Treacherous <i>Times</i>

Andrew McCarthy over at NRO has an excellent column on the "Media's War Against the War." He writes specifically about the boneheaded outing by the New York Times and the LA Times of the government's tracking of financial transactions made by terror suspects. The process appears to have been completely legal but may have been rendered ineffective by the Times' stories:

For the second time in seven months, the Times has exposed classified information about a program aimed at protecting the American people against a repeat of the September 11 attacks. On this occasion, it has company in the effort: The Los Angeles Times runs a similar, sensational story. Together, the newspapers disclose the fact that the United States has covertly developed a capability to monitor the nerve center of the international financial network in order to track the movement of funds between terrorists and their facilitators.

The effort, which the government calls the "Terrorist Finance Tracking Program" (TFTP), is entirely legal. There are no conceivable constitutional violations involved. The Supreme Court held in United States v. Miller (1976) that there is no right to privacy in financial-transaction information maintained by third parties. Here, moreover, the focus is narrowed to suspected international terrorists, not Americans, and the financial transactions implicated are international, not domestic. This is not data mining, and it does not involve fishing expeditions into the financial affairs of American citizens. Indeed, few Americans even have information that is captured by the program - though there would be nothing legally offensive even if they did.

There is much more in McCarthy's piece which merits a careful read. Here are two more graphs from the column:

...the most salient thing we learn from today's compromise ... is that the program has been highly effective at keeping us safe. According to the government, it has helped identify and locate terrorists and their financial backers; it has been instrumental in charting terrorist networks; and it has been essential in starving these savage organizations of their lifeblood: funding.

It was in view of the [program's] palpable value in protecting American lives, its obvious legal propriety, and the plain fact that it was being responsibly conducted that the administration pleaded with the newspapers not to reveal it after government officials despicably leaked it. Exposing the program would tell the public nothing about official misconduct. It would accomplish only the educating of al Qaeda - the nation's enemy in an ongoing war; an enemy well-known to be feverishly plotting new, massive attacks - about how better to evade our defenses. About how better to kill us.

PowerLine notes that:

In its editorial on the subject today, the New York Times offers no shred of an argument concerning the possible illegality or overbreadth of the program. It cites no instance of abuse. Rather, the Times argues "these efforts need to be done under a clear and coherent set of rules, with the oversight of Congress and the courts." The Times purports to invoke the rule of law where no law has been broken, and where the Times itself has both broken the law and damaged American national security.

And, we might add, they've compromised our safety for a single reason: They espied an opportunity to make life more difficult for George Bush. Had Bill Clinton been president and asked them not to run the story as the Bush people did, it is hard to imagine either paper refusing the request.

Michelle Malkin is receiving photoshop entries from around the country in response to the papers' despicable decision to publicize one of the tools we use to protect ourselves from the savages. Here's a sample:

Distancing Oneself From ID

Intelligent Design theorists believe that the designer's activity in the universe can be detected. Many Christian scholars, although they believe God to be the creator, reject ID because they hold that there is no way to detect God's activity, at least not in nature. This poses for them a very serious problem which Denyse O'Leary highlights here.

Here is what I think drives that sort of behavior: Some Christians in science are into emotional meltdown re ID because they have suddenly realized what is at stake:

The only way to rule out ID is to deny that God acts in the universe, period. If he acts at all, his action may in fact be detected.

If one insists as an article of faith that God's actions cannot be detected in principle or that it is wrong to attempt to detect them, that is a new article of faith, and one that is at odds with traditional Christian religion and conventional interpretations of the Bible.

but more generally,

For a long time, many fine Christian scholars got along well with materialists, more or less, because no one put the issue squarely, as the ID guys have done. So Christianity in the intellectual world has been dying the death of deniability: What can you deny and still be a Christian? But now the issue is so basic that it can't just be sophistically manipulated out of existence. Gradually realizing their dilemma, in an intuitive way, some sincere Christians retreat into meaningless abuse of ID hypotheses.

