Byron on the Tiller Case

My friend Byron brought to my attention the article to which I linked yesterday concerning George Tiller's murder. Concerned that readers may get the misimpression that he agreed with the writer of the piece, he sent me an email unambiguously stating his position. It's a very good summary of what has been the overwhelming pro-life response to this episode, and I want to post it here so that everyone will see it.

Byron writes:

As always, you have a knack for getting at important things in ways to make us think. The philosophy teacher in you helps us think through arguments and claims and consequences. Thanks.

Since my name was mentioned as the one who sent you the piece about the ethics of the murder of Tiller, I thought I should say--for the record, since it is such a controversial and weighty matter--that I do not believe that those who follow Jesus should ever take up violence since he plainly taught his followers to be non-violent. Of course I realize that this is in the minority view in church history and although I am not anabaptist, I think the Mennonites and others of that sort get it right on this one. Christians must "overcome evil with good" and so therefore I think this author is dead wrong.

I wouldn't want anyone to think that I sent it to you because I agreed with it, although it is witty and thoughtful. And, if one thinks that killing is a legitimate thing to do to try to stop killing, then this is the quandary you are in. (The author does not advocate vigilante violence,but not because violence is wrong, but because it seems to be declaring war upon the state, violates the just war doctrine, and because it would only create more persecution.) I admire your honesty to face it, although I pray that this author, you and your readers don't take your ponderings too seriously. This is no time for more violence or armchair speculations in favor of violence. This is a time to be consistently pro-life.

Let us speak with one clear voice. Let us, as the Bible instructs, avoid even the appearance of evil. The murder of Mr. Tiller, no matter how horrendous the deeds of the doctor were, was wrong. Period.

I want to say this so clearly because it needs said, and I am glad that most pro-life organizations have been unqualified and clear in condemning this brutal assassination. Yet, the pro-choice community and some in the media have suggested otherwise. Let's not give them anything to wonder about: those who oppose abortion intend to turn around our culture through the long hard work of persuasion, cultural reformation, religious revival, innovative legislation and any other peaceful and legitimate means, but never, ever, by murder.

Surely Byron is correct if the resort to violence is always and absolutely wrong, as those in the pacifist tradition maintain it to be.

My difficulty is in understanding claims such as By makes in the last sentence of his penultimate paragraph when they're made by non-pacifists. If one does not believe that violence is always wrong then what are the justifications for its use? It seems to me that those in the pro-life camp (in which I place myself) are very vague about this. I think Byron would argue that this is one reason we should all be pacifists, but many if not most pro-lifers are not pacifists and would probably reject the suggestion that they should be. In any event, pacifism leads to conundrums of its own which are equally as perplexing and intractable.

If the pro-lifer, then, declines to embrace an absolute abjuration of violence, under what circumstances does he/she think it proper? If it's wrong to employ it to defend the lives of children about to be born then when would it ever be right?

It seems to me that pro-lifers who decline the pacifist option are on the horns of a dilemma: Either killing late-term fetuses, contrary to what many pro-lifers insist, is not really tantamount to murder, or it is tantamount to murdering innocent children, and those who are willing to risk all to prevent this atrocity are justified in their resort to violence.

I really don't like any of these alternatives myself and would welcome insight from our readers, particularly those who consider themselves pro-life. What do you think? Should all pro-lifers embrace an absolute pacifism? Should they back off from their claim that a late-term fetus is ontologically and morally indistinguishable from a new-born? Or should pro-lifers acknowledge that though violence may not be a prudent tactic in the struggle to end the abortion regime in this country, it is nevertheless neither an immoral nor evil one?

Blaise Pascal advised us that our first moral obligation is to think clearly. There are no issues concerning which it is more important that we fulfill that obligation than those issues dealing with human life.

RLC

Re: John Calvin's Theological Legacy

Almost three years ago I did a post on Calvinist theology and invited comments. A reader recently came across the post and chose to respond. His thoughtful email can be found on our Feedback page.

RLC

Pick the Right Fight

In the last couple of days several conservative talk show personalities have been engaging in much hand-wringing over President Obama's recent statement that:

"... if you actually took the number of Muslim Americans, we'd be one of the largest Muslim countries in the world."

It's time for those who are outraged by this to calm down. It's clear, to me at least, that what Obama was saying is that the United States has a Muslim population greater than that of most Muslim nations, just as our Jewish population is roughly equal to that of Israel. This should not be regarded as an incendiary claim. As it happens, like a lot of what the President says, this assertion is factually inaccurate (We have a Muslim population that ranks about 35th in the world), but it's not nefarious. He wasn't, as critics like Sean Hannity are alleging, proclaiming that we're a "Muslim nation," and for them to make an issue of this makes them look silly.

Conservatives only erode their credibility when they insist on trying to put the worst possible construction on their opponents' words. It makes them look petty and partisan and costs us a fair hearing when larger matters are at stake.

One such larger matter is raised by the words of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor:

"I would hope that a wise Latina woman, with the richness of her experiences, would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."

Here criticism is completely warranted. This is a claim she has made on more than one occasion, and it clearly reveals a mindset that's simply unacceptable in a Supreme Court justice. As many have pointed out, if these words had been uttered by a white male nominee he would have been forced to withdraw within hours of the words having come to light.

To suggest that because I am of a particular gender and ethnic heritage I will do a better job of interpreting the Constitution and dispensing justice than someone who is of a different gender and ethnicity is as clear an example of sexist, racist bigotry as one can expect to find outside the meeting halls of, say, the Aryan Nation.

No one who thinks she's better qualified than others to judge the law because she's an Hispanic female should be seated on the Supreme Court, and her appointment tells us much, not only about her, but also about the man who nominated her.

RLC

Senator DeMint and GOP Corporatism

Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina heads the Senate Steering Committee, made up of the Senate's most conservative Republicans, and is a member of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee. In a fine essay in the Washington Times he has some excellent advice for his party. The short version: Get out of bed with the corporate elites.

