The Crucial Factor

Noemie Emery cuts to the heart of the debate over torture with a fine essay at the Washington Examiner. She notes that in all the sturm und drang the most crucial element in determining the nature of the act is often omitted - intent. Whether an act is evil or not depends not merely upon the act itself, as so many of President Bush's critics seem to assume, but mostly on the reasons why it is done.

This is such an elementary ethical principle that one is taken aback by the realization that it still needs to be articulated. Here's some of Emery's column:

The key to the way we judge the morals of violence is that, while the impact on the victim always is similar, force used offensively and force used defensively have always been two different things. Shoot someone, or failing that, fracture his skull with a fire tong, and you inflict pain, harm, and possibly death on your victim, but the reason you do it determines your fate.

Stand at the top of a hill with a rifle, and spray shots at the people beneath you?

If it's campus, you're a monster, and serial killer. If it's a battlefield, and you're facing an enemy onslaught, you'll get a medal, if you survive. Charge at someone with bayonet fixed and pointed? If you're an Axis soldier impaling civilians, it's an act of the utmost depravity. If you're a Union soldier at Little Round Top at Gettysburg, fighting off the oncoming Confederate army, you're a national hero, saving the last, best hope of mankind.

In the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln was offered the use of a bullet that exploded inside the body, doing the victim incredible damage. Lincoln approved it: It would shorten the war. For the same reason - to shorten the war - President Harry S Truman incinerated not one but two Japanese cities. Neither man is considered a war criminal (except by Bill Maher), as they took some lives to save more lives, specifically those entrusted to them, and to preserve a political system less unjust than the ones they were fighting.

Their guilt is absolved by their intent, which was to save lives, and a more benign social order. Yet liberals, who apply the motive defense in trying to exonerate perpetrators of criminal violence - the accused was stressed out, he ate Twinkies, he was deprived as a child, etc. - seem strangely unwilling to extend this to those who made use of 'harsh' tactics to forestall further attacks after thousands had perished in the most torturous manner on Sept. 11, 2001.

"The horror of Sept. 11 resides in me like a dormant pathogen," writes Richard Cohen, shortly before comparing George Bush to a Nazi for trying to make sure such a horror would never recur. "Here, once again, were the squalid efforts of legal toadies to justify the unjustifiable," as he informs us. "I know it is offensive to compare almost anyone or anything to the Nazis, but the Bush-era memos struck me as echoes from the past."

But the Nazis' intent was to invade countries and subjugate and degrade whole populations, set up death camps where as many as 11 million civilians would perish, and orchestrate the elimination through starvation and torture of the ethnically impure from the universe. The intent of Bush and his people in water-boarding three hard core terrorists was to prevent another 9/11, that was sprung on his unaware and his innocent country.

Cohen's characterization is at best simplistic and reveals an inchoate, underdeveloped moral understanding. His argument, if one might wish to characterize it as such, is that since the Nazis inflicted suffering, and the Bush people inflicted suffering, therefore the Bush people are Nazis. It's pretty embarrassing, but there you have it, and Cohen isn't the only one to comment on this issue whose logical abilities are similarly attenuated.

The crucial question that needs to be asked to determine whether the Bush administration acted in a morally reasonable way is not so much what did they do, but rather why did they do it, and this question seems to concern very few of Bush's critics.

RLC

Voter Apathy

It turns out that large numbers of people who voted for President Obama in November disagree with much of his program and policies. Given that anyone who was paying attention last Fall had to know what Obama would do once he was in office, we must conclude that these people either weren't paying attention or they voted for Obama notwithstanding their disagreements with his plans for the country. The first is irresponsible, the second is irrational.

With an electorate like this out there it's no wonder Democrats want to make it easier to vote.

RLC

Uncivil Discourse

What can be done to instill civility into our political discourse? The last eight years were characterized by a viciousness that may have been unprecedented in most of our lifetimes, and though Republicans have, I honestly believe, treated President Obama with much greater respect than Democrats treated President Bush, it remains the case that with the advent of blogs, cable TV, and talk radio civility seems to have become an anachronism.

Some people, perhaps, might think that it's only those who suffer most from the kind of eye-gouging that occurs daily in the blogosphere and on the airwaves who call for civility. Civility, in this view, is the plea of those who hold to what Nietzsche called slave morality, the attempt by the weak to mitigate the harshness of their masters by foisting a moral system on them that would constrain their will to power. In other words, pleas for civility are the recourse of society's losers who don't want the strong to be all the time beating them up, but who are otherwise powerless to prevent it.

I think, though, that the opposite is true. Civility is a mark of strength. Calmness and courtesy are indicators of confidence in one's positions. Lies, insults, and rudeness are red flags hoisted by people who subliminally recognize that their arguments are inherently weak. The flimsiness of a point of view can often be measured by the level of shrillness and meanness with which it's presented. If one's ideas are compelling then he has nothing to fear by extending courtesy and respect to the other side.

No one makes this case with more clarity or eloquence than John Stuart Mill in his wonderful book On Liberty. Mill writes, for instance, that:

The worst offense of this kind which can be committed by a polemic is to stigmatize those who hold a contrary opinion as bad and immoral men .... [O]pinion ought, in every instance, to determine its verdict by the circumstances of the individual case; condemning everyone, on whichever side of the argument he places himself, in whose mode of advocacy either want of candor, or malignity, bigotry, or intolerance of feeling manifest themselves, but not inferring these vices from the side which a person takes, though it be the contrary side of the question to our own; and giving merited honor to every one, whatever opinion he may hold, who has calmness to see and honesty to state what his opponents and their opinions really are, exaggerating nothing to their discredit, keeping nothing back which tells, or can be supposed to tell, in their favor. This is the real morality of public discussion: and if often violated, I am happy to think that there are many controversialists who to a great extent observe it and a still greater number who conscientiously strive towards it.

