Sorting Out the Differences

Christians of various sorts are frequently in the news, and it's sometimes confusing as to what exactly is meant by the labels that are often affixed to them. We often hear people referred to, without explanation, as fundamentalists, evangelicals, or pentecostal/charismatics, but what is it about each of these that sets them apart from the others?

One problem with trying to distinguish between "types" of Christians is that there is considerable overlap among groups and drawing distinctions is a bit like drawing distinctions between races. In some ways there are clear differences, but in other ways there are not, and in many cases distinctions are simply unimportant.

In any event, the differences between the three groups mentioned above are not usually over matters of basic belief but rather over approaches to the culture and the role of reason or intellect in an individual believer's life. Maybe the following brief analysis will be helpful:

Fundamentalists tend to be more separationist with regard to the culture and more disdainful of intellectual pursuits than are evangelicals. Fundamentalists have, at least until relatively recently, taken the position that the only book one really needs to read is the Bible, and that book is to be understood in a very literal sense.

Evangelicals, in contrast to fundamentalists, are often more oriented toward a rational understanding of their faith, based upon both special and natural revelation, and more immersed in, and influenced by, their cultural milieu. Pentecostals, generally speaking, are less enamored of the mind than are evangelicals and tend to be more existential and experiential. They tend to rely, for their theological understanding, upon mystical experience.

Fundamentalists, moreover, are much more likely to see doctrine as important and to see it starkly in black and white. They are more apt than evangelicals to place a literal interpretation on passages of scripture and to read presupposed interpretations into the text. Evangelicals believe doctrine is important, but they are less inclined to certainty about the correctness of their beliefs and more open to a range of views on the meaning of scripture and on doctrinal orthodoxy than fundamentalists usually are.

Pentecostals often share with fundamentalists a strong emphasis on Christian doctrine but will rely more on subjective experience and the "leading of the Spirit" to help them interpret a passage of the Bible than do fundamentalists. The latter are more prone to believe that there is an objectively correct interpretation of most passages of scripture and are suspicious of the subjectivity embraced by pentecostals.

For a more thorough, and perhaps somewhat different, take on the differences between these three varieties of Christians, check out this site.

ID vs. Creationism

Who says Intelligent Design is just Creationism in a cheap tuxedo? Certainly not Creationists and certainly not proponents of Intelligent Design. Rob Moll writes about the increasing estrangement between the two in Christianity Today. Here are a few excerpts:

While the press railed against efforts to introduce Intelligent Design into classrooms, spokespersons at the Discovery Institute routinely distanced their theory from creationism and from those who wanted to teach ID in science classrooms. At the same time, creationists were warning their millions of followers about the dangers of ID. Its foundation in science, not the Bible; its willingness to accept large aspects of evolutionary theory; and perhaps a little jealousy of ID's quick rise to prominence make ID unacceptable to creationists.

Besides, they don't need ID's help to topple evolution. They're doing just fine. An April CBS poll found that 44 percent of Americans believe God created humans in their present form within the last 10,000 years.

ID isn't opposed to evolution, says [Young Earth Creationist Ken] Ham; it's really just opposed to naturalism. Not only that, says [YEC Terry] Mortenson, ID proponents say they're not even interested in the Bible.

"So you've got this group that's not about the Bible," says Ham. "You've got the secular press saying this is just a way to get the Bible back in the schools, because many of the Christians who think ID is great think it is a way to get the Bible back into schools. [At the same time] the ID movement's trying to divorce themselves from that saying it's not [about the Bible]. The secular press is saying yes it is. And many of the Christians who are behind them are really doing it because they are Christians."

But Christians are being duped, Mortensen says. "Most if not all of the ID books are published by evangelical Christian publishers, which are marketing to an evangelical audience. And our concern is that [although] in those books there are good design arguments, there are statements sprinkled in them implying or stating openly that Genesis isn't important."

"We're concerned about the influence it's having on the church," says Mortenson, "causing Christians to not be concerned about what Genesis says."

This can weaken Christians' faith, says Ham. "Those of us who believe in a literal Genesis have a history, a history concerning the Fall, a history concerning the Flood. So when we look at this world, we're looking at a fallen world. It's not God's fault there are tsunamis. ... Death is not God's fault." However, by only discussing an unnamed designer, Ham says, flaws in creation must be attributed to that designer.

"In a subtle way, none of the ID people are coming out and attacking the Bible," says Mortenson, "but by leaving the Bible on the side and saying Genesis isn't really important, and we don't need to worry about that, is a very subtle form of undermining the authority of the Bible in the church."

And the Bible is clear, says Mortenson and Ham, that you can not insert millions or billions of years into Genesis. "I've had personal conversations with a couple of leading systematic theologians who believe that the fall had a cosmic impact," Mortenson says. "You can't have millions of years of death and suffering and extinction of the dinosaurs millions of years before man ever was created, and then have a cosmic impact of the Fall."

