Partly Right

Charles Krauthammer, on a recent broadcast of Brit Hume's Roundtable, talking about gay marriage and the attempt to amend the Constitution to prevent it:

Well, obviously in part it's politics, but changing the definition of the oldest social institution in the human race, one that has been a man and a woman in every society for a long, long time, is a big deal. And if it's happening in a country, it's a legitimate issue and I think there is a legitimate issue here in that the president is right that judges have abrogated this decision which ought to be left to people either acting in referendum or in -- through their representatives. And that -- there are states, like Massachusetts in which it's been imposed and states like Georgia and Nebraska, where there has been a constitutional amendment where the people have spoken in large numbers and been stopped, stymied, by a judge.

But I think the answer is not a constitutional amendment, which would be in the name of the popular sovereignty, but ironically, it takes it away, because if you ever had a state in which a majority wanted to institute gay marriage, it would not be allowed to under this constitution. So it's a little bit contradictory, to act in the name of popular sovereignty and to pass a law which would extinguish.

The way you do it is change the ethos of the judiciary so that if you get the Defense of Marriage Act, which he spoke about earlier, at the Supreme Court, it's upheld and that it keeps it in one state and doesn't spread it all over the country. And having a president who nominates a guy like Sam Alito is a way in which we change that culture rather than changing the constitution.

Krauthammer is partly right. Ideally, the question of gay marriage, just like questions of abortion and assisted suicide, should be resolved in state legislatures. Unfortunately, liberals will not accept the verdict of the democratic process and are using compliant judges to, in effect, override the will of the people. There is no guarantee that the "ethos of the judiciary" would ever change, or ever change permanently. A constitutional amendment is a terrible resort, but it is the only way the people have of protecting themselves from activist judges who use their power to impose their will on everyone else.

If we were guaranteed that the Supreme Court picks for the next fifty years would be of the caliber of the last couple Krauthammer's argument would have more purchase. But given that the next several justices could be appointed by a President Hillary or Gore or Kerry, the argument that we should entrust the preservation of democracy to the Supreme Court loses all its appeal.

Re: Overdoing the Outrage

Our friend Byron is critical of my use of the word "silly" in a post titled Overdoing the Outrage in which I refer to Andrew Sullivan's concerns about disregarding part 1c of Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions on torture as "silly hyperventilating". Byron, whose admonishments I value and whose opinions I deeply respect, urges me to consider that I'm demeaning people who have a noble moral objection to the use of torture when I call their concerns silly. By's criticism can be read on our Feedback page, and I would like to say a few things about it here.

What I labelled silly (a word I prefer because it is gentler than stupid) was this passage from Sullivan's blog:

The United States is a rogue nation that practices torture and detainee abuse and does not follow the most basic principles of the Geneva Conventions. It is in violation of human rights agreements and the U.N. Convention against torture. It is legitimizing torture by every disgusting regime on the planet. This is a policy mandated by the president and his closest advisers. This is the signal being sent from the commander-in-chief to his troops: your enemy can be treated beyond the boundaries of what the U.S. has always abided by. When you next read of an atrocity of war-crime or victim of torture by the U.S., just keep in mind who made this possible.

Sullivan makes these extremely derogatory claims about the U.S. because the administration has decided that any provision which may prevent our interrogators from yelling at, insulting, questioning the courage of, placing in solitary confinement, or even shackling or incarcerating terror suspects or other enemy combatants is an absurd restriction on our interrogators. I agree with that, and I think that it is literally silly, as in unserious or lacking in sense, for Andrew Sullivan to assert that we are a rogue nation because we think it appropriate to treat these detainees as something less than visiting dignitaries. To claim that our reluctance to accept the unreasonable constraints of 1c "legitimizes torture by every disgusting regime on the planet" is arrant nonsense as is almost everything else he says in the paragraph above.

Those who object to the use of genuine torture are certainly not silly people. Indeed, I am one of them, although for reasons I've discussed on this blog I think we must stop short of absolutizing our objection. But those who would call it torture if an interrogator says mean things to a terrorist, certainly are silly, and those who would say what Sullivan says because we reserve the right to offend the sensibilities of those who try to kill us truly are unserious. Go to Overdoing the Outrage to read the full discussion on Sullivan.

Rumination on Race

This is a column I wrote for the local paper awhile back that I thought might be worth posting here on Viewpoint:

Periodically matters of race intrude themselves into our public discussions and often the conversation turns toward what some perceive to be a widening rift between races in this country and is accompanied by genuine agonizing over what can be done about it. Perhaps I'm naive, but I can't help wondering how much of the apparent gulf between Americans is a function of race and how much of it is actually a function of class. I'm willing to be proven wrong, but I suspect that for many people of all colors, the great social fault line in our nation runs between classes; classes as defined not by one's income, but as defined by the moral principles which inform and govern an individual's life and conduct. And surely Americans of every hue populate both sides of this divide.

