Artful Insults

My friend Byron sends along a sampling of historical quotes that raise the act of insult to the level of art. In light of our post the other day on "Civil Discourse" I thought sharing these might be somehow appropriate:

"He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire." -- Winston Churchill

"I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure." -- Clarence Darrow

"He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary." -- William Faulkner (about Ernest Hemingway)

"I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it." -- Groucho Marx

"I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it." -- Mark Twain

"He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends." -- Oscar Wilde

"I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend .... if you have one." -- George Bernard Shaw to Winston Churchill

"Cannot possibly attend first night; will attend second, if there is one." -- Winston Churchill's response

"I feel so miserable without you; it's almost like having you here." -- Stephen Bishop

"He is a self-made man and worships his creator." -- John Bright

"I've just learned about his illness. Let's hope it's nothing trivial." -- Irvin S. Cobb

"He is not only dull himself; he is the cause of dullness in others." -- Samuel Johnson

"He is simply a shiver looking for a spine to run up." -- Paul Keating

"He had delusions of adequacy." -- Walter Kerr

"Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it?" -- Mark Twain

"His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork." -- Mae West

"Winston, if you were my husband, I would poison your coffee!" -- Lady Astor to Winston Churchill at a dinner party

"Madam, if I were your husband, I would drink it!" -- Winston Churchill, in response

"Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go." -- Oscar Wilde

Reading the quotes from Churchill, one can only admire a wit so quick and keen that it can, in a moment, think of such devastatingly clever retorts.

RLC

An Independence Day Meditation

I thought it would be worthwhile on this July 4th to rerun a post we did last year on this date. It's just as relevant today as it was then, maybe moreso:

In a time of terror and war, when the demands of security seem sometimes in tension with freedoms we've enjoyed for over two centuries, it's good to take a moment to reflect on what is at stake in the conflict in which we find ourselves.

The Islamic world, or at least that part of it that has embraced Wahhabism, is comitted to an eternal war against those whom they believe to be infidels. They see this as a war that Allah commands them to wage, and they believe themselves enjoined by God to fight until either the infidels are no more or until we have all converted to Islam. The Islamists believe that Allah has blessed them in this struggle and that he will ultimately give them victory. They have the resolve of men convinced that they walk in the will of God.

There is then no negotiating with them, no persuading them that they should give up the fight. Our only options are to fight them or surrender to them. Our choice is between constant vigilance and more 9/11s.

There are those who think that the Islamists are driven by oppression, or poverty or grievances against the United States for its policies in the Middle East, and they argue that if we could mitigate these conditions the Muslims would relent. This is a grave mistake.

The Islamic terrorists are driven by an amalgam of religious fanaticism, an inferiority complex, and hatred for Western societies which have historically surpassed them in every way. They see the war they are waging as the continuation of hostilities that failed at Tours in France in 732 and again at Vienna in 1683. After each unsuccessful invasion the Muslim tide receded in order to regather its strength for another assault. In other words, for them this is the resumption of a 1300 year long war that began within a century of the death of Mohammed and will continue as long as there are infidels left on the earth. We can be thankful that President Bush seems to understand this even if many who oppose him do not.

In light of the long struggle in which we are engaged, and the alternatives which are set before us, it is appropriate on this July 4th that we pause to reflect upon what it is we hold precious, what it is we fight for, and whom it is that we fight against.

RLC

Tall Order

Newt Gingrich has an excellent piece of analysis in the Washington Times on the challenges that global jihad confront us with and the type of leadership we need to guide us through the rest of this century.

Newt's right, unfortunately, that our current leadership has failed to really lead and do what needs to be done to defeat jihadism. President Bush's instincts have been good, but he has failed to explain to the American people exactly what is at stake and what is demanded of us. Good leadership requires good policies and the ability to articulate those policies to the people. Bush has certainly not done an adequate job of the latter, as his approval ratings show.

Gingrich lays out what must be done, specifically in Gaza, if we can have any hope of ultimately prevailing against those who are committed to our destruction:

The West will sooner or later have to confront several hard realities if it is to defeat its enemies.

First, terrorist organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah will have to be rooted out and destroyed. We do not today have the strategy, the doctrine or the techniques for defeating these kinds of organizations. In Iraq, after more than four years of effort, our current doctrine for population control and for effective local policing and intelligence is pathetic. To defeat ferocious committed and enthusiastically violent organizations like al Qaeda and the Taliban will take new energy, new drive and new determination on our part.

Second, the indirect strategies of propping up corrupt dictatorships have to give way to direct people-to-people help, securing private-property rights and direct financial assistance so we can improve their families' lives and they can be empowered to defend their neighborhoods from evil men. Hernando de Soto will be vastly more effective in designing this than all the bureaucrats at AID and the United Nations combined.

