Hypocrisy, at the Very Least

"Well, why, all of a sudden, if he had all these grave concerns, did he not raise these sooner? This is one-and-a-half years after he left the administration. And now, all of a sudden, he's raising these grave concerns that he claims he had. And I think you have to look at some of the facts. One, he is bringing this up in the heat of a presidential campaign. He has written a book and he certainly wants to go out there and promote that book."

Scott McClellan, March 22, 2004, speaking of Richard Clarke who had just written a book blasting the Bush administration.

HT: Michelle Malkin

With all the sturm und drang today about McClellan's perfidy and hypocrisy, which shortcomings in his character he seems to have left little reason to doubt, the chief questions about his book have gone unanswered. To wit: To what extent, exactly, is George Bush actually guilty of the malfeasances his former friend implicitly accuses him of and what evidence does he offer in support of the charges?

This is from the link:

McClellan issues this disclaimer about Bush: "I do not believe he or his White House deliberately or consciously sought to deceive the American people."

But most everything else he writes comes awfully close to making just this assertion, all the more stunning coming from someone who had been one of the longest-serving of the band of loyalists to come to Washington with Bush from Texas.

The heart of the book concerns Bush's decision to go to war in Iraq, a determination McClellan says the president had made by early 2002 - at least a full year before the invasion - if not even earlier.

"He signed off on a strategy for selling the war that was less than candid and honest," McClellan writes in What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception.

McClellan says Bush's main reason for war always was "an ambitious and idealistic post-9/11 vision of transforming the Middle East through the spread of freedom." But Bush and his advisers made "a marketing choice" to downplay this rationale in favor of one focused on increasingly trumped-up portrayals of the threat posed by the weapons of mass destruction.

During the "political propaganda campaign to sell the war to the American people," Bush and his team tried to make the "WMD threat and the Iraqi connection to terrorism appear just a little more certain, a little less questionable than they were." Something else was downplayed as well, McClellan says: any discussion of "the possible unpleasant consequences of war - casualties, economic effects, geopolitical risks, diplomatic repercussions."

Did the administration really make a conscious "marketing choice" or were they simply predisposed to see in Iraq what they expected to see? What evidence does McClellan offer that the administration deliberately manipulated facts to deceive the American public? Given what was known at the time and in the wake of 9/11, was the administration trying to enact an idealistic geo-political agenda by invading Iraq or were they following a policy of "better safe than sorry" in toppling one of the most evil men since Adolf Hitler? Or were they doing both?

I'm sure Mr. McClellan will be asked to answer these questions and others like them before more than one Congressional committee.

Meanwhile, we may reflect on how sad it is that people who feel that trashing one's benefactor in print after declining the opportunity to honorably leave the service of the benefactor, is an act of personal betrayal when done by others, but who will themselves indulge in the same ignoble behavior when the opportunity presents itself to them.

RLC

America's Dark Ages

In an essay in First Things titled The Sixties Again and Again George Weigel points to six events or "moments" which occurred in that lamentable decade which forever changed this nation and its people:

Taken together, these six moments suggest that something of enduring consequence happened to liberal politics, and thus to American political culture, during the Sixties. A politics of reason gave way to a politics of emotion and flirted with the politics of irrationality; the claims of moral reason were displaced by moralism; the notion that all men and women were called to live lives of responsibility was displaced by the notion that some people were, by reason of birth, victims; patriotism became suspect, to be replaced by a vague internationalism; democratic persuasion was displaced by judicial activism. Each of these consequences is much with us today. What one thinks about them defines the substratum of the politics of 2008, the issues-beneath-the-issues.

You'll have to read Weigel's essay to find out what those six moments were.

If reading about the sixties is more than you can think you can bear, take heart, it could be worse. The article could have been about the seventies. Perhaps the only decade in America's history more nightmarish than the sixties was the one which came immediately after it.

Roe v. Wade, forced busing, Watergate, mile long lines at the pumps, the explosive growth of crime, government entitlements and divorce, My Lai and our ignominious retreat from southeast Asia, the string of court decisions which made many of our schools all but ungovernable, and on and on. For a good synopsis of this miserable but strangely fascinating period in our nation's history see David Frum's How We Got Here.

