Good for the Goose

Michael Egnor corrects the muddled thinking of Timothy Sandefur. Sandefur argues that Darwinism should be taught in schools because it's science and intelligent design should not be taught because it's religion. Sandefur fails to see the special pleading in this, and Egnor points it out to him:

I believe that teaching public schoolchildren that the first two chapters of Genesis are literally true as science is unconstitutional, because it would constitute teaching a particular form of theistic religion on the public dime. I also believe that teaching public schoolchildren and students that...

The diversity of life [all life] on earth is the outcome of evolution: an unsupervised, impersonal, unpredictable and natural process of temporal descent with genetic modification that is affected by natural selection, chance, historical contingencies and changing environments...

or

By coupling undirected, purposeless variation to the blind, uncaring process of natural selection, Darwin made theological or spiritual explanations of life superfluous. ... Darwin's theory of evolution, followed by Marx's materialistic (even if inadequate or wrong) theory of history and society and Freud's attribution of human behavior to influences over which we have little control, that provided a crucial plank to the platform of mechanism and materialism--in short, to much of science--that has since been the stage of most Western thought.

or

Darwin knew that accepting his theory required believing in philosophical materialism, the conviction that matter is the stuff of all existence and that all mental and spiritual phenomena are its by-products. This is unconstitutional, because it is teaching atheism on the public dime.

I believe that teaching schoolchildren about intelligent design (which is not young earth creationism) is constitutional, because it is intrinsically part of the scientific debate about biological origins. It is part of the debate because intelligent design and Darwinism are affirmative and negative answers to the same scientific question: is there teleology in biology?

The Darwinian assertion of unguided processes is meaningless unless lack of unguidedness - design - can be tested scientifically. If a scientific question can meaningfully be answered in the negative, then there must be the logical possibility of answering the question in the affirmative. If intelligent design isn't science, then Darwinism can't be tested empirically, and is merely dogma.

This is a point we've made here many times. If the claim that natural processes alone are adequate to explain living things is scientific then the denial of that claim is also scientific, and the denial of that claim is the core assertion of intelligent design.

It is, moreover, simply false to assume that intelligent design is religious because the designer it implies must be God. It certainly does not have to be God, but even if it did that does not make it religious. God-talk is not necessarily religious. Seeking to discover the nature of ultimate reality has religious implications, as does the claim that the ultimate reality is space, time and matter, but it's not itself religious. It's philosophical.

It is also philosophically purblind to try to keep ID out of public schools because it entails a designer which could be God, but to allow Darwinian theories to be taught which entail that a designer is not necessary. Surely, the claim that an intelligent designer is not necessary to account for the world is a religious claim and anything which implies it, as Darwinism does, has no place in a public school - unless the counterclaim that natural processes are inadequate, by themselves, to account for the world is also permitted.

RLC

Darwin's Unfortunate Racial Views

Denyse O'Leary at Uncommon Descent wonders why people hold Charles Darwin in such high esteem. Of course he was hugely influential and gave us some wonderful insights into evolution, but the man was a racist, says O'Leary.

I sometimes think that Darwin's racism is a bit overstated, but then again he did say this:

"At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked, will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilized state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the Negro or Australian and the gorilla."

It sounds like something one might read in Mein Kampf. Imagine if a seminal intelligent design theorist, say William Dembski, were found to have written something like that. Would we celebrate his birthday? Would those in the academy who called themselves "Dembskiists" not be energetically flagellated at every opportunity by their academic peers? How do you suppose the media would respond? Never mind, no need to answer.

Anyway, O'Leary has issued a challenge to Darwinists to "divorce" themselves from old Charles. I doubt she's holding her breath.

RLC

Fact-Checking the AG

Attorney General Eric Holder has taken a lot of heat for his speech in which he called the United States a "nation of cowards" about race. Not only was his speech regarded by many as insulting it was sadly misinformed, as when he said this:

On Saturdays and Sundays America in the year 2009 does not, in some ways, differ significantly from the country that existed some fifty years ago. This is truly sad. Given all that we as a nation went through during the civil rights struggle it is hard for me to accept that the result of those efforts was to create an America that is more prosperous, more positively race conscious and yet is voluntarily socially segregated.