Third, the U.N. camp system of socialism with unearned anti-humanitarian charity has to be replaced with a totally new system of earned income and earned property rights to restore dignity and hope to every Palestinian.

Fourth, the current system of schools under both Fatah and Hamas control have to be replaced in their entirety with a system dedicated to genuine education and to teaching human rights rather than jihad and hatred.

Lastly, mosques can no longer be allowed to preach hatred and violence. The de-Nazification that seemed obvious in Germany in 1945 will have to be matched by a dehatred campaign today. The haters have to be defeated, disarmed and detained if the forces of peace and freedom are to win.

These steps are only the beginning, but the gap between our current pathetic reaction to the Hamas victory and the requirements of victory give some indication of how far the West has to go before it starts winning. In Churchill's phrase, we are not even at the end of the beginning. However, we may be at the beginning of recognizing that this will be a real war.

Churchill was not only a man of powerful intellect who possessed a clear-eyed view of human nature and realities, but he was also a soldier and fighter who believed in sacrifice and honor and refused to accept retreat or surrender. So where do we go to find another like him?

Certainly not the Democratic party which acts as if it is the fault of the U.S. and Israel that the jihadis hate us and that if we'd just retreat to our borders, and the Israelis would march themselves into the sea, peace would break out in the world. The Democrats offer us Hillary Clinton, Barak Obama, and John Edwards. No Churchills there.

Perhaps the Republicans have someone who can lead us through the perils which lie ahead, but if so, the opposition media will try their best to ensure that his candidacy is stillborn. What's clear is that we need someone with Bush's instincts, Clinton's intellect and articulateness, and Reagan's ability to inspire.

Pretty tall order.

RLC

Return of the Eagles

Here's a great news report. The bald eagle, our national bird, is soon to be removed from the endangered species list:

In 1967, there were fewer than 500 breeding pairs of bald eagles in the lower 48 states. The national bird was in danger of disappearing from much of the United States.

Though the eagles were never in danger of extinction-the vast majority, over 100,000, were in Alaska and Canada-Americans understandably wanted to protect a national symbol.

Today, the bald eagle is doing well. On June 29 the bald eagle in the lower 48 states will be officially removed, or delisted, from the Endangered Species Act (ESA). Yet delisting the bald eagle from the ESA has been a decade-long process that shows how even the most well-intentioned policy can be overcome by politics and ulterior motives.

The bald eagle should have been delisted in the early-to-mid 1990s, when it surpassed the original goal of around 3,000 pairs in the lower 48 states. Since then, the population has continued to grow at the very healthy rate of about 8 percent annually, reaching at least 9,921 pairs in the continental U.S. this year.

Along the Susquehanna River near where I live, it's hard not to see an eagle these days. They are majestic birds, literally breathtaking to watch close-up, and their return to the lower 48 states is a wonderful success that makes all our lives richer.

Photo by Howard Eskin on Susquehanna river near the Conowingo dam, MD Bald eagles concentrate here in numbers that often reach into the fifties during the winter months.

Perhaps we might attach some metaphorical significance to the comeback of our majestic national bird on this July 4th.

RLC

Human Evolution

If the conclusions drawn from this research are correct, if Homo erectus was forming settlements 400,000 years ago, then on what basis is H. erectus considered a different species from H. sapiens (us)? It takes a lot of intelligence, and probably spoken language, to do what this article claims H. erectus was doing. Biologically speaking two populations are of the same species if they can interbreed and produce fertile offspring. We don't know that H. erectus was "reproductively isolated" from H. sapiens and the evidence now is that it probably wasn't. Isn't it about time that we recognized that the evolutionary paradigm for human evolution needs to be revised:

The accepted timescale of Man's evolution is being challenged by a German archaeologist who claims to have found evidence that Homo erectus - mankind's early ancestor, who migrated from Africa to Asia and Europe - began living in settled communities long before the accepted time of 10,000 years ago.

The point at which settlement actually took place is the first critical stage in humanity's cultural development.

Helmut Ziegert, of the Institute of Archaeology at Hamburg University, says that the evidence can be found at excavated sites in North and East Africa, in the remains of stone huts and tools created by upright man for fishing and butchery.

Professor Ziegert claims that the thousands of blades, scrapers, hand axes and other tools found at sites such as Budrinna, on the shore of the extinct Lake Fezzan in southwest Libya, and at Melka Konture, along the River Awash in Ethiopia, provide evidence of organised societies.

He believes that such sites show small communities of 40 or 50 people, with abundant water resources to exploit for constant harvests.

The implications for our knowledge of human evolution - and of our intellectual and social beginnings - are "profound" and a "staggering shift", he said.

