Truth Coming Back to Bite Him

Jerry Brown is running for the office of governor of California against Meg Whitman who has dug up an old interview Brown did on CNN fifteen years ago, some years after his first stint as governor. In a fit of candor uncharacteristic of politicians Mr. Brown admits that his whole campaign for the office was a tissue of lies. Whitman is now clobbering him with it:

If this video costs Brown the election it will certainly be a lesson for politicians: Under no circumstances should you ever tell the truth. On the other hand, that's a lesson they seem not to need to be taught.

Five Reasons to Vote Democratic Tomorrow

Tomorrow is the big day, the day that political junkies have been looking forward to for a long time - the midterm elections. In the spirit of bipartisanship I herewith offer five reasons to cast your vote for the Democrats when you go to the polls:

1. You think the government lets you keep too much of your paycheck.
2. You'd rather not have to work for a paycheck.
3. You think the best way to create jobs is to create more government bureaucracies.
4. You believe the best way to solve our immigration problem is to enact the same economic policies here that the immigrants are fleeing from.
5. You think the best way to gain independence from foreign oil suppliers is to build windmills.

Remember to vote.

Slime and Violence

ABC's Jonathan Karl laments the incivility and mendacity of the political ads with which we've been barraged this election cycle and puts the blame squarely where it belongs:

In one typical example, Democratic ads have transformed Kentucky Republican House candidate Andy Barr into "a convicted criminal" -- complete with images yellow police tape and fuzzy video of crime scenes. Not mentioned is his crime: As a college student 19 years ago, he was caught using a fake ID during spring break.

As you watch this year's ads -- and I've been watching all too many lately -- you'll notice a striking difference between Democratic and Republican attack ads: Democrats are attacking over personal issues, Republicans are attacking over policy.

A recent study by the Wesleyan Media Project actually quantifies this. They looked at 900,000 airing of political ads this year and concluded: "Democrats are using personal attacks at much higher rates than Republicans and a much higher rate than Democrats in 2008."

Karl's report gives lots of examples of how the Democrats have resorted repeatedly to personal insult and slander in a desperate attempt to discredit their opponents in the eyes of the voters.

With so many to choose from, of course, Karl couldn't list them all. Daily Beast columnist Howard Kurtz has videos of several more. Neither ABC nor The Daily Beast, it should be noted, can be said to be Republican media organs.

Sliming one's opponent is the sort of thing that sixth graders do in a student council election. It's done because they have no issues to discuss, or, as in the case of the Democrats, they have no desire to discuss the issues nor their record on them.

Somewhat related to the Democrats' use of personal attack is the absolutely appalling performance of MSNBC's Chris Matthews on his Hardball show the other night. Matthews is either one of the most uninformed cable talk show hosts or he's one of the most dishonest, and his guests seem no better informed, or truthful, than he is. Here's the segment from his program a couple of nights ago. The relevant discussion starts at about the 9:30 mark:

Since neither Matthews nor his interlocutors can recall anything on the liberal side remotely similar to a man pressing his boot onto a disruptive protestor's shoulder - since Matthews believes we'd have to go back 60 years to find a commensurate example of such violent behavior on the Left - let us at Viewpoint remind him of just a few episodes that have occurred in the last year or so, each of which is at least as bad, and some much worse, than the incident that has him worrying that the Tea Party is on the brink of Kristallknacht.

First there was the sad case of Kevin Gladney, a black man who was beaten and kicked by SEIU thugs outside a Town Hall meeting held by a Democrat congressman. Gladney was attacked because he was selling Tea Party paraphenalia.

Then there was the incident last summer of North Carolina congressman Bob Ethridge who physically assaulted a student who was questioning him on a Washington D.C. street. The video of this encounter is at the link.

And we can't forget the poor guy who had his finger bitten off at a health care rally about a year ago. The victim was a 65 year old man who was peacefully protesting health care reform when he was attacked by a MoveOn.org supporter.

And just the other day another MoveOn.org thug grabbed a man around the throat and choked him. The video can be seen here. Finally, if it's uniforms that has Matthews in a swivet as he frets for our future perhaps someone should remind him of these fine citizens who were charged and found guilty of intimidating white voters at a Philadelphia polling place, until the Obama Justice department decided that since they were black the charges would be dropped:

Maybe Matthews and his two guests, both of whom are putative journalists, don't keep up on the news and are merely professionally incompetent. That's always a possibility. On the other hand, maybe they're just dishonest.