Abigail Thernstrom points out that this statement just doesn't square with the facts. Writing at NRO she notes:

A little fact-checking is in order. Saturdays and Sundays looked quite different even less than 50 years ago. In 1964 only 18 percent of whites said they had black friends; the figure today is 87 percent. Raise the bar to "a fairly close personal friend" and the proportion jumps from a mere 9 percent in 1975 to 75 percent in 2005. The share of blacks with close white friends has soared from 21 percent to 82 percent over that same period.

We don't have much in the way of historical data on interracial dating because, not so long ago, the figure would have been too low for pollsters to bother tabulating. But we do know that in 1963 only 10 percent of whites approved of it. In 2006, however, a Washington Post/Kaiser poll found that 59 percent of black men and 41 percent of black women had dated someone who is white. And 41 percent of white women and 36 percent of white men had crossed the racial-dating divide. Today, the number of black-white marriages is up to almost half a million - still low, but a steep rise over the last 40 years. Presumably, these couples generally spend Saturdays and Sundays together.

Holder says that on the weekends blacks and whites lead separate lives. That's not so easy to do, given the racial composition of many American neighborhoods. Half a century ago, only 20 percent of whites reported having black neighbors; today the figure is above 60 percent. Blacks, on average, live in communities that are only half black. Do blacks and whites living in close proximity never chat about common concerns - the schools, the traffic, and the life of their kids in and out of school? Do the whites who voted for Barack Obama refuse to talk to the blacks who live on their street?

There's much else in her excellent essay to reward the reader. Those who nodded either in assent or dissent when they read Holder's remarks should read it.

RLC

Card Check

Jim Wallis at Sojourners draws the astonishing conclusion from the fact that corporate CEOs have obscene incomes, especially relative to their employees, that we should therefore rectify this unfairness by doing away with secret ballots in union elections. Or something like that. How the one follows from the other Mr. Wallis doesn't explain, but he supports "card check" (Employee Free Choice Act) which is essentially a system for preventing employees from casting a confidential vote on whether or not they want to organize a union. The EFCA would allow union organizers to know exactly which employees oppose unionizing a particular business, and what they would do with this information is not hard to imagine.

Card check is an abridgement of the common-sense principle that an election can be fair only if the votes are secret. Otherwise there is the ugly possibility of coercion, intimidation, and retribution. To give an idea of how radical and antithetical to basic freedoms the measure is, one of the most liberal Democrats in modern history, George McGovern, took out an ad opposing it.

The EFCA is being pushed by the Democrat-controlled congress, but it's beginning to look as if this particular assault on American freedoms will falter. At least for now and no thanks to Mr. Wallis.

RLC

Buyer's Remorse

Another victim of candidate Obama's seductions comes forward to announce her buyer's remorse. Here's Megan McArdle at The Atlantic:

Our sister publication asks analysts whether the administration's economic forecasts are too optimistic. They would have gotten a more interesting discussion if their query had been "Is the Pope Catholic?" Of course they're too optimistic. In fact, the word optimistic is too optimistic. A better choice might have been "insane". Like Greg Mankiw, I would love to find a sucker investor who is willing to take the other end of a bet that both growth and revenue will fall short of the administration's predictions.

Having defended Obama's candidacy largely on his economic team, I'm having serious buyer's remorse. Geithner, who is rapidly starting to look like the weakest link, is rattling around by himself in Treasury. Meanwhile, the administration has clearly prioritized a stimulus package that will not work without fixing the banks over, um, fixing the banking system. Unlike most fiscal conservatives, I'm not mad at him for trying to increase the size of the government; that's, after all, what he got elected promising to do. But he also promised to be non-partisan and accountable, and the size and composition of the stimulus package looks like just one more attempt to ram through his ideological agenda without much scrutiny, with the heaviest focus on programs that will be especially hard to cut.

