College Prospects

Students and parents of students might want to read a column my friend Byron wrote for yesterday's local paper. He says a number of interesting things and makes some good suggestions for those preparing for the challenges that college life will present. Here's the heart of his essay:

It has been a hard year for higher education. The massacre at Virginia Tech, the revelations of debauchery that came to light in the fiasco of the Duke rape trial, the reports of widespread cheating at some of our most prestigious schools. The arrest on sex charges of a mid-state professor reminds us of the complexities of navigating the college experience.

Books like "Binge: Campus Life in an Age of Disconnection and Excess" claim to report "what your college student won't tell you," while memoirs like "Goat" tell of brutal hazing within the fraternity system. Novels like Tom Wolfe's important "I Am Charlotte Simons" tell of the moral confusion amidst the "hooking up" culture of the postmodern campus. In a hipster sociological work, "My Freshman Year," a prof goes undercover posing as a first-year student living in the dorm. She was surprised to hear what the students said, how little they studied, and what they really thought of her tenured colleagues. She was surprised to see the lewd posters un- ashamedly displayed on many girls' doors.

Happily, there are reports that indicate a cultural, intellectual and spiritual renaissance among college students. Wall Street Journal reporter Naomi Riley's "God on the Quad" documents the increase in religious activities on many campuses. Groups like Hillel, the Newman Center and InterVarsity Christian Fellowship are flourishing. Riley makes it clear that such groups help with the often-tumultuous college transition.

Congregations that have cared for their children through high school are thinking about how to equip them to be faithful in what some have described as Babylon U. Locally, at least one church, Asbury United Methodist, has hired a campus worker whose job it is to represent the church to local colleges. With college and technical school enrollments rising, congregations may need to explore partnerships with para-church college ministry organizations and think creatively about ways to maintain an appropriate presence on campus.

A central Pennsylvania campus worker, Derek Melleby, has recently co-written an upbeat book to help Christian students bring their deepest convictions into their college classrooms. "The Outrageous Idea of Academic Faithfulness" is a guide for students that captures, I think, the longing of my confirmation class: to discover a purpose-laden sense of calling for the vocation of being a student. It tells stories of collegians who hungered for intellectual and moral coherence in their young adult lives, an outrageously idealistic sense of making a difference, meshing their faith and their college experience in ways that are exciting and sustainable.

What will become of the 2007 graduates who will leave us next month college-bound?

Some, I am confident, will thrive, holding in fresh ways the values and visions nurtured by home churches, synagogues, schools and community organizations. Let us wish them well. More, let us offer support and encouragement, starting in their freshman year.

Read the whole thing at the link.

RLC

Nobel-Caliber Inanity

If awards were given for pure rhetorical inanity Nobel Peace Prize winner Betty Williams of Ireland would surely be in the running. The other day she delivered herself of the following piece of gentle, peace-prize caliber nonsense:

"Right now, I could kill George Bush," she said. "No, I don't mean that. How could you nonviolently kill somebody? I would love to be able to do that." About half the crowd gave her a standing ovation after she called for Mr. Bush's removal from power.

"The Muslim world right now is suffering beyond belief," she said.

"Unless the president of the United States is held responsible for what he's doing and what he has done, there's no one in the Muslim world who will forgive him."

When an audience member told Ms. Williams that Vice President Dick Cheney would become president if George Bush were impeached, she said, "Can't you impeach them both?"

"It's twisted. It's all wrong," she said. "There are so many lies being told. It's hard to be an American and go out into the world right now."

Forget the hypocrisy of a peace-prize winner wishing she could kill someone, that sort of talk is common among the Left and has long ago ceased to surprise or shock us. Focus instead on her implication that the Muslim world right now is "suffering beyond belief" because of George Bush. This is as daft a statement as any that Bush Derangement Syndrome sufferers have levelled at him since 9/11.

Exactly where are Muslims suffering? Afghanistan? Are Muslims there pining for the good old days under the Taliban when women were stoned to death simply for talking to a man who wasn't her husband? Iraq? Are Muslims there worse off today than they were under Saddam Hussein who starved, tortured and murdered them by the hundreds of thousands? Gaza? Are Muslims in Gaza suffering, which they certainly are, because of Bush or because of the corrupt butchers of Hamas? How about Lebanon? Is the suffering in that pitiable land due to George Bush or to the machinations of Hezebollah, Syria, and Iran?

Exactly where and how, Ms. Williams, are Muslims suffering because of American policies under Bush? Of course she doesn't tell us because that would require facts, and it's much easier to get a standing ovation if you don't let inconvenient things like facts get in the way of your demagoguery.