I write all this after having read a post by Rod Dreher who recently found himself exposed to radio talker Mark Levin:

I don't listen to talk radio a lot, because I have a short commute between office and home. But last fall, I got into the car with a colleague to go pick up a pizza (we were working late), and heard some conservative talker with a screechy voice just making an ass of himself. Even when I disagree with Limbaugh, he's interesting to listen to -- funny and entertaining. So too with Laura Ingraham, and even Anne Coulter. But this guy was just horrible. He sounded horrible, and he whined and moaned and basically carried on like the shrill crackpot at the bar that you excuse yourself to go to the bathroom to get away from, and then head for the door.

"That's Mark Levin," my friend explained.

After recounting a decidedly unpleasant exchange Levin had with a caller, Dreher says this:

A cretin who would say something like this on his radio show is a big deal among a lot of conservatives. Good grief. Having spent about 15 unpleasant minutes listening to this creep, I cannot imagine why anybody pays attention to him. Seriously, where is the pleasure in listening to this kind of trashmouth? If I were on the left, I would make sure that people thought that Mark Levin was the face of the Republican Party and the conservative movement.

I guess not even Dreher can resist the temptation to resort to name-calling, but that's not my point, exactly. The fact is that he's right about Levin (to get a sense of Levin's style go here), and not just Levin, and certainly not just conservative talk radio personalities.

Nevertheless, speaking just of conservatives, it's counter-productive of them to dress themselves in such uncomely rhetorical robes because it closes off any chance that their ideas, which are usually superior to those of the left, will get a hearing among the great mass of people who see themselves as neither conservative nor liberal, but who could potentially be swayed by compelling arguments humorously and irenically presented.

Ugly, nasty rhetoric, gratuitous insults and name-calling, refusing to let opponents be heard, are all tactics which generate only resentment and a desire to tune the offender out. They put off the very people we want to reach and they rarely persuade. For this reason I no longer read Ann Coulter (though Dreher seems to like her), nor listen to Michael Savage or Mark Levin and have a great deal of difficulty tolerating Sean Hannity. Despite the ratings and success of these people I don't want any of them to be the face of modern conservatism. I have no problem with their frequent criticisms of liberalism - indeed, I often agree with them - but I have a big problem with the manner in which they often make those criticisms and the way they too often treat liberals as persons.

Nor can the left plead rhetorical chastity. Left-wing blogs are often stomach-turning in their vileness, and I can scarcely watch Chris Matthews on MSNBC who is, in my opinion, one of the rudest people on cable TV. And when it comes to sheer meanness Matthews' colleague Keith Olbermann is all that Dreher accuses Mark Levin of being, and worse.

It's hard to treat people with respect and dignity, of course, when they refuse the same courtesy to others, and it's easy to succumb to the temptation to call one's opponents names when they behave in ways that make the name appropriate. It's not always wrong, after all, to call a stupid idea stupid or to call a despicable human being despicable. Sometimes, when stakes are high and the battle hot some rhetoric and behavior are warranted which would not be otherwise, but incendiary language should be used sparingly and judiciously, never gratuitously. If it's deemed appropriate to use a pejorative in our discourse the reason for it should be explained, and it should not simply be employed as a pinch-hitter for an argument. To employ a different metaphor, our political discourse should be more like those laser-guided missiles the military uses and less like indiscriminate carpet bombing.

Nevertheless, drawing lines our rhetoric should not cross isn't easy, and fair-minded people will disagree as to when the line is being breached. No one wants to narrow the bounds to the point where satire is prohibited or the mot juste that would prick the egos of pompous gasbags is disallowed. Then, too, there are those like Perez Hilton, who, because of their cruel treatment of others, deserve a brutally frank assessment of their own relevant inadequacies. Any line we draw should not rule out of bounds condign frankness about those who mistreat others.

But the difficulty in knowing precisely where to place the foul line does not relieve us of the prima facie duty to give the benefit of the doubt, to exercise restraint, and to refrain from calling people names, as Levin and Dreher both do, over legitimate differences of opinion.

We can accurately describe someone's behavior as stupid, sleazy, or sickening without imputing those adjectives to the person himself, at least until such time as a long train of examples makes it impossible to separate the person from the behavior.

Politics (or any arena in which ideas are at issue) is, switching metaphors again, like boxing. There's nothing wrong with trying to hit your opponent with all you've got. There's nothing wrong with trying, within the rules, to diminish his ability to impose his will, there's nothing wrong with using language that packs a wallop, but it's always wrong to hit below the belt, to try to hurt and humiliate the other person. It's not wrong to deflate arrogant political egos, but it's always wrong to try to destroy people who are honestly and sincerely trying to do the best job they can. Too many people in our politically-oriented media think that the way to prevail in our nation's policy battles is by grievously crippling their opponents or by destroying them personally. Doing this may certainly bring one power, but it's a benefit gained at the cost of one's humanity. It's a devil's bargain.

There's more on the Dreher/Levin contretemps here. For what it's worth I think Dreher overstates Levin's importance to conservatism. He's not the face of contemporary conservatism, as Dreher alleges. That distinction, in my opinion, goes to Rush Limbaugh - whom both Dreher and I often appreciate - and increasingly to Glenn Beck.

RLC

Augustine on Creation

Alister McGrath has a fine article in Christianity Today on Augustine (354 A.D. - 430 A.D.) and "how the great theologian might weigh in on the Darwin debate." It's surprising, perhaps, to read how prescient Augustine was:

In The Literal Meaning of Genesis, which was written between 401 and 415 .... Augustine draws out the following core themes: God brought everything into existence in a single moment of creation. Yet the created order is not static. God endowed it with the capacity to develop. Augustine uses the image of a dormant seed to help his readers grasp this point. God creates seeds, which will grow and develop at the right time. Using more technical language, Augustine asks his readers to think of the created order as containing divinely embedded causalities that emerge or evolve at a later stage. Yet Augustine has no time for any notion of random or arbitrary changes within creation. The development of God's creation is always subject to God's sovereign providence. The God who planted the seeds at the moment of creation also governs and directs the time and place of their growth.

