Ward Churchill and Phil Mitchell

The good professor's troubles keep mounting at the University of Colorado:

University of Colorado officials investigating embattled professor Ward Churchill received documents this week purporting to show that he plagiarized another professor's work. Officials at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia sent CU an internal 1997 report detailing allegations about an article Churchill wrote.

"The article . . . is, in the opinion of our legal counsel, plagiarism," Dalhousie spokesman Charles Crosby said in summarizing the report's findings.

Dalhousie began an investigation after professor Fay G. Cohen complained that Churchill used her research and writing in an essay without her permission and without giving her credit. Although the investigation substantiated her allegations, Cohen didn't pursue the matter because she felt threatened by Churchill, Crosby said.

Crosby said Cohen told Dalhousie officials in 1997 that Churchill had called her in the middle of the night and said, "I'll get you for this."

Cohen still declines to talk publicly about her experience with Churchill, but she agreed the Dalhousie report could be shared with CU officials, Crosby said, because "whatever concerns she may have about her safety are outweighed by the importance she attaches to this information getting out there."

Meanwhile, university officials pull long faces and ponder gravely what they should do about the old Lefty warhorse - academic freedom and all those other cherished values of the academy must be respected, don't you know. Nevertheless, there are some teachers that even the most tolerant institution cannot abide, and one of those is Dr. Phil Mitchell who appeared last Wednesday night on MSNBC's Scarborough Country.

Dr. Mitchell who teaches in the history department at a major American university was informed by his chairman recently that his teaching contract will not be renewed in the Fall because his teaching is not up to university standards.

It's about time, you say. More universities should clear out the deadwood, you declaim. But Dr. Mitchell received an award in 1999 recognizing him as an outstanding teacher. He's also been acknowledged by his colleagues as an excellent instructor. So why is his teaching not up to university standards? It turns out that he is a racist and, worse, a theist.

In one of his classes, apparently, Dr. Mitchell, the father of two adopted black children, cited the opinion of Thomas Sowell, a black economist, who holds a dim view of affirmative action. This offended some students and, of course, the last thing that universities want on their faculty is a professor who offends people.

He also committed the unpardonable offense of quoting from a text on 19th century liberal protestantism, and, in the course of the discussion, made reference to G_d. Apparently, the reference was not part of a profanity, which would've been protected free speech, but was instead respectful, which evidently is not.

For these crimes against the spirit of political correctness and Left-wing orthodoxy his university decided he had to go. The announcement aroused no student demonstrations on behalf of academic freedom, as did the kerfuffle surrounding the martyr Ward Churchill, the ACLU found themselves otherwise occupied and unable to come to his aid, and faculty petitions castigating the administration for the "chilling effect" their dismissal of Dr. Mitchell would have on the spirit of open inquiry on campus were notable for their absence.

Even so, the administration later relented, but still prohibited him from teaching in the history department.

Which university is it that maintains such rigorous standards that anyone who gives offense or shows signs of having a favorable view of religion risks being cashiered? Which university is it that will not tolerate the likes of a Dr. Mitchell? The University of Colorado. The exact same institution which is currently wringing its hands over what to do about an academic fraud and bully who managed to offend just about the entire nation with his comments about 9/11. Evidently, Dr. Mitchell's mistake was being fond of his country, being religious, and not making up a story that he was part Indian.

The taxpayers of Colorado are presumably pleased at the vigilance displayed by university officials in the case of the unfortunate Dr. Mitchell and also with their diligence in making sure that only instructors of the finest character stand before the young minds in Colorado's history department.

For more on this travesty go here.

The Case For Judeo-Christian Values, cont'd

Dennis Prager's series of columns on The Case for Judeo-Christian Values continues with Part VI and Part VII.

Part VI addresses the contemporary emphasis on the appeal to feelings rather than to external moral authority in determining how one should act. He writes:

With the decline of the authority of Judeo-Christian values in the West, many people stopped looking to external sources of moral standards in order to decide what is right and wrong. Instead of being guided by God, the Bible and religion, great numbers - in Western Europe, the great majority - have looked elsewhere for moral and social guidelines.

For many millions in the twentieth century, those guidelines were provided by Marxism, Communism, Fascism or Nazism. For many millions today, those guidelines are ... feelings....feelings are the major unifying characteristic among contemporary liberal positions.

His examples are guaranteed to raise eyebrows... and perhaps blood pressure. For example:

Aside from reliance on feelings, how else can one explain a person who believes, let alone proudly announces on a bumper sticker, that "War is not the answer"? I know of no comparable conservative bumper sticker that is so demonstrably false and morally ignorant. Almost every great evil has been solved by war - from slavery in America to the Holocaust in Europe. Auschwitz was liberated by soldiers making war, not by pacifists who would have allowed the Nazis to murder every Jew in Europe.

He closes Part VI with this:

Reliance on feelings in determining one's political and social positions is the major reason young people tend to have liberal/left positions - they feel passionately but do not have the maturity to question those passions. It is also one reason women, especially single women, are more liberal than men - it is women's nature to rely on emotions when making decisions. (For those unused to anything but adulation directed at the female of the human species, let me make it clear that men, too, cannot rely on their nature, which leans toward settling differences through raw physical power. Both sexes have a lot of self-correcting to do.)

Feelings also play a major role in many conservatives' beliefs. Patriotism is largely a feeling; religious faith is filled with emotion, and religion has too often been dictated by emotion. But far more conservative positions are based on "What is right?" rather than on "How do I feel?" That is why a religious woman who is pregnant but does not wish to be is far less likely to have an abortion than a secular woman in the same circumstances. Her values are higher than her feelings. And that, in a nutshell, is what our culture war is about - Judeo-Christian values versus liberal/leftist feelings.

In Part VII he considers the concept of evil and how this concept creates a great divide between the Judeo-Christian view of morality and other, competing, conceptions:

In much of the Arab and Muslim world, "face," "shame" and "honor" define moral norms, not standards of good and evil. That is the reason for "honor killings" - the murder of a daughter or sister who has brought "shame" to the family (through alleged sexual sin) - and the widespread view of these murders as heroic, not evil. That is why Saddam Hussein, no matter how many innocent people he had murdered, tortured and raped, was a hero to much of the Arab world. As much evil as he committed, what most mattered was his strength, and therefore his honor.