"What good is it if people believe in intelligence?" says Ham. "That's no different than atheism in that if it's not the God of the Bible, it's not Jesus Christ, it's not salvation."

What to make of all this? Well, for one thing ID is clearly not a Trojan Horse for Creationism. Proponents of ID are trying to achieve a relatively modest goal. They're attempting to convince the scientific world that the idea of intentional design is a plausible, indeed, compelling explanation for an amazing array of cosmological, geophysical, and biological facts and phenomena.

Creationists, on the other hand, are trying to convince the world that the God of the Bible created the universe in six days, ten thousand years ago.

The two groups have different agendas and rely, for the most part, on different arguments. IDers are willing to concede, for the sake of advancing their position, that descent through modification may have occurred and that the earth may be 13.5 billion years old. They are willing to concede this because a. there's little to be gained by fighting about it given the nature of much of the evidence, and because b. it's not essential to their argument.

Creationists see the ID approach as an intolerable concession to the materialists because it removes the argument over origins from the realm of Biblical hermeneutics and places it in the realm of science, or at least the philosophy of science.

Creationists see their argument as primarily theological with implications for science and philosophy, whereas IDers see their argument as primarily scientific and philosophical with implications for theology.

Complicating these differences is the fact that there is rhetorical overlap between IDers and Creationists. They are both critical, for example, of the ability of physical processes to fully explain the cosmos and life, and some of the major figures in the ID camp are, in fact, young earth or old earth creationists in their personal theology.

All of this can be very confusing which is the kindest reason I can think of to explain why so few journalists and other critics of Intelligent Design ever seem to be able to get it right.

Rick Monday, Thirty Years Ago

One of baseball history's memorable moments is commemorated in this piece in the Washington Post:

LOS ANGELES -- Rick Monday never tires of answering questions about that memorable day 30 years ago, when he performed his own Patriot Act and unwittingly became an icon to millions of American war heroes and their loved ones.

Monday was playing center field for the Chicago Cubs on April 25, 1976, at Dodger Stadium when he noticed two protesters kneeling on the grass in left-center, intending to burn the American flag. He immediately bolted toward them and snatched it away.

"I was angry when I saw them start to do something to the flag, and I'm glad that I happened to be geographically close enough to do something about it," said Monday, now in his 13th season as a Dodgers broadcaster.

"What those people were doing, and their concept of what they were trying to do was wrong. That feeling was very strongly reinforced by six years in the United States Marine Corps Reserves. I still think it's wrong to do that."

The Dodgers will acknowledge the event before the finale of a nine-game homestand on Sunday, two days before the actual anniversary of it. A video tribute will be shown before the game and Monday will throw out a ceremonial first pitch. On Tuesday, the Houston Astros will honor him as well when the Dodgers play the middle game of a three-game series.

Back in '76, Monday was presented with the flag in a ceremony at Wrigley Field by Dodgers executive Al Campanis. It hung in his home in Vero Beach, Fla., until a couple of years ago, when the house sustained severe damage from a hurricane. Now it's in a safety deposit box.

Monday wouldn't say how much the flag is insured for, but "you'd have to add a lot of zeros. People have offered an outrageous amount of money for it _ not that it's for sale."

The Baseball Hall of Fame recently named Monday's quick-thinking act as one of the 100 Classic Moments in the history of the game.

"Whatever their protest was about, what they were attempting to do to the flag _ which represents a lot of rights and freedoms that we all have _ was wrong for a lot of reasons," Monday said. "Not only does it desecrate the flag, but it also desecrates the effort and the lives that have been laid down to protect those rights and freedoms for all of us."

There's more from the Washington Post story at the link. There's also more background and photos here as well as an audio of play by play announcer Vin Scully's apposite description of the event and of the characters who intended to burn the flag.

Maybe EMP Isn't a Threat After All

In the past we've posted on the potential threat posed to our nation by the detonation of a nuclear weapon high in the atmosphere. Such a blast, we noted, could release a pulse of gamma radiation that would effectively knock out all of our electronics across the entire continent with devastating consequences to every sector of society. It would effectively bring our nation to its knees.

Now J.R. Dunn in The American Thinker gives us reason not to lose too much sleep over the prospect. After summarizing how EMP (electromagnetic pulse) weapons would work he discusses why they are probably not the immediate danger that some analysts feared:

Yet all the same, it's unlikely that EMP represents a major terrorist-related threat to the United States, or will at any time over the next decade. EMP is a national weapon, a weapon that can be used only in cases of total war - and also, at the moment, a weapon effectively beyond the reach of anyone outside the major members of the nuclear club.

Technical requirements for an EMP attack are extremely steep. To achieve continent-wide coverage, a warhead needs to be lofted to an altitude of over 200 miles at a point directly over Kansas, a distance of 1500 miles from the East Coast. This would require a booster of the Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile (IRBM) class, which is one step above the Shahab series. The latest model, the Shahab 4, with a range of 1200 miles, is almost capable of such a mission, but without a full 2,000 lb. warhead.