Great Books

What makes a great book great? At Biola College they offer an honors program in which students read, by the time they graduate, about one hundred of the books considered to be among the very best ever written, but how do they determine which works should be included? Fred Sanders, at The Scriptorium, lists and discusses eight characteristics or criteria of a great book. I've listed the eight, but to read his discussion of them you'll have to visit his article:

1. A great book speaks from an important original setting.
2. A great book is written in a way that is relevant for readers today.
3. A great book is well-crafted.
4. A great book is one that provokes excellent discussion.
5. A great book is inexhaustible, so no reading of it is the final reading, and no discussion ever runs it dry.
6. A great book is time-tested. People from multiple generations have had their hands on it, and have judged it to be worth passing along.
7. A great book is weird. It’s got angles, edges, textures, and stuff sticking out that you wouldn’t have predicted.
8. A great book is smarter than the best teacher, but within reach of the average student.

How many books have you read that meet these criteria? Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series doesn't count.

Bad Faith

Shelby Steele is no bitter, white redneck resentful that we have an African American president. He is himself an African American, a former college English professor, an accomplished author (Affirmative Action Baby and White Guilt), and is currently a senior fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution.

In a recent Wall Street Journal column Mr Steele plumbs the mind of Mr. Obama, seeking to understand the assumptions that guide his presidency. It's a very good essay of which the following is a part:

How is it that Barack Obama could step into the presidency with an air of inevitability and then, in less than two years, find himself unwelcome at the campaign rallies of many of his fellow Democrats?

The first answer is well-known: His policymaking has been grandiose, thoughtless and bullying. His health-care bill was ambitious to the point of destructiveness and, finally, so chaotic that today no citizen knows where they stand in relation to it. His financial-reform bill seems little more than a short-sighted scapegoating of Wall Street. In foreign policy he has failed to articulate a role for America in the world. We don't know why we do what we do in foreign affairs. George W. Bush at least made a valiant stab at an American rationale—democratization—but with Mr. Obama there is nothing.

Barack Obama .... is a child of the 1960s. His coming of age paralleled exactly the unfolding of a new "counterculture" American identity. And this new American identity—and the post-1960s liberalism it spawned—is grounded in a remarkable irony: bad faith in America as virtue itself, bad faith in the classic American identity of constitutional freedom and capitalism as the way to a better America.

So Mr. Obama is very definitely an American, and he has a broad American constituency. He is simply the first president we have seen grounded in this counterculture American identity. When he bows to foreign leaders, he is not displaying "otherness" but the counterculture Americanism of honorable self-effacement in which America acknowledges its own capacity for evil as prelude to engagement.

Bad faith in America became virtuous in the '60s when America finally acknowledged so many of its flagrant hypocrisies: the segregation of blacks, the suppression of women, the exploitation of other minorities, the "imperialism" of the Vietnam War, the indifference to the environment, the hypocrisy of puritanical sexual mores and so on. The compounding of all these hypocrisies added up to the crowning idea of the '60s: that America was characterologically evil. Thus the only way back to decency and moral authority was through bad faith in America and its institutions, through the presumption that evil was America's natural default position.

Among today's liberal elite, bad faith in America is a sophistication, a kind of hipness. More importantly, it is the perfect formula for political and governmental power. It rationalizes power in the name of intervening against evil — I will use the government to intervene against the evil tendencies of American life (economic inequality, structural racism and sexism, corporate greed, neglect of the environment and so on), so I need your vote.

Read the rest of Steele's essay at the link. It contains several excellent insights into the mind of Mr. Obama and, by extension, that of many another modern liberal progressive.

Liberal Genes

A recent study reveals that some people have a gene that predisposes them to be liberals. I don't know what to make of this. Does that mean that if liberalism is genetically determined liberals can't be held responsible for the damage they do? Does it mean that liberals are a kind of mutant? I don't know. Here's an excerpt from the article:

Is political ideology derived from a person's social environment or is it a result of genetic predisposition? It's an interaction of both, according to a recent study on our political leanings that boosts both sides of the nature versus nurture debate.

Scientists at the University of California San Diego and Harvard University determined that people who carry a variant of the DRD4 gene are more likely to be liberals as adults, depending on the number of friendships they had during high school. They published their study in a recent issue of The Journal of Politics.

The 7R variant of DRD4, a dopamine receptor gene, had previously been associated with novelty seeking. The researchers theorized novelty seeking would be related to openness, a psychological trait that has been associated with political liberalism.

However, social environment was critical. The more friends gene carriers have in high school, the more likely they are to be liberals as adults. The authors write, "Ten friends can move a person with two copies of 7R allele almost halfway from being a conservative to moderate or from being moderate to liberal."