In the contemporary Western world, most people who identify with the Left - meaning the majority of people - hate war, corporations, pollution, Christian fundamentalists, economic inequality, tobacco and conservatives. But they rarely hate the greatest evils of their day, if by evil we are talking about the deliberate infliction of cruelty - mass murder, rape, torture, genocide and totalitarianism.

That is why communism, a way of life built on cruelty, attracted vast numbers of people on the Left and why, from the 1960s, it was unopposed by most others on the Left. Even most people calling themselves liberal, not leftist, hated anti-communism much more than they hated communism.

[T]he Left throughout the world generally has contempt for people who speak of good and evil. They are called Manichaeans, moral simpletons who see the world in black and white, never in shades of grey. Western Europeans and their American counterparts loathe the language of good and evil and correctly attribute it to religious - i.e., Judeo-Christian - values. Among those values is fighting evil and "burning evil out from your midst." And to do that, you have to first hate it. Because if you don't hate evil, you won't fight it, and good will lose.

This is an excellent series of columns. If you missed any of the first five installments you can link to them by going to Prager's archive which you will find here.

Note to Guiliana: Please Shut Up

Guiliana Sgrena's story, like a species in thrall to the pressures of Darwinian natural selection, undergoes slow gradual modifications until finally something completely new appears to emerge. Whereas she originally said that hundreds of rounds were fired at the car, photos show only two bullet holes in the vehicle. It also develops that the firing was from the side and rear of the car, consonant with the claim that the vehicle did not stop and instead tried to pass through the checkpoint. Not only did the U.S. military not know anything about Sgrena's release, neither, apparently did the Italian military.

The woman is turning this tragedy into a national embarrassment....for the Italians. No wonder they want her to just shut up.

Captain Ed has the details.

More Wake Up America

Well, the trade deficit figures have been announced for January and they're the second highest in history at $58 billion dollars.

The largest contribution to the trade gap was trade with China (no surprise there) and we're told it was mostly because of an increase in the import of textiles. Gee, since we gutted the textile industry in North Carolina, I guess we have to buy our textiles from somewhere else so it might as well be China, right?

I'd like to direct your attention to the article at this link.

The US has apparently lost the ability to create high productivity, high value-added jobs in tradable goods and services. The ladders of upward mobility are being dismantled by offshore production for home markets and outsourcing of knowledge jobs.

The BLS reports that the number of employed US technical workers has fallen by 221,000 in six major computer and engineering job classifications during 2000-2004. The largest drops were suffered by computer programmers, followed by electrical and electronics engineers, computer scientists and systems analysts.

So much for the new economy that economists promised would take the place of the lost manufacturing economy. America's remaining job market is domestic nontradable services. While India and China develop first world job markets, the US labor market takes on the characteristics of a third world work force. Only jobs that cannot be outsourced are growing.

The Bush economy has seen a loss of 2.8 million manufacturing jobs, a rise in the unemployment rate of 1.2 percentage points, and a stagnation in real weekly earnings. How bad will things have to get before economists realize that outsourced jobs are not being replaced? Indeed, many American companies are ceasing to have any presence in the US except for a sales force.

Cisco's CEO, John Chambers, declared recently: "What we're trying to do is outline an entire strategy of becoming a Chinese company." Cisco is establishing a new R&D center in Shanghai. The US corporation manufactures $5 billion of products in China where it employs 10,000 people.

That is just one company, and there are many doing the same thing. The result is abandonment of the American work force by American corporations. Little wonder the Bush administration is the first administration in 70 years to have a net loss of private sector jobs.

If one US company or a few move offshore, their profits improve and consumer prices are lower. However, when work in general moves offshore, Americans lose the incomes associated with the production of the goods they consume. Domestic production is turned into imports, with the result that America draws down its accumulated wealth in order to pay for the imports on which it is dependent.

Perhaps this is why, in part, Warren Buffet suggests that instead of the "ownership society" proffered by the Bush administrations we're more likely to be a "sharecropper" society.

From Warren Buffet's Annual Report to the Berkshire Hathaway Stockholders (the good stuff starts on page 19 under the heading of "Foreign Currencies").

Should we continue to run current account deficits comparable to those now prevailing, the net ownership of the U.S. by other countries and their citizens a decade from now will amount to roughly $11 trillion. And, if foreign investors were to earn only 5% on that net holding, we would need to send a net of $.55 trillion of goods and services abroad every year merely to service the U.S. investments then held by foreigners. At that date, a decade out, our GDP would probably total about $18 trillion (assuming low inflation, which is far from a sure thing). Therefore, our U.S. "family" would then be delivering 3% of its annual output to the rest of the world simply as tribute for the overindulgences of the past. In this case, unlike that involving budget deficits, the sons would truly pay for the sins of their fathers. This annual royalty paid the world - which would not disappear unless the U.S. massively under-consumed and began to run consistent and large trade surpluses - would undoubtedly produce significant political unrest in the U.S. Americans would still be living very well, indeed better than now because of the growth in our economy. But they would chafe at the idea of perpetually paying tribute to their creditors and owners abroad. A country that is now aspiring to an "Ownership Society" will not find happiness in - and I'll use hyperbole here for emphasis - a "Sharecropper's Society." But that's precisely where our trade policies, supported by Republicans and Democrats alike, are taking us.

So, why would Buffet invest about $20 billion in foreign exchange contracts spread among 12 currencies? Simply because he has little confidence in the US dollar yet he can't put all of that money anywhere else. Also, he faces the same dilemma many countries are confronted with. They have more U.S. dollars than they want, they know they're diminishing in value, but there is no market that is liquid enough to absorb them (other than the U.S. treasury bond market which is happy to sell bonds at the expense of Americans).

Consider that the US Treasury has perhaps $11 billion in gold reserves. If Buffet were to attempt to purchase $21 billion dollars worth of gold, the price of gold would rise so quickly he wouldn't be able to take delivery. In addition, his actions would probably collapse the financial markets around the world.

Note that several years ago, he did acquire several million ounces of silver when it was selling for around $3.50 an ounce.

