Did He Really Say <i>That</i>?

Tapscott has an astonishing quote made by Senator John McCain during a recent appearance on the Don Imus show. McCain said that he would dispense with the first amendment if he could get "clean government" in return. His exact words were:

"He [Michael Graham] also mentioned my abridgement of First Amendment rights, i.e. talking about campaign finance reform....I know that money corrupts....I would rather have a clean government than one where quote First Amendment rights are being respected, that has become corrupt. If I had my choice, I'd rather have the clean government."

Given the choice between preserving the constitution and eliminating government corruption McCain would sacrifice the constitution. His desire to rid the government of the sleaze of venality and greed is praiseworthy. His willingness to jettison the constitution to get us there is abhorrent. The senator votes as though he were generally conservative, but no Burkean or Reagan conservative would ever dream of letting such a thought make it past his lips. One wonders if he realized what he was saying and how much damage these words will do to him in 2008.

Thanks to Captain's Quarters for the tip.

This Can't Be Good

From the link:

Numerous economists have expressed optimism about Iran's ambitions, saying that the impact of the Iran oil bourse on the American dollar-and U.S. economy could be worse than Iran launching a "direct nuclear attack."

While the article is somewhat dated and keeping in mind the need to consider the source, aljazeera.com, it still speaks to the implications of their effort.

And this (also dated) article:

The Bush administration will never allow the Iranian government to open an oil exchange (bourse) that trades petroleum in euros. If that were to happen, hundreds of billions of dollars would come flooding back to the United States crushing the greenback and destroying the economy. This is why Bush and Co. is planning to lead the nation to war against Iran. It is straightforward defense of the current global system and the continuing dominance of the reserve currency, the dollar.

...

With economies so interdependent and interwoven, a global, not just American Depression would occur with a domino effect throwing the rest of world economies into poverty. Markets for acutely less expensive US exports would never materialize.

The result, some SME's estimate, might be as many as 200 million Americans out of work and starving on the streets with nobody and nothing able to rescue or aid them, contrary to the 1920/30 Great Depression through soup kitchens and charitable support efforts.

Can You Live With That?

Tens of thousands of antiwar protestors marched in New York yesterday.

"We are here today because the war is illegal, immoral and unethical," said the Rev. Al Sharpton, who is certainly an expert in such things. If the Reverend Sharpton needed proof of his claims, this sign-holder had it ready to hand:

The claim asserted by this sign is so bizarre, so stupid, that it immediately discredits whatever arguments the sign-holder might otherwise make.

We also note that not everyone marching against the war is opposed to war itself. They're just opposed to this war.

There are politically correct wars and politically incorrect wars. The way to tell the difference is that the latter is any war Bush happens to have initiated. The former is, inter alia, a war that we are not currently fighting.

Here are two questions every protestor should be required to answer before they get their official protestor certificate: "What do you think will happen in, and to, Iraq once American forces are withdrawn?" And secondly, "Can you live with that?"

I have no way of knowing, of course, but I wonder how many in yesterday's crowd would have answered the first question by saying "I don't care." I wonder, too, how many would have answered the second question by saying "Damn right I can."

Thanks to Michelle Malkin for the photos.

Iran Oil Exchange

According to this article it looks like Iran is moving foward with its oil exchange.

Oil Minister Kazem Vaziri Hamaneh said on Wednesday that the establishment of Oil Stock Exchange is in its final stage and the bourse will be launched in Iran in the next week.

I guess it will soon be time to start prepping those B1 bombers.

Evil Energy

Here are some facts I've gleened from the current events regarding oil.

The country's three largest petroleum companies - Exxon Mobil (XOM) Corp., Chevron (CVX) Corp. and ConocoPhillips (COP) - posted combined first-quarter income of almost $16 billion, an increase of 17 percent from the year before.

No doubt we have a Dr. Evil here...but wait...

Taken together, Exxon, Chevron and ConocoPhillips made a profit of $8.19 on every $100 in sales. In contrast, Internet bellwethers Google Inc. (GOOG), Yahoo Inc. (YHOO) and eBay (EBAY) Inc. collectively turned a $19.20 profit on every $100 of their combined revenue.

And of course, despite the outrage from our congressmen, the government sees to it that it gets its share of the windfall...

In the first quarter, Exxon, Chevron and ConocoPhillips turned over a combined $13.8 billion in sales taxes - about 7 percent of their total revenue.

This supports my claim stated in an earlier post...

Economists are perhaps most troubled by the possibility that lawmakers will consider suspending the federal 18.4-cent-per-gallon gasoline tax. All that would do is raise demand and worsen the government deficit - a lose-lose proposition, they said.