It gets better. Read the whole thing.

The main problem, though, for Christians who hold that God's work is undetectable in nature is that they have to deny the possibility of ever recognizing a genuine miracle. If miracles are indeed unrecognizable then no one could have known the miracles that Jesus performed to really be miracles, and thus the Biblical testimony about miracles must be unreliable. This conclusion seems a high price to pay in order to try to seem reasonable to one's secularist colleagues.

Follow-Up

I may have been remiss by not providing sufficient background about my latest post on Democracy (Screwtape Proposes a Toast) that might have facilitated the readers understanding of the article by C. S. Lewis.

Prior to his writing of Screwtape Proposes a Toast, Lewis wrote a book titled The Screwtape Letters, a work of fiction. But only fiction in the sense that the characters and the dialogue sprang from the imagination of one of the greatest modern Christian writers. Yet in our terrestrial reality the issues confronted in this book play out in our lives every day.

The book contains thirty-one letters from Screwtape to his nephew, Wormwood, who is Screwtape's underling in fiendishness. Screwtape is an upper-level functionary in the complex bureaucracy of the underworld. The "Screwtape Letters" are friendly advice from this elder statesman to a front-line tempter on how to procure the soul of his "patient", a young Christian man just trying to live out his everyday life.

Screwtape Proposes a Toast is a short story that Lewis wrote after the "letters" as kind of a finale. In both works, Lewis placed himself inside the head of Screwtape and communicates things as they would be seen by the Screwtape character. As a result, that which is morally bad is good and what is morally good is bad.

Sorry for any confusion.

God's Omnipotence

Author and professor Tony Campolo speaks on the topic of God's omnipotence:

All the sin and suffering that have marked human history since Eden are the result of God relinquishing control over what we do. People like you and me abuse our God-given freedom and thus increase the hurt and destruction that is in the world.

To all of this, most readers will say, "We agree!" Yet, when I dare to say that God is no longer in total control over this world, so many of my fellow Christians go ballistic. They refuse to stop and think. If they did, they would realize that God must be self-limited if we are to come of age and become fully human. Without God choosing to be limited, we could not love God, because love is something that must be freely chosen-nor could we freely choose to love each other. And love is what is ultimately important.

I'm not sure what Campolo means by "no longer in total control." If he means that God has granted man a measure of autonomy to run things as he will then I think he's right. God doesn't directly cause every event or every decision that is made on earth.

If, however, he means that God could not change things even if He wanted to then I think he's wrong. In any case, there's more at the link.

On Democracy

I have been against the concept of a Democratic form of government ever since I realized that a democracy is simply two wolves and a sheep deciding what they will have for dinner. Remember that this country was founded as a Constitutional Republic because our founding fathers realized that a democracy was inherently destined to fail and only lately has our government morphed into a democratic form of government.

Recently I read Screwtape Proposes a Toast by C. S. Lewis and realized that I found an ally for my position from an altogether different perspective. It's fascinating to realize that C. S. Lewis wrote this almost 50 years ago and, to me, it's prophetic.

The entire story makes for an interesting read but you can scroll down to the following paragraph:

But by the latter part of the century the situation was much simpler, and also much more ominous. In the English sector (where I saw most of my front-line service) a horrible thing had happened. The Enemy, with His usual sleight of hand, had largely appropriated this progressive or liberalizing movement and perverted it to His own ends. Very little of its old anti-Christianity remained. The dangerous phenomenon called Christian Socialism was rampant. Factory owners of the good old type who grew rich on sweated labor, instead of being assassinated by their workpeople -- we could have used that -- were being frowned upon by their own class. The rich were increasingly giving up their powers, not in the face of revolution and compulsion, but in obedience to their own consciences. As for the poor who benefited by this, they were behaving in a most disappointing fashion. Instead of using their new liberties -- as we reasonably hoped and expected -- for massacre, rape, and looting, or even for perpetual intoxication, they were perversely engaged in becoming cleaner, more orderly, more thrifty, better educated, and even more virtuous. Believe me, gentledevils, the threat of something like a really healthy state of society seemed then perfectly serious.