Her statement is so incredibly uninformed, so dumb, as to make one wonder whether Ms. Williams knows anything at all about the world for which she presumes to speak.

RLC

Don't Quit Now

The Democrats are increasing the volume on their calls for a withdrawal from Iraq, but as Kimberly Kagin points out in the Wall Street Journal, pulling out now would be to quit just when success is at hand. Of course, as we've argued here before that's precisely why the Democrats are unwilling to wait until General Petraus' progress report is issued in September. The Dems appear to want to do two things: They want to foster the impression that Iraq is a lost cause, and they want us to get out before it becomes plain to everyone that they're wrong.

There's no other explanation for the Democrats' behavior that makes any sense. They have so deeply embedded themselves in the psychology of defeat that to have Iraq turn out well would destroy their credibility with the average American voter for at least a generation. Victory in Iraq would be the worst thing that could happen to the political aspirations of the Democratic party so they demand withdrawal now before victory in Iraq destroys the political credibility of their party.

Read Kagan's entire article. It's an excellent picture of what's really happening in Iraq, and what's happening doesn't look at all like what much of the media is reporting.

While we're on the subject, another thing that doesn't seem to get much mention in the commentary on the war is this: It's becoming increasingly clear that the enemy in Iraq is not comprised to any great extent of Iraqis. The enemy is al Qaida. This doesn't get mentioned much because, I suspect, the critics of the administration have been relentless in faulting Bush for invading Iraq when the real enemy is al Qaida which, we were told, was hiding out in Afghanistan. We were foolish, the argument went, to expend our resources on Iraq when those who declared war on us on 9/11, if not before, were sitting in the mountains of Afghanistan thumbing their noses at us.

Now it appears that the struggle in Iraq is at least largely a struggle of Iraqis and Americans against al Qaida. The tape released by al Zawahiri last week confirms this as does almost every report we read about the fighting. In other words, we are primarily at war with the enemy who attacked us on 9/11, we're winning that war now that we've decided to fight it aggressively, but nevertheless the Democrats and some Republicans want us to quit.

We're like a football team driving down the field with the clock winding down. The team has momentum, they're working their way into field goal range, and just at that moment the coach pulls them off the field and sends them into the locker room. When asked by his stunned players why he did that he tells them that the team has already spent enough energy trying to win, too many players are being injured, and that it's time to go home.

Any coach who did that would be rightly suspected of either having bet against his own team or of having lost his senses. I leave the reader to complete the analogy for him/herself.

RLC

Ali Delivers a TKO

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali Muslim who grew up in the Netherlands and emigrated to the United States, is interviewed on Canadian television by an anti-American Canadian named Avi Lewis. After jabbing at her with most of the left-wing shibboleths about American evils, etc. and suffering the fervently pro-American Ali's gracious but powerful counterpunches, Lewis concludes the session by asking her if she went to a school where she learned all her pro-American cliches.

It was a pretty funny question considering that he sounded in the interview like he learned everything he believes about America from Michael Moore.

Anyway, watch the video. Hirsi Ali is a very impressive woman and she has a very important message for the West about Islam. If she were the model for every immigrant wishing to come into this country I'd campaign for open borders.

HT: Hot Air.

RLC

Killing the Goose

The Bush tax cuts are still producing revenue and lowering the deficit. Here's the story in case you only get your news from the MSM:

The nation's budget deficit will drop to $205 billion in the fiscal year that ends in September, less than half of what it was at its peak in 2004, according to new White House estimates.

The new figure is considerably smaller than original estimates. In February, the White House predicted that this year's deficit would be $244 billion because of stronger-than-expected revenue collections. The deficit hit a peak of $413 billion in 2004 and was $248 billion last year.

The deficit would be much lower, of course, if Congress and the White House hadn't gone on a spending binge over the last five or so years.

Nevertheless, despite the salutary effects of the Bush tax cuts, they're in jeopardy. The Democrats, always quick to take the axe to the neck of whatever goose is laying the golden egg, want to abolish the Bush tax policy, raise taxes, and thereby stifle economic prosperity.

And, for some unfathomable reason, people will still vote for them.

RLC

Blessing and Curse

Paul Marshall discusses in NRO the Hudson Institute's Religious Freedom report. There's much in the report that makes for interesting reading, but in his summary Marshall calls special attention to the following:

Religious freedom [is not] merely a Western preoccupation: It is not confined to any area or continent. Despite the problems in the Islamic world, there are free Muslim countries such as Mali or Senegal. They, together with Japan, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Guatemala, Botswana, Namibia, and South Africa score better in this survey than do Belgium, France, Germany, or Greece.

