America the Beautiful

Peggy Noonan has an absolutely lovely column in Opinion Journal that should be read by every American. America, she insists, has no shortage of heroes, and it's the greatest country in the history of the planet, yet we're placing it all at risk because we have come to doubt the inherent goodness of our principles and of our people. We no longer teach love of country, and we've allowed ourselves to lose our sense of being a mutually interdependent community. We are, she says, like a big box store. Everyone wants to go there, but there's no spirit, no real loyalty to the place, no sense of belonging to something bigger than ourselves.

She crafts a wonderful piece of writing which you can read here.

Up From Atheism

How's this for irony? One of the most influential atheists of the last half of the twentieth century is being presented an award by a conservative Christian university named in honor of one of the seminal figures in the Intelligent Design movement:

La Mirada, Calif. - British philosopher Antony Flew, once considered the most prominent defender of atheism in the English-speaking world, will accept the Phillip E. Johnson Award for Liberty and Truth on May 11 from Biola University, a Christian university in Southern California. Flew, 83, argued in books such as God and Philosophy (1966) and The Presumption of Atheism (1984) that one should presuppose atheism until evidence for God proves otherwise. Then, in 2004, the Oxford-educated philosopher stunned the intellectual world by relinquishing his long-held atheism, claiming that the natural sciences supplied evidence for the existence of a designing intelligence. Flew said that he simply "had to go where the evidence leads."

The Phillip E. Johnson Award for Liberty and Truth was given to Flew for his lifelong commitment to free and open inquiry and to standing fast against intolerant assaults on freedom of thought and expression. Flew drew scorn from skeptics following his shift in views. When informed that he was this year's award winner, he remarked, "In light of my work and publications in this area and the criticism I've received for changing my position, I appreciate receiving this award."

There's more on both Flew and the award at the link.

Jill Carroll

Jill Carroll, able to speak freely without fear of retribution, shares her feelings toward those who held her captive and murdered her friend:

I'm so happy to be free and am looking forward to spending a lot of time with my family. I want to express my deep appreciation to all the people who worked so long and hard for my release. I am humbled by the sympathy and support expressed by so many people during my kidnapping.

In the past few days, the US military and officials have been extremely generous, and I am grateful for their help. Throughout this ordeal, many US agencies have committed themselves to bringing me safely home.

My colleagues at The Christian Science Monitor have worked ceaselessly to secure my release, and worked with security consultants to do so. Many other news organizations, both inside and outside of Iraq, as well as many officials from Iraq and other countries, worked hard to bring about my freedom.

So many people around the world spoke out on my behalf. Thank you, all of you.

During my last night in captivity, my captors forced me to participate in a propaganda video. They told me they would let me go if I cooperated. I was living in a threatening environment, under their control, and wanted to go home alive. I agreed.

Things that I was forced to say while captive are now being taken by some as an accurate reflection of my personal views. They are not. The people who kidnapped me and murdered Alan Enwiya are criminals, at best. They robbed Alan of his life and devastated his family. They put me, my family and my friends--and all those around the world, who have prayed so fervently for my release--through a horrific experience. I was, and remain, deeply angry with the people who did this.

I also gave a TV interview to the Iraqi Islamic Party shortly after my release. The party had promised me the interview would never be aired on television, and broke their word. At any rate, fearing retribution from my captors, I did not speak freely. Out of fear I said I wasn't threatened. In fact, I was threatened many times.

Also, at least two false statements about me have been widely aired: That I refused to travel and cooperate with the US military and that I refused to discuss my captivity with US officials. Again, neither is true.

I want to be judged as a journalist, not as a hostage. I remain as committed as ever to fairness and accuracy--to discovering the truth--and so I will not engage in polemics. But let me be clear: I abhor all who kidnap and murder civilians, and my captors are clearly guilty of both crimes.

Now, I ask for the time to heal. This has been a taxing 12 weeks for me and my family. Please allow us some quiet time alone, together.

Those who were quick to criticize her for her earlier statements are probably feeling a little chagrined right about now.

America's Baghdad Bob

Either Howard Dean is astonishingly mendacious or he inhabits some alternative universe where truth has no correspondence to objective reality and is instead whatever one happens to be saying at the moment. The AP, scarcely able to believe it themselves, reports that:

Howard Dean accuses Bush, GOP of exploiting immigration issue

Democratic Party chief Howard Dean accused President Bush and the Republican Party on Friday of exploiting the immigration issue for political gain by scapegoating Hispanics. Dean and Bush agree on the legislation at the heart of the debate. Both support a Senate bill that would expand guest-worker programs for an estimated 400,000 immigrants each year.

