In Search of the Conservative Intellectual

Steven Hayward at the Washington Post wonders about the intellectual vigor of today's conservatism. Along the way he makes some observations that are both interesting and puzzling:

During the glory days of the conservative movement, from its ascent in the 1960s and '70s to its success in Ronald Reagan's era, there was a balance between the intellectuals, such as William F. Buckley and Milton Friedman, and the activists, such as Phyllis Schlafly and Paul Weyrich, the leader of the New Right. The conservative political movement, for all its infighting, has always drawn deeply from the conservative intellectual movement, and this mix of populism and elitism troubled neither side. Today, however, the conservative movement has been thrown off balance, with the populists dominating and the intellectuals retreating and struggling to come up with new ideas. The leading conservative figures of our time are now drawn from mass media, from talk radio and cable news. We've traded in Buckley for Beck, Kristol for Coulter, and conservatism has been reduced to sound bites.

The best-selling conservative books these days tend to be red-meat titles such as Michelle Malkin's "Culture of Corruption," Glenn Beck's new "Arguing with Idiots" and all of Ann Coulter's well-calculated provocations that the left falls for like Pavlov's dogs. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with these books. Politics is not conducted by Socratic seminar, and Henry Adams's dictum that politics is the systematic organization of hatreds should remind us that partisan passions are an essential and necessary function of democratic life. The right has always produced, and always will produce, potboilers.

Conspicuously missing, however, are the intellectual works. The bestseller list used to be crowded with the likes of Friedman's "Free to Choose," George Gilder's "Wealth and Poverty," Paul Johnson's "Modern Times," Allan Bloom's "The Closing of the American Mind," Charles Murray's "Losing Ground" and "The Bell Curve," and Francis Fukuyama's "The End of History and the Last Man." There are still conservative intellectuals attempting to produce important work, but some publishers have been cutting back on serious conservative titles because they don't sell.

About the only recent successful title that harkens back to the older intellectual style is Jonah Goldberg's "Liberal Fascism," which argues that modern liberalism has much more in common with European fascism than conservatism has ever had. But because it deployed the incendiary f-word, the book was perceived as a mood-of-the-moment populist work, even though I predict that it will have a long shelf life as a serious work. Had Goldberg called the book "Aspects of Illiberal Policymaking: 1914 to the Present," it might have been received differently by its critics. And sold about 200 copies.

I think Hayward overstates his case here. He gives the impression that conservative books are all polemic and no ideas. This requires that he overlook the work of writers like Newt Gingrich, Thomas Sowell, Pat Buchanan, and Mark Levin. Their books are filled with ideas, but perhaps they don't qualify for Hayward since they're written to be comprehensible by the average person rather than just academics. If it's scholarly work he wants, however, he could find it at the Heritage Foundation and in more modest publications like Hillsdale College's Imprimus. The point is that there are plenty of ideas being generated on the right and it's surprising that Hayward seems to have missed them.

Yet it was not enough (for conservative intellectuals) just to expose liberalism's weakness; it was also necessary to offer robust alternatives for both foreign and domestic policy, ideas that came to fruition in the Reagan years. Today, it is not clear that conservative thinkers have compelling alternatives to Obama's economic or foreign policy. At best, the right is badly divided over how to fix the economy and handle Iran and Afghanistan. So for the time being, the populists alone have the spotlight.

I don't see the division on the right that Hayward apparently does. Conservatives seem to be pretty much in agreement as to how to fix the economy and manage foreign policy. The economy is like a beach ball, and taxes, debt, and burdensome regulations are like a weight pushing the ball under water. Remove the pressure and the economy will bounce back to the surface. Almost all conservatives agree with this prescription which is why they oppose Obama's plans to raise taxes, increase debt, and impose ever more onerous regulations on businesses.

In foreign affairs the most effective policy is to have a strong military and be prepared to use it when justice and our interests are at stake. Again, this is not the Obama view, but it is one upon which most conservatives are united.

The blend of entertainment and politics is not unique to the right (exhibit No. 1 on the left: "The Daily Show"). And it is perfectly possible to conduct talk radio at a high level of seriousness, and several talkers do well at matching the quality of their shows to their intellectual pedigree. Consider Hugh Hewitt (Michigan Law School), Michael Medved (Yale Law School), William Bennett (Harvard Law and a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Texas) -- all three of these brainiacs have popular shows on the Salem Radio Network.

All three have written a number of books as well, it should be noted, in case Hayward has overlooked that fact.

With others -- Michael Savage and "Mancow" come to mind -- the charge of dumbing down is much more accurate. Rush Limbaugh adheres to Winston Churchill's adage that you should grin when you fight, and in any case his keen sense of satire makes him deserving of comparison to Will Rogers, who, by the way, was a critic of progressivism. Others among the right's leading talkers, such as Sean Hannity, seem unremittingly angry and too reflexively partisan on behalf of the Republican Party rather than the conservative movement (they are not the same thing).

