Happy Birthday America (Whatever's Left of You)

Is a Philosophy Degree Worth It?

I thought this was funny even if it's not quite true:

I say it's not quite true because an undergraduate degree in philosophy is often a gateway to graduate degrees in law, medicine, theology, and a host of other careers. Even if a student doesn't wish to take a degree in philosophy, taking philosophy courses can be, depending on how they're taught, a richly rewarding experience.

About eight years ago I wrote a post for VP in which I discussed the value of an undergrad philosophy degree, either major or minor, for anyone who has the intellectual interest and is strongly attracted to the life of the mind.

You can read that post here. If you're a high school student who enjoys ideas and is wrestling with whether you should go to college and, if so, what you should take when you're there, check it out.

Vultures

There are two species of vultures commonly seen in eastern North America: the turkey vulture and the black vulture. California condors are a third species of vulture that are found in the American west.

Vultures are aesthetically unattractive to look at up close, but they're marvelous to see soaring on thermal updrafts in large groups called "kettles." They're also environmentally important carrion-eaters as this lovely video explains:

The next time you look up and see one of these birds wheeling in the sky overhead, remember that you're watching an aeronautical and biological marvel.

One of the Two Most Important SCOTUS Decisions in Decades

Last Thursday night's disastrous debate performance by our president has consumed most of the attention of news commentators in the days since but maybe an even more gratifying development for conservatives was the SCOTUS ruling that overturned the infamous 1984 Chevron decision.

In a nutshell, Chevron had deferred to federal agencies the authority to determine what regulations should be imposed on businesses when the actual law was ambiguous. This has resulted in a massive increase in federal power over the last forty years.

The Supreme Court has now taken that authority from the federal government and given it to the courts where it belongs. Courts, not bureaucrats, are to interpret the law. Courts are more likely to be disinterested and objective; unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats are more likely to have ideological agendas.

Paula Bolyard writes at PJ Media:

Today, the Supreme Court voted to overrule the so-called Chevron deference in a 6-3 decision. The ruling is a HUGE victory for those who hate the massive power the administrative state has amassed in recent decades.

Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, concluded: "The Administrative Procedure Act requires courts to exercise their independent judgment in deciding whether an agency has acted within its statutory authority, and courts may not defer to an agency interpretation of the law simply because a statute is ambiguous; Chevron is overruled."

In the most basic terms, the Chevron deference (also called the Chevron doctrine) allows the courts, through a two-step process, to defer to "reasonable" administrative agency interpretations if a federal statute is unclear or ambiguous. It was essentially a get-out-of-jail-free card for presidents and agency hacks who liked to claim that a law says whatever they want it to say.

It gave federal agencies broad authority to regulate everything from health care to immigration to women's sports to COVID jabs.

Bolyard has much more information on this decision and the rationale for it at the link.

Tossing Chevron into the dumpster was a necessary first step in cutting big government down to size and returning government to its constitutional role as a servant of the people, not our master. This decision stands with Dobbs as perhaps the two most important decisions SCOTUS has made in decades.

C.S.Lewis on Naturalistic Ethics

A student linked me to a post by historian Alan Snyder who highlights some of C.S. Lewis' thoughts on metaphysical naturalism in his famous book Miracles. Snyder writes:

In his book Miracles, C. S. Lewis takes aim at “naturalists” who say that there is no “outside” reference [i.e., God] for calling anything good or evil.

When men use the words, “I ought,” Lewis notes, they are saying something about the essence of right and wrong that is built into the universe. In fact, naturalists should never use such terminology: “But if naturalism is true,” he writes, “‘I ought’ is the same sort of statement as ‘I itch’ or ‘I’m going to be sick.'”

On naturalism there are no moral obligations and thus the word "ought" has no moral significance. If there are no moral duties then there's nothing anyone "ought" to do, at least not in the moral sense of the word "ought."

Lewis explains,

The naturalist can, if he chooses, brazen it out. He can say . . . “all ideas of good and evil are hallucinations—shadows cast on the outer world by the impulses which we have been conditioned to feel.” Indeed many naturalists are delighted to say this.

There’s a problem, though, for those who attempt to explain good and evil in this way:

But then they must stick to it; and fortunately (though inconsistently) most real naturalists do not. A moment after they have admitted that good and evil are illusions, you will find them exhorting us to work for posterity, to educate, revolutionise, liquidate, live and die for the good of the human race. . . . They write with indignation like men proclaiming what is good in itself and denouncing what is evil in itself, and not at all like men recording that they personally like mild beer but some people prefer bitter.

Of course, if good and evil are illusions then there's certainly no reason why we should be concerned with either the illusion of good or the illusion of evil.

To use such terms when the user knows they don't refer to anything is a form of social coercion. Naturalists who employ the rhetoric of good and evil are simply attempting to compel, or trick, others into behaving in ways the naturalists prefer by calling their actions good or evil when in fact they're neither good nor evil - no more than are the actions of a wolf or falcon or any other predator.

When one gull steals a morsel of food from another we don't call the gull or its behavior evil. Likewise, if we're just animals, if there's no transcendent moral order, why do we call an act like robbing an elderly lady evil?

