More on Demeaning Blacks

Our post Demeaning Blacks elicited a number of questions about what, exactly, my point was. Did I think it inappropriate to compliment blacks, some wondered. Am I so PC that I think that anything a white person says to a black person is automatically suspicious?

Well, no, but I do think that there are assumptions buried in much of what we say about matters of race, and some of those assumptions would surprise us if we were aware of them. I think they would especially surprise liberals since these folk often make a special effort to demonstrate that they are certainly not racist, even if those rednecks for whom they have such disdain are.

The basic purpose of our original post was to observe that when someone says about a black man that he's "articulate," the tacit meaning of the statement is that "he's articulate for a black man." This is a compliment to the individual, I suppose, but in my view it's an insult to blacks in general. The assumption on the part of the speaker is that it's not the norm to find a black man who can speak properly. The fact that one rarely hears whites described this way is evidence that articulateness is taken for granted among whites but not among blacks and that the speaker is mildly surprised to encounter a black man who expresses himself in standard English.

When I was growing up I used to hear people say about some handsome celebrity that he's "a good-looking black man." They didn't say that he's a good-looking man but that he's a good-looking black man. What they were actually asserting, without realizing it, probably, was that the celebrity was good-looking for a black man, as if black attractiveness is to be measured on a different, and doubtless more relaxed, scale than that of whites.

I thought this was insulting to blacks then, and I think the "articulate" compliment is, for the same reason, insulting now - not to the individual, of course, but to African-Americans in general.

The funny thing is that neither the person who insults by voicing the compliment nor the person who is complimented usually realizes what's really being said and what assumptions give rise to it.

Perhaps it would be interesting when we hear someone say that so and so is "articulate" to ask them if that surprises them. The question might help to expose the unfortunate assumptions that underlie their observation.

RLC

Dispelling the Myths

Our Feedback page has an interesting reply from a student to a post from a while back that addressed several myths about intelligent design. The student believes that these claims are not myths at all, but are indeed accurate criticisms of ID. I encourage readers to check out his argument.

I've copied my reply to him here:

Excellent reply A_. I'm very impressed with your knowledge of this issue. Let me see if I can respond to your critique of the three myths you address.

You wrote that:

Myth #1: The theory of intelligent design is a modern version of Creationism.

Right or wrong it is true that in our country the modern interpretation of ID comes from fundamental creationist Christians. The Dover trial clearly proved this. This does not mean that ID is not true. It only means that in our society, the vast majority of those that buy into the "faith" in ID happen to be Christians. It may be true that abstractly ID goes back deep in history, but it is not a myth that the modern rebirth of ID is a Christian mechanism to reduce what Christians see as the corrupting influence of Darwinism on the youth.

It is true that most, though not all, proponents of ID are Christians and that ID can trace it's lineage back to earlier creationists. It does not follow, however, that ID is a modern version of Creationism any more than the fact that chemistry can trace its lineage to alchemy or astronomy to astrology means that these sciences are modern versions of their predecessors. Chemistry is not alchemy and ID is not Creationism.

The theoretical structure of Creationism is completely different than that of ID. Creationism depends upon the literal truth of Genesis and upon the creator being the God of the Bible. ID doesn't. Creationism is incompatible with macroevolution. ID isn't. If Genesis were shown to be false and God not to exist, Creationism would be destroyed, but ID as a theory would be unscathed.

The fact that most ID proponents are Christians is irrelevant to the validity of the theory. Suppose most evolutionists were Christians (many are). Would that count against the truth of evolution? Or suppose that most atheists are Darwinians (which they are). Does that count against the truth of Darwinism?

You also wrote:

Myth #2: The theory of intelligent design claims that the designer is the God described in the Bible.

Well, in fact, the modern view is indeed a Christian invention. The modern ID movement is one that has been fueled almost entirely by "The Discovery Institute". There is no dispute over the fact that the Discovery Institute is a Christian based organization.

If one were to simply ask Americans that believe in ID the question: if there is an intelligent designer what or who do you think it is? ....it is undeniably true that the vast majority of those Americans would answer that the designer is none other one or all of the Holy Trinity. Even though, at a philosophical level it is true that ID in no way implies any specific God or even a God at all.

The fact that the DI is comprised of Christians or that many ID proponents believe that the designer is the Judeo-Christian God does not mean that it must be God. There is nothing in ID theory or literature which makes a necessary connection between the two. The fact that most people believe that the designer is God does not weigh against the theory of ID any more than the fact that most people believe that Lee Harvey Oswald had an accomplice when he shot JFK weighs against the theory that he acted alone.

The designer could be an alien residing in some other galaxy, it could be an inhabitant of the multiverse, it could be a Platonic demiurge, it could be a Hegelian universal spirit, or it could be the God of Christianity. ID takes no position on the identity of the designer.

Myth #3 "Conservatives and Christians necessarily accept the intelligent design argument".

This would only be a myth if it said that all Christians accept ID. Nevertheless, it does seem true that very few non-Christians or non-conservatives believe in the ID "religion".

The word necessarily means the same thing as logically must so the above sentence in the myth is equivalent to saying that all Christians logically must accept ID; they cannot be a Christian and not accept it. It's like saying that if a figure is a triangle then it must have three angles. It cannot be a triangle and have four angles. It is not the case, of course, that Christians must accept ID in the same way that they must accept that a triangle has three angles and that's why it's a myth to say that the two are logically connected. Indeed, some of ID's most effective opponents are Christians (Ken Miller of Brown, for example).