This is actually, in my opinion, too kind to Hannity who to my ear comes off as a callow narcissist bully who doesn't have the faintest idea how to have a civil conversation with someone who disagrees with him. Ten seconds into his show he hits a vocal pitch that approximates the sound of a faulty blow dryer and maintains that level of stridency for the duration of his monologue. It's as much an assault on the listener's nerves as on the intellect, and I say this as one who thinks that in terms of substance Hannity is usually right.

Hayward goes on to discuss Glenn Beck. It's pretty interesting stuff, especially if you listen to talk radio at all. In fact the whole article is interesting, despite my misgivings about some of what he says. Give it a read.

RLC

Gary Cooper vs. Michael Jackson

People who study such things claim that over the last three or four decades women's preference in men has evolved. Whereas a couple of generations ago women were attracted to masculine men, that no longer seems to be the case. Today, a paper in the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution notes, women seem to be partial to men who appear more boyish or even feminized. I don't pretend to have any idea whether this is true, but some of those who believe it is also believe that the culprit behind this development is The Pill.

The Daily Mail Online reports:

Scientists have long known that a woman's taste in men changes over her menstrual cycle. During the few days each month when women are fertile - around the time of ovulation - they tend to prefer masculine features and men who are more assertive.

On these fertile days, women are also more attracted to men who are 'genetically dissimilar', Dr Alvergne said. Picking a partner whose genetic make-up is unlike their own increases the chances of having a healthy child.

On days when women are not fertile, their tastes swing towards more feminine, boyish faces and more caring personalities, researchers have shown. However, if women are taking the Pill (which first became available in the 1960s) they no longer have fertile days.

That means they no longer experience the hormonal changes that make them more attracted to masculine men and those with dissimilar genetic make-up.

Whatever. I think the preference for boyishness, if it does in fact exist, is more likely to be a product of a trend toward androgeny in a culture which has for four decades derogated traditional masculinity. Two generations of men have grown up being encouraged in all sorts of ways to be more like women and women have been encouraged to favor men who are quick to display their softer side.

In other words, it would be frowned upon today to hold up John Wayne and Gary Cooper as role models for young males. They're too aggressive, too violent, too reserved and laconic. They don't show their feelings. They don't listen. They don't empathize. Instead, boys should emulate the Michael Jacksons of the world if they really want to win the lady's heart.

Guys can thank me for this advice through our Feedback page.

RLC

Afrocity

It's difficult for a liberal to convert to conservatism. The difficulty doesn't lie so much in the ideological transformation, rather it lies in the opprobrium a liberal apostate must suffer at the hands of his former friends. Liberal tolerance extends only marginally beyond those with whom they agree. There's little acceptance and well-wishing for those who come to the point in their lives where liberalism or progressivism is seen as a failed worldview. Such a realization is an indictment of the religion that other liberals hold dear, and they often revile the person who rejects the faith upon which they have staked their lives.

The conversion is particularly difficult for African Americans who are considered by their friends and families to be doubly traitorous. Not only do they reject the political ideology in which so many blacks have placed their hope and trust, but they're seen as rejecting their own people as well. It's like an Arab Muslim forswearing his family to become a Catholic Christian or a conservative Jew becoming a Baptist.

Such has been the experience of increasing numbers of blacks who think beyond the soothing blandishments and seductions of the liberal elite and recognize that liberalism is an ideological plantation for blacks and that the Democrat party is a false hope.

One black woman who had the scales fall from her eyes is Anita Moncrief who talks here about her sojourn with liberalism, her return to the faith and values of her youth, and the insults she's had to endure as a result.

Another fiesty former liberal calls herself Afrocity and writes a blog where she discusses her disillusionment with the left, her subsequent move to conservatism, and the bitter acrimony from black liberals that her perfidy has earned her.

One hopes that as the excitement of having an African American president begins to subside more African Americans will ask the questions Moncrief and Afrocity asked, that they'll have the strength to withstand the pressures exerted on them to remain faithful to their liberal sugardaddys, and that they'll reject the platitudes, dogmas, and failed nostrums with which the left has plied them for the last 70 years.

RLC

More on the Nobel Fatuousness

If any more evidence that the Nobel Peace Prize committee is motivated by purely political considerations this piece from the WSJ provides it. It points out that the nominations for the prize had to be submitted by February 1st, a mere two weeks after the President's inauguration. In other words, the committee evidently judged that of all the people in the world working for peace and the betterment of mankind, President Obama, in the first two weeks of his presidency, accomplished more than any of them.

A couple of our readers wondered why someone like Paul Farmer didn't get the prize. Probably for the same reason Irena Sendler didn't get it. Neither of these two heroes represent any political ideology, they just help people. Neither of them are/were glamorous celebrities and thus could hardly be expected to catch the notice of people who swoon at the thought of bestowing awards upon political rock stars like Al Gore and Barack Obama and possibly being permitted to touch the hem of their garments.