However, at a speech in an Oakland union hall, the 2004 Democratic presidential candidate sought to tie Bush to a much tougher House bill that would tighten borders and make it a crime to be in the United States illegally or to offer aid to illegal immigrants. Bush does not back the House bill.

"This is a nonsensical proposal put out by far right-wingers in the Republican Party who have been endorsed for re-election by the president of the United States," Dean said. "The president has a moral obligation to rein in the right-wing extremists in his party and stop this divisive rhetoric about immigrants."

Bush has spent his political career courting Hispanic voters, the nation's fastest-growing voting bloc, and he has helped double the GOP's share of the Hispanic vote since 2000. Nevertheless, Dean accused Bush and fellow Republicans of demagoguery in the immigration debate, saying it fit with a long-standing pattern. He cited the president's opposition to the University of Michigan's affirmative-action program and Bush's decision to "pick on" homosexuals - an apparent reference to the gay marriage issue in the 2004 election.

"In 2006 it's immigrants. That's what their strategy is on the Republican side: divide people, scapegoat them, set them aside, point the finger at them," Dean said. "Well, that may be good for the Republican Party, but it's bad for America, and we're not going to do that."

Danny Diaz, a Republican National Committee spokesman, said Dean was twisting the facts on immigration. "While Republicans are engaged in a debate to reform immigration so it benefits our country as a whole, Dean and the Democrats are focused on manipulating the subject in a way that benefits no one but themselves," Diaz said. "It is clear that the chair of the Democrat Party does not feel constrained by the truth or the facts."

In Mexico on Friday, Bush said the United States must enforce the laws protecting borders but he also repeated his support for a "guest worker program that would allow undocumented immigrants already in the country to remain."

Diaz has it right. Howard Dean will say anything, no matter how much at variance with the facts it may be, as long as it will benefit the Democrat party. The man is shameless, but, we have to hand it to him, he is entertaining. He's amusing in the same odd way that Baghdad Bob, the guy who kept appearing on tv during the Iraq invasion to tell us that the Marines at the gates of Baghdad were really still back in Kuwait, was amusing.

If Only

The Associated Press is reporting that congressional Democrats, led by Senator Harry Reid and Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi have put out a statement today which notes that the U.S. is involved in grave undertakings around the world and that these matters are of too serious a nature to be hindered by partisan political jockeying.

These Democrat leaders therefore wish to announce that they stand foursquare behind the president and his administration as he seeks to navigate the ship of state through treacherous shoals, and they offer him their full support for the duration of these perilous times.

They state that although he has made missteps in his conduct of foreign and domestic policy, on balance he has provided outstanding leadership to our nation during several very trying crises, and that the seriousness of his task requires nothing less of a loyal opposition than full support and constructive, rather than destructive, criticism. Henceforth, Senator Reid declared, the president can count fully on the Democrats for that support.

When asked for a reaction a White House spokesman noted that today is April 1st.

A National Embarrassment

Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, whose attic has never been completely furnished, declares herself to be the victim of sexism, racism and any other odious "isms" that may be lurking about among those detestable Capitol Police. Her entourage of assorted nitwits and race hustlers concur with her judgment.

According to police and witnesses, Ms McKinney, showing no identification, circumvented a metal detector in the Capitol Building and refused to stop when instructed to do so by a police officer. When the officer, following procedure, sought to detain her she punched him in the chest. This has apparently become chronic behavior for the Georgia congresswoman, and the police plan to press charges.

In response, she claims her only crime was "being in congress while black." The mind groans wearily upon hearing this mindlessly juvenile resort to the allegation of racism once again trotted out to justify unjustifiable behavior on the part of some liberal black politico.

You can see video of Ms McKinney's press conference here. After watching the lady give her statement we've decided she doesn't need to spend time in jail - she needs to be placed in an asylum.

We wonder if the Georgia voters who elected her are as embarrassed as we are that this person somehow got to be a United States congresswoman.