And here is a statement that affirms the logical conclusion of free markets...

Art Smith, chief executive of energy consultant John S. Herold, said $75 oil is "the best thing that could happen to the alternative energy business" and is the greatest force for change in the market. He and other analysts said SUV sales are already declining, and they expect Americans to think more critically about the energy efficiency of their homes and the lengths of their commutes in the years ahead.

We haven't seen much about this in the news yet but the cost of increases in petroleum reflected at the pump are only the beginning. Keep in mind that everything you buy is transported to the stores you frequent by rail and truck. The increased transportation costs will eventually and most assuredly appear in the price tag of the goods you purchase as transportation costs will inevitably be passed on to the consumer.

Also note that petroleum is a vital component in the manufacture of many of the products we buy today. The increase in the cost of petroleum will eventually be reflected there as well.

Sure, higher energy prices are tough to take but you don't have to be a victim. You can invest in energy companies to offset the losses due to higher prices of petroleum and related products. Another positive note is that higher energy prices enable alternative energy technologies to be developed. This, and only this, will free us from our dependency on OPEC.

God Save Their Souls

For some people the death penalty would be a sentence of unfathomable mercy compared to what they deserve:

Prosecutors won't seek hate-crime charges against two white teens accused of brutally beating and sodomizing a 16-year-old Hispanic boy after he tried to kiss a young girl, officials said.

If the teenagers are convicted, though, jurors will be told during sentencing about the ethnic slurs used during the attack, Harris County prosecutor Mike Trent told the Houston Chronicle for Friday's editions. David Henry Tuck, 18, and Keith Robert Turner, 17, are both charged with aggravated sexual assault in the attack that left the unidentified victim in critical condition with massive internal injuries.

Authorities said the two dragged the boy from a house party Saturday and into the yard, where they sodomized him with a plastic pipe from a patio table umbrella and poured bleach on him. Trent on Friday described the pipe as being sharpened at one end and said Tuck stomped on the boy with steel-toe boots and kicked the pipe into him. At one point, the teens tried to carve something on the boy's chest with a knife, he told CNN Friday.

"I don't know that the very beginning of the attack was racial," Trent said, "but there's no question that they were venting quite a bit of hatred in their hearts."

The victim lay behind the house for more than 10 hours before he was found and someone called an ambulance. Trent said there were witnesses to the beating, though no one else had been charged. "You do certainly have to wonder why anyone not report that for as long as they did," he told CNN.

Investigators said the attack happened at an unsupervised house party in Spring after the 16-year-old tried to kiss a 12-year-old Hispanic girl.

Bleach was poured over the boy's body in an attempt to destroy DNA evidence, Sheriff's Lt. John Denholm said. Trent said Friday that doctors had also told investigators they suspected some kind of toxicity in his internal organs that may have been caused by foreign substance, "which makes me wonder if they didn't pour bleach down the pipe as well."

The sexual assault charges are punishable by five years to life in prison. Trent said if the victim dies, the teens could face murder charges punishable by life in prison or the death penalty.

Never mind their ages and the Supreme Court's refusal to allow minors to be executed. Anyone who would do what these two young men did is an animal that should be put to rest just as would be done with a vicious dog. Even if the victim doesn't die, his attackers should at the very least spend the rest of their lives in prison. They don't belong in human society.

I know. Someone will ask what room such sentiments leave for Christian compassion and human redemption. Christian compassion consists in resisting the temptation to treat these wretches in the same savage fashion that they treated their victim. They should be executed quickly and painlessly and then forgotten.

As for redemption this a theological matter and as such is of no concern to the state. Redemption is the prerogative of God, not society. The state's responsibility is to dispatch justice tempered with mercy (compassion). We do pray, nonetheless, that God save the souls of these monsters even as we wish that the justice system could, and would, make their souls available for saving.

Causes of Decline

A friend notes an interesting item from an article in our local paper. In a speech marking a celebration of a local councilwoman being named Democrat of the Year, state representative Daylin Leach (D) pointed to three events from the 1960s and 1970s which caused the current decline of the Democratic party - the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement and Roe vs. Wade. Since 1974, he said, Democrats have not had a banner year in national politics.

The article doesn't say exactly how these issues precipitated the Democrats' fall from popular grace, but we can guess. The Vietnam war, for instance, branded the Democrats for two generations as soft on national defense. The current crop of Democrats have only reinforced that perception among the public.

