A Growing Majority

There's talk at National Review Online's Kerry Spot that the Republicans may soon increase their majority in the Senate to 56/44. Ben Nelson of Nebraska, a Democrat, is rumored to be contemplating either a defection or taking a position in Bush's cabinet. If he does the latter, Nebraska's Republican governor will doubtless appoint a Republican to replace him.

Demagogues and Democracy

Bill passes along a link to an article by Hans-Herman Hoppe the author of Democracy: The God That Failed. Hoppe makes the oft-noted point that in a democracy people soon learn that they can, through judicious use of their ballot, seize wealth which belongs to others and distribute it among themselves. He also writes that:

"...the selection of government rulers by means of popular elections makes it nearly impossible that a good or harmless person could ever rise to the top. Prime ministers and presidents are selected for their proven efficiency as morally uninhibited demagogues. Thus, democracy virtually assures that only bad and dangerous men will ever rise to the top of government. Indeed, as a result of free political competition and selection, those who rise will become increasingly bad and dangerous individuals...."

Viewpoint shares the concern that demagogues find much fertile soil to till among the lower classes in democracies, but even so, Hoppe's statement here seems a bit hyperbolic. Contrary to what he avers, representative democracy in a structural context of checks and balances is the best system of those devised by man for avoiding the ascension of ruthless tyrants to positions of power. At least a search of the historical record doesn't offer much evidence that there's a better way.

Rather than quibble with Hoppe's claim, however, we wish to call our readers' attention to a great passage he quotes from H.L. Mencken. It's worth reproducing in full here:

"Politicians seldom, if ever, get [into public office] by merit alone, at least in democratic states. Sometimes, to be sure, it happens, but only by a kind of miracle. They are chosen normally for quite different reasons, the chief of which is simply their power to impress and enchant the intellectually underprivileged....Will any of them venture to tell the plain truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth about the situation of the country, foreign or domestic? Will any of them refrain from promises that he knows he can't fulfill - that no human being could fulfill? Will any of them utter a word, however obvious, that will alarm or alienate any of the huge pack of morons who cluster at the public trough, wallowing in the pap that grows thinner and thinner, hoping against hope? Answer: maybe for a few weeks at the start.... But not after the issue is fairly joined, and the struggle is on in earnest.... They will all promise every man, woman and child in the country whatever he, she or it wants. They'll all be roving the land looking for chances to make the rich poor, to remedy the irremediable, to succor the unsuccorable, to unscramble the unscrambleable, to dephlogisticate the undephlogisticable. They will all be curing warts by saying words over them, and paying off the national debt with money no one will have to earn. When one of them demonstrates that twice two is five, another will prove that it is six, six and a half, ten, twenty, n. In brief, they will divest themselves from their character as sensible, candid and truthful men, and simply become candidates for office, bent only on collaring votes. They will all know by then, even supposing that some of them don't know it now, that votes are collared under democracy, not by talking sense but by talking nonsense, and they will apply themselves to the job with a hearty yo-heave-ho. Most of them, before the uproar is over, will actually convince themselves. The winner will be whoever promises the most with the least probability of delivering anything."

We wish we would have come across this gem during the recent political campaign. It's a remarkably vivid description of one of the candidates in particular.

Fooling Some of the People

Hugh Hewitt points us to an article in The New York Times wherein the paper of record discusses the Democrats' religion problem. Unfortunately, it seems as if most of the people the Times interviews for the piece believe that the only changes the party needs to make are purely cosmetic. A number of the commentators seem to think that it's the Democrats' image that is the problem. They have to start speaking the language of middle America on matters of religion and clothe their positions on abortion and gay marriage in religious garb, the thinking goes, and the voters will then warm to them.

Elizabeth Cavendish, interim president of Naral Pro-Choice America, is an example. She's quoted as saying that, "The party needs more religious language, but not new positions." Go ahead and dazzle the simpleminded with a few "amens" and "hallelujahs", Ms Cavendish seems to be saying, but there's no need to question any of our convictions.

Many Democrats and liberal Christians, the Times informs us, say privately that they may need to distance themselves more forcefully from the idea of same-sex marriage, standing instead near Mr. Bush in support of civil unions. This, however, sounds more like a tactic than a recognition that one holds a position that needs to be abandoned. It sounds as if the advice being dispensed here is do whatever it takes to get elected and then you can implement your real agenda. Here's how Jim Wallis of Sojourners magazine puts it:

"Let's not call it marriage," said Wallis, who addressed a religious outreach lunch at the Democratic convention this year. "The culture is not ready for that. The principle is legal protection for same-sex couples. It would take the issue away and that issue wouldn't win or lose elections anymore."