Yes, they are. The implications are that however long humans have been on the earth they have been the same species they are today.

RLC

Heads I Win, Tails You Lose

Michael Egnor continues his reflections on the problem that consciousness (or mind) poses for materialistic naturalism. The materialist argues that mind is merely an epiphenomenon of matter. Mind isn't a structure, the materialist insists, it's merely a word we use to describe the function of the brain, like the word "digestion" is simply a word used to describe the function of the stomach.

Egnor maintains that the materialist position is more than just a metaphysical stance. It's a hypothesis which can, in fact, be empirically tested.

The irony is that whatever the results of the test turn out to be the materialist loses.

You can read Egnor's argument here.

RLC

Et Tu, Richard?

The pseudonymous Galapagos Finch, founder of the BRITES, worries that some of his most revered Darwinian heroes are losing their faith, or at least compromising their convictions. Read his amusing editorial expressing his alarm here.

RLC

Civil Discourse

Brian McLaren has a very good post at God's Politics. He writes about the disappointing tone of much of the commentary he finds in the blogosphere and how it has driven a lot of people out of that arena:

A number of my friends have given up blogging, either temporarily or permanently. The reason? The blogosphere seems to indulge a certain kind of rhetoric that they don't want to be associated with anymore.

Although I continue to post here at the God's Politics blog on occasion, and I believe in the power and potential of the blogosphere, I share my friends' frustration with the kind of disrespectful dialogue that frequently ensues in the comments section of so many blogs. The majority want to have substantive and respectful dialogue, and they tolerate the static because they believe in the level playing field of the blogosphere. But the ambivalence is real.

Misleading labels, name-calling, innuendo, insult, cynicism, deception, even flattery can find their way into any of our communication and add another straw to the overweighted camel of civility and mutual respect. (I've already edited out some of my own rhetorical descents in this piece, and I imagine I've still failed to live up to the ideal I'm espousing.)

As if to put an exclamation point at the end of McLaren's post one commenter, speaking from the Christian left, takes to calling Jim Wallis (who didn't even write the post) a moral relativist and a coward for not speaking out on behalf of the poor(!), and another criticizes conservatives, almost all of whom, he/she alleges, are "shrill and ugly." Other commenters seem to think that merely disagreeing with or criticizing a person's ideas or behavior is itself uncivil.

Like McLaren, I sometimes find the line between civil and uncivil rhetoric a little blurred. What seems to me to be on the civil side of the line does not always seem so to some of our readers, and I regret this because one of the qualities I have wanted Viewpoint to consistently display is courtesy and respect. I confess, however, that it is sometimes difficult to criticize those who themselves are disrespectful, unfair, and vitriolic without coming close, in some readers' eyes, to that blurry line. That is our goal, however, and I appreciate it when our readers let us know when they think we haven't met it, even if, in some instances, I believe their judgment mistaken.

RLC

The Glasgow Car-Bombing

I know he's speaking English, but it's a completely different English than what I grew up with. In any event, Hot Air has video of an eyewitness report of the Glasgow airport bombing.

It sounds like the drivers of the car, two fine members of the Religion of Peace, were trying to get a bigger explosion than what they got.

How many more of these homicidal maniacs are there in Britain? How many are there here? Does anyone really think that the jihad will be over in a year or two? We are in a war for survival, and it will last as long as radical Muslims are still walking this earth or until they win.

RLC

Hammering Moore

I haven't seen Sicko and probably won't, but it's coming in for some blistering fire from those who are incredulous that Michael Moore actually lauds the Cuban health care system. Claudia4Libertad, for example, after sketching how Moore has wandered off the path of truth in past films, says this:

Ask any Cuban who has recently left the island (because they can't talk freely about this inside of Cuba) about their health care system and they will tell you that it is often a challenge just to get aspirin and they often have to get it on the black market. The run-down, dilapidated and unsanitary conditions in the facilities that the average Cuban must go to for care are a far cry from the hospitals and clinics reserved for high-ranking members of the communist party or the military. There are actually special facilities in Cuba that serve foreigners who can pay in foreign currency.

If the lauded Cuban healthcare system is so wonderful, perhaps someone can explain to me the following:

• Why some patients are taken to the hospital in wheelbarrows instead of ambulances?
• Why patients must bring their own linens for the hospital bed and often, a fan, to combat the stifling heat and lack of air-conditioning?
• Why cockroaches and other vermin are present in what is supposed to be "sanitary" health facilities? Why many common medicines are not available? If Cuba can export cutting-edge biotechnological products to other countries, surely the US embargo cannot be blamed for not allowing medicine to enter Cuba.
• Why, in a 185-bed cancer center in Santiago where some 6,000 people are treated MONTHLY, there is a shortage of basics such as codeine, anti-nausea drugs, anti-inflammatory drugs, antibiotics, antacids, laxatives, high blood pressure medicine, antihistamines, anti-depressants, contraceptives, vitamins and minerals? This particular hospital, sadly, is the norm, not the exception.
• Why 41% of patients in Cuban hospitals are undernourished, particularly after surgery. Malnutrition risks increase with extended stays in the hospital, according to the U.S. National Institute of Health.