Interestingly, Buffet laments

"I didn't do that job very well last year. My hope was to make several multi-billion dollar acquisitions that would add new and significant streams of earnings to the many we already have. But I struck out. Additionally, I found very few attractive securities to buy. Berkshire therefore ended the year with $43 billion of cash equivalents, not a happy position. Charlie and I will work to translate some of this hoard into more interesting assets during 2005, though we can't promise success."

Ok readers, here it is from one of the richest people on the planet, and he says he can't find anything to invest in. So why is the real estate market in a buying frenzy? Why have the stock markets boomed in the last three years? Why do so many people apparently disagree with him? The simple answer is that Buffet is a value investor. He only makes investments in propositions that represent value i.e. a reasonable chance for a return on one's investment. And, presently, he doesn't see any market to invest in that represents an opportunity for value. I wonder what that makes all those people who are currently jumping into real estate and the stock markets (like they did in late 1990s) with both feet ?

By the way, if any of our readers are interested in purchasing shares of Berkshire Hathaway, the class A stock - BRK is currently selling for slightly over $90,000 per share.

So, you might ask, what does all of this have to do with me? I don't have billions to invest so it's irrelevant. Well, the simple fact of the matter is that you, and I, are faced with the same problem as Mr. Buffet, the holding of a currency that's at extreme risk of loosing value, but unlike Buffet, we can protect our wealth in it's entirety. While the gold market is too illiquid for Buffet to invest in, we are able to purchase gold as a safe haven against the possibility of a debacle that may unfold.

In the final analysis, it all comes down to this simple message from Dr. Alan Greenspan written in 1968 that is more relevant today than ever.

At my Gold Page, I list a variety of ways one may protect their savings and future through investments in gold and gold-related investments. Personally, I prefer physical gold in hand. It's the equivalent of true wealth. Note that this page is purely a public service. I receive nothing whatsoever from any entity listed on this page.

Clever

"So: make a smash hit film about a guy who allows himself to be killed to redeem the world, don't get nominated. Make a modestly successful film about a gal who asks to be killed because she can't bear to live as an invalid, win Best Picture." Noah Millman.

Thanks to Evangelical Outpost for the tip.

George Soros' Bad Idea

George Soros, the sugar daddy of the Democratic Left, wants the U.S. to fight the war on terror after the manner of Spain, presumably by withdrawing within its own borders and letting others carry the burden of the conflict elsewhere. Here are a few excerpts from his recent remarks:

US billionaire financier George Soros slammed as dangerous Washington's strategy to fight terrorism, saying it was creating anger and resentment around the world.

Speaking on Spanish radio station Cadena Ser the day an international conference on terrorism opened in Madrid, Soros said Spain had "a very different response to terrorism - a healthier response".

The Hungarian-born businessman, who spent millions last year opposing US President George W Bush's re-election, said US policies had had negative consequences.

"Producing innocent victims creates anger and resentment. And this anger and resentment feeds terrorism," he said.

Exactly why or how Spain's is a "healthier response" Mr. Soros doesn't say, nor does he tell his listeners who he would nominate to take the United States' place in carrying the burden of the GWOT abroad should the U.S. follow Spain's example. Perhaps he believes that no one should take our place, that the Middle-East hell-holes that breed Islamic fanatics should just be allowed to fester and suppurate and ooze their deranged spawn across the globe. Such a policy would almost certainly make it necessary to fight the orcs in New York and Los Angeles rather than in Baghdad and Ramadi, just as Spain is having to fight them in Madrid, but if that thought disturbs Mr. Soros he gives no indication of it.

Perhaps Mr. Soros should stick to making vast sums of money and squandering it, if he wishes, on the political campaigns of such as John Kerry. He should definitely leave the war on terror to more qualified individuals.

Why Churches Decline

This report on the state of the Church in the UK and the reasons people give for leaving it contains a number of lessons for the Church in the U.S. would do well to heed (Emphasis is ours thoughout):

With Christian moral values and legal protections under assault on all sides, it is commonly said that the reason pews are emptying is that traditional religion is not relevant. A new survey of thousands of churchgoers in the United Kingdom says the opposite however, and indicates that the emptying of the churches has been caused mainly by preaching and pastoral care that has been emptied of moral or doctrinal Christian content. The survey addressed questions about why church attendance was falling so dramatically in the UK but growing elsewhere, even though two-thirds of the British population believes in God.

The results of the year-long survey of 14,000 UK residents by the interdenominational Ecumenical Research Committee has been called 'surprising' by mainstream secular and Christian media. The overwhelming response is to call on churches "to robustly defend moral values with conviction and courage and cease being 'silent' and 'lukewarm' in the face of moral and social collapse."

In an introduction, Lord Bromley Betchworth said "Those who spoke, did so with one voice...an alarming indication that there are multitudes of people across Britain and Ireland who feel that their views are not being heard or represented." The vast majority of the people in Britain and Ireland, he says, are still morally conservative. "They are appalled that moral values and treasured beliefs are being stood on their head and want churches to play a leading role in standing up for these things."

The survey itself asked four simple questions and avoided 'tick-box' responses in favor of written letters. The huge response was a surprise in itself and reflected a growing frustration and anger felt by many ordinary people about the direction of churches and society in general....Many gave variations on the response, "Why hasn't a survey like this been done before, so we can speak?" "At last, someone is listening, thank you so much." "Thank you for the chance to express our beliefs without fear."

Several 'traditionalist' Anglican clerics said that they had "to keep their own views to themselves in case their bishop, who held opposing beliefs, would remove them from their diocese." Many Catholics in North America have written that a similar situation exists there in which the churches are controlled exclusively by bishops and lay administrators who receive no Christian opposition to their officially sanctioned left-liberal dissent from the faith.

Over 90 percent of responses followed a uniform theme that the decline in traditional Christian moral and doctrinal teaching has caused the outflux of congregations. They listed the lack of apologetics, the reasoned defence and explanation of Christian doctrine, as one of the main reasons for the collapse. "It's a myth today that the people of this country have rejected Christianity; they simply haven't been told enough about it to either accept or reject it," wrote one respondent.

Thousands of letters also cited the lack of emphasis on the holiness of God and the need for personal moral conversion. The desire for teaching on holiness, was prevalent and has been influenced, said the authors, by Mel Gibson's film, the Passion of the Christ. Many responded that the churches now teach easy forgiveness; an attitude that 'God loves me anyway,' and that there is no need to attend church or live a morally demanding Christian life.