RLC

Substance Dualism

Dinesh D'Souza offers us a concise introduction to the mind/body controversy in this essay. He begins with this:

Conventional wisdom holds that the human mind is nothing more than the human brain. This belief derives from materialism. By "materialism" I don't mean the mania to shop unceasingly at the mall. Rather, I mean the philosophy that material reality is all that there is. Immaterial or spiritual realities are, in this view, simply epiphenomena of the material world.

We find the materialist view ably expressed in Francis Crick's The Astonishing Hypothesis. What Crick finds astonishing is that our thoughts, emotions and feelings consist entirely in the physiological activity in the circuitry of the brain. Daniel Dennett argues that "mind" is simply a term for what the brain does. And how do we know that the brain and the mind are essentially the same? The best evidence is that when the brain is damaged, the injury affects the mind. Patients whose brains atrophy due to stroke, for instance, lose their ability to distinguish colors or to empathize with others.

But in his book The Spiritual Brain, neuroscientist Mario Beauregard shows why the Crick-Dennett position is based on a fallacy. Yes, the brain is the necessary locus or venue for the mind to operate. It does not follow that the two are the same. Beauregard gives a telling analogy. "Olympic swimming events require an Olympic class swimming pool. But the pool does not create the Olympic events; it makes them feasible at a given location." Far from being identical to the mind, Beauregard argues that the brain "is an organ suitable for connecting the mind to the rest of the universe."

The book he refers to by Mario Beauregard, The Spiritual Brain, makes an excellent case for what is called substance dualism, the view that in addition to our material body we also possess a mind that is not reducible to matter. The book, co-written with Denyse O'Leary, plods in places but overall the two authors make a powerful case that materialism is simply wrong.

Thanks to Justin for passing the article along.

RLC

Positive Depictions

We often read of Hollywood's distaste for traditional religion and are irritated by the stereotypes they often present of people of faith. Yet there are occasionally films made - though not always by "Hollywood" - which present Christians in a realistic and favorable fashion, sometimes explicitly and sometimes in a more understated way.

I've tried to think of some examples that I've seen over the years and the following list is what I've come up with. I've limited the list to non-fantasy and thus have not included the Narnia films (e.g. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Prince Caspian), and I've not included films based on the Biblical narrative such as The Passion of the Christ, Jesus of Nazareth, etc.

Here's my list:

• The Mission
• Saints and Soldiers
• The Scarlet and the Black
• Chariots of Fire
• Amazing Grace
• Romero
• The Big Kahuna*
• Luther
• End of the Spear
• The Apostle
• Facing the Giants

My friend Byron suggests some further possibilities:

• Babette's Feast
• The Hiding Place
• Joni
• Long Walk Home
• Remember the Titans
• To End All Wars*
• Matewan
• Entertaining Angels

* indicates an R-rating

I'm sure that there are many other films that we've overlooked so recommendations from readers would be welcome. You can send them along via our Feedback function.

RLC

Chauncy Obama

Charles Krauthammer, Jack Kelly, and Michelle Malkin tell us clearly, if tacitly, why we should see Barack Obama as an empty suit. As the campaign wears on there's a nervous apprehension beginning to take shape around the quality of Obama's education. Despite a degree from Harvard, he seems to possess a very uncertain grasp of both American history and American geography. Perhaps this judgment is unfair, but of this much we can be certain: If George W. Bush said just half the things Barack Obama has said, the hoots of derision would reverberate through the media echo chamber for years.

As Michelle reminds us in her piece, we still today hear about Dan Quayle misspelling of potato and George H. W. Bush's unfamiliarity with a supermarket scanner, but there's a good chance you haven't heard in the traditional media any of Obama's doozies reported by Krauthammer, et al.

Read their columns and contemplate that this man might well, in a few months, be the leader of the free world.

Here's a parting irony: George Bush often sounds a little dim when he speaks, especially extemporaneously, but he's known to be reasonably bright. Barack Obama sounds like Demosthenes when he speaks, but is rapidly coming to be seen as an intellectual poseur.

If you haven't already, you really should put Peter Sellers' Being There at the top of your Netflix queue. Senator Obama is Chauncy Gardner come to life.