Jason, who sent me the link to the article, suspects that the Nobel Committee gave the award to Mr. Obama as a means of slapping George Bush in the face. If so, Alfred Nobel must be spinning in his grave at the way his legacy is being perverted.

RLC

Embarrassing the President

As you have probably heard by now President Obama has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for ........ well, I don't exactly know what for, but anyway, the Nobel committee saw fit to give it to him. The prize has been awarded in the past to such peace-loving souls as Yassar Arafat so I don't know how much importance it carries.

I do hope, though, that President Obama is embarrassed by the honor. He knows that at this stage in his presidency he has done nothing to merit it and that accepting it makes him look silly. That's not his fault, of course, but I think that if the Nobel committee had wanted to make him risible in the eyes of the world they couldn't have done anything more likely to achieve that result than what they did.

And in the process they make themselves look ridiculous as well. In 2007 they had the choice of giving the prize to an elderly woman named Irena Sendler who had, as a young nurse, risked her life to smuggle dozens of Jewish children out of Nazi-occupied Europe or give it to someone who made a film about global warming. They evidently thought the film was more important because they gave the prize to its maker, Al Gore.

The Peace Prize, evidently, has little to do with peace and everything to do with left-wing politics. The prize committee has made themselves, their award, and its recipient, laughingstocks.

RLC

Moral Subjectivism (Pt. I)

It's one of the most perplexing and disturbing aspects of our age that so many people have adopted a relativistic or subjectivistic view of moral right and wrong. Moral subjectivism is the view that right and wrong are matters of one's own personal taste, preference or bias. Moral relativism is a form of subjectivism that says that right and wrong are defined by the time and/or society in which people live. Thus, when we hear people insist that "what's right for you isn't necessarily right for me" or that "what's right for one culture isn't necessarily right for another" we're hearing the verbal expression of these views.

Barry Arrington has a post at Uncommon Descent where he writes about the Roman Polanski rape of a thirteen year-old girl. The post elicited a comment from a reader that serves as a good example of the influence of moral relativism in our culture. Arrington writes:

Here are the facts concerning the Roman Polanski case: Polanski gave a Quaalude to a 13 year-old child, instructed her to get into a Jacuzzi naked, refused to take her home when she asked, performed oral sex on her as she asked him to stop, raped her (no, not the "statutory" kind, the "forcible" kind), and sodomized her. In a plea bargain Polanski pled to unlawful sex with a minor.

As is common knowledge, Polanski has his defenders because he has made some terrific movies. For example, critic Tom Shales says: "There is, apparently, more to this crime than it would seem, and it may sound like a hollow defense, but in Hollywood I am not sure a 13-year-old is really a 13-year-old."

Here's today's question: "Is it wrong in all times and at all places (even Hollywood) for a 44 year-old man to drug, rape and sodomize a 13 year-old girl?"

For our materialist friends who answer "yes" to the question (as I hope you will), I have a follow-up question: "How can you know that you are right and Polanski's defenders are wrong?"

It's at this point that things took a distressing turn. Here's Arrington:

At first the materialists dodged my second (and much more important) question. But then a brave soul who calls himself "camanintx" took up for the materialist side the gauntlet I had thrown down, and we had the following exchange:

Barry: How can you know that you are right and Polanski's defenders are wrong?

camanintx: Because the society in which I and Polanski (at the time) live in define it as such. Had Polanski lived in 6th century Arabia, he probably would have been treated differently, no?

Barry: Let's assume for the sake of argument that drugging, raping and sodomizing a young girl was considered moral behavior in Arabia between the years 501 and 600 AD [I by no means concede that, but will accept it arguendo]. On the basis of your response, camanintx, I assume you would say that the fact that it was considered moral behavior in the society in which it occurred, is in fact determinative of the morality of the behavior, and therefore if Polanski had done what he did in that place and time it would have been moral. Is that what you are saying?

camanintx: Since morality is a subjective term, yes, that is exactly what I am saying.

In other words, for camanintx, morality is simply a matter of personal taste or (a reflection of the taste of the consensus). Arrington will have none of this foolishness and does a good job of illustrating one of the half dozen or so fundamental errors of camanintx's position. I encourage you to read the rest of his post.

Because I think this is such an important topic I hope to have more to say on it tomorrow.

RLC

Promise Them Anything

President Obama is rapidly proving himself to be a serial promise-breaker. What he says often seems to be at variance with what his administration does. There are a host of examples - from his promise not to hire lobbyists, to his promise to insure adequate airing of any legislation before it becomes law, to his promise to have the most transparent administration in history. Here's another example from Hot Air's Ed Morrissey to add to the list:

When Barack Obama went to Notre Dame to speak at their commencement and accept an honorary law degree from the Catholic university, he attempted to quiet the outrage from conservative Catholics and pro-life activists by claiming to respect the religious teachings of Catholics and protect freedom of conscience on abortion. He insisted that he would do the same during a meeting with Pope Benedict XVI.