DeMint puts his finger on a festering problem in the GOP - they've abandoned their conservative principles in order to appease the corporate power-brokers. Here's part of what he writes:

Earlier this month, the United States Chamber of Commerce handed out its annual "Spirit of Enterprise" awards to those members of Congress who voted with the Chamber 70 percent of the time on its most important legislative initiatives of 2008. The only four Republican senators who did not receive the award were Jon Kyl, Jeff Sessions, Jim Inhofe and me - four of the most conservative members of the Senate.

What were the conservative offenses? We opposed the failed bailouts and stimulus. Which explains why many liberal Democrats scored higher, including Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The Republican who scored lowest of all - that is, the Republican lawmaker supposedly least aligned with the nation's business community - was Ron Paul, a strong constitutionalist famous for his strict adherence to a free-enterprise libertarian philosophy.

There is, in these facts, an important insight into the current unpopularity of the Republican Party. In an era of corporate welfare - which is lately taking on the characteristics of 1930s-style corporatism itself - the interests of big business are veering away from the interests of economic freedom and toward the interests of big government. Many Republicans in the past decade have followed a similar course, and the party - and our country - have paid dearly for the wrong turn.

Republicans were not a party of economic elites as much as they were a party of economic freedom. They represented a clear, philosophical contrast to the watered-down socialism of the Democrats. Even when Republicans fell short on their promises of limited government, Americans believed the promises to be sincere nonetheless.

Where Mr. Reagan fought to deregulate in the interests of industry competition, many recent Republican leaders have sought to regulate in the interests of industry leaders. That is why the lobbying industry has grown so successful in recent years: For the first time, both parties have become receptive to special interest pleadings.

Republicans shouldn't be the party of business any more than they should be the party of labor - we're supposed to be the party of freedom. We should get out of the business of picking winners and losers in the marketplace. We should not care who wins in fair fights between Microsoft and Apple, between CitiGroup and community banks, or between Home Depot and mom-and-pop hardware stores. All we should demand is a fair fight.

It is none of the government's business - let alone the Republican Party's - whether banks make or deny risky loans, but only that we ensure lenders and borrowers bear the consequences of their own decisions.

Republicans will succeed again when we realize our true allegiance is not to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, but to free markets, free people and freedom itself.

There's more good stuff from DeMint at the link, and his point is well taken. Too many corporate CEOs masquerade as economic free-marketeers, but they're really not. They're corporatists who welcome all sorts of government intervention into the marketplace because, among other reasons, those interventions make it harder for pesky smaller companies to compete, leaving the market as the exclusive grazing grounds of the wealthy giants. So far from being appalled at the idea of a marriage between business and government, the very relationship that Mussolini contrived in Italy and the Nazis duplicated in Germany, too many Republican politicians think that such an illicit union can only make the engines of commerce thrum with greater resonance, and they're only too happy to facilitate it.

It's, in fact, a symptom of what's wrong with the Republican party and why they're losing elections. They're simply indistinguishable from liberal Democrats.

RLC

So Long, Ben

Fed chairman Ben Bernanke told congress yesterday that large U.S. budget deficits threaten financial stability and the government can't continue indefinitely to borrow at the current rate to finance the shortfall. He added that:

"Unless we demonstrate a strong commitment to fiscal sustainability in the longer term, we will have neither financial stability nor healthy economic growth. Maintaining the confidence of the financial markets requires that we, as a nation, begin planning now for the restoration of fiscal balance."

The Bloomberg report goes on to say that:

Bernanke's comments signal that the central bank sees risks of a relapse into financial turmoil even as credit markets show signs of stability. He said the Fed won't finance government spending over the long term, while warning that the financial industry remains under stress and the credit crunch continues to limit spending.

We have to wonder why congress and the White House are insisting on driving this financial train over the precipice. Surely, they all know what Bernanke and anyone else who has a bank account knows - you can't keep spending money you don't have, running up debts you have no way of paying off.

The article went on to offer some insight into how we're going to pay off Obama's shopping spree:

The budget deficit this year is projected to reach $1.85 trillion, equivalent to 13 percent of the nation's economy, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

"Either cuts in spending or increases in taxes will be necessary to stabilize the fiscal situation," Bernanke said in response to a question. "The Federal Reserve will not monetize the debt."

If Bernanke's telling the truth then the Fed will refuse to just print money to pay off Obama's debts. The bad news, however, is that the only other way to pay them off will be to raise taxes. A lot. In other words, if you think your paycheck is too fat now, just wait. It's about to go on a very severe diet.

Look, too, for the administration to answer Bernanke's impertinence by replacing him at the Fed with someone more compliant and less responsible.

RLC

Liberty U. Update

A couple of weeks ago I commented on my vacillation over Liberty University's decision to derecognize the student Democratic club. I defended the University's right as a private institution with a Christian mission to sponsor only those organizations which are compatible with that mission, but I also wondered if their decision to exercise that right was a little bit at odds with the name of the university. Since that post, which also ran in the local newspaper, some details have emerged that place Liberty's decision in a somewhat more favorable light than did the article upon which I based my original post.

For example, a pair of op-eds appear on the Liberty website that offer some important clarification. The first says, in part, this:

A number of media sources recently reported that Liberty University banned Democrats from meeting on campus. One headline erroneously read: "Democrats at Liberty University forced to meet off campus." Apparently many journalists do not let the facts get in the way of a juicy, agenda-driven story.

The story was spun out of control from the beginning, when Terry McAuliffe, a Democratic gubernatorial candidate for Virginia, called a telephone press conference to talk about the College Democrat club formed by students of Liberty University. The presses began to buzz. Much of what went to print was wrong. Most journalists were interested in scooping their competitors rather than seeking the truth. Even when some reporters learned the facts, they could not bring themselves to correct their stories because the fanciful reports were just too tempting.

The University has not banned Democrats from campus. Nor has the Democrat club been banned from meeting. And, never has the University or its officials said that a person cannot be a Christian and a Democrat. Sorry for those who want to run with these titillating sound bites, but these are the facts.

The students who formed the Democrat club last October are good students. They are pro-life and believe in traditional marriage. They can continue to meet on campus. The only thing that has changed came about as part of a University-wide review of all student organizations for official recognition status. Official recognition carries with it the benefit of using the University name and funds. While this group will not be an officially recognized club, it may still meet on campus.

