over, and our troops should for pragmatic reasons be ordered to treat the Koran in a reasonably dignified manner out of respect, not so much for the prisoners, who may indeed be detestable human beings, but for the multitudes of Muslims who are watching how we conduct ourselves. If soldiers violate this order they should be punished, but their punishment should be a consequence of defying an order. It should not be because their conduct is inherently despicable.

It will not do to reply that Muslims hold Christianity in contempt and therefore they have no claim on our respect. First, if we are Christians we are prima facie obligated to treat others with dignity, respect, and kindness. That means respecting, to the extent practicable, their most deeply held beliefs even if they don't respect ours. Second, it may be true that they do not respect Christian belief, but then they're not particularly eager to win our affections either. We are eager to win theirs. Without the support of the world's Muslims we'll never prevail in the war on terror, and we won't have that support if our troops don't display a modicum of deference to their most profound convictions.

Ongoing OPs

Bill Roggio writing for Winds of Change updates us on some of the ongoing military operations in Iraq. Here's part of his post:

Security operations continue in the wake of Operation Matador. In the vicinity of Abu Ghraib, just west of Baghdad along the Euphrates River, a joint Coalition - Iraqi operation dubbed Squeeze Play is under way. The assault force is comprised of 4 battalions of Iraqi infantry, 3 battalions of Iraqi Special Police Commandos and elements of the 10th Mountain Division's Task Force 2-14. This is an Iraqi-heavy operation and has yielded great success on the first day. Over 285 terrorists have been detained.

In the Kerbala province (south of Baghdad), a brigade of Polish and a brigade of Iraqi infantry execute Operation Peninsula and round up 184 terrorists and uncover a significant weapons cache.

Operations continue in the Mosul region, one of the insurgency's major rat lines from Syria. In the latest news, 18 suspects have been detained.

There's much more at the link.

Meanwhile, the 28th edition of Arthur Chrenkoff's Good News From Iraq is up. It's an outstanding summary of what's being done to create a viable society in Iraq with emphasis on the news from the last two weeks.

Hmmm

Pat Buchanan notes that if President Bush had nominated John Paul II to a federal judgeship he would have been filibustered by Senate Democrats who would have fought to kill his nomination on the grounds that his pro-life Catholicism places him too far out of the mainstream.

David Limbaugh asks why John Bolton's criticism of the United Nations should make him any more unsuited to serve as our ambassador to that august body than the criticism of leftist Democrats of the United States makes them unsuited to hold political office.

Good observations, both.

Post-Mortem

Joe Knippenberg at No Left Turns offers some advice to the Republicans in the wake of the filibuster "compromise".

If I were doing the spinning on the Republican side, here's some of what I'd say. Democratic happiness over this deal gives the lie to the rhetoric of extremism they have used to smear three worthy nominees--Priscilla Owen, William Pryor, and Janice Rogers Brown--and which they will of course use to smear others. Their principal goal all along has been simply obstructionist, not a matter of principle. Since their charges of extremism were in this case so lightly abandoned, no one ought to take them seriously again. Let's portray the Democrats as they are: not principled defenders of judicial activism (a position we'd love to debate and put in its place), but opportunistic and unprincipled partisans, willing to go to any lengths to stymie a President, for whose person and office their contempt knows no bounds. We have for the moment preserved the forms, but not the substance, of Senate procedure. We will hold the Democrats to their side of the agreement, which we think will take some doing, given their record. And we will continue to remind them of the "flexibility" they displayed today regarding their judgments of judicial extremism. If a judge like Janice Rogers Brown, someone who allegedly would have taken us back to the 19th century, deserves an up-or-down vote, so does any conceivable Supreme Court nominee.

Of course, this would be to tell the truth and telling the truth can be nasty and the last thing Republicans want is for the media to portray them as "mean".

