Missing Something

According to an article in The Guardian religion is losing its cachet in both England and America, much to the delight of atheists who believe that secularization is good for the world, and that humankind will be far better off once liberated from the stifling shackles of belief in God.

The article goes on to find proof of religion's waning influence in the marked increase in the number of divorces and the growing numbers of children born out of wedlock.

These people seem to have themselves been born bereft of a sense of irony.

God and Extra-Terrestrials

Kris forwards an article for MSNBC.com by Clara Moskowitz which raises an interesting question. The article is titled If Extraterrestrials Exist What About God?, and in it Moskowitz wonders how Christianity could reconcile the discovery with their doctrines of the incarnation and atonement:

The discovery of intelligent aliens would be mind-blowing in many respects, but it could present a special dilemma for the world's religions, theologians pondering interstellar travel concepts said Saturday.

Christians, in particular, might take the news hardest, because the Christian belief system does not easily allow for other intelligent beings in the universe, Christian thinkers said at the 100 Year Starship Symposium, a meeting sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to discuss issues surrounding traveling to other stars.

In other words, "Did Jesus die for Klingons too?" as philosophy professor Christian Weidemann of Germany's Ruhr-University Bochum titled his talk at a panel on the philosophical and religious considerations of visiting other worlds.

According to Christianity, an historic event some 2,000 years ago was supposed to save the whole of creation," Weidemann said. "You can grasp the conflict."

Here's how the debate goes: If the whole of creation includes 125 billion galaxies with hundreds of billions of stars in each, as astronomers think, then what if some of these stars have planets with advanced civilizations, too? Why would Jesus Christ have come to Earth, of all the inhabited planets in the universe, to save Earthlings and abandon the rest of God's creatures?

There are several things which might be said about this. First, despite the column's title the article itself has nothing to do with how the discovery of ETs would affect belief in the existence of God.

The article is really an attempt to show that the discovery of life, especially intelligent life, on other planets would be a serious problem not for theism but for Christian theism, but I don't know why it would.

Christians believe that God took on human flesh in order to save sinners on earth. What he chose to do about other beings in other worlds, or whether they even needed redemption, we have no way of knowing. All that matters to Christians is that he came to save us.

Perhaps, the New Testament image of the shepherd leaving the flock to seek out the one lost sheep has some significance here. It could be that the flock is comprised of beings throughout the universe (personally, I have my doubts about life forms elsewhere in the cosmos) and that mankind on earth is the one lost sheep. Who knows?

Weidemann doesn't think this very likely, however:

The principle of mediocrity — the idea that [our world] is most likely typical unless you have evidence to the contrary — casts doubt on this, he pointed out. "If there are extraterrestrial intelligent beings at all, it is safe to assume that most of them are sinners too," Weidemann said. "If so, did Jesus save them too? My position is no. If so, our position among intelligent beings in the universe would be very exceptional."

On what does he base his doubt? Apparently, he thinks it improbable that God would have done what He did on earth more than once:

Another possibility is that God incarnated multiple times, sending a version of Himself down to save each inhabited planet separately. However, based on the best guesses of how many civilizations we might expect to exist in the universe, and how long planets and civilizations are expected to survive, God's incarnations would have had to be in about 250 places simultaneously at any given time, assuming each incarnation took about 30 years, Weidemann calculated.

If God truly became corporeal and took human form when Jesus Christ was born, this wouldn't have been possible, Weidemann said.

I don't know why Weidemann thinks that an omnipresent, omnipotent Being, unbounded by space and time, couldn't manifest himself simultaneously in more than one place. If quantum particles can do it why couldn't the Creator of those particles do it?

Moreover, why could it not be, as Christians have traditionally believed, that the atonement of Christ in Jerusalem 2000 years ago redeemed the entire creation, not just earth?

If ETs are ever discovered, I don't think it would be a problem for Christianity, much less a dilemma. Rather it'd be a stunning revelation, one that would have great potential for helping us understand more about how the Creator acts in his creation.

So Far, So Fast

If you're interested in politics and/or you're curious as to how Barack Obama could have fallen so far so fast from the lofty heights he commanded in 2008 to the low estate he occupies today in the public's esteem I commend to you an excellent essay in the Weekly Standard by Noemie Emery. This essay is not a partisan hit job. It's an objective, dispassionate assessment of where Mr. Obama's weaknesses lie and how they conspired to bring him and his party to the brink of a generation of political exile.

Emery opens with this:

For a success, Barack Obama is a very bad politician, the worst politician to win the presidency by an electoral landslide, to never lose a major election, or to rise to the presidency from a state legislature in little more than four years. He has gone from sterling campaigner to put-upon leader; from the new FDR to the next Jimmy Carter; from being the orator who could hold millions spellbound to the man who moves no one at all. The man who promised everything is delivering nothing. Journalists who wept when he won the election now grind their teeth in despair. Maureen Dowd admits he isn’t the one for whom even he had been waiting. The gap between sizzle and steak never seemed so large or alarming, and inquiring minds want to know what went wrong.

Did the prince (assuming he was one) turn into a frog? Did he use all his luck up in winning his office? Did he, once in power, see his governing skills fade away? The answers to these things are no, yes, and no. The record suggests that he was never a prince (merely a fantasy); that his luck went away once his free ride had ended; and that he had few political, that is, governing, skills to begin with, a fact that is now more than clear. In three areas at least, he appears to be lacking. Let us walk back and see what they are.

I think that Mr. Obama's current predicament is not so much a result of a lack of political skill, although Emery makes a strong case for that, but more a result of the fact that many Americans are becoming aware that Mr. Obama is much further to the left on the ideological spectrum than they realized he was when they voted for him in 2008.