While the students in the college Democrat club are pro-life and support traditional marriage, the constitution of the club pledged support to advance the Democratic platform and candidates. The 2008 Democratic platform has taken an extreme turn to the left on social issues. For the first time it supports federal funding of abortion and repeal of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, a law passed overwhelmingly by a bi-partisan Congress and signed by President Bill Clinton. Liberty University will not lend its name or financial support to undermine marriage or to promote abortion.

In my original post I made it clear that I thought this was precisely the sort of position that the school was duty-bound to adopt.

There's more significant information in the second article.

Having read these two pieces and having heard a report on NPR the other day on this matter, I feel a little chagrined at my original post. I also have had reinforced a lesson I thought I already knew pretty well - just because a story's on the evening news doesn't mean it's accurate.

Thanks to John for calling my attention to the above articles.

RLC

<i>Liberal Fascism</i> in Paperback

One of the most important books of the decade, in my opinion, was released in paperback yesterday, and now you have no excuse for not purchasing a copy. The book is Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism, an exploration of how ideological fascism was spawned by twentieth century progressivism/liberalism.

Those of a certain age will agree that it has been taken for granted for much of the twentieth century that Italian and German fascism were phenomena of the ideological right. It's not uncommon to hear leftists trying to stick the label of "fascist" on their conservative opponents. What these name-callers don't realize, and what even many conservatives don't realize, is that fascism is actually a child of leftist ideology and that the fascist temptation is alive and well today in America - not the fascism of the Nazis, to be sure, but what Goldberg refers to as happy-faced fascism.

In honor of the occasion of the paperback release National Review has an interview with Goldberg in which he talks about the book's reception and the impact it's having on campuses across the country. It's pretty interesting and serves as a good introduction to the ideas he writes about in the book.

RLC

I, Jerk

We all have at one time or another jumped to conclusions about something and wound up regretting it. That's why it's always wise, no doubt, to hold one's fire until sure of the target. Andrew Beitbart recounts a recent incident in which he had this lesson borne home to him in stinging fashion. Breitbart's telling of the tale is pretty funny and contains a good admonition for all of us. Give it a read.

RLC

Socialist Prophet

These words by an American socialist and six time candidate for president certainly seem prescient:

"The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism. But under the name of 'liberalism' they will adopt every fragment of the Socialist program, until one day America will be a Socialist nation, without knowing how it happened." Norman Thomas (d.1968).

In the last three months the Obama administration has taken over five banks, the largest insurance company in the world, and two automobile companies. It has borrowed in those three months more money than has been borrowed in total over the last thirty years. It has amassed a debt that is greater than the cumulative American debt since our founding. It has imposed a burden on every American household of almost $540,000.

We are well on our way to becoming the socialist nation Thomas foresaw. It's hard to envision how, unless the massive spending to which the Democrats have committed us is reversed by the elections of 2010, we can avoid hyperinflation, massive taxation, and the loss of our status as the most prosperous nation on earth.

Perhaps I'm just missing something that others see, but if not our children will pay an awful price for the political choice the nation made in November of 2008.

RLC

Perfection in Biology

Anika Smith at Evolution News and Notes links us to a surprising post. According to the Biologic Institute, physicists studying biological systems are assessing them to be perfect or near perfect in their design:

When we think of simple, elegant, unifying principles in science, we think of physics. It's not surprising then that physicists who examine living systems are looking for principles of this kind.

And it seems they have found one. Simply stated, it is that biological processes tend to be optimal in cases where this can be tested. Life's complexity can make it hard to pinpoint what "optimal" means, but sometimes physical limits provide a crisp definition. Because these limits cannot possibly be exceeded, they serve as an objective standard of perfection. Interestingly, in cases where it is clearly beneficial to edge right up to this standard, that's exactly what life seems to do.

For decades enzymologists have recognized that certain enzymes are catalytically perfect - meaning that they process reactant molecules as rapidly as these molecules can reach them by diffusion. That hinted at a principle of physical perfection in biology, but no one anticipated its breadth until recently. According to Princeton physicist William Bialek, one of the leading proponents of the emerging principle,...."While it is popular to view biological mechanisms as an historical record of evolutionary and developmental compromises, these observations on functional performance point toward a very different view of life as having selected a set of near optimal mechanisms for its most crucial tasks."

In other words, Bialek is saying that the optimal nature of the systems these physicists have looked at cannot plausibly be explained in terms of chance mutation and natural selection. Thus, the people at the Biologic Institute wonder, doesn't this mean that the evidence of perfection coheres better with a Design view of nature than it does with the Darwinian view?

It must be frustrating being a Darwinian. Here you have this beautiful, comprehensive theory that explains so much but which just refuses to conform to so many empirical facts.

RLC

Worldviews

Dennis Prager's column, to which we alluded the other day, got me to thinking about the matter of worldviews or what post-moderns like to call "metanarratives."

Worldviews are inescapable. Everyone has one. It's a lens through which we view the world, the set of assumptions we hold, consciously or unconciously, that help us to make sense of the world.

Any worldview offers answers to the following questions:

1. Who am I?
   
2. Why are we here?
   
3. Where am I going?
   
4. What's wrong with the world
   

Different worldviews offer different answers to those questions, but consider the answers given by just two of the major worldviews on offer in the U.S. - Judeo-Christianity and atheistic materialism.

In the Judeo-Christian view the above questions are answered as follows:

1. A child of the Creator of the universe.
   
2. Because God wanted to love us.
   
3. To be with Him forever.
   
4. It spurns God's love.
   

Those answers have been the well-springs of human creativity and discovery for two thousand years. Belief in those answers leads to a high view of humanity, it's what gives men reason to believe they have dignity and, consequently, human rights. The anticipation of eternity is a source of hope, meaning and happiness in life.

By contrast consider the answers that the atheistic materialist must give to those same questions:

1. A chance product of blind, impersonal forces.
   
2. No reason.
   
3. Nowhere.
   
4. Nothing.
   

Could anything be more sterile, more nihilistic, more likely to sap the life and vitality out of a culture than a view of things that declares that there's no hope, no real truth, no meaning, no dignity to being human? A culture which rejects the Christian worldview in order to embrace this view of life is a culture that will soon be empty and effete.