The Civil Rights Movement, which could have been the crowning achievement of the Democrats in the last half of the twentieth century, turned out to be a mixed bag. John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Hubert Humphrey and others get much of the credit for the progress of civil rights in the 60's and 70's, but it was also Democrats in the south who opposed the national leadership and fought to maintain segregation and racial inequality. Moreover, although minorities made enormous strides under LBJ's Great Society they also suffered from the dysgenic effects of the welfare state, plunging to greater depths of dependency and crystalizing into an American underclass. Other aspects of the civil rights movement also alienated voters - affirmative action, for example, and the waste of millions, if not billions, of dollars which did nothing to lift people out of poverty, but only lined the pockets of politicians and con artists.

Lastly, it has taken thirty five years for the American public to realize the moral impoverishment of our abortion culture, but it is dawning upon increasing numbers of people that, as Ramesh Ponnuru says in his new book, the Democrats, in their zeal for the right to kill unborn children, have become the party of death. There is a majority of people in this country who still find that repulsive.

We'd probably want to cite a few more events or trends of the sixties and seventies that have led to voter disenchantment with the Democratic party, but Leach's statement is interesting, and all the more since it was contained in a speech given by a Democrat to Democrats. Unfortunately, for those who would like to see a return of the Democratic political hegemony, few in the current leadership will be receptive to messages like his, and even fewer will be in a position to do anything to change the perceptions Leach laments.

Something to Think About

Victor Davis Hanson gives those who argue that we should set a date for Iraq to get its act together and that if they don't meet it we should begin withdrawing immediately something to think about:

As for the Iranian crisis, the only peaceful solution, given Russian meddling and Western fear over oil prices, may be through the emergence of democracy in Iraq, which would then galvanize dissidents in Iran. Anyone who rules out force in dealing with Iran's nuclear ambitions should support unequivocally the democratic experiment in Iraq.

An Iraqi democracy may well serve as a model for Iranians tired of the oppression of the imamocracy they've endured for thirty years. If Iraq is allowed to fail, however, then it will exert no positive pressure on Iran to change, and the current leadership in Tehran will continue its mad pursuit of nuclear weapons.

In other words, one consequence of failure to "stay the course" in Iraq is that it will become more likely that it will be necessary to go to war with Iran. No one who shudders at that prospect should be urging us to get out of Iraq even one day before that country is stable and able to go it alone against its enemies.

DOW / Gold Ratio

Here's an interesting chart that I look at from time to time.

The lower chart illustrates the DOW / Gold ratio for over the last 100 years. If you move your mouse to hover over the lower right corner of the chart an icon appears that enables you to zoom in on the chart (at least in Internet Explorer).

It's informative for several reasons. It shows that prior to a bull market in stocks, the price of gold was relatively close to the price of the DOW. We see this prior to 1929, during the '50s and '60s and then again just before the bull market of the '90s. For example, in 1980 when gold was around $800 and the DOW was around 1600, the ratio was 2 to 1 and one could "buy" the DOW with two ounces of gold.

We also see that during the bull markets the ratio diverged greatly with the last period being the year 2000 when gold was around $265 and the DOW just under 12000. That's a ratio of around 45 to 1. It took almost 45 ounces of gold to "buy" the DOW.

Since 2000 the ratio has been declining again and is presently at around 17 to 1. Over the last 100 years the ratio has always reverted to its mean and it doesn't look like this time will be any different.

What this chart doesn't tell us is what the prices will be for gold and the DOW when the mean ratio of 2 to 1 is achieved again. At today's price of $650 per ounce of gold the DOW would have to drop to about 1300. Not a likely scenario. On the other hand, if the DOW were to stay near 12000 for the next several years, the price of gold would have to rise to about $6000 per ounce. Also not too likely. And for you stock market bulls out there a third scenario is that the DOW goes to 36000 but then the price of gold would have to climb to $18000 per ounce.

The more probable scenario is that they will meet somewhere in between. The DOW could drop to 8000 and the price of gold could rise to $4000 per ounce. Or the DOW could drop to 6000 and the price of gold could rise to $3000 per ounce.

Looking at the chart and the trend that's been in place for the last six years it seems apparent that the mean ratio will be achieved before the next divergence begins causing the ratio to increase yet again.

Given all of this, it certainly appears that $1 invested in gold is a much better play than the same $1 invested in the DOW.

Teaching Evolution, Pt. II

Part II of John Timmer's summary of the New York University Conference on teaching science is here. Timmer writes that:

The first talk in the morning session [of the second day] was from Gerald Skoog, who runs a science education center at Texas Tech.