Unfortunately, use of the word class distresses some who complain that it is an insidious code word for race, and that when people try to justify distinctions based on class they're really trying to rationalize old-fashioned racial bias. This criticism is valid, however, only in the unlikely event that all members of a given race hold identical moral convictions so that to mention their race is to identify their morals. Failing that, the objection reduces to the rather disingenuous ploy of defining another's words to mean whatever one wants them to mean.

Other critics will point out that in our politically correct post-modern world "everyone knows" that no individual's values are any better than anyone else's and to think otherwise is to be guilty of elitism; to which the appropriate response is: So what. In The Moviegoer, novelist Walker Percy puts it somewhat differently if no less bluntly when he has a Louisiana matriarch named Aunt Edna address herself to this very issue. She says:

"I'll make a little confession. I am not ashamed to use the word class. I will also plead guilty to another charge. The charge is that people in my class think they're better than other people. You're damn right we're better. We're better because we do not shirk our obligations to ourselves or to others. We do not whine. We do not organize a group and blackmail the government. We do not prize mediocrity for mediocrity's sake....Ours is the only civilization in history which has enshrined mediocrity as its national ideal....They say out there that we think we're better. You're damn right we're better and don't think they don't know it."

This proud woman wasn't about to apologize for the obvious political incorrectness of her "elitist" sentiments. Neither should anyone else. Elitism based upon moral principle, so far from being some awful sin, is in fact a virtue, a salutary antidote to the epidemic of moral relativism currently infecting our culture. This may scandalize those who feel that nobody should be so chauvinistic as to think his principles to be actually better than the next person's, but the irony needs to be noted that those who feel this way evidently believe their own moral egalitarianism to be preferable to other people's moral elitism.

Aside from those enumerated by Aunt Edna, though, what exactly are the virtues which distinguish her "better" class of people? Without attempting an exhaustive list, it's probably correct to say for starters that, no matter what their race, men and women of this class take a great deal of pride in their work, their property, and their character. They assume responsiblity for their actions. They strive to be cordial, courteous, and considerate of others. They're dependable, trustworthy, and temperate, willing to defer short-term gratification for long-term benefit. They're frugal, faithful to their spouses, and committed to the well-being of their families. They are mindful of the fact that children do not raise themselves very well and that properly ushering a child into adulthood requires an enormous investment of time, energy, and self-sacrifice. They enjoy and appreciate excellence, especially in the arts and other forms of entertainment. They esteem education, especially for their children, and possess at least a modest appreciation for the life of the mind.

Why should anyone shrink from affirming the pre-eminence of these qualities and from regarding those who share them to be of superior moral timber to those who don't? And why should the social levellers among us be allowed to succeed in making people feel there is something wrong with choosing to avoid the society of those whose lives and habits are the very antithesis of these values?

It must be emphasized that this is not a matter of race or economics. People of all colors and incomes cherish these virtues and feel uncomfortable around those who don't. Indeed, it is perhaps true to say that many people who share them feel more comfortable in each other's company, regardless of their ethnicity, than they do in the company of members of their own race who don't share them. The extraordinary transracial enthusiasm for Condaleeza Rice, and Colin Powell before her, is, at least in part, an instance of this.

When people are made to feel guilty, however, for believing their convictions to be more noble than their contraries, or when substantial numbers are persuaded that the precepts one lives by are merely arbitrary preferences, none of which is any better than any other, then, as with money, the worse will inevitably drive out the better. The lowest moral classes will eventually succeed in establishing the behavioral norms of the culture, and the principles, or lack of them, which govern their own lives and which are in large measure responsible for their being lower class in the first place, will eventually percolate upward, like some toxic gas, through the rest of society. The denouement will be a social unravelling or disintegration that will substantially diminish the quality of life of everyone.

Three cheers, therefore, for Aunt Edna.

Overdoing the Outrage

Andrew Sullivan is beside himself:

The United States is a rogue nation that practices torture and detainee abuse and does not follow the most basic principles of the Geneva Conventions. It is inviolation of human rights agreements and the U.N. Convention against torture. It is legitimizing torture by every disgusting regime on the planet. This is a policy mandated by the president and his closest advisers. This is the signal being sent from the commander-in-chief to his troops: your enemy can be treated beyond the boundaries of what the U.S. has always abided by. When you next read of an atrocity of war-crime or victim of torture by the U.S., just keep in mind who made this possible.

What has precipitated this outpouring of outrage? The administration has come to the common sense conclusion that part 1c of article 3 of the Geneva Conventions was too vague and restrictive. Specifically, it forbids "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment."

The administration has wisely decided to omit this provision from the military field manual because it leaves "humiliating and degrading treatment" undefined. It in effect prohibits everything from yelling at a detainee to questioning his courage to calling him names.

The L.A. Times article which triggered Sullivan's spasm of indignation says this:

Another defense official said that Article 3 prohibitions against "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment" could be interpreted as banning well-honed interrogation techniques.