Was any of this mentioned in "Sicko?" Of course not! The reason why is one to which I alluded earlier-- Michael Moore is so anti-American, despite the fact that he makes millions off of the American people every time he makes a film, that he will do anything he can to exaggerate and distort the truth to make the Bush Administration look incompetent, evil and silly.

As devastating as this is it's mild compared to the review given to Sicko by Kurt Loder of MTV Movie News of all places. What Loder writes is too good not to read in its entirety, but here's the gist of it:

The problem with American health care, Moore argues, is that people are charged money to avail themselves of it. In other countries, like Canada, France and Britain, health systems are far superior - and they're free. He takes us to these countries to see a few clean, efficient hospitals, where treatment is quick and caring; and to meet a few doctors, who are delighted with their government-regulated salaries; and to listen to patients express their beaming happiness with a socialized health system. It sounds great. As one patient in a British hospital run by the country's National Health Service says, "No one pays. It's all on the NHS. It's not America."

That last statement is even truer than you'd know from watching "Sicko." In the case of Canada - which Moore, like many other political activists, holds up as a utopian ideal of benevolent health-care regulation - a very different picture is conveyed by a short 2005 documentary called "Dead Meat," by Stuart Browning and Blaine Greenberg. These two filmmakers talked to a number of Canadians of a kind that Moore's movie would have you believe don't exist:

A 52-year-old woman in Calgary recalls being in severe need of joint-replacement surgery after the cartilage in her knee wore out. She was put on a wait list and wound up waiting 16 months for the surgery. Her pain was so excruciating, she says, that she was prescribed large doses of Oxycontin, and soon became addicted. After finally getting her operation, she was put on another wait list - this time for drug rehab.

A man tells about his mother waiting two years for life-saving cancer surgery - and then twice having her surgical appointments canceled. She was still waiting when she died.

A man in critical need of neck surgery plays a voicemail message from a doctor he'd contacted: "As of today," she says, "it's a two-year wait-list to see me for an initial consultation." Later, when the man and his wife both needed hip-replacement surgery and grew exasperated after spending two years on a waiting list, they finally mortgaged their home and flew to Belgium to have the operations done there, with no more waiting.

Rick Baker, the owner of a Toronto company called Timely Medical Alternatives, specializes in transporting Canadians who don't want to wait for medical care to Buffalo, New York, two hours away, where they won't have to. Baker's business is apparently thriving.

And Dr. Brian Day, now the president of the Canadian Medical Association, muses about the bizarre distortions created by a law that prohibits Canadians from paying for even urgently-needed medical treatments, or from obtaining private health insurance. "It's legal to buy health insurance for your pets," Day says, "but illegal to buy health insurance for yourself." (Even more pointedly, Day was quoted in the Wall Street Journal this week as saying, "This is a country in which dogs can get a hip replacement in under a week and in which humans can wait two to three years.")

What's the problem with government health systems? Moore's movie doesn't ask that question, although it does unintentionally provide an answer. When governments attempt to regulate the balance between a limited supply of health care and an unlimited demand for it they're inevitably forced to ration treatment. This is certainly the situation in Britain.

Writing in the Chicago Tribune this week, Helen Evans, a 20-year veteran of the country's National Health Service and now the director of a London-based group called Nurses for Reform, said that nearly 1 million Britons are currently on waiting lists for medical care - and another 200,000 are waiting to get on waiting lists. Evans also says the NHS cancels about 100,000 operations each year because of shortages of various sorts.

Last March, the BBC reported on the results of a Healthcare Commission poll of 128,000 NHS workers: two thirds of them said they "would not be happy" to be patients in their own hospitals. James Christopher, the film critic of the Times of London, thinks he knows why. After marveling at Moore's rosy view of the British health care system in "Sicko," Christopher wrote, "What he hasn't done is lie in a corridor all night at the Royal Free [Hospital] watching his severed toe disintegrate in a plastic cup of melted ice. I have." Last month, the Associated Press reported that Gordon Brown - just installed this week as Britain's new prime minister - had promised to inaugurate "sweeping domestic reforms" to, among other things, "improve health care."