Advice For Students

Calvin Seerveld offers some good advice for Christian students attending a secular university. Actually, I think it's good advice for any kind of student in any kind of university. Here are three of his six suggestions:

Major in the best profs, who make you think self-critically and who give solid course content in a field-area that you have gifts for or can be busy with, without noticing the passage of time.

Take a double major, if possible, to promote the ability to do interdisciplinary thinking, a kind of informal philosophy major (if the philosophy available is sophistic, skeptical or "undeep").

Get in-depth knowledge of a certain period: 5th to 4th century B.C. Athens, Renaissance England, Europe around the time of the French Revolution, or America during the 1920s. That is, rather than staying with survey knowledge, get close to a slice of cultural life somewhere, once upon a time, in many of its facets-a form of encyclopedia-historical study. Maybe work for a couple summers or part of a year in an African village, do volunteer work in Central America, or take a job on the south side of Chicago or in Toronto's Regent Park.

Check out the link for the rest of his recommendations.

Should We Pre-empt?

Ashton B. Carter and William J. Perry, former Clinton assistant secretary of defense and secretary of defense, respectively, call for the United States to blow up on the launch pad the North Korean missile that has recently been fueled and made ready for launch:

[I]f North Korea persists in its launch preparations, the United States should immediately make clear its intention to strike and destroy the North Korean Taepodong missile before it can be launched. This could be accomplished, for example, by a cruise missile launched from a submarine carrying a high-explosive warhead. The blast would be similar to the one that killed terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq. But the effect on the Taepodong would be devastating. The multi-story, thin-skinned missile filled with high-energy fuel is itself explosive -- the U.S. airstrike would puncture the missile and probably cause it to explode. The carefully engineered test bed for North Korea's nascent nuclear missile force would be destroyed, and its attempt to retrogress to Cold War threats thwarted. There would be no damage to North Korea outside the immediate vicinity of the missile gantry.

Read their whole argument here.

Former Vice-President Walter Mondale has endorsed similar action. Charles Pritchard in the WaPo argues against a pre-emptive strike.

Shameless

PowerLine has come across this quote from a 2003 transcript of a meeting of the Council of Foreign Relations:

I fear that in the run-up to the 2004 election, the administration is considering what is tantamount to a cut-and-run strategy. Their sudden embrace of accelerated Iraqification and American troop withdrawal dates, without adequate stability, is an invitation to failure. The hard work of rebuilding Iraq must not be dictated by the schedule of the next American election.

I have called for the administration to transfer sovereignty, and they must transfer it to the Iraqi people as quickly as circumstances permit. But it would be a disaster and a disgraceful betrayal of principle to speed up the process simply to lay the groundwork for a politically expedient withdrawal of American troops. That could risk the hijacking of Iraq by terrorist groups and former Ba'athists.

The speaker was presidential candidate John Kerry. PowerLine observes that the shameless Senator Flipper was apparently against cutting and running before he was for it.

Do They Care?

The descriptions of the horrors to which our two young soldiers were subjected in Iraq - the two who were captured, tortured, beheaded, and so brutalized that they were unrecognizable - would seem to put Abu Ghraib and other such episodes in a somewhat different light.

How anyone can think that putting underwear on somebody's head and having a dog bark at prisoners is in the same moral universe as what was done to these men escapes me. Yet, the word "torture" is used to describe both as if they are in some bizarre sense morally equivalent.

We were subjected to Abu Ghraib horror stories and photos for months and years after it came to light. We were urged to reflect on what kind of a nation we are that we would spawn people who could do such awful things as put detainees in humiliating and embarrassing poses. Calls went forth demanding that we leave Iraq because we'd lost the moral high ground. Then came revelations of allegations that Korans had been flushed down toilets in Guantanamo and prisoners having been forced to endure loud music. We flagellated ourselves for our barbarity. We condemned ourselves because we were "torturers."