Meanwhile, Captain's Quarters deconstructs the deal and comes to this conclusion:

In short, this could be merely objectionable and not a debacle, depending on how the GOP signatories interpret "extraordinary circumstances". One must suspect that this has already been defined confidentially within the group, and like Sean Rushton surmises, ideology doesn't play a part in it any longer. Under no circumstances can this be seen as a good deal for the Senate majority or for Constitutional rule. The net effect is that an even smaller minority in the Senate has hijacked the confirmation process than we saw during the filibusters -- and like all tyrannies, we can only hope for benevolent despotism rather than disaster.

And we can thank Bill Frist for his lack of leadership and resolve for taking a majority and turning it into a minority. Not One Dime for the NRSC as long as Frist remains majority leader, or for the Seven Dwarves ever. Patterico is on board with that pledge as well.

Captain Ed is harder on Frist than I think the majority leader deserves. I'm not sure that anyone could have kept those seven Republican senators in line. Nevertheless, I agree with the sentiment that the rank and file need to send a message to the party by withholding their contributions. In our opinion, there should be no donations until all of Bush's Supreme Court nominees are confirmed, and anyone who calls to solicit contributions should be emphatically told why their wasting their time.

CAFTA

Froma Harrop of The Providence Journal makes a persuasive case for the Central American Free Trade Agreement. She argues that the jobs which would be lost are going to be lost anyway. It's much to our interest that they migrate to Central America than that they go overseas to China and India. Here are a few highlights from her piece:

Some labor critics point to NAFTA as a reason to shoot down CAFTA. The 1993 North American Free Trade Agreement covered the United States, Canada and Mexico. Foes of these accords note, for example, that there were 127,000 textile and apparel jobs in South Carolina before NAFTA. Now there are 48,000.

The truth is the United States was bleeding these kinds of factory jobs decades before NAFTA. And it's unclear how large a part NAFTA has played in the years since.

It costs $135 to make 12 pairs of cotton trousers in the United States. It costs $57 to make the trousers in China and ship them here. It costs $69 to do so in other parts of the world.

Americans would be better off if their imports came from Managua, rather than Guangdong. After all, our Latin neighbors are more likely to buy the things we have to sell. That's why farmers producing beef, pork and corn are all for these treaties. So are U.S. companies that make machinery, especially for construction.

CAFTA partners would include very poor countries with fragile democracies. More trade with the United States could stabilize them -- and reduce the pressures on their people to come here illegally. And if the workers make more money, they'll be able to buy more American goods.

There's more at the link. We don't know whether she's right about all this, but it certainly does seem clear enough that American workers making $20 an hour are not going to be able to compete with those making a dollar an hour. Perhaps we can protect our jobs with tariffs, but it's not clear that that is a viable long term strategy. It simply builds anti-American resentments and invites retaliation, which hurts our exporters and consumers.

Maybe some of our readers have a helpful thought or two on this.

GOP Follies

What are the pros and cons of the "compromise" on judicial filibusters? The only benefit from a Republican point of view that I can see is that should they ever find themselves in the minority again they may have recourse to the filibuster, but this is bitter solace. If it's wrong for the Democrats to filibuster judicial nominees now it would be wrong for Republicans to do so in the future.

The liabilities, however, are several. It's now almost certain that at least two of Bush's nominees will not be voted on by the senate, which is a gross unfairness. Every nominee deserves a vote. That should have been a non-negotiable principle, but McCain, Warner and the other Republicans caved on it.

There is still the possibility that a future nominee will be filibustered and that the Republicans will invoke a rule change, but after this deal it becomes psychologically more difficult to pull that off.

Moreover, by kicking the can down the road, the Republicans have risked serious difficulties after 2006 should the Democrats pick up a couple of senate seats in that election. They still wouldn't be in the majority, but a gain of a couple of seats would make a rule change much more difficult to pass were it to become necessary, which it almost certainly will.

