Two Myths

"The Day of Judgment will only come when Muslims fight the Jews and kill them. When the Jews hide behind the rocks and the trees and the rocks and the trees cry out, 'Oh Muslim, there is a Jew hiding being me, come and kill him.'" A saying of the Prophet Mohammed

Among the myths from which many Americans need to be liberated there are two that are especially pernicious.

The first is the myth that the left is the champion of free speech in America and the second is the myth that the haters among Muslims represent only a tiny fraction of the Muslim population and that they're largely overseas in any event.

David Horowitz is a former radical leftist who later in life realized that the left was the greatest enemy of human freedom in the West in the 20th century. He subsequently set about giving speeches and writing books about the threats we face from those who would, if they could, put the boot of oppression on our necks. His work takes him to many university campuses where he and others who share his views, must be protected by armed guards not only from leftist campus thugs but also from violently disruptive, hate-filled Muslim students.

He recently gave a speech at USC that I wish every American would read in its entirety. It gives a clear picture of how far along the process of denying freedom of speech and imposing other fascist strategies upon this country has progressed. The speech reveals some frightening truths, but even more frightening is the fact that so many Amercans are oblivious to what's happening on many of our largest campuses and how complicit university administrators are in facilitating the hatred that is being directed against Christians, Jews and anyone who opposes the Islamist agenda.

Please take fifteen minutes or so and read Horowitz's speech. It'll open your eyes.

RLC

Re: Haiti

Byron pens a caution that my criticism that the aid given to Haiti in the last two decades, totaling several billion dollars, has been largely for naught, is unfair. He points out that in fact much good has been accomplished:

I'm not sure "money thrown" at the problems in Haiti was really just "thrown" nor utterly wasted. Sure some programs and schemes were less effective, but not every aid program was pointless. Schools taught some kids, some clean wells were built, some vaccinations given, some roads built, some hospitals equipped. Those doing development work still have a lot to learn, and local folks do too. But it isn't as if we didn't save some kids from starvation, help some people in good ways, and make a bit of a difference. Tearing off the darkness doesn't come easily, but some successes have been seen, even in Haiti. Brooks is right to insist on cultural ideals that are wise, and to point out the bad infra-structure isn't anything new, really. He's right, but it isn't anything that "liberals" would disagree with. Did you mean to imply as much?

He's right, of course, that much good has been done in Haiti and that that miserable land would be in far worse shape than it is had Americans and others not helped, but we must distinguish aid, which is a government to government transfer, from the work of charities, mission organizations, disaster relief, etc. Most of the good that Byron talks about has been accomplished by private, non-government organizations (NGOs), not through aid which often winds up in the pockets of corrupt politicians, the military, and other thugs. Some of it might seep through the layers of corruption to the people, but it's hardly a good return on our money.

Byron goes on to say that:

I know a number of NGO workers, policy wonks and missionaries. Some are evangelicals, some are active more mainline congregations or traditions. I just don't know anybody who has that simplistic ideology that we can't critique any third world group or indigenous practices. Making liberal ideas about multi-culturalism a whipping boy is too easy and, while may having a grain of truth, I think you overstated it.

This is doubtless true. The people who actually work in other cultures are much less likely to suffer the illusion that all cultures deserve respect or that it's chauvinistic to think one culture superior to another. It is to illustrate this that I appended the letter from my missionary friend to the post. The "multicultural blather" doesn't come from people most familiar with the culture in which they labor to bring relief from misery, it comes from the academy, the media, and the political sphere and seeps down into our popular discourse and determines our assumptions about the world.

We fail to do what needs to be done to bring about genuine change in these places because we're cowed into thinking we'll be called racists, imperialists, paternalists, and colonialists by those who insist that we have no right to impose our cultural values on others - that our culture is no better than theirs. So instead we just send aid which is essentially welfare for corruptocrats, and saints like my friend and Byron's acquaintances stick their fingers in the dike heroically making their life's work trying to hold back the tide.

The rest of By's email can be read on the Feedback page.

Those who want to read up on the problems of giving aid to poor countries should read Dambisia Moya's Dead Aid, or Paul Collier's Bottom Billion.

RLC

Most Influential

Need a quick primer on who's who in contemporary ideological warfare? The Telegraph U.K. has ranked the most influential conservatives and the most influential liberals in the U.S. They actually rank the top 100 of each but they break the lists into installments of twenty. The top twenty conservatives are featured here and the top twenty liberals are here.

There are links to the other 80 people on each list as well.

I question a number of their choices (Joe Lieberman was ranked in the second twenty as a conservative?!), but overall I think they did a pretty good job.

The most influential liberal was a foregone conclusion, I think, but I was surprised by the Telegraph's choice of the most influential conservative.

Thanks to Jason for the link.