RLC

Memorial Day

On this Memorial Day perhaps the best thing we can do to honor the men and women who have fought, died, and/or been grievously injured so that we can feel safe from communists, fascists, and terrorists while enjoying our backyard barbeques is to pause for a moment and send a card to someone lying in a bed at Walter Reed or any veterans' hospital around the country. You don't have to know anyone there, you can just send the card to the hospital and ask the staff to give it to someone of their choosing.

There are so many young men and women, and their families, trying to salvage something of their lives after suffering devastating injuries or the deaths of their loved ones, and so many other veterans of other conflicts who carry with them everyday the physical and psychological pain of war.

Surely we can take a moment on this day to express our gratitude to those whose sacrifice has made our comfort and security possible.

RLC

Feeling His Pain

I know exactly how Dilbert feels:

HT: Telic Thoughts

RLC

The End of Faith II

The other day we talked about David Brooks' assessment of the future of faith and left one part of his essay for separate consideration.

Brooks writes:

This new wave of research will not seep into the public realm in the form of militant atheism. Instead it will lead to what you might call neural Buddhism.

If you survey the literature (and I'd recommend books by Newberg, Daniel J. Siegel, Michael S. Gazzaniga, Jonathan Haidt, Antonio Damasio and Marc D. Hauser if you want to get up to speed), you can see that certain beliefs will spread into the wider discussion.

First, the self is not a fixed entity but a dynamic process of relationships. Second, underneath the patina of different religions, people around the world have common moral intuitions. Third, people are equipped to experience the sacred, to have moments of elevated experience when they transcend boundaries and overflow with love. Fourth, God can best be conceived as the nature one experiences at those moments, the unknowable total of all there is.

These, then, are the beliefs with which those who adhere to traditional faiths will have to contend in the future. Lets consider them seriatim:

First, the self is not a fixed entity but a dynamic process of relationships.

I'm not sure what this means, nor am I sure that anyone can say exactly what the self is. I do think that if we have no soul then the self is either a nebulous and meaningless abstraction (e.g. "dynamic process of relationships")or it just is the physical body. In either case, those who wish to hold onto a meaningful notion of a self which possesses a body will probably do well to not abandon the idea of a personal and enduring soul.

Second, underneath the patina of different religions, people around the world have common moral intuitions.

True enough, which raises the puzzling question of why this is. Is it because we have a common evolutionary ancestor from who we've inherited these intuitions? If so, then these intuitions are mere vestiges of an evolutionary history which need not encumber us today. Just as we can get along perfectly well without our tonsils so too can we get along just fine without the baggage of impulses that evolved to suit us for life in the stone age.

Or are these common moral intuitions a result of the Creator having inscribed on our hearts timeless principles which he expects all men to follow? If so, they are binding, obligatory. In other words, the sense of moral obligation points us toward the God of traditional theism rather than toward some nebulous New-Age force of nature.

Third, people are equipped to experience the sacred, to have moments of elevated experience when they transcend boundaries and overflow with love.

Perhaps so, but what is the significance of these experiences? Are they encounters with God or merely the result of a hyper-active id? Unless these are encounters with something personal and transcendent they're ultimately just expressions of the state of our own psycho-chemistry and as such they're at bottom meaningless. If they're to be considered meaningful then they point to the God of traditional theism rather than some impersonal cosmic warm fuzzy.

Fourth, God can best be conceived as the nature one experiences at those moments, the unknowable total of all there is.

I don't think this is the best way to conceive of God at all. First of all the claim is self-refuting. If God is unknowable then we can say nothing about Him (It), which means that we can't say that He's unknowable or the "total of all there is." Second, the claim turns God into a vague abstraction like the deity of the deists or the Force from Star Wars. That's hardly the best way to think of God. A better way to conceive of Him, in my view, would be along the Anselmian lines of a being who is omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, omnipresent, at once transcendent and immanent, eternal, personal, and necessary.

Such a being is, in fact, the God of traditional theism and is compatible with the deity of most major world religions. Only the existence of this kind of Supreme Being gives religion any real content at all. If God is not as described above then all of man's religiosity is empty posturing and futile psychologizing.

The attempt to invest our spiritual quest with meaning while stripping the universe of any trace of the God of theism is an exercise in absurdity.

RLC

Closing in on a Cure

Here's more marvelous medical news: Researchers have developed a vaccine which apparently prevents an Alzheimer's-like disease in mice. The hope is that the vaccine may even be able to reverse some of the causes of Alzheimer's. Read the story for the details.