The Democrats managed to out-maneuver the doppy Republicans yet again. The Dems have essentially given up nothing that they wouldn't have lost anyway and have effectively secured a Republican promise that the GOP will not prevent a filibuster on the two nominees the Dems feel they can safely oppose without looking bad in the eyes of their constituents. This deal is not a compromise. The Republicans gained nothing, and the Democrats get to block at least two of Bush's nominees.

In my humble opinion, John McCain has just forfeited his chances of gaining the Republican presidential nomination in 2008. Bill Frist, I think, is relatively unscathed. It's true that he appears ineffective in being unable to impose party discipline on the moderates, but his opposition to this "compromise" will work to his advantage with the Republican base in the 2008 primaries.

World Population Trends Down

Richard Neuhaus discusses the latest demographic projections in an essay in the March issue of First Things and they really are quite startling. He writes:

Consider the demographic evidence: Global fertility rates are 50 percent lower than in 1972-2.9 children per woman, down from six children per woman. They continue to fall at an increasing pace. For population to remain stable, the fertility rate must be 2.1 in nations with relatively low infant mortality and proportionately higher than 2.1 where greater numbers of children die in childhood from communicable diseases or malnutrition.

Philip Longman, author of the new book The Empty Cradle, writes in Foreign Affairs (May/June 2004): "All told, some fifty-nine countries, comprising roughly 44 percent of the world's total population, are currently not producing enough children to avoid population decline, and the phenomenon continues to spread. By 2045, according to the latest UN projections, the world's fertility rate as a whole will have fallen below replacement levels." In Fewer: How the New Demography of Depopulation Will Shape Our Future, sociologist Ben Wattenberg states: "Never in the last 650 years, since the time of the Black Plague, have birth and fertility rates fallen so far, so fast, so low, for so long, in so many places."

The average fertility rate in Western Europe is a dismal 1.4 children per woman, ranging from 1.8 in Ireland and France to 1.2 in Italy and Spain. This is what a 1.4 fertility rate means for Germany: "Germany could shed nearly a fifth of its 82.5 million people over the next forty years-roughly the equivalent of all of east Germany, a loss of population not seen in Europe since the Thirty Years' War" which ended in 1748. Western Europe is losing approximately 750,000 people a year.

President Vladimir Putin calls Russia's population loss of 750,00 people a year a "national crisis." The yearly loss could increase to three million or more by 2050. And it is estimated that "Bulgaria will shrink by 38 percent, Romania by 27 percent, Estonia by 25 percent."

According to U.N. estimates, over the next four decades, Japan will lose a quarter of its 127 million people.

"Mexican fertility rates have dropped so dramatically, the country is now aging five times faster than is the United States. It took fifty years for the American median age to rise just five years, from thirty to thirty-rive. By contrast, between 2000 and 2050, Mexico's median age, according to UN projections, will increase by twenty years, leaving half the population over forty-two."

The U.S. fertility rate dropped to a low of 1.7 children per woman in 1975, but rose to 1.99 where it currently is, largely as a result of the slightly higher birthrates among Latino immigrants. However, the population in the U.S. sixty-five years and older is expected to double by 2035.

So, why are birthrates dropping?

To start with, forty-six million abortions occur annually, according to the Alan Guttmacher Institute. More or less "effective" artificial contraception and widespread sterilization have greatly reduced birthrates, especially in those developing countries where coercion is used to reach population targets. UN data report that 62 percent of women of reproductive age who are married or "in union" are using some form of artificial birth control.

But economic and "lifestyle" factors also can affect a family's decision to have fewer children, for example:

Migration of families from farming areas-where children's labor benefits the family-to urban centers where there's no immediate economic incentive for having children.

Women's access to paying jobs in urban areas, and the reality that many have to work to help support the family.

The continually rising cost of raising children: in the U.S., over $200,000 to age eighteen, excluding college, according to the Department of Agriculture.

High taxation, reducing the family's disposable income.

Young people spending more years in higher education to meet the demands of a more highly skilled workforce, which delays the average age of marriage and increases their education debt.

The later average age of marriage, resulting in lower fertility among women and a shortened period of child-bearing in marriage.