Ideas have consequences. One may think that the only difference between the atheist and the Christian is that the atheist gets to sleep in on Sunday morning, but one would be profoundly wrong. The difference between the two worldviews ripples across every aspect of life. It's the difference between hope and despair, meaning and pointlessness, values and worthlessness, dignity and degradation.

The question that puzzles me the most about atheism is not why people believe it, although that is indeed a puzzle, but rather why people would want it to be true. Why, for example, would Christopher Hitchens say that he would find it very depressing if he should discover that God really did exist? Why would philosopher Thomas Nagel write that he doesn't want the universe to be the kind of place where God existed?

These men are essentially saying that they would be depressed and disappointed if the universe were in fact a place where life had meaning, where there was a hope for life beyond the grave, where justice will ultimately prevail, where morality is based on something far more substantial than subjective feelings, where humans have dignity and worth and thus rights, where love is something more than a chemical reaction in the brain, where reason can be trusted, where there is a reason for our existence, and on and on.

To hope that God doesn't exist is to hope that none of this is the case because surely none of it can be the case if God is not there.

RLC

Stand-Up Guy

Ah, the hypoc..., er, irony. President Obama said in a speech on the Sotomayor nomination last Saturday that...

he expects "rigorous evaluation" of his nominee but added: "What I hope is that we can avoid the political posturing and ideological brinksmanship that has bogged down this process, and Congress, in the past."

He derided "some in Washington who are attempting to draw old battle lines and playing the usual political games, pulling a few comments out of context to paint a distorted picture of Judge Sotomayor's record."

Yes, let's have none of the crass political gamesmanship that characterized the Roberts nomination whom Obama voted, after judging him qualified, not to confirm because he disagreed with Roberts' judicial philosophy; or the Alito nomination whom Senator Obama not only voted against for the same reasons but whose confirmation he also voted to filibuster (while claiming to oppose the filibuster).

When it's his nominee up for confirmation he hopes we can avoid all that and disparages anyone who would engage in the same behavior he engaged in when the candidate was a bush nominee.

What a stand-up guy.

RLC

The Death of George Tiller

By now you've probably heard that one of the most infamous abortionists in the country was shot dead Sunday morning as he entered church:

George Tiller, the Wichita doctor who became a national lightning rod in the debate over abortion, was shot to death this morning as he walked into church services. Tiller, 67, was shot just after 10 a.m. at Reformation Lutheran Church at 7601 E. 13th, where he was a member of the congregation.

I myself am a Lutheran and was surprised that this man was a member of the Lutheran Church whose official position on abortion is pro-life and which is certainly opposed to the sorts of late-term abortions Tiller performed. I would have thought that his grisly profession would have put him at odds with the church, but being at odds with the Lutheran church is apparently a very difficult feat to accomplish.

At any rate, his murder raises a very perplexing ethical question:

If one is convinced that late-term abortions are tantamount to murder how does one, assuming one is not a pacifist, condemn the killing of the murderer?

It doesn't help us to think clearly about this matter when people on both sides of the issue are saying foolish things.

Operation Rescue spokespersons, for example, are saying (see link) that they "denounce vigilantism and the cowardly act that took place this morning," but an act whereby the perpetrator knowingly and willingly sacrifices his future is hardly cowardly. Just as with the 9/11 hijackers who President Bush called cowards, the act may be evil, but it's surely not cowardly.

President Obama stated that violence never brings about social change: "However profound our differences as Americans over difficult issues such as abortion, they cannot be resolved by heinous acts of violence."

This, sadly, is simply not true. It's arguable that we never would have achieved the progress in civil rights that was made in the latter half of the twentieth century were it not for the violent upheavals in our cities in the late sixties and early seventies. Martin Luther King was a great man and he accomplished much, but part of the reason for his success was that his non-violence was seen as a desirable alternative to the urban riots occurring across the land.

For that matter it took a terribly violent war to end slavery in this country. It's a deeply troubling fact about human beings that too often violence works. Indeed, too often it's the only thing that works.

So, here's the fundamental question that each thinking American must settle: Did George Tiller's killer do something evil? Presumably he acted on the assumption that a late-term abortion is the equivalent of the murder for pay of a child and that the legal authorities would do nothing to stop it. If that assumption is wrong then what the killer did was indeed evil and he should, in my opinion, receive the death penalty for premeditated murder.

If, however, the assumption is correct then it's hard to say (again, unless one is a pacifist) exactly how what he did was morally different than, say, what German officers tried to do when they, and Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, tried to kill Adolf Hitler.

Everything hinges on whether this assumption is right or wrong, and each person who reflects upon this tragic event will have to come to his or her own conclusions about that.

Pro-Life groups are understandably deploring the act, arguing, rightly, that it gives their cause a black eye, but this is a tactical objection not a moral one. Were it not for the negative press that the pro-life position is going to suffer because of Tiller's death, one gets the feeling that their objections to it would be less strenuous.

Pro-choice groups are outraged as well, of course, but these folks need to be asked whether the late-term children who died in Tiller's clinic were, in fact, being murdered. If the answer is yes, then they should be asked why they're outraged that their murderer has been killed. If the answer is no, as no doubt it would be, then the pro-choice folks need to be asked to explain why, if it's okay to kill unborn babies that are near their delivery date, it's not okay to kill them after their delivery.

As bioethicist Peter Singer and even the ACLU have said, there's no morally significant difference between a child a couple of days before it's born and a child a couple of days after it's born. If killing the former is not murder why should killing the latter be considered murder? And if killing the infant is indeed murder then so must be the killing of the about-to-be-born child.

Anyway, the Tiller killing is a much more complex ethical issue than some on both sides of the abortion debate would have us believe.

RLC

With Small Men

Dennis Prager challenges us to name a single contemporary European who has achieved greatness in some field other than politics, sports, or popular entertainment. The challenge may not be quite fair because greatness often takes a generation of two to become apparent, but Prager's point is that Europe has declined to the point where it's no longer turning out men and women of high accomplishment:

Even well-informed people who love art and literature and who follow developments in science and medicine would be hard pressed to come up with many, more often any, names. In terms of greatness in literature, art, music, the sciences, philosophy, and medical breakthroughs, Europe has virtually fallen off the radar screen.