RLC

The Loser Letters II

Mary Eberstadt sends off another letter to her BRIGHT overlords offering them some sage advice as to how to deal with Christian DULLS. Her letter is full of excellent insights. Let's hope the BRIGHTS decline her recommendations.

RLC

The Scientist and the Turtle

Scientist Sean Carroll responds to an article by physicist Paul Davies who wonders why the laws of nature take the form they do. Carroll writes:

I can think of a few possibilities. One is logical necessity: the laws of physics take the form they do because no other form is possible. But that can't be right; it's easy to think of other possible forms. The universe could be a gas of hard spheres interacting under the rules of Newtonian mechanics, or it could be a cellular automaton, or it could be a single point. Another possibility is external influence: the universe is not all there is, but instead is the product of some higher (supernatural?) power. That is a conceivable answer, but not a very good one, as there is neither evidence for such a power nor any need to invoke it.

The final possibility, which seems to be the right one, is: that's just how things are. There is a chain of explanations concerning things that happen in the universe, which ultimately reaches to the fundamental laws of nature and stops. This is a simple hypothesis that fits all the data; until it stops being consistent with what we know about the universe, the burden of proof is on any alternative idea for why the laws take the form they do.

No further explanation is necessary or plausible. The universe is the way it is because it just is. But could it be designed? Yes, Carroll tells us, but there's no need to invoke that possibility.

Why not? There are mountains of evidence that the universe is amazingly suited for living beings and that such a universe is extraordinarily improbable. Doesn't that suggest the need for some explanation beyond itself?

No, Carroll insists. Why? Because there's no evidence that a designer exists. But what about the evidence of a precisely-tuned cosmos? That's not evidence, replies Carroll, that's just the way things are.

This is like the men who found a turtle perched atop a five foot high post. One man turned to his friend in wonderment and asked who he thought put the turtle there. His friend replied that there was no reason to think that anyone put the turtle on the post since there was no evidence that anyone else was around. But what about the turtle, the first man, asked, isn't that evidence? No, the second man answered, the turtle's sitting on the post because that's just the way things are.

That's how scientists think when they're determined to make their science support their atheism.

RLC

The Conservative Candidate

The American Conservative Union has issued its annual congressional rankings for 2007. Senator John McCain earned an 80%, Senator Obama stood at 7%, and Senator Clinton scored a zero. Obama would probably have gotten a zero as well but for an uncharacteristically sensible vote he cast on an earmark bill.

These results show that there are indeed important differences between McCain and his rivals, but even so: Of the five issues most important to us here at Viewpoint - the war on terror (of which Iraq and Afghanistan are instances), judicial appointments, the economy (taxes, spending, jobs, earmarks, etc.), illegal immigration, and energy independence - McCain figures, on the basis of his record, to be good on the first, a little iffy on the next two, and absolutely awful on the last two.

Sadly, whichever of the two Democrat contenders he faces in November will most assuredly be absolutely awful on all five, and that stark reality persuades us to inch grudgingly toward Mr. McCain.

RLC

More Cell-Phone Hazards

Here's yet another report on the hazards of using cell phones, this time to unborn children:

Women who use mobile phones when pregnant are more likely to give birth to children with behavioural problems, according to authoritative research.

A giant study, which surveyed more than 13,000 children, found that using the handsets just two or three times a day was enough to raise the risk of their babies developing hyperactivity and difficulties with conduct, emotions and relationships by the time they reached school age. And it adds that the likelihood is even greater if the children themselves used the phones before the age of seven.

The results of the study, the first of its kind, have taken the top scientists who conducted it by surprise. But they follow warnings against both pregnant women and children using mobiles by the official Russian radiation watchdog body, which believes that the peril they pose "is not much lower than the risk to children's health from tobacco or alcohol".

Surely one of the biggest hazards of cell-phones is that reading all the studies on them can cause one to be depressed. There's more at the link.

RLC

Advice for the Candidate

The Reverends Al and Jesse give Senator Obama some advice:

Doesn't this violate the separation of church and state, or something?