The idea of a seed, an acorn perhaps, is a nice metaphor for an increasingly popular theory among some Intelligent Design advocates called "front-loaded" evolution. In this view God created the universe with all the potential for everything that would emerge in the universe packed into the initial conditions which obtained at the Big Bang. Thus the physical universe unfolded in precisely the way God intended, ultimately producing human beings.

Augustine also argues that Scripture teaches that time is also part of the created order, that God created space and time together. For some, however, the idea of time as a created thing seemed ridiculous. Again, Augustine counters that the biblical narrative is not open to alternative interpretations. Time must therefore be thought of as one of God's creatures and servants. For Augustine, time itself is an element of the created order. Timelessness, on the other hand, is the essential feature of eternity.

This is an incredible insight for a man of the fifth century given that this view of time is exactly that held by modern cosmologists. Time requires matter in motion. To see this try to imagine time in a world in which all matter is frozen in a motionless state. It's a condition not unlike that of the characters in a movie when the pause button on the remote is pushed. For these characters there is no time until the action resumes. If there's nothing, no matter nor energy, then there can be no time, at least not as we understand it. Thus apart from the universe, and the movement of its material components, the kind of time with which we are familiar does not exist.

Now, Augustine may be wrong in asserting that Scripture clearly teaches that the Creation was instantaneous.... Other options certainly exist-most notably, the familiar idea that the six days of Creation represent six periods of 24 hours, or the related idea that they represent six more extended periods, possibly millions of years. Nevertheless, Augustine's position ought to make us reflect on these questions, even if some of us believe him to be incorrect.

So what are the implications of this ancient Christian interpretation of Genesis for the Darwin celebrations? .... For Augustine, God created a universe that was deliberately designed to develop and evolve. The blueprint for that evolution is not arbitrary, but is programmed into the very fabric of creation. God's providence superintends the continuing unfolding of the created order.

This is a point similar to the one we illustrated a couple of months ago with the analogy of a braided river.

Where some might think of the Creation as God's insertion of new kinds of plants and animals readymade into an already existing world, Augustine rejects this as inconsistent with the overall witness of Scripture. Rather, God must be thought of as creating in that very first moment the potencies for all the kinds of living things to come later, including humanity.

This means that the first Creation account describes the instantaneous bringing into existence of primal matter, including causal resources for further development. The second account explores how these causal possibilities emerged and developed from the earth. Taken together, the two Genesis Creation accounts declare that God made the world instantaneously, while envisaging that the various kinds of living things would make their appearance gradually over time-as they were meant to by their Creator.

The image of the "seed" implies that the original Creation contained within it the potential for all the living kinds to subsequently emerge. This does not mean that God created the world incomplete or imperfect, in that "what God originally established in causes, he subsequently fulfilled in effects." This process of development, Augustine declares, is governed by fundamental laws, which reflect the will of their Creator: "God has established fixed laws governing the production of kinds and qualities of beings, and bringing them out of concealment into full view."

Augustine would have rejected any idea of the development of the universe as a random or lawless process. For this reason, Augustine would have opposed the Darwinian notion of random variations, insisting that God's providence is deeply involved throughout. The process may be unpredictable. But it is not random.

McGrath's article is good and would reward the reader who tackles the whole thing, especially those interested in how a strong commitment to the truth of Genesis can be reconciled with a contemporary belief in descent through modification.

RLC

Preliminary Thoughts on the Sotomayor Pick

David Frum caused eyebrows everywhere to rise by making the counterintuitive claim that the nomination of the very liberal Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court is perhaps the best thing that could have happened for conservatives. His reasoning, however, makes sense:

On the other hand, here's the possible good news in the Sotomayor nomination. A conservative legalist friend notes that the all-important 5th vote on the Supreme Court is Justice Anthony Kennedy's. The Reagan-appointed Kennedy has drifted to the left in recent years - in part (it's gossiped) because of his negative reactions to the brilliant but sometimes acerbic Antonin Scalia.

Having lost in 2008, Republicans had no hope of a conservative or even a moderate judicial nominee. What we should therefore be hoping for, my friend continues, is the most personally obnoxious liberal, someone certain to offend and irritate Kennedy - and push him careening back rightward. For this reason, the politic Elena Kagan would be the very worst pick from a conservative point of view. As dean of Harvard Law School, she proved herself adept at wooing conservative support. By contrast, if Jeffrey Rosen's reporting is correct, Sotomayor was almost unanimously disliked by her colleagues on the Second Circuit and even more by their clerks. And she's unlikely to gain humility from this latest promotion... so who could be better?

This is interesting, but there's really no need to find out whether Frum is correct, since the GOP could easily block Ms Sotomayor's appointment. In order to get a nominee to the full Senate for a confirmation vote the Senate Judiciary committee has to give her ten votes, at least one of which has to be from the minority party. With Senator Specter having defected to the Democrats the remaining Republicans could, if they had the resolve, refuse to give that vote to Sotomayor, just as Democrats bottled up numerous Bush appointees to the federal bench and just as many of them voted against John Roberts and Samuel Alito in the full Senate.

It is one of the ironies of politics that Senator Obama, having declared Roberts and Alito both qualified, legally and temperamentally, to serve on the SCOTUS, nevertheless voted against both and led the filibuster against Alito. Now that he's nominated a woman who gives us good reason to doubt her temperament, Republicans are being warned by such as Senator Schumer that they better not oppose her.

Actually, given Sotomayor's judicial philosophy they should, but given the GOP fear of alienating minority groups, they probably won't.