Moore's most ardent enthusiasm is reserved for the French health care system, which he portrays as the crowning glory of a Gallic lifestyle far superior to our own. The French! They work only 35 hours a week, by law. They get at least five weeks' vacation every year. Their health care is free, and they can take an unlimited number of sick days. It is here that Moore shoots himself in the foot. He introduces us to a young man who's reached the end of three months of paid sick leave and is asked by his doctor if he's finally ready to return to work. No, not yet, he says. So the doctor gives him another three months of paid leave - and the young man immediately decamps for the South of France, where we see him lounging on the sunny Riviera, chatting up babes and generally enjoying what would be for most people a very expensive vacation. Moore apparently expects us to witness this dumbfounding spectacle and ask why we can't have such a great health care system, too. I think a more common response would be, how can any country afford such economic insanity?

As it turns out, France can't. In 2004, French Health Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy told a government commission, "Our health system has gone mad. Profound reforms are urgent." Agence France-Presse recently reported that the French health-care system is running a deficit of $2.7 billion. And in the French presidential election in May, voters in surprising numbers rejected the Socialist candidate, S�gol�ne Royal, who had promised actually to raise some health benefits, and elected instead the center-right politician Nicolas Sarkozy, who, according to Agence France-Presse again, "plans to move fast to overhaul the economy, with the deficit-ridden health care system a primary target." Possibly Sarkozy should first consult with Michael Moore. After all, the tax-stoked French health care system may be expensive, but at least it's "free."

Having driven his bring-on-government-health care argument into a ditch outside of Paris, Moore next pilots it right off a cliff and into the Caribbean on the final stop on his tour: Cuba. Here it must also be said that the director performs a valuable service. He rounds up a group of 9/11 rescue workers - firefighters and selfless volunteers - who risked their lives and ruined their health in the aftermath of the New York terrorist attacks. These people - there's no other way of putting it - have been screwed, mainly by the politicians who were at such photo-op pains to praise them at the time. (This makes Moore's faith in government medical compassion seem all the more inexplicable.) These people's lives have been devastated - wracked by chronic illnesses, some can no longer hold down jobs and none can afford to buy the various expensive medicines they need. Moore does them an admirable service by bringing their plight before a large audience.

However, there's never a moment when we doubt that he's also using these people as props in his film, and as talking points in his agenda. Renting some boats, he leads them all off to Cuba.

Fidel Castro's island dictatorship, now in its 40th year of being listed as a human-rights violator by Amnesty International, is here depicted as a balmy paradise not unlike the Iraq of Saddam Hussein that Moore showed us in his earlier film, "Fahrenheit 9/11." He and his charges make their way - their pre-arranged way, if it need be said - to a state-of-the-art hospital where they receive a picturesquely warm welcome. In a voiceover, Moore, shown beaming at his little band of visitors, says he told the Cuban doctors to "give them the same care they'd give Cuban citizens." Then he adds, dramatically: "And they did."

If Moore really believes this, he may be a greater fool than even his most feverish detractors claim him to be.... What Moore doesn't mention is the flourishing Cuban industry of "health tourism" - a system in which foreigners (including self-admitted multimillionaire film directors and, of course, government bigwigs) who are willing to pay cash for anything from brain-surgery to dental work can purchase a level of treatment that's unavailable to the majority of Cubans with no hard currency at their disposal.

As the Caribbean sun sank down on Moore's breathtakingly meretricious movie, I couldn't help recalling that when Fidel Castro became gravely ill last year, he didn't put himself in the hands of a Cuban surgeon. No. Instead, he had a specialist flown in - from Spain.

HT: Michelle Malkin who has more on Moore and none of it is flattering.

RLC

Just the Facts, Al

James Taylor of the Heartland Institute has a column in the Chicago Sun-Times which casts grave doubt on the credibility of Al Gore's global warming claims. Here's part of what Taylor writes:

Many of the assertions Gore makes in his movie, "An Inconvenient Truth," have been refuted by science, both before and after he made them. Gore can show sincerity in his plea [in his latest book] for scientific honesty by publicly acknowledging where science has rebutted his claims.

For example, Gore claims that Himalayan glaciers are shrinking and global warming is to blame. Yet the September 2006 issue of the American Meteorological Society's Journal of Climate reported, "Glaciers are growing in the Himalayan Mountains, confounding global warming alarmists who recently claimed the glaciers were shrinking and that global warming was to blame."

Gore claims the snowcap atop Africa's Mt. Kilimanjaro is shrinking and that global warming is to blame. Yet according to the November 23, 2003, issue of Nature magazine, "Although it's tempting to blame the ice loss on global warming, researchers think that deforestation of the mountain's foothills is the more likely culprit. Without the forests' humidity, previously moisture-laden winds blew dry. No longer replenished with water, the ice is evaporating in the strong equatorial sunshine."