I wonder if Obamacare will cover gene therapy.

Good Without God

Frans de Waal has a piece at The New York Times' Opinionator blog in which he argues that God is not necessary for human morality. Professor de Waal holds that morality is hard-wired into us by evolution and therefore appeals to a Divine sanction for morality are superfluous. There's so much wrong with his reasoning that one scarcely knows where to start, but perhaps this paragraph would be a good place to focus our attention:

Perhaps it is just me, but I am wary of anyone whose belief system is the only thing standing between them and repulsive behavior. Why not assume that our humanity, including the self-control needed for livable societies, is built into us? Does anyone truly believe that our ancestors lacked social norms before they had religion? Did they never assist others in need, or complain about an unfair deal? Humans must have worried about the functioning of their communities well before the current religions arose, which is only a few thousand years ago. Not that religion is irrelevant — I will get to this — but it is an add-on rather than the wellspring of morality.

The question to ask Mr. de Waal is how it helps his case if morality is somehow built into us? If we've evolved to act in certain ways how does that make those ways "morally right"? If what we call morality is indeed part of our genetic inheritance then it has been encoded into our genes either by Divine agency or by impersonal natural forces. If it's the latter, which is Mr. de Waal's position, how could this innate moral sense possibly obligate us to conform to it? How can blind, purposeless, impersonal forces impose upon us a moral duty to do anything?

If, on the other hand, the moral sense is instilled in us by Divine agency then the rest of Mr. de Waal's paragraph is pointless. If God gives us the moral law, writes it on our hearts as Paul puts it in his letter to the Roman church, then of course people could have followed it before they had formal religion, but that doesn't mean that God is any the less necessary for its existence.

Furthermore, that humans worry about their communities and contrive laws to facilitate their survival has nothing to do with whether it would be right or wrong to break those laws or to do anything that would harm the community. In a godless universe there's no reason why I should care about the community, especially if it's in my own interest to act in ways that harm others but benefit me. Why would it be wrong to treat others unkindly if I prosper from it? What imposes the duty upon me not to behave this way?

Mr. de Waal says that whatever it is it's not God, but, in fact, it's either God or it's nothing at all.

Taliban Woes

The problems and difficulties faced by the Taliban in Afghanistan continue to mount. An article at Strategy Page explains why. Here's the lede:

The massive movement of intelligence gathering and analyzing forces from Iraq to Afghanistan in the last two years is paying off by cutting Taliban supplies of weapons, and money. More and more captured (often from dead Taliban) weapons and ammunition is of poor quality. Explosives, even the stuff made from ammonium nitrate fertilizer, is harder to get, and often used in smaller quantities in order to make more roadside bombs.

That, in turn, is just getting more Taliban killed, including many more leaders. That's because the largely illiterate Taliban have fewer skilled people for tasks like planting bombs (and rigging them to go off on cue). Guys who get promoted often find themselves one of the few people who knows how to rig a bomb, so they have to go out on the bomb planting missions.

These are increasingly more dangerous because the Americans have more UAVs, along with camera towers and aerostats (tethered blimps) that can see for long distances, day or night and in any weather. It's not just that the cameras can pick up some guys planting a bomb (and call in an air strike), but can detect suspicious movement of any kind.

There's much more at the link about how difficult things are getting for the Talibs in Afghanistan and why. Check it out.

Inexcusable

I don't know what's more outrageous, what this boneheaded Rand Paul supporter did to this woman, or the attempt by MSNBC talking heads to blame Glenn Beck and other talk radio hosts for his actions. In any case, the man has been condignly fired. The woman was a provocateur, to be sure, but that's not an excuse for this sort of treatment. She apparently needed to be restrained, but once she was on the ground, stepping on her was gratuitous and excessive.

The edited video makes it look like the man repeatedly stomped on the woman (he didn't), but just placing his foot on her shoulder was bad enough. Indeed, it's about as bad as Joy Behar on The View calling Sharron Angle a moron, evil, and a bitch (three times) and insisting that she's going to hell:

Anyway, the stomper has since apologized, but his behavior has no place in a civil polity and should not be tolerated in our political debates. The Paul campaign was right to sever their ties to the guy. Now, if only the Democrats would sever their ties to Joy Behar, or, for that matter, the SEIU thugs who beat and kicked Kenneth Gladney at a town hall meeting in August of 2009.

I know, I know, but one can still dream.

Irreducible Complexity

In the debate between intelligent design advocates and their Darwinian opponents, the claim is made by the IDers that there are systems in living things that are irreducible complex, i.e. they could not have evolved step by gradual step because they cannot function until all the parts are in place and operating. The bacterial flagellum is considered the paradigmatic example of IC but there are numerous others.