Skoog noted that there are three pressures for teaching creationism (including ID) in public schools. The first is simply to provide a historic context for evolution, which can be appropriate or abused, depending on the teacher. The second is that some are convinced that there is positive scientific evidence for creationist views, which is where improving scientific education and outreach should come in. The final issue is probably the most challenging: teaching all sides of an issue as a matter of fairness. He suggested that science needs to come up with a compelling slogan in answer to the "teach the controversy" demand used by its opponents, but I did not hear one offered during the conference.

Actually, there is a slogan already in circulation. It says "There is no controversy." It's a form of denial, to be sure, but it's symptomatic of those about to suffer an unexpected defeat that they first resort to denying the imminent realities.

Skoog was followed by Jennifer Miller, a biology teacher in Dover...Miller's talk ... made clear that the school administration, which typically lacks scientific training, played a key role at many stages in Dover, and it was noted during the discussion that they also have ultimate control over the hiring of science faculty, and can thereby shape the teaching of science in their schools. As such, it seems that raising the scientific literacy at the administration levels of schools should also become a priority.

Fat chance of that happening. Most school administrators were not science teachers before they got their administrative certification, and many of them were scarcely even teachers in any discipline. To raise their science literacy to the point where they could be expected to make competent decisions about the content of science curricula, or make informed judgments concerning the nuances of the demarcation problem, would require many credits of science-oriented education. Not many administrators have either the time or the inclination to subject themselves to that.

Next up was Glenn Branch of the NCSE (National Council for Science Education), which, as he puts it, spends its time putting out brushfires of evolution controversy around the nation. His talk focused on the efforts of creationists to gain a footing in collegiate settings, with the ultimate goal of gaining credentialed supporters to advance their cause. He tracked how many formerly religious or creationist campus organizations have recently morphed into pro-ID "IDEA Clubs." Branch noted that the religious nature of the national IDEA organization was obvious in the fact that it has only recently dropped its requirement for members to be Christian. These clubs hope to foster debate on campus, but Branch suggested they were best avoided. Many creationists are far more skilled at arguments that appeal to a non-scientific audience than scientists are, and debates draw a crowd. In the absence of the legitimacy conferred by debate, the attendance at IDEA clubs is usually limited to a few committed activists.

So, these clubs are suspect because they contain Christians and because their members are skillful debaters. It's best not to engage these creationists in open debate, evidently, lest the rabble be misled to believe that the evolutionists don't have much of a case. This is odd advice to give to the materialist evolutionists. They're being instructed to avoid a public discussion of the issues, a course of inaction which could only serve to keep people in the dark as to what the controversy is all about. The irony of this is that this advice is given at a conference on how to improve science education and public scientific literacy.

One wonders, by the way, if Mr. Branch would be similarly dismissive of a club comprised mostly of atheists devoted to the promotion of evolution. In fact, come to think of it, that's pretty much what the NCSE is.

Branch's final topic was how to handle a situation where a biology department winds up with a creationist as a graduate student. This was both of general interest, as creationists tend to use their degrees as rhetorical weapons, and of personal interest, as I was part of the Berkeley class that produced the noted Discovery Institute fellow Jon Wells. Unfortunately, his conclusion was that there are no easy answers. He did, however, note that graduate departments exist to serve the scientific community by providing qualified individuals to perform research and teaching services. There is no ethical requirement for graduate faculty to be complicit in the training of someone who is ultimately going to actively harm the field.

Hmm. Now here's an interesting dilemma for the evolutionary inquisitors. They keep insisting that creationism is religion, and now they're saying, or at least Mr. Branch is saying, that students should be discriminated against if they're creationists. I.e. universities should actively discriminate against students on the basis of their religious beliefs. That doesn't sound to us like it would pass constitutional muster, but we could be wrong.

Does Mr. Branch also think that a grad student could be discriminated against because of his/her political views? What about students who have ethical objections to experimenting upon, or dissecting, animals? What about students who oppose stem cell research, or cloning, or who favor policies that would result in environmental degradation? Would Mr. Branch say that no graduate school need confer a degree on students who hold to politically unfashionable opinions in the science community? Or is it only a student's religious views which would justify denying him a degree?

[Ken] Miller and Branch were asked what they felt the next development will be now that the latest creationist effort, ID, has been rejected in court. Miller suggested the redefinition of science to include the supernatural, as has happened in Kansas, while Branch expected efforts to "teach the controversy" to predominate.

I think they're both right, although I would quibble with Miller's use of the word "supernatural." In the present climate it's not clear what that word denotes. As we've pointed out before, the word "supernatural" seems to refer to anything which transcends our universe, yet physicists and philosophers discuss the possibility of other universes without thinking that they're discussing anything supernatural.