Now we see what genuine evil looks like. We see Americans subjected to unimaginable agony at the hands of sub-human savages. And the MSM can scarcely bring themselves to acknowledge what has happened. A day or two in the news and the story's gone. No photos, no descriptions, no nightly reminders of the evil against which we fight, nothing that would give the American people insight into what real evil is. The left-wing bloggers yawn and return to their fantasies of indicting Karl Rove. The media returns quickly to its fascinations with Tom Cruise and Angelina Jolie. It has no time to be drawing the important distinctions between what our interrogators do and why they do it and what the Islamists do and why. The media spent almost as much time fretting over whether our troops treated Zarqawi roughly before he died than they have on the fate of Kristain Manchaca and Thomas Tucker.

It almost seems as if they just don't care.

Highway to Hell

Blackfive has gun camera footage of the takedown of al-Qaeda in Iraq heavyweight Sheik Mansur and several of his colleagues. Scroll down, read the explanation, and then watch the video.

Sic semper tyrannus.

A Modest Proposal

Rebecca Smithers at The Guardian reports on a statement by British scientists calling for better teaching of evolution. Here are a few excerpts:

The world's leading scientists yesterday urged schools to stop denying the facts of evolution amid controversy over the teaching of creationism.

The national science academies of 67 countries - including the UK's Royal Society - issued a joint statement warning that scientific evidence about the origins of life was being "concealed, denied, or confused". It urged parents as well as teachers to provide children with the facts about the origins and evolution of life on Earth.

It points out that "within science courses taught in certain public systems of education, scientific evidence, data, and testable theories about the origins and evolution of life on Earth are being concealed, denied, or confused with theories not testable by science".

Martin Rees, said: "There is controversy in some parts of the world about the teaching of evolution to pupils and students, so this is a timely statement that makes clear the views of the scientific community. I hope this statement will help those who are attempting to uphold the rights of young people to have access to accurate scientific knowledge about the origins and evolution of life on Earth."

The IAP statement highlighted that "evidence-based facts about the origins and evolution of the Earth and of life on this planet have been established by numerous observations and independently derived experimental results from a multitude of scientific disciplines..."

I fully agree. Students should be taught the facts about the origin of the earth and of life, among the most salient of which is that scientists have no idea how the cosmos or life on earth came about. Let's present our students with all the facts about how incredibly fine-tuned the cosmos is, how necessary it is that the universe be just the way it is within tolerances so fine that they defy comprehension, or else there would be no earth. Let's teach our students the manifold scientific difficulties of any theory of abiogenesis and how extraordinarily difficult it is to imagine a naturalistic origin to life.

Unfortunately, I don't think this is what the august members of the various academies of science have in mind when they call for teaching the facts. They know that if students are taught the facts about the origin and structure of the universe and the difficulties of any purely physicalistic theory of the origin of life, only the most rabid materialist students would be able to avoid the conclusion that there is an intelligence behind it all.

In fact, I propose a test. Let's do what these scientists urge us to do. Let's teach thousands of students the facts of cosmological fine-tuning and the intractable difficulties with all purely material theories of the origin of life and, at the conclusion, poll them on what they now believe the philosophical implications are. I'm willing to bet that significantly more students in the test group than in a control group will be persuaded that any explanation that omits intelligence is inadequate.

Censored Valedictorian

There's been a lot of discussion about the young lady whose valedictory address was stopped short by her high school administration. The usual story line is that the administrators didn't like her overtly Christian references and cut off her microphone when she started to voice them.

This may surprise some Viewpoint readers, but, if what I've read about the case is correct, I don't blame the administrators.