At any rate, Emery's essay is an excellent piece of political analysis. Give it a read.

There's Probably No Dawkins

Last year a British atheist organization placed signs on the sides of buses in London saying: "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life."

William Lane Craig, an American philosopher issued a challenge to debate that claim with one of the world's foremost atheists, Oxford biologist Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion, when he tours England this month, but Dawkins haughtily declined, saying that he only wanted to debate bishops and priests. On his website Dawkins called Craig a “ponderous buffoon” who uses logic to “bamboozle his faith-head audience,” but he has notably failed to respond to any of the "buffoon's" criticisms of The God Delusion.

His demurral elicited a letter from fellow atheist and Oxford don Dr. Daniel Came suggesting that Dawkins' refusal was "cowardly".

Meanwhile, two other prominent atheists backed out of their previous agreements to cross swords with Craig. The President of the British Humanist Association, Guardian columnist and prominent critic of religion, Polly Toynbee, pulled out of her agreement to debate Craig at London’s Westminster Central Hall. She had eagerly agreed to spar with Craig on the Existence of God and tickets had been sold for the event. She withdrew recently saying, “I hadn’t realized the nature of Mr Lane Craig’s debating style, and having now looked at his previous performances, this is not my kind of forum”.

I.e. She realizes that Craig would clean her clock, as it were, and she'd rather not suffer the humiliation.

Additionally, A.C.Grayling, who this year published a humanist ‘Bible’ called The Good Book, also refused to debate Craig about the basis of morality, stating that he would rather debate “the existence of fairies and water-nymphs”.

Perhaps this means that Grayling recognizes that on atheism morality has no more reality than fairies and water-nymphs, but he doesn't want to be put in the position of being pressed on the point publicly since that'd be a public relations disaster for atheism.

At any rate, Craig will still be giving a lecture at the Sheldonian Theater in Oxford on the evening he would have been debating Dawkins. There'll be an empty chair on the stage to highlight Dawkins' absence and, by implication, that he lacked the confidence to defend his book against someone who actually understands the issues rather than some parish clergyman who might have proved to be an easier foil.

Given that Dawkins is expected to be a no-show at the Sheldonian signs are being placed on the side of Oxford buses this week which say, "There’s Probably No Dawkins. Now Stop Worrying and Enjoy Oct 25th at the Sheldonian Theatre."

Pretty clever.

HT: Uncommon Descent

Perfidious Perjury or Incredible Incompetence

It appears that our chief law enforcement officer, Attorney General Eric Holder, may have been fibbing to Congress about what he knew about the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms' ill-conceived "Fast and Furious" program and particularly about when he knew it. If so, he committed perjury which is an impeachable offense. House Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith is requesting that President Obama instruct the Department of Justice to appoint a Special Counsel to get to the bottom of the matter.

On May 3 Attorney General Eric Holder testified to Congress under oath that he first heard about F&F in April of 2011:

"I'm not sure of the exact date," Holder asserted, "but I probably heard about Fast and Furious for the first time over the last few weeks."

Unfortunately for Mr. Holder's credibility, and perhaps for his career, newly discovered memos suggest that that claim is at variance with the truth:

One memo dated July 2010 shows that Michael Walther, director of the National Drug Intelligence Center, told Holder that straw buyers in the Fast and Furious operation "are responsible for the purchase of 1,500 firearms that were then supplied to the Mexican drug trafficking cartels."

Other documents also indicate that Holder began receiving weekly briefings on the program from the National Drug Intelligence Center "beginning, at the latest, on July 5, 2010," Smith wrote.

"These updates mentioned, not only the name of the operation, but also specific details about guns being trafficked to Mexico," Smith wrote in the letter to Obama.

"Allegations that senior Justice Department officials may have intentionally misled members of Congress are extremely troubling and must be addressed by an independent and objective special counsel. I urge you to appoint a special counsel who will investigate these allegations as soon as possible," Smith wrote.

The Justice Department is claiming that Mr. Holder never read these memoranda. If not, he should be impeached for incompetence and dereliction of duty. On the other hand, if he did read them and lied to Congress about it he should be impeached for perjury.

And whoever on his staff came up with the lame excuse that he didn't read the memos should be impeached for stupidity.

In any case, if he did commit perjury and is impeached and removed from office I would imagine that he would also be in jeopardy of disbarment from the practice of law just as President Clinton was for lying under oath. It's amazing how trying to cover up a scandal so often produces worse ramifications than would have resulted from admitting up front that you were the one who originally authorized the boneheaded scheme and accepting responsibility for it. UPDATE: It may be even worse for Mr. Holder than I thought. This is from The Daily Caller:

Republican Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona told The Daily Caller on Wednesday that Obama administration officials responsible for Operation Fast and Furious might be accessories to murder.

“We’re talking about consequences of criminal activity, where we actually allowed guns to walk into the hands of criminals, where our livelihoods are at risk,” Gosar said in a phone interview. “When you facilitate that and a murder or a felony occurs, you’re called an accessory. That means that there’s criminal activity.”

Gosar said the government should be held to the same standard as everyone else. Fast and Furious weapons were used to kill U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry, as well as scores of Mexican citizens, and he thinks administration officials should be held accountable.

“We impugn the private sector, we impugn main street America, and the bureaucracy cannot be held to any different standard whatsoever,” Gosar told TheDC, insisting that Justice Department and ATF officials “intentionally — intentionally — violated the law.”

Any day now the mainstream media will wake up and realize that this story isn't going to go away and then maybe they'll start reporting on it.