While Western Europe is still one of the freest regions of the world, the situation is worsening and most countries score worse on religious freedom than they do for civil liberties in general. The reasons for this - continuing religious discrimination, increasingly aggressive secular ideologies, and an increase in religiously demarcated violence - illustrate and exacerbate the continent's increasing tensions.

This is not surprising given the depressing reports flowing out of Europe lately. Europe is becoming increasingly polarized between a hard-core secularism and an intolerant Islamism. It's ironic that the nursery of Christianity has come to despise the worldview that is responsible for whatever cultural glory it has achieved.

The most egregious persecuting states tend to be either Communist, such as North Korea and China, nationalist, such as Burma and Eritrea, or radical Islamist, such as Iran and Saudi Arabia. They also tend to be those that act against U.S. interests. Conversely, those with good records are likely to be good U.S. allies.

Nor is this surprising. Countries whose leaders have respected religious liberty have rarely, if ever, gone to war with each other in the last 200 years.

Religious freedom also correlates highly with other human rights, such as Freedom House's civil-liberty index (.862) and political-liberties index (.822), and with Reporters without Borders press-freedom index (.804). Countries with good religious records also have comparatively little social conflict, remain democratic, and are unlikely to become failed states.

There is strong relation with economic well-being; both of men and women, and religiously based social restrictions on women are one of the major determinants of their economic status. One major reason for this is the strong linkage with economic freedom: Our religious-freedom scores have a correlation of .743 with the Heritage Foundation/Wall Street Journal economic-freedom index. This is more than a finding that rich countries tend to have other good things as well. Religious freedom not only correlates well with positive economic outcomes but also actually contributes toward them since it promotes the accumulation of social and spiritual capital. Good religious policies, good economic policies, and good economic outcomes go together.

Meanwhile, anti-theists like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens rail against Christianity. They insist that Christian theism is a blight upon civilization and should be abolished. They argue that teaching children religious dogma is a form of "child abuse." Their hatred clouds their reason and prevents them from seeing the evidence that Christianity has, on balance, been a tremendous blessing to the world and state atheism, especially in the twentieth century, has been a terrible curse.

St. Paul might have had people like our modern anti-theists in mind when, in his letter to the Romans, he talks about those who, "Professing themselves wise...became fools.... [and] exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator."

RLC

Apoplectic

Here's some must-see video of Tucker Carlson of MSNBC interviewing a lefty who comes almost completely unhinged by Carlson's questions.

The interviewee, one Michael Rectenwald, is the founder of Citizens for Legitimate Government and has been busy publicizing the fact that Sen. David Vitter, a Republican from Louisianna, was on the list of clients of the D.C. Madam.

Rectenwald appears to be on the verge of a cerebral hemorrhage because Carlson has the temerity to call his behavior shameful. It's fun to watch.

You can get more details here or just go right to the video.

RLC

Bold Prediction

Undaunted and unabashed by the utter failure of my bold prediction last November that Republican Sen. Rick Santorum would either win his race against Bob Casey (By the way, whatever became of Casey?) or take Don Rumsfeld's place as Secretary of Defense, I offer another foolish prognostication here.

There's still a long way to go before the primaries so there's plenty of time for everyone to forget that I said this if I'm wrong, and if I'm right I'll be sure to remind you of it:

The Democratic nominee for president will be ..... Al Gore.

Gore's got a lot that Hillary and Obama lack, not the least of which is experience. He has none (or little) of the ethical baggage that Hillary is dragging behind her, and he seems more serious than Barack Obama who looks to us to be running for the title of first black Vice-president in history.

Gore's announcement would trigger paroxysms of joy among the left-wing Democratic base. He has an impeccable anti-war record, and is, of course, a saint among the environmentalists. He has what passes for genuine star-power among the lefties who would pump tons of money into his campaign if he got in.

At some point the Democrats are going to realize that Hillary is a liability and Obama, with only two years in the Senate, is just not ready. If Gore announces his candidacy he'd be the answer to their prayers, or the secular equivalent thereof.

Anyway, we'll see if he throws his hat in the ring. I think he will. He believes he should be president now instead of Bush who he believes stole the presidency, and he wants to avenge the 2000 election "debacle." 2008 would probably be his last chance, and I doubt that he'll pass it up, especially because he probably senses that the nomination would be his for the asking.

RLC

The Spirit of Stalin Lives

For many on the Left disagreement with their dogma is indistinguishable from heresy, or worse. Remember the Weather Channel's Heidi Cullen who insisted that any meteorologist who was skeptical of the global warming orthodoxies should be decertified? Do you recall the fate of astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez who was denied tenure at Iowa State because he believes that there is strong scientific evidence to support the conclusion that the universe was intentionally designed?