Well, it turns out that not everyone got the memo. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is demanding that a tiny Catholic college in North Carolina has to offer health care coverage for abortion and contraception to their employees. Gateway Pundit tells us that:

Belmont Abbey College is a small, private, Catholic college located in North Carolina. For 130 years, it and the Benedictine monks who run it have been dedicated to handing on the Catholic faith.

But the Obama Administration is now trying to force them to abandon that faith or go out of business.

[T]he Administration at Belmont Abbey College removed contraception, abortion, and voluntary sterilization from its faculty's health care policy after discovering it had accidentally been a part of existing plans.

Employees of the school who objected to this change in policy brought a complaint against the school accusing them of "gender discrimination."

At first, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) found no evidence of gender discrimination by Belmont Abbey College... After a few weeks, the EEOC mysteriously reversed course and announced, in effect, that the college had better toe the Administration's line, or else.

The President of the college has declared he will shut down the school rather than be forced by the government to violate Catholic teaching. It's good to know that at least one president in this sorry narrative is taking a stand on principle.

RLC

Sensus Divinitatis

Bradlaugh at Secular Right discusses an article that reports some very inconclusive evidence that somehow belief in God is linked to the evolution of the brain and vice versa. Brad then says that:

I'm curious to know how a religious person processes these news items from cognitive science.

Obviously the fact that the varieties of religious experience can be explained from brain phylogeny does not exclude the possibility that religious experiences are apprehending something that exists as other than brain events, something real in the world outside the skull. Binocular vision has an explanatory pathway from brain phylogeny, but the things we see are real (mostly).

Yet if the possibility isn't excluded, isn't it at least weakened? Do religious people feel this? Well, I'm sure they don't! - but what do they feel? Perhaps one of them could tell us.

I take Brad to be asking whether people who believe in God don't feel that their beliefs are discredited by evidence that religious belief is somehow a function of our cognitive apparatus. Brad evidently thinks that if a belief is a result of the brain's evolution then it is ipso facto less likely to be true.

But this cuts both ways. If belief in God is somehow an evolutionary adaptation then unbelief is also a product of the evolutionary process (either that or it's a degenerate mutant form of belief). If so, the skeptic has no reason to trust that his unbelief corresponds in any way to what's really true. If our beliefs, including our belief in the trustworthiness of our reason to lead us to truth, are simply adaptations that increase the survivability of the species, then we have no reason whatsoever to trust that our beliefs are actually true or that our reason will lead us to have true beliefs.

Survivability of the species may have little to do with what's true. Consider, for example, a belief in a primitive society that the more children one has the greater will be the reward in the afterlife. The belief could be completely false but having it confers a tremendous selective advantage since those who have it are likely to produce more offspring than those who don't.

Nevertheless, set all that aside. Why should it diminish the veridicality of belief in God if it turns out that we are cognitively predisposed to believe? If God exists it might be expected that He would design us to have some sense of His existence. Isn't this essentially what Paul said in the first chapter of his letter to the Roman church? Haven't Christians maintained for two thousand years that the knowledge of God is an a priori conviction inscribed in our consciousness? Why should it be troubling to learn that the predisposition to believe is located in a particular area of the brain?

Indeed, one who believes that life is the product of God's creative purpose and design would respond to Brad by asserting that the odd thing is not that our cognitive apparatus seems to predispose us to belief in God. The odd thing would be if it didn't.

RLC

Indecision

According to the New York Times President and Mrs. Obama actually have this painting hanging in the White House:

The painting is all about indecisiveness. If people select pets that look like themselves and which reflect their own personalities I wonder if the same is true of the paintings they choose for their homes and offices.

At any rate, this work seems a fitting adornment for the home of the man who voted "present" 130 times during his three terms in the Illinois state senate.

RLC

Uh Oh

ABC News reports that the U.S, is spending a lot of money on a weapons delivery system that would be useful only in places like Iran and North Korea. Not only is it spending $88 million on the weapons and the necessary alterations to the platforms which would deliver them, but the spending request was labeled "urgent." Here's the ABC report:

Is the U.S. stepping up preparations for a possible attack on Iran's nuclear facilities?

The Pentagon is always making plans, but based on a little-noticed funding request recently sent to Congress, the answer to that question appears to be yes.

First, some background: Back in October 2007, ABC News reported that the Pentagon had asked Congress for $88 million in the emergency Iraq/Afghanistan war funding request to develop a gargantuan bunker-busting bomb called the Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP). It's a 30,000-pound bomb designed to hit targets buried 200 feet below ground. Back then, the Pentagon cited an "urgent operational need" for the new weapon.

Now the Pentagon is shifting spending from other programs to fast forward the development and procurement of the Massive Ordnance Penetrator. The Pentagon comptroller sent a request to shift the funds to the House and Senate Appropriations and Armed Services Committees over the summer.