Immigration Advice

Dick Morris comes very close to articulating our own position on the immigration issue, and consequently he composes a very sensible column on the subject. The only thing that he might emphasize more forcefully than he does is this: Once the fence - which is itself the sine qua non of any solution to the problem - is in place, there need be no concerted effort to hunt down aliens who are here illegally. The practicalities of such a policy are daunting and may not be worth the effort as long as the invasion of immigrants has been stanched. However, any illegal who gets into further trouble with the law, or who is chronically out of work, should be deported. The existence of the fence will prevent them from leaking back in.

What's going on in the Senate concerning their immigration bill is just a charade. It's as dumb as it is futile to pass a law that requires illegals to pay a fine and learn English unless there is some serious sanction imposed for failing to do it. Since the Senate seems to think that there need be no penalty for not registering or taking English classes, their bill is worse than useless. It would be largely ignored by illegal aliens, and there would be no real cost for ignoring it.

Build the wall, deport law breakers (unless they commit felonies), and let the oxymoronic law-abiding illegals do what they came here for. Give them a registration card that they must possess in order to be hired - let them work and pay taxes - but they should not be granted any of the rights or benefits of American citizens without going through proper channels to acquire citizen status.

One additional thing we'd like to see changed in our laws regarding citizenship: People who are born here to illegal aliens, or to any non-citizens, for that matter, should not automatically be granted citizenship. We do not object to allowing them to apply for it when they reach the age of eighteen, if they've maintained regular residency in the U.S., but we see no reason why it should be bestowed automatically simply because of an accident of birth.

Energy

Why am I bullish on energy investments? Here are several reasons.

Oil is presently above $67 per barrel. One might ask why this is so. In the early '70s oil was around $2 per barrel. Of course the price of a barrel of oil hasn't actually gone up but rather the purchasing power of the US dollar has gone down. Consequently, OPEC simply wants to maintain a fair relative value for a barrel of oil which, as an asset, has remained constant in terms of its utility.

There's also a certain fear factor component that no doubt is added to the price of oil because of the political climate that exists today. This contributes to the price of a barrel of oil in the form of a premium.

Additionally, the demand for oil (and other commodities) is increasing because China is experiencing its own industrial revolution just as the US did 100 years ago. India also contributes to the demand for the same reason.

There's concern about the future availability of oil due to the theory of "Peak Oil". This theory implies that the global supply of oil has peaked and has been or will be reached soon and future supply of oil will be more expensive to extract as the quantity of it declines. A concern for the supply of oil in the ground and the ability of OPEC to deliver it is beginning to be questioned by experts in the industry.

The bottom line is that there is a great deal of uncertainty about the single most important product in the world and the subsequent availability of it. Is the fact that action in the Middle East is the largest component of the news these days just a coincidence?

Given all of the uncertainty and the declining purchasing power of the dollar, companies involved in the energy industry stand to make substantial gains in their share price. One can invest in individual companies or they can buy into mutual funds that offer diversification across the energy market.

Personally, I'm inclined to leave the analysis of individual companies up to the guy at the mutual fund company whose job is to be an expert on the domain.

Below are two mutual funds from Fidelity that specialize in energy. By way of disclaimer, I have holdings in both of them. Visit their website and scroll down to the respective funds, check out their performance, and you'll see why.

Fidelity Energy (FSENX

Fidelity Energy Service (FSESX)

Read about these funds and decide for yourself if they're right for you.

Afghan Spring

While most of the world's attention is focussed on Iraq, the battle against the Taliban continues in Afghanistan. Bill Roggio brings us up to speed on combat operations there. Here's the first half of an interesting post on the topic:

As the Coalition enters its sixth year in Afghanistan, the Taliban has threatened to unleash another of its spring offensives. "With the arrival of the warm weather, we will make the ground so hot for the invaders it will be unimaginable for them," Mullah Omar, the leader of the Taliban threatened two weeks ago through his spokesman. While the past spring offensives have been crushed after Coalition forces destroyed Taliban formations unwise enough to mass in large numbers, this year's offensive will include suicide bombers, roadside bombs and other techniques used in Salafist insurgencies in Chechnya, Kashmir, Iraq, the Philippines, Thailand and elsewhere.

Coalition forces smashed a Taliban assault in Helmand province, killing thirty-two Taliban. Twelve were killed in the initial engagement, and twenty more were killed while "attempting to retreat into sanctuaries." Two Taliban headquarters were destroyed and several weapons caches were unearthed. An American and Canadian soldier were killed in the fighting.