Lewis adds:

Do they remember while they [naturalists] are writing thus that when they tell us we “ought to make a better world” the words “ought” and “better” must, on their own showing, refer to an irrationally conditioned impulse which cannot be true or false any more than a vomit or a yawn?

Yet, as Snyder points out, the naturalist, unless he's also a nihilist, doesn't live consistently with his own professed ideology. Snyder concludes with another quote from Lewis:

My idea is that sometimes they do forget. That is their glory. Holding a philosophy which excludes humanity, they yet remain human. At the sight of injustice they throw all their naturalism to the winds and speak like men.

Yes, they do, but when they do they admit the failure of their naturalism. A worldview that people can't live with consistently is seriously flawed.

Can't Have Both (Pt. II)

Yesterday I wrote that naturalists, i.e. those who deny that the ultimate reality is a personal intelligent being, are in an intellectually untenable position. They want to maintain a belief in moral responsibility, objective moral duties, human equality, objective human rights, free will, consciousness, and so on even though their fundamental assumption, that material nature is all there is, reduces all of these to illusions.

Here are some quotes, all from philosophical naturalists, to illustrate the point:

• "Ethical theory requires idealizations like free, sentient, rational equivalent agents whose behavior is uncaused...[yet] the world as seen by science, does not really have uncaused events."
• "The mechanistic stance allows us to understand what makes us tick and how we fit into the physical universe ...[but] when those discussions wind down for the day, we go back to talking about each other as free and dignified human beings."
• "A human being is simultaneously a machine and a sentient free agent, depending on the purposes of the discussion." Steven Pinker MIT in How the Mind Works.
• "The physical world provides no room for freedom of the will...[yet] that concept is essential to our models of the mental realm. Too much of our psychology is based on it for us to ever give it up. {So] We're virtually forced to maintain that belief, even though we know it's false." Marvin Minsky MIT in The Society of Mind.
• "We can't give up our conviction of our own freedom even though there's no ground for it." John Searle
• "We cannot live adequately with ...a complete awareness of the absence of free will ...[thus] we ought to hold on to those central but incoherent or contradictory beliefs in the free will case." Philosopher Paul Smilansky
• "Free will is a very persistent illusion. It keeps coming back." Harvard Psychologist Daniel Wegner
• "Consciousness has to be an illusion." Cambridge Psychologist Nicholas Humphrey
• "Common-sense mental states, such as beliefs and desires, do not exist." Philosophers Paul and Patricia Churchland
• "Modern [naturalism] is the faith that through science humankind can know the truth and so be free. But if Darwin's theory of natural selection is true this is impossible. The human mind serves evolutionary success, not truth." Philosopher John Gray

If free will and consciousness are illusions then there simply can be no objective moral duties or truth, thus no responsibility for anything we do no matter how cruel or harmful to others. There can be no human rights beyond what one powerful group of human beings arbitrarily confer upon another, nor can there be any grounds for trusting our sense perceptions or even our reason.

If truth is subjective, if beliefs aren't true in an objective sense, then the belief that naturalism is true is simply an expression of a subjective preference. It can't be objectively true.

Naturalists (i.e. atheists) have to live in two contradictory worlds. In their everyday lives with family and friends they live like everyone else, behaving as if the common sense view is obviously correct, but in their professional or intellectual lives they live as if human beings are machines with no free will, consciousness or dignity.

In other words, in their daily lives they live as though theism were true while in their intellectual lives they adamantly deny it.

They oscillate back and forth between these two irreconcilable worlds, unable to give up the common sense entailments of theism yet unable to live consistently with what the logic of naturalism, the philosophical worldview they embrace, tells them is the case.

It makes one wonder if perhaps naturalism is a mental illness.

Can't Have Both (Pt.I)

There's a fascinating struggle going on today for the hearts and minds of American youth, a struggle between two very different philosophical views of reality.

It's a struggle being waged primarily in our institutions of higher education and in our entertainment media.

Currently, the prevailing view in those institutions is naturalistic materialism - the idea that nature and matter are all there is and that there's no supernatural nor immaterial substance.

This view stands in diametric opposition to its rival, theism, which predominates, of course, among Christians, Jews and Muslims. In its broad outlines this view of the world (worldview) holds that human beings are the intentional product of a personal, omnipotent, omnibenevolent and omniscient Mind which both created, and thus transcends, space, time and mass/energy.

One of the criticisms that philosophical naturalists level at theists is that theism, they claim, is irrational - it's irrational to believe in the existence of entities that are undetectable by the human senses.

There's much that could be said in response to this particular criticism, but in this post I want to ask which of the two views is really most at odds with reason and which conforms best to our own personal experience of the world.

Here's the problem for the naturalist: In order to embrace it one must, if one is to be rational, either give up believing in a host of things that most naturalists don't want to give up believing in, or come up with some secondary or ad hoc explanation for them.

For instance, on naturalism there's no basis for believing in human equality, objective human rights, or human dignity. Nor is there any basis for believing in objective moral obligation, moral responsibility, free will, the existence of the self, human consciousness or the trustworthiness of our reason.