Another complication is that high-altitude EMP requires a weapon in the megaton range. (Cold War scenarios utilized a top-of-the-line 20-megaton bomb.) These are thermonuclear weapons, hydrogen bombs, which terrorists and associated states do not yet have. It requires an extremely advanced industrial plant to construct such a weapon. The U.S. can do it, as can the Russians and Chinese. The Iranians cannot. Their first nuclear weapons, if they're allowed to build them, will be simple fission weapons of a relatively low yield.

EMP can be achieved by fission weapons at a much lower altitude. (The effect begins to pay off at roughly 19 miles.) Such an attack would be far less destructive than a high-altitude strike, with effects limited to a radius of 250-300 miles. To achieve useful results, something on the order of a dozen launches would have to be made, on both east and west coasts along with the Gulf of Mexico. This is an extremely complex operation in which each part has to operate with clockwork precision. And even at best, some areas would be left untouched.

In fact, the universal collapse envisioned as a result of a high-altitude EMP strike may be impossible in any case. The situation has never been tested....Much of what we think we know about EMP lies in the realm of theory, with little in the way of hard evidence.

Some scientists believe that the effect has been overrated. These include electromagnetic specialist Dr. William A. Radasky, who thinks that disruptions would be minor and temporary. The pulse could very well be attenuated by distance and other factors, some of which may be completely unknown to us at this time. Mountain ranges such as the Rockies and the Sierra Nevadas could provide considerable protection, along with various deep valleys around the country.

And in any case, the collapse would be well short of "universal". Even if everything went according to plan, Hawaii, Alaska, Puerto Rico, Guam, Gitmo, and all the fleets and overseas bases would still be intact. In the worst case, the U.S. would remain a reigning military power. And with only a handful of suspects, it would not be long until the troops paid a visit to the guilty party.

Dunn finishes his essay with a plea for ballistic missile defense, just in case. Better to have it and not need it, than to need it and not have it, we say.

Iraq's Progress

Bill Crawford's seventh installment of Good News From Iraq is up at NRO. It's a good antidote to the doom and gloom dispensed by the anti-Bush Old Media.

Waffling on Leaking

Senator Kerry presents yet another challenge to those who strive to understand where he stands on things:

'THIS WEEK' HOST GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: On another -- on another front, excuse me, CIA official Mary McCarthy lost her job this week for disclosing classified information according to the CIA probably about a WASHINGTON POST story which reveal revealed the existence of secret prisons in Europe. A lot of different views. Senator Pat Roberts praised action but some former CIA officers described Mary McCarthy as a sacrificial lamb acting in the finest American tradition by revealing human rights violations. What's your view?

SEN. KERRY: Well, I read that. I don't know whether she did it or not so it's hard to have a view on it. Here's my fundamental view of this, that you have somebody being fired from the CIA for allegedly telling the truth, and you have no one fired from the white house for revealing a CIA agent in order to support a lie. That underscores what's really wrong in Washington, DC Here.

STEPHANOPOULOS: That's one issue of hypocrisy but should a CIA officer be able to make decisions on his or her --

KERRY: ... Of course not. Of course, not. A CIA agent has the obligation to uphold the law and clearly leaking is against the law, and nobody should leak. I don't like leaking. But if you're leaking to tell the truth, Americans are going to look at that, at least mitigate or think about what are the consequences that you, you know, put on that person. Obviously they're not going to keep their job, but there are other larger issues here. You know, classification in Washington is a tool that is used to hide the truth from the American people. Daniel Patrick Moynihan was eloquent and forceful in always talking about how we needed to, you know, end this endless declassification that takes place in this city, and it has become a tool to hide the truth from Americans.

....So I'm glad she told the truth but she's going to obviously -- if she did it, if she did it, suffer the consequences of breaking the law.

So. A United States Senator is glad that an employee of the government, who signed a contract promising not to divulge secrets of state, did exactly that. An unauthorized leak by a CIA employee is legally and ethically comparable, in Kerry's judgment, to an authorized leak by an agent of the president of the United States. She shouldn't have broken the law, but she should have. I voted for the 87 billion before I voted against it.

The senator maintains that leaking to tell the truth is different from leaking to tell a lie. No kidding. I wonder whether he'd use that same rationale if members of his campaign staff were leaking to the press some uncomfortable truth about him during the last election. The question is not whether what the agent leaked is true or not, but rather whether a trusted agent of the government should be taking it upon herself to make those kinds of decisions, especially when those decisions may well be politically motivated.

Allahu Akbar, Etc.