The budget numbers are just one more blow to the credibility he worked hard to establish during the election. Back then, people like me handed him kudos for using numbers that were really much less mendacious than the general run of candidate program promises. Now he's building a budget on the promise that this recession will be milder than average with growth merely dipping to 1.2% this year and returning to trend in 2010. Isn't there anyone at BLS (Bureau of Labor Statistics) who could have filled him in on the unemployment figures, or at Treasury who could have explained what a disproportionate impact finance salaries have on tax revenue? These numbers . . . well, I can't really fully describe them on a family blog. But he has now raced passed Bush in the Delusional Budget Math Olympics.

Like so many others who thought that, despite Obama's record as an extreme leftist, he would really govern from the center because he talked about "hope" and he "seemed" so reasonable and sophisticated and everyone governs from the center anyway, Ms McArdle is without excuse. Last November was like Spring Break for just over half of American voters. Normally sober and sensible people found themselves transmogrified into irrational, irresponsible, self-deluded hedonists, and elected a man with a r�sum� that could fit on the back of a postage stamp simply because he spoke well. Now as the voters emerge from the haze and torpor of their dionysian bacchanal they can't believe they could have been so stupid.

There'll be many more Megan McArdles to come, no doubt, and lots more reasons to feel "stupid."

RLC

Biology 101

Maybe the reason many Americans support embryonic stem cell research is because they have no more idea what an embryo is than does former president Bill Clinton. What the ex-president doesn't seem to grasp, and for all I know the current president doesn't understand either (though it probably wouldn't make any difference in his decision to rescind George Bush's ban on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research even if he did), is that an embryo wouldn't be an embryo had it not already been fertilized:

How does it happen that people this benighted are allowed to make critical life and death decisions for millions? How did it happen that an ostensible "journalist," a medical man who had been considered for the post of Surgeon General in Obama's cabinet, didn't politely correct President Clinton after about the twentieth time he repeated the gaffe?

As an aside, can you imagine the media hilarity that would have ensued had George Bush said something this ill-informed?

RLC

The Scientific Status of Intelligent Design

Thomas B. Fowler has written an outstanding and disinterested analysis of Intelligent Design theory for Catholic Culture. It is, for the most part, very accessible to those with a modicum of philosophical and scientific background knowledge and I recommend it to anyone who wishes to gain a better understanding of the scientific status of ID and an appreciation its strengths and weaknesses.

Fowler also does a fine job of summarizing ID's chief competitors including Creationism, Neo-Darwinism, and Meta-Darwinism.

His conclusion gives us a good idea of the terrain he covers in the main body of the discussion:

Intelligent Design has been proposed as a new scientific hypothesis about the possibility of certain types of transitions occurring naturally. The thrust of its proposal is that biological (and other) entities may be partitioned into groups or classes within which transitions are possible, but between which they are not. This is an empirically testable hypothesis, one which contradicts a key assumption of Neo-Darwinism. As yet, only preliminary steps have been taken to formulate and test this hypothesis: Behe's irreducible complexity and Dembski's Design Filter. So no definitive statement about its truth can be made as yet.

Of course, there is no guarantee that the Intelligent Design school will be able to reach its goals; nature may not be the way the theory postulates that it is. The notion of an "Intelligent Designer," for which the school is perhaps best known, is not part of its scientific basis, but rather an inference from it, or rather, an inference about reality based on the physical limitations in nature that the theory proposes. The school is, in some ways, its own worst enemy by not clearly distinguishing its scientific hypotheses from the extra-scientific inferences it draws.

Intelligent Design does not deny naturalism - that is, it does not require science to begin utilizing non-natural forces and entities. It does dispute metaphysical naturalism, which asserts that all phenomena can be explained by science and that there is no other reality. But the latter assertion is a metaphysical inference from the former, which is itself an extra-scientific assumption. The common attacks on Intelligent Design, accusing it of being Creationism in disguise, a Trojan Horse, and of injecting theology into science, are completely baseless. Its critics should therefore concentrate on the scientific issues raised, ignore the metaphysics and eschew the propaganda arguments, however satisfying these may be. But Intelligent Design must also deliver on the science.