RLC

Journey From the Fall

Those of a certain age will remember with a bitter taste in their mouth the American betrayal of the Vietnamese people in the early to mid 1970s. After Nixon negotiated a cease-fire, congressional Democrats cut off funding for the war, refusing aid to the South Vietnamese who were left on their own to face their deaths at the hands of the North Vietnamese who ignored the cease-fire and who were supplied by the Chinese and Soviets. After the Americans left and the North invaded the South a curtain of misery and terror settled over the Vietnamese people, especially those who had worked with the Americans. It's perhaps the darkest, most disgraceful event in our national history, at least in the 20th century.

To say that the South Vietnamese suffered scarcely begins to capture the horrors they experienced, but last night I watched an excellent film, made by Vietnamese filmmakers and actors, that gives us some insight into the atrocities perpetrated by the communists on those who had made the fatal mistake of trusting American politicians to honor our commitment to their protection. Just as the movie The Killing Fields, gives us insight into the unimaginable slaughter perpetrated by the Khmer Rouge as they swept into the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh, so, too, does Journey from the Fall (2007) strip away the comfortable rationalizations that were all very much in the air as we fled Saigon in 1975.

Journey follows the fate of a South Vietnamese official, his wife, son, and mother, in the wake of the collapse of South Vietnam. It's heartbreaking to watch, but it's a story repeated millions of times in millions of lives of people trying to flee the benevolences administered by the armies of the North.

The movie is a little confusing since the narrative does not follow a chronological sequence, but it does a marvelous job of showing us who the Vietnamese people were and the terrors to which they were subjected by the communists.

It's a splendidly crafted film about a very important part of our history, one most of us would probably like to forget, but which we must always remember. It's a shame that most of the politicians who refused to allow President Ford to protect the South from their vicious neighbors are no longer around to see it.

RLC

By Any Means Necessary

Readers sometimes chide me for thinking that lefties lack a certain starch in their moral fiber. Well, I know anecdotal evidence is not going to convince anyone, but here's a prominent liberal talk show host on MSNBC, Ed Shultz, boasting that he'd cheat in order to prevent the Republican candidate from winning the Massachussetts special election tomorrow:

I know, I know. Some will object that Shultz wasn't being serious (although he certainly sounds serious). The point is that people who revere our democratic system and who take their integrity seriously wouldn't joke about something like this, particularly in light of the allegations of voter fraud that have plagued recent elections, and certainly not in a public setting.

It's no wonder the Democrats haven't been upset by the allegations and evidence of ACORN's voter registration fraud. Some of them, at least, appear to think such tactics are morally justifiable.

HT: Radio Equalizer

RLC

Martin Luther King Day

I can think of no better way to honor the memory of the man whose life we celebrate today than to read his Letter From a Birmingham City Jail.

It's hard, I think, to read King's letter without drawing the conclusion that he was driven by his conviction that the Gospel demands that we do justice to our fellow man and that this is our highest obligation. His Christian faith permeated and informed his political thinking, and it would be good for those who admire King but who also believe that religion has no place in the public sphere to reflect on the fact that apart from Christianity there would have been no Martin Luther King. Indeed, a naked public square could never have produced an American civil rights movement.

RLC

Haiti

David Brooks has an excellent column on the Haiti disaster at the New York Times in part of which he writes:

This is not a natural disaster story. This is a poverty story. It's a story about poorly constructed buildings, bad infrastructure and terrible public services. On Thursday, President Obama told the people of Haiti: "You will not be forsaken; you will not be forgotten." If he is going to remain faithful to that vow then he is going to have to use this tragedy as an occasion to rethink our approach to global poverty. He's going to have to acknowledge a few difficult truths.

The first of those truths is that we don't know how to use aid to reduce poverty. Over the past few decades, the world has spent trillions of dollars to generate growth in the developing world. The countries that have not received much aid, like China, have seen tremendous growth and tremendous poverty reductions. The countries that have received aid, like Haiti, have not....

....Third, it is time to put the thorny issue of culture at the center of efforts to tackle global poverty. Why is Haiti so poor? Well, it has a history of oppression, slavery and colonialism. But so does Barbados, and Barbados is doing pretty well. Haiti has endured ruthless dictators, corruption and foreign invasions. But so has the Dominican Republic, and the D.R. is in much better shape. Haiti and the Dominican Republic share the same island and the same basic environment, yet the border between the two societies offers one of the starkest contrasts on earth - with trees and progress on one side, and deforestation and poverty and early death on the other.

As Lawrence E. Harrison explained in his book "The Central Liberal Truth," Haiti, like most of the world's poorest nations, suffers from a complex web of progress-resistant cultural influences. There is the influence of the voodoo religion, which spreads the message that life is capricious and planning futile. There are high levels of social mistrust. Responsibility is often not internalized. Child-rearing practices often involve neglect in the early years and harsh retribution when kids hit 9 or 10.

We're all supposed to politely respect each other's cultures. But some cultures are more progress-resistant than others, and a horrible tragedy was just exacerbated by one of them.