What has happened is that Europe, with a few exceptions, has lost its creativity, intellectual excitement, industrial innovation, and risk taking. Europe's creative energy has been sapped. There are many lovely Europeans; but there aren't many creative, dynamic, or entrepreneurial ones.

So, if this is true to what shall we attribute the blame for this tragic state of affairs? Prager gives us an answer:

There are two reasons: secularism and socialism (aka the welfare state). Either one alone sucks much of the life out of society. Together they are likely to be lethal.

His argument in defense of this claim deserves to be presented in full:

Even if one holds that religion is false, only a dogmatic and irrational secularist can deny that it was religion in the Western world that provided the impetus or backdrop for nearly all the uniquely great art, literature, economic and even scientific advances of the West. Even the irreligious were forced to deal with religious themes -- if only in expressing rebellion against them.

Religion in the West raised all the great questions of life: Why are we here? Is there purpose to existence? Were we deliberately made? Is there something after death? Are morals objective or only a matter of personal preference? Do rights come from the state or from the Creator?

And religion gave positive responses: We are here because a benevolent God made us. There is, therefore, ultimate purpose to life. Good and evil are real. Death is not the end. Human rights are inherent since they come from God. And so on.

Secularism drains all this out of life. No one made us. Death is the end. We are no more significant than any other creatures. We are all the results of mere coincidence. Make up your own meaning (existentialism) because life has none. Good and evil are merely euphemisms for "I like" and "I dislike."

Thus, when religion dies in a country, creativity wanes. For example, while Christian Russia was backward in many ways, it still gave the world Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Tolstoy, and Tchaikovsky. Once Christianity was suppressed, if not killed, in Russia, that country became a cultural wasteland (with a few exceptions like Shostakovich and Solzhenitsyn, the latter a devout Christian). It is true that this was largely the result of Lenin, Stalin and Communism; but even where Communism did not take over, the decline of religion in Europe meant a decline in human creativity -- except for nihilistic and/or absurd isms, which have greatly increased.

As G. K. Chesterton noted at the end of the 19th century, when people stop believing in God they don't believe in nothing, they believe in anything. One not only thinks of the violent isms: Marxism, Marxism-Leninism, Fascism, Maoism, and Nazism, but of all the non-violent isms that have become substitute religions - e.g., feminism, environmentalism, and socialism.

The state sucks out creativity and dynamism just as much as secularism does. Why do anything for yourself when the state will do it for you? Why take care of others when the state will do it for you? Why have ambition when the state is there to ensure that few or no individuals are rewarded more than others?

America has been the center of energy and creativity in almost every area of life because it has remained far more religious than any other industrialized Western democracy and because it has rejected the welfare state social model.

Which is why so many are so worried about President Barack Obama and the Democratic Party's desire to transform -- in their apt wording -- America into a secular welfare state. The greatest engine of moral, religious, economic, scientific, and industrial dynamism is being starved of its fuel. The bigger the state, the smaller its people.

Indeed. I'm reminded by Prager's essay of the closing words of John Stuart Mill's On Liberty:

A State which dwarf's its men, in order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands -even for beneficial purposes - will find that with small men no great thing can really be accomplished.

RLC

Atheistic Ethics

David Harsanyi of the Denver Post writes an odd column explaining how he was driven by moral considerations to abandon his pro-choice views in favor of a pro-life ethic. This is all very well but the odd part is that he seems completely unaware that his new-found sense of moral obligation toward the unborn is completely incompatible with the first two sentences of his essay:

As an atheist and a secular kinda guy, I practice moral relativism regularly. Still, I've always struggled mightily with the ethics and politics of abortion.

This statement simply negates all that comes after. If Harsanyi is correct that there is no God, then there's simply no reason why anyone should think that abortion is wrong or that one has any obligation to respect human life. Harsanyi says, for example, that:

After a life of being pro-choice, I began to seriously ponder the question. I oppose the death penalty because there is a slim chance that an innocent person might be executed and I don't believe the state should have the authority to take a citizen's life. So don't I owe an nascent human life at least the same deference? Just in case?

Well, no, not if atheism is true, you don't. As Dostoyevsky put it, "If God is dead then everything is permitted." There are no obligations, no moral debts that we owe anyone. How could there be? What is it, precisely, that imposes the obligation that Harsanyi thinks he has to nascent human life?

What happens when we can use abortion to weed out the blind, mentally ill, the ugly, or any other "undesirable" human being?

What happens is that we go ahead and do it if we can get enough influential people to feel the same way we do. In a Godless world, might makes right. If a group of people have the power to practice the kind of eugenics Harsanyi's talking about here, there's no reason why they shouldn't do it.

Now, I happen to believe (as the civil libertarian and pro-life activist Nat Hentoff once noted) that the right to life and liberty is the foundation of a moral society.

Actually, the foundation of a moral society, indeed the foundation of the right to life and liberty, is the existence of God. Take that away and there are no rights and there's certainly no "moral society." This is not to say that one must believe in God to live by the values Harsanyi esteems. That's not the point at all. The point is that, given atheism, one can live by any values one chooses. The choice to live by this value rather than that is completely subjective and arbitrary. Harsanyi's preference for protecting the unborn is simply a matter of his own taste, like his preference for one flavor of ice cream rather than another. He could, were he inclined, support the murder of toddlers and it would not be any more or less wrong, in a moral sense, than his desire to protect them.

Charles Darwin writes in his autobiography that "One who does not believe in God or an afterlife can have for his rule of life ... only to follow those impulses and instincts which are the strongest and which seem to him to be the best." Darwin is correct in thinking that for the atheist morality is simply a matter of personal preference and subjectivity, but such thinking leads us to the edge of the abyss. If one man's impulses and instincts incline him to be a child molester and another's predispose him to be a great humanitarian what basis does Darwin, or Harsanyi, have for saying that one is any better, or worse, than the other?