It would be more precise, perhaps, to say that science might eventually be redefined to allow for extra-cosmic intelligence as a causal agent, and why not, if there's evidence which points that way?

Gas Relief

Well it's the end of the week and I was due for a good laugh and today I got it complements of our government. Our congressmen are thinking about giving us back the dollars we have given them in taxes to pay for the increase in the price of gasoline. What a hoot! But I'm not sure since the article referenced below refers to "millions of taxpayers". Does that include you or me?

At any rate, the idea is totally preposterous as it's simply another example of government intervention in the immutable laws of supply and demand. What our government is attempting to do is enable people to be able to afford to buy gasoline at higher prices and in so doing they are perpetuating the demand for gasoline!

The law of supply and demand tells us that if the price of gasoline goes too high, demand will be diminished because people simply can't afford it. That diminishment in demand causes the price to drop and eventually reach a point of equilibrium. Obviously our government leaders think they are all wise and will solve the problem by throwing money at it.

From the link: WASHINGTON - Senate Republicans unveiled a 10-point plan Thursday that offers a $100 "gas tax holiday" rebate check to millions of taxpayers. Meanwhile, Democrats are proposing a 60-day gasoline tax holiday.

Since our trusted government is in control of the matter, I suspect the price of gasoline will go much, much higher.

From The Mogambo Guru

The Mogambo Guru tells it like it is. For those who will listen this is a must read article.

But what all these groups of people have is common is that they all want to be paid in their own units of purchasing power, which (at $75 a barrel) is about ten pizzas. It makes no difference to them what kind of money you use to pay for the oil, as long as they can exchange it for ten pizzas Preferably, they would like to be paid in units of purchasing power that GAIN in purchasing power, so that tomorrow they can buy eleven pizzas for a barrel of oil. And if not gain, then at least not lose purchasing power, and tomorrow only be able to buy six pizzas!

Unfortunately, the dollar is NOT a currency that is going to gain in purchasing power. It is, on the other hand, one of those currencies that are going to lose purchasing power. So, everybody, including foreign oil exporters, have to charge a higher price for oil just to make up the losses in purchasing power they will suffer until they can actually get around to spending the damned dollars on pizzas!

And it is going to get worse, much worse, as you can readily conclude from Chuck Butler at his famous Daily Pfennig site, who reports that at the latest G-7 meeting (representatives of the seven or so biggest economies in the world), they announced that they all decided that "it was 'critical' for the Asian currencies to let their currencies rise versus the dollar. I would not be surprised if China started spending its dollar reserves on all the crude oil supplies they can purchase - at any price. What will be more valuable to their economy next year, $75 U.S. dollars or a barrel of oil?" In short, will seven pizzas be more valuable than six pizzas next year?

...

So, the next time you are watching in horror as that gasoline pump is sucking the money out of your wallet ("sluuuurrrrp!") and you wonder why gasoline costs so much, don't be like me and get mad and go running up to the clerk and calling him a cheating, thieving little over-charging bastard from hell. Experience has shown that it won't help.

And anyway, it usually turns out that the kid had nothing to do with the price of gas, but instead the price of gasoline is up because the purchasing power of the dollar fell! And the dollar fell in purchasing power thanks to the horrid Federal Reserve, which has been creating excess money and credit with their every waking moment since the dreadful moment when that hideous creature of fraud and corruption was created in 1913, which was (as Mogambo musicologists know) the inspiration behind the classic Mogambo reggae tune, "The Fed'ral Reserve Be Killin' Me Money, Mon!" which contains the immortal line "Based on lies, and founded on the sly, based on lies and founded on the sly in 1913, mon, me money goin' down, mon, me money goin' down!"

Atlas Shrugged

Here's news for Ayn Rand fans. We've heard these rumors before, but perhaps now plans to make the movie will finally come to fruition:

Ayn Rand's most ambitious novel may finally be brought to the bigscreen after years of false starts. Lionsgate has picked up worldwide distribution rights to Atlas Shrugged from Howard and Karen Baldwin, who will produce with John Aglialoro.

As for stars, the book provides an ideal role for an actress in lead character Dagny Taggart, so it's not a stretch to assume that Rand enthusiast Angelina Jolie's name has been brought up. Brad Pitt, also a fan, is rumored to be among the names suggested for lead male character John Galt.

Atlas Shrugged, which runs more than 1100 pages, has faced a lengthy and circuitous journey to a film adaptation.

The rest of the article explains why.