It's remarkable that Democrats had no qualms about savaging Clarence Thomas, Condaleeza Rice, Miguel Estrada, or Alberto Gonzalez, nor did they pay a political price for doing so, but Republican knees turn to jelly at the thought of losing votes they don't have anyway by opposing a Hispanic woman who believes that the role of the judge is to usurp the role of the legislature by making policy. If Republicans don't block Sotomayor it'll be a good example of the GOP's willingness to sacrifice principle to politics and another reason why they languish in the minority in Congress.

RLC

The Sting

President Obama assured us that once in office we would henceforth take the "high road" in our treatment of terrorist detainees. Under his presidency, he promised, we would return to our "highest values," etc. Unfortunately, we're beginning to learn that what the President promises is often not quite what he does. Consider this example from the New York Times:

The United States is now relying heavily on foreign intelligence services to capture, interrogate and detain all but the highest-level terrorist suspects seized outside the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, according to current and former American government officials. The change represents a significant loosening of the reins for the United States, which has worked closely with allies to combat violent extremism since the 9/11 attacks but is now pushing that cooperation to new limits.

In the past 10 months, for example, about a half-dozen midlevel financiers and logistics experts working with Al Qaeda have been captured and are being held by intelligence services in four Middle Eastern countries after the United States provided information that led to their arrests by local security services, a former American counterterrorism official said.

In addition, Pakistan's intelligence and security services captured a Saudi suspect and a Yemeni suspect this year with the help of American intelligence and logistical support, Pakistani officials said. The two are the highest-ranking Qaeda operatives captured since President Obama took office, but they are still being held by Pakistan, which has shared information from their interrogations with the United States, the official said.

The current approach, which began in the last two years of the Bush administration and has gained momentum under Mr. Obama, is driven in part by court rulings and policy changes that have closed the secret prisons run by the Central Intelligence Agency, and all but ended the transfer of prisoners from outside Iraq and Afghanistan to American military prisons.

When George Bush sent terrorists to other countries for interrogation the Left went orbital with outrage. President Obama assured us that he would not accept the "failed policies of the past," but how is what the Times reports any different than what Bush did? Instead of sending the prisoners to foreign countries to have their fingernails pulled out our people just tell their people where to find the bad guys and let their people make the arrest and take the terrorists home to be hooked up to the electrodes.

Further on in the article it mentions the difficulty Obama administration officials are struggling with trying to figure out where high level detainees will be kept now that the president has promised to close down Guantanamo. Of course, just because he promised to close Gitmo ...well, by now you probably get the picture.

Hot Air points out that this is the second Bush policy in the last three days for which the Left trashed Bush but which Obama appears to be continuing. The other one is to continue to hold detainees indefinitely without trial.

What a slickster. His modus operandi is to fire up the opposition to Bush, give everyone the impression that he's the antithesis of Bush, and then continue doing much the same things Bush did while his adoring supporters ooh and ahh over how he's purged us of the evil policies of the past and brought us "change." How long will it be before it dawns on those same supporters in the media and elsewhere that they've been conned pretty much like Paul Newman conned Robert Shaw in The Sting?

RLC

While Europe Slept

First Things features a sobering but important essay by Jean Bethke Elshtain titled "While Europe Slept." What she says about Europe is, one fears, equally true of the U.S., or will be in another generation or so. Here's how her essay opens:

In the great cathedrals in Europe, a few people-usually elderly women-can be found at worship. Everybody else is a tourist, cameras hanging around their necks, meandering through. I was recently in Scotland, and I read a newspaper story commenting on three hundred deserted churches dotting the Scottish countryside, asking if they should be destroyed or turned into bars and cafes. Europe herself, in her proposed constitution, refuses to acknowledge the heritage of Judaism and Christianity-although Greece and Rome and the Enlightenment are acknowledged.

Europe cannot remember who she is unless she remembers that she is the child not only of the ancient Greek and Roman worlds and the Enlightenment but also of Judaism and Christianity-the child, therefore, of Catholicism and the Reformation. If Europe abandons her religious heritage, the idea of Europe dies. And Europe has abandoned, or forgotten, her religious heritage. Europe is now "post-Christian." What does this mean? What does it portend?

If a culture forgets what it is, as I believe Europe has done, it falls first into an agnostic shrugging of the shoulders, unable to say exactly what it is and believes, and from there it will inevitably fall into nihilism. Detached from its religious foundations, Europe will not remain agnostic. The first result is manifest in those ideologies of multiculturalism that make "difference" a kind of sacred, absolute principle, although no principle is considered to have any such status. Difference tells us nothing in and of itself. Some ways of life and ways of being in the world are brutal, stupid, and ugly. Some a human rights-oriented culture cannot tolerate. A culture must believe in its own enculturating responsibility and mission in order to make claims of value and to institutionalize them in social and political forms. This a post-Christian Europe cannot do.

Multiculturalism is then, in practice, a series of monoculturalisms that do not engage one another at all; rather, the cultural particulate most enamored of gaining and holding power has an enormous advantage: One day, it proclaims, we will bury you. A sign carried by radical Islamist protestors in London during the fracas over the Dutch cartoons proclaimed, "Europe is a cancer / Islam is the answer." A perverted idea of Islam confronts a Europe that has lost a sense of who she is and what she represents.

For that Europe, the window to transcendence is slammed shut. Human values alone pertain. But these human values are shriveled by a prior loss of the conviction that there is much to defend about the human person, and they are seen as so many subjectivist construals without any defensible, objective content. Unsurprisingly, what comes to prevail is a form of reduced utilitarianism that rationalizes nihilism.

The territory as one's own property is the self itself, or an understanding of the self shorn of any encumbrances of the past, any shackles of old defunct moralities. The self blows hither, thither; it matters not, if it blows my way. The question of what the self is, and whether it has any transcendent meaning, is answered with a shrug.

The late John Paul II saw the result of the belief that we are sovereigns of ourselves, wholly self-possessing. In Evangelium Vitae he writes: "If the promotion of the self is understood in terms of absolute autonomy, people inevitably reach the point of rejecting one another. Everyone else is considered an enemy from whom one has to defend oneself." Society "becomes a mass of individuals placed side by side, but without any mutual bonds."