Divorce.

Sexually transmitted diseases which can impair fertility are at epidemic levels due to multiple partners.

Materialism and consumerism, fueled by advertising and television.

Radical feminist ideology that measures women's worth solely by the acquisition of money and power, and denigrates their contributions to family life.

Neuhaus thinks that declining birth rates are a bad thing. We're not so sure (whether the reasons for the decline are bad is a different question). There are certainly some negative consequences (e.g. a smaller population of young workers to care for a larger population of elderly and proportionately fewer people developing the innovations that make life better), but on balance it's not clear that population numbers commensurate with mid-twentieth century levels would be calamitous either economically or environmentally. Indeed, lower populations would place far less stress on natural resources. Moreover, there must be some upward limit on how many people the planet can sustain before war, pestilence, and famine cause the population to crash. It seems to us better that such a limit never be approached.

The biggest drawback to a declining population in the West would be the disadvantage it would place western civilization in vis a vis third world peoples, and especially the Islamic world, if their birth rates do not also decline. If the drop is universal and not too precipitous, however, it's not clear to us why it should be cause for alarm.

Real Martyrs

When it comes to sheer savagery in the name of religion Muslims do not have a total monopoly as this story illustrates:

BHUBANESWAR, India (Reuters) - The high court of Orissa on Thursday cancelled the death sentence handed to Hindu extremist Dara Singh for the killing of an Australian missionary and his two sons six years ago, and instead ordered life imprisonment, lawyers said.

The high court also acquitted 11 people sentenced to a life term by a lower court for burning alive Graham Staines and his two children in a remote village in the state.

Judges Sujit Burmon Roy and Laxmikant Mohapatra gave no reason for commuting the death sentence on Dara Singh and the acquittal of the others. The judges retained the life sentence on another man convicted of involvement in the killings in 1999.

A mob attacked Staines and his sons Philip, 10, and Timothy, 6, as they slept in their jeep in a remote village in Orissa. They torched the vehicle and killed all three.

Singh pleaded innocent and appealed against the lower court's decision to hang him and sentence 12 other men to life imprisonment.

The Staines' killings followed a wave of attacks on Christians blamed on Hindu radicals fighting conversions, and underscored tension between India's Hindu majority and religious minorities.

What ever happened to the spirit of Mahatma Ghandi?

One of the amazing things about stories like this is that Christian young people are lining up to go to places like Orissa despite the violence and danger they'll face. They're incredibly courageous and the contrast they create with those who are willing to die only if they can kill others is stark.

Indeed, this is the essential difference between Christianity and many other religions. Christianity enjoins us to love people into the Kingdom of God, other religions enjoin their votaries to kill people who resist accepting their "truth".

ABC News on the Filibuster

ABC News did a blurb on the radio the other night about the rules change vote expected to occur in the senate and mentioned that although liberals want to use the filibuster now, it was conservatives who used it back in the sixties to try to block liberal civil rights legislation.

This was deceptive for two reasons. First, the earlier filibuster was employed to block legislation, not judicial nominees. Legislation is what the filibuster was originally intended to be used for. More egregiously, what the ABC reporter fails to tell his listeners is that those who tried to block civil rights legislation were largely Democrats. Robert Byrd, William Fulbright, Al Gore, Sr. and others resisted advances in civil rights by using the filibuster. To call these Democrats conservatives is ludicrous.

Howard Dean

Howard Dean referred to the filibuster on Meet the Press today as a protection of the rights of the minority. This is a silly claim for several reasons:

1. Minority rights as protected by the constitution have to do with civil rights of the American people not political parties.

2. Nothing the Republicans propose to do violates any right of the Democrats guaranteed by the constitution.

3. We have been oft reminded by Democrats and their surrogates that the number of citizens represented by Republicans in the senate is actually substantially less than the number of citizens represented by Democrat senators. This being the case, if a senate rule is to protect the minority, then it should protect the interests of those who are represented by Republican senators.