Likewise, from the fact that few non-Christians accept ID one cannot conclude that therefore Christians must accept it. That would be like arguing that because few Democrats support the president that therefore Republicans must (in the logical sense, not the practical sense) support him.

Anyway, you did an outstanding job with this critique, A_, and I hope you continue to follow the debate on this issue. We post on it often at Viewpoint. ID may in the end turn out to be false. It may be that it's not good science (though it's certainly philosophy of science), but right now it's a much more powerful and compelling idea than it's detractors would have us believe, and few of the arguments against it seem, to me at least, very convincing.

RLC

The World as Information

Here's an abstract of an article by Carlos Gershenson on information in the biosphere. It's interesting that, though Gershenson is not, as far as I know, sympathetic to Intelligent Design, he finds it much easier to think of the world as information than as matter. Yet information (specified complexity) is invariably in our experience produced by minds, not physical forces.

ABSTRACT: This philosophical paper discusses the benefits of describing the world as information, especially in the study of the evolution of life and cognition. Traditional studies encounter difficulties because it is difficult to describe life and cognition in terms of matter and energy, falling into a dualist trap. However, if matter and energy, as well as life and cognition, are described in terms of information, evolution can be described consistently as information becoming more complex. Moreover, information theory is already well established and formalized. The paper presents five tentative laws of information, which are generalizations of Darwinian, cybernetic, thermodynamic, and complexity principles. These are further used to discuss the notions of life and cognition, including their origins and evolution.

Having in mind that we are using metaphors, this paper proposes to extend the concept of information to describe the world: from elementary particles to galaxies, with everything in between, particularly life and cognition. There is no suggestion on the nature of reality as information. This work only explores the advantages of describing the world as information.

He goes on to say in his paper that:

...the difference between biological and physical systems is given by the meaningful information content of the former ones. Not that information is not present in physical systems, but...information is passive in physics and active in biology. However, it becomes complicated to describe how this information came to be in terms of the physical laws of matter and energy. In other words, it is not obvious to describe information in terms of physics, as it requires an interpreter to "decode" the information.

...if we cannot relate properly matter and energy with life and cognition, we are forced to see these as separate categories. Once this breach is made, there is no clear way of studying or understanding how systems with life and cognition evolved from those without it. If we see matter and energy as particular, simple cases of information, the dualist trap is avoided by following a continuum in the evolution of the universe.

Unfortunately, the author defines information as any stimulus detected by any entity. Thus the negative charge of an electron is information when it is reacted to by another electron. Thus everything is information, and if everything is information then nothing is.

Even so, the important point in all this is to note that materialists are finding it more and more difficult to account for the world solely in terms of matter. The world has the aspect of that which is produced by minds even if the materialist recoils from so blunt a concession and even if he resists following the implications to their logical conclusion in a creative mind.

HT: Uncommon Descent

RLC

An IPod in Every Pot

The Detroit News doesn't think that the state Democrats' plan to buy every kid in Michigan his/her own ipod while the state faces a $1 billion deficit is such a good idea:

We have come to the conclusion that the crisis Michigan faces is not a shortage of revenue, but an excess of idiocy. Facing a budget deficit that has passed the $1 billion mark, House Democrats Thursday offered a spending plan that would buy a MP3 player or iPod for every school child in Michigan.

No cost estimate was attached to their hare-brained idea to "invest" in education. Details, we are promised, will follow.

The Democrats, led by their increasingly erratic speaker Andy Dillon of Redford Township, also pledge $100 million to make better downtowns. Their plan goes beyond cluelessness. Democrats are either entirely indifferent to the idea that extreme hard times demand extreme belt tightening, or they are bone stupid. We lean toward the latter.

We say that because the House plan also keeps alive, again without specifics, the promise of tax hikes.

We wonder how financially strained Michigan residents will feel about paying higher taxes to buy someone else's kid an iPod.

This is actually mild rhetoric compared to the title of the column which you can see at the link. Even so, it's hard to disagree with the paper's assessment of the foolishness of the state legislators' proposal.

RLC

More on Imus

Yesterday I wrote about the Don Imus imbroglio (see below), and I thought I should explain that the purpose of that post was to point out the disparity in treatment between Imus's suspension and the punishment meted out to others whose offenses were far less racially offensive than was his.

Having said that, I want also to point out that I don't think Imus, for whom I have no sympathy, said anything in the present episode that was racist or malicious (although his producer, I think it was, uses a racist epithet that should have gotten him fired). Imus's remark was racial, to be sure, but not racist, and much of the commentary that I've heard on this incident, by mistakenly focussing on it's alleged racism, misses the really outrageous aspect of it.

Watching the video of Imus it's clear that he was, in his mind, actually praising the girls on the Rutgers basketball team. He was using what he doubtless thought was black street-slang in order to compliment their prowess on the court. This is what I think the media is missing, and what is so despicable about the incident.

It is only in a degenerate culture that someone of Imus's stature, much less the millions of young people who use language like he used, could think that he was being complimentary by calling these young women "whores."

We have feted and celebrated rap culture to the point now where millions of people think that it is high praise to call a young woman a whore and a lot of young women are no doubt flattered by being called one. "Artists" in this culture dehumanize women by treating them as little more than receptacles for male libido and then the larger pop culture treats the artists as though they are some sort of prophet.