This site, for example lists a couple dozen systems or structures that are alleged to be irreducibly complex. Whether they are or not may be debated, but I'll leave that debate to others more qualified than I. Here are some examples for which the article offers brief explanations:

1. Bacterial Flagellum
2. Eukaryotic Cilium
3. Aminoacyl-tRNA Synthetases (aaRS)
4. Blood clotting cascade
5. Ribosome
6. Antibodies and the Adaptive Immune System

Students of biology will find the complete list interesting reading.

Psychological Egoism

Here's a question: Does genuine altruism exist in human beings? By this I mean, do human beings, or better, can human beings, act for the benefit of others if there's no benefit in the act for the doer? Do we do what we do for others only because we believe, if even subconsciously, that there's some benefit in the act for us?

Before you answer you should read a brief essay by Georgetown philosophy professor Judith Lichtenberg on just this question.

Lichtenberg notes that psychological egoism (PE), the view that all our actions, including those ostensibly done for others, are really done for self-benefit, is impossible to falsify. This means that one cannot imagine a circumstance which, if it obtained, would prove PE wrong. The inability to think of such a circumstance means that the theory can't be tested and this is, in fact, a detriment. Immunity to testing is a weakness in a theory, not a strength.

Lichtenberg might have also mentioned that PE is ultimately based upon circular reasoning. To see this consider the case of Wesley Autrey which she discusses in the beginning of her piece. Autrey risked his life in 2007 to rescue a man who had fallen onto the subway tracks in New York City as a train bore down upon him.

To the question, what was in it for Autrey the PE might reply that Autrey hoped for a reward, either monetary, psychological or perhaps even eternal, for doing what he did. Suppose, though, that upon being interviewed Autrey denies that any of those considerations ever entered his mind. He didn't have time to think, he attests. He saw the man fall, he saw the train approach, and he reacted.

The PE might then resort to this fallback position: "There must have been some self-benefit in saving the man that Autrey felt." If asked why there must be such a motive, the PE can only answer, "because saving the man is what he did and everything people do they do in their own self-interest."

In other words,

1. We always act for our own benefit
2. Cases where people seem to act genuinely for others only seem to be altruistic. There's always a self-beneficial purpose buried somewhere in the person's motivations.
3. We know there must be a self-beneficial motive driving the person's act because we always act for our own self-benefit.

This is a circular argument and circular arguments are logically invalid. Thus, although PE seems formidable, it's ultimately based on fallacious reasoning.

Anyway, read Lichtenberg's column and see what you think.

Unequal Justice at the DOJ

The Washington Post has conducted an investigation into the Justice Department's handling of the New Black Panther Party case and has concluded what was pretty obvious to anyone who had followed it from the beginning: The DOJ is not interested in pursuing voting rights abuses when the victims are white and the perpetrators are black.

The article presents a good summary of what the case is about, and those not familiar with the details are urged to read it. For those who are acquainted with the case here are some excerpts that give a sense of the culture the Post found at the DOJ:

Civil rights officials from the Bush administration have said that enforcement should be race-neutral. But some officials from the Obama administration, which took office vowing to reinvigorate civil rights enforcement, thought the agency should focus primarily on cases filed on behalf of minorities.

"The Voting Rights Act was passed because people like Bull Connor were hitting people like John Lewis, not the other way around," said one Justice Department official not authorized to speak publicly, referring to the white Alabama police commissioner who cracked down on civil rights protesters such as Lewis, now a Democratic congressman from Georgia.

Before the New Black Panther controversy, another case had inflamed...passions. Ike Brown, an African American political boss in rural Mississippi, was accused by the Justice Department in 2005 of discriminating against the county's white minority. It was the first time the 1965 Voting Rights Act was used against minorities and to protect whites.

Coates and Adams later told the civil rights commission that the decision to bring the Brown case caused bitter divisions in the voting section and opposition from civil rights groups.

Three Justice Department lawyers, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they feared retaliation from their supervisors, described the same tensions, among career lawyers as well as political appointees. Employees who worked on the Brown case were harassed by colleagues, they said, and some department lawyers anonymously went on legal blogs "absolutely tearing apart anybody who was involved in that case," said one lawyer.

"There are career people who feel strongly that it is not the voting section's job to protect white voters," the lawyer said. "The environment is that you better toe the line of traditional civil rights ideas or you better keep quiet about it, because you will not advance, you will not receive awards and you will be ostracized."