Presumably, the demonstration outside the Israeli consulate in New York over the weekend was carried out by American Muslims. It's all pretty discouraging. Here's the summary from Counterterrorism Blog:

The Queens-based Islamic Thinkers Society (ITS) held a rally yesterday outside of the Israeli Consulate in Manhattan. Members of the Islamic Thinkers Society are easily identified by their Khilafah flags and provocative signs as well as rhetoric against homosexuals, Jews, Christians, Danes and others, depending on the hot button issue at the moment. Yesterday's rally was held in response to Monday's Tel Aviv bombing that killed 9 and injured scores. While carrying signs including "Islam will Dominate" with a picture of an Islamic flag over the White House, the small but loud group of men chanted threatening slogans:

Leader (in Arabic): With our blood and our lives we will liberate al Aqsa!

[The rest also respond in Arabic:] With our blood and our lives we will liberate al Aqsa!

Leader: Israeli Zionists What do you say? The real Holocaust is on its way. Takbeer!

Response: Allahu Akbar!

Leader: Israeli Zionists, What do you say? How many women have you raped today? Israeli Zionists, What do you say? How many children have you killed today?

Zionists, Zionists You will pay! The Wrath of Allah is on its way! Israeli Zionists You shall pay! The Wrath of Allah is on its way! The mushroom cloud is on its way! The real Holocaust is on its way!

We are not your average Muslims, We are the Muslims of Was al Sunnah.

We will not accept the United Nations, they are the criminals themselves. They get paid by the Israeli and the US government to do their job. We don't recognize United Nations as a body. We only recognize Allah.

Israel won't last long... Indeed, Allah will repeat the Holocaust right on the soil of Israel. Takbeer!

Response: Allahu Akbar!

Leader: No wonder they call you [the Jews]sons of apes and pigs because that's what you are.

We know many government services are watching us. Such as the FBI...CIA...Mossad, Homeland Security... We know we are getting on their nerves, And so are you.... So we say the hell with you! May the FBI burn in hell. CIA burn in hell. Mossad burn in hell. Homeland Security burn in hell!!

Islam will dominate the world. Islam is the only solution. Islam will dominate the world. Islam is the only solution. Takbeer!

Another mushroom cloud, right in the midst of Israel! Takbeer!! Allahu Akbar!

Sadly, the only problem for which Islam offers a solution is the problem of overpopulation. There is no other difficulty facing civilization today for which Islam is even remotely useful.

We are relieved that there didn't seem to be too many of these psychopaths in the demonstration (see video), and those who were there looked pretty buffoonish, as you might expect. Even so, people who justify suicide murders and nuclear attacks on Israel should be taken seriously and treated with the public contempt and scorn they so deeply deserve.

Don't expect such treatment from the media, however. Even had they the courage, they'd lack the resources to carry it out. They're focussing all their efforts on heaping their quota of contempt on the real enemy of human civilization, the Bush administration.

Stand Firm

The president's opponents never tire of declaring Iraq a lost cause and using this alleged failure as a club with which to beat Donald Rumsfeld, and through him, President Bush over the head.

Nevertheless, one must be an inveterate pessimist to see our Iraq policy as a failure. There is much cause for optimism for one who is inclined to see it and willing to look for it beyond the pages of the Old Media.

Take the information dispensed in a recent briefing by General Rick Lynch, for example. His entire briefing is here, but this part, excerpted by John Dwyer at The American Thinker, is especially interesting. General Lynch says this:

I want to talk about four specific indicators on operations here in Iraq, and I don't want to talk about what happened yesterday. I want to talk over a period of time to give you a sense of the trend lines that we see. And these are four that I've talked to you about before, but allow me to give you an update.

We believe that 90 percent of the suicide attacks in Iraq are conducted by foreign fighters-al Qaeda, Zarqawi commissioning foreign fighters to conduct these suicide attacks. Last year this time, across Iraq, we were averaging about 75 suicide attacks a day. Now we're averaging about 24 a day.

One of the reasons for that drawdown is not that Zarqawi and al Qaeda doesn't want to do it anymore, but effective border operations have been capturing foreign nationals at the border. And I talked you through last week in great detail what's happened on the Iraqi border. Last November the Iraqi government declared initial control of the borders, and over time they've placed Department of Border Enforcement personnel-20,000 people, on the borders, 258 border camps-to stop this flow of foreign nationals into Iraq, some of which are coming in to be used as suicide bombers.

So if you look closely at what's happened, just before the first of the year, we were averaging about 44 captured foreign nationals per month, and now we're down to less than half of that. The effect of that is reduction in the number of suicide attacks in Iraq: over 70 a year ago, 24 now.

I talked about IEDs and IEDs that are found and cleared. We have reached the point where almost 50 percent of the IEDs are found and cleared before they detonate. And people say, "Well, why is that?" A reason why that is, is the number of sophisticated bomb-makers we've been able to take off the battlefield here in Iraq.

There are indeed people with talent and capability that can build a reliable IED, one that will function as designed. What we've been doing is a conscious effort with the Iraqi security forces to take those guys off the battlefield and either kill or capture them. And you can see that we took out 115 in the year 2005. And since the first of the year, we've taken out an additional 26.