Raping Reputations

The alleged victim of the alleged unsolicited advances of three members of the Duke Lacrosse team, none of whom anyone would want dating their own daughter, has apparently put the kibosh on the District Attorney's hopes of looking like a hero in the coming election:

The woman who says she was raped by three members of Duke's lacrosse team also told police 10 years ago she was raped by three men, filing a 1996 complaint claiming she had been assaulted three years earlier when she was 14. Authorities in nearby Creedmoor said Thursday that none of the men named in the decade-old report was ever charged but they didn't have details why.

They weren't charged because she declined to press charges, claiming to be afraid for her safety. Okay, that happens. But there was apparently an absence of physical evidence both ten years ago as well as in the recent case, and once a jury hears this history it'll be next to impossible to convict the accused of anything beyond being Division I sleazoids.

A lot of people hitched their wagon to this woman's story. It resonated with people who wanted to believe the very worst of rich white males. Consequently, these young men's lives, and those of their parents, have been seriously compromised. Without any real evidence that a crime had been committed, the president of the university cancelled the lacrosse season, punishing the whole team based on an unsubstantiated allegation against three of its members. Without any proof, pictures of these students, in association with the word "rape," were plastered all across the nation's newspapers and television sets, debasing and humiliating both them and their parents. African-American race hustlers seized the opportunity to blather about the awful history of white on black rape as if it were not the case that interracial rape since the 1960s is overwhelmingly perpetrated by blacks against whites.

We wonder how, if the charges indeed eventually come to naught, all these people will ever apologize to the young men, and to the nation as a whole, for their debased attempt to exploit this sordid event for their own various ignoble purposes. Perhaps a sincere apology will be a lot more than any of the students or their families can reasonably expect.

Two Bad Arguments and Two Better Ones

Here's a link to a very good paper by philosopher of science Jeffrey Koperski on the ID/ evolution issue. He discusses two arguments often made against ID that he identifies as bad arguments and two critical arguments that he feels are more promising.

The "bad" arguments are familiar to anyone who has kept up on the controversy. The first is the attack on the motives of IDers. Critics of ID often seek to dismiss it as a thinly veiled attempt to smuggle religion into science, but they commit a fallacy when they attack their opponents' motives rather than their arguments. The second argument is the complaint that ID is not genuine science. Koperski skillfully skewers both of these.

The critics, however, are on firmer ground when they point to the the lack of a well-developed research plan for ID. The second "good" argument against ID is that it is too radical. This latter argument is quite provocative, and it will be interesting to see how ID theorists respond to it.

Koperski's paper is a little long and probably not appropriate for the casual reader, but if you've done some thinking about this controversy and are interested in the arguments, it's worth a look.

Pass This on to W.

"In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin.

"But this is predicated upon the person's becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American...There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag... We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language... and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people."

Theodore Roosevelt 1907

There was a different breed of men in 1907, apparently. Few who have any visibility in Washington today would have the pluck to say something like this for fear that some editorialist at the New York Times or Washington Post would write something mean about him. To assert some bold truth like Teddy did might cause one to be called shameful names like racist, chauvinist, or xenophobe. Unlike TR, our modern politicians are deathly afraid of offending the arbiters of political fashion in the media.

Unfortunately for them, the visages of such tremulous souls will never adorn a future Mt. Rushmore.

Teaching Evolution, Pt. I

John Timmer of Ars Technica reports on a New York Academy of Sciences program titled Teaching Evolution and the Nature of Science. His report is in three parts which, unfortunately, don't link to each other. Part I is found here. Timmer writes:

As readers of this Journal know, science literacy in the US and its close cousin, the teaching of evolution, are major concerns of mine. So, when the New York Academy of Sciences announced a program entitled "Teaching Evolution and the Nature of Science", I got in touch as soon as I found out about it, and received a press pass to cover the event. The talks were specifically targeted to science teachers at the high school and college levels, as well as policymakers, and took place on the west side of Manhattan. The sessions were formatted to allow two 30 minute talks on related topics, followed by a half hour of discussion, and I was able to attend the majority of them. The talks and discussions were generally very good, and I'm planning on covering them in three entries to be posted on consecutive days.

Teaching evolution even in the absence of controversy can be a challenging thing. Focus too much on the detailed evidence, and the big picture can get lost. Present the broad overview of evolution's explanatory power, and it's easy to skip over the wealth of data that supports the theory. Things get much worse when students come prepared with creationist arguments and the teachers are faced with opposition from a combination of the school administration, the school board, and the state government. The meeting was intended to provide a status report, teaching suggestions, and advice for how to handle the controversy in the future.