There was much else in Dean's appearance for which he could be faulted. For example, he repeatedly blasted Tom Delay in harsh language for the House Majority Leader's alleged ethical shortcomings. Dean then went on to criticize Rush Limbaugh for Limbaugh's criticisms of the ethics of Democratic politicians. He argued that Limbaugh certainly has had his own ethical problems, as we all do, Dean noted, and that no one who has ethical shortcomings should criticize the lapses of others. Well, if we all have ethical faults then Mr. Dean has ethical faults, so, by his own logic, why is he criticizing Tom Delay?

He also sought to make political hay from the Terri Schiavo case. He criticized Republicans for intruding into an intensely personal matter that should have been off-limits to government officials. Mr. Dean misrepresented the problem here, however. It wasn't that Terri's family wasn't left alone by government, it was that one branch of government, the courts, actively prevented her family from protecting and caring for her. The debate in the Schiavo affair was about who should have the right to determine Terri's fate, a man who was her husband in the purely legal sense only, who advanced a highly suspicious claim to know Terri's wishes about life and death, and who had demonstrated no real concern for Terri's well-being over the years, or her parents and siblings who stood by her throughout the whole ordeal and stood to gain nothing at all from their fight to protect Terri except to keep their loved one alive.

It wasn't that politicians were sticking their nose into private family matters, it was that Terri's family urged politicians to get involved when the judiciary refused to save Terri's life. I think we should be proud of those who responded to that desperate plea for help rather than ignore it, as Mr. Dean would have had them do.

Mr. Dean also accuses the Republicans in general, and the president in particular, of being dishonest. Tim Russert ran a clip in which Dean says that he "hates Republicans" and states by inference that they're "evil." Yet, during the show an ad by People For the American Way was run which accused the Republicans ("the radical right") of placing the constitution "under attack" and wanting to "break senate rules" in order to impose their will on the country. If Mr. Dean wanted to point out dishonesty, he could have called the viewer's attention to the mendacity of this ad. The majority party in the senate has the constitutional right to change the rules of the senate and, indeed, the Democrats have done so themselves in the past. There is no threat to the constitution in either what the Republicans are trying to do to secure an up or down vote for GWB's judicial nominees on the senate floor or in the kind of judges GWB has nominated. They are nominees who believe that the constitution should not be interpreted according to current political fashion, and are much more respectful of the authority of this document than are the men and women whom the Democrats wish to have placed on the federal bench and the Supreme Court.

If there is a threat to the constitution it is to be found in the sort of judges who espy in the words of that document rights that clearly are not there. The Democrats will not vote to seat anyone who does not accept the right to an abortion, for example, but that right is nowhere in the constitution. The Democrats also approve of the creation of a right not to be executed if one is under the age of 18 notwithstanding that the constitution is silent about such matters.

The reason why Democrats are so hostile to Bush's nominees is precisely because they fear that his judges will be strict constructionists who will rule according to what the constitution says and not according to the tastes and dictates of the New York Times. It is liberal jurists who threaten the integrity of the constitution and whose rulings have created so much dissatisfaction and divisiveness in this country. Hopefully, on Tuesday we'll see the beginning of the end of that threat.

Machiavelli Must be Smiling

Kausfiles quotes James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal who gives two very good reasons why Democrats might postpone a fight over the filibuster rule:

If the Democrats gain Senate seats next year--or even before the election, through the death or retirement of a Republican from a state with a Democratic governor--the filibuster may suddenly lose its "nuclear" vulnerability.

Further, some Democrats have been acting against their own political interests by obstructing Bush nominees (cf. Tom Daschle). Freeing them to vote for cloture could help their re-election chances, which would be in the long-term interests of the Democrats.

Kaus speculates that the Republicans could force a rules change vote by voting against cloture. This, it seems to us, however, would be too cynical to be worth doing. If some Republican Senators were to attempt to force a showdown on a rules change vote by causing the cloture vote to fail, they would risk antagonizing the half-dozen or so "moderate" Republican senators. These then might, in a fit of pique, decide to vote with the Democrats to reject the motion to change the rule, and the whole thing would blow up in the Republicans' faces.