Gore claims global warming is causing more tornadoes. Yet the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change stated in February that there has been no scientific link established between global warming and tornadoes.

Gore claims global warming is causing more frequent and severe hurricanes. However, hurricane expert Chris Landsea published a study on May 1 documenting that hurricane activity is no higher now than in decades past. Hurricane expert William Gray reported just a few days earlier, on April 27, that the number of major hurricanes making landfall on the U.S. Atlantic coast has declined in the past 40 years. Hurricane scientists reported in the April 18 Geophysical Research Letters that global warming enhances wind shear, which will prevent a significant increase in future hurricane activity.

Gore claims global warming is causing an expansion of African deserts. However, the Sept. 16, 2002, issue of New Scientist reports, "Africa's deserts are in 'spectacular' retreat . . . making farming viable again in what were some of the most arid parts of Africa."

Gore argues Greenland is in rapid meltdown, and that this threatens to raise sea levels by 20 feet. But according to a 2005 study in the Journal of Glaciology, "the Greenland ice sheet is thinning at the margins and growing inland, with a small overall mass gain." In late 2006, researchers at the Danish Meteorological Institute reported that the past two decades were the coldest for Greenland since the 1910s.

Gore claims the Antarctic ice sheet is melting because of global warming. Yet the Jan. 14, 2002, issue of Nature magazine reported Antarctica as a whole has been dramatically cooling for decades. More recently, scientists reported in the September 2006 issue of the British journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society Series A: Mathematical, Physical, and Engineering Sciences, that satellite measurements of the Antarctic ice sheet showed significant growth between 1992 and 2003. And the U.N. Climate Change panel reported in February 2007 that Antarctica is unlikely to lose any ice mass during the remainder of the century.

Not only is much of Gore's evidence that global warming is occuring suspect, but it has never been clear to me that there was a definite link between the warming of the earth and anything that humans were doing. For a man who makes much of his scientific rationality and cool logical analysis Mr. Gore sure seems to be way out in front of what both logic and evidence will support on his crusade to smite the environmental infidels.

RLC

Semper Fi

This is certainly one way to take a bite out of crime. A 27 year old pick-pocket tried to pick the pocket of a 72 year old ex-Marine, retired iron worker, and former boxer and got a good whuppin' for his trouble. A store camera caught some of the action and the accompanying news report gives the details.

RLC

Turn Off the Spigot

Iranians are rioting, sort of, in Tehran over the government's decision to begin rationing gasoline. Iran is awash in oil but because the government spends so much of its wealth on subsidizing world-wide jihad and its nuclear weapons program it has too few refineries to turn the petroleum into gasoline and must import 40% of its fuel.

Rationing has been imposed because Tehran fears that the West will soon impose sanctions on fuel exports to Iran. We hope their concern is justified.

Iran has been the driving force behind Hamas and Hezbollah. They've been manufacturing and smuggling IEDs into Iraq that are killing and maiming our troops. They've been a major source of instability in Iraq - instigating, training, and funding the insurgency there. They're also responsible for kidnapping and imprisoning a half dozen or so American citizens, and they're working on developing nuclear weapons which they have all but promised to use against Israel.

We can either allow Iran to continue their deadly course toward nuclear war or we can stop them now. If we choose to stop them it can be via economic collapse or military force. Military force might ultimately become necessary but it should be a last resort.

Right now we can impose an embargo on Iranian fuel and let the people of that country decide whether they want to support the path their leadership is leading them along or whether they want to replace them. We should do it now because waiting will gain us nothing. Iran is not going to change course unless they're forced to. The alternative, it becomes clearer everyday, is war.

Cox and Forkum

RLC

Stake Through the Heart

The call for cloture failed in the Senate today and the immigration bill, having been revivified earlier this week, is now completely dead. It will not be brought back to life until the Congress and administration give us a secure border instead of just empty promises. Once the door is locked then we can address the question of how to handle the crowd of people sitting in our living room. The vote was 46 to 53 to continue debate, which effectively prevented the bill from coming to a floor vote.

Michelle Malkin has an interesting recap of this morning's events from the time the voting began until the vote was over. Scroll to the bottom and work your way to the top.

Evidently, the advocates of the bill can't bring themselves to believe that the bill lost on it's merits. Senator Dick Durbin, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and a host of others are blaming bigotry, "ugliness" and hatred for their defeat.

This is amusing. These people failed to make a case for the bill, in many instances they failed to even read it, they put it together in secret, they could not tell us how much it would cost, or what its consequences would be. They just expected the American people to shut up and trust them, and because we didn't like what they were trying to foist upon us, they call us bigots, nativists, and haters. This despite the fact that the opposition to this bill cut right across ideological lines. Tom Harkin and Bernie Sanders voted against it for heaven's sake.