The effect of that is, IEDs are produced that are less effective. And in many cases, we're finding the people that are emplacing the IEDs are killed by their own IEDs, or the IEDs that are emplaced don't go off as detonated. And that's because of the conscious decision to kill or capture bomb-makers.

I talk every Thursday about the weapons caches and weapons finds. And if you looked over the years 2005, we came across 2,880 weapons caches and since the first of the year almost 900 weapons caches.

Again, this goes to the effectiveness of the insurgents. In order to be able to create effective IEDs, he's got to have technical expertise, and he's got to have the proper munitions. A lot of these weapons caches we found had old munitions, but a lot of them had relatively new munitions that could build an effective bomb.

So as we look for bomb-makers and as we look for weapons caches to this level of effect, we are reducing the effectiveness of IEDs, VBIEDs and suicide car bombs, suicide vest packs, and also by taking out foreign nationals as they come across.

But I believe that the most important indicator on these charts, on this quad chart, is this one. And that's the number of tips, actionable tips, that we are receiving from the people of Iraq. They have indeed reached the point where they're tired of the insurgency, and they realize that they are indeed the target of attacks by the insurgency. The numbers of attacks against civilians, as I told you before, has doubled in the last four months, is up by 86 percent just in the last nine weeks.

So the people of Iraq are tired of the insurgency, and what they're doing is calling in actionable tips or providing tips to the 250,000 members of the Iraqi security force that are patrolling the streets of Iraq.

Of course, none of these positive trends in Iraq matter to liberal opinion molders. Their agenda, unfortunately, is not to inform the American people, but rather to discredit Bush and defeat the Republicans. Consequently, the sort of news Gen. Lynch gives us will never make it onto our televisions or into our newspapers. Nevertheless, it appears to be the case that Iraq is slowly but steadily developing into a democratic state able to stand on its own feet against the insurgency. There are sure to be further stumbles along the way, more mistakes will be made, but the absolutely worst thing we could do at this point is to lose heart and give up.

To follow the advice of the Last Helicopter crowd at this stage of the game would be a blunder of world-shattering consequence. We must stand firm against those whose vision is so astigmatic that they cannot see America succeeding in any great enterprise. We must resist the defeatism of those like John Murtha and John Kerry who insist that we're losing and should quit the field.

What these gentlemen really mean is that we should guarantee that we lose in Iraq before Bush actually succeeds and garners the credit for an historic achievement. To have Bush succeed would be more than they could bear. We can be sure that if Bill Clinton were at the helm, and if he were doing things just as the Bush team has done them, mistakes and all, Murtha, Kerry, and the rest of the cut-and-runners in the Democrat party would be totally supportive of the effort.

Osama's Latest Missive

Counterterrorism Blog lists the ten points of Osama bin Laden's most recent audiotape. One of his aims, it appears, is to justify the murder of Western civilians by holding them ultimately responsible for what their governments do. This, he probably hopes, will encourage the public to rise up against their leaders and demand an end to the GWOT:

1. Hamas: Despite the fact that we (including Ayman Zawahiri) warned (Muslim Palestinians) not to take part in elections in general, the victory of Hamas shows that there is a "Crusader Zionist War against Islam." Cutting foreign aid to the Palestinians because of Hamas victory proves that war.

2. The public (in the West and the US), despite our warnings, continues to reelect these Governments, pay taxes to these Governments, and send their children to fight against us. They (civilians) are therefore part of the war against us. They are responsible for any harm that would be caused to them.

3. Sudan: The Bashir Government is failing in stopping the Crusader War in Sudan. The Crusaders (Britain) has pushed the southerners (Blacks) to separate. The US has armed them and is supporting them. And now, because of tribal tensions in Darfour, the Crusaders are planning on intervening there. We are calling on the Jihadists to fight them in Darfour and Southern Sudan.

4. Long War: We're calling on all Jihadists, particularly in Sudan and the Arabian Peninsula to prepare themselves for a long war.

5. Danish Cartoons: We are asking the Danish Government to remit the Cartoonists to al Qaida.

6. Saudis: We criticize the Saudi Monarch for refuting the idea of Clash of Civilizations. There is a clash led by the West against Islam.

7. Arab Liberals: Jihadists must silence the Arab and Muslim liberals. (A list has been established, but it wasn't aired).

8. Education: We warn [against] any change that would affect the educational curriculum in the Arab and Muslim world.

9. Arab TV: We warn against those TV stations airing into the region and propagating Crusader propaganda.

10: Truce: We offered a truce to the West (i.e. US and Europe) but their public refused to accept it. They will only blame themselves.

Number 4 is particularly interesting inasmuch as it suggests that bin Laden is no longer optimistic about the outcome of global jihad. He also seems to have written off Iraq and looks to Saudi Arabia and Africa as more promising.

Number 8 is also of interest because it supports the complaint of many observers that it is through the schools (madrassas) that the extremists are preparing future jihadis. These schools should be shut down in the U.S. and Europe, and it is astonishing to us that they haven't been already.

