Third Anniversary

Just a word to mention that today marks the third anniversary of Viewpoint. Our first post went up on May 16th, 2004. Today, 3,380 posts and some 185,700 reader visits later, I want to thank all who have taken an interest in what we've been doing here and especially thank my brother Bill for his help in keeping the site up and running. Without him there'd be no Viewpoint.

RLC

Jerry Falwell

Jerry Falwell was found dead today in his office at the age of 73. Falwell had a habit of saying the most indefensible things that became skewers in the hands of those wishing to discredit Evangelical Christianity, but he was a man whose heart was in the right place even when his mind wasn't. He accomplished a lot of good for the Church and for our country not the least of which was his success in encouraging fundamentalist Christians to forsake their traditional aversion to politics and to get involved in public debates.

He was a man of great optimism, vision, and enthusiasm, and his death will be a great loss to both the church and the university which he founded.

RLC

Best Rèsumè, Best Ads

What does it say about our politics that two essential novices with no political accomplishments to their credit (Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama) are leading the polls among Democratic candidates for the presidency while this guy is an also-ran?

Well, he may not be a media favorite but he certainly has some good ads. Check them out at the link.

RLC

Sustainable Development at the U.N.

Many people think the U.N. is a joke, and that august body itself seems determined to confirm them in their opinion. Recently Zimbabwe was designated to head the U.N. Commission on Sustainable Development. That's the same Zimbabwe which was once a prosperous nation named Rhodesia but whose fortunes collapsed after the former government was replaced, following a costly civil war in the late 70's, by a collection of thugs, tyrants, thieves, and incompetents under thug-in-chief Robert Mugabe.

It's the same Zimbabwe which is the proud possessor of the world's highest inflation, at more than 2000%, and mass unemployment. Human and civil rights abuses are rife. Entire families of farmers have been evicted from their homes and their land confiscated to be given to people who don't know the difference between a sheep and a cow.

As if to celebrate their new status as the head of the U.N.'s Commission on Sustainable Development it was announced on Wednesday that households in the country will be limited to four hours' electricity a day so that wheat farmers will have enough power to irrigate their crops.

That's the same U.N., by the way, that appointed Libya to chair its Commission on Human Rights in 2003. In the halls of the U.N. building irony, like cosmic radiation, is completely unperceived by those through whom it passes.

RLC

Reality-Based

The Democrats, or at least many of those who frequent the blogosphere, fancy themselves the reality-based party. They have a grip on the real-world and the rest of us, we're told, are delusional.

It's going to be harder than ever to make that claim sound convincing if what Rush Limbaugh reported the other day is correct. He cites a Rassmussen poll that found that 35% of Democrats believe that President Bush knew about the 9/11 attack beforehand and 26% aren't sure whether he knew or not. That's 51% of the rank and file Democrats in the U.S. who think that Bush was, or might have been, complicit in the 9/11 atrocity against this nation.

If this is the reality-based party one wonders what reality they're tuned into. They sound more like the kind of people who go around wearing tin-foil hats in order to pick up messages from outer-space. And they vote. God help us.

RLC

Hannity vs. Hitchens

Sean Hannity takes on Christopher Hitchens over the existence of God in this exchange from his Sunday night television show.

Hitchens' argument for why he hopes there is no God strikes me as silly. Why should anyone hope that there is no Guarantor for meaning, morality, justice, human worth and dignity, or eternal life? Why would anyone not hope that there is a Guarantor who insures that love and goodness will ultimately prevail in the universe? Why would anyone hope instead that all is meaningless, empty, pointless, and absurd?

Anyway, watch the video. It's a good introduction to the thinking of modern anti-theists like Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett.

RLC

Mullah Dead Fellah Dadullah

Mullah Dadullah, the top Taliban field commander and one of the most sadistic of the Taliban, has been killed by Afghan troops. He will be replaced, of course, but, in the meantime, according to Bill Roggio's analysis, his death is a serious blow to the Taliban's plans for a spring offensive.

RLC

See No Evil

Details of the capture of the six jihadis who threatened to attack Fort Dix can be found in this story. I was struck by the concerns of the clerk who alerted authorities. He's quoted as saying to a co-worker:

"Dude, I just saw some really weird s-," he frantically told his co-worker. "I don't know what to do. Should I call someone or is that being racist?"