Bowing to Them Didn't Help

Shadi Hamid of the Brookings Institute, a liberal think tank, has some strong words for the worldview of his fellow liberals in a column at The New Republic, a liberal opinion journal. He notes that in the Arab world the U.S. is actually more unpopular and less respected under President Obama, who made it a point to be the unBush, than it was under President Bush.

In an article titled What Obama and American Liberals Don’t Understand About the Arab Spring Hamid writes:

It is worth noting that Bush’s short-lived embrace of Mideast democratic reform—despite his deep personal unpopularity throughout the region—did not appear to hurt the Arab reform movement, and, if anything, did the opposite. This is something that reformers themselves reluctantly admit.

In 2005, at the height of the first Arab spring, the liberal Egyptian publisher and activist Hisham Kassem said, “Eighty percent of political freedom in this country is the result of U.S. pressure.” And it isn’t just liberals who felt this way. Referring to the Bush administration’s efforts, the prominent Muslim Brotherhood figure Abdel Moneim Abul Futouh told me in August 2006, “Everyone knows it....We benefited, everyone benefited, and the Egyptian people benefited.”

Liberals had often told the world—and, perhaps more importantly, themselves—that the Bush administration’s destructive policies were a historic anomaly. When a Democrat was elected, America would undo the damage. For many liberals, including myself, this was what Obama could offer that no one else could—a president with a Muslim name, who had grown up in a Muslim country, who seemed to have an intuitive understanding of the place of grievance in Arab public life.

But, after President Obama’s brief honeymoon period, the familiar disappointments returned. In a span of just one year, the number of Arabs who said they were “discouraged” by the Obama administration’s Middle East policies shot up from 15 percent to 63 percent, according to a University of Maryland/Zogby poll.

By the time the protests began in December 2010, attitudes toward the U.S. had hit rock bottom. In several Arab countries, including Egypt, U.S. favorability ratings were lower under Obama than they were under Bush. Indeed, an odd current of “Bush nostalgia” had been very much evident in Arab opposition circles. In May 2010, a prominent Brotherhood member complained to me: “For Obama, the issue of democracy is fifteenth on his list of priorities....There’s no moment of change like there was under Bush.”

Liberals want Arabs to like us. Conservatives want Arabs to respect us. The former will never happen no matter what we do. The latter will happen to the extent that we remain strong and adhere to our principles of encouraging freedom and democracy around the world. In the Arab world as elsewhere, the people will always follow the strong horse and despise the weak one, but strength is not a virtue among liberals. It is to many of them a symptom of imperialism, hegemony, and inegalitarianism.

Thus the current administration has chosen to "lead from behind," to give the world the impression that we see ourselves as a nation in decline and that the last thing we want to do is promote and push our values onto other cultures. It's feared by our leadership that such would be taken as an insult, but to those who have given or risked their lives in Tahrir Square American political values are, as they were for the Chinese at Tiananmen Square, a source of hope and inspiration.

Arabs don't like us, the call us kafir (infidel), but it is to us - not Russia, not China, not other Arab countries - they turn when they yearn for freedom and need help.

Read Hamid's column. It really is insightful.

Tempest in a Teapot?

My good friend Byron writes to chastise me for posting the story of Governor Beverly Purdue of North Carolina who recently suggested that we suspend elections so that politicians could concentrate on solving our problems without having to worry about what the voters would think. Byron thinks that I go too far in averring that Ms Purdue's comment is symptomatic of an inclination toward totalitarianism in the heart of many progressives. Here's the gravamen of his complaint:

Really, why even write about this? You say that there is a totalitarian impulse deep in the heart of many a liberal. Maybe that is a quote that someone ought to distance themselves from, for that matter, as it strikes me as remarkably rude to accuse nearly half of your fellow citizens of such nefarious impulses. And, frankly, unfounded, I'd say. I'm glad, Dick, that you did say you were not accusing anyone of really planning such a move (to cancel elections) as some fellow conservative bloggers do imply (yes, I've seen them, alarmist, conspiratorial blogs suggesting this is really what Obama has in mind.)

So, if you admit this isn't really any plan of anybody, and is just a dumb comment, why try to make a point out of it, as if it stands for something significant? You've joined the chorus of those making undue political, partisan hay out of this tepid tempest in a teapot. I have a limited amount of time to read on-line each day and I turn to Viewpoint for important insights about important stuff. You have better things to write about. Please stop wasting our time by exposing goof-ball stuff that is said here and there as if it matters. If ten more influential people agree with her, if she shows no remorse, if you even show reasonably that this is some significant trend, I'll eat my words.

For now, though, it seems to me that you've needlessly dignified her comments and you ... have offered just more Hot Air over something that will be forgotten next week. (I suspect you will think I am unfair for saying you are wasting time writing about this kind of nonsense, that your bigger point is that liberals have these tendencies.

You have made that point before, but you should know that drawing this implication from a statement that, if asked, nearly every other elected Democrat would disagree with, is a stretch. No, they may not think it necessary to renounce her---why bother, it's crazy talk, and we all know it! But if you polled other leaders if they, too, want to cancel elections, you won't find many, I'm sure. Which is to say this lurking desire for totalitarianism you accuse your neighbors and friends of is not as dangerous or maybe not as real as you alleged.)

In my defense I offer the following points:

It's manifestly true that there's a penchant on the left for controlling people's lives and that the further left along the ideological spectrum one travels the greater is the desire for control. This seems to me to be inarguable. The yearning to regulate what we can say, what we can eat, what kind of light bulbs we use, what our thermostats should be set at, what kind of car we drive, where we can pray, where we can send our kids to school, and much else emanates from the left. Each of these represents a chipping away of human freedom and each is a step, if only a tiny step, in the direction of total government control of our lives.