Let's Call the Fouls Both Ways

A group of debauched young white Duke University students allegedly assaults a black stripper and the cable news shows go wall to wall playing up the racial aspects of the incident. All the usual suspects emerge to tell us what this says about white attitudes toward black women and how racism still thrives in the ivory towers of white privilege, etc, etc.

Meanwhile, a gang of Neanderthals attacks several people just minding their own business in Las Vegas. The attacks are savage and disgusting, serving no purpose except to inflict pain and suffering on a complete stranger. The news media dutifully mentions them, but it wasn't until I saw the surveillance tapes of the brutal beatings that what everyone pretty much knew, but nobody wanted to say, became clear. The gang of attackers were black and the victims, as far as I could tell, were white.

There wasn't a peep about the race of any of those involved in this savagery in any of the reports I read or heard (see here or here, for example) until Campbell Brown asked a guest on the Today show Saturday morning whether police thought there might be just a teensy racial dimension to the attacks. Her guest replied, that, no, there probably wasn't, the attackers just happened to be black and the victims just happened to be white, and Ms Brown was happy to let that answer suffice.

For the media, racism is only a factor in crimes in which whites attack blacks, a phenomenon which is much more uncommon than the reverse. In fact, blacks are 50 times more likely to commit violent crimes against whites than whites are against blacks. Bureau of Justice victimization reports show that 89 percent of interracial crimes involved black perpetrators and white victims. Yet the media seems to want us to believe that the real problem in America is white violence against blacks.

Let three white degenerates merely be charged with having forced themselves onto a black stripper, and the news media is made delirious by the catnip of racism in the air. Yet when fifteen to twenty black sub-humans punch, kick, and whip innocent bystanders who just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, one is given to think the word racism must have suddenly disappeared from the media style manual.

A basketball referee who only called fouls against one team and not the other would quickly lose the respect of everyone in the game. Maybe this helps explain the low esteem in which the modern media is held.

Dancing on the Head of a Pin

Several very prominent atheists have gathered at The Edge to wrestle over whether it is ethical of them to accept fellowship grants from the Templeton Foundation. The Foundation awards extremely generous amounts of money to scholars seeking to promote a deeper and richer understanding of the relationship of science and religion, and since most of the heavyweights in this debate desire that religion cease to exist altogether, they're torn over whether they are behaving immorally by allowing themselves to be seduced by the Templeton offer.

There's something amusing about a bunch of atheists struggling with a moral question. Their debate reminds the reader of medieval theological arguments over how many angels could dance on the head of a pin.

If atheists are correct in their belief that there is no God, which they presume they are, then questions of ethical propriety are a bit like the 19th century ether. They seem as if they should be real and mean something, but in fact they're illusions which don't mean anything at all. The question of whether atheists ought to take the money when they don't agree with the Foundation's aims is absurd. If there is no God then there is no objective standard of ethics, and all statements of morality are simply expressions of our own desires and preferences.

What, after all, would make an act right or wrong in the absence of a perfectly good, all-knowing Lawgiver? What is it that would make any moral notion obligatory? More to the point, what would make taking the Foundation's money a wrong act? Why would it be wrong to misrepresent oneself to the Foundation, especially if doing so works to one's advantage?

To be sure, other people may not like someone who did such a thing, but so what? What is it about not being liked that makes an act immoral?

In other words, the eminent scientists and philosophers involved in this debate should simply do whatever they feel like doing and not worry about whether it is "right" in some metaphysical sense. It isn't right. Nor is it wrong. Nothing is. That's one of the many ugly consequences of atheism, and it's a consequence that those atheists who are aware of it rarely wish to publicize.

Top Ten Cars

For automobile lovers Forbes has a Top Ten Best Designed Cars feature which begins here. One interesting aspect of the story is that number one on the list costs about $18,000, and number ten will set you back $600,000. You might have to take on a part-time job if you want one.

Highs and Lows

It's passing strange that Democrats still complain about a weak economy with unemployment so low and the Dow so high:

Blue chips gained Thursday, pushing the Dow industrials to their highest close since January 2000, amid solid earnings from GM and a retreat from record oil prices.

The Dow Jones industrial average (up 64.12 to 11,342.89, Charts) rose 0.6 percent, closing at its highest point since Jan. 20, 2000, when the blue-chip indicator finished at 11,351.30. It's also within sight of its all time high of 11,722.98, reached on Jan. 14, 2000.

Maybe the Dems are just hoping that nobody's paying attention. They might be right. The Dow is approaching its highest level ever while Bush's approval ratings are sinking to among the lowest ever. We have a booming economy under the aegis, according to Sean Wilentz at Rolling Stone, of the worst president ever. Go figure.

Republicans Are the Luckiest People

The Republican party doesn't deserve to be this lucky:

(Reuters) - Former Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry said on Thursday he was seriously thinking about another White House bid in 2008 and will decide before the year is out.