The depressing thing about the Imus incident is that the media, missing the point as usual, is trying to turn Imus's words into a manifestation of racism when in fact they're nothing of the kind. It's really an instance of the language of a sleazy, depauperate American popular culture bubbling to the surface.

Imus should indeed be censured by his employers, but not, in this instance, for being racist or racially hateful, but for perpetuating the demeaning, degrading, dehumanizing view of women rampant in a sub-culture that the media itself has helped spawn.

RLC

Slap on the Wrist

Rush Limbaugh was fired from ESPN for claiming that the media overrated Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb because they wanted to see a black QB succeed in the NFL. Trent Lott was fired as Senate Majority leader because he said at Strom Thurmond's 100th birthday that he would've made a fine president when he ran for the office back in 1948. Jimmy the Greek and Tom Brookshier lost their jobs as sports announcers, the first because he suggested that blacks were bred during slavery for physical excellence and Brookshier because he suggested that the members of a college basketball team, all of whom were black, weren't too bright.

Think what you will about any of these firings for real or alleged racially offensive remarks, none of them was anywhere near as repugnant as Don Imus's remark calling the members of the Rutgers girls basketball team "nappy-headed 'hos." So, what punishment did the reliably anti-Bush Imus get from his employers at the very liberal MSNBC? Two weeks suspension and that only after there was an outcry from the African-American community over Imus' outrageous insult of these girls.

When it comes to race it seems that some people get a pass and some don't. No matter how egregious your remarks, if you're on the right (actually left) side of the ideological divide you get a slap on the wrist. No matter how innocuous your words, if you're on the wrong side you get crucified.

By refusing to can the perpetually offensive Imus MSNBC is saying that calling a group of black female athletes "whores" on national radio/television is not that big a deal.

RLC

Journalistic Embarrassment

Journalists need to write to justify their paycheck, to be sure, but most journalists prefer to write about things they know something about so as not to make themselves look utterly foolish. Few of them are as eager to display their ignorance, narrow-mindedness, and contempt for the concept of the free exchange of ideas as eagerly as is Lee Cullum of the Dallas Morning News.

Consider this passage from her recent column on the Intelligent Design conference to be held at Southern Methodist University:

"Those who favor intelligent design seek to prove that evolution is impossible because the complexity of human systems is beyond the capacity of the Darwinian process to accomplish. Hence, humankind must have been created by a supreme designer."

In just two sentences she manages to make at least four errors all of which she could have avoided had she taken the trouble to do a little research:

1. ID proponents do not seek to prove evolution is wrong. Many of them are themselves evolutionists. The seek to show that the materialist assumptions which undergird contemporary evolutionary theory are inadequate.

2. It is not the complexity of living systems that is at odds with physicalist versions of evolution such as Darwinism, rather it is the ubiquity of specified complexity - complex arrangements of things in specified patterns - that makes the claim that physical mechanisms like natural selection and genetic mutation are all that are needed to account for life implausible. Specified complexity, i.e. information such as we find in DNA and proteins, has never been shown to be a product of blind, mechanical forces, but is always the product of intelligence.

3. It is not just the specified complexity of human systems which needs to be explained, as anyone with even a minimal knowledge of the subject is aware, it is the specified complexity found throughout the entire biosphere as well as the exquisite fine-tuning of the cosmic constants, force strengths, and other parameters that have led many scientists and philosophers to the conclusion that there is an intelligence behind it all.

4. ID says nothing at all about who or what the designer is. To suggest that it is a supreme being is to go well beyond what ID posits. The designer could be a "demiurge" as Plato thought, or the impersonal prime mover of Aristotle, or it could be a universal mind such as the European Idealists envisioned, it could be an alien in our own universe, or it could be an inhabitant of one of the universes in the multiverse, or it could be the Judeo-Christian God. On the identity of the designer ID is officially silent.

Ms. Cullum, having acomplished the remarkable feat of having proved herself to be a journalistic lightweight in just two short sentences, is nevertheless unabashed. She plods resolutely on, determined to make herself look as benighted as one person can possibly look. She declares, for example, that:

"Their [ID proponents] mistake is presenting themselves as a science and Charles Darwin as their natural enemy when, in fact, they are arguing from a religious base."

It's not clear how people can present themselves "as a science" but leave her maladroit syntax aside. What exactly does it mean to argue from a "religious base"? Does the fact that most IDers are believers disqualify them from advancing a theory about biology or cosmology? Does Richard Dawkins' anti-religious "base" disqualify him from talking about origins? Of course not, but perhaps we're expecting Ms Cullum to have thought matters through more thoroughly than she is accustomed.

Maybe this is what she means by ID's "religious base":

"The principal funder of the Discovery Institute in Seattle, sponsor of this confab along with the Christian Legal Society at SMU's Dedman School of Law, is Howard Ahmanson, who long has shown interest in conservative religion."

Ah. Well, that settles that. The driving force behind the conference is a man of traditional religious views. It's an outrage that a Methodist school would host a scientific conference financed by a man who is a Christian. Imagine. Someone with conservative religious views, in Ms Cullum's world, should not have the same rights to support his ideas as everyone else, and if a religious person funds an academic institute then that Institute is perforce religious and thus out of place in a Methodist university. I wonder what John Wesley thinks of all this.