Many intelligence soldiers consider questioning the manhood of male prisoners to be an effective and humane technique. Suggesting to a suspected insurgent that he is "not man enough" to have set an improvised explosive device sometimes elicits a full description of how they emplaced the bomb, soldiers say.

The Pentagon worries that if Article 3 were incorporated in the directive, detainees could use it to argue in U.S. courts that such techniques violate their personal dignity.

"Who is to say what is humiliating for Sheikh Abdullah or Sheikh Muhammad?" the second official asked. "If you punch the buttons of a Muslim male, are you at odds with the Geneva Convention?"

Military officials also worry that following Article 3 could force them to end the practice of segregating prisoners. The military says that there is nothing inhumane about putting detainees in solitary confinement, and that it allows inmates to be questioned without coordinating their stories with others.

Human rights groups have their doubts, saying that isolating people for months at a time leads to mental breakdowns.

"Sometimes these things sound benign, but there is a reason they have been prohibited," said Jumana Musa, an advocacy director for Amnesty International. "When you talk about putting people in isolation for eight months, 14 months, it leads to mental degradation."

[Professor]Jinks, of the University of Texas, contends that Article 3 does not prohibit some of the things the military says it wants to do. "If the practice is humane, there is nothing to worry about," he said.

But how does Professor Jinks define humane? If isolating prisoners is inhumane, what isn't? Serving them institutional food? Denying them access to al-Jazeera? Certainly it could be argued that imprisoning a detainee in the first place is degrading and inhumane and there are no doubt a legion of lawyers out there waiting for the opportunity to make that argument in court.

The administration did the right thing to reject this provision, and Andrew Sullivan's reaction is just silly hyperventilating.

The Long View

Great stuff from Michael Barone:

Two weeks ago, I pointed out that we live in something close to the best of times, with record worldwide economic growth and at a low point in armed conflict in the world. Yet Americans are in a sour mood, a mood that may be explained by the lack of a sense of history. The military struggle in Iraq (nearly 2,500 military deaths) is spoken of in as dire terms as Vietnam (58,219), Korea (54,246) or World War II (405,399). We bemoan the cruel injustice of $3 a gallon for gas in a country where three-quarters of people classified as poor have air conditioning and microwave ovens. We complain about a tide of immigration that is, per U.S. resident, running at one-third the rate of 99 years ago.

George W. Bush has a better sense of history. Speaking last week at the commencement at West Point -- above the Hudson River, where revolutionary Americans threw a chain across the water to block British ships -- Bush noted that he was speaking to the first class to enter the U.S. Military Academy after the Sept. 11 attacks. And he put the challenge these cadets willingly undertook in perspective by looking back at the challenges America faced at the start of the Cold War 60 years ago.

"In the early years of that struggle," Bush noted, "freedom's victory was not obvious or assured." In 1946, Harry Truman accompanied Winston Churchill as he delivered his Iron Curtain speech; in 1947, communists threatened Greece and Turkey; in 1948, Czechoslovakia fell, France and Italy seemed headed the same way, and Berlin was blockaded by the Soviets, who exploded a nuclear weapon the next year; in 1950, North Korea attacked South Korea. "All of this took place in just the first five years following World War II," Bush noted. "Fortunately, we had a president named Harry Truman, who recognized the threat, took bold action to confront it and laid the foundation for freedom's victory in the Cold War."

Bold action: the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan in 1947, the Berlin airlift in 1948, the NATO Treaty in 1949, the Korean War in 1950. None of these was uncontroversial, and none was perfectly executed. And this was only the beginning. It took 40 years -- many of them filled with angry controversy -- to win the Cold War.

The struggles against Soviet communism and Islamofascist terrorists are of course not identical. But there are similarities.

"Like the Cold War, we are fighting the followers of a murderous ideology that despises freedom, crushes all dissent, has territorial ambitions and pursues totalitarian aims," Bush said. "And like the Cold War, they're seeking weapons of mass murder that would allow them to deliver catastrophic destruction to our country."

The New Republic's Peter Beinart argues that Bush, unlike Truman, has shown no respect for international institutions. But the Truman Doctrine and Marshall Plan were unilateral American initiatives, and Truman used the United Nations to respond in Korea only because the Soviets were then boycotting the Security Council. Otherwise, he would have gone to war, as Bill Clinton did in Kosovo, without U.N. approval. Bush did try to use the United Nations on Iraq, but was blocked by France and Russia, both stuffed with profits from the corrupt U.N. Oil for Food program.

But as Bush pointed out, we have worked with 90-plus nations and NATO in Afghanistan and with 70-plus nations on the Proliferation Security Initiative. We're working with allies to halt Iran's nuclear program.

"We can't have lasting peace unless we work actively and vigorously to bring about conditions of freedom and justice in the world," Harry Truman told the West Point class of 1952. Which is what we're trying to do today -- in Iraq and the broader Middle East, in Afghanistan, even Africa.