Last week, Marines from Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment, fought a pitched battle with Taliban fighters while patroling in the Shuryak Valley of Kunar Province. After finding a ton of explosives and bomb-making material, the Marines took fire and killed upwards to twenty Taliban in what they called 'The Battle of Salar Ban'. The Marines suffered no casualties. The Taliban has been roundly defeated every time it engaged the Coalition and Afghan National Army in open combat, and the recent engagements are no different.

A suicide car bomber prematurely detonated his explosives while attempting to attack a Canadian convoy in Kandahar. No Canadians were injured, but seven Afghan civilians were wounded in the explosion. Reuters reports "Security forces in Kandahar arrested nine suspected Taliban suicide bombers, two of them Pakistanis." Six Afghan police were killed in two separate attacks in Kandahar & Khost.

The Taliban, and al-Qaeda, have one hope. They hope that Democrats will gain a sufficient number of seats in the Congress in 2006 that they will be able to make it too difficult for President Bush to continue with the war. Between calls for censure and impeachment and demands for retreat, the Taliban and their al-Qaeda allies hope to erode American will to the point where we will just give up and head home.

They've already succeeded in persuading the leaders of the "Last Helicopter" party that the war is a lost cause. All they need do is win over a few independents in November so that the Democrats will regain the congressional majority, and America will pull out, and Afghanistan, indeed the whole Middle East, will fall into their hands like ripe fruit.

The Last Helicopter

Amir Taheri offers fascinating insight into the strategic thinking in capitals throughout the Arab world. The leaders of the Arab countries have taken the temperature of America and decided that once Bush is gone Americans will once again be boarding the helicopters just like they did in Saigon, Lebanon, Mogodishu and elsewhere in order to hightail it back to the states. They are adjusting their policies accordingly and the adjustments are not favorable to peace and democracy.

According to this theory, President George W. Bush is an "aberration," a leader out of sync with his nation's character and no more than a brief nightmare for those who oppose the creation of an "American Middle East." Messrs. Abbasi and Ahmadinejad have concluded that there will be no helicopter as long as George W. Bush is in the White House. But they believe that whoever succeeds him, Democrat or Republican, will revive the helicopter image to extricate the U.S. from a complex situation that few Americans appear to understand.

Mr. Ahmadinejad believes that the world is heading for a clash of civilizations with the Middle East as the main battlefield. In that clash Iran will lead the Muslim world against the "Crusader-Zionist camp" led by America. Mr. Bush might have led the U.S. into "a brief moment of triumph." But the U.S. is a "sunset" (ofuli) power while Iran is a sunrise (tolu'ee) one and, once Mr. Bush is gone, a future president would admit defeat and order a retreat as all of Mr. Bush's predecessors have done since Jimmy Carter.

Mr. Ahmadinejad's ...argument was that once Mr. Bush is gone, the U.N., too, will revert to its traditional lethargy. "They can pass resolutions until they are blue in the face," Mr. Ahmadinejad told a gathering of Hezbollah, Hamas and other radical Arab leaders in Tehran last month.

The general assumption is that Mr. Bush's plan to help democratize the heartland of Islam is fading under an avalanche of partisan attacks inside the U.S. The effect of this assumption can be witnessed everywhere...Pakistan....Turkey...Iraq...Saudi Arabia...Syria.

If people like Ahmadinejad are right then it will be to the Democrats' everlasting shame that, in order to score cheap political points against Bush, they deeply eroded his stature in the world. By their unwillingness to limit themselves only to fair, constructive, and responsible criticism and by their incessant calls for retreat from Iraq when things got sticky, they sacrificed the only chance we'll ever have to effect long-term change for good in the Middle East. And they happily made that sacrifice for no more noble reason than that they saw it as a means to recovering their own political preeminence.

Taheri says that Arab thinkers are referring now to the "last helicopter" image of America. The last helicopter retreating from a tough environment is the Arab symbol for America and American resolve. Perhaps we can also say that the Murtha/Pelosi Democrats should be seen as the "last helicopter" political party. The party of defeat and retreat. A helicopter fleeing toward the horizon might well replace the donkey as the symbol of the Democratic Party.

But, Taheri asks toward the end of his essay, how valid is the assumption that Mr. Bush really is an aberration and that his successor will "run away"?

Read the whole piece to get Mr. Taheri's answer to this critical question.

The Knights of Free Speech

The ranks of the defenders of free speech continue to thin:

BUFFALO, N.Y. - Borders and Waldenbooks stores will not stock the April-May issue of Free Inquiry magazine because it contains cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad that provoked deadly protests among Muslims in several countries.