Secondly, if a particular post is a "waste" of one's time then the obvious course is simply to move on to something else. To write a lengthy email saying how a post was a waste of one's time seems itself to be rather a waste of one's time. No one is going to find every post on any blog worth reading.

Oddly, Byron himself has a fine blog on which he writes, sometimes at great length, about books. I think it would be very peculiar if a reader who found one of his posts to be of little interest to complain that an essay about a certain genre of books wasted his time. I'm sure Byron would advise his correspondent to just not read it.

Thirdly, Bev Purdue is not a nobody in the Democrat party. She is the governor of a major state. What she says is just as important, and just as revealing of the sorts of ideas circulating among her peers as are the thoughts of, say, Arizona's governor. Jan Brewer. Anyone that high up in the party hierarchy represents, and gives voice to, the ideas of a constituency of millions.

Fourthly, even if it's true that no other party leader would admit to sharing her views, as Byron alleges, that doesn't mean much. What people think and what they will admit to are often two different things. It's an article of faith among liberals, for example, that the number of racists in this country is far greater than the number of people who'll admit to being racist. Of course people won't admit to wanting to suspend elections, just like they won't admit to being racist, even if they'd like to see it done. They realize that they'd look like kooks if they did.

Finally, I write about things that interest me. That's what a blog is for. I don't write about what I think would interest somebody else. If a reader thinks that calling attention to the thinking of a major politician in this country is not important, that's up to them, but I think it is important, and, as President Bush once said, I'm the decider.

Raptor Cuisinart

The American Bird Conservancy highlights what certainly appears to be a double standard in the enforcement of our wildlife laws. According to a Conservancy press release:

The United States Attorney in North Dakota has charged seven oil companies in seven separate cases with violation of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act for the illegal killing of 28 migratory birds. Yet, American Bird Conservancy – the nation’s leading bird conservation organization – reports that the wind industry, despite killing more than 400,000 birds annually, has yet to face a single charge.

The oil-related bird deaths, which included members of twelve different species, occurred between May 4 and June 20, 2011. The statutory maximum sentence for violation of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act is six months in federal prison and a $15,000 fine. The date for the initial appearances for the seven companies is set for September 22, 2011, in United States District Court, Bismarck, North Dakota.

“I commend the Fish and Wildlife Service and the Justice Department for enforcing the law in these cases. Oil pits are a known hazard to birds and the solutions to prevent these bird deaths are straightforward to implement,” said American Bird Conservancy President George Fenwick. “It is perplexing that similar prosecutions have yet to be brought against the operators of wind farms. Every year wind turbines kill hundreds of thousands of birds, including eagles, hawks, and songbirds, but the operators are being allowed to get away with it. It looks like a double standard.”

The Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) estimated in 2009 that about 440,000 birds were being killed by wind turbines. With an anticipated twelve-fold wind energy build-out by the year 2030, bird mortality is expected to dramatically increase in the coming years, absent significant changes in the way wind farms are sited and operated. Based on studies, one wind farm in California is estimated to have killed more than 2,000 eagles, plus thousands of other birds, yet no prosecution has been initiated for violations of federal laws protecting birds.

Wind turbine blades kill big birds by whacking them. They also kill thousands of bats by creating sudden low pressure which causes the bats' lungs to explode, but wind turbines are "green" energy producers so apparently they get a pass. Meanwhile, those nasty oil companies responsible for the demise of a couple dozen ducks must be punished to the full extent of the law. The bureaucratic mindset really is a thing to behold.

Here's a video showing how large, soaring birds like raptors are especially vulnerable to the turbine's blades:

There are many threats to birds in the modern landscape: Cell phone and radio towers, tall buildings, feral cats, cars, toxins etc. but few things threaten the large birds like wind turbines.

At any rate, the question is why single out oil companies for stiff fines for the harm they cause, which is relatively minor, and give every other source of harm, many of them far more serious, a shrug?

Reservations Concerning the Death of Awlaki

It's not often that I find myself agreeing with people like Dennis Kucinich and the ACLU, but when Anwar al-Awlaki was killed in Yemen last week by a U.S. military missile strike I think we created a problem and those who brought the problem to our attention have a legitimate point.

First, though, I give credit to President Obama for green-lighting the CIA's and the U.S. military's war on terror and for targeting terrorists wherever they're found around the world. I don't think anyone on the right or the left foresaw in 2008 that he would pursue such an aggressive policy. Terrorists are a cancerous tumor in the body of civilization and their eternal reward, whatever it is, needs to be expedited.

Second, I give the military credit for finding and killing Anwar al-Awlaki. He was a particularly virulent form of cancer, and I admire the skill and effort made to track him and bring an end to his lethal activities against the American people.

But that brings me to the problem. Awlaki and a companion who was also killed in the attack were American citizens, and I have serious misgivings about handing the president, any president, the power to simply execute, without some form of due process, any American citizen deemed to be a threat to the country.

Frankly, I'm surprised that neither the progressive left nor the tea party right seems overly concerned about this since the former was extremely upset about mistreatment of non-citizen enemy combatants at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere, and the latter has a very deep commitment and fidelity to the Constitution.

Nevertheless, people on both sides of the ideological divide seem to be averting their eyes from the camel's nose insinuating itself into the tent of our constitutional protections and creating an opening for real executive abuse by some future president.

By all means the Awlakis of the world should be put out of business, but we need some sort of standard or procedure, involving all three branches of government, not just administration lawyers, that would insure that such operations do not create a precedent for the erosion of constitutional safeguards, particularly the Fifth Amendment which guarantees that no American citizen will be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.