If the "Flying Imams" and a large swath of Democrats had their way a person like this clerk could indeed be sued if it turned out that the individuals on the tape were innocent. Republican Peter King led a move in Congress to pass legislation that would immunize against lawsuit people who express concern about behavior that seems threatening, but, though the measure passed, 121 House Democrats voted against it. If these 121 sages had prevailed, there would be no legal protection for people like the teenage Circuit City employee who thought the authorities should know about the "really wierd" behavior he saw on that video.

In our politically correct world it may be safer to take the chance that these jihadis were really not up to anything malevolent than to assume they were and risk losing everything you own.

It's no wonder he was concerned about whether he was doing something for which he could get in trouble by informing the police about what he saw. In a Democrat state like New Jersey, he was.

RLC

Democrats Debate

A Hillary supporter debates an Obama voter in this amusing video.

RLC

That Eminent Tribunal

My friend Jason is a historian who recently came across this quote which he thoughtfully shared with me. Who do you think said it (Hint: It was an American president):

"At the same time, the candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the government upon vital questions, affecting the whole people, is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court ... the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their government into the hands of that eminent tribunal."

The words are those of Abraham Lincoln in his First Inaugural Address, in which The Great Emancipator is referring to the Dred Scott case that affirmed that slaves were the lawful property of their masters. What Lincoln said about the Supreme Court in his day could easily be said of courts in general in our own.

One salient difference between conservatives and liberals is that conservatives believe judges and justices should rule based on what the law says as much as possible, whereas liberals tend to believe that courts should act to make law if the legislature is too slothful in doing so. This is called "legislating from the bench," and it's the major political point of contention whenever President Bush appoints jurists to the federal bench or the Supreme Court.

Republicans want to be sure that the nominee will respect the Constitution and decide based on what that document actually says, whereas liberals want to be sure that the nominee will feel free to rule in ways that suit their progressive inclinations regardless of what the law and the Constitution say.

Thus, liberals will not vote, for example, to confirm a judge who believes that Roe v. Wade was a bad judicial decision. It doesn't matter to them that there's nothing in the Constitution to support Roe. Society needs abortion on demand, and it would never, it was apparent in 1973, be legalized by the legislature. So, in the liberals' view, it was perfectly appropriate for the Supreme Court to circumvent Congress and each of the state legislatures and grant women the right to terminate a pregnancy.

Roe is just one example. The left, recognizing that the people's representatives would be unlikely to enact a leftist agenda through the process established by the Constitution, would be delighted to have us "resign our government into the hands of that eminent tribunal."

RLC

A Division of the House

There is division at the conservative website National Review Online, and it's over, of all things, Darwinism. Andrew Ferguson has a good essay on the cordial dispute in The Weekly Standard.

You can also find more on the matter here.

I expect there to be much tension in the conservative movement in the years ahead, especially if conservatives get hammered again in '08. There will be a lot of finger-pointing and one of the targets will be Christian conservatives. Secular conservatives will blame the Dobsons, Falwells, and Robertsons for any electoral misfortune and the ID/Darwin issue will probably become part of the recriminations.

This would be wholly inappropriate since the matters in contention should be judged on their own merits, independently of any political use to which one side or another has sought to put them. I fear, though, that they won't be.

RLC

Pardon Our Hiatus

Woe beset us here at Viewpoint this week when my computer decided that, having outlasted its warranty, it would simply die. Being without a machine I was unable to post on Viewpoint or respond to e-mail for the past four days.

I am now, however, the proud owner of a new computer, a Dell Optiplex 320, which, I'm assured by the guy I bought it from, is far superior to the old Compaq Presario which now rests in a computer morgue. I have no way of knowing whether he's correct about that, but at least I'm back on line and hope to be able to keep Viewpoint going.

RLC

Shoe Bomb

Here's video made by the FBI who tested a "shoe bomb" such as Richard Reid tried to detonate on an airliner. The FBI wanted to see exactly what an explosive device like the one Reid sought to employ would do to a plane. The video is chilling. Had the passengers aboard that plane not overpowered Reid, who is serving a life term in prison for his crime, 197 people would today be dead.

The test simulates an explosion in a pressurized cabin at 30,000 feet.