Thanks to Bradford at Telic Thoughts for the link.

RLC

Heads Should Roll

Camille Paglia is a fiercely independent gadfly - usually. In this piece she gives us an inadvertant glimpse of an interesting phenomenon emerging among our chattering classes. People who are paying attention are growing increasingly disenchanted with the Obama administration, but they're aiming their barbs everywhere but at the man ultimately responsible for their distress. Like some Civil War general Obama sits tall in the saddle on the battlefield while the opposition directs its fire, strangely enough, at everyone in his army but him.

Those who fell in love with candidate Obama during the campaign cannot bring themselves to believe that they made a misjudgment. That would mean they'd have to admit that those rubes on right-wing talk radio were more politically perspicacious than they were.

So, rather than admit that to themselves, like a lovestruck teenager they simply refuse to see what was, and is, in plain sight about the guy. It was clear during the campaign that Barack Obama was a left-wing radical who was going to do precisely what he has done. The surprise is that people are surprised.

In the midst of their swoon a lot of people refused to believe that he could be anything but the best thing that's happened to this country since the Bill of Rights. They were so hostile to the Bush/Republican agenda McCain embodied that Obama was, by comparison, a demi-god in their starry eyes. They became so emotionally invested in him that now they find it difficult to think that anything he does is wrong, and they certainly don't believe that he might have misshapen motives for anything he does. Like the teenager whose boyfriend can do no wrong, no matter how much wrong he does, they're smitten with infatuation, and it's taking time for the pixie dust he's sprinkled in their eyes to wear off.

Paglia's essay is a good example. She faults everyone around Obama for the series of embarrassments he has suffered these first months of his presidency, but she doesn't fault him. Anyway, read her essay. Other than her eagerness to absolve the President of recent gaffes and clumsiness, it's a good summary of this administration's maladroitness.

Thanks to Jason for the link.

RLC

A Trillion Dollars

Bill sends along a link to a page that helps us grasp the sheer magnitude of the money our government is spending (and the debt it's piling up). Check it out.

RLC

Neither Rush Nor Frum

Patterico, a well-known conservative blogger, explains why neither Rush Limbaugh nor David Frum speak for him. It's a calm, cogent analysis and one with which I largely agree.

RLC

Unprincipled

Eight Republicans voted to pass the pork-laden $410 billion spending bill yesterday and seven of them had millions of dollars of earmarks in the bill themselves. This is really quite beyond loathesome. It's precisely the sort of unprincipled behavior that cost the GOP congressional control in 2004, and it's the sort of behavior which will prevent them from recovering the voter's trust in 2010.

The voters won't punish Democrats for this sort of recklessness because when Democrats vote to waste taxpayers' money they're just doing what Democrats do, and no one expects or demands of them that they behave responsibly. Republicans, on the other hand, are supposed to have a higher ethical standard and be more fiscally mature.

Kudos to the three Democrat senators who did vote against it - Russ Feingold, Evan Bayh, and Claire McCaskill bucked their party leadership and their president and voted nay. The bill passed nevertheless, on the strength of the support of the eight Republicans.

RLC

Creeping Secularization

The American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) results for 2008 have been released and the summary contains some interesting data. Those who suspect that our nation is growing increasingly secular will have their (pick one) hopes or fears confirmed. The survey collected answers from 54,461 respondents. Here's an overview:

The American population self-identifies as predominantly Christian but Americans are slowly becoming less Christian. 86% of American adults identified as Christians in 1990 and 76% in 2008.

The historic Mainline churches and denominations have experienced the steepest declines while the non-denominational Christian identity has been trending upward particularly since 2001.

The challenge to Christianity in the U.S. does not come from other religions but rather from a rejection of all forms of organized religion.

34% of American adults considered themselves "Born Again or Evangelical Christians" in 2008.

The U. S. population continues to show signs of becoming less religious, with one out of every five Americans failing to indicate a religious identity in 2008.

The "Nones" (no stated religious preference, atheist, or agnostic) continue to grow, though at a much slower pace than in the 1990s, from 8.2% in 1990, to 14.1% in 2001, to 15.0% in 2008.