In other words, if they camouflage what they believe, call it by a different name, they can hoodwink the voters into a false sense of security until they manage to turn a red state blue. Then they can go ahead and push for the very thing that so many of the gullible resent. Wallis isn't recommending genuine change, he's recommending subterfuge.

Many religious leaders, the Times continues, are also pushing the Democrats to be more assertive in fighting poverty and promoting "social justice" but also to soften their stance on abortion. "There is an interest in finding a middle way," he said. "It predates the election year, but there is a little more willingness to listen to it now."

Evidently, Democrats see the need to adopt a more religious facade only because they can't win elections just by being themselves.

Here's a quaint idea: Let's have politicians and parties simply tell us what they believe and what they will try to do if elected, and let the voters decide whether that's what they want to vote for. Let's have no more attempts to fool and deceive the electorate through political posturing and phony image projecting. It's ludicrous, for example, that liberals refuse to identify themselves as such. If they're ashamed of the liberal label then don't be one, and if they're not ashamed of it then don't hide it or run from it.

Many voters may indeed be duped by clever make-overs into thinking that the Democrats share their values on particular issues, but nowhere does the Times article suggest that Democrats should actually be sincere in their expressions of faith, and nowhere does the article suggest that Democrats need to actually do or change much of any consequence, except perhaps around the margins, to persuade religious unsophisticates to vote for them. Evidently, a lot of Democrats still think politics is all a matter of packaging, advertising, and spin. Show the rubes what they want to see and tell them what they want to hear and you'll win their vote. It's as cynical as it is dishonest.

RU-486

Apparently those who voiced concerns about the harmful effects of RU-486 before it was approved for use in the U.S. are being tragically vindicated. This report from Fox News is very disturbing. It begins with an anguished father wondering why the drug that killed his daughter is still on the market:

"How many more deaths is it going to take before the FDA takes action to remove this drug from the market?" said Monty Patterson, 51, of Livermore, Calif. His 18-year-old daughter, Holly, died on Sept. 17, 2003, of septic shock caused by inflammation of the uterus. The teen took RU-486 on Sept. 10 to terminate an unplanned pregnancy, Patterson said.

At least two other American women who took the pill in the United States died, although the FDA says it is unclear if their deaths were directly related to the pill's use.

Those three deaths were among 676 adverse events reported through Nov. 5 by women who used the abortion pill. The reports include women who felt sick and dizzy to more serious illnesses that required hospitalization, according to the FDA.

Viewpoint wonders how many people suffered serious life-threatening effects like these from Vioxx? It is unlikely that RU-486 will go the way of Vioxx, however, because the abortion pill has a certain politically correct pedigree that will insulate it from blame. At least for a while.

Reckless Disregard

We had intended to write a piece on NBC's gross irresponsibility in airing the video of the Marine in Fallujah shooting the terrorist, but Bill Roggio at The Fourth Rail says it all and says it better than we could. We highly recommend his essay to our readers.

The only thing we would add to what he has written is the question of motive. What good reason could NBC possibly have had for showing the video? Were they trying to instruct viewers that ugly things happen in war? That would seem a bit superfluous. Were they trying to discredit our troops and possibly the war? If so, their conduct is close to treasonous. Were they trying to win themselves acclaim among their peers in the news business? If so, they were seeking to aggrandize themselves at the expense of making our sons' and daughters' job in Iraq a great deal tougher, and they were exploiting a young Marine's conduct under extreme duress just so they could receive the plaudits of their colleagues. That is reprehensible.

In short, they had no good reason for showing the video and in doing so have acted with incredible recklessness. NBC has given our enemies a propaganda coup that they've been exploiting non-stop ever since the shooting was first aired, and the network has consequently disqualified itself, in our opinion, as a trustworthy repository of the public's confidence.

Update: Whatever you do don't pass up this e-mail from a Marine on the events surrounding the shooting in the mosque.

Liberal Wit

If a Conservative cartoonist had penned something as grotesque as this, as utterly void of wit as this, as despicably racist as this they'd be justifiably crucified by the liberal media. Unfortunately, the MSM is as hypocritical about race as it is about almost everything else, so they'll just yawn and roll over since these cartoons (See here and here ) were authored by kindred Left-wing spirits.

Neither of these "cartoonists" could carry Condaleeza Rice's briefcase, let alone match her accomplishments and character, which makes their cheap shots all the more disgusting. Where's the NAACP when they have a legitimate reason to be outraged?

Greed and the Cost of Health Care

Health care costs keep rising. Liberals blame greedy drug companies and Conservatives blame avaricious trial lawyers. Both may be right, but there's a third cause. As the amount of our health care that is picked up by insurance providers rises so does the cost of that care. Health care providers simply charge what the market will bear. As long as insurance companies pay the bulk of the expenses, providers will charge all they can get.