"I will make that decision toward the end of the year, but I'm thinking about it hard," Kerry said in response to a question at the Latin Economic Forum at the United Nations.

The Republicans have been incredibly fortunate in the last two presidential elections, largely because of the quality of the Democratic candidates who have been trotted out to oppose them. Another John Kerry candidacy would make it three in a row. They must be thinking that it really is too much to hope for.

On the other hand, aside from the politically skillful Bill Clinton, when in the last forty five years have the Democrats offered the nation a really good candidate for president?

Somebody Has to Do it.

Here's a great idea. If the feds are going to drag their heels on securing the borders, shame them into taking the problem seriously. This is a story worth following:

TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) -- If the government doesn't build security fencing along the Mexico border, Minuteman border watch leader Chris Simcox says he and his supporters will. Simcox, whose civilian watch group opposes illegal immigration, said Wednesday he was sending an ultimatum to President Bush to deploy military reserves to the Arizona border by May 25 or his supporters will break ground for their own building project.

"We're going to show the federal government how easy it is to build these security fences, how inexpensively they can be built when built by private people and free enterprise," Simcox said.

George Bush's approval ratings are down among Republicans to 66%. Pundits say its because of the war, but we doubt that. In our view it's because he's done nothing to curb spending and even less to secure our southern border. If he won't do it, Americans will do it for him. Unfortunately, the fence can only be built on private land, and a lot of the border is public land under government control. Even so, the Minutemen have the right idea, and maybe their example will have a salutary effect on the thinking of our congressmen and president. We'll see.

Free Speech

Wang Wenyi is being given a lesson about the 1st Amendment to the US Constitution and I suspect she's somewhat confused. Perhaps the America she heard about is not the America that exists today. It seems she has been charged with the misdemeanor of willfully intimidating, coercing, threatening and harassing a foreign official.

That's rich. Read the details here.

Meanwhile, we have this item that might help to explain Ms Wenyi's outspokenness.

Back in February I posted this Potpourri Rant that mentioned how in exchange for the opportunity to do business with China, CISCO was cooperating with the Chinese government to enable the Chinese to track dissidents through the Internet, some of whom are executed and their organs harvested for sale.

It looks like the Chinese (our favorite nation trade status partner) have decided to save on the cost of the bullet. Now it looks like they simply perform the surgery on living individuals and allow nature to takes its course.

Ya gotta hand it to those Chinese. There's a certain economic efficiency and elegance to it don't you think?

CIA Leaker Fired

This is welcome news. One of the miscreants responsible for disclosing classified information to the media has been cashiered. We hope she will also be prosecuted:

WASHINGTON - In a rare occurrence, the CIA fired an officer who acknowledged giving classified information to a reporter, NBC News learned Friday. The officer flunked a polygraph exam before being fired on Thursday and is now under investigation by the Justice Department, NBC has learned.

Intelligence sources tell NBC News the accused officer, Mary McCarthy, worked in the CIA's inspector general's office and had worked for the National Security Council under the Clinton and and George W. Bush administrations.

The leak pertained to stories on the CIA's rumored secret prisons in Eastern Europe, sources told NBC. The information was allegedly provided to Dana Priest of the Washington Post, who wrote about CIA prisons in November and was awarded a Pulitzer Prize on Monday for her reporting.

Sources said the CIA believes McCarthy had more than a dozen unauthorized contacts with Priest. Information about subjects other than the prisons may have been leaked as well.

Perhaps the example being made of Ms McCarthy will have a salutary effect throughout government and there will be a greater reticence among those who know and are sworn to protect our nation's secrets hereafter.

Gas Rant

I just filled up the car at the local gas station with 92 octane (middle grade) at a cost of $3.06 per gallon. Ouch! It looks like we are just about at post Katrina / Rita days except there isn't any hurricane. Or at least one we can blame on nature.

There is a silver lining in the rising price of gas though and there is benefit to be appreciated. SUVs that get 12 miles to the gallon will start to disappear from the roads. You know them, their the vehicles that blind you at night when they're behind you and their headlights are so high that they reflect in your rear-view mirror causing a nearly total inability to see where you are going.

When they're in front of you, you can't see anything beyond them so you have no idea what the rest of the traffic might be doing. In addition, statistics show that the other party of an accident involving an SUV is 5 times more likely to be killed.

To me, high gas prices are a God-send. I hope they go to $5 a gallon and with our present administration hard at work on their "energy policy", I suspect they will. Then the SUVs will become a thing of the past and as far as I'm concerned, good riddance.

Perhaps the legacy of the Bush administration will be that he single handedly enacted policy to rid the roads of these monster vehicles that consume twice the gas as the average vehicle does thus driving prices up for everybody although I find it odd that the biggest SUVs are eligible for tax credits. I haven't figured that out yet but I suspect it was simply one of those lobbying things that slipped through on the national defense budget legislation.