Consider now the words of Robert Kennedy, Jr. which he evidently screamed to the audience at one of the Live Earth concerts the other day:

"Get rid of all these rotten politicians that we have in Washington, who are nothing more than corporate toadies," said Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the environmentalist author, president of Waterkeeper Alliance and Robert F. Kennedy's son, who grew hoarse from shouting. "This is treason. And we need to start treating them as traitors."

Apparently, Mr. Kennedy believes that anyone who disagrees with him about global warming or the best way to utilize environmental resources should be summarily shot or at least put in prison. Maybe the Stalinist comrade has a nice cozy cottage in the Siberian gulag in mind for those with whom hwe disagrees.

One longs for the days when America was the land of freedom of opinion. One grows nostalgic for the antiquated idea that our policies should be based on solid evidence. One dimly but fondly recalls campus lefties fervently reciting the Voltarian dictum that "I may hate what you say but I'll defend to the death your right to say it."

For today's secular Left those quaint ideas only apply when it's their ideas which are struggling to be heard. In a world in which their particular myths and superstitions are ascendent there is no room for freedom or dissent. Either toe the line or be punished.

RLC

Winds of War

Why is there nothing in our media about this? Michael Totten reports that Syria has moved into Lebanon:

A few days ago Lebanese daily newspaper Al Mustaqbal quietly reported a limited Syrian invasion of Lebanon:

"Syrian troops on Thursday reportedly have penetrated three kilometers into Lebanese territories, taking up positions in the mountains near Yanta in east Lebanon's Bekaa Valley.

"The daily Al Mustaqbal, citing sources who confirmed the cross-border penetration, did not say when the procedure in the Fahs Hill overlooking Deir al-Ashaer in the Rashaya province took place.

"The sources said Syrian troops, backed by bulldozers, were fortifying positions "in more than one area" along the Lebanese border, erecting earth mounds and digging "hundreds" of trenches and individual bunkers."

Totten then adds the following:

If Israel sent the IDF three kilometers into Lebanon and started digging trenches and building bunkers it would make news all over the world. But Syria does it and everyone shrugs. Hardly anyone even knows it happened at all.

Syria can, apparently, get away with just about anything. I could hardly blame Assad at this point if he believes, after such an astonishing non-response, that he can reconquer Beirut. So far he can kill and terrorize and invade and destroy with impunity, at least up to a point. What is that point? Has anyone in the U.S., Israel, the Arab League, the European Union, or the United Nations even considered the question?

Meanwhile, the Syrian government is evacuating its citizens from Lebanon in advance of...something they expect to happen after July 15, 2007.

What could that "something" be? A coup in Beirut? An attack by Hezbollah into Israel? Could Israel allow either of these to occur without responding, and if they respond will the Israel-haters in European capitals blame them for taking action?

At least we know the answer to that last question.

RLC

Why Europe and Not Us

Matthew Schofield explains why Europe, and not America, seems to be the target of so many recent terror attacks. He writes:

When emergency workers spotted the bomb-laden car a week ago in London's crowded West End, it was clear that for the fourth straight year, the city was being targeted for a major terrorist attack.

Yet Britain isn't the Great Satan to al-Qaida extremists. Most terrorism experts agree that for al-Qaida operatives and sympathizers, the preferred villain is the United States.

So why do attacks keep happening in Britain? And why, since Sept. 11, 2001, has America avoided another assault?

Karl-Heinz Kamp, security policy coordinator at Germany's Konrad Adenauer research center, said it is easy to understand why.

"The U.S. has a historical advantage; America is still the land of opportunity to the whole world. The people moving there believe the American dream of social mobility," he said. "In Europe, we've historically treated our immigrants as hired help, and waited for them to finish the work they arrived for and go home."

Bob Ayers, a security and terrorism expert with London's Chatham House, a foreign policy research center, said that because immigrants to the U.S. can become Americans, the nation has a huge advantage in avoiding homegrown al-Qaida terrorists. Europeans encourage immigrants to retain their native cultures, causing them to be ostracized more readily.

"The Islamic population in the United States is better assimilated into the general population, whereas here, in Germany, in France, they're very much on the outside looking in," Ayers said. "When people get disaffected, sadly, there's not much loyalty to country in that sort of situation."

Experts, noting that success against terrorism can be temporary, agree that there are other reasons.

The U.S. is geographically more separate from the Middle East, the home of much Islamic fundamentalism. Beyond that, especially since 9-11, the U.S. has cracked down on travel and new-resident visas, making it hard for terrorists from outside to get into the country.