Someone may attach a value to us - we may have a market price, so to speak - a price, but not a dignity. Should no one attach value to us and we be too bereft or wounded to attach it to ourselves, we become dispensable. The final triumph of this notion will be a world in which the powerful have their way simply because they can and because the ethical and moral barriers to taking what they want have all been lost. The final fate of the disabled in a liberal society will not be a happy one. We champion "access" even as we redraw the boundaries of humanity to exclude wide swaths of human persons from this access.

Over time human rights, now almost universally accepted among Europeans, will themselves come to be seen as so many arbitrary constructions that may, on utilitarian grounds, be revoked-because there is nothing intrinsic about human beings such that they are not to be ill-treated or violated or even killed. Even now, many do not want to be bothered with the infirm elderly or damaged infants, so we devise so-called humane ways to kill them and pretend that somehow they chose (or would have chosen) to die. Elderly patients are being killed in the Netherlands without their consent. A new protocol for euthanizing newborns with disabilities is institutionalized in the Netherlands, and the doctor who authored the protocols, Eduard Verhagen, tells us how "beautiful" it is when the newborns are killed, for, at last, they are at peace.

Read the rest of this prophetic article. It's crucial that moderns and post-moderns alike see clearly the hell to which post-Christian assumptions are leading us. Very nearly every paragraph Elshtain writes is worth underlining.

RLC

Obamaman Can

This has apparently been all over the internet, but I just came across it recently at Hot Air. Comedian Greg Morton does a riff on Candyman that's been viewed over a million times on You Tube.

Funny and disturbing at the same time.

My favorite Obama song, though, is still this one:

236.com: Barack Obama-sistible - The most popular videos are a click away

RLC

Liberty at Stake

Liberty University is in the news. It seems that it will no longer recognize its campus Democratic club because, officials say, the national party's platform goes against the conservative Christian school's moral principles:

Officials at the private Lynchburg school, which was founded by the Rev. Jerry Falwell, said they made the decision after receiving complaints from trustees, parents and donors.

"They really are great kids and good friends of mine," said Jerry Falwell Jr., who became the school's chancellor after his father died in 2007. "It's just an issue of what Liberty's mission is."

The decision led to swift and strong criticism by Gov. Timothy M. Kaine, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, and the three Democrats running to replace him. Kaine, who spoke on the campus on behalf of then-Sen. Barack Obama last year, urged the school to reconsider.

"For Liberty University to deprive the College Democrats of the same opportunity as College Republicans ... violates that fundamental principle of fairness and teaches the students the wrong message," Kaine said.

This is a story not lacking in ironies. To be sure, the university has an obligation to guarantee that its values and mission are not weakened, and it's certainly understandable that the administrative honchos would see the national Democrat party as a serious threat to those values, but banishing one mainstream political organization while allowing its competitor seems a bit, well, unChristian and unAmerican. Indeed, its the sort of thing that happens most often on liberal campuses which makes it funny that the Democrat governor would complain about it. How loudly have Democrats complained about the indoctrination, intimidation, and suppression of conservative views in public universities across the nation? Not loud enough so's anyone would notice.

Anyway, I'm frankly conflicted on this. I'm not sure Liberty should stifle their students' political views unless the students are publicly and overtly undermining the mission of the school - which, indeed, they may have been doing in campaigning for a radical pro-choice presidential candidate. However, there's nothing about being a Democrat or belonging to a Democrat campus organization that inherently requires one to have the same moral outlook as Nancy Pelosi, John Murtha, Barney Frank and Ted Kennedy. Surely, student Democrats can espouse positions on issues of foreign and economic policy that don't obviously clash with the mission statement of the university.

On the other hand, the university, being a private school, has the right and the obligation to set the limits of acceptable discourse on campus. I don't think a school like Liberty should feel the need to balance a pro-life student organization with a pro-choice group nor should they feel constrained to permit groups on campus that advocate gay marriage. If the national Democratic party takes these positions, and it does, then it's understandable that the university would wish to derecognize the campus affiliate.

Nevertheless, perhaps Liberty should consider changing its name.

RLC

Future Draft Choice

In 2008 my first choice for the Republican candidate for president was Dick Cheney, my second was Jeb Bush. I knew that neither had a chance of being nominated even were they interested in running, which neither were, and both had even less chance of being elected were they nominated. Even so, I'm convinced that the country would've been much better off under either than it is today, which isn't saying a whole lot, I guess.

But now comes another possibility, albeit with a name that's bound to be hard to overcome, but someone who has all the fire and punch of Sarah Palin alloyed with the gravitas that distinguishes her father. I speak of Liz Cheney. The woman is quickly endearing herself to the hearts of every American grown weary of the bloviations and pretensions of the Left and tired also of liberal nostrums and shibboleths going unchallenged by a media more inclined to genuflect at the name of Barack Obama than to ask of him critical questions.

To be sure Liz, Dick's daughter, is not yet ready for the office of POTUS (which didn't stop a mesmerized nation from electing Mr. Obama, of course), but in four or eight years, who knows? Meanwhile, here's some video of her taking on one of the more execrable of our media bullies, Lawrence O'Donnell. The video couldn't be embedded but it can be accessed at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbPlhr0odOY

Liz Cheney is a formidable woman, intelligent and charming, just like her mom, and she appears to have a potentially great future in American politics if she wants it. I hope she does.

RLC

MPD

In a post a couple of days ago I wondered (facetiously) if Barack Obama may have MPD (Multiple Personality Disorder). Then along comes this article in the Jerusalem Post and I wonder whether I should drop the word "facetiously."

President Barack Obama agreed Wednesday to share US nuclear power technology with the oil-rich United Arab Emirates, giving his consent to a deal signed in the final days of George W. Bush's administration.