Much of the remainder of the column is pretty much incoherent but there are a few lines worthy of note. She says, for instance, that:

"If advocates of intelligent design would assemble a conference with their own speakers and professors versus, say, Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion and an evolutionary biologist, that would be a solid and fascinating program."

Does this mean that if the organizers sought to make this a religious debate rather than a discussion on the philosophical assumptions of science that that would meet with Ms Cullum's approval? As long as it were an entertaining conference then SMU would be justified in hosting it? Are all academic conferences at SMU required to offer platforms to opposing points of view? Would Ms Cullum place the same demand upon a conference of Darwinians? The questions raised by Ms Cullum's column are endless and none of them flatter her.

Interestingly, the organizers of the conference did issue an invitation to each science department at SMU, including the anthropology department, to debate the issues during the conference. None has accepted. Perhaps Ms Cullum would be willing to step in and fill the void by debating, say, Bill Dembski or Michael Behe, since the Darwinians at SMU have suddenly realized that they're busy that evening and since she obviouisly, being a journalist, has a great deal of expertise in these matters.

Undaunted, Ms Cullum presses on:

"Intelligent design is not science, and SMU, though unassailable in its defense of free speech, needs to rethink its policy regarding future use of its facilities and their implied prestige."

So, if a theory is not a scientific theory in Ms Cullum's thinking then it has no business using SMU's facilities to air it's ideas. Does she editorialize against allowing historians, or literary scholars, or philosophers use of the university's facilities? Even if it were granted that ID is not science, a concession I'm not convinced is necessary, it is at least philosophy of science. Has the materialist inquisition whose water Ms. Cullum is carrying suddenly decreed that philosophy of science is intellectually and academically disreputable?

"The university does not have a First Amendment obligation to provide a venue to intellectually suspect arguments, unless they are framed in a way that does not violate settled history (the Holocaust) or settled science. Care must be taken, of course, in discerning which bodies of knowledge are rooted in fact and which are not. But an institution devoted to the life of the mind does have a right and a duty to make those choices."

There are two things about this paragraph that merit comment. First, Ms. Cullum's rule would have prevented Albert Einstein from speaking at SMU, or, for that matter, Charles Darwin. It would also have banned the early advocates of quantum theory and the Big Bang and modern advocates of string theory and science writers like Paul Davies who support the idea of the multiverse. Each of these has certainly "violated" settled science.

Second, Ms Cullum glides seamlessly from declaring ID to be extra-scientific to declaring it therefore to be intellectually suspect. This is a fine example of scientism - the view that whatever is not scientific is intellectually inferior and not suitable for discussion at an academic institution.

Since Ms. Cullum has set herself up as an authority on what is called the demarcation problem in science perhaps she'll be so gracious as to answer a couple of questions about it.

ID's fundamental claim is that natural processes by themselves are not adequate to explain the fine-tuning of the cosmos nor the specified complexity of the biological world. If that claim isn't science, then how does its denial, the claim that natural processes are sufficient to explain these things, qualify as science? Indeed, how would one scientifically test the claim that natural processes alone produced our world?

I doubt Ms. Cullum has an answer to those questions, but we won't press her any further. She's embarrassed herself enough already.

RLC

Sam Harris and Self-Refutation

An L.A. Times article quotes anti-theist writer Sam Harris as saying that, "Everything of value that people get from religion can be had more honestly, without presuming anything on insufficient evidence. The rest is self-deception, set to music."

Apparently Harris embraces the credo of evidentialism, famously expressed in William Clifford's (1845-1879) syncopated cadences, that "it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone to believe anything on insufficient evidence."

The problem for Harris and Clifford is that they both deeply believe this proposition even though they can not cite an iota of evidence in support of its truth. What evidence could possibly be adduced in support of the claim that it is always wrong to believe anything on insufficient evidence? In fact, the evidentialist claim, ironically enough, is an article of faith.

This puts our evidentialist friends in an awkward philosophical pickle: If their credo is false then obviously Harris and Clifford should not believe it since it's not true. But if it is true they still should not believe it because they have no evidence for it. Either way, Harris clearly believes something he should, by his own standard, not believe. This is how we define a very confused man.

Mr. Harris is featured in the current Newsweek in a conversation with Pastor Rick Warren moderated by Jon Meacham. The conversation was supposed to be about the question "Is God Real?" but unfortunately the interlocutors wandered off on digressions into the truth of the Bible and Christianity and other matters even less relevant to the question of God's reality. Even so, Harris' confusion was prominent in this piece when he insisted that:

"I'm not at all a moral relativist...I think there is an absolute right and wrong. I think honor killing is unambiguously wrong...."

Now this is very odd. If there is no transcendent moral authority how can anything be wrong at all much less absolutely wrong? What Harris is doing is simply expressing his personal dislike for "honor killing" (killing a daughter or sister who has brought sexual disrepute upon the family - a practice not uncommon in the Arab world). He's declaring that honor killing displeases him and is offensive to his tastes, but he has no grounds for saying that the practice is "wrong" unless he wants to argue that whatever displeases him is ipso facto morally wrong. This move, however, would require an extraordinary measure of hubris, even for Mr. Harris.