RLC

It's Sarkozy

Nicolas Sarkozy swept to victory yesterday in an election that saw 85% of eligible French voters turn out. He's the first mainstream candidate to run openly as a conservative in France in generations and his election signals a deep discontent with the political and social status quo in that nation. The Washington Post says that Sarkozy in his victory speech proclaimed that:

An unabashed admirer of America, Sarkozy, 52, had a special message for the United States, which has had troubled relations with France under President Jacques Chirac, who led international opposition to the U.S. war in Iraq.

"I'd like to appeal to our American friends to say that they can count on our friendship," he said. "But I would also like to say that friendship means accepting that your friends don't necessarily see eye to eye with you."

France's economy is troubled due largely to a 35 hour work week, the inability to fire slackers, and an onerous welfare system. According to the Post:

[Sarkozy's] election signals a shift to the right in French politics and could herald a major transition for French society. Sarkozy has promised to boost economic growth and employment by cutting taxes, reducing deficits, shrinking government and loosening labor laws -- the kind of free-market policies embraced by the United States and Britain, but long eschewed by French leaders.

In selecting the passionate, pragmatic and pugnacious Sarkozy, who is a lawyer by training, voters rejected Royal's prescription of continuing big spending programs to protect and expand France's vast social welfare state.

Another festering problem in Franmce is immigration and the emergence of a highly alienated underclass of North African Muslims among whom joblessness and poverty are commonplace.

Sarkozy, who takes office May 16, has promised tough law-and-order measures and tighter immigration controls that many opponents fear could alienate the country's underclasses and fuel social tensions. Opinion polls throughout the election showed that large numbers of voters were concerned that Sarkozy had an authoritarian streak that could fracture French society.

So, for some voters the choice was between solving very serious problems at the risk of stirring up popular discontent or maintaining social order and allowing the problems to fester and worsen. Most French voters, to their credit, apparently opted for the first course.

RLC

Great Ape Project

Ryan passes along a link to the site of an organization called the Great Ape Project, whose goal it is to secure for the great apes the same basic rights as humans award themselves. They say on their site that:

The Great Ape Project seeks to end the unconscionable treatment of our nearest living relatives by obtaining for non-human great apes the fundamental moral and legal protections of the right to life, the freedom from arbitrary deprivation of liberty, and protection from torture.

Now no one could object to protecting these animals from torture and gratuitous killing, but if they are given the right to freedom from arbitrary deprivation of liberty that would mean that it would be a violation of their legal rights to put them in zoos. I'm not sure what I think about that.

I also wonder where the granting of such rights would stop. Once we give rights to apes do we put ourselves on a slippery slope that winds up conferring similar rights on all mammals? All vertebrates? If not, why not?

Another question that occurs to me is upon what are such rights as the apes are said to deserve based? Where do the apes' rights come from? As with humans, rights are based either upon the fact that we are creatures of God and thus have worth and dignity or they are based on nothing more than the arbitrary preference of those who advocate for them.

If it's the former then, as stewards of God's creation, we have the responsibility to care for what He cares about. If it's the latter that is to serve as the ground for the apes' rights, however, then I'm afraid that these grand animals will gain little lasting benefit from the efforts of their advocates.

RLC

Rare Bird

A very rare bird, a Yellow-billed loon, has been gracing the Susquehanna river in Wormleysburg, PA for the past couple of days. The bird breeds in the arctic along the north slope of Alaska, and although it is sometimes spotted off the Atlantic coast, it is extremely rare inland. It is even rarer to find one in breeding plumage so close to shore and so easy to view.

People have come from all over the east to see it, and as far as I know, no one who has come for it has failed to observe it.

For those not able or not interested in making the drive, here's a photo courtesy of Thomas Brodie Johnson.

RLC

Celebrating Other Cultures

The idea, popular during the last thirty years of the twentieth century, that no culture is superior to any other, just different, has become increasingly implausible in light of our growing familiarity with the Middle-east. Indeed, many of those who live in the region make it hard for us to think that large numbers of these people are anything but savages:

A 17-year-old girl has been stoned to death in Iraq because she loved a teenage boy of the wrong religion.

As a horrifying video of the stoning went out on the Internet, the British arm of Amnesty International condemned the death of Du'a Khalil Aswad as "an abhorrent murder" and demanded that her killers be brought to justice.

Reports from Iraq said a local security force witnessed the incident, but did nothing to try to stop it. Now her boyfriend is in hiding in fear for his life.

Miss Aswad, a member of a minority Kurdish religious group called Yezidi, was condemned to death as an "honour killing" by other men in her family and hardline religious leaders because of her relationship with the Sunni Muslim boy.