Brittany McComb submitted her speech for approval and agreed to the changes the school authorities made to it. When she got up to deliver her address, however, she disregarded her agreement and re-inserted those passages she had agreed to delete. Consequently, the administrators cut off her microphone.

Ms McComb calls her act an instance of rebelling against authority, but I'd call it an instance of dishonesty. If she felt strongly about the content of her speech then she should not have agreed to the administrators' editing. Having agreed to it she was obligated to keep her word. To do otherwise was deceitful and does not reflect well on the faith she was so anxious to publically acknowledge.

We can debate whether the administration should have insisted she delete the explicitly Christian references. They may have been wrong to deny her the freedom to say what she wanted about her faith, but whether they were wrong or not, she was wrong to go back on her word, and the authorities were justified in preventing her from continuing.

Smart Dust

This is interesting: U.S. Forces may be using "smart dust" in Iraq and Afghanistan according to Strategy Page:

"Smart Dust" is basically very miniaturized electronic devices. This is similar to stuff like RFID, smart cards, EZ Pass and those rice grain size tracking devices you can have injected into your pets. But Smart Dust takes this all to a new level by being small enough to be disguised as dirt, the kind you can pick up in your shoes or clothing. Each bit of Smart Dust can be given a unique serial number that, when hit with an "interrogation signal" from troops on the ground, or aircraft overhead, is broadcast back. Some forms of Smart Dust are believed to be in use in Iraq and Afghanistan. It's also believed that Smart Dust played a role in the recent death of al Qaeda leader Abu Musab al Zarqawi.

In this case, if someone were able to sprinkle some Smart Dust on Zarqawi's clothing, it would have been a simple matter to track him with great precision. Iraqis have already heard of this stuff, but regard it more as "magic dust." Iraqis have a tendency to exaggerate American capabilities, especially when it comes to technology. But U.S. troops have learned to use this exaggerated reputation to their advantage, threatening Iraqis with magical capabilities that don't exist. That often works, just like smart dust.

It doesn't strike me as likely that this stuff was sprinkled on Zarqawi. If we were close enough to him to do that, if we knew where he was when the smart dust was sprinkled, it seems we would have taken him out then. But maybe not.

Pennsylvania's Embarrassment

Were it not for the fact that he keeps popping up on television talk shows and pushed to the fore by his Democratic colleagues, the kind thing to do with John Murtha would be to drop one's eyes and politely tune him out, like one does a senile grandfather. Unfortunately, Murtha does not allow us to ignore him. Like Cindy Sheehan he seems to be everywhere we turn, and, since his statements are not disavowed by his fellow Democrats, we are justified in assuming that he speaks for a significant segment of that party.

His recent appearance on Meet the Press reflects the utter thoughtlessness and disingenuousness of the modern Democrats with regard to the war in Iraq. In calling for a "redeployment" of our troops from Iraq Murtha suggested that they be removed to "the periphery" and gave Okinawa as a possible site. Okinawa is certainly peripheral, about like Pluto is peripheral.

As Jack Kelly at Real Clear Politics observes, Murtha's recommendation is just crazy:

Let us be clear about the Murtha "strategy." It is insane. It would be easier to defend Germany from Chicago; Alaska from Miami, or Hawaii from Pittsburgh than to defend Iraq from Okinawa. It would take 10-12 hours -- and six refuelings -- for F-16s to fly from Kadena AFB on Okinawa to Baghdad (assuming China and India would grant overflight rights, a dubious assumption). Mr. Murtha may regard this as "very quickly," but the Air Force does not.

As Bugs Bunny would say: "What a maroon!"

Another howler is Mr. Murtha's assertion that U.S. troops currently serving in Iraq would be "welcomed" in Okinawa. For decades Okinawans have been seeking a reduction in the U.S. military presence, both because they covet the land on which U.S. military bases sit, and because of a long history of pacifism. The U.S. recently agreed to withdraw 7,000 Marines from Okinawa.