The enemy today may be a terrorist, but tomorrow it could be anyone who opposes a president or his policy, whether foreign or domestic. It could be the rich, or the religious, the Wall Street protestor or the abortion clinic demonstrator. We must not allow our government to start us down the road that leads us there.

I'm not a constitutional lawyer so I don't know exactly what provisions can be put in place to prevent this, or how they may be established, but Washington is full of such experts, including one in the Oval Office. We should be demanding that they get about the business of building a firewall around the protections guaranteed to American citizens in the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States. There is bipartisan consensus that the death of Awlaki was necessary. There should also be bipartisan consensus on the need to find a way to insure that such measures don't become a habit.

Re: Yousef Nadarkhani

We received a lot of feedback about Friday's post on the impending execution of Yousef Nadarkhani. Carol did some research and has come up with additional thoughts on the situation. She writes:

I think it's important to remember that this ordeal has been going on since October of 2009 when Nadarkhani was arrested for a charge of illegal protest when he questioned Islamic control over religious instruction at his children's school. This charge was increased to apostasy and evangelizing Muslims, which is a capital offense in Iran.

It is also important to recognize the others who have been affected by this situation. Not only has Nadarkhani been imprisoned during these past two years of trials and appeals, but his wife was also convicted and sentenced to life in prison. What is happening with their children? Are they with living with loving relatives, or are they being persecuted for their faith as well?

And human rights lawyer, Mohammed Ali Dadkhah, deserves respect for his courage to defend Nadarkhani despite charges of "actions and propaganda against the Islamic regime." He has been sentenced to 9 years in prison and barred from practicing law for the next decade. There are probably many other (unnamed) people involved, and (untold) sacrifices being made, to defend Christianity in Iran.

A Washington Times editorial reports that "When asked to repent of Christianity, Nadarkhani said, 'repent means to return. What should I return to?' The court replied, 'return to the religion of your ancestors, Islam.' Nadarkhani answered, 'I cannot.' He also wrote from prison, 'Let us remember that beyond beautiful or painful feelings, only three things remain: Faith, Hope, and Love. It is important for believers to make sure which kind of Faith, Hope, and Love will remain.'

As of this writing I have yet to hear anything of Nadarkhani's fate. Perhaps the international exposure of this travesty will prevent the Iranians from harming him. What they'll do to his wife and lawyer, however, is anyone's guess. Iran may be the most obvious modern witness to the wisdom of our Founding Fathers who established both the freedom of religion and the separation of church and state in our young nation. We can be thankful that we don't live in a country under the thumb of intolerant religious, or ideological, bigots.

No One Died in Watergate

Frank Miniter at Forbes writes an excellent account of the whole sordid Fast and Furious affair and concludes that the extent of the attempt to cover up Department of Justice responsibility could make this the administration's Watergate scandal.

I respectfully disagree, however, with that comparison. No one was killed as a result of the Watergate break-in, but over 200 Mexicans and two American law enforcement officers have been murdered with some of the thousands of guns the Department of Justice intentionally put into the hands of drug thugs and murderers.

Miniter argues that the only plausible explanation for why the administration compelled gun store owners to violate the law and sell semi-automatic weapons to people who could not pass a background test was to give the president a rationale for imposing stricter gun-control laws.

This is a bit hard to believe because one recoils from thinking that an American president would do something so despicable, so stupid, and so self-serving. Yet, Miniter seems correct in saying that there seems to be no other plausible rationale.

At any rate, here's his lede:

Why a gun-running scandal code-named “Fast and Furious,” a program run secretly by the U.S. government that sent thousands of firearms over an international border and directly into the hands of criminals, hasn’t been pursued by an army of reporters all trying to be the next Bob Woodward or Carl Bernstein is a story in itself.

But the state of modern journalism aside, this scandal is so inflammatory few realize that official records show the current director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), B. Todd Jones — yes the individual the Obama administration brought in to replace ATF Director Kenneth Melson Aug. 30 in an effort to deflect congressional criticism — also has questions to answer about his involvement in this gun-running scandal.

Fast and Furious was an operation so cloak-and-dagger Mexican authorities weren’t even notified that thousands of semi-automatic firearms were being sold to people in Arizona thought to have links to Mexican drug cartels. According to ATF whistleblowers, in 2009 the U.S. government began instructing gun store owners to break the law by selling firearms to suspected criminals.

ATF agents then, again according to testimony by ATF agents turned whistleblowers, were ordered not to intercept the smugglers but rather to let the guns “walk” across the U.S.-Mexican border and into the hands of Mexican drug-trafficking organizations.

Read the whole article. If you're too young to remember Watergate and don't know what it was about at least you can get in on the cutting edge of history with this scandal. In an administration that's beginning to look as if it's hip deep in scandals, this one, we better hope, seems to be the worst.

Effective Compassion

WORLD magazine, founded by Marvin Olasky, author of The Tragedy of American Compassion, has an annual contest called The Hope Award for Effective Compassion. First prize is a $25,000 gift to the organization selected from among all the nominees to be the most effective at turning lives around. The stories of these organizations are truly remarkable as they show how private effort can change people and turn losers into winners.

These organizations, though, enjoy a decided advantage over many charities, and certainly over government-run welfare programs. Each of these organizations places responsibility on the individual and each of them stresses the crucial importance of religious faith.

There are four finalists vying for the award and their stories can be found by following the links found at their home page.

Here's a brief excerpt from one of the stories:

In a warehouse nearby, Hope Now graduate Eddie Martinez stood over a long Trail-Gear warehouse table, making sure components for car kits are in the proper place. Messer calls Martinez "steady Eddie," saying he shows up on time and works hard. Martinez is proud that in his seven months on the job he hasn't missed a day.