In the months after the case ended, tensions persisted. A new supervisor, Julie Fernandes, arrived to oversee the voting section, and Coates testified that she told attorneys at a September 2009 lunch that the Obama administration was interested in filing cases - under a key voting rights section - only on behalf of minorities. "Everyone in the room understood exactly what she meant," Coates said. "No more cases like the Ike Brown or New Black Panther Party cases."

If this is not racism then the word racism has no meaning. It's ironic that President Obama, who campaigned as a man who would heal our racial divisions, has done more, either directly or indirectly, to exacerbate those divisions than has any president in the last fifty years.

The principle here is clear, or should be: If it would be unjust for the federal government to wink at white crimes against blacks then it's equally unjust for federal officials to excuse black crimes against whites. As soon as that principle of equal treatment under the law is no longer honored then this country is going to go up in flames, just as it did in the 1960s. Unfortunately, too many on the Left see the ascendancy of a black man to the presidency as an opportunity for blacks to do to whites what had long been done to them. If the Department of Justice and other federal agencies are actually going to abet this attitude then we stand on the brink of social upheaval.

It's getting monotonous, I know, but it must be said yet again: None of this is surprising. It's precisely the sort of racial bias we can expect as long as we keep putting leftists and liberals into positions of power.

Mythbuster

Tobin Hartshaw at the New York Times Opinionator blog offers a good overview of the controversy swirling around NPR's decision to fire Juan Williams for giving voice to feelings probably shared by the vast majority of air travelers around the world, including many Muslims.

If you haven't been following this story you can catch up there, if you have been following it you've perhaps noticed that it serves to expose a couple of myths about liberals to which some Americans still cling. The first myth is that liberals are tolerant of diversity. NPR fired Williams because, though he is himself unquestionably liberal and NPR is a decidedly liberal broadcast network, Williams has on occasion ventured to express ideologically heterodox ideas which have raised eyebrows among the left-wing thought police. Diversity is only tolerated and celebrated on the Left when it's diversity of appearance. Diversity of thought is definitely prohibited.

The second myth is that liberals are invariably compassionate. There was nothing compassionate about the way NPR CEO Vivian Schiller handled this fiasco, but the worst part of it was her insinuation that Williams said what he did because he was either mentally deranged or simply seeking publicity. She fired him over the phone, without the courtesy of a personal meeting, and then publicly insulted him, all because he said on the Bill O'Reilly show that when he boards a plane and sees Muslims on the plane it makes him nervous. Well, if that's a sign of insanity then an awful lot of Americans need to see a psychiatrist.

Schiller has sought to justify her deplorable treatment of Williams by piously insisting on the need for NPR's journalists to refrain from damaging their credibility by expressing their personal feelings. However, Stephen Hayes is quoted by Hartshaw as observing that other reporters and journalists at NPR are not shy about giving their personal assessments, and they haven't fallen afoul of Ms. Schiller's axe. Here's Hayes:

If that’s true, NPR legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg might want to start looking for a new job. Over the past month, in her regular appearances on “Inside Washington,” she has: criticized a ruling of the Roberts Court as scandalous; claimed that Michelle Obama gives people “warm and fuzzy” feelings; called Bill Clinton “the most gifted politician I’ve ever seen;” and lamented that the Democratic Party is diverse enough to include moderates that want to extend all Bush tax cuts.

Totenberg won't be fired, though, because these personal opinions are all well within the acceptable range of liberal good-think. Expressing anxiety about potential terrorists is not.

The fact of the matter is that the Left simply won't tolerate independent thinking, what the communists used to call "deviationism," and anyone who transgresses the approved dogma in any one point, no matter how minor, is anathema. Lanny Davis, perhaps the most liberal member of the Clinton White House, was condemned by his fellow liberals for supporting the campaign of Senator Joe Lieberman, another liberal who happened to support the Iraq war and who was thus almost literally excommunicated from the Democratic party by the keepers of the true faith. Lieberman is the godfather of Davis' child, but such bonds of affection matter not at all to the Left when ideological purity is at stake.

If you'd like a glimpse of where many on the Left would like to take the country read George Orwell's 1984. Few writers have plumbed the psychology of the Left so incisively as did Orwell. If you don't have time for a book then rent the film The Lives of Others. It's a powerful story of what it's like to live in a country run by people who think like Vivian Schiller.

PA Senate Race

Recent polls report that the race for Arlen Specter's U.S. Senate seat in Pennsylvania is tightening to a dead heat. Not so, says an expert analyst cited by Jim Geraghty at National Review. His conclusion, after a lot of number crunching, is that Republican Pat Toomey is still ahead of Democrat Joe Sestak by between 9 and 12 points.