There's a chart here that shows the inverse relationship since 1960 between health care cost and out-of-pocket spending on that care.

Thanks for the tip to No Left Turns.

Hentoff on the Swift Vets

The old Leftist warhorse Nat Hentoff has always struck us as uncommonly fair to people who are his ideological rivals. In a recent column he praises John O'Neill and the Swift Vets for their grace under fire and for their ability to defend their attacks on both Senator Kerry's war record and his subsequent involvement with Vietnam Veterans Against the War.

The oft-heard claim that the Swifties had been thoroughly debunked and discredited is arrant nonsense. It's merely a way of dismissing them without having to actually confront their allegations. The claim that they were lying about the young John Kerry was itself never substantiated. Neither Senator Kerry nor his campaign ever really answered the Swiftees' arguments, and Kerry's refusal to release his naval records lent enormous credibility to the charges that he was not what he claimed to be.

Perhaps more than any other single factor, John O'Neill and the Swift Vet campaign undermined Kerry's pretensions to be qualified to serve as president and kept him out of office. That makes them heroes twice over.

Culture Shock

Fox News has this interesting item:

Thirty states are poised to make abortion illegal within a year if the Supreme Court reversed its 1973 ruling establishing a woman's legal right to an abortion, an advocacy group said Tuesday.

How can this be? We thought the majority of Americans endorsed a woman's right to choose. If even pro-choice groups think that throwing the issue back into the state legislatures would threaten current abortion practice then they are implying that abortion rights don't have the support in this country that their advocates have been claiming for them. State legislators aren't going to ban a practice, after all, that most of the voters favor.

If, overnight, abortion-on-demand became illegal in 3/5 of the nation, shock waves would ramify throughout the culture, the Left would go ballistic, and the culture war in this country would escalate and intensify. None of which, of course, is a reason for not overturning Roe v. Wade.

The history of abortion jurisprudence is a good illustration of how the Left seeks to impose it's agenda upon the nation. They have been singularly unsuccessful in convincing legislatures to promulgate their nostrums, so they by-pass the democratic process, take the decision as to what laws we shall live under out of the hands of the people, and have autocratic and sympathetic judges do the work of legislating for them.

This is one reason the Left has been apoplectic about George Bush's electoral victory on November 2nd. If he appoints judges that hew to a strict constructionist view of the law, who see their task as one of interpreting the law, not creating it, the Left will be bereft of the only tool it has, beyond civil disobedience, for imposing its will upon the rest of us. Let us hope.

Not Bad People

Captain's Quarters Puts the dart in the small circle with this post. Writing about the mutilation of a female Polish hostage and the execution of the female British hostage who had done so much good work for the Iraqi people, Captain Ed says:

Kidnaping civilians as hostages paints a cowardly enough picture of Islamist lunatics, and carving their heads off for the camera makes them look almost infantile in their perversity. Putting a bullet into a woman's hooded head is so cowardly that it takes one's breath away. Together with the discovery of the Polish woman's mutilated and disemboweled corpse yesterday and it's difficult to conclude anything except that those responsible have to be tracked down and killed at all costs.

These are not freedom fighters or Minutemen, as Michael Moore notoriously proclaimed them earlier; these aren't even animals, as animals kill to eat or defend themselves. I can only describe them as ghouls, living demons who live to smell the blood of others in what appears to be some pseudosexual release. They live without a shred of honor or dignity, and like any other psychopath, only derive pleasure from the torture of others.

We can never take the pressure off of these "people." No matter what we do, they will never stop killing, and if we're not careful they'll come here for their next victims. Only when we have stamped the last of these sick bastards into the next world will we have any security in this one.

In light of all that these savages have done in the last months it makes Chris Matthews' claim on Hardball last night that these are "not bad people, just people we disagree with" so extraordinarily obtuse as to leave one speechless.

And the Left impugns the intelligence of those who voted for Bush.

Religiously Motivated Democrats

Hugh Hewitt makes an interesting point:

C-SPAN carried a forum last night moderated by the indestructible Marvin Kalb, which included Michael Barone, so I paused to watch.

The very last question was posed by a visibly angry woman of about 40, who demanded of the panel why discussion of religious voters never mentioned liberals or lefties who were religious, and always seemed to concentrate on the "religious right." (She might have said "radical religious right" but I can't be sure.)

Time was short, so no one really answered this, but I have heard this complaint over and over again. Look, it is a question of numbers. Faith-based voters certainly do exist within the Democratic Party, but they are the equivalent of African-American voters in the Republican party, a valued but by no means numerous group. Voters for whom faith is a huge aspect of their lives tend overwhelmingly to vote Republican these days. It isn't a conspiracy, and it isn't by any means a permanent alignment, but it is a real and significant feature of the American political landscape. Folks who pretend that there are huge numbers of religiously motivated liberal voters are just kidding themselves.