Harris believes honor killings and so on are wrong because they are the negation of human empathy which is a product of evolution, but just because evolution gives rise to some trait like empathy, assuming that it does, is no reason to think that that trait is morally incumbent upon us, and certainly no reason to think it is absolutely so. To reason this way is to try to derive an "ought" from an "is." It is to say that because things are a certain way that therefore they ought to be that way. In logic this error is called the naturalistic or genetic fallacy, and it's really quite surprising to come upon a well educated person in this day and age who still commits it.

RLC

Johnny Hart (1931-2007)

One of the best cartoonists in the business died Saturday while working at his storyboard. Johnny Hart, creator of the comic strip B.C., died at the age of 76. Michelle has details and a lot of background on Hart. His characters were always among my favorites, and it seems like I had been reading his stuff ever since I can remember. He'll be missed.

RLC

Re: Amazing Grace

A student of mine, Eric, replies to our recent post on the movie Amazing Grace with this very thoughtful and insightful essay:

I was also moved and inspired after seeing the movie. After reading an article or two and talking with one of my professors, I appreciate and respect Wilberforce all the more. Reading a few snippets from his book, Real Christianity, I was even further impressed and challenged. With Wilberforce as an example, I wonder how effectively most Christians (myself included) are living their convictions. It seems that the majority of evangelicals (especially in America) should be at least a bit more existential than they presently are.

What I have in mind, particularly, is how the existentialist, because of his conviction, is compelled toward authenticity. For Wilberforce to attempt to portray "real" Christianity is just another way of stressing the importance of "authentic" Christianity, a Christianity that is so ingrained in an individual that it makes a difference in one's life and world.

It seems that, like the existentialist, the Christian should be compelled to live out his or her beliefs. How can this be done? I think that again we should turn to existentialism. The existentialist is affected and molded and driven to action by his or her worldview precisely because the individual has faced honestly what he or she perceives to be the reality of the situation: be it meaninglessness or something else. There has been no attempt to makes things prettier.

Just like the existentialist, the Christian needs to realize the ugliness of the situation of existence (though it may be for different or additional reasons than the existentialist acknowledges). But in the end, the predicament is the same. The Christian and the existentialist (or, for that matter, the Christian existentialist) both see something, or many things, that disturbs their consciences. They are disturbed because the situation does not match how "things are supposed to be."

For the existentialist, he or she knows that the better part of the world's people do not recognize their responsibility to create meaning for themselves. People live blindly in ignorance and perpetual meaninglessness. For the Christian also, the world is not as it should be. It continues, for the most part, outside the recognition and experience of a loving and personal God who desires relationship with the beings created in his imago dei. The result, among other things, is a failure to participate in loving relationship with God and a failure to then extend that [love] to our fellow human beings. Likewise, the result of this is prevalent and intentional evil done by humans against humans.

How is all of this related to Wilberforce and an authentic Christianity? Wilberforce lived his faith, he faced the problems straight on. He saw the evil mankind does to itself (in his case, slavery) and the failure of the bulk of the Christian community to respond authentically according to their convictions. Then he did something about it. He didn't let twenty years of failing to get his bill passed stop him.

And this is how he was authentic. Those twenty years were not true failure because, while he was unable to affect change in British society, he continued to live an authentic Christianity. Such an individual is an inspiration to me, and I hope, to many other Christians as well. Wilberforce recognized the horror of the real situation before him, that things were not the way they should be, and he confronted it with authentic conviction. And that's what we should all be compelled to do.

EB

God Is Love

In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him.
1 John 4:9

When one stops to consider that the Creator of heaven and earth, of the universe, of all that is, our Creator who knew us from before the foundations of the world loved us to this degree, it is, quite simply, unfathomable. Perhaps the only way we can grasp such a thought is to try to understand and believe that God is, in fact, love.

7 Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.
8 He that loveth not, knoweth not God; for God is love.
1 John 4:7-8

Easter Sunday is a significant day of honor for it celebrates the resurrection of Christ. Everything in Christianity hinges on the resurrection of Christ. The resurrection completes the work of God and His plan for our salvation and, at the same time, marks the defeat of Satan as predicted all the way back in the book of Genesis. If the resurrection didn't actually happen, then Christ was a fraud and the Bible is just a bad joke. Verse 9 of John 20 is the key. Your either believe that the resurrection occurred or you don't. We're not going to argue the point at this time.

1 The first day of the week cometh Mary Mag'dalene early, when it was yet dark, unto the sepulchre, and seeth the stone taken away from the sepulchre.
2 Then she runneth, and cometh to Simon Peter, and to the other disciple, whom Jesus loved, and saith unto them, They have taken away the Lord out of the sepulchre, and we know not where they have laid him.
3 Peter therefore went forth, and that other disciple, and came to the sepulchre.
4 So they ran both together: and the other disciple did outrun Peter, and came first to the sepulchre.
5 And he stooping down, and looking in, saw the linen clothes lying; yet went he not in.
6 Then cometh Simon Peter following him, and went into the sepulchre, and seeth the linen clothes lie,
7 and the napkin, that was about his head, not lying with the linen clothes, but wrapped together in a place by itself.
8 Then went in also that other disciple, which came first to the sepulchre, and he saw, and believed.
9 For as yet they knew not the Scripture, that he must rise again from the dead.
10 Then the disciples went away again unto their own home.
John 20:1-10

Easter is also a time to dwell on the love of God.