Martinez—once involved with gang members and drugs—says the Hope Now program taught him how to manage his money and work with people. After graduation, he first worked for the sanitation department of the City of Fresno (an employer that regularly hires Hope Now graduates). When Martinez did well, he says Hope Now staffer Bill Murray helped him find better positions: "Every job they give me, I try to give it 100 percent, every time."

Hope Now executive director Roger Feenstra says cultivating relationships with men like Martinez is key: Feenstra has found that giving an "at-risk" man a job without giving him help to succeed often leads to failure. The pastor and former president of a Christian bookstore chain admits that he didn't know much about gang members when he came to Hope Now, but he quickly learned: "You relate to them like any other person. They need love and respect."

Feenstra says his staffers offer encouragement, accountability, and help with simple steps like getting a Social Security card, learning how to drive, tying a tie, and filling out a job application: "We do things a dad would do." Murray—the vocational counselor—says a Christian man's friendship is sometimes overwhelming to clients without fathers: "You tell them that you're proud of them and they just melt."

If you go to the site you can read the articles on each of the four finalists and cast your vote to help pick the winner of the $25,000 prize.

Just Joking

North Carolina's Democrat governor Beverly Purdue recently suggested that we should suspend elections so that Congress wouldn't have to worry about pressure from the voters and could actually give themselves to the task of solving the nation's problems. When her suggestion got out she was immediately pilloried by conservative media (if the liberal media found her suggestion offensive I didn't hear much about it from them). Her staff reacted to the criticism by saying she was just joking, but that's certainly not evident from the audio of her speech. It sounds to me like she was dead serious:

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air puts her comments in historical perspective:

We have had a number of depressions, including the Great Depression, in our history. We fought two world wars and a decades-long Cold War against an existential threat. During all of these times, the US held its normal Congressional elections. In 1862, Republicans lost 22 seats in the midterm elections, and in 1864, Lincoln faced a tough challenge to continue his role as Commander in Chief.

Both elections took place in the middle of the Civil War, while hundreds of thousands of Americans were dying on battlefields. Comparatively speaking, this is just a rough patch in the road.

We don’t put aside democracy in tough times. In fact, the tougher the times, the more accountability we need from our government, not less. As my friend and radio partner Mitch Berg wrote, “The dumb part? That a bunch of politicians, relieved of the pressure of having to justify their political existences to voters, would “solve” anything.”

Any politician arguing that our government needs less or no accountability to its constituents and citizens is a politician whose constituents should send into ignominious retirement at the first possible moment.

Ms Purdue's remark exemplifies the inclination toward the totalitarian solution that lurks in the hearts of many progressives. President Obama has himself said on occasion that he wishes he could simply bypass Congress and rule by fiat. It'd be easier to get things done.

Now, I'm not suggesting that either the governor or the president have any nefarious motivations for these comments. I'm sure they're just frustrated by the lack of progress in Washington, but what I do think is that among many progressives and liberals there's a feeling that separation of powers and the American constitution are seen as impediments to progress more than as welcome safeguards against tyranny.

This is a dangerous view even when held by good people. Bad views held by good people make it easier for evil people to impose tyrannical policies upon a nation.

Liberal Minds at Work

From time to time over the years we've had reason to feature on these pages examples of political correctness that reach so far into the realm of the goofy as to make us feel almost embarrassed for the perpetrators, who, we believe, despite the stupidity of their attempts to insure that no one anywhere is ever given any reason by anyone to ever feel in any way offended, are actually not unintelligent people.

Perhaps, though, we must now abandon that belief and recognize that we're approaching the outer limits of PC buffoonery and that the people who are taking us there can't possibly have what philosophers refer to as a "properly functioning cognitive apparatus".

This excerpt from a story from across the pond provides a summary of the details:

From the Wicked Witch of the West in the Wizard of Oz to Meg, the good witch from the Meg and Mog children's books, witches have always dressed in black.

But their traditional attire has now come in for criticism from equality experts who claim it could send a negative message to toddlers in nursery and lead to racism.

Instead, teachers should censor the toy box and replace the pointy black hat with a pink one, while dressing fairies, generally resplendent in pale pastels, in darker shades.

Another staple of the classroom - white paper - has also been questioned by Anne O'Connor, an early years consultant who advises local authorities on equality and diversity.

Children should be provided with paper other than white to draw on and paints and crayons should come in "the full range of flesh tones", reflecting the diversity of the human race, according to the former teacher.

Finally, staff should be prepared to be economical with the truth when asked by pupils what their favourite colour is and, in the interests of good race relations, answer "black" or "brown".

The measures, outlined in a series of guides in Nursery World magazine, are aimed at avoiding racial bias in toddlers as young as two.

According to the guides, very young children may begin to express negative and discriminatory views about skin colour and appearance that nursery staff must help them "unlearn".

There's more on this depressing inanity at the link. I'll bet next these good progressive "experts" will be launching a complaint against God for populating bright cheery skies with white clouds and gloomy, foreboding skies with dark ones. Rumor has it that they're already gearing up to get kindergartens to replace bright white lights in the classroom with black lights lest the little tykes be inclined toward racism by the color of their light bulbs.

Martyr in Iran

A 32 year-old Iranian pastor is fighting for his life in Iranian courts. His crime? He converted to Christianity as a teenager. He was arrested two years ago and charged with apostasy, a capital offense punishable by hanging under Islamic law, or at least as that law is being interpreted by Iran's clergy.