RLC

<i>Patriots</i>

By now, some of our readers may have read Patriots: A Novel of Survival in the Coming Collapse by James W. Rawles...

Part novel, part survivalist-handbook, Patriots tells of a small group of friends facing every American's worst nightmare-the total collapse of society. The stock market plummets and hyperinflation cripples commerce and then a seemingly isolated financial crisis passes the tipping point when an unprepared government fails to act. Practically overnight, the fragile institutions of democracy fall apart and every American is forced to survive on their own.

Evading mobs of desperate, out-of-control citizens who have turned Chicago into a wasteland of looting and mayhem, this novel's protagonists make their way to a shared secure ranch in the wilds of northern Idaho. Here the survival-driven group fends off vicious attacks from the outside and eventually assists in restoring order to the country. The compelling, fast-paced action-adventure novel has readers jotting notes and referencing the book's impressive index for informative survivalist tips on everything from setting up a secure shelter to treating traumatic flesh wounds.

The primary message of the book is about being prepared to be self-sufficient should we find that some of the services we've come to expect and rely upon no longer are available like running water, electricity, fully stocked grocery shelves, law enforcement, etc. I found several interesting things about this book:

• It's a self-sufficiency manual wrapped inside a novel. So even if some threads of the story might seem to wander a bit, there's always an underlying educational "how-to" to be learned.


• The events that are unfolding in our economy as I write this have the potential to cause the very social collapse that Rawles describes in his story. Government administrations have ignored the Constitutional mandate for honest money for decades and have embraced Keynesian economics at their (and our) peril. The big banks have hijacked our government and the Administration does their bidding with little or no regard for the cost to the American citizen.


• There is a surprising turn of events toward the end that I just didn't see coming (you'll have to read the book to find out).


• Perhaps, most importantly, the book should motivate the reader to contemplate their degree of preparedness and what they would do should such a scenario unfold.

For those with confidence that such a disruption couldn't happen here in America, you only have to recall the breakdown of law and order, the killing, raping, and looting that took place in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. At least two observations may be made: First, it is ultimately the individual's responsibility to provide for their own security, protection, and welfare. It is not the job of the government and it obviously was a mistake for those who thought that it was. And second, if there was anything positive about Katrina, it's that it was localized to the Gulf area rather than being national in scope.

In the story, the incompetents running our country are held responsible for the unraveling of our social fabric but it could just as easily be caused by a terrorist attack or even a major sun spot or solar storm event. Rawles makes an interesting point when he says that our society's civility is only a thin veneer. Take away food and water for four days and it will be stripped away in an instant. If that happens, what are you going to do?

Check it out.

Latina Justice

Karl Rove maintains that both President Obama and the Republicans get something from the Supreme Court nomination of Sonia Sotomayor:

Mr. Obama said he wanted to replace Justice David Souter with someone who had "empathy" and who'd temper the court's decisions with a concern for the downtrodden, the powerless and the voiceless.

"Empathy" is the latest code word for liberal activism, for treating the Constitution as malleable clay to be kneaded and molded in whatever form justices want. It represents an expansive view of the judiciary in which courts create policy that couldn't pass the legislative branch or, if it did, would generate voter backlash.

There is a certain irony in a president who routinely praises America's commitment to "the rule of law" but who picks Supreme Court nominees for their readiness to discard the rule of law whenever emotion moves them.

Rove is correct to point out the irony. Liberal judicial philosophy is not about determining what the law says but about enacting into policy what they wish it said. A judge who rules on the basis of empathy is a judge who is derelict in her responsibility. An impartial judge should not allow personal feelings to obtrude into her interpretation of the law. If she does then she'll be showing a favoritism or bias toward one or the other of the parties who appear before her. That this is improper is the whole point of the symbol of justice as a blind-folded woman.

The Sotomayor nomination also provides Republicans with some advantages. They can stress their support for judges who strictly interpret the Constitution and apply the law as written. A majority of the public is with the GOP on opposing liberal activist judges. There is something in our political DNA that wants impartial umpires who apply the rules, regardless of who thereby wins or loses.

Mr. Obama understands the danger of heralding Judge Sotomayor as the liberal activist she is, so his spinners are intent on selling her as a moderate. The problem is that she described herself as liberal before becoming a judge, and fair-minded observers find her on the left of the federal bench.

Republicans also get a nominee who likes showing off and whose YouTube moments and Google insights cause people to wince. There are likely to be more revelations like Stuart Taylor's find last Saturday of this Sotomayor gem in a speech at Berkeley: "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion [as a judge] than a white male who hasn't lived that life." Invert the placement of "Latina woman" and "white male" and have a conservative say it: A career would be finished.

Few revelations in recent weeks show the media's total abandonment of their traditional role as neutral watchdogs of the political power players than the revelation to which Rove refers. If, mutatis mutandis, this fatuous remark had been made by a white male, especially a conservative white male, he'd have been keel-hauled by the media and the left. The President would have yanked his nomination within hours, but the same comment from a Hispanic woman elicits nothing more from our media guardians than a few tut-tuts before they commence stomping upon any hapless Republican who might suggest that just maybe Ms Sotomayor is a bit of a bigot.

The media has also quickly adopted the story line that Republicans will damage themselves with Hispanics if they oppose Ms. Sotomayor. But what damage did Democrats suffer when they viciously attacked Miguel Estrada's nomination by President George W. Bush to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, the nation's second-highest court? New York Sen. Chuck Schumer was particularly ugly, labeling Mr. Estrada a right-wing "stealth missile" who was "way out of the mainstream" and openly questioning Mr. Estrada's truthfulness.

Democrats can get away with this because both Hispanics and African-Americans, like drug-dependent women living with abusive boyfriends, are perfectly willing to suffer the indignities heaped upon them by the party overseers as long as those "boyfriends" keep promising them more "candy."

Nonetheless, Republicans must treat her with far more care than Democrats treated John Roberts or Samuel Alito and avoid angry speeches like Sen. Ted Kennedy's tirade against Robert Bork. The GOP must make measured arguments against her views and philosophy, using her own words and actions.