Fourth, it's time to promote locally led paternalism. In this country, we first tried to tackle poverty by throwing money at it, just as we did abroad. Then we tried microcommunity efforts, just as we did abroad. But the programs that really work involve intrusive paternalism.

In other words, part of the reason why the billions of dollars of aid that the U.S. has sent to Haiti in the last twenty years has done nothing to improve the situation there is that we are locked in a deadly (for the Haitian people) tango with our politically correct assumptions about other cultures. The Haitian culture is completely dysfunctional and corrupt, but we're too cowed by liberal/progressive multicultural blather about the beauty of diversity and the need to "respect all cultures" to point out the retrograde, primitive beliefs and assumptions that are destroying the Haitian people.

We're also too fearful of being seen as imperialist and colonialist to do what Brooks says and go in and fix the problems. If we do that, we fear, why, there may be resistance, there may be resentment, so instead of actually helping people we just keep sending millions of dollars that just evaporates once it hits the Haitian shore.

Liberal ideas are harmless until people start taking them seriously and putting them into practice. Then you realize that they not only prevent us from doing what is necessary to really help people but that they're massively wasteful, futile, condescending, and counterproductive.

I have a friend who has been a missionary in Haiti for over twenty years. He loves the Haitian people, but his love for them has not blinded him to their deeply degenerate culture. He's been emailing our church to keep us updated on what's going on in his village since the earthquake. I thought I'd share his last email:

Life is moving back toward normal now. We only had one 'shaking period' yesterday. People are sleeping outside just to be safe...because folks here are easily scared. They'd never think of sleeping outside on a normal night...too scary. Now they won't sleep inside...too scary. It's sad, a life being afraid of everything. I talked to a twelve year old boy who was alone in the woods when the quake happened. The ground shook. He tells me he immediately thought, "Demons!" He ran through briar and brumble cutting his legs to get away from the demons. Demons get a lot of credit here in Haiti for things they don't do. As he told me the story I remembered running by him as I went to get my camera.

Thanks for all of your ideas about helping folks here. I'm at a loss as to what people can do at this point. The big organizations obviously are used to doing this kind of thing. That's a good place to start, helping them cover their costs. I can't see how sending or shipping anything here would work anytime soon. All the 'systems' are down, and they were faulty before they went down.

Gas jumped up in price already. The trip to Port (Port Au Prince) used to cost around $40 in public transportation. Now it's $100 or $150. That should come down as gas gets back in circulation. The big gas 'center' apparently wasn't affected. But for the time being gas is rare.

We imagine food will be rare in the days ahead. It will get expensive, no doubt.

Jean's (John's) one sister and brother have made it out here to our part of the country already. She showed up with nothing but the clothes on her back...literally. She was barefoot. I imagine more and more people will be showing up like that. Locals will be ready to share whatever they have (which isn't much to begin with). I'm guessing this town will be saturated with people seeking a place to stay and start over in the days and weeks ahead. The southern end of the island is in great shape compared to the capital area.

I'm not sure even what WFL (Water For Life) will be able to do to help folks. It's early still. We haven't heard more from our president, Leon, than that he and his wife are fine.

SO, I encourage those of you praying for the relief effort. Helping here in Haiti can be really really frustrating. Pray for the patience of relief workers as they confront the complete absence of infrastructure and preparation for disasters. It sometimes makes you feel crazy, and you end up crying, "Why am I here trying to help these twisted people!?" But they need love, love, and more love.

Helping people find people is a great idea. Radio stations and websites are working hard to help folks. It'll take time.

I'll obviously be doing what I can to help folks in need as they come across my path. A few have today already. If you'd like to contribute to that effort, please do it through Christ Lutheran Church. They are accustomed to receiving funds for the work here with me.

If we wish to really help the Haitians, or the people of any third world country, we should first get it into our minds that we can respect them as individual persons created in the image of God while at the same time recognizing that they're trapped in a culture that is devastating their potential. The worst thing we can do, perhaps, is to "respect" a culture that eats its people alive.

RLC

You Know You're a Conservative If...

Harold Witkov at American Thinker talks about the "Eureka moment" a lot of people are having as they watch what the Democrats are trying to do to their country. People are suddenly experiencing the insight that, regardless of how they voted in the last election, regardless of which party they are registered with, they're actually conservatives. Witkov writes that you can tell if you're like one of these folks if you oppose:

• the federal redistribution of wealth.
• entitlement politics.
• American czars.
• apology tours that denigrate the greatness of our country.
• tax-and-spend politics.
• government takeovers.
• amnesty citizenship for those who have entered our country illegally.
• out-of-control printing of money.
• legislation designed to do away with free speech (Fairness Doctrine).
• big government.
• trillion-dollar government stimulus package slush funds.
• treating our allies like enemies and our enemies like friends.
• politicians who do not let us drill for oil.
• politicians who look the other way while Iran and North Korea develop nuclear weapons.
• government-run health care.
• health care bills that provide abortion funding.
• backroom deals by politicians that circumvent transparency and the Constitution.
• trillion-dollar deficits.
• high taxes.
• treating all people to the identical security scrutiny in airports.
• laws that provide special exemptions for legislators.
• laws that provide special privileges to certain states.
• those who would stifle an honest global warming debate.
• federal funding of corrupt organizations like ACORN.
• "Miranda rights" for foreign terrorists.
• confessed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed getting a civilian trial in NY.
• cap-and-trade legislation and taxing carbon footprints.
• closing GITMO and bringing terrorists to American soil.
• letting the U.N. tell us how to live.
• a president who does not believe in American exceptionalism.