The comptroller said the Pentagon planned to spend $19.1 million to procure four of the bombs, $28.3 million to accelerate the bomb's "development and testing", and $21 million to accelerate the integration of the bomb onto B-2 stealth bombers.

Why now? The notification says simply, "The Department has an Urgent Operational Need (UON) for the capability to strike hard and deeply buried targets in high threat environments. The MOP is the weapon of choice to meet the requirements of the UON." It further states that the request is endorsed by Pacific Command (which has responsibility over North Korea) and Central Command (which has responsibility over Iran).

The request was quietly approved. On Friday, McDonnell Douglas was awarded a $51.9 million contract to provide "Massive Penetrator Ordnance Integration" on B-2 aircraft.

This is not the kind of weapon that would be particularly useful in Iraq or Afghanistan, but it is ideally suited to hit deeply buried nuclear facilities such as Natanz or Qom in Iran.

That the Obama administration would actually go through with an attack on Iran is a thought that generates its own kind of shock and awe, but I have been arguing for several years that the only thing worse than the calamity that such an attack might bring upon the world would be the calamity that would almost certainly befall us were Iran to aquire nuclear weapons. A nuclear Iran would not only be an existential threat to Israel, it's almost a sure thing that terrorists would be supplied with the weapons and seek to smuggle them into the U.S. where they would be detonated in American cities.

An alternative possiblity is that a single nuclear-tipped missile would be launched from an innocent-looking freighter off our coast and detonated high over the nation's midsection. The blast would produce a pulse of electromagnetic energy (EMP) that could theoretically fry every device in the country that uses or produces electricity. We would in an instant be thrust back into the 19th century and the resulting chaos and upheaval would result in the deaths of tens of millions of Americans (You can read more about EMP here and here).

If the MOPs will prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, if war is the only way to prevent them from realizing their dream of precipitating Armageddon, then it seems to me that the Obama administration has no other choice.

RLC

Two More Quotes

The other day we featured some quotes from several famous and accomplished historical figures. Here are two more sent me by a reader from the pen of Ben Franklin:

"Idleness and pride tax with a heavier hand than kings and parliaments."

"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."

Some things never change. One reason today's "kings and parliaments" levy taxes is to compensate for the anchor imposed on our society by those Franklin might have described as idlers. The second quote is one that should be kept in mind by those who believe that government should take over as much of our lives as possible in order to make us more economically secure.

RLC

World Famous

This will probably be of no interest to anyone but me, but my brother Bill informs me that, in the course of scanning through the arcana of our blog's software he discovered that in the last three weeks Viewpoint has been visited by individuals whose IP addresses are located in over 60 different countries and a couple dozen states.

I have no idea how these folks found us, what it means, or if they're even stopping to read anything on the home page, but it's still pretty surprising in any event.

Here's a list of the countries:

• Armenia
• Australia
• Austria
• Belgium
• Belize
• Brazil
• Brunei Darussalam
• Burkina Faso
• Canada
• Chile
• China
• Czech Republic
• Egypt
• Estonia
• Finland
• France
• Georgia
• Germany
• Ghana
• Greece
• Guatemala
• Hong Kong
• Hungary
• India
• Indonesia
• Iran
• Ireland
• Israel
• Italy
• Japan
• Kenya
• Korea, Republic of
• Latvia
• Malaysia
• Micronesia
• Moldova, Republic of
• Mongolia
• Netherlands
• Netherlands Antilles
• New Zealand
• Nigeria
• Norway
• Peru
• Philippines
• Poland
• Portugal
• Qatar
• Romania
• Russian Federation
• Saudi Arabia
• Serbia
• South Africa
• Sri Lanka
• Sweden
• Switzerland
• Taiwan
• Thailand
• Trinidad and Tobago
• Ukraine
• United Kingdom
• United States

Maybe somebody has launched a virus that causes computers around the globe to ring up Viewpoint, I don't know, but there you have it, for what it's worth.

RLC

Dueling with the Darwinists

Stephen Meyer, author of Signature in the Cell, and Jonathan Wells, author of Icons of Evolution gave a presentation recently at the University of Oklahoma. As is typical of these events there was lots of name-calling from the Darwinians and attempts to abort the program before it got off the ground, but evidently none of these tactics worked. Wells files an interesting report on the proceedings at Evolution News and Views. Here's an excerpt:

Darwinist blogger P.Z. Myers, who had scolded the museum for letting us show the film [Darwin's Dilemma], did not come all the way from the University of Minnesota, Morris, to attend. Yet he wrote afterwards about Steve's September 28 lecture:

"I knew ahead of time exactly what it was going to be: complexity, complexity, complexity, complexity, complexity, complexity, complexity, therefore, DESIGN. It doesn't follow. The logic is nonexistent. It's the kind of thing you'd expect a competent person with a Ph.D. in philosophy to recognize, but no, it's the same ol' thing, trotted out every time they get up to speak."