The overwhelming majority of respondents were vehemently opposed to ordaining homosexuals and blamed the churches for the rise in pedophilia scandals because of the prevalence of homosexuals in the clergy. Some celibate homosexuals wrote saying that the prevalence of support for homosexuality in the churches is undermining their efforts to live chastely. One young man wrote, "For sections of the Church to suddenly say that my struggle (to remain chaste)... was for nothing and that it would have been OK to have given in, would be to deny my personal cross for Christ and mock the faithfulness I have shown Him."

Two thousand letters asked for a return to traditional liturgy and pointed out that attempts to attract younger people with jazzed-up offerings had failed and had alienated older parishioners. Over 450 said they drove vast distances to attend a traditional liturgical celebration. 1,500 letters complained that the modern liturgies "bordered on entertainment rather than worship."

The survey supports what many Christians have been saying for decades: there is little point in attending a church whose message is no different from that of the materialistic secular world.

It is a mystery to us why it is a mystery to the mainline churches that their memberships are plummeting. Services in which the ministers and priests seem bored with what they do and give every appearance of not really believing what they say, do not incline people to return to the pew on the following Sunday. Services in which sermons seem dry, lifeless, uninspired, disorganized, superficial, and pointless, where there is no enthusiasm for the Gospel or for bringing truth to the larger culture, are simply not going to compete with those of churches which offer the opposites of these things.

Churches which have abandoned hundreds, or even thousands, of years of traditional moral and theological teaching in order to embrace the fashion of the times will hold on, perhaps, to their elderly but will find their middle-aged and younger parishioners looking elsewhere for spiritual nourishment. Why bother attending a church, after all, that's just floating along on the current of political, social, and cultural popular opinion and remains tethered to traditional Christianity by only the most nominal and tenuous attachments?

Many mainline churches in the U.S. have forgotten what they are and why they exist. Having long ago abandoned the Bible as the final authority in matters of faith and practice, they've convinced themselves that they're fulfilling their calling by undermining every moral and theological conviction in the Christian tradition. They suffer from a kind of institutional Alzheimer's disease and can look forward in their dementia to nothing more hopeful than continued decline until they eventually surrender up their last ecclesiastic breath.

If they wish to see the future they need only look at the Church in Europe.

Fatwa Against Bin Laden

More Muslim leaders are apparently beginning to do what we wish they all had been doing since September of 2001:

MADRID (AFX) - Spain's Islamic Commission, which groups the nation's Muslim community, said it was issuing a fatwa against Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. "We are going to issue a fatwa (religious decree) against Bin Laden this afternoon," Mansour Escudero, who leads the Federation of Islamic religious entities (Feeri) and co-secretary general of the Spanish government-created Commission told AFP.

The Commission invited Spanish-based imams to condemn terrorism at Friday prayers, when the whole country will be remembering the 191 people who were killed in the train blasts and the 1,900 injured a year ago. The attacks have been blamed on mainly Moroccan Islamic extremists loyal to Bin Laden. 'We have called on imams to make a formal declaration condemning terrorism and for a special prayer for all the victims of terrorism,' Escudero said.

The Commission has also drawn up a document designed to "thank the Spanish people and the government for their attitude towards Muslims" since last March 11, in particular for not taking "disproportionate" measures similar to those which the Sept 11 attacks sparked in the US.

The Commission called on Muslims to take part in Friday's commemorative programme being organised by Spanish authorities and community groups and to work with them to ensure terrorism was defeated.

The gratuitous and ludicrous swipe against the United States' response to the deaths of three thousand citizens at the hands of Muslim fanatics notwithstanding, one hopes to see more such indications that European and American Muslim leaders wish to join the civilized world.

Heteronormativity and Other Crimes

FoxNews.Com has a regular feature called Tongue-Tied that chronicles the looniness of the politically-correct Left. Here are some excerpts from today's installment:

Actress Jada Pinkett Smith is under fire for a speech she made at Harvard University that was overly "heteronormative" and made gay students feel uncomfortable by not sufficiently addressing their status, reports The Crimson.

Organizers of the Cultural Rhythms show are apologizing for the offense caused by the wife of actor Will Smith. In the speech, she was said to be giving the story of her life "and her perspective was a heterosexual perspective. "She wasn't trying to be offensive. But some felt she was taking a narrow view, and some people felt left out," the apology reads.

Members of the Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian, Transgender, and Supporters Alliance (BGLTSA) said Pinkett Smith's comments implied that standard sexual relationships are only between males and females. "Some of the content was extremely heteronormative, and made BGLTSA members feel uncomfortable," said BGLTSA Co-Chair Jordan B. Woods.

No Easy Way Out

A Florida company is being sued because employees put a noose near a wastebasket at the back of one of its warehouses, reports the News-Press. A black former employee of Wayne Wiles Floor Coverings in Ft. Myers is suing the company, claiming the noose stunned and humiliated him because it is a symbol of the decades of lynchings that plagued the South after the Civil War.

The company says the noose was hung months or maybe a year before the employee went to work there and was part of a joke they shared about committing suicide and "taking the easy way out" when their jobs got too rough.

Ya' Just Can't Make This Stuff Up

Students at Middle Tennessee State University had a teach-in recently and came to the conclusion that use of the word "lady" to refer to female athletic teams was sexist and derogatory, reports the student paper there. A panel of students and faculty suggested that the school no longer use the term "Lady Raiders" to refer to the women's basketball team. (The men's team is named the "Blue Raiders.")

"When we use the word 'lady,' today at least, we recognize it as sort of a sexist remark," said Ryan Husak, a member of Solidarity. "It is used to sort of suggest secondary status." Because of the connotations of the word "lady," it is demeaning to athletes to refer to them in this manner, according to Husak.

The J-Word

A school board in Florida is considering dropping its pre-meeting invocations altogether after an invited clergywoman dared to utter the J-word during one of them, reports the Naples News. The Lee County School Board is concerned about being sued over the prayers with which it routinely kicks off its meetings. Its members are worried about endorsing a particular faith.