Mr. Murtha's absurdities were not limited to just these. His claim that our killing of Abu Zarqawi shows we don't need ground troops in Iraq is risible. Just because an Air Force jet delivered the munition that ended Zarqawi's reign of terror doesn't mean that all the tracking and intelligence work and so on would have happened if we hadn't had troops on the ground. If we had heeded Murtha's demands to flee Iraq, Zarqawi would be ensconced today in one of Saddam's palaces leisurely slicing off the heads of everyone who has cooperated with the coalition for the past four years. Murtha doesn't care about this. Betraying those who placed their trust in us doesn't seem to bother him. We can commiserate with them, he says, from Okinawa.

Of course Rep. Murtha doesn't really intend that our troops defend Iraq. If he did he wouldn't be calling for a pullout in the first place. What would be the sense in pulling out only to have to rush back in again? He knows that once we're out there's nothing that would ever get us back in. John Murtha, Kelly's column suggests, is either dishonest, stupid, or senile. In any case he's an embarrassment. Read the rest of his piece to see how Kelly comes to that assessment.

Thirteen For Surrender

A total of thirteen senators, all Democrats, voted for the Kerry/Feingold amendment which would have compelled President Bush to withdraw all American troops from Iraq by July 31st, 2007 regardless of what the consequences of that withdrawal would be for the region or the Iraqi people. Listed here are the thirteen:

Akaka(D-HI), Boxer(D-CA), Durbin(D-IL), Feingold(D-WI), Harkin(D-IA), Inouye(D-HI), Jeffords(I-VT), Kennedy(D-MA), Kerry(D-MA), Lautenberg(D-NJ), Leahy(D-VT), Menendez(D-NJ), Wyden(D-OR)

Shortly after that ballot thirty nine senators voted for a meaningless resolution which would have essentially conveyed to the president the Senate's wish that we get out of Iraq as soon as conditions are right for a withdrawal. Six Democrats joined fifty four Republicans to vote against the resolution. The six Democrats were Mark Dayton, Mary Landrieu, Mark Pryor, Joe Lieberman, Bill Nelson and Ben Nelson. Lincoln Chaffee was the sole Republican to vote for the resolution.

During the debate Senator Russ Feingold made the statement that "It is time to tell the Iraqis that we have done what we can do militarily." What on earth makes the senator say this? The presence of our troops defends the Iraqis from predatory neighbors and is the best immediate protection from the ravages of insurgents and terrorists. If the senator thinks that withdrawing before Iraq is prepared to stand on its own is in our, or anyone's (besides the thugs') best interests, then, however smart he may be, he is exceptionally foolish.

Hope For Paralysis Victims

This is a hopeful development:

Scientists have used stem cells and a soup of nerve-friendly chemicals to not just bridge a damaged spinal cord but actually regrow the circuitry needed to move a muscle, helping partially paralyzed rats walk.

Years of additional research is needed before such an experiment could be attempted in people. But the work marks a tantalizing new step in stem cell research that promises to one day help repair damage from nerve-destroying illnesses such as Lou Gehrig's disease, or from spinal cord injuries.

According to the report the stem cells used were mouse embryonic stem cells. Read the whole account here.

The Darwinians constantly remind us that unless science is based on the assumption of evolution it will never progress. I wonder what role evolutionary thinking played in this research.

"Cut and Run" Dems

The Senate is voting today on a proposal by Senators John Kerry and Russ Feingold which would order the president to fly the last helicopter out of Iraq by this time next year regardless of conditions on the ground.

Michelle Malkin has lots of information on the debate and an alternative proposal, none of which will be helpful to those who wish to bamboozle the public into thinking that the Democrats are responsible adults capable of leading this nation in the war on terror.

Malkin captures the essence of the Democrats' strategy for the war in this photo of Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid:

The Democrats disingenuously bristle at the suggestion that they are demanding that the U.S. "cut and run." They're doing no such thing, they insist, they're only calling for a "change in direction," but the change, of course, is in the direction in which we are running.