Magnus Ranstorp, chief scientist at the Swedish National Defense College, said U.S. efforts to track down everything involved in terrorism, particularly funding, have made it very difficult to operate in America.

"The United States is so difficult to crack, they have to have established operatives living inside the country to be effective," he said. "To date, they haven't shown themselves. The truth is, while it's not the al-Qaida Great Satan, Europe is a much easier place to move around."

Yet experts agree that British security services are very professional and, as Ayers noted, "getting better and better at what they do with all the practice they've had since July 2005," when suicide bombers hit London's transit system.

There's more so you might want to read the whole piece. It's not long.

We wonder, though, if the much maligned NSA "eavesdropping" program and the Patriot act are not also largely responsible for the fact that we have not been hit since 9/11. Whatever one thinks of George Bush, the Democrats' claim that we are less safe now than we were on 9/12 is utter nonsense. If, at the end of his term, there have been no further attacks on our homeland, the Bush administration will deserve an enormous amount of credit and gratitude from the American people.

RLC

Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah

Christianity Today's Stan Guthrie tells us about the cool new summer camps for young atheists:

While tens of thousands of kids head out to Christian camps, Camp Quest is offering an alternative for those who take their summer recreation without God. About 150 young people attend Camp Quest programs in Ohio, Michigan, Minnesota, California, and Ontario, according to an article in the Chicago Tribune.

The founder, Edwin Kagin, is legal director for the group American Atheists. He said the atheist camp was founded after the Boy Scouts barred atheists and gays from leadership roles during the 1990s. "We wanted a camp not to preach there is no God," said Kagin, "but as a place where children could learn it's OK not to believe in God."

The Tribune interviewed several young campers in Ohio about their beliefs, or lack thereof. I don't think Christians have a lot to worry about. Here is a sampling:

"[Sophia] Riehemann notes that a secular perspective takes away childhood joys other kids have, such as Christmas. But that doesn't bother her. 'They have Santa Claus,' she said, 'and we have Isaac Newton.'"

Actually, Sophia, I hate to break this to you, but you have Santa Claus, and we have Isaac Newton.

Then there is Allison Page, who is described as a 9-year-old only child. Reflecting on the biblical story of Cain and Abel, Allison opines, "It just doesn't make sense. A brother wouldn't kill his brother."

Ah, the innocence of children. Just wait until you have siblings, Allison.

I wonder why parents would send their children to such a camp. Are they afraid that unless they innoculate their children against the disease of religious belief that their children will grow up to think it more reasonable and plausible than atheism? And who's telling these kids that it's not okay to disbelieve?

I wonder, too, about what sorts of activities the children engage in during their outings. Perhaps there are campfire discussions about why the youngsters' life doesn't have to have meaning in order to be meaningful and how they can be moral even though goodness doesn't exist. Maybe the young atheists are instructed by their counsellors on how human beings can still have dignity and worth even though they're nothing but sacks of blood, bone and excrement. Or perhaps there's a session on how to make up human rights when there really is nothing upon which to base them. This session is probably combined with one that explores how the universe emerged out of nothing all by itself since the two ideas are so similar.

Anyway, the camp sounds like enormous fun, and I'm sure the tykes come home excited about facing the world as atheists.

RLC

Morphing Myth into Truth

Bruce Chapman catches The New York Times in a bit of a fib about the power of Darwinian evolution to accomplish its alleged miracles:

On June 26 The New York Times ran an article by Douglas H. Erwin, senior scientist at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, in which he stated as demonstrated fact the power of natural selection to create the eye. We now can see (forgive the pun) that natural selection "is the primary agent in shaping new adaptations."

His example? "Computer simulations," he declares, "have shown how selection can produce a complex eye from a simple eyespot in just a few hundred thousand years."

Really, Dr. Erwin? Where is your proof of this important fact? What computer simulations, published where and when and by whom? Just a citation or two will do.

One also might scoff at the exaggerated faith shown computer simulations in general, since they frequently cannot even predict next week's weather accurately. But leave that topic alone for now. Let's just have the evidence of published computer simulations referred to by Dr. Erwin.

One suspects that the Erwin claim is based on Dan Nilsson & Susan Pelger's study, "A Pessimistic Estimate of the Time Required for an Eye to Evolve,".... However, as Dr. David Berlinski pointed out a few years ago in Commentary, that paper contains no computer simulation whatsoever, a point obvious to anyone reading it and confirmed in writing by its senior author. It was Richard Dawkins who conveyed the widespread impression to the contrary, both in River out of Eden (1995) and The New Statesman of July 16, 1995. The thesis that there exists a computer simulation for the development of the eye is an urban myth that has built upon Dawkins' uncorrected error.