Lest anyone (Like David Brooks) think that conservatives are defined simply by what they are against it should be pointed out that one is against things because one is for their opposites. It is because one believes in small government, low taxes, strong national defense and individual liberty that one opposes most of the items Witkov puts on his list.

RLC

How Technology Is Changing Warfare

The Wall Street Journal has an interesting article on how technology is making war "safer," at least for those who use the technology. Included among descriptions of various weapons systems is a brief history of how we came to have a fleet of Predator drone aircraft which have been widely used in the Afghanistan/Pakistan theater:

When the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, it had just a handful of drones. Today, U.S. forces have around 7,000 unmanned vehicles in the air and an additional 12,000 on the ground, used for tasks including reconnaissance, airstrikes and bomb disposal.

In 2009, for the first time, the U.S. Air Force trained more "pilots" for unmanned aircraft than for manned fighters and bombers.

After Syrian missile batteries in Lebanon took a heavy toll on Israeli fighter jets in the 1973 war, Israel developed the first modern unmanned aerial vehicle, or UAV.

When Israel next invaded Lebanon in 1981, the real-time images provided by those unmanned aircraft helped Israel wipe out Syrian air defenses, without a single downed pilot. The world, including the U.S., took notice.

The Pentagon set aside its long-held skepticism about the advantages of unmanned aircraft and, in the early 1980s, bought a prototype designed by former Israeli Air Force engineer Abraham Karem. That prototype morphed into the modern-day Predator, which is made by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc.

Unlike the U.S. and other militaries, where UAVs are flown by certified, costly-to-train fighter pilots, Israeli defense companies have recently built their UAVs to allow an average 18-year-old recruit with just a few months' training to pilot them.

There's more at the link.

RLC

Trends Bode Ill for Democrats

James Pethokoukis explains the formidable difficulties the Democrat party faces in trying to keep control of the House of Representatives in 2010.

He lists eight which I paraphrase here:

1. Momentum. Big GOP wins in the gubernatorial races greatly helped Republicans with candidate recruiting for 2010.
   
2. History. In 13 of the past 15 midterm elections going back to 1950, the party in control of the White House has lost an average of 22 seats in the House.
   
3. Party dominance. Particularly in the House, there are lots of Democrats in places with a proven willingness to vote Republican. Currently 47 of them are in districts won by both John McCain in 2008 and George W. Bush in 2004.
   
4. Obamacare. Americans disapprove of healthcare reform by a 51-38 margin. And only a little more than a third think the $787 billion stimulus plan has done much good .... There's also plenty of worry among the electorate that Washington spending is creating a dangerous level of government debt.
   
5. Rep. Parker Griffith. Griffith recently switched from Democrat to Republican and could be an electoral harbinger. His district, Alabama's 5th, gave 60 percent of its votes to Bush in 2004, and 61 percent to McCain.
   
6. Unemployment. It would take a year of 4 percent growth generating 200,000 to 250,000 jobs a month to bring the rate down to 9 percent. And even that would be twice as high as what Americans have been used to during the past two decades.
   
7. Voter apathy. a recent poll by the liberal Daily Kos blog found just 56 percent of Democrats definitely or probably voting in 2010 vs. 81 percent of Republicans.
   
8. Lag time. Even if the unemployment rate falls a full percentage point next year, it may not help Democrats much. Americans only slowly regain their economic confidence after a deep recession.
   

Pethokoukis goes into more detail on these in his article which, if you're a political junkie, is worth a read.

You might also be interested in developments in Massachusetts where they're having an election to fill the seat of the late Senator Ted Kennedy. In a state with a three to one edge in voter registration the Democrat is actually slightly behind in the polls. It seems that even in the bluest of states people may have had enough of the Democrats' shenanigans and policies.

RLC

The Myth of the Perfect Parent

When I was a young man just beginning a family I was convinced that how our children eventually turned out was pretty much a matter of how good a job my wife and I did as parents. As time went on and I saw more and more friends who were committed to doing the best parenting job they could, struggle with rebellious, defiant children or children who simply failed to adopt the values and beliefs they (and I) thought necessary for successful adulthood, I gradually began to see how wrong I was.

A lot of parents are filled with guilt at how their children turned out because they believe that if they had done something differently their children would have been different. They're like the person who believes that when answers to prayer don't come that it must somehow be because of something they're not doing right.