10 Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.
1 John 4

It is relatively easy for us to love God, isn't it?. It costs us little to love God, and it's amazing that so many don't, but God loved us, even as we were sinners rejecting Him, and He loved us to the degree that He sent His Son to pay the price for our sins so that we might be restored to Him. And Jesus loved us so, that He submitted completely to the will of the Father, even unto death on a cross.

16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
17 For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.
John 3:16-17

You've probably heard the following many times most likely being read during a wedding. It's a template, if you will. A model of perfect love, of the love of God. It provides an insight into the being of God, an aspect of His perfection. On this Easter Sunday, let's reflect on this passage and ponder its message.

4 Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up,
5 doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil;
6 rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth;
7 beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.
8 Charity never faileth:
1 Corinthians 13: 4-8

Already?!

We think this is a little premature, but ....

RLC

Felonious Speaker

Robert Turner, writing in the Wall Street Journal, thinks Mrs. Pelosi violated the Logan Act in going to Damascus and is thus guilty of a felony:

The Logan Act makes it a felony and provides for a prison sentence of up to three years for any American, "without authority of the United States," to communicate with a foreign government in an effort to influence that government's behavior on any "disputes or controversies with the United States."

Ms. Pelosi and her Congressional entourage spoke to President Assad on various issues, among other things saying, "We came in friendship, hope, and determined that the road to Damascus is a road to peace." She is certainly not the first member of Congress--of either party--to engage in this sort of behavior, but her position as a national leader, the wartime circumstances, the opposition to the trip from the White House, and the character of the regime she has chosen to approach make her behavior particularly inappropriate.

Of course, not all congressional travel to, or communications with representatives of, foreign nations is unlawful. A purely fact-finding trip that involves looking around, visiting American military bases or talking with U.S. diplomats is not a problem. Nor is formal negotiation with foreign representatives if authorized by the president....Ms. Pelosi's trip was not authorized, and Syria is one of the world's leading sponsors of international terrorism. It has almost certainly been involved in numerous attacks that have claimed the lives of American military personnel from Beirut to Baghdad.

Whether Mr. Turner's charge would stick against the Speaker is, in my opinion, doubtful, but that she violated the spirit of the act is not. USA Today seems to agree.

RLC

What to Do About Illegal Aliens

The column I wrote for last Sunday's paper was on the demographic calamity that illegal immigration is wreaking on our nation. Democrats and most Republicans, both in congress and the White House, seem indifferent to what many others perceive to be a growing sociological tsunami.

Since I've criticized our political leadership for their lassitude on this issue it's fair to ask what I think should be done about the problem. I favor the middle ground between total amnesty and mass deportations. In my view the current Permanent Resident laws, with modifications, could form the basis for a just solution to a problem that may at this point be almost insoluble. Here's what such a solution might look like:

We need first to seal the border. This is the sine qua non of any solution. There's no point in cleaning the carpets while the ceiling is still leaking. Once the border is relatively impervious to all but the most dauntless and determined then we can address the situation of those already here. I am not opposed in principle to rounding them all up and sending them home, but I'm not sure how feasible that is.

Perhaps a better course, one that avoids the worst elements of amnesty and yet allows us to demonstrate compassion for people who are simply trying to make a living and feed their families as best they can, is to tell those illegals among us that they can stay as long as they like with the following provisos:

They must apply for a Green Card (Permanent Resident card). After a certain grace period anyone without proper ID would be subject to deportation.

They will not at any time be eligible for citizenship nor any of the benefits of citizens. Ever. Nor will their future children, born on our soil, be granted automatic citizenship, though they will be able to attend public schools. Moreover, they would be eligible for citizenship when they become adults provided they graduated from high school.

Any infractions of the criminal code will be sufficient cause for immediate deportation.

At the same time there will be no penalty for businesses who employ them and they will be free to seek employment anywhere they can find it. They would, in essence, be permanent guest workers.

If illegal aliens were willing to accept those conditions they would be permitted to stay without having to hide and skulk and live in fear of the INS.

Although it would require a change to the constitution to prohibit granting citizenship to children of "illegal" aliens it would be a "win" for almost everyone. The immigrants would benefit from being able to work without fear of deportation. The American taxpayer would not be compelled to subsidize welfare and other programs for illegals, the worst elements among them would be deported, and American businesses would not have to be burdened with the task of doing background investigations of every employee to make sure they're legal.

This will not please those who demand that we send them all packing, but it seems to me to be the most practical and humane solution to a problem that has been allowed to fester far too long.

Yes, it entails a kind of amnesty, but it doesn't reward illegals with citizenship as other amnesty programs do, and the amnesty is contingent upon first shutting off the flow of illegals across the border and also upon the aliens keeping themselves out of trouble while they're here. If these conditions would be unacceptable to them they would, of course, be free to return home.

RLC

Demeaning Blacks

I was watching a bit of tennis on television the other night and Serena Williams happened to be one of the players. In the course of play the commentator averred that Ms Williams was "articulate." I have never heard Ms Williams speak so I cannot vouch for this assessment, but I do know that were I an African-American I would be incensed at the condescension and stupidity that drips from those words every time they're uttered. Rarely, after all, does one hear a white person described as articulate. It is simply assumed to be the norm for whites.