The board is acting following the prayer offered by Sara Vellekamp, a pastor at First Assembly of God and Cornerstone Ministries in Fort Myers. She concluded her July 27 invocation by saying, "In Jesus' name, we pray."

Horrible History

A strip mall owner in Wisconsin is catching hell for daring to fly a Confederate flag on his private property as part of a display of his collection of some 18 historically significant flags, reports the Green Bay Gazette. Norm Watermelon is flying the flag outside his history-themed Heritage Village Shoppes in Allouez. But it keeps getting stolen, and a couple locals say that the flag is racist and has no place on public display.

The flag flies alongside an oversized Old Glory; the flag for the battle of the Alamo; a St. George Cross; the Continental flag used at the Battle of Bunker Hill in 1775; and a replica of a Betsy Ross original, among others.

Not Black Enough

Students at Bowdoin College in Maine are shredding the College Republicans there for inviting a black conservative to speak on campus during Black History Month, according to the student paper there. The critics say North Carolinian Vernon Robinson is not really a black guy; he is, they say, an "Uncle Tom" who has no right to speak on campus. One writer said (with a straight face, presumably) that the Republican student group "displayed its lack of openness by inviting" him.

"To have Robinson speak at this school as a representative of Black History Month destroys the racial peace movement that has been formulating on this campus," one wrote.

For more examples of utterly astonishing boneheadedness go here, but don't do it unless you have a high tolerance for stupidity. Otherwise, the visit might drive you to despair.

"Heteronormative"?! Are they kidding?

"Yes, Buts" and "Neverthelesses"

Democrats find themselves in an unenviable position in the current political climate. They can't advocate the things they are for - higher taxes, weaker military, more deference to the U.N., gay marriage (whatever happened to that?), etc. - because they know that pluralities of voters will never buy what they're trying to sell. So they're reduced to talking only about what they are against, which is pretty much anything George Bush supports. Their gloomy rhetoric, however, is equally unhelpful, and just pushes them further toward the political margins. People, as Reagan knew, don't like negativity, but that's, unfortunately, all the Left has to offer.

Listen to political spokespersons like Kennedy, Boxer, Biden, Reid, and Pelosi. Visit web sites like Democratic Underground, Truth Out, and Move On. Listen to the MSM news outlets. All one hears from any of these pols or venues is just relentless, teeth grinding, mind-numbing negativism. It's all about "yes, buts", "remains to be seens", "on the other hands" and "neverthelesses". Reason after reason is adamantly put forward as to why we shouldn't do this or can't do that, accompanied by sophistical discourses on why this demarche or that program will never work and why everyone in the Bush administration has nefarious motives and intentions.

Meanwhile the world is changing under the nay-sayers feet, and they find themselves in the insufferable position of being irrelevant to that change. The blow to their egos produces resentment and the resentment spawns an inveterate pessimism and cynicism. The Bush administration's detractors are left pathetically scrambling to salvage their sense of self-importance by insisting that since they themselves had no hand in what is happening, since they opposed it from the start, it therefore is doomed to failure.

They're like sportswriters who never strapped on a helmet but who constantly criticize everything the coaches and players do even though their team keeps winning. They wholly unwittingly offer themselves up to the public and to future historians as objects of amusement and curiosity. For that role, sadly, they are well-suited.

Jon Leo makes a similar point with humor and style beyond the abilities we have at our command, and we commend to you his column titled Time for a Dose of Dr. No.

GWOT Scorecard

Strategy Page provides us with a scorecard for marking progress in the global war on terror (GWOT).

Al-Qaeda was originally built like a large corporation. It has a board of directors of 24, with Osama bin Laden as the CEO (official title is Emir-General). Bin Laden also has 15 people in what could be described as his "inner circle" of aides. Al-Qaeda also had training camps in six countries in September, 2001 (Afghanistan, Indonesia, Chechnya, Albania, Sudan, and the Philippines), with eight commanders. Al-Qaeda also maintained cells in numerous Arabian and European countries.

Since the September 11, 2001 attacks, the United States and allies have been hunting down the leadership of al-Qaeda. Among the big fish (the "Board of Directors"), seven are dead and ten are in custody. Four members of the "inner circle" are also in custody. This is 53 percent of the senior leadership for al-Qaeda. Osama bin Laden is still at large, along with Ayman al-Zawahiri (the deputy commander of al-Qaeda) and Abu Mohammed al-Masri (the planner of the attacks on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania). However, five out of the eight training camp commanders are dead or in custody.

Other statistics of note: Eighteen al-Qaeda financiers are dead or in custody. Among those still at large, though, are two of bin Laden's sisters, two of his brothers-in-law, and a Swiss banker by the name of Ahmed Huber. Huber also has extensive connections with neo-Nazis in Europe. The real financial resource for al-Qaeda remains untouched - the dozen or so Saudis who are called the "Golden Chain." All are at large, and all can still provide enough resources for bin Laden to regroup and strike again.

Al-Qaeda's military committee has also been decimated. One is dead (killed by a CIA Predator firing Hellfire missiles), fourteen, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Ramzi Yousef, have been captured. These include the commanders in Singapore, Java, Southern Europe, and Japan. Several are at large, including the operations chiefs in Kosovo, Tunisia, and Somalia.

Subordinate networks in several countries have been rounded up or decimated. In Jordan, five out of the six major al-Qaeda figures are in custody; in Syria, only five major terrorist figures are still at large - dozens of al-Qaeda members are currently incarcerated, but three major Hezbollah figures are still on the loose. Syria, however, remains a sponsor of Hezbollah. Egypt has rounded up all of the major al-Qaeda figures, as have Italy, Belgium, Germany. The United Kingdom, Spain, and France have rounded up many al-Qaeda figures as well.

Many of the major al-Qaeda figures in Saudi Arabia are dead or apprehended, but a number of figures involved in the Khobar Towers bombing are still at large - some with connections to Hizbollah. In Turkey, 75 percent of the big fish connected with al-Qaeda are dead or in custody. Most of the support structure for the 9/11attack, including Mukhabarat agent Ahmad Khalil Ibraham al-Ani (who the Czechs insist met hijacker Mohammed Atta in Prague), are in custody.

But in some places, the network is pretty intact. Many major Taliban figures are still on the loose. So are all three members of al-Qaeda's WMD Committee, and all of those involved in a Bolivian hijacking plot.