They said she had shamed herself and her family when she failed to return home one night. Some reports suggested she had converted to Islam to be closer to her boyfriend.

Miss Aswad had taken shelter in the house of a Yezidi tribal leader in Bashika, a predominantly Kurdish town near the northern capital, Mosul.

A large crowd watched as eight or nine men stormed the house and dragged Miss Aswad into the street. There they hurled stones at her for half an hour until she was dead.

Go here for more on this story. I didn't bother searching for the video. The pictures at the link are disturbing enough.

These "honor killings" are unfortunately not aberrations in the Middle-east. They are a widely accepted practice among the various ethnic and religious groups in the region and should give pause to anyone who still believes we should "celebrate" multi-cultural diversity. It should also make each of us thankful that we were born here and not in some part of the world where women are held in such contempt that they could be stoned to death for loving a boy of a different religion.

RLC

The French Election

An interesting election is brewing in France for the office of the president. Voting for the two candidates, socialist Segolene Royal and her opponent, conservative Nicolas Sarkozy, will take place Sunday. Sarkozy, who is more favorably disposed to the United States than any French president since WWII, has a commanding lead and Royal has resorted to the time-honored tactic of warning that if her opponent wins there will be blood in the streets.

Scaring the bejabbers out of the voters may help her, but I suspect that a lot of French citizens think there's already blood in the streets, at least in the Muslim suburbs, and that the socialists who've been running France haven't done much to stop it. If so, Royal's prediction may actually help Sarkozy more than hurt him.

See this article for a good summary of where matters stand on the eve of an election that has important implications for future support of American foreign policy.

RLC

For Movie Buffs

You have to be a real movie aficionado to compile a list of the 50 most overrated and 50 most underrated films, but Joe Carter at Evangelical Outpost is up to the task. I'm afraid that I haven't even heard of most of his underrated selections and some of the films he deems overrated I thought were pretty good (Ghandi, Passion of the Christ, Witness). Anyway, those who enjoy this sort of list-making should evaluate his choices for themselves.

RLC

Oklahoma Has Had Enough

With several thousand immigrants crossing illegally into Oklahoma every day at a cost to the state taxpayers of $200 million annually for public benefits and other resources, the state legislature has sent the governor legislation designed to make Oklahoma a less attractive destination for illegals:

The Oklahoma bill builds on measures passed by other states but has a stronger focus on deterring unauthorized employment, he said.

"It lays the foundations for state and local action in a very broad scope of public activities," Hethmon said.

The legislation addresses the root cause of illegal immigration - exploitation of illegal immigrant labor, he said. Among other things, the bill contains employment, labor law and civil rights provisions to protect citizens and legal immigrants who lose their jobs at companies that employ illegal immigrants to perform the same or similar work.

"Stealing American jobs is now a civil rights violation in Oklahoma," Hethmon said.

The measure targets employers who knowingly hire illegal aliens in order to gain a competitive advantage. Key elements of the bill focus on determining worker eligibility, including technology called the Basic Pilot program, which screens Social Security numbers to make sure they are real and that they match up with the person's name.

Created by the federal government to verify the eligibility of government employees, use of the program is mandated in Georgia, said the author of the Oklahoma legislation, Rep. Randy Terrill, R-Moore. It is free to employers who voluntarily sign up, he said.

Public agencies will be required to use the program beginning Nov. 1 and private companies by July 1, 2008.

Mike Seney, senior vice president of operations for The State Chamber, a business and industry group in Oklahoma City, said the group initially opposed the bill but took a neutral position after changes were approved in the Senate.

The changes widened so-called "safe harbor" provisions that allow employers to avoid sanctions for hiring undocumented immigrants if they use the Basic Pilot program and other methods to verify worker eligibility, Seney said.

"All of that goes out the window if you are participating in one of these safe harbor areas," he said.

Terrill said the measure would limit state driver's licenses and identity cards to citizens and legal immigrants and would require state and local agencies to verify the citizenship and immigration status of applicants for state or local benefits.

"The land of opportunity is becoming the land of entitlement," Rep. Rex Duncan, R-Sand Springs, said while debating for the bill.

The measure would not affect emergency medical and humanitarian services, such as visits to hospital emergency rooms and enrollment in public schools, that are required by federal law.

For our proposal for addressing the problem of illegal immigration see here.

RLC