Yousef  Nadarkhani

The Iranian courts have given Yousef Nadarkhani a choice: either recant and renounce his Christian faith or hang. Here's the crux of the story which can be found in more detail at the link:

The case began in October 2009 when Nadarkhani protested at the local school of his two sons. The government had recently passed a law stating that Islam must be imposed on children in local school, and even on Christian children. Nadarkhani publicly protested at the school, stating the law was unconstitutional because it did not allow the free practice of religion. His protest caught the attention of the police and government.

Following investigation, the court in Rasht has ruled that Pastor Nadarkhani was not a practicing Muslim adult before becoming a Christian. However, the court has decided that he remains guilty of apostasy because he has Muslim ancestry. Pastor Nadarkhani’s lawyer, Mr Mohammed Ali Dadkhah, has made it clear to the court that the repeated demand for recanting is against both Iranian law and the constitution. The court replied that the verdict of the Supreme Court must be applied, regardless of the illegality of the demand.

The death sentence for apostasy is not codified in the Iranian Penal Code. However, using a loophole in Iran’s constitution, the judges in Rasht based their original verdict on fatwas by Ayatollahs Khomeini, the “father” of Iran’s revolution in 1979, Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran, and of Makarem Shirazi, currently the most influential religious leader in Iran.

Watch:

The clergy who interpret Islamic law in Iran have decreed that no person of Muslim ancestry can ever convert to another religion, and if they do they must be killed. Here's a question for American Muslims: Either these mullahs are misinterpreting Islamic law, or they are interpreting it correctly. If the former, then do you agree that their demand is barbaric? If not, why not? If the latter, do you hold that a law that calls for execution for one who converts to Christianity is barbaric? If not, why not?

More on Poverty in America

I don't know anyone who doesn't want to help the disadvantaged, but sometimes the disadvantaged make it awfully hard to want to help them.

A woman named Tracy, who herself has intimate acquaintance with those who fall below the poverty income threshold, writes to comment about our post titled Poverty in America and the subsequent follow-up. She says:

I agree with the comments the reader made about people who are considered poor in America who are abusing the system. I also believe they should be given a higher economic class status. The people who are considered poor are living better than the average working person. I know if you were to enter some of their homes you would think they worked for a living, or you might consider them living the good life.

The reason I can relate to this is because I know someone who takes advantage of the system and enjoys doing it. She has never worked a day in her life, is over thirty and has a beautiful home. I asked her one day out of curiosity why she has doesn’t want to work? This is what she stated, “Why work when you can get free money, food and someone else can take care of you, I would be considered a fool to work”.

Surely such people are in the minority yet these anecdotes are heard so frequently that it's little wonder that so many people are demanding that government reform the welfare and entitlement system. As Tracy points out, people who are themselves working hard and struggling to support their families should not have to see their tax dollars go to subsidize the existence of people like the acquaintance she describes above.

Government has two obligations with respect to the poor: To provide a safety net so that no one who, through no fault of their own, needs public help goes without it, and to use our hard-earned tax dollars in the wisest, most efficient, most efficacious manner possible. At present our federal government is failing to meet either of these responsibilities.

Moral Individualism

A couple of weeks ago New York Times columnist David Brooks addressed himself to a phenomenon that has been one of the major preoccupations of this blog since its inception in 2004: The loss of what we might call a moral dictionary to whose authority individuals might submit their own moral judgments.

Brooks writes:

During the summer of 2008, the eminent Notre Dame sociologist Christian Smith led a research team that conducted in-depth interviews with 230 young adults from across America. Smith and company asked about the young people’s moral lives, and the results are depressing.

The interviewers asked open-ended questions about right and wrong, moral dilemmas and the meaning of life. In the rambling answers, which Smith and company recount in a new book, “Lost in Transition,” you see the young people groping to say anything sensible on these matters. But they just don’t have the categories or vocabulary to do so.

When asked to describe a moral dilemma they had faced, two-thirds of the young people either couldn’t answer the question or described problems that are not moral at all, like whether they could afford to rent a certain apartment or whether they had enough quarters to feed the meter at a parking spot.

“Not many of them have previously given much or any thought to many of the kinds of questions about morality that we asked,” Smith and his co-authors write. When asked about wrong or evil, they could generally agree that rape and murder are wrong. But, aside from these extreme cases, moral thinking didn’t enter the picture, even when considering things like drunken driving, cheating in school or cheating on a partner. “I don’t really deal with right and wrong that often,” is how one interviewee put it.

The default position, which most of them came back to again and again, is that moral choices are just a matter of individual taste. “It’s personal,” the respondents typically said. “It’s up to the individual. Who am I to say?”

Rejecting blind deference to authority, many of the young people have gone off to the other extreme: “I would do what I thought made me happy or how I felt. I have no other way of knowing what to do but how I internally feel.”

Many were quick to talk about their moral feelings but hesitant to link these feelings to any broader thinking about a shared moral framework or obligation. As one put it, “I mean, I guess what makes something right is how I feel about it. But different people feel different ways, so I couldn’t speak on behalf of anyone else as to what’s right and wrong.”

Smith and company found an atmosphere of extreme moral individualism — of relativism and nonjudgmentalism. Again, this doesn’t mean that America’s young people are immoral. Far from it. But, Smith and company emphasize, they have not been given the resources — by schools, institutions and families — to cultivate their moral intuitions, to think more broadly about moral obligations, to check behaviors that may be degrading.

Dennis Prager places his finger on the reason for the anomie Brooks describes among the young:

What is disconcerting about Brooks’s piece is that nowhere in what is an important column does he mention the reason for this disturbing trend: namely, secularism. The intellectual class and the Left still believe that secularism is an unalloyed blessing. They are wrong. Secularism is good for government. But it is terrible for society (though still preferable to bad religion) and for the individual.