Of course, Myers is absolutely correct: Complexity, therefore design, doesn't follow. And yes, "you'd expect a competent person with a Ph.D. in philosophy" to know this.

That's why Steve Meyer devoted an entire chapter to it in his book. In fact, it's the chapter from which the book takes its name (Chapter 4.). If Myers had bothered to read Steve's book, he would have known this. Indeed, you'd expect that a competent person with a Ph.D. who's paid by the taxpayers of Minnesota to teach their children would read a book before ridiculing it. But no, it's the same ol' thing, trotted out every time Myers blogs on the subject.

I was particularly interested in this statement made by an evolutionist professor on campus who gave a talk to balance that of Meyer and Wells:

[Professor] Westrop concluded by taking exception to J.B.S. Haldane's claim that finding a fossil rabbit in the pre-Cambrian would prove Darwin's theory wrong. If such a fossil were found, Westrop said, paleontologists would simply revise their reconstruction of the history of life. During the Q&A, one student asked him whether any fossil find could falsify Darwin's theory, and Professor Westrop said "No."

This is revealing inasmuch as Darwinians frequently argue that, unlike Intelligent Design, their theory is genuine science because it can be falsified, that is we can imagine a discovery that would prove their theory false if it were actually made. Often they cite the discovery of a mammal fossil in a layer of rock believed to have formed much earlier than mammals existed. Westrop is saying, however, that such a find would not disprove Darwinism at all. In other words, Darwinism is not falsifiable, at least by the fossil record, and is thus no more "scientific" than is ID.

Wait until Judge Jones hears this.

RLC

Should We Extend the School Year?

I've been eager to find something for which I can commend our President and have been disappointed that his first eight months have offered so few opportunities. Nevertheless, I've persevered and have recently stumbled upon something on which he and I agree. The President believes, and I think he's right, that if we're going to improve education in this country we need to extend the school year.

This will, of course, be a very unpopular proposal with students and even more unpopular with employers who utilize student labor during the summer months, but it makes no sense to build multi-million dollar facilities and only use them, at least at full capacity, for 180 days, or so. It also makes no sense to bemoan the sorry state of our students' academic achievement but only devote half the year to their education.

There are arguments against pushing the academic year deeper into the summer, some more compelling than others, but if the quality of our children's education truly is a high priority then doing all we can to get them that education should trump those arguments.

Our current school year is a vestige of a time when students were needed during the summer to work the family farm and also a time when school buildings became saunas in the summer months. With most school districts now sporting air conditioned buildings, and relatively few students working in agriculture neither of those circumstances obtains any longer.

The article linked to above offers two arguments, however, that are admittedly serious objections to implementing a longer school year: The economic effect on businesses that rely on student employees (and those which rely on students with cash in their pockets to buy their wares), and the cost to taxpayers of having to pay teachers for working more days.

I don't know how, exactly, those two objections could best be addressed, but I do think that, in principle at least, President Obama is on the right track in trying to get students, at least the better students, more hours in school.

RLC

The Invention of Lying

Here are excerpts of a review of a new movie hostile to Christianity called The Invention of Lying:

If you saw Ricky Gervais's delightful romantic comedy "Ghost Town" last year and were looking forward to his new comedy, "The Invention of Lying," be warned. The movie is a full-on attack on religion in general and Christianity in particular. It might be the most blatantly, one-sidedly atheist movie ever released by a major studio, in this case Warner Bros.

Gervais delights in what a faith-based society would call blasphemy, setting up an imaginary world in which no one ever lies. Except his character, who spreads what Gervais obviously sees as the biggest lie of all: Belief in God.

Gervais's character is the first man ever to think of lying. In order to comfort the dying, he randomly hits on the idea of telling them that they will go to a better place and enjoy an afterlife. Citizens who automatically believe what they're told (since no one, even advertisers, has ever told an untruth) start to spread the word, and soon Gervais is doing a gruesomely unfunny parody of Moses and the Ten Commandments. Except his rules are ten lies written on pizza boxes.

Gervais sighs and winces as he spins his absurd made-up stories to the ignorant peoples of the world: There is a "Man in the Sky," he says, who is looking down at all of us and is responsible for everything that happens. Yes, he explains to one woman, he gave your mom cancer - but he's also responsible for curing her. The people aren't happy that "The Man in the Sky" is behind all human suffering. "F- The Man in the Sky!" cries one citizen, and the crowd begins to get angry. A magazine cover exclaims, "Man in the Sky Kills 40,000 in Tsunami!" But Gervais's character insists that whatever damage the Man in the Sky causes, he eventually makes up for it all in the end by providing a beautiful mansion for everyone after they die, at least for those who don't commit three or more immoral acts, and by making it so that everyone can reunite with their loved ones in the next life. Later in the movie, Gervais will be outfitted like Jesus. The movie doesn't have a joke to offer at this point; it just thinks it's funny to show Gervais in long hair and a bedsheet. At the end, in a church, a minister is seen wearing a cross, so apparently somehow the Gervais character also came up with the Crucifixion story.