"For us, the safety and security of our customers and employees is a top priority, and we believe that carrying this issue could challenge that priority," Borders Group Inc. spokeswoman Beth Bingham said Wednesday.

The magazine, published by the Council for Secular Humanism in suburban Amherst, includes four of the drawings that originally appeared in a Danish newspaper in September, including one depicting Muhammad wearing a bomb-shaped turban with a lit fuse.

"What is at stake is the precious right of freedom of expression," said Paul Kurtz, editor-in-chief of Free Inquiry. "Cartoons often provide an important form of political satire ... To refuse to distribute a publication because of fear of vigilante violence is to undermine freedom of press - so vital for our democracy."

Bingham said the decision was made before the magazine arrived at the company's stores. Borders Group, based in Ann Arbor, Mich., operates more than 475 Borders and 650 Waldenbooks stores in the United States, though not all regularly carry the magazine.

"We absolutely respect our customers' right to choose what they wish to read and buy and we support the First Amendment," Bingham said. "And we absolutely support the rights of Free Inquiry to publish the cartoons. We've just chosen not to carry this particular issue in our stores."

There's something very odd about this. Borders would not hesitate to carry a magazine which contained content offensive to Christians because they don't fear Christian violence, but because they are afraid of Muslims, they won't do anything to offend them. The very least they can do, given their capitulation to the Islamic Mau Maus, is to acknowledge the cowardice of their decision and atone for it by agreeing not to carry material offensive to any religion. If they're not willing to do that, however, then they shouldn't privilege one religion over another, and they especially shouldn't do it out of fear of the consequences of standing on a principle enshrined in the First Amendment.

It's funny in a macabre sort of way, but ever since the Danish cartoons precipitated the paroxysms of Muslim violence, we haven't heard many liberals recite the refrain about hating what you say but being willing to fight to the death for your right to say it. All of a sudden many of the formerly pious crusaders for freedom of speech have grown strangely silent. To paraphrase Machiavelli in The Prince, in quiet times every one is full of promises and each one is ready to die for the First Amendment, when death is far off; but in adversity, when death is near and the freedom of speech has need of defenders, then it will find but few.

Yes, but let the speech be obscene or pornographic and the heroic knights of the First Amendment suddenly reemerge onto the field astride their white steeds, acclaiming with their battle cry their willingness to die for your right to to be as disgusting as you want to be.

The Rescued CPT Abductees

My friend Byron, who has disagreed with our criticism of officials of Christian Peacemaker Teams for not showing much gratitude toward the troops which rescued their three kidnapped brothers, sends along this column from Sojourners which gives a little more background on the victims themselves. Evidently, at least two of them did express thanks to, and for, their rescuers, and we are pleased to report that.

Incidently, Byron's most recent reply to me about the CPT business is posted on our Feedback page.

Marriage is For White People

The joys and benefits of the sexual revolution, we were told back in the seventies, are manifold. Joy Jones points out the absurdity of this delusion in this sad piece in the Washington Post. She writes:

I grew up in a time when two-parent families were still the norm, in both black and white America. Then, as an adult, I saw divorce become more commonplace, then almost a rite of passage. Today it would appear that many -- particularly in the black community -- have dispensed with marriage altogether.

[Y]ears back when I taught a career exploration class for sixth-graders at an elementary school in Southeast Washington, I was pleasantly surprised when the boys in the class stated that being a good father was a very important goal to them, more meaningful than making money or having a fancy title.

"That's wonderful!" I told my class. "I think I'll invite some couples in to talk about being married and rearing children."

"Oh, no," objected one student. "We're not interested in the part about marriage. Only about how to be good fathers."

And that's when another boy chimed in, speaking as if the words left a nasty taste in his mouth: "Marriage is for white people."

Jones goes on to give some depressing statistics about the state of the black family in America. Then she delivers this shocker:

I was stunned to learn that a black child was more likely to grow up living with both parents during slavery days than he or she is today, according to sociologist Andrew J. Cherlin.