Reports of Bush's West Point speech noted that Truman had low job ratings -- lower than Bush's, in fact. But does that matter now? Bush, as Yale historian John Lewis Gaddis has written, has changed American foreign policy more than any president since Truman, and like Truman he has acted on the long view.

"The war began on my watch," Bush told the class of 2006, "but it's going to end on your watch." Truman might have made the same point, accurately as it turned out, to the class of 1952. We're lucky we had then, and have now, a president who takes bold action and braves vitriolic criticism to defend our civilization against those who would destroy it.

One big difference between Truman's era and the present one is that people back then, having been taught self-discipline and self-denial and the benefits of deferred gratification by the severities of the depression and subsequent wars, generally accepted the long view. Today, Bush has to convince three generations of self-indulgent instant gratification-seekers weaned on television stories in which difficulties are resolved in the span of an hour or at most a viewing season, to stay the course.

The long view is not a particularly congenial concept to many Americans, but it is to our enemies for whom the grievances leading to the present conflict have their roots in the crusades which began over 900 years ago. Their patience in this struggle is not in question, but ours sure is.

Criminals and Idiots

John Kerry met recently with a number of liberal bloggers some of whom reported on the discussion:

At the urging of Pamela Leavey of The Democratic Daily blog, Sen. John Kerry sat down and charmed more than a half-dozen liberal bloggers after his speech Thursday to the Pacific Council on International Policy in Century City. Kerry asked that the conversation be off the record, but some of the invited bloggers posted his remarks anyway. Hollywood Liberal writes that Kerry "agreed completely with someone's assessment that everything that Bush does is solely for the purpose of looting the country. He basically said that Bush and his cohorts are criminals" and that "at some other point he referred to Supreme Court Justices Alito, Scalia, and Roberts as 'Idiots.'"

This is classic. John Kerry - graceless, pompous and arrogant as ever - calling Bush a criminal and three of the brightest minds in our judicial system idiots. Tell us, Senator, what was your undergraduate GPA? A 76%, you say? Wow, that's impressive. I wonder what those cretins sitting on the Supreme Court earned. Certainly they didn't score that high. I mean a 76% is a C average. That's awesome.

What, Us Baffled?

The Washington Post has an interesting article about origin of life researcher Robert Hazin. Among other things, the writer of the article says:

There is a tendency to think of science as a series of established facts and consensual theories -- "a bunch of things we know, to be memorized," in the words of Robert Hazen, the science popularizer and researcher into the origin of life.

What Hazen will tell you is that science is actually a very human enterprise. It's full of unknowns and uncertainties, of raging controversies, of passions and prejudices. Of all the great unknowns, the origin of life is particularly daunting. Direct evidence of the origin is essentially nonexistent: It happened too long ago, in too subtle a way. There's no fossil of the First Microbe. If there were, some skeptical scientist would surely raise a ruckus, saying: That's just a blob of mud.

The field has attracted people with strong personalities. They argue. They grumble. They snipe. Their debates are much more intense, and more grounded in the rules of science, than the much-hyped debate about evolution and intelligent design.

They are wrestling with basic questions: What is life, exactly? Does it always require liquid water and those long Tinkertoy carbon molecules? Does life require a cell? Did life begin with a hereditary molecule or with some kind of metabolic chemical reaction? Where did life begin on Earth? Was there a single moment that could be described as the "origin of life," or did life sort of creep into existence gradually?

All that is very much in play. In the words of George Cody, an origin-of-life researcher, "No one knows anything about the origin of life...."

Now you can see how all this might get a bit delicate given the current debate about intelligent design. Hazen knows that by exposing the backstage bickering on the origin of life, he may give ammunition to the critics of the scientific community: "Anything I say that shows any uncertainty or doubt, they will use as evidence that scientists are baffled."

No wonder. The article sure makes them sound baffled.

He believes that the universe is hard-wired for the emergence of life. "Emergence" is his buzzword, much more than "evolution." What he sees is inevitable progress from the simplest elements to more complex chemistry, then to life, then to consciousness, and finally to creatures who can comprehend the cosmos. "And if that isn't meaning and purpose, I don't know what is."

This all raises a number of questions. For one, how did the universe get "hard-wired for life"? And if it is, what is it about the universe that makes Hazen think that it is? If the universe shows evidence of being the sort of place that is finely-tuned for the emergence of life, if the laws and field strengths, etc. of physics are such that conscious life is inevitable, then what is the difference between what Hazen believes and what the intelligent design people are saying? Does Hazen believe that cosmic fine-tuning is just a coincidence? If so, then why would he think the universe has "meaning and purpose"? If he thinks that the universe is deliberately "front-loaded" to give rise to conscious life then he's deluding himself if he thinks he's somehow staking out a position contrary to intelligent design.