The truth of the matter, I've come to believe, is that our contribution to a child's formation is much less than what I used to think, and now a lot of "experts" on parenting are drawing the same conclusion. an article in Christianity Today by Leslie Leyland Fields discusses some of what psychologists and others are finding about the influence that parents have on the kind of young adults their children become.

Fields is writing specifically for Christians, but what she says is applicable to everyone who struggles with children who seem to be programmed to make every bad choice it's possible to make. She starts off her essay with a story, the details of which might vary from family to family, but the main theme of which seems sometimes to be nearly universal:

My family and I were traveling in Guatemala a few years ago. We visited a man who had given his life to serving a poor congregation. We sat at the kitchen table with him, a man who had been bent into humility by the burdens of pastoring in a struggling nation while raising four children. Still in the muddy trenches of parenthood with our five sons and one daughter, we confessed to him our feelings of inadequacy.

"Your children are grown. What have you learned looking back on your years of child-raising? Do you have any advice for us?" We looked at him, needy, expectant.

He would have none of it. "I'm not one to talk to. I don't exactly have a perfect record." One of his children was immersed in an addiction, he told us, visibly sad. Another had a failed marriage.

He was silent for a moment, nodding slowly, and then continued. "I never lived up to my mother's expectations either. I've been reading her journal lately, and I see how she prayed for me, what she prayed. And I've never lived up to what she hoped for me," he said, his voice a near-whisper. "I think she considered me a failure."

In my mother-mind, I supplied the last words: "And considered herself a failure as a parent." This conversation shook me profoundly, touching one of my deepest concerns.

Read the whole piece. Especially if you're a parent or aspire to be one.

RLC

Rendering Unto Caesar

Here's an ethical problem for our readers to ponder:

A businessman tells a customer that if the customer pays cash for the service he has been provided the businessman will not charge him tax. If the customer pays with a check or credit card the businessman has to charge the tax. Suppose the tax would amount to a significant sum - let's say $100.

Is the customer morally obligated to pay the tax whether he can avoid it or not? Is it wrong for the customer to pay cash in order to avoid the tax? If he would have paid cash in any event should he also volunteer to pay the $100 tax? Can he rightfully justify avoiding the tax by arguing to himself that he will use that $100 to purchase other goods from other merchants that will help them stay in business whereas the state will simply squander the money, perhaps even using it to line the pockets of legislators?

I welcome your responses to these questions, but please include the reasons which support your judgment.

RLC

The Right Stuff

Hot Air links us to an article at Wired which discusses some of the difficulties encountered by intelligence agencies in locating Iran's underground nuclear weapons facilities and some of the technology that's being brought to bear on the problem.

It's interesting reading, but the article goes on to address the problem of how to neutralize the facilities once the tunnels that house them are identified and mapped. There are a number of tools that have been or are being developed in order to accomplish this task including bombs called massive ordinance penetrators (MOPs) which can penetrate 60 feet of solid concrete before detonating.

MOP

There are also other options which rely on finesse rather than brute power:

The MOP may be capable of smashing through a lot of rock, but there are smarter approaches. The U.S. Air Force has developed skip-bombing techniques with bunker busters so that they arrive horizontally and can be aimed precisely at entrance doors. They may not destroy the entire facility, but if all the entrances are wrecked, then nothing can go in or out.

Thermobaric bombs like the BLU-118 "cave buster" have been specifically designed for attacking tunnel systems; the shockwave will travel far underground, going around corners and bends that would degrade normal blast waves. One test showed that it could kill human targets even when the blast had traveled through 1,100 feet of tunnels.

There are also more exotic options, like the Rocket Balls (or more correctly, "kinetic fireball incendiaries") developed for the Defense Threat Reduction Agency. A warhead would release a large number of these rubberized balls of rocket fuel; once ignited they bounce around at high speed, spreading out by going through doorways and other openings and raising the surrounding temperature to over a thousand degrees within seconds.

Will Iran give up its nuclear weapons program? If they don't will we try to take it out? If we do what will be the blowback from such an operation? Does Barack Obama have the right stuff to deal wisely with these questions? Let's hope.

RLC

More on Reid Faux Pas

A friend emails me to comment on the post Jumping on Reid, and his thoughts afford me the opportunity to say a little more about the matter. Mike writes:

I think the really horrible point in Trent Lott's statement a few years ago was the reference to the "good old days" before the civil rights movement. Whether said in jest or not, a public statement like this from a senator from Mississippi was legitimate reason for Lott to step down.

Maybe Reid's comments aren't sufficient for his dismissal, but certainly if we wanted to see a senator resign for reasons of poor character and incompetence, Harry Reid would be one of the first on the list.

I wrote back to him:

Mike,

I would agree with you that it would have been reprehensible had Lott said what he said with civil rights in mind, but I have no reason to think that he did. Lot's of people are nostalgic for the "good old days" and mean nothing hurtful by it. The plight of minorities isn't even on their horizon when they use the phrase. I don't have any reason to think Lott was doing anything but trying to make an old guy feel good on his 100th birthday.