Details may be found in Volume 115, Number 4 of Commentary, April 2003, under the title "A Scientific Scandal."

The New York Times should retract Dr. Erwin's claim or substantiate it. So should Dr. Erwin. This isn't hard to research and the reply should not be fudged with the name-calling and hand waving that has become standard Darwinist dialogue. Either there are actual computer simulations that back the Dawkins/Erwin/New York Times assertion about evolution of the eye by natural selection, or there are not.

If a myth is repeated often enough, the Freudians have taught us, it soon becomes an accepted truth, even if it's false. But setting aside the lack of veracity to the claim that their are computer simulations that show the development of an eye from a simple eyespot, the even bigger problem, it seems to me, is that even if such simulations existed they would prove nothing about the power of undirected, purposeless, unintelligent, mechanistic forces to produce a structure like the eye.

A computer simulation is itself the product of an intelligent mind acting purposefully with a preconceived goal and purpose. If a computer can simulate the production of an eye, all that demonstrates is that an intelligence is capable of designing a complex organ. It demonstrates nothing about whether such an organ can result from blind natural processes.

RLC

Who Knows?

Amidst all the talk of global warming one question that needs to be asked more often is, if the planet warms would that be necessarily bad? If so, why?

Indeed, much evidence shows that the earth was significantly warmer in the past than it is now. If a warming panet should make the equatorial regions uninhabitable it may open up vast areas in Canada, Siberia, and Greenland to human habitation and agriculture. It may also increase rainfall and increase food production in other, currently more arid, lands. Who knows?

It's interesting that Al Gore, who famously screamed that George Bush had "played on our fears," is doing precisely that with his film An Inconvenient Truth. The earth may be warming, or it may not be. If it is warming it may be due to human activity, or it may not be, and if it's warming, whether due to human activity or solar fluctuations, the temperature rise may on balance be a good thing, or it may not be. How does Gore, or anyone else, know?

RLC

Assault on the Red Mosque

For those of you following the seige of the Red Mosque and the adjacent madrassa in Islamabad, Pakistan Bill Roggio gives some details of the army's assault on the compound and the killing of the leader of insurrectionists, Abdul Rashid Ghazi, early this morning.

The assault by Pakistani forces on the radical Islamist mosque known as the Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque, has resulted in the death of Abdul Rasheed Ghazi, the mosque's leader. Ghazi was shot and killed in the basement of the Jamia Hafsa, a madrassa adjacent to the mosque, along with upwards of 100 "militants." Last evening, it was reported Ghazi was captured. Ghazi had sworn he would not be taken alive, but would die as a martyr.

The Pakistani government confirmed Ghazi was killed in the fighting, however, his body has not been recovered. "He was spotted in the basement and asked to come out. He came out with four or five militants who kept on firing at security forces," said Brigadier Javed Cheema, a spokesman for the Inter Services Public Relation branch. "The troops responded and in the crossfire he was killed. ... There are still certain areas to be cleared. The body is in the compound. The other militants were also killed in the fighting."

AllahPundit has more details at Hot Air, and Sky News has a helpful video.

RLC

The Man With No Base

The National Review's Byron York, writing in the WaPo, explains why he thinks Bush's presidency is all but over. The depressing thing about his column is that it may well be right. There's still much to admire about Bush but he seems determined to try to placate his implacable political opponents and to alienate his supporters.

York starts his essay this way:

Let's say you're a Republican president, a bit more than midway through your second term. You're scrambling to salvage what you can of a deeply unpopular war, you're facing a line of subpoenas from Democrats in Congress and your poll ratings are in the basement. What do you do?

You estrange the very Republicans whose backing you need the most.

That's precisely what President Bush has managed to accomplish during the two big political developments of recent weeks: the commutation of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby's prison sentence and the defeat of comprehensive immigration reform.

York explains why many conservatives think that Bush should have pardoned Libby altogether, but for the record, I think Bush did the right thing in commuting Libby's prison sentence rather than pardoning him. Libby was, after all, convicted by a jury of perjury. Nevertheless, the sentence was indeed excessive, given the nature and context of the offense, and Libby will still, despite the commutation, pay a steep price for his dissimulations.

At any rate, the President's stance on immigration was unnecessarily insulting to his Republican supporters who thought him to be flat wrong on the matter. It was another Harriet Miers moment and, coupled with his addiction to government spending and his inability to bring the Iraq war to a timely conclusion, a lot of his base is starting to shuffle away.

Here are three things he can do to start bringing them back: Show more visible and energetic leadership on the war in Iraq, get the border fence built, and pardon (or commute) the sentences of border agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean. It is beyond comprehension that a President willing to grant a full pardon to millions of people who snuck into this country illegally has nevertheless failed to pardon two law enforcement officers who may have exercised poor judgment in shooting at a known drug smuggler.