Perplexities of Atheism

Carson Holloway has a strange piece on atheist biologist Richard Dawkins at National Review Online. I say that it's strange because part of it is a criticism of Dawkins for insisting on propagating what he believes to be the truth despite the harmful effects it has apparently had on the psychological health of some of his readers. Holloway thinks this is irresponsible:

Dawkins, however, appears to be utterly indifferent to the spiritual and emotional difficulties that his writings cause for many of his readers. He mentions one reader for whom The Selfish Gene initiated a "personal crisis." Its apparent debunking of any higher purpose in nature caused this person "a series of bouts of depression" lasting over a decade. In another case, a teacher wrote to reprimand Dawkins for his book's effect on a young student who was driven to tears after concluding that The Selfish Gene teaches that life is "empty and purposeless."

What is Dawkins's response to those for whom his popularization of evolution causes so much pain? Essentially it is this: "Keep a stiff upper lip." If "something is true," he responds, "no amount of wishful thinking can undo it." No doubt this is correct. But we might with as much propriety ask Dawkins: "If something is painful, does its truth justify inflicting it on people who find it disturbing?" Let us grant - only, to be sure, for the sake of argument - that Dawkins's Darwinian explanation of Life, the Universe, and Everything is true. Does this in itself justify his strident shoving of it into our public discourse, knowing full well the emotional distress it will cause the spiritually sensitive?

Dawkins can be faulted for many things, and Holloway is on target in his other criticisms in the essay, but this one is weird. Even if some people (e.g. students) are forced by their instructors to read Dawkins, the fault is not with Dawkins for writing his books, but rather with those who compel them to be read. Moreover, we should not avert our eyes from the truth just because it has unfortunate effects. If life is indeed utterly meaningless in a godless cosmos then students should be helped to see that. Such truths should be proclaimed throughout society. If God is dead then the human condition is absurd. Let people see clearly the consequences and implications of their metaphysical commitments.

Furthermore, Holloway is faulting Dawkins on moral grounds for being insensitive to the effect that his theories have on his readers, but why should Dawkins be moved by a moral argument? If there is no God then why is it wrong to cause people to suffer psycho-emotional distress? If people get hurt by what he says, Dawkins might well reply, what is wrong with that? Why should he care? Moral right and wrong only exist if there is a transcendent ground for them. If there is no such ground then the whole concept of morality reduces to notions of personal taste and preference.

There is an irony here, though, for people like Dawkins. In the words of Holloway, as a scientist Dawkins "is concerned above all with the truth, with simply seeing things as they are, regardless of any other interests or concerns."

But it is only the theist who has any basis for placing such a high value on truth. An evolutionary atheist like Dawkins has no grounds for it all. To see this one might ask why ought we subordinate all else to truth? Why should truth be so important to us? Why does it matter?

Darwinians might reply that knowing truth enhances survival and thus prizing the truth is a trait that nature has selected for in humans. But even if this is correct it's not clear that believing what's true has any more survival value than believing what's false. If some primitive tribe believes that the more children one has the greater their reward will be in an afterlife, that tribe may eventually come to crowd out competitors who correctly believe (the atheist would acknowledge) that there is no afterlife. If religious belief, despite being false, nevertheless enhances human life, gives us solace in our grief, hope in times of despair, and joy throughout then why should people not engage in it even so? The Dawkinsian can give no answer. Is it not better that a person be made happy in this brief life by believing a falsehood than be depressed by seeing the truth that his life is void of meaning.

Truth is a value, in a world without God, only to the extent that it's possession makes our lives better in some way and improves the probability our genes will survive, but it often doesn't do this. The truth is often depressing, discouraging, and debilitating whereas myths and superstition are often uplifting and enriching.