RLC

Defense Spending

In the following video clip Barack Obama essentially promises to emasculate the American military. All he needs to make his list of promises complete is to promise to appoint terrorist William Ayers Secretary of Defense:

Here's one of the systems/capabilities the senator promises to kill if he's elected to the presidency:

The system used to destroy this malfunctioning satellite was developed to shoot down incoming nuclear missiles from China, Russia, and rogue states like North Korea and perhaps one day, Iran. This is a capability Senator Obama thinks we shouldn't have and which, in any event, is too costly.

Is he right? Isn't it true that we're spending an enormous amount of our resources on the military? Aren't Bush's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan bankrupting this country? Let's put military spending into historical perspective. The following is taken from the Federal Budget Historical Tables and passed along to us by Dick Francis:

In 2007, total defense spending was 4 percent of the GDP and 20.2 percent of federal spending. Most government spending is on human resources. This portion of the budget took up 64.4 percent of federal spending in 2007. But there's more:

In 1943, during World War II, defense spending was 37 percent of the GDP and 84.9 percent of federal spending.

In 1953, during the Korean War, it was 14.2 percent of the GDP and 69.4 percent of federal spending.

In 1968, during the Vietnam War, it was 9.5 percent and 46 percent.

And, most significantly, during the Carter Administration, with no war going on and a Democratic president and Congress in Washington, defense spending averaged about 4.8 percent of the GDP and 23 percent of the federal budget.

In other words, contrary to what Senator Obama and others of the President's critics would have us believe, the U.S. is allocating a historically low proportion of its economy and its national budget to the defense of our nation and our people.

RLC

Prince Caspian

There's a lot of commentary at NRO on the recently released Prince Caspian, a film based on the second installment of C.S. Lewis' Narnia series. Frederica Mathewes-Green thinks the movie is better than the book and offers a list of other movies which, in the minds of her friends and family, were better than the books they were based on.

For more on Prince Caspian check out Byron Borger's Booknotes.

RLC

Our Prospering Intellectual Culture

Perhaps we should start a list of public individuals who really need to see the movie Expelled. A worthy candidate for charter membership on our list might be Alan Wolfe, a Boston College sociologist, who delivered himself of the following little gem while commenting on the emergence of Evangelical thinkers among academic intellectuals. The paragraph is taken from a Washington Post article:

As evangelical scholars seek greater influence, Wolfe warns that getting respect is a two-way street. Evangelicals in the academy too often aren't open to truly engaging those who disagree, said Wolfe, who points to things like "faith statements" at evangelical colleges, which require professors to proclaim Christian belief. A prospering intellectual culture wouldn't make that requirement and shut other views out, he said.

Really? Tell that to Guillermo Gonzalez, formerly of Iowa State University, or any number of other non-tenured professors at any number of universities who remain closet anti-Darwinians for fear that public acknowledgement of their views would wreck their careers. Evidently, there's not much of a prospering intellectual culture at many of our major academies.

Come to think of it, Wolfe may unwittingly be on to something.

RLC

Sen. Kennedy and Life Eternal

The news of Senator Ted Kennedy's brain tumor led me along a rabbit trail of reflections to some thoughts on the matter of eternal life.

I would have dearly loved to have Mr. Kennedy out of the senate, but not this way. I think his ideas and policies, his harsh, and sometimes vicious, attacks on Republicans from Ronald Reagan to Robert Bork to George W. Bush, have been deeply harmful to this country, but, even so, being wrong and doing things that hurt others is a human failing to which we are every one of us predisposed.

I pray that the treatments he will undergo will be successful and that his cancer will subside into remission.

The possibility that he has only a few months left to live, however, led me by stream of consciouness to wonder about eternity, and how, exactly, we should think about the eternal fate of people we believe to have deeply harmed our nation (Senator Kennedy's illness initiated this rumination, but I do not now have him in mind). It's tempting, no doubt, to resent the idea that such individuals could ever be granted access to Paradise, and it certainly seems fair that individuals who have perpetrated particularly terrible wrongs, people like the Nazis, for example, be made to suffer forever for their offenses.

Whatever one may think of the justice of this, it certainly seems uncompassionate, and unChristian, even if many of us often very reasonably succumb to this way of thinking. I can imagine a person who lost a loved one on 9/11 would have great difficulty with the notion that Osama bin Laden might wind up in heaven with them.