What message does this send to Bush's base, to law enforcement, or indeed to the nation?

RLC

Evo-Psych

Evolutionary psychology is the name given to the discipline which used to be called sociobiology. In short, it asserts that all of our basic behaviors and drives are programmed by our genes which have evolved these characteristics in order to increase the likelihood that they would be perpetuated into future generations.

Richard Dawkins first gained fame for his book on this theory called The Selfish Gene. At any rate, Evo-Psych has led to an outpouring of explanations for human behavior, some of them interesting, some of them ridiculous, and most of them impossible to subject to empirical test. The only limit to Evo-Psych explanations is the imagination of the person doing the explaining.

A good example of this is an article by Alan S. Miller and Satoshi Kanazawa in Psychology Today magazine. The authors make a number of claims, some of which are simply wrong and many of which are ludicrous. An example of the former is the claim that:

Judeo-Christian traditions hold that monogamy is the only natural form of marriage.

This is not true. There's nothing in the Judeo-Christian tradition that suggests that monogamy is the only natural form of marriage. Monogamy is not enjoined upon Jews and Christians because it's natural or normal but rather because it is just. Polygynous societies tend to treat women as property, monogamous societies tend to treat them as equals. In polygynous societies a few men monopolize the majority of women, in monogamous societies each man and each woman have a chance to marry.

Despite its flaws, however, the article is an interesting read. Even more interesting, and certainly more amusing, is Fred Reed's blistering critique of it. Reed's essay can be found here and the link to the article is at the bottom of his post.

RLC

Why We Must Stay

Michael Yon is an independent journalist embedded with American forces in Iraq whose dispatches from the war will someday earn him a Pulitzer, or should. His latest is worth reading in its entirety, but here are some excerpts:

The big news on the streets today is that the people of Baqubah are generally ecstatic, although many hold in reserve a serious concern that we will abandon them again. For many Iraqis, we have morphed from being invaders to occupiers to members of a tribe. I call it the "al Ameriki tribe," or "tribe America."

I've seen this kind of progression in Mosul, out in Anbar and other places, and when I ask our military leaders if they have sensed any shift, many have said, yes, they too sense that Iraqis view us differently. In the context of sectarian and tribal strife, we are the tribe that people can-more or less and with giant caveats-rely on.

Most Iraqis I talk with acknowledge that if it was ever about the oil, it's not now. Not mostly anyway. It clearly would have been cheaper just to buy the oil or invade somewhere easier that has more. Similarly, most Iraqis seem now to realize that we really don't want to stay here, and that many of us can't wait to get back home. They realize that we are not resolved to stay, but are impatient to drive down to Kuwait and sail away. And when they consider the Americans who actually deal with Iraqis every day, the Iraqis can no longer deny that we really do want them to succeed. But we want them to succeed without us.....

The argument that the war was about oil was always ridiculous. If we wanted oil we could have invaded Saudi Arabia or stayed in Kuwait. The idea that we would take on the world's third largest military for oil when we could have taken it without breaking a sweat from somebody else was an argument born of intellectual desperation.

Then Yon gives us this horrifying report:

The official reported that on a couple of occasions in Baqubah, al Qaeda invited to lunch families they wanted to convert to their way of thinking. In each instance, the family had a boy, he said, who was about 11 years old. As Lt. David Wallach interpreted the man's words, I saw Wallach go blank and silent. He stopped interpreting for a moment. I asked Wallach, "What did he say?" Wallach said that at these luncheons, the families were sat down to eat. And then their boy was brought in with his mouth stuffed. The boy had been baked. Al Qaeda served the boy to his family.

It is absolutely unimaginable that human beings who profess to be doing the work of God would be so depraved and inhuman. But there's more. Yon describes another al Qaida horror in this dispatch. Read the whole report.

That's the nature of the enemy we fight, and it's the fate the average Iraqi will face if the Democrats and MoveOn.org have their way and we pull out too soon. How anyone with any sense of responsibility to their fellow man can just walk away and leave people to this kind of savagery and barbarism is beyond me.

Their reply, of course, is that we're there now and this sort of thing is still happening so how much worse can it be if we leave? I find that argument to be utterly specious. Everything we've seen about al Qaida's behavior suggests that if we leave the whole country will be turned into an abbatoir as the terrorists rush in to eliminate any and all who stand in the way of their total domination. If we stay we will gradually flush the barbarians from their havens, as we've been doing since the surge began, and save the lives of millions.

Maybe I'm missing something, but it seems to me that leaving now would be the most heartless, cruel, and immoral thing our nation could do.