Anyway, the name-calling shows how much the Washington elites appreciate participatory democracy. We can now expect an all-out legislative war by these folks against talk radio and the blogosphere to try to shut down the voices of dissent that shine light on what they're trying to do to us.

RLC

Hunkering Down

The research of Robert Putnam, author of Bowling Alone, has led him to conclude what anyone who has spent any time on a college campus knows empirically: Diverse communities are often comprised of people who prefer to stick with people like themselves. Putting people in communities with others unlike themselves makes them less trusting, less sociable, less involved in their community than they are in more homogenous settings.

Actually Putnam's findings are more profound than this brief summary make make them sound because they bear on the problem of immigration and its short and mid-term consequences. Putnam describes these consequences in terms which sound pretty dire.

John Leo writes about Putnam's conclusions at City Journal. He says:

Neither age nor disparities of wealth explain this result. "Americans raised in the 1970s," he writes, "seem fully as unnerved by diversity as those raised in the 1920s." And the "hunkering down" occurred no matter whether the communities were relatively egalitarian or showed great differences in personal income. Even when communities are equally poor or rich, equally safe or crime-ridden, diversity correlates with less trust of neighbors, lower confidence in local politicians and news media, less charitable giving and volunteering, fewer close friends, and less happiness.

Read Leo's whole column at the link.

RLC

Skeptical Skeptic

Famous skeptic Dr. Stan Scanton has recently grown skeptical of his skepticism and fellow skeptic Galapagos Finch is outraged at the betrayal. Indeed, Finch is skeptical that Scanton is really skeptical of his skepticism. Read all about it at The BRITES.

RLC

The Shape of Our Future

True or False: Free speech is a value embraced by all western countries. The answer, you may be amazed to read, is false. Consider Paul Belien's article in the Brussels Journal on what is currently happening in Europe:

Last week, a German court sentenced a 55-year old Lutheran pastor to one year in jail for "Volksverhetzung" (incitement of the people) because he compared the killing of the unborn in contemporary Germany to the holocaust. Next week, the Council of Europe is going to vote on a resolution imposing Darwinism as Europe's official ideology. The European governments are asked to fight the expression of creationist opinions, such as young earth and intelligent design theories. According to the Council of Europe these theories are "undemocratic" and "a threat to human rights."

Pastor Johannes Lerle compared the killing of the unborn to the killing of the Jews in Auschwitz during the Second World War. On 14 June, a court in Erlangen ruled that, in doing so, the pastor had "incited the people" because his statement was a denial of the holocaust of the Jews in Nazi-Germany. Hence, Herr Lerle was sentenced to one year in jail. Earlier, he had already spent eight months in jail for calling abortionists "professional killers" - an allegation which the court ruled to be slanderous because, according to the court, the unborn are not humans.

Other German courts convicted pro-lifers for saying that "in abortion clinics, life unworthy of living is being killed," because this terminology evoked Hitler's euthanasia program, which used the same language. In 2005, a German pro-lifer, G�nter Annen, was sentenced to 50 days in jail for saying "Stop unjust abortions in [medical] practice," because, according to the court, the expression "unjust" is understood by laymen as meaning illegal, which abortions are not.

Volksverhetzung is a crime which the Nazis often invoked against their enemies and which contemporary Germany also uses to intimidate homeschoolers. Soon, the German authorities will be able to use the same charge against people who question Darwin's evolution theory.

According to a report of the Council of Europe's Parliamentary Assembly, creationists are dangerous "religious fundamentalists" who propagate "forms of religious extremism" and "could become a threat to human rights." The report adds that the acceptance of the science of evolutionism "is crucial to the future of our societies and our democracies."

Everyone who prizes freedom should read the whole article. Those who value free speech will be disgusted that in the 21st century, less than a generation after the fall of totalitarianisms in Germany and the Soviet Union, good people would be imprisoned for opposing abortion, homosexuality, Darwinism, and for homeschooling their children. They will also be frightened by the realization that there are many in the U.S., especially among left-wing atheists, who look to Europe as forging the path to our common future.

On the lighter side (somewhat) there's this take on the move to use legislation to enforce belief in Darwinism:

RLC

Dishonest or Incompetent

You have to wonder why any conservative would go on a network talk show. You know they'll do whatever they can to make you look bad. Take Ann Coulter, for instance. Coulter goes on ABC's Good Morning America the other day and among other tendentious questions gets asked about her reference a few months ago to John Edwards in which she used the word "faggot."