Short version, al-Qaeda is on the run throughout most of the globe. Even Abu Musab Zarqawi, in charge of all al-Qaeda elements in Iraq, is on the run - as elements of his infrastructure are taken apart. Eight of Zarqawi's top aides are dead. Twenty others have been captured. Zarqawi was unable to disrupt the elections on January 30, a serious loss for the terrorists. Al-Qaeda is still potent, as the attacks in Madrid proved, but they are clearly reacting to the multi-pronged offensive in the United States.

The Cold War against the Soviet bloc lasted seventy years. The GWOT, despite the successes noted above, will probably last as long, unless the West decides it lacks the will to fight it. If this happens, though, the West will cease to exist as a cultural entity, and Islam will stand on the cusp of achieving its dream of a worldwide caliphate.

Hunting the Big Rat

Australian Broadcasting Company's News OnLine reports that an intense search for Abu al-Zarqawi is underway in Samarra north of Baghdad:

Iraqi commandos and United States soldiers have stepped up operations in Samarra, north of Baghdad, in search for top wanted militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a senior Iraqi security official said.

"We have information that Zarqawi may be hiding in Samarra or this region and this operation is aimed at checking that out," the officer said on condition of anonymity.

The official said 66 suspects have been arrested in the operation, which is expected to last a week with the goal of rounding up 250 wanted suspects working for seven armed groups in the area.

On the ground all entrances leading to Samarra were sealed as Iraqi and US forces conducted their searches. No vehicles were allowed to circulate inside the city where most businesses, schools and government institutions were closed for a second day.

The US military confirmed the operation. "Elements of the Iraqi Ministry of Interiors 1st Commando Brigade began operations to kill or capture insurgent elements in the city of Samarra this weekend," said Major Richard Goldenberg of the 42nd Infantry Division, adding that US soldiers are providing a supporting role. He said the operation was based on Iraqi intelligence.

Sounds like even if they don't get the big rat lots of lesser vermin are being taken out of service which can only further erode Zarqawi's ability to project terror. Let's hope, though, that they find the big rat as well.

Two Tales of Suffering

A friend of mine, reflecting on his father-in-law's cancer as well as a couple of our posts on the Culture of Death, was moved to write a beautiful meditation that deserves to be placed before all of our readers:

Pope John Paul II and Hunter S. Thompson have been in the news a great deal lately, reminding me of how much these two dynamic men had in common - as authors, as keen observers of contemporary mores, as charismatic countercultural figures who have inspired loyal followings.

They also shared something else: advancing age and declining health. But their responses to that condition have demonstrated just how little they have in common on the most important matters of all - that is, the meaning of suffering and, by extension, the meaning of life. On one hand, we have the frail Pope, assailed by Parkinson's disease and the flu, straining mightily to carry on his duties at the Vatican; and then we have Thompson, hounded by degenerating joints and constant pain, sitting down in his kitchen chair and shooting himself through the mouth.

Some commentators have called Thompson a coward for what he did. I won't say that. I've seen enough suffering among friends and family to know that people who attempt suicide or even contemplate it are most likely in a terribly dark place physically or mentally or both. They deserve our comfort and prayers, not our judgment. But in Thompson's case it appears that his death was entirely consistent with his philosophy of life.

"It was just like Hunter wanted. He was in control here," his wife, Anita, told a Colorado newspaper shortly after his suicide. "This is a triumph of his, not a desperate, tragic failure." Historian and author Douglas Brinkley, who edited some of Thompson's work, said in an Associated Press story, "I think he made a conscious decision that he had an incredible run of 67 years, lived the way he wanted to and wasn't going to suffer the indignities of old age. He was not going to let anybody dictate how he was going to die."

At that very time, Pope John Paul II was setting an example of his own, exhibiting a lesson handed down through centuries of Christianity - that suffering has tremendous spiritual value, that it can be more of a blessing than a curse, that it is, in fact, the bedrock of salvation. As he shuttled back and forth from the hospital, the Pope lived out the meaning of a recent Lenten message he delivered on euthanasia: "What would happen if the people of God yielded to a certain current mentality that considers these people, our brothers and sisters, as almost useless when they are reduced in their capacities due to the difficulties of age or sickness?.... Thou shalt not kill applies even in the presence of illness and when physical weakness reduces the person's ability to be self-reliant."

And that's really what it comes down to - it's about who is really in control and on whose terms we're really living. Simply put, Thompson lived on selfish terms and the Pope has lived on God's. Thompson took the easier path, the one defined by his will, not by God's - and most, if not all of us, are guilty of that to some extent. Trying to live any other way is a monumental battle, particularly in a consumer society that places premium value on getting what we want, when we want it. I don't like suffering any more than anyone else, and I certainly don't wish for it. But it's clear that the Pope has chosen the harder way, and the fruits of putting God first, rather than himself, show it to be the better way as well.

He is a man, after all, who engaged in dangerous underground work against the Nazis, forgave his would-be assassin and played a leading role in ridding his native Poland - and the world - of the Soviet regime. His unilateral leadership style and stances on hot-button issues in the Roman Catholic Church have infuriated some, but his personal example is sterling. Thompson, though clearly a gifted writer and a discerning journalist, reveled in drug and alcohol use, built a cult of self around those experiences and ultimately shot himself with his wife apparently on the phone and other family members in the house.

In his best-selling novel The Thanatos Syndrome, Walker Percy, a great cultural diagnostician of our times, examined a world that is consumed with a death-wish manifested through the unending pursuit of self-indulgence and self-gratification. We all live in that world today, and I think it's fair to say that Hunter Thompson helped create it by glamorizing excess and celebrating reckless individualism before showing us how it all ends - with a bang and a whimper.

Meanwhile, the Pope, who was once a magnificent athlete, is now so weak that strong winds literally threaten to knock him down during his travels. The man fluent in several languages often has trouble speaking at all. The many gifts God has given him are being taken away a little bit at a time, stripping him bare as death nears. In Hunter Thompson's world, that's an indignity. I can't shake the feeling and the hope that it's really a sign of grace.

Steve M.