Quite so. In fact, many of the religiously motivated liberals we know refuse to identify themselves as Democrats, preferring instead to call themselves Independents or to align themselves with a third party. They are people who generally adopt a "seamless garment" approach to life issues, oppose war as a matter of principle, identify with the poor and the working class, hold a high view of traditional marriage and sexual morality, and eschew a politics of personal destruction. They certainly don't feel at home in the current Democratic party.

Letter From Iraq

How do the Iraqi people feel about Americans in general and President Bush in particular? Here's an anecdotal piece of evidence from IraqTheModel. It's a letter circulating online in Iraq, and Iraqis are invited to sign it. As of the time it was posted on IraqThe Model over one thousand Iraqis had signed.

In the name of God,

Sir, President George W Bush, President of the United States of America. On behalf of the families of the victims of the mass graves, on behalf of the martyrs of "Halabja" and "Anfal" and on behalf of all the Iraqis that you liberated from dictatorship and oppression; we have prayed for you and now we want to send you our congratulations on being reelected as a president of the United States.

Mr. President, we'd love to congratulate you and the people of the United States on the beginning of a new phase of democracy, freedom and prosperity and we wish you and the American people the best, as they have led the liberation of Iraq and sacrificed their sons and daughters for the freedom of the Iraqis; the historical achievement that the United States has accomplished together with the other liberating countries.

The United States and the coalition, among all other nations, were the ones who recognized the suffering of the Iraqi people and saved them from a regime that was more lethal and more destructive than any weapons of mass destruction. A regime that murdered, slaughtered and enslaved Iraqis for long, dark decades, denied them their freedom and their right to live a decent life until God inspired you and helped you to rescue us, liberate our country and put us on the road of freedom and democracy.

Mr. President, we the Iraqis are on your side and we'll keep supporting and blessing your efforts in eradicating terrorism inside and outside Iraq and all those who carried weapons against the liberating coalition forces and the new Iraqi police, hunting down the criminals who murder innocent civilians, whether Iraqi or American civilians.

We the Iraqis are determined to establish democracy and freedom in our country starting with general elections that exclude no one whether inside or outside Iraq. These elections would lead us to a democratic Iraq and we wish that you could help focusing on the role of the Iraqis outside Iraq and make use of their qualifications in the reconstruction process.

We also want to emphasize the necessity of establishing an international legislation that incriminates the Ba'athists, terrorists, fanatic salafis and all the parties, and governments that support them, not forgetting the media that promote the ideology of killing and terrorism.

These parties ought to be confronted and fought to achieve peace and stability in Iraq, America and the rest of the world.

We're also determined to establish a strategic, permanent relationship with our friends; the government and people of the United States to whom we hold the utmost feelings of gratitude, love and friendship for what they have given us and what they're still offering.

We will be united on the road of freedom and peace and we will always be supportive to all the efforts of America in bringing peace to the region.

In the end, we ask God to guide you and bless all your efforts to do the best for humanity as a whole.

All the glory to the American and Iraqi martyrs. Long live America. Long live Iraq, free and allied nations.

Your brothers in the "Iraqi Parliament" voice chat room and in "Sawt Al Iraq" website.

George Bush and the American military have given these Iraqis hope. And not only these but there are doubtless millions of people in Iran and elsewhere who are ruled by theocratic tyrants who are hoping that the freedom that has come to Afghanistan and Iraq through American force of arms will somehow come to their lands as well. America is the hope of the oppressed everywhere in the world and the irony is that the Left, the self-proclaimed champions of the down-trodden, is bitterly opposed to what has been done and has fought it every step of the way.

Make no mistake. If the Left had had their way Afghanistan would still be groaning under the Taliban and Iraq would still be a giant torture chamber run by the Hussein family. Libya would still be working toward the production of nuclear arms, Pakistan would still be allied with the Taliban, and all of these places would still be safe havens for al Quaida.

Another four years like the first four and George Bush will go down in history as the greatest liberator of all time as well as the man most despised by tyrants and their Leftist enablers ever to hold the office of president of the United States.

Secession By Any Other Name ...

The self-marginalization of the Left continues. This essay from The Stranger is an excellent case in point. The editors write:

It's time to state something that we've felt for a long time but have been too polite to say out loud: Liberals, progressives, and Democrats do not live in a country that stretches from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from Canada to Mexico. We live on a chain of islands. We are citizens of the Urban Archipelago, the United Cities of America. We live on islands of sanity, liberalism, and compassion--New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, Seattle, St. Louis, Minneapolis, San Francisco, and on and on. And we live on islands in red states too--a fact obscured by that state-by-state map. Denver and Boulder are our islands in Colorado; Austin is our island in Texas; Las Vegas is our island in Nevada; Miami and Fort Lauderdale are our islands in Florida.