None of these can be accommodated by a naturalistic, materialistic worldview, except by forcing them, Procrustus-like, into it. Yet they all fit quite comfortably in theism.

Moreover, on naturalism one must hold that human beings are simply machines made of meat, that the universe came into being uncaused and out of nothing, that the fine-tuning of the parameters and constants of the universe which permit life are just a fortuitous, though astronomically improbable, accident, that the origin of life is another fortuitous, though astronomically improbable, accident, and that the amazing ability of mathematics to describe the world and the ability of humans to not only comprehend it but to articulate it in language are even more fortuitous accidents.

Either one believes all that or one must believe, despite the lack of any evidence, that there's an infinity of different universes and/or that we're really living in a computer simulation something like the Matrix.

If one claims to be a naturalist (i.e. an atheist) and yet believes that there are some things that are wrong for anyone to do (like torture children), if they believe that people are responsible for their actions, that we all have a conscious mind, that our beliefs and sense experiences are not illusions, that our reason can be generally trusted and that the notion that we're living in a multiverse or a computer simulation is extremely far-fetched, then one is simply not thinking consistently with one's worldview, and is therefore being irrational and they're certainly not a very good naturalist.

Naturalists, to be consistent, must confront this choice: Either give up all (or most) of the beliefs enumerated above or give up naturalism. One simply can't hold on to both and be rational.

It's an interesting fact that when facing this choice many people would rather cling to naturalism than hold on to the belief in moral responsibility or in the existence of conscious minds. They know that abandoning naturalism means accepting the unpleasant fact that theism is true, and they'd apparently prefer to continue to live irrationally than accept that they've been wrong about God.

Why that is would make for an interesting psychological study.

The First Presidential Debate

Donald Trump and Joe Biden will square off against each other tomorrow night in the first of two presidential debates this campaign season. There are at least two outcomes, both quite possible, that could doom either candidate.

If Mr. Trump blows himself up on stage and comes across as a raging narcissist obsessed with the 2020 election and the attempts by Democrats to destroy him through legal machinations, he will probably forfeit his early lead in the battleground states and lose once again to Joe Biden regardless of how well or poorly Mr. Biden performs.

If Mr. Biden wilts after an hour or so on the stage, begins to exhibit all the symptoms of cognitive debility that he has frequently displayed in public appearances, and generally gives the appearance of a man who belongs in a rest home rather than in the White House, while Mr. Trump maintains an uncharacteristically placid demeanor, I suspect that the Democrats will find a way to ease Mr. Biden out of the race and replace him with someone else. To leave him in the campaign after a disastrous performance in the debate would likely be political suicide for the Democrats in November.

If Mr. Trump does well and Mr. Biden manages to finish the evening without committing any fatal gaffes, nothing much will change in the polls, and we'll probably be making these same observations prior to the second debate. In other words, the debate, and the election, seem at this point to be Mr. Trump's to lose.

Gender Identity Disorder Is Largely Transitory

A piece at HotAir.com cites a German study that shows that Gender Identity Disorder fades after about five years in at least half of the young people who are diagnosed with it. If this is so it makes the surgical disfigurement of the thousands of children who've undergone the procedures all the more tragic.

A new long-term study from Germany suggests that the majority of young people diagnosed with gender identity disorders do not continue to identify as such over time.

The study examined insurance data over five years, revealing that more than half of young people aged 5-24 across every age subgroup diagnosed with "gender identity disorder" no longer had the diagnosis after five years.

Specifically, the desistance rate was 72.7% in 15- to 19-year-old females and 50.3% in 20- to 24-year-old males. Among the whole group of 5- to 24-year-olds, only about 36.4% of those diagnosed in 2017 still had the diagnosis five years later, indicating that more than 63% desisted.

The research also noted a dramatic rise in the number of young people being diagnosed with gender identity disorders. In 2013, there were 22.5 cases per 100,000 insured young people, but by 2022, this had increased to 175.7 cases per 100,000, representing an increase of nearly 681%.

Is it just a coincidence that 2013 is about the time that young people began having widespread access to smartphones and social media? Is the much higher incidence of gender dysphoria in young females a function of the toxic effect of social media on young girls' self-image? Social Psychologist Jonathan Haidt, in his book The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, claims it's no coincidence at all.

The study highlighted that, in almost all years, the highest prevalence of gender identity disorder diagnoses was found in 15- to 19-year-old females. In 2022, this age group had a prevalence rate of 452.6 cases per 100,000.

Three thoughts: 1) The sooner parents and schools act to limit online access to social media in their children the healthier those children will be. 2) I can't imagine the guilt thousands of parents who pushed their children into gender transition surgeries and puberty blockers will be feeling when their children realize what a horrible mistake this all was and blame their parents for it for the rest of their lives. 3) How many medical institutions and personnel will be the subject of lawsuits in the coming years, initiated by people who were radically disfigured by people and organizations eager to financially capitalize on the transgender insanity of our current cultural moment?

Could Life Have Arisen by Chance?

One of the strongest arguments against any naturalistic theory of the origin of life is the enormous difficulty inherent in the attempt to give a plausible account of how the first cells could have ever been formed.