The dysfunction is primarily a black problem, but blacks are just the canary in the coal mine. They're often the most vulnerable to dysgenic social trends, but those trends eventually affect everyone:

Often what happens in black America is a sign of what the rest of America can eventually expect. In his 2003 book, "Mismatch: The Growing Gulf between Women and Men," Andrew Hacker noted that the structure of white families is evolving in the direction of that of black families of the 1960s. In 1960, 67 percent of black families were headed by a husband and wife, compared to 90.9 percent for whites. By 2000, the figure for white families had dropped to 79.8 percent. Births to unwed white mothers were 22.5 percent in 2001, compared to 2.3 percent in 1960. So my student who thought marriage is for white people may have to rethink that in the future.

The sexual revolution of the sixties and seventies reduced sex to a form of recreation, and in so doing it insured that sex would be available to men without the necessity of committing to a marriage. If women continue to favor men with sex without demanding commitment in return the statistics Jones cites will simply continue to get more dreary. Young men simply are not going to take on the responsibilities of marriage as long as the benefits are available to them for "free." As a consequence, boys will increasingly grow up in fatherless homes, and the cycles of crime and poverty will simply grow proportionately more bleak.

LaShawn Barber also has a lot to say about the topic of black marriage (Caution: She's not happy).

Build the Fence

Tim Gaynor at MyWay News writes an article that has some good information in it on the proposed fence that would run for 700 miles along our southern border. Here are some excerpts:

TIJUANA, Mexico (Reuters) - Hurling himself over a steel fence into the no-man's-land between Mexico and California, an undocumented migrant sprints across a narrow strip lit by harsh arc lights and watched over by video cameras on tall posts.

Before he can shin up a second barrier of tall concrete pillars topped with seismic sensors and a layer of steel mesh more than an arm's-length wide, U.S. Border Patrol agents close in fast and arrest him.

That scene is repeated dozens of times each day along a 14-mile (22-km) stretch of state-of-the-art fencing separating San Diego, California, from Tijuana, Mexico, that has become a model for no-nonsense policing of the U.S.-Mexico border.

Inspired by the San Diego fence, the U.S. House Representatives voted in December to build a similar barrier to stop illegal immigrants across one-third of the 2,000-mile (3,200-km) U.S.-Mexico border, seen as a weak spot in homeland security since the September 11 attacks.

It is the most controversial proposal in a debate in the U.S. Congress over immigration reform that has split Republicans and sparked protests by Hispanic immigrants in cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco and Detroit. Although the San Diego fence is seen as a success in cutting illegal immigration, the plan for the bigger barrier is struggling to win further support in Congress.

Critics compare it to the Berlin Wall and say it goes against the American spirit of openness, sending the wrong message to the rest of the world about the United States.

The critics of the fence compare it to the Berlin wall. That's a good one. The Berlin wall was built to keep people from escaping the socialist hell of East Germany. People who tried to scale the wall were shot dead by East German soldiers. Sounds like a reasonable comparison.

The fence, critics say, goes against the American "spirit of openness" and "sends the wrong message" about us. Exactly what message is that? That we don't wish to become like France, overrun with people we can't assimilate even if they wanted to be assimilated? America is open to immigrants. All we ask is that they come here in an orderly and lawful manner. The U.S. is a bit like a grand hotel. We want guests, we need them, but we'd like them to make reservations. We don't wish to have hundreds of people suddenly show up in our lobby demanding a room with all the amenities.

Calif. Republican Rep. Duncan Hunter, who authored the fence plan and estimates it would cost about $2 billion, points to a sharp drop in the number of immigrants nabbed heading for the United States through San Diego in recent years as evidence the security barrier works.

In the early 1990s, some 550,000 immigrants were caught every year but with the addition of double fencing, high-tech surveillance systems and more border police, the number plunged to just 138,700 in 2004.

"There is no doubt that its duplication at specific locations along our southern border will be equally successful and bring us one step closer to a border region that is no longer overrun by illegal aliens," Hunter said.

But the U.S. Department of Homeland Security described the planned barrier, which would run for 698 miles, as a "stupid fence" and said it would most likely be ineffective, while the Mexican government slammed it as a disgrace.

"Stupid fence." Someone in Homeland Security calls it a "stupid fence." How the adjective "stupid" might apply to a fence we can't imagine although we have no trouble imagining how it might apply to spokespersons for government agencies. This solecism emerges from the same department that is charged with protecting our homeland against terrorist infiltration, but which has not lifted so much as a pinkie to prevent would-be terrorists from sauntering across our "stupid border" with Mexico.