Thus I find myself in an uneasy theological position. I desire justice, that those who have done great harm somehow be made to pay, and yet I believe, too, that it's cruel to desire to see anyone, even someone as monstrous as a Stalin, Hitler or Saddam, suffer for eternity. In other words, I find myself having to admit that my hope should be that God's will eventually will be done and that everyone ultimately will be purged of his crimes and debt by accepting Christ's atoning work.

Since I also believe that our eternal fate is something that we choose, and since I believe that there are those who cannot bear to choose to spend eternity with God, and since these people therefore choose to separate themselves from God and all that is good, I have to consequently believe that some there are who could well be eternally lost. Yet, I wonder if their lostness doesn't produce an ache in God's heart like the pain the father of the prodigal must have had. I wonder if God is not in some sense like a loving parent, some of whose grown children nevertheless treat Him abominably and break His heart every day.

Could it be possible that perhaps part of the mission and challenge of some in the new earth will be to minister to these wretched souls for as long as it takes to bring them back (See C.S. Lewis' The Great Divorce)? Could it be possible that this is the plan the Father has for the "younger brothers" in His Kingdom? Perhaps it is the case that only when everyone is safely home will the Father be able to fully rejoice.

In any event, while we desire, hope and pray for justice in the world let's also pray that we not become like the Pharisees who, in their pursuit of justice, forgot all about compassion. In other words, regardless what our personal convictions about salvation may be, we should hope that somehow, ultimately, everyone will find their way home.

Shouldn't we?

RLC

Off-Limits? Why?

Barack Obama was indignant on Good Morning America the other day over Republican criticisms of his wife's recent remarks:

"But I do want to say this to the GOP. If they think that they're going to try to make Michelle an issue in this campaign, they should be careful. Because that I find unacceptable," he said.

Obama praised his wife's patriotism and said that for Republicans "to try to distort or to play snippets of her remarks in ways that are unflattering to her I think is just low class ... and especially for people who purport to be promoters of family values, who claim that they are protectors of the values and ideals and the decency of the American people to start attacking my wife in a political campaign I think is detestable."

"But I also think these folks should lay off my wife," he told 'GMA' as his wife chuckled beside him.

Gracious me. The Senator evidently believes that Michelle Obama should be allowed to join in the political fray, make whatever comments she pleases about the meanness of the United States and how there's nothing about the U.S. of which she can be proud, and the GOP must dare not quote her remarks or express any disapproval of them whatsoever. Such behavior is "detestable" according to the outraged husband.

I wonder. Is it also detestable for Hillary's spouse's comments to be scrutinized and criticized? Is Michelle Obama a child to whom we should all condescend when she makes speeches in the public square bearing on matters of public interest? If Obama wants his wife to be off-limits to GOP political ads then he should get her off the political stage. If she's going to act like a politician then it's just as silly to declare her exempt from public criticism as it is to declare Bill Clinton exempt.

RLC

Pay Up

Think about this if you're starting a family - you're already, right now, half a million dollars in debt:

The federal government's long-term financial obligations grew by $2.5 trillion last year, a reflection of the mushrooming cost of Medicare and Social Security benefits as more baby boomers reach retirement. That's double the red ink of a year earlier.

Taxpayers are on the hook for a record $57.3 trillion in federal liabilities to cover the lifetime benefits of everyone eligible for Medicare, Social Security and other government programs, a USA TODAY analysis found. That's nearly $500,000 per household.

When obligations of state and local governments are added, the total rises to $61.7 trillion, or $531,472 per household. That is more than four times what Americans owe in personal debt such as mortgages.

So what are your congresspersons doing about it? How much enthusiasm is there for reforming the system? When President Bush tried to relieve the burden on Social Security the Democrats said that the system was not in jeopardy and blocked his reform plans. Of course, the President himself added to the problem by expanding medicare entitlements.

Someday soon this debt is going to be unsustainable and millions are going to lose medicare coverage, social security and perhaps even see their private pensions dry up. This will almost certainly rock Wall Street so even those who have invested in the markets, which all pension funds do, will likely lose their nest egg. It's a time bomb that could devastate millions of lives.

Meanwhile, Congress spends its time, and your tax dollars, dreaming up ways to indict former Bush administration officials.

One thing we can count on. When you and I lose our retirements, your congressperson won't.

RLC