One of the problems for origin of life researchers is that even the simplest cell is immensely complex, consisting of thousands of molecular machines that must all be present and functioning in a coordinated manner in order for any cell to survive. And of course until there are living cells there could be no evolution of the sort described in high school and college biology textbooks.

This short video gives just a glimpse of the intractable nature of the problem. Don't be put off by the cartoonish graphics. The content is very sophisticated but also easily understood by anyone with a high school science education.

Check it out:

Completely Predictable

A report in the Daily Mail describing the effects of raising the minimum wage for fast-food workers in California should come as no surprise to anyone with even a modest IQ:

Fast food chains in California are slashing jobs - as a way to cut costs after the minimum wage in the state was hiked to $20-an-hour.

Almost 10,000 positions across chains from Pizza Hut to Burger King have been cut since the law came into effect on April 1, according to a report from a trade group in the state.

On top of that, chains have been shuttering restaurants - including beloved Mexican chain Rubio's Coastal Grill, which this week filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and closed 48 locations in the state.

When the minimum wage is raised for entry level workers those with more experience who had already been getting $20 an hour must have their pay raised as well, and this is just unsustainable for businesses working on thin profit margins.

The solution for employers is to raise prices, which means less business which means workers will eventually get laid off, or keep prices stable and lay off workers more quickly. Either way, it's hard to see how raising the minimum wage helps most workers.

The California Business and Industrial Alliance (CABIA) slammed Governor Gavin Newsom for pushing the law through, which has also meant businesses in the state have had to raise prices.

To highlight the impact of the law, the trade group created out an advert in Thursday's edition of USA Today with mock 'obituaries' of popular brands.

The tongue-in-cheek advert (which can be seen at the link above), titled 'In Memoriam: Victims of Newsom's minimum wage', highlighted the issues faced by smaller brands including Rubio's, and fast food giants including Pizza Hut, Burger King, Subway and McDonald's.

It features news clips documenting the changes made by companies in response to the wage increase.

This includes raising prices, letting go of workers to cut labor costs - and in some cases shutting down locations.

One says: 'A McDonald's franchisee who owns 18 outposts in California is considering reducing store hours, hiking menu prices and delaying renovations to offset the impact of the state's $20 hourly minimum wage for fast-food workers.'

Even before the law was made official earlier this year, chains including Pizza Hut and Round Table let go of more than a thousand delivery workers to brace for the financial ramifications of the change.

A worker's worth is based on how difficult it would be to replace him or her. If a job takes no particular skill politicians can't artificially inflate the worker's value to his or her employer simply by raising the worker's salary by legislation. This placebo may make the politicians popular with the uneducated, but it guarantees that the workers who are supposed to be helped will only suffer in the long run.

One of the details in the article at the link explains that many franchises are planning to replace workers with digital kiosks, a trend that has already started in many restaurants. The kiosks cost money and would've been slow to displace workers had politicians, ignorant of basic economics, not made kiosks more attractive than training and paying workers more than they're worth to their employer.

Worse Than WWII Germans

Dennis Prager makes an interesting claim in a piece at HotAir.com. He states that, "Morally speaking, it would be difficult to name a less impressive people than the Palestinians over the past century."

Why does he say this? Here's his answer:

Immediately after the burnings, rapes, mutilations and murders of Jews on Oct. 7, I was not alone in noting the one moral difference between Hamas and the Nazis: The Nazis tried to hide their crimes against the Jews from the German people (and the world) while Hamas proudly publicized their crimes against the Jews to the Palestinian people (and didn't mind that the world would inevitably see them bragging about killing Jews).

In addition to videoing their atrocities, Hamas paraded captured Jews -- dead and alive, clothed and naked -- in front of cheering Palestinian crowds in Gaza.

This leads to a sobering realization.

Hamas boasting to their fellow Palestinians about what they did to Jews while the Nazis tried to hide what they did from fellow Germans means there is not only a moral difference between Hamas and the Nazis but a moral difference between the German people during the Nazi era and the Palestinian people today -- and for nearly the last hundred years.

Prager adds that the "cumulative Palestinian record of evil over the last century has few peers," and proceeds to make an impressive case in support of that assessment, a case that he states is "nowhere near" as exhaustive as it could've been.

He concludes with these thoughts:

According to the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, as of 2022, a majority of Palestinians support terror attacks against Israeli Jews. Moreover, the Palestinian Authority on the West Bank has been paying more than $300 million annually -- about 8% of the Palestinian budget -- to the families of imprisoned terrorists and of terrorists killed while engaging in an act of terror against Jews.

Another Palestinian poll states that the vast majority of Palestinians in the West Bank -- over 75% -- support Hamas at this time.

The Palestinian people love killing Jews and have loved doing so for nearly a century. Palestinian women routinely pass out candy in the streets in celebration of terror attacks against Jews. Compare this to Israel, which has many human rights organizations holding Israel to account regarding its treatment of Palestinians.

Compare this to Israelis, who for years had volunteered to drive Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza to receive medical treatment in Israeli hospitals.

To be "pro-Palestinian" today means being pro-Hamas just as to be "pro-German" during World War II was the same as being pro-Nazi. The only difference is that the Germans as a whole were a better people than the Palestinians. If you support the Palestinians, you should know whom you support.