One of the peculiarities of the intelligent design controversy is that many of the scientists and philosophers who try to distance themselves from ID adopt views the logic of which leads them right back to it.

Thanks to Telic Thoughts for the tip.

Hillary's Not a Shoo-In

Question: When was the last time a sitting senator from the northeastern part of the country was elected president?

Answer: 1960 (John Kennedy). Before Kennedy we had northeastern presidents, but, though many have tried, only one other man has moved directly from the Senate to the White House (Warren Harding).

The point is that it is very difficult to make that move. Kennedy managed it largely because he was a physically attractive war hero from a wealthy and infuential family married to a glamorous woman. And his opponent was Richard Nixon whom he barely defeated (indeed, some question remains as to whether he actually did beat him).

So why mention all this? A lot of people are telling us that Hillary Clinton has a virtual lock on her party's nomination for president. If she runs, we're told, she'd have a very good chance of winning. Before conservatives start looking for bridges to jump off of, however, they should reflect on the history of American elections. Not only is Hillary a northeastern senator, she is not a male, she is not a war hero, she is not from a wealthy and influential family, she is not universally regarded as attractive, and her marriage to Bill Clinton may be more of a liability than an asset outside her Democratic base. In other words, many of the advantages enjoyed by the only person who has pulled off the feat she aspires to duplicate, she lacks.

It's not known yet who her Republican opponent would be, but if its a southern (or western) governor, or at least someone with charisma, a sterling war record and a glamorous wife, Hillary would, if history is a reliable guide, probably lose. For this reason there may even be a lot of opposition to her getting her party's nomination. The Democrats will not want to suffer through another lost presidential election. Their problem, though, is, if not Hillary then who?

Al Gore.

Beautiful Words

Reflect for a moment upon these beautiful words from Pope Benedict XVI:

"And only where God is seen does life truly begin. Only when we meet the living God in Christ do we know what life is. We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary. There is nothing more beautiful than to be surprised by the Gospel, by the encounter with Christ. There is nothing more beautiful than to know Him and to speak to others of our friendship with Him."

The Pope, unlike many of the academics in his flock, is not much of a Darwinian. It puzzles me that Catholic scientists, clergy and others could have such deep difficulties with the idea that God intervened in the world to bring about His creative will. After all, these people believe, or purport to believe, that God was in Christ, that Christ was born of a virgin, turned water to wine, and rose from the dead. They also believe that God performs the miracle of transubstantiation every time the eucharist is served. Yet they wax indignant over the claims of those creationists who hold that God also created life from non-life and that He created man specially and distinct from other anthropoids.

One wonders why one set of miracles is humbly accepted while the other is so vigorously resisted.

Reviving Panspermia

The idea that life began elsewhere in space and subsequently "seeded" the earth is apparently making a comeback. This idea, called panspermia, is the scientific equivalent of a Hail Mary pass in football, but the interesting thing about such theories of life's origin is the unstated reason for adducing them.

It's believed by advocates of panspermia that life must have originated elsewhere because it's just too difficult to construct a plausible materialistic scenario for the origin of life here on earth, given the terrestrial conditions that were believed to have prevailed 3 billion years ago. In other words, panspermia is the materialist's way out of a philosophicaly desperate situation. If life could not have arisen on earth without some extra-cosmic help then in order to avoid the conclusion that life's appearance is evidence for an intelligent agent involved in its origin, it is proposed that life must have originated somewhere else where conditions might have been more propitious.

If the cosmos shows no signs of life anywhere else besides earth, however, and if the genesis of life on earth remains an intractable problem, a lot of people are going to wonder if there may not be something else involved in its production besides purely physical forces and processes.

For a good read on the difficulties any theory of materialistic abiogenesis, whether terrestrial or extra-terrestrial, needs to overcome pick up Paul Davies' The Fifth Miracle.

Good, Mosque-Going Terrorists

Alvin Chand, a brother of suspect Steven Vikash Chand (one of 17 suspected terrorists arrested in Canada on Saturday), said outside the courthouse that his brother was innocent .... "He's not a terrorist, come on...," Chand said. "The people that were arrested are good people, they go to the mosque...."

Well, that pretty much settles that, I'd say.

The Book Of Job

I think fewer books in the Bible have challenged the reader more to understand the Divine message to be had than the book of Job. The Book of Job by Ethelbert W. Bullinger goes a long way to remove the mystery and confusion. It's available at Amazon.com but way too expensive as it is out of print and people that have it are sharking it for obscene prices. I picked it up for $11.00 a couple weeks ago. If anyone is interested in the book, I'd suggest waiting until another used book vendor offers it for sale at a reasonable price. I recently saw it offered here for $13.75 but don't know if it's still available.

From the book:

As the lost son confessed "I have sinned". As Joseph's brethren acknowledged "We are verily guilty". As David said "I have sinned against the Lord". As Isaiah confessed "I am undone...unclean". And as Daniel declared "my comeliness was turned into corruption". So must Job be brought to say, "I am vile. I abhor myself. I repent in dust and ashes".