Asian Americans are substantially more likely to indicate no religious identity than other racial or ethnic groups.

One sign of the lack of attachment of Americans to religion is that 27% do not expect a religious funeral at their death.

Based on their stated beliefs rather than their religious identification in 2008, 70% of Americans believe in a personal God, roughly 12% of Americans are atheist (no God) or agnostic (unknowable or unsure), and another 12% are deistic (a higher power but no personal God).

America's religious geography has been transformed since 1990. Religious switching along with Hispanic immigration has significantly changed the religious profile of some states and regions. Between 1990 and 2008, the Catholic population proportion of the New England states fell from 50% to 36% and in New York it fell from 44% to 37%, while it rose in California from 29% to 37% and in Texas from 23% to 32%.

Overall the 1990-2008 ARIS time series shows that changes in religious self-identification in the first decade of the 21st century have been moderate in comparison to the 1990s, which was a period of significant shifts in the religious composition of the United States.

This chart shows that when asked about the existence of God less than 70 percent of Americans now believe in the traditional theological concept of a personal God. This question was not asked in 1990 and 2001 so it's hard to draw conclusions from it. Nevertheless, if it is the case that fewer people believe in the existence of a personal God today than did twenty years ago, I wonder if this isn't due to a failure on the part of many churches to teach their young that Christianity is a more rational and coherent worldview than any of the alternatives. In many churches young people rarely get much instruction, especially from knowledgeable teachers, after they move beyond their elementary years. Thus, when challenges arise many of these kids are as vulnerable as 17th century Native-Americans exposed to European diseases against which they had no immunity. Their "beliefs" just get wiped out.

RLC

Overwhelmed

This is not at all reassuring. The Telegraph U.K.,trying to put the best face on the administration's dissing of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown last week, tacitly concludes that the president is overwhelmed by his duties and is simply not up to the job. I don't know if their assessment is accurate, but if it is, it should surprise no one. President Obama came to the White House with zero executive and administrative experience. That he feels overwhelmed is perfectly understandable, even if dismaying, given that he's never been in a position where he's had to keep so many bowling pins in the air before:

Sources close to the White House say Mr Obama and his staff have been "overwhelmed" by the economic meltdown and have voiced concerns that the new president is not getting enough rest.

British officials, meanwhile, admit that the White House and US State Department staff were utterly bemused by complaints that the Prime Minister should have been granted full-blown press conference and a formal dinner, as has been customary. They concede that Obama aides seemed unfamiliar with the expectations that surround a major visit by a British prime minister.

But Washington figures with access to Mr Obama's inner circle explained the slight by saying that those high up in the administration have had little time to deal with international matters, let alone the diplomatic niceties of the special relationship.

Allies of Mr Obama say his weary appearance in the Oval Office with Mr Brown illustrates the strain he is now under, and the president's surprise at the sheer volume of business that crosses his desk.

A well-connected Washington figure, who is close to members of Mr Obama's inner circle, expressed concern that Mr Obama had failed so far to "even fake an interest in foreign policy".

The American source said: "Obama is overwhelmed. There is a zero sum tension between his ability to attend to the economic issues and his ability to be a proactive sculptor of the national security agenda.

"That was the gamble these guys made at the front end of this presidency and I think they're finding it a hard thing to do everything."

The real views of many in Obama administration were laid bare by a State Department official involved in planning the Brown visit, who reacted with fury when questioned by The Sunday Telegraph about why the event was so low-key.

The official dismissed any notion of the special relationship, saying: "There's nothing special about Britain. You're just the same as the other 190 countries in the world. You shouldn't expect special treatment." The apparent lack of attention to detail by the Obama administration is indicative of what many believe to be Mr Obama's determination to do too much too quickly.

The Sunday Telegraph understands that one of Mr Obama's most prominent African American backers, whose endorsement he spent two years cultivating, has told friends that he detects a weakness in Mr Obama's character.