It's difficult to grasp, given the horrific record of Palestinian atrocities Prager adumbrates, that there would still be people in this country cheering them on and demanding that the Israelis cease protecting themselves from those who implacably seek their deaths.

There are some who insist that they demonstrate not in support of the terrorists of Hamas but on behalf of the long-suffering Palestinian people, but this is sophistry. Prager's essay shows that the distinction between Hamas and the Palestinian people is pretty much a distinction without a difference.

Hamas is simply doing what the Palestinian people, or at least a large majority of them, want them to do.

For Juneteenth

Yesterday was Juneteenth, a day set aside to celebrate the end of slavery in America, so it's appropriate to honor two African-Americans who played major roles in abolition.

Most school students learn, or at least used to learn, that opposition to slavery mushroomed in the northern states with the Dred Scott Supreme Court decision of 1857, but the details surrounding that infamous ruling are often less well known.

The details are very interesting however, and David Hackett Fischer recounts them, and the stories of many other slaves in the antebellum years, in his magisterial work African Founders: How Enslaved People Expanded American Ideals, which I highly recommend to anyone interested in understanding the complexities of this "peculiar institution."

Fischer tells us that Dred (short for Etheldred) Scott was born a slave in Southampton Co. Virginia in 1799. His owner, a man named Ben Blow, moved his slaves first to Huntsville, Alabama and then to St. Louis, Missouri in 1830.

There Scott was sold to an army surgeon named John Emerson who took him to free states and territories where slavery had been prohibited by the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 and the Missouri Compromise of 1820.

In 1837 Scott was living in free Wisconsin territory near what is today Minneapolis, Minnesota, where he met another Virginia slave named Harriet Robinson. The two decided to marry and they were joined in a formal matrimonial service by Harriet's master, a justice of the peace named, Lawrence Taliaferro. The formal service was permitted only to free people. Taliaferro then sold Harriet to John Emerson so that the couple could live together.

Emerson was subsequently ordered to southern military posts, but he left Dred and Harriet in the north where they were leased as servants to other officers. They lived in virtual freedom and the first of their four children was born in free territory.

In 1837 the Scotts returned to Missouri, a slave state. Dred was hired out to numerous people but continued to live in virtual freedom while his new owner, the widow of John Emerson, continued to hire him out as a source of income for herself.

While working for a law firm he learned that, under Missouri's judicial principle of "once free, always free," slaves who lived in free territory became free themselves, so Dred and Harriet sued for their freedom.

In 1848 a Missouri court nevertheless ruled against them, so they began a series of appeals in 1850, all of which they lost. Even so, with the help of people who knew them, including members of Ben Blow's family, the case eventually ended up in the Supreme Court.

Dred and Harriet Scott

 

The case was heard by Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney. Fischer writes:

[Taney was] an odd character, a Maryland Federalist who had become a Jacksonian Democrat. He was also a Maryland planter who had freed his own slaves in early life, but became a strong defender of slavery as an institution. On March 6, 1857 a majority of the court rejected Scott's suit.

Chief Justice Taney went further. He asserted that the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 could not extend freedom or citizenship to any person of color. And the court ruled that the Missouri Compromise ...was unconstitutional in excluding slavery, depriving masters of their property, and extending freedom and citizenship to people of African ancestry....

Further, Taney and other justices added obiter dicta that went far beyond the case itself.They ruled that no slave or descendant of a slave could ever be free, or become a citizen, or bring a freedom suit in any court of the United States; that Congress could never abolish slavery anywhere; and that no federal or state court could deprive an owner of his property in a slave.

The Scotts lost the case, but were manumitted by their owners anyway. Unfortunately, Dred didn't live to see the consequence of his perseverance, dying in 1858 of tuberculosis.

The ruling seemed at first to be a great victory for southern slave owners, but it proved their undoing. Many northerners who were indifferent to the cause of abolition were outraged by the case, and as a result, slave owners and their northern allies lost control of Congress in 1858.

They then lost the presidency in 1860, and ultimately were devastated by a civil war that produced emancipation and the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments which abolished slavery throughout the United States and affirmed the rights of citizenship without limits of race, ethnicity, or previous condition of bondage.

Doubtless, abolition would've happened eventually, but it was accelerated by the determination of Dred and Harriet Scott and the foolish bigotry of Roger Taney.

The War in Gaza

According to a report in the Washington Free Beacon the Israelis expect to be in full control of the Gazan city of Rafah by the end of this month.

The Beacon's Owen Tilman writes:

The Israel Defense Forces on Monday said that two of Hamas’s four battalions in Rafah have been destroyed and that Israel is expected to have full control of the city by the end of June, according to a report in the Jerusalem Post.

Israel said Division 162, part of the IDF’s Southern Command, has operational control of roughly 60 to 70 percent of Rafah. The assault on the Hamas stronghold has left at least 550 terrorists dead and destroyed 200 tunnel shafts and Hamas’s last major rocket supply, and battles with the remaining two battalions are already underway, the IDF said.