Citizens of the Urban Archipelago reject heartland "values" like xenophobia, sexism, racism, and homophobia, as well as the more intolerant strains of Christianity that have taken root in this country. And we are the real Americans. They--rural, red-state voters, the denizens of the exurbs--are not real Americans. They are rubes, fools, and hate-mongers.

For Democrats, it's the cities, stupid--not the rural areas, not the prickly, hateful "heartland," but the sane, sensible cities--including the cities trapped in the heartland. Pandering to rural voters is a waste of time.

In cities all over America, distressed liberals are talking about fleeing to Canada or, better yet, seceding from the Union. We can't literally secede and, let's admit it, we don't really want to live in Canada. It's too cold up there and in our heart-of-hearts we hate hockey. We can secede emotionally, however, by turning our backs on the heartland. We can focus on our issues, our urban issues, and promote our shared urban values. We can create a new identity politics, one that transcends class, race, sexual orientation, and religion, one that unites people living in cities with each other and with other urbanites in other cities. The Republicans have the federal government--for now. But we've got Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Diego, New York City (Bloomberg is a Republican in name only), and every college town in the country. We're everywhere any sane person wants to be. Let them have the shitholes, the Oklahomas, Wyomings, and Alabamas. We'll take Manhattan.

To red-state voters, to the rural voters, residents of small, dying towns, and soulless sprawling exburbs, we say this: F**k off. Your issues are no longer our issues. We're going to battle our bleeding-heart instincts and ignore pangs of misplaced empathy. We will no longer concern ourselves with a health care crisis that disproportionately impacts rural areas. Instead we will work toward winning health care one blue state at a time.

We won't concern ourselves if red states restrict choice. We'll just make sure that abortion remains safe and legal in the cities where we live, and the states we control, and when your daughter or sister or mother dies in a botched abortion, we'll try not to feel too awful about it. In short, we're through with you people.

They're against us; we're against them. This is a war.

And when the oil dries up, we're not going to be turning to priests for answers--we'll be calling the scientists. And speaking of science: SCIENCE! That's another thing we're for. And reason. And history. All those things that non-urbanists have replaced with their idiotic faith. We're for those.

We should condemn their politics, exposing their conservatism as the anti-Americanism that it is, striving to make "conservative" into an epithet.

We all know that not everyone who lives in the suburbs is a raving neo-Christian idiot. The raving neo-Christian idiots are winning, however, so we need to take the fight to them....It's time for the Democratic Party to stop pandering to bovine, non-urban America. You don't apologize for being right--especially when you're at war.

There's lots more peace and love at the site. Sadly, the good folks at The Stranger don't seem to understand how a democracy is supposed to work, nor do they understand the concept of a nation. Either we agree with them and vote for their candidates or they take their marbles and go home. Their vision of America is of a mosaic of interest groups fractured by hatred for each other, an America riven by difference rather than united by values shared in common. Real Americans, in the minds of The Stranger's editors, are secular liberals, everyone else is a moron.

Whatever happened to liberal tolerance of difference of opinion? Whatever happened to the liberal ideal of celebrating diversity? Whatever became of the notion of "United We Stand"? Don't look for any of these sentiments at The Stranger.

Thanks to Andrew Sullivan for the tip.

Affirmative Action

Conservatives who oppose affirmative action as a general principle are often portrayed by their opponents as bigoted and racist. President Bush was even called an extremist because he harbors doubts about the utility and justice of affirmative action. Yet the evidence keeps piling up that the President's reservations are well-founded. Joanne Jacobs has this report on a recent study:

For blacks graduating from middle-rank law schools, racial preferences are costly, writes Rick Sander, a UCLA law professor and visiting Volokh blogger who's relying on national data on young lawyers' education, jobs and pay. Black students enter law school with lower grades and test scores, Sanders writes in part one of his opus. Part two finds that black law students earn lower grades have a higher drop-out rate and are much more likely to fail the bar exam:

"At American law schools that use large racial preferences, half of all black students end up in the bottom tenth of their first-year class. Put a little differently, the median black student performs in the first-year at about the 7th percentile of the median white student."

Black law graduates who've earned poor grades have poor career prospects, part three concludes:

"Law school prestige is important, but for law graduates as a whole, good grades are a much more powerful predictor of getting a higher-paying job than the eliteness of one's school."