If you enjoy the statistical arcana of political polls you can read the analysis here.

The interesting thing about this race is that it presents us with perhaps the clearest referendum on the Obama, Reid, Pelosi agenda of all the races in the country. As a congressman, Sestak voted for everything his party proposed over the last two years. Toomey has opposed all of it. Neither man brings any ethical or personal liabilities to the campaign so the vote should reflect Pennsylvania's endorsement or repudiation of the ideology of high debt, high taxes, and economic stagnation (Sestak), or low taxes, low spending, and economic growth (Toomey).

No doubt this race, like so many others this election, will be settled by who turns out to vote two Tuesdays from now. If the Democrat base consisting of minorities and 18-21 year-olds stays home, as they are wont to do in mid-term elections, then the Republican Toomey will win. If they turn out in good numbers, it'll be close. We'll see.

Why Big Government Is a Job Killer

Arthur Brooks at the Washington Examiner has a column on the ten ways big government stifles job creation.

"In general," Brooks says, "the worst thing for job creation is a poor entrepreneurial climate. Such a climate is brought on by the large fiscal debt, unpredictable health care costs, and a generally anti-business and pro-regulation approach by government."

He goes on to list and discuss ten ways government policies create this poor climate. Policies such as are favored by contemporary Democrats in general, and President Obama in particular, almost always do the following:

• Increase business uncertainty
• Increase consumer uncertainty
• Impose high corporate taxes
• Raise health insurance costs
• Strengthen unions
• Make it harder to hire and fire
• Impose trade restrictions
• Tighten credit
• Increase unemployment insurance
• Encourage frivolous lawsuits

Brooks goes on to give a brief explanation how each of these stifles job creation. It's a good lesson in economics and also affords a good insight into why, under the current administration, it has been very hard to climb out of the current recession. Those readers who expect to be testing the job market soon might pay special heed to Brooks' essay.

Gay Marriage and Polyamory

One of the very first posts we did at Viewpoint, way back in May of 2004, addressed the consequences for traditional marriage of legalizing gay unions. We argued then, and have argued since, that legalizing gay marriage would all but extinguish traditional marriage.

The reason is that traditional marriage has been for millenia, at least in the Judeo-Christian world, considered to be a union of one man and one woman. Once we accept gay marriage we're acknowledging that the gender of the people in a marriage is no longer legally relevant, but as soon as we make the gender of the participants irrelevant we no longer have any logical grounds for insisting that the number of participants in the union should be legally relevant.

Thus, gay marriage will almost certainly lead to the legalization of polyamory (i.e. group marriage) and that would bring about, in my opinion, the end of both the traditional family and traditional marriage (except, perhaps, in some religious enclaves). Marriage would be pretty much whatever anyone wanted it to be, and when marriage is no longer anything special it will not survive the demands it places upon its participants for very long.

The argument has been rebuffed by some readers who dismiss it on the grounds that they can't imagine people wanting to form group marriages. This is a bit naive, in my opinion, since there will always be those who will do whatever they can do, as this report attests:

A group calling itself the Canadian Polyamory Advocacy Association (CPAA) has asked Chief Justice Robert Bauman of the British Columbia Supreme Court to declare whether polyamorists might be prosecuted as a result of the hearing, scheduled to begin Nov. 22, on the constitutionality of the ban on polygamy.

The lawyer for the CPAA, John Ince, told Chief Justice Bauman that polygamy is a patriarchal system of male dominance where one man has many wives, whereas polyamorous (group love) relationships are "postmodern" consensual relationships that can involve groups of males and females that can be heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual or transgendered who may or may not live together, and thus should not be considered subject to the same laws as polygamy.

"We're not patriarchal. We're not intergenerationally normalized. We're postmodern,” Ince told the media after meeting with Chief Justice Bauman. "We clearly fall outside the definition of the offense (of polygamy). We oppose laws that oppose loving, consensual relationships,” he said.

Pro-family advocates have long warned that the institution of homosexual “marriage” and civil unions in Canada, as well as in other western countries, would lead to the legalization of polygamy and any other form of relationship which participants want to legitimize.

Winston Blackmore's lawyer Blair Suffredine, a former member of Premier Gordon Campbell's Liberal government, remarked at last year's hearing that "If (homosexuals) can marry, what is the reason that public policy says one person can't marry more than one person?"

Opponents of same-sex “marriage” have warned that once homosexuals are permitted to “marry,” there is nothing stopping polygamous marriages, or any type of relationship, from being legally recognized as marriage as well.