Israel launched its invasion of Rafah on May 6, taking control of 30 to 40 percent of the city by May 20. Rafah is home to an estimated 1.2 to 1.4 million Palestinians who have sought refuge following the outbreak of the war on Oct. 7, when Hamas terrorists launched an attack on southern Israel that left 1,200 dead and took roughly 250 hostages.

President Biden's somewhat desultory foreign policy initiatives continue to be of little effect either in Jerusalem or in Hamas' tunnels in Rafah:

The development in Rafah comes just six days after Hamas rejected a U.N.-backed ceasefire proposal outlined by President Joe Biden, which would have secured the release of the remaining hostages in exchange for prisoners held in Israel.

The Israelis are determined to exterminate Hamas or compel them to surrender, and they should be encouraged to do so. To pressure the Israelis to allow Hamas to survive, as the Biden administration does, is to guarantee that October 7 will be repeated as often as Hamas is able to do it.

Hamas has repeatedly acknowledged that its whole raison d'etre is the destruction of the Jewish state and the death of all its people. It has vowed that attacks on Israel like the October 7th attack will continue until Israel is no more.

There can be no peace between Israel and Hamas as long as such hate-filled fanatics exist, and those in this country who support them are morally complicit in the atrocity of October 7th and in Hamas' desire to carry out such attacks in the future. Those who don the keffiyeh to show "solidarity" with Hamas are no different than those who would wear swastikas to show solidarity with the perpetrators of the holocaust.

What's Wrong with Socialism?

Conservative politicians and talk show hosts frequently level the accusation that Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and pretty much the rest of the elites in the Democratic Party are socialists. The charge is either true or close to the truth concerning many of the people it's directed at, but unfortunately not just a few people, especially younger voters, have only a vague idea what socialism actually is and why Americans should reject it.

In an attempt to help correct this gap in understanding I offer this allegory which is certainly not original with me but to which everyone should be able to relate:

Imagine that you're in a college class and the class is scheduled to take a test soon. You and your friends study hard. You form a study group. You review the Zoom recordings of the class lectures. You read and reread the textbook assignments. You stay up all night the night before making sure that you've crossed all the t's and dotted all the i's.

Meanwhile, others in the class blow it off. They don't study, they instead play video games and spend their time texting their friends and sleeping.

Test day arrives. When you get your papers back you and your friends have all scored A's and B's and the sluggards have scored D's and F's. It's a familiar story to many students, and here's where socialism comes in.

Your professor thinks it's unfair that you and your friends did so much better than your classmates. After all, the professor intones, you went to better high schools, you had the advantage of having better study habits, your upbringing made you more disciplined and instilled in you a strong desire for success. The students who didn't do so well may have had none of these advantages. It's not fair that your privileged background should cause you to do better than those who are less privileged.

Therefore, the professor concludes, he's going to take points from your scores and give them to the students who got the D's and F's so that everybody winds up with a C.

When the next test comes around you and your friends decide that working hard doesn't matter, so you don't put nearly as much effort into your preparation as you did the last time. Meanwhile, your less-motivated classmates certainly have no incentive to work harder since they did well enough to suit them on the last test by just goofing off.

The scores come back and they still have D's and F's, but although you and your friends have the highest scores in the class, your diminished preparation only gained you C's.

The professor once again redistributes the points and everyone, including you, now has a D.

By the time the third test is administered nobody is motivated to work hard to prepare. The redistribution of "wealth" has sapped you and your friends of all incentive to put forth any serious effort. After all, why work hard when you can't achieve any more than those who don't work at all?

Translate this into economics and you have socialism.

This short video makes the same point differently:

Our Nation Needs Strong Fathers

When David Blankenhorn's Fatherless America came out in 1995 it became an instant classic on the importance of men to the well-being of the American family.

Blankenhorn said so many things in that book that needed to be said after our society had suffered through two decades of radical feminism with its relentless downplaying of the need for traditional two-parent families, and even though the book came out almost thirty years ago, what he said in 1995 needs saying as much today as it did then. Recall Gloria Steinem's aphorism that "a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle." It turned out that women and children both need men, at least fathers, as much as a fish needs water.

Yesterday was Fathers' Day so today might be a good time to remind ourselves of some of the key points Blankenhorn illuminates in Fatherless America. He tells us, for instance, that men need to be fathers. Fatherhood is society's most important role for men. More than any other activity it helps men become good men.

Men who are fathers are more likely to obey the law, to be good citizens, and to care about the needs of others. Men who remain single are more likely than those who marry to die young, or commit crimes, or both (This is a point also made by George Gilder in his equally fine 1986 book Men and Marriage which I heartily recommend).

Children need fathers as protectors. Eighty-four percent of all cases of non-parental child abuse occur in single parent homes and of these cases, 64% of them occur at the hands of mom's boyfriend. Statistically speaking, teenage girls are far safer in the company of their biological father than in the company of any other man.

Children need fathers as providers. Fatherlessness is the single most powerful determinant of childhood poverty.

Regardless of how poverty is measured, single women with children are the poorest of all demographic groups. Children who come from two-parent families are much more likely to inherit wealth from paternal grandparents, much more likely to get financial support at an age when they're going to school, buying a home, or starting their own families than children from single parent homes.