A similar fence in Israel has certainly not been ineffective and the fact that Mexico deems the proposal to build a fence a disgrace is all the more reason to put the thing up. What's a disgrace is the inability of Mexico's government, despite sitting on much of the world's oil wealth, to give it's people a reason to want to stay in their native land.

The fence plan envisages a double barrier made from former U.S. military aircraft landing mats stood on their side on the south and a high-tech steel and concrete wall to the north. It would run for 22 miles across California, and 361 miles over the sun-blasted Arizona desert, a strip crossed by half of the 1.18 million immigrants nabbed on the border last year.

A remaining 315 miles of fence is proposed to seal three strips between Columbus, New Mexico and Brownsville, Texas, two of them along stretches of the Rio Grande River that became notorious last year as routes for Central American and Brazilian immigrants.

Border police in San Diego warn the fence has also strengthened the resolve of some die-hard immigrants and traffickers who have become wilier and more confrontational. Attacks by frustrated traffickers on agents are soaring, with 119 gun, knife and rock assaults reported between October 1 and the end of February, more than double the number noted in the same period a year ago, the Border Patrol said.

So what are we to conclude from this? As soon as lawbreakers become more determined to break the law we should stop trying to enforce it? As soon as potential terrorists become more determined to breach our security we should give up trying to prevent them from succeeding? People who would use deadly weapons against American law enforcement officials are precisely the sort of people we don't need more of in this country.

Immigrant welfare groups are also critical of the proposal, and point to the fact that past policing crackdowns such as "Operation Gatekeeper" in the San Diego sector in 1994 only succeeded in rerouting the flow of immigrants to more remote and dangerous areas of the border.

Exactly so. That's why the fence needs to cover the entire length of the border so that anyone who wishes to circumvent it has to make the trip by boat.

"Nothing has actually succeeded in slowing down the number of migrants crossing the U.S. border," said Rev. Robin Hoover, president of Tucson-based welfare group Humane Borders. "The fence is just another gimmick that will just expose migrants to greater danger," he added.

A useless "gimmick"?! What the good reverend must really mean is that he's actually afraid the fence will indeed work and that in order to circumvent it illegal immigrants will have to risk more difficult crossings, but isn't that the point? Does the Rev. Hoover believe the U.S. is obligated to make illegal entry into our country easy?

Mexifornia

Michelle Malkin has some very disturbing photos from the recent protests in California and elsewhere. The pictures illustrate the mindset of those who are demonstrating against tighter immigration enforcement and show that these protestors emphatically do not want to be Americans "just like us."

Here is one photo that illustrates what the protestors would like our future to be and what it will be unless Congress suddenly grows a spine and stops pandering for Hispanic votes:

Malkin has links and excerpts from lots of other sites and stories on this issue. Pay her a visit.

Beyond Good and Evil

A recent survey by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that 95% of print journalists and 86% of broadcast journalists believe that the statement that it is not necessary to believe in God in order to be moral and have good values comes closer to their views than does the claim that God is necessary in order to be moral and have good values.

This result cries out for a little analysis. How, we'd like to know, did the respondents interpret the question? Did they take it to mean that if someone believes there is no God they can still live according to the same standards of behavior as anyone else? If so, it's hardly surprising that most journalists would agree with that because it's certainly true.

Or did they take the question to mean that the existence of God has no necessary connection to morality? If this was their interpretation then an awful lot of journalists need to reread Dostoyevsky and Neitzsche.

As we have argued here on a number of occasions, anyone can live however they choose, but unless there is a God, or at least a transcendent moral authority, there are no grounds for saying that one way of life is more moral than another. In other words, there is no right or wrong behavior in a moral sense unless there is an objective standard for behavior, and there can be no objective standard unless there is someone or something with the authority to establish it. Whatever that being is, it cannot be man. One man or group of men cannot determine what is moral and what is not in any non-arbitrary way.

If there is no moral authority such as I describe then right and wrong are simply matters of subjective preference. Behaviors I like I call moral, those I don't like I call immoral. Your likes and dislikes might be different from mine, but that doesn't make them better or worse. It only makes them different.

So it's silly to ask whether God is necessary for people to live what most take to be a "good" life. The important question is, is God, or something very much like God, necessary for there to be a non-subjective, non-arbitrary morality in the first place? To this latter question the answer is clearly yes.