"What this implies about racial preferences is not completely obvious. One needs to estimate both how much of an "eliteness" boost the typical black applicant gets in the admissions process, and how much the average black student's law school GPA would go up if admissions were race-blind and the student went to a lower-ranked school. Both calculations are difficult, and subject to some debate. That said, I think the general pattern is fairly clear. Anywhere outside the most elite schools, new black lawyers are hurt by preferences more than they are helped. For a typical black graduating from a middle-ranked law school, the grades/prestige tradeoff that goes with affirmative action lowers her earnings by about twenty percent."

At top 10 law schools, the gains from prestige offset the grade disadvantage. Black lawyers are more likely to take government jobs and to work in small firms. Some of this undoubtedly is due to preference, writes Sander, but lower grades also are a factor.

African-American writers like Shelby Steele and Stephen Carter have been saying for years that black students are hurt by affirmative action more than they're helped by it. Conservatives have been saying for years that race-based preferences are inherently unjust quite apart from any deleterious impact on the supposed beneficiaries. For our part we just wonder how many generations must come and go before we can assess the success or failure of this experiment. Will there ever be a time when we can say that the unequal playing field established by slavery and Jim Crow has now been evened out and we can all now compete against each other on the basis of our ability, or is affirmative action an entitlement to preference in perpetuity?

Whither Democracy?

Viewpoint has frequently visited the topic of the moral sterility which results from the secularization of a society. Wretchard at Belmont Club takes up the same theme quoting Cardinal George Pell, Archbishop of Sydney, Australia:

[T]hink for a moment what it means to say that there can be no other form of democracy than secular democracy. Does democracy need a burgeoning billion-dollar pornography industry to be truly democratic? Does it need an abortion rate in the tens of millions? Does it need high levels of marriage breakdown, with the growing rates of family dysfunction that come with them? Does democracy (as in Holland's case) need legalised euthanasia, extending to children under the age of 12? Does democracy need assisted reproductive technology (such as IVF) and embryonic stem cell research? Does democracy really need these things? What would democracy look like if you took some of these things out of the picture? Would it cease to be democracy? Or would it actually become more democratic?

The alarm with which many treat people in public life who are opposed to these things often implies that they are a danger to democracy. This overreaction is, of course, a bluff, an attempt to silence opposition, almost suggesting that these practices are essential to democracy.... From outside Western culture, of course, come other possibilities. It is still very early in the piece, of course, but the small but growing conversion of native Westerners within Western societies to Islam carries the suggestion that Islam may provide in the 21st century the attraction that communism provided in the 20th, both for those who are alienated or embittered on the one hand, and for those who seek order or justice on the other.

Wretchard's comments on the Cardinal's words are worth reading. He says for instance, that:

[The Cardinal] asks a logical question which cannot be evaded. When the Founding Fathers created the framework for procedural democracy it was unnecessary to spell out its ends because those were largely provided by the moral, ethical and religious consensus of the underlying society. When that underlying civilizational consensus has been destroyed or diluted, as is the case in Western Europe and to a lesser extent in the United States, what intrinsic ends does a value-neutral democratic mechanism serve? The answer possibly, is whatever ends it can be put to....

In other words, whatever can be done by those who wield the power, ultimately will be done if it suits their purposes. Might makes right in a religiously eviscerated society. This is the moral default position and a thoroughly secularized democracy will find it almost impossible to avoid it.

We doubt very much whether there can be a sustainable secular democracy over the long term. Democracy requires a relatively strong consensus on the question of ideals, morals, and political practices. As John Adams said, our form of government was created for a moral people and will not survive under any other. Only a commonly held belief in a Divine will can provide an anchor for the moral ideals necessary to hold disparate subcultures together.

When a democracy secularizes it inadvertantly creates self-doubt and national drift. Relativistic assumptions come to prevail. Eventually no one believes in anything very strongly, certainly not the principle that we should do what's best for the country rather than what's best for ourselves. Society becomes self-centered, egoistic, fragmented and disconnected. There's no metaphysical glue to hold competing groups together, everyone looks to his own parochial interests and sees no reason why he should care about the common good. Society becomes weak and effete. The national will to survive erodes. Law must be piled upon law to ensure behavior that was formerly governed by the inner law rooted in the conscience of each citizen, and which received its sanction from God. Government perforce becomes oppressive, and conditions become auspicious for a tyrant.

The process is well along in Europe, but European nations have had the advantage, until recently, of being ethnically and culturally homogenous. Now that's changing and democratic principles will be severely tested as large numbers of Muslim immigrants challenge the traditional assumptions of Europeans who will almost certainly discover that, having pulled the metaphysical chair out from under them, those assumptions fall flat on their backside.

Democracies require a shared ethnicity and culture or shared principles of governance. If a polity doesn't have the former, as in Japan, then it better have the latter, but a secularized society offers no basis for such principles. It can only hope for an arbitrary and transient consensus. As secularization proceeds apace in both Europe and America, and as both become ethnically more variegated, freedom will groan under the burden placed upon it. It's already happening in European countries with large Muslim populations, and the creaking and cracking of democracy's timbers as they strain under the load in Holland, France, and Germany, for example, are now being heard all the way to this side of the Atlantic.