The Ricci case is an example: Whites were denied fire department promotions because of a clear racial quota. Ms. Sotomayor's refusal to hear their arguments won her stinging criticism from fellow Second Court of Appeals judge Jos� Cabranes, a respected Clinton appointee.

The Ricci case is right now before the Supreme Court and knowledgeable observers predict that it's going to be overturned. Perhaps Ms Sotomayor should have had a little empathy for the firefighters in this case who worked very hard (overcoming dyslexia in the case of Mr. Ricci) to prepare for the test and pass it. According to NPR:

Frank Ricci, the lead plaintiff in this case, is not a naturally gifted test taker. In an affidavit, he said he has dyslexia, that he studied as much as 13 hours a day for the firefighter promotional exam, that he paid someone to read the textbooks onto audiotapes, prepared flashcards and worked with a study group. And he passed.

Ms Sotomayor disdained the test results because all the people who passed were white (one Hispanic). Her empathy evidently does not extend to such as Mr. Ricci who, due to an unfortunate accident of birth, is a white male.

Anyway, unless the Republicans block her in committee she'll be the next Supreme Court Justice, and she'll have ample opportunity to demonstrate how a Latina judge is better situated than those doofus white men on the Court to interpret the Constitution. I can't wait.

RLC

The Crucial Factor

Noemie Emery cuts to the heart of the debate over torture with a fine essay at the Washington Examiner. She notes that in all the sturm und drang the most crucial element in determining the nature of the act is often omitted - intent. Whether an act is evil or not depends not merely upon the act itself, as so many of President Bush's critics seem to assume, but mostly on the reasons why it is done.

This is such an elementary ethical principle that one is taken aback by the realization that it still needs to be articulated. Here's some of Emery's column:

The key to the way we judge the morals of violence is that, while the impact on the victim always is similar, force used offensively and force used defensively have always been two different things. Shoot someone, or failing that, fracture his skull with a fire tong, and you inflict pain, harm, and possibly death on your victim, but the reason you do it determines your fate.

Stand at the top of a hill with a rifle, and spray shots at the people beneath you?

If it's campus, you're a monster, and serial killer. If it's a battlefield, and you're facing an enemy onslaught, you'll get a medal, if you survive. Charge at someone with bayonet fixed and pointed? If you're an Axis soldier impaling civilians, it's an act of the utmost depravity. If you're a Union soldier at Little Round Top at Gettysburg, fighting off the oncoming Confederate army, you're a national hero, saving the last, best hope of mankind.

In the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln was offered the use of a bullet that exploded inside the body, doing the victim incredible damage. Lincoln approved it: It would shorten the war. For the same reason - to shorten the war - President Harry S Truman incinerated not one but two Japanese cities. Neither man is considered a war criminal (except by Bill Maher), as they took some lives to save more lives, specifically those entrusted to them, and to preserve a political system less unjust than the ones they were fighting.

Their guilt is absolved by their intent, which was to save lives, and a more benign social order. Yet liberals, who apply the motive defense in trying to exonerate perpetrators of criminal violence - the accused was stressed out, he ate Twinkies, he was deprived as a child, etc. - seem strangely unwilling to extend this to those who made use of 'harsh' tactics to forestall further attacks after thousands had perished in the most torturous manner on Sept. 11, 2001.

"The horror of Sept. 11 resides in me like a dormant pathogen," writes Richard Cohen, shortly before comparing George Bush to a Nazi for trying to make sure such a horror would never recur. "Here, once again, were the squalid efforts of legal toadies to justify the unjustifiable," as he informs us. "I know it is offensive to compare almost anyone or anything to the Nazis, but the Bush-era memos struck me as echoes from the past."

But the Nazis' intent was to invade countries and subjugate and degrade whole populations, set up death camps where as many as 11 million civilians would perish, and orchestrate the elimination through starvation and torture of the ethnically impure from the universe. The intent of Bush and his people in water-boarding three hard core terrorists was to prevent another 9/11, that was sprung on his unaware and his innocent country.

Cohen's characterization is at best simplistic and reveals an inchoate, underdeveloped moral understanding. His argument, if one might wish to characterize it as such, is that since the Nazis inflicted suffering, and the Bush people inflicted suffering, therefore the Bush people are Nazis. It's pretty embarrassing, but there you have it, and Cohen isn't the only one to comment on this issue whose logical abilities are similarly attenuated.

The crucial question that needs to be asked to determine whether the Bush administration acted in a morally reasonable way is not so much what did they do, but rather why did they do it, and this question seems to concern very few of Bush's critics.

RLC

Voter Apathy

It turns out that large numbers of people who voted for President Obama in November disagree with much of his program and policies. Given that anyone who was paying attention last Fall had to know what Obama would do once he was in office, we must conclude that these people either weren't paying attention or they voted for Obama notwithstanding their disagreements with his plans for the country. The first is irresponsible, the second is irrational.

With an electorate like this out there it's no wonder Democrats want to make it easier to vote.

RLC

Uncivil Discourse

What can be done to instill civility into our political discourse? The last eight years were characterized by a viciousness that may have been unprecedented in most of our lifetimes, and though Republicans have, I honestly believe, treated President Obama with much greater respect than Democrats treated President Bush, it remains the case that with the advent of blogs, cable TV, and talk radio civility seems to have become an anachronism.

Some people, perhaps, might think that it's only those who suffer most from the kind of eye-gouging that occurs daily in the blogosphere and on the airwaves who call for civility. Civility, in this view, is the plea of those who hold to what Nietzsche called slave morality, the attempt by the weak to mitigate the harshness of their masters by foisting a moral system on them that would constrain their will to power. In other words, pleas for civility are the recourse of society's losers who don't want the strong to be all the time beating them up, but who are otherwise powerless to prevent it.

I think, though, that the opposite is true. Civility is a mark of strength. Calmness and courtesy are indicators of confidence in one's positions. Lies, insults, and rudeness are red flags hoisted by people who subliminally recognize that their arguments are inherently weak. The flimsiness of a point of view can often be measured by the level of shrillness and meanness with which it's presented. If one's ideas are compelling then he has nothing to fear by extending courtesy and respect to the other side.