"The one real serious flaw I see in Barack Obama is that he thinks he can manage all this," the well-known figure told a Washington official, who spoke to this newspaper. "He's underestimating the flood of things that will hit his desk." A Democratic strategist, who is friends with several senior White House aides, revealed that the president has regularly appeared worn out and drawn during evening work sessions with senior staff in the West Wing and has been forced to make decisions more quickly than he is comfortable.

This all may be exaggerated or it may be accurate, who knows? We do know, though, that President Obama likes to compare himself to Presidents Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt, but both of these men struggled with much worse than Mr. Obama is facing, and FDR was further handicapped with the after-effects of polio. If it is true that President Obama feels overwhelmed now what will he feel like if a terrorist attack is thrown into the mix or if the media should turn on him and subject him to the same relentless daily criticism to which George W. Bush was treated. It'll doubtless be enough to drive him back to the cigarettes.

The nation's voters took an accomplished high school quarterback and put him directly into the Super Bowl. The results have so far been predictably unpretty. The White House is no place for on-the-job training - not even for a candidate who can seduce a nation with mellifluous promises of Hope and Change. Nevertheless, we're still only in the opening minutes of the game. Things might get much better for Barack Obama just as they did for Bill Clinton after a shaky start. Or, it may be that the President is indeed out of his depth, in which case we're in for a turbulent four years.

RLC

Credit Where It's Due

Want to know why it happened that the financial industry was allowed to conduct the massive ponzi scheme that eventuated in the collapse of both it and the rest of our economy? The no frills explanation can be found here.

As Steven Hayward says at No Left Turns, if the Republicans could turn this into a 30 second commercial they'd sweep the congressional elections in 2010.

RLC

Corruptocrats

Hot Air's Jason Mattera conducts another on the spot interview, this time with congressional "corruptocrat" Charles Rangel the chairman of the House Ways and Means committee, which writes the tax laws for the nation. Congressman Rangel writes the laws the rest of us must follow but doesn't pay taxes himself, at least not all of them.

Mattera asks him why, and Rangel's response is interesting. Apparently he doesn't think it's a citizens' business how his tax dollars are being spent by our congressional kleptocracy:

See the link for more examples of Mattera's fine work.

While we're at it you might want to watch how citizens get treated by their aldermen in Chicago. Warning: R-rated language from the alderman:

See Michelle Malkin for an explanation of what's going on here.

By the way, in the spirit of "moral equivalency" I should say that Republicans probably act the same way toward their constituents - or at least I should say it if I could find any examples of it. As far as I know, however, there aren't any. Can anybody help me?

RLC

Future Tech

Apparently this is on the way:

And I'm still stuck on trying to figure out how to use my cell-phone.

RLC

Take Your Pick

Charles Krauthammer believes that President Obama is intentionally deceiving the American public in trying to convince us that the root cause of our economic woes is the lack of nationalized health care, weak schools, and dependence upon petroleum. Here's the crux of Krauthammer's column:

The logic of Obama's address to Congress went like this:

"Our economy did not fall into decline overnight," he averred. Indeed, it all began before the housing crisis. What did we do wrong? We are paying for past sins in three principal areas: energy, health care, and education -- importing too much oil and not finding new sources of energy (as in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the Outer Continental Shelf?), not reforming health care, and tolerating too many bad schools.

The "day of reckoning" has now arrived. And because "it is only by understanding how we arrived at this moment that we'll be able to lift ourselves out of this predicament," Obama has come to redeem us with his far-seeing program of universal, heavily nationalized health care; a cap-and-trade tax on energy; and a major federalization of education with universal access to college as the goal.

Amazing. As an explanation of our current economic difficulties, this is total fantasy. As a cure for rapidly growing joblessness, a massive destruction of wealth, a deepening worldwide recession, this is perhaps the greatest non sequitur ever foisted upon the American people.

At the very center of our economic near-depression is a credit bubble, a housing collapse and a systemic failure of the entire banking system. One can come up with a host of causes: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pushed by Washington (and greed) into improvident loans, corrupted bond-ratings agencies, insufficient regulation of new and exotic debt instruments, the easy money policy of Alan Greenspan's Fed, irresponsible bankers pushing (and then unloading in packaged loan instruments) highly dubious mortgages, greedy house-flippers, deceitful homebuyers.