I think that our political discourse needs to change from a "gotcha" mentality where all we care about are the politically correct rules of the game to a point where we give people the benefit of the doubt until we have good reason to believe that they're unfit for office. In other words, I think we need a lot more of the Golden Rule in politics.

I believe with you that Reid is unfit to be a senator, much less majority leader, but not because of his comments about Obama. If we don't want people to criticize us unfairly for things we say which may have implications we didn't intend then we shouldn't criticize them when they make the same kinds of statements.

Parenthetically, I just read chapter 5 of Sarah Palin's book Going Rogue, and I have to say that if she's only half right about the way her political opponents tried to destroy her after the 2008 election then there really are some very wicked and contemptible political activists in our society. Conservatives should strive to be nothing like them.

RLC

More on the Hume Affair

Russ Douthat weighs in at The New York Times on the controversy surrounding Brit Hume's advice to Tiger Woods to embrace Christianity. Douthat thinks the outcry over this is a bit ridiculous:

Liberal democracy offers religious believers a bargain. Accept, as a price of citizenship, that you may never impose your convictions on your neighbor, or use state power to compel belief. In return, you will be free to practice your own faith as you see fit - and free, as well, to compete with other believers (and nonbelievers) in the marketplace of ideas.

That's the theory. In practice, the admirable principle that no one should be persecuted for their beliefs often blurs into the more illiberal idea that nobody should ever publicly criticize another religion. Or champion one's own faith as an alternative. Or say anything whatsoever about religion, outside the privacy of church, synagogue or home.

A week ago, Brit Hume broke all three rules at once. Asked on a Fox News panel what advice he'd give to the embattled Tiger Woods, Hume suggested that the golfer consider converting to Christianity. "He's said to be a Buddhist," Hume noted. "I don't think that faith offers the kind of forgiveness and redemption that is offered by the Christian faith."

A great many people immediately declared that this comment was the most outrageous thing they'd ever heard. Hume's words were replayed by Jon Stewart on the Daily Show, to shocked laughter from the audience. They were denounced across the blogosphere as evidence of chauvinism, bigotry and gross stupidity. MSNBC's Keith Olbermann claimed, absurdly, that Hume had tried to "threaten Tiger Woods into becoming a Christian." His colleague David Shuster suggested that Hume had "denigrated" his own religion by discussing it on a talk show.

The Washington Post's TV critic, Tom Shales, mocked the idea that Christians should "run around trying to drum up new business" for their faith. Hume "doesn't really have the authority," Shales suggested - unless of course "one believes that every Christian by mandate must proselytize." (This is, of course, exactly what Christians are supposed to believe.)

You can read the rest of Douthat's fine column at the link. The secular left has long wished to eliminate religion from public life and in order to accomplish this they've tried to conflate the constitutional proscription against federal meddling in religious matters with a total secularization of all public spaces. The idea that the federal government must be neutral on matters of religion is subtly extended in the public mind to encompass the idea that no one speaking in public should be religiously partisan.

This is nonsense, of course, but that's the understanding of the place of religion in society that progressives are trying to foist upon us.

Their strategy sometimes seems to involve the following four steps which may be implemented either in sequence or simultaneously:

First, make religious belief seem risible and backward in the eyes of the people. Second, convince them that religious talk, particularly in social settings, is impolite. Next, gradually and imperceptibly persuade people to think that not only is there something vaguely inappropriate about talk involving one's personal religious beliefs but that it's also offensive to people. Finally, encourage people to think that any discourse which offends others is ipso facto hurtful and should therefore be illegal.

This evolution has already succeeded in some European precincts where, for example, it's now considered unlawful hate speech for a pastor to tell his congregation that the Bible considers homosexual behavior to be a sin.

Perhaps one reason so many secularists were outraged by Hume's remarks is that they defied the smooth progress the secularists thought they were making toward their religiously sterile omega point.

RLC

Brewing Upset

A very surprising development, one absolutely critical for the future of President Obama's agenda, if not for health care, is brewing in Massachusetts. On January 19th a special election will be held to fill the seat of the late Senator Ted Kennedy. Until recently it was a foregone conclusion that, with a 3-1 edge in voter registration in her pocket, the Democrat, Martha Coakley, would defeat the Republican Scott Brown.

Now it turns out that Brown, who seems to have come out of nowhere, is clobbering Coakley among independents and is consequently running neck and neck with her overall seven days out from the election (But see this poll for a rather different picture). Moreover, Brown raised an amazing $1 million yesterday alone toward his campaign.

If Brown should win he'll almost certainly vote against Obamacare in the Senate thus killing the legislation (Although the Democrats are not bereft of tricks up their sleeve to prevent that from happening should Brown win). Moreover, a GOP win in a state that hasn't had a Republican senator in decades, coming on the heels of Democrat retirements and defections in Congress and the huge losses in the governors' races in Virginia and New Jersey, will absolutely rock the American political scene. It'd be a tremendous blow to the Democrat party.