This is the end of the Lord for the Lord Himself must be the teacher of this Divine lesson. Man may be used by God to bring it about but God alone can be the bringer near of His own salvation, and the bestower of his own righteousness.

All this is quite apart from mere "religion," as such. Job was religious, just as the heathen may be "very religious". Religion is the attempt of man to become righteous by morality and ordinances, but, the moment God produces a broken heart and a contrite spirit, the sinner is lifted completely out of the region of religion, and becomes the possessor of the "righteousness of God" Himself.

The book of Job, therefore, as we have said, is the illustration and the spiritual enlargement of the oldest lesson in the world as first taught in Gen. iv. 1-5. It is an object lesson which exhibits before our eyes the Divine answer to man's great question - the question of this book: "How shall mortal man be just with God?"

...

The first time the Lord God speaks to man after the Fall, He sets forth in his brief question, "Where art thou?" the lost and helpless condition of man. This is the first great lesson which man has to learn; and his attempt to answer this great question is that which forms the first step in his attainment of true "wisdom".

The first question of the Bible is intended to reveal to man his lost condition; and when he has discovered this, he asks the first question in the New Testament, intended to express this conviction, when he cries "Where is He?" (Matt. ii. 2) Where is the Savior whom Thou hast provided for lost sinners? Where is the Savior whom Thou has given and sent?

Unless we recognize this, as the "end" and design of the book, we shall never understand it, or learn the lesson for ourselves.

Simpleminded in Seattle

According to Betsy at Betsy's Page the Seattle Public Schools employ a person with the title of Director of Equity and Race Relations. Among this individual's duties, evidently, is the task of enlightening the taxpayers of the district as to the true nature and definition of racism. The Director's definition, distilled to its essence, is simply this: Something white people are guilty of. She words it rather differently, but what she says amounts to the same thing:

The systematic subordination of members of targeted racial groups who have relatively little social power in the United States (Blacks, Latino/as, Native Americans, and Asians), by the members of the agent racial group who have relatively more social power (Whites). The subordination is supported by the actions of individuals, cultural norms and values, and the institutional structures and practices of society."

This is the sort of addle-pated nonsense a Director of Equity churns out to justify her paycheck? What is "equitable" about this definition?

Question: If a poor white is oppressed by a wealthier black who hates whites because of their race, would the black be racist? Answer: No, because the black belongs to a racial group that is socially and economically inferior to the group to which the white belongs. Thus no matter how much power an individual black wields over an individual white, and no matter how much he uses that power to harm the white, he is innocent of the taint of racism because he is a member of the virtuous race of blacks who are untainted by the original sin of racism.

The Director of Racial Equity also assays to develop a taxonomy of racism for those of us who may not understand the sociological arcana involved. Cultural racism, for instance, is:

Those aspects of society that overtly and covertly attribute value and normality to white people and Whiteness, and devalue, stereotype, and label people of color as "other", different, less than, or render them invisible. Examples of these norms include defining white skin tones as nude or flesh colored, having a future time orientation, emphasizing individualism as opposed to a more collective ideology, defining one form of English as standard, and identifying only Whites as great writers or composers.

Is it racist to point out that this might be the dumbest thing ever to be written on the subject of race? Madame Director of Equity and Race Relations manages to cram more stupidity into a single paragraph than one might have thought humanly possible. To take just a couple of examples:

It is cultural racism, by her definition, to be oriented toward the future, to pay into a retirement account, to show up for work every day and on time in order to secure a paycheck at the end of the week, to save for one's children's college education or a new house, to discipline oneself with regard to the pleasures of food, drink, and/or sex in order to secure the long term benefits of a healthier body and a more stable marriage. If this is racism, and if only whites are racist, it's no wonder the African American community is in such desperate condition.

It is cultural racism, we're given to understand, to value the rights of the individual. Madame Director of Equity and Race Relations should spend an evening or two with Atlas Shrugged, but assuming that she would not be inclined to read Ayn Rand - a white woman, after all - she might at least look around the globe at those societies which promote the collective over the individual and take note of what kind of communities they are. She might do well to compare predominately white nations built on the concept of the importance of individual rights versus non-white nations which are not, and ask herself which she would prefer she and her children live in.

It is cultural racism, the lady avers, to define one form of English as the standard for all citizens. Madame Director would do well to undertake a study of the countries of the world that have the greatest and the least social cohesion and assess whether there doesn't seem to be a correlation to language in these societies. In nations in which there are a plurality of languages there is often stultifying economic inefficiency and deprivation as well as cultural division. One of the surest ways to isolate people from each other, after all, is to encourage them to speak different languages. The best way to unify people is to give them a common tongue. Madame Director defines as racist the desire that we, as disparate races, be as unified as we can be through a common language. Very odd.