The list is long. But the list of causes of the collapse of the financial system does not include the absence of universal health care, let alone of computerized medical records. Nor the absence of an industry-killing cap-and-trade carbon levy. Nor the lack of college graduates. Indeed, one could perversely make the case that, if anything, the proliferation of overeducated, Gucci-wearing, smart-ass MBAs inventing ever more sophisticated and opaque mathematical models and debt instruments helped get us into this credit catastrophe in the first place.

And yet with our financial house on fire, Obama makes clear both in his speech and his budget that the essence of his presidency will be the transformation of health care, education and energy. Four months after winning the election, six weeks after his swearing in, Obama has yet to unveil a plan to deal with the banking crisis.

So far from seeking to solve the current crisis, Krauthammer implies, the president is seeking to exploit it to promote an ideological agenda that destroys capitalism and establishes socialism. Whether this is true or not, it's certainly the case that our financial crisis has nothing to do with schools, health care, or energy. By focusing on these things rather than the banking and stock market collapse Obama exposes himself either to Krauthammer's withering charge of willful deceit or the more charitable charge of gross incompetence.

RLC

Mano a Mano

Two titans in the field of philosophy, Alvin Plantinga and Daniel Dennett, squared off in an exchange at the recent meeting of the American Philosophical Association. Prosblogion has a minute by minute account of the exchange recorded by a philosopher in the audience. The account won't be of general interest but will be of interest to those acquainted with the work of either of these well-known scholars.

According to the anonymous and self-described biased recorder (his/her reasons for wishing to remain anonymous are interesting in themselves), Dennett embarrassed himself and Plantinga won the field.

The readers' comments are also worth perusing.

RLC

620 Fewer Hospitals?

A showdown is looming between the Catholic Church and the Obama administration over the pending Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA).

When it last was introduced into the legislature, FOCA defined abortion as a "fundamental right" that no government can "deny" or "interfere with." That language, FOCA's opponents warn, would help overturn abortion restrictions such as parental notification, laws banning certain procedures and constraints on federal funding. It would also appear to require hospitals to offer abortions to their patients, even hospitals that believe that killing unborn children is a terrible evil.

There are some 620 Catholic hospitals in the United States. They will either refuse to comply with the law - if it has no exception for conscience - or they will close their doors.

How many jobs will this cost? How many suffering patients will be unable to find treatment if the hospitals close down? And for what? So that some leftist ideologues can shove their values down everyone else's throats?

This is not a pro-life/pro-choice issue. Pro-lifers will oppose FOCA, of course, but so, too, should every pro-choicer who has ever argued that a woman should have the right to decide on the basis of her own conscience whether to have an abortion. If the decision to have an abortion is a matter of conscience which should be respected then so, too, is the decision to decline to perform them. FOCA, as it is currently believed to be written, is indeed a flagrantly anti-choice bill.

The Obama administration has already seen the stock market plummet on its watch and with it the retirements of millions of people. Now it is poised to force Catholic hospitals out of business. These are not hopeful trends.

For more on the FOCA showdown see here.

RLC

Mutineers

The most brilliant satirist on the internet, or anywhere, is how the Weekly Standard describes Iowahawk, and surely his latest effort justifies the description. For those who may not be paying much attention a little background is in order. Last year a number of prominent right-leaning journalists spoke rather rapturously of Barack Obama's candidacy and disparagingly of people like Sarah Palin, Joe Werzelbacher (Joe the Plumber) and Rush Limbaugh. In the minds of these mutinous pundits such populist heroes are declassé and faintly disreputable. The newly-elected president then charmed some of them even further by joining them for an exclusive dinner at the home of columnist George Will.

Now Iowahawk takes up his pen to skewer the elitist pretensions of these writers and their mystification and alarm at the influence the "lower classes" have achieved in the party that was once the private domain of the "better breeds." It's an amusing parody and can be read here.

RLC