Gervais is an atheist, which is fine, but his mean-spiritedness (even before the atheism theme enters the movie, is sour and misanthropic) and the film's reduction of all religion to an episode of crowd hysteria are not going to be warmly received. Except maybe by critics.

I'm sure the movie will be lots of laughs for the same sort of people who guffawed at David Letterman's revelations that he'd been cheating on his family with some of his staffers. I'm sure the same folks who find jokes that mention moose hunting and Sarah Palin in the same sentence will hoot wildly and slap their knees at Gervais' humor. For those, though, whose intelligence has not been diluted by generations of incest the movie sounds more like something concocted by a bunch of seventh grade boys.

RLC

Pew Survey on Abortion

A recent survey on Americans' attitudes about abortion by the Pew Research Center for People and the Press has come up with some interesting results:

Polls conducted in 2009 have found fewer Americans expressing support for abortion than in previous years. In Pew Research Center polls in 2007 and 2008, supporters of legal abortion clearly outnumbered opponents; now Americans are evenly divided on the question, and there have been modest increases in the numbers who favor reducing abortions or making them harder to obtain. Less support for abortion is evident among most demographic and political groups.

The latest Pew Research Center survey also reveals that the abortion debate has receded in importance, especially among liberals. At the same time, opposition to abortion has grown more firm among conservatives, who have become less supportive of finding a middle ground on the issue and more certain of the correctness of their own views on abortion.

Another interesting finding (among many) is this:

The poll finds that four-in-ten Americans are unaware of Obama's position on the abortion issue. Conservative Republicans, however, are more likely than any other group to know Obama's position, with 75% correctly identifying him as "pro-choice" rather than "pro-life."

It seems to consistently surprise people to be told that the President is the most radically pro-choice individual ever to serve in that office. They are often incredulous when it is pointed out to them that he twice voted while in the Illinois state senate to allow babies born alive after a failed abortion attempt to be left to die.

The number of people who feel there should be more protections granted to the unborn is also growing:

The latest (August 2009) Pew Research Center survey also finds that four-in-ten Americans (41%) now favor making it more difficult for a woman to get an abortion, up six points from 2007 (35%) and the highest level of support in Pew Research Center surveys for increased restrictions since 1987. However, those who favor making it more difficult to obtain an abortion are still outnumbered by those who oppose making it more difficult (50% vs. 41%).

Support for putting up barriers to abortion varies substantially across political and religious groups. Fully 65% of conservative Republicans want to make abortions harder to get, but just 39% of independents and 19% of liberal Democrats say the same. Almost two-thirds of white evangelical Protestants (64%) back greater restrictions on abortion, but fewer than half as many white mainline Protestants (27%) and the religiously unaffiliated (23%) say the same. Catholics fall in between, with 44% in support of more restrictions on abortion.

There's much more at the link.

RLC

Copenhagen

The President is getting criticism from the left and derision from the right after his failed attempt to persuade the International Olympic Committee to grant the 2016 Olympics to Chicago.

The criticism from the left centers around the failure of the administration to really do their homework by learning in advance where Chicago actually stood in the minds of the IOC. His advisors and others wasted the President's time and risked his prestige in pushing him to go to Copenhagen only to have him rebuffed, and although the sting of the defeat will diminish, the debacle adds to the perception that this administration is fundamentally incompetent.

The derision from the right centers around the haughty presumption that led the administration to think that the President and First Lady could simply blow into town and sweep the IOC off their feet like they have done with Europeans in the past. I think the scorn that some of the talk radio people are heaping on the President for his flop seems shrill, strident, childish, and nit-picky, but I do think they have a point that it was unseemly of Mrs. Obama to claim that she was making "a sacrifice" to go to Copenhagen.

They also have a point that since the President has been bad-mouthing the U.S. ever since he first arrived in Washington, he can hardly expect now to convince the IOC that his city and his country are really not so bad after all. Even so, so much of the gloating on the right sounds as though some of these talkers care more that Obama look bad than that the U.S. be awarded the games.

This is just wrongheaded. The President did the right thing in campaigning on behalf of Chicago, even if he did ultimately fail, and all Americans should be disappointed that he didn't succeed. If he had persuaded the IOC to grant the Olympics to Chicago it could have been an economic blessing for a city that badly needs the help (what the city government would have done with the wealth that would flow into the city is a different question, of course). I commend him for going to Copenhagen and fighting for the games. Now I hope he'll continue to fight for and affirm his pride in the country at large just like he did for Chicago. I just hope he does it a lot more effectively.