No one makes this case with more clarity or eloquence than John Stuart Mill in his wonderful book On Liberty. Mill writes, for instance, that:

The worst offense of this kind which can be committed by a polemic is to stigmatize those who hold a contrary opinion as bad and immoral men .... [O]pinion ought, in every instance, to determine its verdict by the circumstances of the individual case; condemning everyone, on whichever side of the argument he places himself, in whose mode of advocacy either want of candor, or malignity, bigotry, or intolerance of feeling manifest themselves, but not inferring these vices from the side which a person takes, though it be the contrary side of the question to our own; and giving merited honor to every one, whatever opinion he may hold, who has calmness to see and honesty to state what his opponents and their opinions really are, exaggerating nothing to their discredit, keeping nothing back which tells, or can be supposed to tell, in their favor. This is the real morality of public discussion: and if often violated, I am happy to think that there are many controversialists who to a great extent observe it and a still greater number who conscientiously strive towards it.

I write all this after having read a post by Rod Dreher who recently found himself exposed to radio talker Mark Levin:

I don't listen to talk radio a lot, because I have a short commute between office and home. But last fall, I got into the car with a colleague to go pick up a pizza (we were working late), and heard some conservative talker with a screechy voice just making an ass of himself. Even when I disagree with Limbaugh, he's interesting to listen to -- funny and entertaining. So too with Laura Ingraham, and even Anne Coulter. But this guy was just horrible. He sounded horrible, and he whined and moaned and basically carried on like the shrill crackpot at the bar that you excuse yourself to go to the bathroom to get away from, and then head for the door.

"That's Mark Levin," my friend explained.

After recounting a decidedly unpleasant exchange Levin had with a caller, Dreher says this:

A cretin who would say something like this on his radio show is a big deal among a lot of conservatives. Good grief. Having spent about 15 unpleasant minutes listening to this creep, I cannot imagine why anybody pays attention to him. Seriously, where is the pleasure in listening to this kind of trashmouth? If I were on the left, I would make sure that people thought that Mark Levin was the face of the Republican Party and the conservative movement.

I guess not even Dreher can resist the temptation to resort to name-calling, but that's not my point, exactly. The fact is that he's right about Levin (to get a sense of Levin's style go here), and not just Levin, and certainly not just conservative talk radio personalities.

Nevertheless, speaking just of conservatives, it's counter-productive of them to dress themselves in such uncomely rhetorical robes because it closes off any chance that their ideas, which are usually superior to those of the left, will get a hearing among the great mass of people who see themselves as neither conservative nor liberal, but who could potentially be swayed by compelling arguments humorously and irenically presented.

Ugly, nasty rhetoric, gratuitous insults and name-calling, refusing to let opponents be heard, are all tactics which generate only resentment and a desire to tune the offender out. They put off the very people we want to reach and they rarely persuade. For this reason I no longer read Ann Coulter (though Dreher seems to like her), nor listen to Michael Savage or Mark Levin and have a great deal of difficulty tolerating Sean Hannity. Despite the ratings and success of these people I don't want any of them to be the face of modern conservatism. I have no problem with their frequent criticisms of liberalism - indeed, I often agree with them - but I have a big problem with the manner in which they often make those criticisms and the way they too often treat liberals as persons.

Nor can the left plead rhetorical chastity. Left-wing blogs are often stomach-turning in their vileness, and I can scarcely watch Chris Matthews on MSNBC who is, in my opinion, one of the rudest people on cable TV. And when it comes to sheer meanness Matthews' colleague Keith Olbermann is all that Dreher accuses Mark Levin of being, and worse.

It's hard to treat people with respect and dignity, of course, when they refuse the same courtesy to others, and it's easy to succumb to the temptation to call one's opponents names when they behave in ways that make the name appropriate. It's not always wrong, after all, to call a stupid idea stupid or to call a despicable human being despicable. Sometimes, when stakes are high and the battle hot some rhetoric and behavior are warranted which would not be otherwise, but incendiary language should be used sparingly and judiciously, never gratuitously. If it's deemed appropriate to use a pejorative in our discourse the reason for it should be explained, and it should not simply be employed as a pinch-hitter for an argument. To employ a different metaphor, our political discourse should be more like those laser-guided missiles the military uses and less like indiscriminate carpet bombing.

Nevertheless, drawing lines our rhetoric should not cross isn't easy, and fair-minded people will disagree as to when the line is being breached. No one wants to narrow the bounds to the point where satire is prohibited or the mot juste that would prick the egos of pompous gasbags is disallowed. Then, too, there are those like Perez Hilton, who, because of their cruel treatment of others, deserve a brutally frank assessment of their own relevant inadequacies. Any line we draw should not rule out of bounds condign frankness about those who mistreat others.

But the difficulty in knowing precisely where to place the foul line does not relieve us of the prima facie duty to give the benefit of the doubt, to exercise restraint, and to refrain from calling people names, as Levin and Dreher both do, over legitimate differences of opinion.

We can accurately describe someone's behavior as stupid, sleazy, or sickening without imputing those adjectives to the person himself, at least until such time as a long train of examples makes it impossible to separate the person from the behavior.

Politics (or any arena in which ideas are at issue) is, switching metaphors again, like boxing. There's nothing wrong with trying to hit your opponent with all you've got. There's nothing wrong with trying, within the rules, to diminish his ability to impose his will, there's nothing wrong with using language that packs a wallop, but it's always wrong to hit below the belt, to try to hurt and humiliate the other person. It's not wrong to deflate arrogant political egos, but it's always wrong to try to destroy people who are honestly and sincerely trying to do the best job they can. Too many people in our politically-oriented media think that the way to prevail in our nation's policy battles is by grievously crippling their opponents or by destroying them personally. Doing this may certainly bring one power, but it's a benefit gained at the cost of one's humanity. It's a devil's bargain.

There's more on the Dreher/Levin contretemps here. For what it's worth I think Dreher overstates Levin's importance to conservatism. He's not the face of contemporary conservatism, as Dreher alleges. That distinction, in my opinion, goes to Rush Limbaugh - whom both Dreher and I often appreciate - and increasingly to Glenn Beck.

RLC