The Democrats will surely pull out all stops in order to mobilize their base, including a trip or two to Massachusetts by the President to get Democratic voters excited enough to turn out on the 19th. His entire presidency may well be riding on the outcome of that election.

RLC

Jumping on Reid

When Trent Lott, the GOP Senate Majority Leader back in 2002, made the remark on the occasion of Strom Thurmond's 100th birthday that the country would have been better off had Strom been elected president when he ran in 1948 he was excoriated by the press and forced to resign as majority leader by his party because Strom Thurmond had been a segregationist in the 1940s. Lott wasn't even thinking of that, he was simply trying to say something nice about an elderly colleague, but numerous Democrats, including Mr. Obama, screamed for his head, and so the GOP threw him to the wolves.

In 2007 Virginia Governor George Allen was savaged by the press for calling a heckler "macaca," a word that Allen claims he didn't even know the meaning of and no one else did either (Apparently it's regarded in some parts of the world as a mild insult, like calling someone a monkey). The incident is thought by some to have cost Allen the election in his Senate race against Jim Webb.

Now the victim of the racial insensitivity police is Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid who, it was reported in a recently released book on the 2008 election, said that Barack Obama was "light skinned" and had "no Negro dialect" and therefore had an electoral advantage. For this indiscretion Reid is apologizing and groveling and being blasted by Republicans.

Indeed, there is poetic justice in this, and I would be happy to see Harry Reid hounded out of the Senate, but not for this. Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't know what was so terribly wrong with what Reid said (nor with what Lott or Allen said). It was grossly unfair and puerile of the Democrats, including Harry Reid himself, and the liberal media, to make a big deal about the Republicans' remarks, and it is just as unfair for the Republicans to do the same now to Reid (and hypocritical of the liberal media to be largely quiet about it since they blasted both Lott and Allen night and day over their comments).

Let me be clear (as our President likes to say), Reid is vulnerable to a lot of criticism. The squalid manner in which he bought off senators' votes on the health care bill, his comparison of health care opponents to those who opposed civil rights for blacks, his hypocrisy in condemning Bill Bennett for remarks not unlike his own, his lack of class in his criticisms of George Bush, and his willingness to play fast and loose with the truth on any number of occasions, are all legitimate targets, but I simply don't see why it's racist or "insensitive" or otherwise offensive to note a man's color and his mode of speech. Nor do I see why it's racist to declaim upon how these characteristics could work to a man's political advantage with an electorate that clearly wanted to vote for a black man but perhaps not one who was too black. To be sure, it may, like neglecting to cover a yawn, flout a social convention to say out loud what everybody can plainly see, but I don't see how it's racist or otherwise beyond tolerable.

Perhaps, someone out there, liberal or conservative, will explain it all to me and make the case for why Reid should step down as Majority Leader because of his comment about Obama's hue and speech. Meanwhile, I'd prefer conservatives focus on the man's real liabilities, which are legion. In the present instance, however, the offense wasn't racism, but rather hypocrisy, both on the part of Reid and those who were quick to condemn Bennett, Lott and Allen but give Reid a pass.

Conservatives should avoid acting like children by parsing every syllable a person utters for signs of racism just so they can use the words as a political smear. It's really small-minded and ugly, and besides, it's the sort of thing the Left does.

RLC

Are the Taliban Winning?

Much of the news coming out of the Afghanistan theater suggests that we're losing the war there to a resurgent Taliban. Strategy Page tells us that much of this reportage is the result of the media being "played" by the Taliban whose circumstances may be much more dire than one might think from news reports:

[t]he Taliban had a bad year in 2009, although they managed to play the media well enough to hide a lot of their problems. The biggest defeat for the Taliban was in a continued loss of support by the Afghan people. Opinion surveys have had the percentage of Afghan approving the Taliban going downward for several years, and it's now under ten percent. This is no surprise to anyone living in Afghanistan. The Taliban were always disliked by the majority of Afghans, but now their fellow Pushtuns overwhelmingly hate them as well. This has a lot to do with where the Taliban are operating. That is, mostly in the province of Kandahar, Helmand (where most of the heroin is produced) and Khost. About 80 percent of the violence is taking place in 13 percent of the country, and the Pushtuns in those areas are tired of the Taliban and all their self-righteous violence.

The activity you hear about in the north is usually in those few areas up there occupied by small Pushtun tribes. If the Taliban show up anywhere else (among Uzbek, Turk, Hazara or Tajik people, who dominate the north) they are easily identifiable, and subject to prompt scrutiny by lots of guys with guns. The Taliban not only have to be careful where they go in the north, but in the south as well. An increasing number of southern Pushtun tribes have organized militias to keep the Taliban out of their lands. Often, this is being done with the aid of Afghan or foreign troops. This is what the new American strategy is about, and what all the additional troops are for. Since the Taliban are already restricted to a small area, the new strategy constricts their movement even more.

There's more at the link.