It is cultural racism to identify only whites as great writers or composers. One wishes Madame Director would give an example of someone who actually does this with regard to contemporary artists. If her complaint is that people tend to consider only whites to be great composers of classical music, or great writers prior to, say, 1920 perhaps that's because only whites were composing music during the classical era and writing literature prior to 1920 (with the exception of W.E.B. DuBois). Would it constitute cultural racism to say that historically only whites were great mathematicians, astronomers, physicists, or philosophers if only whites were doing this sort of work before the twentieth century?

One last question: Why are the Seattle taxpayers paying good money to employ someone as a Director of Equity and Race Relations in the first place, especially if the person employed is doing more to damage race relations than she is to help them?

Out of the Closet

Last Fall an accomplished geneticist at Cornell named John Sanford came out of the closet. Having harbored doubts for some time about what he calls the "Primary Axiom" of biology (i.e. neo-Darwinism) he could no longer keep his skepticism to himself. Braving the howls and execrations of his peers he has written a book (Genetic Entropy & and the Mystery of the Genome, 2005) wherein he lays out his doubts about the ability of Darwinian mechanisms to explain human genetics. He also discusses the path that led him to his apostasy. Here's a portion:

In retrospect, I realize that I have wasted so much of my life arguing about things that don't really matter. It is my sincere hope that this book can actually address something that really does matter. The issue of who we are, where we came from, and where we are going seem to me to be of enormous importance. This is the real subject of this book ....

Modern Darwinism is built on what I will be calling "The Primary Axiom". The Primary Axiom is that man is merely the product of random mutations plus natural selection. Within our society's academia, the Primary Axiom is universally taught, and almost universally accepted. It is the constantly mouthed mantra, repeated endlessly on every college campus. It is very difficult to find any professor on any college campus who would even consider (or should I say - dare) to question the Primary Axiom ....

Late in my career, I did something which for a Cornell professor would seem unthinkable. I began to question the Primary Axiom. I did this with great fear and trepidation. By doing this, I knew I would be at odds with the most "sacred cow" of modern academia. Among other things, it might even result in my expulsion from the academic world.

Although I had achieved considerable success and notoriety within my own particular specialty (applied genetics), it would mean I would have to be stepping out of the safety of my own little niche. I would have to begin to explore some very big things, including aspects of theoretical genetics which I had always accepted by faith alone. I felt compelled to do all this - but I must confess I fully expected to simply hit a brick wall. To my own amazement, I gradually realized that the seemingly "great and unassailable fortress" which has been built up around the Primary Axiom is really a house of cards.

The Primary Axiom is actually an extremely vulnerable theory - in fact it is essentially indefensible. Its apparent invincibility derives mostly from bluster, smoke, and mirrors. A large part of what keeps the Axiom standing is an almost mystical faith, which the true-believers have in the omnipotence of natural selection. Furthermore, I began to see that this deep-seated faith in natural selection was typically coupled with a degree of ideological commitment - which can only be described as religious. I started to realize (again with trepidation) that I might be offending a lot of people's religion!

Read the rest of Sanford's account of his backslide from the one true faith here.

The True Believers

Richard John Neuhaus at First Things (subscription required) notes that in the introduction to the book From the Gulag to the Killing Fields by Paul Hollander there appears a list of eight ways in which all extremist groups, whether of the right or left, are similar. All extremist mass movements are typified by the following beliefs or attitudes:

1. Extreme hostility toward "outgroups." You are either for us or against us and any dialogue or civil conversation with the "enemy" is betrayal.

2. Complete submissiveness to "ingroups." Our party and its leaders are to be supported without question. Criticism of our side is breaking ranks and breaking ranks is treason.

3. All relationships are subordinated to the criterion of what will advance the "cause."

4. The most important thing to know about the world is that it is divided by the conflict between them and us.

5. Purely theoretical ideas which do not serve the cause are to be repressed.

6. The extension of sentiment is a sign of weakness.

7. We and our group can only survive by the manipulation of others, who are there to be manipulated.

8. The triumph of our cause will result in a harmonious world without conflict.

Communism and Naziism exhibited most or all of these traits in the twentieth century and together they made that period the most murderous in all of human history. Islamo-fascism exhibits the same traits today, and, if it is allowed to thrive, it'll do to this century what the Marxists and Nazis did to the last, or worse.

Iraqis Are Safer Than Americans

Iraq is in chaos. Death and destruction are everywhere. It's the most dangerous place on the planet. That's the message we have drilled into us every day by the American media. Things may not be quite as the media reports them, however. Andrew Walden at FrontPage Mag has the data:

Iraqi civilian death statistics compiled by Rep. Steve King, R-IA, indicate that, contrary to the impression made on the evening news, Iraq actually has a lower civilian violent death rate than Washington, D.C., and pre-Katrina New Orleans. Iraq is also substantially safer than several foreign countries. After seeing media coverage of Iraqi violence King said: "I began to ask myself the question, if you were a civilian in Iraq, how could you tolerate that level of violence. What really is the level of violence?"