Ramadi On Deck

Looks like Ramadi is the next snake pit on the military's list.

By the way, what does 1200 terrorist corpses rotting in the streets of Fallujah do to al Zarqawi's recruiting efforts? Hard to imagine that there'd be too many guys eager to wind up like those fellows.

Which leads us to a theological question. What sorts of strains does the debacle in Fallujah place on available resources in Paradise? It can't be easy for Allah's quartermaster general to produce 72 virgins with which to reward each of those "martyrs", can it?

Campus Anti-Intellectualism

Joanne Jacobs cites a piece from the Chronicles of Higher Education by Max Bauerlein on the paucity of intellectual discourse among some faculty on American university campuses. The article confirms the widely held suspicion that many university professors aren't really interested in either thinking or truth but simply in promoting their prejudices. Jacobs writes:

Groupthink in college faculties is anti-intellectual, writes Max Bauerlein, an Emory English professor, in Chronicle of Higher Education. Politics is embedded in some disciplines.

"Schools of education, for instance, take constructivist theories of learning as definitive, excluding realists (in matters of knowledge) on principle, while the quasi-Marxist outlook of cultural studies rules out those who espouse capitalism. If you disapprove of affirmative action, forget pursuing a degree in African-American studies. If you think that the nuclear family proves the best unit of social well-being, stay away from women's studies."

Many academics don't read conservative texts or talk to conservative thinkers, writes Bauerlein. They think the conservative intelligentsia is represented by Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter, "not von Hayek, Russell Kirk, Leo Strauss, Thomas Sowell, Robert Nozick, or Gertrude Himmelfarb."

"The ordinary evolution of opinion -- expounding your beliefs in conversation, testing them in debate, reading books that confirm or refute them -- is lacking, and what should remain arguable settles into surety."

Liberal professors assume all thinking people agree with them. Those who disagree must be stupid; their ideas aren't worthy of consideration. Academics don't realize they've lost "all sense of the range of legitimate opinion," Bauerlein writes.

"The problem is that the simple trappings of deliberation make academics think that they've reached an opinion through reasoned debate -- instead of, in part, through an irrational social dynamic. The opinion takes on the status of a norm. Extreme views appear to be logical extensions of principles that everyone more or less shares, and extremists gain a larger influence than their numbers merit. If participants left the enclave, their beliefs would moderate, and they would be more open to the beliefs of others."

"...Panels on issues like Iraq, racism, imperialism, and terrorism that stack the dais provide lots of passion, but little excitement. Syllabi that include the same roster of voices make learning ever more desultory. Add a few rightists, and the debate picks up. Perhaps that is the most persuasive internal case for infusing conservatism into academic discourse and activities. Without genuine dissent in the classroom and the committee room, academic life is simply boring."

Bauerlein doesn't want affirmative action for conservatives on campus, Jacobs tells us. His goal is to prod professors to think about the ways they exclude and ignore dissenting opinions.

Excluding and ignoring dissenting opinions is a symptom of intellectual insecurity. It's the preferred tactic of those who realize, if only subliminally, that their ideas simply can't withstand the challenge of open debate. Leftist ideas can only survive on campus if they are insulated from scrutiny and immunized from criticism. Many of our universitites have long ago ceased to be part of the marketplace of ideas. Today they are ideological monocultures, heavily laced with a wide variety of politically correct herbicides employed to kill off any unapproved idea which might otherwise take root in this intellectually sterile soil.

Cheat Seekers

Laer at Cheat Seeking Missiles (Great Name!) has two posts that we recommend to our readers. The first is a tally of approximately 130 instances of attempts by the MSM to skew voter perception of the candidates in the recent election in Senator Kerry's favor. This list should serve as a valuable reference for anyone who writes about media bias for years to come. It's also a damning indictment of the sheer dishonesty that reigns in the organs of the Left in this country. Honesty, as we recall, is one of those values that Bush supporters were looking for in a presidential candidate. No surprise that those who find an emphasis on values in the electorate alarming would hold integrity in such low esteem.

The second is an account coming out of San Francisco State University:

College Republicans at the San Francisco State University were the target of a racist, threatening attack by PLO and al Qaeda sympathizers who want the victorious national political party kicked off the campus, according to California College Republicans.

Despite a physical assault against one GOP student, and death threats, rape threats and even terrorism threats -- one Arab student yelled, "The only way we can defeat you is to kill as many as possible! I'd rather die a suicide bomber's death than to call myself an American!" -- SFSU President Robert Corrigan refused to take any action against the perpetrators, the General Union of Palestinian Students. Nor was the Palestinian group told not interfere with the ability of the College Republicans to exercise their rights of free speech. In fact, during the earlier attack on Monday, the police asked the College Republicans if they would leave rather than arresting their attackers.