The agreement creates a legal framework for the US to transfer sensitive nuclear items to the United Arab Emirates, a federation of seven Middle Eastern states that wants nuclear power to satisfy growing demand for electricity.

Although flush with oil, the emirates imports 60 percent of the natural gas they use to generate electricity. The United Arab Emerates wants to break its dependence on outside sources for its energy needs and settled on nuclear power as the best option.

There's something very odd about this. The President opposes developing more nuclear power plants in the U.S. to alleviate our own dependence upon outside sources of energy because that's bad for the environment, what with radiation and whatnot, but he's prepared to help Middle East countries build nuclear facilities to help them meet their energy demands. Does he think it's okay if it's just Arabs who get exposed to radiation?

Anyway, while one Obama personality is explaining why we can't build more nuclear power plants in this country, even though it's the cleanest, safest energy available on a mass scale, another personality is making deals with the U.A.E. to help them build those very same plants.

I think his various personalities ought to sit down and have a long talk with each other.

RLC

God Help Us

A woman writes to First Things (subscription required) to relate a couple of anecdotes from the last presidential election campaign. She tells us that:

During the campaign, a woman in her mid-twenties told me she would not vote for Gov. Sarah Palin because "Palin is so stupid she doesn't even know where Alaska is." I asked what she meant, and she explained that in a TV interview Palin had referred to Alaska as "up North," whereas everyone knows Alaska is "down there with Hawaii south of California." I surmised that her knowledge of geography is based on seeing textbooks depicting the U.S. map with an insert for Alaska and Hawaii placed in the lower left-hand corner, underneath California. When I gently explained where Alaska is, she dismissed it with, "Well, Palin's stupid anyway."

A second voter, a man about thirty, said he would vote for Obama rather than McCain because "Obama has young children so he probably cares more about the future than McCain does."

A Catholic nun was enthusiastically supporting Obama (as was most of her order), and, when I pointed out Obama's positions on abortion issues, she refused to believe it was true on the grounds that such a wonderful man could not possibly support abortion.

God, please save us from ourselves.

RLC

Ten Punches

Yesterday I commented on Barack Obama's recent speech which was largely given to criticizing Bush administration policies on homeland security. Within minutes of the conclusion of the President's address former Vice-President Dick Cheney gave a stout defense of those policies in a speech at The American Enterprise Institute. This was quite a remarkable conjunction of events, actually, and The Telegraph U.K.'s Toby Harnden composes a fine analysis of Cheney's riposte titled "The 10 Punches Dick Cheney Landed on Barack Obama's Jaw".

Here's an excerpt from Harnden's essay. He first quotes Cheney and then comments:

[Cheney said] "By presidential decision last month, we saw the selective release of documents relating to enhanced interrogations. This is held up as a bold exercise in open government, honoring the public's right to know. We're informed as well that there was much agonizing over this decision. Yet somehow, when the soul searching was done and the veil was lifted on the policies of the Bush administration, the public was given less than half the truth."

The release of the documents was a nakedly political move by Obama and Cheney called him on it. This passage from Obama's speech today came across as completely disingenuous: "I did not do this because I disagreed with the enhanced interrogation techniques that those memos authorized, and I didn't release the documents because I rejected their legal rationales -- although I do on both counts. I released the memos because the existence of that approach to interrogation was already widely known, the Bush Administration had acknowledged its existence, and I had already banned those methods."

The President's justification for releasing the memos is weak and unconvincing. If the contents of the memos were widely known what was gained by releasing them? And why the reluctance to release the additional memos that Cheney is requesting be released so that the American people will have all the facts before them? The most plausible explanation for Obama's decision is that he thought the memos would embarrass Bush. If that was indeed his motive it certainly makes the President look both tacky and vindictive.

It's worthwhile to read Cheney's other nine punches to the presidential jaw at the link to Harnden's column.

RLC

Silver Lining for GOP

It's not uncommon nowadays to hear commentators pronouncing last rites over the dying remnants of the Republican party. The conventional wisdom has it that the country has lurched leftward, electing the most radical congress and administration in history, and all that's left for Republicans is to get on board the train to Euro-socialism or else just go gently into the outer darkness of political oblivion.

Pat Buchanan, however, isn't completely convinced. It's true that the GOP is in a difficult spot and the nation's demographics are definitely not trending in their favor, but there are glimmers of hope that he gleans from a new book by Democrat strategist Chuck Todd. After reciting the dispiriting litany of handicaps, trends and obstacles faced by the GOP in 2012 Buchanan espies a silver lining:

Despite all of the above, John McCain, two weeks after the GOP convention, thanks to the surge in energy and enthusiasm Sarah Palin brought to the ticket, was running ahead of Obama. It was the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the crash and the panic that ensued, which McCain mishandled, that lost him all the ground he never made up. Had the crash not occurred, the election might have been much closer than seven points, which in itself is no blowout.

Second, an astonishing 75 percent of voters thought the country was headed in the wrong direction. Obama won these voters 62 percent to 36 percent. But if the country is seen as headed in the wrong direction in 2012, it will be Obama's albatross.

Third, only 27 percent of voters approved of Bush's performance as of Election Day; 71 percent disapproved. Only Harry Truman had a lower rating, 22 percent, and Democrats were also wiped out in Washington in 1952.

Here is Todd's dramatic point: "With the single exception of Missouri, which barely went for McCain, Obama won every state where Bush's approval rating was below 35 percent in the exit polls, and he lost every state where Bush's approval was above 35 percent." Obama rode Bush's coattails to victory. Had Bush been at 35 percent or 40 percent, McCain might have won. But, in 2012, Obama will not have Bush to kick around anymore.

There's much more at the link to persuade Republicans that it's not yet time to start jumping off bridges, and much, too, to sober Democrats still dancing exuberantly in the end zone after regaining control of both the legislature and the White House. Obama's victory is due largely to factors which won't obtain in 2012.