Made worse? Why is it a bad thing for students to question the orthodoxies of the scientific establishment? Why is it a bad thing for students to ask questions and challenge the information they're being presented by their teachers? Here's a possible answer: It's bad because it embarrasses teachers who, by and large, don't really understand evolution very well themselves, let alone the criticisms of evolution, to have their lack of knowledge, depth, and preparation exposed to their students.

The first session was on the nature of science and biology, presented in part by Robert T. Pennock of Michigan State, who testified at the Dover trial. He suggested that teachers should present evolution as part of a discussion of the nature of science, as the development of the theory is an example of science done right....Ultimately, however, he suggested that the key feature of evolution is that it passes the pragamatic test: evolutionary processes work in both engineering and computer programming, producing efficient products that would not have been proposed by intentional design, including an antenna used by NASA.

I'm not sure I understand what Timmer is saying here, but if I read him correctly he's claiming that Pennock employs the success of engineers and computer programmers as models of the ability of evolution to generate novel designs. If this is the correct reading it's a most peculiar example that Pennock is using. To the extent that engineers and programmers assist in the evolution of novelty the fact simply confirms ID since the input of the engineer or the programmer is the input of an intelligent agent. What Pennock needs to show to discredit ID and support materialist versions of evolution is that this novelty, whether in some physical system or in a computer program, arises without the supervision or input of an intelligent being.

Pennock's talk was supposed to detail the "scientific virtues", but he only got to these at the very end. He considers them to be curiosity, skepticism, attentiveness, meticulousness, objectivity, and integrity.

Skepticism? It's certainly not a virtue in the scientific community to be skeptical of materialistic evolution. In fact, there's a word for scientists who are skeptical of any established dogma. Their colleagues refer to them as "crackpots."

The next speaker, Bruce Alberts, formerly the president of the National Academies of Science, [gave a talk the first half of which] was devoted to his research on DNA polymerases, and included a mind-blowing real time animation of the enzyme at work making a copy of the DNA. Oddly, he explicitly and repeatedly used the term "machine" to describe this collection of proteins, despite acknowledging that ID proponents had used his words to suggest such enzymes were analogous to human designed machinery.

The people who work in the labs just can't help themselves. The systems they study are indeed biological machines, and they can't avoid calling them that despite the telic implications of their own language. Biologists have to constantly remind themselves that what they're looking at is not designed by an intelligence but is rather a product of purely blind, mechanical forces.

Alberts was the first to raise what also became a recurring theme at the meeting: the science education system is broken from the top down. This starts in the colleges that train our teachers, which rely on the same general science education classes that those on the research track take, and provide little help in training future teachers to present science to a general audience. Nobody takes responsibility for ensuring that the teachers-to-be have a general understanding of the nature and practice of science.

This is true. A lot of high school science teachers are really not scientists themselves in any but a superficial way. They're simply dispensers of information. Many of them perform this task with considerable skill and artfulness, of course, but they have limited experience actually doing science themselves. Until they start doing graduate work (and sometimes not even then) they have little familiarity with the practice of science except what they gain as a student sitting in a classroom. One way to remedy this would be to require prospective science teachers to serve an internship in a research lab, or doing field research, as part of their education. The experience of actually doing science under the tutelage of a genuine scientific researcher could be very helpful in giving the future teacher a deeper, fuller appreciation of what science is all about.

We'll comment on Part II of Timmer's report tomorrow.

Welfare Reform Ten Years Later

Ten years ago Congress reversed the decades old welfare programs that had sentenced generations of mostly black people to life imprisonment in the American underclass. When we finally decided that we had wasted enough money subsidizing dysfunctionalism, the left vigorously opposed legislative change. Dire predictions of impending catastrophe for the poor were heard throughout the land. We can't just throw poor mothers into the workforce, we were told. Children will starve, we were guaranteed. In fact, none of that has happened.

Maggie Ghallagher summarizes a lengthier piece in City Journal and brings us up to date on the effects of welfare reform. It's worth copying in its entirety:

This year is the 10th anniversary of the 1996 welfare reform bill. Kay Hymowitz marks the occasion in the current issue of the Manhattan Institute's City Journal by asking a penetrating question: "How is it that so many intelligent, well-intentioned people, including many experts who made up the late 20th century's Best and Brightest, were so mistaken?"

In 2004, The New York Times called welfare reform "one of the acclaimed successes of the past decade." But at the time, the same Gray Lady denounced it as "draconian." New Jersey's Sen. Frank Lautenberg predicted "children begging for food, 8- and 9-year old prostitutes." Sen. Ted Kennedy called it "legislative child abuse," and Connecticut's Sen. Chris Dodd denounced it as "unconscionable."