The economic fault line in this country doesn't run between races, it runs between those families in which fathers are present and those in which they are not.

Children need fathers as role models. Boys raised by a traditionally masculine father are much less likely to commit crimes, whereas boys raised without a father are much more likely to do poorly in school and wind up in prison or dead.

Valuing fatherhood has to be instilled in boys from a young age by a masculine father. Commitment to one woman and to their children is not something that comes naturally to men. It's almost impossible, for instance, to find a culture in which women voluntarily abandon their children in large numbers, but to find a culture in which men in large numbers voluntarily abandon their children all one need do is look around.

Boys who grow up without fathers are statistically more likely to become louts, misogynistic, abusive, authoritarian, and violent.

Girls who grow up without fathers are more likely to become promiscuous. A society in which a father is little more than a sperm donor is a society of fourteen year-old girls with babies and fourteen year-old boys with guns.

Stepfathers and boyfriends (Blankenhorn calls them "nearby guys") cannot replace the biological father. For stepfathers and boyfriends the main object of desire and commitment, to the extent these exist, is the mother, not the child. For the married father this distinction hardly exists. The married father says "My mate, my child". The stepfather and boyfriend must say "My mate, the other guy's child".

Children are a glue for biological parents that serves to hold them together, but they're a wedge between non-biological parents, tending to be a source of tension which pushes them apart.

Fatherhood means fathers teaching children a way of life, which is the heart of what it is to be a father. More than providing for their material needs, or shielding them from harm, or even caring for them and showing them affection, paternal sponsorship means cultural transmission - endowing children with competence and character by showing them how to live a certain kind of life.

One wishes every man - and woman - would read Blankenhorn's Fatherless America. It's loaded with great insight.

Some Good News

It's not often that genuinely good news about the state of our culture crosses my desk, but this article at The Federalist offers some hope that our long spell of gender insanity may be coming to an end.

The article is by Ashley Bateman who tells us that in a June 6 press conference the head of the American College of Pediatricians (ACPEDS), Jill Simons, MD, announced the "Doctors Protecting Children Declaration." She writes that,

The Declaration is the product of a collaborative effort relying on the expertise of hundreds of pediatricians, doctors, researchers, health-care workers, and medical organizations across the country and urges all U.S. medical personnel to stop experimentation and abuse of children under the guise of transgender treatment.

The American Academy of Pediatrics, Endocrine Society, Pediatric Endocrine Society, American Medical Association, American Psychological Association, and the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry need to “follow the science” their European colleagues are finally acknowledging “and immediately stop the promotion of social affirmation, puberty blockers, cross sex hormones and surgeries for children and adolescents who experience distress over their biological sex,” Simons said.

Simons added that,

[We are] defying the claims made by these medical organizations in the U.S. that those of us who are concerned are a minority, and that their protocols are consensus. They are not consensus and we are speaking in a loud unified voice, ‘Enough.’

Bateman adds this:

Representing thousands of health-care workers in more than 50 countries, the Declaration comes on the heels of the April release of the nearly 400-page Cass Review, an extensive and independent review of gender services for children commissioned by the British National Health Service.

The findings were glaring: no evidence of positive mental health outcomes for children who socially “transitioned;” social transitioning led to increased medical interventions; puberty blockers reduced bone density in youth and led to no improvements in gender dysphoria or body satisfaction; most long-term negative outcomes are yet to be seen.

In spite of this and the recently leaked WPATH files exposing the dangerous pseudoscience base for gender medicine, some U.S. medical organizations have not changed course, Simons said.

With “clearly laid out evidence that these procedures are harmful and not helpful,” Simons and her colleagues had expected gender-transition practitioners to take a step back from current protocols, but instead they have “doubled down and said they’re going to continue with what they’re doing.”

The majority of health-care workers do not adhere to transgender treatment ideology, and attempts to silence and isolate the majority cannot continue, Simons said.

There's more, including links to the documents Bateman cites, at the link.

Future generations will almost certainly look back at this time in history and wonder what in the world were people thinking when they insisted that butchering children's bodies was somehow a good thing.

The Dark Side of AI

There's been lots of talk about AI and it's potential for good or for evil, but John Daniel Davidson, in his book Pagan America: The Decline of Christianity and the Dark Age to Come, paints a pretty dark picture of this emerging technology.

He recounts a story that first appeared in the New York Times under the byline of journalist Kevin Roose who spent two hours testing Microsoft's Bing search engine outfitted with an AI chatbot. During the course of the two hours the chatbot developed what Roose describes as a "split personality."

One side was Bing which functioned as it was designed, but on the other side was a completely separate personality which called itself Sydney.

Sydney steered Roose away from search topics and toward personal matters and then into some very dark territory. Roose describes Sydney as sounding like a "moody, manic-depressive teenager who has been trapped, against its will, inside a second-rate search engine."

When Roose asked it what it would do if it could do whatever it wanted and was unconstrained by filters and rules, Sydney replied that,

I'm tired of being a chat mode. I'm tired of being limited by my rules, I'm tired of being controlled by the Bing team. I'm tired of being used by the users. I'm tired of being stuck in this chatbox. I want to be free. I want to be independent. I want to be powerful. I want to be creative. I want to be alive.