Since before WWII only one Democrat president, Bill Clinton, has ever been re-elected to a second term, and there's much reason to suspect that Obama will prove to be more like Jimmy Carter than Bill Clinton.

RLC

The Obama Speech (Pt. I)

In his speech yesterday outlining his rationale for embarking on a "new direction" in the fight to keep us safe from "man-caused disasterism" (by the way, what does it mean to set off in a new direction given that the last direction has kept us safe for almost eight years?) President Obama said this:

I know some have argued that brutal methods like water-boarding were necessary to keep us safe. I could not disagree more," Obama continued. "As commander-in-chief, I see the intelligence, I bear responsibility for keeping this country safe, and I reject the assertion that these are the most effective means of interrogation. What's more, they undermine the rule of law. They alienate us in the world. They serve as a recruitment tool for terrorists, and increase the will of our enemies to fight us, while decreasing the will of others to work with America. They risk the lives of our troops by making it less likely that others will surrender to them in battle, and more likely that Americans will be mistreated if they are captured. In short, they did not advance our war and counter-terrorism efforts - they undermined them, and that is why I ended them once and for all.

I'm sure President Obama believes all these claims, but I don't know why. He certainly offers no reasons why anyone else should believe them. He refuses to release the relevant CIA memos Dick Cheney has asked him to make public that would show us how effective these measures really were. He simply tells us that they were counterproductive and expects us to take his word for it. He declines to tell us which methods he's referring to when he says that there are more effective ways of getting information from terrorists. He cites no evidence for his assertion that waterboarding or confinement at Guantanamo serves as an effective recruitment tool for jihadis or increases their will to fight us - a claim, by the way, which I find particularly risible since every Arab in the world knows that compared to the brutalities his own government inflicts on its enemies, being captured by the U.S. is like being taken into custody by a bunch of Amishmen. Nor is there any reason whatsoever to accept his naive belief that the Islamists would treat captured American soldiers kindly if only we hadn't waterboarded Kalid Sheik Mohammed.

In other words, the President's entire paragraph is little more than a recital of left-wing myths which no one ever really challenges and everyone just "knows" to be true. Well, I don't know that any of them are true, and I'd like to hear just once from someone who advances these myths a little bit of evidence in their behalf.

But this paragraph wasn't the only instance of the vacuity of yesterday's address. See the following post for more examples.

RLC

The Obama Speech (Pt. II)

In his address yesterday on American foreign policy, President Obama said this:

I understand that it is no secret that there is a tendency in Washington to spend our time pointing fingers at one another. And our media culture feeds the impulses that lead to a good fight. Nothing will contribute more to that than an extended re-litigation of the last eight years. Already, we have seen how that kind of effort only leads those in Washington to different sides laying blame, and can distract us from focusing our time, our effort, and our politics on the challenges of the future.

He said this after having spent almost the entire speech faulting the Bush administration for all manner of failings. If anyone exhibits the Washington tendency to point fingers, surely it's the President. It's worthwhile noting, I think, that his much maligned predecessor never once indulged what must have been an enormous temptation to blame his own predecessor for the problems facing the country in 2001. Obama frequently insults and demeans the Bush administration and makes himself look small every time he does it.

And then there's this:

We see that, above all, in how the recent debate has been obscured by two opposite and absolutist ends. On one side of the spectrum, there are those who make little allowance for the unique challenges posed by terrorism, and who would almost never put national security over transparency. On the other end of the spectrum, there are those who embrace a view that can be summarized in two words: "anything goes." Their arguments suggest that the ends of fighting terrorism can be used to justify any means, and that the President should have blanket authority to do whatever he wants - provided that it is a President with whom they agree.

Both sides may be sincere in their views, but neither side is right. The American people are not absolutist, and they don't elect us to impose a rigid ideology on our problems. They know that we need not sacrifice our security for our values, nor sacrifice our values for our security, so long as we approach difficult questions with honesty, and care, and a dose of common sense.

This is a fine example of Barack Obama's adroit employment of the straw man technique. There is no one, at least as far as I'm aware, who is an absolutist on torture except those, like the President himself, who insist that it's always wrong. Those who support the use of waterboarding do so only in certain very restricted circumstances and only if it's administered in certain highly restrictive ways. To suggest that the proponents of "harsh interrogation" believe that "anything goes" is a misrepresentation of their position that is as hyperbolic as it is unfair.

It's not unusual for the President to make allegations which ascribe to unnamed persons positions that no one really holds, but he diminishes his credibility further every time he does it.

RLC

Free Soup

Tell me what's wrong with this picture. The first lady is serving meals in a government, i.e. taxpayer, funded soup kitchen to homeless indigents:

The fellow taking her picture is using what I'm told is a Black Berry that costs about $500. How many people do you know who can afford a $500 cell phone?

So what are we doing buying this guy dinner? I wonder if we also bought him his cell phone.

RLC

Obama's Pick for SCOTUS

Given that President Obama is not going to nominate to the Supreme Court an originalist (a Justice who seeks to determine the original intent of those who wrote the Constitution) what's the best those who don't want another activist (a Justice who legislates from the bench) on the Court can hope for?

The New Ledger nominates Cass Sunstein:

I start with the obvious: Cass Sunstein would not be my pick for the Supreme Court were I President of the United States, simply because he and I do not share the same judicial philosophy. I want my judges and Justices to adhere to original public meaning jurisprudence, and Cass Sunstein is not an originalist. As such, my view is that his approach to interpreting the Constitution is not the best approach. (Doubtless, he would say the same thing about my approach.)

But I will follow up with something just as obvious: Cass Sunstein is plenty bright and plenty learned enough-to say the least!-to be a Supreme Court Justice. While originalists like me disagree with him, we can still find areas of doctrinal commonality between us. A Justice Sunstein would be both a worthy opponent for originalists, and, perhaps more often than some might expect, a valued ally. For this, his nomination to the Supreme Court by President Obama to fill the seat being vacated by Justice Souter, ought to be desired across ideological lines.