Washington politics is Byzantine, but it's probably not that Byzantine.

Our Administration Barks

I find it interesting to watch our present administration as they attempt to blame other countries for problems that are clearly the fault of the current and past administrations.

Specifically, while the administration and congress blusters to China with threats of tariffs if they don't let their currency float against the dollar Dr. Allan Greenspan has this to say.

From the link:

A move by China to revalue its currency "does not follow that that will lower our overall trade balance," Greenspan said. "Indeed, it's probably quite unlikely."

That's because companies are likely to turn to other countries, such as Thailand or Malaysia for goods, rather than U.S. producers. "So essentially what we will find is we're importing from a different area, but we will be importing the same goods," Greenspan said.

As Dr. Greenspan points out, the only thing that will help the US trade deficit is for Americans to buy less imports and more American products. Not very likely, especially given that America doesn't manufacture much of anything anymore.

It is interesting to note that Dr. Greenspan realizes that Americans will buy from any other country rather than from American manufacturers.

As I see it, there are either of two scenarios that are likely to unfold: American jobs and manufacturing will continue to be exported and the trade deficit will continue to grow until foreign countries cut off our credit - Mr. America, your card has been declined, or there simply won't be enough people in this country able to buy anything from anywhere because they have lost their jobs and are broke. In either case, the exportation of jobs and manufacturing will not stop until a state of equilibrium has been attained. I've mentioned this before. It means the average income and standard of living of Americans will decline as the average income and standard of living of their counter-parts in China, Mexico, etc., increases. This process is well under way. Welcome to the New World Order.

Not only are jobs and manufacturing being exported but also the R&D is being outsourced. This means that products will and are being completely developed overseas from concept to finished product and then imported and sold under an American label while the American companies lay off "non-essential" personnel to save costs and boost their stock price. But the day will come when those doing all the work realize they can go direct to the American consumer and the rest of the world as well, and cut out the middle man i.e. the American corporation who bought into the whole idea of outsourcing leaving them with no reason for being. Now that's the definition of justice.

The Demarcation Problem

One of the oft heard criticisms of Intelligent Design theory is that it is putatively non-scientific, i.e. it doesn't meet the criteria of an acceptable scientific hypothesis. Design or creationist theories have been alleged to be necessarily unscientific for a number of reasons: they do not explain by reference to natural law, they invoke unobservables, they are not testable, they do not make predictions, they are not falsifiable, they provide no mechanisms, they are not tentative, and they have no problem-solving capability.

Philosopher of science Stephen Meyer addresses the first three of these alleged short-comings in an article at the Discovery Institute's website. The essay is lengthy and somewhat technical, but it's an excellent analysis of the problem of trying to determine what constitutes science and what does not. In the philosophy of science this is called the Demarcation Problem, and, as many philosophers have noted, trying to find the boundaries of science is often counterproductive and is in any event a devilishly difficult task.

Before concluding that Intelligent Design is not science and Darwinism is, one should read Meyer's article. It would also be good, for the individual of a philosophical/scientific turn of mind, to read Del Ratszch's Science and its Limits and William Dembski's Design Revolution.

And Throw Away the Key!

Here's a switch. The ACLU is actually trying to get the authorities to put lawbreakers into jail. Surprised? Well, the surprise might fade some when you hear that the criminals are not cop-killers or child molestors. No. It turns out that the villainous rogues the ACLU is so concerned about incarcerating are school administrators and teachers who are defying a court imposed ban on school prayer:

NEW ORLEANS - Teachers and administrators in Tangipahoa Parish continue to violate a court-imposed school prayer ban, according to the ACLU, which on May 18 asked a federal judge to send them to jail.

For the fourth time in less than two months, the ACLU has formally notified the judge that school officials are flouting the prayer ban, imposed to settle a lawsuit the civil liberties group filed for a parent in 2003.