Joe Biden describes Barack Obama as "articulate." People like J.C. Watts, Harold Ford, Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, even John Lee Malvo, have their ability to speak the English language noted and praised with annoying regularity. Implicit in the superficial compliment is the assumption that articulateness is unusual for a black person and thus noteworthy when it's found in one. The ability to speak well is not something expected of blacks, so a lot of people - especially, it must be said, liberals - find themselves noting the eloquence of the extraordinary black person and thus tacitly acknowledging their hidden assumption that blacks are generally inarticulate, even without realizing they're doing it.

As I said, if I were a black man I'd be outraged at this back-handed, mindless racial insult every time I heard it. It'd be like someone saying of me that I'm a black man and I've never been to prison. Not being black, however, I find it merely irritating.

RLC

A Modern Parable for Good Friday

Last Christmas I posted a modern parable about a man named Mike. I thought it would be an even more appropriate story, mutatis mutandis, for Good Friday:

A man named Michael, a father of a teenage daughter, Jennifer, had been a member of a top-secret anti-terrorism task force in the military and his duties caused him to be away from home much of the time Jen was growing up. He was serving his country in a very important, very dangerous capacity that required his absence and a great deal of personal sacrifice. As a result, his daughter grew up without him. Indeed, his wife Judith had left him a couple of years previous and took the girl with her.

Finally, after several years abroad, Mike was able to go home. He longed to hold his princess in his arms and to spend every possible moment with her to try to make up for lost time, but when he knocked on the door of his ex-wife's house the girl who greeted him was almost unrecognizable. Jen had grown up physically and along the way she had rejected everything Michael valued. Her appearance shocked him and her words cut him like a razor. She told him coldly and bluntly that she really didn't want to see him, that he wasn't a father as far as she was concerned, that he had not been a part of her life before and wouldn't be in the future.

Michael, a man who had faced numerous hazards and threats in the course of his work and had been secretly cited for great heroism by the government, was staggered by her words. The loathing in her voice and in her eyes crushed his heart. He started to speak but the door was slammed in his face. Heartbroken and devastated he wandered the streets of the city wondering how, or if, he could ever regain the love his little girl once had for him.

Weeks went by during which he tried to contact both his ex-wife and his daughter, but they refused to return his calls. Then one night his cell phone rang. It was Judith and from her voice Mike could tell something was very wrong. Apparently, Jennifer had run off with some unsavory characters several days before and hadn't been heard from since. Judy had called the police, but she felt Mike should know, too. She told him that she thought the guys Jen had gone out with that night were heavily into drugs and she was worried sick about her.

She had good reason to be. Jen thought when she left the house that she was just going for a joy ride, but that's not what her "friends" had in mind. Once they had Jen back at their apartment they tied her to a bed, abused her, filmed the whole thing, and when she resisted they beat her until she submitted. She overheard them debating whether they should sell her to a man they knew whom they thought sold girls into slavery in South America or whether they should just kill her now and dump her body in the bay. For three days her life was a living hell. She cried herself to sleep late every night after being forced into the most degrading conduct imaginable.

Finally her abductors sold her to a street gang in exchange for drugs. Bound and gagged, she was raped repeatedly and beaten savagely. For the first time in her life she prayed that God would help her, and for the first time in many years she missed her father. But as the days wore on she began to think she'd rather be dead than be forced to endure what she was being put through.

Mike knew some of the officers in the police force and was able to get a couple of leads from them as to who the guys who she originally left with might be. He set out, not knowing Jennifer's peril, but determined to find her no matter what the cost. His search led him to another city and took days - days in which he scarcely ate or slept. Each hour that passed Jennifer's condition grew worse and her danger more severe. She was by now in a cocaine-induced haze in which she hardly knew what was happening to her.

Somehow, Michael, weary and weak from his lack of sleep and food, managed to find the seedy, run down tenement building where Jennifer was imprisoned. Breaking through a flimsy door he saw his daughter laying on the filthy bed surrounded by three startled kidnappers. Enraged by the scene before his eyes he launched himself at them with a terrible, vengeful fury. Two of the thugs went down quickly but the third escaped. With tears flowing down his cheeks, Mike unfastened the bonds that held Jen's wrists to the bed posts. She was barely alert enough to comprehend what was happening, but too groggy to respond. Michael helped her to her feet and led her to the doorway.

As she passed into the hall with Michael behind her the third abductor appeared in front of her with a gun. Michael quickly stepped in front and told Jennifer to run back into the apartment and out the fire escape. The assailant tried to shoot her as she ran, but Michael shielded her from the bullet, taking the round in his side. The thug fired twice more into Michael's body, but Mike was able to seize the gun and turn it on the shooter.

Finally, it was all over, finished.

Slumped against the wall, Mike lay bleeding and bruised, the life draining out of him. Jennifer saw from the fire escape landing what had happened and ran back to Michael. Cradling him in her arms she wept and told him over and over that she loved him and that she was so sorry for what she had said to him and for what she had done.

With the last bit of life left in him he gazed up at her, pursed his lips in a kiss, smiled and died. Jennifer wept hysterically. How could she ever forgive herself for how she had treated him? How could she ever overcome the guilt and the loss she felt? How could she ever repay the tremendous love and sacrifice of her father?