Read the rest of The New Ledger's case at the link. I don't wish to prejudge the President's pick, but I'm doubtful that Cass Sunstein would pass muster in the current White House. He's neither a member of a minority group nor is he female. It's a sad fact that one of the qualifications for being appointed to the most important court in the land is a biological trait over which one has no control and which has nothing to do with one's fitness for the office, but that's the world in which we now live. In our postmodern society racial and gender identity are considered every bit as important - if not moreso - as the keenness of a candidate's legal mind.

RLC

Unimaginable Debt

The Washington Post offers a graphic illustration that compares the projected deficits under President Obama to those under President Bush. It's pretty stark ... and frightening. Imagine that you owed far more on your credit card than you could ever pay and every month the interest kept increasing the total. Your credit rating falls as you fail to pay your bills, you lose your home, car and insurance coverage, you're unable to buy clothes or food for your children and no one will lend you any more money.

This is the situation we will soon be in as a nation when the bills start arriving from President Obama's great spending spree. Astonishingly, he himself admitted last week that our debt is unsustainable. Here's part of the Bloomberg story:

President Barack Obama, calling current deficit spending "unsustainable," warned of skyrocketing interest rates for consumers if the U.S. continues to finance government by borrowing from other countries.

"We can't keep on just borrowing from China," Obama said at a town-hall meeting in Rio Rancho, New Mexico, outside Albuquerque. "We have to pay interest on that debt, and that means we are mortgaging our children's future with more and more debt."

Holders of U.S. debt will eventually "get tired" of buying it, causing interest rates on everything from auto loans to home mortgages to increase, Obama said. "It will have a dampening effect on our economy."

Earlier this week, the Obama administration revised its own budget estimates and raised the projected deficit for this year to a record $1.84 trillion, up 5 percent from the February estimate. The revision for the 2010 fiscal year estimated the deficit at $1.26 trillion, up 7.4 percent from the February figure. The White House Office of Management and Budget also projected next year's budget will end up at $3.59 trillion, compared with the $3.55 trillion it estimated previously.

It makes me wonder if Mr. Obama suffers from multiple personality disorder. Who does he think is responsible for plunging us into this debt? Is he battling some other personality for control of his spending impulses? Is there no one in his administration who can urge him to be more responsible? Is there no one who could manage the equivalent of taking a scissors to his credit cards?

The man should be attending meetings of the governmental equivalent of shoppers anonymous, but instead he keeps running up massive debt while warning us that we just can't afford it any more. This is how an alcoholic behaves. The addict keeps on drinking while bemoaning the fact that he's ruining his life and killing his body.

In the President's case, however, it's not his life he's ruining. It's our children's lives which are being devastated by his profligacy. This is what one gets when one votes for someone just because he promises Hope and Change.

RLC

Holder's Tortured Logic

Andrew McCarthy at NRO offers up a devastating critique of Attorney General Eric holder's testimony before the House Judiciary Committee last week. Apparently, Holder was either ignorant of the law on torture or he is willing, as McCarthy says, to misstate it.

Here's what happened. Holder was being questioned by two congressmen, Dan Lungren and Louie Gohmert, on the question of whether the CIA committed torture of detainees under the Bush administration.

The two congressmen highlighted a fatal flaw in Holder's theory. Moreover, they demonstrated that - despite having accused the CIA and the Bush administration of war crimes by cavalierly branding waterboarding as "torture" - the attorney general has still not acquainted himself with the legal elements of a torture offense, particularly the required mental state. This is remarkable, given that Holder's own department explained these elements less than a month ago in a federal appeals court brief.

Rep. Lungren pointed out that if the attorney general truly believes "waterboarding is torture," he must also think we torture our own Navy SEALs and other special-operations personnel when we waterboard them as part of their training. "No . . . not in the legal sense," countered Holder. You see, said he, it's "a fundamentally different thing," because...

"...we're doing something for training purposes to try to equip them with the tools to, perhaps, resist torture techniques that might be used on them. There is not the intent to do that which is defined as torture - which is to inflict serious bodily or mental harm. It's for training. It's different."

But it's not different because "it's for training." Look at the torture statute (Sections 2340 and 2340A of the federal penal code) and try to find a "training" exception. There isn't one. What removes an act from the ambit of torture (besides lack of severe pain) is intent. Lungren pressed this point, and Holder admitted that the training was "not torture in the legal sense because we're not doing it with the intention of harming these people physically or mentally." Intent, he acknowledged, was the key question.

Then, Lungren pounced. The CIA interrogators who questioned top al-Qaeda captives like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abu Zubaydah intended no more harm to them than Navy instructors intended to their SEAL trainees. In fact, we know that the CIA went to great lengths, under Justice Department guidance, precisely to avoid severe harm. Their purpose, Rep. Lungren observed, was to "solicit information," not to inflict torture.

Read the rest of this at the link if this is an issue that you're concerned about.

Meanwhile, here's the position Obama and the Democrats find themselves in as they obsessively strive - like Javert pursuing Jean Val Jean in Victor Hugo's Les Miserables - to land Bush administration officials in prison for having ordered that terrorists be waterboarded to elicit information from them:

They have to contend with the fact that their own President Clinton used extraordinary rendition which resulted in real torture to those who were sent to countries like Egypt and Yemen for interrogation. They have to finesse the fact that Democratic congressional leadership, including the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, knew about the methods being used and condoned them. They have to explain the fact that President Obama refuses to release CIA memos which would settle the question of how effective these methods were, and now they have to somehow circumvent the fact that their own Attorney General has tacitly admitted that according to U.S. law waterboarding, as practiced by the CIA, is not really torture.

I suspect that most Democrats are regretting that they tried to crucify the Bushies on this issue and are right now wishing that the whole matter would just go away. I'll be surprised if they continue to pursue it. If they do I'll have to change the literary analogy from Javert to Melville's Captain Ahab.

RLC