Even during the Vietnam war, the GOP was not the target of Leftist violence. The reaction of the Left to the proper functioning of the democratic process is getting more and more troubling. The reaction shows that their hatred goes far beyond President Bush, and is an attack on more than half of the American voting public.

We'd like to add that attacks like this are abetted by pusillanimous university administrators whose failure to act decisively against the thugs only insures that there will be more thuggery. If conservative white students had said anything like what the Arab student is reported to have said they would've been thrown out of school before they had finished the sentence. Unfortunately, the list of courageous university administrators is as short as the list of instances of MSM bias is long.

Foreknowledge and Free-Will

The philosophically and theologically minded might wish to visit Evangelical Outpost where Joe Carter presents William Lane Craig's attempt to reconcile God's foreknowledge with man's free will.

Craig's argument is clever, but a little convoluted. Perhaps there's an easier way to think of the problem.

In a post titled God and Time last July Viewpoint suggested that the problem Craig is addressing arises because we tend to think of God as inhabiting the same time that we inhabit. God, however, is transcendent. He exists outside of the space-time world that He created. Thus everything that happens in our time - our past, present, and future -reside continually in God's present.

We might think of it this way: God is like a vast sphere or ball, and time is a thin line segment drawn in ink across the surface. Every part moment in time, like every point on the line, is in contact with God simultaneously. God is continually conscious of every moment in our time. He stands in the same relation to our past and our future as he does to our present.

It follows that God knows the choices we made yesterday. Yet we don't have to think that because he knows what choices we made yesterday that He therefore caused those choices. Nothing about God's present knowledge forces us to conclude that our past choices were determined by Him any more than our knowledge of past events somehow caused those events. Knowledge after an event doesn't cause or determine the event.

Prior knowledge of future events is different, though. If we knew, genuinely knew, that a particular event would occur tomorrow, then we might be tempted to think that tomorrow's event is inevitable, that it must occur. This, however, is because we are embedded in time. God is not. Our future is in His present just as our past is. His knowledge of the future is similar to his knowledge of the past, and, if the two really are like mirror images of each other, His knowledge of an event or of a choice we will make tomorrow does not cause us to make that choice.

His foreknowledge would be no more determinative than His post-knowledge. Indeed, it would be more correct to say that just as our free choices yesterday caused God to have the knowledge He has about those choices today, so, too, our choices tomorrow cause the knowledge He has about those choices today. Our choices determine His knowledge. His knowledge doesn't determine our choices. Thus God can have foreknowledge of our future and humans nevertheless remain free to create it.

Hitting the Bullseye

No Left Turns posts an excerpt of an article appearing in the next issue of The New Republic. The article is written by Brad Carson, the losing Democratic Senate candidate in Oklahoma, who reflects upon his defeat and the contemporary culture war. Carson writes:

"The culture war is real, and it is a conflict not merely about some particular policy or legislative item, but about modernity itself. Banning gay marriage or abortion would not be sufficient to heal the cultural gulf that exists in this nation. The culture war is about matters more fundamental still: whether nationality is, in a globalized world, a random fact of no more significance than what hospital one was born in or whether it is the source of identity and even political legitimacy; whether one's self is a matter of choice or whether it is predetermined, before birth, by the cultural membership of one's family; whether an individual is just that--a free-floating atom--or whether the individual is part of a long chain that both predates and continues long after any particular person; whether concepts like honor and shame, which seem so quaint, are still relevant in a world that values only "tolerance." These are questions not for politicians but for philosophers, and, in the end, it is the failure of liberal philosophy that we saw on November 2.

"For the vast majority of Oklahomans--and, I would suspect, voters in other red states--these transcendent cultural concerns are more important than universal health care or raising the minimum wage or preserving farm subsidies. Pace Thomas Frank, the voters aren't deluded or uneducated. They simply reject the notion that material concerns are more real than spiritual or cultural ones. The political left has always had a hard time understanding this, preferring to believe that the masses are enthralled by a "false consciousness" or Fox News or whatever today's excuse might be. But the truth is quite simple: Most voters in a state like Oklahoma--and I venture to say most other Southern and Midwestern states--reject the general direction of American culture and celebrate the political party that promises to reform or revise it."

As long as the Democrats continue in their state of denial about the meaning of November 2nd they will be in special need of men with Carson's understanding. Unfortunately, to the extent that they pay people like him no heed and remain fixated on stolen votes, secession, and stereotypes of red state (or more accurately, red county) voters they'll continue their slide into political irrelevance.