King calculates an annualized Iraqi civilian death rate of 27.5 per 100,000 based on U.S. military and independent statistical sources.

Ironically, Venezuela has 31.5 violent deaths per 100,000 - 14.5 percent higher than Iraq.

Venezuela is not alone in suffering at the hands of left-wing dictators or wannabe dictators: Columbia, hounded by leftist narco-guerrillas, every year loses 61.7 of its citizens to violence per every 100,000.

South Africa, led by an increasingly corrupt African National Congress loses 49.6 per 100,000 to violent deaths every year. In Jamaica-ruled for decades by the socialist People's National Party-it is 32.4.

In Russia, as the Soviet system disintegrated, the count of violent deaths-outside the Gulags-soared. In 1998 there were 30.6 homicides per 100,000 population. Three years after end of Saddam's socialist dictatorship Iraq is actually more peaceful than was Russia seven years after the end of socialist USSR.

But high murder rates are not limited to overseas leftist-ruled countries.

In Washington, D.C., it is 45.9 violent deaths per 100,000. This means civilians living in Washington D.C. .... are 63.5 percent less safe than Iraqi civilians.

Other American cities with higher violent civilian death rates than Iraq include:

Detroit: 41.8 per 100,000

Baltimore: 37.7 per 100,000

Atlanta: 34.9 per 100,000

St. Louis: 31.4 per 100,000

The American city with the highest civilian death rate was New Orleans before Katrina-with a staggering 53.1 deaths per 100,000-almost twice the death rate in Iraq.

Hudson makes the point that the foreign countries with high death rates are all ruled by leftists and the American cities with such terrible rates are all governed by Democrats. Be that as it may, it will come as a surprise to most Americans that an Iraqi is safer in his city than an American is in his. Who'd have thought that would be the case after watching the evening news.

Bio-Machines

Here's a cool site for anyone interested in cell biology. The thumbnails link to animations of the operation of several different molecular machines. I don't know which is more incredible, the structure and function of these nano-machines or the fact that there are people brilliant enough to figure them out.

Most incredible of all (literally) is that these bio-machines are the product of nothing other than blind, purposeless forces.

Thanks to Bill Dembski at Uncommon Descent for the tip.

Giving the Church a Black Eye

With Pat Robertson in full voice the Church doesn't need any more nitwits feeding ammo to its detractors, but evidently that's exactly what has recently emerged. It's a sad day for the Church if things are as Jonathan Hudson at Talk to Action claims them to be here. In a follow-up post Hudson says:

A top aide to mega-church pastor Rick Warren is advising the makers of a children's video game in which characters kill New Yorkers while shouting "Praise the Lord." When children tire of converting or killing New Yorkers, they can switch sides and command the demonic armies of the AntiChrist, and kill the conservative Christians. The real-time strategy game, slated for release in October 2006, is based on the best selling series of Left Behind novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins. The web site of Left Behind Games states the involvement of Mark Carver on its Advisory Board. This web-based marketing tool also highlights his role as Executive Director of Mr. Warren's Purpose Driven Church. What appears to be going on here is an old-fashioned business practice called "endorsement by association."

We await pastor Rick Warren's (author of The Purpose Driven Life) response to attempts to associate him and his ministry with what is apparently a truly execrable video game.

Santorum's Slide

A recent Rasmussen poll shows incumbent Rick Santorum slipping well behind challenger Bob Casey in the race for the Pennsylvania senate seat, and people are wondering why. There are several reasons which come to mind, not the least of which is that Pennsylvania is a blue state which is nevertheless pro-life. In other words, a pro-life Republican running against a pro-choice Democrat will attract a lot of pro-life Catholic Democrats, but Casey is also pro-life and that neutralizes much of Santorum's cross-over appeal. Casey will get pro-life votes that Santorum would otherwise have received if any other Democrat were running.

Another major factor in Santorum's decline is that he's only getting the support of 67% of Republicans. This is an astonishing figure, but it makes sense when we remember that Santorum endorsed liberal Arlen Specter in his primary race against conservative Pat Toomey in 2004. This angered a lot of conservatives and convinced them that Santorum is not a reliable political ally. Later, Santorum voted against Tom Coburn's bill that would have substantially reduced a lot of wasteful and unnecessary spending and this further antagonized those Republicans who pay attention to such things.

There's not much Santorum can do to win the allegiance of pro-life Democrats, but he can woo back disaffected Republicans. He's only got five months to do it, though, so he better get started.

The Second Fifty

John T. Miller at NRO has been swamped with more suggestions for conservative themed rock songs, and he lists the latest recommendations here. The top fifty can be viewed here.

I think the second group may be even better than the first although I was disappointed that I didn't see Where Did Our Love Go by the Supremes or Cat's in the Cradle by Harry Chapin on the list. Maybe they don't qualify as classic rock.