“It’s like this,” explained Stanley Kurtz in a 2006 National Review article. “The way to abolish marriage, without seeming to abolish it, is to redefine the institution out of existence. If everything can be marriage, pretty soon nothing will be marriage. Legalize gay marriage, followed by multi-partner marriage, and pretty soon the whole idea of marriage will be meaningless.”

Just so. Resistance to gay marriage is often portrayed by its advocates as a symptom of homophobia, but this is simplistic. For many, their opposition to the legalization of gay unions is borne of a desire not to oppress gays but to preserve traditional marriage. Traditional marriage is essential to the health of a society - many of the dysfunctions we see among the poor in our inner cities are the consequence of the breakdown of traditional families - and gay marriage will almost certainly undermine it.

The next time someone challenges you to explain how it harms you if two gays or lesbians who love each other are allowed to marry you might explain to them that it's not that it harms you, it's that it harms everyone.

Out of Gas

As this very important election approaches, and as I listen to the political rhetoric on the liberal cable talk shows and watch the Democrats' ads on television a number of questions run through my mind:

I wonder, for example, if there are there any Democrats out there who are actually campaigning on ideas. Are there any Democrat candidates who have not referred to their opponents as "extremists"? Are there any Democrats who are running on the accomplishments of the last two years, or who are willing to have themselves associated with Nancy Pelosi or Barack Obama? Are there any Democrats who are proud to proclaim that they're liberals and are not trying to convince the voters that they're in fact conservatives who really oppose Pelosi and/or Obama? Is there any Democrat willing to campaign on Obamacare, cap and trade, card check, open borders, higher taxes, etc?

I ask the questions sincerely. There may be some, but if so I haven't encountered them, and I'm wondering why not. If it's because there really aren't very many candidates who are willing to campaign on ideas, the record of the Democrat party, or the ideology of liberalism then I have to wonder whether they really believe in what they're doing, what they're saying, and who they are. Are they running because they want to represent the people or because they want to milk the people, or because they want to control the people?

They seem like people who are completely out of intellectual gas and feel the only chance they have is to keep portraying Republicans as kooks and radicals. It's dishonest, but when you have no positive reason to give to voters for supporting you then smears and slander are your only hope.

Letter to Young Students

Stanley Hauerwas, professor of theological ethics at Duke Divinity School, has penned a marvelous letter, packed with good advice, to young students headed off to college. The letter is directed specifically at Christian high schoolers and college undergrads but could be read with profit by any bright young man or woman beginning his or her undergraduate experience. Here's a portion of it:

To be a student is a calling. Your parents are setting up accounts to pay the bills, or you are scraping together your own resources and taking out loans, or a scholarship is making college possible. Whatever the practical source, the end result is the same. You are privileged to enter a time—four years!—during which your main job is to listen to lectures, attend seminars, go to labs, and read books.

It is an extraordinary gift. In a world of deep injustice and violence, a people exists that thinks some can be given time to study. We need you to take seriously the calling that is yours by virtue of going to college. You may well be thinking, “What is he thinking? I’m just beginning my freshman year. I’m not being called to be a student. None of my peers thinks he or she is called to be a student. They’re going to college because it prepares you for life. I’m going to college so I can get a better job and have a better life than I’d have if I didn’t go to college. It’s not a calling.”

But you are a Christian. This means you cannot go to college just to get a better job. These days, people talk about college as an investment because they think of education as a bank account: You deposit the knowledge and expertise you’ve earned, and when it comes time to get a job, you make a withdrawal, putting all that stuff on a résumé and making money off the investment of your four years. Christians need jobs just like anybody else, but the years you spend as an undergraduate are like everything else in your life. They’re not yours to do with as you please. They’re Christ’s.

Christ’s call on you as a student is a calling to meet the needs of the Church, both for its own life and the life of the world. The Resurrection of Jesus, Wilken suggests, is not only the central fact of Christian worship but also the ground of all Christian thinking “about God, about human beings, about the world and history.” Somebody needs to do that thinking—and that means you.

Don’t underestimate how much the Church needs your mind.

Indeed. And if you're not a Christian that last sentence still applies if you substitute the word world, or nation, for Church. If you're in high school or college, or know someone who is, you really should read the whole thing.

The Failure of "Multikulti"

We've often argued on Viewpoint that the postmodern infatuation with multiculturalism is a colossal mistake. A nation, to be a nation, needs cohesion, and it cannot achieve cohesion when its citizens are constantly reminding everyone how very different they are from each other.