One key reason is what secularism does to moral standards. If moral standards are not rooted in God, they do not objectively exist. Good and evil are no more real than “yummy” and “yucky.” They are simply a matter of personal preference. One of the foremost liberal philosophers, Richard Rorty, an atheist, acknowledged that for the secular liberal, “There is no answer to the question, ‘Why not be cruel?’”

With the death of Judeo-Christian God-based standards, people have simply substituted feelings for those standards. Millions of American young people have been raised by parents and schools with “How do you feel about it?” as the only guide to what they ought to do. The heart has replaced God and the Bible as a moral guide.

And now, as Brooks points out, we see the results. A vast number of American young people do not even ask whether an action is right or wrong. The question would strike them as foreign. Why? Because the question suggests that there is a right and wrong outside of themselves. And just as there is no God higher than them, there is no morality higher than them, either.

Prager's right. In a secular society there's no moral authority higher than one's own feelings which means that, since everyone's feelings are different, what I ought to do is whatever I feel like doing and can get away with. No one can say that I'm morally wrong if I choose to be selfish or cruel.

Thus, after a dozen or so jihadis flew planes into the World Trade Towers on 9/11 college profs in some major universities found that many of their students were reluctant to condemn the act. These students, weaned on moral relativism and subjectivism, simply lacked the moral resources to say that it was wrong to murder thousands of people.

Our secularized young are deeply confused and morally adrift. This confusion was illustrated by students in a class at Yale who had been hesitant to condemn the 9/11 attack, but who, when asked by their prof whether it would be wrong to wantonly kill a thousand whales or buffalo, agreed almost unanimously that it would be.

I take solace in the thought that every older generation despairs of the young.

Fading Confidence

Gallup has a new poll out that shows that the confidence of Americans in their government is hitting historical lows. For example, the polling organization found that:

• 82% of Americans disapprove of the way Congress is handling its job.
• 69% say they have little or no confidence in the legislative branch of government, an all-time high and up from 63% in 2010.
• 57% have little or no confidence in the federal government to solve domestic problems, exceeding the previous high of 53% recorded in 2010 and well exceeding the 43% who have little or no confidence in the government to solve international problems.
• 53% have little or no confidence in the men and women who seek or hold elected office.
• Americans believe, on average, that the federal government wastes 51 cents of every tax dollar, similar to a year ago, but up significantly from 46 cents a decade ago and from an average 43 cents three decades ago.
• 49% of Americans believe the federal government has become so large and powerful that it poses an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens. In 2003, less than a third (30%) believed this.

This last view is much more pronounced among Republicans (61%) and independents (57%) than among Democrats (28%), although when George W. Bush was president, Democrats and independents were more likely than Republicans to view government as a threat.

Nevertheless, it shows that there's growing alarm about the intentions of those who are entrusted to run the country and increasing fears that they're succumbing to the temptation to circumvent constitutional safeguards and freedoms in order to avoid legislative opposition to their agenda.

Cupcakes and Racism

The College Republicans at U.C. Berkeley (I know. I was surprised that there are Republicans at Berkeley, too) are having a bake sale that has some students very upset. It turns out that white students will be charged $2 for a cupcake, Asian students will be charged $1.50, and African American students will be charged $.75.

There are cries of "racism" being bandied about over this, but it's not clear from the article at the Blaze in what, exactly, the alleged racism consists:

"I’m ashamed to know that I go to the same school with people who would say stuff like this,” student Skyler Hogan-Van Sickle wrote Facebook. “I’m really trying to figure out how someone can be this hateful.”

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, more than 200 students responded to the event, mostly in opposition. One threatened to burn the table and set the cupcakes on fire. At least four student groups sent complaints to campus administrators, and a student-only meeting was set for Friday evening to discuss it.

Anyway, the ostensible purpose of the price differential is to highlight the young conservatives' belief that preferential treatment based on race is inherently unjust. Their eye is on the University's practice of offering preferential consideration to minorities in admissions. Making it easier for one group to get into college based on their race is unjust, they argue, in the same way that charging people for cupcakes based on their race is unjust.

Read the article and tell us what you think. If you maintain that the bake sale is racist please explain how it differs in a relevant way from racial preferences in admissions.

Darwin's Religious Beliefs

Students often inquire as to what Darwin's religious beliefs were or whether stories of a deathbed conversion are true. A piece at The American Thinker by Richard Weikart addresses the first question, and, as to the second, there's simply no evidence to substantiate the claim that Darwin ever had a change of heart.

Here's Weikart's summary of his essay:

So, what lessons can we draw about the relationship between religion and evolutionary theory from Darwin's own trajectory? First, as he developed his evolutionary theory, he moved from Christian belief in a personal God to a deistic position to agnosticism. It is not clear to what extent his religious views shaped his evolutionary theory, or vice-versa. It seems reasonable to think they developed in tandem.

Second, he rejected any divine intervention or even divine purpose in his evolutionary scheme. Third, he rejected the religious basis for morality. None of these points is good news for those trying to refashion Darwin into a religious believer whose evolutionary theory is no threat to religion, especially to traditional forms of Christianity.

Agnosticism is in fact atheism. An atheist is one who lacks a belief in God, and, since agnostics lack such a belief, they're atheists. The difference between an agnostic and an atheist like, say, Richard Dawkins, is that the Dawkins type atheist (What I call a "hard" atheist) asserts flatly that God does not exist or most probably does not exist. The agnostic, like Darwin, (what I call a "soft" atheist) does not make such a strong claim, but says that although God may indeed exist, there's not enough evidence to warrant believing that He does.

The only substantive difference between the hard and soft atheist is that, theoretically if not in actual practice, the soft atheist is more open to, and less dismissive of, theism than is the hard atheist.