Years passed. Jennifer eventually had a family of her own. She raised her children to revere the memory of her father even though they had never known him. She resolved to live her own life in such a way that Michael, if he knew, would be enormously proud of her. Everything she did, she did out of gratitude to him for what he had done for her, and every year on the anniversary of his death she went to the cemetary alone and sat for a couple of hours at his graveside, talking to him and sharing her love and her life with him. Her father had given everything for her despite the cruel way she had treated him. He had given his life to save hers. His love for her, his sacrifice changed her life.

And that's why Christians celebrate Good Friday.

RLC

A Crucifixion Day Meditation

"It costs God nothing, so far as we know, to create nice things: but to convert rebellious wills cost him crucifixion... You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse... You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon; or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God." ---C.S. Lewis

RLC

College Hijinks

Karl Rove recently gave a speech at American University which made the news because of the antics of some of the protestors. A former student of mine who now attends American and who helped organize the speech, writes to give us his eyewitness account:

I was at the Karl Rove event, and actually, as the treasurer of our chapter of the AU College Republicans, helped to organize it. We found out about two weeks ago that Mr. Rove was able to make it to AU to speak, which is something our VP had worked tirelessly on for a long time. We sent an email out over the College Republicans listserv telling them about the event, because we had limited seating. Of course, afterwards, the protesters et al. tried to claim that we had "not publicized the event." It was on our listserv, which goes out to hundreds of students, and it was on our website. But obviously, we wanted our members [to have] first crack at seats for this event.

Rove's speech ... was extremely entertaining. He had only about 15 minutes of prepared remarks, and then took about an hour of Q and A. He talked about his experiences in College Republicans (he was the national director at one point), campaigning, etc. All in all, it was a good event. The protesters, however, are another story.

Before the event, a group of about 20-30 kids from CASJ (Community Action and Social Justice), which is a loose affiliation of many "progressive" groups, linked arms outside the doors to our event, with signs calling for Rove to be arrested via a citizen's arrest (apparently because of the whole GWB43.com email accounts). Although annoying, they didn't really do anything to disrupt us.

[The GWB43.com accounts were an April Fool's day hoax that many left-wing bloggers fell for, and went ballistic over, until they found out that they'd been, uh, punked, I think is the current expression: RLC]

Afterwards, we went with Rove out the back door of the room we had the event in, which led outside. We heard chanting, which, let's just say, I am sure Rove is used to [from] protesters. He got into his car, but not too far away, separated by a barricade, was a large group (at least 50) students chanting "Go to jail Karl," the f-word, and other things. Then, a bunch of protesters broke through the barricade and laid down in front of Rove's car. Public safety (our campus "police") and Secret Service tried to get the kids up, but the kids didn't move (they went limp, which I guess is what a protester is told to do, because if they touch an officer in any way, that gives the police the right to do what they want to them).

Then, one of the protesters tried to tackle a secret service agent. The protesters deny this, but I saw it less than 10 feet from where I stood. That gave public safety and the secret service the right, then, to start carrying/throwing the protesters out of the way. Rove was able to then drive away.

To be honest, I did not see anyone throw anything at Rove's car, so I don't know how that idea started. Apparently, someone threw a shoe at his car and missed, but I didn't see that.

I was glad we were on national tv last night (O'Reilly and Hannity, of which I only saw the former), but not b/c of something that terrible. I can understand if the liberals hate Karl Rove, but they acted completely childish and immature. Even worse is that several members of the College Democrats executive board, including their President, helped organize the protesting.

A little side story: due to not submitting fund-raised funds from t-shirts and the like properly, the College Dems were temporarily suspended and lost half their school funding that they receive from the University. They have held many fewer events than we have, even though they are larger in numbers, and we are considered the most liberal school in DC. So the joke amongst the College Republicans is that our event drew more College Democrats to it than anything the Democrats have thrown this year.

Sounds like a good time was had by all.

RLC

Concentrating Iranian Minds

NewsMax thinks that Iran's mysterious decision to suddenly release the fifteen British hostages was due in large measure to the fact that the U.S.S. Nimitz carrier battle group was steaming toward the Persian Gulf. The Nimitz will soon be the third carrier battle group in the region and this fact, NewsMax believes, served to concentrate the more practical minds among the Iranian elite.

Possibly. The last thing the less fanatic Iranian leaders want to do is to provoke the United States while George Bush is still president. There will be time for provocations after 2008, especially if the Democrats win the election, but Bush, they've probably concluded, is not a man to trifle with.

The Iranians have learned this lesson afresh in recent weeks. Their revolutionary guards exported deadly IEDs into Iraq and suddenly their operatives were being killed and arrested in Iraqi towns, and top echelon people around the world started to disappear off the face of the earth. Bush has taught the Iranians that there are ways to play hardball short of open war and if the Iranians are intent on playing the game they've found that two can play it.

Better for them, the mullahs may have decided, to wait until Bush is out of office before they push hard against the U.S.

An alternative explanation being floated by some is that Nancy Pelosi persuaded Bashir Assad of Syria to persuade Ayatollah Khameini of Iran to release the hostages.

Perhaps. Or perhaps all the Islamist extremists in Tehran have converted to Buddhism and now want only peace, enlightenment and the seven fold path.

RLC

Mac v. Pc

Reader Nathaniel liked our post on the Mac/Pc wars featuring Dell's recent escalation of hostilities, so he sent us a link to fifteen short ads Mac has produced. Some of them are pretty funny even if you don't know much about computers and couldn't care less about the skirmishing between Mac and Pc lovers.

RLC