RLC

Missing Link Still Missing

The popular idea that the close genetic similarity between humans and chimps is evidence of a close evolutionary relationship between them has been taking a beating of late. A new book by Jeremy Taylor titled Not a Chimp: The Hunt to Find Genes That Make Us Human adds to the drubbing. Taylor pronounces the inference from genetic similarity to close relationship to be without any merit. The book is reviewed at New Scientist by Ewan Calloway who writes that:

[T]he former BBC producer [Taylor] synthesizes recent genetic, behavioural and neuroscientific research to argue that far more than a handful of genes divides humans from our evolutionary cousins, 6 million years removed.

Take that 98.4 per cent [the percentage of our DNA we share in common with chimps], an oft-repeated figure that has been used to argue that chimps deserve human rights. True, Homo sapiens and Pan troglodytes share an extraordinary amount of genetic similarity - yet humans and mice share almost as much.

Complete genomes of both species are enabling researchers to map the chasm between human and chimp, which seems to deepen by the year. A good example is FOXP2, a regulatory gene linked to speech and language disorders in humans. FOXP2 in chimps has barely changed in the 130 million years since primates and mice diverged from their common ancestor. But after humans and chimps split, two key changes accumulated on the human line.

Even greater differences may lurk in the areas of the genome once discounted as "junk" DNA, which don't make proteins but instead determine gene activity. One recently discovered RNA-coding sequence that may be involved in cerebral cortex development was found to vary little between chimps and chickens, yet humans possess 18 unique changes.

Geneticists are right to home in on differences that affect brain development: nowhere is the gulf between humans and chimps wider than in their mental abilities. Psychologists suggest that the ability to infer the mental states of others may underlie language and culture. Children gradually acquire this capacity...but evidence for it in chimps is equivocal.

....Not a Chimp should be mandatory reading for journalists who often reinforce the general public's misconception that chimps are practically human.

It may be that chimps and man have a common ancestor, but the more we learn the harder it is to make that case without resorting to question-begging - e.g. The similarities in DNA between chimp and man result from their evolutionary kinship. This must be the explanation for the similarities because we know they are evolutionarily related.

Another recent development in this regard, bye the bye, is the mounting skepticism in the scientific community surrounding the proper interpretation of the fossilized remains of an early hominid named Ardipithecus ramidus (Ardi, for short) that was initially touted as a missing link between man and chimp. It's now beginning to look, however, like Ardi is not at all close to being a human ancestor.

I wonder how many more times we're going to be told by journalists on the front page of the newspaper that the "missing link" has been discovered only to learn six months later on page twenty that such claims were premature.

RLC

Do Your Job, Mr. Senator

Courtesy of Patterico we have a video of Democrat Senator Tom Carper telling us that it's unreasonable to expect legislators to actually read the laws they write. I am not kidding. The language, he says, is incomprehensible so lawmakers simply read the summary of the bill which is written in prose more befitting a congressman's reading comprehension skills. Carper says in the video:

I don't expect to actually read the legislative language, because reading the legislative language is among the more confusing things I've ever read in my life. . . . When you get into the legislative language, Sen. Conrad actually read some of it, several pages of it, the other day, and I don't think anybody had a clue, including people who had served on this committee for decades, what he was talking about.

This is inexcusable. If the language is so turgid that it cannot be understood, even by legislators who went to law school, then do what any sixth grader would realize you should do and change the language. Here's the video:

I have three questions: If the "English" version is an accurate summation of the "legislative" language why not just write the law in plain English? Second, if Senators like Carper, most of whom are lawyers, cannot understand the legislative language how do they know that the summation accurately represents it? Third, how can anyone justify voting for a bill that will revolutionize the American economy, as health care reform will do, if they don't understand the bill and haven't read it?

This strikes me as almost criminal malfeasance. We don't send these people to Washington to advance their social life and attend cocktail parties. We pay them a very handsome salary to read the legislation they foist on us. If this is how they operate these people should not be in office, they should be in jail.

RLC

Which Side Are We On?

Strategy Page reports on progress in Columbia:

The eight year offensive against leftist rebels and drug gangs has been a success, and this can be seen in economic performance. In the last ten years, GDP has gone from $90 billion to over $250 billion. Investments by foreigners went from $1.5 billion to over $10 billion. In the 1980s and 90s, foreign investors stayed away, and many Colombian entrepreneurs and investors fled the country.

The economic changes of the last decade have improved the lives of most Colombians, and, along with a sharp reduction in violence and kidnapping, led to many exiles, and their talents, returning home. The growing tyranny in neighboring Venezuela, has brought thousands of Venezuelan professionals and investors to Colombia. After three quarters of GDP contraction (about two percent overall) because of the global recession, GDP growth has resumed.

There's much more at the link. Since Columbia is a democracy and a neighbor of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez has tried repeatedly to destabilize it. So far he has failed. Given that Mr. Obama has aligned himself with Chavez against the Hondurans struggling to preserve their own democracy I wonder which side of the Venezuela/Columbia conflict our new administration is on.

RLC