On the other hand, if God does exist, truth takes on a much deeper importance. A God which is the locus and source of all that is Good, all that is Beautiful, and all that is True is intrinsically valuable and to value God is to value truth. To love God is to love truth. If God exists truth matters. Indeed, our eternal destiny may well pivot upon it.

For Dawkins, however, the exaltation of truth is a value plucked out of thin air. He may have as easily plucked out personal comfort or power. His decision to live by the credo that truth matters is no more grounded in anything than if he had chosen instead to live by the credo that ignorance is bliss. Thus his belief that we should embrace the truth regardless of its consequences is obligatory only upon him. He has chosen it as an obligation for himself, but it's binding on no one else. Others may validly absolutize different values and Dawkins has no business saying that they shouldn't.

Dawkins finds himself in the odd position of treasuring truth while simultaneously deriding the only thing - belief in God - that could afford him a non-subjective, non-arbitrary, basis for his choice.

Why They Hope We'll Lose

We and others have often made the claim that the left actually is hoping for an American defeat in Iraq. This seems preposterous to some and obvious to others, and it raises the question why they should feel this way. There are at least three reasons, I think, that lead people on the left to cheer every American setback and essentially to call for our surrender:

First, a defeat in Iraq would be a crushing defeat for Republicans. The left hates Republicans in general and Bush in particular and would rather see this country stymied in its greatest international undertaking since WWII than see either Bush or the Republicans get credit for having pulled it off.

Parenthetically, why they hate Bush is another interesting question which deserves an answer. Some of it is due to their bitterness over the 2000 election, but in large part it's because of their embrace of the sexual revolution. The perpetuation of the radical shift in sexual mores of the last forty years, a religious obligation for leftists, requires unfettered access to abortion on demand. Bush has made it clear that he will appoint judges and justices who do not share that enthusiasm. His greatest crime in their eyes, therefore, is the threat he poses to abortion rights and thus to the ability of individuals to treat sex as a form of recreation.

Indeed, we can take this analysis one step further and point out that it has always been part of the leftist agenda, going back at least as far as Marx's Communist Manifesto, to destroy bourgeois marriage and thus traditional notions of the family. Sexual license, gay marriage, and easy divorce are three vehicles the left seeks to employ to this end, and Bush not only opposes them, but is perhaps the only real political obstacle standing in the way of the public accepting the first two as it has the third.

Second, a defeat in Iraq would make us more reluctant to use force in the future. It would, like Vietnam, chasten us for a generation and make the use of military power much more difficult for future presidents. This prospect has a great deal of appeal for pacifists who are already deeply resentful that we used the military in Iraq in the first place.

Third, the secular left, simply put, hates America. They hate America because America is religious and they despise religion. They hate America because America promotes capitalism and they despise capitalism. They hate America because we have a checkered history and they see evil as a stain inherent in the fabric of our nation and its people. Mostly, though, they hate America because they themselves are Americans and they hate themselves.

They are burdened with guilt and self-loathing, and they project onto their nation the sins and impulses, real or imagined, that they find in their own souls. Hatred for America becomes a form of expiation for the guilt they feel for being American.

There may be other reasons why the left yearns to see the United States brought low by the sixth-century savages against whom we struggle, but in any such list these three surely rank near the top.

Racist Assumptions

La Shawn Barber calls our attention to this cartoon in the Indianapolis Star intended as commentary on a case in Indianapolis' Marion County Juvenile Detention Center where nine guards are accused of raping six teenage female inmates:

Here's a photo of the guards, or at least those whose photos were published:

So why did the cartoonist and the Star assume that if someone was a rapist he must be white? Imagine if the cartoon showed a black guard when all the accused were in fact white. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton would be picketing the Star's offices and demanding reparations.

Sounds like the racists at the Indianapolis Star need a little consciousness-raising.

Speaking of racists, now that mayor Ray Nagin has his wish that New Orleans be a "chocolate city" isn't it just a little ironic that he's had to call in a mostly white National Guard to keep the city from spiralling into chaos?