ABC edited Coulter's reply to show her saying that she's learned her lesson. "If I'm gonna say anything about John Edwards in the future, I'll just wish he had been killed in a terrorist assassination plot."

Sounds pretty awful, doesn't it? But of course ABC edited her comment so as to completely distort the meaning of what she was saying. Here's the full context of her remark:

"But about the same time (as her "faggot" remark), you know, Bill Maher was not joking and saying he wished Dick Cheney had been killed in a terrorist attack. So I've learned my lesson. If I'm gonna say anything about John Edwards in the future, I'll just wish he had been killed in a terrorist assassination plot."

We here at Viewpoint have been critical of Coulter when we thought she deserved criticism, as she did in the John Edwards episode, but this time the criticism is deserved entirely by the dishonest or incompetent editors at ABC. Coulter was making the point that she was just joking about John Edwards when she used the slur "faggot," but that Bill Maher was not joking when he said that he wished Dick Cheney had been killed when he was in Afghanistan. Yet the media hammered Coulter and gave Maher a pass. So in the future, Coulter was saying, she should be safe from media criticism if she confines her remarks to the reprehensible sorts of things that Maher says about Republicans like Cheney.

Her point was well-made and she's exactly right. Anyone can say anything, no matter how vile, about a Republican and the media yawns, but they'll jump at the chance to distort a conservative's words in order to make them look cruel and mean-spirited.

As we said, the folks at ABC's Good Morning America are either dishonest or incompetent.

RLC

Sicko

Michael Moore's film on health care in which he endorses the complete eradication of private health insurance and replacing it with a massive federal bureaucracy, puts Democratic candidates on the hot seat according to the LA Times:

Rejecting Moore's prescription on healthcare could alienate liberal activists, who will play a big role in choosing the party's next standard-bearer. However, his proposal - wiping out private health insurance and replacing it with a massive federal program - could be political poison with the larger electorate.

At a special screening in Washington this week, politicians, lobbyists, media pooh-bahs and policy junkies flocked to see Moore's film. And its slashing demand for action on an issue that voters care deeply about, and Democrats hope to capitalize on, generated plenty of buzz. Moore hopes that, after its general release June 29, "Sicko" will exert significant influence on the presidential campaign.

Instead of greeting the film with hosannas or challenging it head-on, however, the leading Democratic presidential candidates have sidestepped direct comment on Moore's proposals.

Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois and former Sen. John Edwards of South Carolina all have staked out positions sharply at odds with Moore's approach. But none of them is eager to have that fact dragged into the spotlight.

If Moore's fire-breathing proposal catches on among party activists, who tend to be suspicious of the private sector and supportive of direct government action, the candidates' pragmatic, consensus-seeking ideas could look like weak-kneed temporizing - much the way their rejection of an immediate pullout from Iraq has drawn heated criticism from antiwar activists.

In "Sicko," the filmmaker calls for abolishing the insurance industry, putting a tight regulatory collar on pharmaceutical companies and embracing a Canadian-style government-run system.

One good thing about Moore's film, assuming that it's more honest than Fahrenheit 911, is that it should stimulate a lot of healthy debate about what kind of health care system is best for America. That's a debate we need to have.

RLC

Behind the Scenes

The Washington Post has a fascinating article on the evolution of the administration's policy toward detainees in the War on Terrror. The article will cause Cheney-haters to salivate, but more objective readers will find much to admire, as well as to question, in the piece.

Many of those who commented on the article are among the haters and they see Cheney as an evil, power-crazed, megalomaniac. A power-crazed man, however, would show far more political ambition than has Cheney. He did not seek the office he's in nor does he aspire to go higher.

He may be wrong about what he sees as the right course of action in handling detainees, though except for denying citizens the right to legal representation I think he's largely correct, but he's trying to do what he believes is best for the survival of this nation, and he has demonstrated a tremendous amount of personal strength and courage in the face of near universal vilification to do it.

Footnote: Those who think Dick Cheney is the incarnation of evil might reflect on how many evil men have ever done as much for charitable causes as has Cheney. As this article attests the V.P. has given more money to charity than perhaps any elected official in the history of the United States:

Vice President Dick Cheney and his wife Lynne gave away nearly $7 million last year [2005] to help the poor and for medical research.

According to income tax information released by the White House, the Cheneys' adjusted gross income in 2005 was $8,819,006.

The sum was largely the result of Mr. Cheney's stock options from Halliburton and royalties from three books written by Mrs. Cheney.

The Cheneys gave more than three-quarters of their income - $6,869,655 - to several charities, including George Washington University's Cardiothoracic Institute and a charity for low-income high school students in the Washington, D.C. area, Capital Partners for Education.

Doesn't sound to me like the sort of thing evil people usually do.

RLC