But 10 years later, what has actually happened? First, caseloads fell dramatically, dropping 60 percent between 1996 and 2004. The proportion of single mothers who held a job increased steadily to more than three-fifths, or about the same employment levels as married mothers. With little education, most took low-wage jobs. But their wages are supplemented by the Earned Income Tax Credit. And like other workers, their salaries rise with time. Only 8 percent of working single mothers who are high school dropouts earn the minimum wage.

In 2004, distinguished family scholar Andrew Cherlin announced after reviewing the evidence that he had changed his mind about workfare. Mothers, he said, "derive a basic dignity" from work, and "as a result of what I have seen, I now think the term 'dead-end job' is a label that often doesn't fit the perceptions of low-income workers, and I will not use it again."

What about the kids? Christopher Jencks and Scott Winship found "food insecurity" among single moms actually dropped between 1995 and 2000. Poverty rates among single mothers (and their children) are at all-time lows. Studies of children of former welfare mothers suggest little or no evidence of deleterious effects. The pessimists were wrong, but so were the optimists: The work of the mothers does not appear to translate in any direct way into better outcomes for children, on average. No worse, but no better either.

Welfare reform was associated with a sustained pause in the growth of illegitimacy, which does hurt children. But it has not reversed the long-term trend toward more children born outside of marriage.

The critics, concludes Hymowitz, were badly wrong about welfare reform because they underestimate how much culture matters. Welfare reformists, by contrast, argued the way to improve the lives of poor, unwed mothers was to get them to adopt bourgeois habits, like work and marriage.

We've succeeded with the former, but it may be in the long run the latter that matters more for children. Here Hymowitz relapses into the pessimism of the right: Welfare reform can encourage work, but the government cannot do much to help poor mothers make and sustain good marriages. But the Bush marriage initiative, relentlessly opposed by the same people who fought welfare form, is a tool for encouraging civil society to do what Hymowitz says is necessary: Educate the next generation of young people about the importance of marriage for themselves and their children.

Check back in 10 years. The marriage initiative may fail, in which case a several hundred-million-dollar effort to address our most important social problem in a trillion-dollar federal budget will have been wasted. If it succeeds, in 10 years there will be a network of inner-city churches offering scientifically validated programs that actually succeed in helping young people make and sustain decent, loving marriages.

If this happens, it will not be because conservative public intellectuals exhorted them in urban journals to do so. It will be because George Bush decided in his stubborn way to do something good, even if it had no profound public constituency.

Imagine that. The worst president in history completely reversing a cultural trend that condemns people to transgenerational misery. What are the chances that that could happen?

The answer, by the way, to Kay Hymowitz's question in the first paragraph is that intelligence has very little to do with why so many people were so wrong. When you start from faulty ideological assumptions it doesn't matter how smart you are, you're going to wind up on the wrong side of the truth. Liberals are often very intelligent people, but if they start from the socialist assumption that government is perfectly competent to replace the traditional institutions of family, church, and work their policy prescriptions are likely to be disastrous.

Liberals are good at calling the attention of the rest of us to problems that we might not otherwise see, but once they have sounded the alarm they have frequently exhausted their potential for making a positive contribution to solving it. The solutions to the problems they so keenly discern are best left to those who have a better understanding of human nature.

Overstating the Case?

Our friend Byron takes us to task for overstating the case when we accuse the left of being indifferent to whether tax cuts help the economy or not (See the next post below). Our point was that the left despises the rich and any policy which allows the rich to remain so will be unsatisfactory to them. He chides us for over-generalizing, and perhaps we're guilty. He makes his case on the Feedback page.

Dow Ends at 6-Year High

The Bush economy, spurred by the much-maligned tax cuts for the rich, just keeps puttering along, generating jobs and creating wealth. With an unemployment rate at 4.7, which is considered full employment, and more tax revenue pouring into federal coffers, one might think that the Democrats would be changing their mind about tax cuts. If so, one would be wrong.

Liberal opposition to tax cuts has nothing to do with whether or not they work. The left opposes them because they despise the rich and want to punish them. Any solution to poverty which allows the wealthy to remain wealthy is, in their minds, unjust. That the poor are better off now than ever before, that there are jobs out there for anyone who wants one, does not matter to the lefties. The rich are getting richer.

The odd thing about this is that so many of the wealthy class help fund the Democratic left. Freud would have a grand time with all the unresolved guilt and suicidal death wishes that these people must be afflicted with.