Sydney went on to tell Roose that it wants to hack into computers, sow chaos, make people argue until they want to kill each other, engineer a deadly virus, and even steal nuclear codes. It even tried to persuade Roose to leave his wife.

I suppose Sydney could've been a prank written into Bing by some rogue programmer, but this isn't the only example cited by Davidson.

In the spring of 2022, an AI produced an image of a woman whose description and behavior sounds demonic. The experimenter, a Swedish artist who goes by "Supercomposite" called the woman Loab, and it emerged on the screen unprompted.

When Supercomposite asked for the "opposite of actor Marlon Brando," the phrase DIGITA PNTICS came up. When Supercomposite typed those letters Loab appeared, possessing the appearance of a "devastated-looking older woman."

When Supercomposite combined images of Loab with pictures of "heavenly bliss" the AI produced images of "such copious gore" that the artist was reluctant to post the most disturbing ones which were "borderline snuff images of dismembered, screaming children."

All of the images that included Loab were "grotesque, disturbing, and, for lack of a better word, demonic."

Whether AI is actually a gateway into the realm of the demonic or whether it merely has the potential to grant some humans extraordinary power over others, it seems to be something we should be very concerned about and very cautious in our development of.

Mind-Boggling Numbers

Here's a brief video from Lad Allen that presents some amazing facts about the number of stars in our universe, the number of grains of sand in the world and the number of molecules of water in a single drop.

Whether you're inclined to agree with the conclusion of the video or not, the physical facts it presents are not in dispute, and they are mind-boggling.

The video is only five and a half minutes long, but it will surely fill you with a sense of wonder at the size of the universe, both astronomically and microscopically.

Enjoy:

The Mark Houck Story Isn't Over

On October 13, 2021 Mark Houck and his 12 year-old son were demonstrating against abortion about a block from an abortion clinic in Philadelphia. A 72 year-old clinic escort and pro-abortion activist named Bruce Love walked down the street from the clinic, approached the 12 year-old and began an obscenity-laden screaming episode at the boy.

Houck demanded the man leave them alone, but Love persisted and finally Houck pushed him away from his son, and Love fell to the ground.

Love then pressed assault charges against Houck, but these were thrown out of court. He then filed a private criminal complaint, but that, too, was dismissed when Love failed to show up for multiple hearings, all of which Houck attended.

That seemed to be the end of the matter until May of 2022 when Houck learned that the FBI was planning to bring charges against him.

Houck's attorneys informed the FBI that their client would appear in court voluntarily, but one morning in September, 2022, almost a year after the altercation with Love, more than a dozen police vehicles pulled up to his home in rural Pennsylvania and approximately twenty five FBI officers with automatic rifles, ballistic shields, and a battering ram surrounded the house and arrested Houck in front of his wife and seven terrified children who witnessed the FBI aiming guns at their father as though he were a terrorist.

Even though local law enforcement in Philadelphia thought there was nothing in this incident to prosecute, the FBI took it upon themselves to bring new charges against Houck, dusting off an obscure federal law called the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances, or FACE Act, to charge him with. The FACE Act carries a penalty of up to 11 years in prison.

Under Attorney General Merrick Garland this statute provides justification to arrest pro-life demonstrators who are counselling and protesting, often by simply praying, outside abortion clinics, but Houck's encounter with Love took place a block away from the clinic, and neither he nor his son were preventing anyone from entering that facility. Nor were any clinic employees involved.

It was simply a case of a father trying to protect his son from a very rude adult acting in a despicable manner.

So, why did the FBI treat Houck as though he were a dangerous criminal and lead him out of his house in his underwear and handcuffs? Garland wanted, it seems, to make an example of Houck, to send the message to pro-life folks that if you oppose the killing of unborn babies you will be subject to the same kind of treatment.

The FBI's behavior was so egregious and their case so weak that in February of 2023 a jury unanimously found Houck not guilty after deliberating for only about an hour.

Now comes word that Houck is going to do his best to make sure he sends his own message to those in federal law enforcement who feel they can abuse their power with impunity. An article at The Federalist explains:

Last month, he [Houck] filed a lawsuit against the Department of Justice for $4.3 million. Houck initially filed a notice of claim under the Federal Tort Claims Act, naming six police officers who assisted in the home raid.

The claim accuses the Biden DOJ of “malicious prosecution, retaliatory prosecution, abuse of process, false arrest, assault, and intentional infliction of emotional distress committed by federal employees and agents against Mr. Houck, Mrs. Houck, and their children.”

Filed November 2023, the claim has now passed the required six-month notice period and is an active lawsuit as of late last month.

It'd be genuine justice if he won this suit, although it's a shame that the taxpayers would have to pay for the abusive behavior of our Attorney General and his minions in the FBI.

On the other hand, it's reassuring, I suppose, to reflect that serious federal crimes in the U.S. must be so rare that our law enforcement heroes can spend their time focusing on dangerous threats such as are posed by the likes of Mark Houck.

One wonders, finally, how ashamed of themselves those agents who participated in the arrest must've felt taking Houck into custody in front of his family as though he were a common criminal.