Moral Non-Sense

John Rawls in his A Theory of Justice writes:

Certainly it is wrong to be cruel to animals, and the destruction of a whole species can be a great evil. The capacity for feelings of pleasure and pain and for the form of life of which animals are capable clearly impose duties of compassion and humanity in their case.

Rawls may be certain that cruelty is wrong and that extirpation of a species is an evil, but where on earth does his certainty come from? Exactly why is cruelty to animals or humans evil? Because it's wrong to cause gratuitous pain and suffering? Why is it wrong to do that?

Rawls seems to be asking us to consult some sort of moral sense that is hard-wired into the human species and which condemns such acts, but we might well ask where such a sense comes from and why we should pay it any heed.

There are really only two plausible accounts of the provenience of such a sense. Either the moral sense is instilled in us by an intelligent, omniscient, perfectly good creator, or it is the product of physico-chemical forces which blindly and purposelessly selected them to suit us for life in the environment we found ourselves in during the paleolithic period of human history.

I don't know which of these Rawls would opt for, although I suspect he would choose the latter. Whatever his choice, why should anyone who holds that our moral sense is the product of some purely physical Darwinian process believe that cruelty to animals is evil? Why should they believe that anything at all is evil? If our moral sense is simply an epiphenomenon of our evolutionary history then there is no such thing as evil.

If human moral values are somehow a genetic phenomenon which evolved to assist us in the survival of our species, if that's all they are, then why should anyone feel bound by them? Why should an individual person care about the survival of the species? More to the point, what does the survival of some animal species like the snail darter have to do with the survival of humans?

A reader might reply that an individual should reject all forms of cruelty for the simple reason that he wouldn't want himself to be treated cruelly. It is no doubt true that most people wouldn't want to be treated cruelly, but that is not a reason why the individual in question should not be cruel to others, especially if he can get away with it, and it is certainly not a reason why he shouldn't be cruel to animals.

Rawls' belief that cruelty to animals is evil is intelligible only if our moral sense was "written on our hearts" by God. Otherwise, it is completely illusory and might just as well be treated like some vestigial appendix whose retention is purely optional. Absent a transcendent moral authority, moral judgments such as Rawls makes are utterly meaningless except that they reveal something about the subjective states of the person who makes them. They are not unlike declaiming that it is evil to prefer chocolate ice cream to almond swirl.

It is ironic to read naturalists like Peter Singer, and perhaps John Rawls, condemn the mistreatment of animals while simultaneously rejecting the only plausible basis they could have for making such moral judgments. Naturalists frequently perform a moral piggy-back on theism, tacitly using the assumptions of theism to support their moral claims, while at the same time declaring in vociferous accents that the belief system they're exploiting in order to smuggle in their asseverations that cruelty is wrong, is really just myth and superstition.

Naturalists are like heavy cigarette smokers. They know their habit is killing them but they just can't give it up. Naturalists know that they can't live with the logical entailments of their atheism, but they refuse to quit. Instead, like parasites unable to provide their own moral sustenance, they fasten on to the hide of theism and ride it as long as they can, sucking their nourishment from it. Then, just before they have to admit to what they're doing, they leap off and proceed to boast about what free-thinkers they are and how unnecessary the steed whose life they've been depending upon is. They act as if neither they, nor anyone else, recognizes the metaphysical free-loading they've just been engaged in.

And these folks teach at places like Princeton and Harvard.

Courage - Real and Imagined

A Syrian blogger shares his fears and hopes for the future of his country and his people. The courage of the people in the Middle-East who yearn for freedom and are willing to risk their lives for it is astonishing. In an atmosphere of arrests and imprisonments this man makes it just too easy for the Baathist thugs to find him and his family. He fully identifies himself on his blog. It's hard to find words to express the depth of one's admiration for this kind of bravery.

Consider by contrast the number of times we've heard someone in this country, someone for whom there is no risk of anything except becoming rich and famous, called courageous merely for expressing a dissenting political opinion. People who, at no cost to themselves, buck the political powers that be are deemed brave, bold, and heroic for doing something which places them in no jeopardy whatsoever.

It took courage, we were informed, for Michael Moore to make Fahrenheit 9/11. It took courage, his supporters told us, for Ward Churchill to blame America for the 9/11 attacks. If Moore and Churchill are exemplars of courage then the word has become so debased as to mean nothing at all, and the genuine courage of those who live defiantly under real tyranny is trivialized.

Those who are complicit in this trivialization should be deeply ashamed and embarrassed.

The Least Bad Option

Jeffrey Bergner at The Weekly Standard argues that the military strike option against Iran's nuclear production facilities is the least bad of several bad options. It entails numerous risks that the other options don't, but, unlike them, it also has a singular benefit: It is the only course of action, short of a military invasion, that has any chance at all of ending or delaying Iran's quest for nuclear weapons.

The Armanious Murders

Here's the story of the brutal murders of the Armanious family in Jersey City, New Jersey late last year. It turns out that fears, including our own, that this horrific crime was committed by Muslims for religious reasons were unfounded. The perpetrators were two low-lifes looking for easy money. Both of them should have been in prison at the time but were out on the streets. The New York Post reports that:

The pair met at the federal prison in Fort Dix, N.J. Sanchez was sent there in 2000 after being sentenced in 1995 to 121/2 years in prison for conspiracy to import more than three kilos of cocaine and a kilo of heroin. McDonald was sent there after a 2001 drug conviction.

So why were they not in jail? The story doesn't tell us, but it prods us to make a suggestion. Perhaps one of the legal reforms Republicans ought to enact this session is the establishment of civil liability for any official who releases a convicted felon from prison prior to the conclusion of his sentence, if that individual commits another felony before his sentence would have expired. If the victims of felons who were granted early releases could sue the people responsible for turning these predators loose, two things would ensue: It would hold the bureaucrats accountable for their decisions and force them to be much more thorough and circumspect in selecting the people to be returned to the streets, and it would, therefore, severely reduce the number of criminals living among us.

It would also, of course, please trial lawyers whose universe of potential litigants would expand handsomely, but that's an unfortunate and unavoidable side-effect.

The Post's story has details of the crime and explains who the two slugs were who perpetrated it. Thanks to Powerline for the tip.