Journalist and author Robert Wright has conducted a series of fascinating interviews with philosophers, theologians, and scientists, and one of the questions he asks in the course of many of these sessions is essentially this one - can there be moral value if there is no transcendent moral authority? In almost every case the interviewee either hedges on the question or ducks it altogether, but one of the more interesting and straightforward responses is by Ursula Goodenough. The short video clip with Ms Goodenough can be viewed here.

The interview with E.O. Wilson is interesting, too, because Wilson, an atheist, prides himself on the goodness of his life, but the only reason he can give for thinking that his behavior is "morally right" is that it makes him feel good.

The link to Wilson can be accessed at the Goodenough page.

Promise 'Em Anything

We know that election year rhetoric and promises are often over the top, but this from Harry Reid and the Democrats is breathtaking:

WASHINGTON - Congressional Democrats promise to "eliminate" Osama bin Laden and ensure a "responsible redeployment of U.S. forces" from Iraq in 2006 in an election-year national security policy statement.

Then, just when I thought that the Democrats might get my vote, I read this:

The [statement]...lacks specific details of how Democrats plan to capture bin Laden, the al-Qaida mastermind who has evaded U.S. forces in the more than four years since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Oh. Well, maybe they don't want to make the details public because they don't want Osama to know how he's going to get snagged.

Or maybe they just don't have any bloody idea how they're going to eliminate bin Laden, but they figure there are enough idiots out there who'll vote for them just because they promise that they will.

Books on Iraq and the GWOT

Anyone who has been following events in Iraq knows that the post-invasion phase of the war has gone rather unhappily. The media is quick to blame the Bush administration, and for once they have a good, if too simple, case. A new book by George Packer titled Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq explains why.

Marine Colonel Keith Pavlischek writes an outstanding review of the book in Books and Culture and, although I haven't read the book yet, I certainly commend the review to anyone interested in the history of post-Saddam Iraq. Pavlischek notes that although the Department of Defense must accept much of the blame for the failure to secure Iraq after the initial invasion, the situation was very complex and a lot of the mistakes made are only obvious in hindsight. Nevertheless, this paragraph serves as a good summary of Pavlischek's piece:

So, the neocons in the DOD failed to plan adequately for the reconstruction and the counter-insurgency; the Army was perceived as lobbying for a larger invasion force at least partly out of institutional self-interest; and the State Department's experts were throwing a temper-tantrum. No wonder things turned out the way they did.

It is well worth the time to read the whole piece.

A book I have read recently that I also recommend is America's Secret War: Inside the Hidden Worldwide Struggle Between America and Its Enemies by George Friedman. Friedman takes us from the birth of al-Qaeda in the nineties, through 9/11, Afghanistan, and Iraq up to the summer of 2003. It's just packed with fascinating information about hardball diplomacy, behind the scenes machinations, and the war on terror, much of which has never really been publicized. At times the administration looks brilliant in Friedman's telling of the tale and at times it looks rather less so.

One interesting anecdote I had never heard before is that, according to Friedman, the much ballyhooed decapitation strike on Saddam at the outset of the war was actually military disinformation. The military wanted to instill in Iraqi field generals uncertainty about Saddam's status for a couple of days in hopes that the Iraqi generals would use it as an excuse to cut a deal with the Americans and that lives would be spared. As it happened, it didn't work, because Saddam, who was, of course, not at the house which was hit, was able to get on television some hours later.

Lots of other tactics and strategies employed during the dozen or so years covered by the book did work, however, and Friedman's account is captivating.

Both volumes can be ordered from our favorite place for books: Hearts and Minds Bookstore.

Punishing Heretics

Another Intelligent Design advocate and pro-life college instructor, Francis Beckwith, pays for his convictions by being denied tenure at, of all places, Baylor - a putatively Christian university.

Joseph Bottum of First Things has an excellent post on this affair as well as on Baylor's decline as a Christian institution. Telic Thoughts quotes a couple of anti-ID bloggers to fortify the case that it is most likely Beckwith's connection to ID and the theologically conservative Discovery Institute that did him in.

The Other Side of the Story

Despite the assurances and prognostications of congressional and media defeatocrats the Iraqi quagmire simply refuses to materialize. For all the doom and gloom reported in our melancholy media, there is so much going on in Iraq that's cause for rejoicing that it seems the media must deliberately close their eyes to avoid seeing it. Why they don't report this stuff I'll leave to you to decide, but if you're eager for good news coming out of Iraq go here.

Be advised that there's so much good news that you'll probably not be able to finish it all in one sitting.