Before you say you disagree, please read Yon's dispatches at the links above.

RLC

On Being a Jerk

Joe Carter at Evangelical Outpost has a confession to make: He is, he claims, a jerk. Despite this short-coming he makes a serious point about how not to be one.

I don't like being a jerk and I don't like making excuses for my nasty behavior. So I attempt to be nicer, more likable. I pretend to be genial and gregarious in the hope that I'll eventually become less of a jerk.

But it doesn't work. The more I pose and pretend that I'm something I'm not, the more I appear to be a hypocritical jerk.

The main problem is that I go about it all wrong. Instead of trying to be more likable I should focus on being more loving. As C.S. Lewis once noted, "Christian Love (or Charity) for our neighbors is quite a different thing from liking or affection."

Read the whole thing. There's as much wisdom in it as there is humor.

RLC

Addressing Illegal Immigration

Yesterday the local Sunday paper ran the fourth column in the series they've invited me to participate in. I re-worked some material from earlier Viewpoint posts on illegal immigration, and the result can be read at the link or here:

Prior to last week's Senate vote the White House insisted that there was no alternative to the ill-fated immigration bill. It was that bill or nothing we were told by its supporters, but I doubt that most people believed that. I think the American people would've been willing to accept a two-stage measure which looked something like this:

The first stage would guarantee that a border fence be built and the border secured. This is the sine qua non of any serious immigration reform. There's no point in painting the house while the ceiling is still leaking. Once our borders are impervious to all but the most dauntless and determined, and once this has been duly certified by a trustworthy commission, then the situation of those already here could be addressed, but not until.

After certification, any subsequent plan for what to do with those already in the country illegally could be crafted to avoid the worst elements of amnesty and yet demonstrate compassion for people desperate to make a decent living. To that end, once the border is secure, I believe Congress would find public support for legislation that allows illegals to stay in the country indefinitely as "guest workers" with no penalty if the following provisos were also adopted and enforced:

1) Illegal aliens would be required to apply for a government identification card. After a reasonable grace period anyone without proper ID would be subject to deportation. This would be a one-time opportunity so that aliens entering the country illegally in the future would be unable to legally acquire a card.

2) No one who had entered the country illegally would at any time be eligible for citizenship (unless they leave the country and reapply through proper channels). Nor would they be entitled to the benefits of citizens. They would not be eligible to vote, or to receive food stamps, unemployment compensation, subsidized housing, AFDC, earned income tax credits, social security, Medicare, etc. They would have limited access to taxpayer largesse, although churches and other charitable organizations would be free to render whatever assistance they wish. Whatever taxes the workers pay would be part of the price of living and working here.

3) Their children, born on our soil, would no longer be granted automatic citizenship (This would, unfortunately, require a constitutional amendment), though they could attend public schools. Moreover, these children would become eligible for citizenship at age eighteen provided they graduate from high school, or earn a GED, or serve in the military.

4) There would be no "chain" immigration. Those who entered illegally would not be permitted to bring their families here. If they wish to see their loved ones they should return home.

5) Any criminal activity, past or future, would be sufficient cause for immediate deportation, as would any serious infraction of the motor vehicle code.

6) There would be no penalty for businesses which employ guest workers, and workers would be free to seek employment anywhere they can find it. Neither the workers nor their employers would have to live in fear of the INS.

This is just an outline, of course, and there are details to be worked out, but it's both simpler and fairer than the Senate bill. Those who have followed the rules for citizenship wouldn't be leap-frogged by those who didn't, and illegals who have proper ID would benefit by being able to work without fear. The long-term cost to taxpayers of illegal immigration would be considerably reduced, trouble-makers among the immigrant population would be deported, and American businesses would not be responsible for background investigations of job applicants. It would also provide incentive for American youngsters to get an education and acquire skills so they don't have to compete for jobs with unskilled immigrants willing to work for lower wages. The one group that would "lose" would be the politicians who wish to pad their party's voter rolls. They'd be out of luck.

Of course, this proposal won't satisfy those who insist that we send all illegals packing, nor will it please those who think the requirements for letting them stay are too stringent, but it seems a more simple, practical, just, and humane solution to the problem than most other plans that have been suggested.

To be sure, it entails a kind of amnesty, but it doesn't reward illegals with the benefits of citizenship as the Senate bill would have. The "amnesty" is contingent upon first stopping the flow of illegals across the border and also upon immigrants keeping themselves out of trouble while they're here.

If, however, the conditions for being allowed to work in this country sound too onerous, if illegal immigrants conclude they could do better elsewhere, they would, of course, be free to leave.

RLC