The Dominos Keep Falling

Adventures With Chester tips us to an article in The American Thinker titled The Next Domino. In the essay Douglas Hanson discusses elements of the United States' war on terror that the media apparently know nothing about. There are interesting operations afoot both in the Horn of Africa and Abu Musa Island off the coast of Iran in the Straits of Hormuz. Here are some highlights from the article:

With virtually no attention from the mainstream media, the United States has been taking actions calculated to ratchet-up pressure on the mullahs of Iran. A complex plan has been carefully crafted to avoid a direct military attack on Iran, which would inflame nationalism and build support for the mullahs. Once again, the scope, subtlety, and vision of President Bush's foreign policy confounds his carping critics.

Iran has been aggressively moving to export terror and build-up its ability to threaten the world in two places: the Horn of Africa, and the vital Straits of Hormuz, where the Persian Gulf's oil riches must pass on their way to market. There are now some serious indicators that the Coalition, including both French and German military elements, has been deftly executing a combined political and military operation to roll back Iranian gains from the last 12 years.

There are strong indications that the efforts of Combined Joint Task Force - Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA) are starting to push Iranian operators out of the Horn, if they have not gone already. United States naval and ground forces, French commandos, and Die Deutsche Kriegsmarine (German Navy), through a combined series of special and conventional operations, naval power, and humanitarian assistance projects, have established the conditions for the introduction of up to 7,500 troops from the African Union and the Arab League. This is a watershed event for the Coalition in this area, and shows that the Somali people are anxious to finally rid their country of bandits, terrorists, and Iranian agents, and are looking forward to having the government-in-exile return to Mogadishu.

The other prong of CENTCOM's operations against Iran involves Abu Musa Island. The island had been the object of a long-running dispute between Iran and the UAE because of its oil reserves and its strategic location midway in the narrow channel of the Straits of Hormuz. In 1992, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps took complete control of the island , and proceeded to fortify it and deploy thousands of troops, modern air defense batteries, sophisticated anti-ship missile systems, and, according to former SecDef William Perry, chemical weapons. For over a decade, the Iranians have had the capability of shutting down the shipping lane and paralyzing shipment of over one-fifth of the world's oil supply.

This past week, Expeditionary Strike Group 5 (ESG-5) completed an amphibious exercise on the coast of Kuwait. Keep in mind that a rehearsal is a phase of any amphibious operation, and allows the afloat Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) and the Navy to test the communications links, practice disembarkation, exercise the procedures for naval surface fire support and air support, and, of course, practice the assault itself.

Rather than risk a popular backlash by the citizens of Iran against the US by conducting a direct air or land campaign against the Iranian homeland, seizure of an island that has been disputed for decades would show the Iranians we were willing to support their fight against the mullahs without putting their lives at risk or destroying their infrastructure. The mullahs launched their gambit as an act of aggression; reversing it would demonstrate strength, but indicate no hostility to the Iranian people.

This analysis doesn't even include any possible covert Special Operations Force activities designed to foment rebellion in what is viewed as an increasingly restive Iranian population. Because of the pressure being applied in the Horn of Africa and the Persian Gulf, it may require only a slight push from the freedom-loving people in Iran to rid themselves of this oppressive regime, following through on the very visible promise to them made by President Bush in his State of the Union Address.

Bush's critics often seem to assume that because they're not informed by the MSM of any developments in the GWOT that therefore the administration must not be doing much. One might think that they'd learn not to "misunderestimate" the man, but in the hearts of some of them there is an invincible hope that he'll turn out to vindicate all their declamations of his utter ineptitude. Nevertheless, the dominos keep falling. Let's pray that that happy state of affairs continues.

The Ten Commandments

The Supreme Court will spend several months deciding whether it wants to ban the ten commandments from all public property. It apparently will take that long for them to check with the European Union to get their opinion on what our laws should be.

Some commentators have envisioned phalanxes of bulldozers unleashed all across the land this summer smashing existing monuments to powder, while others think this scenario is too alarmist:

The bigger danger to society would be if the monuments were allowed on public land, putting a huge crack in the wall between church and state, say opposition groups. "Our concern is that they would start increasing and the religious right would start marking places," said Christopher Arntzen, chair of the Gay and Lesbian Atheists and Humanists. "There's a danger to civil liberties. A lot of the religious right is directed against non-believers."

Christopher Arntzen has a point. If we allow the Ten Commandments to grace our public spaces as we have for the last two centuries, why, then the wall of separation between Church and state will surely crumble. Indeed, it's a miracle that it hasn't collapsed before now since all sorts of people have been inspired to turn this country into a theocracy by public displays of the Ten Commandments.

Why, we heard of a gentleman on a tour of the Supreme Court building where, ironically enough, the Ten Commandments are in evidence, who upon seeing them with his own eyes fell to his knees and swore an oath that he would single-handedly, if necessary, restore Christendom to the throne of government. We've also heard of countless schoolchildren who have let their gaze fall upon the Ten Commandments and consequently reverted to thumb-sucking and bed-wetting at night. We simply can't tolerate this sort of thing in a pluralist society.

Once the Court has banned the Ten Commandments, of course, there will be no stopping it. It will have no grounds for failing to abolish the under God phrase in the pledge, it will certainly have to ordain that all currency bearing the motto In God We Trust be removed forthwith from circulation, and it will perforce be compelled to prohibit all prayer, all mention of God, in public spaces and public events.

Thus will the secularists have succeeded in imposing their vision of a sanitized public square, scrubbed free of all residue of religious belief, upon the rest of the nation. A glorious future awaits us.

More on the Guiliana Sgrena Story

Little Green Footballs is all over the Guiliana Sgrena story, a story which seems to be something of a work in progress.

Segrena had originally insisted that the car in which she was traveling was moving at "normal speed", but now she acknowledges that they were swerving to miss puddles and going fast enough that they had almost lost control of the vehicle at one point.

She had also earlier denied that there were any lights or signals from the troops who opened fire, but now admits that the Americans had shone a flashlight at them as they approached the checkpoint.

She also claims that the soldiers fired 300 to 400 rounds from an armored vehicle at their car, but that many rounds would surely have shredded the vehicle and killed everyone inside.

If this keeps up her story and the account we've been given by American authorities (that the vehicle was rapidly approaching the checkpoint and failed to respond to commands and signals to stop) will be indistinguishable.