President Obama doesn't like to think in terms of victory, perhaps, but victory is as possible in Afghanistan as it was in Iraq. It just takes a resolute, patient Commander in Chief willing to commit the necessary resources. If the stakes weren't so high it'd be very tempting to say that the fight in those far-off, desolate lands is not worth it, but we must constantly remind ourselves that the Islamists have determined that their struggle against us will be generational. It won't end next year or the year after or even, perhaps, in this century. The fight will go on as long as they're able to mount terrorist operations against the West. They are fanatics whose only purpose in life is to serve Allah by killing infidels. Their war against us will never end until they succeed or they're rendered unable to carry out their "mission."

The day we decide we no longer want to fight is the day we concede victory to those who will destroy us as soon as they possibly can.

RLC

Singer on Moral Duties

Peter Singer, the utilitarian philosopher who gained public notoriety for his views on the morality of infanticide, has written a book in which he argues that we have a duty to help the poor around the world. The book is titled The Life You Can Save: Acting Now to End World Poverty and an interview with Singer about his book is summarized at The Philosopher's Magazine(TPM).

Throughout the summary we read statements made by Singer like:

[W]e should accept the deceptively uncontroversial-sounding principle that "if it is in our power to prevent something very bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything morally significant, we ought, morally, to do it."

"I and everyone else in similar circumstances ought to give as much as possible, that is, at least up to the point at which by giving more one would begin to cause serious suffering for oneself and one's dependents - perhaps even beyond this point to the point of marginal utility, at which by giving more one would cause oneself and one's dependents as much suffering as one would prevent in Bengal."

"I want to persuade as many people as possible to do something about world poverty."

"Most people can give 50% of their income away. I wouldn't say they can't, it's predictable that most of them won't, but I think in the sense that 'ought implies can', they can."

"If it is in our power to prevent something very bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything morally significant, we ought to do it."

"If you're thinking ethically you ought to try to take this point of view from which you consider whether you could prescribe the action if you were in the position of all of those affected by it. I think that if you consider the situation of poverty and affluence, if you were really to put yourself in the position of the poor person and the affluent person, and ask yourself whether you could support the view that the affluent person doesn't give anything to the poor, you couldn't."

Put simply, Singer believes we have a duty to help the poor, and his book is an attempt to answer objections to his belief that we should give away far more of our wealth than we do to ameliorate the world's suffering. Perhaps we should but this is a very peculiar claim for someone of Peter Singer's metaphysical commitments to make because Singer is an atheist.

Singer seems to assume that everyone agrees with him that we have a moral obligation to help the poor and that the only question concerns the extent of the help we should give. But the fundamental question, as we have written about often here at Viewpoint, is where does an atheist get the notion that we have any moral duties at all?

Duties and obligations are imposed upon us, either by ourselves or by a higher authority. If the duty to help the poor is self-imposed then how can Singer say that anyone but himself ought to give of their resources? If the duty to help the poor is self-imposed then it is purely subjective and arbitrary and is no more rational, probably less so, than imposing a duty upon oneself to be selfish.

If the obligation to minimize suffering is imposed by a higher authority than our individual selves then we need to ask Mr. Singer what that higher authority is. Could it be the state? If the state is to be our moral arbiter then whatever duty the state imposes is right, but surely Mr. Singer doesn't think this is true. It doesn't take too much imagination to picture a state imposing the duty to commit genocide, as some Islamic states would do if given half the chance and which Germany did do in the late thirties and early forties.

This is one of several fundamental quandaries an atheist finds himself in. The only non-arbitrary, objective authority which has the power and the right to impose moral duties upon us is God. For an atheist to talk about our responsibility to the poor and our obligation to give to them until it hurts is simply nonsense. Unless God wills it, which He does, I have no moral obligation to do anything I don't want to do.

Someone may object and say, "but if you were poor you would want the better off to help you." That's certainly true, but it's no reason at all why I should help others. The objection invokes the Golden Rule and admonishes us to abide by it, but what reason is there why we should? Why should I simply not live by the rule that says "Look out for #1?"

To this question the atheist has no answer, and Singer's moralizing about duties to the poor is at bottom just so much hand-waving.

RLC

El Dorado?

Those readers with an interest in archaeology will find this article interesting. Apparently, deforestation of the Amazon basin has allowed satellites to detect the remnants of an ancient civilization that dates back to 800 A.D. Some archaeologists suspect it may be the remains of the mythical city of El Dorado.

The article doesn't mention this, but I wonder what the ecological implications are for those of us disheartened by the steady loss of the rain forest biome. What I mean is if an entire city, stretching for 150 miles, was carved out of the forest and then reclaimed by the forest when the civilization died, is it possible that portions of the rain forest could likewise recover some of their former beauty and vigor if those parts which have been destroyed in the last century were allowed to regrow?

Perhaps the loss of the rain forest is not permanent. Tragically, though, the extinction of any species which die out because of habitat loss is.

RLC