There's one other way we might be rid of the SUV. Ford Motor company lost 8% today on the stock market and GM is struggling to outdo them but only lost just under 4%. What amazes me is that in the world of stocks, in order for someone to sell their shares, someone has to buy them. What thinking person would spend money on either of these companies?

At any rate, both companies are going down the toilet and when they do, the SUVs as we know them will be flushed along with them. Driving will be a much safer and more enjoyable...for those that can afford the price of gasoline.

Darn!

Yesterday gold plunged over $20 per ounce and silver followed with over a $2.00 loss.

I was almost in tears as a sat there looking at the real-time graphs that illustrated the greatest plunge in recent history in the metals...and I had no spare cash to take advantage of a buying opportunity that hasn't happened since the bull market in gold began five years ago. Ugh.

Of course, in less than twenty four hours the market recovered almost completely as to almost sneer at me for being caught off balance.

From Richard Russel tonight:

And gold, that unprincipled sneak -- it turned around and closed up 12.40 today -- and up another 3 in the after-market to 638.50 on the June futures. The previous high on the June futures was 636.00 recorded on April 19, so Monday it would not surprise me to see June gold at a new high! Silver did not do as well. But for those who were knocked out of the box in gold, sorry, it's never easy to trade the bull. All that's happened is that the gold bull has succeeded in shaking thousands of non-believers off his back. Amazing!

Experience is a great teacher although it's usually a very expensive one. I've learned my lesson well. There will be more corrections to come during this bull market in gold. In 1980-'81 there were corrections of $100 to $150 dollars that happened just as quickly as yesterday. I'm going to be ready for the next one.

Just in case...

there is anyone left who would believe that our government doesn't lie to us consider this article.

Let's take the official inflation rate, tracked using the consumer price index, or CPI. The idea behind the CPI is to have a fixed basket of goods and track how the prices of these things change from year to year. It only gained prominence after World War II, as a way to adjust autoworkers' labor contracts, a practice that soon spread.

Over time, its importance grew and more people looked to it as a gauge of general price inflation - and, hence, to get a feel for the health of the economy.

The thing is, the way the CPI is calculated changed dramatically over the years. Politicians have figured out that these statistics are useful in winning elections. Ergo, nearly every administration has altered the calculation. And always, the changes made the CPI lower. Every effort to change the CPI, by design, aims to make the economy look "better" than it looked before the changes.

The accumulation of these changes creates a huge difference over time. It's like making a series of small changes to a ship's course in the midst of a long voyage. Soon, you wind up way off course, miles and miles from where you think you are. The chart below on William's Web page shows the extent of the difference, which is just massive. The rate of inflation using only the pre-Clinton era CPI is closer to 7%!

The "Experimental C-CPI-U" is another innovation, introduced by the Bush administration to lower the CPI yet again, once again to paint a kinder portrait of the old hag known as the U.S. economy.

But it's about more than just making the economy look better. For example, since increases in Social Security payments link to the CPI, a lower CPI also saves the government money. According to Williams, if you used the CPI when Jimmy Carter was president, you'd get Social Security checks 70% higher than today's levels. Yes, 70% higher.

The government also duped all those people who thought it was such a great idea to buy TIPS (Treasury inflation-protected securities). Changes in the CPI determine the interest paid on these bonds. The higher the CPI, the more interest paid to bondholders. Some people loved the idea, figuring here was a bond that would keep pace with inflation. Given the government manipulates the CPI, you can be sure the interest rate paid will not keep pace with inflation - nor has it ever.

The manipulation of the CPI explains the great disconnect between what the man in the street feels when he pays his bills and what the confident, well-dressed Fed chiefs and politicians try to tell him. The cost of living is rising a lot more than they want you to believe. At a 7% annual rate of inflation, the cost of living would double in about 10 years. Looked at differently, the purchasing power of your dollar will fall in half.

...

What about unemployment? The government, since the time of the Kennedy administration, has been changing the definition of "unemployed." Again, many small changes over time lead to dramatic end results. According to Williams, if you back out the changes, you get an unemployment number closer to 12%!

Let's look at the federal deficit - basically, the amount of money the government is losing every year. The official deficit for 2005 was $319 billion. However, this excludes unfunded Social Security and Medicare obligations. Throw them into the mix and calculate the deficit the way a business does in its financial statements - and you get an annual deficit around $3.5 trillion.

That's more than 10 times the so-called "official" deficit. By Williams' calculations, you could raise the tax rate to 100% - dump everyone's salaries into the U.S. Treasury - and still have a deficit.

Years of such deficits have created a mountain of obligations for the U.S. government. As Williams says, "The fiscal 2005 statement shows that total federal obligations at the end of September were $51 trillion; over four times the level of GDP." These debts are unsustainable. The bills must go unpaid. If the U.S. government were a private corporation, its bankruptcy would be beyond dispute.

There are only two ways to protect yourself from this kind of abuse. Buy gold and ride the storm or buy gold and leave the country.