This time, the group says, an elementary school teacher in Tangipahoa Parish repeatedly held prayers in her fourth grade class, encouraged students to bring their Bibles to school, held Bible study classes in the cafeteria of D.C. Reeves Elementary School, and admonished students who didn't show up for the class.

In addition, the ACLU cites a prayer it says was recently given at Amite High School, over a loudspeaker, at an awards banquet. The prayer ended with the words "In Jesus' name we pray," violating the ban; the principal of the school sat silently by.

"The consent judgment is repeatedly violated by these individuals because they do not believe anything will happen to them," the ACLU said in the court filing. "Their refusal to comply with the consent decree should and must result in their removal from society."

The ACLU expends vast resources to keep criminals, even felons, out of prison, but strives to bring the hammer down on Christians who choose to practice civil disobedience. Wonderful folks, those lawyers at the ACLU.

Ideological Taxonomy

The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press has an interesting test that will pigeon-hole your ideological predilections for you. As with all such tests, some of the questions are irritating because neither of the options given accurately describe one's position, but even so, the overall results seem pretty accurate. Once the test is completed a link takes you to a page which describes the typical person in your political niche, of which there are about seven or eight.

Viewpoint, it turns out, falls into the "Enterpriser" category.

Use it and They Lose it

Republicans have called for cloture on the debate over the nomination of Priscilla Owen. A cloture petition requires the approval of 60 of 100 senators, to end debate on Owen's nomination. Under Senate rules that petition must rest two days while the Senate is in session and will thus come up for a vote on Tuesday.

If five Democrats do not join with the Senate's 55 Republicans to give the GOP the 60 votes they need to proceed to an up-or-down vote for Owen, Senator Frist will probably carry through with his threat to change the rule and ban the use of judicial filibusters in the Senate. That vote, known alternately as the nuclear or constitutional option, is likely to occur on Tuesday.

Frist will need 50 senators to vote for the rule change in order for it to carry. He'd win a tie since Vice-president Cheney would vote as president of the Senate to break the deadlock. Assuming he has the votes, and it's highly doubtful he would move to vote on a rule change if he didn't, Bush's nominees will be confirmed, beginning with Owens on Tuesday.

Ironically, the only way the Democrats can stop the ban on the filibuster is to give Frist his 60 votes for cloture on Tuesday. If they do, then the vote to change the rule will not come up until at least the next nominee is considered. In other words, the Dems are in the position of being able to save their chief weapon of judicial obstructionism only by choosing not to use it.

Cheap Ethics

A recent Zogby poll of 18 to 24 year olds finds that:

Young Americans entering the workforce overwhelmingly value honesty and integrity, with 92% saying they believe that doing the right thing is more important than getting ahead in their careers-but there is also a strong undercurrent of competing values, placing loyalty to friends, love and getting ahead personally above honesty in business dealings.

In addition to the 34% who say that doing the right thing can be too costly, another three-in-ten (31%) say ethics are important as long as they do not compromise personal goals.

In other words, doing the right thing is important for a significant fraction of this age group only so long as it doesn't get in the way of their ambitions. Lying is wrong, for example, except when it's necessary to advance oneself or to keep out of trouble. Such devotion to integrity is not very encouraging.

Ethicist Michael Josephson reminds us that, 'Ethics is having the character and the courage to do the right thing even when it costs more than we want to pay.' If we want to build long-term trusting relationships, each of us should strive to make a stronger commitment to practice the kinds of ethical values many of our grandparents have lived by - honesty, integrity, loyalty, responsibility, fairness, caring and citizenship."

The difference is that our grandparents believed that Josephson's virtues were objectively right, that they were grounded in something beyond ourselves. For many today virtue is entirely subjective and grounded in nothing more than our own feelings. Given that view, there really is no reason to embrace the virtues when they run counter to our own wants and desires.

There's much more on the survey at the link.