People are united by the things they share in common - a common language, a common history, a common set of political values, a common set of moral principles - to name the most important. Race and religion are also factors, but the divisions engendered by racial and religious diversity are suppressed when those other commonalities are present, as they have been throughout much of our nation's history.

When people share common values and a common language they can, and do, overlook racial and religious differences, but when none of those commonalities exist society becomes Balkanized into ethnic, racial and religious interests groups all seeking to achieve power over the others. Each group becomes a tinder box of resentments, grievances, and hatreds.

This, apparently, is what we see happening in Europe, and the Europeans are starting to admit publicly what they used to try to sweep under the rug - multiculturalism is a failure. The most recent European leader to make this unpleasant admission is Germany's Angela Merkel:

Germany's attempt to create a multi-cultural society has failed completely, Chancellor Angela Merkel said at the weekend, calling on the country's immigrants to learn German and adopt Christian values. Merkel weighed in for the first time in a blistering debate sparked by a central bank board member saying the country was being made "more stupid" by poorly educated and unproductive Muslim migrants.

"Multikulti", the concept that "we are now living side by side and are happy about it," does not work, Merkel told a meeting of younger members of her conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party at Potsdam near Berlin.

"This approach has failed, totally," she said, adding that immigrants should integrate and adopt Germany's culture and values.

"We feel tied to Christian values. Those who don't accept them don't have a place here," said the chancellor.

"Subsidising immigrants" isn't sufficient, Germany has the right to "make demands" on them, she added, such as mastering the language of Goethe and abandoning practices such as forced marriages.

There's more at the link. The United States is a nation of immigrants, of course, but until relatively recently those immigrants insisted that their children speak the language, embrace the traditions, and value the freedoms enshrined in the Bill of Rights. That has changed, however. The concept of assimilation has fallen out of favor. The Left considers it an expression of cultural chauvinism and takes every opportunity to denigrate those very values and traditions. If this trend continues, and it will as long as the Left maintains its cultural hegemony, it will not be long before the U.S. starts looking like Bosnia.

Open Letter to Hispanics

In a recent column Dennis Prager, perhaps the most consistently insightful columnist in the country today, writes an open letter to Hispanics about immigration. It hits all the right notes and says what I wish I had had the wit to say myself. He begins with this:

I am writing to you as a concerned and sympathetic American who is a Republican. My sentiments do not represent every American -- that would be impossible. But I believe the following represent most Americans.

First, a message to those of you here illegally:

You may be very surprised to hear this, but in your position, millions of Americans, including me, would have done what you did.

If I lived in a poor country with a largely corrupt government, a country in which I had little or no prospect of hope for an improved life for me or my children, and I could not legally get into the world's freest, most affluent country, the country with the most opportunities for people of any and every background, I would do whatever I could do to get into that country illegally.

Mexico and many other Central and South American countries are largely hopeless places for most of their people. America offers hope to everyone willing to work hard. Who could not understand why any individual, let alone a father or mother of a family, would try to get into the United States -- legally preferably, illegally if necessary?

Now that I have made it clear that millions of us understand what motivates you and do not morally condemn you for entering America illegally, I have to ask you to try to understand what motivates us.

Please take the time to read the rest of the piece. It's excellent.

His conclusion is particularly insightful. He turns his attention to Hispanics who are American citizens and says this:

Finally, and most important, by voting for Democratic Party candidates, you are voting for a type of government more like the ones most Latinos fled. Take the Mexican example. The Democratic Party is, in most important ways, an American version of the PRI [Mexico's ruling party]. For 70 years, the PRI governed Mexico and brought its economy to its knees because of vast government spending, the squashing of individual initiative, a bloated bureaucracy, unsustainable debt and the subsequent devaluing of the Mexican peso.

Why, for God's sake, would you want to see that replicated in America? The very reason America has been so prosperous and so free -- the very reasons you or your ancestors, like almost every other American's ancestors, came here -- is that America has had more limited government and therefore more liberty than any other country in the world. The Republican Party represents all that you or your parents came to America for -- and why you left Mexico and other countries: individual opportunity and individual responsibility. It is also the party that represents your social values.

Admittedly, the Democratic Party appeals to your emotions. But a vote for the Democratic Party is a vote to make America like the Mexico of the PRI. And a vote for the Democratic Party is a vote to undo the great American achievement of uniting the children of immigrants from all over the world as Americans.

Although I don't place as much confidence in the GOP as Prager seems to, and often think that those who accuse Republican politicians of being just a paler shade of Democrat are right, Prager's column is nevertheless powerful, must-read stuff.